About three months ago, Rita and I decided not to throw Julia a birthday party. We figured that it wasn’t worth spending a whopping $200 to have it at a pizza parlor. So we focused on buying her presents and didn’t put much effort into it. But then wouldn’t you know, Chey, Julia’s biological father, suggested having a pizza over at his place with his new wife. So again, Rita and I didn’t worry too much about the details and bought some more presents.

Then at the last minute, we learned Chey had to move that weekend, if there would be a party we would be throwing it. We racked our brains to think of a good idea…and at last we thought…why not have a pool party? Sure, there might be snow-cover elsewhere but not in Cougar Country.  Our complex’s pool had plenty of space, and we found a place that was doing a $5 promotion for large pizzas. Rita also made sure to invite some of her friends with kids as well as Julia’s classmates.

We were hoping enough people would show to not make it lame…but before we know…it blew up. First there were 20, then 30, then 40 kids RSVP’d. We had to buy some candy for party favors at Costco, as well as the cake. But it was all under control, that is, until I told Rita.

“What Justin’s flag football championship starts at the same time as the party?!?”

“No, I said…it’s a half hour before.”

Rita was none too happy that she had to set up the party without me, but luckily our friend Libby was available to help out. That left me with the other task….make sure Justin made it to the game on time.

And what a game it was. The flag football league doesn’t keep track of statistics officially. But at the end of the regular season, teams are assigned “match up” games against the competition. Justin’s school had been undefeated, earning them a slot in the top bowl game. Parents were psyched, the kids were excited, and the sunshine abundant.

Still, the other team despite having lost once (but never playing Justin’s school) had its fundamentals down. It’s blocking was crisp; it’s routing running precise. Runners could hit the lane and go. But these were still fourth and fifth graders.

Justin’s teammate (and wide receiver extraordinaire) Juan returned the opening kick off into the red zone. But penalties cost the Cardinals a first down, and opened up the Ponies to break a crushing run into the end zone. It would stay 7-0 until the fourth quarter, when heroics got Justin’s team to pay dirt. The other teams pursued a touchdown, but was stopped on a fourth down in the red zone.

The game was almost over, and all the Cardinals had to do was move the ball. But remember how I mentioned how good the Ponies were at blocking…well….that wasn’t the case for Justin’s teammates. The Ponies managed to get to Josh, the Cardinal QB many times and smothered Juan. That left Justin’s team to punt and enter the “seven plays”.

When time expires, there are seven untimed downs. Upon completion the game enters a college football style overtime period. The first untimed down added some yard, but things still looked good for Cardinals. But the second snap saw the same Pony player pivot from left to right and break a run worthy of Walter Payton. We all sat in stunned silence.

But there was still a chance. If the Cardinals scored in less than four plays, they could still win. The Ponies had missed the extra point to make it 13-7. But on the first play from scrimmage, Josh the QB did the unthinkable and threw it right to the other team. The referee called the game right then and there. Justin’s team burst out crying. They couldn’t believe it. A perfect season, until now.

Suddenly parents began to sound circumspect.

“Maybe we put too much pressure on them,” one of the moms said.

Justin was still sobbing as we got back to the car. I asked him if he liked milkshakes and he said yes. So we made tracks for home, via the local McDonald’s. On the way, I told him that everyone loses and that he had a choice to make. He could either let the bad feelings and sadness overwhelm and paralyze him. Or he could use the loss to motivate him for next season.

Of course, being nine years old, my words sort of flowed over him. It knew it would take time for him to understand what I said.

But perhaps the most telling thing was that no one mentioned the obvious. The Ponies and Cardinals both feed into the same high school. With the talent I saw on Saturday, the future looks bright.

We made it back in time to see Julia cut her cake and open presents. It suddenly occurred to Rita and I that Julia probably received a greater dollar amount in presents than we actually spent at the party. Rita was glad that she missed the heartbreak defeat for the Cardinals. But I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

Crushing defeats are the stuff of legend, and are how champions are made. And Justin, wouldn’t you know, is already talking about you guessed it… next season.

Chances are, you have already heard about the epic dustup this week at UCLA. The usually sedate UC Regents meeting was punctuated by protests, arrests, and lots of noise. Chances also are that you have heard a myriad of justifications for both sides…ranging from the need to keep education affordable to the fact that California is “broke”.

I could regurgitate a fairly technical solution for the University of California system that will sound like stereo instructions. As passionate as people are about fees…no one really pays attention once you start talking about defined benefit contributions and capital renewal formulae.

Instead I’m going to say something much different. I'm going to tell you, as a matter of first hand experience that the fee increases are the product of an inept and misguided student government over the last 20 years. Not because these student governments were liberal (or conservative), not because they were extremist, and not even because they were students. Nope, it’s because UCLA’s best and brightest usually were not interested in politics. (Sound familiar at all?)

As a result, those that were politically active used resources to focus on things like outreach for high school in underrepresented minority groups. Or they might stage a protest and claim that Prop 209 (which outlawed affirmative action in California) should be repealed. And while this was mildly entertaining, I thought it was a waste. I mean, what’s the point of having student advocates if they can’t be um….effective….at getting what they want?

Sadly, the “diversity agenda” at UCLA also proved divisive to most white and Asian students who also didn’t want to associate with the “crazies” in student government. And as a result, the protests this week are in vain. Sure it’s good to see students motivated and galvanized into action, to see them not spending countless hours playing Starcraft over UCLA’s T3 LAN connection while sipping Frappucinos. But it’s equally sad to see them only motivated when in fact the die is already cast.

The fee increases in question will do more to devastate the UC’s minority population than Ward Connerly and Prop 209 ever could. The Regents and the UC system know full well that the University’s Asian and white bourgeoisie would pay the increased cost with nary a whimper. They know that no matter how big and scary the protests seem on TV, it’s a small fraction of the actual student population.

And that’s a shame, largely because it’s these very students who will benefit the most from the increase. Why you ask? Because as the door shuts on California’s egalitarian system of higher education, so will its deep reservoir of human capital evaporate.   The protesters need not worry too much, because if they can find a way to finish, there will be precious little competition for the state’s best jobs and opportunities in the future. It is those that will come after that shall suffer the most and no one seems eager to admit that.

For after them, the deluge. And if they resist, let them eat cake….

Just minutes after Friday the 13th began, the freakiness was already underway. Julia had been feeling sick to her stomach and decided to hurl. I asked how she felt, and before long it appeared she might have the season’s newest fad: swine flu. I began to feel a little under the weather that day at work…but for the time being I thought Rita, Justin, and I might escape getting sick. Rita took Julia to the urgent care center and she tested positive for H1N1. So we hunkered down on Friday night and decided to plan. Justin’s last game of the season was the next day, I told Rita that I would stay home with Julia and let the two of them go instead.

But then, after watching Julia prostrate on the couch all day Friday with a mixing bowl by her side…she suddenly rebounded like nothing had happened. So we all went to the game. I was still careful to disinfect stuff until her fever had long subsided. I felt a little crappy as the weekend rolled on…but I didn’t even have a fever.

Come Monday morning, I realized that my sore throat wasn’t going away or because I was thirsty. I scheduled an afternoon appointment with my doctor. Julia went back to school and we thought that it was over.

Rita stopped to eat lunch and we received a call from her doctor at urgent care about the lab test results. There was no swine flu, only a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae. We got a call from the school nurse who decided Julia should be sent home from school and that we should follow up with the urgent care doctor. Although it’s possible to get serious complications from H. influenza, the doctor didn’t think we were sick even though we felt a little dumpy. He did prescribe antibiotics for Julia. This diagnosed explained a lot but not everything. First, 98% of the patients who test positive for H1N1 on the rapid test will be confirmed by the lab. Yet Julia managed to be in that 2%.

My doctor came to a slightly different conclusion. He saw nothing to get excited about symptom wise but did prescribe antibiotics for me. He suspected that I could have the swine flu but that I would be experiencing more body aches. He suggested Julia continue taking Tamiflu until it was gone.

We then went on to the pharmacy. It was crowded and unusually slow. To make matters worse, I no longer had a working pharmacy card through my insurer…and the pharmacy didn’t know who to call. This forced me to go to find the number myself and call the distributor. Armed with that, I returned around dinner time and had to wait 30 minutes even after the insurance had been processed. After that, I figured the day was done.

But then, as the night wore on Rita began to feel worse and worse. After discussing it for a while, she elected to go to another urgent care center the next day. We sat and waited almost two hours before being seen. The conclusion that doctor came to was strep throat…even though neither Julia nor I had it. Stunned, I left the urgent care center and dropped off Rita’s prescriptions.

Nothing made sense, but we began to wonder just how Julia got sick in the first place. The school nurse told us that she had  been immunized for H. influenza multiple times. But the culture taken on Friday didn’t test positive for streptococcus either…..

Do you really want to know the highlight of my week? It was taking Rita and the kids out to dinner at this great Chicago-style pizza parlor, followed by a picnic date in the park the day before. (Of course, don’t get me started on the fact that it was “private park” owned and for homeowner association members only with a keycode to get into the bathroom…)

Instead, I realized that people who read my blog might get the impression that I’m some sort of eternal pessimist that revels like skinny-dipping kid from Andover in a lake of cynicism. But it’s not true. I actually am….surprise, surprise an optimist. What I’m not is myopic, at least figuratively speaking.

So rest assured that as baleful as my opinions might sound today, they belie the fact that I really do think in the end things will get better. The recession, I assure you will end. But perhaps the most common misconception people have is that the future will look like the past. The “Economist” is fond of the old saying, “Drop a frog in a boiling pot of water and it hops out. Drop a frog in a tepid pot of water, turn up the heat slowly, and it dies.” Drastic changes are easy to see, subtle ones are not.

And so the earth is always turning beneath our feet regardless of if we can feel it or not. And as stagnant and gloomy as the present may appear, so too will the future seem artificially bright and glorious. The future isn’t tomorrow…it’s already begun today.

By the time November rolls around, it’s an achievement for a football team to be undefeated. But I’m not talking about the Indianapolis Colts, the New Orleans Saints, the Florida Gators, the Boise State Broncos, or even some high school squad. No I’m talking about Justin’s flag football team. With only one game remaining, his school is now undefeated and gunning for the City fourth grade championship.

It’s been nothing if not unreal. To watch his team week in and week out with seeming ease as if nothing can stop them. Blowouts, barnburners…all with the same result.

It’s come to this: win this weekend and get a spot in the championship game. Lose and go home. The final game was scheduled for this Friday night…which provided plenty of food for thought. It is, after all, the 13th…..

So now comes the moment of destiny, and to be fair, it will be a cruel outcome no matter what happens. For it’s not realistic for young boys to not know what losing is. To shield them from the reality that life is about coming back from defeat, not from being perfect. Neither though, are they deserving to have their dreams crushed in one game.

But I’ve seen in my short life many the epic collapse. Who, after all, can forget what happened to UCLA in 1998 on the soggy grass of the Orange Bowl? Or the deafening silence following the 2006 Rose Bowl? To say nothing of Super Bowl XLII.

It’s enough to make you hold your breath, not that Justin seems to care….

Call me strange, but I tend to like the most thought-provoking of holidays. I’m big on New Year’s. Thanksgiving. And for that matter Halloween. When else do we focus on the exaggerations of our mind, our hopes, fears, and dreams?

And so I got all excited this year…making sure that we bought a huge pumpkin to carve and that I created a really creative costume. But as luck would have it, you probably had a more blog-worthy time than I did.

Although I bought the big pumpkin, Rita managed to slip and fall at my friend’s place the day after the wedding. She was checked out by her boyfriend who is an ER doctor. But within a couple days, she lost her balance again, this time breaking a couple toes. That necessitate a visit to urgent care and a prescription for Vicodin.

No sooner were we on our way to her friend’s party than she began to nod off from a combination of painkillers and a stiff margarita. But we went to the party nonetheless and had a good time. Rita, for her part, talked to her friends. I had a difference experience, somehow uncovering the handful of single men who wandered into the party and noticed “all the hot girls”. I had to break it to them that Rita’s friend is the organizer for a Mom’s Club. And although we were far outside the boundaries of Cougar Country proper…you would have never known.

Come midnight, however, Rita sat down on the couch and fell asleep. Some of her friends and other partygoers wondered why I didn’t wake her up. That answer is that she was almost catatonic. Even shaking her did nothing. But I knew that she would be even more mad if we left the party early. So there I was, eating cake, hors d’ouerves, and watching the single guys try desperately to score.

Rita, doing her best Rip Van Winkle, awoke to the party winding down after 2am. Suddenly we realized most everyone was gone; the bartender and caterer were beginning to pack up. And oh yes, the police had called. But yet, an odd amalgam of people hung on…including the one guy who decided to go as ….yes….Balloon Boy.

So at about 3am, we left drove to a local hotel and spent the night. The next day, Justin and his football team extended their unbeaten streak to 4-0.