Second Effort

I’m officially out of baseball and softball teams to cover this season, which affords me some extra time at work to fuck off. Actually, I could go home right now, but I feel guilty for all the chumps that don’t meet the deadlines and end up staying until five, so I’ll stick around and write up a fresh post.

In fact, the past few hours I’ve been spending my time on a wedding assignment; tracking down the mailing addresses of people on my half of the list. If you didn’t receive an e-mail from me this morning it means we either know your address or don’t want you at the wedding. Deal with it.

In the course of doing so, I talked to my good friend Scott “Big Cock” Iverson. It seems Scott is moving to Chicago in September with his life partner, Heather “Big Cock Luvuh” Allen. He will be working from home, which means he never has to actually get dressed, and while that fact makes me incredibly jealous in itself, the Chicago part makes me insane with envy. Scott has been living the small-town Iowa life for some time now, working for some company that even he doesn’t know what the hell they do in Fairfield. Clearly I am happy for Scott as he gets to reside in my Mecca, and I’m also happy that I will have a friend’s floor on which to crash should the occasion ever arise.

But this situation brings to a puss-filled head a strange little turn in Nowski lineage. For those that don’t know, my dad grew up in Chicago, and when I say Chicago I mean IN Chicago, not some little suburb with lawns and white picket fences. The fences in his neighborhood were made of razor wire to keep he and his punk friends out.

The way I understand it, his youth included such fun activities as seeing friends get shot and getting the piss beaten out of him by gangs. Which is why he sought to escape on several different occasions and ultimately ran away from home. He was discovered some time later hustling pool in, you guessed it, small-town Iowa. My grandparents had divorced, Grandma Lori lived in Chi-town working for Sears and Grandpa was a big shot with United Stationers living in Cedar Rapids at the time. In negotiations I have heard very little about, it was decided that Dad would be better suited to stay in CR with his father and second wife, my third grandma.

It’s a long and complicated story and more than likely sounds like a bunch of bullshit to some of you, but this is the truth as I know it. And as I was contemplating how to sabotage Scott’s move solely because I don’t want him to have what I so desperately want, I found it funny, or at least interesting, that the town from which my Dad spent his adolescence trying to escape has become the one that long to be a part of.

Obviously the circumstances of any life I would have there would be different than the one he lived, so I’m not saying he did anything wrong by leaving. As he has told me on many an occasion, it probably saved his life, and I know it created mine, so who am I to judge? But it’s clearly one of those twists of fate that I really hope to bring full circle.

Don’t let the shirt fool you, he’s no New York pussy.

We’ve probably already waited too long. We should have looked to go as soon as Sara finished her Masters. And being the worrisome little bitch that I tend to be, I start thinking about all the shit we have accumulated and if we were to move to a Chicago apartment, it would without question be too little space for our new big red couch, two big beds and my fat ass all at the same time. But those are things that can be dealt with. And when I called Sara to tell her about Scott’s news and heard her reaction was much the same as mine: “Those fuckers,” I said, you know, in a year we should just start looking to make it happen. We both want to live the metropolitan life for a while, and I’m afraid that out here in the boondocks, that hope seems almost impossible. But it isn’t. I think we can find jobs there and in a year we will be even more qualified.

In the meantime, however, you can view our guest registry on the Target, Kohls and Younkers websites, and buy us some shit that we will eventually pawn for our first month’s rent in Chicago. Just because you aren’t invited to the wedding doesn’t mean you can’t buy me some fucking knives.

They ship for free!

Detroit reliever Kyle Farnsworth then charged Kansas City relief pitcher Jeremy Affeldt, picked him up and slammed him to the ground.

“It was nothing that I said,” Affeldt said. “He must’ve felt like we were going at it.”

Farnsworth said he had nothing to say.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Kyle Farnsworth takes down Kansas City Royals’ Jeremy Affeldt (48) as Tigers coach Lance Parrish, top-left, and Royals’ shane Costa try to separate them in the sixth inning Sunday, July 17, 2005, in Detroit. Royals starter Runelvys Hernandez had hit Detroit’s Carlos Guillen in the head with a pitch, triggering a bench-clearing brawl.(AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

The Farns is a better form tackler than The Boz ever was.

The panic hit me like a great white rocketing through the turbulent Floridian coastal waters. I was trying to wrap up another midweek edition of the IFTC, making a buck on a hard day’s night in the Scenic City. My mind, convoluted with images of skateboarders in baggy jeans, halter-topped pregnant teenage girls at high school baseball games and various asinine Germanic spellings of midwestern athletes’ last names, couldn’t afford to wander. There wasn’t time for the blog, why was I thinking about it? Headline…Cougars quash E-NP’s hopes for repeat…Cutline…Tanner Ziggafoos lunges for a fly ball off the bat of Tiger senior Mack O’Bryan…but the blog, she persisted.

And that’s when the bitch of a shark sank her steely jaws into my loin. Fear runs rampant. The problem isn’t why am I thinking of the blog. The problem is, why haven’t I been thinking of the blog?

I went to Cubs game for Jesus Christ’s sake! The Fourth of July at the Owski Ranch! Festival of Trails! THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF SAY ANYTHING! All were more than viable topics. And there had even been harassment from the not so legion-of fans.

Is it the WC?

I took this picture yesterday.

That was the question. What was sucking the life out of me? Where was my passion for the blog? Where was my dedication?

As dismal a scenario as living in Webster City is, that’s no excuse. A fresh post here makes waking up in the morning in the hopes that someone, anyone, has read and left a comment worth while.

There’s only one way to shake that shark…

The wedding planning is starting to weigh down on us. Rather, it’s starting to weigh down on Sara and in the limited time we see each other and are both conscious, I have to hear about it, so it weighs me down too. But there’s some humor to be found in all of this.

I love that I have to tell people at work that I can’t work the next two Saturdays. Why? Because this week we have to go to Target, not the crappy Fort Dodge Target, a decent one in Waterloo, of all places. Target is the only thing decent about Waterloo, it seems. We have to go to Target to register for gifts. It’s a real burden to go scan thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that you don’t really need, but people have to give you out of obligation. Inviting them to your wedding, eating up one more weekend that could be spent actually enjoying themselves, asking them to spend money on a hotel. We give them on free meal in return and they shower us with pans, knives and electronic devices.

The following Saturday we head for Cedar Rapids. More gift registering, yes, but also to Mount Vernon for our engagement photos. Never in my life have I been so concerned about when or if I should get a haircut. It should be noted that the difference between me with long hair and me with short hair is about 3/4 of an inch. I fucked up shaving last week and it scared me to death that I would have to stare at that little faux paux, not to mention hear about it from Sara, for the rest of my life. Luckily, the beard has reached what I can only assume is it’s peak for growth rate. I say luckily with hesitance, because when you start your day at 4 in the morning, a 5 o’clock shadow stage morphs into something more resembling a Wookie. And what of these eyebrows? Once the proud framework of my apple-butter eyes, they have begun to creep. Dare I pluck? I dare not, thank you,

We also have to start the tuxedo process, and that will be a battle. Sara wants me to look classy, and I’m ok with that, but our definitions of classy vary. those of you that have seen pictures of my all-white senior prom look will understand.

That wookie reference reminds me, I finally saw the new Star Wars. I was almost disappointed to not be disappointed by this one. I know I couldn’t have dreamed up a better destruction of Anakin and creation of Vader. On the same topic, however, I bought the “Closer” DVD, and that’s much better. Natalie Portman,,,jesus…

So I did go to a Cubs game, they won 14-6. Maddux hit a home run. Sara ate a hot dog, got loaded on Wrigley margaritas and then nearly died. We had an awesome time.

If it were up to me, this would be the engagement pic we sent out in the invitations and to all the newspapers. Seriously.

I wrote a massive and less than entertaining post about a month ago that I never posted. Here are the highlights:

No. 3 bitches about friends: “Matt and Maggie, who were supposed to be our couple buddies on the trip, bailed and moved to Dallas for the summer so Matt could sell his soul to the technology devils. We were still stuck with ScatASS and Robert, who said they didn’t have enough money for a hotel for even one night, which is horseshit, they are just incredibly cheap and spend all money they do have on shit like THIS that they don’t need in the first place. So they drove in the morning of the game after I argued and even offended them by telling them as much, but I will say they managed to get to Wrigley ten minutes before the first pitch, which is better than I anticipated.”

Sara coddles her one true love, a ballpark dog. You can see a little bit of my chin(s) and her boob(s).

No. 3 salivates over past meals: “We went to what has become a favorite breakfast place of ours in the gay district, a place called Nookies that we tried last year on the infamous trip with my parents. It was an outstanding Friday morning in Chicago, we sat there, watched douchebag Red Sox fans walk by and realize those two dudes walking in front of them were holding hands, we read the Trib, and I ate, honest jesus, the best omelet of my life. This wouldn’t be a tough one to recreate, fresh asparagus in the egg, chunks of ham, and here’s the kicker, real bleu cheese. It was so fucking good I squirted.”

That’s it. It was like four pages in Microsoft Word and I could only pick out two paragraphs that were really even worth your worthless time.

While I can’t promise that blogging will resume as it has in the past, I promise to make an effort. In the mean time, I strongly suggest you keep tabs on my links on the above right. My cousin, The Bloned, is becoming a particular souce of pride for me with her own blog and things are bound to get even better as she heads off to college and starts binge drinking. In that vein, you can always count on one miss Sheila E, proprietor of Running for Drugs, for a drunken tale or two. Mattbot of As we may Blog updates only slightly more regularly than I, but his posts are always worth the wait. Oculon rarely delivers, but I read it anyway.

Additional pics from Chicago can be found HERE.

I’m back, bitches.