Nay, we are but men. Rock!

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend.  As such my family decided to go ‘camping’ on one of my favorite fly fishing rivers.  I use the term camping very loosely here.  After all was said and done we had about fifteen people at the campsite, consisting of my immediate family and some aunts and uncles and cousins.  Now when I am camping I prefer to take only what I can fit into my backpack and hike into the wilderness in order to find the most secluded place possible.  Secondly, due to the fact that it was Memorial Day the ‘campers’ were out in droves leaving no actual camp sites so we ended up setting up our home base in a gravel parking lot.  The final reason I struggle to call what I did this weekend camping is that both my father and my uncle have portable hotels they call campers.  Now I have issue calling something camping when everyone, did I mention there were fifteen of us total, has a bed with a mattress, running water, satellite TV, refrigerators, and working toilets.  This is not to say that I did not have a good time this weekend.  It was fun.  We caught some decent fish, I took the weekend with a 16″ rainbow.  We had good conversations and played a lot of cards.  We had some very good Oregon micro-brews.  It was a pleasant weekend away; it just wasn’t camping.

 My uncles kept telling me that this is what happens when you get older.  I hope they’re wrong.  I hope this isn’t true for me.  I understand that as you get older there is a certain desire for comfort.  I just hope that I am able to find my comforts in other places.  Even though I had a good time this weekend the enjoyment came differently than if I had been camping on my terms.  If I had been by myself or with a couple friends or my wife the enjoyment would have come from being removed from the every day frenzy and from being in a place where the beauty of God’s creation sings its beauty undistorted by traffic and cell phones and all of the other fillers that we don’t think we can go without.  Part of the comfort of camping for me is the fact that there aren’t the ‘comforts’ of every day life.  I don’t have to rely on my wonderful bed or computer or car to make my life better.  Being in the deep wilderness with nothing but a tarp shelter, my backpacking fly rod, a few more kitchen oddities, and a couple of select friends gives me a comfort that can’t be found in luxury.  It gives me a comfort the reminds me that there is still quiet in the world and that when you go to those places of quiet you can actually hear yourself and the voice of God.  Both are still present. 

Recently I have realized something about my self but before I get to the great epiphany I should probably give some background information about my situation.  When I was growing up I led what some would call a sorted life in regards to partying and the like.  Never anything too serious but I did take my fair share road trips with my brother, ie we spontaneously followed the Grateful Dead around the country for a summer during high school, and we would never hesitate to throw or attend a party.  I tell you this merely to let you know that I have always been willing to do anything and was rarely sedentary for long.  After I got married and sired, that’s right I said sired, a couple of offspring I didn’t get out as much as I used to but always assumed that it was a time thing.  I always assumed that if given the chance I wouldn’t hesitate to paint the town red.  

My wife and children have flown back east because her grandmother is not doing very well.  This means that, despite the unfortunate circumstances, I have the house to myself for about two weeks when I will join my family back east.  Now I would have thought that a man with my history being put into this situation of rare accountability to no one but himself there would be a certain level of debauchery happening.  Now before you go ahead and make assumptions about my present lifestyle I should say that I am apparently not the same man I used to be.  Since my family left four days ago I have been ‘out’ a grand total of 0 times.  That’s right I haven’t even gone out to see a movie let alone get into any high-jinx.  When I came to this realization, that I am much more domesticated or boring, than I used to be it caused a little rain cloud to follow me around for about seven minutes but then I snapped out of it and remembered what I have traded for.  I traded my life of parties and the Grateful Dead, even though they still do make an appearance now and then in my house, for something much more.  I have a family.  I have someone in my wife who is not only always there with me, which is what I think we notice more often when we are frustrated, but there for me as well.  I also have two boys, or ass-kickers in training as I like to think of them, who at the very least keep life interesting.  I miss them. 

I suppose we could all take a go at finishing the phrase "I sweat …" and see if we could top each other’s humor. Of course the sentences would have to be true, and I am assuming the one I heard today is. I was talking with a friend of mine, he happens to be a bigger guy to. Although I can’t really talk, he probably has 50 pounds on me. When asked if he sweats a lot. He replied, "I sweat reading a book."

I am in Dublin (California, not Ireland) for work.  We’re implementing new software at work, and I’m here for training on one of my portions of the software.  During my travel today I’ve realized some things about who I am, neither good nor bad.

My first real job right out of college had the opportunity for extended travel.  Something like spending a few months at a location building and configuring a network.  I was single, and the money would have been good, but the economy turned sour and I lost my job before I had a chance to do this.  Since I never got to travel for that job, I didn’t really get to find if I enjoyed it or not.  I liked the idea of it, though.

The job I used to do full-time (now half-time) had me going to Boise 2-4 times a year.  Typically for 2-day, 1-night stints.  And I’d typically go over with Brendon (and others), so I wasn’t required to get outside of my introverted shell to have social interaction.  The last time I made that trip was now 14 months ago; that seems kinda odd, but that’s what my Outlook calendar says.

Maybe it’s the fact that I now have two kids at home that makes this a little bittersweet (I can hear my wife asking if I’m crazy).  Maybe it’s that I’m used to traveling with someone else, and not flying solo.

I’ve been on the ground in California for only 5 hours now, so I probably need to relax a bit.  I’m sure once the class starts tomorrow things will be better.  I’m just glad that I do this infrequently, because I don’t know if I could handle being on the road by myself a lot.  Even though my kids drive me crazy sometimes, they are my kids, and I miss being around them (again with my wife asking if I’m crazy).  I also wish I would have had the forethought to fly my wife down here for the weekend, and we could just cruise around the Bay Area for a couple of days together.  I’ll have to remember that for next time.

I’ve got two kids.  The oldest, now 3.5 years, didn’t like not being able to move.  When he could roll, he wanted to crawl.  When he could crawl, he wanted to walk.  And as soon as he was walking he wanted to run and climb and jump.

Our youngest, 11 months today, is a different story.  He never was a “holy roller” like his brother.  For a long time he preferred to army crawl as opposed to regular crawling.  It took some encouragement from another boy his age before he started pulling himself up on things about a month ago.  The latest development is when the fun (and “fun”) start happening.

Just yesterday, having pulled himself up on things, he started letting go.  It’s fascinating to see one so little developing a two-footed sense of balance.  I just really hope he doesn’t start walking this week while I’m out of town for work.  That would be teh suck.

In light of my recent basketball post.  I thought I would post this video I was reminded of the other day.  It is an old SNL skit in which Charles Barkley takes on Barney.

I just got home from one of the most incredible sights of my life.  My wife just finished her first half-marathon and it was awesome.  First you have to take in the whole scene.  This race is called the Hippie Chick Half Marathon and encompasses women, and yes it is an all-female race, from every and I mean every walk of life.  There are you twenty-somethings that are obviously at the top of their game.  The winning time was something like 1:31.31, which is pretty impressive.  There is the sixty and over crowd, which is inspiring enough as it is.  There are the baby-boomers that run the whole race arm in arm. And there is everyone in between.  One of the most amazing aspects of this race is not necessarily that all of these women, totaling somewhere around 900, from all of these walk of life are here together but that they all want to see each other do well.  As they are passing each other those being passed are cheering.  I saw multiple women stop and get out of the way of other women in their sprint to the finish line.  It was a competitive atmosphere that I have never experienced before.

Then there is my wife.  She is the mother of my two children and probably the most amazing woman I have ever known, and I know so great ones.  She didn’t run the race fast but she finished.  She ran 13.1 miles and was able to smile at the end.  She uses the same tenacity in loving and raising our children and in being married to me, neither of which is easy.  She is the best woman I know and this race is merely the latest piece of evidence that proves what I have known all along.  She is awesome!!!

There is only one down side to today.  I have to run my half-marathon in July and I do not think I will beat her time.  Frankly put she is in better shape than me, which makes me love her more and go get on a treadmill.  Although 900 women can run a race and only wish the best for all of those involved I do not believe that is something men can do. We can cheer for people to do well as long as they finish behind us.

I’ve had a number of people tell me about the greatness to be found on Hulu, and I got my first taste of it tonight.  I was giving the wife a backrub, cracked open my laptop, and turned on some Newsradio.  Good times.

They do put “mini” commercials in the show.  There are three 15-second ads: one at the very beginning (”limited interruption brought to you by …”), and two in the episode at the normal spots.  Overall, very non-annoying; I can live with it.  Ditching cable might be a whole lot easier than I though it’d be.

As I have mentioned in a previous response to one of my fellow bloggers I am a novice gardener.  This is the first year I have had a garden of my own for many reasons.  This is the first time I have had a yard big enough to have a garden and I have always been around someone who had a garden so I would just help with theirs.  I am growing, with good success so far, jalapeno and green peppers, roma and sweetie cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, red and yellow onions, cucumbers, lettuce, zucchini, carrots, raspberries, marionberries, blueberries, strawberries, basil, cilantro, mint, chives, and parsley.  I have been growing most of these plants in my house for some weeks now and have started moving them into the outside garden.  Up until this time all of my gardening has been pretty theoretical in nature.  Almost like I have been playing acting the farmer.  Now that I have put plants into soil I have broken myself makes everything a little more real somehow.  

However there is a little flaw to my plan.  I have found myself becoming more and more obsessed with gardening and gardening techniques.  I have added four or five different plants to my garden/herb/berry garden since the first till and this does nothing but divide my attentions more and more.  I feel kind of like I am playing a progressive game of Whack-a-Mole where the longer the game last the more moles are thrown into the mix.  On one hand you want more moles because they deserved to be whacked and who better to whack them but you but one the other hand the more moles that are added the more places you have to give your attention.  Right now I feel like I still have a handle on the number of moles that are in my game but if many more get thrown at me I may just keel over.

Anyway the reason I titled this post the way I did was because I made pizza tonight for my family’s pizza and a movie night, Lion King in case you were wondering, and I was able to harvest some fresh basil to put on one of the pies.  There is nothing like fresh basil, especially when all you have to do is to walk out your back door and yank some off a bush.   

I’m not pretending to have been a great basketball player, but it is my first love when it comes to sports and the sport I know the most about.  While my knees (weight gain) keep me from playing the way I want to, I still feel like I could/can teach the sport to others.  The following is a conversation I had the other day with my middle son that led me to believe otherwise.

(Walking home after playing baseball, and with a play ground ball which he had been dribbling.)

Me: “You are a good dribbler.”

MS:  “When I’m a dad, I’m going to play basketball.”

Me:  “I could teach you everything I know about basketball if you would like.”

MS: “DAD … I already know more about basketball than you!”

Me: “Oh …”

MS:  “Barney can do a cool trick with a basketball.” (He then went on to describe the trick.)

Me: (In my head) “I don’t like Barney.”