When the Smoke Clears

There’s this trend I’ve seen I can’t understand or quite wrap my mind around: No-Show Socks.
The young ones are even picking on each other about it. You could be ostracized for wearing socks that actually come above the lower margin of the ankle. At least the Army requires that the ankle be covered so [...]

If you thought the trip out was tough… the trip back was about as bad.
I was bundled up into a cab to try to make it to the airport in time from my briefing and I barely made it. I knew I was taking a very long way home due to a no-plane-change stopover [...]

Travel.
It’s here again with all it’s frustrations. First off, the kind lady at the airline counter who told me where my gate was located: D14. Unfortunately, it was not. It was in an entirely different building and by the time I got there, the plane had left. The Customer Service rep was kind enough [...]

… in the playground at Chick-Fil-A. 2 girls chasing the boys, threatening to fight them. The parent of one of the boys steps in:
Parent: You girls have to stop it. You do not hit people. Where is your momma? I will go talk to her if you don’t calm down.
Girls: (looking only moderately [...]

Travel beckons again, not for pleasure but for work, with a few smatterings of pleasure thrown in for good measure. Next week I get to fly back to California, meetings in Cupertino. I was out there a few months ago, but to visit Monterey for business and I don’t think Cupertino will be quite as [...]

Slow morning… but a piece of advice:
When doing Butterbar’s high-speed workout, Day 3, shave before working out, not afterwards.
My arms were shaking and my shoulders barely had enough strength to keep them high enough to get to the top of the cheeks or above the lip.
I’m bleeding. From multiple sites. Bastard.

Maybe I don’t really have a favorite season. Maybe each season is wonderful. I’ve usually pointed out that it was the fall that most attracted me with the cooling of the days, the gathering of all the good foods the summer provided, the homecoming of people not just to football games but back from vacations, [...]

The crow still shows up each morning, flapping at the door. That’s five days in a row now.
The owls have left for the time being.
Tonight, as I walked down towards the stream two crows swooped in under the tree canopy, then a hawk came in out of nowhere and chased them off.
I [...]

To all executive level staff:
In recent meetings I have been requested to do provide information on products. I am able to provide that information, but I also add caveats. Certainly I am not one to shirk work or avoid responsibilities, but since I am usually met with blank stares or disbelief, I wish to [...]

As many of you might imagine, I have a certain obligation on a day like this to calm the storm… so to speak. I wasn’t able to go visit my mother this year, but I did talk to her on the phone… once I tracked her down. And believe me, it’s not easy on a [...]

It would be nice to let logic take over, let the mundane interpretation be the guide in every encounter, every waking moment. Dreams could be left to their insignificance, chemical misfirings and samplings of short term memories reordered and enhanced into unrecognizable patterns.
Deep down there are still those holdover superstitions that I cannot abate. Hawks [...]

Alright, folks, I’m not giving away any trade secrets here, but I have some non-southern transplant friends, and a few of them manage to try to fit in with the niceties of Southern Life. However, there is a key component they are just not getting so for EVERYONE out there…
The key to the elixir [...]

I have to get this one out there so I can collect some royalties:
Last night I was having dinner with a friend. I found a sushi oasis that is only 30 miles away… a short hop for some uncooked fish cut “just so” in my mind.
The restaurant has that new century feel to [...]

I’ve always had a strong like of chess. I won’t say it’s a love, since I would not turn my back on such a thing as often as I do if I truly loved it, but I enjoy the concept behind it. For some of my friends, I am a pretty good player, but lately [...]

Man, I admire you so much.
To get paid all that money to do absolutely NOTHING… brilliant!
I like long books. I actually read War and Peace and had a great time with it, but over the years it has been “corrected” and re-edited.
Seriously, man, the spelling errors were bad enough. I know I know, [...]