Jay Bobb, Brother #1, and Uncle Will.
Those were different times…
Naperville, Illinois (1975)
Thanks, Aunt Gladys
I’d always wanted a motorcycle. (Every boy, if they are honest enough, does.)
In 2003, I was fortunate enough to come into a substantial inheritance from my Father’s Aunt, whom I had never met, but she knew about me and my two brothers.
She was one of the first women to graduate from the University of Oklahoma, never married, and worked for many years for a major oil and gas company. And when she died, she left her substantial fortune to me and my two brothers.
We didn’t deserve it, but we knew it was coming.
That inheritance allowed me to put a down payment on the “starter” home I bought for my newlywed bride that we ended up living in for 12 years, her engagement ring, her wedding band, my wedding band, and later this beautiful 2003 Suzuki Volusia that I had tricked out with every bell and whistle, including a plastic front guard, sissy bar, and heel-toe shifter.
I loved that motorcycle. I even took classes at Northern Virginia Community College on 250cc pieces of shit motorcycles in order to learn how to ride one so that I could ride this one.
Unfortunately, once Daughter #1 was born, it was hard to justify why I needed to spend the afternoon dangerously riding around the back roads of Northern Virginia on my motorcycle instead of being at home changing dirty diapers.
I had to sell the motorcycle for cash circa 2007, but for the time I owned it, it was an amazing bike.
Red Square, Russia (2005)
As previously mentioned, I had the most amazing 30+ day government paid vacation in Moscow.
Every day was an exciting adventure.
Towards the end, I decided I’d better hit the tourist sites.
I was told to be in line for the tour of Lenin’s Tomb around 8 AM.
I couldn’t be bothered, so I got there around 9.
There was already a crowd.
I made a stand on principal and capitalism and convenience that I wasn’t going to waste my day standing in a queue to see the embalmed body of a man whose mere existence had led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.
However, I would stand outside his tomb in my $10 American Eagle gas station jacket that I still own and wear (!) and commemorate that event for posterity.
So, fuck you, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
May your theories rot with you. From Hell (where you belong) to The Finland Station.
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware (2005)
I really love this picture.
This is me with Dip and Piggy, our first dogs. And our first “children.” (I refuse to use the term “fur babies.”)
No couple ever had better dogs. They were amazing.
And they honestly taught us a tremendous amount about what would be required to successfully raise children.
We have an oil portrait of both of them still hanging in our current home even though Dip died in 2009 and Piggy in 2011.
At the time my newlywed wife was pregnant with our first child. We took our dogs to the beach and stayed in a B&B run by a gay couple.
It was the weekend of the Michigan versus Ohio State football game and I was gauche enough to ask the proprietor, a Michigan Alum, if the schools were similar academically.
“Oh, god, no,” he replied. “Ohio State students are essentially Philistines.”
Hmmm. A snobby gay guy looking down his nose at one of the greatest college football schools in the country.
He reminded me a lot of a UVA alum.
“Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind”
“Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”
Song Of Ajax 