People who play it safe are generally conservative in everything they do.  They work 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, at a job they’ve had for decades.  They like their routine.  They eat breakfast at 7:30, lunch at 12:30, and dinner at 6:00.  Their closets are perfectly organized, with clothes probably sorted  by color.  Go out to eat one Saturday night a month with the kids and one Saturday night without.  They don’t slurge.  They watch every penny they spend.  They buy generic toilet paper and canned creamed corn.  The only charity they donate to is their church.

They are boring.  Incredibly boring.

Since their lives are so mundane, they are absolutely incapable of holding a stimulating conversation.  They can only talk about their kids and the weather, or their job.  They have no intimate knowledge of the world around them, of politics, the environment, of life and death.  Gracious, don’t talk about life and death.  The church tells them what to believe and independent thought is forbidden, maybe even blasphemous.  And scary.

Then there are those folks who take risks, who live on the edge.  City Girl and I are in this category.  We do things on the spur of the moment.  We will open a new business after a half-hour discussion.  We will buy a property after a 15-minute dialogue.  We will gamble our money that we can be successful at any endeavour we tackle.  We believe in ourselves!

Since we’re not bounded by the constraints of a conservative life, we explore every avenue.  We don’t believe that human beings are the supreme species and all others are subservient to us.  That has led us to be vegans, meaning we do not consume animal products.  We do not “own” animals, since we believe in freedom for all and slavery for none.  We are staunch environmentalists.  We do not believe in profit above the fate of our planet.  We care about the plight of the common man.  We care about the needy, which is why we’re opening a free soup kitchen in our county.

We’re hungry for knowledge.  We want to learn.  Learning never stops. 

We’re always open to something new.  For us, there is no final frontier.  There will always be exciting challenges ahead.  We thrive on the action.  We’re adrenaline junkies.  For us, life is an adventure.

How about you?

- Mountain Man

With the opening of the second building at our New Jersey Avenue location in Wildwood Crest this past Wednesday, it’s obvious that the decor and wall hangings didn’t just appear overnight.  It took some serious shopping.  It took painting a pallette in my mind of the decor blending together.

Don’t let my rugged Mountain Man appearance fool you.  I love to decorate.  When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me that, “Someday you’ll make somebody a good wife.”  I’d give her a disgusted look as I continued to stir the spaghetti sauce.  No, I didn’t wear an apron.

Decorating is an art.  It sets the tone of the building, employees, and customers through the feelings it exudes.  Good feelings – in our real estate industry – equal good business and good sales.  That warm, fuzzy feeling gets them every time.  Oh, and our genuinely friendly demeanor helps, too.

Some guys have no taste.  To them, hang a few posters of hot chicks along with a few beer signs and they think that’s cool.  Yeah, if you’re stuck in post-pubescence.  I like to think – no, I know – that I’m eons past that stage.  I appreciate optical splendor.  I love sunsets and full moons and birds fishing in a marsh and swaying palm trees and a sailboat on the horizon.  I enjoy all forms of flora and fauna.  I love mountain streams and deer grazing and hawks circling above.  I can express my pleasure with these images through decorating our homes and offices.

You were right, Mom.

- Mountain Man

Case in point is City Girl.  On Christmas day, she laid in tremendous pain in the hospital with a broken hip.  The ball of the femur (thigh) bone had totally pulled out of the hip socket.  The pain was constant, excruciating.  I mentioned that perhaps we should delay purchasing the building next door to our real estate office for a few months.  “No,” she replied.  “Thinking about the building is all that’s getting me through this pain.”  She was focusing on a positive to try to lessen a negative.

We all do the same thing, except when there isn’t physical pain involved it’s more appropriately called daydreaming. 

I daydream often.  In fact, I guess I actually daydream daily.  My mind is taking itself to somewhere in the future that is pleasant, soothing, idyllic.

Right now, in mid-January of a colder than average South Jersey winter, my mind is working overtime.  My mind is thinking of spring, of planting flowers and vegetables.  This fantasy has been helped along by the half-dozen seed catalogs that have arrived since January 2nd.  As I pour through the catalogs in my reading room (okay, bathroom) looking at tomato varieties, zucchini, spinach, hot pepper, and a host of other vegetable seeds, I envision these plants growing in my dozen raised beds behind the house.  I decide what varieties I’ll grow again this year and which new ones deserve a chance.  I think of the mistakes I made last year, like not planting enough zucchini plants to get proper pollination.  My zucchini crop was a total flop in 2010.  My peppers arrived late and my spinach bolted too early.  And I planted too many cucumber plants.  I’ll cut back on cukes this year.

With new flower beds to deal with as our real estate office expansion comes to fruition, I am debating which flowers to plant.  I want continuity so that the two side-by-side properties will become one.  Should I use impatiens, which always give a colorful display?  No, they get stressed too much in the hot July and August days because they need some shade, not full sunlight.  How about marigolds or asters or chrysanthemums?  Maybe I should start with cold-hardy pansies in March, then replant summer flowers Memorial Weekend?

My mind wanders to envisioning myself in a tee shirt and jeans, on my knees, with flats of flowers ready to find their summer home.  I think about all our customers and even folks walking down New Jersey Avenue who will be complimenting my choice of yellows, pinks, oranges, reds, whites and purples.  The compliments bring satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment.

I feel good.  Isn’t daydreaming great?!!

- Mountain Man

This year, rather than racial equality, I want to address violence.  They go hand in hand at times, but in reality violence is the downfall of mankind.  Maybe shortcoming is a more appropriate term.  Or both.

In my 20′s, when part of the back to the land movement, I bought a few dairy goats and started getting my own goat’s milk and cheese.  One thing always bothered me – the goats fought until they established a pecking order.  Then the alpha doe always picked on the rest, the beta doe picked on all but the alpha, and on and on down the line.  Why couldn’t they get along?  After all, they’re all dairy goats and they’re all in this together.

Then I had a revelation.  They’re just like humans.  We’re always fighting to establish dominance.  Except, sometimes we kill.  Goats, along with most mammal species, fight to establish dominance, but they rarely kill and then its usually accidental.  Humans kill with vigor, with purpose.

In 2009, there were 15,241 murders in the United States.  Sure, that was down from over 24,000 in both 1991 and 1993, but it’s still despicable.  The US also had a total of 1,313,398 violent crimes in 2009.  Are we that prone to acts of violence?  Are we a nation of people who are so far from the norm of a peaceful society that hurting another human being is no big deal?  Do we have so little value for someone else’s life?  Are we, as a society, totally insane?

In the world recently in one year India led with 37,700 murders.  Russia had 28,904, Colombia 26,539, South Africa 21,553, the US about 16,000, then Mexico with 13,144.  Good old Iceland was one of the most peaceful with just four murders.  There are currently eight wars in the world that record over 1,000 fatalities per year.  There are 24 other wars taking place, with ten of them registering between 10,000 and 200,000 deaths each since their inception.

I won’t throw any other numbers at you, since I think I’ve gotten my point across.  We are a violent species.  We kill indiscriminately.  We kill for power, we kill for profit.  Sometimes, we kill because we don’t like somebody’s looks, religion, color, or politics.  People beat up their spouses, their kids, their neighbors, their rivals, or someone who possesses something they want.  Sadly, sometimes people even kill just for kicks or to prove they’re macho to their peers.

So on MLK Day, I ask that violence end.  Only then, can we truly be called “human”.  Dr. King would agree.

- Mountain Man

As you may know from reading two of the blogs I wrote since Christmas, City Girl broke her hip on Christmas morning when we were walking down the railroad tracks to feed some homeless fellows.  She’s had hip replacement surgery and is now in a convalescent home receiving physical therapy.  That makes me a bachelor for a while longer.

I’m pretty good around the kitchen, and in fact I do all the cooking in our household of two.  My mother even used to tell me that, “someday you’ll make somebody a good wife.”  She was right.

But I found one of my limitations this morning.  Since City Girl can not climb stairs, I am converting the dining room into a temporary bedroom.  It’ll be convenient for her being on the first floor and close to a bathroom, her office, and the kitchen.  I had no trouble disassembling the dining room table and along with my buddy Keith we got the table top, extension, legs, and six chairs into an outbuilding for storage.  The new full-sized bed I purchased was quickly assembled.  So far, every task had been regular guy stuff.  Easy to do.

Yesterday I bought a mattress pad, bed skirt, and a matching set of fitted sheet, top sheet, and two pillow cases.  I went 300 count thread, which is decent, and picked a nice beige color which City Girl approved via phone as I stood in the store aisle naming the color choices.  So far so good.

This morning I decided to assemble the bedding.  First I put on the mattress pad and it fit nicely.  Then I took the bed skirt and hit a brick wall.  I tried putting it over the mattress pad, but that couldn’t possibly be right.  I knew it didn’t go over the fitted sheet, so I pulled a chair up to the foot of the bed to contemplate my predicament.  Where the heck does the bed skirt go?  I could have gone upstairs and simply seen where City Girl had it on our bed, but that would be admitting I couldn’t figure it out.  No way!

Then it hit me.  It must go between the box spring and mattress.  Voila.  That was the answer.  Ten minutes later I had the entire bed made.  It looked nice. 

Oops.  One more thing.  Standing back to admire my work, I realized that the bed skirt was very wrinkled.  It needed to be ironed.  City Girl, once she’s home, will immediately point out that I should have ironed the bed skirt. 

I thought for a split second.  No, I won’t iron the bed skirt.  If I did, she wouldn’t feel like I really need her, which I do.  I’d rather have her smirk and think to herself, “He’s just a guy!”

- Mountain Man

New Year’s Eve is a “calendar” holiday.  We are celebrating that we all need new calendars?  That’s stupid.  As for going out and getting drunk, forget about it.  For guys like me who like to regularly consume beer, New Year’s Eve is amateur night.  It’s when people who don’t know how to drink prove it.  They puke and make fools of themselves.  And since the police set up drunk checks at major intersections, drinking and driving is Russian roulette.  No thanks.  I’d rather have a few beers at the local pub on a weekday afternoon and drive home in the daylight.  And don’t even think I’m going to stay up at home until midnight so I can watch a few hundred thousand morons in Times Square, NY watch a lighted ball signal the exact stroke of the new year.  WFC! 

Columbus Day.  Give me a break!  Here’s a holiday dedicated to a man who deceived his Queen, discovered a land that already had a million residents, and directly or indirectly his actions led to many of them being enslaved.  Bravo, Christoforo.  Good job.  Maybe I’ll get in a rowboat and discover New Jersey next weekend.

Halloween.  What is this absurd holiday all about?  Not to mention, why do they start selling Halloween decorations and costumes in early September?  Oh yeah, it’s all about sales and money.  The by-product is all the money dentists and doctors make from the resulting poor health attributed to eating all that sugary candy.  But back to All Hallows Eve.  Do many people really know what this abstract holiday is about?  No, but they don’t care.  I guess it’s a chance for adults to escape from their droll existence and kids to load up on junk food.

Let’s do away with these three so-called holidays, or at least put an asterisk * next to them that denotes they are dumb. 

So that’s what I have to say about dumb holidays.  Oh, it’s 12 noon.  Time to mosey on over to the local bar to have a few cold ones!

- Mountain Man

That was good news.  The only trouble they had was resusciating her from the anesthesia, but they injected some drug and she soon regained consciousness.  I got to visit her about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and her spirits were high.  She was groggy, but she knew the operation was a success and we shared our relief.  They had her legs strapped together with a large padded block in between.  That would deny her any chance to twist her hip during sleep or while awake.

The next day they got City Girl up out of bed and she used a walker – with help – to travel a couple steps to a special chair.  She sat in the chair for a couple hours before needing to stretch out again in a bed.  They also removed her intravenous drip and oxygen hose.  Today, they gave her more rehab and at 4 o’clock this afternoon they are moving her to Court House Convalescent Center from her three day home at Cape Regional Medical Center.  The staff at CRMC was professional and friendly and we have no complaints.  Even the food was okay.

So now she’ll be spending a few days in “an old folks home” receiving physical therapy.  In Cape May County, New Jersey, there are no locales that do strictly physical therapy.  The only option, without traveling 40 miles up the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic County, is to spend time in a nursing home. 

Typical of City Girl, she has turned this chapter in our lives into a positive.  With me now charged with overseeing the daily operations of Jewell Real Estate Agency,  she will be free from the responsibility of showing properties, writing contracts, arranging inspections, and attending closings.  She is looking forward to being at home with her laptop computer and cell phone, tools which will enable her to follow up with contacts and prospect for new clients. 

Leave it to City Girl to turn lemons into lemonade!

- Mountain Man

“Your boy got accused of cheating,” I said, speaking of PGA Tour golf icon Phil Mickelson who also happens to be City Girl’s favorite golfer.

“That’s impossible,” she replied.  “There’s no cheating in golf.”

You be the judge.  The PGA Tour outlawed golf clubs with square grooves, effective this year.  They reasoned that they give the golf ball more backspin, hence lessening a player’s necessity to actually make a skillful shot.  So at the PGA Tour’s fourth stop of the year at Torrey Pines GC outside San Diego, tour player Scott McCarron accused Mickelson of cheating by using a square-grooved wedge.  At least three other players have used the same square-grooved club this month – John Daly, Hunter Mahan, and Dean Wilson.

The golf club in question is a Ping-Eye 2 wedge.  It seems that in settling a court case brought by Ping against the United States Golf Association (USGA), any Ping-Eye 2 iron built before April 1, 1990 was deemed legal.  The PGA Tour agreed to abide by the USGA’s concession in 1993.  The Ping irons in question were manufactured from 1985-1989.  No other golf club company manufactured square-grooved clubs.

 So knowing that square-grooved clubs would be illegal on the PGA Tour this year, some savvy tour players scrambled to find the still-legal vintage Ping wedges.  While at least Mickelson, Daly, Mahan, and Wilson succeeded, most tour players weren’t even aware that the obscure rule existed.  Technically, the four did nothing wrong.  They stayed within the rules. 

But, golf is known as a gentlemen’s game.  What other sport has players call penalties on themselves, even if no one else saw the infraction?  They – in most cases – could get away with it, but it’s an honor system.  “Gentlemen, honor” – that’s a heavy responsibility.  It’s not the type of lingo you’d associate with the NBA or NFL.

Did Mickelson and the others cheat?  Mickelson says, “No.”  McCarron says, “Yes.”  In question perhaps is the spirit of the rules versus some technicality.

Perhaps tour pro Robert Allenby’s take is appropriate.  “I think cheating is not the right word.  But it’s definitely an advantage,” Allenby said of the Ping-Eye 2.  “There’s only a certain amount of players that can find them and I think it’s not right if you’re using them.”

The entire controversy may soon be a moot point.  Don’t be surprised to see the PGA Tour find a way to outlaw the Ping-Eye 2 in the next week or so.

How are the players mentioned doing at Torrey Pines?  After two rounds McCarron and Daly missed the cut and were sent packing.  Maybe that’s a factor in McCarron’s strong accusation?  Allenby is three shots off the lead, Mickelson four, and Mahan six shots behind the leaders.

Don’t worry, City Girl.  Your boy still has a chance to win again this week.

- Mountain Man and City Girl    http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com

The blogsite of Jewell Real Estate Agency, Wildwood Crest, NJ    http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com

So when the Vatican gave the movie a thumbs down, it piqued our curiosity.  This morning we read a Letter to the Editor in the Atlantic City Press by Sharon Hutchinson of Buena Vista, NJ.  Here’s her take on the Vatican’s reaction to the movie:

“As a nontheist, I am amused at the Vatican’s condemnation of the movie ‘Avatar’ as nature worship.  A respect for and communion with nature is one of the most positive experiences that a person can undergo.

“The fact is, we depend upon nature for all the necessities of life.  The religions that worship land – yes, those awful pagan religions – develop a respect and appreciation for our planet that is sorely lacking in our modern society.  The belief that Earth’s resources are put here solely for man’s benefit has led to not only an estrangement from the natural world around us but also the plunder and devastation of the world.

“If I were to choose a religion, it would make the most sense to worship that which provides the necessities of daily living, rather than some ephemeral being who has supposedly placed man above all creatures.  The destruction of the Earth and its resources is the result of such mythical and arrogant thinking.

“It is no surprise to hear this protest from the Vatican, as Catholicism and other forms of Christianity continue to lose ground as science and reason grow.  That ‘Avatar’ has struck such a nerve is but another sign that religions are aware that more people are coming to the realization that it is the ground under our feet, not some spirit in the sky, that helps to sustain our very lives.”

- Mountain Man and City Girl    http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com

The blogsite of Jewell Real Estate Agency, Wildwood Crest, NJ    http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com

We were both excellent students in school.  We did our homework, got good grades, and didn’t cause trouble.  What more could a school expect from us.  We did our part.

But in retrospect, the schools didn’t hold up their part of the bargain.  Upon graduating from high school (City Girl in Philly, Mountain Man in a Boston suburb) it was time to strike out into the great, big world awaiting us.  We weren’t prepared.

Like most our age, we had never been taught in school how to manage our lives.  We had never been schooled in how to rent an apartment, buy a house, finance a car, pay our utility bills, and set ourselves on a monthly or weekly budget.  We hadn’t been taught how to apply for a job, do our taxes, or raise a family.  Through 12 years of school, we had never been offered a course on LIFE.

Fortunately for us both, we were quick learners and we each navigated the bumpy road of life.  Like every twenty-something, we still made our share of mistakes.

Today’s post-school young adults have had a different experience than us.  The majority can’t form a complete sentence.  They were more interested in MTV and video games and texting than what we called “book learning”.  Much of that can and should be blamed on the parents.

We had three young men – 18, 19 and 20-years old – working for us a few years ago.  None were married, but each had at least one infant kid.  One had an apartment but was constantly behind in rent and facing eviction.  The other two had their kid and girlfriend living with them and their maternal unit - one a mother and the other a grandmother.  They had no financial responsibility for house bills as the mother and grandmother – both only semi-literate - had become “enablers”.  Only one of the three young men even owned a vehicle.

One particular week, the guys worked long hours and on payday each received about $600.  As we paid them, each was warned to spend it wisely.  “Don’t blow it,” we said in a big brother-type way.  Each had children to feed and clothes to buy.

Monday morning, they each returned to work with big grins.  “Guess what we did?” they said proudly.  Unbelievably, each rolled up their sleeve to reveal their new $300 tattoo.  “You mean you each spent half your paycheck on tattoos?” was our heartbroken reply.

And so it goes.  Each is trapped into a life of underachievement and wasted potential and hardship.  The parents didn’t have the intellectual tools to give proper guidance.  That said, didn’t our educational system drop the ball on several generations? 

- Mountain Man and City Girl    http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com

The blogsite of Jewell Real Estate Agency, Wildwood Crest, NJ    http://www.JewellRealEstateAgency.com