It is the custom on my soccer team to follow every match with an aprés at one of our houses or a restaurant if we are playing an away game. I volunteered to host today’s gathering and decided to try something new. Since we had an early game (8 am), I thought it would be fun to do breakfast food on the griddle rather than the customary burgers and beer. We had pancakes, breakfast sausage, bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Thankfully, one of my teammates offered to help me man the grill, allowing us to keep pace with demand. In addition to the cooked food, we had homemade bread baked by one of our players, and macerated strawberries to top the pancakes. I didn’t have time to get a photo, so I pulled this one from our security system.

Oh yeah, we won our game 9-1.

As expected, I took a lot of abuse for not attending Nico’s award ceremony on Friday, where nine of my teammates showed up to surprise me and show support for Nico. Fortunately, or perhaps not, that debacle was topped with an even greater one that soon drew most of the team’s attention. One of our players who lives far away spent the night at the home of one of our local players. As soon as he set foot in the house, he was promptly bitten by the family dog, leaving a nasty wound on his calf. Despite his anguish, I was happy to no longer be the center of attention.