5 Things About Dad

I get my love of books, good alcohol, astrology and conversation from my dad. If you ever come over for dinner, he will attempt to guess your sign before dessert is served, and he's usually right. He mentions things like "Saturn cycle" and "Mercury retrograde". He gave me A Time To Kill to read when I was in 6th grade. He's always reading more than one book at a time, and we both have a habit of reading while we eat. It's just so relaxing...---When H and I lived on the east side of LA, our apartment had a serious cockroach infestation. In fact, the whole building did, and it felt like a losing battle. During Easter that year, my parents came and stayed with us. Our neighbors had just been evicted, and their apartment was disgusting. Soon, the roaches came looking for a new place to hole-up. I was so embarrassed. The last thing you want when you first move in with your boyfriend, and your parents are visiting, is a a cockroach explosion.But Dad assured me that this was no big deal - that this was nothing compared to the places he lived in growing up in the City. He peeked around our balcony wall and saw the other apartment's sliding door was open. He bought a can of bug spray, the kind you use to bomb a space with pesticides. He pulled the pin from the top, leaned around the wall, and threw the can through their balcony and into the now empty living room. You could hear it hit the floor on the other side of our shared wall. I always thought that was a pretty bad-ass move.---As you can see from the pic above, Dad has a sense of humor. It tends to be smart and sharp, usually sarcastic. Dad is the one who told me that sarcasm is the "humor of the intelligent". He also likes to make funny comments under his breath and then snicker at them, this guy giggle where his shoulders bounce up and down, and he sounds like Muttley (see below). Now when my sister and I make jokes together, and one of us laughs at our own jokes, we say we're being like Dad.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2M_aQaUzr8&list=PLD7848F1B9803F27F[/embed] ---It's only been recently Dad and I seem to be on the same page, and able to have good conversations. Just the other day we were chatting about financial blogs like Get Rich Slowly and he said he understood what I'd meant now by certain money decisions I'd made in the past few years. He said that if he'd listened to me back then, he would be retired by already. Now, on one hand, that stinks, b/c I want my parents to be happy, but on the other, it was nice to hear from him that he understood, and that my gut instinct of how to save my own money made sense to him now.---My dad owns his own podiatry practice, before that he helped run the country music bar his parents owned, and he worked other random jobs before that. If there's one thing he's instilled in me my whole life, it's that you work hard, and you keep a level of excellence in your work. He's always supported my dreams and decisions, and that sense of entrepreneurship - that if you want something, you figure out the steps and put the work in. You have the autonomy and control to make your life what you want it to be.(My parents are visiting in a few weeks, and I can't wait to spend some time with them)Happy Father's day Dad - love you!