All Fool's Day

April Fools
Originally uploaded by blynaffit

"April 1st: This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four." ~ Mark Twain

The history of April Fool's Day is a little sketchy. Some say it began in 18th century Great Britain, others in France, and the Dutch try to lay claim as well. Many others have stories of how it originated, but how are we to believe any of them? It all could be part of an elaborate scheme.
April 1st is a day reserved for some of the grandest of hoaxes. Here are some of the more famous ones pulled over the years (found on Answers.com and Museumofhoaxes.com).

1. Isaac Newton would be proud: In 1976, British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore told listeners of BBC Radio 2 that unique alignment of two planets would result in an upward gravitational pull making people lighter at precisely 9:47 a.m. that day. He invited his audience to jump in the air and experience "a strange floating sensation." Dozens of listeners phoned in to say the experiment had worked. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
2. The Southpaw Whopper: In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."
3. Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
4. Assassination of Bill Gates: In 2003, many Chinese and South Korean websites claimed that CNN reported Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, was assassinated, resulting in a 1.5% drop in the Korean stock market.
5. UFO Lands in London: On March 31, 1989 thousands of motorists driving on the highway outside London looked up in the air to see a glowing flying saucer descending on their city. Many of them pulled to the side of the road to watch the bizarre craft float through the air. The saucer finally landed in a field on the outskirts of London where local residents immediately called the police to warn them of an alien invasion. Soon the police arrived on the scene, and one brave officer approached the craft with his truncheon extended before him. When a door in the craft popped open, and a small, silver-suited figure emerged, the policeman ran in the opposite direction. The saucer turned out to be a hot-air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records. The stunt combined his passion for ballooning with his love of pranks. His plan was to land the craft in London's Hyde Park on April 1. Unfortunately, the wind blew him off course, and he was forced to land a day early in the wrong location.

Don't be fooled!

Foto Finish Friday

pot of gold, originally uploaded by buckaroo kid.

*Each Friday an interesting photo is selected to end the week on.

Play Ball!

The past two mornings were good ones. It's nice when something you enjoy interrupts your daily routine. Especially when it's a surprise.

Getting up in the morning (I wake around 5 AM most mornings) can be a daunting task as I've explained in the past. However the payback to getting the day started bright and early is always worth it. Being able to collect some thoughts, read, or just accomplish a few things before I head off to work is always rewarding.

The last couple of days I was rewarded in a different way. The baseball season began on Tuesday in Tokyo, Japan of all places. The games were in prime time there, but here it was bright and early. I got to watch the first few of each morning as I sipped on some water and ate some cereal. I liked being able to go to work and have a couple of co-workers talking baseball as soon as I walked in the door. It was a nice change of pace.

Most people complained about the season starting with Oakland and Boston in Japan. But there were a number of Boston Red Sox fans there from America. Think of the great stories you could have when you got back home if you had been able to see the first pitch of the 2008 season in Japan? That's a once in a lifetime experience, if you ask me.

For everyone else the season begins next week. I've been a life long St. Louis Cardinals fan myself, and I still get excited about the beginning of the year. No matter the outlook of the season at hand. And this season's outlook keeps pointing toward doom and gloom for us Cardinal fans. I'm cautiously optimistic myself.

So here's to baseball. Here's to a hard fought season (for all teams). Here's to baseball in Japan, where they are probably more avid about it than us. Here's to peanuts, hot dogs, and Cracker Jacks. And most importantly, here's to nice surprises at five in the morning.

Play Ball!

The 18th Hole and Why I Didn't Care

Isn't it funny how we often look at things (even people) we don't understand, and label them as abnormal or even sometimes to the extreme as dumb? Think about it. You're introduced to some new thing or new idea and often the instinctive reaction is to label it as errant, too complicated, or ignorant.

"I don't understand! Therefore it must be absurd!"

As I've grown older, I've tried to train myself not to have such knee jerk reactions to the unknown. Yet as a human, it still kicks in every once in a while.

I grew up believing golf was boring and uninteresting. I didn't understand it and I didn't want to. I needed a sport that was fast paced to catch my attention (with the exception of baseball, which had strategy. Of which I was positive golf lacked as well). I called golf an old man's game. I labeled it and wrote it off continuously. I even attempted to claim that it was not a sport! After all, I reasoned, shouldn't you be running in a sport?

At the age of 21 I set foot in St. Andrews, Scotland. Just in case you didn't know, St. Andrews and its famed Old Course is the holy land of the golfing world. I was there, I was young, and I didn't care. In fact, I barely remember it. It's just a blip on my memory's radar from that trip to the United Kingdom. I didn't understand the game of golf, I didn't believe it worth my time, and therefore St. Andrew's was just another Scottish village with winding roads and homes built too close together. Oh, and there's that golf course there where they invented the game of golf hundreds of years ago.

To this day, I regret that I didn't care. Because there came a day just a couple of years after that when I allowed someone to teach me the game of golf. Suddenly it looked fun. Suddenly it was no longer boring. I dove into it, like I do most sports when they catch on with me. The next thing I knew I had my own clubs, I went nearly every week (at least to the driving range), and I started seeing some improvements in my game!

Then I studied some of the long history of the game of golf. I learned about that Old Course I didn't care anything about just a few years before, and I wished I hadn't been so quick to write off something I just didn't understand.

I think my point here is an obvious one. When it comes to learning new things, maybe we shouldn't always be so quick to give our opinion. Maybe, just maybe, we'd learn something wasn't as complicated or odd as we initially thought.

Quotables of March

The coolest dude in Harlem
Originally uploaded by Tampen

This month: Potential

"Every man is a potential genius until he does something." ~ Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree

"If a team is to reach its potential, each player must be willing to subordinate his personal goals to the good of the team." ~ Bud Wilkinson

"Leaders create an environment which everyone has the opportunity to do work which matches his potential capability and for which an equitable differential reward is provided." ~ Elliot Jaques

"The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." ~ Eddie Robinson

Foto Finish Friday

no one can get me down except you Joe, originally uploaded by dElay.

*Each Friday an interesting photo is selected to end the week on.

Impossible Germany. Unlikely Japan.

In the song Impossible Germany by the Chicago based band, Wilco, the metaphor of World War II allies Germany and Japan as two people in an unlikely relationship is an interesting one to me. It is meant to show the unlikely and impossible union of two people who are defunct in their communication and even goals in life. There's an obvious problem with the union, but it is not being solved because one or both aren't willing to listen. At least that's my interpretation of the song.

Have you been in a relationship, or seen others in a relationship where it seems each party is going in two entirely different directions? There's an obvious problem of communication because each are independently working in opposite directions (with life goals, spiritual views, relationship goals, etc.). When you are the one outside that relationship, looking inward, it's usually pretty easy to spot. When you are the one on the inside, it can sometimes be more difficult to spot the differences. After all, don't opposites attract? And isn't love blind?

One can use all the worn out cliches they want in an attempt to explain being in a relationship that is pulling in different directions. The cliches are really just excuses for not listening to one another and figuring out life, relationship, or spiritual goals that the two could be working to accomplish together.

I've been in both situations myself. I thought I was in love. I thought it was working, but looking back we were going in two directions and we had far too many struggles because of it. The best thing I ever did was leave that situation (even though at the time it was extremely difficult for both sides). Now that I am in a relationship where we both are clearly unified in our direction and communication, the best advice I have is this: Don't rush into a committed relationship (i.e marriage) simply because you are "in love", "made for each other", or attracted to opposites. You will never regret waiting until you find someone you can be unified on all or most levels with. Can you honestly say that if you are always at odds?

A.D.D. Moment: How fitting is it that Don't Stop Believing by Journey just randomly started playing on my iPod shuffle? OK. I admit it isn't fitting. It's pretty cheesy. Cheesy that I took the time to point it out, and that I even have that song on my iPod.

Think about the last time you bought a car. You probably checked the warranty. You wanted a test drive (or two). You listened to the engine run. You looked under the hood. You asked lot's of questions. You thought about the price quite a bit. You probably even tried to barter a little with the salesman. All in all, you probably didn't make the decision to purchase your car simply because it just felt right. I'd even wager you didn't purchase your car because it was entirely opposite of what you were looking for. "I went in looking for a spacious, large car because I'm tall and large in size, but I came out with a Geo Metro!" That would be ridiculous, and your friends would tell you so.

So why is it we seem to consider our future wife or husband with far less scrutiny?

Mowing, Baseball Cards, and Saving Money

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

~ Bob Dylan

Moving into a house all my own (the majority of my adult life has been spent in apartments) causes you to look at things a little differently. Suddenly I'm turning the light out when I walk out of a room. I'm turning off this and turning off that. When I was in an apartment I was concerned about this a little, but not nearly enough. Most of the time the lights were on throughout until I went to bed. The electric bill rarely fluctuated much it seemed, so I wasn't thinking much about the savings. The house has changed that mindset instantly.

Then there's lawn care. I haven't had to mow any lawn but a handful of times since I moved out of my parents house (we're talking 10 years here!). In my previous post I informed you of all the rain we've been getting lately. In this post, I'm looking out my window and seeing lot's of green grass springing up.

When I was a kid (around 9-11 years of age) I used to mow some of the lawns in the neighborhood. I had repeat business from week to week all summer long. It's amazing to me how little I made, but how I somehow made it stretch. I was paid $9 for two lawns (same owner) and $7 for another. The $9 was pretty much guaranteed every week whereas the $7 lawn was an every other week venture most of the time.

After I made my hard earned money I'd always walk downtown to the bank with my brothers and sometimes a couple of friends. I'd deposit a little money into my savings and hold back a little for my real motivation for doing the work. Baseball cards. The little baseball card shop that was downtown was a favorite hang out of ours. I'd usually have enough money for a soda, a few cards or baseball card packs, and if I was really lucky some bubblegum. It all seems so long ago now, but those were some good times. Certainly we didn't have a care in the world.

As the baseball card companies began to price us little kids out of the market (I still remember the day I outright refused to pay $1.50 for an Upper Deck pack), along with maturity catching up to us, those trips downtown began to grow fewer and far between.

Today hardly any kids collect baseball cards and they are worth very little. Many are suddenly in fear of a recession or worse, so they're taking crash courses in saving money. And now here I am. Needing to take my money and purchase a lawn mower to mow my own lawn for no monetary return. The times they are a changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

It's raining. It's been raining for hours. When I went to bed around nine or so, it was raining. It had been raining for hours then. I woke up around one, and it was still raining. I'm up now and getting ready for the day at hand. It's still raining. I'm pretty sure this is going to result in some flooding.

In some ways, I guess we could use a little rain. Especially since we're on the brink of spring. But, too much of a good thing is almost always a bad thing. It's true with rain and so many other things in life. There's lot's of food that is really good, but lot's of good food is a really bad thing. I'm aware of this, first hand. Fast food joints bank that every time, you will want more of their good thing (I'm using that term loosely), so for a small fee they will Biggie size your food for you! That's almost always a bad idea for the consumer. Even water can kill you if you drink too much of it! Did you realize that?

Too much of a good thing can lead to obsession, or even addiction. Usually those traits in a person are self destructive, unless stopped before things get out of control. This rain right now? I'd say it's out of control.

So what is it you seem to be clamoring for more and more of? Is it good, or is it too much of a good thing? It might not hurt to take a step back and downsize.

Foto Finish Friday

The_cowboy_way, originally uploaded by jonafun 2.

I'm back up in the saddle again! Everything is finally getting settled. Took a little longer than expected. Nevertheless it is nice to get back to writing on a regular basis!

Foto Finish Friday

Sunrise Flight over Lake Skinner, originally uploaded by ms4jah.

Nearly all set up and ready to get back to normal...

Now if spring would only start thinking the same thing.