New Baby

Congratulations to my friends Karen and Kevin (and Brandon and Mackenzie). They have just welcomed their new son (brother) into their family. Three boys now for Karen and Kevin. I just can't imagine.

And Your Father Smelt of Elderberries

If you have the chance, you should definitely go and see Spamalot. My brother bought me a ticket for my birthday and Lisa and I went to see it on Friday. Now, I have see the Holy Grail I don't know how many times, but Lisa had never seen the movie. We both really enjoyed it. All the great scenes are there, plus some new ones. It is quite entertaining. I laughed the entire time. It's currently only on sale until the end of August. "It's just a flesh wound."

http://www.montypythonsspamalot.com/ for info on the show and http://www.mirvish.com/spamalot/ for tickets in Toronto.

After the fun of Monty Python, I spent the weekend at the beach. Yes, I spent the weekend that was hotter than hell at the beach. The 12th annual Heatwave beach volleyball tournament for Sick Kids Hospital was this past weekend. ESI (the company I work for) has put a team in the tournament for the past 7 years. I missed last year because I was hiking around Newfoundland. But, I was back this year as captain. My goodness it was hot. The sand was burning and I actually suffered a bit of heat stroke with a headache that lasted about 8 hours.

The tournament was a lot of fun, as always. We played 14 games, we won 5 of the games and had two others that ended with a point difference. Not our worst year, but not our best either. I had a couple of great serves and now wish that I played more than once a year. By the end of the tournament I was definitely getting a better sense of where the ball was going. (Many collisions happened during the weekend, like the one below between Jeff and Christi.)

Christi and I went swimming in between a couple of the games (Woodbine beach was one of two without an ecoli warning in Toronto this weekend). Boy was it nice to get in the lake even if it was only for a minute or two. To beat the heat we had two tents on Saturday, but only one on Sunday. Even though it was super hot, there was a bit of a breeze. During one of our games we looked over and our tents were blowing away. They actually blew right over a girl sitting on the beach and one of the tents broke. I knew I should have brought the duct tape out of the car. I couldn't have imagined being one of the teams without a tent, it made such a huge difference. We hated getting out and stepping on the super hot sand. But, we did make it on tv. Apparently, I was in the footage shown on CTV News. I missed it because I was too tired to remember to set the pvr. CityTv also taped one of our games, but no word yet if we made it onto their broadcast.

Hockey No Fun

Today was crappy. I hate zip.ca, the rental car company forgot about me (again) and for the first time ever I didn't want to play hockey.

I haven't been feeling great for a couple of months now and it just seems to be getting worse. I can't sleep, I'm upset all the time and I keep quitting my sports. Today I went to hockey and half way through the game I just stopped wanting to play. So, I stopped. I hate my life right now.

But, there was a highlight to my day. I bought the kitties a new scratching post and they are so cute. I bought it for Placenta Head but Noke has taken it over and won't let him near it. I was hoping this would stop him from destroying my couch so that I could think about buying a new one. But, it doesn't look good.

Mudball

On Monday night I had my first baseball game with the Bears (a new team I've joined). It was pouring rain all day. I figured the game would be cancelled, but just in case I asked for a ride from one of the guys on the team (turned out we had to show up no matter what to ensure the team didn't default). About an hour before I was getting picked the sun was shining and Dan asked if I still needed a ride, or if I would take the motorcycle. I hadn't really thought about taking the bike due to the rain, so I asked if he could still pick me up. Boy was I glad I did. It started to pour about ten minutes before he picked me up. We both figured the game would be cancelled. No such luck. Ump said we were playing.

Now, I play backcatch. If any of you have ever been to a baseball diamond when it rains, have you ever noticed how home plate normally seems to be a small lake? Well, this was a red mud lake. No matter what I tried to do the ball somehow bounced in one of the huge puddles and sent mud flying in my direction. By the end of the game I had chunks of mud in my hair, I couldn't see out of my glasses and my uniform was caked with mud from wiping the ball off. Even after a shower when I got home I still had mud in my ears. But, I had a great time!

World Cup

I totally got addicted to the World Cup this year, but not until late in the competition. The first game I watched was Portugal vs. England. I was in the minority here, I think, cheering for Portugal. I'm currently sitting here watching the 3rd place game with Portugal vs. Germany.

Last weekend I celebrated Canada Day at Karen and Kevin's. It was a lot of fun. We sat out side and watched the kids go crazy on the wet banana slide and then played cards all evening. I love playing cards. We also played Taboo and the guys kicked our butts. But, it was still fun.

Nothing else too exciting going on with me. I'm having major issues with my MP3 player. It keeps shutting itself off even with a full battery charge. Of course, I can not find any answers on the web. Hopefully iriver emails me back with some ideas of what is wrong. Then, if that wasn't annoying enough, I just received an email from zip.ca that they have deactivated my account. I loved my zip service. DVDs being delivered to my house. But, I have had over 6 DVDs not received back at Zip and one that I never received. Apparently, they believe that I have stolen them or some such thing. I personally believe that whoever is responsible for the mail in my office building has something to do with it. But, apparently that does not matter. Stupid zip.ca.

I finished reading Stephen King's newest book, Cell. It was okay. It was somewhat similar to The Stand, but not as good. I'm currently reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. A rather depressing book. It is one of the books that started the modern environmental movement. It was written in the 1960s and still resonates today. But, I think I want something a little less heavy for the summer.

Next weekend I'm heading down to the Beaches in Toronto for a beach volleyball tournament as well as going to see Spamalot with Lisa. Should be a good weekend.