Perpetual Monday

Well, we survived the tornados and other weather, though there was a tornado touch-down a few miles from us; we heard the siren, but we both were too out of it to get up, I guess, because we didn't. We ended up only getting 1.5" of rain here, but other areas got dumped on. We got more with Hurricane Dennis in July - 3.5" over 2 days. We'll see what the next couple of months hold for this hurricane season.

A couple of weeks ago at work, the air conditioner in our part of the building broke, which is bad, because the IT folks are in our area, and one of the server rooms was affected. Well, it was the first day in weeks that I was actually comfortable; I am cold-natured, as everyone at work knows. Well, the maintenance guys came in and got it working again, and then it didn't shut off again for 2 days - it was arctic in our area. All of us girls were running around in sweaters and sweatshirts, in the middle of August! It was 95 outside, and we were all freezing. Then it broke again, temporarily. Well, it's working again; some kind person brought in a big thermometer, and it read 67 today. Now, I have a heater in my office, but me and the girl in the office next to me cannot run our heaters at the same time, or we blow the circuit. Well, we had our good HP printer swapped with a big Ricoh printer/copier/scanner, which they had to hard-wire into the wall; she and I pretty much print out a few pages at most - e-mails and whatnot - so no issues. Lately, a person from the other division has been running huge manuals on this printer, and it keeps causing the circuit to blow if I have my heater on.

So basically, we're sitting in a building that is 67 degrees (we sit behind desks, doing computer work - not a whole lot of movement there), freezing our asses off, with or without sweaters, and for some reason, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, when we say anything to any of those "warm" people, they give us 20 kinds of shit, usually beginning with what could possibly be wrong with us medically to make us cold all the time. Why is that? Why is it when the temperature in an office isn't comfortable for everyone, it's the cold people who always have to do the suffering? You know, when someone is complaining about how hot it is in the building, I don't make any snide comments about how if they lost 20 pounds or got their blood pressure under control, they wouldn't think it was so hot; that would be rude. But it sure is okay to do it to me and the others. And it's not like I can get up and do calisthentics periodically - I'll need a much bigger office for that. I eat lunch outside every day, so I can be warm for 30 minutes, smog or no smog. I think we should have a few days a month designated as "warm Days"; I hate to use the D-word, but they do kind of discriminate against us cold-fearing people. It's not fair, dammit!

On a completely different subject, I hate to discuss the politics involved in today's Youth Athletics, mainly because youth athletics should not contain any politics, but I guess I need to bring it up, if for no reason other than a sanity check for myself. With all of this ridiculous Select/Premier/whatever you call your upper-level travel teams that we seem to feel are a necessity for our kids, why do the parents all seem to compete more than the kids do? "I spend more on my kids than you do on yours" or "I travel more with my kids to games than you do" or "my kid scores more points than your kid does". And these parents that get in fights, with officials and/or the kids themsleves - what the hell are they thinking? Morons. It makes me sad to be a part of it - if it weren't for keeping my kids busy and out of the bad stuff, we would not be involved. And I love to watch them play, because they are both very talented (I know, all parents say that, but mine really are. They obviously get it from their dad; I'm the Trivial Pursuit Champion of the Universe - no bodily contact there. Usually).

I guess I really want to know why we, as parents who write the checks and put out all of this effort, have little or no say in what goes on with coaching decisions. Now, I know your average parent doesn't have a clue about the game, and that's not who I'm directing this question to. For instance, my oldest son's team has the head coach, chosen by the association after an application and review process, a new assisstant coach this year, with many years of experience and training, a manager who is also a coach with many years of experience, and at least one other coaching parent. I have played the game myself, Varsity in HS (okay, I wasn't very good, but I did play, so do have some point of reference), and a good number of the other parents have played. We do not pay the coach, but we do pay a professional trainer, and I think that, because we pay him, his word should maybe carry more weight than the coach's. The trainer does not get to come to many games (his college games are the same time as our games, so that's where he goes, naturally), so whatever he goes over in practice the week before, it's up to the discretion of the coach to use or discard that training, and ours pretty much discards it. Now what the hell are we paying the pro for? We've had 2 scrimmage games in the past 2 weeks, and he keeps switching the kids around to different positions; I'm sure he's trying to find the best combination, but that is what practice is for, not the middle of a game. The boys are so confused by the end of the game, it's a wonder any of them have any clue what they are supposed to do. But you can't say anything to him; he'll cut you off, or if he sees you coming, he'll do his best to avoid the confrontation.

More to the point, he got ejected the last game of the last tournament last spring, so he is auomatically out for the first two games of this fall season, which happen to be this weekend at a major Southeastern tournament (we were div. champs last year!!!). If he shows up to the venue - anywhere on the premises, and is found out, we forfeit those two games. He has said several times that he plans to be there, incognito, so he can help the AC and Mgr handle the games (being coaches themselves, there's no way they could do this alone?). Both the AC and the Mgr said he shouldn't risk it, but as usual, that's just brushed off - Head Coach knows best! Well, today, he let it slip to a new parent, who came back and, stating rules from the official rulebook, begged him to not do it, because it would not be fair to her son if they ended up forfeiting. And he acted like he hadn't thought of it that way before, and that he really should reconsider going. The really sad part is, we ( a group of us) don't really think he can advance these boys any further; he doesn't teach them anything new, ever, and if the trainer is getting anywhere, it'll be reversed by the end of the gaming weekend. What do we have to do to vote this coach off of the island?

Oh, and I got some beads done last night; the purple stones I can't remember the name of are strung and hung, and I finished 2 sets of green twist beads - emerald and olive green. The olive ones include a strand of peacock fw pearls; I love pearls. Now, if I could just get some decent pictures of them - I'm going to lay them on my scanner and see what I get. I guess I really need to get off my butt and go see Bob the Wolf Camera Guy....