Jay's Interest: February 2017

My New Year’s resolution was to no longer bring politics into this newsletter, but I’m writing this on the Monday after President Trump signed his executive order to ban most Muslims from coming into our country. I don’t know why I’m surprised – his entire presidential campaign was based on three things: banning Muslims, building a wall that would be paid for by Mexico, and getting rid of the Affordable Care Act. So while I’m not surprised at all by his executive order, I am somewhat shocked by how quickly it happened and how many people it is going to affect. I have to admit – it’s kind of embarrassing to be the country that does something like this to so many innocent people. We are a better country than what this executive order portrays us to be. Yes, terrorism needs to be on the front burner at all times, but to ban an   entire religion from entering our country is simply absurd. The damage this will do to our reputation around the world will more than offset anything positive that may come from it.    

Are you ready to smile!!!  There is rarely a day that goes by that my son isn’t asking me a question that literally stumps me. For instance, last week he asked which is hotter, electricity or lava?? Honestly, I should probably know the answer to that question, but I had absolutely no idea. And just last night he asked what would hurt more, getting squashed or running into a cactus?? Well, I have had the opportunity to be at the bottom of a pile with several hundred pounds of defensive linemen on top of me, and I must say that didn’t feel good. But knowing my son, he probably meant getting squashed by a monster truck. So although Wile E. Coyote would probably disagree, I’m saying that getting run over by a monster truck would definitely hurt more than running into a cactus. I promise I’ll pass on more mind-benders as they become available. 

I was in Arizona recently and as luck would have it, I flew home on the same plane as the Creighton men’s basketball team. As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of the Jays and attend several games every year. It was pretty cool to see 7-footer Justin Patton close-up, but I was more interested to see where in the heck he was going to sit on the airplane, as his three options are pretty much the first row, the exit row, or on one of the wings. As it turns out, he sat in the exit row and it was pretty funny listening to the flight crew explain to him his duties in the event of a crash. I don’t know about anybody else, but if I’m pretty sure I’ll be making tens of millions of dollars in a couple years playing basketball, I’m probably not sticking around once the plane comes to halt. I’ll be headed somewhere to find a fire extinguisher and some clean underwear.

And finally, did you know that Malvern has a radio station? Well sort of… go to 107.7 on your FM dial and after every 6 songs a little voice comes on and says “This is KIMI, Malvern”.  I have no clue where it’s transmitted from or who owns it, but in a span of 15 minutes this past Sunday they played Loverboy, Journey, and the Boss back to back to back.  For you Loverboy fans, I was truly “Lovin’ Every Minute of It”.

Until next time…. 

Jay