Archives December 2007

We made it.  We lucked into getting a Prius rental from Enterprise which Ali was thrilled about.The Hilton timeshare we are staying in is awesome.  Boy is it cold.  I made the mistake of wearing a short and t-shirt for the trip, fine for SW Florida, not so good for weather in the 40’s in Vegas.

  How bout them Eagles?  Wow that was a sweet win in every way.  That was our Super Bowl for this season.  Poor TO sucked the entire game and Tony had his worst game ever.  That is the way I like to see the defense play.  F the Cowboys.

That’s it for now, the week is shaping up that we will be going to the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Blue Man group and a dinner out at a place dad got us a gift cert for, Capo’s  Oh and of course, gambling.  We had an incredible moment last night as we walked into Binions off Fremont street.  My sister told me she has great luck playing red 16 on roulette.  16 is the Duffey number since my sister, my mom and I were all born on the 16th of three consecutive months.  So we walk up to the first roulette table.  They were already closing down betting for that spin but I told Ali how Torrin said I should play red 16.  Ali and my jaw dropped open as red 16 hit…..  WTF, that is unreal.  Damn it I wish I threw money on the table and called it out.  Time after time I said to Ali that I couldn’t believe red 16 came up at the first roulette table we just happened to walk up to…. the odds are indeed slim.  Weird shit.

Today I plan to give a 300 another shot.  No watch, just looking to survive it.  My body is far from recovered from the volleyball tournament.

Well I am officially old.  Last night I opened up my birthday present from mom which included gambling money for Vegas as well as an Old Guys Rule t-shirt.  Mom thought I may think the shirt was stupid but actually I kinda like it, it’s funny.  I wore it to work today.

I opened the door to my office and let out an “Oh crap…”  Evidently the little office gremlins invaded my office after I left work yesterday and did this.

Nothing welcomes you to the old age club like an office decorated in black.  I used to always laugh at the people that had this done to them.  Now I am one of those people.  The only positive I can muster is some people in the office were quite surprised to learn I was going to be 40. 

So what have I learned from being on this planet for almost four decades?  Well I learned that as your age is accelerating, the passing of time seems to accelerate at twice that rate.  A year today seems to fly by.  When I was 12 years old, a year was FOREVER.  I have learned that as you get older it is very hard to not admit that you carry with you many of the traits you observed in your parents as you were growing up, both good and bad.  I now understand how grumpy old men become grumpy old men.  Taking the time to actually think about the world around you can be a really negative thing, at least for me.

In the big picture, I am in a better position than many at 40 both financially and physically.  Mentally is up for debate.  When I was 18 did I think my life would travel the path that it has?  Absolutely not, but I think it is pretty safe to say that hardly anybody is able to have the luxury of having life go as planned.  There is not much point for me to ramble about being 40, it happens, there is nothing that can be done about it, shut up and move on.

They enacted the next phase in water restrictions which I believe is Phase IV.  You will only be allowed to water your lawns once a week during a four hour window.  Phase III allowed it twice a week and Phase II allowed it 3 times a week.  I am not surprised it has come to this.  The fact that we went an entire wet season without appreciable standing water on our property says a lot.  The rain totals for the current year could match the lowest numbers dating back to the 50’s.

Every day for lunch I have a Breakstone’s fruit/cottage cheese combo.  Well I noticed that every single raspberry one I opened this week was bad.  The normally red raspberry part had a brownish tint and a less than pleasing smell.  After opening the 4th one today, I finally called them and told them about it.  Every one that was bad had an expiration date of December 25th on it.  The woman I talked to was very nice.  She asked for all the numbers on the package, asked me where I got it, how many I bought and said they would refund me for them.  She said that it is possible that somewhere along the distribution chain that they were not refrigerated properly which could cause them to go bad.  Who knows.  The first one I opened that was like that, I actually ate a bunch of the fruit, I’m lucky I didn’t get sick.

So I am doing cardio at the gym and on the TV right in front of me is the Family Feud.  Nowadays it is hosted by that creepy looking guy that hosts the Thanksgiving Dog Show, was on Dancing with the Stars and used to play Eileen’s boss on Seinfeld, whatever his name is.  Well the family that made it to the final round was an all american black family.  All american because every one of them except one was at least 50 pounds overweight with a couple probably closer to the century mark in pounds they could lose. Boy did they choke in the finals.

 First woman up gave these answers

Name the longest amount of time a guy has admitted to watching tv straight – 10 minutes (WTF)

Name a food other than chocolate that is fattening – cake

Name something in an operating room – a PHONE (Brilliant!)

Name a book people refer to often – the dictionary

Name something to help have a healthy heart – she couldn’t think of anything HAHA

Well her first, third and fifth answers got a big fat goose egg and she only got 57 points total (need 200 to win)  So it was all up to the big ass matriarch of the family to save the day, she managed to actually do worse.  Her answers were as follows:

#1 – 3 hours

#2 – PASS (WTF??)

#3 – Doctors

#4 – DR SPOCK (WTF?????????)

#5 – PASS

Hahaha she scraped together only another measly 30 points.  What a joke.  It was so perfect that neither of these women had any idea of one thing they could do to help with a healthy heart.  Stand up for America, be an American!!

Last night I was browsing through perezhilton.com and saw a video of Janice Dickinson being interviewed on one of those talk shows on CNN/MSNBC/FOX.  She was defending her statement she made the other day saying that Tyra Banks was “fat” and that Jennifer Love Hewitt wasn’t (see pics of Jennifer lately, ewwww).  Janice said she was just kidding and that in fact her and Tyra are friends.  The host of the show pressed the issue, asking Janice how a statement like that (calling Tyra fat) affects Americans that hear it?  Although I was home alone, I started talking out loud to the computer monitor in anger.  “What the f are you talking about?  America is already fat, do you think people actually give a shit what Janice Dickinson or Tyra Banks says about it???”  It was such a stupid thing for the host to say.  It’s like they think that people are blank pieces of carbon paper and whatever they hear or see from the media immediately becomes imprinted on that paper.  It seems  they (people like the host of the show) think that people have no ability to make cognitive decisions on their own.  Obviously America does think on it’s own and it has decided that being fat and lazy is the way to go, at least for the majority of them.  The whole thing was so stupid.  All this politically correct bullshit has destroyed common sense.  Call a spade a spade.  Illegal immigrants ARE criminals, the Iraq situation and all that lead up to it is basically legalized crime, and identifying a woman waddling across the street that looks like she was just dispensed from a soft serve ice cream machine as “fat” is just telling it like it is.

Today in the gym parking lot I spotted the latest vehicle the guy that used to train Alison has purchased, a jet black, brand new, Cadillac station wagon.  It warms the cold, barren caverns of my heart knowing I somehow helped to financially contribute in his efforts to attain supreme yuppie status.

We just heard that a woman that worked at our office for a long time (20+ years) and whom only retired a couple months ago, just died.  She was the type of person that always had a compliment for everybody.  She was so excited to finally retire.  I saw her one time after she did retire and she told me how wonderful it was.  What a thing it is to work your entire life looking forward to retirement and have it cut short just after it finally becomes reality, very sad.

Phone rings.

Caller – Yes this is Mrs. Terrel, I just wanted to tell you there hasn’t been any watering on my beds….

Me – Ma’am, ma’am

Caller – Yes?

Me – Ma’am, this the tax collector office.

Caller – Oh, oh it is?  Oh my, I’m sorry.

Me – Ok, good bye.

My WoW army, offering xmas greetings for 2007…

I realized another positive sign regarding my post volleyball recovery.  In recent outings I always wound up with a very nasty cracking/snapping sound everytime I went from a sitting position to a standing position for weeks afterward.  I have none of that now.  The swelling has gone down significantly as well.

For some reason from time to time I enjoy just picking a month in my prior blog entries and reading through it.  Even though my writing style is far from grammatically sound, far from highly intellectual, I generally find the entries entertaining enough to keep you tuned in at least through your first cup of coffee.  Hey, it’s not like I am writing about the life of a rock star here…

Obviously there was no way I was going to try to swing a 300 yesterday.  My immediate plan is to try to heal up enough so I can give it a go Friday, otherwise I won’t be giving the 300 another roll until after Xmas and boy what a struggle that would be.

While I was reading my entry for last Christmas I mentioned how the snazzy new Logitech Remote that Ali got me was a bit of a disappointment because I couldn’t use it to control my Bose system out of the box.  To do so required a mystical RF to IR converter named the C-1024.  After endless online investigation and even inquiries at the local Bose store, I found out the C-1024 was no longer being produced.  Well reading this old entry motivated me to take another look and low and behold, the C-1024 is back in production!  Unfortunately, it makes little sense for me to get one now.  First of all, Ali wants me to replace the surround system with something flush mounted. Second, the price of the box is a bit ridiculous at over $200.  If I wasn’t planning to phase out the Bose I may do it but since it will be biting the dust sometime in 2008 I will have to take a pass.

At the gym today I saw Ernie.  Ernie is an older guy I have known from way back when I first went to Gold’s Gym after moving down here.  I never talked to him at Gold’s but always noticed him.  He was tall and lanky like me but pushed around heavy weight.  I remember seeing him squat 315.  It looked extremely painful and he always seemed to walk around leaning slightly forward with a look on his face like something always hurt.  Well I actually started talking to Ernie when he joined JFZ gym.  He was very easy to talk to.  When JFZ got stupid and pulled out all of their “heavy” weights, Ernie made the jump over to Powerhouse with me.  When Ali was still car pooling with me, I would sometimes go to Powerhouse after work instead of lunch and would see Ernie there.  However since Ali became a consultant I have had no occasion to go there after working hours so I haven’t seen Ernie.

Well who walks in the gym at lunch time but Ernie!  He was working a half day and decided to hit the gym before braving the malls to do some Christmas shopping.  He told me about some health scares he had over the summer.  We talked quite a bit and I enjoyed doing so.  Ernie commented how he liked how empty the gym was over lunch as opposed to after work.  Maybe he will stop by once in awhile during the noon hour.  He’s 61 now but still plugs away hard at the gym.  I like Ernie. 

I finally got finished watching the three hour long Ultimate Fighter finale.  There were a bunch of good fights in there.  J-Roc and War Machine had a bloody back and forth war.  The fight between Clay Guida and Roger Huerta was amazing.  They went after each other non-stop the entire time with Huerta prevailing at the end after getting himself nearly knocked out the round prior.  The show finale between Tommy Speers and Mac Danzig was much more lopsided than I anticipated.  Danzig dominated and submitted Speers easily in the first round despite Tommy being a much bigger and stronger fighter.  Matt Arroyo had a masterful armbar submission in his fight as well.  It’s too bad he hurt his rib during the show, else it would have probably been him in the finale against Danzig which would have been a better fight.  I just can never get enough UFC.  It is simply awesome.

My virtual family of WoW characters are picking up and relocating to another server.  I have been on the same server since I started playing nearly 3 years ago.  The server has become overpopulated and stale.  I can move to a low population server for no charge for a limited time so I am taking advantage of it.  It will give me a chance to make some new virtual connections. 

My joints feel a bit better today.  My left shoulder doesn’t hurt as much as it did when I wrecked it in July.  My left knee doesn’t hurt as much as when I wrecked it at the Rumble in 06.  I guess that is a positive, right?

Oh yea, it’s official.  I would have taken out the number one team in my fantasy football league if I started Farve or pretty much any other QB that actually took the field.  I wound up losing by 9.  Pathetic.  I have no one to blame but myself.

So Saturday morning I drug myself out of bed at 5am to get ready to go to the volleyball tournament on the east coast.  I had not touched a ball since the end of July.  I took the Camry for the trip, something I haven’t done before because normally after a tournament I am a wet, smelly, sandy mess.  To combat this I packed extra big beach towels to wrap around the driver seat for the trip home.  Driving the Camry on open highway is nearly effortless.  Going 80 mph feels almost the same as 30, very smooth and uneventful.  Gas mileage suffers going that fast however.  Instead of the 40 mpg we normally average, I could only garner between 35 and 36 mpg cruising on Alligator Alley.

I arrived at the beach around 8:15.  I looked around the parking lot and didn’t see Randall’s truck anywhere.  Son of a bitch, I beat him again.  Randall lives on the east coast, about a half hour from this beach.  Even though I live four times farther away, I almost always beat him to the venue.  It has become more or less a tradition.  Well luckily Jeremy and his partner was already there and they were nice enough to check us in already.

The weather was nice albeit a little windy for my tastes.  We were playing BB and were on a 4 team net.  I knew I was in trouble when after simply doing a warm up that consisted of throwing around the football and bumping a volleyball back and forth, my left shoulder was already feeling twinges of pain.  We hadn’t even done any hitting in warm ups.

Our first match was against a solid team.  One of the players was from Russia.  He was funny to watch.  Whenever he did something positive he would yell out different things in Russian, like “Boris stoopha!!!” (or something funny sounding like that)  Randall and I played sloppy as hell.  In true Christmas spirit we gave away points like presents, screwing up in almost every way you can imagine.  We lost that first match by 6 or 7.

It wasn’t a good start and since it was only a 4 team net we pretty much HAD to win the next two games if we wanted to make playoffs.  Our next match was against two young high school indoor players.  Again they were a decent team but if Randall and played as well as we are capable of playing, we would have steamrolled them pretty easily.   Instead we found ourselves in a close back and forth match.  It ended very badly.  With us behind 23-22 I served into the net, making it 24-22.  We caught a break when the other team also served in the net, making the score 24-23 (game to 25 win by two)  So Randall was serving, I encouraged him to bring us back to victory.  He had a few runs of strong serving during the game that got us quite a few points.  He serves…..into the net…. game over.  If this was 4 years ago I probably would have been really pissed off.  But I literally felt no anger, hell I had served into the net right before him, how could I be pissed?  Well Randall was very pissed at himself.  So pissed that as we approached the tent, he punted his volleyball down the beach and didn’t even bother to go retrieve it.  I told him it was no big deal and to not worry about it.  Randall almost put himself into one of the all-time vball tip list entries when he thought that someone walked off with the ball he punted away in anger.  Luckily someone actually was nice enough to kick the ball back towards the courts.

So short of a miracle, we were eliminated from the playoffs.  In our final game in pool play we were matched against another young team that also was winless.  We played better and beat them pretty easily.  It didn’t matter, we were done.  Not making playoffs in BB, that is pretty sad.  Like I said our net was decent for BB level but still….

Jeremy was playing on another BB net.  Jeremy wasn’t doing all that well either and didn’t make playoffs.  He did however do a great job of doing something that I used to rely on Rich for, nicknames.  There were two kids playing on Jeremy’s net that were incredibly bad.  In fact they lost their first game 21-0 which is virtually impossible to do with rally scoring.  During the day Jeremy named each member of this team of misfits as Evil Genius and Vulture.  Although those names wouldn’t immediately come to my mind looking at these kids, once Jeremy named them, it seemed perfectly appropriate.  Vulture was skin and bones and had a funny voice that sounded like it hadn’t changed yet.  He kind of sounded like Beavis.  Evil Genius was short with short, black, curly hair and had on a pair of oversized black sun glasses that never left his face.  We joked he used these glasses to see ahead 2 seconds in time so he always knew what was going to happen.  When Vulture would hit into the net it was because he didn’t get his talons into it.  Anyway, we had a good time joking about these kids, it helped dispel some of the bad feeling about our own play.

We decided after our matches that we would play some fun matches against Jeremy and his partner, Jason.  I agreed to do so even though I had substantial pain in both my knees and both shoulders already.  I didn’t give a F, I knew it would be months till I entertained the idea of playing ball again anyways.  I wound up playing an additional SIX games back to back, more than I normally would play in a full tournament.  The first four were a mix of Randall and I against Jeremy and Jason and a couple King of the Beach style games.  Ironically, whether it was some of the rust coming off or just the no pressure situation, Randall and I played much better in every way.  We both said it was too bad we couldn’t have played like that during the tournament.

Our play with Jeremy and Jason was very good natured and fun.  Jeremy came up with a couple more nicknames for Randall based on his attire.  Randall was wearing red shorts with a plain yellow t-shirt and a matching red baseball hat.  Jeremy alternated between calling Randall, The Hulkster and Human Torch.  He would drop in funny lines while Randall was playing like “good hit BROTHER…” (like Hulk always says) or “FLAME ON!” as the Torch does.  We got the last laugh when Randall was serving for game point in a couple matches.  Before he served he would say “Good game” and then I yelled “FLAME ON!”  Randall delivered with a game winning ace both times.  It was classic.

So after our fourth match Jeremy and Jason headed out.  Randall and I played two more games against two guys that had been waiting a looong time to use the court.  I felt bad that we made them wait so long.  If it wasn’t for that guilt, I would have never agreed to play more, my body was toast at this point.  So we played the two games, winning both easily.  As the second game was winding down it started to rain, hard.  Game point came during a pretty steady downpour.  The guys thanked us for sticking around to play and then we all quickly grabbed our stuff and headed for the parking lot.

I was a big sandy, wet mess.  After hosing off from the knees down, I tried to brush off as much sand as possible with a towel and then put on my tournament shirt to wear on the trip home.  I thanked Randall for playing, wished him Happy Holidays and I was ready to go.  During the day I had various episodes of pain shooting throughout both knees and shoulders that I knew I was going to be paying for.

I had not checked my cell phone all day and it was about 3:15.  Normally I call Ali at least once to fill her in on how things are going.  Well during the day things were going poorly so I didn’t really feel inclined to report that.  After pool play was done, our games were back to back so I really didn’t have a chance to call her.  So when I saw four missed calls from her on my cell I knew it wasn’t going to be good.  I called her up and she immediately started crying.  She was worried something happened to me.  Of course I immediately felt shitty and apologized for not calling her and I tried to explain the time line that lead to me not calling.  She settled down eventually and after one more apology I told her I would be home in a couple hours.

So when I got home I still had ideas in my head about going to see the Demolition Derby that was Saturday night at the fairgrounds right down the road from us.  I got home about 5, checked on the computer and saw the derby started at 7.  That gave me just enough time to pop some Advil, ice both my knees for a little bit, take a shower and go.

It cost $10 each to get in which is just about the limit of what I would be willing to pay to see a redneck sporting event.  I told Ali as we pulled in I would be pissed if they were charging parking in addition.  Luckily they didn’t.  There were quite a few people there, if I had to guess, close to 500.  Before the race started I grabbed myself a beer even though dehydrating myself further was not a great idea.  I just felt naked being at a demolition derby without a beer.  I also grabbed a hot dog.  At the beer van I was served by a cute girl that kept calling me “Darlin…” in a pronounced southern drawl.  I discovered I like being called “darlin…” in a southern drawl.

Pre-race there was lots of people watching to be done.  The funniest sight that made me wish I brought my real camera was a pot bellied, older guy that came stumbling along the fence line.  He had on no shirt and bib overalls.  He was obviously drunk as some woman sort of held his arm to keep him steady.  It just looked so appropriate for the venue we were at.

So before the racing started they brought out a group of ATV racers whom also were a large part of the festivities.  They had several races around the wet sand track.  The ATV racing was pretty uneventful as it seemed like each time they spread out and there was very little changing of position once that happened.  The cars were a different story.

It was hilarious seeing the different vehicles participating.  Most of them were predictably, big rear wheel drive boats.  The funniest of them was the Iron Rhino, a full size domestic car with white painted traffic cone stuck on the hood along with two big coconuts hanging from the rear bumper.  The other one that made us laugh was the number 4 car, a tiny old Datsun station wagon.  It’s driver side front wheel was bent out at a 45 degree angle.  It seemed practically undriveable.  It putt putted out on the course and seemed to not be able to get out of first gear.

Not being a demo derby veteran I didn’t know what to expect.  I thought they would just be smashing the hell out of each other right away.  Actually the big smash up doesn’t happen until the very end.  There are many rounds of more conventional circular racing first.  There is smashing during these races as well just not total destruction.  The number 4 car went down early after getting involved in a T-bone.  Many of the cars looked like they were barely in running condition before even driving on to the track, as a result many cars were knocked out early.  Disabled cars were unceremoniously pushed off the track by a Bobcat.  I have to admit, it was funny watching the chaos ensue.  Watching cars smash into each other touches the inner 5 year old that used to enjoy banging his toy vehicles together for hours on end. 

The worst part was all the downtime in between races.  It took awhile to clear disabled vehicles, remove debris from the track and water down the track in the middle of the event.  There were various delays getting races started as the car owners tried to make frantic repairs to their cars in between heats to get them driveable again.    We didn’t stick it out to the end.  The combination of being drop dead tired, sore and sitting on metal bleachers for 2 hours was enough for me.  We left fully satisfied with getting 20 dollars worth of entertainment.  It was a good time, good enough that I would definitely go back to see it again.

I woke up Sunday morning sore as hell.  I definitely would have preferred to just back burner my plans for cleaning the pool cage and lanai  area.  However I knew if I didn’t do it Sunday it wouldn’t have gotten done until 2008.  So I limped outside and got to work around 9:30.  I started off cleaning the eaves around the pool cage, something that has not been done since moving in.  It was not a fun task.  As I stood on a step ladder and brushed they dirty metal, sudsy water ran down my arms, soaking my shirt.  I was a wet mess in no time.  Trying to apply pressure to the brush over my head with two sore shoulders was not easy or fun.

Next up I pulled out the pressure washer and hosed down the furniture on the pool deck, the pool cage itself and then finally the pool deck.  I worked non-stop till just after the Eagles kick off at 1pm.  I was tired but felt satisfaction as I admired the pool area looking cleaner than it has in quite some time.

So I sat through yet another frustrating Eagles game.  Just like so many times this season, the Birds managed to snap defeat from the jaws of victory.  They just can’t make the plays necessary to win games.  

I was more pissed about Fantasy Football than the result of Eagles game.  I squeaked into the playoffs for our league as the number 8 seed which meant I had to play the number 1 seed.  I had set my line up on Thurday based on the injury reports at the time that indicated Brett Farve would “probably start” and that Marc Bulger was cleared to start.  I decided to start Bulger since Farve would surely not play all that well coming off an injury against the Raiders whom have one of the top rated pass defenses in the league.  Bulger was playing the Bengals whom have had a porous pass defense.

Well Sunday morning I was too concerned with getting my project started to bother checking the latest injury news.  It turns out Bulger did not play and Farve played and threw two touchdowns, scoring 21 points!  I was so pissed at myself.  The number one team has Tom Brady which is almost unfair.  Brady racked up 51 points….  Even with that huge number, if I would have had Farve starting I would have only been 9 points down with my wide receiver yet to play, a realistic win scenario. Instead, because of my stupidity, my wide receiver has to somehow come up with 30 points tonight to tie, a near impossibility.  I could have shocked the world, instead I exposed myself as a fantasy football numb skull.    To start a QB that doesn’t even take the field for a ff playoff game, inexcusable.

I was beat Sunday night from Saturday’s athletic activities followed by Sunday’s work schedule.  All I wanted to do was veg and play some WoW.  However Ali had a bunch of things to do and I would have felt like a schlub sitting there playing WoW while she trudged along.  So I helped her fold and label entry forms for The Run for the Paws to be mailed out and then later folded up our homemade Christmas cards while Ali addressed the envelopes. 

The weekend pretty much flew by but it was filled with activities both fun and not so fun that at least made it feel worthwhile.

Another chore Ali had was to do the bills.  We are in a less than rosy financial situation right now.  The crush of holiday spending coupled with Manor Care not being prompt in paying Ali’s invoices has put us in a tight squeeze.  It isn’t a great time to be going out to Vegas.

We are now down to less than week until my 40th birthday.  I could rant and rave about how I feel about this event and not much of it would be positive, well probably none of it would be.  But’ I’ll hold my tongue, at least for now.

Palm finally got around to releasing the WM6 update for Treo 750’s.  About f’ing time.  We have heard “any day now” for the last 4 months.  I installed it onto Ali’s phone without incident. 

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.