I’m in a bit of a mid-season slump with the dart game these days. Sunday Grant and I lost six straight legs in Challenge League play cricket doubles. To their credit, Jim and Lonnie and then Mario and Jin took care of business, but still, losing sucks.

Last night in SIDL action we were playing the team from Shooters Bar. Mario and Cuatro are both military and because of the exercise they weren’t available for the match. We had 3 players, but it takes 4 to make a team. You can play with three, but in the vacant spot you play a “ghost” which is an automatic loss.

So we get to the bar (Friends, because Shooters is in an off limits area) and I ask a random guy sitting there if he wanted to throw some darts. He agreed, so we had our four. You know, at my age there are not many firsts left in life, but that was my first time picking up a guy in a bar. Hopefully my last as well.

Anyway, I’m up first and their guy takes the diddle, calls cricket and proceeds to throw a 5 mark on 20s. I answered with two pathetic 19s. Fortunately, the guy couldn’t hit a 19 to save his life, and I hit two four marks to get the points back. The point war was on, and we were both over 100 by the time we finished the 20s and 19s. So we played it tight after that, until he pointed the shit out of me on 15s. I was lucky enough to throw a 3BS (three single bulls) and then hit two more for the win.

The 01 game went down to the wire, but he hit the double out first. I took the diddle and called cricket and we had another nail biter that came down to me hitting enough bulls to close and make up the points to take the game and finish 2-1.

Jim dominated his opponent for a 3-0 win, and Lonnie followed up with a 2-1 victory. Vins, the guy I picked up played all right, but his opponent played better and got all three legs.

So, it was on to doubles. We were feeling pretty confident going in with a 7-5 lead. But Jim and Vins went down 0-3. I was teamed up with Lonnie for the cricket doubles and we really believed we would go 3-0 and win the match. Alas, it was not to be. We were both just enough off our games to lose. Kinda got snake bit, because one of the opponents couldn’t hit anything, except triples for points and double bulls for the win. Weird how that happens. So, we took a 0-3 drubbing and were pretty disgusted with ourselves.

Ah well, going in we thought we would be satisfied getting 5 legs with only 3 players. Vins lost all his games so it didn’t make a difference having him (although we really appreciated his willingness to fill the void). And we were in a position to take the match and failed to play up to our capabilities, so that’s how it goes. We just have to play better the rest of the way.

Next week we have our sister team from Dolce, the Sliders. Looking forward to that match. I just need to find my game between now and then.

In other news, I saw a movie Saturday: The Breakup. It was not as funny as the previews made it look to be, but Jennifer Anniston is easy on the eyes and the ending wasn’t typical Hollywood. I went with another Korean couple and afterwards they took me to a traditional Korean soju hut and got me drunk on my ass. Still, it was fun because it was different. I was the only foriegner in the joint and got a few stares, but what’s the fun in hanging out with westerners all the time anyway?

So that’s the story.