Bowling Scores 8-30-11

223, 161, 226  610 Series

Game 1 I forgot to tally my strikes and spares but I can tell you I had no open frames through 10.  I had one gift strike late that put me into the 220 range.  I started off the night trying the line I finished last week with but the lanes were much drier so as the night went on I slowly moved right back toward the 20 board on my stance. 2/2 on 10 pins! I also X in the 2nd and 9th frames, yes hell had frozen over at this point.

Game 2: 3 strikes, 4 spares, 3 opens

I came back to reality and it began in the 1st frame as I missed a 4-10 conversion completely as my ball rolled into the gutter. I've really been choosing to shoot all of my spares with my strike ball aside from the 10 pin.  I did experment this past Sunday on shooting single pins on the left side of the lane with my strike ball but for decided not to do so tonight.  I clawed my way through the next few frames before the 10 pin bug returned in the 7th and 8th frame where I went 0/2 with both misses being on the left and not in the gutter as the 4 misses last week were.  Leaving me with something in the 130ish range going into the final 2 frames. I salvaged a 161.

Game 3: 7 strikes, 3 spares, 1 open

I can't count the number of times I've seen this in the 2nd frame in my Career:

9-
28

In fact I mentioned getting it tattooed on my forearm as a bust factor.  Like I said the 2nd and 9th frames are my Kryptonite when it comes to failing.

Halfway through the third game we had to get a re-spot of Ben's spare and there was like a 10 minute delay.  This worked in my favor as I settled down and began to relax a bit more finishing the second half of the last game with a five bagger 7th frame on: XXXXX9/.  In fact it was damn near a no-tap 300 game as all I would have needed was one more strike for the 10th frame to look like this: XX9 instead of this X9/. 

For as bad as I shot my spares in the second game to come out with my first 6 of the season is really quite amazing.  Looking back on Week 1 it seems David shot a 716 series week 1.  Holy shit I guess I made him angry when I passed him late in the season last year for high series (729)

As far as my team goes it was the 2nd straight week with just me and Ben.  All of the "special people" started asking if we needed a couple of bowlers and I quickly responded "No we don't"  and then told pretty much every one else that I would rather "Pull a Carson Palmer" than have any of them on my team.  Shortly later Steve from a couple years ago asked if we needed another bowler which I said would be fine he has a 180ish average and so now it looks like our team is coming together.  Hopefully Bill will be back next week and we can have a full 4 man team for the first time this season.  As I said before my Dad is out with a Wrist injury Carlos Beltran style.

1100 (hah) total pins through 2 weeks and a 183.33 average through 6 games.

Sunday Practice

11 open frames this last Tuesday led me to the bowling alley Sunday morning to get in some practice.

Lane 34

195, 187, 210  592 Series

Game 1 - 8 strikes 3 opens 1 spare

Game 2 - 6 strikes 3 opens 2 spares

Game 3 - 4 strikes 6 spares

Went in wanting to work on my single pin spares but only converted 1 spare in the first 15 frames.  I'd say it's rather difficult to throw 8 strikes in a game and not break 200.

Converted 1/1 ten pins but was hoping for more practice on them.  The lanes were  much dryer than last Tuesday.  6 open frames with about half of them being splits.  Still unacceptable and still a lot of work to be done to get back to 2010 form.

Bowling Scores 8-23-11

159, 173, 158   490 Series

Wow, 5 months away from the game really shows why practice is important I guess.  Game 1 I was hitting the pocket clean and leaving 10 pins.  0/3 on 10 pins game 1.  3 strikes, 4 open frames bleh.

Game 2 began with two more 10 pins and converting 1/2.  I finally changed my line to the pocket at this point which eliminated my 10 pin leaves.  Still though couldn't string anything together X wise. 3 strikes, 2 opens.

Third game and out comes the curse of the splits.  4 of them to be exact.  Add to that the fact that I missed a 4 pin in the 8th frame and my 8th frame looked like this:

9-

98





Having a 98 in the 8th is pretty ulous and at this point I completely changed my line again moving way left to the 15 board and throwing across to the 10 board with maximum revs on my ball.  This worked and I XXXX'd out to salvage a 158.  "Hey it only took me 28 frames to figure it out!" 

AMF Lanes also got new flat screen monitors for scoring which are way bigger than what was there last season.  The team we bowled made it a point that every time someone rolled XXX in a row and the turkey popped up on the screen to exclaim: "Wow! Look at the sack on that thing!"  which is pretty hillarious and became a running gag all night.

Only one of my teammates showed up so it was 2 on 4 toinight.  Hopefully my other teammate shows up next week and we can figure out the 4th spot on our roster soon.  Our league meeting before hand saw that we were about 3 teams short from last season so if anyone out there has been thinking about joining a league or knows anyone that wants to let me know.  It doesn't matter how good or bad you are as this is a handicap league and there is a variety of bowlers.  We meet Tuesday nights and bowl 3 games from 6:15pm-830ish.

Final line was 12 strikes and 11 open frames.  Yikes.  Well everyone thought I was sandbagging so sure I'll go with that.  163.3 average through 1 week and 3 games.

2011 Movies Rated

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest  8/10
The Rite 5/10
The Roommate 3/10
The Lincoln Lawyer 7/10
Black Sheep 5/10
The Descent 2 7/10
Insidious 7/10
Cars 2 6/10
Super 8  5/10
Winnie The Pooh 7/10
One Day 7/10

Rumor is a pack rat

How many phrases start with "Rumor has it..."?  This is a frequent saying in the English language many times implying that an occurance is likely to happen.  It can also still be structured as a question but without needing an answer only confirmation that this rumor has started or has been said/spread.  (I.E. "Rumor has it you've been telling people I suck at Ms. PacMan") 

Today I realized that Rumor has a lot.  It is a beginning phrase that I am sure is said thousands of times in conversations every single day with endless posibilities to finish the sentence.  Therefore Rumor is a Pack Rat.

Hey it's a blog on blogging

     My first ever "blog" occurred on 10/21/05 on this website called MySpace.  It hit me earlier this week that I have been blogging my league bowling nights as well as a bunch of other random shit for coming up on six years now.  As cliche as it sounds, wow time flies by fast.  The last few days have involved me converting all of my Myspace blogs to a blogspot account.  Looking back on the whole creation of the account I would probably go back and change it to wordpress (looks cleaner/better) but I've already gotten so far I feel it's too much work to convert yet again. 

     So finally after this being the third night of conversion, it's finally finished.  342 blogs later (342!) and here we are, about 3 weeks removed from the beginning of yet another Winter Tuesday Night Men's League at AMF Lanes, Chico, CA.  These blogs will many times be for nothing other than my own personal amusement as well as some sort of an online journal/documentation of my bowling career.  However the few of you (and the imaginary friend in my head can't forget about you Billy!)  who do fall upon my blogging from time to time can feel free to follow.  I don't see myself getting a Twitter account any time soon (probably never) So this is the spot to lean back and enjoy the Crysta'l Milk, shaken not stirred. 

     I haven't thrown a game of bowling since March and while in past years I have gotten new equipment or tried out a new approach to begin a season, this one I'm going in completely dark with no changes.  Well maybe some new thumb tape because I'm probably going to run out by week 5. 
In a nutshell, from 10/21/05 until now nothing much has changed.  Well except that getting married and having a daughter part, I still have the bustability randomness and passion at heart albeit toned down from the insane days of my youth.

     Stay tuned, as I envision a plethora of bowling blogs and more in the coming winter months and well into 2012...


...That is if we aren't toasting some chilled Rolling Rock's to the end of the world on 11/11/11.