Better By a Mile

For most of the 11 years my wife has known me, I've been a student.  We met when I had just started working on a business degree part-time in 2006.  It took 5 years of hard work and sacrifice to earn that degree, but the result was worth it.  My wife took on more than her share of housework and parenting while I studied.  She never complained and was a constant source of encouragement for me.  After graduation, I was blessed with a series of promotions that allowed us to buy our first home and pay for the birth of our first child.  We were amazed by what God had helped us to accomplish as the sun set on our twenties.  In 2013, we decided that our long-term goals would be easier to achieve if I went on to earn my MBA.  My best friend, Scott, had the same idea, so we decided to apply to graduate school together.  It was amazing to have him as my classmate, and surreal when we attended graduation together just 2 short years later. A year befo...

Special thanks to my pal and gifted artist, Anwar Hanano for recreating this epic moment for me. I've said before that my dad was a really smart dude.  Genius at times.  But his plans didn't always work out as planned.  This is one of my all-time favorites, so I hope you enjoy it too. When we moved up to PA in 1994, we had arranged to rent a trailer in Sunbury under the premise that the landlord would build a ramp or provide a lift to help my father get in and out of the trailer safely.  For as long as I can remember, my dad's primary means of getting in and out of elevated spaces (especially our van) was a pair of 6' long aluminum ramps.  Prior to moving to Pennsylvania, we had gotten used to the fact that they would become a bit slippery in the rain.  What we hadn't experienced yet was how impossibly slick they got when exposed to snow. The process of unloading my dad from the van usually went something like this: Set the ramps up with one end on ...

If you need to catch up, you can read up on the resurrection of my dad's van  here .  That old van carried us around for several years.  She was a workhorse.  She was also a jerk sometimes.  In the Fall of 1994, my dad decided it was time for us to make the move from Mississippi to Pennsylvania.  We had a lot of relatives in PA that we hadn't seen in a very long time, so my Dad thought it would be good for us to get to know them.  We packed as much of our stuff as we could fit into our van and hit the road. Somewhere in Virginia, our headlights started to go dim and the van started to die.  We were able to take a quick exit before she decided to shut off completely.  We tried to start it up again, but there was no response.  My dad quickly concluded that the battery was dead, but he didn't know why.  We popped the hood and noticed that the alternator belt was really loose.  Ah-ha!  Without the alternator working, it wa...

I recently read a story about a woman who got caught selling her food stamps online.  While I don't endorse or approve of her actions, I was saddened by the number of people who had plenty of unkind things to say about her.  I thought about that old Everlast song, "What it's like", and that most of these people (myself included) probably have no idea what was going on in her life to make her do that, or what it was like to walk in her shoes.  The unfortunate truth is that many people find themselves in desperate situations where they feel they must resort resort to actions that other people might consider extreme and unacceptable. People have different limits, just like many of us have different definitions of  needs  and  wants.   A philosophy professor once challenged my class with a dilemma: A man's wife is dying and he cannot afford the medicine that will save her life.  Is it ok for him to steal from the drug store to save her life?  O...

My daughter was recently throwing one of her spunk fits, so I told her to go to her room until she was ready to listen and be kind.  Normally, she'd stop mid-fit to plead with me, I'd insist that she go to her room, and she'd sob her way up the steps.  This time was different. After telling her to go to her room, she took a deep breath and shot me a terrible glare.  Her face began to glow deeper shades of red, and I could see the veins popping out on her neck.  It was as if she was screaming at me while holding her breath.  Then, her eyebrows went into an angry "V" formation and she started to tremble.  Woah!  What is that look?  What is happening?  My body was frozen still (thank God), but something inside me tried to leap out and tackle her to the ground.  I say that in a bit of jest, but I seriously got a wave of anger so intense that it gave me chills.  I hadn't experienced this with her before, but something about it seemed st...

This morning, I was driving my daughter to school and I noticed that my clock wasn't working in the car.  Oh well, probably popped a fuse.  I decided to turn the radio on to check the time.  No radio.  Hmm, things are getting interesting.  TWO blown fuses?  What are the chances?  Weird.  Seconds later, it starts to drizzle.  I hit the wipers.  Nothing.  I started to panic.  We're running a bit late for school, and now I know I'm going to be late for work...especially if I can't get these stinking wipers to work.  I dropped Charlie off at school and circled back home instead of heading to the office.   Perhaps it was a simple fix.  I pulled into the garage and left it running while I did a quick Google search.  It turns out that I'm not the first victim of this odd happening.  Fortunately, there's almost always some other people who are kind enough to share their similar experiences and solutions.  ...

I had always planned to share my faith here, but a couple of excuses had been holding me back. First, I was afraid that I might share something that turned someone away.  I have a lot of friends who aren't Christians or just don't like church.  I assumed that some of my friends and visitors wouldn't want to read about God. Second, my past is what makes my salvation story so astonishing to me.  I thought that I needed to share more about where I've been and what life is like now, before I explained that it is  God  who turned my life around. I was moved by an awesome message at church today, and I decided that there was no possible way I could continue on with this blog if I didn't at least write the  really short version now.  I'll fill in the details later: Life was tough.  I did a lot of stuff that I shouldn't have done.  I refused to take responsibility for myself, and life continued in a destructive downward spiral.  God b...

I was recently exchanging messages with a friend of mine and learned that we have more childhood experiences in common than we knew.  I chuckled when I learned that she had weekly run-ins with her pipes as a kid too! I sleep hard Until my late 20's, I was hell to wake up in the mornings.  My wife might argue that I still am from time to time.  When we were kids, my sister would literally throw water on me to get me out of bed.  I'd wake up in such a violent fit that she'd throw the water while standing in my doorway and shut the door before the water hit me.  This was a daily routine.  I'd wake up, realize that I wasn't being attacked, and lay my blankets out on the floor to dry.  In the wintertime, if I woke up to my sister yelling and poking me with a broom handle instead of throwing water, it usually meant only one thing: frozen pipes. From 1995-1997, we lived in a pretty decent trailer just a few miles outside the city of Sunbury, PA...

[Last Updated Jan. 7, 2017] According to Webster, a Rambler is "one who moves aimlessly from place to place".  We were definitely ramblers.  I made you all a map to prove it! My sister and I attended 11 schools in 5 different states and many more towns.  We got used to it, probably like anyone else who moved a lot as a kid.  Two things really sucked about moving: Trying to make friends (duh!) and losing stuff during the moves.  We once lost all of our youth sports trophies in our move from MS to PA because one of us had the brilliant idea to pack them in a trash bag that was left behind.  The same thing happened with most of our toys in another move.  Most of our photo albums and other sentimental stuff were lost in a storage unit that was auctioned off to pay overdue rental fees.  I want to scream at the television every time I see an episode of   Storage Wars . One of the cool things about moving a lot is that you get to  see ...

Damage from a corn stripper - Ouch! Tonight, I was the unlucky recipient of a papercut.  From a cereal box!  How does that even happen?  Putting the groceries away is a pretty simple job.  I was reaching into the bag and I felt that unmistakable slice.  You know the feeling.  It sucks, especially with heavy paper or cardboard.  They don't always bleed, but they seem to always occur in some knuckle or crease in your hand, so you're reminded of it every time you move.  Any cut (big or small), takes me back to one day at the car wash... My dad, sister, and I were strolling through Sunbury, PA one day in the mid-1990's.  My sister and I were on our bikes, pedaling along with Dad in his wheelchair.  As we were passing a car wash, my dad thought it would be a good idea for us to wash our bikes.  He figured that if we were quick enough, we could wash both bikes before our initial 3 minutes ($1.75) ran out.  He said that the tric...

I have my lovely wife, Dara, to thank for tonight's inspiration.  She recently joked about one of the most important nights of my life.  It's probably more amusing from her perspective, but I've got the keyboard for now! I have a reputation for being frugal.  I'm also a sucker for (almost) anything free.  [Case in point: I just spent every "free" hour of the day today trying to find the best streaming TV provider based on price, quality, channel lineup, promotions, and yes - free swag!  In case you're wondering, we settled on DirecTV Now because they're giving away an Apple TV (Gen 4) if you prepay 3 months...and they offered everything we wanted.]  Back to frugality... We weren't dating long before my soon-to-be-wife had a full understanding of my knack for seeking deals.  We went to New York City a lot when we were dating.  She had always dreamt of making a life there, and I loved the food.  Oh, the FOOD!  I ate.  She shopped....

One day, my lovely wife asked me why I keep a framed copy of this photograph around the house.  I told her that it is an important reminder to me that no matter how bad I think things get, they could always get, and have been, worse. At some point in my childhood (one of my goals will be to piece some dates together, but this was probably around 1990), my father, sister, and I lived in this house.  Aside from the overgrown landscape, it looks in this photograph very much the same as it did then.  It was probably the worst house we lived in during my childhood.  I know my dad wasn't very proud of it, but it was all we could find at the time.  We had just moved from Leesville, LA to be closer to our mother and some of my dad's old biker buddies from our time in California (another chapter). Interestingly, what got me thinking about this old house on Shallowford Road in Moss Point, MS, was the Nintendo Classic craze that we just experienced this past Christmas...

I've been spending a lot of time trying to answer a simple question: What is the purpose of this blog?   Am I trying to make money?  Build my network?  Enrich lives?  Leave my mark?  Share my story?  At some point, all of these possibilities crossed my mind.  Conventional wisdom, at least according to some cursory Google searching, says that it's much easier to gain popularity and monetize a blog that shares something valuable with its audience.  That sounds great, but it's not what sparked my interest.  Ultimately, I've decided that my purpose here will be to share my story with a few hopes: That my children can someday learn from my own journey and experiences.  Sure, I could just tell  them, but most of these tales don't make for good bedtime stories or casual conversations. That someone might stumble upon my humble little blog and find something useful for their own lives, be it some encouragement or experience.  After ...