State of the Union

Well, times have been exciting since I left you all. Here's what's up:

State of the City
We have defied all odds. The lowly 6 seed Pittsburgh Steelers have made it back to the Super Bowl, and I couldn't be more excited. Last time they were in the Super Bowl I was still pretty young...10 years old...and I remember the excitement, but not like this. I rioted on the streets of Oakland after the win - wanna talk about some stories I can tell my kids one of these days. See the video here, taken on my phone. To top it all off, this past Monday I was down on the South Side for a little athletic training action. The normal bus driver wasn't there, so they had some crap ass substitute working his route. Either way, this guy obviously didn't realize that I was going to be picking up the bus home, and he was running ahead of schedule, so I missed my bus home. I was pissed. But so I had to get home, so I walked out to Carson St. to catch a 54c back to Oakland. As I was walking along Carson (in my Steelers hoodie), some guy stops me and says "sir, do you have a moment so I could ask you some questions?" I look at him, and notice that he's wearing a USA Today press badge, so I stopped and had a short conversation with him. The end result of all this was me being in USA Today...vvvvvvery exciting, if I do say so myself. Read the text of the article here. Reading this article, and coupled with everything else I love about Pittsburgh, I'm increasingly more convinced every day the Pittsburgh is the most wonderful city out there. Even driving around the Hill with Sean and Josh the other day helped grow my appreciation of what a beautiful city we live in. If you ever wanna impress a girl and aren't afraid of slums, take her to the Hill...some of the greatest view in Pittsburgh you've never seen. Now if we could just work on the economy...

State of the Company
My company, Avari Sports, has landed on some hard times. Well, kinda. We're restructuring the way we're gonna do business, and it's pretty exciting to me. I'll keep all of y'all posted on what's going on.

State of the Body
Went to the doctor's office today. Had a decent conversation with Doctor Stone. He told me that I've definitely gotten stronger (which I have). My symptoms are far less intense than the last time I saw him, around 6 weeks ago. I'm still not healed completely, though. With that in mind, I'm going to continue going to the trainer twice a week at least for the next month. Today at training, I started running for the first time. It felt good. Candice (my trainer) wants me to take it slow, so I'm going to. We're going to slowly increase the amount of activity that I'm participating in. I hope to start practicing next week or the week after, but I'm not going to rush it just so that I can play at QCTU. Here are my vitals, taken from some very unscientific testing that I did on myself today at the trainer:

Abduction: 100-110lbs left (injured) side, 110 lbs right side
Adduction: 100lbs left (injured) side, 110lbs right side
Hamstrings: 45lbs left (injured) side, 45lbs right side
Hip Flexor: 70lbs left (injured) side, 110lbs right side

So clearly from this, my big problem is the hip flexor. I can barely lift 70lbs with my left side, and I can kick the shit out of 110lbs with my right side. This problem has to be resolved before I can really get into the thick of things. There is hope, tough. When I started my training a month and a half ago, I could hardly do 30lbs with my left hip flexor. I suspect it will take the better part of the month to get back to 110lbs. Once I do, I think I will see my symptoms disappear very quickly, because they are caused almost entirely by lifting my leg...it's strange how much pressure you put on your adductor tendon when you lift your leg if your hip flexor is weak. Either way, we'll see how everything goes, but as of now I'd say I'm 50% playing at QCTU, 95% by Spring Collegiates.

Word.