Where I'm From (pre-1996)

Feast your eyes on the beautiful patchwork quilt that is rural Northwestern Ohio.

This was one of the prettiest locations I've ever lived in, and I credit it for giving me such a strong attraction to trees. I don't ever want to have a home without some greenery. That house also had an epic deck (necessary for grilling and parties), a barn (necessary for projects and macho outdoor things), and an awesome full finished basement with a pool table, fireplace, office, living room, kitchen, and bathroom (necessary for cranking it up to 11).

Looking at the picture, its pretty obvious that we weren't in close proximity to big cities. Hell, I don't think there were even cable lines going out there. When my family moved to Louisville in 1996 my sisters and I were kind of overloaded with all the amenities we had at our fingertips.

That being said, though, when my time comes to raise a family, I'd take a home like this into consideration. We had a lot of privacy. We had a lot of space to adventure in. We developed a strong work ethic (mowing, raking, collecting maple sap, etc.). And we had awesome parties. There was just a lot of room to grow.

I don't think I'll ever get used to living so close to a neighbor that I can look in their windows or hear their music playing from next door. And it makes me manic when I see new mini-mansions being built close to another home. Why wouldn't a builder want some space? Where are all the trees?

Oh well. I suppose its all part of growing up and adapting to your environment. I think I adapted to Louisville relatively quickly. And I feel comfortable now in the NYC area. The traffic has never bothered me. I still get amazed by how many people live so close to each other here. There are probably 3x as many people in a city block in NYC than there were in the entire village I went to school in. Also, check out this statistic from Wikipedia:

The racial makeup of the village was 99.48% White, 0.15% African American, and 0.37% from two or more races.Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.22% of the population.

Its incredible how big a village like that can seem to a child, and how small it seems now that I'm living up here. I suppose anyone makes that realization when they get older. There's always a bigger picture to take into consideration. I try to keep this in mind whenever I begin to feel like I'm the center of the universe. There's so much out in the world to learn. There are so many people in the world to meet. So much to see. So much to taste. So many places to go. Geez.

College Football Winding Down

I'm already nostalgic for college football. We still have this weekend's championship games, and then bowl games through the end of the year...and then, like that, its gone.

The good news with the end of college football, though, is that Oregon-Oregon State is a great game. South Carolina is going to lose, but they're playing Auburn tough, and its a fun game to watch. With Oregon and Auburn winning, though, we're going to be treated to two high-powered offenses playing in the National Title Game. Boise State is out, so I don't have that to fret about.

And I stick by the fact that I wouldn't mind TCU in the title game if one of these teams (Auburn and Oregon) lose. TCU plays some tougher teams, and they're going to be in the Big East in 2012, so I can dig it.

Ohio State will *probably* get into a BCS game. I think that's a lock, actually. Louisville should be getting into a bowl game. This has been a good, good season.

Still scratching my head at how South Carolina could lose to UK this year and subsequently cost me two 6-packs. The team did redeem themselves by beating Florida and earning me three 6-packs. So I'll take it.

And with the end of football comes college basketball. College basketball is my second favorite sport to watch. The biggest problem with it, though, is that its scheduled to play all days of the week. One of the coolest things about college football is that you can count on Saturdays being 'FOOTBALL DAY.' Cooking, drinking, cleaning, napping, drinking some more, talking trash. Its all encapsulated nicely in one macho day or irresponsibility. I can't afford to be this rugged and irresponsible every night of the week. So the fire loses some of its fuel with college basketball.

That being said, college basketball is a nice way to coast into the spring and easing the foot off the gas. And then from March to August the hot rod that is Paul's attention to sports sits idle, covered in tarp, parked in the garage. This will inevitably lead to me going back to 7-day work weeks.

OTHER RAMBLINGS

- The Land, Sea, and Air Sandwich Challenge!

You take a hamburger, a chicken sandwich, and a fish sandwich and combine all three patties under one bun.

http://college-football.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/24156338/26221618

- While Pitt and Cincinnati are currently playing in the snow, it seems that someone got a bit too carried away playingwith the snow. The Cincinnati mascot was detained by police and ejected from the stadium on Saturday, and had to be replaced. Why?

Because he was throwing snowballs into the crowd, and when police asked him to stop, he didn't. Something that then causes this to happen.

- Duncan made a brilliant observation. Auburn needs to consolidate their mascots. They have War Eagles. They have Tigers. A good compromise for them would be the Sphinxes.

- David wanted to argue with me about Duke. I told him the only research I would do about Duke basketball is research into what kind of magical spells and curses they recited to get a Deadite onto their team.

- Did you know that Olivia Wilde's real last name is Cockburn? It has long been a matter of principle that I wouldn't sleep with any woman whose last name sounds like it could be an STD. I'm very conflicted right now.

- I dislike LG, but I like Pond Man

Reminds me of Swamp Thing or Man-Thing

Thursday