21 Years Ago Today

Twenty-one years ago today I woke up to the sounds of A Christmas Story playing on the TV on HBO. My dad turned it on, very loudly, to wake us all up. I remember feeling confused upon hearing the sounds of Christmas carols. The weather was cold and rainy that day, with tons of wind.....completely abnormal for Acworth, Georgia. My cousin Jared and I went down to the day-use area at Galts Ferry, and there was NO ONE there......the wind was making waves and they had just dumped about 50 dumptruck loads of sand on the beach area. We spent hours, in the cold rain, making sand castles and moats and walls to fight off the waves. That was a good day, unlike any fourth of July before it....or since. Cold weather in July...I believe the high that day was 70F.

http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/time_machine/1988/07/04/30102
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RIP Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

In the Summer of 1983, my grandparents bought the biggest Winnebago there was and took seven of the grandchildren on a tour of the USA. We drove from Atlanta to Ventura to Jackson Hole to St. Louis to Atlanta, stopping along the way over the course of six weeks, and spending tons of time in Jackson, where my grandma was born, visiting family. "The Trip" is legend in my family. We cousins grew far closer because of that vacation together than we ever would have otherwise. If I remember correctly, the RV had a cassette player, a big deal in 1983. One of my cousins had just bought the Thriller tape before we left. We listened to that album repeatedly for six weeks. "Don't you kids want to listen to the radio?" "No, turn it over to side B, pleeeeeeeeeeease."

"Beat It" was our favorite song. Some of the hotels we stayed in (at times, sleeping nine people in an RV got to be too much) had MTV......we'd watch until the video for "Beat It" would come on and then roar with excitement.

In 1993, when I still saw the world in Black or White, I thought Michael Jackson was a child molester. In 2005, at the last trial, and after I watched the Martin Bashir interview, I felt that he was still a little boy...that he had been damaged when he was young, and that the evidence against him was all circumstantial. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. He was never convicted. While I wouldn't have let my kids go to Neverland, I still enjoyed his music, and he was a touchstone of my life. If I ever hear a song from Thriller, I can still see the black ink on cream plastic lettering on the cassette tape. My wife had the inside poster from Thriller on her wall, and she was in love with him. Her Barbie married her Michael Jackson doll, not Ken. I so desperately wanted a red jacket, though you couldn't have gotten me to wear just one sequined glove. Had my parents let me, I have short, curly, woolly, kinky hair, and I would've done geri-curl. I believe my father's exact words were, to a nine-year-old boy, "Hell no, son."

Michael Jackson was the biggest icon of the 1980s. Bigger than Madonna. Bigger than Bill Cosby. Bigger than all of them combined. He was, the King.

He's an inextricable part of most people of my generation's lives. He's one of the best singers we've ever had, especially in pop, and well, because his music is such a big part of my life, to paraphrase him, he's just another part of me.
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Insomnia Nugget

How do you know that the drugs are messing with you? When you try to go to sleep at 1AM, but as soon as you lie down, you become obsessed with the idea of baking a cake. So you think to yourself, "Self, you're going the distance, you're going for sleep, but you're all alone, all alone, all alone in a time of need." So you plot your course to sleep, but you can't find it. You daydream of driving, in the car, but that makes your baby seem so far; you try and count sheep but they just go to hell...all the while there's this Frank Sinatra song playing on the radio in your head. And Sleep, that old friend, you're never there...in fact, friend, that's a four-letter word. And, the longer you lie there, the more the cake seems to be calling you. You're not even really a cake fan, nor have you ever baked one without a female overseer, but at 2:00AM you realize that the cake is calling and it's not going to go away until you yield to it, but that you really also love it madly.........so, I just made a cake, and I'm wide awake in America at 2:46AM EDT; I will survive, yeah, yeah.
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Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks

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Missing

I love my wife enough to fake being cool with her going to Utah for Jack's birthday, our anniversary, Father's Day, and Calliope's probable first steps.

I hate being alone.
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RIP Truman Madsen (1926-2009)

http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/05/28/truman-madsen-1926-2009/

Right before I got married, Truman Madsen was my stake president; he gave me my marriage recommend interview. He had me come to his house, a beautiful pad up on the hill west of the stadium, for the interview since he "didn't like conducting interviews in someone else's office."

My recommend interview consisted of two 'questions:'

1. I assume you were truthful in the interview you had with your bishop for this recommend, correct?

2. Bear me your testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

We talked at length after that about what I should expect of married life and why it was important not to quibble over money. Only the eternal stuff mattered.

He was a decent and kind man and I'm saddened by his death.
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The Limón Mandarina / Rangpur Lime

So, my favorite lemon/lime in the world, the limón mandarina, is impossible to find in the States. I can´t recall ever seeing it. I believe it may be called a Mandarin lime or a Rangpur lime, but the photos I´ve seen of those don´t correspond to what I know.

It has the freshest lime taste you can imagine and is a perfect palatte cleanser.

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