Tag: personal (Page 5 of 10)

Strange Beginnings

January 5, 2016 / DB

Another weird start to the New Year.

Just like in 2015, this New Year’s Day I received a call that a close relative was experiencing some serious health issues. While last year I had a day to prepare to travel, this time it required me to pack a bag and get in the car immediately. I spent the weekend mostly sitting in hospital rooms with the relative, returning home late last night.

I don’t want to share too many details, but I can say that in general, things are looking better. As I drove Friday night, the situation appeared rather serious. It has improved, but we’re still waiting on results from a series of tests that were done yesterday to try to figure out exactly what the problems are, what is causing them, and how to move forward.

It was a scary, confusing, and sobering weekend. My relative has been very proactive about making plans for ensuring that health care and legal decisions would be squared away should there be a time where they couldn’t make those on their own. All those responsibilities fall on me in this case. I admit I was very aware of the weight of that role this weekend.

For the moment it appears we’ve dodged another bullet. But there remains a lot of uncertainty about the future, both short- and long-term.

One More for 2015

December 31, 2015 / DB

Last day of the year, so a few moments to reflect are in order.

2015 was a strange year. Many good things. A few not-so-good things. Some frustrations mixed in as well.

The year got off to a bad start for me. As many of you know, a close relative was going through some serious health issues this time last year. In fact, on New Year’s Day we had a series of phone calls that were a pretty terrible way to kick off the year. On January 1, 2015, it seemed like the next few months, or perhaps only weeks, would be very difficult. I spent the next weekend in a hospital in Missouri, hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. Amazingly, things did turn better. I’m convinced this relative has nine lives, and while they are not exactly the picture of good health today, they are still with us.

Being a procrastinator of the first order, I allowed that to keep me from using early 2015 to figure out what to do with the hours in the day when the girls are in school. Once that cloud had lifted, spring break was right around the corner. Then the end of the school year. And so on. So as I sit here on December 31, the picture is no clearer about what I can and should do to fill that time each day. I’m hoping to be a little more motivated in the coming weeks and find something to occupy myself.

On to the good things. That spring break trip to Florida was fantastic. Well, other than the drive.
The girls had fun playing volleyball, soccer, softball, kickball, swimming, and running cross country.
Another summer of great memories at the LVS, which dodged an epic series of storms in early July.
There were lots of bike rides and walks through nature parks.
The whole family read tons of books.
Each girl grew just a little older, which is truly a bittersweet process. This Christmas season especially I missed the raw happiness that comes with having a bunch of little ones. It’s not that they didn’t enjoy the season. But their collective mood was definitely changed from years past.

S. continued to be successful in her job. I played a very small part in it, but the paper I work for was named best in Indiana this year, after winning best sports section a year ago.

And as much as I hate to admit it, the Royals winning the World Series was likely the highlight of my year. I mean, all the kid stuff came first. Obviously. But any time I think back to those four weeks in October, I get giddy like I’m 11 again. I loved getting Christmas cards from friends in KC where the family was posed in Royals shirts, or at a game, or the World Series parade. It’s silly that sports mean so much to me, I know. But in a year that was stagnant personally, a bunch of guys who wear the jersey of my hometown team winning the World Series was about the greatest fun I had over the past year.

A few of my close friends have had more trying years than I. To them I say, despite the pain, loss, and despair, we made it through. The simple act of hanging a new calendar tomorrow doesn’t change any of that. But 2016 is an opportunity to make new beginnings, create new relationships, and have amazing new experiences. Embrace the new year.

Happy New Year to you all. Thanks for reading.

More Of The Old This ‘n’ That

November 23, 2015 / DB

The holiday season is officially here! Which you know gets my juices going.

It was weird to be sitting in Arizona last weekend, switching around TV channels while S. was in her conference session, and coming across a Christmas cookie show while it was pushing 80 outside. I spent one year in northern California – we moved west the week before Christmas 1987 – and it was odd to my Midwestern core for it to be in the 50s and 60s over the entire school break. Living farther south, where it is summer-like during the holidays, would be even weirder.

As my Facebook friends know, I got a little head start on the holiday season, violating one of my self-imposed, admittedly silly rules. Saturday it snowed here. Hard. For 4–5 hours. We ended up with about 2” of snow when it stopped. Had it not been near 60 on Friday and the ground been warm, we likely would have had closer to 4”. Between the Winter Wonderland scene and a phone call from my friend Omar in KC, in which she told me she had listened to “Feliz Navidad” on her way home Friday, I cracked and flipped the radio over to SiriusXM’s Holiday Traditions station while I was running errands Saturday. A blatant violation of my prohibition against listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

I regret nothing.

You know who started their Christmas celebrations too early, though? The jackasses who decided to park a Santa at one of our local malls the FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER, that’s who. They need a punch in the head.

Also the Gap, which was already mixing Christmas music into their store music feed back in October. They suck.

I was in Office Depot or Office Max – they’re the same to me – last week and there were Christmas tunes BLASTING on the internal PA. Man, I love Christmas music, but to have to listen to it at that volume for six weeks? No wonder folks in retail get homicidal this time of year.

I began recording Christmas shows Saturday, and C. and L. watched both The Grinch and Elf on the Shelf last night. I don’t have too many years left where they’ll want to watch them, so I have no problem with them watching before Thanksgiving.

And now some other random notes.

A couple travel notes I forgot to share.

While we were waiting to drop our bags at the Phoenix airport, I had a couple interesting encounters. As we inched through the line, there was a family with a young boy, I’d guess he was 4 or 5, right behind us. Apparently he was tired of waiting and began kicking my suitcase. As first he just tapped it. Then he began kicking the crap out of it. His parents didn’t do anything at first. Then, just as I was turning around to give them a look, the dad yelled, “Hey, knock it off!” As I looked back I saw the entire family was wearing Philadelphia Eagles jerseys. I smiled at the boy and said, “I should have known it was an Eagles fan.” As soon as the words escaped my mouth I wondered if I had just made a terrible mistake. Philly fans aren’t know for their warm, fuzziness. Was I about to get my ass beat in the bag drop line for making a sarcastic comment about their fandom?

There was no need to worry. The parents laughed and admitted it has been a difficult fall to be an Eagles fan. I mentioned I was from Indy and the Colts weren’t exactly having the finest season themselves. It all turned out fine.

Later, as we continued to work through the line, we were talking about our friend who always gets pulled out of line for extra security measures. The only reason he can figure is that they do it because his head is shaved.

I mentioned that when I first began flying for work in 2002, I booked a lengthy west coast trip that lasted nearly two weeks.[1] Because of my jumping around the western quarter of the US, all my flights were booked as one-way flights. Which, in 2002, was an automatic red flag. Before every single flight I got pulled out of line at the gate and had my bag and body searched behind the little screen that was just to the side of the boarding area. Twice flights had to be held while security agents went through every single item in my possession. Including, I said to my friends in Phoenix, my contacts case.

As our line doubled-back on itself, a guy behind us chimed in.

“I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you saying they searched your contact case. That’s where my buddy puts his pot when he flies, because they never search it.”

OK then.

There haven’t been any Reporter’s Notebooks in awhile because I haven’t covered any events since the first week of October. We’ve been busy, and I’m finding it harder to make the long drives I’ve made in recent years to cover games for my paper.

I did get to drive down to Milan in late September. Milan, if it doesn’t ring a bell immediately, is the town/school that won the 1952 Indiana boys high school championship. Which was the team that the movie Hoosiers was based on. I was hoping to get to walk around and check out the museum, but didn’t have enough time before kickoff.

The town, in many ways, feels like it’s still stuck in the early 50s. There are hand-painted signs saying “1952 Champs – Straight Ahead” as you enter town. Milan High School are the Indians. Which, whatever. But there is a bar/restaurant down the street that is called The Teepee. Which is a little weird. But the strangest thing was some of the Milan fans let out an Indian war cry when their team does something good. You know, the noise you made when you were little and played cowboys and indians, patting your lips with your palm. I imagine 20 years ago a lot more people did it. And 50 years ago? The sound was probably deafening.

The next week I was covering a game where Broad Ripple, David Letterman’s high school, traveled south to play a school down near our lake house. Now Broad Ripple is not the most affluent school in the world. Or even in Indianapolis. And they tend to suck in sports. Also, it was a chilly, dreary night. But there was exactly one person in the visiting stands that night. And she was the cheerleading squad’s coach or coordinator or whatever. It was so sparse that when I arrived, and the team was still in the locker room, I wondered if the bus hadn’t made it, or we were about to see a forfeit. I felt sorry for the Broad Ripple kids that no one in their families wanted or were able to make the 45-minute drive to watch them get their asses kicked. The final was 56–8.

Finally, I was lined up to cover the Class 4A football state championship game this weekend. IF the Catholic school we cover, RHS, won their semi-state game last Friday. They were on the road, down near Cincinnati, playing a team they beat by 21 in the regular season. I downloaded the app of a radio station down that way that was airing the game so I could listen. RHS fell behind 14–0 early. They had a long drive to start the third quarter but turned the ball over on downs inside the five yard line. They got an interception but gave it right back. They ended up losing 21–0. So no trip to Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend for me.

Big mistake. That was brutal. But I did spend the weekend with friends to break it up. ↩

Weekend In The Sun

November 16, 2015 / DB

We had a relatively fantastic weekend. I say relatively because that only applies if you enjoy fall weekends in warm locales sans children.

After years of talking about it, S. finally signed up for a medical conference outside of Indianapolis. A few years back we were on the verge of signing up to spend a weekend in New Orleans. Another time we strongly considered going to San Antonio. Each time either something else came up or we just put it off too long and weren’t able to plan the trip.

But we finally caved and flew out Thursday with one of her partners and her husband, someone I hang out with a little bit. They had friends attending as well, and when we walked into our hotel, they already had a round of drinks set up for us. Talk about a good start to the weekend!

The conference was at the Biltmore in Phoenix, which was a pretty spectacular location. Amazing architecture, a pretty relaxed setting, and a nice feeling of isolation even though downtown Phoenix was 10 minutes away and the sprawling suburbs of Scottsdale were right over the property line.

The ladies were in sessions most of the day Friday and Saturday. My buddy is a big baseball fan – and a Cardinals fan at that – and came up with the genius idea of going to an Arizona Fall League game Friday. It just so happened that the Royals and Cardinals put their prospects on the same team (along with the Yankees and Rangers) and were playing 10 minutes away on Friday afternoon. We cruised over and walked up to the stadium just before 11:30, an hour before first pitch. There was a line at least 60 people long to get in! Turned out a lot of those folks were autograph hounds, ready to pounce on prospects in hopes they turn out to be stars some day. By the time we procured our $8, general admission tickets, all those people had scurried down to the left field wall where the players slowly came out of the clubhouse to warm up.

The highlight of the day for me – well other than sitting right off the field, drinking a beer in the warm Arizona sun, and watching baseball on November 13 – was getting to see Royals prospect Bubba Starling up close. We were less than 10 feet away as he signed for some of the hounds. I’m not much on autographs, so I just snapped a picture and watched. My buddy got an autograph from one of the Cardinals prospects for his kids.

title

Then we hung out and watched baseball for a couple hours. The ball flew, so we saw a few homers. Bubba was 1–2 and flawless in the field in the six innings we watched.[1] We were sitting near some folks who had to be related to him. He talked to them at length before the game and then they cheered loudly for him during the game.

Also, it was pretty damn cool to walk around wearing my Royals World Series champions shirt. Especially with some Mets and Blue Jays fans wandering around. Not a bad way to spend the day.

Then back to the resort, where we met our wives at the pool. One of my sisters-in-law just happened to be in town as well, so she joined us for a bit. A nice dinner topped off the day.

Saturday was a nice, lazy day. I took a five-mile walk in the morning.[2] S. had a shorter day so we grabbed lunch at the pool and then sat and baked for a bit. I saw a few more folks with Royals shirts on. And sat near a Mets fan who appeared to making serious efforts not to catch my eye. Then a dinner with the two other couples.

S. had a quick session Sunday morning before we departed for the airport at 9:00.

All-in-all, a pretty good weekend getaway. We agreed we have to do this again and more often.

I read that Saturday he got the extremely rare 9–2 force out at home. I assume he was playing shallow. ↩
A variety of old-man ailments kept me out of the gym and from running. ↩

On Pet Peeves and Quotes

October 20, 2015 / DB

Over the weekend we had a conversation with the girls about pet peeves. We took turns sharing what some of our biggest ones were, which ended up being pretty funny. S. and I made most of ours about things the girls do that make us crazy. And the girls each chose ones that had to do with their sisters.

The clip below from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight would have been perfect had I decided to share a few of my real pet peeves with the girls. Misquotations in general bother me, but when people throw out a reference to the generic “Founding Fathers” that is clearly ignorant of history, it makes me go a little insane.

People, of all ideological stripes, who try to make modern political arguments based on the beliefs of the “Founding Fathers” are either stupid or intentionally ignoring some very important facts.

1) The “Founding Fathers” were not a monolith. They were not George Washington and his cronies. Or even Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and a bunch of lackeys. There were dozens of Founding Fathers. They would not put a rubber stamp opinion on Obamacare, Roe v. Wade, or immunizations if asked.

2) The Founders were a cantankerous group who disagreed on many aspects of how their new nation should be governed. As ridiculous as it is to believe that you could pick up Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc. and plop them down in the modern world and their views would be completely consistent with the ones they held nearly 250 years ago, it is even more ridiculous to insist that there was a singular view of government among the Founders that we can apply to governing in 2015.

3) Finally, what so many of these knuckleheads ignore is that the Constitution – a document some in our country believe to be a perfect, unalterable tract on par with the Bible – was a big, fucking compromise. Urban states compromised with rural states. Abolitionists compromised with slave owners. Maritime states compromised with states focused on internal trade. And so on. Yet modern politicians are blasted for making compromises with their ideological opponents and accused of selling out the Constitution.

All this make me batty.

Listen, it’s fine to say you believe something because of the principles John Jay or John Adams stood for when our nation was being formed. Or that you admire how Alexander Hamilton looked at the world. It’s another to claim that the “Founding Fathers” all believed the exact same thing, would not have changed that view over time, and we need to adhere strictly to those 18th century views. Whether you’re arguing for gun control, against universal health care, or about who gets to choose when we go to war, stop insisting that “The Founding Fathers” should get final say in the decision.

Oh, and now for the clip. Which, I admit, goes a little broader than my little rant there. But it’s a useful piece of advice: before you slap a quote from someone who has inspired you on your email signature or Facebook page, do some checking and make sure they actually said it.

https://youtu.be/Tu_bmX344nY

Summer 2015 Cap

April 23, 2015 / DB

Lost in the early baseball season rush, I’ve forgotten to share something very important with you: my summer 2015 cap choice.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised I haven’t received angry emails demanding I reveal my pick.

Allow me to rectify.

I found myself in a bit of a quandary this year. Last year’s cap is still in decent shape. And there was a lot of good luck contained inside of it. If you don’t fuck with good luck in any sport, it’s baseball. Maybe I should just go with the ’14 hat a little longer.

I do love to buy a new hat, though. It seemed wrong to deprive myself of one of the simple pleasures of spring.

Which led to my other quandary: last year I wore a regular, replica Royals hat, an adjustable version of what the team wears on the field. I had not done that since at least high school, and likely middle school. And then the Royals not only break their 29-year playoff drought, but they get to game seven of the World Series. If I’m replacing the hat I wore during that run, should I still stick with the standard, royal blue, KC cap? You know, messing with a streak and all.

That seemed boring to me. If I’m buying a new cap, it needs to be different. After all, my spring tradition isn’t to buy a new version of the same hat I wore the year before, and the year before, and the year before… That’s something Yankees fans do.

So I ran off to the Rally House and began paging through their offerings. I am a bit picky in what I throw onto my head. First, I don’t do silly. Second, because my hat size changes by between 1/8 and 1/4 inch between haircuts, I can’t do fitted caps without trying them on in person. And while I don’t mind wearing something that is evocative of Kansas City in general but perhaps not the Royals specifically,[1] given their recent success, I would like the hat to be quickly identifiable as a Royals hat.[2]

After hours of careful consideration, I had five finalists. I poured over the details of each cap, making sure I was familiar with the brand, and thus fit. Was I sure I could wear that color for the next year? Did the back have the adjustment device that I get the best results from?

In the end, one winner was clear. I placed an order and it arrived, conveniently, on Opening Day. And it appears I ordered it just in time, because it is no longer available on the Rally House’s website. I like that is not the traditional royal blue, but still close enough to the Royals’ main color. I dig the old school KC. And yet the back is stamped with “Royals,” so it is clear that I’m supporting Kansas City’s current team.

Thus, I present my cap for the summer of 2015, and beyond.

Dope Ass Hat

All ya’ll can rest easier now.

In the past I’ve worn a couple Kansas City Monarchs hats, a KC A’s hat, and a couple “fashion” Royals hats. One of those was a pretty cool, deep gray color with the KC logo in blue. That was a great hat. Then I wore it one day while kayaking with a friend in late July and ruined in by pouring gallons of sweat into it. ↩
I have a pretty fly 1960 Kansas City Athletics hat that I wear on occasion (It’s fitted, and I can only wear it late in my hair cut cycle). I love the way it looks, but since the Royals are good now, I don’t want people asking me “What team is that?” which happens pretty much every time I wear that cap. ↩

Back In The Day

August 27, 2014 / DB

I recently began following Chris Jaffe on Twitter. His claim to fame is that each day he tweets out a bunch of reasons why that date is significant. For example, here’s what his feed looked like this morning.

Jaffe

Anyway, a couple weeks back I noticed he mentioned that the Rolling Stones album Steel Wheels had been released exactly 25 years earlier. I’m not a huge fan of the Stones, but I immediately thought about what the singles were from that album. The first was “Mixed Emotions,” probably their last good song. And, as my brain tends to do, I tried to think of where that song fell in my life. That was easy: it was climbing the charts and in heavy rotation during my first weeks of college.

A little more checking and I figured that I went off to college on August 20, 1989. So I just passed the 25th anniversary of my first week of college.

Yikes.

Or, rather, it was the anniversary of my first week at college. I don’t know if dorms still open a week before classes, but back then we had Hawk Week, colloquially known as Country Club Week, where you moved into your residence, paid your tuition, picked up your books, dropped some more money at the bookstore on important things like t-shirts and sweatshirts, and otherwise spent a week doing a lot of nothing waiting for classes to begin. Well, nothing during the day. The lack of classes was an excuse to drink yourself silly each night.

That first night of college life was a big deal for me. Two good friends from high school were going to KU with me, but neither showed up until later in the week. I had a roommate from Nebraska who, after introducing himself, took off to hang out with some guys he knew from Omaha. Eventually I hooked up with some sophomores across the hall, who offered me a couple beers while we sat around and watched A Fish Called Wanda on someone’s tiny TV. While I didn’t become fast friends with that crew immediately, a significant chunk of them were people I stayed close with through college. A couple of them are still good friends to this day. So that was a pretty solid night.

My other memories of that week are just walking around campus, learning how the bus routes worked, and wondering when the hot girls looking for love would magically appear in my room.¹ I had my first crush almost immediately, a nice girl who I became casual friends with but never liked me as much as I wanted her to.² Amazingly, there’s a shirt up in my dresser that I bought that week that I still wear regularly, although the sleeves were long ago cut off and it’s just worn for mowing the lawn or working out at home.

It’s crazy for me to think about M. being 10 and me having been a primary caregiver for a decade. But then to think that it’s been 25 years since I started college is crazier still.

The answer was never. ↩
A recurring theme for the next several years. ↩

The Struggle

August 5, 2014 / DB

My life, like pretty much everyone’s, has been full of ups and downs. Triumphs and tragedies. Successes and sadness. The last week or so has been one of the toughest in my life.

Yes, I’m off caffeine.

Good lord is it difficult.

Until yesterday I had been plagued by headaches when my body realized, mid-morning, that no caffeine would be flooding my system.

I am at a loss at what to do in the mornings, as brewing and enjoying coffee has been part of my routine since I left the corporate world a decade ago.

And then there are the afternoon yawns. Even with caffeine I struggled in the late afternoons when my energy lags. The last week has been even worse. I took two of the girls to the pool yesterday and kept nodding off while trying to read. At least I didn’t wake up with drool running down my chin and kids pointing at me and laughing.

I would love to have avoided this. But coffee, and caffeinated beverages in general, have been causing me some health issues for several months. I’ve experimented with tea instead of coffee most days since the spring. But even with that change the issues were only scaled back slightly. So I figured I’d give the caffeine-free thing a shot and see if anything changed. The early results are slightly better, but not as much as I would have liked. Which could be a blessing. If the caffeinated beverages only increase the symptoms rather than cause them, I can go back to chugging tons of coffee each morning, right?

I guess I shouldn’t give myself that kind of hope. The headaches are becoming weaker. I’ve yet to pop any Advil today, so perhaps my body is detoxed. Then again, I drank some Milk Chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast this morning, which I’m assuming as a little caffeine in it. But no other issues. So perhaps that will be my new morning routine. It’s not quite as fun as brewing a pot of French Press and drinking it for half an hour.

This is right up there with parenting a two-year-old when it comes to difficult things I’ve had to get through. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Home Again

July 31, 2014 / DB

It was an incredibly long week, but also an incredibly fast week.

Thanks to all of those in Kansas City who helped me out in some way over the past week. Whether you offered me lodging, legal advice, companionship at lunch, a beer and room on your couch to watch the Royals, or just moral support, it was much appreciated.

There were parts of the week that were very good. I saw several relatives I had not seen in a long time. It was good to catch up with some, and really just begin to get to know some others. Our memorial activities were small, but still fine ways to remember my dad.

Others weren’t so great, though. My dad was always a bit of a mystery to me. That’s not a huge surprise given that most of the last 30 years we saw each other occasionally at best, and not at all for nearly a decade. I never harbored ill will toward him. We just went different directions for a variety of reasons. This week I learned things about him that elicited sadness, anger, and left me dumbfounded. It’s unsettling to discover that a person who provided half of your DNA had a profoundly unhappy and difficult life.

I’m not big on regret, and I would not change most of the aspects of my relationship with my dad that were in my control. I do wish, though, that he had found more joy, success, and comfort in his life.

Traveling

July 28, 2014 / DB

I’ll be gone for a couple days.

As many of you know, my dad died last week. I’m off to attend his memorial service and begin the process of dealing with his estate.

I’ve debated whether to write much about this. It’s no secret my dad and I were not close, and had not been for many, many years. Other than my wife, few know the details of why that was the case. That’s not because there’s some dark story behind it. It’s just because we both made choices that set us in different paths, and, eventually, we were no longer in each other’s lives.

I’ve written down many thoughts over the past few days. Whether I share those with you or not, I’m still not sure. It seems weird to have kept so much in for so long and then share it here. Then again, that’s kind of what I do here, share, right?

So I guess we’ll see is what I’m saying.

Anyway, expect no new posts until Thursday, at the earliest.