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Guadaloopy

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  1. For "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" fans: Before Charlie's Mom There was Miss Yvonne RIP Lynne Marie Stewart
  2. My wife and I really like our local Regal cinema. It's $23/mo for unlimited movies and they have several 21+ theaters upstairs with recliners and seat service for food and concessions. No loud kids. Smaller crowd in smaller theater, so chances for a random asshole ruining the experience are lower. Plus, ticket prices for the 21+ theaters are more expensive which weeds out a bunch of people who are more interested in their phones than the experience. We average two movies a month.
  3. I mean, we wouldn't put it past this guy to vote for an actual leopard, would we? The man has a brand to maintain.
  4. I used to be all in on this shit. Proud multi-generation native Texan. Celebrate March 2nd. Blah blah blah. After two years of living in California while with the Navy, I went to a Pacific Beach tattoo shop and had the Texas flag tattooed over my heart. Now I have a Texas tattoo and a Tesla. Either I have really shitty judgment or MAGA ruins everything it touches. Probably a little from column A, but a whole lot more of column B.
  5. I had two things that stuck with me from therapy that I use to stop the mental spiral when it starts: 1. The first is very similar to the "where is the tiger?" question. My therapist told me to ask myself "what is the evidence?" I find that really helps me to reassess what is happening around me and realize that for the most part, there is no real threat. When you start to take inventory and make a list, the rational side of the brain kicks back in. 2. Remember that you've been here before and made it through just fine. It might have sucked a bit, but you did just fine before. The visualization tool for this is imagining that I'm wearing an earpiece and my future self is talking me through the situation. My claustrophobia/panic response is really weird and shows up in strange places, and is completely absent from places it would be expected. I'm 100% fine scuba diving. I have hundreds of dives under my belt and never once felt a tickle of panic. I've done short training cruises on submarines and wasn't bothered at all. I used to spend extended periods of time below decks in the engineering spaces of ships, many times not realizing that I hadn't been above the main deck and outside the skin of the ship for a week or more. Weird places it shows up: I can start to have a panic attack in the drive through line if it is taking too long and there is no way to easily pull out of line. I once started to have a panic attack in the Majestic before Phantom of the Opera because we had seats in the very center of the theater for a sold out Saturday night performance. Last year, before I went to therapy, I nearly shaved off my beard because I had an itch that wouldn't go away and it triggered a panic response. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- By far, my worst panic attacks occurred on airplanes when there were unscheduled delays. As long as the plane is moving or on schedule, I'm perfectly fine. But once there is a delay or we have to wait on the tarmac for any period of time, that panic response kicks in. This stems from an experience in 2006 when I detached from Guantanamo Bay. My departing flight was a commercial charter from GTMO to Jacksonville, a very quick flight. We began our takeoff and were picking up speed when the crew had to abort the takeoff due do some engine parameter being out of specs. So we turned around and didn't deplane, because they thought that they could get a waiver from maintenance and we would be on our way in about a half hour or so. It actually took about an hour and a half to get the waiver, but by then the winds had shifted and we couldn't takeoff in the normal direction. The problem with GTMO is that you can only takeoff in one direction, otherwise you are flying into Cuban airspace. The weather guessers kept saying that the wind would shift back within the next 20 minutes. So we sat there... waiting... on the tarmac... in the afternoon... in June. I was fine for quite a while. I had a book to read and music to listen to. But remember, this was a flight full of military passengers. I wasn't a smoker, but A LOT of military folks were. After three hours had passed waiting for the wind, a lot of folks with nicotine withdrawal were getting very vocal about their displeasure. So the enclosed space, the lack of control, and unpredictable, irritable people finally triggered my claustrophobia. We sat on that tarmac for six and a half hours, and I was white-knuckling through a panic attack for the last two. As soon as we got into the air, I was fine. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last year, post-therapy, I was on a flight back from the Big Island via Seattle. We did not have gate boarding for our flight from Seattle to Tulsa and had to take a shuttle from the terminal to the plane. After we had boarded our standing-room-only shuttle bus and started towards the plane, we got word that there was a minor maintenance issue on the plane and that boarding would be delayed. Rather than take us back to the terminal, they just parked the bus out of the way of traffic until we got the all clear. Before therapy I would have panicked BIG TIME being stuck shoulder to shoulder on a stationary bus not knowing how long I would be there. With those tools from therapy, I spent less than minute with my brain spiraling into panic before getting back to calm. This is not something that I have "beaten", but therapy has given me the tools I need to be able to continue to do the things I enjoy, like seeing a show in a crowded theater and travelling on an airplane.
  6. When the children cry, let them know we tried. The kids:
  7. My first bout of claustrophobia hit me at a wet t-shirt contest in Matamoros, Spring Break '93 when I was 21. Was enjoying the show and one nicely proportioned young lady removed her shirt and the resulting crowd press toward the stage triggered my lizard brain, and I noped the fuck out, losing my glasses along the way. I was terribly nearsighted at the time, but I did not care at all. Didn't have another incident until I went through Navy firefighting training in summer of 1995. Got into a room with about 20 other students in full firefighting gear with an oxygen breathing apparatus to fight a "fire" in a mock engine room with natural gas flames. The air got squeezed out of my OBA bladder which slowed the chain reaction in the OBA and kept me from being able to get a full breath. Again, I noped the fuck out of there. If I had failed to complete that training, I would have been processed out of the Navy. I spent the next two weeks wearing an OBA for two hours a day at a desk while studying prior to taking another try at the firefighting training course. Barely made it through the course on my second try and was fighting panic the entire time. I spent decades avoiding situations and white-knuckling it through those I could not avoid. Finally said to myself, "this is dumb" and swallowed my pride and went to therapy. Now, I'm not about to go spelunking where I have to squeeze through crevices, but reading about it no longer gives me sweats. And I don't stress ahead of airplane flights anymore. If this is something you struggle with, it can get better.
  8. Yeah, when I saw it was rated 13+, I knew it wouldn’t be good.
  9. He didn’t deserve this… to die like this.
  10. whacks off
  11. Took my dog to the vet, and the female vet tech tries to take my dog's temperature the way one does with a dog. My dog was not having it, and starts whining and shimmying forward to avoid the intrusion. Trying to calm him down, I soothingly say "It's OK buddy, that would agitate me, too." Except that is not what actually came out of my mouth. What I actually said was "It's OK buddy, that would excite me too." I did not speak another word to the vet tech during that visit.
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