The Joys of 8 Man Football

One of the many perks of Megan's job is the little card that gets our family into any high school sporting event free of charge. We used her card during basketball season last year, but Leah was too young to stay awake through the entire varsity game. Now she's old enough to enjoy football, which means we get to spend some quality family time watching sports. Don't think I don't love it.

The first thing I noticed at my first Pima football game (aside from the fact that the home stands are pretty small, and the visitor's section is laughably small) was that Pima, being a 1A school, plays 8 man football. If you are a member of my immediate family or a member of Megan's family, you are probably asking yourself, "How many players are there on the field normally?" The answer to that question is 11.

In my last entry, I bored you to tears with comic book minutae. Now I'm going to take a moment to bore you with sports minutae. The thing I couldn't figure when I started watching 8 man football was this: what positions do you get rid of? Off the top of my head I figured it would be the tackles and a wide receiver. Then my brain started wondering how you could tell if the quarterback was outside the tackles (you know, for grounding purposes) if there were no tackles. Well, I did a little research and found out that I was indeed right when I guessed that they got rid of the tackles and a receiver. So how do you call intentional grounding? I have no idea.

Despite being a little odd, 8 man football has its perks. "What perks?" ask those of you who bothered to read this far. Well, I've watched three games so far and have yet to see a field goal. I don't know if they just don't have kickers or if the coaches just play a lot of Madden(tm), but I have never seen the kicking team brought out on a 4th down. Not only that, but I haven't seen a lot of punts. They have a punter, but he only comes out on 4th downs inside the Pima 40 yard line. What does all this mean? It means that more often than not, teams go for it on 4th down and they always go for the 2 point conversion. It makes the games a whole lot more exciting. Why? Because normally going for it on 4th down or going for the 2 point conversion is a gutsy call. You see way more gutsy calls in 8 man football than standard football.

Entertainment value aside, football has turned out to be a great family activity. Megan enjoys watching her yearbook photographers at work as well as the game, and Leah enjoyes being adored by everyone who sees her. All in all it's a good time for everyone.

Comic Book Nerd

As many of you may already know, this is the year of the comic book for me. As a matter of fact, one of the major reasons I wanted to get this iPad was because I can now carry a large comic book library with me everywhere I go. It's a nice perk, but not the only reason I bought this thing (that would make me a huge nerd if it was the only reason, which is why I tell myself it isn't).

Since starting to read comic books back in July, I have read many many comics. It's so much easier to read them digitally than in paper form. I do actually own some hard copy comic books which were purchased from the fantastic Atomic Comics before it closed it's doors for good last month. I own a few TPB's (trade paperback): one DC Crisis, and two UK Transformer compilations. The bulk of my collection, however, is comprised of about 90 issues of Alpha Flight.

What is Alpha Flight? It's a team of Canadian superheroes similar to the X-Men. As a matter of fact, Wolverine got his start in Alpha Flight before running off to join the X-Men. How did I get involved with such a strange group? Well, I started reading comic books because I felt I needed more X-Men in my life. The issues that introduce Wolverine to the X-Men also introduce Alpha Flight to the world. I really like Alpha Flight because it's basically a crisis in every issue. They pull of stuff in April issues that other titles save for December or their annual. They kill off major characters and replace them fairly routinely. Also, Alpha Fight doesn't always have the benefit of sponsorship by generous benefactors, and more often than not they are not even supported by the Canadian government. When you read Alpha Flight, you will absolutely never know what they're going to do next.

Anyway, just because I feel like it and I have the time, I'm going to run down all the comics I have read thus far and give them a rating (no, I won't do it issue by issue. I'll just rate each series).

Alpha Flight Volume 1 There are three volumes of Alpha Flight thus far (well, I think they just started a 4th. I own the first issue of it). The first volume has 130 issues, the second has 20, and the this has only 12. I started the second volume, but I'm not done yet. Anyway, I loved the first volume of Alpha Flight. I read it after having read every DC Crisis. In Alpha Flight, every issue is a crisis. There were very few throwaway issues. they always faced awesome foes, and there were so many twist and turns, I couldn't possibly explain them to you in a concise form. Just chalk me up as an Alpha Flight fan. These issues were as good as anything I've read thus far. Rating: *****

Scott Pilgrim This was the first (and only thus far) graphic novel I ever read. I read it after seeing the fantastic movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. If you haven't seen it, you are missing a movie unlike any other. It's an all-out visual feast. It's as good a comic book movie as there will ever be. Anyway, the graphic novel is as good if not better than the movie it inspired. It's a graphic novel for people who enjoy comic books, video games, and indie rock. If you enjoy any or all of those things, you should enjoy it. I love the story as a metaphor for modern romantic relationships, but I also love it as pure entertainment. It is smartly written, and all the dialogue is almost over the top in its wittiness. All in all a very good read and highly recommended. Rating: *****

As for the DC Crises, I think I'll rank them from my favorite to my least favorite. Before doing that, I think I'd better explain what a crisis is in comic book terms. DC has been around since the 1930s, which means they've had 80+ years to muck up their continuity and make things so convoluted that it became darn near impossible to jump into any of their series without doing a lot of research first. The first major crisis was Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was DC's way of blowing up everything and putting it back together again in a more reader friendly way. With that knowledge in your pocket, here are the crises I have read in order from my most favorite to my least.

Infinite Crisis Oddly enough, Infinite Crisis was the comic Joel always tried to make me read when he was trying to convince me that I should read comic books. I liked Infinite Crisis the most because it seemed like it had the most compelling story lines. It just generally had the most going on, and the things that were going on were all worth following. You really can't ask for more in a massive crossover series. Rating: *****

Crisis on Infinite Earths You really can't do much better than the original massive crossover. The only thing I didn't really like about this series was that at times it seemed like story lines were being laid out in a very meticulous way simply because they needed to shape certain characters in certain ways in order to get themselves out of certain corners they had painted themselves into previously. I'm just saying that the story seemed a little less organic than it could have been, but I understand why they did it the way they did. Aside front he one gripe, Crisis on Infinite Earths is very good and highly enjoyable. Rating: ****

Identity Crisis Identity Crisis is more of a minor crisis than other crises in the DC catalog. It centers around The Elongated Man's wife going missing. I love this story because of the awesome husband/wife relationship between Sue and Ralph Dibny. This is a story that carries over into Infinite Crisis, and even though the conclusion is fairly senseless, there's a lot of real emotion in this story. I'm only downgrading it because it makes me so sad and it seems senseless in the end. Rating : ****


Zero Hour: Crisis in Time Zero Hour continues to story of Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) and his transformation to Parallax and his attempt to rewrite time. I loved the story of Hal Jordan's fall, and Zero Hour is a good story, but it has waaaaaay to much rainbow in it. Seriously, it's very distracting to look at that much rainbow without seeing unicorns. Oh, and there were a couple pieces of the story that seemed like too much of a stretch, even for a comic book. I would tell you what they were, but it's been a while since I read this and I honestly can't remember. Rating: ***

Final Crisis I just really didn't like Final Crisis much. If I was a goth (no, not a Visigoth or Ostragoth or any other sort of actual goth. I'm talking about the people who misuse the word goth and take it to mean "draped in black and obsessed with death") I would eat this with a black fork and spoon, but since I'm a normal person, I didn't like the satanic overtones. I also really hated the aftermath story lines. The Super Young Team is an abomination, and the whole crisis seems 1) unappealing 2) not so critical that it can really call itself a crisis. Rating: * After reading this one, I wanted to hit it with a rolled up newspaper and shove it's face in the Super Young Team side story so it would know what it did wrong.

In addition to all these crises, I read all the lead-in and aftermath stories. I won't bore you with the details of all of those, except to say that 52 was an excellent series and really made me care about Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. The last comic book series I'll tell you about (you didn't really read this far did you? I wrote this more for myself than anyone else) is...

X-Men I have read the first 200 or so issues of X-Men, and loved every single one of them. With all I've reD thus far, I'd consider myself much more of a Marvel man than a DC guy. The X-Men are now so iconic that people who have never read a comic in their life have a general sense of the characters and their respective stories. It's just been a pure delight to get a deeper sense of the X-Men. Although I like to tell people I'm an Alpha Flight fan, I think the X-Men are my favorite comic book characters of all-time.

Well there you have it. I've read a bunch of comic books and loved most of them. If you actually read this, I hope you're a nerd, otherwise I'm sorry for wasting your time.

Typos Aplenty

If you are one of the three people who has started reading this blog now that I am writing in it again, you might have noticed a large number of typos slipping past the editor. There are two reasons for this: first, this blog has no editor. I just write things and throw them on the web and rarely if ever read them again. Secondly, I am writing this from my iPad.

You may have not been aware of the fact that I am now a proud owner of an iPad, but it's true and here's the short version of how I came to own it despite the aforementioned poorness (see last entry). In order to acquire this highly-prized technical wonder, I had to give up something else I treasure. A few years ago back when I used to be in bands, I spent more than I could afford on an Ashdown bass amp. I loved that amp, but I chose to give it up. I haven't played in a band for a while, and I haven't plugged in and played loud since I got married, and certainly not since Leah was born. I put the amp on craigslist and got a few bites before selling it.

The funny thing is that the guy who bought the amp is the former bassist of Redfield, a local band whose demo CD I once owned. They were pretty good, so feel free to look them up. So not only is the amp going to get a good home, it will play more gigs than it ever did with me. If it was a dog, this would be the equivalent of it going from an apartment in the city to a nice farm in the country where he can run free and not poop on my lawn.

With the money I got from selling the amp, I caught the tail end of a refurbished iPad sale at the apple store. Shortly after ordering the iPad, our dryer broke, our rental house fridge broke, and we found ourselves in a bit of a financial bind. I felt selfish for having purchased something that basically serves only me. The rest of the money I got from the amp went toward taking care of our basic and immediate needs. I don't want to spend too much time talking about our finances, and I'm realizing that my short explanation is much longer than I intended. I guess I still feel bad about owning something as expensive as an iPad during a time when we don't have the budget for such extravagant items. Of course timing is everything. If appliances didn't choose to all break at once, our belts might not have been so tight the past few weeks. If I hadn't ordered this iPad when I did, all of the amp money would have gone into the family budget. I'm getting bored with this paragraph, and it's time for it to end.

So why this business about typos? I'm not quite used to typing on this thing yet. I also can't figure out how to turn off the feature that tries to autocomplete every single word I type. So basically my writing is going to be full of a lot more mistakes than it would be if I was using my regular computer. You have just taken a very long walk for a very short sip of water. If you've enjoyed this half as much as I have, then I've enjoyed it twice as much as you.

Vacations for Poor People

So Megan and I have been feeling kinda poor lately. It might be because we're kinda poor. Megan isn't making as much this year as she did last year, and we recently had to buy a new dryer because our old one konked out on us. Immediately after replacing our dryer, we got a call from our tenants in our Mesa house, and the fridge there is dying.

Megan has a long weekend this weekend. We wanted to take a little bit of a family vacation, but we have to do it on the cheap. We thought about going to St. Johns, but we ended up coming to the valley of the sun so we could take care of our refrigerator problems.

Yesterday we made the drive from Pima to Mesa. We dropped Leah off at Shannon and BJ's so she could play with her cousins and not come appliance shopping with us.

We found a refrigerator that meets our needs and our price range without too much trouble. We bought it from this giant used appliance warehouse. They best thing about them is that they deliver and haul away the old one, not to mention the warranty, which is nice seeing as how it's a used fridge. Anyway, we have the business end of our plans taken care of and have the rest of the weekend open for pleasure.

So that's where the poor part of our vacation comes in. We're desperately trying to not spend money on this trip. We have two free passes to Castles and Coasters that we inherited on the Senior Trip we chaperoned. We'll be hitting that tonight, and we'll spend the rest of the time hanging out with family, playing board games and generally trying to not do anything that costs anything. So far we're right on par. We might pull off an entire 3 day weekend in which we only pay for gas and appliances. We just might make ends meet long enough to replenish our accounts and give ourselves some breathing room. We have been blessed with some unexpected income (all of which has come after paying our tithing) and we should be ok. It's just funny that we're on holiday and yet we're doing all within our power to have a fantastic time and not spend money.