Not Quite The Best View In The House

My son played a football game today. It was a pretty good game. Or so I heard. My view was somewhat obstructed.

It was a JV game for the Pleasant Grove High School Vikings against Westlake. I’m not sure what the mascot for Westlake is. In fact, the only thing I know is that it literally is on the West side of Utah Lake.

I arrived at the stadium a few minutes after kickoff. As I walked in, PG ran a play from their own 40 yard line. It was a pass to the tight end running a crossing pattern. He caught it perfectly in stride, beat the defense to the corner, turned upfield and ran it in for a touchdown. As he made his way back to the sidelines, I recognized the number for my good friend’s son. It was only the second touchdown he had scored and the first one that was on purpose.

My friend and his wife entered the stadium five minutes later. He missed it.

My son plays defense. He doesn’t score touchdowns. He stops them. And he had a really good game, making some key tackles. I got to see a few.

See, the game started at 3:30. I took my phone with me to the game. Because I always take my phone with me. . .to the game, to the movies. Just in case there is an outage call.

There was an outage call.

My smartphone means that I can join an outage call. . .and on the second line call the client. . .and of course, read the emails. And I can still watch the game. That’s why there’s a mute button on my headset.

Unfortunately there is also a storm moving into Utah. The temperature at game time was about 50 degrees with lots of wind. And that wind was playing havoc with my mic. It wasn’t the chilling wind that drove me back to my car. It was the constant requests of

Could you say that again? There’s a lot of background noise.

So, with 8 minutes left in the second quarter I retreated to the view from the parking lot. The outage lasted about an hour. I got to return to the game for the fourth quarter.

People often ask me about my work life balance. Mostly they ask because they don’t think I have one. They’re wrong. My work life balance is what allows me to attend my son’s JV football game at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. It also requires me to miss the middle part of the game. Is that too high a price to pay to get to see my son play football on a Wednesday afternoon?

Nope. It just changes my seating options.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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