Natasha and I had a blast playing soccer with our recreational “All Sorts of Sports” team through the Ottawa Sport and Social Club – next week we play Ultimate, and a week later we’re scheduled to play Football. This week our ragtag band of misfits were up against a team that knew eachother and had clearly played soccer before, so we were completely outmatched, and they took it 13-3. But our team’s got a lot of spirit, and everyone looked like they were having fun. A special kind of panting, wheezing fun.

The drinks afterwards at the Royal Oak didn’t hurt the spirits, either. There’s a lot of cool people on our team. It’ll be fun to get to know them better in the coming weeks.

I took a ball to the face during a charge on one of their forwards – extra painful when you’re wearing braces. My face was a little swollen for a day or two after the game, but my fear that all my teeth would pop out if I caught a good boot to the head turned out to be unfounded.