There are only a few real friends we have in life. We may have hundreds or even thousands of acquaintances, but real friends, we only have a few.
While fulfilling my civic obligation at jury duty this week, my phone vibrated. I was sitting there watching people give the judge their excuses on why they should be allowed to go home, so I welcomed the interruption.
I looked down and saw that it was a text from a high school buddy. In ...
Continue Reading →
Vinyl records are making a comeback.
What was written off for dead 25 years ago is now the only segment of the music business that’s showing an increase in hard copy sales.
The website marketplace.org recently featured a story on the subject. It states that record album sales in 2013 had grown to 6 million, and that number is expected to increase this year.
With the last new vinyl record press going online in 1982, why has this happened? The answer is young people.
Even ...
Continue Reading →
Turns out, a lot.
Most of us are given three names when we are born. Our first name is the one most often used to address us, and our last name is normally handed down through our father’s side of the family. Our middle name can be another family member’s name or completely random. Some people don’t have a middle name.
So, how did we all go from having one name, to more than one? Well, it’s complicated and varies, depending on ...
Continue Reading →
My wife and I don’t eat out often, but when we do, we treat ourselves to a nice meal. This time, we tried somewhere fancy. And the restaurant we visited had more wait staff dedicated to us than Wal Mart has employees.
There were two valets, our maitre’ d, three greeting girls, our waiter, a beverage waiter, a bread girl, a guy whose only job seemed to be refilling our water glasses, and another girl who just walked from place to ...
Continue Reading →
Just as the temps finally decided to creep near 100 degrees for the first time this summer, the air conditioning in my car quit.
As I drove along with all of the windows down, I had an epiphany.
Suddenly, I became aware of things I hadn’t noticed in 35 years. Things you can’t notice with the windows up and the AC blowing.
I could hear the sounds of birds, dogs, the road noise, and the feeling of the hot ...
Continue Reading →
Valentine’s Day in elementary school was, for most of us, the first opportunity to express feelings for someone of the opposite sex.
They weren’t real feelings of love of course, but they were the first expressions that helped us to understand that maybe we could overlook the cooties about which we’d been warned.
Sadly, most men still think a card for Valentine’s Day, her birthday or Mother’s Day, is all it takes to make a woman happy.
Women have dozens of triggers for ...
Continue Reading →
Robin Williams died.
Celebrities are as mortal as the rest of us, but Robin wasn’t like the rest of us. That’s why the news of his death was such a shock to most of America.
Anyone under 40 grew up with Robin Williams. Those of us older than that remember the first time we saw him. I first saw him on television in the 1970’s on the show Happy Days. He played a space alien named Mork.
He exploded from the screen.
He later had his ...
Continue Reading →
Cake is overrated. Yet for some reason, it’s used to celebrate the biggest events of our lives, including birthdays, weddings and retirements.
I believe that people like pie better, they just don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings when someone bakes them a cake.
Seriously, can you honestly tell me that you wouldn’t rather have a bite of warm pecan pie with your glass of milk than a piece of cake?
Even royalty prefers pie. Marie Antoinette didn’t say, “Let them eat pie.” She ...
Continue Reading →
There’s been much debate about the lack of manners in this country. Courtesy used to be called common courtesy. It’s now neither.
So, what can we do to bring back niceness? I have a suggestion.
Meetings.
Let’s send those who lack the social graces (we’ll call them cretins) to meetings. Ten minutes in an average employee staff meeting would do far more to set a cretin on the straight-and-narrow path than a smack upside the head ever could.
As a matter of fact, I ...
In most American households, women do the cooking inside and men do the cooking outside.
If you look way back in human history (the 1950’s), there’s a reason for this.
The first outdoor BBQ likely occurred half a million years ago shortly after the domestication of fire and around the time of Nancy Pelosi’s birth. But it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th Century, when George Stephen inherited part of the Weber Metal Spinning Company in the Chicago area, that man ...
Continue Reading →