Oh no! I used the dreaded ‘N’ word…. well before you go flying off in a rage because I used the word nigger, lets look at the definition as shows on dictionary.com

–noun
1. 	Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive.
a. 	a black person.
b. 	a member of any dark-skinned people.
2. 	Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a person of any race or
        origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc.
3. 	a victim of prejudice similar to that suffered by blacks; a person who
        is economically, politically, or socially disenfranchised.

a person of any race or origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc. Sounds about right to me…

I have had this feeling for awhile now. Fat people have become the new niggers of the world. Don’t believe me? Try and get on a plane if you are obese. Just ask movie directory and actor Kevin Smith. He was recently kicked off of a plane because the pilot determined he was a “safety risk”. He was too big to fly. I have seen plenty of remarks about fat people in the news and on news talk shows in the past several months. Fat people don’t deserve health insurance because they cost more (what about people who eat too much candy, smoke, use aspartame, have unprotected sex or drink too much soda?). Fat people shouldn’t be able to fly because they are so huge. Fat people this, fat people that… what’s next? Are we going to have our own water fountains? Our own bathrooms? Are we going to have to sit in the back of the bus too?

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It seems as though life has been handing me bucketful after bucketful of fail recently. Lots of things have been seemingly going wrong and even those situations that seem to be taking a turn for the better have things that just make me scratch my head and say wtf. I must have pissed on somebody’s grave one night when i was younger or something to get this kind of karma going on. While I won’t get into the full details of what has been going on. I will say that the physical therapy I was getting ended in August. I got burned as a result of the Estim treatment they were giving me. It was a second degree burn on my back that I still have a scar from. It undid most all of the work I put in going there. The tension and stress that was created from the situation brought back most of the issues I was having with my back in the first place, with the exception of the extreme pain. That situation gave me a serious hit to my self confidence and affected my work output. In any case, fast forward a few months… Add in some of the stresses of a weak economy and less work and the financial outlook in my household is pretty bleak. I come across what seems to be a pretty good opportunity to pick up more work that will allow me to continue working for myself, yet have someone else send work to me for extra money. The person I have been talking to who is putting their name on this company is well connected and respected. They will most certainly be able to corner a substantial part of the market and get a large number of jobs to keep the work flowing. Good deal, or so I think. After some back and forth with the person I believe is running this new company, I get an email from the person whom I suspect will be my superior. My issue? This person is someone who I have known for sometime. This person is someone who I have a complete lack of respect for. This person is someone who I believe will be a hindrance rather than a catalyst. A person who I have absolutely no desire to do work for or with. Since receiving that email early yesterday. I have been contemplating all of those things. I have been looking for the positives in the situation aside from the extra money (which is sorely needed right now). I see none. As I was discussing the issues with my wife earlier. I was trying to come up with reasons why I should push ahead and not just retreat from it, waiting for the next opportunity which I seem to do more often than not. I came up with the title of my post and what I am going to try to implement as my new philosophy on moving forward. Consider every hurdle as an opportunity to jump higher.

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My father was a marine. My favorite picture of my dad is one of him in his Dress Blues. He looks so proud in that picture and like someone you can be proud of. He was stationed out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Though I don’t know many of the details, I do know that he was in Guantanamo, Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I heard many stories about his days as a Marine. See my dad loved to tell stories. As a kid, and as an adult, I heard them many, many, many times. More of his stories dealt with his downtime rather than any active duty or actual service. So, I don’t have much to go by other than the fact that he enjoyed spending time with his fellow Marines and they gave him a nickname of suicide… not because he was nuts or did insane stuff in the field. But because he would take a shot of everything on the bar at one time. I think I heard that story the most. Growing up, I enjoyed the stories my dad would tell to a point. Into my teenage years, they got a little stale and I tended to stop listening. I still heard him tell the stories to anyone who would listen, and they never changed.

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A big congrats goes out to the New York Giants fans that might have read my post a few weeks ago after they beat the Cowboys. While I might still feel the Cowboys were the better team in that game. The Giants surely just proved themselves to be the Championship team with the Super Bowl win. I am dumbfounded at the fact that they were able to win the Super Bowl. But, they did. So, congrats. I will enjoy watching the Cowboys beat your asses next year….

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Well, I finally got around to making up a MySpace profile. I’m not sure what it is about MySpace. But, it has always left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it is just my anti-social nature that makes me feel that way about a social networking site.. Who knows… In any case, I jumped in head first and got things set up. I will work on a little bit and make it look better in a few days. I have been busy with a few other projects the past week which has kept me from doing much of anything for this site as well. Here is the link: Built Big XL.

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Four emotions I am feeling right now. I haven’t made it any secret that football season has been one of my week points this past year. Every time a Cowboys game was set to come on I was planning bigger and better spreads. More beer, more food, more everything. I was living it up watching my favorite team, America’s Team, kick some ass this year. The way the Cowboys played through the first half of this football season made me remember the days of 10+ years ago when Troy, Emmitt and Michael ran the offense and the team was next to unstoppable. But then as the season wore on, they started to show some weaknesses and things started to get shaken up a bit. I figured, ahh.. no big deal , they will get their stuff together and get back in the groove.

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Well, I have been looking for ways to expand my horizons and reach out to the rest of the world. My first step in that process was to set up a profile at Technorati. For a person who works with the web to make a living, I am a slow adapter when it comes to using technology like this for myself. The family dog has a MySpace account, but not me. It was only recently that I set up an account at YouTube. I dunno what to say. I’m just slow about that sort of thing. I think it is mostly a time factor. But, I figured maybe it was time to break out of that habit and start exploring all the networking sites that exist. Here is my Technorati Profile.

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As I was poking around here in my word press admin panel, I noticed an old post I had started that was about a Hike I took with my son at Ricketts Glen State Park. When I initially started writing the post, I had been editing it and deleted about 3/4 of the post and saved before I realized what happened. I had just left the post figuring I would rewrite it at a later time. I never did get around to rewriting it and figured I would just post it now so I could share the pictures. We went camping at Ricketts Glen State Park back in August and we were both just blown away by the waterfalls. So when he had a day off of school in October. We went back. Here is the post, with some of the picture we took along the hike. The pictures we take next time should be even better since I bought my wife a much better camera (Canon Digital Rebel XTi) for Christmas and plan on slipping it into my bags when we take our camping trip this year

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I have been working on my homemade bread stuffing recipe for well over 10 years. Way back then in a previous life I was a cook at a local family restaurant for several years. During that time I learned a lot of good recipes. Some of them I have held on to and made better over the years. Others have kind of faded into oblivion. One of the recipes I have held onto is homemade bread stuffing. I make this once, maybe twice a year which is probably good considering the high number of calories it contains. I figured I would share the recipe. If you are looking for a low calorie, low fat Thanksgiving. I would not suggest trying this recipe.

This recipe makes a very large batch of stuffing. You might want to alter it to fit your needs. This will give you enough to stuff a 20 pound turkey to the point where it is spilling out (the only way to stuff a turkey) and then have some leftover to bake separately.

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Well Thanksgiving has come and gone. We tried to keep things on the smaller side this year. My Wife’s daughter was with her dad for the week so it was just the three of us and we invited my mom for dinner. We had a traditional turkey packed full of homemade stuffing (A recipe I have been perfecting for well over 10 years. Each year it seems to get even better.) and all the good stuff you would expect for a tasty thanksgiving dinner. Things like mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, kielbasa and a few other things. I won’t say that I didn’t eat a lot, because I pigged out. But, I did eat less than in previous years which was good.
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