I'm Thinking…No!

He or she who controls the television remote controls the kingdom. In our house, my wife is master of the television remote.  She rules over it like Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.  Oh, Prince Albert may have thought he had a certain degree of mastery, but no.  It resides squarely in the hand of, well, the hand.  Control is seldom relinquished – most usually if she’s still in bed or has gone to use the computer in another room.  In those cases, I wait a discreet amount of time, then cautiously approach the remote, fingers trembling. Continue reading “Riding Remote Shotgun”

This isn’t really about having a new car – it’s more about buying one, and the ways people approach it. We (my wife and I) tend to be spontaneous buyers.  You’ve seen them in car commercials. We walk into the dealership thinking solidly in our minds that “we’re just starting to look”.  It ends up with a hurried cleaning out of the glovebox and the trunk, checking under the seats for anything there because the new car will be ready in an hour.  On two occasions we’ve picked up our daughter someplace in a new car she didn’t recognize. The last incident happened at our niece’s wedding in Pennsylvania.  And here’s how it happened. Continue reading “That “New Car” Smell”

There are a number of things in life that straight – out confuse me.  Their purpose, function, and intent confound my intellectual capacities. For example, adding salt to chocolate. What are we doing here?  Can’t chocolate stand fully and completely on its own?  In a rare few instances, other flavors can be added because they’re sweet or compliment – like mint, caramel, even peanut butter or coffee.  But that’s about it.  Salt is clearly a seasoning for meats, in particular burgers, a bit with pepper in mashed potatoes.  Some may wish to add it to the boiling water for pasta, but after that, we’re done here. A while ago, a friend gave us some specialty chocolate candies with sea salt.  There were great boulders of salt perched atop the chocolate.  All I could taste was the salt.  What were the masters of chocolate-making thinking? Continue reading “I Don’t Understand . . . . .”

My faithful readers will recall a blog a few weeks back in which I outlined things that make me smile. Those are the slices of life that give us pleasure and satisfaction.  Well, on the flip side are those instances that do the opposite – the bits and pieces that lead us to “what were they thinking?”  Here are some items and situations that either provoke eye-rolling or cause is to recoil in disgust.  If I’m being overly sensitive, you’re probably right so don’t bother pointing it out. Continue reading “That’s Disgusting!”

On a recent morning, I went into a variety store to purchase some lottery tickets.  Next to the counter was a rack of red “Make America Great Again” caps.  I walked out of the store, not really because the sentiment was offensive, but more because of who and what it represents.  For some, it’s a line in the sand, but for others, it represents unbridled fear and divisive rhetoric that’s driving decisions that aren’t in America’s collective best interests.  Those decisions and policies are neither reflective nor thoughtful – they’re knee-jerk reactions to perceived injustices. That got me to thinking about where we’ve come and where we’re going. Continue reading “How to Make America Truly Great”

I’m in.  Not really sure how to get started here, but I fully embrace the concept that I would somehow be able to influence the thoughts, habits, and branding of millions of people and get paid truck-loads of cash in the process.  This came to my attention as I saw that one celebrity’s daughter is an “Instagram Influencer”.   I hadn’t really understood how that works, and full disclosure, I still don’t.  People actually pay to hear what she has to say? Is that like the Kardashians, who don’t have any appreciably marketable skills yet still end up on television and in magazines all the time?  And the famous daughter is like, what, 19?  And she got a crew scholarship to USC, despite not having ever been on anything less than a forty-foot sailboat.  How cool is that?  I can just see her asking “What do these big paddles do?” at the first practice, or informing the coach that “Riding backwards makes me nauseous”. Continue reading “Becoming An “Influencer””

Was it not Benjamin Franklin who wrote about the inevitability of death and taxes?  I think so, but what he neglected to mention was that taxes are the usually the more painful of the two. This year was more exciting, because in addition to our own revised taxes, our daughter moved, changed jobs, and has gone back to school.  Federal taxes along with a nice assortment of taxes in two locales. That’s the trifecta of joy and anxiety. Continue reading “Death and Taxes”

On a typical morning, my legions of faithful readers will open this blog and expect to read all about the foibles of the people and the world in general around me – things that have happened on the national stage, things that are on television, or inanimate objects that have set out to thwart my best efforts.  Not today, my friends, not today.  Today we set our sights on the simple bits of life that give me pleasure and inspire joy. Continue reading “Things That Make Me Smile.”

Do you remember when “super” meant the Man of Steel, who could fly, see through buildings, and break through concrete walls?  Yes, that was truly super.  Anything super was truly spectacular – so high above us regular people that it was, well, just imaginary. Superheroes wore body suits and capes with their initials boldly splashed across their incredible physiques.  Of course, they had masks to cleverly conceal their everyday identities.  Clark Kent had those black rimmed glasses so that none of us ever suspected who he really was.  Ok, a couple of us really perceptive viewers suspected, but Lois and Jimmy never caught on. Continue reading “Have a Super Day!”

Ok, here’s our award winner for this week.  A woman visiting a zoo in Arizona was tempted to take perhaps the ultimate selfie when she reached into an enclosure housing a jaguar.  The big cat attacked her, holding her hostage until a thoughtful bystander hit the jaguar with, of all things, a water bottle.  This apparently sufficiently startled the cat that it let go of the photographer.  Perhaps the jaguar wanted to see if it was good likeness. Continue reading “Torn (literally) from the Headlines II”