Needed: Sleep

Ever since I went to Nebraska and only got 7 hours of sleep that weekend, I've been really behind on sleep. Normally I get about 9 hours of sleep per day, so you'd think that I'd catch up really fast, right? I haven't sleep too great lately and for some reason I can never sleep in too much on Saturday! I was just about caught up on sleep when I had to wake up at 5 am on Thursday for a minority summer internship interview.

I wish I was better at taking naps. I could really use one right now. Summer needs to come pronto!

The crazy games we do!

On Saturday, we had the progressive dinner for lifeguards. It was really fun but the highlight of the night wasn't the food, it was the crazy things we did afterwards. First we just watch Nathan do flips and acrobatic feats. Then we came up with "jousting" which is when we have two pairs, have them get on piggy back, and run at each other until you knock the other team's "rider" off of his "steed".

Being one of biggest guys in the youth group I was always the horse, and let me tell you it gets violent down there, you're getting punched, kicked, and headbutted. People were always surprised if I lost, but my weight is more on my upper body, causing me to be top heavy! I still did good but I definitely got several bruises.

One match in particular, was when we played this round "Sibling grudge match" where we had the siblings team up. I grabbed Sienna and she got on my back, but at first she had a death grip on my shoulders, which gave me some pretty intense pain because I got sun burned there that day. There were at least 5 different teams and I realized with that many teams I could just plow through people to knock them over since they didn't have their full attention on me. So between Sienna pulling people down and me ramming into people we soon made short work of them. Except for the fact that they kept getting back up and trying again! We had to have beaten Michaela and Tommy 3 times but they wouldn't stop. We still ended up winning, but I was utterly exhausted by the end of it. And apparently instead of grabbing my shoulders Sienna had been grabbing my moobs (man boobs), thankfully I didn't really notice.

After the jousting, we decided to see how big of a human pyramid we could make. I was always the center base of the pyramid, which was understandable since I was the strongest, but after attempting to build this about 5 times my back started to get tender from having so much weight put on it. Most people were switching in and out being the base but I wasn't, and the person on me usually had knobby knees and liked to shift them around, which grinded my spine to dust!

Among these attempts there would be other distractions like once while someone was climbing to the top their foot went down my pants, or someone would set on my calf. I don't think we ever completed the pyramid, but despite the pain and suffering I endured, it was fun.

This whole time, our youth pastor, Brad is sitting in a chair laughing at us kill ourselves and is encouraging us to do it again. But while we were trying to figure out how to do a human janga game, he said "Dog pile!!" and he just jumped on all of us. After realizing that he was fair game we quickly turned the time on him and within 15 seconds, he was dog piled. We soon found out that Brad is claustrophobic because he started freaking out at the bottom of that pile!

I'm officially a man!

As I mentioned in my last post, this past weekend, I turned 18. I would love to tell you that it was the best birthday ever...but that wasn't the case. I had a bunch of ups and downs that day. I didn't sleep well and had to take a placement test for college at 8am. I finished the placement exam pretty swiftly and my dad got me some new shoes. I had planned to take a nap from noon to 3pm because I had to help with the dinner fundraiser for my youth group. But before I could take a nap, Kate called me and was kinda spazing out how I needed to get there early.

Kate sounded pretty desperate, so I headed out there as quickly as possible. I soon realized that was a mistake, because there really wasn't anything to do. I figured that she probably needed some heavy things lifted or moved but I just stayed there and talked to Joy, Tommy, and company!

The dinner is a formal auction dinner, so we all have to wear dress shirts, ties, and black pants. I probably was the last one to get dressed because I frankly hate dressing up! I probably spent about a half hour to get all ready, because I totally was avoiding to put on the tie.

I eventually did get dressed and found myself serving my parents GREATEST. BIRTHDAY. GIFT. EVER! In reality it wasn't too bad because I got sent in the "Dungeon" to watch the muchkins of the parents because apparently there had been some fighting going on.

During the live auction portion of the evening I decided to start changing into my normal clothes. I was just finished putting on my shirt and was just about to put on my belt when all of a sudden, Michaela (pronounced "Makayla") opened the door, grabbed my hand and said "Come on Connor! They're waiting for you!" I don't think I was supposed to be in my casual clothes yet so I was thinking "Oh crap!"

Holding up my pants with one hand, I go throught the doors and everyone starts singing happy birthday to me! I was shocked. Then they made me walk to the front where I saw my dad holding a pie. I instantly knew what happened! At the end of the auction they give a "Pie to the face to a lifeguard of your choice!" to the highest bidder! Knowing my fate was sealed I sat down in the chair of eternal pie punishment and waited for the action to be preformed.

I closed my eyes and waited...10 seconds... then peeked to see what was going on. My dad told me to stand up, still confused, I stood up expecting a pie to the face then. But he handed me the pie and sat down in the chair! Then I realized that he was giving me a birthday gift! To pie him in the face.

That had to be the best gift I ever got! Because I totally was expecting a pie in the face but instead I had it flipped. I accidently hit him with the pie a little hard, but it was awesome.

The Doctor!

Yesterday I had to get a physical. Thankfully I hadn't had one in 2 years but unfortunately my mom made me get one. I had just turned 18 on April 30th but I went to the pediatrician for the last time. My appointment was at 2:15pm so my fellow patients consist of a toddler wearing a super man cap, and a 2 year old picking his nose. I got checked in and instantly realized how I long it had been since I had gone to the doctors and how I'm a little bigger than most of the kids that go through there.

I went in a room where you get your blood pressure, ears, and eyes, checked. It took the nurse probably 5 minutes to adjust the machine to test my eyes because I was so much larger than most of the kids.

After I found the room, I sat on the bed right next to the trash can that had a picture of pooh bear and said "Please don't throw dirty diapers in here" Yes, I felt right at home there.

My doctor, Dr Doss, is Egyptian and has a really strong accent and my mom has to translate for me. Dr Doss is really cool and likes to joke about how many girlfriends I have and what not. I'm going to skip the whole physical portion of the appointment but basically I ended up getting a shot.

As I was walking down the hall I also found a box of suckers, JACKPOT! I took one and walked happily away. As I opened the door to the waiting room, I saw about 6 little kids with the oldest being around 5 years old. I said "Hello fellow pediatric patients! Remember to always get the sucker!" I would like to say that my inspirational speech changed every one of the little kid's lives, even the nose picker, but I doubt it. Kids these days.

Sorry!

Sorry for not posting frequently for the past few weeks. I've had a bunch of stuff going on from finals, and helping out the dinner, to a just being busy with stupid stuff. I'll try to keep the posts going.

Softball

My church has a softball team and after a little bit of recruiting on their part, I said that I'd join. A few weeks ago we had our first practice, and I was a little nervous because I hadn't played softball since 8th grade so I was wondering if I still had it. It was 35 degrees, raining and really windy. I went up to bat and soon enough I'm hitting half of them to the fence! I wasn't sure how I'd do but I did better than I could've imagined!

I had a blast at softball practice, and we have our first 2 games today! Looking forward to the game.

30 Hour Famine Day 1

This past weekend Lifeguards did their 30 hour famine. It was a whole lot of fun. The first thing we did was play this game called "bigger or better" where we were divided into teams, given a quarter, and went around the neighborhood asking people if they could give us something bigger or better than what we had.

My team cheated and we took our youth pastor's kid, Issac. We lost because we didn't exchange enough things. But the other teams got some really nice stuff! They got a DVD player, a red wings blanket, this big stuffed dog and then this one team totally screwed up and got an Ohio state buckeyes football jersey! I'd rather have a quarter than that stinkin jersey! One of the freshman, Sylus, put on the Ohio state jersey....I'm pleased to say that I had him pinned on the ground and was beating him silly with a pillow within the first 5 seconds.


After playing "bigger or better" we went to the wally ball court to play some wally ball. Wally ball is just like volleyball except there are walls on the sides and on the back so you can bounce the ball off of the walls. Our youth pastor Brad was picking the teams, he asked for who was good at volleyball and I raised my hand and next thing I know, I'm a captain. Unfortunately we still weren't able to pick our teams but it was nice knowing that I'd be in charge of my team.

So I'm standing off to the side waiting for Brad to give me the rest of my team. Brad grabs Kelsey, this girl who is one of the only people from lifeguards who drives me crazy. Immediately I start praying silently in my head that she isn't on my team. Then Brad sent Kelsey to a different team. I started thanking God for not giving me her, Brad puts Liz and Kate on my team. Both of whom have no idea what they're doing.

So I'm slightly bummed since most teams have 4 players and I was the only one who knew how to play on my team. As I looked at the other teams I could see that all of them [except one] had at least 2 good players on their team, so I soon relax knowing that Brad won't give me the short stick here. He has the last 2 guys left, one guy is my buddy Tommy who's a senior and we're pretty close. The other was Ian, a freshman who I really didn't know if he could play. Brad ended up giving me Ian. The first thing I asked Ian was if he was good at volleyball, his response? "Ehhh not really." Crap!

As I looked at the teams I could see that we were probably about the 2nd worst team out of about 7. The only team that had the least amount of talent was one with basically 3 useless players and Emily M. Emily didn't really want to be a ball hog, but I could tell she wished she had a better team. They couldn't even return the ball frequently. We beat them easily.

After the first game I was thinking "Hey that wasn't so bad. Maybe I underestimated our team. I haven't even broke a sweat!" That's when we went against the 2nd best team, with Brad (that booger stacked the teams!) Tommy, Nathan, and my sister Sienna. Their worst player was Sienna, and she would have been our second best player if she was on our team! We were slaughtered 9-15. That was the game when I discovered that Liz didn't want to hit the ball at all, Kate was scared of the ball, and Ian is an average player who was my only hope if I couldn't get to the ball in time.

I was soaked with sweat after that game and I knew that I was going to have to cover 3/4 of our side of the net in order to win. Now I hate ball hogging, because I don't like having people felt left out. But soon the girls made it clear that they were expecting me to get the ball if it came to their side. and the opposing teams soon found out our team's strategy was basically let Connor get the ball and if he can't get to it attempt to hit the ball straight into the air.

We then won our next 3 games to go 4-1 and we really started clicking as a team. By "as a team" I mean that Ian and I were starting to mesh into a pretty powerful tandem! He knew when I couldn't return the ball and would set it up nicely to me. It happened just in time too, because we were against the top team at 5-0 with 3 great players in Dan (a youth leader), Chad a 6-3 senior, and Sylus an athletic freshman.

They had a phenomenal strategy that worked really well against our game plan of me as the primary striker and Ian as my backup. They would hit the ball off the wall at a weird angle near the net so it was extremely hard to hit it over in just one hit. It paid in dividends for them as they got a 7-0 lead, very early. But after a while Ian and I got in stride with one another and he was able to give the ball to me in good position so I could strike the ball down with a large amount of velocity that made it had to return. Next thing I know, we're up 12-8!

That's when the hunger pains hit me like a brick wall! After not eating for 15 hours and running around for an hour straight, my body wasn't too happy with me. The pain affected my game and we were down 14-12. I decided to go all out for the rest of the game and was diving all over the place and just went completely crazy on them scoring 3 points to a 15-14 victory!... or so I thought. They played where you have to win by 2 points and we couldn't return their serves to lose 17-15.

Despite my disappointment to not knock off the top team, we still finished 3rd out of 7 and came closest to beating the top team than anyone with basically 2 useless players! Another thing is that we didn't have enough talent to really have a real strategy besides for let Connor carry this team on his back, and I fully believe if we had another player like Sienna, we would've came in first.