Author: Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did.

When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing).

Since then, he was worked in network security, healthcare, banking and finance (and FinTech), general high tech (AI/ML, Cloud, IoT), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content.

And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

Potato Soup for the Soul, Or Stomach Bug? You Tell Me

I fear that in light of several unfortunate intestinal problems this year, I am going to be forced to proclaim 2007 as “The Year of the Colon.”

Harken back if will to the ill-fated multi-family vacation to the beach earlier this year where I spent four of the most miserable hours of my life trying (unsuccessfully) not to puke over the side of the boat while on a deep sea fishing trip. Moving forward in time, just before I left on my vacation to Pennsylvania last week, I had what can only be called “pseudo-appendicitis” that included severe cramping symptoms among other things. On top of that, I’m on my second round of very strong antibiotics for the second time in 3 months. And now…oh now…

I knew that my going away for three days on a solitary (sans-family) vacation was going to cost me, but I wasn’t sure what form it would take. I figured that when I returned, my wife would pretty much hand me the kids and go for a walkabout around town. To her credit, she did give me a few hours of unpacking grace-period before doing so, but since returning, it’s pretty much been the daddy show in the evening. Which wouldn’t be so bad if our youngest of seven months hadn’t come down with an ear infection which has left him a blubbering mess, for which he is now on the very same antibiotics I’m on and which has also turned his colon into a sewage-like firehose from which there is no escape.

The night before last, my wife made a potato soup dish, no doubt inspired by something she read in a magazine her grandmother is fond of called “Cooking Light.” This magazine, in case you’re not familiar, basically takes really yummy versions of high-fat dishes and attempts to make low-fat versions of them. It also includes lots of pictures of MILFs in their little spandex outfits doing these cutesy little exercises while holding 5lb dumbbells (right!). This is the second such attempt at a recipe this month from this magazine, the first being a roasted chicken stuffed with lemons and rubbed with some kinda something (not oil mind you). The result was a terribly bland chicken…reminiscent of a poached chicken breast with no seasoning.

Back to the soup…in the place of whole milk and no doubt at least some butter and half and half, this recipe called for skim milk, sour cream and lord knows what else (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth while thinking about it just now). Now, this dish is one of those dishes that tastes pretty decent for the first few bites, but after a while, you realize that something just isn’t right. The connoisseur in me realized that for whatever reason, rather than having a light and creamy soup, we had a heavy, frothy concoction that wasn’t improved by adding any of the condiments (bacon bits, cheese, scallions) provided. Even as I told my wife it was yummy, I left a bit in my bowl complaining that I was full. No worries.

The next morning (yesterday) I awoke to a queasy tummy, which I blamed on both my antibiotics and on an…um…male pain that WebMD said was normal for prolonged infections in the body. As the day progressed, my queasiness worsened. I skipped the gym and headed home in hopes of some downtime before the fam arrived, only to be quickly followed by my wife suffering from the same ailment.

When I’m sick, I can’t sleep, but when my wife is sick…she sleeps for hours…so once again, I got to be up with the boys all evening (and night) and I’m happy to say that I’m feeling about 80% this morning. My wife is probably back up to 60% but since she started complaining of symptoms after I did, she should be pretty good by this afternoon.

So either, we got some kinda food poisoning from the soup (cuz neither child had any soup and neither child appears sick) or we both got a particularly virulent strain of a tummy bug. Either way, my mind blames the soup and as an added bonus, every now and then a “taste memory” pops up in my mind and in my mouth and it makes me want to just go let it all go. But alas, I have the stomach of iron (minus the fishing trip again mind you) and I just can’t throw up.

So, payback is a bit** and in this case, much worse than I imagined. But hey guess what? My wife gets to go out of town again tomorrow night so guess who gets to pay me back this weekend?

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A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

The Family (You Don’t Remember) Resemblance

 Weekend in PAI returned Sunday from a trip to Pennsylvania—Honesdale, PA to be exact—where I was visiting my maternal mother and my sister (oh ok, half-sister). Honesdale, in case it sounds familiar, is the sight of the parade at the beginning of the Gina Davis, Samuel L. Jackson flick titled “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” where Gina Davis plays a lowly-housewife jolted out of her hum-drum life only to find that she’s really a top-notch assassin with repressed memories. I give it two thumbs up.

At any rate, I made the distinction that this is my maternal mom because as many of you know (as if there were many of you) I’m adopted and have a caravan of family pieces scattered around the U.S. like goldfish crackers are scattered around the backseat of my truck. My maternal mom, lovingly self-referred to as “Bio-mom,” is a 50-ish aged woman enjoying a rebirth now that she and her husband (also father of my two half-sisters) have gone separate ways. She has a new boyfriend, a new hair-do, and has lost a number of pounds and has apparently sent them packing down here to Atlanta where they were delighted to find a DNA match for a new home around my waistline.

I did a lot of face studying while I was there this time, which is what one does when one looks nothing like anyone in their immediate family. And as one restauranteur my Bio-mom knew remarked upon meeting my sister and me, “Her…I see the resemblance, him, not so much. Must take after his father.” After which I simply sat and enjoyed the momentary noise of the crickets chirping outside until my Bio-mom filled the silence with, “He does.” Said restauranteur felt suitably embarrassed and beat a hasty retreat.

But it’s true, I don’t really look like my mother. I mean, perhaps there is some resemblance, but nothing like there is between my full brother or my two half-sisters so I really have no one to compare myself to.  Which I suppose is kind of good, unless I ever want to know what my hair will do by the time I’m 50 (I’m already going silver so I have a pretty good idea).

The weather turned nice and fallish just as I arrived and my mother and I suited up and took the bikes out on about a 15-mile jaunt. We kept up a pretty good clip actually, stopping a couple of times for a scenic break (the picture at the top is one break we took). I also got a couple of good workouts in at my sister’s house where her husband has set up a gym fancy enough to rival most hotels I’ve stayed at. So all in all, I felt good about all the wine and cheese I ate while I was there.

Monday morning I dropped by an old bosses’ office to say hi and I mentioned my weekend to him. Knowing that he is a recreational biker, I also mentioned that I rode about 15 miles this weekend. Then, as a courtesy, I asked how his weekend went and then I listened with increasing agitation as he explained how he did a 100-mile cross-mountain bike race up in the North Georgia mountains. Ah well, I guess I did ask.

I wonder what time the gym opens in the morning…

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A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Life in these United States

Childhood Memories and Zillow

I recently found an interesting Web tool called “Zillow.” It’s billed as a Real Estate tool that both agents and home buyers can use to sell and compare houses in a given market. It’s pretty neat in that it lets you, as a homeowner, see what your neighbor’s houses are assessed for, along with square footage, etc. So, if you think your house is bigger than your neighbors, but you weren’t sure enough to go crowing about it…well, now you can.

Another interesting feature is that it uses other freely available aerial photographs to show the houses. Granted most of the pictures aren’t detailed enough to see what color paint is on the house, but you can see the top of the house and the surrounding land.

I thought it’d be fun to look up some of my old stomping grounds from my childhood and sure enough, I was able to find them. For instance, our first house in Mobile, AL is now selling for about 95K, which in Atlanta prices, would get you a hovel in an undesirable part of town. So, I then looked up our second house, the one my family built with our bare hands, and while there was no value listed, I was able to see the general layout:

My house

When I lived there, we owned five acres on the NW side of a huge tract of wooded land owned by a great uncle-in-law. It appears that it now has been junked up a little bit and more trees cleared off, but it’s still clearly my old house. And boy does that bring up some memories…some bad, some good, some just plain old indifferent. It’s funny though how nostalgic seeing the place makes me.

For instance, that bare spot to the SE of the house…I cleared that out myself over the course of a couple of summers. Mind you, this was in the heat of Alabama summer. I remember working out there during the day (because my dad made me) and being completely soaked in sweat; then going inside the a/c and drinking gallons of sweet tea. I remember our Dobermans running around in the woods as I worked, chasing after who knows what. I remember the girls who used to drop by…well….never mind about that. Suffice it to say that there is apparently something to be said for a sweaty, slightly overweight teen-age boy holding an axe and a pair of lopping shears in the middle of a sweltering Alabama summer. Ah…the memories.

And oh the fishing. Fly fishing, bass fishing or just sitting on the banks with a cane pole in one hand and my faithful dog lying next to me hoping I’ll throw her a piece of my PB&J. It’s almost enough to make a guy get all choked up.

I never really had any desire to go back and visit my old home, until now. Now, I just need a good excuse. Hey, only four more years till my 20th high school reunion.

Man…now that’s depressing.

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

That Heathen Family Down the Road (part 1 of 2)

Sistine Chapel As with so many things pre-kids, I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I don’t attend church as often as we used to before we had children. Did I also mention that I feel really bad about this? Or, at least I try to feel bad, but most of the time I just feel guilty. There is a difference.

I feel guilty because I know that if I don’t make an effort to introduce my children to God, when they get older, they’ll inevitably fall victim to whatever view of God society has most successfully been able to foist on them rather than coming to their own view of God after having been given as much data as possible from a variety of sources.

So, I want to take my children to church, but taking children to church on the weekend is work! After getting up at 5:30 am for five days during the week, on Saturdays and Sundays I just want to get up, enjoy some coffee, maybe sit outside on the porch for a while, and just generally not be rushed to do anything. And taking kids to church is anything but relaxing. It’s basically like taking them to another daycare at this age (my oldest is 3 and my youngest is 7 months), which we don’t like doing since they’re in daycare the rest of the week anyway. We’ve also tried reading Bible stories to our oldest son but right now, unless the story involves danger (“Daddy, did the lions eat Daniel?“) or I can read the story using some heavily accented speech, he’s just not interested. And I’m sorry, but three years old is a little too young be dropping the whole, “Jesus died so you could be saved” thing on him. So right now, I just don’t see that it’s a big deal.

Looking back though, I’ve realized that this drift from church started before the kids were born; they just make a good excuse for behavior that we were already leaning towards anyway.

When my wife and I first met, we were both going to church heavily. I had fairly recently come off of a bad break-up (involving a wedding ring) and had turned to the church for stability since I had no family local. My wife had recently moved to town after finishing her B.A. degree at the U. of Texas and was living with her family while she worked on her MBA. Her family was strict Catholic, but has since embraced the lighter side of church–the Pentecostals.

After we got married, we continued to attend church, but with less frequency. A large part of that I believe is because of the difference in Catholic churches that my wife was used to attending, versus what I was used to growing up under the Pentecostal label.

See, Catholic church rarely lasts more than an hour. Catholics long ago realized, “Hey, we’re all sinners. Let’s get together for an hour on the weekend, break some bread, drink some wine, and then go and sin no more. E- Pluribus Unum…I missed the bus, you missed the bus…”

Pentecostals (Baptists, Church of God, Assembly of God, etc.), on the other hand, still labor under the belief that most of us are perfect and that to remain in a state of perfection, we should meet on Wednesday night and also on Sundays, and attend a church service lasting a minimum of an hour and a half and involving several uncomfortable situations for both the body and the mind.

So while my wife and I both began to drift away from regular church attendance before we had children, I believe it was for different reasons.

In my case, I got a heavy dose of God as a child. Then, as I grew up, studied texts outside of the strict Biblical tombs the Catholic church deemed acceptable several hundred years ago, and was able to decide for myself what I believed in given all that I had seen and heard, I came up with my own beliefs, which still include the basics of what I learned as a child…only more tempered with what I consider a healthy dose of skepticism.

Growing up also opened my eyes to the world of the church. The church today, while certainly offering those who need it, a sanctuary and a place of refuge, is also a business. It’s a business with a CEO (the Pastor) a board of directors (the deacons and elders) and worker-bees (the flock) without whom the church could not and would not exist. And while I believe many (possibly most) churches start out with the best of intentions, I also believe that a great many of them become self-perpetuating businesses with the same desire to succeed as cam be found in any corporate boardroom.

Am I jaded? A bit. Skeptical of “the church” as a whole-absolutely. Do I want my children to endure what I went through as a child only to watch my own parent’s marriage fall apart despite all of the holiness and platitudes they espoused throughout the week in their everyday life-a resounding NO!

Whoa! Where’d that come from? We went from talking about the church, to delving into my personal past. Hmm, maybe we should explore this some more.

(After this commercial break…like tomorrow maybe).
Part 2 on it’s way.