Permanent Mexican Vacation Anyone?

"O h, Mexico. It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low. Moons so bright like to light up the night. Make everything all right" _ James Taylor, "Mexico"

Today has been one of those days where I'm so tempted to pack up what I can fit into my little car and start driving south.

All I would need for sure would be some cash, my passport, some shorts, t-shirts and flip flops. Probably my laptop too.

I'd probably head west to Arizona, then south to Puerto Vallarta. I'd sleep in my car along the way, and live off chili dogs from the Kwik-E-Mart.

When I arrive in Puerto Vallarta, I'd probably head to the downtown bars first. Because that's what one should do in Puerto Vallarta.

Then I'd set up shop that week selling photographs and short stories on the beach. I'd sell them cheap, too, because all I would need to pay for is a bed, a roof, some food, and some cervezas.

Life for me would be cut down to the bare essentials. Work, sure, but only to pay for the good things in life, and most of them are free. The sun. Dancing to the vibrant music. Enjoying the sound of the ocean. The smell of authentic Mexican food cooking in the distance.

I'd spend my days on the beach, peddling my wares, and my nights enjoying the cool ocean breeze off the bay of banderas, hopefully on a balcony on the mountainside, sipping a cold Bohemia.

And everything would be all right.

Nile and Grady, some day I hope you know how lucky you are that your dad loves you more than the above scenario.

RIP Jeff Doyle, You Are Missed

Tonight I got an email from an old friend from Iowa City.

She told me that she had received word that one of our common friends, Jeff Doyle, had died this week of colon cancer.

It was one of those "getting hit by a ton of bricks" moments.

Jeff and I got to know each other through the Iowa City-Coralville Jaycees, and we quickly found ways to get into trouble together.

There was the night we planned to hit the bars in Iowa City. I had to call my then wife and explain to her that I was still at the bar at 3 a.m. "The bars close at 2!" she replied in a sharp tone. "Not in Illinois, they don't," was my reply.

Then there was the time he hosted a Super Bowl party and bought a pony keg. He didn't bother to tell me that there were only 3 of us attending. That was the same Super Bowl party he had champagne chilling on ice so we could pop it and toast Tim Dwight when he scored a touchdown. Sure enough, that bottle got popped. Only. Time. I. Missed. Work. The. Day. After. The. Superbowl.

I also remember many nights turned into morning, sitting on my patio, enjoying cheap cigars and cheaper beer, and solving all the world's problems.

And now that Jeff is gone, I think it is safe to tell one of the most awesome secrets I've kept for over 15 years.

Jeff, a devout Hawkeye fan, made a habit out of stealing football helmets from Kinnick Stadium. He had seats behind the visitor's bench, and he wanted to collect as many helmets from the opposing teams as possible. He was a master at it. Even after having newspaper articles written up about the mysterious helmet thefts, he was never caught. The best newspaper article details a time when the starting QB for the opposing team went to grab his helmet from the bench only to find it gone. Yep, Jeff had it.

He had them all tucked away in a special display case that only his close friends got to see.

Jeff could be a pissy mood bastard, and he could be the life of the party. You never knew which Jeff you might get, but one thing you always knew with Jeff. You had someone who would give you the shirt off his back, and then make sure it fit right.

I'll miss you, buddy. I'll sing "In Heaven There is no Beer" in your honor, and pour out a 40 ouncer for you.

Thank you, dad.

My dad is the most moral man I know.

He won't jaywalk. He might say he will, but he won't.

If he had a late DVD return at the movie store, you can bet your ass he wouldn't drop the DVD in the night return slot. Nope. Because he wouldn't have a late DVD.

I admire my dad on so many levels.

I admire him for his work ethic. When we were young, my brothers and I didn't always see my dad much. Because he was working harder to bring home money to feed our ever-growing appetites.

I admire my dad for the fact that he doesn't waffle. He knows what he believes in, and stands by it.

I admire my dad because he has always understood the notion of the greater good. After receiving his J.D. from the University of Iowa, he promptly enrolled in the U.S. Army. His pay in the military was not anything compared to what he might make practicing law. But it was consistent. The turtle beats the hare. An important value he instilled in me.

I admire my dad because he not only made us laugh, he taught us how to make others laugh. And laughter is medicine...and has helped keep my brothers and I close over the years. Despite many a fight, many an angry moment, and many a mile between us as we grew older.

I admire my dad for his faithfulness to my mom. Just shy of 51 years, things aren't perfect for them, but they're perfect for each other. I only wish that I could find the person in my life that would be with me 51 years later (stop doing the math, I know I'll be dead by then).

Most of all, I admire my dad because he has lived his life the right way, from beginning to present day. Is he perfect? No. I learned some of my best cuss words when he'd be doing wallpaper projects for my mom.

But he's my dad. And he did a helluva job considering all the things he had to put up with. And without speaking for my brothers, I can still say that all three of us are who we are today because of the role our dad played in our lives.

Thank you dad. I can only hope that someday I'll have two boys who feel the same way about me as I do about you.

Refugee Clembo

Just as I was beginning to settle in for an afternoon nap on a day off with no kids, the phone rang.

"Dad!" It was my oldest son, Nile. "Dad, they're coming for your car. Get out of there quick."

In my semi-dazed state, I asked him to repeat himself. "They're coming for your car. Two men. Hurry."

As I hung up the phone, I had a few thoughts going through my mind. The first of which was "I hope I get out of here before they find me."

Adrenaline. A hell of a natural drug. Found that out firsthand when I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane last year. It was kicking full blast at this point, as I ran down to my car, wearing sweats, a Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt that rarely makes it in public, and some skateboard brand baseball cap I bought for Nile in Mexico that was the only baseball cap I could find in my 30 second escape from my apartment.

Remember the scene from Fletch, when he was sneaking in and out of his apartment to avoid bill collectors? That was what I felt like, minus the Lakers attire.

I hopped in my car, looking for a tow truck the entire time, and zoomed off onto rural roadways, not sure of my next move.

Quickly realizing from my previous repo experience (yes, it's happened once before, but was buried in a mountain of issues - losing my townhouse, my job, my girlfriend) I knew that if I could pay off my balance due before the repo men found me, they couldn't take my car. I quickly called my store, where my employee, Deanna, helped me out by logging in and making a payment to my account for me. She uses the same car loan people I do, and has been in my same shoes of trying to dodge the repo man herself.

Paid my amount owed...but the damn business office was closed until Monday morning. I had to hide out for another 36 hours or so.

So I called a friend who knows what it is like to have to lean on someone when there is no way to stand on your own.

I quickly told Fish what was going on, and he just as quickly assured me that the repo man wouldn't find me in Nordeast Minneapolis.

So off to Nordeast I went. With an empty bank account, and a feeling as if I was Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, I showed up in my sweatpants, t-shirt, and borrowed hat from my oldest son.

A quick plan of action was devised - beers and roast beef sammiches at Mayslack's - a Nordeast Institution.

We walked the few blocks to the bar, and went between time inside (it was cloudy and cold when the day began) to time on the patio, when the sun had come out, as if to remind me that everything was going to be ok. Fish told me as we got ready to leave the bar that the afternoon of beer and food was on him.

What started out as a normal day, then a stressful day, suddenly had turned into one of those moments where you stop, and remind yourself "none of this really matters in the end, outside of good times with good people."

As I hopped in my car, planning where I was going to park my car for the next 36 hours, I realized how karma really does happen.

Fish had needed me a few years back, and I helped him out. I needed him for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, and he was there for me.

I raise a glass of Nordeast Beer in honor of Fish, and more importantly, all friends who are willing to step up to the plate and help a friend out at a time when others may just sneer and judge them for being in the predicament to begin with.

Life is a hard mofo at times. Having good people around you can make all the difference between it being worth it, or not. Remember that the next time a friend asks you for some help.

Interwebz Friends: Debunking the Stigma

"So how do you know so and so?"

What a friggin' tough question that is when you are a bad liar.

"Through a social group."

"We have common friends."

"We met at a work thing."

Lies. Lies. Lies.

Truth be told, people, I met them on the interwebz. Get over it.

I've met girlfriends on the interwebz. I've met probably near hundreds of Hawkeye fan friends through the interwebz. I've even been in the wedding of someone I met off the interwebz.

So sue me.

Despite what you read (on the interwebz of all places) and hear and see, the interwebz is not all creeps and pedophiles and con artists.

Despite what you hear:

• Craigslist is not completely made up of ax murderers.
• Match.com is not entirely full of registered sex offenders.
• Facebook.com is not 99 percent men pretending to be women.

The stigma surrounding the interwebz is really a tired cliche at this point. After all, you're reading this blog because somehow you are connected to me via the interwebz.

Yes, dear reader, there are people who I originally met on the interwebz who I would go to hell and back for. And 99.9 percent of them I've met in real life, long after first meeting them on the interwebz, and they have enriched my life immensely.

Think about it...we use the interwebz to be more efficient in every other facet of life - paying bills, keeping track of our finances, ordering groceries, planning vacations - why wouldn't it make sense for us to use it to more efficiently make new friends with whom we have much in common?

Who are these people, these strangers from the interwebz?

There's my bestest interwebz friend ever. She knows more about me probably than my ex-wife...and is always entrusted with said privileged information. Even if she spells things in that funny Canadian/Queen's English way.

There's my former girlfriend, who has remained a great friend throughout the last 3 years.

There's my buddy from Des Moines, who I usually try and tailgate at least once or twice at Hawkeye games each year. Typically we'll talk on the phone at least once a week to catch up on how things are going.

There's my many high school and college classmates, who, while I may have known them in the past, I was hardly friends with them. But now, through the powerful magic of the interwebz, I'm fortunate to have them all as people who I can vent to, help out with their problems, or just make each other laugh for a little while.

So the next time you meet someone new at a party, or the grocery store, or a bar, or at the park while walking your dog...

Remember that they could be a pedophile. Or a scam artist. Or a convicted sex offender.

And in the meantime, please stop making me feel weird for having interwebz frenz. lol. omg. ttyl.

"When I was your age...."

As I near my 40th birthday this summer, it is really hard for me to not start to feel old.

As I watch my sons and their lives, and compare it to what my experience was like at their ages, there is no comparison.

Or is there?

They play Wii, I played Atari Pong.

They listen to MP3s on an iPods, I listened to cassette tapes on a walkman.

They have the Internet, I had a library card.

They like to play backyard football pretending they are Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson, I liked to play backyard football pretending I was Terry Bradshaw or Franco Harris.

They watch music videos on Youtube.com, I watched music videos on MTV, back when they still played them.

They get excited to build a pinewood derby car designed the way they want it, just like I did many many decades ago.

They play with Star Wars figures and G.I. Joe, just like I played with them. As an aside, I'm really hoping they don't pick up the habit of using firecrackers to make the battles more realistic like my brothers and I did back in the day.

As much as I'd love to break out the "back in my day, we walked uphill both ways" stories, because that's what dads are supposed to do, I can't do it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that.

I am so blessed to be able to watch them navigate life, and help where I can.

Don't feel bad for feeling good

A friend texted me tonight to tell me she had had a few too many drinks at the bar.

My response? "So what?"

Now I know that the proper way to react in our new "politically correct" world would have been to tell her to stop drinking, hand her car keys to the bartender, and walk home. I already knew she was walking home, so I jumped right to the "who gives a shit?" stance.

People, it's time we talk about the "Midwestern Work Ethic Guilt."

We already know about the "Jewish Mother Guilt."

And the "Catholic Guilt."

But very few are familiar with the "Midwestern Work Ethic Guilt."

It goes something like this:

1) Work is the most important thing in your life.

2) You must remember rule #1 at all times.

3) When you don't remember rule #2, see rule #1, and remember it at all times.

4) Fun is bad.

I don't know what it is, but even when I'm not broker than a mule that's been ridden across the continental US, I feel guilty for spending $.99 on a crappy double cheeseburger. "That's $.99 I could save."

"Have I worked hard enough to earn this $.99 piece of crap excuse for a double cheeseburger?"

"I really don't deserve this $.99 craptastic pile of crapola."

"No, seriously, I should pay you $99 to not give me this double cheeseburger. $99 I worked hard for, but it would be better for me to suffer from that than suffer from spending $.99 on this excuse of a burger."

People wonder why I would spend money to jump out of an airplane when I had just lost my townhouse, my car (temporarily) and a bit of my bearings.

Well why the hell wouldn't I spend money to jump out of an airplane? That one experience gave me enough of a new outlook in life to justify spending the equivalent of 300 crapalicious double cheeseburgers on it.

So let's take a minute to re-write these Midwestern Work Ethic guidelines, now, so that they match our newfound post-modern self-absorbed approach to life:

1) Work is really important, and we should do our best at it.

2) Work eventually ends, usually when you walk out the door at the end of the day. If it doesn't, then ask them why it isn't.

3) Life is short, so work has to eventually give way to play. Embrace it.

4) Play is not only good, it's required. Even if it means something mundane like going for a walk around your favorite lake, or splurging for a $.99 piece of poop double royale with cheese.

Take it from me...life is really effin' short. So if you don't take time to enjoy the moments you have, you may just not live to regret it.

Time to scarf down this burger that's been calling my name. Time to get living and playing. Go on, now.

Live. Play.

Dorks of a Feather...FLOCK TOGETHER!

It was 20 years ago today, that the dorks of a feather came to play.

Ok, maybe not. But I do know that 20 some years ago, there was a little thing called a Keg Race held, and I may or may not have had something to do with it.

And there was "Ten Guys Throwing A Party," "Guys Who Stuff Their Crotch Disco Party," "Frank Sinatra Birthday Party." A party for all occasions, and I may or may not have had something to do with it.

Bricks on the hood.

Bottle rockets buzzing Sgt. Randy Hansen's head.

The Oompa Loompa.

White Lines dance.

My circle of friends from Grinnell College are much more than just friends. They are brothers. We don't see each other often, but when we do, we pick up right where we left off, at least in spirit. There's no way possible for us to pick up where we left off physically some 20 years ago, when we may or may not have been involved with "that one time when... ."

Grinnell was a tough school, academically. But for some reason, my friends and I didn't let our classes get in the way of our education.

Underwear parties. Another great memory.

Night Train Party. Kamikaze Party. It's Clem's Birthday Party. We found a reason to get a keg quite easily.

At the time, we proclaimed of others that "dorks of a feather flock together!"

Now we proudly proclaim the same cheer toward ourselves.

We could have all achieved so much more in college. If only we had put down the beer stein and picked up our book a few more times each week. If only we had applied ourselves more.

To quote one of my Grinnell brethren, "Mmmm, nah."

My brothers and I all are in agreement these days that we wouldn't have changed anything. Anything.

I raise my glass to my fellow dorks of a feather!

My Slice of Heaven - Spearfish Canyon

As the summer inches closer to reality, my mind drifts away to a favorite spot that I don't take advantage of often enough.

My little slice of Heaven, nestled into the rimrock of Spearfish Canyon in South Dakota's northern Black Hills.

My brothers and I inherited our family cabin from our great uncle Herman. It is a place where I can essentially melt into the canyon's always changing colors and forget that a problem exists in the world.

Herman was quite the character to put it mildly. He stood all of about 4'10, I'd imagine, if that. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, and walked with a humpback gait. He'd always be telling jokes, even if half of us never got the punchline. He was known for squeezing your knee and saying "Do you like girls? If you like girls you'll squirm when I do this." As my oldest son, Nile, used to say when he was 5 years old "Herman looks like Yoda."

The cabin was Herman's pride and joy. He had hand-built it after moving to the Black Hills to work as an x-ray technician at the VA Hospital after serving in World War II. He went and collected every rock that forms the foundation. He found every wood plank that covers the floors and walls. He religiously chopped down trees on the property to provide fuel for the wood burning stove and fireplace, and to help take away fuel from the constant threat of fire in the canyon.

What makes the cabin so perfect is the tranquility. Hearing the gentle sound of the water cascading down the canyon in Spearfish Creek. Seeing in every direction that you look a watercolor mix of pale white, rust-like orange and charcoal gray rocks that have been chiseled down by years of Mother Nature having her way with them. The smell of evergreens and wild flowers from the creek bed combine to give a hint of nature's perfume to the air.

If you want to get groceries, you better plan for at least an hour long round trip. If you forgot something at the store, you're more apt to adapt and figure out a way to make something out of what you have.

Going for a walk at the cabin might mean ending up scaling down rimrock while only inches away from falling down to your certain hospitalization, if not death.

Time moves at it's own pace at the cabin. Nobody is calling you. No computers to distract you. There's TV, but that's really only for the rainy days, if you don't have a good book to read.

When the time comes for me to sit down and take my collective life experiences and craft them together into the great novel I know I have in me, it is a safe bet that you'll find me in Spearfish Canyon. Sipping my coffee or beer on the front deck, watching the world slowly pass by like the clouds above me.

And you can rest assured that somewhere in the book, there will be a humpbacked man with a "unique" sense of humor who looks like Yoda. Thank you, Uncle Herman.

I'm a one man guy

I'm gonna bathe and shave
And dress myself and eat solo every night
Unplug the phone, sleep alone
Stay way out of sight
Sure it's kind of lonely
Yeah it's sort of sick
Being your own one and only
Is a dirty selfish trick.

__ "One Man Guy," by Loudon Wainwright

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyW0dbZPg8Q

When I went through my divorce four years ago, my good friend E.C. Fish, who had gone through his own divorce already, burned me a CD full of songs that have become very personal anthems for me. Included was the song quoted above and linked on youtube.

At the time, the song didn't really describe me. I was hardly living a life of solitude. After being with just one person since I was 18 years old, I did what any red-blooded man would. I was a dating whore.

Fast forward four years, with a few serious relationship gone bad thrown in for good measure, and this life is definitely me now.

But as the song states, it's not something you should pity me for. Hell, I know quite a few married friends who would KILL to be able to be in my shoes, though I'm not sure why outside of the "grass is greener" mentality.

Regardless, in the past 12 months plus, I've really become comfortable in my own skin (which doesn't mean I wish it to stretch or sag so much where it shouldn't, but I'm comfortable nonetheless).

Between frightening images of me as "the 80-year-old guy who sits his front porch yelling at kids who come in my yard" I have learned a valuable lesson. If you can't be ok on your own, you can't be ok in a relationship.

I didn't make a purposeful decision to be single the last year, it just felt right. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't worried about making someone else happy (other than my flesh and blood of course).

I was focusing on me. What made me happy? What kind of people did I want in my life? What were my goals for myself going forward in regards to my sons, my career, my social life, and how did the people in my life fit in with those goals.

Over the last year, as I focused inwardly, I began to get better at rejecting the bad energy around me. Pushing people out of my life who brought that energy with them. Most importantly, I learned to start saying "no" to people asking me for favors. Was it selfish? Maybe. But was it good for me to do it? A resounding hell yes.

So while I make my Hungry Man frozen TV dinner, watching infomercials at 3 a.m. in my boxers and a smelly t-shirt, I don't ponder for one minute why I'm here and not somewhere living a "normal" life with a wife, 2 kids, a picket fence, and a dog. I embrace it.

Do I want the good life, to know what it's like to grow old with someone and wake up every day feeling lucky to have them in my life? I'd be full of crap if I said no.

But I don't need it. And THAT is the secret to my happiness.

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune