I was introduced to my facet this weekend. Unfortunately, the introduction didn't go anything like this:

"Eriq, meet Facet. Facet, meet Eriq."

No, it was more like this:

Eriq leans over to pick up a shoe from the floor. Facet stabs Eriq in the back and laughs maniacally.

So after two trips to my chiropractor, I now have a much better understanding of why the facet is causing me such pain, and what I'm supposed to do about it. Which is basically move very carefully and try not to make it any unhappier than it already is. And with a 2mm difference between normal facet positioning and extreme pain, well, it's going to be an interesting couple of days.

Basically, keep your facets happy. Life will be much better if you can.

I was thinking the other day about the Denton Outlaws and what it would take to help get more fans involved. Our average attendance for this season is up from where it was last year, but we could do so much better. Even trying to get more host families involved, or getting the existing host families more involved. And that got me thinking, why not list the reasons to get involved with the team? So here they are, in no particular order:

REASONS TO GET INVOLVED WITH THE DENTON OUTLAWS

1. You get to interact with a team in a way that most people generally cannot with a pro sports team. Most people who are baseball fans have their involvement limited by how much they pay for tickets and where they sit at the games. You don't get to "talk shop" with the GM or coaches.

2. You get to really know the players if you choose to be a host family. Having a player (or two) live with you for a couple of months over the summer is an experience that's hard to describe, but even harder to imagine NOT doing once you've done it. And in many cases, you get to know their families, their girlfriends, and can keep in touch with them long after the summer season is over.

3. You get to know kids who are going to be playing in the big leagues someday. We've been fortunate that our first two players were drafted the year after they stayed with us. Josh Banda was taken by the Colorado Rockies in 2006, and Matt Cline was taken by the Milwaukee Brewers in 2007. We know more about the Rockies and Brewers farm systems than we ever would have otherwise, and that's a real kick! But we've also had a chance to get to know Eddie Degerman and Omar Arif, who are both pitching in farm systems and doing quite well.

4. You get a chance to have a baseball bat autographed by Rusty Greer. Now that Rusty is coaching for the Colleyville Lonestars, it's actually pretty easy to get him to autograph memorabilia and talk to before and after the game. That's just cool.

5. You get to sit in the stands at away games and hang out/chat with team co-owner Todd Van Poppel. Really. Having a Major League veteran walk up to you and address you by name, ask your wife if she's going to be OK driving home by herself following a late away game, well, it's just cool.

These are some of the experiences we've had with our involvement with the team, and since we want to get even more involved for next year, like starting a booster club, I think it's only going to get cooler.

And then there were three.

Yes, that's how many blogs I've been trying to maintain, and as you can see from the date range between this post and the last, well, I've not been very successful. Why 3? Because I'm trying to compartmentalize. I started this blog with the intent of posting stuff for Eriq the Personal. I have Lessons Learned for techno-babble how-to documents for my own reference as well as the IT world at large. And I have OnQ for the business side of things.

I've seen other folks who mix their personal and business stuff in the same blog, and quite honestly, I'm not that interested in reading about the kids at home, etc., when trying to glean some business insight. And when reading up on friends and their family activities, I tend to skip over the other stuff that they put in. So, in the hopes of keeping others from bailing on what I'm publishing because of cross-contamination of, well, stuff, I'm going to try to keep the three separate. Again. And probably miserably fail at keeping any of them up to date.

So is anyone going to notice that this post came back almost a year after the past one? I can think of exactly one person who might, if he hasn't removed me from his RSS feed already (which wouldn't surprised me one bit). But given that when I ported this site over from one server to another and had trouble getting the blog to display properly (fixed as of this evening, again, only a year later), I really didn't address this in a timely manner (again, stating the obvious) and boy did time slip away from me. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have looked at this again if I hadn't started digging into this whole Facebook phenomenon to see what it's about. I'm learning new stuff about the Facebook interface, including being able to import blog posts into the notes area, which, surprised surprise, got me looking at this blog again. And I chose this blog over the other two because I can be more "me" here than I can in the other two, and, quite honestly, the other two are going to be even more boring than this for those who might want to try to keep up anyway.

So there it is in a nutshell. Three blogs, one Facebook link, and a bunch of CGI scripts updated so this interface doesn't look so crappy. I still really like the logo anyway...