The 43

I have been too tired to write lately. I'm not sure why -- perhaps I'm still settling in to our school year routine, even though it's already a month in. My other theory is that after a bunch of long, sweeping, sometimes nostalgic posts, I'm not always in the mood to do another. I should be doing another and even write some in advance when I get into these funks, but dealing with that is another issue. For now, I need to write about something today. When I originally started blogging, one goal was to record the events of the day -- a sort of journal. I got away from that, recapping busy, important days and glossing past the mundane. Well, maybe on days like today, when I lack the energy to write deeply, I need to just recap the day. Here it goes: I got to sleep in a little bit today while the boys were at school. I picked up Ben and two of his friends midday and we went to a park for a little while, launching Stomp Rockets. Ber and I went to lunch at Einstein Bros., ca...

I've alluded to our new puppy a few times recently, and for those who haven't seen the pictures we have posted on Facebook, here is Popcorn: We've owned Popcorn for about a six weeks now, and it's been a fun adventure. We decided to start looking for a dog after vacation, but we didn't think we'd get one so soon after we got back. One afternoon, I took the boys to a couple shelters just looking, thinking we wouldn't find a puppy. And we wanted a puppy -- this is the only time the boys will be able to enjoy a young dog while they are still young (we adopted our kitten last February with the same mind-set). After visiting one shelter, we arrived at the Humane Society, and in a pen it the lobby were two black puppies. They were pointer-lab mixes names Popcorn and Izzy. The pups never spent time in the shelter, instead being fostered after their mother had given birth (they were only being adopted through the Humane Society). Lori came down to take a look at ...

Back in the 1980s, before MP3s and around the time 45s stopped being practical, I was religious about taping songs off the radio for future listening on my Walkman. I still possess most of those tapes, and have even converted several to MP3 format. This post isn't dedicated to those tapes. It's only about one song. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1985, I was off school on a rainy, November day. Sitting in my room, listening to Fred Winston's show on WLS-AM. The Big 89 at this point was starting to play less and less Top 40, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when an "oldie" came on the radio. The song in question: "When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman" by Dr. Hook. I must have recognized it right away, perhaps thinking "Wow, I haven't heard this in a while," because I went over to my boombox and hit record. Over the years that I've listened to that tape, I must have remembered where I was when I recorded that song. Tha...

As I type this post on the night of Sept. 10, I know exactly what I was doing 10 years ago. I was at the newspaper working, waiting for the Monday night NFL game to end. Broncos receiver Ed McCaffrey broke his leg during the game. That was big news. Twelve hours later, Ed McCaffrey's broken leg would become an afterthought. A phone call woke me up on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Lori had already gone to work and knew I had worked late, so I couldn't fathom why she'd be calling so early (here in the Mountain time zone, the early events in New York were really early in Utah). But the caller wasn't Lori, it was my mother-in-law asking if she was home. Barely awake, I mumbled "Mom? Irene?" and told her Lori was at work. She figured that, but was calling to make sure we weren't flying anyplace this week because two planes had just crashed into the World Trade Center. That woke me up. I turned on the news to begin watching the horrific events of the day unfold...

When I first started thinking about writing a blog in the mid-2000's, my wife was concerned about putting details about our family on the web. This was at a time before Facebook exploded and all your friends knew so much of your life. I finally entered the blogosphere in 2007, but referred to my family as Wife, Eldest and Littlest so as not to give away any intimate details. With generally only my friends reading this blog, and me plugging the blog on Facebook (where everybody knows the names of my family anyway), I've decided to stop using nondescript monikers. When writing about my family, it feels more natural to use their names, and I have to catch myself to use the nicknames -- sometimes slowing my train of thought. I've also resisted posting pictures of my family, even though I've posted dozens of them on Facebook. Realistically, I think my little blog is more tucked away then Facebook. So blogosphere, here is my family: Wife, Eldest and Littlest, aka, Lori, Micha...

As I type this post, I'm watching the NFL season opener: a wild game between the Packers and Saints. The last four weeks or so have been dominated by three things: the kids starting school, the new puppy and fantasy football. After days of research and podcasts, the season has at last arrived. My NFL focus won't only be fantasy football; at work, I'll be putting together the NFL roundup every Sunday night for the Monday newspaper, just as I have been almost every Sunday for several years now. The one thing I haven't been doing is blogging about the NFL. After four years, I stopped writing my NFL blog. I hadn't been as serious about posting over the last year or so, and even after trying to reignite my enthusiasm for back in the spring, I found myself slacking off on it again. I enjoyed the blog when I was actively posting, but it had become too much of a chore. And these past few weeks, I haven't missed it. In past years, I'd avoid too much outside analysis ...

Yes, my post title quotes Rush (" Time Stand Still " if you weren't exactly sure which song). Astronomically, summer has a couple weeks remaining. But with Labor Day ending in about 45 minutes as I type this, summer is perceptively over. Back in May, I calculated that summer would last 102 days . Well, 102 days have passed. Did we get the most out of our summer? I think we got as much fun out of it as we possibly could. Yes, there were some lazy days, and I never did make it golfing, but as a whole, Summer 2011 rocked. And of course, it went too fast. Here's a testament to the quality of this summer: I haven't worn socks in at least a month. Between working a part-time job in which I don't have to dress up, the warm weather, and not being able to go running in the past weeks (thanks to the time taken up by the new puppy and bruising my ribs on a roller coaster at Lagoon), I have not worn socks since Aug. 1 -- the last day I went running. Before that, the only ...