Numbers

I've been fighting a head cold for a few days now but managed to get myself off the couch long enough yesterday to go get a haircut. As I was surveying the finished product, I couldn't help but notice the seemingly sudden increase in grey hairs scattered about the top of my head. This isn't a new phenomenon, I noticed my first greys almost 20 years ago, on the day I graduated high school.

Anyway, I thought that the new greys I thought made me look more like my dad, except substituting my brown hair for his black hair, and my next thought was that this must be what fatherhood does to men in my family. Then there was my 3rd thought that stopped me in my tracks:

When I was the age that my daughter is now, my dad was in his early 50s.

What? That's insane! Who raised a toddler in their freaking 50s??

I was stunned. I'm still stunned. I turn 38 this year (that's the first time I could bring myself to state THAT tidbit in public) and I'm always thinking how much my kiddo, and I love her to death, wears me out sometimes, but how did my dad manage? I had always been...impressed? with the stat of my dad being 20 yrs older than my mom, that when my mom was born my dad was fighting in the Korean War, but for some reason this one seems to squash all of them.

And then there was a 4th thought.

When I was the age my daughter is now, my dad had less than 10 years to live. Yikes.

He died about halfway between my 15th and 16th birthday, at the age of 60, on the Friday of the first week of my sophomore year of high schools. Exactly 6 weeks after being diagnosed with inoperable lung/brain cancer.

Cancer also took his father, several years after. In some ways, I kind of feel pre-destined to be at least prone to getting it myself, but on the other hand, I feel like I'm living somewhat healthier than they ever did. My grandfather drove Greyhound buses across the country for years and enjoyed his adult beverages before quitting cold turkey when he retired. My dad smoked for decades before quitting cold turkey. I've never smoked a cigarette in my life and I've never drank as regularly as I've heard my grandfather did.

Still, I've got things I need to work on, and I guess this year is as good as any to start. I want to be around for awhile. Longer than 10 more years, longer than age 60. Unlike my dad, I want see my kiddo graduate high school & college. See her get married & have kids. My dad would've loved his granddaughter & vice-versa.

It's really weird how one thing can turn into 7 other things. How a haircut brings you face to face with mortality. And so it goes.

Stuck in a moment...

Having one of those moments where I feel like I want to write...something, but not really sure what. Turns out there are web-based generators of "blog post ideas" (of course there is, why wouldn't there be SOMETHING on the internet?) so I gave it a spin and it threw out stuff like "Why I hate Barney Miller" and "The future of Jeff Buckley."

Ok.

First off, there is absolutely nothing to hate about Barney Miller, so I tuned out right there. Hal Linden is a damned treasure. A TREASURE.

I reckon I could ramble on a bit about Twitter since that's the most likely way anyone who reads this besides me would find their way here, as I still haven't mentioned this adventure to anyone yet but threw a link to it on my twitter background, so here goes:

Twitter is probably my favorite social medium, because it's the one I use as sort of a free-for-all. I limit Facebook to mostly friends and family, people who are known to me. To be fair, I've had the chance to meet several (upwards of 20) people from Twitter in person, mostly over beers, and they're all fairly relieved to find out I'm not a murderer, I suppose. On Twitter I follow and have followers from a somewhat diverse subset of people - TV/Movie fandoms, Soccer fans, craft brewing aficionados, and fellow followers of certain sporting concerns. It's kind of like sitting in the world's biggest cafeteria and finding the people with similar interests or something interesting to say. I work at home, so it's replaced the social interaction I used to get from the workplace, but it also allows for some pretty cool asynchronous conversations as well.

I'm fairly active on Instagram and I thought I'd be all over Vine once it went live for Android, but not so much yet, if ever. Hell, I'm only 3 posts into this so far and already struggling!

And tired. So...goodnight!

Whoa.

Whoa.

A second post, less than 24 hours after the first, and likely last one? There hasn't been this much mindbending outside of the old GI Joe cartoons!

Filler done, now for...content? Sure.

I guess I could do an "About Me" sort of post, although it kind of seems like writing about myself is the surest sign that I don't have anything else to write about. Then again, that's pretty much true, so here goes...

I'm north of 35 but south of 40. Married, with a daughter. Born and raised in Florida, now living in Sarasota. I've never seen snow. I'm a teacher, for a virtual program, so I work from home. Live in the south, like beer and sports, and joined a fraternity in college but the image that conjures in your imagination is far, far from the truth. Far. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar.

Continuing...massive sci fi & comedy fan, especially when the two are combined. Could live for a long time on a diet consisting of Firefly, Doctor Who, Monty Python, Douglas Adams, and Eddie Izzard. Most of that stuff is British, not sure if that means anything. Also a big fan of Sherlock, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad & Sleepy Hollow.

Politics and religion? I have my sets of beliefs in both areas but doubt I'll ever discuss either here. If your beliefs are the same, that's cool. If they aren't, that's cool too. I have no interest in changing yours and hope that is reciprocated.

I'm in a shape, just not the one I probably should be in. Working on that, vaguely. Did a couple 5k races this year - Warrior Dash, Color Me Rad, and Disney's Happy Haunted 5k Trail Race. Had a lot of fun with those, looking fwd to more next year, but nothing definite yet.

I've gotten back into tabletop games a lot over the last two years. Love stuff like Munchkin, Quao & Mad Quao, Fluxx, CAH, etc.

I'm on Twitter at @mattcox & Instagram at _matthewcox_

That's everything off the top of my head, so now my head looks even odder than usual, I suppose...

Space Monkey Mafia

At this point in my life, there's only two reasons or times I ever get this far along in the "I should start a blog" thinking - either it's late at night in the middle of a vacation or I'm alone in the house for at least an entire day and have already cleaned my desk. Well, it's 2:30am on the 4th day of winter break, so if you had option one - winner, winner, chicken dinner.

I'm sure this will go the way of every other blog I've started, which means this will be the first and likely last post. Go ahead and print it out, or wait a year or so - it'll take me at least that long to delete this and start over.

Anyway, why a blog? Why now? Who in the seven hells still blogs anymore? Aren't all of the features of blogs broken up in several different social networks (also owned by Google) by now anyway? Sure. Probably. But I REALLY don't feel like a) going to bed or 2) cleaning my desk, so it's either this or watch Godfather 2.

Nah, I'll just go to bed. But I promise to write something sorta substantial later. Don't hold your breath, though. That's just unattractive.

See?