In the original topic I think I confused people and didn't make my point clear. Here I will clear up everything by just asking a simple question.
Last Haircut: 5 weeks ago
Day of Week: Tuesday
Time of Day: Dinner
Salon Bustle: Moderate
Stylist Demeanor: Cordial, playful
Physical Contact: Moderate (vigorous head rubbing while styling hair)
Quotes from Stylist: "He knows I'm working; why's he calling?" "You are getting shorter each time, no?" "I wish all my clients were as easy as you." "You are easy."
Tip: $5.00
Last night we were watching some late-night TV when we heard a woman scream in the distance.
A wine tasting took place at my home in Queens yesterday. Eight tasters unscientifically sampled and rated five bottles of rosé over brunch. Made from a red grape that has its skin removed before pressing, rosés are neither cloyingly sweet or rock-gut cheap like their visual cousins the blush or the white zinfandel. Dry and bright, this variety is best served slightly chilled and pairs very well with summer fare. Following are the results listed from most preferred (top of list) to least (bottom of list).
We saw a lot of good discussion take place this week on GUTSY in response to our latest articles. David Steadman introduced us to Doris Hair and her pals while Mark Sanders made dinner. Sandie Maxa showed us what bad-asses are wearing and Guido Alvarez exposed the revolution as well as had fun with corporate America. Evan Mann found an amendment to a statue of a senator. And finally, Paul Pereira wasn't sure about having kids.
Have a great weekend and tell a friend about GUTSY.
I did a double take last night. While enjoying the sounds of Sugar Hill Gang at an outdoor concert in Manhattan, I saw someone wearing a bullet-proof vest over a t-shirt. It was navy blue with a white star on the back. Is it real, I wondered. Is this guy so bad-ass that he's bold enough to make a public appearance, yet smart enough to protect himself from the dangerous people he associates with?
Or it it FASHION?
Recently I have been discussing this, is having kids a selfish act?
The heat has broken at GUTSY HQ but we continue to observe Summer hours, thus this two week edition of our digest. We covered a lot of ground and if you haven't noticed we welcomed Rusty Mitchell as a new contributor.
The first week started with Ann Whitehurst protesting via mail. Mark Sanders visited a new "beach" and Guido Alvarez showed us parts of a clown. Rusty Mitchell did his part to protect us from diaper bombs while Heather Manske sang along with a cabbie.
This past week Paul Pereira found discrepancies between what is said and what is done at church. Rusty Mitchell wasn't satisfied with his new drivers license and Ann Whitehurst has learned the benefits of spandex. Sandie Maxa remembered a trip to Peru and Guido Alvarez showed his clown again. Finally, Mark Sanders moved closer to death and ate Chinese food with friends.
Have a great weekend and tell a friend about GUTSY.
I'll admit it, I recommended the restaurant. But in fairness I did describe it as a basement that used garbage bags instead of table cloths. My memory, however, of the quality and taste of food had been obviously clouded by too many Tsingtaos.
Driver license photos are not meant to be flattering. However, the "redesigned" Tennessee license I received today gives me a new reason to be ashamed to reveal my proof to legally cruise the highways.
Ever since I had my son a year and a half ago, I have not been able to shed those last few (well, more than just a few) pounds. Not that I care what the numbers are, I would just like to be able to wear some of my pre-pregnancy pants. Maybe one day I will.
Like most people, an awful lot of junk mail finds its way into my mailbox. Each day I shred the credit card offers, recycle the catalogs, toss the internet access disks and tear up the magazine subscription offers that I have come so accustomed to receiving. But last week a new offer arrived in the familiar pre-sorted package that made me wonder if I had crossed another threshold in life.
Every now and then I face the unwelcome task of retrieving an item from the back of the closet. The good news is that I often find something that I wasn't looking for, but am glad that I saved -- like a stack of my travel journals. I thought I'd share a few entries on GUTSY as part of a series.
While my photos tend to remind me of a beautiful, optimistic trip, the journals remind me of the hard details, costs, and discomforts encountered. I'm glad I have both.
We would like to extend a welcome to our newest contributor, Rusty Mitchell. To learn more about Rusty or any of our other contributors please visit our authors page.
In recent years religion has lost all its meaning for me. Through high-school I created my own type of religion. I believe in a being and not necessarily God, but a mix of a supreme being and science (I am NOT a scientologist). I practice it my own way that is not dictated by the Bible and in fact I do not believe in Old Testament or New Testament. Basically I don't believe in the Bible. Rather I think the Old and New Testaments are incredible stories that are fiction. They never happened and it is just used as a device to bring fear and conformity. I think of it as a story with a moral you would tell a child so he would do something nice instead of something bad.
I'm not very well traveled. As a matter of fact, I rarely go further than 75 miles from the small town where I grew up. Last week I boarded an airplane for only the seventh time in my life. My 21 month old daughter Brook and I were headed to Orlando to meet up with my wife and visit family. It was the first time I had flown since September 11, and I was not fully prepared for the experience.
A few weeks ago, I was riding back from the airport with a smiley happy cab driver who had a Phil Collins CD on repeat throughout the drive. He was singing along the entire time and seemed pretty blissful about it. I, on the other hand, was experiencing an extreme case of self-dislike as I sung along in my head to every single line of “Groovy Kind of Love.” I couldn’t help it, the words popped into my head as Phil (and my driver) crooned them from the front seat. Why, why, WHY must I know every word to this song, even though I haven’t heard it in years?
I just returned from the post office to purchase some stamps for paying bills, even though we already have a couple sheets of the really cool Modern Architecture ones.
Does anyone else feel a sense of waste when using a "pretty" stamp to send off a bill? I feel much better about using the small stamps with boring designs for bill-paying as opposed to the really cool ones with big graphics depicting architecture or cartoon characters.
The utility companies, credit card companies, etc. just aren't worthy of the good stamps, even though they cost the same and are usually just as plentiful as the others.
Even though the heat slows us down, it did not prevent us from covering a wide range of topics on GUTSY this week. Paul Pereira was creeped out by a female android while Mark Sanders found one more possible creator. Pete Hofmann experimented with science using a turtle and Sandie Maxa pined for the wooden signs of old. Ann Whitehurst enjoyed her risky childhood and also questioned office food etiquette. And finally Alice Marie told a story of dogs and betrayal.
Have a great weekend and tell a friend about GUTSY.
After a stressful week in NYC, I was happy to hop a plane to my home state of Minnesota for a weekend camping trip. After a two-hour drive from Minneapolis, I was transported to a land of tall pines, rushing rivers and a star-filled night sky. While these natural phenomena put me at ease, nothing says "vacation" like seeing the brown wooden signs in the Minnesota State Park system.
A recent communication with a friend that still works at my previous place of employment got me reminiscing about the good ole days of working in an office...such as the following:
It seems while we have all been living our lives someone has come up with a new way of explaining how everything came into being. It is all the rage in certain groups and even the President wants all of America's children to know about it. How and when did this happen?
I don't know if this will spook anyone else out as it did me - but sometime last week as I was searching through news websites - I stumbled upon a strange article on the internet. At first I thought this was a joke but as I continued to read I realized this was real!
We went walking; there were three or four of us and a dog. It was common to take that dog out for a run in the summer. He would run out ahead and we would maintain a steady pace. We lived in a suburb that abutted farm land and acres of undeveloped land between the farms. We took advantage of all the space. No one was around to report our gunfire. No one screamed at you to get off their property. It was a very good place to be 13.
My father once said to me, “If everyone liked you, something would be wrong with you.” Very few people liked my father, and I often wondered if he'd embraced this otherwise random bit of wisdom to justify his own miserable social position in the neighbourhood and at his place of work.