The Smell of the Sun

Have you ever smelled the sun?  I asked this question of HR, and she looked at me like I had lost my mind.  How do you smell the sun?  I guess specifically what I meant was getting a waft of someone right after they come inside from being in the sun.  When they have that warm, fresh, almost earthy smell emanating off of their skin, and it makes them seem so alive.  They smell alive with energy, with light, with potential.  That is how I imagine the sun smelling like…energy, light, potential…life.

Kate Kershner wrote about this on the website “How Stuff Works,” and she said that what we’re really doing is associating a smell with an object.  So, whenever we smell that smell, our mind is telling us that that is that object.  The problem with this is that it becomes subjective and different from one person to the next.  Whereas I associate the smell of the sun to warm, fresh, earthy smells; someone else might think of fresh laundry, or the beach, or rain even.

She goes on to say that we can’t possible know if the sun has a smell, because we can’t get close enough to sniff it.  So, what we’re really smelling is the air.  And according to one research study, air warmed by the sun actually smells differently than cooler air.  This is because molecules that carry scents are moving faster and more freely in warmer air, so we perceive more of them.  So, I guess I’m not so crazy after all.  I am smelling the warmed air on someone’s skin being carried in their wake as they come in from the sun.

Am I in Heaven?

ML, a Muslim that I work with, had surgery a few months ago on his back.  It was serious enough that it required him to be put under anesthesia.  When he came out of sedation, he found himself in a room surrounded by numerous female nurses.  Still groggy, he lazily asked, “Am I in heaven?  Are you my virgins?”  I asked him if he was disappointed with the selection.  He claims that he doesn’t remember even saying this, much less what he thought about the women.

As they wheeled him from recovery into his room, still mostly out of it, he saw a woman that he didn’t recognize standing in the room, frowned, and asked his nurse, “Who is that, and why is she in my room?”  The nurse said, “Sir, that’s your wife.”  His wife was not amused, especially after the virgins comment, which she apparently also overheard.

Now, his wife plays that trump card whenever she wants to get her way.  “You don’t want to eat what I want to eat for dinner?  Remember that time when you had surgery?”  And ML simply has to go along with it.  I’m wondering now if she made it all up just to get this lifelong trump in her pocket.  If so, that was brilliant!

Standing for the National Anthem - Part 2

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump decided to weigh in on the topic of athletes kneeling for the national anthem.  His view was that either the teams need to make them stop kneeling, or the players need to be fired.  Why our current president is running his administration through social media, I’m not sure, but his extremely stupid statements were probably the best thing for the movement against racial injustice.  His statements served to completely unify the NFL.  Three teams refused to even take the field during the national anthem, and every other team had players kneeling, sitting, or linking arms.  In one tweet, in one single act of insensitive thoughtlessness, the president managed to unify a divided nation and garnish an outpouring of support…for the other side.  At this point, I tend to believe that he’s just stupid.  But what if he’s not?  What if this is all an elaborate ruse; to be the goat, so that everyone else will come together?  It would be a strange way to go about it.

But what is even more confusing is what happened during the Pittsburgh Steelers game.  While the entire Steelers team decided not to even come to the field, one player, Alejandro Villanueva, chose to come to the edge of the tunnel and respect the national anthem.  A former Army ranger, he said that he felt it would be disrespectful to his former platoon and all military personnel to not at least be present.  He respected his team by not actually stepping foot on the field.

After the game, his head coach and several of his teammates denounced and ridiculed his actions.  They claimed that they had made this decision as a team, and that he wasn’t being a team player.  So let me get this right, you’re telling me that you’re supposedly kneeling for equality for everyone.  You’re telling me that the protest against President Trump is that everyone should have the right to express themselves and enact their freedom of speech, as granted by the United States Constitution.  But if someone chooses not to express themselves your way, then you denounce them and publicly ridicule them?  What a double standard.  Aren’t you doing to him exactly what you claim everyone is doing to you?

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the team and media made him feel so bad about his individuality, that he felt compelled to hold a press conference and apologize for his actions.  Apologize?!  For being respectful to a nation and the people that risk their lives to defend it.  Now, I know that this protest has nothing to do with the men and women of the armed forces.  I have no idea why that concept is even brought up.  They are protesting an ideal and the people that are tasked with protecting its people even from themselves.  But if Mr. Villanueva wants to honor his fellow soldiers, and he feels the best way to do that is to be present for the national anthem, then who are they to judge his actions, much less make him feel bad about it?!  He was caught in the middle of a war, and he chose the best way he could think of to be respectful to both sides.  He was present, but not on the field.  Strike two against the supposed protesters of equality.

To continue my praise for people who are finding ways to speak out in respectful ways, I want to jump over to the MLB.  For the first time, a player in baseball decided to join in the passive protests of racial inequality.  Bruce Maxwell, a catcher for the Oakland Athletics knelt during the national anthem.  But…but…he did so while still managing to respect the flag, the anthem, and the country by covering his heart while it played.  I have no issue with this.  It is a protest against an ideal and a situation, while respecting a nation.

I will conclude by expressing my problem with all of this passive protesting.  I said it before, and I’ll say it again.  It is not making a difference.  Nobody is talking about the impetus behind the protest.  They are talking about the action of the protest and the response to the action.  We have lost the goal amidst the chaos, and I wonder if months or years from now if anyone will even remember what we’re fighting about.

When all of this started last year, I told my father that I thought it was stupid what Colin Kaepernick was doing.  Purely because I felt he was going about it all wrong.  Kneeling was not going to change hearts.  All it was going to do was enrage them.  And that is exactly what has happened.  He needed to be using his influence and money to educate, to inform, and to push for productive change.  All it takes is one man teaching his child to be racist to continue the cycle to another generation.  But if you can get to that child and change his mind…to teach him compassion and to look at the heart instead of at the skin of a man…you can break the cycle.  If you can change police tactics to be more humane to everyone, to raise awareness about what’s going on, then you can break the cycle.  And if we’re going to truly do away with racism, from both sides (yes, black people are racist too), then we need to break the cycle.  Imagine all of these athletes using their influence and money for something productive…what a force they’d be.

Does He Bite?

I was sitting in a meeting at work today, and there was one guy sitting away from the table and against the wall.  I scooted over to give him room to join us at the table, but he just shook his head.  I said, “It’s okay, I don’t bite.”  After a short pause, I amended, “Well, actually I do bite, but I’m all gums.”

The Cajun Navy

During the relief efforts for people trapped by the flood waters of Hurricane Harvey, my friend JK and his wife went down to assist.  JK was assigned to a fire fighter relief unit, and his wife joined The Cajun Navy.

For those who don’t know, The Cajun Navy is a volunteer group out of Louisiana, comprising of private boat owners who assist in search and rescue efforts in Louisiana and adjacent areas.  This group was originally formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and reactivated again in the aftermath of the floods stemming from Hurricane Harvey.  They are credited with rescuing thousands of people during these disasters.  After Hurricane Harvey, they came over with their bass boats and jonboats, put into the worst of the flooded streets and neighborhoods, and rescued people that the “official” units could not or would not get to.  It is estimated that they actually rescued hundreds of people a day over the course of two weeks.

I wanted to take a moment to applaud and appreciate the volunteer efforts of ordinary citizens, like The Cajun Navy, for all that they do to help in the wake of natural disasters.  Without their efforts thousands of people might die or be stranded, waiting for “official” units to find them.  Their efforts are selfless and pass without awards, praise of heroism, or in some cases recognition at all.  So, this blog post is devoted to saying “Thank You.”  You are all heroes in my book.

A Greek Sliver

My wife had some ladies over for a Bible study tonight, and she had asked me to pick up a cake for dessert.  The only thing I could find at the store meeting her very specific requirements was called, “Chocolate Therapy.”  This thing was a double-decker chocolate cake with chocolate icing between the layers, chocolate icing melted and drizzled over the outside, and a giant chocolate rose on the top.  In short, we couldn’t figure out if it was supposed to be therapy or put you in therapy.

When the meal was done, the ladies asked my wife to cut them a piece, and that is when the real fun began.  Each one asked for a sliver of cake.  Now, to a normal person that meant a very thin, almost invisible from the side piece of cake.  To my Greek wife that meant a quite large wedge of cake that stood about four to five inches off the plate…on its side.

When several of the ladies started to protest that they really only wanted a sliver, my wife said, “That is a sliver…a Greek sliver.”

15% or More

JC found a gecko in the bathroom last night when she went to take a bath.  She was trying to figure out how to get rid of him and had called us for advice.  I asked her if he looked like he was trying to sell her car insurance.  She laughed and said that she actually used to have car insurance with Geico, but had cancelled it.  I said, “Well, there you go.  He’s trying to win back your business.”

Toilet Seat...Up or Down?

Leave the toilet set up.  Put the toilet seat down.  This has been a struggle between men and women ever since the toilet seat was invented.  Men have the flexibility to sit or stand, so women usually argue that the toilet seat should be down, and men can either lift it or sit.  But I find this argument completely unfair and one-sided.  It puts all of the burden and effort on men to comply.  I contend that it takes just as much effort for a woman to put the seat down as it takes for a man to have to lift it back up again.

I have been married almost 14 years now.  At the beginning of our marriage, my wife complained almost daily about falling into the toilet at night when she was trying to pee in the dark, and I had left the toilet seat up.  (Personally, I found this statement so ludicrous that I laughed, which turned out to be a big mistake).  However, I complained just as much on those rare nights when I decided not to turn the lights on and ended up peeing on the seat, the lid, the garbage can, the floor, the wall, the toilet paper roll, and the doily on the back of the toilet.  All because my wife had gone to the bathroom and put the seat down…or possibly the seat and lid…and the backsplash went everywhere.  I was mad that I would have to scrub the entire bathroom at 2 o’clock in the morning.  (So much for not turning the lights on!)  It got to be where I started to instinctively grope around in the dark, trying to feel out the state of the toilet before proceeding.  (It should be noted that my father lost his man card when he suggested that if I just sat, then I wouldn’t have to worry about any of these problems.)

Something had to be done.  Life could not go on like this.  I was/am a very stubborn person.  If something seems to be a social injustice, then I refuse to comply.  If there is no factual evidence to suggest why I should change my actions, then I won’t do it.  And this issue with the toilet seat seemed completely one-sided.  So, I came up with a compromise, which I suggested to my wife.  When I got done using the toilet, I would put the seat down.  When she got done using it, then she would lift it up.  That way, we are both doing the same amount of work, and we were thinking about the other person and their needs.  Surprisingly, she actually agreed to this plan (I suspect mostly just to get me to stop complaining).

We lived in this harmonious state until that one fateful day when we were in the bathroom, not actually using the toilet, but doing something else around it.  Back at that time, my wife would keep an extra roll of toilet paper on the back of the toilet, so we didn’t have to do the pants-around-the-ankle waddle across the bathroom to the cabinet if we ran out mid-use.  So, one minute we are putting up a towel bar on the wall, and the next minute, the extra toilet paper roll gets bumped off the back of the toilet and “bloop” right into the water through the open lid.  Now, it should be noted that the seat was, in fact, down at that moment.

So, after fishing out the wasted, soggy roll of toilet paper, my wife and I decided together that a new solution was needed.  We agreed that the only truly fair solution was to put both the seat and lid down after each use.  Then, we both had to expend the same amount of effort (which satisfied me), we would always know the state of the toilet in the dark (which satisfied us both), and we wouldn’t have any additional extra-toilet-roll-on-the-back-of-the-toilet murders (which satisfied my wife).

The long conclusion to be taken from this is not to fight about the toilet seat being up or down.  Just agree to put the lid and seat both down every time.  In additional to the other things I’ve already mentioned, it just looks nicer.  Trust me, nobody wants to come to your house and see toilet water (or any other things) while they’re in your bathroom.  And if you’re a guest at my house, please remember this.  It will annoy me if you leave the lid up, in any state.

In the In-Between

When I was a senior in high school, I remember going to a movie one Friday night with some friends.  The older guy in front of us in line, seeing my letterman’s jacket, asked if we were seniors.  When we confirmed it, he told us that he had gone to the same high school, class of 1987.  I distinctly remember thinking that I can’t believe this guy is so old.  He had already been out of high school for ten years.  At the time that seemed unfathomable to me.  I was young.  I had plans.  I had no concept of “real” life.

Now, as my 20^th high school reunion draws near, I think how naïve I was back then.  That guy was only 28 years old.  He was still incredibly young and probably had many more adventures ahead of him.  I would love to be 28 again with so many unknowns and dreams ahead of me.  But I didn’t enjoy them at the time.  No, when I was 28, I was stressed and anxious.  I had just been downsized from my company.  I was worried about money.  I was stuck in an unpleasant marriage.  I was miserable.  I certainly didn’t have any adventures awaiting me.

I look at my life now, and I count the passage of time not in weeks, or months, but in entire years.  I was just telling my spousal unit the other day that I can’t believe it’s almost October again.  I remember handing out Halloween candy last year, and now here we are again already.  It seems that I am grossly aware that every day I grow further and further away from the day of my birth and closer and closer toward the day of my death.  I feel as if I’m in that in-between stage.  Halfway through and halfway to go.  I’m just afraid that the second half will seem to go so much faster than the first half.

Let's Get Quizzical

My company hosted an after-hours pub quiz contest in the atrium of our building today.  I originally had no desire to participate.  One, because I’m actually an introvert that everyone mistakes for an extrovert.  Two, because I generally don’t want to associate with the people at work more than I have to.  However, I was pressured into participating by my boss, so I went and tried to make the best of it.  The real reason for the contest was so that two members of the executive leadership team could fluff their feathers and compete for bragging rights on who knew the most useless trivia.  So, I assumed that the questions would be geared toward their interest level and general age group.  I was expecting it to be like those spelling bees where you get up and your word is “antidisestablishmentarianism” and your opponent’s word is “cat.”

But they did the right thing and hired a pub quiz coordinator, so that it was impartial and official.  The game was very well done…fun and well-organized.  There were six rounds of questions, each round with a theme; like music, movies, or all things from 1996.  I had a lot of fun and enjoyed getting to know the people on my team a little better.  Unfortunately, after being in second place for the entire match, Team Let’s Get Quizzical finished the game 4^th out of 7, after a horrendous depletion in the final round.  The only redeeming part of it was that neither of the two members from the executive leadership team won either.

Enjoying a Cold One

The weather the last couple of weeks has been beautiful here in North Texas.  So, I've taken to going out in the evenings and walking or running.  Tonight, I passed a group of guys sitting in the driveway in lawn chairs, enjoying a cold drink and shooting the breeze with each other.  You rarely see this anymore, as people prefer to come home, drive into the garage, shut the door before they even get out of the car, and essentially avoid everyone.  It was refreshing to see people turning off technology and getting back to socializing face-to-face.  There was something comforting and familiar about it.  It reminded me of when I grew up.

As I passed by on my way back home, one of the guys called out, "Do you need a cold beer to finish off your walk?"  I appreciatively declined, but it was nice to be asked.  It made me feel like I belonged.

Safest Place in Tanzania

Yesterday at lunch, ML was telling us the he was surprised that Dallas didn’t have a better, more widespread public transportation system.  I asked him what they had in his home town in Tanzania, and he said that a German company had come in to the country several years ago and set up a system of public buses.  They also worked with the city to create bus-only driving lanes on the roads.  ML said the issue with this is that bus drivers don’t feel like they need to stop…for anything…stoplights, cars, or even pedestrians.  It has actually become more dangerous to walk around the streets where buses are.  Apparently, there have been incidents reported of people getting off the bus, walking around the front toward the sidewalk, and actually getting run over by the bus they just got off of.

ML said the buses also operate like taxi cabs, in that they get paid by the number of fares they pick up.  So, buses will compete to pick up passengers waiting at stops.  ML was on a bus one time that actually rammed another bus to get to a bus stop first.  He said that both buses were slamming into each other all the way down the road.  That was the last time he ever rode a bus.  I told him that didn’t seem wise, because apparently the safest place is on the bus!

They didn't introduce public transportation, but population control!

Misty

When I was in junior high and high school, we had a dog named Misty.  She was a Terrier and Poodle mix, for which my father always called her a Toodle.  She was small with sort of shaggy black and white hair, and she was the most peaceful dog you ever saw.  That is unless she saw a squirrel in the backyard.  She had a particular aversion to squirrels, considering them intruders who needed to learn their place…which was not in her backyard.  She even went so far as to hunt them, lying in wait in the tall grass for hours, waiting for one of them bold enough or stupid enough to venture too far from the safety of the tree.

We had a huge Ash tree in our backyard that had split into three or four separate trunks about three feet off the ground.  One of the trunks sloped gracefully outward a little before turning and heading upward to the sky.  At the base of these trunks, there was a space big enough for a human being to climb into, and it didn’t take Misty long to figure out that she could actually claw her way up the side of the tree and into this space. 

So, one day she was out stalking a particularly arrogant squirrel.  He would creep away from the tree, looking right at Misty the whole time, daring her to try to catch him.  Slowly, slowly getting further and further away, confident that he’d be able to beat her back to the tree.  Misty waited, patiently, for the exact right moment, and when it came, she tore off across the yard like a bullet.  It took the surprised squirrel a few seconds to register that that black and white streak blazing toward him was not a good sign.  He jumped straight up in the air, did a 180-degree turn, landed, and took off for the tree.

To his credit, he made it to the tree first.  To his detriment, he didn’t realize that Misty had learned to climb the tree too.  Without even slowing down, she launched herself into the air, covering half the distance up the side before her claws even touched bark.  Clawing the rest of the way, she shot into the space at the base of the trunks, scaring the over-confident squirrel, who had enough instinct to dart up the gently-sloping trunk.  However, Misty didn’t stop in the space between the trunks, and used her momentum to barrel right up the trunk after the squirrel.  He just managed to get away, as she nipped at his tail.

Suddenly realizing that she was in fact a dog, and not a squirrel, Misty was forced to retreat back down the trunk to the space at the bottom.  But I swear she had a smile on her panting face, as she watched that a-lot-less-confident squirrel scamper to the Pecan tree next door.

Rock Star!

Today, I got off a particularly difficult phone call with my customer and one of their benefit vendors.  It was difficult because the vendor seemed a bit slow on the uptake and kept circling back around to questions that we had already answered.  At one point, she danced around my question instead of answering it.  This happened on three separate occasions with every repeat of the question.  Finally, I pinned her down and made her commit to something.

When we got off the call, I immediately received an email from my customer saying, “Thank you!  You are a rock star!  I just wanted to tell you.”  I couldn’t help but smile.  It made my whole day…my week even.  To think that something so simple could completely change someone’s mood.  All it cost her was a minute of her time.

The Acrobatic Squirrel

The squirrel that lives in the trees behind our house cracks me up.  This morning, I caught him hanging by his back legs off the power line, tail whipping back and forth, while he stretched his little body as far as it would go.  He was frantically reaching for the tip of the tree branch that stayed elusively just beyond his little claws.  Swinging back and forth, swiping at it as he went by, he finally managed to get the branch to move enough for him to grab it.  He yanked it toward him, let go with his back legs, and swung on the branch like a little Tarzan squirrel to the trunk of the tree.  From there, he did some pretty amazing acrobatic maneuvers to get from the tree to fence, and from the fence to the bird feeder.

All of that for breakfast…

Surprise Phone Call

This morning, my mother-in-law called me out of the blue.  My wife had told her that I was working from home, so she just decided to call me up to tell me that she missed me.  It was so sweet and wonderful, and I was so touched.  We chatted for about 5 minutes or so, and then she rang off.  Just like that.  I have a feeling that it’s going to be a good day.

Sean?

I absolutely hate getting people’s voicemails.  I never know what to say when that little beep plays through the headset.  I panic.  There is a long, awkward silence as my brain scrambles for something to say.  Do I go with something funny?  Do I use a fake voice?  Do I just do straightforward and businesslike?  Who was I calling again?  Is this the right number?  What name did the message say?  Why was I calling them again?  Have a waited too long to leave a message?  Should I just hang up?  Is it awkward now?  Do you think they’ll notice?

So, that’s why I came up with this surefire message that works in those moments when you blank out.  You can’t go wrong with this one.  And the beauty of it is that it works for all occasions.  In my loudest voice, I yell, “Sean?  Sean?  Is that you?  Sean?  I can’t hear you.  Are you on mute?  Are you talking?  Sean?”  And then I hang up.

The person you were calling will be so confused, trying to figure out if it was really you, and if you’re in fact crazy, that they won’t even notice the long, awkward pause at the beginning.

Ball Was Life

CC and I used to play together every single day.  We were best friends and inseparable from the age of seven all the way through high school.  We are still friends to this day, but we took very different roads in life after high school.  But that’s another tale.

At some point a few years after CC moved into his house, his dad put up a basketball goal in the backyard.  I guess I should paint a picture of how the houses were in my neighborhood.  The garages on most of the houses were detached and in the backyard.  So, there was a driveway that ran along the side of the house back to the garage in the back.  It was along this driveway, right in front of the garage, that his dad placed the basketball goal. 

The other odd thing about the houses was that the electrical lines ran along poles at the back of the properties in-between the houses.  So, wires stretched from the poles to the garages, and finally from the garages to the houses.  One of these electrical wires ran right in front of the basketball goal that CC’s dad put up.  So, the wire became part of the game, as we had to shoot high arcs over it to make baskets.

As if this wasn’t enough of an obstacle, CC’s dad also did a lot of woodworking in his garage.  So, he built a quite large wooden table that he kept in the driveway in front of the garage that he used to hold stuff while he was building it.  This table also became part of the game, as we had to shoot from behind it and run around it while we were playing.  The distance from behind the table and over the electrical wire was about the distance of a free-throw. 

So, many of our games (like 21) involved shooting from behind the table and trying to run around it to get the rebound before the ball bounced (or bounced twice, depending on the game).  The goal was to predict which way the ball would bounce off the rim, so you could choose which direction to run around the table.  Pick the wrong way, and you probably wouldn’t get there in time.  I was pretty fast when I was younger, so I had a good chance of tracking the ball down regardless, but CC was not blessed with those same skills.  Which meant that I usually won most games.

There were many such obstacles on our court, like the fire hydrant placed randomly on one corner of the driveway, the raised slab behind the house that was the foundation for an extension that was never completed, or the massive pecan tree that grew over the back of the goal.  As you can imagine many, many injuries were sustained on that court, but I can’t remember having more fun in my entire life.  I lived to come home and go over there and play, sometimes three or four hours at a time.  Ball was life, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Mr. Ed

When I was growing up, we lived on a street that had four-foot, chain-link fences around the yards.  It was easy to climb over them to get to the yard next door, which CC and I did all the time.  He lived next door to me, and we were like brothers, so there wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t play together.  Our favorite game was to spy on the neighbors, and our favorite neighbor to spy on was Mr. Ed.

Mr. Ed was a bachelor that lived two houses down from me.  He was an awesome man that took time to talk to us like we were important, shared his Girl Scout cookies with us (he liked the lemon ones), and endured our incessant “kidness” with boundless patience.  But he also intrigued us, because he lived alone.  We couldn’t figure out why a great guy like that would be alone.  Oh we had some theories, like he was gay, but he never had anyone over to confirm or deny.  He was in his thirties and not bad looking, so why didn’t he have a family?  It made no sense to our naïve childlike minds.  We need more data.  So, we did the only decent thing to do in that situation…we spied on him.

One night, after it was dark, we crept into his yard behind the bushes and looked into his windows.  He was bustling around the house, doing normal things like eating dinner, washing dishes, or reading a book.  Nothing covert or newsworthy.  This went on for quite a while, when all of a sudden all of the lights in the house went off.  It was only around seven or eight o’clock, so we were stunned that he would be going to bed so early.  We strained our eyes to see into the dark, to make out shapes, movement, anything.  But there was nothing. 

We had just decided to abandon our post and head home when someone grabbed us from behind.  We let out two high-pitched shrieks and tried to flee, but our assailant held on firmly to our shirts.  I chanced a look back and stared directly into the grinning face of Mr. Ed.  He apparently had caught a glimpse of us staring into the windows and decided to reverse the tables on us.  So, he had gone along as if he didn’t suspect anything, then suddenly turned out the lights and climbed out his bedroom window.  We had been so absorbed with things inside the house, that we weren’t paying attention to dark figure stealthily creeping up on us outside the house.  He wasn’t mad or anything.  In fact, he seemed downright proud of himself that he had out “spied” us.  That’s just how Mr. Ed was.

Not long after, we found out that he was actually an engineer that worked at a petroleum company in Houston.  He was not gay, just taking his time, and he eventually got married and moved away.  That was a very sad day for us…and for him, I like to think.  The neighbors that bought his house were not nearly as awesome as Mr. Ed.  We lost touch with him after he moved, and I can only hope now that he found all of the happiness that he deserved from life.  I hope he had many kids that he could play with and share Girl Scout cookies with.  I suspect that he would make a great father.

Photos of Memaw

My Memaw did not like to have her picture taken.  In fact, she was notorious for her ability to dash out of the shot at the last minute or for covering her face, so that all that was recognizable was her famous flaming-red hair.  It actually became a game in my family to try to catch her on film.  People would sneak up on her.  They would try to catch her from multiple angles at the same time.  They would go all private investigator, hiding and taking pictures while she was distracted.  But somehow she still knew she was being filmed, and the pictures would end up blurry and unrecognizable or with a hand over her face (she could move that hand like greased lightning). 

Later in her life, when she wasn’t as spry, she gave up trying to avoid the pictures and just started making you regret trying to take it.  We have hundreds of photos with my grandmother sticking out her tongue or flicking off the camera.  But the best photos are the ones taken right after she did something like that, because they capture her beautiful smile, as she laughed at herself.  Sometimes, she was laughing so hard that she was crying, and she was just as beautiful in those as well.

For the Birds

I went to Texas A&M University for four of my five years of higher education.  For the first two years, I lived in a dorm on campus.  The parking for live-in residents was sparse and scattered all over the university grounds, so quite often I found myself having to park on the other side of campus near the Rec Center.  The long walk didn’t really bother me much unless I had groceries or had come back loaded down with stuff from a weekend with the parental units. 

No, the real issue with those parking lots was the trees.  Whoever had designed them had done so with hundreds of trees in rows throughout the entire parking lot.  They provided quite a bit of shade and made an otherwise ugly parking lot quite pretty.  So, why was this an issue, you might ask?  Because with trees comes birds, thousands of them.  And with birds comes bird crap, tons of it…literally.  To the university’s credit, after receiving a lot of complaints about the birds, they tried some creative methods to move the bird population along.

The first thing they tried was simply having maintenance people in trucks driving around the parking lot honking their horns.  This only had a moderate success rate, as the birds mostly just flew from one tree to another to get away from the crazy, honking humans.  So, that’s when the maintenance guys decided to up their game to a method with much greater success…firing very loud guns with blank cartridges at various points around the parking lot.  This imminent threat had the desired reaction as the birds fled in droves to other trees around the city.

What the maintenance guys could not have anticipated was the unforeseen side effect of firing off guns around flocks of birds.  They literally scared the crap out of them, which the birds let loose as they were fleeing, all over the cars below them.  I happened to have my car parked under a tree during this ordeal, so I got it worse than most.  Not to mention that I really only drove my car on weekends for the most part, choosing to walk anywhere I needed to go.  So, when I came back to my car after a week of them firing guns off at the birds, I couldn’t find it.  Where I had left my car, was a white, automobile-shaped pile of bird crap. 

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it was completely covered, every inch of it, in bird crap.  I had to get an ice scraper out to clean the windows just so I could drive it.  It was Sunday, and my girlfriend and I were on our way to church.  She took one look at my car, folded her arms, shook her head, and said, “It’s not going to happen.  I am not showing up to church in that literal pile of crap.”  But I couldn’t just leave it like this, because bird crap can be corrosive to a car’s paint job, so I convinced her to go with me to try to find one of those “free” car washes that high school kids were always putting on.

And as luck would have it, I found a free car wash near to campus.  When we pulled up, you should have seen the dejected faces, the “you’ve got to be kidding me looks,” and the scattering of kids to other cars to avoid the white monster.  But one brave girl sucked it up and came over to evaluate the effort needed to get it done.  All she asked in return was the opportunity to take a picture first.  Apparently, I was the winner of the worst car ever in the history of free car washes, and they wanted to document this momentous occasion.  After taking a picture, which my girlfriend refused to be in, they set to work hosing and scrubbing my car.  The bird crap…would…not…come…off. 

It was caked and dried on there so hard, that no amount of scrubbing or washing it would soften or remove it.  They tried rags, bristled brushes, and finally someone brought out steel wool.  The steel wool finally broke through with a lot of muscle and force, and slowly, slowly they were able to chisel away the bird crap.  It slid off the car in slabs of white crust, slamming into the ground and shattering in piles of odiferous rottenness.  What I didn’t realize until afterwards was that the steel wool also took off the first layer of paint, which I had to get repaired later.

Yes, those kids earned every penny of the $5 I gave them for washing my car that day.

Keeping Perspective

The last two weeks, the coastal cities of Texas have been ravaged by Hurricane Harvey.  The flooding damage has been unbelievable, as people have lost cars, houses, everything to rising waters.  Streets became impassable, so that many people who were forced to evacuate had to trudge through the waist-high water with only what they could carry on their backs or in their arms.  Knowing that whatever you leave behind could be lost forever, how do you decide what to take and what to leave?  How do you walk away and abandon an entire life that you have been accumulating for years?

I grew up in Houston, so almost my entire family is still there.  Most of them were lucky enough to avoid serious damage, but not all.  Some lost almost everything.  The last couple of days has been people assessing the aftermath and figuring out how they’re going to start over.  What can they save, what can they replace, and what is gone forever.

My wife and I are in the Dallas area, so we had no direct affects from the storm.  Life went on as usual here.  In fact, my week was so busy and my customers so demanding, that I’m ashamed to say that I hardly thought about what was going on five hours south of us.  Until one day, when I had endured one of my customer’s abuse for hours, and I was finally leaving work after a twelve-hour day.  I heard something on the radio about the storm, and it suddenly hit me how heartless my customer was being, and how they were making me into the same thing. 

In the midst of this devastating natural disaster, they acted like their stupid demands and wants were the most important thing in the world.  They had the gall to escalate on me for not turning their petty issues around in an hour, when people were watching their lives wash away in minutes.  And knowing that I was located in Texas, they didn’t even once ask if we were okay or if my family was okay.  They didn’t once think about anything outside themselves and their stupid deadlines.

And it was that wake-up call that made me realize that I had lost focus and perspective on the things that matter most in this life.  Work is not life.  We should not live to work.  We should work to live.  I applaud all of those that stepped up to help their neighbors, the rescue workers that put themselves in harm’s way, and the celebrities that used their influence to raise money to aid those that lost everything.  I applaud them for being better people than I am.  They knew what was important even when I lost sight of it.  People.  Life.

Never Stop Trying

We should never stop trying to look good.  We should never become complacent.  It’s possible that some of us will never reach that ideal body, and that’s okay.  We just need to keep trying. 

I realize that those statements might receive a negative response from many people.  You might be thinking that I’m just another man that has an unrealistic expectation for beauty, right?  Not so.  I just don’t like how hard we try to impress someone when we’re trying to woo them and then completely give up after we have them.  Why does being in a relationship mean that that other person suddenly doesn’t deserve our best anymore?  Don’t we want them to be attracted to us?  Don’t we want them to know that they are worth the effort?

I realize that as love grows, you fall in love with more and more of a person, until it’s not just their looks that you love.  But let’s be realistic, we still care what someone looks like, don’t we?  There is too much imagery in this world, tempting and tantalizing us, to not be aware of it.  And I realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I’m just saying that we should keep trying.  Let your partner know that they’re important, and them wanting you…to chase after you like they did in the beginning…is still important.

Always Wear PJs

I work in the technology industry, and with customers spread all over the world, we regularly use WebEx to conduct meetings.  One day, while I was working from home, my manager asked me to have an impromptu one-on-one with her.  Now, it should be known that I rarely get dressed up when I work from home…sometimes I don’t even bathe until after lunch. 

So here I was in pajama bottoms and no shirt, dialing into a call, when all of a sudden my manager’s face pops up on my screen.  She had turned on the video chat feature.  Completely caught off guard, I saw a little picture of myself in the bottom corner of the screen, bare chested and hair sticking up in all different directions.  I could see her grin of satisfaction, as I scrambled to act nonchalant, even as I was crossing my arms awkwardly across my chest to cover up.  She kept on talking, but that evil grin never left her face.  Finally, deciding that she was enjoying this a little too much, I tilted the screen back so that only my face was in the camera. 

It was one of the worst surprises I have ever gotten at work.  I have since disabled the camera on my computer, and I always put a shirt on before starting work when I’m at home.

My Naked Adventures

When I was in high school, I had an obsession with being naked.  If you ask my wife, that obsession has really never gone away, but it was worse in high school.  I liked the freedom of it, but I also liked the excitement and adventure that came with the stigma that being naked is taboo and unacceptable in polite society.  It’s not like I went to nude beaches or flashed people on the sidewalk.  I was more of a secret exhibitionist.

I liked to go sans clothes when there was a chance people might “catch” me, but also when that chance was small.  For example, I started by walking around the house naked after everyone had gone to bed.  This graduated into venturing out into the backyard naked and doing what I liked to call “moon bathing.”  I have also driven naked from my friend’s house back to my house, but it was early in the morning and there were no cars out.  But it was like with any drug, with each successful “hit” I had to up my game to something more daring and bold.

The epitome came one night when I decided to streak down my entire street.  My street had the distinction of being different from every other street in the city in one regard.  It had a line of trees down the middle of the road that split the street into two parts.  So, one night right around supper time, I headed out to the middle of the street naked and hid behind a tree.  When nobody seemed to be raising the alarm, I darted to the next tree, and then the next.  With every tree, I gained more and more confidence, until I started to take the trees in twos and threes.   Finally, I was running buck naked down the street without stopping. 

It was exhilarating and exciting in a way that I could never describe to you.  The air was cool against my skin, which shone a pale, bluish-white in the full moon.  The adrenaline was pumping through my veins, even as my legs were pumping down the street.  The leaves and dirt were soft under my bare feet.  I have never felt more alive and free.  That is until a car turned onto my street, and I found myself fully-exposed in their headlights.

I quickly darted behind a tree and hoped that they hadn’t seen me, but I was not to be so lucky.  In fact, the car slowed down and inched past me in an interminable crawl.  It was only after it was a little ways past my hiding place that I saw that it wasn’t just a car, but a police car.  As the police made their way to the next turnaround to u-turn and come back, I dashed across the street into someone’s yard and hid in the bushes.  The police shone their search light on every tree and into several yards, but I was too well-hidden.  After a few passes, they gave up and continued on down the road in the direction they were originally headed.

Even after they were gone, I waited several tense moments before deciding that this had to be one of the stupidest ideas I had ever come up with.  With a lot less excitement and with the adrenaline pumping through my body for a completely different reason, I slowly made my way back home, taking cover behind every single tree along the road.  As I dressed again in the backyard, I decided that I probably should cool it on the naked adventures for a while.  I would pick them up again later in life, but nothing so bold and daring as streaking down the street and hiding from the police.

Renewing Our Vows

I have actually married my wife three times.  We didn’t get divorced or anything, we just kept getting married again and again.  I guess you could say that I have already renewed my vows…twice.  I know that people usually wait until later in their marriage to go through the ceremony again, but my wife and I have never been orthodox.  So, we just decided to get it over with right at the beginning…the very next day, in fact.

The 3 Amigos Lawn Service

Today is my brother’s birthday.  So, in honor of my brother, I want to reminisce about the “3 Amigos Lawn Service.”  When he was in high school, my brother was looking for various ways to make some extra cash.  One of his bright ideas was to start a lawn service.  That was right around the time when “professional” crews of Hispanic men were revolutionizing the lawn mowing industry and pushing the neighborhood kid’s summer job out of business.

But my brother decided to make a go of it, and with two of his best friends, he started the “3 Amigos Lawn Service.”  If you are a movie buff or just into the old cult classic, you probably picked up on the reference to the movie by the same name.  He actually asked me to design a logo, which featured three guys wearing sombreros, just like in the movie.  But I digress.  The point of the name, besides the obvious that there were three of them and that my brother loved that movie, was that he was hoping it would lend some credence to them being serious professionals, just like all of these upstart lawn businesses.

Never mind the fact that only one of them was actually Hispanic.  Or that one of them was so pale white and freckled that even after an entire summer in the sun, he wouldn’t be able to pass for Hispanic.  My brother was betting on the fact that nobody would know until they actually showed up, and then they’d wow them with their lawn sculpting abilities.

The “3 Amigos Lawn Service” didn’t have a long tenure under my brother’s management, maybe around a month before he grew tired of the venture.  But my next door neighbor and I picked up his customers and continued the legacy.  Despite there only being two of us, we kept the name, and the business went off and on for over two years after that.  We finally went under when the overwhelming number of professional businesses could do it faster and cheaper, making our feeble attempts completely obsolete.

Bags with Bags

For some reason this entire month at work has been really rough.  Not only am I constantly exhausted, but I’ve seen the affects of the daily beatings starting to show up in my physical appearance as well.  From the extra weight to the silver streak in my beard.  I’ve actually been under so much stress lately that the bags under my eyes have bags now.  It’s like they’re packed and ready to go.  I really think they’re about to leave me.  Even they are tired of this crap.

Standing for the National Anthem

There is a phenomenon in our country, which I am totally against, in which black, professional athletes are refusing to stand for the national anthem.  They are doing it supposedly to protest against the unfair treatment of black people at the hands of white police officers.  I have been trying to stay out of this topic for many reasons, but this past weekend, I saw something that made me want to say something.

My wife and I were at the Highland Village Balloon Festival, and we had gone out in the evening to watch the balloon glow.  We were standing behind a quite large Indian group that consisted of several families from little children to older grandparents.  The older grandparents were all sitting in fold-out chairs, while their children and grandchildren were sitting on blankets.  Before the balloon glow, they played the national anthem.  Everyone slowly rose and faced the American flag on the building across from us…including every single one of those Indian people.  It touched me that they showed such respect for a flag, a song, and an ideal that was not their own.  That they honored a country that was not their own.

When I put this in the context of what is happening in this country, it just makes me sicker.  I am not a proponent for social injustice or unfair treatment.  I do not condone treating people violently or inhumanely, regardless of the color of their skin.  But I also do not condone disrespecting this country, its fundamentals and principles, or the freedoms that we enjoy.  I do not believe that disrespecting the national anthem or this country will bring awareness to social injustice.  It will put the spotlight on that particular person, but not on the issue.  The cause is not newsworthy, but the outrage at the act is. 

But I also do not believe that racial tensions in this country are caused by the accused, but by the accusers.  I'm sure you could (any many black people do) make the argument that racism exists in this country.  But the funniest part of that statement is that racism apparently only exists against black people.  Black people are NEVER racist against white people.  Black people NEVER get special treatment that is not equally given to white people.  Are you kidding me?!

* Do we have scholarships solely for white people?  I implore you to even try doing this, and see how many black people come out of the woodwork to protest about the unfairness of it.  But it's okay the other way.
* Do we have an entire month devoted to the history of white people, or anyone else other than black people for that matter?  But February is completely devoted to black history month.  Again, just try to do this for other races and ethnic groups and see what happens.
* Do we have an ESPN sports column devoted to telling the stories of white athletes?  That's The Undefeated, in case you’re wondering.  That's right, only stories about black athletes and how they're changing sports for the better.
* Was "affirmative action" equal and fair to everyone, or just black people?  Well, I guess the answer to that question is seen in the fact that they had to revoke it because it was causing "reverse discrimination."

The division of race is constantly thrown in our faces and kept alive by people whose words suggest that they are supposedly seeking to remove it.  But really it's a double standard.  Racism is good, as long as it benefits black people, but bad if it benefits anyone else.  We will never have racial equality in this country as long as people keep being reminded that we have racial differences.

I think the only true path to racial equality is racial amnesia.  We need to stop thinking and looking at people by the color of their skin or the culture they come from.  We need to start seeing people as people.  There is only one race…the human race…and until we all believe that, there is no hope for this country.  If these athletes were protesting the unfair treatment of people, then I’d support them wholeheartedly.  But the moment you bring race into it, you’ve lost me.

God's Detours

Yesterday, we were traveling across town, and we set the GPS to guide us.  As we were traveling down the freeway, the GPS suddenly said, “I have found a route that will save you 4 minutes, would you like to take it?”  I clicked to accept, and she led us off the freeway.  Both my wife and I thought this was going to be a mistake until we saw the traffic on the freeway backed up right before the ramp we were now exiting.

I think this is a good metaphor for how we need to trust God.  Sometimes, He will ask us to do things that seemingly make no sense or seemingly are going backwards, but that’s because we don’t understand the end game.  We can’t see even two or three steps ahead, much less the entire journey.  We just have to trust and believe that God’s detours are faster than our freeways.

And you can’t open up the details and see the journey in its entirety, as much as they might seem appealing, because if you saw how complicated it might be or what you might have to endure, you might decide not to go or to turn back altogether.  You just have to accept getting one step at a time.  Go here.  Turn here.  Turn here.  Merge here.  The destination is on the right.  We can handle one step.  That’s not too overwhelming.  So, that’s how God speaks to us.  In single sentences, not paragraphs.

Cameron

When I was in high school, my brother got a Pit Bull/Rottweiler puppy.  He named her Cameron, because he was really into his Chevrolet Camero, and that was the most creative name he could come up with in tribute.  Cameron was the best of dogs.  Definitely, sweeter and more loyal than my brother deserved.  I spent more time with her than anyone else, playing with her, chasing her around, and training her, and just generally being a dog with her.  But in the end, she only had one father, and that was my brother.

There were some nights and weekends when my brother would stay out at a friend’s house.  Cameron would follow him to the door when he’d leave and sit there staring at it long after he’d gone.  I would find her laying on the floor, facing the door, waiting for him to come home.  On those nights, I would let her sleep with me, so she wouldn’t have to be alone.  I’d come in there, stroke her side, and say, “Let’s go to be, sweetie.”  She’d reluctantly raise herself up, give me the most pitiful look of sadness, and then relent.

While she slowly traipsed into my room, I’d go brush my teeth.  When I’d get done, I’d find her standing next to my bed with her front paws on the mattress and her back paws still on the floor.  I had hardwood floors in my bedroom, so she found it difficult to get enough traction to get up on the bed.  I’d lift her the rest of the way, and she’d walk around to find her spot.  Her spot, it turns out was lying with her back against the wall, legs sticking out completely across the bed, and head on my pillow.

Now, I had a twin bed at the time, and Cameron was a good-sized dog, so she pretty much covered the entire bed.  I would go push her to the end of the bed, which was always met with growling, before climbing in myself.  Since she took up all of the end of the bed, I inevitably would find myself in the fetal position, tugging on the blankets to get enough to cover me. 

At some point in the night, usually about five or six minutes after the lights were off, she would stealthily (or as stealthily as a dog that size could muster) inch her way up alongside me until her head was once again on the pillow.  Then, with her back once again against the wall, she’d jam her paws into my back and slowly push outward until I fell off the bed.  I would pick myself up in disgust and shoo her back to the end of the bed.

This would go on two or three times, before I gave up in exhaustion and let her sleep against the wall.  I would grab her legs and lay them on top of me, so they weren’t jamming into my back, and we’d fall asleep in a sort-of cease-fire.  Except for the snoring, she was a pretty good sleeping companion…especially in the winter, when her added body heat would warm me up.

The Young and the Hungry

My freshman year of college, I went to the University of Houston.  I didn’t go there because I really wanted to go there, but more because I had gotten my application in late for Texas A&M University, and my only option was to go somewhere for a year and transfer.  This actually is a slight lie, as I could have gone to Texas A&M that year if I had joined the corp of cadets.  However, after hearing about the things they had to do, I decided that a year at another university was preferable.

That entire year at U of H, I brought my lunch every single day.  My girlfriend and I had different lunch schedules, so I generally ate alone.  It was somewhere around the second or third day on campus that I wandered into the satellite student center.  And there, set up just inside the door, was a gigantic TV.  In front of the TV, every seat, bench, and open floor space was occupied by a girl.  All ages, all colors, all cultural backgrounds had come together for one purpose…to watch the daily soap opera.

At first, I thought this was stupid, but it was cool inside, and I really didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I stayed.  Day after day, I found myself slowly getting sucked into the stupid storyline.  I started to need this hour every day, so I could find out what was going to happen next.  I swear that I was the only guy in there, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone.  I was eagerly accepted into the fold, and I was quickly entrenched in conversation with girls around me about who was going to date who next or which character was going to fall down an elevator shaft and never wake up from the coma.

It was a strange way to spend lunches during my freshman year, but surprisingly not as bad as I would have thought it would be.

Superhero or Just Blind

MR was telling me the other day that I looked completely different without my glasses.  He said that he almost didn’t recognize me when I walked by.  I didn’t think I looked that different without my glasses on…more tired and older, maybe, definitely blinder…but that’s all.  I stood in the bathroom for five or six minutes just pulling my glasses off and putting them back on again.  I could still see me looking back at me.

But MR insists that I look different.  So, maybe it’s just because I’m so familiar with my own face.  Maybe “outsiders” can’t see what I see.  Do you think that’s why nobody could tell that Superman and Clark Kent were the same person?

Attrition: I do not think that means what you think it means…

The latest buzzword at my company is “attrition.”  The dictionary defines this word as “the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure.”

My company keeps incorrectly using it in the context of someone leaving the company, either voluntarily or involuntarily termination.  We actually had a presentation today, where one of the managers said that his team had 11 people leave through “voluntary attrition.”  Voluntary attrition?  Who would voluntarily choose to become less effective or weaker from sustained attack or pressure?

The worst part is that people are so ignorant of the English language and too lazy to actually look up a word that they don’t know, that this misuse of the word will get perpetuated throughout other meetings, conversations, and presentations.  So, voluntary attritions will continue at our company.  This reminds me of a t-shirt I have that reads, “Beatings will continue until morale improves.”

The Hummingbird

There's a hummingbird that's been coming to our feeder all morning.  He gets a good, long drink, and then he flies off to explore the world around our house.  Every once in a while, he comes back and gets another drink, and then he's off again.  It's like every time his battery gets below 20%, he comes back for a recharge.

Just for grins, I decided to film him with the slo-mo feature on my phone.  Even in slo-mo, you could still barely see his wings flapping, just his body slowly jerking around the feeder.  They are such amazing creatures.

The Birds and the Scarecrow

I have a hay bale on my back porch that I use to practice my spear toss.  It's wrapped in plastic to help hold the hay in and keep it from going everywhere.  Today, I noticed several birds sitting on top of it, shoving their beaks through the holes torn by my spear, and pulling out the hay.  I think they're using it to make a nest somewhere, but I can't be sure.  They may just be messing with me.  Watching them rip the hay out of my bale was like watching the flying monkeys dismantle the scarecrow.  There's pieces of him everywhere.  I guess I'll have to try to put him back together again when they're through.

Life in an RV Trailer

When I started this blog, it was to find a way to connect with my wife, while we were apart.  At the time, she was living in Missouri, working on her PhD, and I was stuck alone in Bryan, Texas.  I had been having a hard time finding a job in Missouri, so I satisfied myself by working as a software developer for Brazos County.  In order to save money (although it was really so my wife could live in the lap of luxury), I decided to move into an RV trailer in a trailer park on the edge of town.

The trailer park was located next to a goat farm, so every morning, I was woken up by the sounds of goats eating the tree next to my trailer.  That’s right, eating the tree.  One morning, I came out to find one goat standing on the back of another, so he could reach the higher branches.  But I digress…

The experience wasn’t all bad.  Okay, I’m lying, the experience was all bad.  Everything about living in a trailer is smaller.  The living room/kitchen/dining room/office was a single room and was still only about eight feet wide.  I could almost put my feet on one side and touch the other.  The bed was only about five feet long maybe, so my legs hung off the end of it every night.  Oh, and the bathroom!  The shower was so short that you had to bow your head to keep from hitting it on the ceiling.  For some strange reason, they didn’t put the nozzle at the top of the wall, so it ended up hitting me in the chest, so I had to bend almost in half to wash my hair every morning.  The toilet was so small that I couldn’t do both of my businesses at the same time.  So, there was a weird pelvic dance that took place as I alternated immediate needs.  Sometimes I was too tired to perform the dance and just peed in the shower, which was crammed up against my knees.

My favorite part, though, was the propane tanks [sarcasm implied].  The stove, hot-water heater, and A/C heater all ran off of propane, and I had no way of knowing when it would run out.  So, there were mornings in the middle of winter when I’d wake up to find the trailer at 35 degrees.  There were the showers that turned ice cold right in the middle, followed by blood-curdling screaming.  And the chili that ended up half-cooked as it heated up on the stove.

Also, for some reason, the lawn mower guy kept tearing up my sewer hose with the weed-eater.  Nobody else’s, just mine.  I never met the man, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything to him personally, but he seemed to have it out for me.  I went through four sewer hoses over the course of a year.

But the worst part, by far, was the solitude.  It was so lonely.  I dreaded going home every night, because at least at work, I had people to talk to.  All that awaited me at home was hours of job searching, half-cooked Frito pie, and a bed made for dwarves.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, that year and a half apart from my wife nearly broke up my marriage.  It was by far one of the lowest parts of my life.

And yet…God found a way to talk to me more and show me more of life during that time than ever before.  Without the distractions of life and the nonsense that we strive for, I was able to see things clearly.  I was able to have my weird thoughts, take in the overlooked moments, and appreciate all the things that everyone else takes for granted.  I would never want to live in an RV trailer again, but it makes the life I have now all the more sweeter because I did.

The Left-Handed Bandit

Have you ever noticed how all slot machines are right-handed?  Or I guess, how they used to be when they actually had functioning arms?  Now, everything is electronic, and if they have an arm, it’s just for show.  I wonder why machines were only ever made with right-handed arms.  I know that statistically more people are right-handed than left, but I would think that from a purely physical standpoint, this seems short-sighted.  I mean if you’re going to spend hours yanking on a machine’s arm, aren’t you only going to be working out the muscles on one side?  I can just picture all of these people leaving Las Vegas with a puny left arm and a huge right arm.  Everyone would instantly know what you’d been doing on your vacation.

Nowadays, everything is run by computers…some supposedly random number generator program, which every programmer knows is impossible to create.  But when you know that all casino games are going to favor the house, how can you possibly trust a game run by a computer?  It can be coded to do anything the casino wants, so of course, you’re never going to come out ahead. 

Oh sure, you might win small pots occasionally, because that’s what increases your time on device.  And the more time on device you spend, the more money the casino makes.  It’s psychology.  Like B.F. Skinner’s boxes, people are motivated by periodic rewards.  Too many, and you lose interest.  Too few, and you lost interest.  It has to be a game that is “unpredictable” so you keep playing…and paying.  And don’t think for one minutes that casinos aren’t using us as experimental mice, setting up varying degrees of payout on seemingly identical machines to test which machines have a higher time on device.  And with computers, all of this data is fed into the hands of the casinos, so they can constantly be doing analysis and adjustment to increase the amount of money they’re making.

With the old mechanical slot machines, you could give a fair argument to “predicting” when a machine would pay out.  Some people could tell by the configuration of the reels or the time between payout.  Although, some people still claim that it’s impossible for a machine to get hot or cold, because each pull of the handle is independent of the previous pull, it was more reasonable to “guess” correctly more often.  With computers, kiss it goodbye.  It’s all based on the programming now.  You’ll only win, when they want you to win.

And to think that all of this came about because of the recession in the 1980s.  The federal government was looking for ways to increase revenue, so they legalized gambling and then taxed the crap out of it.  So, the more addicted people got, the more money they spent, the more money the federal government made.  They also did one other move that was absolutely brilliant…small, subtle, and brilliant.  They changed the term from “gambling” to “gaming.”  So, people didn’t feel like they were doing anything wrong.  They were just playing a game.

So, if you’re planning to play one of the over 800,000 slot machines in this country, push the button with either your right or left hand, but know that more often than not, you’re still going to walk away a loser.  I guess you can be grateful to game designers for changing the way slot machines work.  Now, at least you can rest assured that both of your arms will be puny.

The Fort

When I was seven years old, a new family moved into the house next door.  They had an older daughter, a son, and a brand-new baby.  The son was my age, and we hit it off immediately.  That was back before people connected through electronic devices, so our time together consisted of playing outside, spying on the neighbors, and harassing our siblings.  CC was an odd kid back then.  I don’t think there was ever day that I saw him that he didn’t have long pants on, even in the sweltering Texas summers.  When I asked him about it one day, he said that he was embarrassed at how white his legs were.  I told him that he would never get a tan wearing long pants, but every day he busted out the long pants.  Nowadays, it’s hard to get him to wear long pants.  He even got a job as a PE teacher, so he could be in shorts all the time!  But I digress.

CC’s dad built him a fort in the back yard out of landscape timbers.  In reality, it was just a box with a door and no roof, but to us, it was a fort…our base of operations, from which we planned all of our spy missions, launched our assaults, and went to get out of the summer heat.  We drug some plywood over the top to give us some shade, and we even built a little refrigerator in it out of bricks.  I suppose you could say it was like a real-life Minecraft.  The refrigerator was a brilliant idea.  We cooled the bricks and then stacked them up in the darkest part of the fort.  Since bricks take a long time to heat up and a long time to cool down, they would stay cold practically all day.  We could put drinks and candy in there, go do our thing, and come back to cold refreshments.  Brilliant!

We spent almost every day in the fort, until a family of hornets decided that it looked like a good spot to make a home.  It was never quite the same after that.  Not to mention that over the years, we got too big to fit inside and our interests generally changed.  We cared less and less about planning make-believe spy missions, and more and more about girls and basketball.  But it was a good fort, and much more than most boys have as children.

One Woman…Ever

I think it’s interesting that people are amazed to hear that I have only had sex with one woman…ever.  That’s right, I saved myself for my wife.  She’s it.  Only one.  The looks on people’s faces are funny, as if they either don’t believe me or feel sorry for me.  I feel like a seven-headed hydra, or a unicorn, or something rare and mythological.  Like they can’t trust their eyes that they’re actually seeing it, but don’t want to blink because they may never see it again.  Isn’t it funny that as a society we have become so degraded that my chastity is the rarity instead of the norm?

Allergenic Punishment

Allergies suck, but they seem worse in Texas.  I had terrible allergies the entire time I was growing up, and then they mysteriously went away when I moved to Missouri.  Those were the best five years of my life!  Then, I came back to Texas, and I haven’t been able to breathe since.

I guess that’s not entirely true.  I get maybe one good sniff, right after I blow my nose, before it instantly fills up again.  I don’t know what it is about the state of Texas that seems to be missing from the rest of the country.  You would think that my body would have developed immunities to whatever is here after all of these years.  I think the plants here are mutating and adapting so that their pollen remains potent.  With all of these scientists out there mutating plants at a genetic level, you’d think someone would have been pumping millions of dollars into figuring out how to neutralize the allergenic effect of pollen.

JS said that he went on a trip to Alabama a few weeks ago, and the moment he crossed into Arkansas, he could suddenly breathe.  He said it was weird, like there was a defining line where the allergens stopped.  His theory is that when Texas joined the union and added the clause that we could secede at any time and become our own country, that the U.S. government got mad.  But they couldn’t not take Texas in, since it would instantly double the size of the country.  So, they decided to punish us instead by shipping all allergenic plants and substances to Texas.  Then, to pour salt in an open wound, they opened all the drug companies in the Northeast, so that Texans would have to rely on the U.S. for medicine.  If we ever try to leave, then they’ll just cut off our drugs.

So, essentially, Texans can’t breathe because the rest of the country is jealous that we were smart enough to give ourselves a way out.  Petty…just petty.

The 38-Point Turn

Today, I watched MR display a tutorial on the 38-point parking method.  He kept pulling in and out of the parking spot, trying to get his huge truck perfectly between the lines.  He’d adjust a few inches one direction, only to find out he’d gone too far.  So, he’d move it back the other direction and over-correct that way.  Back and forth he went.  The sad part is that when he finally gave up, his truck was in the same place as he’d started.

Drinking Jameson in Your Underwear

I was in Derry, Northern Ireland back in November of 2015.  I was there to conduct a training class for a group of new hires in our brand new office.  JM and his wife came over at the same time, as JM was supposed to be taking over the office and getting it established.  His wife only stayed a week, but JM and I stayed two. 

During that second week, we were inseparable.  We dined together, went to the movies together, went shopping together…you name it, we did it together.  There was one night that we were supposed to be going to dinner, and I went by his hotel room to pick him up.  When JM opened the door, he wasn’t wearing any pants!  From the waist up, he was impeccably dressed, as always.  From the waist down…underwear and socks.

I felt a bit uncomfortable and asked if he needed more time.  He replied that he was ironing his pants, and he’d be ready in a few minutes.  He asked me to come in and share a drink with him.  I’m not a big drinker, but he laid it on thick when he told me that he had gotten a bottle of his favorite whiskey, and he didn’t have anyone to share it with.  I took a small glass, which I sipped sparingly, and he jovially talked about his day while he stood there in his underwear...glass of Jameson in one hand, iron in the other!

14 Years on the Couch

My wife and I were set to be married in October.  At the time, I was working in Houston, and she was in College Station starting her PhD.  We planned to get married and for me to find a job as soon as I could in College Station, which didn’t offer a lot of possibilities.  However, in August of that year, I unexpectedly secured a job in College Station, and I needed to start immediately. 

Being a devout Christian, I didn’t want to live with my fiancée before we’d tied the knot, so I appealed to my pastor for assistance.  I didn’t hold out a lot of hope of him knowing someone that could put me up for a few months, but God in His infinitely, amazing love came to my rescue.  A few hours later, my pastor called me back to tell me that he’d found me a “home.”  He was currently doing pre-marital counseling for another young guy in our church, who was a firefighter and paramedic for the city.  He was rarely home (doing back-to-back 24-hour shifts), so he offered to let me stay on his couch.  For him, it would give him someone to be at his place to look after things.  For me, it would give me a place to crash.

So, I called him up, not knowing what to expect from this complete stranger.  He seemed like a nice-enough guy on the phone, and we agreed to meet at a coffee shop, so he could give me a key.  When I asked him how I’d recognize him, he said, “I’m wearing a blue shirt, and I’m bald.”  I laughed that he had chosen those two particular things to describe himself, but it turned out that it was a perfect description, as he was the only bald guy, wearing a blue shirt, in the entire coffee shop!  I liked him right off the bat.  He was funny and easy-going, and you could tell right off that he had a huge heart. 

All told, I spent around two months sleeping on his couch.  I tried to respect his space, picking up my bedding every morning and stuffing it in the back room, and rolling it out every night to sleep.  I kept one gallon of milk and one box of cereal in his house, and I didn’t eat any of his food…even though he offered constantly.  He got up before me, and we easily fell into a routine of him using up all of the hot water in the shower and leaving me with the cold.  He was usually gone before I got out of the shower, so I hardly saw him, except for a few hours on his day off.

Despite that, we remained friends after I got married.  I even attended his wedding, which was three months after mine.  We started a Bible study together, I visited him at the fire station, we went to each other’s houses for dinners and parties.  I've helped him chop down trees.  I've suffered with poison ivy with him.  I've been there to see both of his kids born and grow up.  I've seen him struggle through a rough first marriage and find unbelievable happiness in a second.  I have grown to see him like a brother, and I love him like he’s family.

This month marks 14 years of friendship with JK.  An unexpected friendship that started with God moving a man’s heart to let a stranger sleep on his couch, and a man being faithful enough to listen.  We never know how or when people are going to come into our lives, and we never know how long they’ll stay there.  To have someone withstand the test of time is a whole other level of blessing.  I’m grateful to know JK, and I couldn’t ask for a better friend.  Despite the fact that we now live almost four hours apart, we always manage to find a way to see each other, and every time it’s like we’ve never been apart.