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.
George H.W. Bush and Barbara have such a large family it would be easy to mistake them for being Catholic or Mormon.
One of my favorite memories of former president George H.W. Bush involves him attending a Cowboys game at Texas Stadium sometime after he left office. It may have been a playoff game against the Packers. Madden and Summerall were on the call. Bush was in a suite drinking a glass of milk. The camera focused on him and Madden used the telestrator to circle the milk and commented on the wholesome image and the great example he was setting drinking something healthy instead of alcohol or soda. I looked for a good two minutes for the video but most of my searches resulted in Frank Caliendo doing a Madden or George W. Bush bit. So let this be a lesson to you kids, avoid broccoli but drink your milk and you too can live to 94 years of age.
I saw some people on social media didn’t understand why former senator Bob Dole saluted G.H.W. Bush with his left hand. I guess they didn’t realize he basically had his arm blown off by a machine gun in WWII and learned to cope. He often held a pen in that hand to try to minimize the effect it had on it.
Y’all know I’m a sucker for presidential history, but I’m not a fan of these state funerals because it makes the person and the office monarchal. We are a system of checks and balances, separate but equal power, and this stuff tends to tilt importance and power to the chief executive. I also think too much money is spent on these sort of things – federal employees (and I) get a paid day off, a presidential aircraft transports the body to and from Washington, personnel, security, yadda, yadda, yadda. I prefer the simpleness of Nixon’s funeral, but then again, his had to be toned down because of that whole resignation thing.
Speaking of Nixon, and Trump, many think it’s a tradition for a sitting president to speak at a former president’s funeral. It’s not, though it has happened for the last three. For instance, LBJ died just two days after Nixon’s second inauguration and he didn’t speak at LBJ’s funeral. Truman died just a month before LBJ and didn’t have a state funeral, which I read mainly because his wife didn’t wish for it. With the death of those two, there were no other living former presidents.
It’s well noted that only two pairs of father and sons have become president. However, John Quincy Adams was the sitting president when his father died (as well as Thomas Jefferson on the same day – July 4, 1826). If it were not for Jefferson’s death, I bet Quincy would have had his father lie in the White House. In case you were wondering, Jefferson was buried the day after his death, Adams three days after going to the great beyond.
Eight presidents have had funeral processions down Pennsylvania Avenue, including all four presidents to die by assassination. Again, less is more.
A bit before Thanksgiving my neighbor lost his wife to cancer. It was her second bout and her son recently became a teenager. It’s hard trying to be there for a neighbor and friend without trying to be intrusive.
That same week, a former medical doctor of mine committed suicide leaving behind two young children.
I work from home and have converted a room to a small home office. Every day, OtherDogGeedingII, the new pup, will bring a different toy from BoyGeeding or DaughterGeeding’s room into the office and prompt me to play. Sure, I could easily have the kids close the door to their rooms and resolve this “problem” but it’s entertaining to see what the pup brings me when he wants my attention.
It took her three years, but DaughterGeeding earned her black belt in Taekwondo. I know some of you think these things are trivial and just a way for adults to make money off of parents. Even if that’s the case, along the way, she picked up some confidence and discipline and learned how to set an achieve a long-term goal (this one took over a third of her life). Sure, she ain’t no Bruce Lee and not a fighter, this was more about form and technique. For instance, from memory, she had to perform the technique for all her previous belts – white, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown, red, and black/red.
To mark her achievement, I took one of the boards she had to break for her black belt test and made a personalized Christmas ornament out of it by carving, painting, and matting. She seemed to appreciate it, and I hope it’s something which hangs on her tree with her future family after I’m no longer part of this earth.
