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Showing posts from April, 2017

Stay in your lane

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I was roller skating on my local rail trail recently and coming up to an intersection, so I was slaloming slightly (barely more than C-cuts) to slow down. Someone on a bike came up behind me and said, "On your left!" Alerting people that you're passing is customary and courteous, though I don't know if there are signs suggesting we do that on this trail, like there are on the trails where I skate in Florida. There are also no alligators or exotic birds on my local trail. I was startled and swerved back towards the far right. "Thank you," I answered with a little wave. As the guy passed, he tossed over his shoulder, "Stay in your lane!" My initial reaction was WTF, dude!? You @$$ 4073! However, I said nothing. First of all, are there lanes on the trail? No. The picture above is the actual trail, and that person on the bike is the actual guy. Is he in a lane? No, he's right in the middle of the trail. ( Hypocrite! ) Furthermore, a g...

My kids' priorities

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“Do you need me to hook my computer up to the printer?” I asked my son. “Yes, thanks.” “Okay, will do.” I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I had been awake since before 5:30 a.m. wondering if he had actually finished his paper. I originally thought this paper was due the previous Wednesday (as most logical people would) when he told me, “Dang, I guess we had a paper due today.” I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t worried about doing it that night, or why he didn’t know about it to begin with. “We’ve had MCAS . I haven’t been in class. I’ll do it tomorrow, he told me, before he went to bed.” I obsessed a little about it. Thursday I asked him about it again. I imagined he’d be working on it in between napping and Xbox. (His baseball practice was cancelled that day.) I got some sort of “yeah, yeah, yeah” response. The next morning, Friday, I asked him, “How’d your paper come out.” He grumbled something as he shuffled out the door to the bus stop. It was 6:30 a.m., but still… …all of that...