Two things that the typical hotel can and should do to be better than everyone else:
1. Provide real towels. I don’t understand why every hotel around offers those small, barely-fits-around-your-waist towels that no one loves. It would be so easy to offer regular-sized towels.
2. Provide real toilet paper. I also don’t get why hotels all feel that they have to offer that industrial strength stuff that’s barely softer than sandpaper. Bust out some Charmin and separate yourself from the competition.
Why don’t hotels do this stuff? Is there some industry rule that towels need to be small and toilet paper has to be rough?
It is best not to drink too deeply from a cup full of fame. It can be very intoxicating, and intoxicated people often do foolish things.
Back when I was a TV sportscaster in small town Idaho, the local kids would occasionally come up to me and ask for an autograph when I was out covering some event. I politely declined to sign anything for them, telling them that I wasn’t famous and my autograph would never be worth anything. When I told this story not long ago to a couple friends, they said I was being a jerk. I don’t think so; I was just being realistic about fame and trying not to get intoxicated by the kids’ attention.
Last October at a U2 academic conference, I was asked to sign about 10 copies of my book. My wife told me in advance that I wasn’t allowed to say “no” to those requests. She was right – it would’ve been really bad form to do that. And I have to confess that I got a bit drunk on the attention. Thankfully, that was a short trip and coming back home put me right back where I belonged!
If you don’t know what this post/series is about, see the John Wooden tag and specifically the first quote I posted.
ESPN just ran a piece on Sportscenter that brought back a flood of memories. I didn’t realize it, but today was the 20th anniversary of Hank Gathers’ death. I was in the gym at Loyola Marymount University when it happened, and was scheduled to interview him that day as part of my duties for KMBU-FM, the Pepperdine University campus radio station.
It all happened during the semifinals of the West Coast Conference basketball tournament. LMU — Gathers’ team — was playing in the first game of the day, and Pepperdine was scheduled to play in the second game. I don’t remember the opponents or anything else basketball-related about that day. Not to sound too melodramatic, but when you watch a man die in front of you, a lot of other details fade away pretty quickly.
LMU was an awesome team, and my Pepperdine Waves were pretty darn good, too. I certainly wasn’t an LMU fan, but I’m a Philadelphia native and felt some remote kinship to both Gathers and his teammate Bo Kimble, both of whom were also Philadelphians going to school in Los Angeles. I was happy to see them doing well, except when they played against the Waves.
I arrived early at the gym that day with my friend and radio partner, Kent, and we set up our radio broadcast equipment early so we could watch the first game and then be ready to start our broadcast back to campus. I don’t recall if I went directly to Gathers to ask for an interview, or if I went to LMU’s sports information director … but the agreement was that Gathers would come to our broadcast location at halftime of the Pepperdine game for an interview. His game would be over and we’d talk about that game and, presumably, a title game against Pepperdine. It was Kent’s turn to do play-by-play, which meant I’d handle the halftime interview. I was looking forward to chatting with him about Philadelphia, too.
And then pretty early on in the Lions’ game, Gathers dunked on an alley-oop and headed back to play defense. Only he staggered, stumbled, and fell to floor. His body shook a couple times and medical people rushed to his side. My memory is that he was on the floor for just a couple minutes with people working on him, and then they quickly moved him out the side door. I remember people crying loudly in the silence. I remember thinking it wasn’t a good sign that they moved him out of sight before really doing much medical work. But that’s all speculation and I have no idea what the story was at that point. I specifically remember not thinking he had died; there was no way Hank Gathers was going to die.
Kent and I were stunned, and at some point we switched into news reporter-mode. I’m guessing we probably tracked down Mike Zapolski, Pepperdine’s sports information director, and he made sure we were aware of what was going on. I recall there was some kind of news conference inside the building. They probably announced that the games had been postponed, but I don’t remember hearing that news. I don’t think they announced that Hank had died, at least not at that point.
I think Kent and I went — probably in Mike Z’s car — to the hospital where Gathers had been taken. By this time, all of the Los Angeles media were on hand waiting for the news — radio, TV, papers, everyone. I remember the doctors coming out and standing in front of a row of TV cameras. Rather than stand behind the cameras and not see anything, I moved around to the side/rear of the doctors so I could listen and record the statement for our news coverage. Since fans back at school were waiting to listen to our game broadcast, I remember Kent and I phoned in a couple live updates of what was going on.
I think, but I’m not positive, that I was the one who reported on our station that Hank had died. I remember being stunned that it happened. Beyond belief. I remember hating having to report that on the air. I remember thinking that I probably watched him die on the gym floor, but the doctors said he was pronounced dead at the hospital, not before.
The last thing I remember is going to classes the next day. All this had happened on a Sunday. Kent and I were in the same broadcasting class. Our teacher found us before the class started and took us aside. He said he was proud of us. He told us that he saw us on TV, standing near the doctors. He asked how we were and very delicately wondered if we wanted to talk to the class about what had happened. We decided that we would. And we did. I don’t remember exactly what we said, but we recapped the events of the night before. And some of our classmates asked questions about covering such a big story, and how we felt, and stuff like that.
I probably said that I felt numb. That’s what I remember. And although I don’t think about that day very much anymore … usually about once a year on March 4th when someone mentions it … I’m still kinda numbed by the whole experience. I was probably too young for it all, but really, is there ever a good age to experience all that?
We’ve been casually looking at houses for probably 4-5 years now. That’s what you do when your wife is a real estate agent who has access to the MLS 24 hours/day, and when your “starter” home (that fit your three-person family just fine, but not so much your four-person family) gets too cramped.
But in all our looking, the “right house” never showed up. Oh, we saw some amazing homes — but nothing that had the right combination of location, looks, amenities, and affordability.
Until Saturday, February 20th.
The whole family went out to the Home & Garden Expo and then, since we had nothing better to do, Cari suggested we go see a couple new homes that were just built about a half-mile west of where we live now. And thus began one of the craziest, most intense weeks of our lives.
In the end, we’re not buying the house. But I’ve been writing a diary of the whole experience, and decided to post it even though things didn’t turn out how we hoped.
Saturday, February 20
After visiting the Home & Garden Expo in Pasco, we returned home and Cari took us to see three houses that are all less than a mile from our current home. We really liked House A, and only kinda liked Houses B & C. We went back to House A to look at it again and everyone agreed it was a great house. Not perfect, but the imperfections were certainly things we could live with. Here’s a shot of the front, which doesn’t really do it justice in my mind, but that’s okay.
Sunday, February 21
After church, we drove by The House again. Swooned again. Came home and talked more about it. I don’t remember what Cari said, but she convinced me we should at least see what it would take to make the move.
We agreed that our current house would need a lot of work in order to sell at a good price. Cari made “The List” of home improvements that would be needed here. We talked about The List, made some changes, and resolved to get cracking on it the next day. We also sorted out other things to be taken care of: financing, school boundarie questions, etc.
I spent about three hours doing yardwork to make sure we’d have “curb appeal” on our side if we decide to move. Lawn cutting, trimming bushes, general cleanup.
Monday, February 22
Cari started contacting everyone on earth about home improvements to our current home: cleaning, painting, windows, new doors, etc. She made a a couple local visits to get info and names of people who could put down new carpeting. Appointments were made for the rest of the week.
She also called contacts in the mortgage industry to get information on financing. Our problem was that banks don’t like to lend to people who are self-employed for less than two years. I’ve been self-employed for only about 18 months.
Tuesday, February 23
8:00 am: Our regular house cleaner arrived to begin work. Not the regular, bi-weekly cleaning, but a special job focusing on our cabinets (kitchen and bathrooom) and the shower in the master bath, which had years of hard water stains. She brought an assistant. They worked until almost noon, but didn’t finish.
2:00 pm: Perfection Glass showed up to measure and look at our front door and our sliding glass door to the back yard. We talked about options for replacing both.
4:00 pm: Envision Construction arrived to measure the house so they can put together an estimate for replacing all our carpets (which are 16 years old) and the vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms (also 16 years old).
Having no luck with mortgage Plan A, Cari moved on to Plan B, a local credit union. Didn’t seem promising, but at least the door wasn’t shut on our self-employed faces. She contacted our accountant to let him know what’s going on and ask if he can expedite our tax returns because the bank needs our current income figures.
Cari also went shopping at Home Depot and spent about $500 on new kitchen fixtures (faucet, cabinet knobs, etc.), new lighting for several rooms, and new fixtures (showerheads, spouts, faucets) for both bathrooms.
While all this was going on, I followed the loan officer’s instructions and filled out their online mortgage application in the afternoon. I followed up with an email explaining my work situation, and that I’ve actually had my own clients — outside of my day job with previous companies — for a full two years. She called at about 5 pm for a quick, pleasant call. Unfortunately, she seemed to be saying that we’ll need to not claim any deductions on our tax return in order to qualify for a loan. Ugh.
Envision emailed their estimate on carpeting/flooring work pretty late: about $1,500, not including the actual carpet and flooring.
Wednesday, February 24
8:45 am: The guys from CleanCraft arrived. They’re a contractor/handyman service. They spent about three hours installing the new lights and shower fixtures. Didn’t finish the faucets, so have to come back tomorrow.
11:00 am: Guy named Gerald showed up to measure the house interior so he can give us a quote on painting. In our 11+ years, we’ve never done any interior painting, so this must be the original paint applied 16 years ago. Gerald calls back a couple hours later with an estimate of about $2,000. Only thing is … he’s a former contractor who’s no longer licensed and insured.
The loan officer, meanwhile, is still experimenting with numbers. She knows we can’t NOT claim any tax deductions. We spoke again around Noon to get a few questions answered.
Cari went back to Home Depot for some more odds and ends.
Got our estimate from Perfection Glass on the doors: about $2,800 total for both, much more than we want to spend. Plus they’re booked into April, and we’d need something sooner.
3:00 pm: Service guy from Garrison’s arrives to look at the oven we bought last year. One of the burner knobs is jammed. He used cardboard to make a temporary fix and said he’ll have to make some calls to find out why this one knob has a problem. (They’ve been out several times before for this same reason.)
In the late afternoon, we got great news from the lender: We may be able to qualify even with our normal deductions. We agreed to wait to see the final tax return. Our accountant said he should have it done by the end of the week.
Thursday, February 25
9:00 am: Guys from CleanCraft return to finish the work started yesterday. Replacing faucets is apprently much more involved than lighting. They’re here until about Noon. I spent the next hour talking with them about more work we’d like done.
4:00 pm: Window cleaning service arrived to do the exterior windows, which have years of hard water (from sprinklers) building up on them, not to mention general winter dirt.
I checked the school district’s web site and confirmed what Cari had said earlier in the week: By moving, we’ll be pulling Tara into a different elementary school zone. Even though we’d only be moving about a half-mile, and even though the current school would be a mile from the new house, she’d be zoned to attend a school that’s more than three miles away. I emailed a district official to ask how we go about keeping her in the current school if we move.
Friday, February 26
No visits scheduled today, so we played a waiting game on our accountant. We have estimates for painting and carpet/floor upgrades, but can’t commit to spending thousands on that stuff until we know what our tax hit will be. Unfortunately, our accountant told Cari this morning that he won’t have anything done until sometime over the weekend.
In the afternoon, we learned that someone else was interested in The House, so the mad dash was on. We decided to write an offer now even without knowing the financial side of things, but the offer will have a few contingencies in there that let us back out next week if we get bad news.
Within an hour of submitting the offer, the builder made us a counter-offer. They changed the closing date — moved it up a couple weeks from what we want, which will give us almost no time to sell our house. We have until Sunday night to reply to the counter-offer, so hopefully we’ll hear from our accountant by then.
Saturday, February 27
11:01 am: Our accountant called with preliminary tax return numbers. Unfortunately, we owe more in taxes than we hoped to. It’s a nice problem to have — we both had a good year in terms of income, but now it’s time to pay the piper. Even though we pre-paid a lot of taxes during the year, we still owe enough that the deal is dead. Cari emailed the seller’s agent. I contacted the people who were waiting to hear if we needed the house painted.
Kinda sad. We made a fundamental home-buying mistake: We fell in love with a house before we knew our full financial situation. We got emotionally attached to it. And now we’re letting it go.
We’ll learn and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
If we magnified blessings as much as we magnify disappointments, we would all be much happier.
Tomorrow on this blog, I’m going to post about a very intense and recent disappointment we’ve faced at Casa McGee. So this quote is especially relevant tonight. My mom’s most oft-repeated quote to me as a child was, “Count your blessings.” That’s what I’m doing. Life’s too short and too good to dwell on negatives and disappointments.
If you don’t know what this post/series is about, see the John Wooden tag and specifically the first quote I posted.
Is it okay to brag for a little bit? Hope so. I’ve been waiting to share some good news — and a tip — about the diet I’ve been on, and I decided I’d post something when my weight loss reached 20 pounds. Well, I woke up this morning and skipped right past that to 21 pounds. Wooo-hoooo!
It all started when I woke up on January 6th and weighed more than I ever have in my life. I’d always told myself I’d get in shape and lose weight someday when I had more time to exercise, but this was a tipping point. Figured I had to make time to exercise, and it was now or never.
My plan: No fancy diets, just eating right and getting more exercise. I mentioned last month that a new fitness club was opening up less than a mile away, so everything was perfect.
I have to say that I had a little extra help in the form of an awesome iPhone app called Lose It! This is a screenshot of the home page, but there’s so much more going on.
With Lose It, I set my weight loss goal at the start: 26 pounds over six months. Seemed attainable and not risky. Lose It then told me how many calories I could eat each day and still lose that weight — it gave me a food target, which was a huge help.
Every morning (or as often as I want), I input my daily weight and it charts how I’m doing. After every meal, I also input what I ate and it tells me how many calories I ate and how many I have left. It has a lot of foods in its database, but I also have to “create new food”(s) when I eat something that’s not in there, and that’s easy to do (and kinda fun, I dare say).
When I exercise, it tells me how many calories I burned and those get subtracted from what I ate — in other words, credited toward my daily calorie allowance. It has all kinds of exercises in its system, all the basics that I do when I workout at the gym, and it even has stuff like yard work, hedge clipping, lawn mowing, etc.
This app has been a huge help. Thank you, Lose it!
I haven’t quite reached my goal — five more pounds to lose for that. When I get there, I’ll actually be at the same weight that’s listed on my driver’s license.
So, enough bragging about weight loss. Just wanted to share and, in case anyone out there in Readerville is also trying to or thinking about losing weight, offer some advice and info about the Lose It app. I think you’ll love it.
I don’t know the world record is for Longest Paper String Attached to a Hershey’s Kiss (or even if such a record exists), but I’m pretty certain this one is the winner:
We had a kiss in our bag that had a 20-inch paper string attached to it! I conveniently placed a normal kiss, with the paper string barely sticking out of the foil wrapper, next to it for comparison.
Crazy, I’m telling you. I should get the Consumerist on this.
When you see a successful individual, a champion, a “winner,” you can be very sure that you are looking at an individual who pays great attention to the perfection of minor details.
If you don’t know what this post/series is about, see the John Wooden tag and specifically the first quote I posted.
I’ve been working out pretty consistently for the past six weeks or so. And by that, I mean I’m going to the gym about 4-5 times per week. My workout usually consists of a little weightlifting, some situps, and I’m now up to 45 minutes on the treadmill. That’s where the music comes in.
I’ve got a workout playlist on my iPod with 24 songs. Here are the best workout songs I’ve found so far:
“Chocolate” by Snow Patrol
Such an ironic title for a workout song, but this one has the perfect drum beat and rhythm. I’ll let me treadmill time go a little long when this song comes on at the end. It’s too perfect. Unquestionably, the greatest workout song ever.
Another one that’s great because, depending on how fast you’re walking, each step hits at the same time as each drum beat. There are some slow parts in this song, so it’s pretty good at the beginning when I’m just starting the treadmill session.
Great, short song from an Irish band you’ve never heard of. I’ve never seen this video until just now when I went searching on YouTube (since LaLa doesn’t have it).
“Hysteria” by Muse
Perfect song for the middle of a long treadmill session. “Uprising” is another great Muse workout song, but I like this one better.
Remember this song from the Dodge TV commercials a couple years ago? It was good then, but even better for a workout. Again with the consistent drumbeat that you can walk to super easily.
Another one I couldn’t find on LaLa, so here’s the video. If everyone listed to this song first thing every morning, there’d be no need for coffee runs. Wait ’til the drums kick in at the 15-second mark, and then you’re off.
“Bad” by U2
You knew there’d be U2 somewhere on my workout playlist, didn’t you? I’m still searching for good U2 songs to include, but the live version of “Bad” is winning so far. It’s kinda slow in the beginning, but builds up over the second half of the song. It’s good at the beginning of a walk, and also at the end for winding down.
Welcome to my home away from home on the Interwebz. When I'm not here, you might find me on Twitter (@mattmcgee), Flickr, StumbleUpon, or maybe even Yahoo! Answers. I'm a big sports and music fan. I watch LOST religiously. I love big, juicy cheeseburgers, and ice cream. With M&Ms. The ice cream that is, not the cheeseburgers.
ESPN just ran a piece on Sportscenter that brought back a flood of memories. I didn’t realize it, but today was the 20th anniversary of Hank Gathers’ death. I was in the gym at Loyola Marymount University when it happened, and was scheduled to interview him that day as part of my duties for KMBU-FM, the Pepperdine University campus radio station.
I have to say that I had a little extra help in the form of an 
