Observe the manhandling of the Cruisers, in their home stadium, versus the Laplace Gators. Peyton on a good team, as if I ever had a chance. 0-2 becoming 0-3 on the way to 0-5.

That's not what hurts today though. Although yes, knowing I'm putting down $110 all told to get walloped week in-week out is an ego blow, there are other things.

Like, say, Friday night, when the whole of Napa Valley turned out to take out yon Über-Monster-of-the-Fortnight, the Void Shadow.

Took 3 hours to kill. At 6000 gold or so insurance renewal per death (because it's really hard to kill the monster when the monster takes your armor or weapon), I lost about half a million gold to one monster. By the current eBay exchange rate, that's about $9 cash...a pretty decent loss considering how difficult it is to lose money in Ultima Online. But the big baddy is gone now, so all is well, until the next über-monster-of-the-fortnight rolls around and wreaks havoc for two weeks.

And yet, that's not really why I post this. Today I drove the Causeway, the longest bridge in America (23 miles, give or take), to the north shore [of Lake Pontchartrain] to Abita Springs, to go play paintball with the rest of my little brother's wedding party. It's a guys & girls bachelor party.

First round was capture the flag. I tasked myself with defending the flag. Knocked out one, maybe two attackers, but ran out of ammo. Fortunately, Red ran out of time after recovering our flag to return it to their base before time was called, so the game was drawn.

$20 on another bag of paintballs, and we played, oh, not speedball but something similar to. I was the last man standing for Blue, and while I did some nice dodging, I got surrounded. Stood down.

Then, a few private rounds of speedball, with just the wedding party (because it was obvious we had no clue what we were doing out there)

Won a 6-on-5 matchup with no regen.

Won a 5-on-6 matchup with regen.

And then, a last round, just to finish off the paintballs we had.

2-on-3.

While I had surrendered earlier, technically, I'd yet to have been hit.

Off we go.

Michael (my little brother, the groom), on the other team, splits to his right, where I've been camping out the past two rounds, very very effectively. I spray him as he comes across one of the bags and saw him duck. I had to duck myself because he was being given cover. So I figure he's hunkered down.

Oh no.

There's a lot of open ground in 2-on-3 speedball. I was watching the middle, where Stephen (I think it was Stephen. It wasn't Stobe, that's for sure.) was covering cross. In any case, I wasn't warned that Michael had kept moving along the boundary and came around the backside.

For a split-second, I saw this sage green blur on the corner of my eye, and then all of a sudden a stinging pain in the small of my back, then a pop at my wallet.

Michael shot me. Once in the back, once on the, well, rump. The first shot (on the back) not only gave me a welt, but tore a dime-sized hole in the shirt. The bruise is still seeping blood.

That hurt.

So anyway, my lifetime record in paintball is now 2-2-1. I can cover a flag pretty well, and I've got the volley thing down.

But gee, my back stings.

-KIE