Lucky # 7

I am going to say this once, and never mention it again... 2006 SUCKED. Starting in January I got the beatdown of a lifetime. There were good things... My new home for one, but overall I'm glad that '06 is gone. I have never had so much crap come down the pike at one time in my life. Completely ironic because 2006 was a "year of the dog". In my opinion it was a dog of a year. Ok, there, I'm done.

Welcome 2007. I have only one resolution this year... A resolution that puts all the responsibility on me. If you do what you've always done, you will get what you've always gotten... If you want more, do more. That's it. Sounds simple, huh?
If I want to be healthier, I have to take the time to exercise, I have to eat right, I have to cut back on the stress in my life by learning to delegate. I have to do it. Me.
If I want more financial freedom, I have to budget my spending, I have to make better investment choices. I have to do it. Me again.
I have a distinct problem with the entitled generation we have created over the last few decades. Nobody wants to earn, but everybody wants to recieve. Nobody is responsible anymore.
I ranted about this when my house got robbed this summer, so I won't go into it again at this point.
My youngest brother once said to me, "It takes a lot of 'attaboys to make up for one oops." I never forgot that. I have had quite a few oopses in my life, but my attaboy count is pretty damn high nowadays too. Nobody can hand me redemption, it has to be earned. This year I will earn as much redemtion as I can.

On a side note, this blog isn't exactly what I had envisioned when I started it. There will be changes made. Nothing radical, but last New Year's I promised more political opinion, and I feel I've failed in that area. My personal stories have been well recieved, and I'll continue with that. The 100 word stories... Well we'll see. I have completely fallen flat on the Naked Lunch Specials due to long working hours, but there will be a rebirth there as well. Anything else you want from me, you need to ask or it will probably not happen.

Bad Call, A 100 Word Misadventure

Bowl game day at the bar, and all the Miller Lite girls were dressed as referees. Mark walked up to the redhead.
“If I gave you my number, would you call me for holding?”
She barely glanced in his direction, “You’re out of bounds, pal”
Mark suddenly made illegal contact.
In the blink of an eye she whirled. The blinding flash of pain told him that the kick was good.
As Mark lay gasping, he saw her whisper “personal foul” to the bouncers. They dragged him towards the door where Mark was sure there would be roughing of the passer.

I got to pick the subject for this week's contest due to my win two weeks back. This story was based on a conversation I had with a friend while in Shakespeare's bar on 6th street here in ATX about Miller Lite girls dressed like (you guessed it) referees. We made every bad pun we could think of, and I fit as many as I could into 100 words. That being said, Go, Read, Listen, Enjoy, VOTE!

Winter In Tejas

Posting has been light lately, and life has been busy, so I thought I'd share a picture I took in my front yard at the end of November. Winter can be brutal in this part of the world. It couldn't have been 70 degrees that day... Poor little butterfly.

Huh?

Something seems to be wrong with my site here. I sort of hope it will fix itself, if nothing seems to be wrong, maybe it already did. If you get no sidebar, and only this post it didn't. current posts may be accessed by clicking here. Merry Christmas.

Bowl Me Over

Holy crap! I can't believe I almost forgot!

Game Day!

East Carolina vs University of Southern Florida

Papa John's.com Bowl

(shut up... It is so a real bowl...)

Kickoff is at 1pm Eastern in Birmingham, Alabama

Where it will be a...

First Down... PIRATES!

What sucks is that I can't watch the game because it's on ESPN2 and I'm at work.

24-7 USF at the half...

and final.

ECU deserved to lose this one. They played like crap. At least I can forget about it until next year.

Oh, and to save myself some long term grief... Congrats to the Appalachian Hippies on their championship... or something like that.

Pour Me, A 100 Word Christmas Story

I was a bartender once. I hated Christmas, so I always took the closing shift on December 24th. It was usually a quiet night. One year, this old man wandered in just after midnight. Dirty white beard, paunchy and run down. He ordered peppermint schnapps.
“Laid me off, little bastards” he mumbled as I poured. I tried to ignore him, but he kept on and on. “Whole thing’s automated, don’t need me anymore.”
Finally I said, “Happens to everyone eventually, old man”
His belly shook violently as he shouted, “Ho, ho, hold on there sonny! I was Santa Claus damnit!”

This is my entry for this week's weekly challenge, "A Christmas Tale", here. Go, Read, Listen, Enjoy, VOTE.

Nollaig Shona Duit

Happy Christmas to all my readers out there. Posting will probably be light for the next few days and up until Christmas. I blog from work, and I have a ton of stuff going on right now. I want to thank all my regular readers for coming back time and again, and I want to thank anyone who just happens to stumble in for taking the time to read a little. I have had almost nine thousand visitors (since I started counting) in the last year and a half. I wasn't sure this was going to go on this long, and without all the feedback it wouldn't have.

There will be a 100 word Christmas story on Friday, but other than that I'll only write as opportunity permits, so in case I don't get to say it later I'll say it again now...

Happy Christmas to you and yours.

Lei Brother, A 100 Word Story

Brother Jerome smiled as he walked through the abbey. It was the third Tuesday of the month. Vespers was over, reverently he genuflected before the cross and headed over to the dining hall. Once there he removed his old robe and donned a Hawaiian shirt. Grabbing a beer in a mug made from half a coconut, he helped himself to a chunk of pineapple on a stick, and made his way over to listen to Brother Silas play the ukulele. Third Tuesday was luau night, the one day a month when the brothers could dispense with all that monky business.

This week's challenge was "Monkey Business" just like last week's was "Rehab". Go, Read, Listen, Enjoy, VOTE.

C'mon people, I could win this one.

UPDATE: It looks as though I have won this one. Woo-Hoooo! Thank you to all those who Went, Read, Listened, Enjoied and VOTED!

Sorry Dr. Suess

“Christmas is coming” K-Nine growled, with his Grinch-like sneer.
“It’s coming again… like it comes every year.”
“How can you not like Christmas?” He’d been asked most his life…
Asked by his friends, family, mother, ex-wife.
“It’s just that I don’t” he’d say with a slash of his hand,
“When I was a kid, Christmas was grand”
“But now it means work, and bad attitudes,
People are vicious and I can’t take their moods.”
“Santa can pass me by, save him some work
let him bring stuff to some other jerk”
It could be his heart was too small of course,
Or his ex may have gotten it, in the divorce.
It could be that the whole thing is an act,
and he really does like Christmas in fact.
Possibly it’s that he’s an ass, some might assert
He’s often quite rude, grouchy and curt.
It could be any one of these things, perhaps even two,
But it’s OK either way, Happy Christmas to YOU.

No, Thank You

I got a nice little package in the mail today. It was a thank you letter from Mrs. Peterson (The Civil War presentation I did). But what was really cool was that three of the boys in her class sent me personal notes. I guess I did good.

Puck You

Short and to the point. I am at the Dallas Stars game tonight. They are getting ready to hit the ice, and I am in a skybox at the American Airlines Center here in the big D. The other big D. I just wanted to take a second to brag. Woo-hoooo!

End of the first period, 0-0. Freakin' Stars can't even score five on three.

Early in the second, Columbus scored on the Stars... Short handed even. 1-0 Blue Jackets.

End of the second period, score stands 1-0.

Dallas power play goal by Boucher at the start of the 3rd. 1 all. Woop!

Columbus right back att'm 2-1 Jackets.

6:20 left, 3-1 Columbus. I gonna go out on a limb and say this one is over.

It's all over. 3-1 Blue Jackets final.

And that's the end of the liveblogging for tonight, thanks for tuning in.

Back Wood Love, A 100 Word Story

She’uns was da purtiest gal I eber saw. She din’t allus care fo me doh. Still… she went wid me fo a while, ‘cause I’s da onliest boy her age round here. Den da new preacher come. He had him a boy chile same age as me. We sho din’t hit it off. He whooped my ass good… an took her too. I ain’t no dum hick lak he thot tho. After what I foun' out, I got her back, an him an his preachin’ daddy had to leeb. Sometimes it ain’t what you hab fust, it’s what you re-hab.

Go, read, listen, VOTE.

If you have trouble following the dialect, read it out loud the way it looks. Really.

UPDATE: My story didn't end up on the podcast or the ballot for some reason. Maybe the midget couldn't read it. Anyway... go, read, listen, vote for sombody else. I feel so disenfranchised... (sigh)

65 Years

When I meet WWII veterans, I always say, "My father was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed." When I was young, I didn't really understand the connotations of that. I knew it gave me a symbolance of commonality with someone around 50 years my senior. As I got older, and started to learn about the general brutality of the world around me, I thought I understood a little more. The heart wrenching fear of an unexpected attack. With life experiences, my knowledge grew. I learned about war, and death, and violence. On Sept 11, 2001, it was opened up to me how little I really understood, regardless how much I knew. 65 years ago this morning, My father awoke to an air-raid siren, and was shown how little he understood. My father spent his life trying to show his family what he learned, to prepare us for life. He never forgot what he learned that day. I'll try not to either.

World War Toon

I have several reasons for posting this particular cartoon...

1) According to my mother, Grandpa Hill loved Popeye. I rarely talk about my Ma's side of the family, so, there you go.

2) It's Pearl Harbor day. Something about the Japanese and WWII should be in here.

3) It struck me a poignant that Popeye was signing a peace treaty when they attacked him. Maybe we should remember that in the current war.

4) I like cartoons.

DISCLAIMER: If I, in any way, offended anyone with this blatantly racist and vicious cartoon, I would like to apologize now... I am truly sorry that you are a dumbass. Really.

Dear Santa,

Please make it stop.

Command Performance, A 100 Word Story

It was Captain Wook’s first command. He had risen through the ranks from trooper to officer with strategy and forethought.
As young as he was, he was surprised to have been given a battle commission and command of the first wave. He wasn’t worried though, the enemy had proven to be splintered by political factions and a populace with an overactive social conscience. They would be easy to defeat.
As he reached out with one of his tentacles and shoved another screaming human into his mastication orifice he thought to himself, “Not bad for a Cephalopod from a small moon.”

Go read, listen, enjoy, VOTE.