Miller Time, Baby!!! My true calling?!?

When I was youngling (not to be confused with Yuengling), I had a slew of nicknames. Quite literally so many that it was almost weird for my parents to actually call me Graham...in fact, that still feels a bit awkward. I'll save digging into that for another blog, and maybe a trip to counseling. One of the names I'm most proud of, however, is: "Miller Time - The Original Party Guy," which was actually one of my first nicknames...like pre-speech.

Now you may think it odd giving one's son a nickname born out of a marketing campaign for a beer company (and there may be sides of this story I don't know) but it may actually be the most appropriate nickname of all of them. The story I was told is that I was dubbed "Miller Time" because I was always smiling, laughing, and maybe just a little bit crazy when two or more were gathered. Let's do a quick case study:

Take a look at some of these pictures. Ok, you're probably thinking "nice work showing off the cute pictures of you as a kid, 'Rico Suave.'" Don't get me wrong...I'm devilishly cute in ALL my little kid pictures. However, I'd like you to look a little more closely at the smiles in these pictures. If you've read some of my other blogs, you may have gathered that I place HUGE amount of value on sincerity. The smiles in these pictures are smiles of joy/elation/jubilation/etc. Now, you can fake happy, but you can't fake joy. Do you see my point?

I'm especially glad and maybe a bit relieved to say that smile's been on my face a lot lately - more than it's been in years. There are a lot of variables that play into that: holidays, parties, umm - Christmas parties, visits home... But once again, I'm going to attribute it mostly to spending so much time in the good company of good friends.

All that to say that "The Original Party Guy" is BACK! A few weeks back, we were having a tacky Christmas sweater party at my buddies' house. This is the third party of theirs I've been to in 2 months that eventually turned into a dance party (which has been attributed to my doing by more than one person now). I was DJing this one until our good friends the police showed up...oops. 8) It was just a little too late to be cranking everything up to "11" I guess. The best part about it was that it was just good clean fun. Nobody was "hooking up." Nobody was driving home drunk. No fights or animosity. It was just a bunch of people hanging out and enjoying each others' presence. So, my face wasn't the only one with the sloppy grin on it. Good times indeed.

Last night I joined a group of people and we helped Hooten Annie Parsons move to her new place of residence. I'm pretty sure I set a new record for how much can be fit in the back of an S10 pick up truck. We celebrated with the staple moving meal (pizza and beer) and hung out just a little too late for a Monday night...and you know what? It was GREAT!

It's times like this when I realize that no matter how much stuff sucks, there are reasons to be joyful...and if you can't think of any, I might suggest starting here: Perhaps it's time to reconnect with old friends, enjoy present friends and maybe even discover new friends.

Ahhh Christmas!