Blends With Savanna Grasses

For those of you not in the know, the "Brickyard" is a nickname for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy500.

I had the pleasure of "representin' for my peeps", Quest Software, in Nashville, Tulsa, and Indy over the past couple weeks. I spoke at big user group seminars in each city and was pleased to see big crowds there. I also had the pleasure of meeting in person a number of Quest people who I'd only ever spoken to on the phone.

This is a picture of me and Danielle Mann ===>. Danielle is Quests manager for field marketing. I've worked with Danielle since at least late spring of this year, but I'd only met her on this expedition. The surprising thing about Danielle is that she has a deep, basso, commanding voice but, as you can see, she's about 5'2" and 95 lbs. She's also a huge Buckeyes fan, but we can forgive her of that. Roll Tide!

I was able to enjoy a nearly brand new fully loaded Ford 500 as my rental car. It was a very plush ride with lots of very thoughtful accessories, such as a moon roof, special little lights to illuminate the keyholes at night, radio controls on the steering wheel so that I never had to lift my hand to change a channel (which I do incessantly), auto managing headlights, auto managing rear-view mirror, and so forth.

<=== I can also attest to the excellent crash-worthiness and effective crumple zones on the car. It was late, raining, and cold. I was lost. I pulled a U'ee and got nailed. Totally my fault. Dang it all!!! I was banged up. I knew that I was hit pretty hard because my cell phone holster disintegrated and I hurt. However, it wasn't until I got home the next day that my kids told me I had bruises all over my left side. My color-blind eyes simply could not see the bruises. (I can only see strongly colored purple or green bruises. If they're light, my eyes don't even see them.) It was also a really emotional wreck for me (or maybe I should say that -->I<-- was an emotional wreck) because I just sat there in the rain without a clue who to call. Yeah, ok. I remembered to call 911 after a few seconds (that seemed like days). That always used to be such an easy question to answer and the answer was always so comfortable and comforting. But now that the kids' mom and I are split up, well...

It took me only a day or two to get over the bruises. I was back up and active immediately. But it took me several more days to get my emotional ship righted and back on course. I guess, in a way, it was good for me to have a mini-crisis. It's extremely painful but I can see that I do experience a certain amount of emotional and spiritual growth and healing from these experiences. I wish at times that there was some magical way around these problems, but I know deep in my heart that you just have to barrel on through them.

Move along. There's nothin' to see here. Keep moving...

-Zebraman