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Posted on September 11th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: My Life.
Well, another year gone by. I had a great day. The wife made a nice lunch. Then at 5PM we went and watched the boy play some football. With a one touchdown lead the Bulldogs were lined up deep in their own territory (somewhere around the 5 yard line) and facing a 4th down. The coach apparently didn’t trust the kicker to put it deep enough to keep arch rivals County from scoring… so he opted for a run. The quarterback handed off to the boy who ran hard and broke right finding daylight. He gobbled up nearly twenty and got his team the first down they so desperately needed. They were able to move the ball a little more and to run the clock down. It was a 6-0 win, but it WAS A WIN. I’ve taken to calling the boy, “County Killer”.
After the game we headed home for dinner… my fav, tortellini with a nice salad and some pesto and bread… ahhhh heaven. I think they made every variety of the stuff… cheese, sausage, lobster… LOVED IT.
Then we headed out for the girl’s soccer game. She’s a menace on the field… and because she’s the best player on her team she gets double and triple teamed all the time. She had a rough night but she kept her head high and fought hard. It was like she was alone out there, her team was just no match for the team full of allstars that they were facing down. Funny enough the team of allstars wanted the girl on their team but she refused. She didn’t see the point in beating on the league that she is in and not being in competetive games. Their sideline gave it to her a bit, I guess it was payback for her insolence. She handled it well and I for one am proud that she chose not to play with that pack of hooligans. One of the girls screamed the f-bomb when she went down in the goal… real class acts.
After the game it was cake and presents time… probably not a great idea to be eating cake at 11PM. Meh… oh well. It’s my birthday. I got an mp3 player, Battlestar Galactice Season 3 and a collector’s edition of one of the funniest “horror” movies I have ever seen… Bubba Ho-Tep. Ahhhh, yes… a glorious haul.
Anyway, so there you have it… the birthday rundown. So how was your day?
Posted on August 16th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Editorials, Just Dumb, My Life.
The world is akin one of those conveyor belts dubbed “people movers” that you find at Disney World or Universal Studios. You know, those horizontal escalators that drag your lazy carcasses from the parking lot to the park. Well the world is one of those and it’s moving at the speed of a bullet train. You don’t catch much of the scenery when you’re speeding through a countryside on a fast moving train and likewise not much of life is savored whilst being run ragged through the landscape that is living. Passé terms like “hours become days” and “days become weeks” apply in our time. Everything becomes a mash as one moment rushes into the next and there seems to be no end in sight.
Now we’re all consumed with “energy”. How will we survive without the ability to whisk ourselves from one unimportant and irrelevant process to the next? I know, FOUR DAY WORK WEEKS! Yeah, now we’ll have the time to be great parents and better human beings! Wrong. I don’t know about you but I’ve been out and about on Fridays and it seems to me that four day work weeks are already being abused. It’s just an extra day to peruse the aisles of Walmart or the local shopping mall. We’re not going to save anything by going to four day work weeks unless we do it in tandem with something that hearkens back to my childhood… (which was not so long ago), everything needs to be CLOSED on SUNDAY.
I remember Sundays when I was a kid. I remember everything being closed, even gas stations and I grew up in the metropolis that is New York (albeit Staten Island). Sometimes it was inconvenient. Sometimes you WANTED something, but rarely did you NEED something. Somehow we managed to survive the stores being closed on Sunday. Somehow we survived each other’s company. I can remember Sundays, sitting on the stoop at my grandmother’s house watching a colony of ants (they lived in the crevices of that stoop for a long time) rush around doing their busy work… and likely wondering when it was that my small foot would come crashing down upon their heads. I remember thinking how strange it was that they were forever busy running to and fro. Now, I am one of the ants. This world has made us all like those small things crazed in their “rushy rushy”. When I was a kid Sundays were spent with parents, grandparents and family. The work of the day was getting a nice meal to the table. Nobody was rushing anywhere. Nobody NEEDED to do ANYTHING. Now the only thing that feels like every Sunday of my childhood is THANKSGIVING. One day a year to remind me of so many from my youth.
So when I see people saying, “We need a four day work week,” I agree with them and add… “and everything needs to be closed on Sundays.” It isn’t about energy consumption, it’s about people. Do you really need the ability to purchase a plasma television at 3AM on a Sunday morning? Will you die waiting a day to pick up a package of underpants? I mean really people, what’s with the 24/7 Supercenters? A pharmacy is one thing, but does Walmart sell a damn thing that YOU HAVE TO HAVE in the middle of the night?
Instead of looking at just the energy situation, we need to look at the people situation. The world is going mad. We’re under assault day in and day out. An assault of advertising and information that is incessant and overwhelming. Four day work weeks are fine, but we also need to take back OUR Sundays.
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Just Dumb, My Life.
Last night the wife and I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. One street over there are farms with cows, horses and chickens… so we headed out in that direction to see if any of the “critters” were out. There were some cows chomping away on one guy’s parcel but they ignored us. The horse that’s usually out was tucked away in his barn… so the whole thing was pretty much a bust even if we did get the blood moving. It wasn’t until we were walking up our own driveway that we actually saw something cool, an owl swept across the trees that line the creek behind the house. We see them pretty rarely… but we hear them all the time. It’s the same way with the family of hawks that live back there… but anyway, this guy was perched on a tree in the middle of the yard about ten feet over our heads and didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the humans pointing from below. Here are a couple of pictures that we managed to take (I can’t believe the sucker WAITED for his close up!). Forgive the focus, it was dusk and the autofocus threw a fit.
Now, if the hawks would just be so kind as to cooperate… we could have a whole section on birds of prey!
Posted on July 11th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: My Life, News.
Well now… I keep telling people that I live in the only decent place in Florida… and now Forbes goes and proves me out! Go figure.
Martin County is one of the best places in America to raise a family, according to Forbes magazine.
Using school scores, graduation rates, per capita income and other statistics, the magazine judged every county in the country with more than 65,000 residents. Martin County ranked 11th in the nation.
We’re number 1… uhrmmm, I mean 11. Not too shabby now is it? I am glad to be a resident of this great county. It’s really the last place in the state that I have deemed livable. From here, I’m off to Idaho to build my fortress of solitude. *Rubs hands together maniacally*… Armageddon THIS!
Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Just Dumb, My Life.
I must admit that I’m a little shocked by my steadfast approach to finishing this book. I guess I decided that it’s now or never. The progress isn’t moving at warp speed or anything, but it’s been consistent. That’s huge and it shows a commitment on my part that to this point has been sorely lacking.
Now it’s just a matter of determining who lives and who dies. Writing a thriller of sorts I’ve elected to keep myself in suspense. I have an idea of where the story is going to go and where it will eventually end up… but there is plenty of wiggle room. The protagonist being the villain makes the whole thing all the more open ended. The so-called “good guys” that are tasked with dealing with the situation could be perceived as vigilantes in a way. They’re casting judgment and electing to take an action that they technically aren’t within their rights to do. They’ll have to pay a price for that… it’s just a matter of determining how much of a bastard I want to be to these poor souls that I’ve conjured up in my warped mind.
Ahhhh… is it any wonder that I’m hooked?
Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Just Dumb, My Life.
When you get to 20,000 words on a project and realize that represents 25% or less of the total sum of what you’re going to be writing… you need to amp up the funny… and fast.
Here’s a little something that makes me laugh every time:
This is another good one:
Argh… back to the stone.
Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Just Dumb, My Life.
Sometimes you’ll do almost anything to avoid writing. You hit a snag and it just seems insurmountable. For the last couple of days I’ve been in a kind of writing hell. What did I do in order to escape it? I made for a writing site that I frequent and ended up wasting a lot of time posting about politics, etc. You’d think that it might be a good outlet, and for a while it was. Lots of intelligent people discussing the issues and debating the merits. So what happened? Some tool equated the conservative movement and republicans with Holocaust Deniers. Yeah it’s pretty unbelievable, but it got worse. This person then went on to imply that Cindy McCain (the mother of a black child) is a racist in some awful supposed satire that has her not only fixing the smiles of Vietnamese kids but also the color of their eyes (apparently brown is offensive). It was disgusting… yet the poster is embraced as a fine addition to the community. If this is liberalism, you can guess why I finally said enough is enough and gave up my crusade against the Republican Party. The GOP is a disgrace, but the Democrats and their ilk have degraded into some kind of a radical fringe group loaded down with nutcases. Can you imagine if somebody put big lips and afros on children that Michelle Obama works with? Needless to say, it was time to hit the road… the best part though… I got banned for calling this person out. I must have been doing something right considering what garners praise at that site.
Anyway, I’m back to writing this morning and it’s going well. When I get this sucker done and published, I’ll have to go back to that site and thank them… for all the wrong reasons.
*Meh*, just another day. Be strong and fight the good fight.
Posted on June 19th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: My Life.
I get this question a lot? “Dude, I love the design of your blog, where did you get it?” The fact of the matter is that the theme is pretty much a modified version of a theme that was readily available to anybody that wanted it. Sure the wife unit changed it up, added some spiffy images and otherwise personalized it to my tastes… but there are tons of sites that offer ready to order themes that are equally as attractive. One place you can look for such themes is premiumthemes.net, they have a great selection to choose from and customization to fit your needs is not a terribly daunting task. You don’t need to copy my style, you can get one of your own… one that’s likely better than this one and more tailored to what’s important to you.
So STOP asking me about my theme… and go get one of your own! *snicker*
Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: My Life.
We got a call this weekend. It was the bro asking if we were interested in taking on two adult bearded dragons that a friend was wanting to give to a good home. We’re suckers for lizards around here… so of course we said, “YEAH!” Bearded dragons are especially loveable lizards, if they’ve been hand reared and handled they make wonderful pets… and they aren’t icky… they’re actually beautiful. While they came named, hence the title including Moe and Joe, I have taken to calling them Lopez and Garcia. Don’t ask me why… I just like the names. Lopez has a shorter, lopped tail (lizards sometimes lose parts of their tails if they get scared or caught on something or just grabbed wrong… I did it myself once to an iguana)… so that’s why the name seems to fit. Garcia is just a bad dude, trampling Lopez whenever the mood suits.
You never really know what you are going to get when you get a new pet, but these two lizards are so cool. Both of them have personality and they love to be handled. I swear they try to follow you around when you have them out. No running here… more like, “Hey where are you going?!” Then again these two are so HUGE that there isn’t much that seems to bother them. A couple of bad asses is what we have here!
Here are a couple of pics.
Bath time… gotta keep a playah looking clean. A little warm water goes a long way. In the beginning we just loosen some dirt and debris from the scales and from between the toes. We also used a soft toothbrush to get in the nooks and crannies. I swear, these two have been at the spa for a couple of days. There was no thrashing or trashing, both of these guys are well behaved and really dig the attention. I know you can’t really see the size from this pic, but these two are massive. We went to the local lizard/fish store to grab these guys some crickets (did I tell you they eat live bugs)… and they had a “large” bearded out on one of the employee’s shoulders. The so-called “large” bearded was a wee thing compared to these two!
Moving day… playahs need a pimp crib. Here is a shot of the habitat. Fresh sand (these are desert dwelling lizards after all) and some cubby holes and climbing areas. We have a big piece of wood that we can toss in there if they need something more to perch on… but we’re going to see how things go with what’s in there. This tank is MASSIVE… but these two are so big that they make it look tiny. The more you toss in there, the less room they have to turn and chase the crickets they eat. Still they need places to bask in the light. Lucky them, they get morning light from the window that they’re at… as I finish off this post they are rising and waiting patiently with their heads high… for that morning dose.
So far, so good with these two. I really like that they have one another. We’re always a little paranoid to put a couple of lizards together… but these guys seem to have a system. Here’s to hoping that they are members of the family for a good long time. Thanks to Mike and his family for a job well done with these guys and for entrusting us with them from here on out. They’re great lizards guys and we love the heck out of them… again thank you!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: My Life.
Nearly two weeks ago, I set out to reunite with some old friends from NYC. Thankfully, the two major players in that effort were receptive and gracious and contact was made. I have to say, it was great to hear their voices and to catch up with them. It is really ridiculous to allow time and distance to come between people. I have to say it was like old times. We became friends when we were young and when we carried no baggage. Things are different now, but there was something strangely familiar and oh so comfortable about it all. It really felt like time had stood still in a way… if not on life, at least on our attitudes and in the way we deal with one another. Now it’ll be about setting up some way to do a lil get together and to hang for a bit. It’ll be easy with one, a little tougher with the other… but I’ve been looking for an excuse to fly north!