Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
Today is the last true day of vacation. The wife and I are heading back to Texas early tomorrow morning and that will eat up our whole Saturday. Sunday I am sure will be church and unpacking and getting the apartment back in order. So that leaves today. We are meeting with friends tonight and this afternoon we are visiting my grandma as the assisted living center she lives in is having an ice cream social.
The kids were still with their grandma so the wife and I had the morning to ourselves. We met my mom and her boyfriend for breakfast and then headed to the Indiana Department of Revenue to try to clear up my state tax mystery. The State of Indiana sent us a refund check equal to about twice what we paid for the entire year in taxes. I noticed their error immediately and probably could have called them but I thought it would be easier to explain it in person so we headed to the local office here in town. It only took 3 minutes and the ladies there could not have been nicer. They thanked me for my honesty but promptly took the nice big check from me without offering a reward.
As I mentioned in my last blog, the wife and I went golfing on Wednesday morning. We went to Rice's Golf Center which is a small par 3 course here in Kokomo. We went into the clubhouse and paid for 9 holes of golf and then bought 4 used golf balls (just in case we lost a few on the course) and borrowed some clubs (7 iron, 9 iron and putter for each of us). We opted to play the "short nine" which means we play the shortest nine holes on the course based on yardage. This means hole 1 and then holes 11 through 18. The longest hole is 100 yards and for the most part you could throw the ball to the green from the tee if you wanted to. This is my kind of golf and the perfect way to introduce the wife to the sport (though she has been to a few driving ranges in her life). Here are our scores...
Let me start off by saying that for this being the wife's first attempt at golf, she did great. Now for the rest of this paragraph I will poke fun at her. She asked me early in the week why we would go golfing. I simply replied that it would be something to blog about. So she knew going in that the entire outing would be documented with my commentary. After a few pointers from me (which I am sure did not help in the least bit) she managed to hit the ball on her second swing off the first tee. As she tapped in for what she thought was a four I had to inform her that her first swing (that missed everything) actually counted. She hesitantly penciled in a five and moved on. During the round I showed her various places where I or a playing partner had hit our tee shots. I do remember playing hole 13 once and a fellow golfer hit a tree real close to the tee and was actually behind the tee once the ball stopped rolling. This caused him to have to hit again before we teed off since technically he was "away". Good times! I finally hit a good tee shot on 14 and sank an 8 footer for my lone birdie of the day. You would think this would have made me feel good but since I did not have any more good tee shots on the balance of the holes, it only served to remind me how inconsistent I am. The wife hit a ball into a fence line on hole 15 and I dug the pretty orange ball that she was playing with out of some thorn bushes. It was not until I got to the green that I notice that I had a lot of blood on the back of my hand from retrieving the ball. I made a point of showing the wife how much I would go through for her (even though I did not feel any pain and it took me 5 minutes even to realize that I was bleeding). When we arrived at hole 18, I pointed to some mowing equipment to the (way) right of the fairway and noted I had been there several times. She promptly deposited the ball underneath said equipment. It was behind a shed of sorts and since we were on the last hole anyway we basically threw the ball back into the fairway (hence the * by my wife's score on the last hole). If not for a 3 putt on 15, I would have been satisfied with my round. Since I have not played in about 10 years I don't think I did that bad. I did, however, learn a few new golfing rules. Be sure to note these for your next outing...
Section 3 Paragraph 2b: If said player is teeing off of the first hole and if it is their first time playing the sport of golf, any swings that do not result in the ball actually moving do NOT count in the stroke count.
Section 13 Paragraph 6c: If a player hits the ball slightly with the club so that the ball falls off the tee, the player can use the one time per round qualifier, "That does not count, there was a bee on me" rule. The player will not be penalized the stroke. This will also qualify for any winged creature that may or may not have a stinging apparatus. The winged creature must be witnessed by at least one more player in order to qualify.
When we got back to the house the kids were back home and the daughter was sick to her stomach. She has eaten rather poorly (nutrition-wise) while on vacation (as have we all) but it particularly effected her. We hung around the house the rest of the day.
Yesterday I went into a local business where I used to do a lot of computer work. They had a to do list for me and then I hitched a ride to the local building for the place where I work and went to lunch with some co-workers. The restaurant we wanted to go to actually had a small sign on the door that said, "Closed until Aug. 23rd" so we opted for plan B. The food was OK but we had a good time catching up. We went to dinner with friends last night out to the city of Greentown. Greentown has exactly one stop light. I used to live there ages ago and my brother used to own a restaurant in the same building as the one we ate at. We know the wife of the family that runs the business and her husband is from Italy so the Italian food was great. I had the Gnocchi Amanda (named after the wife). It was gnocchi with a red bell pepper sauce (ah, to die for). Again, we had a great time catching up and just being on vacation.
I have surprised myself this week in my ability to avoid working much at all and enjoying myself. Of course now that will make going back to work on Monday that much worse but oh well. We have a few things planned for today so I will have to let you know how that goes. Until then...
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
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