Matthew's an Auld Dog

Matthew is a 38 year old, married father of three (Evelyn, Charlie and soon to arrive baby - Q): a veteran, a liberal, a hopeless romantic, and a walking cocktail party of information from Minneapolis/St. Paul.


If your rational for getting fit is a date on the calendar, it will fail. It has to be a lifestyle change. I can see why some people get real frustrated. I can gain 20 pounds in two weeks easy, but to lose that 20 pounds will take me 6 months of working out and watching what I eat.

Let's face it; the USA is the bi-polar nation. We tell everyone that looks don't matter that it's what is on the inside that matters, and then have our NEWS reporters telling us all the latest Paris and Britney gossip. We tell everyone that they need to be healthy, flooding them with exercise options and healthy advice, only to immediately follow it up with monster burgers, out of control portion sizes and junk food cheaper than healthy food. We tell people it's not what you want, it's what you have, and then create a society of lemmings with false desire for the newest and latest gadgets,often in a brazen quality that suggests that this one phone/car/television is the thing that will finally make you happy.

I love Minnesota, and Canada for that matter, but Ireland is truly wonderful, with the most beautiful people in the world.

Don't ask someone about their past if you don't want to know about it. Just know they are with you now.

Here is the great debate. Work something mindless, with limited interruption, put in your hours and leave, have some physical labor involved, but you never will bring work home, and earn $30,000, or work that skilled position where you work way over 40 hours for the week, constantly bring work home, think about work even when you don't have to, sacrifice family functions and make $70,000. There are times I wish I were still pouring beers in a bar.

I will say I am glad I am eating steak and fresh veggies instead of spaghetti and bananas.

We in the USA really push ourselves hard, much harder than I think we have to. I think it is a vicious pyramid where the guy at the top feels that making 40 million a year is not enough and then pushes upper management, who in turn push middle management, who then in turn create long hours and tough shifts for the workers, so that the next year they make 42 million. In that same time, no one calculates the accumulated cost of lost family time, stress on workers at work, stress in workers lives caused by work. I think we devalue the cost of actual living.

I had a boss tell a staff meeting that if you have a loved one who is getting ready to pass away, that she had no problem refusing to let you go be with them because you shouldn't wait until the end to let them know how you feel. It told me more about her than I ever wanted to know.

I love the men and women who choose to fight for the ideals that originated in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. They have come freely to serve. They give themselves and their blind faith in our country fills me with pride. There is only one thing they ask in return for their service; don't send them into personal or unjustified conflict.

Do I love the troops? Of course I do. That's why I don't want to see them come home in body bags from a country that doesn't want us there, for nothing more than potential corporate profit.

George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever seen. He is the Anti-Lincoln. Instead of sacrificing his personal agenda for the betterment of the country, he sacrifices the betterment of the country for his own personal agenda. He is even worse than William Henry Harrison, the President who died a month after his inauguration.

I have to live somewhere that has four distinct seasons. Change is good.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, at auld.dog@gmail.com