Osnabruck Here I Come

Hey Everyone,

Well, I wasn't hiding this week, I was more like dying. Even as everything comes together for me in positive ways it was still a painful week. This is most likely because I landed a short term landscaping job that should be considered slavery. I started out Wednesday morning still trying to decide on whether to wait around for a new offer from Jena that didn't seem to be coming, look more at Osnabruck, find something to say to Proveo Merlin that wasn't too harsh, or go to Chile for a lot of cash. But, while the emails were coming in all day, I was out in the blistering 100 degree heat of Memphis, planting trees, digging up other trees, and carrying around rocks that weighed about 150 pounds from one pile to another. No offense to any guys from Mexico, but they just can do work in the heat a lot better than I can, and that is probably why I am the only white American guy at this job. To explain how I got the job, I had Kiley's mom ask if maybe I would want to work mowing lawns or something with a friend of her's who had a company after she saw how I worked on the landscaping here. After a few weeks of no call, on the way home from Cincinnati the friend, Sean Wood, called me and said he could give me some hours for the next 4-5 weeks. That was perfect! He said he would stick me with the crew that isn't so hardcore and they go from 730 am-400 pm. This sounded like a good situation for me. When I woke up groggy the first day I was to work, I was ready to go mow lawns, but when I showed up at the storage that they work out from, there was no lawn mowers to be found. Shit, where are the mowers? There were none and Sean set me up in the truck with him, he told me we would be doing a little landscaping and I was like ok, maybe this will be easier. No, I was wrong, the first hour I had already dug out 3 trees that weighed about 150 pounds each and I was wanting to die, oh well, only 7 hours to go I tell myself. I wanted to just get done with things as fast as possible hoping the next task would be simpler and not so hard on my back. My partner in crime, Martin, who was a Mexican guy, couldn't speak any english, but we got on the same page quickly enough. Martin would dig the holes fast then be very slow filling in dirt around the tree, and everytime I would say let's go get our next task he would just look at me and keep doing it. "Damn, you are right Martin, I should learn that this is going to be much easier than the next thing we have to do." After many hours of really big roots being axed out of the ground, it became 500 pm. I thought I had been getting off an hour before that, but it was not meant to be, and I was not with the light group cutting lawns. The time of my departure was not until 630 pm that evening. I did leave 100 usd richer, but hey I earned it this time! Nobody can say I am just a lazy basketball player who gets everything handed to him after that day, no they can't and I am sure a lot of people would not make it through a day at that job. Well, after all that work I came home to an email from Jena stating that they didn't want to offer more money at this time and now they are going to make sure they can't get someone as good who will play for less than my first offer. Ok, where did that come from? That was bad news for me, and that left me thinking about Osnabruck, who had given me a fine offer, and Chile, which was brand new and was offering large money. The team in Chile was Puerto Montt and they are right on the Ocean, which sounded pretty good with me, and they also were offering around 7,000 usd/month to play for 4 months, then hoping that I could hook up with and Argentina team after that season concludes. This sounded like an enticing offer but my agent and some others were very shaky on that idea, and didn't think South America was the route to go. At that moment I decided I was tired of all this and said if Osnabruck will pay for Kiley's expenses I will go there. 5 minutes later I was sent a contract. Osnabruck was giving me 4500 usd/month (they have more money because they are only signing 2 americans), 100 usd per win, an apartment, shared vehicle with the other American, some food expenses and coupons, some possible endorsement money with appearances (they must think I am going to be good), plane tickets for me and Kiley there and back plus over Christmas, Spa access, health insurance, and all utilities including cable, internet, heat, electricity, gas, all that good stuff. I am now set to ship off there in August. I am excited now and scared to get on the plane, but we will talk more soon as it is time to work on my tennis game.

Nick Kohsterized!!

PS. Happy Fathers Day Dad