#you sure showed that golf ball Torch!
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enamilo · 6 years ago
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Peter Parker would never—!
I feel like the answer to that is always: he would. He totally would, and it’d be worse, Dorrie.
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your-high-lady · 6 years ago
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Realisation
Summary: This story is about Feyre. She has a couple of small dreams she wants to achieve but turns out it isn't as easy as she imagined it would. Trust me, the story is better than the summary. Modern AU. Feysand.
Chapter 1  Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4  Chapter 5   Chapter 6   Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the plot. All credit goes to Sarah J Mass
Chapter 9: Awkwardness and lips
After about thirty minutes of driving, we finally reached the place we were having dinner. It was within walking distance of the mini-golf place so we were planning to just walk over there after dinner.
I smiled at Azriel as he held the door open for Mor, Amren and I, and laughed when he let it close on Cassian and Rhys. I could tell they were close, just like Mor and I. Amren, however, was a different case. She filled the room with her essence, even in her tiny body. It was impossible to miss her.
A small smile on my face, I took in my surroundings. The restaurant was an Italian one with a homey feel to it. There was a row of comfortable-looking sofas right at the back and artificially-lit torches hanging off the walls, each one about a metre away from the other. The rest of the lighting was done by lit-candles on each table. It was a little dark for my liking but the open feeling the place had made up for it. It was a relatively warm night so we decided to sit outside. Our waitress, a blonde woman with huge nerdy glasses, gave us our menus and took our drinks order before the dinner-talk started up.
Ten minutes later, our food orders given, I was listening to Amren and Mor as Amren caught Mor up on her relationship with her boyfriend Varian. Apparently, they'd had sex for the first time a couple of nights ago and it made Amren very happy because they'd been dating for only about three months but she really liked him and had been feeling ready for that step in their relationship for a while now. Amren was just in the middle of gushing about how much Varian adored her when I felt eyes on me. I turned to find Rhys staring at me. Azriel and Cassian, who were on the right of Rhys were playing a game of chopsticks, which meant that they didn't notice what Rhys was so blatantly doing. I looked at him for a couple of seconds, waiting for him to speak or do something but when he didn't move, I said, "Yes? Did you want to say something to me?"
He tilted his head to the side before asking, "Do you have a boyfriend, Feyre?"
I raised my eyebrows before shaking my head. He nodded, thinking to himself, before looking up at me again, "What's your favourite food?"
"Peanut butter, banana and bread, together." The corner of his lips lifted in a small beam.
"Any place you'd like to visit?"
"Paris. I can imagine myself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, looking down, and realising that we are all such a small part of something so much bigger than anything we could imagine." Wow, that got deep. But surprisingly Rhys only gave me a sweet smile before moving on.
"Sunrises or sunsets?"
I instantly frowned. Why would he ask me a question like that? He just raised his eyebrows. "Sunrises," I said, maybe a tad bit more sassily than I meant too.
"What's on the top of your bucket list?"
"I don't have a bucket list. I just want to graduate and settle down." He narrowed his eyes at me.
"Are you sure? There's got to be something you really want to do before you die." I shook my head in reply. I was boring that way. I didn't want to live a flash life. I just wanted to settle down, buy my own house maybe, and just teach art.
"What's your dream life?"
"Teaching art to little kids."
"So you like children?"
"I guess so." I shrugged, brushing the words off. Rhys opened his mouth to ask, I assume, another question but just then Mor squealed. Our food had arrived. I shook my head at her in amusement as the waiter put my dish in front of me. I thanked her before diving into my food. I was actually starting to get really hungry.
About twenty minutes later, we were finally walking over to the mini-golf place. We'd chosen this place because one, it was close to the restaurant we wanted to eat at, two because it was one of the few places that stayed open till late and last because the place was so beautiful with all the waterfalls and amazing replications of cool places around the world, such as the Great Wall of China, the Grand Canyon and the Eiffel Tower.
After amusing the person at the desk for about ten minutes while we all fought over who would pay, Rhys finally ended up paying for all us. Though I wasn't really happy about that, I sucked it up because the entry was only ten dollars per person, so at least he wasn't spending too much money on me. I absolutely hated it when people spent money on me. It made me feel cheap and selfish as if I was using other people's money for my own fun. We decided to make teams, two people in each. Cassian ended up with Mor and Azriel with Amren, which left Rhys and me to go together. Oh, what are the chances!? Trying very hard to hide my grimace, I went to get a golf stick and ball. As I was doing that, I sensed him and the tightness in his muscles behind me. At least he seems as annoyed as I am, I thought to myself.
The first few courses were a blur, with me only coming back to my senses when it was my turn to hit the ball. By the fifth course, we were loosing. By a lot.
But then, at the seventh course he said, "It sucks, huh." I looked up at him with a frown. Did he mean being in a team with him? He clarified, "Loosing. I bet you wish you were with one of the others." He let out a breath in amusement. I frowned before saying, "I don't think that at all. It's not so bad being with you." He stared at me before moving his eyes to my lips. I noticed his pupils widening a little, causing me to blush. He noticed, looking up, before shaking his head and paying attention to the game once again. He didn't talk to me after that.
Rhys's POV
Beautiful. She was so beautiful, breath-taking even. She was so pretty and soft and adorable. The questions I had asked her: they had just been a way to get to know her a little better, but her answers had been so unique and different. She wanted to teach little kids art. I smiled to myself, imagining her walking around a classroom and giving feedback to the children she was teaching, making them smile when she gave them a compliment. I knew she would be successful in achieving her goals. I knew she was strong and wouldn't stop until she got everything she had ever wanted for herself. It was just another one of the things that attracted me to her. Because I was attracted. It was impossible not to be.
But Feyre was so different from her.
She had been so different with her red hair and black eyes that were always gleaming with schemes and wicked delight at small things in the world. I had found the gleam to be attractive but later I learnt that that gleam was just something she was using to lure me in. Her love at the beginning of the relationship was a trap, and then her hatred and evilness at the end was the immediate poison.
And then all of sudden, those black eyes turned into blue and grey. And instead of the gleam, there was a… glow. There was no other word for it. Her emotions shone through her eyes, making her whole face sparkle with the emotion, too. And though the light was mostly from happiness, there was also sadness and despair behind it. It was always there, like a shadow trailing her. And just like the sun momentarily hiding behind a cloud, I could see the shadow of the depressing emotion hiding the shine of the sun. I'd seen the sun disappear behind the cloud a couple of times today. Once before I got her to do the carpool karaoke and once when playing golf. I'd just happened to glance at her, wanting to see her face light up at my success of getting a ball into the pit, and she'd been happy. But before the happiness appeared, there had been shadows. Feyre was good and had hid them quickly, but I was also good. Spending time with her had given me a sharp eye and I'd spotted the shadow. And it wasn't the first time I'd seen it. I'd seen it multiple times before, in our previous interactions and I didn't like it one bit. I didn't understand why I felt this way, but I very badly wanted to get rid of those shadows. I never wanted to see them on Feyre's face again. I just didn't know how to get rid of them. It annoyed me, made me tense. Maybe if I knew what was causing the shadows to appear, I could get rid of them. But how should I ask her? It's not like I could just walk up to her and say, "Hi, I've noticed the shadows in your eyes and face and very desperately want to get rid of them. Could you please tell me what's causing them to appear so that I can do something about it?" Yeah. That would get me places.
Shaking my head at my thoughts, I tried pushing her out of my head and closed my eyes. But even in my sleep, she appeared with her golden-brown hair and grey-blue eyes, her sun and shadows at war.
Feyre's POV
I stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling as I thought.
Rhys.
I felt so comfortable in his presence, something that surprised me a lot since I'd gotten used to the idea of never being comfortable with a male's touch. But it was different with Rhys. He was so handsome, his features sharp but beautiful. I pictured all the drawings I'd done of him. Though they were all done without thought, I knew some of those sketches were the most authentic and alluring pieces I'd ever drawn.
I didn't remember much about my mother, but I did remember something she'd once told me. The sentence had stuck with me from the day she'd first said it and since then I'd always tried to let it show in my work. An artist's best work always comes from the heart.
So did that mean my pictures of Rhys were coming from my heart? But why though? All that there was in my heart was the wish to be successful. That's all I wanted. I didn't want the love of my life anymore. Not after Tamlin. Tamlin's actions had proved to me that my dreams had always stupid and false and that there never had been anyone perfect for me out there. And even if there was, which I very highly doubt, it was not Rhys. Rhys was not perfect. He was arrogant. He was intimidating and always stared at me as if there was something wrong with my face. He wasn't perfect. He was sad and stressed. I'd seen it in my paintings and in real life, too. He was not perfect… but what if?… What if… there was no one perfect out there. What if there never was a perfect guy out there for me. What if I had always been destined to be with an imperfect man. What if I was to make him perfect. No. Not perfect. Complete. I was to make someone complete with my love, and he would reciprocate. Because that was love. Completing someone with your love.
As I lay in bed, I thought about all that.
And then, out of nowhere, I remembered how his eyes had wandered to my lips before drifting back up. I blushed again at the thought, before flipping on to my stomach, stuffing my face in my pillow, and forcing myself to sleep. But even then, night-blue hair and violet-coloured, silver-flecked eyes stared back at me in my dreams.
AN: I love this chapter, it's just so sweet. But what do you think? Do you like where their thoughts are going? Tell me everything.
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roll-for-stupidity · 6 years ago
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5E (Take 2) Recap #3: Grungeons and Dragons (Day 2 of 2)
Alright so if it wasn’t apparent by the “Day 2 of 2″ above, the party got done with this conflict pretty quick in game time (but fuck if it ever took forever in real time. I think even I, the person who came up with this shit, was sick of these little froggies by the end of it. But let’s break down what happened.
I think I’ll start with the green group (even though when we played we started with blue, and we actually held different sessions with only the players in the group present, which now that I think about it was better than the two alternatives which were either one group doesn’t play and just sits there or I bounce back and forth and go insane. So yeah, different sessions).
Oa, Thespin, and Debbie all followed Ea to a hunting party and introduces them to Snuck, the de-facto organizer for dividing up hunting groups and explains that this is their first day out. He divides up the other groups, then takes the four greens (get it? cuz they’re newbies? green? I love hate myself)
Side note: you might be thinking, 
“In a closed society of grungs surely they all know each other and an outsider would be really fucking weird and unusual. Also how do they continue to find stuff to hunt in this forest? Wouldn’t there be a case of overhunting? This world and society are not sustainable. Obviously not much thought or effort was put into the creation of this world. In this essay I will...” 
In response to that: I honestly didn’t think of it, so fuck you for asking. DMing shit is hard. I forget stuff. Remember that time I forgot to mention a very crucial detail that would tip @baumguy off to the fact that a door might be trapped? It happens.
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Back to the action
Snuck shows them the territory they hunt in, bringing them all the way out to the edge of the treeline on the northern part of the forest. Stretching out in front of them, and in an arc to the east and west circling back towards the mountain is that giant gorge Oa spotted from the cave at the top of the mountain.
Up close, this gorge is massive, even for the party at their normal sizes concealed by Bahamut’s magic. It’s easily 100 feet across and so deep that the bottom is indiscernible, the shadow of the far wall casting its full blackness before the bottom is visible.
The only interesting feature this gorge contains is veins of a red, clay-like material woven into the grey stone composing the walls of these cliffs. The only thing Snuck can tell them about it is that it’s in the wall all the way around the gorge.
The party then engage in some hunting themselves, and whether it was due to their larger size, good rolls, luck, or a combination of the three, both Thespin and Debbie brought down a large buck each, easily meeting the green grungs’ quota for the day.
Back at the green camp, the grungs all celebrate the good haul, some going to bed early for probably the first time in awhile, others enjoying some of the meat from the previous day’s job Tak’erak and the other guards didn’t bring back with them. Around a campfire as the sun began to set, Thespin plays a tune as bards tend to do, and Debbie and Thespin settle in for the first (relatively) calm evening both of them have had since this whole thing began.
Oa had other ideas. Using his aasimar ability to grow wings for a short span once a day, he decides to make me as the DM improvise shit as he flies across the gorge. 
Which is great, it’s honestly fantastic when my players do that, because I think it helps me to get better as a DM (and it definitely helped prepare me for something coming up soon). And it plays into why I love D&D so much. Sure for a lot of people, it’s just a game, something to do that’s a little more involved than a board game or even some video games. But as a writer and a storyteller, the allure of D&D to me is to be able to tell a story collaboratively, and I think the collaboration aspect only makes the story better because it gives my players a sense of agency that it’s really, really easy as a DM to take away out of a desire to control the story, and I try my hardest to refrain from doing that.
Sorry, tangent, I know. But it’s an important tangent for me. But moving on
In my design of this world, I did not have anything important across the gorge, and I think in hindsight, the only thing I was thinking there was, I didn’t want my players to think that they had to search an entire world to find what they were looking for, just search the area I presented them with.
But, having to think on my toes, I think I came up with a way to give my player a clue without feeling like I was trying not to reward a good solid play. On the other side of this gorge, Oa found a bit of that red clay, kind of balling it up in his fingers a bit. After feeling the consistency, he dropped a ball of it, deciding to move on until he heard a sort of sizzling behind him, followed by a loud “POP,” and where the ball of clay fell, a small crater lay smoking in the ground.
With this strange discovery, Oa pressed on, until he reached where the gorge intersected the mountain. The gorge didn’t pass through, but rather just ended, with a sheer cliffside preventing any discernable way to climb up to the more snowy region down which the party sled after their entrance to this world.
He did however see a small square hole that he couldn’t quite see into, but he could see a faint, flickering light inside. And then another hole, twenty feet away, and then another hole twenty feet away from that hole. 
These holes continued a good way down the side of this cliff face at regular intervals until for about sixty feet there were no holes. Then the holes began again, and just as Oa was about to turn back, he realized he could hear voices. Very faint ones, but voices nonetheless. And the voices were quite familiar, because they were the voices of Sunflower and Ramen. But we’ll get to that in a sec.
Our other grung friends, the blues, which
Another side note: the SECOND I divided them into two groups, they each started talking shit about the other group SO hard. Which like, was perfect because that’s literally what both groups do anyway when they’re not trying to meet their quota so their groups don’t fall apart
Anywho, Ramen, Riker, and Sunflower made their way with the blue grungs to the mining camp, where they talked to the grung in “charge,” Ragga-Bom
Another side note, I say like “leader” and “in charge,” but really there is no top dawg on either side. Every grung is just as likely to be picked for each day’s Weigh-In, except for the elders. Any grung who lives to a certain age (I can’t remember the actual number, but just think senior citizen but in grung years), is exempt from being chosen. The only other way to gain immunity is to either win the Rite of Ascendency (something I’ll get to), or be directly related to someone who did.
Ragga-Bom doesn’t question the blue grungs he’s never seen before rolling up because I’m a dummy, but he gives them a tour of the mine, which consists of a long straight tunnel into the mountain, with side tunnels to either side every 20 feet or so. 
The three follow past some of the tunnels deeper where it seems the majority of the grungs are working, then they come to a tunnel that has been closed off with rubble making any attempt at passage almost impossible. Ragga-Bom explains that there was a mining accident that caused the tunnel to collapse after an explosion, and they decided to refrain from digging in that area. 
Past the closed tunnel a little ways, the mining tunnels start back up again. Riker pops inside this one to investigate while the other two make their way towards the current back of the main shaft. Inside, he sees torches casting flickering light on the walls, and he can see veins of red clay snaking across the wall, something that was not in the mine tunnels close to the entrance.
Before he gets the chance to investigate further, an explosion from a few tunnels back from the closed shaft shakes the mine, and running back with his party members and Ragga-Bom, he and the others can see two blue grungs limping out of the tunnel.
Ragga-Bom orders an evacuation until they can get a handle on the situation, and when everyone is outside, Ragga-Bom asks one of the injured miners where the third member of their three-man party is (grungs always mine and hunt in threes), and the two just shake their heads.
With that harrowing note, the party are horrified to see the uninjured grungs make their way back into the mine because, despite the tragedy that just occurred, they know things will be much worse if they cannot make up for the lost time and resources caused by this accident before tomorrow.
Sunflower and the others decide to make their way back into town, and when they do, they see a curious sight. A blue grung, but hunched over with his fingers drumming against his lower lip beckons the party to follow him.
They do so, cautiously, and he takes them to a tent, ratty and probably insufficient cover for any rain or any other sort of force of nature. But he darts inside and rustles around until he finds what he’s looking for: three round balls, probably the size of golf balls, of that red clay.
He tells the party with a crazed raspy voice that his name is Taka, and these things he is holding are called Taka Bombs (a very clever and original grung, this Taka), and when the party asks him what they are, he giggles excitedly and jumps up and down then throws one at a tree not far from where the party stands.
At first, it doesn’t seem to do much, sticking to the bark, but other than that appears to be a ball of clay sticking to a tree. But then the clay starts to fizzle, spreading out until the clay itself is almost paper thin wrapped around the trunk, and then the clay explodes, knocking down the entire tree in the process.
The party, absolutely gobsmacked (gobstopped? idk, their gobs were doing something that means they were blown away (heh, get it? no, I won’t stop, you can’t make me)) immediately want to purchase a million of them, but Taka explains he only has the two now, and demands a million gold for each. Ramen explains to the crazy little fella that he has a “special gold” worth all that and more, and he’ll give it to him for the balls of clay
The small blue grung mulls it over, stroking his chin and muttering to himself before finally grabbing the “special” gold excitedly, and stowing it in his tent, the party carefully storing the bombs in their pack.
Sunflower takes Taka aside and asks him about the Weigh-In ceremony, and his eyes kinda light up a bit, before looking downcast suddenly, muttering to himself again, mentioning how “you can go up, yes, up. but you can also go down, down, down....” and kind of trails off, looking dejected.
Sunflower then cautiously asks, “Did you come down, Taka? From the trees?”
Taka spasms and yells out “I was red in the trees but now I am blue on the ground” and howls, sounding absolutely heartbroken.
The party seem genuinely concerned for this little frog, but he runs inside his tent and closes the flap, and they can hear him muttering softly. They decided to head back, the sun quickly setting behind the trees.
Before they go to sleep, Sunflower tries to speak with one of the grungs just beginning their shift about Taka. He tells Sunflower that he personally didn’t know him that well “before the accident,” but they could talk with “the twins” when they got off at midnight. And with that, the grung walked into the mine, and Sunflower and the others went to sleep.
At midnight, Sunflower catches the twins, who introduce themselves as Ching-a-Ting, and K’Boom (don’t roll your eyes at the names, the MM literally says that grung names are onomatopoeia for various things, so bite me lol). She asks them about Taka, and they kinda sigh, telling Sunflower that Taka had been brought down from the castle, transforming him from a red grung to a blue, and the process had driven him a little insane.
But even that did not result in the way he was today. After weeks of trying to adjust to life as a blue grung, he finally decided to start mining. But he refused to work with anyone else, and no one really wanted to work with him anyway. They explained that they had kind of taken him under their wing and genuinely grew to like the guy.
But then he had a major accident when the shaft he was mining exploded. He pulled himself out of the rubble, but from that day he was completely batty.
Taking all that in, Sunflower asked about the bombs Taka had “sold” them, and when they saw the clay ball and confirmed that she knew just what that did, they tell her that she needs to speak with Ragga-Bom immediately.
Sunflower wakes Ramen, but is unable to rouse Riker, and so the two party members followed Ching-a-Ting and K’Boom to Ragga-Bom at the mouth of the cave, who looks absolutely exhausted. But when the twins explain what Sunflower has, he instantly is wide awake.
He explains that he’s been trying to keep his miners away from the stuff by having them dig in the tunnels closer to the entrance as that area seems to be more free of the stuff, saying that the explosion today should be all the explanation he needs for that. But he also motions for the four blue grungs to follow him into the mine.
They pass the main area, pass the closed off tunnel where they now know Taka had his accident, deeper a ways until they reach one of the deeper tunnels. This one is lit with only a few torches and inside is a single mine cart. But the walls of this shaft are filled with the red clay, which the twins explain that they have called tak after the grung who essentially discovered how it works.
Inside the mine cart are small balls of the clay that the grungs have seemingly taken great caution to gather. Ragga-Bom explains that when tak takes nearly any physical force, either colliding with something or being hit with something, it reacts by spreading to nearly flat, then causing an explosion. The larger the surface area after it spreads, the larger the explosion.
Ragga-Bom gestures to the mine cart and chuckles, saying that if anything will destroy the Weigh-In and the grungs who oversee it, it’ll be this. The party are horrified for a second, but slowly come to realize that this might be the only way to get to Nangnang, and the two present slowly begin to work with the twins, who despite having just finished their shift, seem eager to fill this cart and gain a second wind.
And it is these voices that Oa hears as he is making is late night stroll past what you all now know are air vents for these mine tunnels (if you didn’t figure that out, don’t worry, my party didn’t either).
Oa takes a good bit of the tak and throws it against the outer wall of the tunnel and the explosion blows the tunnel right open. Ching-a-Ting and K’Boom are speechless, and Ragga-Bom instantly steps in front of them and the mine cart as he witnesses an absolutely confusing sight: a green grung entering from outside of the cave, where the grungs cannot go due to how cold the mountain is where the tunnels end. 
(See, sometimes you just gotta accept that there are rules about a world that make no sense. Like gravity! Ask any scientist how gravity works instead of what it does and they’ll throw their hands up in the air. Why don’t grungs mine through? Maybe it’s cuz there’s no ore out there! Maybe it’s cuz it’s too cold! Maybe they don’t want to! Mystery hour)
Oa basically pulls the, “it doesn’t matter how I can do what I can do, I can do it. Next question” and I honestly don’t know if they stayed and helped mine out more tak or if they went somewhere else, but they were doing something until dawn which is where we catch up with our other two favorite half-elves.
Thespin and Debbie wake up and decide to take their remaining time until the Weigh-In to talk to some of the other green grungs in the camp, specifically a very elderly couple whose names were Hooel and Cricka. They ask about the Rite of Ascendancy, and the couple explain it only happened once in their lifetime. An aunt of theirs, Thwippip, went out and killed a bear and brought it back, and the purple grung was so impressed, he invited the green grung up with them back to the castle.
Cricka explains that they never saw Thwippip again, but that she and her family were granted immunity from the Weigh-Ins, allowing her to grow as old as she has, her husband Hooel surviving on pure luck.
Debbie instantly decides that they have to go get a bear, and she and Thespin remember exactly where they found bears: on the mountain. Debbie’s enthusiasm was matched in equal measure by Thespin’s incredulity, but when Debbie met the rest of the party coming back from the tunnels, all six of the party got on board
I’ll save you the literal HOURS of combat this fight took (literally I think it spanned two sessions), but the party got some bears, the Weigh-In started, they dragged out the bears, and Tak’erak looked amused, but invites all six of them up to the dais where the ceremony took place. Before they could leave, the twins and Ragga-Bom shout to hold the show and bring up their offering, a mine cart seemingly full of gold from a “vein they just hit last night”
Tak’erak, perhaps in an attempt to avoid any confrontation, allows them to bring the minecart up, and leaving the bears and the minecart on the dais, knowing no grung would dare touch them, the six party members, three blue gruns, Tak’erak and three orange grung guards ascended the tree on the spiders that bring them up and down (yeah I think I forgot to mention these. If I had maybe the party’s not immediately attacking the grungs at the Weigh-In day one would have made more sense)
And from THIS point on, I fucking pulled everything out of my ass because I honestly genuinely did not think we would make it this far in the session we did so I had not planned it yet because I was busy as hell and just assumed it would take fucking forever to do the shit leading up to this. Like I said, DMing is hard
BUT, like I also said before, improv only gets better the more you do it, and I am pretty proud of how the entire rest of this arc went down.
Tak’erak brings them into a hanger of sorts where the spiders going up and down are kept, and explains to them that before they can see Nangnang, they need to go through the transformation ceremony, as Nangnang refuses to see the lower castes.
He then takes them into a large chamber with a long desk with three chairs facing the entrance, behind which are five large tubes of liquid. The first and second tubes have quite a bit, blue and green respectively. The next two have less, being red and orange. The final tube has very little liquid, but the liquid is purple.
The party soon realizes that the liquid drained from the grungs at the Weigh-Ins is what is in these tubes, but they don’t have time to process this thought as Tak’erak clears his throat and announces, “Welcome to the transformation chamber. I, as you probably know, am Tak’erak, and my fellow grungs here, Captain Brack,” gesturing to the orange grung to his right, “and Master Soong,” gesturing to the red grung on his left, “are here to realize your true potential. Obviously you all are very qualified to bring in the work that you have. Soong and Brack will explain to you their castes so that you can make an informed decision.”
Soong explains that the red caste is in charge of the arcane, dealing with various magicks and the like. Brack tells the group that the orange grungs not only protect the Weigh-Ins, but are the militia should any of the lower groups revolt.
Tak’erak gestures to the assembled grungs and says, “There you have it, you may choose, otherwise a caste will be chosen for you.”
The three blue grungs instantly request orange, while Thespin, Oa, Sunflower, and Riker each pick various colors (tbh I don’t remember who chose what because it isn’t important after what happens next).
Ramen and Debbie haven’t chosen, and when Tak’erak sees this, asks, “Are the two of you wanting us to choose for you? We can conduct a short assessment to see which would be the best fit.”
Both Ramen and Debbie find this agreeable. Ramen goes first.
Brack approaches Ramen and asks: “Would you rather lose a battle but have no casualties, or win and have your forces be nearly destroyed?” Ramen answered the second.
Soong approaches Ramen and asks: “Which appeals to you more, knowledge or power?” Ramen answers power
Tak’erak approaches Ramen and asks simply: “What does it mean to rule?” (And now I don’t remember this word for word but I think his answer was along the lines of:) To be the strongest of all those around you
The three take a seat and inform Ramen that they believe the orange class would be the best fit for him, and he undergoes the ceremony
Finally, they come to Debbie and ask the same questions.
To the first she answers that she would rather lose and have no casualties, to the second she answers that power appeals to her more. And to the last question, she answers (again, paraphrasing to the best of my ability): to have unquestionable authority
Now as another aside, I would like to remind everyone that this ENTIRE interaction was improvised. Transformation room, grung leadership, the damn questions, all of it. So like if you take ANY issue at all with this making sense or being cohesive or whatever I don’t wanna hear it lol. Flying by the seat of your pants is terrifying and once you say something those vocal chords don’t unvibrate.
The council take a seat again, and Tak’erak clears his throat and says, “This is something that has not happened since I took over my predecessor’s position many years ago taking this very assessment, but I believe it is time for me to pass the torch. We are giving you my current position as Nangnang’s voice by proxy, the highest position that can be afforded a grung of our standing. No one else can bear this title,” he says the last part looking right at Debbie, his purple eyes unblinking as he finishes this sentence
Every grung in the room save Soong and Brack are stunned. The party is horrified at the prospect of having to spend any more time in this wretched plane of existence. The three (formerly) blue grungs are furious that this grung they have never met has just taken something they didn’t even know was a choice and that their one opportunity to bring this whole caste system crashing to the ground seems to be quickly fading
Tak’erak does not take in any of this however, as he requests all of the assembled grungs to give him a moment with Debbie (who had a different grung name, I just can’t remember it). Once the doors close behind the grungs though, (and Debbie’s player and I walked where the rest of the party couldn’t hear) Tak’erak turns to face Debbie and says simply, “You can drop the disguise Princess Debdelaena”
I’m pretty sure Debbie’s player squeaked. But Tak’erak continued, “No? I can always drop them for us.” And when Tak’erak waves his hand, Debbie’s grung form disappears, along with Tak’erak’s. And standing in the room before a very half-elf Debbie is Frulam Mondath.
Now you may be asking yourself, who the hell is that? It’s been like a million years since we’ve even read that name it’s taken so goddamn long for you to tell this stupid frog story. Well, my rude obnoxious reader with a terrible memory, Frulam Mondath is the lady Sunflower witnessed disappearing through a portal in the temple devoted to Tiamat’s black dragon head
Frulam blows right past Debbie’s gobstamped (at this point I don’t even wanna know what the real word is) expression, and tells her that Nangnang isn’t here. She was looking for her as well, but for the months that she has spent ingraining herself in this society of frogs, Nangnang has not once been here.
She also tells Debbie that despite the fact that she knows Bahamut is trying to stop her, she doesn’t see Debbie or the others as enemies. She tells her that as long as she and the party stay out of her way, she doesn’t need to have anything to do with them. She even offers Debbie this world to rule now that her chance at royalty in Thultanthar is impossible. Her offer to be a purple grung and rule Niik still stands.
After all of this, Frulam waves her hand again and their two grung forms return, this time both of them purple. When the doors open again, Debbie fervently gestures the party over and explains what she was just told. While this is happening however, Tak’erak, quietly slips away.
When the party realizes what has happened, the dash through the castle to the hanger where they see two spiders missing, one of which was just starting to descend with the orange grungs on it.
The party rush into the hanger and Debbie, now a purple grung and in charge, grabs an orange guard and orders him to have all the grungs assemble at the base of the mountain, wanting to make an announcement. Then she runs after the party who all descend down to the ground.
On the ground, Thespin works with the guard to get as many grungs as they can to the mountain for the speech, Oa and Ramen look around furiously for Tak’erak but cannot find him anywhere. Also, the bears are still on the dais, but the minecart has disappeared and the orange grungs are nowhere to be seen.
In the throng of grungs making their way to the mountain, Sunflower spots Taka and scoops him up onto her shoulders and everyone makes their way to where Debbie has set herself up on a rock to be fully visible to everyone.
When all the grungs have arrived, the party is still looking around for Tak’erak, but still see nothing as Debbie begins her speech:
“As you may know by now, I am your new ruler. And as your ruler I want to make a very important announcement that all of you deserve to know: Nangnang, your god, is dead.”
Almost as if timed by a very dramatic DM, there is an absolutely massive explosion.
Grungs run everywhere, not knowing where to go. Taka wriggles off of Sunflower’s shoulders and goes dashing for the mine. Riker and Ramen run after him as Sunflower runs, scoops up Debbie, and grabs Thespin and begins to run up the mountain. This mission is over.
Oa, seemingly unfazed by the events around him, just takes a seat at the base of a tree. Ea (who I definitely never forgot about), walks up to him, sighs, and just says, “You guys should probably get out of here. I’ll stay and run damage control as best I can. But y’all’s job here is done unfortunately.”
Oa kind of shrugs his shoulders and begins walking up the mountain.
Meanwhile, Taka bolted into the mine, dodging the grungs running everywhere, trying to figure out what made that explosion and what needs to be done to fix the damage. Riker and Ramen have a harder time getting through, and when they finally make it into the mine, Taka is a good deal in front of them.
He darts into a tunnel, and when the two pursuers reach that tunnel, they realize it’s the closed off tunnel where Taka had his accident. The two of them have to clear some of the rubble away, being bigger than grung sized. When they do, they run after the little grung who is now almost at the end of this tunnel.
As they do, they almost trip over something, which on closer inspection, is the shriveled up body of a dead grung. And this grung is wearing a cloak and underclothes identical to the Taka who has now turned to face Riker and Ramen, and they realize this is Taka. Or at least it was.
And they know this for certain when they see the figure at the end of the tunnel begin to transform as they shout a single word: “Nikek!” And as white flames begin to lick up the body of this changing form, they realize the Taka they knew is becoming a woman with dark purple robes, jet black hair, and purple eyes. Taka is Frulam.
Right as Frulam is about to disappear, Riker charges after her and the two of them disappear in a bright light, leaving only a rune that Ramen recognizes as the same rune they used to bring them here.
Ramen drops to his knees, his world shattered. And he probably would have remained that way for a good bit longer, were it not for the fact that the rune began glowing again. But it wasn’t taking anyone away this time. It was bringing something back.
That something was a giant wave of water that nearly washed Ramen out of the tunnel, and in this water was a giant orange shark, which snapped at Ramen until the water settles and the shark flops helplessly until it cannot anymore. And Ramen cries.
Ramen and Oa march back up the hill together, and when the party is together again, they say the command word to bring them back to Bahamut: “Nogoorsa.”
So now we’re all caught up! This post alone literally took me uhhhh 3 hours to write, but now y’all know what your favorite characters have been up to. We’ll be starting back up again very, very soon, so stay tuned for the recap of our first session back! Till then, I’ve got a few more posts planned. Ciao for now!
P.S. Thanks to my handy dandy queue schedule, I know this will post on my birthday!! Now if a police officer busts down our door while we’re drinking and playing D&D all he can do is say “fucking nerds” and go away instead of arresting me!
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pjarox-journey · 5 years ago
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Breath of the Wild - Session #10
Into the Woods!
Hey there! I am back from my family, where i had played a bit more!
Sooo... the last time i had reached the stable of the mountain, were i got Fiona back. The next destination on my journey was the big forest west of the mountains, so thats were i headed now!
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It love riding with the horse, kinda. It’s relaxing, and i love the subtle music in the background.
I met a traveling Goron on my way, and smashed some rocks nearby the road. You can always use the minerals, either for upgrading or some rupees.
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Also, i punched a bat with my HAMMER!
Following the road besides the river, i found another shrine. Surrounded by spikes. Which was a bit annoying, and i didn’t know how to remove them. The last time i found some, my fire sword didn’t help.
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BURN! BURN EVERYTHING!!!
...but fire arrows DID help. A bit. So now, time for shrine #19, the Sem-Rat-Shrine (still german!). I had to play around with the height of the water, but it wasn’t too difficult. Took me a few minutes, though, because of waiting.
Day 19 dawned after leaving the shrine, welcoming me with... a thunderstorm. I can tell you, rain sucks in Hyrule. Climbing is incredible annoying, because every few meter you loose some stamina and sliding down the wall as well. But thunder... lightnings strike everything that is made out of metal. And if you carry a piece of metal with you, like a sword, maybe, you’ll get hit. And boy, does that hurt. So i had to remove all metal objects from myself, so i don’t get hit. Yaaay... .-.
On my way i found two guys with a... kinda strange marketing idea - shieldsliding. On top of the hill, a merchant waits for travelers, so he can sell some shields to them, so they can slide down the hill. I didn’t buy a shield there, though. I carried enough with me, thank you. 
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Did you see what i am carrying on my back?!
But... i found another two Korogs nearby - #52 and #53. The first one really like the idea of shieldsliding, so i had to do that to reach the ring he spawned fast enough. The other one lived down the hill, where he loved running in circles.
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Another Korok was living by a nearby bridge. After looting the Octoplattform there, i tried to get him!
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...i tried. Really. D:
After throwing rock for rock, i finally managed to hit the spot. Also, the stones are... strange. I’m pretty sure stones normally don’t bounce like bouncing balls.
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Anyway, hello #54!
After traveling a bit further, i reach the stable of the woods, at the start of day 20! Which... i didn’t remember, to be honest, but i don’t mind! I also found Hestu there, who did not know how to reach the forest, and... i... Hestu. The forest is like two steps away, and you don’t know how to...?!
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He HAS the moves, though!
Lucky for him, he did remember the way after dancing 5 times (and taking my hard earned Korok-Seeds).
As always, i explored the stable a bit, and found some intersting stuff!
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WHO IS A GOOD BOY?! YES, YOU ARE!
I was also able to give Fiona a new haircut, and... what? Why didn’t i remember that?! THAT’S AWESOME!
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Flowers for Fiona!!
As always, there was a shrine nearby the stable, so you could teleport here (or to any other stable/village) at will. If you want to teleport, though. But this shrine... i remember it far too well.
My 20th shrine, the Miiro-Tsuhi-shrine (german!) is one of the most annoying shrines in this games. It’s... golf. You have to stop a ball, hit it a few times, and hope it hits the goal. The first challenge is okay, and i finished it in no time. But the second one, for the bonus chest... it took me a while, and i hate it so much. You get a giant core from that, though, but still... urgh.
After finishing the shrine, i found another Korok in the pond nearby.
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Hello, cube-loving little guy #55!
I also did a quest for a little child at the stable. They wanted to see a flying barrel, which i showed them, so they gave me a starshard - a very very rare material. When the barrel fell to the ground, Fiona went a bit mad, though. But who can blame her?
On my way to the forest, i also visited the nearby tower. Revealing the map is my top priority for every new area, but it’s always such a pain to reach them. In this case, it was in the middle of a swamp, filled with enemies. Why did all the towers have to rise in such areas? Whyyyy? D:
After some sneaking, killing and exploding, i somehow managed to climb it, before the rain started. Thanks, weather!
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Tower activated!
Now, on to the forest! If you know a bit of the world of the legend of Zelda, the big forest is often called “The lost woods”. Why? Because everyone who tries to go into the forest, is lost. You need to go the right way to be able to enter, and Breath of the Wild is not different to the other games.
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You ready, Fiona?
In this case, the fire will give you a hint how to reach the other side. Follow the wind, follow the particles of the fire. At first, there are some big torches on the ground, until you have to carry a torch yourself. An advise from me: don’t do it on your horse. You’ll burn the gras under you, if you are not careful, and it takes waaaay to long.
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Dont burn the ground dont burn the ground dont burn the ground dont bur-
...but did that stop me? Nope!
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See, Fiona? We did it!
On the other side of the forest, there waits...
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The Master Sword!
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...and a talking tree. The Deku tree, to give him a name. He told me a bit about the past, and that only a person on peak of their power can pull out the Master Sword. Which this means, is: you need a certain amount of hearts to be able to use the Master Sword. 13, to give you the required amount. As you can see, i have only 6 right now, and could have 8, whith the spirit orbs i had collected.
To help me, the Koroks that lives here want me to do some challenges, each rewarded by a shrine.
First of all... i did the shrine right besides the Deku tree. My 21st shrine, the Kiyo-Uh-Shrine. If you can count, the shrine is easy. Just count the amount of star constellations, and you’re good.
After that, i did my first trial - the pilgrimage. One Korok wanted to go to the forest to the shrine, all by himself. And i should follow him, without being seen. It’s a bit annoying, but after a few tries, i managed to follow him.
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Sneaky sneak sneak!
As the trials are challenging enough, the shrine, the Du-Chokahi-Shrine (still german!), was a free one, as well as the other two in the forest.
The next trial is the trial of attraction? That would be the translation, i guess, but it really means magnetism. Follow the treas with iron in their mouth. Not too hard, yes, but i had a hard time to see some of the right trees. At the end, there was also a small pond, where i kinda used a raft. As intended.
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Rafts work this way, i promise!
Shrine 23, the Kun-Shidaji-Shrine (german!!), got! Yay \o/
The last trial was the trial of fire. The task: reach the shrine with a forest sword, bow and shield equiped, which aren’t allowed to burn or get destroyed or whatever. I know i needed multiple tries the first time i did this, but this time, i managed pretty well, as i tried to use them as rarely as possible.
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I really like the design of the forest equipment!
At the end, the Mahmu-Ranos-Shrine (german!) waited for me. Now i had finished my 24th shrine, which means i already finished 20% of the shrines! Yay!
A good time to finish the session, don’t you think? With this, i am able to get three more hearts, and i was also able to get even more inventory slots now, as Hestu has finally returned home. So... maybe i’ll take down the first Titan soon? I don’t know. I still don’t know where i want to go next, but... maybe the Gorons? Death Mountain? Fire everywhere? Or the Zora... hm...
Well, you’ll see the next time! So stay tuned! And i hope you enjoyed the summary of this session! I also started Pokemon Sword, so i might post some stuff about that, too! :D
Anyway, i hope you had a wonderful christmas, and that you can enjoy the last days of this year~ See ya o/
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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago
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Tees Quotes
Official Website: Tees Quotes
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• A good friend of mine took me out and had me hit off a tee. He made me understand what was my strike zone and – with my speed – the importance of making contact. So I give him a lot of credit for changing my game and making me the player I became. He showed me how to work on me and my game, and not worry about patterning myself after someone else and focusing on what they were capable of doing rather than what I was capable of doing. – Rickey Henderson • A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it. – Jason Bateman • Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it…. Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something – and so does a man, even if it’s only a little white ball on a tee. – John Eldredge • Also, of course, I need my Dove soap. Of course I need my cocoa butter. I need my Listerine. I need the white Jockey tees. They are really soft and comfortable. – DJ Khaled • And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet? – Kurt Vonnegut • Are you all right?” “Oh my god! I phased!” “Are you all right?” “Are you?” “It was strange.” “I can’t believe I phased just then! That’s never…it was totally your fault.” “I like to think so, yes.” “Tee hee. – Joss Whedon • At home, a T-shirt and something loose like harem pants would do. If I’m stepping out, a pair of blue jeans and a white tee are just fine. – Genelia D’Souza
jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Tee', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_tee').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_tee img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Bob Hope has a beautiful short game. Unfortunately, it’s off the tee. – Jimmy Demaret • But just like I’ve always said when people complain about tee times, ‘I just want a tee time. Just give me one so I can play. – David Duval • But the bottom line is, no matter what, even if I shoot 90 tomorrow, I’m going to enjoy it. Maybe people will say “Oh, he blew it” or whatever. Maybe I’m going to blow it, it’s the first time I’ve ever been there. What do you expect? You know I’m not number one in the world. My knees are going to touch each other on the first tee tomorrow. But let me tell you, I’m going to enjoy it. – Jean van de Velde • Control is the main thing, and the tee shot is the most important shot in golf. You’ve got to hit the fairway before you have a good chance of putting the ball close to the pin. You can be the greatest iron player in the world, but if you’re in the boondocks it won’t do you any good. – Ben Hogan • Courses that you’ve had success on, all of a sudden your game turns around because you feel comfortable on your tee shots, you feel comfortable going to the greens, you know, all the reads on the putts. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe, but it’s certainly one that you get filled up with confidence more than anything else. – Tiger Woods • Edward Abbey said you must brew your own beer; kick in you Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it. I already had a good start. As a teenager in rural Maine, after we came to America, I had learned hunting, fishing, and trapping in the wilderness. My Maine mentors had long ago taught me to make home brew. I owned a rifle, and I’d already built a log cabin. The rest should be easy. I thought I’d give it a shot. – Bernd Heinrich • Elmcrest CC, in Cedar Rapids, is where it all started when I was growing up. The tree-lined course has a very demanding layout that requires you to be accurate off the tee and avoid a number of well-placed water hazards on some of the holes. – Zach Johnson • Every golfer can expect to have four bad shots in a round and when you do, just put them out of your mind. This, of course is hard to do when you’ve had them and you’re not even off the first tee. – Walter Hagen • Every golfer should come to the first tee with fourteen clubs, a dozen balls, a handful of tees, and at least one great golf story – Lee Trevino • Everything was fine until I walked on to the first tee! – Seve Ballesteros • Fighting is like life. You can do everything to a tee. You can show up and fail. That’s no reason to quit. – Frank Mir • Foursomes have left the first tee there and have never been seen again. They just find their shoelaces and bags. – Bob Hope • Get a good jean, a good tee, a good whatever because you can just switch that stuff up and you have like 8,000 different outfits with a few things. – Zendaya • Golf is a stupid game. You tee up this little ball, really this tiny ball. Then you hit it, try to find it, hit it. And the goal is to get it into a little hole placed in a hard spot. – Juli Inkster • Has anyone ever won an argument with you? (Syd) Just Tee, and I was drunk and wounded at the time. (Joe) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • He [Daniel Craig] is mysterious, and I think that that’s the thing Bond has to exude, that kind of mysterious edge. He draws you in, but he is also incredibly cool, you know, James Bond is cool and sharp and Daniel has that to a tee, and he’s also got the rawness and an edginess to him that is slightly unhinged, and you’re not sure what is going on there, and I think that is really intriguing and interesting. It is a lot weightier and gritty, and he has that. – Gemma Arterton • He’s wearing boots, a kilt, and a long-sleeve tee. No coat, even though it’s December. Beautiful people don’t need coats. They’ve got their auras to keep them warm. – Jennifer Donnelly • Hole in One: an occurence in which a ball is hit directly from the tee into the hole in a single shot by a golfer playing alone. – Henry Beard • How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it. – Edward Abbey • I also taught myself how to blow glass using a propane torch from the hardware store and managed to make some elementary chemistry plumbing such as tees and small glass bulbs. – Robert B. Laughlin • I am always looking for a cool tee shirt; maybe one with a rock band or an old advertisement. – Bridget Hall • I call my putter ‘Sweet Charity’ because it covers such a multitude of sins from tee to green. – Gardner Dickinson • I can wear a suit, sweatpants, a long tee shirt, and a denim jacket all at the same time. – Tinie Tempah • I could get you to smile like that, and without sales tax.” I whirled around to find the real Patch standing in the fitting room behind me. He was wearing jeans and a snug white tee. His arms were folded loosely over his chest, and his black eyes smiled down at me. Heat that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable flushed through my body. “I could make all kinds of pervert jokes right now,” I quipped. – Becca Fitzpatrick • I do know how to operate a computer. (Joe) Yeah, right. What was it you said just ten minutes ago? Get this damned thing off my desk before I shoot it? Now make the call, Mr. Hunt-and-Peck. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • I don’t feel like I’m out of my element or anything like that. I’m very comfortable where I’m at. I enjoy being in this position, and actually it feels like I haven’t really been away from it. I feel very comfortable out there from the first tee onwards. – Aaron Baddeley • I don’t think the philosophy really changes between men and women. I think golf courses need to become more distance-friendly overall. I think golf courses almost need to develop a more generic set of tees instead of calling them black, blue, red or whatever. – Amy Alcott • I go to the first tee scared to death every day. The peaks do not seem to last as long as the valleys in this game. – J. C. Snead • I got so strong I felt like a giant…..When I stood on the tee with Arnold and Jack, I was tiny compared to them. But I never believed they were bigger than me. So the mind is so fascinating. – Gary Player • I had held a notion that I could make a pretty fair appraisal of the worth of an opponent simply by speaking to him on the first tee and taking a good measuring look into his eyes. – Bobby Jones • I had to lull Mom and Hank into believing I was in the right frame of mind to be taken into public. If I exited my bedroom foaming at the mouth and dressed in black LOVE SUCKS tee, my plan would never get off the ground. – Becca Fitzpatrick • I have a really simple wardrobe. I wear a low-scoop tee every day with a tux or leather jacket and tux pants or black jeans. That’s pretty much it. – Johan Lindeberg • I have really enjoyed every minute I have spent in golf- above all, the many wonderful friends I have made. I have loved playing the game and practicing it. Whether my schedule for the following day called for a tournament round or merely a trip to the practice tee, the prospect that there was going to be golf in it made me feel privileged and extremely happy, and I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up the next morning so that I could get out on the course again – Ben Hogan • I hurt my shoulder on the fifth tee – just hitting it too hard when you’re too old. – Ian Woosnam • I like What Goes Around Comes Around for old concert tees. Oh man, I got this ‘Sgt. Pepper’ cartoon Beatles shirt there; it was, like, $300. I didn’t even know how much it cost – I thought it was gonna be, like, $80 at most – till I got to the register and was like, ‘Oh mah gawd!’ Good Lord. But it’s classic vintage rock, you know? – Kid Cudi • I mistrust the term graphic novel because it sounds like a good thing to put on a tee-shirt. That’s why the French like them. – Terry Pratchett • I need to use the Dam Bathroom, I need to use the Dam Snack bar, I want a Dam Tee-Shirt. – Rick Riordan • I remember winning the first time, you know, suddenly everybody expects, well, okay, now he should win every time he tees it up, win six tournaments. – Retief Goosen • I still get butterflies on the first tee. I still get sweaty hands, and my heart pumps a lot going down the 18th. But I know what winning is all about now, and that’s a feeling that I like. – Annika Sorenstam • I think I can be competitive. Heck, anybody who can walk to the first tee here has a chance. – Fuzzy Zoeller • I think jeans have gotten away from the original meaning, that symbol of freedom; they’ve gone gimmicky and turned into a status item. Our denim is offered at lower price points for that reason. As far as the men’s clothing in the collection, it’s basically my wardrobe. I think men’s clothes should be grounded, strong and classic. I like simple: a blazer, jeans, a low cut tee and maybe a silk scarf. – Johan Lindeberg • I thoroughly enjoy working with kids, whether it’s The First Tee or the lesson tee with my grandkids. – Jack Nicklaus • I thought Denver and Seattle was a big game but Houston and Dallas is the kind of game that as players, we want to play in. I haven’t missed playing in the National Football League, but every year there are one or two games that makes me wish I could tee it up in that game one more time. – Sterling Sharpe • I wanted to feel good about the way I looked. I didn’t understand why style had to be sacrificed for sports technology. I found when going to the gym women were wearing their own tees, without the technology. I started to think, does it make you run faster if you wear that terrible color or sweat less if you wear that horrible fabric? And I challenged it, and the answers were not there to why we were being given poor design work. It was something I wanted to bring to women’s wardrobes. – Stella McCartney • I went through phases of odd hairstyles and tank top-over-tee outfits and stuff like that. – Jamie Lynn Sigler • I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee-shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia. – Kurt Cobain • If any guy threatened her she’d probably suffocate him with her oversized tee. – Simone Elkeles • If I’d been listening closely, I’d have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense. – Sue Grafton • If I’m not going out, my go-to outfit is some comfortable pants, Vans, and a fitted tee. But if I’m going out, definitely some Diesel jeans, either some super cool boots or nice shoes, and then a button-up. – Sterling Beaumon • If it really made sense to “let the club do the work,” you’d just say, “Driver, wedge to the green, one-putt,” and walk to the next tee. – Tom Mulligan • If Jack Nicklaus had to play my tee shots, he couldn’t break 80. He’d be a pharmacist with a string of drugstores in Ohio. – Lee Trevino • If the rest of his foursome are bunched directly behind his ball, or assume the foetal position with their backs to the tee, the golfer is reminded that his drive tends to be erratic. More cruel yet is for his opponent to stand directly in the projected line of flight, as the safest place to be. – Eric Nicol • If there’s a golf course in heaven, I hope it’s like Augusta National. I just don’t want an early tee time. – Gary Player • I’m a big fan of pops of color, but I thought I would take that to the next level and do a color-blocked Rolex. This watch is the perfect accessory whether you’re wearing a tee and jeans or a well-tailored suit. – Brad Goreski • I’m focusing on quality versus quantity – a nicer tee-shirt with organic cotton and buying just one or two instead of five that are cheaper but made with GMO cotton, which is hard on Earth, sewn by slave labor, shipped all the way from China on boats that use lots of oil and can kill whales with ship strikes and sold by (some) companies that could treat their – Kristin Bauer van Straten • I’m much better off the tee. I’m not a great putter. I do not have a good short game. – Molly Sims • I’m not out there just to be dancing around. I expect to win every time I tee up. – Lee Trevino • I’m really going to do my homework. I’m going to be down there on the practice tee finding out if a guy’s wife beat him up the night before, important stuff like that. Stuff that people want to know. – Lee Trevino • It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet? – Kurt Vonnegut • It’s really hard to perfect one aspect of your kicking game when you’re spending some of your time kicking with a holder, some of your time kicking off a tee, and some of your time drop-kicking the ball. To be able to concentrate just on my punting responsibilities will do wonders for me. – Pat McAfee • I’ve always tried to play golf with a golf club. I have a hard time driving with my rifle. I mean, 18 is really narrow … I have no problem with the course, except for the tee shot on 18. – Jack Nicklaus • Just hopped off the plane came back from Vancouv Little white tee sum boobs & bamboo – Nicki Minaj • My back swing off the first tee had put him in mond of an eldery woman of dubious morals trying to struggle out of a dress too tight around the shoulders. – Patrick Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy • My essentials are skinny jeans, loose-fitting tees, big jumpers, and the leather jacket. Everything is black or blue – I don’t own anything colorful. – Jamie Campbell Bower • My golf score is really bad. I don’t know. I’m definitely not a good golfer. Off the tee box, I can drive it about 275, and I’m in the fairway about 99% of the time. It’s my next shot that needs work. – Jason Aldean • My sister Suga Tee is doing conscious rap. She speaks to the youth. She has an album coming out soon. She got saved but she is still doing her thing. She still spits good game. She’s talented. She sings. I don’t know if a lot of people know this but Suga Tee has a beautiful voice. So ya’ll look out for her album you dig? And look forward to a future Clique album. – E-40 • Never bet with anyone you meet on the first tee who has a deep suntan, a 1-iron in his bag, and squinty eyes. – Dave Marr • No matter what happens – never give up a hole….In tossing in your cards after a bad beginning you also undermine your whole game, because to quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast. – Sam Snead • Not a mark on it. (Joe) Yeah. Wanna check the backseat, where Steele is sitting? I’ll bet there’s a big stain there. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Obviously a deer on the fairway has seen you tee off before and knows that the safest place to be when you play is right down the middle. – Jackie Gleason • On the first tee I kept telling myself, “Trust yourself, you can do it.”- Annika Sorenstam • Once I graduated from NYU, I started making custom vintage tees for my friends and it just took off from there. – Charlotte Ronson • One of the most fascinating things about golf is how it reflects the cycle of life. No matter what you shoot – the next day you have to go back to the first tee and begin all over again and make yourself into something. – Peter Jacobsen • Only because I’m not a morning person. (Joe) And you’re not a night person either. Face it, babe. You’ve only got two good minutes a day. The minute before noon and the minute right after. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain’t discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee. – Kathryn Stockett • Ooo, he’s snotty. I like him already. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Part of wearing a tee is saying, ‘I’m comfortable and casual.’ – Ryan Seacrest • Patience is a virtue. (Tee) Excuse me, pot, could you not pick on the kettle? (Joe) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Reminiscing No one knows … until you live it, to be there, to tee it up each week, to get yourself ready, the players and whatever else…. I think its a very, very difficult, tough and demanding job. And to be able to, particularly, stay at the level of expertise that we have over the years. Along with the fact that we have made football a presence at BYU. I think those are the things that are about as satisfying as anything that has happened. Then, of course, the players…. I think the thing that will be the most difficult is leaving the relationships and the involvement. – LaVell Edwards • Sam Snead did to the tee-shot what Roger Bannister did to the four-minute mile. – Byron Nelson • Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses — they tie — who cares? And why? – Edward Abbey • Tee your ball high…air offers less resistance than dirt. – Jack Nicklaus • The devil doesn’t wear prada; I’m clearly in a — white tee. – Tyler, The Creator • The first time I met [Sylvester Stallone], he had golf tees up his nose. So I figured we were going to be OK. – Sandra Bullock • The fourth tee brings out a mixture of excitement and anticipation, for about 220 yards down the fairway you catch a glimpse of Stillwater Cove, and realize you’ll be walking along this spectacular meeting of land and sea for the next two hours. – Doug Ferguson • The Japanese eat, sleep, and breathe golf; the only thing they don’t do is actually play it, because to get on a course, you have to make a reservation roughly 137 years in advance, which means that by the time you actually get to the first tee you are deceased. Of course, in golf this is not really a handicap. – Dave Barry • The man who runs from his office to the golf club, gulps a sandwich, belches and races to the first tee has no business howling in anguish when he puts his first two shots in the woods, then tops a 3-iron shot into the pond. – Tony Lema • The NBAs a Fortune 500 company. Thats how you look at it. And all the other Fortune 500 companies out there in the world, you dont see their CEOs and COOs going to work with white tees and baggy clothes and stuff like that. So I have to take that same approach. – Carmelo Anthony • The only times you touch the ball with your hand are when you tee it up and when you pick it out of the cup. The hell with television towers and cables and burrowing animals and the thousand and one things that are referred to as ‘not part of the golf course’. If you hit the ball off the fairway, you play it from there. – Ken Venturi • The subconscious mind is probably the most important factor in being a good golfer. It keeps distractions on the course from ruining a good round. You should practice, develop your swing, and do most of your thinking on the practice tee so that when you play in competition, you can hit the ball automatically. – Wiffy Cox • There are three things being a celebrity is good for: raising money for charity, dinner reservations and tee times. – Dennis Quaid • There was a time when all I cared about was the next game, the next party, the next tee time. – Brett Favre • There’s not much pressure on the golf Tour. Walking to the first tee is in no way comparable to walking through the jungle in combat – Larry Nelson • To quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast. – Sam Snead • Trust me, Joe. You’re not a cowboy. The only cows you ever saw as a kid came under a plastic wrap in the grocery store or in a paper wrapped from McDonald’s. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • We don’t want civilians walking around who know about us. Got it? (Tee) Wow, you’re like a ferocious bunny, aren’t you? (Nathan) Worse. A bunny can be fluffy sometimes. Tee always goes for the throat. Trust me. I’m her partner and she’s shot me three times now. (Joe) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • We have 51 golf courses in Palm Springs. He [President Ford] never decides which course he will play until after the first tee shot. – Bob Hope • We never let our people just go. (Joe) What are you? Wolfram and Hart? (Steele) Oh, no, sweetie, they just take your soul for service. We intend to take even more than that. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Well, I think that Augusta is not the same golf course that I grew up on. Bobby Jones’ philosophy was giving you space off the tee; if you put it in the right side of the fairway, you ended up getting the right angle to the green. – Jack Nicklaus • What a shame to waste those great shots on the practice tee. – Walter Hagen • What’s the longest walk in golf? It’s from the practice tee to the first tee. I don’t care if it’s 10 yards. It’s the longest walk in golf. Winners take their swing with them. Losers don’t. – Moe Norman • When Ballesteros triumphed at the British Open in 1979, for his first major win, he hit so few fairways off the tee that he was often mistaken for a gallery marshall. – Dan Jenkins • When I decided to launch my first knitwear line, it was because I saw a void in the basics category. The editors were always looking for cool, fashion-forward tees and sweaters. So that’s where I started. – Alexander Wang • When I got to the first tee on the first day, to hear the cheers, it was like all the oxygen got sucked out. It was hard to pull the club back. – Patrick Reed • When I have a match to play, I begin to relax as soon as I wake up. Everything I do, I do slow and easy. That goes for stroking the razor, getting dressed, and eating my breakfast. I’m practically in slow motion. By the time I’m ready to tee off, I’m so used to taking my time that it’s impossible to hurry my swing. – Walter Hagen • When I learned that there was such a thing as an atheist, I looked it up – and found out that the definition fitted me to a tee. Finally, at the age of 24, I found out who and what I was. Better late than never. – Madalyn Murray O’Hair • When it come to da: ” What it do?! I don’t fall for da: “Woop- TeE- WoOoo! – Erykah Badu • Why is it when I’m the one shot, I’m a baby, but when it’s you, it’s a matter of life and death and national security? (Joe) Because I’m cuter in a short skirt. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Yeah. Kip gets to guard you and I get to house-sit. Life bites the big tee-tawa. (Syn) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • You are so vicious. (Tee) Hence the nickname. (Syd) You know it’s bad when you make me look like Glinda the Good Witch, right? (Tee) Just call me Elphaba. But don’t drop a house on me, ‘kay? (Syd) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • You don’t lose your swing between the ninth green and the tenth tee, and you don’t lose your swing from one day to the next. If you think you do, something is going on that you don’t understand. A diary might help explain it to you. – Harvey Penick • You draw on your own childhood every time you tee it up as an actor. – Ron Perlman • You ever go up to the tee and say, ‘Don’t hit it left, don’t hit it right’? That’s your conscious mind. My body knows how to play golf. I’ve trained it to do that. It’s just a matter of keeping my conscious mind out of it. – Tiger Woods • You hear stories about me beating my brains out practicing, but the truth is, I was enjoying myself. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I’d be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it. And I still thoroughly enjoy it. When I’m hitting the ball where I want, hard and crisply – when anyone is – it’s a joy that very few people experience. – Ben Hogan • You just don’t have the time to worry about what others are doing. You just want to take care of your own business. You are focused on that tee shot on the 10th tee and making it to the finish line. It’s one of the most stressful moments in professional golf, but you have worked so hard to get to that point, that it really is fun. – Mike Weir • You know what I hate about rock? I hate tie-dyed tee shirts. I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia. – Kurt Cobain • You’re such a crybaby. (Tee) Let me almost shoot off one of your testicles and see how you cope. (Joe) You shouldn’t have moved, Joe. It was your fault. (Tee) Yeah, everything’s my fault. (Joe) Good, then we agree. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Your white tee, well to me, looks like a nightgown; Make your mama proud, take that thing two sizes down. – Andre Benjamin
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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago
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Tees Quotes
Official Website: Tees Quotes
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• A good friend of mine took me out and had me hit off a tee. He made me understand what was my strike zone and – with my speed – the importance of making contact. So I give him a lot of credit for changing my game and making me the player I became. He showed me how to work on me and my game, and not worry about patterning myself after someone else and focusing on what they were capable of doing rather than what I was capable of doing. – Rickey Henderson • A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it. – Jason Bateman • Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it…. Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something – and so does a man, even if it’s only a little white ball on a tee. – John Eldredge • Also, of course, I need my Dove soap. Of course I need my cocoa butter. I need my Listerine. I need the white Jockey tees. They are really soft and comfortable. – DJ Khaled • And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet? – Kurt Vonnegut • Are you all right?” “Oh my god! I phased!” “Are you all right?” “Are you?” “It was strange.” “I can’t believe I phased just then! That’s never…it was totally your fault.” “I like to think so, yes.” “Tee hee. – Joss Whedon • At home, a T-shirt and something loose like harem pants would do. If I’m stepping out, a pair of blue jeans and a white tee are just fine. – Genelia D’Souza
jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Tee', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_tee').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_tee img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Bob Hope has a beautiful short game. Unfortunately, it’s off the tee. – Jimmy Demaret • But just like I’ve always said when people complain about tee times, ‘I just want a tee time. Just give me one so I can play. – David Duval • But the bottom line is, no matter what, even if I shoot 90 tomorrow, I’m going to enjoy it. Maybe people will say “Oh, he blew it” or whatever. Maybe I’m going to blow it, it’s the first time I’ve ever been there. What do you expect? You know I’m not number one in the world. My knees are going to touch each other on the first tee tomorrow. But let me tell you, I’m going to enjoy it. – Jean van de Velde • Control is the main thing, and the tee shot is the most important shot in golf. You’ve got to hit the fairway before you have a good chance of putting the ball close to the pin. You can be the greatest iron player in the world, but if you’re in the boondocks it won’t do you any good. – Ben Hogan • Courses that you’ve had success on, all of a sudden your game turns around because you feel comfortable on your tee shots, you feel comfortable going to the greens, you know, all the reads on the putts. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe, but it’s certainly one that you get filled up with confidence more than anything else. – Tiger Woods • Edward Abbey said you must brew your own beer; kick in you Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it. I already had a good start. As a teenager in rural Maine, after we came to America, I had learned hunting, fishing, and trapping in the wilderness. My Maine mentors had long ago taught me to make home brew. I owned a rifle, and I’d already built a log cabin. The rest should be easy. I thought I’d give it a shot. – Bernd Heinrich • Elmcrest CC, in Cedar Rapids, is where it all started when I was growing up. The tree-lined course has a very demanding layout that requires you to be accurate off the tee and avoid a number of well-placed water hazards on some of the holes. – Zach Johnson • Every golfer can expect to have four bad shots in a round and when you do, just put them out of your mind. This, of course is hard to do when you’ve had them and you’re not even off the first tee. – Walter Hagen • Every golfer should come to the first tee with fourteen clubs, a dozen balls, a handful of tees, and at least one great golf story – Lee Trevino • Everything was fine until I walked on to the first tee! – Seve Ballesteros • Fighting is like life. You can do everything to a tee. You can show up and fail. That’s no reason to quit. – Frank Mir • Foursomes have left the first tee there and have never been seen again. They just find their shoelaces and bags. – Bob Hope • Get a good jean, a good tee, a good whatever because you can just switch that stuff up and you have like 8,000 different outfits with a few things. – Zendaya • Golf is a stupid game. You tee up this little ball, really this tiny ball. Then you hit it, try to find it, hit it. And the goal is to get it into a little hole placed in a hard spot. – Juli Inkster • Has anyone ever won an argument with you? (Syd) Just Tee, and I was drunk and wounded at the time. (Joe) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • He [Daniel Craig] is mysterious, and I think that that’s the thing Bond has to exude, that kind of mysterious edge. He draws you in, but he is also incredibly cool, you know, James Bond is cool and sharp and Daniel has that to a tee, and he’s also got the rawness and an edginess to him that is slightly unhinged, and you’re not sure what is going on there, and I think that is really intriguing and interesting. It is a lot weightier and gritty, and he has that. – Gemma Arterton • He’s wearing boots, a kilt, and a long-sleeve tee. No coat, even though it’s December. Beautiful people don’t need coats. They’ve got their auras to keep them warm. – Jennifer Donnelly • Hole in One: an occurence in which a ball is hit directly from the tee into the hole in a single shot by a golfer playing alone. – Henry Beard • How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it. – Edward Abbey • I also taught myself how to blow glass using a propane torch from the hardware store and managed to make some elementary chemistry plumbing such as tees and small glass bulbs. – Robert B. Laughlin • I am always looking for a cool tee shirt; maybe one with a rock band or an old advertisement. – Bridget Hall • I call my putter ‘Sweet Charity’ because it covers such a multitude of sins from tee to green. – Gardner Dickinson • I can wear a suit, sweatpants, a long tee shirt, and a denim jacket all at the same time. – Tinie Tempah • I could get you to smile like that, and without sales tax.” I whirled around to find the real Patch standing in the fitting room behind me. He was wearing jeans and a snug white tee. His arms were folded loosely over his chest, and his black eyes smiled down at me. Heat that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable flushed through my body. “I could make all kinds of pervert jokes right now,” I quipped. – Becca Fitzpatrick • I do know how to operate a computer. (Joe) Yeah, right. What was it you said just ten minutes ago? Get this damned thing off my desk before I shoot it? Now make the call, Mr. Hunt-and-Peck. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • I don’t feel like I’m out of my element or anything like that. I’m very comfortable where I’m at. I enjoy being in this position, and actually it feels like I haven’t really been away from it. I feel very comfortable out there from the first tee onwards. – Aaron Baddeley • I don’t think the philosophy really changes between men and women. I think golf courses need to become more distance-friendly overall. I think golf courses almost need to develop a more generic set of tees instead of calling them black, blue, red or whatever. – Amy Alcott • I go to the first tee scared to death every day. The peaks do not seem to last as long as the valleys in this game. – J. C. Snead • I got so strong I felt like a giant…..When I stood on the tee with Arnold and Jack, I was tiny compared to them. But I never believed they were bigger than me. So the mind is so fascinating. – Gary Player • I had held a notion that I could make a pretty fair appraisal of the worth of an opponent simply by speaking to him on the first tee and taking a good measuring look into his eyes. – Bobby Jones • I had to lull Mom and Hank into believing I was in the right frame of mind to be taken into public. If I exited my bedroom foaming at the mouth and dressed in black LOVE SUCKS tee, my plan would never get off the ground. – Becca Fitzpatrick • I have a really simple wardrobe. I wear a low-scoop tee every day with a tux or leather jacket and tux pants or black jeans. That’s pretty much it. – Johan Lindeberg • I have really enjoyed every minute I have spent in golf- above all, the many wonderful friends I have made. I have loved playing the game and practicing it. Whether my schedule for the following day called for a tournament round or merely a trip to the practice tee, the prospect that there was going to be golf in it made me feel privileged and extremely happy, and I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up the next morning so that I could get out on the course again – Ben Hogan • I hurt my shoulder on the fifth tee – just hitting it too hard when you’re too old. – Ian Woosnam • I like What Goes Around Comes Around for old concert tees. Oh man, I got this ‘Sgt. Pepper’ cartoon Beatles shirt there; it was, like, $300. I didn’t even know how much it cost – I thought it was gonna be, like, $80 at most – till I got to the register and was like, ‘Oh mah gawd!’ Good Lord. But it’s classic vintage rock, you know? – Kid Cudi • I mistrust the term graphic novel because it sounds like a good thing to put on a tee-shirt. That’s why the French like them. – Terry Pratchett • I need to use the Dam Bathroom, I need to use the Dam Snack bar, I want a Dam Tee-Shirt. – Rick Riordan • I remember winning the first time, you know, suddenly everybody expects, well, okay, now he should win every time he tees it up, win six tournaments. – Retief Goosen • I still get butterflies on the first tee. I still get sweaty hands, and my heart pumps a lot going down the 18th. But I know what winning is all about now, and that’s a feeling that I like. – Annika Sorenstam • I think I can be competitive. Heck, anybody who can walk to the first tee here has a chance. – Fuzzy Zoeller • I think jeans have gotten away from the original meaning, that symbol of freedom; they’ve gone gimmicky and turned into a status item. Our denim is offered at lower price points for that reason. As far as the men’s clothing in the collection, it’s basically my wardrobe. I think men’s clothes should be grounded, strong and classic. I like simple: a blazer, jeans, a low cut tee and maybe a silk scarf. – Johan Lindeberg • I thoroughly enjoy working with kids, whether it’s The First Tee or the lesson tee with my grandkids. – Jack Nicklaus • I thought Denver and Seattle was a big game but Houston and Dallas is the kind of game that as players, we want to play in. I haven’t missed playing in the National Football League, but every year there are one or two games that makes me wish I could tee it up in that game one more time. – Sterling Sharpe • I wanted to feel good about the way I looked. I didn’t understand why style had to be sacrificed for sports technology. I found when going to the gym women were wearing their own tees, without the technology. I started to think, does it make you run faster if you wear that terrible color or sweat less if you wear that horrible fabric? And I challenged it, and the answers were not there to why we were being given poor design work. It was something I wanted to bring to women’s wardrobes. – Stella McCartney • I went through phases of odd hairstyles and tank top-over-tee outfits and stuff like that. – Jamie Lynn Sigler • I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee-shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia. – Kurt Cobain • If any guy threatened her she’d probably suffocate him with her oversized tee. – Simone Elkeles • If I’d been listening closely, I’d have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense. – Sue Grafton • If I’m not going out, my go-to outfit is some comfortable pants, Vans, and a fitted tee. But if I’m going out, definitely some Diesel jeans, either some super cool boots or nice shoes, and then a button-up. – Sterling Beaumon • If it really made sense to “let the club do the work,” you’d just say, “Driver, wedge to the green, one-putt,” and walk to the next tee. – Tom Mulligan • If Jack Nicklaus had to play my tee shots, he couldn’t break 80. He’d be a pharmacist with a string of drugstores in Ohio. – Lee Trevino • If the rest of his foursome are bunched directly behind his ball, or assume the foetal position with their backs to the tee, the golfer is reminded that his drive tends to be erratic. More cruel yet is for his opponent to stand directly in the projected line of flight, as the safest place to be. – Eric Nicol • If there’s a golf course in heaven, I hope it’s like Augusta National. I just don’t want an early tee time. – Gary Player • I’m a big fan of pops of color, but I thought I would take that to the next level and do a color-blocked Rolex. This watch is the perfect accessory whether you’re wearing a tee and jeans or a well-tailored suit. – Brad Goreski • I’m focusing on quality versus quantity – a nicer tee-shirt with organic cotton and buying just one or two instead of five that are cheaper but made with GMO cotton, which is hard on Earth, sewn by slave labor, shipped all the way from China on boats that use lots of oil and can kill whales with ship strikes and sold by (some) companies that could treat their – Kristin Bauer van Straten • I’m much better off the tee. I’m not a great putter. I do not have a good short game. – Molly Sims • I’m not out there just to be dancing around. I expect to win every time I tee up. – Lee Trevino • I’m really going to do my homework. I’m going to be down there on the practice tee finding out if a guy’s wife beat him up the night before, important stuff like that. Stuff that people want to know. – Lee Trevino • It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet? – Kurt Vonnegut • It’s really hard to perfect one aspect of your kicking game when you’re spending some of your time kicking with a holder, some of your time kicking off a tee, and some of your time drop-kicking the ball. To be able to concentrate just on my punting responsibilities will do wonders for me. – Pat McAfee • I’ve always tried to play golf with a golf club. I have a hard time driving with my rifle. I mean, 18 is really narrow … I have no problem with the course, except for the tee shot on 18. – Jack Nicklaus • Just hopped off the plane came back from Vancouv Little white tee sum boobs & bamboo – Nicki Minaj • My back swing off the first tee had put him in mond of an eldery woman of dubious morals trying to struggle out of a dress too tight around the shoulders. – Patrick Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy • My essentials are skinny jeans, loose-fitting tees, big jumpers, and the leather jacket. Everything is black or blue – I don’t own anything colorful. – Jamie Campbell Bower • My golf score is really bad. I don’t know. I’m definitely not a good golfer. Off the tee box, I can drive it about 275, and I’m in the fairway about 99% of the time. It’s my next shot that needs work. – Jason Aldean • My sister Suga Tee is doing conscious rap. She speaks to the youth. She has an album coming out soon. She got saved but she is still doing her thing. She still spits good game. She’s talented. She sings. I don’t know if a lot of people know this but Suga Tee has a beautiful voice. So ya’ll look out for her album you dig? And look forward to a future Clique album. – E-40 • Never bet with anyone you meet on the first tee who has a deep suntan, a 1-iron in his bag, and squinty eyes. – Dave Marr • No matter what happens – never give up a hole….In tossing in your cards after a bad beginning you also undermine your whole game, because to quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast. – Sam Snead • Not a mark on it. (Joe) Yeah. Wanna check the backseat, where Steele is sitting? I’ll bet there’s a big stain there. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Obviously a deer on the fairway has seen you tee off before and knows that the safest place to be when you play is right down the middle. – Jackie Gleason • On the first tee I kept telling myself, “Trust yourself, you can do it.”- Annika Sorenstam • Once I graduated from NYU, I started making custom vintage tees for my friends and it just took off from there. – Charlotte Ronson • One of the most fascinating things about golf is how it reflects the cycle of life. No matter what you shoot – the next day you have to go back to the first tee and begin all over again and make yourself into something. – Peter Jacobsen • Only because I’m not a morning person. (Joe) And you’re not a night person either. Face it, babe. You’ve only got two good minutes a day. The minute before noon and the minute right after. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain’t discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee. – Kathryn Stockett • Ooo, he’s snotty. I like him already. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Part of wearing a tee is saying, ‘I’m comfortable and casual.’ – Ryan Seacrest • Patience is a virtue. (Tee) Excuse me, pot, could you not pick on the kettle? (Joe) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Reminiscing No one knows … until you live it, to be there, to tee it up each week, to get yourself ready, the players and whatever else…. I think its a very, very difficult, tough and demanding job. And to be able to, particularly, stay at the level of expertise that we have over the years. Along with the fact that we have made football a presence at BYU. I think those are the things that are about as satisfying as anything that has happened. Then, of course, the players…. I think the thing that will be the most difficult is leaving the relationships and the involvement. – LaVell Edwards • Sam Snead did to the tee-shot what Roger Bannister did to the four-minute mile. – Byron Nelson • Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses — they tie — who cares? And why? – Edward Abbey • Tee your ball high…air offers less resistance than dirt. – Jack Nicklaus • The devil doesn’t wear prada; I’m clearly in a — white tee. – Tyler, The Creator • The first time I met [Sylvester Stallone], he had golf tees up his nose. So I figured we were going to be OK. – Sandra Bullock • The fourth tee brings out a mixture of excitement and anticipation, for about 220 yards down the fairway you catch a glimpse of Stillwater Cove, and realize you’ll be walking along this spectacular meeting of land and sea for the next two hours. – Doug Ferguson • The Japanese eat, sleep, and breathe golf; the only thing they don’t do is actually play it, because to get on a course, you have to make a reservation roughly 137 years in advance, which means that by the time you actually get to the first tee you are deceased. Of course, in golf this is not really a handicap. – Dave Barry • The man who runs from his office to the golf club, gulps a sandwich, belches and races to the first tee has no business howling in anguish when he puts his first two shots in the woods, then tops a 3-iron shot into the pond. – Tony Lema • The NBAs a Fortune 500 company. Thats how you look at it. And all the other Fortune 500 companies out there in the world, you dont see their CEOs and COOs going to work with white tees and baggy clothes and stuff like that. So I have to take that same approach. – Carmelo Anthony • The only times you touch the ball with your hand are when you tee it up and when you pick it out of the cup. The hell with television towers and cables and burrowing animals and the thousand and one things that are referred to as ‘not part of the golf course’. If you hit the ball off the fairway, you play it from there. – Ken Venturi • The subconscious mind is probably the most important factor in being a good golfer. It keeps distractions on the course from ruining a good round. You should practice, develop your swing, and do most of your thinking on the practice tee so that when you play in competition, you can hit the ball automatically. – Wiffy Cox • There are three things being a celebrity is good for: raising money for charity, dinner reservations and tee times. – Dennis Quaid • There was a time when all I cared about was the next game, the next party, the next tee time. – Brett Favre • There’s not much pressure on the golf Tour. Walking to the first tee is in no way comparable to walking through the jungle in combat – Larry Nelson • To quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast. – Sam Snead • Trust me, Joe. You’re not a cowboy. The only cows you ever saw as a kid came under a plastic wrap in the grocery store or in a paper wrapped from McDonald’s. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • We don’t want civilians walking around who know about us. Got it? (Tee) Wow, you’re like a ferocious bunny, aren’t you? (Nathan) Worse. A bunny can be fluffy sometimes. Tee always goes for the throat. Trust me. I’m her partner and she’s shot me three times now. (Joe) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • We have 51 golf courses in Palm Springs. He [President Ford] never decides which course he will play until after the first tee shot. – Bob Hope • We never let our people just go. (Joe) What are you? Wolfram and Hart? (Steele) Oh, no, sweetie, they just take your soul for service. We intend to take even more than that. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Well, I think that Augusta is not the same golf course that I grew up on. Bobby Jones’ philosophy was giving you space off the tee; if you put it in the right side of the fairway, you ended up getting the right angle to the green. – Jack Nicklaus • What a shame to waste those great shots on the practice tee. – Walter Hagen • What’s the longest walk in golf? It’s from the practice tee to the first tee. I don’t care if it’s 10 yards. It’s the longest walk in golf. Winners take their swing with them. Losers don’t. – Moe Norman • When Ballesteros triumphed at the British Open in 1979, for his first major win, he hit so few fairways off the tee that he was often mistaken for a gallery marshall. – Dan Jenkins • When I decided to launch my first knitwear line, it was because I saw a void in the basics category. The editors were always looking for cool, fashion-forward tees and sweaters. So that’s where I started. – Alexander Wang • When I got to the first tee on the first day, to hear the cheers, it was like all the oxygen got sucked out. It was hard to pull the club back. – Patrick Reed • When I have a match to play, I begin to relax as soon as I wake up. Everything I do, I do slow and easy. That goes for stroking the razor, getting dressed, and eating my breakfast. I’m practically in slow motion. By the time I’m ready to tee off, I’m so used to taking my time that it’s impossible to hurry my swing. – Walter Hagen • When I learned that there was such a thing as an atheist, I looked it up – and found out that the definition fitted me to a tee. Finally, at the age of 24, I found out who and what I was. Better late than never. – Madalyn Murray O’Hair • When it come to da: ” What it do?! I don’t fall for da: “Woop- TeE- WoOoo! – Erykah Badu • Why is it when I’m the one shot, I’m a baby, but when it’s you, it’s a matter of life and death and national security? (Joe) Because I’m cuter in a short skirt. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Yeah. Kip gets to guard you and I get to house-sit. Life bites the big tee-tawa. (Syn) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • You are so vicious. (Tee) Hence the nickname. (Syd) You know it’s bad when you make me look like Glinda the Good Witch, right? (Tee) Just call me Elphaba. But don’t drop a house on me, ‘kay? (Syd) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • You don’t lose your swing between the ninth green and the tenth tee, and you don’t lose your swing from one day to the next. If you think you do, something is going on that you don’t understand. A diary might help explain it to you. – Harvey Penick • You draw on your own childhood every time you tee it up as an actor. – Ron Perlman • You ever go up to the tee and say, ‘Don’t hit it left, don’t hit it right’? That’s your conscious mind. My body knows how to play golf. I’ve trained it to do that. It’s just a matter of keeping my conscious mind out of it. – Tiger Woods • You hear stories about me beating my brains out practicing, but the truth is, I was enjoying myself. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I’d be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it. And I still thoroughly enjoy it. When I’m hitting the ball where I want, hard and crisply – when anyone is – it’s a joy that very few people experience. – Ben Hogan • You just don’t have the time to worry about what others are doing. You just want to take care of your own business. You are focused on that tee shot on the 10th tee and making it to the finish line. It’s one of the most stressful moments in professional golf, but you have worked so hard to get to that point, that it really is fun. – Mike Weir • You know what I hate about rock? I hate tie-dyed tee shirts. I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia. – Kurt Cobain • You’re such a crybaby. (Tee) Let me almost shoot off one of your testicles and see how you cope. (Joe) You shouldn’t have moved, Joe. It was your fault. (Tee) Yeah, everything’s my fault. (Joe) Good, then we agree. (Tee) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Your white tee, well to me, looks like a nightgown; Make your mama proud, take that thing two sizes down. – Andre Benjamin
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omgnsfwisnsfw-blog · 6 years ago
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NSFW #20: Choices and Possibilities
This probably wasn’t safe to do. The shell of the building in a long condemned area of Cleveland’s industrial district was missing a good seventy-five percent of its ceiling, the rubble of the caved in roof scattered all over bits of rusting machinery. Plants and wildflowers, brown and frozen by the icy hand of winter, pushed their way through cracks in the concrete floor- Mother Nature’s defiance of the progress of mankind. The sky was blue with the occasional wispy cloud, but the wind still howled from time to time through the open roof and broken windows. In all of this, three folding chairs were situated on more stable slabs of fallen roof and in them sat three people bundled against the Northeast Ohio cold. A small, slightly-built woman with fiery hair under a Mets cap, swathed in a leather biker jacket and a sunset orange scarf. A blonde man with an imposing build but gentle eyes, tucked in a lambskin bomber jacket with a warm shearling collar and an emerald green scarf. These two are sat side by side, facing the third- a somewhat heavyset fellow in a black puff jacket, his own scarf black and white striped and complemented with black earmuffs. He had a microphone clipped to his coat collar, as did the other two. They also each held large championship belts of gold plate and black leather. The odd man out spoke first. “This is a strange place for an interview, isn’t it?” The redhead laughed. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But nah, it ain’t strange at all when you think about it. I mean, look at this old place. What was it? An industrial bakery? A freakin’ button factory? A post office distribution outfit? There’s so many possibilities, Spade.” Mike McGuire looked up through the open ceiling, tapping a finger against her chin. “Possibility’s a funny thing. You have endless doors open before you, with any number of paths you can take all depending on shit like your ability, potential, privilege, that sort of thing. But the further you go, the more choices you make, the more that path narrows until you’ve made your ultimate choice on how your life or career is gonna go. Sometimes you can go back, but sometimes you’re too far down the path to turn around. Like…” The Bronx Brawler sat back up, leaning forward. “...say you show up at a place of business and grab a tiger by the tail. You’re full of piss and vinegar and you got blood shooting out your eyes and you say you’re gonna destroy everyone. You take out the biggest obstacle in your way and everyone’s wondering what kind of havoc you’re gonna wreak. But what they don’t know is that you’ve already made choices. Choices dictating where you’re going, and it sure’s fuck ain’t where people thinkyou’re going- it’s somewhere a fuckton less.” Spade raised an eyebrow at Mike inquisitively. “You’re not one for waxing hypothetical, McGuire. What are you getting at here?” John had listened to his partner weave this tale. It was a familiar one. Maybe because they had lived it. Sensing Mike’s slight annoyance at the question, he cut in. “This isn’t hypothetical at all.” “Nope. See, in case people out there have lost count, this’ll be our fourth go-round with The Limit. So we should know these guys like the back of our hands, but see, something’s not the same here. The Limit’s changed, Spade, and not for the better.” “Can I be frank with you guys?” “But your name is Bryan.” Bryan looks at John - and then to Mike as if expecting an explanation of sorts. He didn’t get one. “Yeah yeah, what is it?” “These two guys? They’ve put a hurting on you. I’m not talking minor stuff. Injury reports’ clear as day. Mike, right off the bat, a concussion. John, a laceration on your abdomen that required dozens of stitches. Both of you, multiple hospital visits. Mike, your hand. They broke your hand on last year’s season finale of Monday Night Brawl.” “Yes. Yes they did, and that’s just fuckin’ it, Spade. These guys came in like a couple’a brazen bulls, and though we got the W every time, they still came out lookin’ like beasts. Sent us to the hospital twice. Nearly gutted my partner. Busted this hand right here. Like you said.” Mike wiggled her fingers for emphasis. “But remember what I said about choices. The choice the Limit made was to be Dominic Saunders’ hired stooges. Nobody knew that. We sure’s fuck didn’t. Saunders caughteverybody flat footed. And at first it didn’t matter. Sometimes the consequences of your choices ain’t so evident right away. But I tell ya, one moment you’re sending the future champs out in an ambulance, and the next?” She snapped her fingers. “You’re cleaning some Cope-spittin’ motherfucker’s pool.” “Let’s rewind, Bryan.” “Okay.” “Monday Night.” “Right.” “Another display of cruelty from our champion. Rob Garcia wound up in the right state this time. Draco Lazarus makes his glorious return.” Displaying his growing penchant towards sarcasm, John gave the shocking surprise a light golf clap. “Saying the same things he’s always said. Part of another group of like minded individuals making sweeping proclamations for world domination.” And he leveled his gaze at Bryan. “Who cares?” He paused. “Noticed something strange. Mike, how about you? Something out of place.” “Aside from a hideous fucking construct of hair bleach, pus, unidentified fungus, and mutant STD cultures gaining sentience as well as delusions of grandeur?” “There was no Limit.” Mike’s face lit up in realization. “Well what the fuck do ya know. There wasn’t, was there? Seems to be kind of a big omission. Seeing as they’re equal parts of the group and all.” “There is most likely a explanation for that.” “Oh, I agree, and I’m pretty sure what it was, too. They had to go start the car, pack up the gear. They’re relegated to porter and chauffeur duty. This is what’s become of two guys that the EWC Faithful nominated as our most worthy rivals of last year. The vicious pit bulls that bust in outta nowhere and tore us apart are nothin’ more than subservient fuckin’ lap dogs now. The bottom of the barrel in a group that in and of itself is the bottom of the barrel.” “Collateral Damage Part Deux.” “The sequel nobody asked for. And sequels usually fuckin’ suck. I mean, I guess they’re not a sequel to the sequel, that’d be gettin’ in goddamn Criterion territory.” John chuckled wrly. “Original wasn’t much better.” “It’s like when they made all those fuckin’ Sharknado movies one after another.” “What’s a sharknado?” “...when a waterspout sucks up a buncha sharks and then makes landfall so you get a shark tornado.” Church looked to Bryan to see what his reaction was. “Alright, we’re diverging from the point.” “No, we aren’t. Bryan, there is no point to this. Alexander? Frank? There isn’t a point to them. These two haven’t competed since December 1st of last year. A few days prior, Mike and I defeat them for a third time. Are we supposed to be impressed that they torched the Eternal Circle, The Clifton Sisters of yesteryear?” For a brief second, easily missable if one blinked, a look passed over Mike’s face that seemed nothing short of besotted. But it was gone as soon as it came, replaced with a more subdued expression of appreciation. “Well spoken, bud. We’re not impressed. Nobody should be impressed, unless they find their grandma’s Bischon Frise particularly impressive. Cuz like I said- that’s what we’re dealing with now. The bulls have their horns ground down and their brass balls neutered, the beasts have their teeth and claws ripped out. There’s nothin’ to fear, or even to really look forward to. This is rote. This is less than fuckin’ rote. And it’s really fuckin’ sad, because anyone who knows us knows we thrive off good quality competition. If we’re gonna face The Limit, we wanna face The Limit, not Diet Limit.” Bryan adjusted the microphone clip on the collar of his coat. He looked down at a notecard in the palm of his hand before continuing. “Mike, John, you two always have something interesting to say. But, come on, you two are really that indifferent about your opponents?” “You want us to be angry at them? Why would we be?” “Kind of going in a circle here, John. Look at your history with them. It bears repeating.” “No he isn’t. Haven’t you been paying attention? Shit, I never thought I’d miss Heart so much. Here, let me fuckin’ explain.” Mike leaned forward again, eyes hard green stones. “The Limit we fought wouldn’t step aside for anybody. Much’s they said they don’t care about titles, I never really believed that. But it don’t look like they have much of a choice now, do they? Not since their Fearless Leader called in the Gilded Shit. Nuh-uh. Seems like those two want these.” The redhead gave a pat to her belt’s front plate. “And if they want these, where does that leave The Limit? I’ll tell you where. Grunt work and hired help shit.” “Must pay well. After all, Dominic is a generous man.” He shrugged. “But think about it. This could have been the opportunity for The Limit that they would never received through achievement alone. Dominic could have bowed out. Could have said, ‘Rob’s out, The Limit’s in.’ But he didn’t. Instead, your kind and compassionate leader disparaged them as losers. Opting for the untested Maurice Yensman instead. In between their clerical duties for Dominic Sanders, they must have seen a lost opportunity as we systematically picked apart the greatest faction this company has ever known.” “See, and here’s where all that bullshit about blah blah blah, we don’t care about wins or titles we just wanna hurt people, really rings fuckin’ hollow. Cuz them stiffs ain’t even getting the opportunity to do that. Listen, as once-worthy opponents, they should take our advice and get themselves outta that shit show before it’s too late and their horns, balls, fangs, and claws won’t ever grow back. Unless they really want to be lackeys for the rest of their lives.” “Mike. John. I’ll be honest, kind of expected something else.” “What do you mean?” “Last week, you were kidnapped by the Collector.” John shook his head. “That was a rough day.” “Those poor, poor Cliftons.” “And the week before?” “I wonder if Duggan ever got home.” “I hope Candice had GPS for the middle of the goddamn desert.” “Look, no offense to the fine citizens of Cleveland but this place isn’t exactly kosher. I was expecting something more.” NSFW look at each other - and then back at Spade. “More? Like more left of a building?” “Or more left of people who’re supposed to be our equals, but aren’t anymore because of their own boneheaded fucking choices?” “Let’s not be facetious. Even before that, there was the viking funeral. And the grand Melon conspiracy. But here we are - inside some dilapidated ruins.” John looked around and he nodded as if to agree with the interviewer. “Sucks, doesn’t it?” “But you want something with a little more production, don’cha? Well, worry not, Spade. See, we did get a short bit of film in before we came up here. Not only that, it has the Limit themselves in it.” “Not to be confused with last time with The Collector.” John looked puzzled, but Bryan was right, they were both being facetious in this endeavor. “Wait, was that The Collector? Or not?” “The Japanese guy? … Whose house in Boca Raton were we even at?” Her partner shrugged in response as if to say, ‘beats me’. “But my partner is right. The Limit unequivocally agreed to appear, even with being our opponents, in a short film meant to make fun of them.” The viewer at home would catch a glimpse of something flashing in the corner of the screen, almost as if to act as a disclaimer. “Can’t say they ain’t at least good sports.” Mike raised a hand to her mouth, snickering behind it, and whipped out her cell phone, showing it to Spade.The picture faded out, and the viewer was treated to the same video that Spade saw.
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the-cookie-unicorn · 7 years ago
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57 steps: The Douglas Vandergraph story from longest clinically documented death case in America to classic man, husband, and father
Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
www.Bargainbrute.com
My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
www.Bargainbrute.com
I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
www.Bargainbrute.com
There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
www.Bargainbrute.com
A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself.  That night I had a dream…..
www.Bargainbrute.com
The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident.  I had a dream where I so upset.  My life was over.  I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before.  My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray.  I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that.  I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me.  It changed me forever.  I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen.  I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted!  Things from that moment changed.  The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport.  He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me.  He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness.  After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist.  After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11.  Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong.  LOL!
www.Bargainbrute.com
So I continue doing therapy for weeks.  You want to talk about work.  Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer.  So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age.  Its a work ethic I have today.  A gift from a time of fond memories.  The 80’s hit and we lost the farm.  Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us.  I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast.   The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself.  The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly.  It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school.  He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe.  It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional  roller wheel on the bottom.  The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms.  There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to.  They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand.  My left hip came around first.  I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward.  Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through.  My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.”  I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair.  Saying, “Looks Great!”  To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently.  "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations.  We just want an opportunity.“
www.Bargainbrute.com
So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again.  That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside.  They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep.  So every day I practiced.  Here is something funny.  I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on.  I am a talker, always have been, always will be.  As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me.  It felt like we were flirting.  I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could.  It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me.  These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise.  I walk today and I will never forget those people.  Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart.  I wonder if they ever think of me?  I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become.  The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving.  I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not.  I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go.  So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose.  My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient  therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
www.Bargainbrute.com
Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me.  I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked.  I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care.  It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it.  I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not.  After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations.  After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen.  57 steps.  Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them.  Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk  those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed!  Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by.  I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class.  I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late.  When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else.  It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments.  99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great.  .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy.  So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57.  By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view.  You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions.  They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them.  Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by!  Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great.  Greatness is determined by personal action.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So my story goes on.  I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it.   That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life.  And still here I am following the plan.  I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years.  We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the “youngest senior executive in the United States.”  A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
Source: https://bargainbrutedotcom.tumblr.com/post/174410659144
0 notes
ultragrocerydeliverytip · 7 years ago
Link
Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
www.Bargainbrute.com
My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
www.Bargainbrute.com
I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
www.Bargainbrute.com
There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
www.Bargainbrute.com
A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself.  That night I had a dream…..
www.Bargainbrute.com
The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident.  I had a dream where I so upset.  My life was over.  I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before.  My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray.  I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that.  I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me.  It changed me forever.  I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen.  I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted!  Things from that moment changed.  The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport.  He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me.  He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness.  After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist.  After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11.  Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong.  LOL!
www.Bargainbrute.com
So I continue doing therapy for weeks.  You want to talk about work.  Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer.  So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age.  Its a work ethic I have today.  A gift from a time of fond memories.  The 80’s hit and we lost the farm.  Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us.  I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast.   The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself.  The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly.  It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school.  He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe.  It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional  roller wheel on the bottom.  The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms.  There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to.  They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand.  My left hip came around first.  I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward.  Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through.  My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.”  I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair.  Saying, “Looks Great!”  To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently.  "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations.  We just want an opportunity.“
www.Bargainbrute.com
So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again.  That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside.  They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep.  So every day I practiced.  Here is something funny.  I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on.  I am a talker, always have been, always will be.  As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me.  It felt like we were flirting.  I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could.  It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me.  These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise.  I walk today and I will never forget those people.  Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart.  I wonder if they ever think of me?  I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become.  The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving.  I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not.  I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go.  So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose.  My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient  therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
www.Bargainbrute.com
Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me.  I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked.  I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care.  It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it.  I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not.  After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations.  After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen.  57 steps.  Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them.  Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk  those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed!  Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by.  I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class.  I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late.  When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else.  It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments.  99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great.  .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy.  So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57.  By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view.  You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions.  They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them.  Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by!  Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great.  Greatness is determined by personal action.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So my story goes on.  I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it.   That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life.  And still here I am following the plan.  I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years.  We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the "youngest senior executive in the United States.”  A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
0 notes
theglittermassacre · 7 years ago
Text
57 steps: The Douglas Vandergraph story from longest clinically documented death case in America to classic man, husband, and father
Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
www.Bargainbrute.com
My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
www.Bargainbrute.com
I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
www.Bargainbrute.com
There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
www.Bargainbrute.com
A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself.  That night I had a dream…..
www.Bargainbrute.com
The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident.  I had a dream where I so upset.  My life was over.  I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before.  My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray.  I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that.  I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me.  It changed me forever.  I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen.  I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted!  Things from that moment changed.  The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport.  He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me.  He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness.  After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist.  After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11.  Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong.  LOL!
www.Bargainbrute.com
So I continue doing therapy for weeks.  You want to talk about work.  Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer.  So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age.  Its a work ethic I have today.  A gift from a time of fond memories.  The 80’s hit and we lost the farm.  Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us.  I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast.   The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself.  The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly.  It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school.  He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe.  It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional  roller wheel on the bottom.  The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms.  There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to.  They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand.  My left hip came around first.  I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward.  Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through.  My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.”  I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair.  Saying, “Looks Great!”  To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently.  "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations.  We just want an opportunity.“
www.Bargainbrute.com
So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again.  That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside.  They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep.  So every day I practiced.  Here is something funny.  I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on.  I am a talker, always have been, always will be.  As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me.  It felt like we were flirting.  I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could.  It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me.  These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise.  I walk today and I will never forget those people.  Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart.  I wonder if they ever think of me?  I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become.  The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving.  I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not.  I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go.  So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose.  My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient  therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
www.Bargainbrute.com
Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me.  I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked.  I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care.  It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it.  I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not.  After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations.  After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen.  57 steps.  Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them.  Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk  those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed!  Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by.  I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class.  I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late.  When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else.  It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments.  99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great.  .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy.  So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57.  By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view.  You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions.  They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them.  Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by!  Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great.  Greatness is determined by personal action.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So my story goes on.  I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it.   That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life.  And still here I am following the plan.  I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years.  We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the "youngest senior executive in the United States.”  A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
Source: https://bargainbrutedotcom.tumblr.com/post/174410659144
0 notes
thyroids101 · 7 years ago
Text
57 steps: The Douglas Vandergraph story from longest clinically documented death case in America to classic man, husband, and father
Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
www.Bargainbrute.com
My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
www.Bargainbrute.com
I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
www.Bargainbrute.com
There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
www.Bargainbrute.com
A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself.  That night I had a dream…..
www.Bargainbrute.com
The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident.  I had a dream where I so upset.  My life was over.  I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before.  My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray.  I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that.  I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me.  It changed me forever.  I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen.  I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted!  Things from that moment changed.  The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport.  He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me.  He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness.  After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist.  After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11.  Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong.  LOL!
www.Bargainbrute.com
So I continue doing therapy for weeks.  You want to talk about work.  Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer.  So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age.  Its a work ethic I have today.  A gift from a time of fond memories.  The 80’s hit and we lost the farm.  Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us.  I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast.   The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself.  The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly.  It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school.  He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe.  It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional  roller wheel on the bottom.  The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms.  There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to.  They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand.  My left hip came around first.  I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward.  Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through.  My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.”  I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair.  Saying, “Looks Great!”  To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently.  "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations.  We just want an opportunity.“
www.Bargainbrute.com
So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again.  That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside.  They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep.  So every day I practiced.  Here is something funny.  I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on.  I am a talker, always have been, always will be.  As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me.  It felt like we were flirting.  I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could.  It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me.  These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise.  I walk today and I will never forget those people.  Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart.  I wonder if they ever think of me?  I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become.  The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving.  I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not.  I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go.  So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose.  My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient  therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
www.Bargainbrute.com
Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me.  I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked.  I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care.  It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it.  I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not.  After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations.  After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen.  57 steps.  Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them.  Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk  those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed!  Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by.  I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class.  I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late.  When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else.  It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments.  99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great.  .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy.  So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57.  By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view.  You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions.  They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them.  Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by!  Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great.  Greatness is determined by personal action.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So my story goes on.  I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it.   That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life.  And still here I am following the plan.  I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years.  We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the “youngest senior executive in the United States.”  A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
Source: https://bargainbrutedotcom.tumblr.com/post/174410659144
0 notes
helenstamey · 7 years ago
Text
57 steps: The Douglas Vandergraph story from longest clinically documented death case in America to classic man, husband, and father
Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
www.Bargainbrute.com
My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
www.Bargainbrute.com
I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
www.Bargainbrute.com
There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
www.Bargainbrute.com
A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself.  That night I had a dream…..
www.Bargainbrute.com
The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident.  I had a dream where I so upset.  My life was over.  I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before.  My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray.  I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that.  I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me.  It changed me forever.  I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen.  I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted!  Things from that moment changed.  The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport.  He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me.  He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness.  After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist.  After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11.  Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong.  LOL!
www.Bargainbrute.com
So I continue doing therapy for weeks.  You want to talk about work.  Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer.  So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age.  Its a work ethic I have today.  A gift from a time of fond memories.  The 80’s hit and we lost the farm.  Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us.  I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast.   The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself.  The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly.  It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school.  He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe.  It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional  roller wheel on the bottom.  The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms.  There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to.  They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand.  My left hip came around first.  I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward.  Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through.  My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.”  I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair.  Saying, “Looks Great!”  To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently.  "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations.  We just want an opportunity.“
www.Bargainbrute.com
So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again.  That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside.  They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep.  So every day I practiced.  Here is something funny.  I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on.  I am a talker, always have been, always will be.  As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me.  It felt like we were flirting.  I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could.  It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me.  These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise.  I walk today and I will never forget those people.  Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart.  I wonder if they ever think of me?  I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become.  The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving.  I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not.  I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go.  So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose.  My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient  therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
www.Bargainbrute.com
Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me.  I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked.  I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care.  It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it.  I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not.  After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations.  After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen.  57 steps.  Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them.  Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk  those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed!  Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by.  I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class.  I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late.  When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else.  It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments.  99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great.  .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy.  So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57.  By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view.  You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions.  They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them.  Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by!  Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great.  Greatness is determined by personal action.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So my story goes on.  I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it.   That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life.  And still here I am following the plan.  I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years.  We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the "youngest senior executive in the United States.”  A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
0 notes
fxcked-upxx · 7 years ago
Text
57 steps: The Douglas Vandergraph story from longest clinically documented death case in America to classic man, husband, and father
Those of you who know me, know my mission is to help others. I am not looking to accomplish this goal as a third party to the cause, but as an active participant. I have sat by and watched the world make decisions for me. I can tell you that if I would have allowed others to define me, my abilities, and my future I would not be sitting here typing this. Yet I type this with one finger. I feel like 30 words per minute as a hen picker is not bad. My left arm is not useful to me, but is a constant reminder not to give up. In a daze with my right arm hanging from some type of contraption a stranger says to me “This is going to hurt” and the next thing I remember is two young people skating by with the Olympic torch and the smell. It was not a smell I will ever forget. All of this was the result of a car accident. I was 16, a Junior in High school, and hungry. My best friend and I left school that day to run home and grab a bite to eat. We pulled out of the school parking lot and headed North down a two lane highway. We made it far enough down the road to run head first into a construction truck. The driver had been on a bender and was high on Cocaine. We found out later he was using the Cocaine as a stimulant to counteract the effects of a weekend of drinking. I have no recollection of the accident other than what I have been told. It took two sets of the jaws of life and an auto Mechanic to get me out of the tangled mess of engine parts so I could be air lifted to the hospital. My best buddy, he walked away with a few scrapes and a memory he will never shake. Seeing me took a tole on him and changed him forever. For some reason he moved on and away from me. I think about him quite often but he later became just a face in the crowd.
www.Bargainbrute.com
My right wrist was so broken in the accident that the doctor who pieced in back together said, “This kid will never use this hand again.” He was wrong. I still bare the scar from that surgery on my right palm and if I would have lost use of this hand I would be screwed right now because its the only hand I have use of right now or ever. They put a elbow cast on to immobilize the arm and the wrist when done and I was awake the next morning talking to family from my hospital bed. It was not right however. Later in the morning I panicked and told my mother to get a doctor, “Something was wrong.” I lost consciousness and was rushed down for testing. The testing showed massive brain damage to the right side of my brain. What the doctors did not know until now was that during the car accident I had tore the inner lining of my right carotid artery and a golf ball sized blood clot had formed there. Pieces of the clot had broke loose and went to the right side of my brain which cut off blood flow and caused a massive right hemisphere debilitating stroke. It eventually killed me! I rapidly declined until my brain was no longer controlling simple things like breathing. So as far as I remember I left school and anything after that is missing up until…….
www.Bargainbrute.com
I was in a room. It was brightly lit. I do not remember if I was floating or standing but I can go there in my mind. In front of me was a door way. I could not see through the doorway and there was no door blocking my view. I was at peace, and I felt as if I had been there for a very long time. Why was I here, in this room? My father was killed in a construction accident when I was 9. He was crushed by a bulldozer while working a construction job. When he came through the door way in front of me he smiled as he approached. He reached out for me and it felt like he lifted me up. He told me that it was not my time to be there and that it was very important that I follow the plan. He told me that he looks in on me from time to time and that he loved me. We talked ever so briefly for what seemed like a very long time. He let me go and I remember falling back. I was falling, falling, falling, and then I rested. The way I explain it to people is if you have ever had a really long day and then lay down and your body says ahhhhh. It was like that but then it was hell.
www.Bargainbrute.com
There were people rushing around me as I layed there. Loud voices, needle sticks, I was aqwake and I remember this moment. The pain, the fear, What in the hell was going on! I will never forget that moment EVER! So the stroke had killed me. My lifeless body was laying still in the ICU. I was still hooked up to the EEG which monitors brainwave activity, and the EKG which monitors the heart. Both had flat lined for 30 minutes and a nurse who was there for my death was leaning over my body to remove some equipment etc when she got the shock of her life! I started hitting her with my the cast on my right arm. I used to go visit the hospital staff and she never forgot me. Activity returned to the monitors and the staff returned to my bedside. I do not know what they were doing. Whatever you do when a dead guy returns to life I guess (laugh). So they stabilized me, and all I wanted to know was where was my dad. I am adopted, and it was my adoptive father that I saw. It was so hard on me when he was killed. We were close. He took me everywhere with him. I never showed it. I do not think I ever cried over it until now. Oh I am sure that many cries I have had over my life were a direct result of needing to deal with that event but I never admitted it to myself.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So when they could I was taken for more tests. It is odd but the test results garnered from the testing they did after my near death experience showed a difference. Instead of showing heavy trauma to the right hemisphere of my brain, these testing results appeared much different. Same tests that they had done before, just repeated again after my death and return showed what one specialist said, “The only trauma I see is that it looks like someone surgically damaged the part of the brain that controls motor function to the left side of the body.” So from complete and definitive damage to just enough to paralyze the left side of my body completely. No explanation was ever given to me and here I am. The best doctors in the country from some of the best institutions have looked this before and after testing over and nothing. No explanation. So my story was on the news for a brief time. When people die and come back to life at the age of 16 it makes the news. I was sent to a local rehab facility. Right arm in a cast, left side of my body completely paralyzed. Future and attitude not looking so bright. Until….
www.Bargainbrute.com
A nurse took me down to the area where the MRI was. I was in a wheelchair and she left me. No sooner had she left and my butt starts to slide forward. As I slide down the belt around my waist starts to slide up. People, doctors, nurses, all are walking by me and I am asking them for help. I guess I was invisible because they just kept walking by and damn it I was hunched down. It was all I could do to use my right leg to try to hold myself from sliding further. My left side completely useless and my right arm in an elbow cast. I am struggling and I felt like I was being loud enough in asking for help but they just kept walking by. Why would no one help me. The strap had come up under my arms and it hurt. It hurt and I needed help. They all just kept walking by and I needed help.; Why were they just walking by me? Could they not see I needed help? The nurse returned and with the help of another they got me back up in the chair the right way. I will never forget being left there to suffer and that was the last time anyone wiped tears off my face I told myself.  That night I had a dream…..
www.Bargainbrute.com
The only other time I remember seeing my dad was the night of the wheelchair incident.  I had a dream where I so upset.  My life was over.  I had been an aspiring athlete, baseball, football, weight lifting, girls, now a partially paralyzed, brain damaged ghost of the teenager I was before.  My dad told me that if I wanted to walk again I needed to ask god and pray.  I remember waking up the next morning and doing just that.  I would have tried anything at that point in time but the wheelchair event changed me.  It changed me forever.  I made a hard decision on that day that if I was going to get my life back it was me who would need to make that happen.  I believe that folks have helped me and I love them for it, but the next morning I drew a mental line in the sand and my goal was to eventually step over that SOB unassisted!  Things from that moment changed.  The local news ran a follow up story on me and Julius Irving(Dr. J) saw the story while waiting for a flight at our local airport.  He cancelled his flight and took a cab up to the hospital I was in to see me.  He was very inspirational and I will never forget his kindness.  After his visit I will never forget the visit I got from the vocational rehab specialist.  After her testing she thought the best job I might be suited for was clerk at a 7/11.  Now I think that is a fine vocation, but obviously she was wrong.  LOL!
www.Bargainbrute.com
So I continue doing therapy for weeks.  You want to talk about work.  Before taking a construction job my father was a farmer.  So I grew up on a farm as a little guy and farm work back then instilled a work ethic in you at any age.  Its a work ethic I have today.  A gift from a time of fond memories.  The 80’s hit and we lost the farm.  Farm Aide was just a TV concert to us.  I continued my therapy and eventually graduated to a much smaller wrist cast.   The fingers on my right hand were moving and I was feeding myself.  The right hand was working and the tests to document why since according to the “best” doctors it should not were happening regularly.  It was during this time I received a gift from a industrial arts teacher at my high school.  He had constructed a walker shaped like a horseshoe.  It had 4 legs, each with a multi directional  roller wheel on the bottom.  The therapist would stand me up and the legs of the horseshoe shape would go under my arms.  There were two peg handle sticking up on the front to hang on to.  They would get my paralyzed hand on one peg and I would do the best I could with my cast hand.  My left hip came around first.  I would take a step with my right leg while in the horseshoe and then pull or drag the left leg forward.  Practice helps and with daily self pressure to push myself I got to where I could swing the left leg through.  My left foot would drag, but so what, “ I was doing it.”  I had sat around for months being paraded around in front of groups of doctors who asked questions I could not answer, nor did I want to any more, all the time they would compliment me on my wheelchair.  Saying, “Looks Great!”  To this day I never understand why able bodied people treat handicap people differently.  "We do not want your sympathy or your opinions of our limitations.  We just want an opportunity.“
www.Bargainbrute.com
So these really smart doctors said I would never walk again.  That the wheelchair was my future, because they just saw the outside.  They were unaware of the determined rage and fire that almost limited my ability to sleep.  So every day I practiced.  Here is something funny.  I had gotten to the point where I could walk around the hospital floor I was staying on.  I am a talker, always have been, always will be.  As a typical 16 year old guy I would talk to the nurses, and they me.  It felt like we were flirting.  I mean I really thought these girls liked me, so I would follow them around as much as I could.  It was not until later in life that I realized they were not flirting with me.  These were good people who were just getting me to walk around and exercise.  I walk today and I will never forget those people.  Those girls will always hold a special place in my heart.  I wonder if they ever think of me?  I wonder if then they ever could have imagined 26 years later whom I would become.  The doctors continued to give opinions on what they felt I was capable of achieving.  I continued to progress, but their opinions of where that progress would stop did not.  I had a electric wheelchair donated and ready to go.  So the day came and the horseshoe lost its purpose.  My left arm and hand still hung there but with the promise of outpatient  therapy I finally took the unassisted step over that mental line I had drawn in the sand and I was discharged.
www.Bargainbrute.com
Not sure who ended up getting that wheelchair, but it was not me.  I had a brace for my foot to keep in from dropping and having to be drug through as I walked.  I swung that left leg through so my walk was super unnatural but I did not care.  It could have taken me a year to limp from the front door of the hospital to the car waiting at the curb, but Damn it, I was doing it.  I was doing it after the best in the country told me I could not.  After my family told me to take it easy, and that it was ok to have limitations.  After everyone in my life I had trusted up until that day had listened to those professional opinions and sympathized with their science I took 57 steps they said would never happen.  57 steps.  Every time someone looks at me funny as I limp past them I remember those 57 steps and limp right on by them.  Every time someone treats me unfairly, or tells me it cannot be done I re walk  those 57 steps in my heart and mind and I succeed!  Every time I enter a room and everyone looks at me because I limp I smile and limp right on by.  I think the hardest thing for me was returning to school and having to walk from class to class.  I would not take a pass or leave early or arrive late.  When the bell rang I ventured out into the halls with everyone else.  It was a lesson every time I had to endure the looks, stares, and comments.  99% of the kids I went to school with were understanding and great.  .5% went above and beyond to help me, but there was that .5% that did there best to make sure I felt unworthy.  So as I would walk by those folks I would count each step 1 to 57.  By the time I reached the 57th step I was past them and they were in my rear view.  You can walk right on by other peoples looks, stares, and opinions.  They are just advertising the hurt someone in their life has caused them.  Be compassionate, but be strong and limp on by!  Not everyone can be wealthy or famous, but we can all be great.  Greatness is determined by personal action.
www.Bargainbrute.com
So my story goes on.  I ended up having to have that artery replaced, and another in my chest that had an anurism in it.   That surgery was supposed to kill me, and I spent the night before it saying my final farewells to those I loved in my life.  And still here I am following the plan.  I have a beautiful wife I have been married to for 12 years.  We have a 9 year old daughter who is a freshman in high school, a 6 year old daughter whom Business Week magazine just called the "youngest senior executive in the United States.”  A billion dollar business empire, and enough sense to know that with love and support directed in the appropriate way anything is possible.
Sincerely,
Douglas Vandergraph
0 notes
thehungrykat1 · 7 years ago
Text
Marriott Manila Launches Philippines Sustainable Seafood Week 2018
For the third straight year, Marriott Hotel Manila, along with other prominent hotels and restaurants in the Philippines, have partnered together to make sure that we continue taking care of our seas by holding the Philippines Sustainable Seafood Week 2018. This time, it will not be just a week-long gathering of top chefs, suppliers, and hotels to educate everyone about the need to reverse our declining ocean harvest, but it will be stretching more than two weeks as more establishments continue to join this worthwhile activity.
The opening of Philippine Sustainable Seafood Week 2018 was held last February 26, 2018 at the Marriott Grand Ballroom in Resorts World Manila. This also serves as a launching point for many other activities in the coming days including presentations, chef master classes, cooking competitions, technical workshops, a photo exhibit, and more. Some of the participants were there that night to give a little preview of what they will be serving at their respective establishments to promote sustainable seafood in the Philippines.
Leading the launch was Chef Meik Brammer (seated second from right), Executive Chef of Marriott Manila who had made the five-star hotel one of the best premium dining spots in the country. Another main proponent of the Philippine Sustainable Seafood Week is Christian Schmidradner (standing), General Manager of seafood company Meliomar which engages with community-based coastal fisheries in various locations around the Philippines. These communities are taught how to avoid overfishing, illegal fishing and destructive fishing methods.
On display were just some of the sustainable seafood items that hotels and restaurants will be highlighting during the coming weeks. They all show their solidarity and commitment to improve the health of the oceans by pursuing responsible business practice in sourcing seafood products from sustainable fisheries and aquaculture. 
Participating hotels, restaurants, and schools include some of the biggest names in the industry like Shangri-La Hotels, Accor Group of Hotels, New World Manila Bay, Conrad Manila, Hyatt COD, CCA, Enderun and many more. They will be having their own activities during Sustainable Seafood Week 2018 so watch out for their respective announcements and schedules.
Here is a preview of what to expect from these establishments during Philippine Sustainable Seafood Week 2018. AG New World Manila Bay had one of the more popular booths during the launch, especially with their endless servings of fresh Crystal Bay oysters which are brackish-water species that are self-sustaining and do not need additional feeds.
They also presented a Japanese-style oyster if you want them a bit seasoned. But the favorite item there was the Aburi Scallops which were prepared and torched on the spot. 
The Discovery Leisure Company, composed of the some of my favorite hotels around the country like Discovery Shores Boracay, Discovery Country Suites, and Discovery Primea, featured a huge Boodle Feast with a medley of delicious seafood. This pile of mouthwatering seafood included Seared Scallops, Kinilaw na Maya Maya, Lobster Relleno, Grilled Tuna, Steamed Barramundi in Banana Leaves, and Sautéed Selva Prawns. This is an entire meal in itself but there were more juicy and sumptuous seafood to explore.
The entire ACCOR group of hotels came in full force with Sofitel Philippines presenting its Emperor’s Fish Ceviche. Emperor fish have moderate resilience to fishing pressure with relatively fast growth and maturation, so they are part of the sustainable seafood program in the country.
The newest member of the Accor group was also present at the event. Joy-Nostalg Hotel and Suites, formerly known as Oakwood Premier, had their Shrimp with Potato and the Pan Seared Cod with Mango Salsa.
Most of the participating hotels use Selva Shrimp which has a “Best Choice” rating for sustainability because these are naturally raised in mangrove forests in small farming communities in Southeast Asia. These do not need any feeds or fertilizers as the mangrove provides the natural habitat and ecosystem for the shrimp. This unique production system combines the preservation of the mangrove forest together with low-impact shrimp farming. 
Other members of the Accor Group including Raffles & Fairmont, Novotel, and Mercure also higlighted their own sustainable seafood creations like the Aguachile de Camaron in Ube Cone, Seafood Biryani, and more.
Shangri-La at the Fort brought in Peruvian Chef Carlo Huerta Echegaray from their popular South American restaurant, Samba. 
He personally prepared his Tamale de Camaron, with huge pieces of juicy prawns cooked a la minute for all the guests. Another of his specialties is the Ceviche de Atun which I got to try last time during Samba’s special 5-Course Christmas Menu.
Makati Shangri-La has an interesting item called Crispy Balls with Selva Black Tiger Prawns. Guests should eat the crispy balls in one bite and then drink the tomato-based broth inside the glass.
Aside from the top five-star hotels in the city, a few major restaurants will also participate in the Philippines Sustainable Seafood Week 2018. Grind Bistro came out with their Smoked Seafood Chowder and a Scallops Ceviche.
Center for Culinary Arts (CCA) showed why they are one of the top culinary schools in the country with their beautifully-plated Pan Seared Barramundi Fillet with Pumpkin Ginger Puree and Edamame. The barramundi fillet was so tender and bursting with flavors.
Of course, host Marriott Manila will not be left behind in featuring their own sustainable seafood selections. Last year, an entire buffet table filled with delicacies was slowly lowered from the ceiling of the Marriott Grand Ballroom to the delight of the crowd. This time, they brought an actual golf cart inside the ballroom to serve as an a la minute cooking spot for their delicious Fish Tacos.
There was also plenty of salmon for everyone including Smoked Salmon and the Soy Mirin-Marinated Salmon Salad.
A warm and hearty Seafood Chowder was also offered by Marriott Manila presented in these cute bread bowls. Other organizations and NGOs were also in attendance to help educate and bring more awareness to the delicate task of saving our oceans.
Watch out for all the exciting activities and special dishes that will be coming out during Sustainable Seafood Week 2018 from February 26 to March 15. Let’s all be more conscious and aware about where the seafood we see on our plates are sourced. Let’s all support this enivormentally-friendly initiative so that we can continue to enjoy these wonderful seafood creations.
Sustainable Seafood Week 2018
February 26 - March 15, 2018
www.facebook.com/pg/sustainableseafoodweekph
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watchingthesuperbowl · 7 years ago
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Notes taken during Super Bowl XXXI
PREGAME
This is a Fox broadcast. Their first Super Bowl, if I recall correctly.
Coin toss: Super Bowl-winning coaches: Ditka, Flores, Landry, Noll, Seifert, Stram
Patriots call heads. It's heads. They'll receive the opening kickoff.
New England coach Bill Parcells to sideline reporter Bill Maas: "I told them don't worry about winning the Super Bowl. Just worry about beating the Green Bay Packers."
Packers head coach Mike Holmgren: "It's different being a head coach. I had to worry about everything all week." Holmgren was an assistant on two 49ers Super Bowl teams.
Holmgren says whichever quarterback plays best will be the winner.
Madden: I talked to Favre before the game and asked him if he's nervous. He said of course I'm nervous. How could I not be?
FIRST QUARTER
Hey, the Fox Box! Cool.
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Patriots in white. Very 1990s uniforms.
First play, Curtis Martin for no gain running right. I had forgotten he was on this team.
I've never actually seen this game before - I listened to it on the radio as I drove across Ohio.
Madden: Patriots trying to spread out to run the ball. Hasn't worked in the very early going. New England gets one first down and Tom Tupa will punt it to Desmond Howard.
Good kick, better return. Howard gets out to the Packers' 45. 51 yard punt, 32 yard return.
This is apparently a recording from the Boston Fox affiliate. They run a crawl saying The X Files can be seen after an hour-long local postgame show. Because I'm sure that all of Boston was worried about that right now, as the Patriots played in the Super Bowl.
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Favre's first pass, goes deep and hits Andre Rison in stride down the middle. Rison is behind everybody and he scores untouched. Rison torched DB Otis Smith on a post pattern. 7-0 Packers after a 54-yard TD pass.
Madden: Because the Packers had two tight ends, the Patriots safety stepped toward the line of scrimmage and Smith had no help deep down the middle.
Madden: Parcells told me he was worried about the Packers getting big plays.
Second play of the next drive, Bledsoe is picked off by Green Bay's Doug Evans. Evans jumped a route and stepped in front of Terry Glenn. He bobbled it, but got control just as he landed out of bounds.
Patriots running seven-DB defense, so Favre throws underneath and lets Dorsey Levens run with it. 19 yards on the play, but it was third and 20. They'll try a field goal and Chris Jacke splits the uprights. 10-0 with 8:42 left in the first quarter.
Patriots getting their screen pass going. Bledsoe to Keith Byars for around 30 yards. Next play, Bledsoe to Curtis Martin for 20 more.
Bledsoe throws deep to Shawn Jefferson in the end zone. Craig Newsome grabs Jefferson's helmet while the ball is in the air. That's a no-no. Pass interference is called. First and goal from the one, and on the first play Bledsoe throws a play action pass to Keith Byars. A quick touchdown drive and it's now 10-7.
Packers go three and out. Former Kent State Golden Flash Michael McGruder nearly picks Favre on third down.
Patriots ran 11 passes in first 15 plays, 10 of them for less than 10 yards. And as soon as Fox talks about that, he goes deep to Terry Glenn. Glenn makes a diving catch at the Green Bay 5.
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Next play, Bledsoe rolls right and throws a strike to Ben Coates in the end zone. I'm not used to Bledsoe being this mobile. The guy was a human statue in the pocket when he played in Buffalo. Anyway, it's now 14-10 Patriots, still in the first quarter.
Fox graphic: 24 total points in the first quarter makes this the highest-scoring first quarter in Super Bowl history.
First play of the Packers' next drive, Andre Rison is wide open downfield and Favre misses him. Would have been an easy touchdown with a better throw. Instead, it's 2nd and 10.
Tedy Bruschi sacks Favre on third down and the Pack will punt.
Good punt by Craig Hentrich (57 yards) and a nice return from Dave Meggett (20 yards). Patriots take over at their own 33.
Patriots go three and out. Tyrone Williams nearly intercepts Bledsoe deep on third down, but doesn't catch it. Probably doesn't matter much, they'll receive a punt.
Promo for the NHL on Fox, next Saturday. Wayne Gretzky and the Rangers take on Philadelphia.
First quarter ends on a shovel pass to Dorsey Levens. Gets a couple yards. 14-10 New England after one.
SECOND QUARTER
Madden: First quarter had everything. Not much pass rush though.
Packers go three and out. Patriots running a 3-1-7 defense on third down. Hentrich will punt. Not a great kick. Patriots take over at their 42.
First quarter total yards: New England 131, Green Bay 70.
First quarter rushing yards: New England 8, Green Bay 5.
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Now the Patriots go three and out and kick it back to the Packers.
Average yards on first down: Green Bay -1.8
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Not anymore. Perfect throw deep to Antonio Freeman. Hits him right on stride and Freeman is untouched the rest of the way. An 81 yard touchdown pass, the longest TD pass in Super Bowl history. 17-14 Packers.
Madden: Lawyer Milloy was a pass rusher in college, still learning to play defensive back. Blew the coverage on Freeman.
Bledsoe has ALL DAY to find a receiver and can't. He throws it away on first down.
Combined yardage: 278 yards passing, 16 yards rushing
Patriots go three and out. Tom Tupa will punt. Pass rusher LeRoy Butler bowls over Dave Meggett, who attempted to block him on third down.
Brett Favre: 5-9, 158 yards, 2 TD.
Green Bay total yards: 152. Green Bay first downs: 2.
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Favre to Rison coming across the middle, gets to the New England 23.
Madden: It's possible to get too hung up on running. If you've got Andre Rison on one side and Antonio Freeman on the other, you might as well keep throwing.
Patriots defense in the postseason: 5 red zone opportunities, 0 touchdowns allowed.
3rd and 13, Packers coach Mike Holmgren is frantically trying to call timeout, but doesn't get it. Favre overthrows Andre Rison in the end zone and they'll have to settle for three points. 20-14 Green Bay, mid-second quarter.
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Holmgren really wanted that timeout.
Summerall: Budweiser beat Bud Light 27-24 in the Bud Bowl.
Madden: This could keep being a high-scoring game unless someone goes on top by a couple of touchdowns. Then they'd go conservative.
First play of the New England drive, Bledsoe with a great pass downfield to Ben Coates. Patriots approaching midfield.
Second and ten, Bledsoe has plenty of time and lofts one deep. I'm sure he wasn't trying to throw an interception, but if you were, you'd throw it just like that. The DB (Prior) caught it as if he were catching a punt.
Turnovers: New England 2, Green Bay 0.
Madden: Parcells said if they don't create any turnovers, they won't win.
Packers run a slant to Freeman, at first it looks like a nice defensive play, but the replay shows it's clearly pass interference. The officials see it and throw the flag.
Next play, Favre goes deep down the middle of the field to Antonio Freeman. Favre wanted Andre Rison, but has to settle for a 20 yard completion, down to the Patriots' 34.
Packers keeping the ball on the ground as halftime approaches. Controlling the clock. Edgar Bennett takes it to the New England 10 as we hit the two-minute warning.
Summerall: There are more Packer fans here than Patriots fans. Brett Favre's hometown is 60 minutes from New Orleans.
Levens runs it to the New England 2. Clock ticking, under 1:30.
First and goal, Favre rolls left and keeps it, just barely getting to the pylon. That's another touchdown and it's 27-14 Green Bay.
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Cutaway: Brett Favre's dad standing and cheering. Madden says Favre's dad was his high school coach. They ran a wishbone offense - Favre always says when he runs, it's his dad who taught him. Less so when he passes.
Halftime show: James Brown. Cutaway of Brown on a golf cart awaiting halftime.
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Not now James, we’re busy.
Patriots looking good on their two-minute drill. They get to midfield with 41 seconds left and two timeouts.
Third and 2 from the Packers' 43. Bledsoe throws incomplete and they'll go for it on fourth down. :26 left in the half.
Incomplete pass on fourth down. Green Bay takes over on downs and you'd have to think Favre takes a knee here.
Maybe they should have. Looks like Favre wants to chuck the pigskin deep, but he's sacked. That's the last play of the half. 27-14 Green Bay after 30 minutes.
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HALFTIME
Madden: Three momentum swings. Packers went up 10-0, New England scored two quick touchdowns to make it 14-10, then it was Green Bay's turn. Pack scored 17 consecutive points.
Patriots have 14 rushing yards.
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THIRD QUARTER
Packers receive the kickoff. Desmond Howard returns it to the 24.
Summerall: Mark Chmura is Brett Favre's roommate. NFL players had roommates at this point?!?
Madden: Holmgren is one of the best second half coaches. He's great at making halftime adjustments.
Cutaway: Groundskeepers checking the goalposts. Maybe the height is off? They don't do anything and leave. Madden thinks Antonio Freeman knocked it out of whack when he dunked the ball over the goalpost after scoring a touchdown. A replay shows that's probably not true, but Madden doubles down on the crazy.
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Third and 1 from the New England 37, Packers give it to Levens up the middle. He's short. They'll go on fourth down because Holmgren isn't a chump. Doesn't work. Levens gets stuffed in the backfield and the Packers get the ball. It was the right move, regardless of the outcome.
Summerall: Players are all wearing stickers on their helmets that say "Pete", in honor of the late Pete Rozelle. I'd like to get Jim McMahon's take.
Patriots do nothing with the ball and punt. 8:07 left in the quarter.
First play of the Green Bay drive, Otis Smith comes on a corner blitz. Blindsides Favre and sacks him at the Packers' 4. 2nd and 17.
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It is not good when your quarterback is faced with this.
Green Bay goes three and out and punt from their own end zone. Dave Meggett returns it to the Patriots 48.
Madden: Patriots have passed on 14 consecutive plays. And of course, they run immediately after Madden mentions this.
Third and 5, Bledsoe to Coates. Ball hits him in the hands, bounces away, hits LeRoy Butler, bounces away, and Coates grabs it for a first down. Replay shows Butler was mugging Coates in coverage, but no flag is thrown.
Patriots run a fake reverse and a deep throw. Bledsoe barely misses Curtis Martin.
Patriots moving the ball well. Third and short, Martin runs for around 8, gets inside the Green Bay 20.
First and 10 from the 18, Curtis Martin blows through the middle of the Green Bay defense. A flag is down, is it a touchdown? It is. Penalty is on the defense. Declined, obviously. 27-21 Packers, late third quarter.
Well, that didn't last long. Desmond Howard goes 99 yards for a Packer touchdown on the ensuing kickoff. 33-21 Green Bay on the longest kickoff return in the history of the Super Bowl. Green Bay will go for two. Got it. Favre to Chmura in the back of the end zone. 35-21.
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The parting of the white sea.
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Summerall: Packers nearly released Howard at the end of training camp, but they kept him because they needed a kick returner.
A fight breaks out in the end zone after the two point conversion. No flags thrown.
Fox graphic: records set tonight.
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Summerall: Packers DE Reggie White has never won a championship on any level, ever.
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Reggie steamrolls a chump
Packers have the ball as we reach the end of the third quarter. Madden says they'll go conservative now and try to chew clock.
After 3: Green Bay 35, New England 21.
FOURTH QUARTER
Fox graphic: Patriots have outscored opponents 41-0 in the fourth quarter of their last six games. Packers have outscored opponents 81-7 in the fourth quarter of their last eight games.
Third and nine from midfield, Patriots blitz and Favre chucks it deep and out of bounds. Hentrich punts and Meggett fair catches at the 20. 35-21 with 14:03 left.
Patriots lose three yards while going three and out. Tupa will boot it back to the Pack.
Cutaway: Green Bay backup QB Jim McMahon. I had no idea he was on this team when I joked earlier about his reaction to the Rozelle stickers on the helmets. 
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Madden: Jim McMahon practices dropkick field goals before the game. Made a 55 yarder.
Packers mostly keeping the ball on the ground here. Clock at 10:05 after Mark Chmura drops an easy pass that would have been a first down. Instead, the Packers punt. Meggett fair catches at his 13 with 9:57 on the clock.
Fox shows foreign broadcasters. Summerall says Marv Levy is on the air in "some country". (It was the UK.) Morten Andersen is on the Danish broadcast.
Patriots slowly moving downfield. They try to hurry up and Bledsoe gets picked on a long pass. Packers get the ball.
Madden says Parcells probably won't be back with the Patriots. Might go to the Jets, might sit out a year.
Green Bay running clock again. Under 7:00 now. Feeding it to Edgar Bennett.
Madden: (Patriots RB) Keith Byars said if we lose, I'll feel terrible, but I'll be happy for (Packers and former Byars teammates with the Eagles) Reggie White and Keith Jackson. Reggie White says he won't feel good for Byars if the Packers lose. This is almost certainly a joke.
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Madden: Reggie has been as tight this week as I've ever seen him.
Promo: After the game, an all-new X-Files.
Patriot defense beginning to become frustrated here. DB Willie Clay smacks the ball out of Antonio Freeman's hand after the play, then goes after Freeman. 15 yard penalty and a first down.
Madden: I'm voting for Brett Favre for MVP. Summerall didn't want Madden to say who he was voting for, but Madden said it anyway.
Green Bay burning clock and moving the ball. Clock is now below 5:00. Tick, tick, tick.
Third and long, Andre Rison almost makes an insane catch against the DB's shoulder. Just barely misses the catch and Chris Jacke is on for a field goal. Wide right. Still a two-possession game, Patriots have the ball with 3:56 left. 
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This close to a great catch.
Packers rushing three and they sack Bledsoe anyway on third down. Three and out, they punt. A weird decision with 3:20 or so left. You need two touchdowns. You need the ball.
Fox graphic: AFC East teams are 3-8 in the Super Bowl. Have lost the last 7.
Packers punt immediately after the two minute warning. Patriots have the ball near midfield with 1:49 on the clock.
First down, Reggie White sacks Bledsoe. His third sack of the day.
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Third and 19, Bledsoe completes a short pass, but it's nowhere near enough for a first down. They throw again on fourth and when Craig Newsome decks receiver Vincent Brisby, the ball pops out and into the hands of linebacker Brian Williams. Ballgame. The Packers have the ball, up 14 points, with less than a minute left and the Patriots have no timeouts.
Packers break out "Super Bowl XXXI champions" gear on the sideline as Brett Favre takes a knee.
MVP is Desmond Howard. Summerall thought Madden should have voted for Howard instead of Favre.
Howard is the first special teams player ever to be named MVP. 244 return yards.
Somehow Mike Holmgren escaped the icewater bucket. His clothes are still dry as the teams meet at midfield.
Final score: Packers 35, Patriots 21
POSTGAME
Players kneel to pray after the game, led by White. Curtis Martin and Don Beebe are in the prayer circle too.
Tagliabue hands the trophy to Mike Holmgren, who immediately hands it to president and CEO Bob Harlan. 
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Ron Wolf: Holmgren kept telling me to sign Desmond Howard, we always wanted him.
Wolf: To the fans of Green Bay, this is as much yours as it is ours.
Holmgren: Huhmbled by this experience, most unselfish group of players I've ever been around, my coaches did a great job. Coach Lombardi left a wonderful legacy and now we're trying to do our part.
Holmgren: Favre audibled on the first touchdown play. I didn't call it, that was all Brett.
Reggie White: Thank you, Jesus. It's not about us, it's about what God has done.
Favre: Want to thank our fans, thank the city of New Orleans. Worked hard for this, our fans stuck with us, it's been a long road and you all stuck with us.
Howard: Not surprised I played so well. You have to have confidence in yourself. Have to thank Ron Wolf for seeing through BS and giving me an opportunity.
Fox analyst Howie Long: Before the game, said Desmond Howard was the #2 impact player on the Packers behind Favre. Howard was an inch away from the CFL, today he's a Super Bowl MVP.
Ronnie Lott: Back in July, Favre said he'd lead the team to a Super Bowl victory and he did it.
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hartranchgolfcourse · 7 years ago
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Open Championship Preview
Open Championship Preview
Blimey! It appears we’re going to have another soggy Open Championship this weekend, with wind and rain in the forecast every day (as it should be, really). I’m not sure what that means for predicting this thing, as my crystal ball has been out-of-order this season. Henrik Stenson and Philthy Mickelson put on a fine display at Royal Troon (they sure know how to name courses across the pond) last year, and if we get a show half as good at Royal Birkdale it’ll be well worth the watch. So strap on your knickers, brew a pot o’ tee and be prepared to stay up until the wee hours of the morn to see the best in the world putt from 50 yards off the green.
Course: Royal Birkdale, Southport, England, 7,173 Yards, Par 70
Past Champions (at Royal Birkdale): Pádraig Harrington, Mark O’Meara, Ian Baker-Finch, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer and Peter Thomson
156 Players, top 70 and ties make the cut after 36 holes
Fun Facts:
The trophy now awarded to the winner of the British Open is officially named the Championship Cup, though it is widely referred to as the “Claret Jug”. Claret is a dry red wine produced in the famous French winemaking region of Bordeaux. The British Open trophy was designed to look like the silver jugs used to serve claret at 19th century gatherings, thus the name. (Courtesy GolfDigest.com)
The winner of the first dozen Opens at Prestwick was presented with a red Morocco belt with silver clasps. Dubbed the “Challenge Belt,” it was purchased by the members at a cost of £25. “Young” Tom Morris captured four consecutive Opens held there from 1868-1872 (still an unprecedented feat). Under the original rules of competition, if a player won three times in a row, he was entitled to keep the prize — meaning there was nothing to play for in 1871, and therefore, no Open was held that year. (Courtesy GolfDigest.com)
British Open Records
Most wins: Harry Vardon has the most British Open wins with six. Most times as runner up: Jack Nicklaus has been runner-up at the British Open seven times. Most appearances: Gary Player has appeared at the British Open 46 times. Oldest winner: In 1867, “Old” Tom Morris Sr. became the oldest golfer to win the British Open at 46 years and 99 days old. Youngest winner: In 1868, his son, “Young” Tom Morris Jr. became the youngest golfer to win the British Open at 17 years and five months old. (Courtesy CNN.com)
The Players:
At the U.S. Open, a lot of big names missed the cut at a course players were torching. DJ, Rory, Justin Rose, Jason Day, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson and yes, even my boy Graeme McDowell didn’t make the weekend. While I don’t necessarily expect the same, I don’t love Rory and DJ here. Both could certainly get hot and win, but Rory doesn’t like bad weather and DJ still hasn’t seemed to recover from falling down the stairs. Here’s a quick look at the Vegas odds:
Dustin Johnson 14-1 Jordan Spieth 14-1 Rickie Fowler 16-1 Jon Rahm 16-1 Sergio Garcia 18-1 Justin Rose 20-1 Rory McIlroy 20-1 Hideki Matsuyama 20-1 Tommy Fleetwood 22-1 Henrik Stenson 25-1 Adam Scott 28-1 Brooks Koepka 33-1 Jason Day 33-1 Paul Casey 33-1 Alex Noren 40-1 Phil Mickelson 40-1 Louis Oosthuizen 45-1 Branden Grace 45-1 Marc Leishman 50-1 Justin Thomas 50-1 Matt Kuchar 50-1 Thomas Pieters 50-1
I really like Fowler and Branden Grace in this spot. Rickie is due and Grace is a low-ball hitter who can keep it out of the wind. I’ll go with Rickie to win in a playoff. If you’re looking to lose some money, copy my $1,000,000 DK Lineup below: Rickie Fowler Adam Scott Paul Casey Branden Grace Bernd Wiesberger Justin Thomas
Well, there you have it. Hopefully you’ve learned something. Enjoy the weekend and I look forward to being wrong as always. Happy golfing!
The post Open Championship Preview appeared first on Hart Ranch Golf Course.
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