It’s summer, so it’s time for the don’t tell anybody that you are on vacation because bad guys are reading your Facebook page and will rob you articles.
I’ll admit, it seems obvious. However, a quick Google search failed to produce a single confirmed c…
Teenage unemployment is currently running at 25%. I can’t think of a single teenager that I know that has a traditional part-time job. My 18 year old son is a certified fencing referee. Not exactly the traditional teenager job.
I started working before…
This past weekend I road tripped with my son to Atlanta for a family visit while he competed in the Peach State Open. Here are a few things I learned on the trip.
The Toyota Corolla is surprisingly comfortable on long drives. It was 10 hours there an…
With my son’s recent decision to attend the University of Mary Washington, now seems like a good time to brain dump on what we learned getting our first homeschooled kid into college. This may not be well organized…
Start keeping records when they st…
Another post about Buck O’Neil and The Soul of Baseball.
Buck shook his head and looked me in the eyes. And very slowly, with a teacher’s edge in his voice, Buck said this: “Son, in this life, you don’t ever walk by a red dress.”
Buck was answering a question about why he (a 94 year old) was flirting with a 20 something – but I think the point he was making goes beyond attractive women in red dresses.
Ferris Bueller said it as, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Of course Ferris is fake, Buck O’Neil is real.
The Buddha talked about the importance of mindfulness- of fully experiencing each moment we have on this earth.
It’s all the same point. We can go through life on auto-pilot, checking things off our to-do list without really experiencing what we just completed, in a rush to just get through the list. Or we can slow down, realizing that 80% of our to-do list probably doesn’t actually have to get done, and fully experience the 20% that matters. If we do that, I think we all find a lot more red dresses in our lives.
Since we hit the big 20 year milestone last year I’ve been asked a few times about our “secret.” I don’t think we have one, and I usually laughed off addressing that question by saying something along the lines of our secret being that neither of us spent any time obsessing over the secret to a long and happy marriage.
Then this week while reading The Soul of Baseball I found the quote that nails it. It says exactly what I was thinking. However, coming from a 94 year old ex-Negro League star who was married for 51 years, it carries a little more weight.
That’s how it goes in this world. Life doesn’t turn out the way you think. You just hold on to each other. That’s the trick.
I agree. It really is that simple.
Expect more on Buck O’Neil here this week. I loved this book. Buck O’Neil was a truly exceptional human being.
Rarely is a book title as perfectly descriptive as this one. The book is exactly as advertised. Written by retired Notre Dame Professor Jay Dolan, it does read like a textbook. It’s not a book that you will sit down and devour in big chunks. It is a bo…
Jay Matthews, the education writer for The Washington Post, published his rankings of DC area schools. Fredericksburg area schools are at the bottom of the list. However, the rankings really only measure the number of college level tests given, and the…
Recent issues with my 1997 Mazda 626 have made it apparent that we needed a vehicle in the family with less than 100,000 miles on it (It is at 177K). The Durango just passed 100K, and at 14 mpg around town, we don’t really want to use it as our daily t…
9131 days ago (February 21, 1987) I met the woman that would become my wife. It was not love at first sight. In fact, she was way more interested in one of my frat brothers that evening that she was me. Lucky for her, my good looks and charm won out in…
