My hat is off to everyone that took the time to vote.  You and I share common ground, even if we voted for different people, ideas, etc.

I love it when I look in the dictionary for a favorite word and it tells me that a definition, or the word itself, is archaic.

Be honest with me.  Tell me, “You won’t get Social Security or Medicare when you are old, but we’d like you to continue to pay into it to take care of those that need it.”  And then, after you have been honest with me, let’s fix the programs or get rid of them for my generation.

Often we (you, me, that guy over there eating the PB & J) decide that we have discovered some verity.  Using this newly discovered principle we extrapolate further conclusions.  Sometimes those conclusions are correct.  Sometimes those conclusions miss minor or major details.  These missed details can send us many degrees away from the truth.  

I don’t like being many degrees away from the truth.

I’ve often thought that I would like it very much, if one day per week, we were assigned some outdoor physical work: hoeing a garden, picking weeds, converting whale blubber into lighting oil, digging a tunnel to China, roofing a house, raising a barn, and/or mining precious metals.  This would give us relief from our present projects.  It would also allow the brain a chance to work on solving problems without us getting in the way.  It’d be like Google’s 20% day, but with shovels.

Today they played the tornado sirens.  It was dark outside.  I was asleep.  They eventually woke me up.  They continued to sound the sirens.  I thought about getting up, and checking for danger.  I decided against it.  It’s my birthday.  I’m sleeping in today.  

I’m honored they thought of me.

Today I realized that I’m part of the 7% of people that are alive.  (If we assume that about 100 billion people have lived on the Earth.)

During the 8 years that I have been married, I have subjected my wife and kids to a hodgepodge of homemade pizza.  They have been guinea pigs lovingly suffering my many pizza making experiments.  I’ve tried to be gentle, but sometimes failure doesn’t taste very good.  As a steadfast devotee of pizza, I love every attempt.  Not a single moment of this pizza research has been wasted.  Every strand of gluten has ministered to my education.

We started making pizzas at home with pre-made pizza crusts.  These were good enough to satisfy my pizza cravings and they took very little time. The pre-made crust provided an opportunity to focus on the sauce and toppings.  

The toppings were fairly straight forward.  We loaded half of the pizza with veggies for my wife.  The other half of the pizza was packed with various meats, possibly pineapple, and definitely peppers for me.  When the girls came along we added a “just pepperoni” pizza.  We’ve mostly stuck with these topping combinations over the years.

The sauce didn’t go through many variations.  Initially we used tomato sauce, some italian seasonings, garlic, mozzarella, salt, red pepper, and a little onion powder to make our pizza sauce.  Over the years we’ve adjusted the amounts and accommodated on hand ingredients to make our sauce.  Right now we use a tomato sauce/paste mix, oregano, basil, garlic, onion powder, salt, red pepper, mozzarella, and a little sugar.  This recipe makes a sauce that adds flavor, but doesn’t overwhelm the toppings and crust.

As time rolled on, we moved from pre-made crust to fresh crust.  Initially we utilized the packaged dough mixes.  They were fairly quick and easy to make, but the results weren’t particularly impressive.  

We moved on to pre-made dough balls for our next attempts.  Unfortunately for this dough, our inexperience and impatience prevented success from being attainable.  These pizzas were not great.  We misused the dough and, dissatisfied, abandoned it.  It was a dark time in my pizza education.

We were delivered from this darkness by a 1-hour pizza dough recipe.  This recipe was a simple mix of flour, water, salt, sugar, olive oil, and yeast.  The ingredients were brought together, stirred, kneaded, and left to rise for one hour.  We’d cook it at a moderate heat for a moderate length of time.  The results were pretty great for the effort and time used.  I was satisfied with this formula until I began researching pizza online.

I opened Pandora’s box reading all of these pizza recipes, tips, and stories.  The ingredients list didn’t change, but there were loads of subtle changes to the execution and ratios.  First, I learned that bread flour is preferred because pizza is foremost a bread.  Second, the water to flour ratio for primo pizza is about .667 to 1.  (So for example, if you used 12 ounces of flour, you would use 8 ounces of water.)  Third, I found out that cooking at high heat for a shorter period yields a better crust. Next, I learned that kneading must be done thoroughly, and that after the initial rise the dough should be reformed to a ball and left to rise again.  I also learned that a long, initial cold-rise adds to the flavor of the crust.  Last, and most important, I learned that the instant yeast called for in most of the recipes is not active dry yeast, but bread machine or rapid-rise yeast. 

Some of these lessons came together, some came separately.  All of them came over a process of time and study.  They all required patience and diligence.

I was ecstatic when I finally got all of these lessons worked into our pizza dough.  I pulled that pizza from the oven, cut it, and served it.  We ate!  It was fantastic, but a little dry from being cooked slightly long.  That’s how it goes with my pizza education.  I’m slowly progressing like an overnight, cold-rise pizza dough.

September of 2011 was miserable for me.  I didn’t lose my job.  My loved ones were healthy and well.  My misery wasn’t caused by any of the normal culprits.  It was caused by the meteoric fall of the Atlanta Braves. 

When the Braves entered September they had a record of 80 wins and 55 losses.  They had a solid 8 1/2 game lead in the race for the wildcard.  If the Braves had won half of the rest of their games, they would have handily made the postseason.  Unfortunately, they found a way to win only 9 of their 27 remaining games.  This failure allowed the St. Louis Cardinals to usurp the wildcard and enter postseason play.

This collapse made history and made me distressed.  It was a torturous slide.  Nearly every day of September I awoke with hope that the Braves might pull out one more win.  Two out of those three days ended painfully.

As I considered my pain, I began to wonder why a game was causing me grief.  What brings a rational person to be so affected by a sports team’s losses?

Isn’t it about time?  

Time is like any other limited resource.  The more scarce a resource becomes, the greater its value.  As we grow older, time becomes increasingly scant.  We are forced to be wise about the usage of our time.  Whatever we invest our time in becomes as valuable to us as the time spent.

When I was a kid I had an abundance of time.  I used this time to collect baseball cards, attend games with my family, and watch baseball on TV.  The time I invested in baseball was drawn from a seemingly endless pool.  So even though I spent more time with baseball, it was not as important to me.  The wins and losses of the Braves had little affect on my younger self.

As I got older I largely lost interest in baseball.  Other activities consumed my free time, and then the players’ strike during the 90’s killed my enthusiasm.  Baseball was no longer my pastime.  It became merely a happy memory.  I invested little or no time in the Braves and was unaffected by their failures.     

A few years ago my interest was revitalized.  My dad, my brother and I went to a game at Turner Field.  We relished every aspect of the experience.  Even the rain added to our enjoyment.  In the end, the Braves won and we were able to rejoice with the crowd.  It was the great time that I remembered from my youth.

That trek to Atlanta started a yearly tradition.  Now every summer we gather together and drive down to Atlanta.  We stop at The Varsity for chili dogs before the game.  My dad curses at the traffic and we battle for parking.  Then we walk to Turner Field and find our seats.  We sit among the crowd and scream ourselves hoarse.  At the end of another great game we struggle back through traffic and begin the journey home.

The past few years I’ve been watching baseball on TV again.  I have a preset for the Braves Radio Network on the radio in our car.  I’m back to being a fan and being a fan takes time.

My time comes from a smaller supply these days.  It has become a very precious commodity.  So I’m trying to be more wise in its utilization.    My family is the most important part of my life and they garner most of my time.  I try to keep things that are trivial down to a minimal investment of time.  For all other interests and ventures, including baseball, I try to follow Paul’s council to the Corinthians by being “temperate in all things”.  Being temperate still allows me to spend sufficient time observing baseball.  And even a moderate amount of time spent with the Braves enables every loss to hurt and every win to thrill.