by Richard Timothy | Dec 9, 2010 | I Do Suggest, I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Reviewed and Recommended
So, I just finished day one of a four day conference I’m attending in DC. The event is called Seven THE Event: Four Days. One Decision. Seven Figures. In short, it’s four sponge filled days where my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I, and 200 other attendees try to soak up as much brilliantly usable and applicable business information as we can, which is presented by four different entrepreneurs that all make a yearly seven figure income, letting us know that we can too.
Now, I’m not sure what the protocol is for meeting millionaires, especially at these conference thingies where you’ll essentially be hanging out with them for the day, but when I got up this morning to get ready I did have a thought. Is there a dress code for conferencing with millionaires? It seems like there might me, depending on the situation. I think a lot of the time people dress accordingly based on the culture and/or context in which they will be spending time with that culture. I mean you wouldn’t show up in a tux when going to drink beer and hunt woodland creatures with residents of a trailer park, unless you lost a bet or something. Likewise, it only seems right that you wouldn’t show up for a millionaire (x 4) hosted conference in a hula skirt and coconut bra over your “With a shirt like this who needs pants?” tee shirt, you know, unless you lost a bet.
So as I was getting ready for day one, my first thought was, “Damn, I wish I hadn’t lost that bet.” Ok, not really, but I was still a little curious on what to wear. I opted to go with the philosophy, when in doubt just dress yourself… with pants on. Wait, I mean “be” yourself… with pants on, and I need to say the overall effect was quite, well, devoid of having people stare at me in an uncomfortable expression.
I did take a few precautions though. First, I wore a belt so I would not be pulling up my pants every time I got up and/or walked around… it was almost a belt… it served as a belt like tool sustaining a solid pants to waist ratio support system… ok fine, it was the pull string from my pajama bottoms, but it worked just fine damn it. And I don’t think anyone apart from Angela noticed. At least she’s the only one that said anything to me about, and since she’s the one that is most likely going to forgive me for what I’m wearing, I really don’t mind with she shakes her head in disbelief and what I occasionally attempt to pass off as fashion for the sake of functionality.
Second, as I was putting on my least wrinkly dress shirt over my tee shirt before leaving to the conference, it turned out that, unbeknownst to me, the shirt was missing a button. From top to bottom it went button, button, no button, button, button, button, but thanks to one of the props I had received from the event I was able to have my very own MacGyver moment. I noticed that if I put my name badge on a string and wore it around my neck. It perfectly covered my missing button and had enough weight to keep my shirt from popping open to giving those around me a little flash of my completely nondescript single colored undershirt with absolutely no dirty words anywhere on it. The best part, Angela didn’t even notice the missing button until I pointed it out to her after the day’s festivities had ended and we were enjoying dinner together.
As for the conference itself, there is something incredibly refreshing and satisfying about going to an event where, when something is sharing with the entire audience a profound breakthrough they experienced that one of the presenters encourage the breakthrough by telling the audience to, “Clap that shit up.”
Here are a few of my “ah ha” moments from day one:
- You have a business to make money, the more money you make the more you can help others and the more good you can do. If you goal is not to make money you have a hobby, not a business.
- Indecision is a form of self abuse.
- The sure way to get clear about what it is you do is to make a decision. Only 20% of your message about what it is your business does is a result of your discoveries, the other 80% is because you made a decision.
It’s been a brilliant first day overall, the information has been grand, the presenters are personable and solid presenters, and the people attending are really quite lovely and friendly. Oh yeah, I even have business cards now! I’ve even handed out a couple. My tag line: Richard Timothy… writer, blogger, smirker. I know! I thought it rather fitting as well.
Definitely looking forward to tomorrow and I’m pretty sure my wardrobe will be a little more to code tomorrow as well, unless I decide to wear my intentionally ugly Christmas sweater. Tis the season you know.
Any thoughts about today’s Smirk?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: man with suitcase, with a shirt like this, missing button, and shirt missing button.
by Richard Timothy | Dec 7, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Working Observations
I’ve have a friend and office mate, same person actually, who is exceptionally susceptible to anything supernatural, and is easily swayed in support of their ghostly existence. Left to his own devices he would be convinced that every image he came across on Google Images under the key words “ghost pictures,” would stand as irrevocable proof that the whole Earth is hunted. And even though it’s not on my list of job requirements, when he gets a little overly sensitive about the issue I’ll spend some time Googling these “images of proof” in hopes that his haunt-expecting persona will be able to let it go long enough to get back to what makes him, him… namely going off on obscure tangents that results in at least two people in the room reminding him to use his “inside voice”.
Of course he’s also terrified of midgets, or little people, as they prefer to be called… I’m not sure what that has to do with any of this, but it does give you a little back ground into his personality. I suppose if there was one thing on the planet that could put this guy into a fear coma it would be some sort of proof (fake or fact), such as a photo, Youtube video, Destination Truth episode, a blog post… anything really, which revealed that there was, in fact, a little person ghost out there maliciously haunting people. I wonder if it would overload his fear capacitor and he would become the next Evel Kinevel?
On more than one occasion it’s taken me about half a day to convince him that his house is not haunted and that he can go home again. To be fair these are the exceptions and not the rule. I’ve talked him though a code red on two separate occasions. He arrived at work determined that he would not set foot in his home ever again. By the end of the day his resiliency was worn down to the point that maybe he’d be willing to take a nap in the house just to make sure nothing was going on… but if something else happened, I had to promise to help him move. So far, he’s deferred hiring any moving vans.
I’d say that at least once a week we have a “ghostly” discussion. Here are a few actual conversations I’ve had with him:
- All old houses are probably haunted, which is why he’ll only move into newly built houses, apartments, etc. He even had his realtor research to make sure his current home was not build on or near any old relocated cemeteries.
- He wanted to know if I could help him find a Buddhist exorcist to get the spirit out of his house, which was making his dog freak out and bark at nothing. There were two spate occasions where a “ghost” had played hide and seek with his ring and then another time his watch… these were the code reds.
- For a few weeks this year he sulked everyday because his friend had just moved into an old house, which He was sure was haunted, you know, because of how the house looked from the outside. Eventually, over time, he started to go over and visit, but he refused to be alone in house. If there were two people in a room, and he was one of them, and the other person got up to leave, he’d follow them out of that room.
- If Ghost Hunters didn’t find anything and deemed a location as a “ghost free” zone, he was pretty sure they just didn’t try hard enough. And let’s not forget to mention the play-by-play of what happened on the Ghost Hunters episode he watched the night before.
- He is certain most ghosts enjoy Christmas, and are traditionally in a better mood, which explains why there is always an abundance of positive energy surrounding the holiday season.
- He wanted to know if I wanted to start a ghost hunting club. He’d been researching what type of equipment to buy and thought we could make some money catching ghosts. Eventually he admitted to drinking a lot and watching Ghostbusters the night before and that it seemed like a really good idea at the time. By the end of our conversation, he apologized.
I must admit that there has been a time or two… probably more… okay, definitely more, that I have taken part as the instigator. Telling him stories that people have told me, or sharing blog posts I have read, like a recent one about a child ghost playing with some little kid’s toys, which a friend of mine wrote about just this past week on his blog Atypical Read. It’s a pretty good story and worth checking it out… though please note, the author does have an affinity for using abrupt language that most people would consider “not safe for work”, unless you work at sea that is.
I’m not sure why I instigate it. Perhaps it’s my fascination with my seeing my friend light up and get so passionate about something so frightening to him… it so, well, brilliantly human. It’s oddly inspiring really… embracing what scares us, instead fleeing and hiding from the unknown. So, I’ve decided to start doing just that. At least once a week I will get my brain out its lazy boy and do something a little uncomfortable, scary even. I think my “ghost days” will be a good reminder of that. Today, I’ll be submitting a story to someone that may want to share it with others, or that may want to print it off and use it to start a fire that their children will use to make a batch of s’mores for a community bake sale to help earn some money to buy new pots and pans for a local soup kitchen… which is still pretty cool. Either way I’ll have done something that is a little scary for me sometimes. Still, it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good day.
What would your first “ghost day” action be?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: ghosts, haunted house, and poke a badger with a spoon.
by Richard Timothy | Dec 4, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Life Characters, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Today’s Smirk was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend of mine, who, muck like 50% of the people in the US who have signed up for a life of legal partnerships, has walked away from the experience with a permanent “ex” attached to his life. And even though his ex no longer share’s his last name, she has an interactive role in his life due to the three children they had together.
Well, a few weeks ago my friend, Carlton, gets a call from his ex-wife’s current husband Fred. Yes, the ex, Becky, did manage to remarry. Fred was calling to let Carlton know about a little hiccup Fred and Becky had gotten into.
Turns out Fred was in the process of trying to get full custody of his own kids from his previous marriage. Apparently Fred’s ex was a bit crazy and quite unfit, according to Fred, to be raising his kids half the time. Because he used words like “mentally unfit” and “psychologically unbalanced” Fred’s ex was required by the state to take a psychological test to see if she was mentally equipped enough to be raising any children.
This also meant is that Fred and Becky were required by the state to take the same test to show that they were mentally fit to care for Fred’s kids full time. I like that the state requires this. It only seems fair that you should have to prove that you are not the loony one when you are trying to get your kids away from someone who you claim is. Fred went on to explain that the reason for the call was because Carlton’s ex, Becky, had scored a little low on the test.
Turns out “a little low” translated into Carlton’s ex-wife achieving the all-time lowest score on the test in the history of the state. It was so low, in fact, that the state was sure it was an error, something must have gone wrong with the scoring… grading… anything… it was impossible that she scored as low as she did, so they were going to let her take it again. Fred’s call was a courtesy call mostly because, if she failed the test again, there was a very good possibility Carlton would be getting his own kids full time.
When I asked Carlton what he thought about the whole thing, he replied, “I have mixed feelings. On one hand, taking the kids full time will definitely be a change to my schedule, which will take some getting used to. On the other hand, I’ve been saying for years ‘that bitch is crazy’ and now it looks like the state might finally be legally agreeing with me, so that feels pretty good.”
I told him he must have been a very good boy this year because it appeared he was getting his Christmas gift a little early. Talk about the perfect unintentional gift from your ex, and it didn’t cost him a thing… well, except for maybe a crazy ex-wife, but I think he’s willing to live with that, mainly because he doesn’t live with her.
Poor Fred though. It’s got to suck not being able to get your kids away from your crazy ex-wife because your current wife turns out to be even crazier… huh?… it would appear Fred certainly has a type.
Coincidence or karma? I can’t say I care, but I do know this, from now on, until the day he dies, every time Carlton says, “… my crazy ex-wife,” he is going to have a genuine smile on his face, even if it took ten years to get there.
To those of you with an ex, what would be the perfect gift from them?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: ex-wife, and smiling man.
by Richard Timothy | Nov 30, 2010 | Holiday Banter, I Think There's a Point, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
With the holidays officially afoot I figure what better time than now to give the gift of a child’s curse. I’m not sure why it is, but in its purest and most innocent form a child’s curse is something a always brings a smile to my face. So what exactly is a child’s curse? Here is a prime example of one that I witnessed last Christmas while I was a my parents house with the whole family, including my five year old niece.
After indulging in excessive amounts of food, like you do, it was time to huddle around the television and watch my families holiday tradition of watching some kid in glasses shoot his eye out with an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle. My niece, was of the disposition that if the television was on, but not playing something Disney princess or Scooby-Doo related then it was not worth watching. This meant that while everyone else was down stairs watching the film, I was sitting on the floor next to the tree, upstairs, while Natalie played house with Barbie’s and Scooby-Doo action figures.
After Shaggy had turned down a marriage proposal from his third Barbie suitor… suitorette, I did my best to encourage her to play something else. Like maybe one of the Barbies could help Shag and Scoob with the Mystery of the solitary blinking Christmas tree light. It worked rather well… until…
Natalie ventured over to the tree with one of her Barbies to check out the light, then she noticed something under the tree. She put down her doll and picked up a hot pad and oven mitt set that was a gift to my mom. The set was covered in a holiday theme with reign deer and candy canes on them. The oven mitt looked a little like a puppet though. The thumb piece section of the mitt was made to be the bottom piece of the deer’s mouth. That way when you pulled a pan out of the oven it would look like it was in the reign deer’s mouth. If falls into the same realm as ugly holiday sweaters and was probably the same designer.
As Natalie is looking at it, she is filled with honest and genuine confusion. She walks up to me with the set in her hands, her brow lightly furrowed. Then, as she gently hands it to me, she asks in the most sincere and inquisitive voice I’ve yet to hear from a five year old, “What the hell is this?”
The problem with laughing at a five year old who is sincere and intent on getting an answer to the question they just asked is the have a tendency to think you are laughing at them. Her dirty looks only fueled my inability to gain my composure. Once she started crying, well, it stopped being as funny. Eventually I was forgiven, but it took one cookie and an ice cream cone, and Shaggy agreeing to marry the Barbie of her choice.
Of course I told everyone, promptly after I got her to stop crying. I just had to make sure she was not in the room when I told everyone… little people (kids) can be so sensitive. Still, there is something innocently smirk inspiring about a little kid cursing when they have no idea its considered a no no. It’s just a word to them. Something they picked up, probably from their parents… or me, but more than likely from their parents. I have a few more that I’m sure I’ll share at time goes on, but I figured this would be a good one to get you all started for the holiday season. Cheers.
So, do you have any kid curse stories of your own? I’d love to hear it.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: what the hell, and cursing kid.
by Richard Timothy | Nov 23, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Well, it finally happened, the first snowfall of the season started Saturday evening and sprinkled its way into Sunday. Some of you already know that when it comes to snow, I am not a fan… and to those of you that didn’t know, now you do. Sunday started a bit late for me thanks to a fabulous evening with some friends, and a late night Castle marathon my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I started once we got home. See, we don’t have a lot of time… make that patience for television… commercials to be more exact.
So, when a new series comes out that is worth watching, our friends, who do enjoy a good series from time to time, will let us know about it. Then, once it comes out on DVD we’ll Netflix it. One thing I’ve noticed with this patter is Angela’s all-at-once commitment to a series when she finds one she likes. When she gets sucked in she wants to get caught up as soon as possible. Take Castle for example, I was interested in watching the show because of my affinity for Captain Mal of Firefly fame, and as I’ve watched the series I’ve been entertained enough to keep watching. Angela, on the other hand, is hooked.
Here’s how our television watching usually goes at the house, Angela will sit on the couch and work on her laptop while we watch something and I play with her hair. No it’s nothing like me trying to French braid it, or me using her hair to make me funny mustaches, while I look at myself in a hand mirror and giggle. No, it’s just me running my fingers through her hair while we watch. So when a show catches her attention she has to see what happens next, which is her phrase of acceptance and appreciation. Every time an episode ends, she says, “Next,” and I fast forward through the closing credits to the next episode on the DVD. Welcome to this past Saturday night.
When we got home and she checked the mail to discover we had received two new disks of season two, and of course we had to watch one episode before going to bed. Four episodes later with one DVD ready to be sent back, it was about 3:30 in the morning, and I was done… mainly because I was on the verge of passing out due to the cold medicine I had taken. The thing about her watching murder mysteries is that when I decide to call it a night, I know she won’t be staying downstairs and to watch any more episodes without me. Not because she doesn’t want to stop watching them, but because she gets scared from watching them and doesn’t want to be left alone. I know, I know, but I think it’s kind of cute.
So now with all that unnecessary exposition is out of the way, welcome to my snow day Sunday, and my noon o’clock wakeup call. Taking nighttime cold medicine at 2AM is a good way to ensure that sleeping in on a Sunday is going to happen whether you want it to or not. The thing about our snow day is that, and I’m not exactly sure how, but the storm managed to knock out our internet, until about 7PM that night. Sure it was an inconvenience, but, well, here are a few things I got from my internetless snow day Sunday:
- It’s nice to unplug every now and again. Even though there were some things I wanted to get done, which required the internet (specifically, getting a podcast hosting site set up), it could wait, and did.
- The importance of knowing how to shuffle. Yes, even though my PC still worked, I chose to kick it “old school” and pulled out a real live deck of playing cards for the sake of enjoying a few hands of Solitaire.
- I love books. Even though they are starting to diminish in number and populate like bunnies in the virtual world, what with electronic book readers becoming the next step in literary evolution and all, a book is permanent and there for you when all the power goes out, and the batteries go dead. There is something comforting about curling up in an oversized chair and reading from a book you are holding in your hands.
- I still enjoy listening to mixed tapes… I have so many that have been ignored for far too long. That’s right, not only do I still have cassettes, but I still have a piece of electronic equipment that actually plays them.
- It’s amazing all of the things you can do with tofu when you spend two hours in the kitchen playing Iron Chef… and you already know what the secret ingredient was.
It might not seem like much, but it really was a great snow day, and I didn’t have to go out into the snow once. Not to mention, out of everything I learned that day, I didn’t have to Google a single thing.
So, how did you spend your first snow day of the season? Or if you don’t get snow where you live, what did you do the last time you had an internetless day? I am curious to know.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: snow day, couple watching tv, yawning, shuffling cards, and Google it.
by Richard Timothy | Nov 17, 2010 | Adolescent Shenanigans, I Just Don't Get It, I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, When I Was a Kid
Families are odd little things. They are their own country in a way, with rules, laws, regulations, and rulers. In looking at some of my friends growing up and their family world was quite different than mine. The ruler concept is always easy to understand when you go from home to home. It was always the parent(s) and when they were not home it broke down oldest to youngest.
Then there is the collection of rules that you need to follow to ensure you didn’t get beat, verbally reprimanded, put in a corner on time out, or hugged and kissed in front of your friends until you promised never to do that again and amazed the embarrassment didn’t kill you. The thing that is so incredible to me is the absolute adherence you had for so many of these rules growing up. Rules that make absolutely no sense now, but back then, sure, you could see the point… if only because your parents would explain your confusion with the always “impossible to argue with” statement, “Because I said so.”
One of these rules recently came to mind one evening while I was enjoying a bowl of “magic soup”, which I believe most people call cereal. I mean I call it cereal as well, but only when I’m having it for breakfast. The rest of the time it’s lovingly referred to as “magic soup”, because… it is. Cereal enables to you build a magical fortress that you can hide behind, or do games on the back, or dig through to find a decoder ring with a special message on the box that, once decoded, tells you to eat more cereal.
The cereal rule I had growing up was a rule based on sugar. Because sugar cereal was, is, and will always be more expensive that unsugared cereal. I guess to be clear, for me sugar cereal constitutes cereal like Honeycombs, Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles, and Lucky Charms, where unsugared cereal means Corn Flakes, Cheerios, Raisin Bran, and Corn Chex… even though technically they all have some sugar in them.
The rule was this; we could only have sugared cereal on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, and only one bowl for each day. The rest of the time, if we wanted cereal for breakfast, we ate crappy unsugared cereal, which I would drown with sugar. Seriously, after all the cereal was gone I loved slurping down the left over milk, which was about half sugar. It had the consistency of clam chowder. The thickness was a result of all the sugar I poured over the flakes, one bite at a time. Thinking about it now almost puts me in a sugar coma. Pardon me while I embrace an uncontrollable shiver or two. (/shiver) Seriously though, left to my own devices, my regular cereal had about three times more sugar than my sugared cereal. And yet, I remember the sugar cereal always tasting so much better.
We followed the rule too. Mainly because if any of us screwed up, or took sugared cereal on a day we were not supposed to, everyone would lose their sugar cereal rights for about a month. Not to mention that there would be a good chance that you would be accosted by all of your siblings when the parents weren’t looking.
In looking back, there is one thing about this rule that makes absolutely no sense… Sunday! I managed to grow up in a religious home were every Sunday we would go to church. Now while at church it was hammered into me that church was a reverent place. A place where I was to sit quietly, listen to the stories teachers would read, and above all else I place where you behave.
So my question is this, if good behavior was an important aspect to the overall effect of this church going experience, then why was one of the only days of the week I was allowed to get wired and jacked up on sugar cereal on the morning of the day I would be going to church. There was no chance in hell I was going to sit quietly though an type of meeting after emptying a bowl of Fruit Loops just before going to a build designed to get people engaging in some type of holy experience.
Occasionally my parents did experience good behavior on my part, but this was only because I had opted to add sugar to my sugar cereal and by the time we got to church I had already hit my sugar peak and was crashing right as service started. I’d sleep through the whole thing, which I suppose was a rather peaceful experience for me as well. Although there were those times that I think my parents, usually my dad, appreciated my sugar rushed behavior, but only on the occasion that a sermon was excruciatingly drab and dreary. If, I mean when I’d misbehave on days like this, my dad was always more than happy to pick me up and escort me out of the main room.
Sometimes he’s smack me on the butt, because I’d more than likely earned it. Other times he’d just smile and give me a hug and take me outside to run around the building to work off some of my excess energy while he sat outside and watched me (out of earshot of the sermon being shared inside). Apparently, sometimes badly behaved children can be an answer to a parent’s prayer… but only if that prayer is for the sake of getting them out of church. Who knew? At least I’m glad I could help. Who knows, maybe that’s the reason right there for why sugar cereal was only allowed on the weekend.
What were some of the rules you had growing up that when you look back made absolutely no sense?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: family, cereal, pillow fighting kids, kids in church, holding kids, and spanking kid.
So as I was getting ready for day one, my first thought was, “Damn, I wish I hadn’t lost that bet.” Ok, not really, but I was still a little curious on what to wear. I opted to go with the philosophy, when in doubt just dress yourself… with pants on. Wait, I mean “be” yourself… with pants on, and I need to say the overall effect was quite, well, devoid of having people stare at me in an uncomfortable expression.
