September 3, 2009 1:25 p.m.
I want to apologize to all the faithful readers of the preseason blogs for not finishing off the final days before the start of the season. Hopefully after you get done reading this post you will say to yourself, “my week is a lot better than that, I’m glad I don’t have it that bad in my life.” And then after that you’ll agree that maybe there was a good reason why there were no posts for this week.
It all started on Monday morning. I was excited for the new week and the start of the season for all the fall sports teams. As much work it is to keep up with all eight fall teams at Concordia, nothing beats game day around the campus when everyone is excited and you never know what is going to happen.
As I was fixing my breakfast I heard my wife from the basement yell, “YOU NEED TO GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!” Now, if there is one thing I have learned in my life is that if someone asks you to smell something, taste something or if your spouse tells you to get down here right now – then the next thing you smell, taste and see is not going to be very pleasant. Sure enough, I ran to the stairs, climbed down the steps and took two steps past the entry way and felt my stocking feet start to squish into the carpet and take on water. I proceeded to the laundry room and I saw water spurting out of a pipe we had fixed last week. Apparently sometime during the weekend the joint that was fixed sprung a leak and started to fill our basement. We didn’t catch it until Monday morning and by that time we were experiencing the spring flood all over.
After the initial panic, shock we started to haul everything out of the basement and onto the driveway and into the garage. This took all of my time on Monday when I should have been interviewing new student workers for the fall, entering rosters into the NCAA system and all the little jobs that are needed to start a sports season. I ended up going into work after the kids were in bed around 10 p.m. I then tried to play catch up until leaving at 2:30 a.m.
That routine continued through Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday we singlehandedly kept the Moorhead Laundromat in business for the month of September with all the loads we washed and dried. And then back to the office for a late night of catch up on Tuesday. On Wednesday we tore up all the carpet and padding and dried and cleaned the floors. Then it was back to the office for the midnight shift.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Thursday morning brought the most bizarre scene I have witnessed since my days of bouncing at a “dive bar” in St. Cloud after college. It started with the insurance adjuster coming over to survey the damage and ended with me having to step in between the adjustor and the plumber so it wouldn’t come to a fight. The adjustor finished with all the preliminaries and was going to make his assessment and call the plumber to get his take and then write the final statement. He then knocked on my door and said the plumber was on his way over and that we could talk it over with him (I knew this was going to be bad). To make a long story a little shorter, we were looking over the damage and the two were going back-and-forth and all of a sudden they started getting more forceful. Pretty soon they started to walk toward each other so I stepped in between and had to settle everyone down before I witnessed a UFC match in my carpet-less basement.
The only thing I could think of during the whole scene was how ridiculous the whole week had become, ending with me in the middle of a disaster area in between two people arguing over details and in ten minutes they would be back to in their nice comfortable spaces and I would still be stuck with a gutted basement – ain’t life grand!
I then went to the office and tried to get some work done but just sat at my desk and laughed. I went home to spend some time with my kids on the final weekend before school starts on Tuesday. And then to put a nice little cherry on top of the “great week” sundae, my wife’s cell phone quit working. I went to the store and was told that she wasn’t due for an upgrade until next May. So in order to get my wife a phone before she left for St. Louis for the weekend I had to use up the upgrade for my phone. So at least my wife is happy with her new purple cell phone and I will be using my phone for the next 20 months or until it stops working on Saturday just before kickoff of the football game because after all, this is the worst darn week of my life!!!
So there you have it, a little story to read and be thankful that you weren’t someone else for a few days. It is now 1:25 a.m. on Friday morning and I will be taking my wife and daughter to the airport at 5 a.m. So if you see me running around Concordia this weekend looking a little frazzled you’ll know my head is still above water and I haven’t thrown in the towel – and come Saturday night after the final recap has been posted I might have to celebrate just a little!
After this weekend I plan to continue to write on the blogs and post videos and audio interviews. The feedback has been incredibly positive and I might have just stumbled upon the sports information wave of the future.
Good luck to the all the Cobber teams this weekend!
I’ll leave you with the mantra that has been used at our house this week (taken from the fish Dory – which also happens to be the name of our dog – in “Finding Nemo”) – “Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming.”