I was in East Texas last weekend to celebrate Christmas with WifeGeeding’s family and her father’s 80th birthday. He took the grandkids to ride a miniature train in Mineola.
I’ve never watched an episode of ‘Laverne & Shirley’. I’d watch the intro to the show and then turn the channel to something else.
One of WifeGeeding’s coworkers lost her husband to cancer this week. He was a father to three daughters, two are in college and one is still in high school. WifeGeeding gave me her mean one-eyed stare when I suggested we introduce her to our neighbor who just lost his wife to cancer.
If Mexico would simply go ahead and pay for the border wall like they are supposed to there wouldn’t be any U.S. government shutdown.
About two weeks ago when driving the kids to school a projectile hit the windshield with such force shards of glass hit my face and fell into my coffee. No one was hurt, though it scared the kids. I was proud of myself for remaining calm and using it as a teaching moment on how not to panic.
“A sitting National Security Advisor, former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33 year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents.”
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Today’s dose of ‘MURICA (There might be cursing at the end, but to me, it’s inaudible)
Yesterday I read a tweet by Mrs. LiberallyLean and it dawned on me that it was the seventeen-year anniversary of meeting WifeGeeding for the first time. Of course, she wasn’t WifeGeeding back then, just a mysterious sexy woman with glasses who walked into my apartment. A group of my friends was going to a Mavs game and one of those friends invited her roommate, which was WifeGeeding, and everyone was meeting at my place before the game. I saved the ticket and put it in a scrapbook I gave her years ago.
That means today is the seventeen-year anniversary of our first date which lasted to about three in the morning. The date was rather simple, I took her to Stonebriar Center to go ice skating, which no longer has an ice rink. She spent most of the evening laughing her end off because I kept falling on mine since it was the first time I ever tried skating on ice. Before skating, we ate at the Chic-fil-A in the food court. Unlike all my previous dates with other girls, I didn’t pay for her meal.
You’ll hear a lot of commercials for the theater play ‘A Bronx Tale’, which was originally a movie produced and directed by Robert De Niro. It was one of my favorite movies for a long time and it included a certain “test” I used to judge a woman’s character. In the movie, a mob boss mentors a kid. One day the kid becomes a teen and is about to go on his first date and the mob boss loans him his car. The mob boss tells the kid that when he picks up his date, he needs to be a gentleman and open the passenger door for her, but after she sits down and he closes the door he needs to walk around the back of the car and glance through the rear window to see if she reaches over to unlock the door for him. If she does, that means she’s worth pursuing because she’s considerate. Of course, that was back in the day before automobiles had remote keys or the ability to unlock all doors at once with a prolonged turn of the key in the door lock. The car I drove to pick WifeGeeding up on our first date didn’t have a remote key, but it did do that trick of unlocking all doors with a prolonged turn of the car door lock (a “regular” turn of the key would only unlock that particular door). Because of ‘A Bronx Tale’ I put WifeGeeding to the test several times that night, and each and everytime she reached over to unlock the driver side door for me, so I thought she was worth pursuing.
One other thing I’ll note about our first date seventeen-years ago. On our way to the food court, I asked her what’s one thing someone wouldn’t know about her unless they specifically asked. That’s when she told me she had a glass eye.
A quote from ‘A Bronx Tale’ which has stuck with me, “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices you make will shape your life forever.” The thing is, I have no talent, so I never had the opportunity to waste anything.
There’s a James Avery Christmas commercial with a sappy song which seems to air after every other commercial and it drives me batty.
I don’t recall any fanfare over the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog this year. Since they are local, and I watch the local news consistently, usually it catches my attention.
No complaints, but without doing anything special my back has felt progressively better over the past two weeks. I mean, my back isn’t great, but I feel improvement for the first time in maybe six months.
I like to jovially compare my back situation with Tiger Woods because he also had a lower-lumbar fusion, we are the same age, are half-Asian, and have fathers who served in the Army. I’ve been under the impression that he’s absolutely pain-free of any back problems, but that may have been a poor assumption on my part. He may be competing again at a caliber level, and you don’t see him grimace, but that doesn’t mean he’s pain-free. Also, I also assume he’s not taking any medication, but there’s the possibility he could be taking anything from Advil to some type of prescribed nerve medicine, pain medicine, or muscle relaxer.
We took the kids to ICE at the Gaylord Texan yesterday evening. That’s the thing with 2-million pounds of carved ice in the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer theme sits in a 9-degree Texas-sized freezer. Of all the things I enjoyed, it was breathing in allergy/pollen-free air. The kids really enjoyed the ice slides. Anytime I see Hermie the Elf, I’m reminded of an old manager I had who looked like the real-life human version. Hotel employees wear a nametag which states where they are from, and I saw one from South Africa. She said she wasn’t fond of the cold and employees are only allowed to work an hour at a time inside the warehouse-sized freezer. Parking was expensive, it cost us $17.
If you look carefully, you can see DaughterGeeding and BoyGeeding on the Abominable Snow Monster’s shoulders
When I watch superhero movies I often wonder how comfortable are the actor’s shoes are boots.
I always get a kick out of how R2-D2 is referred to as “Artoo” in print or captioning.
The first president I vividly remember is Ronald Reagan. He was president throughout most of my childhood and always seemed to be the focus on the evening news my father was watching. Because of this, when I think of “presidential”, Reagan often comes to mind. I think I really connected with him and understood the importance of the office when he addressed the nation after the Challenger explosion and I was a confused child. I never had a grandfather, but he comforted me like I thought a grandfather would, through the television of all things. When I grew older and looked back on history, I found I disagreed with a lot of his politics, but I always admired his character and how he set a great example for the American people. As I watch the evening news with my kids around, I often wonder what my kids think of the presidency and the current occupant and what lasting impressions they will have. For a while, I debated watching the news because of the negative rhetoric and such. Recently, top stories have revolved around the sentencing of Retired Lt General and former NSA Advisor Michael Flynn and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The kids asked how can “bad guys” work for the president. I thought it was a good teaching moment to say no one who becomes president or works for any president is ever perfect, and betraying your country, even working for the president or a presidential candidate, even if you served as an important leader like a general, is above the law and lying, especially to the FBI and authorities, has major consequences. I also made sure to state that the president is only under investigation isn’t found to be guilty of anything yet, but a lot of times where there is smoke there is fire.
When I was a student at Hardin-Simmons University, I was one of the first students to take advantage of the new Leadership Studies minor. Last week, the current crop of students traveled to presidential libraries, homes, and museums in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas. Y’all know my love of presidential history. I would have loved that trip.
If it hadn’t been for Cotton-Eye Joe, I’d been married a long time ago.
If you are a fan of Thomas Kinkade and popular Texas stores and restaurants, I found an Etsy page for you.
