​Here’s comes the dreaded loaded question again:  “How’s it going?”
 
To answer honestly or not, that is the question. Most of us answer broadly and noncommittally, “Okay. Not bad. Pretty good, I can’t complain, but actually everything is just about the same.”
 
That response makes sense many days. Sometimes though things are way up or way down. It may be your health or someone in your immediate family that has you down. A great new job could be pumping you up. Most of the time, we avoid telling the bad news and don’t want to brag about the good, so we still answer the question in a non-descriptive, simple way.
 
I struggle with this. I do not want to burden others with some of the tough things going on in my life. I have to deal with them and resolve the issues. But, still, there is the human need to share, and we do crave sympathy at times.
 
We have bad days, weeks, even years. A good friend of mine lost both his brothers and his wife in an extremely short period of time (less than a year), and both his parents had to deal with life-constraining illnesses soon thereafter. I think of him often if I ever want to throw a pity party. Life can always be so much worse. We all have our pain and challenges.
 
Sometimes though, you just want to report the facts so people know what’s going on. Here you go. Two weeks ago, the following events occurred.
 
We have two dogs, Pepper and Thor, who love to chase every animal on the planet. Their favorite, as my wife describes it, is the “black and white kitty,” better known as the skunk.
 
They took a massive direct dose, the worst in our family history. A half gallon of vinegar didn’t clear them up. Washed and bathed and sprayed with stink-free cleaner, Febreze and baby shampoo, the house (and they) continue to reek. If there’s any consolation, we don’t have to listen for them to know they’re coming up the stairs because you sniff them first.
 
In another incident, while meeting with a friend and colleague to take some professional photos, we noticed someone walking furtively next to his house. Our antenna up, I watched out his front window and saw a teenager get in the car across the street, and quickly pull out, heading directly toward my car at a too-high-rate of speed.  Whammo.  Right in the rear bumper. He drives off. I run out the door and yell at him. He stops, comes back.
 
No biggie in terms of damage, but it means dealing with insurance, taking the car in, some anger at the circumstances and short-term inconvenience. Mostly a first world problem.
 
Then there is one of our cats who can no longer control herself, leaving us at least two presents a day as a gift. After a delay, we dealt with that issue.
 
Finally, there’s the big cost item – the washing machine going out. Of course, I caused it to finally cash in its chips, but the way it broke was too much. The button to start the washer depressed, then wouldn’t retract. The repair guy couldn’t do anything. The part was not available. Replace the washer was the option, and always best to do the dryer at the same time, so we bit the bullet on that.
 
Otherwise, things are fine. The sun rises. The weather is quite nice, in the mid-70s during the day and high 40’s or low 50’s at night. Good sleeping weather if I can quit obsessing about all this stuff and get rid of that lingering skunk stench.

​At this time of year, even if you are not a college basketball fan, it’s almost impossible to miss March Madness – where NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division I teams are vying for their respective national crowns. We’re inundated with predictions, tweets and stories about who is number one, who should make the tournament and which teams got dissed.
 
I bunkered down the weekend of Selection Sunday (for the uninitiated, that’s when the selections for the tournament are made) for multiple conference games. Many teams only get to the big dance if they win those conference championships. Hence, those games are intense.
 
For many years, I’ve been addicted to college basketball. It’s the one sport I continue to follow closely, as baseball and football slowly lost my interest. I’ve also been a long-term addict to the NCAA tournament, starting with Thursday and Friday late-morning games of the first weekend. Some years I would take off work to catch those first two days. Other years I would schedule lunch to watch the early results. Whatever worked to feed the addiction.
 
The intensity of those early games seemed unmatchable. There is something about a small school going against the behemoth that charged my batteries, and captured the hearts of Americans. We love seeing the little guy win.
 
A slight change in the landscape appeared the past 3-4 years or so. More mid-major schools impacted the tournament, such as Butler or Wichita State. They aren’t big colleges, but they aren’t tiny ones either. So if they won, though it would be an upset versus a Duke, North Carolina, Kansas or Kentucky, it wasn’t as big a deal as if, say, Stony Brook (in this year’s tourney) beat Michigan State.
 
These patterns ever-so-slowly changed my behavior. It was hard to put a finger on why I wasn’t quite as hyped as 10-15 years ago. This past weekend, I figured out why.
 
Watching Stony Brook play Vermont in a winner-gets-into-tournament game, while the other team goes home, woke me up to what I’d forgotten that makes the college game so much fun. The two teams compete in the almost-unknown America East Conference (which I would have miss-communicated right now as the “American” East Conference, BTW; praise to Google). The small gym was packed. The word “raucous” (in a good way) fit the crowd. The atmosphere was intense.
 
Are either of the teams capable of winning the NCAA DI tournament? No, but they were totally matched up for this one and they took it out on each other, possession by tight possession.
 
This matchup, like several others (South Dakota State vs. North Dakota State, Farleigh Dickinson vs. Wagner and Wisconsin-Green Bay vs. Wright State all come to mind), demonstrated how much FUN basketball is. Almost none of the young men participating in those games will play beyond college unless it’s in a men’s league at night after they finish their full-time job duties during the day. I think that’s why these small conference championship games are about as good as this sport gets – everything is on the line. The game is played with that mentality.
 
These players (and coaches and referees) will remember those conference championships probably the rest of their lives, more even than their follow-up TV moment during selection Sunday when they get picked (and the whole team jumps up and goes nuts for the cameras) to be fed to the big wolves the following Thursday or Friday.

Some will win an NCAA Tournament game. Most will get immediately blown out.
 
Here’s to those small DI college tournaments. Long may they live. 

​A couple of weeks ago, my abdominal (ab) wheel broke.  It’s one of those workout devices that you roll along the ground, extending your arms in front of you, to stretch and tighten your abdominal muscles. It’s colossally successful in doing the job.
 
When it broke, I was a bit bummed because I’d had that model for over ten years. It served me well. One of the handles cracked, so there was no way to tape it together and limp forward. A replacement was a must.
 
Shopping at the sporting goods store is fun for me. I enjoy browsing through the machines used for different workouts -- checking out running and basketball shoes, seeing what new stretch garments Nike and Under Armor have developed to help you run faster and keep your muscles compressed, and examining any new apparatus that helps you stay in shape.  I looked forward to seeing what new technology had been developed to better strengthen my abs.
 
I wasn’t looking forward to the expense. It was mildly surprising looking at the ab rollers that the prices were so low. Something that provides such consistently high quality results should have cost a chunk of change, it seemed to me. But for $6.78, I walked out the door.
 
Think about that price. Think about the cost of a lunch at Burger King or Wendy’s. Consider what two cups of coffee cost you at Starbucks. Consider that six-pack of Budweiser. Those are all consumable, disposable products. One and done for $6.78.
 
The abdominizer, on the other hand, stays with you for years. If experience is a barometer, my previous one lasted 10+ years, and it was used an average of 1-2 times per week, so let’s say 70 times a year for a low estimate. Let’s also say, for the sake of a conservative argument, that it only lasted 10 years. So that’s 700 uses for $6.78 (though we could also pretty confidently say that it cost less than $6.78 ten years ago).
 
If you divide 700 into $6.78, you get .97 cents per use, or less than a penny per workout. Not bad. Not too many products you buy today give you that kind of value.
 
Compare that cost to other things you buy.  Hmmmm, smart phone?  That’s at least a few hundred bucks. It gives you a lot of information, sure, but does it turn you into the man of steel?
 
Your television?  That’s going to run you a grand, maybe more or less depending on the size and quality of the screen. Does that make your arm and back muscles make you look like a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers? Absolutely not.
 
How about your car? Sure, for $26,000 (or much, much more) you can drive that around for years, and it helps you buy food, get to work, take vacations. That’s useful in fundamental ways. But it also makes you lazy and cuts you off from the environment. And it doesn’t turn your stomach muscles into a ridged board that you can light a match on like the ab roller does.
 
How about your monthly cable fees, a case of bottled water or a pair of blue jeans? These will all set you back more than the abdominizer.
 
What I’m saying is this: Buy the ab roller. It’s a bargain. Even if you don’t use it, there’s no reason to feel bad about the purchase because your initial investment was so small.

There aren’t many bargains left like this in the world. The ab roller will help you increase your active life while pushing you away from the sedentary life. It’s all good.

​Give a person a second chance. Watch a movie more than once. Read a book again. Why?
 
Upon reconsideration you learn something new. The first time you do anything, the excitement takes over. The second time, additional layers unfold. You see nuances in plots. Characters show an unseen side. A new acquaintance shares an unexpected side of her personality.
 
For these reasons, it’s good to give people and things a second chance. For some odd reason though, human nature takes first perceptions and makes that your only perception. We lose something in our lives by not opening ourselves to second opportunities.
 
Many years ago, I chose to start rereading the books in my personal library. This served many functions. The main purpose initially was to decide whether to save any of the books to pass down to our kids. Rereading novels quickly either 1) reinforced that the book I loved upon first reading was worthy of keeping and sharing, or 2) made me scratch my head and wonder what I was thinking about the first time I read it.
 
I found much more. A new world opened. That’s supposed to happen when you read a book or watch a movie. It’s why we entertain ourselves that way. No one ever tells us though to go back and re-explore. Instead, once done, you’re supposed to set aside the book in your library and let it attract dust.
 
With movies the same thing happens. I’m not sure when it occurred to me, but at some point when watching “The Terminator” for the third or fourth time (or it could have been “Three Days of the Condor”), I thought to myself, “Was I asleep the first two times I watched this movie, because I certainly don’t remember this scene.”
 
That’s the big point: We gloss over many conversations and visuals the first time we see or hear them. It’s probably not even that we gloss over them. It’s likely that our brains only capture so many images or so much data, then it spills out. When we go back a second, third or fourth time to take something in, we find a new ripple disturbing the water.
 
The movie “Elf” is another great example. Our family now watches it annually at Christmas. I have my classic laugh at certain scenes. Other times I watch in stunned initial amazement at the nuance of Will Ferrell’s humor and the subtle moments that make the flick so sublime, with a remark like, “I don’t remember this scene at all.”
 
While in college, one of my English professors came into class the first day with a tattered copy of John Updike’s, “Rabbit, Run.” At the time, I had never heard of the book, yet the prof had read it multiple times and he taught that class with a profound joy, exclaiming as new revelations occurred to him during the semester. It amazed me, and I think it also prepared me to re-experience things in the years ahead.
 
Sometimes you should judge a book by its cover. Many times we shouldn’t judge it until we’ve read it twice. That’s when you can form a better reasoned judgment.
 
I have a long-term good friend who I abhorred the first time I met her, blown away by her boorish (to me) behavior. Then, we talked off to the side, and joined a business group together and met at some functions, finding many common interests and a mutual sense of the absurd.
 
If we’d stuck to our first impressions (and she probably felt the same way about me), our life would be poorer today. Enrich yourself. Give things a second chance and see how the plot unfolds.