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Engaged!

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My son, Jake, and his longtime girlfriend, Maggie, got engaged on Saturday, and man, that seems wild to me. Of course we are thrilled with it because they’re a great couple, and Maggie is coming to our family from a wonderful family. Her Mom and Dad were so happy, and her Dad made a point of telling me how great it was that Jake went to him first to ask for his daughter’s hand. What’s wild to me is that Jake has reached the point in his life where he’s doing such a thing. I guess it’s because we spend every day of our lives with our children. We don’t clearly see them as fully grown, functional adults, but they’re there! “Your life is now,” I mentioned to Jake, and it’s a thought I recall thinking when I was heading toward marriage. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. We’re living our days. My sister and brother in law (Jake’s Godparents) hung out with them for a long while. Jake’s brothers and friends, and Maggie’s siblings partied for a few hours. It was great to see all the smiles. And Ja...
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I Imagine

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So, two rounds of golf with my Syracuse buddies at the Militi-Raulli Open. I love playing with that group of guys and we had a lot of laughs, and some pasta. The golf courses are good ones and I put on a putting clinic the first day (sarcasm). It’s not often that your first putt is a birdie putt and the last putt of the hole is to save a triple bogey. But the fun was this morning. We were on a long hole, and we waited for the group in front to clear the green, and slowly walk to their carts. They pulled away, and I lined up my shot from about 210 yards out. I yanked it left. “That’s near them,” my buddy Rick said, and seconds later we saw a short, heavy guy with a club in his hand running up the fairway. It was 200 yards. Poor guy didn’t anticipate how long a run like that would take. He started walking. When he got within 20 yards or so, he started screaming that I hit him. I apologized. He didn’t hear me because he was too busy yelling. I thought about explaining that I was aiming fo...
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Cringe

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Way back in the 1980’s there weren’t a lot of ways to get a message to your girl. You were forced to put pen to paper, and then you’d have to carry the note around until you spotted her. I was a hell of a note writer, and I often think about some of the cringe things I wrote. Yet, back then my main focus also wrote a lot of notes so we passed the slips of paper back and forth all through the year. One afternoon I bent to get a drink from the water fountain and my friend, Dan, ripped the note, I hadn’t passed, from my back pocket. To my utter disappointment and embarrassment, he started reading the note aloud to the dozen others gathered in the hallway. It’s been 44 years and I recall how pathetic my words, meant only for her, were made public. Thankfully, Butzer saw my distress and he stopped reading it and returned the note. I thought of that when I saw the wild declarations of love from Natale Harp to the Pedo Pig. Now that’s cringe worthy! And what the F? He’s a happily married man!...
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The Grind

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Sometimes it feels that we live to work. You see it on social media. People discussing how they don’t feel as if they’re living a life. Especially in the winter months - it’s dark when they get up and dark when they get home. Those who have long commutes truly suffer. And we do it for decades! It’s a little insane. They call it the grind. I hit a job site this week and the woman in the office stocked the trailer with bowls of candy and there was a huge barrel of pretzel rods. I grabbed two and laughed. “When my middle son was about five years old, I took him to my office on a Saturday. The receptionist there loved these pretzel rods.” The woman was looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Well, when Jake saw the pretzel rods his eyes grew big.” “You get free pretzels at work?” He said. He was as excited as one could be. “No wonder you like going to work.” Yep. We all do it for the free pretzel rods.
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The Commuter

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Was on my way to the first site this morning when I spotted a woman by the side of the road. It was spitting rain. She held an umbrella over her head. My mind did that trick it does… …flipped me back in time. To San Francisco in 1983 when I rode with my Dad to work. Across the Golden Gate Bridge each way. For a little while we had another commuter with us. Theresa was a secretary in the office of the general contractor.  She didn’t own a car, and for some reason, Dad offered her a ride. She was right on the way. Was only a couple of miles after we got near the city. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “She’s a kid. She needs a break.” Which sounds wonderful and the Christian thing to do, but Theresa was a freaking mess! She was late some mornings. She was ALWAYS miserable. The end of our ride in was her bitching about how unfair everything was. And to be truthful, she often smelled of sweat. I wasn’t a fan of the arrangement, but Dad went with it. “I feel sorry for her.” We laid down a ...
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Where We Are

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There’s an old Eagles line in a great song, written by Jackson Browne, ironically enough. “Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.” I spoke to a couple of friends, via text, and essentially, I was talking them down about the state of the country. Both friends were on the edge, feeling that there wasn’t a way out of this mess. “The Epstein files don’t matter. The stealing of money means nothing. No one says a word about tearing down the White House.” That sort of thing. And neither of these friends are doing very well financially. They’re around my age, and instead of thinking about retiring, they feel that they may need to get another job. “I’m going to work until I die.” That brings tremendous despair, of course, and the fact that they were sending me the worried texts on a Sunday morning, struck me as more than sad. It’s tragic. Instead of enjoying life as we enter the back 9, they’re driving themselves crazy as they wait for the world to go back to what we knew befor...
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Tommy John

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The legendary Dodgers and Yankees pitcher, Tommy John, passed away. When I heard the news, I instantly thought about my first ever trip to Yankee Stadium. It was an epic road trip. Big Al accompanied me to the big city and we settled into our seats for Yankees-Red Sox. Tommy John versus Roger Clemens. It was the late 80’s and Tommy John was at the end of his great career. Nearly 300 wins… …but he didn’t get one that night! He got absolutely hammered, and by the time he left the Yankees were down 8 runs. The Yankees came back and won that game… …but it’s about more than that. Tommy John will be forever remembered as a great pitcher. He will also be remembered for being the first to ever get Tommy John surgery. The surgery is a common one now. Nearly every pitcher in the league has had it by now. Tommy John was the first. Saved his career and has saved a lot of careers since. More than a pitcher, Tommy John was also known around the sport as an all-around solid guy. Just not that day! He...
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