Is Your Butt Burning?

My commute to work is 25 miles each way. Unfortunately I share the road with some of the worst drivers on the planet. These people are chronic ass riders who think speed limits are more like guide lines that can be ignored. I can’t think of anywhere (inside the U.S.) where there is such a concentration of bad drivers. I shouldn’t be surprised because I witnessed my ex-wife’s (who is the worst driver I ever personally known, which led to more fights and arguments than I care to remember) driver’s test which consisted of her driving with a cop around a course that entailed a 1 mile circle. I was shocked when the test took all of about 2 minutes. I even asked the cop, “is that it?” To which he replied, “Yep, that’s it. Driving is all about experience. We don’t expect new drivers to be highly skilled when they first start out, that will all come with time and experience.” Yeah, we wouldn’t want to burden anyone with having the basic driving skills of parallel parking, three point turns, and highway/interstate driving techniques etc. I think the state has finally changed the driver’s test but there are still a few generations of drivers from the “old days”. So needless to say, I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up dead in some sort of auto accident involving a SUV/pick-up, cell-phone, and some jack-ass in a big rush to get to the grocery store or whatever.

One evening, after a particularly stressful commute home, my wife and I were talking about bad drivers. I said that I wished there was a way you could somehow get a bad driver’s attention when you witness one in action. She suggested that I secretly wished to be God and strike down the offensive drivers with a mighty blow, thus snuffing out their life and improving the driving situation, one bad driver at a time. I, of course, being a little less extreme than my lovely bride, countered with a different idea. I would still take the position of God, and address the people of the world with something similar to this; “I the almighty, who sees all, has been quite disappointed in what I have witnessed. You consistently break the rules of safety, good manners and kindness while you traverse the vast expanse of roadways on this magnificent world that I have bestowed upon you. From now on, if I witness someone acting unsafe, rude, incompetent or otherwise jack-assedly (I’m God, remember, I can make up my own words) whilst operating a motor vehicle; I will inflict the curse of an excruciatingly painful burning upon your butt-hole. The pain will be so brutal that you will not be able to continue driving your vehicle and you will be forced to pull over. The burning will continue until you recognize your sins against yourself or fellow drivers and express remorse for such actions. After that, the pain will subside and you will be able to function normally again. I would ask that you spread the word of your “ass burning” so that others may learn from your stupid knuckle headed mistakes and all mankind may travel together in safety and harmony. Remember you are all my children and I love you, but I still have the right to “tan your ass” so to speak. Thank you for your time, Peace out!”
So there is something to think about the next time someone cuts you off, rides your butt, drifts into your lane while picking up something off their floorboard (which happened to me this morning) or acts otherwise jack-assedly. Peace Out!

The Bright Side

I usually consider myself a very upbeat and optimistic person. However, last Sunday I was in doldrums. I started thinking about the upcoming week and beyond and felt a sense of dread come over me. My work schedule was looking quite grueling, my girls are scheduled to visit their Mom for two weeks in June and my wife will be gone the first weekend in June to deliver our step-son to his father for his month long visitation. All of these combined factors were threatening to send me into a state of deep depression. My wife sensed my sullen mood and told me to look on the bright side of things and if I could just muddle through the rough stretches there is plenty to look forward to. So that is what I did and what a nice week it has been. It went by very quickly and I was able to take an unexpected day off on Friday. I had such a fun day. My step-son and I got to hang out and do some male bonding while my wife worked on meeting her word count goal for the day. After lunch, the little one took a nap and my wife and I adjourned to our bed to lounge and watch one of the 80’s movies we ordered from eBay. It was such a relaxing afternoon. We followed it up with an evening walk around the lake and returned home to cook some steaks on the grill. I really couldn’t have asked for a better day. I had to work yesterday but the wife and I were child-free for the evening so we decided to go out for a date. We had a great dinner at a cozy little Italian restaurant. We returned home and enjoyed each other’s company while we watched, yet another of our eBay 80’s movies. It was a most excellent date night!

I’m not sure what the point of this blog entry is…I guess there really isn’t one. Except… maybe…when things look bleak, sometimes you need to just take a look at things from a different perspective. I feel so lucky for what I have in my life. I love my family so much. I adore all of our children and truly cherish my wife. I think it’s amazing how much I enjoy my wife’s company and I can honestly say that I love her more today than I did when I married her 6 months ago (which doesn’t seem possible). But, I shouldn’t be surprised because she is all I ever wanted in a wife. With all of those things going for me, it really doesn’t matter how many days in a row I have to work or whatever other downers life can throw at you, I can always find a “bright side”.

I apologize to anyone that felt nauseated at reading this, but I’m just totally smitten and can’t help myself:)

Old Friends

Well, I think I'm on the blog wagon again. We will see how it goes. I'm a little rusty, but I hope you enjoy the latest installment, just the same.

Today, I was thinking about all of the different people that I met and befriended during my 17 years in the Air Force. Unfortunately, I haven’t stayed in touch with many of them, but that doesn’t change the many fond memories that I have for them. We pretty much were all subject to the circumstances that caused our paths to cross, whether it was a deployment, remote assignment or whatever. I wonder what happened to the countless names and faces that helped make my career so enjoyable and those that helped me through some of the rough stretches. There was my first dormitory roommate, Eric, from Bean town. I remember how we used to go cruising in his old orange Ford truck and our night fishing expeditions. If , for some reason, you are reading this, Eric; I apologize to you for the times I had…um…overnight guests and you had to sleep in the dayroom and I did utilize your bed once while you were deployed to England, but hey…you were deployed to England, you lucky dog! Then there was my friend “Shaq”. He was a total clown. The funny thing about our friendship is the first few times we met, I thought he disliked me and he thought that I felt the same about him. We later ended up on a deployment together and after drinking a few beers together, we were best buds. We had a blast in Germany and St, Johns, Newfoundland I don’t think I had ever seen three months go by so fast. I will never forget being doubled over in pain, from laughter, as Shaq described the circumstances behind his hotel room bed getting broken and stating that sometimes a ménage et trois isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I had many good friends while stationed in Korea, but Shannon is the first person that comes to mind. He was a hard worker and always made sure everyone’s beer glass was full when we were at the bar (I’m sensing a common theme here). He introduced me the owner of the Stereo Club in “A” town, thus ensuring preferential treatment on our many excursions there. I will never forget when Shannon’s motor functions were slightly degraded and he asked me to pour his beer in his mouth for him. I hope your liver has recovered from that long year, my friend. Then there’s Jake. Jake and I spent hundreds of hours working on aircraft together and were often the go to guys when an aircraft had to be repaired quickly or attempts by other crews fell short. My daughter ended up being a flower girl in his wedding. Every other week we would go to a Chinese buffet restaurant that served crab legs. We would eat so many crab legs that our wives (at the time) refused to go back there with us (a sure sign that things weren’t meant to be in our marriages). D.J. was my roommate on my last deployment to Saudi Arabia in 2002. He had a unique way of counting down the days in country by prominently displaying a different card from his Hooters playing card deck. We’re both hockey fans and played roller hockey four times a week while deployed. D.J and I had an ongoing argument on who was hotter…Brittany Spears or Shakira. I always said that it was Shakira hands down, but I could never sway his opinion…I wonder what he thinks now? D.J and I would host a friendly game of cards once a week. One night while playing cards, someone made the comment “every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.” You can imagine the response the comment got, but it sparked a legend of sorts. D.J. and his coworkers were bored at work and created a “Killing Kittens” score board…complete with a bell, so you could ring it each time you added a strike against another kitten (this is what happens when boredom sets in….scary isn’t it?) D.J. also took it upon himself to design a patch, featuring Bill the Cat (like the blog picture) depicting our deployment as the “Killin’ Kittens Tour”, which I still have to this very day. Another brain child of D.J. was the mustache contest. We had two weeks to grow facial hair and then we had a vote. I forget all of the different categories but, one was “most pre-pubescent” and another was “most porn star like” (which I won, btw).

That was just scratching the surface of all the different characters that I’ve met. I know that I’m missing so many others, but space and time is limited. Hopefully, you can look back at your acquaintances with a smile. Here’s to friends…past and present.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

I realize that my last entry highlighted my distain for commercials, but if I were the marketing director for Wal-Mart I would totally cash in on Valentines Day. My add slogan would go something like this; “Be sure to shop Wal-Mart, your one-stop shop for all of you Valentines Day needs. We have it all.”:
Cards? Check
Flowers? Check
Chocolates? Check
Rope? Check
Massage Oil? Check
Camera and Film? Check
Condoms (with or without vibrating pleasure ring)? Check
Teddy Bears? Check
Personal Lubricant? Check
Candles/Wax? Check
Heart Shaped Cookies? Check
Midget Dressed in Cowboy Costume, Riding a Tri-cycle? Okay…so maybe we don’t have EVERYTHING.

Seriously though, I’m not a huge fan of Valentines Day. I think the concept is good, but I don’t feel like I need a holiday to remind me to be romantic. I think of myself as an everyday romantic…I’m always trying to find little thoughtful things to do for my wife and I regularly treat her to foot massages and the like. However, it is nice to set aside a special day for our loved ones and that is what I appreciate most about Valentines Day. My biggest gripe is how cliché it is, with all of the roses and chocolates and such. I prefer something with a little more thought to it. Another flaw in V-day is that most of the marketing is geared towards gifts for women. But that only makes sense because the women put up with our crap the rest of the year. Personally, I have nothing to complain about because my wife was so thoughtful that she gave me some chocolates and a very pretty pair of thong panties for Valentines Day. The only problem is the panties don’t fit me very well. My…umm…stuff…keeps falling out and the string kind of chaffs my backside, but it’s the thought that counts. Hee Hee, I love that woman!

Hope you all have a great Valentines Day!!!

TV...Schmeevee!

The Super Bowl and the commercials were the big topic of discussion this week. I watched some of the game but my feelings towards it were lukewarm, much like the rest of the football games during the regular season. I used to love to watch football, but trying to sit through a televised game is just painful to me. The amount of commercials is utterly ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I understand commercials generate the revenue for the television networks, but I feel the networks have damaged the entertainment value of their offerings in their quest to maximize profits from commercial breaks. It’s not just football either. Have you tried to watch a show or movie on a national or cable network (ex. TBS, Comedy Central, etc) lately? It seems like over half of the allotted time is dedicated to bombarding the viewer with advertisements for products, services or upcoming channel programming. I just don’t have the patience and end up using Tivo to record the program so I can skip through the commercials. My question is; has it always been this way or is it just me? I don’t think I have ADD, but I guess it’s possible that I have developed it in my adulthood. My wife may interject that it’s a sign of my rapidly advancing age and the first steps on my journey to becoming a crotchety old man. Hmm…maybe she’s right. I guess I’ll sign off now; I’ve grown bored with this blog entry, if only there would have been some flashy message about drinking cold beer with half naked women on trampolines, it might have kept my interest. Until next time.

Hello...Is This Thing On?

Okay...so it's quite obvious that blogging more was not a New Year's resolution of mine. I've been swamped at work and the homefront has been pretty hectic also (that's nothing new). I'm still alive and have some riveting blog topics to share in the very near future. Please be patient and check back soon. Now I'm off to fix one of those temperamental flying machines, which was a subject of a previous entry. I hope you all have a great "Super Sunday".

Confession

I hope everyone’s New Year has started well. Mine has been great so far and I’m very excited about 2007. I’ve been reminiscing about the beginning of 2006. One of the things that came to mind was how liberated I felt when I let go of my failed marriage. I also recall feeling slight trepidation about dating again; after all, I had been out of “the game” for around 12 years. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very confident in who I am and what I have to offer. But, I never really felt that my personal traits translated well or were accurately represented in the typical dating venues of bars or clubs. It seems much of the emphasis and judgment is based on personal appearance in these places. I’m not flashy, stunningly good-looking, well-dressed, nor extremely outgoing. Given my feelings on the subject, I decided that I would try avoiding the bar scene (plus having a full-time job and raising 2 girls on your own really puts a strain on a social life). This friendly, funny, witty, thoughtful, slightly dorky, and mildly handsome short guy was going to delve into a world he never thought he would enter…Internet Dating!!! Yes, I admit it. I was sort of embarrassed by it at first, but if you think about it rationally, meeting someone through a dating site makes much more sense (thus, you would think it should be more socially acceptable) than hooking up with someone at a bar. At least when you go the internet route, you have some sort of description of the person and the opportunity to communicate and see if the individual in question is someone you might find interesting and you can go from there.

My personal experience with internet dating was very positive (except for the one slightly crazy woman that was communicating with me). My goal when I started was just to meet some people. I had no expectation of meeting “my soul mate” or “Mrs. Right”; plus, I just got out of a long marriage so why would I want to get all serious with someone anyway. I remember when I made up my profile; I stated that I was just looking for casual dating but would consider something more serious if I met the ultimate woman. I think I even said that she would have to “knock my socks off”. I was unwilling to compromise again. This woman would have to be funny, smart, goal oriented, considerate, pretty, outgoing, loving, sexy, caring, non-materialistic, fun, talented, and have the ability to laugh at herself. She would also have to appreciate me and be able to reciprocate all the love and caring that I’m capable of giving. She would have to accept my faults and applaud my strengths…be my perfect partner. Oh yeah…and by the way…she would also have to accept and love my girls. I know…it’s quite a tall order and truthfully I figured it would take a long time to find someone even close to my ideal mate. So I began my quest in earnest and had a strong response from women that found my profile and/or picture interesting. I also initiated communication to a handful of potential dates. There was one woman in particular, who originally caught my eye with her beautiful picture, but it was her intriguing profile that really got my attention. Thankfully, she returned my email. After about a week, I was talking on the phone or emailing a few women regularly and actually went on a lunch date. But I kept coming back to that one person that I found so interesting. I looked forward to her emails each day and found that our situations were so different yet undeniably similar. She became the main focus of my cyber attention. Our messages to each other were amazing (I still have them saved, by the way). Then it happened…she asked me on a date. I was so excited that I was going to meet this person. However, a fear crept over me…when it was just an email relationship I could envision this woman in the context of her profile and email messages…would the real woman live up to this preconceived idea I had of her…would I live up to the expectations she had of me…I longed for her messages each day, but if the date went bad what would I have to look forward to? I pushed the negative thoughts aside and pressed on. I will never forget when I first saw her…she was walking towards me and it was just like a movie when the music plays and the object of desire is walking in slow motion across the room with a beam of light shining down on them. I was stunned for a minute but regained my composure. I pulled it together and we ended up having a great time together. She was all that I had imagined and more. That date ended up spring boarding us into more dates together and that initial flame quickly consumed us. Neither of us was looking for a serious relationship but we both realized we had something special.

You all know how this story ends…actually “ends” is not the proper word, because the story continues still today. I’m still amazed that I found someone that “knocked my socks off”, especially so soon. My wife is the ultimate woman and I love her more everyday. I think there is a lesson here too…Don’t be afraid to try something different. I could have let my negative perception of internet dating prevent me from trying it. It was a great experience…also, sometimes you find what you aren’t looking for…when this happens; have the courage to accept it. You’ll be glad you did.