A little fire

After some consideration about the pain in my shoulder (related pain from my herniated disc), I've come to the conclusion that I need to go back to the gym after missing two weeks. One of the exercises I perform at the gym is to stretch on a roll. Prior to going to court with Ricardo every day last week, I was going to the gym a few days a week, doing the stretch and doing exercises from physical therapy as well. This week I've been catching up and had lots of work to do, so today I'm going to hit the gym for sure and follow that up with two trips next week at least. If, at the end of next week, I'm still in so much pain, I'll call the doctor and set up an appointment with surgery in mind. We'll see how it goes.

Last weekend was fun, but cold. Driving out to softball Saturday morning, it was 37 degrees. Brrrrr. We played four games with basically an hour off between every game and I was gone from 6:30 til 6:30.  Yes, it was a long day. LL had two of her friends in town from Ann Arbor (they came to the wedding as well) so she was not without things to do. Then on Sunday I had golf scheduled for 10:00 with Ricardo, Markakis, Smitty and Bill the Bear. Unfortunately the course was over an hour away and once again it was about 40 degrees in the morning. Ugh. After golf, we hung out in the course bar and watched the Bears game. Good fun!

On Saturday I brought Mr. Heater out with me to the fields to provide a little warming spot for players and to help the guys on the bench stay warm.  At one point I was fiddling with the propane/air mixture and heard from behind me, "Joe, you're on fire!" Which I thought was either a joke or they were commenting on how I was hitting (2-3 with 3 2-out RBI in the first game). Neither was true. I was actually on fire! The sleeve of my turtleneck had touched the heating element of Mr. Heater and lit up! I had a long sleeve underwear shirt on underneath though, so I didn't even notice that I was on fire. It was quickly doused however and all was good. I was not the last person to get lit up though as Blind Mender wandered into it and burned his pants as well as someone else. Too funny.

We went 2-2 and lost the last game to a team that was supposedly a level below us so we had to give them 2 runs. We lost to them 13-11. That team however was made up mostly of players from two teams AT our level, so we shouldn't have had to give them any runs. Their center fielder was the best player on either team, but the tournament director did no research and just accepted their statement that they were a level below us. Crap.