Sunday, July 22, 2007

First Paintball Experience...

So yesterday was the Fifth Annual Fish Paintball Battle, and I was basically forced to participate because, well, I helped plan it. This was my first paintball experience, and is likely to be my last. I've already promised that I will find something to conflict with next year's event. It's not that it was un-fun but it wasn't fun either... I actually found it kind of boring... and painful...

Call me a sissy if you must. (I think making multiple skydiving jumps disqualifies me for the title of "sissy," but whatever...) But my idea of fun is not crawling around in the middle of the woods, in the dirt, being eaten alive by mosquitos, pretending to care about disarming a make-believe nuclear weapon, while shooting and being shot at with marble size balls of sticky paint. Besides that, it seems so many of the players felt the need to aimlessly fire off multiple rounds of paintballs, hoping to hit something, instead of taking the time to actually aim. I didn't come close to using my initial 500 paintballs, yet "killed" 8 people.

While there were some good parts, like seeing some of my family that joined in, and getting to shoot my supervisor in the back, it doesn't make up for the dozens of bug bites I am left to scratch, and the several painful bruises covering my body... It was one of those things you feel the need to try once, just to say you've done it, and then it is out of your system...

On a side note, I will be leaving for a much needed vacation with my family tomorrow. We will be visiting with more family in Grand Rapids, MI... I am looking so forward to forgetting about work for a week and relaxing... I'm not looking as forward to going to the beach with several bruises to accessorize my swimming attire...

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I think my dad is going to die...

My younger sister, Kara, recently had her yearly check-up, and the doctor told her she should have her cholesterol checked, now that she is 20. Kara is a super-trim, dancer, runner, toothpick, so we were all shocked to find out that the results showed her cholesterol at 262! That's higher than my step-dad's was before he started on Lipitor! When I had my cholesterol checked, it was 154, and Kara eats much healthier than I do... which means it has to be heredity...

While my maternal grandfather does have high cholesterol, I would peg my dad's side as being the more likely line of transport, seeing as all of my paternal grandfather's brothers died of first-time, massive heart attacks in their late forties! My grandfather lived to be in his late seventies, before passing away due to complications from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, but he did have angioplasty...

So, considering my dad's unhealthy lifestyle, I approached the subject of cholesterol when he called this past Sunday. I asked him when he last had his cholesterol checked and he laughed that he didn't know because that would require going to a doctor. (He laughed because he is a surgical nurse who works with doctors every day and is even planning a mission trip to Kosovo with several of them at the end of the month.)

Then I told him to be serious because heart disease runs in his family, he doesn't eat regular meals, the meals he does eat are not healthy ones, he doesn't have a regular sleep schedule, works extremely long hours at a stressful job, doesn't floss regularly, and carries all his extra weight in his gut... all things that have been correlated with fatal heart complications... "You're asking for a heart attack!" I told him. "Well, you have to go some how!" he laughed... I told him, "Later is better than sooner..."

I'm not sure if he got the message, and I doubt he will make any lifestyle changes, which I find very disenheartening because there was a long time when I probably wouldn't have been overly upset to lose him because I was so angry with him for destroying our family... Now that we have actually been working on reconciling our relationship, and I am to the point where I actually like him (I've always loved him... liking was a bit more difficult...) I have concerns about him not being around... All this stress is going to give me a heart attack!...