Tag: 30 Day Challenge

30-Day Challenge: Day 20 – A 10+ Year Old Picture

Hard to believe he’s been gone 30 years this summer.


The instruction was to provide an older picture; nothing stated suggests who or what should be the subject. Since my sister Leslie sent me these pictures, along with some of my father, I thought I’d show these.

This is my grandfather, McKinley Green, who I wrote about a few times early in my blogging, here and here and here.

The particulars are lost to me so far, but apparently, McKinley, or Pop as almost called him (the others called him Mac), was my father’s stepfather. He’s not in the picture in the 1930 Census; I’ve seen the records. Yet, my father’s birth certificate, dated 1944, when my father was 18, lists Pop as my father’s father. There was a clear clerical error, however. In the section that lists the age of the parents at the time of my father’s birth, my grandmother’s info is correct, but Mac’s info listed his age in 1944, not my father’s birth year of 1926.

As noted, my grandfather loved going to the track, both for the cars and the horses. Our thing was playing gin rummy, and we played a LOT, especially on Sunday afternoons while watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. And when he was looking for a card, he would often say, “Be there, finakis!” I have no idea what that meant.

Hard to believe he’s been gone 30 years this summer.
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Oh, the baby in the picture above is my eldest niece Becky, my sister Leslie’s daughter.

30-Day Challenge: Day 19 – Something That Made You Smile Today

“Good stuff. this is why i love reading blogs other than my full time career as a dentist.”


Spam can be a real PITA, as I know Rose and SamuraiFrog have written about recently. Even with comment moderation and/or the Akismet filter, I probably spend a couple of hours per week scanning my various blogs; among other things, I have to make sure that items in the spam folder are actually spam, as I have found legitimate comments there, usually from people in Asia, for some reason.

Still, when the day (or the week) is beating me up, when REAL comments are getting under my skin – not on this blog, but elsewhere – I have found some spam unintentionally hilarious. And where else can you receive such unfettered confirmation?

Review of the movie Salt: “A thoughtful opinion and ideas I will use on my website. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time on this. Thank you!”
A recent picture of me: “This is all very new to me and this article actually opened my eyes.Thanks for sharing with us your wisdom.” (That’s what my wisdom is for!)
Animal adjectives: “I am without a doubt thankful to you for providing us with this invaluable files. My spouse and I are in truth grateful, absolutely the material we needed.” (Why you and your wife would need a list of animal adjectives is beyond me, but I don’t judge.)
Animal adjectives: “Actually actually very good weblog publish which has received me considering. I by no means looked at this out of your stage of look at.”
Hiroshima: “I knew I was correct. My friend and I placed a bet about which web site was superior. I thought your webpage was much much better produced, but she believed this post on trendy style ideas was much much better. We rounded up 5 loved ones memebers who experienced not seen possibly web site prior to to study them every a lot more than. Majority chose your site. Thanks for maintaing an excellent website.” (I so hate to be the cause of strife with your friend.)
My favorite outfit : “I actually decided to produce a simple video about this, I would be pleased if you would possibly take a moment to look at it and perhaps leave a message about what you think, I left the video url in the “website” field, hopefully you can access it, thank you a lot.” (I am SO flattered, my red sneakers are flattered…)
Current grades: “Good stuff. this is why i love reading blogs other than my full time career as a dentist.” (Dentistry and blog reading go together like…)
My childhood picture: “Thank you for this lovely post, even if it took quite a long time to complete reading. (English is not my native tongue) May I ask where you got your sources from? Thank you!” (My source is my mother, thank you.)
Animal adjectives: “I hope you would not mind if I put up a part of this site on my univeristy blog?” (You go ahead and do that.)

Spam is unfortunately a part of Internet life. I’m trying to make the best of it, and when I can, laughter is my chosen tactic.

30-Day Challenge: Day 18 – Favorite Board Game


I have always loved board games. I used to play them all the time. As a kid, my favorite game was SCRABBLE, which I used to play with my great aunt, and from time to time as an adult, usually with my in-laws.

With children, I love to play SORRY. As Jaquandor explained, this is a game that by the time a kid is 4 to 6, can play an adult straight up.

I found this out when I used to play with my late friend Nancy’s son Jeff when he was about 6 in 1978 or 1979; I would not give him an advantage and he’d beat me almost half the time. Likewise, my daughter is very good at it. In fact, we often play with her stuffed animals as surrogates as well, with each of us essentially playing two colors, and she’ll often come in first and second, or at least first and third.

I’m quite fond of Monopoly. I could tell you what the purchase price and basic rent for every property on the board; unfortunately, it’s a game that really requires multiple players, and that has not been the situation I’ve found myself in of late. For our wedding, we received an Albany-based Monopoly set that I’m pretty sure we’ve never used.

I went through a phase of playing a lot of Trivial Pursuit in the 1980s and 1990s, but some people didn’t like the fact that I won too often – it’s a curse – and I probably haven’t played this century.

The game I play most often at this point is backgammon. It’s a game I learned at a bar appropriately called Bacchus in my college town of New Paltz, NY from my friend Anne. Then I didn’t play for a long time. Now I play my friend Mary at work at least twice a month at lunchtime. It’s a fairly easy game to play, though it takes a little while to ascertain the best strategy. The board often shows up on the back of checkerboards, and the game is available online, so one can hone one’s skills.

30-Day Challenge: Day 17- A Childhood Picture

The elementary school I went to was the one closest to my grandmother’s house, rather than the one closest to our house.

Here’s a picture of (L-R) me, my sister Leslie (16.5 months younger), sister Marcia (5 years, 2 months younger).

My recollection is that we were 10, 9, and 5. One of my sisters thinks 8, 7, and 3. My mother doesn’t remember.

Regardless, it is our very favorite picture of us, especially compared with the next picture of the three of us (NOT SHOWN, thank you very much, which we call the “year of the bad glasses.” Mine were oversized horn-rimmed, and the girls were wearing cats-eyes.

The picture above, I THINK, was taken at McLean’s department store in downtown Binghamton, NY, where my mother worked in the bookkeeping department. For all the time I can remember, my mom worked outside of the home, at McLean’s, then at Columbia Gas & Electric. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she worked at First Union Bank as a teller.

And because she was working, the elementary school I went to was the one closest to my grandmother’s house (Daniel S. Dickinson) rather than the one closest to our house (Oak Street), which had a HUGE effect on my life. There are seven kids I knew from K-9 from Dickinson, then grades 10-12 at Binghamton Central HS, at least four of whom I’m still in touch with.

30-Day Challenge: Day 16 – Future Tattoos

I’m just not that into suffering for my (body) art.

For the longest time, I had zero interest in tattoos. I associated them with drunken sailors and the people with whom they spent time.

Then I’ve discovered in recent years that they have gone mainstream. More than that, on some people, they actually look good. Although there was this woman on TV this month who had some design on her neck that made her look ravaged by disease.

I am still concerned that while the design may look OK when it’s new, it may look less desirable when the body changes. Or the message that seemed on target at the time may end up feeling less than appropriate a few years down the road.

The other thing is that I’m just not that into suffering for my (body) art, and dermal abrasion, removing said tattoos, would arguably be worse.

Moreover, I would be ineligible to give blood for a year, if I were to get a tattoo, and blood donating I’m convinced is as advantageous to me as it is beneficial to the recipients.

I’m not likely to get a tattoo. But if I were, there is little doubt what it would look like.

Or a variation thereof.

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