Bob and Debbie Conroy - Enjoying the Journey Together!

A “near miss” is actually a hit. Defining oneself by the type and brand of alcohol consumed is an example of effective marketing meeting low self-esteem. Everyone I follow on Facebook that is a runner eventually gets a serious injury–do they not notice the correlation? Atoms do not actually touch each other as their electrons repel each other and this force increases exponentially as the distance between them decreases. So when you sit in a chair you actually levitating above it- just not very high. It is your ability to transform your dreams into goals, and your focus on them, that will determine your happiness in life.

I was picking up license plates for a new car in Adel, IA and noticed a sign on a building across the street. The sign was for a bar with the prosaic name Hideaway Lounge . It was a bar, i.e., a business where people make a profit off other people’s chemical dependency. But it was the other business that really caught my eye, a 24 hour crisis center. How ironic that a bar and a crisis center are co-located. It is an obvious symbiotic relationship but is it mutualism, commensalism or parasitism?  An additional irony is the address: 911.

Some of the things that make me stop and think “Really”: License plates with stickers in multiple places besides the lower left corner. People that refuse to get a computer or use the Internet. Parents with children with more alcohol than food in their cart. Graffiti. Broke people driving new cars and living in big houses. Sports fanatics that can recite sports score and stats but couldn’t name a single person in the Cabinet, their U. S. Congressman, state legislator or state senator. Rap music with profane and violent lyrics. Computer viruses. People that say, “Don’t judge” since good judgment is what keeps us safe. Why it is called Happy Hour? “Reality TV” since it is anything but real. National Public Radio. People that define themselves by a brand of beer or a sports team. Real estate developers that go broke to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in little old Des Moines. Rekha Basu and the Des Moines Register in general. Professional Sports...

Some just have to be told. Here are my current offerings in a continuing effort to come up with an original thought that might be quotable hundreds of years in the future:  The hardest thing to endure is an obvious truth that others have decided to ignore.  Beyond “Fight or Flight”, when faced with more options, a person tends to freeze. Dust and smoke in the atmosphere create beautiful sunsets and then attack your lungs while you sleep. A well-timed kind word is a precious gift. Just when you have things figured out, it doesn’t matter. Time spent with grandchildren is the big payoff. In a rational world, the self-treatment of depression and anxiety by abusing drugs would only appear in fiction novels and the movies. We build truths out of the bones of those that defy conventional wisdom. Suicide is the ultimate method of reducing one’s carbon footprint, anything short of that is some degree of grandstanding or self-delusion. Ignorance can be replaced with knowl...

I am still haunted by a mental image of two coeds that passed by me on an early morning walk to the football stadium in Iowa City a few years ago. They were wasted –obviously intoxicated from a binge that started at least the night before. Their eyes were bloodshot, with pupils dilated, set in sullen grey sockets on their slack faces as they stumbled down the street. I just saw another version of that look at a microbrewery on the south side of Des Moines. A microbrewery is not a typical hang spot for me but I was there for a meeting. I am a principal of a local flying club and the current board president selected this location due to the extreme cold at the airport hangers. There were about ten people in the large tasting room when I arrived for the meeting. During the hour-long meeting about ten drinkers left at random times while another ten arrived in almost perfect synchronicity. All but one was male, all were about 25-35 years old and well dressed. It was the look in th...

Football is like a bad joke with fans (fans is short for fanatics) cheering for their surrogates to inflict brutality on others. Not far removed from the days of the Roman gladiators.  As always, follow the money. It is the advertising dollars spent by the alcohol cartel that provides the money and the spin to keep it going.

I recently had successful surgery on my thumb. It was locked in a “thumbs up” position. The thumb situation had progressed from painful to bend to impossible to bend. The surgery required a small incision to cut the tissue around the tendon to release the pressure. I went to a surgery center and put on a hospital gown then was wheeled on a gurney into the operating room. There were three nurses in there to prep me. My arm was vigorously scrubbed from my shoulder to the tips of my fingers. The final rinse was with pure alcohol. After the alcohol rinse, a large sterile paper sheet was immediately placed on me with my hand was sticking out a hole. I was warned by a nurse not to bring any other body part out from under the sheet. The nurse went on to say that it was the best way to kill any bacteria remaining on my skin. So I wonder, why do people put a substance that kills all that it touches their body. It is sad how the alcohol cartel has hijacked our culture.

The University of Iowa, nationally known as a top “party school”, has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Anheuser-Busch to guarantee its infamous standing. The contract will allow Anheuser-Busch to use the TigerHawk logo on retail displays, flags, caps, cups, and T-shirts. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIAAA supports and conducts research on the impact of alcohol use on human health and well-being. (It is the largest funder of alcohol research in the world.)  Here is what the NIAAA reports about college students drinking: Virtually all college students experience the effects of college drinking – whether they drink or not. The problem with college drinking is not necessarily the drinking itself, but the negative consequences that result from excessive drinking. College drinking problems: •College drinking is extremely widespread: about four out of five college students drink alcohol. ...

Debbie and I had a long delayed getaway weekend starting the day after Thanksgiving.  We went to Minneapolis and stayed at a nice hotel across the street from the Mall of America (MOA).  A recent story in the news reminded me that I wanted to share our MOA experiences.  Here is the excerpt from the news item: “Authorities arrested at least nine people after a “series of fights” at the nation’s biggest shopping mall sent chairs flying and caused after-Christmas shoppers to flee, officials in Minnesota said Tuesday….Witnesses described a chaotic scene.”  Reports stated that up to 200 were involved in the fighting. First of all, we did not go there to shop.   After all Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year and frankly there are no special shopping destinations anymore.  We live four blocks west of Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines.  Within a few miles of our house, we have about one of every store and restaurant chain t (albeit ...

John Prine 2011 - photo by Bob Conroy Debbie and I went to the John Prine with Iris Dement Concert at the Des Moines Civic Center last night. It was a very enjoyable event.  Dement did a 40-minute set and Prine did a non-stop two hours.   Such talent!  Turns out that Dement is married to Iowa’s Greg Brown and he came on stage for the encore which, of course, was “Paradise”. We planned to go out to dinner before the concert but did not preset the location so it turned into “Where do you want to go eat ?” followed by the required rejoinder “I don’t care, where do you want to go eat?”  We exchanged this several times, trading roles each time but getting no closer to a final answer.  Finally, we talked ourselves into Jethro’s BBQ by Drake University on the theory that school is out so it would not be too crowded.  Epic fail!  As we pulled into the parking lot there were aging frat boys spilling out into the parking lot, beers in hand. (btw, just when...

I found a copy of some old blogs on a hard drive. Note that the links do not work. 23Oct2008 Finally posting some pictures from the trip to Omaha with Bill, Fay, Mikki, Aimee, Debbie and me to see Katie and the kids in September The Lucinda Williams concert was a big disappointment. She made a few rambling political statements and seemed to think better of it and then only made things worse. Many people felt insulted and started to leave early and Debbie and I were among them. It ruins her music for me. I found some articles that Fay has written since moving to Germany: http://www.kaiserslauternamerican.com/article.php?i=8355 and http://www.kaiserslauternamerican.com/article.php?i=8347. She has a lot of articles and photo credits on this page: http://www.21tsc.army.mil/ My first cousin Dave O’Karma is one of those people that make the world a more interesting place by his creativity and chutzpah. Here is a link to his profile on Wikipedia: span> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...