What a Thanksgiving week, capped off by a GREAT football game on Saturday night! This blog will have it all: a weekly rundown of big events, witty repartee, and sports opinion. It is like you are tuning into Sportscenter: John edition.We spent from Wednesday to Saturday up in Kansas City and had a great time. For all of you who do not know, which is most of you outside of family, I have received a job offer in the Kansas City area as an HR specialist at the Office of Personnel Management for the Federal Government. Just this last Friday I found out that I passed my background check, which means that my previous "tentative offer" becomes a full-fledged offer of employment. We hope to be moving after the baby is born and start my new job after the beginning of the new year. OPM has not let me know what their timeline is, but I should find out more from their home office in Washington today. We are VERY excited about the job. We are excited to move to Kansas City. Yet every move like this brings mixed emotions. Carrie, for one, does not like chang
e and she keeps bringing up all the things and people we will miss here, which is a long list to sample from if you want to feel blue. No doubt we will miss our good friends, especially from church. We will miss being so close to Pat and Stephanie Zysk who have become our close friends. But you can't have everything exactly the way you want it. As the Rolling Stones said, and as I used to sing to my whining younger siblings which made them want to murder me in my sleep: "You can't always get what you want." (Sidenote: I have been told I look like Mick Jagger. I am not sure I see it)We spent much of our time in Kansas City looking for new apartments. Because of the imminent arrival of our son, our moving situation gets complicated very fast. There is a reason people tell you do not try to make multiple life-altering changes all at once like a new job, a new home, and a new baby (quite the trifecta). We managed to find an apartment in Overland Park, Kansas just 10 or so minutes from the Cranes. Here is their website: http://www.aspenlodgeapts.com/. It seems relatively safe, the apartment seemed nice, and they made us an offer we could not refuse: 2 months free rent plus $500 off our February rent, so that we get $1900 off our yearly total rent. This agreement allows us to have the flexibility we need to move in when we want to. We want to move as soon as we can after our son is born, but there is no telling exactly when that is going to be. We will have to wait until Carrie and he are ready. Having the peace of mind of knowing that we have an apartment reserved and we can move in when we want, and that we did not have to pay extra for such a convenience is a huge blessing for us. They also have a small 24-hour gym and
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When I was not searching for apartments and signing leases I helped Laurence put some of the finishing touches on the
exterior paint job of their home. Painting an entire home by hand is a painstakingly time-intensive project, especially for people who are intermittently obsessive-compulsive like myself. Laurence and I are a good team since he is more of a "get'er done" home improvement type. I am way too slow and careful, but maybe that is also because it was not my house. But the house looks great and Laurence has done a TON of work, and I think the whole Crane family should be pleased by how it has turned out. The whole project was a clear reminder that realtors (pronounced like the He-Man villain "SkeleTOR" according to the frequent radio spots I hear) are a bit misleading when they try to sell you a house by suggesting to put your rent money towards something permanent. There are A LOT of costs associated with home ownership that come outside of the mortgage. It is not as simple as taking your rent money and making it your mortgage. We do have plans for homeownership, but while we have a small family I think we will hold off until the right moment comes along. Kudos to Laurence and co. on a job well done!Thanksgiving was wonderful. Since Carrie's stomach is squished and mishapen by our growing boy I had to eat more to make up for it. Actually, BEFORE the week started I weighed in at 164 pounds, which for me is the most I have ever tipped the scales at. I estimate that I have gained about 15 pounds during Carrie's pregnancy. Sympathy weight? Probably not. My lifestyle has gotten much more comatose since graduating from grad school, and I do not exercise enough. Hopefully I can use the health equipment at our new complex to get a bit more healthy. Note on sauna: you use more calories sitting in a sauna for half an hour than by running the same amount. It's less cardiovascular, but it's a lot more relaxing. Granted I will more than make up for the calories lost when I consume makkara and soda, but that will only be when we have guests, which I hope is frequently. In fact here are some health benefits of sauna:
Health Benefits
Though the sauna experience is different for everyone, most will agree that there are many health benefits that come from regular sauna usage including the following:
- Aids in skin ailments such as acne, eczema & other wounds
- Relieves stress
- Burns calories and encourages weight loss
- Conditions the heart
- Induces a deeper more relaxing sleep
- Relaxes muscles & can relieve joint pain caused by arthritis, rheumatism, over-exertion & muscle fatigue
- Sweats out toxins, impurities and chemicals
- Cleanses skin
- Fights illness
- Recreational and social benefits
But Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. The Cranes do a good job of helping me, the new guy in the family, feel at home. They added to their holiday spread what they call "Tony's beans" which is a green bean casserole with onions on top, just like my family makes.
The icing of the great week cake was the BYU victory over Utah. For those of you who like to discuss these things read on. If you don't skip it, it won't hurt my feelings. I feel that the game was very close and played by two teams who were of very similar talent levels. BYU was aided by some stupid personal fouls by Utah early on, and then nearly gave the game away with overly-conservative play-calling, reminiscent of the Crowton playcalling. Remember those screen passes on 3rd and long? (I just threw up in my mouth) I wish I had some roofies like G.O.B. from Arrested Development so I could re-forget what I just remembered. Dark times. I think we need to fly my father out for every BYU-Utah tilt, seeing as BYU is undefeated in contests he has attended recently in both football and basketball. As a Ute alum my father has suffered through seeing all of his children attend the hated rival of his alma mater, and he has done so with dignity. After the game, contreversy bubbled up as QB Max Hall said that he hated the U- the team, the fans, the whole university. To read more check this article out: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4699865. I had some thoughts about this incident:
- These are understandable emotions to have. I would be livid if my family had been treated in such a way- being spit on, having beer poured on them, and being harrassed to the point that they needed a security team to escort them out of the stadium after the game.
- Unfortunately those fair emotions blossomed, like they often do, into unfair generalizations in his public statements. I am sure that Max Hall was speaking off the cuff and did not plan to say that he hated everything the U stands for. That is a ridiculous statement. As heated as the sports rivalry is, the U is a fine school with good students. My parents met and married and I was born while at the University of Utah. It is a preposterous, irrational statement to make, but do we expect everything that comes out of a tired football players mouth after a game to be calcualted and smooth and exactly what they mean? Isn't that why everyone dislikes Alex Rodriguez so much? Hall's statements will undoubtedly fuel a fire that is burning, and this rivalry will continue to elicit vitriol from both sides for a long time. His statements will undoubtedly be bulletin-board material for every Ute player and fan going into next season's game.
- Hopefully this publicity will put an end to that type of behavior if it is going on at Ute games. I have been to many BYU-Utah games in Provo, and while there is not much love shared between fans, I have not witnessed any innappropriate behavior besides that moron who assaulted the U male chearleader, and then got beat up by him. i always root for idiots to get their due justice. Are there annoying BYU fans? YES. I get annoyed with some Cougar fans when they are playing anybody, but nothing like what Hall's family supposedly experienced. My friend Darren and I still laugh about the Ute fans who cleverly quipped when BYU was stopped: "That brings up another BYU...FOURTH DOWN!" While they were making fun of our team, everyone around laughed. We definitely exhanged good-natured verbal barbs with those guys, but I would characterize BYU fans as docile and good-natured and sometimes even lame. The closest I ever came to conflict was with a crazy Utah fan who clearly wanted to fight me during a BYU-Utah basketball game. Alicia was visiting BYU and my friends and I were making jokes. I wondered out loud if Utah was trying to win by being repulsively ugly. They had a markedly ugly team at the time. The Ute fan in front of me got agitated and started yelling at me, asking me if I was gay, and wanting to know if I wanted to fight. I laughed and said no. It was bizarre behavior, but I did not leave that interaction thinking that all Ute fans were as dumb as that guy. But there are definitely bad eggs. On both sides one should be very careful before characterizing a whole group of people negatively. BYU fans must realize that there are some crazies who attend our games, who, if given the chance, might act like those who harrassed Hall's family. Utah fans should not deny that those people exist at Rice-Eccles. Newsflash- there are annoying, stupid people at every school in the nation. The sheer number of students and the population of the metro areas associated with each school makes it inevitable. That does not excuse that behavior. The opposite should happen as both schools should make extra efforts to see that it is safe to be a fan of either team while watching the game.
- I always find the anti-BYU club very funny. The chatboards quickly turn into BYU hate: Mormons, polygamy, blah blah blah. I have news for Utah fans: Half your school is LDS as well, including your football coach and many players. What is also laughable is the complaint about how BYU students are so homogenous. It is true- 30,000+ active members of the LDS church are going to be more homogenous than the population of a major city. But don't hold up the University of Utah as the pinnacle of diversity in comparison. Utah is a mostly commuter school from the Salt Lake area, where local high school affiliations still matter, so don't bring that trash in here! My best friends at BYU were from Boston, Houston, Fresno, New York, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc. While pretty similar, there were planty of dissenting opinions religiously, politically, etc., a truth that is lost on many haters.
- This will rile up my Utah-loving family and friends, but the point still rings true. When it comes to the fan bases Utah hates BYU much much more than BYU hates the U. Just like Red Sox fans hating the Yankees more (e.g., I fight with my wife every time she playfully asks if we can name our son Derek) and Finland hates Sweden more. They all have little brother syndrome. And I include myself in that group of irrational Red Sox fans. I think as BYU students come from a variety of places, they don't grow up with Utah hate in their blood. I grew up rooting for the Utes. Most Utah fans grew up in Salt Lake, and they have been feeling the hate for a long time before they even start at the U. Those feelings are part of the reason they applied to the U and not the Y. If I had not gotten into BYU I would not have hesitated to go to the U. It's a fine school. For me these athletic events are fun games made more fun by the rivalry, but it is more than that for some.
