But against my better judgment, last year we bought Ethan a 14′ trampoline. Conveniently (so I thought), it breaks down into tiny pieces that can fit into a 5′x2′x2′ box. As it turns out this “convenience” is really a deadly trap, tempting you to consolidate all 200+lbs of galvanized steel and nylon netting into a single immovable container.

“Immovable, except to me of course.” These are the words of my hubris which betray my aging body. In my mind, I saw my 20 year old self hoisting the massive box onto my shoulder, strolling from the back of our house to the front, perhaps while whistling a jaunty toon, then gracefully depositing it in the POD storage container in our driveway.

Here’s how it really went down. I tipped the box on its end, put my shoulder into it, then immediately realized that the only “hoisting” that was likely in my future was myself onto an ambulance stretcher.

“But surely once it’s up on my shoulder, then I’ll be good to go.” So I called Missy over to help lift it onto my shoulder, which she did.

Immediately, I realized I was in way over my head. The crushing weight of super-jumpy-fun-time drove me into the ground. But my reputation as a man was on the line. I had to set out toward the front of the house.

At this point I blacked out, and only regained consciousness when my wife inserted herself into my hell. By her account, I was making noises that qualified as somewhere between full on cardiac arrest and gentle sobbing. I may or may not have wept openly. Understandably, her instinct to help and support her husband kicked in, and strong. Unfortunately, that instinct seemed to drown out her understanding of basic physics. Let me illustrate:

Here we see your basic leverage system, where the fulcrum would be me and the downforce is the behemoth box of pain perched perilously upon my shoulder.

Here we see Missy “helping” by lifting with great force on the back of the box.

“STOP HELPING! STOP HELPING!” would have been what you heard shouted were you in our neighborhood that particular afternoon, as I staggered forward, desperately trying to stay underneath my cargo as it violently and quite unexpectedly pitched forward.

Astonishingly, I recovered my balance just in time to dump the box in the storage container. It later occurred to me that placing the empty box in the POD first, then bringing the pieces of the trampoline there could have avoided this ordeal, but I blame the unicorn.

But that’s not the story in this post. When I finally got around to taking the fish tank in from my car, I kinda forgot what all I had wrapped up in that walmart bag inside it. So on my trip to Petsmart on Friday at lunchtime to get a higher powered filter and some fish, I skipped right by the gravel and decorations, assuming I was set, that I had packed that all inside the tank.

When I got back to my desk, I discovered, or rather didn’t discover, those needed essentials for a smooth, stress-free transition from bag to tank for my 6 neon tetras. So I just filled the tank, set the new, higher powered filter on low, and poured in the fish. But the lack of decor items breaking up the landscape just allowed the filter to spit out water unhindered, and created a bit of a maelstrom within the tank. The swirling current was almost too much for the tiny fish to offset by swimming furiously against it.

So come 5:30, I had an idea to try to ease the stress of the fish for the weekend, until I could get the tank set up proper. I had two small plastic tree things from a beta tank I used to have set up at work, so I dropped them in, hoping they would settle to the bottom and give the tetras a place of shelter during the terrible storm.

Instead, as I discovered this morning, those trees didn’t settle to the bottom. No, they stayed mostly afloat, spinning and bobbing in the current, occasionally catching a downdraft and diving halfway down the tank towards the fish, before floating back to the top. So in reality, I had created a giant tree monster that, from the fishes point of view, enjoyed teasing them by randomly threatening to squash them against the cold plastic bottom of the tank. Add that to the still constantly swirling current, and I had 3 out of the 6 fish dead from stress.

But I like to look at the bright side. The three that survived just made it through the fish equivalent of Navy Seal training. I almost want to get little plastic knives they can keep in their mouths and paint their faces with black grease. These fish are invincible.

However, I think I caught myself missing the point behind that lesson entirely, and wound up in another camp, albeit subconsciously. I started looking at strangers driving nice cars and thinking, “Boy, they sure are putting on a show. How many more payments? Or is it leased?” I flipped the whole thing around, measuring strangers financial smarts based on how crappy and old their car was.

Now mind you, this was a subconscious thing, and for some reason people I actually know were exempt. But Joe Public on the street, boy he was fair game.

I had missed the whole point: I have no right or means to judge anyone based on the vehicle they drive. I don’t have any information about them, nor should I, nor would it do me any good if I did. Judging them based on their car, or their clothes, or their house, or anything for that matter, only serves to hurt me and the cause for which I fight.

It’s an ugly fact that I’m quite ashamed of. Casting judgment on others is a very easy trap to fall into, and I hope I never do it again.

The ol’ Saturn came from the factory just 14 short years ago equipped with an electric sunroof. Somewhere between then and when it came into my possession, the sunroof was the victim of some type of catastrophic event that resulted in a twisted, screeching, scraping sound being emitted whenever you push the open button. It was really quite horrifying the first time I pushed it, almost like a Bengal tiger had descended onto my car and was attempting to peel back the roof like a can opener.

For the first few years, I just accepted that the sunroof was broken and wouldn’t open. But the cover that normally slides forward to hide the glass part was also broken, and stuck in the rearward position. So I always had the sun shining in on my head. One day I decided I would try to fix it. Three minutes of tinkering, then pushing, then pounding and I was through trying to fix it and just wanted to see if I could manually force it open.

I was somewhat successful, in that it opens now, but not without some sort of prying device. Luckily I keep a crowbar in my trunk, so this summer I promoted my crowbar to the passenger seat for quick access on hot days. It’s common now to see me in the parking lot after work prying at the sunroof of my car just like in Grand Theft: Auto. Except one look at the car and everyone knows I’m not stealing it.

Yesterday, I had driven to work with the windows down and sunroof open (because the A/C quit working and I can’t justify spending any money on it, it would be like resealing your driveway when your house is on fire). It seemed sunny enough, so I went into work without thinking twice. About 5 minutes into a 1pm conference call, it was brought to my attention that it was now raining. Hard. Like rivers in the parking lot hard (too soon to The Nashville Flood of 2010?) I ran outside, closed everything up, got drenched, and looked forward to getting home with a large wet spot on the back of my pants that evening.

So today, when I got to work, I played it smart and left only the passenger window open so that I could continue to air out the car from the internal hose-down of the previous day, but minimize the damage should another storm pop up.

And another storm did pop up. But this time, as I weighed my options, the prospect of running out into the rain to save only the passenger side of my car seemed less automatic than in the past. A thought occurred, “What if I leave it?” Passenger seat and floor get soaked. Not the first time that’s happened, probably more like the 15th (seriously). I am in no more discomfort than normal on my drive to and from work for the next few weeks before it drys out.

So I remained seated at my safe, dry cubicle while water poured into my car. Meh.

Note: I have zero intention of ever reselling this car to anyone, or else I might care more. My conscience couldn’t take it. Between the broken parking break, the leaky window seals, and the disintegrating interior, I’ve decided that it’s my moral obligation to ensure that the only part of this car that will ever be reused anywhere is the engine, since it seems like it will never. ever. die.

In recent years, I’ve seen the addition of a neat little feature on microwaves: the “Quick Start” buttons, which can start your food heating for a minute with the push of a single button. Nice, although if you would have told me that I would have a device in my home that can shoot deadly radiation at the push of a single button, I would have hoped for a ray gun of some sort.

Well that neat feature has now taken over the entire interface of my microwave. Instead of having separate 1, 2, or 3 minute “Quick Start” buttons like I used to see, now they’ve combined the function of the standard 1-6 numeric buttons with the quick start functionality. Now, I fancy myself a tech savvy guy, so I figured, “Fine, so if I want to cook something for 20 seconds, I’ll just have to push the Time Cook button first… somewhere here….. must be missing it, check again……….. There’s no time cook button.”

I proceeded to pound on the buttons randomly like a monkey, and finally achieved my goal. So let’s recap:

Old process for cooking something 1 minute:

1. Press 1
2. Press 0
3. Press 0
4. Press Start

New process for cooking something 1 minute:

1. Press 1

Verdict = Win

Old process for cooking something 20 seconds:

1. Press 2
2. Press 0
3. Press Start

New process for cooking something 20 seconds:

1. Press 2
2. Swear because microwave starts up at 2 minutes
3. Press cancel
4. Search for Time Cook button
5. Press random buttons with varying degrees of failure
6. Swear again
7. Realize 5 year old son is standing behind you
8. Convince son not to tell Mommy where he learned that word
9. Stumble upon Power Level button which displays current power level
10. Accidentally bump 2 button and discover that it has switched to taking a time input now
11. Press 0
12. Press Start

Verdict = Fail

A lady I work with and her husband had the first floor of their home underwater this weekend. I was able to go and help with some of the cleanup yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I’ve never seen flood damage first hand.

As we drove up to their street, I was wondering if we were in the right place. All the houses on the adjoining streets were fine. I saw a guy getting home from work, getting his newspaper and going inside. As we turned onto the flood damaged street it was like entering another world. The yards were full of debris: construction trash, ruined furniture, destroyed possessions, limbs, fences. It felt like driving through a tornado ravaged neighborhood, I didn’t notice that all the structures were in tact because of all the carnage in the front yards.

By the time we got there, all the furniture had been removed from the first floor, as it was all completely destroyed. Our friends had ripped down the wet drywall and insulation, so we hauled it out of the house. We ripped out the kitchen cabinets and tore up the flooring. Most of their privacy fence had been ripped right out of the ground by the force of the flood waters, cement post footers and all, so we cleaned up as much of that as we could find along with their destroyed patio furniture and debris that had settled in their back yard.

Being in one of the actual homes damaged by this flood with the homeowners brought the devastation to a level of reality for me that I didn’t understand before. Looking around, the place barely even resembled a house anymore. Walls were kicked out, exposing the framing. Everything was wet and smelly. And our friends had to look at it and be reminded of how nice things were just a few days earlier. I know if it were me, I’d have a lot of “why” questions, and would just want to turn the clock back and wish it had never happened. It would be very hard to be motivated to work on it.

I was tired after the back-breaking work, and looked forward to going home to shower and relax. These folks were undoubtedly far more tired than I was, but didn’t have the luxury of leaving it behind them and going home (a coworker of mine put them up in a rental house they had available, but it’s not home).

The good part is that my company has really rallied around them to try to take care of them in every way possible. The Nashville community has shown why Tennessee is called the Volunteer state, and I’m seeing this for the first time as a relatively recent Nashville transplant. That said, I don’t want to be one of those people who uses the positive stories of help and good deeds to make myself feel better, then goes on happily with my life while the flood victims still have to get up tomorrow to the reality that their lives have been drastically changed. The struggle will be ongoing for them, and the effects of this disaster are going to be felt for a long time. The course of many lives have been permanently altered because of it.

My dad would give us a safe opportunity to look at any new gun he brought into the house and let us shoot it (though I was too young to shoot his shotguns, although I do remember him letting me shoot his Colt 45, the kick scared the crap out of me). It took the mystery out of it, they weren’t like the forbidden fruit anymore, but even with that, I knew that touching any of his guns outside of those opportunities meant bad, bad things for me. Of course, he kept them unloaded and the ammunition was kept somewhere that I wasn’t aware of.

So then came the question of why we need a gun in our house. It wasn’t all that many years ago when American citizens needed to arm themselves to defend their nation from an invading army. And if that still seems too unlikely for you, look at what happened in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina. If chaos breaks out due to natural disaster, I’m not going to put the safety of my family at risk because of my trust in the inherent good nature of my fellow man. So between that and the rumor of the current administration’s gun control plans (taxing them to oblivion, making it impractical for me to purchase one), we decided that now was as good a time as any to buy a home defense firearm.

So with all that out of the way, I needed to decide on the type of firearm that would serve us best. A handgun is small and would be easily fireable by my petite wife, but I wanted something that would have a higher intimidation and recognition factor. The best home defense gun is the one that never has to be fired.

So I decided on a pump action shotgun. It takes an elite, rare level of crazy to come after someone holding an easily recognizable 12-gauge boomstick. And the sound of the loading mechanism lining up the next shell for launch could be enough to scare off an intruder all by itself.

I considered a few variations of the Mossberg 590, then came across a 2006 Remington 870 Express Magnum that a coworker was selling. It has a short barrel (18.5″), pistol grip and side-folding stock for easier maneuvering in tight quarters. A magazine extension allows for an extra 3 rounds (total of 7) before needing to be reloaded.

I like the idea of a shotgun just in case my wife would ever need to use it because when shooting buckshot, aim is less important.

Here it is, in all it’s glory:

And of course, being a geek, the first thing I did when I got it was take it apart to see how it worked:

So I skipped a run to give it time to rest, and it seemed to be fine. So I tried a 5 mile run, but 2.5 miles in, the pain returned and was more severe. I was still able to finish the 5 miles, but it was pretty uncomfortable. At this point I knew it wasn’t just going to go away, but I told myself that if I had to run in pain on race day, it would be worth it.

As a last ditch effort, I took 10 days off (right in the middle of a key training time, as mileage increased each week) to make sure it was completely rested. I started taking omega 3 fish oil, as I read that could help with joint lubrication. So after the long rest, I headed out for a 5 mile run on Saturday.

Half a mile in, the pain was worse than ever, and extended down my leg to my ankle. I was able to run 1.5 miles, then had to walk back. Even after just that short jog, my knee was worthless the rest of the weekend, and walking up or down stairs was really painful.

So, I guess that’s it. My knee seems to just hit a wall around 9 miles, that’s 2 years in a row. I suspect it’s a cumulative effect, and 3-4 months of training just adds up and eventually breaks my knee down. I shouldn’t be surprised, my knees took a pounding all through high school, since I was in sports year round every year.

The most frustrating part is that I’ve already paid the price, but I don’t get the prize at the end. I got up in 25 degree weather and ran, spent time away from my family for almost 4 months, with the motivation being the race at the end, crossing the finish line and being able to say I had run 13.1 with my friends and coworkers. I paid the price of training, and now with 2 weeks before the race, I have to sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else claim their reward. *sigh*

The good thing is that I lost almost 30 pounds while running. In a few months, I’m sure I’ll appreciate that more, but it still hurts to miss out on the Country Music Marathon this year.

I was in fourth grade, and Reebok Pumps were THE thing. I remember the commercials, where some NBA player would reach down, squeeze a few pumps of gravity-defying juice into his shoes, then sky over the competition and rip off some crazy windmill dunk or something. Clearly there was a coorelation between having a rubber bladder full of air in the tongue of your shoe and possessing the freakish natural ability necessary to put 45 inches between yourself and the ground.

Generally speaking, I didn’t usually get the latest fads when it came to shoes, but I think my parents must have taken turns going around with us boys and occassionally dropping the extra money to get the coolest thing, because somehow in 4th grade, I ended up with a pair of black, green, and purple Reebok Pumps. Once I realized that I was still incapable of separating myself from the court vertically enough to dunk, the cool factor wore off a bit.

Soon after, at a class skating party at the local Roller Rink (yep, it was definitely 1989), I was introduced to the brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. We hit it off, and really had alot in common. For example: I loved video games, it was a video game. I had a few dollars in quarters, it had a convenient slot to put them in. It was really a bit uncanny. I found it to be somewhat needy, but I really enjoyed spending time with it so I put up with it.

But as with all relationships, we ran into a bit of a snag shortly after our courtship began: I ran out of money. I quickly assessed my options, which, for a 10 year old looking for money, are few. The only thing I had of any value were my shoes, which I conveniently didn’t need at the moment being that I was at a skating rink wearing skates. A friend of mine (who always seemed to have money) had been wanting a pair of Pumps, so I sold them to him for $60. I’ve never been very good at planning for the future, so I’m not sure that I had thought much beyond the skating party, when the rink would be requiring the rented skates back.

I spent the next several hours blissfully transferring every dime (or quarter, as it were) of my shoe money into that wonderful machine. I remember beating it at least once, and paying for my friend who was now the proud owner of my footwear to play too (some parts of that game were just to hard to solo). And as far as I know, my parents never found out that I sold those shoes for arcade money. I have no recollection of how I was able to get home without having my shoelessness noticed, but after that I just went back to wearing my old shoes.

And it was worth every penny.