To all: back from Calif w/an embarrassingly funny yet painful true story I thought I'd share to anyone with a little spare time this morning. Our trip to the wife's family began nice enough with temps in the 80's when we arrived and we had a great time seeing her sister's new baby girl along with visiting the rest of the family. I thought I'd try to get the two young nephews out of the house for a little exercise so suggested a walk to them which was received with frowns and it's too hot, etc. So I told them this wasn't going to be an ordinary boring type walk but an "intelligence walk"! They perked up and asked what that was and I told them it including a unique learning experience involving a ball they had brought to Grandma's house. I told them the ball would accompany us and that we would be examining the ball's personality along with it's tolerance for being thrown and kicked around. They soon agreed to head out with me and we began throwing the ball around as we walked the quiet hilly streets around Grandma's house.
Now for the unitelligent part of the walk I hadn't considered: while chasing a ball thrown over my head on a street with about a 25% decline, I decided to try and catch up to the ball with my less than dazzling speed and I may have even caught up to it and saving an extra half a block trip to the bottom of the hill IF I hadn't lost my balance running at full speed and fallen. Did I mention the road we were "walking" was a particularly rough asphalt? I scared the kids when I got up from the nasty fall bleeding from my left hand, right knee, and right elbow. I tried to act like it didn't hurt much to reduce my embarrassment somewhat and we immediately headed back to the house with me limping along. I'd torn my shorts (wish I'd worn long pants) and the back of my short sleeve T-shirt (wish I'd worn a long sleeve shirt too) and I arrived at the front door a few seconds behind the nephews who ran ahead to get Grandma and Mrs. tuna to help me. Upon further review, I had large abrasions on my upper and lower back (which we later discovered went on down to my posterior on the left and right sides) in addition to bruises and abrasions on both hips, both palms, both elbows, and the right knee and lower right leg. It took about 30 minutes washing the small stones from the left palm, right knee, and right elbow which were considerably worse than the other injuries. Mangled skin was scrubbed away and or cut away from those areas before bandaging me up. My humiliation wasn't quite complete however until the 9 year old told the wife and Grandma as I sat there in pain, that my "intelligence walk didn't work"! Mrs. tuna chewed me out far longer than the was necessary I believe...including a refresher chew out on the trip back home last night.
Overall it was still a good trip but I really must learn how to better adjust to my current age!!
Sorry it's been a poor market for many including you and me lately Bob...at least I did close out everything before we took off to California, but a lot of damage was already done by then...and sorry too that your "other job" is not working out as nicely as it was supposed to....I'll be around some today because I can't drive the car with my bandaged left hand and right knee as we have a manual transmission....carp!!! Actually I'm in a lot less pain today than when it happened 2 days ago....whew! Best to you and the rest of the board!! tuna |
