Category: Life

Lessons I’ve learned through the school of hard knocks. This is my catch-all, miscellaneous category if you will, where I address topics that don’t quite fit into the other categories.

From your Valentine


The rose also has thorns.

 Happy Valentine’s Day! See, I didn’t forget about Valentine’s Day. A man is never allowed to forget Valentine’s Day. We get so many reminders in oh so many little ways, beginning in childhood with our mothers. This morning, I saw this reminder in my inbox from Encyclopedia Britannica:

Today is Valentine’s Day, the feast day of St. Valentine, a priest and physician who was martyred about AD 270 in Rome, and the tradition of exchanging greetings of love on Valentine’s Day is based on the legend that Valentine had signed a letter to his jailer’s daughter, with whom he had fallen in love, “from your Valentine.”

I’m sure that the author/poster of this almanac entry was a woman sending every man a not so subliminal reminder. Any man in a relationship who forgets Valentine’s Day is in big trouble. Especially after all the constant reminders. But how does a holiday like Valentine’s Day begin in the first place? This holiday is based on an old legend that has somehow miraculously survived to this day to cause a lot of angst among men in relationships. How? Well, you can thank Hallmark for that! They needed another holiday for people to buy cards. ¡Voila! Hallmark resurrects St. Valentine! That’s capitalism at work rearing its ugly head. And then the florists, jewelers, and the confectionaries got in on the action, too.

But it’s not just about making money. It’s also about expressing love. And what better way to do it than with jewelry, flowers, chocolate, and Hallmark Valentine’s Day cards? Most men dread Valentine’s Day, so I wonder what happens in a relationship between two men. Do they both forget about Valentine’s Day and each one hopes that his partner doesn’t bring it up? And what about two women in a relationship? Do they both go overboard buying each other gifts?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

DDR

Milestones


Seated: Danny, Rick, Delia, Jerry. Standing: David, Diego, Joey.

Our lives are marked by many milestones. The most easily recognized milestones are birthdays. I don’t really remember any of my birthdays until I reached the age of five. Five was such a magical number for me. Just ask William Carlos Williams about the number five and you’ll see what I mean. Five was special because a nickel was worth five cents (obviously) and that would buy me a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup when I was five. Then there was a long dry spell before I reached the next milestone of ten. It sure felt much longer than five years! Probably because I would tell people my age by half years: “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m seven and a half!” But when I turned ten, I had hit double digits. I felt grown up. So grown up that I talked my mother into buying an electric guitar and amplifier that I promised to learn to play but never did.

Thirteen was another important milestone because, suddenly, practically overnight it seems, I became a teenager. Being a teenager was cool! My sixteenth birthday meant I could take driver’s ed. I felt like I was really moving up in the world. I was sixteen and I had my driver’s license! Of course, I couldn’t drive because I didn’t have a car, and no one was foolish enough to let me drive their car. I wouldn’t drive a car until I turned eighteen and I bought my own car. Eighteen was a very memorable milestone for me, too. I also had to register for the draft, and I was sure I would get drafted and have to go to Viet Nam! So, I enjoyed life as much as possible before I was drafted, even though President Nixon had stopped the draft and no one was getting drafted anymore, but I was convinced that I would somehow get drafted anyway. Nonetheless, I was an adult with voting privileges.

Nineteen was also memorable because that’s when the state of Illinois, in its infinite wisdom, lowered the drinking age to nineteen for beer and wine. Let’s just say that I communed with the spirits on weekends to unwind from the long week of work at the peanut butter factory. When state legislators realized they had made a mistake in lowering the drinking age, they raised it back up to twenty-one again. But not before I turned –Tada! –twenty-one! I take pride in having planned my date of birth so precisely. Twenty-one meant I was an adult for real. Even if I would never get drafted. You would think that there would be no more milestones after twenty-one, but then you would think wrong! As all male drivers under twenty-five know, surviving your own reckless driving habits to live to your twenty-fifth birthday grants you the privilege of seeing your auto insurance drop dramatically.

Then the milestones were no longer significant. Thirty? The big three-oh? Thirty was so anti-climactic after seeing my auto insurance rates drop. Forty? What a yawn! I celebrated by taking a nap. And don’t even ask me about turning fifty. So, stop asking me already. I forgot all about my fiftieth birthday until my sons reminded me that we usually go out for dinner and the movie of my choice for my birthday. Do I know how to celebrate or what?

Now, I hate it when people ask me my age. And not because I’m embarrassed about my age. I enjoy being my age and I never try to appear younger than I really am, but please don’t ask me my age. That involves math. How old am I? Let’s see. This is 2010 minus 1956, the year of my birth. That makes me … Oh, I hate doing math. That’s why I majored in literature! After twenty-one, I stopped keeping track of my age. Age became just a number to me–an unknown variable that I didn’t want to calculate! Why do I need to know my own age anyway? If I go to the liquor store for a bottle of wine and the clerk asks me if I’m old enough to drink, I just hand him or her my driver’s license and say, “You figure it out.” Now that I think of it, why am I still being carded?

My next milestone–and one that I look forward to seeing–is my 100th birthday. Triple digits! I hope you will read my blog entry on that incredibly special occasion!

DDDR

WordPress.com on my iPhone App


This is me experimenting on my iPhone.

This is me experimenting on my iPhone. I use it for everything except making phone calls. Sometimes when it rings, I have trouble answering it by the second ring. So, I downloaded this WordPress App and I’m trying it out now. I really love blogging and now I’ll be able to blog anywhere! So, this was just a test. Had this been an actual post, you’d probably be disappointed.

DDR

J’adoube


My former blog at http://chicago60643.wordpress.com

I’ve worked really hard on my new blog. Actually, it’s my old blog, but I’m updating it a little bit. I never did like my old title of David Diego Rodríguez, Ph.D. It just seemed too vain and oh so pompous. But that’s also exactly what I liked about that title. With this new blog, I wanted a new title, so I changed it to Estados Unidos Mexicanos. At the top, I have placed a picture of my Mexican passport. I like the ambiguousness of the title the United States becomes Estados Unidos in Spanish. Since I was a boy, I have always known that the official name of México is really los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. In the U.S., it’s just Mexico, without an accent mark. So, I like the title because I like to write about mexicanos in los Estados Unidos, and that includes both countries. 

If you think this blog is schizophrenic, I will correct you and insist that it’s multifaceted! Yes, I know that it’s titled Estados Unidos Mexicanos, but it’s located at chicago60643 at wordpress.com. Of course, the four categories of this blog have a tenuous relationship to each other. You’re probably wondering how Life 101, Chicago, Mexicans, and Spanish Lessons all are related to one another. Actually, I have written several blog posts that could fall under any one of the four categories! 

However, I have a confession to make. I don’t like the new title, either! But I can’t think of a good title for this blog. Perhaps one of my longtime readers may have a suggestion or two. Please be gentle! Part of the problem is that I write about whatever comes to mind, regardless of its relevance to reality or current events. Well, my blog ID does locate me in Chicago on the South Side. And I’m damn proud of that! All the other good IDs I wanted were already taken. I’m surprised I was able to get this ID. I mean, who wouldn’t want chicago60643 for a blog ID? So, I snatched it up! 

For a while, I toyed with the idea of having several blogs, one for each different category about which I write. But then the organization of maintaining several sites became unbearable. I want my blog to be fun for me. I don’t need another burden in my life. In fact, now that I think of it, I use my blog as therapy. This is a place where I can kick off my shoes, let down my hair, and soak in my imaginary beauty bubble bath to disseminate my innermost thoughts to the world. Whether they asked for them or not. I feel a renewed psychic cleansing with each new blog post. I really can’t speak for my readers, though. I enjoy writing, so I don’t worry that much about whether or not anyone actually reads my blog. 

Lately, I’ve been going back to previous entries and categorizing, tagging, and editing them. This is a very time-consuming process! But all the same, it’s also very therapeutic. And I am such a perfectionist, too. My students accuse me of having OCD. If it doesn’t come out right the first time, I repeat the process repetitively, redundantly, and repetitively. So get used to it! I mean repetitiveness and redundancy. I’ll do it over and over again repeatedly. There I did it again! 

Oh, yes, the title. I used to play chess religiously in high school. Even though I no longer play chess, I constantly think in chess terms or strategy. Or I just plain think about chess. So, I want to say to all my readers: J’adoube. Meaning, I say, “J’adoube,” as in I’m adjusting a chess piece and therefore, I am not required to moved it. J’adoube! I’m adjusting my blog. But I may or may not move it in the future. It’s my move. You’ll just have to wait to see what I’ll do! 

DDR

WordPress.com


WordPress: The iPhone App!

So, I’m using an updated version of WordPress.com. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. I used to post my blog on my website at http://davidrodriguez.us using WordPress blogging software that I kept on my website. It worked fine for the first two years or so. Then one day, my comments section was filled with spam. Beaucoup spam! One spam message left in a comment was so long that my blog never finished loading. And I couldn’t log into my own account and update my blog. Or remove all the spam. This happened to me again. Two more times, in fact. Whenever I contacted my ISP, I was told to contact WordPress. The last incident caused me to stop blogging for months! At first, I thought, “I broke the Internets!” 

Another problem I had was upgrading the WordPress software to my website. My ISP didn’t automatically upgrade the software even though they provided me with the original version. I only attempted one upgrade and my blog was down for about a month. Somehow, mysteriously, I accidentally deleted my entire website! After hours of reading WordPress documentation and multiple attempts to install the new software, I finally had my blog up and running again. That was my one and only WordPress upgrade. I swore to never upgrade again. Now that I’m using this new version of WordPress software, I realize I was lacking many features and widgets that I now take for granted. I love the way new features, themes, and widgets mysteriously appear without me having to upgrade.  

If you look at my archives list, there is a huge gap between June 2009 and January 2010. That was the period when I didn’t know what to do about my blog that had been hijacked. And I was really in the mood to blog! I tried other blogs, but I liked the WordPress features the best. I did open an account at WordPress in 2008 when I was previously locked out of my own blog, but I never actually used it. Finally, I told myself, I want to start blogging again. I really missed blogging! And now I’m blogging, as you can well see.  

So, here I am back blogging with WordPress. I like all the features available. My current blog already strongly resembles my old blog. Okay, so I’m a little resistant to change. I mean, I’m not very pliable. Except for all those new widgets that I’ve added to the right column of the blog. I also like the way my blog appears on my iPhone. When I open my blog on the iPhone, it’s so much easier to read than in the regular browser. It’s so much more manageable. I also like the WordPress App that’s available for my iPhone.  I plan to use it very soon.  

But I promise that my current blog will be of the exact same high quality as ever. And, of course, you remember how low high I set the bar before, right? Well, I can’t vouch for the quality, but I can guarantee you quantity. Much more than you ever asked for. My goal is to write a blog entry every day for a month. Okay, I picked February because it’s the shortest month of the year, much to the consternation of African Americans who were awarded February for Black History Month. And since this isn’t a leap year, I should easily be able to write twenty-eight blog posts. Right? I sure hope so!