2020 NFL Draft Best Individual Skill Sets: Wide Receivers
March 17, 2020Passing time with sports on pause – The Nail in the Coffin, Episode 172
March 18, 2020Two days in a row with a post? What is this? 2008 or 2009 when I joined up with Scott, Andrew, and Rick? Will Denny come wandering through the virtual doors next? Jacob Rosen and the weekend crew back in action? I feel like I’m streaking now!
A Billion-Dollar Idea that Marvel Should Totally Do Right NOW!
What we’re going through right now? It’s life, but think of it as a film. This is a movie and everyone gets a turn to cast themselves as heroes, villains or bystanders. Don’t be bystanders Marvel! Black Widow is almost certainly 100-percent complete and ready to be watched by a voracious public who isn’t going to be able to go to a movie theater. Marvel is owned by Disney who launched the most must-have streaming service since Netflix, Disney Plus. Do not push back the release of this film, Marvel. It’s time to do the magnanimous thing (and probably business-savvy thing as well) and release Black Widow as soon as possible on your streaming platform. It’s a gift to your fans. I know it’s not what you planned, but it will turn Widow into one of the most legendary films of all time, regardless of how good the movie actually might be. Make it happen, Marvel.
Seeking Normalcy
Yesterday was Tuesday. It was St. Patrick’s Day. I was craving as much normalcy as I could possibly get. My family was apparently craving the same thing as well. My wife got up and made green pancakes for the boys. In the most normal of all possible ways, when I took this picture, I had to BEG my eldest son to smile for the picture. He barely did. That might have been my look too if I’d been tasked with eating green pancakes.
Without getting into it too much, I have been busy trying to accommodate as much “work-from-home” at my company in the last possible minute. It’s not something a stodgy institution like insurance was quick to embrace before the last couple of years. And even then, it was adopted by big fancy corporations like Progressive and Grange Insurance, but much harder to roll out in substantially smaller community-oriented insurance agencies like ours.
This is where being a nearly-life-long geek has paid off some. A combination of tricks with the phone system, an implementation of Microsoft Teams, and a last-minute purchase of notebook PCs and USB wi-fi adapters for traveling desktop computers, and we made massive progress in maintaining just a skeleton crew at our main offices.
Much like my kids and their pancakes, I was in search of normalcy so I got dressed for work like normal.
Over the past few years, I adopted the “uniform” of an everyday sport coat. I don’t need to be dressed up in my industry. I grew up with a dad who wore a suit every day for a long time before relaxing his wardrobe somewhere in the late 1990s or early 2000s. I have played with different levels of dress over the years but for much of the last three or four years, I’ve found comfort in wearing almost the same thing every day. If I have a business meeting, I look like I’m dressed for it. If I have to go to a funeral, I am dressed more appropriately than at least half of those in attendance.
That’s not a judgment, either. It’s just to say that with my wardrobe, I’m aiming for the midpoint at all times. Sometimes I’m overdressed. Sometimes I can be seen as underdressed. But usually, this strategy has me feeling like I’m approved by Goldilocks herself each and every day.
It’s also to say that there’s literally no reason that I should get dressed up in my normal wardrobe in the midst of a viral outbreak so that I can put in some time at the office with my skeleton crew. Pardon my language, but fuck it. It was good enough and made sense last week. I found it comforting to have one of a few things go unaltered during this weird-ass time this week.
Before I go, I wanted to leave you with another recommendation. I’m listening to an audiobook by H. Jon Benjamin called Failure Is An Option. Despite the sad-sounding title, it’s meant in the spirit of comedy. The audiobook is read by the author that many will know as the voice of a faux James Bondian cartoon character named Sterling Archer, you know, from the adult cartoon, Archer. I’m only halfway through it, but it’s been a great escape. He’s dry. He can be dark. Make no mistake. Benjamin is funny. I love hearing him weave jokes in and out of his autobiographical stories about his life.
That’s it for me today. Talk to you soon.
We love you. We want the best for you. We hope you’re healthy and occasionally even happy if you can muster it. We’ll do everything we can on our end to help with that last one, for at least a few moments per day.
Cheers.