What else is there?

Revival

2007-11-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

I've put off writing about this for some time because I don't want to jinx it. Last fall, a majority of my blogs consisted of my fascination/obsession/disappointment of Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers. Last New Year's Eve after Brett cried on national television after the Bears' game, I was convinced that he was through. On Super Bowl week-end, though, he announced he was coming back for more. I made up mind at that point that I would not miss one play of this season, no matter how bad it was or how good it was. I resigned myself to the fact that this truly would be his last season. In September, I ordered Direct TV so I could get the NFL package and I have not missed one play of the Packers' ten games this year. They have won nine of those games and probably should've won the one they lost, but I can't complain. Favre has had a revival this year. If it wasn't for Tom Brady's ridiculous year, I think Brett would be the leading candidate for MVP. It would be his fourth, which would be a record. Speaking of records, this year he has broken the record for most wins, most touchdowns, most completions, most attempts, and most interceptions. And he's not doing it because he's just hanging around. He's winning games. Two of my favorite Packer regular season games happened this year: the San Diego upset in week three when Favre hit Greg Jennings on a slant to win the game with just under two minutes left and the overtime touchdown pass to Jennings on Monday night football in Denver a few weeks ago. The first ten games have helped lift the Packers to their best start since Lombardi walked the sidelines at Lambeau.

It's Thanksgiving Day and the Packers play the Lions in about two hours. I'm not sure how this season will end, but I'm trying not to think about that right now. I'm trying enjoy each game because I know that I don't have that many more left to watch Brett Favre play. I don't know how far they'll go in the play offs this year or if they'll even make it. They could collapse today and lose the rest of their games, but I don't think that will happen. I don't know what will happen and that's the dichotomy of being a sports fan: the moment always seems bigger than it is whether it's good or bad. That's also the beauty of sports: there's always next week or next year and you keep holding onto that, waiting for the perfect season or that magical game. This has been my most enjoyable season as a Packer fan since I started following them in 1993. I think the reason is that the expectations weren't that great for this team coming into this year. I was just hoping that Green Bay would play some important December games and maybe make the play offs. Well, here we are: 9-1 in November, tied for first in the NFC with the Cowboys. I don't know where it's going or where it will end up, but I know that I'll look back on this season at some point down the road and know that it was special...or at least had the chance to be.

Back For More

2007-10-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

I was pretty sure that no one read this blog even when I updated it semi-regularly last fall and into the winter, but now I'm positive that if there was the faint bit of interest in it, it's gone because I haven't written a new post since the beginning of June. The thing is, though, is that I don't think I've ever really written anything on here with the intention of someone else reading it...I guess I've written it with the only audience in mind being myself. I know that sounds somewhat arrogant, but I'm probably somewhat arrogant, so there you go.

I guess probably in the last month I've wanted/needed to write something on here, even though I'm not sure if any of the posts would've had any point to them or had any direction whatsoever. And basically I can feel myself slipping into a disjointed post as I'm typing this sentence, so let's focus this right now before it gets completely scattered.

I never realized how much I need my left ring finger. No, I need it. I know "need" is a strong word, but hear me out. For the last two years, I have worked out consistently. I've probably not had longer than 10 days away from the gym. Now, looking at me you probably wouldn't think that. I'm not big, I don't have big muscles, my chest doesn't stick through my shirt, but I've always worked out. I don't do it to look a certain way (maybe I do a little), but I do it because there are some things you just need to physically work out of your body. Things that maybe you don't know how to get out emotionally. Maybe types of stress that build up and the only way to get them out is to run or, in my case, lift. Maybe you feel a little bit better about yourself when you look in a mirror and you look pretty good. Maybe you feel good because you're healthy and you have energy and you feel strong. Maybe it's all of that stuff, but I can't really describe in words the feeling I have after I have a good work-out...I just know that when I leave the gym, I've left a lot of other stuff there that I carried in with me. I also can measure tangibly how much I am improving in the gym. There's a competition with myself that I'm constantly trying to win. I'm trying to one-up myself from a week ago or a month ago or a year ago. There's a sense of accomplishment when I consistently improve on my past performances. I say all that, to say that I haven't been able to do any of that in the last three weeks. I broke my left ring finger three weeks ago playing flag football. Turns out, I broke in the worst way possible. Basically, the piece of bone beside my joint that holds another bone in place, shattered and tore some tendons along with it meaning the only way to fix it would be to have it surgically repaired. I had surgery two weeks ago today and I've been to two therapy sessions trying to regain mobility in my finger. I essentially have no grip in my left hand right now. I probably have only 75% of my grip with my right hand because I broke my right ring finger in college (but not nearly as bad) and never got it fixed.

I never quite grasped the importance (at least for me personally) of physical exercise. Its effects are rarely seen when consistently used, but when it is absent from my life, I find how much I depend on it. Having said that, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I guess everyone needs an outlet. I'm a physical person: I have a lot of energy, I like to do things, I like to be active. It's only natural that my outlet involves physical activity.

This week I was able to get back in the gym for the first time since I broke my finger. It's been sort of like starting over, but I can already feel myself getting back to normal.

A Few Favorites

2007-06-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post about some of the stuff I've been into lately, but I just haven't had time. I'm making some time now. First things first: "The Office" is the best show on television, hands down. Actually, since I only watch two ("Lost" is the other one) I guess I don't have a lot to go on. But I'd be willing to bet that "The Office" is the best show on television. Now that that's out of the way...let's move on. If I was leaving tomorrow and couldn't carry my ipod and only could carry five books and five cd's (and a cd player, of course, with unlimited batteries) here are the ones I would carry (in order from best to not best):

Books: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving, "The Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving, "Joe Dimaggio: A Hero's Life" by Richard Ben Cramer, "Forever" by Pete Hamil.

Albums: "Cold Roses" by Ryan Adams, "Across A Wire: Double Live Album" by Counting Crows, "The River" by Bruce Springsteen, "DwightYoakamacoustic.net" by Dwight Yoakam, "9 Crimes" by Damien Rice.

Some movies I've seen recently (within the last four months): Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Stranger Than Fiction, Garden State, The Illusionist, Down in the Valley, The Proposition, Winter Passing, Fracture, Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Great Gatsby, Ghost Rider (terrible)

You should check out a singer named Brandi Carlile...just bought her cd "The Story"...good stuff. Also, Ryan Adams has a new one coming out at the end of the month that everyone is saying is his best yet. Anyway, sorry this is so random. I'll try and get some pics up soon.

Cyclical

2007-05-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post a year ago today talking about the end of the school year and graduation. I can't believe a year has gone by that fast, and last night, I found myself once again chaperoning project graduation and thinking the same things I thought last year. I've said before that I love working in the education field because there are definite beginnings and endings to each year. There are certain feelings that go along with each part of each year, but the thing I love most is that you can measure each year for what it is. You can compare one year to another. Barring any unfortunate incidents in these next two weeks, I would have to say this has been my favorite year of the four years I've been at my school. This has also been the most challenging year.

I am the middle school guidance counselor at the school where I work. I also teach two upper school Psychology classes, so I feel like am very involved in both the upper and middle school. During the fall, I feel sharp and on top of everything. I am very energetic and this year was no different. The first three months of the year were very crisp and tight. I attended a coaching convention in St. Louis and my wife and I went to New York for five days in October. Basketball season started in October, as well, and I enjoyed this season more than the previous three. When Christmas arrived, I couldn't have asked for a better first semester.

The begninning of January is the second busiest time of the year for me. We register seventh and eighth grade students for tests and then give the tests and collect the tests and send them off and wait to get them back and then mail them out to the families. We also have the DUKE talent test for seventh grade students that takes place the third Saturday in January. We usually spend a week reviewing them for the test. January always flies by. This year my wife and I also had our first baby on January 22. On the 29th, we finished out our middle school season in a great way...you can read about it here. Three days later, our school lost one of its students. The year never really fell back into rythym after that. February and March sort of floated by while we tried to figure out what our new "normal" was going to be. In April, I helped chaperone our 8th grade trip to New York and for the last week and half, I've been doing make-up standardized tests.

Last Friday night our Upper School had its awards night. For two and a half hours, we listened to the achievements of our students. The list was quite impressive. At the end, we watched a photo slide show of the student who passed away in February. Had it only been three months since that had happened? It felt like three years. We had become used to our new normal and that's all you can really hope for, I guess. As a collective group, we had picked up the pieces and moved on as best we could. The slide show brought back a little of the feeling of those few days in February when I was exhausted from being a new father and exhausted from the emotion that pressed itself on the school for those few weeks after the accident. I think sometimes we need to be reminded of those times that push us or challenge us, so that they don't become silent pictures in our heads.

Each year brings its own events and personality, but the skeleton outline is always the same. It's always cyclical. I think that's why I like education so much...because I hate change. I love knowing what to expect each year, but also knowing that each year will bring its own challenges.

Disappearing Act

2007-03-30T18:04:00.000-07:00

My principal is retiring at the end of this year. She hired me four years ago and working under her has been very rewarding both professionally and personally. We have a lot in common even though she's close to forty years older than I am. I remember being in the hospital back in January when Jordan was born and texting my principal. I mean, how cool is it that a sixty-something year old texts. That's just how she is. There have been many afternoons over the past four years where I've sat in her office and talked about music, our fascination with cults, or just listened to her stories about her life. She tells great stories. Two days ago, we talked in her office after school for one of the last times, I'm sure. Our topics ranged from computers to Charles Manson and finally to losing touch with people from our past.

What was most interesting about the last part of our conversation was how different our perspectives were on people who we haven't seen in awhile. Even though there's a considerable age gap between us and she's from another generation, it's never felt that way until that afternoon. She was talking about how many people she has lost contact with from her past. We both agreed that it was like people just vanish from the face of the earth when you lose contact, but the difference in my generation and her generation is the means of communication. With the evolution of the Internet and my space and blogs and basically any search engine, you can find people that have "vanished" and pull them back to the present if you want to (and if they want to). Who hasn't ever been bored and decided to plug random names from the past into Google or my space and see what pops up? She told me she wouldn't really know where to begin with something like that.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I question whether or not this access to finding people is a good thing. Sometimes when people "vanish" or just fade away over time it's best to leave them there. I'm beginning to think that certain people only fit in certain contexts of my life and to try and bring them back or reconnect with them would leave me disappointed. I think there's a circle of friends and family that stay with you throughout your life. And every time you see them, you pick back up from where you were the last time you were together. Then there are others who fall along the way or disappear and it's best to let them go. I've tried to hold on to more than a few people for nothing more than nostalgic purposes and, more often than not, we seem to lose touch anyway.

I guess that's why our brains are designed to remember emotional experiences. The people that are worth remembering will always be somewhere in my mind. And over time parts of those memories will pull a disappearing act, but the ones that are most important will stay where they are. The people who have vanished are somewhere else now and I'm sure (if I was important enough) I've got a place somewhere in there memories as well.

Spring River

2007-03-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

I had one of those dreams last week. You know, one of those where you wake up and think, "Where the hell did that come from?" It was one of those that felt like you were living it until the very moment you start to come back to consciousness and then you realize it's not real. And you have that disappointing feeling that you're losing something that you never really had in the first place. I've always had those dreams. When I was younger I would dream that way about the ocean. I loved the ocean and wanted so badly to be there. I would almost will myself to dream about it. Usually what would happen though, is that in my dream I would be riding in a car and I would see palm trees and I would know that the ocean was close by, but I never could quite get to it before I woke up. After awhile, I wasn't even tricked into thinking I was actually there...I had the dream sequence memorized. After only a few minutes I would realize I was dreaming and the disappointment would come back again. As I've grown older, these dreams don't happen as much and they never include the ocean. I guess, maybe, my subconscious has settled and I have everything I want or need. In the last few years, though, these types of dreams pop out of nowhere from time to time. The difference in the newer version of these dreams is that I am going back in time to a place I used to go when I was younger. My friend, Ben, and his family would take me camping in Arkansas at least twice a year from the time I was in the third grade until I was a junior in high school.

This river was beautiful. There were some rapids and some calm parts. The water was green and moved along at the foot of the Ozarks and there were hills all around. The water was also very cold...about 65 degrees actually. There were little islands that caused the river to fork at places and eventually it would find its way back together. There were rope swings and inner tubes all along the river. We would walk the railroad tracks with our tubes on our backs about two miles up river and put in and float all the way down to our campsite. We did this every summer. It never got old. I think the river always had some mystical quality about it. At night Ben's dad would tell us ghost stories while we laid in the camper. He would tell us of the "Spring River Hacker" and make it sound so believable that we thought we heard footsteps outside. Our third summer there we noticed one of the rope swings had been cut down and we found that a young man had slipped and busted his head on the tree and died. We would talk about how many bodies were at the bottom of that river and that only added to our fascination. There was a tunnel under the tracks with the date "1902" carved at the top. We would make up stories about people who had worked the railroads. At night we would hunt for crawdads and cook them over the fire while we listened to Hank Williams, JR. and George Jones or some AM country music station we picked up in Missouri. Ben and I made our last trip when we were Juniors in high school.

Almost two years ago, I convinced one of my friends to go there with me camping. It was late March and a cold snap moved through just was we were there. We only stayed two days and it was at a different camp site, but it still had the same pull over me. We planned another trip for later that summer with our wives and another couple. We went in late June, on a week-end and stayed at the same camp site that I used to stay at when I was younger. Everything was different. The river was overcrowded with drunks in canoes, the water seemed lower than used to be, and snakes were everywhere. I went out into the water at dusk, like Ben and I used to do, but this time no one wanted to go with me. I waded out by myself and ended up swimming out to where the first rope swing used to be...the one where the guy died. There was another one in its place and there were some teen age boys taking turns swinging off of it. I climbed onto the bank and then climbed the tree as the rope swung back to me. I grabbed it and took a couple of seconds to think about it, then I jumped. Not as far down as I remember. I landed in the current and let it me take down river a little ways before I made my way back up stream to sit on the falls and watch the moss wash down the river just like it used to at the end of every day all those years ago.

I haven't been back since then. I'm not sure if I ever will go back. I'm getting tired of outgrowing things now. I want some things to still have more meaning than they probably should. I don't want Spring River to lose any more mysticism than it already has. I'll just visit it in my dreams and live with the disappointment of waking up.

Endings are not always sad

2007-02-19T13:21:00.000-08:00

This summer I wrote about how this would probably be Brett Favre's last season to play football and I went into the long list of memories I had of him playing throughout his career. In the last paragraph, I wrote that "endings are always sad". Last month something happened that made me change my mind.

I coach middle school girls and boys basketball. In the four years I've been there we've had some pretty good teams. At the end of every season we would take our teams to the T-N-T state middle school tournament outside of Nashville. Last year our girls won the tournament to finish 21-0 on the season. The feeling at the end of the game was great, but I also felt a little empty...like, "what do I do now"? At the end of every season, I feel a little disoriented and it takes a couple of weeks to move on. This year was different. It was the first year I didn't feel that way.

Our girls team this year was not as good as last year's team talent wise, but finished a very respectable 14-6. I had more fun this year than I did last year. The girls were very coachable and improved a great deal over the course of the season. Their attitudes were great and they played hard every single game. We decided not to go to the T-N-T tournament this year because it stretches our season out too long and the drive every week-end is not worth it. At the end of our last game we talked to our girls in the locker room and I haven't felt more satisfied about a team. We left the locker room knowing we had given our best the whole season and won more games than we probably should have.

Joe North and I coach both the boys and girls, so after we left the girls in the locker room we went out to coach the boys. Our boys team was talented, but small. I believe we finished the season with a losing record, but it didn't feel that way. The team we were playing that night was 0-18 and we knew we would end our season with a win. Before the game, their coach (who I knew from college) approached me and told me that he was going to let his manager dress out for this game. His manager was named Cody and Cody has Down's Syndrome. The coach told me he was going to put Cody in at the end of the game and he (the coach) asked if we would let him shoot a few shots. I told him of course and so we told our players what the plan was. By halftime, we led by 20 and at the end of the third quarter the game was all but over. Our 7th grade players were in by the time Cody entered the game. Garrett (the opposing coach) had marked an "x" with athletic tape so Cody would know where to stand on the court. We called a time-out and told our kids what to do. We lost the ball and Crockett County (the opposing team) dribbled down and passed it to Cody. He shot and missed and we got the rebound, then lost the ball back to him and he shot and scored. Every fan in the gym stood and cheered. I looked down at our bench and every one of our players was standing and cheering. Crockett County got the ball back and Cody scored again. He jumped up and down on his "x" that had been marked for him. We got the ball and went down the court and I noticed Cody staying on his end giving a thumbs up sign to his coach. Then I saw him leave the "x" and drift to the three point line. His teammate passed him the ball and he shot a three that was only about an inch short. He got it back and heaved the ball again. Nothing but net. The gym was deafining. I was jumping up and down, our kids were jumping up and down. The whole place was excited. The buzzer sounded and the game was over. Cody's teammates hugged him. Our guys gave him high fives and we went to our locker room to close out the season. I think everyone in our locker room knew we had ended the season the way we were supposed to. As I was walking across the court I saw Cody and his coach share a hug in the doorway of the locker room. You couldn't have scripted it better.

The next day Cody's mother emailed the school and thanked us for doing what we did. We should've thanked her and her son for helping us make the end of our season worthwhile. Endings aren't always sad. They're only sad if you have regrets about not doing the right thing.

Two weeks

2007-02-04T06:52:00.000-08:00

Jordan is nearly two weeks old now. If you want to be exact, she's thirteen days. It's gone by fast, but thirteen days ago seems like forever. I don't know if that makes sense or not. Regardless, a lot has happened in these past thirteen days...a few lives have been changed. Almost everyone told me that my life would change forever once Jordan was born, but I don't feel like a different person. I still feel like me with just a little bit less time to do some of the things I used to do. There wasn't some giant epiphany or Damascus road light, there was just a baby. And she wakes up a couple times a night and I don't sleep as much as I did two weeks ago, but I'm used to it now. I keep her awake after Davina feeds her so she can stay on a schedule. I try to burp her and change her as best I can and then we put her down again. And we go through the same ritual an hour and a half later. She cries some and stares at nothing a lot. We're seeing a little personality, but nothing big. She's just a baby. She's just someone who's dependent on us for everything and we're doing our best to do what's best for her. Right now is the easy part. She's around one of us every second of every day. There's nothing to worry about now. At some point down the road there will be: "why isn't she answering her phone?", "why is she out past curfew?", "is she really where she says she is?". I like this part now and I didn't think I would. I know I'll miss it when it's gone.

Last Thursday night, I got a call at home from my principal telling me that three of our students had been in a wreck and one had died. I made my way to the hospital and stayed up there until twelve that night. There were at least 60 other students there showing support. The next day the counseling staff and the headmaster met at school and we stayed there five hours mapping out the day for Monday, trying to figure out what the best decisions to make were. Last night, there was a visitation for the student who passed away and once again there were many kids there supporting the family. I spoke with the parents of the boy who passed away and left not having any idea of what they were going through. I cannot imagine it. The only thing I kept thinking about was what it must have been like when their child was two weeks old. I guess that's all I could relate to that situation. Did they hold him and say things in choppy words and make stupid noises like I do with Jordan? Did they tense up and want to pull their hair out when he screamed at two o'clock in the morning? I do that now. I'm sure they did all those things that I'm doing now with my daughter. I don't know what it's like to lose a child...I don't even know what it's like to watch a child grow up, but I know that I like where I am right now with my daughter. I get to hold her when I want to and make every decision for her. I know I won't always be able to do that. One day she'll have her own thoughts and her own decisions to make and at some point I will cease to be the biggest influence in her life. Maybe I underestimated how much I would like the newborn stage.

The Tipping Point

2007-01-25T17:38:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to pass along a friend's blog: www.audra45277.blogspot.com. Check it out...she's just started it.

Words

2007-01-25T17:27:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing I don't understand: I can write about my dogs, the softball team I used to coach, Brett Favre (like, twelve times), the state of politics/evangelical culture, and other things that are not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. For the life of me, though, I cannot find the words to say about being a new father.

Jordan was born on January 22 at 6:45 pm. She weighed 9 lbs. My wife was awesome during the delivery. I tried to be awesome with her, but I had it easy. We brought her home yesterday and had our first night with her at home last night. She had her first bath about an hour ago and is now asleep. My head feels like it's swimming in emptiness.

I wish I could communicate with you (whoever reads this blog) about how I feel, but I can't find the words to tie all of it together. Sometimes you don't need the words, though. I think maybe words might get in the way of this one.

Sometimes it just works

2007-01-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

I think if you could characterize our culture in one word...if you had to just pick one, I think you could safely use the word "egocentric". Basically, "egocentric" is a fancy way of saying that someone is spoiled. If you wanted to go a little deeper than that, then you could say self-absorbed and if you still weren't satisfied you could boil it down to its essence by saying that if a person was "egocentric" then they believed that everything revolved around them, that everyone cared about what they had to say and that they rarely take others' feelings into consideration. I think that word fits. I've been accused of being egocentric and I probably am on a regular basis. There are a lot of tools (blogs, my space, face book, etc.) that we use when we assume people actually want to know what we think about certain things. This is our world. A world of TV and radio hosts who talk just to be heard. We're egocentric and we think everyone wants to know what we have to say...but sometimes they don't.

I've been relatively close to a situation over the past few months that some people have felt inclined to opine on for lack of a better word. They thought their advice was wanted and they thought their opinion mattered to the people involved. At first, I was one of those people who thought my opinion should be given. Only later did I realize that not only was my opinion not needed, but that my opinion of the situation completely changed.

My friend Michael has always been a little....secretive shall we say. You know, always held his cards close to his vest so to speak. That's never been an issue really, basically I ask him about stuff and he gives me a run around or some bullshit story. I've learned to deal with it. Anyway, one day last summer he finally came out and told me that he was dating someone. "No big deal", I thought. Actually, I was a little relieved because there was some talk going around that he might be...well, you know...that maybe he didn't like girls. Anyway, the catch in the situation was when he told me who he was dating. You see there was somewhat of an age discrepancy there and Michael and I had been her after school care teachers when we were in college. It's okay if you're feeling a little strange about this. I did at first, too. I actually laid down on my bedroom floor when he told me. At first I didn't know what to think, then I didn't think I liked it and I told him. But that was all before I had a chance to give Audra a fair shake.

Over the last few months, I've been able to get to know Audra for who he she is at this time in her life. She is funny, creative, and has the sort of sense of humor that Michael has. She is really nothing like I thought she would be or like I thought she was to begin with. She loves people and she does not think like your normal nineteen year old. She's actually more mature than Michael and I put together. I know that's not saying much, but it says enough for me.

There will always be people who will always give their opinions and think that people want to hear them. They will reason and debate and do all of this in the most "caring" manner, all the while failing to see how insignificant they are in the situation. I'm sure people have offered all kinds of "advice" to Michael and Audra over these last few months. I know I did. But here's the thing people fail to understand: sometimes it just works. Sometimes things just happen and you would never expect them to or you might even question it if you're not around it. I've been around it, I've seen it and it works. It works beautifully.

I'm not sure exactly when I changed my mind about this situation. I don't really think it happened all at once. The more time I spent around Michael and Audra, the more I understood how much about them that this was. It wasn't about me or anyone else who cared to throw their piece into the hat. I saw how they were around each other and at first it made me a little queasy, but after that I really saw what they meant to each other. It's a good thing...and it's their thing....and it works.

The man of the hour has taken his final bow

2006-12-31T23:22:00.001-08:00

It's a Pearl Jam song tonight (the title of my post). I'm not nearly as embarassed about this one.

It's 1:26 in the morning on the first day of 2007. Ten years ago tonight, my car was stuck in a field and I was hoping my dad wouldn't find out how it got there. The Packers were three weeks away from winning the Super Bowl and Brett Favre had just won his second MVP.

Tonight it's a little different. New Year's Eve was good. Chad and Jada and Davina and I went to eat dinner at a nice resturant. I recorded the Packers' game at home and after we ate we went to a friends' house where we drank and sang kareoke. They had the game on at their house and I watched the end of it over there. I watched as Favre was taken out of the game with under two minutes to go and Donald Driver carried him off the field. I watched the post game interview where Favre teared up and talked about how much the game meant to him. I went home and watched it two more times. I watched the pre-game show and the interview with John Madden and I am starting to understand that this is it. He has done everything but say it. Brett Favre is done. He is leaving.

"The man of the hour has taken his final bow, as the curtains come down, I guess that it's just goodbye for now."

Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same

2006-12-28T17:45:00.000-08:00

Pardon me for titling my post using lyrics from a Keane song...I'm a little embarassed that I did that, but that song has been in my head all day and it seems appropriate.

As I mentioned in some previous posts, I teach school. I also coach. I help coach boys and girls' middle school basketball. I love it. I know a little bit about basketball and I like to teach what I know to the kids. I'm comfortable with basketball, I know what to expect and I usually know what to do in certain situations. I also helped coach high school softball my first two years and it was one of the most rewarding decisions I have ever made.

It started as a favor for one of my friends at the school. He was coaching softball and did not have an assistant. I was already committed to the baseball team as an assistant coach for them, but the chance to work with my friend and also have about fifteen less games was enticing. I ran it across the baseball coach and he said no problem, but he thought I was making a mistake and that I wouldn't have as much fun. The first year was great and we made it to the game before the state tournament. We lost 12-5 to a team we should have beaten, one of our players got in a fight and I was ejected. It was a horrible way to end the season. The girls cried, my buddy cried, I cried (and I don't cry). I remember them all sitting in a circle and Jody (my friend and the head coach) talking to them and his sentences and words being broken up by his voice shaking. My wife and I went to eat after the game, but I had no appetite. I didn't want to talk, I just felt like sleeping. I just wanted to go to bed. It felt like someone close to me had died. I can't describe it any other way. That's just how it felt. I had never felt that with basketball to that point. There was so much emotion and when it was over it was heartbreaking. The picture is of our region championship on May 16, 2004.

The next season wasn't nearly as successful. We picked it up towards the end and were only one game short from our previous season. At the end of the season, Jody resigned as coach and I picked up Middle School girls' basketball, so I dropped softball and I didn't think I would regret it. I did. I still do, but I know it won't be the same if I go back. Jody's gone, some of the girls I was closest to are gone and I wouldn't want to try to replace those two years with something that would only fall short.

Tonight, we had dinner with Jody and his family. His wife was saying how it was sad to see how fast her kids were growing. They are only three and two years old, but she said it has gone by so fast. I understood what she was saying. Soon I 'll be saying that. I already know how it feels.

Last night I was lying in bed and I could feel the dampness of an early April night after a game. I could smell the mix of grass with the dew that had settled with the darkness. And I miss it all the time. I miss the cold February practices, I miss hitting balls as high as I could to the outfield, I miss coaching first base, I miss the bus rides to away games, I miss being made fun of by the girls, I miss it all. I miss the way the dirt smelled and I miss the way the air felt when I was driving home in my jeep after a game.

Tomorrow I am eating lunch with two of my former players. They are sophomores in college now. One of them broke her thumb when she was a junior and I used my shirt to stop the bleeding. I helped the other with her senior term paper and rediscovered how much I love Jay Gatsby. I am glad I still keep in touch with them. I hope someday to receive wedding invitations and birth announcements from them. And then maybe I'll feel old. Right now I just miss it.

I see myself in my mirror everyday and it's easy to lose track of time. You get your bearings by watching other people age, not yourself. In about a month, my scale of time will be measured by an infant, then a toddler, then a child, then a pre-teen, then an adolescent and so on. And maybe I'll never feel the same. Everybody's changing and I don't know why.

All for a Tree

2006-12-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

For the last few years, Davina and I have driven about thirty minutes outside of Jackson to a Christmas tree farm and picked out our own, live Christmas tree. This year we decided to do it again. Our schedules are pretty packed, so anytime during the week is out and that only leaves Saturday or Sunday. And since Sunday is Favre's day (oh, I mean the Lord's day) we can't do it then. There was only one problem with this past Saturday: Davina had signed us up for birthing classes. That's right: all day, 9-3. In this class, we learned about all the great things that happen to the body while it is pregnant. We even got to see a live birth on tape. And that's something I never, ever, ever, ever want to see again. I had balked at the idea of this class all week, but Davina wanted to go, so we went. Well, about an hour and a half into it, Davina realized it was a waste of time (and money), so we started making our plans for the rest of the afternoon.

We finished the class at three and headed for the Christmas tree farm. We got there about 3:45 and started on our quest for the tree. For some reason, Davina wanted a Virginia pine instead of a White pine. Well, actually the reason was that a Virginia pine would fit in front of our dining room window better than a White pine. I, of course, preferred the White pine. After about twenty minutes of discussing this decision and changing our minds, we decided on the White pine. Basically, we decided on that because I played the card of "since you made me go to birthing class, I get to choose the tree." Now we had to choose which White pine we wanted. The first one I saw, Davina said was way too big for our house. See, this year, we have a new house with 12 foot ceilings, so I wanted to take advantage of the extra height. Anyway, the one I wanted actually was too big (even I could tell that), so we continued on. We found another one and I talked Davina into getting this one. This tree would be perfect.

Me and Davina with the tree that was supposed to be perfect. I didn't actually cut it down myself.

After we paid our $52 for the tree and had someone tie it on the top of the car, we headed home. I proceeded to cut the rope and bring the tree inside. Usually, I have no problem carrying the tree in the house, but when I removed the tree from the top of the car, I realized I had no leverage on this thing. I was swaying and trying to keep my balance until I finally dropped it right in the front yard. I had to get Davina to help me carry it in. It was quite an emasculating experience; you know, having your pregnant wife help you carry something. That being said, we managed to drag it into the house and drop it in the living room. It is at this point I realized how gigantic this tree actually was. It also was at this point, that Davina's mood took a turn for the worse. I run upstairs and get the tree stand and attempt to put it on the trunk of the tree...one problem: it's too small. It's actually way too small. I run to the garage and get a saw and begin "shave" some inches off the width of the trunk. In the process of this "shaving" I cut my left three times with the saw and begin to bleed on the floor and the tree. I wipe my hand on my jeans and, apparently, this is a big deal because Davina then scolds me for wiping my blood on my jeans because blood is hard to get out. I didn't take too kindly to this untimely criticism, so I said a few words back and continued to saw. After 45 more mintues and piles of sawdust in our living room floor, the tree stand still does not fit around the tree. I am now determined to get this damn tree up in our living room, so I head to Lowe's to get a tree stand big enough for the tree. I get to Lowe's and find one...for $55. I buy it because I just don't care anymore. I would've paid $550 for it just so I could get the tree up. I call Davina on my way out of Lowe's to see if she wants me to pick up anything to eat on the way home. I can tell she's not too happy right now, so I just tell her I'm coming straight home. In the meantime, some punk kid honks his horn at me because I didn't recognize the light was green. It was then that I sort of lost it. I pulled onto the road and then turned around and followed him to a parking lot. I pulled up beside him and asked if I knew him...you know, since he honked at me at all. "Oh no, sorry man, I accidentally hit my horn" was his response. Back home now, I get the tree in the stand and stand it up and begin cutting the net off the tree. As I am doing this, branches of the tree are flailing everywhere. They're hitting the walls, they're landing on the dining room table (that was supposed to be not in the way). The tree's so tall that we can't even cut all of the netting off. We had to get a broom and stand in a chair and lift it off. So, there it was in all its glory. It blocked the entire window and stood there like some out of place buffoon. I can't really think of any other way to describe it.

We survived that night, but we still haven't finished decorating it. Believe it or not, it actually looks pretty nice from the road as you're driving toward our house. Hopefully when we're done, I'll have some quality pics on here. It was a good memory for our last Christmas with just us here. I'm sure we'll have many more in the years to come.

Our Heroes Must Never Grow Old

2006-11-29T16:43:00.000-08:00

The most recent cover of Sport Illustrated has Brett Favre on the cover with a hood over his head and graying stubble on his face reminding everyone of what they already know: Brett Favre is close to the end. The way his hood is placed on his head makes him seem almost holy or wise; like someone who has been through many storms and weathered them. We can see the lines on his face and his eyes aren't as wild as they used to be. He seems more settled, more reflective. And lest you chide me for ascribing these characteristics to a "football" player you need to understand that Brett Favre is much more than that to anyone who has even remotely followed this game. He is an ideal, a representation of what the game should be. He is the personification of the prodigal son, the wild man who did things his way. The man who almost went too far, only to stop himself and right his way. The man who slung his grief out of his arm the night after his father died...and did it in front of America. He is the man who was at the top of the game and led his team to the top of the league. He was the wild stallion that was harnessed, the gunslinger who never ran out of bullets, the ironman who has yet to rust. He has done his job without missing a day of work for the last 14 years. He has done this in a violent sport, a sport that thrives on brutality. He has done this in a man's sport. And what we see now is the sunset. It's not quite disappearing yet, but soon it will. And with the sun will go a player that our generation and probably the next will never see the likeness of again.

One of my favorite movies is "Unforgiven". Clint Eastwood stars as William Munny who is a retired bounty hunter who has settled down and started a family and a farm. His young wife dies and he's no good at farming so he sets off on one last job and faces the demons of what it's like to kill again. It's not as easy as it used to be or maybe it never it was. Munny used to be the best, but now he just struggles to get his horse under control. The best gunslinger becomes the old gunslinger: not as fast, not as sharp. But we want him to win, we want him to succeed. Maybe we want it more than we ever have because in the back of our minds we know that it will never be like it was. And we want that, don't we. I know I do. We think if we want it bad enough for them, then they'll win. We try to will them to win, but all the while we see the shadows creeping and it's getting a little darker every minute. And this bothers us. It bothers us because we know we are losing more than person in a uniform or on a screen, we're losing a little bit of what we see in ourselves when we watch that person. We know we're getting older. We know someday we'll not be as fast or as sharp as we once were and that's hard to accept. We want so bad to defy age, to beat time. We inject fluid into our faces and our bodies. We take vitamins, we exercise, we use facial cream, but we know time keeps its steady pace. And when one of our heroes rides off into the sunset, they take a part of us with them.

I haven't read the article in Sports Illustrated, but there's one quote that I've seen and it says this: "Our heroes must never grow old." And I wish that quote were as certain and final as it sounds. It sounds like a decree spoken from someone in authority, like an addendum to the Ten Commandments. If only it were. Maybe if I say it enough, I'll feel that way. Maybe I'll even believe it. But for now, I can just wait and count the strokes of the hands that keep pulling the sun down.

There's someone else now

2006-11-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

I chaperoned a field trip today for our 8th graders. We went to Bowling Green, KY to the National Corvette Museum...for the third year in a row. I actually enjoy the trip. We get to see how a corvette is put together which, for me, is very cool because I have absolutely no idea about anything on, in, or about cars. After we get to walk through the plant and the museum there is a pretty sweet gift shop filled with coffee mugs, shot glasses, and coozies. There's also other stuff, but all of our kids seem to purchase one of the aforementioned items. The last two years I've received a t-shirt as sort of a payment for chaperoning the trip (I also receive a free meal at Ryan's steakhouse, which should be enough). This year the guy that puts the trip together asked me if I wanted a shirt. Now, I've got enough t-shirts to wear a different one everyday for two months in a row, so lately my wife has been griping at me when I come home with another one. She's not really worried about drawer space, she just wants one herself. Last night we won our city league flag football championship and got a...that's right, a t-shirt. I was thoughtful enough to get one for her, too. So, today as I'm standing, trying to figure out which style t-shirt Davina would want, it hits me that I'm now not just thinking about one other person. I've got another one on the way. I make a direct route to the cashier and ask where the baby/children's section is and she points me to the far left corner. I get over there and have absolutely no idea what size I need to get. I grab the smallest one I can find and decide that's the one I want. I show it to my fellow teacher (who has two daughters of his own) and ask him if he thinks this will fit her. He says, "yeah...in about a year." That's fine, I guess. We'll need some more clothes in a year.

Our nursery is ready to go. We've got everything we need, except the baby. Jordan is kicking and punching and seems to be ready to be here. I walked into her nursery tonight when I got home and laid the shirt I bought her over her crib. What will she be like when she's finally ready to fit into that shirt? What will we be like? I feel like my growth or change as a person has sort of leveled out in the past few years, but I feel a big change coming now. And that's not a bad thing. When I walked into her room tonight to lay that shirt down, I felt proud to be giving something to her; something that I picked out on my own. It'll be three or four years before she is able to appreciate gifts, but that's ok. I'm beginning to feel a little piece of what it's like to be a parent, what it's like to want pass up something for yourself and give it to your child. I think I like it.

Two Months

2006-11-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

We had our first baby shower yesterday...well, it wasn't really our baby shower. Luckily, guys don't have to go that stuff. Apparently, we received 63 gifts including cool stuff like diapers, a stroller, and something like a reverse backpack that you can carry your child in like a kangaroo. Very nice.

Davina has signed us up for some birthing classes. I hear that you have to watch a live birth...not in person, obviously, but on video. The worst part about these classes is that they're on two different Saturdays from 9-3....right in the thick of college football season.

All of Davina's family is coming to stay at our house for Thanksgiving. She has two brothers and they have five kids between them ages 6-10. Happy times.

I know this is all sort of random, but that's been the way my brain has been functioning lately. January 27 (Davina's due date) seems like it's pulling us closer every day...which I guess it is. It's hard to believe that in two months, it won't be just us anymore. There will be someone else that depends on us for everything. And it'll be like that for the next few years. But I'm not scared or nervous. I'm actually pretty confident in my ability as a parent. This all may change five minutes after the birth, but two months out, I'm feeling pretty sure of myself.

If I can remind myself, I hope to update this more and more as the date gets closer. T minus 74 days.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

2006-10-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

I was over at my buddy, Michael's, apartment Wednesday and saw an old cd laying out on his table. Actually, there were two. One was the acclaimed "Jesus Freak" album by the one and only DC Talk. The other was a Centrifuge praise and worship cd from 1996. I immediately grabbed that one and played it. The second it came on, Michael and I could not stop laughing. The first song went something like this: "God (God [echo]) Come (Come [echo]) Near (near [echo]) Now (now [echo]). And then it repeated the line over and over. After 45 seconds of that, I skipped to track four which offered these original lyrics: "You are my strength when I am weak, you are the treasure that I seek, you are my all in all." How long do you think it took for the writer of that chorus to come up with it? I'd say maybe 30 minutes...maybe. Eject. Place DC Talk in the player. Skip to Jesus Freak. This one opens with a guitar riff that was ripped straight off Kurt Cobain and jumps into a head banging fiasco that I actually thought was pretty cool when it first came out ten years ago. I could actually stomach the DC Talk cd...it wasn't completely awful, though it was completely unoriginal.

Christians have created a counter culture in our society and I had always been proud to be part of that, but the older I get the more I believe that the Christian right has created its own form of capitalism. They capitalize on pop culture, on politics, and anything else they can to "reach non-believers". What they're also doing is making a cheap buck. They market and sell millions of t-shirts, cd's, books, movies, and even candy. The Christian market has become an alter-ego of regular society and that does not make them appealing. You have your middle majority of Christians who don't want anything unless it makes them feel good or sounds nice or looks nice. Books like The Prayer of Jabez and The Left Behind Series fall into this category, along with 90% of all praise music that is usually backed by some soft piano and a simplified chorus repeated over and over. What about visual art? Well, my friend, Thomas Kinkade has cornered the Christian market on that one. Soft colors, majestic scenes, lamps lit that reflect the fallen snow. And, oh, look there's a baby fawn with his mother drinking out of the stream that runs right in front of the cottage at the base of the mountain. Aren't they worried about flooding or maybe an avalanche? Not at all, in Kinkade's world those things don't happen. These are the staples of pop-Christianity.

What's even worse than the previous paragraph is that there are a lot of these people and they have a great deal of influence. The Republican party saw that and completely duped these people into believing what they said. And here we are, six years later. Congressmen and Senators who reach out to the Christian Conservative Right on banning gay rights and gay marriage have homosexual people working for them and with them. And probably after they won their district or their senate seat, they sat with these people, had a glass of wine, celebrated their victory and laughed about how gullible the Christian right can be. Our conservative society, led by the CCR has all but removed grace from the discussion. "If you're foreign and illegal, pack your bag and get your ass back to Mexico." "If you have a different sexual preference, you do not deserve to have joint benefits...but don't tell anyone I'm sleeping with my secretary and am on marriage number three." "No to stem cell research, we can't harm innocent lives, but bomb the hell out of Iraq and everyone over there." What have we come to? Where is the logic? Where is the grace and compassion? I don't see it. And I don't know where I fit. I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess. Looking left and right and not liking either one, really.

When I was pulling into Michael's apartment on Wednesday night I was behind a car that had two stickers on it. One said "CSI": Christ Saved Individual. The other said, "Got Jesus?" It seems that there are no original thoughts left in Christian circles. Whatever happened to Thou shalt not steal? We seem to be a blinded a people, incapable of thinking on our own. We're all sheep following the wrong shephard. And the problem with that is that we're not sly as the wolves who are leading us.

"I'll always love you, though, New York..."

2006-10-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Without being sac-religous, my "holy trinity" of music consists of Counting Crows, Bruce Springsteen, and Ryan Adams. I won't ascribe any deity to any of these people or try and figure where each one fits in a "father, son, holy ghost" sort of way, but let's just say that they're all equal in my eyes and each one brings something different to the table. The title of this post comes straight from a Ryan Adams' song called "New York, New York" and I was constantly singing the first line of the song in my head over and over while I was in the city.

"Well I shuffled through the city on the fourth of July, like a firecracker waiting to blow."

And that's how Ryan's song begins. And that's how Davina and I were the five days we were there. Basically, trying to fit it all in, trying to see everything. It's very hard for me to take you through our trip because there was just so much that we did. We hit the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Ground Zero, 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center, Empire State Building, Central Park, Soho, Grennwhich Village, the Upper West Side, Queens (on accident), Times Square, "Rent", St. Patrick's Cathedral, we even attended the Latin-American heritage festival (on accident).

Davina had never been to New York before and had always wanted to go. This trip had been in the works for over a year and we finally decided that we had to do it now because once the baby got here, travel would be limited for awhile. I had been twice before and I was anxious to show Davina what I loved about the city, but also make sure she saw the high points that everyone needs to see when they go to New York. We flew into JFK late on Thursday night and on Friday we spent the whole afternoon in Central Park. She kept saying that it was weird to be here because she had seen it movies so many times. I thought the same thing the first time I was there when I was sixteen. I felt like I was in a movie.

The next day we hit the Statue and Ellis Island. The one thing about New York that I had never noticed until this time was that we were the racial minority in the city. I think New York captures what our country is and what it was built on. We are a country of immigrants. That's how we were formed, that's where our strength is. That's our character. It's our diversity that seperates us from the radicals that have warred against us since we were first formed. We're quick to demand that the illegals be thrown out, but is this not what seperates us from the closed mindedness of fundamentalists; a chance at something better? I think it is and I think we have to think about people instead of policy when we make our judgements.

Over the next few days, we spent time in the Village, Little Italy, we walked on the Brooklyn Bridge at night and went to the observation deck of the Empire State Building at dusk. We saw "Rent" which summed up a fallen world without grace without even meaning to. And on Tuesday morning when it was time to go, we didn't want to leave.

I don't know if I can describe New York at all using words. It's sort of how I felt each time I've been there and stood in the canyons of buildings all around me. It overloads your senses and it brings back memories of people and characters that I've read about and listened to and I see New York how they see it. I see Joe Dimaggio in the golden age of baseball, being the face of America and the personification of New York. I see Willa Cather's character, Paul, from "Paul's Case" as he lives out his fantasy looking out over Central Park and the snow right before he steps in front of a train because that dream is disappearing. I see the family from John Irving's "The Hotel New Hampshire" finally settling in Manhattan after a time of sadness in Germany. I see Jay Gatsby coming into the city preparing for one of his parties on the East Egg. I hear Ryan Adams' singing that he'll always love New York and I understand why. And Sprinsteen, even though he's Jersey through and through, I know why he's "meeting across the river". Because that's where it is...that's where the opportunity is, the life is, that's the center of the world the moment you're there and it feels like you are in the middle of everything. "New York, New York".

Monday Night Football...running blog

2006-10-02T17:17:00.001-07:00

I'm keeping a running blog of the Packers' game tonight. I'm basically ripping this idea off of Bill Simmons, better known as the "Sports Guy". He's a writer for Page 2 on espn.com. Anyway, I'm gonna give it a try tonight. We'll see how it goes...

7:02 - The ESPN pre-game show just showed a graphic that said 25 of Green Bay's 53 players are under the age of 25. That really makes me feel good about the game tonight.

7:13 - The last time Brett Favre didn't start a football game, gasoline was 1.12 a gallon, "Rosanne" was the number 1 tv show, and "Last of the Mohicans" was the number 1 movie...and I was 12 years old.

7:15 - I don't usually like red-headed women, but Rachel Nichols (the sideline reporter for the game) is actually very hot.

7:22 - The Packers haven't won at Philly since 1962. Their defense is still reeling from the 2004 play-off loss where they gave up a 4th and 26 with under a minute to go. They ended up losing the game and I ended up in a deep depression for the next two weeks.

7:23 - OK...here's what I think for tonight...Packers 27-Eagles 21. Defense will play well...Favre will play well. Upset win...I can feel it!!!

7:29 - Everyone on the pre-game show just picked Philly...all four of them!!!! And Mike Tirico just butchered the use of alliteration. And now there's a stupid silly samuri pregame opening that rivals anything completely crappy that I've ever seen...how's that for alliteration.

7:31 - The first Monday night game I watched Favre play was in 1993 against the KC Chiefs when Joe Montana was quaterbacking the Chiefs. The Packers lost.

7:40 - Packers to receive.

7:44 - 3 and out for Green Bay

7:47 - 3 and out for Philly...McNabb sacked!!!!!!

7:50 - 22 yard pass from Favre to Jennings...ball on the 33

7:52 - 1st and goal...incomplete pass...2nd and goal...we need to run it.

7:53 - Dropped pass by Driver in the end zone...he dropped two last week...catch the damn ball!!!

7:54 - field goal...3-0 Packers...not enough...needed a TD

8:00 - Donovan McNabb just had about four minutes to throw the ball...completion for 22 yards.

8:04 - FUMBLE!!!!! Packers recover inside their own 10 yard line...how about a 97 yard drive?!!!!

8:13 - 1:21 left in the 1st quarter and Favre has thrown 16 passes...the most first quarter passes in his career...by the way, McCarthy said he wanted to make it a priority to run the ball this season.

8:17 - The Packers are getting absolutely NO rush on the quaterback.

8:18 - End of the first quarter...3-0, Packers.

8:21 - Packers hold...Eagles punt. Green Bay has it at their own 10. I'm very concerned at the amount of pass plays the Packers have called. We have no running game right now...this doesn't look good. The more Favre throws, the more likely a pick is.

8:25 - 3 and out for the Pack

8:31 - NO PASS RUSH!!!! Eagles convert third and long.

8:33 - FUMBLE!!!! Again inside the Packers five...Packers ball...this is crazy!!!

8:35 - Packers fumble...Eagles recover inside the Packers' 10...I hate football!!!

8:38 - Touchdown Philly...7-3 Philly

8:46 - Dave Rayner field goal from 54 yards...7-6 Eagles.

9:04 - I hate referees...no pass interference call when the DB never let go of Jennings...settled for a field goal...9-7 Pack...1:42 left in the half.

9:13 - Third and long...SACKED!!!! How about that...a pass rush. 53 yard field goal attempt for Philly...kick is up and it's...a fake...ran out of bounds...Packers 9-7 at the half.

9:37 - Good opening drive for Philly...1st down on the Green Bay 32...they are running it all over Green Bay.

9:39 - Green Bay holds...Field goal Philly...10-9 Philly.

9:47 - Big catch from Jennings...Philly is challenging...

9:49 - Ruling on the field stands...30 yard pass play Favre to Jennings.

9:50 - Catch the *&^% ball, Driver!!!!! Right in the numbers.

9:51 - Eagles hold...Packers to attempt another 54 yard field goal...kick is up and it's...way off.

9:54 - Bad move to attempt the field goal...good field position for philly.

9:55 - Another huge pass play...TD Philly on Ahmad Carrol...he sucks!!!

10:00 - Another dropped pass...through the hands of Morency...intercepted by Philly. No help for Favre

10:03 - Pass interference on freakin' Ahmed Carrol...he sucks!!!!

10:04 - TD Philly...Green Bay looks completely lost...24-9 Philly. I hate football!!! I feel at least two more Favre int's...it all started with the Donald Driver dropped pass.

10:08 - Philly is pinning their ears back now...2nd and 20 on the Green Bay 10...intercpeted...flag down...penalty on Philly...1st down Green Bay.

10:12 - Philly is bringing the house every play...something bad is about to happen.

10:13 - 27 yard pass to Driver...1st down.

10:13 - interception...i'm shutting it down...had a guy open...underthrew him...I'm done...I can't take it...goodnight.

A Bar at 13, A Bar at 26

2006-10-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

This week-end I was in St. Louis for a basketball coaches' convention. It was basketball non-stop, all day and all night. You could say that it was a basket full of basketball, but you probably wouldn't want to say that because you would sound like a complete tool. Anyway, at this conference there were several of the country's top coaches from top collegiate programs. We had Bruce Webber from Illinois, Lute Olsen from Arizona, Bob Huggins from Kansas State, Jim Boeheim from Syracuse just to name a few. These guys gave their philosophies on everything from the 2-3 zone to coaching how to defend the screen and roll. It was a lot to take in at once, but very worth the three and a half hour drive to St. Louis. The conference was held at the Adam's Mark hotel in downtown St. Louis, which is where we also stayed. A nice hotel with a bit of personal history.

As I documented before, I was a huge...actually, a HUGE Will Clark fan growing up and the closest place to see a ball game was St. Louis. He played for the Giants the first part of his career and when they would come to St. Louis, we would go to St. Louis and stay in the Adam's Mark hotel because that's where the players stayed. There was this bar in the Adam's Mark where all the players would go after the game. We would wait for them to step off the elevators on their way to the bar and ask them for an autograph. I actually just hoped to speak to one of them. I met several players, but never knew what to say or if I should say anything. These people were like gods to me and I was only a mortal. So, they would step off the elevators and I would fearfully hand a ball or a baseball card and a pen to one of them in hopes of an autograph. Some would sign, some wouldn't. Some (Barry Bonds) were complete jerks, for lack of a better word (or words), and would just tell you to "get the hell out of [their] way". I never did care for Barry Bonds, so that didn't bother me or hurt my feelings. Well, I would wait and wait for some of the players and they would exit the elevator, sign a few autographs and disappear into the smoke of the bar. All I could do as a thirteen year old, was watch as they were enveloped in the noise and atomsphere of the Players bar in the Adam's Mark. As a thirteen year old, I couldn't go in there. I would stand a couple of minutes, see who I could see and find something else to do. I can remember wondering what must be in there. I can remember thinking how mystical that place seemed because all these people who seemed to carry some worldly divinity about them all congregated and vanished into that place to rub shoulders with other people who I could not relate to in the least bit.

We checked in to the Adam's Mark on Friday night and headed out to find something to eat downtown. As we walked out the door, I saw some kids in Cardinals jerseys getting ready to go to the game and I wondered if they would mistake me for a player. It was weird to think that I was now the same age of some of those people I looked up to so much...that I seemed to think were untouchable. We walked past the Players bar and I glanced in there the same way I had thirteen years ago and it still had the same feeling. It seemed bigger than it should be.

We had a full day of basketball the next day and my friends, Jada and Chad, were picking me up at the hotel that night to go out. As a side note, there's not much I enjoy more than catching up with friends over a few beers and pizza. Well, that's what we did. Hung out for awhile, talked while we watched the USC-Iowa football game. Talked about the kids we have on the way, about moving, about adult stuff. I felt so far away from thirteen years old that it seemed like I was never there. They dropped me off at the hotel where my friend, Matt, was picking me up after the night session and then we would head back to Jackson. I got to the hotel a bit before Matt, and I had to kill some time. I went to the business center and checked my email which took about three minutes. I still had about thirty minutes to kill, so I had to find something to do. I walked back to the lobby and saw the Players bar sign and it clicked that I was actually old enough to go in there. So, I walked in like I belonged there...like one of those players from years ago. And when I walked in I saw people who had no divine attributes at all. There were two fat guys in Arkansas shirts drinking beer and who made fun of me for ordering a Long Island Tea. There was a group of guys in their fifties who was sexually harassing the bartender and drunk off their asses. There were a group of women and men a bit older who were louder than anyone else in the bar and had filthier language than anyone else as well. I asked the bartender if any of the baseball teams stayed here anymore and she said that that they all stayed at the Union Station hotel now. And I guess that's fitting in a way. I guess we all outgrow times in our lives and I guess these teams moved on to something bigger and better and nicer. And I guess, last night I outgrew the mysticism of the Players bar in the Adam's Mark hotel in downtwon St. Louis. Give me pizza and beer and some friends to catch up with...give me that anytime over the Players bar in the Adam's Mark hotel in downtwon St. Louis.

Week 3

2006-09-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

I played in a basketball tournament this week-end. We played four games in one day, against some very good competition. We beat a junior college team in the first round and then lost by four to a team out of Memphis. We won our next game and then played a very good team later that night that beat us by ten. I was completely exhausted, my body ached and this morning when I woke up, I hurt even worse. But today, I couldn't wait to wake up because it was Sunday. I wish I could say that I couldn't wait to go to church, but that wouldn't be the complete truth. I was excited because the Packers played the Lions and usually a quick remedy for a slow start is a trip to Detroit. Well, the Packers didn't disappoint. On the first drive, the Pack went three and out on two dropped passes by their best receiver. On the second drive, though, Greg Jennings made a 15 yard out route a little something more and turned it into a 75 yard touchdown pass...and not just any td pass...number 400 in the career of Brett Favre. He joined Marino as the only other player in NFL history to reach 400 td passes. He's now only 18 behind Dan for the all-time record.

The Lions kept the game close and even had a chance to tie it on their final drive after Ahman Green fumbled while trying to run out the clock. Favre threw three more td passes today and no interceptions. Granted, the Detroit defense is nothing close to good, but it was still good to see Brett have a great day. I came home after the game and watched our old coach, Mike Holmgren completely dismantle the Giants as the commentators mentioned Favre's milestone on every NFL related channel. This is when football is fun. And every now and then, you get a little hope.

Week 2

2006-09-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

I am convinced that football may be the creation of Satan. At least, I think that's case over the last year and two weeks. It seems that football (more than any other sport) has the ability to reach into your body, drag your soul out kicking and screaming, throw it to the floor, kick it, spit on it, put it back in your body and say, "See you next week for more of the same". Or maybe that's what it's like to be Packers fan and a UT Vols fan on the week-end of the Florida game. Anyway, I have to say that this week-end had super potential. Potential like Tony Mandarich had in the early 90's. And basically it played out the same way that did.

I had one of those Saturdays this week-end. You know, those Saturdays when you don't put a shirt on until 8:00 pm because, well, you have no reason to. Yeah, that's how it was this week-end. I watched the LSU-Auburn game along with the trouncing of Notre Dame. Took a break after that and read the Green Bay Press Gazette online to get ready for Sunday's game. Then it was time for the Tennessee-Florida game. I don't want to get into it too much because I'm just not ready yet, but to make things short and sweet I only need to tell you one thing: -11 yards rushing for the Vols at home against the number seven ranked team in the country. 21-20, Florida. Heartbreaker.

I was feeling good by morning, though, and had a GREAT feeling about the Packers.. Another reason football may be the spawn of Satan is because it is the great deceiver. The memory of the ass kicking we took at the hands of the Bears just seven days ago, seemed like last year and we had the Saints coming in who we beat 52-3 last year. It all seemed to be so good.

I went to Sunday School this morning, skipped out on service, came home and put on my Sterling Sharpe jersey from 1994. It seems my Brett Favre jersey is hexed. I can't get a win when I wear it. I headed to Mulligan's in time for the kickoff and I'll be damned if we didn't force a turnover on the Saints' first possesion. Green Bay ball in New Orleans' territory. Brett Favre td pass to Greg Jennings, first score of the year, first Favre td of the year...23 behind Marino. Next Saints' possesion, forced fumble, our ball in the red zone...field goal. 10-0. Next posession, another Saints' turnover. We drive down and kick a field goal...13-0 in the first quarter. Needless to say, it did not last. We started dropping balls, couldn't block at all, our defense blew assignments and next thing we know we're down 20-13 in the third quarter. But we have Favre and he didn't disappoint (except for the first and goal pick he threw). We tie the game at 20-20 on his second td pass of the day. The Saints get it and score when our safety Nick Collins falls down on a pass play. Our ball...Ahman Green fumbles. New Orleans recovers and scores on its first play from scrimmage. 34-20, Saints. Packers ball and Favre leads them down again. TD pass to Noah Herron. Favre's third of the game...34-27 Saints. Packers hold and they get it with one more chance to go down the field. Three minutes left and no timeouts. Favre gets them into Saints territory and then runs out of bullets. There's only so much he can do. New Orleans wins 34-27. Packers are 0-2. I'm having flashbacks to last year.

After watching this game, this is what I believe: put Brett Favre with a talented team and he wins you at least 10 games...probably 12. Donald Driver is one of the best playmakers in the league, people just don't know it. In the end, it's another loss, but Favre played well and maybe proved some people wrong. The emotion is already wearing off and next week in Detroit is looking pretty good.

Five Years

2006-09-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

I guess every generation has that moment. You know, that cliched moment where "you never forget where you were when such and such event happened". My parents had JFK and the Challenger (though I vaguely remember that) and I have 9/11. Emotion is such a huge component in memory...the most important, actually. And the heavier the event, the heavier the emotion and the more likely the memory is to sear itself in your brain. Well, that's what 9/11 was or is...seared to my brain.

It was my first day of my first real job out of school. I was in orientation at the Jackson Madison County General Hospital. I had been hired by Pathways Behavioral Health Services to be an (let me see if I can get this right)...an "intensive family preservation specialist". So, we had two days of orientation: Monday, September 10 and Tuesday, September 11. I can remember sitting next to Ashleigh James who was a college classmate of mine and who was also in orientation that day. She told me the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. My first thought was that it had to have been an accident. I asked, "What kind of moron accidentally hits a building?" About thirty minutes later, our speaker was interrupted by someone who whispered something in his hear. The speaker then told us that the second tower had been hit and it looked like we were under attack. He dismissed us for a few minutes while the hospital tried to figure out what steps they should take, if any, to secure the building. Ashleigh and I walked outside. It was one of those days right on the edge of summer and fall. The air was clear, but the sun was still a little warm. A nice breeze was blowing. We didn't really talk about it much...the magnitude of it wasn't on top of us, yet. I called my dad who then told me the Pentagon had been hit. During my lunch break, I went up to my church and checked on one of our friends who's husband was in PA on business. They had three children all under the age of six. He was fine, she said, but didn't know when he would get home. The weight of it started to set in. I got home that afternoon to find my wife watching one of the twenty channels that were that had been overridden by the news stations. We went to Rafferty's that night with my parents and I went to bed thinking about what would be next. Would I be drafted? Would there be more attacks? Will it ever be the same?

Five years after, it seems the same to me. Probably because I wasn't affected directly by that event. So many mistakes have been made since that day by our administration, but I can't help but wonder if it would've been different with anyone else. 9/11 changed our country and forced our hand on some awful decisions. September 11, 2006 was a day that affected me far more than it's five year old predecessor. On 9/11/06, my wife and I met at the Women's Clinic in Jackson, just three hundred yards from the hospital I was at five years earlier. We walked back into a dark room and let a lady wipe some slime on my wife's stomach and probe around the top of it with a strange looking wand. We got to see our baby's brain and kidney's. It looked at us with it's skeleton face and hollow eyes. We saw it stretch its arms and legs. And we saw that we were having a little a girl. Emotion helps sear memories to our brain...9/11 will always be a contradiction in my head.

Week 1

2006-09-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

Since this very well could (and, based to today's performance, should) be Brett Favre's last season, I am going to blog about each week. This is probably more for personal, therapeutic purposes than entertainment purposes...And since apparently no one reads my blog, this shouldn't bore too many people.

Since I live in Jackson, TN and nowhere near Green Bay and since Green Bay went 4-12 last year I really don't have any chance at watching them on TV unless I go to the local T.J. Mulligan's sports bar...Which I have done religiously for the past two seasons. Today was the first game of the season and a lot of expectation is attached to it. The plan was to go to early church and then Sunday school, be out by 10:45, come home, change clothes and head to Mulligan's for some pre-game action and then watch the Titans' game while waiting for the Packers game which started at 3:15.

The Pack opened against the rival Bears who have one of the best defenses in the league. They completely dismantled the Packers last year and in one game hit Favre so hard, so many times that I literally winced at least five times during that game. It was hard to watch. I sit in the same seat every Sunday in the same, smoke filled back room with the same three people...All of which are at least in their late 60's or early 70's. They are all from Green Bay and one of them used to work for the Packers in the 80's and 90's. I have no idea what their names are or what they do (I assume they're retired). We really don't talk about anything but sports and they talk about their kids sometimes, who are all older than me. Last year, about all we did was complain about Mike Sherman.

Today the Packers sucked. They didn't stink, they sucked! That's the only word that can describe it. Their new coach seems to be inept at best and at worst incapable of coaching a pop Warner team. The Packers needed a quick start and to play with a lead to have a chance at winning this game. It is nearly impossible to beat a team like the Bears playing from behind...Especially when your team starts two rookies at guard. Well, right off the bat Chicago scores on six plays, capped off by a 42 yard pass from a quarterback who was playing his second game in about a year. The Packers came out and played fast which was Coach McCarthy wanted...Oh, wait that's not right. Their first possession was a three and out on three straight running plays. Surely they would open it up a little...But, no. Brett Favre's stats at the end of the half...5-5 for 70 yards. One of the best quarterbacks of all time attempting five passes in a half...Good football. At the end of the first half, 16-0, Chicago.

It only got worse in the second half. Green Bay couldn't move the ball, Favre got impatient and threw two balls right to the defense. Final Score: Chicago 26- Green Bay 0. First time the Packers have been shut out since 1991. I left Mulligan's feeling like I did a lot last year: let down.

Timmy, Tommy, and Chris

2006-08-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

I teach high school students. It's a pretty good deal. I like being around teenagers most of the time and, hopefully, they like being in my class. I'm 26 years old... and only 8 years older than some of my kids. There are good things and bad things about that, I guess. The good being that I can relate to them pretty well, they are comfortable around me, and we have a lot of things in common (music, sports, etc). The bad being....well, basically everything I just mentioned. There's a fine line to walk with students when you're a young teacher and I'm sure I've let some things go that I shouldn't have or joked around too much, but I don't think a student has ever had a bad experience in my class. The most important thing for me is to be someone they will remember in a positive way and, if possible, be someone they can respect. I was lucky enough to have three people like that when I was a teen-ager.
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When I was 15 years old, I started to become active in my church's youth group. I had always gone to church, but was never really active. Truth be told, there was a girl I sort of liked in the youth group and the only time I got to see her was at church, so basically I went as much as I could. That spring there was a youth intern named Timmy who was a student at a local college that was hired at the church. Later that spring, Timmy became interim youth minister and hired two guys to be his interns for the summer: Tommy and Chris. Almost everyday that summer, I was at church playing ping-pong, whiffle ball, or breaking my wrist playing dunk basketball at the gym. It was the foundation that set me where I am today. It was the beginning of a time in my life that could've been riddled with mistakes, but wasn't. Most of all, it allowed me to be around college guys who loved God and set an example for me.
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Timmy was small and sort of mousy, to be honest. He loved soccer and loved embarassing the hell out of me for no good reason at all. I was/am closer to Timmy than the other two. Timmy performed my wedding ceremony; my first date with my wife was a double date with his wife and him. I was a youth intern under him in college and eventually was interim youth minister after he left. Timmy was the most approachable person I have ever met and I've told him more things that he ever wanted to know. He's sat through his share of complaints about school, my parents, people in general. He's seen me completely lose it and get thrown out of basketball games for fighting. We've been lost in Kentucky, lost in Alabama, lost in Florida, driven 24 straight hours from Palm Beach, flew to Israel, sat on the steps where Jesus stood, watched lots of Seinfeld, talked about even more Seinfeld, blackmailed each other, and talked about nothing more times than I can count. If I had to pick one person that had the most influence on me in my teen age years, it would be Timmy.

Timmy and me at Justin's Wedding (Fall 2004)

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Tommy was the one who loved sports and played whiffle ball and basketball and video games with us. He was also the one who gambled with us on church trips and got mad at us when we played sports against him. He was the one who duct taped my legs and made me sit in a closet on a church trip to Atlanta and made fun of me for being gay because my broken wrist was set in a feminine position in the cast. He also announced to everyone on the charter bus that I liked our preacher's daughter who was a few grades younger than I was. For all of those exceptional qualities, the one thing I can remember about Tommy is that he came over to my house a couple of days a week when I was pretty down about not playing baseball because of my wrist and we would play "homerun derby" on Sega. Tommy took things over the line a lot and was probably not suited for the job that summer, but he did care about us and no one ever doubted that.

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If I wanted to be like one of the three guys that summer, it was Chris. Chris was the only one who had a girlfriend at the time and I guess I thought that was cool. He was also a pretty cool guy to be around, but looking back, was probably the most distant. I don't think I ever got as close to Chris as I could have because I didn't see him as approachable. It was more like a "hero worship" thing with him. Two memories stick out in my mind about Chris: the first being a letter he wrote me to encourage me about a situation I was going through my junior year in high school. I still have the letter and everytime I write a letter to one of my students to encourage them or help them through a situation, I remember the letter Chris wrote me. The second one I remember is the time we went "caving". I'm not sure why this left an impression on me, but it did. I rode with Chris and his girlfriend (Sarah) to the cave and I guess that made me feel important. Sarah was around a lot that summer and I remember I thought it was cool having a college girl around.

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Timmy and I still keep in touch and my wife and I are going to visit him and his wife when we go to New York City this October. Timmy lives in New Jersey and is a church planter. Tommy and I actually played on the same basketball team this winter and both lost our tempers. We played against each other, too, and had to be seperated once or twice. He still lives in Jackson and is a police officer. Last time I saw Chris, he and his wife (Sarah) were in Texas. He was at one of the biggest churches in the country doing youth ministry. It seems like a good fit for him. I think he was always meant to be on a big stage. It fits his personality.

I was always closest to Timmy, wanted to be like Chris, but found out that I'm more like Tommy. I learned I could never work in a church and I don't have the patience to be as approachable as Timmy is. I am much different than I was eleven years ago (I guess everyone is), but I hope I can have the same impact on someone else that these three men had on me.

The Lost Art of Facial Hair

2006-07-31T19:21:00.000-07:00

Freedom of expression is alive and well in our culture today. You can see it lifestyle preference, fashion, music, art, hairstyles, automobiles, etc. Everyone wants to have a "signature" look and the more original it is, the better. I can appreciate the piercings, tattoos (I have one and will probably get more), low rise jeans, low ride trucks, high ride cars, and even the tennis shoes that also double as roller skates. I mean, I'm a gen x guy, so that stuff is alright with me...to a point. However, I also have a little "old school" mentality, so you can bet that I was excited when I noticed that the ultimate fashion statement that was exhibited in the 70's and early 80's was making a comeback this week. This fashion statement wasn't meant to be a "fashion" statement at all. It was a symbol, if you will, of machismo. A symbol of manhood. Maybe even a proof of testosterone. It said, "Hey, look at me. I'm right above the upper lip...right below the nose. You can't miss me. And even though a man can grow hair all over his face, he chose to shave everything, but me. I'm a mustache!!!!" That's right. Thirty years ago nothing said "man" more than a line of hair that bridged the nostrils to the upper lip. And it's back, baby!!

Two movies opened last Friday: "Miami Vice" and "World Trade Center". Both had well known actors (Collin Farrel and Nicholas Cage) and both actors chose to sport what they knew would make them manliest of all, if you will. They could've gone with the conservative, trimmed goatee or even the full beard. They could've stretched it a little and been hip with the fu-man-chu or the thin sideburns, but they decided to keep it real. They knew what would project masculinity in a palpable way from the screen right into the theater. The 'stache.

Deep down I've always wanted to sport just a mustache. My facial hair grows pretty fast and usually I'll have some shadow or a goatee or a full beard in the winter. I even once had a fu-man-chu mustache for "Cowboy Day" at the school where I teach. However, I never had the courage to pursue an all out real mustache. I guess I was concerned that a child molester look wouldn't flatter me or maybe I would look like a porn star from the 70's. But see, these people gave mustaches a bad rap. People quickly forget the torch bearers of the mustache movement: Magnum P.I., Hulk Hogan, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday. These were people who wore the mustache with pride. These were manly men.

Tonight I decided to bite the bullet. With help from Collin Farrell and support from Nick Cage and inspiration from Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, I too can call myself a member of the mustache mafia. True, I may look completely ridiculous and mothers may shield their young daughters from my sight as I walk down the street, but I know that I am helping bring something back that has been gone for too long. A symbol of strength, resolve, and, of course, bad taste. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it, but I will wear as a banner every second that it adorns my upper lip.

The Immaculate Conception

2006-07-14T06:09:00.001-07:00

At the risk of offending anyone with the title of my blog, it is meant to be tongue and cheek only.

Prologue

Pictured to your left is Nacoma. Nacoma has been part of the Hart family since early December. Even though my wife was strongly against it, we rescued her from the local humane society so Mr. Brady would have a friend to play with and wouldn't be so bored that he would have to dig holes under our fence and chew our patio furniture. Despite a couple of run-ins with Mr. Brady and stealing his food and his toys and his dog house and biting his ear, Nacoma treated Mr. Brady with the utmost respect for the first month and half of her stay. Things changed for us all one January morning...

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It was imperative that we get a female dog when we went to choose a suitable friend for Mr. Brady. Not for mating purposes, mind you, but for territorial purposes. Mr. Brady had never really been around another dog, so conventional wisdom says that a strange male dog would not be good. Mr. Brady was neutered, so he was somewhat calmer than he was before, so our new female friend would need to be spade so she wouldn't be throwing herself at Mr. Brady and he wouldn't have to be ashamed of not being able to respond. That could be embarrassing for him. Well, the professionals at the humane society said they had the perfect dog for us. She was friendly and calm and very obedient. Thus, one Saturday in early December, Nacoma came home with us.

Over the next six weeks, let's just say Nacoma added a few extra pounds. When we first got her she was lean and athletic looking. No fat on her. I would even say that she was a little underweight. Well, as I said, she packed on the pounds, but only around her stomach. That was the only part of her body that was growing. She looked like one of those real skinny guys who has huge gut. It's just noticeable. I kept telling my wife that we need to feed her less or run her more. I thought she had been eating Mr. Brady's food along with hers, but he wasn't losing any weight. We finally reasoned that since she had been at the humane society for the last year, she was just getting fed more and thus putting on more weight.

I came home from playing basketball about 7:00 in the morning on Wednesday, January 25. I went to feed the dogs as usual and when I walked out the door I heard something that sounded like two cats getting ready to fight. We had a lot of stray cats in our old neighborhood, so I just figured two of them had gotten in our backyard and somehow avoided getting eaten by Nacoma and Mr. Brady. When I opened the door, Nacoma didn't run up to me and neither did Mr. Brady. I saw him standing in the middle of the yard looking toward the corner of the house. I looked to my left and saw Nacoma curled up. When she saw me, she stood up and then I saw what the sound was that I heard. Under her were eight puppies, making the most God-awful sound I had ever heard. I froze. I turned back around and went in the house. My wife was in the shower, so I went straight to the bathroom and told her the news. I went back outside and we started bringing the puppies in the house. We knew we had a big responsibility ahead of us for the next six weeks. It was an immaculate conception. I joked with Davina that these puppies could the best dogs ever born in the history of the world...They may have been born without sin, so we should for sure keep them. They could teach Mr. Brady right from wrong and help he and Nacoma get along. She didn't go for it.

Epilogue

Sadly, three of the puppies died. Nacoma quit feeding them the first day. Davina, with her nurse's instinct, tried to save them and couldn't. She cried when the third one died. I buried them in our backyard and prayed Mr. Brady wouldn't dig them up. He didn't. The other five grew up and eventually moved into and ruined our garage. We found good homes for all of them, Nacoma got spade, we moved to a new house where there is a much bigger backyard where she and Mr. Brady play together every day. Seriously, they do. It's amazing.

New House

2006-07-13T09:07:00.001-07:00

Nearly two weeks ago, my wife, Davina, and I moved into a new house. This is the fourth place we have lived in our six years of marriage and the second house we've actually owned. It seems we're making normal, if not, good progress when it comes to gradually up sizing our living arrangements. And I guess that's good. But the only problem is that I really, really hate moving...and packing and unpacking and sorting and throwing things away and wrestling with our old king size mattress which was then placed on top of my jeep and taken to goodwill. I also hate the details of moving. You know, like unscrewing the curtain rods, remembering to get the vacuum cleaner, the dog house, extension cords, and everything else that's been shoved in the back of a closet. But we made it...we even suprisingly made it with no nostalgic feelings of guilt or sadness for our old house.

We moved into our first real house in March of 2003. We stayed there just over three years. It was a nice three bedroom house with a backyard for the dog which soon became dogs. Our first house with a garage, so that was nice. We had a guest bedroom we rarely used and an office and then the master bedroom. It was nice. Nothing special, just nice. Great neighborhood that had a pond in the middle of it that I would let my dog swim in most times we took him walking. We decorated for Christmas every year and every year I put lights on the pitch of the roof above the garage while Davina held the ladder, which seemed to always move.

Our new house is bigger, nicer overall. We have a big deck on the back of the house that overlooks the back part of the subdivision since we're on a hill. I'll be able to see the train when it rolls by in the winter once the leaves have fallen off the trees. We have three bedrooms and an upstairs bonus room which I have claimed as my rec room/office (but mainly rec room). It still doesn't quite feel like home yet...it feels too nice to be home. It'll have to be broken in, lived in a little before it can feel like home. But it is nice. It'll also be nice to have the extra room in a few months.

Trying your best

2006-06-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

I played in a three on three basketball tournament a few weeks ago that was part of the "Blues Heritage" festival that Jackson has every year. I've never played in a three on three tournament before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I played in a couple of five on five tournaments this year and our team finished right in the middle of the pack both times. These were pretty competitive teams in the five on five tournaments, so middle of the pack wasn't that bad.

When I got to the 3 on 3 tournament, I found out that our team was in the over 30 bracket with only two other teams. Two other teams??!!! Are you serious? How can you have a tournament with three teams? And I'm only twenty-six...granted two other players on my team were thirty or older. There's something about the human body when it starts getting older. A lot of mass is added and you get "grown man strong" for lack of a better term. I'm not there yet. I work out and exercise, but I don't have a lot of mass (and don't care for any) and barely weigh 200 pounds. I saw some of these guys we were going to play and they outweighed me by 20 pounds. Now that would be no problem in a full court game, but 3 on 3 is half court, so it's not like I could run them to death. I was getting prepared to get knocked around a lot.

And I did get knocked around...I was actually fouled twelve straight times in one game by this guy who was either doing it on purpose or was the worst basketball player I've ever played against. It was probably a little of both. We ended up winning three straight games to win the tournament and won them fairly easily, but that was after I had to sit out for bad sportsmanship and throwing an elbow. In my defense, it's hard to keep your cool when you're getting hit every single play. The only thing I kept saying was, "This is not basketball." They had to make a rule before the championship game that each player could only foul five times. Makes sense.

A lot of people think they can play basketball and a lot of those people can't. I'm not saying I'm great. I can't jump that high, I'm not that quick and I'm an average shooter at best. I have decent post moves, I can rebound well and I like to play physical, but for the most part, I know how to play the game. I know where to be in situations, where to pass, where to dribble on fast breaks, when to cut, etc. I understand the right way to play the game. I don't foul everytime because I know how to play decent defense. After I had been fouled for the 8th straight time and said a few words to this guy, his teammate said, "Hey, he's trying his best." I think that phrase is used as a cop out too many times in our society. I could try my best at flying a plane, but I could never get a job as a pilot. I could try my best at computer programming, but a computer would never get programmed. Trying your best is a great start, but there has to be knowledge of what you're trying your best at. It's a combination of effort and intelligence and ability. I don't ever want to just try my best. I want to know what I'm trying my best at, and hopefully, I'll be successful at whatever that is...not just because I'm trying my best, but because I have a desire to be excellent.

From the Vault - June 28, 2006

2006-06-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

The random pic I chose today was taken two years ago at my friend, Justin's, wedding shower. I've known Justin since around the fifth or sixth grade when he wore cool lines shaved in the side of his head and a William "Refigerator" Perry jersey. See, Justin's last name is also Perry, so it just fit.

Justin and I have played many sporting events with and against each other and have also had our share of disagreements over said sporting events. We've been on many road trips including Arlington, TX (where Justin fell asleep driving and I got a speeding ticket that turned into a warrant for my arrest), Boma, TN (not many people know about that one), and Irving, TX for a week long mission trip where we attended something called a "Rainbow Youth Rally"...and, no, it was not an outreach event geared toward the young homosexual community in Irving. Justin and I were interns under our youth minister during the winter of 2000. We actually had our own offices and would visit schools trying to get students to come to our youth program. We had our office sponge painted the colors of the schools that we would visit, but I could've thrown up in a bucket, splashed around the room a little, and it probably would've looked close to the same as the sponge paint. Regardless, I don't think I've ever laughed that much and that hard in one given month in my whole life. There are a few quotes from that month that only Justin will get, so as an homage to him I will include them here: "Come and getcha love" and "Stong woman". Not funny to anyone else, but he knows.

In the picture above, Justin and I are at his wedding shower in July of 2004. He married Jackie in September of that year and they are currently in seminary in Wake Forest, NC. Justin is going to school to be a pastor and from what I read in his emails, he has grown into a great man. After I graduated from college, Justin and I didn't see each other as much. He had one year left and then moved to Memphis. I don't think I've seen him since his wedding and that's a little weird. I've never thought about it until now. Justin were as different as two people can be. We did have some similarities, but we were always a healthy contrast to one another. At times those differences could grate against each other and make for some tense moments that probably lasted longer than they should have, but are easily laughed at now. This picture was the last time I saw Justin in a "non" formal setting (his wedding). We still keep in touch and, probably, always will. A lot of things seem like a lifetime ago, but can still be around when you want them to be.

From the Vault

2006-06-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

I've never liked Tuesdays. I'm not sure why, but they've always been my least favorite day of the week. So, I've decided that every Tuesday I will randomly pick an old picture out of this tupperware box I have sitting on my closet shelf in my office and blog about it.

This picture was taken in May of 1997 at my high school graduation. I graduated in a large class...about 450 students. These are my parents standing with me. My dad, Bobby, and my mom, Nancy. We all look a lot different today than we did then. To be honest, I don't remember much about my graduation ceremony. My school didn't have what you would call a "formal" ceremony. A lot of cheering and whooping...some gang signs flashed as some students received their diplomas. You know, a typical graduation. I distinctly remember wanting to get out of there fast because I had a baseball game to play that night and I remember that night at our "project graduation" I won a K-mart gift certificate (which I used for flip-flops) and a "Shoe Carnival" t-shirt that said "I shopped at Shoe Carnival and lived." Whatever that means.

My senior year was pretty good. It wasn't great or special or anything. I have a feeling most people would say that the older they get the events that happen in the five to six years after graduation tend to dwarf the "senior year experience." We did have a new principal my senior year who was absolutely Terrible! (terrible with a capital "T") He became more of a punch line by the end of the year and our principal from the previous three years actually ended up handing our diplomas to us on graduation night. I can remember being a bit self conscious because most of my friends were graduating with honors and had "honor cords" and tassles and a bunch of stuff that's probably in an attic somewhere now and I had a plain green graduation gown with a yellow tassel. I graduated almost right in the middle of my class. A startling 2.4 gpa. I wasn't blessed with the best work ethic my first 19 years of life.

We have our ten year reunion coming up next year. I only keep in touch with about five or six people from my senior class. It'll be fun, I guess to go and show how much I've changed since then. I've kept myself up pretty well and I'm willing to bet that most of my other classmates haven't. Other than that, I guess I want to leave high school in that picture. My last time on that campus, posing for a picture with my parents. My best years (like most people) have come after that night.

Prime

2006-06-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

After writing my Brett Favre blog last night, I started thinking about other people I like watching perfrom, whether they're athletes or musicians or actors. See people like that, who are on "stage" in front of millions of people every year, they have their "primes". Those times when they seem untouchable and their ceiling for greatness in limitless. Those times when everyone talks about how these people will change the respective business of which they are a part. In these "primes", these people are clearly five or six notches above your average person. They carry themselves differently, they do things that only the smallest percentage of society can do. People say athletes are overpaid and maybe they are. Same with musicians and actors, but tell me how many average people can do what they do. None. These people are special. I will say, however, that we (as a society) in the past twenty or so years have done a great job at making average/below average actors and musicians seem great. Sadly, people with only minimal talent (see Toby Keith or almost any other country music artist on the radio today) are making the most money. Alas, that is another blog in and of itself. This one is about five people who have or had unspeakable talent and were at the top of their industry at one point. These are the people I would love to go back in time and watch:

1. Brett Favre - Green Bay Packers Quarterback - 1995 - Why this year? This was the year he won his first MVP award and even though the Packers did not go to the Super Bowl that year anyone could see that it was just a matter of time before they were there. He was still young enough to throw his body and his arm 100% into every play. He played and lived with a lot of rebellion. Truly a gunslinger.

2. Will Clark - San Francisisco Giants First Baseman - 1989 - As a 25 year old, cocky, brash player, he took the Giants to the World Series and set a record for play-off batting average that still stands today. I'll never forget (as a 9 year old) watching him get the game winning hit off Mitch Williams on an October afternoon. I was hooked. His eye black was smeared like war paint and the camera shook because the fans were so loud. No one doubted he would get the winning hit...it was a given. Clark retired in 2000 after making one more play-off push with the St. Louis Cardinals and leading them to the National League Championship after taking over for Mark McGwire. He hit .345 with 12 homeruns and 45 RBI's in only two months. Average those totals over a full season and they would stand with anyone's best year.

3. Adam Duritz - lead singer for Counting Crows - 1996 - After releasing their first album in 1993, Rolling Stone compared Duritz to a young Van Morrison with the songwriting ability of Dylan and Springsteen. After touring two years straight, Duritz folded under the pressure and went into a state of depression. After facing his fears of being in the spotlight, he and the band released "Recovering the Sattelites", an angry, noisy album completely different from the previous album that garnered so much praise. RTS was full of angst and doubt and was probably their best album overall. Today Counting Crows are still touring, but seem to be on their last leg. Duritz had another bout with depression and has gained a lot of weight. They haven't released an original studio album since 2002.

4. Mel Gibson - 1994 - It's hard to remember the initial feeling you get when you see something great for the first time. I've seen Braveheart at least ten times and each time I know I'm watching something great. I would love to see Braveheart again for the first time in a movie theater and ride the emotion of it from the beginning to the end. It's a shame what Hollywood has done to him after he made "The Passion of the Christ". That movie, itself, was another one I would love to see again for the first time.

5. John Irving - author - 1978 - The year he released "The World According Garp", his signature novel. I would love to have started reading him then and waiting impateintly for his next novel and next novel and next novel. Too bad I wasn't born until a year later. After reading "Garp" you knew he would have many more great books on their way. I would've loved to have taken the ride. To wait and see how the next novel would be. I've been able to the next best thing and just read them all at once. After "Garp", Irving wrote "The Hotel New Hampshire", "The Cider House Rules", "A Prayer for Owen Meany", and "A Widow for One Year". What a streak of novels! I have read all of these except for "The Cider House Rules" and they are all great pieces of literature full of every emotion imaginable. I have not read his latest release which was in November of last year, but it's hard imagine it will top the other ones I have read.

Endings are always sad

2006-06-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching a Brett Favre press conference. He's starting his 16th year in the league and for the last few years it's been up in the air as to whether or not he would return. Last year, Green Bay had its first losing season in 14 years...or in other words, since Brett Favre took over the quarterback position in 1992. In that time he won three consecutive MVP awards (which had never been done and still hasn't been done), he led the Packers to two Super Bowl apperances (97-98) and won one of them, he broke the record for most consecutive games started by a quarterback, and is 26 touchdown passes away from breaking Dan Marino's career record.

In a weird way Brett Favre has been a fixture in my life for the last 13 years. He's been my favorite player since 1993 and every fall I would watch the Packers play when they were on television. I can remember when they beat Detroit in the play-offs in 93 when Favre threw a 60 yard touchdown pass to Sterling Sharpe to win the game. I can remember on hall-o-ween night in 1994 when all of my friends were going to a party, I stayed home to watch the Bears and Packers on Monday night football. On New Year's Eve of that same year, I stayed home to watch Green Bay shut down Barry Sanders in the first round of the play-offs. I remember Thanksgiving of that year, driving to Lexington to visit my father's parents' graves and carrying a portable/adaptable television in the car so I could watch Dallas and Green Bay. And like so many other times in the early/mid 90's, the Cowboys stomped the Packers. I remember in 1995 (the first year Favre won the MVP) watching Green Bay's first game of the season from a motel room in Arlington, TX because I was watching my other favorite athlete (Will Clark) play baseball that week-end for the Texas Rangers. I can still picture my living room crowded with me and four of my friends in January of 1996 when the Packers dismantled the 49'ers in San Francisisco to make it to the NFC champioship game. I remember that victory was especially sweet because we were all snowed in at my house and hadn't been to school in three days. I can also remember that next week, going to early church to get home in time for the pre-game show for the NFC championship and how disgusted I felt when Dallas, once again, destroyed the Pack. I'm still standing in my living room that summer day in 1996 when Brett Favre addressed the media after coming out of rehab for addiction to pain killers and a struggle with alcohol. I can rememeber my mother commenting to my dad that she wished he would quit drinking, too. And my dad (without a pause) saying, "If you looked his wife, I probably would." I remember that season and a 13-3 record and second MVP for Favre. I remember being congratulated, like I was on the team or something, when the Packers beat Carolina to go to the Super Bowl. All my friends were shaking my hand and patting me on the back because they knew that team and that player were somehow a part of me. I was at a church Super Bowl party (against my wishes) the night Green Bay and Reggie White sacked New England to win back the Lombardi trophy. I spent the entire game by myself upstairs away from everyone else, so I could watch it in peace. And high school was over.

I can still see my dorm room in college in November of 97 when Green Bay was finally getting their revenge against the damn Cowboys. And how I kept putting off going on a blind date that afternoon with my future wife until I was sure the game was out of reach. I can remember Favre butting heads with Warren Sapp and grabbing linebacker's face masks, afraid of nothing. I can see the pass fall short to Chumra to end the chances for a second Super Bowl win. And I'll never forget watching John Elway helicopter into the endzone like a flying horse. They showed that replay too much. In 98, when the team wasn't quite the same, I watched them lose to Detroit on a Thursday night from my bed in my dorm room. Favre threw two picks. They were able to win a wild card slot that year and the day they played their first round game my girlfriend (now my wife) and I watched in horror as Terrell Owens (who had dropped about five balls that day) caught a pass over the middle from Steve Young as time expired, then took a vicsious hit from the Packers' safety, Darren Sharper and still held on to the ball. Game over. Season over. Coach Holmgren to Seattle.

I got engaged the follwing May and the Pack hired Ray Rhodes for one disappointing season. I got married in 2000 and the Pack improved, but not enough, but I still remember Favre throwing a game ending touchdown to Antonio Freeman against the Vikings on Monday night football. No play-offs for the second straight year. A little improvement (and retribution) in 2001 as I started my first real job out of college as a social worker. My partner was a big Redskins fan and the Monday night game after the 9/11 tragedy saw the Packers whip the 'Skins. I had a lot to say the next day at work. I watched Mike McKenzie thwart another T.O. touchdown catch as the Pack won their first play-off game since their Super Bowl season in 97, only to get embarassed by the Super Bowl bound Rams the next week. Favre threw six picks and talked about retiring. A great regular season in 2002 collapsed as Mike Vick and the Falcons walked all over the Pack at Lambeau. I had a paper route that Christmas break and every morning I would get up at 1:30 a.m. and start my route and there was one house with a Packers' flag and I would always know that they would be watching that Saturday night. And they watched Favre get bested by Mike Vick. In 2003, I was working at the same job I have today, teaching school. I put Brett Favre posters and jerseys on the walls in my room/office. That year my dad and I went to St. Louis to watch him play in person for the first time. They lost and Favre broke his finger. I can remember watching MNF that December at my uncle's house with my entire family the night after Favre found out his father died. I still see him hurling the ball like he was trying to physically release his grief and pain. And my family celebrating (even though they weren't Packer fans) and delaying the opening of gifts so we could watch that magical first half. And the next week driving through the Smoky Mountains on the way to the Dixie Stampede with my wife's family, I made her drive so I could watch the game on another portable/adaptable tv. I watched the packers dismantle the Broncos in a game they had to win to make the play-offs while my wife and all of her family made the family picture without me. I remember getting up at least ten times that night and borrowing my sister-in-law's phone to call my dad every ten minutes to get an update on the Vikings' game and the feeling I got when I found out they lost and the Pack were going to play-offs. The next week and the overtime win against Seattle...more calls of congratualtions to me, like I was on the team. And then the next week, in what was the worst experience I've ever had watching a sporting event. Watching Favre throw the ball wildly into the air and seeing it land the arms of an Eagles' safety setting up the game winning field goal. A season that was thought to be destined, pre-arranged, or "heavenly helped" came crashing down. The next year watching the Pack start 1-4 only to come back and win the division on Christmas Eve in Minnesota. And me, having a wreck on the icy roads trying to get to my parents' house to watch the game because my in-laws were in town. And then last year, the first losing season, Favre showing his age, my friend and I driving to Cincinnatti on my birthday only to see Brett throw six picks and Green Bay fall short. And remembering the feeling this past April when he said he's coming back for one more year.

I have always been loyal (probably to a fault) to people I care about, whether I know them or not. They become a part of me and carve a place into a certain time of my life. They are connected to certain places and certain times. So a person who is connected to those places and those times becomes something bigger. They become a representation of something else. And when they leave or fall out of sight then a door shuts on that time they were here. As I was watching Favre's press conference today, it occured to me that I have grown from a child to a man and the whole time sports was a backdrop. Brett Favre and the Packers have been around for milestone achievements in my life: high school, high school graduation, college, engagement, marriage, college graduation, adulthood. I know this sounds like a little much and I don't mean that Brett Favre has been a huge influence in my life because he hasn't. I don't know the man. I do know, though, that the one constant in all of these changes has been Sunday afternoons in the fall. I know that. And if nothing else, it's neat to know that someone you admire is still doing what they were doing when you were barely a teen-ager.

I like things that have beginnings and endings. I guess that's why I'm a school teacher. I like definite book ends on things. That's why I've always been loyal to players and not teams. I will still be a Packers' fan when Brett Favre finally retires. But when his chapter closes, it will be the last common factor that ties certain events in my life together. Beginnings are great because things are new and you don't really know how it's going to turn out, the middle in this case was awesome (two super bowls, three mvp's) and endings are always sad. They just are. If it ends the way it should, it's sad because it's over. If it ends the way it shouldn't, it's sad because it didn't end well. This is the ending and it's sad. "The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings."

Mr. Brady

2006-06-12T05:24:00.000-07:00

I had never had a dog growing up. Well, never had a dog for very long. We took in a stray once, named him/her "Star" and then we had to give it back the next day. I grew up with cats. I know it's not a very masculine animal, but we had them and as I got older I would bring stray cats home and they would stay. By the time I graduated high school, we had Beavis (acquired in 1995), Hope (acquired in 1996) and Whitey (acquired in 1989). Two of the three are still alive...Whitey has moved on. I never really wanted a dog. It's not that I didn't like them, just never wanted one. I got my first dog in the fall of 2002 and named him Brady.

At the time, my wife was working 12 hour shifts on the oncology floor at the hospital. It was an emotionally exhausting job. I remember that she would come home at 7:00 at night and just crash on the couch. Luckily, she only worked three days a week, but the job was getting to her and had beat her down pretty good. I thought it would be a great idea to surprise her with a new puppy. I asked the lady what breed the dogs were and she had no idea...she just knew the mom was a lab. They all looked like labs in the face and they were all golden. I picked the smallest one because we were renting a house then and had no fence around our backyard. I picked up Brady that night and had home and in the bathroom before Davina got home. I told her to go open the door and see what was in there. Initially, she wanted to take him back, but that night she ended up sleeping with him on the couch. In a moment of foreshadowing, he peed on her in the middle of the night. This is the Mr. Brady that we would come to know.

We moved into a new house in March of the following year and while Mr. Brady's body had grown longer and his head had grown bigger, his legs had hardly grown at all. We waited and waited for him to grow, but he only stayed in limbo between a full grown lab and a puppy. Mr. Brady enjoyed his new home and I would let him swim in the pond in our neighborhood in the afternoons. On a trip to the vet that spring we discovered the shocking truth: Mr. Brady was mix of dotson and lab. How these two breeds of dogs managed to physically pro-create is beyond my imaginiation. Many times I have tried to work out the logistics behind this mystery and I cannot wrap my mind around it. Mr. Brady was a half-breed and by this time behavior bordered on insane.

Over the next couple of years things got a little busy. I didn't walk him as much, but we would still let him in the house when we decorated the Christmas tree every year. He liked that, I think. During this time, Mr.Brady developed what weather.com calls "thunder phobia". Basically, he is insanely scared of storms. This is probably due to the fact that he has been outside during two tornadoes. Davina and I were both locked down at work and couldn't get home to let him in the house. Regardless, everytime it thunders Mr. Brady will hurl himself at the back door like a linebacker diving for a tailback. It's such an awful thud that we always end up putting him in the garage. This past August Mr. Brady decided he was too special not to be able to pass his genetic make-up on to another unfortunate mutt, so he bit and dug his way through our fence. We called the vet to get an appointment to get him fixed, but the next appointment was more than a week away. We poured quickcrete concrete in the hole where he dug out. We flipped the boards, so he no longer could squeeze through the hole in the fence that he had eaten through. Still, he struggled. He had scratched up his paws and legs. And, yes, he did manage to get out. A week later, he was fixed and settled down quite a bit.

In December of this past year, I decided Mr. Brady needed someone new to play with, so I went to the local humane society and purchased Nacoma. A husky, pit bull, and some other things mix. She is a whole other story that I will tell later. In short, they get along great and even though they don't know it, they are getting ready for another move to our new house at the end of the month.

Last night, Mr. Brady slept in the garage because it was lightning outside. Nacoma whined and whined because he wasn't outside. And sometimes, when I want to get strange looks, I will take Mr. Brady to the high school soccer games or football games. Some kids say he's cute, some kids say he's ugly, some smaller kids are simply scared of him. The high school kids in my class tell me he's the ugliest dog they've ever seen and he might be. He's been a pain in the ass more times than not and to be honest I can't really find a redeemable quality about him. The only good thing about him is that I've never seen any other animal that looks like him. He is one of a kind on every level.

Pool Boy

2006-06-03T04:45:00.000-07:00

I have always had a knack for having things happen to me that make great stories to tell. Some of these things are a result of choices I make and some of them just happen. Hopefully, over the summer, I can share some of these.

Last week I was officially certified as a Red Cross lifeguard. This summer I will be lifeguard at the Jackson Country Club. The only thing halfway strange about this is that I am 26 and married. See, lifeguarding would've been a pretty cool job to have when I was, say, 18 or 19...but 26 could border on creepy. The advantages of lifeguarding for a 19 year old male are seemingly endless. Free tan, no heavy manual labor, lots of girls, etc...for a 26 year old married man the advantage is this: a summer job/paycheck.

Many of the students I teach have asked me this question: "Why are you lifeguarding this summer? Don't you get paid from school?" The answer is "yes, I get paid and I'm not sure why I'm lifeguarding...it sounded like a good idea at first". Yesterday I went to the pool to turn in my paperwork and get a crash course on the filtering system, pool vac, and chemical changing. Our filter system is pretty shot so it kicks out sand at the left side of the shallow end of the pool. The pool vac is attached to a 20 foot tall pole that is pieced together with duct tape and other fine material. The pool manager asked me to vacuum some in the pool so that I could get the hang of it. Do you ever get a sense of how someone sees you when you're performing a task or doing some physical activity? I hardly ever think of how people see me, but yesterday as I had the pool vac rolling furiously on the bottom of the pool and as I wrestled with that pole that kept falling apart each time I pulled back on it, I had a clear vision of who I was at that moment: I was the "pool boy". I was wearing a t-shirt that was black with white letters saying "New Jersey" on the left side of the front of the shirt and on the back was written in red cursive "Lovin' " and in white capitalized print "Jersey". I just recently shaved my head completely (razor and all) and my scalp had about four days growth on the top and my face matched it except for the black goatee that hadn't been trimmed in a few weeks. In short, I looked like a dock worker on the eastern seaboard. I'm quite sure I made a great impression on the aristocrats at the Country Club. But hey, sometimes there are sacrifices for a paycheck...like a free tan, no manual labor, and, of course, cleaning the pool.

Class of...

2006-05-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

We had our graduation ceremonies last Saturday at the school where I work. The school is a college prepatory school, therefore not as big as the public schools in my city. Our graduation ceremony is a little bit different from any other I've attended in that each graduate has about 20-30 seconds alone on the stage in front of the crowd while all of their accomplishments are read in front of the audience and their fellow classmates. It makes for a long ceremony, but it's actually a pretty neat idea. The graduates get one last moment in front of their class, their teachers, their parents and everyone else in attendance. There is one last synopsis for the crowd, one last affirment for the teachers, one more photo op for the parents and one last moment for the student to hear his/her high school accomplishments. Almost like closing the door behind them. Then they walk to the other side of the stage receive a handshake and a diploma and they are no longer high school students.

I remember my high school graduation nine years ago. Two things stand out about that to me now: 1.) No amount of money would be enough to convince me to be 17 again. 2.) I see no one from my high school graduating class on a consistent basis. I'm not sure what that says about anything at all, but for all the importance and time and effort that goes into growing up, it seems that a person changes more in the four to five years after high school than anytime during primary or secondary education. I think it has a lot to do with meeting new people, becoming independent of parents, becoming more dependent on yourself, and facing your future in a more direct way than you ever had before. You are forced to change or quite possibly you will not succeed.

I chaperoned our school's "Project Graduation" for the second straight year this year. We loaded up all the seniors on two charter buses after graduation and headed to Nashville. We rented a cabin and had dancing and kareoke and food and a cartoonist who was incredibly talented. The students danced and sang and ate and hung out with each other. As I was making my rounds around the property making sure no one had slipped into the woods, I could hear the music playing from in the cabin. I don't remember what song what was playing, but I do remember thinking that this more than likely was the last time everyone of these students would be together at the same time and in the same place again. That's a pretty powerful thought if you let sink in. It's not a sad thought, though. Some of our graduates are going all over the country to try their best to do something positive, some are looking forward to their respective college's football games, and some are just going to party and inevitably they will be back here in January. Whatever the reasons we go to college, we know that after four years (or more) we won't be the same. One last time together with classmates is fun, but it doesn't grow anyone. It's one last time to be together in one place while the world waits patiently. I'm not sure how the Class of 2006 will do, but I suspect it won't feel much different than any class before it.

Church Music

2006-05-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I bought Bruce Springsteen's new CD, "The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome." It's an album of 13 songs based on the folk music of Pete Seeger. Some of these songs date back to the 1500's, others are negro spirituals that find their origins in the cotton fields of the South sung as prayers of hope. Every song on the album is accompanied by strings and horns played by 17 members of the Seeger Sessions band. The music is alive. It is powerful. You can feel what you are listening to. One apocalyptic song ends with this line, "God gave Noah a rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time. Pharoh's army got drownded, Oh Mary don't you weep." And after that last line, horns blare and cymbals crash and you can feel what the chaos and violence might resemble at the end. It's tangible. It's palpable. It's also unpolished and unvarnished. You're listening to music being made, not produced. Another song that reaches out of the speakers and demands that you feel it is called, "Eyes on the Prize." The first verse is about Paul and Silas being jailed and continuing to keep their faith. This originated as a negro spiritual and was re-worked to be a powerful anthem during the civil rights movement. It is a very deliberate, matter-of-fact song where the author is continuing to press, to fight, to keep his eyes on his goal. It was about focus, but it was more about faith. Faith in doing what he thinks is right, faith in his God that He will deliver him from this bondage. The chorus is simple, "Hold on, hold on, keep your eyes on the prize and hold on." Each time "hold on" is sung it is sung with more conviction, more strength and fortitude than the time before. It's almost as if the singer is trying to convince himself to press on. It is a march, it is purposeful, it is deliberate.

Today in church two ladies sang a song about Paul and Silas in jail and I could not help but notice the absolute chasm between these two songs. Each line in the song this morning was soft, sweet, and full of cliche. There was no urgency, just little pearls of wisdom. I know these ladies sang with a pure heart, but our churches seem to lack grit. They seem to lack any fortitude. We are killing ourselves from the inside out because we are painting the Christian walk as something that is smooth and easy and can be summed in phrases like "Let go and let God." We are losing touch with an outside world and it's reflected in our music, in our way of talking and in our blind faith in an ultra-conservative society. I identify much more with what I hear when I hear the words "hold on" over and over and with stronger and stronger conviction because that's what life is sometimes. You hold on. Keep your eyes on the prize and hold on. Everything else may be in complete disarray, but hold on. Life might hard, but hold on. You might lose someone you love, but hold on. Keep your eyes on the prize and hold on.

The group that got President Bush over the hump in both terms is the Christian conservative right. I probably fall into that category as opposed to any other (although I didn't vote for W). This group consists of upper-middle and upper class white people for the most part. I know that's a generalization, but it is true. The Republican party touts family values as election time approaches and they harp on two issues to get a vote: gay marriage and abortion. And when the CCR hears these two issues they perk up. They take to the streets and damn anyone who wants think otherwise. They celebrate when their man wins and completely ignore the ineptitude when he fails. The largest protestant religious denomination is also mostly made up of these people. The Southern Baptist Convention should receive government payment for the support of the GOP. I am a southern Baptist. I believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and that Christ is the only way for salvation, I also believe that we have lost sight of what Christ truly taught and are bordering on pharisaical law. And when we sing sweet songs about the Christian walk, we show that no matter how polished and how clean we may seem, we still cannot identify with freedom from bondage like the people who wrote "Eyes on the Prize" can. We cannot identify with Christ for being wrongfully treated because of who he was like the black people from the civil rights movement can. Instead of viewing life as a sweet place where problems are solved with three points in a sermon, maybe we just need to hold on. Hold on. Keep our eyes on the prize and hold on.

Loose Ends

2006-05-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Seasons have distinct feelings...not emotions, but the way they fit into your life. Smells, sounds, light, darkness, etc. Summer feels long, slow moving; dragging along the calendar. Fall is quick, crisp, brilliant. Days get shorter, the air is thinner. Winter just hangs there, suspended like the gray clouds in January (that was a little too much, sorry), but you get my point. Spring just pops and it's there one morning. White buds blend to green leaves and it's over. Seasons are distinct and that's their beauty. As a school teacher, there are different seasons all together. There are times of the year that you love and times that you hate...May is a time to hate.

You see, May is the busiest month of the year. Final Exams, AP tests, prom, awards day, graduation, etc. All the loose ends being tied up as fast as they can. Students looking forward to the next step in their life, looking forward to the next 4-6 years as preparation for entrance to the "real world". Let's be honest though, that phrase ("real world") should be discontinued and never spoken or written again. Some students are nostalgic, but most are impatient and ready to move on. And they take their exams, fill out their cap and gown size, get their prom pictures developed, show them off, wear their college shirts on the designated day, think there is no class as good as the class of '06, walk to the stage, get the diploma while their tassel hangs loosely on the side of their cap. Then it ends.

If seasons have feelings then May feels loose to me. Two months ago I hurt my knee playing basketball and even after three weeks, when there was no pain, my knee had no stability. It felt as if it were floating inside my leg. That's the best way I can describe the month of May. Kind of like saying, "I'm not quite sure which direction everything will go, but we're giving it our best shot." It's that kind of month. We'll get there for sure, I just don't know how. Our kids that we're sending off to college and beyond: they'll get there, we just don't know how it's going happen, but we know it's going to happen. The loose ends will be tied and they'll be ready to move once again.