Go ahead and guess who was at Marzoni's (apparently known as Marz to the locals???) in Duncansville last night. You know what, just stop guessing because you'll never get it right. The USC Men's Volleyball Team! That's right, I'm talking about the University of Southern California's NCAA men's volleyball team right here in central Pennsylvania. At first when the host at Marzoni's said that the USC volleyball team was going to be there I thought he said USAV because honestly, why would USC come to Altoona, PA? I was obviously proven to be mistaken though when The Trojans walked thru the restaurant doors and sat down at their reserved tables. So of course since we were within touching distance of the team we decided to listen in on some of their conversations. Not surprisingly they were not impressed with the Altoona area or Harrisburg International Airport, the airport they flew into. Seriously though, what are the odds? Oh and their reason form meandering The Railroad City? A pre-season game with PSU. How nice must it be to fly cross-country, skip a day and a half of classes and play volleyball for a day? If I would have had a camera with me, I would have taken a picture. Of course I would have been in it, wearing a Trojan's sweatshirt and hoisted above the other players like a set of dumbbells!

I typically don't write about specific other people (in general) however I'm willing to make an exception in this case. I'll change the names here to protect the innocent though (although if you'd consider any of the people mentioned in this post innocent you must be on drugs or something). So this past weekend there was the annual First Rites beach volleyball tournament in Rehoboth Beach, DE. I came out with a nice 3rd place victory on Saturday and a 1st place win on Sunday. But I'm not really here to talk about that. If you aren't familiar with Rehoboth Beach, well then either you haven't been reading this blog for more than a couple months, or you're not up on your current Delaware beach geography. It's funny. I'll tell someone that I'm going to Rehoboth Beach for the weekend and they usually respond with, "Oh the gay beach?" "Yup that's the one."

Rehoboth Beach is known mostly for its, well its homosexual atmosphere. If you're not into playing for my team, and you're looking for a good time at the beach, Rehoboth is the place to be. Just to make myself clear, I'm not homophobic, nor do I hate these individuals. Just because I don't share their same viewpoint on members of the same sex doesn't mean I don't like them or am afraid of them. So now that we have that cleared, let's move onto my story shall we.

Some friends and I were groovin' at the Frog Pond Saturday night. Now in case you haven't read my post on bars that are named after animals and colors, dated 05.20.2006, then you should check that out first before reading on. We go to the Frog Pond because there is a great band that plays there and the music is pretty much the best around. The fact that chicks are making out with each other all over the place really doesn't inspire me to be there (mostly because they aren't as hot as they should be). So like I was saying, some friends and I were out getting down with our bad selves on the dance floor when suddenly a stranger named Kathy approached my friend Darla. Kathy reached a hand out as if to introduce herself to Darla. For the first couple moments I thought perhaps that these two dancing machines knew one another. Approximately 3.14 seconds after that thought, I realized what was actually going on there.

Now picture 5 friends dancing in a small circle having a good ol' time: loud music, drinks in hand, smiles all around, wild crowd surrounding them. Now picture only those 5 people stop dancing in an instant with super large eyes and mouths wide open while the rest of the club continues to jam. It was a scene right out of some horrible porno made in my buddy Tim's basement.

Finally Darla extended her hand which allowed Kathy to shake Darla's hand for what seemed like minutes on end. Kathy's mouth was going none stop while Darla just held her gaze with eyes the size of golf balls and a jaw dropped half way to the floor. Finally after what seemed like ten minutes (probably only really being less than one Earth minute, unfortunately the mind seemed to wonder while all this was going on mostly to the thought of, "Why is Darla not talking??") Kathy left. There Darla stood, unmoving, like a deer caught in the headlights of an encroaching sports car. Now I don't remember if it was one person or all of us at the same time but I know at least one person said, "Who the heck was that?!!" According to Darla, who may or may not have been actually experiencing some form of disrupted reality at that point in time, the conversation when like this:

Kathy: Hi, my name is Kathy.
Darla: (head slightly nodding) Uh huh . . .
Kathy: I was sitting over there at the bar and thought you looked pretty awesome and hot.
Darla: (head slightly nodding) Uh huh . . .
Kathy: So I just moved here not to long ago from [enter city of choice here] and just got out of a three year, long term relationship. My dad died not to long ago and since then I have been blah blah blah blah blah.
Darla: (head slightly nodding) Uh huh . . .

At that point Kathy finally walked away. Note how there was no introduction from Darla, nor was there an exchange of greetings or farewells. All Darla could muster up was the phrase "Uh huh." I mean seriously here. How much nerve does it take to walk up to some stranger in a club, obviously dancing with a small group of friends, and tell them you think they're hot (and gay for that matter)? A heck of a lot more than I'll ever have. What makes this story even better is the person Darla was dancing next to during all this was her boyfriend. Who, by the way, was just as speechless as the rest of us and said absolutely nothing during the above conversation. Now Darla claims to have been giving him the I-need-help-now-idiot eyes, but I can assure you that wasn't the case. And frankly when you're witnessing a train wreck, there really isn't anything to say to anyone at that time.

But I think the best part of the night, may have been the car ride back to the house. During the walk to the car all we did was recap and laugh at the incident. Then, after about 2.72 minutes in the car Erin buzzingly blurted out, "I'm sort of jealous! Honestly why didn't some chick hit on me? What do I need to be wearing some kind of color or something?"

Can you say, "The Summit Wallyball Tournament Champions?" Okay so it was the B division (not quite A, but definitely not C), but I mean seriously do you see the size of that trophy?! The last trophy I won was back in little league baseball. It was the only other trophy I ever won and it was no bigger than a slice of pizza. Grant it we only got one big trophy for this win, so we decided we'd just take it on tour sort of like Lord Stanley's Cup.

On a different, yet slightly related note, I met the one and only Stan Sheetz last night at the wallyball after party. For those of you not from the great state of Central PA, he's the President (though not CEO) of Sheetz Inc., one of, if not the, greatest gas station/convenient store chain in the history of the world (thanks to the MTO). Yeah I shook his hand and asked him how he was doing. Some people dream of meeting famous people like Michael Jordan, or Will Smith, or even Gandhi, but not me. Oh no; I dream bigger! Sheetz baby!

Wow! I just found out that I am officially ranked in the nation in the GAV (Great American Volleyball). Check it out! It may not be much, but it is me!

Chalk up another stalker today. Only this one may require a restraining order. Something I haven't had to muster up with the other two quite yet. On a plus note, this one isn't married, but on a bad note, she may not be out of the third grade yet either.

Now that I have your attention, it's story time. So I started helping with this girl’s volleyball clinic every other Tuesday for 3rd to 6th graders. I figured it sounded like something to do, and I'm all for generating interest in volleyball. So two weeks ago we had probably close to 40 girls attend. This week it had dropped down to 30, but that's definitely okay, because if they don't want to be there, they shouldn't be there. I'm pretty sure I don't know any of their names, but they sure know mine (Coach James of course, or Dude as this other girl calls me), especially this one little ball of energy. No matter what the drill, she makes sure to follow me around to where I am coaching and "show off" or basically just draw attention to herself. This then escalates to her thinking she and I are in a personal dodge ball match, with her constantly winning. Serving time comes and the game becomes Lets Try to Hit Coach James with a Serve.

During hitting practice I sucked it up and told her that I had gotten a restraining order on her and she had to stay at least 10 feet away. I don't know why she didn't believe me. That was evident by her grabbing my arm at some point and dragging (and by dragging I don't mean literally because frankly if a 3rd grade girl could drag me across a gym floor I'd probably wet myself as she would have to be an actual real life ogre or something like that) me to the other side of the gym.

So in a few weeks I'm sure I'll see that little bundle of joy again as she has probably told her parents by this point that she wants to go to this clinic everyday, even though we don't offer it but once every couple of weeks!

What the heck is my deal? Am I really that unappealing to chicks my own age? Grant it I realize that obsessive video game playing isn't a huge chick magnet, but I'm willing to share. Or course I don't let anybody win. Not even my 6 year old cousin. And she really doesn't seem to like it when I throw my controller down to the floor then stand up with my arms thrusting to victory while shouting, "Oh yeah! I crushed you!!" Sometimes I throw in a little circular Stirring-The-Cauldron arm dance too.

It seems like I just left work Friday afternoon and then came in the next day (which turned out to be Monday) for the new week. As Randy from American Idol would say, “Aight, so check it out dawg.” Friday I got home from The Workplace and wound up going over to my friends place for dinner where he made some great deer steaks from the giant buck he murdered the previous weekend. After that and half a movie later I was headed back for home to grab some shuteye for the volleyball tournament on Saturday. I then woke up Saturday morning nice and early and headed on down to Bedford for the tourney. About 40 kills, 12 service aces, 1 painful facial from a D-I men’s volleyball player, and a 3rd place victory later I was in my car and headed for Messiah College and a Jars of Clay concert to meet up with The Neighbors and another good friend from college.

Now the concert I thought started at 7PM and I left Bedford around 5PM giving me just enough time to arrive at Messiah just before the start, with my disgustingly sweaty and smelly self intact, however, I found out just as I was leaving the tournament that the concert didn’t start until 8PM. So I took a little side trip and broke into my friend’s house to grab a quick shower on the way down there (don’t worry, she knew I was doing that [just incase you’re concerned about me taking showers in your house without you knowing, fear not as I do tend to let people know a couple hours ahead of time]). Around 730PM I grabbed what I thought was going to be a quick burger at Sheetz which turned out to be a massive waiting game where I wound up stuffing my face with burger during my 5 minute car ride from Sheetz to Messiah.

Finally I arrived just before the concert and got to semi-sing along with one of my favorite bands. I guess I should have kept up with their albums, as I didn’t know most of their songs since the last album I listened to of theirs is about 5 years old.

Hey guess what, it’s side story time. Now since this concert was at my Alma Mater the majority of the people at the concert were in fact current college students. No big surprise to me at all. What did surprise me was that while I sat in my nice familiar chapel seat, that I spent oh so many chapels sleeping thru with my “borrowed” Lottie Nelson Cafeteria coffee mug full of pipin’ hot chocolate in one hand and my head in the other, and looked around the gymnasium I noted the sheer amount of students with their cell phones open taking pictures, or texting or what-have-you. Now I didn’t get cell service in the gym and I use one of the biggest carriers in The States (or so they say) so I can’t imagine they were all making phone calls. Now taking pictures I can semi-understand even though pictures from cell phones stink and are crappie as all get-out (the majority of people in this world don’t really care about quality for some reason), but the people texting messages for half the concert just didn’t make any sense to me. Why even come when you can sit in your nice comfy dorm chair with your laptop and the band’s latest CD playing and IM your friends for free?! I just didn’t get it. But then again I have noticed that I’m not a college student anymore and usually I tend to find most people younger than I am (the majority of which are students, and note I said most, not all) idiotic and lemming-esk¹.

So back to my super-fast weekend. After the concert I grabbed a coffee at Sheetz with my friends and took off for home once again. One Breakfast Blend coffee and 34 songs on my iPod later I made it home and into bed around 2AM. Since God has a hilarious sense of humor far beyond that of my own I didn’t sleep at all that night thanks to my muscle aching body and thought-consuming mind. So at 8AM I pulled myself out of bed to get ready for the Stiller game! I met up with the other members of The Steelers Fans-tastic 4, which is now The Steelers Fans-tastic 4 Minus One Because She Moved to Alabama But That’s Okay Because We Picked Up a Great, Fun Replacement. So, yeah The Steelers Fans-tastic 4 . . . still. We made it to the game with our long underwear and heavy jackets in place under our heavy coats. Seven Kit Kats, 47 Swedish Fish, 3 giant chocolate thin mints, 2 beers and 1 Italian sandwich later we made it to our seats ready to cheer on the home team. We were a little cold during the first half, so we went inside to warm up during the third quarter. Come the top of the fourth I was ready to be back out there again to scream and shout, so we went back outside to watch the end of the game. From the beginning of the game, 213 rush yards by Fast Willie Parker, 5 Steelers touchdowns, 1 really bad Roughing The Passer call, and 31,416 verbal profanities later we were on our way back home from The Steel City. Another Italian sandwich, countless college/friend stories, 7 unfinished rounds of Deserted Island, and one Booze Bus story later, I had arrived home around 1030PM last night and stupidly decided to post my pictures from the Stillers game online (which can be found here, or on my Facebook account) which allowed me to be in bed by 1130PM.

Next thing I knew my alarm was going off and I had to be at work in less than an hour. WTF? Where did my weekend go?

¹Lemmings (as in the Lemmings video game series) are small, green-haired humanoid beings that mindlessly walk en masse into any danger in their path, following the popular myth that real lemmings behave in a similarly suicidal fashion (Wikipedia).