A little walk down memory lane with Mom…
6 minute read
December 31, 2013, 4:07 PM
I certainly had a fun time this past weekend. Mom came up to visit for a few days, and on Saturday the 28th, we went up to New Jersey for the day, where we wandered around an old stomping ground: Glassboro. This is where my parents met while in college, and this is also the first place where I lived, from birth to age three.
The first stop was Rowan University, which was Glassboro State College back in Mom and Dad’s day. First stop was at the Barnes and Noble, which is now the university bookstore. I had never been in a Barnes and Noble on a college campus before. It’s something of a cross between a college bookstore and a normal Barnes and Noble, in that it’s styled like a regular store, it has the cafe, it has a section for books and other stuff that they normally sell, but then it also has a section for school-specific merchandise, a school supply section (smaller than I expected), and a textbook section. Mom got this:
Continue reading…If you think that you take your Christmas light displays seriously…
2 minute read
December 27, 2013, 11:12 PM
You may think that you take your own Christmas light display seriously, but I’ll bet that you’ve been outdone by this house located on Red Hill Way in Ellicott City, which my mother and I took a side trip to visit after going to Arundel Mills today. First, just take a look at the lighting, which by itself is pretty extensive:
Categories: Christmas
Holidays are not about a calendar date, but are about what you make of them…
4 minute read
December 25, 2013, 10:03 PM
Happy Festivus, everyone. It’s time to air some grievances. It’s time to discuss this neurotic fascination of some people in trying to force their beliefs on everyone else about how one should spend a holiday. This year, I have just about had my fill of hearing people insist that all of the stores should be closed on [insert holiday here] so that people can spend time with their families. It starts around Thanksgiving when the stores announce the hours for their sales. This is when you hear people say, “What? They’re open on Thanksgiving? Why aren’t these people spending time with their families?” or, “You’re taking these people away from their families!” Recall that there was a story this year about a Pizza Hut manager who lost his job because he refused to open the restaurant that he managed on Thanksgiving. Then the whole discussion comes around again near Christmas when places make the announcement as to whether or not they’re going to be open on that day.
The thing that these people who raise such a fuss on television, radio, and the Internet tend to forget is that holidays are personal affairs. Everyone celebrates holidays a little bit differently than the next person. And not everyone celebrates the same holidays. For some people, December 25 is “Christmas”. For other people, December 25 is “Wednesday”. And the specific dates of many holidays actually have no significance. The celebration may have significance, but the date itself is usually not directly tied to that celebration. Thanksgiving is on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States. It’s that day because Congress set the formal observance on that day, i.e. that day on which the federal government is closed in observance. Christmas is normally observed on December 25, near the date of the winter solstice. Why? Because Christians hijacked some pagan celebrations and made them into their own holiday. In fact, we don’t know when “Jesus” was born, or if “Jesus” even existed at all. The dates of some holidays have significance, like Martin Luther King Day (observance of King’s birthday), Washington’s Birthday (I don’t really have to explain this, do I?), Independence Day (marking the date of the Declaration of Independence), and Veterans’ Day (honoring our veterans, on the date that the armistice with Germany took effect, ending World War I), but most of the other holidays’ dates are not significant in and of themselves. For instance, Labor Day could be the last Monday in August instead of the first Monday in September, and the observance would be unchanged.
Look at what I unearthed…
4 minute read
December 24, 2013, 11:22 PM
So I was digging around in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine tracking down some missing text for Project TXL (the Today’s Special site revamp), and I ended up finding this gem from approximately December 1, 1999:
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Ten years after I graduated college, I’m going back to school…
3 minute read
December 23, 2013, 4:08 PM
First of all, yes, it really has been ten years since I finished college. I finished up at JMU a little more than ten years ago, and then they mailed me the diploma not long after that. I can’t believe that it’s been that long. Doesn’t feel like ten years have gone by, that’s for sure.
That said, a lot has happened lately. I am now the proud holder of a commercial learner’s permit, which I got on Monday at the MVA in Gaithersburg. That was a stressful time, but probably not in the way you might think. I got in there, got my number, and then sat down, figuring that I might as well get comfortable. I took this picture, and then posted it to Instagram:
Lights on the Bay!
6 minute read
December 20, 2013, 3:35 PM
So on Wednesday evening, I got together with my friend Melissa, and we spent much of the afternoon and evening in Annapolis. We visited the downtown area and Annapolis Mall, we had dinner, and then headed down to Sandy Point State Park, where we saw the “Lights on the Bay” Christmas light display.
In downtown Annapolis, we visited approximately the same area that I explored back in April. We parked on Main Street, and went down to the harbor, explored around a bit, went up to the traffic circle near the Maryland State House, and then returned to the car. We were both kind of amused with getting photos of each other, more than anything else.
Case in point:
Selfie.
A little polish and elbow grease is a great way to move on…
5 minute read
December 2, 2013, 10:36 PM
Sometimes you never know what is going to provide a sense of closure to a chapter in one’s life. In this case, shining up my water bottles provided a sense of closure to a chapter in my life that I have been trying to move on from. Recall that I left Food & Water Watch in July as I looked to determine what the next chapter in my career would be. However, it’s hard to move on when I was staring at the branding of my former employer every time that I would take a drink of water. To put it another way, I love my stainless steel water bottles from Klean Kanteen, but what was screenprinted on the bottles reminded me of something that I would prefer to put behind me.
In other words, this:
Categories: Food and drink, Myself, Stuarts Draft