MadMup.com

I found this here… I was hesitant to comment because I have no idea what I can hand-make and send to someone, but I think the idea is neat (and I liked the movie!), so I thought I’d make the leap.

Here’s the deal:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days. That is my promise. The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

The key phrases here are “I don’t know what that gift will be yet” and “within 365 days.”

This otter be interesting…

A couple of weeks ago the Career Class met for a Bible study and the “introduce yourself” thing this time was “tell something about yourself” and the rest of the class would guess whether or not it was true. Most everybody said something that was true and the few who said something false were guessed as false right away. When it got to me, my statement was, “I lettered in four sports in high school.” Everybody thought that was pretty funny, and when I listed them (football, basketball, wrestling, and baseball), they came to the (correct) conclusion fairly quickly that I went to a small high school. I even mentioned this a long time ago, and those who remember that will also remember that the letter in basketball was for keeping stats.

While I didn’t end up playing all four years of football in high school, I do have some fond memories of it. When I made the switch to tight end my Junior year, I felt a lot better about things – catching the ball made more sense to me than blocking people, and I never had the size back then to block well anyway. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we got a new quarterback my Junior year and ended up having primarily a running game that year, but I did catch 100% of the passes that were thrown my way (a grand total of ONE).

So when it was announced in the Career Class a couple of weeks ago that we’d been challenged to a flag football match by the Young Marrieds class, it sounded fun to me. I wasn’t getting all Uncle Rico or anything, but I thought it might be fun.

The game was this past Saturday and our class won by default – they had two guys show up. Since we were all there, though, we went ahead and split up into two teams and played. Luckily for me, my team had one more guy on it, which gave me the opportunity to sit out every other series… which quickly turned into sitting out more plays until someone needed a break… which turned into me sitting out all the plays and just keeping track of the line of scrimmage.

I knew I was out of shape, but, man. My lungs were hurting, I got dizzy, and toward the end of it, my legs weren’t cooperating. Sheesh. This is why everyone laughed when I said I played sports in high school, by the way – this is the exact reason. I had remembered the catching passes part, but had forgotten the running up and down the field part.

So yesterday I was pretty sore. Plus I’ve been kind of low-level sick for a while, and coughing was really painful. My legs and my back hurt so much that it was painful to step on the accelerator in my car. Today my back felt a bit better, but my legs were worse. The media specialist at work asked me what was wrong because I was walking funny.

So I’m hopeful I won’t be as sore tomorrow, but time will tell. I’m older and out of shape, and I guess there’s something I can do about one of those things.

And that is: never play football again.

My mom and dad and another couple from their church headed to Branson, Missouri, last Saturday for a week of hanging out and going to shows.

For some of you, I could stop right there and the entry title would be fitting enough. I’ve never been, but it sounds like the sort of thing I probably wouldn’t hate terribly – after all, my last few times at amusement parks I’ve enjoyed the shows more than the rides. Laugh if you must, but see me when you’re my age and we’ll see who’s laughing then (hint: it will be me).

My mom called me on Monday night and said, “Are you sitting down?” and then proceeded to tell me my dad was in the hospital. He started feeling ill on Sunday morning and was admitted Sunday afternoon. They had taken X-rays and done a CAT scan, and had determined he had some intestinal blockage. There was some concern that he would need surgery, and apparently it’s a rather nasty surgery with all kinds of recovery time – a real bummer when you’re nine and a half hours from home. Over the course of the next few days they kept an eye on him and finally decided it was okay to release him back into the wild earlier today.

That first night when I was talking to Mom and then to Dad, and back to Mom again, she’s relaying things to me that he’s saying in the background, including something about how they’re going to bury him in Branson – note: this is before the results of the CAT scan were in and anybody knew what was going on. Is it any wonder where I get my sense of humor?

Dad also made Mom and their friends leave the hospital and go see some shows. “They didn’t come down here to sit in a hospital, after all,” he said. My dad cracks me up.

So now he’s out and about and they are planning to fit as many shows in in the next couple of days as they can before heading back to Wisconsin.

Many thanks to all of you who were praying for him. I appreciate it, and he wanted me to tell you that he and Mom appreciate it, too.

Here’s one of my favorite pictures of Dad – there’s something about the look on his face and the look on Tiger’s face that is just absolutely perfect: