101 More Random Things About Me

It’s becoming painfully more and more aware to me that I’m getting older.
I’m strongly considering shaving my head once my hairline recedes too far, though I’m not sure which would look worse.
I wake up most mornings with lower back pain, although admittedly I think that’s more from being overweight than simply getting older.
I’m finally starting to understand how each generation idolizes the music that they grew up on and thinks anything that came after it is complete garbage.
…though there are definitely a couple of bands that just make me scratch my head as to how in the world I ever liked them – Bush, Creed, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, to name a few…
And just like former generations, it drives me nuts to see just how much more expensive things have gotten since they were when I was growing up. Seriously, a 250% mark-up on gasoline – WTF?!
In other news, as you may have guessed from this blog, I still love writing very, very much.
Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m a writer who doesn’t read as much as he should.
And yet I’ll also feel guilty when I do other things instead of writing.
I’ve come to the conclusion that being filled with angst is intrinsically just part of being a writer, and I like to think that I’m doing better at learning how to live with that.
I find myself increasingly amazed by the variety of new Oreo flavors that grace the store shelves these days.
I’m both equally excited and terrified about the prospect of having children.
I sometimes wish that I didn’t get so charged up about politics because I think that it impedes me from doing other creative things like being funny … and yet I think I would also be somewhat disappointed in myself if some of the social issues of today didn’t bother me.
I’d really like to see Jerry Seinfeld perform stand-up.
I’d also like to go back and watch his show, from start to finish, just one season after another because although I remember Seinfeld growing up, I feel like it’s one of those classics that I should really take the time to better appreciate now that I’m an adult.
For the first 30 years of my life, I’ve never really cared much for hamburgers, and yet in the last couple of years I’ve actually been enjoying them.
Red Robin was probably the turning point in my hamburger appreciation revolution.
I actually turn my car radio down when I pull up to a stop light so that my music doesn’t disturb the other drivers.
It bothers me when I see somebody making use of the local grocery store’s offer to take people’s bags to their car unless they’re clearly not able to do so on their own.
There are so many places around the country that I’d like to visit, but I’m very, very happy living in Tampa, Florida.
If there were another way to travel quickly and affordably around the country (and ultimately the world) other than via air travel, that would be excellent.
Sometimes I go to Disney World just to walk around and take in the ambiance.
I would love to build something gigantic out of Legos, and if the bricks wouldn’t cost me tens of thousands of dollars, I really think my wife would be cool with me building a Lego Stegosaurus in our living room at this point.
Of all the toils involved with getting older, I think not having the time to do all of the things that you once loved earlier in life is probably the worst.
I don’t know when, but one of these days I am going to go SCUBA diving again.
Part of me really wants to switch to using a Mac, but I don’t have the $2,000 initiation fee and I’m a little nervous that I won’t end up loving the switch as much as I loved moving from another smart phone to an iPhone.
Sometimes I treat Twitter as merely a way for me to talk to myself in public over the Internet.
I always check the pool for alligators before stepping in. It’s really just common sense…
Out of all the household chores to choose from, I think my pick would have to be the laundry.
I’d love to be better at keeping plants, but I mostly blame a combination of laziness and the Florida heat for my consistently black thumb.
I’m often envious of the British because their accent makes them sound so much more bloody intellectual than us stoopid Americans.
My drink of choice is typically rum & cherry coke … though if the bartender is up for making something tropical, pretty much anything with assorted rums and fruit juices would be even better.
Anne Hathaway is probably one of my favorite actresses at this point, most notably for The Dark Knight Rises.
Chris Evans gets the nod for the gentlemen, because as much as I loved him as The Human Torch in Fantastic Four, I think he’s been even better as of late as Captain America.
Although admittedly it’ll probably never rank as high as the first Lord of the Rings trilogy in my book – mostly for nostalgic value – I’m still really enjoying The Hobbit trilogy as well and I’m probably going to be a little sad when the final movie runs because that’ll likely be the end of the road for seeing Tolkien’s world up on the silver screen.
I’m actually starting to come around on Nyan Cat.
I think that I would be too afraid of what could go wrong to actually go into space myself, but I’ll continue to be amazed by everyone who does go and what we can learn from their time away from home.
I think it would be kind of neat to just live on a cruise ship for a few months in a row. More if it was somehow on one of those ridiculously expensive luxury condo ships!
Under no circumstances should a third Ghostbusters movie ever be made.
I used to play the oboe in the school band. I picked it mostly because I had an ego and the band teacher had told us that oboes and french horns were harder to play than other instruments. Eventually getting kicked out of band my Freshman year of high school for being a smart ass was pretty much the best thing that ever happened to my oboeing career.
Also, remember Welcome Freshmen on Nickelodeon? That was a great show.
I don’t really like chicken on the bone. Give me breasts or nuggets or even tenders, but anything else just seems like way more work than it’s actually worth.
One of my more recent projects with my sister involved creating a children’s book for her daughter, and I was really happy with how it turned out. I don’t want to write kids books forever, but if we ended up with half a dozen in the series while our kids are growing up, I think that would be pretty cool.
I would love to own a boat, but I’m not sure if I have the discipline to keep it up like you’re supposed to.
In general I like the concept a homeowners association because I don’t want to live next door to the guy who decides to paint his house pink, but I’m starting to think that my HOA is a bit overzealous.
I used to play Magic: The Gathering in high school, but stopped because it brought out some really ugly stuff among my circle of friends and even now I’m a little embarrassed looking back at it, even though the game was a lot of fun before we started stealing from each other.
I’m a super nostalgic fan of Sierra Online. I used to order their games by the box load when they would have these awesome “Buy 1 Get 2 Free” sales in their magazines. I even still have all of the original boxes for my King’s Quest & Space Quest & Leisure Suit Larry games somewhere because if I ever have an office big enough, I want to put them up on the walls for display.
Reading Ken Williams’ yachting blog also kind of inspires me about the boat thing…
I would love to have a gigantic saltwater fish tank in the house … if I could also hire somebody else to maintain it for me. The wife and I tried doing a saltwater tank ourselves once, and it lasted about a week… 😛
I think I get more nostalgic for Northern Michigan every time I go back home, but I couldn’t live anywhere but Florida.
I don’t really like going to weddings, even though admittedly they’ve gotten a lot more tolerable now that I’m married and don’t have to participate in the garter toss.
Gingerbread is one of my favorite types of Christmas cookies, but those men are in good company because I tend to like a lot of others, too!
I prefer Target to Walmart, mostly because I hate waiting in line to checkout.
I’ve been to the circus twice in my adult life and I actually thought that it was pretty cool.
I could eat pizza pretty much every single day and be ok with that.
I hope that I’m a fun Dad.
I try not to focus on it too much because it’s such an arbitrary judge of success, but I really enjoy watching the word count of this blog rise because it’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve been writing this thing for over 10 years now.
Gay rights is probably the number one topic that riles me up right now.
I’m kind of a fan of sushi now, but pretty much every place that I try except for my go-to place ends up being disappointing.
The Simpsons is hands down my favorite TV show of all time.
Right now I have That’s All by Genesis stuck in my head while I’m working on this list.
I sometimes have problems listening to songs that I used to enjoy if I realize they’re talking about religion. I honestly didn’t realize that Creed with a Christian rock band when they were huge at the time.
My favorite attraction at Disney World right now is probably the lazy river at Typhoon Lagoon. I could just float circles around that park all day long…
One of these days I want to travel to Europe to see all of the castles.
I’ve never understood why the Kevin Smith movie Jersey Girl bombed because I think it’s one of the best movies he’s ever made.
I secretly enjoy seeing all of the new scents that Bath & Body Works comes up with.
I plan to use having a kid as an excuse to buy me an iPad so that we can play games on it together.
I absolutely hate lawn care. I really want to have a nice lawn that I can be proud of … I just have no desire to get out there and cut and prune and landscape it all myself!
Sometimes I feel a little spoiled with regards to fireworks because going to Disney World as often as I do, I’m usually disappointed by most local displays around the 4th of July.
For a good portion of my childhood, I was convinced that my liver was on the wrong side because a doctor said so while looking at my x-rays, but in hindsight I’m pretty sure that it’s fine and we were just the victim of a doctor’s prank about looking at all of his x-rays backwards… 😛
I used to go camping all of the time growing up in the Boy Scouts, but now I’m not sure that you could pay me to sleep on the ground in a tent where the bugs and bears roam free.
I don’t really drink beer anymore, but when I did, I always drank Corona because I thought it felt tropical.
It’s not uncommon for me to get weird looks in the grocery store during pumpkin season when 90% of the things in my cart feature pumpkin that I want to review for my pumpkin blog.
One of my fond memories from growing up was laying out on our deck one summer night when there was a meteor shower in effect and just spending hours watching them flash by in the night. A friend of my Dad’s had brought over his telescope and we all just had a blast checking out all of these celestial objects that were millions of miles away. I was probably 7 or 8 at the time.
For a period of about 6 weeks, I was kind of a hustler in the 4th grade. My Dad would bring me home these giant Jolly Ranchers and then I would sell them at school the next day, making deals for whatever change anybody had on them. Eventually the principal told me that I had to stop, but I earned enough money to buy Base Wars for the NES before I was forced into retirement!
Especially considering all of the diving that I did near the end of my teenage years, I’m still not sure how I grew up not learning how to swim. I even took lessons, but they never really stuck and water over my head still freaks me out. It’s something that my wife and I have vowed not to let happen to our kid, considering how much they’re going to grow up around the water.
I’m a huge fan of Pillsbury Toaster Scrambles … the ones that are basically Toaster Strudels, but with eggs and meat and cheese product inside of them instead. But only the sausage ones, not so much with the bacon…
Even though I barely play anything that’s not “retro” these days, I’ve been reading Penny Arcade for over 10 years now and I still find it hilarious every single week. I have a load of respect for how they’ve built their business in addition to the comic itself, and I try to crib ideas from them about how to drive my own creative efforts all the time.
The kind of dog that I had growing up was a water dog, also known as an Axolotl salamander. I had him for quite a while and he was almost the length of his tank before I decided to keep him outside in my makeshift pond in the sandbox for the summer and he ended up getting eaten by a neighborhood cat.
If/when I ever get time to pick up a guitar again, I’d like to get back into playing classical acoustic guitar because although my dreams of becoming a rock star have all but died, I still kind of romanticize the idea of sitting around finger picking acoustic songs by the proverbial campfire.
I’d love to spend a summer just bumming around the Florida Keys.
One of the things that I’m most looking forward to about fatherhood is watching Sesame Street with my kid.
I really, really want to read more. I’ve got a list of books in the waiting and everything. I just need the time to read them.
I first learned about investing when my Grandma & Grandpa gave me 5 shares of stock as a high school graduation present. I still have those 5 shares, along with 57 more of them.
I wish I lived in a neighborhood where everyone was as excited about decorating for the holidays as I am.
It’s probably no surprise that I absolutely hated gym class growing up, particularly in elementary school with that stupid net to climb, and the rope, and the pommel horse – all did a fantastic job of decimating the self-esteem of a 9 year-old who had absolutely no upper body strength whatsoever…
For a more positive childhood memory, I used to LOVE reading books about The Hardy Boys. And Tom Swift – I think I checked out every last book about his inventions from the county library at least twice!
I’ll tolerate going to see 3D movies because my wife really likes them, but overall I think 3D TVs in the home are kind of stupid because I don’t want to wear 3D glasses on my couch and it’s not nearly as amazing as it was when we went from SD to HD. Now 4k, on the other hand…
Some of my favorite modern games are the Grand Theft Auto series, although admittedly I’m currently several games behind.
Right now my favorite vacation is the kind where I can go somewhere and do as little as humanly possible. Last year we went on a cruise and only left the boat twice, and it was great!
I’ve never broken a bone in my body, and even though I certainly have no desire to do it now, I kinda feel a little gypped that I never got to experience walking around with a cast growing up.
Even though I’m kind of afraid of heights, getting to go up to the top of the Mackinac Bridge for an article I wrote for the Weekly Choice was one of my all-time favorite highlights of living in Northern Michigan.
I used to have great memories of going to the casinos in Michigan and playing slot machines for a few hours on the weekends, but I’ve only done it once since I moved to Florida and it was about the most unimpressive 15 minutes ever.
As much as I really enjoyed going to Legoland last year to check out all of the awesome models, I kind of wish that more had gone into the rest of the park like Disney does with its parks so that I could justify going back on a more regular basis, but right now it’s more of a once in a long while-type of thing for me.
I actually thought to stop and go back through this list to make sure that none of the things that I’ve listed in this or my last one are the types of stuff that I’ve used to answer security questions on websites before!
In roughly three hours, I get to find out whether my first child is going to be a boy or a girl. I’m kind of hoping for a girl.
I think recycling is very important, even though my local county’s recycling program is about a decade behind the rest of the world because there’s a bunch of stuff that they still won’t take.
I used to think that tea was pretty gross, but I kind of got turned on to it earlier this summer and now I usually drink at least a cup or two a day.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever washed my car since the day that I bought it. That was back in 2007.
When I first moved to Tampa, I got a job working in an office building downtown on the 31st floor and I just thought it was the coolest thing because it was so incredibly different than everything I had known from the small town where I had spent the previous 23 years of my life.
I surprisingly found this 101 easier to put together than the last 101.

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