A Friend in Need, is a Friend with Kraft Dinner!

I wish that I had more friends like Mike Mclay.

I have always been blessed with an assortment of awesome friends. I have been able to maintain a number of friendships for 20+ years. It has always been a great source of pride for me, but lately I have been extremely thankful for the friendship of Mike Mclay.

Mike and I first met in training when we first got hired for Accenture in the Summer of 2007. My first impression of the guy was that he looked like Tyson Tomko in a suit. (Tyson Tomko being a former WWE/TNA wrestler) Mike and I hit it off quite easily, and probably because we both share a similar sense of humor, in addition to several similar likes a dislikes.


(Artist’s Rendering of Michael Mclay.)

Early in our tenure with Accenture, Mike broke his leg, and was severely injured due to slipping on some ice, and had to miss work for a year, and it was funny, because the place just didn’t seem the same without him. It’s funny some of the things you don’t realize you miss when they are gone, but Mike’s loud, and sometimes argumentative approach to customer service, listening to him on his calls, were quite entertaining, and somewhat weirder, relaxing.

When he came back, I was immediately happy to see him, because Mike is the kind of guy that makes everyone around him better. Even though I know that he doesn’t believe it, he does. He helps make me a better person, and I can say this with all sincerity, that I wish that he was my older brother. I once told him that, and he didn’t believe me, but it is totally true.

He is my most supportive friend at Accenture, and without him, work isn’t the same to come in to. And while I have a lot of friends at Accenture, who are very supportive of me. (Jen, Lynnda, Amanda, Lisa, Lesley, Mike, you know who you are), Mike Mclay by far is my closest and dearest friend at work.

I only wish that he takes the time to read this, because I never chat with him online, but I hope that someone will bring that to his attention, so that he can know how much his friendship means to me. He has made some of the hardest moments of the last year of my life a lot more tolerable, and his guidance and opinion is one that I respect more than most.

I don’t know where life will take me in this world, as I have not yet perfected Flux Capacitor technology, but I do know this, that I certainly hope that I have a friend like Mike Mclay around me always, because he makes me a better person, just having him as a friend.

But that’s just my opinion… What do I know???
F.M.

Screwing around at the Vanderhuge Estate!

Are you ready for some Foosball?

Greetings, Legionnaires!!!

Well it looks like another Superbowl has come and gone, and like the Superbowls before them, I have no interest in partaking in the Annual Football culmination for gridiron supremacy. It’s amazing how little I care about the sport of Pro-Football, but then again, it lacks the pageantry of Pro-Wrestling, so of course, I lack a certain level of interest.

While that last statement is not completely true, I do not care for the sport of professional football. I have never really cared for it, and I think that the main reason is, is that there are too many rules. That, and I never really grew up around the sport of Football. My Dad never took an interested in the game, and with the exception of the 4-Peat Superbowl losses of the Buffalo Bills, I never really took much of an interest.

Now, I hear a lot of people say that they watch the Superbowl in order to watch the millions of dollars pumped into the advertising for products that in most cases, no one has any interest for. Now I am a fan of commercials, as you can plainly see by my Youtube videos, but the fact remains that commercials are still not enough for me to watch the Superbowl.

I just don’t find football very interesting.

Even in High School. I was always told that I should have played for the Football team, and even at one point, was guaranteed a spot on the team (Due to lack of interest/players) but I refused because I always hated staying after school for any reason. (The reason? I always felt that I was being punished if I had to stay there any longer than I had to)

I imagine that I would have been much more popular in High School had I played on the football team, but let’s face facts, I lack what pros call “Athletic Ability” and as a result, I am sure that I wouldn’t have done very well. I am also sure that I would have been thrown off the team for excessive force or something like that during a game, because let’s face facts, I don’t think that a suplex is actually legal in High School Football. I am pretty sure it isn’t even legal in Pro Football.

I just find Football to be very boring, and too Rule-intensive.

But then again, there’s going to be one of my friends saying: “Football? Boring? Aren’t you the guy who watches like every Orioles game? Baseball is so bloody boring, how can you watch that?” Well I answer that by saying that it’s not just the game that does that to me, it’s the idea of Baseball.

My Grandfather (The late, Great, Rusty Chindemi) and I used to watch Baseball all the time, and it was something that I grew up admiring, so it’s been in my blood for years. I have a deep-seeded emotional link to the game, and that is why I love it so. Listen to me talk baseball, and almost every single time, I will mention Rusty somehow.

Watching baseball for me, brings me back to an emotion that can only be captured, sitting at a game with Grandpa and just talking about anything, it didn’t have to be just baseball. It’s a feeling that I try harder and harder to recapture in the 6 years since he passed.

I am sure that I would have felt the same way about Football, If it were what we watched, but it wasn’t. It was baseball, and the game itself always reminds me of the man I refer to as my second father.

Not a day goes by when I don’t think of him, and the lessons that he taught me, and he’s is just as responsible as anyone for helping shape me to the person that you see today. And a lot of the lessons that he used to teach me, were using baseball references. So whenever you hear me talk about Rusty, or Grandpa, know that I am speaking about a great man, who I would give anything just to speak to again, because he certainly was someone worth remembering.

So getting back to my original point… I really don’t care for Football.

But that’s just my opinion, what do I know?

F.M.