there are two things you need to know for this story.

the first thing is that one of my best friends, bookguy, turned 50 six months before me. i have always basked extra-overtly in these six-month spans where he is older than me, with a lot of tired and sad jokes about old men and the like. these adolescent quips roll off him as easily as you'd expect with his knowledge that i am a few s...

for those wondering about the back story with the last gallery posting, it is this.

it was the day of bella's annual save the children carnival, her third. she did her recruiting. she completed her planning. she hung her flyers. on the morning of, when we pulled into the lot where the carnival happens, there were three large construction dumpsters on the blacktop of her space, consuming more than a third of the lot and blocking the spaces reserved for half of her booths. upon seeing this i turned to her. her unblinking face was frozen in disbelief at what she was seeing. then, her face began to soften. it continued to sag until tears were seconds away. i put my hand on her knee and said it would be ok. we still had lots of space and would adjust. predictably, she said space or not it was still ruined with these giant, ugly things right in the space. her sound logic continued as she quickly adding strong observations like "who wants their children playing on a construction site" or "they're taking all the shady spots".

after stopping the car, we walked to the dumpsters to see what was in them. after climbing up and peering over the edge we were greeted by this (see photo). the carnival was on the day before father's day and that cardboard box was front and center. i nudged bella with my elbow, pointed at the box and said, "you're all good. grandma nyla has your back."

i could see bella, still rather flummoxed at the luck, dismissed my comment. as we hopped down from the dumpsters i stopped her and said: i don't know if she ever believed me or not but things did go just fine.

you may not believe me either. if so, how many people have you met in your life named nyla?

on a tuesday, bella approached me to ask if she and a friend could go to a concert. this would be bella's first concert. before i could speak she pleadingly added she and her friend loved this performer who was a really great girl and the concert was at a venue in our neighborhood so we could walk there meaning she could get home super-fast. the pitch went on a while. i asked the date of the show....

last week was high on troy week. at every turn it seemed i was being lavished with a body of compliments and kudos and appreciation for a variety of things, unrelated, from a variety of folks, also unrelated. some of the people i see weekly and some of the people i hadn't heard from in many months and in one case many years. the many years person rounded the week out, coming in on saturday evening. it came as such a surprise and carried such an unexpected remark, it is the only specific item from the week i'm going to share: the "pager site" mentioned would be the third website i ever made in my life, which justifies my friend's astonishment that it could have possibly withstood any test of time. regardless, if that isn't a puff of wind up a fella's skirt, i don't know what would be. thanks j. and thanks not for having the thought, but for having the consideration and going to the effort of letting me know you had the thought. i appreciate this doesn't always happen, or doesn't happen enough in today's frenzy-filled days at least.

and then monday morning as i walked anthony to school i took in my scene. my four year was energetically charging on his bike towards school, which he is still thankfully crazily excited about. i was appreciative of the early fall weather. i had a solid night of sleep. i had a good swim the day before. i thought of the previous week and how dear and giving my world had been to me. as i studied the blue sky i thought that perhaps this life of adulation may be my new standard and i could now routinely expect such generous feedback from the folks in my life. perhaps this was the universe making good on all of the karmic rewards surely due a soul as kind and gentle and needy as mine. then at work, before i had logged the first hour at my desk, a young co-worker told me that some of my behaviors were indicative of a high-functioning autistic and she wondered, aloud to me, and believe it or not, innocently, if i'd ever been tested. before her sentence was complete, i heard the magic bubble that had been following me around for the last seven days implode with a wispy simper behind me. and that quickly the universe i thought may have so recently changed in my favor, appeared to have righted itself.

first, i'm not a huge football fan. i like it, watch it occasionally but am an inconsistent follower. moreover, i've never been a great fan of the tampa buccaneers or indianoplis colts but just in case you are less of an enthusiast than me, something totally awesome happened last night.

to set the stage you must know that it really began long ago. you see, the tampa buccaneers have always sucked ... a lot. they had a couple of good years but the law of averages mandates this.

then six years ago the owners, the glazer family, finally made a bright decision and hired a coach named tony dungy. he is a calm and resolute man and gets results through his intelligent and consistent ways. he took on the global issue of rebuilding this greatly addled buccaneers franchise and achieved remarkable results for a collection of athletes and coaches who were coming off 13 consecutive losing seasons.

four years after his hiring the owners unceremoniously fired him, feeling his results were not as expeditious as they would like. they replaced him, luckily, with an aggressive and equally competent john gruden who picked up where dungy left off and took advantage of his fortunate position.

last night, dungy's new team, the indianapolis colts, came into tampa on monday night and beat the buc's number 1 rated defense in the most spectacular comeback i've ever seen.

to quote al michael's statistician, "no team in NFL history has won a game after trailing by 21+ points with fewer than four minutes left in the fourth quarter."

until now. four friggen minutes. it was absolutely amazing.

welcome to the life of righteous retribution glazer family because you just took a huge drag from the ever-loved karma pipe.