Saturday Morning

I woke up this morning and had a typical Saturday Zach experience. I like to do a lot of things at the same time. It starts with breakfast. We haven't been to the store all week so I find a bag of frozen biscuits and throw 'em in the oven. I start a load of laundry. I give the dishes in the sink the eye. The garbage needs to be taken out, so I get the trash cans in the bedroom and bathroom and dump them into the one in the kitchen. It's all about the timing. I complete the latter task while the biscuits take the extra couple of minutes to finish.

I adore mindless multitasking. I am rarely happier, or more content, then when I'm cooking dinner, tending to laundry, and emptying the dishwasher while listening to a podcast. It's very likely that if, one hour later, you asked me one sentence spoken from the podcast, I wouldn't be able to do it. This is my "happy place" after work. Doing things and being productive in a trivial way is my wheelhouse.
Now I have my biscuits with peanut butter and some cranberry juice to ward off the sore throat that the wife has. I'm going to finish my morning words and decide what to do next. I have a consultation with an Emory professor about a project that I have yet to start. There are countless distractions on the Internet waiting for me.

The biscuits are still so hot that the peanut butter probably will melt onto the keyboard if I try to eat one. Alison hates that I eat biscuits on peanut butter. She says that it's not a southern thing, although the rest of her family doesn't agree. Maybe they're just sucking up to me. In any case, I like peanut butter anything, and it's my default meal when nothing else is available.
In a few minutes the laundry will be through the cycle and I get to rotate the moist clothes into the dryer. On the way back, I could empty the dishwasher. Yep, it's Saturday morning indeed.

For deeper thoughts, read my previous post, Zach Goes to Church.

Mr. Law Goes to Church

On Sunday I did a lot of things that I usually do on Sunday. I watched football. I watched the Titans lose, which has become a strangely familiar habit. I had a few adult beverages and watched more football. I quite possibly consumed more food than was prudent. This is not unusual. I did one unusual thing.

I went to church.

I was not raised in any particular religion, and it wasn't until I was of college age that I was aware of my parents' faith growing up. They were both Catholics, albeit different brands of Catholics back when that used to mean something.
The closest I ever came to a discussion on the subject was with my mom one day in the car. I brought up the lack of religion and she said that just because we didn't go to church did not mean that we lacked belief. I didn't press, because when it comes to confrontation I run like the wind when I get the faintest whiff of controversy.

My parents are deeply involved in a Catholic church now. They joined about five years ago. I like that they now have a community. I don't understand their beliefs and to date have not pressed them on it. It's not my way.

For the past year or so I've considered myself an Atheist. I'll put it with a capital A for now. There are two types of atheists. The first kind are not unlike people who dislike hot dogs. They share a belief but that in of itself does not constitute a group. The second kind is almost as fundamentalist as some of the religious folks. They are certain they are right and that all religions are the same. I thought I might be one of the second kind, but there were more important issues, you know, like the NFL draft, and I let it slide.

Then a podcast happened. The guest on NPR's Fresh Air was Karen Armstrong, a former nun who had given up the church and later became a religious scholar. Her new book is called The Case for God. I felt a personal challenge.

I would read a book that gives a history of religion, which I always find fascinating. I like her discussion of the Greek terms mythos and logos. Mythos is myth or mystery, and comprises most of the Bible. The stories were not meant to be taken literally and follow stories written so long ago that they existed for thousands of years before there was such a thing as writing things down. We've lost myth in today's society. Everything has to be tangible and literal. Don't tell us a fable or parable, we have to tweet it or recount it on Facebook. I'm not very far in the book so I can't say what her case is. I doubt there is a case at all. It's just Armstrong's way of saying that the current version of a personal God who might Tweet you back doesn't exist. But there could be something godlike in every one of us.

At a very early hour on that Sunday morning I ended up at a beachside church in Jacksonville. I wore shorts and I wasn't the only one. Not everyone dresses up for church anymore, apparently. It was a nice service and I felt the community aspect of church. I also felt, as I normally do in such situations, that someone would spot me, point and scream like one of the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When everyone sings the same songs and recites the same responses and I of course don't have any idea what they're talking about, I don't think that there's a deeper spiritual connection in the room. People just go because they've gone for years and they know the chants because they've been saying them for years. There is no meaning. I don't know that of course, I'm just speculating. The church is probably a little more mainline Catholic than my dad's since there are signs on the wall proclaiming "Pray for the end of abortion" and the sermon was about divorce and how it's destroying our society. The world probably would be a better place without abortion, but are the people fundamentally against it adopting unwanted kids or supporting unwed moms? I see the potential for negativity and shudder. That's how it goes when you have a bit of a collective mind.

Everyone but me went up for communion, which I still find a bit creepy in concept. I know Jesus didn't mean them to take his comments literally. OK, maybe he did, but since the Good Book is just a 2000-year-old version of the telephone game, he might have just asked someone to pass the salt and got misquoted.

The bottom line is I want to understand religion better. I need a better foundation of knowledge. Instead of using this knowledge to create the latest Dan Brown-esque thriller, I'll just try to get to know my parents better. That is, if I ever have the guts.

Tax Free and Loving It

Let's talk about me, shall we? I have an unusual physique. My waist is slightly below average and my backside is, well, not so much. Because of this, pants shopping is seven circles of hell instead of a mildly annoying experience. Today I put my marriage to the test, as I always do when it's shopping time.

Georgia has one tax-free shopping weekend in early August. It was time. I knew, with football season upcoming and the many me-centric moments to come that it was a perfect opportunity to do something together. We started the day at the Gap in Atlantic Station. Is that where Obama shops for his jeans? I forget.

Jeans have changed in the year or two since I last purchased them. They're darker. Maybe I notice that since mine have faded to an old or at least middle aged level. They're also patterned, either with a splotch of lighter color in the front or a kind of horizontal line. I have to say, there's a little of the early 90s stonewashed look going on. Some jeans are even pre-ripped. Really?

We hit the Gap, and surprisingly it's not too busy. The token gay man assists us. I give him a once over since Alison's looking for a gay boyfriend. I think this could be the next big reality show. It's not meant to be. I try on the "easy fit" jeans, which basically means for people with ample proportions. I get two pair of 36/32. The first fits not at all. It's tight in the front and back. Lovely. The second pair, which is theoretically the exact same size, fits almost perfectly.

When I go back to the shelves there are no more in that size. I move on to the "standard". Hoping that the standard will fit is like believing that an NFL wide receiver who always drops the ball will suddenly learn how to catch. As luck would have it, I get a fit.

The shopping theory for me is if I find a pair of pants that fit, I need to sell the store out of their stock. It's that bad. I tried on four more pair in the same size. None of them fit. I still consider it a success, because most of our shopping experiences end in one of us getting a bit too grrr. We even had a nice lunch at Boneheads where I put the hot piri-piri sauce on my chicken to the point where I was sweating profusely. This is how I usually get when I shop. I needed the experience to complete the day.

Alison got home and found the coupon that we should have brought earlier. I'll say it, when it comes to coupons, we have a problem. We have a manila folder full of Sunday inserts. It's rare that we'll go out to eat without a coupon. Grocery store check-out folks and waiters hate us. I love shopping like Alison loves a football tripleheader, so when she suggested that we go to another mall (two malls in one day?), I kind of laughed it off.

Speaking of coupons, we finished the weekly grocery store list and were ready to go. When it's time to shop, we have become a well-oiled machine. The oil sometimes drips all over the parking lot, causing a mess. We sometimes go to as many as four stores to complete our shopping. One weekend we discovered that the most efficient method is to go together and split the list. Then we look at the receipts and see how much we really saved with coupons (and fake saved with the Kroger Plus card aka marketing brilliance). We were on the way to Publix when Alison mentioned to her mom on the phone that she had a coupon to the Gap if we wanted to brave the Lennox Mall traffic.

I am a man who doesn't like to back down from a challenge. Yes, I am an idiot. I went back to a second mall in one day. It was crowded. The line at this store was ten deep. I was not flustered. I tried on a pair of jeans. That was fine. We had a 30% off coupon, but we also had a card from the first store that gave us one free pair if I bought three. I had to find two more pairs to complete the day. I tried on six pairs of jeans as my increasingly flustered wife watched. I finally succeeded and left the mall, hopefully for a long time. And as a bonus, the final three pair of jeans cost less than $80, after the first pair was a heart-attack-inducing $55. For me, anyway.

After that shopping torment, we made our way through Publix, Trader Joe's, and Kroger. We used a total of 14 coupons, including one for an item that we did not purchase. Take that, America.

On the beach, part four

I have neglected my vacation diary because I, like many current politicians, have been carrying on an affair. It's with Dreamweaver. Last night I spent three hours putting a Lightbox gallery on a site that maybe 15 people will see. If only I could have done so while traveling to South America.

Don Funk is the self-professed master of the roundhouse kick. On the final evening of first year of beach vacation, Don introduced this technique. It could not be performed on our porch, which was probably a good thing since he was drunk. No, this graceful athletic movement needed to be completed in the pool.

We went to the pool. Don showed off his moves, many times. Small children were frightened. OK, no kids were at the pool, which is good since Don is a first-grade teacher.

In the subsequent three years, we talked about the roundhouse kick but there was no actual kicking. It could have been because Don hadn't made it back to the Florabama club to drink a bushwacker, which tastes like milk mixed with turpentine. In any case, we missed out. Don promised not only to display the kick, but to give lessons on the half hour.

It was Wednesday night. On most beach vacations, we would have headed home by then. We usually stayed four nights but this year we had a buy-four, get three free deal. We had worn Don down. He was going to display his might. My wife had her mini video camera, so we were going to get a Youtube-quality production for sure.

A friend had insulted Don, stating that he would not be able to break a piece of toilet paper with his kick. Don moved into action. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper and wrote messages. They called our friends many names. Now I was part of roundhouse kick lore. I would have to hold up the paper.

We went down to the indoor pool, strangely located on the 7th floor. The view was across the street, not of the gulf. Don got in the water and I held the paper up outside the pool. It was apparent, not at all due to Don being a short man, that I would have to get in the water. I would be in the line of fire.

I imagined Don firing through a kick and breaking my nose, or missing the paper and injuring himself, a more likely result. I held the paper a couple of feet above the top of the four-foot level. Don's first attempt was low. He is not easily swayed. His second kick went through. There was jubilation.

I've heard that one of the problems with society today is that people don't know when to say "enough". This is true of eating, spending, some distant unmentionable relationships, and very rarely for me, football obsession. I brought my circular Titan inflatables to the pool, and decided that it would be cool to try to jump from the side of the pool and land on the inflatable so that I would be sitting. My attempts were laughable.

Don wanted a turn.

I assumed that he would follow my example. Do the butt flop and call it a day. Don went for another tact. He dove.

The hole was at most a foot across. It was probably designed for a pre-teen. Don's entire furry body went through the opening. If he tried it again a hundred times he wouldn't be able to do it again. Did I mention the pool was four feet deep? Don came up, and I laughed (it's all on video that could be used for many lawsuits if ever published online) as Don held his head. He had cut his scalp. When you're with kids, the fun is over when someone starts crying. With adults, it's over when someone starts bleeding.

Don survived, because he's he tough kind of guy who's allegedly never had a hangover. We were on concussion watch for a day. The offending inflatables were used once more in the ocean and left behind with leaks. I do not at all consider it a metaphor for the 2008 season.

The best part of a vacation is detaching from the world and your troubles. A week seems like the perfect amount of time to be away. I wouldn't mind finding out if two would be better.

On the beach, part three

This is less of a narrative than a discussion on one facet of the beach trip. It's a big facet. It's drinking.

Drinking and the beach go together like salt and water. Don and I celebrated putting up the tent by cracking a beer. In fact, we celebrated every tent reopening with a beer. If we went into the water, usually due to consuming a solid quantity of beer, we had a beer. When it was time to eat lunch, we had a beer. At the end of the beach day, when we went to the room, we had blender drinks. Then we took either a blender drink or more beer to the grill as we cooked. It was one person's responsibility to watch the meat and the other's to go back upstairs and get more beer. After dinner, and maybe one more blender drink, we had one or two more beers. It's not surprising that we were asleep by ten o'clock on most nights.

If I drank this much at home, I'd be in some kind of 12-step program within a month. On the beach, it's par for the course. I invested well in my beer. Naturally I'm too much of a beer snob to buy Miller Lite. Once I'm on the beach, well, what happens on the beach stays on the beach. Except that I'm writing about it now. The reason why we drink Miller Lite during the day is that it's available in acceptable can format. This year, Don brought bottles. No one really cared as long as the bottles ended up in the trash and not ground into the sand.

My beach beer is Abita Strawberry. It's basically a lager with strawberry flavor. Does drinking flavored beer make me less of a man? Not if I drink a case of it. Yeah, that's the ticket. I also brought some of my favorite Corsendonk, but I didn't get around to it. Between the blender and the Miller Lite and the Abita and some Shiner I bought on a whim, we drank away the week.

I did a test tonight. I drank a beer with dinner. Yep, it's not the same as sitting on a reclining chair, listening to the surf.

On the beach, part two

Call this episode "Day One".

It's important when you're spending a week on the beach to set the scene. We set up the tent on Saturday and spent some time admiring the water, but Sunday was the real first day.

I got up at the early hour of nine. Note that we're in Central time, so it was more like 10. Don woke up early, as he always does. He might have been on his second pot of coffee. It was time to get ready. We packed Don's giant cooler with ice, beer, and not much else. The wives were going to the grocery store.

What does one bring to the beach? I had a towel, a book (Zach's beach reading book reviews will come later in the week), sunscreen, my iPod in a zip-loc container, and one of the room keycards that sported an ad for Dominos.

We went down. It was time to erect the tent. In Year One of our beach trip all we had for shade was my Titans umbrella. It didn't offer much salvation from the sun. Don, ever the competitive one, bought a replacement. We put up the canvas, spread out the tent and pulled up the legs at each corner. The one and only Chicago Bears tent in the state of Alabama was up, with the "C" logo facing our room. We unfolded our chairs and cracked the first beer of the day.

Normally I'm a beer snob. When you're on the beach and likely to drink half a dozen before "cocktail hour", you go with the Lite stuff. We assumed the positions. Don sat on his chair and alternated between his iPod and crossword puzzles. I read my book and sometimes listened to podcasts on my iPod. Who needs conversation on the beach?

I ventured out after a while to do something Don called "seeing the turtles". That meant one of us had to go to the bathroom. On the first day of our trip, we saw a yellow flag. That meant the water was somewhat choppy. The waves topped out at three feet. It was not what you'd call rough. The water itself is a constant shade of dark green. The gulf was free of debris but you weren't able to see to the bottom. The opening shelf, before you really got in the water, was full of shells. I walked out maybe twenty yards into the gulf. Problem was, I had to go out another thirty or so to get to waist-level water. That was my introduction to the beach. Something underwater grabbed at my foot, but other than that, nature did not interfere.

Later in the day I decided to bring out one of my Titans floaties that my mom bought for me a while back. It was circular with a hole in the middle about a foot in diameter. I spent a good 15 minutes on our opening day blowing the two items up. I wasn't sure that I'd fit in this device.

It was sunny so I kept my sunglasses on. Ideally I'd get out deep enough in the water, flop my butt into the hole and relax for a spell. I could have used a drink holder. I got into the proper spot, pushed the inflatable down, and jumped. I bounced off the edge. My glasses fell off. Miraculously, they sunk right to where my foot was. I didn't bring my sunglasses into the water again. Later in the week I found that I fit, albeit barely.

Day 1 is the most likely day to get sunburned. We found that out when we went back to the room for cocktail hour. Don hadn't applied sunscreen at all and was medium rare. I had applied sunscreen, although not as often as I should. I had the trademark Zachy splotchy burn. If I miss a spot, it looks like a modern art masterpiece. Half of my right forearm, an area from the middle of my right bicep to my shoulder, and both legs from mid-thigh to just below the knee were red.

We weren't allowed to slow down. My wife made blender drinks. From the first year of our trip, she has been in charge of the cocktail hour. It's either rum or vodka and a can of those frozen drink mixes. We had strawberry. They were very good and in no way slowed me down from drinking a few Abita Strawberries later in the evening.

Near the bridge to the beach is the cooking station. There are four charcoal grills. The property is well maintained, and the grills are usually cleaned every day. The grill we chose was clear of charcoal but had a little water. We had our lighter-fluid free charcoal but no lighter. We borrowed a lighter and ripped off pieces of paper from the charcoal bag to start the fire. I'm a landlubber so I had chicken. We had grouper in foil. The ladies were boiling the "royal red" shrimp upstairs. Don was not happy with the fire. Later he purchased additional charcoal and lighter fluid. Even though I had a brand-new grill set with the coolest spatula ever, Don preferred to flip the chicken manually. I kid you not.

Why is it the coolest spatula ever? It has a beer opener. That's the only reason. Don thought it was cool as well. The ladies were less impressed.

We had our feast upstairs and drank a few more. It was maybe ten in the evening when we went to bed. Our master bedroom featured a king-sized bed, a flat-screen TV with DVD player, a bathtub with jacuzzi jets, and a stand-up shower. One downfall of the bed was that it was impossible to get all of the sand out, and every time I rolled over I got some on my burned legs and arm.

That's my report from day one. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Drinking is a given.

On the beach, part one

It was dark. Other than an old security guard named Floyd, we were alone. We walked on the bridge that led to the sand. The rhythmic sound of the waves hitting the shore was all we could hear. We kicked off our shoes, confident that no one would steal them, at the end of the bridge. The sand was chilly even though it was warm in the night. I would compare the consistency to sugar. The stars were out, although not as prominent as you would expect far from a big city. Looking back at the building, we saw less than half a dozen lights on in the twelve floors.

We walked to the edge of the water. The waves nearly got us. It must have been high tide. We stood still and looked out at infinity. That's what the water looks like. Like it goes on forever. People who thought the world was flat never made it to the ocean.

We turned and kissed. It was a moment we'd remember for a while, and it would have to do for nearly a year. We passed the wooden benches that during the day sported blue cushions and umbrellas. We didn't see the spot where our tent was.
Walking back over the bridge, we didn't see Floyd. We opened the gate and found the elevators. It was 4:30 in the morning, and it was time to go home.

Bad Timing

“I never meant to make you cry
And even though I shouldn’t call
It just reminds us of the cost
Of everything we’ve lost
Bad timing, that’s all” – Blue Rodeo

No one writes a broken-heart song as well as Blue Rodeo did it in the late 80s/early 90s. At the time this song came into my life, I was in the midst of an intense crush. I assumed that timing was perfect for a relationship to blossom as I just had ended one the day before I first talked to the object of my affection. As it turned out, timing was not so good. She went to Mexico the following semester, wrote me once to my significantly more than once, and gradually faded from my life.

I’m going on vacation a week from Saturday. That’s good. At the same time, while I’m gone my company’s going to roll out a new e-mail newsletter template. I will miss out on part of that. Talk about bad timing. I thought today of some of the other bad timing moments of my life and felt compelled to share. Here are some of the highlights:

Breaking up with my girlfriend the day before she had a medical procedure: The breakup was a long time coming. We were doomed, and for months had been in a death spiral. She had a heart condition and needed a procedure to attempt to recreate the issue in order for doctors to properly diagnose the condition. I did not plan to break up with her then. It just kind of came out. I still escorted her to the hospital that day, fending off death ray looks from her mom all day. All in all, it could have been handled better.

Purchasing my Scion: The “smart” car buyers purchase their vehicles in the last month of the year. That’s when you get the best deals because the new year’s stock has arrived and the old year is, well, old. I went to a Toyota dealership looking at a Corrolla, the base model. It was boring. I test drove the Scion and liked that it was much more sporty. Scions were hot cars at the time, and they sold for sticker price. I paid. As we know now, the economy tanked and just six months later the guy who sold me the car called me up, asking me to let friends know that Scions were now selling for invoice. If I went to a dealership now, I could get a car for well less than that, and probably the dealer’s first born.

Investing from 1997 to today: When I started as a contractor at IBM in 1997, I got signed up for one of those 401ks. Those were the halcyon days. Put away 10% of your money and when it was time to retire, you’d have plenty of cheese. Unfortunately, I’ve been through an Internet bubble, the Asian market insanity of the late 90s and the mess of the past year. My 401k as a whole is worth slightly less today than the total that I rolled over from that 401k in 2005. And I’ve put a lot away since 2005.

Here’s the last one, and the only one that’s sports-related: LenDale White fumbled the ball twice in more than 200 touches last year for the Tennessee Titans. The second happened to be in the second quarter of a divisional playoff game. White tried to get the extra yard to get a first down on third down. He lost the ball and the Titans missed on a field goal opportunity. Had Rob Bironas made that kick, John Harbaugh might not have challenged Bo Scaife’s catch on third and seven. It was overturned. If Bironas made the 46-yard field goal there instead of missing the 51-yarder due to the overturned catch, the Titans would have had a 13-7 lead. It would have been game over and possibly, just possibly, led to a Super Bowl victory.

Bad timing, that’s all.

Minor procedure

Now I know, at least in some small measure, how Anquan Boldin felt when two Jet defenders tried to cave his head in last fall. Boldin broke several bones in his face and allegedly didn't take anything for the pain. I'm no Boldin.

I kept seeing the term "conscious sedation" in the materials handed to me prior to going in. Frankly, I didn't want to be at all conscious as the doc performed his magic. I walked into the room and it was cold. I had a blanket all the way up to my neck. It reminded me of 9/11, when I went into Radiology and had a Picc line inserted while the radio was on, the announcer all but insisting on panic. Actually that room was colder, but they did have warm blankets. When I had my appendix removed last May (worst week of vacation ever), the operating room was very cold.

In my youth I was almost petrified of needles. I'm glad that I got over that. As I walked in I saw about a dozen syringes on one side of the room and about double that in instruments behind me. The doctor put in the IV. Sometimes it hurts for a second. Sometimes it hurts for a minute. This time, I didn't even feel the needle. He gave me a little of the sedative to start. I told him that it felt good. Less than a minute later I was out.

Here's my recommendation for anyone getting a gum graft. Do not try to eat food that you have to chew for at least 24 hours. The wife took me through the Chik-Fil-A drive thru. I got home, had my first pain pill, and ate maybe two nuggets. Eating anything with texture at that point felt so strange. My entire face was numb, and the feeling coming back was all pain. My body said "no mas" and it was nap time.

I spent the afternoon with an ice pack on my face, trying to enjoy the 70s cop drama "The Seven-Ups". I could never quite follow what was going on. Even an extended car chase wasn't compelling. The pain pills worked, although I would get dizzy after a while. The worst feeling was when I took one at 6:30 on an empty stomach. I felt like I was going to hurl until I had a few bites of Panang chicken that my wife was nice enough to get for dinner. No matter how hungry I thought I was, I couldn't consume much.

I woke up at 3:30 to take my mid-evening white pill. I had some more Panang and read a few pages from Dennis Lehane's latest. It's a page-turner, I tells ya.

I had three grafts, and I listened to the nurse's instructions but not inspecting those parts of my mouth with my tongue. The roof of my mouth feels like the worst pizza burn ever. My recommendation to all the kiddies is to brush twice and floss once a day. Have a dentist show you how to do it correctly. Even if you hate it, it's a walk in a park compared to the alternative.

Cut

If I were restricted to discussing my history of oral surgery, I could fill a few pages. When I was nine I went over the handlebars of my bike and landed face-first in the pavement. I had surgery that night for a shattered jaw bone. One of my front teeth was lodged in my jaw bone and only years later was it finally removed. Years later I had a bridge installed so my mouth looked normal again.

Today I’m having a gum graft. Read this if you want to lose your appetite. There are parts of the body that regenerate, but gums are not one of them. Mine are bad. I decided to have this procedure as an alternative to having worse procedures in the future. I’m not nervous, although I am hoping to be knocked out, like when I had my wisdom teeth out. In that case they gave me an IV, had me count down from ten, and at about six I was knocked out. Wisdom teeth and appendixes. Why do we have them again?

From my recent history, you might think that I’m a surgery junkie. Three years ago I had a cyst removed. I remember falling asleep well before I got into the operating room. Post-surgery was the pain, literally and otherwise. The wound stayed opened and my poor wife had to pack it twice daily. I heard that it would heal in six to eight weeks. It was 13.

Last year I had emergency surgery to remove a troubled appendix. Relive that experience with this epic blog. When I returned home the following day, I was bored more than anything else with having to basically sit on a couch all week. I’m hoping for that kind of experience today and beyond.

Am I nervous? Here’s my theory on surgery and on life. Everything that you anticipate or dread will pass. When I’m on vacation, by day one I can imagine how I’m going to feel on the final day. It will be over and there will be nothing I can do about it. This is comforting in times when you’d prefer to pull out the TiVo remote and fast forward. This is not comforting when you want to savor the brief “moments of magic”.

Pedi-curious

In the past ten years, has the definition of being a man changed? The trend has been for men to be more like women. To be the strong, silent type who provides and talks about feelings as often as he clips his toenails is no longer acceptable. Now each male must own one of these, pluck his eyebrows, use skin cream and sometimes shave in unthinkable areas.

Is it possible to cave in on some of these modern demands and retain one’s testosterone? Or is it a slippery slope toward frosted tips once a guy gives in to any such suggestion from his spouse? I was man enough to find out.

This weekend was month three of a personal marriage experiment. We are doing monthly “big dates”. It alternates that one of us plans a date. For April, I planned to re-enact dates one through three. The dates were in late August of 2002. On the third date, I was “man” enough to attempt the good-night kiss and the rest is history.

Overall the re-enactments went well. On Friday night we found out that the location of our second date, Rock Bottom Brewery, no longer exists. We were able to improvise at a nearby restaurant and finished off with a drink at the Grand Hyatt. The hotel is now surrounded by high rises, which somewhat obscures the view from the Japanese Garden. On Saturday I took the wife to the Fox Theatre, where our second date ended. We did a tour, which was fun. We then moved on to the Vortex in Midtown.

Here’s where my attempt to be an alpha male nearly went terribly wrong. In the summer of 2002 I was newly single after breaking off a long relationship that nearly literally killed me. I wasn’t getting regular raises at my job, and the women I dated were generally successful. I was tired of the man-always-pays theory of dating and decided to test this theory on poor wifey by telling her that on our second date that she’d be paying for dinner. She did, although it was nearly a deal-breaker.

As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold, or in the case of my cheeseburger and onion rings, rather hot. She "forgot” her purse in the car and I paid, finally.

Wifey's note: I did not leave the purse in the car on purpose. Carry on.

Have I lost anyone yet? Yeah, I’m supposed to be getting to the point. This is what the call in the journalism biz “burying the lead”. There was one last part to this date, a part that wasn’t in the original plans and most certainly not part of our 2002 courting. The suggestion of what I was about to do in 2002 would be like correctly predicting who the President in 2009 would be.

I got a pedicure.

That’s right, loyal followers, I went into an unnamed salon and had a Vietnamese woman who barely spoke English do unspeakable things to . . . my feet. To prove that this is a very manly thing, two other guys had the treatment while I was there. We did not make eye contact.

I’ve had a few massages, and generally speaking I have enjoyed them. Frankly, you could have put me in a room, stuck my head in that doughnut pillow, played Enya for an hour while I napped and it would have been just about the same experience. Being touched for me can be an uninspiring feeling.

I’m not going to revisit the entire process, because my mind is trying to block it out. You sit down in a giant chair that has a mini-Jacuzzi in the bottom. There’s room for the legs about halfway to the knee. Most of the time the pedicurist looked at me, talked to the woman next to her, and giggled. I’m glad Alison was there to translate.

The Jacuzzi part isn’t bad. I didn’t really like the massage chair, because every setting seemed to nearly push me out of the chair. I don’t need to be manhandled when I’m being girly. Your nails are clipped. Every surface is scrubbed and clipped. Me no likey the emery board. The scrapey thing that was like the green side of the sponge you have in the kitchen sink was less like torture than I anticipated. I was pumiced. Only when she proceeded to the exfoliating scrub at the end did I finally return to reading Galileo’s Daughter. The pedicure had not been invented in 1600s Italy, I’ll tell you that much.

I got one last soak and it was over. I thought about giving the woman a fist bump but she probably would have pressed charges. My final task was to sit and wait while Alison got a manicure. I did not hold the purse but it would have been poetic.

Somehow I did not have the urge to watch redecorating shows on cable. I spent two late hours last night and most of Sunday catching up on the NFL draft. I still have a pair. There are times in life that you have to attempt new experiences, even if your friends will make fun of you until the end of time for it. I’m a better, and perhaps metro-er, man for it.

The best part is now I can wear open-toed shoes.

What is Zachrilege?

Zach-ri-lege (zak-ruh-lij)

noun

1. The views of Zachary Thomas Law, or Zach to his friends, enemies, and neutrals on the world
2. The truth as I see it, easily refutable by those with common sense

Many moons ago, a friend of mine who is quite accomplished in the recruiting biz suggested this as a possible domain for my Web site. The meaning of the word "sacrilege," which is the root of this name, is primarily "the violation or profanation of anything sacred or held sacred". Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?

I sometimes have thoughts that don't have anything to do with sports, or my fictional world, which also has a lot to do with sports. This would be a good place for such thoughts.

Despite the prevalence of the Web, where everyone's expressing an opinion, it's still a scary thing to "out" oneself. This is because most of us still live in the "real" world with bosses, co-workers, and associates who have conventional beliefs. Expressing any thoughts or beliefs outside this mainstream view could be dangerous. I'm not afraid of losing a job or a friendship over my beliefs. I am petrified of being misunderstood. That's why, generally speaking, I keep my trap shut.

This blog is my trap. It's going to be open.