Find a Way to Do a Little Towards Your Goal

Last night I was feeling terrible. I had stayed home due to sinuses but I had on my workout schedule to go run. I really wasn’t feeling up to it, but I knew that if I didn’t go, I would be setting myself back. I needed to do something, at least a little, so when [...]

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The pleasures of a lantern candle holder

I picked this up on Sunday: a simple pressed metal lantern with all the sides enclosed. It is designed to hold a candle of a decent size. The one seen burning here is rated for 35 hours. However, I didn’t get it for the light it puts out, which is relatively little. Rather, by using [...]

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We All Need Help

I remember the aftermath very well. I had two very hard finals on the same day. The one in the morning was quantum physics. The one in the afternoon was mathematical modeling. I had exams nearly every exam period that semester because I was carrying 30 semester hours in order to complete a double major [...]

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Veterans Day

I’ve always been around the military. I was born a Marine brat. I went to The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. There I was in USAF ROTC. And there I signed a contract for a full technical scholarship so that I would be commissioned a second lieutenant in the USAF. On June 13, [...]

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You Don’t Have to Have Money to Help

Friday night my wife and I talked about my upcoming hair donation. I have grown my hair out a number of times for Locks of Love. I’ve been told hair grows at a rate of about half an inch a month. For Locks of Love, the ponytail must be at least 10 inches long. That [...]

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A Tribute to One of My Heroes

Saturday evening, one of my heroes passed away. SSgt. Everette Stanley McDonald, USMC, Ret., was the uncle of my beautiful wife. He was a Marine, a fire fighter, and a police officer. He was a Vietnam veteran, a drill instructor, and a leader of men. He was also simply, “Uncle Stanley.” The first time I [...]

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Physical Fitness: Start Slow and Build Up

Getting back into shape has been hard, especially with my allergies. There are weeks at a time when I’m fighting sinuses badly enough that attempting to do anything cardio related just seems like a bad idea. I know, because I was in this sort of situation my last couple of years in the USAF, from [...]

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You Are Capable of More Than You Think

I received an email the other day from a friend of mine who is seemingly overwhelmed by what life has thrown him. He has responsibilities in one arena, but he’s trying to take care of an important situation in another. As a result, he is focusing more in that secondary arena and saying he’ll get [...]

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Identify What Keeps Things in Perspective

At The Citadel, we quickly learned that as a freshman (or knob in Citadel language) tomorrow could be much, much worse than today. However, there were a few points during the year which you could look to a progress, as evidence that you were surviving. The first of these was when you first reported. The [...]

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Handling the Unexpected

There’s an old military maxim which states: “No plan survives first contact.” This is very true, because when the shooting starts, you don’t know who is going to go down, what the enemy might have that your intelligence didn’t know about, or how the terrain might be different than what you expected. In our daily [...]

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