FilteringCraig

After a strong start, my brief jogging career was derailed for two weeks with soreness in my achilles. After taking two weeks off and putting more focus into stretching, I am officially back on track. Today was my longest workout to date at almost four miles. While the time may not be all that impressive, that isn’t really what I am looking for. Running speed will continue to increase as I continue to lose LB’s. For now, I just want to continue to keep my runs as long and as steady as possible to keep the aerobic workout going for as long as possible.

Well, I guess he didn’t really force me to do anything, and it surely was a good excuse to type something today. The only thing that really bums me out is that the rules state that I have to tag eight people and the luck of the draw states that MisterCrunchy already tagged my WIFE and my BASS PLAYER! How is it that I don’t get to tag these people? I guess I should start the tagging exercise next time. In the meantime, I will tag my wife’s friends.

“Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.”

1. I swore off most political conversations about a year ago because I got tired of everyone sounding like a bunch of bumper stickers. I have been relatively successful so far, and I am going to do my best to carry it into the political season. I think we might need a return to a time when people kept political inclinations close to the vest. I think we have proven an inability for civility, myself included, when we get too involved in politics.
2. After a time period when I considered quitting, I am more excited about music than I have been in quite a while. My band is back writing and playing a lot, and we will have a new recording soon. I have three new songs specifically that I think people will be very surprised by them.
3. I run on a relatively consistent basis, but I am not a runner by any stretch of the imagination. I keep thinking one day, I will look and feel like a runner, but I have this feeling that I will continue to look like a slightly over-weight guy who never quite gets into real shape. I like food, beer, and my coffee with creamer too much to commit to being completely svelte.
4. I have always found it difficult to specialize in any one thing in terms of a career. My interests range a lot, and I end up doing a lot of different things, none of them spectacularly. That makes it difficult to rise through the ranks of an organization, but it should set me up to be a pretty well-rounded manager. After joining my family’s business, I am putting that notion to the test and it has been good so far.
5. I don’t really like traveling all that much. Airports and hotels and things stress me out and with very few exceptions, I get bored with sight-seeing. I prefer the kind of travel where you get to your destination and make it a temporary home like a condo on the beach where you have a kitchen and stuff like that. Maybe that makes me boring, but I don’t really care anymore.
6. I think yard work is pointless, unless it isn’t. I think that manicuring a bunch of plants in obsessive fashion around our houses is something really silly from a cultural evolution standpoint. Then again, if anyone out there finds gardening therapeutic, then I am all for it. I just haven’t figured out that balance where some people can have their therapy without forcing me to pretend I give a shit about hostas, day lilies and the like.
7. I find it funny that the sports blogging world is falling into the same patterns as the political blogging world. ESPN are Republicans and everyone hates on them right now.
8. The first thing I ever played musically were the drums. I have always had a dream that I would go see my favorite band and the drummer would hurt their arm and they would look to the audience for a replacement. In that dream, I would go up there for just a single night and rock the effing house and kick some ass. I never go on to tour with the band, but I do hang with them for a single night.

And the people that I am tagging are as follows. Dittoheston, Deezo, Brian, (for comedy’s sake) Justin, Life Liberty Pursuit, The Mike, My Cousin Who Hasn’t Blogged Since June 12, 2006, Bill From Nothing But Love.Net

I am not sure how I feel about this yet. At some point it will probably be funny, but right now, I am still finding LeBron in parachute pants singing “My Perogative” kind of disturbing.

Part of being married (apparently) is adopting the priorities of another family that weren’t necessarily a big part of your life before marriage. One such priority in Jen’s family is making a big deal out of birthdays. When my birthday rolled around in February, I was borderline confused by all the attention being paid to me by my brand new family in-law. It certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but I had no idea to expect phone calls, cards and gifts.

Where I am going with this is that today is Jen’s birthday and thanks to all the big attention paid to my birthday in February, I have had ample warning for the veritable barrage of birthday-ness that has struck my household this week. I made sure that Jen was properly gifted and hopefully dinner tonight will be worthy celebration of the day my wife was born so few years ago.

And the marriage learning curve continues.

So, Happy Birthday to my wife Jen. And here is a wink to all my in-laws saying that even if I don’t totally get everything, I am more than happy to analyze things and play along when I should do so.

I think Ryan Tucker’s mental issues are officially behind him. See he and Brady Quinn rock out with Poison to “Nothing But a Good Time.”

Travis Hafner has struggled in the first half of the season, and if it has had anything to do with his contract situation being up in the air, we should expect to see Hafner return to form. Hafner and the Indians went into the All-Star break thinking about continuing contract discussions that began in spring training and it appears that they have hit common ground for a contract worth $57 million for five years.

So, assuming this deal is true, how did the parties come out in the negotiations?

A look around the league puts it in perspective.

Magglio Ordonez will make $13.2 million this year. Vlad Guerrero is at $14.5 million. David Ortiz makes $13.25 million. Albert Pujols is at $13 million.

Of course, all of this assumes that Hafner can increase his production to the levels that he and the Indians had become accustomed to seeing last season. Assuming he can do that, it appears that Hafner made himself available to the Indians at a relative bargain. I say that because Hafner has put himself slightly below the rest of the slugger market as it sits today, and that market will continue to rise over the next five years of his contract. So, five years from now Hafner could be one heck of a bargain compared to his peers.

At the same time, don’t feel too badly for Hafner. He gets the kind of money which will leave him more than set for many lifetimes, while he gets to learn from Jim Thome that chasing dollars isn’t always the best way to play this game. Hopefully Hafner can create the winning atmosphere here and it is nice that he is willing to stay to try, rather than flee to another city where they might seem poised for success at the time.

I can tell you this much, Hafner won’t need any more money after his five year contract is up, and he has a really good chance of creating the kind of legacy in Cleveland that very few cities are willing to extend to athletes. Ask Jim Brown, Bob Feller, Charlie Nagy, or Bernie Kosar what it means to have a positive legacy in the eyes of Cleveland sports fans. We never forget those types of players who contribute to our memories. Hopefully Travis Hafner can join that list of players.

Yesterday I decided to go out and purchase Jim Norton’s book live and in person rather than wait for a shipment from some fake store on the internets. So, I walked into Borders in a posh Cleveland area shopping center with the pretentious moniker, La Place. After looking around a bit for the book (and finding myself unable to pass up on Chuck Palahniuk’s new book) I was unable to locate Lil Jimmy’s book in the Borders.

That’s when one of the helpful Borders employees asked me if I needed help finding something.

Well, truth be told, I needed some help, but what I would say next needed to be worded carefully. I didn’t really want to tell the Borders employee that, “Yes, in fact, I am looking for a book by Jim Norton entitled “Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch.” While that might have been funny, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So, I told her I was looking for the new book by comedian Jim Norton. She typed it up in her computer and within earshot of three or four other customers said, “Oh, ‘Happy Endings.’ Let me see if we can find that over here.” I am not sure if the title had completely hit her yet.

But I think the title of the book finally sunk in when she pulled it off the shelf to hand it to me and saw the cover for Lil Jimmy’s book.

First and foremost, I want to congratulate myself for my own good fortunes. Why, you ask? They have started selling Magic Hat beer in the Northeast Ohio region. I couldn’t believe my luck when I went into the grocery store a few weeks ago and found that there was a Magic Hat mix pack as well as some individual six-packs of Number 9 and others. When I told Jen about it, I eventually said, of Number 9, “If I could only choose one kind of beer to drink for the rest of my life, I would choose Number 9.” It was then, and only then, that she knew just how serious I was about this beer.

In other news… we attended a 4th of July parade in Chesterland where I went to high school. We were with some friends and they had warned us that some of the floats would be interesting. I guess I never realized that there were so many vociferous religious-types in Chesterland, as at least four floats were for churches. One church rolled by our stop later in the parade when this exchange occurred.

The lady on the float showed the crowd an empty bucket and yelled, “I am all out of candy, but I can offer you salvation through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!”

Somewhere behind me, I heard someone yell, “I think you should get some more candy!”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

I love the Ben Folds. I love the song. Make sure you stick around to see the goofy Ben Folds surprise ending to his cover of The Postal Service’s song.

In a story that can only be described as the “Daniel Larusso’s going to fight!” moment of the year, LeCharles Bentley has announced to Cleveland sports reporter Mary Kay Cabot that he is going to try to be ready for training camp this season. In an interview with Cabot over the weekend, it came out that Bentley had four surgeries last year. He had one for his patella tendon and then other various surgeries related to staph infections and other ailments.

The real blockbuster statements followed. Bentley says that the infections in his leg were so bad following surgery that doctors contemplated amputation of the leg. He further went on to describe a situation where the doctor was unsure if Bentley would make it through the night. Last season, all Browns fans could think about was whether or not LeCharles Bentley was ever going to play football again. Come to find out that we should have wondered if Bentley was going to continue living.

And now, on the cusp of July, Bentley has made so much progress that he is talking about being ready for training camp to compete for playing time on the Browns’ offensive line. This is the stuff of which TV movies are made. Of course, in order for it to be any kind of story worthy of putting on TV, Bentley will have to get back on the field and keep defenders out of the backfield.

Until it comes to fruition, though, these are just the off-season dreams that usually turn into in-season nightmares. And while it is still a long-shot, Browns fans can hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, LeCharles Bentley will defy the odds and give the team some good karma with his amazing fall and rise after signing with the team.