Baseball Starts In An Hour

1. I just saw a woman breastfeeding. This is not as cool as I once thought it would be.

2. This morning Saved By The Bell: The College Years was on channel 27. Sportscenter was on channel 28. Mike and Mike was on 29. Bob Golic wasn't bad as the resident advisor. This is a horrible time of year for Sportscenter. Mike Golic carries Mike and Mike when he tells his locker room stories, but most of Mike and Mike is unwatchable.

3. Baseball starts in an hour.

4. ACC football is very mediocre. With this being said, Wake Forest should never beat Clemson. Especially 12 to 7. Tommy Bowden better be looking for a job.

5. Baseball starts in an hour.

Some Things

1. It took me a gallon of bleach, a bottle of CLR, a new curtain, and a new mat, but my shower is clean. The sad thing is it still isn't really clean.

2. I don't wash off fruits or vegetables. I just eat them. I haven't got sick yet. My grandfather never did either. He lived to 84.

3. I wash my hands 5 out of every 6 times I piss.

What I Have On My Office Door

I do not care much about politics, but the "School isn't about Learning" and "Research isn't about Progress" really hit home.

"Everybody Has A Reason To Begin Again" From Springsteen's "Long Walk Home"

I play basketball with these kids. I let the kids shoot instead of me. If I get the rebound, I pass the ball to a kid. I rarely shoot.

Most of the kids go home. Some kids stay behind. These kids tell me I am too nice. They say this is the root of my problems with the opposite sex. I tell them that I have no problems with the opposite sex. I tell them that the opposite sex is crazy anyway.

The some kids leave. I am alone with my thoughts. I freak. Maybe the kids are right. Maybe I am too nice. But my high school football coach called me the dirtiest player he ever coached. I once held a guy by his practice jersey, choking him, so he would not hit the quarterback. My favorite thing was to get under a guys pads and pinch him. I was an effective crotch blocker. But you know what: maybe I am too nice.

It is the difference between perception and intention. I pass the basketball to the kids, because I want them to feel included. I want them to feel accepted. I could not stand feeling "left out." I spent a significant portion of my life feeling different and outside of the main clique. That is a lonely and stupid feeling. I have seen too many parents and possible mentors indifferent to that feeling. I have seen that loneliness perpetuated by indifference. I do not want to be part of that perpetuation. I pass the ball to the kids, because I want to pass it to them. I would rather see them shoot and play together than shoot myself. It has to do with teaching. It has nothing to do with niceness.

But that is not what the kids saw. They are just kids. But in some ways I failed as a teacher. In some ways, I was just as bad as the indifferent mentors and parents.

When you try to teach others, you learn about yourself. It is not what I can do for the kids; it is what the kids can do for me. This sounds strange and mixed-up, but at the end of the day, a mentor or a parent is only as good as his kids' perceptions. (An author is defined by his readers.) And perceptions have very little to do with intentions.

When You Leave The Tea Bag In Too Long, The Tea Becomes Too Strong

I have been listening to country music radio. This is because I get very few stations on my MP3 player.

Every five minutes an Obama ad comes on. Every 30 minutes a McCain ad comes on. The fact that Obama is spending this much money on country music radio ads in southwest Virginia intrigues me. I cannot decide if it is a sign of progress or a sign of the apocalypse.

I am becoming very indifferent to the whole thing. I know it does not matter. And the fact that people thinks it matters blows my mind.

"Don't believe in rock 'n' roll
Can really change the world
As it spins in revolution
It spirals and turns"

It spirals and turns, baby.

"This is my life
It's what I've chosen to do
There are no free rides
No one said it'd be easy"

Conversations Heard On The Bus Or Possibilities

Guy to Girl: "You have a boyfriend?"

Girl: "Yes."

Guy: "Good. I have a girlfriend. But if anything changes, I'll let you know. You do the same?"

Girl (with a little smile that has a thousand interpretations): "I will."

667th Post

I am standing at the pisser. I cannot remember what day it is. I cannot remember what month it is. I cannot remember what hour it is.

But I keep saying "If I only had more time." That is bullshit. Time is not scarce. It is energy that is scarce.

I can make all the excuses I want. But life is about energy. It is about getting out of bed. It is about caring. It is about caring so much it hurts. It is about caring so little that you say "Screw it." It is about looking deep inside oneself and saying: "This is what matters. This is what I am going to fight for. This does not matter. This is what I am going to let go."

I can never forget energy is a renewable resource.

On Field Goals, Extra Points, And Brian Billick

I am not going into probabilities. But I would go for two-point conversions and touchdowns more than the average college or NFL coach. It is about offensive confidence. Touchdowns win games. Field goals keep games close. It is also about being unpredictable. Another offensive play is another play to do something creative and unexpected.

Brian Billick did the Redskins game yesterday. His NFL philosophy came off as it is all about luck and bounces. If you make it, it is a good play. If you don't, then eventually you will get fired anyway. This translates somewhat to college and high school football too. There is too much competition and genius rarely lasts.

I found him refreshing. He isn't a great commentator. He wasn't a great coach.

But he did win a Super Bowl.

Thoughts This Morning

1. I haven't blogged in a while.

2. Blogging isn't a bad thing to do in the morning. At least I am doing something.

3. What would I say in an interview at Wal-Mart? I would probably talk about high-margin items like produce, and how Wal-Mart could capitalize on local products. I also think stores need better faces. They need produce and meat managers who know or at least act like they know frequent shoppers. I also think Wal-Mart should take the Dyson philosophy and be proud that their stores work. This is more complicated. Fortunately, I do not have any interviews lined up with Wal-Mart in the near future.

4. I have said this before. But Cowen's "Get something done every day" becomes truer with every day I don't get anything done.

5. I have donated the Blazer. It was sad. I probably could have gotten a few hundred dollars for it from a junkyard, but some times you just have to let go.

6. I cannot get interested in sports. I hope the Rays win the AL East. But I really don't care. I think the NFL and college football is pretty uninteresting. Maybe the playoffs will get me fired up, but I doubt it.

7. I find my my current colleagues, co-workers, cohort to be somewhat uninteresting. This says more about me than them. But I have seen a lot of good people come and go. I tend to retreat inside of myself when I get bored and disinterested. This is probably not a good trait. It is a worse trait to talk about other people who you don't really know.

Things I Have Said In The Past

"Virginia Tech football will be Virginia Tech football. Beamer will win 8.5 games a year. He will always be near the top of a weak ACC. He will always have great athletes. He will always depend on defense and special teams. He will never show the offensive creativity it takes for teams to win national championships. He will get beat by superior coaches who have as much talent as he does. Sometimes he will get beat by superior coaches who have less talent than him."

And my thoughts on Glennon have not changed either.

The fact that Beamer told ECU that they wanted to redshirt Taylor would be a fireable offense at other schools. The value of "wait and see." The value of unpredictability is something that Beamer and Stinespring do not understand.

Lesson

One time in college we had a veteran team. It was getting towards the end of training camp. Everyone was getting hurt. Not severely injured, but nicked up. Coach decided to end camp early. He let us go to the pool to help us heal up. It was probably the most reasonable memory I have concerning coaches and training camps.

The thing about training camps is that for three weeks your life was football. We got up at 6:00AM. We went to breakfast at 6:30AM. We practiced to noon. We ate lunch and relaxed until 2:00 meetings. We practiced until 6:00PM. We ate dinner and then had meetings until 10:30PM. It was football all day long.

I hated it. I still do not know if it is productive. Athletics is about muscle memory. Muscle memory comes from conditioning. It comes from practice. But a lot of training camp is about getting through not honest practice.

The important thing, the freeing thing, is that you begin the season.

There is a lesson here for me. I do not know exactly what it is, but it is there.

Nothing Against Argentina

But I want total destruction.

I do not know where the Chinese got these fans, but they sound pro-Argentinean or anti-American.

I do not like the flopping in international basketball, but on the whole, it is a more physical game.

Officiating is horribly inconsistent.

Now it is time to refocus and finish the destruction.

Olympics

I have decided to watch at least some of the US-Argentina basketball game this morning. Part of me worries about jinxing them. Part of me is avoiding work. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do. This is why wireless Internet and laptop computers were designed.

Poor Service

I am sitting at this coffee shop. It has a big sign that says "No Wal-Mart." It has a container asking for donations to a legal fund to fight Wal-Mart. It is retro-hippie. It presents itself as a place where the counter-culture meets. A place where money does not matter even though it costs $2 for a cup of coffee.

Well it took the lady two minutes to wait on me. She didn't say "Thank you." She didn't say "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry" when I was waiting for her to refill the coffee pots.

Sometimes you have to make a stand. Sometimes you have to say "No more." We'll see how long it lasts, because I do like the place.

"You have to stand for something, or you will fall for anything."

Hard, Not Easy

He was always a cool guy. At least he thought he was cool. Conversation came easy to him. He genuinely liked people. Sometimes he talked too much. But he was cool.

Then it happened. He said something stupid, not entirely untrue, but stupid.

He was not cool anymore. He tried to tell himself that "coolness" was self-defined. But he had always lived by others' definitions. He couldn't change that now.

He guessed he would gradually accept his new position. But it would be hard, not easy.

It Kind Of Comes To You

I was a center. Sometimes we had turn-back pass protection. Sometimes a nose tackle lined up in the A gap between me and the guard. The middle linebacker was responsible for the other A gap. I was responsible for the middle linebacker. But if he didn't come I was supposed to help the guard with the nose tackle. But I always had to keep my eye on the middle linebacker. No matter what I did I couldn't get it right in practice. "Damn it, you got to help out more. Damn it, the middle linebacker is going to kill our quarterback. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Shit you are going to kill us Bastiat, F-ing kill us." It didn't matter what I did. I did it wrong. I hated after-practice film session. I hated turn-back protection. I felt helpless. I knew what not to do. But I had no clue what to do.

I asked the starting center. He said "When you get in the game, it kind of comes to you."

"We Only Got 4 Minutes To Save The World"*

Why would anyone make a trade with Billy Beane or the San Antonio Spurs or the New England Patriots?

If Beane or Popovich or Belicheck called me and said I have a deal for you, I would certainly think myself out of it. I know the limitations of moneyball, but the biggest disparity in professional sports today is upper managerial talent. There are no Michael Phelps in MLB, the NBA or the NFL. There is just too much competition. Baseball, basketball, and football are too developed. Too many talented kids want to go pro.

This begs the question. How has Phelps done it? Some of it has to do with the nature of individual verus team sports. Phelps only depends on other guys in relays, but he must be a freak of nature.

Have you ever started to write something and it does not go anywhere? It does not make sense. It is just writing to be doing something.

I have.

*That Justin Timberlake song 4 minutes featuring Madonna.

5:26PM

All day just waiting.

Will The Package Be Delivered?

I have sat here all day. It has become a test of will. Very rarely do I not go to the office when I am in town. I have worked it out where I can work from home, but I hate sitting here waiting for a package that might or might not come.

Some Things

1. Waiting around for UPS sucks. There has to be a better way. Especially when the package could fit into my mailbox. My libertarian side likes the innovation that UPS and FedEx has brought to the market, but waiting around sucks.

2. Missing UPS sucks too. I did that Friday and yesterday.

3. At least I am reaping some of the benefits of the air conditioning I am paying for each month.

4. This is another post, but it wasn't the gas.

5. I enjoy reading. But there comes a time in a man's life where he has to write. Reading is and should be mostly recreation. Life is not all recreation.