2001-02-20 - 16:33:16

I am back from a nice long weekend and feeling incredibly refreshed. There is something so rejuvenating about spending quality time with people you love.

My love-filled weekend included seeing my parents (for the first time since Christmas) and spending most of President's Day with my nearest and dearest friend of 20 years, Lucy. The weekend would have been perfect had Cor joined me on my little mini-vacation.

I love that seeing my parents is always a consistently good thing. We always do something fun together in the daytime and then watch a movie at home at night. This is a nice routine, we always have a good time with it. Our family activity this weekend was going to the driving range.

I had never swung a real golf club before. Let me tell you, I have a whole new respect for people who are golfers. I am still sore today! I was much more successful on the driving range than I had expected to be. The kind of hand-eye coordination that is required for connecting a club with a ball is not my strong suit. In spite of that I was able to do it! Not with great style or form, but I whacked a good 20 or 30 balls without humiliating myself. I consider that a major sporting victory for me.

Seeing Lucy was fantastic. Of course it always is. We have so many shared memories and experiences that we are guaranteed hours of conversation just reminiscing.

Because we don't get to see each other very often, our time together has become sacred to us. I am so happy that we were actually able to spend about five hours just hanging out and catching up.

I always feel so much more grounded after a good long talk with her. She is someone that I can tell absolutely anything and get a non-judgemental response from her.

Somehow in the short amount of time we had, we were able to hash out most of the little niggly things that were bothering us in our lives and even get a fresh perspective on the choices we are making or faced with.

I don't know what I would do without her. She is the best!

There is a very sad event that happened this weekend that I feel compelled to address. NASCAR lost one of it's legends on the racetrack at Daytona on Sunday. Dale Earnhardt, Sr. was killed in a crash as he was on his last lap of the Daytona 500.

I am deeply saddened by the passing of this man I never met. Through Cor I have received an intense education in racing, NASCAR in particular. Dale Earnhardt, Sr. was one of the drivers that I followed, rooting for him made me able to enjoy watching races with Cor.

The impact that Dale Earnhardt, Sr. had on the sport is equal to that of a superstar like Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky. How do you replace a phenomenon? More importantly, should NASCAR strive to find a replacement?

I will leave the arguing about safety measures and NASCAR rules to the people that really know and love and understand racing. I know that I will continue to watch the occasional race with Cor, but it won't be with the same enthusiasm as before.

Although the likelihood of his family ever knowing that their husband/father/son/brother had an impact on my life is next to nil, my heart goes out to them in their time of grief and they are in my prayers.

Until Next Time...

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