On the eve of the Eve
I hate this weather. I really do.
I'm not really that hateful. It's just that it's December 30. It's supposed to be cold, and I'm a fan of the cold. It's nowhere close to cold. In fact, it's going to be a balmy 70 degrees.
Okay, I can deal with that because we could actually go play golf. However, Kansas likes to tease people. Sure it's going to be 70 degrees today, BUT it's going to be blowing 25-35 mph today. It's not fun to play golf in a wind. Granted, we can handle 10-20. But tack on some additional mileage per hour and it really sucks.
That's why I hate this weather.
I'm done.
Oh hell yeah.
I'm done with all my Xmas shopping. Yes, I am a guy and I finished early. Unbelieveable. Timmy and I used to always go Xmas shopping around the 15th or 16th of December. Unfortunately, the two of us have had conflicting schedules the past few years thus we have been unable to do that activity which we OH SO ENJOY.
I hate it.
I hate it.
God Almightly Lord in Heaven, I hate it.
I really think I did well in my shopping because I did it in short intense little bursts of creativity. I just put a coat of fixative on my drawing for my mother whom I showed to Lavonne. Lavonne's prediction is that it will make my mom cry. That wasn't exactly the response I was looking for but hey, I guess I'll take it. There isn't enough time to frame it right now, plus I'm not even going to try to pick the frame. I will recommend the matte but that's about it.
Other than that, I still hate shopping.
Everyone and their children's children were at Wal-Mart as I dashed down there to finish up the last gift I had to buy for my cousin Stiff. Stiff recieves not one, not two but three dvds. I did pretty well with the fact that they are chick flicks too. But I had to dodge, dip dive and duck people down there. I can only imagine the horrors of Wichita this close to Xmas.
However, now that I'm done, tomorrow is the first of the three Xmases, we celebrate. This one will be fun as we will fondue tomorrow evening for the meal. I only predict that I will burn myself twice and lose one item of food once.
I hate shopping. I hate it unless I'm in a sporting goods store. Then I only dislike it a little.
I feel like I cheated.
But it was fun. I have to remember that.
We had our second hunt of our pen-raised birds today. The group met at noon. We were actually down several members from the openind day crew. The trio of Duane, Tubby and Don all had to work at their respective jobs. Joe, one of the founding members was out because last weekend he fell out of his tree stand and broke his leg, and his wrist. However, Joe wasn't going to be denied the oppurtunity to watch us hunt.
Now Joe is a large man, I'm guessing around 6 feet tall and somewhere in the neighborhood of 320+. Anyways, they wheeled him down the ramp and into the back of a truck. Once again we loaded the 55 birds into the cages before we transported them to the field.
I honestly was expecting the same deal as opening day, where they took the cages out and released the birds . Wow, I was really wrong. This time, they loaded the cages onto the back of two ATVs. They drove the ATVs to the edge of the grass. Danny told us to spread out and get ready.
I honestly thought he was joking.
He wasn't.
Joe had a hold of one of the cords to the cage door. He gave a slight tug and out came a bird. After we shot four or five, we went to try to find them in the grass. Then we switched up some positions and did it again. This pattern continued until we had released all the birds. In fact, some of the birds they actually threw into the air.
It was a scream. However, what these shits were landing in can only be described as Holyfuckingthick. The whole process took about an hour or so. The major drawback was that this Holyfuckingthick seemed to swallow the birds up. Some actually did get away.
The landowner of the ground to the south of us just happened to be with us and Danny had asked him if we could walk it back. His response was a classic "Well I would if I were you." So we loaded up into some trucks and the Killer Van and made our way one mile to the south to walk back to the north. I watched Herb on his ATV drive down the edge and all of the sudden he was in the patch. I started laughing because Herb was driving back and forth in front of us like a dog. Dad looked at me and said "I wonder how he points?" and I said "He waves." It was pretty funny to watch this guy on an ATV driving back and forth in front of the group like a dog. I think it actually worked as we kicked up a bunch of birds. I know at least one time he drove OVER a hen, but she was sitting tight enough that she broke right after he went over the top of her.
The 13 of us ended up shooting 48 (37 were banded) while probably leaving 10 out there in the Holyfuckingthick. One guy abstained from taking any birds which allowed us to take four per person. Neuf left early so I grabbed his birds too.
On the way home, I laughed because I realized that if we were stopped by a game warden, they would just shoot us on the spot for having 12 roosters between 2 of us in my vehicle.
I think I may have shot 9 today. I know I killed 4 for sure. The rest were those kills when someone else shot at the same time and it folded up. I had to shoot one out of a tree as well too.
It was a damn good day.
Now, it's time for bed because I'm going hunting tomorrow as well.
Words to live by.
I received my new life motto via email. I think it's classic, but the only problem is that I do not drink martinis.
"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well
preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand,
martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and
screaming "WOO- HOO what a ride!"
Anyone else agree?
two down, two to go
So, I am taking a break from working on one of my final projects. This is a very involved work where I have to write four things, a news story (cake), a broadcast story, a press release and two full page print ads. The broadcast story is done, the press release is also done. However my printer is now out of ink. I guess I had better bust ass and finish up the ads, and then run to WalMart in the morning to get more ink. That way all that is left is to do the news story. I'll load it with quotes and transitions.
It wasn't a bad weekend, despite what my ankle believed. Appearantly, my ankle had not quite healed from Thanksgiving weekend. On Friday while I was calling the games, I felt it stiffen up. I don't move a lot while watching the games because I'm so focused on what is going on. Anyways, after the games, I hopped in my exploder and zipped over to Moundridge. I noticed that my ankle was hurting a little then especially when I tried to run across the road. Knowing that I was hunting in the morning, I decided that a little ice and some ibuprofen would probably go a long way. I iced my ankle and took some ibuprofen.
Saturday morning came and my ankle was a bit tender, but nothing unbearable. I felt that it hurt a lot worse the weekend before. I didn't do my ghetto tape job and just laced my boots up tight. The G-man and I hunted the first patch. I walked slow with thoughts of my foot in the back of my head but I didn't baby it or anything. During our walk, I did hit one rooster from a long ways off. It buckled once but didn't go down. As we came to the end of the field, Hollie went to a snap point off to my left. The G-man was off to the right and out of range so, i went to see what she was pointing. I got close and a rooster broke. One shot later and the rooster went down and Holly jumped on top of it.
The next patch we hunted was some draws in the middle of a green wheat field. That's when I really began to notice my ankle was incredibly tender because the wheat field was still frozen but very uneven. We flushed another rooster but neither of us had a shot. We chased some quail but then we went to the last patch of the day, the milo field where I shot that rooster on Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We walked all around it and by the last 1/2 mile my ankle was really hurting. There was a little draw on the west edge and I thought that the grass would provide enough cushion for me that I could walk much easier.
Oops.
That's what I get for thinking. I never saw the hole. I stepped in it with my right foot which just happened to be attatched to my now sore ankle. I went down like I had been shot. The G-man said he was looking and it was like I had disappeared. I didn't even swear because I had no words that would describe the pain shooting through my ankle. Somehow I did buck up and finish the field. I got home and I could still walk albeit with a slight limp. I drove back to Hutch and called two more ball games via the radio and by the time I was finished i was done. I stood up to let Cliff take over and I realized that my ankle would barely support any weight.
In fact, when I got home, my ankle was swollen.
Now I will be on a strict regimien of ice and rest because Saturday there is a major hunt planned and I have to be healthy. This will be great fodder for my other final paper due tuesday.
Games, games and more games
Great ball games tonight.
The first one I called was an 87-78 overtime thriller. The HC women blew an 18 point lead in the second half. I supressed the urge to scream "DAMMIT JOEL!! TAKE A TIME OUT!!" over the air. What possesses a coach to watch his team just have their commanding like sliced and diced like that knife salesman on those informercials, when he can call a time out and stop some momentum? Someone explain that to me. Finally C-jack knocked down a HUGE three with just over a minute to go and the Larks never looked back.
I thought that there couldn't be a better game than the first one. Wow. I was mistaken. The men's game was even better. Hillsdale jumped out to a ten point lead at one point but the Larks had a furious comeback to tie it at 19. From that point on, the most either team lead by was five. Back and forth, back and fourth, it was wild. There were two technical fouls called. The Saints scored on a three point play to take a 73-71 lead. After a Lark turnover, I thought all hope was lost as the saints had the rock with about 25 on the clock. Somehow, the Larks forced a turnover and had the ball with 19 ticks on the clock.
Larks started working their offense trying to run a clear out for Camden to get the ball to the Big Kid. However, Devin stopped instead of cutting to the hoop like the play called for. With Devin's cut that would leave the Big Kid open to take the last shot. By stopping, Devin made the offense grind to a halt. Camden fires up a three from a LONG way that was nothing but net with 1.4 seconds to go, and the Larks lead 74-73. A desperation heave was well short and the Larks escaped with a one point win.
You ended up with the feeling that these two teams could play 20 times and they would split all the way down. It was a great night of hoops.
The kid is back.
Okay, so I just completed a quadruple header of high school basketball games. Four in one night. It wouldn't be so bad, but I was actually broadcasting the games. The first two went smoothly. No major hitches or glitches. Things were rolling along, names were flying off my tongue, and the play by play was sliding along like an ice skater. I even had my spots timed out perfectly so that we had not a lot of dead air. Life was good.
Then life turned bad.
Real bad.
First of all, my statistician had to leave. Not that big of deal, because we had a plan. My father came to take Jake's place as my statistician. Perfect. Only problem was, he hammered out the lineups for me. Oops. Now it was a little chaotic as he had scribbled down all the names on the program instead of putting down just the starters and then adding the rest as they came in. I thought okay, I can make this work. The second problem of the evening was that the HOME team's girl's numbers were incorrect. Next thing I know, we're trying to get them corrected. Problem two avoided.
The game tipped off and we were about 45 seconds into the action. No one had scored yet and I glanced at the clock to see how much time had elasped. Imagine my surprise as I saw the clock was stuck on :49 seconds. No buzzer, no clock, no score. The refs stopped play and then they tried to figure it out. I took a 30 second timeout, hoping that they could get the problem straightened out.
Of course they couldn't.
Someone went and grabbed one of those old fashioned flip scoreboards. So for the first quarter and half of the second I had only the flip scoreboard to work with and I had to guess as to how much time was left. It didn't help any when the scorekeeper fell behind. I wasn't exactly fond of life at the time. Finally, they got everything straightened out and life was good once again.
i'm still existing
I am here. Really I am.
I'm sitting here getting ready to broadcast some hoops tonight via the 'Net. However, because I am so damn graceful, I'm icing my ankle. Not with frosting but with actual ice. Somehow last night in my sleep, I managed to get it all twisted up catty wampus style. Now it feels like i've sprained the living shit out of it. How the hell does someone do that in their sleep? I'd love to know exactly what I was doing last night in my dreams, or if i've become a sleepwalking runner. I woke up this morning and said "Damn, my foot hurts." When I rolled out of bed, I almost crashed to the floor.
I truly fear this to be a dreaded low ankle sprain. Yes. That's right. I've probably got an injury that never occurs. There probably isn't any treatment for it and i'm fucked.
