By Doug Wilcox

By now, I’m sure that most of you (if you’re at all curious) are aware that Marv Sargent and Bob Warning came away with a narrow victory in the event, so I won’t bore you with the details. I wouldn’t know most of them anyway, having missed yet another match play finals. As has been the pattern this year, my partner and I did just enough to garner a check, finishing in 18^th place out of 66 teams. We struggled to carry virtually all day long and, by the time we finally put a few strikes together late in the day, it was too late to crack the top 12.

It was a weekend of little sleep, but I’m getting used to that. On Thursday night, my usual doubles partner (we were prevented from bowling together in this event due to the member/non-member restriction) was supposed to arrive at the local airport around 11:00 PM. However, due to a couple delays, his flight didn’t land until about 11:50. This translated into about a 1 AM bedtime for me and an unusually grumpy morning at good ol’ Benetech.

I had asked to leave work at 11:00 that morning in order to get to the practice session in Dublin on time, but I couldn’t get away until around 11:40. Part of the delay was the fact that I was named Employee of the Month, an honor which I pessimistically view as an entirely hollow one. I earned the "award" largely due to the fact that an employee who does the same job as I did vanished without a trace one day, leaving one day without telling us that she would never, ever be back. This left a huge void which I had no choice but to fill, like it or not. We’ve recently hired a couple new people to help take the load off of the remaining installation consultants (my official job title for you unnamed stalkers out there), but for nearly a month, I had to attempt to do the job of two people, picking up the pieces of an employee-employer arrangement that simply didn’t work out. In return, I became the August E.O.M., a distinction that gives me no cash reward, no special parking spot and no 12-month subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club. In short, just a simple "Thanks. Keep it up. Get back to work."

Once I left my work woes behind, the drive to Dublin and the practice session went smoothly. Jason and I both bowled in a pro-am and then hit the highway to Vacaville, where we had made plans to stay with Jason’s partner for the weekend. We settled in for the night, ordering a pizza and putting on "The Green Mile" on DVD for the night’s entertainment. After the movie had played for a while, the pizza arrived so we paused the movie. A few minutes later, we were situated and resumed where we had left off. About an hour down the road, little Hayley (Robby’s two-year-old daughter) was put to bed. We paused the movie so Robby’s wife wouldn’t miss anything. When she returned, the movie came back on and we watched in silence for about five minutes before Hayley started crying for Daddy. We stopped the movie and Robby left for about 15 minutes. Off and on, off and on we went throughout the film. What was listed as a three-hours-and fifteen-minutes running time took us nearly six… long… hours to watch. It’s a really good movie (one that I would recommend to all of you prison-drama-with-inmates-who-may-or-may-not-have-magical-powers-and-who-may-or-may-not-be-innocent-set-in-the-1930’s fans out there), but maybe we should have opted for "A Bug’s Life" on this occasion…

I’ve already mentioned the bowling on Saturday and there’s no need to re-visit that memory, so I’ll skip ahead to Sunday morning. Having missed the finals, Robby was unable to escape a day at the zoo with his family, so Jason and I were able to take off for Sacramento whenever we pleased. We left around noon and headed to downtown Sacto for a bite to eat. We ventured over to the local Hard Rock Café (I’ll pause for a moment while those of you blindsided by the fact that Sacramento has a Hard Rock Café gently shake out the cobwebs and get back up on your chairs) and had a leisurely lunch. We killed the rest of the scalding day indoors watching bad TV and wishing we were still bowling. By the time his flight left, it was time for me to dread going to work for another long week…

The next tournament, scheduled for Stockton next week, has unfortunately been canceled so we don’t bowl again until late August in Watsonville. I just realized that I haven’t had much social commentary in my column as of late – I’ll have to set some time aside and see if there is anything socially that I’d like to comment on. I’ll let you know – stay cool, everybody…