Yes, I take the GPS estimated time of arrival as a personal challenge.
I forgot to mention, when I met my friends for scholarship weekend, I did what I could to avoid talking about the divorce or my ex the entire time. I didn’t want to be a downer and wanted the focus on all of us having fun and being able to escape our everyday problems for an evening.
I forwarded this to a friend who sells his plasma to make extra money; however, there’s no Dallas location – If you are a healthy adult 18 to 50 years old, you may be eligible to earn up to $1,500 a month in compensation to donate your poop (compensation may vary by city and is subject to change).
In the midst of DeSantis’ feud with the Disney Company, Fort Bend County Judge JP George, the chief executive officer of Fort Bend County, Texas, wrote a letter inviting the company to relocate to his area and avoid “authoritarian, anti-business, and culture war attacks from extremists in Florida.”
The omission of one particular ingredient is glaringly obvious: cream. Because there are no dairy products used in Oreo cookies, the FDA does not allow Nabisco to call their filling cream. The easy get-around? They spell it “creme”.
Traffic accidents dropped 82% after the city shrank the roadway from three to two lanes in each direction on this nightmarish stretch of Jefferson, which cuts through a variety of residential neighborhoods just west of the thoroughfare’s main commercial district.
The Harrisburg, Pa., native and former Penn State star got to drop the puck ahead of Sunday’s tilt between the AHL’s Hershey Bears and Syracuse Crunch. While he indeed dropped the puck, there was one problem – no player from either team was at center ice yet. It wasn’t until after his initial drop that the 2021 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year was told how the ceremony actually works. Once players from the Bears and Crunch skated over, Parsons got a second chance to do a traditional puck drop before walking back through the tunnel. The Bears apologized for not fully explaining how the puck drop is supposed to work.
Scholarship selection weekend was great. Now that I’m a divorced man, I have a greater appreciation for these extraordinary long friendships. While I still haven’t had a belly laugh in over two years, I had one, maybe two, really good laughs. Slowly, I’m coming back together.
Regarding the scholarship trustees, four are childhood friends from Mineral Wells. Throughout high school and college, I was always the heaviest. Now, I’m the lightest and only one under 200 lbs. I never thought that day would happen.
When you are a full-time dad, you feel responsible for your children’s safety 24/7. When you get divorced, and while you always remain a dad at all times, you are no longer responsible for their safety 24/7, just your court-agreed possession time. So, when the kids do something like fly out of state for a long weekend, it’s a weird kinda feeling. You also want them to have nothing but joy, but you feel bummed you aren’t making lasting memories with them.
My closest peer in a divorce-recovery texted me a photo I sent him one year ago over the weekend. It was of me and my kids on the roof of GeedingManor watching the sunset. In the original text from a year ago, he was checking in on me, because at that time, I was only allowed to see my children nine hours a week. It was interesting looking at my eyes in that photo. They belonged to a broken man, longing for his marriage, already missing his kids, sitting on the roof of the home he doesn’t want to sell, not having any idea of when will the healing process can begin because so much was still ahead of him in terms of the divorce. Rebuilding could only start once the divorce is over, and I still had to finish the court mandated parallel parenting class, get the results of my psych exam, mediation, selling and moving out of the house, the actual divorce, and a hundred of other unplanned and unwelcome things are finished. Otherwise, if you start the rebuilding process too early, everything you worked on may come crashing down and you have to start all over, and I didn’t want to start all over again. While I’m not where I want to be, I have made progress since that photo. It’s a mixture of the simple passage of time, counseling, medication, prayer, and a handful of other things. I just wonder what the percentages of each are . It’s hard to measure that kind of progress. That person in the photo does not know how much stronger he is than he imagined.
One thing I wonder is if I’ll ever be able to trust anyone unequivocally again. The last time I thought I could be myself, be transparent with my thoughts and fears, confide my stress and depression, and share all my medical information, that woman left me at my lowest point and continues to work to alienate our children from me. I fear I so desire to love again, I’m going to sacrifice some things I shouldn’t have the first time. If I question integrity, I need to go with my gut and not my heart. So, if your bride doesn’t even glance at you as she walks down the aisle, run. She’s not there for you, she’s there for the show.
One thing that bothers me is the person who makes a big deal out of when they are included in the photo, even if they aren’t the main subject. My brother was like that, I feel robbed of many family photos. You miss looking at that stuff when you lose your family. Those folks don’t understand how a small act of humility on their part makes such a difference in someone else’s life. When that person does it, the rest of your time with that person feels like you are walking on eggshells and just can’t act yourself.
I knew Nocona Boots were made (at one time) in Nocona, Texas. But I didn’t know there was a connection with the Justin Boots company. This is from the founder of Nacona Boots, Enid Justin:
Her father was the famed boot-maker Herman Joseph Justin, who cobbled his first pair of boots while working in a Texas barber shop. A student of the boot-making craft herself, Enid opened the Nocona Boot Company in 1925 after her brothers, John, Sr., Avis, and Earl, decided to move her father’s business to Fort Worth, Texas.
The Batman Starring Adam West.. Coming Soon! – The guys who put this together did a great job. You’ll really appreciate it if you’ve seen the new movie or at least the trailer. They actually put together a behind-the-scenes featurette if you want to know how they pulled off the great CGI.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Monday, April 25, 2022
I’ve seen this photo hundreds of times, but it’s the first time I’ve looked at it in my forties. All those other times, I never appreciated just how high Bo actually jumped.
Yesterday I saw a nearly pristine Mercury Mountaineer. In case you were wondering, the final Mercury automobile, a 2011 Mercury Grand Marquis, rolled off the assembly line on January 5, 2011.
It’s scholarship weekend. When our best buddy from college tragically died, his mother was gracious enough to set up a memorial scholarship and asked his close friends to serve as trustees. We’ll get together tonight to select a graduating senior of Clyde High School and reminisce and laugh at ourselves. It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this since 2004. I believe we’ve given out over $50,000 in scholarships and charitable causes. I hope we have impacted a few lives.
This house in Southlake is very pointy and medieval.
This Guy Earning $270,000 Per Year As A Google Engineer In Austin Might Have You Questioning Your Career Choices – Clinton Stamper, a 26-year-old software engineer at Google, lives in Austin, Texas, and brings home just under $300K a year. Here’s what his life is like in the Lone Star State.
MS World Discoverer was a cruise ship designed for and built by Schichau Unterweser, Germany in 1974. In 2000, the ship struck an underwater obstacle and was damaged; it was subsequently grounded–to prevent sinking – and abandoned in the Solomon Islands.
This tweet and reply between two Christians caught my attention yesterday.
I normally don’t comment on tweets made by people I don’t know, but I caved. I wish I would have proofread it before I posted it, “can” should have been “can’t”.
This tweet also gave me some pause, and I spend a long time reading and relating to many of the responses.
It seems like it was just yesterday when conservatives were upset the government were using Tesla and Musk as the latest examples of the left throwing government money at things that were never going to be profitable.
The kids informed me on top of going to Universal Studios in Orlando this weekend, they will also be making a stop at the Magic Kingdom. That’s where the ex and I spent our honeymoon. I wonder if she’ll think about it when she’s there.
I’ve been exploring my feelings about this weekend getaway. I really want the kids to have a fun time and make some great memories, but I think what bothers me is that I feel like I’m being replaced since the ex’s sister and her husband are going. When the ex first left me and the only contact she allowed me to have with my son on his birthday was a five-minute monitored call on speakerphone. I learned the ex’s sister’s husband gave my son what I thought was a rather personal father/son type of gift, and I remember the feeling of being replaced back then. Now, I know most of you will tell me there’s no replacing me as my boy’s father, and I understand the perspective you want me to view this from. But, at the same time, I think you can understand with the way things went down how I feel that I’m marginalized and replaceable. If the ex’s goal was to make me feel this way, mission accomplished. It also doesn’t help that he’s the ex’s mother’s favorite in-law.
I think I’ve said it before, but this was the time in our children’s lives I was really looking forward to spending together as a whole family unit. All these years of not traveling because we thought they were too young and saving money for future trips and vacations was right around the corner, and then my family broke apart. It was just one of those life fulfilling dreams that was about to come true and the carpet got pulled from under me.
It feels good to be blogging again, and I understand some of you don’t like the transparency, but that’s one thing that makes this blog unique. Some days are better than others. It’s not just like riding a bike again, at least for me. I’m just a guy struggling who is trying to grow and rebuild.
However, earlier this month operators of rover turned its powerful Mastcam-Z camera toward the sky to capture Mars’ potato-shaped moon Phobos transiting across the surface of the Sun. And the result, well, the result is spectacular. Phobos is much smaller than Earth’s Moon, measuring only about 20 km across, so it does not plunge Mars into darkness. However, with the moon etched against the Sun, the video reveals the lumpy nature of Phobos’ terrain, complete with ridges and small hills. It also showcases sunspots on the surface of our star.
This happened in Houston. I think it’s some sort of mating ritual.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Thursday, April 21, 2022
