For The Birds...

Okay... to my U.S. brethren... Happy Thanksgiving. To my Canadian and European friends: happy Thursday...lol

I'm putting together a top ten list of things to be thankful for... Just my brain (in)activity:

I AM THANKFUL:

10) That inspite of the fact that I spend more time in arenas, stadiums and behind microphones than with her, my gal pal still loves me. She deserves better, but still thinks I'm great. She looks through rose colored glasses, but I'm not going to change her... not one bit.

9) Despite the prognosis... my sisters STILL are kickin' butt and trying to enjoy and live life. They really do define what it means to beat the odds and are good people on top of that.

8) Even though I lead a somewhat hard lifestyle with all the miles that I log, I am still in relatively decent health. Some days I feel more like 93 than 45, but I still enjoy living everyday life.

7) While I'm a working stiff and could complain about my job, that I have an ounce of brain matter to realize that I'm pretty darn lucky to have a job. Let alone three. Perspective Mik, it's always perspective...

6) Despite the odds, we are slowly making Toledo Sports Radio a small success.

5) While I have a nice round figure (read: belly), I can't cook. I eat at work and I nuke meals or eat out but when I need some real home cooking, I can call any member of my family and go visit and they let me stay for dinner...lol

4) While I have a nice round figure (read: BELLY), my gal pal still loves me insanely. There is no one on this planet that I could ever ask to love me more completely than her.

3) When I have screwed up (all the time) and had a pity party or two, that God had enough of a sense of humor not to listen to me whine and still loved his brat inspite of that brat's stupidity...

2) That I'm painfully aware that while I have tried to do good for others, that I could do so much more. What's the old saying: The size of your funeral will be determined by the weather?...

1) to the Good Lord, that inspite of my best efforts... HEY! I'm still ALIVE!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone... Hope you can find things to be thankful for... infact, if you care to share, leave me a comment about what you might be thankful for this year...

When Life Throws a Curve Ball...

I'm just kicking back and taking it easy right now... Weird crap can sneak up on you when you aren't looking. One of our supervisors at work is finding that out firsthand. It isn't weird crap... It's life and death. She went into the emergency room yesterday cause she wasn't feeling good. She got a diagnosis today... pancreatic cancer. Wholly crap! Talk about a slap to the face or a sucker punch to the guts... I sat there stunned. The diagnosis they gave her: it's terminal. I feel so horrible. The people at work all just kind of sat numb. I don't know her that well, but it hit close to home. I think about my sister and how she is hanging on with her cancer battle and I have really come to appreciate what she's going through. Life can be such a precious and delicate thing. Many times it's unappreciated or more likely than not, taken for granted. I just know that I'm approaching middle age and feel like I'm 90 sometimes, but when I see people who are suffering and dancing with their mortality, I stop complaining about what aches me and I feel so grateful to be alive. You pray and you hope for the best. And for pete's sake, LIVE and enjoy life... even if it's just deciding to be in a good mood when you don't feel like it. LIVE and LOVE...

Eleven - Eleven...

It's November 11th... My sister Terri's birthday. Glad she's holding on to keep celebrating another year of life. Truly a gift from God. I think about her situation and her prognosis. She's defied the odds and continues to live life as best she can. I'm grateful that she has done as well as she has... The other reason I'm looking at things with a bit more perspective is because I always get sentimental about Veteran's Day or Rememberance Day... I guess because I see how much people really sacrificed for a guy like me to be a full time goof ball. I just feel like "Thank you" is so weak... especially after what happened in Fort Hood last week. It really drives home how important it is to appreciate and support our men and women in uniform. I was sitting in my hotel room last sunday morning, flipping channels and watching TV when I came across a preacher show (Charles Stanley) called "In Touch"... I was expecting just the typical sunday morning fare. But this program was a re-run of a guy in church talking about our founding fathers and the early days of our history and how they would rely on their faith to govern. It was a real eye opener for me and it got me thinking about history and it snowballed from there... and it got me thinking about our troops and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you seems inadequate, but it's all I've got. I do say thanks not only those who gave their all, but those who have served or are currently serving...We are forever in your debt...

Deja Vu... all over again!

I'm a guy who's a creature of habit. Ask my gal pal, she'll tell you. I know what I like and I usually like it alot. Whether it's sports, food, or people, I like familiarity... for the most part. A case in point... last spring I wrote about a kid I met when I was in Dubuque, Iowa for playoffs last season. I enjoyed the heck out of the kid. He's a special needs kid who took to a couple of our players. The team really went out of their way to make him feel special during the playoffs. He was/is a really neat kid. I'll never forget when we were getting on the bus to head for home, he stopped outside and went up and hugged a couple of the players who he'd really liked. I was genuinely touched.
Fast forward to last Friday night. We were in Dubuque again to play them in a pair of regular season games. I was getting my gear set up to broadcast the games online. Well, I look down near the area where the two teams will go onto the ice and there is the familiar smile and the familiar glasses. I finish setting my stuff up and head down to say hello, not even sure if the kid would remember me. He does and his mom also remembers me and so we chat about the team and I tell them how most of the players from last year have moved on with their careers. I give them info about a couple of the kid's favorite players from our team. So they were really happy to hear about what happened to the guys they became fans of. Now we get beat while we're there so that stunk to high heavens. But as we got back home on Sunday morning at 6am with no sleep, I get off of the team bus and walk over to my car. I get in and stop to get some gasoline. I fill the tank up and decide that since I have Sunday off from everything, I can drive home five minutes and sleep till the afternoon and putz around all day and watch football. It would've been great. But of course, the term 'normal' and me have never been on the same page. So I decide to do something crazy. I pour myself into my car, and drive six hours to go see the gal pal. She had no idea. I freaked people out. I show up in church, and afterwards, I go up to her and she about freaked out. She just grabbed me and pulled me into her arms, hugging me so tight that my air supply started to go out. But she let me come up for air and the look on her face was just perfect. She was shocked and when folks came up to me to say hello, they found out that I was in Iowa the night before and had been up all night coming back to Ohio and then another six hours to there. They were all stunned, but as I simply stated the obvious: "hey, my gal pal is WORTH IT"... I spent about five hours with her and then headed for home, six hours back. I got home to Michigan a little after midnight and slept for what felt like five minutes and went into work dragging my knuckles. But I'll never forget the look on my gal pal's face and when she said how much it meant to her what i did. I am not one to pat myself on the back, and I'm not looking for that here now. I only mention it because I think about how much she does to motivate me to be a better human being. And how most of my friends at home would be laughing at me for being so freaking crazy to go almost two and a half days without much sleep and drive six hours each way to spend a few hours with my girl. Now if you care to share, I have a question for you: what is the craziest thing you've ever done to be able to spend time with someone you are/were/ used to be crazy about? I hope you all are okay and have a great week...