Month: February 2024

Thursday Inspiration — Cooking with Gas

Fandango12 Comments

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to write a post using the word “cook.”

Ever since I got married almost 46 years ago, my wife has been the chief cook — and I’ve been the bottle washer, so to speak. She is a very good cook and I am fairly confident that had I not married her, I’d be dead my now.

My pre-marriage bachelor diet was primarily fast food, fried food, and beer. But Mrs. Fandango began preparing healthy, nutritious, delicious meals. She made sure I got a balanced diet with veggies and fruits and food that was mostly organic.

One of her requirements wherever we lived was that our home had to have a gas range, rather than an electric cooktop. She felt that she could cook with much more precision with gas than with electricity. And since she took pride in preparing her meals and I loved eating her meals, I made sure to accommodate her gas range demand.

In fact, she loves cooking with gas so much that this is one of her favorite rap songs.

Now I don’t want you to think that my wife prepares everything I eat. I make my own cold cereal breakfasts and when we have eggs, I am often the one who cooks them. And I’m also the outdoor grill master, grilling hod dogs, burgers, steaks, and even seafood to perfection.

So I’m not totally helpless in the kitchen.

WDP — Past Tense

Fandango4 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you enjoy your job?
View all responses

Yes, I enjoyed my jobs. I actually had multiple jobs in my career. They were all in related fields — software and services, healtcare, and benefits administration solutions and systems — but with a number of different companies.

My work was varied, interesting, gave me a lot of satisfaction, and I was good at it. The only aspect of my job that I didnt enjoy was the constant travel, as I spent a lot of time on the road meeting with prospective clients, existing clients, going to seminars to present papers and make presentations, and to “network.”

And by “on the road,” I mean “in the air,” as most of my travel required flying hither and yon — mostly domestic but some international. And flying got old fast.

I had accumulated more than 2 million frequent flyer miles on American and close to half a million each on Delta and United. I can’t even estimate how many miles I amassed on airlines like Southwest and airlines that no longer exist, like PeopleExpress, PanAm, Continental, and TWA.

But that’s all in the past. I retired at the end of 2015 and I do enjoy being retired. No one is telling me what to do or when to do it. Well, except for my wife. And I haven’t set foot on an airplane in eight years and have no intention to do so. I told anyone who would listen after I stopped working, “If I never have to board a plane again in my life, it will be too soon.” I intend to live by that.

Super Tuesday

Fandango15 Comments

In the United States this coming Tuesday is what is known as “Super Tuesday.” It’s a day that 15 states plus American Samoa hold their primary elections. In addition to my home state of California, these other states are having their primaries: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.

Super Tuesday earned its nickname because its the date the most states hold their primaries and caucuses, meaning it’s also when the most delegates are at stake to earn the party presidential nominations, which are announced at the respective political party conventions in July and August.

In the past, Super Tuesday is the day that is seen to most accurately forecast how the presidential primaries will play out. Every four years, the contest is when millions of Americans in a wide swath of states head to their polling places.

But this year, we already know that the Democratic presidential nominee will be the incumbent president, Joe Biden, and his vice presidential nominee will be the incumbent vice president, Kamala Harris.

We also already know that the Republican presidential nominee will unfortunately be Donald Trump, but his running mate is yet to be determined. So this year’s Super Tuesday event is not going to have the impact on the presidential election that Super Tuesdays have had in the past.

Every registered California voter automatically receives election ballots in the mail. My wife and I completed our mail-in ballots yesterday and we’ll be dropping them off today in official ballot drop boxes.

Because there is not much at stake in these primaries this year, at least at the presidential level, primary voter turnout is expected to be low. But there are also primaries in most of these states for seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives as well as for statewide, countywide, and local elections, which is what prompted my wife and me to get it done and drop them off to be counted.

Anyway, if you happen to live in a Super Tuesday state, I encourage you to get out and vote. Because even though the presidential contenders may be a foregone conclusion, who wins the other state and local primaries could have a major impact on your quality of life starting on January 20th of 2025.

FOWC with Fandango — Cunning

Fandango15 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “cunning.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.

WDP — Difficulty Saying Goodbye

Fandango11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
View all responses

I suppose my answer to this question is the phase that lasted for about 48 years was the most difficult to say goodbye to. That phase was my working years. I started that phase when I entered the workforce after graduating from college until I retired in 2016.

When I was working I never had a problem answering the question, “What do you do for a living?” I was always quick to answer and to go into whatever amount of detail about my work than the questioner could tolerate. I never answered that I was a husband and a father, even though being a husband and a father were important parts of who I was. I was proud of what I did for a living, ineas good at what I did for a living, and I allowed what I did to essentially define who I was.

So after I finally retired in 2016, when asked what I do for a living, I would hem and haw and finally say something like, “I’m retired now, but before I retired I used to….”

If pressed about what I do now that I’m retired, I answer, “Oh you know. This, that, and the other.”