Writin' Forty

I had a hard time sleeping last night. That usually happens when something is on my mind.  And while I was going through any number of things that could have been on my head this was one was easy to figure out: I was sad. And the reason it was easy to figure out is because Mom was visiting and she was about to leave.  That’s a good reason to be sad. I may have said this before in the blog, I  dunno : my mom is my favorite lady on the planet. That is no sleight to my wife, by the way. She’s clearly top 2, number one in many important and special ways. But Mom is my favorite and I was reminded why on any number of times during this visit. I would listen to her talk and I would smile because I see where I get so many of mannerisms and behaviors from. I understand where my stubbornness and loyalty come from. I understand where my desire to be honest and truthful to my friends come from. I certainly have characteristics from my dad, but Mom seems to be my spirit animal in a lot of ways

In the Air Force they do this thing called BLUF which means “bottom line up front” which is a way of giving the reader, normally a high ranking officer, a very quick synopsis over what they’re about to read. Outside of the military, I’ve seen a TL ;DR which means “too long; didn’t read” and if someone is nice enough they’ll put a sentence after that acronym which will tell you what the whole message is about. So if you’re reading this the BLUF or TL ;DR  would be that I received my blue belt in jiu-jitsu (excited squeal)! If you’re inclined to read further I can give a forty (one) year old guy’s perspective about what I learned from receiving blue belt. I wasn’t expecting to get blue belt at all  that day I received it, not for months down the line . While I know that the school’s twice a year belt promotion ceremony isn’t the only time Steve can give a belt, when I didn’t receive blue belt during the last belt promotion ceremony I (with a lot of help from my friends) I changed my

“I got a ticket to (a) Pearl Jam (concert) and it’s yours if you can get out here,” my good friend Robert messages me. I hesitated slightly before answering. On one hand, it’s Pearl Jam, a group that’s famous enough that most people would have heard of them even if they never heard a song by them. It’s also a g roup I enjoyed a ton in college. And after college.  Which is becoming a lot of days.  On the other hand, Robert lives in Seattle. I live in Charlotte,  which is   on the other side of the United States  if you’re somehow even more geographically challenged than I am.  After a chat with the  Mrs , who never once has told me that I can’t or shouldn’t hang with my friends, I went ahead and booked the ticket. Robert was stoked and so was I! One of the things I’m enjoying about writing this blog is that I get to talk about my friends and in this case I get to talk to you about my buddy Robert, who I met in college. I was a sophomore, he was a freshman. Let’s back up. I was one o

I’m a blessed man, as much as I’d like to think otherwise sometimes. One of the ways that I am blessed is that I am good at making friends. I learned long ago that there’s a difference between a friend and an acquaintance; I, for whatever reason, have never had a hard time in making friends wherever I have lived.  A happy consequence of that is I have been a part of a LOT of wedding parties, once as a best man (technically twice, but only one of those marriages count in my mind—that’s another story) and many times as a groomsman.  My two and a half year stop at  V ictoria, Texas was no exception to the first paragraph and in the case of my newly married friend, James  (and, it has to be said of course, his wife Shelby) ,  it made for a very interesting story to tell wedding goers as to how we met:  he was a bartender and I was a patron. I mean, most of the time it’s “I went to school with this guy” or “I served in the Marines with this guy” or “This is my family, so  kinda known