The Daily Review: The Week in Review- Life is a Highway, Move on, or Get Off

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review: The Week in Review- Life is a Highway, Move on, or Get Off

A slow week on this blog as far as activity. This blog hasn’t posted anything since Wednesday night, because I had a crazy week. I had to get my bike to the bike shop, making plans for the holiday season including getting together with friends who are coming to town who I haven’t seen in a while, as well as friends who live in town that I haven’t seen in a while before I head out to the West Coast, Seattle to be precise on the 23rd. Returning calls yesterday that I missed, because my phone was dead and didn’t get it get back until Saturday afternoon.

Speaking of that, I have a friend from high school and we go back to early 1991 our freshmen year in high school. My birthday was last Tuesday and he finally called me, because he was finally able to get my phone number and manage to hang on to it. At least long enough to call me. He’s been messaging me on Facebook every time he’s wanted to talk to me, really since 2011, because he now lives on the West Coast where he’s been since he graduated from college in the early 2000s. He’s lost my cell number and I only have a cell number, every year at least since 2011. And I told him the last time he Facebook messaged me, “that if you want to talk to me, you’re going to have to get my number and call me.”

We only talk about once a year anyway, because we’ve drifted apart the last 10-15 years and don’t have much in common anymore. And talk and get together during the holiday season because he comes back in town every year to see his family for the holidays. And we generally get together for the holidays. Anyway he finally managed to get my number from a mutual friend and he called me on birthday last Tuesday night. We talked for about an hour, caught up, talked about what we might do together as well get together with mutual friends and all hanging out together in a big group. It was a good chat and the phone number issue never came up.

My I-Phone dies on Wednesday and I mean just died absolutely no life whatsoever in the phone. Didn’t even respond to my charger. I make a call with it on Wednesday afternoon and it’s probably at 80-90% power at that point. I go take a shower, come back about twenty-minutes later and the phone is simply dead and non-responsive. The call I made was to the bike shop, I was just returning their call, because they wanted to ask me questions about the bike. The call was maybe ten-minutes and the battery on my phone is pretty strong to begin with. Tried a couple different chargers on it as well as calling the I-Phone with a portable phone and the phone didn’t respond to any of that. So I knew I had a problem and I was going to have to get the phone looked at.

I called the Apple Store in Bethesda, Maryland to make an appointment. Great store and very customer friendly and responsive. You can see why they have sold out football stadium crowds of business everyday and why people have to camp out the night before outside of the store people trying to buy the latest, well I-Phone or computer, just to get service there while they’re still young. But that’s the problem, because they’re so popular and efficient, at least in Bethesda, its hard to get timely service there. I made an appointment on Thursday to get my phone looked at and was able to get the appointment yesterday. They’re not called bar genius’ for nothing and I’m not talking about making drinks.

The guy who worked with me at the store, tried a couple a different chargers as well as scanning the phone with another device and opening the phone up to see what might be the problem. He finally got the phone to reboot and was able to get life back in the phone. And probably had the phone fixed about ten-minutes later after he saw me. And told me, “sometimes these phones just crash and shut off and perhaps just need a break and a chance to reboot and come back.” I’m paraphrasing, but that is pretty close and he told me what I can do to fix the phone myself the next time it simply dies on me and doesn’t respond to the charger.

There was plenty on my plate that I wanted to blog about last week, but I was borderline mentally exhausted by Wednesday. Really just dealing with my bike which is how I get around for the most part as far as running day-to-day errands, not having a phone for three days and getting word out that if you need to contact me, you’re going to have to email, or send me a private message on one of these social networks that I’m on. Dealing with what I might be doing the week of Christmas with hanging out with friends and then heading out-of-town a week from this coming Wednesday. This week should be pretty active on the blog and I’m looking forward to really my last active week on the blog before I go out-of-town and before the new year.

Read Full Post »

President Barack Obama: ‘Happy Father’s Day from First Lady Michelle Obama’

Source:President Barack Obama– spending some time with someone else’s baby, but I’m quite sure it’s not his.

Source:The Daily Press

“First Lady Michelle Obama wishes a happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there and shares why President Obama is a great dad.

Every solution the President puts forward is inspired by a desire all parents share: the need to build a better world for his kids.

In President Obama’s words:

“What I think about is what kind of world am I leaving my two little girls. And what I realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children, all of our children, a better world. Even if it’s difficult. Even in the work seems great. That’s our responsibility as fathers and as parents.”

From President Barack Obama

To start off I want to say Happy Father’s Day to all the father’s out there, especially my own big guy and to all the father’s that may read this post, like my older brother, the father of my two nieces and nephew, who I’m sure is giving their dad a great day.

To add one not so positive note, I just wanted to add, that I was checking my daily email, to check today’s news and I only saw one article mentioning anything about Father’s Day, as if today wasn’t even a holiday or anything. I saw plenty of articles celebrating Mother’s Day last month as there should be, but Father’s Days barely mentioned at all. Like it’s some invisible holiday, not even worth mentioning, which is a shame to me, because father’s are just as important. We don’t exist as people without them, we are never born without them.

To me at least father’s are equally important. I couldn’t imagine life without my own dad, as I imagine a lot of people couldn’t and they not only deserve their own holiday but they deserve to be recognized for it as well. This is their day, their own holiday, that we celebrate, for giving us life and at least doing their part to raise us up and be there when we need them.

I guess we all can talk about the importance of having our father’s in our life and what they mean to us and so-forth. But for me when I think of dads, especially my own, I think of the person who provides the discipline in the family and is the rock that keeps us together. My family being an excellent example of that, the guy you knew always loved you, which is why you didn’t want to piss him off.

To me mother’s and father’s, are equally important, but their roles are somewhat different. Mom, is there to provide the loving support, to make you feel better. That whatever problem you might be going through, it’s not the end of the world and we’ll get through it together. Where dad comes in and lays it all out for you, whether you want to hear it or not. Because he believes you have to hear it for your own good and then tells you how you can fix the problem. Gets on you when you mess up and embraces you when you do well.

To describe my own dad personally: he’s a Teddy Bear, big tall guy physically, but personally as well. The Teddy is just as important as the Bear to describe my dad. Very sweet loving guy, who could crack your ribs with a hug, that’s how much love he can put into it. But someone you don’t want to piss off.

My dad has the old tough love approach when it comes to fathering. He’ll let you know when you are doing well and when you are not and need to correct whatever behavior is the problem. My dad and I don’t have a lot in common personally and look at the world differently. Perhaps that’s because we are a couple of generations apart or something. My parents had kids late in life, but what we do have in common, like football, baseball, cars, movies to a certain extent, politics and current affairs. Even though we don’t always agree on everything, like certain aspects of health care reform, we really have in common and can talk for hours about any of these subjects. To give you an example of my dad and here’s both the Teddy and Bear side of him.

The day of my high school graduation, June 1994. I graduated at Constitution Hall in Washington, one of the advantages of Bethesda Chevy Chase High School and going to high school in the Washington area. First the Bear: I was running late for my graduation, if you know me well, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise and my dad who drove us down there, was getting on me the whole time about running late. I eventually got there on time, but it was a rush. “This is a very important day, you shouldn’t have ran late and need to be more responsible.” Etc. Which is what dad was telling me, after we all graduated and received our diplomas.

My whole class and I leave the building together and go back outside. Now here’s the Teddy part: who’s the first person I see as I’m walking down those steps, my father being the first one to greet me, reaching out and giving me a big hug for graduating and showing his love. My dad is a great guy, but don’t piss him off.

Read Full Post »