I am a Heelist

There.  I said it.  I am a Heelist. This morning I went to the cabinet to get a slice of white bread for my breakfast.  It was a new loaf, and like all new loaves, it had a damned brown heel piece right there in my way.  I became irrationally angry at the sight of the heel. Never mind that I was going to toast my bread, and the taste would be the same.  Never mind that a heel is still part of the loaf - just looks a little different than the majority of the loaf.

Whitebread

Instead of eating the heel and getting on with my life, I huffed and pushed it aside so I could get to the more desirable next piece. I know that I will be irritated all the way through the loaf, every time I go to get more bread.  Just the sight of a heel irritates me.

Oh, and what happens at the end of the loaf?  That's right - there's another heel right there, just waiting.  And then what?  Two heels together.  Where does it end? An entire loaf of bread consisting of only heels????

The Devil is in the details

Admit it.  This morning you woke up and said to yourself "Gee, I wonder what Ian would put into a playlist if he were going to reference the Devil?"

Well, I heard you.  And this is it:

Me and the Devil - Gil Scott-Heron

Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones

Devil went down to Georgia - CDB (I don't really like this one, but it has to be included)

Christmas with the Devil - Spinal Tap

Friend of the Devil - Grateful Dead

Devil Song - Beth Orton

Run Devil Run - Jenny Lewis

Some Devil - Dave Matthews

Angels and Devils - Echo and the Bunnymen (that other Liverpool band)

Devils Food - Alice Cooper

I don't know why you were thinking about this.  Kind of weird, really.

A comedy of errors

INTRO:

On April 12, I was coming back from Chattanooga - I'd been at the IRS, after successfully getting a wage levy lifted from a client's account (I'm a CPA and it was three days before the end of tax season btw, so I was feeling pretty harried).  About halfway back to Cleveland, I was pulled over and given a speeding ticket.

FAST FORWARD TO YESTERDAY:

I realized yesterday, that I had missed my court date for the speeding ticket.  Ordinarily, I would have just paid the ticket, but this time I wanted to talk to the judge, and explain the circumstances, in the hope that he or she would give me a break and keep the ticket off my record (and therefore off of my insurance record).

"Why did you miss your court date?", you ask.  I'll tell you:  I have an employee, Terry, who was taken into hospital a week so so ago, leaving us both worried about him, and also short staffed.  He is going to be fine, but is leaving his appendix and part of his colon with the hospital. We are a small office, and it was pretty chaotic - to the point that I JUST PLAIN FORGOT. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l00GGEy_72c)

AND NOW THIS MORNING ROLLS AROUND:

Ok, so I made arrangements to go to court this morning, where I would presumably be able to charm the judge.  I was supposed to be there at 8:30 sharp. However, this morning a semi crashed on the interstate, closing I-75 south, and re-routing everyone.  I finally made it to court at 9 am, and was able to sit in the courtroom with thugs, scalawags, Mother rapers, Father stabbers, Father rapers! (homage to Arlo Guthrie right there).  The guy before me was wearing handcuffs, an orange jumpsuit and orange Crocs. He and the judge were arguing about his next court appearance, since the guy was due to go to prison in Georgia until 2015, and wouldn't be available in 60 days.

Thankfully, not my judge

Finally, it was my turn.  I went up to the bench with my coat, tie, and accountants face on.  The judge asked me why I missed the original court date, and had no sympathy when I told him about Terry. He chewed me out and rescheduled the court date for my heinous crime to August 26, with a stern warning that excuses would not work a second time.

This is in no way reminiscent of my morning in court:

I left court, chagrined, and went to get into my car.  Guess what was on my windshield?  Yep:

Happy birthday, Ian.

Eating and exercising

If you know me, you've watched me blossom from about 195 lbs at the beginning of 2012 to 217 (!!!) at the end of tax season this year. I went from bumbling through my 8th marathon, to not being capable of running a mile without stopping. I went from eating like I was going to run a marathon to, well, eating like I was going to run a marathon (minus the exercise).

Anyhow, nowadays I go to work in my only pair of sweatpants that still fit.

Me, the day after tax season ended:

OK, not really, but I have started looking at my eating and exercise routines. Each day, I do at least an hour of something and usually alternate running one day and biking the next. My goal is to run the 4 Bridges 1/2 marathon in the fall, followed by a credible Chickamauga 1/2 Marathon in November.

BUTIGOTTALOSEMESOMEWEIGHTFIRST

I've been using an app called "My Fitness Pal" (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/), which tracks calories taken in, records sodium, protein, cholesterol, sugar, various vitamins and other stuff.  It also takes away calories burned through exercise, based on the type of exercise, and my weight.  I can plug in my goal weight, and how quickly I want to reach it and the app (I mainly use it on my phone) will adjust the desired caloric intake to what it would take to get me there.  I've been using it for a little while now, and it is working. An interesting byproduct of using it is that I'm paying attention to what I eat now, and don't want to put entries in that go against my goal.

So, I'm down 8 lbs so far.  Looks like I'm dropping about 2 per week, AND I'm getting back into shape. AND I feel much better about myself.  Pretty soon, I'm going to have to buy some smaller sweatpants.

Self awareness, AKA The emperor has no clothes...

...AKA, it's good to have good people close to you.

Michael Jackson died of an overdose of propofol, because his doctor didn't have the stones to tell him no. At the time of his death, he had become a freak of nature, surrounded by sycophants who sucked the money and common sense right out of him.

Likewise, Elvis Presley. In my opinion, he was ruined because he was surrounded by people who had no motivation to tell him when he was being ridiculous. They were making too much money off of him to ever stop him short and tell him a few truths (I'd have told him not to put on that white jumpsuit, for one thing!)

Nooooooooo!!!!!

I was talking to a friend on Thursday about self awareness. My point being that all of us of believe that we are self aware, but are we really? If you don't have someone who cares about you enough to jerk a knot in your tail, you may start to believe your own press and forget that not all of your decisions are good ones, and that you may not actually appear to the world the same way you appear in your mind.

A sibling can really help to keep you grounded. A typical brother or sister isn't going to listen to self aggrandizement without snorting at your silliness and telling you to get over yourself. Also, I think that one of the hallmarks of a good marriage is when a spouse is not afraid to (nicely and lovingly) point out that the other is wrong, or on the wrong track - ultimately, the correction will make the person being corrected a better, more stable person.

Now in my opinion, and referring back up to the top to the Michael Jackson paragraph, Michael's family don't appear to have served him very well at all.  Somewhere down the line, people - his family included from what I've seen - stopped saying "You're an idiot".  Idunno, maybe because they were all making a ton of money off of his very large amount of talent?

This really could have been nipped in the bud, couldn't it?

I own a teeny-tiny accounting firm right here in beautiful downtown Cleveland, Tennessee.  I am the only CPA in the firm - Luckily, I have a good network of other CPAs of whom I can ask questions.  I also depend on, and ask the opinions of, my staff.  I may have more technical knowledge of accounting (doesn't that phrase just send a sexy shiver down your spine?  No?  Huh.), but I hope that I have enough of their respect to where they will give me their honest opinions about a business decision I might make.  I may not take their advice, but I do listen.

I believe that it is the process of listening to others advice and gentle (hopefully) corrections that they make, that enable a person to have a glimmer of self awareness. I have no illusions that I am self-aware, but I hope that the knowledge that I'm not, makes me be...just a little.  Know what I mean?

By the way, do these jeans make my butt look big?

In defense of the eradication of squirrels

Squirrels are nasty, disgusting, disease infested critters. They are rats with tails. They are the rodent version of a pigeon. They chew everything.  That being said, I could have ignored them. BUT THEY MESSED WITH THE PEAR TREE.

We have a pear tree that some friends gave us after Lisa's Mom died. We planted it in the back yard, and it grows delicious juicy pears. I would have let the squirrels eat a few. I mean, it produces hundreds every year. But, no! The damned squirrels eat the buds before the pears grow. Stupid rat things. Two years ago, we got exactly zero pears. That is when I declared war on them. Last year, we captured 17 of them, and released all of them into the woods, many miles away. This year, we've gotten 4, including our nemesis, "Red". We lured him into the trap with a partial ear of corn. The biggest coup though, was last year when two of them came into the trap at the same time, one right after the other. The lead squirrel tripped the latch before the second could turn around. I guess they are living together in the country now. Just stay out of my yard! (Picture an old man, shaking his cane at the neighborhood kids, and you've got me.)

Proof of The Coup (also, my Facebook cover photo):

It is getting harder and harder to entice the little devils into the Cages any more. They are canny creatures, I'll give them that much. I do have an old BB gun that belonged to my brother in law. It is probably 40 years old and has very little power. I take it into the back yard when the little bastards run along the fence and shoot at them. I nail them about every fifth shot. Problem is, when I nail them, they just look annoyed at me and jump into the nearest tree.

Artists rendition of me hunting squirrels:

We've got three or four that still have the mistaken impression that our yard is their yard. One in particular likes to run along the fence from the enormous hackberry tree in the back, all the way to the front of the house, and then onto the maple tree in the front. From there, it walks the power line like a furry Karl Wallenda, and then on to Starnuts Starbucks, I guess.


This is Karl Wallenda, btw:

Yesterday, I received distressing news from a friend who lives a mile or so away, that his bird feeder is under attack by - you guessed it - a squirrel.

THIS WILL NOT STAND, I TELL YOU!!!

So, pull together pear tree owners.  Bird feeder owners.  Attic owners. Break out the Daisy Air Rifles.  Arm your traps with ears of corn or tiny yet delicious peanut butter crackers (plain or crunchy, doesn't matter).

Let's get em.  And then ship them off somewhere else. I'm not mean enough to kill them. Yet.

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(Standard Disclaimers:  I often throw in commas where they are not needed, and leave them out when I should have put them in.  Also, sorry:  No refunds on time wasted reading this.)


In 1974 President Nixon resigned from office in disgrace. You know, Watergate.  At that time in my life, I parroted the family line "He didn't do anything that everyone else wasn't doing, he just got caught".

(Not Dan Aykroyd)

 I realize now, that that was not a proper response.  Nonetheless, I wasn't really old enough to have formed my own opinions.  I am now old enough, and not surprisingly, no longer share the exact opinions of my parents.

On the national level, I voted for the Republican presidential candidates through the first George W. Bush election, then voted for the Libertarian candidates in the next two elections, because I liked their ideas about personal freedom without a "Nanny State" watching over us all.  Since then, I've come to believe that the Libertarian ideal would not work in practice, mainly because we DO need government, some of us more than others, and that it seems mean to me that a country as great as ours would not help the less fortunate.

In the last election, I voted for Barack Obama, not because I think he is the greatest man out there, but because I found him to be better than his opponent. Frankly, I was also well sick and tired of the outright lies being spread against the man, instead of actual logical discourse about policy disagreements with him.

But that's not the point of this post.

A week or so ago, I self identified as a Liberal (ooh, the horrible "L" word.  Doesn't hearing it just send shivers down your spine?  No?  Me neither).  I started thinking about it though.  I'm really not liberal.  Probably slightly left of center, but certainly not liberal.  In my opinion, what has changed is the definition of Liberal, and the definition of Conservative - maybe not the definition, maybe more like the connotation.

It seems to me that the Republican Party, or at least many of those who speak for the Republican Party, have shifted and distorted its message so much as to make it unrecognizable.  I despise the meanness that comes out of the mouths of people like Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity,  Glen Beck, and (throwing up in my mouth a little) Rush Limbaugh.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't care at all for the smug, self satisfied, puffed up folks in the media who feel that everything the President does is wonderful, and that anyone who disagrees is an idiot. I will say that the level of outright meanness and bald faced lies that come out of the Fox Network eclipse that of its mirror image, MSNBC.

Anyhow - I take back my label of being a "Liberal", and replace it with my new label of "Old School Moderate."