It is January 6, 2022. A year ago today, a sitting president, defeated in his attempt for re-election, organized protestors in an effort to overturn a lawful election. It was not the best moment in the history of this country.

No matter what policies his administration implemented that may have had a net positive effect, the way that tenure ended will define the administration of the 45th president of the United States. I know that all I can really offer is an opinion, but I believe the events of a year ago highlight the narcissism and desperation of a man who found out he wasn’t the solution.

He was the problem.

Today there are still countless weak-minded fools that believe that the election that took place in November was corrupt. They’ve had irresponsible agents of chaos whispering in their ears that the election was faulty, that there was cheating. They sued over and over again, and the result in each and every case has been the same – the case was thrown out or lost due to the complete absence of evidence.

I hope you all have a peaceful day and have a moment to reflect on the events that took place a year ago. I hope you can thank a peace officer, a first responder, a health care worker, a teacher for their service. What these folks do every day is an incredible challenge, and the witless mob that tried to overturn a lawful election are a clear and present danger to our democracy.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

It is Wednesday, January 5, 2022, and baby, it’s cold outside. 15 degrees according to my little weather station – I’ve got an Accurite weather station that ties into a weather crowd-sourcing app, Wunderground.com (Weather Underground).

I’m not expecting a lot of drama today. There will be a lot of discussion in the news about what happened in the Capitol a year ago tomorrow. Right now I’m watching an interview with a House Representative from Pennsylvania, and she’s talking about her experience as Joe Biden was accepted as President of the United States.

We still have a lot of Americans that have swallowed the big lie hook, line, and sinker. They’re just a bunch of weak-minded, gullible fools that don’t know when they’ve been the target of the biggest political con-game in US history. They’ve been led to believe that they are patriots when just the opposite is true. They follow every word of a wannabe authoritarian dictator – the former guy hardly paused to breathe when he had chances to praise the autocrats that seemed to have unlimited power in their countries. He talked about how the populations of certain countries would obey the words of brutal strongmen without question.

He certainly didn’t like it when the press told the truth about him.

Let me add my .02.

Trump is the worst president in US history. He is also the worst ex-president in US history. I pray that he never steps foot in the White House again. I would say that I hope he never steps foot in the Capitol again, but I’d sure like to see him show up to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection.

A political observer from our neighbor to the north is afraid the United States is on a road to a right-wing dictatorship by the year 2030. Right now, I believe that is not an unreasonable forecast. I can only hope that people give up their feeling of entitlement and work towards a level playing field for all.

That’s enough of a rant for now.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve… but Donald J. Trump, I hope you get exactly what you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Good morning! It is Tuesday, January 4, 2022. It is early, but I made that choice… or more likely, my bladder wanted to get up and I decided to go along with it for now.

The weight-loss plan I’m on right now cuts carbs and increases water consumption. I have not been properly hydrating for awhile, so I know that I need it for several reasons… my body needs water, there is no doubting that statement. I need to rid my body of some of the bad stuff in my body – a cleanse, so to speak. The other aspect that I shouldn’t discount is that I have a history of kidney stones, and my increased water consumption will hopefully have a positive impact on that part of my health and well-being.

My 6:00 AM alarm just went off. Coffee is on, should be done brewing momentarily, and I’ll have some low-carb toast with peanut butter for breakfast – I normally have an omelet, but I think I need to keep up with some variety. An omelet, low-carb pancakes, toast and peanut butter, or just a protein shake. One of the challenges is always adding some variety to keep the program from getting too monotonous.

One other thing worth mentioning – the total volume of water. I have a goal of 8 glasses of water per day. Most folks would aim for 16 ounces, and I’m leaning towards 22 with the glass I have, and I have come to the realization that I really want to try and get that last glass of water in by 7 o’clock PM. Had to get up too many times in the night to relieve that pressure.

Time to focus, adapt, and overcome the challenges of the day.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace, y’all.

Today is January 3rd, 2022. Funny… I almost kept adding “twos” to the end of the date.

This is the first day of my “renewal”. Generally speaking, January 1st really isn’t the best day to start on a new path and rededicating oneself to goal setting and finding some balance, primarily due to my desire for just another day of sports and bar food.

The first day is typically easy. I’ve already dragged myself out of bed, showered, dressed, and slammed home two glasses of water as part of my hydration goals. Made myself a low-carb breakfast omelet with a little cheese and half of a leftover steak from Friday night.

I’m trying to get my writing in early… might be a little of the “eat that frog” attitude, getting a commitment done early in the day so I don’t sit and wonder about it the rest of the day.

Right now, Odin is sitting with me in my chair. He’s perched up on my right shin looking for the food I ate while he was still back in the bedroom. He’d really give me a long, judgmental look if he knew what happened to the last bite of my omelet – Bonnie’s dog, Ruthie, enjoyed it a great deal.

OK, time to get focused on the rest of the day… I’ve got an Admin course starting in a little more than two hours.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

The end of my holiday break… tomorrow, I’ll get up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to resume my role as a trainer for a really great company, and, no, I don’t write that just because this is my public blog and I might have co-workers or customers read it. I’m a very happy person, professionally speaking.

Just like anybody else, I have things that just hit me wrong, and sometimes I’ll write about them, sometimes I’ll just bite my lip and keep my mouth shut.

I am focusing on myself this year, and counting the time I have left, trying to be as productive as possible – trying to find that best version of me. It’s never too late to try and get better. My opinion is that when you think you can’t improve or learn something new, entropy kicks in. Order moves to disorder, organization moves to chaos. It happens for all of us, I think. The trick is hoping everything falls apart at once and you get to move on all at once rather than being taken in small pieces.

I will step on a scale tomorrow morning and cringe… I haven’t been following the low-carb ketogenic lifestyle for some time now, and most of the weight I worked so hard to lose in 2019 has once again taken up residency in my gut. Tomorrow, we get back on the train. Eggs, water, coffee for breakfast. bratwurst in a low-carb tortilla for lunch, more water, and then a salad tomorrow night for dinner. My dumbells are in my training space, so I can crank out a few sets when the Q&A slows down. I’ve got my mindfulness program to help me with my head… home office has a corporate discount with “Headspace”, and I have found it helpful.

Goal setting, goal management, managing the size of my world… all things I need to spend some time on. I just need to exercise a little discipline and maintain my focus… I know I left it around here somewhere.

That’s good for now.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace, y’all.

Today is January 1, 2022. It is the first day of the new year, and I’m settling in with some barbeque, little smokies, and later on, there will likely be a Manhattan added to the mix.

Snow and sleet have graced us with a small coat of nature’s WD-40 on the roads. We’re going to try and stay in today as the snow continues to fall, interspersed with the click-clack of icy sleet crystals tapping on the window.

Dogs aren’t very enthusiastic about doing their business outside today. I’ll be cleaning up messes from time to time.

Oh, by the way, the anti-vaccine propagandists and misinformation spreaders are not helping my attitude right now. So many lives being taken thanks to idiots out there pushing bad information. If we had reached 70% vaccinations last summer, we wouldn’t be going through this perpetual rise in unnecessary deaths. Almost all of the folks that are dying from the coronavirus today are either unvaccinated or under-vaccinated. Just makes me cringe when I go to a sports forum about my favorite pro team and I read idiots pushing fantasy and science fiction as truth. Maybe I ought to just stop going over there… it doesn’t seem to do anything positive for me. Only side effect is raising my blood pressure.

I’m going to take a few minutes and spend a little time with my planner. Try to get my head in a better place.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Eight thousand, seven hundred, and nine days left if my life is of average length.

I’m off to a decent start. Today is my oldest daughter’s 25th birthday, and we’re going to go out to lunch after bit, along with the youngest of my three kids, my son, Dane. I think sushi will be on the menu… my wife isn’t a big fan, and Dane and I can tear up some raw fish. Add in a couple of errands to run – prescriptions, topping off the tank, grabbing some premium cuts for dinner – and that’ll keep us tied up for a couple of hours.

I still need to get the Gator in the garage, though. We’re under a winter storm watch over the weekend. Highs today will reach the 50s, but we’re heading into cooler weather tonight.

Might be able to use the grill for dinner, though.

The emphasis is currently on and will continue to be about time management. I need to plot out my days in fifteen-minute increments, and really buckle down on achieving certain goals as they pertain to advancing some skill sets I’d like to stay focused on.

My guitar playing could always use work.

In the meantime, I should clear some stuff out of the Flex so Bon and Dane won’t have to fight my steady accumulation of receipts and other paperwork that somehow find their way into my my car and never find their way back out.

But to close today’s entry, a very happy birthday to my first child, the child that made me a dad. I’m very proud of you and proud of who you are and who you are becoming. You’ve got a great new career on the horizon, and I wish you a lifetime of happiness and fulfilling experiences.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

It is Thursday morning, December 30, 2021. The new year is right around the corner, and I’m keeping one eye on the weather, one eye on the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, and one eye on my wife sitting next to me… she can be kind of sneaky, so I need to be prepared for any inevitability.

Just kidding, honey… I don’t have three eyes.

I’m pondering my habits again. I think I really ought to try and do a more comprehensive job keeping my daily schedule up to date and scheduling my “me” time. I should start off the day with mindfulness, and end the day with it as well. I should schedule my time to practice my musical instrument, and identify my weaknesses as part of a cyclical process.

It all comes down to discipline, and January is as good a place to start exercising that discipline. I should take time to be introspective and make deliberate efforts to turn some weaknesses into strengths. There are some things I likely won’t tackle – learning how to sight-read sheet music is likely not in my future, but getting my head straight on chord forms and chord scales is.

Databases… I could use a little work there. Functions, Logic Apps, runbooks… there are so many things I ought to lock down and improve upon.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Yeah, it’s a Wednesday. This is the 21,289th day of my existence on this realm of existence. It has been a good day. Had a nice poke bowl for lunch, and some barbecue for dinner, with burnt ends and pulled pork. I prefer the hot barbecue sauce.

I’ve been thinking about the pandemic a little bit more these days. I find it interesting that there are people out there that believe that Biden and Fauci are responsible for the pandemic, that Biden and Fauci are behind the big push to get vaccinated, therefore Americans shouldn’t get vaccinated… also Biden and Fauci are pushing for masks.. keep in mind, there are no federal mask mandates, and the support for mandated federal vaccinations are waning… but these same folks that oppose mask and vaccine mandates are also the same bunch of yutzes that blame Biden and Fauci for not doing more to lower the infection rates of the general population.

These people are idiots.

Seriously. The same idiots that protest in the streets about vaccines and masks are blaming the guys telling people to wear masks and get vaccinated are responsible for the problems.

Serious bizarro world bullshit if you ask me.

Get vaccinated.

Wear a mask when it seems appropriate or mandated by law.

Don’t blame others for your own stupidity.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Working on creating a habit, once again. I’m resolving to do this regularly, and I must admit, tonight is not one of those nights that I really feel like writing. On occasion, I simply feel like closing the windows, drawing the drapes, and just letting the world go for the evening. Maybe I’ll play a game on my laptop, maybe I’ll read, or, like tonight, I’ll just kick back, fix myself a cocktail, and watch above-average college football teams pound the stuffing out of each other in bowl games named after sponsors or fruit.

But, I’m doing it. May not be the most entertaining literary work, but it’s something.

Tomorrow I’ll spend some more time with my 2022 planner, get to focus on goals for the year, and try and clarify my pursuits. I probably ought to do laundry, too.

I’ll also be contemplating tomorrow’s dinner. Kansas ruled out one opponent due to COVID protocols and rescheduled with another, so there was a game, then there wasn’t a game, then there was a game.

Pandemic eligibility rules can be complicated.

I probably ought to call it a night, though. Lisa went to bed a good hour ago, so I should navigate my way in that general direction.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.