Flash forward, flash back.

It's a strange thing about last night's post. Today on my way home, I was behind a pickup truck with bumper stickers of the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Bob Marley and Bob Dylan...and one that read "I brake for anything BUT a liberal". Are these people severely conflicted or just totally clueless?

The boss has been on vacation this week, which means it's been quiet. Any work that's come across my desk has gotten done in record time because it's been so easy to work without a foot up my ass. Aside for a couple choppy moments, it's been smooth sailing. However, this afternoon I went into hyper cover my own ass mode; making sure everything was in it's place for when the big man comes back and freaks right out...not because anything's wrong, just because he's been out of the loop for a week.

Tonight, I'm laying low. I'm gonna clean up the apartment, catch up on my DVR, and re-watch Clerks before I see the sequel tomorrow.

Last night, it dawned on me that Monday was my Dad's birthday. He would have been 54 years old this year. Trying to fall asleep last night I got to thinking about the impact he made on my life. It's been almost eighteen years since he passed, and it's been everything I found out about him after he died that's made a bigger impact than the 12 years I had with him before then.

I'm turning thirty in just a few weeks, and I'm still learning for these lessons my father left behind. His infidelity to my mother shaped my attitude towards relationships. In that case, I vowed never to give into temptation when I'm involved with someone, which has been a tight rope because in hindsight many the relationships I've been faithful to were never strong or "real" enough to warrant that policy. I finished college, something he never did, and in a field that he would've loved to be a part of. And as hard as I am on myself most of the time, I take pride in the fact that my Dad would be proud of me if he was here today.

This September, on the anniversary of his death, I'm gonna take a little road trip and visit his grave and the place he crashed his hang glider, causing his death. The ramp he launched from that day is now overgrown with trees, all the souvenir shops (not because of the hang gliding ramp, mind you) around it have long since closed, and Mt. Gaylor is now a ghost town. The fences they put up to keep people off the launch ramp have been beat down and if memory serves, is littered with discarded beer cans, no doubt from teenagers. Not many people pass by there nowadays, and none of them know the story of what happened there 18 years ago.