This blog is a window into my head and partially into my family life.  For many reasons, I have kept secret the fact that we have taken a pounding financially in the past year due to a myriad of reasons, most of them unforseen.  The most frustrating part of it all is that we are blessed with two awesome and healthy daughters, two good paying jobs and we don’t live beyond our means.  That being said, the combination of events (which I simply won’t get into here) has left us reeling in a way that is frustrating as hell and I need to see the light at the end of the tunnel before I lose my goddamned mind.

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Sometimes common courtesy trumps what you can legally or technically do and I think I encountered such a case yesterday.  A co-worker and I were getting a post-lunch coffee at the Starbucks inside the Target by work yesterday.  We were behind only a mom and her kid.  Sure, it was annoying enough for them to take forever to order but that wasn’t the worst of it.  Since we were in a Target and the Starbucks workers are actually Target employees, they can ring up anything you’ve bought in the store.

I’m a huge defender of free speech but there is one word that I think is used way too much today that minimizes the horror associated with it.  The casual use of word “Nazi” has become too far imbedded in our daily lexicon.  Everything from the “Soup Nazi” in the famous Seinfeld episode to people tossing the word around when describing a trait about someone they don’t like, it makes me uncomfortable when I hear it.

Some example ...

In this day and age of bit torrents and file sharing, I’m one of the few people who don’t actually mind paying for music and movies.  I do view file sharing as stealing from artists and tend not to participate in newsgroups where you can get anything for free.  Were I a poor college student, my attitude might be different but as of right now I buy my music via iTunes and rent my movies through Netflix.

That being said, I have a ...

I need to know if this is a Midwestern thing or that it’s a missing component in the south.  As an ex-Chicagoan that was raised in Detroit and now lives in Atlanta, it’s a dirty little secret that I’m actually a native of Wisconsin.  I attribute my obsession with cheese as part of my birthright from being born in Milwaukee and living there the first three years of my ...

As a father of two kids, one of the places we frequent often is the local park.  One of Ally’s favorite things to do is be on the swing for long periods of time.  Now that she’s bigger, she doesn’t ask me to push her to get her started.  I mention this because when I’m standing next to her, I’ve been asked by quite a few kids of the course of the past few years if I could give them a push on the swing.  In this day and age of predators and perverts and lawsuit-happy parents, I almost always decline.  I say politely to the kid that it might be best if they have their parents ...

I’m worried. 

I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you’re on; we’re in a recession.  Jobs are falling by the wayside, prices are increasing exponentially, real estate prices are in a freefall and there isn’t really a light at the end of the tunnel just yet.  Obviously our economy goes up and down and these ebbs and flows are a natural cyc ...

After 2 ½ years, I have yet to successfully come up with a replacement for the word “blog”.  After 2 ½ years, I still hate the word.  With the word “blog” becoming more and more a part of everyday conversation and also a buzzword for the media to use, this bastardly coined word won’t be leaving our consciousness any time soon.  The sound of the word just grates on my ears.