In which Chorus looks ahead to vacation...

I AM READY FOR A VACATION.

I WANT TO LEAVE FOR VACATION RIGHT-FREAKING-TODAY.

Anyhoo, we are leaving for vacation in a week and I am looking forward AAAAAAAAH WHY CAN'T WE LEAVE TODAY. 

We will be driving across this great and beautiful country and a little bit of the great country to the south of us, stopping here and there and everywhere to play golf.  Our first destination point is Georgian Bay for three nights with my dad and his wife, then we will head to Ottawa for a week with WH's family, then home via Toronto for our annual Blue Jays game.  This year, we'll see the Yankees (Boo!). 

Right now, we are flood watching. We did have a hotel reservation in Minot, ND, but the hotel is right in the middle of the area that is recently evacuated, so we've had to shift our plans a bit. We have a hotel reservation and a golf reservation in Grand Forks as well, so we're keeping an eye there too.

It's a beautiful day today in Prairie City, sunny and warm and MAYBE IF WE CAN'T LEAVE FOR VACATION TODAY I COULD JUST GO LAY DOWN IN THE GRASS SOMEWHERE INSTEAD.

I'm finding it hard to focus on work.  You might have guessed that.

What we've been up to...

Well, I'm on holidays from work until July 20th, so I've been enjoying my time off so far, playing golf, spending some truly lovely quality time with WH and getting preliminary cleaning and fixing done in our new house.

On the golf, I've played my first two rounds of the year, and hit the ball really well, though inconsistently. My highlight of the week so far was a drive off the 14th hole on our local city course yesterday that went 235 yards. Woo!

On the new house, we are loving it. There are lots of little things to do, cleaning and changing lightbulbs and figuring out where our things are going to go. The lady who lived in the house before we did left us a very sweet little note and a bottle of champagne in the fridge. This was a very kind act, but to be honest, I would have preferred it if she had done things like clean up the mountains of dog poop in her backyard... dog poop that she had been shovelling into her window wells for the last several years. But such is life, I guess, and we will enjoy the champagne while we work to make what was formerly hers now ours.

Really, Phil?!

Today's post is dedicated to making a little fun of Phil Mickelson, largely because of the following quotation, which I found on golf.com. Phil uttered these words after his early exit at last weekend's FBR open, a tournament at which he went 7 over-par and missed the cut by seven strokes.

This does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm about this year. I'm excited about how I'm putting. I'm excited about how I'm driving it off the tee.

Seems innocent enough, eh?

Let's start with the last sentence, shall we? I'm excited about how I'm driving it off the tee. Really, Phil? Are you REALLY excited??? REALLY? The reason I have my doubts is that, frankly, you drove off the tee like crap last week. To be specific, David Toms had the best driving accuracy last weekend, at 69.64%. The average through the field was 50.48%. Your driving accuracy was 28.6% TWENTY-EIGHT POINT SIX PERCENT, Phil. Of a possible 28 fairways, you hit 8 of them. ... EIGHT! I've been golfing for two years, and I suck, and I HIT MORE THAN 28% OF THE FAIRWAYS I FACE.

And your putting? YOU'RE EXCITED ABOUT YOUR PUTTING?! You are currently 155th on tour in putts per round. Thirty putts per round was your average for the two rounds you played in Scottsdale, Phil. Not exactly a statistic I'd write home about in the same sentence as the word "excited," unless the sentence also included the words, "not," "at," and "all."

Phil, Phil, Phil. I think the reason that some people don't like you is that you can come across as phony. And here's a perfect example why. I would have more respect for you if your post-tournament comments this last weekend were more along the lines of, "Boy, was that ever bad. B-A-D. I'm really going to have to do better if I hope to crack a top-ten this year, let alone win something. Back to the driving range, I go!" We know you're capable of this, Phil. After the disaster at Winged Foot, you said, "I can't believe I did that. I'm such an idiot." And we loved the comment because it was true!!

On Tiger Woods

So, he won the US Open. He hung in there for 91 holes with the surgically-repaired knee and won his 14th major, attributed by him as the best of his career.

And today there are early reports that the knee will require new surgery and he will be gone for the rest of the season. People will, I'm sure, immediately proclaim that the new surgery is a result of pushing through the Open, and that's not known yet, but it's probably a fair assumption that playing the Open didn't help the knee at all.

So the question is, was it worth it? Was playing the tournament of his life, grinding and pushing and hitting all of those must-sink putts, worth losing the rest of the season?

My guess is that for Tiger Woods, there are no regrets. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that re-thinks a lot of decisions, or spends a lot of time second-guessing himself. He wanted to play the US Open, he wanted to win the US Open. Mission Accomplished.

And while I'll miss watching Tiger for the rest of the year, I wouldn't trade the excitement of this last weekend for more opportunities to see him in the months to come. It was, by far, the most fun I've had following a golf tournament in my entire life.
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*And it was that exciting despite an entirely annoying broadcast by NBC. Just shut up and show golf shots, for crying out loud. There are posts brewing about sports broadcasts... more to come...

In which Chorus gets her first Par!

I've been golfing now for a couple of years, and this morning, I finally parred a hole for the first time. It was on the first hole I've played all year, a par 4, and I hit 5 wood, 8 iron and two putts.

Yay me!

In which Chorus Golfs

Not actually Chorus.
LPGA Tour Pro Paula Creamer.

Unabashedly, unashamedly, undeniably... I love golf.

Let me go back about three years, before WH and I were dating, but after I started thinking that I might like to be. This was around the time he first suggested that I should come out to the course one day and he would give me golf lessons. Being that I thought he was pretty nifty, I let him talk me into it. We got to the driving range, he handed me a club and a ball and said, "Here. Hit the ball with the club. That's your lesson."

From that date until last summer, I accompanied him to the course a few times, played horribly, swore a lot, whined like a baby, cried at least twice, and hit maybe 3 good shots. What I was playing was quite a lot more like glorified croquet than golf.

Then last summer, things changed. But this requires some background. WH and I had originally booked our wedding reception at the golf course at which WH is a member. Six months after we had made the booking and paid our deposit, we received word that the golf course had double booked the space, and we were second in line. It was horrible news, and we had a very difficult time finding a new place to host our reception on such short notice. Fortunately, we did find another (and better and cheaper and altogether fantastic) location, so it all worked out in the end. But as you can imagine, the first course was eager to make amends, so they gave both of us free golf memberships for the year. So I got a chance to play much more often than I had been.

The week after our wedding, we had contemplated sneaking away to the mountains for a little mini-honeymoon, but decided instead to stay home, relax, put our house back in order, and just be peaceful. Oh, and play a lot of golf. The week after our wedding, we played 72 holes of golf. I think it was our second day on the course, on about the 12th hole, that things changed. WH had already hit his drive. I teed mine up, set my club, relaxed, and swung. Ka-BOOM. It was an absolutely beautiful drive, and as the ball bounced well past WH's on the fairway*, I could hear him laughing from the cart behind me. And I managed to hit really well off the tee for the rest of the week! My game improved steadily from there... my putting got better, I hit more good drives than I did bad ones, and I came close to getting par on a couple of holes. I was officially hooked.

Don't get me wrong, there was still a lot of swearing, and I know that when I step back on the course this year, there will still be regular and frequent moments of frustration. But the knowledge that I can do well, and that I'll only get better, is incredibly motivating.

WH is heading out to the course to play his first round of the year today. I can't wait to play mine.

*To be fair, I was tee-ing up off the women's tees, so I had several yards' advantage.... but still.