flying irishman

would love to see Angkor Wat & all the other places you’ve chosen as goals as well. Has been more than a year since we traveled to a new and exciting place.

think Obamacare will be a good thing for our country and be reshaped and improved as time goes on?

have a handful of favorite tv shows to recommend? What are they?

the effort to investigate the circumstances behind the death of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya should continue instead of a return to focusing on legislation by Congress?

have a spring garden? Any favorites in bloom now?

have a favorite pro sports team? Are they having/did they have a good year?

feel relieved to see the U.S. economy growing stronger?

think there will ever be a peaceful end to the violent conflicts in Israel/Palestine, as there apparently has been in Northern Ireland?

spend some time each week trying to create art? If so, what kind of art?

get caught up on sleep on the weekends or tend to stay out late partying or stay up watching TV or doing something else?

think the firearms laws in your country are reasonable and effective at decreasing shootings?

hope the spring lingers into July?

to recycle, in most cases, are the most potentially harmful to the environment. CFLs contain mercury, but often end up in landfills when people don’t know what else to do with them, as do household batteries, print cartridges and so on.
I’ve found online that some retailers (try Lowe’s & Home Depot to start) will accept these items for recycling, but they certainly don’t advertise it.

that had little bits of paint in it yesterday. Picked some of the flecks out of my teeth. Yuck! Oh well, hope it was all latex.

is adopting a Zero Waste to Landfill initiative. I’m glad because I’ve always wanted to do a better job at recycling, and now there is lots of info available at work and multicolored tubs have replaced our trashcans. I’m not going to be the person who doesn’t know what goes where.

19. I rarely finish my fiction projects, despite my best intentions.
20. Most I’ve ever weighed: 336. Least I’ve weighed as an adult: 178.
21. I’m closer to the all-time high than I care to admit.
22. My parents are very good people, though not quite saints.
23. Lots of alcoholism in my family. Even as a teenager, I knew if I started to drink, I’d never control it. So I never started.
24. As a teen, my first act of rebellion was refusing to be confirmed
in the Catholic Church.
25. The years are roaring along; I wish I could slow them down somehow.
26. I love chocolate.
27. I spend too much time wishing I could go back in time and correct some mistakes.
28. My older brother dramatically proved that people can change their lives for the better.
29. I’m glad my brothers & sisters have had so many children, among other reasons, so my wife and I don’t feel we disappointed our folks.
30. I’ve been diagnosed ADHD, but I just can’t bring myself to take meds for it.
31. Two of my brothers and my sister are lawyers. Three first cousins are lawyers. My mom’s dad, whose name I share, was a lawyer. Two of my sisters-in-law and a soon to be ex-brother in law are lawyers.
32. Should I have gone to law school? I don’t know. Probably not.
33. I developed borderline carpal tunnel syndrome when I was 26, but it’s mostly gone now, even though I type for hours almost daily.
34. If I can lose this weight, I’d like to climb a 14,000 foot peak.
35. I don’t play the lottery or go to the casinos. I think I’d like them too much to stop.
36. In the MFA program I graduated from, I was pretty close to one of the professors. We watched hours of baseball together. He was my mentor, a charming alcoholic who could be a brilliant teacher at times. He was considered one of the best poets of his generation once. Last time I saw him was in a crowded lecture hall where an investigator was trying to answer questions from upset and angry grad students about a sexual harassment investigation. My mentor, sadly, was one of the harassers.
37. As a teenager, I used to drink about a gallon of milk a day. One of my brothers used to say I didn’t drink but inhaled the milk. Now I’m allergic to it and haven’t had a glass in years.
38. I’ve always wanted to live in Los Angeles again. I was born there, but my family moved away when I was 2.
39. As a preteen, when I played Dungeons & Dragons, I was usually the Dungeon Master.
40. I’m not one to get excited by celebrities. So few of them are worthy of their fame.
41. In my opinion, Obama is a great President. The best in my lifetime thus far certainly.
42. I’d like to live to 80 or more and had better get exercising and eating right if I’m going to have a chance.
43. I’m awfully pleased to have finished this goal. Best thing I’ve done today.
37.

TV show is rectify, on Sundance. It’s about a man who’s just been released from jail after 19 years on death row. DNA evidence has proven someone else was involved, so a judge vacated his conviction. His younger sister led the effort to free him. Since the case wasn’t dismissed, the authorities in this small town in Georgia can choose to try him again. Meanwhile, he’s trying to adjust to life outside of death row, where he’s lived since he was 18.

is closely tied to my sleep goal and food gournal goal. Just won’t happen unless I get those two things under control

I broke down and put weed and feed on the grass in back. So now the dogs have to be taken in front every time they want to go out for a while. Even so, they regard the back as their personal property and have been barking angrily periodically at my wife and me as if to say,
I demand to be allowed to visit my property.”

to see any of my immediate family won’t come until sometime in midsummer. Tried to persuade them to visit me, but no one is interested in spending the time and money apparently.

rectify, on Sundance. Have seen 3 of the 6 episodes thus far. I think the show is fantastically good, bordering on great. If the last three episodes were available, I’d stay up late and watch them all. Can’t stop thinking about it.

is making me feel pretty self-counscious. Have decided to just get over it and try to finish.

Jill, by Philip Larkin, published 1946. Written when he was in his early 20s. First-rate story about 18-year-old lower-middle class Oxford scholarship student John, who becomes enamored of his hard-drinking, charming and callous roommate, upper-middle class Christopher, who hardly puts any time in to his studies. Why should he, when he can always get John’s work to steal from. About a quarter way through, and Jill has yet to make an appearance. A good bet she will either be Christopher’s girlfriend or our protagonist will fall for her and then Christopher will swoop in and make passionate love to her, leaving John to feel devastated.

is blue. I’ve often wished it were something else. But no.

I used to have these sort of existential crises in which I felt as though I was all alone in the world and just imagining everything and everyone else out there and that if I didn’t stop thinking about it, I’d start to see things as they really were, which would be disastrous.

I ever did was marry my wife. I’ve been hugely lucky and very very happy over the last 21 years. Here’s hoping for at least another forty for us.

high school football and started on varsity for two years. I was a defensive tackle. I liked it much of the time, but probably wouldn’t have played if my parents hadn’t wanted me to so badly.

but am not a fast reader. Maybe average.

of J R R Tolkien. I didn’t care for the Lord of the Rings movies as much as I thought I would because I’d spent so much time as a kid wondering about Middle Earth and all who lived there that I couldn’t fully accept the interpretations of someone other than Tolkien about what it was like.

removed