Memorial Day 2010

It’s Memorial Day, a time to remember the men and women who have given their lives in military service of this great country. The high price of freedom is heroes' blood; the low price of tyranny is politicians' ink.

A soldier dies in freedoms name
Not for fortune or for fame
Remember them on this day
Their bodies lost so far away

With flowers on stones so gently laid
The flag it mourns each passing wave
Of heroes who have raised her high
In foreign lands, in times gone by

Peanut Butter on an English Muffin vs. The Best Seafood in the World.

This actually happened about six months ago, but it still makes me laugh. The partners at my company were having our annual dinner in the city at the Chinese Seafood Palace. The restaurant is AMAZING. You literally pick out what you want in the tank and they pull it out still live. The next time you see it, it is on a plate cooked to perfection and ready to enjoy and inhale. To understand how good this seafood is, I have tried seafood throughout the gulf, on the west coast, throughout the eastern seaboard and for the majority of my life have lived less than 5 miles from the beach in NJ. That being said, normally I would give the advantage to the west coast seafood, but nobody beats The Palace.

Back to the story. While standing in line at the supermarket, it is one week to go and I'm already warming up my taste buds. I am planning and awaiting the occasion to drive to the city and have an unbelievable seafood dinner. Just the thought is making me feel like, “Yeah, I don't care if the lady in front of me in the express lane does have 50 items.”.

Then CRASH, out of nowhere, my fantasy is ruined by the ring of my cell phone. One of our clients really needs training and is requesting it on the same day as the dinner. I think quickly and try to reschedule. They are really cool clients, so I can't refuse when they tell me that they only have all the people together for that day and they'll all be at a show the following week. I think to myself, they are west coast, they get awesome seafood all the time. If I said that I would have felt guilty, because they probably would have scheduled as a courtesy to me. I couldn't eat guilt fish.

The day of the dinner comes and I am bummed, I finish the class a little early and am hanging out in the co-op with visions of Monster Crab swirling in my head. I figure, what the heck, I have work to do and start typing away.

My loving partners email me to tell me that they got to the restaurant late, so I probably could have made it. Now I hate the world, need comfort food. I pull out the ,Thomas's Sandwich English Muffins and a jar of Skippy Super Chunk. Within 5 minutes I have a toasted English muffin peanut butter sandwich, one of my favorites, since I started working at home.

Another email from my partners, telling me the scallops in the shell (my favorite), are perfect. Screw them, I have my peanut butter and Thomas's, beside I may not win, but my monkey brain can still sling some poo at them. I grab my iphone and try to put on a happy face. Pointing to my soon to be dinner, I snap the shot and email it to all of them.
They send back a shot of three, huge lobsters...
I sling more poo...

Information Overload?

I'm not talking about the commercials where people hear a word and go off on a tangent, I have my own tangent. I started thinking as I began to read other peoples blogs, I like this, it is fun, entertaining, heartwarming. I enjoy reading things that other people write, just as much as I like writing my own.

Great, the mailman is here, I go and get the mail and the current edition of Popular Science, National Geographic, Maxim, VAR Magazine, CRM, the local mini-paper and various advertisements are in it. I'm not the fastest of readers, I tend to savor the English language like some people savor wine, I inhale it, I swirl the words around my mouth and on occasion spit them back out in front of a like minded audience. So how in the hell am I going to read all of this material, in addition to all of the stuff I normally read on the Internet and the stuff I have to read for work? I'd be awfully drunk on words!

I try to prioritize things, but as it would happen as I begin reading the first item, it becomes an immediate priority and I HAVE to finish. Wordwine does not age well and once the cap is taken off must be consumed. So now it's like 3a.m. in the morning, as usual, I'm up drinking in more words than my ape brain can handle. I fall asleep for a while and when I wake up a few hour later, the words in front of me have not transferred from the media to my brain, wouldn't that be great, I'd have a stack of books on my head all day draining tidbits into my scalp. The problem is, now there is an urgency , at least to me, to finish the last of the grapes of knowledge, humor, technology, business, etc. from the words in front of me. I tell my brain SLEEP, Please!. My brain replies FEED ME! I can't ignore it any longer. I rub the sand from my eyes and replace it with imaginary toothpicks. I drain the last of the words and try to get back to sleep.

I know what everyone is thinking, just cancel some of the subscriptions. I do that on occasion, but the thirst grows exponentially and I find myself filling the vacuum with more blogs, more books, more internet news.

Hello My Name is Reed and I have a problem.

Age of Reason?

So, my dad is up from TX, and I started thinking, he's 32 years my senior. Then I start thinking, I celebrated my 40^th birthday three months ago. I'm actually older than my dad was when I was born. Holy crap, my youngest daughter is turning 8 this year, I remember my dad when I was 8. Now I start thinking, I don't feel forty, wait, what is forty supposed to feel like? Did I feel like 40 when I was 20 or do I feel 20 now that I am forty?

I recently joined linkedin and started looking up friends and ex-coworkers. I categorized them by how long it's been since I've talked to them. 1-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15 years, here's where I go woe, 15-20 years and finally 20-25 years. Holy shit, I haven't talked to these people in so long, we've missed major events in each others lives; marriages, births, near deaths, deaths divorces, etc.. These are people I swore I'd never lose touch with, people who knew me better than I knew myself. I like to blame getting married for losing touch with them and that's convenient, now that the marriage is over, I have been spending a lot of time with friends and trying to re-establish old acquaintances.

Getting back to my point, I'm now 40, just a number? Yes and no, I feel young, I feel healthier than ever before in my life, I've earned an unbelievable amount of wisdom. When I look in my heart I see a young man still trying to figure the world out, trying to see things for the very first time, starting his life anew. When I look in the mirror, I see a 40 year old bachelor trying to come to grips with middle age, not in crisis, but in confusion. When I look in my daughters' eyes, I see Superman, a hero who can do little wrong, who will protect them and guide them forever.

So who am I? At any given time, I'm a little bit of each, but above all I am someone journeying through life with the lessons of 40 years. I have learned life is not forever. Anyone who has had a brush with death knows there is no set expiration date on their heel, just a use before date on their body. Life changes when you get older from an expectation to a gift. So, for now, I enjoy life to it's fullest . As the great philosopher Jeffrow says, “All men die, not all men LIVE!”

The First Post....

Welcome to the populus es bardus (people are stupid) blog. I'm not saying I'm any different, it's an all inclusive statement.
First example: this blog. Why did I start this blog? Found an old friend on a social network site and they asked me if I read their blog or wrote my own. I of course said no to both. I don't read blogs. I write my thoughts on websites that I start and never finish, I talk to people face to face, I spend more hours on a phone than Ma Bell. Why would I read or write a blog. OK, so it's like 5 hours into not only reading my friends blogs, but blogs that she read and I'm like hell it's only 1a.m., I could start my own blog.
I try to log on to Google with my email and password and Google comes back with incorrect password. I log on to my email 4,000,000,002 times a day, it is the right password. Noooooo, Google doesn't like that password, so I decide to reset it. They send the reset password email to where else, but the email they say I do not have the password to. Guess what I went to the email client and POW, it lets me right in. So now, I realize the email and everything else account are two different things!
Now it's time to set up the blog. Time to choose a name. I enter every name I can think of push the 'check availability' button, it goes something like this:

1. I enter 'peoplearestupid'
2. Click on the 'check availability' button
3. The system tells me in red it is already in use, but suggests:

• reeds_people_are_stupid
• reedarestupid
• stupidpeoplearereed
• thedogflyingwithdragonovermoonreed

Uhhhh... Uhhhh... Uhhhh... I think I'll see if I can say it in latin, that will make me sound smart. Forgot who I was again, I DON'T KNOW LATIN!!!?! I won't admit that to myself so it's time to Google.
I enter 'English to Latin Translation' in the search bar and pow 42,500,332 results. I decide what the hell, I'll pick one of the first ones there. WRONG, it gives me like 12 translations just for the word people. It's almost 2a.m., who can I call? Who can I email? Who in 2010 actually knows Latin? Wait, I know I'll email my friend who has the Latin signature on his email, "Amat Victoria Curam"(he probably also knows Klingon or he's just trying to look smart like me) . I can't wait that long, patience sucks! Here's where the real stupid happens. I search for an email stream thinking hey, I'll use his latin phrase for the title of my blog. I randomly pick an email stream with him in it and as I'm reading down the back and forth I find an email I sent to him, with "Populus es bardus" written on the bottom of it. I was trying to look smart, hows that for a pattern.