Bustin Out Loud

Posted 10:02 PM by RedSox
The Experiment continues…

Old, I’m definitely getting old.

Yesterday was our Special Olympic bowling qualifier. It is a mandatory competition that every bowler must go through in order to qualify for the State Games in November. Usually it is run just like the State Tournament with divisions and awards and the like. Last year they started half-assing it and now it is little more than a glorified, regional practice. But it is nice seeing other bowlers that you don’t get to talk to but twice a year. It just works out to be a very long day for Boogieshoes and me. They need to have two sessions during the day. The morning is the Unified tournament, which I participate in. Unified Sports is a concept where athletes with special needs (which I will refer to athletes the rest of the way) are placed on teams with athletes without special needs (which are called Special Partners). For bowling we have four person teams two athletes and two Special Partners. The afternoon session is for the Traditional tournament, which is a singles tournament with only special needs athletes. Since Boogieshoes is the Local coordinator for our team, she has to stay all day. And since I am the Local Coordinator’s husband, I also get to stay all day.

So, the morning session got off to a bang, literally. One of our Special Partners was involved in an automobile accident literally in the driveway of the bowling alley. She was fine but shaken up. Needless to say that provided a bit of a distraction to everyone on the team. Once we got to bowling things calmed down. First, let me say that I am not typically fond of the Milford Lanes where we have our tournaments. They use a synthetic surface that doesn’t usually favor the way I throw the ball. Yesterday, however the bowling gods were looking down on me. The lanes were perfect for me. I scored a 154 in the first game and this was worrying about our Special Partner who was in the accident. By the second game that had been cleared up and I relaxed a bit more. I threw a 159. Not spectacular but still much better than usually do there. In the third game it all came together. I bowled a 223. 223 is my second highest score ever. My best is 235. I was one inch from bettering that yesterday. In the ninth frame I was working on 5 strikes in a row and threw one in a little light and left 2 pins. I just missed on the spare sliding the leading pin in front of the other. I came back strong in the tenth but that one inch kept me out of the 240’s. But it was 1 pin better than my brother-in-law’s 222 that upstaged my 197 last week so my competitive side was satiated.

In the afternoon I got stuck being a lane monitor because they didn’t have any volunteers to run the lanes. I promptly got volunteered. I had nine athletes on my lane and yawned my way through two games without having to do much except direct traffic.

So by 4:00, 8 hours in a bowling alley was finally over. What a long day that is.

The coaches and Special Partners that were left cruised on over to Bennigans for some food and beer. Something about all day Special Olympic events leave us all thirsty. We desperately need some time together after these things to talk and laugh about the day and bond from the shared experience. I think that is why we all become so close. It happens every time. Last night was no exception. We got to the bar at around 4:00 and proceeded to play darts for 4.5 consecutive hours. We had a blast. We were laughing and joking and competing (Some of us took it a bit more seriously than others). Lord Baltimore, Guinness, Sock Momma, and yours truly did the bulk of the damage. We mostly played team cricket. Every combination of teams was played. I was especially fond of two games in which the team of RedSox and Sock Momma wiped the silly sh**-eating grins off of Lord Baltimore’s and Guinness’ respective faces. This included a miraculous comeback shooting bulls eyes. Granted we lost he rubber match right after that but they had gotten really cocky after beating us twice in a row. We came back and took the next two. They were definitely nervous going into that last game.

All and all a really good evening.

This is where the feeling old comes in. I woke up this morning and, between the bowling and dart marathon, I couldn’t move my right arm today. My elbow and the bicep right above it hurts still. I haven’t played dart for that long a period of time in over 5 years. But come on. My arm should not being falling off right now.

It seems I have lots to talk about tonight.

And now for something completely different…

Number 1 - The Larch

Ah, the joys of being a Business analyst project lead. On Thursday, the IT resource working on the project that currently is my life had on of those damn flashes of inspiration. You know the ones. The one where they decide, quite independently, to do the exact opposite of what you specifically asked for in the project definition. It is inevitably a half-baked idea that was never fully thought out. I know this because if it was thought out then the reason I asked for it the way I did would become readily apparent. But no, this is the new idea, lets run with it. These always annoy me because they rarely do permanent damage but it inevitably costs me 4-5 days of project time just to get everyone to see that I was asking for something out of my ass but I actually thought about what I was requesting and actually talked to other even more knowledgeable people than me about what the best way to do this should be. Go figure. In the end we end up doing it my way anyway.

We were getting nowhere with emails, so I shelved the discussions on Friday until our weekly status meeting today to curtail further damage. I was armed and dangerous and ready for a fight. To my great disappointment, the IT resource was very reasonable and saw my point right away and we are back on track in 2 days rather than 4-5. Normally I would have rejoiced about this. Especially with the very short time we have to actually do a major overhaul of a couple of processes. But I worried about this all weekend and over prepared myself for the worst and went swaggering in there looking for a shootout. For once in my life I was ready for the confrontation confident that I was the quickest draw at the table. It was a letdown hearing “Ok, I see your point. We’ll do it your way.”

Until next time…