Every week, we try to take our girls to the local public library. We have a really great system here in our county and since we pay taxes for it, we should use it. I hear people complain about the expense on their tax bill, but shame on you if you never use it. You also pay for public schools and a myriad of other things you probably don’t realize. Regardless of if you use any of these things or not, its a fact of life. It’s an expense that is part of the price of the community you choose to call home. Remember that, you choose to live there. The only thing you should be complaining about is the quality of the services you pay for.

Sorry about that little rant, so on with my point.

The girls absolutely LOVE going and I love taking them. Now that my 5yo can read, she is obsessed with doing just that. She always makes sure to get a good mixture of fiction and non-fiction books too. If you told her she could only have 2 books, she would get one of each. The 4yo cannot read yet, but is really trying hard to keep up with her older sibling and is doing well. I love to see her get picture books as well though because she tells fabulous stories just based on the pictures.

Anyway, I love to go too but for different reasons. See, we have a great system where I live. Very up to date materials from books, to movies and Cd’s. I usually get a handful or two of Cd’s to “try them out” and expand my horizons. This wees haul is what inspired this post though. I got perhaps the most eclectic mix of music I’ve ever borrowed. See, I don’t always go for new titles. I like to find old albums I probably had on cassette back in the day along with stuff I couldn’t buy as a kid, weren’t born yet when it was made, or just liked one song and want to hear the rest without investing $10-$15 for.

As you may know, I LOVE music. I have such passion for it and I listen to it almost constantly. Even in my daily activities, simple things remind me of songs all over the spectrum and I’m singing in my head. I have certain things I listen to before I play hockey, before I go to bed, and while I work all day. I don’t just hear music, I listen to it. I study the lyrics and emotion of the singer in each track. I love passionate music. I don’t mean love songs, I mean I can hear, see, and feel the passion behind the track. Mostly though, I love re-discovering old songs I’ve heard for years that suddenly become a favorite because something in my life can now be related to it. That’s the most fun about having a large library I listen to constantly on shuffle.

So, here is my list of borrowed Cd’s. I think it shows the variety of things I like. What do you think?

1. Jim Croce – Photographs & Memories – His greatest hits
   Track after track of classic rock genius. I promise there’s at least one on this alum you like
2. Monster Ballads
   How did that get in there? “They taught us how to rock, then they taught us how to love” said the infomercial. Hehe, I really got into the hair metal bands and this is a good mix tape of the ballads. I never had the hair, but don’t deny it, you like some of this stuff too. At least one.
3. Pavarotti’s Greatest Hits
   Yeah, this dude can sing like no one else. I don’t have much opera so I may as well have some of the best by the best. I love Nessun dorma! for its passion. Pure passion.
4. Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst
   New acoustic rock by a fairly unknown. This is a solo effort and I really liked his group stuff with Bright Eyes. Look up “First Day of My Life” as a good starting point. It was mine with Conor.
5. Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill
   I had the tape. This album is still awesome. Somehow the wife didn’t know it. I hadn’t heard it in years, yet still knew most of the lyrics to Paul Revere. Genius early hip hop by a brilliant trio with a legend in the making producer Rick Rubin. I usually listen to anything he produces, regardless of the genre.
6. George Michael – Faith
   Although some of this record dates itself to the 80′s pop of my junior high days, the first 4 tracks are timeless classics. Faith, Father Figure, I Want Your Sex, One More Try. You know you have memories to these.
7. Regina Spector – Far
   I love her voice, I love her arrangements, I love her sound. She’s just different in the right kind of way.
8. Rush – The Spirit of Radio (Greatest Hits 1974 – 1987)
   I still love these tracks, the best the band did. I know you probably had a boyfriend who was really into them or maybe you were that boyfriend. Just a great collection of tracks from their early works which in my opinion were they’re best. Still one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen.
9. Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane – The complete 1957 Riverside Recordings
   When it comes to the improvisational genre of Jazz, these two are legends. Smooth and sultry at its finest.

So there you go. My typical variety of sounds and rhythms that fill my ears every day. Thanks if you made it this far into my list. As a bonus, I will give you my favorite little past time activity to do in a library. Find the non-fiction section of your public library, you know the area with those crazy numbers that organize the mess. Anyway, pick an aisle or two at random and just walk down them paying close attention to all that’s there. I kind of find it amazing about all the information out there about everything you probably didn’t think of. If you’re feeling adventurous, grab something in a subject that made you stop and look longer than usual and check it out. You’ll certainly learn something you didn’t know about the world around you. Enjoy.

Ahhhh, once again I have a hockey team to play on. At least for the remainder of this season which will be about 9 more games including playoffs, I will be on the ice every Thursday night. I am very happy about that to say the least.

Now if I can get rid of this sore throat funk, on again off again small fever, overall feeling of exhaustion, that would be great. It’s not strep but the doc gave me an antibiotic anyway just to nip anything in the bud as he put it. I thought it might be from all the yard work I did Sunday, but it got worse and lingers annoyingly.

One week from tonight I will be at the house of blues watching Ben Folds playing his piano in person. Ummm, I think we still need a babysitter. Any takers? The sister in law moved away today so our normal go to person is now gone. Only 100 miles away, but a bit far to go for a simple night out.

Really looking forward to our big road trip in 2 weeks. Gonna meet my niece, gonna meet some of my Internet friends, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get a round of golf in with the father in law. More than anything, I desperately need the separation from my work for a week. Desperately.

I will be at BlogHer this year too. All I need is my airline ticket, and final approval for my time off and that will be that. I don’t have a pass to the conference, but I’m not really going for that. I’m going to meet some friends in real life, have a great time partying with said friends, and hanging out in my favorite city on Earth. After the show I’ll hang around for a few days and visit my family and old friends on the Island as well as take in a Mets game. So if you’re going, make sure we find each other. If you read my blog, I want to meet you.

Last weekend we went to the festival of chocolate, this weekend we’re going to the strawberry festival. My favorite fruit, yum.

Cool. Talk soon.

Growing up as a kid my lifelong dream was to be a professional athlete. I probably hoped to play for the Mets baseball team AND the Islanders hockey team. I can’t say which I would have loved more, because I truly wanted both. I never played hockey as a kid and now that I am an adult I understand the expensive reasons why. I did play baseball up until the last year I possibly could without making a school team.

That was the first time I woke up. I remember that final tryout during my freshman year of high school, I remember not doing well and when I didn’t see my name on the callback sheet, I knew I’d never look at a list like that again. I still played softball and played extremely well when I did for a bunch of years after that. Not to brag, but you want me on your team. I don’t hit for power, I hit for average, I’m fast, and I take great pride in my infield skills. I’ve even on occasion gone to the batting cages and knocked the hell out of pitches in the 90+ max speed cage. From a live overhand pitcher though, not since I was 14. Needless to say, the Mets haven’t called.

One down, one more lingered.

Even though I didn’t start playing hockey in anything organized, I still had the dream, although the odds were quite honestly non-existent. I was young and dumb. I lived in an area that was about 3 hours from the nearest ice rink. Maybe, I don’t really know. Regardless, once I moved down to my current home I got on to the college roller hockey team. I don’t really remember how, but I became the goalie for the team and I just did it. I did pretty good too, we won one regional championship and runner up the next year. We made two trips to nationals and fared less than well to say the least, but it was a great experience.

I love the pressure of being a goalie. Games are won and lost on my shoulders more than any other player on the bench. I’ve pulled myself to better the team when I didn’t have it. I’ve won games, and even league championships by making the final save in a shootout to win. I love the pressure and no one is harder on myself than myself when I make a mistake. I always accept my mistakes. The only thing missing from my hockey career is a coach. I’ve never for a day had a coach. I learned the position from watching the pros on TV very carefully and asked players who beat me what they saw when they scored.

I remember sitting in that locker room at nationals after we were eliminated the last time. I remember looking around knowing that would be the last time I wore my school uniform and maybe last chance I’d get “noticed” by any teams. I know, stupid right?

After that I made the switch to ice and after about a year of rec league play, things started looking up. It turned out my local town was getting a new minor league team. On a whim, I made contact with the newly named head coach and he liked my email so much, he asked me to come in for a meeting. At that meeting I told him where I’d played, my collegiate story and what not when the unthinkable happened. He signed me to a tryout agreement. There I was, sitting in a little office with a professional hockey team head coach and signing my name to an actual tryout contract.

It was the bottom of the barrel in terms of minor league hockey, but my name was in a league office and I was told when to show up for the first days of scrimmages. For 3 days I had a practice jersey to wear and for 3 days I was the first and last body on the ice. First one on due to my level of excitement, last one off because I couldn’t move as fast as the others. For 3 days, a briefly NHL defender now on this team as an assistant player coach stood at the blue line blasting shots in somewhat frustration, and completely perplexed by my glove hand skills. Seriously. I have a great glove. Unfortunately, my glove hand only kept me there for 3 days before some higher tiered keepers got handed down from their training camps. For 3 days I played well at times, but certainly not well enough even for a minor league that pays less than some fast food manager jobs.

Not that pay mattered, but when you have a real professional logo on your chest, even in a tryout, you think about it.

There it was, two of two. I still play when I can but over time it sank in that my childhood athlete dreams would never be realized.

Now I could sit here and blame everything else for this fact of life. I didn’t have this or that, my parents moved away from New York, blah blah blah. I will not do that. I can not do that. My belief in fate override all of those things. Everything happens for a reason and its impossible to know what one step in a slightly different direction would have changed. Perhaps I would not have the amazingly beautiful babies I have now. I will not force my unrealized dreams on them. It’s not fair to their own interests to do that. However, anything they do try and pursue will get my full support. From them, I will not accept anything less than full effort either.

Coming to terms with not realizing your childhood dreams is tough for me. Giving up on anything is not something I’m very good at. I imagine its tough for anyone to accept such a truth but I also know it happens to most everyone. Life’s circumstances always change our paths and you can either accept these changes and give your best efforts, or be bitter at the world you’ll never understand.

I choose to give my best effort in sport, in employment, as a parent, and as a husband. What was your dream as a child and what was it like when you realized you achieved it or, for whatever reason, were forced to adjust your goals?