A Personal Note

I'll give you a couple of options. You can consider this a belated anniversary valentine, or you can consider it a comment on how life has been the last month or six weeks. Take your pick.
Now, down to business.
Thanks, honey!
Thanks for eight years of this partnership. Thanks for loving my girls, and now our granddaughter. Thanks for buying in to my goofy life, and treating it with far, far more respect than it deserves. Thank you for hanging in with a migraine sufferer. Thanks for learning baseball to details you had never imagined existed. Thanks for your encouragement when I see no point or hope. Thanks for believing when I'm ready to give up. Thanks for doing your job all day and then getting home many nights and helping with mine, too. Thanks for tolerating the calls that come at weird hours and during the birthday parties and other celebrations. Thanks for making room in your house as well as your heart for my kids and the baby. Thanks for enjoying some of the more peculiar of my acquaintances (or at least pretending to), because I love some of these whackos dearly. Thanks for ignoring my devotion to rasslin' and roots music and especially Levon Helm-I know how his voice grates on your nerves, and I really am trying to remember not to play him right after you get home from work. Thanks for trying to smile as I drag you to every Dylan show in a seven state area. Thanks for reminding me not to yell at the television during Red Sox-MFY games after the under-30's have gone to sleep. Thanks for pretending to tolerate cajun/creole food, moroccan food and whatever kinds of critters are skewered on those kabobs from the cuisines of various parts of the world. Thanks for pretending to think it's a good idea to visit those neighborhoods in Chicago that contain the great blues clubs. Thanks for letting me rant when I need to. Thanks for your patience with Zevon and Dickinson and Cash and Grohl and Earle and Snider and Hiatt and Guthrie and Haggard and Lovett and Waits and Kimbrough and Burnside and Willie and all the others you really don't care for.
And for all I've left out, thanks for that, too!
I love you more than I can ever explain.
Me

Tiger, The Women, and Apologies

A young man, married, twice a father, the best (perhaps ever) at his job, wealthy, handsome and as famous as anyone in the world: Awesome!
The same young man, outed as a philanderer, facing the loss of his wife and children, reputation, half his wealth (at least) in a divorce settlement, seriously damaged earnings potential for the future: Stupid, arrogant and sinful.
The same young man, emerging momentarily from therapy, owning his behavior, apologizing profusely to everyone he disappointed and wounded: Hopeful.
Some (any) portion of the Other Women involved in his philandering asking for the young man to apologize to them, women who wanted to be with a famous man they knew to be married, women who demonstrated no restraint or morality themselves: Absurd!
If there are to be additional apologies in Tiger Woods' case, how about Tiger's girlfriends, all, some, or any of them, summon up an attempt at decency themselves, and apologize to Mrs. Woods?
One thing that hasn't been said anywhere by anyone about Tiger Woods is that he forced or coerced anyone into his bed. That being the case, they were, at the bare minimum, willing participants. With a married man. And twice a father.
There is a lot of speculation in the media about Tiger's body language, choice of words, eye contact with the camera, and everything else about his statement last Friday. He brought that on himself. But what must be said is that whatever his motivation, he seems to be trying to get his life together.
We must applaud anyone who makes such an effort.
But there is no sympathy here for any of those who shared in his misbehavior looking to play the victim. They all knew who he is. That's why they made themselves available to him.
Instead of asking for apologies, ladies, how about growing up and making one?