Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween!

Char wasn't too sure about emptying the pumpkin.


But she knew what kind of a Jack-o'lantern she wanted. "It has to be a spoooooky one!" (Whenever you say "spooky", you have to twist your open hands right and left.) Of all the pumpkin faces on her Halloween coloring pages, she had me carve this one.


Then it was time to go out for Trick or Treating! Despite the dire warnings about thunderstorms, the night was mild and clear.


We left the house at 6:00, and within three minutes a large group of monsters, princesses, super heroes, one rapper (?), and their parents came around the corner. Char was absorbed into the pack, and we watched her go door to door with the other kids.  She had a blast, but after 45 minutes she wanted to sit on the sidewalk and count her candy. You could tell she was wiped out because she didn't even put up a fuss when we suggested it might be time to go home.

I have a lot of great memories of Halloween - it's my favorite holiday. But being able to watch my daughter make friends and excitedly dash down the sidewalk with them is going straight to the top of my list. I've never had a better Halloween, and I didn't even get any candy.

Somebody else did.


Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Bug Update: Bump and Grind (part 2)

After I got home with my "new" bumper, Daphne drove into the garage with Charlotte asleep in her car seat. We can't move Char from the car to her bedroom without ruining her nap, so we crack the car windows and let her sleep as long as she can. But we don't leave her alone. I stay in the garage and work as silently as I can.

Thanks to Char's nap, I was able to dive right into bumper disassembly. In theory all I have to do is unscrew the bumper's eight nuts and bolts, but it's never that easy. Fifty-year-old car parts that have spent most of their lives outside are going to bad-tempered. And if they're from the Midwest, then you're also going to have deal with their rust issues.

After reading Roger Welsch's books on tractor restoration, here's how I approach cantankerous, rusty nuts and bolts.

1) Gently tap the rusty nut with a small brass hammer, and then use a wire brush to clean off as much surface rust as you can.
2) Spray the nut with penetrating oil. I use Kano Kroil. And then walk away for 15 minutes.
3) Try to tighten the nut first. This seems counterintuitive, but tightening the nut helps crush the rust that has built up between the threads, and you'll have a better shot at loosening it when you reverse directions.
4) Spray the nut again, and wait a few more minutes if you can stand it.
5) Begin turning the nut loose. If you get it going, and it feels like it's beginning to bind, try turning it in the opposite direction a quarter turn, and then go back to turning it loose.

It's been my experience that at this point most small nuts either come loose or break off. But bigger nuts and bolts may take to blowtorch heat or at worst a nutcracker.

While Charlotte slept, I quietly broke one bolt and loosened the other seven. Not bad. The rest of the broken bolt is in there:



Later that evening I spent an hour drilling out the broken bolt and tapping the hole with new threads.

Last night I was excited to combine my two bumpers. I decided to use the top bar and one of the guards from the donor bumper. Around 9:30 a chrome-plated bolt from my original bumper snapped, but the donor had a slightly pitted replacement that would work.



But by 10:30 I was about to blow up. The components just refused to work together. As soon as I got one piece in place, the others would jump out of line. You'd think I was working in Washington. That was funny the first few tries, but by attempts number nine, ten, and eleven I had stopped laughing. I hate going to bed after a garage failure, but the clock was ticking.

While gathering up my tools in anger, I realized what I was doing wrong. I quickly took everything apart, and then again started all the bolts in their respective holes, but by only one turn. The bumper was a wobbly mess, but I began to methodically tightened each bolt by just two more turns before moving onto the next. Five minutes later each bolt was tight, and the bumper was one solid piece. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

Right away I could see that the bumper looked much healthier, and its fit was better. I winced when I tested the trunk lid, but the lid didn't - for the first time in my life - scrape against the bumper when it was opened. Those annoying bar dents were gone, too.

Awesome! For the first time in months, I did my "I-can't-believe-that-worked-I'm-not-a-loser" dance.

To quote Daphne, "Not bad for twenty bucks."


Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Bug Update: Bump and Grind (part 1)

I don't like my Beetle's front bumper. The top bar is especially bad. It has several dents like this one.


I guess what bothers me the most is that I didn't put those dents there. That was somebody else's work, and I don't want to own their dents. I want to replace the bumper with a better, original one, but front bumpers rarely come up for sale online, and when they do, the sellers won't ship them. "Local Pickup Only" is the bane of my VW existence. I'd like to find parts in wrecking/ recycling yards, but I don't seem to have very good timing there.

A week after I bought my car, I drove it to a VW wrecking yard in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Since childhood I'd been staring at the rows of broken Beetles when we'd drive by the lot, but when I arrived to shop for parts the fence was gone, and the property was empty of all vehicles. The man in the lonely office shack told me they had their car auction last month, and every car that wasn't sold had been crushed.

I knew how those cars felt.

After living in Des Moines for a few years, I heard there was a wrecking yard full of Bugs in Zearing, Iowa. I hightailed it up there, but I had missed their auction by a few weeks, too. How does that even happen?

Then last week I spotted this ad on Craigslist.


With the help of Google maps and a couple of phone calls, I was able to find where the field was located. I was told to wait by this metal fence, and a guy in a red and white pickup would let me in. 

He did.


He rolled the gate open just enough for me to enter, and then he quickly slid it shut and fastened the gate with a chain. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself into. I wanted to go back to car to get my camera, but this place didn't seem too photo friendly.

"You know what cha' looking for?" the guy from the truck asked while lighting a cigarette.
"A front bumper."
"For what?"
His question stumped me for a couple of seconds, "For my car?"
He smirked and took a long drag, "For your car? What cha' got? You got a van? Type III? Beetle? Ghia?"
"Oh," realizing my mistake, "I've got a Beetle."
He nodded, and started leading me down a gravel path stained with oil. "You know what cha' looking for?"
Rather than getting tripped up again, I told him yes.
"If it was in a pile, could you recognize it yourself?"
Again, I answered in positive.
"Okay, " he said while pointing to an eight-foot tall metal bush, it's chrome branches twisted and winking in the sunshine, "I'll leave you here. Be careful, and holler if you get in trouble."

I couldn't believe my luck. The craigslist ad wasn't lying. There, crowded against a shed that had lost its roof and two walls, was a huge mound of bumpers. Unbelievable.

Just as I started to smile to myself, the guy walking away threw this over his shoulder, "Too bad you wasn't here yesterday. A guy was in there digging around for four hours. He took a lot good ones home. I think he cleans them up and sells them online."

You have got to be kidding me. I'm too late, again?

Instead of getting angry, I decided the guy was yanking my chain. Had I'd been looking at a pile of fenders, he'd probably have said the same thing. It was time to roll up my sleeves and start the excavation for pre-1967 metal.

This is what I was looking for.


But after 30 minutes, I wasn't so sure. Most of the bumpers were from the 70's, and the early bumpers I did find were either rusted out or bent like twist-ties. I considered digging deeper into the pile, but I didn't think anything under all that weight was going to look any better than what was on top. I also didn't know when I had my last tetanus shot. Feeling defeated, I abandoned the bumpers to go check out the cars. The guy said he had more than 80 of them.

He did.

If this lot was an open field, I could probably jog from the front gate to the back fence in about ten seconds. But this maze of trees, cars, frames, and body parts took decades to assemble, and rock climbing skills would be needed if I wanted to move quickly.

But speed was the last thing I wanted. This automotive labyrinth was fraught with booby traps: sharpened handholds, rotten wood disguised as solid footing, broken glass pits, and rusty nail spikes threatened from all sides. By the time I emerged from the heart of the warren, I felt like Indiana Jones without the cool hat. I also didn't have a bumper.

After an hour and a half of climbing up, sliding down, and shimmying around, I settled on a bumper that was attached to a dismembered Bug's front clip. It's not that the bumper was all that great, it was just better than anything else I saw - kind of like the one-eyed king. And its top bar was in decent shape.

I asked a different guy who was working in the yard if I could leave and get my tools, but he said that wasn't necessary. He volunteered to take a Sawzall to the bumper's bolts and cut the bumper free. Although he only wanted to charge me $15, he spent 20 minutes and broke two blades working the bumper loose. I gave him a twenty and considered myself lucky.

I think I can combine the best parts of the two bumpers and have something that looks more presentable. But if I fail, I'm only out a few bucks.

Actually, I'm just excited to work on my old car again.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Quick, Name This Movie


Fertile Ground: A Moving Story (slash!) Halloween Movie Review


When Daphne and I were thinking about moving a couple of years ago, we were on the hunt for a Victorian-styled farmhouse. One place we seriously considered was located on an acreage just outside of Sheldahl, IA - about 22 miles from Des Moines. It had a newly updated kitchen, updated bathrooms, and wooden pocket doors. Below your feet were original hardwood floors and above your head were ceiling medallions and crown moldings. It felt perfect.

 Here's the front of the house:


Check out the gingerbread and the siding:



Wait! Why is that person jumping out of that window, and how did I get a picture of it? 

Turns out the house had been a location for the direct-to-DVD horror movie Fertile Ground (2011). The pictures in this email are screen shots taken from the movie's trailer. Normally I'd post a link, but the trailer is rated R for blood, nudity, and overacting.

Now we know why rubber mats were stapled to the porch's roof. The killer needed secure footing.


This also explains why we found, in a corner of the basement, a large wooden cross with a Blair Witch thingamajig hanging from it (hard to see, but it's on the left):


Fertile Ground's plot line: "Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate's family home in New Hampshire. There, isolated and haunted by strange noises and horrifying visions, Emily learns she's pregnant while Nate is possessed by the homicidal spirit of his forefathers. In a house haunted by past victims, Emily learns that she's the latest target in a murderous tradition."

Umm, moving an expectant woman from the city to an isolated farm house? That hit a little too close to home for Daphne who was also pregnant at the time.

I'm a huge fan of horror movies, and you might think I'd jump at the chance to own a house that starred in one, but like getting close to a Hollywood prop, this place wasn't as nice as we first thought. The hard wood floors were only finished where the rugs didn't cover; the rest of the flooring consisted of plywood and bent nails. The ceiling moldings were new and probably made of Styrofoam. The water pressure couldn't support the new seven head shower. Every new appliance in the kitchen was a dented floor model. And one of the toilet bowls was filled with floating, dead boxelder bugs. That seemed ominous. Outside, you could put your foot through many of the porch's floorboards.

But couldn't those things be fixed? We thought so. Once you have dreamed yourself into a house, it's hard to shake yourself awake. 

But then Daphne watched Fertile Ground with me, and that was like getting a bucket of cold water dumped on her. Of course the main similarity is that the fictional movie and our fictional moving took place at the same house. But there were enough parallels between our own real lives and that of the movie's couple to be surreal.

It's true, the plot line involving moving a pregnant woman from the city to the country touched a nerve, and both couples, real and imagined, were also pregnant with baby girls. Although the movie couple miscarried (no way would I have let Daph watch that part), they were going to name their little girl Ruth. We considered Ruth as a name for our girl, as it's Daphne's Grandma's first name.

Although we didn't move into the house, we spent the better part of three hours walking around the property discussing where our belongings would go if we did. Watching the onscreen couple do that same thing gave us a sense of déjà vu, especially seeing the empty, "Two Men and A Truck" truck pull away from the acreage. We've used that moving company three times.

Seeing movie props that we had physically handled, like the wood grave marker, strengthened the feeling of connection, "Oh yeah, I forgot 'Our Beloved Child' was carved into the cross." We could also see differences in the background of scenes. For instance, when a killer ghost is standing with an axe in a haunted kitchen, I don't usually notice that it's standing next to a different microwave than what's there now.

Neither of us look like actors, but there are some similarities. I'm only eight days older than the movie husband, Gale Taylor, and although he's taller and better looking, we sometimes share the same beard:





For comparison, Leisha Hailey played the movie wife/ mother:



Was the movie scary? When Fertile Ground was over, Daphne asked me to walk with her to the basement to "help" get the laundry... first time that's happened. I think it was the mixture of impending doom and familiarity that really spooked her: here's a place she's acquainted with, and now it's being splattered with blood. "Oh, I'm so glad we didn't buy that house.", "Oh, I'm soooo glad we don't live there!", and "Oh my gosh! I couldn't ever live in that house!!" were common exclamations. 

I found the movie itself to be slow and predictable, but I had a blast vicariously moving into our haunted house. Overall, I rate Fertile Ground a 7 out of 10 for me, and a 2 out of 10 for anyone else. Daphne might give it a 1, but I doubt that. 

When we made a list of what we were looking for while house shopping this year, Daphne put "No Horror Movie Houses!" in her top five.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Straight to the Top

The first Scooby-Doo cartoon aired the year I was born, 1969, and I grew up watching the Mysteries Inc. Gang expose alleged monsters and ghosts as phonies. I can't remember a time when Scooby hasn't been on TV, and I'm looking forward to visiting old friends when Charlotte's old enough to enjoy these mysteries without getting scared.

One Scooby-Doo cartoon I'll have avoid for awhile is Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.


In 1998 this full length movie was a reboot of the original TV series. After growing up and getting real jobs, the old gang reunites for one last mystery tour. The problem is, as far as this cartoon world is concerned, the monsters are real. When Fred tries to pull off the zombie's mask, the zombie's head comes off instead. And the head continues to move and groan.


That would be too much for Charlotte to see. It was pretty strong stuff in '98 when I watched it with my then seven-year-old nephew. We were both on the couch, but Zach was hiding behind my legs. When that head came off, Zach's eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline.

Alarmed, he whispered, "Brent? Do you ever pray to God when you get scared?"

"Yeah, if I get too scared, I ask God to help me."

Zach replied, "Me too," and he leaned in close, "Sometimes I just skip right over Jesus."

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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Totino's Pizza: Not Special; Limited

I believe Totino's pizzas are on the bottom rung of the pizza ladder. That doesn't mean I don't like them, every journey begins with a single step, but if your pizza journey begins with Totino's, then there's no place to go but up.


Personally, I only eat a Totino's pizza when I'm desperate or alone (or both). So, I wouldn't call it a "party" pizza. It's more of a "you didn't get invited to the party, so it's just us" pizza.


I think it's suspicious that Totino's doesn't sell Canadian Bacon pizza, but Canadian Style Bacon.  Canadian style?  Does their bacon wear tiny knit hats?

In the 90's I bought this used Mitsubishi Gallant. I still like the rims on that car, but I'm embarrassed to see that I use to tuck my t-shirts into my shorts. Pull that shirt out, bozo.


It was a pretty nice car until some kid keyed the hood while it was parked at school. The paint along the scratch began to chip away, and by the end of winter most of the hood was bare.

To compensate, I glued a gold "Limited Edition" emblem to the trunk. It didn't make the car look any better, but that plastic lie made me giggle.



Now whenever I see a product marked as a "Limited Edition", I look at it with skepticism. Those words might be on the box just so the makers can feel better about themselves. Come to think of it, "limited" isn't much of a compliment. Here's the Oxford Dictionary's third definition.


When using that definition, you can't swap "limited" and "special". Imagine taking that route during a parent teacher conference.

Mom: "We think our Tony is such a special kid."
Me: "I agree! He's very limited."

It's with that skepticism that I approached this Totino's pizza at the grocery store. On Saturday I was fighting a severe head cold, and I was desperate for an easy meal.



This limited edition, Mexican styled pizza also has limited time flavor? What is that? Is it like Fruit Stripe Gum? After three chews all the mexican style flavor disappears? What flavor would be left in its wake?

 Time to find out.


It didn't look like the picture on the box, but I was surprised that this pizza had some Mexican flavor. Not a lot of Mexican flavor, but a limited amount.

Limited Edition: I guess there can be truth in advertising.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

At least I could do that.

Last weekend our new neighborhood threw a block party. Barricades blocked both ends of the street in front of our house, and by 5:00 kids were running everywhere. The only problem was that they weren't running with Charlotte.

Not only is she the new girl on the block, at three years old, Charlotte's the youngest of the kids moving around on two feet. The gal closest to her age is almost six, and she and some other seven-year-olds were too busy walking behind some high school girls to give Char a second glance. In fact, everyone was too busy to play with Char.

I get it; I really do. I understand why those bigger kids told Charlotte they didn't want her playing tackle volleyball. She's too little. She also doesn't have the balance to glide down the hill on a Micro scooter, or the motor skills to steer a Power Wheel plastic Jeep. She doesn't understand the impromptu rules of kickball en mass, or how cliques work. She will, soon enough, but on Saturday night, Charlotte wanted to pretend she's a kitty and have a tea party with some imaginary bears. And sadly, no bears came calling.

All day long Char had been telling us, "I can't wait for the party tonight!" but by 6:00 she was standing alone in the street sobbing, "No one will play with me!" And she was right; no one would play with her.

I watched her move from group to group soliciting playmates, and each time she was answered with a "No", a shirt turned to show its back, or a pair of cruel shoes running away.

I can wipe away tears, fix broken toys, and tape torn book pages. But I can't make the other kids like my daughter, and a simple repairman is helpless against a broken heart.

I rescued her from the middle of the street, and we both went into our house to regroup. Since I've never been good at consoling a crying girl, I did what I could. I made Charlotte a snack plate, and we watched TV on the couch together.

After twenty minutes, Char was willing to give the party another try. This time she decided she needed something to set herself apart. She needed something that would get the other kids to abandon their big wheels and sidewalk chalk and come running. She needed... her Scooby Doo umbrella.

Oh. Crap.

I tried to explain to Char that the other kids might not be too impressed with her umbrella, but she was sure she had found a lightening rod for friendship. After losing a brief tug of war in the garage, I hesitantly escorted my little Gene Kelly to go singing in the pain. I have to give her an E for effort, but as I suspected, no one else was excited that Char had learned how to open and close her pink parasol. One boy started to cry for his mom because Charlotte kept following him around trying to hold it over his head.

Just when I was sure that all was lost, the sun went down, and the unlit backyards began to empty their multitudes back into the street. The high schoolers took off in their real cars, and with no one left to show off to, the kids became kids again, and Char was allowed to hold hands with a group who went running up the sidewalk towards a neighbor's trampoline.

Through the darkness I watched her silhouette fall, bounce, slip, and rebound on the tramp while her distinctive giggle ricocheted over my head.

Later, when no one was looking, I ran her forgotten umbrella into the garage and hid it on a high shelf.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Memory Stick (ers)

Although we moved to our new place four weeks ago, I'm still unpacking. It's taking longer than I planned because I'm trying to "thin the herd". Boxes that haven't been opened in decades are being slowly exhumed.

How my fifth grade music lesson book got in a box marked "College Papers", I'll never know. It was wedged between the papers I wrote for British Lit. and a Critical Literature class.

Funny thing is, even though I sweated for days writing those college papers, I threw them in the recycling bin last night. A character analysis of Smerdyakov from The Brothers Karamazov? Barf.

But I'm keeping this lesson book. I was ten when I started playing the saxophone, and it looks like I wasn't planning on being a serious player... but I still think these "Wacky Packages" stickers are great.


Let's zoom in.


It's aluminum, Fool! (That's an inside joke for Daphne.)







When it comes down to keeping or tossing something, one of my litmus test questions is, "Does this make me smile?"

Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but 34 years later the answer is still "Yes".

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Tales from Community Cookbooks: Political (?) Edition

Here's something you can bring to your next tea party.



Personally, I won't try to make this recipe. I don't think it will work for me.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Stair Master

This week's Datebook lists all the Halloween haunted houses in Des Moines.


Reminds me of a book I unearthed while unpacking my old paperbacks last night.


I ordered this from a Scholastic Book Club catalog when I was in third grade. I know I don't remember any of the stories in this book because I didn't read them. The picture on page 50 stopped me in my tracks. 


In 1936, two photographers on assignment for Country Life magazine were taking photos of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. One of the photographers saw "a vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman" gliding down the staircase, and the photo of the "Brown Lady Ghost" was taken.

The first time I saw this picture I was eight years old and living in Inwood, Iowa. It was in the fall of 1977, and once a week instead of walking home from the bus stop, I'd walk to the laundromat and climb the steps of a dark stairwell to my Cub Scout meeting on the second floor.

Seeing an actual picture of a "real" ghost was frightening enough, but the stairs the ghost was floating above looked exactly like the stairs at the laundromat! It doesn't matter that the haunted stairway was half a world away, and it looked nothing like the laundromat's stairs; they were exactly the same! Oh my God! I'm never going to another Cub Scout meeting again!

But I couldn't miss the meetings. My mom was one of the den mothers, and she'd notice that I wasn't there. Moms are like that. The only way I was going to solve my problem was by facing my fears. And by "facing my fears", I mean shutting my eyes and sprinting up the steps as fast as I could. When the meetings were over, I'd survive the steps by challenging someone to race me down, or I'd simply yell, "Last one down's a booger head!" and bolt down the steps before my mom could grab my collar and make me walk. 

By the time Christmas rolled around, I had the biggest calves in the troop. 


This was not a good mix.
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Saturday, October 5, 2013

May Your Next 80% Rock

I don't really think that I'll ever be asked to give a high school graduation speech, but if that happens, I think I know what I will want to say. It will go something like this:

Before we drove to my high school graduation ceremony, my dad and I were standing in the driveway waiting for Mom to come out of the house. She was inside triple checking that the party supplies and decorations would be ready for our guests and relatives when we returned from the school gym.

Leaning against the car, we both were watching the "Congratulations Brent!" sign lazily bumping against the house in the breeze. Dad wasn't much of a talker, so he surprised me when he broke the silence.

"Bud, I sure feel sorry for you."

"What for?"

"Well, high school is over. I just feel bad that your best days are behind you."

Back then I took my dad's word as gospel, but I joked that there was no way that going to school with the same 39 kids for four years constituted the best of anything.

Dad countered, "You got to suit up and play sports, you sang in the choir, and you played in the band. You took art and photography. You did all kinds of other things, and that's all over. Now all you have to look forward to is work."

That's a pretty dismal assessment, and looking back with a 26-year-long lens, I suspect Dad was beginning to show some early signs of his depression. But I know there are plenty of people who are not depressed and would have agreed with him.

But why? What's makes the high school years so special? Maybe it's because those four years can also be your formative years, and the rocky passage from adolescence to maturity is so memorable. But I don't know that for sure.

What I do know is that the average person living in the United States can expect to live 79 years. Only four of those years are spent in high school. Mathematically, high school is only five percent of your life.

When was the last time you bragged that you had a great five percent of anything?

How did your first marathon go? Well, early on I had 1.3 miles that were awesome!

Did you have a good spring break? Yes! One third of Tuesday was really fun.

In his song Glory Days Bruce Springsteen sings, "I had a friend was a big baseball player, back in high school", and later, "Well, there's a girl who lives up the block, back in school she could turn all the boys' heads."  Despite its scant four years, high school still seems to be the reference point most often used when people talk about their "glory days".

So, if you had a great time in high school, I'm happy for you. If you were academically successful, you deserve a pat on your back. If your activity won an award, you earned a I at solo contest, or your team had a winning season, then "Go J-Hawks!"

But please don't smile too broadly, pat yourself too hard, or cheer too loudly. None of those things would have happened to you without the help, support, and love of the people who aren't wearing a graduation cap right now. You are standing on the shoulders of giants; giants who changed your diapers, wiped away your tears, and made sure you brought that graduation cap tonight.

And sadly, I can assure you that a successful high school career does not guarantee continued success down the road. You'll have to continue to earn it, and that will be even harder because your giants won't always be there to help you.

But what about the students who didn't think they were successful at UHS? For them high school wasn't fun. What about the kids who found the last four years painful? Or even a torment? To you, I say I'm sorry that happened, but please don't beat yourself up too hard. Remember high school is just five percent of your life, and that you, too are surrounded by people who love you.

Happily, like past success, past failure doesn't guarantee future failure. When I was a college junior home on winter break, I bumped into my high school art teacher at church. He asked me what I was going to do after college, and I told him I was thinking about a career in education. Without any hesitation or sarcasm, he asked me, "Why do the worst students think they can become teachers?"

I didn't know how to answer him, but I've been a teacher for 22 years, and no one has ever asked me what my GPA was in high school.

In about 20 minutes, your high school career, for better or worse, will be over. Like it or not, you'll leave here, and your high school reputation will not follow you. You will have the unique opportunity to reinvent yourself. And there is so much power in this opportunity. Don't waste it. Greet tomorrow by acting like the person you want to be. Every new person you meet will believe that is the person you are, and pretty soon you'll believe it, too.

Tomorrow can be magic.

26 years ago I shook my head at my dad, and I told him he was wrong. High school was certainly not going to be the highlight of my life. And it wasn't. I don't think I've hit my highlight yet.

Class of 2014, I hope you're excited that there's so much undiscovered territory to your lives, and I wish good luck to whomever you become.

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Thursday, October 3, 2013

At Least it's Better Than "Probe"

Spotted on the drive to daycare yesterday. I think Detroit is running out of car names.


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