Second Effort

Can I just tell you what a wonderful feeling it is to be back? Each of your comments brighten my day. Literally. Like I smile and a lot more and the reflection off my iMac is blindingly brown and mentholated.

I’m also getting back in the column groove with this weekend’s editon of the TC. It’s a weeper relating to Harold Reynolds termination and the absence of Peter Gammons from Baseball Tonight, you know, the kind of thing only a true blue sports douche can appreciate. Like me.

But it feels so fucking good, guys. I’ve been writing piles of stories, but nothing I’m really enjoying. This and my column makes me a happy boy.

Sadly, what’s on my mind today is far from happiness despite the influx of blogging and columnisting. We had our first real emergency with Tarantula last night, not a week into her life with us. My buddy Horny stopped by for a place to stay closer to Ames, where he is currently working. We weren’t careful enough about the little black monster roaming the living room on Horny’s visit, and she managed to get herself in a pretty bad pinch in the recliner he was sitting in.

I’m not kidding when I tell you I thought she was a gonner. Completely immobilized and suffering to the point where I felt it my duty to end it. Sara saved her, though, calling the vet immediately while I cradled our broken baby and poor Horny stood there not knowing what to do.

To make matters worse, the Iowa Falls vet was on vacation. “You’ll have to call Ackley,” they said. Sara called and we jumped in the big maroon Buick to give it a true test. We had to average 85 miles an hour on the 15 miles of rural highway to Ackley, Sara frantically crying and trying to figure out if the cat was even still alive, me talking on the phone to a coworker trying to figure out where the vet was in a town with which we aren’t familiar.

Triumphantly, Tarantula was in much better shape by the time we arrived. The same could be said for Sara, but not for me. I was in a shambles, unable to converse with the vet and repeatedly leaving the room because, well, it was out of my hands and also because I am huge pussy. We had to leave our kitten with the vet that night and suck it up when we got home, pretending we weren’t nervous wrecks for Horny’s sake.

The vet made a very reassuring call to us at about 9:30, saying her reflexes were already much better and he felt that with that much improvement in a few hours, things looked good for Tarantula. Sleep still didn’t come easy. We both felt horrible for allowing this to happen in the first place, as if the poor thing hadn’t been through enough in week already. Nothing like being kidnapped from your mother and the only home you ever known, hauled 70 miles down the road in a steaming hot Buick, getting immunized two days later, and then just to top it off, twisting your entire body into a pretzel under the weight of a 300 lb house guest.

Tranny, as I like to call her, looking cute as all get out but growing weary of the constant barrage of flashes.

That whole ordeal began last Thursday evening. I am happy to report that Tarantula not only seems back to normal, but she growing and getting more adventurous already. I think she has forgiven us for the mishap, though she does sometimes attack us in our sleep, just a reminder that we owe her big time.

One life down, eight to go.

Other news from the weekend, our recent buddies Kari and Kyle are abandoning us in northern Iowa. Kyle scored a sweet gig with that large farm implement company centered in our fair state and is taking his wife to Bettendorf in search of riches. We are excited for their good fortune, but seeing more friends move farther from us, especially ones with which we were spending time virtually every week, will be tough. Oh well, Kyle needs to hone his golf game if he wants to hang with me anyway.

In honor of their happy/not-so-happy news, I prepared a feast of epic proportions one Saturday, courtesy of Rachel Ray (NICE!). It was my first run at crab cakes, but I think we’ll be doing that again very soon. Also gorgonzola walnut cream pasta with turkey meatballs. It was supposed to be veal, but you know, this is Iowa Falls. The Borsin/ricotta/provolone pizza rounded off the meal, with an assortment of beverages, of course.

All the cheese was great, but none of us have had a good visit to the bathroom since.

The Wife says she is determined to start a blog. The only thing stopping her right now is she can’t come up with a name. I don’t know if she is trying to get my goat, but between she and the recent comments on my last post, I figured it was time I step up.

It has indeed been a long time since I updated y’all on the goings on in our lives. Sadly, there aren’t that many goings on. We moved to Iowa Falls, fulfilling my vow to Sara at our wedding that we would no longer live in Webster City on our first anniversary. That’s been the biggest change for us, and it has been a good one. Sara is now a gainful (though not by much) employee of the same company as me. She took over a news reporter/news director for our radio station role and seems to be enjoying it, though splitting time basically means she has two fulltime jobs and a salary. And we all know, salaries suck.

We live about four blocks from work, but both still drive everyday. In her defense, she drives after getting up at five in the morning to run five miles. In both of our defense, we both have to be able to jump in our car and run to cover a story at a moment’s notice. In my defense, the four blocks is virtually all uphill.

I think its safe to say we were both a little concerned about the idea of working together. And when Sara was moved into the cubicle adjacent mine, well, we both cringed a little. But we’ve been doing this since March and really haven’t had a big work-related blowout fight. Mostly its just nice to have someone that relates to the same frustrations with the same people on a regular basis. Plus, we see a whole lot more of one another and don’t have to spend so many hours in the car on a weekly basis.

Iowa Falls really has been a big improvement in itself. We have restaurants. That’s a big thing for me. And the people, at least in my mind, are a vast improvement over the dirtbags we had to fraternize with in the ghetto Hy-Vee in Webster City. We are living the small-town life during the week. When I don’t have a game to cover I swing into Fareway to see what looks good in the meat counter. My grill has been getting a serious workout. We had the parents and some friends over for the fourth of July and watched the fireworks over the river from our back yard. On the weekends we still try to escape, usually to CF to hang with friends Kari and Kyle Gray.

The other big news in our house is the addition of our new baby, Tarantula. Everybody knows I’m a cat guy, and we were in serious discussions to take on our first boarder just about the time we were getting ready to move. Since then we put it on the back burner, but my parents had been feeding a stray that pooped out five little ones on their doorstep about two months ago. Her name being Spyder, all the kittens had to have names derived from the arachnid family. Drake and Cathy took Spiderman, we took Tarantula, another girl my mom knows took Spider Mite and the two remaining kittens are Charlotte and Spider Monkey. If any body has any interest, they are cute and well-behaved and already housebroken. I can probably e-mail you a pic too.

So that was the bland-ass, getting you all back up to date post. For some reason since taking this job, I haven’t had the bold “Say Anything” mindset going for me, and it doesn’t just apply to the blog. I have only written about five columns in my entire time here in Iowa Falls while I used to turn one out every week. That’s probably a sign of some deep psychological issues, but I’m going to try and walk it off. If Sara is writing too, that should help keep me competitive.

For starters, I see I have an e-mail that has been in my in-box for about a year. The start of my bachelor party blog. As there have been some issues pertaining to that night revisited in recent weeks, I think I’ll set a goal to finish that baby by Sunday. We’ll see.

The pic is from our back yard. Not bad, right? The carpet in our new place is roughly the same color as that sky.