Another Friday is upon us, and who doesn't like Friday's? Fridays don't mean the same thing they did so long ago in college where the weekend actually started on Thursday, but no one wrote a song called "I dont like Friday's" now did they........



This weeks topic relates to ever expanding pile of TBR material that I have stacked on my desk (or any available floor space) and it's simply the last five books that I've read. As much as I have been enjoying writing my 1st book, my first love will always be reading. 

Last Five list for September 7th, 2007 - The Last Five Books Ive read

5.     Looking for Alaska, John Green - Do any words need to be said about this book??
4.     Debt of Honor, Tom Clancy - Clancy is the master of espionage 
3.     All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque - So much more than a war novel
2      Beige, Cecil Castellucci - Fascinating book worthy of all the praise it has received
1.     Peeps, Scott Westerfeld - Just started reading today

As always I'd love to hear your last five, and here is to hoping that my TBR pile always remains overflowing with great books

Cheers!!!

*please note that it is not my intent to diminish the tragedy behind the song "I dont like Mondays"

I will be back either later today or tomorrow with a more in depth discussion about my last 5 days but for now this is a decent description of how I am feeling and doing

While it doesn't rival a comet or a full solar eclipse.......The complete lunar eclipse was pretty cool to watch happen this morning.  I'm amazed watching things like this because it always stretches my imagination and fascination with space.  My astronaut career choice was put on hold because I'm terrified of heights and I'm horrible at math which I believe are two requirements that I fail miserably at.  I hope that some of you were able to catch it, it's an utterly amazing thing to watch

I have been doing a great deal of thinking over the last few days about what I wanted to do as a weekly feature on my LJ and while I have come up with several ideas, I think I'm going to settle on this for now (until I change my mind tomorrow).  I am a big fan of all sorts of lists, sometimes they consume my life and not always for the better.  I have finished lists, unfinished lists, written down lists, lists in my head and lists that I probably will never start or finish.  It would be too cliche to do a favorite / least favorite type list but somewhere in the middle lies what I will refer to as "The Last Five List".  The name itself is self-explanatory but I will try and come up with interesting ideas as well as some pretty standard topics each week and I hope you will join in and play along with me.

For the inaugural weekly list, I've got a fairly standard topic to start off with, but since I happen to be doing this right now as Im writing this, it's not a bad place to start.

Last Five List for August 24th

The Last Five Movies that I have watched on DVD

5. Aladdin (1992)  -  The original Disney classic that I would probably watch even if I didnt have kids
4. Mean Girls (2004) -  A horrible movie that I wouldn't watch if I didn't have kids
3. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (2007) - Am I bad if I have a bootleg copy of this???
2. The Illusionist (2006) - I love every Edward Norton movie. Is it just me or is Jessica Biel in every other movie these days?
1. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) - A riot of a movie and the humor never gets old (like in your pants jokes)

Feel free to add your Last Five and I promise I will have a topic a little out of the ordinary next week

*update*  Happy Birthday to John Green who turns 30 years old today Yay for John!! I hope to one day get to tell him in person how much his project has meant to me and literally altered my entire life!!!  Congrats John and I cant wait for Paper Towns to hit the shelves

I've been working hard on my first novel over the last few weeks and the beginnings of something worthwhile are starting to take shape.  Every time I sit down to write out an idea it brings forth new ideas and the words just begin to flow like they are coming from somewhere else.  Obviously, not everything I write is brilliant and I'm certain that most of what I have written won't make the final edit (or most likely past the 1st edit) but I started to notice something curious.  

Every time I sit down to write, my youngest daughter Madelyn gets out her journal and starts writing as well.  The other day while I was sitting on my couch typing furiously, I looked over to the other end of the couch and I saw my daughter with her laptop, not playing games or looking at disney.com like usual, but she had Microsoft Word open and was typing away as fast as a 7 year old can.  I asked her curiously "Maddy what are you writing about?" and in her most studious voice she replied "I'm writing a chapter book like you daddy!"  Madelyn has always been a writer even before she knew how to write words.  She would scribble lines and write letters and would read it back to you saying whatever it was that she wanted it to say.  She is a curious girl who at 7 years old spends as much time writing about her day or making up stories as she does watching TV.

I mentioned at the beginning of my LJ how I was inspired by the whole Brotherhood 2.0 project to take up writing again, to follow my dreams and that I had found my place in life.  Little did I know when I stumbled upon this that Madelyn would embrace the project as much as she has.  When she saw the video about it being John Green's birthday she immediately exclaimed that she wanted to make a sign for John wishing him a happy birthday.  Those who have kids or know kids, I'm sure you are aware of their short attention span. It's amazing that something that they are really excited about will be forgotten in about 5 minutes.  About ten times a day though she will ask me "Is the new video up yet?" and she anxiously awaits it being up for viewing. 

My children were away on vacation for a month this summer in California when I found this project and I was excited to tell my oldest daughter Alyson about it . I thought it would be a great way for her to get excited about something that she loves (reading) and would be something that we could immerse ourselves in together.  Little did I know that it would be Madelyn who would take to it and it would become a big part of her life.  She proudly tells everyone she knows that she is a Nerdfighter and I laugh when people look at her funny and ask "A what?" She looks at them with these exasperated eyes and says "A Nerdfighter, its like a regular person except that instead of being made up of skin, cells, and tissue...I am made of awesome!!!"   .

You never know what the consequences of your actions might be and the effect that it will have on others.  Maybe you will start a Vblog, and it seems like it will  be a fun project to share with your friends and a few others.  But then again, maybe your project will inspire someone to follow their dreams, and it will bring a father and daughter closer together giving them something to share and will change their lives forever

I'm sure we have all heard or spoken the words "First impressions are lasting impressions" and we can all agree that this mantra holds true in most cases.  How many times have we met someone and come away from that meeting with a bad impression that  never seems to go away.  If we happen to eventually become friends  with them, it is usually brought up in conversation "When I first met you, I really didnt like you " and it is usually followed with laughter from both parties. What if you never got that second chance though?  What if that one fleeting moment is the only time that your paths will cross and that impression lasts forever? This can have a lasting impact on a person, especially if that person is someone who is famous or if you've held them in some high regard.  What if this person was Randy "Macho Man" Savage.

Like most young boys growing up I LOVED professional wrestling, I worshiped the ground that my favorite wrestlers walked on and their nemeses were people to be reviled.  Even my mother talked to me about watching wrestling with my grandfather on Saturday afternoons and she told me about  all the greats.  She would talk about "Jumping" Jim Brunzell, "Haystacks" Calhoun, and "Killer" Kowalski and how they would never miss an episode.  When I was a child, wrestling was not nearly the entertainment giant it is today. Hulk Hogan was just starting to become a household name, Wrestlemania hadn't started yet, and of course it was ALL real.  Every kid had his favorite wrestler, whether you liked Hulk Hogan, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, "Ravishing" Rick Rude, or Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat the one thing we all had in common was that we were all against the darkness and evil that came from Tehran, Iran....The Iron Sheik. My wrestling hero was The "Macho Man" Randy Savage, I was enamored with this wrestling God and knew right away that when I grew up I wanted to be just like him.  He had skill, power, and grace and it seemed that he could do now wrong.  He would always prevail when it seemed he was so close to defeat, he conquered evil, and he of course had the lovely and talented Elizabeth in his corner.  Even when he turned into a "bad" guy (I must admit I have forgotten the storyline on how this occurred) I stood by my guy until by some cruel twist of fate our paths crossed in the Cleveland airport.

When I was 13 years old my family was taking my Grandmother on her first trip to Disneyworld (I think I'll write about this someday). We were all sitting anxiously at our gate waiting for our plane to arrive talking about all the things we were going to do over the next two weeks. I decided that I needed to stop at the airport magazine stand to get another book for the trip. I'm such a "nerd" that I was worried I wouldnt have enough to read while on a vacation to Disneyworld. As I passed one of the seating areas of a coffee shop I glanced over to my right and it was as if the heavens had opened and a light shown down from the Gods there sat my hero, the great "Macho Man".  I stood dumbfounded for a moment and didnt know what to do, I raced back to my mother and said "Quick, quick give me a piece of paper a pen and the camera he's here, he's here!!"  I ran back to the cafe hoping and praying that I hadnt missed my chance to meet my hero and as luck would have it he was joined now by two other wrestlers, The "Big Bossman" and Rick Rude. My mother had followed to see what I was absolutely raving about and caught up to me as I stood sheepishly out of sight.  She convinced me to gather up the courage to go over to him, even though I felt unworthy to be standing in the presence of such greatness.  

The Gods were having a conversation as I approached and when I was about 5 feet away from Mount Olympus the conversation suddenly stopped, Randy looked up at me and our eyes locked.  I stood frozen not believing that this could possibly be happening to me and as I tried to speak the words they just wouldn't seem to come out.  I managed to say in what must have sounded like utter gibberish "Mr Savage sir, Im really sorry to bother you sir, but do you think it would be possible that I could get you sign an autograph and let me take a picture sir, you are my favorite wrestler and I think you are just awesome sir".  Silence followed my babbling as he looked me up and down and replied with his trademark sneer, fist raised and pinkie pointing outwards at me "We were having a private conversation here kid, now beat it"  My heart that had been racing at what must have been 180 beats per minute just stopped, Did I really hear what I think I just heard?  Could my hero really have told me "Beat it kid?"  To add insult to injury he spoke once again, "Is there a problem with your ears kid? I said beat it!"  I turned slowly from my spot just a few feet away and a tear welled up in my eye as I walked slowly back to my mother, tail between my legs.  Here it was, the chance of all chances, to be in the presence of greatness and I had just had my heart ripped out. My mother tried to console me on the way back to our gate and eventually I felt somewhat better about things and life did go on......or did it.

Years later, having grown up, and having given up my obsession for wrestling, I thought I had put this brief moment in my life into some sort of perspective, until it all came rushing back.  While watching TV on a lazy weekend afternoon I heard a voice that brought a flashback in time, like some sort of freakish Manchurian Candidate moment where I was put into trance at the sound of a voice or phrase.  There, on the television, was that evil man. That man who had ripped my heart out and feasted on it in that airport cafe was hawking Slim Jim's to the masses.  I sat in a trance on my couch hardly believing what I was seeing.  My hands started to tremble and shake, and a bead of sweat formed on my brow.  It took about 10 minutes after the commercial was over for my heart rate to return to normal and my hands to stop shaking.  How could something after all these years still affect me so greatly that I was literally reduced to shaking on my couch at the mere sound of his voice. 

I know for certain that this brief moment in time had absolutely no bearing on his life and it was forgotten as soon as it was over.  But it's a moment frozen in time that will stay with me forever.  The thing I take away from this is that I always try to do my best to make a good impression on people I don't know. Whether its a kind word or holding the door open for the person behind me these all have an affect on other people and show who we are.  The impressions we leave on others can be fleeting, or they can last a lifetime, the funny thing is that you never know which one you are leaving so always try to put your best foot forward and think of how you want to be remembered.

Cheers!!

There are times in my life when I have been told I am too much of a cynic, that I tend to look at the glass as being half empty instead of half full.  This Saturday morning, while drinking overpriced coffee and reading the paper, my wife was rejoicing the fact that it was such a beautiful morning.  My initial reaction to this innocuous comment was "It's too humid and the air smells like rain is coming."  Typical of our morning conversations lately her reply was simple and terse, "Why not just crawl back into bed then and stay there the rest of the day."  I must admit at first I thought this was a wonderful idea, I did not want to be up at this hour and really had no interest in reading the paper anyway. Being the trooper that I am though I decided to do what I always do in these situations, go for a walk.

Normally when I go for a walk, I'm trying to avoid doing something that is on some list that just seems to magically appear. I cover it up by saying "I need to get a little exercise in my life," well this day was no different.  I did have a lot of things to do and I was trying to come up with reasons to avoid doing them.  The grass could wait to be cut, and the flowers would soon get watered with the rain that lingered in the air.  There was no reason to wash the car since the day was going to be ruined, in fact ,crawling back to bed was looking better and better with each passing minute.  As I put on my overpriced shoes, grabbed my overpriced coffee, and set off on my trek through my ridiculously overpriced neighborhood, I couldn't help but think how fast this Summer seemed to go.  The kids are getting ready to go back to school, and I know this because I just spent the day before in an overcrowded, overpriced mall buying clothes for my daughters that I neither approved of or wished to see them wear in my lifetime.  My oldest daughter who seems twenty, but swears she is thirteen and a half  (like that half makes all the difference), grumbles in that way that only teenagers can, "This is what all the kids wear dad and stop being such a grump!"  Standing in line to pay for these ill-fitting clothes alongside all of the other glassy eyed fathers I think to myself, when did my daughter trade in her nice Laura Ashley dresses for low-rise jeans and shirts that just seem too small?  I have no idea when this particular event happened but I'm fairly confident that my wife must assume all of the blame for its occurrence.

As I begin walking down my quiet tree lined street, which seems to back up the sewers with the fallen leaves every October, I pass some of my neighbors who seem too damn giddy as they wave good morning to me.  Who are these people anyways I think as I grunt to them, cant they feel the rain in the air and see that Summer is almost over, why are they so damn happy!  It was when I reached the end of my street that something struck me and may have changed my outlook on life forever.  There, on the porch, was a woman I know quite well, who didn't wave as I approached but she seemed to be lost in contemplative thought.  It was then I realized that she was crying softly with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, tissue in hand.  It took me a few seconds to remember what happened just a few short months ago that shook up our neighborhood and my youngest daughters school forever.

One overcast and bleak Spring morning I stood at the bus stop with this same woman and she was rambling on about all of the things she and her family had planned for the summer.  There was a trip to Disneyworld, a camping trip to North Carolina, and a cruise to the Caribbean on their agenda.  She was just beaming about how much she was looking forward to doing all of these things and in typical fashion I was just smiling, thinking why the bus seemed to be late again, and praying that this woman would stop her incessant talking.  That afternoon I received a phone call from my wife that I needed to go pick up my daughter from school.  I asked her "Is Madelyn sick or something again?"  It seems that the flu runs through her school every month and she spends most of the school year with some sort of ailment.  I could tell though that my wife was choked up on the phone and after a second she sobbingly told me, "There was an accident at school and a kindergarten student was killed."  I was certain that I misheard what she said, but she continued on that the little girl down the end of our street was killed when the flag poll snapped in half and struck her at recess. At that moment I couldn't believe what I was hearing because these are things you only see on TV, they don't happen at your school or to people you know.  Luckily, my daughter wasn't outside when it happened because she has recess at a different time, but I thought how easily it could have been her and was grateful that she is young enough that this wouldn't affect her in any serious manner.

Right then and there those memories of that spring day came rushing back as I saw this woman alone on her porch, hardly noticing I was there if at all, and I felt ashamed.  How could I be so ungrateful when I have so much to be thankful for?  I have two beautiful children who are both bright and healthy, I have a wife whom I adore even if we don't see eye to eye on everything.  I have all of things I could ever want or need in my life and I'm mad because it's going to rain and it seems I have too much to do.  I stood still for one moment before turning around to walk home and suddenly the air didn't seem so humid and the list of things I had to do didn't seem so long.  The clothes I bought for my daughters yesterday were all of a sudden adorable and didn't seem so expensive or ill-fitting after all.  I waved and said hello a little too eagerly to my neighbors I had grunted hello to just a few minutes ago, and I greeted my wife with a hug and kiss as she was still sitting on the porch.  She eyed me dubiously for a moment as I went in the house to change into some old clothes for the days work ahead.  When I returned a few moments later to get the lawn mower out of the garage she asked, "Is everything OK?"  The tone in her voice sounded as though she was certain I had been abducted while walking and was replaced by someone else who couldn't be her husband or the person that had just left 15 minutes ago mumbling something about rain and how the day was ruined.  I stood silent for a moment before answering, "Honey I love you, I love our children, and I love our lives more than anything.","  I'm incredibly grateful for all the things you do for me and for all of the sacrifices that you've made in our marriage."  As I yanked the cord on the mower to bring its engine to life, and with my wife looking suspiciously on, I said to no one in particular "My what a beautiful morning it is today".

Wow, I've been so busy this last week I just realized today that I'm really behind in posting anything to my LJ.  It's less than two weeks now until the kids go back to school and I know that I can't wait!!  Since I decided to dedicate myself to writing full time, it seems that I have less time for everything than I ever did.  I've been working on outlines and developing characters in-between, "Dad I'm hungry", "Dad can you get me past this level on this video game", and "Dad, Aly keeps touching me" I feel like I need a vacation.

I feel really good about my decision  to start writing again, and I'm getting into the swing of things slowly but surely.  My one daughter is so excited , she has been telling anyone who will listen that her dad is a writer and is going to be famous.  That has a nice ring to it, but I continually have to remind her that writing a book is a lot like being an actor who's waiting tables until their next role, its not very glamorous and it's really hard work.

I'm going to keep this brief today, I need to make an appointment with a few people regarding some research and then I think it's off to the local bookstore for some writing and book buying, two of my favorite things

Good luck to all, and I look forward to talking with you and reading your blogs to see what's going on in your world.

I've never fancied myself as much of a television person. In part because it seems that most television shows either aren't very smart or just aren't aimed at middle-age men.  I was never into Seinfeld while it was in prime time (though it seems I never miss it in syndication). I don't watch Grey's Anatomy or Lost, and I'm probably one of the last humans on the planet to have never watched an episode of Survivor.  While I was on the internet today though I came across a new television show coming out that at least seems a little interesting.  Im posting the link below and I appolgize that I'm not adept enough at Live Journal yet to add it any other way, but for those who havent seen this it at least looks interesting.

Hope all is well with everyone, and I wish you all continued health and success

http://buzzsugar.com/343086

PS.  The clip is a little bit on the racey side at times so those who have children around them should be warned