I know that my two daughters have been preoccupied with the news of Chelsea King’s death.  It’s time to have that conversation that we’ve had before, but need to reinforce from time to time.  Be Safe.  We have lots of open fields around our house.  It’s a great area to go biking, jogging and letting the dogs run free.  It is also an area my daughters are forbidden to go without me.  I have been out there on my own at times and felt uncomfortable.  I have run into many a jogger or dog walker out in the fields enjoying the fresh air and countryside.  I have also been tracked by coyote.  I have run into illegal aliens.  I have run into strange men.  I have also run into the lone woman jogging from time to time.  You can sense their discomfort when they usually don’t acknowledge you and get by you as fast as they can.  They shouldn’t be out there alone.  You should always be with a buddy.  A buddy can always run for help.  A buddy may notice something you don’t.  The old “two heads are better than one” works.  It will keep you safe and it will be a deterrent.  Just like lions and wolves, human predators go after those who have been separated from the herd.

Have you ever watched Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator” on Dateline?  The scary thing is how many shapes and sizes the predators come in.  Sure some of them are creepy looking and you wouldn’t get within thirty feet of them, but too many of them are normal looking and mild mannered.  They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  The one noticeable thing with most of these dirtbags is their complete lack of any sense of right or wrong.  They seem to think their evil compulsions are normal.  What’s a young woman to do?  Trust your senses.  Your senses are real and they work.  Be wary of strangers.  Am I telling you ladies anything you didn’t already know?  Women have survived for centuries on their instincts and senses.  Our daughters need to do the same.

Chelsea King has suffered and gone on to the other side.  Pray for her family and friends.  They are the ones that need it now.

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I keep hearing in the media about the terrible economic state of the newspaper industry across the states.  Nationwide, newspapers have gone out of business, downsized and been put up for sale due to the drastic drop in circulation for these publications.  They cry foul over the internet and all of the bloggers and other media sites that have been created.  One of the biggest complaints you here is the lack of quality of the news on blogging and off brand sites.  These people aren’t trained journalists.  They are not verifying their facts.  Blah, blah, blah.

I see it as a complete lack of foresight by the newspapers.  Why pay to have the paper delivered when I can read it for free on my computer?  Not only can I read it for free, but I can read almost any newspaper in the world. I remember starting with email and internet usage in the early 90’s.  There weren’t a whole lot of news outlets online yet.  If my local paper had hit me up for a subscription to read online back then, I probably would have paid it.  Instead, everybody gave it away for the last twenty years and now they’re crying over it.

I can’t help but think that the competition is good.  Sure, there are the yellow journalists that will make false claims and misrepresentations, but they will naturally be ferreted out.  I don’t know about you, but when I find out a media outlet has been untruthful, I tend to never watch or read that publication again.  There are so many more viewpoints available to us with this plethora of news outlets on the web and on cable television.  Imagine MSNBC and FOX news being your only news outlets on television.  You get to choose between the communist channel and the totalitarian channel.  Something turns me off and I just go to another news outlet.

I see a day when newspapers don’t exist anymore.  I see a day when home phones don’t exist anymore(I want to cancel our home phone, but Karen thinks I’m crazy).  Remember when Dick Tracy would look into the television screen on his watchband?  That day is here.  Time to embrace the changes and use them to our advantage and not cling to the days wrapping your fried fish in a newspaper.

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It seems like a lot of parents and the government are completely paranoid about their teens getting a driver’s license.  Karen and I can’t wait.  I wish he could have gotten his license on his birthday, but with his broken leg and all, he’s a little behind schedule.  However, in a couple of weeks, we should have a new driver in the house.

I am looking forward to this for mainly selfish reasons.  When you have three children, a lot of your life is spent in the car.  Almost every night of the week, either Karen or I are driving around for dance, soccer, swim, surfing and whatever else you can think of.  We believe the kids need to work hard in school, but we also believe they should have an athletic endeavor to keep fit, so it is all brought upon ourselves.

About three years ago, I had a melt down in the car.  It was Labor Day weekend and there was a soccer tournament.  Why do these morons schedule games at seven in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays?  After a long week at work and spending the entire weekend at a soccer tournament in one hundred degree heat, I lost my temper in the car on the way home.  All this driving around was getting to me.  Something had to give.  We had to change our priorities and we had to actively look to carpool with other families. 

I got over my tizzy and life continued, but when you’re child is fifteen there is a constant tug of war going on.  They want to do more and go more places, but they are entirely dependent on you for transportation.  I don’t know about you, but getting up at 5:30 in the morning, working all day and then picking your son up at  11:30pm on Friday night at a party that is eight miles from your house just isn’t appealling.  I’m becoming a fuddy duddy.

Here we are on the brink of a new driver in the house and I can’t wait.  He can take himself to and from school.  He can help drive his sisters around.  He can drive himself to and from swim practice.  He can drive himself to and from the beach.  We cand send him to the grocery store.  We can make him go gas up the car.  It seems the possibilities are endless.

You’d think it’s my birthday as excited as I am.

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Ten years ago the media was abound with Y2K.  The end of the world will happen at the end of the millenia.  A computer glitch will bring the whole world to a stand still.  What a load of crap.  This decade we have a whole lot more important things to worry about like when is my damn sales revenue going to go up?  Ten years ago, I was 32 years old with two children, just moved into a house, vice president at the business and going a million miles an hour.  Present day, I’m still in the house, three children and now the president of the company.  You know those optical illusions, when you look at it one way you see a certain object and then you blink your eyes and see something completely different?  That’s what I feel looking back the past ten years.  In some ways ten years ago seems forever and in other ways it has gone the speed of light.

My main reflections are on the people who’ve impacted my life in the last ten years.  I had the birth of my daughter Jacqueline.  What a wonderful addition to our family she has been.  I can’t imagine the other four of us without her.  I also lost my grandmother and my father.  These are the first thing that come to my mind.  The great joys and the great sorrows.  It’s easy to ride the wave of joy.  It takes no effort at all.  It’s much more difficult to overcome grief.  You only realize these things until years later how they have affected you.

Personally, I have spent the past three years trying to defy mother nature by not accepting my own mortality.  I feel the aging of my body and don’t like it.  You want to go for a five mile run all hills.  Let’s do it.  I’m f***ing sore and my ankle hurts.  You want to do a mini triathlon.  Let’s go!  Let’s have another bottle of wine, I won’t be hurting in the morning.  You want another helping of these cheesy potatoe?  Pile it on.  I have tried my best to defy mother nature and it just doesn’t work.  Instead of fighting mother nature, I’m ready to accept her and be at peace with myself.  Is this a sign of maturity?

I’m looking forward to another ten years.  If all goes well, my house will be paid off.  I’ll get to see all my kids graduate from high school and head off to college.  There could even be a wedding in the next ten years.  Heck, I could be a grandpa in ten years. 

If you want to have a great conversation with your spouse, then select their New Year’s Resolution for them.  I always pick a resolution for Karen and the ensuing conversation is quite lively!

Happy New Year!

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Of course, Karen had planned on taking Veteran’s Day off but had to work after missing the day before, so I decided to stay home last Wednesday.  It was a good day.  I had the kids work like slaves and we cleaned the place up nice and neat.  We decided to go to the new Sonic that opened up that all the kids are talking about.  Crazy, the line of cars was an hour long for food.  It’s sad that the most exciting thing to happen in Vista in the last twenty years is a Sonic opening up, but who am I to pass judgement on this little town.  Anyways, all was good until Jennifer walked in the door from her friend’s house at 5:15pm bawling her head off.  In trying to console her, we gathered that she had puked in the street right before walking in the front door.  We got another sickie poo!  Wait, what is that I hear?  Mom just got home and she’s puking.  We’re on a roll now.  Stewart gets it on Friday, but didn’t actually puke until Sunday.  Weird.  I’m just thankful that I have still dodged the bullet.  The puking comes on suddenly with no warning.  I sat in a conference room with twelve people all day Friday praying that I wouldn’t spew all over everyone. 

All I see and hear about seems to be getting vaccinated for the flu and H1N1.  No, thank you.  My father had heart disease and was strongly urged to get the flu shot every year by his cardiologist.  He and my mom got the flu shot every year and then proceeded to get the flu about two weeks later.  Call me superstitious.  Karen got the flu shot and then she gets the flu.  I think she might even have had the flu twice in the last month and now she has to get the H1N1 shot because she works for a health care provider.  Suey! 

I hope everyone has a healthy Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Nothing worse than being ill over the holidays.  Take your vitamin C.

Flu this.

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This flavor of the wild west has drawn me down there for the last twenty five years.  When you cross that invisible line in the sand, from one instant to the next, you are thrown into a culture completely different than ours.  When you’ve grown up in suburban “Leave it to Beaverville,” crossing the border for the first time is shocking to say the least.  Besides language and cultural differences, there are other many new sensory things your brain is trying to process.  Every car seems to have a dent or a scratch in it.  There is a variety of odors one can experience from the multitude of taco shops to the nose burning raw sewage that’s leaking from somewhere and going who knows where.  The experience makes you tingle a little bit as if you’ve landed on another planet.  The sensory overload generates feeling of anxiety, joy, alertness, fear amongst others.

Once you’ve sped through all this hustle and bustle of the border and starting speeding south down the coast, the alertness and tenseness leave your body as you start to gaze out at the endless beaches with nobody on them.  Before you know it, you’ve hit the small beach town of Rosarito.  It is here you can enjoy an assortment of activities from surfing to fishing to horseback riding.  In the evening, the town is full of visiting Americans and locals going out to dinner and dancing.  You can even buy fireworks and go down to the beach to set them off.  After the border shock, a day and night in Rosarito is most enjoyable.  The slower pace down here relaxes you from the rat race that is our American society.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  Although never lacking in its charm, the town is ghostly in appearance.  There are signs of life but not many.  Many of the bars and restaurants are closed or completely empty.  The streets are empty at night.  At eight in the evening on a Saturday night, there were only four people inside of Papas ‘n Beer, the town’s most infamous nightclub.  I remembering being here in the past when the place would be full of hundreds of revelers.  My favorite tequila bar was closed and the windows boarded up.  They used to have a two gallon clear jug sitting on the bar full of clear tequila with a two foot pickled rattlesnake inside of it.  It’s the worst rot gut you can imagine, but for some reason you gotta do just one.

From what I can gather, there are three things affecting the town.  First and foremost would be the daily news regarding the murder and mayhem by the drug cartels in Tijuana.  My wife has told me she’s never going down there again.  Secondly, you now need a passport to cross back into the United States.  I guess a lot of people don’t want to spend a hundred bucks to get a passport.  Then, of course, it’s the economy stupid.  People are watching there money and being more judicious on when and where they spend.  Spending a couple hundred dollars on the weekend with a .1% chance of being beheaded by the drug cartel is a no brainer for most people.

I look forward to the future days of peace and prosperity for our neighbors to the south.  I look forward to someday feeling comfortable taking my son and his buddies down for a beach camping trip.  I want him to get that point break to himself with his buddies instead of fighting off fifty guys for one wave .  We’ll get it done someday, but not this year.

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When we signed our son up for little league, you had to assist the league in fundraising.  This was done by having each family sell a box of about twenty candy bars.  You either take the time to sell the candy bars or you pay an additional forty dollars cash up front for the registration fee if you want your kid to play baseball.  We take the chocolate bars and walk around the neighborhood once and sell maybe one or two candy bars.  What are we gonna do with the rest of them?  You give it three or four weeks and they magically disappear into my mouth, my wife’s mouth and my kids’ mouths.  Now, we’ve eaten all the candy and have to pay for it.  Good grief! 

The door to door salesman still exists but in a different form and for a different purpose.  They are all cute little boys and girls walking around the neighborhoods in some kind  of uniform or another with freckles and ballcaps or ribbons in their hair.  The typical for sale items are magazines, wrapping paper, popcorn, candy and cookies.  It’s the perfect scam getting the children to do the dirty work for all of these organizations that supposedly need money and it’s high time it stopped.  It’s the same old sob story with the teacher’s, the schools, the pta, the girl scouts, the cub scouts and so on.  If we don’t fundraise, then programs and activities are going to be cut.  I’ve been hearing this same old tune for a long time and it never seems to change and the programs and activities always seem to grow and never diminish.

The ultimate question is where does all the money go?  Do you remember the director of the Red Cross here in San Diego whose salary was $400,000.00 per year?  You ever notice there is never an accounting made available of what the funds are for?  What’s the cost of the actual goods being sold?  Whose really benefiting from the proceeds?  How much of the proceeds actually ends up at the local level?  When did this become the children’s responsibility to do this?  How much free labor did these organizations just receive from us and our kids? 

I know a lot of you think I sound like a curmudgeon.  What put me over the top?  The schools sure do seem to send a lot of papers home with the children.  Usually, my wife reads all of these papers and I never looked at them until recently.  My eight year old daughter brings me a piece of paper saying I have to fill it out because she has to return it in the morning.  It’s an order form to buy books.  The schools’ and the teachers’ are now peddling books to the children through the classroom and I have to fill out a form saying yes or no.  Why can’t they read the books at the school?  Isn’t the library good enough?  Shouldn’t our taxes cover this?  Please don’t tell me some kid isn’t going to learn how to read if I don’t help out.

Do people question things anymore?  Are we all so busy in our own lives that we don’t notice the slow transformations that have taken place incrementally over time?  Are we all ever going to stand up and say no to some of this stuff or are we too afraid of conforming and keeping our mouths shut?  I sure have a lot more questions than answers.

I won’t slam the door in your face, but the answer will be a polite, “No.”

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We moved to southern California in 1976 before the dawn of Air Coryell.  We lived on a wide street in Pacific Beach.  All the boys of the neighborhood would get together everyday after school during football season and play two hand touch in the street.  It was sandlot football on the hardtop and a lot of fun.  We would even play at school where we had a nice green field to run around.  Since we had soft grass, this is where we played tackle and the game wasn’t football.  The game was “smear the queer.”  Could you imagine this happening in today’s world?  The noon duty would have had us all in the principal’s office for being too rough and for being haters.  We would have probably had to go to some gay and lesbian sensitivity training.

Fast forward thirty three years.  I have been a Charger fan since the late seventies.  I’ve been through the Air Coryell years and the Bobby Ross era to the hardass Marty Schottenheimer years.  There has been a lot of bad football throughout the years in San Diego, but there has been no tougher time to be a Charger fan than the Norv Turner era.  I don’t have a lot of time being a husband and father of three, so the only football I usually can squeeze into my schedule is the weekly Charger game.  However, these games are so hard to watch.  It always seems to be a lack of focus or preparation surrounding this team that you want to throw your bottle at the television screen.  This team has so much talent but always seems lackadaisical.  Lack of focus and preparation usually points to a lack of leadership.

What to do as a fan?  Well, my son started playing high school football.  I was so looking forward to attending his football games and also start attending the varsity games on Friday nights.  My son and I decided to attend the freshman game this week because a good friend of mine coaches on the freshman team at La Costa Canyon.  We sat  and watched La Costa Canyon rip Rancho Buena Vista  in a 48-6 total domination.  I have nothing to do with these players and coaches, but I was embarassed sitting in the stands.  I think the score would have been 96-12 if the La Costa coaching staff didn’t start subbing in second and third string players. 

At half time, the RBV coaches made the kids do wind sprints as punishment for their poor play.  This really pissed me off.  I wanted to go down on the field and make the coaches do the wind sprints.  The boys on both teams are all fourteen and fifteen years old.  They all come from similar socio-economic backgrounds.  They have similar practice facilities and by rule they have the same amount of practice time.  Why such the disparity on the field?  Leadership.  You can’t blame it on the kids.  The kids are there of their own free will and playing for the love of the game.

I didn’t even bother going to the jv or varsity games.  It was a clean sweep by La Costa Canyon and granted they have a great football program, shouldn’t the games at least be competitive?

I’m not even going to bring up San Diego State.  What an abomination!

Maybe I’ll become a 49′er fan, I love that Mike Singletary guy.  That’s leadership.

It’s tough to be a fan.

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With the state of the economy and lack of any business activity going on out there, I have had to rethink things and take whatever opportunities that may arise.  I have been fortunate to be doing business with Home Depot for many years and was given the opportunity to do a lot of work in a very short period of time.  The opportunity is to replace all of the air conditioning equipment on the roof of five Home Depots throughout southern California in six weeks.  We will have removed and replaced 150 pieces of equipment in that time.  Our record day, and company best ever, was in Hemet when we craned down 37 old units and 29 new units in one day.  We’ve been on a fast track schedule with cranes, semi’s, forklifts, recyclers, manufacturer’s, plumbers, electricians, sheet metal workers and more for the past month.  The schedule is so fast and so much is going on that I am running all of the projects myself with a crew of ten men.  We have been gone for a month.

It was a close call between staying in a hotel or just commuting.  All of my employees really wanted to start work at 6am, to beat the sun and the heat.  It has been really hot in SoCal the last month.  This put me in the decision of getting up at 3:30 to 4:00am on a daily basis to drive the freeways and then make the drive back in the evenings or just staying in a hotel.  It was a no brainer for me.  If I had to get up at 4am everyday, I could just not function well.  I packed my bags and off I went. 

Here I am, my last night in a hotel for awhile and I’m blogging:)  I am usually on the roof of a Home Depot at 6:00am and usually am not done until three or four in the afternoon.  By that time, the sun has taken the life force out of you and it’s off to the hotel room to sit in front of the air conditioner in your underwear until you cool down enough to take a shower.  I must commend the crew because there has been little to no drama the entire time.  Yes, men can be dramatic.  We finally had some stuff go down on our last job.  We had one guy  arrested and I haven’t heard from him.  I had another guy have a tizzy on the roof today and quit on the spot.  I’ve been doing this so long, these type of things don’t surprise me or bother me anymore.

I can’t wait to get back to San Diego County.  I will never complain again about how crowded San Diego is getting.  You spend a few days in the realm of Los Angeles and there is a density of people that you really can’t notice or comprehend on a day trip or weekend sojourn.  Once you’ve spent a week up here, the crush of humanity is noticeable.  The other thing you notice is the police presence.  I have never seen so many squad cars in my life.  We were hearing sirens going off every half hour up here.

Here I come, home sweet home.

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My son inspired Karen and I.  He was on the swim team this past spring for the high school freshman team.  We saw how exhausted he was and how intense the practices were and then we saw the transformation of his body.  He was already in good physical condition, but the swimming chiseled him like you wouldn’t believe.  Karen found a swim class every Saturday and Sunday morning and off we went.  It has been very challenging for two people who never swam before.  The first couple of weekends wiped us out completely.  We would swim in the morning and then come home and eat everything in the refrigerator and then fall asleep on the couch.  The kids were worried about us.  Lo and behold, after three or four weekends, we were able to swim in the morning and then function normally the rest of the day.  We’re going to continue it throughout the fall.  We definitely feel better and more energetic.

Ever since our dog Domino died in February, my daughter Jennifer has literally been on her hands and knees begging for a puppy.  Her persistence has paid off because I caved in late July and said okay let’s get a puppy.  Well, the conversation turned into how one puppy would be lonely during the day.  One puppy turned into two puppies.  I found them on the internet.  There pictures were adorable (I’m a big softy).  They were cute little fuzz balls, but they were in Arizona.  The breeder was nice enough to drive them to Temecula because she wanted to visit her grandmother.  Chloe and Bear joined us at the end of July.  They are cute and fun and they sure do poop a lot.

The midlife crisis kicked in again.  Just when you think it’s going to subside, it flares back up again.  I’ve always wanted a convertible ever since I can remember.  I decided to sell my truck and buy a convertible.  In this economy, it took two months to sell my truck.  My enthusiasm to get a convertible waned as the summer progressed, but then lo and behold someone bought the truck and I was out test driving convertibles with my daughter Jennifer the following Saturday.  The first car I drove was a beautiful silver Mercedes CLK 55 AMG.  I told the salesman that I was going to go test drive some other cars and that I might be back.  He said there is no might about it.  He said after driving this car you won’t want any other and he was right.  Two days later I bought the car for my 42nd birthday!

Now, for the downer of the summer.  It’s a cool hundred degrees late in the afternoon on a Friday in Escondido, CA.  The RBV, Orange Glen, Castle Park, and Santa Fe Christian football programs come together for a four team scrimmage.  It’s a great format because you get to play against three different teams in an hour and a half.  Stewart got his shot at starting cornerback and on the third play from scrimmage a running play came his way.  He and the outside linebacker made the tackle and then a couple of other players came flying in.  Everyone got up except Stewart.  He has a broken tibia, that’s your shin bone.  Ouch!  Doctor says three months in a cast from his toe to his hip.  He is definitely going to learn the meaning of patience. 

I hope you all had a great summer.

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