It's Gonna Happen!

I don't know where to start. There's only one week left in the season and the Cubs are up 3.5 games over the Milwaukee Brewers after today's action.

I'm stoked. Look, I know if the Cubs were in any other division in baseball they'd be in third place at best. But let's not get bogged down in details here. The fact of the matter is the Cubs are any combination of four wins or four Brewer losses from being in the playoffs for the first time since 2003.

I'm already expecting to miss quite a bit of sleep during the month of October. Sure, my grades will probably suffer, my work won't be very good, I'll be miserable to be around and on edge all the time, I'll develop an unhealthy dependency on caffine and be insufferable, but that's a small price to pay to stay up late watching the team I've followed for 20 years have a chance to do something they haven't done in almost 100 years.

I haven't written a lot about the team this year for fear that I might jinx the good thing that was happening. (And at this point, I do believe in curses, fate and all that crap. I'm going all Earl Hickey and trying to collect as much good karma as possible. I'm letting people out in traffic, holding open doors for people 20 to 25 feet from even getting there. Waitresses that normally wouldn't get a decent tip are getting 25 percent and I'm apologizing for things I know aren't my fault to just to try to keep karma on my side. (After a century without a title, I'd confess to the Abe Lincoln shooting if I thought it would help. Note to any federal agents: I wasn't born when Lincoln was killed, no need to investigate me.)

The problem with living in South Georgia is that I'm surrounded by Braves fans, so there's no one here to share my joy and passion. There's a guy in my class who's a Phillies fan and a guy at work who is a Mets fan. My boss is a White Sox fan, so he'd rather the world end than have the Cubs win. So I'm forced to share my joy with you, whoever happens to stop by here.

More to come as the Cubs get closer to the playoffs.

A little help from my friends

Hello again everyone.

I come to you needing help. At work, we're having our own little "World Series of Pop Culture" and half the fun of the tournament will be coming up with a team name. My teammates and I haven't been able to come up with anything yet, though I'm disappointed they rejected my suggestion of "Ferris and Sloane's Illegitimate Love Children."

So now I'm turning to you for suggestions. I can't promise any of will be selected, but I'd love to see what ideas you come up with.

For those of you scoring at home, or even if you're by yourself

Sometimes you see something and you know you just have to have it. For me, it was the shirt to the right.

As a baseball fan, I care about second base. As a male, I definitely care about second base. So when I saw a story about this shirt (and organization) in Newsweek, I thought it was both a great cause and a really clever slogan.

So now Yes Dear has the shirt, and I can feel good that I've done my part to help fight breast cancer, or as I'll refer to it from now on, saving second base.

I also enjoyed the thank you card accompanying the shirt that had a picture of pink bra and the words "thank you for your support."

Should I be concerned?

So school is in full swing, keeping me busy, but it's a good busy. I'd forgotten just how much fun it is to go to class and learn something new or have things you kind of knew put in their proper terms. While working at a newspaper wasn't exactly mindless work, there was a lot of less-than-exciting work that eventually became so routine that I got bored with it.

There's only so many ways you can write a story and after almost five years, I'd pretty much reached my limit of ways to tell the same story, so it was good for me to get away and back into an academic setting, which I find I really enjoy.

But with school and two part-time jobs (school's much harder when you have a mortgage to worry about) comes a lot of time apart from Yes Dear. Even though she works at the RAC (the rec. center on campus where I'm doing my graduate assistantship), we don't see each other much.

I wasn't too concerned about that to begin with. After all, when she went back to get her Master's Degree, I pretty much went an entire semester only seeing her walk home from class and go to the computer room to work on her thesis.

But shortly after school started, I noticed something different with Yes Dear. She'd leave for about an hour and then, when she came home, she'd be all hot and sweaty. No real cause for concern, after all, she did work at a gym. But soon I learned some disturbing news.

She'd been going to meet a college guy. It started out just once a week, but now it's up to twice a week. She always puts on special clothes and goes to meet him. When she comes home, she's always hot and sweaty and telling me how hard things were.

Making matters worse, she was paying this gentleman cold, hard, cash to go see him. He, too, worked at the RAC and had the audacity to say hello to me and even act like my friend.

Could it be? Could my wife be cheating on me right under my nose?

Well, no, she just hired a personal trainer to keep her motivated and accountable to someone to work out. But that's a boring blog post, so I went for the cheap, tawdry story-telling approach in the hopes you would keep reading.

By the way, in case your curious, she's doing well with her trainer and enjoying it (after the fact, she's not really thrilled during the actual training.)

I'm not quite dead

So for the past several months, a product called "vitamin water" has been advertising extensively on the channels I watch. (Apparently I need to also buy new vehicles and eat steaks and use A1 steak sauce, but that's a different topic for a different day.)

Vitamin Water, as best as I can tell, is just another in a line of sports drinks like Gatorade, Powerade, and the long-since forgotten 10K.

Having never tried the product, I'm really not in any position to discuss the merits of the beverage, but there are a couple things about Vitamin Water that bother me, if for no other reason than I think their marketing team is being lazy.

Let's start with the name. Vitamin Water. Really, is that the best we could come up with? As the old Saturday Night Live sketch used to say, "who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?" Vitamin Water is one step above "Healthy Drink" in terms of naming a product. You've got to sell the sizzle, baby, not the steak. Vitamin Water doesn't pop. It doesn't grab my attention. It sounds like something my grandmother should be drinking to offset the onset of aging. But apparently it's being marketed to people like me.

And how is it being marketed? With perhaps the worst slogan ever for a product in the history of mankind? The slogan, for those who haven't seen the product advertised, is "Try it."

That's right, just "Try it." Not "Try it, you'll be amazed" or "Try it at your own peril," you know, something that might give it an edge. Nope, they went with "Try it." Again, I ask, who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?

If you're going to go with "Try it," why even bother trying at all? Why not go with "Vitamin Water: Ehh, why not?" But I guess the ad wizards had to make some sort of effort to earn their paycheck.

School Update: So far, so good. I'm getting used to getting up at 7 a.m. every morning for one of my jobs, but other than that, things are well. I like my classes, like my classmates, and best of all, I get to use Yes Dear's faculty parking pass to drive to class. The two graduate assistants at the RAC who also ride with me to class also enjoy that perk.

Intramural Update: Playing with a team comprised of Yes Dear's student employees, we went 3-1 in the dodgeball season. Playoffs start Sunday night, and we'll see what happens. I know this much, my arm hurts.

Well that was fast

So Friday was my last day of employment at the Statesboro Herald.

I gave my boss a little more than two weeks notice of my intent to leave, wanting to be fair to him and to the other reporter (yes, that's singular) to give them time to try to line up my replacement. I told my editor on a Wednesday I was leaving. By Friday, he'd offered the job to someone else and by the next Tuesday, he'd accepted.

Now my ego isn't so big that I thought I was irreplaceable. But two days to find someone who could do my job? My boss said it was more of a matter of finding someone quickly and that's why they hired someone so quickly. I'll believe, however, that it just meant I could be replaced at a moment's notice.

They're singing Go Cubs, Go.

Baseball season's underway
Well you better get ready for a brand new day.
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

They're singing ...
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go

Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go

Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

They got the power, they got the speed
To be the best in the National League
Well this is the year and Cubs are real
So come on down to Wrigley Field

They're singing ...
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go

Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

- Lyrics by Steve Goodman

Here it is, August 2 and the Cubs, yes the Chicago Cubs, are in first place in the National League Central. The same team that hasn't been to the playoffs since 2003, the World Series since 1945 and they haven't won a title in nearly a century, but as we're entering the dog days of August, my beloved Cubbies are in first place. Granted, it's only by percentage points over the pesky Milwaukee Brewers, but I'll take it.

As you would expect, I'm giddy with excitement. Sure there's still two months of baseball left to be played and if history is any indication, the Cubs should blow it and wind up watching the postseason from their couches, but as Charles Schwab likes to say, past performance is no gauaruntee of future return.

In year's past, I'd be a nervous wreck right now worrying about the Cubs. But over the past year or so, I've realized that all that worrying really didn't do me any good. Instead of analyzing every little thing about the team, I'm taking a different approach this year. I'm riding the wave of emotion. It's a lot simpler than agonizing over the team's lack of on base percentage or their starting pitching after their top two starters. The formula is simple: Cubs win and I'm happy. Cubs lose and I'm unhappy.

Screw all the statistical analysis (which is odd of me to say considering the vast majority of my reading material over the past few years is about that stuff.) It's fascinating from an intellectual level and, ideally, should help me with my fantasy team, but it takes away some of the joy of just watching a game. After all, the game is supposed to be fun, and what's more fun than an emotional roller coaster ride with your favorite team. Sure, there's bound to be some lows, but those will make the highs seem that much more magical.

A few weeks ago, a fan brought a sign to a Cubs game that simply read "It's Gonna Happen." While the cynics and naysayers may say "it" is a collapse, I'm on board with those who believe "it" is a World Series trip.

Hop on board, it's going to be a great ride for the next two months.