Patrick Says » Randomness

You Always Think You Have More Time…

Patrick D. — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:45:34 +0000

That musical post the other day sparked some retrospection on music for me. It was interesting to see how many people take on the idea of an instrument and quit. I wasn’t alone. I suppose that reflects well on those who continue to and eventually master their instrument.

I am not one of those people.

A couple years back, I suddenly had this interest, maybe even a need, to learn to play the guitar. Some family members even got me an acoustic guitar for Christmas. I had a couple CD-ROMs that were supposed to help you learn.

I never found the time.

I suppose what I was really craving was an outlet for my creativity. But I just don’t think I have the skill for learning the guitar. Some things even a guitar tuner is not capable of fixing.

I suppose the other reason I wanted to learn to play guitar was that I wanted to bring music back into my life in a more meaningful way. In my 20s and even my 30s, music helped me define who I was and where I was going. But as I got older and life got busier, things got dropped and music was one of those things. Sitting down with an album used to be something I treasured. Now I can barely find the time to listen to the Top 40 on the radio.

I miss music.

Somehow, I need to get the music back. New stuff too. Not just the old stuff. I like to make fun of people who are stuck musically where they grew up. I’m not about to fall into that trap.

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Thank You, Discover Card!

Patrick D. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:07:00 +0000

I got this brochure in the mail today at work. It made me smile. I wonder why. Let’s make a game out of it, shall we? In the comments, answer these two questions:

What is the first thing that caught your eye?
What made Patrick smile?

I’ll update this post with the answer after I get a couple responses.

UPDATE: Yep. My friends know me. It’s the boobs.

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Beating The Skins…

Patrick D. — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:26:30 +0000

I don’t normally blog about music stuff like drum heads or guitars, but I’m light on content these days, so why not, you know?

Did I ever tell you all about when I wanted to be a drummer? It was fifth grade. They offered a couple students the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and I jumped at the chance. I’m not sure what made me pick the drums. I have no rhythm. None. At all.

I signed up anyway. It was me and two other students and they had both picked the clarinet. For the first month or more, I literally was banging the big drum just to keep time for the clarinet players. I was not happy. I’m sure that there was some lesson in all of it, like Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san karate by washing the house, but I didn’t have the patience.

I quit the class.

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Light It Up!

Patrick D. — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:58:35 +0000

So, I wanted to take a moment here to shill for my friends at The Wife’s church, Valley View Baptist Church. I’m know I’m not much for religion, but these are good folks. When our family was going through all the crap that we’ve been through the last couple years, Valley View was there helping in ways I can’t begin to go into.

The last six months have been rough for them. Again, not my place to go into great depth, but they are currently in a rebuilding phase. They have a sign out by the road that has not been lit up for awhile due to finances. So, they are looking for donations to help turn it back on.

I’m pretty broke, but I thought maybe I would put this out there to my awesome readers (all three of you). You can sponsor in $5 increments. I’ve added a link below to contribute to me. I will take the total collected (if any) and turn it directly over to them. They even have little paper light bulbs you can have your name on if you sponsor.

Take that money you were just going to blow on metal step stools or whatever and help out a good cause.

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Pinewood Derby Time…

Patrick D. — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:48:31 +0000

Well, it’s that time of year again for The Oldest’s Cub Scout pack. It’s time for the Pinewood Derby. Last year was my (and his) first year and it was…an experience. I know more about food allergy testing Austin than I know about the Pinewood Derby. I had no idea what I was doing and didn’t figure out until a couple nights before that I was severely underweight. For those of you not in the know, a Pinewood Derby car can be up to, but not over five ounces. So, I had to drill about ten screws into the car to get it up to weight. And wow-zer, did it make the car ugly.

This year was going to be different.

We got a body picked out and our neighbor/den leader cut it out. The Oldest sanded it and put the weights on. I’m currently still painting, but I expect we’ll be ready to go by this Saturday. If you follow me on Facebook, you can see a bunch of pictures of the car as we complete it. The idea this year was to model it after the R-9 refueler trucks I drove in the Air Force (see picture).

Obviously, I can’t make it as detailed as the actual vehicle. It’s more of an inspiration, but I think it will be cool. Hopefully, we’ll do okay.

Last year was rough for The Oldest. He doesn’t take losing well. It’s something he hasn’t learned well and it’s hard to teach. He got pretty teared up last year. I’ve tried to prep him more this year as last year caught me off guard.

We’ll see how it goes this Saturday.

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That’s How I Roll…

Patrick D. — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:19:20 +0000

I very nearly gave this up. Blogging, that is.

I’d had a particularly bad night the other night and I was in the mood to destroy something. It’s what I do. I destroy my own things. Why would I do this? I suppose it’s a lot of things. Part of it is that I’m tired of pretending that everything is hunky dory all the time. That I’m dealing well with this life I lead. I didn’t want to have to put a fake-ass happy face on and write posts about Katy Perry or dick jokes.

Since that time, I’ve reconsidered. Posts may be infrequent here for a bit. Or they just may be dark.

I’m not sure how it’s going to go. Just between you and me, I considered taking on a pseudonym and creating a blog out there somewhere to just tell it like I feel it, but with my luck, someone would stumble onto it and figure out it’s me. Maybe I still will…

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I’m Not Gonna Give Smokers Too Much Grief…

And We’re Back…

Patrick D. — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:20:23 +0000

We’re up again after the strike. Looks like we beat SOPA and PIPA back. For now. They will be back. You can bank on that. This post, from Patrick Says, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Possibly related posts: Down With SOPA… A Real Conversation With The Wife… Guess Who’s Back? [...]

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Down With SOPA…

Patrick D. — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:47:34 +0000

Just an FYI that this site will be particiapting in the SOPA Strike tomorrow (if I installed the plugin correctly). This site will be down to protest SOPA and PIPA, the government’s over-reaching and censoring of the Internet. Call your Congress peeps and urge them to oppose these pieces of garbage legislation.

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Yep, I’m Done With This…

Patrick D. — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:45:08 +0000

Look, I’m not saying my kids aren’t great. But these three-day weekends sometimes blur the line between work and time off. Sure, there was some fun with the building of the Lego and the swinging of the Wii remote controller, but sometimes you just need to go to work and get some quality time with the stapler. Just saying.

In other news, the city of Arnold sent The Wife a late notice on a red light camera ticket that was dismissed back in 2006. A Facebook friend of ours also got a notice on a dismissed ticket. I’m hypothesizing one of two scenarios occurred:

The city of Arnold is so desperate for revenue that they are sending out letters to anyone and everyone in the hopes that the person will pay the ticket. Too bad for them I have a family-friend attorney who got the initial ticket dismissed in the first place.
Someone screwed up and ran the wrong query in the database resulting in an avalanche of notices that should never have went out. This person will probably be assigned phone duty on Tuesday to answer what will certainly be a boatload of irate callers.

I’m leaning toward #2. Seems more plausible.

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NPR And The Chicken…

Patrick D. — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:02:24 +0000

I was listening to NPR the other day and they were talking with this woman. I tuned in late, so I didn’t really have the full story. But she was talking about this pet chicken she had and how she had to take it to the vet because it was sick. Ultimately, they were not able to save it and she had it cremated.

And I’m thinking, ‘wow, I’ll bet the smell of that chicken being cremated was delightful.’ I’m getting hungry just typing about it. Mmmmm…I do loved blackened chicken.

Sorry about your pet.

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