"Aye, There's the rub!"

Part of the fun of a World Cup atmosphere was seeing and meeting the variety of people who came to France for a good time...and to actually see some rugby as well. There was these Kiwi fans whom I met on the Tram in Montpellier after Tonga-USA...

And then these Kilt-clad Scots in Paris...

And at the Tonga-Samoa match, Ian and I, along with the other fans at the Stade de la Mosson were treated to a DOUBLE Haka-one by each Pacific Island Nation:


Here is hoping that all of your Holiday Haka's are happy ones! Cheers!

It's pretty tough to imagine a life without animals. The may look majstic in the dawn's early light like my daughter's horse Maverick:
Or you can have a friend waiting for you each morning at Breakfast like my friend Patrick's poodle at his home in Ancerville, France:
Or you can wake up to a Bulldog snoring in your ear or waiting for his morning walk like Buddha:

One thing is for sure: Our lives just would not be as fun without our four legged friends...Have a good Monday!

My friend Jacques has little girls ages two and four. He has been over to the house a couple of times and has brought his girls along. The last visit he came with his daughter Joceylyn. Watching her curiosity and her delight with playing with some of Rachel's stuffed horses or petting the dogs or the cats, it really hit me that it did not seem that long ago when Ian and Rachel were pre-school age. I told Jacques to enjoy this time, it really does go fast.

Rachel has developed a work ethic that even my late maternal grandfather, the carpenter, would have appreciated. It is true that she is NOT a morning person, but once she is up, she is not afraid to hustle for a dollar. She does house cleaning at my brother's house and my rugby coach Denny's house. She has been doing some house and dog-sitting this 4 day weekend and she still goes to her job answering phones at the company that Ian works at. As far as high school is concerned, she is SO ready to be done with it. She is tired of what she views as busy work, surrounded by a lot of kids who are too lazy and unmotivated to do anything with their lives. It's true she did have a great time in France, like this shot near Versailles will show:
The downside is that the trip kind of put her behind the 8-ball at school. She is getting caught back up and is talking to me about colleges: UW-River Falls, North Dakota State, and also she has talked with me about going out with some friends to check out Wyomming. Any place that has an Equine program is pretty much fair game.

Ian is in the unique position of being good at a lot of things, but unlike his sister, has not developed the passion for any ONE thing. At this point, he is looking to transfer to the University of Minnesota with an eye on a general Liberal Arts degree with a Japanese minor. He talks about maybe doing the Peace Corps and then after that teaching English in Japan. One thing is for sure, with him working and going to school full time, I doubt that he will have time to do Rugby this spring.
I don't know if I will ever get a chance to be his teamate in any more games anyway-I think I am going to stick to Old Boy games in 2008. It took me way to long to physically recover after playing prop against the Upper Midwest Selects this Spring in our last game. Thank God Denny moved me over flanker in the second half. As it was, it took a good couple of months before my left shoulder and neck really felt right after that.

At any rate, one thing I have not said, that I should have said is that I am REALLY thankful for my kids. Even if they were not my kids, I would still enjoy being around them. When you talk with parents who are alienated from their kids, or their kids have drug or alcohol issues, or they got pregnant, or they have no motivation to do anything with their lives, I feel really blessed. It is like they got their mom's smarts and good looks-just without going off the deep end in the science fiction stuff...May the force be with you this weekend.

My Parents graduated from high school in 1957, got married in 1958, had my brother Bill in 1959 and me in 1960. My parents were of an era where kids got married right out of high school-back then, that was WHEN you could have sex. As you might have noted by the years, this was PRE-birth control pill. That meant that contraception misfired-a lot-back then.

The cool thing about my parents getting married young and being so oversexed and fertile was that when I was born, I not only had a complete set of grandparents, I had MOST of my great grandparents, as well. (Two of my great grandfathers had already died)

The down side in those years of having parents getting married so young is that generally they-like many in their generation- were not mature enough to handle the emotional rigors of marriage. My parents got divorced back in 1968-before I turned 8 years old. It's a sad thing to admit in print that I do not have a single happy memory of my parents together. It seemed like all they ever did was yell at each other. Sometimes it got physical, too.

The silver lining part of my parents frequent squabbles was that I got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. My paternal grandfather scared the bejesus out of me. He was a gruff man who was not particularly great around kids.  My maternal grandmother put up with a lot being married to him. She had a huge impact in my life, because she shared with me and my siblings a love of animals and a love of exploring the world. When I was a kid, my grandmother bought me all kinds of great books about places faraway, like Australia, South Ameria, Europe-you name it. After she and my grandfather sold the Doggie Shop, she was able to indulge in her passion for travel. She has been to every continent except Antartica-she would have liked to have gone their, but it's tough to find a senior citizen who wants to go THAT far south. She has been to places as far flung as Siberia,China, Japan, Mongolia, Morocco, Patagonia, the Amazon, Tahiti, Fiji and Australia.  As a kid, I enjoyed listening to her talk about her travels. I also enjoyed listening to her talk about her simple, but idylic childhood in Pepin and Phillips, Wisconsin.

My grandmother for the last year and half has had a major loss in her memory. She is not safe to be left alone for any length of time because her memory loss level has become quite moderate and has had some falls.

I remember around the time when her memory was starting to go, my grandmother was very meloncholy when I would visit her. Pretty much all of her friends are dead or in nursing homes. It struck me that we all want to live a long healthy life, just like my grandmother. In many ways, she has had an exemplary "Third Age":She has travelled a lot, is financially stable, has a nice house, has been able to live independently, didn't really even miss a beat when my grandfather died back in March of 1978. There are a lot of AARP aged women who would swap places in a second with my grandmother. Still, it has to be a sad thing when you have outlived all of your friends, siblings and you have become the last one standing.

Last week,when I had my grandmother and father over at my house for dinner, it really struck me just how severe my grandmother's memory loss has become. She asked me about my maternal grandfather, my mom's dad. (I will write another blog entry about him at a later date) She asked me how he was doing. My grandfather died in August of 1988, a couple of weeks before I started nursing school. Luckily, she still recognizes her kids, me and my siblings and my kids. I know people who have family members with Alzheimers, and that has to be one of the unkindest cuts of all-when a loved one no longer recongizes a spouse, children and dear friends.

As we, in the United States, are about to celebrate Thanksgiving next week-a big holiday where families get together and air is thick with nostalgia, turkey, gravy and pumpkin pie- I want to take a second and wish you, dear reader, with the wish that you can be around your loved ones and enjoy their company this holiday season. This holiday season, I am thankful that I still can set a place for my grandmother at the family table for Thanksgiving.

This tombstone I found at the American Cemetary not far from Verdun-I had talked about it a bit in an earlier posting. I am sorry that I am a day late today.
When my friend Patrick took me and Ian to this American Cemetary-the largest outside of American Soil, it was a very grey, rainy and dreary. It was already a very sobering and meloncholy day. If you spend any amount of time touring the area around Verdun, you can very easily get overwhelmed with amount of death and destruction that took place in the Ardennes and in the Lorraine during WWI and WWII. What struck me about this white cross that marked the final resting place for an American Soldier from Pennsylvania was the date he died: 10 November 1918-exactly one day before the Armistice was signed that halted armed hostilities. At least it was supposed to.

The next day, when we were having a beer in the pub at the Chateau Fort in Sedan,
Patrick told me and Ian how on the morning of November 11th, 1918, a  French Army Officer decided to attack German troops who were accross the river from the French, to "show the Germans that we are better soldiers than they are!" As tragic as it was to die a day before the Armistice was signed, it was even more tragic to have had loss of life on November 11th. Patrick said that the officers in charge of the attack were punished by being re-assigned, but overall, it was a big white-wash, because it would have been a public relations disaster. In my opinion, Patrick's story highlighted the responsibility that senior military officers and politicians have.They really do make life and death decisions. It's something remains a constant even as we are about to enter the year 2008. As a veteran, I realize that sometimes hard decisions have to be made, but when an officer or politician makes a decision that puts lives on the line just to make themselves look good, it is an abuse of the power and esponsiblity of leadership in the highest order.

In the end, that tombstone and Patrick's story highlight that one day really can make a difference.

My grandparents had a pet shop and dog kennel when I was a little kid. Next to your grandparents having a candy shop or ice cream parlour, it is hard to imagine anything cooler for a grandparent to have. Not suprisingly, we always had dogs or cats when I was growing up. I like a variety of dogs, and while Golden Retrievers will always have a special place in my heart, I cannot deny that ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to have a Bulldog.Particularly after I house sat a delightful Bulldog named Humphrey back when Ian was little, right before Rachel was born. If you have ever tried to price a Bulldong, you know they are not cheap. For an English Bulldog puppy, you can expect to pay in the $1,000-1,500-or MORE for a Bulldog. Even a dog lover like me cannot rationalize laying out that kind of money for a dog.

As luck would have it, I worked with a lady named Tammie at United Health Care who raises Olde English Bulldogges. It's a bully breed, but does not have quite the number of health issues that an English Bulldogs have. She knew how much I loved Bulldogs, and when her female had a large litter, she saved the runt of the litter. He was born with the sack still on him, and he was not breathing. Showing that dog lovers really will do ANYTHING for their animals, Tammie did mouth to mouth on the little runt puppy. She called him Buddha. At work she told me that she had THE PERFECT Bulldog in mind for me, and that I should come over and meet him. When me and my daughter Rachel went over to Tammies, we met Buddha, and we were smitten. We had a chance to meet both the father and mother, and both dogs were nice, muscular, solid, friendly and LOVED kids and other animals...We were sold. Luckily, Tammie knew I had a tight budget, and sold me Buddha at quite a discount for what she could have gotten for the brindle bundle of joy.

We liked the name so much,that the moniker "Buddha" stuck. He was SUCH a cute puppie. When I would bring him to Metropolis Rugby games or practices, very young, stunning women would approach me and Buddha and say "OOOH! Your puppy is SO cute...Can I hold him?" If I had been a single guy or a rogue, I could have done VERY well meeting women with Buddha. As it was, I got to meet some nice people.("Honest Becky, it NEVER got past talking about the puppy")

Well, Buddha is a year and a half now. He has dragged our elderly Golden Retriever, Rambeau, kicking and screaming into canine geriatric fitness. He helped make Rambeau more fit and fighting trim for an oldy Goldy. Buddha just LOVES our cats...
That's Buddha with our Calico Emerald. Buddha loves kids, adores company-when people visit, his little bob-tailed butt just wriggles and writhes with Bulldog joy. He's just 80 pounds of love...
Like having kids, cats and AFS exchange students, it is hard to imagine what our lives were like "BD", or Before Bulldog.

One of the fun things on this trip to France for the 2007 Rugby World Cup is that I had a chance to see my friends Bernard and Jean-Paul. I met them 26 years ago when I was a student in Montpellier. We found that we shared a love for sport-particularly soccer and Rugby...

Over the years, I kept up with Jean-Paul and Bernard. Bernard is now a history teacher. During the summer, he is a tour guide. When my wife and I were in France back in 2004, he was nice enough to play tour guide and show us a town called St.Gulheim-le-Desert. It's a picturesque village with an amazing 11th century Abby. Bernard is happily single. Has no desire to settle down with any one woman. His appartment is very much guy's place, that shows off his love of history and travel. He has a really cool collection of hats, and military headgear, as well. He is very much a sports fan, has played rugby and soccer, and is still really trim and in great shape.

Jean-Paul married his sweetheart Fabienne. They and their sons Charlie and Leo live in a house in a little village called Puisserguier, near his native Beziers. He is a geography teacher in Capestang, not far from Puisserguier. Jean-Paul's passions are Pastis, wines(particularly those grown in Languedoc),soccer(Olympique Marseille and the French National Team), Rugby(A.S Beziers and the French National Team), and working with kids as a coach/volunteer with Midi-Lirou's Football Club.

Bernard joined my son Ian and me to watch the USA-Tonga match. After the match was over, we met Jean-Paul and some of his friends and relatives to talk about rugby, drink massive amounts of beer, talk about food and travel. Ian and I had a GREAT time. Two young women from Minnesota recognized Jean-Paul's Metropolis T-shirt that I had given him and they joined the party. Bernard is in the Red, second from the left, Jean-Paul is the Blue Metropolis Shirt, 3rd from the left, I am the Chunky one wearing the dark Blue USA rugby T-shirt, and Ian is in the white shirt on the far right. I need to get Jean-Paul to give the names of the others. I think Christophe is between me and Jean-Paul.

The amazing thing with true friends, is that you can go a few years between seeing them, and then you just have fun as if no time has passed. I never imagined I would see the day where me and my son would be able to party with my friends IN France. Considering Ian decided to be born the day after Bernard left San Antonio back in 1987 and had never met him, I hope he thought that it was worth the wait. I can hardly wait for Jean-Paul, Fabienne and the boys to be able to come to Minnesota so I can try to return the favor and show THEM a good time, because they-and Bernard-were all fantastic hosts.

When people meet me and my wife, a lot of stereotypes crystialize in a hurry. As suprising as it might sound in 2007, there are some people who are still amazed at the fact that I am a nurse. Ben Stiller's screen charachter in "Meet the Parents" and " Meet the Fockers" has to deal with all kinds of stupid, inane comments. I cannot even begin to tell you some of the questions and comments I have dealt with. You know what? It's nothing compared to what my wife Rebekah has to contend with when people meet my nubile, smiling, smiling red-headed wife and find out that she is a Funeral Director.  The reactions have ranged from "You don't LOOK like a funeral director." Which begs the question: Just what SHOULD a women look like who is a funeral director?

One of my other favorite questions that people have for my wife is, "You don't actually TOUCH them(meaning the corpses), DO you??" My wife, to her credit, is very patient. Just as I am a minority in my career field, my wife's gender makes her kind of unique among funeral directors.(Although more women are going into the Mortuary Science program at the Univesity of Minnesota) People ask me, "Doesn't it bother you that she touches dead bodies?" I tell them, "As long as she is not having me take a cold bath before bedtime and lie perfectly still in bed, it's OK with me." The person posing the question looks at me like somebody looking at Gomez Addams...

My wife, or as I call her now, "The Funeral Frauline", got into this kind of work only a few years ago. It all stemmed from going to her grandmother's funeral in Chicago, where they really made a hash out of things. At that point, it struck my multi-tasking bride: "Hey, I can DO this...I have an eye for detail...I like helping people...why not?" As luck would have it, the funeral director profession has almost an acute of shortage of people as my profession of nursing. My wife was able to get the Veteran's Administration (She's an Air Force Veteran) to pay for her schooling AND give her a stipend. She was able to finish off her B.S in Mortuary Science at the University of Minesota in about 2.5 years-and with excellent grades, I might add.

My daughter Rachel does not want to hear about what her mom does at work. I find it fascinating. The thing that amazes me, is that thanks to her theater and Communications broadcasting background, she can be having a totally rotten day, she might be tired, but the minute that she gets a phone when she is on call, she is ON...It's amazing to listen to her talk and soothe people who have just lost a loved one. She really does view her job as a sort of ministry. She is very much hard-wired to want to help people out during a tough time in their lives.

So, "Nursedude" and "The Funeral Frauline" are just fine with our career choices. And we can deal with the occaisonal stupid question or rude comment. At least in our own dysfunctional, care-taker kind of way, we are good for each other-even though we kind of represent the extremes on the health care continuem of cradle to grave coverage.

I could not BUY a date when I was in high school. As luck would have it, I found a woman who actually WANTED to date me when I was in college. Next month will mark 27 years that we have been an "item". Along with being very smart, good-looking and taking care of all of the technical stuff in our house, my wife Rebekah did for my kids what the late Princess Diana did for the Royal Family when she was married to Bonnie Prince Chuckie: She cleaned up the gene pool. Thank heavens Rachel looks more like her mom-a woman who likes like me would be one UGLY looking woman...For any reader who wants proof of the cleaning of the gene pool, I offer you exhibit A(Thanks, Honey!)

During our French trip,after my daughter and wife left, my son and I went to visit a friend I made back when the Twin Cities hosted the international Special Olympics in 1991. Patrick was the soccer coach of the Gold-medal winning French side. His wife Martine, and daughter Estelle were in the Twin Cities as well. We hit it off and over the years had exchanged cards and letters. He had given me a standing invitation to come visit his house in Ancerville, in Lorraine and near La Meuse. Patrick, Martine and their apricot poodle share a NICE house with beutiful gardens. Thanks to Patrick taking time off from his job of coaching mentally handicapped adults, Ian I got to see a lot of North East France: his little village near St.Diziers, Verdun, Sedan, a side trip to Belgium, and Nancy.

In the midst of all of the sport and culture,the trip to Verdun was a very sobering place-a reminder that sport is just that-games. When you see graveyards with tens of thousands of white crosses and wooded areas that prior to WWI were villages that got wiped off the planet because of the war, it is a place that causes a lot of self reflection-Particularly since I am a vet and I have a 20 year old son.

Patrick Played soccer professionally for Sedan, and he was able to get me and Ian to watch Sedan practice one day.

I have already written about the fantastic meal that Patrick's mother in law, "Mami" made for us at her home in Sedan.
Our stay in the Ardennes was very memorable. At the Museum of the battle of Verdun, I was able to get a book on a subject that interested me a great deal, but had never been able to FIND a book, on the subject of Colonial troops from Africa who fought and died for France during the First World War.

Not all is about war and meloncholy in the Champagne-Ardennes area. There are the Champagne caves in Epernay. We found a great beer shop in Belgium. The scenary is beautiful, with rolling hills and there were pretty fall colours during our stay.  The people are very friendly-almost midwestern in their level of courtesy...even when driving, it was not as cut-throat as driving in Paris, Marseille or Montpellier.

The charm in going to the Champagne-Ardennes region, is that it IS a bit more laid-back. It's a very agricultural region, so the quality and freshness of the food was fantastic. Add to that the history, natural beauty and the people, it is a region that more of my compatriots should go visit.