I wish I could define, All the thoughts that cross my mind They seem to big for me to choose, I don't know which ones to lose

Greetings. I am recovering not only from yesterday's Bastille Day, but also from the weekend visit by my mom and step-dad who breezed into town. (Ok, not so much from July 14, but more so because of the visit. That, and Heidi's birthday today.)

Not much happened Saturday of note, save a few noteworthy incidents during dinner (most of the day was just hanging out type of stuff). Where we were eating had the USA softball team playing Canada in a pre-Olympic tune-up on several of the multiple televisions scattered throughout the place (not all the tv's in the place but both sides of our table could see the game). What we ended up noticing and being perplexed by--given that the sound was not on for any of the t.v.s--was that the USA women had on pink, and not red, jerseys. We eventually discerned that the non-patriotic pink was purposely being worn not in some effort to feminize the players (which had my mom and I not particularly happy: they should have been in red, white and blue), but rather for breast cancer awareness. This made my mom and I feel somewhat better; however, not before my mom used the word "parlay" in a sentence and completely missed any reference to Captain Jack Sparrow. I did find it entertaining though (and there was a "Captain Jack's" dessert on the menu...).


Sunday was a bit more eventful, as we headed down to Dania Beach (just south of Fort Lauderdale) to watch some jai-alai at Dania Jai-Alai (pictured). My mom was the instigator for this trip: she had gone when she was young with her father and wanted to see how it was now. I was also interested in going, although did not know much about it: my prior exposure to the sport consisting basically of the shot of play included in the opening credits of Miami Vice when it was on t.v. (way back when). Well, that, and that the ball moves very fast and is very hard, and has killed some people (also way back when--they wear helmets now to help protect against this).

The whole trip was neat and interesting. The play/game itself was fascinating, if not a bit frustrating, particularly if you wanted a particular person to win (adding on the pressure of a bet just made this worse, by the way). In some respect, the play is similar to racquetball/handball in structure, with the addition of 8 people/teams playing in a round-robin type format, where the winner of a point stays on court to play the next up in the line (for those curious to know). Beyond the game, the atmosphere was also entrancing to me: the 10,000 seats filled with just over a 100 people. In some respects, you could see and feel how popular the game used to be, and the hope that it might once again. That the remain bulk of the fans seemed to have stayed with the game since its heyday (i.e. it was an older population), also added to the atmosphere.

We ended up staying through the first 9 games of Sunday's 14 game schedule, which covered about 3-4 hours. Then departed to catch some dinner. All-in-all a good time, and I now have begun a plot to drag get a group of friends down there for a "field trip" of sorts....

Help me, make the right decisions
Know which way to turn, lessons to learn
And just what my purpose is here