Meditation, anyone?

I mentioned earlier that Candace, my kind-of-sister-in-law, is in the middle of a 10 day meditation retreat. I got a email from Janice's brother Jeff which gave more details on what actually happens during these 10 days. The email is written by a former attendee who gives a first-hand experience. It's posted below.

My first thought is that I wouldn't make it past hour 6 at this place. And I'm not sure I want to look at myself "objectively" - I would then create a checklist of things I need to work on and that list would number in the hundreds, I believe.



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...let me go ahead and tell you what I experienced. It is something I would recommend everyone to go through - it is only 10 days in a whole big lifetime.

The 10 day course aims at putting you on a path of self-discovery and correction with the final objective of making you a more sensitive, sensible, ego-less and balanced individual who is able to take the good and bad life has to offer, with equanimity.

You start after taking an oath to not speak for the entire duration of the course. It is not normal silence, but 'noble silence'. You do not communicate verbally, through actions, in writing not even using your eyes. You are not expected to look anybody in the eye, your eyes have to be downcast all the time. In essence, you live the life of a monk for those 10 days. Halfway through the course the silence really hits you.....

Additionally you also agree to (for the duration of the course): 1) not kill any living creature 2) abstain from lying (not very difficult as you are not talking) 3) abstain from stealing 4) abstain from sexual activities (sexes are segregated, so virtually impossible). 5) not use any intoxicants.

The course itself is very practical in nature and aims at experiential learning. The day starts early, at 4:00 am, which is the wake-up time. At 4:30 am you start meditating and this goes on till 9:30 pm, with recess for breakfast(6:30 - 8:00 am), lunch(11:00 am - 1:00 pm) & tea(5:00 - 6:00 pm). There is no dinner. In the first 2 days you realize 2 things - one, that you have a subconscious mind (or unconscious mind) that is nothing more than a junkyard, and; two, it is not in your control.

By the end of the first 4 days, all you manage to do is to get your mind to focus on a small triangular part below the nostrils with the line of the upper lip as the base. You think of nothing else but the breath coming in & going out of your body. Other than this, your mind is unaware of everything else happening around you & inside you. Then you use this heightened (sharpened) awareness to probe into yourself over the next 6 days.

You are trained to look at yourself objectively - at a physical level, as you meditate you feel pleasurable as well as painful sensations all over your body. You are expected to deal with both kinds of sensations with equanimity/equipoise/ indifference, being the observer. The underlying concept is that everything in life is impermanent, so learn to deal with highs & lows with a smile, objectively.

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Quick Question

Fantasy Football is just around the corner and I want to come up with a new team name in honor of one of the scandals going on in sports. Any ideas?

Random Notes

• Well my mom is in town this past week and its been pretty uneventful. I taught her some new things like, you can use a credit card in the grocery stores and you can leave windows open at night and nobody will break in to the place. After this week, I'm really nervous about getting old. You become so out of touch with society. Maybe its just my mom, but I'm beginning to think its just a by product of getting old. Ugh.


• Ahhh, finally some good news at work. The high priced company attorneys were able to get my name removed from a pretty large lawsuit that I mentioned about 6 months ago. Once again, this is the only time I was happy to be seated across two Duke graduates. As they said, the greatest defense for a defamation case is that it is the truth. I will be joining these two Dukies today in four days of depositions of the two guys that are suing our company for wrongful termination and a million other little things. $500 an hour we are paying these guys and they are worth every penny. Attorneys are now added to the list of things that you don't cheap out on, which includes toilet paper, scotch, TVs, and whores.


• Carol has been gone for the past couple of weeks and I have been able to play 2 seasons of NCAA 2007-College Football. The Terps are on a 22 game winning streak and have brought home two national championships. With my mom cooking dinner every night and having the fridge stocked with beer, it has been a wonderful week.
• I want to bring something up that RRD posted a little bit ago that has me very concerned. What is wrong with wearing khakis, brown shoes and blue socks? Please help me out here. I have some light brown socks, but I don't like the way that they look. I've conquered the matching belt with shoes issue and no more pleats and I thought I was on my way. But now I hear this and I'm a little worried.
• And Eric, I know that you are feeling bad about golf right now, but I know that I speak for many of us readers here that if you don't improve and stop shooting in the 80s, you will be band from writing about your golf outings.

I'm mad as hell....

And I'm not going to take it anymore!

Quick update from Round 1 at Apple Valley: I hit 13 greens & fringes. 13! Thirteen.

I shot 79. Sickening. 13 greens should be at worst a 76.

38 putts - 4 three-putts - will do that to you. I left myself too many 50 footers on the large greens.....and I paid for it. I need to shoot 77 tomorrow (at worst).

Z is for Victory!

Our local public course - Crooked Tree in Mason - had the club championship this weekend. Long story short - I shot 76 the first day, highlighted by a bogey on 16 and a double on 17 (nice finish!). I ended up 2 strokes clear of the field.

Started today - doubled an easy par 5 to start to lose the lead....... and by the time we made the turn, I was up by 8. I ended up shooting 37 on the front (made a few nice putts) while every one else in my group shot no better than 42. I don't understand it.

Bogeyed 15, 16 and 18 - 18 is a par 5, and I played it with the following clubs:
5 wood
left-handed wedge
wedge
7 iron
9 iron
15' sidehill putt in!

I shot 76 (again) today and ended up winning by 7. I was thinking what Jim Nantz would say coming up 18 - and the best I could get would be the title of this post.

It's a pure target golf course - I hit driver on 3 holes - and big numbers are everywhere. I made 3 doubles - which sounds bad but consider that there were three 9's in the group between my opponents today. It sets up nicely for a thinking man's golfer.

Played with a started yesterday and he told me that the head pro's son (who is about 19 or 20) is in the group in front of us. The conversation went like this:

Starter: "He's a good golfer! Hits the ball a mile"
EZ: "Really? Does he play college golf?"
Starter: "Oh yes! He's that good! He plays for Ohio State...."
a bit of a pause there...I'm thinking , that's weird - if he played for Ohio St, I would have heard of him or seen him up in Springfield for the states....
Starter: "Newark."
EZ: "Um...what? Ohio St - Newark?"
Starter: "Yes! He's on the golf team there!"

OK - when I was at Case, where it took an average of, oh, 91, to make the team, we played these satellite campuses (like Ohio St - Lima, Penn St- Behrend, and Akron-Wayne) in our tournments. And let's be honest, no one was any good. Winners shot like 78 or so.
(Although the weather was always crappy - it was always 50 and 20 mph winds for spring tournaments in Ohio. Kermit wore short sleeves and shorts in that weather).

So people's perspective are a bit skewed. It was nice kicking his ass today (he shot 84 to my 76).

Anyway- that win gets me into the Greater Cincinnati Tournament of Champions, and an automatic entry in the Crooked Tree Ryder Cup team in October. It's a sad state if I have to carry that team. I'll try to recruit Don, Craig and Mike for the team.

Off to Apple Valley tomorrow.....

Who needs caffeine?

Scene: Eric's family room

Eric stumbles downstairs at approximately 6 am, still half asleep. He finds the remote, and after about 3 minutes of channel surfing, he lands on MSNBC......

First voice he hears is Chris Hansen's from Dateline NBC...

Chris Hansen: "Sir, do you want to explain yourself? You are naked, walking around chasing a cat and you have a bowl of whipped cream..."

Wait, what?

OK - now I am awake for the day. Thanks for that eye-opening visual.

Weekend Comments

1. Say what you want about the Sportsguy's article, but his podcasts are starting to get better. I was very hesitant to download those but since he wasn't writing every week, I started to check it out. I thought the Adam Corolla one was terrible, but to see how far he has come with the most recent one, Michael Wilborn, it is amazing. For you DC boys, download the Wilborn podcast and you will not be disappointed. Very good. I am now hooked. Good job Sportsguy!!! And Eric, you are starting to sound like Dad. "Podcasts? I don't know how it works. I can't get it to work. I'm going to put my head in the sand and ignore it."

2. Two things. First, I can't believe that Family Feud is still on. Second, when did Louie Anderson stop hosting it? The guy from Seinfeld, Mr. Petterson, is the host. And why haven't we gotten a team to on that?

3. Wiz, I'm extremely jealous of your World Series of Mini Golf tournament. I'm still waiting for my invitation. I would absolutely fly across country to play in that.

4. 240 muscle bound softball girl (Godzilla) vs. very short and stocky goth girl (ramo). Which one do you find more attractive. I was thinking about this the other day when I watched two groups of high school girls cross the street. One was a bunch of goth girls and the other was the softball team. And boy, this is a tough one. Some more information for you, the goth girl was wearing a tiny skirt and a belly shirt. Her legs were the size of tree trunks. Very disgusting. And no, I wasn't camping out at the local high school. This was on my way home from work.

5. Bronx is Burning- I like it. Not too bad. I'm a fan.

Next week activities

Tomorrow starts "Golf Week" for me - a possible 7 rounds in 7 days. This weekend is the Crooked Tree club championship - the local course where we have our church league on Mondays. Greens are slow.....

And then Monday begins my annual pilgrimage to Apple Valley for the Ohio Public Golfer's Tournament. Monday afternoon is the practice round - with Dad, Steve and Kermit. Last year going home, Steve totaled his car in Apple Valley getting sideswiped by the Mt Vernon golf coach's daughter....... at least it resulted in the Bucha family getting a new Saab.

The tourney starts Tuesday, with over 230 people teeing off. The top 120 make it to Thursday, and the top 60 to Friday. Dad usually drives the cart (and if I'm not pissed at him, I'll ride along with him...). He indicated that he should be ok "to walk a round or two and carry the bag".....uh, I'm not sure about that.

I thought my game was coming around until last night at the range - the good news is that I was hitting consistent drives! The bad news is that I topped 3 3-woods in a row. That's a nice, confident feeling.

On a related note, my brother-in-law's wife (is that my sister in law? This is Janice's brother's wife - is she a sister in law oifficially? I have no idea how that works) is leaving this weekend for a week trip......to meditate. For 9 days she will be at a meditation retreat. No phones, TV, computers, etc. And - at the retreat - no talking. 9 days of silence.

I'm not sure I could go 3 hours at a place like that. And I could sneak my pager in - that's silent. Every 5 minutes I could excuse myself to go to the restroom and pull the pager out of my pants...... what?

Sports Odds and Ends

It's a slow day here at work today - it is an official annual "Clean out Files" day - so I will be "busy" cleaning out hard & soft files. I guess that means the images I have saved for posting on F&J need to be thrown out....

Some quick sports tidbits:

- Sad news to hear about Skip Prosser. I don't think there is another coach that has links to all the readers of this blog:
1) He has Maryland ties with his coaching stint at Loyola (MD);
2) He has Ohio/Cincinnati ties with his stint at Xavier; and
3) Of course, he has the ACC ties with WF.

People in Cincinnati still love him.

- The Browns have signed Joe Thomas (#3 overall) AND Eric Wright (CB from UNLV, 2nd round)! Two huge signings....and Mr. Elf (John Clayton) can go blow it out his ass as he preidcted "a long and drawn-out holdout from Joe Thomas".
Those are two key cogs that are needed right away for the Browns - especially Wright.

I know a bunch of you are asking "Well, what about Quinn??" I'm not so worried about him. He's not starting day 1 (unlike Thomas and Wright), and Quinn is more of a long term investment.
So if he's not here for the opening, I'm ok with that. Quinn is not as critical for 2007 as the others....he's more important for 2008 and beyond.

- I feel like I'm on the golf course in the middle of summer, and all of a sudden there is a rumbling in the distance....a storm is on the horizon. I'm the Tribe and that storm, of course, is the Yankees. Will I get to the clubhouse in time to beat the storm? Will the storm fizzle out before it gets to me? Will I make it to a shelter and boot the Tigers out?

Ok, bad analogy. But this week is the first week I am starting to watch the Yanks a little more nervously.

Who's NOW, ESPN?

Remember the NBA playoffs where San Antonio and Phoenix met in the second round? There were plenty of outcries for the NBA to effectively stop the playoffs, since the SA-Phx series was the de facto final. (and they were probably right).

Well, ESPN should just stop this idiotic Who's NOW? series and just go right to the finals. Who is more NOW than these two people:

Tim Donagey
and
Michael Vick

Forget anything else. These two will be leading SportsCenter for the next, oh, 6 weeks. I don't think you can get anymore NOW than that.

By the way, Wilbon - I hope those checks ESPN is giving you for this are good. You've lost a lot of credibility with this crap.

Manolo, shoot that piece of shit

I defend you in the blog and this is what you do to me? Fuck you Bear.

Come on down!

I think this is an excellent choice.... and not just because he is a Cleveland fan!

Weekdays at 11 am will be just fine for the next 10 years under his leadership.

Strange Dream

Crazy Nicoderm dream last night. I'm still trying to figure out what it meant, but here is the story.

Carol dies. Don't know how, but she dies. Next thing I know I'm with the Benson family since Chad also died. Very strange since nobody was crying or anything like that, just standing around chatting. Then Amy (Brad's sister, not my ex) stands up and tells us that Chad and Carol's last wishes were to make sure that all of their friends go by new nicknames and she hands out an envelope with people's new nicknames in it. The only one I remember was for Mark Larson, who needs to be called "The Professor".

I couldn't go back to sleep after this, and now I have this very bad feeling that someone is going to die. So everyone please be careful, watch your back, and don't fly down to South America.

The Track

Jesus, this Open is wonderful. Since Eric is behind right now, and I'm sure he is checking online, I'm not going to ruin anything for him, but WOW. Also, I'm actually liking a lot of the previews of the fall lineup on ABC.

Anyway, yesterday was absolutely wonderful at Del Mar, except for getting destroyed and only hitting one large wager.

• Started the day off with a wonderful breakfast in Solana Beach with one of my supervisors and his girlfriend and Carol. This place had the BEST bloody marys I've ever had. Two in me, and I'm ready for the track.
• Got there around 1 hour before post time and the place is packed. They are expecting 40,000 people today. They had 42,000 on Wednesday when the season opened. A Saturday or Sunday here at Del Mar is really like the Derby or the Stakes. About 50% of the people are dressed up, the crowd is very energized, and it is more like a party than your normal atmosphere at a regular track.
• First time I purchased actual seats. Usually I will either just putz around on the first level or go into the infield where you can spread out a blanket and watch the races inside. If I'm going by myself or just with Carol, I will do the later, but with a group of 9, these seats were perfect. Plus the lines for everything were so much smaller. Rarely a wait to make a wager, order a beer, or hit the bathroom. Also, since the track is on the beach, the sun can really be a bitch, so having our seats covered was a bonus.
• I started off 0-3 in the first three races. I almost broke down in tears when I realized that I misread my handwriting from my morning analyses and beat on horse 7 instead of 1. 1 came in and I would of won $220.
• One of my CRs, Emily, was on fire. I decided to jump on her bandwagon and made somewhat of a comeback. With breakfast, tickets, beer, food, and gambling for Carol and I, I was down $240. After the third race I was down about $400, so it was a nice strong comeback in the afternoon.
• One of the races, the superfecta paid $69,000 and the trifecta paid $7000. A 60-1 odd horse won which Carol had in the trifecta.

Movie Time Food

On Friday, Carol and I were at the movies and I wondered if anyone has ever tried to pull off a dinner/movie date by actually having dinner at the movie theaters? Wings, Hot dogs, Nachos, popcorn, and candy? I wonder if a guy could pull this off successfully? And when I say successful, I mean successful.

Quick poll

So when I mention that I vacationed in Key Largo, which song popped into your head? Was it:

a) this one
or
b) this one

If you said a), you are my friend. If you said b), you are a band-wagon jumping scumsack who probably likes Jim Nantz and Tim McCarver.

Sports, "Soap" Style

Will this man hold on to win the British Open and start a new clothing line for adidas? And will Eric become the first customer of the clothing line (with Leland being the 2nd)?

Or will Sergio take lessons on learning how to close a major from his ex-girlfriend's father (Greg Norman) and turn into another garish-colored golfer who threw the British Open away like this man:

Will this man be seen as the main cause for the downfall of all American team sports by the year 2015:

And how long do those Michelina's Frozen meals kepp in the freezer? 1 year? 2?

These questions - and many others - will be answered in the next episode of "Soap"!

Homo or International Playa

For the life of me I can't get the Shop Boyz song "Party Like a Rockstar" song out of my head. I discovered this picture (thanks RRD) and thought it would be perfect for this song.

Have a great weekend everyone. We can only aspire to have as much fun as our boy Lee here.

Let the Rain fall down

Discovered the Noggin channel tonight and got to watch some old Laguna Beach reruns. Ahhhh, Kristen where have you gone? I miss you so much.

And what is Noggin? I thought it was a kids channel, but I've seen ads for shows on this channel that shows two girls kissing, and then a separate one for a guy coming out of the closet? Carol thinks it is a Canadian teen soap opera show.

Interesting question for us gamblers. If presented the opportunity, would you of bet on the dogfights at Vick's house? I'm going to table this for a while since I'm not too sure what I would do, since my first reaction was no, but if Vick's cousin told me about an obvious layup, I might have to lay some money down.

For those of you that don't believe in the Gooch just ask Jon what happened today. I'm truly sorry Jon. I should understand and control the Gooch better.

What happened to me this morning?

So I've had a very rough week at work. I get to work this morning and realize that I didn't shave from my right side burn to the lower part of my ear. This wouldn't be a big deal if my beard didn't grow fast, but it does. I was going to run over to the store to buy a disposable, but I've been in meetings all morning. Now if I shave it, it will look weird since the rest of my stubble has grown out. Also I'm wearing two different color socks. Black and Blue. Carol did the laundry (the way it should be), but didn't take the time to match the socks up properly. Since I was half asleep this morning, I couldn't really tell that they didn't match. Not a good start to the day.