A Weekend To Remember

(NOTE: This was written after the rehearsal dinner last Friday night)

If you are like me, and in this case I hope that you are, some of the friendships that I have go beyond a verbal description. Whether it has been the sheer amount of time working together or playing together, I find that the best friendships that I have been privileged to develop over my 36 years are the kinds of things that keep me going. Deep friendships are true sustainers of life, and I wouldn’t trade anything for them.

As I announced back in April, one of my best friends, as of this past weekend, is now married. Also in April, I promised to write about this very subject, and I really haven’t been inspired until tonight (and inspiration is 9/10 of the law, or something), so here it is.

I have known Matt since Jr. High School. From this point, the list is long:

We have sung in various choirs and ensembles, we have collected sports cards and gone to many a card show (E-Gad!), created sound effects with a mic, an effects CD, and a reverb unit on a Pentium(!) 75 for the Verdict, we have spent inordinate amounts of time on tour buses, unloading and loading said buses, we have played Spades to Arkansas and back, years of church league softball, coming up with creative ways to push the envelope as much as possible in the audiovisual world that we inhabit, the outdoor movie nights transformed themselves from Frankenstein to an audiovisual marvel, we have gone to way more Predators hockey games than I can count, we have bowled at almost every alley in the Nashville area and beyond, and we have also stayed up until 3:30 in the morning creating the farewell video of all farewell videos. We even made it to work just a few hours later.

He is also a master manipulator…of computer software; he deftly doctors his own photographs (it blows my mind), and has an astute visual brilliance that has always been an exciting thing to watch over time. As a non-professional artist, his caricatures of people and faces show off in a very good way the kind of talent he has been blessed with. At my request, Matt created an avatar for me that I could use on message boards, and also happens to grace the top left hand corner of this very blog.

He is also one of the strongest Christians that I know, he not only talks it, he also walks it. He is a faithful servant in that he does what he can with the time that he can allocate, and he has been a man that has been willing to listen when I have needed to get something heavy off my chest. He has also been willing to beat things into my head for the times that I don’t quite listen (sorry about that, I’m getting old).

I am sure that he figured that he would be married with children way before this, and I am sure that he has had more than one conversation with God about the subject (and just for the record, I’m STILL having that conversation). As always, God’s timing is perfect, even if we don’t know why things are happening the way they are happening. Matt’s patience and waiting have paid off, and he can probably look back and trace the events that led him and Shannon to the altar this past weekend.

So to my friend, ally, cohort, colleague, partner in crime, and Star Wars quote machine, I wish you, Shannon, and Brittany the very best that life has to offer in your new life together.

Fantasy Football 2K7

After having a completely dismal and totally forgettable fantasy football year last year, I decided to do some things differently this year. Step one: don't obsess over the draft this year. I picked at 12 last year, and really over thought the whole thing in retrospect. This year, I prepared by listening to the fantasy podcast on ESPN, and doing some extremely light research. I didn't even pick up a fantasy magazine until the day before the draft. Step two: don't screw up the first overall pick in the draft. Picking LDT was a no brainer, but a little part of me really wanted to buck the trend and pick Stephen Jackson.

After that, I just decided to pick the best player available at the position that I wanted at the time, virtually ignoring the bye weeks, and I am just not sure about how I feel about the team that I picked. I am definitely weak at WR, and hopefully Cutler will just take care of the football. Pretty solid at the TE spot, and I picked two K's just so that any other owner couldn't use one or the other of them. The run on team DEF's and defensive players started early (round 5), but I always save those until the end simply because I end up playing defensive roulette and the early defensive picks leave more offensive players on the board for ME.

Since this happens to be the second annual fantasy football draft post, I will also post an update at the three week mark, and hopefully be better off than I was at the time last year.