The Coolest Desk Ever [OR] “I Am Weak”

soma no prescription overnight shipping by Zac Logdson

A Guest Blogger Post for our MAN CAVE Section

Editor’s Note ~ This post is being reprinted with permission from the author.  Information about his company and other projects can be found at the end of the post. Thanks, Red Dirt Kelly

***

As you may recall from a little more than a week ago, I sold my office desk without really any clue as to what I was gonna do to replace it.  But after about an hour working from a tiny spare desk we had lying around, that barely held my 30” monitor, I decided I needed to act fast.

My goal was to buy or build a custom desk made from something that wasn’t intended to be a desk.  And I wanted it to represent ME a lot better than the old one did.  I wanted people to walk in my office and have my desk be so mind-blowingly awesome that they’d have to turn away to shield themselves from the glory of it all.  I wanted my desk to send people into seizures.  I wanted it to cause children to weep and old people to wet themselves.  I wanted my desk to be both loved unconditionally by all who saw it AND feared by those who heard folk tales about it.  So I built that desk… and in the process, I became an extremely weak individual.

Back Story

A few years ago, I read somewhere (no idea where) that having pictures of your family on your desk was a sign of weakness.  I don’t know who made that claim or where that perception originated but whoever put that in print is a tool.  I can see where it might be accurate but do I really want to do business with anyone that thinks I’m weak just because I have a picture of my family on my desk?  That said, I think that concept always kinda stuck with me.  On my old desk, I had various photos of my family on the area behind me, plus drawings and notes on my bulletin board from my kids.  But like I said, they were behind me.  Definitely not the focus of my office.  So I decided to change that.

Building the Perfect Desk/Becoming Weak: Step 1 – Concept

There’s an architect in the basement of our building that had some really old (maybe a hundred years) wooden windows he was storing in a nearby shed.  I asked about them to see if he’d be willing to sell them. Continue reading The Coolest Desk Ever [OR] “I Am Weak”

Comments

comments

The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 11

#11 of 52 : MATT, BILLY, and JOHNNY

External Photo Clues:
None

Imagine:
I remember that hot summer morning like it was just yesterday.  That’s me, Billy, there in the middle.  My best friend Matt is to my right and my other best friend Johnny is to my left.  I remember that morning well, not only because that was the day my mom got her new camera, but that was the day me and my two best friends got into a lot of trouble…

Now don’t get the wrong idea, we were basically three good kids.  It’s just that things kind of got a little out of hand that day.

Early that morning, even before the sun came up, Matt was knocking at my bedroom window.  His dad had died when Matt was two years old and his mom worked about three jobs just to make “ends meet”.  On the nights that his mom worked all night, he seemed to just show up at my house.  I opened my bedroom window and let Matt sleep in my room for the rest of the night.  My parents were really cool and didn’t really mind…they liked Matt a lot anyways.  That morning we woke up to my mom screaming for joy.  My dad had given her a new camera for their anniversary.  My dad had always told me that he knew how to make a woman happy.  Hmm…I guess he did.  As I sat down to eat some cereal, I noticed Matt eating out of the box and drinking milk from the carton…”hurry up dude, you’re wasting time”, Matt yelled at me.  We finished up and headed outside.  As we opened the front door to step outside, the sound of gun fire went off.  Matt and I launched ourselves onto the front porch deck covering our heads.  It seemed like forever before the noise stopped.  We looked up and we saw Johnny laughing, “you two are a couple of girls”.   Johnny, the joker of the bunch, had rigged my front door with a bunch of black cat fireworks.  Matt yells, “Dog Pile” and we commenced to tackle him and give him a monster wedgie.

Once we got through rolling around on the ground, we headed for the old cotton mill bridge.  I don’t know what it was about that old wooden bridge, but it seemed like the place where we always started our day.  The old mill had been abandoned for as long as I can remember, but the bridge was still in use.  It was pretty cool; it was one of those old wooden tunnel bridges.  We use to screw around underneath that thing for hours.  At times you would see some smaller vehicles cross it, but I’m not sure I would have tried to drive a truck over that old thing.  When we got to bridge we knew there was going to be trouble.  Four punk kids from the next town over were in the middle of the bridge throwing rocks at the old cotton mill.  Not that breaking the windows to that old place really mattered, but it was the fact that we pretty much thought of that place as our own.  Johnny, being the “outspoken one”, yells at the biggest kid in the group…”hey fat ass, you throw like a girl”.  Matt, being the momma’s boy of the group, basically slid behind me and made himself look as invisible as humanly possible.  I was like, “great Johnny…here we go again” and the time last summer when we got in a fight with the Hennessy twins suddenly flashed before my eyes.  I’ll still have bruises from that fight…damn those girls fought dirty.

As the four boys slowly walked toward us, I noticed Johnny kneeled down and got some sort of “make-shift” contraption out of his back pack.  Knowing Johnny the way I did, I knew this was about to get really exciting.  As the boys came closer, they got louder and more vulgar.  I told Johnny…”whatever you got planned…you better do it quick”.  That’s when I saw the lighter…then I heard him say, “you guys better run…this is going to be loud”.  Johnny lit the device and threw it in the middle of the pack of boys.  The boys weren’t to the end of the bridge when they saw the lit make-shift bomb and they scattered quick.  One took off to the right, one went left, one went straight, but the fat loud mouth wasn’t so lucky.  BOOM!!!! It was LOUD…the ground shook, the mill windows rattled, and I could swear I saw a mushroom cloud.  It was the loudest thing I had ever heard.  The three of us hit the ground laughing our butts off.  As our laughter halted we heard, “hey…where’s Bobby”.  It was then when we all three realized that we never saw the fat kid run.  Was he dead?  Did Johnny blow him up?  We didn’t know, but we knew this was going to be bad.

At that time, the three of us and the three punk kids started to make our way back towards the cloud of dust.  Then we saw it…Johnny’s make-shift bomb had blown a hole right through that old wooden bridge and the fat kid had fallen down into the creek bed.  “You guys killed him!”, one of them said.  “Good”, said Johnny.  As we made our way down to the creek bed, we saw he was laying half way in the water and completely covered with mud.  “Check his breathing”, Matt said as he bends down to pick up one of the kid’s shoes.  One of his buddies leaned down and put his ear next to his mouth.  “Good…he’s breathing”.  “Too bad you girl!!!”, Johnny said, with a slight kick of dirt on the poor boy.  After several attempts of his friends trying to make him “come to”, the kid’s eyes opened.  “What happened, am I dead?”, he said.  “These jerks tried to kill you”.  The three of us stood up and gave him a nice sarcastic “golf clap”.  Looking up at us from flat on his back, the kid points and mumbles a few slurred words.  Not even understanding what he said Johnny barks back at him, “you want more you girl?”

But the next words out of his mouth we did understand…”Truuuuuuuck!!!”.

We all looked at each other in total fear.  We already knew that old wooden bridge could barely support a regular sized car, but here comes this moving truck, and on top of that, Johnny just blew a huge hole in it.  Matt and the other three boys all grabbed an arm or a leg and darted down the creek.  I hurried up the creek side wall as fast as I could thinking, someone had to stop the truck from crossing the bridge.  By the time I made my way out, it was too late.  The truck was already half way across the bridge.  I ran to the opening of the bridge and started to wave my arms yelling, “STOP”.  Not sure if it was my yelling or if the driver saw the huge hole in the bridge, but he stopped the truck and got out.  “hey kid…what’s your problem”, he yelled at me.  I yelled back at him, “dude!, the bridge is going to collapse…run!!!”.  The bridge creaked as the flooring started to give way.  The trucker turned and ran towards the other end of the bridge.  Just as he made it to the other side, the entire bridge collapsed into the creek bed.  As the trucker and I stood there and stared at each other across the bridgeless road we could hear the faint sound of a congratulatory “golf clap” from the boys.  I thought to myself, we are in big trouble.  Should we run, should we stay and face up to our mess.  We decided to stay.

By this time the fat kid had made his way back onto his feet and the boys were all walking towards me to make their way out of the creek.  I convinced them all into not saying anything about the bomb and just see what happens.  By then the trucker had made his was down his side of the creek, out, and up to us.  “you boys OK?”, he asked.  Johnny says, “hell man…you about killed us all.  Don’t you know that old bridge won’t hold your big ass truck!!!?  Looking down at his fallen truck he says, “I’m sorry guys, but what the heck am I going to do about all those pop bottle rockets I was hauling”?   We all looked at each other and smiled.  Not even saying a word, we all knew how lucky we were.  Johnny looks at the fat kid and said, “you ok?”  “Yea, I’ll be ok”.  “See you tomorrow”, Johnny says.  The fat kid replied, “I’m not sure, you guys play pretty rough”.  As we started to walk back home, I looked back.  I could see two of the boys helping the limping kid along and the truck driver was still standing there staring at the bottom of the creek.  I put my arms around my friends and smiled.

Now as I sit here staring at this old picture, I can’t help but think about all the great times we had together and how I throughout my entire life, I never found any friends as good as I had when I was ten.

About The Author:
John Hare is a Senior Regulatory Coordinator for Oklahoma Gas & Electric. A 39 year old family man that enjoys spending time with his wife, Carrie, and his three kids, Colton, Ashton, and Donovan.

Authoring For The Imaginary Family Project:
Oops!… we are temporarily oversubscribed.
We’ll open this project up for new Authors later this year.

About The Imaginary Family Project:
The 2011 Imaginary Family Project is a year-long collective art endeavor coordinated by occasional amateur artist Quentin Bomgardner and co-sponsored by The Red Dirt Chronicles.  This project is based around “lost” vintage photographs, which have been acquired at flea markets, garage sales, estate sales, and eBay – heirloom collections, with no heir.  Every week a different author will “find” one photograph by creating an imagined history around one of its subjects.  At the end of the year, the collection will be compiled and presented as a group.

Previous Entry | Next Entry

Comments

comments

What are your N.U.T.s?


A lot of the blogs I read have written recently about the need for men to have a firm grasp on their non-negotiable, unalterable terms or as Wayne Levine (the man who coined the term) calls them, our N.U.T.s.

To quote Levine:

To be the man, father, husband or leader you want to be, you must develop and maintain a firm grasp of your N.U.T.s

N.U.T.s – non-negotiable, unalterable terms—are the things that define you as a man. They’re what a man is committed to. And when these N.U.T.s are compromised, men become angry, unhappy, frustrated, depressed. They would rather blame others than take responsibility for their own actions. They’ll play the victim as they take out their negative feelings on those they love. They’re also the guys who will try to drown their sorrows in alcohol, drugs, porn, and a slew of other equally destructive behaviors.

I’ve borrowed a list of a few examples of N.U.T.s from Levine’s website and have listed them below:

* I am faithful to my wife.
* Compassion for my family trumps my need to be right.
* I am a risk taker.
* I do what I believe is in the best interest of my children, even if they disagree.
* I do not ask for permission.
* I do not indulge my addictions.
* I take my problems to men, not to women.
* I do whatever it takes to keep my family in our home.
* I honor my daily spiritual practice.
* I do not sell out who I am to please others.

Although I suspect I have an unspoken list of N.U.T.s, I don’t think I’ve ever actually voiced many of them to myself or anyone else. In the coming weeks, I’m going to spend some time thinking about my non-negotiable unalterable terms and will be posting them here on the RDC as a permanent reminder to myself of those things that I will hold to no matter what. Some of mine will be fairly similar to the ones above and some will be quite different. Either way, I’m looking forward to the process of considering, defining, and listing my own N.U.T.s.

What are your N.U.T.s?

Comments

comments

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Four-Ever, I DO

About Thursday at noon last week I realized that even Queens of Multi-tasking have limits.  Actually, I think it was 11:45 a.m. when I stopped and wrote three e-mails.  All of them canceling appointments I had previously set up because “I was going to be running errands around town for my daughter’s wedding and might as well take care of (X).”  I took off my multi-tasking crown and tossed it somewhere into the back of my SUV; it landed alongside three bags of clothes (dry cleaner, gym bag, sack of clothes I had to buy because I forgot my gym bag last week), four boxes of Mason or Kerr canning jars (drinking glasses for the wedding), six wedding presents for my daughter and her fiancee’ I had collected from church and friends over the last week, school books (both teaching and learning) and five crumpled pieces of paper.  If unwadded, lists of 10-15 things “to be done before the wedding” would be revealed on each of the paper balls.  They rolled to and fro on the floor of my car as I drove madly around town, forward when stopping and backward when I took off again.

Five days later, the crown is still resting haphazardly in the back and I’m not quite ready to don it again.  Rather, I’m still thinking about all the seeds planted in my Life Garden last week: memories, new friendships and relationships, a new marriage in our family and, well, more memories.  I’ll talk about those in just a minute.  First I want to honor this post by reporting on my garden.

“My Little Victory Garden” was neglected most of the week.  I took solace in the fact that our neighbor’s sprinkling system was watering my seedlings nightly.  Evidently last summer during a long hot week, Dennis (my neighbor to the west) told Mick that he was watching after my garden by adjusting two of his sprinkler heads to rotate 360 degrees, thus also covering my garden as well as a portion of his yard.  Nine months later, I thanked him in my head for that little gesture by commenting to myself, “Well, at least the garden is getting a little water at night. You rock, Dennis.” Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Four-Ever, I DO

Comments

comments

Meanwhile Back at The Ranch: I’m Braking For Spring

What a day!  It was the barn with the Daffodils that caught my eye first, and after that I just kept noticing glimpses of color and new life all around.  If you haven’t already, stop and notice. (Click photos for a larger view).  Have a great week!

On my way to Wal-Mart, I noticed these beauties in front of an old barn.

 

 

It looks like my strawberries survived the winter. I'm going to clean out the dead leaves and start watching for blooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a welcomed sight coming up the drive. Looks like it's time to get out the rake.

Continue reading Meanwhile Back at The Ranch: I’m Braking For Spring

Comments

comments

Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.