They will converge this Saturday, March 10 in a fundraiser for some of my friends’ volleyball team. Buffalo Club won nationals at the US Open Volleyball Championships last year, the first Kansas City team to do so. To raise money for the defending bid, they will be holding a tournament this Saturday.

You can find details at the site I built them here.

They recently participated in the USA Volleyball Open in New Orleans and they won the Mens’ AA championship. Not only that, but my former college roommate (you are the man, Stowell!) – was named MVP of the tournament. Not bad for a bunch of volleyballers from Kansas City. From what I understand another one of my roommates (the winner of the Biggest Loser contest) – was named to the all-tournament team as well. That’s the rumor, but I haven’t yet confirmed that.

My team went to nationals, but I didn’t participate. A small part of me wishes that I would have, but in the end, I had a great Memorial Day weekend with Alli’s parents. Volleyball season didn’t go as I planned this year, which is too bad, but we’ll see what next year brings.

I just want to say congratulations to the Buffalo Club, the team that I helped name back in the day. I’m proud of you guys and really happy for you.

Big night.

Corporate Challenge Volleyball Finals (we won).
American Idol Finale (Michael McDonald II won).
Top Chef Finale (my boy Harold won).
Lost Finale (I got goosebumps…such an awesome show).

It’s time for bed. More on the above later.

“Baby, we’re gonna be up five HUNDIE by midnight!”

Greatest movie about Vegas.

EVER.

OK, so there’s a lot to talk about. First, I want to congratulate myself on making it to 200 posts. This is my official 200th post (according to WordPress), so I’m going to do a little mental macarena for myself. 200 posts since October 1st of 2004. 200 posts in 529 days; that’s approximately 1 post every 2.645 days. Not too bad…but I’m going to try to get to 400 by the end of the year. Think I can do it?

Friday night, we tried to do some staging at my parents’ old house. It’s been for sale for quite a while now and we (and by we, I mean Alli’s mom…) tried to make it more appealing by putting some furniture in it. It looks A LOT better now.
Played this weekend in the Big G Volleyball tournament, a tournament that was hosted by my alma mater, Graceland University. It was disappointing. First, I was disappointed in the turnout of teams. Originally, they were expecting as many as 16. When we got the schedule last week, it was down to 11. When we showed up on Saturday, there were only 6. While I still had fun playing in the old gym, I was disappointed that more teams didn’t show up. Plus, we played HORRIBLY. I had to pass all day and I did decent for most of it, but then started passing really poorly and the problem was that it was more when it counted that I passed badly. I made up for it as much as I could with some good defense and my hitting was really pretty good for most of the day…I just chose to stop passing at the worst possible time. Plus, with only 6 teams, there was no rest built into the schedule. We were either playing or reffing the whole time. Not fun. By the time the tournament rolled around, we were all pretty beat. So we lost in the quarterfinals to a team we had beat easily in pool play.

Boo.

Best part about it though was that, since we were in Lamoni, we got to partake in the best pizza ever from Hampton’s Pizza Shack. I was able to keep some leftovers for lunch today and man, were they tasty!

Sunday, we got up and went to Bob Evans for some tasty breakfast and then basically slept the rest of the day away. I tried to watch the Big 12 Tournament Finals, but I couldn’t stay awake, only waking up to see that my Jayhawks had pulled it out in impressive fashion. I thought that their win over Texas could get them as high as a 3 seed, but I guess not. We’ll have to settle for a #4 in a pretty tough bracket. This year, I’m not going to let my homer attitude take the best of me and I’ll probably have KU losing to Pittsburgh and I’ll just be happy if they don’t, even if it does break up my bracket a little.

Finished off the weekend by watching Pride & Prejudice last night. It was an interesting flick, but we both couldn’t figure out why Keira Knightley was nominated for Best Actress. Gwyneth Paltrow or Claire Danes would have been much more deserving candidates in my opinion.

So that was it. Long, tiring weekend. Another on the docket for this weekend when we go to St. Louis to visit our friends there. Should be fun. Plus, the tournament starts. Good times.

We played awful this morning. Awful. We just were not clicking at all and it sucked. We just couldn’t do anything right.

Then, we kind of turned a brief corner and we participated in the longest rally I can remember in my 10+ year volleyball career. We won one and lost won, finally getting ourselves into the win column, needing to win our final two games to make it into the playoffs. We were down 23-24, and managed to come back and win that game and another game to JUST make it in.

Then, in the semis, I got one of the nastiest floor burns on my left leg. It’s probably 4 inches long and 2.5 inches wide and it still is stinging me even today. Well, we won our semifinal match in 3 games and then went to 3 games in the finals against the team that we had needed to beat to get into the tournament. While they ended up beating us, I guess you could say that it was a “moral victory” considering how terribly we played the rest of the day.

Overall, it was a pretty good tournament.

I hope it doesn’t hurt too badly.

UPDATE: Jumping didn’t hurt too much. Landing did. We’ll see how it feels on Thursday if we play again.

It doesn’t feel great today, but most mornings are like this. Fortunately, we are not playing Sunday now so I will have the rehab time I need.

Also, I Just wanted to point out that my brother Jake has a blog (and he’s actually posting on it!). He still needs some design help and has to work out how to use WordPress, but I just wanted to recommend him as a read.

The tournament went really well. I listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the way to and from Ames (and some during the day) and our team played well, losing in the finals to a bunch of Iowa State alumni.

Unfortunately, on the very last play of the very last game of our very last match, something awful happened…I sprained my ankle something FIERCE. I came down from a block just fine, but the ball was close to me and as I reached out to play it, I stepped akwardly, coming down on the side of my right foot. I felt about 25 ligaments in my ankle pop and then watched as the ball dropped and we lost. It actually still hurts me now thinking about it.

I iced it briefly and then made the 2-1/2 hour trek back to Council Bluffs, listening to Harry Potter the whole way. By the time I got home, my ankle was throbbing pretty bad. Got home around 10-ish and iced again. Tried to go to sleep that night, but it was tough because my ankle was in so much pain. I fell asleep, but woke up around 5 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I got up and listened to the rest of Harry Potter and tried to walk around to get rid of some of the stiffness in my foot. It helped and continued to feel better as the day went on.

We were pretty lazy all day, watching Stealth and some random TV while we waited for the Super Bowl to start. After it was over, we drove home, got in around midnight and got to sleep. By the end of the weekend, I drove approximately 11 hours and over 730 miles. I’m exhausted, but it was a great weekend. Thanks for hosting us, Tom and Carol!

It was good to be back in the gym playing competitively. While I’m certainly not at the weight that I want to be at right now, I’m feeling in better shape (although this tournament I feel like crap afterward). I am really looking forward to the year. I think that we will get better as the year goes on and it will be good motivation for me to get in shape.

I have to say, I have this one friend on my team whose name is Josh. Josh is our setter and he is very VERY good. Josh could have played with a better team this year, but he chose to play with me and two other guys from work because he is a really good guy. I enjoy playing with him and I think that he brings the level of play of those around him up. Anyway, I was just thinking tonight how he is a good friend. I know that he could have played with someone else and he didn’t and I’m grateful for that.

I like having a good setter around.

Oftentimes, men find it difficult to have really good friends. We all have “buddies”, but sometimes true “friends” are a rarity because male-to-male relationships are so difficult. I don’t know what it is about those that make them so difficult, but I have been blessed with great friendships.

When I was 3, we moved from Iowa back to Kansas and we shortly started attending church in Olathe, KS. One of the things that I loved about going to church back in the day was the friends that I had there. When we started attending, I had a bunch of built-in friends, a group of guys who were either my age or within one year of my age and that group was probably about 8 strong at the time. Over time, amazingly NO ONE moved away.

Our friendship grew and we became closer friends. It helped that our friendship was based in a church relationship and all of our parents became friends as well (if they weren’t already). Almost none of us went to the same schools. But as we got older, our friendships got closer because we began to play on a club volleyball team together. While our team probably could have been better with other players outside of our group, the way we had it was the way we wanted it and what happened was remarkable. Almost all of us went off to the same college that all of our parents had attended and continued to play volleyball competitively.

After graduation (at different times), things seemed weird. We all still kept in close touch (some more than others), but our lives were changing as we made the adjustment into adulthood. One-by-one, we began getting married (standing in each other’s weddings was fun) and settling down, not surprisingly in the same areas where we had all grown up.

As we have all gotten settled, our friendships have changed, but not for the worse, more for the better. All of us have spouses and they have been added to the mix. Our conversation subjects have gotten more grown up (sometimes) and we all seem much more responsible (at least most of the time).

The one thing that hasn’t changed over time is that we can count on each other. Our friendship will last even if there are those of us that move away. I’m glad for that. These aren’t really my friends, they are my extended family, and I’m thankful for all of them. You know who you are.