Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Of the Games.

It has been a busy week. With little work and lots of play. Two Sundays ago our friends the Candlers came down from Illinois. When they come down it means it is ping pong season. This time it was not different in the least bit. On Monday we heated things up after I got home from having lunch and a business meeting with my boss and co-worker. We started it off with Texas Tornado, and we played that till they had to leave for Brownsville later that day. The following Saturday they came back, and we hardly skipped a beat. Frisbee was the order of that day. We played the first game of Frisbee, in the middle of the day, it was hot, and hot...did I mention that it was hot? Anyway we were burnt out before we had even reached the half way point in the game. After our second water break, both teams were tied at 3-3 and we deiced to play to 4. We finished up with our water break, and went back to the game. The rest of the game only lasted 30 seconds. Sierra started by throwing a fade out to Lena towards the left, and seconds latter she connected with a pass to me in the end-zone to end the game. It was rather anti-climatic. We went back to our house and after a little X-box we were recovered, and set up the Volleyball net. Some more friends came over, and joined in the game. We played a total of three games of Volleyball before moving on. The team that I was on won the first two matches, but took a crushing loss in the third game. The sun was lower in the sky now and we set out to play Frisbee again. This time we had more players, as my brother in-law had joined us along with our other friends.
Now I am not going to blame it on the fact that our team had a disadvantage in size, or that about half of them had never played the game before but...we were crushed. Flat out killed. 7-0. It was not even a near run thing.
Again we turned to ping pong...Yes! Texas Tornado was played till the rest of the guest had to leave late that night. At which point a challenge for a rematch between my older brother Calvin with Josiah Candler against each of their younger siblings. Two year back now we had played each other with those same teams and the younger siblings had won 2-1 in a best of three set. This time Josiah asked for a single game elimination. And that is what his sister and I gave him and Calvin. 21-11 final.
Yesterday we played Volleyball again, this time at the beach. Mr.Candler, Calvin, Johanna (my younger sister), and Rebecca (My youngest sister), against Josiah, Sierra, Lena and myself. We lost after we tied them up at game point. Final 16-14. Frisbee followed, and we kept the same teams. At the break, my team, or rather the team that I was on, was down, 4-3. But Lena found herself in the end zone three times in the second half holding the Frisbee. I through for three Touchdowns as well, while Josiah and Sierra both through and received Touchdowns respectively as we won 7-5. We finished up by playing Texas Tornado last night again...after several hours of X-box. Hehe...I think I have hooked the Candlers on it. The finals for Texas Tornado is as follows.
Rebecca 1.
Lena 3.
Josiah 5.
Sierra 9.
Calvin 11.
Johanna 16.
Robert L. 21.

Needless to say I am worn out...and beat.

End post.

Robert L.

Monday, December 22, 2008

I got your back!

Our pastor's son from G.A. came down this weekend to stay through the holiday. It is tradition that we play paintball every time he comes down and we did not break the streak. We brought in some new recruits as well. W.Daniels and K.Burk joined us. They are some of the newest members of our church. G.Rogers was also going to play for the first time but he had a job dropped on him for Saturday so he had to miss. But overall we had six players. K.Burk, W.Daniels, D.Otis, B.Otis, my brother and my self. We were going to play three on three, but when we got to our battlefield, we found it already in use. Eight other paintball players were just about to rape things up when we showed up. The "Battlefield" was and old abandon cotton gen. It is by far the coolest place I have ever played at. When we showed up however the players that had been playing before decided to stay if we wanted more players for our game. We were glad for the extra people, we knew that it would be rather lack luster with only three on three. We agreed and the teams were slit up.
We stuck together as the six of us went up against six of them. Sounds fair? Well they had been playing at this place every weekend for the past year or so. We were on their home turf. It was rough. The first game started and we all split our own ways. Two to the left, two down the middle, two to the right. I had played here before so I moved quickly up along a trench I knew of, staying under cover to the right side. At the end of the trench I got up and ran for the bunker. I got behind it without drawing fire. Moments later I felt a hand on my shoulder and W.Daniels said "I got your back." A three count later and I took off for the next bunker as W.Daniels put down covering fire. We had already spotted two foes and W.Daniels had one pined down. The other one was on the move by the time I had stopped. Three shots later from my M98 and we had a one to nothing lead as the target was hit. W.Daniels then asked for covering fire as he moved up. I did so and he made it safely. We spotted one more of the enemy moving far out to the right in tall grass. W.Daniels asked me to continue the covering fire and he moved up again. And then I blow it. The man in the tall grass could not get a shot at my teammate but the guy who had been pined down before could. He started fire at W.Daniels' feet that were out of cover. However that gave me a chance at the man's head that was fire at W.Daniels. I guest that it would take longer for our foe to hit my guy's feet, then it would take for me to hit my target's head. I was wrong. There was a bush that had small branches hanging over into my line of shot. My paintballs broke on them and never got close enough to make the other guy pull his head down. He hit my man in the foot, and he was out.
I had used my own man as bate so I could get a shot at a foe and I had failed. I could have shouted out a warning to my man, to pull his feet in but I did not. Now I had two foes to deal with. However that changed. I started taking fire from my left, where I thought my men were. I moved and the guy in the tall grass saw my. He started opening fire on me so that I could not raise my head to see where his two other teammates were moving to. But they did not have to move to get me. A shot from the other guy in the grass came through a crack in the bunker and hit my leg. Later I learned why I had been flanked when I got back to my base. Three others besides W.Daniels of my team had been taken out already. That left one other guy and he followed us soon after. In the end, we lost 6-1.
We avenged ourselves in the next game. I started by moving into the tall grass that my former foe had been in. I was some what separated from the rest of my men, with the closet being my fellow Ghost Squad member, my brother. It was not long before I had crawled on my stomach so that I had a good shot at my first target. My M98 did all the talking and she only needed two shots to conclude the conversation. However I was then in turn fired upon. The grass parted around my head as shots mist me, coming from a man that was taking cover behind a small bush. I crawled backwards as fast as I could. A shot glanced off my shoulder, but upon my inspection it had not burst, thus I was still alive. I roll behind a large bush, which turned the tables on the man that I was having a fire fight with. I found a nice hole to shoot from, so that my shots would not break on the branches. I put 10 shots into the other mans bush before he called out "hit".
By the time I fineshed working my way around to the main battlefield, my team had cleaned up on the rest of them. My old buddy W.Daniels and B.Otis, (our two military guys) were still standing. We won 6-3.
I sat out the next round so B.Otis could use my gun, as his had stopped working. I finished by playing the final round as we were out numbered five to four. We lost that one, 4-1. I got the only kill, and added a death to my total, to end the day with, 4 kills and 2 deaths. I was proud of that, as I was playing at the other teams home filed. Overall we did okay.

Later we played basketball that evening, and that was not so pretty. I was fifth string in those games. And it showed. I made one shot in three games, and only tried three times. But I did have the most steals, I just never had the ball past my way so I could take more shots. But then the other players on my team were better options, to get the ball to. The team I was on won all three games, but I had very little to do point wise with that. By the way, did I ever mention that I do not like basketball. :)

Robert L.

P.S. I know I promised another Christmas post, but that will come later.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Lights. Lots of lights.

How many of y'all put up Christmas lights? I do not mean just on your tree, but on your house, or on the bushes out side. We do. Every year for as long as I can remember. We also reuse our lights every year. If you have every reused your lights before, you know what that means. Every year the lights need to be repaired, fix, but at almost any coast not replaced. This year we got a lucky break and bought some new lights, rather then fixing the same lights that we had patched up, rewired, rigged and beat into working condition for us the past ten years. For y'all that have never had the joys of fixing lights, I will give you a quick run down of what it is like.
1. You get down the lights from your attic or storage place. (Please note, if you are a A/C tech and work in attics a lot, you are now the favorite person to do this job.)
2. You unpack the lights and separate them from each other.
3. You pick up the first one and plug it in. It turns on.
4. You smile and say "So far so good." reach to unplug them and put it in the good pile, when you bump the lights and half of them blank out.
5. You find the lose bulb and wiggle, flick it, press it tilll it is in tight. The lights turn back on.
6. You plug in the next set. Only two out of three sections work. You sigh. But then you see the problem. A bulb is broken. This will be easy. You change the bulb, it works.
7. The next string of lights work. Good. You do not say anything like you did the first time, as you know the lights will hear you and stop working. You throw this set into the working pile before they have a chance to break.
8. The fourth string does not work. Only one section out of the three are working. No shaky bulbs that you can tell, nor are there any broken bulbs. Time to grind.
9. You pull out every non-working light from front to back, checking it to see if it is the bad link. It is a three hundred sting of light, with the sections divided up into three of one hundred each. You get lucky and find the bad bulb on the 11th light. One of the two small wires from the bulb is broken. You do not know how this happens every year, but it does. You replace it and the ten light behind you and the eighty nine lights in front turn on. Not to bad...Yet.
10. Two of the three sections of the lights are now on. But if you remember from #8 there is still one more that is out. You go to one end of the dead lights, and start pulling them out again. The lights are tight in there and you pinch your fingers often. By the 15th light your fingers are throbbing. By the 25th you have small blisters on your finger tips. By the 50th light the blister have fallen off and the is tinder skin exposed to these harsh conditions. By the 75th light you find the problem, at last! Another wire brake. You replace it. And stare in disbelief. There more then on problem. You try sucking on your fingers as you glare and the dumb lights.
11. You move on to 85th, and are still mad. 95th, and you cannot fill your fingers anymore so you do not care. 100th! And there is nothing wrong with it. You do not know what to think or say. You sit for fifteen minutes and say nothing. You do nothing. You just stare.
12. Then you start back at the beginning trying to find one you may have missed. You get to light number 33, and as you pull it out, a small wire falls out of the socket. You realized that you had broken it as you put it back in the first time when you checked it. You replace it. It works, the last one hundred lights turn on. You are done. Time to put the lights up on the house. You sigh. and suck you fingers.

To be continued in "The Twelve Things that Goes Wrong While Putting up the Lights."

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sports clip

Here is a video clip that is pretty cool. Click here.