The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters
Sometimes I just stumble across fun little facts and/or tidbits. When that happens, they will wind up duly noted in this category.
A framed silhouette of my niece, standing before the mountains at sunset, carries a message for her high school graduation: “Behind you, all your memories. Before you, all your dreams. Around you, all who love you. Within you, all you need.” It is a blessing, but also a challenge — to live with gratitude for the past, purpose in the present, and trust in the strength we already carry. In its quiet way, it’s pure Stoic wisdom.
Read more
They called you odd. Paranoid. “That guy with the charts.” But maybe you weren’t wrong—just early. Turns out, history has a soft spot for the weirdos who saw it coming. Being early often looks a lot like being weird. People smile politely. They call you intense. Or ask if you’ve “been getting enough sleep lately.” But then ten years pass, and suddenly everyone’s quoting the person they once thought needed a nap and a hobby.
Read more
“Joy doesn’t cancel out the heavy things, but it gives you little pockets of strength to carry on. Let it in, whenever and wherever you can.” Joy isn’t a finish line. It’s a companion. A weird, sometimes inappropriately timed companion. It shows up when you need it, not when you deserve it. In this reflection, I explore how small moments of joy can help carry us through the weight of the world, with a little humor and maybe even a rubber chicken.
Read more
Sometimes a Jacket Comes with a Story
When you’re in the middle of a weight-loss journey, your wardrobe becomes a revolving door—too big, too short, too baggy, and occasionally, just right. That’s how I ended up at the Goodwill store on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, where I found a blazer that fit me like it was tailored for this very moment. It wasn’t until I got it home, though, that I discovered it came with a little bonus: two concert tickets tucked neatly inside the inner pocket. Michael Bublé, Amalie Arena, February 13, 2019. Seats 5 and 6. And just like that, I had a mystery… and a man named Rick to thank for it.
As the curtain begins to close on 2024, I find myself looking back on what has truly been a transformative year. This was my “health-focused” year, and what a year it has been!
Read more
The Western North Carolina Mountains had their first snow day today. Watching the webcams from time to time during the day brought back many great memories. There’s a magic to the first snow that roots itself deep in memory, stretching across years and places. In Kings Mountain, NC, where the winters were mild and snow was a gift rather than a certainty, the first flakes meant the world was about to change. As a kid, waking up to a white-coated street was like waking up on Christmas morning. School would call it a day, and we’d pile out of the house, sleds in hand, to the steep street just beyond our driveway.
Read moreWell, this is another of the few 5-star ratings I’ve given. This small restaurant is only a few blocks from the house and has been there the entire time we lived here. We just never went, and frankly, we are both mad that it took so long. We kept saying we needed to try it, and a Groupon came up for it, so that was the incentive.
Read more
So, this is my first post in a very long time. A lot has happened since that last post in October of 2020. That one was about local candidates and my recommendations. The intervening years was just too turbulent for me, and I know my posts would be mostly rants and filled with gloom and doom. We still face a lot of the problems coming out of the past couple of years, and I’m sure I’ll be ranting a lot, but it is time to get back into the game.
Read more
Have you ever seen a sign or notice and wondered about the story behind the sign? Some of them could
Read more
The only person I know who’d had Burger King’s new vegetable-based burger liked them a lot. I finally got around to trying one for lunch this past Thursday. I’m not vegan nor vegetarian, so I was viewing this very critically and didn’t care about the outcome (other than I didn’t want to eat a bad burger for lunch). I was pleasantly surprised.
Read more
I almost never rave about a phone app, but in case you haven’t seen anything about this one, you really have to get the JFK Moonshot app (available for Android and iPhone). This is about the coolest thing I’ve seen and sets a pretty high bar for Augmented Reality.
Read more