This past weekend, my wife and I adopted this cute, 2-year-old Cocker Spaniel from a woman who had gotten divorced and no longer could keep her. Aleena is very well trained, fun, and really melding into the family, here.
I’ve never really considered myself a “dog person.” In fact, for many years I considered myself “NOT a dog person.” I think there were really three reasons for this: Continue reading
For years, I was a slave to eating microwavable popcorn – sacrificing taste for an easy fix. Sure, it was a simple way of making a snack – crack open the cellophane and toss the paper pack of shortening-covered seeds into the little black box – but where’s the fun or flavor in that?
Luckily, my wife intervened.
“Microwavable popcorn?” she asked. “Not in my house.”
Now, instead of greasy, burnt,
over-flavored kernels, I’m treated to perfectly popped, puffy morsels, fresh from the stovetop. Every bite is like eating a tiny pop of gloriousness. For that, I am thankful.
Today, my wife and I went to see the second Sherlock Holmes film: A Game of Shadows. It was a pretty good movie, not quite as good as the first, but I would definitely see it again. The fun part was that the movie reminded me of the time I went to see the first (modern) Sherlock Holmes film. It was not so much the movie of which I was reminiscing, rather, how I got there.
It was mid December 2009, and my friend Brad had scored a pair of sneak preview tickets to see the first Sherlock film. I was single at the time, and driving through the snow from Mayville to the Marcus Majestic in Brookfield, Wis. On my way, I decided to call a woman that I had met on eHarmony.com. We had been emailing back and forth for a couple of weeks and finally got to the point where we had become comfortable enough to talk on the phone.
We both had pretty busy schedules, but in an email she said, and I quote, “If you’re up for a chat my lame, boring, nerdy self will be proofreading a paper tomorrow night…”
She had me at “proofreading.”
We exchanged numbers and during my drive she sent me a text letting me know when she had an open window to talk.
It is important to note that this would be my first time calling her.
Even though we had been emailing back and forth enough to converse rather comfortably, I still had that nervous pit in my stomach when I hit the “send” button.
She and I talked and the conversation was rather easy. In fact, it seemed like we were both rather enjoying the conversation.
That was, of course, until I rear-ended a guy.
A man in a minivan was making a right turn onto
Capital Drive in Brookfield. He started to go and I started rolling forward while checking the traffic to my left.
Then, he abruptly stopped. I hit him at about three or four miles per hour.
“Uh,” I said, “I just ran into somebody. I’ll call you back.”
I quickly hung up the phone, put my car in park and got out. The man that I had rear-ended got out of his minivan. “Oh, man, I am so sorry,” he said, “That was totally my fault. I shouldn’t have stopped.”
I asked him if he wanted to exchange insurance information. He declined. Because it was snowing, I never did see if there was any damage to his car, but there was only a slight nick on the front of mine.
He and I went on our separate ways like nothing had happened.
Once I was back on the road for a few minutes, I called the woman back. I was completely embarrassed, and she thought that, perhaps, she had just witnessed the flakiest excuse for a guy to end a phone call.
It definitely made for an interesting first call.
We were married a year and a half later.
And that is my story of my last car accident and the last time I went to see Sherlock Holmes.
The end.
Let me begin by telling you that I have never been afraid of a little self-deprecating humor – especially if I can help someone out in the process. And, as the CEO at the agency that I work at says, “if you can’t fix it, feature it.”
With that said, today we are going to talk about spandex. Specifically the type of spandex that I wear.
For those of you that don’t know, I am an avid cyclist. I’m not a great cyclist, but I can hold my own. So, on a regular basis, I pull out the tightest cycling shorts and jerseys that I can find and ride for hours on end.
Until last year, I always thought the kinds of shorts that the pros wear were kind of funny. Instead of “normal” (for those of us who think wearing skin-tight clothes is normal) cycling shorts, the pros wear bibs that look a lot like skin-tight lederhosen.
Then, sometime in October, I picked up
a set of Twin Six cycling bibs just to try them out.
I am never buying a pair of regular cycling shorts, again.
The bib cycling shorts seem to make it all work together. You never have to worry about your pants sliding down when you’re riding, and when you get out of the saddle, you never have to pull your shorts up to make sure you’re not getting stuck on the front end of the saddle when you sit back down.
They’re glorious.
All that said, I still can’t bring myself to shave my legs. Perhaps if I get to the point where I am actually competitive, but until then, I’m not that self-deprecating. (no offense to the guys that do – I’m just not good enough to justify that…yet)
I spent the whole weekend thinking about how I am going to tackle this whole blogging thing and get back to my pre-2010 form. But then, after a weekend of working diligently to get two websites ready to launch, the last thing that I
wanted to do was pull my laptop out of my briefcase. So, here we are, a little limp into 2012 as I blog lazily from my Kindle Fire. Hey, showing up is the first step towards success, right? Happy New Year.