What is Islam - let's ask Wafa on al Jazeera...

Moral of the story: the Arabs and fundamentalists of Islam should be back living in the Middle Ages and THEY STARTED THIS...

So here it is - more than a month has gone by since Valentines Day, but I've been doing so much that I really didn't even write in my written diary let alone my typed one. So today is the day I'm going to catch up. I have a lot of things to catch up on and this is the one that has me with the least amount to do since so little has changed since Valentines Day that I figure I would start with the easiest and work my way backwards.

One of the things I do know is that I am going through my mid-life crisis. I don't know if it is mid-life crisis so much as it is just a crisis of getting older, but either way I'm going through one. I think it started out last month when my brother brought his wife and kids down to San Diego to the San Diego Zoo. I spend time with my little (well he is a little brother too, but I see one more than the other) brother, but seeing this one and his wife and kids made me feel old. I was thinking to myself over sushi (I do love the sushi place by where I live, but it made his wife ill - that or she was pulling a Princess Di) that it is time for me to make some tough decisions about life. So I began making them there and then.

The first is that I'm going to start saving for my retirement more aggressively. Outside of the fact that the economy has all of us feeling the pinch of a down turn in the market and all of our 401k plans and IRAs are earning less and less - there is something to be said for saving - so I'm going to start setting more money aside for the day when I get to retire. Sounds strange - thinking about retirement and I never thought about it before, but here I am thinking about my old age. It is kind of cool because I'm already retired from the military and have retirement already in my lexicon, but I mean the big retirement - the big one where you don't return from.

My other decision was more difficult because it involved vanity. Ever since I was in my mid-20s I've been getting gray hair. Part of it was just ignored as I had a haircut when I was in the military that I kept all the way through, but now I think I'm going to take the advice of my hair guru and actually let my hair grow out. BUT, that leads me to a big question: do I then color it (well, do I have someone else color it)? A lot of guys I know have been having their hair colored for a very long time, but this would be a first for me. Personally, I think some guys pull off gray hair easily (Jon Stewart comes to mind - meanwhile, how about his falling out with CNBC's Kramer - oy that is fun). I have no problem with letting my hair grow out a little bit (probably go from a haircut a week to a haircut every month), but while I let it grow it will be gray and I'm not sure I want gray hair poking out from all over.

Now that I've actually written that down I think it is kind of a silly thing, but it is my mid-life crisis so let me do it my own way.

Then there is the thing that all men do during their crisis - a new car. I don't have car payments so it is kind of nice being able to pay for a car, but do I do what all men do and buy a car that makes a lot of noise or do I keep the car I've had for almost 3 years (the longest I've really kept a car) and let it be mine for 5? Decisions decisions. If the answer is no I have to figure out what I want: do I want a true mid-life-crisis kind of car or do I want to go practical and go out of state to buy it at another brother's house so that I don't get stuck paying the huge sales tax that we're about to start paying in California. More decisions that I'm not happy about making so I might just stick to the car that I have until I see how far this mid-life crisis is going to take me.

Speaking of taxes - I got my tax bill back and see how much I owe and decided that I'm not going to pay my state taxes (CA) until my best friend in the whole wide world gets his tax REFUND from the state first. I may end up charged a penalty, but how unfair is that. He overpaid his taxes and CA is just saying - screw you, you're not getting your refund because we cannot afford to give them. Unfair and it should be criminal.

So I'm getting more and more fit, which is always a good thing, and I'm putting on a suit (it was an Armani) and I realize that I have an awful lot of fabric in the belly left over. I'm losing more fat again and I was mad because I buy suits and jackets in sets of four. Charles, I've written about him before, my shopper knows exactly what I like and he was able to get me all hooked up and I have some great suits and jackets, but I was terrified that I was going to have to give them to charity. Lucky for me I went to the tailor and the only master tailor I know was able to take them in one last time - if I lose any more weight I'm done and the suits have to go back, but this time I was lucky.

Speaking of luck: my brother is finally putting in my new floors. Yes, it took me forever to figure out the kind of floors that I wanted to change my old floors out for, but he did it and I love him for it. He is starting a business with a buddy of his and they are doing some kind of contracting. I should buy in for 51% and start getting some of these government contracts that the USA and CA are giving out. Should you do business with your brother? Probably not huh, but still - he's worth it and would make a really good business partner because he is a good guy and they need a leg up: two white males doing a business together doesn't get them very much, but I'm a veteran and to have a veteran owned business wouldn't hurt!

I don't know when my floors will be done, but soon I hope.

And on that note not much else happened in the last month. I've been very busy, but not too busy to be able to play with the dogs and to make their little tails wag. We get to spend a lot of time together during Passover because I'm not working (obviously) so we're going to have a good time together. We are hoping that we can do Passover with the special people in our lives and I think it is cute that whenever I take the dogs down to Del Mar they remember their favorite places to #2 and the rest. It is kind of adorable.

So the big decisions coming up is do I continue my mid-life crisis into a new car and do I color my hair. I've made the choice about letting it grow out (not to the point of being a hippie mind you), but I'm going to have to choose about whether or not to stay grayish or to color. Friends and co-workers are split, but I don't know where I fall. I guess I have to just flip a coin since if the color doesn't work out I can always get a hair cut, but if it does work out I will look younger for the first time in my adult life!

Until next time! Pictures will come later.