Episode 8: Lemonade
“Eat Right, Stay Fit, Die Anyway”. Motto of the Round Lake Running Club
You learn a lot about living when the most important person in the world to you dies.
You also learn a lot about happiness from sadness, a lot about being full from being empty, a lot about success from failure.
The old folksy adage is “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”.
I prefer the motto me and my buddies created for our makeshift running club. It really puts things in better perspective. Make everything count along the way ‘cause guess what, none of us are getting out alive. I don’t know what happens on the other side but I do know this, whatever it is or isn’t, whatever you were doing here is done.
I’ve used “get busy living, or get busy dying”, the Andy Dufresne line from Stephen King’s “The Shawshank Redemption”, many times in the past because it’s so appropriate and I as wrote in Goodbye Neil Young and in One Year Later deciding to get busy living was brutally hard and completely necessary, and something that anyone who knew Bonnie knows was her absolute expectation because she really did embrace that life is not a spectator sport.
So deciding to actually pull the trigger on doing LBV was making a pretty big vat of lemonade, because I was dealing with some big-ass lemons.
I have tried to do a few things in these chronicles. One, be truthful about the fact that I began this pretty much as an accidental tourist. Two, that once the Go decision was made I never again waivered about going forward. Three, I’m very happy I did it. It’s been an adventure that I’m just fully realizing a lot of people never get to experience. A lot of people think and talk and dream about starting a business but another old favorite quote of mine usually comes into play, “when everything is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done”.
There’s another element in play that may give us a chance to make some lemonade. LBV is a wine and cigar bar. At the end of 2009 the Michigan Senate and House passed a no-smoking bill that goes into effect May 1st. Interestingly there’s a carve out for “cigar bars” and the way the law reads we may be exempt from the ban by virtue of the fact that the way our smoking lounge was built appears to comply with the definition. Unfortunately as of this writing I do not have a final ruling, so we’ll see. As I wrote in Episode 4, sometimes you get lucky.
Well, that’s about it. I think I’ve said about everything I set out to get off my chest when I started the chronicles I don’t know where this little science experiment of mine is going to end up but I know that its creation has gone a long ways toward getting me living again.
Thanks for your indulgence. I’m quite positive that the adventures of LBV will play prominently in future blog posts.
I’ll leave you with a quote – actually lyrics – from a John Mellencamp song “The Real Life”. John and I grew up at the same time in towns that were 20 miles apart. I remember seeing his early bands play in the local venues, and no, I don’t know him and I had no idea he’d hit it big but really glad he did.
I want to live the real life
I want to live my life close to the bone
Just because I'm middle-aged that don't mean
I want to sit around this house and watch T.V.
I want the real life
I want to live the real life
You learn a lot about living when the most important person in the world to you dies.
You also learn a lot about happiness from sadness, a lot about being full from being empty, a lot about success from failure.
The old folksy adage is “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”.
I prefer the motto me and my buddies created for our makeshift running club. It really puts things in better perspective. Make everything count along the way ‘cause guess what, none of us are getting out alive. I don’t know what happens on the other side but I do know this, whatever it is or isn’t, whatever you were doing here is done.
I’ve used “get busy living, or get busy dying”, the Andy Dufresne line from Stephen King’s “The Shawshank Redemption”, many times in the past because it’s so appropriate and I as wrote in Goodbye Neil Young and in One Year Later deciding to get busy living was brutally hard and completely necessary, and something that anyone who knew Bonnie knows was her absolute expectation because she really did embrace that life is not a spectator sport.
So deciding to actually pull the trigger on doing LBV was making a pretty big vat of lemonade, because I was dealing with some big-ass lemons.
I have tried to do a few things in these chronicles. One, be truthful about the fact that I began this pretty much as an accidental tourist. Two, that once the Go decision was made I never again waivered about going forward. Three, I’m very happy I did it. It’s been an adventure that I’m just fully realizing a lot of people never get to experience. A lot of people think and talk and dream about starting a business but another old favorite quote of mine usually comes into play, “when everything is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done”.
There’s another element in play that may give us a chance to make some lemonade. LBV is a wine and cigar bar. At the end of 2009 the Michigan Senate and House passed a no-smoking bill that goes into effect May 1st. Interestingly there’s a carve out for “cigar bars” and the way the law reads we may be exempt from the ban by virtue of the fact that the way our smoking lounge was built appears to comply with the definition. Unfortunately as of this writing I do not have a final ruling, so we’ll see. As I wrote in Episode 4, sometimes you get lucky.
Well, that’s about it. I think I’ve said about everything I set out to get off my chest when I started the chronicles I don’t know where this little science experiment of mine is going to end up but I know that its creation has gone a long ways toward getting me living again.
Thanks for your indulgence. I’m quite positive that the adventures of LBV will play prominently in future blog posts.
I’ll leave you with a quote – actually lyrics – from a John Mellencamp song “The Real Life”. John and I grew up at the same time in towns that were 20 miles apart. I remember seeing his early bands play in the local venues, and no, I don’t know him and I had no idea he’d hit it big but really glad he did.
I want to live the real life
I want to live my life close to the bone
Just because I'm middle-aged that don't mean
I want to sit around this house and watch T.V.
I want the real life
I want to live the real life
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