I will type this one last time, and then I will no longer say, write, or think this. But I am nervous as hell about my interview with Kareem this Saturday in Los Angles. People tell me that nervous people often times are unprepared people, but that is complete and utter bullshit. I know all 10 of the questions I want to ask him by heart, and I even have five other ones I can throw at him, and that doesn't even include the follow up questions that may come as a result of his answers. I know the outfit I'm wearing (which will include this shirt from his foundation). I've talked to all the necessary contact people, I have a photographer on board, I have hotel reservations made, the car is rented, friends and family have been contacted and all that stuff. And still I am nervous.

When I was in college, I used to get this nervous before speeches and presentations, but all would be well once I got in front of the audience and started talking. Since college, I have taught, spoken in front of 500+ people and given all kinds of presentations, and the same thing happens. I get nervous until I start speaking, and then I tell some sort of disarming joke, get the crowd laughing, and then everything is good. Only once in my life have I truly choked in front of a group, and that was due to me being unprepared. I was embarassed that day, and it will never happen again.

But this nervousness has to do with WHO I'm interviewing, not whether I'm prepared or ready. I've looked up to Kareem since I was 9, and my father gave me his autobiography to read. I followed his career, admired his intellect, and I have privately rooted for him to get a head coaching job in the NBA. But until June of this year I never, ever thought I would meet him let alone rearrange my life for a weekend to interview him on the other side of the country. And now that opportunity is just days away, and I'm nervous. I can't sleep, I lose my train of thought easily, my temper flares up a bit more..all of that. But I'm hoping that by admitting and writing it, it will ease (not eliminate) my nervous energy and bring me some sense of calm.

And now, something to make me happy...

I live in an area in called Dupont Circle and Washington D.C. and for those of you who aren't familiar with this area, let me just say its an eclectic area. For years the area has had a gay/lesbian stigma attached to it, which doesn't really bother me because a)the area is nice b)there are plenty of things to do and c)I live with my girlfriend. Still, on any given day or night, there are reminders of this stigma that cross my path, and this morning was one of those occasions.

I was walking by Starbucks, when I noticed a car pull up by the curb. In the driver's seat was a woman who looked to be about 60 years old, and in the passenger's seat was a woman who looked the same age. The driver put her hazard lights on, and then got out of the car, and the passenger stepped out of the car, opened the back door to get her briefcase, and the closed the door as well. Then I heard the driver tell the passenger to have a great day, and they hugged, which really didn't give me pause. But then they kissed. And when I say kiss, I don't mean just a peck on the lips or cheek. They kissed long, deep and with enough tongue to make this man jealous. I

It was at this point, that I actually walked by the lovebirds, and I didn't want to look like I was staring or shocked (I was) so I kept right on walking by them. As I did, I noticed the incredulous looks on the faces of the people walking towards the kissing lovers, and I knew that I wasn't crazy. As I said earlier, this area is no stranger to gay/lesbian activity, but even this was something new. You (meaning me) just don't see women this age get down like that very often. I'll admit that after I walked by the couple, I looked back at them a couple of times, and they were still kissing, but I also noticed that had added a little groping to the mix. I don't know about you, but seeing this level of passion in public before 8am is a bit much, but I couldn't look away. Finally, they stopped kissing, the passenger went into a building for work, and the driver jumped back in the car. Show over.

I hope I haven't displayed too much ignorance here, but dammit if you had seen this, you'd have done the same thing.

There's was nobody on the road, en route to work this morning. I passed by 34 Starbucks, and there weren't more than 4 people in each one. I may have passed 10 people total from when I left my house to when I walked into work. Then I peeked around the corner where Macy's is, and I saw a phalanx of people in and around the store taking full advantage of the biggest shopping day of the year. And where am I? At my f**king desk pretending to do work, on a day when everyone else called off work.

Three of my co-workers are off today, which is fine because I volunteered to work this day, so I could all the days before and after Christmas off. I may go out of town during that time, and I need that flexibility. Still, you never really know how stupid you'll feel getting up and coming into work the day after a holiday until you get here. All the things I said I was thankful for yesterday, have now come undone because I'm frustrated that I'm not in my bed drinking mimosas, watching Sportscenter, and laughing at those jackasses who had to go to work.

But yeah other than that I'm doing swell. I met a lot of people on my lady's side of the family yesterday, and it went way better than I thought it would except for two things. One, at our first destination, several female family members kept blocking my view of the Dallas/Oakland football game because of where they were sitting. I wanted to ask them to move, but to do would have been tremendously rude, so there were 5-10 minute stretches of the game I just completely missed. And second, my lady's grandmother has about 1000 creepy dolls strewn around her house. There are white dolls, black dolls, Native American dolls, a Lucille Ball doll, a Jackie O doll, and even an Urkel one. The only doll I actually enjoyed looking at was the gloved Michael Jackson one. You have no idea how badly I wanted to whip out my camera phone and capture the whole creepy scene, but that would have been rude. Next time though.

My reflections on the death of Washington Wizards' owner Abe Pollin.

I think it may be time to have THE talk again.

My son has had prepaid phone for about 2 years now, and most of the time he is pretty laid back with telling me he needs more minutes. I call him, I get a voice prompt letting me know he can't accept calls, I go online and put more money on, and then I call him and ask him why he didn't tell me. And his answer is always, "I meant to tell you Dad, but I forgot." Then I tell him that he can monitor his minutes as they get lower, and once they get down below five minutes he should tell me. He said ok which is child speak for "yeah whatever I'll forget as soon we hang up." I get and respect that.

But recently things have changed in the urgency department. First I get a call last week from my son asking me to help him setup voicemail. I just assumed all this time that he had voicemail, but clearly I was wrong. I interrupted the Wizards basketball game on television, walked him through the process for way too long, and boom the voicemail was setup and he cheerfully said thank you Daddy. I said thank you, and tried to back to watching the game.

Then on another occasion, I get a call (from a different phone) from Carlton, and he tells me that his phone is dead and he needs me to refill it. I tell him that I'll put more time on there as soon as I can..and two hours later he calls me and asks if I have done it (which he knows damn well I hadn't otherwise the phone would have worked). I started to ask him what the urgency was, and then it hit me...my 13 year old son is having special feelings toward a young lady, and he wants to be accessible as possible. Up until now, the talks about women and girls have been all hypothetical, but it appears as if he is now officially in the "game". And what better person to assist him in this game, than me right? He has no clue what kind of ride(s) he's in for, but I can try my best to equip him with as much common sense as possible.

So this morning, I left directly from the pool and came to work, which meant I spent a little more time than usual in the locker room. I brought my soap, my deodorant, and my clothes, and I showered and dressed right there, which was not ideal, but I made it work. While I was getting a dressed, an older gentleman with a cane, slowly made his way to a locker not too far from mine. I was naked at the time, which meant I immediately tensed up and got a bit defensive, and I was thisclose from saying something, but then I just relaxed and went on about my business.

This gentleman didn't say a word to me at all, he just put his cane and his backpack down, and slowly started to remove articles of clothing one by one. I was just about finished getting dressed, when I heard some grunting come from behind me, and I turned around and noticed that this guy was struggling big time to get his workout clothes on his body. His underwear, socks and shirt were on, but he couldn't get his warm up pants over his ass, and despite the loud, powerful grunting he was doing, it was not helping at all. I really started to just walk out of there and act like I did not see this, but I wanted this man to have a workout in the actual gym, not in the locker room putting on his pants, so I asked him if he wanted any help. He sheepishly said yes, and I just lifted his pants up on his waist for him, and then I quickly went back to my locker. As I walked back over to my locker, he looked up and said thank you, and I said no problem at all without looking up at him. He grabbed his cane, and slowly headed towards the gym. No elaborate thank you, no b.s. small talk, he was just a short, sweet, efficient operation.

Now usually this story wouldn't have had a chance in hell of getting off the ground, because I would have said something smart or asinine to the older man about standing close to me, and then a fracas would have ensued, and he'd have beat me down with the curved end of the cane. But for once I accessed my mature side, and actually did a good deed, and I felt pretty good. I wasn't trying to embarrass the man, or make him feel helpless at all. Plus it is quite possible that 80-85% of the time, he has enough strength to pull those pants right up without any grunting or labored motion. But this morning he struggled, and I helped him out. And that's really what you want out of locker room buddy isn't it?

In a strange twist, as I left the locker room I broke my shoe strings to my dress shoes, I realized I had a hole in my sock, and I forgot my umbrella on a day when its supposed to rain. I've yet ascertain what the correlation is between my good deed and my unfortunate luck.

Click here to listen to me and my main man Ryan talk about basketball related issues.



Stay A Little While - Loose Ends

I'll get back to regular blogging tomorrow, until then checkout this article. Shoutout to Kyle for allowing me to guest write on his site.