Casey's Just Sayin'

Step 1: Get fat. Step 2: Set up exercise program and diet for a bet at work. Step 3: Lose 30 pounds in three months, win $300 and gloat (in the humble way you have) about beating the pants off everyone else. Step 4: Enjoy Thanksgiving Step 5: Really enjoy Christmas Step 6: Get sick for a couple of weeks, stop worrying about calories and forget you own a treadmill. Step 7: Gain 8 of it back. What? Really? It’s true, I’m afraid. I can no longer pretend that I haven’t turned right back in to a slovenly sloth. (The slovenly part isn’t true. I just took a shower. Although I could use a shave. I just liked those two words together…. never mind.) So, what the hell? That was hard work. Am I just going to let it all go again? Criminy sakes, I’ve gained back almost 1/3 of the poundage that I originally lost. How is that possible. So, after I write this I’m breaking out the dusty treadmill and going at it again. I’m counting calories (retroactively today – that was scary) until ...

Have you ever thought about how much you work in a year? If I work 40 hours per week, year round, I’m working 2080 hours per year. We’ll subtract 240 hours per year for holidays and vacation and that leaves only 1,840 hours per year working. I have a graph that shows the U.S. average at 1,770, so that’s pretty close. I’m alive 8,760 hours per year. That means I work roughly 21% of the time I’m alive. If I sleep six hours per day I’m awake 6,570 hours a year. That means I work roughly 28% of the time I’m awake. That’s not terrible, considering what I do at work is funding everything my family does and everything I do outside of work, which is no small task. I have a short commute, a larger office and for the most part really like my compadres in arms. According to some shotgun web searches, workweek lengths vary according to what country you call home. Workweeks in the U.S. are about 40 hours. If you don’t like to work so much, try the Netherlands as they average about 25 hours ...

I’m going to blame this one on McDonald’s. They started it way back in 1971 when they told the world, “You deserve a break today.” Maybe I did deserve a break. I was only three, so probably a nap would have done the trick. What about my mom and dad? They were hard workers, raising a big family, trying to make ends meet. I’ll bet they deserved a break in 1971. Come to think of it, my mom was probably preggo with my little brother, so she definitely deserved a break, right? Here’s the problem: McDonald’s was talking to the whole damn world. That catchy tune was telling lazy bums, cruel bullies, sleazy perverts and otherwise dark individuals that they deserve something, that they had somehow earned special recognition. Now, 39 years later, the word “deserve” seems to pop up in every other ad. It’s ridiculous. It now officially means nothing. I hope it means nothing. I hope there aren’t ignorants out there who hear that they deserve the best possible rate on their car insurance...

So, I’m hoping one of you blog brains out there can shed some light on a new visitor phenomena on my blog. I’m used to 20-60 visits a day. Sometimes a little more, but not much. I can live with that. It’s not terrific, but at least I know SOMEONE is reading this stuff. All of a sudden I’m getting 175 to 200 hits a day. I’m jazzed at first and curious, of course, so I go to my statcounter.com and start digging in. Locations: The hits are from all over the world. So, OK, maybe I just took off in the former Soviet Union or something. Maybe I’m being translated somewhere now. I should really keep digging though. I don’t want to, but I should. So I start checking the length of the visit. Ah, this is interesting. Most of the visits over the last week have been for 0 seconds. That reeks of a computer doing the hitting. But it’s still from ISP addresses all over. How is that possible? Now I need to keep digging. How about checking what sites visitors came from? Ah, there it is. ...

What does it say about someone who has had several careers? Flighty? Inconsistent? Lack of patience? Unreliable? I don’t know, really. When it comes to the way I approach life I think I’m pretty stable overall. I think a lot of people rely on my fairly regularly and I come through for them. Is that just a need to be needed? Maybe. That’s OK. Everyone on this planet has an almost animal need to be needed. I can except that in myself. Anyway, I’m stable. Great. Good job Spence. But then we get to my work, what I do for a living. I’ve had five careers, not including writing, a quick gig at Taco Bell, a bit at a movie theater and a few months working the banquet rooms at the Red Lion Hotel. I won’t include writing until I can pay my bills with it. Right now it’s just a hobby... a dream... a... thing. So, five careers. First it was 5 years in radio. Started at 16 or 17 years old. So much fun. Loved it. I learned a lot about a lot in that first real gig of mine, not the le...

I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it looks good, like an old melodrama title for some community theatre play. You know, the kind that a local talent writes that is so full of everything they’ve ever wanted to say. They do that, I think, because in their heart of hearts, they truly believe that this is the last time anyone will ever see their work, ever pay attention to what they think is really important. Those eighty-seven people from the same town, eighty of them friends or family and the other seven so old they won’t remember anything about it the following day anyway. Really sad. So, what are the seven things bloggers blog about? What seven descriptive words will cover every blog ever written? Well, look, here they are now: Observation, Confession, Expression, Protestation, Exultation, Depression or Cracking Jokes. I think these are the main reasons people blog. But this is like saying that there are only seven story lines and that when we fiction writers create ...