The Road to 40 Day 190/365: Play and Playdates

Vino and I had a chance to play with friends on this day, while Che ticked off a huge accomplishment at home.

I didn’t have a hangover from a night of drinking, and I came home relatively early, so I woke up a bit earlier than usual. Seeing that I felt okay around 7am, I got up and got ready to play with the Saturday morning session of the basketball games.

The games usually start at 7:30am, so I was fairly confident I’d get there in time for the first game. Unfortunately, when I got there, I was already the 29th player to show up. That meant after the current game, I’d have to sit out one more game before I could play.

I aimed to play for a bit, I didn’t realize that I’d see a sportsfest level crowd.

It was good, though, as I saw old friends who also rarely show up, and some of the newer guys who have been joining the games on other days.

In my first game, I failed to knock down a shot. I had a lot of open looks, but just couldn’t get anything to fall. We ultimately lost by about 10 points.

I sat out the next game, and a lot of people were already leaving as the sun was getting hotter. There were still a lot of guys hanging back, so I thought there would be another game at least.

After the game was done, there were about 13 people who went to the court. Two of the guys realized they had come late, so they stepped back. I was the guy on the bubble, but one of the guys said I should play since I don’t get to play regularly.

The guy who gave me his spot actually burned my team last week with threes. So for this game, I tried to run harder to give a little bit of his contributions had he been the one to play.

Luckily, my shots fell as well, as I got four of my shots to fall. One of the guys even passed to me for the potential game winner, but I saw there was an opportunity for a better score so I passed it and we scored. Dude teased me a bit for shying away from the moment.

Having played two games with one of them under the sun, I feel like I had a good workout.

I got home to see Che cleaning up the office. We’ve been stuffing it with things we didn’t want to deal with so that the living and dining rooms are presentable for guests. I usually forget where things go, so I usually wait for Che to tell me where I should keep the things she’s still going to use in the future, like our organizing bags for travel.

Che kept a lot of the toys, as we have decided to donate a lot of them to charity. Vino hasn’t been playing with the toys, so it was best for other kids to enjoy them.

Vino had a friend coming over, and incidentally, one of his friends had a cancelled playdate. They were inviting us to come over, but since Vino had a visitor already, I said, why not another one?

Che went to the room to rest while the kids were playing in the room. I was tasked to watch over them, but I let them just be kids for the most part. They were playing a bit while I was washing the dishes, but eventually just went back to playing Roblox.

It may look weird for kids to be playing on their gadgets while they’re all together, but I’ve come to accept that this is how kids play now. Before, we’d all be outside, but at some point, I played with my friends on a Local Area Network. There were nights when my cousins and I would walk to a computer shop and play DOTA or Counter-Strike.

Now, they have handheld gadgets, but they’re playing like we did in computer shops, with all the yelling and the trash-talking. They also do that while they’re on Facetime, but it feels more competitive when you’re trash-talking in person.

With their attention spans, they were bound to get bored playing on their tablets, so they found another way to entertain themselves by playing table tennis.

Che went to do some cosmetic procedure that would take a couple of hours, so I was left with the kids. They left around 5:30pm, so Che reserved an oyster place for dinner.

We arrived there at almost the same time and had a good chat about life. Weekend dinners together give us a chance to really catch up about things. On a regular day, we would get to talk, but it would mostly be about what’s going on in our daily lives. With this quiet evening, we were able to talk about big picture things.

We went home after dinner, with Vino falling asleep while riding the bus. I brought him up, and he surprisingly continued to sleep. I guess he got tired from the day’s activities.