One Lent during college, my dad suggested I give up alcohol. Forty days without beer at Marquette University in Milwaukee? Not happening. Now ten years after graduating, I just yesterday completed the formerly Herculean task with ease. When Lent came up, I wanted to give up something meaningful and hard. I’d been defaulting to drinking a bit too much with work stress and felt unhealthy. And Lent seemed like a good time to put a potentially-forming habit to bed before it grew to anything more than that. I spent a total of five minutes considering giving it up for Lent, and then suddenly it was Ash Wednesday. Last minute I decided to take the plunge and not drink until Good Friday. And it went well! I found it very worthwhile. At first it was sort of difficult because of a few situations where I actually felt odd not drinking. For example, my wife and I hosted our parish priest for diner and, I admit, I did miss having a pre-dinner whiskey and wine during the meal with him. I ran into a few similar situations as Lent began where I felt lame or out-of-touch by not drinking. I realized this…Continue reading Thoughts on an alcohol-free Lent
Month: March 2018
No cowards here, just promises
This week, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens advocated a Second Amendment repeal. And we, as Americans (both gun-owning and non-gun owning), must remember and cherish the moral underpinnings of our right to arms. I tire of Second Amendment advocates relying on hunting to provide the basis for our right. Hunting is a fun activity and provides a palatable, unobjectionable-at-a-dinner-party rationale for our right to arms, but it is entirely inadequate as a justification for private gun ownership. Our right to bear arms is a basic human right, not one granted to us by the Constitution. The Constitution, n its face, accepts this: the Second Amendment does not grant us the right to bear arms, instead the Second Amendment (as all of the Bill of Rights) mandates that the government not infringe on that right. The right predates and supersedes the Constitution, our government, politicians, etc. “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” Jeffrey R. Snyder’s A Nation of Cowards (link to full text, apparently with author’s consent) provides a wonderful primer on these ideas. Below I provide some excerpts. Here is a link to a complete audio reading by one of…Continue reading No cowards here, just promises
Thoughts on tipping
Done right, tipping is an easy, stress-free way to enrich other peoples’ lives. Yet people fail to take the time and minimal effort to tip in the right way. Realizing that, here are a few (nine) of my thoughts on tipping: 1) Can’t afford a tip? Can’t afford the fun. If you can’t afford (or are sweating) dropping someone a fair tip, you probably shouldn’t be doing the activity requiring tipping. Spending $100 on a dinner and then feeling pain at the $20 (minimum) tip means you shouldn’t be spending $100 on a meal. 2) Tipping tells you a lot about a person. If you’re going to stiff someone on a tip because of what you’ve deemed to be poor service, you have a duty to tell them what they’ve done wrong to deserve such treatment. I have lost massive respect for people who justify their cheapness on allegedly bad service. “I’m not cheap,” they say, “that waiter just sucked.” That’s fine, and while a bad tip for bad service doesn’t necessarily mean someone is cheap, the two almost always seem to correlate. If you are actually going to leave someone a bad tip (defined as below 15% on a…Continue reading Thoughts on tipping
War Lesson #2–Put the right Marine in the right spot, regardless of rank
This week I finished Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. While reading, I came across a passage that ties in well to one of the war lessons I think junior military leaders need to understand (**spolier alert for this whole post**). While on a Texas-to-Montana cattle drive with some of the men from his former Texas Ranger unit, there is a point where one of the cowboys, Augustus McCrae, has just fought off six of 12 attacking Indians alone. Stranded and away from support, McCrae’s mind wandered before the second part of the battle with the Indians. He reminisced about some of the Rangers’ abilities in battles with Indians. I particularly noted the description of a character named Josh Deets: “Deets’s great ability was in preventing ambushes. He would seem to feel them coming, often a day or two early, when he would have no particular clues. “How’d you know?” they would ask him and Deets would have no answer. “Just knew,” he said. In Lonesome Dove, Josh Deets is an free black, high-performing cowboy. Recognizing Deets’ abilities as a reconnaissance man and tracker, Woodrow Call–McCrae’s business partner and leader of the cattle drive–assigned Deets the scouting duties for the cowboys when…Continue reading War Lesson #2–Put the right Marine in the right spot, regardless of rank
The military leaders’ guide to writing letters of recommendation for your former subordinates (and a draft letter you can use to save time)
As most of my readers (I think there are almost ten of you now) know, I was a Marine Corps infantry officer. In this job, I oversaw many young men. The Marine Corps has the lowest retention rate of all the branches of service, so the vast majority of these young men served four years and then returned to civilian life. After the Marine Corps, these Marines have spread to the wind. Many have started families. Some have rejoined the Marines in some capacity, whether reservist or active duty. Some have gone to college, law school, or (unfortunately) jail. Others have become plumbers, teachers, firefighters, or police officers. No matter where these fine men have gone, they need character references or letters of recommendation. Because these guys mostly enlisted out of high school, their only non-Marine Corps work experience was their high school, minimum wage job. That experience does not speak to recruiters, colleges, or juries like a good account of their Marine Corps service. And it is hard for these guys to encapsulate their service in a palatable way for civilians. To my knowledge, the Marine Corps offers no centralized clearinghouse of an enlisted Marine’s reviews that he can…Continue reading The military leaders’ guide to writing letters of recommendation for your former subordinates (and a draft letter you can use to save time)
Lean Muscle Chili–a winter delight with great macros for just $1.73 per meal
One of my brothers is visiting from Arizona for ten days. He is moving up here for his first young professional job in about six weeks. We are excited to have him back in the North Country for good. The other night, we decided to work on a recipe for another healthy lunch option after recently posting about the Rob Special–another cheap, macro-rockin’ lunch option. We made an updated, healthier version of my main chili recipe. We called this version: Lean Muscle Chili. The name Lean Muscle Chili is a rip-off from my real chili recipe. In 2014, I won a chili cook-off (so what if there were only about ten entrants?) using my original Muscle Chili recipe. The real recipe contains copious amounts of ground beef and some venison. Right now, I have no venison (I passed on my one good shot at a buck in 2017, wahh!), and ground beef is so calorie dense that I’ve started using ground turkey as a replacement. More than just calories, I’ve been making a concerted effort to limit red meat these past few year because my blood pressure gets high sometimes. Limiting red meat, sodium, and alcohol has really helped my blood…Continue reading Lean Muscle Chili–a winter delight with great macros for just $1.73 per meal
Building your Biglaw wardrobe
You did it. You scored of of the coveted Biglaw jobs out of law school. And now you think you need to look the part, but you don’t have much money. Here’s what you should do. (For non-lawyers, Biglaw is the name given to the biggest law firms in the world. These high-paying jobs are the most demanding lawyer jobs straight out of law school. Having these jobs is also a miserable way to go through life.) First, don’t go hog wild and spend a ton of money on “a new wardrobe.” You will fail at this. Instead, plan and prepare. This is going to take a bit of time. The most important thing to consider is fit. Fabric and material quality is the second most important factor. Go slow. Research and find experts to help you. Okay? Calmed down? Good, now proceed. Second, shoes. I suppose you could try to buy just one pair of dress shoes, but they will get very beat up and not last. Unfortunately, that means you’ll need two pairs. Save up your coin and go to Allen Edmonds or a similar store. You will buy one pair of dark brown, conservative shoes. Your goal…Continue reading Building your Biglaw wardrobe
The Fool’s Errand–Part One, Chapter Three
“The Fool’s Errand” ***Author’s note: This is the second installation of a small fiction project I have been working on. I will post portions of the story during 2018, so stay tuned. Below is part two. Click here for chapters one and two of part one.*** Chapter three: The Crumbling Cathedral –Late autumn 2019; four months before the Deserter’s Dying Declaration– The assembled militia guzzled coffee in the church gymnasium. The general had taken a big risk to muster the entire group, save for the patrols out at the time, in one place. He sensed dissension and wanted to deal with it head-on. So close, he thought, our time is so close. Stemming the tide on internal quarrels as their time to act approached outweighed the chance of the Invaders locating and maybe bombing the church. The men assembled, and the general’s keen eye noticed that the men divided themselves into two groups. On one side, behind a few officers, sat two-thirds of the militia. Behind him sat the remaining third. After roll call, the general asked if anyone would like to speak. The militiamen were not surprised by the general’s informality. He began most musters in this fashion. Normally…Continue reading The Fool’s Errand–Part One, Chapter Three