I was perusing other blogs today and noticed a trend of people either regurgitating their New Year's resolutions or offering up their 2005 Year in Review. I say "regurgitating" because if you think about it our new resolutions are really just rehashed versions of those of auld lang syne . . . and the lang syne before that . . . and the one before that. While the year in review is no new idea, I think VH1 has driven it into the ground. I'd like to think I have better uses for my blog than competing with Mo Rocca. Besides I still think Martha Stewart...
Friday, 30 December 2005
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
My wife and I pulled off the I-75 freeway to gas up and get a bite to eat in a small town called Bushnell, Florida. With still over three hours to go on a ten-hour trip to Naples, we had reached that point on the journey where getting there was no longer half the fun. What better way to cure travel crabbiness and curb the appetite, we thought, than with cholesterol on Texast toast? We headed for Waffle House.Route 48 west of I-75 in Bushnell is a fairly secluded and desolate neck of the woods. A slightly dilapidated motel with a weedy parking lot...
Monday, 19 December 2005
Today a glitch in the inner-workings of our comany's phone system crippled my work productivity. Some of my coworkers relish these times, but I normally do not. One of the benefits of work is that it supplies you with tasks, however mundane, so as to occupy your time and alleviate boredom. Had I felt more productive I would have probably found something else to do. There are, after all, other aspects of my job description that do not involve the...
Tuesday, 13 December 2005
I'm getting fat. I wasn't always fat. When I was in college, my drivers license claimed I weighed in at 142 pounds. This was a lie. Because I didn't want anyone who looked at my drivers license to know I really only weighed 135, I bumped it up to what I thought was a more suitable weight for a guy my height. Those were the days. By the time I hit my late 20s I made it to 175. Three years into my marriage I found ten more pounds, and since then, I've probably found close to ten more.My waist size , as you might imagine, has only expanded with my...
Monday, 5 December 2005
December is upon us once again. This means that along with pulling out the tangled string of lights and rusty tetanus-ridden ornament hooks, we wrestle with age-old holiday traditions. Some of them survive from year to year because we enjoy them. Others we observe but secretly wish they would disappear and find their way to the closet of the Ghost of Christmas Past next to the Yule log and door-to-door carolers.One of these less desirable traditions for me is the office gift exchange, where there are suggested minimums and maximums for the dollar...
Sunday, 27 November 2005
My lovely wife, Elaine, and I spent our Thanksgiving this year with my sister and her husband, Karen and Ron, in their turn-of-the-century home in downtown Norfolk. Also making the pilgrimage from Georgia to Virginia were my parents. Since they, unlike the aforementioned family members, did not request their names be specifically mentioned in my blog, I'll change them to protect the innocent. Let's just call them Tom and Barbara White. While I'm...
Tuesday, 22 November 2005
Forcing motorists to wear seatbelts is one of the most innane laws ever concocted. It ranks up there with blue laws and profanity laws. It should not be the role of our government to tell us how to protect ourselves. If I'm not buckling in a child, that's one thing. I'd even go so far as to say if I fail to buckle myself up when I've got a kid in the car that's another thing. But if I as an adult make a conscious choice not to wear my seat belt, this should not infringe on any law. If I run a red light, I've created a traffic hazard. That merits...
Monday, 21 November 2005
I sent out a bulk email last night inviting almost 500 people to check out my blog. After emailing these unsuspecting souls, I couldn't decide if having done so would be looked at by them as vain on my part or just plain desperate. A blog by its very nature does lend itself toward vanity. The author thinks that he has some unique take on life and that people actually care to hear it. But being conceited is of little worth if you don't also have blog...
Saturday, 19 November 2005
On the side of our refrigerator is a house wish-list my wife composed a few years ago. It lists home improvements we aspire to have completed someday. When she first handed it to me, I read it and nodded at her approvingly the same way she does to me each time I tell her I'm going to lose weight. It doesn't bother me that we don't have a built-in shelving fixture under the bathroom counter or a nice piece of art hanging over our fireplace. It's not that the items on the list are financially undoable or that I don't think these would be worthy ways...
Monday, 14 November 2005
Have you seen the new Burger King commercials? The Burger King guy with the gargantuan plastic head and crimson red eyes is pure evil incarnate. The creepy factor on this guy is way off the charts. If his looks alone weren't reason enough to make you question his motives then surely his reckless behavior would be. I'm talking about the commercial where they show him drilling bolts into a steel girder as he and another guy are standing God-only-knows...
Friday, 11 November 2005
On two occasions this week I visited the GA French Bakery (3512 Satellite Blvd., Suite 5, Duluth, GA 30096; 770-622-2682) near the corner of Satellite Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road. My first visit was on Wednesday when two hours into a crumby work day I decided that the only thing that could sway the on-coming crabbiness was sweet sweet pastry. GA French Bakery was a place I had passed several times and even stopped at once before but for whatever reason I hadn't made it a regular stop on the periodic midday hunger run.Famished for something...
Thursday, 10 November 2005
Tuesday, 8 November 2005
This past Sunday my wife and I went to the local Waffle House to dine out . . . in so far as feasting on greasy hashbrowns and gristle can be construed as dining out. Waffle House is a diner of the greasy spoon variety. Though it's a national chain each establishment attracts a local element of color particular to that vicinity.Sitting at the counter was a gentleman who had four prescription pill bottles lined up next to his plate. Four! Why anyone...
Friday, 28 October 2005
Today I had the long-dreaded honor and pleasure (read sarcasm) of visiting my dentist. Although I'm not as hesitant to go as I used to be, lying down in the torture chair while people pump novocaine into my gums and soft rock into my ears is certainly no picnic. After today I am not so much a dentist phobic as I am a dentist skeptic. Don't get me wrong. I don't begrudge anyone the opportunity to take money be it from my own pocket or that of my insurance company, but shouldn't there at least be a pretense of medical care? Today took the cake.I...
Tuesday, 11 October 2005
My recent visit to Nashville made for a nice contrast to my childhood visits to Tennessee. As a kid my family would occasionally make sojourns to the twin cities of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, both fun places known for hayseed kitsch and cuisine. Nashville bore the signs of most major cities, skyscrapers, parking garages and rerouted traffic. Smaller than Atlanta in both size and population, Nashville is a much more walkable town. Shops and boutiques are concentrated on a few convenient blocks. Restaurants emit smells of everything from wings...
Saturday, 1 October 2005
Someone once told me that nothing changes your life as much as when you find out your expecting. Now I know he was right. Though it seems like only yesterday, actually three weeks have passed since I awoke to my wife screaming from the bathroom for me to come look at two straight lines on a home pregnancy kit. Hesitant to get our hopes up prematurely we quickly decided to opt for a second opinion. An immediate visit to the doctor confirmed our suspicions. "You're definitely pregnant," he announced.In just a few short weeks we are becoming the quintessential...
Monday, 12 September 2005
I opened the refrigerator today only to find a package of Peeps left over from what I assume is last Easter. That my wife and I have six-month-old leftover chilled holiday candy is surprising enough. What really threw me off guard though is that I must see them countless times when going to get a coke and yet I only now realized they're in there. That means I usually don't look at them with anymore skepticism than I would the ketchup, the olives or the crisper drawer. Worse yet, I now wonder if they date back to an even earlier Easter. After...
Thursday, 8 September 2005
This past Labor Day weekend I added another country to the list of places I've been. Nogales is a Mexican border town just south of Arizona. Catering to U.S. tourists, merchants are hawking everything from locally crafted trinkets to non-prescription (at least in Mexico) pharmaceuticals. Suburban Sally can buy margarita glasses at one store and Oxycontin just next door. Prices are always negotiated and the U.S. greenback is the currency of choice.Sightseeing...
Wednesday, 31 August 2005
Human corpses are floating through the streets of New Orleans and Atlantans are concerned there will be no gasoline. I feel like I am in one of those picture puzzles from Highlights magazine -- the kind where you had to find what was missing from the picture. Only now what's missing isn't a rear wheel on a bicycle or a scoop of ice cream from a cone. It's compassion and sense. Does our burning desire to fill our tanks really override the concern for our neighbors three states over? Have we forgotten how stupid the apocalyptic people looked...
Sunday, 28 August 2005
A French lab claims a urine specimen Lance Armstrong provided in 1999 has tested positive for steroids. Results of this test aside, does anyone else find it gross that the French leave old frozen urine samples lying around? I can see freezing sperm, embryos or even your body if you're into cryogenics, but what good is frozen urine? Come to think of it, the Metro stations around the seedy Pigalle district in Paris smelled pretty pungent when I was there, but I always thought the assailants were local. Has anyone tested to see what those yellow cancer...
Friday, 26 August 2005
Apparently there are two women's bathrooms where I work and one is bigger than the other. Recently on the communal printer I found a memo that read "BLUE EARRING FOUND IN LARGE LADIES RESTROOM." I paraded the memo around and asked people why plus-sized women got their own bathroom. Few found this as amusing as I d...
Tuesday, 23 August 2005
Some people market products. Others market skills. The people who most amaze me though are those who make a living marketing themselves. The motivational speaker is the first guy that comes to mind, but really several types fall into this category: politicians, religious leaders, philosophers, etc. Instead of producing a tangible good or provide a service people would rather pay for than do themselves, these people do little more than employ the gift of gab. Those who can't rely solely on their personality offer us a carrot. They may have a small...
Sunday, 21 August 2005
Today I ran into an old college classmate from a French course I took fifteen years ago. Oddly enough, I was conducting a children's program in French when she spotted me. We tried to think of people we knew in common. The only people we could come up with was a French family we each had lived with as exchange students. It got me to thinking of what opportunities I have been afforded simply by knowing another language. Not only have I had the opportunity to live in another country, but I've also taught the language. The impact I may have had on...
Saturday, 20 August 2005
Most children won't hesitate to sit on Santa's lap or offer a hug to a theme park cartoon character come to life. I remember being at the grand opening of a Burger King years ago when the Burger King himself invited a group of us kids to come up on stage. His magic had been sub-par and his exaggerated beard and mustache were so artificial looking that they weren't so much accessories to his costume as they were impediments. Nonetheless I, like most kids, jumped at the chance to do his bidding.The exception to this is the kid who immediately starts...
Friday, 19 August 2005
I came home this evening to find that my wife had bought me a new pair of shoes. Putting them on brought back memories of buying shoes as a kid. It always happened around the first of the school year. The shoe sales weasel would press on the shoe and ask how it felt. I don't know why as a kid it never dawned on me to say, "It feels like your mashing on my toe," but I didn't. Instead I would perform the routine geek-walk up and down the aisle of the shoe store. If they were Red Goose shoes I got a prize-bearing golden egg from the campy goose egg...
Wednesday, 17 August 2005
Far be it for me to begrudge someone his political affiliation, just cause, or Nascar preference, but do we really need to use our cars as sounding boards for these things? Roadways that were once sprinkled with the occasional "Baby on Board" or "I [heart] my dog" bumper sticker are now littered with W's, fish, and a countless array of colored ribbons. Yesterday I had to avoid rear-ending a van sporting a ribbon made of red and blue puzzle pieces. On it were the words "Autism Awareness." I was already aware of autism before this jamoke cut me off....
I cannot fathom the amount of my childhood that I whiled away in front of a television. I got to thinking about it after discussing old tv shows with co-workers yesterday. Being mostly in the same age cohort, we all grew up with the same 80s milktoast programming. Girls swooned over Alex of Family Ties or Chachi from Joanie Loves Chachi. Guys liked action shows such as The A-Team or The Fall Guy. No one mentioned educational shows unless MacGyver counts as an educational sh...
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