Let’s go… Slaho!

Those who know me know that I am a huge U2 fan. I would have to say that they are my favorite band right now and have been for a few years now. But they have not always been my favorite band. No, siree! In fact for most of my adult life (and a good chunk of my adolescent life) my favorite band has been Genesis. Most of my old friends know this. My siblings absolutely know this (I used to put on a different cassette by my bed every night and listen to the until I fell asleep). Most people who have only recently come to know me well, probably had no idea. This is mostly because they haven’t released any new material in over 12 years (and nothing worth listening to in almost 20!). And when they decided to do their reunion tour they chose to not come within 100o miles of Miami. HOW DARE THEY!!! Well, Genesis, I guess my new favorite band will have to be… let me look at my CD collection… ah, here we go… U2! So there!!

All kidding aside (that should be difficult for me to do), I have liked Genesis music since I first heard “Abacab” when I was 12 years old. I heard the song on 103.5 WSHE (She’s only rock n’ roll!) and fell in love with it instantly. I quickly recorded using my cassette recorder and listened to it until the tape almost snapped in half. I then heard their next single, “No Reply At All” and I was hooked. This was my favorite band, hands down, with a sound nothing like any other I had heard. Little by little I began to acquaint myself with their music. This all culminated with me going to my first concert at the age of 17 (I was a late bloomer there, my parents didn’t like the idea of going to concerts and always forbid it). I almost didn’t make it to that concert, but I was not going to be denied. I had to tell my parents that they were a religious group, hence their name, and that I really wanted to see them. they said I could go but I had to take my little brother along. Not a problem, he liked them too! (It helped that I forced him to listen to them every night apparently).
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I don’t work well with little sleep.  I’m groggy, I’m cranky, and I have a tough time focusing on doing my job correctly.  So now, picture this.  I’m waking up at 3:15 am for the second day in a row.  Again I barely slept… maybe it was nerves, maybe fear of oversleeping, maybe it’s because my bed was about as comfortable as a lingering wedgie that you just can’t pick because you’re afraid someone’s gonna catch you doing it.  Whatever the reason I barely slept.  For the third night in a row.  And my inability to nap, on top of being tired from a long drive on Friday compounded with the need to change a tire on I-95, AND on top of the fact that I did after all run 13.1 miles less than 24 hours earlier just magnified my fatigue.  Pure adrenaline got me out of bed.  That, and the fact that I promised Ivan that I’d pick him up and take him to the race so that his wife wouldn’t have to wake up, get ready, and drive the man with his kids in tow to the park.  I had everything laid out this time, making sure that I was ready and that I wouldn’t have to triple check everything like I did the morning before.  Then at 3:40 am I stepped out of my room… straight into 29 degrees with a wind chill sub 20 degrees. 

I did come EXTRA prepared knowing it was going to be even colder than the day before.  I decided to wear TWO pairs of warmups while I waited for the race with the intention of shedding them both at the start.  I brought two power bars: one for me and one for Ivan.  I figured he wouldn’t be ready and I was right.  He hadn’t eaten and wasn’t planning to before the race… a big no-no for such a long run.  We had the same traffic problems as the day before but still got there easy enough and headed in to the waiting area.  I noted that I wasn’t as cold as the day before.  I figured it was more than anything because I had lived through the shock of the initial hit I took the day before when I got to the race site.  We looked for and found Javi who again was hooking me up with the disposable lab coat.  The extra layer would be key today, at least for the beginning of the race.
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3:15 Saturday morning… time to get out of bed. Many who know me have heard me say it. Whenever I see 3:15 on a clock I feel like it’s God telling me He’s watching me. I made sure 3:15 was the time I saw on the clock when I got up (maybe it was cheating because I set it up that way, but hey! It works for me… and for those wondering why 3:15 it’s because 3/15 was the day God sent me head first into this world… literally!!)

So, I was now getting myself ready. Many layers of clothing… check. My shot blocks and supplements… check. D-tag on correctly… check. Bib… check. Newly glued Jesus porcelain thingy… check. It seemed I had everything. Still, after yesterday I wasn’t taking any chances. I tripled checked everything to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I got a wake up call from Javi to make sure I didn’t oversleep. I was awake. I was good. He mentioned it was clear out. I reminded him that it wasn’t 3:30 I was worried about. It was 5:30 and I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to make a stop before getting to the race area. I was going to CVS. I was going to get trash bags. I didn’t have a raincoat, and I was looking for a cheap way to stay dry. I stopped at CVS at just before 4 and got myself a 20 pack (the smallest they had). I figure I’d share with my comrades and that I’d bring the rest home work their original purpose. While there I also decided that it was a good time to replace my dog eaten shades. (I’m not sure if I had mentioned I replaced the shades in my other blog… if I did, now you know exactly when I replaced them)
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Job.
That’s what my running partner was calling me the day before the race. I felt like him too. Everything seemed to going against me the days before my Goofy quest to run 39.3 miles over a two day period in Disney World. Some of it was my own doing I think, particularly the mind games I was making myself go through. Some of it was just plain old dumb luck. And I was really beginning to believe that God really didn’t want to me to run that weekend.
Here’s a small recap of what happened in the couple of weeks leading up to the race.
It started with me going to buy a pair of new running shoes. I had just come back from visiting Javi, my long distance running counterpart, who I somehow wound up training with more than anybody from here in Miami (and the person I trained with the most after him lives in Gainesville… is there nobody I can train with in Miami?). Upon returning I realized my shoes had seen their last days. So I went to buy new shoes. Problem was that my wife had lost her ATM card and the new one hadn’t come in yet so I had to take cash out to buy the shoes. I went to the bank and withdrew $200, some for my shoes and some for whatever else I was to buy until the cards arrived. Well, I bought my shoes all right, but apparently I left the envelope at the register when I left… so my $100 shoes turned into my $200 shoes. I was bitter to say the least. And little did I know but this was just the beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

My Christmas tree is dead. We’re still 4 days from Christmas and the poor thing is just drooping and dry. It’s my fault really. I bought it at Publix where they don’t saw off the bottom for you, then was too lazy to pull out my hand saw and take a bit off the bottom. I watered it plenty, but the poor thing just wouldn’t drink. So it died. And it’s just sitting there, leaving needles on my floor, but leaving a nice scent in the meantime.

Well, it’s only four more days, right? Then I can just dump the tree. What’s four days anyways? Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it. Here’s the other. My tree is not an ADVENT tree. It is a CHRISTMAS tree. In other words I should have it up for Christmas. ALL of Christmas. Not just Christmas day. But the entire Christmas season. That, of course, traditionally ends on the feast of the Epiphany (what my Hispanic lineage refers to as “La Fiesta de los Reyes Magos”, or “Three Kings Day”). One of the things that I’ve noticed has been lost during this whole secularization and commercialization of Christmas is that people have not just forgotten the meaning of Christmas… they don’t even know when Christmas is. Everybody still seems to know that Hanukkah is nine days long. But nobody seems to know that Christmas is 12 days long. HELLO! That song is not about gifts!! There really are 12 days of Christmas. No, you’re not expected to give or receive gifts for 12 days (though it’d be nice), but we should be celebrating throughout that time.
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OK so technically this is not going to be a poem. And Ide is short for Idelio (pronounced, ee-deh, not “eyed”), but it looked nice that way and when I think of an ode I think of something giving an uplifting description (just in poetic form). So, an ode this is…

Today was a rough day for me as I was there to bid a final goodbye to an old friend. It was sad in a way because I’ll never be able to see or speak to him face to face again. On the other hand, I couldn’t help myself from smiling for the man had done something that he professed he would do better than anybody I’d known until now: he cheated death for 37 years. If the Grim Reaper had had his way with Idelio he would have taken him long before I ever would have had a chance to meet him. He was supposed to be gone by the age of 7. And after he turned 8, there was no reason to believe at any point in life that he should go on any longer. And yet he did… day after day after day, after month, after year, after decade. He wasn’t being fooled either. He and I talked freely about his mortality numerous times over the last 20 years, he constantly reminding me that every meeting may be our last, but that he was going to make sure that somehow it wouldn’t be. Well, the day finally came, and though many expressed shock at it’s suddenness, I couldn’t help but think otherwise, and could only smile at the fact that we were all fortunate to have him as long as we did.

I must admit that when I first met the man, I didn’t know what to make of him. He was the first person that I can honestly say I regularly interacted with who had a visible physical disability. You’d never know it by talking to him, though. He never let you look at him or treat him with any sort of pity. He was what he was and that’s the way he was supposed to be, so deal with it. It was a great attitude to have and an incredibly refreshing one that made it easy for me to interact with him. It took my focus off of his right hand which was misshapen and which he could not control, and from his very obvious limp. Growing up I had an issue that whenever I would see someone with a disability I couldn’t help but stare. Idelio quickly taught me to stop doing that; all the while he never actually said, “don’t stare at my hand.” It just became natural to not look at it, and to see the man behind it.
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Made you look…

Yeah I wish I had written something substantial here myself but no… I didn’t. All I’ve got to show for the last 18 days that went blogless are the 73 spam comments I was sent claiming that my blogs are very helpful. Well at least somebody claims to have been to my site, because I sure as hell haven’t been here!!

I did run today. And I do have a propensity to write after running. And I am in training to run 39 miles in a 28 hour period which means I need to run a lot… so maybe I WILL be writing more in the coming weeks. Just don’t hold your breaths. And it’s a shame too because every day at some point I’m like, “Man, that would be something awesome to write about.” But by the time I actually get to a computer the thought is gone like an Albert Pujols walk off grand slam.

Well, here’s to writing a few lines!!!

So I said that I was going to be blogging every other day… HAHAHAHA!  Who was I kidding?  Now that I’m back teaching, AND coaching both my sons basketball teams, AND with the St. Timothy Carnival around the corner, PLUS running as I continue to train for my races, who’s got time to blog?  The average person would then chime in and say… “Dude, just blog for 10 minutes, man.”  To which I would respond, “You haven’t read my blogs, have you?  It takes me 10 minutes to write the intro to my daily dissertations!”  So, please forgive me if my blogs show up infrequently.  Today I don’t have much time (though it’s more than I’ve had in the last 2 weeks), so I will just give you a small poem inspired by the U.S. Open currently being played in Flushing Meadows.  Enjoy!

Ode to Tennis

Oh tennis how I love thee.

I do love you so

And not just because to you

Love means Ze-ro.

Your players are outstanding

They run from here to there

And the women play in clothes

That look like undwerwear.

Two players who are really good

Are Roger and Rafael

I like one more than the other

For reasons I will tell.

Rafael Nadal

I don’t like his style at all

I prefer Roger Federer

I think he’s so much betterer!

I haven’t gotten in front of the computer much over the last few days. Just had a lot on my mind I guess… and stuff I really didn’t want to write about, really, though maybe I should have for my own sake. Then I noticed that it had been 5 days since I blogged. And THEN I realized that with school returning to session I need to get more disciplined if I am going to continue blogging. The first week is never too intense, but week two is, and if I don’t separate some time to jot down my thoughts, they will never see the light of day… or in this case the light from the computer screen. So today I resolve to write at least once every two days… even if what I write is gibberish, or just two lines. Maybe I should return to writing some of my Short, Short, Short, Short Stories which I have abandoned writing over the last couple of years. I need to let the Short Story Muse inspire me so that I could return to doing that. Or maybe I should shoot a couple of slahoems (Slaho’s poems, for those not knowing the lingo) out. Or maybe I should continue working on my book on Young Adult ministry, the one I started writing over two years ago, but just haven’t transferred to the computer.

I don’t know where my mind will wander, but I definitely have to write! It keeps my mind focused and it helps me to organize my otherwise random thought process. And it forces me to come up with questions and answers while I am running, which I am going to be doing a lot more of as my training intensifies for my upcoming ventures. So the challenge is on! School is back in session… AND SO AM I!!

Here’s to WRITING!!

When I woke up this morning I had a strange urge… chocolate milk. It had been a long time since I had chocolate milk, one of my favorite treats as a kid. When I was growing up my dad would wake me up every morning with a nice cold glass of chocolate milk, sometimes made with Hershey’s syrup, and sometimes made with Quik. Regardless, I remember thinking as a kid that there was no better way to wake up. And these were the thoughts that were going through my head as I drank down my cup. Man, those little things in life can sometimes spark the best memories.

Last night I was looking for a spark because I was a bit down. Looking through Facebook I read about the meteor shower that was going to coming into the Earth’s path (or vice versa) over the next few days. I’ve always liked shooting stars and this was going to be the best opportunity to see one for a long time, and the best time to view it was going to be between midnight and 5 am. So after watching a DVD with Dania last night, I decided to head out. But before I headed out I did something then that I usually reserve for right after I finish my run, or sometimes even until the next morning. I gave Dania a big kiss and told her I loved her, and then went to the beds of my sleeping kids and gave them each a big kiss also (thank God they didn’t wake up, and in particular the baby, because Dania would have been REALLY ticked off). NOW, I was ready for my run. You see, I realized that however unlikely, leaving for my jog may be the last time I see my kids. Any moment just might be my last. Just 36 hours ago that was true for an acquaintance of mine.

Yesterday was August 11. It was my mom’s 79th birthday. 79 years is a long time, but it seems that nowadays a lot more people are reaching that age. My mom has gotten there but only after going through a number of trials, most specifically a long bout with cancer, which fortunately she has overcome for the time being. But it has left her week and tired. The treatments really left her a shell of her former self physically. She’s nowhere as strong as my grandmother was at that age, and she went on to live to be 100. I’m not sure how long she’s going to be around, but I must admit that I am very fortunate to still have her, and I have to take advantage of the time she has left here whether it be for another year or for another twenty. You never know when that moment will come.
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