John’s thoughts, rants, and crazy ideas
I’m always surprised when I hear Suzanne say “I’m on borrowed time”. We could be chatting in the car, watching the tube, or just out on the front porch swing when she makes that statement. Each time she says it, I hear a sense of mortality in her voice as well as gratitude about the fact that she is still here with me. So what does it mean when we say ‘Borrowed Time”? An online definition said it was to…
I don’t know about you, but there is something about doing puzzles that seem to give my mind a break from all the hustle & bustle around me. A cup of tea and a half-hour break from the action seems to do the soul some good. For me, a puzzle is a combination of Where’s Waldo, shape perception, and math. I like to pick up a piece and look at the picture to find the exact location of that piece….
By now, you all know that numbers are my thing. I love working with numbers, accounting, statistics, measurements, and more. In my former life in the Park and Recreation industry, putting together the budget for the department was just plain fun. So a new important number popped up today for me, thirty-four. In January of 1989, George Bush was sworn in as President, Phil Collins’s song “Another Day in Paradise” was popular, Tiramisu was a trendy food item, Mcdonald’s actually…
A couple of months ago, I dropped Suzanne off at a Hobby Lobby as I ran over to Menards in Champaign. Back to pick her up, she looked puzzled, so I asked the reason. She said, “I ask a clerk where I could find a sex book, but she didn’t seem to understand”. Looking at her with excitement in my eyes, I shared that I didn’t think Hobby Lobby was the right place to look for that item, then repeated…
Some Christmas card letters are epic novels, some Christmas cards are just signed, some with photos, a piece of candy, or just a brief note about the year a loved one had. I told myself that this year, I was going to start to send Christmas Cards out again. Obviously, I told myself that too late as my bout with influenza took over the past few weeks and it appears, this is going to be the best I can do….
The Christmas season brings out cherished memories with friends and family. One of the most cherished periods of my life was publishing my dad’s WWII diary back in 2012-15. As a tribute to him, I put together a video of how he spent Christmas each year he was overseas. Now, watching this video every year brings a smile to my face as I remember him and our journey together. So here is my annual posting of Christmas for a WWII…
Sometimes you get to the point where you hate to answer the phone. Someone raising money, and another to sell you something. But the call Suzanne is really tired of is from a friend or family member who says they have cancer. That call came in again this week from Suzanne’s oldest and dearest Cissna Park friend. This friend accepted her into her life when Suzanne was new to the community; shared her family with ours; traveled to quilting events…
To all our friends & family, Happy Thanksgiving. It’s hard to put into words how grateful we are to still be together for Thanksgiving this year. It seems so long ago that Suzanne was diagnosed, and now we think we have figured out how we will share this life from here on. Since we got married, Thanksgiving has usually been a day we celebrate with Suzanne’s side of the family. Big dinner at Suzanne’s dad’s; both of her brothers &…
Back when Suzanne changed her eating habits, I had no idea what bisque was. I thought maybe it was what you used when you played frisbee, or an abbreviated name for a breakfast bread item, maybe even what a farmer with a speech impediment calls one of his implements. Now I know and if you’re not sure, Bisque is a style of soup. From what I can read, it is of French origin although modern bisque is far different than…
The number 2000 is probably best know as a year. It’s hard to believe that it was twenty-two years ago when we moved into the year 2000. Getting there was a challenge as the whole world was in a computer tizzy. The fear that all the computers in the world would crash as we moved from 1999 to 2000 made everyone crazy. Banks wouldn’t be able to complete transactions, phone systems would be disabled, and electric grids would collapse. As…