Due to drastic career changes, our previous relocation to Grand Rapids, MI has been rescinded, and we’re back in our home up in Indian River. Since we were never able to sell our home, moving into the home we still own is actually rather nice. I far prefer one house payment to two. 🙂
Now that we’re back up north, permanently as far as we can tell, we need to do something about our landscaping. After our home burned down a few years back, we never landscaped around the replacement home. And while the septic drain field being in the front yard means we have lovely green grass:
We have nothing done to the house itself to make it look nice:
Yes, the deck has a couple of shrubs, and in the summer had some flowers, but let’s face it, this is just sad. Unfortunately, when I had a landscaper come out, he wasn’t help AT ALL. Since he couldn’t fill our yard with trees (drain field, anything other than tiny ornamental trees are right out), he basically told us we were out of luck.
We’ll probably have to find another landscaping company, and see if they are more imaginative. As it is, we know we want flowers and a small tree, with a nice path along the front… but we have no idea how to plan that, much less build it.
Does anyone else have a drain field in their front yard? How do you go about landscaping when trees are out of the realm of possibility? Are we doomed to an ugly front yard with lush, green grass?
Like any fallen-off-the-wagon blogger, I’ve decided to commemorate my intention to return to regular (personal) writing by redesigning my site. I think the last time I redesigned my site, I blogged for a week. Now that we’re back up north, with only one house payment, and only two jobs — perhaps I’ll have some time to brain dump online.
Expect lots of news about BirdCam. It’s my latest obsession. 🙂
Here’s to our new life, which is basically a 1 year rewind. Details later…
Today would have been Mr. Rogers’ 85th birthday. If you were a child in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, you know Mr. Rogers. Heck, I don’t even remember my childhood, and I still know this man.
I look at the fast paced lives my kids are growing up in, and it makes me sad to realize that not only don’t they have the opportunity to watch Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, even if they did, they wouldn’t enjoy it. I honestly believe Fred Rogers did for several generations of kids something that parents, doctors, educators, and even PBS can’t seem to do anymore — make kids feel good about themselves. There are plenty of good, moral television shows available for children today, but none of them are capable of doing what Fred Rogers did with a little bit of kindness, a closet full of sweaters, and a whole lot of imagination.
To be honest, I don’t think it’s the fault of current television programs that they can’t accomplish the same thing Mr. Rogers did. Our media-soaked world is a different place, and for better or worse, lifestyles have changed. The thing that worries me, is that in our technology rich world, nothing seems to have taken the place of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Nothing has been able to speak to the past few generations in the same way a simple man with a soft voice and a kind heart did for so many years.
I’m almost 40 years old now, which is the same age Fred Rogers was when he started his television show. Yes, my mother raised me to be a decent young man, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit how deeply Mr. Rogers affected the man I grew up to be. Heck, I’m probably a writer today because Mr. Rogers told me I could do it.
It sounds melodramatic, but I seriously worry about the kids who grew up with Power Rangers instead of Mr. McFeely and Queen Sara. Hopefully there is an equivalent positive force in the lives of recent generations that I’m simply not privy to. Hopefully with the speed up of our day to day lives, our youth have been able to slow down enough to care about people. Hopefully, they learned to make believe along the way, too.
Perhaps it’s because I grew up without a real father figure. Perhaps it’s because as a nerdy, introverted kid I spent more time in the land of make believe than other kids. Whatever the reason, Fred Rogers is a man I look up to. I admire what he did, I admire who he was, and in the back of my mind, I always try to live in a way that would make him proud of me. Mr. Rogers, I’ll say back to you your own words, “If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
Happy birthday, Mr. Rogers. You’re loved and missed. Thank you for caring about generations of children. You made the world a better place.
Greg jerked out of his fitful slumber because a cold draft snuck under the covers when his wife got out of bed. After quickly sealing himself back into his burrito-like cocoon, he realized that warm or not, his aching back wouldn’t allow him to sleep. With all the angst a 40 year old man can muster, Greg swung his feet out of bed and shoved them into his slippers. One of those slippers was soggy and misshapen, thanks to a set of puppy teeth which were obviously thoroughly lubricated with slobber.
Greg plodded into the kitchen, and scooped himself a bowl of scrambled eggs, which were getting cold in a pan on the stove. After eating his eggs, Greg dressed himself and patiently waited for a chance to use the bathroom. Then he waited some more. And more. Finally he used the bathroom, shaved his face, and relinquished control of the bathroom to the waiting hordes of children.
With a quick kiss for his wife, Greg grabbed his briefcase and walked out to his car. He didn’t have gloves, or any motivation to scrape the ice off the windshield, so he sat in his cold car and shivered while he waited for the defrosters to do their work. After a few minutes, he grabbed the still icy steering wheel, and drove across town where he faced 9 hours of waiting to come home. Or “work” as some people called it.
Now let’s listen to Fred’s morning:
Fred felt a cool breeze on his leg, and woke to find his wife had gotten out of bed early to make breakfast. She didn’t purposefully wake him up, but after the fitful night of sleep, getting out of bed was a welcome change. When he slipped his feet into his slippers, he found one had been thoroughly chewed by the puppy, and was much more absorbent than he realized when it came to dog slobber.
Not wanting to let his slipper incident go unnoticed, Fred clopped into the kitchen and proudly announced, “Now presenting, Sir Squishy Toes of Tasty Slipper Lane. You may all bow and slobber your praises.”
The girls eating breakfast around the table giggled, and Fred noticed they left him a sizable amount of scrambled eggs in the pan, where the ambient heat kept them warm. Knowing what happens to the bathroom when 3 girls and a wife get ready for their day, Fred quickly gobbled down his eggs and tried to be first into the bathroom. Unfortunately, his plans were foiled when he went back for seconds. (The eggs were good!)
After his eggs, Fred waited patiently in the queue outside the bathroom door. He challenged his daughters to a “pee pee dance off”, to see whose dance was the most pathetic. The girls let dad go next. After a quick bathroom break, Fred grabbed his electric razor and released the bathroom to the girly inhabitants of Tasty Slipper Lane. He grabbed his coat and his briefcase, and then looked around the house for his wife. She was waiting for him with a smile, happy to see that after all their years of marriage, a goodbye kiss was more than just habit — he wouldn’t leave the house without the brief moment of intimacy.
Fred smiled as he approached his car, because the frosted windows meant he’d get an extra 5 minutes of audiobook listening in before work. He sat in his car, shivering slightly, and with his hands crammed into his coat pocket he dove into the world of his audiobook. In a few minutes, the car had warmed up enough to drive, so he went to work. Fred shut the car off in the office parking lot just before an exciting scene in the book. It would be something to look forward to on the drive home. But first, there was hot office coffee waiting inside, and Fred was excited to warm up his hands with a mug full of it.
The point is probably painfully obvious. I’m both Greg and Fred, and this was my morning. For me, and I suspect many others, simply focusing on the positive instead of the negative can make a situation drastically different. This morning, I chose to be Fred, and my day has been wonderful. More often than not, I choose to be Greg, and it sets the mood for the entire day.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, try to be Fred. Just once. See how it goes. 🙂
That’s how long it took before I had to shave my face every day. Since I know guys that had to shave at 12, I refuse to believe this revelation marks me as a “grown up” — I sincerely hope that day never comes. 🙂
For the record, I hate shaving. I’ve never really liked it, and apart from a 12 year old boy wanting to be manly, I think I’ve always been perfectly happy with my baby face. But that’s all gone now.
If you aren’t a member of the Hairy Face Cleaving Society, there are basically 3 ways to go:
Use a modern cartridge shaver. This is the route most folks go. The razors can range from pink with moisturizing strips, to 5 bladed steel jobs with a AA battery to provide vibration when face-scraping.
Use an electric shaver. This is the method I currently use. I don’t use it because it offers a clean shave (it doesn’t), I don’t use it because it’s fast (it’s not), I use it because it seems to best hit both “sorta fast” and “notta lotta razor burn” — which is very important to me.
Safety razor with 1940’s handle. This is truly the best method. No really. If you can lather up your pre-warmed face with a soap cake and badger brush, then slowly slide a double-edged razor blade over your throat — you will have the cleanest, razor-burn-freeish shave you’ve ever had.
Truly, the third method is the best, and by far the cheapest. The only problem is that it takes a long time. It’s also difficult to get dressed and let out the dogs while shaving with a double-edged razor blade. Just sayin. Still, if you’ve ever wanted an amazing shave, follow the advice of my cooler-than-me friend Kyle, and try the old fashioned method. You won’t be sorry.
I’m making this resolution a year in advance so that perhaps I can get my life in order enough that devoting time to writing fiction might be practical.
I have plenty of ideas for books, but fleshing them into more than napkin-sized scribbles is something beyond my ken. Hopefully reading more books this year (my goal is 24) will help. Hopefully spending this year with the notion of getting my life stabilized a bit will help too. Heck, maybe the boxes in my office will even get unpacked.
Anyway, Dear Next Year Shawn: Write a book man. Quit fantasizing about it, and just do it. Oh, and This Year Shawn? Yeah, help a brother out. You have 12 months.
I’m a regular sufferer of writer’s block, and for years I had a deep seated fear it meant I had run out of ideas. Or creativity. Or grey matter. Perhaps that’s true, but since that is depressing and impossible to fix, I decided to declare it a total lie. And now it’s on the Internet, so you KNOW it’s true.
Creativity doesn’t run out, it just gets stopped up a bit. There’s probably an apt analogy about how Drain-O isn’t an ideal fix, and how we often treat mental clogs the same way with alcohol — but I don’t really feel like making such a profound and absurd comparison. Basically, I’m currently cleaning out my pipes. And this is my blog, so both of my readers are stuck with the slimy hair globs of my writer’s clog. You’re welcome.
I’ll leave you with that mental image, and just remind you — if you’re struggling with writing, or creating in general: Creativity doesn’t run out, it just gets clogged up. Write in a journal. Draw a blue duck. Record a podcast about the value of berber carpet. Heck, you can even spew wild claims of psychological understanding as it pertains to creativity on your blog. I know a guy that did that once.
I’m normally not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. You never hear anything thing about them after about January 2nd, and they’re often unrealistic and too general. As it happens, I’m actually at a point that I need to make some major changes, and I’m also at the point that I actually realize it. It’s the perfect storm of resolution-making. Â So 2013, while in you I resolve to:
1) Have a month of income in savings by the end of the year.
Some of you think it appalling that we don’t already have this in place, but keep in mind this is building on the, “stop bouncing checks” resolution from some time ago. We make plenty of money, but we suck, absolutely suck, at managing it. The current double house payment (wanna buy a house in Indian River?) exacerbates this problem — but we still make enough money. Just need to handle it better.
2) By the end of 2013, weigh 190 or less.
Thank you all for assuming this isn’t a very big goal, when in reality it’s about a 35 pound goal. Yes yes, I carry my weight well, but it’s to the point that even carrying my weight well isn’t helping much. I look fat unless I wear a muumuu, which not only isn’t an option at work, but also makes a person look fat.
3) Stop missing deadlines.
If you know me from my CBT Nuggets video series, you fully understand this one. It seems my life is always chaotic, and every other week I seem to have Ebola, but nonetheless, I need to get on track with meeting deadlines. For Linux Journal readers, you probably don’t realize this as much — but I suspect the Executive Editor (who is awesome, btw) has considered hiring a contract killer to help motivate me. Let’s just say I have a habit of turning in writing assignments for our monthly magazine over a month late. Do the math, that’s messed up.
So there you have it, the Shawn Powers List of Things He Hopes to Do but Will Probably Mess Up, or the SPLOTHHTDBWPME as I affectionately refer to it. I also hope to read more and stress less, but those are too general, and I already reached my self-enforced limit of 3 resolutions. Happy New Year everyone!
The problem is that I assumed everyone would KNOW I was being completely sarcastic in regards to “thanking” Westboro. I thought my tweet made it clear that in my family discussion, I used the comparison that “Westboro is to Christians as Al Qaeda is to Muslims.”
I wanted my kids to realize that by assuming all Muslims are evil like Al Qaeda, they’re using the same logic that all Christians are as hateful and evil as Westboro Baptist Church. Unfortunately, not everyone understood what I meant. This includes one of the crazy whackjobs from that “church” as well, since I was retweeted by one of the Phelps guys. (And not the cool Phelps, who swims really fast)
So when I started getting nasty (concerned) emails and facebook messages, I clarified on twitter:
But still, the thought that I’d be associated with WBC in any way other than disgust and disapproval was so reprehensible, I felt a blog post was appropriate. And a shower. And a nice long vomit.
I’ll leave you with a little bit of encouragement in regards to WBC, which I originally read on John Scalzi’s website. It posits that the entire WBC “thing” is nothing more than a money-making scam. That at least makes sense, as I can accept people being scamming scumbags. Human beings actually believing the stuff they say? That’s harder to comprehend.
My kids are selling pies for a school fundraiser for their choir/vocal class. (My two oldest are in choir, and are amazing, thanks for asking!) The cool part is, after orders are taken, the kids MAKE the pies themselves! What a neat idea, hats off to Hopkins Schools for a cool fundraiser.
If you want to buy one, we’ll do our best to get it to you. If you’re nearby, we’ll just deliver it. The further away you are, the more challenging delivery gets. If it requires freezing and dry ice to ship, we might have to share the shipping expenses. 🙂 (Note: I freely offer my pie eating services for those needing such services)
Anyway, the Apple Pie is $9, and the Blueberry Pie is $10. Â Here are paypal links to send the money:
NOTE: I’m a moron and can’t make the paypal links work. If you want to use paypal, just send the money to paypal@brainofshawn.com with a link and a note as to which kind and what type you want. 🙂
Today would have been 
