I'm stressed out, put on some Eminem.

The music that people are listening to these days is slipping.  It's as if no one considers that what they expose themselves to is going to affect them on a multitude of levels.  Music, and any sort of media, is going to affect your disposition. It will bear consequences on your personal energy, your mental energy and everything else.

People often hesitate to get a spiritual life coach, but it may be just what they need.  We don't hesitate to go to a doctor (a type of coach) or a physical trainer (another type of coach) but when it comes to a spiritual life coach we feel weird about it for some reason.  It's not new news that what we think about has consequences.  That how we manage our mental energy and personal energy are important, but we never seem to consider how to alter those.

When I used to play piano seriously it was very apparent to me that my mental energy affected my playing, and though somewhat overlapping, my personal energy played a role as well.  It was odd how the same sequence of notes could have such different consequences according to my state of mind.

While a spiritual life coach may not be something many of us are ready for, all of us can take a moment and consider the medias we are exposed to, start with something simple, like your music.  Consider it's energy and how it aligns with your goals and filter appropriately.

Good luck. 

You probably can't afford him anyways. 

No, we have a girl...no a human girl.

"DON'T EAT THAT DESIGNER HANDBAG!!!!"

"DON'T EAT THOSE DESIGNER CLOTHES!!!!"

"DON'T EAT THAT DESIGNER MAKEUP!!!!!"

Yesterday when my wife pocket-dialed me I became curious and just stayed on the line.  You know, an auditing type thing.  See (hear) what happens when I'm not around.  In retrospect I'm not sure what bothered me more:

1. That reading the transcript you'd assume we have a dog.
or
2. That my child's favorite flavor seems to be a Louis Vuitton designer handbag.

Babies don't make sense.  Not when you lived a civilized life prior to them.  Not when you owned designer clothes and your wife had enough designer purses to last through her 22 outfits that she'd go through on an average week.  But babies don't make sense because they don't have to and - ready for this? - that exact thing does make sense. 

See, if I could poop my pants when needs be, and not wear shoes, and have a complete inability to maintain balance AND still survive; I would.  It's logical.  Much more logical than buying designer handbags that cost as much as laptop computer.  Much more logical than working 100 hours a week in a job that is salary.  Much more logical. 

Babies don't get enough credit.  Everyone thinks that they are underdeveloped and lacking body control, but that is just ruse and they'd maintain that ruse if it wasn't for boys realizing they'll never get to own a gun like that, and women realizing they'd never get to a designer handbag sale.  Everyone has a dream, and for some of those people it happens to be eating everything in my house.  We call her Jessica the baby, but soon she'll be Jessica the teenager and things will be much worse.  Much, much, worse. 

This is something you can read about insurance.

The truth is that I don't know anything about what an "insurance agency system" is.  But I have my guesses.  I have my speculations.  I have my thoughts that I'd rather keep to myself but things have changed people.  Things have evolved.  I can't just live my life not knowing any more.  There comes a point in any mans life where he has to ask what does it mean when someone says, "The Insurance Policy Management System that we bought sucks."  Am I supposed to have an emotional reaction to that?  Is that bad news?  Does it matter if the Insurance AMS works or doesn't?  Do I care if whatever the heck the Insurance Agency Systems breaks down?  Is this important?

Yea.  It is.

I'm bluffing.  It may not matter at all.  I still don't know.  It's all a mystery to me.  But I can make something up - is that what you want?  Ok.  Here it goes:

Insurance Agency System
- a directory used within an insurance company to keep track of customers, customer information, policy information, and other crap.

Insurance Policy Management System
- directory of company proprietary policies often kept as a sub-directory within Insurance Agency Systems.

That's all I got.  So deal with it.

It's broken...

He said it like it was supposed to be profound:

"Our insurance agency system is broken."

I could sense the despair, and I could feel the urgency, but I didn't know what to say, after all I didn't even know we had "insurance agency systems" nevermind the implications of them breaking.  But before I could make up some sort of empathetic response he said,

"Without this the insurance policy management system can never function like we need it to."

I had known Thom since we were kids.  We lived next to each other for 17 years, but lately it was like I didn't know him.  His mutterings had become fragmented and often incoherent.  He had become obsessed with the "insurance agency system" and would come up with terms like that all the time.  It was like whenever he came over to the house he was saying something like "insurance ams is slipping" or "the insurance governor has frozen the system again".  It would have been silly and even funny if it wasn't for the tragedy of it all. 

When Thom graduated with his bachelor's degree he got a job at a national insurance agency, but a few weeks after finishing his training he had a seizure.  The doctors said it almost killed him, and that although his MRI looked normal, his "SPECK" scan showed something much different.  Much, much, different...

What do you mean it's a "used" computer? Did you use all of it's "computing"?

Growing  up in Ontario we used computers all the time.  Even though there wasn't much to do with them, they made great walls for our gerbil mazes.  The computers were good, but we also used computer keyboards, and we used computer monitors as well.  The first thing you have to understand about gerbil's is they don't understand computers or computer equipment.  They didn't get that when they peed on our terrain obstacle (also known as a keyboard) that we either had to either buy an entirely new (used, we were rich, but not that rich) computer equipment or that we'd have to some sort of electronic repair service.  Thing is about the dudes who do electronic repair service is they:

1. Don't like it when you tell them the piece of equipment you're working on was peed on by anything.
2. Can't fix certain things once they've been doused in urine. 

So, we finally stopped using keyboards as terrain obstacles. 

Later when I was in college I worked at a electronic repair service dept. for a software company and used computers; laptop and desktops to diagnose issues with high-end thermometers that they built for the govt. 

Bowel Control

I thought it was going to be about as normal family vacation as any other.  I had rented a giant bus like thing from this RV Rental place in Florida called; Florida RV Rental.  Very creative on the name.  Flying to Florida to rent a car to then drive to an RV Rental place admittedly felt a bit inefficient, but it was the net experience I was focused on, I wanted to create a specific experience for my family and I just didn't know how else to do it. 

On any family trip I believed in delegation, so I placed Joey in the role of RV Management.  He'd never been a manager before and although you might blame that simply on his age I think what was more responsible for this was his tendency to lose bowel control whenever he got excited.  Personally I think that is directly related to the pomeranian my wife insisted on getting him as a baby.  The fact that the RV Management and the RV Management's pet have developed the same bowel control blind-spot somehow doesn't seem related if you ask my wife about it.  I tried arguing with her about this, but she assured me I was wrong, and when I asked her if she was sure, she said "completely."  I believed her.  That is what they call "trust". 

The plan was simple, go to the Florida RV Rental, rent an RV, drive to every attraction on the east coast, and then leave my family only to return for HS graduation; but like so many great plans, it became complicated....

Catering Schmatering, I need catering.

I knew there was a way to this man's heart, but I knew I didn't have the skills it took to arrive there.  It didn't take much time to realize that upon arriving in Mequon that food was the way to Jill's father's heart.  It also didn't take long to realize that Jill's father kind of hated me.  He said I kind of looked like Prince and "how could anyone ever like Prince?!"  I posed some practical answers but it became apparent he wasn't interested in them.

In the yellow pages catering wasn't a very big list.  The main one was; Mequon Catering, and seeing as I was in Mequon, and seeing as I needed catering; Mequon Catering seemed to only make sense.  When I called them and explained my situation the guy who answered said, somewhat condescendingly, "You're trying to cater your way into your girlfriend's heart?  That's dumb.  How big is he?"  I was going to tell him the story about how he once fought a bear and won over a Ding Dong last year on a camping trip but I didn't really feel like the catering guy needed to know that.

Fred, Jill's father, loved food, but more specifically he loved food that was between 20 and 30% fat.  There was a variety of flavors and types, but when it boiled down to it, I had figured out that the fat level was what counted.  The catering guy said that wasn't a problem, so I made a plan:

Get so much catering food that Fred would be intoxicated by it. And then when he wants more, when he really wants more, I'll say, "I'll give you more, but only in exchange for your daughter"

It worked...except for the daughter part.  She apparently just thought of us as "friends".  Which is why I always gag when I think about catering food.  It's gross.