Still blessed.

Nationals... That is a large blog in itself, but I'll write it up now. Hopefully it won't be too long. Monday got started off to a nice start if somewhat confusing. We couldn't check into our dorm rooms until four but Aunt Pauline was leaving at 9:30. Katie found that the Roths would be at the tournament in the afternoon so Aunt Pauline stayed until then and headed back to home. I judged once that day and listened to some great comments by a student panel on, "Was competing in NCFCA worth it to them?" All of the people said yes and I love the reasons: The changes one could make and the better witness to God's grace one could be in the world and the classroom. Is that not worth a lot? I think so. The student panel was an eye opener in other ways, because some of the students seemed only interested in the benefits that occurred through getting a better job. I realize they were concentrating on different aspects of the benefits so it wasn't their goal to be exclusive but it did make me start thinking that there are a lot of people who see debate as a way to improve their communication skills so they can get the coveted job in the White House.

Moving on to the rest of nationals now. Monday was a relatively short day. After getting a room and judging one round, I attended the introductory meeting that night and went to bed soon after that. Tuesday and Wednesday are almost identical. The days were arranged so that I spent most of the time judging. Both days combined (which started before 6 and usually ended about 12) ended up having 10 rounds of judging. Estimating about 2 and 1/4 hours each round, that was 22 hours of judging. On a day by day basis, I was putting in 11 hour days, just in judging. That doesn't include the rounds I skipped and walked with friends. It is SO nice to have people with which I can talk and relax with when I'm feeling lonely. NCFCA has a lot of old friends, but most of them are busy doing other things and don't go to Nationals. At the end of Wednesday, Katie and Charlie broke into double-octafinals but lost against Baker-Baker. My next blog will have more on that, but it's getting too long as it is.

I'm putting a lot of the last week’s events into this blog, but I thought I would skip forward and present the day-to-day life of... Friday when we got home from the airport. I loved California weather. It was hot, low humidity, sunny, and all around nice (except for the brief cooler spell). I got off in Pennsylvania just to find it swelteringly hot. I hadn't felt that warm since last summer here. No offense to Californians, but plain heat doesn't quite match with heat and humidity. After all, you can sweat more in California and cool down faster; that's how the body is designed to work. In Pennsylvania, if it is warm and you try sweating, all you get is a wet shirt and no cooler. The high humidity almost destroys the body's ability to cool down. Fortunately, the humidity was only above the 80% range. Still bearable. The real suffering comes during the summer's 100% humidity days. You can be all dry with dry clothes, you can sit in the shade with a fan blowing over you, but you will still be soaking wet and extremely hot in 10 minutes. Most folks don't realize how much they sweat until it doesn't evaporate.

Cool. I just finished my next post after this one. I'm a whole day ahead! I don't know about you, but these long blogs seem boring to me. I won't feel insulted if you don't read these. :-)