Tit For Tat

OK, so if you read my last post, you know that I just don't really care about a whole lot of incidental BS these days. But this one got me going for sure.  Tonight, John Allen Muhammad was executed in Virginia because of his actions in the high profile case of the DC Sniper.  So the man who killed so many people seemingly just for the sport of it is dead.  Most people would say, "Tit For Tat, justice is served."  While I think that this is just a terrible situation and that his death does not really solve anything, this is not why I bring up the topic tonight, because as I said, I really don't care.

    As  I watched Larry King on CNN cover the story tonight while the execution was being carried out, I was troubled by what one of the victim's family members had to say.  Keep in mind, my family member was not a victim so perhaps I am speaking out of turn but this is what completely blew me away.  After Muhammad was dead, Larry asked the brother of one of the victims how he felt about the whole situation and made note of the fact that Muhammad left behind family, including his own children and how terrible this whole ordeal must be for them as well.  Are you ready?  This is what floored me.  The victim's brother then says that his sister also left behind a family and children because of this senseless act and that he has absolutely no sympathy for Muhammad's family now that he is dead. 

     Whether or not you believe that he deserved to die, whether or not you believe that justice has been served, how could you not have at least an ounce of sympathy for the children who have had to deal with the fact that their father has done something so horrific and that now he is dead?

     I'd like to believe that God would want me to hand my anger up to Him and to try to find at least in some small fashion some peace in my heart after all of the time that has passed since these terrible murders.  Am I completely off track here?  Do I not have the right to speak up until my daughter is dead?  Or my mother?  Or my wife?  Could I find peace if I were in the same situation?  I hope I never have to find out.

"Are You On Drugs?"

The other night I went to my mom's house after work to collect my birthday card with a monetary gift enclosed (I'm an only child so yes, at 36 I still get birthday gifts from my mom), birthday dinner which consists of a curry gravy with white potatoes and Danish meatballs, and some nice conversation to top it all off.

     I began to explain to my lovely mother as I am going to explain to you now, that I have reached a point in my life where I am decluttering.  There are a lot of things that I just don't care about anymore. "What do you mean you don't care?", she says to me with a bewildered look on her face.  "I don't know how to explain it." I said to her with a smile.  There are things in life that people stress out about that really just don't matter.  About a month ago I was one of those people.  I stressed about work, I stressed about what people think of me, and finally something clicked and I said screw this.  Life is way too short, I am 36 years old and I am going to start living my life in a stress free manner.  At the time that I was trying to explain this to my mother, I couldn't come up with the right words that would make her understand exactly where I was coming from.  So, she says to me half-jokingly and half concerned, "Are you on drugs?"  We had a good laugh about it because she knows damn well that I am not on drugs but that I was obviously stumbling through my new found outlook on life.  I don't have it all figured out and I'm not sure exactly where this is all coming from, but as long as I am having fun I guess I will just roll with it. 

     There are still moments when I have to fight off the old ways of getting annoyed about things and have to remind myself that I DON"T CARE!  Don't get me wrong here, I do care about things, I care about my friends and family, I care about being productive at work, I care about being a good human being and a good father and husband, I just don't care about a lot of the incidentals that clutter up so much of our time.

     To this point of my blog it has been like the ascent of the roller coaster ride.  Now that you are on board and have reached the top and there is no turning back, I guess it's time to really start riding my mind.  Do you have what it takes to raise your hands above your head or are you going to close your eyes and white knuckle the handrail in front of you?  Either way, I don't care, as long as you enjoy the ride, do it however you like.

        

High On A Hill, It Calls To Me

     In April of 2000, my wife and I jumped on a quick flight from Ontario Airport to the airport in Oakland California to begin our honeymoon.  Honeymoon in Oakland?  The armpit of California? Why would you honeymoon in Oakland?  There is only one correct answer to that question, which is that you would never honeymoon in Oakland California.  As it turns out, you can't just fly from Southern California  straight into San Francisco which happened to be our destination.  I've never been able to figure out the reasoning behind making us fly into Oakland instead of just flying straight into SFO, although I have a theory that it has something to do with the rivalry between So. Cal and Northern California.  They don't want us up there at all, but since they can't stop us from visiting at least they can make us have to go through Oakland first.  That makes me think, maybe I will lobby for a South Central International Airport, not that LAX is any better I guess.  I seem to have wandered off course here but the tone had to be set.

     So, we play the game, we fly into Oakland knowing that a quick taxi jaunt over the Bay Bridge will remedy the situation.  As the taxi circles around to start our journey across the bay, there it is in the distance, "high on a hill, it calls to me" (the lyrics of Tony Bennett, we all know where his heart is).  The most beautiful skyline I have ever seen sprawled out in front of us.  Coit Tower stands guard overlooking the bay, the Transamerica building stands in the center of it all making its point. There's Alcatraz, the stories that place could tell.

     It's not long before we find ourselves at the hotel that we will call home for the next several days.  To the rest of the world, it is the White Swan Inn, to us it is a little slice of Heaven.  This is an old but elegant place with a bit of primitive charm.  The wood floors creek beneath your feet, the elevator is a bit tempermental, but once you get the gate like door closed properly, it gets you where you need to be. 

    

     There we were, beginning our life as a young new family, and beginning our love affair with the city by the bay.

     Once you get out onto the streets of San Francisco, your brain almost immediately goes into sensory overload.  The sites, the sounds, the smells, some good and some not so good, this isn't a fairy tale so you need to know that not all of the smells are pleasant but they all add to the experience of life in the big city.  The food in this town is just amazing to top it all off.  We love to eat and we love it even more when the food is delicious.  From Joe's Crab Shack, to Neptune's Palace, to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and my personal favorite, The Grand Cafe, you just can't find a bad meal in San Francisco, at least I never did.

     Why do I bring up this topic today, almost 10 years after the fact?  I bring it up because we miss our time there.  We have been talking about maybe going back there sometime soon.  With the holidays on the way and our work schedules being what they are, we will have to wait a little bit longer but posting pictures and talking about it might just hold me over for just a minute or two. 

      

    

    

What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

     After a long day of trying to make unrealistic corporate dreams come true, I found myself without a topic worth writing about, nor the energy with which to even try to come up with something.

     Then it came to me, not like an epiphany but more in the form of an email from an old friend.  An old friend who is a writer, a real writer with a real writing job and a real writing husband who also has a real writing job.  Anyway, in this email she says that she loves this little blog of mine and at that moment, I thought to myself, or maybe I said it out loud, either way it doesn't matter, "What the Hell am I doing here?"

     I started this blog not ever thinking that anyone would read it even once let alone follow it or comment on whatever rubbish happens to spray out of my head on any given day.  I'll be honest, I did do a little self promoting on FB and by way of a little word of mouth, but even then the thought of people actually reading this never really occurred to me.  Call it stage fright or lack of confidence in my skills.  My wife is the same way.  She is an artist, a good one too, who doesn't like her own work or think that it is as good as it really is.  Is that normal?  Besides, what's the big deal?  I'm not selling a product here.  I didn't serve you a heaping plate of nachos with a long hair in it or anything.  It's just a blog, chill out fat boy!

     In a way it feels like a secret is exposed.  Not a huge life altering, Michael Vick dog fighting ring, Heidi Fleiss prostitution ring, Monica Lewinski Oval Office kind of secret. No, this is more of an I like to stack 8 or 9 cookies with a glass of milk and mow them down when no one else is looking, pick that flake at the edge of my nostril when I think I am  out of the view of other motorists, wear these jeans twice without washing them kind of secret.

     I LIKE TO WRITE!  I LIKE IT A LOT! I MAY OR MAY NOT BE ANY GOOD AT IT BUT I AM GOING TO CONTINUE TO WRITE UNTIL I NO LONGER WANT TO WRITE!  That my friends, was liberating.

     Listen, I'm not sure why you people have decided to read this blog but I do know that I am glad you are here.  So far it's been a lot of fun and I hope at the very least we can all have a few laughs and share some stories.

     For a guy who wasn't sure what the heck was going to happen when I sat in front of the keyboard tonight, I sure did spill a lot of ink didn't I?

     

 

               

Covert Operation

     Last night at around 11:57PM under the cover of darkness, I decided to conduct a highly sophisticated and not easily executed covert operation.  I was going to sneak into my 36th birthday hopefully without being noticed and without incident.  Much to my dismay and promptly at 12:00AM, like an angry parent waiting up for a disobedient child to get home long after the previously agreed upon curfew, there it was waiting for me.  There would be no sneaking around, and there would be no getting away with one.  I was caught and the punishment was to be  steep.  Violently, my 35 was taken from me and all that was left in the end was the body of a 36 year old man.  Tattered and torn, I lumbered upstairs and off to bed to sleep off this traumatic event.  I woke up this morning only to realize that the first morning of 36 feels a lot like the last morning of 35.  This might not be so bad, I might actually survive this and come out on the other side smelling like a rose.  An old rose with pedals falling to the soil below perhaps, but fragrant and colorful none the less.  Today, I will spend the day with my family at Disneyland.  It's "The Place" (that's what we call it), the place where we can go as a family to get away from the ho hum and where everything is perfect.  Today, I will use "The Place" as neutral territory, a safe and familiar place to be to get acquainted with my new 36 and hopefully we can come to an understanding that is beneficial to us both.  I wont lie, I am a bit skeptical and apprehensive, but willing to give it a try.

       Today's photo is a picture of the smoke created by my birthday cake as seen by the nice folks up at the International Space Station.  Leave it to NASA to be on top of it huh?

Just Listen

     Here, in my little blog that wishes it could, I tend to do a lot of talking about nothing.  In the real world believe it or not, I am a man of very few words.  I spend a lot of time observing what is going on around me and laughing about it.  Have you ever consciously taken the opportunity to shut up and just listen to what people say when they don't know that others are listening?  There's the know it all, " I told them but they wont listen to me."  The do it all, "I have to do everything around here and the rest of them don't do shit."  This one cracks me up the most because we all think that we do more than everyone else and yet there is still so much to do.  If we all do it all then why the Hell isn't it done?  The badass, "They know not to mess with me because I will go off!"  Yep, you're a 59 year old woman with a bad haircut and an obvious limp.  "They" obviously know when "They" are outmatched.  The road rager (this one is me 100%)  " Dammit, why are you sitting in my blind spot?  Get off the damn phone idiot!  You should know that I want to get over even though my signal isn't on!"  The rich guy's wife, "....................................." she doesn't say anything because she doesn't have to, and how dare you look at her even though she is wearing next to nothing and her fake rack is defying gravity.  Get over yourself Barbie, you're not that big a deal.  The do gooder, "Here, let me give you a hand with that."  Why is this guy so underappreciated and often considered annoying?  Is it just me?

     There are so many different kinds of people, and yet we are all so much alike.  Take a few minutes in the mall or the grocery store or amusement park the next time you think about it and just watch and listen to what is going on around you.  I promise you will have a good laugh and probably something good to write about.            

    

Truth or Chocolate?

     2000 years ago what we know as Ireland, England and northern France today, was the Celtic Empire. It was believed that the 1st day of    November marked the end of the harvest and the last days of Summer.  Soon would come the cold days of winter.  Samhain, believed to be the God of Death would allow on this one day of the year, all of the souls of those who had left the earth, to return to their homes.  This of course terrified the people who would run into the fields to stear clear of the ghosts and goblins that were sure to inhabit their homes and town centers and mini malls and Starbucks.

     Now, somehow  throughout the course of the 2000 years that have gone by, the tradition has been distorted and reshaped into something that..................well something that scores me a lot of chocolate.  So, get those kids into their Hannah Montana costumes and send them out there into the world with their pillow cases and well versed chants about  smelling feet which apparently makes them hungry, hungry for only something good to eat.  Get out there and make Samhain proud........ I can't wait to do quality control on the chocolate goods...........What?  You have to run several tests to make sure that the candy is good. Right?  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!