I have been playing flag football for almost 10 years now and I enjoy it immensely. Last year, when we moved to Indianapolis, I was dismayed that I could not find a competitive league to play in. There are a number of weekly pick-up games, though, and through them I learned of a men’s church league and was invited to join a new team there.

New teams can be tricky. A “new” team that’s a split of an existing team with a few new players can often go far, they have a core that’s intact and capable. I ended up on a real new team, where only two members had played together previously and some had never played flag football before. Flag is quite different than regular football. There’s no downfield blocking, you can’t stiff arm, you can’t tackle. All of those lead to penalties or ejections and are often what trip up people new to flag rules, even if they’ve played some HS, College, or even NFL ball. You also lack any connection between players. The quarterback might under- or overestimate a receiver’s speed and end up throwing lots of picks.

For this reason, it’s no surprise that many new teams go 0-X, rarely going 1-X, and almost always losing badly in playoffs if they make it there. In the regular season, we went 1-6. We ended up losing our last regular season game to the #1 team 66-24. Ouch. That put us in last place, meaning we got to play them again the next week in the first round of the playoffs. It would be easy to foresee the loss and throw in the towel right away. I’ve seen lots of teams play a man down due to low attendance or even forfeit that game, knowing it would be a blow-out. Can’t blame anyone, you don’t get paid and some people drive an hour each way plus the game time.

Instead, our team stayed with it. We had more people show up than the previous week. We analyzed what went wrong and came up with a game plan. The opponents used a quick strike offense with timing routes, so we rushed often and played press. By halftime, their QB had thrown 3 picks and we managed to keep it tied. We ended up winning 28-27, scoring the go-ahead points with 12 seconds left. We surprised everyone just by showing up and wowed them by beating the #1 seed.

The next week, we had a matchup against the #2 team. We had the same number of people show up and we again put a game plan together. We had not played the team the week before so our game plan wasn’t quite as good. We went on to lose by one score, 47-42, bringing the team down to the wire.

It was a hell of a season. It was fun to fight adversity and come together as a team to victories, both real and moral. I can’t wait for the spring season to see where we go from here!

Today is Thanksgiving in America. I’m conflicted in how I feel about Thanksgiving, thanks to John Oliver and Last Week Tonight, but I am undoubtedly thankful for a lot of things – my family, my friends, having a job, community, etc. One thing my wife, Michelle, and I are really thankful for is that our nearly 15 year old pug, Loki, is still with us this Thanksgiving.

Catching some Z’s

Dressed as a spider

Enjoying his favorite treat, a giant carrot!

As Loki has aged, he’s remained a vibrant character, always living up to his namesake, but time catches up with us all. These changes have taught my wife and I a lot over the years, lessons that we can apply elsewhere in our lives.

About 5 or 6 years ago, Loki lost his hearing. It took us quite a while to catch on! We had taught obedience using verbal and hand signals. A “down” command was accompanied by moving your hand, palm down, toward the floor. As long as Loki was looking at us, he was quite obedient. One day, we went for a walk and on the way back, Loki lost visual contact with Michelle and thought she was behind us. He took off down the street, ignoring our shouts, which was quite alarming. He got in a lot of trouble for that, and we still did not understand the issue for a few days until we said “treat” and he didn’t react – that’s how you know for certain that a dog is deaf! Loki taught us that when someone cannot verbalize their problems, it’s up to you to “listen” to the other signals they send. It’s your fault that you didn’t use the right vocabulary to understand them, and you shouldn’t get mad at them.

A few years later, Loki started having issues with his eyesight. As we had become quite reliant on hand signals since he was deaf, this was problematic! His vision has faded slowly, thanks to some good veterinarian ophthalmologists, but it’s going bit by bit. This has caused some other health issues as he is now prone to scratch his eyes, and we’ve been to the vet more than once for a scratched cornea. The poor guy has to wear a cone when he’s not closely supervised!

Altogether, these vision problems have taught Michelle and I quite a bit. We have to rely on Loki’s sense of touch more often. He may look right at you but not see you, so you have to rely on other senses, such as touching him with your hand or foot to get his attention. If he doesn’t see us, he may run to another room to look for us – and he’s fast! We spend a lot of time chasing him around the house now, trying to get his attention. This has taught us, again, to be patient with him and not get mad. We also have to pay more attention for him and anticipate where he’s heading, as he could run into something that hurts very easily.

Finally, over the summer we discovered an inoperable tumor in Loki’s mouth. Though it’s growing and we can’t do anything about it, you could hardly tell, he’s as feisty as ever. But we realize this could be his last Thanksgiving with us. We’re thankful that he’s still here and we’re hopeful he makes it to his 15th birthday in two weeks and Christmas after that. We’ve learned to spend more time with him than we were before and to enjoy every moment of it!

Loki, thanks for spending so much time with us and for teaching us so much! You’re the best pug anyone could ask for!

I love the changes the seasons bring. The warmth and rebirth of spring, the long days and sunshine of summer, the cooling temperatures and changing leaves of fall, and the snow and shorter daylight of winter. In particular, I really, really love the snow. I love watching it snow, I love the dogs playing in it, and it’s great football weather. Sure, I don’t love raking leaves and shoveling snow, but the benefits far outweigh these negatives.

This may seem an odd thing to wax poetic about, but my wife and I grew up in the MidWest and North, respectively, and spent almost a decade in the South. We really missed the seasons when we were in North Carolina, where the summer is about 9-10 months long. Living in Eastern VA was a bit better, the seasons were closer to 3 months each and we got snow a few times, but it was rare enough that you’d have to be crazy to drive in it. We’re now in Indiana, where the seasons are seasonal and snow is just something that happens.

This past weekend was the first snow of the season, which was really fun. I even got to play some flag football in it which is amazingly fun. I love me some snow!

I signed up for the challenge of 30 blog posts in 30 days at the beginning of November. I participated in this last year as well, but I only completed 25 articles due to time. It was still a success by virtue of improving my writing skills, but this year I wanted to complete the challenge with a full 30 posts in the allotted time.

Unfortunately, I’m in the opposite boat this time. I find myself with a few hours right now that I could use to write, but my well has run dry! I started with a few items in Evernote that I’d like to write about specifically for the challenge. My personal was short-form content, rather than longer content or series posts. With those topics exhausted, I’m struggling to write the remaining articles, with 10 to go. Ugh.

This is an interesting problem for me, one that I haven’t encountered in years. That translates to a lack of coping skills! Since I’m out of practice, I’d love to hear what tactics others use when they have a writing deadline and nothing to write about. My current plan, outside of soliciting assistance, is to use this time to recuperate and keep a notepad by me in case I think of anything. If nothing pops into my head this weeknd, I’ll at least have recharged batteries come Monday and more focus I can apply to the problem. There’s a lot of thoughts rattling around in my head, I just need to find ones that may be interesting to write about and a cohesive hypothesis that ties them together.

It does look like I’m not alone in this problem, as a number of other 30 in 30 participants have slowed down their output. Maybe we can help each other with our writer’s block. Ping me on twitter if you have ideas or need help yourself!