When people start giving you stuff like this, grandparenthood suddenly gets real

Last month I was in the grocery store and ran into Jenny, a high school classmate and track teammate of mine. We were chatting and updating each other on our lives (as one does while standing in the produce section) when I mentioned that Chloe was due with our first grandchild in mid-September.

Jenny, a grandmother herself, lit up.

"Oh," she said, "it's amazing. You have no idea how much you can love a grandchild until they're actually here. You hear about it and agree that of course you'll love that little one, but you don't really understand until you hold them."

I've heard lots of people say things like that, and it makes me even more excited than I already am to become a grandpa.

That word "grandpa", by the way, sounds much older to me than "grandfather" goes. Your grandpa has white hair and walks with a cane. Your grandfather has salt-and-pepper hair and plenty of energy to play with you.

It's all semantics, of course, and as I've said, I really don't care what this little boy calls me. I just can't wait to meet him.

This year for Father's Day, Chloe gave me a bag of Starbucks coffee (she knows me well) and the mug pictured above. When your Father's Day presents become more like Grandfather's Day presents, you know you're entering a new phase in your life.

Well, the grandparent phase, of course, but also the phase when I will only drink out of coffee mugs 10 ounces or larger. I have no time for those useless little 8-ounce teacups...

If you have a basement gym, you might as well use it

Over the last year, I've gotten a lot of mileage here on the blog posting about my adventures at the gym.

I was never a weight lifter until May 2024, when Elissa and Mark bought me four sessions with a trainer named Kirk at Ohio Sports & Fitness (OSF) in Willoughby, Ohio. My knowledge and enjoyment of strength training really blossomed under Kirk's guidance, and I enjoyed working out with him twice a week almost without fail for 13 full months.

As of a month ago, however, I no longer go to OSF, nor is Kirk serving as my trainer. This has nothing to do with the gym or with Kirk. The facility is great with a lot of friendly and very helpful people. As for Kirk, what can I say? He's an amazing personal trainer whose extensive knowledge blends well with his positive personality.

He's a good egg, that Kirk.

No, my disengagement from the gym has nothing to do with them. It was simply a decision I made several weeks ago when I decided I needed to free up some time in my otherwise hectic life (something I mentioned this past Monday in an egregiously gratuitous game show-related post).

One of the changes I made in my routine was to shift the site of my twice-a-week strength training to our house rather than an outside gym.

It turns out we have a pretty nicely equipped gym in the back room of our basement, thanks to the efforts of my son Jared. When we still lived with us and was really into lifting, he stocked that room with everything you really need to build muscle.

That includes two adjustable weight benches, a rack for bench pressing, a barbell and various weight plates, a full assortment of dumbbells, a machine for hamstring curls and quad extensions, and a bunch of other stuff I won't even list here, all placed on a series of heavy-duty rubber horse mats.

For the longest time I felt guilty I wasn't taking advantage of this nice exercise setup located right in my own home. Now I do.

I admittedly miss Kirk, and I miss the atmosphere at OSF, but so far this change has been for the better. It cuts significant time off my morning routine, and it doesn't involve any sort of membership or personal training fees.

It also helps that my strength training goals are relatively modest. I'm not looking to bulk up or anything. Really, all I want is to maintain what I have in an attempt to stave off age-related muscle loss.

The Tennant Gym is more than equipped to help me do that.

Now if only I could get a machine for the basement that makes me not want to eat cake all the time...

I was a contestant on two TV game shows (and I'm so very sorry for bringing it up again)

Earlier this summer I seriously considered making this a once-a-week blog in place of the three-times-a-week cadence I've followed for the last couple of years.

For one thing, I was looking for ways to free up my daily schedule, and reducing the amount of time I spend writing each week seemed like an easy fix. Secondly, and probably more importantly, sometimes I simply don't know what to write here.

I have the hardest time coming up with blog topics. I feel like I've told you all of my stories. I already rehash old posts once a month as part of our Blog Rerun series, and there are subjects I've covered two, three, four times or more.

Apart from Terry and the kids, who naturally are the main focus of this blog, the topic I've come back to time and again is my appearances on the game shows "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and "The Price Is Right." Longtime readers of the blog are sighing right now and getting ready to click away, as they've heard me drone on about this over and over.

As for the rest of you, I won't even get into the details other than to offer video clips of my appearances below in case you're bored and somewhat curious about them. If you want to know more about the what, how and why of these little adventures of mine, just use the search box at the top of the blog to search for "Millionaire," "Price Is Right" or "game shows." That should bring up past posts on the subject.

(NOTE: I've never been able to figure out how to get the search box to appear on the mobile version of the blog, so if you're on your phone, scroll to the bottom and click on "View web version." Everything will get really small, but you should be able to zoom in on the search box in the top right of the screen.)

Anyway – and please understand how much I feel like a digital harlot right now – here's my appearance on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" from January 30-31, 2003. It's low-res, but it works:

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Recorded from WOIO-TV 19, Jan. 30-31, 2003

You can also watch that same video here on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/736926100  I used to have it on YouTube, but a few years ago the folks at Sony forced me to take it down because of copyright violation. It had something like 70,000 views at the time, and while it didn't seem fair that I needed to remove a 20-year-old VHS-recorded video clip, I didn't have a choice.

On the other hand, CBS doesn't seem to mind that my "Price Is Right" video is on YouTube and still going strong 18+ years since I appeared on the show on February 16, 2007. It has 95,000 views to date, though that has nothing to do with me. I've discovered there's an ardent digital community of "Price Is Right" fans, and I believe my recording of that particular episode is the only one that's easily accessible online.

"The Price Is Right" - February 16, 2007
Also recorded from WOIO-TV 19.

I went home with $32,000 on Millionaire and four electric guitars plus $2,500 from Price Is Right.

Again, anyone who has read my stuff over the years already knows all of this. To them I apologize for rehashing it, but I'm telling you, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO POST SOMETIMES.

Maybe I'll come back Wednesday with a little more inspiration.

The fleeting summer

Now that all of my kids have graduated, the end of the academic year doesn't mean as much to me as it used to (other than high school sports PA announcing opportunities drying up for a few months).

The only thing I really notice is that my drive to work gets faster in the summer.

I drive past a busy elementary school on weekday mornings. When school is in session, my commute usually coincides with drop-off time, and the line of cars backs up into the street I take to get to the office.

It's not that big a deal, especially because there's a friendly police officer there every morning directing traffic, and he allows those of us not dropping off kids to pull around the line and be on our merry way.

But that's not until we get relatively close to the school driveway. Until that point, I sit in stopped traffic for a few minutes, particularly if the school crossing guard is having a busy morning ferrying kids across the road (which he generally is, given that this school is in a residential neighborhood and features a lot of parents and kids walking to school).

Much like an 8-year-old in June looking forward to a long summer vacation, once school lets out, I get excited about 12 weeks of drop-off line-free driving in the mornings. It feels like I'm going to be zooming to and from work forever.

But before I know it, and way before it feels like it should be happening, the drop-off line is back. Early September rolls around and those same kids, all a little older and now a grade higher, are back out there clogging up the roads in pursuit of an education.

Again, not a burden at all, but it does remind me how fast summers go, especially when you live in a place like Northeast Ohio where cool (or freezing cold) weather is the rule eight months out of the year and sometimes longer.

We so look forward to summers here on America's North Coast (we're the only ones who call the southern shore of Lake Erie that) that once they arrive, we sometimes hang our entire emotional wellbeing on them.

"Please, please, please stay warm and dry. Just for a little while. Please. The snow will come soon enough. Whoever is in charge of the weather, I will pay them $1,000 just for the opportunity to wear flip-flops for a few weeks."

This helps to explain why so many people around here, especially boys in the 12 to 16 age range, start wearing shorts when it's still freezing outside. We're so desperate for warm weather that we'll pretend it's here once the weak, early-spring sun comes out, even if the air temperature tops out at 40 degrees.

All of this is to point out what you already know: (A) It's July 25th. Somehow. (B) It's still summer, but kids start going back to school in just a few weeks. (C) Nothing good ever seems to last.

Enjoy it while you can, gang.

Every scar tells a story

I wish I looked as good as this guy, though I could do without the foot-long leg scar.

You might have read today's headline and assumed I was referring to emotional scars. While it's true those types of non-visible scars always have a story, today I'm talking about actual physical scars.

I have four of them on my body, and on those rare occasions when I notice and think about them, they take me back to different times of my life.

There is, for example, the gash on the side of my right leg I got when I was 10 and we were jumping over the bushes at Mike Ostack's house.

As I leapt over those bushes and landed, I grazed against the jagged edge of a rusty old metal garbage can on the other side. It was enough to tear my jeans and the skin underneath, resulting in my first set of stitches (five of them). I think there was also a tetanus shot involved, or at least I hope there was.

Mike was one of my best friends in the world, but within a year he and his family would pack up and move to Stone Mountain, Georgia. I've seen him only a few times since. Nowadays our only communication comes in the form of LinkedIn messages exchanged once a year on his birthday in February.

Life goes on. We all have people who come in and out of our little spheres.

There's also the cut on my chin I got playing football.

Well, to be honest, I wasn't "playing" football. It was during pregame warm-ups my junior year. I was on the scout defensive team as a cornerback. On one play, Dave Engeman, a strong, talented senior guard, pulled around my side and gave me a stiff forearm to the chin strap.

I walked back to the sideline, unbuckled my helmet and felt my chin, only to pull back my hand and see it was covered in blood.

That was a four-stitch cut sewed up by our team doctor in the locker room. He used a topical anesthetic that lasted for maybe two of the four stitches.

I'm not going to lie: It hurt. And later the cut got infected and smelled funky for days.

On the top of my left foot is a gnarly scar I picked up in my friend Matt's basement, sometime between the garbage can and football cuts. We were playing hide and seek in the pitch dark, as we often did, and I somehow managed to rake that bare foot across the sharp metal corner of a dehumidifier unit.

You have to understand, kids: In the 60s, 70s and 80s, consumer products were often made with only functionality in mind and not necessarily safety.

My mom took me to the hospital, and amazingly the staff there decided not to stitch the cut but instead just bandaged it. It eventually healed after several weeks, but I always thought that was the wrong call.

Anyway, the only other prominent physical scar I have is actually two scars, and I don't remember a thing about how I got them.

They were the result of a hernia surgery I underwent at 18 months of age. I've heard stories of how I would cry and cry at night, and no matter what my mom or sisters tried, they couldn't comfort me.

Turns out I had a bilateral hernia. One day they dropped me off at the hospital for the surgery and I had to stay there overnight. My sister Debbie always says it was the saddest thing to see me in a crib in my little cowboy-themed hospital gown as they waved goodbye and left me alone.

All's well that ends well, though, and I'm happy to report I've had no issues since.

I was thinking of leading today's post with a photo of one of my scars. I didn't ultimately do that, but rest assured that if I had, it wouldn't have been the hernia scars...

The long, long days I wouldn't trade for anything

It was a pretty typical Tuesday in mid-June, if a somewhat exhausting one.

Up before 5am, get dressed for the gym, have some coffee and do my New York Times puzzles, then head out for a lower-body workout with trainer Kirk.

Lift, grunt, suffer a little. Legs feel like jelly, but I get through it.

Head home. Shower and dress as quickly as I can, then hop in the car for the 15-minute ride to the office. Resting on the passenger seat (and the floor) next to me are my laptop, my lunch, my PA announcing bag, and a separate bag with a change of clothes.

Get to the office, go right into meetings. Rip through my to-do list as best I can over 9 hours.

At the end of the day, I head to the men's room, lock myself in a stall and change into more casual clothes in preparation for announcing that night's Lake County Captains baseball game.

I get to Classic Auto Group Park two hours early to prep. Go through lineups, pronunciation guides and game scripts. Put my pregame and in-game reads in order in the thick three-ring binder handed to me by Jason, the Captains' game operations manager. He's good at what he does and very funny, but he also runs a tight ship. We all want our game production to go as well as it can.

As game time approaches, I exhort the fans in the stands to get loud as I read the Captains' starting lineup with all the energy I can muster.

The game itself goes pretty well. I don't miss a cue, and there's good chemistry between me and Liv, the talented on-field host.

After the last out, I pack up my stuff and head back to the car. I get home a little after 10pm. I brought my dinner to the ballpark and already ate, so I jump right into the shower.

Once I'm out, I move to the kitchen to pack my lunch for the next day. Then I shave, brush my teeth and climb into bed. I've been texting Terry throughout the day, but we chat for a few minutes and catch up on our lives.

By 11pm we turn out the lights. I plan to walk my normal 2.3-mile loop first thing in the morning, so I won't get more than 6 or 6 1/2 hours of sleep. That really isn't enough, but it's something I accept. I'll catch up tomorrow evening.

This can all be a little tough on my 55-year-old body, but here's the thing: I choose to do it. I control my schedule, and I love it all.

It is maybe the ultimate freedom to be able to determine how your days are spent. I have a job I really enjoy. I have the ability to exercise and take care of my body four mornings a week. And I have a supportive spouse who allows me to pursue my PA announcing passion on many an evening (more than 100 events a year).

There are ups and downs, of course. Some days feel better than others. My mood fluctuates like anyone else's, often because I fail to be grateful for everything I have.

Still, it's all perfect. Or maybe "perfectly flawed" is a better way of saying it, because problems and issues still come thick and heavy. But they're only so bad.

After a day like this, I worry whether I'll have the energy to pop out of bed the next morning and do it again.

One way or another, though, I always do.

I couldn't begin to ask for more.

Birthday Week makes you take stock of the relationships in your life

My brother Mark had a birthday yesterday.

There are a couple of times each year when I have a slew of family and friends celebrating birthdays all at once.

One is the month of March running into early April. I won't even get into the list of people in my life who have birthdays during those five weeks, other than to say it's long and includes both Terry and Elissa.

The other stretch of birthdays happens right now in mid-July. It doesn't involve as many people as that March/April run, but it's no less important.

It began yesterday with my brother Mark's birthday, it continues tomorrow with my good friend Kevin's big day, and it concludes on Sunday when my sister Debbie turns a milestone age.

I won't tell you exactly how old Debbie will be, other than to say it's a number ending in 0 that falls somewhere between 69 and 71. And she makes it look good.

Oh, and also, when my Aunt Peg was alive, her birthday was also this week.

All of these people have played important roles in my life, and they're all good folks worth celebrating.

The fact that they're each a year older this week makes me appreciate them all the more.

As I've often (morbidly) pointed out here on the blog, we all have an expiration date. As much as we would like to believe life as we know it now will go on forever, it won't.

One by one, I and the people celebrating birthdays are going to shuffle off this mortal coil. And that's OK.

Really, it's OK. It's the way of things, and there's no getting around it. Acceptance feels a lot better than dread and denial.

Anyway, I digress. Here's wishing the happiest of birthdays to my big brother, my big sister, and my buddy Kev, and here's to the memory of good old Aunt Peg.

I only wish to point out that you're all older than me and always will be.

My wife has been a great sport since the very beginning of our marriage

You could argue that the simple act of marrying me makes Terry a great sport, but it has always been more than that.

Like, on our honeymoon in 1992, she spent a day with me at the Kennedy Space Center. I was fascinated, but I know she was bored out of her mind. What can I say? She loves me.

Speaking of our honeymoon, she also agreed to participate in the video from which the screen shot at the top of today's post was taken. And she did it in defiance of her own good judgment.

Click to here to watch that video.

To explain: We had spent a day at Universal Studios, and as we were getting ready to leave, we came across a "Screen Test Home Video Adventure" exhibit where you could insert yourself into a scene from "Star Trek." Terry did not want to do this, but I really did, and eventually I convinced my new (and reluctant) wife to come in and act with me.

That is, if you want to call what we did "acting." We are not Shakespearean dramatists, as you will quickly see, but it really was a lot of fun. At least it was for me, as I didn't have to wear the pointy Vulcan ears Terry did.

The video (which, again, is linked above) is the real point of today's post, as is the fact that I have the greatest wife in the world.

May she live long and prosper.

Allons, enfants! Bastille Day is as good a day as any to celebrate all things French

Image credit: CultMTL.com

(NOTE: This is one of our Blog Rerun posts. It originally ran here on 5Kids1Wife.com on this day in 2021.)

Today is Bastille Day. I'm always reminded that, on this day in 1989, my friend Kevin and I went to our high school French teacher's house unannounced and drank wine with her in celebration of the holiday.

I give Madame Whitehorn credit for being so gracious to us. She was under no obligation to invite two former students (who showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep) into her home on a mid-summer Friday morning.

Yet she did, and she remains one of my favorite teachers ever, as does another former French teacher of mine, Madame Pumphrey.

As I've mentioned, I took 14 years of French classes between the Wickliffe City Schools and John Carroll University, so I have a deep interest in French language and culture. It also doesn't hurt that, as a First World War buff, I have a relatively detailed knowledge of the geography of Northeastern France, where so many battles were fought.

By the way, contrary to what you may think you know about France's military history, the French army was a tough out in WW1. The Germans had deep respect for their tenacity and fighting capacity.

I've visited Paris four times, but I've only scratched the surface of things to see and do there. I also someday hope to make it "en province" and experience some of the non-Parisian parts of the country.

The closest most Ohioans get to all things French is visiting some part of Francophone Canada. I have been to Montreal five times, and while it's lovely, it's not the real thing.

Nor should it be. It is a wonderful city with a mystique and culture all its own.

French people have a reputation for being rude and snooty, and I'm sure many are (just as many Americans are). But during my trips to France, the people I've met have been nothing but kind and gracious.

That includes the French woman whose job it was to stand in the men's room while I peed at the Gare de Nord train station in 1999. I don't know if she kept any notes on customer behavior, but if she did, I'm sure she noted my exceptional cleanliness and respect for French urinals.

Like any job, there are ups and downs to working in the sports industry

Terry and me with our son Jared at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida...before the place was torn up by a hurricane.

My son Jared, who works for Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays, put it better than I could have when he said, "Everybody wants to work in baseball until they actually work in baseball."

What he meant was that lots of people are anxious to work for a professional baseball team, but when faced with the reality of what that means day to day, it's a career choice some quickly regret.

Jared's words resonated with me because I started my career in sports media as a newspaper journalist here in Northeast Ohio. I was a sports agate clerk/staff writer for The News-Herald, a large suburban daily paper, from 1988 to 1990 while in college, spent nearly a year as a sports writer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Lake-Geauga Bureau in 1991 while still in college, then returned to The News-Herald in late '91 as a full-time sports writer.

I worked for the paper until the fall of 1996, when I switched gears and began writing plan documents for a health insurance firm.

That's a big change, but it was necessitated by two key factors that still loom large for local sports journalists:

(1) Terry and I were starting to have kids, and I needed a larger salary than The News-Herald could provide. Very, very few people in sports media are anywhere near what you might call "rich."

(2) Along those same lines, I worked nights, usually until 1 or 2 in the morning. That is not conducive to a growing family, especially when the kids start playing sports or have evening school events.

The work itself was fun, but it could be tiring. There were many nights when I would cover a game, come back to the office and write my story, then start editing articles and laying out pages for the next day's paper. THEN we had to stick around until the first papers came off the presses to check that no glaring errors had made it through the editing process.

Similarly, during the baseball season, Jared's days are long no matter whether the Rays are home or away. As Senior Coordinator, Baseball Information & Communications, he researches and writes pages and pages of media notes (starting in the morning on game days). After games he's doing more writing, researching and generally helping media do their jobs well.

If you're a sports fan, you might know the Rays are playing this season at George Steinbrenner Field, a minor league baseball facility, since their home park at Tropicana Field is unplayable after being damaged last year by Hurricane Milton.

I texted Jared on the day of the Rays' home opener this season and asked him how it went.

He reported that the bullpen cameras at Steinbrenner Field had been installed incorrectly so that they couldn't tell which relief pitchers were warming up. That's information usually announced right away in the press box.

And speaking of announcing information, I don't think the press box microphones were working, either, so Jared or someone else on the Rays' staff had to yell out relevant information to the assembled media as it became available.

All of this was happening while Jared was trying to do his regular job and also training two new Rays communications staffers. It was a long, exhausting day, I'm sure, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary for people who work in professional sports.

That's just the way the job goes, and if you don't want to do it, they can always find someone who does.

I'm a big fan of the current sports staff at The News-Herald. Among those writers is a guy named Chris Lillstrung, who covers many of the "niche" sports I like to follow closely like soccer, hockey, and track and field.

I'm also Facebook friends with Chris. He often posts about the sacrifices people like him have to make in order to survive in newspaper journalism these days. It's still relatively low paying, and it still involves long evening hours that make it difficult for him to spend time with his daughter.

None of what Chris posts is whining, though. It's just fact.

I pay for a subscription to The News-Herald to read what Chris, John Kampf, Ben Hercik, Jay Kron and other N-H sports scribes write, but my few bucks aren't enough to give these professionals the type of compensation they really deserve.

The economics of the industry are such that they're simply not going to be paid large salaries, and instead they must take some solace in the fact that what they're doing is also providing a valuable community service.

That's heartening to think about, but it doesn't pay the bills.

The point is, any time you think "how cool!" when you hear about a friend's kid working in professional sports, or if you yourself are considering a career in that field, make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open.

It IS cool and personally rewarding, and it can be done, but understand what you're giving up in return.

When it comes to the sports industry, there never has been any such thing as a free lunch.

This old house: Where we sleep, eat, and pile up memories

Later this month, we will celebrate having lived in our house for 22 years.

We moved in on July 19, 2003. I remember the exact date because...well, because I remember dates like that. There are vast expanses of my brain crammed with dates and details I really don't need taking up space perhaps better filled by more practical information.

I also remember that day because it was my friend Kevin's birthday, and while he has nothing to do with this story, I still equate move-in day with Kev's birthday.

Anyway, 22 years is in some ways a long time and in others not so long at all. My mom lived in her house on Harding Drive for 56 years. And I know lots and lots of people who have been in their homes nearly that long.

Still, it feels like Terry, the kids, and I have always been here at 30025 Miller Avenue. When we took occupancy of the house, Elissa was 9, Chloe was 6, Jared was a few weeks away from turning 5, and little Melanie was still two months from turning 3.

Jack wasn't even a thought yet.

The house has hosted graduation parties, countless birthday celebrations, our 25th anniversary shindig back in 2017, and a whole lot of visits and sleepovers involving family and friends.

I've cut the grass 8 million times (or so it feels). And I think Terry has pulled an even higher number of weeds from the flower beds.

It's the house to which we brought Jack when he was born in 2006. It's the place where we watched all of the kids grow up.

And for now, it's the place where Terry and I intend to spend at least a few more years, if not several.

When you're in your mid-50s and still able to get around well, you don't often think about stairs, for example, being much of an issue. But in 20 or 30 years, if we're still in the house, they very well could be. We have both an upstairs and a basement, and we travel between them regularly.

Interestingly, by the end of this year, our current house will be the place where I've lived the longest in my life. I spent the first 22 years and 4 months of my existence living on Harding Drive before Terry and I bought our first house in 1992.

It gets to a point that even if you decide you want to sell your home, you can't imagine anyone else living there after you. I still feel that way about the place on East 300th Street where Terry and I spent the first 11 years of our marriage. Three different families have lived there in the two decades since we moved out, but part of me still thinks of that house as ours and the others as just renters.

In the end, there's an obvious difference between a house (essentially a container for your stuff) and a home (a place where you always feel warm, welcome, and safe).

I would like to think we've created a nice little home on the southern edge of Wickliffe over 22 years filled with love, light and fond memories.

It's a miracle kids in the generation before mine survived to adulthood

The awesome Secret Sam Spy Case from the mid-1960s

I'm the youngest of four kids, and as I often say, I'm the youngest by far.

There's a 12-year gap between me and my next oldest sibling Mark. My sisters Debbie and Judi were born 14 and nearly 17 years before me, respectively.

As a result, I was in effect an only child growing up. My sibs had all moved out by the time I was 7 or 8, and many of their old 60s-era toys were left in the house for me to play with.

Well, I should say Mark's toys were there for me to play with, because toys back then were very gendered and I wasn't especially interested in anything Judi and Debbie had left behind.

Among the things I inherited from Mark were a wooden hockey stick, a G.I. Joe action figure, a plastic (everything was plastic) space capsule, and best of all, the Secret Sam Spy Case.

The Secret Sam Spy Case was a plastic (of course) briefcase containing a spy pistol with attachable grip, a small camera that took actual photos, and a periscope.

The cool thing was that you could shoot bullets from the gun or take pictures with the camera while they were in the case and the case was closed. There were holes on either side of the case for the gun to shoot its little plastic (again) bullets and for the camera to take a shot of a neighborhood "suspect" without his/her knowledge.

Very neat, but looking back, it's funny to think how different toys in 1965 were from those in 2025. For one thing, the gun. Can you still get toy guns? Probably, but I don't think they're as popular as they were in the 60s or even when I was growing up 10-20 years later.

And a gun that shoots actual hard-plastic bullets? That ain't happening today, but it was fair game during the Johnson Administration. Even in the best-case scenario, these little projectiles stung and would leave a mark on anyone at whom you shot them. Aim high and suddenly your friend was on his way to the hospital to have an eyeball removed.

So many of my siblings' old toys were dangerous. Lots of sharp, metal corners and plug-in gadgets that heated up and presented a serious risk of burns or electrocution.

It's not that toymakers didn't care about kids back then. They cared about them a lot, because kids were obviously their key demographic. It's just that they assumed children would be smart when it came to how they played with these toys.

"Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine," was the warning toy companies issued to kids of the day. And for the most part, the kids complied.

The ones who didn't listen ended up getting hurt, but in the vast majority of cases, after a band-aid or even a couple of stitches, they were fine.

Somewhere along the line, though, either kids got dumber or personal injury attorneys got a lot smarter. Maybe both.

All I know is, the Secret Sam Spy Case wouldn't fly today.

And somehow I think we're all a little worse for it.

My interactions with recreational fireworks as a kid were nearly disastrous

I don't know if kids still do this, but when I was growing up, my friends and I would play with fireworks any and every chance we got.

By "fireworks," I mean not only things that make loud noises, but also relatively innocent stuff like black snakes, smoke bombs, pop-its, and jumping jacks. If you could light it or throw it, and it did something cool, we were all over it.

In general, we were all over anything involving fire. I don't know what drove us to be such little pyromaniacs, but we loved us some flames.

The problem was, at least as far as I was concerned, the potential for injury was real and frequent. I never actually got hurt playing with fireworks, but that was only by the grace of God.

I remember once being with my friend Matt, who had gotten his hands on an M-80. These little bombs were the kings of neighborhood fireworks simply because of the explosive power and noise they generated. We couldn't have been more than 10 years old, yet here we were playing with something that could have blown our fingers off.

We decided to wedge the M-80 into a little crack in a picnic table at the playground. Matt lit it and we backed up a few feet. When it went off, splinters of wood flew in almost every direction, with one whizzing within an inch or two of my head. It could easily have gone into my eye.

Then there was the time Matt and Kevin were shooting bottle rockets across the street. I opened the front door to our house to see what was going on, and they very smartly decided to shoot one straight at me. I didn't get hit, but it did enter our house before exploding just inside the storm door.

I almost got in big trouble for that one.

My worst near-miss, without a doubt, was the time I nearly burned down my school with a jumping jack.

I've told this story here on the blog before. Here's how I described the incident in a post 10 years ago:

I was playing with a pack of jumping jacks I'd, um, borrowed from my dad. I was with my nephew Mark, who had to have been only 6 or 7 years old at the time. We were by the old Mapledale Elementary School, and ringing the building was a two-foot-high pile of dry leaves. My genius idea was to light a jumping jack and throw it into these leaves, so that's what I did. The leaves, of course, immediately caught fire, and the flames started spreading rapidly around the perimeter of the building. Mark and I ran away as fast as we could. Someone who was there told the cops I had done it, and by the time I got home, there was a Wickliffe police cruiser waiting in the driveway for me. My mother was, to put it mildly, not happy.

You'll want to know what I was thinking there. Heck, I want to know what I was thinking, but I don't know. Not even an 11-year-old boy can fathom the thought processes of an 11-year-old boy.

The only positive outcome was that the school did not, in fact, burn down. But that's only because the good folks from the Wickliffe Fire Department came and put out the mini inferno I had started.

Anyway, it's Fourth of July here in America, which means recreational fireworks will be out in abundance. If you celebrate in this manner, please stay safe and use a little common sense.

Like, for instance, make sure that when an M-80 explodes, it doesn't create projectiles that could potentially kill you and your friends.

That would really put a damper on the holiday.

International travel in Basic Economy is the ultimate test of endurance and old personhood

Earlier this week I mentioned how my wife and two of our kids traveled to Brazil in late May. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.

The part I enjoyed the least is the part I enjoy least every time I travel to other countries, which is the actual travel.

Getting to Rio de Janeiro required a flight from Cleveland to Houston...easy enough as domestic flights go. But then we had a 10-hour jaunt from Houston down to Rio. It was an overnight flight that we experienced in the most cost-effective way possible: sitting in Basic Economy.

Maybe I'm just getting on in years, but those Basic Economy seats simply aren't designed for restful sleep or even basic human anatomy. It's the truest example of "you get what you pay for," a feeling you experience as you're walking through the Business Class section of the plane on the way back to your pathetic accommodations in steerage.

I've flown Business Class internationally before, and let me tell you, once you do it, you have no desire to go back to a regular seat.

You have oodles and oodles of room in Business Class, a couple of shelves for storage, and even a tiny, gnome-sized closet that doesn't hold much but to me symbolizes the power and prestige of sitting among the privileged. You can lay flat with a pillow and warm blanket that allow you to sleep comfortably for hours at a time.

You will note that on those occasions I've flown Business Class, it has always been because my company paid for it. I would never spring for it personally, which is why we sat in the cheap-but-decidedly-cramped economy sections of the Boeing 767-300 aircraft that took us to and from Brazil.

By the way, I feel like there was a time when you could find daytime flights to Europe and South America, but they seem to be far less available these days. My first trip outside of North America in 1999 was an Air Canada flight from Toronto to London that left early in the morning and got us to the UK a little past dinner time. No sleep required.

Nowadays, though, it's all about overnight flights. I'm not one to try and experience a new country on zero hours of rest, so I feel obligated to get some sleep even though I'm sitting on a hard "cushion" in a sky chair barely wider than the diameter of my hips.

Terry supplied me with a Tylenol PM to knock me out on the way to Rio, and while this helped, it didn't solve my #1 issue when it comes to airplane sleep. No matter how hard I try, I have to switch positions roughly 437 times a night because my butt inevitably starts hurting if I don't shift around.

Which means that even with the help of the Tylenol PM capsule, the sleep I get comes in fits and starts and is punctuated by strange dreams and long periods in that weird state between wakefulness and slumber.

After a while, my legs start to hurt, too, largely because I don't get up and walk around as often as I should.

By the time we land, I have experienced a combined 2-3 hours of low-quality sleep, which is enough to survive on but not nearly enough to feel well-rested and ready to experience customs, travel from the airport, and whatever we have planned for Day #1 of our vacation.

Someday, when I win the lottery (which I never actually play), I'm going to start taking all of my flights in First/Business Class. Each time I fly, I'll do it lying on a bed of goose feathers covered in sheets with an absurdly high thread count while a flight attendant feeds me grapes and tells jokes.

In the meantime, it's sore butt muscles and lack-of-sleep-induced colds after every international trip for me.

Oh, the price we pay to experience the world.

In the mood for some joyous chaos? Try a Brazilian soccer match

My daughter Elissa, my wife Terry, and me before the match enjoying some Brahma Chopp beers, which I would describe as Brazilian Bud Lite.

Last month, four of us (my wife, our kids Elissa and Jack, and me) took a one-week vacation to Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It was the first time any of us had been to South America, and the trip lived up to our every expectation.

Rio is a wonderful place with a rhythm and vibe all its own. I highly recommend it to anyone anxious to experience Brazilian culture and the friendly Brazilian people, though it does present some minor obstacles for the American traveler.

For one thing, while there are English words on signs all over the city, relatively few people there speak our language well. I wouldn't expect them to (it's THEIR country, after all), but we tend to get spoiled traveling to many popular destinations in Europe and Asia where you can find English speakers on almost every corner.

We learned the words you need to be polite in Brazilian Portuguese, including "hello," "goodbye," "please," "thank you," and "I request that you not steal my iPhone." Beyond that, we relied on hand gestures and the godsend of an app known as Google Translate.

Fluminense supporters waving flags
and screaming at the top of their lungs.

There's also quite a bit of traffic in Rio, so don't expect to get anywhere quickly. The locals accept this as a fact of life and make up for it by driving like suicidal maniacs.

That's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. We got around via Uber, and we found the Uber drivers to be somewhat aggressive in their driving. By "somewhat aggressive" I mean changing lanes on a whim without really looking, not bothering to even tap the brakes at stop signs, and seemingly targeting pedestrians for no other reason than the sheer sport of it.

While the Uber rides provided enough thrills to last us a long while, so did my favorite part of the trip, which was the chance to attend a soccer match between Rio-based teams Fluminense and Vasco de Gama.

We did this through a tour company that specializes in bringing foreigners to Brazilian soccer games. Buying tickets directly as a non-Brazilian is a difficult experience – perhaps intentionally so – so you have to do it through an accredited agent.

Our tour guide Leo was outstanding. He was effortlessly trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish and English) and did a good job preparing us all for the experience.

Because Brazilian soccer is an experience. From the pregame festivities outside historic Maracanã Stadium to the match itself, rare is the time you can even hear yourself think. Everything about it is loud. All the time.

A small portion of the pregame crowd near Maracanã Stadium.

The streets around Maracanã were filled with people sporting Fluminense and Vasco de Gama colors. While it was technically a home match for Fluminense, the Vasco supporters seemed to be out in greater numbers.

We were told that Vasco fans generally draw from the region's working classes, while Fluminense fans are somewhat more affluent.

Regardless, we didn't overtly root for either team. We just tried to soak in the atmosphere. Outside the stadium there were fireworks aplenty (M-80s and bottle rockets mostly) and people yelling specific chants/cheers for their team. Europeans and North Americans mingled freely and happily with Brazilians and other South Americans, giving the whole thing an air of intense but friendly rivalry more than dark menace.

Once inside, we were struck by a few things that differed greatly from American sporting events:

• The only reason we knew the Brazilian national anthem was playing was because the players stood at attention and the words appeared on the video boards. The fans continued cheering loudly as if nothing important was going on. We couldn't hear the song at all.
  
  
• Once the match began, everybody stood. Everybody. The whole time. There was virtually no sitting.
  
  
• On a related note, people clogged the aisles of our section rather than just staying close to their seats. If you wanted to go get a beer or visit the restroom during the match, you had to wade through a dense sea of screaming fans standing in your way.
  
  
• I say "their seats," but there is no assigned seating in Maracanã Stadium. You just claim a seat and sit in it. If you leave, the seat is fair game for anyone else.
  
  

That's me and my son Jack before the start of the match.

Each side's supporters seemed to have an arsenal of chants and songs they would shout together in large groups. These were obviously in Portuguese (as were all game announcements and video board messages), and Leo tried to teach me one for Fluminense.

When the Fluminense fans launched into this particular chant, Leo turned around and looked at me like a teacher quizzing a pupil, but I immediately forgot almost everything I had learned. Instead I just sort of yelled along using nonsense words that somewhat approximated what I heard from the fans around me.

No matter, though. It was still a lot of fun.

In fact, the whole thing was a lot of fun...loud, crazy, and carried out in a beautiful language I will never be able to learn no matter how hard I try. But in the end, Fluminense's 2-1 victory (even including the shower of beer that hit us when Vasco scored the first goal of the match) was undeniably enjoyable.

I will not, however, be trying out anything I learned in Brazil at, say, the next Cleveland Guardians game. Between standing in someone's line of sight the whole game and claiming seats for which I don't own a ticket, something tells me I would be in a lot more danger at Progressive Field than I ever was at Maracanã.

Is tearing up at old Raffi songs a symptom of man-o-pause?

Elissa & me, 1994

When my now-31-year-old daughter Elissa was born, Terry was working a 9-to-5 job at Lincoln Electric while I worked nights as a sports writer at The News-Herald.

This was an ideal arrangement from the standpoint of child care in that, once Terry went back to work following her maternity leave, I was there every day to take care of Elissa.

When Terry got home around 5:30pm, I would eat some dinner then head out to cover a game or go right to the newspaper office for a shift on the copy desk.

Elissa, a champion sleeper almost from birth, thankfully slept until about 9:00am every day, which was a good thing for someone like me who didn't get home from work until 1:00 or 2:00am.

Many weekday mornings, I would awaken to the sound of Elissa on the baby monitor quietly playing in her crib or babbling the way infants do.

I would get out of bed and go into the nursery, and Elissa and I would greet each other with smiles and hugs.

I would then put her on the changing table, take off her onesie or whatever jammies she was wearing, give her a fresh diaper, and dress her for the day.

Usually I would pop a cassette into Elissa's little Fisher-Price tape player to give us some music as we went about this morning routine. We had a lot of kid-oriented cassettes, but the ones I remember most were from Canadian musician Raffi.

Raffi put out a string of smash hit children's songs in the 70s, 80s and 90s, my favorite of which included "Baby Beluga," "Morningtown Ride," "Bananaphone" and "The Changing Garden of Mr. Bell." These songs and many others of Mr. Raffi's take me back to those mid-90s glory days of new parenthood like nothing else.

Elissa, of course, remembers none of this. She was too little. But I think back to the way I would sing to her and she would smile, and suddenly the room gets very, very dusty.

This wave of nostalgia is perhaps unsurprising for someone like me whose kids are mostly grown and who is 2 1/2 months away from becoming a grandfather.

I also wonder whether it's a byproduct of the tongue-in-cheekily named "man-o-pause," which medically speaking is more about the gradual loss of testosterone in men and its related physical effects.

In my reading about male menopause, I don't see anything about hormone-related emotional swings, so either I'm just making this up or else I haven't read the right sources.

Either way, I wouldn't mind going back for just one hour to 1994 and listening to some Raffi tunes while changing and holding a smiling baby who was as happy to see me as I was to see her.

What a time that was in our lives.

Did I suggest that my son should commute to college because I thought it would be best for him, or because I don't want to move yet another futon into another dorm room?

Recently Terry accompanied our youngest child, Jack, to his orientation session at Cleveland State University. I've been to a couple of these orientations, and I've always found them to be at least somewhat fun and exciting for both parents and the freshmen-to-be.

As Jack gets ready to go back to the classroom after a two-year absence, he texted us a few weeks ago asking whether he should consider living on CSU's campus in Downtown Cleveland, rather than commute five days a week.

We've had three other kids live in dorms and/or off-campus housing near Cleveland State, so it certainly wasn't an unreasonable request.

Terry and I both, however, counseled Jack that, for him, it's probably best to commute for at least a year and get used to being in college before diving into the on-campus experience.

There's also the matter of student loan debt, which would rise considerably for him if he chose to live in a dorm (what with the cost of housing, food, etc.)

Jack wisely agreed with us, but then I reflected on the true motivation for the advice I had given.

On one hand, yes, I do think this is the best approach for Jack. I really do.

On the other hand, I have helped four of our children move into dorm rooms and apartments, none of which ever seemed to be on the ground floor but involved endlessly waiting for a single elevator that five dozen other students and their parents were trying to use.

It's a tiring process that involves lugging heavy bins and boxes of clothes, bedding and other dorm room accoutrements.

And I'll admit: While I strength train every week, it was one thing doing all of that in my 30s and even 40s. It's a somewhat different thing to do it in my mid-50s.

Oh, I can do it. I'll manage. It's not so much the actual moving as it is the prolonged recovery from moving that will inevitably follow.

Because, you see, that's what I notice about being this particular age: I can still do almost everything I've ever done, but if it's at all strenuous, my body (which used to bounce back in hours) will let me know about it for a solid day or two afterward.

I'll move your couch up the stairs, sure. I'm just desperately hoping you won't ask me to move the love seat, too.

In the end, I'm confident that what I told Jack came from the right place.

But if he decides to stay on-campus in future years, I'm requesting that a case of ibuprofen be kept close by at all times.

Every once in a while, I like to offer my wife examples of things an idiot would say

The AI-generated wife in this picture is looking at her AI-generated husband the way my real-life wife sometimes looks at me.

This is a fairly common exchange between me and my bride of many years:

ME (cleaning up the kitchen after dinner): What should I do with your glass of water? Dump it out?

TERRY: You should leave it it where it is and not touch it so I can have some later.

ME: Yes, of course! I knew that, but I wanted to show you what an idiot might ask in this situation.

This happens all the time. I ask what ultimately turns out to be a dumb question, and when I hear the answer, my only chance at recovery is humor.

Other situations in which I end up having to offer the "I was just letting you know what an idiot might say" defense include, but are certainly not limited to:

• When I'm looking for something in our house and she points me toward its easily discernible (for a non-idiot) location
• When I'm unloading the dishwasher and ask – for what may be the 37th time – which black plastic kitchen tools go in the tool turnabout and which ones go in the sliding drawer to the right
• When I ask what she's doing today after she has already told me twice
• When I'm trying desperately to open a package from the wrong end and she gently points out the "tear here" direction on the other side
• When I ask what time our family get-together starts instead of just looking at the calendar on the fridge
• When I'm trying to put something together and somehow miss the very clearly marked Tab A that goes into Slot B

And so on.

I view all of this as a helpful service. Without me, my wife would never know how to identify an idiot in her life.

Even though she has lived with one for 33 years.

How will I fill my days when I retire?

For many years before he passed, my father-in-law Tom liked to point out that he was retired and rarely had significant obligations on his calendar, unlike those of us still working for a living.

It would be a family get-together on a Sunday, and someone would say something like, "I have to work tomorrow." Someone else would chime in, "Me too."

Then Tom would flash that funny little mischievous grin of his and say, "Not me!"

I have often wondered what that life would be like.

Actually, we all get glimpses of it on our days off. Especially our weekday days off.

The stores and the roads are relatively empty. We're free to structure our time however we like.

And sometimes, after that giddy feeling of being unencumbered by job-related responsibilities passes, we're also free to be bored.

I look ahead a decade (or so) hence to my own retirement, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. The possibilities are intriguing and exciting, but I also worry I'll run out of things to do.

I imagine it takes a little while to get the hang of being retired. By the time I call it quits, I anticipate having been in the full-time workforce for 44 years or more.

That's a fur piece, as my dad used to say. Certainly long enough to develop deeply ingrained patterns of behavior necessary to survive and thrive in the world of work.

Changing those patterns can, I assume, be a bit of a challenge, especially when you reach an age when change of any sort is met with skepticism or outright annoyance.

How am I going to deal with that?

Maybe more importantly, how will Terry deal with having me around all the time?

I can't say for sure, but I can tell you something I noticed recently when talking with her.

It was a particularly stressful and busy week, and I sighed and said to her, "Am I retired yet?"

It took her less than half a second to reply with a sharp and emphatic, "No." The message I took away was, "No, you are not, and I would prefer you not be retired for as long as possible so I don't have to share this gloriously empty house seven days a week."

Maybe, if she has her way, I'll never have to worry about how I spend my retirement days because I'll never be allowed to retire in the first place.

So much of my mental wellbeing depends upon a nearly empty inbox

 

Please, as a favor to me, don't do this.

(NOTE: This post was originally published here four years ago on June 18, 2021. As is usually the case with these blog reruns, I have not changed my opinion on this subject.)

You may have heard it said that there are two types of people in this world: Those with zero emails in their inbox, and those with 5,000 emails in their inbox.

I am of the former camp. You can almost always fit my inbox onto one screen. It is stressful for me to have unread emails in any quantity, let alone a list that numbers into the tens, hundreds, or (gulp) thousands.

There have been times when I was watching a presentation by a co-worker sharing his/her screen, and for a brief second you could see Microsoft Outlook with an ungodly blue number like 32,418 next to their inbox, representing the total number of unread messages in there.

I would have a heart attack. Seriously, at that point you need to just start over.

I maintain an orderly folder system for both my personal Gmail and work Outlook accounts. These folders are divided into categories, and I place emails into each upon receiving and reading them. And many I just delete right away.

"What about emails that need to be acted on but I don't have the time to do it right when they come in?" you might ask.

Then have a "To Do" folder or something that tells you these are messages that need to be addressed in short order. Or make good use of a program like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote that allows you to easily create tasks and reminders for yourself.

Just, please, don't allow that blue "unread" number to get into the five digits. Or the three and four digits, for that matter. The aneurysm you save will probably be mine.

I was never a hat guy until long after the hair decided to leave the top of my head

This is me in a golf cart on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in France, and well, I just think that's a funny sentence.

I think it was the late 80s or early 90s, but at some point, guys in my generation decided they should start wearing baseball caps.

I should say American guys made this decision, as we seem to be the only ones who have done it.

I should also add that other guys besides me started wearing hats, because until the last couple of years, I never embraced the trend.

That was partly a result of my big head. I never felt I looked all that good with a hat on. Plus, there's a certain reality to buying a hat for a large skull. Sometimes even the adjustable ones are uncomfortably tight.

I lived happily this way for decades. At the same time, starting in my mid-20s, I began losing hair on the crown of my head. This is a genetic thing and, hey, it happens.

One result was that, at least five times every spring and summer, I would be outside for an extended period and my bald spot would turn red and uncomfortable.

I've always just lived with this, never quite making the connection that, if I were to start wearing hats in the warmer months, I would not get these sunburns.

It was only when my wife strongly suggested I keep a supply of hats in my car that I started wearing them, and even then it's really just an occasional thing for me.

In fact, I'm recovering from a crown-of-the-head sunburn as I type this in mid-May because I didn't wear a hat recently when announcing a high school baseball game. The temperature was on the cool side, and apparently to my brain, that meant there was no danger of sun damage.

Which is of course silly and wrong. It doesn't have to feel hot for the sun to burn you.

So I'm trying to get myself into the hat habit. I have 3-4 baseball caps and a floppy brimmed hat in the car, all of which make me look exactly like what I am: A middle-aged suburban dad and soon-to-be grandpa trying not so much to be cool but rather to ward off melanoma from the top of my oversized head.

It's an ongoing struggle.

Cable TV taught me never to become a counselor at Camp Crystal Lake

I'm not sure of the exact year, but at some point in the early 80s, I got a cable-equipped TV in my room.

This was like the hitting the jackpot. It included the full package of premium channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax.

These channels were great for watching movies that had been in theaters only weeks earlier. It was a big deal when the first of the month rolled around and HBO introduced its new lineup of movies, including the blockbusters that were otherwise only available at, well, Blockbuster.

It was on HBO that I saw the first four (I think) "Friday the 13th" movies.

I remember sitting in my room one very late Friday night watching the first "Friday the 13th." My parents were asleep, the house was quiet, and I was scared stiff.

I wanted to turn it off when Mrs. Voorhees got her head chopped off, but I couldn't look away.

You have to understand, back then we hardly ever saw anything like that in movies or video games. It was terrifying.

With today being Friday the 13th, I think back on how cheesy those movies really were, and how they probably weren't particularly scary compared to some of the things you see today. But believe me, back in the Reagan Administration, Jason and his hockey mask were the height of the horror genre. They made you think twice about ever working at a summer camp.

And you sure as heck knew not to run to the basement when you heard a strange sound down there. That was just common sense.

When you see a number on the bathroom scale you don't like...

One evening a month or so ago, I decided to weigh myself.

This isn't an especially remarkable occurrence except for two things:

1. It would be the first time I had weighed myself in 2025. I hadn't done it at all this calendar year.
2. When I did get on the scale, the number that came back was one I had never seen before.

220 pounds.

Yikes.

Now, to be fair, it was late in the day after I had eaten, which isn't the ideal time to weigh yourself. And the weight I've gained over the last year or so is partially fat and partially muscle from strength training.

There's also the fact that no one would have looked at me and guessed I weighed a lifetime high of 220 pounds.

My face was fuller than it normally might be, and for the first time I ever remember, I had a bit of a belly. But I do carry weight well, and at most you probably would have said I weighed 195 or maybe 200.

No, 220 it was. I was a little stunned.

I knew I hadn't been eating well. And I knew, for the sake of my health, I needed to get back on track when it came to my diet. But I didn't anticipate that particular number on the scale.

Five days later, I found myself sitting in a Weight Watchers workshop for the first time in more than two years.

Weight Watchers has always been the most effective method of weight loss for me. Their point system works well for someone who is goal-oriented and likes clear direction.

I am what's known as a lifetime member of Weight Watchers in that I hit my physician-assigned goal of 185 pounds back in 2013 and maintained it for a period of six weeks.

Once you do that, you no longer have to pay Weight Watchers a fee. You just need to weigh in once a month within 2 pounds of that goal weight and everything remains free.

I did that for a while, and then I thought I could do it on my own without Weight Watchers.

But I couldn't, and of course I gained weight, so I went back to WW in 2016 and lost even more weight than before (getting down to a gaunt 166 pounds at one point...that wasn't good).

I experienced more ups and downs with my weight over the next several years, and now here we are.

I have been following the WW program, and of course I'm losing weight. I always lose weight when I do this.

My goal is to get back to that 185 number, which may be more difficult than it used to be given my age and the muscle I've gained. The latter is a good problem to have, but the fact is that muscle is heavy relative to fat, so getting the number on the scale to drop can be tricky when you're lifting.

The real question, of course, is whether I can maintain it over the long haul. That's the challenge, and it's going to require a change in thinking.

I can't obsess over the number on the scale every week. It has to be about developing daily habits that get to me to my goal.

My high school track coach, the great Al Benz, always taught us to concern ourselves more with the means than the ends. That is, worry about your form, technique and training, and the end result (times/distances) will take care of itself.

I was never very good at that. Before meets, I always worried over whether I would break 20 feet in the long jump or get into the low 11s in the 100-meter dash. I should instead have been thinking about the steps in my long jump approach or perfecting my start in the 100 meters.

In the same way, my focus now should be on a balanced, healthy daily food intake and getting plenty of water, rather than the exact amount of weight I'll have lost by the time my Monday morning weigh-in rolls around.

If I do the first part, long-term success (with some inevitable small bumps in the road) is guaranteed.

So this is as much a mind exercise as it is about meal planning and label reading. It's about long-term health and a more satisfying pattern of eating.

It's about finding ways to feel good that don't involve late-night carbohydrate loading.

So far, so good. I'm making progress, and it doesn't need to be fast.

Maybe this time I'll figure out how to keep on doing the things I've always known I should have been doing in the first place.

Here's what I've noticed about going to the gym: Everything is heavy

"Yeah, that's the idea," you probably said to yourself upon reading the headline of today's post. But hear me out.

I know the point of weightlifting is to move heavy things around in an attempt to build strength. You're supposed to make your muscles fail, thereby breaking them down and allowing them to rebuild themselves bigger and stronger.

And the only way to make them fail is to lift heavy objects.

Yet there's a difference between "heavy" and "HEAVY."

Like, the first set of everything I do is "heavy." By the time I get to the last rep, I'm working hard to get that weight into the air (or out to my side or whatever the movement calls for). But it's not to the point that I've lost the will to live.

That's not the case when I'm dealing with "HEAVY" weights. These are generally the types of weights my trainer Kirk will give me when I'm working out under his tutelage.

We'll be doing, say, a dumbbell incline bench press exercise. He'll walk over to the dumbbell rack and select two that are, for him, not a problem to move, but that are, for me, at least a small problem to move.

He'll hand me the dumbbells, I'll lean back on the bench, and I'll proceed to lift them 10, 12 or 15 times, however many reps he tells me to do. The last few reps are decidedly uncomfortable, and my earnest desire is for the set to end so I can go back to the mostly comfortable lifestyle to which I'm accustomed.

But then we'll proceed to a second set, and this time Kirk will hand me a Volkswagen or a small elephant and tell me to lift it about the same number of times.

I'm not speaking literally, of course, but he inevitably picks large dumbbells of the kind I normally associate with Mr. Universe contestants and that one women I see every day at the gym who is way stronger than me.

Even if/when I successfully complete this new and decidedly unfair task, Kirk will keep handing me larger and larger objects to lift. It's as if he's playing a practical joke of which he and all the rest of the gym-goers are aware, and I'm serving as a source of endless amusement for them.

I know what my face looks like when I'm really struggling to get a weight into the air, and I'm sure it's hilarious if you're just standing there watching. I also start to contort my body in a way that undoubtedly defeats the purpose of the exercise but also makes me feel like I'm making some progress toward lifting the 4-ton anvil Kirk has given me.

When we get to the heaviest weights, I'm quickly beyond caring whether I live or die. All I know is that existence = suffering and the only way I will make it through is to perform the prescribed number of reps, whatever it takes. This is when I know we have reached the level of "HEAVY."

And, if you'll pardon my language, it really sucks.

Then, suddenly, without me realizing it, my 1-hour session with Kirk is over. He gives me a fist bump, tells me I did a good job, and walks with me back into the gym lobby.

I collect my things from the changing room and head out to my car, noting that while my arms are fatigued to the point I simply cannot lift them over my head any longer, I have logged another workout. Victory.

The next day I am sore. And weak. My daily creatine powder helps, but there's a certain level of muscle fiber breakdown my 55-year-old body simply cannot overcome without the passage of at least a few days.

Yet there I am back at the gym soon after, sometimes the very next day to work on another part of my body while the first part tries desperately to repair itself. This cycle of suffering ends only if I die or decide to give up lifting, which in the eyes of the gym rats around me is kind of the same thing.

So back I go. It's hard knowing that while "heavy" is at least manageable, "HEAVY" is the only way I'm going to get better at this.

And worst of all? I'm paying both Kirk and the gym owner Frank for this suffering.

It always bears repeating: No one ever said I was a genius.