Now I See

I now wear glasses.  For vision.  On my face.

I have been for about six days, and I feel like singing Aladdin's "A Whole New World."  There definitely appears to be a "dazzling place I never knew."

For example, did you know that trees actually still have leaves when you're more than ten feet away from them?  I didn't.  For years, I have been under the assumption that they mysteriously turn into a green and brown blur when humans move beyond a specified distance.  Who knew?

Blair is also even cuter than I had realized.  My original claim was that she is the prettiest child in the state, but I am now willing to extend that to a national title based on my newly acquired perception.  Those wonderful Hatcher genes are even better than I thought.

For the past several days, I have spent a considerable amount of time sliding my glasses up and down my nose in order to contrast the things I've been missing and the things I can now see.  It is simply amazing!  I can notice the individual grains in a piece of wood.  I can read road signs that I was previously unaware even contained words.

My new accessories also provide another benefit.  People I meet now think I am at least 20 years old as opposed to the previous misconception that I was a freshman in high school.  This may prove to particularly useful when people approach me at work and do not immediately believe that Winn Dixie allows teenagers to run their pharmacy department.

Plus, I just look plain smart!

I also highly recommend Dr. Tiffany West who works at the LensCrafters location on Airport Boulevard in Mobile.  She is professional, polite, intelligent, and even laughed at my corny jokes.  I suppose that last trait falls under the label of courteous.

Symmetry

Symmetry is beautiful.  At least that's what they say.  I don't know who they are, but they say it.  Therefore, it must be true.

And apparently Blair agrees.

While shopping at a children's clothing store in Gulfport last week, Blair stopped running around the store momentarily to play with the Lego area they had set up.  This alone is enough to melt her dear father's heart. 

She needed some assistance gathering the stray Lego blocks, a task to which I gladly obliged.  Then I sat back and watched.  She began to assemble the blocks on the table in a intriguing fashion that grabbed my attention right from the start.  I made sure not to interfere because my curiosity was desperate to see her finished product would be.  When she was done, this is what I saw.

If you can't tell, the arrangement of the block is perfectly symmetrical!  And, no, it's not a fluke.  Betty Clair has just been so blessed in life that she will be afforded the honor of spending years and years with two obsessive-compulsive minds in her home.  Life is sweet!

College Football Review and Preview

With considerably less free time for watching television due to a wacky work schedule and family obligations, college football has become the only sport I actually have any time to follow.  And of the college games I see, 97.3%* of those involve my alma mater, Auburn University.  Thus, I consider myself at least as qualified to publicly share my views as the legendary Lou Holtz (and he gets paid to do whatever it is he does).

The 2013-2014 college football season came to a dramatic end last week culminating with the Florida State University Seminoles being crowned the final champions of the Bowl Championship Series.  My inspiring Auburn Tigers came up just a bit short and finished the season at no. 2 in the final rankings.

Congratulations, Florida State.

None of the experts ever came close to predicting this matchup for the championship game, yet Auburn was able to prove they were the best team in the Southeastern Conference and earn a spot in Pasadena.  Florida State proved to be a dominant force as the only football team in a basketball conference that I believe is geographically somewhere along the Atlantic Coast.  (Maybe I'm still getting over the loss.)

The Auburn Tigers definitely did surprise a lot of people who follow the sport and this was in large part due to having the two best skill position players in the state of Alabama in their backfield with Tre Mason and Nick Marshall.

Did your head just explode?

Of course Tre is a given, but 83% of you reading this probably don't like my assessment that Nick Marshall is a better quarterback than the Chest Tat King who holds court over in west Alabama.  If so, just ask ESPN.  They have numbers to prove it and numbers don't lie.  My belief is that Nick Saban will not have any trouble at all replacing his 3-year starter because any young man on the depth chart will be more than capable of throwing screen passes to future NFL running backs and letting them run for 20+ yards.

And with that, I just lost nearly 83% of my readers.

For the 17% of you still here, the season as a whole was pretty exciting and produced some intriguing bowl games to end the year.  Central Florida was able to do a great impression of Boise State's 2007 Fiesta Bowl performance and knock off a Baylor team that supposedly should have had no trouble with a team from the American Athletic Conference. And, yes, I had to google UCF's conference affiliation; don't act like you knew it.  In the Chick-fil-A Bowl, we got one last glimpse of Johnny Manziel and the amazing things he can do on a football field as his Aggies pulled out a close call over the Duke Blue Devils led by J.J. Reddick**.

Despite what would have been my preferred outcome, the BCS Championship game turned out to possibly be the most exciting finale to a season since the system's inception in 1998.  Through all its flaws and warts (e.g. Auburn 2004), the BCS was actually pretty good at placing the two best teams in its final game, and that was what it was designed to do.  Remember USC-Texas in 2006?  That was high quality sports viewing.

The new playoff system will have some chinks, though, and some of these are already being discussed.

For example, I as a fan will not have the vacation time nor the financial backing to travel across the country and watch my team play in TWO postseason games.  Who really does?  Therefore, I would be stuck trying to decide if I want to stay home for the semifinal game and risk my team losing and not advancing to the championship, thus seeing no live postseason play, OR attending the first game and witnessing my team in victory,  but then having no money left to go see them play in the championship.  I know these are just horrible, awful, despicable first-world problems, but I do think it has the potential to turn the championship game into a Super Bowl-ish*** atmosphere in that most people in attendance will not actually be fans of either team.

I do, in fact, like the aspect that the playoff participants will be chosen by a committee.  It is my hope that a committee, as opposed to computers, will reward conference champions for accomplishing such a feat.  I'm not in any way into the SEC pride thing like many fans, and I believe if you're not the best in your league then you don't deserve a shot in the finals.  I suppose I'm also progressive enough that I don't have any qualms with the recent appointment of Condoleezza Rice to this group.  Who do you think is a more qualified decision maker, an Ivy League educated former United States Republican National Security Advisor or an aging Pat Dye?  Sorry, Pat, but I think you are more useful shooting dove in Notasulga than expressing opinions on this topic.

Time will tell, but I think the best option would be to institute a 16-team playoff and allowing the higher ranked teams to play at home until the championship.  But you know what they say about bowl prestige, bowl revenue, blah, blah, blah...  I guess that's why I am just a lowly pharmacist and not the NCAA president.

To conclude my 2014 season preview, here is my (somewhat biased and hastily prepared) too-early top 10:

1. Florida State
2. Stanford
3. Auburn
4. Oregon
5. Michigan State
6. South Carolina
7. Alabama
8. Oklahoma
9. LSU
10. Baylor

War Eagle!



*This is a made up statistic.
**This may or may not be their star player's name, although I think his eligibility should have run out by now.
***Am I allowed to use that term?

Random Acts of Blair

Blair and I were discussing my blog content the other day, and she told me about this new idea she had.

See, that's her having an idea.  Although she doesn't look too thrilled about it, I can assure you that she was at the time.  (By the way, I hope you stocked up on these kinds of "ideas" since they're no longer legal.  I have!)

Anyway, her idea is for me to get on here and post a single picture of something she has done that I was quick enough to capture before it ended, or as usually happens, got destroyed.

So, without further ado, here is a picture of how I found my gym shoes the other day.

I'm not entirely sure that Blair is to blame for this "random act," but I have some pretty strong suspicions.  Betty Clair is generally pretty good about leaving the clothes on her Barbie dolls during playtime because she is mature enough to know that Barbie shouldn't be running around the house that way.  Blair, however, is still a bit naive about normal societal parameters as they pertain to public nudity.  She will learn in time.

Thoughts of a Toddler

There are many times during the day when Blair makes a facial expression that leaves me desperate to know just what thoughts are running through her curious, mischievous young mind.  Smiles, frowns, and everything in between seem to indicate many different emotions, and I would give anything to be able to understand what is happening underneath those blonde curls (no matter how fleeting each idea may be).  Therefore, I would like to ask for some assistance.  I am posting pictures below that show different looks and I will briefly describe what I assume my daughter is thinking.  Let me know if you think it's accurate.

"I am only ONE month old.  How many photographs is this crazy woman going to take of me?"

"This satsuma is a little larger than the rest.  It reminds me of my bald head." 

OR 

"I see a better one up there, but my dad is too short to get it."

"Could you please wipe the snot off my face before awkwardly lifting me up to take this photo?"

"I love my Gus Gus so much."

Gus the cat:  "She looked so sweet and innocent when they brought me home.  I suppose it's still a better option than euthanasia."

I honestly have no idea what she was thinking here.  She ran around Bellingrath Gardens making this expression for a while, but I have no knowledge of its origin.  Is she casting spells, breathing fire like a dragon, or just being odd like her mother?

"I'm so bored here that I would be more entertained watching my hair grow."

"It's funny that my dad is wasting time taking pictures before he goes to work because I'm fixing to dirty my diaper and make him late."

"My parents are terribly irresponsible for leaving me on this fence while they take a nap.  I don't even have on sunscreen!"

"OMG, my BFF is totes cray cray for that last Snapchat."

"I smile when I remember who my dad is."

"I LOVE YOGURT!"

"Wow, Evie, that really is a fascinating story about heroes!  Your life is so full of adventure!"

"Yo, Mom, why you holdin' that other baby?"

"All these other kids must have visually impaired parents if they chose these outfits.  As for me, I look good!"

"ZZzzzz....."

"Of course I eat them, Donavan.  Cold hot dog slices are a delicacy down here in south Alabama."

"Poppa is laughing right now, but he doesn't know I'm about to whack him in the back of the head with this shovel."

"It's Selfie Sunday!"

"LSWho?"

"This long haired redneck better not touch my cheese sticks."

"Thanks, Dad, for letting me help wash your truck.  Mom will be glad that you made me change clothes before playing with the water hose this time."

"I'm getting really close to walking and this place will never be the same once that starts!  Insert evil laugh."

OR

"I have gas."

"I hope he doesn't take me to the top of a skyscraper."

"I see my dad over there. He is super duper awesome.  I'm so blessed to have inherited his good looks."

"So, THIS is how I'm going to spend the evening?  With my weird shirtless cousin drinking Kool-Aid in an ice chest?  That's the third time this week!  Sigh..."

"They see me rollin', they hatin'."

New Year's Resolutions

Here are my resolutions for the year 2014.  It may be presumptuous to think you actually care, but you did actually come here to read the stuff I write.  Publishing them for the rest of the world (since my stats are showing I have readers in nine other countries) should also make it more difficult to abandon them over the next 365 days.

1. Significantly reduce my social networking.
• Since it is a HUGE waste of time, I am going to aim for only logging in to Facebook or Twitter once a week (or less).  However, I may have to figure out some way to set up alerts to let all four of my readers know when their favorite blogger has a new post since most of the page views here originate from a link on the aforementioned productivity killers.
2. Run 3 miles in less than 21 minutes.

• As some of you are aware, I developed a healthy interest in triathlon this Summer.  This required me to purchase a road bike, some swim goggles, and several articles of clothing made out of lycra.  I was able to drop about 15 pounds and have kept it off recently despite the colder weather limiting my willingness to engage in outside activities.  Although I was quite pleased with my accomplishments as a newbie triathlete, I have some new goals for the coming year.  I need to get faster!  Additional racing goals include cycling 20+ miles at 20+ mph and swimming at least 1500 meters without stopping.  (Don't I look awesome?)
3. Read every word in my Bible.
• I've made this one several years in a row, but I always come up with some lame excuses to back out of it.  In fact, the little ribbon is still stuck somewhere in Deuteronomy marking my premature discontinuation last year.  I was already pretty far behind schedule, anyway.  If you have completed this one in the past, leave a comment below and let me know if you had a specific plan you followed and how you liked it.  There are definitely plenty of them to choose from.
4. Give.
• Other than what I drop in the offering plate at church, I need to find more ways to do this.  This can include my time, money, or anything else I may have of value to share with others.  I need to set an example that my daughter can actually witness and use those opportunities to explain the importance of this act while she is still somewhat impressionable.  She is a bit young, but I don't think it can ever start too early.
5. _______________________________
• This space was intentionally left blank.  I am leaving it that way until my wife fills it in.  Hopefully she doesn't suggest something like "Rub my feet every night."  That being said, this may be one of the most foolish resolution ideas I've ever had.  On the other hand, I may just be the most awesome husband ever.  Let's assume the latter.  Wish me luck on this one!

Happy New Year!