One week, green light, banquet

So it has been a week since Button’s insulin shock episode.  She has pretty much fully recovered to the point she was before the incident.  The cats seem to be adapting to the all wet food diet we have put them on. 

So even though I still feel like I am looking over the edge of full blown sickness, I signed up to play in the volleyball tournament this weekend in Fort Lauderdale.  I have been popping Airborne twice a day since Monday.  I signed us up to play in BB.  The guy that runs the tournament has forced Randall to play A recently because he won BB a couple times with different partners (not me).  I am hoping we don’t get bumped up again.  I haven’t won a BB tournament since 2004 and I haven’t so much as touched a volleyball since July.  The last time I played was when I hurt my left shoulder so bad that it bothered me for a couple months afterward.  It will be interesting to see how I emerge physically from the tourney.  It will feel good to be out on the beach competing, even if it isn’t at a very high level.  My goal is to at least finish over .500 for the day.  If I don’t that will mean it will be the first time I ever finished a vball season with a sub .500 winning percentage, yuck.

Last night I went straight from work to the annual banquet for the runners club Ali and I belong to.  It’s ironic to me that we have such an involved role with the club.  Hell Ali is on the board for the club and was actually being encouraged to be the VP of it.  It’s ironic because the club is filled with people that are hardcore runners, people that have run for most of their lives.  Ali was really gung-ho about her running for a short time period but after I got hurt and couldn’t run with her, combined with her having some knee problems of her own, she hardly runs at all anymore. 

I really flounder in social situations like this.  Meeting dozens of people and trying to strike up instantaneous conversations with them is something I just suck at, plain and simple.  The only time I have a fighting chance is if I down a six pack of an alcoholic beverage before hand.  I only had two light beers which wasn’t enough.  I had one guy tell me his name and I realized 5 seconds later, I totally wasn’t paying attention and had forgotten it already.  I was constantly trying to do some sort of word association as I was told people’s names so I could remember them.  Ali is much better in these situations although she claims that she isn’t.  Luckily I had her to cling to.

They had a woman there doing a presentation about running.  She had run in the Olympics and still competes at a very high level.  She really broke down the art of running and offered great insight into what it takes to be successful at running .  A lot of what she said also could pertain to being successful in other parts of your life.  Her presentation went a little long for my taste but she was very knowledgeable and obviously very passionate about running which everyone appreciated.  It was interesting getting inside the head of an Olympic caliber athlete.  The discipline and self motivation required is something I really admire.

After her presentation the club president got up to make some award presentations and say a few words.  He is from New Zealand and has a pretty thick Australian accent.  When that accent was coupled with him speaking on a PA system he sounded very much like Ozzy Osbourne to me.  It made me smile a few times.  The meeting wrapped up around 9 and then we helped break stuff down, clean up and put things away.  By the time we got home it was after 10.

I wasted some time after work yesterday walking around Wal-Mart.  On the HD TV’s they had some video of guys base jumping wearing wing suits.  I couldn’t believe it.  Wing suits are basically parachute jump suits with webbing sewn in between the legs and the arms so that when you extend them your body becomes a human wing.   You actually fly.  The video I saw was incredible.  These guys jumped off sheer cliffs like it was nothing.  Several times as they were “flying” some of them would come within a few yards of rocks jutting out like it was no big deal.  It really looks like an amazing experience.  They have small chutes that they deploy to catch them before the run out of air real estate.  What a rush that has to be.

I have aspirations of pressure washing the pool area Sunday morning.  We need to tackle what is left of our Christmas buying list as well.  I am actually more or less finished shopping for Ali.  I don’t think I ever have been done this early.  Of course limiting myself to getting her 3 or 4 things helps immensely.  I listened to Christmas music for the last hour I was at work yesterday to see if it would help pump up my Christmas spirit.  It gave me a little rise. It seems my bubble of negativity is very hard to penetrate nowadays.