Nay, we are but men. Rock!

 ”BEHOLD this swarthy face–these gray eyes,

 This beard–the white [redish brown] wool, unclipt upon my neck,” 

                                                  -Walt Whitman, “Behold This Swarthy Face”

 Every November the students of the university I work for hold a month-long event called “No Shave November.”  There are many schools that do something of the sort whether it is “No Shave November” or “Janu-hairy”  or whatever clever name can be thought of to allow students, and some faculty and staff, the excuse to not shave for a month.  This year I decided to participate.  I have never done “No Shave November” mainly because my wife does not like it and refuses to get close to me when I have a beard.  But seeing as how my wife is pregnant, and when she is pregnant she has a head cold for nine months, and doesn’t get close to me anyway I decided to give it a whirl.

 I have realized something this month.  I like having a beard, at least for the winter months.  I don’t think there is ever going to be any way that I could wear a beard in the summer; if you didn’t read my last post I weigh 332lbs.  I produce enough heat as it is.  But in the winter it is awesome, some would say manly.  I would like to keep my beard but I am a reasonable man.  I will let the people decide.  Should I go full beard or should I return to the goatee?

Graaarrrrr!!!!! I am Eric the Red

Kind of wussy but it will do I guess

This summer I reached a pinnacle of physical fitness that I had not reached since college where I wrestled and played football.  This summer I ran a half marathon and got down below 300lbs for the first time in nine years.  I felt pretty good about myself to the extent that I pretty much stopped doing anything physical after I finished my race.  I was able to fool myself into thinking that I was still in pretty good shape until I stepped on the scale last night just for the heck of it.  After the 0.0 flashed for an unusually long time the screen came up 0 LsP2.  Now I don’t speak computer but I’m pretty sure that what 0 LsP2 translates into is, “What the #*%$ do you think you are doing!?  Get the $*#&@ off of me fat @#%.”

So here we go again.  I know the chips are stacked against me with it being the holiday season but I need to do something.  I ran this morning and when I got back I weighed myself and am brining 332lbs with me.  I want the scale to say 299lbs.  Let’s do this.

I started running again today and I have a medical query for all of you who may be reading this.  I have two main issues that arose when I ran this morning.  The first issue is one that is very perplexing to me.  The issue is that I do not enjoy running.  I know tons of people who love running and use it as a way to reduce stress.  For me it is quite the opposite.  Running increases my stress level and I think it sucks.  I wish someone could give me the actual medical explanation for why this is.

The second issue is a little more pressing seeing as how I have no idea how it got in there.  Apparently I have a pygmy marmoset in my large intestine.  This is the only explanation I have for the gurgling that happened at about the halfway point in the run, or in other words as far as I could get from my bathroom.  It was this marmoset that forced me to do the, “I’m not gonna make it” waltz back to my house.  I hate marmosets.

If there is a doctor that is reading I would really love a home cure or a prescription to get rid of my furry little companion that lives in my colon.

There are certain rules of life that one should be able to count on right?  One such rule is that over time people should get smarter.  I know occasionally there are people who do things when they are young that they know will not turn out well because they don’t know better.  And even more occasionally there are those in the twilight of there life that also do things that they should have learned better than to attempt.  A person that I care about deeply has just decided to do something idiotic.  My 30-year-old brother has just decided that a good way to make some extra money would be to become a bouncer.  That’s right folks a bouncer.

Who in their right mind wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, “Hey, I think I would like to get stabbed between the 6th and 7th rib today or maybe hit in the jaw with a crowbar at the very least.”  I mean come on kid!  Being a bouncer, although manly, is a little too far toward the Neanderthal end of the spectrum.  I know that bouncers exist much in the same way that a $1000 bill exists, they are out there but I have never seen them.  When I think of a bouncer I think of the guys from Roadhouse, minus Patrick Swayze, or someone who would follow Snoop Dog around not my brother.  I hope this is some last hoorah in order for him to prove something to himself and that he will before he gets into a serious scuffle.  My brother is a big guy and can take care of himself but it only takes one knife, gun, board, car, baseball bat, crowbar, set of iron knuckles, double team, roll of quarters, slap-jack, cattle prod, pool stick, sword, … well you get the idea.  I hope my brother makes it to old age.

I know because I am an administrator in the residence life department of a university that I am supposed to like the night life.  I am supposed to be one that waits for the sun to go down before I really start my job.  I am supposed to be in student housing until all hours of the night playing Halo, debating theology, eating crap that came from a styrofoam package, and the like.  These are the things I did for the first few years.  Now I think they are ridiculous.  I spend much of my time trying to talk college students into going to bed before 2:00am regardless of how little sleep they think their bodies need.  Have I gotten too old for this job?  Am I still relevant in the lives of college students?  I love what I do.  I love being able to help college students sort through some of life’s big questions like, “What is my calling?” and, “Do I really believe all of the things that I thought I believed growing up and if not what is there to believe in?”  These are a few conversations I have had lately and have often not to mention the political conversations lately.  I love these conversations, and I think I am good at having them.  I don’t think I am perfect by any stretch but I believe God has gifted me in being able to help others sort through some of these things.

But back to my question.  Am I still relevant to today’s college student?  I don’t listen to the same music.  I rarely have seen the same movies.  I am horrendously out of style.  So I ask you are these things I need to be in order to work with young adults?  Am I being, or more accurately can I be, everything to everyone as Paul tells us?  I need to honestly answer these questions so I can know if it is time to hang up my ping pong paddle and don the button down shirt, flat front khakis, and wing-tipped uniform of mid-level college administration.   My wife and I are committed to the community we live in but I do not know if I still have the energy to do that voodoo that I do so well (sometimes).

Hello hello!

(cue music) Welcome to Epic Fail Friday!

I thought that I would introduce something not-so-random to our essentially stream-of-consciousness blog here.  Is there a better way to end the week?  I think not.

Epic Fail #1

I know that the title of this post makes some assumptions.  It assumes that I sometime do understand women, which may be a bit of a stretch.  I work with college students in leadership development.  I have a staff of 10, 3 men and 7 women, that I supervise.  My wife and I get to do some fun activities with the staff at different times of the year.  For instance last night my wife went out to Portland with the women from my staff on a girls’ night out.  They went to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner and then went out for dessert.  Apparently at some point the conversation turned to the subject of skinny dipping.  I don’t know what the fascination is with skinny dipping and women.  According to my wife, as she recounted the conversation to me, most women at some point in time have gone skinny dipping and a good number of them make it a regular thing.  Not only that but the women from my staff are planning on going while we are all on a retreat at the coast this coming weekend.  

I am conflicted with this knowledge.  One one hand I can see the value of doing something like that in order to share common experiences and therefore strengthen their relationships.  On the other hand I think it is dumb and I know it’s illegal.  I can’t even set up some sort of prank like waiting until they are all in the water and stealing their clothes; talk about inappropriate.  What am I supposed to do?  I will probably put the kibosh on it just out of principle.  You can’t tell me that jumping into 50 degree water in the middle of the night with no clothes on, opening up the possibility for sand to find its way into the few places it can’t get into when you are wearing clothes, is a good idea. 

I would like to take a poll:  

Should I stop the exhibitionist water extravaganza or allow it? 

and

Is skinny dipping as prevalent amongst the fairer sex as I have been led to believe?

This past weekend four of us went backpacking in the Columbia River Gorge.  Since it is now Friday you may be asking yourself why it has taken me so long to post.  The answer is simple: I just now regained enough energy and got rid of enough soreness to type and formulate coherent thoughts.  

When it was decided that the guys from our small group should take a backpacking trip there was an initial flurry of conversation about where we should go.  One of our number had hiked the Eagle Creek trail in the Gorge l and said that it was beautiful, which proved to be true.  He said that the trail was a loop and that at the far end of the loop there was Wahtum Lake which suggested that it would be nice to camp there on the second night of the trip.  It sounded like a grand plan, and for the most part it was.

The trip has actually been a long time coming.  This past summer I helped one of the guys buy a handful of new gear through some connections I have.  Once the gear was bought it would be unfaithful not to use it, so we did.  On Friday we got to the trailhead at about 4:00pm.  Not a bad time.  We got our boots on, adjusted our packs, and headed out.  We got just under 4 miles behind us before we stopped to set up camp for the night.  All was well.  We experienced all of the things one would expect to experience in one of the most beautiful wilderness areas in Oregon.  We saw cascading waterfall that had cut through sheer rock faces, we saw lush forest still vibrantly green even after the long summer, we smelled hippie chicks who had apparently been on the trail for quite some time,…yeah we saw it all.  We set up camp and cooked dinner and sat around shooting the breeze until the Sandman’s gentle tuggings pulled us into our sleeping bags.

The next morning we awoke to some new elements to our environment.  There was a level of dew over everything as if the wilderness just needed a little spritz to wake herself fully.  The air was crisp, the day was new, and THERE WAS A HOLE IN ONE OF THE BACKPACKS FROM WHERE THE @$#%ING MICE HAD CHEWED THROUGH TO GET THE SNACKS!!!!!  I hate rodents I always have and I could have crawled through the underbrush, found every last one of the little furry turds, and broken their necks.  But what I did do was to say, “Man that sucks.  Sorry about the pack man.”  I thought it was a fair compromise.

We finally got on the trail about 10:00 and started the 10 mile, slightly uphill the entire day, trek to Wahtum Lake.  The evening of day 2 went much as the evening of day 1 went with dinner, a fire (that may or may not have been started with white fuel), conversation, and the like.  There was, however, one major and distinct difference WE FOUND A BEER IN THE LAKE!!!  Granted the ‘beer’ we found was a Bud Lite but it can loosely be considered beer category and was delicious.  

The next morning we broke camp a little sonner and were on the trail by 9:00am.  We ended up finding a shortcut to the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail).   One of the finer points of backpacking that I had not learned on any of my trips in the past is that “shortcut to the PCT” is apparently an old native american saying that when translated roughly means, “Trail that goes straight up the side of a mountain and is designed to make one rue the day that humans grew legs.”  And I mean straight up.  It was crazy.

The good news is that after starting the the day with such an intense assent the terrain entered into the down hill portion.  It started out gentle enough and then moved into something that resembled an olymic bobsledding course.  The steep decent lasted for about 6 miles and by the time we got back to the main trail my legs felt like someone had flayed open my quads and filled the cavity with over-cooked pasta.  We were all pretty well shot by the time we got to the main trail and we still had about 4 miles until the van.  By the time we got to the van we had gone about 25 miles over terrain that ranged from a gentle 3-4% incline to a not so gentle 9-12% incline/decent.

The final push to civilization felt like I was in Mordor trying to get to Mount Doom but without a stout hobbit companion to carry me when I could go no farther.  I wish I had a Samwise.  We finally made it to the parking lot where we pealled our sock off and donned our flip flops or shoes and began the almost week-long recovery process.  But we made it.  All in all it was a successful trip.  We had a good time and it is always nice to be in the woods.

Now normally, the only way a post like this would make it on a man blog is because of the title (I’ll take Famous Titles for $400, Alex….);  however, this post actually has something that we, as parents, can relate to (well, I suppose we could about the other anyway, because of that fact).

Well anyway, here is the link. Definitely SFW

What do you all think?

My apologies for the length of this one but I think it is a fun story.

This past Monday I had a rare day off for this time of year.  In fact it was my first non-workday since July 25th.  This includes weekends.  Since we had such a rare gem we decided to pack up the minivan and head out for a relaxing few days of camping.  Now both my wife and I have spent a fairly significant amount of time in the wilderness in our lives but for some reason we just haven’t been able to get the whole pull-into-a-campsite-with-everything-you-would-have-at-home-and-call-it-camping thing down. Something always happens that makes it seem like we have never actually been outside let alone gone camping.

The weekend’s activities started out pretty encouragingly.  My oldest son had his first ever soccer game on Saturday so we stuck around to be able to do the whole soccer family thing and then we would camp Saturday and Sunday nights.  It was awesome.  I’m not going to say that kid was the best 3-year-old out there, because some people who might read this blog also had kids playing, but he was one of the most enthusiastic.  It was a good indication of how he will be when he graduates to playing a higher level of athletic contest, football.

After the “game” was over we headed back to the house and threw our living room in the back of our van.  We drove to my parents’ house about 30 minutes away in order to get their propane grill, beer, and mattresses from their RV.  That’s right mattresses.  Then it was off to Beverly Beach on the Oregon coast.

When we got to the campsite we realized two things.  Thing the first: we didn’t bring the propane tanks for the grill.  No big deal my wife and I are relatively proficient at fire starting.  Thing the second: we brought the wrong tent and one of us is going to have to sleep in the back of the van each night.  Other than that things were going swimmingly.  Things continued to be pleasant until my oldest son started getting abdominal cramps.  The kid developed a case of Beverly Beach’s Revenge that would make that guy in Alien who had the little creepy jump out of his ribcage cringe.  I know my son was in pain because I have amazing powers of deduction.  So when he started yelling, “Papa my belly hurts!!! It hurts!!!  Make it stop!!! I need to poop!!!”  I knew something was amiss.  We spent a good amount of time on the potty that evening and into the morning.  I think I am going to take him to the tattoo parlor tomorrow and have WARNING CONTENTS UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE tattooed onto his abdomen.  Seriously I think he actually lifted off the seat a few inches one time.  It was bad.

This probably would have been enough to make us come home the next day but to make matters even more surreal I forgot one major rule when going to the Oregon coast.  IT IS FREAKING FREEZING AT NIGHT!!  We didn’t bring sleeping bags because our kids are not to the point where they do them well.  So we brought blankets.  With my wife in the van I was sleeping beside my boys and they were fine because they had the blanket all three of us were using as well as an expedition weight fleece blanket.  Unfortunately it was not big enough for me as well.

Around 4:00am I scared the bejeezus out of my wife by opening the back hatch of our van and crawling in with her.  I’m sure she thought I was some sort of intruder but I thought she was the absolute best source of warmth I could find and with the kids in the tent…  

The next morning we played around for a while and then packed up and went back to my parents’ house where my oldest and I set up the tent in the back yard.  We made Smores over the fire pit.  I was able to watch the Broncos beat the Chargers.  But best of all I feel like I reconnected and reintroduced myself to my family.  Yeah for camping.