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Alisa's visit was awesome, it was great to not be alone all the time. Plus she brought me easter candy and a new pair of jeans!! New jeans for me is a once-every-other-year occurrence for me, so it was exciting for me. We had a great time, we were able to see a lot of things. Got to see Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, and went to the Grand Bazaar a couple times too. The picture is in front of the Blue Mosque.

Going to the Grand Bazaar was great cause I don't like going alone. When I'm alone I'm an easy target for people to talk to me, or grab my coat to get my attention. But with someone I got bothered less. Plus, Alisa is a way better bargainer than me, so I saved some money too.

The only thing that sucked about Alisa's visit was the weather. Now that she is gone the weather forecast calls for a week of sun. There have been like, 3 non-rainy days while I've been in Istanbul.

After Alisa left we flew down to Izmir for our last regular season road game. We have one more home game, then playoffs. The coaches and management were nervous for the game cause we are battling for second place. The team we were playing was good, and they were really upset when they lost to us earlier in the season. Apparently their coach went nuts and yelled at our coach staff.

Anyway, the place was packed and the atmosphere was tense. The game started badly for us, a couple turnovers and a quick 7-0 run for them. Then I set a ballscreen, rolled to the hoop and caught a perfect bounce pass from a teammate. I jumped from the middle of the key and slammed it right on two of their players. I was clearly fouled, but whatever. Next play we came down, I got the ball on the wing, dribbled left toward the middle, spun baseline and threw in a 12 foot right hand hook. I went on my own personal 8-0 run and they called timeout.

The game was tight all the way. We were down 8 with about four minutes to go, but hit a couple threes and I dunked once to pull us even. With about 30 seconds to go we were up two, got the ball and hit a three in a scramble situation to put us up by five. There was no comeback after that, it totally deflated the other team. After the win we had to hurry cause our flight was in two hours. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but apparently we were about two hours...from the airport.

From the moment the game ended to the time we were showered, dressed and on the bus was no more than 6 minutes. We had given our bags to the team manager before the game, he left the game early to get our tickets and get our bags on the plane. This meant that, for all of us, our carry-ons were our sweaty basketball shoes and a plastic bag full of our still wet game gear. It was slightly embarrassing.

With the win we moved into a tie for second place. We hold the tiebreaker though, so we control our destiny. A win would get us 2nd, which is important for the playoffs. The club missed the playoffs last year, so the improvement is huge. Hopefully we will be able to do some damage in the playoffs.