NO INCOMING THIS WEEK

No new books came into the house this week.  Quel dommage!

I have been busy this week, though.  Colds and flus took up much of our time.  And grandkids.

We took grandson Mark (age 15) to run an 8K sponsored by the Pensacola Running Association.  He came in third (and first in his age group) with a time of 34 minutes 12 seconds -- a fantastic time but he was disappointed because he wanted to run it in 32 minutes.  Turned out that 95 percent of the course was on sand and much of it uphill, which slowed everyone down.  One runner said that the sandy uphill part felt lilke swimming backwards in slow motion; another that she thought the sand would never end; and a third said, "I'm never, ever, in this lifetime, ever going to run this course again."  There were still runners finishing an hour after Mark had, so I guess Mark did all right.  Afterwards there was a free pancake breakfast.  We're going to get Mark a sign -- WILL RUN FOR PANCAKES!

Wa capped the week off by attending the Kangaroo's first soccer game!  Christina signed him up for a two- to three-year-old league, so at three-and-a-half he's one of the older ones.  The game was scheduled to begin at 11:30 in the morning but through a mix-up in communication the other teams thought the time was 12:30.  So the Kangaroo's team (they are The Pikes and were a pinkish jersey) spent dome time scrimmaging, which for this age group means running around like banshees.  The kids love to kick a ball up to the point when they are supposed to, at which point a solid kick turns into a wishy-washy nudge, followed by everybody standing frozen like statues while parents and onlookers are shouting,"Kick it!  Kick the ball!"  Well, everyone is frozen except for a girl named Olivia who inherited the kicking gene from a mule.  Olivia raced around kicking the ball everywhere.  As long as the ball was being kicked she felt she was doing her job.  Onside offside, front, back, sideways, under the parents legs -- it didn't matter as long as the ball was kicked.  A few times the ball went into the right net and a few times into the wrong net, but mostly it zigzagged all over the place.  Several of the kids who were happy to run all over the place started crying when the ball was placed on the court, and continued crying for the rest of their time there.  The other team finally showed up and the game began.  If it was chaos with only one team on the court, imagine it with two.  Nobody knows what the final score was or who kicked what into whose goal.  The kids for the most  part had fun.  Parents and grandparents had a great time. From little acorns, right?  Look out, FIFA!

Not that any of the above is of interest to you.  So let me leave you with a bit of P. G. Wodehouse:  a Librvox recording of My Man Jeeves, eight marvelously funny stories.  Any one of the eight will dispel your Monday blahs and help you get over the shock of Daylight Saving Time.  Enjoy,


https://archive.org/details/my_man_jeeves_librivox