by Micheal Lewis
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The history of the evolution of the left tackle is intertwined with Michael Oher who will one day be an NFL star.
I will admit that I know almost nothing about football, and that the closest I ever came to understanding it was when I went to a football game in New Orleans and could actually see the entire field. So you may be surprised that I picked up this book about football. I was, too, especially since I didn’t realize it would be so technical about football.
I first heard about Michael Oher when Reader’s Digest ran an excerpt from the book a few months ago. I usually hate the book excerpts, but I was interested in this one. The excerpt explained how Michael is a black kid who lives with (and is adopted by) a white Christian family. How he ends up with them and how his football ability developed is what I thought the book was about.
The book is indeed about these things, but is also about football. I read the first five pages of this book without understanding anything at all. The diagrams in the book didn’t even help me. But then I became involved in the story.
Michael Oher is apparently eligible for the NFL draft in 2009, so I’ll be watching out for his name.
New tiny dog adventure has been posted here.
Warning: it is long.
About two months ago, I put down two very expensive bags of special grass seed in the front yard and in the grub area in the back yard (as well as some nematodes which ended up being more complicated than I expected, and for hours afterwards I felt like there were little bugs crawling all over me).
Because of the time six years ago in our last house when our builder had grassed the yard and we hadn’t realized we should water the yard until the grass was healthy (thus resulting in a crabgrass “lawn”), I knew that I had to be vigilant about keeping the seed wet until it fully germinated. So I had been very good about watering the seeded area at least twice a day unless we had rain.
If it rained, then I rejoiced because the rain meant I didn’t have to go into the basement and turn on the outside back yard water (because the hose drips if we leave the outside water on) and go outside to turn on the side yard spigot (which also drips but only when the spigot is turned on and so the water shoots into the foundation of the house.) If it didn’t rain, then I went through the procedure above and wondered why all our hoses leak.
And then, after all my effort, I realized that I had only succeeded in growing a fine crop of weeds.
Nevertheless, the weeds still needed to be mowed. I finally got motivated enough to get up early to mow the lawn this morning. The past few days have been too hot to mow, so I figured that if I got up with the dogs, the weather would be cool enough so that I could mow the whole freaking half-acre without dying of sweat-induced dehydration.
Well, the grass was still wet with morning dew when Mister Stanley began howling to go outside, so I decided to do some work and give the lawn time to dry. I was about to start mowing when some immediate work came in over email. By the time I got it done, I had just enough time to run outside, spill gas all over the mower when I tried to fill it, mow the tiny strip of grass on one side of the house that is partially gravel, mow the dog area, and run the mower back into the shed before the thunderstorm started.
There is still about a half-acre left to mow.
Damn rain.
I have a terrible stomachache right now, and clearly the illness has gone to my brain because I did not remember that I had left Mina outside an hour ago until she barked at me.
Her bark was kind of muffled, so as soon as I heard it, I remembered that I never let her back inside the house!!! I’d meant to go to the kitchen and let her in through that door, since she was lounging on the deck when the boys and I went inside through the garage door. But I didn’t.
I raced downstairs to the kitchen door, and found Mina standing outside with her nose about an inch away from the door. As soon as I opened the door, she marched inside.
Now she is busy digging at the sofa in the living room. Apparently she’s trying to build a tunnel from the sofa to the back yard, so that next time she doesn’t have to depend on Stupid Mommy to let her inside.
The problem with adopting a stray dog from Puerto Rico is that when you have already trained your current dogs to pee and poo indoors on a newspaper-covered tray that you have designated solely for that purpose, you make the mistake of trying to train the new dog to use the same method.
Years later, long after the failure of this attempt, said stray from Puerto Rico still thinks that newspapers are merely for herself and her chick to rest on.
