here's pretty much all you need to know to get caught up with me.

bella took the picture on the left in april of 2017.
bella took the picture on the right in september of 2017.

the moral of the story. not a whole lot has changed in my life. i'm a pony with few tricks. the part of the story that matters is my scant tricks give me lots of fulfillment.

but most peopl ...

notes from a toastmaster's talk i gave titled JUST DO IT ... AGAIN.

i was at a game night recently. the hostess had assembled a diverse mix of her friends from different parts of her world. this means that many of the people in attendance didn't know one another. to this they played a game called two truths and a lie. if you're not familiar with this you just say three things about yourself, two that are real and one that is a lie and the people are supposed to gu ...

i was no kind of celebrity when i was in high school. fact is i did a pretty masterful job of blending into whatever backdrop surrounded me. but now, now i know what britney and gwen and taylor all feel when they enter a room.

unfortunately it is not because of me but because of my vivacious wife who is a story-telling machine in the classroom. she has her students near frothing to meet the man who married the likes of their crazy, say-anything biology teacher. i always knew there was some intrigue around me given the whispers and finger points i get when i go to a basketball game or school concert with marty or bella.

the other morning i had to get something out of marty's van. i could not find our backup set of keys so needed to interrupt her during school. when i stepped through the doorway of her large classroom the student heads swiveled toward me. marty, back to the door, was in full throat giving some instruction. before she could turn, one of the students rose from their seat, pointed at me, and said "IT'S TROY!".

to this marty swung my way and confirmed the initial report, "it is troy. what is troy doing here?".

as marty walked towards me kids leaned into one another, never taking their eyes off me and whispered excitedly. i explained my plight to marty. she got the keys and then wondered aloud the best way to get them back (as i tend to easily get lost in the large school). marty asked if anyone would volunteer to lead me to her car and then bring the keys back so i didn't have to find the room again. twenty seven hands shot in the air, "i'll go! i'll go! i'll go!".

now if i could just figure out how to can that zeal and pump it into the rooms of people who have to interact with me daily.

MARTY'S BROTHER
did you see something in troy when you first met him that told you he would be successful?

MARTY
no.

MARTY'S BROTHER
really? well how did you know he would be successful? that it would work out?

MARTY
i didn't know. how could i?

MARTY'S BROTHER
so you didn't know something the rest of us didn't?

MARTY
no. not rea...

the content from this website (starting in march of 2001)

for sure and without doubt, my most cherished and valuable possession in this world is the content from this website, since the birth of my first child at least. this didn't happen by design and it never really occurred to me what i possessed until a reader pointed it out to me in 2006. fact is right around then i was going to shut the site down but that story has been told. i have no idea how many hours i have poured into this over the last 17 years but i also have no way of quantifying the value it holds to me personally, and as times passes, my family. it is certainly not a daily or overt appreciation but can be seen when i observe marty and one of my kids going through old photos, or bella commenting on a troyscript she had recently read, or when i see my wife in the morning stepping through the archive viewer, occasionally saying, "ahh. do you remember when alex/anthony/bella did that?". most often my answer is no and i'll peer over her shoulder to re-aquaint myself with what happened 7/8/9/10 years ago as if i'm seeing it for the first time. that is where the true value of this 'thing' shows itself to me as the vault of my family's forgotten history.

glasses

like most people i started needing glasses in elementary. and like most people the glasses i got as a kid were kinda cheap and sucky--no high fashion here. so when contacts became available i gladly jumped ship to them. but as i aged i noticed my contacts-aided vision became increasingly blurry. when i asked my optometrist about it, he said it had to do with a facet of my vision and (at the time) could not be corrected with contacts. if i wanted crisp vision i would have to go back to glasses. my sight continued to worsen so i decided to make the move BUT declared i would not get crappy glasses. unfortunately, i didn't know what that meant.

then marty and i went to a movie. in this movie there was a character that took a pair of glasses off and set them on the table in front of him. as the scene played out, shown in the image above, i stared at the glasses and with a spooky level of clarity and confidence i knew they were the glasses for me. after the movie, i continued to perfectly see them in my mind as if i was looking at a still frame from the film.

for the next two years every time i passed a glasses store i would tell marty to give me a minute, i would walk in and ask the sales clerk if they had any "rimless, cable-wrap, saddle-bridge glasses" and for two years i was told no. then one day the sales guy said, "as a matter of fact i believe i do". he turned, scanned the wall of options, pulled a pair down and set them before my blurry, astonished eyes. i picked them up, put them on, leaned into the small mirror on the counter and said i'd take them. marty interrupted with a "whoa, whoa, whoa" and asked a silly question about cost. he studied the sticker on the glass's arm and said a number that surprised even me. but my pause was momentary. and before he set them back down on the counter, i repeated my declaration that i would take them.

that was 17 years ago and since then i have bought three more pairs so i would have extra parts for when they stopped making them (which they recently did).

necklace

in any picture you've ever seen of me in the last seventeen years, where my neck is visible, you will see my necklace. when purchased over the web in 2000, i never thought that this sub twenty dollar bit of pewter would be draped around my neck for almost two decades. i'm also amazed it hasn't been lost or broken. but here it is still in tact and still around my neck. sure i've gone through about hundred yards of leather cord, having to replace it every other year or so but that metal nubbin with the single word SIMPLIFY stamped into its soft face has never faltered through my every adventure over these many years, including the birth of all three of my children. i'm not exactly a superstitious man but i would be plenty sad to lose the one physical object that has been with me through it all. the only other such possession i have would be my wedding ring, which i don't know why i would not include that on this list but it somehow feels different.

another thing i like about my necklace is most people who try to read its tiny print thinks it says SUPERFLY instead of 'simplify'. the expression they give me when they think i, a very not-superfly kinda guy, am wearing a piece of jewelry with that proclamation on it, is one of the best faces i ever get to see.

bike(s)

i've only had three bikes in my adult life. i rode my first one for three years. it was a starter bike of sorts to see if i would take to the sport. i did. i rode my second bike for more than twenty years. and it wasn't like it was staying pristine hanging in my garage. i rode it a lot. and i mean a lot. in a story that hasn't been told (yet) a new bike has come my way and i very much see it as my next twenty-year bike. it truly is a piece of art. truly. and flying down a smooth road on its back is truly a source of intense-joy for me.

car

like my bike, my car brings me great joy. i'm not exactly a car guy and my car isn't exactly a showpice. fact is it is pretty beat to hell. part of that abuse is due to a philosophy i adopted after my kids were born that said, "you can love your stuff or you can love your kids, but you can't love both." because of that, in part, my car has plenty of nicks and scratches in the paint, namely because my kids, when younger, loved getting in and out of my car through the sunroof. there wasn't another kid who witnessed this allowance without great envy. there also wasn't a pleading glance at a parent that wasn't met with, "don't even think about it."

as for the car i adore so much, it is a 91 bmw 318i, or an E30 for those in the know. i wanted one for many years and became dour when they stopped making them in 91. when it was time for me to replace a failing car, i kept a sharp eye out for one in the used lots. when i spotted this one, the deal was done before i completed the u-turn. i'm its second owner and have had it for 19 of its 26 years. unlike my bike i don't drive it often (as i walk or bike most places) but the days i get to pull it out of the garage are good days, especially when i'm headed for the highway for a cross-country adventure in one of the most fun-to-drive cars i have ever come upon.

desk/office

ever since i was in junior high, making my desk a place i found comfortable and productive has always been a thing. between having a large workspace, my wall of wonder as the backdrop and lots of custom additions to it, i've always made having a space i want to be at a priority. when we bought our house, i knew the room and space i wanted and claimed it immediately. it was originally the nursery/changing room of the house and is part of the master bedroom suite. part of it included a double doored closet. after we decided to buy the house i gained special access to it again to measure the closet to see if my 50's government issue desk would fit into it. it would with an 1/16 of an inch to spare. to say it was like it was meant to be would be too goofy so i won't, but you gotta admit ...

watch

a guy whose core hobby and interest is time and life managment has to have a watch of note. my timepeice of choice is an original military issue timex. the two things i love most about it are (1) its rolling date feature (not all the modern-day replicas have this), and (2) it does not have the ridiculously large (american) face current-day watches do which is a better fit for my smaller wrist. next year the watch will be 40 years old and still keeps spot-on time just as it did when it originally rolled off the line.

MY DREAM DAY
05.30     wake (naturally)
06.00     write (for web or talk)
07.00     get aleo off to school
07.30     set goals for the day
08.00     get anfer to school
09.00     work - deep-dive development
01.00     exercise
02.00     meditate
02.30     design window
03.00     administrative - work
04.00     administrative - personal
05.00     read - professional
06.00     family dinner
06.30     dad hours (two 45 minute blocks)
08.00     clean kitchen (for marta)
09.00     leisure
10.30     bed

were i allowed to live the above day unperturbed for lots of days, i could cover a remarkable amount of ground on an enviable variety of fronts.

over a three year period i lost 25 pounds. two things contributed to this. first my doctor said my blood pressure had been slowly increasing and had now reached a point where i had to start taking medication for it. i have a personal goal of never having to be dependent on any pills, like any and like ever, so my question to him was completely predictable:

TROY
ok, but when can i stop taking them?

DOCTOR
stop taking them? what do you mean?

TROY
i mean how long do i have to take the pills before i can stop?

DOCTOR
well, never. you will take them the rest of your life mr. dearmitt.

i explained i didn't want to take any pills. he said that was a fine notion but my heart was saying something different. i asked if there were any alternative solutions. he said i could stop drinking. i don't drink. i could stop smoking. i don't smoke. i could leave my high pressure job. i don't have a high pressure job. i could lose some weight. well, i'm not exactly obese but i could stand to lose a few pounds. so let's try that. i asked him to give me three months. he agreed but said if there was no change after three months i would have to go on the medicine.

i lost ten pounds in those three months and when i went back my blood pressure had returned to its normal range so no medicine for me. woo-hoo. but during my weight campaign i heard/read something that caught my attention. i can't remember if it was dr. oz or tim ferris but i think it was one of the two and they said that this notion that as we age we have to lose the battle with our weight and physique is a bunch of nonsense. that not only is there no reason you cannot retain your college age body but your college age body is representative of what you are supposed to look like.

when i heard that and after having the initial success in dropping weight, i drew a new line in the sand that i would re-claim my college body. the below chart shows my happiest day over a three year period. that was the day when my weight, after starting at better than 175 pounds first dropped under 150 pounds. this is probably the first time my weight was below 150 in more than twenty years.

at my last annual checkup, my doctor had a student shadowing him. after a few introductions and pleasantries, he asked me to remove my shirt and get onto the examining table. after doing so, my doctor looked at me over his clipboard, turned to the girl at his side and said, "i assure you mr. dearmitt is the healthiest patient we will see today."

i'm unable to quantify how much sweeter a sentence that is than "i am about to put you on a pill that you will take until the day you die". i don't think we've invented the math to compute the difference between those two emotions.


click to view in full size

the short story is this:

• in mid-june i resigned my position of ten years at my most-recent employer, washington university in st. louis.
• i spent the next three weeks feverishly working to make my exit a clean and competent one. fwiw i spent the five weeks prior as well, starting my work after making the decision to leave. this effort was largely in the name of my staff who i didn't w ...
  View in Family Scrapbook >>>

yesterday i talked about my old job. today let me introduce you to my new job.

in 2010 i was asked by my employer to modernize a dated scheduling system they used to set their school's semester course schedule. for many years this had been a fully manual process and was buckling under present-day demands. they were hoping for something that c...

today, july 12th, 2016, is my last day with my current employer.

you may still remember my first day. i surely do. for the last ten years whenever anyone would ask how long i worked there i would always respond "since april 10th, 2006" with an aspergers-like zeal. many would comment on the precision of my answer to which i would sim...

i imagine i've announced this before but an odd life claim i can make is i've never, in almost five decades of life, lived in a house with more than one bathroom, even today. growing up, being an only child, only three people had to juggle bathroom time. now we have five people who have to dance in and out of the space. with three of those people being young children, or women who have given birth ...

most days anthony and i make the one mile walk to his school. after dropping him off, i then turn and walk another mile to my office. (fold in my morning workout, this is what gives me 9,000 steps when i sit down at my desk at 9am). depending on how early anthony and i leave the house, we have a variety of choices as to the route we take to school. our most direct route is a straight shot out of o...

of all the things i'm mocked for, my wardrobe may rank highest. people pick at both my choice of clothes but even more than that they pick at how few variations of those choices i wear. in reviewing recent photos i noticed how our first day of school photos for the kids this year captured my entire wardrobe.

on the left you have casual troy. i have four pair of those shorts* in three dif ...

marty, bella and i were walking home. as we were crossing a street bella yelled "SLUG BUG!" and gave me a hard shot in the arm. that side of my body sagged from the unexpected blow (she is not the small and defenseless girl she once was). as i began my whiny "what didya do that for?" the guy inside the vw beetle guffawed and yelled out his passenger window, "Man! I love that shit!". his comment got bella and marty laughing. the humor missed its mark on me and my sagging arm.

REBOOT
story concept by Troy DeArmitt

If there was a patient zero, they would never be known because ninety days after the discovery, more than seventy million people were verifiably terminal. It annihilated the middle class in a single sweep. Then it ravaged the poor, the rich, and then the rest. The "first world" was extinct within five months.

The ...

below is the musical piece i'm trying to learn right now (right now in this case equalling the last year). and no, i don't know how to play the piano. this is the first song i'm learning. presently i'm up to the 45 second mark, but as you'll see that's where things get interesting.

marty was driving home from georgia after a week away with the kids. i was in a meeting in my office. in the middle of a sentence my phone, which was sitting the desk between the man i was meeting with and me, began to ring. in the seven years i've had my phone this might be the eleventh time it rang as no one really had my number and those that did knew using it was about as effective as screaming my name out their front door. surprised to see it come to life, i glanced down at the screen. it read: SEX GODDESS. i swung my eyes to the man on the other side of the desk to see if he noticed the caller. he had not. i said i had to take it and answered the phone and heard: i later told the guy what happened and was relieved at the time that he didn't see it. he said if he did see it and i wasn't going to answer it, he surely would have.

regarding yesterday's pro-peril story, for any wondering, my part of the peril was installing the rope on the tree. i'm not a fan of heights and for sure know bad things can happen. but if i want my kids to leave their comfort zone and travel to new places, i reckon i should as well every now and again.

granted, being taunted by anthony while going through my trial with chants of "do you want me to climb up there and do it dad?" does not enrich the experience in any meaningful way other than, maybe, egging me on to finish the job.

and i'd never been more thankful for my failing vision because once i was at the peak of the climb and trying to manipulate the thick-as-my-wrist rope into the slip knot my super-neighbor taught me minutes earlier, i was able to slide my glasses down my nose a bit and given my severe near-sightedness, the distant world below blurred out, looking much less ominous.

i don't think folks talk nearly enough about the awesome parts of getting old.

a few days after my fourteen year old bella was mistaken for a grown woman (ref), she and i were out running errands. i told bella that given (1) her looking older than she is and (2) me looking younger than i am since shedding 25 pounds we might start running into situations where people look at us and wonder if we're a father and daughter or a rich guy and trophy girl. after icking and hacking her way through the suggestion she explained that no sensible human could be that mis-guided. i agreed that it seemed crazy and unlikely but said she should prepare herself for the possibility.

not even twelve hours later bella and i were on an evening bike ride through our park. we pulled up in front of the art museum to adjust some gear (me giving bella my helmet because she forgot hers - again). as we were working things out a woman exited the museum and walked by us. glancing our way, she pulled up and complimented our bikes. she stood back taking them in and then said it was so great that we enjoyed the same things and got out together. she began saying "it's nice when a ... ". here she paused and looked at each of us and bella finished her sentence "father and daughter" and the woman picked it up thanking bella and saying it was hard to tell sometimes.

after we parted and got out of earshot of the lady bella turned to me, saw my broad smile and said, "don't say a word. not a word." and we biked on in silence for a bit while bella digested this new development.

today is my 9 year anniversary with my present employer (remember).

and, if you believe in a little rag called forbes, my employer is the 13th best you can work for, in this country at least.

and i've long said i'm the happiest employee at my employer which means i might have a sporting chance of being one of the top 13 most satisfied employees in the country.

and i have the added benefit of being able to walk to my office. that is after i walk my boys to school in the morning (which adds up to 8,000 steps by 9:00am for all my step-counters out there).

and this proximity obviously means, when the kraft macaroni and cheese mood strikes, i can walk home for lunch too.

and i'm not even going to mention the part about my office being a sexy, cool corner office with a bay window or that it would be my first choice of offices on the entire campus. we'll just leave that bit out.

and then there's the little professional part where i love my work, like way more than i should.

sometimes it seems unfair.

but so did unloading trucks after i graduated college.

so if life is going to feel unfair either way, i'll take my current unfair over my past unfair any workday of the week.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. awesome

notes from a toastmaster's talk i gave titled MY FINEST HOUR.

for school, bella (13) was asked to write an essay about a family member. this was her response. it's crazy how much she knows about my/our past. at her age, i was never that plugged into my parents, or anyone who wasn't me for that matter. i find her curiosity and empathy both impressive and humbling. if i'm ever in need of a biographer, i for sure know who i'm tapping.

my notes from a toastmaster's talk i gave titled FAMILY MANTRAS.