tennis and family prayer

so i had a blind date last night. adam anderson invited me to the pacific life tennis tournament in palm springs yesterday. it was a great time. he got some amazing seats from a family connection and we just hung out and watched tennis all day. quick comments about the tournament:

• im not a die-hard tennis fan, but these tournaments are a great time. it was one of the early rounds so there were games on all of the courts all day long. we had tickets to the main court and saw rafael nadal play in one match and tim henman in another. here is a picture of 'rafa' in his shants.
• you get tickets for a court for the whole day. in these early rounds there are 4-5 games per court per day. and with the early rounds there are good, ranked players on each court. so you dont have to have tickets to the main arena.
  
• there are a couple of practice courts for the players to warm up on before their matches. everytime we walked by these courts there was a large crowd gathered to watch someone warming up. we missed federrer warming up but saw him walking on the grounds from the warm up court to the player locker room. we saw roddick warming up with the bryan brothers. and, we also saw this girl. this was the most entertaining part of the day. here is why: we saw her warming up from a distance and a huge crowd watching. we asked about 10 different people who it was and no one knew. some said they thought it was maria sharapova but they werent sure. we asked if they had bothered to look at her face yet because that would probably be a good way to find out if its actually maria. finally we found a guy who really knew his tennis and he told us it was daniela hantuchova from slovakia. lesson learned: 6 foot fit bronzed girls with great stems playing tennis in their underwear draws large crowds.
  

anyways, so at about 7:30 when adam is dropping me after a day spent with just the two of us, he tells me about a girl he wants to set me up with. she goes to grad school at asu and was only in town for the weekend. my other plans for the evening had fallen through so i told him to set it up. he called his wife. she called her. within the half hour i had a date in la canada.

so i went to her house at 9. knocked on the door and aksed if an emily lived there. thankfully one did and i took her out. unbelievably she had already had dinner. i hadnt though so we went to beautiful downtown montrose to get some 'snacks.' i got the pulled pork full sandwich with kettle chips and a side of slaw snack and she got some fruit cobbler. she was a cool girl. graduated from byu in '05. we played the name game and found out she knew my roommates from my last year at byu. degress of separation: 1. she also went to llamapalooza at the honky tonk. she is now getting a masters in social work from asu.

after dinner i didnt know anything to do so i just took her home. when we got home she asked me if i wanted to come in and finish watching 'goal: the dream begins' with her family. her whole family was there. all other 4 siblings, 2 in-laws, 2 parents, a snoring poodle and me. thankfully the movie was half over by the time we got there. its a terrible show. on the way home we argued which is worse, 'ghost rider' or 'wild hogs.' neither one of us had seen either, i thought 'hogs' would be worse, she thought 'ghost' rider. 'goal' beats both. think of every cliche from any movie ever and its in this show. highlight from the experience: at the end of the movie the guy makes the winning goal, in the final game of the season, in added time, against newcastle's rival liverpool which clinches the championship for newcastle (i told you it was completely cliche). when he made the goal the sister cheered out loud. this was classic for a few reasons: she was 35 years old. actually, she was in high school. but, everyone saw this coming. everyone. unless you are blind and deaf you saw this coming. this isnt one of those movies where they build up and then the guy misses the goal. you knew this was going in and she still cheered like she didnt expect it. plus, she had already seen the show! after cheering my date said, 'my sister loves this show.' i couldnt believe it. she sincerely cheered as though she was surprised at the goal. it was incredible.

so the movie ended, the lights came on and the family just stood around talking. and then the dad said they should say family prayer. so the whole family and the random guy from claremont said prayer. the dad asked me to say it. so i did and made up names of people since i didnt know anyone's name in the family. thats a lie. he didnt ask me to say it. the son in law did. afterwards we exchanged numbers, i hugged the whole family goodbye and went home.

the date was good. im sure we will go out again if she ever comes back to california. blind dates with girls that dont live nearby is ideal. if i want to go out again we can stay in touch till she comes back, if i dont, its incredibly easy to avoid the second date and tell her, 'i would set up another time to get together, but you live in arizona. dang. huh? well, bye.'

songs to describe her:
longtime - boston (really nothing to do with her, but more just in memory of the lead singer that died last week)

songs to describe the date:
get me away from here i'm dying - belle and sebastian
we are family - pointer sisters
real madrid anthem - there were cameo's by raul, zidane and beckham in the movie. easily the highlight. more to come on the team at a later post.