Let’s go… Slaho!

Today I was back at work simply to clean up my classroom for the summer and to verify that the grades that I turned in were correct. Since it wasn’t a REAL day of work (no students or grading) I decided to take my little one with me. The tyke is 22 months old, and a bundle of energy AND a little crazy so I kept him in the stroller most of the time, for fear that he was going to make a run for it. But when I went into my classroom to tidy up, I decided to give the kid a break and I let him out of the stroller. Of course he tried to make a run for it (as I had expected) opening the door of my room and taking off down the hallway, but it was all for a good laugh. It actually appeared like he understood that I had him in the stroller for that reason because he went just far enough to hide behind a trash can, then started laughing when I “found” him and took him back to the room. Once inside my room he just moved around looking curiously at everything and helping me to throw away trash. (I’d give it to him and he’d “sort” it and put it in the garbage can. It was actually pretty cute) After a while he got bored though and decided he wanted to play with some of the stuff on my desk. Most of the stuff was harmless… an empty pen stand, a calculator without batteries, a stapler, a pair of scissors, a grenade, etc. Seriously, though, he was just playing with some plastic stuff on my desk, and then found a candle that was given to us at the beginning of the year. The candle was in a small glass bowl. When I saw him grab the bowl, I immediately told him to put it down. He did, for the moment. But when I wasn’t looking, he grabbed candle and bowl and took off for the back of the classroom. I noticed what he had taken off with and decided to follow him. When he saw me coming, I saw him do what he normally does when I am coming to take something away from him… throw it before I can take it from him. Not good. First I saw him getting ready to throw the candle. I gave him an assertive “No” so that he’d understand I didn’t approve and he went on and threw it anyway. By this time I was close to him, and knew I had little time. Again I told him “No”, but just as I reached toward him, he turned and threw the bowl where I couldn’t reach it (the kid has a really good arm for a 2 year old). The bowl bounced once without breaking, but before I could let out a sigh of relief it bounced a second time and shattered. I immediately grabbed him and took him back to his stroller, mostly because I didn’t want him to get cut with the glass on the floor, but also to show my disapproval. But I really didn’t give him a hard time about what he did. He didn’t know that what what he had his hands on was so fragile, nor could he understand its value. Fortunately, this bowl had little value, but would he have understood better if had been fine crystal? Probably not.

As my boy grows older he will little by little learn a little more about responsibility, and eventually he will be able to assign value to the things he is left responsible for, but even then sometimes he is going to wind up breaking something of great worth which may not understand, causing pain or anger to someone else while he looks on with a child’s innocence what the whole big deal is. In other words, what is the big deal?

This is how I’ve been feeling today as I watched the press conference where Albert Cutie announced that he will be joining the Episcopal Church. Four weeks after being caught in a compromising situation, Albert has decided that the best way to face the situation is to walk away from the hot water. He can just begin anew with his new “spiritual family” as he called them. He’s looking forward to working with them, but he has a lot of love and fond memories from his time as a Catholic priest. It really sounded like a guy who left one team and signed a free agent contract with a new team, looking to bring them a championship. But in looking at him, I couldn’t help but pity him. He really didn’t seem to grasp the fact that what he did was a lot more than give himself a chance at a new family. He was in the process destroying his current family. The glass bowl that he had his hands on, the Church which he had chosen to be his “bride” and was given to him to take care of by his own Father, had just been thrown and shattered, and all he could do was shrug and say, “What’s the big deal?”
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Well, here we are…  the last day of the school year here at Columbus High School.  I’ve pretty much been done for two days since most of my classes are senior classes and those boys already graduated over a week ago.  I had only one class of underclassmen, and their final exam was Tuesday.  I graded those papers already and turned in my grades, so my work for all practical purposes is done.  I just need to do some tidying up and some tying up of loose ends, and I need to fulfill a few more tasks that I could refer to with other lame cliches and I’ll be done.  I’ll have a little more than a week and a half off and then I’ll begin summer school.  Then after three weeks of that I’ll have 6 weeks of much needed rest.  Then, it’ll be back to work again.  But, I know of at least two teachers who can not say the same.

 Yesterday, I was watching the news and I saw the story of a local teacher who was having an affair with one of her 15 year old students.  She worked in a Christian school somewhere in north Dade County, and it appears like she has been having this relationship with him for over two months.  She is 32 years of age.  She could technically be the kid’s mother.  The most disturbing part of the story is that the kid’s mom knew about their relationship and actually gave the happy couple permission to take a trip to Orlando together for Memorial Day Weekend.  Well, I’ll tell you one thing.  It’ll be a weekend the kid will never forget!!  It is pretty sad to see these grown women preying on these kids.  It isn’t like this a common thing (as far as we know) but it has happened enough recently for us to wonder what is going on through these women’s heads.  It’s not like this lady was ugly.  I’m sure she could find someone her own age without problem.  It just seems that these women haven’t gotten out of that “high school” phase part of their lives.  It seems that they are either unwilling to grow up, or they are living out some fantasy or are trying to live out a part of their lives they missed out on.  In this case, though, this woman went a step further.  She got consent from the kid’s mother. (more…)

Today marks the one year of anniversary of the first P90X workout I did.  How can I be so sure it was a year ago today?  Am I that kind of freak that remembers such random dates?  Was that first workout THAT memorable?  The answers to the last two questions are yes and no.  Yes, I normally do remember random meaningless dates for no reason, and no the workout was not that memorable, and this particular date did NOT remain in my memory bank.  It just so happened I started at the end of the last school year, and i went back into my archive to see when I had started blogging about my exercising and I noticed it had been a year ago today.  Coincidence?  Not completely.  What was a coincidence is that I received a reply to my blog on “Ink and the NBA”, and it came from a site stating “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days”.  I really hate getting these comments on my blogs from “mass commentors” who are only trying to advertise their products, and send such generic messages such as, “I learned a lot from this entry, I think I’ll come back.”   It’s a good thing I moderate these comments because 9 out of 10 of the comments I get are like this!  Still, I found it interesting that I received one from a weight loss site on the anniversary of my decision to get back in shape. (more…)

I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs a lot more than I usually do this year.  Normally, I watch until the Heat get elminated from the playoffs.  That meant that last year I didn’t even watch the playoffs.  Sure I watched just enough to see the Celtics beat the Lakers (the two teams I grew up hating the most, since I was a Sixer fan most of my life), glad to see that Kobe wasn’t going to win without Shaq (sorry Kobe fans but I can’t stand the guy), but other than that I didn’t watch much.  This year I decided that i wanted to see some of the best talent in the NBA and not just my hometown guys.  I must say that i am impressed with the talent and in particular the great games in both Conference Finals.  There’s been some exciting basketball.  But it’s something else that has really grabbed my attention and I just can’t seem to separate it from the games I am watching… the number of tattoos that the majority of these guys are wearing.

Now maybe I’m old fashioned, but I just don’t get the whole tattoo thing.  Honestly one simple tattoo doesn’t bother me too much, but why would anybody want to ink up 30 or 40% of their body?  And I know that one shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but let’s face it most of us don’t read books whose covers don’t “speak” to us, so the tattoos make an impression on me that I can’t overcome sometimes.  And growing up, tattoos always said one thing to me about a person… thug.  I rarely met someone all tattooed up that was very outgoing or caring.  These people were usually mean-spirited or drugged out (I am generalizing, of course).  (more…)

OK, OK, a small break from my Mad Rants. I do have a couple more on the way, before I go back to being happy go lucky, fun-loving Wency again. Today, though, I’m here to share my thoughts on my latest endeavor…

A few days ago, I received two pamphlets in the mail. One was addressed to Wency Ortega, the other to Wenceslao Ortega. I figured one was for my dad, and mistakenly sent to my place until I saw what they were for… EXTREME RUNNING. Nope, they were both for me. They must really want me, I thought, so I read the pamphlet. And what I read intrigued me. Oh, did it ever intrigue me!

The pamphlet was an advertisement for a 190 mile run across the state of Florida, from Clearwater to Daytona Beach. This sounds nuts! So, of course I read on. It is a giant relay intended to be done by a team of twelve runners, each doing three legs, for a total of 36 legs, and to be done nonstop until one reaches the final destination. Each leg is between 3 and 10 miles, and each runner will run a total of between 11 and 21 miles depending on their assigned legs. NICE!
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I hope you have a little time to read if you are about to read this blog. I AM a rambler. And a note, as much as I’ve written, my thoughts here are still incomplete and may seem overly generic in some cases. Realize that this is a small portion of what my feelings led me to write. You’ve been warned!

OK, so I’m hung up on what is going on in my Church for the moment.  Yes, I know that for some this whole Fr. Albert thing is old news, but it is still stuck in my mind.  It’s time to get my thoughts out.  I’m not sure who I’m really angry at right now, but I am upset.  Am I upset at Father Albert, or at his parishioners, or is it at our Archbishop and the Archdiocese of Miami (these guys are having a rough week with me…)?  I guess that it’s a little bit of each.

Where can I begin.  Well, let’s see, a few weeks ago Fr. Albert Cutie, the poster boy for the Catholic Church (and I mean this in a good way) was caught in a compromising situation with a woman.  This is obviously a big deal because he is a Catholic priest and he has taken a vow of celibacy.  This has caused a tremendous upraor, thoughout the Christian (yes, beyond “Catholic”) community, as well as in the Latin community, faith notwithstanding.  Everybody has an opinion on the matter, and in my OWN humble opinion almost everybody is way off base.
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Last year at this time of year I began to blog regularly as I started my new workout regimen.  I really got into it and was very consistent for a while.  Then Facebook happened and I stopped writing.  Seems that my curiosity (or nosiness) was stronger than my will to write.  Since then I have found myself thinking of things that i should write down, and yet I never found the time, energy, desire, or the plain old wherewithall to do so.  Well, I finally found something to write about.  in fact I have a bunch of things I want to write about because they are on my mind, and I never want to forget how I felt at this moment in time about these particular topics.  Hopefully these are things that will inspire me to change not only me but to go out and change the things I don’t like in this world and improve the things that I do.  I’m sick of just sitting around and doing NADA on my big butt (which has gotten bigger again since I stopped exercising… that’s changing today too…).  So today I share the first of many thoughts i have regarding certain topics.  Hopefully after my rants, I will begin with some more lighthearted writing later on.

On Sunday, I received some sad news.  I was informed that the Archdiocese of Miami Youth Center was up for sale.  This retreat facility and gathering place for the Catholic Youth of Miami has had a special place in my heart for a long time.  It is there where I went through the Encuentro Juveniles nearly 20 years ago (September 8-10, 1989).  It is where I went to the “youth and young adult group” related to this Catholic Movement for 3 and half years every Monday (and many times Wednesdays, too) after that retreat.  It is where I went through my leadership seminars (Liderazgo) to learn more about being a young Catholic Leader walking in the footsteps of Christ’s disciples.  It is where we held retreats for both SpiritAlive and CrossRoads retreats when I was coordinating those respective groups.  It is where we ran Archdiocesan retreats for Young Adults, in particular the “Remember” retreat that I helped create with Frank Villaronga (former head of Young Adults for the archdiocese), and a host of other great creative people involved in YAMI (Young Adult Ministry Institute).  Dania used to do the St. Brendan Encounters there when she was Campus Minsiter there.  And it is the place that I spent almost a full two weeks of my life working on when it was hit hard during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.  This place truly has a special place in my heart. (more…)