NFL Brain Damage History

Presented By: MedicalBillingandCoding.org

Credit to @SubEWL.

100 Riffs

100 Riffs (A Brief History of Rock N' Roll) from Chicago Music Exchange on Vimeo.

So very cool, found by my brother Eric. 100 famous guitar riffs, played back to back in a single take, that gives a brief history of rock and roll.

Put Your Desks Away!

My brother Eric sent me this link to a piece of furniture I think would be genius for homeschooling families!

As If From Nowhere bookcase

Store your schoolbooks AND your desks all in one place!


*In other news, Solomon saw yesterday's post and IM'd me:

Solomon: I've never had a whole blog post to myself before, praise jojoba oil.

Underwater Bubbles

My brother Eric, in his Navy submarine days.

The Dad Squad

Not to be outdone, the yearbook for the men in the Lewis family has come out just in time for Father's Day! Let's see who made the grades!

IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME DAD

No one wanted a baby as much as this dad, so the fact that he had to wait 20 years couldn't have been more agonizing. But that baby finally came, and it's safe to say he was worth waiting for! Andrew's proving to be the dad we all knew he would be; patient, innovative, and fun, making baby RFL a lucky baby indeed. As Melissa T. says, "I think a kid would give up anything to have Andrew as a father and get to sleep in a drawer!"

MOST FUN DAD

Brianne's husband Joe wins this title hands down. When the kids want to play for hours on end, Joe is always up for the challenge. His endless energy and enthusiasm makes him a shoe-in for this category. His son Landon will never be bored, and Landon's friends will always want to come over to his house. In my house, whenever the boys are trying a new trick that requires physical aptitude, you'll very often hear the phrase "I bet Joe could teach us!"

BEST LONG DISTANCE DAD

There are some things Dads never want to be, and I'd bet the number one thing is "not there". But Ed had to take on that challenge and in true Ed style he has made the best of it. He proves that the shortest distance between two points is a father's determination, and while he can't be there physically, he's learned to accept that the next best thing is better than nothing.

GEEKIEST DAD

This Dad of the unsalted peanut is no doubt gearing up to deck the nursery halls with homemade webcams made from old television sets hooked to peanut butter jars and light bulbs. Posters of Bill Gates with Sharpie moustaches and devil horns will line the baby clothes drawers. Little Unsalted Peanut will be spitting on my iPhone "accidentally" while Jeff rewards baby with treats behind my back. Lucky for him I love geeks!

MOST COMPLEX DAD

It's not a given that all dads will be easy to read. Sometimes we have to look deeper into a dad to see the truths that lie beneath. My brother Eric has more layers than a Napoleon, so you've got to work a little harder to get to the layer you want. But it's there. It just might take few pints of a stout ale to reach it. And let's be real, any dad can hug you, but there aren't many dads out there who can rewire your house, build you a computer, babysit all 14 of your children at once, analyze your personality, clean your grout, fly you to your destination, starch your shirts, and teach you Bible lessons all in one day. Way better.

MOST SUPPORTIVE DAD

While Bonnie certainly could have done a bang-up job on her own, she found a gem in Jamie. He stepped into the role of father like he'd been doing it his whole life, and filled a void in the lives of Bonnie's kids. A few special men out there have the ability to love children regardless of who their biological father is, and Jamie is certainly one of those.

JOB WELL DONE DAD

Eric Mosley couldn't be the father he is without my father in law Jerry having done something right. He's another one of those special men who can love a child completely, regardless of biology. Eric grew up knowing he was adopted, but never feeling like anything but Jerry Mosley's real son. Because that's what he was. Big Father's Day thanks go out to this dad.

MOST SATISFYING DAD

If you've got needs, Michael T.'s here to get them taken care of. Whether his kids need time, attention, discipline, instruction, distraction, motivation, encouragement, Michael is on the job. When a deficiency is identified, you can bet the farm it's going to be addressed posthaste.

MOST SEXY DEMONSTRATIVE DAD

I always knew Eric was going to be the best kind of father. Demonstrative to the extreme, supportive to the extreme, attentive to the extreme. And I was right. I've never wished he was any other kind of father than what he is, and I'm so glad for my children that they will grow up with a dad like him.

BEST DAD FOR ME DAD

Maybe some dads are more this or more that, but for my money I couldn't have gotten one more perfect for me. Not many dads in this world would have "gotten" me, but mine not only got me but thought highly of me as well. We've been part of our own Mutual Respect Society from day 1, and the value that he has brought to my life is immeasurable.

Closet Freak

My husband has always been a closet freak. No, not a freak who is in the closet, but someone who is a freak ABOUT his closet. When I first saw his closet before we were married, it reminded me of my brother Eric's closet. Everything facing the same direction, spaces between each hanger, types of shirts grouped together. He even had a color coded hanger system: short sleeved button downs on one color, tee shirts on another color, pants on yet another color. Shoes were laid out in order from most casual to most dressy.

I didn't know whether to be amazed or frightened.

Because I've always been in charge of the laundry and putting clothes away here, I've refused to follow most of his closet rules. I'll hang the shirts on whatever color hanger is closest to my hand at the time. And fortunately he is still breathing 10 years later, even though he has to walk into his closet every day and see tee shirts hung up on a rainbow colored assortment of hangers.

But there is one closet rule he still follows that I've learned to appreciate. When he takes an item off of the hanger to wear it, he take the empty hanger and hangs it on the far end of that closet bar. So when you go to rehang clean shirts, there is a section of empty hangers right there. You don't have to sift through the hanging shirts to find the empty hangers. Every time I go to hang his clean clothes up, I am reminded of how much I like that rule.

Now, I don't enjoy it enough to do it with my clothes, but I can say that I appreciate the efficiency of that particular rule. If I ever put any care into how my closet was organized, I'd implement that rule for sure. But for now, my only rule is "Throw on whatever looks cute and GET THE HELL OUT OF THE CLOSET as fast as you possibly can. Don't look back, leave all survivors behind, SAVE YOURSELF!"

Melissa Gone Wild

Did you feel it? The subtle shift in atmospheric pressure around 1:15pm on Thursday May 12th? The momentary darkening of the sun? Did you feel off balance for a second as the earth shifted on it's axis? An unexplained pulling at your back, as if a black hole had opened up behind you and was sucking you in? I know you felt something. You must have. Because Melissa and I ran into each other.

(For those not in the know, Melissa and I have been best friends since childhood. Well, only friends since childhood, if we're being honest....)

This unexplained scientific phenomenon happened at Chick-Fil-A in Audubon. I was coming home from the kids' piano lessons in Norristown, and Melissa had just been to a kennel in Audubon to pick out a puppy with her husband and kids. It was one of those rare days when neither of us knew what the other was doing. I didn't know I'd be going to Chick-Fil-A, she didn't know where Audubon was and had never been in that area before. Melissa and I don't live close enough to each other to run into each other. Our in person contact is always planned.

I walked up to the counter to order, and stopped in my tracks. I saw a woman from the back, and something about her made me stop in my tracks. Everything around me slowed down. I saw her feet first, and if you know Melissa, you know that her feet would stop anyone in their tracks. A man is known by the company he keeps, but Melissa is known by what she keeps hidden by Converse in the winter months. Her feet are prehistoric. Reptilian. Skeksis, even (only Andrew will get that reference, but it's a good one).



There are random bones and knobs sticking out from every which angle. You barely recognize them as feet. And then she puts on a toe ring and I want to shout out, "Gollum has his Precious!!".

But I digress. The point is, the feet I saw looked so familiar to me. I moved up this woman's body and realized I knew that tee shirt from somewhere. I looked up higher to the hair, and said to myself, "Huh, Melissa wears her hair like that..." But my brain took so long to register that yes, it was Melissa. You see, I never see her in the wild. I have never seen her when she didn't know that I was seeing her. It was like I was a National Geographic photographer on assignment in the Siberian tundra and I had just come upon a rare white tiger that I'd previously only seen in zoos.

A million thoughts were running through my head: "Am I really seeing this?? Can it be true? Don't make any sudden movements, you'll scare it! I wonder how it got here? What is it about to eat? Where is it going? Holy crap, it really IS white! Wow, it never does THAT at the zoo..."

Once my brain finally allowed me to admit it was Melissa, I walked up and stood right behind her without saying anything. She jerked her head around, and, being an extrovert, had the same reaction I had had minutes before, only very loudly and dramatically. We were both so flustered at what was happening that we couldn't complete a sentence. It was fragments of, "what is going....how did you.....i don't even know where.....puppy....i was at....the kids are...I...chicken.....andrew lives near here??...."

Fortunately she had to run because her husband and kids were waiting in the car, otherwise we'd have both probably melted into puddles of confusion as every neuron in our brains exploded like a 4th of July fireworks finale.

I finished having my lunch with my brother Andrew and LittleRFL, but I was in the fog of nuclear fallout. As soon as lunch was over, I got into the car and called Melissa. She was experiencing the aftermath as well. We talked for 60 minutes about the scientific anomaly that had just occurred.

We realized that we don't know how to be casual with each other. We've never had call to be, and have ZERO interest in such behavior. It would be beyond ludicrous for me to say, "Oh hey, Melissa! Funny seeing you here! Getting some chicken? Okay, I'll talk to you later!" She would sooner wear frosted eyeshadow than say to me, "Suzanne! I didn't know you were going to be here! Oh cool, Andrew lives near here, didn't know that! Ok, gotta run!"

We have learned in our lives how to do that with other people, in order to be accepted socially. But it's impossible to do it with each other. It's unnatural. It would have been much better if I had pretended I hadn't seen her, and the moment had never happened. It was too creepy for words, although I've given it many more words than previously intended.

So we apologize if the resulting earthquake, asteroid or blackout messed up your day. Trust me when we say our day was much worse. We saw something we never want to see again; Melissa and Suzanne trying to pull off casual. It's ugly, it's uncomfortable, it's degrading. It's like that time she and I went to the Philly Zoo and saw/heard the giant turtles mating.

Reminds me of a blog post my brother Eric sent to me the other day, written by a man who is losing his voice to cancer. Christopher Hitchens says:

"A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful."

She Whips Her Hair Back And Forth

My great-niece Audrey, oldest daughter of my oldest niece Bonnie, filmed by Bonnie's father and my brother Eric. Watching her dance moves, my heart is warmed seeing that my dance style lives on. I've heard talent like mine skips a generation, and Audrey has proven that to be true. I love what happens at 1:40.

I Don't Wanna Be It!

Lewis babies all growed up....but while the rest of you see 6 drop dead gorgeous young adults with tons of amazing hair, jawbones to knock you dead, boobs enough to feed all the starving children in Africa, skin to put airbrushed pageant babies to shame, I see 6 chubby kids with cute dirty faces waiting to play Kick The Can with me and Melissa.

Disenthrall Yourself

My brother Eric sent this to me the other day. If you love me, you will watch this. (I know what you're thinking, "Wow, she only wants 3 people to watch this?) If you want to know anything about me, watch this. If you hate me, watch this so that you can tell others exactly why you hate me. This is exactly what I am all about, and this is why I fight.



I was so struck, realizing that our educational system was born during the Industrial Revolution, and was created for promoting industrialism. Factory lines, everyone coming out the same. That's always been my problem with it, because industrial thinking is not creative. It doesn't encourage revolution or change or beauty or innovation.

I love the part about how our current system thinks the only thing kids have in common is their age. That the educational system sees a "sell by" date on our children. I also loved his explanation for how the Arts are the victims of the ADHD "epidemic", because the arts require you to have a sensate experience, while ADHD drugs numb your senses.

And the divergent thinking section was brilliant. Divergent thinking is what I live for imparting. Divergent thinking is what will cure cancer. Divergent thinking births innovative, wildly successful companies. Divergent thinking is what is killed, or suppressed to the point that you can barely find it anymore, in the current educational system. That isn't an opinion, it's just the truth.

Sir Ken Robinson is this amazing thinker who is revered the world over for his ideas on education and creativity in the business world.



"If you're not afraid to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." Listen to him describe the hierarchy of subjects in all educational systems, with dance/drama at the bottom of the pile.

Tiny Dreams

I love this more than life itself. Stop motion animation turns me on in and of itself, but mini-stop motion animation?? That stars a little tiny girl flying on a bumblebee??? Shut your mouth.

It reminds me of the Alice In Wonderland game I used to play for hours on the little Commodore 64 that my brother Eric gave me.

Bros And Hos

Tonight my brothers and sister and I have our annual (used very loosely, as we've probably done it 3 times total) siblings dinner. We're going to Poco's, a great Mexican restaurant in Dolyestown, PA, and then heading upstairs for the comedy show.

The Annals Of Andrew, Part 2

Now for the Commodore 64 Summer Olympics story...

As you learned yesterday, my brother Eric gave me a portable C64 when I was in my preteens. Along with the machine, he gave me tons of games. One of those games was Epyx's Summer Games. In this game, you'd choose a player and the country your player was representing. Then you'd take the player through a series of Summer Olympics competitions.

The game featured an opening ceremony with doves, and at the end your players would be ranked and the Gold medal winner's national anthem would be played as they all stood on the podium. That is how it came to be that Andrew and I could hum the national anthem of most every country in the world. Of course, we've since forgotten how they all went, except for one country. Epyx. Oh, Epyx isn't a country, you say?? In this game it was, and we'd fight over who got to be from Epyx, because their national anthem was the coolest. It had a syncopation, which wasn't easy to accomplish back in the days when songs on the computer were made up of blips and beeps. (in the link above, you can see the Epyx flag)

Andrew and I played this game for hours on end. We'd play until our fingers were bleeding, and I can't believe that the A and D, and J and L keys on my keyboard survived the beating. You see, that's how your player would run. You'd hit the A and D or the J and L keys, depending on which player you were, as fast as you could, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The faster you could hit the keys, the faster your dude would run or swim. I'd practice so hard when Andrew wasn't around. I'd play a one player set, and try to figure out all the tricks. But of course, Andrew always won.

Now, if you saw the picture of the C64 screen, you can imagine how funny it must have looked...the two of us, him over 6 feet tall and me not far behind, sitting in front of that tiny screen for hours, hunched over and sharing one keyboard, hitting those keys as fast as we could over and over.


I'm sure Andrew's got some funny Summer Games memories, maybe he'll post some in the comments...

An Eric Episode

If you've ever wondered when or how my computer love originated, you need look no further than my brother Eric.

Eric has always been into mechanics and electronics, always loved taking things apart to find out how they worked. So it was only natural that he had an interest in computers and decided to make his living in that field.

When I was very young, Eric gave me a computer he'd built. All I remember about it is that it had this hose/tube thing that reminded me of a vacuum hose, with that accordion pleating. It was huge, and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I don't remember playing on that one much, but I'm sure I did.

But it was the portable Commodore 64 that Eric gave me in my preteens that really got me hooked. I loved that machine like it was my soulmate.

Summer Olympics (which Andrew and I played for hours, and is deserving of a blog post all to itself), Blue Max, Beach Head 1 and 2, I could list the amazing C64 games for hours. My favorite was the Alice in Wonderland game. It served as the precursor to my obsession with adventure games like the King's Quest/Police Quest/Space Quest Sierra series. When I would play Alice in Wonderland I would get swept into that world, and I never wanted to leave. It's true that you never forget your first love...I still get a little misty eyed when I see a DOS prompt.

When I went to stay with Eric and Sue for a summer a few years later, that's when I first played a King's Quest game. I don't know if Eric already owned it or if he bought it for me, but I fell head over heels in love. Eric was a huge fan of Whoppers then, and he always had a paper milk container full of them near the computer. So for that whole visit I ate Whoppers and played King's Quest. That was also when I learned that the game manual had a phone number in it for the "Hint Line". (What I didn't learn was that numbers starting with 1-900 weren't free...)

I remember that when I'd have a problem on the computer, and Eric would come in and sit down to fix it, I would just watch in complete awe of his power over the machine. I wanted nothing more than to be able to manipulate the computer the way he did.

Looking back, I guess at that time it was pretty unusual for a 12 year old to have a personal computer. But it was (and still is) pretty unusual for a girl to have a brother like Eric Lewis, so you gotta throw "usual" out the window.

Drink Up

No wonder Zachary is such a strange kid.........

2:27 Minutes Of Fame

Check out my brother ELew on CBS Evening News, operating the projector at John Young's Guerilla Drive-In.

Here's the video clip.

You Had To Ask

My mom and I drove to West Chester last night to pick up Colson. While we were there, we had dinner with my niece Brooke, who happened to be in town on her way back to Manassas, and my brother Eric.

It was fairly late for the kids, and they were all starting to get a bit tired. Towards the end of dinner, Zachary asked me if we could go home. Brooke looked at him and asked, "What are you going to do when you get home?"

Zach looked up at her, rolled his eyes and said, "NOT see any of you!"

I Baptise You In The Name of the Father, the Son, And Marco......Polo!

I was talking to ELew last night, and he started telling this story that began with, "I went to this baptism slash pool party last weekend..". I had to stop him there, because the thought of a baptism slash pool party was making me laugh out loud, and I had to comment on it. I mean really, of all the ludicrous events...

I had to immediately think of an analogy, to explain how ridiculous this pairing was. I mean, you're taking a ceremony that is supposed to be fairly solemn and fraught with meaning and pairing it with an event that's along the same vein, but completely frivolous and casual. The first one I could come up with quickly was a briss slash orgy.

Driving home I came up with a few more:

"I'm going to a funeral slash wax museum tour".

"I'm going to partake in communion slash grape-stomping".

"I'm headed to a breast cancer survivor ceremony slash wet t-shirt contest".

I could go on and on....feel free to add your own.

The Great Debaters

Driving in the car yesterday, I had a funny thought about what Judgment Day would have looked like with my family present. (Why, you ask? I have no idea, my brain moves in mysterious ways...)

No doubt everyone behind the Lewises in line would have a long wait. We'd all be debating with God regarding our lists of sins.

My mother would be trying to weasel her way out of her sins by complimenting the Lord on what a nice job He did making flamingos, that they turned out to be just the loveliest shade of salmon. And she'd be all, "I just love what you did with magnolias too, I would have made them EXACTLY the same way!"

My brother Andrew would be trying to make God laugh by agreeing with all of his sins, and telling the story of each one in his witty, self-deprecatory style, elaborating wherever he could to try to make light of the ACTUAL sin. God would be in tears at the end of each story, laughing so hard that He'd have forgotten why He was so upset with Andrew in the first place.

Amy, with her amazing memory, would just keep saying, "Oh yeah! I totally forgot about that one!"...."Really? Are you SURE I did that? What year was that? I have absolutely no recollection...". She'd be making God re-tell the stories of each one, and she'd be laughing at herself and slapping us all on the arms, "Can you believe I did that?? How funny is that?!!"

ELew would be playing Devil's Advocate with the Lord, doing his "well yeah I did that, but it's no different than (insert inane analogy that has no bearing on the situation but takes you on such a long journey you forget the original premise)". And he'd do it so well that Satan himself might pop his head up and ask God,"Yo, you wanna play a little Let's Make A Deal? I gotta have that dude on my team, he's gooooooood!" (Satan always has a Brooklyn Italian, Danny Devito-esque accent in my mind.) ELew would end with "Besides, that guy was an ESTP, so what I did had no effect on him. Is it really a sin if the person you're sinning against isn't affected by it??"

My Dad would be trying to explain what he was thinking during each of his sins, where he was on his spiritual journey at that particular point in time. He would want to help God understand why he thought the way he thought so he'd be quoting the scriptures he was studying at that time, and explain how he'd interpreted them, and God would be all, "Lewis, you do realize I WROTE that goddamned book??". (Yes, God will say goddamned. It's like how white people can't call black people niggers, but black people can call each other niggers.)

My husband would be turning each situation back around on the Lord. He'd pull out the "Well, if you think about it, you created me to sin. So in reality this is all YOUR fault!!". Then he'd use the, "You gotta admit that one was pretty creative, I have to get extra points for that...!!"

And I would be prepared with my spreadsheets full of percentages and Venn diagrams, research information and rational justifications. I'd have prepared my closing arguments during everyone else's turn, and I'd have come up with a speech full of zingers and sound bites. And at the end, I'd try to put on the too small glove, and God would have to throw up his hands in complete awe at my preparation and my eloquent and passionate delivery.

Either that, or God would have realized there was no way He could spend eternity with such a big bunch of yahoos, and changed His mind about the lot of us...

Ladies And Gentlemen...

Cole produced, directed and starred in a spontaneous five scene play on the 4th of July. When asked afterwards, he said he was inspired by the two trees, "that looked like you could pull a curtain between them, like a stage".

Here is scene 1.