November 3rd, 2011 - Comfortably Numb; R.I.P. John Gugie; Six Word; No Excuses

Well folks, we’re almost there, another weekend, and it looks like the gorgeous weather we’ve been having here on Long Island is going to be with us through the weekend and beyond. It’s been a relatively quick week for me, but still I am looking forward to being off and of course, going dancing once again. I must say, life has been pretty stagnant lately…nothing much going on here.


Source: Dummidumwit's Weblog

Comfortably Numb

In a lot of ways I’m feeling pretty numb these days, not happy and not sad, just kind of going through the motions of daily life. In a lot of ways I am trying to keep a positive outlook on everything as I wade through the stagnancy, so that’s been working to my advantage, or at least my daily mood, and I’ve been pretty productive, for me anyway, which has helped too.

November is here and it’s my birthday month, so I always love this time of year. It’s also a really short month for school days, as Election Day, Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving provide us with five extra days of respite from the daily grind. School has been hectic, at the very least, and probably the hardest thing about it has been keeping kids motivated. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot more yelling than teaching lately, so the broken up month will hopefully work to ease both my moods at school and the kids behavior…or not, lol!

Rest in peace John Gugie

This morning I was awakened to some very sad news. For the third time in recent memory, a fellow writer passed away suddenly. I first met John Gugie through another writer friend of mine, Karen Bishop. The two of them had a sort of cyber-relationship going on through Facebook and presumably they met through what was then Associated Content.

For that past year or so, I watched as their relationship blossomed into what seemed like one of the most genuine things I could have imagined, though they were limited to Facebook and telephones as they lived in separate states. Night after night I watched as the two of them would playfully comment with one another and post songs on each other’s walls. It was always very cute. Though such a relationship is hard for me to even imagine, anyone who was friends with the two of them on Facebook could plainly see that their love and devotion for one another was real.

A few months back, Karen had a stroke of bad luck and needed help for a move she would have difficulty making. John came to her rescue by starting a “Help Karen Move” Facebook group in order to help her raise some much needed funds. Though I don’t know all of the specifics, I think the two of them found a kinship in being fellow health sufferers. I believe John was handicapped in some way and I know that poor Karen has been a long time chronic pain sufferer.

John was a very outspoken individual, who was always honest and plentiful with his upfront and sometimes colorful Facebook commentary. Here are some of John’s quick-witted and funny comebacks to my comments:

Me: Oh honey, cover your mouth when you yawn. It’s not pretty!

John: Toss a Habanero pepper in her mouth.

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Me: Ugh, now I need a nap! Sometimes days off are just as busy as if you’d worked. Now if I only had a hammock in my backyard.

John: Cool, like Gilligan’s Island. I get Maryann, you can have the professor.

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Me: Goodnight!

John: Goodnight honey! (Make people talk!)

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One day I posted a picture of me with a frittata I had made with my students:



John: O.K., creepy smile like you killed someone and put them into the frittata.

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And just the other day, I posted a photo with a caption that said, "Hugs: One Size Fits All...pass them on!," and John's response, well...

John: That can be interpreted so bad, lol.

And a few minutes later, after thinking about it:

John: Hugs...wait, that's not a roll of dollars in my pants and not my hands on your tush...they're Myers'...he's not really gay, he's just doing it for free gropes.

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You can see from these few little exchanges the type of guy John was. Though I never met him personally, face to face, he was a constant presence on my Facebook page and I am definitely, sorely going to miss him. As for Karen, my heart goes out to her big time. I've known her a lot longer than I've known John and I can only imagine the pain she is feeling right now. Though she hasn't said much on Facebook today, she did change her profile picture.



For anyone who's followed these two lovebirds as I have over the past year or so, they will know what this picture represents: two lone wolves who somehow found each other in cyberspace and provided one another with great joy and comfort. My sincerest condolences go out to Karen and I want to say to John to rest in peace. You will be missed, my friend!

Six Word

During one of my correspondences with my ex over the summer, he had suggested a website to me. I guess that maybe he came across it in school and he had been involved in it somehow. During the time we had been together, he helped me from time to time to come up with suggestions for journal questions for my students and he thought that maybe this could be worked somehow into my class, especially since I was also a writer.

The website is maintained by Smith Magazine and the particular project he directed me to is called “Six Word.” Now the whole project is too engrossing for me to talk about in this post, but from what I’ve ascertained from it thus far is that it’s a way for people to tell their stories in a series of six-word phrases or sentences. All one has to do is register to become a member and enter in as many six word phrases as you like, whenever you like. In the end, the collective six-word phrases tell a story, a tale of one’s life, or a portion of it, in some way.

It took me a long time to find the time to take a look at it, but I finally did recently and I find the concept to be pretty cool. It sort of reminds me of something I did last year on Facebook called “My Year in Facebook,” or something to that nature. That post allowed you to choose from among your FB posts from the year 2010 and put them all in one place. In a lot of ways, the collective end result was a snapshot of your year and it made for a very interesting read.

Six Word carries much of the same concept, only from what I can see so far it’s much more deliberate than the random Facebook counterpart. At this moment I’m not going to share the ones I’ve added to my own Six Word profile, but I may one day, once there’s enough of a story to be told and once I get a better hang of it. Again there’s much more to it than I’ve said here, and perhaps I will do a more in depth piece on it one day, but in the meantime if you think this might be of interest, check out the website below:

Six Word

No Excuses

Finally, here's a good chuckle for the day. I got this in an email from my good pal Rich. It gave me a chuckle and I hope it gives you one, too!

Eat Healthy and do exercises daily like granny!






So what's your excuse? Mine is I have no pink panties.

Well, that's all she wrote folks! Enjoy your Friday and the weekend and as always, thanks for reading!

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