Three Meals Any Bachelor Can Make

I’m almost 29 years old and have only been in two long term relationships. Since I was often a bachelor, and usually poor, I spent a lot of time perfecting the craft of preparing simple meals that fill me up even if they aren’t inherently impressive. Don’t get me wrong; I can cook a lasagna with the best of them, but whenever I was just cooking for myself, it never really made sense to throw that much effort into most meals (or to dirty that many dishes). More importantly, cooking even the simplest meals kept me from learning the names of every employee at Taco Bell.

“Just the usual?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Perfect sir. We have your family pack with a side of shame right here.” “….thank you.”

Running Tips for People Who Aren’t Runners

I’m a fairly big guy. Not huge, but at 5’10 and just over 200 lbs, no one seems to be overly surprised when I tell them that I played football in high school and rugby in/after college. However, many people seem a bit surprised when I tell them that I run on a (semi) regular basis. In middle school and high school, I ran track with my primary event being the half mile, but it wasn’t until a massive growth spurt during my junior year that I really began to look out of place during that event. There’s something about a 220 lb linebacker running next to 150 lb track stars that brings to mind images of an elephant running next to a herd of gazelle. In high school, I ran track to get in shape for football season. In college, I ran to keep in shape for rugby. But now, I’ve finally figured out that I kind of just like running. Rather than it being a means to an end, it has become something that I look forward to at the end of a day. Even though I identify myself as a not-a-runner (“No, I’m not a runner.”), I still have some completely inexpert, but practical, running advice for people who also aren’t runners.

The Five Stages of Packing to Move

For most of the last eleven years, I have lived in Newport News, Virginia. I went to college at Christopher Newport University, graduated with a master’s degree in teaching, and then began work the following fall at a local high school. In that time, I have lived in eleven different places (counting the dorms), which has made me a veritable expert on the packing and moving. As I prepare to move to North Carolina and take the next big step in my life, I am again reminded of all the wonders that moving brings, like the “can I fit that in my car?” challenge, or the decisions about whether or not I like ____ enough to make it worth packing and lugging to a new place. And of course, there is my personal favorite game: “can these make a meal? I don’t want to move food. Scrambled eggs and Brussel sprouts are probably fine together.” As much fun as the whole packing things is, the tediousness of the task can only be described as a process.

Stage 1: Denial

“I’m not moving until the end of the month, and it is only the 20th! I have plenty of time.”

In the first stage of moving, there is plenty of time for everything. No need to rush when you have nearly a fortnight left to transfer all of your stuff to a new place. This is when you “plan” how you are going to pack the copious amounts of junk that you have acquired since your arrival in your current living situation. About this time, you also begin to really think about how daunting the task will really be; a fact which you promptly put out of your mind since that is an issue that future you will have to worry about. Sucks to be future you!

How to Write a Dystopian Young Adult Trilogy

The idea of the dystopian post-apocalyptic universe has been around since George Orwell discussed Big Brother in 1984. Recently, however, the adaptation of these dystopian young adult series into movies has become massively trendy in Hollywood (see: Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, etc). While I enjoy many of these books, we have to go ahead and admit right now that these series are all pretty much the same. I know that I have little room to speak as a lover of Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels, which don’t exactly break new ground with each release, and I am not saying that these books/movies are not enjoyable; on the contrary, I often enjoy them despite clearly no longer qualifying as a member of the authors’ target audience.

These series typically contain several mutual elements: a reluctantly heroic protagonist, an occasionally forced love story, an evil and oppressive but functional governing body, and a common plot scheme. Trilogies also seem to be the primary means of telling these stories, with an occasional prequel or collection of related stories mixed in there. Since this will be my seventeenth blog post, I am basically a professional writer at this point and am totally qualified to advise future authors on how to write their own dystopian young adult novel trilogy.

Trust me, I’m a professional.

Three Jobs Everyone Should Work

I started working for someone other than my parents when I was 14 years old and got a job doing whatever my neighbor’s dad was doing at the time. Since that time, I have probably worked for about ten different companies doing all sorts of things to ensure that I had the money to pay my bills and live comfortably.  Yesterday, I went to a job fair in Raleigh (a little bit of a bust unless I wanted to sell cell phones or insurance) and as I drove the three and a half hours home, I had time to reflect on what I have learned from each job that I’ve worked. As I reflected, I realized that there are three types of jobs in particular that have shaped how I interact with workers on a daily basis. I believe that if everyone at worked these jobs at some point in their lives, it would yield a much more calm and understanding community of people who are more genuine when they say “have a good one” before leaving a store.

1. Serving

The Job: I have served in environments ranging from high class restaurants to casual bars and have found one commonality in all my serving jobs: sometimes customers are jerks. In every place that I have worked, servers make just enough money on their paychecks to cover the taxes that have to be paid; if you aren’t making tips, then you aren’t actually making money. So many things can slow a server down, from the kitchen making a mistake on an order because they are overwhelmed to a hostess double (or triple) seating you; that is giving you multiple new tables at the same time. I have only ever worked in one restaurant that had strict “sections;” an area in which all your tables are sat so that they are conveniently located near each other. In the other places that I have worked, my tables could have been anywhere in the restaurant. If a table on one side of the restaurant needs ranch for their fries, a table on the other side of the restaurant just got sat and needs their drink order taken, and the food just dropped for the table upstairs, it is easy to find the weeds.