"i know you are hoping it's a boy"
(hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me)
((part two))


cancer is everywhere.

especially if you are looking for it. i don't actively try and look for it as much as i did sixth months ago, but there is still a subconscious part of me that jumps into hyper-aware mode as soon as i read or hear a story of someone struggling with some form of it.

just today, i hopped into the car heading out for a brunch and a run with a friend and i turned on espn radio hoping for some mindless analysis of the nba playoffs or some "expert" to tell me why the braves offense (heyward included) currently makes me want to hide my eyes. instead, what do i get? pat williams, gm of the orlando magic is introduced by colin cowherd's sit-in, brian kenny, and they start off with a short anecdote about pat's son running in the boston marathon yesterday. why was pat's son running in the race? because his dad his fighting something called multiple myaloma. i don't even know what that is, nor am i going to google it because i will then be sure that i, too, have multiple myaloma. pat williams, while talking about his malady, could not have been in better spirits, though. it was unbelievable. he knew he was in for a fight, he admitted it, talked about how proud he was as a dad to have his son run in his place in the marathon that he trained all of two months for (really...that's not even fair. i've been running for three months now, and i am just up to four miles.), and then they rapidly changed subjects to dwight howard and his kind-of impending free agency (he will be after next season). i was floored. i was like, keep talking about the cancer. i need you to talk about the cancer so that it can ruin my day completely. but, they didn't. they spent 90 seconds on it and then moved into exactly what i was looking for. mindless talk about sports.

closer to my life, local, i have 3 friends that have spent time in and around limbo who are in different places with their respective father's battles with the disease. matt and stephanie have been told that they are in their final days with their father here on this earth. rachel's dad is beginning his radiation therapy today. all i or anyone that cares for these people would want for them is take their dads' pain and anxiety and confusion and illness away, but we can't take it away. we are forced to sit idly by and offer our prayers and our support and hope that, in some way, it helps. (i love you, guys.)

in one of my weaker moments a couple weeks ago, i looked around and found that percentage-wise, humans have a 1 in 3 chance of fighting with some form of cancer. cancer is everywhere. if you are looking for it.

in the last couple of weeks since sarah and i officially let the kumquat out of the bag, there is one comment that has been made more often (to me, at least) than any other aside from "congratulations".

"i know you are hoping for a boy."

yeah...

i know where the comments are coming from. if i've shared the story once, i've shared it a hundred times. one of my biggest regrets with our pregnancy experience with caroline was how visibly shaken and disappointed i was when we initially found out she was a girl. for weeks leading up to that special day and ultrasound, i joked with andy and kiker about the idea of having a boy. little league. soccer. pee-wee football. star wars. bmx bikes. hot wheels. we would sit and eat ribs and wipe bbq sauce on our faces and tim allen grunt and i just knew i would have my boy that would carry on the o'kelley name and give our house some macho to balance out all the pink and flowers and gymnastics that hannah sported proudly. alas, it didn't happen. caroline was a girl and sarah didn't have to look hard or long at my face to know that i was bothered.

i am proud to say that i was only bothered for a couple days. i adjusted my expectations. i started mentally preparing for another princess and on august 23, 2007, out she came looking just like, what do you know, me! what we lost in macho-balance we did gain in "hannah looks just like you, sarah and caroline looks just like kevin." yay! i could claim one! caroline looks like me and, today, at three years-old, well, she acts just like me. she's stubborn. i mean really fucking stubborn. she's strong-willed. she's not afraid of anything other than tiny bugs. she doesn't like london on suite life on deck. and she needs the remote...at all times. she and hannah, both very much girls, are both very much my girls, and i wouldn't have it any other way.

when i hear the comment, "i know you are hoping for a boy", i hear what people are saying. they know me. they know my boy name is just waiting to be used just like it's been waiting for the last ten years. they know i'm a freak about sports. they know i would be that dad at the ballpark, but really, this go around, ...

i couldn't give a shit.

i am being honest. i don't daydream about a boy the same way that i once did. what i daydream about is health. and love. and showing my children impactful ways to affect their universe. to not be rude for the sake of being rude. to be caring. to try really hard at always doing their best. to be kind to their mommy. to learn to love guacamole. you know? the important stuff. and i can do that with a girl or a boy. it makes no difference to me.

you probably don't believe me. i don't blame you. it's a shift in the paradigm that is me. that happens, i suppose, when life reminds you of your mortality.

cancer is everywhere. if you are looking for it. and i do, still. i look for it in moments. not to let it scare me. i look to let it ground me and remind me that little league isn't as important as i once thought it was.

i no longer play church basketball or church softball "to win the game". i play to finish the game and find a lesson somewhere wrapped inside the end result.

come boy. come girl. it makes no matter.

i am praying for you, matt. and you, stephanie. and you, rachel. and your dads.

come what may.

hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me
(part one)


sunday morning, we were heading into firehouse off of highway 11 when sarah's dad, bill, shook my hand and said, "congratulations". i am paraphrasing the next part but it went something like this..., "there is no truer symbol of hope than bringing a child into the world."

i wasn't sure how he meant the comment.

it could've been just from the baby angle. baby=symbol of hope. a new life. completely innocent. completely unaware of how truly fucked up the world is. parents, entirely aware of how truly fucked up the world is, make the intentional decision to create a new life anyway. in the baby growing inside of the mommy's belly is not only a life, but a metaphor. the parents telling the world that they feel that all is not lost, not only for their current children but this child, too, and they are not afraid for this child or this child's future generations. the baby represents optimism, a moment in time flip of the bird to the cynic inside all of us, an expression of belief in the potential good of our fellow man and the goodness of our creator that allows miracles such as human creation to be within our reach and control.

it could've been from the kevin angle. at least, there was a part of me that heard it that way. there have been few people that have been as in tune with my every day anxieties over the last 18 months as sarah's dad. sarah's dad is a doctor, so any time anything odd happened to me, he was one of the first we talked to. a weird feeling i had never noticed or paid attention to before? will you call your dad? an experience relating to my expelling of bodily waste that worried me? will you call your dad? my being dizzy for several months post-operation? will you call your dad? something i read on the internet? i am pretty sure i just found my cause of death on webmd. will you call your dad? each time, he patiently (from what i am told) heard sarah's retelling of my most recent malady and responded back to her in a loving and educated and rational way. he didn't make fun of me (from what i am told). he didn't tell me to sod off (from what i am told). he just told me in so many words the same mantra that my therapist did. is it possible that little bump on your head that has been there as long as you can remember will end up killing you? maybe. is it probable? um, no.

more than likely, some of both of those sentiments were captured in bill's words and, however he meant them, i appreciated it.

in spite of all the clean scans, positive test results, return to health, and encouraging words, there have been many days in the last eighteen months i was certain my fate was in immediate peril. after my late january scan, i put my doctor on the spot.

dr. wade. this is unfair of me to ask you, but you have gotten to know me and my anxieties pretty well over the last 18-20 months. i have two concerns with the idea of having more children. one, i want to be relatively certain that, barring something unforeseen and unrelated to my having kidney cancer, i would like to be around and a part of that child's life for a long time. two, i also am worried about my children now and in the future-tense being at greater risk for having the same issue.

dr. wade: (smiles) that's not how this kind of cancer works. you shouldn't worry about that.

(here's the unfair part) so, if i were you, would you, you know, not try again?

dr. wade: (smiles) i think you should feel good about going on and living your life in whatever way you want to. we're going to see each other for a long time.

the rest, as they say, is now history.

"there is no truer symbol of hope than bringing a child into the world."

sarah is pregnant. twelve weeks on thursday. the due date is one week before my own birthday, october 23rd.

let's do this.

the resolution most likely to fail
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty-five))


back on tuesday, january 25th, i played cocky with my new year's resolution number "4", which was to "run". i even called it a gimme, which was completely freaking ridiculous. it was a way of self-motivating myself to believe in something that, on that day, i didn't truly believe. yes, i had bought running shoes. yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. yes, i felt, physically, i was ready to try something different than my tried and true "rocky training montage" that i've been doing three times a week since caroline kicked me out of my workout room and sent my bench and most of my free weights to some dude who i am sure has pawned them by now. i was ready to do something different, but i didn't know if i could.

as i've said to many friends and others that didn't care to hear in the last two months, i have never, read: NEVER IN MY LIFE, run when it wasn't attached to some stick or ball sport. and even when i did, i didn't like it. mind you, i didn't consider myself lazy. i didn't shortcut any of the conditioning that the activity i was participating in asked of me, but i didn't go any farther than i had to either. running seemed like a waste of time. i had a young man's metabolism burning away all the fat and poor diet choices i made for the greater portion of my adult life. i was fine with the exercise that i got, which in the last ten years had consisted of either my old free weight program, my newer rocky training montage, six months of softball one night a week and three months of basketball one night a week. not a whole lot, if any, of cardio mixed in. i wasn't unhealthy. i wasn't fat. i wasn't partaking in anything illicit, unless you considered the occasional kiker burger a drug (some do). i wasn't even close to optimizing the potential for health that my body still had in it, though. sending one kidney to the dump, you would've thought, would've triggered my awakening. i am sure to some degree, at least indirectly, it did. but it's not what kick-started the running program.

remembering back to november, i was probably heavier than i've ever been. around 184 pounds. i remember my primary doctor visit vividly, because, after i stepped on the scales, the kind young nurse said, "ooh. looks like someone ate a little extra birthday cake this year." in a minor win, i didn't call her any names, because she didn't call me one. in so many words, though, i heard, "ease up, fatty." my blood pressure registered a little higher than normal and the doctor decided to schedule another check-up for early february, just to make sure it wasn't something they were going to have to keep an eye on. i went back shortly after making out my resolutions. about two weeks and three or four runs into what i still wasn't sure was something i really wanted to do. i had gained three more pounds, maybe five. i wasn't sure, because the same kind nurse didn't make any comments and i couldn't make out her handwriting on the last number. my blood pressure checked out fine that day. so did my kidney function. i set up another visit six months down the road. rather than dwelling on the two small victories, i did what i do best. i found something negative. i called sarah and told her i was fat. it was settled. whether i liked it or not, i was going to run and i was going to be more healthy. i was also going to lose weight, which i am told to this afternoon, isn't always "healthy". we'll debate that on a later post.

i give a lot of credit to meg denson. she ran her first 5K in the freezing temperature of winter last year. in the beginning of my efforts toward the spring portion of the running resolution, i told myself on many days that if meg could do it, i could do it. i told her of my new goal. she said that she would like to get back in the habit of running herself. a couple weeks later, we talked and she mentioned the flapjack 5K in trussville on march 26th. as overwhelming as it seemed at the time, somewhere mid-february probably, we said we'd do it.

along the way, we picked up partners in crime. jacob sutton (jacob, playing the role of my expert and answerer of most of my questions, given his cross country experience in high school), katie gibson, amy gibson, and philip gibson all shared in the idea that running would be good for them. sometimes one of the above would run with me. sometimes, several. sometimes, it would just be me. i feel qualified enough having been doing this for two months now that i can safely say that doing it alone sucks. having a partner with me was and is exceptionally motivating, even if we weren't always training at the same pace. knowing that they would see me if i slowed or stopped running to walk for a bit was a shameful nudge towards pushing harder and pushing farther. as we got closer to the date, we put vaughn banks in a corner and dared him not to join our tribe. vaughn, being the freak he is, didn't have to train with us mortals. vaughn ran a 5K in 24 minutes in early march cold turkey. we badgered him about it, but, really, we were all just jealous that it seemed to come so easy. when vaughn started his move towards the flapjack, he immediately jumped to jacob sutton level training, and they left us behind to champion their efforts and proudly claim them part of our team, even if we didn't deserve them.

moral support came from several different places, too. meg's husband, reagan, was a proud cheerleader throughout the entire two months. sarah never once gave me a hard time about leaving on a sunday afternoon to go run for an hour and then come home to complain. amy and katie's mom championed our effort and was there (along with christina tidmore) to show her support at the race.

the flapjack 5K came on saturday, and all seven of us that participated (eight if you count nicole oglesby, repping for humc, herself) reached our goals. all seven ran the entire course. all seven posted our best outdoor times (that i know of) in the two months leading up to the race. it was a spectacular success made even more spectacular because we did it together. personally, i finished 54th out of close to 200 racers. (here are the results)

the flapjack isn't the end of the running. really, i hope it's just the beginning. i took sunday and monday off as a celebration, but went back to the indoor uab track with amy today. i ran 3.1 miles (approx 5K) in 27:34, two full minutes faster than my outdoor run on saturday. amy and i walked around the track, happy to run without the expectations of the flapjack looming, that freedom and the predictable conditions inside helping us both achieve personal bests. we walked two times around the track, then we ran another mile just for the hell of it.

meg has already eyed the vulcan 10K in october as our next carrot on the stick. after today's run, that seems totally attainable. who would've thought that way back on january 25th. i sure wouldn't have. and i wouldn't have been able to do it without my friends.

thank you to everyone mentioned above in this post, for making this journey with me. thank you to my girls for being there with there big honkin' smiles at the finish line on saturday. i love you all.

'til the next race.

p.s. - today, march 29th, i weighed 170.4 lbs.

like. a. boss.

since when did i know anything about anything


i missed my window to publish my usual and annual "nobody knows anything" post before the ncaa tourney began.

just as well. the sentiment holds true, year after year. the tournament may have seemed more unpredictable this year as compared to most, but it wasn't. every year in the last 5-10 years, the tourney has been unpredictable. this year, four double-digit seeds remain in the last sixteen. that's about right. there's a butler that people tend to remember have a really decent basketball program only after they pull an upset against an overrated big conference opponent. there's a wisconsin that nobody picks in their bracket either because they play a horribly unattractive brand of basketball that people who watch games don't want to see advance or you might have heard that they scored 33 points in a game late in their season and the casual bracket challenger figured they couldn't really be any good. there's duke because there is always duke. same with kentucky. the power conference team in ohio st. that seems better than they are because a one and done freshman has been outclassing inferior opponents all year. there's jimmer. there's kemba. and a couple of also-rans that will likely end up in the final four mainly because i didn't mention them today.

hindsight proves nothing just as it proves everything all at once. not one bracket out of 5.9 million entered on espn guessed the sweet 16 correctly. not one.

so, why am i so mad? disappointed? angry even at finding new ways to find myself at the bottom of my bracket pool?

if nobody knows anything, should i be excluded? of course not. i didn't watch any college basketball this season. remove a few frustrating alabama basketball experiences and one jimmer masterpiece, i did not watch one other game from start to finish this season.

nevertheless, i entered my picks with confidence. surely, i would have seen enough sportscenter to make up for my lack of first-hand knowledge of the teams in question. and then it hit me. all sportscenter shows are alley-oops and dunks, maybe the occasional three. i don't know who's any good. i just know that one guy that used to play at alabama made top ten plays that one time. holy. shit. i've become my wife!

speaking of my wife, her bracket predictions are currently in the 96th percentile in the country. mine? 37th?

how effed up is that? you know what my wife really gets fired up about? grey's anatomy. and twilight. and mashed potatoes.

i don't know what that says about me, but it's not good.

i am fearful that one of these days i will understand and own that my being brash and claiming "nobody knows anything" as a subtle sleight of hand to make you think that i do doesn't really make any sense. i'll realize that i am no better at predicting the sports future than my three year old and i'll give up the ghost.

i won't even fill out a bracket. yeah, that's it. i won't fill one out and then i'll tell you and you and you how stupid you were for picking louisville over morehead st. you should've seen that one coming miles down the pipe.

yeah, i'll do that next year.

"hello, welcome to regions. my name is ann"


back when i subscribed to sports illustrated, one of my favorite little blurbs was a short snippet/fact/stat/absurdity that could be found towards the beginning of every issue under the header, "sign of the apocalypse". it would be something like, "the yankees asked the city of new york for $370 million dollars in bonds for their new stadium the same week they signed cc sabathia to a $161 million contract." or "shawn king, a former nfl defensive lineman, says he failed a league drug test because the woman whose urine he had used to help hide his marijuana use turned out to be pregnant". they were always really funny, most because they were insane and totally grounded in this world's reality all at the same time. ever since, i feel like i notice my own personal signs of the apocalypse all the time in my daily routine or reading. this week, at regions bank, one of those such happenstances occurred.

regions bank has been struggling for a while now. having gone in the huffman and/or roebuck branch 5 days out of 7 for the last five years, i've noticed many different attempts to change their look/perception/image at the only level most of their customers will ever see, the branch level. they painted shit kermit the frog green. they advertised by showing people riding kermit green bicycles around downtown and in their promotions/commercials. (i have no idea what that was about.) they added flat screens to their lobby to take people's minds off the fact that they were waiting fifteen-thirty minutes in line because someone had only scheduled two tellers on a payday friday. tellers have always been asked to be nice to the customers, at least i assume this has remained the case since my one year of teller-ship at amsouth before regions bought them out. now, though, tellers are trained to be SUPER nice.

like many businesses in the last five-ten years, name recognition is becoming an increasingly annoying method of welcoming a customer into your establishment. WELCOME TO COLDSTONE!!!, anyone? pet supplies "plus" tried this for a couple weeks two or three years ago until we realized that "hello!!! welcome to pet supplies "plus"!!! can we help you???" rang entirely insincere and counter to the sentiment we want our customers to feel when they came in the door. regions has tried to institute this method in the last year or so, at least if the branch manager is taking notes. it's funny to me, because the effort is absolutely and directly related to the idea of "if the cat is away, the mice will play", meaning if the branch manager is in her office, i will be warmly greeted upon entering the branch. all of the customer service reps. will smile a fake smile at me as i move past them. i will be told "good-bye" as i leave. it's a wonderful put-on. if she is not there, though, well, it's a different story. the csr's don't look up as i walk by. i am not told "have a nice day" when i exit. i'll eavesdrop on conversations concerning haircuts or old people. i'll smile and think, "that's more like it. at least now, you are being yourself". when you approach the teller line, name recognition effort has been more successfully indoctrinated. "hello. welcome to regions. my name is ann."

i love ann. she is a sweet older lady. great at counting. very generous with giving out paperclips and rubber bands to separate my change order. she's awesome. the perfect teller.

i digress.

let's just choose to ignore the "welcome to regions" endeavor. it seems that it's here to stay. nevermind that it implies that the customer is either an idiot or asleep when they take a right/left into the bank next to the big regions sign, walk into the building that reads regions on all four sides and then through the lobby where every piece of literature is marked with the regions logo. i get it.

let's get to this week's sign of the apocalypse. another personal touch exercise that regions asked of its tellers in the last year or so was to have the teller sign each deposit slip they hand back to the customer. a subtle name to the face of the teller that handled your transaction. i kind of liked it. it was almost like they were handing me their business card. i was happy to take care of you today. my name is ann. come back and see me. i will, ann. i will come back and see you. tomorrow even!

unfortunately, that changed this week. at the end of my transaction monday morning, ann put my deposit receipt into her printer, pulled it out and put it on her desk. instead of reaching for her pen, she reached for something else, a stamp. i thought, what the fuck is going on? why does ann need a stamp? she popped my receipt with the stamp, handed it back to me, and i looked at it. the stamp read, "thanks, ann".

seriously? it wasn't even a copy/mold of ann's hand-writing. i know ann's handwriting! this isn't fucking ann's stamp! not my ann!

some regions executive that is probably paid more than me and most of you was likely presented an idea from below.

minion: listen to this idea, jim. it's fucking brilliant. our tellers have been signing their name to deposit receipts for about a year now, and our research has shown that this takes a lot of fucking time. also, most of our tellers can count, but some of them can't write for shit. i can't tell you how many emails i've gotten from concerned customers saying that they had know idea who signed their deposit receipt. they have threatened to move their money somewhere else, jim, if we don't fix this problem. i know how to fix this problem, jim. instead of tellers using their chicken scratch to personally sign their names and take up to 3-5 extra and valuable seconds of our customers day, we can make stamps for every teller and ask them to stamp the shit out of that receipt with a totally legible, if not totally accurate, facsimile of their name. whaddyouthink???

jim: do it.

so, ann stamped the shit out of my receipt. she handed it back to me with a smile. i smiled back, but it wasn't a 100 percent smile. it was like ann had punched me in the face with a frail right cross. the branch manager wasn't there that day, so i didn't get a "good-bye" from a csr either. i walked by the wackenhut security guy with his cell phone pressed up against his ear. i hoped i didn't get jacked in the parking lot. i didn't think he would notice. i heard the silence tell me to fuck off as i left the branch. i forgot where i was, prob'ly wachovia or compass. it doesn't matter.

nothing matters anymore. soon enough, we'll all be assimilated into this crazy, mixed up machine that tells us we can't sign our names anymore. we'll be issued a stamp and ink pad at birth and that'll be it.

"welcome to regions. my name is ann. my i rip out a small part of your soul?"

sure, ann. be gentle, please.

"if everyone in this room shows up with a paintbrush, we'll finish in about twenty minutes"
(cue laugh track)
((we were there six and a half hours))
(((you do the math)))


for two consecutive sundays in february, i pimped our church daycare's second paint day with the above joke. it wasn't terribly funny, but, then again, i didn't really mean for it to be. i said it in a light-hearted enough way, for i knew the way that it sounded would come across as exaggerative.

surely, he doesn't mean all of us could fit into those tiny daycare classrooms. that would be foolish. he must be joking. i'm gonna laugh to ease my tension.

on the second and third sundays last month, we probably had around 200 people in worship. some of them young. some of them young-ish. some of them middle-aged. some of them older. some of them older than that. most of them all capable of holding the smallest of paintbrushes. those that were not, i would never hold them no-showing against them.

the daycare has been floating our church for more than two years now. in my head, it seemed like a very fair request, even if i didn't word it in this way.

because of the children's place, no staff have been let go. because of the children's place, no significant ministries are no longer offered. because of the children's place, no hard and fast conversations have been had or been necessary to radically reshape our budgets to accurately reflect what our congregation is able to support. as a thank you for the hard work and dedication of the children's place advisory board, the daycare staff, and, most importantly, the sweet children that OUR daycare serves, let us rearrange our own schedules, re-prioritize our own lives and come give those children a whole new world to walk into on monday morning, february 28th!!!

how i worded it was this way. "the daycare is having a paint day on saturday, february 26th. it would be greatly appreciated if you could help. (insert above joke)".

it didn't work. much like the first paint day, hardly anyone showed. a few church members. a couple daycare families. some daycare staff. that was it. as someone pointed out to me on facebook, it turned out that everyone else had another commitment that day.

and that's fine. the work got done. the kids got freshly painted rooms, and i got to re-teach myself the same lesson that i've been studying the last 11 years. what i think is important to others, what i think should be important, what i really, really want to be important to the life of our church often isn't.

and there are hundreds of different reasons for that, not many of which i am interested in re-analyzing today. today, i thought it important to write about the church in the hopes that it would kick me back into gear of writing about her more.

the natural church development survey has been taken. the results are in. the factor on which the church will focus its intentional energy has been chosen. i intend to track our progress here. i, in no way, intend to sabotage or throw darts at the effort, rather i intend to attempt to take a somewhat analytical look at the process. i will use actual numbers, true statistics, some of my own opinion, and gauge how i feel like we are doing. if this thing is truly a working process, the proof will be in whether or not the congregation literally moves together towards...something.

let's look at paint day: the sequel as our starting point. the entire church was corporately invited to the one of the most convenient and reasonable service projects that we could offer in several different forums (church announcements, messenger, bulletin, fliers on doors, etc.). not counting church or daycare staff, fewer than 15 members showed up. for the sake of starting the conversation, we'll be generous and say that we average around 200 folks on sunday mornings currently. that will make the math easy. for paint day: the sequel, the ppr (parish participation rate) was 7.5%. we'll introduce more statistics in the coming weeks, but we'll see and track ppr most often in the hopes that, over the course of the next sixth months, we see that number start to rise. if we notice the average attendance in worship over a four week span rise or fall, we'll adjust our calculations accordingly. meaning, if our ppr goes up just because attendance on sundays goes down but the same 15-25 people are still around and doing everything, we don't want to qualify that as a good thing.

i'll end here with a similar question that i asked on facebook last week. what has to happen for our church to be interested in moving together? our health team has posited that if we improve the functionality of our "effective structures", we will be closer to finding that answer.

let's pray they are right.

follow me on twitter @okelleykevin


well, i did it. raise your hand if you're surprised.

...

me either.

almost two full years ago next month, i published this ignorant piece of bullshit. you see what i did with it? i played (by played, read: pretended to be) as nice and diplomatic as i could, but there wasn't anything in the tone of that post that said i was giving twitter an honest shot at being worth anyone's time. even in the comments that followed, i used the positive reinforcement that i got from a couple friends to feel better about just how ignorant i was being. and for almost two full years, i continued to feel the same. about it all. the 140 character limit, like my wasting my own time (and yours) on my relatively long-form blog posts somehow rendered a tweet irrelevant. the narcissistic angle. seriously, the moment i made the intentional decision to put this journal where "all the world" could see it, i struck that defense from any argument i could ever make about anything internet-related. the subject matter angle, which, really, i am bothered moreso by that than anything else as i re-read this again. in the post, i dug at comments that might alert followers to what someone may have done to their hair to what movie they felt like pimpin' in a given moment to random joe athlete pimping himself, shouting out to his fans mid-game. the reason this bothers me so much is because it's all freaking relative, right? of course it is. i say that all the time, because i believe it. what's not important to me could be EXTREMELY FUCKING important to the next person, so what right do i have to judge and gauge the importance of anything that is coming out of anyone's mouth at any given time? dammit, i hate being a moron. and i hate being a hypocrite even worse. but i am, with a capital "H".

thank god for personal growth and evolution.

a little over three weeks ago, i started warming to the world of twitter, and i published this slightly less than ignorant piece of bullshit. quickish opened my eyes to what twitter could do if someone harnessed its powers for good. each day, quickish gets more in tune with what they do, and i now visit it more often than any other site on the internet. what's funny, though, is that it has opened a canyon of interest in me that quickish alone can't seem to fill. i've asked myself, quickish is doing a masterful job of compiling and sharing with me what its editors have deemed relevant to the sports stories of the day, but what if i don't want quickish to be my editor? what if some of what they are filtering out would add quality to my sports experience or day? what if something that one of my favorite columnists says doesn't make their cut but would totally crack me up or lead me to a column that i'll chew on for days?

the more i asked myself the initial question and its obvious follow-ups, well, the answer came pretty easily and fairly quick. i didn't want quickish to be my editor. i will still lean on them to be my tipmaster and to point me in directions that i wouldn't have time to find myself (and therein lies the genius of that site), but i am going to start creating my own filter.

and so today, i opened up my brand spanking new twitter account, and i couldn't be happier.

so, are you going to tweet, too?

i'd like to tell you, honestly, that i won't. but that's every bit as ridiculous as my writing about how twitter was worthless two years ago.

what about "facebook is not twitter".

fuck that. it really bugged me on that day that i might have bugged one of my facebook friends with my quick-hit updates, but the sentiment doesn't hold water. i see many facebook friends having tied their twitter to their facebook anyway, and facebook does a good job, from what i've noticed, of grouping and consolidating multiple tweets into a ziplink that you can choose to click on or not if you are interested in looking to "see similar posts".

so, yeah, i'll probably tweet. i have no idea about what, and i have no idea how i'll differentiate between what's worth a tweet and what's worth a status update, but i am guessing i'll find my groove sooner rather than later.

thank god for personal growth and evolution, indeed.

and thank god for twitter.

running


about a month ago, i trotted out my personal resolutions for the year 2011.

at the time that i banged out that post, i had already committed and invested in the idea of number four on my list, which was to "run". at the time that i banged out that post, i had already been to academy with sarah and we had each purchased a new pair of running shoes. sarah got some pretty shape-ups. me, i got some fancy grey and green reezigs. if peyton manning says they are awesome, they've got to be pretty awesome. at the time that i banged out that post, i had already attempted running for the sake of running for the first time in my life. and, to my surprise, it was terrible. i was miserably out of shape.

i don't mind running. i am a running kind of guy. always have been. growing up, i couldn't wait to get outside and play imaginary games of basketball with myself in the role of jim farmer and my ghostmen his teammates at alabama. over several months of basketball season, i can't tell you how many games jim farmer won with his sharp-eyed long distance shooting, clutch free throws and uncanny ways of finding mark gottfried for an open jumper or mike davis underneath the basket for a clutch lay-up. jim i would run around in my back driveway for hours on end on saturday mornings, burning every calorie that i was going to take in over the course of the whole weekend. if it was football season, things were even better. pick up games on my street were fairly epic. our field would include my front yard and the neighbor's houses on either side of me, probably a good 50-60 yards in length. reminiscing with chris hicks yesterday, i remembered just how many kids, more importantly how many boys lived on pinebrook lane with me as a kid. again, we would play forever, usually til the sun went down, running around like we didn't know what it meant to be tired. add onto that soccer and hide and seek and water-balloon wars, i couldn't have been any closer to constant motion.

my physical activity became a little more structured through middle school and high school, but there was still a butt-load of running, all still attached to some sport. after a couple year lull in my early twenties, sports and the running that went along with them found their way back into my routine with the development and the sustaining of the men's softball and basketball teams at the church that continue to this day.

there isn't a period in my life that i look back on where sports and running and physical activity didn't play a huge role. but one thing i never did was just...

run.

if it wasn't attached to some goal, to some number of runs i was trying to achieve or prevent, to some defined end result, running, to me, seemed stupid. if i can stay in shape by playing flag-football, why would i just run? it didn't make any sense. i'd drive by people running in parks, around tracks or on the side of the road and think, how boring.

a funny thing happened, though, between my youth when all my cardio was attached to a stick or ball sport and when i turned 34.

my metabolism slowed down. come to find out, the amount of cardio you get from playing softball for 1-2 hours a week on my crappy diet doesn't actually prevent a normal person from being a fatty. who knew??? come to find out, i was just super lucky. my genetic make-up allowed me to eat what i wanted to eat, lift some weights, run on occasion doing something that i thought to be fun, and i'd never gain any significant pound-age. it was awesome.

after my surgery and recovery in the summer of 2009, i probably weighed less than i had in 10 years. the stress of the entire situation had drained me of most of my motivations, including the want to eat. who really needs to eat when you're worried about eyeball tumors, right? anyway, after i got some focus back, i recovered my same phycical routines and ate even more, trying to put weight back on my diminished frame. over about six months, the weight came back, but it wasn't all good weight. it wasn't all muscle. it wasn't that i was fat, but, like i said back in january, i could see that if i didn't change something, i could be.

and so, the resolution was made. it's nothing more than fact that the best all-around total body workout that you can have is to run. most people just don't do it, because it sucks ass. things like the shake-weight are invented, or that belt that you wear to work that electronically stimulates your abs for you. why run when i can eat fried chicken and have this belt do the crunches for me. running is for losers. i know this personally, because 7-8 times in the last three weeks i've run, and it's sucked ass every time. my lungs hurt. my legs feel heavy. my heart burns. i am sore the day after. there isn't anything fun about it...

until about 30 minutes after i've cooled down, and it's as if i've plugged myself into the wall and this wonderful jolt of energy makes me feels like i've been recharged, telling me that yes, in fact, this is good for me. it really is like nothing else that i've experienced in my lifetime of exercise. right now, the feeling doesn't last very long, but it lasts long enough to get me properly stoked about the next time i'll be able to get outside and just run again.

it's crazy. before i made my resolution, i didn't really know of or about anyone that ran for the sake of running. now, though, it's like everyone is doing it. just in limbo, meg, jacob, ben, vaughn, amy and katie are giving it a go or have been for some time. it feels like every other update on facebook is someone checking in with their stats from their last workout. i have a step-cousin that just ran the full mercedes marathon. others that are already running 10k's. it's nuts. but kind of fun.

'cuz here's the thing. i am nothing if not a little competitive. and if i see someone post a time off of their smartphone app., all i can think is give me a month and i'll have that beat. maybe i will and maybe i won't. to achieve my greater goals, which is not only running 5k's and 10k's but being competitive in them, i'm going to have to find more than three days a week to train.

listen to me. "to train". who woulda thought it? definitely not me.

sarah's probably rolling her eyes. she knows that as soon as i can get from the "sucks ass" stage to "this is kind of great", i am going to be completely annoying about it. i am not there yet.

but i will be.

not seeing the trees for the forest


it's trendy in the national sports media post-national signing day to bemoan the celebration/exploitation of high school football players. surely, these 17 year-olds don't deserve this type of attention, do they?

well, of course they do.

ivan maisel wrote this column last thursday. i won't waste your time and link to all of the like-minded articles that i've read in the past week because most of them share the same sentiment. that being, for all the stars and the hype and the faux-celebrity that is created for many of the high-profile football recruits, a very small percentage of them pan out to be something truly great. in his column, maisel cross-references espn's top 150 of 2006 prospects with the 2010 nfl draft and finds only 20 of that group had their name called by roger goodell or one of his underlings. you can't argue with the facts i suppose, but the thing is...

he totally misses the point.

do you know what a number one recruiting class looks like?

here, let me show you.

 how many of those names do you recognize? be honest. my guess is one, maybe two at the most. in this state, cyrus kouandjio became a household name over the course of three days, so he's a gimme. he's the guy that went on espnu and announced his intentions to play for auburn university with the most pained look i've ever seen on the face of somebody that was laying down his path for the next four years, the "best days of his life". about an hour after the announcement, a young lady from scout.com broke the story that auburn had yet to receive the lineman's letter of intent. by that time, facebook was aflutter, mainly because all of the recruiting "experts" had penned in cyrus to join his brother at alabama for weeks. so, the same auburn fans that on my facebook nation didn't announce/celebrate any other signings that day (not one!!!) made a point to welcome cyrus to auburn's "au"ll in family. a funny thing happened on cyrus' way to auburn, though, and he quietly faxed his scholarship papers to tuscaloosa saturday afternoon. those same facebook people never posted retractions. then again, most of them likely didn't even know who the big fella was until a friend of theirs told them he was "supposed" to go to alabama, but they still used his momentary brain-freeze to flip the proverbial bird in the faces of their alabama "friends". most of those folks probably will still assume that cyrus will be on the loveliest village come the fall. he won't. i digress. back to the names. if i give you cyrus, how many others do you recognize? maybe one? two at the most? and that's fine. completely normal even for you to not take off work for signing day the same way you would for, say, columbus day or something of much greater importance.

again, maisel and his ilk are nothing but right in the numbers they use to extrapolate what they see as a day that is full of sound and fury most often signifying nothing.

except, it does signify something.

what the national pundits miss when they try and mock the importance of the celebration of signing day is the idea that these names will be the ones that i (and fans across the nation) will emotionally invest in for the next four to five years of my (our) life. it makes zero difference if they go on to be drafted in 2015 or if they become all-americans or if they make all-sec. the important part is that they are now a part of my favorite football team. their journey will make up a part of my journey. i will celebrate their highs with them and poo-poo their lows at them.

four years ago, alabama signed another number one class. take a look at these names. if you are an alabama fan or even an sec fan, how many names do you recognize from this group? a helluva lot, right? to maisel's point, a lot of those starry-starred athletes didn't work out the way recruiting sites predicted. even for me, i remember being infatuated with burton (b.j.) scott when he signed. i was obviously already in love with julio, but i was happy to have burton be my mistress. he caught a pass in the first quarter of the clemson game his  true freshman year and then fell off the map or into nick saban's doghouse, rarely to be heard from again. after this year ended, he opted out of tuscaloosa and went to play at south alabama where he could play on the field his final year. how about tyler love? five stars just like cyrus and he has yet to see significant playing time.

to my point, though, 18 of those 32 names have played roles, if not key roles, to alabama's success and even the ones that didn't i have worried and wondered about.

why?

because they play for alabama, stupid.

when the national columnists call out those that spend time with and invest in recruiting, all it tells me is that they don't have a local rooting interest.

they would probably argue that they are trying to identify and represent the "bigger picture" of college athletics, and i get that. in many facets of my life, i make pained and concerted efforts to be a big picture guy. not with college football, though. i pay attention because these guys, these young men are going to be my boys for however long they roll with the tide.

that alone, is worth my attention.

the dark side of getting the most for your money


i am not a bargain shopper. to be honest, i am not a shopper. period. when sarah is lucky enough for me to pick up anything at the store/cvs/wherever, i am going to be in and out. my mission, if i have chosen to accept it, will be to march into the establishment with list in hand or in my head, get what i am there to get, and find the nearest express lane checkout. more often than not, these trips aren't even for the o'kelley house. they are for limbo. early on sunday mornings, i'll travel to the huffman wal-mart looking for something quick and easy for breakfast. i'll come up to the checkout line with a package of ground coffee (starbucks or dunkin' donuts), a few packages of pop-tarts (strawberry, blueberry, s'more), maybe some mini-doughnuts (powdered white) and two half gallons of something else to drink (orange juice, milk, chocolate milk...two of those three). i might throw in a package of gum or an impulse disney movie, and i am out. quick and easy. i couldn't tell you what brand of drink i bought. i can't tell you if i got the better deal on coffee or the one that was on sale that month. i just don't care. never have. if i am lucky, i never will.

sarah, on the other hand, is a coupon-er. she is not a freak about it, but she does clip some coupons. for everything. we'll be sitting down to a relatively nice and peaceful dinner out at ruby tuesday or some other kid-friendly joint and she'll exclaim, "ooh. i think i have a coupon." inevitably, i roll my eyes and ask her to stop searching for it.

"seriously, the waiter is coming right now! please...put. that. AWAY!"

saving money is great i am sure. sarah has taken over the lion's share of the money responsibilities in our home, main reason being i had a pretty gnarly habit, when single, of not paying a whole lot of attention to things like "due dates" and "amount owed." more often than not, i just paid attention to the "minimum amount" and would send it in around the same time the next month's bill came in. no problem, right? the only exception to that rule was my rent, and i am proud to say i was never a day late in my bachelor life with that check.

anyway, back to the point, saving money is great i am sure. but there are a few things in this world that are worth not skimping on. mind you, i haven't found many of these things. we'll be eating dinner and afterwards, sarah will say something like, "that was the off-brand this or that..." or "those chips were low-fat and on sale. could you tell a difference???", and i'll be like, "sonuvabitch!!!...no....but don't do that again!!!" she's sneaky like that.

most of the time, she coupons or buys healthy or goes low on stuff at the store and i never know the difference.

until a couple months ago.

when she bought the prison toilet paper.

i am sure the prison toilet paper purchase was my fault. i am all the time complaining/whining about how freaking quick she and the girls go through a roll of toilet paper.

"daddy. can you get me some toilet paper???", says one of the girls sitting on the pot.

"i got you some yesterday, baby."

"i know. it's gone."

"whatthef...gone??? how is it gone? i haven't even gone to the bathroom since i put it in there!!!!"

"i don't know." "can you bring some toilet paper, please?"

so, i am sure sarah heard these types of exchanges and thought to herself, "alright. i hear you. let's see what we can do about this."

at some point, she went to what had to have been wal-mart (there's no way publix would sell this abomination) and bought the prison toilet paper. maybe she was wowed by the fact that the package was guaranteed to "last seventeen times longer than average roll of toilet paper" or that 24 rolls cost 89¢, but she got it. and let me tell you, the last couple of month's worth of trips to the can have been unpleasant.

the paper, itself, is paper thin and rough all at the same time. you would think based purely on how thin it was that a roll would exhaust itself quickly. but, it must be wrapped around that cardboard cylinder tighter than the core of a baseball, and it doesn't. it doesn't exhaust itself quickly. it lasts for freaking ever. each trip to the toilet, i cringed. i'd finish my business, clean myself up and march out of the bathroom as fast as i could to bitch about the experience.

"PLEASE don't get the prison toilet paper anymore. what have i done to deserve this???"

"oh, it's not that bad."

right. my guess is that sarah was just doing her thing at work to avoid the prison toilet paper at home.

after what seemed like years, we finally were ready to buy a new package of toilet paper.

"seriously, please get the good stuff. please don't get the prison toilet paper."

"whatevs."

in spite of dismissing me, though, sarah did, in fact, get the good stuff. extra soft. very fluffy. wonderful to feel. after i finished this morning, i wished for more output, if only to savor the reward after.

saving money is great i am sure, and i am certain my wife does an excellent job, and i bet she even does it in part so that she doesn't have to bitch at me about going to subway three times a week while she is forcing down a lean cuisine. i love that she cares that much for me. and our family.

i do hope, moving forward, that she will never skimp and buy the prison toilet paper again. it was far too unkind to the area of my body that deserves a lotta love and a lotta concern.

excuse me. i am going to the bathroom. i don't even have to go. i am just going to wipe for fun.

ewwwww.

the day i started considering a twitter account


for as long as HACAM (birthed as HAM) has been around, i've had the blogroll over to the right that's not as much a blogroll as it is a tip into my daily internet surfing habits. "to pass the time" isn't as much recommendation as it is this is what i like, maybe you would too. the most disappointing part of "to pass the time" has been the coming and going of friends that started a blog, wrote for a short period of time, then left the blog just sitting there, an interweb snapshot of what sounded like a good idea at the time only to play out as a timekiller that was eventually re-prioritized to the back of the backburner. andy, kiker, joseph, rebecca used to write, and then they didn't. my brother is still linked, but he doesn't write anymore. so, "to pass the time" isn't as much a blogroll, because i don't know many people anymore that blog.

as it stands now, the longest tenured blogger on the list is a guy i've never met, but his work has been a part of my life for years now, a guy named dan shanoff. i "met" dan several years ago when he was writing for espn.com's page two. his column was called "the daily quickie" and it was brilliant for it's time. it summed up the previous days biggest sports news and the day-of's stories that espn would likely be tracking in quick-hitting, 15-20 word blurbs. he was full of piss and hyperbole, using the phrase "instant classic" before you started hearing it everywhere and quick to judge last night's game as the best. thing. ever. it was awesome then. and it's awesome now. dan's been gone from espn for several years now, but his daily quickie concept has had several different iterations, most notably as the morning "wake-up call" on the sporting blog and then on his personal blog.

about six months ago, dan started teasing his new company, a company that he would appropriately call "quickish". quickish launched about a month ago and it quickly and easily has become my most passionate internet obsession (sorry, facebook). so, what is quickish? this page describes it in full, but, in short, it's a insta-ish hub for all things sports. every sports reporter has a twitter nowadays. many of them use their clever powers for good and post intelligent quips and commentary about the events they are paying attention to. quickish's editors cull through all of these tweets/columns/on-air commentary and publish what, in their opinion, makes the most relevant sense to the narrative a respective game/match is telling/will tell tomorrow. thus far, quickish has been at it's rapid fire best during nationally broadcast, everyone-is-paying-attention games. the divisional nfl playoff games, jimmer fredette's coming out party last week against san diego st. and today's lakers/celtic tilt are good examples. last sunday, though, most of the sports country was watching the same thing, the nfl conference championship games. fortunately for quickish, they just so happened into a circumstance that almost destroyed the internet.

if you were watching the bears/packers game, you know the story. jay cutler is mysteriously absent when the bears take the field early in the third quarter. fox is sent scrambling to tell the nation what the crap is going on. their sideline investigation discovers that "something" has happened to one of cutler's knees, and he is questionable to return. the funny thing is, cutler, if you go purely by the picture on the television, didn't look hurt. he wore his normal douchebaggery look on his face as he hid under his hooded overjacket and toboggan. their were images of cutler trying to loosen up...something...on the stationary bike. cameras caught him later in the game staring aimlessly from the bench. not helping his back-up read the endzone pictures. not encouraging his teammates that were fighting without him for a trip to the super bowl. he reacted with positive emotion after his back-up's back-up got the bears back into the game, but, by that point, the internet (mostly via twitter) had written their story.

what is wrong with cutler?

why isn't he in the game?

this guy has no heart!!!

they would have to drag me off the field on a stretcher!

is he even hurt???

he's not hurt, he's scared!

he looks retarded!!!

i bet he spits on old people!

jay cutler raped my baby!

death to jay cutler!!!

long live caleb hanie!

who is caleb hanie?

exactly.

the reaction and the punishment was swift and severe. the internet had declared jay cutler a quitter, and it is going to take him years (if ever) to shake that tag, a result of one football game (his biggest ever, of course) out of many, many football games he's played.

quickish editors, i can only imagine, were in heaven. everyone in the sports community, players and reporters and fans alike, had an opinion, and they were all putting it out "for all the world to see".

i got caught up in it, myself. i jumped on facebook and live-blogged along to the events of the fourth quarter. it was invigorating and fun. i wanted to be a quickish editor so bad i could taste it. by the time i joined the fray, the cutler thing was almost old news, so i commented on the game itself, rooting against a hamstrung bears team that i didn't want to watch in the super bowl. i loved it!

shortly after the game, a facebook friend posted a status update.

"facebook is not twitter."

i felt the twinge in my gut as though they were saying it to my face, calling me out in shame. you idiot! don't you know how to use the internet?

now, they may or may not have been talking about my blowing up their status feed with shit they cared nothing about, but my guess is that they were.

which begged the question, do i want a twitter account?

i am still not sure if i do. at this point, i am much more interested in the idea of "following" the sports-related community than i am in search of another public outlet to spout my opinions. and to be honest, the idea that "facebook is not twitter" is debatable in it's own right. facebook is competing for advertising dollars with twitter. i am certain they would love if they could pull relative newbies like me away from a quasi-competitor and keep me committed to them and only them.

what i do know is that it seems to me like the advent of quickish is affirmation of something that i truly believe. you can dislike the era that we are currently in, the era where social media has given just as much weight to what i say as anybody else, but this is an evolution, not a fad. just like the cell phone and the laptop, social media is a step forward, not a step back.

i love that quickish has tapped into the potential of what is likely only going to grow in depth, quality and style. i love that, even if i decide against the whole twitter account, quickish allows me to tap into that universe and reap its benefits at the same time it's arming me to comment on its darkside. thanks to quickish, i probably don't need a twitter account to know that the national consensus paints jay cutler as worthless and jimmer as basketball jesus.

but, i'll probably get one anyway.

i resolve
(2011)


"i'm so used to shooting myself in the kneecaps, standing in the way of progress and letting down my friends..."

if 2010 was the year i faced my fears, 2011 will be about moving forward and letting go. it's not exactly january one. i get that, but this post was never going to be properly based in my reality until after i had my 18 months-out scan. had the scan i now have, and i am super happy to report (granted, HACAM is late to the story...facebook got the exclusive) that my remaining kidney was, in the words of my doctor, "working like a champ" and there were "no surprises" to be found. so, what does that mean, exactly? well, for one, it means i can take another deep breath. for two, it means that i can go to the bathroom for a few months without the fear of seeing blood in my urine. it may sound silly, but, let me tell you, i will never take going to the bathroom and everything being "normal" for granted for the rest of my life. that last tuesday's scan gave me the peace of mind to not worry about that type of thing, if even for a little while, it was worth it. for three, and this is probably the most important realization i've come to in the last seven days, it would seem to me (me, of course, catching up with the rest of my world) that i am currently cancer-free. now, a more rational person may argue, "but, kevin, weren't you technically cancer-free on july 23rd of 2009 when they removed that rotten kidney from your abdomen?" the rational person, it has been proven, would be correct. that's not the way i've viewed things for the last 18 months, though. the way i've seen it, if there was one bad cell in my body that could grow into many bad cells that could grow into a tumor, surely there were more of those bad cells lurking in my body and had only yet to be found. for 18 months, i've been waiting, not so patiently, for the "other shoe" to drop, having one of my many tests or scans to show me what i had already convinced myself of to be true. that i still had cancer. but, the thing is, i didn't. or, i don't. what everyone else knew that i couldn't own was the form of cancer that was inside of my body had a relatively simple curative treatment if the cancer was contained, which mine was. remove the kidney. the pathology report showed that the cancer was isolated, it had not reached the margins of the organ and i was to "celebrate" my good news. i just. couldn't. do it. what about my chemo? what about my radiation? i haven't even seen an oncologist! this isn't how cancer goes! but, for me. it did. over the last seven days, i've started to realize what's been true now for 18 months. i was fucking lucky. and i don't have cancer. if something had spread from my kidney tumor, it would have manifested itself somewhere else by now. it hasn't. thank you, god. does last tuesday's test mean i will never be sick again in my life or that i'll never have to fight off something else somewhere down the road? no, of course it doesn't. but what it does mean is i am back with the rest of you. my risk is no greater. my chances are no higher. everything left behind in my urological system is ticking as it should. "no surprises" were found. i guess my physical story has been about the same for 18 months now. emotionally, i've had some catching up to do. i'll still worry about stupid things. i did that before june of 2009. i'll still be hyper-aware of things that are changing in and with my body. that's just me. emotionally, i've had some catching up to do, but i am just about caught up. hey there, friends. my name is kevin o'kelley. nice to see you again.

to the list...

1) don't die - you didn't think the above would let this baby slip from number one, did you? something haunting hit me as i was mentally outlining today's post. that being, if i kept "don't die" on my resolutions list every year, one year i was going to fail and not be able to write about the lessons i had learned from the failure afterward. i am still nowhere comfortable with the thought of moving on to whatever is next. maybe, if i am lucky enough to be around in 25 years, "don't die" will have slid down to, like, number 7. in 2011? it's numero uno.

2) see fewer doctors - in the last 18-ish months, i have had the following: 4 abdominal ct scans (the first one that found the tumor), 4 chest x-rays, 1 chest ct (required because of the motion artifact of july, 2010), 1 brain scan (a "peace of mind scan" that my primary care doctor allowed and set up for me because my post-operation dizziness had me convinced that i had a brain tumor), 3 moles removed at the dermatologist (surely you didn't think i would automatically rule skin cancer out.) 1 set of glasses issued (i started seeing noticing floaters shortly after my surgery, which prompted a visit to an eye doctor. i was certain i had something dreadfully wrong, "eye tumors" if you will) that i never wear but note every time i squint i should probably give them a try (what? i went to the optometrist to make sure i didn't have "eye tumors", not to get glasses!), many blood tests, i've been on and now off the anti-depressant, lexapro, i 've been poked, prodded, listened to and lectured by at least 5, maybe 6 different doctors. it's time to cut that number back a little bit. schaeffer eye center keeps calling me to make sure i come back in for my yearly visit. i should go and do that. sarah's gonna make me get more moles cut off toward the end of the year at that annual trip, and i am guessing i'll have to visit my pcp at least a couple times, but cutting many doctor's visits down to a few would be a giant step forward. 

3) don't get fat - "don't get fat" reappears after a one year absence from the list. the reason? i keep putting on weight. at my last two pcp checkups, my weight was higher than the previous visit. adding insult to that injury, i did a body mass test on the wii a couple weeks ago and it, too, told me i had gained weight. now, obviously, i am not fat...yet, but i've come to realize that if i don't start eating a little better, i think, for the first time in my life, i could be. whether it's my metabolism slowing down a little or a combination of that and bad food choices, 2011 will be the year that i take my body back and intimidate you all with my level of fitness. which brings us to number 4...

4) run - what. the. fuck? seriously, if you had told me five year's ago that i would have "run" on a resolutions list, i would've laughed at you and told you to pass me another hot dog. no, really. pass me a hot dog. with chili. and onions. and extra cheese. slaw, too, please. dunk that motherscratcher in gravy with a side of sweet heat chips and then (and only then) could you explain to me how in five years i would think that adding "run" to my list of resolutions would be a good idea. but, here we are. and i am going to do it. at this point, i have to. i've already bought running shoes. i've committed. and so, the specific goal will be this. run in at least one 5k by the end of the spring and a 10k by the end of the fall. after my first "run" on sunday left me looking for a neighbor's trash can to vomit in, i know i've got a long way to go. if you ask me, though, this one is going to be a gimme.

5) find kiker and andy again - this one is hard, because it's unexpected as well. i am not sure how i lost tangible touch with two of my closest friends of my last ten years, but it happened. we've had long bouts of not being able to hang before, but we always had football season to look forward to. then, this year happened. and came. and went without us getting together if only for one bama blowout. it's takes two to tango. i know this. and i understand my prioritizing limbo over some baptist cult in palmerdale (don't gasp...they'll know i'm kidding) has played a significant role in the lack of hang-time, but i do miss them. and i miss them in a way that facebook is never going to be able to solve. here's hoping i can find a way to make this a win by the end of the year, with a genuine hope that we can make it happen sooner rather than later.

6) buy some freaking music - talk about slowing to a halt. one of the early staples of HACAM was the year end "best of my music" list, but we've had to discontinue that effort because i rarely buy any new music anymore, which is completely ridiculous. at 34, do i really want to already be that guy that has stopped listening to and looking for new artists? that guy that is now certain there will never be another band as kick-ass as blood brothers or bearvsshark once were. i don't want to be that guy, but i was that guy in 2010. my favorite album in 2010? fucking yeezy??? a kanye record??? have i lost my mind??? maybe, but maybe 2011 will be the year that saves me from myself. with new records on the horizon from blink, yellowcard, brand new, panic at the disco, fun, thrice, green day, taking back sunday and manchester orchestra among others, surely i can find room in my cd changer for more than the 7 or 8 records, total, that i spent money on last year. 

7) see julio play in a football game - over the last couple of years, this type of resolution would, obviously, be tied to heading to bryant-denny to see the tide, but sarah and i (and amy and katie) have gotten back in the habit of making it to at least one alabama game per season. the resolution is altogether different this year. as we all know now, julio is taking his talents to "what's soon to be my new favorite nfl team". there is a pretty good chance that whatever team drafts him will find their way through either atlanta or nashville. if they do (or even if they don't), i want to drive/fly to see him, blow him a kiss from the stands and tell him how much i still love him. hugs.

8) help move limbo into it's next phase - there is no confidential name or strategy to this one, merely the want to make sure limbo doesn't revel in her successful launch last year and stop moving forward. considering we've already helped out with one mission project in our daycare, committed to another this coming saturday and have tentative plans for a spin-off that's not really a spin-off bible study in the works, this one is well on it's way. every ministry in every church runs through its respective "dog days", though, where the temptation is to do what's minimally required for several weeks and justify the stagnant waters by saying "it's our time to recharge and refocus". the goal is for limbo to stay fresh and exciting and kinetic in a way that will motivate our established base to include even more of our friends and family as we move towards a productive calendar year.

9) don't be a lame duck lay leader - with the church in the early, survey stages of the natural church development effort, this one could be tricky. i want to be patient and let the process take hold and begin to work in our church in a way we haven't allowed in our two previous attempts. on the other hand, it's a valid concern that most everything completely stopped moving in the month of january to await the results of the first survey. here's hoping that the 30 members that are answering the questions are honest, and here's hoping that the congregation can hear the results in a less defensive way than we have in the past. as part of this resolution, the long range planning committee needs to offer the church a mission statement before spring and lay leadership needs to empower functionality in our committees that have, mostly, been laid to waste by our dysfunctional and overextended previous structure.

10) get a dog - while it sounds simple enough, this one is highly conditional. for us to have a dog, we also must move into a new and bigger house. each passing birthday or holiday, our home magically shrinks just a little. and while we love our home, all four of us are starting to see the benefits of graduating into something a little more room-y. sarah started pining for a new house late last year. i have a feeling, after hosting several little girls for hannah's belated birthday sleepover this coming weekend, the motivation may be renewed. at any rate, back to the goal at hand, i really like owning a dog. since kammie passed, it has never stopped feeling weird to look out into the backyard and see it empty and alone. i think i am ready for another "man's best friend", but only if the condition of upgrading our home is met first.

well, that's it. that's this year's list. every single one of these will require intentional effort and concern to be met, and every single one would make me a happier and healthier person if i could claim "victory" at the end of the year.

for those of you that are worried, no, of course i haven't forgotten about sarah and the girls. they are and will always remain my number one priority (no offense, g-o-d. i just choose to see you as part of all of it). rather than using them as a gimmick or a gimme and including them on my list, they can rest assured that i will take care of them as best i know how.

"so i'm nailing shards of hope together to put something over my head...
'cuz you know here it's always raining, and it happened again. it happened again...
she said, i let this slide when we were younger, you know you don't have to write like this...
the whole world's full of losers. if you've got a chance to win, TAKE IT!!!"

the only national championship game preview that matters
(to me)
((that kid))
(((part two)))


it's been a tough pill to swallow all season, auburn only letting alabama celebrate its own national championship for one year, really it has. ever since alabama lost to south carolina, the dread of tonight's moment has been building. at that point in the season, nothing really had changed. alabama could still run the table and still held their destiny in their own hands and still held the hope that they could repeat as sec (and maybe national) champs. but the feeling was never really the same. if nothing else, the south carolina game exposed alabama as not perfect. not anymore. beatable. flawed. lacking...something. maybe it was a killer instinct. maybe it was experience on defense. maybe it was just that the secondary couldn't cover alshon jeffrey. whatever it was, the alabama football season never did feel as special as this alabama fan wanted it to, especially now that my worry that this was julio's last season has proven itself to be true.

what made alabama's "lost" (if you can call a ten win season with a likely final top twelve-ish ranking season a lost season) season so much worse was what was happening with auburn. early on in the year, let's face it, auburn should've lost. in overtime against clemson, auburn's offense was held to only a field goal. on their own possession, clemson's quarterback found a wide open receiver alone in the end zone. game over. no dream season. except that it wasn't, game over that is. the clemson player dropped the ball. the clemson kicker made a field goal to tie the game, sending the teams into a second overtime. except he didn't. an illegal procedure penalty was called during the kick. the clemson kicker missed the second try. auburn wins. no big deal, right? clemson wasn't a great football team. if auburn struggled against clemson like they had struggled earlier against mississippi state, this team, too, was flawed. auburn was going to have a decent to good season, but there didn't seem to be anything special about the team.

except there was.

cam freaking newton turned out to be really special.

south carolina (the first time).
kentucky.
arkansas.
lsu.
and (ugh.) alabama.

five more games that auburn could've lost if not for the special talents of their quarterback. their big, freakishly big, athletic, strong-armed quarterback. five more games that they could've lost, except they didn't.

the momentum built just like it did with alabama last year. the internet chatter became more and more annoying, just like it did with alabama last year.

and then, the game-changer. the pay-for-play story broke. the resulting scandal turned many auburn fans into lunatics and the auburn family bunkered in (ALL IN, mind you) deeper and deeper into their proverbial rendezvous hole, convincing themselves that espn was out to get them, convincing themselves that every sports media outlet was looking to tarnish their season. cam newton could do no wrong. the whole story was a lie, except it was proven that it wasn't.

the defense changed. the story wasn't bullshit anymore, but any person that implied a connection between the now guilty father and his golden boy son was thought to be an idiot. never mind the fact that the choice of where cameron newton would go to school was on record as not being cameron newton's choice. rumor-mongerers, aren't we all?

the football part of cameron newton's game is no longer in question. the human interest stories about his offensive coordinator are cute, but beside the point. michael dyer is a really good freshman running back, but he is merely a small piece of the puzzle. nick fairley is nasty, for sure, but he's anchored a defense that's given up twenty-five points a game. not really that impressive.

this, ladies and gentlemen, is a one man gang. cameron newton is a collegiate force of nature. those that follow this blog know how special i consider the athletes that have worn that tag on HACAM. i don't know what kind of coach chip kelly is. will having 37 days to prepare for a one man team help oregon's chances?

it should, but i don't think it will matter. cam newton is vince young, version 2010. he is better than everyone else. he is "that kid".

i think this will be a wildly entertaining football game. i think oregon is going to score on auburn early. i think cam newton is going to throw an interception in the first half on one of his deep throws that someone on his team has run underneath or someone on the other team has not picked off for the first 13 auburn games. i think that pick will turn into points and momentum and i am going to be surprised if oregon isn't up at the half.

i think people will start to believe that oregon can win, except that they won't. this is auburn's cam newton's year. and i think they win the night by two touchdowns.

i am interested in what my reaction will be to the eventual outcome. will i be happy for auburn in the same way that i would have been in year's past, especially in those years pre-julio and saban when alabama sucked? i don't know. it'll take watching the game to see where my emotions take me.

i hope the oregon uniforms look incredible in hd. and i hope that espn doesn't try and spread the hyperbole much farther than cameron newton tonight. or at least stop talking about everyone else after the first quarter. kind of like the oscar's does by announcing the winners in the supporting categories at the beginning of the show. yeah, you were great and all, but you weren't nearly as important as the leads.

tonight, the role of cam newton will be played by cam newton. in this movie, that's the only fact that matters.

i'll probably grade myself on a curve
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty-four))


we had a pretty interesting conversation sunday in limbo about the idea and execution of new year's resolutions. the consensus in the room seemed to be that january 1 was a fairly arbitrary start date, but everyone was pretty keen with the notion of goal-setting, which was comforting, especially given that when i asked our collected group how many were planning on making resolutions this year, only three (myself included) out of eleven raised their hands. our hour together nailed down the fact, though, that we all wanted to find ways to better our lives and the lives of those around us even if we didn't agree on the concept of the calendar telling us when to do so.

me, i am a calendar guy. for as long as i've been setting goals on the blog and writing follow-ups like today's, my simple mind wraps itself quite easily around starting at the beginning of the year and evaluating at the end. and so, i continue that schedule today as i take my final official look-back into the year that was kevin o'kelley's 2010.

here is the refresher.

now, let's review...

1) don't die - ... maybe sliding this one up to number one last year after my scare in the summer of 2009 played a significant role in my still being here in january of 2011 to write this post. maybe it just wasn't in the cards for me to meet my maker last year. either way, i am glad that i am still here. i can't say that i didn't think A LOT about the idea of dying. every day, i am not shitting you, every day i have a deathdream. i am able to shake them off and away a lot quicker than i did in the final few months of 2009, but i am obviously still not at ease with what comes next. maybe i never will be. maybe this is one of my curses. it seems unfair to me and everyone around me that i can't get my head out of today and look ahead some to "tomorrow". i am glad i didn't die in 2010. i am. now, if i could just stop thinking about it so much. score: +1

2) get "operation limbo" off the ground, up and running - ... well, well, well. my first real success story of 2010. early last year, i asked jacob sutton and joseph florence to help me with a sketch that we would perform at the beginning of worship to pimp the idea, this idea in my head that was limbo at the time. jacob and joseph, in spite of the morning's technical difficulties, were really funny like they always are. the sketch had to do with the gap that had developed at our church in the last several years where there was no real group or place for students and young adults to plug into after high school. we had a couple of fledgling young-ish adult sunday school classes, but i wasn't real confident either would speak to the group that i had in mind for limbo. so, jacob and joseph riffed on the idea that now they were in their twenties, they were just hanging out in the sanctuary with no real purpose in the proverbial life of the church and joseph asked jacob what they were supposed to do about it. jacob's response? "we wait...................until we're 30." it was hilarious. and pointed. and true. and so, limbo was born. and now, at our church, you don't have to wait if you are looking for something after you've crossed that barrier into adulthood and come to the realization that you still have no idea what the hell is going on in the world. nowadays, i don't think of limbo as an "age-group" thing (we span from early twenties to mid-thirties) as much as i do a "this doesn't make sense to me. let's make sense of it together." group. and it seems to be working. part of our evolution in 2011 will be to become more effective and affective at getting our word and work out to the masses. looking back one more time, though, we've now had 37 unique and special people come to room 218 at some point in the last 45 weeks, and we gather every sunday morning with between 10-15. numbers are a pretty weak measure when it comes to spiritual impact, but they do suggest there was a need in our church (even if we are still dangling on the outer edge of the church corporate) and limbo is trying to help fill it. score: +1

 3) be a more than serviceable lay leader - ... hmm, this one is probably not the easiest for me to judge myself on. i could take a straw poll within the church and if the standard was "serviceable", well, i might get a pass. if it's "more than serviceable", i don't know. what has happened that is good in the life of the church over the last 12 months? consensus within the congregation is that we are in better "health". that meaning, there is less overall drama. members and visitors, alike, seem to be harris fans. our finances are currently well within order. long range planning has been meeting and visioning for over six months. natural church development is starting back up and the church, right now, seems committed to that process. our connectional giving has improved drastically with the church meeting it's "target" in 2010 (for the first time in a very, very long time). leadership in the church is getting younger, in no small part to the weeds and limbo. along those lines, we made efforts to streamline the administrative board of the church in the hopes that 2011 will be more efficient. missions are still happening and giving members opportunities to serve. the halloween carnival succeeded again. the children's place daycare is a lighthouse and symbol of hope in our immediate community. i am probably forgetting many others. but, this all begs the question, what credit can i take for any of it? what blame rests at my feet if i were to list the cons of 2010, too. it's a good question, and we'll address it again soon. "serviceable" in the church is relative, thus "more than serviceable" probably is as well. i am going to give myself a point here. if you disagree, please feel free to comment and tell me why. score: +1

4) prepare for the inevitable - ... ugh. i called this one, right? not that it took a rocket scientist to predict that any college football team would eventually lose a game, and lose a game(s) alabama did. in spite of their talent and potential that was on full display for 20 minutes of the iron bowl and 60 of the capital one bowl, alabama finished a disappointing 10-3 and probably 10 spots lower than their preseason number one ranking. the first loss to south carolina was easier than i thought it would be to swallow, mainly because they were down the whole game. the idea of predicting the future of next year's team with the likely departures of 3-5 underclassmen seems discouraging currently. we'll wait til after the a-day game for that. and we'll also give myself credit for being a realist with this particular resolution a year ago. score: +1

5) don't forget about my deceitfully evil gang of weeds - ... maybe my first miss of 2010. i remember vividly the conversation that i had with the weeds on a sunday morning early on in 2010, that i was thinking of using my positive, free and clear scan in january as a springboard to get my head back in the game of making a difference in the church again. what that meant to them was that i wouldn't be available on sunday mornings anymore. my doing limbo, kathy and deb doing kids sunday school, the goldens having their hands full with noah, kim getting elected to city council, among other things pulled our sunday school class in many different directions, and it's been hard to feel like a cohesive whole all year. i don't know that blaming any one person or event or circumstance would do justice to all the mitigating factors. i didn't "forget" the weeds, but actions spoke louder than words. score: -1

6) say no to drugs... and by drugs, i mean lexapro - ... an interesting result with this one. i told myself that if i got a clean bill of health again in july, i would start to wean myself off of the anti-depressant. even though there was a little scare with a "motion artifact" in my lung that turned out to be nothing, the clean bill of health came a few days after i had my scan on july 9. after that, i took a half-dose of the lexapro through my and sarah's trip to gatlinburg later that month and then put the pill bottle in the pantry for good. since then, it's been an up and down ride. i have found my good moods hard to sustain, especially the last couple of months, what with the anticipation of the next scan this month ramping up my awareness of every little thing in my body that's not 100 percent anymore. the bottle of lexapro sits right next to my bottle of multi-vitamins in the pantry, and the last two or three weeks i've wondered if starting them again wouldn't be better for me and my family. maybe all the doctor would order is another clean scan and some peace of mind to go along with the apple a day. we'll see soon enough. this one is a technical notch in the "win" column, with mixed results as to the quality of my life since i realized the resolution. score: +1

7) find brian again - ...hmm. does seeing him on one road trip, three visits in three days count as a "win"? maybe, but probably not. i am going to give myself a half-point here, because we did have to drive six hours to see him and it probably ended up being one of the more fulfilling three days of my year, but seeing them once per year doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you are talking about someone that i care so deeply about. score:  +.5

8) find dad again - my second full-fledged fail. for me, the spirit of this one is more important than the letter number of times we saw each other, which was actually several thanks to a lunch or two, a handful of hannah's socccer games and a christmas get together. no one did anything "wrong" this year. i just don't know if i feel like we are any closer to being closer. i hope so. for 2010, though? score: -1

9) take ken to a braves game - ... another technical win, even if it didn't flesh itself out to us seeing each other as much as i would have liked to. we went to an incredible phillies game the second week of the season that included a jason heyward homer and a walk-off by nate mcclouth. ken even returned the favor by picking up the tab for the bullet through the forehead that ended up being game three of the division series with the giants. much like brian, i think if we were a little closer, ken and i would be, too. the distance and just life, i guess, has been a riddle we have not been able to solve the last few years. bottom line for the grade, though, is i did, in fact, take ken to a braves game. score: +1

10) keep loving my girls - ... the one big "gimme" of last year. i did keep loving sarah, hannah and caroline. it's hard, at times, to keep that loving from becoming conditional. i'll love you like you deserve just so long as you don't piss me off, okay? that kind of sentiment. hannah is really hard right now, and it's a combination of a lot of things i know. hanging out with older kids at daycare. observing and mimicking older girls that she sees on television and at church. having to deal with a little sister that always wants to do what she does. i know it's tough. now that she's her own little person, she wants more than anything to figure out who she is and she wants it to happen fast. she needs her way all the time. she is hardheaded. just like me. she has a quick temper. just like me. once the heat of any moment has passed, she wants to over-manipulate the rest of the day/night to make sure everything is okay. just like me. she is infuriating. i am sure...just like me. caroline, on the other hand, is three. she's a silly three and is really only a handful when our agenda takes the onus away from her being the center of the universe. no problem with four people in the house, right? ugh. she's adorable most of the time, though, and she's grown to love her daddy in 2010 much like i feel hannah always has. it's been nice. i hope that sarah and i can keep our collective heads in 2011 when it comes to the girls. our daughters really are too special to not appreciate them being in our lives every waking second. score: +1

wrapping up, let's see, it looks like i went 7.5 for 10!!! not too bad if i say so myself, which i just did. 

i read several status updates on new year's eve that spoke very poorly of 2010, and i hate that it was a tough year for so many people, including some dear friends. at the same time, i am happy that last year was much less volatile for the o'kelley family. if you removed me being constantly worried about things i have no control over from the equation, who knows what kind of banner year it may have been. that thought will be a nice springboard into my resolutions for 2011, which i'll try and have posted shortly after my january scan. 

one final thanks for everyone that stopped by hannah and caroline and me in 2010. whether you love me, hate me or are somewhere in between, whether you agree with me or disagree with me and my potty mouth, whether you came here through your own free will or were forcefully handed a copy of a post or emailed a link, thank you for sharing in this experience with me. this is an open place. an honest place. a place that makes me strive to be a better person for you and for "you".

if you would begrudge me or me in this forum, shame on you, and get a fucking life. you have more important things to worry about. go invite someone to church for god's sake instead of waiting on someone to save the church for you. 

a happy 2011 for those of you that love HACAM for what it is. comment more in 2011! if you write, write more! about anything!!! 

2010.

the end.