The musings of a madman...

  I am no longer allowed to enter the hardware store nearest my house… “Why?” you ask? Well it has a great deal to do with the fact that my idle hands are often, in fact, the devil’s playground.  We will make that sentence make sense in a little while, but first we gotta explain that I get A LOT of time off of work every year and I have to use it or lose it.  We’ve discussed this and what I often do with that time before.  What is only apparent to people who are connected to me either very personally or on FaceBook is that every summer I take what I have come to call “birthcation,” wherein I do not work my full time job at all on the week of my birthday. July 1rd was my 45st birthday ($callmephlip if you’re still feeling residually gifty, I celebrate all month) and I was naturally scheduled off of work-work the whole week.  Rather than spend big money GOING anywhere, I used the time to relax and work on some household projects in between my random acts o...

  As the two of you well know, my dumb ass thought I was told I had 24 hours to live one time last month. As you may or not have observed in these here pages over the past several years, I took this information and made a simple misunderstanding into an absofuckinglute PROBLEM for a bunch of people.  The vessel of the worst of those problems, naturally, being myself. It stands to reason that NOT having only a day to live is actually a pretty good thing, y’all.  I can thank my now-21-month commitment to my health and fitness.  My doctors are actually kind of wowed at my laser focus and refusal to chill out on my regimen.  Needless to say, I **should** have more than 24 hours left on this spinning rock. …  but there is some fallout from my actions and that is an absolute problem, because I have ABSOLUTELY burned some bridges here in a city that I cannot afford to leave. One thing I never do is sit around wondering where my exes are living or what they ...

     I am not “popular” but a lot of people seem to know who I am.  It is rare that I go out anywhere within an hour or so from my city that I don’t bump into SOMEONE I know.  Bear in mind for those of you who didn’t learn in elementary school that North and South Carolina are two different states, we do have paved roads and indoor plumbing here in NC and I live in the 68 th -largest city in the US.      Anyway… Back in November, Dollar General had Hot Wheels buy one get one free and I made a point of trying the stock in each of the 5 within five miles of my house.  On a random Friday morning I happened to have off burning up some time, I stopped into one of them and bumped into this girl I had some dealings with when I was 16 doing some before-school shopping with her apparently high school-age son.  I guess you could call it “puppy love,” but in 1995, she was a 'girlfriend' in my 16 year-old mind,...