Reports from a full weekend

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

Well the Saturday part of the full weekend lived up to it's promise.  Sunday however was far more casual and relaxed.  Lots of good visits with various family members throughout the weekend.  Sated my appetite for pro football on Sunday.  And managed to get in some painting where I discovered a horrible thing about myself.

Family

Saturday soccer went about how I expected.  Emily showed no desire to play, point blank refusing to do so in fact, which wasn't a huge surprise.  It's enough for me that she practices and maybe goes out there as the season progresses.  Daniel played as much as he was asked to.  He wasn't exactly effective, and actually demonstrated what the coach called 'the aggressiveness of a butterfly' as he just ran up & down the field.  But he played, which was a step in the right direction.  James was the ironman, never coming out of his game, and doing his level best, just coming up short a couple times on goals.  And overall the stress of the morning was not where I thought it might be, partially due to Dad taking the young ones off my hands when he could.

The birthday party was nice, I got to enjoy some time with my family.  It's just different now as people have aged and the older members of the younger generation have left town.  Different dynamics, people just not as interested in things like playing sports.  But as my kids grow hopefully that will return on some level.

The day was capped by a party at Dennis' house, with Kim's relatives from Texas in town for a visit.  Which was a nice time.  Pretty low key.  Played a few games of ladderball.  Chatted about other things.  Taught them a new card game, which they took to like flies to honey.  A good party in general, even though the kids did get a little bored.

Training

Kim & I ran in the Race for the Cure bright and early Sunday morning.  Well, to be honest, I did walk some, being surprised by the up & down of the trail, and the difficulty of running in such a huge crowd.  I still turned in a respectable 37 minutes though.  And Kim, I am so proud of her, ran a 38 minute race, despite no real preparation or training.  It was a nice race though, and glad to have done our part for the cause.

More importantly it did not affect my ability to continue my overall training when I got back into it this morning.  Since my main goal is to be able to run 10K races next year this training is my primary focus.  So I don't plan on running any more races this year.  Although I might find something over Thanksgiving. 

Football

Not a good weekend for my teams.  Ole Miss squeaked by Tulane, a game they should have won handily.  And that was the highlight of my weekend.  My Buffs got thoroughly trounced, the type of beating that has become way too common in the Hawkins era.  I can only hope that things either turn around quickly or we have a quick collapse so that era can close out sooner rather than later. 

The Broncos blew their game, having numerous chances to take control.  But I will give credit to Jacksonville for playing the better overall game, and not screwing up with big errors, or turnovers.  The Rams apparently played a generally solid game, but there is a reason they have only won 3 games in 2 years.  So while there is hope, particularly in the play of our super rookie QB, it's a long tunnel before that light shows up.

The most important thing was I kept my head and didn't let all of those losses kill me emotionally.  As I posted earlier, I'm not sure if it was because I just had low expectations or I am becoming better at handling such things, but I handled all of the above losses much better than in years past.

Miniatures

Since Kim went out with her Dad all day yesterday, leaving me to sate myself on football I decided to try and balance that out with some miniature painting.  Which went okay, except every time I really got going I started getting a headache.  After some careful thinking and analysis I decided I think I know the cause of said headache: eyesight strain.  The thing about the miniatures is sometimes you need to find some really small places to paint.  In the past I would just hold the figure closer to my face to locate these pieces.  Well after doing that for a while I began to realize that doing so was not only not effective, it was bothering my eyes.  So when I sat down for my last bit of painting I focused on keeping the figures farther away, and lo and behold: less strain and easier to focus on the small stuff.  Which leads me to an inescapable conclusion: gonna have to spring for some cheap reading glasses to use while painting, in other words my eyes are starting to age.  But otherwise the painting was fun, and I am excited to keep doing so as much as possible.