Hottest styles, every shoe, every color discusses the impact of television on a child’s sense of style and dress.

Cruise on over and add your 2 pence!

Hi, My Name is Thomas and I’m a Mommy-Blogger is the obligatory introductory post.

Are You At Your Mother’s House? is the first in what will be an unknown number of posts related to the challenges of having a 9 year old living in two households with two sets of rules.

Go check them out, along with the other parenting blogs, TummyTime for expecting parents, CuddleBugs for parents of infants and toddlers and Realiteen for parents of teenagers. And don’t forget to check out the other TweenBeat writer, Adrienne Osborn.

It’s a move I’ve called sexist, ignorant and foolish.

Certainly, moms have a particular perspective on raising children. Certainly, in Jacksonville and Onslow County moms have to deal with particular issues that other moms (you know, the non-married-to-military kind) don’t. But, also certainly, dads have particular perspectives.

Dads in Onslow County deal with particular issues that other dads (you know, the non-military and non-married-to-military kind) don’t. Further, some  dads are dealing with being a “part-time” dad, whether it’s because of military deployments, separation or divorce and some dads are single parents.

Dads in these circumstances (in all circumstances, really…) are not just being ignored by Onslow Memorial, but relegated to a completely secondary role as a parent in most of American society. That’s pretty jacked up, isn’t it?

Back to Onslow Memorial’s search for bloggers…

I thought about sending in my own application and qualifications through their online form, but I imagine that I’d either be completely ignored (though, interestingly enough, there’s no “gender” box) or accused of fraud or…Something. Either way, it probably wouldn’t work out well for me. Instead, I’ll copy/paste the questions and answer them here. Follow the jump for the “application”.

Below are the questions from Onslow Memorial Hospital. My answer will be added as an indented bullet.

• Which blog would you like to write for? Check all that apply.
• TummyTime
• CuddleBugs
• TweenBeat
• RealiTeen
• TweenBeat (described as: “Conversations for, by and about Mothers of Kids 6-12”). Mini is 9 going on 16. It’s something I’m not looking forward to, but I seem to have been left out of the decision process on this.
• Have you contributed to any blogs in the past? Please describe briefly.
• I have indeed contributed to blogs in the past. In addition to having been the primary writer on three blogs (Brock Log was my first attempt at blogging; Onslow County Politics was my attempt at blogging local politics; and Bloviations, my current blog in which I cover just about anything), I’ve contributed to BlueNC, the foremost progressive/Democratic blog in NC. I also participate in many other blogs by way of comments.
• Are you currently writing and/or editing for any blogs? If so, please describe briefly.
• I am currently writing a blog. My blog is titled Bloviations (http://blogs.brocknet.net/blovations). I use this blog to write about my life, local events, local, state and national politics and just about any and everything else. I act as a webmaster/editor for several blogs in the BrockNet family, the premier blog is Eriepressible (http://blogs.brocknet.net/eriepressible).
• What is your previous writing experience?
• I have extensive writing experience as a blogger, as detailed above. I also have experience as a writer of government letters, awards, reports and training curricula over a nearly-14 year career in the United States Marine Corps, in and out of uniform.
• Submit 300 word autobiography.
• My biography is here. If I were submitting the online form, I’d paste it.
• Submit sample blog entry #1. Each entry should be at least 300 words.
• Interview: Delmer Asks Me Questions – If I were submitting the online form, I’d paste excerpts and links.
• Submit sample blog entry #2. Each entry should be at least 300 words.
• An Assortment of Dissociated and Disjointed Thoughts – If I were submitting the online form, I’d paste excerpts and links.
• Submit sample blog entry #3. Each entry should be at least 300 words.
• It’s not the worst day imaginable, but man, it’s been close. – If I were submitting the online form, I’d paste excerpts and links.

That’s my application to be a mommy-blogger for Onslow Memorial Hospital. Not that it matters, because I’m not a mommy…

The subject of her post, cyber stalking, is something I’ve never had to deal with, as I have always written online by my given name. I do so for two reasons:

• I believe it lends more creditibility to my writing
• It requires that I think a little more about what I write

There is, though, a risk associated to writing by name and, to be completely honest, I really hadn’t considered it before I began writing. By using my name, I’ve placed myself in the public view. People of “authority” read my blog. Media outlets (Hi JDNewsers!), City of Jacksonville staff and, even, folks at the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate have visited and read my writing. This means that the people I’m closest to (Mini and AM) could become targets of their attacks (should any of them decide to do so). When I first posted at the Brock Log, I had never thought any of that possible.

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never been victim of “cyber stalking” or it’s real world counter-part as a result of my online writing. I’ve been even more fortunate that my friends and family have been spared any sort of stalking.

It’s not something I’ve really worried about in the past…But now, as I become more public, it’s something I have to consider and be more watchful.

Delmer’s questions, and my answers, are below.

You have recently taken up bicycling as your only (primary?) way of getting around. What inspired you to do this?

Mostly, it was the cost. Car payment, car insurance, fuel and maintenance adds up, you know. But, I’ll admit now, since it’s just between us, that there’s more to it. I think it was a bit of “mid-life crisis.” I needed to do something to drastically shake my life up. I couldn’t relocate (I need to be close to Mini, not to mention AM), career change would be limiting as I live in the service-industry center of the universe (and I wouldn’t make a good Hooters girl) and I’ve never been one for small sporty cars. My weight was at an all-time high (hovering at 200lbs). I was constantly stressed and just wasn’t having fun. I’d had the bike for just at a year and barely ridden it, so I decided to try it and realized riding the 6 1/2ish miles wasn’t bad. And then, I realized how much better I really felt after riding. It was a no-brainer then. I’ve lost 10ish lbs since August, my blood pressure is way down, I feel better and I generally don’t freak out about as much stuff as I had been. It’s still the right choice for me.

Regarding your bicycling activities: What kind of bike do you ride? Have you calculated money saved by riding a bike vs. driving a car. What do you wear on your commute to work (do you wear street clothes or Lycra and then change at work?).  Do you do anything to “freshen up” when you get to where you’re going? (I wear Lycra and change after the sweat evaporates a bit; I also wipe off some.  After the lunchtime ride (which I take late) I don’t do anything … I just try to stay away from people.) [This probably seems like more than a single question – I took the liberty of counting it as a single “themed” question.]

I ride a 2007 Trek 7.3FX hybrid. It’s not my dream bike (which is tied between a Trek 520 or Surly Long Haul Trucker), but it gets me where I need to be and I’m mostly comfortable (I’ve got some hand issues to work through on long distance rides, but I’ve got a plan).

I haven’t really compared the cost of riding to the cost of driving since it’s really not an either/or situation for me.

My dress for riding depends on the weather. If it’s comfortable (50ish or above), I wear mountain biking shorts and either long-sleeved or short sleeve athletic shirts. The shorts have a spandex inner lining with a chamois and a nylon outter shell. (This keeps me from having to wear the standard spadex cycling shorts and causing mass-nausea.) The athletic shirts wick sweat away and dry pretty quickly. I’d like to add some wool jerseys to my closet, but they’re pretty expensive for me. During the cooler weather, I’ve been wearing spandex riding shorts under nylon wind-pants with the long-sleeved athletic shirts and fleece or jacket over that. I wear fleece gloves (I need a better solution) and a fleece beanie or Atlanta Braves baseball cap under my helmet. I’ve recently found some wool socks (merino smart wool) and have been quite happy wearing them in cold to warm weather.

I have the benefit of a locker for clothing and stuff in my office and a shower in my building, so I do the complete clean-up before my workday begins. I haven’t taken a lunch-time or mid-day ride, but will be running during my lunch-breaks soon. I’ll still have benefit of the shower. Even though I’m clean, I prefer to stay away from people. It’s just safer for everyone that way.

Have you had any close calls – that is, have you been hit or almost hit – while tooling around on your bicycle?

I’ve never had a close-enough to reach-out-and-touch-a-car call…But I’ve had my share of jacksonvillians pull out in front of me, turn without looking and those folks that to try to push me off the road. There’s only two run-ins that I can vividly recall.

The first was pretty early in my commuting. An older heavier woman in a car yelled “Hey! Fuck YOU!” at me from across an intersection while I was making a perfectly legal left-turn. I still remember how shocked and hurt I was from that incident.

The second was not that long ago. I was stopped on the road’s shoulder at a Stop Sign. As I was about to start a left-turn, a pickup truck (driven by a Marine) completely blew past through the intersection. It appears that he needed to get to the Aikido studio that was just a bit ahead. I followed the truck and informed the driver that he would’ve hit me had I not noticed the headlights and halted my left turn. There was no real confrontation, but the guy didn’t even apologize for nearly putting me in a deadly-serious predicament.

As it is hard for me to come up with five sort-of original thoughts so close together, I’ve borrowed this next question from James Lipton of “Inside the Actor’s Studio”:  What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

My dream profession is to writer. Newspaper or magazine articles, books (not that I have any interesting stories or viewpoints for anyone to read), even poetry (I’ve recently written a haiku, you’ll be happy to know). Heck, I’d be happy writing speeches for other people to give. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a lawyer. I always imagined myself to be (what I know now) is an Alan Shore-ish sort of guy…Just shorter and less attractive. I’d be the guy taking the goofy or obviously-going-to-lose cases. Of course, in my imagination, I always won.

It has been said, and this applies to blog posts, that nobody wants to know what you had for lunch. This is not true as I’m always curious about what people eat and enjoy seeing pictures posted of meals. I’d like to know what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner recently (I realize, depending upon when you read this, that you may not have had time to throw back three meals today – any three over the last two days will work.)

Two days ago, on Wednesday, I had a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast. It was from the newly installed snack bar in my office building. Last night, I had turkey, cheese, guacamole sandwiches on croissant rolls. Today, my lunch was turkey, cheese and guacamole sandwich on a hoagie roll with macaroni and potato salads. 

Finally, and I’m reminded of this as we’re so close to the inauguration … boxers or briefs? [This probably seems like question Six of Five. It is, but it should be an easy one.]

In normal clothes, boxers. I haven’t worn anything else since boot camp in 1996. If I’m riding, I go au naturale in my riding shorts.

That’s the interview. If any of you are interested in questions from me, let me know in comments or by email.

The House Diaries will be about the day-to-day life of a house in Mayberry and the people that live within.

So, you know, check it out and stuff.

It was cold (30’s in the mornings) on the rides in and cool and windy on the rides home. I wore my biking shorts under sweat-pants, athletic T-shirt under a sweat shirt under a fleece under a wind-breaker on the coldest days and left the jacket off when it wasn’t so cold. My hands were toasty under a set of non-cycling fleece gloves and I got a $4 fleece beanie for under the helmet. That and two pairs of socks (though I bought some thick thermal socks this weekend) seemed to do the trick.

The week’s mileage is just over 65 miles. The stats, they are below:

You’ll notice, no doubt, the conspicuous absence of any recreational riding. Mostly it’s because it was chilly in the evenings, but also because AM rode to work two days. Hopefully, we’ll get some recreational riding in this weekend and in the coming week (even though darkness will be coming earlier as Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday morning).

Beginning in January my commute is going to grow to just over 11 miles. I’m moving offices (Yes…Again…For the third time in 3 years) from the Russell Marine and Family Services building back to the MEF Headquarters building (I previously worked there when I was in the USMC). I’m kind of excited about the increase in daily mileage. There’s going to be some definite changes in the bike, though. More on that later.

We got Dexter neutered and had his shots updated.

We voted. Early voting is really easy and takes very little time. There really is no excuse, folks. Please, go vote.

We set up AM‘s bike so that she can ride to work. Mostly this consisted of me wrapping bungee cords around her (bicycle’s) rack so that she could secure a backpack to it and getting her reard red-blinky onto the left chainstay more securely. You should go congratulate her because yesterday was her first commute-by-bike. Hopefully, she’ll blog about her experience.

We took Mini to the park on Sunday. There were lots of people and kids and puppies there. It was a good time, I think.

You may have noticed that I toyed with publishing “Tweet-Digests” last week. I figured that nobody was really interested, so they’re gone. They were kind of annoying since most of my Tweets are either one-offs or responses. I don’t display the Tweet badge since room is limited on the side-bar, so go add me to your Twitter to get my stuff.

I received a call three weeks ago from the City of Jacksonville Clerk’s office. There’s a vacancy on the Trails and Greenways Commission and my application for City Advisory Boards/Commission is still active. The City Council will be voting on it at their November 5th meeting. I am actively lobbying for this appointment. I’ll be writing each Councilmember asking their support. If you’re interested in getting someone to the Trails and Greenways Commission that knows in a personal manner (I ride the Rails-to-Trails daily) the impact of the greenways and trails in Jacksonville, I’d appreciate your support.

I need to start taking pictures again…It’s been far too long since I’ve taken the camera out for a stroll…Maybe this weekend.

(Note from Thomas Brock: What follows is a guest post from Lindell Kay. Read more of Lindell’s writing at the Jacksonville Daily News and at his blog, Off the Cuff.)

My father, soon to be 79, has only one testicle. He has never disclosed to me exactly how that came about. In fact, it took me 30 years to find out where he picked up the long purple scar that stretches across his stomach. He told me at various times he was bitten by a ‘gator in Vietnam and bayoneted by a communist in Korea. The truth, I found, was less thrilling – doctors removed his appendix many decades ago.

My father’s one testicle is gigantic. Not surprising, Kay men have always been know for their large cojones, literally and metaphorically. And my father’s limited testicles count never interfered with his libido. I am the
youngest of eight children and there have long been whispers of several big-balled Vietnamese kids running around Da Nang in the years after my father’s tour of duty.

So why am I telling y’all all of this? Because I wanted to tell you about a visit my father recently had to his doctor’s office. To fully appreciate that tale, you need some background.

He had an appointment with a new physician and had to wait in the aptly named waiting room for about an hour. My father had his prostrate cut out about 15 years ago and has to make frequent trips to the little boys room.

Around 48 minutes into the wait, my father had to go. Now here is another slightly weird family secret  admission necessary to tell this story. Kay men like to sit down to urinate. It has not been fully explored whether it is the exhausting endeavor of lugging around large gonads all day that forces us to sit on the can, but it has long been suspected.

Now we don’t sit down in most public restrooms, at least I don’t. Thank God for urinals. But at home and in other clean bathrooms we usually take a seat.

One last necessary fact – my father has a ridiculously stretched out scrotum. He told me his one gigantic  nut dangles like a bowling ball hanging inside a plastic shopping sack.

So my father did his business in the bathroom and was called into see the doctor. As soon as he doc examined my father, he started ordering tests and asked whether my father felt OK.

My father asks what’s wrong and the doctor points down at my father’s genitals and says, “You don’t know? Take a look, man!”

My father looked down and panicked when he saw his entire sack had turned blue. He said he felt lightheaded and had to sit down.

“I thought I was a goner,” he told me.

Then it finally donned on him that the bowl on which he sat in doctor’s bathroom had blue cleaner in the toilet water. My father’s scrotum had been died blue.

When he relayed this story to me I told him I HAD to put it on my blog. Then he asked what a blog was and I tried to explain it to him.

“And people read that crap?” He asked incredulously.

Good grief. Everyone’s a critic…

Create some pictures of Jacksonville — this fair town that I know so little about. These pictures may be illustrated personally or by a close loved one. Use any medium you like, but preferably they’ll be in those listed earlier (pens, crayons, markers, pastels, paints, et cetera). Let’s make the palette a 8-inch by 11-inch piece of paper, or standard letter-size dimentions [SIC]. Feel free to go smaller, but not larger.

He’s even offering an interesting array of prizes (I’ve quoted the text, but there are images in his post):

My favorite coffee mug with smile logos. Retail value: 50 cents

Sand I collected from Wrightsville Beach and stored in a strawberry jam jar. Retail value: Priceless

One Freedom Communications water bottle. Retail value: $2.99

One Maxmag.com keychain. Retail value: $7.99

Your artwork placed at the top of the blog as a regular item at “Lost in J-Town.”

The contest runs from September 6th to the 20th. Winners will be announced on September 30th. Submissions can be sent by USPS or email or hand-delivered.

Snail Mail:       The Daily News co/Phillip Ameling, “Lost in J-Town”
                       P.O. Box 196
                       Jacksonville, N.C., 28541
E-mail:            pameling(at)freedomenc.com
Drop off:         The Daily News at 724 Bell Fork Road, Jacksonville.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to enter anything, but it certainly sounds like a fun idea!