You missed me. Admit it. You secretly have wanted a blog the past two weeks and I failed to deliver, right? I know it’s true and you know it’s true, but most of all, I know it’s true. So I’m going to remedy that.

And I should say here, it’s not a secret obsession for everyone. The Vile One has done her part to post on my Facebook wall** each week, chiding me and trying to embarrass me into writing something. Good for her, however, you’d think after knowing me for probably between two to three decades she’d have realized that there is little chance I will be embarrassed. Having such a messed-up moral compass makes it so.

While I’d like to say it was all work that kept me away, that’s not totally true. I have been slammed lately with all the ramp up we have going on for NCAA.com as we get set to kick off football. This is the first time ever that the site will focus on FBS football, which is awesome. And I’m lucky I get to play a cool role in the site, especially the football stuff***.

Actually, despite the serious addition to the workload now that we’re out of summer mode, it’s not the only nor the main reason I haven’t blogged in a couple weeks. No, it’s more that I didn’t have anything to say.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Okay, be honest, how long did it take you to really start to comprehend that last statement and start reading again? Yes, me, Mr. Talktalktalk, the one who has never met a conversation he didn’t want to dominate, I didn’t have anything to say.

It was weird because I almost always can find something to talk or write about. I am not encumbered with the need to have any direct knowledge of a subject before I interject my thoughts; in reality, it’s quite the opposite as I talk about shit I have no clue about all the time.

Why be boring and only talk about things you really know about? Lame.

But, the past couple weeks I didn’t have anything inspiring that pushed me to want to write it down. What can you do? Not much. Just keep going on.

So that’s what I did. I just worked and did whatever it is that I do and I figured at some point I’d get a lightning strike of inspiration to again be able to blog. And then it happened.

On Saturday, I went for a long run. It was just after noon and was heating up for the day. The air was thick and wet, humidity dripping as soon as I walked out the front door. Typically this is how I like to have it when I run, but for some reason, it was a bit too much. By mile 4, I was done. No energy left to run, I decided to just think of all the names my “buddies” would call me if they saw me right then and I just power walked the last mile home.

Halfway there, it struck me.

I was walking past one of the 17 bus stops along the road I run on and it had the normal garbage piled up by the sign, but it was a little different. There was a whole bowl of Fruit Loops dumped on the ground. It wasn’t there just 30 minutes before when I ran by the first time. Someone had just put it there.

My first thought was: Where’s the bowl? It was just all piled up, orange and red and green and yellow circles, clumped together, still mushy, soggy with milk circling around and slithering away in the dirt. Why was it here? Who put it here and why didn’t they want it anymore? And where did the bowl go?

The questions quickly faded as I swished past and moved up the start of the hill, the one that I have yet to be able to master running all the way up at the back end of my workout. But a new question popped into my head: When was the last time I had Fruit Loops?

And then it made me wonder what else I missed, as I quickly realized I hadn’t had Fruit Loops in forever, or at least since 2007.

So, as I made my way up the hill and back past the Mennonite church and what is probably the drug house on that one block, I started to think of the things I miss the most, stuff I haven’t had or used or played with in years. The short list I came up with in the final 10 minutes of my run/jog/walk included:

  • Fruit Loops: It started this whole conversation in my head and there’s good reason: That shit is good. It’s no Count Chocula or Cookie Crisp, but it’s definitely in my top five cereals of all-time.
  • Asteroids: My favorite video game of all-time, I wish I had a table-top version like you’d see in Pizza Huts in the late 1980s.
  • Rock candy: Wasn’t this supposedly the cause of several young, aspiring TV star kids’ deaths in the ’80s, mainly after they put it in Coca-Cola? If so and this isn’t just an urban myth****, I’d like to see this make a comeback for some of these young, aspiring TV star kids of today.
  • Cold water: This may seem strange, but if you live in a place where the average daily temperature is a larger number than the U.S. debt total, you’d understand. In the past year that I’ve lived in Georgia, I’ve had cold water, the good icy kind that comes right out of the tap almost immediately as soon as you turn on the faucet, exactly twice — with both times coming while I was home in Illinois. It’s amazing how much you can miss something as bland as cold water, but after a good run or just on a hot day, coming into the house and letting the water run for six minutes and then getting a glass full and it’s still about 73 degrees, well, it leaves a bit to be desired. And it’s the same in the shower. It never gets cold. You know, that cold kind of shower that’s awesome after mowing the grass on a hot-as-shit day. Or the cold kind on one of those first warm days of spring, when it’s 82 for the first time in months (and it was probably a high of 43  just two days before) and you take a cold beer in with you to take the bite off from the long drinking session the night before. No? Not something you’re familiar with? Hmmm, maybe that’s just a me thing.

Ahh, there’s something else I miss that should be on the list — talking just to talk, even when I don’t know what it’s about. There you have it. I’m back.

So anyway, here’s your blog Vile One. And really, here it is for all of you since I know you secretly missed it.

** To my Islamist friends with open minds but who are stuck in closed-minded countries: a Facebook wall is a place on the Internet where you can post stupid, funny, meaningful, outrageous, insane things for people who you have allowed to be your ‘friends’ to see and comment on. It’s a sort of private-but-public forum that people in free countries use. This is similar to Twitter, but that’s more for drunk posting after the fucking Cubs lose.

*** SHAMELESS WORK PLUG ALERT: Make sure to check out our new live stats coverage that we’ll unveil the fist weekend of the football season. And be sure to get into the live blog and ask a question. You might recognize who’s giving the answers.

**** Urban myths are awesome. Kidneys for sale. Abducted by Crips. All of them. What’s your favorite urban myth?