Reunions

My sister has a big reunion coming up, she’s probably not going to be happy with me for saying so, but it’s a 20 year high school reunion, I’m sitting at about 13 so I’m no spring chicken either but the age or time frame really has nothing to do with this post, it was just the catalyst that got it moving forward.

So we were busy talking school and family reunions and got to talking about how we’ve generally always missed them because they are almost always held in the summer when we are really busy (being busy in the summer is a good thing for us), but as we were discussing this, one group of people who have been coming to our campground for years was on their way home while another one that we’ve pretty much grown up with (at least one visit per summer) was coming in.

We decided that we run a pretty cool business, a business where every weekend and heck, a lot of the normal days, can become like reunions.

Last weekend our friend Trevor Kriss was down with a couple of his buddies that have been coming for the last five years or so, Trevor himself has been coming since the very first year we opened, 1985! Over the last 30 years he has become like an uncle to us. Once his kids got a bit older, I think Kevin was like 7 and Kaitlyn 9 or so, he started coming down and spending a few days with us and them during the week as well. They even brought their cousin Devin and the three kids have become like little cousins to us. Every year we look forward to seeing them and Trevor, it’s one of the important reunions that we have every year.

One thing I’ll never forget about Trevor, along with a few other of our friends we’ve met through Voyageur’s was their presence at my mom’s funeral. It was at this point that I really began to see that these weren’t just people that would come tubing every now and then, and that Voyageur’s was so much more than just a typical business.

Another one of our great Canadian friends was also down last weekend, Kyla Taplin, with her family. Kyla is one of the sweetest people I know, a very caring individual who always puts a smile on our face every time she comes (it doesn’t hurt that she always brings us a case of Kokanee!). Kyla use to always come to Voyageur’s with her husband, it was there place together, but unfortunately a few years ago her husband died unexpectedly. It was a loss felt not only by her but by us as well, another example of how these “customers” become so much more to us. Luckily, Kyla has continued to come and visit us each year, like Trevor she has now begun to bring her kids with as well, sharing in the place that has so many good memories of her and her husband with the next generation.

There are hundreds of individuals I could go on and on about that have really become like family to us over the years, but the last one I’m going to talk about in this blog are the “Stony Mountain” crew.

For those of you that don’t know, Stony Mountain is the site of a pretty hard core prison in Canada. Many, many moons ago a group of the prison guards started to take a trip to Voyageur’s every summer, I believe this started in 1989. The looks on people’s faces when we tell them we have a group coming from Stony Mountain are always priceless!

This group happened to have a couple of girls in it who are Ryan’s and my age and when we were younger our “go to” pick-up tactic was always to get campers to play volleyball with us, so this was how we got to meet Jen and Brenda…even though our moves didn’t work, we’ve become very good friends over the past…probably 20 years, wow, that’s crazy to think that we’ve been friends for that long!

As we got older and got into college we started to go and visit the girls up at their place in Falcon Lake and got to know even more of their friends. So it would go that they would come down with the Stony crew and then during the weeks they would occasionally come down with the Falcon Lake/Westhawk Lake crew and we got to be pretty darn good friends with all of these guys.

As time has gone by and life has gone on we don’t get to see nearly as many of these guys as we use to, I personally really would love to get together with the whole crew again one of these days because we always had a great time together and they really became like family to us. We spent a few weekends with our buddy Matt at his Caddy Lake place and in Winnipeg and could always crash at the Kelly’s if needed too.

So although, every weekend becomes like a reunion to us in the summer, there are certainly some people that I would like to make a better effort to get back in contact with. The individuals I’ve met through Voyageur’s have certainly become a big part of my life but my classmates, cousins, aunts and uncles are very high on people I miss seeing list.

I’m quite a bit younger than most of my cousins (you guys are so old!) but I tend to be able to get along with all of them very well. My closest cousins are Scott, Mike, and Katie and I don’t get to see them enough. They’re always there for me if I need anything, though, and truly exemplify what family is supposed to be. I hope to make a trip to see Scott and Mike sometime this year, and I need to definitely make a better effort to get to Fargo to see Katie, Corey and the kids in the fall. It sometimes means trouble when all of us Brumwell’s get together but it sure can be a lot of fun!

We often find ourselves getting so busy in life that we forget to make time for ourselves and the people we truly care about. We get caught up in our occupations and moving forward with these things that certainly play a major role in our lives but sometimes forget about the people that have helped to shape us along the way, good or bad. It’s always good to leave the bad ones in the past, but don’t forget the lessons they taught you. Getting together with the people who have had a positive impact on your life can sometimes even help you to gain some perspective on the bad ones as well…good friends are always worth the effort to keep them in your life and sometimes it takes a reunion to help you remember just how good and important they are.

I started this blog before this past weekend’s reunions, but I just wanted to mention that I did in fact have a great time with my friends from Stony Mountain and we even got to catch up with some of my sister’s classmates as well, all great people who we’re very lucky to call friends.

As our business goes, we also got to meet several other new people and who knows what kind of new relationships can flourish from these encounters? I also found out that some of my great friends from Cromwell will be coming up to reunite with us in a week or so and had one of my best friends write a post on here for the first time, we got another great post from Mike, and Kelly added a great Bio which not only talks about himself but gives some insight into the direction this blog has been headed. I don’t always get to see the awesome friends that write with me for this blog, but every time I read one of their posts, it’s like a mini-reunion. It lets me, and you, get caught up with these awesome individuals and even shows a side that I never knew existed. Reunions always bring forth so much nostalgia, and what I think about most is just how lucky I am to have such amazing friends and family in my life. I hope you get to have some reunions before long in your life too, and I hope you take the opportunity to take full advantage of these when you can.

In case you have been keeping up with my #BDandLLHappyDays and have noticed that I haven’t posted the last couple of days…I’ll post another blog explaining that later! It may have something to do with too much whiskey and women…

Late Nights Are Fun

I was just on Facebook and happened to notice my bud Jason posted something on my wall for the first time ever, it was a link to a blog! Well, to my surprise I clicked on it and there were a bunch of Web Logs written on the BD&LL intranet site. That got me brainstorming ideas and I thought to myself, "Even though Jason has never invited me to do this, I think I'll write my own blog, too and put it on the line."

So here goes nothing....I'd like to talk about some late night action and how the evolution of "Late Night" has changed throughout my life.When I was in elementary, I can remember pushing the limits of the space time continuum by turning on the lights outside our garage and playing some best of 7 series on the court with the ever lucky Jed Geer and Shawn(nana) Lee. Those games probably would have kept the neighbors up all night if we hadn't lived next to the Royal Manor old people's home, with the ball bouncing on the concrete and us reacting like idiots to every made and missed shot, errant pass, and rolled ankles on the kamikaze cliff where the pavement met the grass. We played thousands of games of pickup hoops late into the night and then would get up and start it all over again. Oh to be a kid again!

As I got into hike school those late nights of basketball turned into many hours of sitting in the kitchen with my mom talking. As you can probably decipher, I was a pretty big party animal in high school with my late night menu consisting of alfredo noodles, butter, and parmesan cheese, a beverage of WCP (or as normal people call it: Wild Cherry Pepsi), and some good talks with my mama talking about everything and anything, although hoops or drama productions dominated the conversation. Honestly, that was the highlight of my late nights in high school; I know what you're thinking, "wow, just like Dazed and Confused and Project X". But really, I wouldn't change it for anything.

As we're going along chronologically, as a history teacher would, the next step would be college. Let's just say there were a couple more late nights in collage, yes collage (a blurry mashup of pictures) than there were in high school but a couple stand out more than others. First were my years at the University of Northland State College University or as some call it, TRFU. How many all nighters could one person pull in a calendar year, you ask? I reply with "how many times could Curt Christianson be cloaked while playing James Bond multiplayer Protect the VIP?" Yes, our late nights were often filled with a Football Frenzy order from Dominos and all night PS2 action at the Campus Courts. There may have been other nights with other things involved, too, but we'll leave that for another blog....

Moving on up to the next prestigious university, MSUM was the next stop on the life train. Meeting up with old cohorts like Dusty Neibauer and Kyle Simonson, newish/oldish friends in Ryan and Jason Brumwell, and a completely new random stranger that became a good friend because of basketball in Dan "the Stallion" Nyberg. We spent quite a few days together playing basketball at Nemzek but I doubt we ever played harder than when getting after a rousing late night game of "31". I can hardly hear the phrases "near....far", "10 (but in the voice)", and "A-Bomb, Bi@*&#$" without breaking into the hysterical laughter you only achieve at 3 am. Throw in a bakers dozen of garlic cheese bread that Slingshot delivered from Pizza Patrol and I'd say that's a pretty great late night!

Being old enough to frequent the bars meant that we could, of course, also hit the karaoke scene. I don't know what's better, our version of Total Eclipse of the Heart or the ladies that take it so serious they get mad at us when we would upstage them (in our own mind, but you must remember, it was pretty late at night)! I could probably go on and on about all the late nights we all spent together but some things are better left unsaid and just remembered, or should I say kind of remembered!

After college I assumed my late nights would pretty much be behind me and for the most part they were, until this past December when Bree and I were blessed with the biggest life changer, our son Tate. I've never done any drugs but I can only assume that those first two weeks after bringing Tate home is what it's like to be on black tar heroin. Those late nights are a blur, with a lot of screaming, crying, sucking on bottles, and peeing in the bed and if you then put that with all the stuff Tate was doing it was a chaotic time! Seriously, though, I literally had no clue what I was doing and the one person who could tell that the most was Tate. Think about his strange journey that led him to my arms and then he was thinking, "I got stuck with this clown, can someone please just feed me my food and rock me with a little rhythm?" I remember one of the first late nights when Bree's mom was at our house and I couldn't rock Tate to sleep and I finally handed him off to Bobbi with an exasperated, "he's so fussy right now". As soon as he nuzzled into her arms he was sound asleep and I zombied off to bed with the thought that all those late nights in my life before this never prepared me for this.

In fact, nothing could prepare me for being a father, but as I rocked Tate to sleep one night (yeah, I figured out how to do it eventually) I thought back to all the late nights I had and thought about a quote I had just recently heard that fit the situation perfectly. Too bad for me I hadn't slept for 34 straight hours and have since forgot that great quote and damn near everything about that night! Whatever. All I can say is that of all the great late nights I've had, with all my awesome friends, nothing compares to a late night of holding Tate in my arms. I can't wait until we can turn on the lights outside the garage, play hoops into the wee hours of the night, and start the whole cycle of late nights all over again.

The Unglamorous Necessities of Living Well

“Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”

~Zen Proverb

I’m not sure where and when exactly I first came across this quote. But it was probably at college, which means it was longer ago than I’d really like to admit. Regardless, I’ve carried it with me in the increasingly dusty storage passages upstairs. Like all good proverbs, it has layers of interpretation. Coming to an understanding of those layers - moments of enlightenment - takes exercising the mind; another intentional characteristic of proverbs.

One interpretation I’ve come to is that in life there is no arrival point at which everything after is auto pilot. That graduation, job, job promotion, marriage, trip, etc. That moment you’ve dreamed about since you were young, whatever it is. Once obtained the work isn’t over. To make it to that moment you had to, metaphorically speaking, chop wood and carry water. To move forward, you have to continue to maintain it by chopping wood and carrying water: doing the day-to-day, often mundane and boring tasks in the same manner as before. Accomplishment is a great feeling, but bragging rights won’t keep us living; really living and feeling alive.

For many of us, chopping wood and carrying water is probably taking out the trash and doing the dishes; changing oil in the car and cleaning the bathroom; getting the groceries and giving the dog a bath; taking the kids to school and cooking dinner; working out and, well you get it. Call it the unglamorous necessities of living well.

Yesterday, my wife and I took our dog to the beach, came home and made dinner, then we split up and she got groceries while I took the recyclables in for some cash money. That afternoon I bottled one batch of wine and racked another then we made dinner, did dishes, garbage, etc. Unglamorous labor and to an outside observer (such as our lovely readers) this is boring and not newsworthy. Something we all tend to forget at some point when posting things to social media.. Jus’ say’n.

But I felt accomplished and it felt good. Things got done and I’d exerted some energy - I guess that releases feelsgood body chemicals and such. But while I can carry the accomplishment into future days - I like the fact there are 10 corked wine bottles that have taken 9 months of process to get there sitting in the hallway - today, I won’t get the same feeling unless I accomplish more, accomplish todays unglamerousness. It follows another Zen goal: live in the present moment. Yesterday’s chopped wood and carried water does little for me today, especially if I burned it all up and drank it all - or turned it into beer. Time to continue on today, getting shit done and wait for a moment of enlightenment to make itself available.

In light of our current situation, i.e. #‎BDandLLHappyDays‬, happiness is tied of course to accomplishment, feeling of well-being, and not ignoring the little things, the small and unglamerous. It is not a complete picture of happiness, but what is? As Jason told me the other day, “You make your own happiness.”

In conclusion, after searching the above proverb, I came across this blog by Thomas D. Craig who had this to say about it:

“Break life down into the simplicity of the present moment.  As human beings we do not live in the present moment.  We carry our past forward with us, we yearn for something in the future and all the time we miss what is in front of us at all times.  Life is beautiful right in front of us at every moment.  Focusing on this moment right now removes the mind from drifting to wants, needs, desires….all driven by the mind in search of attachment.  With attachment comes suffering.”

Some good words to digest over the coming week(s).

Here are a few of my unglamerous moments.

Happiness is:

Dusting off the electric guitar to practice 9 Paces West songs #9pw2014

The sound of a tube amp turning on.

Wine bottled - finally.

Listening to: “Walking into Clarksdale” album by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant

Reading: wine making websites

Salud!

Time

“Time is on my side.”

- Mick Jagger.. Well actually Jerry Ragovoy writing as Norman Meade, but Mick Jagger made it cool.

My antivirus just notified me that I have enjoyed one year of free service and it is now time to renew. I’m pretty sure I did that last week. Right after I posted my last blog..

I’ve been away for a bit and lots of things are happening in the BD&LL world. Quite honestly, I need to catch up. I’m going to go do that now but don’t worry, we have that elapsed time technology available here.

So here’s what I have as a recap since I’ve been out:

- Summer arrived

- Jason attracts bears

- The Real Estate business drives other people besides myself to drink

- Someone has made a grand oversight in allowing us to have a radio show.

- Stuart Scott makes me cry

- I now know what #100HappyDays means

A little over a month of time elapsed. Also in that amount of time, someone cut and pounded my wisdom teeth out of my head, I found out I hate vicodin, and I’m still wondering if these holes in my mouth will heal up. But that just sounds like an excuse and I did manage to write my bio during that slightly medicated time period. But quite honestly, June whipped by and July is on its way out. Time just seems to go faster the older I get. I don’t understand meta~level physics and the space-time continuum enough to comment on whether or not time speeding up could actually happen - theoretically or otherwise. Most likely it is my perception of time that is changing.

When I was younger, time seemed to move much slower. Waiting to turn a certain age - ages at which new freedoms and responsibilities became available - could be excruciatingly slow. So many changes, so quickly, and constantly that it actually made time feel slower. So much living in such a short period of time. Now, things don’t change and I’ve entered “the grind” as it is known, and just living for the weekend makes days, weeks, and months blur on by.

Another personal observation on time: I spend a lot more time looking back at things that happened earlier my life than I did before. Maybe it’s a “good ole’ days” nostalgia, maybe it’s frustration that I had to grow up and get a “real” job, but part of me believes it’s because I’ve lost some direction towards the things that are most important to me including artistic and academic pursuits that seem to be in a holding pattern. You don’t spend a lot of time looking backwards when you’re faced forward. But regardless of how I feel about time, how I feel about what I’m doing with my own available time, it keeps ticking by; completely unaware of me and unforgiving.

Time isn’t so much the life lesson here. The life lesson is how you spend that time. Time itself is a human construct used to make sense of our world, to record our history. But the passing of time, that onward indefinite march, is indifferent to the human world, without concern for its justice, morals, and especially without concern for second chances.

Lately, I don’t feel like I’ve spent my time most wisely. I’m concerned about accomplishing things, of being “something,” of doing “something” with my life. Struggling a bit with my current position and my perception of myself. Much like the protagonist of the #100HappyDays challenge, I feel I am overlooking the things that truly make me happy and understating their importance. Which almost got me to sign up for the challenge. But I’ve reconsidered for a couple reasons:

(1) I read a blog where the challenge actually had the opposite effect and it made some good points I won’t mention here. But google it, you’ll find it. I promise.

(2) I need to blog more, not find another thing to do on the interwebz.

So, I’ve decided to make my move for “Councilman” rank in the BD&LL pyramid scheme. To the uninitiated, this means I must post once a week to maintain rank, learn how to use twitter, actually drink a Banana Daiquiri, and make pilgrimage to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota to learn how to drive a bus and mediate fights; and their aftermath.

Consequently, I probably won’t be doing many thematic posts, but rather just blogging about the stuff I do, what makes me happy, probably even the shit that makes me angry and imperfect because that’s real life. Moments of triumph, moments of failure. “You know, strikes and gutters, ups and downs” Also, by consequence, I need to actually do stuff to fill that time and those blogs. It may become “lessons in mundane life” but I promise to do my best to “keep it real” and relatable - and add pictures with fuzzy retro lighting! We all have the same set of basic emotions and life experiences in idiosyncratic proportions and I think I can make my daily moments of delight or frustration seem like a group activity rather than me just being a smug asshole.

For the challenge, I will do this for the length that Jason is now doing his 100 days + the net days I’m behind. About 15 blogs, one a week, into the month of October. #BDandLLHappyDays

Sorry, Mick. Time, is on its own side. But we can choose how, with what and with whom to fill our own time and in the manner we do so. That lesson, is one that I could use plenty of study and guidance on. But sometimes we have to be our own teacher. Here’s to an experiment in living.

~Listen to this: Our Lady Peace “Spiritual Machines” album.

~Guilty pleasure listening: The All-American Rejects “Move Along” album.

Further reading:

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmsophere of quiet that true joy can live.” ~ Bertrand Russell from “The Conquest of Happiness”

“One reminder: if change were to stop--that is, if Becoming were to cease--time has no refuge in which to hide. Time is no longer, because time is a measure of change in disguise.” ~ Paolo Soleri from “What if? Collected writings 1986-2000” (Good luck finding this one in the local library, but still, a great mind.)

100 Happy Days

I recently was watching The Today Show and saw a piece on this “100 Happy Days” challenge. It started with a gentleman who found himself underappreciating the wonderful things he had in his life, a trap I believe we can all fall into. After his friends were quick to remind him that he had a pretty fantastic life he started this challenge to show it to himself.

I’d like to think that we all have something to look at during our days that makes us realize not just how lucky we are to be here, but that life is pretty great. For some of us that may be awesome friends, a great job, the love of your life, or even just an occasional banana daiquiri.

I personally think that I have a pretty great life. There are definitely things in my life that get me down, it’s life, these things happen…but I like to look on the bright side of things. It doesn’t always work out the best, sometimes people just try to bring you down because they can’t stand seeing other people happy when they are miserable, but for the most part I’d like to think that people not only want to see others happy but that they can become more happy by helping others to become that way.

To be honest, I think that’s one of the main points of this blog. When we started it we thought that all of our random stories of debauchery would put a smile on people’s faces. We have since evolved into fewer and fewer stories of nights out and more and more we’re just getting down to telling our stories. Some are sad, some are hard to read sometimes, but many are funny and show us trying to look at the bright side of difficult situations.

When I write I always try to bring forth some humor into my situations, good or bad, because even though the situation may seem terrible to me at the time I think if we can dig through the mess to see the humor or good in a situation then we will all live happier lives.

A couple of my friends recently posted this video on Facebook:

 

The video itself is inspirational and really heartfelt but the fact that two individuals posted and tagged me and my brother in it was one of the coolest things. We have been very lucky to team up with an amazing group of individuals to raise a ton of money for cancer research in the last nine years and these people are the ones that inspire us to keep doing it.

In the video, Stuart Scott talks about “Never giving up,” but how even though he promises not to do it, he states that it’s hard sometimes and sometimes when he can’t fight he needs others to fight for him.

I think he didn’t just hit the nail on the head as far as a fight for your life against cancer, but the everyday fight for your life, sick or healthy.

We all have our down days, days where it’s hard to see the light and almost impossible to carry on, but we also have friends and family that are there for us to help raise us back up. They show us that whatever gets you down is a temporary thing and that the joy that you have brought to their lives is a constant. That because of you, they are able to be a better version of them and hopefully the same can be said about you.

We must fight for ourselves in this life because there won’t always be someone around to help us fight, but by trying to see the light in the darkest of situations we can hopefully attract others that want to see the light as well. People who will help you regain that view when dark clouds eventually roll back in for you.

My biggest goal is that you (our readers, my friends) won’t need a cancer or any other life altering scare to help you to see the wonderful things in your life and to live it to the fullest. I will be doing the 100 Happy Days challenge because some days the clouds come in awfully dark and it’s tough to see the light, but I want to remind myself that it’s there. I want to remind others that even when things get bad, there are positives in every day.

 

I would like you to join us in this endeavor. Go to www.100happydays.com and get yourself registered to start the challenge! If you’d like, use the hashtag #BDandLLHappyDays in your posts and we can follow everyone together! That way when we can’t see the happy in our days, maybe someone else can inspire us to see the things we’re taking for granted.

I’d like to think the BDandLL crew are pretty happy individuals but now we have an even greater opportunity to show the world!

Thanks for reading and joining our challenge! Here’s to all of the Happy Days ahead!

 

KRJM Radio Show

A brand new blog from our newest contributor and soon to be co-host of our newest venture, Kurt Philion! Here's a little break down of what to expect and what we're working on, you'll notice we don't really have a title for the show yet and that's where we may need your help! I've been trying to convince him that we need to keep it Banana Daiquiris & Life Lessons but he's a little worried about the alcoholic reference in the title. I kind of like, "BDandLL presents, The Happy Hour" but if you or your company want to be a major sponsor of the broadcast we could go with something like, "FRANK's WEINERS presents: BDandLL's Happy Hour" So give this a read, then shoot us some title ideas! You can post on here, on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere! Just let us know what your ideas are and we'll try and come up with the best one! Thanks all, now enjoy the newest post!

As an avid reader of what they call “Banana Daiquiris & Life Lessons” on that thing they call the internet, I have decided it’s about time for me to test my writing (or in this case, typing) skills.  Never was I much of an English connoisseur back in high school, nor was I in college either but I know a thing or two about how to talk so this can’t be much different, right?  So I’ve been told.  People tend to be poised in telling me that it will be fun and entertaining if I’d just try it out!  Kind of like swimming for this guy … it doesn’t come naturally at all.  You should see me trying to swim; entertainment for all ages when I plop myself into a pool in attempts to fend for my life; also known as “swimming”.

A little bit about me:

I’m 5’7.78” tall with not much hair (by choice), not sure of my actual hair color, we’ll go with brownish-tan.  Eyes are hazel which is like a sprinkle of blue/brown/tan with green outer lying a black pupil.  I kick with my left leg, throw with my right arm and if you saw my writing on paper you’d think I stick a pen in my mouth, bite down and swivel my head back and forth in attempts to actually display something you can consider English language.  I am now also new to wearing jewelry, sporting a 400 carrot gold ring on my left ring finger (go figure…it’s called a “ring finger”).  Actually there are no carrots or real gold…just pure love on that baby!  After reading that last line I bet you’re thinking “MAN I could go for some CARROTS right about now!  I LOVE them!” 

I don’t smoke, I can barely swim and I only chew my food to help extract all of the valuable nutrients it provides for my body.  It [body] has been through a lot in its time, but for being older than eighteen and younger than ninety, he’s holding up pretty well.  Did I use those brackets right or no?  Oh well, I told you I’m not very good at English. 

 

Interesting fact:  English was first hour my senior year and of the fifty minutes we were in class each day, I was awake for three of those minutes (The first minute to sit in my seat, the second minute to get comfortable in the seat and find something soft to put my fore head on, then fall asleep. The final minute… when a classmate would wake me up saying “Hey, the bell’s gonna ring soon!”) 

 

Just like clock work! 

 

Ahh, the joy’s of high school.  It was so exhilarating that I could barely contain myself.  Or stay awake for that matter.

Alright, now that you know every little detail about me --- mainly the ones that don’t matter and really aren’t that important --- it’s time to get to the point of this blog. 

 

Blog (bläg):  noun
A personal website or web page on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc. on a regular basis.

Okie doke?  Okay then.

 

This has been a lot of work thus far, not going to lie.  Thinking … it sucks!

I’m so used to just thinking on the fly, not typing things out and just letting it roll off the tongue and into a microphone that transmits the sounds of my vocal cords to a computer, into an antenna and out to a big tower out by Bear Park … yeah, that’s us!  I’m getting off track again.  Oh sweet look, a unicorn! 

 

Let’s go for a journey down a road you’ve never been on before.  A blog you’ve never read before because it’s one that you would not read, but hear.  Technically there are no roads either.  I fooled you! 

To put it in better terms, I’m saying we will hear the beat of a different drum….On your ear drums. 

 

 

I’ve been friends with Jason – you know the guy that’s always posting about BDandLL (tweet ‘em:  @bdandll) for a long time.  What a mess!  How would you like to have a conversation with someone who keeps putting random things into a sentence then getting so off track you don’t even know if he can swim or not. 

 

On track and staying on track!

 

Jason and I met up a couple weeks ago to visit about doing a radio show pertaining to everyone’s favorite blog:  Banana Daiquiris & Life Lessons
The exact blog you are reading right now!  How cool is that?  I come up with ideas sometimes just off of what people tell me would be cool.  A radio show with not only one of my good friends and high school classmates, but also thee most famous BDandLL contributors, Jason Brumwell as a co-host.   Seriously, who wouldn’t want to hear Jason on the radio?  When we tell Jason he has twenty minutes to utilize on the air, he goes twenty-five.  He’s all about giving 110% all of the time!  If I’d tell him to jump, what do you think he’d say??  That’s right, he wouldn’t say a word, he would just laugh!
Conversation with laughter, some life lessons and maybe even a daiquiris.  

 

Some questions you may have are, what station is this going to be on?  Will I be in an area where I can actually listen to it?  What day/night would it air?  How long is Jason’s hair in centimeters?  Do they actually allow Jason on the radio for more than twenty (five) minutes?  Could you step on that spider for me?  What will these guys actually talk about?  I wonder what Jason looks like when he’s on the radio…

All of these questions can be answered very easily.  It would air on Gold 101.5 FM KRJM out of Mahnomen, MN.  Wednesday evenings at a time TBD.  For all of you techie people you know what that means, for you non-techsters TBD=To Be Determined.  The tower is located in Bear Park, MN – a suburb of Gary, MN.  The radius of reach is anywhere from 65-80 miles depending on the atmosphere.  But what doesn’t matter on the atmosphere, is we are LIVE twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week online at www.krjmradio.com & on the Tune In App for your smart phone so you can listen anywhere you have internet or wi-fi capabilities!  Cooooooollll! 
We usually don’t allow men like Jason on the air waves as there is an organization known as the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) who keep people like him away from microphones that tend to broadcast a long ways, BUT, I represented him as his agent to negotiate a contract with very, very specific details and big words I can’t even type they’re so confusing.  I’m in radio, not some English major, come on!  Give me a break!  We would talk about all kinds of life lessons and several topics that you read about right here on BDandLL.  Basically, a blog come to life in words across a radio station!  Muahahahaha! 
You’re wondering what Jason looks like on the air?  Well, let me just put it this way … picture a daddy bear in a baseball cap, frolicking through the woods, smiling and making friends one step at a time.  Delightful, isn’t it?  Yeah, now you’re starting to think this could be….. no, no… WILL BE…thee greatest radio program to hit the air waves since, like, what ever else you thought was the best thing to hit the air waves last.  THAT good!  So there you go, now let me get that spider for you…

 

Lastly, in order to make this radio production take off, we need the assistance of some businesses/organizations or individuals.  The way a radio station operates to get programming on the air is through sponsorship.  Without them, we wouldn’t be in existence and that’s a fact, Jack!  Jason has the details on how you can get your business on the show to make this LIVE radio blog get its start! 
Just when you thought breaking 10,000+ hits and views here would make Jason and the crew rich and famous … now they want to take it to the next level.  I’m here to assist if you or anyone else you know of would be willing to do the same. 

I never did answer the question of how long Jason’s hair is in centimeters on this blog … we’re saving that for the debut of “ ….. <Insert name of our radio show here>”!

Official program details will start to leak out once the sponsors start rolling in. 

 

Now it’s time for me to leak out, before I freak out. 

When It Rains, It Pours - Part 1

When It Rains, It Pours – Part 1

Hey guys, it’s Barry again. Hope all is well in the blogger universe. Sure hope we are gaining some followers out there, because we are not going to get rich and famous without you guys. Typically, I like to blog about something funny, sarcastic, or generally rip on something in the world. Well, this blog will be about my last few months. A lot has happened since I last blogged.

So my new life began in January. I started a new job on January 2^nd and was very excited for this promotion and opportunity to make some cash-money. I would show up to work every morning excited to learn something new, work with my new partner, and bring a new edge to the business. 

We were working in the Real Estate Lending business and the market that we’re in is hot. Working on strictly commission, it was exciting to know how well the market was doing.

I finished my training at the end of January and was ready to hit the floor running. My partner was extremely wise and already had a great leg up on all the competition. What more could I guy ask for really? I had a partnership with someone great and we were splitting commission. Ca-Ching!

 All about the Benjamins!

Oh, did I mention we had an assistant to take care of the phones and most of the paper work while we hit the roads and brought in more business? Extra Ca-Ching!

April 10^th was the day things changed. It started off like every other day did over the last three months. I went through my files to make sure they were in all order, made follow-up calls to my clients, and then went to lunch. When I returned to the office, I looked into my partner’s office. Our assistant was in there and it looked like someone’s dog had died. I am uncomfortable in sad situations and don’t know how to react most of the time, so I opened the door and walked in like, “HEY, WHAT’S HAPPENING?!” My partner asked me to sit down. Now, at this point, I have no idea what is going on or how to act. Maybe I want to stand, maybe I want to leave – all I know is I do not want to hear what I am about to hear. So, I sit down and brace myself for the news, with feet wrapped around the chair and sweating a bit. My partner looks at us and says…

…that she’s leaving the company.  

I have no idea how to react – I pause for a moment, wanting to say “Fuck…What?…We had plans; we had hopes; we had everything going the direction we wanted.” Why couldn’t someone’s dog have died? (Just kidding, I love dogs). So I sit there and say nothing for a moment. It’s quiet and it’s awkward, so I go with, “So, how about the weather we’re having?” We have a small laugh and get back to the topic at hand. Our assistant goes back to her desk to return some phone calls and I stay in the office. My partner apologizes to me for leaving and placing this responsibility on my shoulders. I am now two and a half months out of training and suddenly went from a Junior Officer to a full blown Officer just after lunch. My book of business went from $1.5 million to $7.5 million in the matter of moments, and in a short few weeks it would be over $10 million.

Now, with great business comes great responsibility. I will be the first to admit, I was excited for the new challenge. My career was on its way to being very successful. I had arrived at my dream job faster than I thought I would. Well, that’s what I thought anyway…

The end of April came and I had worked two weeks on my own, put in roughly 90 hours to make sure everything would close on time, spent time away from my wife, friends, dog, and the house. I told myself that I would get through this and that it would eventually get better. The next two weeks brought us into May. I spent more time at the office than any other place. I would not take lunch, because I did not have time. I would not get home for supper, because things needed to get done. I spent the majority of my day trying to save the face of the company I was working for. 

You see, what I didn’t know was that our underwriting department was struggling and could not keep up at all and this is why my partner had left. She had seen this coming. As a result, my deals were not closing on time. So I fought every day – yelling, even screaming sometimes, trying my darndest to get things done. While I was doing that, my phone would be ringing and my emails would be adding up from customers, realtors, and builders calling to yell at me, wondering what was going on.

Flashback to when my partner had left – I forgot to mention the company took away my assistant, so I was all by myself in my small office. Back to the story – I was told every single day, from those in charge, that things would get better…and so I waited. I showed up every morning at 7 AM and left around 8 or 9 PM. I even went in most Saturdays and/or Sundays. I was living off of Red Bull, Mountain Dew, and chips. I was so stressed that I would not sleep at night and got up every night to move to the living room to do some additional work. Needless to say, with all this stress and my super healthy diet, I worked myself into sickness. I took a few days off to figure out what I was doing. 

I went back to work after a few days off, feeling slightly refreshed and ready to tackle the world. I found out that nothing had changed – my projects were pushed back even further, my voice-mail was full, and my emails would take days to get through. So that’s when I called my boss to put in my two week notice. He tried hard to get me to stay, promising me things, advising me that things were about to change. I asked myself what I should do. I was in the office night and day, I didn't see my family or friends, and I was super stressed, but I was making good money that could provide for my family and our future plans. So I told my boss that I would keep working and see what happens.

I called my underwriting department, because I had a slam dunk deal that was closing at the end the day, but I had not seen the final numbers yet. They go ahead and tell me that it will not close today and we will have to move closing back two days. I lost it, and wish I could apologize to that poor lady I was talking to. I picked up the phone, called my boss, and thanked him for the opportunity. I gave him my two-hour notice, cleaned out my desk, and left. I felt like I was being set up to fail.

Life Lesson: Choose your family, friends, and your health over money. Coming home and spending time with your family is underrated and I would like to thank my wife for supporting me throughout the whole process. MONEY ISN’T EVERYTHING…DAIQUIRIS ARE.

Start Your Day on a Positive Note

 

Some people would consider me a pretty positive person, others may not, but I certainly try my best to be positive, unfortunately like most humans there are a lot of negative things that happen in my life. I’m not special, my bad days are no worse than anyone else’s, I just tend to take them to heart a little more.

I put forth a lot of effort to try to make my days a lot brighter, though, and a lot of the time as long as I start my day on a positive note it seems like when crappy things occur I can try to flash back to the thing I did that morning that put me in a good mood to at least start my day.

While I was driving bus during the school year one of the things I would do would be to get up early, have a cup of coffee and search the internet for life lessons to put on my bus. If I happened to stumble across a brief story that helped me to leave the house in a more positive frame of mind, all the better! But you can’t control the other people in your life, and their attitudes.

When I would get down to the bus garage I would generally walk in with a smile on my face, ready to face the day, but I would also meet someone who thought it was strange to see someone so happy so early and he would generally ask if something was wrong with me or say something along the lines of why are you so happy this early?!

That has the ability to change your mood right away. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, but I spend an awful lot of time in my own head and when someone makes a comment like that it’s tough to keep on track with trying to keep myself in that positive mood. We really shouldn’t let other people affect us this much but unfortunately it’s inevitable.

The people you work with, or even just encounter during your day, make up your experiences and your experiences affect your moods and your memories. Staying positive requires positive thinking and it’s hard to think positive when you surround yourself with negative people. So you must choose who to spend your quality time with wisely.

You can’t choose the people you work with (unless you hire all the individuals), but even then, people are different and you can’t predict how they’re going to act in certain situations before they have a chance to experience those situations. The thing that you need desperately to do is to choose positive individuals to spend your “quality time” with. This is the time away from work, when you do the things that make you who you are.

I have been lucky enough to have a great group of people that I call my friends. Summers are tough because I don’t get to see them a lot but these friends are the type that make an effort to come out to see me and even if we don’t see each other for months on end, the second we can get back together, we’re right back to where we were at our peak of friendship, and for the most part…they’re all extremely positive people!

One of the things we try to do every year, away from work, is play in a co-ed volleyball league at one of our favorite watering holes. The group we play with and against are awesome individuals…and even though we may get a little cocky from time to time, it’s generally good natured and we are also the first to laugh at how bad we can be as well. Thankfully the people we play with and against make the whole experience fun as well and we generally give each other a pretty hard time and I believe we all enjoy the opportunity to let loose a little bit and enjoy a positive activity away from our day to day struggles. It’s a positive activity that we do once a week and little things like that can have a huge impact on how you react to the rest of the things that pop up throughout your week. It also gives you something to look forward to each week and activities like this can be the source of happiness if you choose them to be.

It’s crazy how something as simple as reading a positive article, or watching a positive video (I suggest Kid President) right to start your day can really set the tone for whatever comes next. You’re still going to have bad days, that’s inevitable, but when you start your day in the right direction you can begin to see the negatives throughout the day as speed bumps, or obstacles rather than a completely different path.

It's crazy, but as I get older I've started to notice that art and nature has begun to make a bigger impact on my emotions. Just by looking outside and seeing the sunshine my day begins a lot better. In a similar sense, when I see a great work of art (and "great work" is all in the eye of the beholder) I seem to be put in a more positive mood from that point forward.

One of my favorite life lessons put to art!

 

Try to maintain that positive attitude you began your day with, remember that on the other side of the obstacle you face, is the path you want to return to. Work to get through the obstacles and try to do so in the same positive light that you began your day with, it may be easier said than done, but I guarantee it’s worth the effort.

We all have two options when faced with diversity: either give up or keep going. Those of you that decide to keep going will always have positive memories to look back at when you face your next obstacle, the ones that give up may just make that into a habit.

Start every day in a positive light, you can’t control everything that will come at you throughout your day but you can try to control how you handle the situations. If you’re getting frustrated with something; step back, take a few breaths, try to reason it out in your head, then regroup and give the problem another shot. Yelling, screaming, and getting down on yourself has never accomplished anything.

Stay positive to the best of your ability. Life will work to bring you down but as the great Jim Valvano said, “Don't Give Up...Don't Ever Give Up!!!"