Disc Golf and Shiner

A few years ago, I obtained my level 8 youth soccer referee license with my son, who was interested in refereeing as a part-time job. I did it mostly to learn the rules and actually know what I was talking about when I was yelling at the ref. I'd much rather sit and watch the games than work them, so I let my license lapse.

My daughter plays as well. Invariably, the referee crew will be short, so they'll have a parent work as an AR (Assistant Referee). ARs are the ones that work the sidelines of the field calling the balls out of play and offside. Since no one else in our corps of parents has had any experience or know much about the rules to begin with, I'm usually the guy who volunteers. My daughter's U12 team was playing a U11 team from Ankeny yesterday and I got the call to sub for the missing AR. The center ref just wanted me to call the out of bounds and I assured him that I was certified and was comfortable calling anything that needed to be called.

Our team was up 2-0 on a much smaller group of girls, when toward the end of the 1st half, one of their forwards received a pass and broke to the goal. I had a suspicion that she was offside as she had been called several times before that point, but I honestly lost track of where she was at the time the ball was kicked. Having not seen it, I didn't make the call. I wasn't too worried about it until she scored. Then I saw our coaches argue the non-call, which they rarely do except in obvious cases. Then I knew I blew the call. Of course, that swung the momentum their way and they beat our girls 4-3.

Note to self: The opposing team is *always* offside.

My son has a job refereeing youth soccer and has spent most every weekend working 3-4 games each. Last weekend, he made $60 for 3 regular season games. Today, he has 4 games at a tournament in Des Moines, which usually pay more. Righteous bucks for a Froshman in high school. Not a bad job for about 5 hours of work a week.

I got roped into taking my daughter and one of her friends to VEISHEA today. You may know that this is an annual (sometimes) event put on entirely by students at Iowa State University, where I went to school. It's quite fun with a parade, exhibits, food, entertainment, etc... What I'm looking forward to is the free Robert Earl Keen show that's taking place on the lawn of my old dorm building. I'm a big fan and this will be my first opportunity to see him live. I asked my wife if she wanted to go. It's 10:30-12:00 midnight. She refused citing the late hour. Huh? When did you get to be such a fuddy-duddy? Oh, right. She turns 40 this year.

My son and I got new cell phones the other night. We're on a minutes-sharing plan together and each had issues with our respective phones. My phone's battery wouldn't hold a charge for more than 3 days, or 4 1-minute calls, whichever came first. Aaron shut his in the car door and smashed it. That made me glad that my exact words when asked whether to add insurance to Aaron's phone were, "Oh, God, yes!". The thing I didn't pay attention to at the time was that there is a $50 deductible on top of the monthly premium we've been paying. That phone is over 2 years old.

Luckily, we had a 24-month contract and we were well past that. I figured we'd be better off renewing our contract and getting new phones, which is what we did. I would have paid $20 + tax for my new battery and ended up paying $27 for the new phone. We chipped in the $50 for Aaron's phone and he paid the difference on one of those camera jobs.

What is it with new stuff that guys just go ape-shit crazy? Aaron's about filled up his phone w/ pics of the dog and whatnot and I've been playing with the new gadgetry on mine. 2 days of dinking around on it and it hasn't even lost a bar on the battery meter. Gotta love that.

Bill Gates is giving away $100 for passing this email to 5 of your friends...

AOL is going to start charging for its instant message service...

George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any President in the last 50 years...

Parents can obtain $500 throught a class-action settlement with the Gerber Company....

A study has found that fellatio can significantly decrease the risk of breast cancer in women...


You've seen these clogging your inbox. I don't know what gets into normally clear-thinking people that makes them forward this crap (although I think more research should be done on that last one. It can't hurt).

The latest one that's making the rounds is that oil company boycott deal where you're supposed to boycott the two biggest oil companies for a full year, thus they'll be forced to lower their prices, thereby forcing the other oil companies to follow suit. Before you know it, gas will be down to a svelte $1.50/gallon. It's all crap, of course: www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

I don't get many of these types of emails since I tend to associate with more level-headed people than average. However, I was treated to this gas boycott email by my... mother.

MOOOooooooOOOM!!

You know, English and grammar was never my thing in school, but for some reason, I'm Mr. Language Nazi in my later years. I have an unnatural desire to biotch-slap anyone I hear using incorrect grammar or stupid misspellings. You suppos"ably" graduated high school. Did you get nothing out of it?

My biggest pet peeve is hearing these blunders in the media. These people make a living communicating and they can't even figure it out. If I wrote the editor of the Ames Tribune every time I found a grammatical mistake, they'd rename that section "Letters from K".

Here's one from a radio ad I hear every day: "...the spray-in bed liner is far more superior to the competition..." Doofus. If you are comparing two things, one is superior to the other. I suppose adding "more" drives the message home, but it actually just makes you sound stupid.

My favorite is "... available in a myriad of colors...". Myriad means "many". The sentence should read "available in myriad colors". If you can't handle it, use "many" and quit trying to make yourself sound smart.

Really, people. This isn't rocket surgery.

I'm fairly tech savvy, although I'm rarely exposed to tech stuff. My wife purchased a laptop to be able to do work at home and also for school work that she'll have when she goes back to school. I just installed a wireless network in my house, which is nice to have if you want to work, say, in bed, like my wife is prone to do (pun not intended).

When we purchased said laptop, we got it without a wireless card, since we had one for her old laptop and we figured we'd just use that one. Of course, the new one did not have a port for this card. We would have to purchase an internal card. This made my wife nervous. She just got this machine and already I'm going to have to open it up.

Unfortunately, mini PCI cards are not nearly as plentiful as the regular, plug-in kind. I had to do some advanced searching before I finally just got one from Dell, which made the laptop. The card arrived 2 days after we ordered (solid) and I went to work installing it last night. The actual installation of the card was butter, but I ran into a wall when I tried installing the drivers. The machine wouldn't recognize the drivers. So, then I had to do something I absolutely hate doing: contacting tech support.

Luckily, we had another computer that is connected to the net, so I decided I'd have a shorter wait if I tried the online chat version of Dell's tech support. I waited a total of 17 minutes, which is way better than I expected. I drew a guy named Jashandeep and was immediately glad I chose on-line support rather than calling. To his credit, his written english was impeccable. Anyway, long story short. 'Deep was able to provide me with the correct drivers, which I downloaded to my desktop computer, copied to disc and transferred to the laptop with no catches.

So, for now, life in the K household is the Sea of Tranquility.

I've been a fan of Tony Kornheiser for about 5 years.

Who?

Tony Kornheiser is half of the cast of Pardon The Interruption (PTI) on ESPN. The other guy is Michael Wilbon. They are columnists for the Washington Post and their PTI show evolved from what they did every day at the office water cooler: bicker back and forth about sports. However, I'm more of a fan of the radio show he does. A few years ago, predating PTI, Tony had a national show on ESPN Radio until his abrasiveness toward the network suits, coupled with a rather raw "internet show", earned him a "vacation" from the radio waves.

Prior to the ESPN Radio gig, Tony had a local radio show on WTEM Sports Talk radio in Washington DC. After the ESPN gig flamed out, he took a few months then went back to the local show. WTEM's signal carries about 30 miles. Luckily, they have an internet feed so people around the world can listen. The great thing about Tony's show is the "mailbag" segment. This is the final 5 minutes of the show when Tony reads "emails, faxes and your notes" from listeners responding to topics from the day's show. It's quite an honor among the peeps to be read during the show. I've had the opportunity a few times to be read during the mailbag and even once leading off the show. The highlight of my fandom came when I had the opportunity to visit the studio while on a trip to DC. Since then, I'm "one of the great emailers". Sweet.

If you follow the NFL, you probably know that ESPN has taken over the broadcast of Monday Night Football from ABC which had a stranglehold on it for a hundred years. The new team in the booth consists of Joe Theismann, Mike Tirico and none other than Tony Kornheiser. Unfortunately, with TK on the road so much, that means the radio show will be retired once again. The last air date will be April 28, 2006.

The latest joke in the show is just how long Tony will remain in the booth for MNF, with the over/under at 4 games. Tony says he's taking the under.

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What, are you in the 4th grade?

Anyway. You know when you're at the gas pump and the nozzle automatically clicks off when the tank is full? I invariably will coax a little more into the tank to get the total to an even dollar so that I don't have to deal with Cletus, the attendant, trying to make change.

Every once in a while, I get the auto shut-off at the magical even dollar. It's commonly known as a "Perfect Pump" and it gives me so much joy. It's those little pleasures that give me a will to live. It'd been several months since I had one, but I got one the other day. Of course the most recent one was for $28 and the last one was $25.

I'll save a "price of gas" rant for another day.

I have weird hair. It's kind of thin and straight. And it's gradually leaving my head. It's funny how I'm losing it, though. When I was younger, I had a widow's peak. In the span of about 2 years in my late 20's, the widow's peak just receded and thinned until I had sort of a straight hairline midway from my forehead to the crown of my head. Then it just stopped.

For about 10 years now my hairline has not moved one millimeter and I still have just a light tufting of turf where the widow's peak was. It looks horrible when it's long so I try to keep it short. After a while, I just got sick of spending $12 to have a professional spend 2 minutes to shear it off. I have clippers at home and figured I could do it just as easily myself. As it turns out, it's not that easy to do, particularly in the back. Still, it's something so simple a child could do it, so I had my daughter give it a try. She did a good job with it the first couple of times and I gave her a couple of bucks for the effort. After the novelty wore off, it got tougher to get her to drop whatever she was doing to cut her dad's hair.

I got an electric shaver for Christmas last year. It works great and makes short work of my daily face maintenance. One day, after trimming my sideburns, I had an epiphany. I took my shaver and ran it down the center of my head clear to the back. There was no going back now. I ran it all over my head until I couldn't hear any more cutting. I looked at myself in the 3-way mirror and saw that I missed nothing. Elapsed time: about 1 minute.

So now I'm sporting Mr. Clean.

Well, at the risk of showing my advanced age, I'd like to report that the Mitchell (SD) High School class of 1986, of which I was a part, is having their class reunion this summer. Those who finished high school will know that this means it's my 20-year reunion.

I don't know if my experience is typical of yours, but I think of my high school years as generally some of the best of my life. I was fairly active in athletics, made decent grades without really trying, had a fair number of friends, had a few girlfriends and generally got through without a lot of drama. Despite this, I have had contact with exactly 1 classmate since the last reunion (10 years). I suppose it might have something to do with living in a different state now, and not having visited my hometown more than 3 times in 20 years. While I'd like to make it back for this, I have a lot going on this summer that I might not get there. And I don't feel that I'll have missed anything if I don't. We'll see what happens.

For my job, I often will have to write a legal description of the property on which we are doing work. The first part of the description is a general location of the parcel which is followed by a more detailed "metes and bounds" retracement of the boundary. The wording goes something like, "A parcel of land in Section blah, blah, blah... in the City of blah, blah, blah... that is more particularly described as follows..." I was writing this in Word for Windows and accidentally dropped the second 'l' in "particularly". Of course, that brought up the little green squiggle line under the word alerting me to the misspelling. I right-clicked it to bring up Word's suggested spelling and it came up with "PARTICULARIER".

You remember that Texas trip me and some buddies of mine take every year? (See IBTT2k6 story) Planning for the IBTT2k7 started roughly 2 weeks after the end of the IBTT2k6, a new record. My inbox is going to have 50 emails every freaking day until mid-March.

I heard on the news that one of the 9/11 conspirators, Zacharias Moussouhi (or something), was deemed "eligible" for the death penalty. That just struck me as a funny use of that word. I always connected "eligible" with something that was desirable.

"You are now eligible to recieve a free gift".

"He still has two years of NCAA eligibility".

"Eligible Bachelor".

"Congratulations. You are now eligible to be exposed to toxic gasses until you are dead... If you play your cards right". See? It doesn't quite sound right.

At any rate, I hope the dude doesn't squander his eligibility.

Miller: A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?

You might recognize this dialogue from the 80's cult classic, "Repo Man". The funny thing is later on in the movie, another character is at a pay phone outside a restaurant and you can see the sign in the window advertising a "Plate of Shrimp" special. Completely intentional, of course.

I have a friend who is fascinated by this stuff, which he calls "synchronicities". Seems he's constantly experiencing this strange cosmic unconsciousness. I had one last night while messing with my blog settings. My son was watching "Family Guy" - the episode where "Death" sprains his ankle and Peter has to perform his duties for him, namely, kill the cast of "Dawson's Creek". The time setting function lists cities that are within your desired time zone. One of the cities listed is Dawson Creek. Oooooweeeeoooooooooooo.

A little history: A group of guys from Iowa have been taking an annual spring break trip to Austin, TX for more than 10 years. I've been on the trip 6 times in the last 8 years. The itinerary always includes but two solid activities: disc golf and drinking Shiner Bock. Austin is home to some of the best golf you will find in the country. We have some over-planning, organized m-f'ers in the group and it showed this year. We used to make the trip by car, but 15 hours of straight driving no longer holds the appeal it once did.

The planning for this year's trip began in October 2005 (that's 6 months prior to the actual event). It's kind of like how Christmas season starts earlier and earlier every year. But, as I said, the planning paid off. We usually don't have a "theme" for our trips, but this year it was suggested that we try to hit some really good BBQ joints since we would be within the confluence of about 3 different approaches to preparing BBQ.

The Trip-

Wednesday, March 22: Clue, Neif and K (that's me) packed up the car and headed to KC around 3:00pm. We originally planned on hitting KC a bit early to play a round or two at WaterWorks Park. However, we were treated to about a 6-inch snowfall the week prior and were still dealing with cold temps, so we decided to forego the golf in KC. Once in KC, the plan was to find the Chartroose Caboose restaurant to partake in some cheesesteak goodness. Unfortunately, the CC that I had looked up on the internet was not where I thought it was. Neif had mentioned another place by the interstate that he always wanted to hit. So, we hit the All-you-can-eat shrimp special at the Jumpin' Catfish. After a 12-er of Fat Tire was obtained, we hit the Best Western by the airport where we were joined by Bej, who drove down from Nebraska.

Thursday, March 23: The 4 of us awoke early to make the 1 mile drive to the satellite parking lot at KCI airport. The first Shiner was cracked at roughly 6:30am and we partook of our traditional "First Shiner" ceremony in the shelter as we waited for the shuttle to the terminal. Check-in was uneventful and we began our aerial journey to DFW to meet up with G, who was flying in from Charlotte, NC. Through some sweet wrangling, we were able to get all 5 of us in the same row on the same plane from DFW to AUS. Unfortunately, the worst trainwreck of the trip ocurred as G's plane was delayed on the tarmac waiting for a plane to clear out from their gate. About 20-30 minutes were burned until they finally found a gate for them. The rest of us were waiting in the Cowtown Bar right across from our gate as this unfolded. We waited as long as we could while G sprinted from his gate to ours, but he missed us by minutes. Turns out, he could have made it if we had known to talk to the flight attendants on the plane instead of the gate wench. As it turned out, G got a flight about an hour later and the rest of us acquired the rental van and found cheap Shiner at the C-store at the airport exit. Once we had all that, we only had 15-20 minutes to wait until G arrived and we picked him up at the terminal. Then Clue dropped his cell phone loading up G's gear. Luckily, we discovered it was gone as we pulled out of the airport. A quick call to the cell got us hooked up with the guy who had just found it and we mad arrangements to pick it up at the terminal. Elapsed time was about 5 mintes from loss to retrieval. Solid.

First stop was lunch at Sam's BBQ in a suspect part of east Austin. This is an African American joint which serves up "wet" BBQ, meaning meat with sauce. We all went with combo plates that featured your choice of sausage, brisket, pork ribs and mutton. I went for the sausage and mutton. Good stuff, but probably not the most cleanliness in food prep.

Next stop, Pease Park and 2 rounds of golf. Special Guest: John Houck, who was gracious enough to play some holes with us.

Dinner was to be eaten at the House Park BBQ south of Pease. Unfortunately, it's only open for lunch, so we headed to Barton Springs Rd. and the Green Mesquite. It's not really strictly a BBQ joint, the 'Q was passable. The jambalaya was awesome, however.

Friday, March 24: Circle R Disc Golf Ranch - 2 rounds on Rolling Meadow course and 1 round on Circ Hill course. Abundant sunshine and light wind. Unbelievably great time.

Saturday, March 25: Searight- a longtime favorite course with lots of ace-runs and some improvements to the course. Nice. Lunch was at Kreuz (pronounced- 'krites') Market in Lockhart. Probably the best german-style BBQ in the world. This is a dry-style of BBQ. There is no sauce to be found in this place. Just awesome meat that is available in pork ribs, beef brisket, beef shoulder clod (lean), sausage (regular or jalapeno). The jalapeno sausage is damn good. Kyle, TX has a new course that we decided to try on our way back to Austin. The locals are pretty excited about it, but we were a bit disappointed. Granted, it's new and not really broken in yet, but the flow of the course could be better and holes not quite so close to one another. I'll reserve final judgement intil it's better established. But, we probably won't be back. The annual visit to Chuy's did not disappoint. The Elvis Presley Memorial Combo was kickin'.

Sunday, March 26: Circle C- This course used to be a trainwreck until a new bike path forced its redesign. I love it now. Lots of real golf shots in the cedars. Punishment for being off-line. We played it in doubles, but I'd love to play it in singles. Another couple rounds at Circle R Meadow finished out the trip. No trip would be complete without a visit to the Taco Cabana for cheap mexican food.

Monday, March 27: Depart Austin. Tom Kite was on the plane. Grabbed another 12-er of Fat Tire for home. Tired, but not like 15-hours-on-the-road tired.

I play disc golf. I drink Shiner. That doesn't define my existence, but they are both heavily weighted on my priority list. Thoughout this little blogging experiment, I'll show those who are interested a little insight into my life. It's not wild and raunchy stuff. I'm pretty boring as far as that goes, but I have my moments.

Anyhoo. Look for my report of our annual trip to Austin to play disc golf and drink, well, you know.