Football Football Football

SO, it looks like my pattern is once every 45 days or so, in regards to updating my blog! I would probably be doing a better job if I weren't writing blogs for two sports sites, and a fantasy football league! Regardless, here is my update on Haven's happenings over the past couple of months.

Football season, NFL (for my viewing pleasure) and college/high school (for my career's potential) has begun! My current weeks are packed with seven days of gridiron. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are high school and middle school games in which I officiate. Tuesdays are meetings with the Pacific Northwest Official's Association. Saturday's are either a Washington home football game, in which I have volunteered as the official's liaison, or multiple pee-wee football games. Sunday is my chosen day off to watch my Raiders, and obtain content for my weekly blog articles. Lately I've been going to a neat bar in Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle, to watch all the games. On occasional Sundays I can get a friend or two to join me, but others I will go alone. It's not so bad when everyone there is interested in exactly the same thing I am. Tends to lead to a fast and furious friendship (at least for the three hours we're sitting next to each other).

Some of you may be wondering, "what is an official's liaison?" What I do is show up about 3 hours before kickoff at the University of Washington. I don my ALL-ACCESS PASS around my neck, dress in business casual, and wait for the officials to arrive. Once they arrive I introduce myself as their "go-to guy" for whatever they need or want. Then I walk them out to the field, to the television truck, or to the trainer's room for taping, etc. Once they have the lay of the land, they go back into the locker room and have their pre-game meeting. Once they are ready for the field I escort the head referee and umpire to the coaches locker rooms for the officials/coaches conference. After a final escort to the field, with teams in the tunnel, smoke pouring onto the field, crowd screaming, and the occasional plane flying overhead, I am free to watch the game from wherever I want. I usually end up in the press box or on the sidelines. It's the best view in the house for sure! At halftime I make sure they get back into the locker room area safely (with the help of five of the biggest motorcycle cops you've ever seen). I repeat the escort process for the end of the game and then wait for them to do post-game meetings, deliver penalty reports to head coaches and then ensure they get to their cars safely.

I finished my trail running series in August and had an interesting final race. I thought it began at 9:30am, like the rest of the series. It started at 8:30am. Needless to say I was late, and had to run a quarter mile from the parking lot to pick up my number, then do a lap around a field to catch the person that was in 200th position. This is the kind of thing I've literally had nightmares about! The leaders had taken off at least 3 minutes ahead of me and were at least three-quarters of a mile ahead. Luckily, I had 13+ miles to catch them. The unfortunate part was that I had to pass 191 people on single-track trail to get close. I managed to have a good race and finish 9th, but with that additional three minutes would have been in the 6th or 7th range. Regardless, I won the series for the 30-39 age group and finished 3rd overall. There was only one runner to beat me in all four races, and he won the series, needless to say I suppose.



Recently went through an ending of my relationship, so have moved to a small mother-in-law apartment in a friend's basement. It's a temporary fix to a more permanent problem, being single again. It's certainly not the most painful breakup I've had as it was more of a parting of ways, but it's not fun either way. Linus and Chili and I are getting used to our new digs and are doing our best to keep busy. The apartment is dark and a bit depressing, but my friends and pets are quite helpful for the heart. I have a classmate that recently went through the same kind of thing, so we're kindred in that way and spend a lot of time being single guys.

The question now is where do I go and what do I do after football season. Seattle is expensive and Colorado has it's drawbacks too. However, both places are amazing for a lot of reasons and I could be happy in either place. That's the process right now and I should have a better idea in the next month or so. In the meantime, I hope everyone is well! Miss you all!