Sunday

I slept in today and ate a trough of cereal. I love eating, it is one of the great joys in life along with friends, love, sex, football and challenges. Speaking of eating, I am really excited about learning how to cook a new meal tomorrow after work from my friend Ian who is a professional chef. Ian cooks food that is head and shoulders above anything else I have ever tasted and I’ve eaten a lot of the best restaurants in Seattle and elsewhere. He has an incredible passion for cooking that comes out whenever he even talks about it… his descriptions of food make my mouth water. He loves preparing meals like I love eating them. We are the ultimate pairing, the creator and the appreciator. I have the good fortune of meeting him every Monday evening and having him teach me how to prepare top quality meals. I can’t wait for tomorrow; Fletch is coming over to and the three of us are going to have a feast and drink some wine. There is a core group of friends; Fletch, Jeremy, Ian, Jarek and I and whenever two of us get together we have a great time, but three or more always makes for some highly entertaining debauchery. We are planning on making scallops with some sort of vinaigrette salad… Ian will be demonstrating and helping me learn how it’s done. Yum.

After I went to Costco this morning, Nick Fitzer gave me a call and wanted to play tennis. I drove up to the IMA to meet him, but when I got there, I saw a bunch of guys playing touch football. I love playing football almost as much as I love to eat, so I convinced Nick that we should go join them. We played for around two and a half hours and had a great time. I quarterbacked my team and scored five rushing touchdowns and ten passing touchdowns. At the end, we decided that we would have an overtime style playoff to determine the winner. The rules were that you had to line up at the 15 yard line and score a TD within 4 plays. I and the opposing quarterback were very good, so we just took turns scoring several times. Finally, one of my teammates said he wanted to try quarterback, and proceeded to lose possession on downs and then threw and interception on his next possession. Useless. We lost, but that didn’t matter, I had a wonderful time. I love being young, healthy, and in my prime. Watching the ravages of age on the older generation makes me appreciate what I have right now so much more. Statistics show that big guys like me generally have a shorter life span and more things go wrong with us as we age. I’m not sure if that is because big guys don’t have the short man mentality and don’t press as hard to stay in shape or if it’s because carrying more weight stretched across a bigger frame causes more problems. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. Whatever, I like it my way. I would rather live fast, big and hard and flame out early then do nothing with my life and slowly die. I do a fair amount of running and exercising, so it was fun to see it pay off as I was quick as all these little guys and when I reached speed, way faster. They were really shocked to see a guy a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier juke them and then burn their cutoff angles. Then I came home and watched a bunch of guys play football on television who are a hundred pounds heavier than I am and far stronger make dives and moves that I couldn’t keep up with. I’ve learned to keep life in perspective; at almost everything you try there will always be someone better and someone worse than you… you can only compete against yourself.

After football, I came home and did my laundry, which I have been avoiding, while watching the Eagles almost beat the undefeated Patriots. Now I just have to put the clothes away and clean my kitchen for the dinner tomorrow and I’ll be good for the evening.