We're halfway through 2021: How does it compare with last year?

Much time and many tweets were expended last December saying goodbye and good riddance to 2020. And with good reasons, really, almost all of them having to do with a little thing called COVID-19 (you may have heard of it...it’s been in all the papers).

This was not only cathartic for a lot of people, it also put pressure on 2021 to be better. Much better. Having reached the halfway point of the year, here's what we can say about it:

Good Things About 2021 So Far

• We're "emerging from the pandemic," as the phrase goes. Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all down. This is undoubtedly great news.
• On Jan. 10th, my Cleveland Browns defeated the team from Pittsburgh in a playoff game. It is always encouraging to know that, at least occasionally, good wins out over evil.
• Celebrity deaths seem to be down from last year, I think? Not that celebrities' lives are any more valuable than any other lives, but if nothing else, we use them as barometers for how old we ourselves are. Last year it seemed like a movie star was dying every 24 hours.
• The U.N. declared this the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables. This designation is virtually meaningless, I know, but I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and feel like they deserve their own year.

Bad Things About 2021 So Far

• We (and by "we" I mean Americans, though I think this is probably also globally applicable) still seem to be yelling at each other a lot and mistrusting each other and generally feeling smug and superior to those who do not happen to share our worldview. This may never go away, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be raised as a depressing, terrible thing, which it is.
• There are still COVID variants in many parts of the world, and while it's human nature to just want to move on and forget about the virus, many people can't. And you have to assume those variants are going to take root here.
• In that same vein, my daughter Melanie had the virus in January and still cannot smell. This doesn't seem to bother her in the least, but it bothers me.
• I know I'm not alone in this, but I ate way too much cake in the first half of 2021. My cake consumption needs to come down. (I tend to eat as much cake as I do fruits and vegetables. I don't think it balances out well.)

You should know who this man is and what he accomplished

 

In an Olympic year such as this, we're almost inundated with amazing athletic performances. The world's best amateur athletes (probably the best athletes, period) get together and do things that, unless you're very familiar with their particular sports, are difficult to fully appreciate.

Take gymnast Simone Biles, for instance. It is next to impossible to hear too much about her, because she is a generational – probably once-in-a-lifetime – talent. She does seemingly superhuman things so often that casual fans of gymnastics like me quickly lose perspective on just how uniquely gifted she is.

The same is true of track and field, long one of the marquee sports of the Summer Olympics. What track athletes accomplish in terms of speed, skill, and hardcore competitive spirit is breathtaking. I could watch Olympic track events all day.

Which is why I feel like you and I should know the name JuVaughn Harrison. That's him flying through the air in the photo at the top of this post.

Over the weekend, this 22-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama, qualified for the Olympics in both the long jump and high jump at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in baking-hot Eugene, Oregon.

We could stop right there and his achievement would be historic. No one has competed in both of those events in the same Olympics in more than 100 years, since the great Jim Thorpe did it. Technically speaking, they are very different events and require very different talent, skill, and execution.

But get this: Harrison not only qualified for the Olympics in both events, he won both events. If you're a non-track person, I'm not sure I can describe for you just how mind-boggling this is. He beat out a long list of highly trained specialists to take first place in both jumps.

That's...unheard of.

For the record, Harrison long jumped 27 feet, 9 1/2 inches (8.47 meters) and high jumped 7 feet, 7 3/4 inches (2.33 meters). Try measuring out those distances sometime and marvel at the fact that a single human being could leap horizontally and vertically that far/high.

I won't get into it here, but it's interesting to note how the quality of long jumping has diminished since the 1980s and 90s, when we as fans were absolutely spoiled by the likes of Carl Lewis, Mike Powell, Dwight Phillips, Ivan Pedroso, etc.

There are a lot of theories as to why the top long jumpers don't go as far as they used to, but that doesn't take away from what JuVaughn Harrison accomplished in Eugene, and what he could accomplish a month from now in Tokyo.

Remember his name.

I still love apples...lots and lots of apples

As we get older, our food preferences sometimes change.

In my case, the years have softened my dislike of the only two foods I used to say I wouldn't eat: sauerkraut and cantaloupe. Now I love sauerkraut (don't ask me what happened there), and I will happily eat cantaloupe, particularly if it's included in a fruit salad.

One thing that has not changed over time, however, is my passion for apples.

One does not usually connect the words "passion" and "apples," but there's really no other way to describe it. I love apples, and specifically, I love Gala apples.

I love Gala apples so much that I eat 3-4 of them every day. Every. Day. That is absolutely no exaggeration.

Nowadays, it's more often four per day than three. We go through bags and bags of them.

Interestingly, though, I'm not a fan of large apples. I like small to medium-sized Galas, to the point that I suppose 3-4 of them is equal to maybe 2-3 of the larger variety.

Either way, I still eat a lot of apples.

That's the only point I wanted to make here. Well, that plus the fact that I continuously bless the unnamed person who decided to make fruits and vegetables 0 points within the WW/Weight Watchers system. This saint of a man/woman makes me feel infinitely less guilty about my apple obsession.

My love of office supplies started early

When I was growing up, my dad worked in an office environment as a data processing specialist for Lake County, Ohio. He worked with those big, tape-fed computers of the 60s and 70s, which had the processing power of your average tablet computer nowadays.

He would regularly bring home pads of paper for me to use, but it was never ordinary, blank paper. It was always sheets of specialized data processing forms, the back of which were blank for my writing and drawing pleasure.

He also brought home staplers, tape dispensers, binder clips, pens, pencils, erasers, markers, notebooks, file folders, and a whole host of other items that businesses commonly use, most of which were for me to play with.

Other kids wanted toys. I asked for typewriter ribbons.

This was weird, I know, but it has served me well in my career. I am the absolute go-to guy if you're looking for a particular item and don't want to walk all the way across the building to the office supply cabinet.

When I start my new job at Goodyear, one of the first things I will do is get my hands on a bunch of fresh office supplies and store them in a drawer in my desk.

Nothing else will be more exciting to me that first day, I guarantee.

Saturday in the Park: What is your earliest memory?

Asking people about the very earliest thing they remember in their lives is a tricky business, for at least two reasons:

• What they think is their earliest memory may not actually be their earliest memory. You're going back to toddler-hood here, and I'm not sure your brain's recollection of those times is to be trusted, at least so far as sequencing events goes.
  
  
• What they see as a memory may not have happened at all, but may be something they think happened or that they actually dreamed at some point.

Which is why I'm not entirely sure this really happened, but I believe my earliest memory to have occurred sometime in the latter half of 1972 when I had just turned 3, or maybe slightly earlier. And here's why:

The memory itself is walking out of my room (or my parents' room...wherever it was I was sleeping at the time) very early one morning into our living room, which back then had these hardwood floors. And I remember picking up a copy of the album pictured above, which is "Chicago V" by the band Chicago.

I remember that part distinctly because I thought the cover was so cool. Chicago V came out in July 1972, and I'm guessing my brother Mark would have bought it soon after its release. Or maybe my sister Debbie? Either way, we had a copy.

I can't go back further in time than that, and it was a relatively minor thing that I believe to have happened.

What's your earliest memory, and how confident are you it actually happened and/or that the details in your mind are accurate?

(By the way, "Chicago V" included the classic Chicago song "Saturday in the Park," and today is Saturday and all, so you were getting this post no matter what.)

I admire you if you have the patience for poetry and opera

Some of my interests are of the kind that appeal only to a niche audience, to put it kindly.

Classical music is one of those. I will listen to an hour-long Mahler symphony and not even realize time has passed. I'll rip through a Beethoven string quartet while out running and be sad when it's finished.

So it's not like I don't have the attention span to appreciate fine art.

But even as an English major, I never could really get into poetry. And even as a fan of classical music, I still don't find myself getting along very well with opera.

Case in point: I've been reading the Lord of the Rings books lately, starting with "The Hobbit" and (as of this writing) currently nearly the conclusion of "The Fellowship of the Ring." These are long, dense novels, and I enjoy every minute of them.

Except when Tolkien goes off and throws a four-page poem in there. Then my eyes glaze over. I need the narrative to advance, not some navel-gazing verse extravaganza written long ago by an elf lord named Zipfindel or whatever.

As for opera, I have a few of the classics on CD, including "Carmen" and "Otello." And I try. I really try. But so far, nothing I've listened to grabs me the way Bach and Debussy do.

I listen to operas because, as someone who wants to do his small part to keep the classics alive in this day and age, I feel duty-bound to get through them.

I realize it's probably a matter of not truly understanding these two art forms and/or simply not having found the right poem or the right opera.

If anyone wants to be my mentor and throw out some "Beginner's Guide to..." suggestions on either medium, they will be most gratefully received.

I give entirely too much thought to my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn bios

I have come to the conclusion that the only two types of people who click on your social media profiles are:

(1) Yourself

(2) People who read a comment you've made and want to know more about this idiot who has no idea what he/she is talking about

Other than that, nobody cares.

Yet I've changed my Twitter bio at least eight times in the last year. I'm almost certainly the only person who is aware of these carefully-thought-through edits.

As of this writing, my Twitter bio (which is limited to 160 characters, so you have to be strategic about it) reads this way:

Dad of 5, husband of 1, corporate communicator, PA guy. The only Ottawa @Senators super fan in Ohio. I play the saxophone every day, though perhaps not well.

My hope is that people look at it and say, "Well, that's a witty and interesting person!"

And maybe they would, if anyone actually looked at it.

But nobody does. Because again, nobody cares. They're too absorbed in their own stuff to notice.

On LinkedIn, at least, I can argue that the bio makes a difference. Because I was in a job search for two months, I was very, very deliberate about how I populated that particular bit of digital real estate.

My LinkedIn "headline" (that's what they call it) is this:

Strategic Communicator | Executive Counsel | Reputation Architect | Relationship Builder | Marketing Leader | Crisis Manager | Podcaster | Blogger | Harnessing the Power of Words

The idea there is to use keywords that might come up in searches conducted by potential employers, recruiters, etc. It's also to give the people who find you in other ways a quick taste of who you are and what you're all about.

But again, the only person who has ever given this more than three seconds of thought is me.

All of which makes me question the value of the inherently narcissistic beast we call social media. If no one is going to read my bio and immediately ask me to come to their house and play the sax, then why do I check my phone 114 times a day?

I need a new doctor and I'm apparently biased against men

This is my soon-to-be former physician, Dr. Spech-Holderbaum. She would probably think it's funny that I'm posting a photo of her on my blog.

My primary care physician, the wonderful Michelle Spech-Holderbaum, M.D., is retiring in a week. I have been seeing her since the 90s, as has my wife. She has also been my father-in-law's doctor for many years.

There was a part of me that looked forward to annual check-ups because she was always so nice and always took the time to answer questions, give advice, and really just listen.

So now I need a new doc, which is cool. Dr. Spech-Holderbaum deserves her retirement after many years of being very good at her job.

Dr. Spech-Holderbaum worked for the Lake Health medical system, but rather than look there for her replacement, I first checked out the local branch of the Cleveland Clinic that's near my home.

I went onto their website, where you can select physicians by specialty; whether they treat adults, children, or both; and by gender. And without giving it a thought, I automatically set the parameters to internal medicine, adults only, female.

It's not that I looked at the gender box and said, "What, have a man poke and prod me? Forget it!" I just subconsciously picked "female" because that's all I've known for many years.

And there were, by the way, many female physicians there from which to choose.

Are female doctors more attentive? Better listeners? More in tune with their patients' fears and worries? Maybe. Those are all stereotypes, and they're certainly not universal (I know men in many professions who possess those qualities in spades.)

But for whatever reason, I'm almost certainly going with a woman as the next person to whom I will, once a year, ask dumb questions about vitamins, my horribly scarred hamstrings, and if I'm really OK at my current weight or whether losing a few more pounds is a good idea.

As a man, all I can say is that I would not want the job of caring for neurotic me.

The start of a new adventure: It's a good year (get it?)

A couple of months ago, I told you my time at Vitamix had come to an end and I was seeking a new opportunity.

Consider the new opportunity found.

On July 12, I will join the team at Goodyear as Communications Manager, Global Technology. It's a chance to tell the company's story beyond its legacy rubber tires, specifically the work Goodyear is doing to shape the future of mobility.

I'll get to communicate both internally to Goodyear associates and externally to a variety of stakeholder audiences. It's the best of both worlds, and I couldn't be more excited about it.

The team I'm joining is brimming with talent and experience, so there's the added blessing of upping my own game and learning from some truly accomplished corporate communications pros.

And speaking of blessings, I couldn't have expected to find such a great position so relatively early in the job search process. By the time I walk into the corporate offices in Akron for the first time, it will only have been 2 1/2 months since my last day at Vitamix.

I received a lot of support and encouragement over these last several weeks, and it came from a list of people too numerous to mention here individually. Suffice it to say I'm indebted to all of them.

The only question now is whether I'll have space in my new office to house my collection of 20 or so sports bobbleheads. They're a great conversation starter when you're the new guy.

An after-school basketball program in the early 80s expanded my worldview a little

Big bad Lincoln Elementary (now Wickliffe Elementary)

When I was in fifth and sixth grade at Mapledale Elementary School, we had an after-school basketball program for boys during the winter. Or at least I assume it was specifically for boys, because no girls ever participated, nor do I expect they were ever invited.

A few times a week, we would gather in the gym and Mr. Oravecz would teach us the fundamentals of the sport: dribbling, passing, shooting, etc. We tried to run a few very basic plays, though our early-adolescent brains often had trouble absorbing even those.

One day in the spring, we would travel across town to Lincoln Elementary School to play end-of-season games against boys from Lincoln and from Worden Elementary.

Both years we did this, the outcomes of the games were never in doubt. We would beat Worden and get beaten by Lincoln, and Lincoln would beat Worden.

Lincoln was, you see, by far the biggest of the three elementary schools in Wickliffe at the time. It had two floors. Two floors! Mapledale and Worden were single-story buildings with only a few wings each.

Lincoln also had a gym with bleachers. Bleachers! We had no such thing at Mapledale. It was intimidating, at 11 years old, to walk into a strange gym with bleachers overlooking the basketball floor and seeing those bleachers filled with kids rooting heartily against you.

Lincoln also had something else we didn't.

Lincoln had Black kids.

If that sounds pathetically sheltered and Caucasian, it's because it was.

We didn't have African-American kids at Mapledale, and I think Worden was in the same boat. (Actually I do remember one Black kid at Mapledale, Ricardo Davis, but he may have been the only one there during my time.)

African-Americans were actually a minority at Lincoln, too, but there were definitely far more of them there than at our two small schools.

So, in addition to coming to this seemingly large school with a gym twice the size of ours, we also had to find a way to play against Ralph Topps. Ralph was an African-American kid who, if he wasn't already 6 feet tall in fifth grade, was darn close to it. I was one of the taller Mapledale players, and I don't know if I was even 5-7 at the time.

I later played summer baseball with Ralph, and while he was a decent athlete, he was really just a regular kid like the rest of us.

Looking back on it now, that sort of "revelation" seems pretty funny, maybe even sad. A year or two later, we would all be brought together at the same middle school, and it turned out we had a lot more in common as Wickliffe kids than we were ever separated by race.

Or at least that's how it seemed to me at the time. It was only later I learned of some of the things the African-American kids had had to deal with because of the color of their skin. Things I never would have dreamed of, things that never in a million years would have happened to me, and things that made me sad.

In the end, that basketball program was the start of an education for this kid from Harding Drive that continues to this day.

Five dad wardrobe tips I live by

This works. Apparently.

 

(1) Socks with sandals = no, but socks with slides = yes
No socks with sandals is an eternal rule, but you can apparently wear socks with those athletic sandals they call slides. I have a pair from Adidas that I mostly wear when I'm taking out the trash or going to get the mail or something. I've learned from my kids, particularly when they're participating in sports, that you can get away with socks and slides, so I do it regularly.

(2) Cargo shorts are always a 'no,' though I still dispute this
I no longer own any cargo shorts because I'm afraid one of my kids (potentially the oldest one, but we're not naming names) will kill me if I wear a pair. The non-athletic shorts I own are all now pretty much just a series of simple, two-pocket, non-cargo khaki jobs. I happen to like cargo shorts, but I avoid them in order to keep peace within the family.

(3) Denim will never go out of style
I will likely be wearing jeans the day I die. Just good old, straight-ahead, blue Levis. These will always be in my closet.

(4) Mid-calf white socks? Sure!
Not with shorts or anything, but as long as I'm alive, the long white sock industry will stay afloat.

(5) Buy a winter coat you like and wear it for at least three presidential administrations
I have a black overcoat I've worn every semi-cold day for the better part of a decade. I have it dry cleaned each year. I'm probably due for a new one, but I'm riding this one out until it's threadbare. And even then I'll probably take it on a year-long farewell tour.

The barrage of critters on our back deck

One of our cats' current favorite pastimes is to sit near the door to our deck and stare at the animals who visit there.

And when I say "animals," I really mean squirrels and birds. Other than the very, very occasional raccoon at night, those are the only varmints who regularly come calling.

They do this because we offer them food. As I've mentioned before, my wife has a tiny squirrel picnic table on the deck that she regularly outfits with corn cobs. Word has spread quickly among the local squirrel community that there is tasty free corn to be had at this location, so every day we get several fluffy-tailed visitors.

Terry put a plastic bird feeder on the garage window that looks out onto the deck, so we also get a steady influx of wrens, sparrows, and other small winged creatures I can't identify.

All of which puts the cats into a frenzy.

Well, not a "frenzy" so much as a state of high alert. Our fluffy cat Molly, in particular, has taken it upon herself to spend hours each day observing the comings and goings of our woodland friends. She can barely contain her rage over their insolence and would like nothing more than to get outside and personally maim each and every one of them.

The other cats are curious but nowhere near as angry as Molly, who sits on an office chair placed there by Jared so that her long lonely hours of guard duty will at least be comfortable.

My favorite times are when the squirrels, who have come to realize we mean them no harm at all, walk right up to the deck door within inches of Molly's face and stare at her through the glass. She gets so worked up she starts making strange clicking noises and vows to rain eternal hellfire on the squirrel and each of his/her descendants.

I think she needs some sort of anger management training.

In her defense, squirrels really can be evil. My daughter Elissa recently had a squirrel get into her chicken wire-protected garden and wreak havoc on the plants there before he finally figured out how to escape.

This does not deter me from wanting a squirrel as a pet, but I'll admit they may not be the innocent, lovable little fuzzballs I've always assumed they were.

It's alarming how much of my mental wellbeing depends upon an empty inbox

Please, as a favor to me, just don't do this.

You may have heard it said that there are two types of people in this world: Those with zero emails in their inbox, and those with 5,000 emails in their inbox.

I am of the former camp. You can almost always fit my inbox onto one screen. It is stressful for me to have unread emails in any quantity, let alone a list that numbers into the tens, hundreds, or (gulp) thousands.

There have been times when I was watching a presentation by a co-worker sharing his/her screen, and for a brief second you could see Microsoft Outlook with an ungodly blue number like 32,418 next to their inbox, representing the total number of unread messages in there.

I would have a heart attack. Seriously, at that point you need to just start over.

I maintain an orderly folder system for both my personal Gmail and work Outlook accounts (when I have a job, of course). These folders are divided into categories, and I place emails into each upon receiving and reading them.

"But what about emails that need to be acted on, but I don't have the time to do it right when they come in?"

Then have a "To Do" folder or something that tells you these are messages that need to be addressed in short order. Or make good use of a program like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote that allows you to easily create tasks and reminders for yourself.

Just, please, don't allow that blue unread number to get into the five digits. Or the three and four digits, for that matter. The aneurysm you save will probably be mine.

It's not that I don't like pools, I just don't want one

For context, it is important to note that I'm not much of a "water guy." I took swimming lessons only because my mom made me do it, I never wanted to spend as many hours at the city pool as my friends did, and while I can swim to survive, I'm not especially skilled or confident in the water.

I don't hate swimming. It's just that I can take it or leave it.

All of which gives me great admiration for those who are very much water-oriented. Especially those who have their own pools. Whether they're in-ground or above ground, pools are expensive and, it seems to me, difficult to maintain.

But if you're OK with that, then more power to you. Enjoy the heck out of that big bathtub and/or hole in the ground in your backyard!

It's ironic that, of all the family vacations we've taken over the years with the kids, my favorite is probably the beach vacation we took to Delaware five years ago. I loved everything about it, except I hardly went into the ocean. I was perfectly content sitting on the beach reading a book about trench warfare in World War I (that's 100% true).

I've never jet skied, though it looks like a lot of fun. I've never water skied, either, though it also looks like a lot of fun despite the fact that I almost certainly would fall over within seconds.

I put boat ownership in the same category as pool ownership, by the way. There's a whole lifestyle that revolves around boating, though all I see are dollar signs and maintenance problems. But if you love it, that's awesome. Again, it's just not for me.

The one concession I might eventually make is buying a hot tub for our deck. Jared has been after us to do that for years now, and I might be willing to relent there. But someone else is going to take care of it. I got swindled into taking care of five cats many years ago, and I'm not going to fall for that trick again.

When the kids (and grandkids) live far away

Us visiting grandchildren in 20 years

My daughter Chloe and her husband Michael recently bought their first house, which is in Akron. Given the crazy seller's market nowadays, they had to bid on several homes before finally having an offer accepted on one.

Throughout this process, Terry kept subtly (or maybe not so subtly) urging them to look at houses farther north, which would have put them closer to us.

In the end, they settled on Akron, which isn't exactly next door, but is also still less than an hour away.

Given that Elissa lives just one city to the east of us, we are very fortunate to have our older kids so close. I know many people who only see their offspring and grandchildren once a year on out-of-state trips.

I've always told Terry that you can't count on five kids settling in the immediate area where you live. It happens, but not often.

Jared's career, in particular, has the potential to take him to far-flung places. When you're in the sports information business, you go where the jobs are. And if you want to be a college sports information director, as Jared has thought about, you go to whichever university is willing to give you a shot.

That's the way it works. Not everyone is going to want (or have the opportunity) to stay in good old Ohio.

Knowing us, though, if and when one or more of the kids move to another part of the country, we will become frequent fliers and end up seeing them relatively often.

To my children, then, I say this: If you're definitely going to go somewhere else, think about Montana. I've always wanted to see Montana.

The Oasis in our backyard lives up to its name

This is a picture of our back deck, and specifically what it looks like in the summer when we get down the table and chairs and plant stands and other paraphernalia that get crammed onto it every May and taken off of it and stored away in November.

We refer to this area as The Oasis. The name belies the small size of the area (in truth, it's not an especially large deck), but it fits with its psychological importance within our family.

The Oasis is a place to go outside and read by yourself in the morning. It's a place where squirrels come to eat off of Terry's corn-baited squirrel picnic table, and birds land to eat from her feeder attached to the garage window.

Maybe most importantly, it's also a place where some combination of family members will regularly gather to sit, talk, and maybe imbibe a glass of wine or a beer.

It's exactly what the word "oasis" implies.

I mention all of this because of the particular role The Oasis played exactly one year ago today.

A year ago last night (at 12:55am, to be precise), my mother-in-law took her last breath. She was surrounded by her husband and three children at the time, which it seems to me is exactly as it should be.

That next morning, bleary-eyed and exhausted, a group of us spent a couple of hours sitting around The Oasis table and just talking. We talked about memories, we talked about the events of the previous evening, and we talked about how different the future was going to be.

The important thing is, we talked. And I think that helped everyone deal with Judy's loss just a bit better.

Whatever it is and wherever it is, I suppose everyone needs an oasis in their lives.

Do you like your first name? I'm always surprised by the number of people who don't.

I have always liked that I'm named Scott. It's a good, solid guy's name, as far as I'm concerned. Not too popular (it was a top 20 name in the 1970s, but never ranked high on the list before or since) and not too, shall we say, exotic.

My middle name is Patrick, which I also like. I wouldn't mind it as a first name, though I would insist people call me "Patrick" and not "Pat." Big difference.

It's interesting to me the number of people who don't like their first names or who, at best, are apathetic about it. When I learn that about someone, I always ask what they would change their name to if they could, and in most cases they have a very quick answer, like they've given this a lot of thought.

Legally speaking, of course, there's little standing in the way of them changing their names to something they like better, but the hassle usually far outweighs any benefit from being able to sign a check as "Ace X. Studburger," or whatever.

I've posted on this blog the list of names I wouldn't mind having, if for any reason I was forced to change my name. If you don't feel like clicking on that link (and really, who could blame you?), my five approved alternative names are Bruce, Tim, Dave, Hank, and Kai.

"Hank" and "Kai" are surprise entries, no doubt, but I would be fine with either.

As I also explain in that post from 2013, my dad wanted to name me "D.J.," though it wouldn't have stood for anything. Just "D.J." Mom overruled him, however, and "Scott" it was.

Incidentally, "Patrick" apparently came from a guy with whom my dad used to drink down at the Hob Nob. I don't think I ever met him, but as a rule, the drunks at the Hob Nob were all pretty nice people, so I'm sure he was lovely.

When you don't want your youngest to grow up, but you also sort of do...

Here's something Terry and I have noticed in recent years.

We'll be talking to a parent whose last/youngest child is nearing high school graduation and they'll be borderline distraught about it. They can't imagine not doing kid activities anymore and not having the same routine, and understandably, they're having a hard time grasping the concept of their baby going off to college or trade school, or entering the workforce.

We will nod sympathetically. And then, as we walk away, we will turn to each other and say (almost in unison), "I can't wait until Jack graduates."

This is not nearly as heartless as it sounds. We're enjoying Jack's high school experience as much as we did with the first four, maybe even a little more so. It's just that, with kids starting to move out of the house, we've had a taste of the empty nest life. And well...

It's awesome.

I love my children, don't get me wrong. They're good people. Fun to be around, smart, mostly conscientious, and so easy to be proud of.

But we've been through many years of the chaos that comes with a large family (a family we chose to have, it should be noted). And the freedom and peace and quiet that comes with a smaller household just can't be beat.

Believe me, I know we're going to miss sports and band and everything that comes with having kids under the age of 18. Even having been through the cycle multiple times, we still love it all.

Then Terry starts talking about having a house in Florida where we can spend the winter months, and I admittedly get a little tingly.

So Jack, my boy, you're doing great. Keep getting those good grades, keep running, keep playing your trumpet, and keep on keeping us busy. But when it's time for you to step out into the wide world on your own, trust me what I say this:

I will be right there, helping you pack up the U-Haul.

"For I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am"

You might possibly recognize today's headline as the words of the Apostle Paul (specifically from Philippians 4:11). I wanted to point that out immediately because, while Paul learned to be that way in life, I most certainly have not.

Some background: Most Sunday mornings, Terry and I sit in with the Young Adult Sunday School class at our church. We are decidedly no longer "young adults," but I made sure the members of the class are OK with our participation (either they are or they're too polite to say otherwise).

The class has been going through a book of short, Bible-based essays written by a friend of ours named Kyle Tucker. Kyle lives in Virginia. He is a big bear of a man with an even bigger personality. He is smart and funny, and I always enjoy his insights into all things spiritual.

Recently we read one of Kyle's missives around success: how we measure it, how we should measure it, and what "contentment" really means.

Two things struck me:

(1) We're almost inevitably happier people when we learn to appreciate what we have and where life has taken us. But "contentment" is not the same thing as apathy. You should always strive to improve in the ways that really matter, but the stuff you own is probably more than you really need. More stuff is not going to make you happier.

(2) We often admire those who have learned to be content, but we ignore how they got there in the first place. In Kyle's words, when it comes to spiritual "success" in life, "we too often admire the accomplishment rather than the qualities that brought about the success." Too true. I want to learn to be truly content and not constantly dissatisfied and ungrateful for what I have, but I don't necessarily want to put in the work that will get me there.

To that last point, the people with the best, most fulfilling outlook on life usually get there through determination, focus, perseverance and desire. They work to be happy, and while they're not apathetic, for them it's not always about what's next. They're perfectly happy where they are. They learn over time to be that way.

This flies in the face of what society tells us, which is that you can never have too much money, too many possessions, too much fame, etc.

The wise man/woman, on the other hand, counts his/her blessings every day and lives in a state of consistent, grateful contentment.

That's where I want to be when I grow up.

The flawed strategy of the bunnies by the side of the road

I take the majority of my morning walks/runs along our street, Miller Avenue, and its creatively named westward extension, West Miller. Together, these streets provide a simple (if hilly) 2.32-mile loop I use as the basis for most of my A.M. excursions.

The route passes by a series of wide grassy areas in which you can usually find some combination of deer, racoons, possums, birds, and skunks, depending on how early you get out the door. Also featured there are what Terry and I simply call The Bunnies™.

These are some common species of wild rabbit, but we never call them "rabbits." It is always "The Bunnies™."

This morning while chugging down West Miller, I had a very typical encounter with one of The Bunnies™.

A bunny will be happily chomping on grass by the side of the road as I approach. He/she will then see me coming. If these bunnies were smarter and had some system of passing down tribal knowledge, they would have learned from their parents that I am a common sight on the streets in the morning and am absolutely harmless.

(NOTE: I wanted to use the rabbit equivalent of "tribal" in that paragraph, so I looked up what a group of rabbits is called. There is apparently some difference of opinion out there, but one of the common designations is a "fluffle" of rabbits. Really. I would have happily used that word, except I don't know how to render it in adjectival form. "Fluffle-ey" knowledge? "Fluffinial" knowledge? "Flufflenian" knowledge? I have no idea. So I stuck with "tribal.")

Anyway, rabbits don't seem to have any method of societal knowledge transfer, so they rely purely on instinct. And this bunny's instinct told him I could definitely be a threat and he should do what these bunnies always do when I approach.

He stayed where he was and sat perfectly still.

This is not, it must be said, an ideal approach. For one thing, the bunnies are not camouflaged against the grass, so they're readily visible even from a distance. And even though they generally do a good job of remaining motionless, it doesn't matter. I'm already staring right at them.

Regardless, here's what also happens every time: They will stand there until I get within a few feet, and then they'll run away in terror. Every time.

The problems with this whole philosophy are evident:

(1) You, as a bunny, are very quick. By waiting until I'm right on top of you before you run, you nullify this advantage and make it easier for me to lunge out and get you (which, let's be clear, I would never do, but they don't know me).

(2) More importantly, if this is your strategy, then you have to stick to it. Have some nerve, bunnies. If you're going with the stand-perfectly-still approach, see it through to the end. The assumption here (the key to this whole method of defense, really) is that I don't see you in the first place. Why ruin it by running away at the very late minute and making yourself extremely obvious? Why, The Bunnies™, why??

I have no answers, but I'm considering some sort of leaflet campaign among the bunnies urging them to reconsider their absolutely terrible approach to keeping me from killing them.

Which, again, I would never do. But they're bunnies. They can't be expected to know I have their best interests at heart.

There really is something to this Five Love Languages thing

You know what I'm talking about, right? The Five Love Languages? It's a book by a guy named Dr. Gary Chapman, the premise of which is that we each give and prefer to receive love in different ways. Those ways, in Dr. Chapman's construct, are Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch (see above).

As the book suggests, each of us has at least one of those languages we prefer above the others, though being the complex creatures we are, it's not like we want our partner to focus on just one of them and totally ignore the other four.

Still, in my experience, your dominant Love Language preference is pretty strong and pretty obvious.

For my wife, it is and always has been Acts of Service. If you rub her feet or carry something for her or do some household chore she would like to have done, trust me, buddy, you'll be enjoying her gourmet meals for a lifetime. (And by "buddy," I'm referring to the next guy she marries after I die trying to lift something entirely too heavy for me as an Act of Service.)

For me, it's Words of Affirmation. I don't mean that you need to follow me around the house and let me know every seven seconds how great I'm doing. I just mean it's nice to hear every once in a while that I'm on the right track, I'm doing the right things, you're happy, etc.

And conversely, you really need to tell me if I'm not on the right track, not doing the right things, and you're not happy. It's that communication thing, folks. It has to happen.

Anyway, I'm always fascinated to learn people's Love Languages, because honestly, I'm really bad at guessing what they are. I'm not the best reader/observer of people, so when I learn which of the five on the list is someone's favorite, I'm often surprised and grateful to learn something new about them.

You can take a quiz to learn your Love Language(s) (and your partner's Love Language(s)) at Dr. Oldman's Five Love Languages website. There's a whole lot more to it than I'm explaining here, so trust me when I say it's worth the investment of your time if you're someone who is involved in a relationship.

When I was a freshman in high school, the seniors seemed like adults to me

What I must have looked like in the Fall of 1984 when I entered high school and got to rub shoulders with all of the seniors.

My high school housed grades 9 through 12, which meant that, at the beginning of every school year, you had 14-year-olds barely starting puberty sharing the building with nearly 18-year-olds who looked like they probably dropped their kids off at daycare that morning before coming to class.

When I was one of those 14-year-old freshmen (who admittedly was almost finished with puberty by that point), I idolized those seniors in the Class of 1985. To me, they looked, talked, and acted like they were adults.

Names from that class that come immediately to mind include Vince Federico, Lisa Strmac, and Kevin Horten, among many others. These were grown-ups to me, and it always made me feel that much smaller, younger, and immature.

In retrospect, this is silly. I look back now and realize these people were essentially just slightly older children. But at the time, the difference in age, experience, and demeanor seemed huge.

When I played football, there was a tradition in which, at one practice a year, the freshman team offense would go up against the varsity defense, and vice-versa. This was full-go, full-contact football, and I always assumed the intention was to allow ninth-graders the chance to experience what getting hit by a varsity player felt like.

I was on that freshmen offense, and I was a running back, which meant I was fair game for these 12th-grade adults to basically maul as they pleased. I took a handoff and ran right into Vince Federico, who I believe was a linebacker and had the ability to break full-size cars in two with his bare hands.

Vince smashed me to the ground, but then he popped up, offered his hand, pulled me to my feet and said something like, "Good job, big boy."

I will never forget that. The hit stung for a moment, but his encouraging words stayed with me.

Which makes me wish that, by the time I was a senior, I had taken the whole job of being a leader and role model more seriously.

I was captain of the track team, for instance. I worked hard and like to think I set a good example that way, but I wish I had interacted more directly with the underclassmen to help them improve. I wasn't mature enough at that point to do it, to my own loss.

There is probably a lesson in there for all of us as parents, aunts/uncles, managers, business professionals, etc. Someone is almost always looking to you to set the right tone or model correct behavior, whether you realize it or not.

Bottom line: Be Vince Federico and not me.

People in our house come to me with their car troubles. This is probably inadvisable.

For many years, I have carried out the same maintenance routine every few weeks on the cars in our driveway.

When I say "the cars in our driveway," I mean the cars belonging to whatever combination of people happens to be living with us at the time. Terry and I are at a stage in life when that is ever-changing, with some kids getting older and moving out, others living on campus for college then coming home for the summer, etc.

Anyway, if you live here, I'm going to periodically run through a checklist of basic maintenance items on your car. These are pretty much what you think they would be: I'll check your oil, refill your washer fluid, ensure proper levels of other fluids, and break out the tire gauge to ensure your tires are correctly inflated. If they're not, I'll drive the car to the local BP station and refill them accordingly.

Beyond that, I will buy and replace light bulbs that burn out and do the same for your air filter when needed, but really, that's the extent of my car maintenance knowledge.

The problem is that when something really bad happens, I'm of no help. I will not even attempt to diagnose issues with the electrical system, couldn't tell you how to flush your coolant, and have zero experience with suspension or drive train issues.

So when you come to me with those problems, the only service I can perform is driving your car to our mechanic Randy so he can work on it and avoid having me make things worse.

Cars nowadays also have onboard computers, and I don't know anyone who has the equipment at home to check those codes, so forget the notion of having that check engine light problem diagnosed in our driveway.

Much like houses, cars are now complex systems that are beyond the ability of the untrained to fully understand and fix.

It's just that the problem gets infinitely worse when I'm your in-home mechanic. I've never even changed my own oil, for Pete's sake.

I'm now the guy who waves at passing cars when I walk

Bill Reid is a man I admire. He is a legend here in Wickliffe for several reasons, not the least of which is that he served as mayor of our town and has also donated hundreds of pints of rare type AB blood to the Red Cross over many decades.

He also became, at some point, the Waving Guy.

Bill used to walk around Wickliffe a lot. Maybe he still does. I'll have to ask the next time I see him at a high school sporting event.

When he would walk, he would wave to each and every passing car. You could count on getting a wave from Bill if you drove past him.

That is not Bill in the photo above, by the way, but he did always have the same friendly smile when he waved.

I used to think this was so funny. Kind of a quirky old guy thing.

Until I started doing it myself.

Now, let it be said that when I'm out walking or running, I only wave at cars I pass on my street (Miller) and the adjoining street (West Miller). I don't do it on other, busier streets in town.

More specifically, I do it when I'm walking/running in the street because there are no sidewalks available. And as much as I intend it as a friendly greeting, it's also a simple acknowledgement of the fact that the passing motorist has seen me and moved over to give me some room.

"Thank you for noticing me and not killing me with your 5,000-pound SUV," is what I'm in effect telling people.

I do the things you're supposed to do when you walk/run on the side of the road, including going against traffic and wearing a yellow reflective vest. Still, you would be surprised how many clueless people speed up Miller and don't notice me until the last second because they're on their phone.

Actually, maybe you wouldn't be surprised.

Either way, I'm grateful to every driver who allows me to live another day. Waving to them is probably the least I can do.

This is what we looked like on June 6, 1992

My wife and I were married 29 years ago today. It was a Saturday, and while it looked like it was going to rain, we got away with pretty good weather for the whole shindig.

I have written about our anniversary at least three times in the history of this blog, so I'm not sure there's anything new to say. Those prior anniversary posts can be read here (2012), here (2015), and here (2017).

Life goes on, and we go on. That's not something to be taken lightly or for granted, though sometimes in the everyday grind we do lose sight of the things that are most valuable in our lives.

And that's all I have to say about that. Happy anniversary to the best wife a guy could ask for.

Rearranging your living room: The pinnacle of excitement

A couple of months ago we rejiggered the furniture in our living room. It was the first time we had done this in a while, and it caused quite the stir.

Quite the stir, that is, not only among the people who live in our house, but among our regular visitors as well.

Everyone had their own opinions on the new configuration, which saw the TV switch places with the piano and the sectional couch pulled around at a new angle, along with a few other minor changes.

We were able to move the TV only because we switched from WOW cable to AT&T TV streaming service. Previously, the TV was placed right where the cable came up through the floor from the basement. But a streaming TV can go anywhere in the house where you have WiFi, so that opened up a lot of design possibilities.

The important thing is that my wife, the person who spends the most time in the living room, liked the change.

But seriously, you know your life has fallen into what might be described as a mundane routine when a living room rearrangement is the only thing you can talk about as a family for a week.

Don't forget that printers are miracles

Every now and then I'll write a post about the good/bad old days in which we lacked certain technology that is now commonplace, and how none of us should ever take it for granted.

This is one of those posts.

I am of sufficient age to appreciate how amazing it is to have a desktop printer, because I grew up at a time when no one had them.

All of your school reports back then were handwritten or, if you were fancy, produced on a typewriter.

We had a typewriter in my house, and I remember using it to write reports on Theodore Roosevelt (when we had to pick a president to write about), Iceland (when we had to pick a country to write about), and Vermont (when we had to pick a state to write about). This involved setting margins and manual carriage returns, and if God forbid you made a mistake, reaching for the foul-smelling White Out to correct it.

It was cumbersome, but the final product always looked nice.

Like a lot of people, the first printer I owned was of the dot matrix variety, and much like a typewriter, it required changing out the ink ribbon every so often.

It only printed in black and white, of course, but that didn't matter. The fact was, it printed! I would create something on my Commodore 64, and a couple of minutes later, there it was on paper, looking all professional (or so it seemed).

You have to understand, this was a revelation. Then they came out with Print Shop software and you could create banners and flyers and all sorts of things that previously could only be handled by a graphic designer and a printing service.

In retrospect, it all looks pretty bland and cheesy. But to say that is to ignore how transformative portable printers really were. What had before involved a large investment of time and money could now be done in an instant at home. Mind blowing.

The next time I want to complain about my Epson printer, I'm going to stop for a second and appreciate the fact it exists it all.

They're tearing down my high school, but I was more sad when they got rid of my elementary school

 

Rendering of the new Wickliffe Schools campus

One of the biggest things going on right now in my little hometown of Wickliffe, Ohio, is the building of a new PK-12 school campus. It's a long, long, long overdue project, and it's going to bring our educational facilities out of the early to mid-20th century and into the 21st.

One result is that our three current school buildings will all be torn down. I attended two of those (the middle and high schools) and have plenty of memories wrapped up in both.

Still, I'm completely fine with it, given the expense of operating those ancient structures and the  opportunities afforded to our students at the new campus.

What I haven't gotten over, though, is the demolition of good old Mapledale Elementary, the school that stood at the end of my street where I attended kindergarten through sixth grade. That one hurt.

I spent more than half of my public school career there. I developed a love of reading, of sports, and of music there. In many ways I grew up at Mapledale.

And now it's gone, replaced by nice little houses for somewhat older folks without children, as I understand it.

Wickliffe students nowadays are dumbfounded when I tell them our city used to have three separate elementary schools. Those schools shaped so many lives, but they've faded into distant memory.

That's progress for you. On balance it's a good thing, but the older you get, the sadder it is when vestiges of your childhood fall victim to the bulldozer.

Somewhere in between 24/7 kale and a bag-a-day Cheetos habit is your sensible diet

I know exactly what I should be eating. You probably do, too.

I own a copy of a book called "The China Study." It's popular with the clean eating crowd, and while some quibble a bit with its science, I don't think anyone would read it and say, "Nah, this guy's wrong. I'm opting for the Bacon Grease Diet."

We know leafy greens are good for us. We know nuts and seeds should be part of our diet, as should fruits, vegetables, "good" fats and complex carbs. We know we should use some common sense when it comes to things like red meat, processed foods, and trans fats.

Yet we Americans still tend to eat in a manner that can only be described as decidedly unhealthy. We eat bad stuff and we eat a lot of it (ask a visitor from another country what strikes them about America, and stunningly often they'll mention the gargantuan portion sizes in our restaurants).

Still, you can't blame anyone for eating what they enjoy. People want to eat what tastes good. Dietitians, physicians and others whose job it is to guide us toward healthier food choices will tell you your palate evolves and that eventually the good stuff will start tasting better, but in my experience, well...that's at best partially true.

I eat pretty healthy, I guess. I get kale and spinach in my daily smoothies, I try to stick to whole grains, I eat a lot of fruit, and my dairy intake is relatively minimal.

But I'm inconsistent with nuts, almost never eat seeds, will drink multiple cups of coffee with half-and-half until the day I die, and don't get nearly as much fish as I should.

On balance, I feel like I'm doing OK, and over the years my blood work has supported that idea. I'm not perfect, but I am intentional about what I eat.

You may be in the same boat. Or maybe you have a much healthier diet than me, in which case kudos to you.

Realistically speaking, though, a lot of us are going to eat Ding Dongs and ice cream, and we're simply not going to stop. The secret, as always, is getting us to do it in some moderation. God bless the people trying to get us there.

The promise of June

For some people, the start of a new year is the time to reenergize and look ahead with optimism. For others it's the coming of spring.

To me, though, you can't beat the arrival of June.

I once called June "the greatest month of the year," and I stand by that.

Part of it is the weather. I am grateful to live in Northeast Ohio 365 days a year, but when it comes to getting outside and being active, June has the best balance of warm, sunny days without the near-Florida-like humidity that comes along in July and August.

Also, for the first several years of your life, June probably meant summer vacation. You played, you relaxed, and you got yourself ready for the next grade up in school, whatever that may have been.

It is also as good a time as any to address whatever it is in your life that needs addressing. Just as the cold and snow are behind us, so too can be the problems and issues that have weighed on your mind for so long. The calendar has flipped, so your attitude may as well change with it.

Easier said than done, I understand, but you have to start sometime. June 1st is a pretty good candidate.

Happy June, everybody (even to my Southern Hemisphere friends for whom June is more a reminder that winter is on the way...on balance, you still have better weather than we do.)