Normally I wouldn't be too worried about it, but tomorrow is the Regional swim competition, and we really need some good weather in order for all the teams to get there. It's in Versailles, which is 100 miles away and--oddly enough--pronounced exactly as it's spelled.
So if it's not too much trouble, please send good weather to Kentucky tomorrow. If you will do that for me, I promise that when we are having some random nice day and it is raining on your parade wherever you may be, I will send the good weather to you.
The swim team is getting really excited about the upcoming regionals event on Friday (and hopefully Saturday). Some of the guys decided to go that extra mile by stripping off any fuzz that might hold them back, so they disappeared into the locker room after practice today with a 6-pack of disposable razors and a can of shaving gel. Mike just had time to do one of his legs, so this was his condition upon arriving home:
We are absolutely consumed by swimming these days. Two more weeks until Regionals!
Thursday night the kids had a meet here at Knox. Here is Annabelle's 50-yard freestyle:
and Mike's 100-yard breaststroke:
That kid to Mike's left (your right) is somewhat of a god in local swimming circles. At the beginning of the season, he and Mike didn't even swim in the same heats, let alone in side-by-side lanes. So it's really remarkable to see Mike giving him a run swim for his money!
Thursday night was Senior Night, where we honored our graduating swimmers. We had some flowers, and one of the moms made really nice shadow boxes for them:
I snapped a shot of Mike and Annabelle while they were hanging out waiting for their races:
I also got a picture of Annabelle with her friend Katie, who you might remember from the Case of Mistaken Identity:
Here's a picture I snagged from the breaststroke video:
Saturday we went up to Louisville for the Brown Bear Sprint at Shawnee High School. This was a fun, relaxed meet. Mike swam the 100-yard IM for the first time in competition:
And Annabelle participated in a most unusual relay:
It's called the corkscrew, and personally I would like to see it added to the lineup for the summer Olympics!
I had another chance to practice with my new camera at today's swim meet. I took some video of Annabelle's 50-yard freestyle:
(Hey, speaking of Annabelle, guess who else is participating in Blog365? Go over there right now and show Annabelle the love!)
I didn't get another chance to take pictures of her, so I practiced on other people's kids instead. Nothing to write home about. Out of 63 photos, I got 2 that were semi-decent or at least interesting. Here is "semi-decent," a somewhat blurry shot of some kid from Trinity (click to see it bigger):
And here is "interesting," one of our guys (again, clicking makes the photo grow):
Damn, I really wish that one had been centered, thus elevating it to semi-decent status!
Of course, they both get even more interesting if I solarize them. Check it out!
Long after I stopped being a "young adult," I have continued to enjoy reading YA literature. Give me a good Lois Duncan or the latest volume of Princess Diaries, and I am quite happy.
One YA author whose work I have enjoyed over the years is Chris Crutcher. His books involve teenagers who are dealing with big problems, and there is usually a strong element of athletics interwoven in the plot.
Mike is currently working really hard on his 100-yard breaststroke and is hoping to take it to the state competition in February. He goes to practice with the team but also puts in a fair bit of his own time, whether by lifting weights in the basement or running with his dad. I'm really impressed at how dedicated he is, and I thought he might enjoy reading Crutcher's book STOTAN!, so I tucked a copy in his Christmas stocking.
Here's what Publisher's Weekly said about STOTAN!:
To be a Stotan (a cross between a Stoic and a Spartan) is to push one's physical and emotional capabilities beyond the limit, as four high school swimmers find out when they accept the challenge of a week-long endurance test devised by their coach. Though it is swim team captain Walker Dupree who narrates, this is every bit as much an ensemble novel as it is four individual stories. Each young man pursues a personal goal, but together the team pursues demons outside the group, ranging from an "anonymous" neo-Nazi association distributing offensive newspapers to the abusive father of one of the boys, who drives his son to suicide. But a demon bigger than any individual or group effort comes along when illness strikes one of these Stotan young men. Then the team finds out that you can't always make sense of everything, you can only go after it with your best shot. Crutcher has written an involving, realistic novel; though it deals with tough, unsolvable issues it is often leavened with humor.
Fast forward from Christmas to the swim meet last Thursday in Bowling Green . . .
I looked over and saw Mike, wet from his last event, listening to his tunes, and reading his book. I couldn't resist snapping a picture without him noticing:
I sent the picture to Chris Crutcher along with an email explaining how happy I was to be able to share my enjoyment of his writing with my son. I got back a nice note and a request for permission to post the picture on his website. I said sure, so now Mike is featured prominently at the top of the page. You should go over there now and check it out!
Did I mention that Fred gave me a new camera for Christmas? It's a beauty, the Panasonic DMC-TZ3. I took it to today's swim meet in Bowling Green and faced the learning curve. After being a Sony girl for over 3 years, it's going to take me a while to get used to some things, but I think in the long run, it's going to be perfect. Today though was not so perfect.
I started off by using the video feature to record Annabelle's 50-yard freestyle. Somehow though, as soon as I started recording I also pushed to stop recording. Therefore, at the end of the race when I pushed again, thinking I was stopping it, I was actually starting it, just in time to capture 12 breathtaking seconds of footage of ceiling, feet, and empty pool as I wandered back to the bleachers.
For her next race, a freestyle relay, I decided to experiment with the burst mode and shoot some stills. I took this picture, which I was quite please with (I'm not down-sizing any of the images in this post, so feel free to click and see the full-size version):
I admired it on my way back to the stands, where I found Fred cheering wildly for some girl in the pool. Who, I inquired, was that? Oh, just Annabelle. Yes, I had taken pictures of the WRONG KID! Everybody around Fred got a good laugh out of that.
Fortunately I also took this picture, thinking it was Annabelle gearing up for her dive, and you can see her cheering and waiting her turn:
I tried video again for Mike's 100-yard breaststroke, because he likes to be able to critique his form afterwards. First, I almost did a repeat of what I did when I tried to tape Annabelle, so I had to start the recording again shortly after his dive. I was a little disappointed in how jerky the quality was:
A practice clip that I shot in the heat before came out fine, so I think it was just a combination of shaky hands and being too close to his lane.
What was NOT disappointing was his performance in the race. He was seeded last in his heat, but he finished fourth. At 1 minute, 17 seconds, and change, he had managed to shave a couple seconds off his time and was ecstatic when he came out of the water:
I shot more stills in burst mode for the freestyle relay that followed immediately. I didn't get anything as good as I got of NOT Annabelle, but here's his dive, which I pulled out of this original photo:
It's nice but not as cool as the one I got of NOT Annabelle. Still, swim pictures are really hard, and these are better than any others I've ever taken before, so that is progress. It's a little demoralizing for me to have trouble with something I'm used to being pretty good at. I'll keep working with my new toy though (and maybe even read the instruction book), and I hope to have progressively better pictures to share here soon.
At 8:00 this morning, I dropped the kids off at the high school to catch the bus down to Elizabethtown for the '07 Fall Preview swim meeet. I drove down later, stopping by Barnes and Noble for hot chocolate along the way, and arriving in time for the 10:30 start time. I found a spot on the crowded bleachers and sat there until well into the afternoon.
This was a huge meet, with 15 schools participating. Each event was 50 yards, with the top 30 in each returning in the afternoon to compete in 100-yard heats. Mike participated in breaststroke and freestyle, and Annabelle did freestyle.
In her heat, Annabelle was a little motorboat and came in first! She beat out another seventh grader, 2 eighth graders, a ninth grader, and an eleventh grader, finishing in 38.82 seconds:
Mike's time in the breaststroke (34 seconds) put him in eighteenth place and qualified him to swim in the 100 this afternoon. He was the only boy on our team to qualify for the 100's! He hung with the pack through most of the heat but just wasn't able to pull it out in the end. At 1:21.74, he finished last, but he's even more determined to work hard to improve his time through the rest of the season. You can see that he's got a nice, strong stroke:
Here's Mike at the end of the meet:
You wouldn't believe how exhausting watching swimming can be. I'm beat!
Hard to believe it's been a week already since I was blogging during class, but here I am again. I worked on my indexing project all morning, but then I had a school board meeting at 2:30, and I haven't slowed down since.
Mike had a rehearsal this afternoon for a talent show he's participating in tomorrow night at the Leaders Club. I let Fred take him to that since Fred will be out of town for the actual show. Apparently Mike did really well and impressed the warrant officer for the 113th US Army Band. He gave Mike his card and said he wants to talk to him about jamming with the band at their spring concert!
Tonight the kids had their second swim meet. I volunteered as a timer, so I had one of the best seats in the house but was too busy to really watch much of the meet. I totally missed Annabelle's 50-yard freestyle, because she was out of the water before I knew she had even been in. She did great though--shaved 3 seconds off her time! Mike also had a really good night. He came in second (by a whisker) in his 100-yard breastroke. The other kid's mom was my co-timer in lane 2, and we had a good time cheering for our boys.
Now I'm in my Intro to Legal Resources class (because FSU wouldn't give me credit for my ADVANCED Legal Research class from law school--duh) and just marking time until I can crawl into bed and catch up on "Grey's Anatomy." Tomorrow I'm helping out with band uniforms after school, picking up Mike from swim practice, taking Annabelle to a meeting at her old school, and going to Mike's show. Saturday is an ALL DAY swim meet in Elizabethtown. And Sunday I have a welcome reception to attend. The fun just never stops!
Swim season started tonight, with a scrimmage against Meade County. Mike swam last season, but this was Annabelle's first meet. Both kids were really happy with how everything went. Turns out Annabelle is a little motorboat in the water, and I think she'll be able to make some great progress this season. Mike's happy because his times tonight beat his best times from last season. He's hoping to take his 100-yard breaststroke to state.
The best part of the evening for me was watching the kids support each other. After one of Mike's events, I saw them high-fiving down at the other end of the pool. Mike came up to our side of the pool when Annabelle was swimming her 50-yard freestyle and jumped up and down and hollered for her. I got kind of choked up between feeling so proud of her out there swimming her guts out and so touched to see her big brother cheering her on.
It's gonna be a great season!
Editing to add: Here is some video of Mike's 100-yard breaststroke. He's in lane 4 and the second guy out of the pool:
