The Mighty Ducks Part II

So a new season of coaching begins for me this week. Last fall I coached a 10 year old boys soccer team for the first time. We started the season rough, losing every game. But by the end of the season, I had done my best to teach these kids how to play together and we began spanking our opponents the last few games. I felt very much like Emilio Estevez coaching Pacey, I mean Joshua Jackson and the rest of their peewee hockey team.

This week, I received my new roster. A new team of ADHD 10 year olds. I gotta say I'm looking forward to the challenge. It's probably one of the best moments of my week when I've been having a cruddy day at work and I go to one of my kids' practices and all I see are smiling happy 10 year old kids running around on the field playing with each other. They don't care about money, bills, deadlines, or projects. They don't have girl issues, "beef", or any other kinds of drama that starts to arise in teenage years. All they have to care about in the world is playing a game. God, it's the best feeling...I wish I was a kid again. What's even funnier is when my kids team loses. I'll run into a parent the following week at practice and be like "Man, I still can't believe we barely lost at the end of last Saturday's game!" And the parent will simply reply "Look at the kids. Does it look like they even care? They've already forgotten they lost and are playing happily again." And it's true. Not a care in the world.

Needless to say, I'm still not ready for kids anytime soon. knock on wood.

March Madman

So it's that time of the year when every man mysteriously disappears for about a month. He's unusally inactive at work, and exposed to unhealthy levels of tv radiation as he follows his favorite basketball teams in the NCAA national tournament. In addition, for the average man, he's probably invested in 2-4 pools hoping to display his testosteronic dominance in hardwood prognostication.

For me, this year is especially important because my Hokies are in the tourney. I'm only in one pool this year, but my hopes are high that my picks will hold. As much as I want my hokies to win, I'm picking Georgetown to go all the way. I think they have what it takes to upset and win. That's not to say I'm not rooting for my Tech team though. I would love nothing more than to lose my pool if it means the Hokies are the national champs. But realistically, I just want them to make it to the third round, and possibly pull off an upset there.

Beyond that, I have no other goals for this tourney. I'll see you all at Bailey's for the tech game(s).

I'm not a millionaire.

So recently, the mega millions jackpot lottery reached a record high of $370 million. I generally play the lottery once every few weeks, but when the jackpot got this high, you KNOW I had to play. So I bought 10 tickets on the last night like many of my friends. My best ticket won me like $3. So yea, I'm not a millionaire.

The thing with the lottery is, I don't even need the jackpot. Anything over 5 million is more than I want/need. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to get as much free money as I can. But realistically, I do not aspire to live like a baller or hip hop mogul (as my normal spending habits and clothing style might suggest). Honestly, my whole goal in life is to continue living the way I am currently living, and not have to work. For me, this equates to making somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 a year income. So, let's assume that I live on the high end of my goal and make $100,000 a year. That's enough for me to live in the size house I currently live, have a decent reliable car, and have enough spending cash for my going out/vacations/travel/food etc. Now I figure that in order to reach my goal of not working and receiving this kind of income, I'd have to win a small lottery and put all my winnings into some kind of fund and live off the interest compounded from it. So taking a look at the kinds of funds that are out there, I figure that with a few million dollars (less than 5) I might be able to get 5% interest. So to receive $100,000 a year in interest, quick math puts me at 2 mill.

So 2 is the lucky number. 2 million dollars and I can continue to live my current lifestyle without working. So $370 million jackpot, that's nice. But I'll gladly play lotto south jackpot and hope to hit that 3-4 million jackpot. After taxes/taking that lump sum, I get my 2 mill and retire at age 25.

I'll see you guys at the 7-11 for my retirement winnings.

Ole....Ole Ole Ole!

I've been a soccer fan my whole life. I started playing soccer when I was 5 because my dad played soccer in college and thought he'd start me on it. I took a 5 year hiatus from competitive soccer when I hit college, but now that I'm a working professional, I've dedicated a lot of my free time back to my favorite sport. Last year, I started coaching a boys U10 team. It's awesome to watch 10 year old kids play. That's the age when they don't have a care in the world. School is easy, there's no teenage drama to worry about, and they sure as hell don't have any work/class/grown up stress to worry about. All they care about is playing a game. Even when they lose, they forget about it the next day and come back out and play again. I would give anything to go back to that age.

In addition to coaching, I started playing soccer again. I'm a member of several adult teams. I play with Spikey Mike's coworkers. We're not very good competitively, but they're cool peoples...and they love to drink/snowboard so that's win win for me. I also started up a team with my coworkers. They're awesome. Everyone on the team is extremely skilled. I feel weaksauce playing alongside them.

Both my teams are coed. I've found though, that's extremely hard to find enough women to play. My team with my coworkers struggles to find enough girls to play each week, and often times we have to play one down. If any of you happen to be of the estrogen bearing variety and would like to play, holla at your boy!

Other than that, snowboard season is pretty much over...so most of you should start seeing me on the weekends again.