Friday, April 13, 2012

Spike This (Part 4) - The Good, The Bad and the Swedish

After the middle school volleyball season ended Beth decided she wanted to play more volleyball.  I thought volleyball might have been over for us but she really seemed to enjoy playing and wanted to continue.  To continue playing in the off season you have to sign up for a club team.  As I have learned this is an entirely different animal all together.  Actually I have learned a lot of things since the school season ended, like that she just really scratched the surface of this volleyball stuff at school and there was a whole lot more to learn.

We began to investigate different club teams and narrowed our choices down to Alabama Juniors and Team Sting.  Beth attended both tryouts and was accepted onto both teams.  She decided that she liked Team Sting better, which was fine with me since the training facility was closer to the house.  In November they started having workouts and preseason conditioning for the players.  These were all held at D1 sports in homewood.  Most of the workouts consisted of different exercises to strengthen and condition the players for volleyball.

Volleyball teams are divided into Divisions by age.  Beth is 13 and turns 14 in august.  This puts her in the 14 and under division.  The team that she was placed on was the 14 Local team.  We chose a local team this year so that we wouldnt have to do much if any traveling.  Initially, she was placed on a team with 6 other girls.  As the preseason workouts progressed we were notified that they were merging the 15 Local teams and the 14 local teams to create two 15 year old teams.  This was due to the fact that beths team only had 7 players which is a couple short and the 15 local team had 12 players which is too many (did i mention that her school team had 18 players, yikes!!!)  When they merged they created a team with 9 players and a team with 10 players which works much better.  Beth was placed on the higher level team with mostly 15 year olds.

In December the practices started in earnest and Beth learned that everything she knew was wrong.  She found out that she served wrong, she stood wrong and she moved wrong.  the process of relearning how to play volleyball again had started.  She attended practices twice a week and gradually she got her game back together.  She learned how to serve correctly over hand, pass, block and spike.

Club volleyball is a tournament based sport.  In beths teams case they practice all season for 4 tournaments.  Originally, the first tournament was supposed to be played in February but as it turns out the tournament was overbooked and team sting had to reschedule a new tournament.  The first tournament was chosen to be the gadsden volleyball tournament in march.  the girls had been practicing for nearly 3 months without playing a real game and were ready to play someone else besides the other team sting teams.

the day of the tournament came...

Needless to say beth was nervous.  She hadn't played a volleyball game since late September and had never played a game with team sting.  The first tournament was in Gadsden so we got up early the morning of the tournament and got ready to go.  The ride was pretty quiet (mainly because we were all still asleep, or wished that we were).  We got to gadsden and started and went into the tournament.  I ould tell that Beth really was a feeling very nervous.  What she didn't know is that I had a surprise for her.  Beth loves Swedish Fish.  For those of you who don't know what they are, they are these little gummy fish.  But they are very stiff, much more so than regular gummy bears.  They are also not very sweet.  Anyway, I secretly brought her some Swedish fish and I gave them to her before she wnet into the tournament.  The effect was immediate, she calmed down and started to smile.  She seemed to get her confidence back and went into the school.   Beth met up with her coach and her team and they went to start stretching and getting set to play.

The pool play portion of this tournament consisted of four matches for each team.  Stings opponents were NASA VBC, Gadsden VBC, Alabama Elite and Southwest Georgia VBC.   They played their games well.  In the end the team only won 2 of their 8 games but beth played well and went on several sustained serving runs.  One of them was 9 consecutive serves and the other was 6. I was very proud of her.  I have said before that I never pictured my daughter as the sporty type but she has repeatedly proven me wrong with that.  She is one heck of a volleyball player and I am eager to see what she does next.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Mediate This...

I was involved in a mediation this past week.  That in itself is not that interesting.  I mean the process is interesting from a legal stand point.  Rather than going to a court like a lawsuit or having a panel of arbitrators and hearing evidence you sit in two different rooms and a mediator goes back and forth trying to negotiate the differences and come to a solution.  It reminds me a lot of buying a car.  You make an offer to the mediator (your salesman) and he goes to the other party (the sales manager) and tries to get them to accept the deal.  When they don't he comes back with a counter offer and so on until one of two things happen; you settle on a deal or you get so tired and pissed that you walk out and decide to take the other party to court.  But like i said, that wasn't the interesting part just the setting...

Lets go back in time a little bit...

When I was in high school and college we went to East Lake United Methodist Church.  During that time I decided that I was going into engineering for my career and we had a pretty big group of youth that were graduating and going to college around the same time.  One of the ministries that developed in the church was a mentoring ministry where an someone in the church would "adopt" one of the college students and help guide them as they went through school.  Ideally, the mentor would be in a similar career field to the student so that they could provide relevant experience and advice and possibly even help with contacts and getting a job once you got out of school.

My mentor was Jim Smith (the names have been changed to protect those involved).  He was the president of Smith and Jones Engineering which was a local consulting engineering firm that did electrical and mechanical engineering.  Mr. Smith and I kept in touch pretty regularly since I was going to school in town and was at church most every weekend.  He also made a point of telling me to let him know when I was close to graduating and he would see what we could work  out about some sort of job.  At the time the economy was not great and the job market for engineers was slow.  Finding a job was not easy for newly graduated engineers.

I entered my Junior Year of college and I began to look for a co-op job.  In engineering school you are encouraged to take a co-op position in the last couple of years to expand your experience and help get you ready for the "real world".  Quite often these co-op positions become permanent positions with many firms like Southern Company, BE&K and Rust (I'm dating myself since most of these companies have changed names).  I thought this was the ideal chance to go ahead and let Mr. Smith know that I was getting close to graduation and looking for a co-op job since he had made a point to tell me to get with him when the time was right.  I talked to him and explained my desire for a co-op job and he said that they were looking for a couple of co-op positions.  I went to their office (by now they had changed their name to BQR Engineering) and met with Mr. Smith.  He passed me off to one of the engineers that worked in the mechanical department.  I got an interview and a tour of the building.  I thought I was on my way.  A week went by and I didn't hear anything so I checked with Mr. Smith at church and he said that he would see what was going on.  Another week went by and I didn't hear anything.  I called him and he told me that they had filled the positions.  He said that he was sorry but that it was the mechanical engineers decision and he had chosen someone else.  He then told me not to worrry that he would "take care of me" next time and make sure that didnt happen again.  I was disappointed but I felt like I still would have a job in a year or so when I got out of school.  In the mean time I got a co-op position with the City of Birmingham Engineering Department.  We didn't really do that much but I got to do a lot of home work.

Another couple of years passed and graduation was getting close.  My co-op job with the City was just a co-op and would end when I graduated so I had to start looking for a "real" job.  I remembered what Mr. Smith had told me and called him again thinking that this time would be different and I would have a job that would become a career and I would be able to take care of my new wife and provide for her and the family that we wanted to have.  He asked me to come down and talk to him so I did.  I went to his office and we had a nice talk and at the end he told me that he didn't have anything right now but that he would call me as soon as a position was available.  I told him that was great and that I was willing to do anything to get started.  He said that he understood.  I left, again thinking that a job was a sure thing and that I would be hired soon.  Weeks turned into months and no job ever materialized.  Finally, the time was approaching for my wedding to Melinda and i knew that I had to find some job that I would be able to have insurance for us so I finally went to work at Randy's Computers selling computers.  In over 2-1/2 years I was unable to get a job doing anything at BQR after virtually being promised a job.  The rest is history; I finally got a job at Miller and Weaver and from there joined BBG&S Engineering as a partner.

Back to 2012...

So the week before the mediation the attorney for the side that I was assisting called me to go over the process and told me that the way mediation works is that your party sits on one room and the other party sits in the other room and you rarely if ever see each other and the mediator goes between them negotiating the dispute.  This put me at ease a little since the engineering firm that is in the dispute is the one where I tried to get a job and Mr. Smith was the president.  Now we work with them on some projects so I have to interact with them on a regular basis.  Well of course the first thing that the mediator does is put us in the same room to start.  And to make matters worse the president  of the company is the one that came to represent them in the mediation.  Did I mention that he is the son of the guy that didn't give me a job on two occasions???

Wait...

Why am I upset?

Dont I want to stick it to them a little?

No, thats not the way I am, thats not how I roll.

Well ok I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that enjoyed it a little.

Anyway, it was more awkward than anything.  I just didn't like being in the room with them and having to tell them all of the things that their firm screwed up on this project.  Its a first for me and I don't hope to repeat the process either as a member of the prosecution or defense.

What I really thought about most of the time was how all of this might have been different if they had given me that job so many years ago.  Would I have been the engineer on that project?  Would I have been able to make a difference and keep them out of the court proceeding?  Would I have been the one making the huge mistakes and costing the company thousands of dollars in legal fees and settlement costs?  How would my life and my career been different?  How would the reputation of that company been different?  These are all interesting questions that I have no answers to?

I just find it very ironic that I was the one who was calling them out on their mistakes and that my testimony is the one that prevented them from getting out of the case and forced them to have to go to mediation and settle.  I guess the moral of the story is that you should beware of even making what appear to be small mistakes in life because you never know which ones are going to come back in a big way and bite you in the ass later down the road.


Sunday, January 1, 2012

2011 A Golden Retrospective

2011 was a very eventful year.  I think that it will be remembered by the Golden family as a good year.  If you havent been there for the blow by blow this is a recap of the highlights.

Noah:  At the beginning of 2011 Noah was getting over the flu and his 3 day hospital stay.  From that point on to the end of this year he has been awesome.  He hasnt had to have oxygen at all this year and we have controlled his CCHS with nothing more than adjustments to his ventilation rate.  For my Non-CCHS friends that is a huge achievement.  He has had colds and minor illnesses but we have managed them and due in a large part to a correctly functioning CO2 monitor we are able to accurately measure his CO2 and make the appropritate changes to his ventilator. 

Noah has transitioned from using an HME (artifical nose) to a Passy Muir valve and then to a full cap over the course of this year.  We now wear the cap on a daily basis.  As documented in prvious blog posts, the use of the cap has helped his speech and breathing tremendously. He now knows most of his alphabet and all of his colors.  His speech is getting more distinct.  This has caused us to lose most of our therapists and for them to declare him on track developmentally with a normal 2 year old.  Again that is truly amazing considering where he started from.

On the developmental side Noah has learned to walk and then to run.  He is now working on the daunting task of going up and down stairs.  My hard headed son has tried to escape from his bed by diving out and learned that this is not the best way to get up in the morning.  Noah is also en expert at using an Iphone.  He can find it, unlock it and change screens to find his favorite games.

We were once told by one of the doctors that they couldn't say that they felt good about Noah and his prognosis.  I'd love to see how he feels about him now.

Hannah:  2011 has been a good year for Hannah too.  She has started to transition from a child to a young lady.  She has the biggest heart of anyone that I have ever met.  She continues to get better at piano and did exceptionally well at the first recital with her new piano teacher.  In school, she was evaluated for the RLC (gifted program) program and accepted.  She now goes to RLC every Monday and is really enjoying it too.  She also is the best big sister that a little brother could have.

Beth:  What can I say about Beth...  2011 has been the year of volleyball plain and simple.  The year started with Beth deciding that she wanted to play on the school team and then practicing like a mad woman to make the team.  Then once the school season was over she decided that she wanted to play on a club team and she went out for that and made it too.  So as I write this we are in the beginning of the club season.  It will be interesting to see if her new love of volleyball will be something that remains through 2012 and beyond.  She has also developed from a young lady into a young woman and is preparing for high school.  She is also working on her application for Jefferson County International Baccalaureate high school.  She continues to amaze and impress me with her determination.

As a family we went to Disney World this year.  We went before in 2008 and had a blast and we all decided that it was time to go back.  We were concerned with how Noah would hold up to the heat and the walking required since Disney World is part amusement park and part marathon.  He did excellent.  Our only gripe was that we had to push the trip back  couple of weeks and it turned out to be a hot week.  Next time we go we are thinking that we will try for a Thanksgiving trip rather than a summer trip.  The family is already talking about the "next" visit.

I hope that 2012 will be as healthy and fun as 2011 was.  I look forward to finding out.  So we say goodbye to 2011 but we will always have the 12,223 pictures that Melinda (and I) took during the course of the year to remember it by.  Here's to a happy and prosperous 2012.