The End of School & The Beginning of Wedding Season

One of the real joys of my job is interacting with different types of people. Ages, genders, walks of life etc. I enjoy seeing kids become young men and women. We are only two days away from high school graduation and it's an exciting time at school.

The seniors, for the most part, have been done with school for the past week or so but secretly the majority of them mentally checked out a long time ago. Looking back and reflecting I remember how excited I was at this time in my life. I saw high school graduation as the closing of one chapter of my life and the beginning of a totally new one. I was going of to Tennessee where I didn't know a single person. I hoped to make some friends, have a great time, and receive an education along the way. Looking back I accomplished all three of those goals and much more. These seniors are about to embark on a totally new chapter in their lives. I for one can not help but be excited for these kids going forward.

Its Wedding Season!

I have several good friends that I made while at Tennessee embarking on new chapters of their lives together this summer and upcoming fall. This weekend I'm really looking forward to heading up to Knoxville for Ben Cunningham and Meredith Amburn's wedding. I met Ben freshman year fall semester at UT while he was a pledging SigEp which is the fraternity I ended up pledging the following semester. I'd like to think him and I have been friends ever since. Sophomore year of college Ben lived in the Clinch House along with six other friends of mine. That place became my home away from home during the weekends. I actually remember on more than one occasion bringing a few microwaveable meals and a change of clothes to spend the weekend there despite it being a 10min walk away from my apartment at the time. Ben and I ended up becoming roommates at the fraternity house my junior year. I'm pretty sure that I met Meredith through Ben that sophomore year. All I remember thinking was that Ben out punted his coverage with her and found himself a great girl. I'm very happy for both Ben and Meredith and am very happy that they thought enough of me to be involved with his wedding as an usher.

Changing gears a bit, one goal that I made for myself was to get back into decent shape. As most of you know I coach high school basketball and still enjoy playing from time to time. Rick Pitino, a pretty successful and famous coach, said once that he would never hire an assistant that was out of shape. While I'm not in brutal shape I'm certainly not what I'd call in shape and a far cry from the kind of condition that I was in during high school. After four years of college, meal plans, fast food, and being involved in a fraternity I found myself several pounds heavier and several steps slower. I'm not trying to get back to high school shape but I decided to myself that I needed to get back into what I'd call "good shape." I tried last year to get into a regimented workout routine and did for a short period of time but just couldn't stick to it. Once basketball season ended this year I made the promise to myself to start a workout regime and stick to it. A few friends of mine did CrossFit during college and really enjoyed it so I decided to give it a shot. Long story short I've started doing CrossFit and have been doing it for about 3weeks. It's kicking my ass at times but that's exactly what I'm looking for. There have been a few days, and they'll certainly be days in the future, that I haven't wanted to go. Since I'm paying for it I can't rationalize skipping so I don't. I figure I spend money on a lot of stupid/trivial things and spending money for CrossFit is an investment in myself.  It's something that I enjoy and it's something I'm going to continue.

Till next time my friends.