Updates and nicknames

OK, to my fellow swimmers I must confess I have done a rather poor job of training since our last gathering. It seems that the warm, pollinated, blooming grip of Spring has finally wrapped her honeysuckled fingers around my throat and head and enslaved me in a Benedryled haze over the last couple of weeks. Breathing, which was was not only a pleasant and casual pastime of mine, has now become a fearless and wretched foe constantly engaging me in cough-hacking and runny-nosed battles to which I respond with a united Robitussin front flanked with a never ending supply of Kleenex and nasal spray. As of today, my enemy has presented me with a new weapon for attack: the dreaded Sneeze. The sneeze is a combination attack force with both oral and nasal capacities and the capability for multiple attacks much too strong and powerful for a single Kleenex to defend, thus lowering my munitions supply and weakening my army's capacity for a long, drawn out war.

As President John F. Kennedy once said, "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind." It is with this in mind that I have begun negotiations with the dreaded Spring and it's biological warfare to determine a peace. I have offered up my tonsils, left lung, and right eardrum in exchange for a complete and immediate peace from the napalm attacks on my throat, constant bombing of my head and ears, flooding of my nasal cavities, and of course a ceasefire from the cough and dreaded Sneeze. Spring has refused to accept this settlement citing that if my tonsils were worth anything at all someone would have taken them years ago and noting that my right eardrum burst in the attacks of Spring 1994, making it a notoriously hostile and conflicted area for well over a decade now.

It seems, my fellow Swimmers, that the great War Against the Spring is bound and determined to continue toward certain destruction and death for at least one of its combatants.

In all seriousness, I have been pretty sick lately with some allergy issues and haven't been able to swim as much as I had planned. I have gotten a couple of swims in here and there and hope to get one in tomorrow morning assuming I'm feeling better. I suppose the good thing to note here is that after our 2 mile swim a couple of weeks ago I felt great and have the utmost confidence that I will be able to accomplish our 2 1/2 mile swim on Saturday with minimal concern or trouble, especially with Jeff "The Shark" Thode MIA for this one, thus eliminating our most swiftly-paced swimmer.

And on that note I have decided that we all need aquatic nicknames for the Swim. So for I would like to offer up "The Shark" for Jeff given the ferocity and swiftness in which he attacks the Swim and because he's in really good shape and I'm a little intimidated and afraid of him. Also, I'd like to offer the nickname of "The Tuna" to Bill Jolly since he is our coach and Bill Parcells's (NFL coach several times over) nickname was "The Tuna." Just seems to fit. That's as far as I've gotten so far, but I am calling dibs on the nickname "Manitee" for myself. I think it best describes my (in)abilities in the water, for my fondness for mango leaves, turtle grass and algae, and for my purported likeness to mermaids.