Page 68 of 121

13 Reasons Challenge

Michael 3 Comments

Just about everybody is familiar with the book and TV show “13 Reasons.” Some like it because it brings teenage suicide to light. Some hate it because it celebrates teenage suicide. Some abhor it because it’s just another way to exploit something, anything in the news.

Last week I was trapped in the rabbit hole and came up at a site where a young woman in Australia has taken a completely different direction from the show. In her blog terrymcnude.wordpress.com she says, “Instead of the 13 reasons why Hannah Baker killed herself, (we have to move on from that) and ask ourselves, what are 13 reasons why you’re happy with your life.” She then challenged others to find their 13 Reasons, pass them on, and encourage others to do the same.

While there are so many words being spent every day on all that we’re sure is wrong and unfair in the world, here’s a chance to spend a few on what’s right in yours.

So, I’m going to take that challenge and find the 13 Things that make me most happy and challenge you to do the same and then challenge all those who you share yours with to do likewise – on so on and so on.

13 Things That Make Me Happy.

  1. This is so easy it’s almost cheating. My No. 1 Thing that makes me happy is a daughter who seems to like me, too. Can’t say more than that.
  2. Just as easy is No. 2, having two siblings who are close and caring and never too busy to help with anything, anytime, anywhere.
  3. Having a small but strong group of friends.
  4. A walk in the morning without rain.
  5. Listening to piano-centric jazz. Thank you David Benoit.
  6. Stanley Cup Hockey!
  7. Christmas decorations.
  8. Cooking something without a recipe, sometimes even without a plan, and it actually tastes good.
  9. Spring when I sit outside intending to read but end up staring at the flowers.
  10. Top-down drives in the summer through back country roads.
  11. A good murder – the fictional kind, not one that ends up on the evening news.
  12. Pizza. (I never met a pizza that didn’t make me happy, except one with pineapple maybe).
  13. Being done with dialysis. Maybe someday that might move up in the list when I can actually be done with dialysis. But for now, 3 times a week I’m at my happiest when they pull those needles and they say “That’s it, you’re done for today.”

That’s it, those are mine. Now, are you up to the challenge?

 

Shave and a Haircut

Michael 5 Comments

I still can’t get used to it. Although I try to avoid my face in the mirror – well, maybe not avoid as much as not concentrate on – I have been spending more and more time staring at myself every morning.

About a month ago I became completely clean shaven. That hasn’t happened for over 30 years. And even before that it was a week to week decision regarding facial hair arrangement. Now that I’ve gone close to a handful of weeks without anything there you’d think seeing all of my face looking back at me wouldn’t be that disconcerting. Most of the time it isn’t but that first-thing-in-the-morning glance still returns an element of surprise. It’s probably because I forget what I look like by the time the morning comes having not seen me for the whole night.Mustache

I didn’t decide to shave everything off my cheeks and chin because of any new fashion statement I was looking to make. I didn’t do it for the love of a woman, the lust of a mate, or even at the suggestion of a friend. No, I did it for the most common of reasons assuming that anybody who has changed his facial appearance is completely honest about the reason for the change. I shaved completely because of the dreaded trimming accident.

Trimming, the bane of those who would let a little of nature show through on their visage without so much that he may be mistaken for a member of a well-known family whose patriarch holds a patent for duck calls. Trimming is tough! You have this fancy specialized piece of equipment with all these different heads and guides and they all have adjustments for different lengths and … well … if you happen to have the wrong guide on or the right one set at the wrong length and … well … if it’s a little early and you’re a little tired and … well … things happen.

So, at least for now, I’ve rejoined the ranks of men who scrape blade across skin each morning – ok, most mornings. Good thing I never got rid of my old razor.

Anybody know if they still make double edge blades?

 

Happy Birthday! (Offer valid in the continental United States only. Void where prohibited.)

Michael Leave a comment

Last week was my birthday (thank you) and among the cards, letters, and gifts I received a plethora of greetings from a host of retailers than I have bought from. They were all particularly generous. For example:

One restaurant would be happy to celebrate with me by offering me a free dessert! (Offer good for any single serving dessert item up to $5.00 with entrée purchase, guest must pay any sales tax, cannot be combined with other offers, not redeemable for cash or gift card.)

Another restaurant was celebrating my special day by giving me a free entrée (with the purchase of a second entrée of equal value or greater value, dine-in only, excludes daily special, maximum value $19.99).

Yet a third was willing to part with 25% off the regular price of any breakfast to ring in another year for me (as long as I also bought a beverage, didn’t select any combo meals, stayed away from the breakfast buffet, didn’t dine on Sunday, and spent less than 8 dollars on my choice, otherwise my maximum savings was capped at $1.99).

And still a fourth eating establishment was going to remember my special day with a full 10% of the total check for me and as many guests as I care to include in this raucous fete (excluding alcoholic beverages, market based priced items, pasta and salad bars, discount not to exceed $10.00).

Among the non-food offerings, an e-retailer wanted to commemorate the day of my birth with free shipping on any on-line purchase (minimum $34.99, enter code at checkout).

Or another on-line or in-store savings just for me during my special birthday month of 10% OFF ALL MERCHANDISE (excludes designer, clearance, super-saver, or special purchase items, plus sales tax and shipping, must present coupon at time of purchase, no facsimiles accepted, please enter special 15 character code (“selected just for you!”) before check-out for on-line purchases).

Even the state lottery got in on the festivities offering me a dollar off any $5.00 instant game (coupon expires 30 days after printing).

At least Publishers Clearance house wanted to celebrate with me by offering me a special extra chance to enter their sweepstakes on my birthday only for a prize I may have already won with no purchase necessary! (Don’t ignore this opportunity being made only to special individuals born this month like you!)

And you thought that gift card from Aunt Ella was impersonal.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

Happy Early Father’s Day

Michael Leave a comment

Earlier this week someone told me how much she thought I look like my father. People always say family folk look like each other and most of the time the resemblance stops at having the same number of eyes and ears. I don’t often look at myself so I’m not a good gage if I even have eyes and ears but I do look at my father every day. On my refrigerator is a picture of my parents at a dinner some 20+ years ago. I don’t know if it’s the last picture they had taken but it is the last picture of them that I have.

Yesterday I looked at the picture then I actually looked at myself in the mirror and darned if I don’t look like him. It helps that we’re not too terribly far apart in ages, his in the picture and mine in the mirror. And it doesn’t hurt that he was always looked a bit younger than his age and I a bit older. But there he was, in my mirror, looking back at me.

When our resemblance was mentioned I remarked that I wish I could be like him rather than look like him. He was a remarkable person, in that he really deserved to be remarked about. Born the year that World War I came to an end he grew to be tall-ish, strong-ish, and with a year round tan courtesy of the fire and heat of the steel mill where he worked for 45 years. Until I came along he was the sole male in a house filled with women. He worked, he prayed, he played, he hobbied, he hubbied, he befriended anyone he met. He served country and community, but always it was God and family before all else. I have very few specific memories of things we did because it seemed he was always there. Rather than a specific memory I have one long memory from childhood to manhood.

He retired the day I got married. You hear so often that poor old Mr. So-and-So just retired and then died within a year yet he managed to get another 26 years out of life after becoming a gentleman of leisure. I don’t think he figured he would have lived as long as he did. He developed diabetes in the early 1960s when people died of the disease and had a few other bumps along the way after that. But it wasn’t illness that makes me think he lived longer than he expected. I think he figured that anybody who was born in a year that ends in something-teen probably won’t be around when the year’s first two numbers change. But stick around he did. Long enough to travel, long enough to see, play with and make a grandfather’s impression on my daughter, long enough to endure my mother’s various redecorating ventures, long enough to see her beat her own demon cancer. And long enough to make it just past his 88th birthday and almost to his 56th wedding anniversary. If you do the math you see that he was a little on the late side for marriage in mid-century America. I think he waited to make sure he would get it right.

Over the years he taught me how to be me. But exactly when or how I couldn’t say. When he died I can honestly say I didn’t lose my father. I lost my dad.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

Getting from There to Here

Michael 10 Comments

Last week I noticed I now have over 300 followers, assuming everyone who ever followed still is. A huge assumption that and all that goes with it. Three hundred might not seem like a lot to those who have followers reaching towards four digits. Or it might seem like a lot to those who published their first post sometime this weekend. I know that I’m happy that 300 people think enough of the stuff I push to the Internet to want to know when something new gets pushed there and to me that seems like an accomplishment all in itself.

I got to wondering how the first person who decided to follow my blog even found it. I’ve never published it on any social platform. It’s not linked to a Facebook or Twitter or any other account. I can count on one hand and have at least two fingers left over the number of people I’ve told that twice a week they could read questionably creative ramblings of mine if they so cared. So…how did you come about to be reading this? Inquiring minds and all that, you know.

I follow about a dozen blogs and about another dozen I have loaded onto my browser’s favorites list. I guess that’s not a really great quid pro quo ratio. I’d follow all three hundred of those who follow me but some of the notices I’ve received of a follower don’t include a blog for me to seek to see if I would like a steady dose of their offerings. And in fairness (real or imagined) of all those that I do follow, not all follow me in return. I’m fine with that. I can see myself more interested in someone’s writing and want to follow him or her more closely that that someone might be interested in mine and would prefer to only occasionally peek into my brain, psyche, or whatever corporal component is putting fingers to keyboard that week. You can’t like everything you find crossing your path in life.

Still I wonder why some do, some don’t, and would some others if they even knew that it is available. What makes us like one thing, not like another, and not care enough about some to form an opinion?

Now that I think about it, I should probably stop before I lose the few of you that are still out there. I don’t know if Word Press counts to negative numbers.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

Hunting for Easter Eggs

Michael Leave a comment

Are you still looking for Easter Eggs? Not the colorfully dyed ones. At least I don’t think they’re colorful. Honestly, I really don’t know. I only found one and it was ok. A little color in the corner and the links were in the traditional Internet hyperlink blue, but mostly it was black and white. What am I talking about? Easter Eggs.

See, I’m not a gamer so even though I have heard about cheat codes I never really understood what they were or how they worked and I never heard how video game programmers would hide writing credits in the program. Since I didn’t know of these I certainly wouldn’t know that those who do know call these things Easter Eggs. Nor did I know that EasterEggsthe term had then expanded to include other surprises hidden in programs and apps, on DVDs, and even on Google.

Last week I was reading a blog on Dictionary.com and discovered my own little surprise. I’m sure I remember someone once telling me of Google’s fun presentation when you search the word “askew” but I don’t remember ever actually seeing it. Of course, after I read the on-line article I had to type the word into my Google and sure enough smiled when the page returned was itself somewhat askew. That’s when I began my hunt.

Reading that many Android devices have Easter Eggs hidden in their operating system “about” sections and knowing I have a handful of the devices literally at my fingertips every day I set on a search, an Easter Egg hunt if you will. I haven’t found any yet but I know if I keep my eyes open and follow my instincts I’ll soon end up with a basket full!

Oh, how this reminds me of the days when we’d play every Beatles record we could find backward. Of course back then we did call any found secret messages Easter Eggs. We just called them weird.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

‘Tis the Season, Spring 2017 Edition

Michael 4 Comments

I’m pretty sure I should have been born the son of an Italian wine maker. Or perhaps an olive grower. I could see myself spending Sunday afternoons on a rough stone terrazza nibbling on marinated olives and peppers and artichoke hearts sipping a glass of wine, listening to Old World folk songs and letting the sun warm me where the wine doesn’t. Ahhhhhhhh.

Instead I have jelly beans and a leftover beer I found waaaaay back in the fridge, trying to find a spot somewhere on the 4×8 patio that is out of the wind driven rain storm, hoping the next lightning bolt stays waaaaay on the other side of that hill over there.BOC

That’s all on me though. I couldn’t pick where I was born but I could have moved if I really wanted to. I chose to stay in the only city in America with less sunshine than Seattle. (That’s what I’ve been told. I didn’t believe it so I looked it up and they were WRONG! That particular proverbially always rain-logged Washington hamlet actually has less sun than my burgh but just barely, coming in at Number Nine of the Top Ten Cloudy Hit Parade with a 57% chance of clouds compared to our 56%. What is the number one least sunny city in the US? Juneau, Alaska. Sorry Land of the Midnight Sun dwellers. Apparently that’s not enough for the midday darkness the rest of the year.) Where was I? Oh, yeah. I stayed.

I chose to stay here where the chance of pressing my own olive oil is somewhere around the chance of me removing my own appendix. Wine making might have a little advantage, but still it’s not likely I’ll be trading in the Miata for an Alpha Romeo and riding it along a strada panoramica overlooking the Baia di Napoli. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the morning forecasts and pick those choice hours when the sun will come out and the top will go down and the drive will be just as scenic. Even if it is of the access road leading to the 27th worst commuter road in the country. And we do better than Seattle there, too. (They have the 8th worst commute. Sorry.)

Thank God I don’t have to go to work in either city. More time for olives and wine. Or jelly beans and beer. Happy Spring!

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Lost: One Part of Me

Michael Leave a comment

I’ve had a hard time getting this post started. If I say what’s on my mind I have to open myself up some. But then, that’s the point of blogisery, isn’t it? It’s not that I haven’t made myself quite clear on things that I like, things I don’t, and how I feel on the myriad of stuff in between. But not so much about me.

I’m closing in on the end of my Lent, a lot of people’s Lent, and there should be some reflection going on now. We’ve been taught that Lent is a time for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Prayer happens as a matter of course. Fasting in America seems to be more centered on “what did you give up for Lent?” rather than understanding to use the time you are fasting from one thing to spend on time in prayer or giving. Almsgiving used to be easy when I was flush. I gave away more money than some people made in those forty days. And then…

Here’s where the reflection starts. As I was closing in on the last week of Lent I started to think of what I had done. Not much it seems. When I had to leave my job for health reasons three years ago I thought it was just a bump in the road. A little time off and I’d be back and all would be normal. A year went by and I had put in, aptly enough, about 40 days of work before I was back in the hospital. Another year and although I had three attempts at returning I spent no time on the job. The third year and I didn’t so much as not try as accepted that I can’t live that life any longer. Each year the giving of money, time, and self shrank.

While I was asking myself what I had done for Lent this year I could say that I prayed. More than on most days. Fasting was easy, I’ve had a few years practice on simplifying my life already and probably for the first time that I can recall I used the time that I would have otherwise been engaged in whatever in prayer, sort of like you’re supposed to. But I gave nothing. Some clothes to the St. Vincent dePaul Society. No big contributions to the church. Nothing to any charities. No help for any causes. I didn’t have it to give. I couldn’t even give time with half of my week tied up at dialysis. OK, so 3 days out of seven. And on the days I’m not there I’m gathering up strength for the next day I am there.

I used to so look forward to the Lenten season. Odd, perhaps. I guess it’s actually Easter and the traditions surrounding it that I look forward to but you can’t have Easter without Lent. Something about the solemnity of Lent and the crescendo reached on Easter Sunday is so different from anything else. For me, not being able to take complete part in all the season is like I’ve lost part of me.

Maybe in three days I’ll feel completely different. But today this is what I was thinking and that’s what I type when the time to type comes. Isn’t that the point of blogisery?

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

And the Survey Says…

Michael 6 Comments

Two or three times a month I take an Internet poll. I’d love to be one of those people who make $100,000 a year taking polls on line. Frankly, I don’t have 48 hours a day to take that many polls and if I did, even with no life, I have a life. And even more franklyer than that, two or three a month is getting to be too many any more.

I do most everything on a mobile device nowadays. Even when I’m not out of the house I’m more likely to be on my tablet than on the desktop computer – which, oddly enough is actually on a desk. I don’t think that it’s so unusual that I’d rather connect with a handheld device in the comfort of a comfy chair. Yet more often than not when I open a survey invitation polling people’s opinions on “technology,” I’m presented with the error message explaining “that survey does not support mobile devices.” Am I using old tablet technology?

ResultsThis weekend I opened my emailed during one of the intermissions in the hockey game I was engrossed with on TV (and you thought I was too old to multi-task) and found a survey opportunity on “social issues.” The notice claimed it would take about 15 minutes to complete the poll. Since I had 17 minutes of non-hockey time left I clicked the link. There I was presented with a survey on “social issues,” AKA what I think of my cable provider. Such burning “social issues” we should face every day.

Yesterday I did a little shopping and was presented with an opportunity to express my opinion on a truly pressing “social issue.” Let me see if I can present it in poll-like fashion.

People who stop suddenly as soon as they cross the threshold to a shopping establishment, i.e. stop in the middle of the freaking doorway:

[    ] should be avoided with all available alacrity so as to not be made to feel like their presence is at all any sort of intrusion into your space lest you intrude into their space.

[     ] will have their shoppers reward cards revoked and never be allowed in public without a escort

[     ] must be run up the back of their ankles with any available shopping cart

[     ] truly deserve the death penalty

Now that’s a poll on social issues.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

No Skeletons in my Closet*

Michael Leave a comment

If you’ve noticed, over the past few weeks I’ve included posts about counters and drawers and cabinets. That’s because I’ve been paying more attention to those spaces as I prepare for the annual fun fest known as spring cleaning. Last weekend I was in the bedroom closet. My bedroom closet is about the size of my first apartment and has just as much in it. So I thought it would be a smart idea to perhaps whittle down some of the extraneous pieces there before attacking the disaster it has become over the winter months.

For some reason I have clothes like you wouldn’t believe. Actually I know the reason. Over the past couple of years I have lost a remarkable amount of weight, about 120 pounds all told. Now, some of it (maybe 2 or 3 pounds) was planned but the most of it came off as numerous surgeons removed, rearranged, and reconstructed various pieces of me. Although I’ve been picking up new pieces (of clothes, that is) along the way I haven’t done a good job of eliminated the old. As a result, in addition to the few pieces Hangersthat actually fit I have clothes that are anywhere from too large on me to OH MY GOD WAS I REALLY THAT FAT BEFORE!!! So where does one start?

After taking an entire weekend de-hangering, cleaning, folding, and sorting I have a nice pile to donate, a few that will become welcome additions to the rag bag, a couple that are probably even too disreputable to throw away in a middle class neighborhood, and remarkably enough, some that fit. And still the closet bursts at its seams.

I know I could have avoided all of this if I had adhered to a few tried and true methods of preventing the clutter before it started. Things like remove one old item for every new one bought. That worked well enough when I picked up a new piece here and there. It went out the window last year when I came home with a few totes full of new stuff since I had no summer wear that didn’t fall off me and the neighbors kept asking about that guy with the suspenders holding up his swim trunks. Then there’s the old trick of turning all one your hangers facing away from you at the start of a season and reversing them as you wear what’s on them. Let me tell you right now that I don’t have OCD but if I did I wouldn’t go more than two days before being driven bonkers by the disarray on the closet rod. I can tell you for sure and indeed that I know I don’t have OCD because I made it all the way through a whole week before having to correct that madness. Perhaps you subscribe to the Forty Hanger Rule. Limit your wardrobe to whatever can be stored on 40 hangers. Everything else must go. I don’t know how women do it. I’m just a guy and I have over 100 hanging pieces plus all the sweaters on the shelves and the shoes on the rack and the ties, oh the ties. Why, I have more than 40 hangers tied up in golf shirts, football jerseys, and hockey sweaters.

There was once a time when I wouldn’t buy tires for the car. Trying to decide between tread patterns, mileage ratings, whitewall, blackwall, white-lettered. It was all too much. So I would just trade in the car. I wonder if I can do that with closets………

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

*There’s no room.