Addiction

Caffeine is my shepherd; I shall not doze.
It maketh me to wake in green pastures:

It leadeth me beyond the sleeping masses.

It restoreth my buzz:

It leadeth me in the paths of consciousness for its name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of addiction,

I will fear no Equal:

For thou art with me; thy cream and thy sugar they comfort me.

Thou preparest a carafe before me in the presence of The Starbucks:

Thou anointest my day with pep; my mug runneth over.

Surely richness and taste shall follow me all the days of my life:

And I will dwell in the House of Mochas forever.

~Author Unknown

I am addicted to Caffeine although I won't admit it. Wait did I just admit it? I use to say no, I am just addicted to the taste of Coca-Cola not the caffeine in it. I would say this because I can drink a Coke right before bed and not have any trouble in falling asleep. Which is true but still doesn't make me not addicted to Caffeine. I can tell when I go without it, I get those headaches or I become the grouch. I have figured out that its Caffeine because of my new addiction to Starbucks. I NEED MY STARBUCKS. Every morning on the way to work I stop, the lovely barista know my name and my favorite drink. If I didn't change my mind every other day between Hot or Cold they would have my drink already made. It's the start to my day and later followed with a Coca-Cola for lunch...

Step 1: Admittance...

"I Heather Ezell am addicted to um Ca, no Caff, fine Caffeine."

No Words...

1. Growing up I loved Walt Disney movies. The VHS movies in the thick plastic cases, you know what I am talking about. I think Mr. Disney was a true mastermind. The characters, the phrases and meaning behind the movies goes way beyond what it seemed...

"You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality." -Walt Disney

2. Although Cinderella was not my favorite movie as a child I think its message is one of the greatest.

A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep. In dreams you will lose your heartaches. Whatever you wish for, you keep. Have faith in your dreams, and someday, your rainbow will come smiling through.No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true. 

-Cinderella

3. There is no doubt Land Before Time was one of my all time favorite movies. From Little Foot to Ducky, there is not a character in that movie that I didn't love.

Let your heart guide you. It whispers, so listen closely. - The Land Before Time

4. You can't tell me that when you watched Peter Pan you didn't wish you could find some fairy dust and fly. Or if you thought of that happy thought long enough you would rise off the ground. But in the movie I think Peter Pan said it best with this...

All it takes is Faith and Trust - Peter Pan

5. P.S. Pixar is taking over the animation world...

It's because I like you, I don't want to be with you. It's a complicated emotion.

-Finding Nemo

6. Although I learned many things from Disney Movies, I think I learned the most from the main man himself.. Winnie the Pooh, and Tigger too :).

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.

-- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

Cinderella????

What's normal?

I have been battling this issue for awhile now. And in this world of judgement, teasing and bullying I think its a topic that should be discussed. I love the efforts of society to try and remove words such as retard and gay and fag from our vocabulary.

I feel the same way about the word normal. What's normal? who decides what's normal? From putting ketchup on french fries to wearing socks with shoes who decides it's normal. I find myself keying to this word in conversations and text often. Many times I will stop and ask "How's that normal?". It's a hard question to answer but what I have found even harder is finding a replacement word for normal just because it is cemented into our everyday life. I have made a conscience effort of not using the word and honestly I can't remember the last time I did. I won't lie, it does slip out every once in awhile but I usually catch it. I just think too many kids, teenagers and even adults fight every day for normalcy in their lives, even if they don't know why its normal or agree with it. From athletes to musicians, country to city, gay to straight, conventional to non-conventional, no one is normal, we are all different and no one person is perfect. God made us the way we are for a reason, we have a path, our own path, that we get to paint it the way we want to. So enjoy it, use all the colors and don't worry that your path doesn't look like the one next to you.

Own it, Love it, Be Proud of it.

"I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part."  ~Shirley MacLaine

Adversity

Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:5). 


On July 10th I ran my first 5k of my life. Its a new thing I have gotten into, running, for no reason, just running. I know who would have thought I would actually do something like this. This coming from someone who only participated in like 1.5 summers of preseason workouts, out of 4. But something in me changed and now I actually enjoy it, I make time for dates with the treadmill in the evenings. But back to July 10th, I was so proud of myself for signing up for this 5k, but this day will not be remembered for that for me. Instead its one of the saddest days of my young life....


5 days later I tweeted after the funeral "It will go down that I carried you, but you have always carried me". I was a pallbearer for my high school coaches funeral, it was an absolute honor but definitely not easy. I think about her often especially after getting this coaching job. I can't count how many times I have wanted to pick up the phone and call her for advice. I know she is watching over all of us, walking with the Lord and teaching the Angels how to play defense. I miss her, we all miss her but she is still with us everyday. Not that I need a reminder of her, but more just in memory of her, I got another tattoo. A blue cancer ribbon with the Jimmy V quote "Don't give up, don't ever give up." She never gave up, she won... STEPH WON.


During my Christmas break at home I had the opportunity to spend Christmas Eve at the Phillips house with the boys and the Giddens. The boys remind me of her, their mannerisms and some of the things they say. She would be proud of them, I am proud of them. I got to help the boys put out the Reindeer food and get the milk and cookies ready for Santa. But my favorite part came after all that when I was laying in theirs bed trying to get them to go to sleep so Santa could come. Its a memory I will cherish forever. 

New Years Resolution

I know everyone makes New Years resolutions and with 12 days these resolutions are over. If its a diet, a workout regiment or some how living a better life, we focus so hard for a few days and then it soon slips away. Well I have a couple of resolutions, one is to cut out negativity in my life and another is to get back to blogging. I am hoping both become a habit and not just a 12 day fad. 

I want this blog to be different than what it use to be for me. I want it to be more about my life outside of basketball, off the court and out of the office. Now I am sure there will be a post or two or ten about basketball, I mean its been my life for almost 24 years now so how can I not talk about it. But I am going more for the other stuff. 

I am living in Milford, CT and working in Fairfield, CT, a 20 minutes commute on a good day. I never would have imagined that I would be driving to work fight the morning traffic to New York City, but I am. I don't mind it at all actually, the 20 minutes is good thinking time for me. I have been living here for a little over 4 months now, and so far so good. I really enjoyed the month of warm weather I got to enjoy as I went the beach on an almost daily occurrence. Now the winter has set in and as seen on CNN the blizzard of 2010 is still being dealt with and I am sure there are more of them to come. 

As I put an end to the first post of the new year, I would like to say 2010 had its up and down. I found, lost, and found my way again and I believe I am on the right path. At least for the time being. 

Better late than never??

Yes I know I haven't updated since before Christmas and I am sorry for this. You ask why? Well its been a busy past few weeks. Since getting back to Iceland we have had 4 games (3 away and 1 at home) and I have taken over coaching an 8th grade girls team. The 8th grade team practices 4 times a week, which keeps me pretty busy. I am usually running from my practice to theirs every evening.

So to go back a few weeks...

I got back to Iceland on January 6th after spending about 20 days at home. My time at home went by way to fast but it was great to spend some quality time with my family and friends. My travels back to Iceland went as smooth as possible even with all the new international flight rules and extra security. I got back to Iceland at about 7am on the 6th. My plan was to go to my apartment and take a nap for a few hours and then get up and run a few errands before I went to practice. Well that plan didn't go so well when I completely slept through my alarm and didn't wake up till almost 5pm and had practice at 6. Lets just say I was lucky to wake up as I could have easily slept right through practice. Since then I have adjusted a little bit back to the time change but still not going to bed before about 2am. The good thing is I don't have to get up early and I usually sleep till about 10:45, so its really not to bad.

Like I mentioned earlier we have played 4 games since being back. We won the first game against Valur by about 20 points and I finished the game with a quadruple double. I had 25 points, 15 rebounds, 11 assists and 10 steals. The next game was against Njardvik, who had beat us earlier in OT, we won this game by almost 30! I finished the game with a triple double and had a first of my career by scoring 40 points. I also had 10 rebounds and 13 assists. After that we played away at Snaefell, which is a 3 hour bus drive and a trip I have been on too many times already. Lets just say its not one of my favorites places to travel to. But either way we were still able to pull out a 20 point win. Once again I finished the game with a triple double. To finish out the 4 games we traveled to Keflavik who we lost to earlier in the season by one. Lets just say this was our worst game of the 4 and we ended up losing. Our next game is tomorrow (Wednesday) and then we play again on Sunday in the Subway Cup semifinals.

In other news we added another player to our roster, she is from Denmark but played College basketball in the States at Dayton University. This has been a really nice addition to our team and I have really enjoyed playing with her.

Well that's an update on the Basketball aspect since I have been back in Iceland. I will post another update shortly with everything else that has been going on. I will leave you with a few pictures of the recent games...

Until next time have a great day and take care!

Welcoming the new player (Kiki Lund)

40 point game..

I got my bags packed..

The countdown is down to 65 hours, less than 3 days, and about 3,900 minutes! My bags are packed and waiting by the door. Before I leave I do have some unfinished business to take care of. We have a game on Wednesday against Hamar. A team we lost to over a month ago by 1 on a last second play. So it's going to be a pretty tough game and would be nice to get a win before the Holiday break!

I had a pretty fun and exciting weekend, starting with the All-Star game on Saturday. The game was at 1pm and all the Americans that were playing in the game were joking that it was only like 7am back home, so it was too early to play haha. Even with the earliness of the game, we still had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the team I was on and I think we all had fun playing with each other! During half time of the game was a 3-point contest. Unfortunately after I had a great first round (16 out of 20), my second round of the contest wasn't so great, Oh well! During the second half of the All-Star I tried to make it a little more fun by attempting behind the back passes and such. Thank goodness my team had about a 20 point lead so when some of those passes didn't work out to well it wasn't a big deal. In the end, my team won 103-85 and I was awarded the MVP with 29 points, 13 boards and 10 assists. After the game I was informed that the person who makes the basket to break the 100 point mark is suppose to by a case for the team. Well I was that person who hit this basket and although I was all for buying the case they said I didn't have to since it was the All-Star game. I guess I lucked out even though I totally would have done it!

After the All-Star game I stayed around the gym to watch the Men's game before heading home to get a much needed nap before the evening festivities. Most of the American players got together on Saturday night and had a semi American party to celebrate the all-star weekend as well as our last weekend in Iceland before heading home for the Holidays! Needless to say it was a good thing we had Sunday off!

As for this week I am just trying to get everything taken care of before I leave on Thursday. Like I said I have my bags packed and everything like that. But I have a few other things to get done before I leave. Like I need to eat or get rid of some of the food in my fridge as I can't leave it in there for 3 weeks without it going bad. I also need to catch up on all my laundry so I don't leave any dirty clothes behind. Good news is my new Visa came in the mail so I don't have to worry about that anymore! Other than those things just a few little things here and there I need to get done that will hopefully allow the 65 hours to pass by faster! I am not sure when the next time I will update. I will try to get one in while I am home for the holidays but if not it won't be till January so have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

All Star Game

Winning team..

MVP

3-point Contest

Saturday night..