Something To Get Excited About

November is here, my birthmonth is finally upon us. If that's not exciting enough (and it isn't) there has to be something else. I mean last year I didn't even get a happy birthday from anyone other than my wife and son until after the day was already long gone. Thankfully I don't put a lot of stock in celebrating birthdays so my feelings weren't hurt, at least not too bad.

But there is something that I do put a lot of stock in and that's Ash. As in Ash vs The Evil Dead. It's been twenty-three years since the last film, Army Of Darkness, came out and the fans have been clamoring for something more ever since. Well not that time has come and that something else is here. Ash vs The Evil Dead is a new show on Starz and it promises to make November a much groovier month. Unfortunately when I tried to embed the trailer it gives me an error message about the code so just go watch it on Youtube here.

With that awesome new also comes the promise of something else equally as awesome, potentially that is if AMC does their job right. The almost as long awaited adaptation of the comic Preacher is coming to a television near you sometime in early to mid 2016. It promises to shake religious things up if it follows the tone of the comic book. And it has one of my favorite actors in it, Joe Gilgun from This Is England amongst other things. Same thing goes for the trailer, I don't know if it's my laptop or Youtube that has the problem so just go here to watch it.

So there it is. Two things to get excited about for now and then the near future. TV just gets better and better. Well at least if you stay away from the major networks that is. Finally with the pay channels, AMC, SciFi and Netflix some really cool shows (The Walking Dead, Comic Book Men, Z Nation, Longmire) have been introduced that would have never made it onto regular tv. That's something at least.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Saturday Is The Hang Out Day

Saturday is quickly becoming the hang out day for me and my son. During the week we usually only get to see each other for about half an hour in the morning each day. I get off work at midnight and get into bed two or three hours later then I'm up at 7am to get him ready for school. Afterwards I (try) to go back to sleep for a few hours. It's not easy but I do it for him. So when Saturday comes around I try and make it about him. Right now we're rolling out on our own for at least every other week and more often if we can.

I don't know if my wife quite understands it, it's not that we don't want to be around her but I think since he spends all of his time with her during the week after school he wants some special time for just us guys. Plus it's  not like we spend the entire day away from her. Just yesterday I did some yardwork first and then we boogied out of the house about 3:30pm to the primary destination, The Comic Empire. He chose a few comic books and I got The Walking Dead #20. Then we went to an electronics repair shop to see what was wrong with a Nintendo DS XL that my wife had found. She's been hitting Craigslist finding free stuff and some people were moving and left a bunch of stuff on the curb. She found the DS there along with a Playstation 2 amongst other things.

The guy there checked it out and although it partially works it would take about $75 to replace the top screen. We decided to think about it and went over to Vintage Stock to see how much the used ones go for in their store. Once that was done Walmart was next to check on getting a stylus for each of our tablets. That was a bust, you can get them online from their website for a fourth of the price that they charge on the store. That's very strange. Then we backtracked and went over to Toys R Us to see how much they charged for a new DS. Now that we were completely armed with our information (and he got a chance to play on their demo model) our bellies were rumbling so he chose McDonalds as the place to fill them. It doesn't hurt that he can play there and I can use the free wi-fi.

A few hours and a lot of play with new friends later we called my wife to have her meet us at Toys R Us to check on a karaoke machine that her mother wanted us to buy him for his birthday. While there I decided to give up on the idea of getting the DS fixed and instead bought a new 2DS. For the price it just made more sense to buy something new with a warranty that is a better product. He didn't see me so this will be a complete surprise for him. My wife wasn't so sure but he is like me and his uncle Gary, we love our electronic toys. The night still wasn't over though. Next up was Target where my wife wanted to check on some new jeans for our son and her as well. We found a pair for him, he's growing so much that none of his fit him anymore.

I also looked at the stylus they had but found the situation was the same as I had found earlier at Walmart. Speaking of Walmart, you guessed it, my wife wanted to go there next for a few things so back we went to the same store we'd visited earlier. Eventually I got her to leave as the night was getting quite late and we made our way home where I was sure I was going to be staying. I got our son a bath and changed myself to get ready for bed only to find that we were out of milk which we would be needing in the morning. Yeah, back on came the clothes and back to Walmart (a different one this time) I went. It was over as fast as I could make it because now it was after midnight.

I made it home but not into bed for a little bit. It was a very busy day spent running from place to place and then back to the same places but finally it was over. I was exhausted. Sleep was now to be mine. Who knows what we'll do on our next hang out day, maybe some hiking or even a movie. I just hope it won't be as much running around. So what do you do on your hang out days?

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Birthday Blues? Not Likely Mate.

So today is my birthday. Forty-nine years ago I was foisted upon the world and it's been a trip. The first year we were married my wife threw me a big party attended by my friends, her friends and lots of people from church. About five minutes after I walked in the door I was safely ensconced in the kitchen with a friend or two where I remained for quite some time. The thing is, I'm not much of a party guy, not much of a celebrator. I'd rather do something low key like go to a movie and or hang out with my loved ones and friends. Parties just aren't my thing. Actually celebrating holidays period aren't my thing. When I was single I never decorated for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween or any other occasion.

I don't know why this is I just know it's what I prefer. Of course now that I'm married and have a kid I don't really have a choice. The house is decorated not matter what my preferences are and I get that. I want my son and wife to enjoy life and if that means I have to make repeated trips to the attic to bring down and put back up boxes then so be it. My wife did learn that it's better to just keep everything low key for my birthday and that since I'm not a party guy if she wants one planned for her birthday then she's better off having someone else plan it. It's just not a skill I've mastered nor do I care to. Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do my best not to cock it up.

Oh, and by the way, I did make it out of the kitchen during that birthday party and actually talked and was sociable to those attending. I appreciated everything my wife did that night for me. I just don't want to go through it again if I can help it. I'm nobody special so it's just another day to me. Perhaps I should have been a Jehovah's Witness. Then I could have a reason for not celebrating (although it's a rather strange one in my opinion) but that's neither here nor there. Hopefully I'll get some rest, have a little cake and go buy something I don't necessarily need but just want. That's my idea of a good birthday
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Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Mortality Has Reared It's Ugly Head

This year I've been feeling my mortality for the first time, and not because I turned forty-seven yesterday. Earlier in the year my wife had a blood clot on her brain and it really made me look at life and assess where I am in my own life. Yes I did realize that I have more than likely already lived more than half of my allotted time and I haven't accomplished much of what I want to. What I learned is that the clock is ticking. Clearly most people end up frustrated in life, not doing the things they would most like to be able to do. We get stuck in jobs we really would rather not do just to pay our bills. After all, it costs (a lot) to pay for a mortgage and associated bills, vehicles and gas, phones, food, clothes....this list could keep on going. The trick is to find a way to pay those bills while doing something that you enjoy. I'm not there yet.

Years ago when I worked at Cabell Huntington Hospital in Huntington, WV my co-workers and I would laugh and joke about men (okay doctors) that would go through a mid-life crisis. These men always bought either a sports car or motorcycle and tried to look younger than they were. Now I feel that I understand them a lot better. Some of them clearly were trying to regain a part of their youth, a time when they were much happier, but they tried to do it by purchasing things instead of finding things that they like. That can only help superficially, smoothing the outside image that a person sends out without discovering what actually makes them happy. Also, it's usually at mid-life when you have the money to spend on these things, unless you're me. I've always been a late bloomer in life.

As for the others who were actually just trying to enjoy life more, well my experiences this year have made me think about what was really important in life. It isn't the things you accumulate, that you own. As a matter of fact those things usually end up owning you. You end up chasing the most recent, newest model or the coolest new gadget. I think it's much more important to be with people that you love and who enhance who and what you are. Basically, if you surround yourself with cool people you'll enjoy life more. Where you live, what you drive, your social status, none of those things are important to me. Making a huge sum of money while nice isn't that important either. What good does it do to make a million dollars a year if you work eighty hours a week and never get to see your family and friends? You never get to see your favorite band or go to the beach or see your child grow.

Believe me, if I could pay my bills off and find a way to support my family on a smaller budget I'd move to Peru right now. The cost of living is lower and there are so many beautiful things to see. I have many ideas that I need to work on, perhaps one of them could be the one to allow me to get paid to do what I like. You can write a hundred movie scripts but if nobody is willing to buy one, well you can't pay your bills with that. It seems that we always need a little help in one form or another to make our dreams and ideas work. Of course you have to put in the effort first to be properly prepared and make it easy for someone to say yes to those ideas. There are untold masses out there who have talent so you have to come with more than that. Determination and a strong will are necessary and even then you aren't guaranteed to succeed. The hardest thing is to find that someone who can help make it happen especially when you don't have any contacts in that field.

All I can do is keep working and planning and doing my research. At least then I can say that I gave it my best effort no matter what the outcome is. You can try and succeed or fail, but if you don't try you can only fail. Besides, if you throw enough crap against the wall eventually some of it will stick. Anybody out there who wants to help show me the way?

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

My Father's Best Advice

My name is Ernesto Rivera. Roughly a week after my fourteenth birthday my mother came into my room and said that my father wanted to speak with me which came as quite a shock because I had never seen him before in my life. While my mother was pregnant with me he left her for his mistress and in the years since he had never come to see me. Not for when I as in the school play, not for any awards I've received, not for any of my futbol games, not even ever on a birthday. As a matter of fact I have never even received so much as a letter, a birthday card or a single present from him although he did make sure that he was never late sending money every month to my mother, presumably to help in my upbringing. So you can imagine what a surprise it was to hear my mother speak those words.

I looked her with a blank expression on my face, dumbfounded. Had I heard her wrong? Surely that must be the case. But she confirmed that he was there and wanted to talk to me. I asked why and she merely shrugged her shoulders and said for me to go to him in the living room. As I walked into the room she disappeared into the kitchen although I am quite sure that if one were to be able to float through the walls like a ghost she would be found with her ear on the other side of the door straining to hear what was being said. Upon seeing him for this unusual first time I must say I was not impressed. Throughout the years I had built up stories and images in my head that could explain why he had not been involved in my life, after all, I was his firstborn child as far as I knew. He looked nothing like the covert spy or adventurer that I had imagined him to be.

I sat down quietly and looked at him even more intently. He was shorter than me, was starting to put extra weight on his middle and his hair was thinning quickly so he mistakenly chose to leave it long and used a hideous combover to make believe he had more than he actually did. He looked like any other man I would see walking on the street. There was nothing about him that stood out. His clothes didn't seem to match the person, as if he were trying to disguise who he was, to make himself appear younger and more attractive. Instead they failed miserably and only drew attention to the aging that he was trying so desperately to hide. Underneath a nauseating coat of cologne I detected a faint odor of alcohol emanating from his sweating pores and he looked as if his nerves had gotten the better of him. He mustered a quickly fading smile and greeted me.

Hello son.

Hello sir.

I have come at this time because it is your fourteenth birthday and you are now becoming a man so I thought it would be appropriate for me to give you some life advice.

But my birthday was last week.

Ah, a few days do not matter!

He tried to smile again and I only looked at him, stone faced, devoid of emotion, not speaking. His smile faltered once again.

Well, to start, as you are getting older you will start having feelings for girls and they will try to trick you, to make you think they love you when they don't. They are sly devils who only look to get a man in their clutches so that they can sponge off of him and have him take care of them for the rest of their lives. Just like your mo..... well, never mind that. They will play you against your friends or other men if you allow them to. Do not do so, if you do you will have a lifetime of problems. Do you understand what I am saying?

As my mother had done to me a few moments before I merely shrugged my shoulders. This was all mystifying to me, even more so as to why he was even here in the first place.

Well, I'm sure it will become all too clear to you as you get older. Now then, here are some simple rules to live by. Number one, never go with a girl that weighs more than you. There is nothing sadder than a woman physically dominating a man. It's disgraceful and emasculating. Second, never marry a lazy woman. Pick one who understands it's her place to work in the house and cook and take care of you. If she leaves the house dirty while she lays on the sofa eating candies and watches her soap operas, if she makes you cook for yourself or get your food elsewhere then it makes you appear to be less of a man. You do not want to invite that kind of condemnation from your peers. It's degrading. Also, do not let her mother come between you or insert herself into your lives, they tend to be very intrusive when they get old and if they can they will always create problems. Lastly, never choose a woman you have to explain yourself to. You are the man and as such you should never have to explain what you do or say to a woman. You must rule the house without questions from her. There, with those simple rules you can make your life much easier and not have too many problems. Do you have any questions?

I wanted to scream DO I HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? OF COURSE I DO! WHY DID YOU LEAVE US? WHY HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN ME BEFORE? WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME? WAS I NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? I wanted to scream that and much more at him but it was not correct, it would be disrespectful and not proper so instead I tried to mask what I was feeling and appear contemplative. What next came to mind now was why after fourteen years, after all of my life, did you come to me now with this? This information is what you felt you needed to share with me? This horrible information that even I at my inexperienced age could tell was completely wrong and out of place? That's the best you could do? Yet even this I could not say to him. Instead....

Well, I guess, that is, no, I better not....

It's okay son, go ahead and ask me what your question is.

It's just that I was wondering which of those rules was the one you didn't follow? (As I blurted this out a confused look spread across his face. Now that I had said it I couldn't stop myself.) I mean with my mother, which of these rules did you not follow with her?

His face immediately turned a bright red and he started to stammer and shake as he attempted to control himself. He stood up quickly and for a moment I thought he would strike me for my impudence but instead he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face with it.

Yes, well that's a subject for another time as I have some pressing engagements that I must attend to. Please consider what I have said to you. It will really help you later in life, trust me.

With that he turned on his heel and started to leave the room. He was halfway there when he put his hand in his pocket and stopped as if remembering something. Slowly he turned and I could see that he was still visibly shaken by my comment. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for him, almost but not quite. He pulled out a crumpled card and gave it to me, no longer trying to make eye contact.

This is for you, it's not much but I thought you might use it for something, uh, for something that you like. Perhaps for some of those history books you like to read or you could go see one of those American movies that you like so much. Well, use it on whatever you feel like. Goodbye son.

Once more he turned on his heel and this time he did leave the room, going out by way of the garage and I followed so that I could lock the door, there were thieves here after all and as I walked back into the living room I looked at what he had given me and saw that it was a old birthday card with a clown on it, clearly intended for someone younger than I and immediately I thought how pathetic it was. When I opened it a 50 soles bill fell out and then I noticed the inscription. "Son, I know I haven't been there for you and I am sorry. Please forgive me. Papi"

Now I was the one confused. What did this mean? How old was this card? How did he know about my reading and the movies that I liked? I heard a sound coming from the kitchen and thought what did I really know? Is there something that my mother hasn't told me? I started towards the kitchen but halted, unsure of what I would say or do if I went in there. Instead I slowly made my way back to my room but could not bring myself to enter it and then changed my mind and climbed the steps to the roof. Once there I laid on my back and stared at the sky, barely noticing the clouds as they drifted across a rare sunny sky for this time of the year. My mind instead was on all of the questions that I now had and they threatened to overwhelm me. Before long I fell asleep with none of them answered.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Mom Comes For A Birthday Visit

Earlier this week my mother left to return to her home in Ohio after spending a week with us. She came in for my four year old son’s birthday which was the first time for her to do so. The last time she saw him was almost two years ago. All the other grandkids grew up in the same area and indeed still live there today but I’ve always been the one in the family to roam and unfortunately that means we live quite a bit of distance from each other. It was good to see her but I knew that the week was all about her and my son spending time together, that was the most important thing and they both loved the time they had. To be certain all of us need to make a better effort at seeing each other more often and the past week showed us how important it is for my son Johnny.

He needs to see his relatives as often as possible so I’m already thinking about trying to fly back home later in the year, at least for a week or so if I can. After that we need to find a way to save the money it will cost for us to go back to Peru and visit my wife’s family there. To make that happen costs quite a bit of money and I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a way to procure the funds but so far nothing has come to fruition, especially since I don’t foresee a future for myself as a bank robber or thief. Too much bad karma there if you ask me.

So instead I try and call once a week and I’d like to get everyone on Skype so that we could all do a video conference and at least see each other as well but it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to listen to me. I mean it’s free as long as you’ve got an internet connection. Doesn’t get much better than that does it? I’m not really a phone person and I’ve never been one to call very much. When I was single I would call maybe once a month or so if they were lucky, okay really my family usually would call me and I rarely was the one to call. Gotta be honest with myself since it is my blog.

As we get older it becomes clearer to me how much more important it is to talk about things now because honestly we don’t know how much time we have left in this world. Personally I don’t want to leave something to chance on the hopes that I can always talk about it later. In the past my motto was why talk about something today when I can put it off until tomorrow but that just doesn’t cut it anymore. All it took was having a kid for me to realize that.


Published by Don Leach

Clerks II and Soul Asylum

Back in November I was able to buy some DVDs for my birthday but have been slow to watch them. Some of it is just timing with my soon to be three year old who commands the tv far too much. Some of it is because I get quite a few DVDs from the library and don't always get to watch them because I just don't have enough time.



So anyway, I finally got around to watching the Clerks II DVD that I purchased. True to form I couldn't watch it straight through but I was able to watch it in two parts on consecutive nights. I like Kevin Smith's work (in spite of the foul language) basically because I think I somewhat get what he's trying to say (Dogma for instance). That doesn't mean I always agree completely with him but I try not to have any expectations and approach a movie on it's own merits. Clerks II was a fun romp with some of his characters (and friends appearing in bit parts) that I think he has now put away, at least for the time being. Maybe in another ten years he'll dust off the mothballs and we'll see what has become of Dante, Randall, Jay and Silent Bob as they move into their forties.

During the final credits there was a song playing that I liked a lot. It was "Misery" by Soul Asylum and it is a slow builder that the band knows how to do well. It just kind of struck me at the time as being really good so I thought why not throw it up here as well? Doesn't hurt anything plus I just like to listen to it.