The Patio Project

The Patio Project

For the last 2 Sundays, I've worked on the patio at my new place. Before, it was a dangerous sort of walk from the back door because you had to be careful where you stepped. One could have easily twisted their ankle and since I get hurt enough without help, I couldn't afford for that to happen.

So I undertook what I now dub, "The Patio Project."

What follows is a pictorial essay (with comments) on my latest building project.

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Thoughts On Being Thankful

Thoughts On Being Thankful

Thanksgiving is approaching and although it's not as big a deal in my family as Christmas is, I always try and take a moment to remember what the holiday stands for. Figuratively. To be thankful.

I'm thankful for my family. They are always there and always support me. Even when I screw up and let me tell you, I've had some doozies. Family is first and foremost in my life; I've taken some hard knocks to learn that one.

Then there's my health. When I'm not popping out kidney stones or collecting yellow jacket stings or pulling muscles, my body is pretty solid. I eat healthily-although some would argue; I still believe pizza comprises all four food groups-and I can do just about anything important that needs doing.

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That Time of the Year

That Time of the Year

It's here, it's finally here! I never thought it would come but now it has. Dove Season officially opened in North Carolina on Labor Day!!

Yep, you heard me. It's now legal to go out and shoot those pesky doves that are always eating up the garden. The good thing is, you can bag up to five of those little buggers every day.

Seriously folks, I didn't know dove hunting still existed. Do people eat doves? I don't know about you, but as far as birds go, I can't imagine doves being very tasty or very meaty. Once you pull all the buckshot out of one, what do you have left? Four ounces of actual meat?

How do you cook it? Is there a dove cookbook? I can imagine the recipies: Dove Stew. Dove a l'Orange. Dove with Mac & Cheese.

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What 37 Means To Me

What 37 Means To Me

I had a birthday this past Thursday. I turned 37. Getting older means different things to different people. Thirty-seven isn't a magic number by any means, to most people, but to me, it promises to be a year to remember.

What does 37 mean to me?

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Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

After succumbing to the inevitable metabolism death, I underwent The Great Diet Switch . Since that fateful day when I swore off regular sodas, I have rarely to drink one. When a diet choice is available, even a particularly nasty one, I always take it.

Such is my commitment. Even though I haven't lost a single pound, I haven't gained any either. Victory or Mexican Stand-Off?

Either way, during my quest, I have learned some very important lessons.

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My First Date

My First Date

Everyone remembers their first date. It's a special experience that you never forget. Like your first real kiss. Or your first car. Or your first computer.

My first date was with Angela Smith. We were both fifteen and went to different schools. That's how I got the date, she didn't know I was a nerd.

We met in MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship), the youth group at our church. Her parents had just started attending the church in our neighborhood and to her, I was just another guy. She didn't know any better.

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The Last Milli Vanilli Fan

The Last Milli Vanilli Fan

Back in the spring of 1989 when Milli Vanilli released their smash Album, Girl You Know It's True, a friend of mine introduced them to me. I made a copy of her cassette (life before CDs in my world) and practically wore it out in my tape deck. It was one of the first CDs I eventually bought when I got a CD player.

The album was great driving music. I jammed to it many a time on my commute to and from my retail job at Sears that summer. My senior year of high school followed in the fall and I began a lot of my mornings with Milli Vanilli's peppy, infectious tunes. It helped get me through that final year.

It was also great party music. It seemed that everywhere I went that summer, a Milli Vanilli song made it into the music rotation. The album is easy to listen to and easy to dance to, even for a disjointed white boy like myself.

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The Worst Position in Football

The Worst Position in Football

I never played football growing up because my mom wouldn't let me. I was accident prone enough without adding eleven guys to the equation, all in pads (read: armor) trying their best to knock me on my almost-non-existent ass . But if I had played, there's one position I wouldn't have wanted.

Center.

For those of you living in a cave or outside the U.S., that's the guy who snaps the ball to the quarterback. To me, that's got to be the worst position in the sport.

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Milfs Abound

Milfs Abound

MILF. A term I believe was made widely popular by the movie American Pie. It means Mother-I'd-Love-to-Fornicate. The F doesn't really stand for fornicate.

When I was sixteen, I had a thing for MILFs. I liked older women. Truthfully, I liked any women, but the mature ones held something special for me.

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Public Booger Mining

Public Booger Mining

You've seen these people. We all have. The people that engage in some good old fashioned public booger mining.

That's my politically correct term for nose picking. I call it booger mining. Ingenious, huh? Conjures up visions of midgets with hardhats and lanterns, singing camp songs as they descend into the depths of a nasal cavity for another toiling day of mining. For boogers.

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The Great Cereal Blog (part 2)

The Great Cereal Blog (part 2)

Remember when you were a kid and it was a big deal to go to the grocery store? Do you recall why it meant so much to you? Did it by any chance have anything to do with the venerated cereal aisle?

Ahh, that cereal aisle, offering children the grandest of choices in sugary foods known to man. Cereals of rice, corn or oats; transfused with amazing sucralicsious sugar.

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The Greatest TV Intro Ever

The Greatest TV Intro Ever

It's not Cheers or Friends or even MASH. It's not Who's The Boss or Leave It To Beaver or The Brady Bunch. Nor is it Scooby Doo or Monday Night Football or Arrested Development. No, the greatest TV show intro ever edited is none other than ...

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Bed Security

Bed Security

There's a lot I miss about being married or in a serious relationship. Cuddling on the couch when we'd watch TV, cooking a grandiose meal for two, taking naughty showers together. And even providing bed security.

Women know what I'm referring to, it's something that's innate in their genetic coding. I never knew I was providing the service for the girlfriends and wives in my life until one slipped up and let me in on the secret.

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The Lyric Mangler

The Lyric Mangler

It's a complete mystery to me. How my five year old nephew can remember the words to every song he hears. How he can recite entire passages from movies verbatim. I don't understand, he must have a gene I don't. I can't even sing a Christmas song completely through without substituting words that sound the same.

I'm what's called a Lyric Mangler. I'm the guy who sings to every song he hears, and gets only 80% of the words correct. I can hit the notes (most the time), but I can never remember the words. Never. Give me any song, from any era, and I guarantee I will screw it up.

I don't understand why I have such trouble. I remember telephone numbers I haven't called in a decade. I can recite Pi up to 12 digits (3.141592653589...), a number I learned in high school almost 20 years ago. I can recognize faces of people I met over all times of my life, and place them in the exact moment I met them.

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Thanks For Giving

Thanks For Giving

It's that time of the year again. The leaves have turned from brilliant oranges and yellows to shades of brown. The time had changed and temperatures have cooled and most importantly, Turkey Day is here!

Officially, in America, November 22 is Thanksgiving Day this year (always the 4th Thursday in November). A national holiday where the government shuts down and most everyone gathers with family to over-eat and nap and watch football. It's the day we recognize for giving thanks.

So personally, I'd like to give a shout-out to all the Native Americans (read: Indians) and thank them for sacrificing their way of life, their land and their lives so our great country could be born to police the world.

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The End of Baseball Rain

The End of Baseball Rain

November is finally kicking into full swing and the cold is upon us. After a month of teasing us with relatively mild temperatures, Autumn has turned the corner.

Summer in the South is marked with intensity. Whether it's intense heat, intense humidity or intense thunderstorms; summers here are characterized by extremes. That also goes for a simple rainstorm.

In the Summer, rain rarely falls lightly or all day. Storm clouds form in a matter of minutes and drop gallons of water in the blink of an eye. Growing up, I always called it Baseball Rain.

Why? Because it was the type of rain that fell during baseball season. Baseball Rain has many distinct characteristics.

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Homage To The Southern Biscuit

Homage To The Southern Biscuit

In the South, we take a lot of things in stride. If it rains on game day, we shrug and celebrate that at least we don't have to work in the yard. If our car breaks down, we call someone to pick us up. But whatever you do, don't mess with our biscuits.

The biscuit is a Southern staple. For breakfast, you can fill it with eggs, sausage, bacon, country ham, cheese, breaded chicken, pork loin, steak. You can drown it with sausage gravy, milk gravy, red-eye gravy. Or you can simply slather it with butter and eat it straight.

As the South has been infiltrated by different cultures, the biscuit has taken on other unlikely partners. Chicken-fried steak. Kielbasa. Bratwurst. I've even seen them served with salami and pastrami, accompanied with spicy mustard.

But no matter how many different items the biscuit gets paired with, the Southern biscuit itself remains constant. When baked to perfection, it sports a golden crown that glistens with freshly drawn butter. Its texture remains flaky throughout while still retaining the consistency between a heavy bread and croissant. And when it enters your mouth, it melts over your tongue like cotton candy with a unique flavor that can't be duplicated.

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The Obligatory Halloween Blog

The Obligatory Halloween Blog

Halloween is probably the funnest holiday ever invented. Not only is it during the best time of the year, Autumn, but it is mandatory to be someone else. The holiday is a license to pretend and what could be more fun?

Since the earliest days of my memories, pretending was part of my life. Before my sister came along when I was four, I had pretend play-friends. I remember playing with them in the sandbox, pushing the hardened cat turds around with my yellow Tonka bulldozer, pretending the entire sandbox was a construction site.

(I always wanted the write the word turd.)

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A Cheesedog Like No Other

A Cheesedog Like No Other

About twenty years ago, I went to an old soda shop style restaurant in downtown Burlington named Zack's. Their main fare was hot dogs and Cokes in ten ounce glass bottles. And everything was always served with a smile and a thanks.

Zack's hot dogs has been a staple of North Carolina's piedmont since 1928, when they first served their signature hot dogs to a very happy customer. Fifty-five years later, I discovered them, and even today, they are still serving traditional American food to patrons of all ages. Any time a restaurant is open for 75 years, owned by the same family the entire time, they are doing something right.

I'll never forget the first time I ordered from them. I didn't want just a plain hot dog, I wanted something special. Something unique. So I chose the cheesedog.

Visions of a hot dog covered in melted cheese danced in my head, lighting up my imagination. What kind of cheese would it be? Cheddar? American? Something exotic like pepperjack? Maybe that melty cheese that seeps into the hot dog bun like it thought it was chili. Or maybe it was a hot dog stuffed with cheese!

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Fat Boy Asthma

Fat Boy Asthma

Growing up, I had what I affectionately called "Fat Boy Asthma." Whenever I would play sports, I had trouble breathing. It never experienced an attack for no reason like most asthma sufferers, it only happened when I exerted myself. In fact, that's what the doctor's called it, over-exertion asthma.

I still called it Fat Boy Asthma.

I was chubby during those years before puberty. Of course, now, after puberty we all call it something different. Big-boned. Because our bones have grown, right? Actually, my bones aren't bigger than other people's, just the cushioning on them is.

The descriptor "chubby" was killed sometime during the Political Correctness Movement of the 80s and 90s. The blander, more vanilla terms of "overweight" and "weight-challenged" took its place. "Obese" even came into play but that was reserved for your overly chubby people. We just called them "fat" back then.

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