Tandem Sky Diving With A German Shepherd Police Dog?

Since last nights blog I've been inundated with suggestions from (usually not so) well meaning friends. They all have great ideas of what I can try on the extreme side of life. Among those I have heard today are ...
-Catching a bullet with my teeth
-Ice road trucking
-Continuing to drive my Mustang without buying new tires (this person made a good point. I gotta get on that...)
-"Dry Snorkeling" (No water outside the mask. Water inside the mask.)
-Tandem sky diving with a German Shepherd police dog

People. You are not being helpful. I want to stimulate my adrenal glands. I do not want to die. I want the exhilaration of an emotional rush. I do not want an extended stay in ICU.

Honestly, I don't think you are trying hard enough. My friends and family are some of the most creative people I know. My son-in-law write songs and tours in a band. And that's just his part time job. My brother-in-law use to be a pseudo-carnie by running games at an amusement park and he came within a hair of driving the Oscar Meyer Wiener-Mobile for a year. My own kids are all certifiably insane ... usually in a good way. My brother writes poetry for a newspaper. My wife can legally wrestle and restrain renegade teenagers. One of my daughters-in-law houses the homeless, and one of them homelesses the housed (she works for a savings and loan and she'll either kill me or laugh hysterically when she reads this.) I've been blessed to hang out with cops, Coast Guard "swabbies," a coroner, jet pilots, ex-cons, current cons, a nuclear missile repairman, mayors, national champion archers, EMT's, truck drivers, taxi drivers, a sniper, an underwater bridge pier painter, a stuffer of animal intestinal skins with Johnsonville Bratwurst, and a guy who passed his 16th kidney stone today. There is some serious talent in that bunch. And these are the best suggestions they can squeeze out of their fertile brain cells? Puh-lease.

It appears that I'm going to have to go it on my own. Chart my own course. Design my own destiny. If I'm going extreme I'm obviously going alone.

You'll all be sorry when you read my memoirs.

I'm All Shook Up (with apologies to Elvis)

I think I need to do something extreme. Not odd. Not weird. Extreme. Some years ago our home had an invasion of mice. I set traps around the laundry room. That was normal. Then I declared war on the vermin. That was weird. Next I found myself sitting on the clothes dryer late at night waiting for the SNAP that would signal the demise (de-mice?) of the furry creatures. That was extreme. I mean, it worked so it wasn't an altogether bad plan. But I would think the traps would have done just fine without my presence. I did forego the camouflage face paint and uniform so that's one point for me.

When I took a year off from ministry in the local church I spent a lot of time reading and talking to God. "Decompressing" if you will. Pretty normal stuff. Then upon my relocation to Cleveland I took the personal challenge of throwing a ball from my ninth floor balcony into Lake Erie. The management even gave me access to the 11th floor (better known as the roof) one day so that I could try it from there. They were cheering for me. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I only had one baseball and every time I threw it and it fell short I had to descend the nine floors (I walked. We baseball players do that.) to get the ball and then nine floors back up again. All of that just to hurl the ball one more time and watch it bounce on the lawn. Yes, I finally got the ball into the lake on one bounce. Since I couldn't get it back to try again I chalked it up as a win and moved on with life. But it was a challenge. (If you keep track of these things my rotator cuff is in the lake too.)

But have you ever felt yourself "flat lining?" It's not that I'm not enjoying life. It isn't like there is nothing to accomplish. I love my job, my church, my wife. That stuff is all great. But a guy has to step aside from that once in a while and do something extreme simply for the sake of doing it. And at the moment I can't seem to find a challenge worthy of making my adrenaline pump ... my heart race ... my imagination soar. So.

It's time to shake things up.

Not sure how I'm going to do that yet. I may have to start with odd and weird. I mean, I may have to work up to extreme. Before I skied down from the continental divide in Colorado I spent a few years skiing Missouri. Missouri was my "set-up." I would have killed myself had I gone straight to the divide. And as much as I want to shake things up, if I go from boring and normal directly to extreme ... well, it could be hazardous. Probably to myself.

So here we go. I need some suggestions. The comment line is open. Help a brother out, would ya please? I need a good suggestion on how to "Go Extreme." I prefer that it not involve spilled blood (mine) or jail time. Other than that ... I'm open. Let's shake things up...

Good Old Google

The number 1 google search that sent people to this blog yesterday was "Shut the door and waste me."

That's all I have to say about that.