it’s been a long day

here’s a funny story. it’s currently 409am (309am CST) and i’m sitting in the hyatt hotel lobby in the orlando international airport. here’s a funnier story, i’ve been here since 830am (730am CST). here’s how it all went down:

i’m down in orlando for the weekend for the national flag football tournament. we lost our first two games mostly due to poor officiating. now, i’m not one to point blame on the officials, but these guys were terrible. we had the same crew both games and they just had it in for us. very, VERY questionable calls – and it just seemed to come at the most inopportune times for us – in the two games, we lost by 8 points total, first game by 2 and second by 6 – we had 2 touchdowns called back in each game (4 total). do the simple math, not to mention the momentum turnaround and you can see why we were still in shock at how it all went down a couple days after. being done on saturday morning, we had saturday and sunday to sit around and do whatever – a game of texas holdem, some spades, watching the football games, 36 holes of minigolf – just chillin with the boys, pretty much. so a couple guys switched their flights to earlier, so they could just go home and those who stayed enjoyed the warmth that florida was able to provide, whilst you’s up north played with the weather not reaching positive numbers.

i on the other hand, had booked my flight to leave on tuesday (in an attempt to save me a couple bucks and in actuality, i did save me a couple bucks – but i’m wondering if it was worth it), while everyone else left on monday morning. i checked the flight leaving monday, but that was overbooked as it was, so i wasn’t gettin on that plane. which leaves me to the last 22 hours of interesting airport endeavors. when it’s all said and done, i’ll have been sitting in this airport for 26 hours, the majority of the time spent up in the hyatt hotel lobby – leeching off of their wireless internet for all it’s worth. i had me some lunch at chick-fil-a and dinner and cocktails at the macaroni grill here in the airport. i was able to chat to friends that i haven’t chatted with in a while. i watched the movie ‘hero’ (which is a pretty decent movie). i tried to lay down and catch some shut-eye (along with about 4 others) here in the lobby, until the security guard came and said we can’t sleep up in the lobby – i did get about 3 hours in, so i should be good for a while now 😉 oh, and in case you was wondering, the cheapest room (with the AAA discount) was $200/night, which is why i didn’t just get a room here. hindsight being what it is… it prolly wouldn’t have been a bad time to just go rent a car for a day and cruise orlando by myself, then park that somewhere’s and sleep in the car. but that’s not what was done – and by the time that thought came around, it was too late to make that worthwhile. to say it has been an interesting trip, an understatement.

on a side note: since i’ve had time to just chill and think some, i’ve been wondering what i’m doing with my life. right now, i’m tryin to succeed in two completely different job roles. i’m not making any progress with my work career right now – not that opportunities havn’t been presented, but because “i only work until 2pm, so i can go lift and workout at the HS”. i’m working parttime at a job a trained monkey can do – i’m not making a super tons of moneys and i don’t have any benefits. not what a somewhat experienced, college graduate should be doing at this point. i’m thinking it’s almost time to give up on the dream of playing professional football. i will continue to play semi-pro, because i love the game – but maybe my focus should be more on getting on with my life and not so much holding on to that super slim chance something will come out of my playing… sometimes it just all feels like wasted talent, and “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent” (A Bronx Tale – good movie).