Sexy Rexy for President: Week 1 NFL Stuff
I haven’t talked much football at all since last season. The lockout drained any potential excitement I had for the upcoming season and I didn’t want to talk about it. Happily, the issue got resolved, preseason games happened, and the NFL I know and love is on as if nothing ever happened. So without further ado (although I tend to add a lot of ado as I go; really, I often throw in so much ado that sentences become incomprehensible and parenthetical asides becoming paragraphical asides, but hey, I like having a lot of ado around.), here are my thoughts after 1 week of NFL action.
Exercise DVD Review: Bob Harper’s Ultimate Cardio Body
It’s been a while since I did one of these, but I feel like I’m almost obligated to do reviews for workout DVDs now. You can find my other Bob Harper and other reviews here.
I bought the Ultimate Cardio Body DVD a while ago but never got around to reviewing it. Why? Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle doing the actual workout. Since I hit my target weight, I eased back some on the workout front. I still exercised, only not as much, and I know from prior experience that doing a little bit of exercise will not leave you in good enough shape to truly experience a Bob Harper workout. Jillian Michaels has built a money-making machine around the idea that she is TV’s Toughest Trainer, but you wouldn’t know that from their exercise videos. Bob Harper will drive you into the ground and make you smile while he does it.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Ultimate Cardio Body, honestly. Besides cardio. Would it be like his previous cardio-centric DVD? Would I be able to not use weights? Would I collapse and die partway through? This morning, I finally got a chance to answer those questions. After five weeks of getting up at or around 4:30 every morning to do a cardio workout, I felt ready for a new challenge, so I threw in the DVD. (By the way, the answers are Yes, No, and Nearly.)
Some Observations from GenCon 2011
Last week into the beginning of this one, I was in Indiana for my first ever GenCon. For the uninitiated, GenCon is a gaming convention that mostly caters to tabletop roleplaying, LARPing (L Live. A Action. R Role. P Playing. Live Action Role-Playing), collectible card games (like those weird Japanese things where you basically raise cute little fake animals to be stone-cold murderous gladiators), miniature wargaming, and stuff along those lines. Essentially, it’s Gamer Nerd Heaven.
My wife and I knew a bunch of people who were going, which was the main draw. See, we’re what I call half-jokingly Retired Gamers. We used to tabletop regularly, but stopped about 3 years ago. We used to play two or more LARPs a year, but stopped about 3 years ago as well. We used to play Magic: The Gathering but stopped 6 or so years ago. So we don’t really game much. In fact, we planned on playing absolutely nothing when we went out there, which is pretty much the opposite of what everyone else does when they go to a GenCon. Our plan was to hang out with friends and drink.
Mission accomplished.
If I Could Have One Superpower…
Warning: Total comic-book-inspired geekery ahead. Like, full-on nerdgasm alert. Don’t judge me.
It’s 8 o’clock PM. I am getting ready for bed (yes, I go to bed at an hour that your grandparents would envy. The alarm clock starts going off at 4:30 every weekday morning so we can try to get up and exercise before work. No, it isn’t fun.). My wife is washing her face. She turns to look at me in the mirror, brow furrowed and face intense. “I have a question,” she says, using the tone that I know marks the beginning of a serious discussion. I put on my serious face, ready for a deep and thoughtful interaction. She pauses, then says, “If you could only have ONE superpower, what would it be?”
Whoa. This is heavy shit right before bed.
Holy Shit, Do I Need a Vacation
Hidey ho. For the past few days, I’ve been contemplating new blog posts. My last one, though, is a hard one to follow. I’ve struggled with writing some pointless angry rant about flip-flops or some other equally stupid shit when the last thing I wrote here was a heartfelt and painful goodbye to a friend I wasn’t ready to lose just yet. It just didn’t feel right to me. I’m sure if Carl was here, he’d insist that I write some stupid piece of shit drivel because that’s what I do, and he wouldn’t want me to change.
So I’m trying. It’ll be drivel, no doubt, and useless, but it’ll be something, at least. Read the rest of this entry
Love You, Carl
Cheers to you, buddy.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to write this. I already know it won’t be as good as I want it to be, or as good as he deserves, or really convey how I felt about my friend and the role he played in my life or how important he was to me or how much I’m going to miss him or any of those things. But I have to try, because my brain won’t stop trying to write this, and so I’ll try to put it here. My shitty little nothing blog is no place to try to immortalize one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, but it’s all I have, so I’m going to try.
Carl Spicer was one of my friends. The word “friend” does a bad job conveying the role the people who are important to me play in my life. My friends are my family, the ones I have chosen to surround myself with. I love them all, quietly but fiercely. I don’t show much in the way of emotion, generally, so it isn’t something that I usually convey overtly. But those people that are part of my life, that I am lucky to know and be close to, are as important to me as any blood relation.
Carl was a very special person, to me and to everyone he knew. He was kind, gracious, warm, genuine, funny – really and truly, he was one of the best people I’ve ever known. I never heard him say a cross word about anyone – he’d bust balls with the best of them, but I never once heard him demean or complain about anyone. I am sure he lost his temper from time to time – he was Italian, after all – but I never saw it. He was calm and generous in words and deeds. I compare myself to him and I am humbled. He’ll always be a better man than I can be.
He dealt with cancer for a long time, but this past Friday night his fight was over. He was 51 years old. Too young. Just too fucking young. He deserved more and better. I get angry when I think about it and I want to rant and rave and it’s taking everything I have right now to not let myself do that. I’m pissed off that the sun comes up and the fucking world spins and everything looks like it just doesn’t matter that he’s gone and I’m doing a terrible job right now keeping it together and not getting furious again.
I’ll never be able to tell someone who didn’t know Carl what they missed by never meeting him. That makes me want to cry, that I just don’t own the words to impart the man that he was so that a thousand years from now in some way someone who read this could feel a pang inside themselves and feel just the vaguest sense of loss that gnaws at me right now. I envy the people that believe in an afterlife, sometimes. Right now is one of those times. They can convince themselves that it’s a just world and that one day when they pass they’ll be reunited with him. I believe there is no afterlife. I can’t convince myself otherwise. So I’m jealous.
But I will see Carl again, when I dream. Every time I stand on my deck he’ll be there, sitting down with a beer in front of him, smiling. I’ll see him in the eyes of my friends, and I’ll hear his voice echoing from the walls of my house and all the places he went. He made my life better by being in it. Now he’s gone, and my life will always be a little worse because of that fact. But I’m grateful to have known him. I’m lucky. I miss you, Carl, and I’ll always miss you.
The last words he ever said to me were the same words he said every time we parted. “All right, guys, I’ll see you later. Take care.” I wish I could see you again, Carl, but I’ll do my damnedest to take care and make sure that the people I care about know how I feel about them. I want you to do the same thing. Tell the people you love how important they are to you, and look at them and squeeze their hand because you never know if that’s the last memory you’ll have of them.
I love you, Carl. I love you all.
Title Contest WINNER Announcement!
The pulse-pounding excitement surrounding my Name a Book, Get Devoured contest has come to an end! After compiling close to a THOUSAND entries (uh, roughly estimated. It’s either 1,012 or 7, but it’s hard to say) they have been whittled down, mulled over, masticated, ruminated, regurgitated, and shifted to different stomach chambers for the final decision. Now, I am pleased to announce the lucky winner:
Winter in Derenemyn 