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.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
the day i started considering a twitter account
for as long as HACAM (birthed as HAM) has been around, i've had the blogroll over to the right that's not as much a blogroll as it is a tip into my daily internet surfing habits. "to pass the time" isn't as much recommendation as it is this is what i like, maybe you would too. the most disappointing part of "to pass the time" has been the coming and going of friends that started a blog, wrote for a short period of time, then left the blog just sitting there, an interweb snapshot of what sounded like a good idea at the time only to play out as a timekiller that was eventually re-prioritized to the back of the backburner. andy, kiker, joseph, rebecca used to write, and then they didn't. my brother is still linked, but he doesn't write anymore. so, "to pass the time" isn't as much a blogroll, because i don't know many people anymore that blog.
as it stands now, the longest tenured blogger on the list is a guy i've never met, but his work has been a part of my life for years now, a guy named dan shanoff. i "met" dan several years ago when he was writing for espn.com's page two. his column was called "the daily quickie" and it was brilliant for it's time. it summed up the previous days biggest sports news and the day-of's stories that espn would likely be tracking in quick-hitting, 15-20 word blurbs. he was full of piss and hyperbole, using the phrase "instant classic" before you started hearing it everywhere and quick to judge last night's game as the best. thing. ever. it was awesome then. and it's awesome now. dan's been gone from espn for several years now, but his daily quickie concept has had several different iterations, most notably as the morning "wake-up call" on the sporting blog and then on his personal blog.
about six months ago, dan started teasing his new company, a company that he would appropriately call "quickish". quickish launched about a month ago and it quickly and easily has become my most passionate internet obsession (sorry, facebook). so, what is quickish? this page describes it in full, but, in short, it's a insta-ish hub for all things sports. every sports reporter has a twitter nowadays. many of them use their clever powers for good and post intelligent quips and commentary about the events they are paying attention to. quickish's editors cull through all of these tweets/columns/on-air commentary and publish what, in their opinion, makes the most relevant sense to the narrative a respective game/match is telling/will tell tomorrow. thus far, quickish has been at it's rapid fire best during nationally broadcast, everyone-is-paying-attention games. the divisional nfl playoff games, jimmer fredette's coming out party last week against san diego st. and today's lakers/celtic tilt are good examples. last sunday, though, most of the sports country was watching the same thing, the nfl conference championship games. fortunately for quickish, they just so happened into a circumstance that almost destroyed the internet.
if you were watching the bears/packers game, you know the story. jay cutler is mysteriously absent when the bears take the field early in the third quarter. fox is sent scrambling to tell the nation what the crap is going on. their sideline investigation discovers that "something" has happened to one of cutler's knees, and he is questionable to return. the funny thing is, cutler, if you go purely by the picture on the television, didn't look hurt. he wore his normal douchebaggery look on his face as he hid under his hooded overjacket and toboggan. their were images of cutler trying to loosen up...something...on the stationary bike. cameras caught him later in the game staring aimlessly from the bench. not helping his back-up read the endzone pictures. not encouraging his teammates that were fighting without him for a trip to the super bowl. he reacted with positive emotion after his back-up's back-up got the bears back into the game, but, by that point, the internet (mostly via twitter) had written their story.
what is wrong with cutler?
why isn't he in the game?
this guy has no heart!!!
they would have to drag me off the field on a stretcher!
is he even hurt???
he's not hurt, he's scared!
he looks retarded!!!
i bet he spits on old people!
jay cutler raped my baby!
death to jay cutler!!!
long live caleb hanie!
who is caleb hanie?
exactly.
the reaction and the punishment was swift and severe. the internet had declared jay cutler a quitter, and it is going to take him years (if ever) to shake that tag, a result of one football game (his biggest ever, of course) out of many, many football games he's played.
quickish editors, i can only imagine, were in heaven. everyone in the sports community, players and reporters and fans alike, had an opinion, and they were all putting it out "for all the world to see".
i got caught up in it, myself. i jumped on facebook and live-blogged along to the events of the fourth quarter. it was invigorating and fun. i wanted to be a quickish editor so bad i could taste it. by the time i joined the fray, the cutler thing was almost old news, so i commented on the game itself, rooting against a hamstrung bears team that i didn't want to watch in the super bowl. i loved it!
shortly after the game, a facebook friend posted a status update.
"facebook is not twitter."
i felt the twinge in my gut as though they were saying it to my face, calling me out in shame. you idiot! don't you know how to use the internet?
now, they may or may not have been talking about my blowing up their status feed with shit they cared nothing about, but my guess is that they were.
which begged the question, do i want a twitter account?
i am still not sure if i do. at this point, i am much more interested in the idea of "following" the sports-related community than i am in search of another public outlet to spout my opinions. and to be honest, the idea that "facebook is not twitter" is debatable in it's own right. facebook is competing for advertising dollars with twitter. i am certain they would love if they could pull relative newbies like me away from a quasi-competitor and keep me committed to them and only them.
what i do know is that it seems to me like the advent of quickish is affirmation of something that i truly believe. you can dislike the era that we are currently in, the era where social media has given just as much weight to what i say as anybody else, but this is an evolution, not a fad. just like the cell phone and the laptop, social media is a step forward, not a step back.
i love that quickish has tapped into the potential of what is likely only going to grow in depth, quality and style. i love that, even if i decide against the whole twitter account, quickish allows me to tap into that universe and reap its benefits at the same time it's arming me to comment on its darkside. thanks to quickish, i probably don't need a twitter account to know that the national consensus paints jay cutler as worthless and jimmer as basketball jesus.
but, i'll probably get one anyway.
for as long as HACAM (birthed as HAM) has been around, i've had the blogroll over to the right that's not as much a blogroll as it is a tip into my daily internet surfing habits. "to pass the time" isn't as much recommendation as it is this is what i like, maybe you would too. the most disappointing part of "to pass the time" has been the coming and going of friends that started a blog, wrote for a short period of time, then left the blog just sitting there, an interweb snapshot of what sounded like a good idea at the time only to play out as a timekiller that was eventually re-prioritized to the back of the backburner. andy, kiker, joseph, rebecca used to write, and then they didn't. my brother is still linked, but he doesn't write anymore. so, "to pass the time" isn't as much a blogroll, because i don't know many people anymore that blog.
as it stands now, the longest tenured blogger on the list is a guy i've never met, but his work has been a part of my life for years now, a guy named dan shanoff. i "met" dan several years ago when he was writing for espn.com's page two. his column was called "the daily quickie" and it was brilliant for it's time. it summed up the previous days biggest sports news and the day-of's stories that espn would likely be tracking in quick-hitting, 15-20 word blurbs. he was full of piss and hyperbole, using the phrase "instant classic" before you started hearing it everywhere and quick to judge last night's game as the best. thing. ever. it was awesome then. and it's awesome now. dan's been gone from espn for several years now, but his daily quickie concept has had several different iterations, most notably as the morning "wake-up call" on the sporting blog and then on his personal blog.
about six months ago, dan started teasing his new company, a company that he would appropriately call "quickish". quickish launched about a month ago and it quickly and easily has become my most passionate internet obsession (sorry, facebook). so, what is quickish? this page describes it in full, but, in short, it's a insta-ish hub for all things sports. every sports reporter has a twitter nowadays. many of them use their clever powers for good and post intelligent quips and commentary about the events they are paying attention to. quickish's editors cull through all of these tweets/columns/on-air commentary and publish what, in their opinion, makes the most relevant sense to the narrative a respective game/match is telling/will tell tomorrow. thus far, quickish has been at it's rapid fire best during nationally broadcast, everyone-is-paying-attention games. the divisional nfl playoff games, jimmer fredette's coming out party last week against san diego st. and today's lakers/celtic tilt are good examples. last sunday, though, most of the sports country was watching the same thing, the nfl conference championship games. fortunately for quickish, they just so happened into a circumstance that almost destroyed the internet.
if you were watching the bears/packers game, you know the story. jay cutler is mysteriously absent when the bears take the field early in the third quarter. fox is sent scrambling to tell the nation what the crap is going on. their sideline investigation discovers that "something" has happened to one of cutler's knees, and he is questionable to return. the funny thing is, cutler, if you go purely by the picture on the television, didn't look hurt. he wore his normal douchebaggery look on his face as he hid under his hooded overjacket and toboggan. their were images of cutler trying to loosen up...something...on the stationary bike. cameras caught him later in the game staring aimlessly from the bench. not helping his back-up read the endzone pictures. not encouraging his teammates that were fighting without him for a trip to the super bowl. he reacted with positive emotion after his back-up's back-up got the bears back into the game, but, by that point, the internet (mostly via twitter) had written their story.
what is wrong with cutler?
why isn't he in the game?
this guy has no heart!!!
they would have to drag me off the field on a stretcher!
is he even hurt???
he's not hurt, he's scared!
he looks retarded!!!
i bet he spits on old people!
jay cutler raped my baby!
death to jay cutler!!!
long live caleb hanie!
who is caleb hanie?
exactly.
the reaction and the punishment was swift and severe. the internet had declared jay cutler a quitter, and it is going to take him years (if ever) to shake that tag, a result of one football game (his biggest ever, of course) out of many, many football games he's played.
quickish editors, i can only imagine, were in heaven. everyone in the sports community, players and reporters and fans alike, had an opinion, and they were all putting it out "for all the world to see".
i got caught up in it, myself. i jumped on facebook and live-blogged along to the events of the fourth quarter. it was invigorating and fun. i wanted to be a quickish editor so bad i could taste it. by the time i joined the fray, the cutler thing was almost old news, so i commented on the game itself, rooting against a hamstrung bears team that i didn't want to watch in the super bowl. i loved it!
shortly after the game, a facebook friend posted a status update.
"facebook is not twitter."
i felt the twinge in my gut as though they were saying it to my face, calling me out in shame. you idiot! don't you know how to use the internet?
now, they may or may not have been talking about my blowing up their status feed with shit they cared nothing about, but my guess is that they were.
which begged the question, do i want a twitter account?
i am still not sure if i do. at this point, i am much more interested in the idea of "following" the sports-related community than i am in search of another public outlet to spout my opinions. and to be honest, the idea that "facebook is not twitter" is debatable in it's own right. facebook is competing for advertising dollars with twitter. i am certain they would love if they could pull relative newbies like me away from a quasi-competitor and keep me committed to them and only them.
what i do know is that it seems to me like the advent of quickish is affirmation of something that i truly believe. you can dislike the era that we are currently in, the era where social media has given just as much weight to what i say as anybody else, but this is an evolution, not a fad. just like the cell phone and the laptop, social media is a step forward, not a step back.
i love that quickish has tapped into the potential of what is likely only going to grow in depth, quality and style. i love that, even if i decide against the whole twitter account, quickish allows me to tap into that universe and reap its benefits at the same time it's arming me to comment on its darkside. thanks to quickish, i probably don't need a twitter account to know that the national consensus paints jay cutler as worthless and jimmer as basketball jesus.
but, i'll probably get one anyway.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
i resolve
(2011)
"i'm so used to shooting myself in the kneecaps, standing in the way of progress and letting down my friends..."
if 2010 was the year i faced my fears, 2011 will be about moving forward and letting go. it's not exactly january one. i get that, but this post was never going to be properly based in my reality until after i had my 18 months-out scan. had the scan i now have, and i am super happy to report (granted, HACAM is late to the story...facebook got the exclusive) that my remaining kidney was, in the words of my doctor, "working like a champ" and there were "no surprises" to be found. so, what does that mean, exactly? well, for one, it means i can take another deep breath. for two, it means that i can go to the bathroom for a few months without the fear of seeing blood in my urine. it may sound silly, but, let me tell you, i will never take going to the bathroom and everything being "normal" for granted for the rest of my life. that last tuesday's scan gave me the peace of mind to not worry about that type of thing, if even for a little while, it was worth it. for three, and this is probably the most important realization i've come to in the last seven days, it would seem to me (me, of course, catching up with the rest of my world) that i am currently cancer-free. now, a more rational person may argue, "but, kevin, weren't you technically cancer-free on july 23rd of 2009 when they removed that rotten kidney from your abdomen?" the rational person, it has been proven, would be correct. that's not the way i've viewed things for the last 18 months, though. the way i've seen it, if there was one bad cell in my body that could grow into many bad cells that could grow into a tumor, surely there were more of those bad cells lurking in my body and had only yet to be found. for 18 months, i've been waiting, not so patiently, for the "other shoe" to drop, having one of my many tests or scans to show me what i had already convinced myself of to be true. that i still had cancer. but, the thing is, i didn't. or, i don't. what everyone else knew that i couldn't own was the form of cancer that was inside of my body had a relatively simple curative treatment if the cancer was contained, which mine was. remove the kidney. the pathology report showed that the cancer was isolated, it had not reached the margins of the organ and i was to "celebrate" my good news. i just. couldn't. do it. what about my chemo? what about my radiation? i haven't even seen an oncologist! this isn't how cancer goes! but, for me. it did. over the last seven days, i've started to realize what's been true now for 18 months. i was fucking lucky. and i don't have cancer. if something had spread from my kidney tumor, it would have manifested itself somewhere else by now. it hasn't. thank you, god. does last tuesday's test mean i will never be sick again in my life or that i'll never have to fight off something else somewhere down the road? no, of course it doesn't. but what it does mean is i am back with the rest of you. my risk is no greater. my chances are no higher. everything left behind in my urological system is ticking as it should. "no surprises" were found. i guess my physical story has been about the same for 18 months now. emotionally, i've had some catching up to do. i'll still worry about stupid things. i did that before june of 2009. i'll still be hyper-aware of things that are changing in and with my body. that's just me. emotionally, i've had some catching up to do, but i am just about caught up. hey there, friends. my name is kevin o'kelley. nice to see you again.
to the list...
1) don't die - you didn't think the above would let this baby slip from number one, did you? something haunting hit me as i was mentally outlining today's post. that being, if i kept "don't die" on my resolutions list every year, one year i was going to fail and not be able to write about the lessons i had learned from the failure afterward. i am still nowhere comfortable with the thought of moving on to whatever is next. maybe, if i am lucky enough to be around in 25 years, "don't die" will have slid down to, like, number 7. in 2011? it's numero uno.
2) see fewer doctors - in the last 18-ish months, i have had the following: 4 abdominal ct scans (the first one that found the tumor), 4 chest x-rays, 1 chest ct (required because of the motion artifact of july, 2010), 1 brain scan (a "peace of mind scan" that my primary care doctor allowed and set up for me because my post-operation dizziness had me convinced that i had a brain tumor), 3 moles removed at the dermatologist (surely you didn't think i would automatically rule skin cancer out.) 1 set of glasses issued (i startedseeing noticing floaters shortly after my surgery, which prompted a visit to an eye doctor. i was certain i had something dreadfully wrong, "eye tumors" if you will) that i never wear but note every time i squint i should probably give them a try (what? i went to the optometrist to make sure i didn't have "eye tumors", not to get glasses!), many blood tests, i've been on and now off the anti-depressant, lexapro, i 've been poked, prodded, listened to and lectured by at least 5, maybe 6 different doctors. it's time to cut that number back a little bit. schaeffer eye center keeps calling me to make sure i come back in for my yearly visit. i should go and do that. sarah's gonna make me get more moles cut off toward the end of the year at that annual trip, and i am guessing i'll have to visit my pcp at least a couple times, but cutting many doctor's visits down to a few would be a giant step forward.
3) don't get fat - "don't get fat" reappears after a one year absence from the list. the reason? i keep putting on weight. at my last two pcp checkups, my weight was higher than the previous visit. adding insult to that injury, i did a body mass test on the wii a couple weeks ago and it, too, told me i had gained weight. now, obviously, i am not fat...yet, but i've come to realize that if i don't start eating a little better, i think, for the first time in my life, i could be. whether it's my metabolism slowing down a little or a combination of that and bad food choices, 2011 will be the year that i take my body back and intimidate you all with my level of fitness. which brings us to number 4...
4) run - what. the. fuck? seriously, if you had told me five year's ago that i would have "run" on a resolutions list, i would've laughed at you and told you to pass me another hot dog. no, really. pass me a hot dog. with chili. and onions. and extra cheese. slaw, too, please. dunk that motherscratcher in gravy with a side of sweet heat chips and then (and only then) could you explain to me how in five years i would think that adding "run" to my list of resolutions would be a good idea. but, here we are. and i am going to do it. at this point, i have to. i've already bought running shoes. i've committed. and so, the specific goal will be this. run in at least one 5k by the end of the spring and a 10k by the end of the fall. after my first "run" on sunday left me looking for a neighbor's trash can to vomit in, i know i've got a long way to go. if you ask me, though, this one is going to be a gimme.
5) find kiker and andy again - this one is hard, because it's unexpected as well. i am not sure how i lost tangible touch with two of my closest friends of my last ten years, but it happened. we've had long bouts of not being able to hang before, but we always had football season to look forward to. then, this year happened. and came. and went without us getting together if only for one bama blowout. it's takes two to tango. i know this. and i understand my prioritizing limbo over some baptist cult in palmerdale (don't gasp...they'll know i'm kidding) has played a significant role in the lack of hang-time, but i do miss them. and i miss them in a way that facebook is never going to be able to solve. here's hoping i can find a way to make this a win by the end of the year, with a genuine hope that we can make it happen sooner rather than later.
6) buy some freaking music - talk about slowing to a halt. one of the early staples of HACAM was the year end "best of my music" list, but we've had to discontinue that effort because i rarely buy any new music anymore, which is completely ridiculous. at 34, do i really want to already be that guy that has stopped listening to and looking for new artists? that guy that is now certain there will never be another band as kick-ass as blood brothers or bearvsshark once were. i don't want to be that guy, but i was that guy in 2010. my favorite album in 2010? fucking yeezy??? a kanye record??? have i lost my mind??? maybe, but maybe 2011 will be the year that saves me from myself. with new records on the horizon from blink, yellowcard, brand new, panic at the disco, fun, thrice, green day, taking back sunday and manchester orchestra among others, surely i can find room in my cd changer for more than the 7 or 8 records, total, that i spent money on last year.
7) see julio play in a football game - over the last couple of years, this type of resolution would, obviously, be tied to heading to bryant-denny to see the tide, but sarah and i (and amy and katie) have gotten back in the habit of making it to at least one alabama game per season. the resolution is altogether different this year. as we all know now, julio is taking his talents to "what's soon to be my new favorite nfl team". there is a pretty good chance that whatever team drafts him will find their way through either atlanta or nashville. if they do (or even if they don't), i want to drive/fly to see him, blow him a kiss from the stands and tell him how much i still love him. hugs.
8) help move limbo into it's next phase - there is no confidential name or strategy to this one, merely the want to make sure limbo doesn't revel in her successful launch last year and stop moving forward. considering we've already helped out with one mission project in our daycare, committed to another this coming saturday and have tentative plans for a spin-off that's not really a spin-off bible study in the works, this one is well on it's way. every ministry in every church runs through its respective "dog days", though, where the temptation is to do what's minimally required for several weeks and justify the stagnant waters by saying "it's our time to recharge and refocus". the goal is for limbo to stay fresh and exciting and kinetic in a way that will motivate our established base to include even more of our friends and family as we move towards a productive calendar year.
9) don't be a lame duck lay leader - with the church in the early, survey stages of the natural church development effort, this one could be tricky. i want to be patient and let the process take hold and begin to work in our church in a way we haven't allowed in our two previous attempts. on the other hand, it's a valid concern that most everything completely stopped moving in the month of january to await the results of the first survey. here's hoping that the 30 members that are answering the questions are honest, and here's hoping that the congregation can hear the results in a less defensive way than we have in the past. as part of this resolution, the long range planning committee needs to offer the church a mission statement before spring and lay leadership needs to empower functionality in our committees that have, mostly, been laid to waste by our dysfunctional and overextended previous structure.
10) get a dog - while it sounds simple enough, this one is highly conditional. for us to have a dog, we also must move into a new and bigger house. each passing birthday or holiday, our home magically shrinks just a little. and while we love our home, all four of us are starting to see the benefits of graduating into something a little more room-y. sarah started pining for a new house late last year. i have a feeling, after hosting several little girls for hannah's belated birthday sleepover this coming weekend, the motivation may be renewed. at any rate, back to the goal at hand, i really like owning a dog. since kammie passed, it has never stopped feeling weird to look out into the backyard and see it empty and alone. i think i am ready for another "man's best friend", but only if the condition of upgrading our home is met first.
well, that's it. that's this year's list. every single one of these will require intentional effort and concern to be met, and every single one would make me a happier and healthier person if i could claim "victory" at the end of the year.
for those of you that are worried, no, of course i haven't forgotten about sarah and the girls. they are and will always remain my number one priority (no offense, g-o-d. i just choose to see you as part of all of it). rather than using them as a gimmick or a gimme and including them on my list, they can rest assured that i will take care of them as best i know how.
"so i'm nailing shards of hope together to put something over my head...
'cuz you know here it's always raining, and it happened again. it happened again...
she said, i let this slide when we were younger, you know you don't have to write like this...
the whole world's full of losers. if you've got a chance to win, TAKE IT!!!"
(2011)
"i'm so used to shooting myself in the kneecaps, standing in the way of progress and letting down my friends..."
if 2010 was the year i faced my fears, 2011 will be about moving forward and letting go. it's not exactly january one. i get that, but this post was never going to be properly based in my reality until after i had my 18 months-out scan. had the scan i now have, and i am super happy to report (granted, HACAM is late to the story...facebook got the exclusive) that my remaining kidney was, in the words of my doctor, "working like a champ" and there were "no surprises" to be found. so, what does that mean, exactly? well, for one, it means i can take another deep breath. for two, it means that i can go to the bathroom for a few months without the fear of seeing blood in my urine. it may sound silly, but, let me tell you, i will never take going to the bathroom and everything being "normal" for granted for the rest of my life. that last tuesday's scan gave me the peace of mind to not worry about that type of thing, if even for a little while, it was worth it. for three, and this is probably the most important realization i've come to in the last seven days, it would seem to me (me, of course, catching up with the rest of my world) that i am currently cancer-free. now, a more rational person may argue, "but, kevin, weren't you technically cancer-free on july 23rd of 2009 when they removed that rotten kidney from your abdomen?" the rational person, it has been proven, would be correct. that's not the way i've viewed things for the last 18 months, though. the way i've seen it, if there was one bad cell in my body that could grow into many bad cells that could grow into a tumor, surely there were more of those bad cells lurking in my body and had only yet to be found. for 18 months, i've been waiting, not so patiently, for the "other shoe" to drop, having one of my many tests or scans to show me what i had already convinced myself of to be true. that i still had cancer. but, the thing is, i didn't. or, i don't. what everyone else knew that i couldn't own was the form of cancer that was inside of my body had a relatively simple curative treatment if the cancer was contained, which mine was. remove the kidney. the pathology report showed that the cancer was isolated, it had not reached the margins of the organ and i was to "celebrate" my good news. i just. couldn't. do it. what about my chemo? what about my radiation? i haven't even seen an oncologist! this isn't how cancer goes! but, for me. it did. over the last seven days, i've started to realize what's been true now for 18 months. i was fucking lucky. and i don't have cancer. if something had spread from my kidney tumor, it would have manifested itself somewhere else by now. it hasn't. thank you, god. does last tuesday's test mean i will never be sick again in my life or that i'll never have to fight off something else somewhere down the road? no, of course it doesn't. but what it does mean is i am back with the rest of you. my risk is no greater. my chances are no higher. everything left behind in my urological system is ticking as it should. "no surprises" were found. i guess my physical story has been about the same for 18 months now. emotionally, i've had some catching up to do. i'll still worry about stupid things. i did that before june of 2009. i'll still be hyper-aware of things that are changing in and with my body. that's just me. emotionally, i've had some catching up to do, but i am just about caught up. hey there, friends. my name is kevin o'kelley. nice to see you again.
to the list...
1) don't die - you didn't think the above would let this baby slip from number one, did you? something haunting hit me as i was mentally outlining today's post. that being, if i kept "don't die" on my resolutions list every year, one year i was going to fail and not be able to write about the lessons i had learned from the failure afterward. i am still nowhere comfortable with the thought of moving on to whatever is next. maybe, if i am lucky enough to be around in 25 years, "don't die" will have slid down to, like, number 7. in 2011? it's numero uno.
2) see fewer doctors - in the last 18-ish months, i have had the following: 4 abdominal ct scans (the first one that found the tumor), 4 chest x-rays, 1 chest ct (required because of the motion artifact of july, 2010), 1 brain scan (a "peace of mind scan" that my primary care doctor allowed and set up for me because my post-operation dizziness had me convinced that i had a brain tumor), 3 moles removed at the dermatologist (surely you didn't think i would automatically rule skin cancer out.) 1 set of glasses issued (i started
3) don't get fat - "don't get fat" reappears after a one year absence from the list. the reason? i keep putting on weight. at my last two pcp checkups, my weight was higher than the previous visit. adding insult to that injury, i did a body mass test on the wii a couple weeks ago and it, too, told me i had gained weight. now, obviously, i am not fat...yet, but i've come to realize that if i don't start eating a little better, i think, for the first time in my life, i could be. whether it's my metabolism slowing down a little or a combination of that and bad food choices, 2011 will be the year that i take my body back and intimidate you all with my level of fitness. which brings us to number 4...
4) run - what. the. fuck? seriously, if you had told me five year's ago that i would have "run" on a resolutions list, i would've laughed at you and told you to pass me another hot dog. no, really. pass me a hot dog. with chili. and onions. and extra cheese. slaw, too, please. dunk that motherscratcher in gravy with a side of sweet heat chips and then (and only then) could you explain to me how in five years i would think that adding "run" to my list of resolutions would be a good idea. but, here we are. and i am going to do it. at this point, i have to. i've already bought running shoes. i've committed. and so, the specific goal will be this. run in at least one 5k by the end of the spring and a 10k by the end of the fall. after my first "run" on sunday left me looking for a neighbor's trash can to vomit in, i know i've got a long way to go. if you ask me, though, this one is going to be a gimme.
5) find kiker and andy again - this one is hard, because it's unexpected as well. i am not sure how i lost tangible touch with two of my closest friends of my last ten years, but it happened. we've had long bouts of not being able to hang before, but we always had football season to look forward to. then, this year happened. and came. and went without us getting together if only for one bama blowout. it's takes two to tango. i know this. and i understand my prioritizing limbo over some baptist cult in palmerdale (don't gasp...they'll know i'm kidding) has played a significant role in the lack of hang-time, but i do miss them. and i miss them in a way that facebook is never going to be able to solve. here's hoping i can find a way to make this a win by the end of the year, with a genuine hope that we can make it happen sooner rather than later.
6) buy some freaking music - talk about slowing to a halt. one of the early staples of HACAM was the year end "best of my music" list, but we've had to discontinue that effort because i rarely buy any new music anymore, which is completely ridiculous. at 34, do i really want to already be that guy that has stopped listening to and looking for new artists? that guy that is now certain there will never be another band as kick-ass as blood brothers or bearvsshark once were. i don't want to be that guy, but i was that guy in 2010. my favorite album in 2010? fucking yeezy??? a kanye record??? have i lost my mind??? maybe, but maybe 2011 will be the year that saves me from myself. with new records on the horizon from blink, yellowcard, brand new, panic at the disco, fun, thrice, green day, taking back sunday and manchester orchestra among others, surely i can find room in my cd changer for more than the 7 or 8 records, total, that i spent money on last year.
7) see julio play in a football game - over the last couple of years, this type of resolution would, obviously, be tied to heading to bryant-denny to see the tide, but sarah and i (and amy and katie) have gotten back in the habit of making it to at least one alabama game per season. the resolution is altogether different this year. as we all know now, julio is taking his talents to "what's soon to be my new favorite nfl team". there is a pretty good chance that whatever team drafts him will find their way through either atlanta or nashville. if they do (or even if they don't), i want to drive/fly to see him, blow him a kiss from the stands and tell him how much i still love him. hugs.
8) help move limbo into it's next phase - there is no confidential name or strategy to this one, merely the want to make sure limbo doesn't revel in her successful launch last year and stop moving forward. considering we've already helped out with one mission project in our daycare, committed to another this coming saturday and have tentative plans for a spin-off that's not really a spin-off bible study in the works, this one is well on it's way. every ministry in every church runs through its respective "dog days", though, where the temptation is to do what's minimally required for several weeks and justify the stagnant waters by saying "it's our time to recharge and refocus". the goal is for limbo to stay fresh and exciting and kinetic in a way that will motivate our established base to include even more of our friends and family as we move towards a productive calendar year.
9) don't be a lame duck lay leader - with the church in the early, survey stages of the natural church development effort, this one could be tricky. i want to be patient and let the process take hold and begin to work in our church in a way we haven't allowed in our two previous attempts. on the other hand, it's a valid concern that most everything completely stopped moving in the month of january to await the results of the first survey. here's hoping that the 30 members that are answering the questions are honest, and here's hoping that the congregation can hear the results in a less defensive way than we have in the past. as part of this resolution, the long range planning committee needs to offer the church a mission statement before spring and lay leadership needs to empower functionality in our committees that have, mostly, been laid to waste by our dysfunctional and overextended previous structure.
10) get a dog - while it sounds simple enough, this one is highly conditional. for us to have a dog, we also must move into a new and bigger house. each passing birthday or holiday, our home magically shrinks just a little. and while we love our home, all four of us are starting to see the benefits of graduating into something a little more room-y. sarah started pining for a new house late last year. i have a feeling, after hosting several little girls for hannah's belated birthday sleepover this coming weekend, the motivation may be renewed. at any rate, back to the goal at hand, i really like owning a dog. since kammie passed, it has never stopped feeling weird to look out into the backyard and see it empty and alone. i think i am ready for another "man's best friend", but only if the condition of upgrading our home is met first.
well, that's it. that's this year's list. every single one of these will require intentional effort and concern to be met, and every single one would make me a happier and healthier person if i could claim "victory" at the end of the year.
for those of you that are worried, no, of course i haven't forgotten about sarah and the girls. they are and will always remain my number one priority (no offense, g-o-d. i just choose to see you as part of all of it). rather than using them as a gimmick or a gimme and including them on my list, they can rest assured that i will take care of them as best i know how.
"so i'm nailing shards of hope together to put something over my head...
'cuz you know here it's always raining, and it happened again. it happened again...
she said, i let this slide when we were younger, you know you don't have to write like this...
the whole world's full of losers. if you've got a chance to win, TAKE IT!!!"
Monday, January 10, 2011
the only national championship game preview that matters
(to me)
((that kid))
(((part two)))
it's been a tough pill to swallow all season, auburn only letting alabama celebrate its own national championship for one year, really it has. ever since alabama lost to south carolina, the dread of tonight's moment has been building. at that point in the season, nothing really had changed. alabama could still run the table and still held their destiny in their own hands and still held the hope that they could repeat as sec (and maybe national) champs. but the feeling was never really the same. if nothing else, the south carolina game exposed alabama as not perfect. not anymore. beatable. flawed. lacking...something. maybe it was a killer instinct. maybe it was experience on defense. maybe it was just that the secondary couldn't cover alshon jeffrey. whatever it was, the alabama football season never did feel as special as this alabama fan wanted it to, especially now that my worry that this was julio's last season has proven itself to be true.
what made alabama's "lost" (if you can call a ten win season with a likely final top twelve-ish ranking season a lost season) season so much worse was what was happening with auburn. early on in the year, let's face it, auburn should've lost. in overtime against clemson, auburn's offense was held to only a field goal. on their own possession, clemson's quarterback found a wide open receiver alone in the end zone. game over. no dream season. except that it wasn't, game over that is. the clemson player dropped the ball. the clemson kicker made a field goal to tie the game, sending the teams into a second overtime. except he didn't. an illegal procedure penalty was called during the kick. the clemson kicker missed the second try. auburn wins. no big deal, right? clemson wasn't a great football team. if auburn struggled against clemson like they had struggled earlier against mississippi state, this team, too, was flawed. auburn was going to have a decent to good season, but there didn't seem to be anything special about the team.
except there was.
cam freaking newton turned out to be really special.
south carolina (the first time).
kentucky.
arkansas.
lsu.
and (ugh.) alabama.
five more games that auburn could've lost if not for the special talents of their quarterback. their big, freakishly big, athletic, strong-armed quarterback. five more games that they could've lost, except they didn't.
the momentum built just like it did with alabama last year. the internet chatter became more and more annoying, just like it did with alabama last year.
and then, the game-changer. the pay-for-play story broke. the resulting scandal turned many auburn fans into lunatics and the auburn family bunkered in (ALL IN, mind you) deeper and deeper into their proverbial rendezvous hole, convincing themselves that espn was out to get them, convincing themselves that every sports media outlet was looking to tarnish their season. cam newton could do no wrong. the whole story was a lie, except it was proven that it wasn't.
the defense changed. the story wasn't bullshit anymore, but any person that implied a connection between the now guilty father and his golden boy son was thought to be an idiot. never mind the fact that the choice of where cameron newton would go to school was on record as not being cameron newton's choice. rumor-mongerers, aren't we all?
the football part of cameron newton's game is no longer in question. the human interest stories about his offensive coordinator are cute, but beside the point. michael dyer is a really good freshman running back, but he is merely a small piece of the puzzle. nick fairley is nasty, for sure, but he's anchored a defense that's given up twenty-five points a game. not really that impressive.
this, ladies and gentlemen, is a one man gang. cameron newton is a collegiate force of nature. those that follow this blog know how special i consider the athletes that have worn that tag on HACAM. i don't know what kind of coach chip kelly is. will having 37 days to prepare for a one man team help oregon's chances?
it should, but i don't think it will matter. cam newton is vince young, version 2010. he is better than everyone else. he is "that kid".
i think this will be a wildly entertaining football game. i think oregon is going to score on auburn early. i think cam newton is going to throw an interception in the first half on one of his deep throws that someone on his team has run underneath or someone on the other team has not picked off for the first 13 auburn games. i think that pick will turn into points and momentum and i am going to be surprised if oregon isn't up at the half.
i think people will start to believe that oregon can win, except that they won't. this isauburn's cam newton's year. and i think they win the night by two touchdowns.
i am interested in what my reaction will be to the eventual outcome. will i be happy for auburn in the same way that i would have been in year's past, especially in those years pre-julio and saban when alabama sucked? i don't know. it'll take watching the game to see where my emotions take me.
i hope the oregon uniforms look incredible in hd. and i hope that espn doesn't try and spread the hyperbole much farther than cameron newton tonight. or at least stop talking about everyone else after the first quarter. kind of like the oscar's does by announcing the winners in the supporting categories at the beginning of the show. yeah, you were great and all, but you weren't nearly as important as the leads.
tonight, the role of cam newton will be played by cam newton. in this movie, that's the only fact that matters.
(to me)
((that kid))
(((part two)))
it's been a tough pill to swallow all season, auburn only letting alabama celebrate its own national championship for one year, really it has. ever since alabama lost to south carolina, the dread of tonight's moment has been building. at that point in the season, nothing really had changed. alabama could still run the table and still held their destiny in their own hands and still held the hope that they could repeat as sec (and maybe national) champs. but the feeling was never really the same. if nothing else, the south carolina game exposed alabama as not perfect. not anymore. beatable. flawed. lacking...something. maybe it was a killer instinct. maybe it was experience on defense. maybe it was just that the secondary couldn't cover alshon jeffrey. whatever it was, the alabama football season never did feel as special as this alabama fan wanted it to, especially now that my worry that this was julio's last season has proven itself to be true.
what made alabama's "lost" (if you can call a ten win season with a likely final top twelve-ish ranking season a lost season) season so much worse was what was happening with auburn. early on in the year, let's face it, auburn should've lost. in overtime against clemson, auburn's offense was held to only a field goal. on their own possession, clemson's quarterback found a wide open receiver alone in the end zone. game over. no dream season. except that it wasn't, game over that is. the clemson player dropped the ball. the clemson kicker made a field goal to tie the game, sending the teams into a second overtime. except he didn't. an illegal procedure penalty was called during the kick. the clemson kicker missed the second try. auburn wins. no big deal, right? clemson wasn't a great football team. if auburn struggled against clemson like they had struggled earlier against mississippi state, this team, too, was flawed. auburn was going to have a decent to good season, but there didn't seem to be anything special about the team.
except there was.
cam freaking newton turned out to be really special.
south carolina (the first time).
kentucky.
arkansas.
lsu.
and (ugh.) alabama.
five more games that auburn could've lost if not for the special talents of their quarterback. their big, freakishly big, athletic, strong-armed quarterback. five more games that they could've lost, except they didn't.
the momentum built just like it did with alabama last year. the internet chatter became more and more annoying, just like it did with alabama last year.
and then, the game-changer. the pay-for-play story broke. the resulting scandal turned many auburn fans into lunatics and the auburn family bunkered in (ALL IN, mind you) deeper and deeper into their proverbial rendezvous hole, convincing themselves that espn was out to get them, convincing themselves that every sports media outlet was looking to tarnish their season. cam newton could do no wrong. the whole story was a lie, except it was proven that it wasn't.
the defense changed. the story wasn't bullshit anymore, but any person that implied a connection between the now guilty father and his golden boy son was thought to be an idiot. never mind the fact that the choice of where cameron newton would go to school was on record as not being cameron newton's choice. rumor-mongerers, aren't we all?
the football part of cameron newton's game is no longer in question. the human interest stories about his offensive coordinator are cute, but beside the point. michael dyer is a really good freshman running back, but he is merely a small piece of the puzzle. nick fairley is nasty, for sure, but he's anchored a defense that's given up twenty-five points a game. not really that impressive.
this, ladies and gentlemen, is a one man gang. cameron newton is a collegiate force of nature. those that follow this blog know how special i consider the athletes that have worn that tag on HACAM. i don't know what kind of coach chip kelly is. will having 37 days to prepare for a one man team help oregon's chances?
it should, but i don't think it will matter. cam newton is vince young, version 2010. he is better than everyone else. he is "that kid".
i think this will be a wildly entertaining football game. i think oregon is going to score on auburn early. i think cam newton is going to throw an interception in the first half on one of his deep throws that someone on his team has run underneath or someone on the other team has not picked off for the first 13 auburn games. i think that pick will turn into points and momentum and i am going to be surprised if oregon isn't up at the half.
i think people will start to believe that oregon can win, except that they won't. this is
i am interested in what my reaction will be to the eventual outcome. will i be happy for auburn in the same way that i would have been in year's past, especially in those years pre-julio and saban when alabama sucked? i don't know. it'll take watching the game to see where my emotions take me.
i hope the oregon uniforms look incredible in hd. and i hope that espn doesn't try and spread the hyperbole much farther than cameron newton tonight. or at least stop talking about everyone else after the first quarter. kind of like the oscar's does by announcing the winners in the supporting categories at the beginning of the show. yeah, you were great and all, but you weren't nearly as important as the leads.
tonight, the role of cam newton will be played by cam newton. in this movie, that's the only fact that matters.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
i'll probably grade myself on a curve
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty-four))
we had a pretty interesting conversation sunday in limbo about the idea and execution of new year's resolutions. the consensus in the room seemed to be that january 1 was a fairly arbitrary start date, but everyone was pretty keen with the notion of goal-setting, which was comforting, especially given that when i asked our collected group how many were planning on making resolutions this year, only three (myself included) out of eleven raised their hands. our hour together nailed down the fact, though, that we all wanted to find ways to better our lives and the lives of those around us even if we didn't agree on the concept of the calendar telling us when to do so.
me, i am a calendar guy. for as long as i've been setting goals on the blog and writing follow-ups like today's, my simple mind wraps itself quite easily around starting at the beginning of the year and evaluating at the end. and so, i continue that schedule today as i take my final official look-back into the year that was kevin o'kelley's 2010.
here is the refresher.
now, let's review...
1) don't die - ... maybe sliding this one up to number one last year after my scare in the summer of 2009 played a significant role in my still being here in january of 2011 to write this post. maybe it just wasn't in the cards for me to meet my maker last year. either way, i am glad that i am still here. i can't say that i didn't think A LOT about the idea of dying. every day, i am not shitting you, every day i have a deathdream. i am able to shake them off and away a lot quicker than i did in the final few months of 2009, but i am obviously still not at ease with what comes next. maybe i never will be. maybe this is one of my curses. it seems unfair to me and everyone around me that i can't get my head out of today and look ahead some to "tomorrow". i am glad i didn't die in 2010. i am. now, if i could just stop thinking about it so much. score: +1
2) get "operation limbo" off the ground, up and running - ... well, well, well. my first real success story of 2010. early last year, i asked jacob sutton and joseph florence to help me with a sketch that we would perform at the beginning of worship to pimp the idea, this idea in my head that was limbo at the time. jacob and joseph, in spite of the morning's technical difficulties, were really funny like they always are. the sketch had to do with the gap that had developed at our church in the last several years where there was no real group or place for students and young adults to plug into after high school. we had a couple of fledgling young-ish adult sunday school classes, but i wasn't real confident either would speak to the group that i had in mind for limbo. so, jacob and joseph riffed on the idea that now they were in their twenties, they were just hanging out in the sanctuary with no real purpose in the proverbial life of the church and joseph asked jacob what they were supposed to do about it. jacob's response? "we wait...................until we're 30." it was hilarious. and pointed. and true. and so, limbo was born. and now, at our church, you don't have to wait if you are looking for something after you've crossed that barrier into adulthood and come to the realization that you still have no idea what the hell is going on in the world. nowadays, i don't think of limbo as an "age-group" thing (we span from early twenties to mid-thirties) as much as i do a "this doesn't make sense to me. let's make sense of it together." group. and it seems to be working. part of our evolution in 2011 will be to become more effective and affective at getting our word and work out to the masses. looking back one more time, though, we've now had 37 unique and special people come to room 218 at some point in the last 45 weeks, and we gather every sunday morning with between 10-15. numbers are a pretty weak measure when it comes to spiritual impact, but they do suggest there was a need in our church (even if we are still dangling on the outer edge of the church corporate) and limbo is trying to help fill it. score: +1
3) be a more than serviceable lay leader - ... hmm, this one is probably not the easiest for me to judge myself on. i could take a straw poll within the church and if the standard was "serviceable", well, i might get a pass. if it's "more than serviceable", i don't know. what has happened that is good in the life of the church over the last 12 months? consensus within the congregation is that we are in better "health". that meaning, there is less overall drama. members and visitors, alike, seem to be harris fans. our finances are currently well within order. long range planning has been meeting and visioning for over six months. natural church development is starting back up and the church, right now, seems committed to that process. our connectional giving has improved drastically with the church meeting it's "target" in 2010 (for the first time in a very, very long time). leadership in the church is getting younger, in no small part to the weeds and limbo. along those lines, we made efforts to streamline the administrative board of the church in the hopes that 2011 will be more efficient. missions are still happening and giving members opportunities to serve. the halloween carnival succeeded again. the children's place daycare is a lighthouse and symbol of hope in our immediate community. i am probably forgetting many others. but, this all begs the question, what credit can i take for any of it? what blame rests at my feet if i were to list the cons of 2010, too. it's a good question, and we'll address it again soon. "serviceable" in the church is relative, thus "more than serviceable" probably is as well. i am going to give myself a point here. if you disagree, please feel free to comment and tell me why. score: +1
4) prepare for the inevitable - ... ugh. i called this one, right? not that it took a rocket scientist to predict that any college football team would eventually lose a game, and lose a game(s) alabama did. in spite of their talent and potential that was on full display for 20 minutes of the iron bowl and 60 of the capital one bowl, alabama finished a disappointing 10-3 and probably 10 spots lower than their preseason number one ranking. the first loss to south carolina was easier than i thought it would be to swallow, mainly because they were down the whole game. the idea of predicting the future of next year's team with the likely departures of 3-5 underclassmen seems discouraging currently. we'll wait til after the a-day game for that. and we'll also give myself credit for being a realist with this particular resolution a year ago. score: +1
5) don't forget about my deceitfully evil gang of weeds - ... maybe my first miss of 2010. i remember vividly the conversation that i had with the weeds on a sunday morning early on in 2010, that i was thinking of using my positive, free and clear scan in january as a springboard to get my head back in the game of making a difference in the church again. what that meant to them was that i wouldn't be available on sunday mornings anymore. my doing limbo, kathy and deb doing kids sunday school, the goldens having their hands full with noah, kim getting elected to city council, among other things pulled our sunday school class in many different directions, and it's been hard to feel like a cohesive whole all year. i don't know that blaming any one person or event or circumstance would do justice to all the mitigating factors. i didn't "forget" the weeds, but actions spoke louder than words. score: -1
6) say no to drugs... and by drugs, i mean lexapro - ... an interesting result with this one. i told myself that if i got a clean bill of health again in july, i would start to wean myself off of the anti-depressant. even though there was a little scare with a "motion artifact" in my lung that turned out to be nothing, the clean bill of health came a few days after i had my scan on july 9. after that, i took a half-dose of the lexapro through my and sarah's trip to gatlinburg later that month and then put the pill bottle in the pantry for good. since then, it's been an up and down ride. i have found my good moods hard to sustain, especially the last couple of months, what with the anticipation of the next scan this month ramping up my awareness of every little thing in my body that's not 100 percent anymore. the bottle of lexapro sits right next to my bottle of multi-vitamins in the pantry, and the last two or three weeks i've wondered if starting them again wouldn't be better for me and my family. maybe all the doctor would order is another clean scan and some peace of mind to go along with the apple a day. we'll see soon enough. this one is a technical notch in the "win" column, with mixed results as to the quality of my life since i realized the resolution. score: +1
7) find brian again - ...hmm. does seeing him on one road trip, three visits in three days count as a "win"? maybe, but probably not. i am going to give myself a half-point here, because we did have to drive six hours to see him and it probably ended up being one of the more fulfilling three days of my year, but seeing them once per year doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you are talking about someone that i care so deeply about. score: +.5
8) find dad again - my second full-fledged fail. for me, the spirit of this one is more important than theletter number of times we saw each other, which was actually several thanks to a lunch or two, a handful of hannah's socccer games and a christmas get together. no one did anything "wrong" this year. i just don't know if i feel like we are any closer to being closer. i hope so. for 2010, though? score: -1
9) take ken to a braves game - ... another technical win, even if it didn't flesh itself out to us seeing each other as much as i would have liked to. we went to an incredible phillies game the second week of the season that included a jason heyward homer and a walk-off by nate mcclouth. ken even returned the favor by picking up the tab for the bullet through the forehead that ended up being game three of the division series with the giants. much like brian, i think if we were a little closer, ken and i would be, too. the distance and just life, i guess, has been a riddle we have not been able to solve the last few years. bottom line for the grade, though, is i did, in fact, take ken to a braves game. score: +1
10) keep loving my girls - ... the one big "gimme" of last year. i did keep loving sarah, hannah and caroline. it's hard, at times, to keep that loving from becoming conditional. i'll love you like you deserve just so long as you don't piss me off, okay? that kind of sentiment. hannah is really hard right now, and it's a combination of a lot of things i know. hanging out with older kids at daycare. observing and mimicking older girls that she sees on television and at church. having to deal with a little sister that always wants to do what she does. i know it's tough. now that she's her own little person, she wants more than anything to figure out who she is and she wants it to happen fast. she needs her way all the time. she is hardheaded. just like me. she has a quick temper. just like me. once the heat of any moment has passed, she wants to over-manipulate the rest of the day/night to make sure everything is okay. just like me. she is infuriating. i am sure...just like me. caroline, on the other hand, is three. she's a silly three and is really only a handful when our agenda takes the onus away from her being the center of the universe. no problem with four people in the house, right? ugh. she's adorable most of the time, though, and she's grown to love her daddy in 2010 much like i feel hannah always has. it's been nice. i hope that sarah and i can keep our collective heads in 2011 when it comes to the girls. our daughters really are too special to not appreciate them being in our lives every waking second. score: +1
wrapping up, let's see, it looks like i went 7.5 for 10!!! not too bad if i say so myself, which i just did.
i read several status updates on new year's eve that spoke very poorly of 2010, and i hate that it was a tough year for so many people, including some dear friends. at the same time, i am happy that last year was much less volatile for the o'kelley family. if you removed me being constantly worried about things i have no control over from the equation, who knows what kind of banner year it may have been. that thought will be a nice springboard into my resolutions for 2011, which i'll try and have posted shortly after my january scan.
one final thanks for everyone that stopped by hannah and caroline and me in 2010. whether you love me, hate me or are somewhere in between, whether you agree with me or disagree with me and my potty mouth, whether you came here through your own free will or were forcefully handed a copy of a post or emailed a link, thank you for sharing in this experience with me. this is an open place. an honest place. a place that makes me strive to be a better person for you and for "you".
if you would begrudge me or me in this forum, shame on you, and get a fucking life. you have more important things to worry about. go invite someone to church for god's sake instead of waiting on someone to save the church for you.
a happy 2011 for those of you that love HACAM for what it is. comment more in 2011! if you write, write more! about anything!!!
2010.
the end.
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty-four))
we had a pretty interesting conversation sunday in limbo about the idea and execution of new year's resolutions. the consensus in the room seemed to be that january 1 was a fairly arbitrary start date, but everyone was pretty keen with the notion of goal-setting, which was comforting, especially given that when i asked our collected group how many were planning on making resolutions this year, only three (myself included) out of eleven raised their hands. our hour together nailed down the fact, though, that we all wanted to find ways to better our lives and the lives of those around us even if we didn't agree on the concept of the calendar telling us when to do so.
me, i am a calendar guy. for as long as i've been setting goals on the blog and writing follow-ups like today's, my simple mind wraps itself quite easily around starting at the beginning of the year and evaluating at the end. and so, i continue that schedule today as i take my final official look-back into the year that was kevin o'kelley's 2010.
here is the refresher.
now, let's review...
1) don't die - ... maybe sliding this one up to number one last year after my scare in the summer of 2009 played a significant role in my still being here in january of 2011 to write this post. maybe it just wasn't in the cards for me to meet my maker last year. either way, i am glad that i am still here. i can't say that i didn't think A LOT about the idea of dying. every day, i am not shitting you, every day i have a deathdream. i am able to shake them off and away a lot quicker than i did in the final few months of 2009, but i am obviously still not at ease with what comes next. maybe i never will be. maybe this is one of my curses. it seems unfair to me and everyone around me that i can't get my head out of today and look ahead some to "tomorrow". i am glad i didn't die in 2010. i am. now, if i could just stop thinking about it so much. score: +1
2) get "operation limbo" off the ground, up and running - ... well, well, well. my first real success story of 2010. early last year, i asked jacob sutton and joseph florence to help me with a sketch that we would perform at the beginning of worship to pimp the idea, this idea in my head that was limbo at the time. jacob and joseph, in spite of the morning's technical difficulties, were really funny like they always are. the sketch had to do with the gap that had developed at our church in the last several years where there was no real group or place for students and young adults to plug into after high school. we had a couple of fledgling young-ish adult sunday school classes, but i wasn't real confident either would speak to the group that i had in mind for limbo. so, jacob and joseph riffed on the idea that now they were in their twenties, they were just hanging out in the sanctuary with no real purpose in the proverbial life of the church and joseph asked jacob what they were supposed to do about it. jacob's response? "we wait...................until we're 30." it was hilarious. and pointed. and true. and so, limbo was born. and now, at our church, you don't have to wait if you are looking for something after you've crossed that barrier into adulthood and come to the realization that you still have no idea what the hell is going on in the world. nowadays, i don't think of limbo as an "age-group" thing (we span from early twenties to mid-thirties) as much as i do a "this doesn't make sense to me. let's make sense of it together." group. and it seems to be working. part of our evolution in 2011 will be to become more effective and affective at getting our word and work out to the masses. looking back one more time, though, we've now had 37 unique and special people come to room 218 at some point in the last 45 weeks, and we gather every sunday morning with between 10-15. numbers are a pretty weak measure when it comes to spiritual impact, but they do suggest there was a need in our church (even if we are still dangling on the outer edge of the church corporate) and limbo is trying to help fill it. score: +1
3) be a more than serviceable lay leader - ... hmm, this one is probably not the easiest for me to judge myself on. i could take a straw poll within the church and if the standard was "serviceable", well, i might get a pass. if it's "more than serviceable", i don't know. what has happened that is good in the life of the church over the last 12 months? consensus within the congregation is that we are in better "health". that meaning, there is less overall drama. members and visitors, alike, seem to be harris fans. our finances are currently well within order. long range planning has been meeting and visioning for over six months. natural church development is starting back up and the church, right now, seems committed to that process. our connectional giving has improved drastically with the church meeting it's "target" in 2010 (for the first time in a very, very long time). leadership in the church is getting younger, in no small part to the weeds and limbo. along those lines, we made efforts to streamline the administrative board of the church in the hopes that 2011 will be more efficient. missions are still happening and giving members opportunities to serve. the halloween carnival succeeded again. the children's place daycare is a lighthouse and symbol of hope in our immediate community. i am probably forgetting many others. but, this all begs the question, what credit can i take for any of it? what blame rests at my feet if i were to list the cons of 2010, too. it's a good question, and we'll address it again soon. "serviceable" in the church is relative, thus "more than serviceable" probably is as well. i am going to give myself a point here. if you disagree, please feel free to comment and tell me why. score: +1
4) prepare for the inevitable - ... ugh. i called this one, right? not that it took a rocket scientist to predict that any college football team would eventually lose a game, and lose a game(s) alabama did. in spite of their talent and potential that was on full display for 20 minutes of the iron bowl and 60 of the capital one bowl, alabama finished a disappointing 10-3 and probably 10 spots lower than their preseason number one ranking. the first loss to south carolina was easier than i thought it would be to swallow, mainly because they were down the whole game. the idea of predicting the future of next year's team with the likely departures of 3-5 underclassmen seems discouraging currently. we'll wait til after the a-day game for that. and we'll also give myself credit for being a realist with this particular resolution a year ago. score: +1
5) don't forget about my deceitfully evil gang of weeds - ... maybe my first miss of 2010. i remember vividly the conversation that i had with the weeds on a sunday morning early on in 2010, that i was thinking of using my positive, free and clear scan in january as a springboard to get my head back in the game of making a difference in the church again. what that meant to them was that i wouldn't be available on sunday mornings anymore. my doing limbo, kathy and deb doing kids sunday school, the goldens having their hands full with noah, kim getting elected to city council, among other things pulled our sunday school class in many different directions, and it's been hard to feel like a cohesive whole all year. i don't know that blaming any one person or event or circumstance would do justice to all the mitigating factors. i didn't "forget" the weeds, but actions spoke louder than words. score: -1
6) say no to drugs... and by drugs, i mean lexapro - ... an interesting result with this one. i told myself that if i got a clean bill of health again in july, i would start to wean myself off of the anti-depressant. even though there was a little scare with a "motion artifact" in my lung that turned out to be nothing, the clean bill of health came a few days after i had my scan on july 9. after that, i took a half-dose of the lexapro through my and sarah's trip to gatlinburg later that month and then put the pill bottle in the pantry for good. since then, it's been an up and down ride. i have found my good moods hard to sustain, especially the last couple of months, what with the anticipation of the next scan this month ramping up my awareness of every little thing in my body that's not 100 percent anymore. the bottle of lexapro sits right next to my bottle of multi-vitamins in the pantry, and the last two or three weeks i've wondered if starting them again wouldn't be better for me and my family. maybe all the doctor would order is another clean scan and some peace of mind to go along with the apple a day. we'll see soon enough. this one is a technical notch in the "win" column, with mixed results as to the quality of my life since i realized the resolution. score: +1
7) find brian again - ...hmm. does seeing him on one road trip, three visits in three days count as a "win"? maybe, but probably not. i am going to give myself a half-point here, because we did have to drive six hours to see him and it probably ended up being one of the more fulfilling three days of my year, but seeing them once per year doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you are talking about someone that i care so deeply about. score: +.5
8) find dad again - my second full-fledged fail. for me, the spirit of this one is more important than the
9) take ken to a braves game - ... another technical win, even if it didn't flesh itself out to us seeing each other as much as i would have liked to. we went to an incredible phillies game the second week of the season that included a jason heyward homer and a walk-off by nate mcclouth. ken even returned the favor by picking up the tab for the bullet through the forehead that ended up being game three of the division series with the giants. much like brian, i think if we were a little closer, ken and i would be, too. the distance and just life, i guess, has been a riddle we have not been able to solve the last few years. bottom line for the grade, though, is i did, in fact, take ken to a braves game. score: +1
10) keep loving my girls - ... the one big "gimme" of last year. i did keep loving sarah, hannah and caroline. it's hard, at times, to keep that loving from becoming conditional. i'll love you like you deserve just so long as you don't piss me off, okay? that kind of sentiment. hannah is really hard right now, and it's a combination of a lot of things i know. hanging out with older kids at daycare. observing and mimicking older girls that she sees on television and at church. having to deal with a little sister that always wants to do what she does. i know it's tough. now that she's her own little person, she wants more than anything to figure out who she is and she wants it to happen fast. she needs her way all the time. she is hardheaded. just like me. she has a quick temper. just like me. once the heat of any moment has passed, she wants to over-manipulate the rest of the day/night to make sure everything is okay. just like me. she is infuriating. i am sure...just like me. caroline, on the other hand, is three. she's a silly three and is really only a handful when our agenda takes the onus away from her being the center of the universe. no problem with four people in the house, right? ugh. she's adorable most of the time, though, and she's grown to love her daddy in 2010 much like i feel hannah always has. it's been nice. i hope that sarah and i can keep our collective heads in 2011 when it comes to the girls. our daughters really are too special to not appreciate them being in our lives every waking second. score: +1
wrapping up, let's see, it looks like i went 7.5 for 10!!! not too bad if i say so myself, which i just did.
i read several status updates on new year's eve that spoke very poorly of 2010, and i hate that it was a tough year for so many people, including some dear friends. at the same time, i am happy that last year was much less volatile for the o'kelley family. if you removed me being constantly worried about things i have no control over from the equation, who knows what kind of banner year it may have been. that thought will be a nice springboard into my resolutions for 2011, which i'll try and have posted shortly after my january scan.
one final thanks for everyone that stopped by hannah and caroline and me in 2010. whether you love me, hate me or are somewhere in between, whether you agree with me or disagree with me and my potty mouth, whether you came here through your own free will or were forcefully handed a copy of a post or emailed a link, thank you for sharing in this experience with me. this is an open place. an honest place. a place that makes me strive to be a better person for you and for "you".
if you would begrudge me or me in this forum, shame on you, and get a fucking life. you have more important things to worry about. go invite someone to church for god's sake instead of waiting on someone to save the church for you.
a happy 2011 for those of you that love HACAM for what it is. comment more in 2011! if you write, write more! about anything!!!
2010.
the end.
Friday, December 31, 2010
it's only fantasy if you aren't winning
my pointing out that i've now won five fantasy football titles in ten years isn't really bragging. it's just stating the fact of the matter.
however trivial you may think the world of fantasy sports is, let's face it. that just means you haven't played them. for years now, i have championed fantasy football as my true gateway into my love for the nfl. it really is kind of astounding to me that more of my friends won't follow along. everyone and their mother roots for a college football team, most of the folks i know being either alabama or auburn fans. and don't get me wrong. if you are going to have a rooting interest, you might as well pick one that has a legitimate shot at winning their championship, which both of those schools do. unless your rooting interest is, in fact, your alma mater, why one would torture themselves by rooting for a little sister of the poor is beyond me, but that probably only further indicts me as a fairweather fan, which i totally am. that being said, if you are going to pay attention to college football played at high levels, i don't understand neglecting the natural next step of watching professional football on sundays. every nfl team has 20-30 equivalents of your favorite college player. the game is faster, more efficient, more athletic and more powerful. and if you ever get a taste of it and like the flavor, there is nothing that would solidify your nfl fandom more than owning a fantasy team. on an average roster, you have 14-16 players representing almost as many teams, which means you'll be invested in more than 75 percent of every game that's played on a given nfl sunday. rooting for your players. rooting against the players on your opponent's teams. reconciling which you'd rather happen first. your fantasy team winning? or your real team (sorry falcons)?
fantasy football has given me a greater appreciation of the just-less-than gods that entertain me every nfl sunday. fantasy football has also given me a greater appreciation of how good i am at fantasy football.
two years ago, i did this.
this year, i won again.
while i ended up with two marks in the loss column in 2010, i don't know that i enjoyed a nfl season any more than i did this year, the main reason being one of my favorite football players of all time, mike vick, not only lead his real team to a division title, but he anchored the alabama asianmen all year, too. there is no sweeter feeling for this fan than when real life rooting interest also pays dividends on your fantasy roster. for having played as long as i have, it's really kind of a surprise it hasn't happened more often. i had rowdy roddy white for a couple years. i traded for michael turner last year. that's really the list. maybe subconsciously, during the draft, i avoid falcons because i know my heart would want to start them every week even if it wasn't the most sapient fantasy move (god help me when julio is on an nfl roster next year). probably an enlightened strategy. like most of my strategies.
let's break down the season. for the first time in the history of our league, we used the auction draft format, which means, in theory, every nfl player is available to each team in the league. the only factor is how much you want to pay for him. each team starts with a $200 budget with 16 players to draft. my first and most expensive pick ended up being the fourth best player on my team. not great, but not the worst money i could have spent. ray rice only single-handedly led me to one victory all year. it just so happened to be my playoff semifinal. i'll take it. my next three picks also ended up as major contributors to my cause and top four players at their respective positions (tom brady, greg jennings, jason witten). it may be just a coincidence that not one of the other nine teams in my league could make that claim. it's probably not. with the 84th (EIGHTY-FOUR) pick in the draft and my 8th selection, i stole the number one running back in fantasy and my mvp, arian foster. don't try to remember anything substantial he did at tennessee. he was a bust. don't worry about what round he was drafted in the real nfl draft. he wasn't. i paid $16 for him. including my own ray rice, 20 running backs were more expensive in our draft. it may be just a coincidence that i ended up with him. it's probably not. those five picks (out of 16) were the only five that started more than 8 games for my team. the other starters in my championship game came via our waiver wire, which means they had either been cast aside by one of the other nine teams after their draft or they were not taken among the 160 picks in our auction. of those types of players that ended up on my team (coincidence? probably not.), dwayne bowe ended the year as the 3rd best fantasy wide receiver. darren mcfadden was the sixth best running back. another player ended up as the 6th best player at his position, too.
mike vick.
mike vick was my first true waiver claim of the year. i claimed him before week 2 after kevin kolb went down with a head injury in week 1. vick led the alabama asianmen to the first of his 8 (out of 14 team total) victories that week. asianmen went 8-1 in vick's 9 (brady went 6-0. brett favre went 0-1) starts this year, the only loss (one of only two during the entire campaign, remember) coming in week four when the redskins knocked him out during the first quarter. thanksgiving weekend, mike vick enacted his revenge on the redskins on a monday night when he turned in the third best performance in the history of fantasy football. after scoring 74 points for me that night, i blindly and unconditionally started and rode to victory vick the next four weeks even while tom brady outscored him sitting on my bench in the last three of those four. i benched vick in my playoff semifinal, going against my gut, and almost lost as he outscored brady by 30 points while sitting. i scraped by, started vick in the title game and ended up not needing him as my opponent's players were either hurt or didn't show up for the most important game of the fantasy season.
the most interesting part of the vick story, relative to my league, is this. vick got hurt week four and was out for a few games. brady had his bye week five. i needed a quarterback for week five, and i had three options. drop vick, pick up replacement. drop brady, pick up replacement. concede the loss and keep both. well, i don't really do "concede the loss", so i hedged my bet by dropping vick, knowing that if i did so with brady, some team in the league would swallow him up and away from me. i lost week five anyway (stupid favre!), but still sat at 3-2, nowhere near the bottom of the standings and nowhere near the top of the waiver wire. i dropped favre immediately and claimed vick. i opened up my league wednesday morning melancholy at the thought that someone would have gotten him ahead of me. but they didn't. i got him back. it may be just a coincidence that i didn't lose another game the rest of the way. it's probably not.
as cocky as this post sounds (and is), fantasy football is a fickle game. barring injury, you're likely (not promised) to get good production from your top three picks. everyone is. and so, a fantasy draft and season has nothing to do with the first three rounds. it's the middle 4-11. what rookies are going to get playing time? who will be the dark horses (foster, vick) in the age of fantasy sports where all the dark horses have already been identified by some fantasy "expert". how closely can you man the waiver wire in the first couple of months (mcfadden, then bowe) to find a producer on a bad team that might be turning into a good team where he'll produce even more? it's fickle. and it's trivial. but 50 million(-ish) people can't be totally wrong. and if i am going to do it, i might as well do it right, right?
so, i do.
war asianmen.
again.
my pointing out that i've now won five fantasy football titles in ten years isn't really bragging. it's just stating the fact of the matter.
however trivial you may think the world of fantasy sports is, let's face it. that just means you haven't played them. for years now, i have championed fantasy football as my true gateway into my love for the nfl. it really is kind of astounding to me that more of my friends won't follow along. everyone and their mother roots for a college football team, most of the folks i know being either alabama or auburn fans. and don't get me wrong. if you are going to have a rooting interest, you might as well pick one that has a legitimate shot at winning their championship, which both of those schools do. unless your rooting interest is, in fact, your alma mater, why one would torture themselves by rooting for a little sister of the poor is beyond me, but that probably only further indicts me as a fairweather fan, which i totally am. that being said, if you are going to pay attention to college football played at high levels, i don't understand neglecting the natural next step of watching professional football on sundays. every nfl team has 20-30 equivalents of your favorite college player. the game is faster, more efficient, more athletic and more powerful. and if you ever get a taste of it and like the flavor, there is nothing that would solidify your nfl fandom more than owning a fantasy team. on an average roster, you have 14-16 players representing almost as many teams, which means you'll be invested in more than 75 percent of every game that's played on a given nfl sunday. rooting for your players. rooting against the players on your opponent's teams. reconciling which you'd rather happen first. your fantasy team winning? or your real team (sorry falcons)?
fantasy football has given me a greater appreciation of the just-less-than gods that entertain me every nfl sunday. fantasy football has also given me a greater appreciation of how good i am at fantasy football.
two years ago, i did this.
this year, i won again.
while i ended up with two marks in the loss column in 2010, i don't know that i enjoyed a nfl season any more than i did this year, the main reason being one of my favorite football players of all time, mike vick, not only lead his real team to a division title, but he anchored the alabama asianmen all year, too. there is no sweeter feeling for this fan than when real life rooting interest also pays dividends on your fantasy roster. for having played as long as i have, it's really kind of a surprise it hasn't happened more often. i had rowdy roddy white for a couple years. i traded for michael turner last year. that's really the list. maybe subconsciously, during the draft, i avoid falcons because i know my heart would want to start them every week even if it wasn't the most sapient fantasy move (god help me when julio is on an nfl roster next year). probably an enlightened strategy. like most of my strategies.
let's break down the season. for the first time in the history of our league, we used the auction draft format, which means, in theory, every nfl player is available to each team in the league. the only factor is how much you want to pay for him. each team starts with a $200 budget with 16 players to draft. my first and most expensive pick ended up being the fourth best player on my team. not great, but not the worst money i could have spent. ray rice only single-handedly led me to one victory all year. it just so happened to be my playoff semifinal. i'll take it. my next three picks also ended up as major contributors to my cause and top four players at their respective positions (tom brady, greg jennings, jason witten). it may be just a coincidence that not one of the other nine teams in my league could make that claim. it's probably not. with the 84th (EIGHTY-FOUR) pick in the draft and my 8th selection, i stole the number one running back in fantasy and my mvp, arian foster. don't try to remember anything substantial he did at tennessee. he was a bust. don't worry about what round he was drafted in the real nfl draft. he wasn't. i paid $16 for him. including my own ray rice, 20 running backs were more expensive in our draft. it may be just a coincidence that i ended up with him. it's probably not. those five picks (out of 16) were the only five that started more than 8 games for my team. the other starters in my championship game came via our waiver wire, which means they had either been cast aside by one of the other nine teams after their draft or they were not taken among the 160 picks in our auction. of those types of players that ended up on my team (coincidence? probably not.), dwayne bowe ended the year as the 3rd best fantasy wide receiver. darren mcfadden was the sixth best running back. another player ended up as the 6th best player at his position, too.
mike vick.
mike vick was my first true waiver claim of the year. i claimed him before week 2 after kevin kolb went down with a head injury in week 1. vick led the alabama asianmen to the first of his 8 (out of 14 team total) victories that week. asianmen went 8-1 in vick's 9 (brady went 6-0. brett favre went 0-1) starts this year, the only loss (one of only two during the entire campaign, remember) coming in week four when the redskins knocked him out during the first quarter. thanksgiving weekend, mike vick enacted his revenge on the redskins on a monday night when he turned in the third best performance in the history of fantasy football. after scoring 74 points for me that night, i blindly and unconditionally started and rode to victory vick the next four weeks even while tom brady outscored him sitting on my bench in the last three of those four. i benched vick in my playoff semifinal, going against my gut, and almost lost as he outscored brady by 30 points while sitting. i scraped by, started vick in the title game and ended up not needing him as my opponent's players were either hurt or didn't show up for the most important game of the fantasy season.
the most interesting part of the vick story, relative to my league, is this. vick got hurt week four and was out for a few games. brady had his bye week five. i needed a quarterback for week five, and i had three options. drop vick, pick up replacement. drop brady, pick up replacement. concede the loss and keep both. well, i don't really do "concede the loss", so i hedged my bet by dropping vick, knowing that if i did so with brady, some team in the league would swallow him up and away from me. i lost week five anyway (stupid favre!), but still sat at 3-2, nowhere near the bottom of the standings and nowhere near the top of the waiver wire. i dropped favre immediately and claimed vick. i opened up my league wednesday morning melancholy at the thought that someone would have gotten him ahead of me. but they didn't. i got him back. it may be just a coincidence that i didn't lose another game the rest of the way. it's probably not.
as cocky as this post sounds (and is), fantasy football is a fickle game. barring injury, you're likely (not promised) to get good production from your top three picks. everyone is. and so, a fantasy draft and season has nothing to do with the first three rounds. it's the middle 4-11. what rookies are going to get playing time? who will be the dark horses (foster, vick) in the age of fantasy sports where all the dark horses have already been identified by some fantasy "expert". how closely can you man the waiver wire in the first couple of months (mcfadden, then bowe) to find a producer on a bad team that might be turning into a good team where he'll produce even more? it's fickle. and it's trivial. but 50 million(-ish) people can't be totally wrong. and if i am going to do it, i might as well do it right, right?
so, i do.
war asianmen.
again.
Friday, December 24, 2010
hannah and caroline and me
(part forty-three)
it's christmas eve as i start banging away at what, according to current form, may end up being my last blog post of 2010. i hope not, but things have slowed down on HACAM in the last three months. Not intentionally, mind you, but life has happened, facebook continues to happen, and an alarming (-ly wonderful) lack of drama related to the church also continues to happen.
this will be the first time in six years that the blog's post count drops, and i am not sure how i feel about that. i suppose it was bound to happen. until the day comes when someone starts paying me to piss "you" off, i will have other things that must be prioritized over writing about my girls, my church, auburn's quarterback and julio jones. last year seemed to be the perfect storm of subject matter (for kevin o'kelley). in 2009, of course, the girls continued to grow, mature, annoy and fascinate. towards the end of last year, i started wrapping my head around the idea of having "had" cancer (note: started being the operative word. until i am proven wrong again ((please, lord, let me be proven wrong again)) in january, i am still worried constantly about bad cells growing into something badder inside my body. i wrapped my head around the idea long enough to start writing about it, which was cathartic. alabama football did their thing in the last third of the year. they performed above already high expectations, recaptured my imagination, and won a national championship. rolando mcclain won the butkus. mark ingram won the heisman. julio made it all possible. 2009 was a banner year for subject matter, yes it was. and then along came facebook.
if there is one thing above all others that has contributed to the post count dropping in 2010, it's got to be my more active involvement on THE social network. i stuck my toes in the water last year, just in time to reap the facebook birthday wishes benefits, but, this year, i just went ahead and dove on in. quick-hit topics or links that i may have given attention on the blog in 2009 went straight to facebook. it was easier that way to get a quick response and gain a conversation about those topics. one of the downfalls of the blog was/is that, in many instances, by the time a friend found their way to a post on HACAM, the subject was old news. with facebook, if something strikes my fancy and i want to talk about it, i link to the story and go. i had never experienced gratification so instantly, and it was terribly rewarding. at the same time, though the blog may have lost out in quantity, in my opinion, it's probably gained in quality. the posts that now make the cut have often festered for days to some degree, and some of the fat ends up being trimmed away. i am interested to see if this trend continues in 2011, or...
will i start to tire of facebook? i don't know. it's a good question. i am still a relative facebook newbie, and i am still a huge fan of the footprint it's made on my life. i talk with people that i would never have more time for than to say "hi" or "bye" to. i can passively pay attention to long distance friends and relatives without intruding into their lives any more than "like"ing a status or telling them that their family is beautiful based on the pictures they post. i have fallen in love with the good-natured debate that i've found on topics that have reached some level of import in my life. on the other hand, i've found it interesting to observe those friends and "friends" that have started to fall out of love with facebook. they have claimed that it has taken up too much of their time, that they are too dependant on it. others have claimed to just plain hate it. others have remembered the "good ole days" when it didn't include status updates and wish for a facebook that is never coming back. a less commercial, a less farmville-y, a more innocent facebook. a boring facebook. those people that have given up on the facebook will likely claim that their life is a more fulfilling place without it. and it may be. for now. for ever. who knows. all i know is, right now, i like it. one of my 2011 resolutions will be to gauge, this time next year, if i still feel the same.
humc still gets it's share of love in the land of HACAM, but the lack of drama or controversy since bishop-gate has almost been unsettling. we are in a very serious and deserved phase of transition at this point, one that calls for less talk and more action. the natural church development process is hoping the third time ends up being the charm. the long-range planning committee still searches for our vision. and yet, something still feels...i don't know. i'll explore it more here after the new year. for now, we'll enjoy the relative peace and hope that's it the quiet before the storm of growth...if...that's even what is supposed to be happening.
it's been yet another quite a year. i'll inventory my 2010 resolutions soon and see how miserably i failed at them.
see you soon. i gotta go check facebook. (winking smiley)
(part forty-three)
it's christmas eve as i start banging away at what, according to current form, may end up being my last blog post of 2010. i hope not, but things have slowed down on HACAM in the last three months. Not intentionally, mind you, but life has happened, facebook continues to happen, and an alarming (-ly wonderful) lack of drama related to the church also continues to happen.
this will be the first time in six years that the blog's post count drops, and i am not sure how i feel about that. i suppose it was bound to happen. until the day comes when someone starts paying me to piss "you" off, i will have other things that must be prioritized over writing about my girls, my church, auburn's quarterback and julio jones. last year seemed to be the perfect storm of subject matter (for kevin o'kelley). in 2009, of course, the girls continued to grow, mature, annoy and fascinate. towards the end of last year, i started wrapping my head around the idea of having "had" cancer (note: started being the operative word. until i am proven wrong again ((please, lord, let me be proven wrong again)) in january, i am still worried constantly about bad cells growing into something badder inside my body. i wrapped my head around the idea long enough to start writing about it, which was cathartic. alabama football did their thing in the last third of the year. they performed above already high expectations, recaptured my imagination, and won a national championship. rolando mcclain won the butkus. mark ingram won the heisman. julio made it all possible. 2009 was a banner year for subject matter, yes it was. and then along came facebook.
if there is one thing above all others that has contributed to the post count dropping in 2010, it's got to be my more active involvement on THE social network. i stuck my toes in the water last year, just in time to reap the facebook birthday wishes benefits, but, this year, i just went ahead and dove on in. quick-hit topics or links that i may have given attention on the blog in 2009 went straight to facebook. it was easier that way to get a quick response and gain a conversation about those topics. one of the downfalls of the blog was/is that, in many instances, by the time a friend found their way to a post on HACAM, the subject was old news. with facebook, if something strikes my fancy and i want to talk about it, i link to the story and go. i had never experienced gratification so instantly, and it was terribly rewarding. at the same time, though the blog may have lost out in quantity, in my opinion, it's probably gained in quality. the posts that now make the cut have often festered for days to some degree, and some of the fat ends up being trimmed away. i am interested to see if this trend continues in 2011, or...
will i start to tire of facebook? i don't know. it's a good question. i am still a relative facebook newbie, and i am still a huge fan of the footprint it's made on my life. i talk with people that i would never have more time for than to say "hi" or "bye" to. i can passively pay attention to long distance friends and relatives without intruding into their lives any more than "like"ing a status or telling them that their family is beautiful based on the pictures they post. i have fallen in love with the good-natured debate that i've found on topics that have reached some level of import in my life. on the other hand, i've found it interesting to observe those friends and "friends" that have started to fall out of love with facebook. they have claimed that it has taken up too much of their time, that they are too dependant on it. others have claimed to just plain hate it. others have remembered the "good ole days" when it didn't include status updates and wish for a facebook that is never coming back. a less commercial, a less farmville-y, a more innocent facebook. a boring facebook. those people that have given up on the facebook will likely claim that their life is a more fulfilling place without it. and it may be. for now. for ever. who knows. all i know is, right now, i like it. one of my 2011 resolutions will be to gauge, this time next year, if i still feel the same.
humc still gets it's share of love in the land of HACAM, but the lack of drama or controversy since bishop-gate has almost been unsettling. we are in a very serious and deserved phase of transition at this point, one that calls for less talk and more action. the natural church development process is hoping the third time ends up being the charm. the long-range planning committee still searches for our vision. and yet, something still feels...i don't know. i'll explore it more here after the new year. for now, we'll enjoy the relative peace and hope that's it the quiet before the storm of growth...if...that's even what is supposed to be happening.
it's been yet another quite a year. i'll inventory my 2010 resolutions soon and see how miserably i failed at them.
see you soon. i gotta go check facebook. (winking smiley)
Monday, December 13, 2010
"the cam newton situation is not isolated"
i spent the first four hours of our drive home today listening to sports talk radio. over the course of any given week, the more sports talk you listen to, the more nauseating it can be. however, monday mornings on the national shows are usually the exception to that rule. why? well, in the three hour slots the shows have to fill, they have to breakdown and analyze anything and everything important that happened in the world of sports since they signed off sometime friday before lunch. i flipped back and forth this morning between mike and mike and colin cowherd on espn and dan patrick's nationally syndicated show. between the sports talk and the girls being really, really good, the first two-thirds of the trip actually kind of zipped by.
the most interesting segment, to me, came from dan patrick. one of the many topics covered, naturally, was the heisman trophy presentation and the coronation of cam on saturday night. the fact that newton won the award wasn't what was interesting. if you'd been paying attention to heismanpundit.com since midseason, you'd have already known the result. what was interesting about the heisman segment was the story dan patrick told about a conversation he had saturday night with a college recruiter/coach from "outside the sec" that was also from a perennial top 25 program. patrick said they talked recruiting shop for close to an hour over dinner and the recruiter told him that once a "kid" was drawing interest from sec schools, his program then proceeded to back off from the recruit because they couldn't "compete with the sec when it came to "resources". the "resources" in question, patrick went on to explain, were not facilities or academics or even readying the athlete for the pros. the "resources", of course, was money. lots and lots of money. the coach told patrick that the sec is "on a different level" in a lot of ways. one of those ways, he suggested, was due to the fact that "the cam newton situation was not an isolated incident."
naw. you don't say?
make note, the conversation that patrick was retelling had nothing to do with cam newton, other than his was the situation that sparked the convo, but everything to do with the big business of college football.
it was pure coincidence, of course, that smu's story of fraud/exploitation/profiteering played immediately after the heisman ceremony on espn. the program had been scheduled for that saturday for months, i am sure. the irony was not lost, though. i noted back in my cam newton "to be or not to be" post that my favorite story of recruiting corruption came from that campus and eric dickerson's trans "A&M" (he showed up at smu with a trans am that he claimed his grandmother bought him. later it came out texas a&m boosters had purchased the car for him). you would have thought that a sexy, high profile football program being removed from the planet for several years would have served as a cautionary tale. it did not. all that happened is that it drove the crookedness further underground, where it then went on to include shady characters like logan young and kenny rogers and whatever name that runner for this guy that works for that agent goes by these days.
what tickled my ear's fancy the most this morning was patrick saying, specifically, that the recruiter wasn't calling the sec's five star athletes out as sour grapes. he didn't see the athletes the sec schools could afford as athletes that weren't "good enough" or "a good fit" or "right" for his program. he just couldn't get them. he didn't have the "resources". so, he had to forget about them and move on to less expensive options. "it is what it is".
you can talk about what a "winner" or "fine young man" cam newton is all you want. me? i could wax rhapsodic for three more years about how julio jones changed my life. i am convinced he's most likely the best human ever. none of us really know otherwise, right? that's what i've been reminded of so many times with regards to the most recent scandal, hasn't it? "how do you know?" "where are your facts?" "who told you this?"
and "they" are right. i don't know much. about anything. but there are people that do. i listen to them.
can we all just admit, then, that conferences and schools that can afford to pay their assistants more than the average nfl coordinator (and that's not even mentioning the head coaches) probably share some of that cash with their recruits/players? is it a proportionate or even fair share? um, no. probably not. but it's something. whether it's literally or figuratively shoved underneath their dorm room door makes no difference in the least.
here's hoping that all of this noise that's made by concerned fans and alum advocating on behalf of athletes being paid above the table pays off somewhere down the road.
until then, i'll continue to bask in the awesomeness that is the sec. thank god i was born and raised an alabama fan. it must suck to root for teams without boosters with deep pockets.
i spent the first four hours of our drive home today listening to sports talk radio. over the course of any given week, the more sports talk you listen to, the more nauseating it can be. however, monday mornings on the national shows are usually the exception to that rule. why? well, in the three hour slots the shows have to fill, they have to breakdown and analyze anything and everything important that happened in the world of sports since they signed off sometime friday before lunch. i flipped back and forth this morning between mike and mike and colin cowherd on espn and dan patrick's nationally syndicated show. between the sports talk and the girls being really, really good, the first two-thirds of the trip actually kind of zipped by.
the most interesting segment, to me, came from dan patrick. one of the many topics covered, naturally, was the heisman trophy presentation and the coronation of cam on saturday night. the fact that newton won the award wasn't what was interesting. if you'd been paying attention to heismanpundit.com since midseason, you'd have already known the result. what was interesting about the heisman segment was the story dan patrick told about a conversation he had saturday night with a college recruiter/coach from "outside the sec" that was also from a perennial top 25 program. patrick said they talked recruiting shop for close to an hour over dinner and the recruiter told him that once a "kid" was drawing interest from sec schools, his program then proceeded to back off from the recruit because they couldn't "compete with the sec when it came to "resources". the "resources" in question, patrick went on to explain, were not facilities or academics or even readying the athlete for the pros. the "resources", of course, was money. lots and lots of money. the coach told patrick that the sec is "on a different level" in a lot of ways. one of those ways, he suggested, was due to the fact that "the cam newton situation was not an isolated incident."
naw. you don't say?
make note, the conversation that patrick was retelling had nothing to do with cam newton, other than his was the situation that sparked the convo, but everything to do with the big business of college football.
it was pure coincidence, of course, that smu's story of fraud/exploitation/profiteering played immediately after the heisman ceremony on espn. the program had been scheduled for that saturday for months, i am sure. the irony was not lost, though. i noted back in my cam newton "to be or not to be" post that my favorite story of recruiting corruption came from that campus and eric dickerson's trans "A&M" (he showed up at smu with a trans am that he claimed his grandmother bought him. later it came out texas a&m boosters had purchased the car for him). you would have thought that a sexy, high profile football program being removed from the planet for several years would have served as a cautionary tale. it did not. all that happened is that it drove the crookedness further underground, where it then went on to include shady characters like logan young and kenny rogers and whatever name that runner for this guy that works for that agent goes by these days.
what tickled my ear's fancy the most this morning was patrick saying, specifically, that the recruiter wasn't calling the sec's five star athletes out as sour grapes. he didn't see the athletes the sec schools could afford as athletes that weren't "good enough" or "a good fit" or "right" for his program. he just couldn't get them. he didn't have the "resources". so, he had to forget about them and move on to less expensive options. "it is what it is".
you can talk about what a "winner" or "fine young man" cam newton is all you want. me? i could wax rhapsodic for three more years about how julio jones changed my life. i am convinced he's most likely the best human ever. none of us really know otherwise, right? that's what i've been reminded of so many times with regards to the most recent scandal, hasn't it? "how do you know?" "where are your facts?" "who told you this?"
and "they" are right. i don't know much. about anything. but there are people that do. i listen to them.
can we all just admit, then, that conferences and schools that can afford to pay their assistants more than the average nfl coordinator (and that's not even mentioning the head coaches) probably share some of that cash with their recruits/players? is it a proportionate or even fair share? um, no. probably not. but it's something. whether it's literally or figuratively shoved underneath their dorm room door makes no difference in the least.
here's hoping that all of this noise that's made by concerned fans and alum advocating on behalf of athletes being paid above the table pays off somewhere down the road.
until then, i'll continue to bask in the awesomeness that is the sec. thank god i was born and raised an alabama fan. it must suck to root for teams without boosters with deep pockets.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
january 18, 2010 seems like a long time ago
almost eleven months ago, 2010 resolution #7 was "see brian more...". it didn't really work out the way that i wanted it to. i could claim weak-ass excuses like "how time flies" or the girls or church or work or softball or the blog or too much time on facebook or too much time losing track of friends, but all of them would be just that. weak. and ass.
savannah is a long way away, even as the crow flies, sure. the sheer thought of the six to seven hours in the car with girls that are going to go apeshit halfway there has played a big part in my selfish ass presenting the "it's december. i work in retail. i gotta work." card year after year when sarah or sarah and hannah or sarah and hannah and caroline have made the trip for the last however long without me. believe me. it's been a long however long.
last year, brian was there and the girls got to see him without me. i had missed tons of time due to my surgery and there was no way i could get away. it made my heart warm, though, to know that hannah and caroline would get to hang out with him, and they did. i was jealous, but happy at the same time.
our relationship has never been the most functional even when it was our "normal". lord knows we weren't the only children of divorce in the world, but it felt like it a lot of the time. my friends, in particular, all were from families whose parents had stayed true to their vows. i don't know if that made them happy or not, but going to their houses to hang out had a very weird and comfortable vibe to it. going to my friends' houses felt, for me, like walking into a norman rockwell painting. i know that any of my childhood friends that might read this blog are rolling their eyes right now at the thought of their home being the picture of americana. whatareyougonnado? when you are child of divorce, you see, especially one that was old enough when their parents separated to know that divorce was some fucked up shit, you (i) find yourself pining for that societal feeling of "normal" for the rest of your (my) life. as you (i) get older, you (i) realize along the way a sad fact, that you're (i'm) searching for the pot at the end of the rainbow, but it doesn't stop you (me) from wanting it. badly. my friends had it. and i didn't. breakfast in the morning. dinner together around a table. family functions. both parents at open house. simple shit. shit that children of marriage take for granted. or maybe they don't. maybe they realize that kind of stuff is special. for a kid that started putting up barriers pretty young, i convinced myself that they took it for granted. and it gnawed at me for years. when i came home from a friend's house, nothing was "normal". my mom did everything in her power to make it feel that way, and for that i will be forever indebted, but it just...wasn't. not the "normal" that i told myself i wanted. when i was eight, nine, ten years old, i just wanted my parents to be back together again. i was eight when my parents divorced. brian was four. our relationship was never going to be functional. and the fucked up thing about it was that it had nothing to do with us.
growing up, most of my memories of brian and our time together have been appropriately revisioned or romanticized, because remembering the bad stuff is a fucking waste of time. we didn't have a ton in common and we held that against each other a lot. i've told the story before, but i will say that if you've never had a younger brother hurl a throwing star at you with ill-intentions, well, you haven't lived. thank god, by that standard, i have. our age difference and the fact that i was an asshole didn't help our cause as we got older. brian did his thing. i did mine. we enjoyed each other's company every now and again. played some video games. went to the movies. nothing crazy. we fought. a lot. never to the point of regret. i loved him. more than anything. i just didn't know how to do love right. probably still don't. in the midst of all sorts of chaos, though, i think about how much i must've let him down...
i figured out how much brian meant to me too late. he was already gone down a dark path that i couldn't save him from by the time i did. he would admit that. i tried a couple times. to save him. to save us. maybe more than a couple. i felt like i was doing him a favor. then i felt like i was enabling bad habits. we cut ties again and/or again. i said cliched bullshit like, "he's got to want to help himself". i prayed for him, not even knowing what that really means. a year would pass. i would call my mom and ask her about him. "he's doing okay." or "i haven't heard from him in a while." were the stock answers. occasionally, her voice would perk up a little and you could tell they had a really nice conversation. those were good days. more time passed. he did some more rehab. he tried to sort things out at our aunt's house. that didn't work. then he moved to florida. finally landed in savannah. i figured out how much brian meant to me too late once. it makes me happy that i learned from that mistake and made better efforts.
i think about him all the time. and i think back. i think about what a disservice i was to him as a big brother. how the same shit that i felt so sorry for myself about was ten times worse for him. i think about the little kid that was thrown out to pasture by people that should have loved him the most and i wish that i would have had the courage to make things better. to appear as the ghost of "what the fuck are you thinking???" to those that should've loved him most and allow them to see the error of their ways. but i didn't. or i couldn't. or i was too immature at the time to grasp what was happening.
after we reconnected a few years ago, it was how it always should have been. it took one conversation to hear in his voice what i hoped that he heard in mine. that i loved him. that i had always wished him well, just not always in very practical or helpful ways.
since then, we've been as functional as two brothers that are six hours apart can be i suppose. i think we miss each other. i know i miss him. the brian that i talk to now is the one that i took for granted growing up. smart. caring. tender. tough. when all the dcd shit hit the fan a couple years back, he was the one that i wished i had by my side, not to beat anyone up but to be the explicit voice of reason that only someone that cared about me but had also lived their life outside of the perverted walls of "the church" could be. when i found out i had something growing inside of me last summer that wasn't supposed to be there, i knew i needed him to be with me, feeling confident that just his presence alone would scare the surgeon into not fucking up when he cut me up and pulled things out.
i see me talking about him now and i realize how much of a selfish asshole i still am. i don't deserve his care or concern any more than anyone that ever hung him out to dry does, but, when i asked him to come, he came. that's who he is.
i've told him and i hope he knows that i would kick ass for him, too, if he needed it. i would even listen, too. i can't wait to listen to him this weekend. as much fun as i am sure our family will have, as much good as i know it will be for me to be with sarah and hannah and caroline with her dad's side of the family, seeing brian will be what i think about when the girls are going apeshit somewhere on the macon side of atlanta. i'll think of him chasing me around the house, throwing shit at me. i'll wish things weren't for him the way they were, because people i know who claim "i hit the bottom" haven't seen it. brian has. he has the scars, many of them self-inflicted, to prove it. once upon a time, if he ever stared at you really hard, you kind of wanted to pee your pants a little bit. he was that guy.
that stare is still there, i bet, if he needed it to be. i see a different look in his eyes now. a glimmer that personifies hope and the kind of person i want my girls to grow up to be. smart. self-sufficient. strong. and sweet.
see you in a couple days, dude. when i do, i hope time will move slowly.
almost eleven months ago, 2010 resolution #7 was "see brian more...". it didn't really work out the way that i wanted it to. i could claim weak-ass excuses like "how time flies" or the girls or church or work or softball or the blog or too much time on facebook or too much time losing track of friends, but all of them would be just that. weak. and ass.
savannah is a long way away, even as the crow flies, sure. the sheer thought of the six to seven hours in the car with girls that are going to go apeshit halfway there has played a big part in my selfish ass presenting the "it's december. i work in retail. i gotta work." card year after year when sarah or sarah and hannah or sarah and hannah and caroline have made the trip for the last however long without me. believe me. it's been a long however long.
last year, brian was there and the girls got to see him without me. i had missed tons of time due to my surgery and there was no way i could get away. it made my heart warm, though, to know that hannah and caroline would get to hang out with him, and they did. i was jealous, but happy at the same time.
our relationship has never been the most functional even when it was our "normal". lord knows we weren't the only children of divorce in the world, but it felt like it a lot of the time. my friends, in particular, all were from families whose parents had stayed true to their vows. i don't know if that made them happy or not, but going to their houses to hang out had a very weird and comfortable vibe to it. going to my friends' houses felt, for me, like walking into a norman rockwell painting. i know that any of my childhood friends that might read this blog are rolling their eyes right now at the thought of their home being the picture of americana. whatareyougonnado? when you are child of divorce, you see, especially one that was old enough when their parents separated to know that divorce was some fucked up shit, you (i) find yourself pining for that societal feeling of "normal" for the rest of your (my) life. as you (i) get older, you (i) realize along the way a sad fact, that you're (i'm) searching for the pot at the end of the rainbow, but it doesn't stop you (me) from wanting it. badly. my friends had it. and i didn't. breakfast in the morning. dinner together around a table. family functions. both parents at open house. simple shit. shit that children of marriage take for granted. or maybe they don't. maybe they realize that kind of stuff is special. for a kid that started putting up barriers pretty young, i convinced myself that they took it for granted. and it gnawed at me for years. when i came home from a friend's house, nothing was "normal". my mom did everything in her power to make it feel that way, and for that i will be forever indebted, but it just...wasn't. not the "normal" that i told myself i wanted. when i was eight, nine, ten years old, i just wanted my parents to be back together again. i was eight when my parents divorced. brian was four. our relationship was never going to be functional. and the fucked up thing about it was that it had nothing to do with us.
growing up, most of my memories of brian and our time together have been appropriately revisioned or romanticized, because remembering the bad stuff is a fucking waste of time. we didn't have a ton in common and we held that against each other a lot. i've told the story before, but i will say that if you've never had a younger brother hurl a throwing star at you with ill-intentions, well, you haven't lived. thank god, by that standard, i have. our age difference and the fact that i was an asshole didn't help our cause as we got older. brian did his thing. i did mine. we enjoyed each other's company every now and again. played some video games. went to the movies. nothing crazy. we fought. a lot. never to the point of regret. i loved him. more than anything. i just didn't know how to do love right. probably still don't. in the midst of all sorts of chaos, though, i think about how much i must've let him down...
i figured out how much brian meant to me too late. he was already gone down a dark path that i couldn't save him from by the time i did. he would admit that. i tried a couple times. to save him. to save us. maybe more than a couple. i felt like i was doing him a favor. then i felt like i was enabling bad habits. we cut ties again and/or again. i said cliched bullshit like, "he's got to want to help himself". i prayed for him, not even knowing what that really means. a year would pass. i would call my mom and ask her about him. "he's doing okay." or "i haven't heard from him in a while." were the stock answers. occasionally, her voice would perk up a little and you could tell they had a really nice conversation. those were good days. more time passed. he did some more rehab. he tried to sort things out at our aunt's house. that didn't work. then he moved to florida. finally landed in savannah. i figured out how much brian meant to me too late once. it makes me happy that i learned from that mistake and made better efforts.
i think about him all the time. and i think back. i think about what a disservice i was to him as a big brother. how the same shit that i felt so sorry for myself about was ten times worse for him. i think about the little kid that was thrown out to pasture by people that should have loved him the most and i wish that i would have had the courage to make things better. to appear as the ghost of "what the fuck are you thinking???" to those that should've loved him most and allow them to see the error of their ways. but i didn't. or i couldn't. or i was too immature at the time to grasp what was happening.
after we reconnected a few years ago, it was how it always should have been. it took one conversation to hear in his voice what i hoped that he heard in mine. that i loved him. that i had always wished him well, just not always in very practical or helpful ways.
since then, we've been as functional as two brothers that are six hours apart can be i suppose. i think we miss each other. i know i miss him. the brian that i talk to now is the one that i took for granted growing up. smart. caring. tender. tough. when all the dcd shit hit the fan a couple years back, he was the one that i wished i had by my side, not to beat anyone up but to be the explicit voice of reason that only someone that cared about me but had also lived their life outside of the perverted walls of "the church" could be. when i found out i had something growing inside of me last summer that wasn't supposed to be there, i knew i needed him to be with me, feeling confident that just his presence alone would scare the surgeon into not fucking up when he cut me up and pulled things out.
i see me talking about him now and i realize how much of a selfish asshole i still am. i don't deserve his care or concern any more than anyone that ever hung him out to dry does, but, when i asked him to come, he came. that's who he is.
i've told him and i hope he knows that i would kick ass for him, too, if he needed it. i would even listen, too. i can't wait to listen to him this weekend. as much fun as i am sure our family will have, as much good as i know it will be for me to be with sarah and hannah and caroline with her dad's side of the family, seeing brian will be what i think about when the girls are going apeshit somewhere on the macon side of atlanta. i'll think of him chasing me around the house, throwing shit at me. i'll wish things weren't for him the way they were, because people i know who claim "i hit the bottom" haven't seen it. brian has. he has the scars, many of them self-inflicted, to prove it. once upon a time, if he ever stared at you really hard, you kind of wanted to pee your pants a little bit. he was that guy.
that stare is still there, i bet, if he needed it to be. i see a different look in his eyes now. a glimmer that personifies hope and the kind of person i want my girls to grow up to be. smart. self-sufficient. strong. and sweet.
see you in a couple days, dude. when i do, i hope time will move slowly.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
hannah and caroline and me
(part forty-two)
((my first real mistake as a parent))
mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...
or football fans.
i was having a conversation a couple days ago with a buddy about how i loved a (good-) spirited debate. surprising, right? my definition of debate, though, especially in the realm of this blog or on facebook must be naive or misshapen or skewed or something. if i've learned anything from HACAM and facebook over the past five years, it's that i am "dangerous", "stupid", "sexist", a "bammer", a "mind-reader", "cold-hearted", "mean", "bad for my church", "tactless", among other qualifiers, most of these from people that i've enjoyed, at some point in my life, fraternizing with. it's hard to argue with any of them i guess. mainly, because if i do, people will call me names again.
i imagine these, my most glowing qualities, come out and to the surface while i am watching an alabama football game. since hannah was born, absolutely nothing has changed with my attitude or the way i comport myself during these games, at least the ones that mean something to the greater "process" and the ultimate end of a conference and/or national title. i clap and yell with glorious support when the team executes a play to perfection. i flail and moan and kick and scream and hurl venom towards the field or television when something goes wrong.
all the while, hannah (and now caroline) are somewhere in the vicinity of the game, too, taking it all in.
readers of this blog that don't use the word "fuck", don't worry (yet). neither of the girls have taken to the interwebs with their own journals contributing to the downfall of civilization by using their own variations on their daddy's "dirty words". that'll come, though. don't you worry.
when we got in the car after the game last friday, though, indisputable evidence of my (and her mommy's) influence poured out of the first baby girl. as we pulled away from rebecca's, hannah started crying. soon, her crying turned to bawling and within a few seconds, she was inconsolable. after letting her cry it out for a few minutes, i asked why she was so upset. it was because she was worried that a friend, whose parents root for auburn, would brag and make fun of her the next time they saw each other. damn.
was she upset that alabama lost the game? maybe, but not so much in the literal outcome of the literal game. she was upset that her friends who had chosen to root for auburn would have something on her the next time they got together. i resemble this sentiment, wholeheartedly.
i love a spirited debate, mainly because, removed from the subject in question, whether that be a football team or lunch at krystal, i pride myself on being able to separate the sinner from the sin, if you will. if you don't like alabama as much as i do, that's fine. if you think a whopper is tastier than my little piece of heaven, that's fine, too. i'll argue why i think i am right, or feel right. i might even argue why i think you are wrong. i am not going to call you a douchebag, even if i think you are being one. that's just the way it is.
kids, specifically my first grader, can't be this rational. not yet. kids are the worst trash-talkers, because it's all emotion that's vomiting from their mouth. they don't care about making good points. they just "nanny, nanny, poo-poo" all over their classmates faces with no regard for the emotional trainwrecks they are leaving in their wake. i know this because i was the worst at it. i can specifically remember an instance from my childhood when i lost a friend for over a month because i kicked his ass in tecmo bowl and wouldn't stop talking about it for a week. it was "mean". "tactless". "stupid". all of those. i suppose i knew better. my mom would've kicked my ass had she known about it. but i didn't go to school with my mom. and hannah doesn't go to school with hers. or her dad. we can't protect her from kids being cruel. we just get to pick up the pieces after someone's broken her heart.
the sad part about that meltdown in the car after the iron bowl was how predictable it was. by my injecting her, week after week, year after year, season after season with the idea that football and alabama football is worth giving your friends a hard time about, i let the meltdown happen. i produced it. it was my creation.
as i said, i know kids are mean. that part i can't change. they are all emotion. it's part of their charm and part of the reason i want to stick my head through a glass door half the time.
i also know kids are impressionable. and i've impressed upon my child that she should give a shit when a friend of hers who has parents that have impressed upon them to be an auburn fan comes bragging about a victory in a football game. because i've done this, i've given her a reason to worry about something that she didn't ask for.
that kind of sucks.
as she gets older, i'll have to make sure she is able and trained to respond to others with something more substantial than tears. i'll have to impress upon her the value in (good-) spirited debate.
then she won't have any friends either.
(part forty-two)
((my first real mistake as a parent))
mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...
or football fans.
i was having a conversation a couple days ago with a buddy about how i loved a (good-) spirited debate. surprising, right? my definition of debate, though, especially in the realm of this blog or on facebook must be naive or misshapen or skewed or something. if i've learned anything from HACAM and facebook over the past five years, it's that i am "dangerous", "stupid", "sexist", a "bammer", a "mind-reader", "cold-hearted", "mean", "bad for my church", "tactless", among other qualifiers, most of these from people that i've enjoyed, at some point in my life, fraternizing with. it's hard to argue with any of them i guess. mainly, because if i do, people will call me names again.
i imagine these, my most glowing qualities, come out and to the surface while i am watching an alabama football game. since hannah was born, absolutely nothing has changed with my attitude or the way i comport myself during these games, at least the ones that mean something to the greater "process" and the ultimate end of a conference and/or national title. i clap and yell with glorious support when the team executes a play to perfection. i flail and moan and kick and scream and hurl venom towards the field or television when something goes wrong.
all the while, hannah (and now caroline) are somewhere in the vicinity of the game, too, taking it all in.
readers of this blog that don't use the word "fuck", don't worry (yet). neither of the girls have taken to the interwebs with their own journals contributing to the downfall of civilization by using their own variations on their daddy's "dirty words". that'll come, though. don't you worry.
when we got in the car after the game last friday, though, indisputable evidence of my (and her mommy's) influence poured out of the first baby girl. as we pulled away from rebecca's, hannah started crying. soon, her crying turned to bawling and within a few seconds, she was inconsolable. after letting her cry it out for a few minutes, i asked why she was so upset. it was because she was worried that a friend, whose parents root for auburn, would brag and make fun of her the next time they saw each other. damn.
was she upset that alabama lost the game? maybe, but not so much in the literal outcome of the literal game. she was upset that her friends who had chosen to root for auburn would have something on her the next time they got together. i resemble this sentiment, wholeheartedly.
i love a spirited debate, mainly because, removed from the subject in question, whether that be a football team or lunch at krystal, i pride myself on being able to separate the sinner from the sin, if you will. if you don't like alabama as much as i do, that's fine. if you think a whopper is tastier than my little piece of heaven, that's fine, too. i'll argue why i think i am right, or feel right. i might even argue why i think you are wrong. i am not going to call you a douchebag, even if i think you are being one. that's just the way it is.
kids, specifically my first grader, can't be this rational. not yet. kids are the worst trash-talkers, because it's all emotion that's vomiting from their mouth. they don't care about making good points. they just "nanny, nanny, poo-poo" all over their classmates faces with no regard for the emotional trainwrecks they are leaving in their wake. i know this because i was the worst at it. i can specifically remember an instance from my childhood when i lost a friend for over a month because i kicked his ass in tecmo bowl and wouldn't stop talking about it for a week. it was "mean". "tactless". "stupid". all of those. i suppose i knew better. my mom would've kicked my ass had she known about it. but i didn't go to school with my mom. and hannah doesn't go to school with hers. or her dad. we can't protect her from kids being cruel. we just get to pick up the pieces after someone's broken her heart.
the sad part about that meltdown in the car after the iron bowl was how predictable it was. by my injecting her, week after week, year after year, season after season with the idea that football and alabama football is worth giving your friends a hard time about, i let the meltdown happen. i produced it. it was my creation.
as i said, i know kids are mean. that part i can't change. they are all emotion. it's part of their charm and part of the reason i want to stick my head through a glass door half the time.
i also know kids are impressionable. and i've impressed upon my child that she should give a shit when a friend of hers who has parents that have impressed upon them to be an auburn fan comes bragging about a victory in a football game. because i've done this, i've given her a reason to worry about something that she didn't ask for.
that kind of sucks.
as she gets older, i'll have to make sure she is able and trained to respond to others with something more substantial than tears. i'll have to impress upon her the value in (good-) spirited debate.
then she won't have any friends either.
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