Football Epilogue

 I'm on the clock. There are 22 minutes left before I have to pack up from this chicken scratch session and head to the "Banta Bowl" for my son's football game. It is an idyllic autumn morning in Appleton with bright sun, a light breeze and the temperature hovering somewhere between medium coat and sweatshirt. I'm wondering if forgetting my winter cap will be logged as a regret today. If it is it'll only be a minor one.  I'm sitting in one of my favorite little coffee shops here, the Commodore Cafe . I usually sit on the main floor but I arrived to a busy lobby as there's a street market going on along College Avenue, the main drag through downtown, today. This caught me off guard as there's usually not a ton happening here on the Saturday mornings. Downtown usually has a sleepy vibe in the morning. In my mind this offsets the weekend evenings where there are ~30 bars, according to  appletondowntown.org . Indeed, the town may often have to sleep it...

A favorite of mine. Go MIAC. From here:  link to print There's a unique level of excitement and anticipation at the start of the (American) football season. To me, it is the unofficial start of autumn. In reality my summer ends a couple of weeks sooner in mid-August when the training begins. Often referred to as "two-a-days" due to the historical two full practices they entail. This time of the season is often the subject of my dreams, or maybe nightmares, due to their intensity. In my college playing days, I think three-a-days would have been more apt due to the couple hours of meetings and weightlifting that happened in the evening as well.   Two-a-days are an onerous time where players challenge each other for their position on the "depth chart" (top spot on the chart is the starter) and you form and mold the kind of team you are going to be for the season. The lion's share of play installations and coordination are done here. The rest of the season is ta...

The view from shore   I am relaxing and enjoying a quiet morning at the cabin and looking to keep my brain relaxed and in the moment. I came up here to help put the docks and boat lifts in the water and get things largely ready for summer. That mission was accomplished yesterday with only some mild soreness manifesting so far.  Working as a team with my dad and brother, the whole process of positioning the two docks and three lifts of various sizes took pretty much the whole morning. The lists are particularly heavy and we leveraged a couple of the plastic, small kayaks the kids use to help create some buoyancy and ease positioning once they were deep enough in the water. One of the kayaks did get a little out of position though and launched itself from its position and nearly concussing my dad. Good thing he's still got a little bit of quickness.  The work itself, while in waders that eventually got washed over in the deeper spots and ended up being a sort of aquarium fo...

The desert outside of Scottsdale while enjoying an ATV tour. And so here I am. Sitting at an oasis in the Sonoran desert. I'm in Phoenix, AZ at the Arizona Grand Resort (& Spa), sitting on the patio just outside the resorts golf pro-shop. The coffee is tasty as I watch the upper middle class (does that still exist) play the high handicap version of golf that is probably still way better than my game.  Along the patio are a good, but not overly crowded, mix of mom's with their kids, non-golfing dads and the occasional youth baseball player who looks like they just received gear from the bat armory and has their marching orders for the day's tournament. The speakers are playing some motown, funk and classic rock/folk classics. I'm finding myself frequented by birds, namely a precocious sparrow hoping to find some dropped crumbs. Sorry, I've only got coffee at the moment. So, this is my spring break. It's a small escape from the stress good people in MN had to,...

Here I am in Appleton, Wisconsin preparing to watch my son play in his final game of his sophomore year. This has been a challenging season for the Vikings, with an 0-9 record so far and no indication that today will spell victory for the team. In reality we knew that this season would be one of adversity and change. The offseason, late in the offseason, saw a head coach change. This was frustrating as organizations that make such changes usually do so right at the end, or just before the end of the season. I really think this was poor form for the university and is hopefully being taken as a learning experience.  The change was sad as, despite the lack of success in the wins column, we really liked the outgoing coach. We felt that he took the effort to connect with the players and be supportive of their University experience. Fortunately, it appears that that coach landed a respectable assistant coaching position elsewhere.  Coaching can really be a metaphorical meat grinder....

  Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay I have lived in three states in my adult life. Geographically physical parts of the United States, I’m sure I’ve lived in many more emotional/spiritual states (sometimes more than one at once) but that’s a different story for a different time. Most of my time away from Minnesota was in my mid-to-late 20’s; Northern California for graduate school and Maryland/DC for my postdoc. After 7.5 years away, and having had two kids, an opportunity to move home presented itself and we took it. Now, 16 years after moving back to the land of 10 kilo-lakes (order of magnitude estimate), the wanderlust is re-emerging. I’m finding myself tied to my exact location less and less and am becoming more curious about living in the greater world. While tourist-type travel may satiate some of that, I’ve grown fond of the idea of spending extended time elsewhere. By that, I’m thinking of the order of three to six months; something on the order of a sabbatical. This w...