Dumb dog

Dear Dog That Lived At This House Before We Bought It,

I hope you're enjoying wherever it is you're living now. Rest assured that our dog is enjoying her new home and probably getting into many of the same adventures you had here.

There's just one little think you and I need to talk about. I know you lived under the deck in the back yard, and that's all well and good. I bet it was a cool, shady place for you to call your own. But here's the thing. All those holes you dug under the deck, under the steps and even under the gate. Yeah, those ones that you probably had a great time just digging and digging. Well, apparently our insurance company needed those to not be there. And guess who that responsibility fell on?

Me.

So I had to find someone who had a large amount of dirt who would let me then fill a pickup truck with that dirt, drive home, and fill in the rather large holes you decided to dig.

I can't speak for your owners, but we have a rule that my son learned by the time he was two. Before you can play with something else, you have to put the first toy away. So in the future, before you decide to dig another hole, how about filling in the first hole before you start.

Sincerely,

A guy who does not enjoy moving large quantities of dirt by hand.

Grandma and the Masters

My grandparents loved golf.

I knew that any weekend we made the 70 mile trip to visit them, there was going to be golf on.

I hated golf. I find it boring. Incredibly challenging and difficult to master, yes. But boring nonetheless.

A few years after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother won the lottery. Ok, not the actual "Mega Millions" lottery, but something almost as good. She won the right to buy Masters badges (tickets) every year. This right can not be transferred to anyone else and can't be passed on after you die.

Each year, my grandmother would let one of her eight children have control, for lack of a better word, of the badges, meaning they could go and take their spouse or kids. The only rule was the tickets were for family members only.

Being that neither of my parents or my brothers were all that interested in golf, we fell pretty far down the list when it came to the order in which each family got to go.

When it was finally our turn, my brother and I went together and while we still find the game boring to watch, we knew that strolling the grounds at Augusta National to watch the world's finest golfers was akin to being in Carnegie Hall to watch the world's finest musicians perform. We didn't have to have a deep appreciation for the game to have a deep appreciation for where we were and what we were able to witness.

Because we lived relatively close by, we also got to go whenever someone couldn't make it, usually for the Thursday or Friday rounds.

This year is our year to go again. Or, it was supposed to be. My grandmother passed away this past September. So no Masters tickets for us this year, or any other year unless we win the lottery.

CBS has been running Masters commercials over the past few weeks. It makes me realize how fortunate I was to get the opportunity to go to the Masters a few times. It also makes me miss my grandmother.

Leaving a legacy

I met Barry when we were both 15.

We were at a church camp and for some reason we were divided up into state delegations.There were about 15 kids from my church. Barry represented the rest of the Georgia contingent.

As it turns out, his aunt had been my freshman English teacher.

A few years later, we both ended up as students at Georgia Southern University. We ended up in the same campus organization. While we weren't best friends, we certainly hung out a lot, making random trips to the beach, playing video games, going to football games and plenty of late nights playing Risk with our friends.

Risk, for the uninitiated, is the game of global domination in which you roll dice and move armies across a map of the world, seeking to occupy every territory on the board. Attack to quickly and you'll end up spreading your army too thin. Wait too long and your opponents will become so powerful that there's not much you can do to to stop the ensuing onslaught.

So we must have played dozens of games of the course of the time we were in college. Over time, we learned the different strategies and patterns of everyone who played. I would end up being overly cautious, hoping to lay low while other players battled amongst themselves. Another friend would basically draw the game out a long as possible in an attempt to wear us down mentally as we got tired of waiting for him.

This brings us to Barry. Barry is what I imagine professional Risk players (an occupation I really hope exists, though I doubt it does) call a "wild card." Barry would seem to eventually grow restless and want something to happen, so he'd load up a country with as many armies as possible and then go on a marauding campaign that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. It was a military excursion for the sake of doing something. I'm not sure if there was ever a long-term plan associated with the attack or if it was just boredom.

Whatever the reason, if you were in the path of Barry’s destructive rampage, whatever plans you had were likely ruined. To make this post even more nerdy, it was like playing with a “chaotic neutral” character from Dungeons and Dragons. You weren’t sure what was going to happen, you just hoped you weren’t involved.

I graduated from college in 2001. I mention this because from time to time (including last weekend) some college buddies still get together to play Risk. We make the same jokes about the Ukraine being weak,  referring to Alaska as "The Fightin' Palins" and other geopolitical jokes that we all know are coming, but we laugh anyway. Barry lives about two hours from us, so he’s not among the players, but we still make references to someone “Pulling a Barry.” More than 13 years later, his legacy, or something like that, still lives on.

*Barry is currently a United Methodist minister so hopefully he’ll forgive me for giving away his Risk strategy to any of his new friends/parishioners who read this before his next Risk game.

The rise of the sports nation

If you’re reading this, please send help.

I’ve been hiding for years, besieged on all sides, trying to hold out against attackers who want nothing more than to force me to assimilate into their culture while abandoning all pretense of my current life.

At best you would call me a conscientious objector. At worst, you’d call me a traitor.*You see, My alma mater has insisted on branding itself “Eagle Nation” and has basically declared that anyone who attended classes, graduated, watched a sporting event or knows someone who has heard of the university a part of the nation.

*Should I ever run for public office, please correct anyone who uses that phrase out of context.

But I’m holding out. I don’t want to be a part of Eagle Nation, or, for that matter, any organization that would have me as a member. I want to be an alumnus of the school and a fan of their athletic teams without having to buy in to some crappy marketing scheme.

As best as I can remember, this whole “nation” thing started with the Boston Red Sox and has spread to any team that has more than three fans who are more than five feet apart. I don’t want to be in Eagle Nation. I want to pay you money for tickets to go the games and then be left alone. I haven’t declared my intentions to join your nation-state and don’t appreciate trying to be forcibly annexed in.

We all know that “Eagle Nation” is just a blatant marketing ploy to try to build up a connection with the school so you can not feel so bad about asking for money. I get the feeling we’re only a few steps away from changing the terminology from “donations” to “taxes” so people can look down on those who take advantage of attending sporting events that don’t charge admission instead of revenue-generating sports. “Why won’t you pay your taxes to support the Eagle Nation?” When it stops being effective, they’ll move on to something else.  

Instead of worrying about me, Eagle Nation needs to go try and conquer Mountaineer Nation with its headquarters in Boone, NC to make Appalachian State a satellite campus of Georgia Southern.  

So I will remain here with attackers on all sides holding out. Please send help as soon as possible.  

A Good Day

My wife hosted a bridal shower today. That means two things for me.

First, it means I've spent the past few days trying to make our house look like no one actually lives here. Not in the "clear out all the furniture so we can fool the people who watch House Hunters" kind of way, but in the "everything is put in its place just like no time ever" kind of way. It fools no one and is frankly insulting to everyone who shows up. We're putting on a show for ... you know what, that's a rant for another time.

The second thing it means is that my son and I are essentially kicked out of the house for three to four hours so the ladies can do whatever it is they do at bridal showers. I'd initially planned on taking my 4-year old to the Georgia Southern baseball game, but an overcast day with scattered showers and a packed stadium isn't the ideal way to entertain a small child.

Fortunately, right around the corner from the stadium is the Georgia Southern Museum. For $4, we got to see fossilized remains of Mammoths, pretend to be a paleontologist and search for dinosaur fossils while seeing an 30-foot Mosasaur. There was even a small tunnel he could crawl in to and when he stood up, he was in the belly of the long beast. We saw diagrams of Native Americans and their progression to developing tools to making canoes and fishing. We also saw the exhibit on a Civil War POW camp located about 30 miles from the Georgia Southern campus. As you can imagine, my son was less than impressed, so we went back to the mosasaur exhibit for a bit.

After that, we headed over to the Wildlife Center where despite the chilly and windy temperatures, we had a great time wondering the outdoor exhibits. We saw two Bald Eagles, a Golden Eagle, a few owls, snakes, turtles, a falcon and a lot of other animals. His excitement level was unbelievable. "I can't believe we saw a falcon, right in our own town," he said. On our way out, we went back to the Bald Eagle nest to see the majestic bird up close (20 feet away). It was incredibly awesome.

From there, we went to his favorite frozen yogurt place where, as luck would have it, Cars was on. Honestly, I'm not sure they own another movie as it seems Cars is on every time we go there.

All in all, it was a perfect afternoon, and a lot more fun than going to the baseball game would have been.