faulker009

Every year there are certain events cemented in my calendar. My fantasy basketball draft. My fantasy football draft. My fantasy baseball draft. My annual physical exam. Fortunately, all four of those events have brought very positive results in the past. But not every year. Like the year I drafted Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony. Or the year I passed on some guy named Jerry Rice.  Or the year that I released Roy Halladay.  Or the year that my blood test came back with a high ferritin count. When the doctor told me my ferritin level had exceeded the limit, I thought she was making a joke about the little weaselly house pet. Oh.  Ferritin.  Not ferret.  My bad. Biology was not my strong suit, either time I took it. When the doctor starts reading off the results to your blood test and there’s no punch line at the end, you listen loud and clear. Ferritin is the protein in the human body that stores iron and apparently I was storing too much. She had me go to a lo...

I have smoked two cigarettes in my life. The first came at a party during my freshman year in college when I capped off a night of underage drinking by losing my tobacco virginity. I know, I know, two wrongs don't make a right. The second cigarette came about a week later when a girl space friend offered me a menthol. Have you ever had a menthol? It really is the cure to quit smoking. It did it for me. Now, I'm not claiming to be any type of health nut and I certainly enjoy eating straight out of the Ben and Jerry's pint as the clock strikes midnight, but fortunately tobacco has not been part of my diet since that night in 1985. I can remember my dad puffing on a cigar from time to time. And I can remember my mom sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom. But fortunately I didn't come from a family of chain smokers. Then again, my mom and dad had no brothers or sisters, so there really wasn't much of a sample. It's always amazing to me when you walk through an airport...

When it comes to Black and White, two things immediately pop into my mind: The classic music video of Michael Jackson’s song where the faces of all different people morph into one another, implying we are all the same And the Seinfeld episode where Jerry describes the classic Black and White cookie as “two races of flavor living side by side… nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate and yet somehow racial harmony eludes us.   If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved.  Look to the cookie Elaine.  Look to the cookie! Before I get to how this relates to today’s story let me take a step back. A few days ago, I had lunch with my brother, who is fourteen years older than me. He lives 1,000 miles away, but for 90 minutes, we just happened to be in the same city at the same time. My brother is a human, not a cat, but he has lived nearly nine lives. A year out of high school, he moved to Hawaii to quench his thirst for surfing. ...

In the last decade, Starbucks has taught us more new words than Webster. There’s Baristas and Frappuccinos, Tazo and Vivanno. During final exams in college, I drank “a lot” of coffee, but a latte, never heard of it. Of course, if you are looking for a lot of coffee now at Starbucks, don’t order a tall or even a large (grande). You’ll need to get the Venti. (For the record, there is no result for Venti at dictionary.com.) During this time of unemployment, I have done my best to stay away from Starbucks. If I am ordering a $4 drink, I want a little umbrella to come with it. But this week, I decided to meet an old colleague for coffee at Starbucks to catch up on the good ole days. Little did I know that I would learn another new term -- Ulcerative Colitis. For those of you scoring at home, Ulcerative Colitis is a form of inflammatory bowel disease. That’s the good news. The bad news is my friend was told that this could be the early stage of colon cancer. That announcement wo...