With a new administration in place in the nation’s capital, we have heard a lot of talk about unity in recent weeks.
I hope everyone joins me in trying to make this a reality regardless of what political party you belong to or who you chose on Election Day.
And I know just the way to get the unity train started.
Dessert.
I know that I am destined to live a life of leisure. I know I will eventually escape the daily grind.
Until now, I always thought I would achieve this goal the American way, by winning the lottery. I recently found out that the path will go through Australia, and I will actually have to keep on working.
The Australian state of Queensland is accepting applications for what they call the best job in the world. I know this thing has my name written all over it.
I find myself in a bad situation these days. I should know better by now because I always make this mistake.
I have let my hair grow too much.
I have this love-hate relationship with my hair. Part of me really likes when I let it grow for a while, but the whole thing becomes such a hassle.
You see, I have curly hair. Some people – mostly women – will compliment me on my nice curly hair. That’s easy for them to say because they aren’t the ones who have to try and make it look presentable on a windy day like we had on Thursday,
I learned a lot of things at college.
My academic program prepared me for a career as a writer. Playing a varsity sport provided many lessons about hard work and dedication. My social and leadership activities helped me learn how to work effectively with many different kinds of people.
But in my free time, I learned one other valuable lesson. I learned the importance of strategy in the game of Yahtzee.
I generally have a hopeful personality. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I can easily forgive.
But I have had it up to here with the television industry.
Shortly after the new year, the Screen Actor’s Guild will vote on whether or not to strike. Yes, just a year after the writer’s tore the heart out of the TV season, the actors might provide an encore performance.
I had just started to get into our weekly viewing routine. We had a nice rhythm going and looked forward to the addition of “Scrubs” to our schedule in January.
I know the actors pushing for a strike will talk about how they need to guarantee the future for their profession through payments for performances viewed online and stuff like that. But this goes way beyond royalties.
Now I will have to develop an entire new routine if the actors decide to take a stand. Don’t they realize the pain that will cause?
At one time, my family’s traditional Christmas Eve celebration featured a big dinner. As we all grew older and my siblings got married, we would all enjoy a dinner of steak and shrimp before sitting down to exchange presents.
However, those marriages produced children who didn’t want to sit still and be patient as their parents, aunts and uncles hunkered down with a good meal and pleasant conversation. Something had to change.
I don’t remember all of the specifics of how our current Christmas Eve tradition came to pass, but that doesn’t really matter. All I know is that we look forward to it every year with increasing anticipation.
A terrible, terrible thing happened on television last night. I didn’t see this tragedy when I wrote this, but I know it did not turn out well.
One of the cable networks presented a show called “A Miser Brothers’ Christmas” or something like that. They dedicated 60 minutes to this brand-new program which never should have seen the light of day.
How do I know this without watching the show? It’s simple. There are only five real animated Christmas specials for television.
I don’t know why the people running television don’t understand this, but I guess I should be used to it by now. They never listen to the other perfect ideas I have to enhance the experience for viewers across the nation.
We don’t need a show to tell us how the Miser Brothers – you know them, Heat and Snow – finally patch up their differences to help an injured Santa deliver all the presents for Christmas.
I know we don’t need a show to tell us that because Santa doesn’t get injured in any of the classic Christmas stories so why make up an injury for the old fella now? That’s just unnecessary.
We do know that Santa can be a bit of a jerk to a reindeer that looks a little different than the rest of the herd. We learned that in Rudolph, one of the Fab Five shows.
I accompanied my wife on a shopping trip recently. She had to pick up some holiday items so I kind of just hung around the store and goofed off.
After I looked at all the stuff that could even remotely interest a guy, I wandered into the scented candle section. I have no idea why. I knew nothing there would interest me, but figured I would check anyway.
I hoped against hope I would find something to interest me, some candle that I could buy without looking like I had turned in my man card. I like a good scent as much as anyone else. I just don’t like to admit it.
That’s when it hit me. These candle people have totally underestimated us guys. They think we don’t want their product, when that’s not entirely true.
Maria left for work the other morning, and I had the house all to myself. As I prepare to start a new job and end my short sabbatical, I wanted to do something special.
So I cooked up some turkey bacon. Actually, I just heated up bacon I had cooked and frozen several weeks ago. I knew I would have time to enjoy the food and get the offending smell out of the house before my wife returned at the end of the day.
Something happened, however, after I chowed down. I still felt like something was missing. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed something else to satisfy me. After a minute or so standing in the kitchen and thinking, I realized the answer.
Orange juice.
I didn’t realize until we got in the car to go to the theater last weekend that Maria, Bridget and I had never attended a movie together.
Every other time Bridget wanted to see a flick, I would take her while Maria worked. Nothing had come to town which compelled all of us to head to the movies.
Then “High School Musical 3” came out.
The first two installments of the series have played many times in our house so we had lots of reasons to be excited. We avoided the opening weekend crowds so we could really enjoy the fun.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take something very important into account when we took our seats and almost ruined the entire experience.