So if you know me, you should know that I like basketball. Well I don’t just like it. I don’t have an exact count of all of my thoughts I have ever had in my life but if I did and tallied them all up I think that thoughts about basketball could very well out number thoughts on any other subject. When there are those times when my mind is free to wander and I have no immediate need to think about anything I will always find my way there some how. It may be a thought on how I want to be in better shape so I can play a little more like I used to back when. It may be remembering a play from one of my favorite players in times past. It may be trying to visualize how my jump shot or twisting layups look to other people. Anyway I think about it a lot, though not as much as I did growing up. I have more things to think about now and more, more good things. But this post is the beginning of a story about just something I thought about today in regard to the game I like.

So I was 8 years old. I started cub scouts, I don’t remember much about cub scouts because we didn’t have leaders all of the time when I was the age when I would have been in this program. I don’t know really that I learned much from scouting, I did learn how to tie a bowline knot with one hand, so if I fall down a cliff and someone throws a rope down to me and I can only use one hand to tie a knot in the line (since the person throwing the rope wouldn’t be able to do it for some reason) I could tie that knot so I could be pulled up. That’s good thought, right?

The one thing I did get from scouting was from being a new cub. Right after I turned 8 it was time for an army of boys to hit the streets, going door-to-door to sell tickets to the scout-o-rama (in scouting if you put hypens and an “o” in the middle of it, that makes it extra special – camp-0-ree, scout-o-rama, etc). This is an expo where each chartered organization in the salt lake area come together and put up a booth displaying some strange part of the world of scouting. So I too took my packet of tickets and went out with my dad. Upon looking at the packet I saw something awesome. Included in the information for the boys selling these tickets (we were always told to focus on the money-saving coupons that would save much more than the cost of the ticket) there was something meant to motivate all boys to sell these things to give everything they had in an effort (f-word?) to earn the fabulous prizes there for the taking. The thing that caught my eye was the special “Launch Day” prizes, for those who sold a certain number of tickets on the first day. If I sold the 20 tickets in my packet in that first day I could win myself a basketball. Now I had no idea that this rubber globe could be bought for $5 or less at the local Whatever-Mart, I just knew I wanted one for some reason. I still don’t know why. Maybe it was the fact that it said “Official Size and Weight” and the word ”Official” struck me for some reason. Or maybe it was just that all boys like to play games where you use a ball. As far as I can remember, up until this point in my life I had not played basketball. I really hadn’t played many of the ball sports (football, baseball, soccer, jacks). I know I did play with a whiffle ball in the yard some times and I did want to get into my dad’s golf clubs and take a whack at a golf ball to see how far down the street I could hit the thing. But I had not played this particular game 8 years into my life.

I believe I told my dad I wanted to sell all my tickets, so he helped me the best he could and we sold all of them. This meant I won my prize. I’m not sure how long it took for me to get this prize, but I do remember the day I got it. One of the cubscout leaders dropped it off. It wasn’t in a box like the many Spalding and Wilson balls made from the various synthetic leathers are. It was just the loose ball, covered in rubber like a set of Good Year tires. I remeber feeling the pointy stippled texture of a brand new ball and well I wanted to use it right away. I wanted to learn how to play this game. It interested me. It really did.

Well my dad did something for me that brought me a lot of happy times, and a lot of frustrating and painful (physically) times. He taught me how to play basketball. He bought a rim and put a wooden backboard up on our house. My older sisters didn’t really like this, because their window was right under the hoop, so in order to play we had to put a big heavy wooned door over the window on the outside so that the window wouldn’t be broken. I thought this was awesome though. 

I don’t know how much I really played at the beginning. I do know I started shooting underhand (granny shots) and that before the sad sad day when the wind blew that first hoop down I had started to shoot overhand. I do know that I liked playing from the very beginning. I just liked playing.

This story will be continued…

Now for something from the present day.

The other day Heather posted THIS. A series of on-liner (or so) thoughts. Here are mine:

 If I were going to school now I still would have going into an arts field, but I probably would have going to the Art Institute of America, which would have given me a more intense art education, cost a lot more, and I still probably would have ended up doing design for things like self storage facilities. So timing can be a good thing.

I wrestled with Cooper today, which I need to do more. But that boy can take everything I throw at him, and me throwing him and just comes back for more. I want to be as relentless as him sometimes.

I would like to take Aleksia and Cooper and put them next to Oliver and Ella at the same age. The conversation between Ella and Aleksia would be amazing and would merit like 50 billion views on YouTube.

Speaking of YouTube I once thought I would have no use for it, I was wrong.

Every winter we seem to get a sickness in our house that just goes around and around for weeks. I’m just glad that this years version is not filling our house with vomit like last winter.

I really don’t like Josh Groban, his voice is about like fingernails on a chalk board for me.

I don’t think about it much, but sometimes I wonder what I would be like if Heather and I hadn’t found each other. Pretty much I’m sure I would be a worse version of the person I am now. Not that I’m great now, just better than I would be otherwise.

Even before I was a freak about basketball I loved drawing. After both I realized I like cooking. I have had day dreams about doing animation for Disney or other studios, and of course I have (as mentioned above) day dreamed about basketball as a job. I only thought about cooking, that is one way I know I am doing that best thing I could be doing (since basketball wasn’t really an option).

I posted a sketch of an eye the other day. It was Heather’s eye. When I told her it was hers she said “I thought it looked familiar”.

I harrass Heather a lot, I’ve done it for more than 10 years and she still seems to be surprised by it sometimes.

Teaching primary is a lot like teaching as a missionary, except the primary children understand a lot more about the gospel than katolicy niepraktikujace (non-practicing catholic).

Speaking of non-practicing catholics. Why call yourself that? If you don’t really do what you’re supposed to in order to be something are you actually what you claim to be?

This is the longest post I’ve ever written I think it’s too long…

So I wil end with the Sketch-O-Day – Today we have a Gry’ors, something that exists in my story I’m trying to write

Sundiata Gaines on a 10-day contract hits a game winner over the Cleveland Cavs. Now that’s awesome, kids grow up dreaming about things like this…

I was in the grocery store today and I was looking at some soups, trying to decide which ones would be worth getting. They were the thick and chunky kind and there were more kinds than I thought there would be so it took me a minute. I looked up and saw a store employee coming down the aisle with a motorized pallet jack. I figured he’d stop for a second to all me (since I was  a customer, I was there before he came down the aisle and there was no way for a pallet and a cart to pass each other in the aisle) to make my choice. But no, he insisted on trying to squeeze by me, and failed. He hit my cart, knocking it into the soups I was looking at. Oh and Ella was in the cart at the time. One good thing though was he couldn’t make a getaway and pretend it didn’t happen because in the process of hitting us he knocked off a whold case of cans off of his pallet and had to sit there and pick them up as I stared at him in disbelief that he just tried to do something so obviously retarded. No he had no escape from his shame. Oh and he did feel shame, I know because he tried to hide when I passed him again on my way to the checkout stand.

Then after I returned my cart and was passing behind a van a family came out of the store. They were maybe 2 steps out of the store when the wife decided for some reason she HAD to hit the button to open the automatic lift door on the back of the van. This door hit me, while I was carrying Ella to the car. Seriously people, what the crap are you thinking. the good thing though was that I didn’t have to yell at this woman. She got an ear full (rightfully so) from her husband. I heard him go on for the whole walk from the store to their car, and he continued after I had buckled Ella into the car and drove away.

Well here’s  the sketch:

So I missed yesterday. The day just went by and by the time I thought about it I was too tired. So I know SOOOO many people are reading what I write and are so very sad when I miss… Anyway it’s just for me for therapeutic reasons to get thoughts out of my brain.

“It has tingly goodness” – Guess who said that and about what. If you guess right I’ll give you a prize.

If you had to think of the ultimate animal (non-human) living on earth today what would it be? Well unless your answer was the platypus you were wrong. It hatches like a reptile, and if you look at it from front to back it starts out like a duck and then quickly changes to a beaver. To finish things up it is a venomous mammal. How many of those are there? Not a lot, and not only does it produce venom, it uses a spur on its leg to stab things for injection, like some kind of marsupial ninja. Just thinking about this because the platypus comes up a lot in our house.

Speaking of crazy creatures, here’s a little sketch of a creature I wish existed. A flying turtle. I think that would trump the platypus.