Some loose ends while waiting for the rain to let up...

It's 6:00 p.m., it's raining so hard outside that it's pitch black, so I've opted to hang here at the office for a bit. Might as well catch up on the blogging...

Per my prior post, Daughter did receive and accept an offer to join the company she interviewed with in Louisville - yeah for her! She'll graduate in a couple weeks, come home for a short spell, take a quick vacation with a friend to NYC for a couple days, and then head to Louisville to start her new life on June 8th. She's done a great job of keeping her act together in college, she's gone straight thru in four years (evidently that's more the exception these days), had a great time in the sorority, worked part-time jobs to help pay expenses, has had some great adventures along the way, has a steady boyfriend and is finishing with a 3.0+ GPA. In some regards, she did a lot better than her old man - ha! Look out world, here she comes!

Son's team did make the playoffs and we drove over to Clinton, MS to watch them play this weekend (afterall, it was his birthday). It was only a seven hour drive and I gotta say that I was much impressed with what we saw of Mississippi. Granted, you have to drive through the armpit of south eastern Texas (no two ways about it, Vidor is just plain ugly) and Louisiana (there're pockets of regional potential here, but overall...just keep driving) to get there, but it was pretty cool. I'm guessing they've had plenty of rain this spring because everything was gorgeous shades of green. The roads were smooth and bordered by patches of purple, yellow and orange wildflowers in amongst all the greenery...quite pretty. And clean, too! Virtually no roadside debris to speak of! The best part, at least as we experienced it, was that all of the people we encountered were just the nicest folks! I'm wondering if that could be due to the influence of the Mississippi College students? Weather was wonderful, upper 70's and minimal humidity. Did I mention the accents? I loved hearing the deep southern drawl of the natives! They're "only" about 500 miles from here but their accent is totally different from that of Texas. In Texas, it's a Texas drawl. In Mississippi, they talk like they're from the real south!

Son played fine but the team was eliminated after losing the first two games of the series. While that's not great, at least it frees them up next weekend for things like, oh, I dunno, studying for finals?

Happiness

It's about 7:30 a.m. and we're waiting to hear from Son around 8:00, he's expecting to hear from their Coach as to whether their games are rained out today. If not, we'll hop in the car (with the Mother-In-Law) and drive 2 1/2 hours to see their double header. Their season is nearly over and these are to be their final home games. The team has had a good year and, provided they close things out ok over this final week, should make the playoffs. Son has done great...as a freshman he's been the starter at 1B all year and has been batting around .380 all year, too.

In the meantime, Daughter is in Louisville, KY for what should be her final stage of the interview process with a national hotel management company. They flew her and four other soon-to-be new grads (our understanding is all for different positions) in yesterday, wined and dined them last evening, and will be, primarily, showing off for them all day today. So far she's quite impressed with the staff, the hotel, and this weekend is Thunder Over Louisville so there are big doings both all over town and, specifically, at the hotel. As Daughter is focused on a career in Events Management, this is a great time for her to be here and see what it's all about.

Here's a link to the hotel and another about Thunder Over Louisville.

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/sdflm-louisville-marriott-downtown/

http://www.thunderoverlouisville.org/

Needless to say, we're quite proud of her! She's done a great job of making it through school and graduating in four years with solid grades. She's been active in a sorority, had (and still has) a great guy as a steady boyfriend, and worked to help pay her expenses. She's made some great friends and even did an internship in Events last summer in NYC.

We've been truly blessed with some really great kids!!

Disappointing

One evening earlier this week my wife and I were watching TV. At one point "Castle", a newer cops/robbers type show on one of the mainstream networks, came on. The show opened with Castle and his ex-wife sitting on the floor (they'd evidently fallen off the bed), sweaty and coming up for air after a round of boisterous sex. Their conversation was around their happiness that their relationship (and the sex) was so much better now that they were divorced as opposed to when they were married. His ex is expressing how this has her interested in investing more in their relationship, the thought of which had Castle clearly disturbed, and the scene ends with the ex bending over to, the clear implication was, perform oral sex on him.

At this point I changed the channel and there was CSI Miami. The CSIers were picking bloody human remains off the blades of an industrial sized wood chipper.

For this we have AT&T Uverse? 8 million freaking channels, all that HD potential, and mostly just tons of crap.

I do, however, take some comfort in seeing that Friday Night Lights just got a two-year renewal/extension. I guess I won't be canceling cable afterall (or, at least, not quite yet).

That's Our Boy!

One of the many benefits of being self-employed is the control I have over my own schedule. In this case, I have the flexibility to take a relatively short (under 3 hours) road trip to watch Our Son play college baseball.

This is his freshman year and the season has just started. We drove up mid-day on Friday to catch a home game and then drove to Dallas to spend the night with my folks and catch a double header on the road in Ft. Worth on Saturday afternoon. It was a trip well spent as Son played the entire game on Friday and the whole second game on Saturday. These were the 3rd, 4th, & 5th games of the season.

His team lost 9 - 6 Friday afternoon and then again 14 - 12 in the first game on Saturday. They won the second game Saturday 11 - 2. At this point their overall record is 2-3. Son did exceptionally well in the two games he played. He's a fine young man and we really enjoyed seeing how well he fits in with the rest of the team and is playing well enough to be earning their respect.

The really cool part is that the games Saturday were played at LaGrave Field in Ft. Worth. Check out the list of Hall Of Fame players who have played on that field...this includes some really heavy hitters! (Pun intended..?) Of special note to me is my all-time favorite major leaguer, Brooks Robinson! So, how cool is it that my kid got to not only play on the same field that guys like Brooks, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, etc...played on but that he also played very well (i.e. 2/4, HR, 4 RBIs, run scored) in contributing to his team's victory?! As a dad of a player, trust me, that's a mighty fine feeling!

Being there in person to see Our Son hit his first HR in college ball - priceless!

My Nuthin' Box

When I created this blog several weeks ago I named it in a sign of agreement with and respect for the ideas expressed by Mark Gungor in the video clip attached here titled "The Difference Between Men's Brains and Women's Brains". If you want to know where the title of this blog comes from - watch the video, it's hysterical!

Initially I held off on posting due to wanting to wait until after my Wife and I attended one of Gungor's seminar's up in DFW...you know, wanted to make sure that the guy was as good in person and in a full-length seminar as he is in that clip.

The answer is YES! What the guy says makes an awful lot of sense and he does it in an incredibly funny way. Basically, we laughed for about 8 hours...and learned a lot about how we can improve our marriage. And, as relatively new empty-nesters, that's a good thing. Personally, I sure wish we'd been exposed to this way of looking at things 25 years ago, our lives together sure would have been noticeably smoother.

Gungor is a Christian (as am I), he pastors a church in the Green Bay, Wisconsin area, and while the seminar we attended was in a church, the material was presented in such a way that it absolutely was applicable across all denominational lines and I really can't think of a thing that would have been "too spiritual" even in the eyes of non-Christians.

Bottom line, we got a lot of value out of it and wholeheartedly enjoyed it. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who's married or even just interested in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Very worthwhile!