Monday, November 2, 2015

Poetry

Facebook, twitter, instagram, blog
Nobody, nobody, cares about your yog

My garmin data, my training log
Nobody, nobody, cares about your yog

Through mountains, desert, snow, and fog
Nobody, nobody, cares about your yog

A slow kerplopple, an all night slog
Nobody, nobody, cares about your yog

My buckles!  My revolutionary nutrition strategy!  My race reports!  My FKT!
Clearly sir, you're an attention hog
And perhaps in some small community, you are the top dog
But nobody, nobody cares about your yog

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

What is that awful stench? It's Trent Richardson

My first two years of fantasy football were very successful and involved a large amount of luck.  I get that. I accept that.  I knew it couldn't go on for ever.  So for the most part, I can live with the abomination that has been my current fantasy season.  But one thing I just can't bring myself to accept is Trent Richardson.  There is simply no acceptable explanation for the degree of ass that he has sucked.  No, I did not actually watch any Browns football last year, but how could everyone have been so wrong about this guy?  He was productive last season, and all I read this year is about how he's come into camp in great shape, looking explosive, good hands out of the backfield, centerpiece of the offense, blah blah blah.  So he starts the year unproductively on a crappy team, then amazingly gets traded to a good team where he's handed the starting role, and many knowledgeable fantasy losers start claiming he's a top 5 back now.  He proceeds to completely shit the bed.  Like, he doesn't even belong in the league in any capacity.  What a turd.

So as I checked the score of the Monday night game last night, and saw that indeed no miracles had happened and another humiliating defeat for my fantasy team was in the books, I began to think about Trent Richardson and how I felt about his 1.7 pt contribution this week.  I knew very quickly that our toxic relationship could not continue.  Would I just put him on the bench and let him rot?  No.  Absolutely not.  There is an awful Trent Richardson stench that is hanging over my entire roster.  It needs to be scrubbed clean.  So trade him for something?  Anything?  No!  I will not lower myself to pretending for one second that Trent Richardson has any value whatsoever.  He will be unceremoniously dumped on his ass and that's the end of it.  A warm satisfaction pumped through my veins as I thought about my revenge.  I imagined a sullen Trent Richardson, sitting on the bench, thinking about his failure and overcome with embarrassment and remorse by the way I had discarded him.  He'd do anything, ANYTHING to earn his way back into my good graces.  No.  No Trent Richardson!  It's over.  You've failed.  Failed! 

I then broke out of my little daydream, shook my head at myself and mumbled, "I'm losing my fucking mind."

"Don't say that Daddy!", Maya admonishes me.  "You're silly.  You're silly Daddy."

Yes.  Yes I am. 

Monday, October 14, 2013

Weekend Recap

On Saturday I raced a x-country OTCY.  My goal was simply to show some resilience and courage when the pain rained down.  I failed.  Miserably.  I have absolutely no balls.  Nothing new there. 

On Sunday, I had a nice morning yog with the Shoulder Toucher, the Well Man, and the Mexican Assassin.  Very enjoyable.  Upon finishing, I was informed that I had been assigned babysitting duty for Maya and her two cousins and needed to make it home asap.  It went pretty well I think. 

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Football Season

I was going through some pictures on my phone and found it amusing that 4 consecutive photos that I had snapped of Maya pretty much perfectly sum up the progression of the Eagles season thus far. 





4 pictures, 3 games thus far, although picture #4 anticipates the result of the upcoming encounter with Peyton Manning and crew. 

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Just when it seems hopeless

I went golfing with Dr Evil a few weeks ago.  Redhawk.  Temecula.  Temperature forecast is for a high of 102.  We're teeing it up at 2pm.  Don't insult me with your god damned golf carts, we're walking.  I've got a water bottle filled with vodka and grape juice (all I had in the fridge) and 6 cold beers stuffed into my golf bag.  We are men and we shall golf! 

We get set to tee off and life is splendid.  The only problem is, my lower back is inflamed.  It's either from the uber manly big weights I've been dead lifting lately, or from constantly kowtowing to Maya's demands to be carried everywhere even though she's probably closing in on 40lbs.  No matter the cause, my back hurts and that is not good for golf.  Over the 17 years of my golf career, all without a lesson, I've developed a baseline skill set that lets me hack it around with enough consistency to make the game enjoyable.  Today however, the immobility of my lower back has me trying to overcompensate with my hands, resulting in repeated, hideous, very much not enjoyable snap hooks.  I've also committed the critical strategic error of offering to drive Dr E to the course, thus preventing myself from getting pre-shitfaced and adequately numbing the pain.  So, here I am, playing the worst fucking round that I've ever played with Dr E.  He, meanwhile, is playing the best round that he's ever played with me.  He smoothly goes fairway to green while I meander through the bushes in an interminable series of golfing misadventures.  I'm feeling the frustration build, and build, and build, and I'm barely holding it together.  I'd say that I beat Dr E about 70% of the time that we go golfing, but as we walk up to the 8th green, he's looking at a birdie putt to go back to -1 and I'm 16 strokes behind.  I bet him drinks and dinner that I will beat him on the back 9.  He does not take long to accept the bet.  Dr E chokes his way to a +1 37 on the front 9, while I card a smoooooth 54. 

The back 9 commences and the alcohol is starting to settle in a little.  I'm done with my vodka and have moved on to my beer, and the fresh start that comes with my bet has temporarily relieved some of my frustration.  Through the first 3 holes of the back 9, I find myself one stroke behind.  Manageable.  I tee off on the 13th, make decent contact with the ball, which starts off to the right and then hooks back sharply into the fairway.  Ugly, but I'll take it.  Dr E then steps up and hits a pretty high fade that settles right into the middle of the fairway.  He immediately starts gushing over himself,  blathering about how that is exactly how he envisioned his swing, his contact with the ball, and the ball flight, and the whole experience just satisfies him immensely.  Shithead.  We trudge towards our balls, and I set up over my shot, which had come to rest a good 30 yards behind Dr E's masterpiece.  I hit a miserable semi-shank into the rough to the right of the green, while Dr E puts his ball to about 12 feet of the cup.  I walk up to the green, find my ball in a shitty lie, and hit a shitty pitch that overshoots the green.  Steam.  Pressure.  Rising.  This is rapidly falling apart.  I walk over to my ball and promptly hit another pitch that overshoots the flag by about 30 feet.  Dr E smirks, as he's marked his ball and is enjoying watching my odyssey while he awaits his birdie putt.  Fuck it.  I take my pitching wedge and throw it as far as I can.  It bounces and cartwheels a few times and comes to rest in the street adjacent to the course.  Oh GAWD that felt good.  I grab another iron from my bag and throw that one too.  Squirt, squirt.  I frantically grab another one and fling that too.  Squirt, squirt, squirt.  Oh, what a release!   After changing my underwear, I march over to my ball infinitely more prepared for the inevitable 3 putt that will just about guarantee my doom.  At this point Dr E calmly mentions, "I think I hit your ball."  I look at the ball in his hand, and look at the ball I'm about to putt, and realize that he's right.  With the spectacle he created by fawning all over himself after his first shot, both of us temporarily forgot that he's a giant pussy with no distance off the tee.  What do we do?  We decide that after I retrieve my clubs, especially the one still lying in the street, we will go back and replay our shots from the correct spots on fairway, disregarding the two stroke penalty both of us should take.  Fuck you USGA.  Second time around, I put mine to the middle of the green and two putt for par.  Dr E hacks it around for a double bogey and falls off from there.  My 41 on the back easily wins the bet.  Victory. 

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Giant Penis Growing Out of My Forehead

Wow.  Over three months since a blog.  Plenty of thoughts and experiences have occurred in that period that would have been worthy of summarizing and randomly posting on the internet for no one to read, but I just haven't been able to muster the effort.  But a few other long dormant bloggers have recently sprung back to life, and I'll follow their lead and spew some nonsensical clap trap of my own. 

I don't have many unshakeable convictions.  It might seem like I do with the way I act, but I really only stand up for ideas to the extent that I've thought them through and have convinced myself that they're right.  When I argue, even if I seem like I'm in total disagreement, I'm still incorporating opposing ideas, and often revisit them after the fact and rethink them from several different angles.  I sometimes find that they had more merit than I originally thought, and sometimes they change or develop my opinions on something only loosely related.  I don't live in the world I wish I did, I'm not the person I wish I was, and I have to come to terms with things I don't like and don't understand. 

It's along the lines of the previous paragraph that I've recently had to accept that fact that there's a giant penis growing out of my forehead.  I can't see it, but after carefully reconstructing the events of the last few months, I've come to the conclusion that it must be there, and I need to deal with it.  So be it.  It starts at home.  The last few months I've had the chance to spend a lot of time with my daughter.  The terrible twos are not a myth.  The interactions have been challenging, exhausting and sometimes maddening, and so I've been fairly analytical about how I'm dealing with this and how my parenting needs to evolve to deal with it all.  I'm very intentional with the way I explain things, the instructions I give, and my disciplinary approach.  Yet all I get back is That Look.  You know that look.  A mix of blank stare, confusion, horror, and disgust all rolled into one. 

My thoughtful approach has rolled into other areas of life too.  At track, we're working out at the lake during the summer, and I make an attempt to incorporate a full variety of trails into each workout.  I draw a map, mark the beginning and end of intervals, color code it with effort levels and arrows showing the direction, post a written description a few days before the workout and then describe the workout in detail immediately before it starts.  The invariable response of each of the 20-30 faces who show up every week?  That Look. 

At work, after carefully preparing and presenting my thoughts, whether on technical project issues or more general discussions, the response to my ideas is the same.  That Look. 

I've greatly enjoyed the media shit storms of the past few months.  Zimmerman.  Snowden.  Riley Cooper.  Bob Filner.  Not so much the incidents themselves, but people's reactions and opinions on the matter.  I don't actively engage people on these issues, but in the few cases where I've been asked and have had the opportunity to give my carefully balanced thoughts on these circuses, almost impossibly, the response has simply been That Look

So, thoughtful analysis being my bag baby, I took to trying to understand why I've been getting That Look with such shocking consistency.  The more I thought and the more explanations I considered, the more it boiled down to one simple, inescapable conclusion.  Giant penis growing out of forehead.  Nothing else makes sense.  It's not an easy reality to accept, but I can't let the fact that I can't see it let me ignore the overwhelming evidence from the outside any longer.  Time to move forward and figure out a way to not let this massive cranio-phallus deprive the world from my crystal clear communication skills any longer.  It's a challenge I think I'm up to. 

I also wonder if there should be a separate division for me when I yog in OTCYs.  I bet I'd dominate. 

Monday, May 6, 2013

Hodge Podge

Leona
I did not yog thee.  I DNF thee.  I finally contracted Maya's stomach flu, and if not for the fact that Geronimo came to life and I was giving him and Jason a ride to the race, and for my burning disgust with the Suffer Seeker and American Hero for the way they backed out, I never would have gotten out of bed.  Rising up at 1:15a.m., I sat on the couch for an hour, analyzing my shooting stomach pains, dull headache, full body aches, raw skin, and overwhelming exhaustion and tried to force myself to the conclusion that I was in fact not sick.  I couldn't muster the energy to walk 20 feet and get a glass of water, so the task of driving 150 miles and then running 50 more seemed a bit daunting.  But I'm glad I tried. 

I got to spend 16 silent miles fully focused on my misery and wrapping my head around the specific aspects of discomfort that makes one decide to quit instead of soldiering on.  After quitting, I enjoyed analyzing my reaction, and specifically how in ultra, quitting after 16 miles feels like going out the door for a run in the morning and quitting after one block.  I reminded myself a few times that 16 miles on trail with a few thousand feet of climbing is actually a nice weekend long run.  It felt like  zero.  It felt like less than zero, if that's possible.  It felt like a complete abortion. 

I got to see Rob Krar's dominant victory, crossing the finish line in front of about 10 spectators in the finish area who provided him with a few scattered claps, everyone assuming that he was a middle of the packer in the 50k.  He crossed the line, dropped his head, softly muttered "Oh shit", then found a partially shaded area in the dirt and collapsed.  Slowly a few whispers came on, "Did he just destroy the course record?  I think he might have.  Who is that?"  Stunning effort, 50 minute victory in a Montrail race, a course record on a very hot day when everyone else melted, and it went completely unacknowledged.  So fitting for ultra. 

I got to see Geronimo suffer like I never have before in ultra.  He tried Muscle Milk for the first time at mile 42 and was a puking mess for the rest of the race and the first half of the car ride home.  We were truly a sorry bunch, but the humor of our reduced condition wasn't lost on me, and I reminded him a few times that at some point, we would realize that this was fun.  Jason was a hero for chauffeuring us home. 

Fathering/Uncling
Maya spent 10 days with the stomach flu, spraying it from both ends, including a few horrific events in the middle of the night.  I would joke about it, but it was entirely true that the smell of diarrhea and vomit was burned into my nostrils.  It stayed with me everywhere I went, and it was particularly strange to continually experience the subconscious urge to recoil in disgust from the stench every time I went to hug and hold Maya.  Glad that's over.

Scene from yesterday afternoon.  I was babysitting Maya and her two older cousins, girls 3 1/2 and 6 1/2.  The 6 1/2 year old announces that she has to go to the bathroom, as if this required some kind of response out of me.  Somewhat surprised, I say, "Okayyy, can you handle everything on your own?".  Her response, and I quote, "Wellll, I haven't quite figured out the wiping part yet."  I immediately knew that I would never forget that sentence, and would never let her forget it either. 

Scene from yesterday evening.  Situation in my home reminded me of a Jeff Foxworthy punchline...  You know you're a redneck (or in my case, you know you have a 2 year old) when your clogged kitchen sink drain backs up and spews out all over the floor, and it actually makes it cleaner!