May You Live In Interesting Times

Hi friends.

It's been a minute. Hopefully any of you reading who were in the path of Hurricane Helene are safe and your family and friends are as well. If you're reading this and are currently in Florida, I really hope you're safe as that doesn't look good at all. Everyone who went through that has their own story of what the storm was like and what the effects afterward brought to them. 

For my house, we were fortunate. We lost power around 4 a.m. Friday morning as the worst of the hurricane passed through Statesboro. We, luckily, had no major damage to the house and while the yard was littered with pine cones (rough estimate of more than 5,000 if you were wondering), there was very little damage and we were likely among the first to get our power back as the lights came on around 9 p.m. on Friday night. 

We spent the next several days cleaning up, volunteering, and checking on my parents and friends who didn't have power or water. 

We also didn't have internet service. The cell service was, to be my most generous, spotty at best, especially the first few days after the storm. Text messages wouldn't send from my house and there was virtually no chance of loading a webpage unless you drove into Statesboro. One coworker told me she found the post office parking lot had the best signal so she would drive there and park for 30 minutes to communicate.

Which is to say, I missed the Jagermeister Cup final (congrats to Northern Colorado) and actually didn't find out who won until sometime Monday after the game. 

My parents got power back sometime Wednesday after the storm, and most of my friends had it back by Friday morning (though my friends' water system still wasn't working properly until two days ago, so they and their kids would come over to shower periodically). 

We finally got our wifi back a week after the storm and I was thinking, "Excellent. My oldest has a soccer game in Savannah on Saturday and I can get back to watch Tormenta take on the newly crowned Hailstorm as South Georgia fights for a playoff spot."

If you follow me on social media, you know what happened. Midway through the second half of his game, my oldest, playing outside back, saw an opportunity to press forward (clearly he's been paying attention to Aaron Lombardi and, when he was still at Tormenta, Nick Akoto). He and the defender were side by side and my oldest was fouled and fell hard. 

When he didn't hop back up, I started to worry. When he took even longer, I got more anxious. He eventually got to his feet, but I could see him holding his shoulder. My wife went over to check on him and then frantically started waving for me to get our things and that's when I got really nervous. A visit to Urgent Care and then the Children's Hospital in Savannah showed his collar bone broken in two places. The Orthopedic surgeon on call at the ER said it didn't need surgery right away, so we went home. 

I tried to watch the Tormenta game once he got settled, but honestly, my heart wasn't in it. This is the second year in a row that my oldest has had his soccer and cross country seasons cut short. Last year in mid-October he took a soccer ball off the ribs and was out for eight weeks with bruised ribs. My quick googling shows a broken collar bone is 8-12 weeks for recovery.

We met with the orthopedic surgeon Tuesday afternoon. As expected, he's going to need surgery and some plats put in to help it heal properly. Fortunately, he's expected to make a full recovery and be good to go by mid-January. Unfortunately, he'll be a spectator for his teams for the rest of the year. 

I'm not sure if he'll make it to Friday's Tormenta/Kickers game. Unfortunately, I will have to miss that one as I had prior plans (high school football) before the game was moved from its originally scheduled Saturday night kickoff. I'll be following along as best as I can. 

The game has huge playoff implications as Richmond currently holds the final playoff spot with Tormenta one point behind. A win by Tormenta vaults them back into playoff position with just three games remaining. A win from Richmond would put Tormenta four points back with three to play. Not impossible, but also not a position any team wants to be in. A draw keeps Richmond in the final playoff spot, pending the outcomes of the Chattanooga and Lexington games Saturday night but salts away another week of the season. While it's not mathematically a must-win game, it's pretty close. 

On a personal note (as if this whole post hasn't basically been a personal note), I appreciate your patience and understanding as I've kind of gone missing here lately. I promise I'd much rather things be "normal" and I just get to write on here regularly but we're going to do the best we can. 

Collarbones aren't supposed to look like that. 

Have a great day everyone.