My Michigan Mini-Football: An Appreciation

I wasn’t sure we’d find it after it got lost in the farmer’s field in North Dakota.

I thought it was gone forever when we kicked it over the barbed wire fence in Montana.

I was sure I’d never see it again when we punted it into the river in Duluth.

I was absolutely positive it reached the end of the line when it disappeared in Minnesota several years ago.

But now it’s back home, a little worse for wear, but nothing you wouldn’t expect if you’d been through what it has.

I’m talking about my Michigan mini-football. I bought it at K-Mart in the Copper Country Mall. That, in itself, should tell you something about how long I’ve had it, as that K-Mart has been closed for a very long time. (Sidebar: one of my biggest regrets in life is never dining at the Eatery in the back of K-Mart. Sigh.)

This football is perfect for traveling with. It’s small, it almost always spirals, and you can throw it a mile. It’s just what you need to break up a long day of driving. You stop the car just about anywhere and run a few routes. Parking lots, desolate roads, roadside parks, it all works.

As mentioned above, I’ve almost lost it several times, but it keeps coming back, like a good bad-penny. Take my trip out west several years ago:

• In North Dakota we had to search a farmer’s field at the intersection of two dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, all because of an errant punt. I kept waiting for the farmer to come out, shotgun ready, yelling at us to get out his field. Luckily, it didn’t happen, and we eventually found the football.

 Minutes before losing the football in the field

• The next day, we kicked it up into a tree at a park in North Dakota. We finally got it down after throwing rocks at it for what seemed like hours. (It was way up there!) A minute later, it got punted into a dry river bed that wasn’t as dry as I thought. Still, it was worth it to get the ball back.

Looking up at the football in the tree

After retrieving it from the mud

• Soon after, we were at a rest stop in Montana and it got punted over a barbed wire fence. We had to poke a long stick through the fence and slowly roll it back.
• At the end of the trip, when we were back in Duluth, it got kicked into a river. Luckily, we were able to fish it back out.
• (Yes, I know. We are terrible at punting. However, it’s too fun to give up, even if it keeps getting us into trouble.)

Soon after the trip out west, it got left in Minnesota, where I thought it was lost for good. (Why would any native Minnesotans go out of their way to make sure no harm came to a Michigan football?) However, it just reappeared there recently, which was like an early Christmas present for me. However, there was one problem: it had a leak, as one of the seams had split.

I had two options. I could either retire it, or I could do all I could to get it back into working order. I chose the second option, and used massive amounts of Gorilla Glue to re-seal the seam.

Gorilla Glued

I’ll admit it’s not pretty, but it’s functional. I’m not sure how long it’ll last, but its legacy is already sealed as being the best football I’ll ever own. Any more use I get out of it is just gravy.

I’m betting it won’t spiral as well anymore, what with the eight pounds of Gorilla Glue throwing it out of balance. Still, I don’t care. And when it finally reaches the point where it is no longer usable, I plan to find a place of honor to retire it. Heck, I may even have to get a mantle.

Left Behind (Cue Ominous Music)

I like to think of myself as being technologically inclined. However, I also like to think of myself as being stunningly handsome, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.

The point is, I’m pretty much up to date with the changing world of technology. For example, I text. I pay bills online. I don’t remember the last time I mailed a physical letter. I can figure out Red Box. Heck, I’m a software engineer. You get the picture.

But here’s the scary part: it won’t last forever. As you age, eventually you aren’t able to keep up with the constant stream of technological advances. This is because the older you get, the more stubborn and resistant to change you become, which soon leaves you riding a horse in a horseless carriage kind of world.

In fact, I can already see it happening to me. Take video games. When I was twelve I was, and I am not exaggerating here, the best video game player in the entire world. I had ridiculous joystick control, and I was incredibly cool under pressure. I could get Barry Sanders 4092 rushing yards in Tecmo Super Bowl, which was as high as the game would count, before the season was even half over. Today, however, I’m afraid of playing video games. The controllers have roughly eighty-seven buttons and sixteen control sticks. The games themselves are so complex that the manuals are as long as a Steven King thriller. I would have no idea where to start, and so I simply don’t. I hate to say it, but I’ve been passed by.

While you might think that not playing video games isn’t a big deal, it really is. It’s an early indicator of things to come. Soon, as more and more new technology is developed, I will begin to understand less and less of it. Then, at some point, I will become the equivalent of the old man who complains because nobody uses rotary phones anymore, with the only difference being I will be complaining about newer technology.

I can hear myself already: “I’m not using that new-fangled matter transformer gizmo to go to the grocery store! It’s nothing but foolishness! A man could get his arm lopped off if he doesn’t get his whole body inside the transfer capsule thingie! I heard somebody once transported himself to Denver, but his arm wound up in San Antonio! Try to get your insurance to cover that! Plus, you have to be a nuclear physicist just to figure out what buttons to press and what levers to pull! Heaven forbid you press the green one before the red one, or you set the dial to “deep-fried” instead of “lightly toasted”! If you’re not careful, you could wind up on the top of Mount Everest! No sir, I think I’ll walk!”

And the same thing will happen to every one of you. So, when you watch the video below, feel free to laugh, but just remember, it’s your future too!

Happy Blogiversary

Well, it’s been an entire year since I started blogging, and what a year it’s been! Looking back, one thing stands out above all the rest: just how little substance is actually included in my 90 posts.

Not that I consider that to be a bad thing, mind you. Frivolous is my style, and hopefully it’s made you smile on occasion. In today’s crazy doom-and-gloom world, that’s all I’m aiming for. (Currently, that is. I plan to get rich on this sometime in the future, although the details are still quite sketchy.)

However, now that I’ve made it a year, I’m not going to cut back and rest on my laurels, even though I’m not quite sure what ‘laurels’ are. Instead, I want to make the next year of this blog even better. My plan is to sell out all of my ideals for a glossy, Hollywood-blockbuster style blog that makes up for its lack of heart with its excessive use of special effects.

Just kidding! But I still want a better blog, and to do that, I need your help. This is because I’m not quite sure what “better” really means in terms of this blog.

So, what would YOU like to see? What would make this blog better? Let me know. It could be anything. Here are some examples I’ve thoughtfully come up with:

• Less use of words that aren’t really words, such as “Blogiversary”.
• Try to incorporate time travel.
• Lower fat, lower cholesterol, please!
• Lasers
• Dinosaurs are always good.
• You know the part where you write? Stop it!

If you’re wondering, yes, this is a shameless stunt just to see how many people I can get to comment on this. However, I feel no shame in doing so. It’s my anniversary. I can do what I want.

Who's Making That Racket?

I bought a new tennis racket today because my old one was warped and bent out of shape.

I’d like to say that my damaged racket was the reason for my serves and returns having the same precision and raw power of a two-year old throwing rocks into a lake. However, it’s the other way around. My tennis racket got bent because of my serves and returns having the same precision and raw power of a two-year old throwing rocks into a lake.

I’ll explain: I’ve developed the bad habit of throwing my racket in frustration after screwing up. Sometimes I’ll throw it down to the ground, where I then have to fight the urge to jump up and down on it several few times for good measure. Sometimes I’ll lob it high into the air and watch in satisfaction as it comes down and makes a loud clattering noise. Sometimes I’ll sidearm it across the court where it will skitter along for a while, making me happy to watch until I realize I have to go and retrieve it.

At least I screw up in interesting ways. Sometimes I’ll dramatically hit the ball into the net. (Not necessarily the net on my court, mind you.) Sometimes I’ll send it careening way off to the left or right, not even coming close to the spot I’m aiming for, and possibly endangering others. (I wouldn’t be all that surprised if one of my errant shots someday took out some old lady walking her dog on the sidewalk). Sometimes I’ll blast it way over the court. Sometimes I’ll somehow manage to hit it behind me. Sometimes I just whiff and miss it completely.

No matter how I screw up, though, I still handle it in the same way: First, I frown in complete disbelief. This is to try and make anybody watching believe that what has just happened was a complete fluke, something totally beneath my stature as a tennis player, and something likely to never happen again. (Even if I did the exact same thing the previous point.) Second, to show my true passion for the game, I’ll throw my racket.

When you combine my throwing-the-racket habit along with the number of times I’ve screwed up, it’s no surprise that my old racket quickly became scratched, bent, and virtually unusable.

So now I have a new racket. However, I’ve already decided I’m not going to throw it. Instead, I’m going to conquer my anger. I realize that this is going to be tough, but I have a number of ideas I can use to help:

1) I can keep my old racket close at hand, and when I screw up I can just throw that instead.
2) I can start swearing when I screw up, which will hopefully distract me from throwing my racket.
3) I can never play tennis again.

I’m not sure what option I’m going to go with. I kind of like them all.

One thing is certain, though: I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances to determine which one works best.

Welcome To Hazzard County

I watched the second half of an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard the other day. It was great, by which I mean it was essentially a 30 minute chase scene that was so ridiculous it bordered on sheer genius.

Now, I’ll readily admit that I couldn’t sit down and watch multiple episodes of that show without rolling my eyes at the cheesiness of the whole thing, but in half-hour chunks it’s priceless.

There was a loose plot about a mob syndicate or some nonsense like that, but the plot really didn’t matter. The only point of it was to create opportunities for chase scenes.

This show isn’t about character development, that’s for sure. Here are several things that happened in the last thirty minutes:

The General Lee jumped a creek. Daisy wooed some bad guys, who became so week-kneed that they couldn’t defend themselves when Cooter ran out of the bushes and bonked them on the head with a two-by-four. Uncle Jesse cackled like an insane scientist and cruised around randomly in his beater truck. Rosco crashed his police cruiser into another police cruiser, causing his door to fall off. He also made a bunch of unintelligible noises that sounded something like, “gue, gue, gue.” There was a fantastic chase involving the Dukes, the bad guys, and Boss and Rosco, which went around and around in circles through town, and which made absolutely no sense, but was still utterly fantastic. Also, the bad guys got caught in a net at the end.

How could this all be made better? Easy! It was all accompanied by classic Duke Boys chase music, made up mostly of frenetic banjo, fiddle, and steel guitar.

Seriously, they don’t make shows like that anymore. Here’s a clip I found of the circle chase.

The Lowe's/Michaels Ratio

So I went into Michaels the other day to buy illustration board. Why? Because I felt the need to illustrate, of course, and what better place to do that than on a board?

Anyway, those of you who have been to Michaels before knows that it’s not what you’d consider a male-tailored store. For example, there are no pictures of things blowing up, nor are there any big screen TVs playing Sportscenter nonstop. Also, handy spittoons are not left out in the aisles for the convenience of chew tobacco users. In addition, there are entire rows of floral arrangements there which can make a guy shudder and dive for cover from up to two aisles over.

Still, I braved it and did my shopping, although when I left I felt a severe need to do something macho, such as hauling off with a satisfying belch.

As I walked to my car afterwards, I looked across the parking lot and saw Lowe's, and I began to think that perhaps I should be spending more time in there. (As of right now, my Lowe’s Visit Counter is stuck at 0.) It just seemed to be the manly thing to do. I mean, there has to be a reason for me to buy a pounder or a, whadyacallit, squeezer, right? Maybe I could get several pieces of drywall for future use. Or what about a drill press? I could fit it in my kitchen.

Now, why would I need these items? Who knows? Maybe I could embark on a do-it yourself project of some sort, possibly involving rafters or joists. (Then I would be able to make the hilarious joke of telling people, “Joist a minute, I’m busy.”)

A moment later, though, I shrugged the urge off. As Popeye says, “I yam what I yam,” and that’s the motto I’m going to stick to. This means that I’ll go to Lowe’s only when I have a real need to go, and no sooner.

So that's my plan, even if it means my Michaels to Lowe’s ratio is not what you’d expect for a typical guy. But why be typical, anyway? Typical is boring. I prefer quirky.

My point is this: don’t worry about what you think others will think, and just follow your heart. (Or any other phrase that is equally as inspiring.) Plus, if I bought a pounder or a squeezer, I’d probably poke my eye out anyways.

Keeping Perspective

Friday was a typical day at work. I did everything you’d expect from somebody trapped in a scene from Office Space.

I attended several meetings and nodded in agreement as buzzwords and acronyms were tossed about seemingly for the sake of making those speaking them sound important. I may have even contributed a few of my own, although I’m not proud of it.

I sat in my cube and typed away on my keyboard furiously.

I updated my white board to keep track of my current tasks, all while doing my best not to become addicted to the smell of dry-erase markers.

I engaged in small-talk with co-workers about nothing in particular, but which could, in a pinch, be considered a “team-building activity.”

I talked confidently on the phone about matters that really weren’t that important, but which seemed to be at the time.

I filled in my time sheet by guessing at the number of hours I had worked on each of the three million project categories I am allowed to charge time to.

I left the office happy to be through another week, but still thinking about what the next week would bring.

As I was about to pull into my apartment complex, I saw that a school bus was dropping children off there. They piled out and immediately began to engage in activities that children are noted for. For example, they began to throw pine cones at one another.

I smiled.

I mean, I want to throw pine cones, too! Heck, I’d like to get involved in anything within the Throwing Stuff At Other Stuff category of kid amusement. Also, I wouldn’t mind poking at mud with a stick for a while. And I wouldn’t be against running around at full speed just because it seems like the thing to do. Shrieking at the top of my lungs? I’m in!

Oh well. That’s obviously not going to happen. I’m stuck in khaki and button-down shirt land. Poking at mud is prohibited.

However, at least seeing the pine cones flying through the air helped to remind me that everything doesn’t always have to be taken so seriously all of the time.

So maybe I’ll go collect some pine cones after all, and store them in the glove compartment of my car. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll come in handy someday.

The way I see it, it’s not about winning the war against maturing, it’s about prolonging the battle for as long as possible. Sometimes it's just easy to lose track of that.