Good evening to all. I know, I know. I've been remiss in keeping you informed of my life and the sometimes bizarre happenings that seem to accompany me.

First things first- I ran a nice four miler at Susan's this afternoon. Nothing spectacular but it felt good . . . different scenery from my normal route and there are lots of shade trees which came in handy since it was in the high 80s today. One of those runs where I just sort of quit listening to my body and got some thinking done. You know the kind?

I still have not posted my new hair cut. Yes, Susan's daughter, MAC was on the soccer team that won the AYSA Alabama State championship. Pretty cool. And as promised, I let her cut my hair. The original promise was a shave but since the coach sort of backed out and only took a buzz, MAC did the same to me and no shave (I know . . . nice lesson to teach 11 year old girls about keeping your word)Her team is the U11 girls (age group) A competitive traveling soccer team with the Birmingham United Soccer Assoc (BUSA). The thing that is even more amazing is the fact that club soccer allows 12 full time players and her team only had ten the last couple of months of the season. There were only six teams that made it to state in their division with the six split into two groups and each group playing round robin with the top two of the three going to semi-finals. Her team lost the first game 1-0. We all thought it was over. However, we handily won the second game of the round robin and the team that beat us lost by much worse so based on points scored/points allowed, we took the tie-breaker for second place making it into the semi-finals. Sunday morning we found ourselves playing at 8 on a cold blustery day. Bad storms and tornados came through Saturday night, dragging a strong cold front behind them. The temp was high 50s/low 60s with guts in the 30-40 mph range. We were playing the #1 team from the opposite bracket. The team we were playing was an all-star team from Auburn made up from several of the local traveling teams in the area. I guess the AYSA rules allow this. We thought we were doomed since we had lost last fall to one of the Auburn teams and this team was made up of the best of the best from that area. It was a great game- the girls came out with no fear and jumped on the other team from the get-go. We won it 3-1 and moved on to the finals in the afternoon. For 11 year old girls, they stayed surprisingly focused but not uptight. The coach gave them a good speech and kept them relaxed during the day. You could tell that they were ready to play when we took them to the field for warm-ups. If I recall, we won 3-0 and the game was never really in doubt. In all we only allowed 2 goals in four games. We have a great goalie with trememdous speed and quickness and one of the two goals scored was a roll in fluke after she lost her footing. So the bottom line is I got a clipper cut with #2 clipper. Personally, I love it but the girls do not like it at all. TOO BAD-I may just keep it this way during the summer. Pefect for running and riding in the convertible!

Enough for now.