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The Latest from the "Live Deeper" Blog by Brian Vaszily...
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I love games. Not the ones people in relationships play with one another, but board games, brainteasers and the like. From playing Hi Ho Cherry-O with my sister, Boggle with my grandmother, and word searches on my own in my youth, to playing Life with the kids, Sequence with my wife (great game, check it out) and trying to solve any puzzle that comes my way today, playing games has always been one of my passions. Typically, the more intense the game's challenge is to my brain, the more I enjoy it....
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Like just about anyone over age 30, I miss album covers. I am of course referring to the big ones that covered vinyl records (LPs). The ones that cover CDs are only about 14% as big, and those that covered cassettes only 7%; this reduction in size since the mid-1980s was the dying of the album cover, and that death is now nearly complete with the advent of MP3s. It is rather sad that today's kiddos won't know the unique joy of album covers, except perhaps as a relic. Yes, today there are music DVDs...
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Technorati Profile It is a sense- and mind-altering dining experience that has enjoyed immense popularity in European cities, including the Blinde Kuh (Blind Cow) in Zurich where the concept was first started. And it can now be experienced at Opaque restaurant in Los Angeles, with locations in San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and other U.S. cities planned too: dining in complete blackness. For an hour or two, you abandon your sense of vision completely while you eat an entire meal served by blind...
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Sports are microcosms of human living. I watch my son wrestle in high school and see the beautiful sense of purpose it gives him, and the great lessons of hard work, team work, delayed gratification, winning and especially coping with loss. But I watch him wrestle and sometimes find myself cursing the referee and his entire family or wishing that my son not only wins, but beats his teen opponent into bruised and bloodied total submission . Sports bring out the best, the worst and everything in between...
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Technology that can actually render objects invisible. The paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Etch-a-Sketch. People come up with some very neat stuff. Then again, we tend to get so caught up in these works of people – not to mention getting caught up in people’s messes – that we often get lost in them. As individuals, as a family, as a nation and as a human race, we therefore often lose sight of the far greater accomplishment and inspiration available to us all: Cicadas. Well okay, not...
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Have you read The World's Oddest Jobs and Hardest Jobs & My Life as a Carrot Juice Technician Part I and the conclusion in Part II yet? That’s where I covered one of the most unusual and difficult jobs I ever held -- making carrot juice by hand for a chain of Chicago health food stores and staining my hands deep-orange in the process. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get to feel superior to me because you never had to do that , and you’ll also discover why odd jobs and hard jobs can actually...
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[Be sure to first read The Oddest Jobs, the Hardest Jobs & My Life as a Carrot Juice Technician Part I ] If what you do for a living defines who you are to some extent, then to some extent at the age of sixteen I became a carrot. You see, for about six months in 1986, for a long-gone mini-chain of health and gourmet food stores in Chicago called Foodworks, I had an after-school job making carrot juice. I was “Brian Vaszily: Fresh Carrot Juice Technician.” And while it was not the first, second...
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I was a Carrot Juice Technician. Before I get to that story, a few questions and some related thoughts for you to consider (and perhaps by the end of this piece you’ll also be motivated to share your comments and answers to these questions; everyone’s got insights worth sharing on this one!) What is the oddest job you ever held? The most difficult? The one you learned the most from? The most rewarding? What we do and have done to make a buck or a billion is not who we are, of course, but from our...
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Below are the final photos from the three-part "The Point and the Power of Abandoned Places" short essay and photo series. After you have read the essay and viewed all 40 of abandoned places photos, I and certainly others who come to read this would love to hear your own personal thoughts and recollections in relation to the Abandoned Places short essay . Also, either in the comments area here or by clicking the new "Digg It" button at the bottom of this page where others are leaving comments --...
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[Be sure to first see Part I of this Abandoned Places piece ...] Abandoned places. You’re driving in the country and they are there, some trying to hide behind overgrown weeds or in dark woods like the abandoned house in my Michigan story that concludes below, while others lean obvious against barren landscapes of corn or sand or nothing. Or you pass them while riding the train through the city or across the entire continent and they stand there in ignored neighborhoods, former towns, and forgotten...
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The country drive between the quaint town of Port Austin, Michigan and my in-law’s cottage near Port Aux Barques Lighthouse on Lake Huron takes twenty or so minutes. At about the halfway point on the drive a dense and dark patch of woods and weeds appears and then is just as quickly gone. If you’re not looking specifically into it as you pass, you don’t see the outline of the abandoned house that has been swallowed by this thicket. My wife, because she had been passing by this abandoned house since...
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I’ll bet you need to enjoy life more. In particular, I’ll bet you need to party more. Perhaps that sounds juvenile. Nonetheless, the statement is actually especially true if your high school and college years are long behind you. It is even truer if you are married and truest of all if you also have children and even grandchildren. You need to party more. See, common knowledge says we're increasingly connected to one another. But that’s a load of nonsense. Oh sure, with the Web, email, instant messaging,...
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It is my observation that far too many people end up merely existing versus really living. Go to work, come home, watch some TV, go to bed, and the same thing again the next day. Shopping and chores and more TV on the weekend. A few holidays in between. Yawn. And then always too suddenly, the deathbed -- and yes, the fear of coming death, but moreso the fear and regret of a life not fully lived. When I was fifteen years old, I had a conversation with an elderly gentleman who was sitting in a wheelchair...
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