A Choice, A Change

If you stop and think about it, life is just a choose your own adventure book.  The only difference is you cannot look ahead to each choice and then take the better option.  Everyone that ever picked up a choose your own adventure book did this.  You cannot lie about it, you know you did that.  I'm not talking about making choices like steak or chicken for dinner, I'm talking big choices.  Choices that can change your life.  Sometimes these choices aren't yours.  For example, I have thought about how different my life would have been if my parents decided to stay in the Detroit area instead of my dad taking a job in the U.P.  This decision was not mine to make as I was seven at the time, but if they didn't make that choice, I would not have met my wife.  That's just bananas to think about, isn't it?  That's also super scary to think about.  How different are all of our lives based on decisions that aren't yours to make?  When I sit down and think about those kinds of situations, my mind always comes back to two different choices that were made that impacted our (mine and my wife's) lives.

The first choice wasn't even really ours to make.  After college my wife got a job with Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.  When we were graduating college we agreed that we would move to the first place where one of us found a job and that is just how we ended up down there.  But this isn't the choice I'm talking about.  Moving to Wichita seemed like a pretty easy decision.  It was either move and be gainfully employed or stay unemployed and continue to look for a job.  So we moved and worked down there.  Found a great group of friends.  Adjusted to life with no winters, no trees, and being far from family.  We even started to look at buying a house.  It was shortly after we started looking at houses that the economic recession hit and my wife got laid off because of it.  This was about four or five years of living in Kansas, so we were fairly well established in the area.  It's safe to say we dodged a giant bullet in not buying a house.  We would have been in a great financial mess.  Shortly after getting laid off, my wife started looking for jobs.  We thought staying in Wichita was an option, but there wasn't much happening in her field of work.  So she looked into Kansas City.  Bigger area, we figured there's a better chance there.  No luck.  We got to the point where it was 'find a job anywhere and we can move'.  With my working retail, and at the time with Target, it gave us some flexibility to move.  Transferring wouldn't have been a problem.  Here's where the choice comes into play.  My wife had a couple of interviews with a company in Charlotte, North Carolina.  One was a phone interview and the second was an in person interview.  They flew her in, she stayed for a couple of days.  We both thought it went well.  The company even had someone drive her around the area to see some neighborhoods.  After that, I started looking at stores to transfer to, even talked with my human resources manager about the move.  Then the company chose to go with another candidate.  Heartbreak.

We were on the verge of discovering another city and another state.  We were in our late twenties, the time to strike out on your own and make those kinds of moves.  To discover new and exciting places, even if it's farther away than maybe you had ever imagined living from your family.  You never know what would have or could have happened had we ended up there, and that is kind of the fun part of thinking about situations like this.  Would I still work for Target? (short answer is hell no).  Would it have been a place we would have hated?  Maybe.  Or could it have been a city we would have fallen in love with?  The answers are always going to be up in the air.  Looking back on it, I'm glad the company made the choice to go with that other candidate because it has led us to the second major choice in our lives which has worked out great for both of us.

After about a year of no luck on the job front in Kansas or elsewhere, it was decided it was time to get out of the state.  Outside of a great group of friends (our Kansas family) we had no ties to the state.  It was tough seeing our actual family two, maybe three, times a year.  We wanted to be closer.  We wanted winters again.  We wanted to see trees and water and not melt when you step outside in early July.  We were able to pick and choose where we wanted to go.  There were a few qualifiers we were looking at.  It had to be closer to home.  It needed to be big enough of an area for job opportunities for both of us.  The economy in Michigan really hadn't turned around quite yet, so that was out of the question.  We thought about Chicago for a split second then realized....ewww, Chicago.  The idea of living in Milwaukee or Madison was also on the table.  There are a few companies that my wife could have worked at.  There were some factors that went into our decision to not move there.  Another place was the Twin Cities in Minnesota.  We have family and friends that live in Minnesota and they never really had anything terrible to say about it.  After looking and talking about all these options, we landed on Minnesota.  It was as close to being in Michigan without living there.  The economy was rebounding nicely so the job markets were starting to pick back up.  This was the second big choice in life.

I look at our move to Minnesota as that second major choice for a few reasons.  The big reason is work.  My wife found a job that was decent after we moved here and just recently found one that is a little bit closer to home and a much better working environment.  I was able to transfer stores while working with Target and that made the move easier.  We see our family more than a few times a year as we are now just a nine to ten hour car ride away.  As opposed to a flight or a two day drive while we lived in Kansas.  The past few years, I have been able to take some time off in the fall and go hunting back home.  It is great because I love being in the woods at that time of year.  Plus, I'm able to provide plenty of food for everyone in the years that I am lucky enough to harvest a deer.  Above all that, I have found a job that I love.  By the time my eighth year of working for Target was coming around, I realized that I wasn't going anywhere with the company.  It was not fun to work there anymore.  That was almost six years ago which is crazy to think about.  My move to World Market probably would not have happened if we hadn't moved to Minnesota.  World Market has been great for many reasons, but the biggest one is the relaxed atmosphere.  It is not nearly as stressful and therefore better for me.

It was probably inevitable that I moved on from Target, but if we had lived in another state maybe I would be working for a different company.  Maybe I would have found some random office job if we moved to North Carolina or a warehouse job in Wisconsin, we will never know.  Making big decisions like this can be scary, but that is what life is all about.  Taking big risks like moving to a new state or leaving a job can impact your life in so many positive ways, but those risks have to be calculated.  Impulsively moving without having a plan isn't the way to go.  I like to think that in all the other multiverses out there, we made the move to Charlotte and to Madison and to Milwaukee and that those versions of us are just as happy as we are here in Minnesota. 

A Moment to Remember

While we were home this past week, there was a day when I went into the family room at the cabin and my dad was watching a documentary on the Apollo program.  I sat down to watch around the time the documentary was talking about the Apollo 11 moon landing and I was intrigued.  Not because I didn't know what was going to happen, obviously it happened, but because I was transported back in time.  News reports, home video, recordings from inside mission control, all of it was being shown.  We've all seen the video of the astronauts climbing down the ladder and heard the historic communication, but to see other aspects of the landing was...'awe inspiring' aren't the right word....maybe 'engrossing' is the right way to put it. 

To see the excitement in the mission control room was amazing.  To see the tears in the eyes of people standing on the street watching the landing through store front windows.  To see news anchors from around the world be almost at a loss for words was something to behold.  And sure, you can see a clip of it here and there, but to see it all strung together and creating a larger story brought goose bumps to my arms.  What was more important, looking back, was that clips were being shown from around the world.  This was not just an American accomplishment.  This was an accomplishment for the world.  It was an inspirational moment that brought the world together, if only for a few days.  

I want to be alive for a moment like that.  Not a moment to be remembered because it is a tragedy, but a moment that can inspire.  A once in a lifetime moment that forty years from now, I want someone to ask me 'do you remember where you were when *fill in the blank* happened?'  I want to save a newspaper showing worldwide excitement and unity.  I'm just afraid that the way the world is now that it will never happen. 

Lawn Care Etiquette

It's that time of year again when home owners have to drag themselves out of the air conditioning and cut the grass and weed the flower gardens.  It's both terrible and satisfying at the same time.  You look at the lawn when you finish and it looks so nice.  You just have to deal with being out in the heat and humidity when you do it.  Or you could pay someone to do it.  That's always an option I suppose.  Our lawn is small enough that with a push mower I can get it done in less than an hour.  I remember cutting the grass growing up and my brother and I would split the work between the two side yards and the front and back yards.  It seemed to take forever when we did it, but that could just be because we were so young.  Living in a neighborhood where the houses are so close together, I have been thinking about law cutting courtesies.  At what time is it appropriate to get out and cut the grass?  When is it too early or too late in the day?  You don't want to be that house on the block that everyone hates because you cut the grass at the wrong time.  If you don't know which house is that house on your block, you might be that house.  Don't be.

I first started to think about this because I left for work one day a few weeks back and the owner of the house on the corner  was almost done cutting his lawn.  It was 7:00 in the morning.  My only thought was 'wow, what a dick'.  I understand a lot of people, myself included, would prefer to get the grass cut early in the day before it gets too hot outside.  I cut the grass this morning around 10:30 and it was already above seventy degrees.  It was not pleasant.  It is Friday and I figured it was a reasonable time.  Most people are at work if they have a standard Monday through Friday type job.  If there was anyone around that maybe works different hours like overnight or second shift type jobs, 10:30 shouldn't bother them, right?  The last thing that I would want is to be trying to sleep and a neighbor being out with a loud mower or weed whip. 

I'm not a huge fan of lawn work in the evening.  I always look at the evening as a time to relax and unwind from the day.  The last thing that I want to do after work is do more work.  Plus, it seems that bugs are more active in the evening.  Who wants to swat at mosquitoes and gnats and try to cut grass at the same time?  I know I don't.  However it could be the only time to do it.  It's not that I flat out refuse to do evening grass cutting, I just prefer to do so in the morning. 
 
How early is too early?  I suppose it depends on the day.  If it is during the weekend, and I want to be outside doing this, I might start a little bit later.  Most everyone catches up on sleep during the weekends.  During the week, I'll maybe start a little bit earlier than on the weekend.  An easy way to know is to just wait for someone else to start.  Let someone else be the asshole that wakes the neighborhood up.  Personally, I think 9:00 during the week and 10:00 on the weekend are perfectly acceptable times to start lawn work.  

Hot Takes: 2019 Edition

It is here.  The 2019 MLB season starts today!  I did this last year so I figured why not do it again?  Hot takes are fun when you make predictions based on some hope but also outlandish thoughts.  With the Tigers circling the bottom of the standings, you might as well have some fun with it.  Here.  We.  Go.  

• JaCoby Jones will be a Gold Glove finalist
• Niko Goodrum will have a 20/20 season (I whole heatedly believe this)
• Jordan Zimmermann will have a 15 win season
• Miguel Cabrera will steal two bases
• Christian Stewart will lead the team in home runs
• Nicholas Castellanos will sign an extension with the team
• Shane Greene will be traded, but will still end up leading the team in saves
• Casey Mize will make at least one start in the Majors
• The Tigers will win five games against the Cleveland Indians
• Matt Moore and Tyson Ross are both flipped for prospects at the trade deadline
• Ron Gardenhire will be ejected five times

I cannot wait for the Detroit Tigers to be good again.  Most everyone thinks they'll be good again in 2021 which sounds like a long ways away, but it's only two more seasons.
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*begins to cry uncontrollably* 

A Season of Sadness

The 2019 MLB season is upon us.  We have already seen games that matter played.  Granted it was just the Mariners and A's so no one really paid attention.  Except to see Ichiro play his last games.  And the games were played in Japan so they were on SUPER EARLY.  The real Opening Day is the 28th.  One week from now!  My co-workers make fun of me because of my excitement, but I take the day off and just soak it all in. 

It is going to be a very painful season for us Tigers fans.  The youth movement has started, but all the prospects that are going to bring this team back to relevance are still a year or two away.  By all accounts, 2020 and 2021 is when we will start to see the top ten to fifteen prospects in the bigs.  If they're still with the organization.  Also, one of the core starting pitchers, Michael Fulmer, is out for the season after his elbow exploded recently.  We'll see him back some time in the 2020 season.  If you want to find the positive to this devastating news this just means he'll have one less season's worth of innings on his arm.  He'll be well rested and could be the true number one we thought he would be after his rookie season.  This could also be Castellanos's last season with the Tigers.  And Miggy is coming off a lost season and is another year older.  

With all this bad news, what do Tigers fans have to look forward to?  Ummm, Christian Stewart is gonna mash a ton of baseballs.  Just don't watch him in the outfield.  Niko Goodrum is the new Don Kelly/Andrew Romine.  But better.  I think he has the ability to make games fun to watch, but as a utility player he won't have a true position each and every game.  The bullpen, surprisingly enough, could be a bright spot.  If the starting rotation can eat enough innings where the bullpen won't be taxed by August that is.

There are going to be long stretches this season where the Tigers are going to be unwatchable.  There are no two ways about it.  The first month of the season they have a chance to be a .500 team playing teams like Toronto, Kansas City, and Minnesota, but they've also got Boston, Cleveland, and New York on the schedule.  As fans, we just have to look for the fun and positive to get us through what is undoubtedly going to be a tough season.

End of the season record prediction:  67-95. 4th in the AL Central.  Kansas City sucks more than Detroit does. 

Well Spent

This past weekend I celebrated my 37th birthday.  And by 'celebrated' I mean chilled and kept it low key.  I'm not all about big celebration or grand gestures.  I wanted to just enjoy the day.  I took three days off of work which is what I normally like to do for my birthday just because.  I don't want to be at work on my birthday.  It's a day for me. 

The first day of my three day weekend was spent watching the original 'Star Wars' trilogy.  I have been doing this for several years now.  I grew up loving these movies and I still do.  Yes it's nerdy.  Yes I could do something else with the six and a half hours.  No I don't want to do anything else with that time during my birthday.  We see those social media posts that are like 'take care of yourself' and 'self care is important'.  Self care has many facets and I think that some include losing yourself in a favorite movie or book or tv show. 

Saturday and Sunday were spent just chilling at home and doing a little running around.  My wife and I checked out a brewery in Hastings and ate dinner at a restaurant we liked.  I say we checked out a brewery, but let's be honest, I checked it out.  My wife doesn't drink so she tolerates me enjoying a beer or two while we sit and talk.  It's what we're all about. 

Everyone spends their birthdays in different ways.  Some go all out with parties while some lay low.  It's all about what you want to do isn't it?  Embrace being selfish on your birthday.  If you want to sit around in your pjs all day and drink coffee while reading a book, DO IT!  If you want to go shopping and buy some new clothes just because, DO IT!  If you want to invite a bunch of people over for an all night rager, DO IT!  Spend the day feeling great about yourself, but also think about doing that more than just once a year.  Celebrate a half year birthday, or just celebrate you every couple of months. 

Ned was Right

After having a lack of snow during the months of November, December and January, Minnesota finally remembered that it is, in fact, Minnesota.  But not before delving out a handful of rather bizarre days of weather.  From negative thirty degree temperatures to mid thirties just two days later at the end of January.  We also saw some freezing rain right before another plummet in temperature.  Then finally.  It happened.  Winter showed up.  We finally got snow. 

In the months of November and December we had to shovel snow maybe three times.  It has been snowing in the Twin Cities for the past twenty four hours.  It started snowing last night around six thirty.  It is now seven twenty two and the snow hasn't stopped.  We have easily gotten a foot and a half in that time.  It's just wonderful. 

We have a very small driveway because our garage is on an alley.  Because of that we do not have a snow blower.  We have no need for it...yet.  We do have to keep our front sidewalk and porch clear though.  That takes some time.  There are a few people in our neighborhood that will run up and down the sidewalks on the block and clear a path.  You still have to go through and full clear the width of the walkway, but at least a good majority of the walkway is done. 

I have been of the mindset that if you get out and clear the snow a few times it is less stressful on your body.  I'd rather get out and shovel two or three times during a snow storm to keep the accumulation down.  It helps that I enjoy the cold and the snow.  If I was not a fan of it, I'm sure I would just want to be outside once and be done with it.  I would also probably just do it once if I had a snow blower.  Going old school and having a shovel almost forces your hand to go out a few times.  I just put in my earbuds and listen to music as I go.  It makes it go by quicker.  I've seen both in our neighborhood and I've been wondering which method is best.  It helped that I did not have to work today so I could pick and choose times to go out.  

it. cold.

You guys.  It's cold. Too cold.  And I love cold, but it's almost too much for me.  The one good thing is that if you put room temperature beer outside, in less than an hour it's ice cold. It's so cold that places like the post office is not sending out their delivery men and women.  Stores and businesses are closing.  Schools are shut down.  For all of that to happen, especially in Minnesota, it's something 'special'.  I don't have much else to say about it.

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Jan 30, 2019 at 8:39am PST

No Rush

The big thing on the movie landscape in the past decade has been super hero movies.  Specifically movies in the Marvel Universe.  Movies like Iron Man, Thor, and the Black Panther.  Everything in between as well.  They are all enjoyable to watch and I have seen them all with the exception of one (Ant Man and the Wasp).  However, I do not rush out to see them. 

They are all well made.  Visually they are amazing.  We truly live in an age of wonder with what movie studios can do.  They bring you into a world that is an escape from every day life which is what movies are suppose to do.  They're fun.  They take themselves just seriously enough to have great cinematic tension, but also have quite a bit of humor in them. 

For all the positive things that the MCU movies have going for them, they have one flaw.  They all start to run together.  There is not much of a difference from one to the next.  Because of that, I haven't found myself rushing out to see them when they're in the theaters.  I do understand the point of seeing them in the theater, it's an experience.  It's an immersive environment, you get pulled into these grand adventures. 

I'm sure it's great, but it just isn't for me.  I'd rather sit at home and watch them when they're released to streaming services.  You know, sit down in my pjs, enjoy a few cups of coffee, not have to over pay for the movie or snacks.  In order for this to happen, you have to let go of the fact that if anything major happens, it won't be a shock to you.  We just watched Avengers: Infinity War a few weeks ago and anyone that has seen knows about 'the snap'.  It's a major moment in the MCU which has ramifications we aren't fully aware of yet.  Because we finally watched months after it had been out in theaters, the major spoilers were gone.  And you know what, it doesn't much matter to me.  I'd rather avoid the large crowds and enjoy the movie from the comfort of my own home.