Month: July 2009 (Page 1 of 2)

I Have No Class

July 30, 2009 / DB

My 20 year high school reunion is this weekend.

Those are some of the scariest words in any language.

When I turned 30, I was excited. I felt like I was finally old enough where people would take me seriously. Turning 30 gave me a new sense of confidence, as if I had finally arrived at true adulthood after years of trying to figure out if I was a grown up or still a kid. Now that 40 is right around the corner, I must admit my thinking is more along the lines of, “Wait…I’m going to be how old?!?!”

I’ve been thinking about high school, and the time that has passed since graduation, a lot recently. We are not heading back to Kansas City this weekend for the reunion. For years I said there was no way I would go. While I enjoyed my ten year reunion, I was disappointed that a lot of people I wanted to see and catch-up with did not attend. I guess I figured I still kept in touch with the people I cared about and had an interest in what they were doing, so why bother going back for a cliched night of asking people how they’re doing, reliving dumb things we did in middle school, etc.?

But that changed over the spring and we tentatively decided to head back. When plans changed, I started to get kind of excited about the event. Some of the people who I was in regular contact with 10 years ago have drifted away, and I was eager to reconnect with them. I realized that for every awkward conversation, there would probably be 2-3 good ones. And the night was sure to be full of crazy stories we could talk about afterwards.

A variety of factors made traveling this weekend extremely difficult, though, and we agreed it wasn’t worth it to fly in on Saturday afternoon and then need to be back at the airport first thing Sunday morning. Again my feelings about the reunion are mixed. Based on some of the Facebook connections I’ve made in recent months, there was a group of people I was very interested to catch-up with. And then there were people I was dreading talking to, the people I didn’t know in high school but suddenly wanted to be my Facebook friends. And there’s a part of me that thinks these awkward moments are an important part of growing up and I’ll be missing something by not being there.

The good news (for my Kansas City readers) is that in place of a rushed trip this weekend, we are working to bring the whole family back in October, while the big sisters are on fall break. We’ll keep you all updated as that gets closer, but we hope to have more time to hang out with everyone then, reintroduce you to M. and C., and introduce you to L. for the first time (for most of you).

I may have to dig into my boxes of cassette tapes and play a few fine selections from 1989 this weekend.

How Times Change

July 28, 2009 / DB

I started reading Bill Simmons again recently (and listening to his podcast). For various reasons, I’ve rarely read him over the past 2-3 years. It’s fun to find an old friend again.

I just finished his summer NBA two-parter, set to quotes from his pick for top movie of the decade, Almost Famous. It reminded me of the day back in the spring of 2000 when I was bored at work, scanning espn.com and found something about the NBA and Boogie Nights. Sounded interesting so I started reading. 20 minutes later I finished part two, sent a link to some friends telling them that the MUST check out this new guy on ESPN, and then went back and read part one, which had been posted earlier in the week. That was the beginning of countless hours of my employer paying me to read his columns.

Reading his current effort got me thinking about re-watching movies. Aside from the holiday classics, I just don’t do it anymore. Hell, I barely watch movies at all these days, preferring to listen to music and read. I wondered how many movies from the current decade I’ve watched more than 10 times. Not many, I bet. And I wondered how that compared to the 90s. I took a gander at my DVDs, put a little thought into it to capture those movies not in my collection, and came up with these rough lists.

These are, by the past two decades, movies that I A) love and B) have watched more than 10 times. (!) indicates the movie is one of my top 20 favorites of all-time.

90s:
Reservoir Dogs
Goodfellas (!)
Office Space
Pulp Fiction (!)
The Usual Suspects (!)
Swingers (!)
Shawshank (!)
Braveheart (!)
Saving Private Ryan (!)
Good Will Hunting
LA Confidential
Boogie Nights

00s:
High Fidelity (!)
Elf
Old School
Zoolander
Finding Nemo (WALL-E will soon join the list)

Now what, do you suppose, would explain this dramatic shift?

Birthday Girl

July 26, 2009 / DB

M. turned five on Saturday. In some ways time has flown, and in others that night five years ago when S. called down to me and said that her water had broken* seems like ages ago. I’m pretty sure being a parent for five years ages you something closer to ten. Especially when your first-born (and second, and potentially third) is as head-strong as M. is.

(My classic response, “Are you sure?” It was two weeks early! I wasn’t expecting it!)

We just did a small party for her Saturday; we’re in the process of planning a party that includes her friends in a few weeks for a day when S. isn’t working, as she was on Saturday. We had the obligatory cupcakes. She got some clothes, a jump rope, a bell for her bike, a soft baseball bat/glove/ball set, her first Webkinz (as did C.), and a movie. She was predictably thrilled with it all, especially the Webkinz puppy, which was a replacement for a beloved toy dog that was recently trashed after C. peed on it.*

(Good times that day, let me tell you!)

She’s taken to the baseball bat pretty well. Sunday night she hit four in a row, including one over my head. She has a tendency to get excited and swing before the ball has left my hand, but when she focuses she makes good contact. Catching with the mitt is another thing completely. That may take awhile to master.

We’ve been practicing soccer a lot lately, and she’s taken an interest in being a goalie. A couple weekend back she was positioned in the goal C. for for her birthday and I was kicking the ball at her. She was doing a great job stopping it, so I slowly increased the force behind the kicks. I struck one pretty solidly and it smacked her in her chest, surprising her a bit. I quickly complimented her on the fantastic save and told her that’s how the great goalies do it. She was convinced and asked me to kick it harder. I was tagging the ball pretty good that day, but keeping it on the ground so she could use her hands and chest to block it.

Well, Saturday night after she got her fill of baseball she pulled out the soccer goal and wanted to show off her skills to her assembled relatives. She stopped a couple and I warned her I was going to start kicking it hard. She said ok and got into position. I took a solid cut at the ball, about as hard as our previous sessions, only I got my toe under the ball. I watched as the ball looped off the ground, took a dip, and then smacked her right in the face. She cried a bit and I apologized but also reminded her that she needed to get her hands up and stop the ball, even if it’s in the air. So I worked towards both Father of the Year and Coach of the Year at the same time!

So now she’s five. Kindergarten is right around the corner. In some ways she seems very grown up, especially when she’s wearing her glasses to watch TV or play on the computer. Other times she drives us batty with her whining and deliberate efforts to act inappropriately. It’s been a difficult summer for her and us in many ways. I think being in school every day this fall is going to be a very good thing for both her and us, both academically and in terms of getting her out of the house and keeping her interested and occupied. But she’s a good, smart, and sweet girl, and hopefully she’ll begin to leave the toddler tantrums behind now that she’s officially a big girl.

Le Tour

July 23, 2009 / DB

You might wonder why I’ve not written a word about the Tour de France this month. After all, the Tour was a staple of my July posts during my first three years as a blogger. With Lance back on his bike again, why haven’t I been writing about it?

To be honest, I still don’t know what to think about Lance riding, nor what to expect from him. Is this a triumphant return or simply a ride driven by ego and hubris? Is he really trying to spread the word of his cause or to simply shut all the people up who have been chipping away at his legend since he retired? Should I want him to win or just race competitively and make it to Paris without any red flags being waved following a post-race pee-in-a-cup session?

I’ve been watching, and hoping Lance does well, but I am having a hard time answering all the questions. The drama between him and teammate Alberto Contador doesn’t help, as I have no idea who is right and who is wrong.

As I’ve written before, there is a compelling amount of evidence that he may not have been clean when he won seven straight Tours. But he also passed every drug test ever administered to him. I tend to believe most people are cheating, somehow, and the best are the ones who are well ahead of the testing curve. His return brings back all these conflicted feelings.

It’s also been sobering to watch him and expect that hammer to still be there; the destruction of people on climbs, his withering gaze as he passed them, or his superhuman efforts in time trials. Clearly he’s still a world-class rider, but age and the time off have robbed him of the power and speed that made him unique. He’s just another rider who hung in there until the final week then didn’t have enough to keep up with Contador as he pulled away.

I suppose it’s a reminder that comebacks of all kinds, while often inspiring and entertaining, rarely live up to the original act.

Gym Wrap Up

July 22, 2009 / DB

If I’m not mistaken, I never shared how our final sessions with our trainer went. I believe the last time I offered an update was in May. So we have some ground to cover.

Our final three or four sessions were focused on strength and then power. The strength weeks were pretty straight forward: heavy weights for low reps, generally 4-5 sets of only five reps. I have to admit the testosterone kicked in during these weeks as I started throwing some heavy weights around (or more correctly struggling to gently move them from a resting position) and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Until the next morning when all the stiffness set in. There were some especially brutal dead-lifts that nearly wrecked both my back and S.’s.

The power week was a mess. S. wasn’t able to make our session, so I was on my own. I had no idea what a power workout was going in. Turns out it’s a lot of jumping and leaping and squatting and whatnot. Then you throw medicine balls around for awhile. It nearly made me puke. We began with several series of jumps: first jumping onto progressively higher benches; then doing a lunge, jumping into the air, and landing in a lunge position with the opposite leg forward; squat-thrusts that ended with a vertical jump; and finally what I’ll call jump rope jumping in which you take a small hop, jump as high as you can while bringing your knees to your chest, and repeating. By the time we got to the first set of that final exercise, I was already sweating like crazy, struggling to catch my breath, and seeing spots. After that set my legs were like rubber and I started looking for a trashcan. I avoided purging, but did have to walk out the lactic acid on the treadmill. I chose to skip repeating any of those workouts the rest of that week.

So we wrapped up our work with the trainer the week before we went to Mexico. After a week or so off, I’ve started the workouts from the beginning, adding weight or more difficult apparatuses as needed. It’s pretty amazing to be doing squats on a Bosu with relative ease now compared to back in February when I could barely stay upright on one. I don’t think I’ve made dramatic, visible changes to my body, but I am definitely in better shape than I was when we started. Of course, I feel like I’m back to a fairly base level of fitness now and what I do from here on out will be the real benefit. I knew I was out of shape but it’s humbling to see how all the work I’ve done over six months just got me back to a point where I think I should have been to begin with.

I think I’ve said this in each of my summaries, but I really enjoyed our trainer’s approach. Regardless of phase or what kinds of workout tools we were using, we stuck to these basics: two lower body exercises, a chest exercise, a back exercise, a shoulder exercise, then a series of total body exercises and ending with ab work and yoga for stretching. We never did biceps curls or triceps extensions or any other exercises that focused on a single, secondary muscle group. At first I was a little confused by this, but as my fitness improved I could feel the total body portion of our workouts hitting all those groups in ways that were a lot more interesting than standing around and curling dumbbells.

By far my favorite total body exercise is what our trainer called grannies: you hold a medicine ball in front of you with your arms extended, squat down letting the weight drop between your legs, then explode up lifting the weight up over your head. He recommended thinking of trying to throw the weight as high, straight above your head as you could. Without actually throwing it, of course. When we started these in week three, they just about knocked me out. Not unlike the power workout, I would be sweating, struggling to breath, and trying not to pass out when we got to set three. By May, though, when I had firmed up my core strength and my knees weren’t creaking quite as much, I started to really dig them. I was still gassed at the end of set three, but now it was like how I feel after a good, hard run. We did a few variations on these, sometimes going from left foot to right shoulder and vice versa for example. If you want to do a basic exercise that hits everything, I highly recommend these.

So yeah, I’m in better shape than I was back in February. There’s still room for improvement. I didn’t do a lot of cardio work in conjunction with our weight work, so my goal for this second time through is to run at least a couple times a week. I do notice strength that I didn’t used to have, especially in my core muscle groups, and some of the little aches and pains I used to have in my knees and back are not nearly as noticeable as they used to be. I think that’s a sign that this routine was a success.

“I Want To Live, Breath. I Want To Be Part Of The Human Race.”

July 20, 2009 / DB

I’m kind of fascinated by the coming copyright wars. That may be a bit dramatic, but there’s no doubt that the digital age and the explosion of the Internet are ripping apart all the current copyright laws. The old media companies take their heads out of the sand only long enough to entrench themselves deeper in the old system and maybe punish both their customers and the agents attempting to help ease their path into the new age along the way.

There appears to be a happy ending on the horizon for Internet radio, although I wouldn’t put it past the various interested parties on the IP side of the debate to find a way to screw it up before everything is said-and-done.

On the other hand is the developing situation at YouTube. The site was recently hit with a massive judgement for royalties owed for songs that they host. Organizations like ASCAP appear ready to go after websites that link to those videos as well, although they seem to make a distinction between commercial blogs and Joe Blows like myself with personal blogs and a dozen or so readers.

With that in mind, and as an F-you to the old media oligarchs who refuse to admit their age has passed, here’s a stunning video of Radiohead absolutely ripping “The Bends” apart. Watching this makes me want to run around the block as fast as I can or do 1000 push ups or find some other way of burning off the energy it creates.

youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAKFSnQdhvE&hl=en&fs=1&

I’ll throw this out there, as well. No one – not Nirvana, not Pearl Jam, not Soundgarden, nor anyone else – had two albums in the 90s as good as Radiohead’s The Bends and OK Computer. If I didn’t have my silly rule about only one album per artist, they would both be in my top ten albums of all time, with OK being my co-favorite of all-time.

R’s – Why Bother?

July 19, 2009 / DB

I’ve been searching for reasons to continue to pay attention to the Royals between now and the beginning of football season. It would be easier to spend my evenings listening to the Cardinals or Red Sox or Dodgers or some other contending team so the nights were full of entertainment rather than misery. I must admit, though, it is kind of like an auto race at this point. I’m just watching for the accidents. You really never know how this team is going to blow a game.

According to at least one transplanted Kansas Citian, though, the rest of the baseball world still cares about the Royals. That’s reason enough for me. For another week or two.

Fountains Of Greinke

In short, it’s been a rough 23 years. But it’s been a rough two decades for Pirates, Rangers, and Brewers fans too, with the D.C. area set to join us. What’s unique about the Royals’ struggles is that people like you – Dodgers and Sox and Yanks fans – seem, strangely, to care about the Royals.

Little Sister

July 14, 2009 / DB

Part Two of the B. girls update.

L.’s full of tricks, too.

She’s crawling like a mad-girl, all over the place and getting fast enough to be dangerous. A week or two ago you could put her down on the floor, run to the other side of the room and get something done. Now, she’s on your heels the entire time. I had to pick her up and move her back to the living room three times tonight when I was doing dishes.

She’s also pulling up on everything that she can get her hands on. We have a push walker that she has suddenly started moving around. I don’t think walking is imminent, but I bet she’ll be closer to C.’s 11 months than M.’s 13 months for starting to walk.

Tooth number four is just pushing through her gums. All four front ones appear to be coming in normally. We’ve been working to move her towards solid foods, but most of the time she shows no interest. Which is weird, because when we first busted the cereals and baby foods out she went right at them. For the past few weeks, though, anytime we feed her she literally spits the food out at us. We may need to try some different flavors, although even the sweeter foods don’t seem to do the trick. She does enjoy the occasional Cheerio. She’s also a big fan of eating paper, which isn’t something I shared with the pediatrician at her nine-month check-up.

Then again, the spitting food may not be related to food at all. One of her favorite things to do is to crawl around, play with her toys, while spitting and making raspberry noises the entire time. She’ll do that for 10 minutes straight some times.

We won’t talk about sleeping. It looks like we’ll go 1-3 when it comes to good sleepers in this family.

When she’s not tired or hungry, she’s about the happiest baby in the world.* I think this is my favorite stage, around nine months when they get mobile and develop personalities and are delighted by everything. I love how she’s not just interactive, but initiates play now. It’s such a clear and enjoyable sign that she’s not going to be a baby for a whole lot longer. I’m going to enjoy the next six months or so before the whining kicks in.

(I believe I’ve said that with all three girls. We’ve been very fortunate.)

Big Sisters

July 14, 2009 / DB

A long-overdue update on my crazy daughters, part one covering M. and C.

The last month has been dominated by swimming lessons and a new gymnastics class for the two big sisters. Each class reinforced much of what we already know about M. and C.’s personalities: M. is cautious to a fault while C. has no fear of anything physical.

For example, it took M. over three weeks of the four week swim lesson class to finally put her face in the water consistently. And even then she was just kind of bouncing in the water rather than kicking around like the other kids in her class. To be fair, she was by far the youngest kid in her class and most of the other kids seemed to be pretty comfortable and were learning how to actually swim. C., on the other hand, routinely dunked herself under the water and popped back up, screaming with delight. The last day of class, she even waded into the pool and kept going past the point where she was supposed to stop. She slipped, went under, and the lifeguard had to jump in to fish her out. If M. did that, she would avoid water for a month. Once C. stopped coughing, she was itching to wade back in again.

Still, M. did get a lot more comfortable in the pool. When we go to my in-laws’ pool, she now jumps in on her own and spends most of the time swimming around with the help of some water wings. Getting that comfort level is the most important thing at this age. Next year we can worry about learning strokes and whatnot. C., strangely enough, has become a little more cautious. I’m not sure if her going under spooked her, or if it’s just because the in-laws’ pool isn’t zero entry and she can’t keep her feet on the bottom, but she tends to stick around the steps and play there, and she doesn’t seem interested in jumping in from the side. Unlike M., she could use a good scare to teach her that she needs to pay attention to what she’s doing.

They started gymnastics the week we were in Mexico and have now been to three classes. They’re both in age-specific classes, but do basically the same things: tumble, walk on balance beams, jump on trampolines, swing on ropes and hop into foam pits, swing on rings, etc. They both love it, although again we see the differences in the two: C. is all-out all the time. She’s constantly running, jumping, rolling and the teachers often have to bring her back to the station they’re working at because she has wandered off to another area. M., as usual, always has one foot on the brake. When she heads down a runway towards a ramp to tumble, she runs full-speed, then comes to a stop at the ramp and carefully hoists herself up before summersaulting into the pit.

At the end of each class the kids climb onto a big net that hangs from the ceiling, wind their arms and legs through it, and then their teachers walk it back-and-forth so it swings. Then, they all get to pick a treat out of a candy basket. The first week I went, C. picked out a super sour jawbreaker. Her teacher asked her if she was sure that’s what she wanted, and C. said yes. The teacher said, “She would be the one to try that.” Of course she hated it, but even when it comes to sweets she’s fearless.

Those are the big activities we’ve planned for the summer. Swim lessons took up June. Gymnastics last until mid-August. We bust out the wading pool and water mat a couple times each week, and head to the in-laws’ pool about as often.

Fortunately, the girls play together really well. Most of the time. I have to yell at M. to stop telling C. what to say and do about 40 times a day. They’ll be playing in the other room and I’ll hear something like this:
M: “Let’s play Grandma. I’ll be the Grandma.”
C: “OK!”
M: “C., you say, ‘Grandma, I want some cake.'”
C: “Grandma, I want some cake.”
M: “OK, now say…”
D: “M.! Stop telling her what to say!”
M: “Sorry. C., say…”

They have games called both Grandma and Mama. I have no idea what the particulars of either game are, but they play them both each day. They also enjoy ripping leaves off of trees, collecting flowers that we’ve trimmed, and then “planting” them somewhere in the mulch. They don’t understand why we don’t have new trees and flowers sprouting from all over the place.

Coming in part two, an update on L..

R’s – Midseason Ugh

July 13, 2009 / DB

There’s not much to talk about that hasn’t already been covered on the real Royals blogs. The team sucks – this weekend they managed to not score when Bannister went 7+ giving up only one run and lost, scored nine runs the next night and still lost by six, then were shut-out again on Sunday – and at times it looks like some of the team is giving up. I was listening to games over the weekend and you can almost predict when someone is going to boot a room-service ground ball or toss a potential inning-ending double-play ball into right field. Poz even busted out a “Here Are All The Ridiculous Things That Have Happened This Season, So Far” column today, and it stands up with all the dumb things the Royals have done for the past decade.

Then there are the trades. I mentioned the Ryan Freel trade last week. Then came the real doozy, two young arms for a shortstop that every statistical measure shows is one of the worst players in the majors over the past three seasons. I’ve looked at that deal from every angle (I’m not even going to bother to learn how to spell his name. Let’s just call him Y). The only justification I can come up with is that Dayton Moore thinks things are so bad that Y is worth the risk, understanding he may completely wash out. Now I don’t think that’s the case, Moore has been in love with Y for years, but that’s the only benefit-of-the-doubt argument I can find. “We’ve been running Tony Pena, Jr, and Luis Hernandez out there for the last month. Can this guy be any worse? And if he pans out, I’ll look like a genius!” Argh.

(I tend to agree with Rany’s suggestion: this season is over. Put Bloomquist at short for the remainder of the year. With Gordon coming off the DL, Teahen becomes the super-sub (unless/until he’s traded). If you really love Y that much, chances are he’s going to be available for free when the season is over. Cortes may not pan out, but why take the risk of trading away a promising arm for a 27-year-old shortstop that is clearly in decline?)

Things are so bad one prominent Royals blog busted out an “<a href=”http://www.royalsreview.com/2009/7/11/946005/i-quit-as-a-royals-fan-mad-lib”>I Quit As A Royals Fan</a>” Madlib this morning.

I do think I found what the Royals really need, though. After reading the Sports Illustrated, Where Are They Now? article about Earl Weaver, I checked YouTube for some of the Earl’s greatest arguments and came across this epic Dick Hauser explosion. Simpler times, because I don’t ever remember hearing about this and that was back when I lived-and-died with the R’s. Perhaps something like this would get them playing halfway decent ball again. Not that Trey should try this. I think they’d just laugh at him.