what will we do when there are no more fires to put out?


hispanics, cuss words, bishop-gate, OH MY! these are headlines to only a few storms that have driven their way through the humc congregation over the last several months and years. sharing space with a congregation with whom we had a hard time communicating ended predictably, with that congregation going somewhere else. blogs being disseminated to an unsoliciting and unaware group of people that were asked to care about how how i choose to voice my often asinine opinions ended with somewhat of a whimper. people either chose not to care or just stopped making eye contact with me. either way, nobody hurt. bishop-gate came and felt like a hurricane for a couple days, but it was really more like tornado warnings five years ago (back before doppler technology went and got real!!!) when the sirens went off and a whole county would freeze at one time, but really the storm was just passing through a cow pasture in the southwest corner of county-in-question and was never coming towards your home.

the most recent non-issue that we forced into being an issue came in the form of our wednesday night dinners. for the duration of my time served on our finance committee, we have known that one particular line item in our budget (food account) was off. depending on how late in the year we were looking at it, it seemed way off. speculative opinions were shared and worried over. "ms. ellen is buying too much food." "ms. ellen is making too much food." "ms. ellen is choosing the food that is too damn expensive." "people aren't coming because the food doesn't taste good." "someone needs to talk to ms. ellen." "should we discontinue our wednesday night dinners, because, obviously, this line item is telling us that the food service is a drain on our budget?"

except that it wasn't.

after much gnashing of teeth and huffing and puffing about what needed to happen in the kitchen or in between the kitchen and our church office, a wednesday night evaluation committee was force-forged in our administrative board meeting two months ago. the group would ask questions relevant to wednesday night dinners being offered to our congregation and, hopefully, provide some insight as to what our church wanted to do with those dinners moving forward. the list of questions was written and published in our weekly messenger and also sent out to the church's email list with the following request...if so moved, please take a few minutes of your time to answer these questions and help the evaluation committee come to a consensus on what is/isn't offered on wednesday nights in the form of dinner and programming. that's it.

the response was...underwhelming. 17 responses came back. the information culled from the responses, though, was valuable to a point.

what ended up being more valuable was something, admittedly, that should have happened a long time ago. for two months, the church made a point to collect actual data, not merely opinion. the data would include meals served, meals prepared, cost of goods, revenue generated from attendees, etc.

to many's surprise, after crunching all the numbers, it was discovered that the money spent on wednesday nights was not out of order at all. it was discovered that the amount of food prepared was a "planned surplus" to be used in the daycare the following day. it was discovered that the amount of money charged by the church for dinner was just about right. it was discovered that the cost of the food served on wednesday was consistently covered by those in attendance. finally, it was discovered that there was never any drain to speak of, only a minor accounting quirk that, honestly, should have been repaired before now. now that the representative church is aware that the "issue" is again a non-issue, maybe finance can find remedy for the error at our next meeting.

myth:

wednesday night dinners are a financial drain on the church. we need to offer programming that removes offering the service of dinner on wednesday from the equation.

myth. busted.

in an appropriate-for-us move, the argument, if you will, evolved, and another non-issue was cited as an issue. ms. ellen still isn't walking through that door in the fall! so programming (read: staff) needs to decide what we are going to offer on wednesday in the fall so we can decide what to do, goddammit!!!

and so, as one myth is busted, another is perpetuated, that our paid staff must decide for us, the church, what it is we should do.

ugh.

to me, this feels backward, but, then again, maybe i am alone.

my understanding of a healthy church would be one that, ideally, hired and paid staff to perform the ministries of their church they felt were important. unfortunately for our staff, we still don't really know what's important to us as a church, so we are left with asking our staff to figure it out for us.

does that really make any sense? shouldn't we be asking our staff to be creative within the realms of their current job description? grow their areas, come hell or high water? be rare? be relevant?

maybe.

or maybe not.

i don't know.

i am finding it harder and harder to work up a good piss-off about anything related to the church. if my little kohi experiment has proven anything to me, it's proven that i've got way too many good things (family, friends, limbo, work, running, fantasy baseball)  going in my life to waste very much time being super-negative about anything.

i will say this, though. we are at an unfamiliar crossroads in the life of our church. the non-issues that we are choosing to activate as issues are becoming more and more trivial. in the grand scheme of things, we are at a place where we have two very defined choices.

do something.

or don't.

happy index
(part fourteen)


kohi closing tonight at:

7

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

lost another softball game.

the good:

waking up ten minutes later than thursday and friday of last week and hustling away to work to catch up from being off all weekend was incredibly energizing. knowing that i had to cram most of my day in before a conference call at 1:00 was motivating. getting everything done that i needed to was satisfying. a good day at work.

i don't know that i can articulate just how much more peaceful a mindset teaming up on the girls both in the morning and in the evening is. nothing hurried. no real pressure. still very glad that mommy is home.

braves win. five games above .500.

off day tomorrow.

happy index
(part thirteen)


tonight, the kohi closes at:

8

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

i'll speak more about this on tuesday, but our administrative board meeting saw one myth (finally) put to pasture at the same time another was perpetuated. that was too bad. #thatsoundslikeoneofthosevagueassfacebookstatusupdatesthatihate

the second hymn in the sanctuary this morning. what was that about?

walking into limbo this morning and the roof all leaking and shit.

chipper's hurt. who in the pool had 42 games?

the good:

girls were great one last time this morning without mommy. hannah slept with daddy last night. we all got up, to mcdonald's and to the church in plenty of time to clean up the flood.

braves beat halladay. what the what?

another super run this afternoon. i guess the recipe is 69 and cloudy, because friday and this afternoon made me wish i never had to stop running to do life.

mommy came home.

dinner at lonestar as a family for the first time in 5 nights. we had a good time together. caroline and hannah never stopped talking. the steak was "jesus christ!" incredible.

coming home and watching the first hour of bieber as a family, sarah and i both tearing up during "one less lonely girl" when the bieber team pulls girls out of the crowd to be googly-eyed up close and personal by jb. we don't know if it's the girls' trainwreck-y emotional reactions or just the idea of how incredibly world-changing that moment must be for those girls. pretty cool.

the great:

did i mention mommy came home? another trip in the books.

commentary:

daddy did what he do, son!

happy index
(part twelve)


the kohi will close tonight at:

7

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

full day three of being a single-dad was always going to feel the most heavy. soccer festival in the morning, off to lunch and hanging out for a bit at the church and then to a birthday party. in fact, it did feel heavy, but the day breezed by for the most part with only little to some whining from caroline, who went the entire day without more than a five minute car nap whilst in transit from the soccer fields to the church.

an off day that didn't feel like an off day. these days, these busy days that zoom by and feel like they get away from me without enough arbitrary "me-time" are always kind of hard to swallow. the girls were very sweet, though, most of the day.

the good:

as mentioned above, part of the day included taking hannah to kylie's birthday party. i don't know if i should be or feel ashamed, but this was the first birthday party i've ever taken her to with caroline in tow. as stressed as i was about it (i am not the most social creature you see), it went fine. clint being there to burn some of the time and playing rag ball with some of the kids made it almost fun. i know the girls had a good time, which, of course, was all that really matters.

the quality of my church car wash was what we thought it was, but so was the bbq! will probably buy a pound tomorrow for good measure.

hannah finished up her most successful soccer season yet, scoring in the the last of the four mini-games her team played this morning. it's fun to watch her start to grasp some of the concepts of the beautiful game. selfishly, i hope she sticks with it long enough to enjoy how much fun it could be when her body and skills catch up with her mind. i am very proud of you, hannah.

commentary:

i am exhausted. t-minus less than 18 hours 'til sarah is back home. we are all ready for her to be back.  

happy index
(part eleven)


tonight, the kohi is going to close at:

8

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

day two of being a single dad. i'll feel the full brunt of the single dad thing tomorrow, but, every time i do this, i have such an overwhelming sense of awe at what my mom did for me and my brother. granted, she was married to someone more often than she wasn't, but that doesn't count for shit when it comes to child-rearing. at least, it didn't in my house. my mom did everything. made sure we were taken care of as best she knew how. i appreciate that, even if i don't appreciate her as much as i should now. sarah is missed in many ways when she's gone, but the sheer thought of knowing your partner in crime is in town and around to help is so, so comforting.

good god, i hate to blog whine, but i don't know how long it's been since i suffered through a case of the "fridays" like i did today. i smelled the weekend when i got to the store this morning, and the day dragged out of spite.

the good:

the girls were great again this morning. no issues with getting ready or their respective drop-offs. like champs they were. like champs.

after a horrible run on tuesday and one worse than that wednesday, today was more like it. 4.66 consecutive miles in just over 46 minutes and i felt like i could have kept going. i didn't, though, because we had to get to...

fajita friday. tonight, amy and katie joined the girls and me for our meal of mexican proportions. good food. fun company. we could have stuck around and kept visiting, but we didn't because we had to get to...

best buy. why? to purchase justin bieber: never say never. we came home and watched about half the movie and i love jb even more than i already did. the kid just sweated talent before his mom and grandparents even knew what to call it. i love jb. love him. will be rooting for a musical career akin to justin timberlake. he's that good.

another good bedtime routine. caroline fell asleep to jb, so i got to carry her upstairs like a princess. a sweet end to a pretty sweet night.

happy index
(part ten)


last night, the kohi closed at:

7

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

i am nothing if not a slave to most of my routines, and one of my routines is arriving at the store around 6:30 on the mornings i open. i love the head start i get on the day, close to two full hours of peace and productivity before my opening cashier arrives. with sarah being away and my being responsible for delivering the girls to school, i got to the store around 7:20. the first half of the day felt rushed as a result.

blogger being in read-only mode all night.

day one of being a single-dad.

the good:

the girls were just short of excellent this afternoon and evening. very little complaining while i worked out. a fun and easy trip to chick-fil-a for dinner. great in the bath. no tears at bedtime. massive improvement over last night.

just one more day of work before the weekend off with the girls. saturday and sunday are going to be chock-full of ... stuff, but i do like looking forward to two days away from what has felt like "the grind" for a few weeks.

braves walk-off on the same day as good news came back from heyward's mri.

twitter during a big time sporting event.

day one in the books.

happy index
(part nine)


the kohi will close tonight at:

6

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

wow. i just thought yesterday's run sucked. well, today sucked even harder. the combination of the heat, the humidity and it being the back end of a back-to-back killed me. for the second consecutive day, too, i picked a flat course. it didn't matter. by the end of our close to four miles, i was done. d. o. n. e. done. i never want to run again ('til friday).

sarah's gone. tonight should've been the easiest of the four to get through. most of it was at church anyway. around bedtime, it hit caroline that mommy wouldn't be tucking her in, and she lost it. cried on the way to the potty. cried on the potty. almost drowned herself brushing her teeth because she was crying. cried through the bedtime story. cried herself to sleep. hannah made herself cry after she got off the phone with sarah. lotsa tears. sad, sad tears.

the good:

work was pretty good today. not the usual day after an off day hangover and the time went by fast enough. it's funny. i don't know that i could ever honestly tell you that i wasn't productive each day i am in the store. that's not how i roll. some days just get along faster than others. today got along.

a little less worrying.

the girls are in bed.

happy index
(part eight)


last night, the kohi closed at:

6

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

more worrying.

as i wrote earlier in the day, i had my first "off day" running in two or three weeks. we went early to avoid the worst heat of the day, but, around the 3 mile mark, i was just out of gas. i struggled to get past my four mile mark. i hope today is better.

best buy didn't have manchester orchestra's or sloan's new cd's, both released yesterday. just one of the two would have been a nice pick me up from the shitty run.

tim hudson was terrible last night, and jason heyward was worse. heyward was actually pulled for an offensive replacement(!!!) last night and is now scheduled for an mri on his shoulder. similar to last year with his thumb, i would almost feel a little better if there was something physical going on that was making it difficult for him to perform. we'll see.

yesterday evening was sarah's last night in town for a while. as i am wont to do, i spent most of the night dreading her being gone and the time alone with the girls instead of trying to savor the time we actually had together.

the good:

lunch at dreamland with sarah. i had been craving dreamland for weeks. it was everything that i hoped it would be, outside of the troll-ish waitress that i always seem to get.

hannah's last regular season soccer game was last night. her team was a little out of sorts, but she played well for the most part and they gathered a win to nail down second place in the league. i hope she keeps playing.

dreading doom
(happy index)
((intermission))


i have now been actively paying attention to and chronicling my happiness or lack thereof for a full week. after seven days, the kohi (kevin o'kelley happy index) is averaging a 6.85. not too bad. looking back at and reflecting on things, i haven't felt better-than-average happy. the week doesn't feel any more successful than that number. to be honest, it feels a little worse.

if i can draw any conclusions based on the current and small sample size, it is this. the negatives of my respective days, the "bad"s and the "ugly"s, if you will, are given greater weight in my nightly inventory than the "good"s. whatever arbitrary scale that i am using to post the final number at the end of the day is much harder to push up than it is to weigh down. in terms of measurable weight, that, of course, doesn't make any sense. but we aren't really talking about measurables. if i was an even-keeled person, a tick on the plus side would carry just as much influence as a tick on the minus side would. for the first week of the experiment, that hasn't been the case.

why?

truthfully, i think the explanation is really pretty easy for me to see. i don't know that i'm a "glass half-empty" guy. i think i am worse than that. i anticipate things are going to go poorly most of the time. thus, when things do go wrong or my bad thoughts cause me to feel off-kilter, in a sick sort of way, it feeds my sense of self-importance in that i was able to forecast the bad before it happened. on the other hand, my "good"s are more like unexpected christmas presents. i love them like i love chocolate ice cream, but because i can't convince myself that i willed them to happen, i probably didn't deserve them anyway and thus the joy of something like hannah riding her bike (a tremendous milestone in the development of her own self-confidence!) is fleeting, much like the chocolate ice cream. the same type of twisted logic can be applied to my running accomplishments. at the end of january, i couldn't run a mile without stopping. it took me three or four weeks to get there. but, when i did, did i celebrate? of course not. i just moped about not being able to run two miles. and then three. and then four. and now five. friday and sunday, i ran outdoors for over 4.5 miles on consecutive outings. did it feel good? sure it did, until today came and i felt completely wiped around the 3 mile mark and i had to stop running and walk for a couple minutes. automatically, my mind started working against me. what if the weekend runs were just a fluke? what if i haven't really established four miles at all? why do i suck at running?

it could be running. it could be my expectations of the girls. it could be the church. it could be my family or friends. it could be the store. if the kohi is telling me anything, it's telling me that i am fearing the worst and letting that fear dictate some of my actions during the day and many of my reactions to the events when looking at them in the rear-view mirror.

i don't know that i can call this a revelation. i think the people who know me would tell you i can be a cynic. that i can look for the foul in my fellow man and celebrate it when i find it. see! i told you!!! i told you he/she is worthless/incompetent/lazy/fat/etc. i told you!!!

i don't think i've always been this way, planting and harvesting my own misery all the time. i do think it's directly related to the cancer. i do think that, as far as i've come, i still have a long way to go with reconciling  how much of a mindfuck that whole thing was and still is for me (don't tell me i don't have anything growing inside of me!!! i can feeeel it, man!). that shit took away some innocence, some passion, some empathy, some drive, and a whole lot of patience. and, goddammit, i hate it.

"the first step to solving a problem is admitting there is a problem."

the next seven days will be a good test for the kohi. sarah leaves for san diego for four full days tomorrow. i'll be single-dad-ing it, and i can do it one of two ways. i can wake up ten minutes earlier than the early-ass early i already wake up expecting the girls to be a disaster or i can wake up, get my mind right, and go out of my fucking way to make mommy not being here as painless as possible for the girls. the challenge will be to put the joy back into my own private mudville. stop dreading the days that i won't have and prepare the girls as best i can for the days they still do.

here's hoping the kohi will reflect the challenge as well-played.

i'll let "you" know.

happy index
(part seven)

kohi closes tonight at:

7

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

just some worrying. god bless sarah. she is really trying to be patient with me. i think we both figured that my clean scan in january would buy me more than just over three month's worth of peaceful mind. the days aren't bad days, per se, like i used to have bad days, but they really dampen my overall mood. most strikingly, they dampen how much patience i have with the girls and how willing i am to make sure they are happy and well. i don't know what depression feels like, but these days have to be close. when you know, in theory, that you want to be happy and, also in theory, you can map out how to get there. somewhere, something deep inside your brain hamstrings you. you think bad thoughts. the bad thoughts take over. the bad thoughts win. you're fucked.

the good:

a normal and productive monday at work

a reluctant but productive home workout

hannah is ready for her new bike. i am so proud of her. the deal was if she could learn to ride on her current bike that's just a little too small for her, we would reward her with something newer, cooler, and less princess-y. she's ready. she can take off, stop, turn and react to traffic. good job, hannah. it was fun watching you do your thing this evening.

we actually won a softball game. in our first 4 games, we scored 8 runs. tonight, we scored 18. it is always fun to have an excuse to see my friends and play softball with them. the losing was getting to us, though. tonight was nice.

happy index
(part six)


kohi closes tonight at:

9

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

i left for the church too early for whatever meltdown happened between the girls and sarah, but i know it was bad enough for sarah to send me this google chat, "my kohi is currently at 2". not a good way for mother's day to start. i think we helped her rebound from it, though. i hope so.

the good:

limbo is on a streak of really engaging conversations. this morning, we talked about our emotional response to the death of a figurehead and our emotional response to all the other emotional responses. it was good enough that we'll probably pick up where we left off next week. we don't do that much.

joseph showed up for the first time in many a week for limbo. he was received with something akin to a "norm!!!" from cheers greeting. limbo, where everybody knows your name.

lunch with joseph and marie and the girls was nice. we continued the conversation from limbo a little bit and enjoyed being together as a sextet for the first time in ages.

backed up my 4.5 mile run friday with another one this afternoon.

no evening activities (for some reason) meant i could lock up after the run and not drive back to the church tonight.

the great:

mother's day dinner at cajun steamer. really, we could not have asked the girls to be ANY better at dinner. they were wonderful. we ate outside per hannah's request. the girls sat on bar stools and ate their dinner together. for about 15 minutes, it almost felt like sarah and i were alone. we didn't really know what to do with the freedom, so we just ate our food before it got cold and didn't have any ketchup flung in our face. good, good times.

commentary:

church, television, sports. not one of three (i don't really consider limbo church. it's not deserving of the poor personal connotation) played any bearing on the kohi today, which is incredible and rare. for the first day in a long, long time, it felt like an off day, a day that we did a lot of things that we wanted to do. no pointless meetings. no wal-mart. just family and friends. goodness. i wish for more days like today.

happy index
(part five)


the kohi will close tonight at:

6

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

a lot of worrying today. gotta try and stop that or redirect my attention to something else. a customer came in late-ish to the store tonight and randomly started talking about having a positive mental attitude. he was all like, "tell me something...what always comes after the rain?" i responded with, "a bible verse?" i heard what he was trying to say. i just didn't want to play along. thanks for trying, though, black tony robbins. or guy that was going to give me his testimony, but i had to get back in the office to, you know, look for that...thing. that pretty much sums up the guts i had to get out of my hole today.

hannah's soccer team never really woke up and lost this morning. she didn't seem too beat up about it by the time she got her shaved ice and started rocking taylor swift on the waffle house jukebox. i need to teach her how to better dwell in the sadness of defeat.

speaking of sports...braves lose. lebron loses. so much for the debut of pitching phenom julio teheran. you don't deserve to be called julio. until he shows he belongs, i am going to call him bob. oh yeah, and heyward sucks ass right now.

the good:

closed out a record week in sales for my store. feels nice.

was nice to watch hannah play again after a couple weeks away.

beastie boys album is starting to take hold.

commentary:

i am anxious to see what kind of impact a day around the church will have on the kohi. i am so used to dreading everything other than limbo. tomorrow, i am going to try and keep as open a mind as i've had in, well, a long time.

happy index
(part four)


kohi closed at:

8

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

eh. work was long. productive again and we're on pace to to have a solid week. now, if i could only get jazzed again about being there.

the morning started off sloppy with the girls being super-whiny about whothehellknows. most mornings, and we feel lucky for this, the girls are really sweet and cooperative. caroline gets up and her happy index always starts at ten. hannah i think is more like me in that regard. i think she starts middle of the road and will need to be swayed one way or the other. yesterday morning, though, they both were ill, ill, ill. i don't know if they didn't sleep good or what, but damn. their collective attitudes just made me want to get out of the house and to work.

the good:

post-work run was really good. stretched out my outdoor distance to my longest yet at 4.5 miles in right at 45 minutes. pace wasn't great at all, but, for all the hills we did, it felt like a big accomplishment. 6 miles still sounds like it's a ways off. the crazy thing? it's not.

fajita friday was what is always is...the cure for what ails just about anything. the food, the jumbo margarita, the family and the feeling of having just burned 600 calories added up to a wonderful experience. i so love fajita fridays.

the braves have won six games in a row and heyward still isn't hitting. if he wakes up and becomes the hitter and obp machine that i think he will, the braves are going to win the wildcard. maybe even compete for the division. we'll see.

fringe. well, four months 'til another new fringe. last night showcased john noble at his finest and the cliffhanger ending was a pretty exciting set-up for the direction of the show next season. with my tv over for the year, it's time to get a book. enter love wins.

happy index
(part three)

kohi closes at:

5

the ugly:

buffalo wild wings. you know how, when you're really hungry, everything sounds good and nothing sounds good all at the same time? you have five to six quality choices between the soccer field and home but you can't pick just one? well, we picked...wrong. our last three bww experiences had been above average (mind you, their average is probably a heyward-esque .235). tonight, they went 0-4. food was "fine". it was what we thought it was. the wait and the drama and the more wait completely shat on the experience. shat upon, i tell you!

the bad:

work. man, i am so burned out. who am i to complain, though, right? at least i have a job. a super, super job. i really like my job, in theory. i do. maybe i need a vacation. or a new attitude. work was "fine". we were busy. i was productive. i just left feeling like i was going home from a lock-in.

it's hot in our bedroom. we need a new fan. one that doesn't make fucked up noises at 3 in the morning and one that we can turn up higher than the low setting without worrying about it falling from the ceiling and killing us in our not-sleep.

did i mention buffalo wild wings? god, i hate that place. why did we go there?

didn't run. didn't exercise. i feel fat.

started worrying a little this afternoon.

the good:

i woke up today feeling good.

my tangelo was good.

caroline laid in my lap and was sweet while we were waiting on top of waiting at bww.

hannah asked me what "that bad man that we shot and put in the ocean" did for us to do that to him. maybe i'll just invite her to limbo this week.

the kitchen smells like brownies at bedtime.

happy index
(part two)

tuesday night, the kohi (kevin o'kelley happy index) closed at:

6

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

left hannah's backpack in my car, throwing the girls morning schedule into disarray.

tough day to get into a flow at work. wednesdays are always a little rough coming off my off day, and the idea of running on wednesday afternoon is somewhat daunting, given that tuesday-wednesday is my only back to back running days of the week.

developed a blister on a piece of skin that had just blistered over the weekend. it hurt.

the good:

braves win both games of their doubleheader and are two games above .500

my fantasy pitching staff went off.

watching caroline play with the mighty noah at church dinner was really quite amazing.

hannah wanting to ride home with me even though i was trying to talk her out of it.

the lakers lost...again.

ran 4.30 miles in 40:03 on a very flat course in huffman. the 9:19 per mile pace was my best outside pace yet.

the great:

ms. ellen's fried chicken for possibly the last time on a wednesday night. it's really quite sad that wednesday nights as i know it seem to be hustling toward an end, but, boy, i've really enjoyed it for a long time. thank you, ms. ellen.

a commentary:

in reference to chris golden's comment on the first kohi, i really like the perspective of each of his days starting at a 10, but i am not sure i am in that place. i think most of my days start at a 5, the needle moving up or down given the circumstances that surround each day. we'll see how that evolves.

(happy index)
(part one)


today was a good day to set a baseline for this little experiment. as noted in today's earlier post, there was a moment where i would have told you i was around a 3, but the day rebounded nicely.

the kevin o'kelley happy index (kohi) will close tonight at:

7

the ugly:

n/a

the bad:

you know, the whole "late" thing

the good:

another five mile run
my first under eight minute mile (coming on my fifth mile of the day)
blog created and published
happy dinner with a happy family
sprc meeting where no one had to raise their voice.

fin.

happiness is hard
(hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me)
((part three))


on espn radio this morning, colin cowherd cited a 9 year-old study on happiness done by a phd at a chicago university (sorry...i am too lazy to look for something to cite. i am just going to trust that cowherd wasn't making it up.). the study was simple to execute. it went like this. ten couples were randomly selected for a week-long trip to the beach on the university in question's dime. the only catch was this. the phd would place a short phone call to the man and woman of each couple once every waking hour. each hour over the course of the 12 hour period, each participant would rank their happiness on a scale of 1-10. that's it. outside of that one factor, the couples were told to enjoy themselves as best they could. once the vacation ended, the phd allowed three months to pass. he then asked all ten couples to come in, one couple by one, for a one hour evaluation of their experience. as part of the sit down, each participant was asked to rank their happiness for the entire week. to a couple and to a (wo)man, the ranking of the week on the whole was significantly higher than each person's respective average over the course of the 84 phone calls during the actual vacation. the phd concluded what he already suspected, that we, as humans are good at revisioning history and even better at pushing uncomfortable things in our past to the back of our minds so that positive experiences have more room in the front.

after his story, cowherd used the anecdote as a way of bringing up michael jordan and the myth of his awesomeness. if anyone talks about jordan these days, it's all hyperbole. "greatest ever". "never missed a clutch shot." "dunked once over jesus." that kind of stuff. gone from our collective consciousness are all the stinker games he played. all of the last second shots that he took that clanked off and away from the rim sending the bulls into the tunnel hanging their heads in defeat. all of the first six or seven years of his career when he could barely get out of the first round.

such is sports. if lebron can carry the heat to a title this year, looking back twenty years from now, you'll be led to believe that his career started with the 2010-11 season. his struggles and growth will be forgotten, because struggles and growth only make for good stories in the olympics.

such is life, especially when it comes to happiness. oh, happy day. is there a more relative qualifier than the word "happy"? some things that currently make me happy like facebook and twitter and fantasy baseball probably make others roll their eyes or recoil. some things that makes others happy like cooking or doing yardwork or searching for pictures of osama bin laden's shot up face online kinda make my stomach turn over. in life, in our life, though, we know happy when we see it. and we know happy when we feel it. it's no surprise to me to think that our chicago phd called one of his group right after they realized they stayed in the sun for three hours too long and they gave that hour a 2 on their scale because they were burned to hell. what is ever surprising and always disappointing is that we, and by we i mean i, can't interject some perspective into any given moment to realize and own that there are often many, many more reasons for us to be happy versus sad/mad/frustrated.

when i think ahead to my family's disney vacation that is just over a month away, i want to keep colin cowherd's anecdote in the front of my mind. will there be frustrations along the way and during the week? i am sure there will be, several in fact. but, what would happen if i could condition myself with the idea that, no matter what, this will be the BEST. VACATION. EVER beforehand and let that idea vaccinate all my negative thoughts with something akin to a preemptive strike?

my wife and friends know that i can be a fickle little baby. just today, i was totally pissed that amy and katie showed up to uab to run 10 minutes later than we planned. TEN MINUTES. that's it! but i let it ruin the next half hour and i ran with a chip on my shoulder the whole time. never mind that i ran my fifth, yes FIFTH mile in under 8 minutes, which i am pretty sure is the first time i've ran a mile in less than 8 minutes since i started this madness three months ago. never mind that i've lost over 25 pounds and am probably in the best shape of my life at 34. never mind all of that shit. they were TEN MINUTES late. i am such an asshole.

the point is this. i want to get better. and i need to get better. if not for me, for my family and the little kumquat that deserves a father that is at least the same amount of sane as hannah and caroline have had thus far.

i want to be able to own that, goddammit, i should be and AM happy most of the time. why wouldn't i be?

i am challenging myself now. every day for the rest of the month of may, i will log here or write down to log later how i would rank each day in terms of my own personal happiness. the notes will be short and sweet. we'll see if conducting my own personal trial helps my own personal effort to not be such a whiny bitch all of the time.

note: having said all of this, i fully expect caroline to tangle a sucker in her hair on the way home just to test my ass.

humc is weezer
(and that's not an altogether good/bad thing)


once upon a time, there was a band called weezer. in 1994 (my junior year of high school), weezer burst onto the scene with their self-titled album and their hit single, "undone - the sweater song". weezer was unique in the midst of the angst-y, self-important early nineties for several reasons. they didn't look like rock stars, in so many words. rivers cuomo and his thick-rimmed glasses looked like fifty guys that i would walk past in the hallway at school. when they played music and made music videos, they looked out and into the crowd and the camera versus staring at their shoes like so many of the scene grunge bands of that era. their songs had an edge to them, but they were poppy as all get out, immediately accessible and fun. cuomo's lyrics were incredibly self-deprecating (and still are), removing the pretense from whatever criticism they would inevitably receive from "making it". on the strength of "...the sweater song", "buddy holly", and "say it ain't so", weezer (the blue album, to fans) went multi-platinum and weezer was everywhere.

a couple years later, weezer would follow the blue album with their masterpiece, pinkerton. not nearly as accessible as their debut, pinkerton found cuomo at his dark and witty best. the songs took several listens to conjure up the same magic as their previous effort, but, once ingrained, you couldn't let them go. pinkerton, to this day, remains one of my top ten favorite records ever, and i can't imagine enough records coming out and into my "old dog" consciousness to knock it from that perch.

a funny thing happened to weezer, though, after pinkerton failed to make their record label mounds of cash. commercial success pulled cuomo in directions he was obviously uncomfortable moving, and his band was asked to change. over the last ten-plus years, weezer has spent record after record trying to recapture the mythical glory that was their early years. over the course of their last four or five records, the band finds itself in an unenviable place. they are a cover band, a weezer cover band that has spent the last several months on tour for two nights in each city they've visited, one night playing the blue album on the whole, the next night the same with pinkerton. don't get me wrong, as a fan that has written off five of their last six albums as "totally not pinkerton" (i gave maladroit an good, honest shot. still don't like it.), i would've loved going to one of these doubleheaders. but, in the end, i would've been sad for a band that i once loved whose "adoring" public had refused to let them move forward and mature into something more than that band that makes me feel better about being a teenager/college student.

as i sat around yesterday thinking about weezer, i started wondering and worrying about the place that my church currently finds herself in.

for years now, probably since before i came on staff in 1999, our congregation and her leaders and her pastors have been busy, maybe/maybe not intentionally, repackaging what was our blue album. in the late 80's and early 90's, we wrote a figurative album that many, many people found accessible and enjoyable and relevant.

nowadays, we are still very relevant to the majority of the group that has stuck around through thick and thin, but we can't quite figure out a path to our future. i wish on most days that we could forget about our past, stop talking about being 140 years old, and just pretend that we happened upon 200 or so nice people in the middle of huffman that were interested in establishing a united methodist church in the middle of a community that could use some tender love and care. having said that, i realize that wouldn't be fair. you can't ask people that have been around the church for way longer than my 30 years served to forget about our history and tradition any more than you could ask weezer to erase the blue album and pinkerton from their catalog. we will always carry that part of our identity with us.

the question remains, what good is it to us now? it is just a cause for celebration, that we've been able to survive for 140 years, or somewhere buried in all those years can we excavate and discern a map that points us toward 2100 a.d.?

our long range planning committee resumes its work this coming sunday, out from underneath the constraints of natural church development for the first time in months. here's hoping we can renew our energy and focus from this time last year and help create a vision that will energize our congregation to become something we didn't know we could be.

if we can't, i worry our 140th anniversary celebration in october will feel less like a party and more like a viewing, full of characters from our past gathered to pay their final respects to an old friend.

#whatwouldjesusdo

"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.