hahaha....that is the best one yet!

Kelly has a leg fetish! Kelly has a leg fetish!

Overall, I live a (purposefully) rather quiet life.  With my medical condition, getting out and about is rough.  That and the older I get, I find my tolerance for stupidity steadily decreases.   It's safer staying home.  For me and the idiots around me. 

I'm going to have to write a series of articles (I think I've written a couple already) on the ways that he sees things differently.  Mostly, it's a case of a slightly 'off' perspective that opens our eyes to stuff that we see as background filler and brings it into a focus that's inspiring. 

Example - having a new baby in the house is always interesting.  Since M (I'll call him M for his privacy) is the second child, he got to experience both of the youngest two.  For the youngest son (#3 in order), his morning ritual was to climb out of his bed (and he got a big boy bed at 18 months 'cause of the new baby) and run into the room next door to look in the crib and say "Hi, baby!" Always excited about it, rather than upset that he wasn't the baby, anymore.  If he couldn't say good morning to his baby brother, his entire day was off.  And to this day, the two of them are as close as peas in a pod. 

Another example of M keeping our life interesting.  One morning, in the church nursery, our daughter was being held by one of the nursery workers.  She was 6 months old at the time, and M was (and still is, I feel sorry for her boyfriends later) very protective of her.  Almost hovering at times.  One of the teenagers, a good friend of the family, came over to her and started tickling her, like folks do to an infant to get 'em to giggle and smile.  Well, M comes over and kicks the girl in the back of the leg and hollers, "Leave my little sister alone!"  Now, what are you going to tell a 3 year old autistic child with that one?  We wanted to encourage him for the protectiveness of his sister, but we also wanted to discourage the kicking ... and only one of the ideas would be able to stick.  Talk about a dilemma.  If we tried both, it would only confuse the poor kid and neither idea would stick.  So, we decided to encourage the protectiveness and work on the "don't hit/kick people" idea later.   

So many stories ... so little time.    Definitely an idea for a series of articles.  Since, I won't have many (any) customers calling in to work over the next couple weeks, sounds like a convenient time to write them.

Oh my gosh..I do...

I have never blown up anything though. I think that's pretty up there.

This is a fun list. Everyone here has done some pretty cool stuff. It gives new ideas for a new list of things to do.

I want to respond to a lot of this, but I have to hit the sack.

But man oh man, have you folks had some interesting life experience so far!

1. Had 2 kids

2. Wrote a CRM program that I sell for car salespeople.

3. Got married

4. Took photos of Mars through my telescope and a webcam in 2003 when Mars was close.

5. Met a moonwalker (Gene Cernan)

6. I was on a commercial back in 1979--my dad invented a hand-held skateboard sail and we did a commercial.  The business burnt down, no insurance, no sales, etc.  Pre-internet marketing blues.

7. Wrote a screenplay and novel (both non-published)

8. Took D.B. Sweenie's acting career away from him.  I was at a Red Wings game with a few buddies and D.B. was there promoting "The Cutting Edge."  He was supposed to shoot a few pucks into a net and missed 3 times.  The place was silent.  I started booing him--everyone else followed-suit.  He looked like a kicked dog and shrugged his shoulders in sadness.  He never acted in a hit again.

9. Went to a strip club in Canada with a few friends.  The place was packed and we wanted to sit next to the stage.  One guy, a computer-nerdy-looking guy was talking operating systems to a stripper.  I asked him if we could have his seat since it was my friend's birthday (I was fibbing.) He agreed and said, "Call it a birthday present" as he pushed his glasses up the rim of his nose. I ran out of "ones" 15 minutes later.

10. Was salesperson of the year at the Chevrolet dealership where I sold cars.  I will be it again this year.

11. One more for the road.  I won a "walkaround contest" demonstrating the Tahoe to chevrolet execs.  I beat everyone in the state of Michigan.  I didn't know the product that well--I just used the first rule of sales--I told the execs what they wanted to hear.  How we were going to beat Toyota, how great OnStar is, "Total Value Promise" (the slogan from GM that particular year), etc. I had them eating out of my hands.

Oh yeah--when classmates came out, I wrote that I volunteered for the Gulf War, became an F-15 fighter pilot, got shot down, captured and tortured.  I then wrote that a movie was going to be made about my experiences and was going to star Ben Afflec as me.  I actually had a few people from highschool email me and say they never knew that about me!    

Classmates.com that is...

Nowadays, I wouldn't pick Ben Afflec for obvious reasons.

Marv

Didn't lie--geared my presentation towards my audience as any good salesperson does.  I do firmly believe that we have better products than Toyota (google their truck recall or the engine oil sludge if you don't believe me.)  Onstar is great--I had a customer get car-jacked and onstar tracked down the car, slowed it down and caught the criminal. Remember the family that got stuck int he snow a couple of winters ago?  The dad went out to get help and they found him frozen to death?  If they would have had a GM car with onstar, the would most-likely had been rescued.

So Little-Whip--I'm assuming you are anti-bailout.  Let me share a little with you.

If there was no big-three, you would be goose-stepping right now and bowing to the people who prepare your sushi, not vice-versa.  The big-3 saved this country 60 years ago by re-tooling to product the vehicles of war and I promise you this--they didn't ask the US Government what kind of plane they flew to "beg" for help nor did they say any vile garbage like, "You're bad decisions got us there and in a free market--you should be left to be destroyed by the Axis powers."

The Big-3 also sent vehicles and much needed cash to help the same southern states that were against the bailout during Hurricane Katrina.

The Big-3 also saved this economy after 9/11 when they came out with 0% and actually kept this country rolling when shit looked pretty bleak.

Since then, oil went up as well as gas prices and that is what killed this economy--not "credit crunches" or people with shitty credit not paying their bills.  We had a lame-duck president who would beg the Saudis to raise production (the same Saudis who blasted the world trade center and who'se asses we saved in World War 2 from facist Germany and Japan using vehicles built by the Big-3.)

So, the gist of my response is, I just don't appreciate a stripper, who lies to men leading them on during a lap dance and acts interested so a dollar can be stuffed down her crotch, calling me a liar.

I meant Germany and Italy--type faster than I think sometimes.

And by the way--$17 Billion is a lot less than what 3,000,000 people on the bread line would cost this country.

How on Earth is that a cool thing?  By your own admission here, you lied.  And why?  To be funny?  I really don't see the humor in that.  I suppose you could try to explain the humor of it.  I still wouldn't get it.  I've met people who do that and I've always thought that their lies tarnished anything real that they actually did.

I also have some issues with other stuff you posted here.  In order to keep things on the positive note that I was hoping for, I'm not going to go into them.  But I will say this (and it applies to the whole thread):

Just to be clear-- my point of this thread is really to celebrate the things that people have accomplished.  They don't have to be equivalent of Olympics or winning a Nobel prize, but things that are important to them.  However, I would hope that people don't make deceiving others into some equivalent of cool or worthy.  If you don't have anything positive, you are better off starting another thread.

I can't believe I actually had to post this.

I think he sees it as cool because he managed to fool people.

But he misunderstood your point. You were looking for positive things, things that one will mention proudly as defining characteristics.

Obviously, I'm on the wrong board--I actually thought people had a sense of humor here--guess I was wrong.  I guess I have to explain things because you do not understand sarcasm.  You know how when you go to a class reunion?  People always feel that they have to embelish what they have done since graduating?  I did it as a little  bit of sarcash--I picked the most otrageous thing I could think of (being a fighter pilot, being shot down and having a movie made about it starring Ben Afflec as me--and if you saw me, you would understand the sarcasm!) and cracking up when people actually believed it.

Tell you guys what--hide your heads in the sand, don't laugh, don't understand sarcasm, be good Republicans and have a nice life.

p.s. I am not SeanC by the way.