Exhausted

It was a really draining weekend. Alison didn’t come back until Sunday evening so I was solo all weekend. Saturday was my volleyball tourney. I was up at 5am, took care of the pets, packed the car and was out the door around 6. Clearwater was a lengthy drive. This was the first time I have headed north on I-75 since Hurricane Charley. It was pretty scary. I-75 is several miles inland yet the results of the storm were clearly evident. All of the road signs were gone, the billboards looked like someone took a huge baseball bat to them and I kept seeing these bent over poles but didn’t know what they were at first. I realized the were the big steel light poles. The were bent over like plastic straws, amazing. You saw blue tarp covered roofs everywhere along with many buildings with even more severe damage. Huge trees were down everywhere. It made me appreciate how lucky we were even more.

I got 2 sets of directions to the tournament, one from mapquest, one simple abbreviated set from the tournament website. I decided the set from the tournament site would be better since they should lead me right to the playing area. Of course you know where this leads, the wrong way. The directions were intended for people heading SOUTH although there was no indication of that. SO I wound up passing where I could have exited and added another 45 minutes to my already long commute.

After the long drive I had to use the bathroom. The public restrooms at Clearwater beach are unique. They are unisex. It is a square of 6 toilets in a small square building, each with simply a toilet. Plus they are open at the bottom and the top so you can hear everything going on around you. Not an ideal arrangement especially if a guy/girl next to you decides to have a melodic number 2.

The tournament didn’t go well. I haven’t touched a ball since my last tournament which was almost exactly a month ago. It showed early. All phases of my game were off. We lost our first match badly to a team that we had no business losing to. Almost every game we got down early and then had to try to battle back. We had a 4 team pool and only went 1-2 in the pool. That sucks. The good news was we were tied with 2 other teams that were 1-2 so we had a chance to still make the playoffs. To do so we would have to win 2 mini-playoff games. The first was against the team that we beat in regular pool play, barely. We won that game 16-14 after being down 14-11. In the mini-game to 7 we got down 5-2 but somehow managed to come back on them again and win the game 7-5. The second mini-playoff game was against the team we lost that first game to. We got our revenge and took care of them pretty easily 7-2. So we managed to get off our net and into the playoffs.

Our first playoff game was against a team that I wasn’t very impressed with. Normally I would think we would take care of a team like this pretty easily. I had started to play better as the day progressed, being able to serve a bit better and hit for points. In the playoff game I hardly got to hit at all as almost everything went my partners way. Even so, we had a lead 2/3 of the way through the game. But then things went bad with a bunch of unforced errors that knocked us out of the tournament in speedy fashion. It was frustrating because I didn’t get served but that is part of the game. So we limped out of the tourney in 6th place, our worst finish since the very first time we played together. The last two tournaments have been pretty shitty. Hopefully the last one this upcoming weekend will wind up on a positive note. Here are a few pictures from the beach.

On the drive home I decided to use the mapquest directions in reverse to get back home. Traffic was bad. One of the early roads I needed to take was route 19. I was driving awhile in traffic and didn’t see a sign for 19 yet but I saw one for Alt 19. For some reason I figured Alt19 must get me in the same general direction as 19 so I would be smart and take that. What a dumb ass I am. My “shortcut” basically took me on a 45 minute circle that wound up putting me slightly north of where I would have been if I just took 19. I was furious with myself by the time I actually hit open highway. 3 hours later I was home. I was tired, dirty and bummed about the bad vball day when I got home around 8 pm. I had no inspiration to start cleaning up my vball gear and putting stuff away. So instead I just fed the dog and vegged, I figured Sunday I would bust out all that had to be done.

After yet another bad night’s sleep I was awakened by Nicki at 7. From 7:45 am till 5 I did non-stop house crap. Mowing the grass, removing the storm shutters ,weeding the garden, cleaning inside, blah blah blah. I was spent by the time came to go to the airport to pick up Ali. It was great to see her and she was very happy to be home. Sunday night I was so tired from the weekend, I showered early and was in bed before 10. However with as tired as I was I had a horrible time falling asleep and even once I did I think I woke up at least 10 times. I got up this morning feeling like death. The Eagles play tonight which means midnight at the earliest, damn………