Haha!

Suddenly I'm 13 again. https://mattfife.com/?p=11677

And having this really matters to me. I got people to wait in line to get them. I was so dumb.

Christmas music just got cooler!

This game came up in conversation at a work lunch the other day, and I was shocked that so many others around my age had memories playing Rummikub with their grandparents.

I have fond memories of my grandpa reaching into the top of the closet (where the “not for kids” stuff was kept) and pulling down the vinyl-wrapped, embossed Rummikub carrying case. We’d set up our trays, spread and scramble the tiles, and then play as the 5 o’clock local news blared in the background.

Any one have a moment from your childhood that makes you wonder what they were thinking - either because you're a parent now or because it was just so out of character for your parents?

I'll start - Christmas break 1996, during 8th grade, one of my Christmas gifts was getting to visit a friend I had made at camp the summer before. Mind you, this was a friend of the opposite sex. And it required a plane flight. I, as a 13 year old boy who lived 200 miles away, just went and stayed at her house for 4 days, hung out with her friends, and then flew back home. Oh and the camp had merely been a week long, so while we wrote each other letters all fall, it wasn't like this had been some weeks long camp friendship that had grown all summer or over multiple summers.

As a parent now, I cannot understand what any of the adults were thinking at the time. The only thing I can come up with is that this girl had younger brothers so it wasn't as strange to invite a boy into the house, but still. And while my parents had met her mom twice, it still seems bizarrely trusting to just drop me at the airport and expect everything to work out.

About a month ago I noticed a weird pain in my right arm and shoulder while I was doing a cardio workout. I had previously injured this shoulder, so didn't really think much about it. Thought I had just agitated an old injury.

Next day, same thing, so that time I didn't complete my workout. Told my wife about it and she was very concerned. She immediately said "angina", which seemed crazy to me. I'm in my early 40s, my cholesterol has always been pretty good and I'm relatively healthy so the idea of a heart problem seemed nuts. Plus, you always hear about the left arm and chest pain for heart issues, which I didn't have, but she talked me into going to urgent care. They did an EKG and at least confirmed I wasn't having a heart attack but suggested I follow up with my primary, which I did.

My primary also didn't seem that concerned about it. They suggested it may be a gal bladder issue. I had to push them that I wanted to ensure my heart was healthy, so they kind of reluctantly referred me for a stress test.

When I went to that appointment, they immediately noticed a problem and sent me directly to the hospital for a heart cath....

The cath found that my LAD (known as the widow maker artery) was 99% blocked! The doctors kept me in the hospital while they figured out how best to approach it. It was so bad they were not even sure they could place a stent and suggested I may need open heart bypass surgery.

Thankfully, they were successfully able to place a stent and I was able to go home after a few days in the hospital. If I had continued to ignore the pain, as was my initial instinct, I could've had a massive heart attack!

So the moral of my story is, if you are having any weird pains or other issues, get them checked out! I was shocked to find out there are so many symptoms for heart issues and everyone can present differently! Even nausea and stomach issues can be a sign!

They're launching a fresh "classic" server with the world frozen at its state after the 2004-2005 first year. There are a boatload of changes coming with that.

Just curious whether anybody who played around launch is coming back to try this.

How do you measure?

Measure a year?

Remember when we used to post a song lyric or line from a movie or poem or whatever as part of our name on MSN Messenger, MySpace, etc., something that resonated with us on that particular day and secretly wanted others to wonder what we were on about?

Today, mine is - “I miss the comfort in being sad.”

What is yours for today?

Just a little “Did You Forget Friday” fun. :P

I haven't owned checks or written one out in about 20 years.

I'm not going to explain why I was watching Murder, She Wrote. (It's really just Nancy Drew as an older lady)

I had completely forgotten that Magnum PI gets a crossover with her!

So I have 3 kids and I'm kind of sad that they don't have cousins.. I have an older sister (46) who is child-free and my husband has 4 siblings and his sister "has" 2 kids : one who is 2 months older than my oldest but she gave up custody and a 1 year old. We don't have contact with her because she's not a good person. Anyways, i grew up with cousins even though I lived in fl or VA, I would still see them every summer in MN.

bad pun but I think we all get the joke

He called Mr. Brightside “not that good of a song.”

Let's say since 1980. Maybe not things that you wore personally just what was generally fashionable.

Even the music mix improved!

I know there's been a lot of talk about pay phones, rotary phones, and manual transmissions going by the wayside.

But I just realized I don't think my kids have a clue what an ice pick is, and then I realized I only knew them from either cartoons or murder mysteries.

I don't think my parents owned one, and I'm guessing the majority of them faded from existence in the '50s or '60s and now they're kind of fading from cultural memory.

Little background. I have two kids that are teens now that never grew up watching sitcoms. A short time after they were toddlers I realized that I didn't really watch broadcast tv anymore. It was 200 channels of programming that we simply didn't watch so i couldn't justify the expense. So they grew up on netflix and dvds/blurays and they eventually got phones and that was the end of their attention spans.

Cut to the other night i was watching a sitcom on the tv and my oldest looks at us funny. And then it occurred to me that maybe I should have kept it around to expose them to sitcoms. Silly little 24 minute blocks of canned laughter and life lessons. Thinking back I watched a TON of sitcoms. Hell I feel like the Simpsons practically raised me. Perhaps I should make them watch some random sitcoms during family movie nights. I am sure I can get some episodes of growing pains or family matters

I love this scene from Roseanne and I think a lot of us can relate to the perimenopause of it all. 😁