A guy I work with was just telling me his wife wants him to go gluten-free. I told him the line from a comedian I recently saw who said “I don’t know what gluten is but I am pretty sure I want it!” His debate is whether to go gluten-free at home and then stock up on it at work or go for it full-time. I don’t know why we do these things to each other. When I decided to lose weight I didn’t try to get anyone else in my family on board. I knew it would be a fight and it wasn’t worth it. There have been times when my wife and I tried the same diet but then the kids were all annoyed with us (you can ask them about the cauliflower mashed potato fiasco). Yes there are things I will do for my wife, not because I want to but because I am being supportive, and there are things she has done to support me. Food thou is a big one, as a reformed fat guy asking me to give up food would not go well. I have a hard enough time giving it up for myself. Maybe the gluten thing wouldn’t be so bad if all the gluten-free stuff didn’t taste like cardboard. Like the fake hamburgers and hot dogs before them they just ain’t right. Especially the ones who try to taste just like the thing they removed. I have eaten and like black bean burgers, but they don’t try to taste like meat they just try to make them taste good. I you are going to get me to eat your, whatever ingredient free food, it better taste better that the box it comes in.

Yesterday was a horrible day for the people in the Oregon community college town where the shooting took place. We need to be sensitive to what they need to begin healing. What annoys me in the after math is every politician jumping to their favorite topic of “who to blame”. Some run to gun control others mental health while others to the lack of God in our society. While I fall into the faith camp I also recognize what none of the politicians will admit that they are not offering “real” solutions. The problem, which is not just this issue but many of our issues today, are complex and require hard work and in many cases hard choices in who we are as a country. They will run to the quickest answer they think will appease the general public, not to real solutions which might mean they have to say and do things that are not popular with the people who elected them. I am not asking anyone to give up their principles or go back on what they believe, I am asking them to do some real hard work, or employ others to do that work, and then listen to them to come to a real answer for why our country is under attack from within. Not politically motivated, not along ideological line, but a thoughtful, intelligent effort to get a root cause and solutions.
“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
John F. Kennedy