Tag: personal (Page 6 of 10)

On Throwing Things Out

July 24, 2014 / DB

As promised, the second of two nostalgia-focused entries.

Last week I spent some time cleaning out our attic and some boxes in a basement closet. I don’t have a ton of old stuff left around. I purged much of it when I moved away from Kansas City 11 years ago. But there were still a few boxes with fun memories of my youth in them.

The biggest box contained all my old Star Wars and GI Joe toys. Nothing was in collectable condition, so I decided to unload them on the girls. Now, keep in mind that they’ve never seen any of the Star Wars movies, nor any GI Joe cartoons. But they happily played with them for hours and hours. Seriously, it was the best behaved they have been all summer. I should have done this weeks ago! Some of the novelty has faded, but L. especially loves playing with the Millennium Falcon, the X-Wing fighter, and the GI Joe F-14. I found one GI Joe action figure separated into two pieces. Apparently he stepped on a land mine or something.

Another box contained an over-flowing scrapbook that I started during the 1980 American League Championship Series and World Series. All kinds of other random sports memories are crammed into it. I didn’t look through it too much, but I did find a few gems in my brief investigation.

First, I found the stat sheet my 1984 Little League coach handed out at the end of that season. This was a good year, as we went 14-2 and won the championship series two games to one. It was also my first year in a tougher league, and as usual when I was on the bottom half of the age bracket, I struggled. I hit just .229 for the season. But, I wasn’t afraid to take a walk¹, and managed to get an impressive .485 on base percentage. I was ahead of my time! Throw in the fact that I could run down about anything hit to center field, and Billy Beane would have loved me. Had I not been 12/13 and about to enter eighth grade, of course.

Also in that scrapbook was the Kansas City Star Fall TV preview section from 1985. On the cover? Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas from Miami Vice. No wonder I saved it!

The impetus for this process was a sister-in-law’s impending yard sale. For years I’ve held on to a massive box of CDs. This thing is huge; it’s damn near impossible to pick up, so I kept it on the floor of our basement closet. After much deep soul searching, I decided to go ahead and send 95% of the disks to the sale. Most of the songs I still listen to are already on my hard drives. And it’s been years since I went down and dug out a disk to rip a song that I was missing. I was far more likely just to buy the track from iTunes or Amazon than waste time going through the box. And I figure with the impending age of streaming music, anything I want to listen to will never be that far away.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel some pangs of doubt when I handed the box over. There was a lot of time and money put into amassing this collection. It was especially difficult to decide whether to give up my large collection of Pearl Jam import singles. But, again, they’re all on my hard drives already, and I can find most of them quickly on Rdio when I need to. So they all went.

After the review, I saved just a handful of disks. All my Pearl Jam live albums. Some by local bands that I knew would be tough to track down if I did want to listen to them in whole some day. And then a handful that are in my “all time favorites” list. Hopefully the rest find a good home.

Probably the funnest thing about digging through that box was seeing how my tastes changed over the years. There were plenty of “pop” artists in there. There was still a lot of early 90s R&B. ² A small pile of jazz disks. Some cheesy soundtracks probably purchased to have around in case girls liked them. And then loads and loads of “alternative rock” artists.

As with any time I decide to either pitch or give away stuff, I struggle with the accounting behind the transactions. I think of how much money went into buying these disks/clothes/books/etc. and what their worth is now. As with the Star Wars toys, nothing in these boxes was rare or in pristine condition. The value today is almost completely based on my memories of their time in my possession. This CD helped me through a rough time. I read that book during one of the best summers of my life. And so on.

I suppose the bottom line of this exercise is, since I got my own credit cards and income during and after college, I’ve always bought too much stuff.

Or maybe I was afraid to swing. I don’t recall. ↩
I had sent the bulk of those disks over a few years ago for another yard sale. ↩

Looking Back

July 23, 2014 / DB

The first of two nostalgia-laden posts. My apologies; I’m a writer in my 40s. I can’t help myself.

This morning I finally wrapped up my review of the old posts here on the site. I won’t promise everything is completely cleaned up. But the number of posts with unreadable HTML segments smack in the middle of a sentence should be fairly low.

I didn’t read the posts closely while going through this exercise. I’d still be working had I done so. But a few observations from reviewing 11 years of writing.

I begin a lot of posts with the contraction “I’ve…”. I noticed this because in many of those posts the apostrophe had been converted to the code that tells browsers to insert an apostrophe. So I had to replace them often. Anyway, now I have a complex about it and will do my best to not begin posts with that contraction again.
I watched a lot more TV in the first, say six years, of the site than I do. That’s not a surprise in many ways, given our current cable-less state. But even when we were still rocking the whole Uverse package, it’s been years since I sat and watched hours of TV the way I did back in 2003-08. Probably a good thing. Although not all those hours were with kids. S. and I used to watch a lot of TV together. We spend most of our evenings working on computers or reading now.
I didn’t do a complex study of how the tone of the site has changed, but it clearly has. I think in the early days I was trying hard to be funny and carve out a niche as some kind of humorous social commentator. I imagine I was reading a lot of blogs that had that general tone and I was just mimicking it. And I wonder if some of my current tone is informed by writing for a paper and having to stick to the no-nonsense, all facts AP style. Granted there’s plenty of nonsense here still. I think the way I present said nonsense has changed, though.
Another big change, and this is mostly on me, is a different feeling in terms of the site being a community or conversation. In the early days I referred to this site as an online postcard to my friends scattered around the county. Since I allowed comments in the early days, I think that often turned into a multi-person discussion, even if just one or two friends added their thoughts to a post. Blame comment spam and my annoyance with it. Also, though, our lives have all changed a lot in the last 11 years. Those of you working now often have fancy titles before or after your names, where you were just employees or “associates” a decade ago. And most of us have added spouses and kids, so free time outside of work can’t be spent coming up with witty comments for my silly blog posts. Besides, that time is taken up posting witty comments to Facebook and Twitter, anyway! We’ve all changed a lot, my friends.
I write about politics a lot less than I used to. Many reasons for that, none of which we need to go into now. I would imagine even folks that see the world through the same ideological perspective as I do are thankful I’m not writing 3500 rambling words about this issue or that anymore.
It amused me greatly to read my posts about the various changes in look or platform for the site. Always so excited about the fun opportunities the latest change brought. Always to be rehashed 18 months later when I made the next change.

Running this site is one of the most consistent things I’ve done in my life. I started it two weeks into my marriage, and in my first week living in Indianapolis. I didn’t become a father until a year after the site’s first post. I’ve known a lot of you much longer than that, but time, distance, and circumstance means I see you all way less than I used to.

I don’t know how many of you read this regularly. I always imagine a certain friend is reading a specific post and taylor it for them. But even if no one is reading, it still scratches an itch that I have. I imagine the next 12 months will bring another round of life changes for me, as the girls go off to school and I look for a way to become at least a semi-productive member of society again. Given what this site means to me, don’t expect it to disappear just because I’m not spending 90% of my time at home with a computer handy.

Age Appropriate Fashion

May 22, 2014 / DB

There are many good aspects to being in your 40s.

In a lot of other ways, though, it bites the big one.

I could write for pages and pages about the downsides to being 40+. Rather than bore you with stories about how my back always hurts, my crappy eyesight, my deteriorating hearing, etc. I thought I would share this less personal observation.

I’m beginning to question how I dress. Only mildly, mind you. But still, sometimes I wonder if there is some vague line around 40, maybe 45, when you need to stop dressing like you’re in your 20s.

Examples: Should I wear as many shirts that proclaim my loyalty to my favorite teams, beers, or other cool products? As a middle-aged man shouldn’t I be wearing either name brand polo shirts or Tommy Bahama shirts if I’m going to dress casual?

Today I was buying a pair of shorts. My shorts tend to be monochromatic, usually khaki, black, or navy. Today, though, I picked up a pair that featured a muted plaid pattern of grays, blacks, and whites. They’re not garish, but neither are they the plain shorts I traditionally wear. Still, as I walked to the register, I wondered, “Am I too old to wear these?” Likely not, but I felt like I might be right up on the edge of whatever the highest age they would be suitable for.

Which is stupid. We’re long past the era where each age required a specific style of attire. Wear whatever is comfortable and fits your tastes, as long as you don’t look ridiculous.

It did help, though, that at St. P’s pickup today there was a dad/grandfather, clearly at least ten years older than me, wearing a surfing t-shirt and some stylish plaid shorts. If he can pull it off, I damn sure can.

Too Much Blue

April 23, 2014 / DB

Trees are budding out, lawns are greening up, mowers are being pulled out, allergies are popping up, and I’ve already got the first sunburn of the year.

Spring, at long last, has truly sprung.¹

Which brings the annual wardrobe reevaluation, pitching aside shirts that have survived a couple of summers and are worse for the wear, or that I’m just no longer fond of, and going through the fun process of replacing them.

When I look at the side of my closet where I hang my short-sleeved shirts, I realize something: I have too much blue. I’d say two-thirds of my shirts are some shade of blue. Then a significant chunk of that final third is some shade of gray.

I’m in a fashion rut, I suppose.

Part of that is explainable by a simple truth: just about every sports team I follow features blue as one of its primary colors.

KU: blue.
Royals: blue.
Colts: blue.
I don’t have a Pacers shirt currently, but odds are if I did, it would be blue rather than gold.
If I buy a shirt for the World Cup, it would either be for the US or Italy. Blue and blue, although an American shirt obviously gives me plenty of chances to get away from blue.

I try to mix things up, but I can’t help myself. Maybe it stems from wearing too many white t-shirts with graphics on them in high school and college, but I just don’t dig on white shirts that much. And, try as I might to get an alternate color shirt for one of my teams, I can’t help myself and always seem to walk away with another blue one.

When we were in Kansas City earlier this month, for example, I told myself all I would buy on my trip to the Rally House was a new Royals hat. Naturally I walked out with a new Royals hat and a blue KU shirt. I tried to find a red or white or even gray shirt that worked, but the ones that kept jumping out at me were blue.

Good grief.

So I spent hours over the weekend shopping for summer shirts that A) have nothing to do with sports and B) are not blue or dark gray. It was hard. Because each time I was drawn to the same old shades.

In the end I ordered a couple cool shirts, one red and the other green. Neither repping a team. It’s a start, I guess.

It did dip into the 30s last night/this morning. But that’s a blip, not a trend. ↩

I Am An Idiot

January 5, 2014 / DB

A – Many of you have been saying I’m an idiot for a long time.
B – Chiefs fan, you might want to skip this one.

I’ve been claiming, for years, that I’ve shed many of my sports superstitions. And that’s true to a point. Back in the glory days of my superstition-dom, game days involved elaborate ceremonies of picking the correct clothes, going through proper pre-game activities, finding the correct seat, saying and thinking the proper things before the game, and so on.

It’s all that shit I’ve (mostly) dumped. When the games begin, though, I can still be quite the freak. I change seats at halftime to try to improve my team’s luck. If my team is playing well, I won’t move, even if that means I have to sit in the same uncomfortable position for an hour-straight. Do I really need to use the restroom? Because we just scored ten straight points and I’d hate to ruin that.¹ I’m convinced Michigan made their comeback against KU last March because I switched beers late in the game.

So I still have some issues.

And those issues reared their ugly head Saturday.

When the Colts-Chiefs game went to halftime, with the Chiefs leading 31-10, I flipped the TV over to Netflix and told the girls they could pick a movie. I was done. It’s one thing for the Colts to get embarrassed at home in the playoffs. It’s another for it to happen against the Chiefs, my hometown team that I never had much love for.

They kicked off a movie, I grabbed my Kindle and started reading. After about 20 minutes I checked the score. Hey! The Colts scored. But, wait a minute. They’re still down 21. I scrolled back through the game summary to see Andrew Luck had thrown a quick interception and the Chiefs cashed it in for another TD.

Back to my book.

I checked a while later. The Colts had cut it to 14.

Normally, when I turn a game off in disgust and my team begins coming back, I start doing mental math. “If they get within XX points, I’m turning the game back on.” I did not go through that process Saturday. Even with the Chiefs’ long history of playoff heartbreak, I didn’t think there was a way they would blow this game.

At next check it was down to 10. The girls’ movie was just about over and I realized I might have a dilemma. The Colts had played like shit when I was watching and had just cut a huge deficit down to a reasonable one. Could I turn this game back on, and risk blowing it?

Uh-oh. Now it was three points.

We took the girls up to bed and I checked again. The Chiefs kicked a field goal to stretch it to six. In the 30 seconds it took to walk back down to the basement, Luck hit T.Y. Hilton and the Colts were up one.

I groaned and yelped and cursed.

S. gave me a look.

“The Colts are coming back and because of my stupid rules, I can’t turn the TV back on,” I muttered.

She just shook her head.

“They’re ahead! They were down 28 points! And I can’t turn it back on because I don’t want to mess it up.”

“Sounds like a dumb rule to me,” she said. “Seems like it’s a good way to miss a great game.”

I checked the score one more time. The Chiefs were driving.

“See, now I can’t turn it on. If I do, and the Chiefs score, it clearly has something to do with me watching.”

“I’ve told you this many times, baby…You’re. Not. In. The. Game.”

I stared at my phone screen, waiting to see how the Chiefs’ drive ended. The moment I saw they had turned the ball over on downs, I flipped the TV on. Thanks to the delay on Yahoo, I only saw the Colts running off the field in celebration. Which served me right.

What a game, what a comeback, what an amazing entry in both the Colts’ history and Andrew Luck’s personal story. You can argue, next to the Super Bowl win and the comeback in the AFC title game that year, this is the third biggest Indy sports moment since we moved here. And I fucking missed it because of my stupid, idiotic superstitions.

So yeah, I’m an idiot.

That’s right, we. ↩

Holiday Jihad #2

December 19, 2013 / DB

Before some kid notes, another holiday jihad for you.

Years ago I sent a Christmas card to the parents of a college buddy. I found out later I had misspelled his mother’s name – I thought her name was Lara but it was actually Lura – and I was horrified. I quickly apologized and she shook it off, saying I wasn’t the first to make the mistake.

There’s a simple act of respect that goes into getting someone’s name right. It shows you value your relationship with them. That’s why I get all fired up when someone misspells a name on the address label of a Christmas card.

One family in particular has been sending us cards for nearly a decade with my wife’s last name spelled incorrectly. This is from someone who worked with S. for most of that decade. Keep in mind, S.’s last name was clearly printed on the uniform she wore to work. Her last name appeared on all kinds of paperwork that this coworker surely had to read. And we’ve sent this family our Christmas card each year, again with S.’s last name clearly printed on the return label.

But every year they spell her name wrong.

I get that we make it tough on people, having two different last names. But that seems like a basic part of sending Christmas cards: reviewing address to make sure they’re up to date, changing names after marriages, and ensuring the names you already have are spelled correctly. It’s an act of care and respect.

Anyone can make a typo. But misspelling a name, when you’ve had countless opportunities to see it spelled correctly, over and over and over again means you’re lazy, dumb, or an asshole. Or, perhaps, all three.

People…they’re the worst.

In Sickness And Haircuts

November 14, 2013 / DB

It’s a double sick day. C. came home early yesterday with a fever and L., who was already on medication for a bad cough, was burning up this morning. Good times. We’re deep into a Netflix binge that will likely last all day.

I got called to come pick C. up about 2:20 yesterday. When I got to school, M. was sitting in the office with a big, proud grin on her face. After we got into the van, I asked her if it was cool to hang out in the office.

“What do you mean, why would that be cool?” she asked.
“Well, you get to hear everything that’s going on, see everyone that comes through, and know what Mrs. H and Mr. H (the school admin and principal) are up to. And you do like to know everyone’s business.”

She tried to play it off and acted like nothing much was going on.

Of course, later in the night she couldn’t help herself and started telling us all kind of St. P’s gossip. I knew it!

I didn’t hear all the conversation, but a couple nights ago I heard S. telling L. not to use the word chubby, because it can hurt some people’s feelings.

“But Mom,” L. shouted, “chubby people are awesome!”

I don’t know where she got that, but I like it.

Tuesday was haircut day for me. I go to a local spot where I can get in and out in less than 20 minutes. I never ask for a specific person, but tend to have one of two or three stylists¹ each time. One of them is full of opinions. Once she told me that she refuses to take any medication, including Advil/Tylenol, because she thinks medicines cause more problems than they solve. This week she told me that she didn’t think the Miami Dolphins controversy was that big of a deal because “everyone uses that one word,” and gave me examples of how she used it growing up and “it didn’t mean nothin’.”

It’s always an awkward position to be sitting in a chair while a person cuts your hair with sharp, pointed scissors and they begin dropping opinions that you disagree with. It’s one thing to talk about sports or pop culture or your favorite restaurants. It’s another to get into more political matters. I just don’t want anyone to shave a bald spot where I can’t see it, or “accidentally” stab my skull or nick my ear because I’ve argued that I think medications are generally good things or using racial slurs is never cool.

Like that old man who started talking about race at the football game earlier this year, sometimes it’s easier to keep your mouth shut, nod, and hope it ends quickly.

Speaking of high school sports, I cover my first girls game tomorrow night.

I don’t know the proper term. “Person that cuts my hair” is too awkward, and I don’t go to a barber shop, so they’re not barbers. ↩

Add This To The List

September 26, 2013 / DB

I’ll assume that people who are long time readers of the blog, and/or have known me for many years, have mental lists of my many odd traits. I’m not even going to jog your memories with a few examples. You know what you make fun of me for.

Here’s one more you can add to your lists:

Several times a year¹, I have a dream in which it is Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and I realize I haven’t watched any Christmas movies or listened to any Christmas music yet. And I freak out because between Christmas Eve Mass, family meals, and hosting people, there’s no way I’ll be able to squeeze in Elf, Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, and my hundreds of Christmas songs before the season is over.

Now what the hell does that mean and why does it happen so often?

I had that dream last night, thus the occasion to share it with you. Now proceed in your fun-making.

Let’s say six, tops. Although I should really start tracking it, shouldn’t I? ↩

Snow Day

March 6, 2013 / DB

Another rumored major snow event in central Indiana was a bust. Such as been the norm in the winter of 2012-13.

We got 4-5″ overnight, less than the 6-9″ that had been predicted, turning Wednesday into a two-hour delay for the girls rather than a real snow day. They were disappointed when we told them they just had to hang out and play inside for a few hours and then head to school. It’s good packing snow, though, so snowmen and snowballs are in their future this afternoon.

Which got me thinking about my favorite snow day ever. I know, I know. Old school friends are shaking their heads, saying, “OF COURSE he has a favorite snow day.” In my defense, I can only remember what I did on two, maybe three, snow days ever back in the day. So it’s not like I have a list of my 20 favorites stored on my hard drive somewhere.

So cut me a little slack.

That said, let me take you back to February 1980. As I remember it, it was during the Winter Olympics. But it could have been anytime that winter and my mind has just stuck this in the midst of the games.

This was before we moved to Kansas City, and we were still living in southeast Missouri. We went to school as normal that day, but a big snowstorm rolled in and they sent everyone home early.

I was part of the original generation of Latch Key kids, so I got off the bus, played around in the snow a little, and went into our quiet apartment to watch the Olympics until my parents got home.

Soon there was a knock on the door and my parents’ friend Jerry, who lived with his wife two buildings down, was there. He was an unemployed construction worker with no kids and kind of took me under his wing. While he was around 30, he was still just a big kid and loved to take me to do stupid kid stuff.

He told me to come on and we hopped into his rusty, blue Ford pickup. We went to Wal-Mart, he made some purchases and gave me a quarter to use in the vending machines outside. Let’s say I bought a new Super Ball, although I have no idea what I spent that quarter on.

On the way home, in the midst of a deserted county road, he yanked the steering wheel hard to the left and hit the brakes putting the truck into a spin. As we began to rotate, he floored the gas and we continued to spin faster. I remember kind of levitating in the seat, since there was no way I had a seat belt on in 1980.

We circled for a moment or two before he let off the gas and I sunk back into the seat. I’m sure I gave him a wide-eyed look, as I remember him laughing and saying, “You’ve never done donuts before, have you?”

I shook my head and started laughing, relieved that he intended for us to spin out like that and we hadn’t been on the verge of going into the ditch or something.

“Wanna do it again?”

I nodded and off we went. All I remember from the rest of that day is sliding around the front seat, laughing myself silly as we turned circle after circle on deserted, snow-packed roads on a cold day in 1980.

So here we are, over 33 years later, and that’s still one of the first things I think of when the girls have a snow day. One of these years, I’ll have to find a deserted parking lot and go spin them around a few times.

Out With The Old

December 31, 2012 / DB

Each year, when I post something around New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day, I make the joke that it’s the Xth straight good year in my life. I say it’s a joke because let’s face it, any year where you’re still upright at the end is a good year. You can go through mistakes and missteps, tragedy and loss, but if you’re still breathing at midnight, odds are you can find a way to call it a winner.

That’s not to say that some years aren’t more difficult than others. There are years you can’t wait for midnight, or to wake up New Year’s morning, in the hopes that the turning of the calendar will help you put the bad things of the previous year behind and to make a new start. I know some of my readers have had tough times this year, for a variety of reasons. I just want to remind you all that, as long as we’re still here together, there’s always hope for better days ahead.

Now, all that said, it really was a pretty fantastic 2012 for the B’s. I know it’s kind of silly/obvious to say this, but often the best things that come in each year are those that you did not expect on the previous January 1. We had some great times in 2012 that were planned and which we looked forward to before they happened. But there were also some pleasant surprises along the way. Our lives are, mostly, better than they were 366 days ago, and as much for the things we couldn’t anticipate as the things we did.

Which makes me look very forward to 2013. We have a lot of stuff planned already: a trip to Disney World in three weeks, another trip to Florida over spring break, and a fall wedding in Boston. That’s a pretty great year right there. If we have a few pleasant surprises along the way, we’re talking about one for the ages.

There will no doubt be disappointments, challenges, and heartbreaks. And I’m going to do my best this year to remember that all those plans, all those surprises, are really just window dressing. What is important is the actual time spent with my family and friends. Ultimately that is what matters the most.

So happy New Year to all of you. I hope whatever 2012 meant to you, 2013 is better.