I AM READY

After what seems like months of focusing on war, disease, and all the other ills of the world, finally it is time for a diversion. My fantasy draft is today. Of course the best thing about the draft is that it is a sure sign that we are a short time away from the return of football. For at least a few hours every week I can focus on real problems like who I am starting at quarterback and who is on bye this week.

Of course these are not the real problems of life, but you can not underestimate the value of being able to pretend they are if only for a few moments each week. This is the true value of sports, an opportunity to escape into a world where scoring a touchdown is the most pressing issue. I enjoy watching the TV for three hours straight without mention of terrorism, or decaying infrastructure, or mine collapses.

The draft is also a day to get together with old friends I don't see much anymore. To remember just for a few hours the days when we all gathered on Sundays together to eat, drink, and watch football. Before the days of mortgages, kids and careers. To tell the same old lame jokes and laugh just as hard and for just a brief moment feel like the person you were the first time it was funny.

So break out the chips, the football mags, and the player stickers because football is finally back. I am taking Stephen Jackson second in what I hope will be the BEST....DRAFT.....EVER..... I hope not to have to scream NOOOOOOO! today too often if the player I wanted disappears just before it is my turn to pick. I hope my players leave their helmets on all season, but however it goes I am just glad we are back to the time of year where there is a lot of football left to play.

BO KNOWS by the time I hit 35 in February there will be two little McCabe boys. That is why the correct answer is always "I don't care as long as they are healthy" because trust me when you have put into print that you are hoping your little boy was a girl you feel a little bit of guilt when it turns out not to be true. But once I get past that I will be looking forward to dragging my boys to ball games for the next 15-20 years.

BO KNOWS I have mentioned before my love of stand-up comedy. With that being said I must warn you not to watch the new HBO special from Bob Saget. Trust me it is an hour of your life you will wish you could get back.

GOODBYE SUMMER

The most valuable resource in the world is time. No one knows how much they are going to get and you can't make more of it. That is why you will not hear one word of complaint from me as another summer comes to an end. I will return to work on Thursday after what amounted to about ten weeks off and there are few jobs in the world where one has that luxury.

I will also never complain about the money they pay me for this job. I think anyone who works hard at their job believes they should be awarded more money, but the fact is my job is paid for by taxpayers and to think that teaching will ever get you a six figure income is not realistic. Besides money is not the only reward you get from a job. My last job paid me about as much as I made my first year teaching and I struggled most days to drag my butt out of bed by 8 to get there by 8:30. Now, I bounce out at 5 a.m. and there have been few days when I really didn't feel like it. That can not me measured in dollars.

Like anyone with a family I wish I had the options that come with great wealth. I wish all my bills were paid off. I wish my wife didn't have to work if she chose not to. I wish I could improve all the things around my little house that need improving, or just go buy a big new house. I wish I could buy my children everything I want them to have ( although my wife would claim I already do that). But how many people have all that?

What we teachers do get is time. Time to do what is important to us. Time to get a job to make some extra money. Time to work around the house. Time to read. Time to write useless blogs. Time to exercise more. Time to walk the streets pulling a little blond boy in a little red wagon. Time to ride the "firefighter" ride at the amusement park as many times as we want to. Time to snuggle up in a cool dark room with a Land Before Time video and drift off into a nap. Yes, time is a valuable resource and if we are granted enough of it a great reward awaits us, another summer. So Goodbye Summer I look forward to seeing you again.

BO KNOWS I probably upset my fellow teachers with my opinion about our compensation so I will make one point. I think the perception of teachers being underpaid has a lot to do with the amount of education required for the job. So teachers having to pay a good portion of their income to student loans probably is a problem. So what I would love to see the government do is somehow reward people who dedicate themselves to the profession by rewarding some kind of education credit. I don't know what would be exactly fair but the basic idea is you set up a number of years to be spent in the classroom and once the teacher serves # number of years they get a nice bonus of $ amount of dollars but it must be used to either pay off student loan debt or fund further education as they move up in the profession. I think this would be a useful way to improve teacher compensation. Good for teachers and good for teaching.

BO KNOWS it was nice to see Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn enter the baseball Hall of Fame. Two great players who stayed out of trouble and played their entire careers for one team. We won't see many like that in the future.

BO KNOWS I have all but given up dodging potential cancer causes as now a new report says my ink jet printer could cause cancer. Lets face it. There is nowhere to hide.

BO KNOWS our government has serious problems when a grade of "structurally deficient" makes a bridge still OK to travel on. I think at the very least we need different classifications just for morale.

BO KNOWS that Entertainment Weekly has made a list of the top 50 films that ESPN.com's Bill Simmons would say makes it "dusty" in the room. The list at http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20041669_20041686_20048641,00.html will probably bring back a lot of memories for movie fan's but what about those that didn't make the list. No Empire Strikes Back? Come on for all we knew that was the last time we were going to see Han Solo. And what about Armageddon. Bruce Willis stays on the asteroid so Ben Affleck can survive. It doesn't get much sadder than that does it.

BO KNOWS unintentionally it seems there has been a Star Wars reference in nearly all of my posts. I am a fan but I don't seek to mention it every week it just seems something related catches my attention almost every week. That being said I am going to make one more point and then no Star Wars for awhile. I need some advice. While I have promised my wife to wait at least another year to introduce my son to Star Wars. (she wants him to stay a little cartoon fan at least that long and she knows he will love it.) I am confused on how best to introduce a new generation of children to Star Wars. Do they watch them as we did starting with IV and ending with III? Or do they watch in order from I to VI or do we show them IV,V and VI and pretend the prequels do not exist? I can't decide.

BO KNOWS fantasy football is just around the corner so here are some clips to get you in the mood. See you next week.