BoyGeeding was talking to me the other day saying cash and gift cards are the worst present a kid can get for Christmas. I asked what would he rather get, $10 or underwear worth ten dollars for Christmas. He chose the underwear.
I went to Grapevine Mills Mall yesterday and was surprised how certain stores controlled the amount of people inside. They literally had a line of people waiting to get inside, but were only let in, one at a time, once a person left the store. I’ve never seen anything like this before. How did this become a thing? Fire code, I guess. But the mall wasn’t as crowded as I’ve seen it during malls’ heyday.
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my neck or spinal surgery that saved me from paralysis. Below is a video I recorded of me a few days before surgery tying to walk unassisted and throw a football. I’m happy to report I’m almost entirely healed. Heck, I thought I made remarkable progress just nine days after surgery. Up unto last week, I was still experiencing symptoms. The most visible being the shaking of my hands and jaw as I tried to drink from a mug or bottle. I thought that was something I was just going to have to love with, but as of last week, that problem started to dissipate. I’m grateful for where I’ve come a year ago, both psychically and emotionally. I still have a ways to go on the latter, but overall, I’m progressing. For instance, I’m still very much hurt my ex, knowing I don’t have any family, wouldn’t lend any assistance when I asked her for a little help regarding my surgery. I thought just being the father of her children she would have respected me enough at such a vulnerable time in mine and their lives.
I really like that new Tom Cruise commercial where he thanks for fans for watching Top Gun: Maverick. He amount of calm he has as he falls out backwards from a plane is simply amazing.
Something many probably aren’t aware of is the recorded laughter played at the very start of every SNL cold open. It annoys me because it’s so unwarranted.
The NFL provided two gems of a game on Saturday. We got to witness the largest comeback in history and a snow game, which came down to a last second field goal. As much as I enjoyed watching them, I wish I could have been with my son to bond over those historic moment. Divorce prevents such things and is evil.
Meanwhile, college football provided us with something called the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl. I’m not kidding, there’s a bowl game named after the current talk show host. And yet, some people still argue the college game is better.
It’s been interesting watching the Harry and Meghan Netflix special. I’m proud of Meghan for talking about her struggles or challenges with ending her life. It takes courage to talk about that stuff, and I’m proud of her husband for the support he’s given her. When I let down my guard and talked to my spouse about my challenges and struggles, thinking the world would be better off without me, she used it against me to take our kids away from me. Right when I needed her most, she abandoned me. So much for better or worse, or death do us part. Yes, I’m still hurt by the betrayal and I’m still healing from it. What happened didn’t just affect me, it affected everyone in my immediate family, which is no no more.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for where I am right now. Especially compared to a year ago when I was facing paralysis. I’ll expand on those thoughts next week.
William Randolf Hearst had the news papers. Jeff Bezos has The Washington Post, not to mention Amazon.com. Elon Musk has Twitter. Rich people like to control the narrative.
“Don’t get angry. Be silent. Avoid regret.”
Bono, The Edge, and David Letterman were all spotted together at a pub. Sounds like a joke, but it’s true.
Lee’s bill aims “to establish a national definition of obscenity that would apply to obscene content transmitted via interstate or foreign communications.” According to Lee’s office statement, the Utah senator believes that since “obscenity is not protected under the First Amendment and is prohibited from interstate or foreign transmission,” it is time to review the standards set in 1973 that eventually have allowed for the production and distribution of sexual content to be legal in the United States. According to Lee, “the Supreme Court has struggled to define obscenity, and its current definition under the ‘Miller Test’ runs into serious challenges when applied to the internet.’
The law, Measure 114, grants county sheriffs and police chiefs discretion to determine who qualifies to purchase a firearm under a new permit-to-purchase program. But Measure 114 lacks criteria clearly defining what disqualifies applicants, details on what makes someone a threat and what data can be used by law enforcement in making that decision. That’s a problem for activists who have critiqued law enforcement, particularly in the racial justice protests that took place over the past two years.
The National Assembly has decided to do away with the traditional method of calculating age, by which babies are born one year old, to standardize the country’s legal and administrative system
Several motorists who were speeding through an elementary school zone on the Florida Keys Overseas Highway received an odorous onion as a reminder to slow down from a county sheriff’s deputy dressed as the Grinch.
Come for the claim that Trump was a better president than Washington and Lincoln, stay for the "Trump digital trading cards" pic.twitter.com/qEKWYpgXL7
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) December 15, 2022
Be sure to watch the whole clip, it’s worth it.
#Breaking New much clearer video, courtesy Kitt Wilder, of STOL variant F35 B model landing JRB Fort Worth, and pilot ejects. Condition of pilot still unknown. @CBSDFWpic.twitter.com/BeERIeyhtO
This is some sort of pass my dad had in Vietnam that allowed him to stay out after a curfew.
My church small group had their annual Christmas dinner last night. As I’ve mentioned, I’m the youngest in the group by what I’m guessing is at least 15 years. It’s not everyday you hear someone start a story with, “So, Frank Sinatra introduced himself to me at a party.”
I take my dogs on car rides a lot. One dog will go straight to the driver’s side door, wait for me to open it, and then jump in. The other dog will always go around the entire car and then jump in. I’m not sure why he does it. He kinda looks like he’s looking for an entry point. One time, I decided to open the driver’s side door first, before I even told them we were going for a car ride. Despite the door being wide open and seeing his brother jump in, he still did his bit and circled the car before he jumped in. Another time, I carried him into the car, but he jumped out, circled the car, then jumped back in. Maybe he think’s he’s a bomb sniffing dog and just wants to make sure it’s safe. Maybe he’s watching too many mafia movies.
When I read a short biography or profile on someone, like a teacher introducing herself to parents in a newsletter or website, I like to know where they went to college. It really isn’t important. It’s just one of those things nice to know. But it annoys me to no end, when after they state where they attended school, they add a little cheer in parentheses. When I see that, most of the time, I think that was their peak in life. Now I’m reminded of college. I had a college VP who also taught classes tell our class that if any of us ever thinks our best time in life was in high school or college, then we should go ahead and kill ourselves and end our life now. He was dead serious when he said it. Because, why go on living if your best days are already behind you. What then do you have to look forward to? He wanted us to live with the mentality that we are either living our best life at the moment or that it’s out ahead of us. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. Now, if someone says the funniest time they had in life was in high school or college, then I think that’s okay. Just don’t say the best days of you life have already passed.
I don’t want to think my best days in life were in high school or college. I don’t want to think the best days of my life were when I had everything I wanted, a wife, kids, and a house. Life can be better, and I look forward getting out of the valley and back on a mountaintop.
I think the nuclear fusion story isn’t getting enough coverage. There’s a good chance before I die, this achievement may power a car.
I can’t figure out what was stranger, a tornado in December or a tornado in the morning. Strange times we live in.
I just found out that our state capitol now has a mall, as in a large yard just like our National Mall. It’s actually really pretty. Here’s a current video of the space, and here is the project’s website. I’ve always loved how our capitol hugs the campus of our state’s university.
The wording in that last sentence was designed to tick a lot of people off. And if it did, you are part of the problem.
A friend from church recently had both hips replaced for a second time. That’s one active lifestyle he has worn something like that out, twice. However, the socket has come out of place twice since surgery. I wonder what his doctor/surgeon can do about that.
I was always fond of my father’s signature.
I’ve posted about this before. Our house was broken into after a Christmas in the late Eighties. I remember coming home from Fort Worth late one evening with a brick and broken stained glass from our front door greeting us. Skippy, my first dog, a poodle, was locked in a closet. The police report cracks me up. They reference every person by at least their first and last name, while only my father was referred to as simply “Mr. Geeding.” He just had that stature and that’s what everyone in our small town called him. I can only recall one person calling my father by his first name, and that was weird. Well, other than the handful of men around his age who served with him.
The person who broke into my home was a classmate. All he took was a video game I borrowed from another friend, Ten Yard Fight. Funny thing, despite him not owning a Nintendo, he left the Nintendo. He came by the next day with the game (with the cover all scratched up to disguise it) asking if I would play the game with him on my Nintendo. At the time, I didn’t realize it was the only thing missing from our house. Skippy couldn’t speak, but he gave me a big clue that this friend was guilty because that dog did something he never did. That friend was lying on the floor playing the game and Skippy just took a whizz on him. That was strange behavior for him. He never did it to anyone else. The next week at school, in wood shop of all classes, I confronted him about it. It was the first fight I ever started. I’m not sure how it started, but I was working on a football helmet, sanding it getting ready to stain it. I gripped in my right hand and hit him across his face with it. Our teacher, Homer Hensley, broke up our little skirmish. It was the first and only time I was sent to the principal’s office for disciplinary reasons. Despite starting the fight, I didn’t get punished, though my friend did. Maybe he provoked me and instigated it. I can’t remember. I don’t have the game anymore, but I still have the Nintendo.
Skippy was named by my brother after the Skipper in Gilligan’s Island. Everyone called him Skip of Skippy, but my brother only referred to the dog as Skipper. I remember taking a New Testament class during my first summer semester in college. The night before the final, Dad called and told me Skippy had died. We had a pool in the back yard, and he fell into it. To my knowledge, that was the only time he was ever in the pool. He had a bad heart, and about twenty-minutes after Dad or Mom rescued him from the pool, it gave out. Dad tried CPR, cuffing his hand to blow in his snout, but his time had come. I came home the following weekend. It was strange walking into the house and not being greeted at the door by Skippy and his wagging tail. That’s when his death hit me. Rest in peace, Skip.
