Sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports....

"Marge, Bart gets to ride up front today because he's a good guy at sports." 
                                                                      --Homer Simpson

Now, while Homer may have been talking about hockey--hockey still is technically a sport, right?--his point remains:  sports are awesome. 

I've sort of been puttering around the house muttering Homer's sports chant these last few weeks because all sorts of sporty-type events have transpired.  Notre Dame is back playing football with the first defense that I've looked forward to trotting out in, what, 18 years?  The NFL is back and while I am a Bears fan in name only, NFL games this year have been a riot to watch because of those pesky refs that last refereed during the Central Michigan/Southern Alabama game.  Also, not to be forgotten but the Chicago White Sox are--as I type this--still in first place.  However, I'm willing to admit that by the time you read this, my beloved Sox will be in first place no more.  Sigh.

But it's not just that stuff.  Except for the whole refereeing debacle, all this stuff happens most Octobers.  You know what doesn't happen most Octobers?  This:

Isn't it glorious?  Ok, a little background.  I have this wicked-awesome friend named Kalena.  Seriously, she's one of my favorite people ever.  Up there with Abraham Lincoln, Peter North and Carlton Fisk.  She's always super-positive--unless she's talking about James Franco, ovens or (for whatever reason) Tom Hanks--and whenever I have a totally dumb idea like "We should have a night where we play Disney music and drink Mai Tai's and rent a mouse and a duck and make them act out Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck skits" she always says something like "That's an AMAZING idea!"  She's wonderful.  

Kalena, seen here in the shadow of my trophy, being awesome.

But she's also a dirty Michigan fan.  Now, it's not all her fault.  I mean, she went to Ann Arbor intentionally to learn readin' an writin' and 'rithmatic but she's not the total moron that you would expect.  She somehow climbed above the stereotype and became a honest, decent, intelligent person.  

Last year, we were watching the Notre Dame/Michigan tilt and--whilst drinking, of course--came up with the daft idea that we should watch the series together every year and that maybe we could find a trophy to pass back and forth, depending on the winner.  This is where drunken ideas tend to go off the rails but she has this theatre tech boyfriend and when he heard about the idea, he said "Yes.  Yes, we should do that."  So, Marc set about brainstorming some kind of trophy that he could build and, over the course of the year, Kalena and I pestered him enough that he built the damn thing. 

Look at the fine craftsmanship involved.  He took a standard trophy for, weight lifting, probably, and added another trophy to it.  Because, why not?

Then, he found some old "Starting Lineup" football action figures, painted them in the manner of the Irish and Wolverine colors and glued them to the sides and top of the trophy.

Rarrrr!

 Then, he topped the trophy with a few more starting Lineup action figures...

...and, because he knows us, he made the damn thing light up:

It'll orb through green, red, blue, purple, etc all while I giggle and clap my hands.

And that's it.  Just kidding!  Marc took a step back, looked at his creation, and asked, "How can I make this trophy more obnoxious?

So, this past Saturday, I found myself surrounded by a group of friends and dirty Michigan fans at Matilda's, the Michigan bar of choice.  Because Notre Dame lost a sizable fourth quarter lead last year and lost, I had to watch at an "away" bar.  And boy was this game awful.  At one point, Michigan had 5 consecutive passes picked off by the Notre Dame D.  Not sure I've  ever seen that before.  On the ND side, the very first pass of the game was picked off and then our Frosh quarterback through an awful, awful interception into a crowd in the end zone from the 10 yard line.  It was an ugly start.

However, we settled down after inserting our backup QB and the Irish squeaked out a 13-6 victory.  A victory, I might add, that was made all the more sweet by the fact that I could lift an amazing trophy over my head and blast an air horn over and over again to the chagrin of the clientele at Matilda's.  

It was fun.  We walked around that neighborhood blasting the air horn and I was sort of a mini-celebrity.  Folks asked about the trophy and a few wanted to take a picture with it.  Good times.  

Kalena was an amazingly good sport through it all.  But while I tried not to be super obnoxious, did I mention that I had an air horn?  I just hope that I haven't made her hate list.  It'd be awful to someday end up on the same "must be destroyed list" as ovens and Tom Hanks. 

Today in Jesus Christ

A few notes on marriage

1)  This is the kind of thing you don't see in all those romantic movies HBO plays on a constant loop:  last night, I found myself watching a Cheers with my wife as we went to bed at about 10pm.  On a Friday night.  Woooooo!

2)  Our exhaustion was actually not our fault.  We spent the better part of the day at the bank arguing about our property taxes.  It seems that some fairly important information about said taxes was mailed to our neighbors instead of us and as such, we never received word of said information until a whole lot of bullshit financial penalties were added on.  Want to know what the problem was?  The "one half" in our address.  

See, we live at 5934.5 N Paulina (send money!).  Sometimes whatever system we're working with--be it the Chase bank system, Grub Hub, PizzaHut.com, etc--won't let us put a decimal point in the address.  Sometimes you have to list it as 1/2.  Sometimes you can't put any indication at all.  This leads so some moderately annoyed delivery guys and some important information about our taxes never actually reaching us.  

Yesterday, at the bank, Krishni and I sat with an incredibly patient banker for over 3 hours while she tried to make things right.  No shit:  we found four different versions of our address in the Chase bank system.  Three or four times, she shook her head and said "I've never seen anything like this."  At one point, I was on the phone with a rep from another department and that rep requested that I confirm my address.  When I did so, she said "That is not the address in our system" and demanded that I confirm the incorrect address at which she happened to be staring.  In a moment of frustration, I asked "I'm sorry ma'am, but I have no idea what incorrect address you're staring at.  How on earth am I supposed to confirm an address when I don't know how the address is wrong?  This is the whole point." 

3 hours later and nothing is resolved.  We're going back Monday.

While waiting to hail a cab outside the Chase tower yesterday, my gorgeous--and under the weather--wife, turned to me and asked if incredibly complicated situations like this ever happened to me before I met her.  "No," I replied, "This is just one of the added bonuses that comes along with being married to you."  She took it as an insult but honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.  

Maybe with less Chase Bank, anyway.

3)  As I mentioned, Krishni is a bit under the weather today.  She was all hopped up on DayQuil yesterday and chugged some NyQuil at night.  However, this morning at about 7am, I rolled my fat ass over in bed and noticed that she wasn't there.  Typically, I'm not awake at 7am unless the leafblower guy is asking to be murdered so it was just by sheer coincidence that I noticed she was no longer in bed.  

Well, it wasn't by sheer coincidence: I was just awakened by a nightmare where Krishni was still asleep but nonetheless cupping my balls in her hand and staring into my eyes as she slowly crushed them.  In the dream, I was screaming "WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE THE FUCK UP!" while trying to slap her awake so that my balls may survive to eventually produce Vladimir Voorhees Jacklich, Supreme Ruler of the Universe. 

Now awake and thankful that my magnificent balls were still intact, I became concerned that I had shouted out "WAKE THE FUCK UP!" in my sleep for my entire condo to hear while simultaneously flailing about with my arms and driving my sick wife from our marital bed. 

Nope.  I found her on our couch and nudged her awake and asked if she needed anything.  She said no and then told me why she came out to the couch in the first place:  "I was cold so I turned off the air and then I was sleepy and then sneezy so I just went to sleep on the couch."  Being a smartass, I asked "Just how many dwarves are you?"  In her sleepiness, she just replied, "Doc?"

I love my wife.

4)  For the record, I do not believe my wife is trying to castrate me.  When I did wake up, alone and confused and concerned for my manly bits, I found that I had tangled myself up in my sheet and my bits were wrapped up tightly in said sheet.  I have to believe that was the cause of the dream.  Also, I'm oddly glad it was Krishni and, not, say, Brad crushing my nuts.

Because that would have been weird.   

5)  My concern for accidentally slapping my wife in her sleep is grounded in one actual incident.  It would appear that a few years ago, I was asleep with my arm over my head while my wife laid (lied?  Layed?  Whatever) next to me watching TV and researching the Ebola Virus on her iPhone.  Seems that my arm had a spasm and sort of karate chopped her in the face with such force that it woke me up immediately.  Holy fuck I never felt as bad as I did that night.  I apologized profusely and offered to go sleep on the couch but she declined.  

A few days later I made the mistake of telling this "humorous" anecdote to Krishni's Mother.  I know it's all in my head but I still feel Darlene looks at me funny every once in a while, suspecting me of beating her daughter.  Guilt and all that.

Again, these are the stories the rom-coms don't tell you about.  

6)  Finally, you know how I feel about gay marriage.  If you only ever read one thing on the subject, make it this.  That essay is a reply written by Minnesota Vikings Punter Chris Kluwe to a Maryland state delegate who was complaining about a different NFL player who stated his support for marriage equality.  The highlight?

"They won't magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster."

Seriously.  Go read it.