One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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I’m not sure if I have written anything about this but…Our house is unofficially off the market. It looks like we are setting up to rough it through at least one more winter here in Malta. Simply put, we need to redo the siding on our house. Staying for us is not a bad thing. There are worse places I could be. We love it here for the most part. We love our jobs. We love the people here. We love the community. Everyone has been really encouraging throughout this process. Thank you for your kind words and not wanting us to leave. The last mon...
I was going to write about how I purchased my first pair of Jordan brand shoes at age 31, but I have a more important story. PJ started tee-ball! It is his first time playing in a real baseball game. I also have to shout out Malta Parks and Recreation for their kickball league (PJ’s first team experience.) I know we may technically have one foot out of the door (nothing is guaranteed), but one of the things that Susan and I appreciate about Malta is that in the last few years extracurricular s...
I see it coming. This week I had the chance to cover the 2019 State Class A-C Track and Field Meet in Laurel, MT. At this event were the three Class C teams that are covered in the PCN. I know it’s coming. Why didn’t you go to the 2019 State AA-B meet in Kalispell to cover Malta’s track teams? Over the years I have gotten flak for covering the smaller schools, but I have always responded the same. All of our local kids work hard and we are the Phillips County News, meaning we cover every sport...
I’m a man. So the thought of anyone touching my feet makes me uneasy. I cringe at the thought of getting a pedicure or a foot massage. Even going to a podiatrist is a no-go. That being said, I should’ve gone to a foot specialist years ago to help with a situation that I have had for the past 10 years. When I met my wife Susan in September of 2009, it was as a food runner at the U.S. Open in Flushing, N.Y. That particular gig was extremely hard on my feet. This event featured more walking and...
Selling a home is a waiting game. There is a slim chance that we may be here for a while; as long as you’ll have us, we will be happy. Thinking about the possibility of change can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. I love things about living here and one of those things has been the overwhelming responses to our family eventually leaving. We feel very loved and I am happy to feel like we haven’t worn out our welcome. So, in the meantime, we will be here until our house sells. While living here...
It is hard to talk about moving. We love it here. Ironically, thinking about it takes me back to when I moved here a little less than seven years ago. At that time, I was content with my job at Walgreens. I was in my mid-twenties at my parents’ house helping with groceries and toiletries. I had not a worry in the world. Then on April 4, 2012, (seven years ago and a few days) out of the blue, an old friend who I thought was a gorgeous girl from Tennessee sent me a Facebook message saying ...
I have to admit something. I am terrible at doing chores. No, not because I am a guy, but I think it has something to do with my attention span. Back when I was growing up, when it came to cleaning, I was the star of the show. After school, my two younger brothers would try to clean the house for our parents before they got home from work. It was during this time that we were taught how to clean dishes, wash our clothes, clean the bathroom, and everything else. I used to think I was great at...
If you have seen me moping around Phillips County lately, it’s because the whispers you have heard or seen are true; we are moving sometime in the near future. Though it will be a new beginning for our family, it has made me sad at times. This is because I wish I could take anyone who wanted to come with us. That’s the kind of community Malta and Phillips County has been to me. Gracious, loving, welcoming, and accepting. I will miss the people, the small town atmosphere, and the sports tea...
It’s interesting being a parent at times. I enjoy watching my boys play together. Now that Lincoln is starting to get around by crawling or assisted walking we get to see the boys interact more and more; it has been somewhere between perfect harmony and a 4-H pig show. On one hand, you have PJ, my four-year-old, who hasn’t had to share with anyone until recently, and on the other hand, you have Lincoln, my 11-month-old, who just wants to play with all of the same toys as his big brother. PJ sit...
Disclaimer: I am cheesy and definitely not always correct, so take these next words with a grain of salt. I mean well, even if it doesn’t translate well. For most of my life, Valentine’s Day has been a cloudy day. The day has been better the past seven years now that I have found my true love and wife Susan. While I am perfectly content with my love life nowadays, I know that there are a ton of people that are currently as bitter as I was in my teenage years and earlier adult years. I wan...
It was a cold day in the United States last Wednesday, January 30. People were freaking out because temperatures reached -50 below in different Midwestern states. Luckily for me, I know plenty of people in the Midwest, including my family. Throughout the day I saw various social media posts talking about how cold it was outside. I had never experienced negative 50-degree wind chill days while living in Chicago, so when it happened, I felt like saying welcome to our world. Yes, negative 50 degree...
I get into some weird hobbies sometimes. Roasting my own coffee beans is one of those weird things that I enjoy to do nowadays. I am not the only one. Most people just drink coffee no matter the situation. My new hobby has ruined that for me. I no longer can simply just go anywhere and drink whatever coffee is thrown in front of me. I was after that coffee house experience. The type of experience you would get from a Star-bucks or a Caribou or various coffee shops in the area. Places like...
I am not too fond of moving. And by moving, I mean moving my personal belonging from one building to another. As many of you know, we switched offices a week or so ago. I knew the day would be coming but I dreaded it. One of the main reasons I dreaded the move was because over the past six years working for the PCN I had accumulated so much stuff in that old windowless office. I packed up a majority of my old office before the Malta High School Weights Class students moved desks and other heavy...
It has been a weird holiday season for our family. But not weird in a bad way. It was almost like a mini vacation for us due to the fact that we had a few days off in consecutive weeks. Of course we didn’t have any gas money to “skip town” but we had each other and new Christmas presents! For PJ we bought a few action figures, a remote control motorcycle and various other things. Lincoln received a few baby toys including toys that will help him crawl and eventually walk. I purchased Susan...
So I had a cheat day. But I did not post that to my keto support group’s page on social media. That is one way to easily get attacked. If I know one thing about the internet, it’s that people are more prone to attack your joy if it’s something they don’t agree with. You can respond to this by writing a letter to the editor if you don’t agree but just know that I had a cheat day. That cheat day was Christmas. I ate carbs all day long. Yams, buns, peaches and cream pie; and I started the day o...
The Monday before last Monday was pretty intense. What I have feared would happen did. I got sick on a Monday. At the PCN, Monday is an essential day for writing news and general wrap up. My Monday morning involves talking to several coaches to recap sporting events that have happened over the weekend and then writing stories about our local teams or various other features. Because Mondays are so busy, if I haven’t written everything during the weekend, I absolutely need to be in office to take...
Last week I talked about the things I enjoyed about our vacation to Lake Tahoe and this week I wanted to talk about the things that bummed me out about our trip. I have a problem with simply enjoying vacations. During my 22nd birthday, while I was living in Florida, my mother came down and surprised me with a vacation cruise to the Bahamas. That story is for another day, but it was on that trip that I realized that I don’t relax well. I was hoping that this trip to Lake Tahoe would be different. I did have relaxing times, but I found a way t...
I'm about six years late on this press release, but here it goes. I was hit with a shock wave of news when I found out that a building from my past was imploded in 2012. That building was the Grand Palace Hotel on Canal St. in New Orleans. The year was 2006, and it was roughly fourteen or fifteen months after Hurricane Katrina. During that time I was a freshman in college and it was Mission Week or Saint Louis Christian College's version of Spring Break. It was during this week that I went down...
I like coffee. No, I love coffee! I enjoy it very strong, black, and fresh. Every. Single. Morning. But not this morning because I'm sick. And it hasn't been very fun. I have my Keurig set to warm up at around 5:30 a.m. so that all I have to do is rinse the pod holder and put a new pod in. After that, I press the button and out comes liquid energy. I have grown fond of the Keurig because it is so easy to clean and the amount of caffeine seems to be less than when I brew coffee in my French...
It's not Halloween yet, but I have got a horror story for you! Well, it's not that bad, I'm being a little dramatic. The other night, Susan and I were tuning into Big Brother on CBS in our room, watching the nominations for evictions and something terrible happened. Again, I may be a little too dramatic. As the head of the household was putting up her nominees, I felt something touch my leg. I thought to myself “what was that?” To my surprise and great horror, a brown house spider was sit...
It's hard being addicted to food. Being a premature child, I was pretty skinny until the age of seven. I think I know how that all changed; my late Godmother. When I was about six or seven, it was because of her that I ate my first Big Mac and then five minutes later, my second Big Mac. It was an experience that changed my life forever. She used to take us to all kinds of restaurants, movies, and other fun places. After eating those Big Macs, it seemed that my appetite for junk food grew and tho...
It finally happened. Recently I wrote a three-part series of how I missed out on Taco Bell's Nacho Fries. I can finally say that I had a chance to taste the greatness that was those nacho fries. It wasn't without controversy, but I did it! On a trip to Chicago a couple of weeks ago to say goodbye to my grandfather, we had pulled into a hotel in Dickinson to rest from a day full of driving, when it hit me that there was a Taco Bell right across the street from us and at midnight I was going to...
Another Phillips County Fair has come and gone and what comes next, though exciting in their own rights, sort of depress me. The end of this year’s fair marks the beginning of fall and then winter, and with each year that passes, I wonder how many more I can go through. Living in Montana for the past 22 years has toughened me up, given me thicker skin to deal with the elements (huge portions of Montana biscuits and gravy over the past two decades have also helped with insulation of the bod.) I moved back to my birth town of Missoula from San D...
People often hate or fear what they don't understand. Something that freaks me out is a hairless pet. I guess when you're told your whole life that domesticated animals are furry and cuddly, you get stuck believing that they should always have hair. Trying to prove that I am not “specieist” (racist against hairless pets), I have tried watching videos of hairless cats and even subscribed to a social media page in which they send out videos often. I don't think it worked because I had the hon...
Yes, my boy has glasses. A few weeks ago we took PJ to an optometrist just to make sure he could see well. I should have known that he would have to wear glasses at an early age, given that both his mother and father have had glasses in their childhood. Every year, Susan and I took PJ to the eye doctor but only because we needed glasses. A year ago, he mentioned that he wanted glasses because he was the only one without them. His mother was prepared to buy him non-prescription glasses just so...
