Unsolicited advice – With any hardship in life, view it in light of eternity.
I replaced all of GeedingManor’s fire alarms on Saturday. Truth be told, most of them have been removed for years for going off sporadically despite replacing the batteries and cleaning them. I recently discovered most fire alarms last for only about ten years and mine were more than twenty. The one located most centered in the house is actually a carbon combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector.
My 25-year high school reunion was this past weekend and I have some regrets in not going. I thought it was odd it was not happening during homecoming and it didn’t seem well planned, but I think I got that perception because I’m not on the Facebook which was how most of the planning took place. My good friend Jimi did attend. He said none of our closest friends were there, and that would have been perfect. I already know what’s going on in their lives and get to speak to them at least yearly. I would much rather be forced to see and interact with classmates I literally haven’t thought about since graduation but were in my second-grade classroom. He did inform me that the very first girl I slow-danced with (7th grade) died from cancer.
The teachers at the school my kids attend and my wife work at require all tattoos be covered. Some teachers wear a bandaid every day on the same spot. I bet some kids think their teacher never heals, that they are the opposite of Wolverine.
Last night I flipped channels between specials about Patrick Swayze and the Cola Wars. The Cola Wars special was fun because not only did it bring back a lot of memories, but throughout the special, they did the blind taste test with executives from both Pepsi and Coca-Cola as well as the contributing journalists.
Last Thursday I went to the local TxDOT to renew my drivers license. The plan was to get there before they open, 8:00 AM, to try to avoid being in a long line. It turns out half of Denton County had the same idea.
When I walked into the building, I saw that 27 people were in line ahead of me, which I didn’t think was too bad. But then I realized this was only the downstairs line, the line continued upstairs. I didn’t leave the building until 12:24 PM. The workers wouldn’t allow us to line up on the stairs. Basically, they sent us up about ten at a time.
Because I expected a long dreadful experience, I didn’t feel like the ordeal was all that bad, unlike many others. My heart went out to the elderly. One man leaned on his walker the entire time. An elderly woman asked those around her to assist her in sitting down on the floor and to get up periodically to use the restroom. I felt the wait upstairs wasn’t as bad because there was a railing to lean against, either with my backside or my forearms.
When you stand in that line for that amount of time, you get to know the people next to you. I was fortunate enough to stand next to this really cool young woman from Argentina who wanted to talk DC vs Marvel and all things sci-fi the entire time.
About an hour into my wait, I realized I left some of my required documentation on the counter after an employee came out to tell us to make sure we had all required paperwork. I laid it out the night before so I wouldn’t forget it, and like an idiot, I forgot it. I asked Ms. Argentina if she would hold my place in line so I could drive home and retrieve them and before I could even finish my sentence she said, “Dude, I got you. I got you.”
Even though my drivers license wasn’t going to expire for another two weeks, to renew it, I needed to provide a certified birth certificate, Social Security card, or passport. I did have my U.S. Treasury ID with me which shows I have a certain security clearance and my face on it, but that wasn’t considered acceptable ID.
When I returned, Ms. Argentina was no longer on the first floor but was looking for me and waving to get my attention to show she was now on the second floor, which is visible from the first floor. After chatting with her a bit more, I asked if she could do me one more favor and accept a Chick-fil-A gift card I had in my wallet. I told her I wanted to express my thanks and that the world needs more friendly souls like her.
One dude in line had his headphones on and received a call. I’m guessing because he had his headphone on, he had no idea how loud he was actually talking and how everyone was picking up on his leud lifestyle.
The TxDOT worker who processed my request had a flower in her hair and she looked like she might be from Hawaii. Sure enough, she was, and she said she wears a flower in her hair every day to honor her heritage. When she was finished with my request and it was time to leave, I thanked her in Hawaiin by saying, “Mahalo.” She seemed genuinely touched.
John Goodman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Here’s some unsolicited advice – always have a spare bottle of Liquid Plumber or Drano on hand.
My drivers license expires in two weeks and I can’t renew online so I’m going in to renew it in person today. I hope I make it out alive, I’ve heard horror stories of three-hour waits, lines out the door, and people having to stand in the heat. I’m trying to go in prepared, I’m bringing in the letter they sent me, printed and filled out a renewal application, and bringing in three forms of identification.
Here’s a crazy idea for a science fiction story. All of a sudden transmission data from Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 start coming in faster than it has ever before, and it’s because it somehow returned and is orbiting Earth. Maybe the story starts out sometime in the future and scientists haven’t received any data from them for the last fifty years.
While earlier generations played with eye-catching print fonts and horizontal lines, today’s tech-savvy young people have a new arsenal of tricks. Many throw in headshots. Some add bitmojis, the personalized avatars used in text messages and on social media.
Hiring managers say they are seeing résumés in Instagram-friendly palettes of mint green and pastel pink. Some come spiral-bound like full-color corporate brochures.
The flashy résumés are colliding with efforts by employers to strip down CVs to their most basic elements—coding skills, college degrees, work histories—to reduce bias in hiring. Many companies run résumés through tools called applicant tracking systems that remove photos and other design embellishments. Others are looking for ways to blind out even names and addresses, which could reveal gender, race or socioeconomic status.
My sainted mother would have turned 71 years old today. She was a voracious reader. If you would do me a small favor, to honor her, simply read a magazine article or a chapter in a book. The photo at the top of this post was taken in Corpus Christi, circa 1979, and that’s me hugging her leg as she’s about to fish with nothing but a bamboo pole.
The new owners of the 42-story office high-rise on North Central Expressway plan to convert eight floors of the tower into a 5-star InterContinental Hotels Group hotel.
Along with guest rooms, the hotel will have an outdoor swimming pool, a fitness center, more than 21,000 square feet of meeting space and a top-floor ballroom and banquet space with views of the nearby downtown Dallas skyline.
This maybe be common knowledge to my fellow Texans, but sometimes it gets so hot in the afternoon, outdoor recess is canceled and the kids have to stay indoors. Yesterday, the first day of school, was one of those days.
I was told by one of my kids that a fellow student was sent to the headmaster’s office because she wouldn’t stop growling at the teacher.
WifeGeeding said one of her kindergarten students asked, “How did you learn to read? When did you learn to read?”
Sonny Jurgensen, a voice of Washington Redskins games for decades, has signed off. The former Redskins quarterback, now 84, played 11 seasons for the ‘Skins, from 1964 to 1974. Previously, he played for the Philadelphia Eagles, starting in 1957. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983.
Random fact about the 84-year-old Jurgensen, his full name is Christian Adolph Jurgensen III. He was born 1934, at a time when parents were still comfortable giving their kids the name “Adolf”. In case you are wondering, Hitler became Chancellor of German in 1933 and Führer the following year. WWII started in 1939 and ended in 1945.
If I’m going to have to buy a scrub brush for the kitchen or the bath, it’s probably is going to be of the green and yellow variety, only because it’s what I was grown up with. However, those two-tone blue ones are pretty sharp looking.
I recently mentioned that one of my coworkers lost his eleven-year-old son. Yesterday, I found out he was suffering from Pearson syndrome. Per Wikipedia – Pearson syndrome is very rare, less than a hundred cases have been reported in medical literature worldwide.
I’m surprised ‘U2 3D’ made the list. I would have expected ‘Rattle and Hum’ or my personal favorite, ‘U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle‘. I had no idea they played in front of 180,000 people at Slane.
I’ve edited maybe five Wikipedia pages in my life. All of them were small grammatical errors or typos, with the exception of the time I decided to provide a citation.
I got a little sentimental with looking through photos yesterday. Funny, many of you have been with me the entire journey, and more.
I think I post this picture every year, it makes me laugh. The mom is cute and bald men can relate to the dad. But truth be told, the first day of school bums be out as a parent, I’m left wondering if I made the most of the summer for the kids as I should have. Most likely, it was a great summer in their eyes, but I always want to make it better for the whole family.
Yup, it’s the first day of school for my wife and kids. As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m bummed that I will no longer be dropping the kids off at school. Last night, DaughterGeeding mentioned something about it. “Dad, I’m going to miss you taking us to school. I’m going to miss the smell of coffee in the car and listening to The TICKET, like when Muse in the News comes on. We always knew we were running late when they got to birthdays.”
Parents will have the option to order shoes for sizes 4C to 7Y (for kids aged roughly two to 10) on a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly basis, costing $50, $30 or $20 per month respectively. Kids’ sneakers typically retail for $60, so monthly subscribers will save about $10 a pair. You can alter the frequency of deliveries or pause your plan as you see fit.
Even though I don’t plan on subscribing, this service sounds pretty reasonable.
The concept is simple yet revolutionary: Members meet up at a bar, a library, a bookstore or any venue that will host them. Once the bell rings, silent reading time commences. After an hour, the bell rings again. Other than that, there are no rules.
