http://www.dougveeder.com "Life is a handful of short stories, pretending to be a novel." ~~ Anonymous Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:57:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Just briefly! Irishman For Hire is taking a week off. I had a fantastic (albeit crazy) extended weekend in Boston last week and this week, I am celebrating my fourteenth wedding anniversary with my beautiful bride, Mrs. Irishman! Happy Anniversary, Steph! I love you! I also want to wish a ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=131 “There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=128 Friggatriskaidekaphobia is the fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I am superstitious but I widely believe that Friday the Thirteenth is an invention of the movie industry. It does not exist. Therefore, I don’t believe that Friday the Thirteenth is a day of bad luck. Last Friday morning, I woke up to ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=127 It was a hot, sticky Wednesday afternoon when I dropped everything and drove to the AT & T store. It was June 23, 2010 and after a couple of days of unpacking, Stephanie and I decided it was time to order our internet service and to plug back into the ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=126 There is a place in my house where I cannot sit. I cannot read there. I cannot think there. I cannot focus there. All I can do is laugh there. The last time I sat there I laughed so hard that my children had to inquire about what was so ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=125 I just found out that one of my favorite television shows has been cancelled. I knew it had to happen one day but I am still dismayed. The show has given me many hours of great entertainment and in retrospect, it even created one troubling period in my life where ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=124 Moving is for mad men. You spend hours storing, packing, boxing and purging and once the move is complete, you spend hours trying to figure out what the chicken scratch on the side of each box actually means. It’s pure insanity. On our third night in the new house, we ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=123 As I was driving along I-95 last month, I saw a clean-up crew dressed in orange jump suits working off their community service by collecting trash along the highway. As I drove past the gaggle of orange jumpsuits, I locked eyes with a young man in his late teens who ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=122 A couple of weeks ago, I closed the final page on the sixth book of my life. I know people call each significant segment of our lives a chapter but I believe a “year in the life” equates to a chapter in our personal history. Three hundred sixty-five days covers ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=121 It was a show about science versus faith. Good versus evil. Free will versus destiny. Redemption versus damnation. LOST packed all of this in a six year run that has left so many unanswered questions and personal interpretations about what happened on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific, that ... http://www.dougveeder.com/?p=120