Football, Football, Football

Man, my mind has mostly been on Football the past week or so (and my family too of course).

I love coaching. However, the toughest part has to be splitting into two teams (one more experienced/talented team and one less experienced/talented team) and getting the players that have never played before, on a familiar basis with football. Kids that have never played before are generally WAY behind the others. They don't understand the object of "always staying low" while hitting, the language (being in a practice and the general-speak is like another language and they look so lost when you talk to them).

We have two kids that joined us yesterday. One is a younger kid from the 7th grade team who wasn't getting many reps with his team as a lineman, but he can play RB/LB for us. He's WAY behind though, however he has some good genes in him as his uncle is the starting LB for the 49ers. The other kid came down from the 9th grade team and has never played. He's literally about 4'10" or shorter and about 100 lbs.

These two kids I really want to reach out to and let them know I care about them. I'm worried about the coach they will be with (they are on the less talented team) as I don't know if he is patient enough to give them time to learn. I'll keep my eye on them.

Other than that, we have such a good group of kids. A few of them goof off now and then, but they all seem to get along very well. It's been a blast.

I can't seem to sleep right now. I fell asleep tonight earlier than I ever have in a long time (about 10pm or so) and I woke up at 4:30 naturally and couldn't sleep. I think since I'm used to sleeping about 6 1/2 hrs a day, that it's my body just responding to that. It's nice to be up though. It's pouring rain out and it's the middle of august. We got rained on like crazy at practice yesterday.

I can't wait for camping this coming weekend. I've gone camping more this year than I have since I lived here. I love it and thanks to Alene loving it, I get out to do it more.

I've been bummed the past week because I've been w/o my ipod. The battery failed (yes, you anti-mac people out there...go ahead and give me hell, however....) but the apple support has been very good. I sent it in, they replaced it with a new one (still w/in the one year warranty....barely) and I'll have my new one w/in a week. Not too shabby, however it comes at a time when I subscribed to a couple of daily podcasts and I have to sit at my computer to listen to them.

I ordered a paintball gun on ebay. I hope I get it before I go camping so I can test it out in the great wide-open :).

With that, I leave you with a picture from the ending bar scene of "The adventures of Hick Johnson, Space Cowboy".