The 43

Nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes. We all have regrets. We all wish we can have do-overs. We all wish we can forget the screw-ups. Unless someone is completely incorrigible, humans carry at least a little shame and guilt with them. Learning from your mistakes makes you grow, but sometimes, forgetting the mistake is difficult. It can linger, re-emerging once in a while, reminding you that you should have acted differently, acted at all, or just shut up instead of saying something stupid. Many years ago, I started counting up the self-embarrassments that were torturing me. I didn't tabulate these moments all at once, but after a few months, I had reached around 100 instances. I rounded to the even century and called it "the hundred." As I accumulated this mental list, I realized, most of the shame-inducing incidents were before I was 25, and even then, before I was 18. I also committed to stop dwelling on the past miscues. If one popped back into my mind, I would s...

My evenings the past few months have not been conducive to writing. I seem to be cramming in an extra hour or two of work after dinner, and it hasn't quite warmed up enough to write outside just yet. There's been some lethargy, too -- I need to think of topics to write about, or even simply write about the day or the week. So tonight, without any work and the dog already walked (just around the block, she's got a scrape on her shoulder that I hope scabs over soon), I came out the front porch to write. I don't have a topic. And I'm thinking one isn't coming to me tonight. I went through my closet today, took out about 35 items, and organized it a little better. I did some yardwork, then grilled hot dogs for dinner. Recorded two old "American Top 40" episodes from the internet. Went for a long walk without the dog -- she looked at me so sadly when I got back.  I'm ready to run and work out this week, and try to eat decently. I've actually not bee...

Day 366 ... One year ago today, I blogged about the pandemic for the first time. The last year has held the strange distinction of feeling it went by super quickly and that it was never going to end. But here we are, more than a year into the pandemic, and I can't help but reflect about how things evolved in the last year. That first month, everyone was so shellshocked by the emerging crisis. Between the lockdowns and the initial reports that the virus was far more infectious than it was, people were genuinely freaked. There were so many unknowns, so a sense of dread and helplessness was natural. The country needed about a month more of serious measures last spring than we actually had. People got too antsy -- Americans just aren't a patient bunch, and the political climate didn't help. The second wave, and then third and fourth waves, happened and lived up to the worst fears scientists had predicted.  However, we learned to live with the pandemic. The more we learned abou...

I've written often about how songs bring me back to a certain memory or, a general time and feeling around when the song was popular. For example, I've been hearing "(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" by Rita Coolidge on the oldies station lately, and it's reminding me of the going to Milwaukee with my dad to see a Brewers game in 1977. I can't remember exactly where I heard it, but likely, somewhere in our journey to County Stadium and back, it came on the AM radio (probably more than once) and forever embedded in my brain as a memory of that day. My brain doesn't just connect songs to a specific day or occasion. "Welcome to the Jungle" reminds me of my first semester of college; "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" ruled radio in the spring of 1985; and "Beautiful Day" by U2 will always be connected to fall 2000 after we moved to Utah. Granted, everyone feels these connections, to other things besides songs, to...

As this life progresses, I'm continually stunned by things that occur annually, with the last occurrence not seeming so long ago when, in fact, an entire year has passed. My annual summer solstice blog post is an example of this. First days of school, last days of school, big swim meets, Independence Days, vacations, Halloweens -- the days that make lasting impressions burn into the memory, so the next occasion seems sooner than it actually was. However, there are the less significant events that feel so recent but were actually a year ago. I wrote about one of these moments in 2009 , and I'm guessing we approach the first anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown, I'll be marveling how the weeks and months zipped by (the year of coronavirus is a topic for another post).  Every January, I experience the expedited passage of time in something not so monumental and, really, should be mundane: taking down the Christmas tree. We wait to get a tree every December until after Michael...

As a condition to play sports while preventing the spread of COVID-19, all high school athletes in Utah must be tested every two weeks. After a fall in which seasons were canceled because of unchecked cases and rumors surfaced of coaches telling their players not to get tested if felt symptoms, the state clamped down by instituting this testing protocol. So far, it's worked out well -- the message is getting through to athletes that they need to be smart or risk ruining the season for their teammates, and the rate of positive tests for these students has been low. The boys have been tested three times, including twice via the rapid testing their school is offering. This morning, they needed to go in at 6 a.m. to be tested -- in order handle about a hundred students in a couple hours (and allow them to practice after school), the school had to start early. So far, we've heard of no positive tests -- at least nothing that would cancel Michael's games this week or force a quar...

Lori and I started dating in 1993, and that first fall and winter, I usually had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights off. Although we weren't planted in front of the television during all our free time, naturally, we watched some TV. Amid "Seinfeld" and "Frasier" episodes, we gravitated toward "Mad About You." I had watched episodes off and on during the show's first season, and I thought it was OK. As a single person, it didn't quite resonate yet. That changed when we started watching NBC Thursday nights together. I must admit, Lori brought me around to appreciating and enjoying "Mad About You." She saw something I had yet to realize: Paul and Jamie Buchman felt a little like us, in that they were a young couple navigating a new relationship, albeit a few years ahead of us.  The episode that really struck a chord with Lori told the story of how Paul and Jamie may have encountered each other as grade schoolers. It reconfirmed for...