Bag of Randomness for Friday, February 17, 2017

  • Confession – I had a wonderful Valentine’s Day evening with my gay college roommate. I had to travel to Washington, D.C. for work and he now resides in our nation’s capital. It’s been seven years since we’ve seen each other. He lives in a house that is over 110 years old. It’s three stories and has a third-floor outdoor porch. He told me those porches were where the slaves or “the help” slept when the houses in the neighborhood were first built.
  • When using Google Maps for navigation, I was surprised to hear it welcome me to each state/district as I entered them – “Welcome to Washington D.C.”, “Welcome to Maryland.” When you live in Texas, you don’t often cross state borders because they are so friggn’ far away.
  • One of the best parts about my stay is that the area has no moutain cedar. Ah, my allergies and sinuses have enjoyed the break.
  • This is my third or fourth trip to D.C. but this time I made sure to eat at the legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl.  Maybe next time I can eat at Freddy’s BBQ Joint.
  • DaughterGeeding was sad about me leaving for a few days. When I arrived at my hotel and unpacked, I found this drawing which touched my heart. It’s GeedingManor, and she drew on the front and back writing the names of everyone in the family, including the dogs and the bunny. I thought this sort of thing only happens in the movies.

    However, when I talked to her later in the evening about it, she made it for her mother when she visited El Paso over six months ago. WifeGeeding never found it, so it’s been sitting undiscovered and forgotten about for a while.
  • I was surprised at how run-down RFK Stadium looks.
  • It’s interesting meeting your coworkers for the first time. Of course, we’ve worked together for a long time and have chatted on the phone, but have never met in person. It’s a bit awkward when you all first meet and try sizing each other up and trying to compare the mental picture you have of each other. I waited for them to introduce themselves as I didn’t want to guess which three white guys are who and which two South Asians ladies are whom (I’m too lazy to look up the who/whom thing so I’m sure I made a mistake here by splitting it 50/50). However, I am a schmoozer and like to turn on the charm. When one of the girls asked if they all were as I imagined, I told her that the men were scruffier but the women were even more beautiful than I imagined.
  • Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson Makes A Cameo In Plano Teenager’s New Space Flick
  • I can envision the Republican-controlled Congress impeaching President Trump in less than two years because they find him hard to work with and defend, and would rather work with Pence and work on getting him elected president.
  • One heck of a quote by our governor:
    • “If the NFL tries to come down on the state of Texas, I might just pass a bill in the state of Texas mandating that all NFL players have to stand and put their hand on their heart when the National Anthem is played.”
  • I guess I’m a little slow, but until reading this article on rebar graphene, I had no idea that “rebar” was short for “reinforcement bar”.
  • ‘I know they are going to die.’ This foster father takes in only terminally ill children
  • Last week Mike Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers and the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings and founder of Little Caesars, died and I didn’t think anything of it. But then yesterday, I saw this on the news and was genuinely touched.
    • Little Caesars founder quietly paid Rosa Parks’ rent for years
      • On Aug. 31, 1994, Parks, then 81, was robbed and assaulted in her home in central Detroit. (Federal Judge Damon) Keith called real estate developer Alfred Taubman, the owner of Riverfront Apartments, about finding a safer home for Parks. Taubman pledged to find the best home available. When Ilitch read about Keith’s plan and Taubman’s promise in the newspaper, he called the judge and said he would pay for Parks’ housing for as long as necessary. (Parks passed away in 2005 at the age of 92). Keith served as the executor of the trust established for Parks’ housing.
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Bag of Randomness for Monday, February 13, 2017

  • There should be a Bag of Randomness for tomorrow but I’m not sure what the rest of the week will look like.
  • For BoyGeeding’s upcoming birthday this week I started to make a Death Star pinata with him and his sister. I knew it was going to get messy, but I didn’t think it would get that messy. Also, the balloon popped halfway through which meant we I had to start over.
  • I wear a Fitbit but haven’t really been utilizing it until the last 25 days or so. I saw a National Geographic channel special about the fat that can accumulate around the heart when one doesn’t take care of himself during his twenties and thirties but how one can decrease the fat by moderate exercise and splitting it up during the day. At the same time, a friend step challenged me on the Fitbit app and then I decided to commit to at least 10,000 steps a day. Before, I’d get lucky if I’d break 5,000. Part of the limited steps comes from working from home and no long walks from the parking lot, meeting rooms, restrooms, and a lot of it comes from being lazy. Since Thanksgiving, I’ve stopped tracking my weight and blood pressure on a daily basis and it was starting to show. So now I’m on a streak of about 25 days of at least 10,000 steps a day and I’m surprised to see my resting heart rate has dropped ten points. I was working out before, mainly weights for about 20 minutes a day and thought my cardio was adequate. Well, I was wrong. Here’s hoping I can keep this up.
  • Mark Cuban was on Friday’s BaD Radio and admitted to taking Propecia to fight off hair loss. I wish the guys would have pushed him just a tad more and get him to admitted to dying his hair.
  • While watching ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ yesterday, I learned Tyrannosaurus Rex is Latin for “the Tyrant King.” The show also had a segment on the “bro hug” with the first part of the story based at Baylor. WifeGeeding was surprised to see the communications professor who was interviewed. He was in WifeGeeding’s youth group and his father was the youth minister. The youth minister was well loved, he died of a heart attack the day after WifeGeeding’s prom, sometime after teaching Sunday school.
  • A Valentine’s Day dance in Henryetta, Oklahoma was canceled after it was discovered that an old city ordinance bans dancing within 500 feet of a church.
  • Mississippi may bring back firing-squad executions
    • Concerned by recent court challenges and practical constraints that make execution by lethal injection increasingly precarious, Mississippi is taking preemptive action. The state legislature introduced House Bill 638, which proposes adding firing squad, electrocution, and gas chamber to the list of approved execution methods in Mississippi.
  • Kate McKinnon is great at portraying politicians, and she does a wide range –  Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jeff Sessions, Angela Merkel, Kellyanne Conway, Betsy DeVos, and I’m sure I’ve left a few off.
  • The Bluebonnets Have Already Arrived – We love our state flower, of course, but it’s a little early for them to be blooming, right?
  • While listening to NPR’s “A Way With Words” it was stated it’s common for the people on the East Coast to say “I’m calling out sick” as opposed to “I’m calling in sick” and “I’m standing on line” as opposed to “I’m standing in line.” I’m not used to listening to East Coast folks.
  • I watched about ten minutes of the Grammys and about five of those minutes was an awesome Target commercial.
  • I’ve only started to follow Chelsea Clinton on Twitter for a couple days, but the woman has become unleashed.
  • I heard a comedian talk about the subject of her comedy, that she doesn’t feel comfortable “punching down” but will happily “punch up”.
  • It was neat seeing Ben Stiller tweet about Dirk –
  • I’m reminded of the three-eyed-fish on ‘The Simpsons’ – Mysterious orange alligator spotted in South Carolina
  • An attention getting headline from The Dallas Morning News which has a little bit of everything – Gay porn star with Nazi tattoos arrested in meth raid that rattled Oak Lawn
  • Random “What if?” – What if someone or some entity bought Twitter and decided to just shut it down (not that it would ever happen), how would that affect the Trump presidency? Would updating his Facebook page make up for no Twitter?
  • Something from Gary Provost regarding writing:
    • “This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
  • I’ll end by sharing these two videos I tweeted over the weekend. One if of OtherDogGeeding dreaming, the other is something I’ve mentioned many times before, DaughterGeeding taking her brother’s hand as they walk to the front of the church for children’s church. The hand holding, her looking over her little brother always touches my heart, and him allowing her. I know it’s not going to last much longer, he’s going to tire of it, but for now, I’ll soak it in as much as I can.

 

 

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