“And here I am still writing 2022 on all my blog posts.”
For me, 2021 was a year of survival. 2022, a year of rebuilding. I hope 2023 will be a year full of growth.
A long time ago, my brother, who I idolized, gave me some poor advice. He said when reading for pleasure, never read anything that’s fiction, read something that enhances the mind. Because of that advice, I’ve never read a book of fiction until last week. For me, biographies are easy to read and follow, but works of fiction are hard because I easily get lost keeping characters straight and understanding the plot and whatnot. All that to say, I found the following tidbit that I’ve been chewing on. I think about it on a grander scale than what you think it may be intended, I think about it regarding how I judge people when I first meet them or based off of just a few things I may know about their past. “But we all have a person we were and a person we are. It’s never a straight line between the two—and it’s certainly never a predictable one. Just because you read the first few chapters doesn’t mean you know everything that’s coming. Keep an open mind. If you’re lucky, there’s a plot twist.””
I learned that 97.1 “The Freak” was suppose to be “The FREQ.” As in, “the frequency”. But in focus groups, people kept calling it “the frek”.
A year and a half ago if you told me TCU would be playing in the national championship game and Gary Patterson would be coaching in Austin, I would have said that would be unimaginable. Makes me wonder where & what I’ll be doing a year and a half from now. Here’s hoping it’s something unimaginable.
Texas A&M is now the only power 5 program in the state of Texas that hasn’t played for a National Title in Football, Basketball or Baseball since 1940.
I thought drone shows would replace fireworks. It looks like the two will just be blended.
To enter in 2023, fireworks explode off of Reunion Tower as drones create a lighted ‘Happy New Year’ over downtown Dallas during Reunion Tower NYE. #nyedallas@dallasnewspic.twitter.com/cQPZPIjS54
That’s a photo of Miss Ukraine in costume at the Miss Universe pageant.
I’m just saying, when I worked at Southwest Airlines, you didn’t see the kind of mess they are in now.
We had a surprise waiting for us when we got back from our church’s Christmas Eve service. Two-inches of running water. My first thought – It’s the evening of Christmas Eve, ain’t no way I’m gonna get anyone to come out in this literally freezing weather. My second thought – This is going to make for a memorable Christmas.
I was grateful that I wore my Merrill hiking shoes. I think they are ugly, but they are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned, and they never need breaking in. This time, I paid a little extra for the water-proof version. The downside to them is they don’t vent well, so my feet sweat a lot in them. However, if you come home to a flooded garage, they come in quite handy.
My washing machine is in the garage, and that seemed to be where the water was coming from. I turned off both the hot and cold water to the washing machine, but the water didn’t slow. That meant I had to start moving stuff out of the way to find the source of the water. I don’t have the tidiest garage, but my kids are troopers and helped me move stuff out of the way. When I finally moved the washing machine from the wall, I was able to see water gushing from inside the wall. Thankfully, when I moved in, I made sure to ask the landlord’s management company where the shutoff valve is and kept their emergency contact number.
I called the emergency contact number, and per the greeting, someone should be manning the line. But I know it’s Christmas Eve. Thankfully, I kept the cell phone number of one of the rental property’s client manager. Thankfully, he picked up. He said he was on call, but in a rush to get out of the office, left the “on-call” phone in the office. But, he said I did the right thing in tracking him down.
While I’m grateful to be living in a house, it’s not one I’m very proud of. There are many things wrong with it. For instance, the garage slopes the wrong way, so none of the water was draining out. My son reminded me that I owned a small wet-dry vacuum, so I was able to use that to get three couple of inches of water out. I think I emptied that thing at least ten times.
When a plumber was finally able to come the following afternoon, we found the culprit to be shoddy repair work. A PVC piped used to for lawn sprinklers was used instead of one used for indoor plumbing.
I love watching the Kennedy Center Honors. It was great seeing Christian music (which I have a love/hate association with) get a spotlight with Amy Grant’s induction. Her music reminded me of a happier and more confident time in my life. Of course, it was great to see my favorite band be honored as well. I’ve never been one for Borat. I liked that Eddie Vedder was part of the festivities, though I thought it would have been Bruce Springsteen. But Springsteen inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It’s still hard for me to listen to U2’s music. I’m not there yet, but one day I will get lost in their music again.
As of right now, I feel like my best days are behind me. You have no idea how much I want to be proven wrong.
I’m sorry for only one post this week. I took the week off from work to spend it with BoyGeeding and DaughterGeeding. We went to the Dallas Stars game on Wednesday and had a blast. It was the perfect mini-vacation we all needed.
Things didn’t start out great for the Stars game. Since it was my son and daughter’s first hockey game, I wanted to get there early so they could take in all the pregame festivities. But when we got the the arena, the door was locked. It turns out the game was scheduled to start at 8:30 pm. When I bought the tickets, I noticed the game time said 8:30 PM. Not putting much thought into it, I thought it was referencing Eastern time. When you live in the central time zone, a lot of time you see events are scheduled for Eastern time and just know to adjust for the hour difference. The older version of me would have really let this bother and loom over me. But, Keith 1.5 moving to 2.0 took it in stride and tried to make some lemonade with the lemons I plucked.
One of the many things I hate about divorce, especially a bitter one, is all the “firsts” you miss out on with your children. There’s nothing like experiencing firsts with your children, you know you are making a memory and increase your bonding. Thankfully, I’ve been a part of many of their firsts when we were a whole family, like to the beach, Disney, and major sporting events. I still dealt with a little sadness their mother didn’t tag along, she deserves to experience their first hockey experience. But, she has made it known if I’m a part of anything, she will not be a part of it. I don’t think any parent should miss out on any firsts of their children because of some sort of disagreement.
Going into it, DaughterGeeding wasn’t all that excited. She even asked, due to my mistake of the start of the game, if we could leave early. I reluctantly agreed. However, she was enjoying the experiencing so much that when it hit third period, she asked if we can stay for the whole thing. That sure did warm my heart.
BoyGeeding had a lot of good hockey questions. I wished I knew more about hockey to answer them.
I wonder why I’m not more of a hockey fan. The Dallas Stars really do put together a great product. The atmosphere was pretty wholesome. Compared to the TCU football game we attended last year, there was a lot less cursing and drinking.
The American Airlines Center (it’s hard to believe it’s been around 21 years, it’s held up grate) has an option of buying a souvenir cup. But the cup comes with free refills. I’m not sure what I paid for it. I should be more disciplined paying attention to price when buying certain items. Most of the time, for stuff like this, I ignore whatever the price and just deal with it. Tickets for our nose bleed seats set us back about a hundred each. Of course, Ticketmaster will add in their convenience fees for each individual ticket, then you have parking to pay for, then you realize why you don’t do these things more often.
Since we were playing a Canadian team, the Canadian national anthem was sung. To my surprise, the singer went immediately from it to the Star Spangled Banner. If you didn’t know better, you would have thought it was one long song. I do love the hometown bit of when you get to any part of our anthem that references “star” the whole crowd emphasizes it.
I thought having virtual Christmas lights on the jumbotron the entire time was an unappreciative and unnoticeable bit.
They do a cool little t-shirt drop by attaching them to mini-parachutes and dropping them from the rafters.
I’m proud of my kids for many things, but one thing I take pride in is how well they act in public. They might be a little soft-spoken and shy, but they are well-mannered and respectful.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Friday, December 23, 2022
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.
