The Surgery - Part 1 of 4 The Preparation

May 25th...5:00am. I roll out of bed for my final time with my spleen. I decide to have a shower but I don't know why since they are going to be covering my body with weird soaps and cutting holes into me right away. But I do anyway since I figure I'd hate for the surgeon to suddenly jerk the knife back when he suddenly gets a whiff of my un-showered self. I wander into the kitchen afterward and look around. I'm not allowed to eat OR DRINK anything until after my surgery so I resign myself to the fact that I'll have to starve. Luckily I had gorged myself on Vern's Pizza and Coke the night before after my soccer game so I really wasn't that hungry.

I had packed a whole whack load of stuff into my overnight bag...books, cd's, discman (yeah, I'm not cool enough to have an IPOD yet) shirts, pants, games, etc. You'd think I was going on a youth retreat or something! I was going on a retreat but the only thing retreating would be my spleen!

As we parked the car and walked towards the resort I felt a huge weight on my shoulders. So I took off my overnight bag and Shiela carried it for me. Whew, that was better! We zipped right through registration and before I knew it I was in a guest room. Ah...I was finally in my room at this resort called City Hospital. As I sat on the bed I suddenly heard a noise, looked up and saw one of the of the resort attendants come into my area. Then came an odd demand for a resort, "Ok Mr. Mathies, we're going to have to ask you to strip down and put on one of our lovely resort gowns. You can't stay here without a gown on." I thought it was a little odd to have to be naked under their resort gowns, but oh well, it was a free resort and if that was one of the rules I could live with that. That was until I put on the gown and realized that it was quite drafty in the back...not a lot of material there. I'd have to walk carefully I figured. Then came the time to put on the resort socks. Apparently not all guests had to put these on, but because I was named Sheldon Mathies and lived in Saskatoon I had to. Made no sense to me but oh well.

As the nurse helped me put on these oversized socks that went up all the way to my knees, I suddenly realized that the gown didn't have any legs to them. It was early in the morning and so my brain was functioning slowly but it went something like this. I'm naked under this gown, I'm sitting on the bed with my legs on the bed trying to put on oversized socks. This means my knees must bend so I can reach the end of my feet to put them on. Oh look, what a nice view out the window. The nurse is helping me put on my socks and she is at the end of the bed. I'm not married to the nurse. There are no legs to this gown. I'm naked underneath. So if she's at the end of the bed looking at me trying to help me put on my socks and my knees are bent then that means...BAM! I dropped my knees down the bed so they were flat. Sorry lady, nobody gets to view that except my wife. It was at this point I realized that certain things may be exposed during my time at this resort and there was very little I could do about it. After that I did my best to stay covered, but mistakes seemed to happen a lot at this resort.

The clock slowly ticked away and then suddenly I was allowed to leave my room. Maybe allowed isn't the right word. It was actually a forced parade. At this resort on our floor around 7:45am every morning they gather up all the guests and line them up in the hallway. And yes, I was one of them. The nice resort attendants were lining everyone up. There was the older guy in the wheelchair, a lady with a shaved head, an older lady with white hair, a younger man with the bad knee in the wheelchair, and a few others including me. I looked pretty normal. I was dressed like everyone else but all I had was an IV pole I carted down the hallway. It was a great parade and we were all allowed to bring along a guest to walk with us. I took Shiela.

Now originally I thought they were lining us all up in the hallway for a race. And since everyone had a guest with them I figured it must be a 3-legged race. So when the resort attendant said "Let's go" I grabbed my IV cord, wrapped it around Shiela's right foot and my left foot and off we went running. A quick "WHOA!!" and three or four resort attendants stopped us and informed us it was a parade, not a race. I was disappointed but I unwrapped the cord from our legs and fell back into line. Apparently those in wheelchairs got to be at the head of the parade.

As we walked down the hallway we went by a few resort attendant stations and it was great. I waved to everyone as we went by and wished that I had brought some candy to throw to them. It was great to hear them cheering for us as we marched down the hallway up to the great door. The great door that led into the holding corrals.

As we marched through the great door I saw many separate stalls. As they led me by my IV to my stall I felt more like a horse at an auction then at a resort. All the members of the parade and their guest were given a separate stall to sit in. We could still all see everyone as no one closed the curtains. It was at this point that the draft must have begun. They told us prior that we all had a certain surgeon and anesthesiologist assigned to us, but I'm not so sure. I think they could all see us in our stalls and they start drafting us based on who they want to take care of. Because as we sat there people would come in and out of the even greater door and they would look at each of us as they walked by and then leave again. I smiled big and tried to flex to show them how strong and healthy I was, but it was to no avail. One by one the anesthesiologist and surgeons would come out and go talk to certain people. First it was wheelchair man, then Hip man, then the shaved head lady. I obviously didn't go very high in the draft because I was the last one picked. Finally, they came out and talked to me and told me all the wonderful things that would happen to me in this special area of the resort. They said I'd have lots of guaranteed rest and I'd wake up a new man. Then they were gone. They had tried to make me feel like I was the #1 draft pick, but I knew better. Oh well, I still got a room in this special area and I was excited. "Guaranteed rest?" I thought, "What do they mean by that?"

I kissed and hugged my wife and then they led me away. I glanced back once to see Shiela smile at me and then the even greater doors magically opened. I stood and stared at this new area...this was going to be an adventure and I really hope I make it back. As I walked forward I glanced back at Shiela who gave me a small wave. Then the magic doors closed and Shiela and I were separated...I could only hope it wouldn't be for good.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 of 4 - The Special Room

I'm Spleenless and Loving It!

I'm back home now and decided I should put up a quick update on my surgery!

First of all, I didn't die during it (obviously). The surgery itself went well and my surgeon did a great job of sucking my spleen out of me. Thank you to everyone that visited me while in the hospital...that meant a lot to me and I'm sorry to anyone who had to watch me dry heave or throw up while you were there since my stomach was extremely nauseous and I couldn't even keep down water! I left the hospital on Friday morning and am still recovering at home. The small holes where they cut into me hurt a bit still especially when I turn over or bend over. I have a headache quite often which is annoying because I never get headaches, but I'm taking some strong drugs for that. I feel ok most of the time, but if I go out and about for more than an hour I feel pretty tired. It will be a long time until I play soccer again.

The one thing that didn't feel or look so right after the surgery was my eyes. If you have seen me lately you would think I was demon possessed as my eyes are puffy and VERY bloodshot. When I open my eyes up wide it looks pretty scary. Last night I looked in the mirror at them and saw that my eyes were turning a little yellowish in places along with the red. I immediately figured this was bruising and was a little worried...I don't mind bruising but I don't want to be messing around with my eyes.

So I told Shiela I wanted to go in to Emergency to get it checked out and speak to the Hemotologist on duty. So we headed on down there at 10:00pm. To make a long story short, the ER doctor said the bloodshot eyes and puffiness was just a result of the surgery. It could have been caused by the pressure that was put on my eyes during the surgery (they taped my eyes shut while I was unconscious) or any other type of pressure. He said the yellow in the eye was a good thing because it meant the eye was healing and the body was reabsorbing (or something like that) the blood back into the system. So all in all I was fine, but just to make sure they wanted to take my blood for a platelet count.

And this is where it gets good. My platelet count has been stable around 50,000 but that was on 15mg of Prednisone. Right after the surgery my platelet count went up to 88,000 which was a good sign. But last night, 3 days after my surgery, the doctor said my platelet count was up to 331,000! I can't remember it ever being that high, even after going to get IV gamma globulin done for three days.

So praise the Lord that it appears so far he has healed me through this surgery! I am still on some Prednisone but over the next few weeks I will be lowering the dose until I am off completely. Thank you to everyone for your prayers as God has definately answered them by healing me so far!

Last Post With a Spleen

Yep, this is it. My very last post while I still have a spleen. My spleen and I have had some really good times together...actually all of our times have been together. But tomorrow I venture out into the world on my own. Well, not really on my own. I still have my heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, gall bladder, and many other great organs. I don't plan on giving up doing things just because my spleen isn't here to do them with me. I still have to live life to the fullest! My spleen will understand. It will be watching me live my life from some medical landfill somewhere where all the used up spleens and other organs go. I'm sure it will want me to live a great life! And I plan to do just that!


Oh yeah, happy 100th post to me! I can't believe I've written that many things. For those of you waiting for the story of my BC trip and also the Fact or Fiction story called "The Mysteriously Silent Monkey" it will have to wait until after my surgery.

So, see you all on the flip side!

I'm Back!

This is just a quick note to let you know I'm back in town again from my trip to BC. I was joking with some people that I was on a "business trip" to BC, but in reality that is pretty much what it was. When you start to coach at the Provincial level you don't go to those tournaments to see the sites. You are there for one reason only...soccer. Of course we did manage to get out one night and see some things, but it was a busy and tiring trip.

That's all I'm going to blog about right now...a 19.5 hour bus ride home makes a guy a little tired so I'm going to go hit the sack. I plan on blogging about my trip in some shorter segments over the next few days. Work is going to be very busy over the next few days as I only have two days of work before I go in for my vacation at a local resort the locals call "City Hospital". Check back later on for more!

My Life Update

I'm going away to B.C. for a few days to the BC Tournament of Champions with the U13 boys Saskatchewan Provincial team. I leave early in the morning on Wed and won't be back until later on Monday. so here's a quick update on what's going on in my life:

1) I'm on TV again, but wasn't today. It will probably be tomorrow (Wednesday) on the news starting at 6:00pm. If it doesn't air on Wednesday then it will be Thursday. And that's on Shaw Cable Channel 10.
If anyone has cable (I don't) can you try and tape it for me? I'd like to see what I look like.

2) My surgery is still on for May 25th. Some of you may have heard that it was potentially going to be postponed. My platelet count has been fairly stable at around 50,000 for quite some time now so the Specialist thought we might want to wait. But we lowered my Prednisone dose from 15mg per day to 10 mg per day and after only 3 days of that my count dropped to 35,000. So the surgery is still on as the Specialist said (and I agree) that I shouldn't be on 15mg or even 10mg of Prednisone for a long period of time.

3) I want to write a whole post on this, but I just don't have time right now. (It's 1:11am and I leave for BC in 5 hours) On Sunday I went to see a presentation on Teen Challenge. For those who don't know it's a program that helps drug addicted men aged 18 and over to overcome their addiction. They have a documented 70% success rate compared to the 5% success rate of government programs. All because these men are introduced to Jesus and he is saving these men from their addiction. If anyone has the chance to go hear this men's choir, the presentation and testimonies of the men in the program you should definately go! I think they are coming to Moose Jaw and Swift Current yet so if you live around there I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

Ok, don't check back here for a while now because there won't be anything. But I'll have lots to post after my "business trip" to BC.

I'm on TV Again!

I just got off the phone with the Sports guy from Shaw TV which is cable Channel 10. Looks like I'm going to be on the news Tuesday evening. Tomorrow morning at 10:00am I am going to be doing my little segment with him at Diefenbaker Park where I will talk about the Hbc Run for Canada and how we are raising money for local Olympic athletes. I'm a little nervous already!

But wait! That's not all! I'm also booked in to be on the Sports on Shaw call in show on Thursday night at 7:00pm on June 1st! So be sure to tune in and watch it!

Volunteers Needed!

I was talking with the race director for the Saskatchewan Marathon and she told me that since they have changed the course this year they need a lot more volunteers. I told her I would try to help and recruit some.

This is where YOU come in. Here are the details:

When: May 28th (Sunday morning)
Time: Depends on your job (but in the morning)
What: They need people to stand on the course and tell people which way to go, people to hand out water at the water stations, etc.
Experience: None required!

What's in it for You:

• All volunteers will receive an event t-shirt
• All volunteers are entered to win prizes.
• All volunteers will be invited to their 2006 volunteer appreciation event 1 week following the marathon.

So if you are around on May 28th (and I know that all of you are!) then follow this link HERE and volunteer to help out. Just tell her that Sheldon from the Hbc Run for Canada recruited you (no, I'm not getting paid for recruiting or anything like that...I just want her to know that I was out trying to help her).

*Now this may seem hypocritical, but I'm not volunteering. However, I will excuse you too if you just had surgery 3 days before this event.

Dump and Chase? Where's the Skill!

Last night I watched most of the Edmonton Oilers game. I finally went to bed after the 2nd overtime because I was falling asleep on the couch anyways and I would have missed any goal that happened. Thankfully the Oilers put away the winner and won.

Now I don't want to get into a big fight over hockey teams, but while watching that game I couldn't help but think back to Game 7 in the Calgary series. Those Flames played terrible and they just didn't seem to want to win, or even play for that matter. The Oilers game last night was VERY different. Those Oilers came out flying! They were checking people hard into the boards all night and were skating hard and fast. It was awesome to see them work so hard.

But while watching the game I once again couldn't help but notice the teams using the old dump and chase routine. Now I'm not a hockey player so maybe I just don't understand, but it still makes no sense to me. When I play sports our teams usually like to have possession of the ball (I'm thinking soccer now). When we make an attack, we don't usually kick the ball up the field and hope that our players can run onto it first and win it back. Of course not, that's crazy! Instead, we pass the ball around until we can pass it to our forwards as they make a run past the defenders. But it's a PASS to them, not a long shot into the corner where it becoemes a 50/50 ball and we just hope we win it back.

I see that all the time in hockey. "Dump and chase. Oh, we lost it, better get back on defense. Ok, we're breaking in on the attack. Dump and chase. What! We didn't get the puck! Ok, back on defense." I mean really, keep possession of the puck. Skate it across the blue line or make a short pass to a teammate that is skating across the line. If I was a coach and we were playing defense, I would just tell one of my players to hang out near the red line by the net and wait for the other team to dump it in...then we will just skate it back out again. Simple!

In my opinion whoever came up with the "dump and chase" theory must have watched too much 6 year old's playing soccer where they just kick the ball as soon as they get it!

Am I off my rocker? Feel free to enlighten me in the comments section. I would love to hear what the hockey fans have to say.

Mission Impossible 3 Review

Last night my youth soccer game got cancelled due to the rain so Shiela and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to go see a movie. We once again went in for free as we still have a few "free movie" coupons we cut out of cereal boxes over the last few months. We were debating whether to see "Stick It", which is done by the creators of "Bring it On" which is a great movie, or else MI3. It really wasn't a long debate but trust me, we will be seeing "Stick It" eventually!

I wasn't sure what to expect from MI3, especially since I didn't really enjoy MI2 all that much. It has been a long time since I watched it, but all I remember is the opening scene of Tom Cruise hanging on a cliff (which was pretty cool) and the girl. Ohhhg...that girl! And that's not a nice "Ohhg". That's a "I can't stand her" Ohhhg. I just felt that the plot in the second one was terrible and that girl ruined the whole movie.

Anyways, back to MI3. Overall I loved the movie. There was lots of action, explosions, and cool scenes where they need to sneak inot places again. And there was no annoying girl. There's a girl of course, but she's not annoying in this one. I don't want to give anything away so I'll just leave it at that and say that MI3 is a great movie to go see if you want lots of action, cool gadgets being used and you don't want some lousy girl to get in the way and mess everything up! I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10!

Answer to Meeting an Olympian - Fact or Fiction

Most of you got this one right. The answer to this wonderful story is FALSE.

I wrote the story the way I had wanted it to turn out. In reality it went like this:

I left my house around 1:55pm and got to the Midtown Plaza around 2:10pm. I had all my brochures and posters in my bag and I sauntered into the mall like a man on a mission. After circling the mall because I didn't know where the HMV actually was, I finally found it. I went inside and looked around. Immediately I could see it...nothing. No lineups, no cameras, no reporters and worst of all no Jamie. I casually wandered around the store pretending to look at CD's so I didn't look like an idiot, all the while trying to see if she was somehow hiding in the store somewhere that I just didn't see. Of course I knew this was impossible since you can pretty much touch both sides of the store at the same time and it is a terrible room for hide and go seek.

I finally asked one of the workers if Jamie was going to come by and he said "Oh, she's already come and gone." Come and gone, I thought to myself. That has got to be the shortest autograph session I have ever heard of since it's only 2:15pm! "When was she here?" I asked him. "From 12:00 - 2:00pm," he answered back as he continued stacking CD's into the shelves. Hmmm....I must have read the paper wrong I thought as I pretended to look at CD's for a little bit longer so it didn't appear that I had purposefully come there to stalk Jamie. Then I slowly walked out as normal as possible, walked back to my car and drove off to the train bridge to watch pelicans for a few minutes before going home. Oh well, I missed my chance there but hopefully there will be more.

So that's the real story. Stay tuned for my next Fact or Fiction story..."The Mysteriously Silent Monkey"

So Much Effort - Such an Easy Solution

For the last few months I've been having trouble with our printer. It's a great printer and works well, but for some reason it just doesnt' want to print colour any more. I didn't really care for a long time because I didn't want to print colour anyway...it's way to expensive to replace those cartridges. However, I needed to print some things off for work and I needed the printer to start working.

So the hacking began. Now I know what you are all thinking, "You are out of ink!", but no, I wasn't. The ink cartridge gauge said I had 3/4 of a cartridge left. I probably uninstalled and installed my printer about 5 times trying to get it to work. I would take out the cartridges and put them back in. I printed out test page after test page to no avail. I searched for what seemed like hours through all the support web pages for my printer and through all the trouble shooting techniquest. Still, nothing!!

I finally decided to call tech support. So after finally getting through after about a 15 minute wait I was on the phone. Now these tech guys seem to have some weird ways of fixing things. After going through the rig-a-ma-roll of getting all my information like name, rank, favourite colour and most watched reality show we finally got to the problem...no colour printing.

That waas when the weirdness began. He told me to go get a damp paper towel and a dry paper towel. Have you ever tried to get paper towel damp? It's impossible! It's either wet or dry...there is no in between! So I brought back a wet and a dry paper towel and got back on the phone. "Ok," he said, flip over your ink cartridge, put the damp paper towel over the bottom of it and hold for 30 seconds. So I did. And VOILA! I had ink on the paper towel. "I've got colour," I proclaimed to him over the phone. "Ok, now do it again." So I did. This time I had less colour. "Now do it again," he continued. So I did. Even less colour. It didn't take me long to see where this was going.

Then came the solution. "Well, Mr. Mathies, the problem is that you need a new ink cartridge. The one you have is too old and the ink has solidified in it so you just need to buy a new cartridge. Bye bye."

I hung up the phone and looked at my 3/4 full ink cartridge. That's about $30 worth of ink in there. I decided to try it out one more time. Nothing. So I finally gave in and opened up the new ink cartridge package, put it in the printer and printed out a test page. VOILA! Colour! After hours and hours of fiddling and messing around and all I had to do was change the cartridge.

Sometimes I make life so complicated. Any one else out there feel like that sometimes?

Sudoku Master - Not!

As a birthday gift Shiela's parents bought me an electronic Sudoku puzzle game. This little electronic device has 2,000,000 Sudoku puzzles in it and will provide me with hours and hours of entertainment. Little did I know just how frustrated I would become.

Now I didn't know how to play Sudoku but I had heard it was easy...all you had to do was fill in the squares so that every row and every column had the numbers 1-9 in them. I figured that was easy enough. I was kind of busy after I got the game and so Shiela ended up playing it first. She was addicted quickly and was finishing off games left right and centre. Finally, a couple weeks later, I finally found some time and picked it up to play.

WHOA! This was hard! I was working up a sweat trying to figure these things out. I'd look across the row to see if a number would fit and then along the column to make sure I didn't have that number yet and slowly work my way to the solution. And SLOWLY was definately the right word. It took me forever to finish the first one...40 minutes to be exact and I was only on Level 1..but I had to make a few guesses at the end to get it. While playing the game I was telling Shiela that this game was impossible and that you had to guess on a few of them in order to finish. She adamantly told me that you can't guess at all and there is always one number you can get.

I think it was at this point that I started to wonder just how smart I was. There was no way I could finish this puzzle without a couple guesses at the end. Yet I knew lots of people that played these games all the time and were finishing them easily. I started questioning my brain...for some reason my brain was not able to figure out these games! Maybe this prednisone I always take has cut off certain brain functions and so now I can't play Sodoku.

After finishing the first game I started on a new one (a few days later). After many days of playing on and off with a total time of 1 hour and 38 minutes I still couldn't finish the game. Shiela had offered to help me before but my pride wouldn't let her. I was sure that if everyone else could figure out these games so could I! But eventually I gave in and let her look at it.

Shiela took one look at it and then gave me a very confused look. "Why aren't you filling in these empty squares?" she asked me. "Well you can't," I explained, " because that could be an 8 or a 6 and there is no way to know because I can't get the other numbers until I know that one." Shiela looked at it a bit longer and then said "You do know that each 3x3 grid also has to have the numbers 1-9 in them, don't you?" I just stood there and stared at her. As I slowly got closer to her I took the game from her and looked at the screen. There on the screen were nine 3x3 squares. Nobody had told me that each 3x3 square also needed to have the numbers 1-9 in them. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" I said as I quickly sat down to finish off the game. 1 minute and 17 seconds later I had finished it.

Now I'm a pro at these things. My record right now is 6 min 52 sec to finish a Level 2 puzzle. It sure does help when you know all the rules. And I also got my confidence back after realizing that I wasn't stupid after all and that maybe the prednisone isn't slowly killing me (ok, it is, but not in this case).

So go out and play the Sudoku puzzles...there is one in the paper every day or you can buy books of them at a Buck or Two. And once I'm finished all 2,000,000 puzzles in my game I will gladly let you borrow it too!

Tauro Prophecy

I just happened to be looking at the Fulchester United website and found an article they wrote on Mar 29th. This was right at the end of the regular season where some teams were fighting for a playoff spot. Here is what the article said:

Dynamo ( 12 ) vs. ( 3 ) Tauro

Dynamo is perhaps one of the surprise teams in Division 3. Tipped by some to be an outside contender for a top 3 spot, the team has struggled badly with consistency this season but still managed to pull off a huge 5-1 upset win over title-chasing Arsenal last week. Tauro for their part have shown outstanding form since Christmas and have lost only two games in 2006. Rob Hydomako has been the go-to-guy for the men in Blue and will be the man to watch again tonight as Tauro look to pip Arsenal to second after a relatively slow start. Isaac Hayes in the Tauro goal has been in MVP form of late and is another player to watch in what should be a high-scoring affair. Dynamo blew Tauro away last time out with Andrew McCarthy scoring three. Don’t put any serious money on a repeat of that result though as Tauro look to bounce back from disappointing 5-5 tie last round.

Prediction: 6-1 Tauro

Well, that game didn't quite go as we planned and we ended up tying them which dropped us a few spots in the overall rankings. But it actually worked out for the best because we got to play the Hawks in Round 1 of the playoffs and we seemed to own them all season.

It's fun reading articles about yourself (or at least my team). Isaac definately was in MVP form and honestly we would never have made it that far without him. Also, Rob was a huge asset to our team all season scoring 30+ goals in 26 or so games. Pretty impressive! There were lots of other contributors on the team that we definately needed or else we never would have gotten as far as we did, but if I start naming names I'd probably miss someone and hurt their feelings. So we'll just leave it at Isaac and Rob.

Speaking of that, the Awards Night is May 15th so to all you Tauro players feel free to come on out for that.

Want to Learn a New Move?

No, sorry _______ (I've left out the name so as not to embarrass the person) it's not a move to pick up girls. Our Technical Director for Eastside Soccer showed me this website that has the best video clips for learning new moves that I have ever seen. I've found a few others but they did them so fast and the clips were so short it was hard to figure out. These video clips are long, descriptive, and they show you how to do it step by step with lots of re-runs of people doing the moves.

So go check out www.bigfootsoccer.com and if you like what's there maybe donate them some money as the site is entirely free!

What a Great Team!

This last Saturday night I attended our U12 boys soccer windup. This was the team I coached in the indoor season and I loved it. The guys were so much fun to coach and they worked really hard. Our season started off a little slow with a number of losses, but we slowly started picking it up and by the end of the season we had beaten Aurora who had only lost to 1 other team all season. That was the highlight of my season right there since around 6 or 7 of those Aurora players are now on the Provinical team I assistant coach with and they had an amazing team. ( Side note: I'm sure I've said it before, but honestly, these kids are amazing soccer players at this level. They have so much skill it is phenomenal! If they were the same size as an adult team they would clean up on them...it makes me fearful of these new youth teams entering the senior men's league)

The windup was a lot of fun. We went out to an acreage owned by the parents of two of the players out in Riverside Estates. What a beautiful area! Unlike the new acreage developments I've seen, this one has been around since around 1968 or so and is very nicely developed...large trees all over, a beutiful little pond with a fountain the backyard, nicely laid out paths winding through the backyard, a large swimming pool right off the backdoor along with a hot tub, a beautiful fire pit area nestled in among some trees in a bit of a valley. Everything about the place was nice and it definately made me want to buy an acreage!

We had a great time eating hamburgers and hotdogs, but then the real fun happened. The boys were playing a game of rugby with a soccer ball. Was it really rugby? No. Actually it was more like "do whatever it takes to get the ball and run it through the other net." Sounds like my kind of game. I got there just as they were about to pick teams. I didn't get picked first (I know, my feelings were hurt!) Fortunately I got picked second and the teams were pretty fair as the other team had the biggest player out there (besides me) and I had to keep him in check. It was an extremely rough game and everyone had bumps, bruises, and scrapes as they were grabbed around the neck and thrown to the ground, tackled into the nearby bushes, tripped while running up the field (I outlawed tripping after one guy was nearly killed). There were a few cut mouths and bleeding lips from being kicked in the face, but overall it was a LOT of fun! And my team WON!

My team and parents were extremely nice to me in the gift they gave me. Two of my players went to Thailand at the end of our season and they bought me a couple cans of Coke for my collection. The first one was from Thailand and it was a collector can for the World Cup with a soccer player on it. The second one was from Korea and I think it is the Korean soccer team on the can. Both cans were extremely cool and not the normal size and shape of our Canadian cans. They also bought me a soccer cd case holder, a soccer ball whistle, and a bobblehead soccer player. Then I also got a really cool Kit Kat bar from Thailand that is actually lemon flavoured cheesecake or something like that. I don't know if I should eat it or not. Finally, they all knew that I really love Coke a lot and like to drink it a lot, so they gave me gift certificates to Sobeys so I could buy all the Coke I wanted! And trust me, I can buy A LOT of coke with the gift certificates they gave me.

I'm really going to miss that team as the players were great and the parents were extremely supportive all season, but I guess we all have to move on. My new U11 Gold boys team has been amazing so far and I love coaching them too! But thanks to everyone associated with my U12 boys Gold team. It was a great season and I'm glad I got to coach you!

Long Overdue Fact or Fiction Answers

Over the last few weeks I've been bombarded with people wondering why I never post the answers to my Fact or Fiction stories. Of course I immediately protested and said I was sure I had posted the answer, but I knew deep down they were right. After a quick look back I found out that there are two stories I never posted the answers to. What's that you say, you want more time to think about it? Well, TOO BAD! You snooze you lose! LOL!

Oblivious To Fame - Fact or Fiction (original post Nov 8, 2005)

This story is FACT! In case you don't remember this was the story of me meeting Bob Bassen and eating breakfast with him. I had absolutely no idea who he was but all my friends who were in the dishpit knew and wished they were me (ok, I don't know if they wished they were me since at that time they were better basketball players than me, but I bet they wished they were in my shoes at that exact moment!)


Freeze Dirt Bag - Fact or Fiction (orginal post Feb 21st)

This story was FICTION! Practically everyone got this one right. This was the first story where we used the Poll system for people to vote on the stories and it worked really well.

The way this story really happened is like this. My assistant coach and I were driving out of the hotel in Edmonton and onto the street when we looked over and saw a cop car with it's lights on. As we glanced around we saw a cop behind this one teenager and he had him up against the wall in the usual search position. As we glanced around we saw a case of beer lying on the ground with the beer spilling out and running down the sidewalk into the nearby grate. (I'm sure any alcoholic that saw that would have had a heart attack because if it had been Coke I know I for sure would have had one!) It was pretty obvious the kid had stolen the beer and was now caught. Yeah, so unfortunately I never got to help with the arrest but it sure was fun thinking of what I would have done had he been running away!

Ok, so now I'm all caught up. I've decided to keep stories on my site for 1 week before posting the FACT or FICTION answer, so stay tuned and keep checking the blog!