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My grandmother (mom's mom) recently passed away at age 90, so I wanted to display this article I wrote about my grandparents six years ago. At this point, I still have my dad's parents to spend time with, which actually, I hope to do tomorrow.

(This column was originally published in the Crawfordsville Journal Review on March 19, 1999)

There are at least 56,828 things to do during spring break. If you have a credit card, or know how to use a stolen one, the number grows exponentially. But there is one activity that rarely gets a lot of hype this time of year.

I was really surprised how good the ratings were for the first week of the XFL.

While I do not consider myself an expert in many things, one thing I feel a bit knowledgeable about is the genre of business-related books. I haven't read all 540,495,317 books in this field, nor do I plan to do so, because most are written by authors who think that because a company made billions of dollars by having its employees wear Hawaiian shirts on Fridays, the CEO of said company is a genius.

In a day and age when there are so many different types of people, with various races, ethnicities and personalities, there is one type I'm more likely to associate with frequently.

I have an insatiable and unconscious desire to surround myself with Dr Pepper drinkers.

But Iím also convinced that most Dr Pepper drinkers are psychotic.

Which comes first is unclear. And calling someone psychotic can be misconstrued, so Dr Pepper drinkers, donít take this personally. But ponder the following arguments.

I thought I had finally recovered from my addiction, but it has come back

to haunt me. Luckily, I am able to handle it through indulging for short periods

of time, and it mysteriously goes away, almost as fast as

it hit me.

Yes, you guessed it. The addiction is video games. Another good way

for me to stay away from video games is to just be so freakin' busy that

I don't have

time to play. But I have to make time for Circus