Homeownership, Pneumonia & Forest fires...

I am a homeowner! Well, the bank is anyway, but I get to live there. We do have quite a bit of painting and carpeting to do, but it is nice as it is anyway. The previous owners had some interesting color choices for the front room. (purple and mint green)

I went on the annual BYU MBA rafting trip with all of the OB/HR hopefuls. It was reminiscent of vikings raiding passing boats what with all the carnage on a daily basis. I ended up with Pneumonia and a broken nose. Not bad for $235 bucks.

My wife thinks I'm competitive and I suppose I am. One student on the trip was much more competitive than I'll ever be. Five minutes into a week long rafting trip he was bleeding from both knees in a failed attempt to attack another boat. The irony in this story is that this young man happens to be my wife's first cousin! I love repeating that story to her. She's still trying to find who in her family was adopted in order to bring their families together, because she's certainly not related to him.

My broken nose was mostly my fault. It was sustained while performing the "Flying Dutchman" maneuver on the recruiter from Microsoft, Jason Carson. While pulling the unsuspecting swimmer what he thinks to be into the boat, he is unceremoniously tossed clear over the boat into the water on the other side. My injury happened when his lagging heel caught me in the face. I was swallowing blood for the next 20 minutes and am still very tender to the touch three weeks later.

As you can see from my previous blog entries, I ran a marathon just a few months ago. I've been a bit tired lately, but felt that a short, two mile run would lift my spirits. I had to stop twice during my run due to shortness of breath. This, I felt, was not normal for me so I went to the doctor. He listened to my lungs and sent me for chest x-rays and diagnosed me with Pneumonia. About halfway through my antibiotics, I'm beginning to feel that little bounce in my step again.

If you're a forest ranger the last thing you expect to see from a group of MBA's from BYU is a forest fire that was started by a smoldering cigar. This is exactly what happened the Sunday we were there. Most of us were down enjoying a lovely devotional down at the rivers side when one of the students came running down in a panic yelling that their was a forest fire about 50 yards from our campsite. We all ran up the hill back to camp and started a bucket brigade to douse the flames while the rangers were on the way.

Come to find out, the fire was started by one of our guides no less. He had been smoking a cigar and tried to extinguish it on a bone dry, dead fallen log. Yikes!