Some folks base their identities off of what they hate. For instance, I see a lot of people on social media base their identity off of hating a certain politician or a sports team.
I genuinely feel sorry for people like that. Their lives are so meaningless that instead of accomplishing anything useful, they base their identities off of hating someone or something. That’s just sad.
We do hear the word love a lot. Unfortunately, it’s often said in a sarcastic tone. Or even worse – without anything behind it.
If I ever told you I love you, I mean it. Love is a powerful word and I truly believe that love can fix just about anything.
There’s a reason why Oceania in 1984 took so much effort to destroy the love between Winston and Julia. If you can destroy love, you can destroy anything. And that, my friends, is a true dystopia.
Travel
If you’ve been following this blog, I talk about travel all the time. One of my favorite things in the world to do.
Giving credit to where it’s due, I credit my Grandmother who got me into traveling.
Sadly, I never traveled with her out of the country. I’ve literally driven thousands of miles with her. But we never left the country together.
She lived to be almost 102 and broke all the rules. You know all that wacky advice people give you about health? Yeah, throw it all out the window.
People on social media love to have these weird ass lists. I’ve heard everything from cold showers to cutting out coffee. That’s just retarded.
People who want to live will live. Grandma was that person. She enjoyed life. And boy did she live! (She also drank 9-12 cups of coffee a day so anyone suggesting to cut out coffee needs Holy Water thrown at them to see if they start burning).
So I’m merely copying her. I take the Mrs on trips every chance we get. We’ve been to Vegas a bunch of times, most recently to see Billy Idol last year. We’ve been to Europe three times so far and four times to the Caribbean.
Not at all bragging. We live in a tiny ass apartment that’s so small I literally paint on the floor. There’s no space. At all.
I also drive a piece of shit car.
Travel is just where we’ve decided to spend our money.
That’s the thing about travel. If you really want to travel, you’ll find a way to make it happen. You don’t have to be rich to travel. You can get super deals too if you know where to look.
We now have a hard rule that every year, we have to leave the country and we have to go to a country we’ve never been to yet. We have a list of countries and we somewhat follow them in order.
Also before we die, we definitely want to step in all 50 states.
European Board Games
I’ve recently written about designing my own board game.
Yes, I’ve played a lot of European board games in the past. My favorites of all-time are probably Agricola, Age of Industry, Railways of the World, and Automobile. I also like Power Grid and Puerto Rico a lot. Recently, I’ve been playing a little La Granja and I’m right now in the middle of a game.
We’re on turn 4 and I got a slight lead between four players. I’m hoping to hold this lead. We’ll see.
We’re playing online and I’m waiting for one of the people to move so while waiting, I’m writing a blog post. Why not?
A funny thing happened today. I was walking outside and I just thought of a concept of a second game. Yes, already.
It has a mechanic that is somewhat original. I’ll be stealing some ideas from both Agricola and Seven Wonders. But I also have a mechanic that’s going to be somewhat new.
I’ve played so many games that I can steal a little here and there to form something completely original. Plus, it’s an excuse for me to do more art. I’ll do all the art design.
The funny thing – the game I’m working on now currently has directions in both English and Romanian.
American Football
A long time ago, I wanted to be a quarterback. Well, it never happened.
In my mid-20s, I gave football one last shot. I tried to make a semi-pro team as a defensive back and kick returner, and tore my knee in a warmup. That ended that pretty fast.
It was for the best though. I was fearless (reckless). I’d probably have brain damage today if I played semi-pro.
I’ll always love American football however. I got too much into it awhile ago. I’ve won fantasy football twice and I’m almost always right when gambling. In fact, I predicted the outcome of every playoff game last year and only got one wrong. I not only said who would win; I explained how they would win and was pretty much right.
So yeah, successful at gambling. But today, it’s a receding passion. I no longer play fantasy football because I simply don’t have the time to put into it. We had a few ringers I competed with and it almost always came down to two of us. I swear, I’d put an hour of research a night when I played fantasy football.
No more. Had to dropkick that habit because it would get in the way of my art and music.
I still enjoy watching games though. We got NFL Network, which is great. You have to tell all your friends not to text you and turn off the radio/stay off a computer until the game ends. Then you can watch the games without commercials.
My wife and I have different favorite teams so we watch two games a week. Unless of course we’re playing each other.
I’ve been to a few football games live. I got several friends with season tickets. Good times.
I’ve also watched a lot of games at bars. And speaking of which, I got a funny bar story.
Good looking women are more pleasant than ugly ones. By far
So contrary to popular opinion, good looking women aren’t stuck up. They’re actually considerably more pleasant than unattractive women.
If your opinion differs on this, you’re probably just really bad with women.
If you’re a straight guy, I’ll give you a tip. Good looking women hear they’re good looking all the time. Open up with something else, something interesting.
Allie and Roxy are two of my besties in real life. My wife is also good looking. I get along great with good looking women. Always have and always will.
Anyways, I’m at an airport bar and the Patriots are playing somebody. Forgot who, but it’s a Playoff game.
I had some guy sitting to my left and a beautiful woman to my right. Well, being a guy, I tried talking to the guy. He hated the Patriots and was butt hurt about something, so I ended that convo pretty fast.
Maybe Tom Brady kicked over his sandcastle when he was a child. Whatever the case, I have no desire to talk to bitter people.
So I turned to my right and asked the beautiful girl who she was rooting for in the game. She asked me “is X playing?” I said no. So she said, “oh, neither then.”
She was personal friends with X as he used to date her best friend and they obviously ended on pretty good terms as all of them are still friends to this day.
We started talking about life, business, ballet, and all kinds of cool stuff, before I had to run and catch my flight. Fascinating conversation though. One of the best airport conversations I’ve ever had.
She travels a lot for her business. She used to be a ballet dancer and now makes a pretty good living selling dance clothing.
I’m convinced beautiful women are also smarter than average. But that’s another story for another day.
And if you’re wondering about Allie and Roxy? Yes. Both smarter than average. Allie actually has one of the best memories I’ve ever seen and is also trilingual. She’s one of the reasons I want to be trilingual as well.
