Month: June 2011

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Gratitudes, Day 4

After a day of 100+ degree heat, it would be pretty easy to use air conditioning as three of the things I was grateful for yesterday (the house, my car, at Augsburg), but I’m trying not to repeat myself.

  1. Minnesota weather — As contradictory as that may seem, I’m grateful that the high temperature one day can be over 20 degrees lower than the day before.
  2. Massages — They help my muscles relax… or at least they will once my muscles stop being so tense all the time.
  3. L.I.P. Scarlet Garcia — This blog entry says that the Scarlet Garcia who was murdered a few years ago wasn’t my partner and it usually gets one or two hits a day.
  4. Scarlet Garcia — She’s probably the best partner I could have had on Beauty and the Geek.
  5. Informal dress codes — I can go to class at Augsburg in a t-shirt and shorts when it’s reeeeeally hot outside.
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Gratitudes, Day 3

It’s getting close to summer camp for the Scout troop and they’ve got a beach with canoes, sailboats, etc. To use the boats and the entire swim area, you need to pass the swimmers’ test. To take the swim test at camp, you have to stand in a loooooong line filled with lots of other Scouts and adults. We like to avoid that by doing the testing here.

  1. Swimming pools — I helped 18 Scouts and adults take their swim tests here at home so they wouldn’t have to do it at camp.
  2. My lifeguard certification — I have the authority to do swim testing.
  3. Wacky Noodles — I used one of those long foam tubes as my “lifesaving device” for the swim testing. I also used it to slap the water to get the swimmers’ attention. (Thankfully, I didn’t leave any permanent marks on any of the kids.)
  4. Quesadillas — Dinner was yummy.
  5. “Shawn’s Favorite Hotdish” — It’s been my favorite since I was a kid: egg noodles, ground beef, corn, mushroom soup and cheese all mixed together and seasoned with garlic powder. I ate some for Dinner #2 and it was yummy as well.
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I think Sirius XM is racist

I admit it, sometimes I sing along with the radio while I’m driving. Sometimes it’s been a long time since I’ve heard the song and I get the words wrong. And sometimes the words in the song aren’t the same ones that I remember.

I was listening to the 90s station yesterday and they started playing Everlast’s What It’s Like. They cut out a lot of words. A lot. To the point of silliness. Maybe they’re trying to be overly protective because some of the words aren’t really that offensive. Everlast uses the line “if I find that man, I’m cutting off his ______” and it rhymes with “calls”… is the word “balls” really going to scar anyone for life?

But people might say, “That’s the way the single was released to all the radio stations, of course that’s how it’s going to sound!” If that’s the case, I’d like to present to you Exhibit B: Blessid Union of Souls’ I Believe.

I hadn’t heard that song in ages, so I was happily singing the words I remembered and stumbling through the ones I didn’t. Then it got to the part where the song goes “One day Daddy’s gonna find out she’s in love / with a brother from the streets.” At least those are the words I’d heard on the radio in the past. That’s not what I heard yesterday.

It turns out the phrase they use on the CD is “with a nigger from the streets.” That is what I heard yesterday. So Sirius XM doesn’t like Everlast’s use of the word “balls”, but Blessid Union of Souls singing “nigger” is okay. If you toss out the race card, can anyone else think of a good explanation?

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Gratitudes, Day 2

Sunday was hot and toasty outside. My team was playing soccer (I was standing on the sideline… I need to have the doc take a look at my knee to see if I did something bad to it) and we play on turf with a lot of little rubber bits that keep it vaguely soft. They also make the field really hot under the sun, thus making your feet really hot inside your shoes.

  1. Shorts — The air flow around my legs helps cool me down.
  2. Sunscreen — It prevents the sun from turning my nose into a Krispy Kritter.
  3. Air conditioning — Can you sense a theme here?
  4. The WaZoo! Show — I’ve been part of the group for about nine years now and I have fun getting together with a bunch of people to read scripts once a month.
  5. Khan’s Mongolian Barbeque — We eat there afterward and the food is mighty tasty.
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Five Gratitudes, Day 1

I was watching a video today of a presentation made by Shawn Achor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the version I watched anywhere, but there’s a similar presentation on YouTube (which isn’t as good, of course). I decided to include a link to the third part of the “backup version” in here, so to speak, because I think it’s worth watching.

Out of that list of ways to enhance our happiness, the easiest seems like the gratitudes. (I could write a journal, but I tried that in Norway and ran out of steam pretty quickly… it’s tough when it takes me four single-spaced pages in a Word file to recap the events of the day.) So for the next 21 days, I’m going to write five things I’m grateful for. He recommends doing them first thing in the morning, but there are days when first thing in the morning for me is get dressed, grab food and run out the door. And some days, grabbing food isn’t on that list, either.

You’re all welcome to join me and, if you’re not sure where to start, you’re all welcome to reference a blog entry I wrote back in 2006: Reasons to be thankful. You can think of the grown-up ones, you can think of the simple ones—just be sure that you’re grateful for them.

Today’s list:

  1. Mountain Dew — I like the flavor, it’s got caffeine and I hate coffee. I mean HAAAAAAAAAAAATE coffee.
  2. Peter Stark — The professor for my Leadership course in the MBA program. He’s a smart guy. I learned a lot.
  3. My warm bed at night — Sleep is awesome.
  4. Sunshine — It’s bright, shiny, warm and a nice contrast to the recent gloomy, cloudy Memorial Day weekend.
  5. Friendship — ‘Cause I get by with a little help from my friends.