It is Finally Back

Nine long months of waiting came to an end last night when the college football season officially began. Thus we are entering my favorite time of year, September, when fall is approaching and Saturdays are all for the Gators. It is the time of year when Orange and Blue are the only colors that really matter, when vacations mean taking a long weekend to a road game or heading back to Gainesville. I have already begun my preparations for tomorrow’s kickoff and have begun looking even further down the road. Flights are booked for Tennessee, rides to the game are being finalized and tickets are being searched for. Emails have actually been circulating for weeks amongst my friends in preparation for the season; we are already planning our tailgate on the first weekend of October. Some of us have flights booked to New Orleans for the UF-LSU game while others like me have made arrangements for Tennessee and FSU, but am waiting on a friend before finalizing my road game.

 

So what does a Saturday look like for me?

 

We have friends visiting DC for the holiday weekend but that hardly changes my weekly gameday routine. I plan on getting up early Saturday morning so hopefully tonight will not be too crazy. I will have my breakfast and drink my coffee out of my blue Gator mug. I actually used to have two mugs, one orange for away games and one blue for home games but the orange one broke. I also used this method at times when deciding on which Gator shirt to go with, but have since changed to going with the HOT shirt, so I will wear the same shirt to every game until we lose, then switch to another one. I am still unsure of which shirt I will be wearing when we kick off tomorrow. I could go with my grey Gator football shirt, that’s what I was wearing in the desert for the National Championship. It will just come down to feel and of course in two weeks when I am in Gainesville I will have to make a stop at the campus bookstore to purchase more gear, maybe a MNC T or a new coffee mug or a sweatshirt, heck I will probably buy one of each. You can never have enough Gator gear. Back to the topic, after I have finished eating I will probably hit the gym, I get too antsy before games and usually like to do something to keep my mind off it. Since the game tomorrow is early, 1230 kick, I will rush home from the gym, shower and throw on the chosen gameday outfit and head out for the Gator bar. Once at Baileys in Ballston I will order the greatest chicken fingers and extra honey mustard ever served followed by numerous buckets of beer. We will eat, drink, the Gators will win and then we will celebrate. Because its an early game most people will head home to relax after and then go out later. If it were a night game or a later start there is a good possibility we all head out in gameday apparel and annoy the rest of DC in our blatant obnoxiousness that comes with being Gators. We are after all the champs at just about everything. So, there you have it, a typical Saturday not spent in the Swamp.

 

Here is what I am looking forward to during my favorite time of year:

 

9-1: Kickoff of the 2007 season enjoyed with great friends

9-8: A relaxing tune up before the SEC season starts.

9-15: My first trip to the Swamp in over a year, tailgates, family and Jim Beam

9-22: No watching, no eating, no drinking, its Yom Kippur and some things are actually more important than football

9-29: Round out the great month watching UF get revenge on Auburn (hopefully)

 

And then one week later we kick off October in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. This fall is going to be great and it all starts tomorrow.

My bookshelf overflows

I am a bit of an entertainment junkie. I love reading, going to movies, watching TV and listening to music both live and at home. But summers for me are usually the time when I devour books. And as a bit of a collector I like to buy them instead of just borrowing or going to the library. Finishing a good book is like a conquest and I purchase them in hopes of someday giving them away. I offer a lot but I think to this day only three people have ever taken books from me. Whether that is because of different taste or because my friends just don’t read as much as I do I am not really sure. One summer a few years ago when I was working at a sleep away camp I read about 8 books, all of LOTR and The Hobbit as well as the whole Enders Shadow series. Since the end of this TV season I have read about a dozen new books, all the Harry Potters, I am Legend, the Gunslinger (Dark Tower book 1), The Book of Fate, and Don’t Stop the Carnival. OK, so that is 11 books, but you get the point, I also bought the Drawing of the Three which is the second book in the Dark Tower series. The problem is that my two little bookshelves are now full and I have started just stacking books on top of other books. I really don’t want to get another bookshelf as I hope to move in the next month or so but I also don’t like my bookshelf to be so messed up and overrun.

 

Since my friends don’t want my books and I still want so many more I have been looking into online trading. My amazon.com cart is always full but I try not to buy too many at a time. There are some great book exchanges online that I am looking into

 

Book Mooch and Zunafish(you can actually trade all sorts of things on here) are the two I am considering signing up for at the moment. There is also Library Thing which allows you to catalog the books you read, no trading though, just kind of cool. Still, even though these online resources provide me with exactly what I am looking for I kind of wish people I knew read more so I could hand them the book in person and get to talk to them about it later. I might be asking for too much, after all I do get to talk to my friends about all the other things I love like movies and TV and music and those mediums we are able to enjoy together often.  

A Name Change

Coming off of last weekend when I was surrounded by my entire family they still linger on my mind this weekend. Specifically, I have been thinking about my last name which I could care less about and the last name of my grandfather which is really important to me. My father’s last name might be the one I have had all my life but little else about my father has been part of my life. On the other hand, my grandfather was a huge part of my life, living near me from the time I was born until I moved away. He was also the only survivor of his family. When he got married he had three girls and one boy, I am sure he was relieved to know that his name would carry on for one more generation. But, then his son only had one child, a girl, so that means his name is pretty much done. My other cousins have last names they don’t intend on leaving behind and fathers that deserve that. I do not. For many years now I have discussed changing my name, I have been thinking about it for probably ten years now. Though, I have always figured I would just rid myself of my last name, not take a new one. And now, with some urging from my family, no one really pushing me but suggesting that I take my grandfathers. They say it will become clearer to me or more important once I decide to have a family and that may be true however right now all I know is that the name I have is not going to work for me. So, the decision comes down to taking his last name and continuing that tradition or making my own and starting anew.

Survivors

It has been a little over a week since my last post and I have been trying to write since I got back from Minnesota on Monday but I have found it rather difficult. The truth of the matter is that no matter how hard I try to put down my thoughts and feelings from the trip I get blocked. Since I was in Minnesota for my Grandma’s unveiling and since this past week was the anniversary of both of my Grandparents passing that may be why. But, its not that I am sad because of their death, no death doesn’t bother me, at least not when it comes to people who have lived long full lives. My mom of course wishes she had her mother for longer, we all wish we could have the people we love for longer but in the end I think both my grandparents were ready and now I fully believe they watch over us in our everyday lives. So, if it wasn’t death that bothered me, what was making it hard to write this? What is making it hard to write right now? It is honor, I am not sure I am living my life in a way that would honor them and because of that I am having a hard time putting down in words what they mean to me.

 

Here is what I wrote last year on my old blog:

My Grandparents

This week has been a comedy of errors that hasn’t really allowed me to get to writing something about my Grandparents. And now that it is a really slow day at work I still am not sure what to write. Something that the Rabbi said at the funeral has stuck with me though as I look through photos and that is how important the future was to my Grandparents. There past was ripped from them, so rebuilding and creating a family became very important and remained that way for their whole lives. Even on some of my latest visits when my Grandmas health was clearly fading she would ask if I had enough money to take girls on dates. She was hilarious like that. They were both hilarious in there own ways, although it was hard to see there humor from outside. After all they didn’t tell jokes; it was more just how they were. I doubt many people would describe them as funny but I remember countless times laughing in their presence.

One thing everyone will say is that they were both beautiful. They met in a DP camp in Germany and as the story goes my Grandpa was the stud of the camp, a sometime professional soccer player who never much cared for shirts, and he took a liking to my blonde haired green eyed Grandma. When my Grandma introduced my Grandpa to her sister she supposedly broke the pencil that was in her hand. I just heard that story for the first time last week; I wish I had heard more. I know they both have interviews on tape for a Stephen Spielberg project that I don’t think ever happened; I will have to get a hand on those. And while I don’t know as much as I like about my grandparents I do know they have left quite a legacy, something that I think they are proud of.

My family is extremely large, my Grandma had 3 sisters and a brother, and they have spawned a family that is in the 100s now. Of that family we are considered the good looking ones. Not that the others aren’t but we are a very good looking family. But more than that we are close and we are growing once again. We are friends, we occasionally take vacations together, we do things together, and we take part in each others lives. And now that our cousins are having kids and we have more cousins we get to watch them grow up and continue on a great legacy. A legacy that I think my Grandparents can look down on in pride.

All of those things still hold true this year. I still have not seen the tapes and I have a sneaking suspicion that my aunt does not want me to. She is a bit overprotective but I think I will get a hold of them eventually. My family has not grown more, though there seem to be more extended family than before, the babies running around Minnesota can be overwhelming. But, what I love most about my grandma and her family is how the things that were important to her are the very same that are important to her remaining siblings. There are three of them left, two sisters and a brother, and they look so much alike. Talking to them is like talking to her, it’s always the same questions and the same topics of conversation. Are you dating anyone? Why aren’t you a lawyer? When are you going to have kids? It isn’t their fault of course, it’s in our genes. In a round about way the Shoah transformed them, became part of their children and continues to affect the further generations to this day. Some wonder if we will ever be free from what happened, really free from it. I am not sure; I think survival will always be what’s most important to us. I once told someone that just being alive was enough, but that’s not true, to honor them fully we can not just survive but thrive, family is important, being successful is too, but being a success is only a precondition to creating further generations. I think that the Rabbi was right; our grandparents loved us for who we were and for what we represent. The Hope.

 

When I was a baby, just born my grandma was in the hospital with my mom, I of course threw up on her and she told me that story for the rest of her life. My grandfather played soccer with me; he drove me to baseball camp. He once got into a fight with my mom over my little sister. They never hesitated to help, because even though their youth was stolen from them they wanted nothing more than for ours to be great. And our lives were great, partially thanks to them. Often times I will be driving around town and I will think of them. We have gone so much further than they ever could have dreamed and yet we have so much further to go. We gave them hope, we gave them a future where there was no past and now as the numbers thin it becomes more important for us to continue providing that hope, continue making a future for them, for ourselves and for all the generations yet to come.

Pack, unpack and repeat

It seems that’s all I have been doing lately. I pack my bags, leave town, return, unpack them and then a few days later I am packing again. Of course, I also get to do laundry in between. At this point, after 6 weeks of this I am really ready to have an extended period of time where I don’t have to pack a suitcase. I doubt that will be possible for more than two weeks though. Anyway, last weekend I drove up to Atlantic City for a good friend, they were having a memorial of sorts for her Grandfather who passed away earlier this year. And since I am such a good friend and I got to spend a lot of time with her grandpa during my trips to Florida I felt like it was the right thing to do. I also had never been to AC, so I had to see what all the fuss was about.

 

I left last Friday around 1pm and arrived close to 5 pm. The drive was not bad but the hotel was an absolute dump. As you would expect of a summer weekend in the Northeast most hotels rooms were booked as people leave the cities for the beach. On Friday night we headed out to dinner and checked out the Casinos with my friend and her sister. The casinos were alright, though a big disappointment compared to Vegas. But, what really compares to Vegas? That is actually a pretty unfair comparison so I will overlook it, both Friday and Saturday night we did manage to have a good time at the places we went and I even won some money. Granted it wasn’t a lot but winning is always a lot better than losing. That and getting absolutely wasted on Saturday night after the memorial service Saturday afternoon. My friend and I basically drank all day, so I was a mess when I finally sat down at the tables around 10 to play; I am a bit shocked that I won at all. And after a long day of drinking that did not end until at least 4 am I decided it would be a good idea to leave AC to head back home at 8 am.

 

I made it back home around noon on Sunday and was able to settle into my house for a few days before having to pack up again. And that is where I sit now, getting ready to leave town tomorrow for Minnesota. I am both looking forward to it and dreading it, which is what happens with the bittersweet times I go to Minnesota.  This time we are going for my Grandmas unveiling, last summer it was for her funeral, before that it was my Grandpas unveiling and before that his funeral. So, on the one hand the occasion is somber but on the other I enjoy seeing my family and spending time with them. After this weekend I hope the next occasion we get together will be for a strictly happy one. I have actually spent this entire week in a bit of a funk because of the prospects of this weekend with this nagging feeling of regret that I never got to know my grandparents well enough. I have found myself looking for books to answer all the questions I never asked about their holocaust experiences that they never volunteered to me. I am sure I could have had 100 years with them and still felt there was more I wanted to know and that is something that the living will always have to harbor about the dead. So, we move on and live our lives, we try to honor their memory and I can not help but feeling that somewhere, somehow they really do watch over us. Unfortunately, all they get to see me doing lately is packing or unpacking my suitcase.

M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

Yesterday during rush hour a bridge collapsed in Minnesota. It was the 35W that crosses the Mississippi river and it has been all over the news since last night when it collapsed during rush hour. It also happens to be the bridge, that as my mom so quickly reminded me, where I learned how to spell Mississippi. The bridge goes through downtown Minneapolis and is the main path to St. Paul. As a kid we took that bridge a lot and even though I have not lived in Minnesota in over 20 years now I was horrified when I started hearing about this bridges collapse. As of now there are 7 dead and searching the river continues as I type this. I called my mom of course to make sure all of our family was ok and thankfully they are. Most of my family members live and work in Minneapolis and do not use 35W regularly. My thoughts go out to the people of Minnesota and the families of those who were on the bridge. For as long as I have been away and as little time as I spend there now Minnesota still holds a very powerful place in my life.

 

To this day when people ask me where I am from (no one is actually from DC) I usually answer with Minnesota. I do follow up the Minnesota comment with a story about Florida as most of my life was spent in Florida. Still, when I go to family things outside of my immediate family, it is always Minnesota where I go. That is where we celebrated 40 years of liberation (it has been over 50 now), where my cousins weddings were held and where my grandparents are buried. It is where I will be in 8 days, seeing my mom and sisters for the first time in 5 months and many of my other family members for the first time in almost a year. So, while I was lamenting the poor state of my favorite sports teams from the Twin Cities over the past couple of days this bridge collapse reminded me that there is so much more to worry about than whether or not your favorite team can afford to keep the star player. I was sad to see two former Minnesota stars hugging in Boston last night but it has been much worse knowing that for the next few years as I go to visit there will be a looming reminder of the tragedy that occurred last night.