Author: admin

I’ve been keeping a watch on Rich Obert’s list of the top 150 AZ football players of 2027. It is a big list–ballooning, even. Still in spite of all that my kid has never made the list. I paid the minimal fee for a short-lived membership to the paper just to see if the kid made it. The list is now up to 30, and no sign of the kid. No clue how the list is chosen either. If it is about players who are getting noticed by colleges, well he ought to be on it with 4 offers, one from a CFP playoff team. If it is about all district honors, he has those as well. We’re only at 30, and sure, I’ll accept the kid isn’t top 30 (though he’s being overshadowed already by lesser players at his position), but I’m expecting to see him in the next 120. If I don’t then it is clearly underdog season loading.

Finally got a clear look at the schedule. The football schedules are largely two-year affairs. You book most of your opponents on a home and home two year deal. Some games are open, giving the team a chance to add a new opponent. This year that opponent is Sandra Day O’Connor High. Good school. My boy played with their 7 on 7 team for a while, so he knows what he is facing. Should be a close match. The rest of the matches don’t quite follow the home and home feel. The last two games are road games against Nogales (at the very edge of the USA) and Corona who features #23 on the aforementioned list, a kid my boy grew up with and who I coached his entire youth career. That too is going to be a fun one.

I want to get into breaking down the rest of it next Wednesday as the Waiver Wire returns in full. For now, I’ll fade into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Vance hits out at ‘scandalous’ Zelenskiy comments about Hungary’s Orban” I dislike JD Vance and every single thing this man stands for. I won’t begrudge his wife at all, because I don’t know her, but I can tell you that her man’s ‘white victimhood’ is an absolute sham. He’s not the worst part of that entire administration, but he’s possibly the most insidious among them.
2. 400. That is a big number. I fail to understand why it means more to me than 309 or 402 or anything like that but this threshold number matters, if only a little bit. Let’s keep it rolling.

It works!

As an organization and cueing tool, creating tabs for each assignment is very effective. The secret lies in focus and having a second window open for research. Focus really means closing tabs–especially research ones–when you are done. If you start to leave these things to linger so will your attention. I’ve learned this the hard way by now. I lost focus once during the entire exercise and it cost me at least 30 minutes. Once I got back on track, the work went smoothly. It continues smoothly into day two of this process. I love that learning new things and methods can increase my productivity. I feel like the act of being productive is rewarding, even if I am not a huge fan of the tasks I need to complete.

Finishing is finishing.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “U.K. Bars Ye Over Antisemitism, Months Before Major Festival Performances” UK don’t play. Still, this concept itself strikes me as odd. If you hate Muslims, Christians, or any other religion it is referred to as a phobia. If you feel the same way towards Jewish people it has another term entirely. Though developed in the 1770’s, it was popularly coined back in 1879 by a German journalist, Wilhelm Marr as a rebrand of Jew hate, or Judenhass. Odd though, it was meant to cover multiple peoples, but has only ever applied to the Jewish people. We need to think about how we talk and think about the Jewish people…
2. We also need to think about our own pride. It really feels like everything we are experiencing in the USA right now is a reflection of pride and stems from a sense of arrogance. When you mix those two together you create a sense of exceptionalism that alienates everyone around you because you see yourself as better and not beholden to the rules of the world. For example, our country is about to commit war crimes, if the announced plans of the administration is to be believed. Yet, since we are Americans, it is not a war crime but merely an act of self-defense against a perceived enemy in order to prevent…. economic… threat. Or, as realists perceive, to keep the individuals in power from looking bad.
3. Sigh.
4. I’m going back to my tabs now. Call me when the crazy is over, okay?

I am always on the hunt for new approaches to figuring out how to get stuff done. This method is one that I’ve never ‘officially’ tried and now feel like I’ve been doing in some form for years. I always leave tabs open with work I am attending to. I often leave a tab open for each class and others for emails I need to write, etc. This is done absently as opposed to mindfully. I don’t do it as a way to organize workflow.

But what if I did?

Could the secret to visualizing and thus managing my workflow be as simple as creating a series of tabs or windows that reflect the jobs that need to be done on any given day. Could I find a way to systemize and thus prioritize workflow in a tabular fashion? It doesn’t sound like a huge leap in thinking, but it definitely works as an evolution to the earlier sticky note approach. I could even take the extra moment to correlate sticky notes to tabs as a reinforcement and a bit of a visual reward as the stickies pile starts to fill up. The key to doing this would be having two windows open. One is a research window whose tabs are restricted to research for the current project. The other would be the tab-based window where the work is organized in some fashion (urgency based?). I would complete a tab, take a break, repeat. Add on the visual throwing away of stickies into the task jar and you have a reinforced system!

I’m going to go try this. Tomorrow I will let you know how it went.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Savannah Guthrie returns to ‘Today’ anchor desk for first time since mother’s disappearance” I get that she needs to work. What is bonkers is how much of a story the ongoing disappearance of her mother actually is. That means that whatever she says as one of the key faces of the morning news and show cycle, everyone will be still thinking about how she is doing. It also means there will be no real mention of that case on her show, because that would be sad.
2. Has anyone really paused to consider the fact that regardless of whether or not we decide to “end” the fight in Iran, Israel has vowed to keep bombing them until all the leadership is dead? Given that, when does the fighting actually end? See, you cannot kill every single bit of leadership, because there are always going to be new leaders. It feels like they are trying to slay a belief system, which is going to mean killing a lot more people than just leadership. You have to eliminate all of the followers and acolytes of said leadership as well until they don’t have access to power. That simply isn’t feasible. Has the Gaza Strip taught us nothing?

so, yeah, we did Easter. It was actually quite fun and engaging. The only issue is that I forgot to blog, so here I am on my phone late into the night trying to figure out what to say. I don’t have a solid coherent thought. So, I suppose I’ll get right into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Trump issues an expletive-filled threat against Iran as details of US aviator’s rescue emerge” This is getting straight up dumb now.
   
2. Staying on politics for a minute. What really bugs me is the contrast of ideas and how much people within that small but powerful republican base are willing to bend the knee and swallow any sense of decency to get their crap passed. Moreover, people outside of that base are doing the same. It is a toxic situation that the next Democratic administration is going to have to clean up. Why? Because that’s what democrats do anymore. They clean up after the frat party.
   
3. I really try not to be political here all the time but all the time it’s becoming clearer that this crap needs to change and people don’t have a ton of hope that it will. That’s a real problem for me. I’d love to walk away, but my kids won’t and I want to be able to be a part of their lives…
4. Struggling with fatherhood again, obviously. I hate feeling like I’m the forgotten parent.
   
5. on a brighter note I’m feeling much better about the writing, though I am clearly not going to get paid for past work. I don’t know why the company is screwing me like this. I intend to finish out these next few projects and move on. Time to see what I can do with an agent and a good story.
   

Today a man asked me for help. I didn’t wait to see what he needed. Instead I told him I didn’t have any cash. This is not a new occurrence in my life, but this older black man stayed with me all day. I could have been him. I could become him at some point in my life. Nothing is guaranteed, and the protections we’ve long relied upon as Americans are eroding before our eyes. I mean, how can you ignore the grift when Trump’s Presidential library is actually being planned as a high rise hotel? I won’t say more negative things about dear leader, because bots are scraping the internet looking for low-level fools like me to make an example of. Sad how it’s come to that. Sad how when I had a moment to do something different, I did not. I did not go out of my way to make a brighter day for a person in need, so what does that say about who I am?

It doesn’t say anything good. I think who we are is who we are when people are not watching us. I wasn’t being watched then and I turned in a dog of a performance as a human. I need to get better.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “A professional cornhole player and quadruple amputee is arrested for murder” Just read it. It will not disappoint. This suspect wanted to be “a priest or a Secret Service agent one day.” Given his proclivities, he might want to settle for ICE agent.
2. Fun fact: A handful of the players who made Drake a top school over the last two years have transferred to Northern Iowa. UNI plays Drake this season. Should be fun. Might need to watch that one live.

Having a hard time accepting it is Friday, which is likely a result of traveling in the middle of the week. I took my kid to Tulane, which it turns out costs nearly $93,000 a year to attend. He’s being offered a full ride to play football. This is and has always been the dream. The school averages better than 24K attendance per football game, which goes to show there is a high level of student and community buy in, given the school has under 14,000 students. Good football, better school. Top 70 in the nation. That stands out, given the number of very good programs throughout the nation. His other school choices do not rank as highly, either in football or academics.

Ultimately, it is not up to me.

All I can do is provide advice, which I will continue to do.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Education Department directs student loan borrowers in SAVE plan to prepare for repayment” Slipped this one under the radar, they did.
2. Really appreciative of the Lady Talis for giving me space to write this every single day–even when it is inconvenient for us or her in particular. In order to be successful in life you need to have that partner who is going to provide space for that success, be on your side, and see your success as theres as opposed to seeing it as a challenge or something that is a threat. This is me speaking from experience.
3. Another interesting thing I noticed: FOX is advertising on APnews. We are entering the DEEP age of spin and government-run media. Not so much gov as republican… That is scary territory folks. There will be a blog on how to escape not too long from now..

I think…

Staying healthy is incredibly difficult and expensive. Fast food is getting more expensive, mind you, but trying to feed four to five people salads on a daily basis is going to bankrupt me. Honestly, the uptick in healthy choices makes me feel good about how we treat ourselves and our kids, but it requires making some serious life changes financially. I don’t know what those changes are.  I do know the industry puts a premium on anything that is considered healthy or organic. That is bad for, well, everything we are trying to achieve. This is especially true because our kids, once on their own, are going to reach for what is cheap, not what is good for them.

I think…

This visit to Tulane is reminding me a lot about the culture of New Orleans. I forgot that NO was a black city. By that I mean the working class is predominantly black and brown in the heart of the city. After 11 pm, which is when we touched down, we only saw one person not of color working at the dozen plus places that were open including our hotel. That guy was barely out of his teens and yet was in charge. It is a snapshot, not a study. I cannot really say that it means anything.

I think…

I’ve forgotten how to sleep outside of my bed and especially without my partner. I rolled over in the middle of the night to hold her and dang near fell out the small bed. She wasn’t there, but the edge of the bed was. After a long moment of sadness I tucked myself back in and found sleep.

I think…

That’s all I got in me this morning.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “FACT FOCUS: False claims Trump made as he addressed the nation about Iran” It’s bonkers because it is actually what we have to do now following whatever this man ever says. Even more bizarre is that he gave this speech about the war being at it’s end, on April fools day and today the articles are all saying things like, “Takeaways from Trump’s address: No end date for Iran war and few details on strategy ahead” So it was a joke… or he is.
2. Funny, after writing that blog on the plane we get to the hotel that night and South Park is on and doing a bit about exactly what I said about Heaven…

Being on a plane deep into the night as the sky fills with turbulent clouds has me thinking about death and, more specifically, how people consider the afterlife. Recently my mother-in-law has come closer to Jesus. I think itis a thing older people do when they recognize they’ve topped the hill and are heading to the clearing at the end of the path. I think part of it is wanting to remain intact—memories and all. I suspect we all want to preserve some sense of self; some awareness of who we are or were. The construct of Heaven gives us that hope. It points us towards the possibility of what could be after we close our eyes that final time. Yet, I don’t know how many of even the most devout believe in this Heaven.

I’ve watched comics and anime and stories and movies all try to dissect this place. Even science occasionally takes a stab at locating the afterlife. Is there a place in the clouds? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think that death is the end of our energy either. I do feel that it is the death of the memories and the mortal forms we hold. Energy, allegedly, can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore it—we—only change state. Billions struggle to understand what that means before the end. Heaven is just a good of structure as any, should the purpose be peace and ease into the transition. Yet in its present state it is both the treat and the stick driving us towards someone else’s structure of a modern society.

That to me is no Heaven. Mine has all you can eat chicken. And light sabers.

Some Thoughts:

1. No Bonkers Headline. No internet. Heck, the closest I can get is remembering that I read a story this morning about Pre. Trump pulling up to the Supreme Court only to hear them shellack his lawyers’ argument against birthright citizenship. Why was he there? Intimidation? Grandstanding? I know he felt that these people he put in the seat would certainly do right by him if he were there. I also think he thinks there’s a lot of wink and nod type behavior about to unfold. I hope he is dead wrong.
2.  

Something really funny happens after you haven’t eaten “real” food for a few days. You start to taste things you haven’t before. I use this salad dressing by Braggs which has all kinds of stuff in it, and this is the first time I tasted the actual oils in the texture of the sauce. Yes, I know it is odd to call dressing sauce, but you get the idea. There are things we ignore because of frequency. I spent the last two days consuming three bowls of oatmeal a day with the occasional grape, banana, and once, watermelon and nut clusters additives. The goal was a cleanse. Mission accomplished, I suppose. I don’t know that the BP dropped to the level I hoped, but I know it reset me physically. My stomach is moving in a positive direction at least.

Also moving in a positive direction is the recruiting situation for the youngest of dem franchise boys. We’re off to Tulane shortly for a chance to see what kind of team they are and what kind of opportunities he may have here following his senior season. Most offers are not signable until you show up in person, so we are showing up. Tulane is a CFP playoff team and an offer from such a caliber of squad is an excellent oportuniry. What that actually means is yet to be determined, which is why we have to empty the wallet and hit the road. Sadly, the wallet it empty now, so future teams are going to need to foot the travel bill.

I hope they will.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “A South African politician goes snorkeling in a giant pothole to highlight city management failures” No, seriously! The picture is wild.
2. Also.. “Tennessee librarian fired for refusing to move more than 100 books from children’s to adult section” She fought to protect kid hits such as, “Larry the Farting Leprechaun” which does not belong on any adult shelf whatsoever. We’re in the midsts of a culture war, folks. Hold on to your garters and bibles…

Day two of the Oatmeal cleanse. I’m officially not about this life. It is helping me recognize how much I actually enjoy food that tastes good. I get to enjoy a little of that tomorrow and a bit more when I visit Tulane later this week. That visit is the first of a handful of college visits for my youngest as he settles in to deciding where he is going to college. Tulane, Hawaii, Idaho, and Northern Arizona have officially offered scholarships. There have been conversations with Northern Iowa and New Mexico, the former being the result of his brother playing there and hopefully becoming a leader on the field this year. Note: I don’t think he’d ever admit it, but, beyond following his coach, I think the kid went to UNI in part to play in a dome. He’s never done that as a home player and it is kinda cool.

But this is about food, not football.

I’ve come to terms with the reality that I have high blood pressure and need to monitor it constantly. That means less salt than the average bear, which often translates to less taste than the average bear. This is the reason for the cleanse. I’ll be repeating this behavior every six weeks (in theory). Staring six weeks into the future means staring into the end of the semester and the beginning of summer. That’s a fun exercise. The summer is filled with opportunities to get healthy and to eat a lot of different things. I’ll need to start considering how to balance my eating and keep the pressure down. The goal here is to lower the pressure and create a lifestyle where I get tasty food and it stays low. Yeah, I want all the smoke.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Gulf allies privately make the case to Trump to keep fighting until Iran is decisively defeated” So they really want this thing to spiral? I don’t see how this ends well for the region. What happens when Iran is put down? Who is in charge then? Do we not think people are going to stay mad?
2. Also this: “Army reviewing after helicopters hovered alongside Kid Rock’s swimming pool as he saluted” Why does Kid Rock matter?
3. And this… “Charlie Kirk highway got vetoed in Arizona. Elected officials are citing politics” Because of course they are. If these guys don’t get what they want, they complain and play the victim.