I Can Swing a Racket

When the days were less troublesome and time was in more abundance, I occasionally found myself [no, not in the soul searching way] on the tennis courts behind Dixon Middle School. Usually, I was in the company of my friend Jory. While neither of us ever had ambitions of playing competitively, we managed to occasionally impress each other with our abilities. In other words, we advanced from the novice level of the game.

It wasn’t long before my SIL Rebecca discovered that I was sneaking into her field of interest and the challenge of a game was issued. What young teenage boy can resist such a challenge? For her, it must have been like stealing candy from a baby. If ever it was possible to finish lower than Love, I certainly came close. For the sly spider lured the fly to the safety of her net. The wicked serve with the spin on the ball left my eyes spinning, my hand eye coordination was more like a drunken stupor….and so my play time resumed with Jory.


And then the days grew shorter. Time began to issue its call to responsibility and adulthood and eventually a mission.

In the first couple of post mission years I played a game or two of tennis. I don’t rightly recall with whom. For years, my racket moved with me from place to place— always collecting dust, zipped up— the bag over its head, muffling its cries to get out.

Enter Spring of 2007. An invitation is made by my friend Adam in the ward to come join him and his “tennis” friends. With great hesitation, I accepted his invite [those who know me know that my body feels old and is out of shape and suffered two long term injuries playing softball last year]. Two weeks ago, in spite of nature’s fury, I found myself on a lighted court at night with four other players eager to get their game on. A silent prayer was offered, asking for help in not looking the fool. When the match was over, I told Adam that he served like a girl…like my sister in-law. That was a compliment. Aside from not being able to return his serves very well,

I held my own.

My serve was on and off like a light switch

My backhand is still in hiding. When I find it I’ll have to dust it off too.

I held my own. And returned to play again last night. I even returned a few of Adam’s serves. And no injuries to report. That is my report.

And The winner is....

Many celebrations have come and gone already this year: the Oscars, passing kidney stones, delivering a baby, 30th Birthdays, climbing the Y for the first [or second time], getting a new [used] set of wheels for free,… these are just to name a few of the oodles and oodles of note worthy events.

The newest and greatest and most marvelous of all celebrations [at this exact moment in time] is one worthy of a joint celebration. Puxa Meu is at the top of the charts!!! It’s ready to go platinum baby! Just Google "Puxa meu" and da ta da da! It’s me. Right there on top. Just like the palm reader on 1505 West Center [in Provo] said would happen. Who would have thought that such a gal could have foreseen all y’all’s actions with your mouse click after mouse click, tallying up the hits for my site. Ole Mark McGwire would be proud of such a hit record…and I don’t even use steroids. Naturally, I’m not a one-man-band. I really do owe it all y’all. So pat yourself on the back, toot your horn, do the “Oh what a feeling” Toyota leap, tell me how much you love me and adore me and want to be me. Too far? Okay, ignore the last 15 words or so [but remember that shallow praise will go along way with me].

Sound the Alarm and Head for the Bunker

Twas a normal Sunday Church day...

Five minutes after the hour [65 minutes of Sacrament Meeting], the Bishop stepped up to the pulpit and said that we would forgo the closing hymn and have a prayer...[I'm thinking, What? We haven't gone that far over the time]

There have been a couple of tornado sitings. So after the prayer, we will have all the primary children and their leaders go to.... All the adults for Sunday school will go.....

What actually ended up happening [because kids wanted to be with their parents and parents wanted to be with their kids], we all crammed into the basement . Yes our church building has a basement. After several uncomfortable minutes, it was decided to let the kids do their Sharing Time. But alas, all bad things must come to an end. The tornado warnings passed and we returned to our regularly scheduled program.

Come to find out, there had been several funnel spouts/funnel clouds...all of them Rhode Islandly small for a funnel cloud...not a Texas size [aahhh ok...I'll throw in Oklahoma, Kansas and the rest of the tornado belt] twister. Only one was confirmed as touching down for a few seconds [Pecos Bill would have scoffed at such a wimpy overgrown dust devil].

The photo above shows one of them there funnel clouds not more than 1/2 mile from my home.

Having said all that, I am glad that we were all at the church [with or without a basement] and not hunkered down inside our bathtub at home.

Amusement with a Slice of Crazy

The uncle of a certain fellow blogger likes to amuse himself [and his guests] with some odd forms of entertainment. Because I am not as blogger savvy as my compatriots, all I have is a link to the site to show you what I am talking about.

If you are wondering...Yes, I have tried this contraption. Yes, it's crazy. Yes, it's a rush of adrenaline. Whould I do it again? Probably not...considering the owner's personal experiences with the device.

Super Trooper

To borrow from ~j:

Today’s yay- Lil goober's surgery for his trigger finger release went well.

Today’s boo: getting up at 4:30am to get to the hospital by 5:30, not leaving the hospital until after 10:00 [for a fifteen minute procedure], having to drive back to the hospital cause the lil tike managed to pull off his bandage.

Cheaper By The Dozen?

Today marks a very special day. It is our 12th anniversary. I am amazed each time I reflect back on this same day 12 years ago and all the things that had to happen in order for a loving Heavenly Father to put us in a position to cross each other’s path.

President Hinckley once stated that he could trace back everything good that has happened in his life to his mission. I would imagine that I could also make such a declaration. As odd as this may sound, it was because of my stubbornness [for what seemed more like selfish reasons at that time], that I did not extend my mission [at my mission president’s request]. As such, this allowed me to return to my homeland just in time to register for school [pick up the scraps of classes that were left], and it was in this same semester that I found my future wife, in the same 200+ seating-auditorium classroom.

Of course there were many other things that happened in those previous 21 years that had to happen to get me to the point of serving a mission and I will not go into to all that...you’ll just have to read my journal and piece it all together.

The bottom line is, I can’t imagine my life without her [and our 4 chillins]. She has been and forever will be my pillar of strength, my best friend, and confidant [just to name a few of the roles that she plays in my life]. So while it may not be cheaper by the dozen, it certainly seems to be better by the dozen. Here is to another 12 and many more dozen to come.

♣♣♣♣♣♣and a Happy St. Patricks to all y'all.♣♣♣♣♣♣

UnDELLicious

I’m sure that most of you have encountered customer service that has run-a-muck. My recent experience has been no different.

My poor lil notebook/laptop computer took a turn for the worse. You see, it recently came down with a very nasty virus that two different anti-virus companies have been unable to detect and deliver a deadly blow [to said virus]. It has been advised to me to just reinstall Windows and begin anew. Come to find out, because problems do not enjoy solitude, my CD/DVD combo drive had also entered the world of defunctness.

Enter the phone call to DELL customer service [keep in mind that DELL does everything in its power to discourage phone calls unless you have a very large banking account from which they can feed the hunger of their 3rd world customer service agents]. I began my inquiry about being able to purchase a new CD/DVD drive so that I could fix the aforementioned problem. Now each and every time that I have dealt with DELL [via phone, online chat or email] there has always been at least one problem or another [usually because the left hand in Dallas, never knows what the right hand in New Delhi is doing. To keep the story short, let’s just say that the customer service rep hung up on me without even trying to say “Good-bye” or “Thanks for choosing DELL” or “Have a nice life, moron.”.

Two days later a package arrived for me in the mail from DELL. Inside were two color ink cartridges and two black ink cartridges…no explanation about why I was receiving such a gift from DELL. Speculate how you will. The problem is, I tossed their printer in the trash after my first dealings with having to order ink from directly from DELL. Besides, it was a cheap piece of plastic anyway and too costly to maintain [because of the ink]. So now I am stuck with four cartridges of ink and no printer to use them with. An additional two days later, I received an invoice from DELL for the ink [which has a retail value of $114.00]. The part that I eventually ordered from DELL was only $68.00.

Why couldn’t they just send me a replacement CD/DVD drive instead if they felt bad about my experience with their customer service agent? That is an unsolved mystery.