Nay, we are but men. Rock!

So today is my wife’s birthday and two of her best friends came over to bring her ice cream and apparently talk all of the oxygen out of the earth.  It was good times for a while we were all joking around and I felt like I actually live here.  Then the subject changed to the diva cup.  It was this point in the conversation that I was banished from my own living room.  I’m not talking about a civil, “Hey Ben I know you live here and I respect that more than you will ever know.  Could you please leave so I could discuss something that could make you feel a little uncomfortable?  I know this is a little inconvenient so feel free to get a little more ice cream as payment.”  That is what I would expect, or at least that is how the conversation would go in my head.  What I got was, “Go check your email so that we can talk.”  

You need to understand the level of trepidation I am feeling right now.  Every time these women get together something bad happens to my life.  When they first became friends I had to start washing Ziplock baggies.  Later I had to leave the kids’ bath water in the tub so that I could use it in the washing machine or on the garden.  Then I started using a rock as deodorant.  Something bad always happens whenever I get kicked out of a room.  I’m afraid when I walk back in there they’re going to tell me that I can only brew and drink soy beer or something.  

The jokes on them though.  I’m not checking my email. I’m writing this post and I’m eating the rest of the ice cream anyway.  That’s right ladies you can’t control my life.  I’ll do what I want when I want to do it in my own house.

There seems to be a growing epidemic among professional athletes to show their greed by holding out from pre-season activities.  The current examples are Devin Hester and Steven Jackson.  I think this “tactic” some athletes use is complete crap.

First off, you signed a contract for your athletic services for, let’s say five years.  You have agreed to play for this team for five years.  Where in this statement — least of all the contract — does it say that you can play for four of those years, and then hold the fifth year hostage while trying to squeeze additional years — at a higher salary no less — from the people you are already contractually obligated to?  Plain and simple, you have a contract for five years, so just shut up and play out the contract.

Second, you can (or more likely your agent can) negotiate an extension while you are working your tail off in pre-season drills.  All you are doing is keeping yourself from being prepared for the season, and making it harder on your teammates for them to be prepared for the season.  Every athlete will tell you that it is totally different in speed and intensity between reps in practice and the actual game.  For an 11-man team sport, being on the same page, going at the same speed, knowing what each other is going to do and when is vitally important to the success of said team.  It’s just plain selfishness.  Show you are a “team player” and they will reward you.

And to top it all off, league minimum salaries are set way, way, way above what anybody truly needs to live on.  An example of this greed and selfishness comes to us from Devin Hester, “I can’t go out and play this year making $445,000. Come on, man.”  Come on, how else is he going to afford the 4000 sq. ft. house in L.A. and Miami.  And you can’t forget the garage loaded with tricked out cars.  Gotta get me a Bentley to go with my Mercedes and Porsche and Hummer and Escalade.

I get frustrated when I hear athletes complain about being underpaid when there is somewhere around 5-6% of US citizens who can’t find jobs.  There are millions of families that live in poverty conditions in the US, let alone around the world.  There is a rapidly growing list of people who are being foreclosed on.  Be grateful that you have a talent that someone wants to pay you for, and you are not huddled in some shelter somewhere in downtown Memphis.

</soapbox>

Until last weekend, I had never participated in an organized running event of any length. I wasn’t exactly seeking opportunity either. I have actually avoided several. However, at about 9:00 pm, the night before a race someone called my bluff and I ended up promising to run a charity 5k in Santa Ana, El Salvador.

I awoke race day morning to the roar of pouring rain. This was our 8^th day in Central America and our first sight of precipitation before sunset. Each morning until now, only little puff balls dotted the sky. This wasn’t the ‘dry’ rain of the Pacific Northwest. This kind of rain is what some might call a torrential downpour, but a promise is a promise, so I strapped on the mint-condition, two year old New Balance runners and made my way to the bus with five other volunteers from my Habitat for Humanity crew.

We should have told the driver to take us home when watched the wipers flap wildly in vein across their windshield real-estate. We should have stopped the bus driver from driving off when we reached the registration table as soaked as if we climbed out of a river. Instead, we stuck it out and waited for the race to start for an hour (uncovered). We were the only five Gringos of nearly 400 runners, so naturally, the local news station couldn’t resist asking for interviews. Of course, we agreed.

I took it slowly to “keep pace with the group”, and finished the completely downhill 2.8 mile (not exactly 5k) in 22 minutes. Nothing on my entire body was dry including my super-chaffed nipples. That’s right; my nipples had been rubbed raw by my wet t-shirt. That last sentence reads funny, but it’s totally true. I had no idea this would happen, but looking back it makes sense.

• Wet clothing feels cold even in tropical storms.
• My nipples turn into ¼ karat diamonds below 70 degrees.
• Running makes even the smallest man-boobs bounce.

This combination chaffed my completely useless nipples enough to make me appreciate my wife’s breast-feeding agony.

Tuesday night, I actually asked her if she had any bag balm.

Every year as part of my job I lead a team of 10 college student leaders on a 7 day backpacking trip in the Sisters Wilderness in Oregon.  It is one of the best parts of my job description.  I really love the day to day work that I do with these leaders but to actually get to go into the back country for a week and get paid for it is pretty cool.  Our program has built into it 4 main elements used in the learning/development process: Solo, where they are on their own for about 24 hours, Leader of the Day, where two of the leaders are responsible for all of the decisions made for the day from traveling to setting up camp to meal schedule, Final Expedition, where the guide and I leave during the night and they are responsible for getting safely to the trailhead, and Summit, where, you guessed it, we give summating one of the Sisters a whirl.

All in all it is a pretty sweet deal.  I get to be part of breaking in some students who have never been in the wilderness before and be part of furthering their leadership skills on the whole.  What I don’t like about it is the masochistic training schedule our university’s strength and conditioning coach put together for us.  I swear this cat must be endorsed by the National Association for Lunging Lungers.  Every day has you doing 764 more lunges than the previous day.  I don’t know what’s worse, doing the lunges now or summating a 10,000ft mountain without doing them.  Personally I am leaning toward not doing them since it is only one day of the trip instead of every day leading up to it.  On the bright side though my tush now deserves to be cast in bronze and put in the Louvre. 

Oh. man. I need one right now! (who doesn’t?)

Neighbor kids, LDS, Seventh-day Adventists, and girl scouts (I don’t really need those Thin Mints and Samoas anyway) beware!

I guess you all should call now before you come over

A while ago I wrote about my quandary about what to do with regards to television, keeping cable or over-the-air or no TV at all.  A couple of weeks ago I started the “implementation” process of my chosen solution, and I have to say that freely available, over-the-air TV is nice!

A year or so ago we replaced our old, tube TV with an HD LCD TV.  While we’ve had the ability to display HD content, we’ve been rocking the standard definition (SD) cable signal.  I’ve been craving an HD signal ever since we got the TV, but I had just couldn’t justify the added expense that cable and satellite providers charge for an HD signal.

Well, now I have an antenna on my roof pulling down the over-the-air signal, and we have 5 HD channels, plus some SD channels.  There are two national channels that we’re not currently getting, so I have some tuning yet to do, but all I can say is “Wow!”

I watched some of the Wimbledon Men’s Final in HD, and was just awestruck by the clairity of the picture.  The color of the tennis balls just jumped off of the screen.  Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching my first baseball game in HD.  Granted it was the Phillies/D-Backs, but it was glorious.

This week, Tuesday night, is the MLB All Star Game.  Guess where I’ll be?

This evening I remembered a conversation I had with my wife a month or so ago.  At the time I thought, ” I need to remember to put something about this on the man blog. So here it is.  You may recall a while back our illustrious vice president making a comment about his lineage during a press conference.  The comment went something like, “I have Cheney’s on both sides of my family and I’m not even from West Virginia.”  When I heard this I was furious and I mean mad.  It was the type of thing that the more I thought about it the more angry I became.  When I shared this with my wife she asked, “Why are you so worked up about this?”  I replied, “We are both from West Virginia.  How can you not be upset?”  I went on to explain that the real reason I was mad was that being from West Virginia we have grown up hearing the negative WV jokes, having to deal with the stunned looks from people when they find out we are educated and from WV, and explaining to people in Oregon and other parts of the country that WV is an actual state and not merely western Virginia.  For some reason people in the rest of the country seem to think we are all back hills, incestuous, banjo playing, moon shine making, no shoes wearing, one-toothed bumpkins.  I have come to accept that everyone from West ‘By God’ Virginia gets painted with the same brush.  People are allowed to be misinformed and make assumptions about other people groups.

What I do have a problem with is when the person who would be president if anything ever happened to Bush, who wouldn’t even be in office without WV by the way, chooses to perpetuate the hillbilly stereotype on a national stage.  It is impossible for any state to rid itself of unfair labels when those charged with caring for and running the entire country, not just those states with oil, choose to further ignorance.  This is not an anti-Bush/Cheney political rant, we can get into pure politics at another point.  This is a, “Those with power of influence over others have a responsibility to make sure the things they are saying are not bigoted, misinformed, ignorant, racist, or perpetuating stereotypes” rant, I know it doesn’t just role off the tongue.  If someone claims to love and serve this country, as Dick Cheney does, they should love and serve the country as a whole.  If they don’t want to do that they should at least stop short of actively damaging the reputation of the parts they couldn’t care less about.

Back with the second athlete that I don’t like — in no particular order of course, just as they come across my TV (or mind).

Back in the mid-1990s a freshfaced teen yet to be known as A-Rod came up with the Seattle Mariners, and proved to be as important to that team as an older teammate, oddly known as Junior.  Alex showed his excellence both at the plate and in the field.  The fans in Seattle had a very solid team that was shaping up to be a playoff contender for many years to come.  One year after Junior skipped town to go play for his hometown team A-Rod did something that will forever make me root against him.

Alex got all Cuba Gooding Jr in Jerry Maguire.  “Super agent” Scott Boras went out and got Alex the money; 10 years for $250 million.  At the time an astronomical, totally unheard of contract.  At the time could he be foreseen as becoming one of the best players ever?  Yes, definitely.  However, it showed the true nature of most teens who become professional athletes who don’t know any better, and are led by agents looking for top dollar over anything else.  Let me explain.

Sure, the idiot owner of the Rangers coughed up the money, and A-Rod (and Scott) took it to the bank.  The problem is that Texas never was, and may never be a true contender.  Before, during, and after Alex being on the team.  When A-Rod signed that contract he became a mercenary.  No longer was he playing baseball for the joy of the game.  Going to Texas he definitely wasn’t playing for championships.  He was following the money, which is what mercenaries do.

You can say that I feel this way about him because he’s a Yankee, and I’m a Red Sox fan.  Totally not true.  Before he became a Yankee there was a failed trade of him to the Red Sox for Manny Ramirez.  I was totally against that trade, and I’m very glad that it didn’t happen.  I like Man Ram too much to have lost him to a mercenary.  He totally fits with the Yankees, though, because the love their mercenaries.

Most importantly I’m a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, and the only MLB team around is the Mariners.  They are the region’s team.  The way A-Rod left the Ms totally smacks of the pretty girl who ditches her middle-class prom date for the rich kid who’s driving a Porsche.  It’s all superficial, absolutely zero substance.  I find it a bit more than ironic that the first year post-A-Rod in Seattle was the best year they’ve ever had.

Last Friday, the 4th of July, after my half-marathon my wife got the call that her grandmother died.  We made arrangements and she flew from Portland to Pittsburgh that night on a red-eye.  The difference between this trip and the last time she flew out is that this time I have the boys.  There is one similarity between the trips however.  I get bored without my wife.  I know this may make me sound pathetic but she is the idea generator and I am the doer in our relationship.  Obviously there are times when I have ideas and she obviously does a lot but generally this is how it works.  I have no idea how to keep these two over-active pygmy marmosets entertained.

This evening I took the boys to get my wife’s birthday present, which is still 23 days away so I am ahead of the game by guy standards.  I went to a store at a local upscale mall because I had an idea on what I would like to get her, which I won’t disclose yet because sometimes she reads my posts.  I will however tell you that it is awesome.  On a scale from 1-10 of awesome birthday gifts with 1 being doughnuts and ten being a diamond ring it ranks at about Macho Man, who would obviously be 12.  When I got to the store I walked up to the display of Macho Man birthday gifts and froze.  I was completely overwhelmed.  I was so overwhelmed that when the sales associate asked me if I need any help I’m pretty sure what came out of my mouth was, “I need good… Can you tell me… I think I would like to mfmdphphph… Come on kids we’re leaving.”  

After we left Macho Man Inc we drove home but I still couldn’t think of anything to do with the boys, and they were strapped in, so we kept driving around the neighborhood.  After the third time circumnavigating the community, once I started getting strange looks from the neighbors like I was casing their houses, we went home and my oldest and I drew with sidewalk chalk while my youngest ate it.

I need help.  I need to know what to do with my kids in the evenings.  I need to know how to not get too overwhelmed when I make another attempt at birthday shopping tomorrow.  I need my wife to come home.

I tried to muster up the energy to write this yesterday but as it turns out the only thing I had energy enough to do after about 10:00am was to eat, and I mean eat.  Whatever I could get close to that wouldn’t run away was mercilessly devoured.  I ran my half-marathon yesterday morning and it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done.  Let me take you through the timeline of the day:

4:30am       Wake up

5:00am       Leave with a friend for the race

7:00am       Start running at a pace that I’m sure made some turtles snigger

7:05am       Start wondering why I was doing this

8:30am       Become convinced that I was doing something completely stupid

9:15am       Wonder why the organizers of the race chose a course that continually lengthened itself

9:59.47am  Find my Holy Grail known as the Finish Line

A friend and I ran/walked 13.1 miles yesterday and I have no idea how it happened.  First off I was working myself through a 12 week training schedule to prepare for the race.  Due to some circumstances with family that far outweighed my running schedule I lost weeks 6-10; so basically I trained for 6 weeks, took a month off, trained for 2 weeks, and ran a half-marathon.  Oh, and did I mention that I weigh roughly the same as a baby bull elephant?

The first hour and a half of running wasn’t that bad, if you can believe that.  After about mile 9.5, however, I felt like I moved from the speed of an excited slug to that of a three-toed sloth on morphine.  There were a couple of reasons why I was able to finish.  The first reason was Christ.  I know that that might sound like any number of professional athletes on TV that give glory to God before going on to tell everyone how great they are but it is absolutely true.  My wife and I use prayer beads to help with the discipline and consistency of our prayer lives.  Prayer beads are basically a Protestant version of the Holy Rosary, but since Protestants apparently can’t be associated in any way with the wonderfully rich Catholic faith we get the term prayer beads, beautiful huh?  But anyway, I would run through the prayers in my head and it would take about 20 minutes at a time.  While I was going through the prayers I was fine but the moment I stopped I would hit a wall.  You could say that the only reason the prayers made running easier because it distracted my mind and let me focus on something else for a while, I just wouldn’t believe you.

The second reason I was able to finish was because of other runners.  I began the race with a good friend of mine.  We had decided to run together a while back.  He is in better shape than me and a fair amount smaller, though he himself is a big guy, so he was faster than me.  Despite this fact he chose to stay with me and put up with all of the times I needed to walk when he would have, I’m sure, preferred to be running.  But because we are friends we ran together.  It wasn’t until somewhere between miles 9 and 10 that I was able to convince him that it was alright if he went ahead.  He is a good friend.

After the race I was hungry like I have never been hungry before.  I ate everything.  If it was someone else eating it would have been impressive how much was actually consumed but since it was me it was a little embarrassing.  I just couldn’t get un-hungry, if that’s a word, let alone full.  Today I am pretty sore but doing relatively well.  I don’t know if running races is addictive or if I am still a little delusional from yesterday but my wife and I have signed up for a 10K in September called Pints to Pasta.  I don’t think it will be fun but there will be beer at the end of that one so that should make things a bit more bearable.