Random Facts About Me

My friend Nichole posted this on Facebook, and I thought it would be fun to share my answers here.

First Job - Soccer Referee

Current job - Senior Analyst (How about that for a vague title!)

Dream Job - Professional Blogger/Influencer

Favorite Food - Lox on an everything bagel with cream cheese

Favorite dog - Farfel. My parents got her from a shelter a few months before I was born. I grew up with her.

Favorite footwear - I loved Adidas Gazelles. The problem is that the soles got worn out quickly.

Favorite Candy - Skittles

Favorite Ice cream- Mint Chocolate Chip. Graeter's Ice Cream in Columbus may have had the best I've ever had.

Your Vehicle color - Brown

Favorite Holiday - Probably Halloween. No clear winner for me on this one.

Night owl or early bird - A night owl before I had kids. Now, an early bird by necessity. (I hope to go back to being a night owl in 15-20 years again!)

Favorite day of the week - Saturday

Tattoos - No

Can you drive a stick - No

Favorite color - Green

Do you like vegetables - Some

Do you wear glasses - Yes, and I need a new pair. I also wear contacts.

Favorite season - Spring. The weather finally gets nice, and my birthday is in May. Spring was the end of the school year growing up, the start of the baseball season, and Kennywood Day!

Feel free to share your answers in the comments below.

Exploding Shoe

I haven't written about any of my experiences being a soccer referee lately since nothing truly exciting or out of the ordinary has occurred. More importantly, I went on a self-imposed sabbatical from working as a ref (see the raising two young kids thing). While I worked as an assistant referee (AR) for one adult game in July, this past weekend was the first time I worked multiple games in probably 9-10 months. I served as a referee for a tournament and was assigned 3 high school aged boys games. Again, nothing out of the ordinary except for trying to see what kind of shape I'm in...until this happened.

That is my cleat. It is not supposed to be in two pieces. I worked as an AR for the first game and moved to the center referee position for game #2. About 5 minutes into this game, the top portion of the bottom part of my cleat came undone. Fortunately, the entre bottom part of my cleat came off (though exploded sounds more exciting) about a minute later. I have no idea how I would have run the entire game with part of my shoe flapping around. It took another four minutes to retrieve the missing part of the shoe, and I ran around holding the shoe for another minute until I could get it off the field.

There's a specific uniform you have as a ref that includes black shoes. While I knew that it was probably about time to get new cleats, I didn't think about bringing an extra pair of black shoes since, first I don't have a second pair of cleats, and second, I never thought that my shoe would explode! So I ended up finishing the entire game running on essentially one and a half shoes, and in my opinion, called a good game. For the third game, I wore gray tennis shoes as an AR. I don't think anyone noticed though I know I probably looked a little silly.

Oh, it turns out that I fared pretty well keeping up with all of the 16 & 17 year olds. Of course, I was exhausted when I got home from the games and am a little sore today.