Farewell Juno: We Hardly Knew Ya!

Random thoughts following our much bally-hooed, but in the end kind of lame, snowfall:

The Prophets of Doom REALLY blew this one: We all have them in our office, the weather "armageddonists" who seem to spend the entire Winter as a part-time meteorologist. They start in October with a "I've read it's supposed to be the worst winter in decades." Then they spend the next few months on weather.com, find every potential storm, exponentially blow it out of proportion and spend the next few hours with like-minded weather fanatics discussing how bad it will be and what events will be cancelled.

The most aggravating part of these people - and we ALL know at least one of them - is they find the weather model (they look at different models - they aren't screwing around) that gives the worst possible outcome and multiply it by 3. So if the weather sites predicting anything from a dusting to 2 to 4 inches, they immediately proclaim "We're getting 6 to 12 inches."

They also like to call storms 6 days out, which anyone who spent 10 minutes in an Earth Science class will tell you is an inexact science at best.

The true meterologists are having a rough winter: I'm not one of those who like to trot out the "it's the only profession where you're wrong all the time and still get paid" line every time a 40% chance of rain doesn't give us a tornado. In fact they have been painfully accurate over the past decade or so . Ivan, Sandy, and countless other storms were dead on. In the past 10 days the forecasters have: 1) completely missed calling an ice storm, 2) Were so wrong on the timing of another they called off a day of school and not a flake fell until 4:00. 3) Fell asleep at the wheel again a few days ago and I woke up to six inches of wet snow and now 4) Overhyped this one so badly they actually closed my ofice, which NEVER happens.

Where's the Love? (Adult Version): I realize that we are becoming an increasingly agnostic nation so maybe people aren't as versed in the "love thy neighbor as yourself" concept - but it kills me when we DO get a decent amount of snow and someone pulls out their snow blower and spends a whole 26 seconds knocking out the 22 feet in front of their home (we live in a row home). I'm no saint but most of the time I can cover at least 4 houses easily without using a motor.

But it doesn't stop there: If people shoveling their cars out would spend the extra few minutes to pile the snow on the curb rather than in front and back of their car the street wouldn't have nearly the amount of drama we do every winter where people place trashcans in front of their house to mark their spot.

I am TOTALLY against that practice btw. If we all use that logic than nobody can visit anybody until all the snow melts. Plus - it's not your damn street!

Where's the Love (Kids Version):  I don't have many issues with "kids today." I don't ever remember walking to school in 3 feet of snow like so many people who are my age. I remember school getting called all the time. I don't think kids today are stupid, or lazy or whatever else.

But they are blowing it when it comes to one thing: when I was young, our first order of business was shoveling out the elderly people on our street and we damn sure didn't ask for money. Sometimes we got a tip, sometimes we didn't - but it wasn't about our separate shoveling business where we knocked out the driveways of yuppies for $15 a pop. And if we got to the door of someone we didn't know who turned out to be elderly (I hate that word...maybe "old" is ok, but you cn argue I'm old) then we charged an insanely low price like $2 a driveway.

In our neighborhood, not only are the kids not shoveling anything gratis, they are charging exorbitant rates and make no concessions for our AARP-qualified friends.

I guess part of it is a lot of us don't really know our neighbors anymore - but on this one I think the kids are just being lazy. I'm part of the problem - while I was out shoveling my kid was in the house reading his "Ripley's Believe it or Not" coffee table book.

I guess I should be glad he was reading.

Dear Complaining Parents...From Coach Aaron

I hear your disparaging comments about my coaching ability and I know it's not an accident that I do.
I'll take this moment to respond.

What I want to say first is I'm not mad at  you. You want the best for your kids as any parent does. And I have - and I hate to admit it - done my time as one of "those" parents. So I look at your complaining as comeuppance for when I spent an entire season raising hell because I didn't like how a softball coach was speaking to, using, playing my daughter. I'm still embarrassed about it - but I learned from it.

I am a well meaning Dad who coaches basketball and soccer. I don't consider myself overwhelmingly qualified to coach. At every registration for each sport I check the box that I'm willing to coach,or assist, or help. And then I write clearly above the box that "I will coach if you are in need of coaches, but I don't want to stand in the way of anyone else who wants to coach."

I am always called to coach.

I won't speculate on why you elected not to coach - but my guess is you will say that you don't have the time. I'm not sure I have the time either. I often go into work early on practice days and rarely do I have time to go home and eat before practice starts. Mary brings my dinner to the office or often I eat at the practice field while changing out of my work clothes in the bathroom.

Don't think that my time commitment is limited to showing up for practice and games. I spend a lot of time planning out the practices by reading articles and watching different drills on videos. Of the dozens of drills on any particular skill that I can find online, only a select few are appropriate for the age and skill level of my kids, it takes time to parse through this.

I line fields early on Saturday morning. I go to storage sheds at odd hours of the night and sort through boxes of uniforms and equipment to make sure we have what we need.I organize team pictures. I have often personally delivered uniforms to peoples houses for various reasons. I attend coaches meetings. I respond to every email regarding practice time and game locations even though more often than not the information is readily available. I killed an entire weekend over the Summer going to a coaching clinic so I could be a licensed soccer coach. That doesn't include the stuff I did online.

I have spent hours on the phone with various parties because one of my kids parents forgot to register him and the deadline had passed.  I have stood in parking lots with kids whose parents got caught up in something and couldn't pick them up on time.   The registration process is ridiculously long and tedious - all of these leagues have so many rules...Military operations are done with less paperwork. I organize end of season parties and make darn sure I have something good to say about every single kid - and sometimes this takes a LOT of time! :-)

I have dealt with discipline issues - treading carefully between getting my point across but not accusing anyone of raising their kids the wrong way. I have broken up a fight between parents after a game and went through HOURS of paperwork and hearings defending my kids.

I am told I shouldn't be doing all of this - that I should have a parent do it. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to have one who is willing. Often I'm not.

Apparently they don't have time.

I respect your intimate knowledge of the game and  your extensive resume which makes you 10 times more capable of coaching this team than I am - I do wish you could find the time. I have gone more than my share of nights without sleep trying to balance everything - maybe I need better time management.

I try to teach fundamentals the kids can take anywhere rather than focusing on set plays to set up the kids who already know what they're doing. I know the plays you have in mind would lead us to victory and my lack of focus on them is costing us games - but I'm  trying..And when a kid who has never had an athletic moment in his life scores a goal or makes a basket and their parents are in tears - I feel vindicated. Maybe there's a happy medium - I am open to that - but please don't lose sight that I do what I do with EVERY kid in mind.


I'd love to play every kid equally. I also wish all of them were equally talented, showed up at an equal amount of practices and showed an equal amount of dedication when they were there. I guess I could completely ignore these factors and just go with an egalitarian system of playing time. But that would cost us games even before they start - and I also understand that you expect me to win.

Make no mistake - I hate playing some kids less than others - I feel for those kids, but I've been around long enough to know the kids are happier when they win playing 15 minutes than when they lose playing 20.

I try everything I can to give everything I can to figure out a way to get every kid an appropriate amount of playing time - it gets blown up regularly when I get a text an hour before the game - or sometimes while the game is going on - that a kid won't be there because he has a "school function." School functions apparently appear out of nowhere.

I don't get paid for this and I wouldn't feel right taking any pay.What you may not know is this experience often costs me more than my sons registration fee. I buy equipment that I think will help. I make up the difference when our collections for a mutual cause fall short. When one of the bigger kids on my team didn't have uniform shorts that fit him and I was running out of options to get them Mary suggested we make a run to a sporting goods store.

I scoffed at laying out the money to do this, after all, it's MY money - but Mary knew me all too well: I wasn't going to let that kid have to explain to anybody why he didn't have the same shorts as everyone else.  Another coach had an extra pair of shorts and we were able to save a few. The father wasn't much help - he paid the same amount as everyone else - why should he have to buy shorts?

But I'm no candidate for martyrdom. I know people that coach 2,sometimes THREE teams...Nobody else has the time. And  the responsibilities of commissioner - I have no idea how they do it. I honestly don't.

And the experience of kids are largely shaped by volunteers. Not just coaches; Youth group leaders, boy scout troop leaders, band parent organizations, room parents, PTO leaders,  and countless others. As a parent I feel it's my responsibility to help where I can - as other parent volunteers have made great experience for my kids possible.  I'm just trying to be fair.

Nor am I an altruist. I get a lot more than I give for doing this.

I get time with my son. Oh I'm not doing this to promote him - he'd be better served by another coach. He's the one that gets the most criticism and every minute he's on the floor or field I wonder if I'm playing him too much, is it fair? But still - I love sharing the time with him.

I get time with your kids - and they give me energy.They're funny and excited to learn. Many times I start practice after a bad day at work and by the end my problems are long forgotten. I love seeing these kids a couple of years after I've coached them - I love watching them grow.

I get to meet great people - I've made countless friends doing this. It's hard to make friends after 30 - but doing this makes it easy. I know you aren't happy with me but I hate to tell you - you're in the minority. And while I earlier lamented the lack of help - the other side of it is I get a LOT of help - if that makes sense.

So maybe your criticism is warranted. The joy and friendships I get doing this far outweigh any time and money outlays. In the end that's what matters. I get a great experience - maybe you have every right to feel I should be a better coach.

So thank you for your thoughtful criticism. And thank you for letting me enjoy your kids.

The Dream Lives, Despite the Past Year

It's 3:05 am and I'm honoring Martin Luther King's Birthday by trying to figure out the best way to get caught up at work and reflecting on my shortcomings as a father of a biracial son.

Oh yeah - we have a black President, which despite the ramblings of some does mean we've come a hell of a long way as a nation in the past fifty, forty, even 20 years. For a while, subconsciously or not - I tried to make myself believe that President Obama's election meant we had reached some sort of nirvana when it came to race relations. And I'm proud of this country in so far as my son can sit in a classroom and see a picture of President Obama on the wall and think "why not me?"

That has been my message on past Martin Luther King days when I have rambled in blogs like this or on ridiculously long Facebook posts. I have thanked MLK and others for their part in improving this country. 

But, as the past  year has made all too clear, we aren't "there" yet when it comes to Dr. King's vision of a country that judged all by the content of their character. 

2014 was the year of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice. If we're being real, we know those weren't the only three black men (one barely a man, one a boy by any definition) treated "unfairly" by police (to use a ridiculously soft word.) I could probably think of plenty more myself if it weren't 3:27 am. 

In the case of Mike Brown, I don't know what the hell happened but I do know that any district attorney who wanted to get the thing through the grand jury could have done so and that cops seem to get a free ride under Robert McCulloch. There's a LOT of troubling things going on - on both sides - this one needed its day in court. That's why we HAVE the courts!

You get your choice with what's most despicable about the Eric Garner situation:

• The society of overcriminilization. (Loose cigarettes?)
• The amateur hour policing of the two initial officers. 
• The chokehold itself - there were more than enough officers at the scene to subdue Mr. Garner (if he needed being subdued for his big crime) without the chokehold. 
• The classic cop move of getting a suspect into a position where it is physically impossible to move and screaming to put your arms behind your back while shoving his face into concrete for "resisting." (#99 played that part to a tee on the video). 
• The piss poor medical attention he received. Actually - I think this matter has gotten lost in the whole thing. As bad as the first video is, the second one of him lying motionless while a dozen police officers stand around showing less medical where-with-all than the average Boy Scout may bother me even more. 

I won't argue there weren't other factors to consider - some obvious from the tape and some unseen - but I don't understand how anyone could argue this doesn't deserve a day in court. Police officers have among the hardest jobs inaginable, and they also have the monopoly on legitimate violence in this country. The people - not the self-interested DA's, need to have a role in policing the police.

Tamir Rice, one year older than my son, gunned down without a warning. Spare me the details of his size and the fact that the gun looked legit...If the police can arrest James Holmes - who had just murdered 12 and shot 70 more - without incident, then I think it' a fair assumption that the Cleveland police could have managed to resolve this without a need to make funeral arrangements for a middle-schooler.

As anyone who has seen me with my son can figure out he's adopted. As a white father of a black child (Don't you love it when the Obama haters pull out the "He's half-white, you don't hear anything about that" line, and then promptly ask for his birth certificate.) - I know I have a responsibility to teach him history. History that extends far beyond Dr. King and Harriet Tubman.

He needs to know about Emmert Till, Edgar Mevers and the bombing of the church in Birmingham that killed four young black girls attending Sunday school.

He needs to read the Constitution that deemed black men 3/5's of a person (not to say women got a fair shake in that one, there's a lot in the constitution we don't like to talk about.)

He needs to truly understand slavery, as well as the share-cropping system that replaced it that was hardly any better. Dred Scott. Governors standing at the gates of schools to protest the matriculation of a black woman.

And that's just the beginning - the History 101 stuff.

In short, he needs to understand a concept that seems completely foreign to him: Hate.

There are no shortage of resources to teach him a much more comprehensive history of black men in America than what he's getting in school. And I need to step up and do it. Before he hears his first "why does their have to be Black Entertainment Television" speech...Or "the NAACP is racist" or - my personal favorite: "Why isn't there a white history month?"

When I adopted my son I pictured having him in much more diverse environments than I have placed him. Make no mistake - from what I can tell he's been accepted by the kids (and parents) in almost all situations. He gravitates towards the bi-racial kids whenever he can - which makes sense. However I have seen a lot more love toward him than anything else.

But he has a pure heart. He's never had a bad word for anybody. Some would say he's immature emotionally because he doesn't have anything in the way of cynicism. I just think he looks for the best in everyone - that he has a belief in the goodness of the human spirit.

I hope he doesn't lose that.

Early Morning Regrets

It's 3:30 AM.
I meet with my boss at 9:30 AM. I have a hell of a lot to do before then. The office opens at 5.
I do this kind of crap to myself all of the time. There's no reason in the world I shouldn't be sleeping right now, calm in the knowledge that I have worked as hard as possible and can justify my progress on every project.

I can't though.

This is a position I find myself in far too often - trying to rally at the very last minute. It causes a hell of a lot of anxiety and often serious self-loathing. There are times at work where I literally hit myself multiple times in anger for the time I wasted.

I can't keep living like this.

One problem is I'm about the most disorganized person God ever created, the other is that I am the worlds biggest procrastinator. There's nothing that can't wait...Until it really can't wait. I'm in that situation now. I got maybe 4 hours of sleep last night - I hope this is the last such night.

Like every idiot I wrote out about 20 resolutions for myself - and the one concerned with work was to achieve a "consistently exceeds" expectations. This isn't exactly an auspicious start - but it's early.

I wish I knew the difference between the "winners" and people like me. The truth is the overwhelming majority of us know what we should be doing. Rarely does our best use of time involve one more round of 2048.

I just want to get it right for one year. I just want to have one New Years eve where I don't lament everything I screwed up the year before. I'm 43 - my life is well past the halfway point. It's time to show the world I'm not a complete dud.

I'm off to a good start with the gym. I've gone 15 times over the last 17 days and I feel a difference. But right now I'm still a "resolutionary" - hopefully in March I'll be buying new pants.

But my job is where it really has to come together. I'm good at my job - but I could be so damn much better. This is the year I want to prove that. I don't want to think what would happen if I were to get let go from Guardian...But I don't just want to survive - I want respect. And you earn respect.

In other news my ragtag bunch of misfits that constitute my basketball team are embarking on a 3 games in 3 days weekend. We have no great players,but we do have six kids with some level of talent.We also have four duds - but maybe they'll skip a game here and there. We're 0-2 but our two losses were by a combined 3 points. What scares me is we haven't had much practice at all the past three weeks and we could be 0-5 in three days.

But I've obsessed way too much over such things in the past. Coaching kids is my outlet - but I can't use it to avoid real life.

It's day 9 of 2015. If I get through it unscathed (and even better with a W in basketball) - I might start getting excited about what this year can bring!

The Fun Begins

For what it's worth - I'm 240 pounds.

I guess that's bad. My BMI would certainly tell you that.

I could care less that I weigh 240 pounds. If I was fitting into my pants without a gut hanging over my belt, if I could keep up with my kids at soccer practice, if I could present to people with confidence and be 240 pounds than I'll go with it.

I have no plans to weigh myself again. Ever. I'm sure there will be situations where I'm asked to step on a scale and I'll comply - but I won't be paying any attention to the result. The only reason I weighed myself at all was because I asked to meet with a personal trainer because as much as I hate to admit it I don't know what the hell I'm doing when it comes to weights and part of their schtick is to weigh you. And that's fine.

I started working out a couple of weeks before 2015 rolled in but I guess I could still be labeled a "resolutionary." Statistics say that by mid-February I'll be done with the gym. But I'm doing my best to avoid the mistakes that I've made in the past, the same mistakes people make every year.

I won't make it about weight. That's hardly revolutionary - for years it's been known that if you're weight loss regimen is a constant focus on the scale it's doomed to fail.  But people want that objective win. So the cycle begins: You join a gym, or buy some of that  Nutri-System crap (anybody else ever enjoyed their dry burger in a bag?)  and you have a kick ass first week... You lose 5 or as many as 10 pounds - You're HOT!!! So you double down the second week...You work out even harder, your daily diet becomes a scoop of peanut butter and an apple and you get on the scale and...shit...you only lost one or two pounds. BUT YOU'RE KILLING YOURSELF...And from there the downward spiral begins - it's all over within a month.

Not this time - screw the scale.

I'm starting slow...Slow as hell. The first day at the gym I walked on the treadmill for 45 minutes and notched a whopping 2.3 miles. That's so slow that it insults the concept of slow. But whatever - I've gotten better every day (although I don't use the treadmill every day). In the past I've gone and blown myself out on the first day and killed any joy out of it within 3 weeks.

I won't be "checking in" at the gym. There's just something screwy about that.."Look at me!!! I'm at the gym!!!" To me if you're checking in - it means you don't plan to be there very often. It's also begging for false praise..."You look GREAT!" because damn it...you gotta be polite!

I'll diet eventually - but not until the spirit moves me. I haven't tried to do anything healthy in well over 4 years. If I've learned anything over the years is that I can't overhaul who I am in a day, a week, whatever. If the only thing I change this year is that I exercise more - I'll live with that. In the past I've decided I'm going to exercise 1 hour/day and become a vegan overnight - it hasn't worked.

I'm 43 and even at 18 I wasn't much of an athlete. I'm not trying to become something I never was. I just want to feel better.

And if someone happens to notice that I look better - well I'll take that too!!!