Tomorrow is my father's birthday. And from his birthday until Memorial Day, I tend to get a bit nostalgic about my dad's mother. She passed away when I was 12 of a form of leukemia. Often, I feel misunderstood by everyone, but she seemed to understand all my quirky ways. Since her passing, the only person that really 'gets' me has been my wife. But even still, she's unable to follow at times.

The last few weeks have been strange, to say the least. I added an OKCupid account (shrug) to see if anyone would be interested in hanging out with a married guy to take in some live music, new restaurants, etc. Needless to say, I'm getting a little weird about things. Call it a "something's not right feeling", but something just isn't right. If I start writing poetic verses and haikus, please check me into the nearest mental facility :-) I hope it's just my nerves and nothing to worry about.

Guess I'll finish watching Ghostbusters II on Netflix. It's a lonely night in Kansas until the missus gets home.

Spring Break

The past two weeks have been a blast! My actual birthday was 2 weeks ago today, but due to time and other commitments, I was unable to really celebrate until much later. There's another friend of mine whose birthday is 6 days after mine. We decided to corral a few folks for a trip to Holeman and Finch. If you have never heard of it, google it. They have the best hamburger in the world (yes, the world!)! We enjoyed 15 dollar hamburgers, great drinks, and awesome conversation among friends.

Since this week is Spring Break, the missus and I have been enjoying quiet evenings at home, without kids. I drove them to my parents home last Friday and came back to town the following Saturday. We love our kids, but the time spent with the missus has been priceless. We've done nothing extravagant, but to come home, have take-home Chinese and watch movies. It's been a great week and unfortunately, will be winding down in a few days :(

My son yesterday, posted a FB status that said the following: "No matter what people say, money can buy happiness". Obviously as a teenager, he hasn't had a chance to experience life broke or with money considering he lives with me. And as his father, we make sure he has the items necessary to grow and learn. We make choices about 'extras' he can have. For example, he doesn't have a cell phone and that is by choice with me and my wife. He has a playstation, but again, that is by choice.

Looking back over my 35+ years of life, the best time I've ever had was when I lived on 80 bucks a month while in college. I was BROKE as a JOKE (LOL)!! But I was happy, I was carefree. I wasn't living the dream however, I wasn't sure what the dream was. And then I started working full-time, got married, purchased home, bought cars, had kids, and BAM!! As quickly as you make the money, it runs through your fingers like sand at the beach. But the key, is that despite all these possessions, I am not happy. It's too much to keep up. The house requires repairs, the subdivision your home is in has a Homeowners Association that fines you when you don't keep up with maintenance of your home and landscape.

I'll be the first to say, I have a wonderful life. But at the moment, I am looking to downsize it. I've begun making short and long term goes to begin downsizing it. Ultimately, I have discovered what my dream is, but will be unable to begin to accomplish it until the kids have graduated from high school. I won't voice what that dream is, but involves being a free spirit and lots of water :-)

Anyway, that's all for now. The missus and I have a few more days of freedom before we have to drive to go get the rugrats. Feel free to comment. I would love to hear your thoughts :)

Another Year of Celebration

Good evening friends. I am less than 3 hours from celebrating another born day. Happy 21st birthday to me! Okay okay, I'm celebrating an anniversary of my 21st birthday. But more importantly, this is my second blog in less than a week. I really am working hard to be a little more responsible at putting my thoughts in writing, but not so much to stop enjoying life.

I have a few days off to enjoy my birthday. One of the first things I promised myself many moons ago was to take my birthday off to enjoy. The first birthday after I started working full-time, was a disaster and as a result, I vowed to take my birthday off. I haven't been consistent with this practice, but here I am and I'm successful today.

My kids bought me a nerf gun for my birthday. Little did we all know that the house would turn into our private battleground with nerf bullets flying all over the place! The nerf gun they purchased for me has bullets that whistle as it travels to its target! It's been a good day so far and tomorrow promises to be better with chili cheese dogs and onions on the menu for dinner. But more importantly, dessert will be fried apple pie with ice cream (yum!).

I'm not sure what the missus plans for me for my birthday. Maybe it involves something red, see-through and lacy? I'm quite easy to please as most men are.

If you don't hear from me for a while, it's only because I'm taking advantage of being a year older and getting free alcoholic drinks. But I'll check in next week. Holla!

New Beginnings

Yeah, so it's been 2 years since I've written anything here. You know what? I've been out living life, and the last few years have been awesome! I've since earned my black belt, I've coached two season of middle school football as well as 3 seasons of middle school lacrosse. My current season in lacrosse is going well and my team is having a fantastic season. We will continue to work hard and hopefully, we will be in a position to compete for a MAYLA championship in May.

The beauty about having a blog that is unpublished is that I can talk about anything. This week, my 'private manner' discussion would be my wife's obsession with rope. Yeah, i see the raised eyebrow you just made. And yes you heard it correctly. She's become fascinated with rope and the art of bondage. I would imagine most men would probably run for the hills if their wife wanted to tie them up. But remember, we are about 6 months away from celebrated our 15 year anniversary, I love this woman and will support her in all her endeavors, no matter how weird they might be. We've spent the last few days learning several knots that are used in bondage. She's practiced so much, a few of them she can tie in her hoodie pocket without even looking while she ties it.

I'm not sure what will become of it or where this will lead. All I know is that I'm supportive of her and will stand to probably be a beneficiary of her skill and knowledge (cheesy grin).

Hopefully, I will start posting more stuff here. By the way, I have birthday coming up, so I hope to receive lots of things (free trips to the Caribbean, money, a new motorcycle, college tuition for the kids, a rich girlfriend....LOL). Enjoy your weekend friends :-)

2010: Halfway Point

It is damn near July 1st, and my first blog in over a friggin year! Where da hell do I start? I obviously can't talk about taekwondo, because hell, I'm nearly a black belt now! The kids? Yeah, they're alive, although there are days i would love to remove them from existence. The missus and I? Wow! Never would i have thought I'd say 20 yrs ago that i would find one woman whom could make life so perfect! We're doing fantastic! November will be 13 yrs of marital bliss! Besides having my parents alive and in love, I couldn't ask for a better mate and friend!

Anyway folk, I hope after the last year, everyone is happy and healthy. My health has improved over the last year because of the additional cardio from taekwondo. It has me wanting to complete a 5K in under 25 mins by the end of the year. Super aggressive, but what's the point in creating a goal that's easy to reach? Until the next time....Hola!

AJ

Spring Season Lacrosse Wrapup

I know, it’s been like 5 months since I’ve wrote anything. I can tell you it was for a good reason why I’ve been MIA. For the last couple months, I’ve been coaching a 11 and under lacrosse team in Cherokee County, GA. The season is now over and in summary, we had an extremely successful season.

For the season, we played 9 games. Their record was 8-1 and we participated in 2 end of season tournaments. The first tournament, The Roswell Invitational, was okay. We finished in our pool 2 – 2, but I felt much better considering no one in our pool went undefeated. By knowing that, it showed that the teams in the pool were evenly matched.

Our last tournament, the Bagataway Tournament, is a national qualifier for the U11 national lacrosse tournament. Because the tournament was held at our home field, we were given an opportunity to participate. My organization had two U11 teams, so we combined the two teams and took the 20 best players from both teams. We had two practices to develop some sense of chemistry and camaraderie. Needless to say, after our last practice, I had my fingers crossed to win just one game.

The day of the tournament started with an 11am game against a Forsyth county team. We didn’t play them during the season so I knew nothing about this team. And given my outlook on the tournament, I just told the boys to go out and have fun. Well, they had fun indeed! I’m not certain what was discussed among them between Thur and Sat, but they looked like a team that had been playing together all season! We won that game 16-1!

Our second game was against a team from Alpharetta. I gave them the same pregame speech, “Let’s have fun!”. And they did just that. In fact, we earned our first shut out of the season with a convincing 11-0 victory. Maybe, just maybe, I underestimated my team?

Sunday would be our test. We would play a team from Gwinnett county at 9am, and our last game would be against the Lake Norman All Stars from Charlotte, NC. From our first game until now, they were sizing us up, taking notes to determine how to defend us. ARE YOU SERIOUS??? You can’t line up your best 10 players and just play the game? We had 3 coaches, they had 8!!! I wonder if they were being paid to coach! LOL

We beat the Gwinnet team 12-2. Can you believe during the game, the Lake Norman coaches were taking notes about my boys and how they play? You can’t be serious! So in the spirit of gamesmanship, I had my boys take their jerseys off after our last game. And with about 5 mins remaining before we played the Charlotte team, I made them switch numbers!!

It was hard fought battle, probably one of the most exciting U11 lacrosse games I’ve seen ever! Even better, we won, 9-6!! Their coaches were definitely humbled as they expected to annihilate us! They even had this look of confusion as if to say “How did we lose that game?”. Actually, it was pretty simple. Any team I ever coach will be fundamentally sound. And quite simply, we played better as a team and won all the ground ball battles. Maybe next year coach J
Because we were the top seed in our pool, we got an automatic invite to the finals!! And in the semi-finals, were two North Carolina teams vying for the opportunity to play my team! The semi-final wasn’t even close and the Hurricanes won 10-1 over their arch rival The Cobras.

So here I am, trying to pinch myself to wake up from the dream. 1) I didn’t grow up playing competitive lacrosse, 2) This is my first year coaching lacrosse. What did I do to deserve this? These were my thoughts 5 minutes before the game. The team we were playing is a club team that travels throughout the country to participate in tournaments, their coach was a former lacrosse player and had been coaching the team for several years. How was I going to compete against that? Anyway, the game started and by halftime, we were only down one point.

When the game was over, we had lost by 2 points. The kids came off the field with a sense of dejection. But quickly, I reminded them of how far they had come and gave them some perspective as to what they did accomplish. As we’re shaking hands, the winning team was very positive to the boys and loaded them with compliments. I spoke with the other coach and commended him on the sportsmanship his boys exhibited and congratulated him on a hard fought win. He reciprocated by complimenting on the kids’ hustle and their athletic ability. When I explained to him that we were a rec team, he shook his head and blew a sigh of relief!

For all that trouble, we earned 2nd place in the Southeast championship. I was extremely proud of the boys as well as myself considering I didn’t back down from competing against significantly more experienced teams and coaches. I had a blast but am very happy the season is over so that I can focus on my golf game!

I’ll try to be better about writing about my escapades. Hope you enjoyed it!

No More Bush!!

One sunny day in 2009 an old man approached the White Housefrom across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he'd been sittingon a park bench.
He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, 'Iwould like to go in and meet with President Bush.'
The Marine looked at the man and said, 'Sir, Mr. Bush isno longer president and no longer resides here.'
The old man said, 'Okay' and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White Houseand said to the same Marine, 'I would like to go in andmeet with President Bush.'
The Marine again told the man, 'Sir, as I said yesterday,Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resideshere.'
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House andspoke to the very same Marine, saying 'I would like to goin and meet with President Bush.'
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, lookedat the man and said, 'Sir, this is the third day in a rowyou have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I'vetold you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the presidentand no longer resides here. Don't you understand?'The old man looked at the Marine and said, 'Oh, Iunderstand. I just love hearing it.'
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, 'See you tomorrow.'