3 - 0

Colts 31, Cardinals 10

2 - 0

Colts 27, Dolphins 23

And a few things to note:

First snap of the game, Peyton and Dallas hook up for a 80 yard touchdown. 12 seconds into the game.

The Colts offense have the ball only 14 minutes, 53 seconds, but they manage to win the game.

Dallas Clark - I knew he'd have a big year without Marvin Harrison lining up. He finished with seven receptions for 183 yards, the fourth highest total for a tight end in NFL history (according to NFL.com).

Peyton Manning - Finding new ways to win.

1 - 0

Colts 14, Jaguars 12

One Moment in Time

Do you remember where you were when...

As a child, I remember the adults of my world talking about Kennedy's assassination. It was one of those moments everyone remembers where they were. And this shared memory of one moment in time united a generation. On the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, stories abound. People eagerly share with others their participation in that moment. Because it was a moment shared by more than just those waving at the President as his motorcade drove past before the fateful gunshot echoed through the streets. It was a moment shared by America.

And I used to wonder...what will be that moment for my generation?

There have been a few...

I remember a third grade lunch, a snowy day - too cold to play outside. That day, it was indoor lunch recess. Typically after eating on cold or rainy days, we would returned to the classroom to play games, or color or read. But this day, we tuned in to watch the news coverage - the space age claimed more victims. January 28, 1986.

I remember driving home from high school with my best friend, Jeff and our younger siblings, Donovan and Jon. I remember Jon getting in the car, all hopped up about the bombing of a building with a day care. I remember thinking how Jon exaggerated things, about how active his imagination must be. Bombings don't happen here. And even if they did, no one would attack a building with a day care. And I remember getting home to find my mom in front of the television, remote in hand as she scanned from one news station to the other. And all of a sudden, Jon's imagination wasn't so wild and we all were vulnerable. And forever the image of a firefighter, cradling the baby covered in blood. April 19, 1995.

In college, there was the Labor Day weekend at Aunt Trish and Uncle Barry's. Sending summer off within the warm embrace of our own ring of fire tribute. The one morning, standing in my aunt's kitchen and seeing the headline in the Detroit Free Press. High speed chase, paparazzi involved, car crash, minor injuries...only to find out later that the newspaper was right on only three of the four points. More than minor injuries. The tragic end of what had, at one point, been a fairy tale existence. August 31, 1997.

But I had no idea that those moments in time would pale in comparison to one warm day in the fall...

I had taken a week off from Family Video to visit my sister, brother-in-law and baby niece. Kaylee was 9 months old and I relished the idea of taking care of her while my sister worked. We were downstairs in the Potter family condo. Kaylee was entertaining herself with some toys on the floor while I watched "If Looks Could Kill" on HBO. Not a great movie, but slightly more entertaining than the usual round of morning talk shows and infomercials. My sister called, as had been her habit, to check on her first-born. But this call was different than the others.

"Are you okay?"

I was a little confused - it seemed like such an odd question for so early in the morning. Not, "How's your day?" or "How's the baby?" No questions about breakfast, or our plans for the day. Just the question...

"Are you okay?"

I don't remember my exact words - probably something like, Yeah, sure. Why?

"Planes are falling from the sky, crashing into buildings. Are you watching the news?"

And my thought - what is wrong with my sister? Seriously, did she smoke her breakfast? What kind of imagination must she have?

I flipped over to a news station and then I saw it, the smoke pouring from the second tower hit. I don't remember what I said to her, but all of a sudden...

I wasn't okay.

We couldn't talk, she had to run to a impromptu meeting where her bosses would tell her and her co-workers that it was okay for them to do what they needed to. Stay and work if you need to, go home and be with your families if you need to. Whatever you need...

I remember watching the news coverage and being, honest to God for the first time in my life awe-struck. Speechless. Terrified. Alone and so not alone. Scared of what lay outside the doors.

Frightened by the notion that if anything happened, I was the only thing standing between this precious baby girl and the world. That responsibility that I had relished suddenly seemed heavy and scary.

I wanted my sister to rush home and take over. I wanted to go back to bed and start the day over again. I wanted my Mom.

The rest of the week is surreal, even now. Pictures and imagines forever ingrained in my mind.

People pleading for word of loved ones, smoke drifting up from a once quiet field in Pennsylvania. The flag being unfurled from near the carnage at the Pentagon. President Bush receiving word that we were under attack while sitting in front of a room full of the nation's true innocents. Bent metal marking the final resting place of thousands.

In my own little world - fighter jets screaming overhead in a constant flight pattern, the sound so foreign in my homeland.

Moments that I will never forget. For I shall always remember where I was when...

9/11/2001

World Trade Center, 2,628 souls
American Flight 11, 87 souls
United Flight 175, 59 souls

Pentagon, 125 souls
American Flight 77, 59 souls

Shanksville -

United Flight 93, 40 souls

God Bless You All.

Forbidden Fruits

When I was growing up, we had a neighbor on North Towne Drive with a fairly substantial backyard garden. In it he grew the delights of summer and sometimes this homegrown bounty would end up magically appearing on our back deck. Primarily fresh grown tomatoes, with gritty bits of earth still clinging to the sun-ripened skins.

Backyard Farmer Bill grew all things in that backyard of his. He even raised chickens one year in pens back along the treeline of the creek - and hosted the neighborhood in a end of summer chicken barbecue. As a child, I didn't connect that the moist, flame grilled meat had once been the object of my curiosity and affection, or at least as much affection as you can give a chicken who is without remorse when plucking at tender human flesh.

For all the years that we lived on North Towne Drive, Bill and Yvonne's yard sat in the middle of a row of houses that were home to a dozen elementary school aged children. Never did we hear a disparaging remark while using their yard as a gateway to our friends' houses. Sidewalks didn't exist on our street, so we made paths across the bright green grass in games of Ghosts in the Graveyard (a kind of hide & go seek summer passion of ours played in the late evening hours). And sometimes we found ourselves following Bill around as he maintained his lawn, and he patiently let us explore our childhood curiosities.

But there was one fascination of our childhood minds that we believed was forbidden. Along the north side of Bill's backyard grew grapevines. Throughout the summer we would watch these bushes grow into this thick green wall. And as the wall grew, so did the bounty of grapes - fresh, purple globes of juicy goodness, calling to us like sirens. And when we didn't think anyone was looking, we would snatch a few of these precious gems. Plopping them into our mouths, we would peal back the tender sun warmed skins and sink our teeth into the meat of the fruit. The warm tart juices would fill our mouths, the tiny seeds would be captured and spit out and for a moment, we were victors in the war of forbidden pleasures.

And then one day, we were caught, not eating, but plotting a way to capture some of the summer goodness. Backyard Farmer Bill caught our stares upon his summer labors. And I remember clearly the worlds he said that brought the war-mongering to an end.

"You can eat as many grapes as you want - just leave me enough to make a bottle of wine."

And all of a sudden, the forbidden fruits were no longer sweet goodness, but just warm grapes. And in mouths that had once rejoiced and savored the victory, these grapes were more bitter than sweet, warm mush instead of tart bursts of flavor.

And the spoils of war became spoiled by the peace. Forbidden no longer.

A Flight to Remember

I'm not typically a nervous flyer. I've done it often enough over the years to actually look forward to the thrill of takeoff and the relief of touchdown.

That being said...it doesn't take a whole lot for me to become a nervous flyer.

I've experienced just about every sort of delay on the ground. Everything from hurricanes to lightning storms to, well, there was that one time when someone on the tarmac backed their truck into a plane. A big plane. A DC-10. How exactly does that happen? And how do you explain that on the insurance incidence report?

I could write a book about the hours I've spent visiting connection cities courtesy of the airlines. An extra night in Phoenix, another in Houston. A night in Chicago where I was greeted in the morning by a cockroach relaxing on the bristles of my toothbrush.

There was that time when Becky and I were coming back from Las Vegas. She was sure that she would break my run of bad airport luck. We boarded the plane on time, pushed away from the gate on schedule. Got in line for takeoff only to discover that one of the computers on the plane required rebooting. Simple enough, except if we went back to the gate, we've have to go through the security procedure. So it seemed like it would just be faster to find a quiet spot of runway to stop and reboot - but that's easier said than done in Sin City. Three hours later they finally got the computer rebooted - just in time to discover that we didn't have enough gas to get back to Cleveland. So in the end, we had to go to the gate anyways. So...four hours later...

Then how about the time my mom and I were flying back from Denver. We boarded on time, pushed back from the gate - even flew across the Midwest with time on our side. And then, on final approach, a snow storm closed the Cleveland airport. On final approach. As we were making our descent. Seriously? And to top that off, we couldn't gamble that we had enough gas to circle the airport until it reopened so we were re-routed to Detroit. Unbelievable, right?

But fortunately, all my airline adventures have happened on the ground. Knock on wood that this is a pattern that will continue.

Except...

I had one of those flights on final approach to DIA returning from vacation in Indiana. Nothing tragic, nothing too crazy - hardly worth mentioning except that it made for a flight to remember. And was enough to make me a nervous flyer, at least at the time.

It was a rather boring flight. I spent most of the time zoning out to Mark Harmon and NCIS (thank you USA Network for mini-NCIS marathons). And I was looking forward to landing and zooming home to my puppy dog. Captain announced final approach and I began to anticipate getting off the flying tin can.

As we made our descent into DIA, we hit a patch of turbulence. Not rock the plane violently turbulence, more like the small hills on a roller coaster. The kind that give you butterflies in your stomach - normally a good sensation, and not overly concerning though I did worry about hitting an air-pocket that would drop the plane further than we had to drop. And then...

All of a sudden, instead of descending into the airport, we started climbing. Engines screamed like on takeoff, which seemed a little odd, considering that we were coming in for a landing. And then we banked hard to the right. Definitely more of a bank that I've ever experienced in a plane. Enough that had I been standing up, there's a good chance I would've ended up sitting in 20F instead of 20A. And I'm not sure the gentleman already occupying that seat would have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

At this point, I had a pretty nervous hold on the armrest and was trying to not get creative with my thought processes. Mark Harmon was gone from my screen in what the standard message assured me was due to normal aircraft movement. Except it's not really very reassuring, as I'm pretty sure that they don't have a standard message that reads "Signal lost due to extremely unusual and dangerous maneuvers - all hope is lost."

So to distract myself, I looked out the window. At the beautiful lightning display. Nice, right? But I'm sure it's heat lightning...oh, except for those giant bolts. Okay - looking out the window wasn't proving to be the distraction I was hoping for.

And now my thought process got creative. Why didn't we land? Are these evasive maneuvers? Does the pilot know something he's not sharing? How am I suppose to judge the mood of the flight attendants if I can't see them? How fast can I turn on my cell phone and text everyone I know? What would I say? Could I text a farewell message without feeling the need to use proper grammar and punctuation?

Oh, and why has the emergency lighting all of a sudden come on? Exit signs, floor lighting. I don't imagine the emergency slides at those emergency exits will do a whole lot of good if the plane isn't actually on the ground. Does my floatation device also double as a parachute? And seriously - if the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, I'm totally going to pee my pants.

Turns out, in the end, that the flight pattern they had us approaching on didn't leave us with enough runway to actually stop the plane, so the landing was aborted and we had to come in on a different approach. In the end, my creative juices got flowing just enough to create borderline panic, though I managed to avoid crying, screaming, hyperventilating and rationalizing. I did, however, probably leave deep finger-shaped indentations in the armrest.

Words to Live By

Life is short,
Break the rules,
Forgive quickly,
Kiss slowly,
Love truly,
Laugh uncontrollably,
And never regret anything that made you smile.

Life may not be the party we hoped for,

but while we're here we should dance.