Does every waiter have to ask how everything is less than five minutes after they serve you? Do they not eat out themselves? Can they at least watch you to see if your mouth is full BEFORE they ask you?

Look, all you need to do is walk by me once in awhile and if I need something, or “the food sucks”, I will get your attention. Is the food so bad in these places that waitresses have to ask you how everything is? Shouldn’t it just be fine? After all, it is what we expect when we eat out. I don’t go out thinking “hit or miss, I hope this food’s good”. And one more thing. Tell me your name. That’s not reserved for costly restaurants. That way when you disappear, I can ask the next waiter to find you, just in case “it sucks”.

Just one man’s opinion

The Regular Guy

Things that change with age..part one

Stop tucking in that tee shirt! Why in Gods name do men begin tucking in their tee shirts when they get older. Did you ever see any man between teenager and thirty nine years old tuck his tee? Man, tucking that tee makes your pants look like they are up to your neck. And besides that, do we really need to see your beer belly hang over your belt buckle? Check out those pics of you when you were younger. I bet you let that tee hang back then, so why the change now? Tucking that tee doesn’t make it a dress shirt either. It is what it is. Tee shirt and jeans with the tee out. Lets keep it that way….

Just one mans opinion!

The Regular Guy

Jose Reyes watches from the dugout after pulling himself from the Reds game.

Jose Reyes blew it. He should have followed in the great Ted Williams footsteps .

Met fans don’t really get much to cheer about unless its every 15-20 years. The last big thing we had was 1986. Yesterday could have been a shiny moment, although not grand, but still something to cheer about after another horrible season.

Jose Reyes won the National league batting crown which for those of you not in the know, means he hit for a higher batting average than anyone else in his league. Not an easy thing to do and especially if you are a NY Met. There has never been a NY Met to win the National league crown. I believe the last Met to get close was Cleon Jones in 1969. Sounds like a pretty good accomplishment for a Met but indeed it did not come without controversy.

Jose Reyes chose to take himself out of the game after getting a bunt single in the first inning, so as to preserve his lead in the standings and make it very difficult for the next closest hitter to catch him. Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers was that hitter. He needed to go 3-4 in his final game to overtake Reyes. Knowing that , Reyes chose not to chance taking extra at bats. Bush league as some might say.

Ted Williams, when faced with the possibility of hitting .400 chose to play in both games of a double header instead of sitting out and letting his average remain at .400. That is what Reyes should have done. Earn it. Make it right and don’t cop out. Real accomplishments should be earned if they are to mean anything. Too bad for Braun, that he really never had a fair chance to go up against Reyes for at least four at bats.

Being a Met fan it only makes me feel worse. It seems that even our best players rarely do the right thing. I guess it really isn’t so bad after if I compare it to the self destruction of two of our best ballplayers, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, back in the 80′s. Those two guys really killed Met fans.

Sometimes its not what you accomplish in life, but it’s the character you show in trying, that really makes people admire you…..

Just one man’s opinion…

The Regular Guy

When I was a kid, I once heard my mom say to her friend that she shouldn’t lift a heavy item. Your thinking “that doesn’t sound so bad “, but, aha, there’s more. She followed that with a scary suggestion that this woman’s “uterus will fall out!”

Wow! What the hell is that? I don’t think I was more than 10 yrs old but that sure sounded bad to me. What the hell is a uterus? Did I have one of those? I lifted some heavy things. Was I going to lose something through my ass? Next time I saw my friends, I had to ask if any of them knew what the heck a uterus is. Well as it turned out we weren’t so up on the female anatomy as we thought we were. Sure we knew the important parts breast, butt, the female flower….you know all the stuff that mattered to us, but a uterus? And the fact that it might just “fall out”. I remember thinking that I was glad I was a guy cause it didn’t seem like much more than a good bowel movement was coming out of me.

So fast forward to the present. I find myself laughing today when I tell women at work not to lift heavy things because their uterus might fall out. They laugh and say that won’t happen, but I tell them I don’t want to be the one present to witness the event if it does! After all, am I the one that s going to have to have to pick it up, bag it and carry it to the hospital so they can put it back in? Hell I don’t think I have it in me toss it in my car and bring it with us. Its not like a finger that you can throw in a bag of ice and put it on the dashboard. If you witnessed your child’s birth than you know just how messy those things can be! Seriously, does it really “fall out”? I recently heard a story about a guy who pushed so hard during a visit to the john, that his intestine fell out. Really, a friend of mine drove him to the hospital and watched the doctor push it back in. Holy crap man!

So for future reference, don’t let your woman pick up heavy items.  Unless you have a pooper scooper or something else handy to pick up that uterus when it falls out you better carry those grocery bags from now on!

Just one man’s opinion!

The Regular Guy

It seems to me that there is quite a crowd of women between the ages of 30 and 40 who can not find Mr Right.

Online dating sites brag about the rate people that find love using  their programs, but in real life they seem to fall short of their lofty success reports. Women between the ages of 30 and 40 are finding themselves in limbo when it comes to landing the man of their dreams, especially if they have high standards. More and more I hear how there are so few “good” men out there and that the ones they date always fall short of capturing not just their heart but simply their interest.

Yesterday I stood between four women aged 35 to 50 and listened to them question ones relationship status. This woman being questioned is about to turn 40 and had been through a marriage that went bad. That was 7 years ago and today, she finds herself still looking for Mr Right. Sandy (not her real name) is a great girl who is not only very attractive but intelligent, witty, honest and sincere. She is also very independent and well liked by everyone who knows her. Why then can’t she find what shes looking for? She explained how just recently she met a new guy, who is 40 and without baggage (means no ex wife, no kids) which is rare these days. She also mentioned that he would like children and that is one of the things Sandy is looking for in a man. One of the women stated that at 40, he knows what he wants as opposed to earlier in his life. I laughed aloud when I heard that statement because usually men say they can not figure out women because they are always changing. t Matter of fact, men who are married often state that their wives are no longer the girl they married (see earlier posts for more on this). When I laughed they asked why I had, and I couldn’t help but chime in. I said that men were simple in what they want and that it never changes. Perhaps it’s that women at this age don’t want the same things as they did years ago when we were closer in what we both wanted and expected from each other. I said that men wanted the same things now as we did then. Sex, good food, toys and laughter. Its is really very simple, but for a woman at this age the sex we want is always too much, women don’t have time to cook or don’t know how, the love of cars, motorcycles, sports, and electronics never did anything for woman to begin with, and laughter is childish( ie: the Three Stooges come to mind). A good example might be this: In high school just about every girl wanted the jock boyfriend. He was into all the things I mentioned above and to some extent so was she. She played sports or went to to the games(maybe to meet one of the jocks). She thought his car was “cool” especially if it was a convertible, because then everyone could see her in it. Now, if you look at that guy today, he is still the same but the woman his age considers him “childish” for being the same man today as he was back then. Today the women want the “geek” who back in high school they made fun of or never paid any attention to his attraction to her. He was weird or goofy, skinny or dressed funny. Not COOL. Too bad because now all those great guys are probably the nerds who are married and successful. Oh the jocks are probably married too or they are bald and fat and are now the unattractive ones. One hell of a vicious cycle huh?

So in this day of single girls outnumbering single guys, where does a great girl find her soul mate? That question will probably go without answer forever because as they say “you can’t force love because it happens when you least expect it”.

Just one mans opinion…

The Regular Guy

Some one once said” Life is what happens while your busy planning for it.” Maybe it wasn’t exactly that but close enough.

So how is it that we get so involved in planning our lives that we miss most of it as it jettisons right by us. I have been trying to change the way I live my life for years, and it’s a slow process at best, trying to undo the mess that I have created.

Last year, I went to see “Eat, Pray, Love ” and I walked away from the film with a reinforcement of what I always believed. You can not change your life unless you change where you live your life. Nothing really changes if your environment doesn’t

The main character in the movie came to a crossroad when she realized that she wasn’t living a life by choice but one that she couldn’t relate to because she became lost in all the things that life threw at her on a daily basis. She didn’t know who she was and what truly made her happy, so she embarked on a mission to find her true self.

If you think about it we build our lives in steps which seems to end in retirement. We are born, we grow, we learn, we work, we marry, we have kids, we buy a house, we create massive expenses and responsibilities, and we hope for a comfortable retirement. We are led to believe that this is a way to a happy life. We don’t live life, we work it. Sure we all get little bits and pieces of it but do we ever really live the life we would if we could?

I have spent my life working just to enjoy a few off weeks a year to do things that make me happy while all the time wishing I could work less and live more. I am not talking about traveling the world but just taking the time to “smell the roses”.  I, like most men, are driven to make money with the hope that at some point I can enjoy the rewards of my lifelong efforts. But unless you happen to make a killing very quickly, you will find that basically you work your whole life to live, and not much more.

Maybe we are all just missing life the way it was intended to be. “SIMPLE.” We have all become products of our environment. So caught up in our work that it becomes our life. Think about how upside down we have made our lives. We spend most of our day working and the rest sleeping. When we aren’t sleeping we are on our phones or computers probably either working or wasting time.  I have been told by my parents that some of the best times of their life were before all this technology set in. It seems that living before the 1960′s was great. Could it be because life was much simpler and less cluttered with technology. People actually had conversations in their living rooms with neighbors on Saturday nights. It was called “having company”. Today, we don’t even want to talk to each other so we just text.

If you are young and reading this here’s some advice. Start early and save as much money as possible by avoiding what everyone else is doing with theirs, because later in life you will need it more than earlier. Travel as soon as possible and see how others live in difference to where you were raised. Take a job or jobs that don’t tie you down ( this is the difficult one) but allow you to leave if necessary and start up somewhere else. Remember, its not how much you earn its how much you spend that makes life difficult, and with this in mind, stay debt free. And last, you will  learn later in life that it is shorter than you think so be prepared to say yes now to all the things you truly want to do and not make excuses as to why you can’t. Don’t let your “career” become who you are. Keep your life “simple” because at some point you will look back on it and wonder how it got so complicated and stressful and not know how to fix it. It becomes like the hamster on a wheel. Repetition over and over, the same everyday.

Life as we know it happens because we allow it to. Someday, hopefully sooner than later, I’ll get this life right!

Just one man’s opinion

The Regular Guy

Being a kid, I always looked forward to snow days off from school. When my friends and I heard that snow was coming we couldn’t help but plan whose house we would wind up at to build a fort and have a war with neighboring kids.

There is something really wonderful about being snowbound in your home as an adult. Time stands still.

When everyone in town is snowbound, nobody gets the edge on anyone because we are all in the same boat. There are no worries about lost business to another company or making an interview for a job. There is no getting the kids ready for school while you text on your Blackberry to a client. Time stands still.

You sleep in and when you awake you hurry to the window to see just how much snow your going to have to shovel to get that car out of the driveway. Your not worried so you go back to bed and catch up on sleep you wouldn’t normally get. If your real lucky, your laying next to someone who is feeling a little frisky. Hell you have all day. Time stands still.

You finally get your butt out of bed and you eat a really big breakfast because your going to need those calories for all that shoveling. You dress like its 20 below outside and your armed with shovels, salt and ice scrappers. All this doesn’t seem so bad because you have all day and nowhere to be, just like everyone else.Time stands still.

As you shovel that snow you begin to remember when you were younger and your dad made you go outside to clear a path so he could go to the store for the milk and bread he forgot to get in preparation of the great storm. As he slides and stumbles to his car, you can hear him mumble under his breathe how your mom is a pain in the ass and won’t stoop reminding him how she “told him so”, about the milk and bread!  As the cold air brings you back to reality, you look around and marvel at how breathtaking the snow and ice on the trees look. What a great day to be alive and you remember that you have all day to enjoy it.

Yes, when a snowstorm hits your town, its truly a magical moment. It brings you back to a simpler time in life when you had nothing but time..no worries, no responsibilities, no cares in the world, just time. Time that was so endless because you never knew just how fast it would pass in your lifetime. For me, being snowbound stops time just long enough for me to remember what it was like, when I had nothing but time, to enjoy my life.

The Bible is the greatest story ever told.

When I was young enough and not able to express my own feelings about religion and church, my parents made it their personal agenda to see to it that I was brought up a good Catholic and that I attend church every week. Back then and now in hindsight it was probably not the right way to go about introducing me to religion. Forcing me to attend church just made me resent going even more.

Now, as an adult, I have my own feelings about my religion and beliefs, even though I still have a mother who every once in awhile lays the guilt trip on me about my lack of attending church regularly. That standing, I have always been fascinated about my Christan background and its roots beginning with God, Adam and Jesus Christ.

Being that we are now in the Christmas season, it is hard not to think about Christ and what he means to Catholics and Christians everywhere. With all the hoop-a-lah and shopping, the real reason for this holiday gets lost in marketing for new I Pads, phones and the latest electronics that our kids can’t live without

All of my adult life I have always believed in religion and had hoped that what I had been taught really happened, but being an adult I also questioned how incredible it would have to be if it were in fact all true. I know that as a Christian I am not supposed to question my faith but how can any person not think that it might possibly be just “the greatest story ever told”.

Just thinking about it all and how it was passed down for centuries almost seems like an impossibility that one story could live on for that long and not be based on truth and real events. It seems to me that people who believe without question are more at peace with their lives than those who don’t. There must be something to it.

Although I have always questioned my faith, I have always wanted to believe. When people would ask the silly question about one person I would like share a conversation with, I always chose Christ, even though I think I would turn to a sobbing ball of mush in his presence due to the awe of it all. It just seems to me that this life we have must be for some bigger reason than the stress and craziness we live with day to day. To believe strongly that someday we will be in a better place, would make this life easier to get through.

And so in closing, I think its probably better to believe and find that in the end there is no afterlife, than it is to not believe and find that there is a judgment day and I failed the test. So as the good Catholic that my parents raised, I should say that this year, I hope you  remember to keep the Christ in Christmas…God Bless!

At some point in life we all get to an age when our eyes start to become unreliable, especially in dimly lit restaurants.

Being a Regular Guy, I fought the good fight for the last five or six years, trying to get by without optical help. Always one for seeing (no pun) eye doctors, I was told that I only needed readers and that my left eye was only fixable with surgery. So on I continued, hazing cereal box labels, newspapers, and menu’s trying make sense of it all.Wearing glasses never seemed like an option because I had  great “walking around ” vision. Carrying glasses for reading was even worse because I don’t use a “man purse” and glasses on a chain were strictly for my sun glasses ( which is still fashionable to date).So what does the Regular Guy do?

Alice, its time for contact lenses. Changing eye doctors, I had hoped that this one would be able to offer the option of contacts to help with my reading debacle. Watching my wife use contacts, never seemed like a daunting task to me and I figured that I could master the art of lens wearing in short duty. Okay so maybe I had ideas of grandeur. As my wife has observed and pointed out to me, I have three things playing against me in mastering the insertion and removal of these wonderful optical  pieces. Finger tips that over the years have lost sensitivity ( from work), hands like bear paws ( piano fingers preferred) and last, eyelid slivers. These three things, if you have not figured it out, will make placing contacts in your eyes VERY difficult.

Needless to say, I stymied the assistant in the docs office for a very long hour, the first time I attempted to install my superior eye wear. Retreating back to the safety of my home, I enlisted the assistance of my favorite contact wearer, to teach my the ropes on how too install these little domes of magnifying wonders.

So armed with visions of expert techniques buried in my mind, I attempted a second installation visit with the docs asssistant. Being blessed with skills beyond most mortal men, I conquered the task at hand and left with contacts in place!

After putting in the lens, I should tell you, I felt like I was in my thirties again. I was walking around the office in wonderment of how much I could read and from such as distance. These things are incredible. I am a new man!

But alas, all good things come to an end. Contacts, as I already knew, must be removed every night and put back in every morning. What a bummer! So maybe I still haven’t really conquered the task just quite yet. Already I have ripped one lens, dropped another (and found it stuck to the soap dispenser bottle) and placed one in backwards (ouch),but I move on with the hopes that great vision is still within my grasp. Its only been three days and it hasn’t gotten much easier, but when I do get (the one lens) it in, seeing everything clear again makes it worth the effort.

Already I know the best thing about reading so easily again. Perusing a menu and actually knowing what I am ordering instead of ordering out of frustration or with the aide of my trusted sidekick’s vocal descriptions. Life is good!

(as submitted by Lea for “She Say’s”)

A real man is a woman’s best friend. He will never stand her up and never let her down. He will reassure her when she feels insecure and comfort her after a bad day.

He will inspire her to do things she never thought she could do; to live without fear and forget regret. He will enable her to express her deepest emotions and give in to her most intimate desires. He will make sure she always feels as though she’s the most beautiful woman in the room and will enable her to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, and invincible.

No wait… sorry… I’m thinking of wine.
Never mind.

I raise my glass to those who are lucky enough to have found a real man, as well!