BagOfNothing.com

• 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.

Happy birthday, BoyGeeding.

• 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 –
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• 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.

OtherDogGeeding dreaming pic.twitter.com/bYTqbsDWrd

— BagOfNothing (@bagofnothing) February 10, 2017

Every Sunday she takes her little brother's hand and leads him to the front for children's church pic.twitter.com/sP9e2cEt7m

— BagOfNothing (@bagofnothing) February 12, 2017

• I use my father’s dresser and the other day WifeGeeding accidentally pulled one of the drawers out. In the far back and long forgotten was this old cigarette carton box. I remember the day Dad quit and I think he was going to do it cold turkey, so I was curious if it was empty, and alas, it was. I told my childhood friend Jimi about it and he said he could remember the day I told him my father was going to quit smoking and we were trying to guess the year. I then remembered this old “contract” I made my father sign it in hopes of weaning him off. My mother signed as a “witness”. If my memory serves me correctly, he smoked one last one and couldn’t even finish it and then was chewing Nicorette like all get out. So by the date of this “contract”, that box is at least 30-years old.
  
• I’ve been wanting a mechanical keyboard and took a chance on a discounted return item on Amazon. It arrived yesterday and I was all giddy hooking it up, but then I had Charlie Brown slump once I realized the “T” key didn’t work. I was tempted to write this entire Bag of Randomness using that keyboard just for kicks.
• While reading my book on presidents and relationships they’ve had with former presidents, I started to wonder what president had the most future presidents born in his administration. I couldn’t find anything online, so I researched it myself. My first guess would have been FDR since he served the longest, but there were zero future presidents born during his time in office. I suppose a depression and a world war would hamper procreation. But without double checking my work, it appears the most future presidents born in a single president’s administration is three, and it’s a tie.
  • Washington – Polk, Buchanan, Tyler
  • Truman – W. Bush, Clinton, Trump
• Before reading the book, I really didn’t know much about Hoover other than he presided before Roosevelt and at the start of the Great Depression. I associated “Hoover” with the vacuum and thought he “sucked”. However, the book has given me an appreciation for him and his life after the presidency, especially how much he helped Truman and the rebuilding efforts after WWII. Heck, Truman sent him on three overseas trips in just one calendar year. Many folks claim Carter might have the best or most influential life after office, but Hoover is a strong argument.
• DaughterGeeding came home from school and tried teaching me a new song she heard on the playground, the “Diarrhea” song. She was amazed and how I could contribute to it.
• DaughterGeeding likes to write and will often write notes so not to forget things she learned earlier in the day. I have to admit this attention getting headline really caught my attention and I had lots of concerns at first. I thought she might be yelling a line from an Anne Frank movie or something from The Sound of Music.
  
• Last night’s ‘Life in Pieces’ had two guest stars from ‘The Office’.
• Last night there was a collegiate track meet at the new Cowboys headquarters and an eleven-year-old homeschooled girl competed – against college students, mind you, and came in third place in her 3,000-meter race.
• Erin Gray was one of my childhood crushes, she’ll be in Irving tomorrow for the Dallas Comic Show. I loved her in both ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Silver Spoons’ and was delighted when she guest starred in ‘Magnum, P.I.’.
  • “Here we are, face to face, a couple of silver spoons…“
• You can now watch VR content from the Chrome app
• Teenagers Who Vandalized Historic Black Schoolhouse Are Ordered to Read Books
  • After five teenagers defaced a historic black schoolhouse in Virginia with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti last year, a judge handed down an unusual sentence. She endorsed a prosecutor’s order that they read one book each month for the next 12 months and write a report about it. But not just any books: They must address some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods.
• The great Nick Offerman will be back on ‘This Old House’ this weekend.
• In a bit similar to the pet rock, rock band KISS will now sell you air guitar strings.
• Paris to erect bulletproof wall around Eiffel Tower
  • Temporary fences were installed last June, but these rather unattractive barriers will now become permanent with the placement of a 2.5 meter-high bulletproof glass wall, according to French daily Le Parisien.
• When you read the headline, you don’t picture a redheaded white kid – A 15-year-old (Sorta-maybe) Basketball Prodigy
• Starplex music venue in Dallas may not be named Starplex after all
• 37 days: Corpus Christi finds lessons in mayor’s political implosion
  • Fed up with lingering infrastructure problems, Corpus Christi voters turned to a political novice to run the city. In just over a month, he was gone, leaving behind political limbo — and some lessons.
• Awkward Sean Spicer interview by Breitbart, the reporter is very nervous – Digg
• SI.com – Report: Ex-Baylor president Ken Starr could join Trump administration
  • Former Baylor president Ken Starr has a job waiting for him in the state department, according to a report by Foreign Policy magazine. Starr is reportedly on the shortlist for the position of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The post is tasked with the promotion of religious freedoms around the world.
• For my fellow Google Daydream owners – You can now watch VR content from the Chrome app
• Everyone and their dog wrote off the Mavs, but dang they are playing some good ball. Sure, they aren’t going to go deep in the playoffs and they are a long ways away, but they sure are exciting to watch and we need to appreciate Dirk as much as we can. It’s nice to see him still deliver in the clutch.
• Sure, many may think we are living in crazy times with a Trump presidency, but I think when we look at our nation’s legislative history, prohibition or the 18th Amendment actually happened. I’m curious to know what legislative act can top that.
• Rev. Dr. Hart, I just want to say I’m proud of you. Your accomplishment is not for your glory but for His alone, but you already knew that.
• Chris may not know or understand, and he should know who he is, but yesterday he restored my faith in humanity and reminded me of this Reagon quote which is etched on the outside of his tomb.