Monday, June 16, 2003

A Day After Father's Day

So what did you get your dad for daddy’s day? I had a good dad’s day yesterday and I hope you all did as well. For my dad, we got him a new gas grill and took him out for supper. I think the grill that we bought for him is one of the biggest grills known to man. You could probably put an entire cow inside of this thing and cook to perfection. I told my dad that we’re going to have to have a gigantic party at our place to see how much we can grill and how fast. You just have test out this thing’s limits……

It really was a great day for father’s day. Mostly sunny, 80 some degrees out, and hardly any wind. Since it was so nice out I also took the opportunity to play some bocce with Ryan and wash my car. I think that this is probably the first time my car has gotten washed within the last month or more. Usually I get a fifty cent car wash when I fill up with gas during school up in St. Cloud, but being down here none of the gas stations around have that deal so I never really get around to washing my car. I couldn’t let it go any longer and it was pretty nice out so I just did it.

Backing up a day, Saturday was also a beautiful day. In the morning I ran a 5K in Austin that the local YMCA was sponsoring (and by sponsoring, I mean that they are holding it and making us pay $18 to run in it). I ran it with my friend Caleb who, by the way, ended up finishing second overall in the race. I was very impressed, especially since I had a very lackluster time myself (I’m not even going to post it because it is one of the crappiest times I’ve had for a 5K ever). Even though I did have a bad time, I still managed to eek out second place in my age group and 19th place overall. One thing this race has showed is that I need to be putting in a lot more miles than I have been if I want to be competitive the rest of the summer, especially in the longer races like the 5 mile in Austin coming up and 10K’s.

Afterwards, I went home and took a little nap. You know, I really wonder why the US doesn’t switch to a schedule like Japan and Mexico have where everything closes down for a couple of hours over the noon hour for a nap break. I would really love a nap at work every day. Instead, I always make a couple of trips over to the coffee pot to re-caffeinate myself so that I’m awake for the afternoon. Anyhow, the rest of the day was nice and I spent it mowing the lawn and relaxing outside reading.

Now let’s jump back one more day to Friday (isn’t it odd going counter-chronological? I think it is). Friday night we had a Strike Team Improv show to put on. Anyhow, our show didn’t go very well. We had a small crowd for the second week in a row. I really don’t know why our crowd size is waning this year. Maybe it is because we haven’t advertised. Maybe it’s because we aren’t the new thing to do anymore. Maybe we’re not fresh enough. I really don’t know, but I hope that our crowd size picks up soon because it is hard playing to a smaller crowd. You don’t get the response you’re looking for and that often breaks down your stage presence making it harder to really focus yourself on the games. You start thinking more about why people aren’t there or why the laughs aren’t as many instead of keeping your head into the improv games.

Our show was also a stressful one because one of our team members didn’t show up until about a half hour before the show (we’re supposed to be there about an hour and a half early to prepare for the show and warm up). We scrambled to find a replacement and were busy monkeying around with that instead of focusing on the show. She eventually made it, but to complicate our show, the intro by our host for the night utterly bombed. I don’t know if he just didn’t realize that his monologue was bombing or what, but it drug on for way too long and it was horribly unfunny. Our game order also got messed up, the beat for poetry slam (one of our games) was way too fast, and the inspiration for the games was pretty lackluster at best (not the audience’s fault. Our host was just taking stupid inspirations). Blech, I just didn’t like this show. Hopefully we’ll have a better show next time.

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