Earlier this month, we hosted my friend Satoru from Japan for his annual August vacation in Iowa. My friend Satoru has come to visit every August for the past 7 years in a row. Each year in August, he uses some of his very rare vacation time to come and stay with us for a few days. He first started back in 2003 when I was a bachelor in a one-room apartment, and now he’s still coming to see us every year now that I’m a married man with a baby and a house. It’s always a whirlwind of activity when Satoru is here.There’s always so much to do and so little time. Here is what we did...

One of the things I’ve noticed during the past few years is that I don’t care about sports anymore. I watch sports, I follow sports, but I don’t really care about sports. I enjoy watching sports (my wife and I always watch the Olympics and the World Series and the Super Bowl together, and I follow the World Cup every four years), but I don’t really have any rooting interest. I don’t have any favorite teams. Whatever part of the brain makes people into “sports fans” just doesn’t function for me anymore. It wasn’t always this way. I used to love...