The Ben Dungan (dot com)

It doesn’t get any better than watching those old Dusty Rhodes promos from the 80’s to get fired up to get back in the game.

But you have to get your jersey back first before you can play…

There can only be one ‘first fire pit’ of the season. It’s one of the classic fall firsts. It’s like Opening Day in baseball, or that special feeling race fans get in February when that green flag drops for the first time in Daytona.

There’s more ‘fall firsts’ to come – some good and some challenging. And while fall is just beginning, we can’t lose sight of the fact that we’re still right in the middle of the season of COVID.

In normal times, Christmas music shouldn’t be played until the day after Thanksgiving.

But these aren’t normal times we are living in right now. That’s why I didn’t balk at the sounds of Christmas music being played on Magic 98.9 over Labor Day weekend. I embraced it.

Bring it on, I say!

Job searching is a lonely endeavor. But you don’t have to go at it all by yourself. COVID-19 may have changed the rules of engagement, but we still have the ability to ‘reach out and touch someone.’ Try it. It still works…

It’s not every day that you get to drive 127 miles to pick up a 33-pound Bradford watermelon for $20 from the Bradford Watermelon Company.

This is what I learned (with a little help from Debra Freeman with Southern Grit Magazine)…

Isn’t it funny how a bottle of scented hand sanitizer can instantly transport us back to the good ol’ days of the ‘Before Times’?

I supposed there will be an ‘After Times’, but for now we are stuck in the ‘In-Between Times’…

I’ve never been falsely accused of impersonating an earthquake before, but after last week, I can now say I have.

Last Sunday’s 5.1-magnitude earthquake was just another metaphor for this thing we call life in quarantine…

“Pianist-comedian Victor Borge once said, ‘A smile is the shortest distance between two people.’ These face masks, while absolutely necessary, widens that gap even further. Strangers become even more strange these days.”

There are two hummingbird feeders, three flowering hibiscuses, about a dozen sunflowers, some zinnias, and a few hyacinth bean vines wrapping themselves around some trellises. There are flowers and flora as far as the eye can see. Oh, and weeds too. There are always weeds.

That is what life looks like from the patio these days. In the fifteen years that I’ve called this house my home, I’ve never spent as much time on my patio than I have this year.

But this is no ordinary year. The world we knew just four months ago is not the same world we know today.

“But alas, I knew this day would come – the day where I’d have to submit myself to a coronavirus test. Let’s face it – we’re all going to have to get a coronavirus test at some point. I was just hoping I could put it off as long as possible.”