Sports traditions

I remember a time as a kid, when I was playing little league, that I found myself involved in a little bit of a hot streak. 20 years later, I remember the streak itself much less clearly than I remember hiding my socks from my mom after every game because, as any sports fan knows, you don't wash your socks during a hot streak!

This came tom mind today because there's a neat article in the Detroit Free Press about sports traditions. It talk about where they came from and what they mean. For those of you who aren't sports fans, they probably won't mean anything to you (other than possibly giving you a little bit of insight into the slightly warped mind of the sports nut).

And for anybody who takes the time to click over to the article but thinks they're all silly, you should understand how deeply these concepts take hold and the fond memories they engender for some of us. My wife will attest that I still cry every time I hear a clip of Harry Carey singing "Take me out to the Ballgame".

Here are a couple that I would have to add to the list. They won't mean anything to most of you, but for a few, should at least make you laugh.

1. If you have a Jacksonville Jaguars hat, it always goes under you left foot during a tight volleyball game.
2. Nobody wants to be a monkey as much as Marcy P. And the "Theme of the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen" is always good luck.
3. Always put a handful of sunflower seeds in your mouth at once. Make sure to spit the shells through the fence. Extra points for hitting the umpire.
4. "I don't want you to be sorry. Just do better."

That's about all I can think of right this moment. Feel free to add if y'all have any other bright ideas.

Laterz.

And the President can't figure out why the economy is a piece of shit...

I (I, in this case, meaning my office.) got hired to do a small job recently. A small company, which is currently trying to rapidly expand, hired me to create a 20-odd page powerpoint presentation that they can use when presenting their products to potential customers.

It's not a bad job; it's just somewhat time consuming.

I have to say, though, that it's a little odd to be paid about $1000 for a job that could proabably be performed by the average 6th grader.

No wonder 90% of small buinesses fail within 2 years.

Of exhaust pipes and role models...

This weekend, I installed a new exhaust pipe on my car. To those of you who are "car guys" (or "car gals"), this probably doesn't seem like a big deal. However, being as I'm the kind of person who calls AAA when I have a flat tire, successfully replacing a major piece of hardware on my car was a major personal victory.

I had a bit (okay a lot) of help installing the pipe from a family friend who, in a former life, was the head mechanic at a local dealership. He now has a very well equipped auto shop, for his personal use, at his house. Since our families have been friends forever, (He's my best friend's dad.) I felt comfortable calling him on a Sunday afternoon and requesting the use of his shop.

As it turns out, I also made good use of his expertise. I think he was afraid I'd hurt myself (or, more likely, his shop) if he didn't help. At any rate, we successfully changed the pipe and my car no longer sounds like a Harley with a badly tuned carburetor.


His assistance gave me pause to think, however. I'm nearing 30 years old. I have a 3-month-old son. I've been married for almost 6 years. By any legal or even logical definition, I'm an adult. The thing is, regardless of how many "adult" activities I participate in, I still don't feel like a Grown-Up.

I think this is due, at least in part, to the fact that there are a number of "Grown-Ups" that I admire and look up to. And it feels like, if I'm looking up to a number of people, then I must, logically, be down. And I guess that's okay.

In a culture where sarcasm and detachment are the qualities that men are supposed to strive for in order to be cool, (especially when any apparent affinity for any other male will be derided by the homophobic masses as "gay",) I've been extremely lucky to have a number of invaluable male role models in my life.

(In case you haven't noticed, I'm using my blog as my online diary today. If you don't have any interest in the kind of stuff I'd write in a journal, please feel free to stop reading and check in tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be back to the useless, but slightly comedic dribble that I normally write.)

So these are my Thank-You's to a few guys who I look up to. (Sorry about ending that sentence with a preposition, but "... guys up to whom I look." seemed a bit ridiculous.)

Keith- Thanks for showing me that not running the rat race doesn't have to mean running against it. Sometimes it just means ignoring it and doing your own thing. Quiet competence is a very cool thing when more people you know spend way too much time blowing their own horn.

Rick- Thanks for demonstrating to me that anyone who says things like "Once a screw-up, always a screw-up," is an idiot. You were one of the first people I met who made it clear that I didn't need to know everything yet. I could pick it up as I went along.

Fletch- Thanks for being honest. At a time in my life when I was incredibly disillusioned with the whole world's fixation on artifice, you showed me that honesty, while not necessarily being the most trouble-free option, was indeed the best policy.

Jeff- Thanks for being the youngest Grown-Up I know. There are times, when I'm very frustrated with myself for not getting to where I want to be, that you give me a little bit of hope. (And though I realize it weirds you out a little that I look up to you when we are, at least chronologically speaking, roughly equal. You seem to deal with it well.)

Pop- Thanks for showing me who I can, with a lot of work, be. I know you're not perfect. Far from it, actually. But the older I get, the more it seems like I'm becoming like you. And that's definitely a good thing.

Grandpa- Thanks for showing me who I should try to be. You're the only person I've ever know whose priorities were ALWAYS in the right place. I'll never be able to live up to the example you set, but I'll always try.

Laterz

Anagrams

Andrew Andrew wrote a quickie blog the other day involving anagrams. I love anagrams. (Too many years of reading Dave Barry, I guess...)

I checked out the site he referenced and had to share one of the anagrams created for me.

From this point forward, the agency for whom I toil (The Learning Center of Northern Michigan) shall be known as-
On fertile, trenchant greenhorn. I'm aching.

So true. So true.

And speaking of editors...

I received a call today at work from a gentleman who was having some difficulty getting MS Word to work the way he wanted it to. He was trying to put a header at the top of his first page that was different from the header at the top of all his other pages.

This is a little bit unusual, but not a particularly complicated problem. I could have walked him through a couple different ways to fix it but I figired it'd be faster if he just emailed it to me and let me fix it for him.

When I sent the file back to him, I laughed and offered him my name, which I had neglected to do in our initial conversation since we really had gotten right down to work. He, of course, reciprocated with his name.

I turns out that the gentleman I just showed a very simple word trick to - the kind of trick most 5th graders could do today - was turning in this paper as his final project for his MASTER'S DEGREE in education.

Worse yet- He recently retired from his previous job. He had been the editor of the local paper for the past 25 years.