Farewell and adieu…..

Been a while since I’ve paid a visit to the old blog site, I have to say that I’ve missed it.  I miss writing and know I need to do it more but it seems like every time I plan on dusting off my keyboard something comes up and that plan goes out the window. But this post isn’t about me, (well not directly anyway). No, this post is about the loss of a man who I admired and respected. Robin Williams passed away today via an apparent suicide. I know a lot of people are posting memories and stories about him so this isn’t anything new but stick with me if you will.

 

Robin Williams was a big part of my childhood. I’m an old fart so I grew up with him watching Mork and Mindy, I watched him bring one of my (at the time anyway) favorite cartoon characters to life in Popeye. I heard years later he hated this movie, and watching it years later it’s understandable, it’s not a very good movie. It didn’t matter though, I watched it and loved it as a kid. Robin had so many great roles during his life. From Good Morning Vietnam to Dead Poet’s Society to What Dream’s May Come. Hell he even had his own Saturday morning cartoon!

 

So what would make a guy who had seemingly everything, money, fame, adoring fans and a family that loved him, take his own life? Depression. Supposedly Robin was severly depressed and was going into rehab for a drug relapse. I don’t know much about drugs aside from the occasional marijuana usage (What? I live in CO! It’s legal!) but I do know about depression.  I’ve battled it for as long as I can remember and I’d be lying if I said I’d never thought about suicide. I’ve spent many a sleepless night laying in bed thinking about how to do it.  The worst bout was after I lost my parents and wife, I figured no one would miss me, I wouldn’t be hurting anymore, why not? Who was gonna miss me? I thought of so many ways and came close so many times but never did it. Why? I don’t know. I remember someone, I can’t remember who, telling me that suicide was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Makes sense if you think about it. Was I hurting? Immensely. Did I want to love in a world without my parents? Without my wife? No! So why didn’t I do it? As corny as it sounds I didn’t because of my dog.

 

Those of you who know me in real life know I have a pug named Bo. I got Bo for my wife Michelle. She was raised around pugs and loved them. Me? The only pug I’d ever really seen was Frank from Men in Black. They were cute little dogs sure but did I really want one? Not really but I knew she did so we got him. I’m so glad we did because that dog saved my life. After everything that happened to me Bo was my one constant companion. He was there by my through thick and thin and is laying here beside me as I type this. Bo was what kept me going. He was the one “person” I knew I could talk to, the one shoulder I knew I could cry on and the one who was there for me no matter what.

I know its silly to say that a dog save my life but it’s true. When I was so far down I would think “what’s gonna happen to Bo?” What happens if no one finds me for a day or a week or however long it takes for someone to notice I’m missing? I couldn’t stand to think of something happening to him. When I’d be driving down the road and thinking of crashing my car, I wouldn’t because I’d have him with me and couldn’t bear to think of him howling  in pain if the crash didn’t kill us both.

I don’t mean to say that my family wasn’t a factor too because they were. To have to deal with the loss of me on top of the loss of our mom and dad and their sister-in-law in so short a time? How could I do that?  The short answer is, I couldn’t. I’m glad now I didn’t. I’m not gonna lie and say things are perfect now because they aren’t, not by a long shot. But they are better now than they were four years ago. I’ve met an amazing woman who pulled me out of my hole and turned my life around. I’ve gotten re-married, something I never thought I’d do and I’ve made some amazing friends.

I know this post has gotten awfully dark, awfully fast so I’m gonna wrap it up. The point I’m trying to get across is this. Yes life can get you down. Yes things can get hard. But you know what? Suicide isn’t an answer. If you feel like no one cares for you, your wrong. Even if you don’t hear from your family, friends or whoever as often as you think you should doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you. Imagine what they would be feeling if they lost you, wondering why you didn’t reach out to them for help? I know how devastating suicide can be. Shortly after I started my current job a friend of mine from training killed himself. We were devastated that such a happy, carefree guy would do such a drastic thing!

 

So I guess what I’m saying is even when you’re at your lowest, and believe me I’ve been pretty damn low, things will get better. Don’t give up. Don’t EVER give up. Things will get better. I don’t know how or when but they will. Trust me on this. I’ve been about as low as a man can go and I’m still here.  Don’t think you’re weak for seeking help. It takes more strength to admit that you need it than to suffer needlessly. Don’t be ashamed to talk, there are people out there willing to listen. A friend, a family member, your dog or cat, someone! You’d be surprised how much talking helps. So stay strong, keep your chin up and carry on. If I can do it, so can you.

Please, take care of yourself and each other.

 

Till next time kids,

Daniel

I’m too old for this @#$!

So as I write this it’s 10:46 p.m. on Friday January 6th. In about an hour and fourteen minutes I’ll officially be 39 years old. I don’t usually get reflective on my birthdays but I’m feeling that way this year. Last year I pretty much ignored my birthday because I was busy getting my sister-in-law from the airport and planning for my wife’s memorial service on the 8th. This year, I honestly don’t have any plans for my birthday and don’t really care to make any, it pretty much just feels like another day.

It’s funny, when I was younger birthday’s were a big deal, I used to look forward and dread them both. That’s one of the things about being a January birthday, especially when it’s early in the year. Another reason an early birthday sucks is you don’t really have anything to look forward to till later in the year. I mean yeah there’s Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day but when your young you don’t really care about those.  The big holidays weren’t until the summer time, months away!

Of course if the me know could talk to the me then..well there would be much to discuss. If someone had told me when I was 16 or even 18 what my life would be like at 39 I’d probably have laughed at them. When I was that age, I knew it all. I had my life planned out, I was gonna go to college, be married and have my own house and kids by the time I was this age. Funny how life has a way of throwing curve balls at you.

If I had known then that I’d be a widower at 37, I’d have laughed at whoever told me that. If I had known would I have done things different? Would I have still made that first phone call to talk to Michelle? I think I would have. I cherish the memories and times we had together and I miss her every day.  Would I have made different choices at other points in my life? Honestly I don’t know. They say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, a cliche I know but I do think the things we go through in our lives make us who we are.  Would I have told my parents to take better care of themselves and have taken better care of myself as well? I hope so. So much happened in my life that could have been prevented. If only my Dad had gone to the doctors sooner, if only that guy hadn’t broken into my parent’s house and attacked my Mom or the door had been locked, if only Michelle…so many if onlys.

Didn’t mean for this to turn into a pity blog but I guess it kinda turned out that way, sorry about that.  One of my resolutions was to blog more, maybe I’ll finally get around to doing part to of my beer review. I still have the beer, just haven’t cracked it open yet. I’ll try to make my next post more upbeat, I promise I’ve just been feeling reflecting about getting older. And for those of you who are gonna say “39 isn’t that old” or “age is just a number” etc, etc I know that, and appreciate the sentiment but if it’s not how old you are, it’s how old you feel then I feel ancient.

Beer me! (Aka I like Beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow!) Part 1

So as a blatant ripoff err I mean tribute to the Fall beer review that Bill/Will does so well over at Veggie Macabre I decided that I would do my own beer review this year. I had a grand plan to review all the beer that I bought (or at least a good portion of it in) one fell swoop. I learned something important about myself though, three beers is pretty much my limit (at least on an empty stomach it is). I do plan on reviewing the rest of them, just not right now. Also if there are any spelling errors in this post, I blame the alcohol.

Yes it’s Glee, it’s the only version of the song I’ve heard. (and probably the shortest on the net)

So I started my day with Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat. I do have to admit I like the wheat beer over the regular beer. I love a good Blue Moon (with the orange) and even though Bill has already reviewed the Blue Moon pumpkin offering for this year I’m gonna do it too.

Anyway, here’s what the Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat looks like.

With special guest group AC/DC!

I know that’s not a very good picture so let me try this one.

Another shot of the bottle

And here’s an actual shot of the beer itself

I do like this beer but it’s honestly nothing special. I love the color and not just because it goes so well with the coloring of the letters on the back. If your looking for a pumpkin flavor with your beer however don’t bother with this one. If they hadn’t said that it was a pumpkin wheat I wouldn’t have known. It’s honestly kind of a middle of the road beer for me. I’d order it in a bar if there was nothing else available that sounded good. I do have to say though it is a very smooth beer. There’s no bitter beer face involved with this one.

The next beer isn’t technically a Fall beer but I’m including it because as I write this post it’s cold, raining and/or snowing. It’s Isolation Ale from the Odell Brewing company here in Colorado.

After tasting this beer I can understand why it’s a Winter ale. It made me want to curl up under a blanket with a bowl of chili and this beer. It’s a very hoppy beer but I didn’t mind that. It fight with the atmosphere (minus the bowl of chili) and made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside. It’s a good beer but not a great beer, a little too hoppy for me but I prefer lighter, sweeter beers. Yes I know, I’m a beer heathen.

The last beer I had before I wussed out is another local brew. It’s Breckenridge Brewery’s After Rakin’ Autumn Ale.

I just realized I didn’t get a picture of just the beer itself. In my defense I was feeling pretty tipsy at this time. And in case your wondering, no that’s not a butterfly knife, that’s my bottle opener.

Since I didn’t get a proper picture for you let me just say this is a very, very dark beer. Not quite a stout but close. It looked almost like a glass of cola instead of beer while I was drinking it. It does have a nice hint of caramel to it and for being such a dark beer it’s not very bitter. It does get more bitter as you go along though. It could have been less bitter to me in the beginning because I had just finished the Isolation ale but I couldn’t swear to it.

I will say that drinking these beers while watching a Gamera marathon of Mystery Science Theater 3000 made the beer that much tastier. Bad movies with good beer is a combination you just can’t beat.  And because I’m in an MST3K mood I leave you with this.

Part two coming soon!

Road Trip!!

Wow, it’s been way too long since I’ve updated my poor neglected blog. I wish I had an excuse as to why it’s been so long but I kind of lost my desire to write for a while but I’m back and ready to give it another try! Hopefully there are still a few people out there willing to spend a few minutes reading the nonsense that I write.

I was originally going to make this post about autumn in Colorado but when I started taking the pictures (and yes there are a LOT of pictures) I decided to just make it about my road trip in general. My sister Robin and I decided to spend the day in Estes Park taking a lot of pictures, looking at the fall colors and hopefully spotting some of the wildlife in Rocky Mountain National Park. If Estes Park sounds familiar to you then it’s probably because that it’s the location of the Stanley Hotel (more on that later) which was the basis for Stephen King’s novel The Shining. You may have also seen it on Ghost Hunters on Syfy. If you haven’t seen it let me give you just a taste.

While I didn’t get the chance to actually go into the hotel I did get some pictures, but your gonna have to wait. Patience Grasshopper!

So to get to Estes Park from where I live you have to go through the town of Loveland. Okay, technically you don’t have to go through there but if you don’t where else are you gonna see the Statue of Liberty? Aside from New York and Las Vegas that is.

She got tired of New York and relocated to Colorado

Loveland’s actually a cool little town. Their biggest claim to fame is that around Valentine’s Day you can actually mail your sweetheart’s card there and have it re-sent to them with a Loveland postmark. I’ve never actually done it but I’ve heard about it on the news. And as Facebook has taught us, if it’s on the news it must be true! Speaking of, if you don’t read this blog and pass it on to 25 of your friends someone , somewhere will do something bad and probably charge your credit card for midget porn or something.  It was on the news! I swear!

Other than the Statue of Liberty there’s sadly not much to see in Loveland. It’s a nice little town and all but it’s not an entertainment hotspot or anything. Once you get past Loveland thoughyou can stop at the Dam Store. No seriously, that’s it’s name! The Dam Store! I have proof!

Why is it called the Dam Store? Well that’s easy! It’s next to a dam! And it has a tower that you can climb to take pictures of said dam!

Not really much to look at I know but it does have a nifty sign! Oh and these last two pictures were taken from the tower. And now the sign!

Yeah not really a whole lot to it to be honest. It is dam related and has the Dam Store name on it though! Your right enough about that. And honestly who want’s to see a Dam map when you can see things like this?

                   

Granted they’re both shots of the same spot but I liked it so much I had to shoot it twice! And think of it this way, your left eye can look at one and your right eye can look at the other!

So we left the Dam store and were heading up to Estes Park when I saw a sign that caught my attention.

But what really caught my eye was their choice in advertising. No, not the sign, these.

   You can’t see it from this picture but the “girl” on the left is wearing sheer panties. I wish I was kidding.  My sister and I thought they were real people when we first drove by but instead they were what we called the “Hoochie mannequins”.

We eventually got into Estes Park proper and I knew I had to get at least a few pictures of the Stanley Hotel.

I think there was some kind of event going on at the Stanley the day we were there because it was packed! There were cars parked everywhere and still more looking for places to park. One of these days I’m planning on staying a night at the Stanley just to say that I have. On the Stanley hotel’s website they actually offer a Ghost stay package. You can spend the night and even get your own EMF detector to keep afterwards. They also do ghost hunting tours as well if your feeling brave enough.

In case you thought I was exaggerating about how crowded it was, let me show you something.

Okay so it doesn’t really give that great of an idea of how crowded it was but trust me, it was.

We decided to try to avoid traffic and take the side streets to get to Estes Park and that’s when we came across this.

Little did we know that this would be about the only real wildlife we would see all day and they were camped out in someone’s front yard!

We finally made it into Rocky Mountain National park and from here on out I’m gonna keep my commentary to a minimum and let the pictures speak for themselves. Click any picture to embiggen it.

  

The pictures below were taken at two miles above sea level. We were pretty high up but were gonna go higher.

With these next pictures we were officially above the tree line. There was a sign that said we were entering an Arctic Tundra climate. Sadly I didn’t get a picture of the sign but it wasn’t that exciting anyway.

The picture above is probably my favorite one of the bunch. I have to give a big thank you to my sister Robin for taking it for me.

The one above and the ones that follow were taken on the way back down the mountain. I thought they came out really well and had to include them in the post as well.

Well that wraps up my most recent road trip. I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them. I hope you at least made it this far into the post too! I know it was very photo heavy but I had to share. Also fair warning, I have one(or possibly two) more travel blog coming. Of course you don’t have to read it but I do plan on being better about updating my poor neglected site. I’m also planning a review of the Star Wars blurays. Not that anyone really probably cares but I’m gonna do it anyway. Because I can.

Thank you all (six of you) for reading and I should have another post soon!

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For Michelle

How do you describe someone who was your whole world? How do you put into words how much you love someone who’s no longer there? How do you stop your heart from hurting because there’s a hole there that can’t be filled? You left me too soon. We had so many plans that will go unfulfilled. So many places we wanted to see that won’t be as spectacular without you. You told me you wouldn’t go anywhere without me but you did. You made me promise to take care of myself but how can I when I can barely make it through a day without crying over you?

I know I should celebrate your life and the time we had together but right now I can’t it hurts too much. I can’t sleep at night because there’s no one next to me to keep me warm or to rub my back after a long day at work. There’s no one there to laugh at my stupid jokes or to tell me I’m being silly. I miss your laugh, I miss your smile, I miss you.

I miss your beautiful blue eyes and your smile that could light up a room. I miss your stories that I’ve heard a hundred times before but always acted like I’d never heard before. I miss the way you used to play with my hair. Thirty-two is too young to leave this world.

I know your in a better place now, there’s no more pain, no more lousy hospital food, no one poking you or squeezing you. But where you are I can’t see you except in pictures or in my mind. I tell everyone I’m doing ok but I’m not, I feel like I’m broken inside and nothing can fix it. It was hard enough to lose Mom and Dad but to lose you on top of it damn near killed me.  The only reason I didn’t lose my mind the night you died is because I knew that’s not what you would want.

I know one day we’ll be together again and I know that your still with me in spirit but I would do anything to have you next to me for one more day. You will always be my one and only Michelle, you will always be the piece of me that’s missing. I’ll do my best to make you proud of me and I know that I’ll hear about if your not when we’re back together.

Be at peace my sweet angel, I’m so glad I got to tell you one last time that I loved you before you left me. I know you loved me too, you wouldn’t have put up with me otherwise. Just know that I loved you with my whole heart, mind and soul and a piece of me died the day I lost you.

I love you more than you’ll ever know,

Dan

Tis the Season

So it’s December and most of us are getting into the holiday spirit. I’m trying to this year but I gotta be honest I’m having a tough time with it this year, it’s been a rough time so far. I’m not gonna be Danny Downer though, no this post is about Christmas/Hanukkah. I’m gonna post some of my favorite holiday songs and see if I can jump start my holiday spirits.

Since it’s Hanukkah as I write this let’s start with one of the few Hanukkah songs I know. I’m sure most of you know this one too, if not please to enjoy four plus minutes of Adam Sandler singing about Hanukkah!

You know, I did a search on YouTube for Hanukkah songs, not a whole lotta choices! So since I’m not really Jewish and I couldn’t really find any other songs that I know or really inspire me to post them I’m gonna move on. No offense Jewish readers.

I’m gonna start with one of my favorite holiday specials ever. This one usually puts me in the mood but when you watch it for the first time in November it kind of kills the mood. Regardless of that I still love this one, even if it is forty something years old.

You know I tried to find the actual clip from the cartoon but the only one I could find was a crappy version that some had recorded from a camcorder and uploaded. The one above is the best one I could find. (And I watched a LOT of them!) There’s something about Thurl Ravencroft’s voice that’s soothing though, I could listen to that song over and over again. Oh wait I did! 😉

Since we’re on the subject of the Grinch

I can’t believe how hard it is to find the original clips from the cartoon! This was the best I could find for this song too! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over? Oh well I guess it’s the song that really matters right? Right??

How can you do an article about Christmas songs and not have a clip of Rudolph? I gotta admit, there are a ton of memorable songs from Rudolph, I’m gonna restrain myself and just post a few of them.

I gotta admit, I have a love/hate relationship with this song. Because my last name is in the song every Christmas guess what I heard?

Last one from Rudolph, I promise. What’s that? No Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? I can’t do Christmas songs without including that one? But..but…it’s my blog! Okay, fine! You win!

I knew if I didn’t include that one, some of you would track me down and lynch me. I gotta admit, I may have watched this one when I was a kid but I don’t remember it as fondly as some of you do.I gotta give it to the Rankin-Bass people, they did a heck of a job for what they had back in the day.

Okay I know this isn’t technically a Christmas song but come on, who doesn’t think of this at Christmas time? I actually remember aluminum Christmas trees. Thank Jeebus they didn’t last very long, they were pretty hideous. Off topic for a second, one of my favorite childhood memories is my Dad selling Christmas trees outside the firehouse. He wasn’t exactly a “people person” but he could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo if he wanted to.

Anyway, back on topic, I’m going waaaay back with this one. This is another one everyone should know, maybe not the cartoon but the source material.

From a Golden Oldie to something a little more modern.

I know this probably isn’t gonna win me a whole lotta geek points or improve my street cred any but I was never a big fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I don’t know why, it combines Halloween (my favorite Holiday) with Christmas. You’d think that’d be instant win but it just didn’t do it for me.  I know a lot of my readers are fans though so that’s why I included it.

I struggled with this next song. Not because of the content, but because it was so hard to choose between this one and his other “Christmas” song. I went with this one purely on seniority, not because I like it better.

You know what? You guys guilted me into posting Rudolph so I think I should get to post another one of my choices by default!

You know, on that note I think I’ll wrap this post up. I hope the songs and clips helped put you in the holiday spirit. If not then your just a grinch! 😉

Thanks for (still) reading!

Dan