PPS

I couldn't close without hitting post 900. Let's just let the world speak for itself...

Say good night, Gracie.

I started this blogging experiment in the spring of 2004 as an outlet for political writing urges. Over the years, it grew to encompass parenting, music, beer, food, graphic design and myriad other things. In recent months, I've neglected the blog sadly. It has come to be a nagging burden, something I want to get back to and can't find the time for, something that helped define a period of my life.

The thing is I am beginning to say good bye to that period of my life. As I look around me now, I see a whole new set of challenges — a child who is growing up, a business in the advanced planning stages, new relationships and efforts to rebuild burned bridges, a whole new set of life and financial goals, and a growing puppy.

Each one of these demands my feet being on the real ground more than the virtual ground. And truth be told, this blog slipped off track a couple years ago and never really found a new direction. Recognizing that and recognizing the new realities of my life going forward, it is time to say good bye.

I've had fun, and maybe I'll come back in a new form. You can still find me on Twitter and maybe elsewhere. In the meantime, so long and thanks for putting up with me for a few thousand words here and there.

Paul



P.S. — I've been thinking about this for weeks, but my friend Jason deserves a hat tip for taking a similar step first.

A year comes, a year goes.

Put simply, 2011 was a strange year. It was full of endings and beginnings, full of lessons, full of pain, full of happy memories. Of course, every year could fall under that description, but 2011 seemed full of much larger and more intense events.

Beginning the year, I was engaged. At the end of the year, I was in a new relationship and figuring out what to do with the house I had bought with my ex-fiancée. I spent the second half of the year dealing with PTSD and learning remarkable lessons about relationships and partnerships. My daughter turned into a tween, and I learned how to reconnect with her. Echoes of 20 years ago filled the year. I began the year employed at one company and ended it as a contractor at another. The year began with changes in brewing and business planning and ended with plenty of lessons learned and plenty more to learn.

On New Years Eve, a fellow single dad answered one of my comments about 2011 by saying "Instead of resolutions, I think I'm going to make a list of lessons learned in 2011." At risk of leaving some out, here is a short list of the lessons taken in this year:

• Budget time and money. You will have more time and more money for what you want.
• Don't try to cram extra things in to small amounts of time. You will accomplish more and feel less stressed out by what needs to be done.
• Finish tasks. Finish it before you pick up anything else. You will save time and stress.
• Be where you say you're going to be when you say you're going to be there. Friends, partners and lovers will trust you more.
• Don't promise things you can't deliver. Again: trust.
• Use the right tool for the task and pay attention to process — whether you're cooking, building, brewing or whatever. You will save time and effort and have a better product.
• Cutting corners isn't worth it. Nothing finishes as well as it would if you did it the right way.
• Bourbon barrels and imperial stout were made for each other.
• Silicon cooking tools are worth having. As is the perfect cast iron pan. Take care of what you have, and it will always treat you well.
• Beverages really do taste better out of the right glassware.
• Think about where each dollar you spend is going. Who is it helping and what will you get in return for it?
• Spend the extra few minutes with the people who are important to you. A little goes a long way.
• If you get another chance, do it right. This rule applies to everything.

I'll add a piece or two to this as it seems appropriate. For the moment, though, it makes a pretty good foundation for 2012. Life really is simple if you let it be.

Cheers.

Blur: the lost year.

How it got to be December and how I managed to go two months without a single good blog post is a little baffling to me. Time flies, but this year seems to have vanished. The changes that have happened amidst that woosh are just as baffling. The kid has begun growing up in ways that have brought their own surprises. We lost a cat and gained a puppy. I lost a fiancée and gained back some parts of myself that had been submerged. I discovered the hell of PTSD and the beginning of healing. I remembered lessons I'd forgotten. We revisited places I haven't seen in 20 years and saw friends I haven't seen in longer than that. I learned important lessons about partnership, friendship, and being good to the world in general. And I continue to tackle lessons and changes that have been years in the making.

At the risk of hyperbole, I can fairly say that the past year has been a period of more growth and lessons than any other period of change in my 41 years.

I had originally planned to write this post about the lessons and mistakes, but it seems redundant to cover what has already been covered in therapy and to a lesser extent on here. Some day, I may fill in the blanks, but I need a little more perspective on all that has happened before I can truly understand all that has been taken away and handed to me.

For now, what I am doing is working harder — working harder at business and work, at being a patient parent, at being a partner, at being a friend, at finishing the things I start and keeping the promises I make, at being stronger and more disciplined, and at asking for help when I need it.

As we kick into the holidays, I will likely be saying a lot of thank-yous to friends who stuck by us through everything, to partners who called me on my failings, to people I hurt because I had lost my way in one fashion or another. Mostly, I am grateful that life sometimes has room for second chances.

What's wrong with this world #2 (WWWTW2)

Cheerleader Frog and Football Player Frog. Er... froggles. Need I say more?

What's wrong with this world #1

We are now so lazy that we can't even be bothered to cut up the Slim Jims to go with our processed cracker/cheese product.

Bookends

This was a summer of crazy weather and personal journeys through hell and back. It was also a summer of lessons and growth, and it began and ended with concerts at the Charlottesville Pavilion.

The first show was The Arcade Fire in early June. The night was hot as hell at show time  — well past 90 degrees still. The band turned it on, though. The energy was great. I got texts from friends close to the stage and decided to hang back after aborted attempts to wade into the roiling, steamy crowd. it was a good show, though, and somewhere on my phone is a happy picture that belies the tensions that were already in the final stages of destroying our relationship.

The counterpoint to this show was seeing The Avett Brothers with the kid a couple weeks ago. Where the Arcade Fire show was tightly choreographed with a defined setlist. The Avetts show was the opposite. It felt loose from the moment they hit they stage, down to forgotten lyrics and missed cues. Still, it was a brilliant show. They were obviously happy to be on stage and engaged with the audience. And it felt more honest than the tighter, cleaner show at the beginning of the summer.

In the end, the bookends seem more stark than sandwiching a concert in on an "off" night in early June and taking the kid for a show I knew she'd enjoy in early September. (I wasn't the only dad who thought that, either, given the number of dads with daughters on the lawn that night.) The real kicker, though, is that I remember the tension at the first concert, and soon after, all hell broke loose. It wouldn't really calm down for another two months or so. In that time, life took some drastic turns; I discovered how powerful and insidious PTSD could be; and I spent a great deal of time gaining perspective, healing myself, and working on my relationship with the kid.

And that's where The Avett Brothers show really stands out in stark contrast. We barely made it to dinner at Mas Tapas and barely made it to the show, but I felt more relaxed than I'd felt in ages. Chalk the easing up to some positive turns in life in general and feeling like I'd finally been released from a strange, bad dream. Chalk it up to that, in part. But chalk it up also to watching the kid play with her glow sticks and smile as she curled up on the blanket next to me as the concert was winding down. And chalk it up to realizing — finally — that I was back in ways I hadn't been for years.

Mas and more Mas

My previous visits to Mas in Charlottesville have all been exercises in controlled gluttony. You finish your meal realizing you have eaten perhaps double what you should have, but the food has been so good that the satiation feels grand.

 Tonight, it was just the kid and me.

 We scraped into the parking lot behind Mas with barely an hour to spare before The Avett Brothers concert. The wait was far too long, but the hostess had a bench with a not-really-table table that she could spare. Next thing you know, she is asking the kid which kind of juice soda she wants and what beer I want, and we're settling in at the nook in the corner. Not exactly perfect planning, but things were working out.

The kid was tired and distracted, but we covered the menu and put orders in. Anchovies, spinach and manchego salad, hummus, lamb sausage, and empanada with Caremont chevre. The dishes came out with remarkable speed, particularly considering how busy the restaurant was.

 The kid tried the anchovies; she wasn't sure about them, but it was a start. She liked the hummus though it was a tad spicy. The spinach salad? She hated the dressing. Hated it. One of the servers stopped by, and I took a step I rarely take which was to say that the salad wasn't to her liking. Next thing we know a comped spinach salad with oil and vinegar arrives. She wolfed it down, and minutes later we were paying the tab to get to the show.

How were my dishes? Terrific. The empanada with Caremont chevre, jalapenos and applewood smoked ham chunks was delicious. The merguez with a habanero-cider chutney was delicious. The anchovies were as delicate as they could be. And I could only finish the empanada.  As I told the excellent hostess, one of these days I will remember to order half of what I want to order.

The real win there wasn't the food, however, it was the service. They took care of us in ways that will be sure to bring me back. Kudos.