100 Words: A Good Day

Sometimes it's hard to define what a good day is.

Not today.

This evening I reconnected with one of my cousins that I haven't seen in eighteen years.

Ben was the cousin closest to my age, growing up. He was my other half in the family -- a slightly shorter, mirror image. The times I spent with him were some of the happiest of my childhood.

Then life came along and suddenly we're forty year old fathers of teenagers.

His mom insisted that we get together.

And the years melted away, and the laughter was real, and my day was good.

100 Words: Saturday Morning Cartoons (another run-on sentence)

Watching Saturday morning cartoons, when I was a kid, was like a big play dough bowl of artificially flavored, sugary imagination, exploding in every direction, in a kaleidoscope of primary colored super heroes, and mystery solving, talking dogs, and wabbits and puddy tats, splattered with educational nuggets about a place called the Conjunction Junction, and commercials selling me everything I thought I ever wanted, with aluminum foil covered antennae, and a vertical hold knob, beaming the universe into my living room, one ludicrous scenario after the next, making me smile, teaching me to dream about things higher than my ceiling.

100 Words: 500 Posts (The Best I Could Do)

This is my 500th blog post.

It's taken me almost seven years to get here, and 100 words seems very inadequate to express what this blog means to me.

I've found a voice, and I've found that I have something to say.

About my family.

Nothing is more prevalent than what I write about my family.

I often wax nostalgic.

Sometimes I've made myself laugh. 

Sometimes I was lost, and you saved me.

Little things in life, became lessons. 

And, finally, I've found that writing about this world has helped me to see how truly beautiful a place it is. 

100 Words: What Makes Me Smile Tonight?

Sometimes, I sit back and marvel at the things that make me smile, and I realize that there's a lot more that makes me happy, than doesn't.

I can
get as discouraged as anyone, with the direction of the world we live in, and the foolishness that passes for civility, and discourse.

That is, until I look around at my own life. My family is incredible. My marriage is strong. My kids are good kids, because they want to be good kids.

My friends are true friends.

My life is good.

I think about all of this, and I smile.

100 Words: Who Knows? You Might Like Poison Ivy

So, I've made no secret of the fact that I have not enjoyed my poison ivy experience.

At all.

But, that doesn't necessarily mean you wouldn't...

You might like poison ivy if:

You enjoy mosquito bites. Thousands of them.

You don't mind the smell of sulfur and brimstone.

Your name rhymes with Nadalph Whitler.

You're tired of the ususal, peachy fleshtones, and looking for a new direction -- something closer to the color of raw, ground beef....seasoned with e coli bacteria.

You like being mistaken for a leper.

You just want to be left alone, when the zombie apocalypse begins.

100 Words: Pioneer Day

Utahns celebrate the 24th of July, as Pioneer Day -- the day, in 1847, that Brigham Young, led the vanguard of the Mormon pioneers, into the Salt Lake Valley and declared: This is the place.

This was the culmination of a movement of American citizens, denied the most basic and fundamental of American rights -- the right to worship as they chose. Hounded and hunted, from state to state, the early mormons left for the Promised Land of western America, seeking a home where they could worship according to their own consciences.

If you cherish your religious liberty, thank a mormon pioneer.

100 Words: Will and Kate + One

The Royals had a baby yesterday.

William, and Catherine, brought into the world, their firstborn son, third in line to the British crown.

The brits, who adore their royals absurdly, were overjoyed.

Americans, conversely, came out by the gob-load to express how disinterested they are in the event, and how little an impact it will have on their lives.

If you're so obsessed by this news, that it consumes your every waking thought, you need a life.

If you cannot wish a seemingly decent couple of first time parents joy in their new journey, then you also need a life.