What a week. Been busy the past several days since my psychological profile was taken. I was totally going to write a post several of the last few days but I just couldn’t find my voice.

Last week I did get to live up to the namesake of this blog and I suited up to play goalie for the first time in 6 months. Strangely enough everything felt great early on but the rust came out and the other team ate it up in a frenzy. It didn’t help that my team in front of me also played a bit sluggish that night. Regardless, I got to inhale the scent of the ice and it was sweeter than I could remember. I need to get on a team again and play regularly. It certainly isn’t as harmful as the rec soccer I’ve been playing in. Just last night my team entered our playoff bracket to end our season. Win and you play again, lose and see you in January. So we played one of the most physical games I’ve ever played in. I scored our only goal in regulation and watched on the sideline with a re-aggravated bruise on my heel as they netted the equalizer. Overtime came and went and we decided the match on penalty kicks where I netted my shot and watched my teammate hammer in the final shot and we were victorious. All it cost me was a re-injured heel, a sore top of same foot that was stepped on, a nasty bruise on my shin where I was kicked, some road rash on my belly from a rough take out during a run, and a nice imprint of a ball on my arm from a blasted shot resulting in a corner kick. Oh yeah, we had 3 minutes until our next game against a well rested team without playing in a previous game started. We were cooked before it started and we lost. No single hockey game has ever caused this many injuries, although I play goalie and I am much more protected on the ice.

All that blabber seems a bit selfish though with all the other events of late. We have a holiday fast approaching for giving thanks. I think all of you who read my blog know about a friend to my family and her condition. I have never personally met Anissa myself and only had a few back and forths on twitter, but she has impacted my world. She is a good friend to my wife and a fabulous writer and what happened to her has touched me deeply. I worry and pray for her well being and yet, we’ve never even spoken to one another. It was a week ago today she suffered her second stroke in 4 years and quite frankly, with all her family has been through, is not fair. After nursing her daughter through a battle with cancer, they have spent more than enough time in a doctor’s office.

I believe her resolve and determination will pull her through this ordeal. The will and love in her family will provide the strength she needs. The outpouring of support from the online community has been amazing to witness. More amazing than that is the strength I have been able to read from Anissa’s husband. Reading his updates on the situation are so full of love, life, and courage that I am completely in awe. I could only hope I would be half the man he is in a situation like that.

Read about how you can help on the Anissa created project Aiming Low here.

Read updates on Anissa from her husband as he posts them, along with some of the family history here.

In light of this tragedy in the Mayhew family, there is some good that has come from it in mine. Perhaps it’s a ripple effect and perhaps you have felt it too. Seeing and reading about what happened has caused my wife and I to become a little bit closer. Perhaps the suddenness of what happened triggered the effect but there is certainly a change between us. A change for the better in my opinion, a change that has brought out more love for each other. Seeing just how quickly and strongly everything can change in a dime, we have subconsciously decided not to take every moment together for granted.

I have to admit I have struggled a bit with this realization in our change. I struggle because I very deeply feel for the Mayhew’s. I have fought off emotions as I read the updates from Peter and I wholeheartedly want everything to be well for them. Yet at the same time I am glad to see the positive changes that have taken place in my own household. There is a new and different closeness in my own marriage but I feel guilty because it was born from events I would not ever wish on anyone. I have seen and have first hand experience with what can happen from strokes. My aunt suffered a major stroke 25 years ago, roughly, and was never the same. I hope and I pray that Anissa comes through this with flying colors. I someday long to give her a hug and thank her for bringing my family closer together and tell her I am happy to see her in good health and spirits. She will pull through. I believe it.

So on Thursday if you gather for Thanksgiving and happen to speak a prayer for the meal you about to receive, include the Mayhew family in your prayer and squeeze the loved ones around just a tad tighter than usual. Being able to do so is why we give thanks in the first place.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who may read this.

The calendar event had been set for a couple weeks and when I did I cringed. Management training with a description that read “..an interesting, educating, and fun afternoon.” Immediately I saw those silly team building exercises where you fall back into arms and what not. Anyway, what I got was not much like that at all. What we really got was a psychological profiling tool that showed us what kind of personalities we all had and then some simple group exercises to stress that point. It was interesting to say the least and I learned more about my co-workers than myself but it was still interesting. Lucky for us, the gentleman running the seminar from our training department was engaging and likable. Thank God it wasn’t stuffy or silly or else I may have run screaming at the first break. Which is a good thing because I think there will be more of these in the future.

I wonder if you have ever done something like this before. As to not draw too much attention via links, you can google my score and find out pretty quickly what it was. After you do, I’m curious if you have ever done that and what was your score?

I am an INFJ and I share this score with, I shit you not, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. I think that’s kinda cool.

Did you have or still have a collection? We all do actually. Whether it be small or large or isolated or vast, we all collect something. For some reasons there are stereotypes or ridicule directed at those who collect certain things and that is unfair. We all have a collection of something. Even if you don’t respect or fully realize it yet, look around your house, find a theme or pattern and there’s your collection. If not, although I’m sure you do, you need more love in your life.

When I was a kid I collected baseball cards. Until the last year or two, it was never about the value of certain cards, it was about having little pieces of info about my favorite team and players. Before the internet, these cards were the source of information about players if you didn’t get to a game and purchase a media guide. So I would actually read them. I loved the stats and little stories on the back and every player had one card each year, 2 if they were all stars. There were four companies and nothing all too special except the style of the borders. I still have mine, although you won’t find any past the mid-90′s in my collection. The industry made it all about perceived value and money and creating so many dame special rare insert mini sets it became impossible to collect specific things. $5+ for a pack of 4 cards due to limited quantities and rare possible “insert” cards took the fun out of it. Once it became about the “investment” I stopped completely. Still, I have most of them still and there are times I miss the excitement of picking out a few packs for a few bucks and hoping my favorite players were inside.

Comic books are probably the most popular kind of collection. They also come with the largest stereotype of all of them. I never got into them although I enjoyed reading some of them from time to time. I guess I didn’t live close enough to a good source and I was consumed with the sports cards and all those stats. I’ve never met a comic book collector I didn’t like. Something bout the passion for story lines that have passed through a couple generations that I admire. I feel like it’s something I could pick up or start at any time and enjoy it. Even share it with my kids because they appeal to everyone and anyone. Disney didn’t buy Marvel to gain a more “masculine” customer base. Besides, reading is reading and that’s a good thing. Right?

I get this trait from my parents. My Dad collected records as a kid, movies as an adult, and eventually started collecting baseball cards right along with me. It was a bonding thing looking back and that was pretty cool. My Dad really had no interest in sports expect big games and that was only limited to baseball and hockey games. He and I shared a bond with music, movies, and our bizarre sense of humor. My mom though, she’s ig into collecting things. She has a wonderful depression glass collection, a few plates, but her current passion is ornaments. Hallmark ornaments to be exact. She starts buying them in July but gets the new catalog in June and is known by name in the store. We often tease her they’ll end up on eBay someday but I can assure you not all of them will. Seriously, she has so many that she needs to anchor her tree to the wall or the weight will pull it over. They look good though and I admire her for this collection because she does it with passion. She doesn’t do it because they’re an “investment” rather because she enjoys them and takes pride in arranging them every year. I admire that.

My wife is not much of a collector so she thinks. She might think I’d say she collects bags or shoes, but she doesn’t. What she collects is a sign of the times, she collects TV shows. Not on DVD or anything, she hardly watches anything on a DVD unless I put it on. She collects hers on her DVR. Again though, I admire the passion to which she has her recording list optimized and tuned for the favorites in her collection and although she never watches an episode twice, the DVR is never not full. Shows that get canceled get replaced with new shows and there is always a constant stream of things to watch. None of these shows are soap operas either, all sitcoms, dramas, drama-dies, comedies, and realities. As much as I tease her for this new kind of collection, I admire her passion for it.

These days I don’t really collect much other than music and I guess movies looking around. I wouldn’t say games because I cycle them out after time by trading them in for credit towards new ones, but music brings me the most passion and in return I am passionate for it. I would enjoy collecting art I think but I can’t afford it nor do I have the wall space to properly display it. So tell me, what do you collect? What brings you enough joy that you’ve developed a passion to collect it? Doesn’t matter what it is, I will admire you for it. Collections are formed out of love and are often nurtured and continued by love to the beholder. It’s not about the material things as things, but the emotions that get stirred as you explore the subject of your desire. It’s that passion and emotion that I admire in any collection.