Does the clothes make the man?

Yes I have a picture of a guy instead of a hot woman today. Don't get use to it. The temperature dropped twenty degrees since yesterday and will stay that way here. So I've broken out the shirt, tie, and even a jacket. I haven't worn my ties in a long time. For my first 9 years as a chiropractor it was a daily staple, but since I've been down here I've gone more casual. Many of my female business associates hound me to wear a tie since they know I will look good in it. However I haven't picked it up. My tie carousel has gone up and down in my closet many times, but that's about it. I was talking to my friend Paul this morning and he said that a few people in his business group wear suits and ties to feel like a businessman. And therein lies the rub. I remember being a child and not wanting to wear gold so I wouldn't be seen as big shot. What really got me was when Paul said someone during his introduction said he was an under earner. Hey that's me. I've always sold myself short and I think my comfortable clothes are another way that I do that. What's that old alcoholic term, "fake it to you make it." I think that's going to have to be my motto until I increase my worth some more.

I tell you for someone whose hands are very important to them, you can't tell with me this week. Besides both my wrists still being strained and hurting in some positions. Monday I scraped about 2 layers of flesh off the back of my hand. Honestly I didn't even know until I saw the blood. What truly sucks it wasn't enough loss to get a scab so it's just raw skin until it heals.

Hopefully you've stopped vomiting from all that. The Harry Potter movie last night was good, but interesting. Interesting you say? Yep. At this point in the series they've taken the track that you've read the books so they have no reason to give you any background information. If you're just there with for a friend you're shit out of luck. The reason I say this is because I read the book when it came out years ago. Let me tell you I was really trying to jog my memory during the movie. I think I may need to dig the series out of storage to read it again.

Life's Tidbits

I was reading the local magazine for the area since they had their annual Sensational Singles article. This was the first time in a while that they didn't ask our group for participants. The interesting thing this year is that I knew many of the people through business. Their were about 20 people ranging in age from mid 20's to late 40's. Now the biggest thing that really stood out to me was the longest relationship question. Only one person said 10 years while everyone else was like 3. Holy shit! Is this is a demographic slice of Americana? This really made me feel a difference between myself and everyone else. My longest relationship was 16 years. Are these people all just light weights? Or are people bailing out of relationships faster instead of working on them? It was just mind boggling to me. Although I have to admit when I talk to people in the singles group, many people had short marriages and the long term ones are few and far between. I guess having it all together there really made me see it.

It was funny this morning to be treating someone while his wife was Facebooking about everything. How do I know? Well we're Facebook friends since we are in a business group together. The age of technology has spread everywhere.

I see that I'll be going by myself to see Harry Potter tonight. It was a very light Internet in seeing it within the group. When there is only one woman and myself usually they drop out at the last minute and that's what happened this time.

Help Needed

Okay this is a new one for me. I usually just journal here, but this came up and we're still behind. My friend Chuck got reactivated to go with the marines to Afghanistan. He's a chapel for about 400 marines. Something I didn't know was there are female marines. I know there are women in every other part of the military, but the marines always seemed like a guy thing. Anyway he serves with 60 women there. The problem is that all donations are male oriented and the women get nothing. Chuck says that they are in desperate need of skin care and any “feel pretty” products. The climate is extremely dry and it is so difficult to get quality products where they are stationed. My friend Amy who does Mary Kay has taken it up to help them. So here is her message.

This is where I come in… I want to provide for these women who are selflessly serving for our country. I am willing to donate all my time, mailing, profits and products to these ladies. But I really need your help. I am beginning a program so you may “Adopt a Soldier”. I want to get every lady there a full size skin care set and tinted lip balm (SPF 15 of course). If you are able to donate, Your name would actually go on a card with a message from you, to the female soldier. Since my friend Chuck is the Chaplain and all donations go through him to be fairly distributed, I feel confident all these ladies will be getting exactly what they need with my instructions to Chuck.

To “Adopt a Soldier” there are 3 different ways to help…
Donate $50 to give a complete Miracle Set to a soldier (One card just from you)

Donate $25 to share in a Miracle Set to a solider (Your message and one other on the card

Donate $8 to give a Tinted Lip Balm SPF 15 to a soldier (One card just from you)

((At this point we are taking all donations and just adding them up to do Miracle sets for all of them))

Please let me know if you are interested. I am so thrilled I can help out these ladies. I have already ordered mini hand creams for them and I will get them off to Chuck as soon as they come in. What a great surprise when they get the big box the next time with everything they need for a happy face!

Let me know if you want to help. And I will get payment and the message you would like to tell your soldier.

Hugs!
Amy Becraft amysavalanche@cox.net
PS – If you would like to forward this e-mail on to a friend who may be interested in helping, feel free.

Thanks for your support.

The Eyes Have it

One of the new members mentioned it at Panera's the other night. Most everyone had glasses on. The numbers were 10 people out of 12 and those two both has Lasik. It was a surprising cross section of Americana. Then while waiting for my oil change today I was reading an article about how having glasses is no longer a stigma like it was when I was a kid. It may actually be a cool thing. I know Eric was excited to get his glasses and he thinks they are cool. Now I know he wasn't dropped on his head as a baby so maybe the rumors are true. I'm happy to see the stigma drop, although I think it's just numbers more than society changing. I think people are wearing glasses in record numbers now and that the norm is to have them. You're on the fringe if you don't have them. Who would have guessed?

Size Does Matter

While removing my Mom's TV did kick my ass yesterday. I am thoroughly enjoying it today. I'd had gotten so use to a small 19" set over the last 5 years. When we split I gave my ex our big TV for Eric. Now to have a big TV again to watch DVD's is great. It's like WOW. I'm a kid in a candy store. I remember visiting one of my friend years ago and his GF's parents had a huge projection set and I was like in heaven. While size doesn't matter to me in most cases. I do have to admit with TVs, size does matter.

I have to admit it was a pretty uneventful day. If I could have slept in it would have been better. I did my usual Barnes & Nobles run and even stopped in Borders to check them out to see if I could find something I wanted since I had a 40% off coupon, but they didn't have anything. Besides being out of the way there selection is always sparse in anything I want.

My talk with the baseball team seemed to go okay. I did start to worry when I got there and their was only little kids playing. The coach did tell me 3:30. He like most of the parents were late. The funny thing was as soon as I started talking, the kid at bat started hitting foul balls our way. I talked maybe 2 minutes and I can't count the amount of times I had to duck.

I tell you I don't know what I would do with myself, but I could use another day off. Well my day at the office tomorrow isn't too full so hopefully I can do something and get out early.

Revelations

Sitting and listening to everyone at the table last night at Panera's, especially the Photographer saying she was ready to go back home until she joined the group, I realized something. I now know more people than I think I ever knew combined, however I still don't have any very close friends. I only notice this when people from the group come in and have no one and they find friends. I get a nice feeling from it, however I haven't had that feeling for myself. Friends as an adult is a different animal from when I was a kid. I have people to call to do stuff with, but no one to share my day to day stuff except for my friend Paul back in NY.

I'm tired today. There was a freaking mosquito in the room last night. It flew past my ear every few hours waking me up. I'm not quite sure which is worse. The usual keep flying past my ear that I have to get up and kill it or the frequent wake ups. All I know I'm tired and the mosquito is now dead.

Not much on my plate today although I have an appointment to talk to one of the private school baseball teams about getting treatment. I've increased my skill with it so hopefully it goes better than last time.

A Bumpy Day

It was a bit of a bumpy day for me. The good was that I found the oil leak in my car. It turned out that rubber band in the box was the gasket. Mystery solved and that made me very happy.

I finally decided to take my Mom's TV out of her place. It's way larger than mine and she never uses it. I tell you this kicked my ass. While I know my Mom isn't going to get any better. I guess it was sort of a little lie in the back of my head that as long as the TV was there things had some normalcy. I almost didn't take it today since it was upsetting, but the moving cart was right at the entrance which it is never there. So I knew I would kick myself for not taking it and have to do it again at another time without the cart. Now that it's at my place it's nice having a big TV again. When I got divorced I gave my ex the big TV for Eric and I kept the 19". I don't know if he ever got to use it or she kept it in her room.

Game night went well and we had many new people there. The bumpiness came at the end. The Photographer was there and some of the new girls were asking her questions. Some about the group, Game boy, and life. It was weird sitting there listing to it all. Halloween is coming up and we were dating at this time last year. A mutual friend might have her Halloween party again and we both went to that as a couple. So it was weird for her to talk all about this and not mention me. She would look over at me and I'm not saying I wanted her to say anything. It was just strange. The other was about her relationship with Game boy which again was interesting since she dated me at the same time since she wanted the relationship with me for a while. However I had been dating the Planner. Anyway she had ended it with Game boy a few months ago since she now wants a more serious relationship. Again I wasn't looking for her to share any of this information, but there's this whole sub story of us in there. I don't know if her looking at me to see if I wanted her to share or what. All I can say is it was just strange.

Runaround

One of my biggest complaints about Virginia Beach is that their was no plan. Developers were allowed to run wild. So you have a zillion neighborhoods that don't connect and have one maybe two ways in/out if your lucky. Now I'm not talking a cul de sac. I'm talking several hundred homes if not pass the thousand mark. It causes bottlenecks all over the freaking place. Now you wonder why I mention this. Well we have an annual school 5k in our neighborhood. Today was it. Trying to get out of our neighborhood is a nightmare unless you do it before 7 am or after 11 am. Streets are closed and the best is the road out of our part of the neighborhood is the starting and ending place for the race. Yes we're stuck. God I hate this day.

On better news I found my oil leak. It's from the part I put in Wednesday. Either there is some grit under it or I need to tighten it more. I'm just happy to have found it.

This weekend I'm going to take my Mom's TV out of her room. She never uses it and it's been sitting there for the last few years. It's a lot larger than mine so it's a done deal. However it's another point of downsizing my Mom. I haven't had to do anything in a long while so it's a bit of a sore spot. I think the next one will be when she's dead.

The highlight of the day will be game night at Panera with the singles.

Slippery

It seems I've swung from one car problem to another. It seems I'm leaking oil. I'm not quite sure if a bunch came out a once after I fixed the camshaft sensor or it's been building. I've got a little pool collected in the bottom of the engine and a lot on the ground. I don't see any hose I knocked off and I'm thinking it's coming from the engine which wouldn't be good. I'll have to keep an eye on the level to see if it's stopped doing it or if it's continuing to leak.

I finally got my free massage this morning. It went well and she has good hands. So I'm seeing her Monday and if we're good we can start marketing together which will work out well for both of us.

I got a blast from the past this morning. It was an article in the paper about chronic fatigue syndrome. When I first met my ex wife she wanted to be a school teacher, but didn't want to be in charge of anything. I remember on our first date thinking WTF? However since it was our first date I didn't verbalize it. She became a teacher and ended up hating it and stopped doing it within 6 months. Why she stopped was she said she got chronic fatigue syndrome. During the time we were dating I really worked on helping her out, getting her information, and pretty much bending over backwards to help. All of this I was happy to do. However just before we separated we were talking one day and she casually mentioned how she made the whole chronic fatigue thing up so she could get out of teaching. My jaw dropped, but I didn't say anything cause I couldn't believe what I had heard. It was like 14-15 years of believing a lie.

I was happy that I really didn't have any anger this morning, but I figured I would journal about it so I could put it to rest.

Smoke and Guns

While I love living down in Virginia it has some quirks that New York didn't. One of the biggest is guns. In the Old Dominion as long as you have a license and don't have it concealed (which needs a special permit) you can wear you gun to supermarket. Like I was walking into the post office yesterday and a woman is walking out with a holstered gun strapped to her belt. I tell you I've been down her too long since I didn't even flinch. I do admit the woman with the pink holster in Panera bread a few weeks ago was interesting. I have to admit, at least in this area, I see more women with guns than men. Not quite sure what's up with that. I might have to add it to my checklist when I'm thinking about asking a woman out. Attractive, check. Wedding ring? Nope. Carrying a gun to blow me away and not in a good way.

The other thing is smoking. Tobacco is still a very big cash crop here. So is smoking in public places. It was funny even the comedians at the Funny Bone Sunday were like you still have smoking here. Even Ireland has done away with smoking in pubs we were informed. I can't wait till 12/1 when the smoking ban goes into affect here.