For many years, my family and I lived in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. For those of you who don't know, Oshkosh is the site of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s annual fly-in. Over a million people come from around the globe for the week long event, which features flight demonstrations, notable aviators, and celebrity enthusiasts of all kind (John Denver was a regular when he was alive; Chuck Yeager and Dick Rutan make the trip every year as well). It is the largest civilian airshow in t...
Just over 7 years ago, I received the job that I truly thought would be my career. I was working with developmentally disabled adults in a group home setting. The following years seemed to confirm my feeling that this would become my career, as I advanced up the ladder as quickly as I could. Within a year, I was an assistant manager. Two years after that I was manager. I coauthored the Y2k disaster program for the 50 programs under our care, and authored the individual Y2k support plans fo...
OK, this one off the funny papers. In the now growing war against me (no, I'm not kidding, it's gotten pretty stupid), I have been accused of violating someone's human rights. Did I hack into their computer and edit their blogs? Did I manipulate joeuser's servers and hide them? No...I CRITICIZED them. For this, I get categorized as a "human rights" violator. Please show me any international agreement that stipulates the right to blog without criticism. It isn't there. What I canno...
This "tales from the road" is going to be different than the previous entries, as it describes hiking, one of my favorite activities. We set out to hike the entire Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which follows Lake Superior's southern shoreline in Michigan's upper peninsula. Our guide was experienced to the area, and had the trip plotted out for 43 miles over 5 days. We set out on day one to rain, which continued the entire day and was a delige until two of us reached camp, as breakoffs...
I stated in my earlier blogs about the error of my younger days, and how I spent time in the county jail. During that time, I gained a good deal of insight as to how stereotypes are built up. I have found that ex inmates almost always have some level of prejudice. During my time in the Pierce County Correctional Center in late 1988-early 1989, I found out a good deal why. Inside many of the cell blocks, the blacks tend to mingle with the blacks, the hispanics with the hispanics, and so ...
The five and a half years I spent managing group homes for the developmentally disabled were my best time for road trips, as I had to get out and away from the madness and frustration that was my job (and would eventually result in my leaving the field altogether). For months, we had planned to travel to Lincoln, Nebraska to see some friends of ours who performed in a family band in their home state. As I pored over the road atlas, I saw there was more that we could do with that trip. W...
Jeff woke up in the morning with a horrible hangover. His first conscious thought was to rid himself of any visible evidence of the hangover, as the new prohibition laws were rather strict, and he didn't relish the thought of spending his 35th birthday in the stocks. He grabbed his bible and opened it, reading the requisite passage in Ezekial, logging carefully his notes in case the government questioned his commitment to the government's new Compulsory Religion laws. As he stumbled into the ...
OK, so here's the scenario. I'm at a discussion group of local activists. Not all of us are avowed Libertarians in the group, but there's a strong libertarian sentiment nonetheless. I am speaking as the group begins to dissolve in some petty little squabble or another, and I make the statement "we need to win the war; THEN divide the spoils". At this point, some older gentleman who's been mostly listening, pipes up "War? What war?" and beging on his own little rant (I fully expected a "...
Our neighbors have their great grandson over at their house daily. He's generally a good kid, but we've found one very frustrating trait we've tried to deal with. He will walk in the house regularly without knocking. It is not unusual for me to be sitting on the couch reading or doing something else and look up and see him standing there. We've tried to talk to his parents and our neighbors about it, but this is their "golden" child (they have two boys). He simply cannot do wrong. When I addr...
I weep for the state of public education today. If the teachers who blog regularly on this site are any education, FAR too many of our teachers are graduating with the notion that they are ALWAYS right and that there is no room for debating their position (inbloom, alisonwatkins, and select others, this does NOT apply to you). Worse yet, they apparently lack the skills to read in context. The whole topic was keyed off when an educator discussed a situation they had handled. I felt it...
When I was a middle school aged student, much of my writing had macabre, violent undertones. I wasn't violent by nature, just warped. You see, I was ahead of most of my class in reading, and I continually searched for new material. I quickly found Stephen King's books, and began devouring them at a rate of about one a week, which at the age of 13 is a pretty substantial quantity. As young artists are wont to do, much of my creative writing began mimicking the substance and style of my new ...
I was rereading dharma's article about writing professionally, and wanted to comment, but decided against hijacking her thread (I already left a comment prior, but didn't want to detract the emphasis on her writing career on her own blog). Anyway, I'm pretty much setting the stage for entry into my own professional writing career. Frankly, if I'm successful, I'll have the individuals on this blogsite to thank. You see, for about a year and a half, you have been my sounding board, my harshe...
A couple weeks ago, while surfing BlogClicker, I came across a blog where the blogger was soliciting items to sell for surgery. As I surf many blogs over the day, I thought no more of it. Until today, when I stopped briefly on the blog. I will spare some of the details so as to spare the blogger SOME embarrassment, but suffice it to say, the money was being raised for a SEX CHANGE. Now, see, I don't care if you're a man wanting to be a female, a female wanting to be a man, or wish to have ...
Well, I seem to be on the downside of a rather virulent illness that's seen me shed over 10 pounds in 2 days' time. What worried me about the whole thing wasn't the explosive diarrhea (shades of South Park WERE going through my head, though), but the extremely stiff neck. I could barely move my head, and was starting to fear something horrible like meningitis or Lyme disease (I picked a deer tick off my friend's dog the other day, so I know there are some in the area). The unusual part of thi...
I've always hated pseudo intellectuals. You know the type, the guys who pull our their "word of the day" dictionaries and use the words awkwardly throughout the day (use it three times and its yours, right?), or who look through the thesaurus to come up with a good "stumper" word. I've always looked for a lighthearted way to deal with their inanity, and as such, I've discovered the joy of adjectives. Adjectives are, quite simply, the easiest part of speech to "manufacture" words without detec...