You probably noticed I haven’t blogged in awhile.  Many of you are probably worried sick.  Just so you know, I am just fine, although I have been having back spasms and some pesky post-nasal drip lately.  Part of the reason for the neglect has to do with misfortune.  Seven inches of rain that dropped from the sky in a 10 hour period managed to breach the basement wall of my family room a few weeks ago.  I had to move everything out of there, which meant disconnecting my big screen TV until I could resolve all my drainage issues.  And my television set that I watch outside on my patio wouldn’t work after i was forced to install the shitty mini cable box that my cable provider now requires.   It’s a double whammy for me, a shit sandwich that I unfortunately have to bite into, because it’s football season- big screen TV disabled and my outside TV not working.  It’s imperative those televisions fire up this time of year.  Sure I could watch my games in our bedroom, but that’s just not right. At least that’s my wife viewpoint.  I have to have my quarterly snacks, and she hates it when I sweep all the crumbs over to her side of the bed.

Watching Football

So I had a cubic yard of fill dirt delivered and I went to work filling in depressions in the ground close to the house that caused the seepage into my family room, sealed all step and sidewalk seems with polyurethane caulk (that shit is great- but pricey) and removed the saturated carpet and took it to the dump.  I scrapped the idea of reinstalling carpet, and instead went with PVC floor tiles.  But I had to wait a week for their delivery, which wasn’t necessary a bad thing because I had a lot of remodeling I wanted to do in the family room anyway.  I finally finished the room off yesterday.  We threw down a nice big area rug to tie things together.  It looks pretty sweet.                             Watching Soccer

I have to tell you I am not happy with my cable company.  Or Radio Shack.   After two no shows a cable company technician finally showed up only to tell me the cable I ran out to my patio years ago was not the preferred type and it would not conduct well enough for their piece of shit mini box.  Well fuck!  I bought that cable from Radio Shack and that’s what the doofus guy there cut and handed to me.  I wish I could find out who that jerk was.  I’d give him a good piece of my mind- maybe egg his house.  And I wouldn’t be using just average eggs.  No sir.  Extra-extra large.  And I’d let them set out in the sun for a week before I started flinging them.

I do remember that guy had a name tag, and though I can’t recall the name on it, the word “manager” was emblazoned boldly across it.  So of course I figured he knew what he was doing.  So because of that twit I had to spend a day re-running preferred cable to my patio.  The type you should use is RG6 if you feel in need of the information.  What pissed me off was everything was working just fine till that worthless mini box showed up.  My cable company mailed 3 of them to me for all my TV’s, and they acted like they were doing me a big favor.  My picture was going to be all super and swell because their stupid mini boxes would provide me with all digital reception.  Instead what I got in my back yard was an annoying TV screen  reminder that something wasn’t quite right and would necessitate a house call from a technician.  If the message had read something like “Thanks to the douchenozzle at Radio Shack, our piece of shit mini box won’t work,”  I think I would have been more tolerant of all the inconvenience my cable company was inflicting on me.

Wow!  Yesterday I got my outside TV all hooked up to my new cable and man, I hate to say it but all digital is the cat’s meow.  To be honest with you, the picture I was getting outside before the mini box era was a little distorted on a few channels- distorted in the way that all of us that lived in the 50’s remember picture distortion.  Television sets really took a beating back then.  What seemed to resolve an annoying vertical roll or fuzzy picture was a nice fist pounding to the top of the set.  So a little distortion was something I could live with.  At least there was a picture.  I couldn’t quite make out a ball in flight, but I could definitely see a bunch of  guys running around and knocking the shit out of each other.  And that’s really all I need.

Which brings me to the real reason my blogging has been on the back burner.  As you might have guessed, I have a character flaw, and it’s called football.  I am completely obsessed by the sport and I know it occupies way too much of my time but I can not help myself.  I played the game in grade school and high school and loved it, but I’d like to think now that I am a

Me Receiving Hand-Off During Practice for the Big Game Against St. Marys

reasonably mature person I can see that it is just a game, and more importantly, a game with significant physically and mentally destructive repercussions for those competing in it.  And that is probably where inlays its magnetic power.  For me the sport holds a gnawing compulsion to view much like the morbid curiosity invoked by a horrific car wreck.  And the money that’s involved.  Holy shit.

I know these things and yet I sit and watch, day and night.  But in my defense, while I have been sitting, I have been thinking of solutions.  I believe there are things we can do to make the game more palatable to our consciences.  I must tell you about them some day.  Maybe after the Super Bowl.

Geezuz!   Another 7 inches of rain the past two days.  You’ll be happy to know all is well in my basement.  Thank god!  Theres a Thursday night game tonight.