Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
Today I have 3 favorite words. Being a Friday, the easy guess would be “It’s the weekend.” Nope, that’s not it. I’ll play the part of Vanna White here and display the letters T and B in the puzzle.
T _ _ _ _ B _ B _ B _ _ _ _
Any guesses? If not …
After dropping wads of cash to see the Broadway musical Hamilton, my 2018 summer concert budget is shot. If I am going to any concerts this summer, they are going to have to be economical. This ticket’s price seemed perfect for my 2018 concert budget …
Continue reading “My Low Budget 2018 Summer Concert Experience Begins”
With summer in full swing now, beach volleyball may be a great activity to try. It is fun, good exercise and makes you look cool. Or not …
So you don’t look like Donald Trump on the beach, here are the Top 10 Beach Volleyball Rules …
There are lots of reasons to love living in the Chicago area. For example, I loved being able to see the hit Broadway musical called Hamilton this past weekend. We drove. My rule is that if we are headed to Chicago for a big event, we take the train. If no big event is happening that will draw tens or hundreds of thousands of people to Chicago at the same time we are going, we drive. Or if our 10 year old daughter is coming with us, she overrules all and insists on a train ride.
On the day we headed into Chicago to see Hamilton, I knew of a march happening on the actual busiest expressway in the USA outside of California. That would be the Dan Ryan Expressway that often looks like this …
Yikes! My oldest son drives that to get to work. The march was to protest gun violence, but I knew it was taking place far south of downtown where we were headed. Here’s a quick look at the march …
It may be hard to believe a cheapskate like me paid to see Hamilton, but I did this past weekend. Too bad I didn’t get a ticket for my wife. She would have enjoyed the show.
Just kidding. I got us both tickets, and excellent seats. Here’s our view from the first row of the mezzanine …
I would definitely sit there again. But as I sat there, I became obsessed with the seats in this section …
I stumbled out of bed early yesterday and looked for my weapon. Yes, I was headed to war. If you don’t know what I am talking about, please read about the Civil War II. But I knew there would be nothing civil about it. I grabbed some grub, printed my map and headed for the battlefield with my weapon of choice …
Noted navel lint enthusiast and all-around nutjob Alex Jones is predicting a Civil War starting today sparked by Democrats.
I am very upset about this, but not because there will be a Civil War.
Our church has what is called a bread ministry. They have a room full of baked goods like bread, cookies, pastries, bagels, etc. that are close to or past their expiration dates. Anyone is free to take what they want. Every once in a while like this past Sunday, they even put out foods to sit at room temperature that clearly require refrigeration. I would understand this more if ours was a church with a faith healing ministry. Get the parishioners sick on questionable food, and then heal them with a couple Immodium and a Pepto-Bismol chaser. But we don’t do that. Sure, we have the snake handling, but no faith healing. That would be weird. We just get sick.
My wife and I don’t typically take much from the bread ministry, but for whatever reason last Sunday, my wife came out of there with a couple bags of stuff. I never question free food. One item was an apple pie. Shortly after arriving home, I found the pie here …
In the midst of all this political rancor and contention, I feel the need to spread some good news in the world. In the spirit of good vibrations and karma, I am pleased to start what should be a weekly series called Happiness Is as part of this blog. I will focus on something positive that makes me, and possibly you but I am mostly concerned with me, happy. So without further ado, I am pleased to offer up the first edition of Happiness Is.
For me, Happiness Is a big bowl of these …
We had a genuine, official MoveOn Families Belong Together rally in our sleepy little Chicago suburb today. Can you guess which sign I made?
If you chose the crappy looking one on the right that you thought may have taken me 5 minutes to make, award yourself 10 points. But then deduct 5 points because it really took me only 3 minutes.
The rally was so close to our house that we could have walked. It was bloody hot and humid today, so we drove. However, there were many more people at the rally than expected, and I had to park so far away that it may have been closer walking from home.
People were on every corner of a major intersection in our town holding their colorfully decorated and clever, or crappy in my case, signs. I think this was my favorite sign, although not from our rally.
As a follow-up to my Pulitzer Prize nominatable blog post about my most recent hotel stay, I may have found a great reason to stay at that hotel again next time, completely unrelated to the leftover free cheese. It’s the view …
No, not that view from the window. This view …
Every month I visit the same company in St. Louis, and have never stayed in the hotel just down the street from the company, until this trip. I think the reason I have avoided this hotel is because it has no pool and I wasn’t aware that this hotel chain was part of my travel rewards program. It still has no pool, but it turns out that it has been part of my travel rewards program only for the last 13 years. Huh. Oh, and no free breakfast is offered. Free breakfasts are an important part of my hotel stays since I tend to take enough food to stretch it well past breakfast in order to cover snacks throughout the day and even lunch.
At check-in, I was pleased to have been offered bonus travel program points, and then settled into my room. Imagine my delight upon seeing this …
When I’m feeling petty, the name that comes to my mind is Tom Petty, but in an effort to appeal to NASCAR fans, I figured I would include a pic of Richard Petty. Good luck packaging my occasional Trump-bashing blog rants to appeal to the NASCAR crowd, right?
Anyway, I am feeling very petty and vindictive thanks towards this restaurant …
My dad bod was on full display at the hotel pool while on vacation last week. Fortunately, every time I hit the hotel pool, there was nobody else there. Maybe the reason the pool was empty was because I hit the hotel pool with my dad bod. Regardless, nobody got to see my dad bod except for my wife, my daughter and my niece, although I swear I caught them averting their eyes.
The dad bod discussion was back on the radio recently as the radio personalities reminded me that 2/3 of women are supposed to prefer the dad bod to a rock hard man bod. This survey was offered as proof …
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 