Once upon a time, I was riding high on the hog.  I could afford anything I wanted, and still put money in the bank.  I had a great job, a lot of friends, and the respect of most of the people I worked with ( Read more... )

One of the services I use on the internet is a browser surfing assistant called "Stumble" - they surf the internet and suggest things that you might like based on your profile (you give up/down thumbs to things and they use that to help screen suggestions).  Generally, they do a pretty good job of this.

Yesterday they sent me an email with more ( Read more... )

About 3 weeks ago, due to the visible daylight filtering into the basement of our "new to us" home through cracks in the exterior walls, my wife and I agreed that we needed to get an estimate on the repair of those walls.  I called a guy listed in the yellow pages, and he came right over and hit us with an estimate.

To repair (a process called " ( Read more... )

It's now been six days since I got the phone call from my dad that prompted my tirade (last post).  I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I can't seem to think about anything else.

There seem to be two things that have dominated my thoughts since then.  First, a lot of my thoughts have revolved around telling my dad off and letting him know that ( Read more... )

I wrote once before about having reached a spot with "Steering by Starlight" where I felt stuck. The exercise didn't seem workable.  My friend aisling  even suggested that perhaps I was trying to take too big of a bite, and should break something in the exercise down to smaller bites.

Nothing seemed to work.  When my wife asked me about it last week, I ( Read more... )

Ha, hahahaha.  If you just flashed back to the 1980's  and saw a mental picture of some ridiculous TV commercials, that was my intention.

I find that, especially as I grow older (physically) that I am spending a lot of time re-learning lessons that were intuitive truths 20-30 years ago.  Today, after nearly a week of feeling run-down and run-over, I ( Read more... )

I had a strange dream last night, that concluded with me waking up with one thought in my mind.  This is nothing less than an answer to the primary question of my experience in this lifetime.

I was raised in the United Methodist Church.  I left when I was 16, primarily due to the vitriol associated with my parent's divorce.  I could understand ( Read more... )

My wife and I have had an AT&T (formerly Cingular) cell phone account for nearly four years.  The whole reason we chose AT&T was that we were promised a block on text messaging.  Except that every once in a while, I'd hear the phone make a funny noise, and see a little envelope pop up on the display.

About a year ago, I finally got a straight answer ( Read more... )

You know how easy it is to be your own worst critic? This morning is only 1 hour and 10 minutes long, and this morning I've learned that I must be doing something right - because my EX-WIFE is one of my closest friends. Doesn't that break some sort of law?

I recently noticed that I have been posting a lot of rants and otherwise negative blogs lately, and decided to do something about that in a positive way.  No, not by blogging less - but by blogging MORE, and more positively.  So, I created a new LJ group - positivequote  which is devoted to my posting one positive message quote every day.  Which means I am ( Read more... )