Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

Family Time: Trip To The Ballpark

by 2 Comments

If you’ve been here before, you know I frequently blog about my son Jack because of his autism, or my wife Tiffany because she’s my everything, but I don’t really talk about my other two kids a whole lot. Well yesterday, I took my son Benjamin to the Cardinals-Padres game in San Diego, and he did some things I knew I had to blog about.

Ben’s favorite player is Skip Schumaker of the Cardinals. We have a personal connection to him, so Ben roots for him and likes to watch him play. Once a year, we head down to San Diego to watch the Cardinals play. This year, that day was yesterday. We arranged to have him say hi to Ben during batting practice, and Ben was pretty excited. What 9-year-old wouldn’t be excited about saying hi to a real baseball player while he’s on the field?

It was an afternoon game, so we pulled him out of school early. Does it get any better than leaving school early to go to a baseball game? I guess it does if your favorite baseball player says hi to you!

Ben with Skip before the game.

After taking the picture, the funniest thing happened and I’ll be able to tease Ben about it in 50 years.

[Read more…]

How To Eat Like A Marathoner

by 1 Comment

I had such a great nutrition day yesterday, I felt like I had to share the details here today. But first, I have to wish my wife Tiffany a happy 12th anniversary. Since I’m going to talk about food, I always joke that the most expensive meal I ever had was my lunch on May 23, 1999 — it cost me the rest of my life! But really, I’m madly in love with her and as difficult as our life is, I am grateful every day to have her as a partner. She’s my best friend and I’ll never be too macho to admit that.

Anyways, I said I was going to talk about food … I had the most incredible day from start to finish yesterday. [Read more…]

What's On Your iPod?

by 7 Comments

This is probably the most embarrassing post I’ll ever make. But what the heck … I’ll do it. I’m going to tell you what I listen to when I run. But you have to tell me what you listen to. I can’t be the only one embarrassing myself!

I don’t listen to music when I run outdoors, but I have a playlist for the hamsterwhizzle (my name for the treadmill). I run for less than 40 minutes at a time on the hamsterwhizzle, but I listen to music. I listen to a wide variety of music. Here’s my playlist, in order: [Read more…]

Ask What You Can Do

by 4 Comments

Note from Sam: The day after Osama Bin Laden was killed, I contacted Operation Jack friend John Atilano, who is deployed to Afghanistan, and asked him what the mood was like over there. He said it was basically business as usual, but if the war ended and everybody came home, then they’d be up celebrating all night. So I followed up with a quick DM conversation on Twitter with him.

Sam: U have any interest in writing a guest blog?
John: Sure. Do you have a topic in mind?
Sam: I think it would be awesome if u could talk about what ur doing over there and really anything that comes to your mind. There’s …
Sam: an amazing sense of national pride right now with the news and I think people would love to hear from you, no matter what u have to say.
Sam: Gonna blog about Flat Stanley on Wed and if u know when u can send something, I’ll tell folks u have a guest blog coming. They’ll love it.
All I was hoping for was something like, “It’s hot and dusty and we drive tanks and watch out for bad guys and help good guys.” This is what I got from John:

—————

This is the third time I’ve been featured on Operation Jack. The first was on Veteran’s Day and the second time was last week. I’ve never met Sam in person but I truly admire everything he has accomplished. He is a testament to dedication, hard work, and the reality that one man can truly make a difference. I love reading his blog. My heart breaks when Jack has a bad day. I “watched” Sam go sub-3 at Boston via twitter and rapidly refreshing the BAA tracker; I cheered out loud when he did it! Although I am blessed with three healthy children I understand his fight against autism. Daddies slay dragons. Jack’s dragon is Autism. You can’t slay a dragon without a sword and a shield.

After the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s (OBL) demise, Sam asked if I’d like to write a guest post given the jubilant national pride that has swept across our nation in the past few days. I accepted this honor with pride and a little hesitation. OperationJack.org is not a political blog. It is kind of a running blog. Mostly it is about helping others. It’s Sam doing everything he can to help his son, Jack, and the other families who deal with autism on a daily basis. It is about helping to fight cancer. It’s a glimpse into one family’s struggle to provide normalcy for their family. As a guest, I wanted to ensure I remained true to this theme. I thought to myself, “How am I going to write about OBL in such a way that it relates to Operation Jack?” After much deliberation, I think I have figured out a clever way of relating the death of OBL, Operation Jack, running, military families, and helping others together. It’s not pithy but I do believe it is cogent. Stay with me for the next few paragraphs and I promise I will tie it all together! [Read more…]