The older I get, the earlier I wake up

My wife is philosophically opposed to the idea of, as she puts it, "getting up in the 5s." By which she means waking up before 6 a.m.

You might take from that that she would be OK with getting out of bed at, say, 4:30 a.m. And you would be wrong. Terry would no sooner get out of bed at that hour than she would eat blue cheese.

(Terry hates blue cheese, you see. I love it. Terry prepares the food in our house. Guess which ingredient you never see in our meals outside of the occasional rogue bottle of salad dressing?)

Anyway, Terry does not like to get up early, or at least what I consider early.

Most days, I'm out of bed at 5 a.m. Occasionally it's 4:50 a.m., and I don't need an alarm to do it. I just wake up, lay there for maybe a minute, and my feet hit the floor.

I realize there are many people for whom a wake-up time of 5 o'clock would be "sleeping in." These people generally fall into one of three categories:

(a) They deliver newspapers
(b) They have blue-collar jobs that require them to be at work at some unacceptable time like 5:30 a.m.
(c) They are 104 years old

That whole thing about needing less sleep as you age is true, right? I assume it is. How else do you explain the line of senior citizens at the buffet restaurants every day at 4 p.m.?

My sister Judi used to get up around 4 in the morning. She would use the early hours of the day to exercise, clean the house, and watch reruns of "Cops."

My family loves "Cops." It's a thing with us. There's something about seeing shirtless white people of Southern descent getting arrested that appeals to us.

Anyway, I get up fairly early only because I have to. If I'm not up by 5:00, there's no way I can do everything I have to do in the morning. That list, in order, includes:

- Get dressed for running
- Feed the cats
- Go downstairs and clean out the litter boxes and sweep around them
- Go outside and get the newspaper
- Get a drink of water
- Lace up my running shoes
- Go and run 2-3 miles depending on the day
- Stretch
- Come in and record the run in my running log book while getting a second drink of water
- Shower
- Dress
- Read the paper and eat breakfast
- Brush my teeth and head out the door for work

If I'm not out of bed by 5:15, something on that list is going to get sacrificed. And I don't want to sacrifice any of it.

Well, I would gladly sacrifice the cat-related items. But those have been my jobs for many years now, and I'm fairly certain no one else in the family is going to take them over. So I'll continue doing them.

During the summer I have the house all to myself in the morning because none of the kids have to get up for school, nor does Terry have to pack their lunches and see them off. My teenagers would, if given the opportunity, sleep until 3 p.m. every summer day.

We don't let them do this, of course. (Most of the time.)

As I type this, it's 9:20 in the evening, which means I'll be waking up in a little more than 7 1/2 hours. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and eat my nightly chunk of blue cheese and head off to Dreamland with the rest of the old people. Good night!

Why, back in my day we...pretty much did the same things kids do today

You know what makes me laugh?

When people my age post things to Facebook about how our childhoods were so much better and kids today are lazy and they're disrespectful and blah blah blah.

This makes me laugh, because I'm not quite sure exactly what childhoods they're remembering.

I knew a lot of these people as kids, and I don't remember them being especially:

a) Industrious
b) Respectful
c) Polite

A good chunk of them were, without a doubt, terrible little demons. Just like a certain percentage of kids today are terrible little demons.

Just like a certain percentage of kids 100 years ago were terrible little demons.

Are you following me here?

I realize the world has changed, but I just don't think we were necessarily raised any better than today's kids are being raised.

I think it's just a case of many of us now being parents and really noticing how badly suited some people are to being mothers and fathers.

Those same bad parents existed 30 and 100 and 1000 years, you know.

Maybe it's just me, but when someone posts that one item about "I didn't just grow up, I was RAISED," I am tempted to remind them of the time they were suspended for three days for throwing things at a teacher.

But I don't.

The reason, simply put, is the utter futility of arguing on the Internet.

95% of Internet denizens have no real interest in reasoned debate. They are interested in stating their ill-formed opinions, the facts be darned.

They are interested in visiting nut-job, off-brand "news" sites to have these opinions validated. Again, without letting facts and reason get in the way.

So for the most part, I keep quiet.

Not that I don't have ill-formed opinions, by the way. I am probably as misguided as the next person. It's just that I have learned the advantages of silence. Something to do with that old Mark Twain quote about keeping your mouth closed and letting people think you're a fool rather than opening it and removing all doubt.

And let me say that I am in no way attempting to slander my fellow Generation X'ers. It was great growing up in the 70s and 80s. I had a ball.

But this sudden feeling of superiority over the current generation (Millenials? What do we call these kids?) is not our most becoming trait.

Seriously, that guy really did get suspended for throwing things at a teacher. Was he "raised" to do that?

Here's what I've learned about marriage

Next week, my wife and I will have been married 21 years.

You would think that, somewhere along the way, I may have picked up a useful tip or two.

I'm not sure I have. But it seems like a good topic for a blog post, so I'm going to give it a shot.

In no particular order:

(1) If you make it all about you, there are going to be problems

Marriage is the ultimate give-and-take situation. Your emphasis needs to be on "give."

Inevitably there are going to be times when your needs aren't being met, or at least when you think they're not being met, which for practical purposes is the same thing. It may sound counter-intuitive, but in these situations you need to concentrate on putting the other person first.

I know, I know. Right about now you're thinking, "Yeah, but what about me?" And right there is your problem. You're going to have to have a little faith. I don't know how it works, but whenever I think of what Terry wants first, I inevitably end up getting what I want, as well. Works virtually every time.

Trust me on this one. It's spouse first and you second (or, if you have kids, you third).

(2) If you don't make it all about you, there are going to be problems

See what I did there? This is the essence of one of the great conundrums of marriage.

On one hand, as I said, you need to seek first to serve rather than be served. But...

If you're continually playing the role of the martyr, the effect tends to wear off.

See, ideally, if you put your spouse first, they will reciprocate. You can spend a very happy several decades together if the pattern is mutual servanthood.

But if the servanthood is one-sided, the person doing the serving is inevitably going to become bitter and resentful. It will happen even to the best of us.

So you do have to assert yourself. Speak up. Don't make your partner guess. Let them know where you see problems in the relationship and talk it out. Don't expect the other person to read your mind.

(3) Understand something very important that holds true for almost any relationship...

My dear sister Judi (whom I miss dearly) once said something I didn't understand at the time, but that I later realized was very profound.

She told me, "The things that attracted you to your partner in the first place are the exact things that will irritate you and drive you crazy later on."

There is much truth to this.

I haven't asked Terry in what specific ways this applies to her as my wife, but I imagine it's my quirky forgetfulness and completely oblivious approach to life that make her nuts. Initially these may have seemed cute, almost endearing.

But now, two or three decades down the road? Let's just say the woman is a saint for continuing to live under the same roof as me.

(4) If you're like most couples, you will never have the same body temperature at the same time

Look, I don't understand how this works, nor can I grasp why it's so universal. But at any given time, one of you will think the house is too hot while the other will be running to turn up the thermostat because they think it's freezing.

And generally speaking, from my experience, men are usually hot while women are usually cold. There are exceptions, but that's the pattern.

If you watch Terry and me sleep, you will think we're living in different dimensions. She'll be snuggled under a pile of covers while I'm laying on top of the sheets sweating. And we're three feet away from each other.

Barring the very unlikely occurrence of differing climatic patterns within our bedroom, I will simply chalk this up to inextricably variable body temperatures. There's no solving it, there's only dealing with it.

And while I may be biased here, it seems to me the cold person should be the one who deals with it. If I'm too hot and I'm already laying in bed uncovered, what more am I going to do? Stripping down naked probably won't make that much of a difference.

But the cold person can pile on successive layers of blankets until they're warm, which would suggest that we should simply lower the temperature in the bedroom until the warm person is happy.

Unless of course I'm trying to adhere to my own Rule #1. In which case I'll just sleep on a block of ice while she blissfully snoozes next to me in our blazing-hot bedroom. What can I say? I love her.

The allure of the "highly selective" college

This summer, my daughter Chloe will spend two weeks at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, studying biomedical engineering.

A few years ago, my oldest daughter Elissa spent three weeks at that same prestigious university studying journalism.

Both experiences were part of what they call "pre-college" programs, designed to expose high school students to campus life at an Ivy League university.

Elissa, I think, learned quite a bit during her time at Brown, as I'm sure Chloe will, too.

Here's what I learned:

(1) Ivy League colleges are very expensive for full-time undergraduates.

(2) Very, very expensive.

(3) Like, if you attended college during the 20th century, you almost wouldn't believe how expensive they are.

(4) Rhode Island is far away from where I live.

I learned #4 because I had to drive Elissa to Brown from Northeast Ohio. Ohio and Providence, you will note, are only close when viewed on a globe.

When viewed on, say, a road map, they are quite a ways apart. Several states apart.

One of those states is New York. New York, it turns out, is a very wide state.

By my estimate, it took us 18 days to cross New York.

(It was actually only about six hours, but I was fairly certain it would never end. How on earth do people drive across those gigantic Western states without shriveling up and dying from boredom?)

All told, I think it took us 10 or 11 hours to get to Providence. I drove Elissa there on a Saturday. We stayed overnight in a hotel, then moved her into her dorm at Brown on Sunday, at which point I immediately got back into my car and drove those same 10 or 11 hours back to Ohio.

We'll be doing the same with Chloe, or at least that's the plan. We may tell her to pack light and just fly there.

One way or another, Chloe will spend half a month at the same university where countless famous politicians, artists, actors, athletes and other well-known people earned their degrees.

In a way, I view the whole thing as a bit of a cruel joke. These kids get to go to a nice school, they grow to love their surroundings and the learning environment, and then they come home to realize they will most likely never actually attend that school as a full-time student.

The reason, as noted in Scott Learning Points #'s 1 through 3 above, is that it is financially prohibitive to enroll at these schools, to say the least.

The admissions people from the Ivy League institutions, who as a rule are bright, articulate and very genuine, will tell you that schools like theirs strive to ensure that money is never an obstacle for a deserving student. Their financial aid is all need-based.

Two things to note from these statements:

(1) If they don't want money to be obstacle, then maybe they shouldn't charge $58,140 per year (Brown's 2012-13 undergrad cost).

(2) Their idea of my financial "need" is very, very different from my own idea of my need. My idea is that I'm approximately $58,100 short of being able to send my kid to Brown for a year (I'm willing to spring for the 40 bucks). Their expectation of what I can contribute to her education is, suffice to say, significantly higher.

So in a way, these pre-college programs, while undoubtedly wonderful experiences, are also the equivalent of academic teases.

Do I think my daughters have the credentials to get into schools like Brown, Princeton, Penn, Harvard and Yale? Eh, maybe. Hard to say. They're both smart girls. Very smart girls.

But there are lots and lots of smart kids at those schools, and it's difficult to tell whether my offspring would have what it takes to get one of those coveted acceptance letters.

My kids are at least smart enough, I can tell you, to know that any sensible person wouldn't drive round trip to Rhode Island in a single weekend if he didn't have to. Which puts them light years ahead of their father.

Confessions

1. I don't remember ever hearing of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight before in my life...and I live within 20 miles of them. Thus, when this whole story broke, it took me a good 24 hours to understand who these people were, what had happened to them, and why this was such an incredibly big deal. You can't imagine my confusion.
   
   
2. With huge apologies to my nephew Mark, until a year or two ago, I wasn't quite sure who the band Oasis was, and I couldn't have identified a single song by them. Mark is their biggest fan. I don't understand how their existence passed me by, but it did. They're apparently quite good. Sorry, Mark.
   
   
3. I don't dislike the New York Yankees nearly as much as I dislike the Boston Red Sox. Sorry, fellow Cleveland sports fans. I realize this violates some sort of code, but there you have it. Let it be said, though, that my intense dislike for the Pittsburgh Steelers trumps them both, for what that's worth.
   
   
4. I like raisins and prunes. A lot. Even more than, say, ice cream. I know this makes me a freak. I know this makes some people almost angry at me. But again, there you have it. I'm not changing. (And for the record, I think the Sun Maid girl in the little bonnet is pretty hot.)
   
   
5. Speaking of hot, if I had to pick another male on this planet that I could look like, I'm still going with George Clooney. I know he's not the Hot Guy du Jour, but I think he's a darn good-looking dude. In, um, a strictly platonic way, of course.

Life isn't a sprint, it's...well, yeah, actually it is a sprint

Between the ages of 13 and 18, I ran competitive track and field.

I was a sprinter, and I was actually pretty fast. Not "state champion" fast, but faster than most of my classmates. I got to win a lot of races and feel somewhat athletic in the process.

Sprinting was actually a lot of fun, because your work day was a relatively short one. When our team ran in one of those all-day relay meets, my schedule would look something like this:

• 9 a.m. to Noon: Sit out in the sun and work on my tan.
• Noon to 12:05 p.m.: Take off warm-up suit and stretch a little.
• 12:05 to 12:10 p.m.: Walk over to the starting line for the 100-meter dash and try to look cool while waiting for the starter to tell us to take our marks.
• 12:10 to 12:10 and 11 seconds: Run 100 meters as fast as I possibly could.
• 12:11 to 12:15 p.m.: Put warm-ups back on and return to working on my tan.
• Later in the meet: Repeat process for 200-meter dash and the occasional sprint relay event.

This was in stark contrast to the distance runners, whom I never understood.

For one thing, they had to run a long way. I mean, a long way. At least compared with the sprinters. Why, I wondered, would you opt to run 3,200 meters when you had the choice to run 100? Or even 200? Certainly no more than 400.

And their practice workouts were horrible. They involved running for impossibly long periods of time without stopping, and doing so ideally without throwing up.

The sprinters' workouts, meanwhile, would consist of a couple of spirited fast jogs around the track, and then we all went home to do our homework. I think our grades tended to be better than the distance runners'.

Anyway, I mention all of this because I have two kids running track now, one of whom (Chloe) is a distance runner. And wonder of wonders, I've become one myself.

Sort of.

I get up most mornings around 5:15 a.m. and amble three miles. Not very quickly, but I do it.

Which gives me a lot of time to think while I run. I think about all sorts of "big picture" things, and about life in general, I guess.

Sometimes I think about how quickly the last few decades have gone. For example, I remember being 10 years old. Vividly. And it seems like it couldn't have been more than about three weeks ago.

Yet here I am at the ripe age of 43 1/2. Not "old," really, but certainly not young.

And I begin to realize how sprinting prepared me for life. It taught me to go all out and take advantage of fast-fleeting opportunities. It taught me to compete, and compete hard. It taught me how to dig deep and find that extra gear in order to accomplish my goals.

It also taught me how to sun myself. I seriously had the best tan in the late 80s...

Four things I'll miss about being unemployed

(1) Stores with no one in them
You people who work 8 to 5 probably have no idea (as I had no idea) how wonderful it is to shop during the day. Stores are wonderfully uncrowded. The aisles are clear, there's always someone available to help you, and the checkout lines are nonexistent. You're in and out in minutes. I didn't even realize this was possible.

(2) The giddy feeling of a (relatively) unplanned day
Since about the age of 5, my days have been pretty well mapped out for me. Whether it was school or work, my time has been essentially spoken for over the better part of four decades. Then, suddenly, you find yourself sans occupation, and you wake up in the morning and realize the day is yours to spend as you see fit. There are some things you have to do, of course, like look for a job. But when I wanted to go to the library, I went to the library. When I wanted coffee, I had coffee. When I wanted to watch reruns of "The Beverly Hillbillies," I...well, I never actually did that during my four months of joblessness. But the point is I could have.

(3) Getting the mail
I extolled the virtues of this in a previous post, but it was such a highlight of my days that it bears repeating. I am endlessly jealous of my wife for being at home when the mail gets here. The possibilities of what you might find when you open that mailbox are manifold. Most of the time you end up disappointed, of course, but it's what you theoretically could find in there that's exciting. A check, a letter from a secret admirer, a notice from an attorney that a rich uncle has died and left you his fortune. They're ALL possible, do you understand? The mailbox is where the magic happens.

(4) My hoodie and slippers
This was the uniform of my unemployment: A black Denison University hoodie and my warm slippers. I was unemployed over the winter months, and I always found myself cold, so I would slip into these two items of clothing and instantly my body temperature would rise. Now I look at them both sitting forlornly in the closet and I get a little nostalgic. Then I think about the fact that I'm actually earning a paycheck again, and it's funny how quickly the nostalgia goes away...

10 words I really should try to use more often in my daily conversation

1. Kerfuffle

2. Snoutfair (a good-looking person..."George, you really are a snoutfair. HEY, DON'T HIT ME! IT'S A GOOD THING!")

3. Lugubrious

4. Turpitude (NOTE: I would not be at all opposed to joining a band called "Lugubrious Turpitude." Nor would I object to reading a book in which the villain is named Lugubrious Turpitude.)

5. Brobdingnagian (something really big)

6. Withershins (also sometimes rendered "widdershins," meaning counter-clockwise)

7. Snollygoster (used mainly of politicians, meaning a person not guided by moral principles)

8. Bumfluff (a British word I just learned, apparently refers to hair growing where it's not supposed to be or not wanted...and honestly, just a fun word to use all around, even as an epithet: "Oh bumfluff!")

9. Hemidemisemiquaver (a 64th note in music. Not that common, which is just as well considering how much energy you use in saying it.)

10. Zyzzyva (a type of tropical weevil, but more importantly, the last word in many English dictionaries...I love the fact it even exists.)

Being the new guy in the office

Today is my first day of work in more than four months. I am, as you may have noticed, extremely excited about this fact.

Part of the reason is that I am very good at being The New Guy.

Having worked at eight different places over the last 20 years, I'm well acquainted with finding my way through a new office, from figuring out the internal culture to exactly where they keep the coffee.

It's a process of constant adaptation, deference and friend-making.

It's also mentally exhausting, because it takes months to really get everything down. But it's worth the initial effort.

For example, I make a point of being proactively friendly when I start a new job. I'll aggressively seek people out and introduce myself.

Even if, as is the case about 20 percent of time, that person is just a visitor who doesn't even work there. In those situations, they're more frightened of me than anything else.

Mostly, though, you're able to make a good first impression by doing this.

Good first impressions are useful, because your co-workers are more likely to help you if they think you're a pleasant person. It also helps to project an aura of competence, especially if the way you do your job affects the way they do theirs.

I'm pretty good at projecting competence. That doesn't mean I have competence, only that I'm excellent at seeming as if I know what I'm doing.

I also go after what the professional self-help books like to call "low-hanging fruit." I find some relatively easy project to tackle early on, and when I complete it successfully, I make it seem as if it was a great problem I have solved to the long-lasting benefit of the organization.

People always seem to be impressed by this. Or maybe they're just taking pity on me and want me to feel good.

Either way, I feel like I've pulled one over on them.

Another great New Guy trick is the come-early-leave-late approach. Everyone knows you're going to be gung-ho when you first get there. And they'll expect the long-hours routine to fade out quickly.

But if you keep it up, people will start to think, "OK, this guy isn't going to bail on us. He's dedicated. I like that."

Or at least that's what I assume they're thinking. They may actually be thinking, "What a total suck-up. This guy will flame out in less than a year."

I choose to believe the former.

Things I would really like my children to learn

How to use the plunger

Look, sometimes in the course of routine toilet operation, you're going to get a back-up. And that's OK.

Maybe you overestimated the amount of paper the toilet could accommodate in a single flush. Maybe your little brother shoved a stuffed animal down there. Maybe you ate four Big Macs for lunch. Whatever the reason, it happens to the best of us and we're not going to fault you for it.

However, being absolved of blame does not mean you are absolved of responsibility. You must work to clear the blockage. It's your sworn duty as a member of this household to grab the plunger and try to force through whatever is backing up the toilet.

If you need help in learning proper plunging procedures, ask. I will gladly help you. Just don't walk away and leave it for someone else to deal with.

Also, as a side note, don't think I didn't giggle two paragraphs ago when I used the word "duty" in this context.

The practical advantages of telling the truth

Yes, lying to your parents is morally wrong. That alone should be reason enough not to do it.

But there's also this: Telling the truth is going to save you from having to incur even worse punishment.

You know how your mother always tells you to just admit it when you screw up because lying about it will get you into exponentially deeper trouble? She's not kidding about that.

And you and I both know she'll eventually figure out you're not telling the truth. You can almost certainly fool me, but that's only because I'm clueless. Your mom? She knows, man. She just knows.

The value of showing up

Here's one of these little life secrets that I, as the parent, am supposed to impart to you:

A surprising percentage of life success comes from simply being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there. Seriously, you won't believe the rewards for just showing up.

Whether it's work or school or a family commitment, show up. There are two advantages to this:

(1) People will be impressed, which means they will be more likely to give you the things you want.

(2) If you're dreading a meeting you have scheduled or you just don't feel like working on a particular day, showing up and getting started will go a long way. Problem situations are never as bad as they seem once you turn up and start tackling them head-on.

Trust me on this. Just show up.

If people want to mix ketchup and mustard, that's OK

And by that I mean this: As you venture out into the world on your own, you're going to encounter a wide range of people whose life experiences and individual tastes differ greatly from your own. These people will say and do things that are utterly unfamiliar to you.

Which should be totally fine, as far as you're concerned. Do not dismiss them out of hand simply because they're not like you.

That's not to say I don't want you to make moral judgment calls. We've tried our best to teach you right from wrong, and I'm confident you can (and will) tell the difference.

But don't assume your way is the only way. Consider other perspectives. Respect them. Don't be willfully blind to ways to build a better mousetrap.

In other words, even if you yourself would never mix ketchup and mustard on a hot dog, it doesn't mean others won't. And it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

(I do it myself occasionally. And I'm only semi-ashamed to admit it tastes great.)

Five useless things currently in my wallet

(1) Disney-themed credit card with a picture of Tinkerbell on the front: I'm too embarrassed to show this card to any merchant, so I don't. I mean, I don't claim to be Chuck Norris or anything, but I like to salvage a little bit of my manly dignity. For the record, my wife ordered these cards for us. As far as you know.

(2) Vision insurance card: Never mind that it isn't even valid anymore. I see the eye doctor once every 47 years. And I'm not due to go again until 2035. This can be safely thrown out, and I would do just that if I didn't save every single semi-official document and/or card someone issues me. I have Romper Room Fan Club membership cards from the 70s. You think I'm kidding.

(3) Gold Starbucks card: When I go to Starbucks (which is often), I try to appear hip and cool by paying with my smartphone app, rather than the old-fashioned plastic gold card. No one is impressed except me, yet I continue using this app even when the card would probably be easier.

(4) Professional association membership card: I belong to a few clubs and associations specific to my line of work. Each of these organizations issues a membership card, and I never look at it again until it's time to throw it away. There's no use for it at all, other than to make you feel like a valued, dues-paying member. Which you should feel like anyway when you beg your employer to write the check to cover those dues. Staggeringly useless.

(5) $6 in cash: I almost never use cash. That $6 will sit in my wallet for weeks unless a child asks for money to pay some miscellaneous (and possibly fabricated) school fee, or if we go to Jerry's Dari Pride. Jerry's is a landmark ice cream store here in my hometown, and they only take cash. You want Jerry's ice cream, you bring cash. Simple as that. That $6 most likely represents an ice cream cone at some indeterminate point in my future. Unless you want it, in which case let me know and I'll drop it in the mail (the money, not the ice cream cone).

Clothes shopping and the middle-aged male

By the time you read this, I will have blown somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 on new clothes.

Give or take a few bucks. And that number includes three new suits, which are big-ticket items.

But really, two grand.

I'll have done this for three reasons:

1. I have the money. I spent a chunk of my unemployment tackling freelance writing assignments for the Cleveland Clinic, which is a "nonprofit" (heavy on the quotes) that has more money than it knows what to do with, so giving me a small piece of the pie certainly didn't break the bank for them.

2. I have a new job, which you already know. It's a business casual environment, but I wasn't all that stocked up on biz casual clothes, so it's off to Kohl's I go.

3. I'm a smaller person, which you also already know. I'm pushing 40 pounds on the old Weight Loss Meter. There's just not as much of me as there used to be to fill out the shirts and pants hanging in my closet, so I figure I'm go out and buy tinier versions of those same shirts and pants.

A couple of notes on point #3:

I file this under "Problems That Are Nice to Have," but for two months now, I've been walking around hiking up my pants. Even with my belt on the last notch, I've still been fighting Droopy Drawers Syndrome thanks to my weight loss. Again, nice problem to have, but more than a little annoying after a few weeks.

Also, it should be noted that I really will go out and buy smaller replicas of the stuff I already own.

This is because I'm a 43-year-old man. We have our tastes and we're pretty well set in our ways. Short of a midlife crisis that drives us to start shopping at Aeropostale, we see no need to change what works for us in the way of sartorial choice.

So when I take my big blowout shopping trip later today (about a week ago from your future perspective), I'll pretty much just find the section that contains Scott Clothes and start pulling stuff off the rack.

The stereotype is that men don't like shopping. I'll say that's half true for me. I don't relish the thought, but I don't hate it, either.

I will, however, do it in about half the time it would take, for instance, my wife to purchase the same items. I will be in and out of that store in a couple of hours, which is pretty good when you're blowing four figures on new duds.

Really, all I care about is coming away with:

• Some decent sandals to wear this summer
• Some work pants that aren't four inches too big around the waist
• Some new underwear

I am seriously excited about the underwear. Nothing excites Caucasian males in their middle years quite like the feel of fresh tighty-whiteys, let me tell you. Or maybe that's just me.

Either way, the Hanes people are going to be making a few bucks today, so good for them.

I can also guarantee that I will walk away with at least a few items of Dockers clothing. White guys love us some Dockers. My only rule there is no pleated pants. This isn't 1997 anymore. It's flat-front or nothing. That much I know.

Beyond that, though, I'm sticking with what I know works: Khaki pants, plaid button-downs, and the occasional dark-rinse jeans when I'm feeling hip. And tight-whiteys, of course. It all starts with the tighty-whiteys.

Five people who worry me

1. Abe Vigoda: He's still alive. I would have bet my house that he was long deceased. Yet Mr. Vigoda ("Fish" of Barney Miller fame) is still with us at age 92. It's not so much that I'm worried he's going to die. It's that I'm worried he's NOT going to die. That somehow he has developed superhuman longevity and will live for hundreds of years more, just waiting for the sweet sleep of death finally to overcome him. I would hate for him to have to exist like that.

2. The guy who decided the Kardashians should be famous: I don't blame the family for being so maddeningly overexposed. I blame the publicist who made it happen. One day we're going to find out who he is. And pardon my French, but there will be heck to pay. Oh yes, there will be heck to pay...

3. Anne Hathaway: We've covered this topic previously.

4. My lawn guy: I've had the same lawn guy (Bob) for more than 20 years. Several times a year, he comes by, applies a variety of fertilizers and chemicals to my lawn, charges me a pittance, and gives me written instructions on what specifically I should do to take care of the grass. And I do almost none of it. He says to mow on the highest setting, I mow it down like a putting green. He tells us to water the lawn, and we haven't done that (literally, I think) since 1998. I'm worried my noncompliance will eventually lead to an aneurysm on his part. It has to be frustrating. I'm sorry in advance, Bob.

5. Billy Joel: When Billy Joel was cranking out hit songs in the 70s and 80s, I think we all sort of thought of him as pleasant and harmless. Then he got into a series of car crashes in which alcohol may or may not have been involved, but you'd be pretty surprised if it wasn't. And then he peed in a bar with no toilet around. And then a few weeks ago his daughter's stalker was found naked in the woods, which while not an indictment of Billy himself, is still indicative of the craziness that suddenly surrounds him. I just want my happy little Piano Man back. Is that too much to ask?

This is why you should thank a policeman

A police officer came and shot a sick (and possibly rabid) raccoon in my backyard today.

I'm not kidding you. This actually happened.

And I didn't get to see any of it.

Terry and I were at Chloe's high school track meet when this all went down. Apparently there was this strange raccoon wandering around our neighborhood in the middle of the day.

I don't know how, but one of Wickliffe's finest became alerted to this fact and started tracking it.

He came down our street, heard my neighbor's dogs barking wildly, and found the raccoon in our backyard.

The poor little critter was trying to get a drink from our flooded sandbox. The officer approached him and even poked him with a rake to see if he could get him to move, but the raccoon pretty well stayed put. He was clearly sick and suffering.

Having only his high-powered service revolver at the time, the officer called for back-up. "Back-up," in this case, meant another officer with a smaller-caliber handgun (a .22, as it turned out).

The other officer came to our house with said weapon, and one of them mercifully put a few bullets into the little guy. And that was that.

I only found out about it after the fact from my neighbor, Joe.

Normally, my sarcastic self would find a reason to make fun of this situation. ("Call the SWAT team! Call the SWAT team! Sick raccoon on the loose! Bring the flamethrower!")

But it made me realize just how mundane a police officer's job can be. And how desperately we would miss them if they weren't around.

I wasn't about to shoot that raccoon, I'll tell you that. For one thing, I don't have a gun. For another thing, even if I did have a gun, I would have been too scared to fire the thing in my own backyard, for fear the bullet would ricochet off the ground and hit something or somebody I love.

(NOTE: What would most likely happen is that the bullet would ping off a nearby tree, bounce back and go right through my leg. There is nearly a 100% chance of that being the outcome. Knowing this, I have enough sense not to engage in such leg-shooting activities.)

But yet, as a whiny taxpayer, I would expect that someone in a position of authority should come and take care of my raccoon problem for me.

And that someone is the police. By all accounts, the officers involved here were professional, safe and efficient. They did their jobs and probably didn't think anyone should take special note of it.

I love that. And I admire them greatly for doing the right thing and putting that poor raccoon out of his misery.

So here's to you, mighty raccoon hunters (OK, sorry, the sarcasm thing couldn't help but rear its ugly head). In between listening to speeding motorists making excuses as to why they don't deserve a ticket and willingly putting your lives on the line when actual bad guys are around, you don't get nearly the credit you deserve.

My family, and my now-bullet-ridden sandbox, salute you.

Father vs son - Who ya got?

One thing I always remember about my dad was the constant realization that, while he would never actually do this, he had it in his power to crush me physically.

That sounds horrible when I go back and read it, and I don't mean to imply I grew up in a house in which physical violence was the least bit common. It wasn't.

I can remember getting spanked once in my life. Just once. And it never happened again, because I was too smart to allow it to happen again. I learned my lesson.

Which is why, as a parent, I don't really have a problem with spanking. It's a punishment I've doled out a handful of times in the lives of my five kids, and it's something I don't ever anticipate using (or having to use) again.

But the point is, I knew that if I ever messed up big time, one of the possible outcomes was my father beating the tar out of me.

Even when I passed him in height (it was only by an inch or so), I would never have dreamed of messing with him. Mostly because he was Dad, with a capital 'D.' And he was so good to me, I never felt compelled to test him.

This subject is relevant to me now because:

(A) My older son is a full 3 1/2 inches taller than I am.
(B) My younger son will also likely pass me in height in another five or six years.

Tall Boy is in eighth grade, and he's only 150 pounds or so. I've got a good 25 pounds on him. I could totally take him. For now. Once he fills out in high school, though, I don't know.

On the other hand, even when my dad was in his 60s, he was still strong. Or at least it seemed that way to me. I think that, had I done something like disrespect my mom in front of him, he would have smacked me across the room. And I would have said, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

Which makes me wonder what the gap is between Perceived Dad Strength and Actual Dad Strength. We, as guys, endue our fathers with superhuman qualities. Dad can do almost anything in our eyes (except fix stuff...my boys are aware of my shortcomings there.)

But the truth is our fathers are flawed, just like every other human being. And maybe we as sons don't want to find weakness in them. Maybe we think that, if Dad = Superman, eventually we will, too.

So we see them as stronger, smarter, and overall awesomer (it's my blog, I can make up words) than they really are.

Or, maybe I'm getting way too philosophical about this and my Dad really could beat me up well into senior citizen-hood.

Either way, I don't ever want to have to drop the gloves with either of my boys. But if you ever see me walking around with a black eye, you'll know that "Actual Dad Strength" is a lot less than I had hoped...

I can't remember my children's names, but I can remember the starting lineup of the 1979 Cleveland Indians

Look, I have no idea why it is I know this, I just do: Exactly 26 years ago today, on May 2, 1987, I took the SATs at Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio.

There is no practical reason for me to retain this information. In fact, I would just as soon it move out of my brain so I have room for more important stuff, such as key facts about my medical history and the places where stuff goes in the kitchen so my wife doesn't yell at me for not putting it away correctly.

But there it is, stuck somewhere in the recesses of my mind: the exact month and date when I took the SATs.

It will never go away. I know this. It will never be replaced by something useful.

Why does this happen to us? Why don't we remember where we put, say, our car keys? Or our heart pills? Or our children?

Why, instead of our spouse's birthday, can we remember the name of the kid who came over and stole our cornflower-colored crayon while we were busy drawing a picture in second grade? Why? Why?

Why do I remember the name of every elementary school teacher I had, both main classroom teachers and special subject teachers?

Miss Marshall and Mrs. Chermely taught me art from first through sixth grade, I can tell you that, but I'm a little fuzzy on my online bank account password. And the whereabouts of the Tupperware container I need and just washed yesterday.

Can I remember whether my Honda needs an oil change? No, I cannot. Can I remember the movie Terry and I saw on our first date in 1986? Yes, I can. ("Down and Out in Beverly Hills")

Can I remember our house WiFi password when someone asks for it? You're funny. Of course I can't. Can I remember the exact layout of the house across the street on Harding Drive where my friends Billy and Jason lived? Down to the last square foot.

I have nothing resembling what you might call "useful memory." I recall random stuff, and I recall it quickly. Which has served me well only the two times I appeared on game shows. (NOTE: I went weeks and weeks without mentioning the game show thing, and now I finally caved in. Sorry.)

Other than the occasional national television appearance, this ability to regurgitate the jokes in almost any given episode of "Mork and Mindy," for example, has had exactly zero real value for me.

Like right now, I should remember what my point was in writing this post. But I don't. All I can tell you is that I'm pretty sure Andre Thornton batted clean-up for the '79 Indians. I hope that helps you in some way.

A new job, a new beginning, a new blogging schedule

So after four months of unemployment, I have a new job.

It makes me so happy to type those words, I'm going to do it again:

So after four months of unemployment, I have a new job.

Starting Monday, May 13, I will assume the title of Director of Communications for Vitamix, a company of which I'm hoping you've heard. They make very high-end, high-quality blending equipment for home and commercial use, and they're growing by incredible leaps and bounds.

This extended period of unemployment was the first of my life, and it was at times a nerve-wracking experience.

Now that it's ending, I can see how it helped me. It was a great time to reassess, get healthier, refocus myself, bring back this little mess of a blog, etc.

But when you're in the middle of it, you have a hard time believing the people who tell you, "Oh, trust me, it will be the best thing that ever happened to you!"

It's difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you don't even know how long the tunnel is. And when you're the sole source of income for a family of seven.

But like I said, now that it's over, I have to say these four months were good for me. I'm ready for gainful employment.

My new job is one with a high level of responsibility. I have three people reporting to me (all of whom, fortunately, appear to be talented pros), and there are a lot of expectations for my team to transform the way Vitamix communicates to its internal and external audiences.

No small challenge, but one I welcome.

Anyway, with the return of full-time employment in my life comes the usual examination of one's priorities and schedules.

For example, I've determined that after 11 years of soccer coaching and administration, I have to step down from my beloved Wickliffe Soccer Club. It's an organization I hold near and dear to my heart, and I'm proud to have had the chance to serve it for more than a decade.

But it's time to hand the coaching and leadership reins to others. They don't need my old self hanging around messing things up anyway.

There's also the matter of this blog. I determined months ago that I would not give it up once I got a job, even if you people all went away and I was just writing for myself (a distinct possibility of which I'm keenly aware, believe me).

But writing every weekday isn't going to work, either. So what to do, what to do?

What I've decided is to promise three posts per week starting the week of May 13th. I'm guessing those would appear on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, though we'll see what schedule works best. And occasionally we'll try to throw in a Tuesday or Thursday post, as well.

I realize this is all far more important to me than it is to you. And I want you to know how intensely grateful I am to the 150-200 of you who regularly check in here daily to read my senseless raving. It's a very, very, very small corner of the Internet, but one I hope that brings you some pleasure and even makes you think from time to time.

So let's see how that works and go from there.

In the meantime, go out and buy yourself a Vitamix machine. You won't be disappointed.