An Election Manifesto

“I don’t like President Clinton or her husband.” ~ me, 1992 to 2001.

Right about now most of my friends are scratching their heads - but you worked for a Democrat, right? Yes I did but we’re not there yet. Someone would have to know me for a long time to know the rollercoaster my political leanings have endured.

The first presidential election I ever participated in was via absentee ballot in 1992 from Sembach Air Base Germany. My independent streak was visible immediately – I voted Perot. I couldn’t vote for Clinton – what self-respecting member of the military was going to vote for a Democrat who wanted to slash military spending and I couldn’t vote to re-elect Bush after he broke his promise – does anyone remember it? “Read my lips. No new taxes.”

I personally blamed Clinton for the battle of Mogadishu and the bodies of American servicemen being dragged through the Somali streets. Requests for armor had been denied at the highest level because this was a peacekeeping and humanitarian mission.

A new breed of Republicans came to us on the heels of those images. A group of Republicans lead by Newt Gingrich that brought us the Contract With America in 1994; a group that appealed to the middle of the road, independent voters who wanted congressional accountability. We wanted fiscally responsible and smaller government. We wanted term limited congressmen rather than life long politicians. A return of the traditional “of the people, by the people, for the people” governing.

I was part of that wave that swept the country. They promised us constitutional amendments to term limit members of the House and Senate. They steered clear of the social issues and I supported them whole-heartedly.

I voted straight ticket Republican for the next decade – except for that one time in 1998 when Jesse Ventura came along but that’s another story.

Things changed for me after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I reacted like any dyed in the wool GOP supporter would. I became xenophobic and wanted to punish any Muslim on the face of the earth. I clearly remember wanting to end it all by using nuclear weapons and turn the whole region into a glass parking lot.  I said on more than one occasion that we could name that new state “New Texaco” and we could drill through the glass and get our oil cheaper.

We invaded Afghanistan and went after the people responsible for those attacks. I waved the red, white and blue as hard as any American. My brothers were both serving and as a veteran myself I knew that not only my family, but the families of thousands of Americans would pay a price but that we would show the world that the United States was not to be trifled with.

Then in 2003, our leaders decided to invade Iraq. My brothers were ordered into another country in the Middle East to wage war on behalf of the United States. This time I had questions.

I took my fear and distrust of Muslims and did research. I read the Quran. I learned about Islam. I learned there were different types of Islam, much like Christianity. I learned that Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim and Osama Bin Laden was a Shiite Muslim. I learned that they were sworn enemies and would likely have killed each other rather than worked together.

The hunt for weapons of mass destruction was a farce played upon the American people. Our troops were sacrificed for reasons that still aren’t clear to me.

The fiscally conservative side of me was confused. President George W. Bush cut taxes during a war, the first president not to raise taxes to pay for the war he decided to wage. The Republican Party kept shilling about tax and spend liberals while running up a budget deficit. We were spending billions of dollars and growing government without paying for it.

This wasn’t MY Republican Party!

This Party was lost – wandering with no direction and no leadership. Rather than sticking to the principals of Ronald Reagan or the 1994 Contract With America this new Republican Party was taken over by religious zealots. The new litmus test for whether or not you were a good Republican was where you stood on social issues and whether or not you were Christian enough. We started to use terms like RINO to describe people and pushed moderate Republicans out. Moderates like General Colin Powell were pushed out of the Bush administration.

As a moderate myself I no longer felt like the Republican Party wanted me. I was left without a party. I became an independent voting for the candidates rather than a party.

I voted for my first Democrat in 2004.

In the fall of 2005 I met a Democrat who changed the way I viewed the party. This guy was a military veteran who believed in social and fiscal responsibility. He knew I was a Republican but welcomed me anyway. I felt like this man truly represented me and my interests, so I did something I had never done before. I joined a campaign, for a democrat, against a Republican that I had helped elect in 1994 under the Contract With America.

In the 2006 mid term elections I helped defeat the Republican Party that I had believed myself to be a part of for my entire adult life.

You would think that the Republicans would have figured out what went wrong but they didn’t. They turned even harder to the right and brought out the Tea Party conservatives. They brought forth candidates who were generally unelectable. They appealed to the far right base but not to the general electorate. Any junior political scientist will tell you that unless you can appeal to the middle you will never win a general election.

Still the GOP went deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole.

Now fast forward to the 2016 Presidential election. Both parties nominated candidates that fail to appeal to the middle. For the first time in my life a presidential campaign isn’t about which person is the best candidate to lead the United States. This campaign is about which candidate is the lesser of two evils. A campaign of sound bites between two individuals who are so nasty and vapid that I am uninspired.

We have third party candidates but both major parties insured that Gary Johnson was excluded from the debates – a lesson learned from the last time a third party candidate actually appealed to the general electorate – 1992.

If not for my fear of an incompetent person being elected, I would vote for Governor Johnson. The problem I have is if that vote allows Donald Trump to be elected we will open a Pandora’s Box. We will run the risk of this country being managed like any of Trump’s businesses. We will default on loans and he will not care. Women’s rights will be set back 50 years under a Trump presidency. If he were to be elected we may as well tear down the Statue of Liberty and send her back to France, since she too, is an immigrant. The words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” will never ring more hollow.

This is why I will be voting for Hillary Clinton. It is not because I like her. Quite frankly I do not support much of what she says. I will cast my vote for Mrs. Clinton because I want to be proud of this country and our imperfect democracy. I believe she will give my daughter a better world to live in – something Mr. Trump definitely will not do.

Republicans – take heart. If you return this party to the respectable party of old, where social issues take a back seat to fiscal responsibility and religion is again separated from politics, I will entertain voting for your candidate in 2020. If you continue on your current path, I will vote to re-elect President Clinton – and her husband. 

Time

Our society would find itself completely useless without time. Everything we do revolves around it – when we go to bed, when we go to work or school, when we go to a store for basic supplies – nothing is possible without qualifying a time around it.

Time isn’t just limited to a measurement on a clock. Minutes and hours add up to days, months and years. Time can drag on or it can pass by in the blink of an eye and often times it does both at the same time without any of us realizing what has happened.

The last year in the desert has been one of the longest years of my life but it ended all too soon.

I know, sometimes I am a conflict to my own argument.

Since my recent epiphany with feelings they are still bombarding me. Some of the things that were exposed are still like open and raw nerves stinging in the open air.

Christmas reminds me that we are rapidly approaching the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death. It seems like only yesterday that we were coping with the aftermath of that loss. Those years seem to have passed by in a nanosecond.

Somewhere in time, after that loss, I lost myself. I went from the person who dove into things; devil may care, with my heart on my sleeve. I learned to guard myself, maybe too well, after she died.

I used to be a decent writer. The thing that made me a good writer was the emotion in the words. For years I claimed that I lost my mojo and couldn’t write anymore. I am only now realizing that I never lost my mojo. I simply closed off my heart and soul and empty words have no feeling and can’t make the readers lose themselves in a page. I couldn’t be open anymore and the ability to write died a slow and agonizing death.

The other victim in all of this was a phrase I tried to live by in the immediate aftermath of her death.

Never leave something for tomorrow because tomorrow may never come.

I stopped worrying about time. There was always tomorrow. I can talk to that person tomorrow. I’ll answer that message tomorrow. I’ll tell that person how I feel tomorrow. I don’t want to do that today; we can do that next time.

Suddenly, you run out of tomorrows.

 With my mom, there was always something to do tomorrow. The list of things she wanted to see was exhaustive. She always said we would do that tomorrow or later. She died without doing many of the things she had wanted to do. I let her die without insisting we spend time doing those things she wanted to do. I swore that would never be me that I would never sit and say I wished I had done this or that. I would seize the day and live life to the fullest.

When I closed myself off I also closed myself to living life to the fullest.

Today is my last day in Tucson. I am sitting here thinking of things I didn’t do. Things I was going to do the next time I saw you. Things I could do tomorrow.

There are no more tomorrows.

I’ve been burned by time again. I forgot how fleeting it was. How life can pass you by in a moment if you allow it to.

Don’t make my mistakes. Learn from them. Allow yourself to live completely and enjoy the little things. Don’t live a life with regrets. Don’t regret the things you still have time to do. Make time and do them.

Before you run out of time and find yourself sitting alone in an empty room thinking about all of the things you wish you had done.

I Am Alive

“If you’re not feeling emotions you’re not truly living.”

I remember offering that advice to someone not too long ago. It rolled right off my tongue like so many other nuggets of wisdom do. I try to use my age and experience to help others around me. That doesn’t keep me from being hypocritical in that advice.

I told her that life is about all of the emotions; happiness, joy, ecstasy, pain, anger, betrayal and rage. If you’re not willing to experience all of them then you’re not truly alive.

The people that know me best also know that these are the things that I am least likely to do. I have been closed off for years; the end result of trusting one too many women who didn’t deserve it, of experiencing loss but never allowing myself to feel it, of being full of rage but stifling the anger to always be in control. I’d become automated emotionally. Perhaps machinated would be a better word.

I realized that I was a hypocrite and it was I who was closed off and emotionally unavailable.

I was the one who was not alive.

How is it that people did not see this? I have been with far too many friends and lovers for this lack of emotional investment to go unnoticed. The empty embraces, the kisses that don’t touch your soul, the hollow “I love you’s” uttered in the dark and the mindless fucking. Worse, why hadn’t anyone pointed this out to me?

I pondered this quietly in my own mind and I had no answer. The fact remained that I was dead inside.

I came out to the desert southwest more than a year ago to find myself. A spiritual journey to become one with the awe-inspiring mountains and flaming sunsets had come to yield the inner-peace I sought but had done nothing to light the fire in my soul. The fire the long-term friends would remember and the drive behind the dreamer who believed in global change.

Depressing to think about, isn’t it? I was giving advice to someone that I couldn’t grasp myself. The hypocrisy was laughable.

Something was about to change.

Spending time with the student caused a role reversal. While she opened herself up to life she unknowingly taught me to do the same. The teacher became the student.

It started with releasing rage. The same rage that had been boiling just beneath the surface for so many years started to boil to the surface. We harnessed this rage and used it in a “productive” manner. With each blow I delivered, another piece of the wall I had insulated myself with would crack and crumble. I kept things as controlled as possible – I feared what could happen if I let loose with the full fury of what was just under the surface.

As I allowed rage to flow outward other emotions soon followed. Once I was done swinging in anger I allowed myself to feel joy and happiness. Even more amazing, I allowed someone to share those feelings with me. It was incredibly peaceful. The more I tapped into the rage and allowed it to flow freely the more I found other feelings tagging along. The more physical I became the more emotional I was and the more emotional I was the more enjoyable the physical aspect became as well.

I was alive again.

The more alive I felt the more I understood the advice I gave her wasn’t for her. It was my soul screaming at me. I had been ignoring my inner voice for so long I couldn’t hear it anymore. She unwittingly broke through the silence. Blow by blow, the sweet symphony of a hand exploding against flesh brought new life to the empty silence within.

I was full again.

Sadly, a rush of emotions is not easy to handle. I became completely unsure of everything. Like a teenager fumbling with a virgin’s bra clasp every time I experienced something. I was like a baby exploring everything for the first time. Except it wasn’t the first time and some emotions trigger memories. The painful memories that the walls were first built to defend against and the same memories that led to the bout with painkiller addiction because I didn’t want to feel anything ever again.

To be alive you have to let yourself feel the good and the bad. I embraced them all and trust me; I have felt the good and the bad. I have felt rage like I have never let come to the surface. I experienced happiness and ecstasy that I did not know could exist and wont soon forget. I tasted fear and pain and felt the sting of loss. Things I was not capable of a year ago.

Fast forward to this evening.

I pulled out of the lot at work with the sun setting for one last time. I took a familiar turn onto Speedway and took a route I had not taken since the last time she and I drove it. A familiar song was playing on the radio. I opened the sunroof and let myself feel the memories that are a result of associative learning, I warmly remember discussing the haunting sound of the guitar work in this song. I turned onto Swan and laughed to myself thinking about all of the drivers who had caught my wrath during the rush home to enjoy a lunchtime rendezvous. At one intersection with The Smiths playing I fondly remembered road head that was so good I could still feel it. The memories and emotions felt good tonight.

I caught the sun setting with the sky ablaze over the mountains. Through the tears I realized that this was the last drive on those roads and this may be the last amazing sunset I would see for a long time. In this moment of sadness I realized that Tucson had been exactly what I needed and I embraced the emotion and I realized that I was never the teacher. I was the student and will always love the teacher for providing the most important lesson that I couldn’t teach myself. She taught me something that I had long forgotten…

I am alive.

Innocence Lost

Another generation lost it’s innocence yesterday amid a hail of gunfire in Connecticut.

The gunman burst into classrooms at an elementary school and targeted children between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. Twenty children fell victim to the gunman’s wrath before he turned his weapon on himself.

The ages of the victims and the fact the massacre took place inside a classroom has left an entire nation in shock and disbelief. We have grown accustomed to mass shootings in the U.S. and the typical reaction is, “Where now?” when we hear of another tragic series of senseless acts of violence.

We all took a step back yesterday. These were children who had never done anything wrong. School is supposed to be the one place where our kids are safe from the evil in our world. Where they learn their A, B, C’s and how to add 1 and 1. We spend our lives trying to teach them that monsters aren’t real and in one morning we all learned that monsters really do exist.

Yesterday’s tragic events left us all feeling stripped and vulnerable. If this can happen in Connecticut, what is going to prevent the same thing from happening here…to my child?

We think of the other times in our lives that we lost our innocence and were left feeling vulnerable or scared.

We lost a part of our innocence when we learned that musicians like John Lennon could be assassinated for what they say. We lost more of it when we watched the Challenger burst into a ball of fire in front of our eyes. We lost a lot more when we saw a firefighter carrying a child’s body from the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. We all sat in stunned silence when we learned that children could be the “evil monsters” and schools weren’t safe at Columbine High School. Just when we thought that we had no innocence left we learned that passenger aircraft could be turned into weapons on 9/11. By the time the massacre at Virginia Tech happened we were already becoming numb to the effects of violence and a loss of our innocence.

One of my college professors told me that he had a concealed carry permit and did carry on campus despite state law prohibiting weapons shortly after the attack at Virginia Tech. This professor stated that the ability of an armed individual to storm a lecture hall had been a thought prior to the VT attack. He said he carried despite the law because if he ever needed it he doubted he would be prosecuted.

The time to debate how we protect our children is now. We can’t wait until the next tragedy to have this discussion.

I don’t know if my professor was right. Maybe we need to arm our teachers. Maybe we need to post armed guards at gates onto school property, much like you see at military installations. I don’t know what the right answer is but I know we need to do something.

Gun control alone will not change things. The weapons used in Connecticut were legally obtained by the first victim, the gunman’s mother.

We are obligated, as a “civilized society,” to seek out the answers and make the necessary changes to prevent another tragedy like this from occurring.

We shouldn’t need to sit down with our children and try to explain to them how this could happen. This time of year we should be sitting with our children talking about letters to Santa, why they can’t open their presents yet and why they should be thankful.

This morning there are 20 children who will never do any of those things again. There are 20 families asking why.

We have a greater responsibility to those families. We have a responsibility to the children who lost their lives senselessly and our own children.

Our children lost their innocence yesterday.

We need to make the changes necessary for them to live in a safer world before they become as numb to the loss of their innocence as we have.

Dating and Irreverence.

Most people know that I’ve been single again for a few months after basically being off the market for a couple of years.

Naturally, I took some time to myself and reflected on the disaster that I had called a relationship. After a while I came to the same conclusion that everyone comes to, I am ready to look for something new.

After thinking long and hard about what I wanted, I decided the time was right to start moving.

There was just one problem. I don’t remember how.

This couldn’t be too hard, right?

I am a moderately attractive male in decent shape. I have a job, a car and don’t live with my parents. I am housebroken, give amazing back rubs, can go shoe shopping and can recognize a fresh haircut from 100 yards (having been married to a hairstylist aided in this skill). These things should make me somewhat marketable so finding a date shouldn’t be too hard, I imagined.

Everything works better with a plan – at least that’s what my advisor told me in college. Every PR campaign we came up with required a detailed planning synopsis. Dating is one of nature’s purest forms of PR so I started trying to develop a plan.

At that point I remembered that I was never good at the planning synopsis.

I talked to friends. They tend to be smarter than I am (usually). We created what was referred to as the “Dating Advisory Council.”

The council was created because of my previous dating disasters. It was decided that perhaps I was not a good enough judge of character so a three-member panel would help me select my dates. I guess I’m a bit naïve and believe what women tell me.

The council consisted of two women and one man. It was their duty to screen potential dates to make sure they had only the best intentions. All of the council members are good friends. The women have bullshit detectors built in. One has been called a bitch by most of the women that meet her. She was chomping at the bit to start talking to prospective dates. The assumption was if they survived her, they were definitely worth pursuing.

To this point the council has yet to interview a candidate.

I talked to other friends. I need to meet new people and the bar is not the place to meet someone that can honestly be referred to as “dating material.” My major requirements? That the women I would meet would be nice and genuine. Hot is naturally a plus.

This culminated in an evening where a friend introduced me to people and included statements such as “She is single, and a brunette. I know you like brunettes.”

For the record, I am an equal opportunity employer. It just happens that most of the women I have dated were redheads, followed by brunettes. I have never actually dated a blonde. I am not sure why. I want to be clear; I do not discriminate based on hair color.

I created a Facebook status to signal my intentions to the world.

“…now accepting applications for female companionship due to an increase in social event invitations. The position will initially be part-time but may be eligible for an increase to full-time status with benefits dependent upon performance. For more information inquire within.”

I have had to explain that the “benefits” part has nothing to do with sex, unless you view that as a benefit. The word “benefits” was intended to imply dinners, movies, excursions and the like.

I can assure you that line did not work.

I thought maybe I should try something else.

I looked at Match.com to see what online dating included. The first thing I noticed was that I knew people on the site. I checked out their profiles to see what people put out there as they set out to sell themselves to the date seeking public.

Online dating profiles are really a lot of fun to look at. It is amazing how many people can’t spell or use something even remotely close to the English language.

You have a few short paragraphs to tell me why I should consider contacting you. Showing me that you lack the intelligence to know the difference between their, there and they’re isn’t going to get the job done.

Of course, the idea of false advertising and complete exaggeration creeps into my mind too.

Then there are the people trying to find a date by using one really terrible photo. It made me wonder what these people are thinking. Did anyone tell them that this photo can make or break their success?

The photo with three drunk girls at a bar is great, but maybe you should tell me which one of them you are. For all I know this could be a package deal.

Then they want me to pay for this service. Okay, let me get this straight. I give you a pile of money and you make me no real guarantee of anything?

I start thinking I could do better at a bar. A few Captain and Cokes cost far less than this website does and my guarantee of meeting someone is about equal, right?

A few friends drag me completely out of my box and into social settings. I start wondering if they are feeling bad for me

I do meet new people. It would appear that most of these people are exactly what I am looking for. Nice and genuine people with no hidden agenda.

Things still get complicated.

I’ve been off the market and out of the scene for so long that I have no idea what today’s statements mean.

What is the difference between going out and hanging out? They seem to be used interchangeably but that clarifies nothing.

Where did I leave my training wheels?

At the end of the day, I don’t feel like all of the dating education I have received is really helping me. I feel just as lost as I did months ago, maybe more.

When did it get so hard to meet someone to go out and do things with?

There should be an idiot’s guide to dating. Okay, maybe just one for blonde guys like me.

Maybe it would just be easier if I waited for girls to chase me. Something tells me that plan won’t work well either.

Anyone have a better plan?

Bad days, Religion and Random Thoughts

We all have bad days from time to time. We tend to bitch and moan about the terrible things that happened during our day.

We use phrases like “FML”, “My life sucks” and “things couldn’t get any worse” without thinking about the fact that we don’t have it so bad.

The next time you’re having a bad day, stop for a moment and be thankful for your “bad day.”

Somewhere tonight, someone’s loved one didn’t come home and they never will.

Someone got out of bed this morning feeling fine and didn’t make it to see the sun set.

Someone went for a doctor’s appointment to get a cough checked out and left the office knowing they would die.

Someone kissed his or her husband or wife or child goodbye for the day only to later learn it was forever.

Your day really wasn’t so bad now, was it?

Sometimes we all lose perspective on things. If we keep things in perspective, life is never all that bad.

New lessons from new people.

Quite a few new people have wandered into my life in the past few months. I don’t believe this is entirely random or for chance.

I reconnected with an old friend. We have talked a lot since January. We talked about toxic relationships and cutting the toxic people from our lives. I told her that I needed to meet some nice and genuine people.

She has succeeded at introducing me to people that are much better to have in my life. The people I have met are positive, morally sound and fun.

I have started to remember what life is supposed to be like and what fun really is. I know what I want out of life and I know what I deserve.

I will not settle for less.

Religion visits Irreverence.

An interesting observation I have on many of the new people I have started associating with.

Many of these people have strong religious convictions. They are not all of the same religion but many of them find strength in their faith. Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Buddhist and Muslim the religion doesn’t matter, the person does.

I find peace in talking to them and find religion not to be the purported “off-limits” topic so many people claim it to be.

The last religious person I tried to be friends with turned out to be a toxin of the worst kind; a preacher’s kid whose negativity was dragging me right down along with them. I turned to this person for advice on matters that I was incapable of solving on my own, for spiritual guidance at a time of need. This person became hypocritical and refused to help.

I cut that toxic relationship off immediately.

I took that experience and others before it and again decided religion was for superstitious old ladies, as Clint Eastwood said in Gran Torino.

I may be wrong. I can admit that. It works for the people I am meeting. I am not saying I am going to start being religious or going to church or anything like that. I am just going to keep a more open mind and listen more to what these people have to say.

It can’t hurt, right?

Random personal thoughts

I can’t believe how tired I have been. Once I catch up on my sleep I plan on reentering the social world. I only have two more days of work before my next day off. I need a break.

I think it is time to reenter the dating world too. I use my schedule as an excuse not to date. I need to stop doing that. Just because one person wouldn’t make time and would never have been willing to work around my schedule does not mean that everyone is like that.

It is time to stop letting those old excuses affect the present and future. I need to be willing to let someone prove that experience was the exception and not the rule.

This means that I am again willing to take a chance. Let’s do this one more time. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

I will never know if I don’t get off my ass and take a chance.

Squirrels in her hair and other insanity.

They say that kids say the darndest things and for as cliché as that is, I found it to be true today. The imagination of my six-year-old daughter proves this more true than ever.

I was combing her hair this morning before I took her to school and her hair was terribly tangled. I asked her how her hair got so tangled and her answer left me rolling on the floor.

She told me that squirrels snuck into my house while we were sleeping. They played in her hair she told me. She stated that they used their tiny hands and feet to make her hair crazy.

I asked her if she was sure it was squirrels.

“Yes, daddy, it was squirrels,” she said. “It was not chipmunks. It was squirrels.”

I had no idea how to respond to this. She said all of this with the most serious look on her face. I couldn’t laugh at her. I didn’t want to make it sound like I didn’t believe her, even though I knew this was not true.

I asked her where the squirrels went. She told me they snuck out before we woke up. She said they were nice squirrels. She reiterated that they were squirrels and not chipmunks.

I think the chipmunk thing comes from her watching too much Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakuel.

My daughter’s craziness was just a foreshadowing of the day to come.

My insane work day.

The conversations at work today were insane. Purely insane.

One of the guys went on a tangent about GILFs. I know what you’re asking. What’s a GILF? It is like a MILF only instead of a mom, it is a grandma.

I couldn’t find any fallacy in the logic. The argument was with so many girls having children young that it is possible for a grandma to be in her late 30’s or early 40’s.

Call me shallow, but I can’t get into the grandma fetish. It just isn’t my thing.

We had a serious talk today about testing pepper spray on some of our subordinates.

I asked a friend who works in law enforcement about the hazards of pepper spraying a coworker. After some serious discussion with her we determined that pepper-spraying subordinates might qualify us as shittiest bosses ever.

Besides, how would we get the pink UV dye off of the kids?

I had to drive a Honda minivan today. I felt like I was less of a man just for having driven one. My nightmare got worse. The next car I had to drive was a PT Cruiser.

I was emasculated by fate today. I was scared to death that someone I knew might see me driving said vehicle. How on earth would I explain that one? I am still looking for my balls, in case you were curious.

Still tired.

One day off didn’t make up for it. I am still dragging ass. I fell asleep while writing this Friday night. I had to finish Saturday morning. I will be caught up on sleep soon enough. I get to sleep in on Tuesday.

Technological win.

I finally figured out how to set this blog up to automatically publish a feed to my Twitter account (it too is named IrreverentChad). For me, that is a major technological win. I learn something new everyday.