Day 24 – Peanuts or Shells? It’s Up To You.

A popular saying onboard ship when I served in the Navy was “Some days, peanuts. Some days, shells.” That would usually be followed with a “Today is a shell day” because no one would think of the saying if they were having a peanut day.

Well, today started off as a shell day for me. I awoke with a headache that worsened as I drove to work, hitting every red light and getting stuck behind slow-moving semi-trucks and soccer mom vans. Then I sat through a ninety-minute meeting where an auditor presented his findings to management. Being a shell day, it wasn’t a particularly rosy report.

The headache, of course, faded in the background. The longer than usual drive meant I got to listen to an extra song on my mp3 player, which turned out to be one of my favorite Bob Seeger tunes. The audit findings? Good for my department because it provided us the mandate to make some long desired changes to business processes. The cherry on top was a meeting scheduled for 4:30 pm on a gorgeous, sunny Friday afternoon that was rescheduled to Monday morning.

Peanuts or shells?

It really depends on how you look at things. Granted, sometimes there just isn’t a bright side to a bad situation no matter how hard you try to find it. Or perhaps there is, but it’s buried so deep it isn’t even worth the effort. And truthfully, sometimes we just like to wallow in self-pity. We all have days like that.

Some people have lives like that.

And yet, we’ve all seen stories of individuals who refuse to let a bad situation affect their outlook on life. You might even know someone like that. They can’t control the things that happen to them, but they can choose how they react to them.

That is what I did today.

Beer-wise, this was a two-peanut day. I tried two different Leinenkugel's - Sunset Wheat and Classic Amber. The former claimed to be a wheat ale, but tasted more like a fruit beer. Not bad, but not great (one peanut). The latter was better, though not by much. A so-called premium lager, it looked great, but tasted so-so (one peanut). So...two peanuts.

Unfortunately, I had to work late due to fallout from the auditor meeting and I got behind a bunch of cell phone talkers on my way home. Shell day?

You decide.

Cheers!

Goal...............524.....365
Progress...........43......24
Remaining......481.....341