I hear it all the time: "Life is hard!" In reality, life is easy. It is the relationships in life that are hard. Our lives are full of relationships in every category: intimate, work, family, friendship, etc. On some level you even have a relationship with the person who makes your Starbucks every morning. In fact, that is probably the easiest relationship you have (or at least the most rewarding). If you are married, dating, single or jaded, you interact with people every day who shape your life and how you lead it. If you are married, your spouse is likely the first person you see in the morning. Those first couple of minutes the two of you have together can shape the rest of your day.

Desperately seeking happiness Don’t you wish you could just take a really good picture, put it on your driver’s license, and that is how you see yourself? All the time. Isn’t that what self-esteem is all about? Feeling confident and secure? Getting through that job interview may be easier or calling that new crush. When God made you he wanted you to be happy with yourself . I wonder if His feelings get hurt with all this plastic surgery that happens in the United States. In other countries people are not so obsessed with looks, but happiness seems to be more prevalent, like in Bhutan in the Himalayans, where happiness is in the constitution. Seeking Joy is part of their society. The Dala

 There are a lot of little things that I love about baseball: the crack of the bat, ballpark dogs with extra onion and sauerkraut, the sound of the ball smacking leather, nerding out on statistics, big swooping 12-to-6 curve balls that fall off the table, monster jacks, infield hits, bleacher bums, diving catches, when infielders barehand the ball (or even better, when outfielders do it).   The list goes on and on, but there may be nothing about baseball that I enjoy more than a good manager ejection.   The "manager ejection" is unique to baseball. I mean, you see basketball coaches get tossed from time to time, and sometimes they throw a little tantrum, but it's not the same.   I do

           Let's try this again. Thursday evening I attended my second River Cats game as your intrepid sports reporter.  This time, instead of the press pass around my neck, I held a ticket in my hand.      The split between the press pass and me was amicable and mutual.  The morning following my first foray into sportswriting, I was asked, very cordially, to "please dress appropriately and professionally when covering any games at Raley Field,  i.e., no shorts, T-shirts or flip flops."   The outfit I wore into the press box Monday evening? You guessed it, shorts, a T-shirt, and flip flops.  The hat trick.  Oops.       In accordance with this request, I decided to wear pants, a col

 "What did the yogi say to the hot-dog vendor?" "Make me one with everything"                 Yoga? Me? Not bloody likely.  Up until recently, when I thought of yoga , I conjured up  people named "Moonbeam" and "Mudpuddle" singing "Kumbaya" while stretching and massaging one another's colorful auras.  No thanks.  I don't drink soy milk, I'd rather die than become a vegan, I can't stand drum circles, and patchouli makes me retch.                Don't let the degree from the University of Oregon fool you; I'm no hippie.  Except when it comes to the music festivals, /cause they're far out, man.  Come High Sierra, I will be gallivanting barefoot, loving all my fellow Earth creatures, and m

       The cheeseburger.  Is there anything so uniting and yet polarizing at the same time?  Everybody loves cheeseburgers.  What about the tree-hugging vegans, you ask?  They love cheeseburgers too, but the burger is made of bulgur and whey and twigs, and the cheese is made of soy, whatever that is.  The top-selling vegan product today is the veggie burger.  That's a fact.  Look it up. And when you do, let me know what you find out, because I'm using the word "fact" very loosely here.   The point is, everyone loves burgers. There you go, we're united. So if we can agree that everyone loves burgers, why are they so polarizing? Because your favorite burger probably isn't my favorite bu