I grew up during a time of constant recession. I graduated High School in one of the worst recessions in the last half of the 20th century.
Fortunately for me, I was able to find work in the military. However, the experience really stuck with me. Recessions had a way of following me around, too. The economy was on the downswing when I got out of the Army, too. When I got out of college, same deal.
The mid and late 90s were a party. I have to admit. It was the manifestation of all the hope and excitement of the 80s. The decade that has no name (the years from 2000 to 2009) wasn't that great, really. It's like we were doing everything we could to keep the 90s going, but eventually, it caught up to us. The no-name decade (or the aughts or the naughts or the naughties), were probably more bummer than party. We had the dot com implosion, the terrorist attacks, two wars and ultimately, the real estate bubble and the global economic collapse.
Things were exacerbated because not only were there fundamental injustices, with the rich staying rich and the poor getting poorer, but because the very dimwits who caused the problem got the government to give them essentially all the money in the world to make sure their party never had to end.
Now, this decade? Shows every potential to be much, much worse. Like the late 70s, we have a well-intentioned, but weak and ineffectual president. There is absolutely no indication that things will return to pre-recession levels maybe ever. We stand a very real chance of seeing the first young generation who will not do as well as the preceeding one.
I've got a business and we were doing great. I think that's what makes things so difficult, now. We grew from about $200,000 in sales in 2005 to about $1 million in the rolling 12 months from mid 2008 to mid 2009.
Being a small businessperson was a thing of beauty at the time. I had built a million dollar business in less than five years and it seemed like there was endless potential ahead for me and my team.
We took on a lot of overhead, added a lot of staff and borrowed a lot for capital equipment to make it happen. It's easy to add a thousand dollars of debt service when your company is averaging $80,000 a month in business. It seems like such small potatoes. If it helps you add to sales, why wouldn't you?
I think like most success stories, luck plays a part, though. I think way too many people give themselves too much credit when things are going well. Likewise, they shoulder way too much of the blame when things go poorly.
I certainly cannot control the weather or the global economy. When both of them conspire against me, along with a complete disappearance of small business credit and the destruction of the automotive industry when your business is located 30 minutes from Detroit?
Sorry, but you could be the biggest genius in the world and you'll still probably have difficulty.
Now, our sales are about half what they once were. We've had to shed a ton of personnel.
Even so, every week I have to weigh the possibility that further cuts are necessary. I held off too long, hoping we could turn things around. I just didn't like the idea of letting people go. In the end, it was the wrong decision to make. It burned through every cent of savings and tapped out pretty much all my available credit.
We've cut our payroll by about 2/3. Some of the expenses just aren't that variable, though. The long-term debt we service is not something I can change very quickly, or at all.
If I can manage to hang on, there is some cause for optimism. Our landlord agreed to lower the lease on our warehouse by $200 a month in October. The first two trucks we bought will be paid off in December. That'll save about $13,000 a year.
I'm going to cut yellow pages spending by about half. So, that'll save us about $9,000 a year.
That presumes, of course, that me make it that far. I am trying to survive week to week these days.
Time seems to have really sped up, though. Seems that no sooner do we close the books on a month and next thing you know, we're closing them on another month. That's good if, for instance, you're trying to get closer to the day when you pay off a couple of trucks. Not so good when the bills for the next month are coming due and the receipts from the previous month are underwhelming.
However, if we do manage to survive, this was a bit of a cleansing. We tightened things up. We've still got debt to service for the next 5 years, but it drops off pretty regularly throughout. Every year we surivive will be easier than the one previous.
There are advantages to being small, too. Right now, we have essentially 5 employees. At our peak we had 14 and were looking to hire more.
With the 5, I honestly think they can handle about $50,000 to $60,000 a month in volume no problem.
Adding the other 9? It made my core 5 that much less productive. They had to try and keep the others from messing up. They had to spend part of their week fixing the mess-ups they couldn't prevent.
So, doing another $30,000 or 40,000 in volume sounds attractive, but in the future, I don't know that I'll do it. I prefer to keep just A players and do the volume they can handle. And keeping overhead and payroll down will mean that I won't ever have another month where I lose $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000.
Yeah, having those extra folks lets you handle another $20,000 or $30,000 a month, gross, but that additional gross profit doesn't mean much if it exposes you to losing as much as $50,000 during a slump.
This is just a tough, tough time to try and run a small business. Politicians will do anything they can to keep Wall Street rich, but the rest of us? I think it's hard to deny that Washington doesn't care about us one whit.
I keep hoping I can pilot this thing through this recession, but that's hard to envision since I honestly don't think things will improve for years.
However, I also wonder, what if this thing goes down? I've burned through pretty close to every available resource I could muster. I might very well have to find something else to do here, soon.
At my age, I can't imagine finding that many employers who would be interested in me.
I'd really want to start another business. But what? I sure won't have any money.
There are a couple of things I'd like to go back to school and study. Again, though, school is expensive.
I could take a deployment or two with the Navy, but that only solves the problem for a few years.
The other part of all this is that my son is 8, almost 9 years old. I have about 9 more years with him until he, most likely, leaves home. This business was a way for me to earn a living in an economic armpit of the country so he wouldn't have to change schools and could keep all his same friends.
If he were already off to college, I'd probably be asking to be mobilized with the Navy right now. Instead, although I'll probably have to spend a year or so away on mobilization one of these days, I want to spend as much time with him as I can. His years as a youngster are numbered.
So, all there is left for me to do is keep plugging away. Do whatever I can to avoid becoming another sad story. Do whatever is within my power to avoid becoming a small business statistic.
It's been so long, honestly, I can't even remember what it was like to do over $100,000 a month in business. We had 2 of them in 2008. In the first half of 2009, we had 3. It's not like they were totally unheard of.
Now, though, everything is changed. Instead of seven figure annual sales goals, I'm hoping we can sustain $40,000 a month.
I am already thinking in terms of, "It used to be like X back when I was rich."
Back when I was rich. Let's hope those days come again.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Keys to Perfect Parenting
Okay, I have to admit, the title is a loss-leader. I don't know the keys to perfect parenting. I also don't think anybody else does, either. Anybody claiming to be able to impart that sort of flawless wisdom is probably trying to make a fast buck at the expense of some naive and desperate people.
However, like most parents, I want to be a good parent. Most parents I know take their responsibilities very, very seriously. If I thought it were possible to be a perfect parent, that's what I'd want to do.
My son is the closest connection I could have with immortality. If things play out according to the natural order, he will be here long after I'm gone. If I've done my job correctly, the lessons I passed to him will be passed on to his kids and so on.
I worry about my son. It's difficult to squeeze an entire human being's existence into a neat little box. Just as you think you've got a kid figured out, he grows and changes and you're presented with a new set of challenges. Even when the kid is as young as my son: only 8 years old, they are fabulously complex little beings.
The big thing in our lives right now is travel baseball. That's a new experience for both of us. I have to admit, I was very proud when he made the team after two days of tryouts. I was never much of a baseball player. My two years of Little League were probably two years too many. Still, baseball is something my son has always loved. From the time he could walk, if there was a ball around, he would throw it.
At 3 years old, he would throw a tennis ball against the front door and practice catching it every night. Sometimes for an hour or more. You just don't see that sort of focus from a 3 year old.
At 4, when he had his first real baseball glove, he'd throw wiffle balls against the same door and work on catching with his glove, over and over and over again.
He would set up imaginary bases in the living room and tell his mother, "Mom, the Indians are playing the Yankess and I'm up to bat!"
Nobody ever pushed him to any of this. If environment were the deciding factor in developing a kids' loves in life, he'd be a piano player right now. Our house was always full of guitars, drums, keyboards. We had PA systems and recording studios for every minute of his lifetime. He just never really took to it.
He just loves sports, and baseball most of all.
So, here's where the parenting stuff comes in. On the one hand, a responsible parent has an obligation to steer their kids into productive and positive activities. On the other hand, you have to try to walk that line between doing what's good for the kid, and going overboard on trying to shape them into something they may not want to be.
As an example: letting a kid play baseball? Good.
Forcing a kid to play baseball when they'd rather not? Not good.
When Logan tried out for Mavericks, I not only had to take into account that he loved baseball, but I also had to consider whether this would be a positive activity for him. Would it be too much? Would it be too stressful?
The fact that he wants to do it? Yeah, that's a big factor, but it's not the only one. Being a parent means sometimes not-letting your kid do things they may fully want to do.
Last night, Logan came to talk to me. I am pretty amazed at the depth of the conversation we had, considering he's 8. He was clearly bothered by something.
The first thing he wanted to talk about was really sort of interesting for me. Logan plays baseball in the front yard. Not actual baseball. He takes a bat of some sort, and a ball of some sort, and hits and runs bases. He'll do this for hours to entertain himself.
Now, being the busybody Dad I am, I've tried at different times to make the activity more productive for him. For instance, I suggested he use his narrow bat. (They make training bats that are much narrower than a normal bat to improve hand-eye coordination.) I've suggested he use foam mini-balls.
I don't MAKE him do anything, really. It's mostly free-play. However, I'll suggest things here and there. Sometimes he does what I'm suggesting. Sometimes he doesn't.
There were also times in the past when I'd see him out front playing his little games and think, "I should be out there, somehow. Poor kid, out there with nobody to play with." When I would, he'd indulge me for a few minutes, then make it clear that it would be okay if I went back into the house.
Yesterday, he said he had lost one of his tennis balls. I told him no problem. It'd turn up, or I'd just pick him up some more next time I'm at a store that sells them. I tossed him a couple of the foam mini-balls to use. He didn't need them. He still had one tennis ball left.
So, later, he could barely bring himself to say, "Dad, when I play baseball in the front yard, that's my fun-time for baseball. Mavericks is my serious time."
The more he spoke, the more it became clear that what he wanted was just to have fun running around in the front yard. He didn't want me to make it a meaningful training activity. He didn't want me suggesting that he hit a different type of ball, or use a different type of bat.
Fair enough. Obviously, I meant no harm. And we're talking about interactions that lasted probably less than a minute and that happened, at most, about once every 3 or 4 weeks. However, he was making a reasonable request and I felt that I should honor it.
Logan is a very cooperative and obedient child. If there were ever a little boy with no serious behavioral issues, it's him. To this day, I still marvel at how easy it is to get him to do the things he should be doing. You tell him once and that's it. It was that way, even when he was too young to be verbal. His grandmother noted that even as a toddler, he was like his mother: if he was doing something he shouldn't, you told him once and that was all it took.
So, I think, to Logan, when I would get in there and say, "try this", if he didn't really want to try it, it caused some internal conflict for him. I'm his Dad and I think part of him was saying, "We should do what Dad wants". Even though he didn't have to, it was enough to create a little dissonance within him.
Easy fix on this one. Let the kid play. He doesn't want or need my involvement.
Now, on to second issue. (Yes, the conversation was really this long, had this many issues and he really did bring these things up.)
Logan does miss his friends. He was a day-care kid from an early age and formed a lot of friendships with a lot of other kids in his class. There are a couple, especially, that he sees a lot less of, now that baseball is in full swing.
One of them has really been giving Logan a hard time about Mavericks. He tells Logan that Mavericks take up too much of his time. He tells Logan that his rec team could beat the Mavericks.
At first, I would tell Logan that the kid was being a little crazy. The rec teams have a lot of good players, but honestly, they're at least 3 or 4 years behind the level of ball Logan is playing in travel. I told him maybe the kid was a little jealous.
Now, I think there's more to it. Maybe the kid resents the Mavericks because he feels like they're taking his buddy away.
Logan said that he wishes he could play on a rec team with the two kids who I would say are his best friends.
I told him that once this season is over, he doesn't have to try out for Mavericks next year. If he wants to play rec league next year, that's fine.
He was clearly relieved about that.
However, I pointed out some realities about playing rec ball.
The first is that, sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody here, but the rec teams are really terrible. 22 of the best players in the district are now playing travel baseball for the district's sponsored travel teams. Throw in that a handful play for travel teams not sponsored by the rec district, and the number is probably closer to 35 or 40.
The layers that are left? There are a few who are good players. The rest are players who either aren't very good, or who have developmental issues. I'm not trying to be cruel, here, but Logan playing rec would be pretty much like him playing against travel teams of 6 year olds.
Last year in rec, he had a game where he went 4 for 4 with 2 home runs. That was BEFORE the travel teams took most of the good players out of the league.
Yeah, he would probably get an ego-boost by hitting 3 home runs per game and being the star everything on the team, but it would do next to nothing for his development as a baseball player.
I'm not trying to be cruel to the kids playing rec. As I've said, there are some good players in there. Trouble is, they're outnumbered by about 8 to 1 with kids who just can't play baseball very well.
So, I pointed out to Logan the following realities about playing rec.
1. There are 2 rec teams for Logan's school. It is nearly impossible that Logan and his 2 buddies would end up on the same team by luck of the draw.
2. One of his 2 buddies has said he's going to try out for Mavericks next year. (He didn't try out last year.) If he makes the Mavs and Logan is playing rec, he still won't get to be on a team with the kid.
3. Logan could very well end up on a team with neither of his friends, and the team could really, really be a very bad team. Baseball is a dismal game to play when your team can't get outs, you're baking in the sun while the other team bats over and over and over again, and when your turn comes up to bat, you go down 1, 2, 3 every inning.
So, yeah, the idea of playing in a league where he'd be a big bad stud has some appeal at a quick glance, but it could very well turn into a nightmare.
Again, I emphasized that he had a choice here. He said, "Well, now I'm thinking I want to play Mavericks."
I told him that right now is way too soon to make that decision. He has a lot of time to decide. Tryouts aren't until August and we're not even halfway through the Mavericks season, yet. I told him that he really should reserve judgement until after the season is over. There is no need for him to make that decision right now.
If he plays rec, that's fine with me. Personally, I think it'll be a self-correcting problem. He could play rec for a year, realize he's miserable, and then he'll go back to Mavs the next year. I can see this happening. At this age, he's got good fundamentals and good athleticism. Playing rec would free up time where I could send him to some clinics to make up for the stuff he's not getting, coaching-wise.
The only other aspect of this is that he has one friend in particular who is really badmouthing the whole Mavericks thing. I think part of it is jealously. I think part of it is that he misses Logan. However, the reality is that this is a case where one friend may inadvertently be trying to hold Logan back. Yeah, Logan may not mind being held back, but at 8 years old, he doesn't realize that his friends won't hold themselves back for him. It's misplaced loyalty to hold himself back for them.
Still, if he played rec., it would also free up time to learn other activities. Heck, I'm glad he's playing baseball, but honestly, I'd rather have the time for him to learn golf. He could still play a High School sport and he would have something that could be an active part of his life beyond High School.
So, I just don't have a lot of worries about this one. One way or another, I think things will work out just fine.
Mostly, I think he was relieved to hear that he had a choice, here, and that he wasn't trapped.
The third topic he brought up did require some action on my part, though. He said that the combination of school and baseball has got him a little worn down. I understand and had worried about that.
The first problem is his bedtime. His mother and I have fought like cats and dogs about this for as long as Logan has been alive. I think a reasonable bedtime for him would be about 9:00. She thinks a reasonable bedtime is about 10:00 to 10:30. We have had absolute knock-down, drag-out fights over this over the years. If I push the issue, and am willing to risk another knock-down drag-out fight, I can try to get his bedtime routine started at 9:30, which means he might get to bed at 9:50.
I think that if you have to wake your kid up out of a dead sleep to get them to school, they're not getting enough sleep. I'm not about to raise my kid by consensus, but the vast majority of kids Logan's age have a bed-time between 8:30 and 9:00.
So, I think the lack of sleep, in a kid, just like in an adult, is creating stress for him. Just like with grownups, it keeps you from handling things well. It makes little things seem bigger than they really are.
The other thing is, frankly, I agree with him that the practice schedule for the baseball team has been a bit overboard. We started practice back in September, took maybe a month off in December, than started up again in January.
On the one hand, that's awesome as far as developing skills. However, this isn't the 1970s soviet union. We don't need to identify our athletes at a young age and feed them a constant diet of one sport until they are honed into the ultimate international competitors.
So, I'm going to make a point of letting Logan miss the optional practices. We have maybe one practice a week that's optional. We've been busting our butts to get to them, but when we've got 2 or 3 games and 1 or 2 regular practices in a typical week, that's just too much while school is in session.
Also, if he plays Mavs next year, I'm going to campaign hard for them not to do the Fall practices. If they're optional, we won't attend. I think that's just too much and doesn't really have that much impact on how they play in the Spring. Whether they start in the Fall or Spring, they'll play just as well once the season rolls around. The Fall practices are just leading to burnout.
Logan has only had about 1 or 2 months off from baseball since this time last year. He loves baseball, but he's also 8 years old. I don't want to wear him out.
So, here I am trying to nurture and foster a kid's love of the game, while trying to keep him from getting stressed out at both sports and school.
Granted, in the grand scheme of things, this is small potatoes. It's not really a "problem" per se. Just something I have to figure out and deal with. Like most things with parenting, I'll have the perfect answer some years in the future when it's too late to use it.
I just want my boy to be happy. I told him how proud I was of him for bringing these things up last night. It was very hard for him and each issue, he told me through tears. He was afraid I'd be angry. It took a lot for him to muster the courage to bring these topics up.
Which is a good reminder that he's a sensitive young man who is still only 8 years old. I do wonder if there were a sport he could excel in, that's fun to practice on your own. I honestly can't think of any... okay, other than cup stacking.
However, like most parents, I want to be a good parent. Most parents I know take their responsibilities very, very seriously. If I thought it were possible to be a perfect parent, that's what I'd want to do.
My son is the closest connection I could have with immortality. If things play out according to the natural order, he will be here long after I'm gone. If I've done my job correctly, the lessons I passed to him will be passed on to his kids and so on.
I worry about my son. It's difficult to squeeze an entire human being's existence into a neat little box. Just as you think you've got a kid figured out, he grows and changes and you're presented with a new set of challenges. Even when the kid is as young as my son: only 8 years old, they are fabulously complex little beings.
The big thing in our lives right now is travel baseball. That's a new experience for both of us. I have to admit, I was very proud when he made the team after two days of tryouts. I was never much of a baseball player. My two years of Little League were probably two years too many. Still, baseball is something my son has always loved. From the time he could walk, if there was a ball around, he would throw it.
At 3 years old, he would throw a tennis ball against the front door and practice catching it every night. Sometimes for an hour or more. You just don't see that sort of focus from a 3 year old.
At 4, when he had his first real baseball glove, he'd throw wiffle balls against the same door and work on catching with his glove, over and over and over again.
He would set up imaginary bases in the living room and tell his mother, "Mom, the Indians are playing the Yankess and I'm up to bat!"
Nobody ever pushed him to any of this. If environment were the deciding factor in developing a kids' loves in life, he'd be a piano player right now. Our house was always full of guitars, drums, keyboards. We had PA systems and recording studios for every minute of his lifetime. He just never really took to it.
He just loves sports, and baseball most of all.
So, here's where the parenting stuff comes in. On the one hand, a responsible parent has an obligation to steer their kids into productive and positive activities. On the other hand, you have to try to walk that line between doing what's good for the kid, and going overboard on trying to shape them into something they may not want to be.
As an example: letting a kid play baseball? Good.
Forcing a kid to play baseball when they'd rather not? Not good.
When Logan tried out for Mavericks, I not only had to take into account that he loved baseball, but I also had to consider whether this would be a positive activity for him. Would it be too much? Would it be too stressful?
The fact that he wants to do it? Yeah, that's a big factor, but it's not the only one. Being a parent means sometimes not-letting your kid do things they may fully want to do.
Last night, Logan came to talk to me. I am pretty amazed at the depth of the conversation we had, considering he's 8. He was clearly bothered by something.
The first thing he wanted to talk about was really sort of interesting for me. Logan plays baseball in the front yard. Not actual baseball. He takes a bat of some sort, and a ball of some sort, and hits and runs bases. He'll do this for hours to entertain himself.
Now, being the busybody Dad I am, I've tried at different times to make the activity more productive for him. For instance, I suggested he use his narrow bat. (They make training bats that are much narrower than a normal bat to improve hand-eye coordination.) I've suggested he use foam mini-balls.
I don't MAKE him do anything, really. It's mostly free-play. However, I'll suggest things here and there. Sometimes he does what I'm suggesting. Sometimes he doesn't.
There were also times in the past when I'd see him out front playing his little games and think, "I should be out there, somehow. Poor kid, out there with nobody to play with." When I would, he'd indulge me for a few minutes, then make it clear that it would be okay if I went back into the house.
Yesterday, he said he had lost one of his tennis balls. I told him no problem. It'd turn up, or I'd just pick him up some more next time I'm at a store that sells them. I tossed him a couple of the foam mini-balls to use. He didn't need them. He still had one tennis ball left.
So, later, he could barely bring himself to say, "Dad, when I play baseball in the front yard, that's my fun-time for baseball. Mavericks is my serious time."
The more he spoke, the more it became clear that what he wanted was just to have fun running around in the front yard. He didn't want me to make it a meaningful training activity. He didn't want me suggesting that he hit a different type of ball, or use a different type of bat.
Fair enough. Obviously, I meant no harm. And we're talking about interactions that lasted probably less than a minute and that happened, at most, about once every 3 or 4 weeks. However, he was making a reasonable request and I felt that I should honor it.
Logan is a very cooperative and obedient child. If there were ever a little boy with no serious behavioral issues, it's him. To this day, I still marvel at how easy it is to get him to do the things he should be doing. You tell him once and that's it. It was that way, even when he was too young to be verbal. His grandmother noted that even as a toddler, he was like his mother: if he was doing something he shouldn't, you told him once and that was all it took.
So, I think, to Logan, when I would get in there and say, "try this", if he didn't really want to try it, it caused some internal conflict for him. I'm his Dad and I think part of him was saying, "We should do what Dad wants". Even though he didn't have to, it was enough to create a little dissonance within him.
Easy fix on this one. Let the kid play. He doesn't want or need my involvement.
Now, on to second issue. (Yes, the conversation was really this long, had this many issues and he really did bring these things up.)
Logan does miss his friends. He was a day-care kid from an early age and formed a lot of friendships with a lot of other kids in his class. There are a couple, especially, that he sees a lot less of, now that baseball is in full swing.
One of them has really been giving Logan a hard time about Mavericks. He tells Logan that Mavericks take up too much of his time. He tells Logan that his rec team could beat the Mavericks.
At first, I would tell Logan that the kid was being a little crazy. The rec teams have a lot of good players, but honestly, they're at least 3 or 4 years behind the level of ball Logan is playing in travel. I told him maybe the kid was a little jealous.
Now, I think there's more to it. Maybe the kid resents the Mavericks because he feels like they're taking his buddy away.
Logan said that he wishes he could play on a rec team with the two kids who I would say are his best friends.
I told him that once this season is over, he doesn't have to try out for Mavericks next year. If he wants to play rec league next year, that's fine.
He was clearly relieved about that.
However, I pointed out some realities about playing rec ball.
The first is that, sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody here, but the rec teams are really terrible. 22 of the best players in the district are now playing travel baseball for the district's sponsored travel teams. Throw in that a handful play for travel teams not sponsored by the rec district, and the number is probably closer to 35 or 40.
The layers that are left? There are a few who are good players. The rest are players who either aren't very good, or who have developmental issues. I'm not trying to be cruel, here, but Logan playing rec would be pretty much like him playing against travel teams of 6 year olds.
Last year in rec, he had a game where he went 4 for 4 with 2 home runs. That was BEFORE the travel teams took most of the good players out of the league.
Yeah, he would probably get an ego-boost by hitting 3 home runs per game and being the star everything on the team, but it would do next to nothing for his development as a baseball player.
I'm not trying to be cruel to the kids playing rec. As I've said, there are some good players in there. Trouble is, they're outnumbered by about 8 to 1 with kids who just can't play baseball very well.
So, I pointed out to Logan the following realities about playing rec.
1. There are 2 rec teams for Logan's school. It is nearly impossible that Logan and his 2 buddies would end up on the same team by luck of the draw.
2. One of his 2 buddies has said he's going to try out for Mavericks next year. (He didn't try out last year.) If he makes the Mavs and Logan is playing rec, he still won't get to be on a team with the kid.
3. Logan could very well end up on a team with neither of his friends, and the team could really, really be a very bad team. Baseball is a dismal game to play when your team can't get outs, you're baking in the sun while the other team bats over and over and over again, and when your turn comes up to bat, you go down 1, 2, 3 every inning.
So, yeah, the idea of playing in a league where he'd be a big bad stud has some appeal at a quick glance, but it could very well turn into a nightmare.
Again, I emphasized that he had a choice here. He said, "Well, now I'm thinking I want to play Mavericks."
I told him that right now is way too soon to make that decision. He has a lot of time to decide. Tryouts aren't until August and we're not even halfway through the Mavericks season, yet. I told him that he really should reserve judgement until after the season is over. There is no need for him to make that decision right now.
If he plays rec, that's fine with me. Personally, I think it'll be a self-correcting problem. He could play rec for a year, realize he's miserable, and then he'll go back to Mavs the next year. I can see this happening. At this age, he's got good fundamentals and good athleticism. Playing rec would free up time where I could send him to some clinics to make up for the stuff he's not getting, coaching-wise.
The only other aspect of this is that he has one friend in particular who is really badmouthing the whole Mavericks thing. I think part of it is jealously. I think part of it is that he misses Logan. However, the reality is that this is a case where one friend may inadvertently be trying to hold Logan back. Yeah, Logan may not mind being held back, but at 8 years old, he doesn't realize that his friends won't hold themselves back for him. It's misplaced loyalty to hold himself back for them.
Still, if he played rec., it would also free up time to learn other activities. Heck, I'm glad he's playing baseball, but honestly, I'd rather have the time for him to learn golf. He could still play a High School sport and he would have something that could be an active part of his life beyond High School.
So, I just don't have a lot of worries about this one. One way or another, I think things will work out just fine.
Mostly, I think he was relieved to hear that he had a choice, here, and that he wasn't trapped.
The third topic he brought up did require some action on my part, though. He said that the combination of school and baseball has got him a little worn down. I understand and had worried about that.
The first problem is his bedtime. His mother and I have fought like cats and dogs about this for as long as Logan has been alive. I think a reasonable bedtime for him would be about 9:00. She thinks a reasonable bedtime is about 10:00 to 10:30. We have had absolute knock-down, drag-out fights over this over the years. If I push the issue, and am willing to risk another knock-down drag-out fight, I can try to get his bedtime routine started at 9:30, which means he might get to bed at 9:50.
I think that if you have to wake your kid up out of a dead sleep to get them to school, they're not getting enough sleep. I'm not about to raise my kid by consensus, but the vast majority of kids Logan's age have a bed-time between 8:30 and 9:00.
So, I think the lack of sleep, in a kid, just like in an adult, is creating stress for him. Just like with grownups, it keeps you from handling things well. It makes little things seem bigger than they really are.
The other thing is, frankly, I agree with him that the practice schedule for the baseball team has been a bit overboard. We started practice back in September, took maybe a month off in December, than started up again in January.
On the one hand, that's awesome as far as developing skills. However, this isn't the 1970s soviet union. We don't need to identify our athletes at a young age and feed them a constant diet of one sport until they are honed into the ultimate international competitors.
So, I'm going to make a point of letting Logan miss the optional practices. We have maybe one practice a week that's optional. We've been busting our butts to get to them, but when we've got 2 or 3 games and 1 or 2 regular practices in a typical week, that's just too much while school is in session.
Also, if he plays Mavs next year, I'm going to campaign hard for them not to do the Fall practices. If they're optional, we won't attend. I think that's just too much and doesn't really have that much impact on how they play in the Spring. Whether they start in the Fall or Spring, they'll play just as well once the season rolls around. The Fall practices are just leading to burnout.
Logan has only had about 1 or 2 months off from baseball since this time last year. He loves baseball, but he's also 8 years old. I don't want to wear him out.
So, here I am trying to nurture and foster a kid's love of the game, while trying to keep him from getting stressed out at both sports and school.
Granted, in the grand scheme of things, this is small potatoes. It's not really a "problem" per se. Just something I have to figure out and deal with. Like most things with parenting, I'll have the perfect answer some years in the future when it's too late to use it.
I just want my boy to be happy. I told him how proud I was of him for bringing these things up last night. It was very hard for him and each issue, he told me through tears. He was afraid I'd be angry. It took a lot for him to muster the courage to bring these topics up.
Which is a good reminder that he's a sensitive young man who is still only 8 years old. I do wonder if there were a sport he could excel in, that's fun to practice on your own. I honestly can't think of any... okay, other than cup stacking.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Why small business people... or at least THIS small businessperson, will never forgive any politician who supported the bailouts
Senator Bob Bennett just got ousted in the Republican Primary in Utah and I couldn't be more pleased. It appears that he was ousted based on a single vote that he cast: the vote for House Resolution 1424, more commonly known as TARP.
Better yet, pretty much everybody who voted for TARP is now quaking in their boots. They are getting huge and real primary challenges, and if they get to the general election, they're going to have a lot of trouble because TARP isn't popular with either Republicans or Independents. Democrats aren't that big on it, but it's not that big of a factor for them.
Now, that's pretty harsh, I'll admit. Bennett was a career conservative. One of the most conservative members of the Senate. Is it right that a single vote should cost him his career? My answer is a resounding, "yes".
To understand, we have to go back and revisit the history a bit. The banks, through nothing more than their own genuine stupidity, caused themselves huge problems that came to a head sometime in 2008.
Hank Paulson went to congress and said that if congress didn't give the banks all the money in the universe, with no strings attached, that we would all die in the next great depression.
The people, almost unanimously, shut down the congressional switchboard screaming that they wanted NO BAILOUT. That Wall Street caused their own troubles. They should fix them, themselves. If they couldn't, then too bad. They need to be financially ruined for being so stupid.
HR 3997 was rejected.
Wall Street sent more lobbyists, Hank Paulson explained that fascism is the only form of government that works, and HR 1424 passed.
Now, that was bad enough. Honestly, if that were all Bennett and others had done, I'd probably have found it distasteful, but not unforgiveable.
What happened next outraged everybody. Wall Street didn't provide any liquidity, at all. None of that money got to Main Street. Unemployment shot up to 10%, where it is today.
The bankers and insurance executives who had just destroyed the US economy then went about awarding themselves multimillion dollar bonuses.
Congress did nothing.
Bottom line: congress threw main street under the bus so Wall Street wouldn't have to deal with a bumpy ride.
Small businesspeople, more than any other group I'm aware of, hate the bailouts.
We're a fiesty lot. You have to have a bit of a ballsy and independent streak to hang out your shingle in the first place. We play fair, we play by the rules.
We're not so naive as to believe that life is always fair. We deal with little injustices on a daily basis.
We also are sick to death of other people putting their hands on our money. Once you open a business, it's as though the entire world is now entitled to your money and they make demands on it every day.
Most of us have gone through tough times. We've done extreme things to save our businesses. We've loaded up our credit cards. We've sold off all our posessions.
Ultimately, we know that the price of running a business badly is that we may ultimately fail. We may ultimately face financial ruin that could take a decade or more to dig out of.
So, to see congress annihilate the American people, our sense of justice, our capitalist heritage just to benefit some stupid Wall Street morons who couldn't run a profitable business? It is infuriating.
So, when a congressman is stupid enough, as Bennett was, to claim that he voted for the bailout because businesses in his district demanded it? That strains credibility. Personally, I don't know a single small businessperson who thinks any of those Wall Street banks who needed TARP should be in business at all.
What about the argument that it was a terrible thing to do, but if we didn't, then we would have faced another great depression? Honestly, I think anybody who thinks that is too stupid to be allowed to own property.
Are there actually people so stupid in our country who think that the great depression would have been averted if we had made 1-year loans to 12 banks and bought 1 insurance company and 2 car companies?
This was never Great Depression II in the making. That was just a smokescreen used to ensure the success of No Banker Left Behind.
If there is a capitalist hell, George Bush, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Barack Obama and every legislator who voted for the bailout deserves to be there, forever. What they did was unforgivable. Losing office is the least that should happen to them.
Better yet, pretty much everybody who voted for TARP is now quaking in their boots. They are getting huge and real primary challenges, and if they get to the general election, they're going to have a lot of trouble because TARP isn't popular with either Republicans or Independents. Democrats aren't that big on it, but it's not that big of a factor for them.
Now, that's pretty harsh, I'll admit. Bennett was a career conservative. One of the most conservative members of the Senate. Is it right that a single vote should cost him his career? My answer is a resounding, "yes".
To understand, we have to go back and revisit the history a bit. The banks, through nothing more than their own genuine stupidity, caused themselves huge problems that came to a head sometime in 2008.
Hank Paulson went to congress and said that if congress didn't give the banks all the money in the universe, with no strings attached, that we would all die in the next great depression.
The people, almost unanimously, shut down the congressional switchboard screaming that they wanted NO BAILOUT. That Wall Street caused their own troubles. They should fix them, themselves. If they couldn't, then too bad. They need to be financially ruined for being so stupid.
HR 3997 was rejected.
Wall Street sent more lobbyists, Hank Paulson explained that fascism is the only form of government that works, and HR 1424 passed.
Now, that was bad enough. Honestly, if that were all Bennett and others had done, I'd probably have found it distasteful, but not unforgiveable.
What happened next outraged everybody. Wall Street didn't provide any liquidity, at all. None of that money got to Main Street. Unemployment shot up to 10%, where it is today.
The bankers and insurance executives who had just destroyed the US economy then went about awarding themselves multimillion dollar bonuses.
Congress did nothing.
Bottom line: congress threw main street under the bus so Wall Street wouldn't have to deal with a bumpy ride.
Small businesspeople, more than any other group I'm aware of, hate the bailouts.
We're a fiesty lot. You have to have a bit of a ballsy and independent streak to hang out your shingle in the first place. We play fair, we play by the rules.
We're not so naive as to believe that life is always fair. We deal with little injustices on a daily basis.
We also are sick to death of other people putting their hands on our money. Once you open a business, it's as though the entire world is now entitled to your money and they make demands on it every day.
Most of us have gone through tough times. We've done extreme things to save our businesses. We've loaded up our credit cards. We've sold off all our posessions.
Ultimately, we know that the price of running a business badly is that we may ultimately fail. We may ultimately face financial ruin that could take a decade or more to dig out of.
So, to see congress annihilate the American people, our sense of justice, our capitalist heritage just to benefit some stupid Wall Street morons who couldn't run a profitable business? It is infuriating.
So, when a congressman is stupid enough, as Bennett was, to claim that he voted for the bailout because businesses in his district demanded it? That strains credibility. Personally, I don't know a single small businessperson who thinks any of those Wall Street banks who needed TARP should be in business at all.
What about the argument that it was a terrible thing to do, but if we didn't, then we would have faced another great depression? Honestly, I think anybody who thinks that is too stupid to be allowed to own property.
Are there actually people so stupid in our country who think that the great depression would have been averted if we had made 1-year loans to 12 banks and bought 1 insurance company and 2 car companies?
This was never Great Depression II in the making. That was just a smokescreen used to ensure the success of No Banker Left Behind.
If there is a capitalist hell, George Bush, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Barack Obama and every legislator who voted for the bailout deserves to be there, forever. What they did was unforgivable. Losing office is the least that should happen to them.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Kids Sports and Focusing on an Elite Athletic Program
As anybody who knows me knows, my son is playing travel baseball for the first time this year. It's been intense. 2 practices a week for 8 months prior to the start of the season. Since the season started, we've played about 3 or 4 games a week.
(A little of this is due to a fluke in scheduling. Once the middle of June rolls around, other than 2 tournaments, we only play 1 game a week. Crazy, because the boys will be out of school by then, but oh well.)
My go-to guy on baseball knowledge is my cousin's husband, Clay Snellgrove. He owns/runs the Bases Loaded Baseball school in Murfreesboro, TN. He played 4 years of baseball in college at Middle Tennessee State University (a Div I school), played a bunch of years in the Padres minor league system at their AA affiliate, and I think he got called up for AAA ball once or twice.
So, as far as baseball knowledge goes, this guy is a bona-fide former professional baseball player who has gone farther in sports than anybody else I personally know. (Apologies if I got any of the details of your career wrong, Clay. I think I hit most of the major points, though.)
That's just a very long way of saying, when this guy says something about sports, especially in regards to developing young people to play sports, I listen.
When he says a big barrel bat makes a difference, I go to the store and buy big barrel bats.
When he says that the Mizuno Power Close gloves really are probably the best-designed gloves for younger players, the next catcher's mitt I buy is a Mizuno Power Close.
Sometimes, though, he surprises me. We recently had a long conversation where I shared with him my concerns that maybe Logan is getting a little too much baseball.
Now, I'm not complaining. I'm just neurotic. Logan, if he continues to play travel ball, will only get a month, maybe a month and a half off from baseball every year. That causes me some concern. He's also developing little baseball related injuries that may or may not have happened if he were just playing rec. league. That causes me some concern. Overtraining in any discipline can lead to injury. That's just a fact.
To make matters worse, there are ways for Logan to play MORE baseball. Fall baseball leagues aren't that common up here, but they're around. I basically put my foot down on that one, though, when a parent or two approached me about Logan playing.
There comes a point where, sorry, it's just overkill. I don't care who your boy is, but he doesn't need a 12 month organized baseball routine, with no breaks. Especially not when he's 8 years old.
Now, I do believe, on balance, that travel baseball is positive for Logan. As a previous blog post pointed out, he's getting plenty of "normal childhood" time, but missing out on some of the abject boredom and video game aspects of a "normal childhood". To date, I haven't seen that travel baseball has caused him to miss out on anything positive in his life.
I do worry, though. Clay thought that perhaps the 8 month off-season might be a bit of overkill, too.
He emphasized that participation in other sports may actually help a kid in one sport moreso than merely concentrating on one sport year-round.
In this case, you could take a kid and put him through a 10 month a year baseball program. Or, you could put him through a 5 month baseball program, but have him play, say, soccer or basketball in the off-season. That way he's still developing his athleticism, coordination, etc.
Baseball is tricky, too, because it doesn't emphasize cardiovascular fitness the same way that, say, soccer does. Yes, being one of the fastest kids on the team helps Logan. However, if he couldn't hit, catch and throw, all the cardiovascular health in the world won't make a whit of difference.
(This difference, by the way, really starts showing up after puberty. Pretty much every elite runner in the universe has a story about how they were the world's most uncoordinated soccer or basketball player. They attribute it to having a higher concentration of slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are helpful in sports like distance running. However, the lack of fast-twitch muscles gives them much slower reaction ability than the kids who excel at your typical hand-eye, or foot-eye sports.)
So, is all the off-season work paying off? Yeah, I think so, but not as much as others might think.
As I've said before, 90% of a kid's athletic success probably happened in the womb, not as part of some rigorous training program.
So, let's say your kid is already a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 as far as baseball skills. That rigorous 8 month off-season program? Probably brought them up to maybe a 9.6 or 9.7. However, Clay feels that a shorter off-season program, maybe a month or two, would give them the bulk of that improvement. Maybe bring them to a 9.5.
On top of that, he feels that the additional athleticism they'd gain by playing soccer in the off season would render any remaining difference moot.
So, in this example, a 2 month pre-season program would bring them to 9.5, but their 2 months of soccer give them enough additional athleticism to bring them to a 9.6 or 9.7.
So, what are the lessons to be drawn from all this?
First, I don't think, especially at an early age, that concentrating exclusively on one sport is necessary, even if you think the kids future is in that sport.
Second, even if you are one of the few parents who are grooming your kid, sure that they will get a scholarship to a Div I school or play some sort of sport professionally, you can still probably get them there just as quickly if you expose them to a wide variety of sports, especially when they're younger. (I will add an editorial comment that these parents are what I'd consider emotionally unbalanced and not very realistic. Their beliefs will probably end up causing more harm than good for their kids. If your kid plays Div I ball, that's awesome. However, a lot of very talented kids try and not very many succeed. So, while preparing them to play Div I, you might want to consider having a strong plan B if Plan A doesn't pan out.)
Third, the bottom line of all sports for kids should be fun. Period. End of story. Fitness, socialization, self-esteem, those are all secondary reasons to do it. If your kid isn't enjoying it, you shouldn't be pushing them into it. So, it's important for coaches to make sure that practices are actually fun for kids. It's also important to guage your kids feelings towards participation in sports. Once they start treating it like a job they don't enjoy, it's probably time to try and find something else.
Fourth, there does come a time in late Middle School or High School where a kid with real talent will have to select just one sport to focus on. Especially in sports like Basketball and Baseball since they rely very heavily on specific techniques in addition to general athleticism. However, I still think there should be at least one season where even these kids prepping for an elite athletic career should work on a different sport. It gives them a break, lets them avoid overuse injuries and helps their overall athleticism.
So, how does this all apply to me, personally? Logan can play Mavs baseball so long as he enjoys it. (He still loves baseball. Had to keep him from trying to crash a rec. league practice today. Never saw a kid who loved baseball practice so much he would try to crash other teams' practices.)
However, I hope he keeps an active interest in other sports. So far, so good. He plays rec flag football and in a local church-sponsored basketball league. The longer he can play multiple sports, the better.
(A little of this is due to a fluke in scheduling. Once the middle of June rolls around, other than 2 tournaments, we only play 1 game a week. Crazy, because the boys will be out of school by then, but oh well.)
My go-to guy on baseball knowledge is my cousin's husband, Clay Snellgrove. He owns/runs the Bases Loaded Baseball school in Murfreesboro, TN. He played 4 years of baseball in college at Middle Tennessee State University (a Div I school), played a bunch of years in the Padres minor league system at their AA affiliate, and I think he got called up for AAA ball once or twice.
So, as far as baseball knowledge goes, this guy is a bona-fide former professional baseball player who has gone farther in sports than anybody else I personally know. (Apologies if I got any of the details of your career wrong, Clay. I think I hit most of the major points, though.)
That's just a very long way of saying, when this guy says something about sports, especially in regards to developing young people to play sports, I listen.
When he says a big barrel bat makes a difference, I go to the store and buy big barrel bats.
When he says that the Mizuno Power Close gloves really are probably the best-designed gloves for younger players, the next catcher's mitt I buy is a Mizuno Power Close.
Sometimes, though, he surprises me. We recently had a long conversation where I shared with him my concerns that maybe Logan is getting a little too much baseball.
Now, I'm not complaining. I'm just neurotic. Logan, if he continues to play travel ball, will only get a month, maybe a month and a half off from baseball every year. That causes me some concern. He's also developing little baseball related injuries that may or may not have happened if he were just playing rec. league. That causes me some concern. Overtraining in any discipline can lead to injury. That's just a fact.
To make matters worse, there are ways for Logan to play MORE baseball. Fall baseball leagues aren't that common up here, but they're around. I basically put my foot down on that one, though, when a parent or two approached me about Logan playing.
There comes a point where, sorry, it's just overkill. I don't care who your boy is, but he doesn't need a 12 month organized baseball routine, with no breaks. Especially not when he's 8 years old.
Now, I do believe, on balance, that travel baseball is positive for Logan. As a previous blog post pointed out, he's getting plenty of "normal childhood" time, but missing out on some of the abject boredom and video game aspects of a "normal childhood". To date, I haven't seen that travel baseball has caused him to miss out on anything positive in his life.
I do worry, though. Clay thought that perhaps the 8 month off-season might be a bit of overkill, too.
He emphasized that participation in other sports may actually help a kid in one sport moreso than merely concentrating on one sport year-round.
In this case, you could take a kid and put him through a 10 month a year baseball program. Or, you could put him through a 5 month baseball program, but have him play, say, soccer or basketball in the off-season. That way he's still developing his athleticism, coordination, etc.
Baseball is tricky, too, because it doesn't emphasize cardiovascular fitness the same way that, say, soccer does. Yes, being one of the fastest kids on the team helps Logan. However, if he couldn't hit, catch and throw, all the cardiovascular health in the world won't make a whit of difference.
(This difference, by the way, really starts showing up after puberty. Pretty much every elite runner in the universe has a story about how they were the world's most uncoordinated soccer or basketball player. They attribute it to having a higher concentration of slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are helpful in sports like distance running. However, the lack of fast-twitch muscles gives them much slower reaction ability than the kids who excel at your typical hand-eye, or foot-eye sports.)
So, is all the off-season work paying off? Yeah, I think so, but not as much as others might think.
As I've said before, 90% of a kid's athletic success probably happened in the womb, not as part of some rigorous training program.
So, let's say your kid is already a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 as far as baseball skills. That rigorous 8 month off-season program? Probably brought them up to maybe a 9.6 or 9.7. However, Clay feels that a shorter off-season program, maybe a month or two, would give them the bulk of that improvement. Maybe bring them to a 9.5.
On top of that, he feels that the additional athleticism they'd gain by playing soccer in the off season would render any remaining difference moot.
So, in this example, a 2 month pre-season program would bring them to 9.5, but their 2 months of soccer give them enough additional athleticism to bring them to a 9.6 or 9.7.
So, what are the lessons to be drawn from all this?
First, I don't think, especially at an early age, that concentrating exclusively on one sport is necessary, even if you think the kids future is in that sport.
Second, even if you are one of the few parents who are grooming your kid, sure that they will get a scholarship to a Div I school or play some sort of sport professionally, you can still probably get them there just as quickly if you expose them to a wide variety of sports, especially when they're younger. (I will add an editorial comment that these parents are what I'd consider emotionally unbalanced and not very realistic. Their beliefs will probably end up causing more harm than good for their kids. If your kid plays Div I ball, that's awesome. However, a lot of very talented kids try and not very many succeed. So, while preparing them to play Div I, you might want to consider having a strong plan B if Plan A doesn't pan out.)
Third, the bottom line of all sports for kids should be fun. Period. End of story. Fitness, socialization, self-esteem, those are all secondary reasons to do it. If your kid isn't enjoying it, you shouldn't be pushing them into it. So, it's important for coaches to make sure that practices are actually fun for kids. It's also important to guage your kids feelings towards participation in sports. Once they start treating it like a job they don't enjoy, it's probably time to try and find something else.
Fourth, there does come a time in late Middle School or High School where a kid with real talent will have to select just one sport to focus on. Especially in sports like Basketball and Baseball since they rely very heavily on specific techniques in addition to general athleticism. However, I still think there should be at least one season where even these kids prepping for an elite athletic career should work on a different sport. It gives them a break, lets them avoid overuse injuries and helps their overall athleticism.
So, how does this all apply to me, personally? Logan can play Mavs baseball so long as he enjoys it. (He still loves baseball. Had to keep him from trying to crash a rec. league practice today. Never saw a kid who loved baseball practice so much he would try to crash other teams' practices.)
However, I hope he keeps an active interest in other sports. So far, so good. He plays rec flag football and in a local church-sponsored basketball league. The longer he can play multiple sports, the better.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Travel Baseball Schedule is Intense!
This is our off week, so we only practiced twice. However, starting Monday, we're right back in the thick of it. I guess until the season started, the thought of playing 50 games was more of an abstraction than anything. I knew that it sounded like a lot of games, but until we actually got into it, I didn't realize how many games it really was.
The season started a little more than 3 weeks ago, and we've already played two tournaments, and 12 games, overall. Yes, that's an average of about 4 games a week. Figure an MLB team might average 5 games a week, and you get the idea.
We start up again the week of the 10th, and play 9 league games and a tournament before the month is over.
In June, oddly enough, our schedule thins out considerably. Right around the time that school lets out, we go down to one game a week for the last 3 weeks of June. However, we have the state tournament in the middle of the month.
Then, the season ends with one last tournament in July, plus one remaining game the day after the tournament.
Intense. Just totally intense.
We're only about a quarter of the way through it and I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
I was excited to see Logan playing Mavericks baseball because I thought it would greatly increase his chances of playing in High School. I think it will increase his chances, but not too sure it will greatly increase them. I think if he develops normally, his chances of playing High School ball are pretty good, with or without Mavericks baseball.
It's too early to worry about it, but if he decides he wants to play rec next year, I'm fine with that. I'm not sure I'd have said that at the start of the season.
A lot of where I'm coming from is from having seen the level of competition in the league. Logan is one of the more talented kids. He's batting well and is one of the better infielders on a team that's one of the better teams in the league.
The other thing that's sort of strange is that all this organized baseball has really cut into the time where I work with Logan, one on one. I'm the first to admit that I was and am a crappy baseball player. However, I'm a pretty analytical guy and can teach a person a basic baseball swing.
I think, honestly, if we cut out one Mavericks practice a week for Logan and I worked with him on hitting, he'd be hitting even better. Thing is, that's not such a burning need right now. He's 2nd on the team in batting average right now, and he's been up with the leaders all season. So, it's not like he's got major problems with his swing I need to correct.
More than anything, this has been fun for me! Finally, a sport that I can follow where I care who wins! I mean, I'm a Cleveland sports fan, and it's nice to have a sport to cheer and watch that isn't followed by abject misery and the star player, or the entire team, leaving town.
I enjoy being bench coach and keeping the scorebook. I enjoy being allowed to help with the practices.
This whole thing is intense, though. Our head coach is a frenzy of energy. He has done a great job with the kids and if he had to be paid for all the time he put into this, we'd never be able to afford it.
I wonder how I'll be feeling in 2 more months, though. Actually, if we can make it to the 2nd week of June, we're home free. The schedule gets a lot easier, then, with just one game a week and 2 tournaments.
The season started a little more than 3 weeks ago, and we've already played two tournaments, and 12 games, overall. Yes, that's an average of about 4 games a week. Figure an MLB team might average 5 games a week, and you get the idea.
We start up again the week of the 10th, and play 9 league games and a tournament before the month is over.
In June, oddly enough, our schedule thins out considerably. Right around the time that school lets out, we go down to one game a week for the last 3 weeks of June. However, we have the state tournament in the middle of the month.
Then, the season ends with one last tournament in July, plus one remaining game the day after the tournament.
Intense. Just totally intense.
We're only about a quarter of the way through it and I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
I was excited to see Logan playing Mavericks baseball because I thought it would greatly increase his chances of playing in High School. I think it will increase his chances, but not too sure it will greatly increase them. I think if he develops normally, his chances of playing High School ball are pretty good, with or without Mavericks baseball.
It's too early to worry about it, but if he decides he wants to play rec next year, I'm fine with that. I'm not sure I'd have said that at the start of the season.
A lot of where I'm coming from is from having seen the level of competition in the league. Logan is one of the more talented kids. He's batting well and is one of the better infielders on a team that's one of the better teams in the league.
The other thing that's sort of strange is that all this organized baseball has really cut into the time where I work with Logan, one on one. I'm the first to admit that I was and am a crappy baseball player. However, I'm a pretty analytical guy and can teach a person a basic baseball swing.
I think, honestly, if we cut out one Mavericks practice a week for Logan and I worked with him on hitting, he'd be hitting even better. Thing is, that's not such a burning need right now. He's 2nd on the team in batting average right now, and he's been up with the leaders all season. So, it's not like he's got major problems with his swing I need to correct.
More than anything, this has been fun for me! Finally, a sport that I can follow where I care who wins! I mean, I'm a Cleveland sports fan, and it's nice to have a sport to cheer and watch that isn't followed by abject misery and the star player, or the entire team, leaving town.
I enjoy being bench coach and keeping the scorebook. I enjoy being allowed to help with the practices.
This whole thing is intense, though. Our head coach is a frenzy of energy. He has done a great job with the kids and if he had to be paid for all the time he put into this, we'd never be able to afford it.
I wonder how I'll be feeling in 2 more months, though. Actually, if we can make it to the 2nd week of June, we're home free. The schedule gets a lot easier, then, with just one game a week and 2 tournaments.
Okay, what's up with cup stacking?
There are three cups arranged on the kitchen counter this morning. One of them has a little plastic dog on it. Now, I don't think Logan is cup stacking, but seeing the cups made me think of it.
What's up with cup stacking? You guys know what I'm talking about, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNG3sgk02Lc
There's some sort of company that sells "stacking cups". (No, I'm not making that up) and some sort of timer. Voila, a sport is born.
I just don't get it. I mean, in the most absolutely fundamental sense, I don't get it.
It's not like special olympics. The kids I see stacking cups all seem to have reasonably good dexterity. They don't seem like they're wearing hockey helmets to school riding the short bus. These all seem to be relatively healthy, normal kids.
But stacking cups? I could see doing it as a bar bet. Maybe as a little competition during a birthday party or something. But actually practicing it? I have to imagine these kids practice it.
It teaches virtually nothing that you would want your kid to learn from sports. It isn't teaching social skills. It's not teaching how to work with others. It isn't emphasizing physical fitness, flexibility, strength...
Even as far as "games" go, this one isn't so hot. I hate to give a shout-out to video gamers, but at least most modern video games require a little bit of thought. Most good games involve some degree of strategy.
Now, yeah, it's true that something YOU do is fascinating and interesting, but things other people do make no sense whatsoever. I used to look at the guys who lived in the gym and think, "Is that how they want to spend the rest of their lives?"... then immediately go sit in a room by myself and practice guitar for 3 or 4 hours at a pop.
Nowadays, I question whether my time was well spent. Honestly, for me right now, it boils down to something approaching a parlour trick. If a guitar just HAPPENS to be handy, and folks just HAPPEN to be standing around and I just HAPPEN to stroll over and start playing, the usual result is that people are impressed.
For my son, if he continues to play travel baseball, it'll probably be the same thing. Someday, he'll say to himself, "I wonder if I should have spent so much time playing ball." Then, once every 3 years, there'll be a softball game at the company picnic or something and he'll go 3 for 3 with 3 HR and gun down everybody while playing shortstop.
As a side note: I'm starting to think the gym rats were right. They look good 24 x 7. I only look good when I'm playing a guitar, and even that's debatable.
So, to a degree, almost anything you devote your younger years, unless you find a way to make a living at it, is going to prove to have been a waste of time in your older years.
If you're lucky, you'll get a chance every year or two to display a flash of brilliance that makes people think about you in a different light.
But what are the cup stackers going to do? They're sitting at a bar and say, "hey everybody give me 18 cups, I want to show you something"?
Or, they're at the neighborhood barbecue, and wander over to a table of unused cups and start stacking and unstacking them?
What is the reaction going to be? "Oh wow, I didn't know Drew played the piano so beautifully!" Or, "whoa, who knew that Madelaine in accounting was a wizard with a basketball?"
I think the reaction is likely to be something like, "Oh my... Joe must have OCD. Look at him over there, stacking and unstacking those cups."
Or, if they know about stacking cups as a sport, I think the reaction will be even less favorable. "Ummm... no... Joe doesn't have OCD. He's spent a considerable portion of his life doing that by choice. He thinks its a sport."
Joe finishes his dazzling display, wanders over to the group of onlookers with a self-satisfied smile. The reaction?
At best: "Ummm... that was nice, Joe."
More likely something like, "Joe... don't ever do that in front of other people again. You just embarassed me."
Or, "Joe... those were the last cups we had. Will you run to Wal-Mart and get some more. Silly me, but I didn't account for some guy having an uncontrollable urge to touch all the unused cups at the table..."
Now, I am positive that somewhere I'm going to offend the parent of a cup stacker. Yes, I realize that it takes a lot of practice. Yes, I realize that it's a wholesome activity and that at least the kids aren't doing drugs.
Honestly, though, was there NOTHING else for your kid to do? Gardening? Knitting?
These kids are actually travelling to competitions. So, seriously, you could have afforded a real hobby. Buy a snare drum. Go get them some LaCrosse equipment. Heck, buy them a dart board. They may never have to pay for a drink the rest of their lives.
Sports are supposed to build self-esteem, but I'm not so sure this one is succeeding on that dimension. It really smacks of trying to find a sport that is so incredibly obscure and wierd that your kid can be a champion simply by showing up.
(Not that I'm making a value judgement on that. I was once my church's ping pong champion because the only two people who showed up were me and my cousin, Charlie. He took second place. I still have the ribbon. He probably does, too.)
I know where you're coming from. You saw that girl in school who is the state champion at dressage and yeah, you thought that was a bunch of BS because the girl's primary accomplishment was having parents who could afford to own, train and stable a dressage horse.
You got to thinking, "Well... sheesh... I can't afford a horse, but my kid should be a state champion, too."
Thing is, riding a horse actually does involve some rather obvious skill. It's actually a sport. In fact, it's one of the world's oldest sports. Like all the truly great sports, its origin was in perfecting a skill necessary in trying to kill things.
Yes, it's BS that one 12 year old in middle school, primarily by virtue of being filthy rich, gets to be the "state champion". Because, you know, filthy rich people need a few more advantages in life.
The cup stacking thing? Honestly, it's got the sport and competition value of taking a phillip screwdriver, and screwing and unscrewing 2 drywall screws into and out of a block of 2 x 4.
Actually, it's not quite as good, if you ask me, since being able to drive drywall screws is actually a skill with some professional application later in life.
The dressage champ is going to have all these childhood photos of when she was skinny and looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor in Jodhpurs and Wellies.
Your kid is, at best, going to have a youtube video where they're hunched over a table stacking cups.
This is not the stuff, "Whoa, look what I found from when grandpa was a kid!" is made of.
Post Scriptum:
The criticisms of this blog post are already coming in.
My sister in law, Laura, says that she used to have to square dance in gym class, so cup stacking is at least not as bad as that.
My response is:
From a middle school boy's perspective, at least in square dancing, you got to touch a girl. I'm thinking cup stacking has the opposite effect.
Okay, maybe we could compromise. I think it should have an aspect where it teaches something they can show off later in life. So, include a ping pong ball and teach the kids beer pong.
Call it "milk-pong" or something. But send them to college with a skill that pays the bills.
My cousin's husband, Clay, who is one of the blessed few people I know who were so proficient at a childhood waste-of-time that he has earned a living at it for over a decade, now, said that if I am going to gripe about wastes of time, that my I won't ever have time to write about anything else.
To which I had to point out that my blog is almost always about wastes of time and that I really don't ever write about anything else. I mean, not to kick myself too hard here, but I'm the guy who writes about zero-turn lawn mowers and analyzes youth baseball bats, right?
Okay, I just looked up the sport of "speed stacking" on Wikipedia and the first two paragraphs had me laughing so hard I cried. Literally.
However, there are apparently, benefits to participation in this sport:
[A third group (Gibbons, E., Hendrick, J. L., & Bauer, J. State University of New York, Cortland) studied the effects on the reaction time and confirmed Udermann rather than Hart, stating "that the results agreed with the claims made by Speed Stacks, in which practicing cup stacking can improve reaction time." [16] They also state "Even 60 minutes of cup stacking practice can improve reaction time in young adults."]
60 minutes? What? Are they kidding? That's like saying that eating 72 tons of brussel sprouts will reduce your risk of cancer. I mean, at a certain point, the benefits become irrelevant if what you have to do to get them is insufferable.
And what do they mean by "reaction time"? Like the kids who are sport stacking are now invincible in dodgeball? Color me skeptical.
[The Department of Kinesiology of the Towson University, Towson, MD studied the influence of participation in a 6-week bimanual coordination program on Grade 5 students' reading achievement with Sport Stacking being the bimanual activity. A significant increase was found for the experimental group on Comprehension skills, proving that Sport Stacking may improve students' reading comprehension skills, regardless of sex.]
I would think that any benefits of sport stacking would necessarily have to be "regardless of sex" because if you had any regard for sex at all, this is the last thing on earth you'd ever do.
What's up with cup stacking? You guys know what I'm talking about, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNG3sgk02Lc
There's some sort of company that sells "stacking cups". (No, I'm not making that up) and some sort of timer. Voila, a sport is born.
I just don't get it. I mean, in the most absolutely fundamental sense, I don't get it.
It's not like special olympics. The kids I see stacking cups all seem to have reasonably good dexterity. They don't seem like they're wearing hockey helmets to school riding the short bus. These all seem to be relatively healthy, normal kids.
But stacking cups? I could see doing it as a bar bet. Maybe as a little competition during a birthday party or something. But actually practicing it? I have to imagine these kids practice it.
It teaches virtually nothing that you would want your kid to learn from sports. It isn't teaching social skills. It's not teaching how to work with others. It isn't emphasizing physical fitness, flexibility, strength...
Even as far as "games" go, this one isn't so hot. I hate to give a shout-out to video gamers, but at least most modern video games require a little bit of thought. Most good games involve some degree of strategy.
Now, yeah, it's true that something YOU do is fascinating and interesting, but things other people do make no sense whatsoever. I used to look at the guys who lived in the gym and think, "Is that how they want to spend the rest of their lives?"... then immediately go sit in a room by myself and practice guitar for 3 or 4 hours at a pop.
Nowadays, I question whether my time was well spent. Honestly, for me right now, it boils down to something approaching a parlour trick. If a guitar just HAPPENS to be handy, and folks just HAPPEN to be standing around and I just HAPPEN to stroll over and start playing, the usual result is that people are impressed.
For my son, if he continues to play travel baseball, it'll probably be the same thing. Someday, he'll say to himself, "I wonder if I should have spent so much time playing ball." Then, once every 3 years, there'll be a softball game at the company picnic or something and he'll go 3 for 3 with 3 HR and gun down everybody while playing shortstop.
As a side note: I'm starting to think the gym rats were right. They look good 24 x 7. I only look good when I'm playing a guitar, and even that's debatable.
So, to a degree, almost anything you devote your younger years, unless you find a way to make a living at it, is going to prove to have been a waste of time in your older years.
If you're lucky, you'll get a chance every year or two to display a flash of brilliance that makes people think about you in a different light.
But what are the cup stackers going to do? They're sitting at a bar and say, "hey everybody give me 18 cups, I want to show you something"?
Or, they're at the neighborhood barbecue, and wander over to a table of unused cups and start stacking and unstacking them?
What is the reaction going to be? "Oh wow, I didn't know Drew played the piano so beautifully!" Or, "whoa, who knew that Madelaine in accounting was a wizard with a basketball?"
I think the reaction is likely to be something like, "Oh my... Joe must have OCD. Look at him over there, stacking and unstacking those cups."
Or, if they know about stacking cups as a sport, I think the reaction will be even less favorable. "Ummm... no... Joe doesn't have OCD. He's spent a considerable portion of his life doing that by choice. He thinks its a sport."
Joe finishes his dazzling display, wanders over to the group of onlookers with a self-satisfied smile. The reaction?
At best: "Ummm... that was nice, Joe."
More likely something like, "Joe... don't ever do that in front of other people again. You just embarassed me."
Or, "Joe... those were the last cups we had. Will you run to Wal-Mart and get some more. Silly me, but I didn't account for some guy having an uncontrollable urge to touch all the unused cups at the table..."
Now, I am positive that somewhere I'm going to offend the parent of a cup stacker. Yes, I realize that it takes a lot of practice. Yes, I realize that it's a wholesome activity and that at least the kids aren't doing drugs.
Honestly, though, was there NOTHING else for your kid to do? Gardening? Knitting?
These kids are actually travelling to competitions. So, seriously, you could have afforded a real hobby. Buy a snare drum. Go get them some LaCrosse equipment. Heck, buy them a dart board. They may never have to pay for a drink the rest of their lives.
Sports are supposed to build self-esteem, but I'm not so sure this one is succeeding on that dimension. It really smacks of trying to find a sport that is so incredibly obscure and wierd that your kid can be a champion simply by showing up.
(Not that I'm making a value judgement on that. I was once my church's ping pong champion because the only two people who showed up were me and my cousin, Charlie. He took second place. I still have the ribbon. He probably does, too.)
I know where you're coming from. You saw that girl in school who is the state champion at dressage and yeah, you thought that was a bunch of BS because the girl's primary accomplishment was having parents who could afford to own, train and stable a dressage horse.
You got to thinking, "Well... sheesh... I can't afford a horse, but my kid should be a state champion, too."
Thing is, riding a horse actually does involve some rather obvious skill. It's actually a sport. In fact, it's one of the world's oldest sports. Like all the truly great sports, its origin was in perfecting a skill necessary in trying to kill things.
Yes, it's BS that one 12 year old in middle school, primarily by virtue of being filthy rich, gets to be the "state champion". Because, you know, filthy rich people need a few more advantages in life.
The cup stacking thing? Honestly, it's got the sport and competition value of taking a phillip screwdriver, and screwing and unscrewing 2 drywall screws into and out of a block of 2 x 4.
Actually, it's not quite as good, if you ask me, since being able to drive drywall screws is actually a skill with some professional application later in life.
The dressage champ is going to have all these childhood photos of when she was skinny and looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor in Jodhpurs and Wellies.
Your kid is, at best, going to have a youtube video where they're hunched over a table stacking cups.
This is not the stuff, "Whoa, look what I found from when grandpa was a kid!" is made of.
Post Scriptum:
The criticisms of this blog post are already coming in.
My sister in law, Laura, says that she used to have to square dance in gym class, so cup stacking is at least not as bad as that.
My response is:
From a middle school boy's perspective, at least in square dancing, you got to touch a girl. I'm thinking cup stacking has the opposite effect.
Okay, maybe we could compromise. I think it should have an aspect where it teaches something they can show off later in life. So, include a ping pong ball and teach the kids beer pong.
Call it "milk-pong" or something. But send them to college with a skill that pays the bills.
My cousin's husband, Clay, who is one of the blessed few people I know who were so proficient at a childhood waste-of-time that he has earned a living at it for over a decade, now, said that if I am going to gripe about wastes of time, that my I won't ever have time to write about anything else.
To which I had to point out that my blog is almost always about wastes of time and that I really don't ever write about anything else. I mean, not to kick myself too hard here, but I'm the guy who writes about zero-turn lawn mowers and analyzes youth baseball bats, right?
Okay, I just looked up the sport of "speed stacking" on Wikipedia and the first two paragraphs had me laughing so hard I cried. Literally.
However, there are apparently, benefits to participation in this sport:
[A third group (Gibbons, E., Hendrick, J. L., & Bauer, J. State University of New York, Cortland) studied the effects on the reaction time and confirmed Udermann rather than Hart, stating "that the results agreed with the claims made by Speed Stacks, in which practicing cup stacking can improve reaction time." [16] They also state "Even 60 minutes of cup stacking practice can improve reaction time in young adults."]
60 minutes? What? Are they kidding? That's like saying that eating 72 tons of brussel sprouts will reduce your risk of cancer. I mean, at a certain point, the benefits become irrelevant if what you have to do to get them is insufferable.
And what do they mean by "reaction time"? Like the kids who are sport stacking are now invincible in dodgeball? Color me skeptical.
[The Department of Kinesiology of the Towson University, Towson, MD studied the influence of participation in a 6-week bimanual coordination program on Grade 5 students' reading achievement with Sport Stacking being the bimanual activity. A significant increase was found for the experimental group on Comprehension skills, proving that Sport Stacking may improve students' reading comprehension skills, regardless of sex.]
I would think that any benefits of sport stacking would necessarily have to be "regardless of sex" because if you had any regard for sex at all, this is the last thing on earth you'd ever do.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
It's raining, it's pouring...
Been getting a bit of rain lately. Not the massive rains we usually need to make business pick up, but enough rain that the lawns are getting plush and green. Applied some fertilizer with dandelion killer in it and the lawns look really good. I do take some pride in a good looking lawn. Right now, I get extra pride because I'm growing one at the old house and the new.
Having the John Deere zero turn is a big help. I don't know about the prospects of launching the lawn-care business this Summer, though that was my original intent. Two problems: one, is that I only wanted to do it to keep my employees busy but I've had to throw in the towel and lay off almost all my employees. Second, the recession has brought out about 100 new lawn care businesses this year. Cutting through the noise wouldn't be easy.
The John Deere, though, takes two lawns that probably would take 3 hours or so with my old riding mower, and cuts down the mowing time to maybe 30 minutes or so, at most. I still have to do a half hour's worth of hand-mowing the tight areas, trimming, edging, etc. But still, this could take 4 or 5 hours, easily, if I didn't have the zero turn. As is, maybe an hour I can be done with both lawns.
The new house, the yard was a disaster. The dandelions were downright embarassing. Like the house, itself, the yard was sufferring from mild neglect. Though I expect the front will be looking good in no time. In the back, I'll need some shade formula grass for sure. There's almost no sunlight, ever, back there.
The rain is also significant because of the roof leak in the new house. I'm trying to see if we can seal the existing flat roof, but that's a nightmare. We took care of one section, but it still got a little wet with the weekend's rain. Tonight's rain will be a test because we've pretty much sealed everything that needed obvious attention. After this, the options other than a complete tear-off and putting up a pitched roof are pretty few. I don't relish that possibility because of the expense, especially since it's money I don't really have right now.
Might have to put the whole project on a credit card. Objectionable, yes, after all these years of getting my personal credit-card situation completely under control. (I do have debt for the business, but personal debt, my credit cards are all paid off monthly and other than that, I just have house payments and a car payment.)
The house, other than the small leak, which I'm working on, is starting to take shape. The major renovations (two interior walls removed), are done and the texturing and painting is taking place, now. The upstairs windows aren't in, yet. The living room furniture is still in plastic awaiting the finish of painting and final placement.
I might be living on milk crates for quite a while. Nothing like having a house to furnish, but no money to furnish it with.
Business-wise, things are so slow, we might go down to Nashville, but we can't seem to find out any details on that. Servpro was asking who could go and we raised our hands, but nobody has told us when or where, yet.
Business still hasn't really picked up, but it's not completely dead in the water like it had been. We really do need some serious rain to get things going. The amount we're getting now is nice for keeping the grass green, but it's not helping the business, much.
I re-scheduled one of my Navy drills and am doing one day here in Toledo. The commander of the local NOSC (Navy Operational Support Center) was sure nice over the phone. I don't know if that's a Navy thing or I'm just remembering all the grumpy officers from when I was enlisted, but Navy Reserve Officers sure seem like a really nice bunch of people.
Funny, but I joined in order to serve, and have enjoyed the experience so much, I'd really like to do it for as long as possible.
My transfer to Fort Worth? Haven't heard anything back, yet. Should be going through anytime, now.
My promotion finally was processed, 4 months late. So, I'm officially a Lieutenant Junior Grade, now. A year and a half, and I'll be a Navy Lieutenant. (Same as an Army / Air Force / Marine Captain.) The Navy ranks make a little more sense, when you figure them out.
You have Lieutenants, who act "in lieu" of a commander. Then, you have Commanders (from the old title "master and commander"). In theory, that's who commanded a ship. Above them, you have Captains.
So, you start out as an Ensign. (The juniormost officer on ship who used to carry and fly the flag of the ship, which is called the ship's "ensign".)
Then, you are a Lieutenant Junior Grade. Then, Lieutenant. Then, Lieutenant Commander. Then Commander.
Contrast to the Army where you have first and second lieutenant. Captain. Major. Lieutenant Colonel... no real rhyme or reason to any of it, really.
Anyway, I do enjoy being a Navy Officer. It takes time away from Logan, but not so bad. At least not until I get deployed. Right now, it looks like the only people being deployed are the contracting officers, which, coincidentally, is what I'm going into.
I just signed up for the last of my correspondence courses. After that, I have an in-residence course that is apparently difficult to get. Right now, it's 2 weeks long. Next year, I hear, it will be 4. So, I'll be preparing for that during drills in Fort Worth.
Having the John Deere zero turn is a big help. I don't know about the prospects of launching the lawn-care business this Summer, though that was my original intent. Two problems: one, is that I only wanted to do it to keep my employees busy but I've had to throw in the towel and lay off almost all my employees. Second, the recession has brought out about 100 new lawn care businesses this year. Cutting through the noise wouldn't be easy.
The John Deere, though, takes two lawns that probably would take 3 hours or so with my old riding mower, and cuts down the mowing time to maybe 30 minutes or so, at most. I still have to do a half hour's worth of hand-mowing the tight areas, trimming, edging, etc. But still, this could take 4 or 5 hours, easily, if I didn't have the zero turn. As is, maybe an hour I can be done with both lawns.
The new house, the yard was a disaster. The dandelions were downright embarassing. Like the house, itself, the yard was sufferring from mild neglect. Though I expect the front will be looking good in no time. In the back, I'll need some shade formula grass for sure. There's almost no sunlight, ever, back there.
The rain is also significant because of the roof leak in the new house. I'm trying to see if we can seal the existing flat roof, but that's a nightmare. We took care of one section, but it still got a little wet with the weekend's rain. Tonight's rain will be a test because we've pretty much sealed everything that needed obvious attention. After this, the options other than a complete tear-off and putting up a pitched roof are pretty few. I don't relish that possibility because of the expense, especially since it's money I don't really have right now.
Might have to put the whole project on a credit card. Objectionable, yes, after all these years of getting my personal credit-card situation completely under control. (I do have debt for the business, but personal debt, my credit cards are all paid off monthly and other than that, I just have house payments and a car payment.)
The house, other than the small leak, which I'm working on, is starting to take shape. The major renovations (two interior walls removed), are done and the texturing and painting is taking place, now. The upstairs windows aren't in, yet. The living room furniture is still in plastic awaiting the finish of painting and final placement.
I might be living on milk crates for quite a while. Nothing like having a house to furnish, but no money to furnish it with.
Business-wise, things are so slow, we might go down to Nashville, but we can't seem to find out any details on that. Servpro was asking who could go and we raised our hands, but nobody has told us when or where, yet.
Business still hasn't really picked up, but it's not completely dead in the water like it had been. We really do need some serious rain to get things going. The amount we're getting now is nice for keeping the grass green, but it's not helping the business, much.
I re-scheduled one of my Navy drills and am doing one day here in Toledo. The commander of the local NOSC (Navy Operational Support Center) was sure nice over the phone. I don't know if that's a Navy thing or I'm just remembering all the grumpy officers from when I was enlisted, but Navy Reserve Officers sure seem like a really nice bunch of people.
Funny, but I joined in order to serve, and have enjoyed the experience so much, I'd really like to do it for as long as possible.
My transfer to Fort Worth? Haven't heard anything back, yet. Should be going through anytime, now.
My promotion finally was processed, 4 months late. So, I'm officially a Lieutenant Junior Grade, now. A year and a half, and I'll be a Navy Lieutenant. (Same as an Army / Air Force / Marine Captain.) The Navy ranks make a little more sense, when you figure them out.
You have Lieutenants, who act "in lieu" of a commander. Then, you have Commanders (from the old title "master and commander"). In theory, that's who commanded a ship. Above them, you have Captains.
So, you start out as an Ensign. (The juniormost officer on ship who used to carry and fly the flag of the ship, which is called the ship's "ensign".)
Then, you are a Lieutenant Junior Grade. Then, Lieutenant. Then, Lieutenant Commander. Then Commander.
Contrast to the Army where you have first and second lieutenant. Captain. Major. Lieutenant Colonel... no real rhyme or reason to any of it, really.
Anyway, I do enjoy being a Navy Officer. It takes time away from Logan, but not so bad. At least not until I get deployed. Right now, it looks like the only people being deployed are the contracting officers, which, coincidentally, is what I'm going into.
I just signed up for the last of my correspondence courses. After that, I have an in-residence course that is apparently difficult to get. Right now, it's 2 weeks long. Next year, I hear, it will be 4. So, I'll be preparing for that during drills in Fort Worth.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Throwing Live Pitch
In a lot of ways, throwing live pitch is a metaphor for raising a child. I have a pitching machine for Logan, but for actual batting practice, you need to throw live pitch.
I don't have a very good arm. I don't have good control, but there are certain things I need to practice with him. Yesterday, I actually let one get away from me and it hit Logan in the head. Fortunately, he responded exactly the way he should: by turning his head so it glances off the helmet and doesn't crack him in the face.
I also have practiced deliberately throwing high and away and high to teach him to look for those pitches and lay off them.
I also work a lot with throwing inside because those pitches are probably the hardest to handle, but can be turned into great hits if you know how to deal with them.
Sort of like an innoculation, you do a little bit of nasty stuff to them in a somewhat controlled environment so the really nasty stuff won't hurt them, later.
As a parent, you have to expose your kids to some dangers (small ones, with minimal consequences, you hope) to make sure they can handle them in your absence. With that foundation, you hope they'll be able to handle bigger dangers later in life when you won't be there to watch.
I am not entirely comfortable with live pitch for a lot of reasons. One is that my control isn't that good. Much easier to load up the pitching machine and let it throw perfectly predictable balls to my boy.
Just like in real life, though, he needs something a bit more challenging and realistic to prepare him for the real world.
The reality is that even at his age (in the Under 9 league), he's facing pitching that's harder and nastier than what I throw in practice. Just as life will, at times, come at him harder and nastier than anything he's seen in the controlled conditions of living at home.
The best you can do is prepare them as best you can, but realize that once they leave the on-deck circle, they'll truly be on their own. You can cheer. You can support. However, you have to give them the chance to stand up and succeed or fail on their own merits.
I occassionally have to remind myself that I survived it with the benefit of far less preparation he did. He'll do just fine when the time comes.
I don't have a very good arm. I don't have good control, but there are certain things I need to practice with him. Yesterday, I actually let one get away from me and it hit Logan in the head. Fortunately, he responded exactly the way he should: by turning his head so it glances off the helmet and doesn't crack him in the face.
I also have practiced deliberately throwing high and away and high to teach him to look for those pitches and lay off them.
I also work a lot with throwing inside because those pitches are probably the hardest to handle, but can be turned into great hits if you know how to deal with them.
Sort of like an innoculation, you do a little bit of nasty stuff to them in a somewhat controlled environment so the really nasty stuff won't hurt them, later.
As a parent, you have to expose your kids to some dangers (small ones, with minimal consequences, you hope) to make sure they can handle them in your absence. With that foundation, you hope they'll be able to handle bigger dangers later in life when you won't be there to watch.
I am not entirely comfortable with live pitch for a lot of reasons. One is that my control isn't that good. Much easier to load up the pitching machine and let it throw perfectly predictable balls to my boy.
Just like in real life, though, he needs something a bit more challenging and realistic to prepare him for the real world.
The reality is that even at his age (in the Under 9 league), he's facing pitching that's harder and nastier than what I throw in practice. Just as life will, at times, come at him harder and nastier than anything he's seen in the controlled conditions of living at home.
The best you can do is prepare them as best you can, but realize that once they leave the on-deck circle, they'll truly be on their own. You can cheer. You can support. However, you have to give them the chance to stand up and succeed or fail on their own merits.
I occassionally have to remind myself that I survived it with the benefit of far less preparation he did. He'll do just fine when the time comes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)