by Adam Jones

The football was just sitting in the corner of the garage. I took it with me, kind of like when the Greatest Hits of Southern Rock CD is just sitting by the counter at the gas station and you pick it up for $6.99 because, heck, when's the last time you heard "Flirtin' with Disaster" by Molly Hatchet? Anyway, I was going for a walk around the neighborhood, the weather was perfect and I needed a ball to toss.

That's right, a 39 year-old man walking around a residential neighborhood throwing a football to himself. I've decided that this will be my lifetime sport. A good friend ruptured his Achilles tendon in one of our church league basketball games two weeks ago and it gave me pause. I'm really not interested in golf and don't have a reliable tennis partner. I've always believed exercise should involve a ball of some kind, which eliminates running and swimming. So this is it: fresh air, cardiovascular benefits, hand/eye coordination and pretending I'm Limas Sweed while the puzzled neighbor at the corner of Highland Hills and Laurel Ledge wonders what the hell I am doing trying to get both feet in bounds before I hit the curb. I may even start a league.

by Adam Jones

We all remember when we gain entrance to clubs, either formally or informally. This starts when another toddler rolls a ball to you on the playground or maybe when you are baptized or when you stick your whole face in the cake at your first birthday party to celebrate America's great fascination with both excess and eating a lot of crap. The best club I ever joined welcomed me when I was five and I went to Kimbrough Memorial Stadium to watch the West Texas State Buffaloes play football. I'm still a member in good standing - and so are all of you.

We got a new member this fall. There's no telling what B will say on the way home from a Saturday morning breakfast. He often asks if the day will be a "family day," which in our house means Mom and Dad are not going to work and the whole family gets to spend time together. He follows up by asking if we are going to the park or if friends are coming over or, sometimes, he says something really profound. Like:

by Adam Jones

Rain came to Austin on Tuesday and I had the day off. No better place to be in such a circumstance than at the Frisco Shop on Burnet. The Frisco is a real coffee shop, a relic from the fifties and the last restaurant standing in the once famous Night Hawk steakhouse chain. You can get strong coffee at the Frisco, but if you order a 2%-decaf latte the waitress will look at you the same way a goat looks at a new gate. It's that kind of place.

I was hungry and looked to stake my claim to one of the five parking spaces fronting Burnet. A blue Ford F-150 swooped in front of me and took it, which wasn't cool because, well, I was hungry and now would be forced to sit through another red light at the corner of Burnet and Koening while I made the block and parked around back. The Frisco is a seat yourself joint and I found a booth by the window, which allowed me to take great solace in being dry and well-fed while the rest of the world drove around in the rain striving to accomplish their daily tasks. Did I mention I was hungry?

by Adam Jones

There are entirely too many electronic devices in my family room. It's overwhelming. The Jonesfamily is now a TiVo family, which means I have had multiple conversations this week about connectivity with A/V receivers, cable converter boxes, HD compatibility and whether the 51 minutes Mrs. JonesTop Ten spent on hold with Time Warner would send us directly to marriage counseling. Our friend, Holly, summed up this exercise in futility when we asked her if she had undergone the same survival exercise through the electronic wilderness when she upgraded her television viewing environment.

by Adam Jones

A quiet family room suggests danger lurks beyond all comprehension. After making the Sunday morning coffee, I figured I needed to investigate, for that's what any above-average parent would do. I found C, the one-year old, perched on the brick hearth next to two Chinese terra cotta soldiers my mother-in-law gave me. C had the same stoic expression as his ancient comrades-in-arms. Not one of contrition-no-more like: "Yeah, I know I'm on the hearth, but if you try and remove me, my boys Po and Lin here are going to have something to say about it." Knowing the relative immobility of Po and Lin and that I outweigh C by about 165 pounds, I was not intimidated and removed him from harm's way.

September 24, 2006

by Adam Jones

My wife does not understand my affinity for color weather radar. Quite simply, I love it. She does not. I could sit for hours and watch the greens turn orange and red and slowly envelope my town in a fantastic barrage of rain and thunder and lightning. When he was a very young boy, Z and I once stayed up long into the night-or I did anyway-watching a thunderstorm roll in on channel 44 with the upstairs windows open to let in the real time sound effects.

Where I grew up, there was no need for this technological marvel. The Texas Panhandle sits on the High Plains-accent on High. It is about 3600 feet from sea level to the top of the Caprock Escarpment to a flat piece of land the Spanish explorer Coronado called the Llano Estacado. Land so flat that you can see the weather long before it hits you. The squall lines almost always start from the northwest, coming off the Rockies, and they build and spread and darken the sky so predictably that you have a great sense for when to get inside. You don't need television. There is a great book, probably long out of print, titled The Desert Smells Like Rain, which tells of the Indians of Southern Arizona who schedule their crop cycles, and thus their entire livelihood, around the two times a year it rains in their desert homeland. The farmers and ranchers of the Texas Panhandle have these same instincts, although the Ogallala aquifer gives them a somewhat larger margin for error.

September 17, 2006

by Adam Jones

Oh baby don't it feel like heaven right now?
Don't it feel like something from a dream?
Yeah, I've never known nothing quite like this,
Don't it feel like tonight might never be again?
We know better than to try and pretend,
Baby no one could have ever told me 'bout this...

The waiting is the hardest part,
Every day you see one more card,
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart,
The waiting is the hardest part.

-Tom Petty, The Waiting

September 11, 2006

by Adam Jones

Juan was not allowed in the house without the Lone Star. We sent him back out into the traffic and noise. His task wasn't easy-three different places before he found a supplier. Who knew? But it had to be done. We were not about to trust the Longhorn fate to a freshman quarterback against a top-flight opponent. We needed the Lone Star.

That and a couple of big time plays that the Longhorns never made. The two biggest plays in the first half were both turned in by Buckeyes-one forced fumble at the goal line that constituted a fourteen-point swing against the home team and one perfect strike to Ted Ginn to break a deadlock going into halftime.

September 5th, 2006

Written by Adam Jones

Opening day delivers us a number of traditions. We pine away for that first kickoff for a very long seven months, redeemed only by recruiting season, the major golf championships and the NBA Finals-and many of us ceased caring about professional basketball years ago. Where I grew up, opening day was accompanied by road trips and dove season, not necessarily in that order. The dove provides a symbol of peace to humanity during these troubled times. Of course, I am one who believes God wants his children to be truly happy, which is why the gentle creatures taste so freaking good wrapped in bacon and jalapenos. If it were up to me no one would enjoy this delicacy-a dove in close proximity to me and a shotgun is about as safe as the career prospects of a bail bondsman in Tallahassee or Coral Gables. But I digress (the first time this season if you are keeping score at home).

Written by Adam Jones

August 15th, 2006?

Forty. That's what I will be in February. B, the three year-old, reminds me of this daily. When his smartass mother asks him: 'How old is Daddy?' He gleefully responds: 'Almost forty.' ?B executes this line right on cue because his mother has trained him to do so. Everyone thinks this is funny.