Month: October 2012

37 yrs and I’ve learned something new each one. This year’s lesson is about impressions. See, they change very quickly. People expect a lot of you and then the see how you handle it and they, sometimes, expect far less. How you respond to the decreased pressure says everything about your ability to lead and be successful.

The only problem is I haven’t organized my response to the situation. Not yet. I’m slogging along, trying to assemble the various threads of important activity and doing all of it during business hours and, when possible, between 9 and 2 AM. This of course is unhealthy, because it pares back the couple time I have with my wife to nothing and my time to pursue personal writing to far below nothing.

How do I reconcile this? I am not really sure about that part yet. You’d think after 37 yrs I would have found a way to recognize how my life works on a daily basis and make space for all of the parts of life and forms of happiness I think I need. Sadly, no such luck.

Instead I slip away to the worlds displayed on my TV and live vicariously through the wonderful characters portrayed on screen. TV is a wonderful escape, and everyone needs one. The problem lives in not having the time to escape and to dwell in the now. Or at least in not being able to calculate the time to do both.

Some Thoughts:

1. I have lost every fantasy football match up this season. I am hardly a threat to make the playoffs, which mean $100 gone. Where the f–k did I spend it?

Week two of the me project. I went out and played ball again. This time is was an epic fail. I dropped more balls than I caught. I could not get open. I could hardly stay on my feet. The reason behind this epic nightmare really boils down a very sick three year old and a sleepover.

My eldest had a friend staying over, which meant the youngest was in my room. To make matters worse, he was sick all night long, crying, vomiting, and carrying on. I probably slept 2 hours total last night. I woke up after 8 for an 8:30 game and hustled out of the house without eating or drinking anything. At least I brought a water bottle.

Take it from a 37 yr old with the body of a 49 yr old; you cannot hope to be successful going at it cold like that. Although I didn’t cramp or pull anything, my right knee feels swollen and my legs ache like I replaced all my blood with lactic acid. It is clear that I am out of shape and need to do much more in order to be ready for sundays. I need to be in the gym twice a week at least. I will try to hit the gym on wednesday and, in a few weeks, add friday to the routine. If I can do that, bringing in all of the extra workouts, and do some more on the side with the kids, I will be legitimately game ready in a month.

That is when the pounds will be ready to come off.

I still think like a kid. Sure, I have all the trappings of adulthood. I have the job, the family, the responsibilities, but I think like a kid. I play, I laugh, I run. I want to have fun every day. This different style of thought allows me to really enjoy my everyday and, I believe, connect with my kids on a basic level.

I suspect the problem with modern life is this inability to connect with our own youth vs. behaving like we still are youth. Some grown people will fight wars over imagined slights, harkening back to the machismo of youth. Meanwhile, others may see imagined slights and, like kids, get over it real fast.

I suppose I am making more out of this than I should, and that too is a kid’s approach to life. Everything is bigger. Everything is of the utmost importance and failure hurts real bad–until the next thing comes along. You care about everything everyone thinks about you until you don’t. You fall in love hard and fast and stay in love as long as possible. You eat like a monster and stay thin forever.

I’m rambling now.

Some Thoughts:

1. I put the (I) there, because at some point I want to discuss the possibility that thought itself is an illusion; that we think we think but in fact are hypercomplex self-replicating biological computers merely responding to our programming and processing input. But that is a conversation that cannot be written while watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

I’m watching Rhona Mitri do Cinemax action porn. No nudity for Rhona, but the show usually fills us up with the requisite sex to go along with the violence of each episode. The show is good; a guilty pleasure to whisk away an hour of my friday night better spent writing or grading. I watch because I enjoy it, because it looks great on a 51″ screen, and especially because I think this is where we are headed with TV. The last few notable new shows drifted away from the rote cop and lawyer drama into the realm of the military. Shows like Strike Back, Homeland, and Last Resort draw on our perceptions of the military life and give us civilians and new vets something to stare at.

I cannot speak for the vets. I would not assume that doctors, lawyers, and cops are watching their TV counterparts glorify their trade. Likewise I am not going to assume vets are flooding the chat boards with praise of the old new military genre. Still, there is no question that soldiers are coming home, and people who have no experience with the veteran class have questions about what it is they lived through and may still carry with them. These shows sensationalize that, but they also recognize the soldier as a person and a hero. That is why I think they’re working.

I watch Strike Back for the thrills. I watch Homeland for the intrigue. I watch Last Resort, because I haven’t seen anything like it before. I will continue to watch, and if something new and military comes along, I will be more inclined to watch that too.

Some Thoughts:

1. I had an opportunity to change my vote on the Cardinals game, because I posted after it began. I maintained my integrity and it cost me a win.
2. Feels like I’m getting a handle on my responsibilities for the semester. The difficult part is to sit down and really get out from under the work and to a place where I can mark priorities and push through what needs to be done inside the classroom, in the office, and in my writing life.
3. Vegas trip this November with some great friends and coworkers. I’m excited!

A broken clock is right twice a day. Unfortunately, one that works can be wrong all the time. My fantasy season is starting to shape up that way. For starters, I benched the 49’rs Defense and they had the greatest defensive performance of this young season. On the other hand, my pick ’em success has been a real ego boost for me. The trend continued this week with a 9-6 record. Some of the picks were (failures in red):

BAL over CLE
SF over NYJ
ATL over CAR
CHI over DAL
GB over NO
HOU over TEN
MIN over DET
ARI over MIA
STL over SEA 

BUF over NE 
KC over SD
OAK over DEN
JAC over CIN
TB over WAS
NYG over PHI

On to the picks for this week:

AZ over STL
I know I’m posting this as the game is still going on, but this pick came long before the game (that the cards were losing last check) started. The Cardinals will continue to roll until faced with the possibility of playoffs.

MIA over CIN
Miami is on the verge and the QB has stayed loose all season. If Bush can do his thing in the screen game, there will be a reckoning in Cincy.

GB over IND
This could turn into a shootout. I think Rodgers has more ammo in his chamber than Luck.

BAL over KC
No comment needed.

NYG over CLE
I almost called this the other way. Giants are dejected following a close loss in Philly.

PIT over PHI
PIttsburgh doesn’t have the same sort of history with PHI that the G-Men do, which means that they won’t be worried and will handle their biz–especially after watching tape on the pass rush last week.

ATL over WASH
Falcons are used to the VIck type. That’s all we need to know.

CAR over SEA
As a home game, I give this to Carolina.

CHI over JAC
Jacksonville is not a good team. I feel that they are a worse offensive engine than the Bears and definitely don’t have the defensive capacity of the Bears D. Fact is, Jacks may have hit their win quota for the year.

MIN over TEN
I can’t express how surprising this season has been. MIN is back and in charge of their destiny to a certain extent. They have the chance to be a wildcard team. TEN does not. I expect Johnson to continue striving for 100 yds. So long as he has Hassleback, he’ll get it.

DEN over NE
NE had to resort to the run game and the D in order to survive the best BUF could offer prior to the implosion. Now, DEN is not BUF. I don’t think Brady is the QB he used to be and that is going to show against this solid defensive unit.

SF over BUF
See above re: implosion. BUF is done for the year.

NO over SD
The line must be drawn here. NO cannot go 0-5. Nope.

HOU over Jets
Another season long past the sell-by date. Very sad for my team…

I am not sure when the cycle began. Maybe it was the moment my son ran into my room screaming and calling out apologies. It might have been the moment before, when I heard the ceiling fan come apart in his room. The more I struggle to recall the starting point, the more glimpses of dismay slide into focus. There was the moment after My son’s music concert last night when the strap came loose from my $200 camera and it crashed to the ground. The flat tire signal coming on. The strange sounds the car made all throughout the evening and well into this new day. Then, of course, there is the matter of the missing wallet.

I cannot say when it went missing. The range of time spirals outward from school night at McDonalds, where I last used it. I noticed the missing wallet this morning and have since been frantically searching for it to no avail. As I write this post I am taking a break from cleaning my car. Any hope that it slipped out of my pocket and on to the car floor faded with the writing of these words.

I have never really lost a wallet, so I have a lot to learn about replacing all of the cards and information I stored there. I have experienced a spin cycle, or downward spiral, or black cloud–whatever name people use these days to express those moments of utter hopelessness where everything seems to turn out wrong. I am hoping some things turn out right, or at least I can find the start time, so I have a better sense of when this nightmare will end.

This sort of thing comes around once a year at least. The duration often depends on the intensity, and it is generally limited to electronics. Since this has nothing to do with electronics, I might be experiencing something else entirely; some new form of trial designed to test me in ways I would not have imagined.

Or maybe it is penance for giving that horrible TV show, Revolution, a second chance last night. The moment I hit record on the DVR I knew I was making a mistake. No matter the cause or outcome, the real battle is how I deal with this adversity as it happens.

So far, I think I am holding up okay.

The night came crashing down in the form of a ceiling fan blade still attached to its metal arm. A child followed screaming hysterically. Amidst the tears and pleas for forgiveness he managed to give this account:

He was snug in his loft bed when he realized that his clothes were still on. He did what any five year old child would do; he pulled off his shirt and shorts and tossed them to the ground. Only, the shorts never landed. He looked out towards the ceiling fan, which was no longer rotating but instead whirring angrily. There he found his shorts wedged between a blade and the base. He watched this curiously, wondering first how it happened and then what would happen next. There was a sound like metal tearing and the fan blade became unmoored from the fan. It fell to the ground with a loud thunk! The boy, now realizing the terrible thing he’d done, began to panic. He started to cry. He ran towards my room screaming, “It was an accident!”

I joined the story here. At first I thought he took a life given how panicked he was. Turns out he thought he took his own life, or that I would take it at the tail end of a glorious beating sure to find me incarcerated or worse. The thunk was the first I heard of the trouble. I followed him back to the room asking what happened. When I saw the fan his shrill cries for mercy leapt three octaves.

I did not beat the child with the fan blade as he suspected. The loss of the $100 fan made me sad, but seeing his condition was punishment enough for the atrocity. Of course, I let him know he was on probation. One slip up and punishment will reign. As for the fan, we don’t have a replacement. Their room is directly above the garage and hot enough that the fan was the only thing keeping them cool at night.

I’m still looking for ways to cool that space down.

Some Thoughts:

I was thinking about Ann Coulter again. While searching for video clips for my SOC/ENG learning community I stumbled across some of her videos. The one that set me off was when she said she wished we could get to the point where we admitted we elected a leader simply because of the color of his skin. I thought, well can we get to the point where we admit that said leader has qualities of value that extend far beyond the color of his skin? It is that line of thinking that drags me back into the political foray yet again. Watching the news, even CNN, I am left to wonder if the 24 hr news orgs are actively trying to make this a real political race if for no other reason than to have airtime. It wouldn’t be the first time a news org elevated the importance of an event simply to sell adspace and attract viewers. Casey Anthony comes to mind.

I realize this isn’t Waiver Wednesday, but I spent a great deal of time today playing football and then watching it. The first hour or two was simply me on the ground looking up at the TV, because the legs wouldn’t work. That is what happens when you haven’t worked cardio for years and then run routes for two hours. Those two hours are my new weekly fix. I was welcomed into the weekend warrior community in a 2 hr football fest where I caught as many balls as I dropped–including a nice touchdown catch and a terrible TD drop in the endzone.

Once the playing was over I went on to watch my favorite teams play as my fantasy team has played: badly. The Jets were blown out at home while the Giants reminded America that they have no answer for the Eagles, dropping 8 out of the last 9 contests. The reason this climbs out of Waiver Wednesday is the emotional let down the losses brought.

I don’t know why people love sports to the point of emotional attachment, but we do become involved with our teams. We become rabid and we live and die by their actions. It feels like a biological thing; a way that we stay connected to the lizard brain and the us vs. them mentality. As evolved as I want to believe I am, I need that us vs. them fix. It gets my blood up. Sadly, when the Giants and especially Jets are involved, it can also get my sadness up.