A Moment to Boast

I hope you will be patient with me if I brag just a little bit.

See, I have the two best kids there could ever be. Sure, they give us fits from time to time (afterall, they are pre-teens), but by and large they are exemplary. They help some around the house (and when I say "some", I mean some), they do well in school and they're both about the most talented kids I've ever known.

That's what I want to brag about.

Hannah has been dancing since she was 4-years old with a dance organization over in Manassas. Her teacher, Miss Lisa, is a terrific teacher and very patient. Hannah loves her. When she got into the 4th grade she was eligible to dance on company, so she tried out and made it.

Every year, though, the girls (and a sprinkle of boys) have to audition for the company again. Nothing is guaranteed. If you were on company last year, it may give you a brownie point or two, but it does not mean you'll make it if there are more talented and dedicated dancers.

Hannah tried out for it again this year and made it. She starts those practices next week (I think). It means more parades and other competitions this fall and winter, and we can't wait. I'm so proud of her.

Jacob, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with dance. His big thing has always been baseball. He's played on a team at least twice a year since he was five, whether it was machine pitch or boy pitch (he skipped t-ball). He's played a lot of ball.

He got elected to the All-Star team in the American league three years ago. It was his first year of eligibility and we were thrilled for him. He got elected the two following years, too, both in the AL.

This year we took him off of that AL team and put him back into the draft. He got drafted onto the Braves in the National League, and now he's been elected to the NL All-Star team. Not many kids can say they've played for both. I'm very proud of him, too.

Actually, to say that I'm proud of my kids is an injustice. I don't know what the right word is, but proud doesn't touch it.

Know what, though? I'm not proud of them solely because they made the dance company or because they made the All-Star team. I'm proud of them because of the way they live. I'm proud of them for never giving up. When others told them they weren't good enough, they basically just said, "Oh, really? Watch this!"

I'm proud of them for not being quitters. I'm proud of them for how hard they try in school and other endeavors. I'm proud of them because they don't lie, cheat or steal. And I'm proud of them because they are trying to live right.

I'm just plain proud of them for being who they are.

I've got some danged good kids.

Now if they could just be a little more respectful to their mother, I'd almost expect them to be saint-ified.

Ok, well, maybe that's going just a tad too far.

They are such little demons sometimes.

The Dumbing of America and the Demise of Baseball

You know what? I've finally figured out why football has replaced baseball as the most watched game in the United States. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier because it's oh so very simple.

Simply put, it's because this nation has turned into a country full of dolts.

I know. Harsh statement, right? Don't get me wrong. I like football. It's not my favorite game (that spot will always be reserved for the real National Pastime), but I do like it.

In fact, I was at every single football game in Cougar Stadium in 1984 when BYU won the National Championship. I loved those games. It was exciting, I admit it.

I'm not saying, either, that football fans are dolts. Quite to the contrary. I think some of them are quite brilliant and talented people. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that there are a lot of baseball fans who ARE dolts. There's one in every crowd, as the old saying goes.

For me, though, there is still nothing like a good old baseball game on a warm summer's night. I love sitting in the stands, eating dogs and even keeping score. I love the smell of a baseball, the feeling of dirt on my pants and the sound a wooden bat makes when it solidly hits a speeding ball. No sound in football, or any other sport for that matter, can compare to that. The only one that even comes close is the sound of a small, white, dimpled ball dropping into the bottom of the cup. It's close, but still, it's no cigar.

Nuances in baseball abound. Catcher getting signals from manager. Pitcher getting signals from catcher. Coaches getting signals from manager. Batter and runners getting signals from coaches. To sit and watch, from the dugout or from the stands or even from the field, it's intellectually stimulating. Will the runner go? What pitch will be thrown? Will the batter bunt? Where does the fielder go if the ball is hit to him? There are a million things to consider, and it all takes less than a couple of seconds.

You've got to be quick on your intellectual feet in a baseball game. Fielders have to constantly think about the play they will make if the ball is hit their way. Pitchers and catchers have to constantly think about pitches and their locations. Runners have to constantly think about what they'll do when the ball is hit. Do they take an extra base? Do they steal?

Drag bunt? Hit and run? Run and hit? Fair or foul? Delayed steal? Double play? Change up or curve? Pitch out?

It's a thinking man's game.

I'll go to my grave insisting that baseball, to be truly appreciated, has to be thought about. It was made to be slow.

Today, though, most people aren't slow. We drive fast to get from here to there. We sleep 5 or 6 hours a night because there's too much to do. We play video games all day long and have nothing but instant gratification.

I know one guy at work who is at his desk every single day before I get there at 7:30am and he's there when I leave at night just after 4. He won't take a day off when he's sick because he says there's "too much to do," so he comes in and tries to infect the lot of us. As far as I know, the man lives at the office. I'm all for dedication, believe me, but there's such a thing as going too far. The man has bags under his eyes, for Pete's sake.

Every day I hear on the news that so-and-so was killed in a car accident because he was going too fast.

I talk to parents who work 60-70 hours a week and hardly ever get to see their kids because they get home from work too late.

I hear about homes in which both parents work and leave their kids to a nanny or even to fend for themselves.

I hear about people who lose their temper in line at the grocery store because it's taking too long.

I heard yesterday about a guy driving down the Interstate who was the victim of road rage. Someone ran into his car with a motorcycle, for heaven's sake, because he slowed them down! Tore his rear view mirror off and left a big scratch down the side. A motorcycle!! Seriously?

We've become a nation of do-it-in-a-hurry, gotta-get-it-done now, winning-is-the-only-thing dolts. There's no time anymore for sitting and reading a paperback novel, studying and pondering the scriptures or just listening to good music. We don't go and visit our neighbors, we don't go and visit grandma and we don't write letters, unless they are sent via email.

Baseball is slow. It's counter to the way America is nowadays. We all move at the same pace at which football moves. Fast-paced. Breakneck speed. Put your head down and plow through the line.

Just a word of warning here before I close.

Watch out football.

One of these days the country is going to be going faster than you, too, and then you won't be the most watched sport in America anymore.

We'll all be hockey fans instead.

Serendipi-dog

I stumbled upon web site this morning that included someone's idea of the 100 most beautiful words in the English language. My brother, Marc, is an etymologist and quite the grammarian. I have never considered myself such, though I love to learn new words. But I thought it might be fun to write a blog with as many of these "beautiful" words as I can, along the lines of Cat in the Hat. Following is my attempt. See if you can pick out the "beautiful" words. At the end I'll tell you how many I actually used.

One word of warning - BEWARE the red herrings! I have included other words I like, though they are not included in the list of the 100 most "beautiful" words.

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I have never been an ailurophile. I've never even had a ripple, not one scintilla of affinity for the animals, though I was an erstwhile owner about 10 years ago. They were minx's, though, with no tails. The two of them, named Skeeter and Midnight, were born in a rabbit hutch and were wild as bucks. We got them just after they were born, but they beleaguered our home with their endless scratching. So much to my wife's chagrin, our ephemeral proprietorship ended.

If the truth be told, I was imbued by my parents with much higher regard for dogs. Not only are dogs much more becoming to me, they're just a lot friendlier. Sure, I'm a little inured, since I've owned dogs since I was just more than 7-years old.

Shortly after Kelly and I were married we bought our first dog. His name was Slider. He was a comely dog, the conflation of a German Shepherd and a Beagle, and I actually cared about him for a time.

But being the spawn of those two lines of canine pedigree, he was the shedin'-est dog I've ever known. It didn't take long before he was my nemesis, The Riddler to my Batman, the Kryptonite to my Clark Kent. The efflorescence of our friendship faded quickly, as Mother's Day flowers in a dry vase.

Slider was with us for 14 years, but as with all things, he grew old. He became desultory and languid. His lassitude turned to indolent lethargy, and he began marking his demesne, both inside and outside the house. Good times with him became fugacious, and I could tell that he longed for the halcyon days of his youth when he would gambol uncaringly among the daisies in the park across the street from our condominium.

Slider died on a Friday morning. They told us at the vets office that they would cremate him and sprinkle his ashes in a bucolic atmosphere out in Strasburg where he could run and play with abandon for eternity.

The kids, of course, were woebegone with grief. The imbroglio we experienced in our family after Slider died was labyrinthine. One day I was the bad guy for not liking the poor dog and the next it was Kelly, because she took him to the vet that day. Neither of us were winners in the minds of our children.

So Kelly and I talked about a new dog, one that could be an inside dog, one that the kids could walk and take care of.

It turns out that we've had that dulcet little pooch for a week today. Her name is Charlie, the mixture of a Bichon Frise and a Poodle. A Bichon-Poo. Her effervescent ebullience is contagious, and though she's still in her very incipient growing stages and is a relative ingénue, she seems to be a panacea for all things wrong in our home. She is a lot of work, no doubt, but her enthusiasm calms the heart of even this savage beast. She's already brought a lot of felicity to our tiny bungalow and is the cynosure of all the neighbors. We've got dog-sitters lined up from now to eternity.

Interesting thing is that we were actually just looking around for another dog. But the epiphany hit me this morning. It's been serendipitous. We actually found a lot of cure while we were looking for a dog.

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I used 35 of the "beautiful" words in this blog. How many did you pick out? Leave me a comment!

My Bucket List

OK. For some reason I've been inspired.

Whether it was the trip to Costa Rica, the trip back, or whatever, I've been inspired to improve my life. I want to be so much better. It really shouldn't be that hard. Little improvements along the way make for big improvements at the end. Heck, some would say I'm not really that good anyway, so ANYTHING would be an improvement.

I can't say I disagree all that much.

I tried to do a little bit of research on the subject, and so did the requisite clicking around the Internet. What I found was that most people today are making bucket lists.

You know what a bucket list is...a list of the stuff you want to do before you kick the bucket. Though I've heard of them, I've never really worked on mine. Today, however, I thought it might not be a bad idea to jot down a few ideas.

So, here's the start. It's just a draft, so it will be improved over the next few months.

1 - Read more good books and watch less television.
2 - Do better in my Church calling, whatever it might be.
3 - Be able to retire...it doesn't matter when, since right now it doesn't look like I'll be able to do it AT ALL.
4 - Jump out of an airplane.
5 - Climb a large mountain, like Everest (ok, not Everest, but a large mountain)
6 - Cycle 100 miles in less than 7 hours.
7 - Run five 5k races, with my son, in 2011.
8 - Do a triathlon, even if it's a mini.
9 - Have better food storage in my home.
10 - Write a book that someone will actually read.
11 - Go to the new Yankee Stadium.
12 -

You know what? The more I think about it, the more I realize that I've already done a lot of the things I want to do.

I went on a mission.

I got married.

I had children.

I went to Europe.

I traveled by train.

I flew an airplane.

I flew IN an airplane.

I went skiing in Utah (Greatest snow on earth).

I have relaxed on the beach in Hawaii.

For the most part, I'm happy with my life. Would I change anything? Maybe, but there are very few choices I've made over the years with which I am dissatisfied. For the most part, I'm comfortable in my own skin.

If I really think closely about it, there's only one thing on my bucket list, and it's something I work on every single day. I pray for it. I think about it. I practice it. I really, really try to do it.

I just want to be a good husband and father.

Nothing more, nothing less.

If I never get to run a triathlon, so be it, if my wife and kids are happy.

No Everest? I'm fine with that, if they are satisfied.

Never jump out of an airplane? OK.

When I die, you can write what you want on my tombstone. But if my wife and my kids can say that I was the best husband and father they could have had, everything else will have just been gravy.

Swimming with the Dolphins

"They're over there!"

Josh pointed astern at a white-hulled boat about a mile away. "We just got a call from that boat over there," he said, his voice betraying his obvious excitement. "They said the dolphins are all around them!"

Josh was our captain for the day, a transplanted Washingtonian who'd married a Costa Rican woman, had a son and built his own house on the edge of the rainforest just a few miles out of Puerto Jimenez. He'd traded in his software engineering hat for one that was equally farmer, boat captain and tour guide.

"What kind of dolphins are they?" someone asked.

Josh smiled knowingly. "These will be the Spotted Dolphins. There is a pod of about 300 of them that lives in the Golfo Dulce. There are no predators for them, so the pod just gets bigger and bigger."

Tino, our boat helm, turned the rudder toward the other boat and gunned the motor. The hull lurched out of the water and sped toward the dolphin pod, spraying water from both sides and creating a large wake behind it.

Jacob and Hannah were in the air chairs, two belted seats at the front of the boat that hung out over the water. Buckling yourself into the seat and leaning into the oncoming breeze gave you a definite sense of flying across the water. There was nothing between you and the gulf but a couple feet of speeding air.

Everyone on our boat saw the dolphins when we were still several hundred feet away from the other. They were jumping and swimming all around it, frolicking playfully with each other and showing off for the eco-tourists who had paid their way into the observation seats.

"You should all go to the front of the boat," cried Josh. "They'll swim right in front of us and all around us!"

None of us had ever seen anything like what we saw next. What seemed like hundreds of Spotted Dolphins had converged on our vessel and were jumping and swimming on every side. Taking turns, they swam, some with babies no longer than Hannah is tall, directly in front of our speeding boat. Others would jump out of the water and then disappear beneath the glistening gulf.

"They always jump twice," said Josh. "They like to be on camera, so they give you a warning and then they jump again."

Scanning the water I saw one jump only about 20 feet from the boat. Focusing my camera on the general area, I quickly snapped a picture when he flew through the air again.

After watching the dolphins play for nearly 20 minutes, Josh said it was time to go. "We have an appointment with the preserve for 9 o'clock," he said, "so we've got to get going."

After spending a couple of hours at the preserve (which is another story all its own), we got back onto the boat with Josh and Tino. "This is going to be the most fun you will have on this tour," he said. "Does anyone want to swim with the dolphins?"

Looking around I saw that everyone in the boat had raised his hand. I raised mine, too.

"Tino and I invented this sport a couple of years ago," Josh continued. "It's called wake-boarding and it's really, really fun."

Wake-boarding consists of a long rope attached to the boat on one end, and on the other, a large piece of wood with two hand-holds sawed into it. There was one rope and board combination on each back corner of the boat. Two "swimmers" jumped into the water at a time and held onto the boards. Once secured, the "swimmers" are towed behind the boat at about 1300 rpms. If the "swimmer" points the front of the board into the water he will dive down as far as 15 feet.
Bryan and Heather went first and then it was my turn. Jacob and I both jumped into the water, I grabbed one rope and he grabbed the other. Once we had a good grip on the boards and had assured that our masks were good and tight, Tino gave her some gas and we started speeding through the water.

I wanted to go down immediately, so, pointing the front of the board into the water, I took a deep breath and dived until my ears started to hurt. The first thing I noticed was that it was eerily quiet and peaceful beneath the surface. I felt like I was flying through the water, but I saw no dolphins on my first dive.

Angling the front of the board toward the surface, I felt like one of the dolphins for which I was searching. I crested the top of the water and came out up to my waist.

I looked over at Jacob and laughed. He was doing great and had even dived down a time or two in the time it took me to go down once.

I had readjusted and tightened my swim trunks before jumping in the water, but they were still starting to sag dangerously. I let go of the board with my left hand and tugged at them gingerly. They were all right. It just felt like they were falling down. Just in case, however, I bent my knees so in case they did come off I wouldn't lose them in the 800 feet of water below me.

Another gulp of air and a big smile later, I was again diving down into the big, deep dark. There still were no dolphins around me that I could see, although when I came up Josh was pointing all around me. Another gulp and down I went.

I probably dived down about ten times, all with no results. Every time I came up I saw Jacob coming up, too, a big smile on his face. I learned later that he never saw any dolphins. He just thought it was fun to swim almost effortlessly.

One last time I dived into the darkness, when, almost immediately after going beneath the surface, I heard the high-pitched voice of a Bottlenose dolphin. Scanning beneath me, I finally saw it off to my right side. Marveling at the ease with which it glided through the water, I held my breath until it swam in another direction.

My turn was over, but as they pulled the rope toward the boat, I kept my mask in the water, just in case. I'm glad I did. I saw the most poisonous snake in the world only about 30 feet below me, wiggling and snaking its way toward the inky blackness. It was a yellow sea snake, and found that I was happy it was that far away.

I also saw a moray eel just before I got back into the boat. It, too, was about 30 feet below me, wending its way into the deep.

Kelly and Hannah both took their turns and then it was back to port. Shaking Josh's hand while disembarking from his boat, I said, "This has been the best, Josh. Thank you."

He smiled and shook his head. "Yup. It is the best, isn't it? That's why I came down here and never left. I love it."