Summery Tales

Here I am for my er, quarterly update.

I'll try to attach some pictures of the highlights.

1) Triathlon training. This Saturday, I will participate in my first triathlon--ever. I am half scared out of my mind, and half excited. I swam the full distance for the swim portion for the first time yesterday, and did it again today. It's a sprint triathlon, so it's just a 1/2 mile swim, but there was a point (yesterday before I swam it, actually), when I thought that distance would kill me. But now that I've done it twice, I feel a lot better about Saturday. Tack on a 10 mile bike ride and a 5K run, and I'm there! Yeah! I feel so hard core.

2) The mental hospital. No, I was not instated. I started teaching piano lessons there for volunteer hours for a psychology class, but I have loved it so much that I've kept doing it. I have just one student, and he is great. Tonight I am going to a talent show he will be playing at. I am so proud! Funny story, though. So, the other week I asked him about a book he carries around sometimes called "The Art of Power." He informed me that it was a tai chi book, with instructions on how to do the different poses and things. I was intrigued, so I asked him some more questions, and then he said, "Do you want me to teach you?"

"Well," I thought, "why not?"

So, there I was, in what I thought to be a pretty private setting. In the group room in this particular wing of the state hospital, with my piano student, doing tai chi. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later I realized the possibility of having been observed. I came for a lesson, and the desk attendant wasn't sure where my student was. I said, "Maybe he's in the group room already, practicing."

"Nope," he said, "I can see the camera right here and he's not in there."

Doh! Oh well...I hope someone got a smile out of watching our piano lesson-turned-tai chi lesson that day. :)

3) Tennis Intramurals. I played in BYU's mixed doubles intramurals a few weeks ago with a good friend, Craig Estep. And we won! It was awesome. I was pretty surprised when they put us in the top division, and I figured we'd meet some pretty stiff competition. But, well...we didn't really. I mean, we only had to play 3 matches to win the championship, and two of those matches were against the same team. But anyway, that's not the point. It was great, and glorious, and I've got a shirt now. I guess there's nothing else holding me back from graduating, now.