Hi.

I told myself this summer that I was going to do three things:

1. Read more
2. Write more
3. Run more

If I were honest with myself, I haven’t been doing either of these things very well. At best, it’s been hit and miss.

Obviously, this blog is hopefully going to satisfy #2 in my Summer To-Do List. Writing is something I enjoy.  Something I need to do. I’m not a rookie at blogging. I blog about what I know and what I love to do.  I have my own blog about running, and I am a contributor about My Beloved Huskers, and Teaching.  You would think that that would be enough.

You would be wrong.

What I’ve found is that there a lot of things that rattle around in my head that don’t fit into these specific venues.  While I love to write, I don’t think the authors at the teaching blog would see any use for me posting about my adventures as a Mr. Mom at our local pool.  Nor would it make sense to complain…er…vent about my job on the Husker blog.

That brings me to this blog.  This will be a catch-all blog.  If it’s about running, great.  Huskers?  Probably later on this fall.  Teaching?  More than likely. Everything else?  Most definitely?  Like the title of the blog implies:  This is my blog and these are my rules.

Truth be told, I’m also trying out this new-fangled Tumblr that all the kids with their ironic t-shirts and hipster glasses are raving about.  (Read that last sentence in an old-man voice.  It’s a lot funnier.)

Tumblr vs. Blogger….it’s on.

The More Things Change….

I’m pretty decent at math.  I can add AND subtract.  Well, what happens when you have 2010 and subtract 20?  That’s right, you get The Year That I Graduated.  Put THAT on the ACT and see what that gets you.

In the back of my head I had told myself that I wasn’t going to do the whole reunion thing.  Didn’t see a point to it.  Fast forward to this past winter and “friends” on Facebook were already planning the event.  Not only that, but once in awhile I’d take a peek at who was attending and….long story short….I decided to go.  The tipping point was the fact that 2 of my high school friends – friends that stood up at my wedding – planned to come into town specifically for this (they still have family in town).  OK, fine….

There were 2 days to the reunion and I opted for Day 1, the reception at a local bar.  Going in, I knew that the Class of ’90 would break down into their little cliques.  Sure enough, after about 4 drinks, we all settled into where we were 20 years ago.  On one hand, it was great to catch up with my little gang, but on the other hand, it would’ve been nice to see what the rest of my classmates were doing.  I have to admit, it was pretty comical watching the captain of the cheerleaders have to sit down because she was so hammered.  Also comical were the unusually large amount of those still clinging to their high school years…..20 years later.

I’m pretty confident my decision on my 30 year has been decided, but who knows?  Maybe the starting quarterback of the football team will get arrested.  If someone can guarantee that, I’m back in.

Pool Guy

Now that we’ve joined a gym and our monthly membership fee looms, we’ve had this crazy notion that we should actually use the gym.  I can proudly say, that after 2 weeks, we’ve done just that.  My wife is exercising on practically a daily basis, I got my ass kicked via a complimentary 1 hour training session, and the kids seem content being penned up in the child center for about an hour.

As I previously mentioned, the tipping point for the entire family joining the gym was the mega-pool.  In theory, it’s great.  I can sit by the pool, watch the kids not drown, they get tired, I put them in the car, I’m Dad of the Year.  The reality, though, is pretty comical.  Because I have the good fortune of being able to go at peak swimming hours, I get to people watch…arguably my favorite pasttime.  The pool seems to be sectioned off much like a high school cafeteria (jocks, popular kids, etc.).  Let me take a crack at breaking it down for  you:

• The Mom Section – about 8-10 moms gather like hens at the corner of the zero edge part of the pool all wearing their dolce gabbana sunglasses sunglasses and keeping a half-eye on their kids, and keeping the other 1 1/2 eyes on the conversation about how the Jonas Brothers cancelled their concert and her girls are just devastated now (actual conversation).  And because of this, their kids are running around the pool area, diving into the shallow end and being all-around maniacs.  I’m about one more splash away from kicking them in the kidneys.
• The Victor Conte Section – These are about 3 or 4 bros that just got done with about 1000 bench presses, 5000 lat pulls and a ton of ab crunches and feel incumbent upon themselves to be in the pool.  Not swimming, not even talking to women, literally strutting the width of the pool.  If I had money to put on it, I’d bet the Mom Section kept better watch of those in the Conte Section than they do of their kids.
• The Swim Team Section – The kids that spend a LOT of time at the pool.  They get in once in awhile, but it looks like they’ve already done their thing.  It be like me hanging out at the track after I’ve already done intervals.
• Me Section – I’m too cool for school.  I hang out at the edge of the pool, splash my kids, and make sure that my 3 year old doesn’t try to perform the Dead Man’s Float.  I take great joy in watching him walk under the mushroom in utter amazement and joy every time he does it.  I’m that guy.  Oh yeah, I’m wearing my Oakleys.  I’ve got a cool rep to protect.

So I just realized that I’m spending my membership on people watching.  That’s fine.  It’s totally worth it.  I think a breakdown of the rest of the gym…excuse me, fitness center….is in order, but that will be for a later time.  Until then, have a great weekend everyone!

Sad Day for Broadcasting

I found out last night that the news department that I was a part of for the better part of my early career is being “outsourced” to Davenport, IA.

First, and most importantly, I hope that all of the staffers are able to find employment elsewhere.  Hopefully, in stations that genuinely care about broadcast journalism.  My fear, however, is that those stations are becoming more scarce.   Television stations have – and always will be – run by business people.  Ratings matter.  No ratings = no paychecks.  I get that.  The problem is is that more and more stations are being run by business people that have absolutely no experience in the broadcast business.  In the eyes of the public and, more importantly, advertisers…a news presence adds legitimacy to your station.  I still feel that, if you have a legitimate newscast that people trust, the public will follow and trust you.  If your newscast is being produced 300 miles away, well…I don’t know what to tell you .  How do you go into a local business and say, “yes, we’re very excited about our newscast…they devote 2 minutes to the weather and they rip and read the ‘top headlines’ from the area.  Oh, one thing…it’s produced in another state.”?

Centralized News is a scary trend.  Is it the death knell for local news?  Time will tell.  The public still wants to know what is going on in their town.  They want to know what it’s going to be like tomorrow.  And they want to know what is going on with their favorite local sports team.   I think stations are slowly rethinking how they tell stories and how they reach their audience, but I still believe that people still make time to watch “their” newscast.  Maybe I’m too old school.  I hope I’m wrong and that I’m overreacting.

Earworm! (x2)

This is what I’ve had rattling in my head over the 4th of July weekend.  I’m all about Freedom of Speech (and the other 4), but can we at least put a limit to how many times these songs are on the radio?  For my sake and the sake of all humanity?  I sincerely hope that at least one of these songs gets stuck in your heads. Yeah, I’m like that.

My daughter is a big fan of this song…NOT the video (don’t judge):

…and my son likes this one. It’s hilarious when he yells, “drank! (pause) mazel tov!”

File both of these in Good Parenting 101.

Fitness Bound

You’ll notice that most of my material right now is running a little low in the teaching category.  There’s a good reason for that:

I’m not in school.  Duh.

I started this blog to get a fresh start, stretch my writing legs, and postulate on more things in my life than just running.  Well, when you’ve taken a self-imposed sabbatical from doing anything dealing with school, you start running out of material.  And, just when I thought I was going to run low on blogging material this summer, the family and I made the jump to improve ourselves and join a health club.   Yeah, there’s no shortage of material anymore.   Let’s just start at the beginning, shall we?

My wife had been interested in joining a club for herself for awhile now, but we never really followed through on it.  The health club subject came up again and we started doing our research.  My conclusion was that shopping for a health club….I’m sorry….fitness center, was like shopping for a car.  You get the sales pitch, you get to kick the tires.  Hell, if you’re lucky you get a 3, 5, 7 day pass to try it out in regular traffic.  The only difference is is that the salespeople wear wicking material and are much better looking.

Anyway, we were getting a little discouraged (dingy, creepy, too overpriced, etc.).  As a last chance, we decided to go to the  new mega-gym in our little part of suburbia to see what it was all about.  I had always regarded this gym with genuine curiosity.  What the hell is this place?  Do you need 150 treadmills?  We drove into the parking lot and it was like finding a spot at the mall the day after Thanksgiving.  I thought it would be funny to circle the lot until I found a closer spot, but that would be self-defeating now, wouldn’t it?

My mindset throughout this whole thing was, “I don’t really need a gym.  I’m good with my running and I can get some cross training done in our fitness center at school. If my wife wants a single membership, great.  I’ll stick with what I know.”

…and then I walked in.

It was huge.  It was bright.  It was immaculate.  And this was the part in the day where most of the after-work traffic had come and gone.  ”OK”, I thought, “you still don’t really need a gym.  My wife will love it, though.”

After getting a tour, we decided that…hell….even I could work there and sell this place.  It was that impressive.  What sold me, you ask?  Honestly, it started with the kids.
Lots of stuff for the kids to do.  Oh, and look at that, maybe the kids could jump in the lap pool, maybe throw some weights around.   You know, the kids could do that.

Maybe the kids will get more cross training in now that the kids are paying for it.   That’s the theory anyhow.

“They’ll Stretch Out”

As I mentioned before, I love to run.  I got into it about 4 years ago.  I have run 1 marathon, 3 half marathons, 2 10ks, a handful of 5ks, and 1 Qdoba Burrito Run (another story, another time). Anyhow, fitness is now a part of my life.  I’m not militant about it.  I love my cheeseburgers, ice cream, etc., but I do get really cranky when I haven’t run in awhile.  Why am I telling you this?  Well, in the past few weeks, my wife has made a concerted effort to get back into walking, working out, etc.   This, my dear readers brings me to my story.

My wife desperately needed to replace her 11 year old Avia’s (?) because she wanted to do more walking and working out.  Normally, I would suggest our Local Running Store.  But, knowing full well that their prices were a little higher than what she wanted to spend, we decided to go to a Certain National Chain Sporting Goods Store.   We got there and there are 2 guys talking about God Knows What.   Probably about how having to go to summer school sucks.   Anyway, we go in there and I pick out a few pairs that I think she’d like. Asics, Nikes, and Under Armour.   After minutes of watching the big screen TV above him, the guy finally asks us if we need help and my wife tells him that she’s looking at doing more walking and that she’d like to try on these 3 pairs of shoes.  What does he do?   Brings out the Asics and says they’re out of the other 2 in her size.  OK, fine.  That can happen.   Then, he just leaves. *side note – I’m chasing Kid2 (3 year old boy) around their 20 foot “track”, so my wife is on her own.

She puts on the pair, but one of the shoes has the security tag on it.   Our sales guy is still nowhere to be found, but the other guy that he was previously talking to makes a cameo appearance and tells her that she has to go to the front of the store to get it removed.  Not “oh, I can do that for you.”  So, she goes to the front of the store….in her socks and gets the tag removed herself.   She finally tries them on and tells the guy that the Asics are too tight.  He tells her that the mesh will stretch out and they’ll be fine once you break them in. My wife tells me this and I laughed….with the guy standing right next to me. He almost….almost….launches into the “I have a pair of these and it took me….”,  before I tell him that we’re leaving.  Trust me, this guy hasn’t seen a track/football field/tennis court/basketball court since grade school.

LONNNNNNGER story short….we go to the Another National Sporting Goods Chain Store and at least the salesgirl sticks around to help her try on shoes.   She’s now the proud owner of some Mizuno’s.  What can I say?  We’re now one of “those families”.  The ones who wear the same brand of shoes.

I understand finding staff can be difficult at some places, but do you think there could be some sort of screening process?  I don’t want a guy selling me a computer if all he owns is a Commodore 64.  I don’t trust the waitress who tells me, “I usually don’t eat fish.” and we’re at a seafood restaurant.  Next time maybe you put Chuckles in the apparel department next time.  I’m sure he’s stretched out his share of clothing.

Summer School

The first thing that people tell me about how great it would be to be a teacher is that you get summers off.  Well, when I started teaching, I was looking forward to it, too.  For way too long in the “Real World”, I had toiled during the sweltering months of June and July.  When I was hired on as a teacher, it was finally going to be my time to sit back, drink a few Coronas over the lunch hour, catch up on past episodes of Friends The A-Team and, when August rolled around, I’d be re-energized, sobered up and ready to go.  Well, that hasn’t exactly been the case.  As I see it, things still need to be done and summer is a good time to take advantage.  Here’s a rundown of my past 8 summers.

Summer #1 – Take accelerated teaching program – with 15 hours of course work – in order for me to get my teaching license

Summer #2 – Take classes for my Masters (9 more hours) PLUS my first year as a father

Summer #3 – Last 2 classes plus Comps

Summer #4 – Kid #2 arrives

Summer #5 – Teach summer journalism workshop

Summer #6 – Final Cut Pro training, journalism workshop

Summer #7 – Advanced Final Cut Pro training, workshop

Summer #8 – New curriculum for new class, workshop

For the record, I appreciate having June and July off and I’d like to think that I still maintain a decent perspective.  I’m definitely not the guy who says “280 days and counting” on the first day.  Don’t even get me started on That Guy. My point?  Yeah, it’s 2 months off, but there’s still work to be done.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Friends The A-Team is on and I have a few limes left.

The Lead

Every good story starts with a solid lead, right?  Well, here’s one thing that you need to know about my writing:

I suck at writing a lead.

Actually, that’s not true.  I’m actually pretty good, but I can guarantee you it’s the last thing that I write.  And, since my background is in TV, sometimes I don’t even have to write a lead….I can just let the video and/or sound bite do it for me.  Who says TV reporters aren’t real journalists, huh?

Speaking of my background, I should probably introduce myself.  My name is Razz.  Well, it’s not actually Razz.  My parents didn’t hate me or anything.  I got that name a long time ago and I’ve answered to it ever since.  That’s how I’m referred to in my line of work.  I’m a high school journalism adviser who just finished his 8th year of teaching.  Previously, I was in the “real biz*” (a.k.a.-broadcast journalism) for about 14 years or so.

I should also mention that I’m  a proud father of a 6 year old and a 3 year old who, from here on out, will be referred to as Kid1 and Kid2.  Trust me, they’ll be involved in this blog more often than you think.

When I’m not teaching, I enjoy reading, playing golf, and running. In fact, I love running so much, I just wrapped up writing my running blog, Running Off at the Mind.  It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of great people, but I thought I’d try something new.  Besides, there were only so many things that I could write about on that subject.  A nod to my “Running Buddies” can be found off to the right in my blogroll.  Even if you’re not into running, they’re really funny and a good read.  Anywho, I thought I was over my blogging itch, but…well…..here we are.  There’s just something about writing that makes things more gooder.

Normally, you should start a blog with a certain focus.  A topic, if you will.  Well, as you’ll quickly learn…..I’m not normal.  I wholeheartedly plan to go off on a tangent about something and sometimes, I may even have a point!  Bonus for me AND you!

If you’ve come here for information, I can’t guarantee that.  If you’ve come here for a laugh, I can’t guarantee that either, but I’ll give it one helluva shot.  If you’ve come here thinking you’ve stumbled on some weird adults only site, I’m not going to guarantee anything NOR will I give it a shot.  Nope, just keep on browsing.

*because apparently teaching isn’t a “real biz”.  OK, then.