Party Time

Our station had its annual summer party today and I'm wiped out now. We went to the Olympic Oval to have our own little Olypmic Games. It sounded kind of lame at first but I sure as heckfire am glad I went. It was a kick in the pants! Our first event was curling. We had some instructors take us through the basics for about half an hour and then we had a shoot out. This was interrupted for some time, however. One of the sales associates was sweeping the ice to get the stone to go further when he went down, his face taking all the force of the fall. He cut his forehead open right at the eyebrow and a large puddle of blood formed on the ice. I think he also broke his nose, cut the inside of his lip, and nearly separated his shoulder. The paramedics were called and he went to the hospital to get stitches. I'm sure glad it wasn't me. Then we resumed our contest. Although my form was pretty good, I kept over shooting the target. While we were doing this, the U.S. Speed Skate Team as well as some Aussie Olympians were working out on the ice. They sped by us in tandem at unreal speeds.

Our next event was, of all things, dodge ball. Is that an Olympic sport? I was better at this. I helped our team advance into the semi-finals with two consecutive game-winning shots, each to the head. Apparently head shots are ok in the Olympics. After this we noticed the Skate Team was finished and a few of us went to talk to 1500 meter Olympic record holder, Derek Para. He was a very nice (and really short!) guy.

Our final event was the slap shot. We had to shoot at a target positioned in front of a hockey net. After a little coaching from my hockey-playing friends, I actually made a rather difficult shot.

After that we strapped on our harnesses and bungie-jumped on the trampoline the freestyle aerial jumpers train on.

In the end, our team won third place and each of us recieved a purple ball cap! Whoa, that's a little more than I can handle. We went back to the station to have a catered lunch and the prize give-away. The main course was a whole-roasted pig that they rolled into the room. It was smiling, wide-eyed, at everyone. The women sitting at my table were all disturbed by it. One of them, a reporter, had to change seats so she didn't have to look at it. Another one couldn't eat very much of it and got two desserts to satisfy her hunger. As far as I was concerned it wasn't great. I've been to a Tongan wedding and I used to have a Neighbor from Hawaii and they do the roasted pig thing much better. After I covered it with salt (which I had to dig out from my own stash) and spicy bbq sauce, it was tolerable. I had two helpings. I'm not going to let a little thing like lack of flavor stop me from gorging myself. After the lunch, they began drawing for prizes. The grand prize was a 21-inch tv. In the back of the prizes was a new golf bag ($199.00 retail value) with various drivers and woods in it. I have an instinct about these things. There have been three occasions in which I've known what I was going to win. Once in Idaho Falls I was at a company Christmas party. There there were about 3000 employees there. When they held up this stupid grandfather wall clock, I knew it was mine, and they called my name. Another time, at the place where I now work, there was a Chia Head in the prize stack. Something inside me said, "You're going to win that." I did. Today, I leaned over to my friend Di and told her I was going to win some of that golf stuff. I won the bag. Woo hoo, I guess. The only time I don't get the premonition is when I win something I want to win, or don't win anything at all.

I don't golf so if anyone wants to buy a new golf bag let me know.

In other news, Princess Rufflebutt's running a fever. She was sniffling a lot last night and she's really grumpy today. I've given her some Tylenol. I hope it helps.

My two oldest boys started school this week. I keep asking them what they learn but they don't say anything. Today I pressed my 1st grader and he said, "Either I didn't learn anything or I forgot it all." At least public school is free. I guess you get what you pay for.

Oh, one more thing. I stumbled on to this and laughed pretty hard.