I like that we do things (some consciously, some not) that buck conventional tradition.

If I were to be completely honest, I take secret pleasure in the fact that our tendency as a family to not do things the ‘normal’ way wigs out my mother in law. She’s very much a “you do things because that’s what people do” kind of person and that bugs me. I truly think she’s never taken the time in her life to stop and consider anything on more than a superficial level. It seems most of what she does, believes and lives is based on the idea of “that’s what you do” – and that’s always annoyed me.

So when she calls my wife and asks if we have pork cooking on the 1st, I smile on the inside when my wife explains that we’re doing sushi and the muffled Charlie Brown trumpet voice on the other end of the phone that you can barely make out seems just a little deflated at the notion that someone might actually not do what everyone else does.

I expect this trend to continue in 2012.

That is all.

When I was a kid, I lived in the same house from a few months before my 4th birthday until I moved in December of the year I turned 18. That was 20 years ago this month. I lived in that house for 179 months – just shy of 15 full years.

In the 20 years since I moved out of my parents house I’ve moved 17 times if you count the short stays at hotels when we’d make big moves. If you ignore those month-long stays and just count it as part of the moving experience then I’ve moved 13 times. Of those moves two were short stints back to the parents for a total of 3 months. Those moves take place over 6 different cities/areas.

We bought this house three years ago and as of this month, it’s the longest I’ve lived at one address since leaving home as a kid. In April, the Dayton area will serve as the area I’ve spent the most time since then.

I guess for us this area has slowly become home. Both my wife and I were born and raised in western PA. Different areas, but still western PA. My daughter still identifies with western PA to a small degree. She was born there, although I doubt she remembers it as we moved when she was about a year and a half old. But we returned in 2003 and stayed until we headed out here in 2006. She’s 14 now, but she was 8 when we moved here. She was a third grader starting at her third school in 4 years. My son however, pretty much knows this area as home. He was born in Jacksonville, FL. We left there before he was two months old. When we came to Dayton he was just 4. He’s 10 now. It’s all he knows. The only school he’s ever gone to is the one he’s at now.

It probably seems crazy to move around that much, but I don’t think it was bad. It’s easy to get complacent and jumping around as much as we did for so long kept it exciting. We generally followed the opportunity first and foremost. Now that the kids are older, the focus has shifted more towards stability. When you’re the ages of my kids, moving would suck balls. However, I do think all the moving when they’re younger is good. They see a lot of things, meet a lot of different people – generally learn to be adaptable.

We don’t really have a hard, concrete plan looking ahead. The general goal is to try to stay here until the kids are adults…which means 8 more years for the youngest to hit 18. Realistically 9 for him to finish school. After that, who knows? Suddenly, we’re not quite as tied down any more. Possibilities are endless…except for Florida. Florida is the worst. We’ve gone twice and couldn’t wait to escape both times.

At any rate, it’s weird to think I’ve spent more time in this house than anywhere else I’ve lived since that house I spent my childhood in. Even if we do stay here another 9, that puts us up to 12. I wonder if I’ll ever live at one address as long as I lived with my family in that house as a kid?

1. uncle jesse
2. lord gonchar
3. uncle
4. xmas tree up an arse
5. homies
6. metallica christmas
7. long goatee
8. s.e.cupp
9. “barely legal swedish girls”
10. “christmas tree” ass

Needs a little fine tuning, but I’m pretty much reaching exactly the audience I need to be.

This is just silly enough to make me laugh. Any less silly – no laugh. Any more silly – no laugh. This is the perfect amount of silly.

Interesting.

I think being ‘self-aware’ more often than not borders (or crosses into) what I tend to feel is overthinking things. And when you’re overthinking things, you’re over-complicating them.

That’s not to say there isn’t ever a time and place for that kind of processing, but I’m not sure it’s a regular part of the flow.

I tend to trust general instinct – and either I’m too stupid to know it doesn’t work or it does. And if it does, maybe it’s just an innate ability to do that same kind of processing without being so ‘self-aware’ about it? Which would mean that in the big picture it is a necessarily part of the flow, I guess. So who knows?

And by general instinct, I mean I don’t need many periods of reflection or sorting out thoughs, ideas, situations and things. Am I too dumb to know I’m not as happy and my situation not ideal as can be or am I smart enough to understand that it’s never going to be perfect and worrying about wringing every last ounce out of it is a perpetual excercise in frustration?

Which leads me to an interesting observation I made long before this conversation. Compared to my online circle of influence, I’m a balls out impulsive, just go-for-it type. But compared to my real-world (you know what I mean) circle of influence, I’m an overthinker – very precise and thought out. Not sure what that means or if it matters, but it’s always been interesting to me. And if I think back, it seems I’ve always held two circles of influence like this – even when “real world” was all that there was. I wonder what that says about me?

We’re busy right now with the annual halloween/birthday party for my daughter. My son usually has a friend over too and they run around the yard and the woods trying to scare the older kids. Last year was a ‘generic’ halloween theme – standard scary stuff – titled “Lucky 13″ for her 13th Birthday. This year it’s a research lab accident/mad scientist/shit has gone bad theme. We did invitations that we’re all official sounding – as if you we’re privvy to inside info. Very subtlely at the bottom in small font we put: www.researchfacility14.com password:number14

The kids seem to dig it. We’re in the process of setting the garage and deck up and getting it all into theme. Hopefully, I get some photos or video or something. The bad news is that the Camaro doesn’t get to sleep in the garage for the next 4 nights.

I’m also semi-simultaneously working on this year’s DVD set for the football team. Last year’s was such a hit that I think I’ve become the guy who does this for the team. Recording the games is cool and I know the coaches use it as a tool, so I’m contributing in my own special way. The parents and boys love the DVD’s. The entire season’s games are on there along with highlights, music videos and more candid stuff. It’s my job to make 10 year old boys look like rock stars. Amazing how some decent football plays edited in sync to some pump-up music can achieve this to great effect. I have less than three weeks to deliever a finished product to everyone at the end-of-season party. The weird thing is that I actually feel some pressure to up the ante, so to speak. You kinda have to outdo the last one, right?

Then it’s Thanksgiving…and holiday shopping and X-mas and New Year’s and stuff.

I, personally, don’t understand the concept of going ‘too far’ with most things and Halloween is certainly not the exception. Hell, it’s the rule. It’s the one time when it’s kind of okay to go a little too far. What can I say? I like things to be all or nothing.

We had heard a lot about a Haunt in Columbus called the Haunted Hoochie. The idea whas that it’s a bit more extreme than your standard Haunt fare (which is usually midly humorous at best). Here’s a quick video:

Honestly, the video show the best of it all. That’s not to say it wasn’t cool. It was. But I think I had myself expecting a little more. On a scale of 1-to-10 with 1 being family friendly and 10 being the extreme end of things, I’d put this in the 5 or 6 range. Crazy stuff. The actors touched you, which was neat. I think a few with the chainsaws were getting kind of ‘friendly’ when the girls came through too…and I think that’s all totally cool as long as you understand as a visitor what you’re getting into.

For comparison, the average theme park haunt stuff is probably a 2, maybe 3 for the better things on my scale.

Like, really. I don’t get the idea that this stuff is any more than silly, forgettable fun. We kep saying we’d like to see someone really push it and do an 18+ haunt and really fuck with you. Face it, as an intelligent adult, nothing they do can truly ‘scare’ me. It’s a show. I’m not a moron. But you can do things that will stick with me. Show me fucked up stuff. Or totally fuck with my head. A friend on Facebook recently posted a promo video for a Haunt in NYC that seems to be taking the latter approach and really trying to mind fuck people:

It’s cool because there’s a set of rules attached to visiting:

1. YOU MUST WALK THROUGH ALONE.
2. You must be over 18.
3. Stay on the marked path at all times.
4. You will be prompted to do certain actions. Please do exactly as you’re told. This is for your safety.
5. There is absolutely no speaking allowed inside. You can, however, scream as loud as you’d like.
6. Do not ever touch the actors.
7. Do not ever touch the walls.
8. You must wear a protective mask and carry a flashlight at all times.

That’s a pretty good start. Although I think my approach would be almost entirely the other direction. I’d want to leave you with imagery that would take a while to shake.

Interestingly, we’ve started a yearly tradition with a Halloween party for my daughter’s birthday and we hope to keep doing it for my son once she gets too old. I’ve been checking out different forums for ideas, inspiration and tips. One post caught my eye recently on one forum that was titled, “Over the Top? WARNING, graphic image”

I clicked eagerly thinking this was my kind of thing and it might be something I could incorporate for our party. So I click it and what do I see? This:

Whadda you think, is this over the top? I don’t mind pushing the comfort zone, but there are limits.

For real? On my scale this is a 1. Completely harmless, silly and forgettable.

The most interesting thing were the replies. Oddly enough (to me, at least), there were people who thought this was too extreme. No one seemed to find it uninteresting, boring and trite as I thought.

Then today on Facebook, Cedar Point posted something about their Halloweekends event and one of the replies to the photo posted (of a character getting makeup done) basically complained of the actors getting too close. I’m thinking, “My God. The experience at Cedar Point is as tame as it gets. It’s a fun, silly vibe that I’m totally ok with taking my kids through.” and here’s what I believe to be an adult saying they feel like it goes a little too far.

I have no point really – that’s the case with a lot of crap I post here. Just a random concept. An idea. A realization. It’s funny how different we all are and where we draw those lines.

…and, how fucked up am I really?

Or more correctly – how fucked up is everyone else?

A report by the conservative Heritage Foundation notes that when most Americans hear the word, they think of people who routinely can’t afford the basic staples of life: nutritious food, shelter and clothing. In reality, data from other federal surveys suggests that’s not the case for most poor people. And thanks to steadily increasing living standards, many or most poor Americans have things such as internet service, cable TV and dishwashers–not luxuries, to be sure, but not the picture of destitution that the word poverty often brings to mind.
As the report’s authors, Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield put it: “[T]he actual standard of living of America’s poor—in terms of amenities in the home, housing, food consumption, and nutrition—is far higher than expected.”

This is something I struggle with a lot. I don’t mean to trivialize living in poverty, but our expectations are pretty high.

When I hear people saying they’re ‘hurting’ because they didn’t feel comfortable taking a vacation this year, I know our priorities are out of whack.

If you have cable TV and internet service, you’re not poor. You may be living at a lower standard than those around you based on the curve, but you’re not poor. Being poor or impoverished to me is the inability to meet basic life necessities. Beyond that, everything else is gravy.

If you have gravy, you ain’t poor, brutha.

School starts and there’s a million and one things to keep track of as we fall back into the school groove. My son’s football season takes a little chunk of our time and it doesn’t help that I tend to stay involved on a greater level with game video, DVDs, intro music and such.

It’s also when things really start to kick into gear with planning my daughter’s annual Halloween/Birthday party. I’ve been slowly putting things together for a while now, but these last few weeks before October, we really start finalizing stuff. Lot’s of great ideas for this year so I hope we’re able to capture the vibe in photos or videos.

Also, I’ve been tending to share the smaller, sillier and more random things on Facebook rather than here on my blog. For example, last night I posted a GIF that involved nudity, bodily functions and a live octopus. Just easier to corrupt lives, scar psyches and lower the bar on Facebook than here sometimes. Still struggling with what to share here with the world and on Facebook with less of the world. Everything doesn’t need to be both places and yet sometimes it feels like it should be. Not sure how I feel about all the ‘social’ stuff online. Meh.

So that’s what’s going on. Thanks for stopping by. Now get the fuck out.

I’ve worn a Pirate cap since I was a kid. This spring I bought myself a Pirates shirt for my birthday that I’ve been slumming around in all summer. I’m convinced my shirt is what made the difference.

I’m a bigger football fan than a baseball fan, but there’s something about a summer evening at the ballpark that I dare say is just as good (if not better) than winter at the stadium. I’ve always enjoyed following the long baseball season. We lived in Pittsburgh for 2 or 3 of the past 12 years (most 2004 and 2005) and we got to quite a few games during that time. PNC Park is so nice. I don’t get to see many Pittsburgh games and quite frankly I don’t always have the patience to sit through games on TV. Sometimes the mood strikes. I eagerly watched them face the Cubs on WGN just before the break. I’ve been mostly living vicariously through the MLB app on my phone. I check it several times every evening and proudly proclaim to my wife how many games out of 1st we are or what combination of wins and losses would put us in what position.

In a weird sort of way it’s more fun to be a Pirates fan than a Steelers fan. It’s easy to be a Steelers fan. They’re badass. You’re a Pirates fan because you want to be. I’ve been wearing those Pirates caps around the whole time. My current one is a few years old and pretty dirty. Might be time to score a new one. Then again, maybe not. Don’t want to look like a fair weather fan.

I dunno. Just some thoughts. Something romantic about summer and baseball and finally winning a few – especially when no one expected it.

Fucking Pirates, man!