Having a ball, thanks

I’ve had an eventful few days since we last talked. I’m not sure why I have more than my share of those, but it keeps life interesting and gives you poor entertainment-starved folks something to read about. It also affords you the opportunity to comparatively feel better about how your own life is shuffling along.
My latest round of hard-to-believe weirdness began on Saturday. I sang at a wedding in the afternoon (congratulations Cathy and Adam Feste). The only thing weird there was singing a Bon Jovi song in Danebod Lutheran Church. A Bon Jovi song just can’t be sung in, say, a Michael Buble voice. It has to be sung in a rock and roll voice. Have you ever been in a very noisy room and you are talking really loud to the next person and everything suddenly falls silent except you, who continues to scream for a few seconds? It kinda feels like that. Only this one lasted for four minutes and 12 seconds.
This isn’t quite so traumatic if you can actually sing like Bon Jovi. I can’t.
I got through it, however, and everyone who accidentally made eye contact with me told me I did a nice job.
On Saturday evening we followed the wedding procession to the Hadley Community Center. Kathy and I were in charge of getting the Cathy and Adam video set up and projected on the wall for the guests to see after dinner was served. It came off with nary a hitch and then the event shifted to the dance portion. At this point Kathy and I were in charge of staying awake until the end of the night to transport a couple of the slightly chemically altered participants back to Tyler. Suddenly, about an hour into the dance I got extremely tired…I mean more than my usual perpetual grogginess…and started shivering uncontrollably. We would have to go back 25-30 years for me to think of the last time I was shivering uncontrollably, and that involved a stalled car and 20-below wind chill. With the dance ending at midnight, I figured I could just suck it up and get through. By midnight I was begging and pleading for the night to end, when the D.J. excitedly announced he had been “persuaded” to PLAY ANOTHER HALF HOUR!!!
With the help of a short stint in the car snoozing with the heater blasting, I got through the night. I might take a second to note here that I had been home doing nothing for most of the previous 50 or so Saturdays and I felt fine. Just dumb luck, I guess.
I finally found myself in bed sometime after 2:00 AM. I never would have guessed how difficult it would ultimately be to drag myself back out. I slept nearly non-stop until 6:00 AM on Monday. I did take about a four-hour break where I sat up and dozed Sunday evening. Along with the chills and sleepiness, I was experiencing dizziness, headaches, nausea and growing evidence of a sinus infection. The same symptoms I get when I hear Sarah Palin speak. Monday morning I still had a tough time dragging myself out of bed to get ready to work.
And actually, it was more than just work. Tacked on to the end of the day was a company Summer Fun event. I was going bowling…for the first time in 25 years, and the last time was a disaster.
Each year the company I work for, enXco, gives the employees a day in the summer to go out and enjoy some fun with their co-workers and just generally give you a chance to get away from the usual grind. The group I work with was given a choice of bowling or golf. I, being one of the office rats, was afforded the luxury of attending both the Monday night bowling outing, and the Tuesday morning golf outing. Um…OK…I was told there was no choice, I HAD to go. Hazing, maybe.
Three times since I started at enXco back in March I have been told I would participate in some sort of activity that I at one time would have told you I would never do over the course of my life. Flying was first, then came bowling and golfing. Bungee jumping comes up and I swear, I’m out of there. A man should have to endure only so much happiness in his life…and mine is already filled with marriage.
So I drug myself to work and for another eight hours fought whatever sleeping bug I caught over the weekend. By 4:30 when we were heading to the bowling alley, I was actually starting to feel somewhat human, and figured I might actually live through the experience.
We started the evening with the most amazing baked potato bar that my palette had ever experienced. Imagine a big steamy potato topped with burger and onions and melted cheese and ham and sour cream and shredded cheddar and did I mention burger? It was delicious. The problem was that I hadn’t eaten hardly anything since early Saturday evening, and I didn’t dare unleash the barrage that I craved on my sickness-ravaged insides. But what I had was delectable.
Unfortunately, it seems like every time a guy ends up at a bowling outing, the activities eventually end up being all about bowling.
There were 10 of us bowling and we bowled three…er…rounds(?) over the course of the evening. The first round was “regular” bowling. I found that I have some genetic predisposition to release the ball with enough spin that no matter where the ball starts in the lane, it ends up in the left hand gutter. I’m sure there are those of you who would mutter that I’ve always kind of gravitated to the left. In bowling, however, that can be detrimental. Try as I might, I never shaved more than two or three pins off the left side of the…er…“triangle o’ pins”(?) I bowled in the low 50s.
My gloom and frustration, though, dissipated in “round” two. We moved from regular bowling to sort of variety bowling. Each frame we rotated from regular hand to opposite hand to granny style forwards to granny style backwards. Suddenly the pins were exploding off my ball. Somehow I managed to pull off the third highest score. I was just happy I got through the whole backwards granny thing with out getting my ball wedged between my thighs.
I should have polished my nails on my chest and strolled out the front door at that point. Round three was back to regular bowling. I was back to a 56.
The night ended with some very nice gifts from the company and all-in-all, a pleasant surprise…even without my 8” ViewSonic Digital Photo Frame with SwifTouch Touch-Frame Technology and my 12” Pilsner Minnesota Twins Freezer Glass.
Monday night, I knew, was the easy hurdle. The next day the bar would be lifted. I had NEVER played a round(?) of golf. I had never even stood on a green.
Next week: At 9:30 AM I was standing on the first…er…“tee-off place” at the Slayton Golf Course. At 5:30 I was lying in the Tyler hospital with an I.V. draining into my arm.