really botched this one up
Man… (sigh)
I mean, how do you recover from this one? Seriously, it’s pretty bad that Jon forgot Colby’s birthday last week, but this? This is an all time low from D.O.
It’s really a good thing I have a blog that’s viewed by “the masses” allowing me to humbly admit my fault in an attempt to recover from the unthinkable.
Yesterday I freakin’ forgot my father’s birthday. The very man from whose loins I came suffered through his 53th birthday without even enjoying a phone call from his firstborn.
Proverbs 10:1 says, “A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother.” Suffice it to say I’m the latter son. I’ve nothing else to say. Perhaps ever. This might be the end of my interaction with humans as we know it, out of shear shame. Unlikely, but it may be.
Sorry Pops. Happy day after your birthday. Heck, happy week after your birthday.
(unofficial) people of the year award
As I entered my house in Bryan, TX around 9:45pm I greeted my roommate Jay while donning my new jacket I’d just removed from the closet because our house was barely warmer than 49 degrees Fahrenheit (and I’d been wishing I’d packed said jacket all week). Jay and I briefed one another on the happenings of our respective Thanksgiving holidays and in sharing mine I knew I’d be remiss if I failed to make mention of the family Morgan. I felt so greatly indebted and grateful towards these wonderful people that I took a picture of myself holding their family portrait and published it for all of the world’s Internet users to see. I then intentionally decided to leave the reasons behind my indebtedness and gratefulness vague.
(In case you don’t already know what my facial expression pictured above means, its the “uh, yeah, this family rules” face.)
giving happy thanks
I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to go about handling this post for at least 2 weeks. The process began when I first saw this sign in my neighbor’s yard during one of my contemplative strolls around Cavittville.
I thought about going on a rant regarding the funny ways that we choose to proselytize our convictions without actually speaking. I was going to emphasize that the word “funny” is in fact not synonomous with the word “wrong.”
I thought about basing the post on the sentence “If you are not an Indian who was here when the Europeans showed up, give thanks.”
I thought about opening with the verse in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5 that talks about how giving thanks in all circumstances is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.
I thought about writing my first ever satirical post which probably also would have been based on 1 Thessalonians 5:18.
I even thought about posting the picture all by itself.
What ended up happening was simply a post composed of a list of ideas of what said post could have been…
Which one do you think you’d have enjoyed most? If nothing else, I hope you at least enjoyed the sign, as I enjoy it daily on my walks. I also hope this homeowner doesn’t find my blog like a certain other group of people once did upon my blogging about them…
Happy T.
wordpress + odfm = (heart)
Your eyes are beholding the first official post that online diary for the masses has ever published on wordpress. My heart is happy that your eyes are here. I’ll take a moment to make you aware of some things that will be a little different for you, the reader, now that I’m at wordpress.
1. Comments: When (not if) you make comments here, you’ll have to type your name and email address (which nobody will see but me) and your website if you choose. If you think that’s kind of a drag take heart that the cookies on your computer should offer you the luxury of only having to do it once.
2. Pages: As you can see in the sidebar under the “navigate” heading, I’ve posted a few pages for new people to more easily get acquainted with odfm and it’s author. Please check them out, as they are one of the main reasons I made the switch. If you do visit one and suddenly feel lost (and forget that you have a “back” button) just click the header at any time and you’ll be brought right back here.
3. Links: When I set up this blog, I opted to go ahead and import all those blogger posts you came to love over the years. So they’re all here. When they were imported, they came as they were, which means on posts where I linked to other posts, those links haven’t changed. So they’ll still direct you to the old blog. This really isn’t a big deal, but it sort of bothers me, so I had to throw it out there.
4. Font size: For some reason when I imported the old posts, the first paragraph or two of each post have tiny letters and the remainder of the post has a more sizable font. Don’t know why that happened, but keep it in mind if and when I link to an older post in the future.
I believe that is about it. Please feel free to comment and let me know that you successfully made it here alright (like calling your parents to let them know you arrived somewhere safely). If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to share those too.
mom, look what I made (vol. 1)
I assume you readers who are parents love having your kid come home from school or church with a piece of art in their hands, raised high for you to see, often accompanied by the words, “Mom! Dad! Look what I made!”
You readers who are still in [grade] school know how much you love completing a piece of work - maybe a painting or an awesome drawing of a ship - and taking it to your parents to proudly show them and say, “Look what I made!”
Well this is my version of what I just described, only it’s not only for my parents’ eyes. It is for all to enjoy.
“(Insert your name here)! Look what I made!”
this makes me want to cuss
When I open up my Internet and see numbers like these, it makes me want to load up my car and drive North. Seriously. Eighty nine degrees for the high on November 14th? That rounds up to 90. This, friends, is not acceptable. That 73 is a glimpse of hope. I’m sure humidity will be pushing 90%.
If you’d like to vent (about the weather or anything else), the comments section is open.
Hat tip: Andy S.
3-in-1 post on mortality
If somebody asked me today where I would go if I could go anywhere, I think I’d bend the conventional rules of the question by answering “my own funeral.”
I’ve not been to a ton of funerals, but the ones I have attended always bring the same thought processes to mind. I think, “how cool that this one person affected all of the people in this room.” This leads into thoughts like, “I wonder how many people would show up to my funeral” and “Man, wouldn’t it be cool to go to your own funeral and see who’s there and what the people are saying about you?”
Part I: A Friend’s Father
I just got back home from a close friend’s father’s funeral. It was pretty incredible. There were no less than 500 people in attendance. This man really made a big impact on the lives of countless people, and his family was blessed with the ability to be encouraged by having some of those people show up to the funeral to celebrate his life. There is no way that every single person affected by this man could have come to the funeral today. That just makes my mind reel. I seriously doubt that this man had a clue of what a weighty impact he made on so many different people, and what those people are doing today as a result of his influence on them. It’s really crazy to think about. Life is so short, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference while we’re here.
Part II: A Friend I’ve Only Read About
You may recall my book review on Into the Wild, the story of the life of Chris McCandless, a man with whom I greatly identified. I recently got a chance to see the Sean Penn’s film version of the book. Though I wasn’t by any stretch of the imagine blown away by the film, it did bring back to mind thoughts I had throughout the time I was reading the book. These two thoughts in particular kept coming up: One, how fortunate is the McCandless family to have somebody (author Jon Krakauer) research their son’s life in depth, that they are now able to see who he affected and how he affected them during his two years of traveling? And two, I have no doubt that Chris McCandless knew not the impact he made on the people he met as he traveled. He probably just saw them as people who were nice enough to give him a ride or a bed, but he really impacted a number of them. He only lived to see his mid-twenties, but he was (and thanks to the book, forever will be) a very influential person to many. Life is so short, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference while we’re here.
Part III: My Own Mortality
When thinking about life and death and things of that nature, I sometimes think of how I want things handled after I die, and I realize that for any of the things I want to actually materialize, I’ll have to write them, well, while I still can. I see this as a good opportunity. I want my funeral to be enjoyable for the people who are gracious enough to attend it. I’m aware that the chances are pretty good that my funeral will bring people together who probably haven’t seen each other in a while, and I want those people to be able to have some quality time with one another. I don’t know what that looks like really. Maybe a lunch or something after the funeral. Like the funeral I attended today, I would like “It Is Well” to be sung by any of my immensely talented friends. I want every possible organ of mine to be donated to people who need them and whatever’s left can be burned or whatever option cheapest. If I die before Click does I want someone to bring him to the funeral. If I die before I get married, and my remnants are cremated, I think I’d like to divide up the ashes between my family and my roommates. That way my fam could keep them somewhere, and I’d ask my roommates to scatter them on one of their awesome trips, somewhere they think I’d like. But more importantly than all of the “Things I want done after I die” list is this: I really want to live in the reality that life is so short, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t make a difference while I’m here.
ladies and gentlemen, I give you the…
No, I’m not the loser because of the awesome mustache I had in that picture. I’m the loser because, well… this is how it went:
(A real phone call that took place last night between Mikey Mills and myself)
D.O.: Did Laura see her post on my blog?
Mikey: [turns to the side and asks Laura]… No, hold on.
[Time passes while Mikey and Laura read the post written in Laura's honor]
D.O.: Does she love that? I made the picture in GIMP.
Mikey: Yeah, that’s good… [increasing snickering in the background] This is real funny…
D.O.: What?
Mikey: Laura didn’t answer the question on that post.
D.O.: It said Laura!
Laura in the background: You should click the link on that comment…
D.O.: [Goes and clicks said link]… Holy crap… I’m such an idiot…
All: [Eruptions of laughter]
It turns out that Laura Nutter didn’t win (or participate) in the poetry contest. It was Laura Stiller, wife of my Arlington friend, Danny Stiller… I don’t know much about her, but, since she really did win the contest, I’ll tell you what I do know.
Laura is married to my Arlington friend Danny Stiller. They have a married people blog that I just added to the “theirs” section of my links. She confessed to reading my blog back in March and we here at odfm are very happy to have her. She has about a million different blogs. Her profile lives here. It’s overwhelming.
Congratulations Laura Stiller! No congratulations to Laura Nutter.
ladies and gentlemen, I give you the…
As promised, I’m giving the winner of my poetry contest a award as great as any I’m able to give… blog recognition. Our winner was one Laura Nutter who came up with the correct answers Ogden Nash and Joyce Kilmer.
For those of you who don’t know, Laura is one of my sweet friends from the beloved college days and the slightly less popular Dallas days. She’s proven to be a faithful and loyal pal over the years, and has provided many with some of the best hugs around. But boys, don’t get any ideas, because she’s taken. Mikey dates her. That’s right. Mikey.
So congratulations to Laura on her big victory. I hope our friendship will be able to endure this post… and that picture.
Honorable mention goes to Andrew Shepherd who successfully got Kilmer without using Google. If you’ve never checked out his blog, you really should. It’s far better than anything you’ll get in these parts.
gimp 2.4
The fine folks over at GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) have gone and outdone themselves. GIMP 2.4 has recently been released in its stable version and is available for free download here. It’s been available for a while, but the stable version hasn’t been available (to my knowledge) until a few weeks ago. Either way, it’s here now, and you should get it if you’re looking for a powerful photo editing and graphic design software. You no doubt remember my previous entry on the GIMP about six posts ago.
Now for the true reason for this post. Pictured above is my current - and possibly your future - desktop background. I’d like to use it to introduce the first online diary for the masses contest for November, 2007. The person/persons who provide me with the author of the poem written above the tree will have bragging rights in the blogosphere. However, the winner will be the one who provides not only the person who penned the provided poem, but also the author of the original poem from which the provided poem was derived. The winner will be rewarded as generously as I’m possibly able to reward someone. Google is a permissible resource, however if you are able to answer it correctly without google… I’ll come find you and hug you.
A hint: click on the picture above or you’ll have a very hard time reading the poem.
An observation: it is very presumptuous of me to expect anyone to participate in this contest. Yet another example of how I make my blog out to be a much bigger deal than it actually is.