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Showing posts with the label real life

It Started with a Christmas Album

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  used with permission ( link 1 ) ( link 2 ) I ain’t e’em WANT to sell my house…      Four weeks before this was all in motion, we took the girls to the Tanglewood Festival of Lights.   If you don’t know, going there usually means you will be in your car for 3-5 hours, and this time was more on the five side of things.   With children in the car, my phone was not to be the one that sourced the music for the ride.   Instead, we listened to a Christmas album. I HATE Christmas albums, but this one was jazzy and the singer had--… this VOICE.   I asked the wife person “who is this?” at least 621 times.   She explained who and then how she knew/knew of her each time I asked, since we were in traffic with the car in park.   The jazzy sounds and buttery voice had me hooked.      In November, my last previous neighbors had moved and after prepping the house, the company that owned it opted to SELL instead of seeking a new tenant.   To the surprise of ALL involved parties, the house snared

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  July 14, 1997… I walked into an NC DMV and got my no-longer-a-kid license.   The one with facial hair, a stamp that didn’t peg me for being under 18 and reflecting a height that reflected my last adolescent growth spurt. I also registered to vote.      In the interceding 23 years, I have not missed one single opportunity to inform myself and vote in every single election.   I have avoided being arrested for or convicted of anything that would jeopardize my right to vote.   I avoided being less than informed on issues that would drive who I should vote for, even in a land before ubiquitous internetting and unsolicited (or solicited!) text messaging.   Every first Tuesday after the first Monday of every November, I got my ass up and went and participated.   When Early Voting became a thing in my mid-to-late 20s, I chose a favorite polling location – one alternative one now – and have not missed an opportunity to vote early since.      I have seen election seasons come and go.  

True Story©… Dating Advice

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       Not that anyone needed to know this, but I might have benefitted in my earlier days from some good dating advice.   One might say it was a small miracle that I escaped high school without my virginity. This story ain’t about that… Well, not directly.      See, I always have this thing where I am willing to expend a little effort to see people do well, even if that means they will do better than I am doing or have done.   With that in mind, I used the time I have had in the house over the past seven months helping men with the tools they might use to assist them in securing more and better women.      I hear you laughing, but these kids these days have it MADE.   They have the whole of the internet, cell phones – of which I did not have until age 21 – are standard now, and ON those phones cameras are unavoidable under nearly any stretch short of the kind you send a kid into a gas station counties away because you will be using it to sell crack.   They have dating sites whe

Still Not Listening to "They"

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     “They” said this shit would be dead in no time flat.  NO one wanted to hear that shit. That was in the mid to late 1970s.  I would be born only a couple of short years later in 1979.  That said, the argument can be made that we literally grew up with you.      “That ain’t real music, anybody can write some damn nursery rhymes,” they said while continuing to NOT write anything – ANYTHING – themselves.  The irony of the repetition of their own parents’ detraction from what they did in their own youth, and their parents before them.  Bearing that similarity, it stands to reason that they would know how this story would continue, if not how it would (or not) end . Hip Hop…      At 40 years old, I have become accustomed to being told for 30something years that I was wasting my time liking – nay, loving – it.  In the 80s, to me it was people who looked like me, spoke like me and dressed like I wished I could afford to.  It spoke to interests that I had and evolved with me as

What is Love?

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(sorry, I HAD to do it)      For all we think we know about love, the real fact of the matter is that we really don’t know shit. Ask 50 people the question “what is love?” and you will get 47 answers. Sure, there is a textbook definition: But really, what does all of that tell us?  We have a biblical edict to love one another, but I am have been through my bible time again and have yet to find the words on exactly HOW to do so. Please note, I am taking nothing from my bible as I find nothing anywhere else specifically telling me this either. We find ourselves left to learning everything we know about love from those who love/loved us… My pops: I don’t know I am willing to call this love.  Sure I know him, but do I?  So little was contributed, so little was available that his mother did most of the things that he should have been doing for us.  To him and to everyone he should have been making moves for, his love was for himself. Shit, if this lottery ticket i

Baby Name Generator Abuse

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I have lost 40 pounds… 60 if you count the 20 I lost immediately when my heart was trying to kill me, but we’ll only count the 40 I lost on purpose. Diet and exercise.  In the sharing of my experience, every Tuesday, I will post a low-carb meal for you.  I have been doing that for most of a year now.  What I DON’T post is that every 6-10 weeks or so, we enjoy a random-ass cheat day.  Only one and we feel horrible the next morning. Where I work, there are THREE private donut shops with some of the best donuts in my state.  Two are owned by Vietnamese cousins and each is about 8 minutes from my job.      One morning on a cheat day, I stopped by one of the Vietnamese ladies to pick some things up for us.  Ahead of us in line was a man with his four kids.  As it was apparently the last day of school  for them, he was treating them and letting them choose. Him:  “Mason?” Kid:  “[donut]” Me:  *thinks*  “Aiden” Him:  “Aiden?” Kid:  “[donut]” Me: *thinks*  “Conn