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Name: T.D.
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Metro: Rockford
Gender: Male
Interests: Cool Words:
Altruistic, Acquiescent, Rebus, Untethered, Sojourn, Interior, Abandon, Trebuchet
"whenever one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself." -J.Y.C.
Expertise: the wise-crack, the hand clap, & the shoulder-shrug
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/15/2005
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| The Jinx (or 31 Flavors, Skywalker and the A-Team battle Voltron and my mind)one of my earliest memories of ice cream is getting the bubble gum flavor from a Baskin Robbins in the Cherry Creek mall in Denver, CO. it was amazing! someone probably related to edison or the wright brothers had found a way to put ice cream and gum together - brilliant. i loved it so much. the next time we went to 31 flavors i remember searching and searching for the bubble gum flavor - after all there are 31 flavors and to a young kid who probably couldn't read very well that's a lot of ice cream to try and decipher. horror, it was no where to be found! this plummeted me into despair, because i thought my bad luck had jinxed me again. this jinx happened quite a bit when i was young. since i grew up in a family with two brothers "Calling" things was HUGE. if you didn't "call" it someone else could and then you were out of luck. this went for everything... food, seats, favorite characters in t.v. shows, movies, cartoons, you name it. imagine my joy when my older brother chose Han Solo as his favorite in Star Wars, leaving Luke Skywalker just hanging out there for the taking. i thought to myself, "what a moron. I'm going to swoop in and call Luke, the lead character, who is obviously going to end up with Leia!" perfect example of my jinx. another keen example is with another hit from the 80's that was very important to most kids (boys) my age... The A-Team! (cue theme song.) you see for some reason we actually watched the two hour pilot episode of The A-Team. and for some reason i can vividly remember it. as we watched my brothers and i all began to pick and call out our favorite. my older brother for some crazy reason picked murdock or maybe it was hannibal i'm not positive. my younger brother in a spectacular display of non-racial bias chose B.A. Baracus. i of course chose the other guy... now you're probably saying how is that bad luck to pick dirk benedict's character Face?!?!? the guy is suave and gets all the ladies. seems like a pretty good pick to me. well you would say that because you wouldn't remember that in the pilot there was no dirk benedict - no Face. you see the character i chose ended up dying! yes, that's right he died! it wasn't until later when the show was actually picked up for syndication that my deceased favorite character was replaced with dirk benedict. so i ended up with him by default which was great, but it was touch and go there for a while and the jinx was firmly taking root. i also remember a similar incident taking place with Voltron... something about the guy who piloted my lion was killed in an early episode... probably replaced by the chick in the pink lion or something. i don't know it all gets kind of hazy. at any rate, i did not find out until much later that some of Baskin Robbins flavors are seasonal. man, that bubble gum flavor is good. to this day it always makes me feel special and like the jinx has been broken when they have it in stock.Ã   | | |
| THE IMITATION OF CHRIST: (Words for a Me-crazed world.)I've been reading some good "old" books lately. A german monk from the Netherlands (of all places) has written a little book you may have heard of before, it's called 'The Imitation of Christ'. Some speculate it's the second most read book of all time... second to another good "old" book called the B-I-B-L-E. Here's some amazing pearls of wisdom from Brother Thomas å Kempis. Chew on these thoughts for a while, and know that they've withstood over 500 years of scrutiny (ie- they've probably proved that they're worth thinking about.):
SURRENDER: "The true imitator of Jesus isn't the one who has accomplished the most, but rather the one who has surrendered the most."
HUMILITY: "The depth of our prayers isn't measured by the number of our words but by the humility of our hearts."
"If you wish to learn and appreciate something worth while, then love to be unknown and considered nothing. Truly to know and despise self is the best and most perfect counsel. To think of oneself as nothing, and always to think well and highly of others is the best and most perfect wisdom."
ACTION: "On the day of judgment surely, we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done; not how well we have spoken but how well we have lived."
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| "Hello? Hello?!? Stupid prank callers!"So as an addendum to my last post get this...
my wife and i were talking about the bird last night before bed (as is our nightly ritual). and she said that a few nights ago she kept hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night and it would wake her up (i never woke up because i sleep like a rock) and she'd answer it and no one would be on the other line!?! then she realized it was just our favorite mockingbird calling. i love it! | | |
| Mockingbirdit's almost 2:00 a.m. this isn't an unimaginable time for me to be awake, but lately my late nights have been interrupted by an uninvited guest. you see in my neighbors yard is a willow tree and in this tree resides our constant evening companion... the mockingbird. i know it sounds cliche, but this guy is driving us crazy! crazy is probably an exaggeration. he can be quite cute at times, but when you're trying to sleep a loud bird is not what you want to drift off to sleep to. to kill a mockingbird seems like more of a genius title than ever before!
these next two stories are completely true and i would swear on the bible in a courthouse if necessary. the night before last we were turning out the lights and brushing teeth, etc. (read: getting ready for bed), when our fine feathered friend began his midnight serenade. you see he doesn't choose to sing until late at night typically after midnight, which is typically our bedtime. anyway, my wife and i are talking about the mockingbird and all of his different calls and whistles. and then we hear the bird do something out of the ordinary... it begins to whistle exactly like a car alarm!?! yes, the bird was "mocking" a car alarm. it literally did like a loud high pitched alarm noise followed by a distinct car alarm chirp, chirp. you know the noise that the little keyless remote makes when you open the electronic/remote doors, or turn off the car alarm. we both just started dying laughing. this bird can really sound like anything.
last night just before drifting off to sleep to the brazen sounds of the mockingbird... which we thought had gotten thrown out of it's roost or something because it was like 12:30a and no sign or sound of him, but almost as soon as my wife could comment that he wasn't chirping he started in. it was almost like he was waiting for us his audience to be seated (in bed) and ready for the evenings performance. well he had a humdinger. i don't know if it tops the car alarm, but he's going through his routine calls... robin, cardinal (i'm pretending to sound like i know bird calls... go with me on this) and then i kid you not, out of nowhere he started ringing like a telephone! i'm not even making this up! it's unbelievable, and unbelievably loud. the bird has obvious skills.
i think tonight i might try to teach him how to whistle the Mayberry theme or g'n'r's Patience or perhaps the intro to DC*B's Foreverandever Etc...
wish me luck.
how can something so loud come out of something so small? (the identical question could be asked about my current listening).
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| From the Mouths of Babes"Jesus is ALIVE!"
last night (Easter Sunday evening) we were going through our nightly ritual putting our children to bed. We had read a story and finished singing a few songs. (Mayzee wanted to sing a "big person song" - not one of the kid songs they normally sing. And so she wanted to sing "Our Love Is Loud" which was hilarious and awesome.) Any way so we get to the part where we pray and mommy finishes praying and Henry yells, "Jesus is ALIVE!" it was pretty amazing. here's a little 2 year old who apparently had got the message of easter (and the world for that matter). it was a good night. | | |
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