A vegan, a person on a gluten-free diet, and a person who does Crossfit walk into a bar. How do I know? Because none of them would shut up about it.
If you haven’t heard this joke before, you can probably relate. I know I can. I remember meeting Sarah on Day 1 at a new job. Not only did she tell me her ex-husband came out as transsexual and divorced her, she then proudly stated she was gluten-free and proceeded to reaffirm this stance to me daily during my entire employment there.
I promised myself when I radically shifted my diet in June I wouldn’t become one of those idiots. Well, I’m about to become one of those idiots. Sigh.
I stepped on the scale this morning and weighed in at 182.8. When I did the same thing back in June after wondering why I was able to fit into only two pairs of my work pants, it read 213.7. Everything felt horrible back then. I was in the midst of Longhaul Covid hell, I’d just come off a round of high-dose steroids attempting to fix a Covid-caused mouth issue that still hasn’t improved, and none of my clothes felt right. I was puffy, inflamed and jiggly.
On June 2, I went to a functional medicine doctor. She ordered a new round of different blood tests — 11 tubes in all — and a few weeks later, I saw her again to go over the results. Inflammation was my enemy. Gluten, dairy and a whole host of other things were contributing to it. So I would need to radically change my diet.
As she went over what I could and couldn’t — or at least should and shouldn’t — eat, I was panicky. No pizza? No pie? No… bacon?! When she paused, I quickly jumped in: “So, like, um, how closely should I adhere to this?” which was short for, “You’ve got to be freaking kidding, right?”
“Well,” she said, staring at me seriously. “That depends. How bad do you feel?”
Yeaaah…
I went home and talked to Wifey Poo. I told her this was what I was going to do, that I was sick of being sick, and nothing else had worked so why not try it? She immediately agreed to join me in my food overhaul.
So I did it. I cut out the things that were said to cause inflammation. I started thinking of food in an entirely different way — as fuel for the machine that is me instead of as a thing that goes with social interactions or creates pleasure or comfort.
And I became one of those annoying gluten-free people. Silently, until now, which proves it is, indeed, possible.
I didn’t do this to lose weight. I did this because I felt like shit and didn’t want to feel like shit and had tried everything else to not feel like shit and still felt like shit. I had nothing to lose and nothing else left to try.
Four months later, I feel in so many ways better than I have not just since before Covid kicked me in the balls, but in the past 20 years. I have energy that carries me throughout the day. My brain fog is largely gone. I’m mentally healthier than I have been in a long time.
And oh yeah I lost 30 pounds.
I’m happy that my pants fit — that they’re even too loose now. I’m glad I can wear my T-shirts without showing my manboobs, err, huge pectoral muscles.
But the weight loss? That’s just a by-product of changing how I look at food, how I look at myself. Instead of a dumpy old Datsun, I’m a finely engineered Ferrari that needs the best fuel.
So I don’t eat the stuff I used to love. I got through the readjustment (read: withdrawal) caused by ditching unnatural sugars. Yes, I still allow myself one cheat day a month, in which I still keep things under control but chow down on a piece of pizza or some wings or a bowl of ice cream.
But even then, I keep it in moderation. Not because I’m concerned about my weight. I just don’t want to wake up in the morning and feel like I used to feel. So that’s my motivation. That’s why I’ve lost 30 pounds. That’s why I’m confident I’ll never step on a scale and see a “2” as the first number ever again.
It’s not about the weight. It’s about living a better life.
Gas Wars
One of my earliest memories is being in the back seat of the car Mom was driving, waiting in line to get gas. Our car’s license plate — the old orange New York version — started with an even number, which meant that Tuesday was a government-approved day to fill up. The line was huge — yes, for an impatient 4-year-old, but also for an impatient Mom and a whole host of other impatient people who didn’t like the current president.
We’re in another energy crisis right now, though not as bad as the late 1970s. Prices are jumping, oil’s above $80 a barrel, and countries not exactly friendly to our ideals still are calling the shots.
But there are still moments of levity in it for me.
There are two gas stations at the exit I take to get home after work. Mr. Fuel is on the left side of the road. I remember when Mr. Fuel was built. I would see it when I would come to Future Wifey Poo’s house while we were dating. Gas was $0.98. Booyah.
On the right side is Travel America. I’m not sure when that was built, but it’s a bit down the service road, and it’s the favorite of truckers traveling down Interstate 70. I don’t go there often because getting in and out behind slow 18-wheelers is annoying at the end of a long day.
But.
Every once in a while, Travel America sticks a big middle finger up in the direction of Mr. Fuel and drops its gas prices a few cents lower than its rival. And then Mr. Fuel, not being one to take that shit lying down, drops his prices a few cents below Mr. T&A. It happened again yesterday.
I love this. And not for the economic benefit I get by being able to fill my tank for less money. After all, it’s a freaking Nissan Versa. It has a 12-gallon tank and gets 6 billion miles a gallon. Fuel isn’t a huge expense in my life. No. I get the joy from knowing — or at least imagining — there’s someone at each station looking across at his rival and getting all Yosemite Sam when the other guy lowers his prices.
The ‘Don’t Blame Me, I Didn’t Say It’ of the Day
‘I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.’
Jon Gruden, after resigning from his job as coach of the oakland los angeles oakland las vegas raiders
So here’s the thing: There aren’t too many people out there who mean to hurt someone. You’ve got your loony-toons, bullies, murderers and that one girl who took the heartfelt letter I wrote her in ninth grade and read it to her entire school bus. But in general, the vast majority of people hurt others without intending anything ill.
That doesn’t absolve them from the responsibility for the hurt they caused, and “I didn’t mean to” isn’t a good excuse.
If you want to say that cancel culture, in some circumstances, goes too far, I’ll allow you to take a step down that plank. If you’d like to follow up with, “But he wrote it 10 years ago,” hey, have at it… that board gets kinda shaky when you’re at the end.
Nevertheless, the way Gruden handled the situation once his first comment dropped about the size of a Black man’s lips — by saying it had nothing to do with race but rather was a little quip he frequently used to refer to people he thought were lying — was something I, as a crisis communicator, knew wasn’t going to end well. It was a good try to play the “The Lips Are Close Enough to Pinocchio’s Nose That Maybe People Won’t Notice The Difference” defense. Bonus points for the bold attempt.
But Gruden knew — or should have known — that more damning information was coming. So what Gruden’s initial explanation amounted to was, well, let’s all take a look at the size of his lips.
Whiskey From the Boss
I might have unwittingly given myself a gift yesterday. As part of my job, I’m assisting our Director of Growth with our recruiting strategy. She asked for some input, so I developed a six-step plan. Step one is to reduce turnover on our team in an industry notorious for lots of it. And strategy No. 1 in doing that is to think about the people who, if they left, would hurt to lose and then go make sure they feel like rock stars.
“How can we do that?” she asked.
“Well, how do Division I schools treat top high school football recruits? Go do that.” Without the strippers, of course.
So I surveyed the team: “What’s a gift you could receive that would really show you that someone sees you.” The answers were varied, which is the point: One-size-fits-all thank-yous don’t work in business.
And so it came to pass that Big Boss and the Director of Growth, who happen to be married, gave me a card and a bottle of whiskey to say thanks for everything I’ve done for the team so far. I’ve only been there two months. I wasn’t thinking about me in the least when I suggested she go to great lengths to keep good people. It’s humbling and flattering to be thought of in that way.
Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
- Boy The Younger’s fall baseball season came to an end tonight. He played the team that scored 17 runs in the first inning the last time they met. This game didn’t look much better, though they held them to 13 runs in the first inning. Winning! And then, down 14-0 in the top of the last frame, something clicked. A team that had scored no more than 1 run in a game all season suddenly put up a 10-spot. The Super Team went through five pitchers. Their fans grew restless. One dad even walked away. Now, it wasn’t a win, but in Little League, moral victories count for something.
- I’m going out to lunch with a colleague tomorrow. We’re talking about how he can build his social media presence as a new Realtor.
- Wifey Poo and I have a date Friday night.
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Pig Kidney — Aug. 20, 2023
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Religious Exodus — May 14, 2023
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Slog — May 13, 2023
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Sad vs. Depressed — May 4, 2023
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Porn — May 3, 2023
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Iowa Visit — May 2, 2023
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Listening Right — April 25, 2023
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Baseball Bookend — April 23, 2023
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3:32 a.m. Thoughts — April 19, 2023
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Living — April 19, 2023
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Team Thanos — April 18, 2023
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Falling Down — April 17, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Fuck Carvana 🚗Stupid Tooth 🦷Cave Woman 😠 I am a huge fan of the 1993 movie Falling Down. The movie stars Michael Douglas. Interesting side note: I once umpired a Little League baseball game for his son and called him out on strikes, which led to a crying temper tantrum. His,…
Toxic Positivity — April 14, 2023
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Nickname Need — April 13, 2023
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Dental Malpractice — April 5, 2023
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Not Snot — April 4, 2023
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WTF is a Tiguan? — April 3, 2023
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The Difficult Thing — April 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Closing the Door 🚪Car Shopping🚙Fake Kid-Hater 🧒 Over the course of my life, I’ve gotten used to doing the difficult thing. This often hasn’t been by choice, and it’s never been easy. It’s simply what I’ve had to do. Whether it was facing a pregnancy in which we knew our child…
African Arrival — March 31, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Changes and Similarities ✈️Family Drama Update 🎭Close Encounters 🤼♂️ My Favorite African (MFA) has arrived. His plane landed at Lambert International at around 1:15 yesterday, and about 15 minutes later, a kind TSA person allowed us and the woman who accompanied MFA on the flight to violate all sorts of Homeland…
African Eve — March 29, 2023
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Tech Hatred — March 24, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩TikTok Stupidity 😠Back Woes 😧Improv Friends 🎭 There are increasing number of hours each week in which I have a strong desire to throw every piece of connected technology into the nearest lake and move to wherever I have to go to be as far away from any modern gadget as…
Exit Ramp — March 23, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Anniversary Changes 💍Near Death Experience 💀Dreamcatcher Drama 😳 All relationships change over time. Friendships, parent-child, boss-employee, husband-wife … no matter the relationship, the only constant thing is change. My marriage has changed mightily since it began. When Wifey Poo and I said our vows on March 22, 1997, we were –…
Blah — March 22, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Why The Blahs? 😷Anniversary Plans 💍Unpleasant Warnings 🐍 Feeling blah is complicated when you have my medical history. For many people, feeling blah as I’m feeling right now is a clear indication that some sort of illness or infection has invaded the body. But for me — and for many others…
Floss Shaming — March 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Dentist Visit 🦷Basketball Sucks 🏀Found Husband 👨 No one truly likes going to the dentist. I’ve had people push back on me when I’ve said this before, but when I lay out the following scenario, well, it’s pretty much checkmate: “You just had the most well-respected doctor in the world tell…
The Lunchable Deal — March 18, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Dumb Gubment 🦅Dawg Party 🐶Flying African ✈️ We as modern Muricans tend to just accept that it’s the gubment’s job to educate our children. Of course, when other countries that aren’t our friends do that, we call it “indoctrination,” but that’s a topic for another day. The topic for today is…
Death Cometh — March 17, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Costly Mortality ☠️Crazies, Unite 🤪Defining ‘Appointment’ 🦷 I’m getting ready to die. Sounds ominous, right? Dramatic? Scary? It’s not. Oh yes, in a certain light, it’s depressing as hell. But what it really involved was a meeting with an attorney that Wifey Poo and I had yesterday to figure out exactly…
Finishing — March 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Books and Stories 📚SVB Lessons 🏦Basketball Party 🏀 Holy crap, you guys! I actually finished something I wrote! In fact, I finished two somethings I wrote! As my regular readers (hey you three!) know, I’ve been stunk in a funk of starting to write books and short stories with gusto and…
Sorry, Please Continue — March 9, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Podcast Appearance 🎙️The Birth Control Pill Story 🐶Good Tired 🥱 If you would have asked me a few years ago whether I could ever envision myself on a stage in the back room of a dive bar sharing a story about how my dog ate six months of birth control pills…
Peaking — March 8, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Pee Mate 🚽Game Maker 🎲Dumb Muricans 🦅 I have been thinking about death a lot lately, not because I’m particularly eager for it to happen or because I’m particularly not eager for it to happen. I guess it’s because I’m a few months shy of my 49th birthday and please-for-the-love-of-God let…
The Return of the African— March 6, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Dieudonne 🌍Hoops Win🏀Cornhole Roll ✔️ In 2021, during some of the darkest and most difficult times in our lives as individuals and couple, Wifey Poo and I did a thing. It was a big thing. It was a challenging thing. It was an amazing thing. But to say it was just…
Tribe — March 3, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩’Full Stop’ 🛑Needles 💉Business Lessons 🧑💼 Here’s something I learned about myself today: One way to ensure that I will debate you on a topic until I give my last breath or until you are huddled in a corner in a fetal position is to end the statement of your opinion…
Mindful Commute — March 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mindfulness 🧘Mullet Prez 👩🦳Murder Family 🔪 Our brains are amazing things. So adept are they at routines that they can essentially run on autopilot and let you do the everyday stuff like operating a multi-ton object advancing at 70+ mph among lots of other multi-top objects advancing at 70+ mph without…
After Life — March 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Bloody Hell 💂Circus Moments 🤡Silence 🤫 OK, people: I’ve got a bone to pick with you. But first, a little digression. What in the bloody hell does that phrase mean? “A bone to pick with you?” That sounds absolutely disgusting. And if you’re wondering why I said “bloody hell,” well, that…
Angry Marketing Guy— Feb. 28, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩24 Hour Video 😡Rubik’s Kid 🧊Dilbert Doofus 🤪 There are two things I cannot stand in the working world — and in life, in general. The first is people whose lack of preparedness turns ordinary stuff into emergencies. The second is when people criticize the result of something they previous approved.…
Corruption, Penis Sizes and Bird Drones — Feb. 23, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mormon Billionaires 💰Bigger Packages 🍌Birds Really Aren’t Real 🐦 Can we just get on with blowing the tits off the world with nuclear weapons or something and end this stupid thing we call the human race? Yeah, I know that’s a little dramatic, but when I take a look at the…
Home of the Hypocrite — Feb. 21, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Muricah The Evil 🦅You Buy You 💰Big-Ass Van 🚚 I find it rather humorous that Muricah warned China not to send arms to one side of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine … and that we issued this warning with a straight face. I’m quite sure most Muricahns believe their country…
Wal-Mart — Feb. 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Salve 🩹Car Wash 🚗💧Light Removal 🎄 I try not to venture too often into a Wal-Mart, especially on the weekend. I cling to slim hope for this nation as it is, and I find Wal-Mart trips do not help my grip. Alas, this weekend, Boy The Younger was under the weather…
Shit People — Feb. 17, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩CC, BCC, FU 📧Basketball Poll 🏀Andy Rooney 🎙️ This week has largely been a Shit Week marred by Shit People. What are Shit People? They aren’t exactly easy to define, but one hallmark of a Shit Person is his rampant use of the CC function at work to passive-aggressively play power…
Brain Rest — Feb. 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chill Day 🛋️Busy Weekend ⚾Halftime 🏈 I’m not working today. Not only am I not working at my day job, I’m not doing any work for my side gig today. I’m not planning on doing much of anything, actually. And I don’t feel guilty about that. This weekend was insanely busy.…
Drugs — Feb. 10, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Big Pharma Sucks 💊Work Rules 🧑💼Big Weekend 🏈 Spend any time in front of the television and you’ll see ads touting the latest drugs that you shouldn’t take if you’re allergic to and that you most definitely need to ask your doctor about. Now comes a study showing that the people…
Missourah and the Spy Balloon — Feb. 7, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Top 5 🎈Symphony 🎻Living Eulogies 💗 Top 5 things overheard in Missourah last week as a purported Chinese spy balloon made its way over the state en route to its rendezvous with an F22’s missile: Despite my high-brow upbringing in Suburbia, New York, I’m not what anyone would call A Symphony…
Pokey Joe — Feb. 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Space Walk 🧑🚀Bye-Bye Brady 🏈Failure Rate 🐿️ When Boy The Elder was just Boy and devoid of a younger brother, we had a nickname for him: Pokey Joe. BTE didn’t do anything fast, but more than anything, what he did incredibly slow was get out of a car. That would suck…
Stuck Balls — Feb. 1, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Raccoons 🦝February 💘Man Nips 🕺 Today I bring you the story of a raccoon who got his balls stuck to railroad tracks. But the reason you think I’m bringing you this story is not the reason I’m bringing you this story. You think I’m bringing the story of the raccoon Neil…
‘Fuck Tha Police’ — Jan. 28, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Tyre Nichols 😔Tattoo Day ✒️Nephew Hoops🏀 I was a white kid in suburbia, New York, in 1988 when the gangsta rap group N.W.A. came out with its album Straight Outta Compton, featuring the song Fuck Tha Police. It was scandalous, at the time, to suggest that the police would be anything…
Snow — Jan. 25, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Car Concert 🎵Sick Wife🤒People Suck 🖕 Within the 24 hours in the run-up to Snowpocalypse 2023, the estimates on the Weather Channel app for our snowfall total ranged from 1 to 10 inches. That’s like going to the doctor and being told you have anything from a splinter to terminal cancer.…
STUPID Goals — Jan. 20, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Mission: Failed 👎Ho 🤣Handy Family 👍 It has to suck to work at the Missouri Department of Transportation. Why? It took exactly 75 minutes for all of 2023 to be a failure. Let me explain. Those of you unfortunate enough to have been involved in any sort of corporate planning process…
Writing Retreat — Jan. 15, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Houston 🖊️Sad clown 🤡Taco Seasoning 🌮 Houston, Missourah, is not unlike a lot of other rural Missourah towns through which I’ve driven and bears a resemblance to the Small Town USA in which Boy The Elder did a lot of his early growing up and to which Boy The Younger came…
Ceilings — Jan. 14, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Definitions 📖Missing Bourbon 🥃Mysterious Knocks 😵 I generally abhor any writing that starts with, “Webster’s dictionary defines …” Webster’s dictionary defines “ceiling” as a noun meaning “the overhead inside lining of a room.” The implication is that it’s a limitation, a max, a point of demarcation between what’s out there and…
Movie Ambush — Jan. 13, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Annoyance 😠Disappointment 😞 When Boy The Elder was Boy The Only in our home, he watched one of the Air Bud movies featuring a basketball-playing dog. Or maybe it was football. Or soccer. By the time that series was over, that dog had played them all. Anyway, whichever Air Bud…
Animal Updates — Jan. 12, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Thor’s Blurry Hammer 🍆Pigeon Delivery 🕊️Idiot List 🤪 Thor is really, really good with his hammer. And by that, I mean that Thor the walrus in Scarborough, England, is really good at masturbating and ruining New Years Eve. If you haven’t heard about this story, stop reading stupid news like politics…
Bad Boys— Jan. 11, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Bruising Basketball 🏀Poke ☝️Six?!? 🔫 I grew up in the NBA era of the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons while loving a New York Knicks team that was, to put it mildly, quite physical. Guys like Steph Curry and LeBron James can makes basketball seem like artistry these days, but give me…
Done — Jan. 10, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩What There is Like! ⛅’Modern Policing’ 🚨Xylophone Time! 🎵 When you decide to talk about a time in which you truly believe you more-or-less died and saw what comes after this life, you have to be comfortable with the fact that people might think you’re nuts. Hell, talking about it on…
Media Landscape — Jan. 6, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Grace Ashford! 📰Idaholy Shit! 🥔Story of the Year! 🍆 The three most influential people in my life as a journalist are, sadly, all part of the Great Newsroom in the Sky now. Professors Michael Perkins and Bob Woodward (AKA Bob Woodward-Not-That-Bob-Woodward) helped educate me at Drake University, and Lisa Warren was…
Santos Kills Puppy — Jan. 5, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Poor Puppy 🐶Romeo and Juliet 🤴👸Meta Mistake 🙊 Disturbing news out of Washington, D.C., today as Republican Congressman-elect George Santos (if that’s his real name) brought a 6-month-old puppy to the house floor and screamed “Hey, look at me!” before slitting its throat and lapping up its squirting blood like a…
Institutions — Jan. 4, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Pretty Good Rant 😠Tesla Plunge 🚗Missed Lasts 😥 Those of you who regularly read my drivel (I see you, DirtySciFiBuddah) might have become aware of the fact over the past year or so that I am not a huge fan of our world’s modern institutions. All of them might, in…
Finishing — Jan. 2, 2023
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Incomplete 🕮Frustration 😠Bowl Bust 🏈 To say that I know how to write is like saying I know how to breathe. No one considers that they know how to breathe. They just … breathe. No one is particularly good at breathing or bad at breathing. Again, they just … breathe. I’ve…
Fifty Intentions for 2023
Welcome to Issue No. 15 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. So last year, I had a list of 100 intentions for 2022, and I did fairly well,…
Vision Board — Dec. 30, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩2023 📅Helping 🧠The Universe 🔭 I’m not much for long-term plans and goals. This isn’t to suggest I don’t think they’re important. I just think that spending a lot of time on them is futile. What’s the saying? Man plans, God laughs. Something like that. Anyway, I’ve learned through experience that…
The Point of Suffering — Dec. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chain Links 🔗”Work” 🧑💼Popular Toys 🧸 After my first son died in December 2000, I spent a lot of time wondering why. Why me? Why Wifey Poo? Why Jacob? Why this level of suffering in a world supposedly created and run by an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God? So I did what…
Freezing Fans — Dec. 26, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chiefs! 🏈Indy Tickets 🏎️Bank Visit 💰 When I bought the tickets to the Christmas Eve contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Seattle Seahawks as a gift for Boys The Elder & Younger, it was sometime in September and temps hovered around 90 degrees. The thought that the game might…
Jacob at 22 — Dec. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Timelines 👶Extinctions 🌋Sin City 👌 As I fall deeper down the rabbit hole learning more about theories on space and time, the concept of alternative timelines comes up again and again and again. Whether it’s the stuff of science fiction or one day will be proven to be the stuff of…