Sign

I didn't end up buying this sign for my house, because I didn't want to offend anyone. (Some of my friends don't play poker at all.)

Thought of the Week

I want to look back and be able to smile at my past. And know that I did all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
--Indigo Broderick

Returning to Baseline

I was struggling to to find the time, energy, and material to maintain my column on a weekly basis. So last month I decided to switch to monthly. Now, I feel like it has been way too long since I have posted. So I came up with a new solution.

I have intentionally tried to keep my blog from being typical. Although it is fine if you use your blog to update your life and post pictures of your kids being cute and talk about your vacation schedule. That is not the purpose of my blog. I wanted to maintain that it is meant to be for entertainment not personal information.

However, I am going to now revert to something more typical of most blogs. I'm going to post whenever the heck I have something to post about. Not weekly. Not monthly. But sporadically. I'll give this a shot for a while and see how it works. I'll keep you updated. The goals of the blog will be the same, but the frequency of posts will be a mystery. I'm returning to baseline.

I was told that variable intervals was the best form of reinforcement to increase desired behavior. So there you go. You'll hear back from me next... when you do.

Mid-Week Swindle

Slightly less than Secondary

Dear Sean and anyone else that is disappointed that I am not writing as frequently,

I do maintain a second blog; tertiarythoughts. On this blog I don't write on consistent basis. I don't always do things like proofread, nor do I always have an intended purpose for sharing. However, maybe it will help fill the void from me writing less on here.

Thanks Sean. Good to know at least one person misses the regularity of my column.

--Kevin

Hobby

We all had various hobbies while we were in college. I played poker, played ultimate Frisbee, watched stand-up comedy, and picked up hitchhikers walking home from jail. Typical college stuff.

I still remember how it all began. At first I just saw a few other students sitting at the bus stop and I offered them a ride back in to town. Then one day I saw a couple of guys walking the side of the road. They were young adult males, white, tattoos, one of them wearing a wife-beater. I remember trying to describe it to my girlfriend at the time and as I struggled for words, “they weren’t exactly the type of guys…” she interrupted, “that you should pick up.” I responded, “Well, I wouldn’t have wanted you to pick them up.”

They hopped in to my 1986 Nissan pick-up with extra cab. One of them had to sit sideways in the back on the little square that folded down to make something resembling a seat. So I asked them with complete sincerity where they were coming from, and they responded, “We just got out of jail.”

At this point I hadn’t even realized I had passed a jail, so I paused before continuing the conversation. How should I respond here? Do I ask, “What were you in for?” Either one of these guys was significantly bigger than me, and there were two of them. Did I really want to know what they were in for? But… we only live once.

Turned out they were just in for some graffiti misdemeanor, or so they claimed. That was the start of my inmate education. I learned the cab ride back to town cost about $20. The prison that I had seen on the other side of the highway that we had yet to pass was a completely different facility. Little did I know that on my 6.5-mile daily commute to school I passed a prison and a jail.

That began my hobby of giving rides to convicts. Maybe another time I can tell you about the kid getting transferred from one jail to the next, or the time I picked up a couple, or the guy in for skipping out on a restaurant bill, or the time I picked up a 300-pound guy and another 6’4” guy on the same day, or…

Click here to read more about the SLO prison.

Thought of the Week

Ever notice how "what the hell" is always the right answer?
--Marilyn Monroe

Two Halloween Pics

These were literally taken less than 2 days apart. I wasn't going to post pics of my costume, but after my sister commented on how much differently I looked at work on Monday I thought about it and thought it was pretty funny.