Redondo Beach volleyball with the Lakers (Aaron)

I just wanted to share my Saturday morning with you. My friends and I are playing in a little beach volleyball tournament next weekend. Now, I know that it's not typical to "practice" for a dress-up-and-drink tournament, but we wanted to take advantage of the early fall good weather and play a little beach ball. We all agreed to meet over at Knob Hill in Redondo Beach. I arrived and we had a good size group there to play.

I'm warming up and I see this EXTREMELY tall man meandering down the stairs to the beach. He's got a scraggly beard and there's another guy with him, and I'm thinking, "Hey, wait a minute... Holy crap, is that Pau Gasol? Whoa! Cool!" And then he and his buddy get to the bottom of the stairs, and they start walking toward us. (Whoa!) And then they started warming up with us!

We played beach volleyball with the Lakers' star center Pau Gasol and his buddy, feisty 3 point specialist, the Machine, Sasha Vujacic! It turns out that Sasha lives in the building nearby, and that Pau is building his house nearby. They were both really cool and were eager to have some fun scrimmaging with us.

Both players are definitely basketball players first, and the team we were scrimmaging against was clearly not as good as our team. Pau just stayed up front in the middle all the time, and Sasha wanted to set. Our team played its usual rotations.

Let me tell you, it is very intimidating to line up across a 7 foot basketball star. That was the first rotation of the game, and I went up and blocked his first hit. :) (As I said, basketball is definitely his first love.) We played 4 games, and we went up against each other many times. As the day went along, he blocked a few of my hits and I got some more of his too.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera or my phone anywhere nearby, so no pics, but it was definitely a highlight of my extended summer!

UPDATE: I was emailing with the guys after the day...
Me: Dude, I can't even come up with anything clever to express how cool it was that we were playing vball with Pau and Sasha. It's a little intimidating to line up across an NBA all-star center! Hopefully, none of the other teams will have Chris Kaman on their teams this weekend.

Justin: I think there was one rally where Aaron blocked Pau 3 times in a row. Each time, Pau threw out some awesome random profanity. F-ing Hilarious.
Good times. Wish I could have stayed longer.

Humanitarian Day

For the past little while Aaron and I have talked about volunteering more and giving back. We also recently both read The Soloist by Steve Lopez - an excellent book that draws attention to the homeless problem in LA (a movie is coming out soon, too). So when I got an email through work looking for volunteers to help with Humanitarian Day distributing items to the needy on skid row, it struck me as something we should consider. Aaron was game, so we went for it. It turns out that the day was organized by the Islamic Society of Irvine which meant two things: 1) we were definitely in the minority, and 2) they weren't serving the volunteers lunch since it is Ramadan and Muslims are fasting.

Aaron and I volunteered to help with surveys. After the homeless went through the 'fair' and collected their items we asked them questions about if they liked the event, which of the items we offered they needed the most (most said the blanket, second place was the hygiene kit), how long they've been homeless, etc, etc. We got a little insight into the lives of these people who certainly do not have it very easy. Some were just released from prison, others were addicts, many just said they simply couldn't get or hold down a job.

Asking these folks all these questions really just opened up others in my mind. Had they simply drawn a bad hand in life or were they wreck less and careless? Did they not have a good family to take care of them? Would that make a difference? Is there any hope for them to get their lives on track?

At least we helped meet some of their basic needs. And every single person I talked to was sooooooo appreciative. So, we did make a very small difference and I feel pretty good about that.

2 Years

Yesterday Aaron and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary - keeping it relatively low key. We exchanged gifts and ate a candle-lit picnic on our 'grass' in our backyard. Aaron planned it all out and kept it a surprise. With the hints he gave me (I always ask for a million hints when he has a surprise up his sleeves) I thought we were going for a picnic in the mountains where he proposed. So, I was half right with the picnic part. :)

I received flowers at work, too. Here's how our conversation went once I received them (paraphrasing, not word for word):

Julie: "Aaron, thank you so much for the flowers! They are beautiful."
Aaron: "Uhhhh, did a card come with those flowers?"
Julie: "Oh, yeah, I guess so... I didn't even look. Why?"
Aaron: "Because I didn't send you flowers and I'm wondering who did!"
Julie: "Hilarious! Let me open the card."
(finds and opens card)
"No way! Such ironic timing! These are from my new Director at work welcoming me to the team!"

Okay, so I'm clearly not trying to become a movie writer... as that dialogue is pretty crap. But you get the gist of it. So, yes, I haven't posted anything about it yet but I have a new job at Deloitte. Same company as before... still in marketing... but now on the national team rather than the regional team. Good times! Here's a low quality photo taken with my cell phone.

Mini Monache High School reunion

I know not everyone is into the whole Facebook and Myspace thing. And I get it - I'm not exactly a heavy user. But a couple of weeks ago I found a couple of long lost friends from high school online. And it turns out that they live within walking distance to me! So bizarre! So, over the weekend we had them over for brunch along with another friend who happened to be in town from Sacramento. It was fun to catch up and I hope we all get together again soon.

H-O-R-S-E

On Monday evening Aaron and I played what I imagine is the first of *many* games of H-O-R-S-E on our new basketball hoop. Our awesome friend Darren helped put it up.

Bad photo but great concert!

Aaron and I went to the Jack Johnson concert with a couple of friends last night. We didn't bring our camera so this is the best photo I've got - taken from my camera phone, which is clearly NOT meant for nighttime use. Jack Johnson holds a special place in our hearts because not only is he awesome but we chose one of his songs for our first dance at our wedding - Better Together. It's not one of his better known songs so I wasn't surprised that he went through the whole show without playing it, but I was a little bummed. Ah, but not to worry! He returned to stage for what turned out to be a 3-song encore and played our song as the very last one.