Not Much in the Way of News

I have been reading other people's blogs, the few that I read regularly, and following the stories, and enjoying them, but somehow have not had much to say myself. The summer has been speeding by--every weekend there has been some sort of event or out-of-town gathering, quite a bit of traveling for me on buses and trains, and then the five-hour drive each way to the conference I went to a couple of weeks ago. Still have not made it to the beach, but I have hopes.

Because I have been traveling so much, I have missed a few Sundays of playing volleyball with my friends in our local park. I did get to play last Sunday, though. Because it was so hot--over 90 and humid--and because a few people were away, we had a very low turnout, barely enough for three on three most of the afternoon. After the first game, we all staggered back to the blanket and collapsed in the shade. I basically felt like I was going to have a heart attack. I announced to the guys (it was just me and the guys at that point) that I felt like my body temperature was through the roof. NewAge Guy suggested helpfully that I pour some water over my head. I poured it not only over my head but my whole body. That helped a little.

Then my cellphone rang. It was one of the absentee friends, who had promised he'd show up later in the afternoon, but was feeling lazy. I tried to cajole him to come, saying we needed him because we were so short on players. I reported on who was there so far and how we had been playing three on three. I said, "We played one game and then we all felt like we were going to die."

Of course that couldn't go unchallenged by the male contingent. New Age Guy, lying prone in the shade with his eyes closed, woke up long enough to mutter, "Speak for yourself."

Absentee Friend never showed up, but a few other friends did, and we got some bystanders (or bysitters) to play, also, so we actually managed to get in a couple of games of four on four and, I think, one or two where we had five on five. But it was hard to play in the heat, and people started giving up and going home, and then we were back to three on three. So then we had to pack it in kind of early, take down the net and go home ourselves. At a certain point you just have to admit defeat.