In reference to the football picture of myself I posted the other day, someone asked what position I played. It reminded me of something that happened that season. It was pee-wee ball or whatever you called it before you could play in junior high, and during the game, I was in my usual spot, the sideline. The coach calls me over and tells me to go in and play tackle. I was excited at the opportunity to get on the field and ran out there for the next play, but I didn’t know where the tackle was supposed to line up. I tried to find the position before the snap and the coach was yelling at me, which only made it more stressful and confusing for me. He ended up calling a timeout and yelling at me for not knowing any positions in football. I wasn’t so much upset as myself as I was for feeling like I embarrassed my mom, dad, and brother in the crowd. The moment I got home I opened up an encyclopedia and memorized all football positions.
My brother was a great football player, and when it came time for me to play in pee wee, I was one of the first drafted because of his reputation. I was not a great football player or athlete. I always felt bad being drafted so high and not meeting the expectations of my coaches.
That story above reminds me of another ignorant sports moment. It was my first junior high basketball game and I was in my usual spot, the bench, four spots down from the coach. He calls me over and tells me to go in for someone, and again, being excited at the opportunity to just play, I ran onto the court after a basket was made and didn’t check in at the scorer’s table. In little dribblers, you didn’t have to check in, the rules were lax and kids were switching in and out all the time during play. Again, I wasn’t so embarrassed or mad at myself, I was just worried I embarrassed my father. He never did anything to make me feel that way, but he was so proud of my brother’s athletic accomplishments I just felt I let him down.
I think it was Billy Madison that also had daddy issues.
The football fields we played on were unlevel, full of weeds and stickers, and the dirt was hard like a rock with holes and cracks all around. Looking back at it, it was an awesome experience. Ah, the Optimus Field, how I miss thee.
I really like Tony Romo. I really want him and Jason Witten to win a Super Bowl together. But all feelings aside, Nate Silver would give a 98% probability saying Romo will not make it through the season injury-free. That means, like it or not, for better or worst, the Dak Prescott era will begin this season.
But let’s just try to find a silver lining and say Romo’s injury scare was nothing more than a wake-up call for him and that makes him really excel this year.
Seattle is just bad luck for Romo.
Just an observation, but I think 90% of political bumper stickers are “against” something and not “for” something.
Our bedtime reading is The Mouse and the Motorcycleby the great Beverly Cleary. It’s one of the few stories in with a person named Keith is actually viewed in a positive light. In last night’s reading, Ralph S. Mouse talks about his uncle who got trapped in a waste basket and was assumed to have been thrown in the incinerator with the rest of the trash. Obviously, unmistakably, this was Beverly Clearly using a Christian witness metaphor of not living for Christ and wasting one’s life on the trash of “the world” and burning in Hell. No doubt about that, I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on this when I first read it. (written in sarcastica)
DaughterGeeding was walking on the living room floor, shrieked, and said she had a thorn in her foot. I got some tweezers and removed it, and told her that as flimsy as the thorn was, she shouldn’t be in so much pain. Later in the evening when I was about to go to bed, I noticed a dead bee on the floor. Yup, you guessed it, she got stung by a bee and the thorn was the stinger. Proof: WifeGeeding verified the “thorn” came from the bee.
I caught the first episode of NBC’s ‘Better Late Than Never’ with William Shatner, Henry Winkler, George Foreman and Terry Bradshaw. I saw a few commercials but knew nothing about it other than it had those four guys going to Asia, and since I like the personalities of all those guys, I figured why not. I mean, it has Captain Kirk and the Fonz, that in itself is funny. To my surprise, it’s more like a reality series. All of them don’t play characters, but just themselves and a film crew is following them around. Granted, some of it is scripted, but it was pretty enjoyable.
William Shatner looks great for an 85-year-old man. The show stated he was born before the “Star Spangled Banner” became our national anthem.
To my surprise, and I’m surprised and I never noticed it before, but Winkler actually changes his voice when he plays the Fonz.
WifeGeeding took one of the cast members of the show ‘Fixer Upper’ to a formal when she was at Baylor. I think it was the carpenter. When she drops this tidbit on friends when the show becomes a topic of conversation, they all respond in a way as if she settled for me or could have had things so much better.
Former head coach Art Briles almost said that exact phrase when asked about Sam Ukwuachu’s sexual-assault case. The Boise State transfer was found guilty and sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years of probation.
The Zip N Store seems like a good idea as long as you don’t have a hole or tear in your bag.
Last week, Barry over at LiberallyLean.com posted this image and it really got me thinking about my driving habits.
Personally, if there is no stripe in the middle I will hug the curb. If there is a stripe, I’d follow the rule in the image.
The image makes a good point about the advantage of driving to the far curb stating both drivers can see oncoming traffic better. But I had some reservations:
If there were a queue of vehicles, depending on how they follow this rule, it could block the opposite driver from turning.
It doesn’t really work if you have a trailer attached.
After about a week of observing what others do, I finally decided to do some research (Ticket listeners, insert George Digiani drop here).
CHAPTER 545. OPERATION AND MOVEMENT OF VEHICLES section (2) (c) “On a street or roadway designated for two-way traffic, the operator turning left shall, to the extent practicable, turn in the portion of the intersection to the left of the center of the intersection”
Chuck Yeager, the retired general, test pilot, and first man to break the sound barrier is 93-years old. I read an article that he’s active on Twitter and is a mix of Ron Swanson and “get off my lawn” Clint Eastwood character. For the heck of it, I tweeted at him and he actually liked the tweet. The restaurant in question was Harlow’s Smokehouse, and it’s true I used to just eat there and check out all the memorabilia in the Chuck Yeager room. And I’d like to think it’s really him tweeting (his official webpage links to the Twitter account, but who knows if it’s him actually tweeting). He last broke the sound barrier in 2012.
If red light cameras are a thing and generate revenue for a city, I’m surprised there are speed cameras. I can’t see them being used or holding up in court if there are multiple cars on the road, but if there’s only one or a few and the car and driver can be easily identifiable, it could work. Trust me, I’m not advocating for them, I’m just surprised in today’s world they aren’t a thing.
Tony Robbins stuff
In that Tony Robbins documentary, it shows his morning routine. In his backyard is a very small but deep pool with 57° water. I’d say it’s probably three feet by three feet and seven feet deep, considering Robbins himself is six-foot-seven. He jumps into and it covers his head, though I don’t know how long he stays under.
Wikipedia states he grew ten inches in high school which was later attributed to a pituitary tumor.
That documentary also shows his heightened sensitivity towards anyone with potential suicidal tendencies at any of his conferences, what he does to monitor them, and how he assigns a person to look after them. I couldn’t tell if he’s trying to cover all bases to ward off lawsuits or if he genuinely cares. Sadly, I’m a cynic.
I’ve spoken about my personal struggle with suicide before, and it’s still something I fight more than I’d like to admit. It’s something I don’t want to say I’ve overcome because I don’t want it to humble me, but it is something I work on every day. With that said, the best description of suicidal thoughts I’ve come across is from David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest. It’s important to note the year because it was well written before September 11, 2001.
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Blogger Note: I’m not trying to draw attention to myself regarding my struggles with suicide nor and I’m trying to vie for any sympathy. But as I often do, for better or worst, and for reasons I can’t adequately express in words, I like to be transparent with my struggles. Sorry for the downer, here’s a pick-me-up.
Something like this won’t happen again – Once the road was paid for, it was handed over to the Texas Department of Transportation, and it later became Interstate 30.
For the last five or seven years, I’ve had a reoccurring dream. Well, the dream isn’t reoccurring, but the theme would always be the same. I’m me and in a professional career, but I always have to go back to Hardin-Simmons University, live in the dorm, and work on completing my degree. Often, I’ll find myself struggling to adjust back to dorm life, forgetting my class schedule, and feeling unmotivated because I want to go back to my job and frustrated at the multiple semesters needed to be complete which seems beyond reach. About three months I had the same dream but it ended differently. I walked into my dorm and WifeGeeding was waiting for me and I exasperatedly explained to her how I wish I could just go back to my job and live in a house and be a real adult again. She tells me that it makes no sense that I’m back in college working on my bachelor’s when I already have an MBA, have over a decade of experience in the field I’m in, and have been hired by a company because of my knowledge and experience pertaining to my job, not my education. I woke up with a weird sense of awe, as if I was bitch-slapped by an epiphany, and haven’t had a variation of the dream since.
That picture above is so old that kid’s Rams’ shirt says “Los Angeles”.
For homework last night, we were supposed to spend thirty minutes reading with DaughterGeeding. Lifehack – You can just put on a child’s favorite cartoon and turn on the captioning and call it even. [written in sarcastica]
A reader asked why I have posted anything about the Cowboys new practice facility. I’m not really sure, but they don’t mean to me what they used to mean to me. You can say that about sports overall.
A Life Pro Tip on Reddit that stuck with me for a while yesterday – Don’t become so obsessed with how the world should be that you become incapable of being happy in the world as it actually is.
I’ve never had to fire anyone, and not sure if I could ever do it.
I’ve always been intrigued by Tony Robbins. Not so much that I’m a “follower” or I’ve read a book or even listened to a tape or podcast. Netflix has a new documentary on him and I decided to check it out. Within the first three minutes, you totally see why people are attracted to him and his methods. I was surprised at the amount of cursing he does, extreme and direct, and how he admits he basically created this character of Tony Robbins. It seemed like the same thing a WWE wrestler would do to create a character.
There seems to be growing concern from a group of conservatives about the health of Hillary Clinton, that she’s hiding something. While I have no idea if any of that is true, and I agree she has a track record of not being clear and honest, I’m suspect of Trump’s health ever since his doctor released that ridiculous letter about his health which reads like a Madlib.
