Clancy & Me

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat…I’m a crazy dog owner.  I don’t know how I got to that place; I guess it just happened as time went on.  I talk about my dog way too much (for example: this blog post).  I once decorated her room with Christmas lights.  I have multiple nicknames that she responds to.  I dress her up in a costume for Halloween.  Yes, I’m obsessed.  She runs my life and I’m not ashamed to admit it.  She has also taught me a few things along the way.  We’ll get to that in a moment.  But first… 

Growing up, I was allergic to dogs – I couldn’t be anywhere near them.  In 1997, my parents decided that it was time to introduce a pet into the family.  They chose a breed that was hypoallergenic, so that little Ryan could listen to his K-Ci & JoJo album without itchy eyes and a runny nose.  It was a Bichon Frise that they bought at Chapel Hill Mall in Akron.  Normally, buying a pet at a place that sits adjacent from the airbrushed t-shirt stand is ill advised.  That certainly was the case here.  When we brought him home all he did was sleep – so much that we ended up naming him Cuddles.  Yes, that’s the worst name for a dog ever.  It’s not too bad a name for a Care Bear, but a terrible choice for the dog of a seventh grader who was trying desperately to be cool. 

Cuddles, the pet store mall dog wasn’t just sleeping; he was clinging on to life.  I’m not sure if my parents ever got their money back from the store, but after multiple vet trips, Cuddles eventually got healthy.  Now that he was well, we needed to change his name.  The Cleveland Indians were in the middle of their eventual World Series run that year, with Sandy Alomar having a career season.  1997 was a good year for Sandy: 30 game hitting streak, All-Star Game MVP, game tying home run in the playoffs against future hall-of-famer Mariano Rivera, and namesake of my first pet.  We buried the name Cuddles for good and that’s how Salomar came to be.  For the most part, he was a good dog, albeit very annoying.  Small, white, yippy, with a mean streak at times, you couldn’t bring small children or other dogs around Salomar.  Still, Salomar was my first pet – and he had an awesome name, so I’ll always remember that dog.

But this post isn’t about Salomar.  This post is about the obsession in my life, our dog Clancy.  Clancy is a yellow lab, dare I say the cutest (and smelliest) yellow lab ever to grace this fine Earth.  She came into my life way back in 2004, when Eileen’s mother surprised her with a new puppy.  Eileen was home for the summer after her freshman year of nursing school at Kent State.  See, Eileen was deathly afraid of being home alone, so her mother thought that a puppy was much cheaper than building a full blown panic room with home alarm system.  A woman at her mother’s work was trying to give away this six-month old puppy for free to a good home.  Clancy came from a reputable show-dog breeder.  Her overbite and black, crooked front tooth made her useless in the show dog world, but a perfect candidate for home protection in Eileen’s world.  Little did Eileen’s mother know that this free show dog misfit would end up costing thousands in the long run.

Clancy hating life in her Halloween costume

Just a quick rundown of everything Clancy destroyed in the first few years of her life: Eileen’s designer glasses, dental retainer, dental mouth guard, Lladro porcelain figurine, carpeting in four separate bedrooms, ate two bars of soap in one sitting, a bedroom door and door frame, and three metal dog cages.  I’m sure there’s more, but I’m drawing a blank at the moment.  As for the three dog cages, let’s just say that Clancy has had some issues with containment.  Our furry Houdini would push against the metal cage with all of her weight, until she bent the bars near the cage door.  Then, she would somehow open the cage door from the inside and make her escape.  Yes, she did this with three separate cages.  You think we would have learned after the second.  It got so bad, that for the fourth cage, Eileen’s father had to reinforce the cage door with rebar and nail the back of the cage to the kitchen floor. Young Clancy makes Marley look like a saint.

Clancy is a much different dog now.  Calm and reserve, she spends most of her days lying around the house, searching out her next nap.  After all, she is 9 years old and in the golden years of her life.  It’s the simple things in life that make her happy.  A dirty sock, unattended trash can, dropped ingredient while making dinner.  The unbridled joy that Clancy shows when I come home from work everyday is rivaled by almost nothing in life.  I wish that I had her enthusiasm for life and love that she gives in that moment.  Letting the dog out of her room when I come home from work is just another thoughtless task for me, but for the dog, seeing me is the highlight of her day.  Like I said, Clancy loves the simple things…like car rides.  She doesn’t care if we’re in a swank Range Rover or a 1997 Honda Civic, all she cares about is being by my side on the road.  We can learn so much from our pets.  Clancy has helped to teach me that in order to be truly happy in life, don’t look at your possessions, but look to those you love most. She is fiercely loyal and demands our attention at every waking moment when we are home.  Even as I sit here writing this, she seems a little put off that I’m not paying attention to her.  All she wants is love.  If she only knew that 1,200 words were being typed about her right now...

Clancy and I at softball.  She was ejected from the
 game for kicking dirt on the umpire.....and for pooping in left field

As the years pass by, I find myself growing closer and closer to Clancy.  Once Eileen and I were married and moved in together, she became our first mutual responsibility and love.  Now, five years later, she still remains that.  I have never thought of the dog as “our child” (I’m a crazy dog owner, but not that crazy), but I can see how those without children can think that way.  Clancy has taught us how to love and care; it is comforting to have her around.  Clancy is more than a dog to us.  I’ve been with Eileen for 12 years and the dog has been around for 9 of them.  She has been a huge part of our relationship; it will someday be weird when she is not around.  But here’s to hoping that day is far in the future.  She surely will never make it to see a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl (she’s a huge football fan), but I hope that she will be around when Eileen and I have a child someday.  After all, she was the one that gave us the building blocks on how to become great parents.

New York City State of Mind - Part Two

This is part two of our trip to New York for our five-year anniversary, to read part one, click here

This was a different type of New York trip than Eileen and I had taken in the past.  Past trips featured activities such as the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Today Show, Times Square, National History Museum, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, China Town, and even riding one of those double-decker busses for the entirety of a day.  Don’t get me wrong; if you've never been to the city, they’re kind of cool to do.  But they’re not New York.  When you’re strolling through Times Square and shopping at the M&Ms store, you’re pretty much doing the same thing you’d be doing at the Mall of America.  I’ll never understand the people who travel to New York and then have dinner at the Olive Garden.  Endless salad and bread sticks are great, but really?  This was our 6th trip to New York, so it was time to cut free from the regular touristy areas of the city (for the most part).

I wanted this trip to be all about good food – and food that we couldn't get back home.  For that aspect alone, this trip was a success.  Some of the highlights of the stay included sushi at Momoya, an amazing dark chocolate bar with pistachios from Mario Batali’s Eataly, pizza in Little Italy, outstanding fish tacos down in Chelsea, Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA (a beer that is 18% ABV and is next to impossible to find), and salmon eggs benedict from Sarabeth’s.  As far as food highlights go, I could write an entire post dedicated solely to how good the brunch was at Sarabeth's.  The restaurant faces Central Park South and is spitting distance from The Plaza Hotel – highly recommended.

I had surprised Eileen early in the spring with this New York trip to celebrate our five-year anniversary.  On the night of our anniversary we had dinner reservations at The View before heading over to the Minskoff Theater to see The Lion King.  The View is a rotating restaurant that sits atop the Marriott Marquis hotel on the 48^th floor.  I was hesitant at first, because the Marriott Marquis is in the heart of Times Square.  The best thing about the 48^th floor in Times Square though, is that you can’t see Times Square.  So it was like we weren't even there, which was fine by me.  The meal was very good – not the best meal that I've ever had, but definitely the best meal that I've enjoyed while watching the sunset over the Hudson River.  The restaurant’s name is apropos – the sights were astonishing.

At the Minskoff Theater before The Lion King

When our waiter approached us after dinner to inquire about dessert, we kindly declined and asked for his recommendation for a great, local dessert joint.  Upon sight, I could instantly tell, with a high probability, that this gentleman adored Broadway (if you catch my drift).  Without hesitation, he suggested his favorite after-Broadway hangout, a bar/restaurant named Joe Allen.  He mentioned that this particular bar is a favorite spot for the actors to visit after their performances.  With much vigor, he exclaimed, “If you’re lucky, you might even see Nathan Lane”.  I gave him a quick smile and a nod of the head while trying to hold back what I really wanted to say, which was “Who the hell is Nathan Lane?”  A quick IMDB search on my phone at the table showed that he was the voice of Timon in Disney's The Lion King.  Not exactly a showstopper, but at least he had a nice tie-in to the evening.

After dinner we headed over to the theater a little early so that we could take some pictures before the show.  Since I purchased the tickets five months early, I had my choice of any seat in the theater.  I opted for the front row of the balcony, with two seats in the dead center of the stage.  My thought was that Eileen is short and I didn't want a tall theatergoer to sit in front of her and block her view.  The front row of the balcony would be perfect…..so I thought.  As soon as Eileen sat down I noticed that there might be a small problem.  When I looked over to see her leaning forward in her seat uncomfortably, I knew there was a problem.  Eileen couldn't see over the balcony railing.  My wife needed a booster seat.  Need to read that again?  My wife needed a booster seat.  The proud husband that I am, I walked over to the usher to request a booster so that the vertically-challenged love of my life could enjoy the show.

After the show, we made our way to Joe Allen for dessert.  The bar/restaurant certainly was hopping with energy.  Little did we know, reservations were required, even for dessert.  There were a large group at the bar having drinks.  The hostess knew the group, as they were regulars and approached them for us to see if they would let us have two seats at the bar since their table was almost ready.  We thanked a man in the group for allowing us to join him for that brief moment.  As we sat down he questioned whether we were old enough to even sit at the bar.  I let him know that my 30^th birthday was only five months away, so I would be fine. 

Needs no explanation

He asked what show we saw that evening – you could just tell that this guy was a Broadway mover and shaker. The disinterested look on his face when I told him that we saw The Lion King kind of said it all.  It was pretty much the equivalent of going to a bar where stand-up comics hang out and telling somebody there that we just saw Carrot Top and absolutely loved his act.  The Lion King is the tourist pick of shows, kind of like Cats at the end of it's run in the late nineties. It didn't help matters that we were at the bar with a Lion King sippy cup that they served soft drinks in at the show.  Oh, and we ordered two Cokes in the bottle - no alcohol.  To top things off, our dessert was three chocolate chip cookies with ice cream.  Just to summarize: chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, Coca-Cola, and a Lion King sippy cup.  The man I was talking to was enjoying a nice glass of The Glenlivet 18, while I was enjoying preschool dessert options.  No wonder our age was seriously in question that evening.  

By the way, our waiter from The View was right; we would see celebrities in this bar.  At one moment, the man at the bar pointed out that the entire cast of Pippin walked in.  The only way I would have known this, is if they were in full costume, toe tapping around the place.  We would have been better suited just going to a touristy cheesecake place – at least we wouldn't have been the least cultured people there.

Our last night on the Brooklyn Bridge

Our trip concluded with a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge at night.  This is something that Eileen has always wanted to do – and it was totally worth it.  It was one of those moments where you feel like you're in a movie.  Much like our entire trip, the views of the city that night from the bridge were remarkable.  Spending our five-year anniversary in New York with each other was just the escape that we needed.  We still laugh about that damn sippy cup a month later – I mean, who brings cheap souvenirs into a bar?  That story is a microcosm of our relationship.  Although grown adults, we really are still kids at heart.  For all of the stresses and struggles that come along with life, I am most thankful that I have somebody by my side to laugh along with me.  It makes going through the tough time just a little bit easier.  But above all else, I’m just happy that Eileen gave me a pass not once, but twice on forgetting to buy her a card for the weekend.  I’ve gotta be on my game for next year.

New York City State of Mind - Part One

Five years ago.  I looked like a tall 14 year-old.

Eileen and I just celebrated our five-year anniversary this past October.  At first glance, five years doesn’t sound like a long time.  To Eileen and I, these past five years have gone by so quickly that it even sounds a little funny to tell people that we’ve been married that long.  I sometimes catch myself counting back on my fingers when people ask “how long have you been married?” but that is most likely due to the lack of mathematics taught to me in 7^th grade than anything else (1). No matter how fast it seems to go, five years is a long time.  Think of the maturity difference between a freshman on his first day of high school compared to that same person on his first day as a sophomore in college.  Well, some would actually argue that his maturity drops a few levels during that time span.  Dammit, I’m really bad at analogies – but you know what I’m trying to say.  Five years was a big deal for me.  As I’ve said in other posts before, Eileen is the funniest person in the world and every day with her is a new adventure that I absolutely love to be a part of.  She will also love that I’m taking this space to talk about her – she’s the best.

Since Eileen loves surprises, I decided to get her plane tickets, dinner reservations, and tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway on October 18^th, the night of our anniversary.  Since New York is one of our favorite cities to visit and Eileen was clamoring to see The Lion King, I thought it would be the perfect surprise.  I happened to tell her at 2:00am on a random Saturday night in May when I was very drunk and half asleep.  I’ll never be mistaken for Noah from The Notebook, but it was perfect nonetheless.  I really am a bumbling fool when it comes to the romance department.  Example: when I was packing my bag for our latest New York trip, I realized that I forgot to buy Eileen an anniversary card.  We had a 6am flight, so there was no time to get a card from this point on.  I was card-less.  The only hope I had was that Eileen also forgot to buy a card.  Light bulb!  Eileen’s Aunt had just sent us an anniversary card in the mail that very day.  So, in the event that Eileen bought me a card, at least I would have this in my back pocket.  Cross off Aunt Kathy’s name and replace with mine, and I was good to go.  That’s a far cry from restoring an old plantation home to it’s former glory just to impress the girl you fell in love with 14 years earlier.  Yes, I am fluent in The Notebook.

As we were driving to the airport the next morning, Eileen casually threw out the comment, “I bet you didn’t remember to get me a card.”  Shit.  I reassured her that I did indeed have a card for her, she just didn’t need to know at that moment that it also happened to be the same one she received in the mail the day before with one small edit.  We flew out of Akron-Canton, so the flight and check-in was incredibly easy.  I suppose that a 6am fight helps. 

Since we couldn’t check into our hotel early in the morning, our itinerary for the morning included grabbing a quick coffee and then taking a bike ride through Central Park.  We stayed at a Marriott in Midtown East, which was perfect walking distance to 5^th Avenue shopping and Central Park.  After grabbing a Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks, we headed over to Central Park.  It was a spectacularly sunny day and a beautiful ride through the Park, especially with the autumn foliage.  It was such a special ride, that I almost forgot I was pedaling a 1993 cruising bike with broken gears and a rattling back wheel.  I am such a Trip Advisor snob when traveling; I am surprised that I didn’t look up bike rental reviews.  Eileen and I found the first bike rental “company” that we could find.  I use that term loosely, as I believe we rented them from the Somali cast of Captain Phillips.  It’s not a good sign when somebody has to walk a block to an alley just to grab your transportation for the day. 

So Eileen and I clanked our way through the park, stopping for a few obligatory photos at some of the popular spots.  We stopped by the reservoir and several other areas that I’m sure plenty of Meg Ryan movies were filmed.  We ended the ride by touring Strawberry Fields outside The Dakota.  There were some second-rate musicians playing renditions of John Lennon songs on cheap acoustic guitars.  It was so cliché that I couldn’t overcome the music being played; it ruined my time at this spot.  We took our photo on the mosaic, navigated through the hippies, and then biked back to the area in front of The Plaza Hotel to return our bikes, a two-hour ride in total.  We went back to our room to rest up and get ready to go out for the remainder of the day.

When we returned to the hotel, we both needed to charge our phones.  I had put Eileen’s charger in my bag, so when she went to grab it, she saw her Aunt’s card.  Well there goes that plan.  Her suspicion that I forgot to buy a card was indeed true.  I didn’t even get to cross out her Aunt’s name yet.  I assured her that I would go to Duane Reade to get her a card, but she said that wouldn’t be necessary and that surprising her with the trip was more than enough.  Then, in only the funny little way that she could say it, she laughed while saying, “You’re really going to be mad at me! Not only did I buy you an anniversary card, I also got you a Sweetest Day card.”  Shit.  I'm down two cards to zero.  Not the way I envisioned our romantic anniversary weekend to start…

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post. 

1) Instead of math, we played basketball in a gym for an hour every day.  True story (one that deserves it’s own blog post someday). 

Still Waiting for Next Year

As I sit down to write this post, the Red Sox are 3 outs away from winning their third World Series in the last ten years.  I’m assuming that they aren’t going to blow this because they don’t play in Cleveland.  I have to admit, I am a Red Sox fan – they are my second favorite team behind my beloved Cleveland Indians.  Yes, second favorite teams are ridiculous and shouldn’t exist and I’m kind of embarrassed that I root for them.  But, let’s just put it this way - with the bases loaded in the 7^th inning and the Cardinals threatening to score, I just took my dog outside to poop.  I came inside and the inning was over, having no clue what had happened.  To put that in perspective, I don’t leave the room for a play during a Browns game, even if they are getting blown out in the 4^th quarter.  Yes, I like the Red Sox.  No, my night isn’t completely ruined if they lose.  That’s the difference.

As a Cleveland sports fan, I find every championship clinching game in the MLB, NFL, and NBA must watch television.  I cannot remember the last one that I missed.  I take it all in.  From the players’ celebration on the field and in the locker room, to the trophy celebration, to the live shots of the local sports pub, I watch it all.  I find the juxtaposition between these celebrations and my entire life as a sports fan fascinating and also somewhat therapeutic.  I guess I could be ever the optimist and say that I’ve been on the wrong end of watching these celebrations three times in my life and for that, I should be thankful.  But 1995, 1997, and 2007 were monumental disappointments.  To be that close and to lose is worse than never being there at all (just ask any Buffalo Bills fan). 

           

As a side note, I find this to be the perfect spot to mention that the 1997 World Series Game 7 collapse was entirely my fault.  In the middle of the 9^th inning during commercials, my friend Dan and I thought it would be a grand idea to bang his mother’s pots and pans together in his front yard while screaming, “We won the World Series”.  Looking back, I was only in 7^th grade at the time and didn’t know any better.  My Cleveland sports heartache was very minimal at the time, I was living through the glory years of mid 90’s baseball.  I wish I could go back and punch 13 year-old Ryan in the face for being a jerk…and for buying that Deep Blue Something album.  My favorite part of the story, and most ironic, is that Dan’s mother didn’t cook…like ever.  When she was younger, she burned a meal so poorly that she just gave up.  So those pots and pans shouldn’t of been in the house, therefore creating an alternate universe where I wouldn’t of banged them, allowing Jose Mesa to pitch a perfect 9^th inning.  Sorry guys.

Watching these three clinching games a year is a constant reminder at how dismal my sports fandom has been my entire life.  The ineptitude of the Cleveland Browns alone should make me swear off watching sports for good. I mean, if you went to the same restaurant 16 times a year and got really shitty service 11 of those times, you would stop going to that restaurant, right?  Most normal people would.  Not the Cleveland sports fan though.  We keep coming back for more, hoping that this is the time that it pays off.  So the reason why I watch all of these celebrations is that I know it will be my time someday.  I don’t know where I will be, or how old I will be. All I know is that I’ll be crying like a little baby, knowing that all of this rooting will some day pay off.  I hope.

Return of the Blog

Hello, 17 people that read my blog.  It’s been awhile.  The last we left I was writing about running my first 5K and getting ready for summer to begin.  Well since then, summer has come and gone with nary the blog post.  I took trips to Niagara Falls and Catawba Island with Eileen, watched my youngest sister graduate from Kent State, shot even par for the first time in my life, experienced the most exciting end to a baseball season that I can remember only to have the other shoe drop immediately, have had two promotions at work, went through some difficult personal issues and ran another 5K to support one of my best friends’ dad and his fight with pancreatic cancer.  Unfortunately he just recently lost that battle – a great life cut much too short, but one that was certainly lived to the fullest. 

So it was a summer of ups and downs, but one to remember for sure.  So here I sit, rebooting the Losing Touch Blog after a very short hiatus.  It’s not like a long ’07-’13 Justin Timberlake hiatus, but more like the recent hiatus the Cleveland Browns have taken from losing football games.  I named this blog Losing Touch because of my ever-feared thought of becoming irrelevant to the times.  I’ve always tried to keep up on pop culture and current events and have vowed to never grow out of touch.  So writing this blog was one way to help me do that.  I will always be a child at heart; so growing older is not something I’m looking forward to.

But now I have a different reason to write this blog – to help remember what has happened in my life. It’s kind of like a digital time capsule.  Life is too short to start forgetting large chunks of time as you grow older.  It happened to me, I have very faint memories of 2003-2006.  Those were the college years, which most dub the best years of their life.  Well, I don’t remember much from mine and it’s not due to illicit acts.  I just think the brain has to do a memory scrub every so often.  Kindergarten to senior year of high school is fully engrained – but my brain right clicked and deleted most of my college memories.  After college, came an engagement, marriage, and house, which have built new lasting memories that I’ll never forget.

So I’m back on the blog circuit, archiving my memories digitally, ensuring that they will always be available.  It will be pretty cool to read these posts 10 years from now.  Hopefully then I will be reading about that time I finally got to celebrate that Cleveland championship, or how I bought the entire clubhouse a round after hitting a hole-in-one.  Most likely though, I’m just ensuring that people can make fun of me all over again for obsessing over Katy Perry’s song Roar.  There it is.  4 paragraphs into the return of my blog and a Katy Perry mention.  I would of put my money on Taylor Swift to be brought up first…and I would of lost.  Oh man, am I sure I really want to have you read this stuff?

Running My First 5K

Imagine that one goal, that one activity or thing that you have always wanted to achieve, but knew deep down in your heart would probably never come to be.  For one reason or another it just seemed impossible.  No matter which way you played the scenario out in your head it always had the same outcome....failure.  This week I conquered one of those activities - I ran a 5K.  I know, it's only 3.1 miles, and to most serious runners it is just a breezy warm-up.  But I'm not a serious runner. Up until a month ago I didn't even consider myself a runner at all.  Actually, I hated it.  Which is why running the Kelly's Grief Center 5K (http://kellysgriefcenter.org/) was a pretty big deal.

Just a few months ago, running for more than 10 minutes was my absolute max.  I mean, who wants to run anyways?  Running and I never got along.  Maybe it's because running was always used as a punishment in the sports I played growing up.  You mean...I screwed something up and you're going to make me run more laps around the field?  And then I'm suppose to run "for fun" later on in life?  I was pre-conditioned to hate this activity.  It's like trying to root for your team's bitter rival after your dad raises you to detest them. So yeah, that's not going to work out.

My friend Dave and I acting to look like 2 runners

Even in high school, when forced to run, I always tried to get out of it.  There were a few of my friends on the baseball team that shared this feeling.  During conditioning, we had to run around the school three times, which was roughly one mile.  When the coaches weren't watching, a group of us would run once around the school and then sneak into the cafeteria to steal chocolate eclair ice cream bars.  We would then slam the ice cream bars during a brisk walk around the school and then meet the coaches back in the gym.  So we ran a third of a mile and then walked a third of a mile while eating ice cream bars.  Hard to believe it based on our extreme training regimen, but our team was the utmost mediocre.  My wife also pulled this charade in high-school for her track team, as she would hide in a bush and pop out to run when the rest of the team approached the bush.  Reason #463 we were meant to be together. 

Running to me, was just another chore.  I did it for the health benefits and not for enjoyment.  No matter what distance I tried, I was instantly bored.  Whether it be the track or treadmill, every step was more boring than the next.  My feet hurt, my shins hurt, I wasn't having fun.  I guess that it also didn't help that I never thought once about what kind of shoes I was wearing.  I not only needed new running shoes, I needed the right running shoe, so I went to Second Sole in the Valley.  The owner of the store picked out the perfect shoe for my foot, which also happened to be the most grandpa-like in appearance. I trusted his judgement and bought them although I absolutely hated how they looked (a classic sign that I'm not a runner - not yet).  I went to the gym and ran the next week and a funny thing happened - my legs didn't hurt, my shins felt great, and I was starting to have fun.  These shoes must of been working some sort of magic because I'm not suppose to be enjoying this.

I never set out to run this particular 5K.  The week prior, my wife and many of our friends ran in a 5K supporting infertility at Copley High School.  I was playing in a poker tournament the night before that was planned a few months out, so I had to graciously decline the invitation to run.  It was a good move.  A few whiskeys, scotch, cigars, 6,000 calories (not a joke), Taco Bell and $100 later and running was the furthest thing from my mind.  Based on the Taco Bell alone, it would of been a cataclysmically bad decision to race the next morning at 9am.  I felt awful that I did not participate in the race, given the cause and the group running.  Luckily for me, two of my friends were running the Kelly's Grief Center 5K in Stow the next week, so I had a chance to redeem myself and test my recent training.


Kelly's Grief Center 5K team

 I set a goal for myself to finish the race in 27:00 even.  I was running on false hope since I have only ran 3 miles or more twice in my life, which happened to be the week of the race.  Once I arrived at the race, for reasons unknown, I was even more confident in this goal....until I overheard a conversation at the registration table.  It's never good to hear one experienced runner decked out in proper gear tell his friend, Mr. Short Shorts that this is "one of the area's toughest courses", especially if you have never run a race before.  Great.  Confidence was out the window.  My new goal for my first race was now to finish without stopping to walk.  If guys in serious racing attire are concerned, then the newbie wearing basketball shorts with pockets should be peeing his pants scared.

The course was indeed difficult (at least in my mind), with many hills throughout the run.  I finished the race in 27:16, for a 8:47 mile pace.  Only 16 seconds off of my goal - I can deal with that. I finished dead even with a lady who placed first in her age group.  That means that if I was a 50 year-old woman or older, I would of been a champion.  So I have that going for me.  In the end, I finished exactly 100th out of 236 runners, so not too bad for my first try at this.  I haven't been this proud of an athletic accomplishment since hitting the same batter three times in one game while pitching in high school. 

If you asked me if I would ever run a 5K at any point in my life, my response would of been a resounding 'No'.  Just a few days ago I told somebody that I would never run a half marathon, now I'm having second thoughts.  For those serious runners out there reading this, you will laugh at my time.  But a few months ago I could barely run a mile, let alone three.  Now I love running.  I look forward to going to the gym and trying to see how much further I can go.  Even as I finishing my first race, my competitive personality started to kick in the moment I crossed the finish line.  16 seconds off my goal...failure.  I was proud and kind of bummed at the same time.  Oh well, something to look forward to overcoming during my next race.  I don't know when or how it happened, but I'm a full fledged runner now...and I kind of like it.

Die Hard Cleveland Fan Upset with Hiring of Browns Head Coach Rob Chudzinski

The Cleveland Browns’ search for a new head coach commenced on Thursday night when the team announced the hiring of Rob Chudzinski.  Chudzinski, who has most recently served as the Carolina Panthers Offensive Coordinator under Ron Rivera in 2011 and 2012, will bring much needed innovation and a vertical offensive game plan to a sickly Cleveland Browns offense.  Team owner Jimmy Haslam said candidly that Chudzinski’s leadership style and candid decision making candidly made him the best fit for the job.  However, not all Browns fans agree with Haslam’s assessment of his new head coach.

Die hard Browns fan and Toledo native Rob Chudzinski is one of the many who disagree with Chudzinski’s hiring.  “When I was at home with my wife Sheila and saw my name scroll across the bottom of the ESPN ticker as new coach of the Cleveland Browns, I instantly disliked the hire”, Chudzinski stated this morning.  “This team has seen its fair share of heartbreak since 1999, and hiring yet another inexperienced head coach is unacceptable.  As a child in Toledo, I would pretend to be Brian Sipe and Ozzie Newsome in my backyard, so I know the glory days of Browns football and what this team means to its city.  I am passionate about this franchise and gambling on a guy like myself is concerning for not only the front office, but for the fan base and region as well”. 

The Browns set an NFL record, interviewing 53 candidates in 11 days for their head coaching vacancy after the firing of Pat Shurmur.  Frustrated at the media perception of the arduous process and overall negative fan response, sources say that Haslam came to the realization that he cannot please the fans and was overheard screaming at Banner, “F*** them, if the fans think that they are so good, let’s see one of them try to coach this team”.  Enter Rob Chudzinski.

When asked on his shot of ever becoming an NFL head coach, Chudzinski replied, “You know, when I interviewed with Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, and St. Louis last year and walked away without a gig, I pretty much gave up on my dream.  If you can’t land a job with Jacksonville, then you need to rethink your career choice, which weighed heavy on my mind.  Then, out of nowhere, Mr. Haslam contacted me this week and invited me to an interview after Chip Kelly left him at the alter alone with Kim Jong Banner.  I was pretty bummed that my favorite team had to settle on somebody less than Chip Kelly, but I guess I’m lucky that they settled on me.  I’m still not on board with this hire, but you know, I guess I’ll give me a chance before I call morning radio to complain about myself”.