I’ll start with a humblebrag: At work today, I got a chance to hang out with a couple of world-class athletes, an Olympian and a Paralympain. We had a really nice chat, talking about our kids and paint colors for my new house and Sam Kavanagh’s bike-helmet tan lines. You know, just hanging out, as you do at your office on a Friday.

I shared with friends as more a bemused aside, an island of weird fun on a stressful Friday. Someone inevitably asked whether I’d taken any pictures with the guys.

Well, no. That would have been… weird. Was that weird of me to think?

A disclosure: I am sometimes rightly called out for documenting instead of living in the moment. After all, I am an introvert and a former reporter. Documenting makes me feel safe. So why didn’t I document this moment?

I think it comes from that reporter background. When I was out interviewing or writing about a famous subject, I was there as the audience. I wasn’t Larry King or James Lipton, almost a celebrity myself. I was just this guy, you know?

The comedy team of DeMong and Grieser

I can’t even think of many folks with whom I’d have wanted selfies (or whatever we called them way back when). Douglas Adams, surely; he’s my biggest missed opportunity there. Who knew he’d pass so soon? I probably assumed I’d interview the guy a ton more times. Lawrence Block, the great mystery writer, because he introduced me to a clean, wry, eminently readable tone.

Nobody else comes to mind. I feel like it ruins the professionalism of an interview, and conversely, that it can turn fun low-key social time (like today) into a weird fandom dynamic.

So: What are your selfie rules? When would you or would you not take a selfie with someone famous?

(One last contradiction: I did take a selfie goofing around with Olympian Billy DeMong when he was here. So who knows?)

Near-Final Update: The tile guys finished late Sunday evening. They promised a team of three; only two ever showed, and one was hurt, so really it was down to one. That guy did what he could, and was very apologetic, but the project took a couple of days longer than planned, and in the process he bashed up some cabinets that now need to be sanded down and repainted. Photo below is from while the mortar was drying, before the floor could be mopped. Toilet and ceiling need to be caulked, and molding added to the ceiling, but that’ll have to wait until this weekend.

Another Update: It’s Friday, and I’m not in love with home reno. I finished the ceiling tiles Tuesday night, but we’re waiting for the floor tiles to be done before caulking and hanging the molding. Unfortunately, one of the floor guys got hurt, so while he did show up yesterday, he couldn’t really help the second guy. They did, though, manage to clear the bathroom floor of ugly old linoleum, wash it and apply the sealant or whatever. (They also did the same to a closet we’re re-flooring.) The tile should be down today, and then grout added tomorrow.

Update: Hanging the panels is proceeding nicely (photo below). Each is painted over twice, then spaced just a bit apart and hung once dry. It’s a slow process. My goal is to get them all painted and dry today, hang what I can and finish tomorrow.

Original post: Sharing some before and after pics as we redo the master bath. To be fair, we’ve already painted the walls and cabinets, and customized a new mirror.

I’ve spent the morning debating whether to write about the state of Roger Goodell’s NFL, but this overheard exchange may seal the deal.

Two co-workers — and I work with professional auditors — were opining in the men’s room whether the Super Bowl was fixed, whether the last call at the end was, as one said, “You know, politics.” You know, because the commish and the Pats’ owner are best buddies.

First: Come on. No coach wants to lose the Super Bowl. That’s just dumb. And yet… and yet these two men, whose job it is to pore over corporate accounts looking for any sort of intentional or unintentional wrongdoing, unironically opined that a coach might have thrown the game so the Commish’s favorite team would win. And I’m not in the heart of Seattle; here in Dallas, all we care is that the Iggles or Potomic Drainage Basin Indigenous Peoples don’t win the Super Bowl.

The NFL has a trust issue.

As Gregg Easterbrook often says, the league doesn’t have to be America’s favorite sport. Baseball was once, remember, until real and imagined scandal brought it low. And this past season has been rife with real and imagined scandal, culminating in the Super Bowl win whose trip to the Big Game is openly attributed to breaking the rules. That’s not even taking into consideration the laughably tone-deaf (and I am being incredibly generous there) responses to the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson issues.

I love football. I love the NFL. Something’s got to be done. Because when “Deflategate” or “Ballghazi” or whatever fizzles — and it will, because what commish would take back the Lombardi trophy from the team responsible for his ascendancy? — my co-workers won’t be the only ones floating ridiculous conspiracy theories. After that, it’s a quick trip to “eh, the game is rigged” and an exodus of fans.

I don’t write a lot about sports. I *consume* a lot of sports, especially during football season, but writing about it? Well, I’ve always left that to sportswriters, whose command of history and statistics I always admired.

Until now. Because some of those sportswriters are thinking about the past and not the future.

Last Sunday, the New England Patriots won the 2015 AFC Championship. No big whoop, except that not a day later, allegations of cheating came up. Allegations apparently accurate enough that the league is “distraught.”

This is not new for the Pats, which is unfortunate in itself. Worse is the reaction of some sportswriters and commenters, who have said, “It was a 45-7 blowout. Who cares whether the Patriots cheated?”

Hell, a Slate writer opined America should thank the Patriots for being so bad, like they’re the NFL’s Scarface.

The problem is, while Scarface is ostensibly a piece of adult entertainment, the NFL is hugely influential to college students, to high-school students, to children who play football.

It’s not just a Texas thing. Just ask ESPN’s Gregg Easterbrook: Football is an all-ages sport now, possibly the most played, and what happens in the pros is reflected all the way down. The good and, unfortunately, the bad.

And so you have a league already foundering for its light treatment of spousal and child abuse faced with a winning team that’s made a habit of cheating. You have writers saying, “Who cares? They won.”

You have kids watching, reading, consuming everything about their beloved sport — as I did — and getting the message: cheat, as long as you win.

Cheat. Just win doing it, and you’ll get a pass from the writers and the fans and the league.

Let’s turn that around. Let’s have the Luke O’Neils of the world remember what sportsmanship means. Let’s show the kids playing Pop Warner and the young men representing their universities that you can win without cheating.

Nobody needs to be Scarface. The Patriots have the talent; they certainly don’t need to cheat. And we shouldn’t give them a pass for doing so.