Elise and I will take an excellent adventure on Saturday.
We’ll pack up and head south to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., home of Nova Southeastern University. Ever since we spoke to a rep at a college fair months ago, Nova has been on Elise’s dream schools list. As a senior without a club team to play on, her opportunities are dwindling.
Enter this camp.
I wrote an email to coach John Constable last week. “Finished your recruiting class for 2016 yet?” I’d priced the camp (and accommodations), but I just wanted to see what he’d say.
“We’re still looking,” came his reply.
“Know someone who wants to be a Shark?”
Matter of fact …
A few friends suggested a Go Fund Me page to help Madison and I get to South Florida.
[See Elise’s Go Fund Me page here.]
Don’t freak – Elise’s real name is used in the listing. If you’d like to help me see that my girl gets her shot at the big time, feel free to donate.
1. Is Elise going to play at Coastal Carolina?
That school’s on her list, honey.
So too are:
- Converse College*
- Florida Atlantic University
- Jacksonville University
- Lees-McRae College
- Mount Olive University
- Nova Southeastern*
- Stetson
- UNC Wilmington
- Warren Wilson College*
*-denotes schools actively recruiting her.
Coastal Carolina would be cool. The school’s at the beach.
So are a few others, in Florida. She’d be a Chanticleer (a character from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, basically an angry chicken.) This season, Coastal came to play my alma mater, UNC Charlotte. So that’s a plus.
Right now, she says Converse and Warren Wilson are the front runners. She’ll visit Coastal Carolina next Friday. Stay tuned.
2. What is cheese?
Cheese is the beauty of heaven combined with the bliss of Utopia, in shredded or sliced glory.
Sure, cheese is a food made from the pressed curds of milk. Just as the planets and stars of the universe are simply space dust and Martian ice glaciers.
Cheese is the bond between slices of buttery toasted bread, the heart and soul of a trio of enchiladas, and the blanket of glory that rests upon a steaming bowl of French onion soup. It’s the gold lining of cheeseburgers and celestial robe known as queso dip that engulfs the luckiest of corn chips.
Cheese is comfort and cheese is love.
3. What are the bugs that shed their skin called?
They’re known as molters – which would make a decently cool fantasy football team name.
Bugs wear their skeleton on the outside – as an exoskeleton. They’re like M&Ms, with the hard shell on the outside and soft stuff inside. Humans and other bipeds and quadrupeds wear their skeleton on the inside, under a layer of skin.
They’re like Whoppers, if Whoppers had soft stuff in the middle, under the soft chocolate shell and crunchy core.
As a bug grows, it outgrows its skin.
Not unlike you girls, with soccer cleats. A bug will slink off and split open his exoskeleton. Underneath is a new top cover, pliable and big enough to house the bug, such as a cicada, until the next growth spurt.
4. Why didn’t the M&Ms we didn’t pay for set off the alarms at Target?
Oh! What do you know.
Stores put security tags on high dollar items. A cylinder of mini Christmas M&Ms – in January, no less – doesn’t warrant the extra attention. These M&Ms should have been 75% off like the rest of the beat-up, no-one-wants-it Christmas candy.
The cashier said it was just 20% off, though.
Oh yeah? Where’s customer service? Only, she agreed. “M&Ms are excluded,” she sneered. Seriously? It’s frickin’ Christmas candy. So Grace and I stormed out (I stormed, she skipped) and it was then I noticed the M&Ms hadn’t even been rung up.
Here’s the moral dilemma: Do I go back inside and pay the piper? (Or Susanna, the friendly customer service counter employee)?
Or do I take a bite out of The Man, and take home the candy? Is Jesus watching? Is God watching? What about George Burns? Girls, I didn’t go back. And the number of websites I can across to bring anyone with the will to learn the glory of shoplifting at Target?
Kinda made my skin crawl.
5. Why does everyone think we’ll have flying cars someday?
Because George Jetson.
Flying cars would be the worst idea since e-cigarettes – or Katy Perry inviting fans onstage with her.
It’s frightening enough to share a strip of potholed asphalt with a joker swiping through Tinder while behind the wheel. How about in an age in which I’d have to share the sky with this dolt?
I’ve got dudes flying over double-yellow lines on a country road to get around my speed-limit-driving ass. What’s that clown going to do at any altitude?
No thanks.
Technology is supposed to take us higher and get us there faster, but sometimes, we forget about stuff like safety. Or common sense.
If I want to throw caution to the wind … I’d rather do it by trucking a kid who looks like me to South Florida to watch what she can do.
Just a dad ... 
If I could I would help with the GoFundMe, but funds are tight this month. Sending positive vibes your way though 🙂
You rock, Katy. We’ll take all the positive vibes we can get!
Never had the problem about choosing a school for higher learning and definitely never had any actively chasing me — I left school in the 8th grade 😦
I usually go back if I walk out with something I haven’t paid for. But one day, I took something back (an item of clothing) that had not been charged for. I approached the cashier and said, “I think there’s been a bit of a mistake.” She looked at me with her eyes bulging, “I don’t think so,” and called the manager over and said, “The customer said we have made a mistake” (must be the royal “we”) The manager’s eyes bugged even more and her nose rose into the air as she said, “We do not make mistakes Modom.”
“Suit yourself.” I replied and walked out.
But, if it had been peanut M&Ms, I don’t think I’d have gone back LOL
Happy to help a future soccer champion 🙂
I didn’t know that, Lyn! Anyone who calls their clients Modom ought to have some shrinkage to deal with.
Thank you so much for your contribution to my girl’s excellent adventure. We’ll take a picture for you while we’re there!
LOL it reminded me of the Brit comedy series “Are You Being Served.” 🙂 My pleasure Eli, and yes, you’d better show us pictures or else 😉
Aw, I am wishing your girl the best of luck and have a good feeling that she will go far in college with soccer, because she has had a great backing in a dad and coach, too 😉
Thanks Janine! She has a guest post coming up here soon, on being a girl soccer player.
So excited to hear your doing the college touring thing!! Go get ’em Elise!!!!
I have gone back with things unpaid for and gotten it cleared up… Good thing to do I guess. And I have left knowing something was not paid for…. oops…. Bad idea.
And Flying cars??!! I keep telling my boys, car freaks, and also geniuses when it comes to engineering stuff, I do not want to die not having flying cars in my lifetime. But I see your point. Taking 15 year old driving has reminded me that not everyone is all that well behaved on the road. Cue man tailgating, honking and flipping us off because he is going the speed limit. Mind you, there was TWO lanes!!!! Seriously….
Maybe flying cars are not a good idea. Fun. But maybe not yet.
Blessings,
Vicki
I can’t wait to go, Vicki! She’ll appreciate your cheer, too.
It’s best to clear things up. I didn’t notice until we were in the parking lot – how’s that for an excuse?
Maybe if flying cars were flying bumper cars, we’d be fine. The worst part of teaching the kids to drive is exposing them to the fine citizens behind the wheel!
Agreed!!
Mmmm.. You had me at cheese. People have learned to drive, let alone fly, yet! I would love to fly, but I fear the idiots. We love cicadas. We used to find there shed exoskeletons on the trees down in VA all the time. We get a few up here in Nova Scotia, but like down there.
I could go on and on about cheese – and actually did, once: https://coachdaddyblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/cheese-goes-on-everything-even-cheese-2/
Idiots in the sky seem exponentially more dangerous than idiots on the ground. One day we’ll find out.
The cicadas were so loud here one year that I could roll down my car window on the highway and hear them over the traffic.
At least on the ground there’s a chance of survival in a collision. In the air? Not so much. There are flying cars now… err I guess they’re more like cars that convert to planes.
Great cheese post. We use all kinds of cheese, too. Parmasean (aka stinky) cheese, cheddar, havariti, Monteray, shredded, sliced, block… Guess I could write a whole post about it, too!
There’s always room for cheese talk.
We have a great team but all of our scholarships are for academics and none for athletics (if that is what you are looking for), or else I would recommend my school. Then again, it also is a little far north and nothing like sunny Florida 🙂
It took me a year of reading to realize your girls’ names aren’t their real names 🙂
Elise’s two must-haves: A kickass biology program, and women’s soccer (kickass not required, because she figures she can bring it.)
Sunny Florida will be 85 when we’re there for the camp – it’s 60 something here in Carolina!
I started with pseudo names, and after one post that depicted them as badass, they’re all, “you can use our real names if you want!”
Matthew’s name is so generic and then his last name is not the same as mine, so I figured he was safe (and he also never cared 🙂 )
52 here right now, waiting on Joaquin to bring it on.
Not sure what I was afraid of, as the older two are on social media. Joaquin nipped at our asses all the way down, and his buddies left a mess in South Carolina while we tried to get home.
Awesome. I hope the colleges that are recruiting her will also pay her to go via scholarship…full.
French onion soup with bubbly cheese…it really doesn’t get a whole lot better, maybe on pizza.
Bugs…molting or non, Eww…I’m anal enough to return to a store that over or under charged me or didn’t charge me at all. I can’t believe I’m liking a quote by Screech, but I do, and it is so true. Thanks ladies and thank you, Eli.
PS…why do I always have a PS? Humans shed their skin too. It is called dust…What can one expect from the largest organ? And thank goodness for the skin. Go Biology!
best of luck and the wolverines would be happy to welcome her with open arms )
Cheese and molting insects, hmm there could be a burger combination happening here mate. They’d buy them in China. You could be an entrepreneur.
Soo, I will never eat a Whopper again because of you. Ha! Not that I eat them now, because I don’t – but if I did, I wouldn’t. Cheese is my favorite snack and if I ever had to give it up, I would die!
I do hope the adventure to Florida was a wonderful time!
I hope you had (are having) a great time in Florida. Good luck with your recruiting visits and the hard part – making an actual decision and then watching baby girl get in the car and head that direction. Yup. Been there, done that 🙂
It was an incredible experience, Michelle. We took a walk at Pompano Beach and talked about possibilities the evening after the camp … definitely stuff for another post! (Have you written about that?)
It’s ok – Des stole a car from the library. A toy car. I did return it but not in a classy way – I put it in the book drop after hours.
Oops.
I bet that happens every day.
I want to go to college at the beach.
I was afraid to read your cheese answer but you didn’t ruin cheese for me. Thank you.
Des! Grand theft auto. When they ask for something stolen to be returned, “no questions asked,” maybe more thieves wished there was a drop box after hours.
College at the beach seems like a distraction, but for stuff like marine biology, I think Kansas or Wyoming wouldn’t have the best, you know? Kind of like when you’re in Kansas or Wyoming, you’re better off ordering the steak than the “fresh ocean catch.” (How fresh can that be?)
There isn’t a collection or order of words in the universe, in any dialect or language, capable of ruining cheese for me.
And if I knew of the way – I’d never, ever use it.
You criminal! Haha! I accidentally did the same thing at a Hammericks a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t go back either. On another note Converse is right down the road from me!
i’m hardcore, Rena. By accident! what’d you take from Hammerick’s? that’s more hardcore than Target!
Converse is a top choice right now. We should talk about you becoming her surrogate aunt while she’s in school!
Tell her my washers empty time she needs it and it comes with an optional home cooked meal! I accidentally walked out with 2 pairs of pj’s for my SIL! They were right in my arms while I paid for everything else! With my 80 year old mom! Lord help me!
That might sway her toward Converse, Rena! I have walked out with stuff from Target more times than I will ever admit in this space (or at least slowly and spread out so as to not arouse law enforcement suspicion.)