Justin had his first swim meet last night. Boy were their a lot of kids there. He was both excited and nervous. When we got to the meet, he asked the coach if he could swim butterfly instead of breaststroke. Since there were no 7-8 boys swimming fly, the coach agreed to let him swim it. The scratched out his breaststroke card and wrote 25 Fly on it, and the event number. Butterfly was all he could talk about — he’s sure he can do 25 yards legal.

His first event was anchoring the 100 free relay. His stroke is looking better, but his turnover is non-existant. Question to the Collective of former or current swimteam coaches or wannabees (a.k.a. most of my brothers or sisters) - Should I continue to work on stroke efficiency or should I throw in some turn over drills? His relay took 3rd, and he split a 52.

His second event was 25 back. Usually he just sinks when he tries to swim backstroke, but his stroke actually looked pretty good this time. I think he added 5 yards to the race, bouncing from 1 rope to the other. He took 6th in his heet with a time of about a 53. We had some time before fly, so we hit the snack bar and chatted for a while. He was still very pumped about the chance to swim fly. He knew that all he had to do was keep it legal and he would get a ribbon. I told him that I would be proud as long as he tried.

After the snack, I sent him over to the bullpen for fly. As his event was behind the blocks, he came back to me and said - “They sent me back, they said it wasn’t time yet.” Begin Panic Mode. I rushed him to the block and ran his card to the other end. In all the confusion, I forget to remind him what event he was swimming. The race starts and he swims freestyle instead of fly. After the race, when he found out that it was suppose to be his fly event, he was crushed.

At that point we called it a night…

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• Danielle: Dad, why do you need that stupid alarm clock anyway?
• Me:  So I can wake up on time so I can go to work and make money to pay all the bills.
• Danielle: You should be able to sleep as late as you want and never have to go to work.
• Me:  I don’t think they would like that very much
• Danielle: You could just tell them that you were sick…

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Tip1:

If you are an old man in the turning lane with a pickup truck in front of you and a 1994 Green Toyota Camry behind you AND the truck in front of you starts to go but then stops, DO NOT run into the truck.  If you decide to run into to truck, DO NOT back up.  If you decide to backup and hear a loud sound that might be a horn of the person in the 1994 Green Toyota Camry , STOP before you hit the 1994 Green Toyota Camry.  Don’t worry too much about this tip, as you will only damage the license plate of the 1994 Green Toyota Camry.

Tip 2:

If you are a 17 year old kid driving an old Shadow and you are not in either of the left hand turning lanes, DO NOT cut across the two left turning lanes into a parking lot because you missed your turn.  If you do want to do this, make sure that there is not a 1994 Green Toyota Camry in the left most of the two left turning lanes.  If you decide to cut in front of 1994 Green Toyota Camry it WILL attempt to not hit you, by slamming on the brakes and turning sharply, but despite its drivers best efforts, it will smash into your rear passenger side door.  You WILL get a ticket when the police come to fill out the accident report.  The driver of the 1994 Green Toyota Camry will not.

BTW: Tip 1 and 2 were less than 30 minutes apart…

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First they took our office…and it was bad.Next they took our furniture and chairs…and it was worse.

Now they have taken our parking spots in the garage…

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Person at Urinal 1(From my company)[PU1]: So are you with XYZ?

Jim thinking in his thinking spot [JTIHTS]: He’s violating the “No talking at the urinal law, especially to a stranger”

Person at Urinal 2(From XYZ company) [PU2]: Yes

JTIHTS: Isn’t that obvious by the fact he’s in this restroom?

PU1: We sure are glad to see you…

JTIHTS: That’s not something you want someone to say to you at the urinal.

PU2: So how many guys…aahhhh…employees do you have?

PU1: 13 or 14.

Saturday morning Justin and I went to the Science Center.  Brenda had signed us up for a dinosaur class - “Digging up the past” as a Father’s day gift. Unfortunately, when we got there they informed us it had been cancelled.  They offered to let us do a robotics class instead, but Justin wasn’t interest.

Instead, we took advantage of our time in other ways.  We looked at thier prehistoric exhibits, fossils, models, ancient tools and arrowheads, etc.  Next we did the Lego Mindstorm — which is a lot more like programming a robot than playing with lego’s.  Our first attempt to slay the robot dragon with our robot boxer had a slight bug - missing the last instruction, but we quickly fixed the problem.  We added steps to have the robot do a victory dance then punch the dragon again.  Since we still had time, we built a second robot the blinded the dragon.  It worked flawlessly on the first try.

We completed the Science Center trip by building the arch, exploring the space station, using the robotic arm training facility, watching the stars, and finally  building the world.  Since we are members at the Science Center, the whole trip with parking, lunch, all the exhibits, was less than $10.

On the trip home, we passed by  a golf course, and I mentioned that we needed to get out and play again.  He thought we should do that instead of our original plan of going swimming.  We hit the little Par 3 - pitch and putt course on Hwy K.  I shot 2 over for the front 9, but the back 9 started off a little rough (back to back double bogeys on 11 and 12).  So the 13th hole I told myself to relax and just play a safe shot to the left-middle of the green (there was a lake to the right, but the flag was to the right of middle as well).  I took my lob wedge, did a 3/4 swing, and dropped the ball right where I wanted it.  It bounced once and started rolling toward the cup.  I started thinking — No Way –, and yet it kept rolling…until

PLOP

Hole in one.

And Justin was my only witness. Not that was a Father’s day gift.  After the game, we went home, grabbed Danielle and went swimming.  To finish the night off, I went to see X-men 2 (after the kids went to bed).

COMMENTS

I was driving on Hwy K the other day when I noticed the car in front of me had a hand written note hanging from the passenger side visor.  Written in big bold letters were the words “B U C K L E   U P”.  I glanced at the driver, and could tell that she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt….

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Justin had his first swim practice last night for The O’fallon Torpedo’s.  I had a flashback (but not the good kind of flashback with cool special effects) to my first practice at Dellwood when Brother Joe was the coach.  The team started with one of the coaches leading stretching and arm circles just like Joe use to make us do.  The only thing that was missing was him saying - “Come on, my grandmother can do better than that.”

They lined the kids up behind the blocks, each lane with a different age group.  The kids jumped off the block or the side (their choice) into the 12 ft water and were to swim 25 yards to the other side.  Right before Justin’s turn, a girl jumped off the block and started to panic.  The coach and her mother kept telling her to swim to the rope, but she just paniced and treaded water.  Finally she did the classic place-my-hands-over-my-head-and-sink move that you see in bad old movies.  The head coach jumped in, wearing her jeans and brightly colored T-shirt to pull the girl out.  The coach calmly said - “maybe you should swim next to the wall tonight”.

Justin had a pretty good practice.  The coaches commented to him about how well he kicked when they were using kickboards.  He even did a start off of the blocks….then it rained and we left.  He said swim practice is a lot more fun than soccer practice.

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BTW: The new tenants are finally starting to move in

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