Virtual Rants

Playing to Win

Reading Genuine's post, Will You Play With Me? reminded me of the simpler more laid back days before my child was old enough for competitive sports.

Today was Colter's last b-ball game of the season. His team lost to the best team in the league, but all of our players held their heads high. They are winners. They kept the game close until the last quarter, and they did it without throwing an elbow.

I learned three things about basket ball today :

The Gettysburg Diet

The last time that I lost weight, I was in a heated battle, kind of. I was going through a divorce, and the weight loss was a involuntary side effect. Since I've been happily married for almost ten years both the love I have for my wife, and my waistline have grown…significantly.

Now I am embarking on a great experiment, testing whether this diet, or any diet so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. I am met on a great battle field of sweets and fats. And I've come to dedicate a portion of them to the garbage, as a final resting place for those who dieted before.

My diet: eat whatever I want, but less of the bad stuff and more of the good stuff. So I'm cutting down on: Bread, mayo, butter, fats and sweets of all kinds, and drinking mostly water.

I am consuming more, lean protein, fresh fruits and veggies, and using mustard, dill relish, vinegar, hot sauce, or soy in place of mayo and salad dressings.

I know that I'll have to start exercising, ill keep you posted on that as it comes together.

Have you ever dieted? What worked for you?

Change Your Mind,

and Your Body Will Follow ... I hope?

I just applied for a job. Wow, there, I said it, or rather I wrote it. I never thought that those words would cross my lips, or my fingertips. I've been freelancing since 1992, and since moving down to Florida about three years ago, I've only worn long pants and shoes about 20 times. So this is a big change.

I'm not counting on getting the first job that I apply for, so I'll keep you guys posted.

Oh, I'm also going to cut my hair, and donate my ponytail to Locks of Love. Did I mention that I've had the ponytail for more than ten years. But wait, That's not all!

I'm also going to try to loose about 10, OK, maybe as much as 20 pounds. If all of these changes don't kill me, I'll try writing a series to rival Harry Potter, and look for a cure for cancer in my spare time.

Look for updates posted semi-regularly on the upper left of this site. Wish Me luck.

What changes are you about to make?

Last Night I Cried

I cried for all the children who suffer, and I cried for their parents. Last night I cried for my own family, for our blessings, and for our vulnerabilities. Last night I watched the beginning of Lorenzo's Oil. If you've seen the movie or read the book, I need say no more. If you haven't, this is one of those rare stories that is so powerful it bears mention almost 15 years latter. Rent the movie, watch it then go hug your children for a very long time.

This remarkable story is still playing out.

What stories have moved you?

Off the Hook

UPS is holding my son's package hostage, and I'll pay the price. It was supposed to be delivered today, but as of 5pm it hadn't shown up.

It wouldn't matter if it were a solid gold Xbox, or a buck-twenty-five toy from the back of a cereal box, in a child's world, it is priceless. Mail, any mail is worth it's weight in titanium, but a package bearing an item that the child has waited for is indefinably unapproachable from a monetary stand point.

Now I fear that something terribly wrong has happened to it, and I will spend the rest of the evening and possibly the next couple of days listening to Colter becoming more and more dejected. It will feel something like nails across a blackboard, slowly getting louder and louder.

How does your child handle waiting for a package?

It came at 6:20 EDT, Im off the hook.

Come Back You Cricket and Fight Like a Slug!

Why a slug?

It may not have a backbone, but it doesn't hop around. I hate crickets. They are spineless and they hop.

I recently got in an e-mail shouting match with a person who refused to acknowledge my points.

He said X.

I said X is full of sh!t, and I'll tell you why!

He says Y.

I say what about X? What about confronting me, and showing me the faults in my logic? Do you know what he says?

Z.

The art of logical discourse is lost on some. All they can do is stick to talking points (usually someone else's.)

I don't have time for that. It shows an utter lack of respect for another's point of view.

If you loved me, you would beat the Sh!t out of me with my own words, otherwise how can I know if I'm wrong or if you are just a moron?

What steams you about electronic conversations?

Restraining Order

It started like any ordinary day, I tortured my son by making him watch TV and play GameBoy. Then I got down right abusive, I made him write a paragraph about anything, to keep his writing skills from atrophying over the summer.

Colter: What do I write about?

Daddy: Anything you want to.

Colter: But I don't want to write about anything!

Free Press or Free-for-all?

I just got a comment (from Rob) that made me wonder, how much "Free Press" do I want on my site anyway? The thing that got to me about this comment, was that it started out as a reasonable argument against indiscriminately tipping a waitperson.

Then it was as if a switch was flipped, or his med's wore off. He starts to rant. OK, ranting is cool. Then, I think the liquor kicks in, and he starts cussing, then attacking other commentors, not just attacking the comments, but the intelligence of the people who left them. By the end he's just rude.

Now I won't stoop to the level of attacking this commentor on a personal level, I'll just let his alleged writing speak for itself. I'll add this, though,

Coffee, Coffee Everywhere, But…

This post was inspired by AGK's post: Dennis the Menace. It is, (among other things,) a lament about the loss of electricity and therefore the loss of hot coffee.

I have two words for you Angela, French Press. As a veteran of many a North Carolina ice storm, I found that I can deal with almost anything Ol' Momma Nature has to throw at me, as long I have my coffee. So even as a student, (way long ago,) I somehow found the extra fifty bucks to make sure I always had a way to brew.

What will fifty bucks buy you?

Blogging For Books

Walking Across Frozen Grass

AJ's Mom waived from the doorway of his one-bedroom mobile home. She looked out of place there, graceful and elegant, in contrast to her unfortunate surroundings. She would have looked more at home on TV, selling mini vans to working moms, but we weren't there to shoot a commercial, we were there to interview her about her son's mental illness.

Inside, I sat her on the couch and assessed her features for lighting. Her short hair, bleached by the Texas sun, framed her face perfectly in gold. Her skin was smooth, light bronze with just a few freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. An easy subject to light.

I put the camera on the tripod and John placed the microphone. The director settled in beside me. "Don't look at the camera," he said, "It's just you and me talking, OK? "

She nodded and smiled a broad confident smile, but her eyes revealed a different mood. These eyes had seen a lot of tears, they had known real pain.

I saw those same eyes, on another woman, in another town. Sitting across the kitchen table after the children were asleep. Her youngest was dieing of cancer. She was pale and unkempt, and her bottom lip quivered when she spoke, but her eyes were the same.

Throughout the years of shooting interviews and studying features, I'd see those same eyes many times, on many faces, in waiting rooms, and ICU's, in custody hearings, and in food kitchens. I'd eventually come to learn that they were the saddest and most frightened eyes in all the world. The eyes of a parent who's child is hurting. But I couldn't truly appreciate them, until late one awful Christmas eve.

We were staying at my folk's log cabin in North Carolina to help care for my mother. She had just returned from the hospital, and my father had just been admitted. After a long day of visiting, cooking and playing games we put Colter to bed, and I started wrapping presents.

About an hour had passed when my son woke up screaming with a fever of 104. The pediatrician on the phone, told Julie to get Colter to the emergency room as quickly as possible.

He's fine now, but as I walked to the car across the crunchy frozen grass with my son in my arms, Julie looked up at me and I finally understood. I saw the humbling and overwhelming responsibility of being a parent both in Julie's eye's, and through my own.

July 11, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)