Weekend from H!@#$ll

Hey all,

I haven't talked about movies in a long time, so hear goes....
The Losers....very good.
Robin Hood....very good.
From Paris with Love....good.
I took the kids to the $1 theater to see Despicable Me and planned to sleep through the whole thing. I have to tell you that this movie was very good. I laughed like crazy and at the end I was crying (literally). This is the animated movie with the very scary looking villain and cute little minions.

I have to tell you about this weekend.
It is not anything dental but I think it will be a good read.
Friday night....6 and under soccer game. Noah scored 3-4 goals. There is a bit of a nip in the air here in Florida. I was wearing my brand new Chicago Marathon fleece (I wasn't cold, but I wanted everyone to see my new fleece). And all the parents are sitting next to each other cheering on their kids. One of the mothers (my mom would call this woman "heavy set") said she was cold. I said, "Do you want to use my fleece, I am not even cold (and this is where I think I went wrong) and this fleece is an extra large."
Now, I don't know why I said that. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I had good intentions, I think I was trying to let her know that it would fit her.
But I have to tell you that I felt so bad. All weekend and even now I feel bad.
If it was dude I wouldn't have thought twice about saying this. But as much as I was trying to be nice I think I might have hurt her feelings.
Now the question is do I say something to her the next time I see her. I think I am going to let this one die.
And my weekend only got better.

Saturday morning I ran (8 miles and feeling great).
Then it was breakfast and then go cross town to my daughters swim meet.
Now, I don't know if you have ever swam in a meet or anything so I will try to explain it to you. Back in the day when I was doing this, a swim meet took a whole weekend.
Now they have express meets. That is, when an event is going on the next swimmers are ready to go. So much so that when the previous event finishes the kids stay in the water and the next swimmer starts by jumping over the previous swimmer. Then when the next event starts the previous swimmers exit the pool.
Now a whole meet will take about 3 and a half hours.
My daughter was in 6 events.
The pool was organized chaos. There were people everywhere and getting from one side of the pool to the other was an adventure.
So Madison was in the very first event, so we sung the Star Spangled Banner and Madison was already at her spot.
Now after her first event (which was event #30) is when the meet started to really get going.
She came back from her event and sat at our seats. She said she was going to go see a friend. I said no problem (her second event was like #37). Then David, the baby, needed to be changed so Hilda went inside to deal with David.
Now there is a PA system at the pool and they are announcing what event # is going on and who is in the pool. They announced that this was event #36.
WHAT???!!! Already, damn that was like 12 minutes.
I jumped up and started to look for Madison and like I said before the place was a zoo.
I realized there is no way I am going to find her in this mess.
Then the starting gun goes off and event #37 is starting and they are announcing who is swimming in each lane and Madison is not in her lane swimming.
Then half way through the event I see her at the starting block. She had missed her event.
Hilda comes out of the building with David and I tell her that Madison had missed her event.
Now we are both church going Christian people but between the two of we dropped about 14 F-bombs in about a five minute yelling session.
It was hot, we were out of our element, we felt helpless (because the coaches weren't much help either), it was chaos and now Madison had to pay for our disorganization.
All you can do is drop the F-bomb and you couldn't even yell it because there are so many people there. You had to say it between your teeth.
So Madison is hysterical and both her parents are pissed as s!@#$%t.
But we sat her down and told her she has to let it go (I mean she still had 4 events left).
I told her it was my fault because this was all so new to me. I told her I was sorry and it wouldn't happen again.
It took a couple of minutes but we all got over it.
Once she swam again the event she missed was forgotten about.
So all this before 1pm on Saturday. Still got lots of stories to tell.
Before I tell the next story I have to preface it.
Our church had 5 interns that worked at our church for the summer.
My family really took to them. We had them over for dinner. We had them over for World Cup games. So when they went back to college I told one of them the next time he is back in town I would try to get him up to a Gator Game.
Well, last week he called and told me he was going to be in town. I asked my wife it would be okay if I took Luke (my 11 year old son) and Joe (college guy) to this weeks Gator Game.
We got the green light.
It was a 7pm game. Great, I could go to Madison's swim meet come home at noon (we originally had the times wrong) and get picked up to go at 3pm (see I usually go with another friend and he graciously volunteered to drive).
Well, I purchased the tickets and had them at home.

We are at the meet and realizing there is no way we are getting out of here by 12:30.
So I started thinking of plan B. See we are about 35 minutes from home but directly on the way to Gainesville.
Now it is 1pm and I am starting to panic. I still have to go home and get dressed and get the tickets and get Joe and leave by 3pm.
Well that ain't happening. So I came up with this elaborate scheme. I would go home get everything I need. I would change, get drinks and snacks, get the tickets and meet my friend at my house and we would leave together.
We would go by the pool, drop off the van for Hilda and jump in my friends car.
Well, what do you know everything worked.
The last event was just finishing when I pulled up the pool. I put everything in the van and met my friend at the gas station.
I kissed everyone goodbye and we went to the game.
We got there in just enough time to sit and have a beer and a cigar while the kids threw the football. It was great.
We left the car about 50 minutes before the game so we could show Joe the campus.
See Joe goes to a college with about 3000 students max. See the University of Florida has about 58,000 students. The campus is HUGE and there is a lot to see.
We went around to the main drinking strip and saw all the crazies. I showed him a bunch of dorms and educational buildings.
Okay lets start making our way to the stadium. We got close to the stadium and we split up from our friends and agreed to meet back at the car after the game.
We were very close to the gate and I realized I forgot the tickets in the car.
Now this isn't like grocery store where you just turn around and go back out to the parking lot and get to your car.
No, the car is very very far away. So I called Rich, my friend with the car and he didn't answer his phone. Cell phone coverage is very spotty there because so many people are on the phone at once and it is so loud a lot of the time you just don't hear it.
Calm down, John.
So I see a guy holding one ticket in the air (the universal sign for I am trying to sell this puppy). I run up to him knowing it is 10 minutes before the game and he has long passed the area where people are buying tickets. I went up to him and gave him my story and said, "and yes this is my 11 year old son that you would be helping out." He gave me the ticket.
Okay, stay calm you are 33% there.
10 seconds later another guy has 2 tickets in the air. I went up to him. I gave him my story and he said, "how much will you give me for them?" I really didn't want to give him anything but I realized he paid $90 for them. I said, "how about $20?" He was thrilled.
He probably would have given them to me but what the heck.
So I paid $110 for 6 tickets. Three I would never use.
We went to the game and had a blast. I don't want to talk about the outcome but we had a great time.
And got home at 1:15am.
Up for church bright and early the next morning.

WOW!!! That was about 30 hours of my life. Crazy.
I thought it would be fun to talk easy stuff today after Friday's blog.
The crazy life of John Gammichia. Stick around, there will be more.
Hope you are having a great week,
I will talk to you on Friday,
john