Go to bed
-October road has mastered the close-up are they? or aren't they? "falling in love" shot. Tonight's episode featured at least 4 instances. The punky perky pizza delivery girl look pretty much sealed my fate- I will continue to watch this show. It's a little booky, sometimes to the point of forcing literary references, but it feels like the show has its heart in the right place... maybe too much heart.
-Put this on the list of calls that I'd prefer not to receive from the cops, "Sir, we found your pants...and your wallet on campus. Call me back at 555-555-5555."
- I've been thinking about cutting my toothbrush down, but I'm hoping I can handle the weight of a full-length brush.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Advice columnist domino in age-awareness explosion
Dear Amy,
I'm 30-years old, never married....
This was how one young man began his letter to an advice columnist. I may have read the rest of the column, but this is the only line I remember. My brain immediately began racing- how many 30-year old men or nearly 30-year old men did I know that had never been married? Bazillions! was my first reaction. Granted, I live in a transient land where men and women come and go, which was suggested by the word transient, rather than stay and grow roots, but has the world gone mad?
As I arrived home, plopped my keys on the Star Trek-insignia-shaped table, and pilfered my mail, I noticed a "Save The Date" card. This wasn't one of those fancy-schmancy wedding cards. No, no, this was the announcement of an impending high school reunion. In theory, I have always wanted to attend my high school reunion out of "curiosity." In practice, I now realize that attendance is much more daunting than I previously anticipated. Why? myspace.com, that's why. Without the Internet, I may have been able to prod and pluck a few pesky memories from my mind about high school, but with visual aids strange feelings of both inadequacy and superiority have come flooding back. For some strange reason, I am unable to look at my high school classmates and not make some sort of comparison- my god man, you call that a beard? LET ME SHOW YOU A BEARD. Or on the flip side, how is it possible that in ten years you have only gained hotness? Isn't there a law of physics that prevents that sort of continual hotness upswing?*
Beard and hotness issues aside, perhaps the most daunting piece of all is acknowledging that 10 years have passed since I left high school. Somehow, I feel the need to account for those 10 years. I suppose 4 of them can pretty well be summed up in the 300 pages of blog postsings here. It's mundane and vague, but life has those moments. Then I can fire up the juicer and squeeze out a mention of college, ski lift operations, and the never-ending drum that beats a tune on a plastic disc. That covers another 5 years. I must have a missing year, wait, no, most of that was spent with a plastic disc. I guess that covers a big chunk of it. Throw in some travel, a little heartbreak, some really great friends, the on-going but lackadaisical search for meaning in running, novels, and life and we're getting pretty close. Not so bad.
Perhaps though, the tough part isn't acknowledging what has transpired in the last 10 years, but in what hasn't. So tough, that I can't bring myself to do it right now.
*Not all of my comparisons are quite so superficial, but give me a break, all the girls have private profiles and it's easier to compare looks than actually dig up memories and try to compare those with all the valuable information in a myspace quote.
Dear Amy,
I'm 30-years old, never married....
This was how one young man began his letter to an advice columnist. I may have read the rest of the column, but this is the only line I remember. My brain immediately began racing- how many 30-year old men or nearly 30-year old men did I know that had never been married? Bazillions! was my first reaction. Granted, I live in a transient land where men and women come and go, which was suggested by the word transient, rather than stay and grow roots, but has the world gone mad?
As I arrived home, plopped my keys on the Star Trek-insignia-shaped table, and pilfered my mail, I noticed a "Save The Date" card. This wasn't one of those fancy-schmancy wedding cards. No, no, this was the announcement of an impending high school reunion. In theory, I have always wanted to attend my high school reunion out of "curiosity." In practice, I now realize that attendance is much more daunting than I previously anticipated. Why? myspace.com, that's why. Without the Internet, I may have been able to prod and pluck a few pesky memories from my mind about high school, but with visual aids strange feelings of both inadequacy and superiority have come flooding back. For some strange reason, I am unable to look at my high school classmates and not make some sort of comparison- my god man, you call that a beard? LET ME SHOW YOU A BEARD. Or on the flip side, how is it possible that in ten years you have only gained hotness? Isn't there a law of physics that prevents that sort of continual hotness upswing?*
Beard and hotness issues aside, perhaps the most daunting piece of all is acknowledging that 10 years have passed since I left high school. Somehow, I feel the need to account for those 10 years. I suppose 4 of them can pretty well be summed up in the 300 pages of blog postsings here. It's mundane and vague, but life has those moments. Then I can fire up the juicer and squeeze out a mention of college, ski lift operations, and the never-ending drum that beats a tune on a plastic disc. That covers another 5 years. I must have a missing year, wait, no, most of that was spent with a plastic disc. I guess that covers a big chunk of it. Throw in some travel, a little heartbreak, some really great friends, the on-going but lackadaisical search for meaning in running, novels, and life and we're getting pretty close. Not so bad.
Perhaps though, the tough part isn't acknowledging what has transpired in the last 10 years, but in what hasn't. So tough, that I can't bring myself to do it right now.
*Not all of my comparisons are quite so superficial, but give me a break, all the girls have private profiles and it's easier to compare looks than actually dig up memories and try to compare those with all the valuable information in a myspace quote.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The world is not black and white.
I know because I am constantly reminded of the gray.
In fifth grade, for somebody, I learned about opportunity cost. I'm quite sure there was a hypothetical example. This example allowed that I could either buy a walkman or a baseball glove, but not both. I had to weigh my options and consider how I was going to spend my money. If I picked the walkman, the baseball glove was the cost. If I picked the glove, no radio. I remember being intrigued by this concept. Learning economics at such an age seemed kind of cool and grown-up. Decision-making, big words, walkmans, and gloves- for someone who had just entered the double digits, this was pretty revolutionary stuff.
I had no idea that opportunity cost would be the governing principle of my existence. If I had, I think I would have been a little more reluctant to choose a hypothetical tape deck with headphones.
I know because I am constantly reminded of the gray.
In fifth grade, for somebody, I learned about opportunity cost. I'm quite sure there was a hypothetical example. This example allowed that I could either buy a walkman or a baseball glove, but not both. I had to weigh my options and consider how I was going to spend my money. If I picked the walkman, the baseball glove was the cost. If I picked the glove, no radio. I remember being intrigued by this concept. Learning economics at such an age seemed kind of cool and grown-up. Decision-making, big words, walkmans, and gloves- for someone who had just entered the double digits, this was pretty revolutionary stuff.
I had no idea that opportunity cost would be the governing principle of my existence. If I had, I think I would have been a little more reluctant to choose a hypothetical tape deck with headphones.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Exercise the darkness inside
Sometimes, when it's cold and a bunch of hot bodies gather to sweat and pant and stuff in Gold's Gym, the windows fog up. If the panters, and sweaters, and stuffers create enough of the exercise fog to cover the windows, then when I walk by I see only shadows bouncing up and down to some unheard rhythmn.
It's a little like a glimpse into an alternate universe. An alternate universe where the opaque people only bounce up and down and never seem to get anywhere at all.
They have ponytails in the alternate universe, so it can't be all bad.
Sometimes, when it's cold and a bunch of hot bodies gather to sweat and pant and stuff in Gold's Gym, the windows fog up. If the panters, and sweaters, and stuffers create enough of the exercise fog to cover the windows, then when I walk by I see only shadows bouncing up and down to some unheard rhythmn.
It's a little like a glimpse into an alternate universe. An alternate universe where the opaque people only bounce up and down and never seem to get anywhere at all.
They have ponytails in the alternate universe, so it can't be all bad.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
From high to low
It's curious that highs and lows very rarely average out. Last Saturday, I was on Ultimate Cloud 9. Today, a storm has blown through and the wind carried my Ultimate-related joy away with it. Wind makes Ultimate a curious game; a lot less beautiful and a lot more blooper-ful. Add in my own recent battles with sickness and that's some sense of how far down I've tumbled from 9.
If I may be so bold as to compare Ultimate to knitting, which thanks to the Internets I find myself doing more often than I thought possible, I'm starting to wonder if I have too many projects going at once. I think I'm getting a little tangled up in what other people want and I am struggling to remember what I want. It's easy to pick up the needles, and it seems that the knitting is fairly straight forward once you've got the knack, but the trick I think is to actually choose the right yarn and turn that yarn into something useful or beautiful or at least accomplished. I've been knitting mittens with the same basic yarn for about four years now. Recently I have found myself with a whole lot of new yarn and ideas for all kinds of projects. I can't knit them all even if I knit furiously for the next 6 months, so sometime soon I need to pick a yarn and a project and knit something I can be proud of. It's ok if that's not mittens; it's ok if it is.
I don't know if it matters, but I'm also starting to worry that I'm about to pass my knitting prime.
It's curious that highs and lows very rarely average out. Last Saturday, I was on Ultimate Cloud 9. Today, a storm has blown through and the wind carried my Ultimate-related joy away with it. Wind makes Ultimate a curious game; a lot less beautiful and a lot more blooper-ful. Add in my own recent battles with sickness and that's some sense of how far down I've tumbled from 9.
If I may be so bold as to compare Ultimate to knitting, which thanks to the Internets I find myself doing more often than I thought possible, I'm starting to wonder if I have too many projects going at once. I think I'm getting a little tangled up in what other people want and I am struggling to remember what I want. It's easy to pick up the needles, and it seems that the knitting is fairly straight forward once you've got the knack, but the trick I think is to actually choose the right yarn and turn that yarn into something useful or beautiful or at least accomplished. I've been knitting mittens with the same basic yarn for about four years now. Recently I have found myself with a whole lot of new yarn and ideas for all kinds of projects. I can't knit them all even if I knit furiously for the next 6 months, so sometime soon I need to pick a yarn and a project and knit something I can be proud of. It's ok if that's not mittens; it's ok if it is.
I don't know if it matters, but I'm also starting to worry that I'm about to pass my knitting prime.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Variations on not yet dying
Sick leaves. They aren't the ones falling from the tree. No. No. Those are already dead. Poetic as they may be set to music from 1963. Poetic like a plastic bag dancing in the wind or so the Americans would have us believe.
Sick leave. Spending days in and out of sleep, I recall a time when this is what I did. It kind of makes me want to go back to work just so they won't make me go to that place when I had nothing to do with my day except wait for the next one. It also seems like a good opportunity to reflect on the value of health and how easy it is to overlook that on a day-to-day basis. I think I'll drink some orange juice to that. This also provides an opportunity to reflect on all the other important things in my life, but then I realize that I don't feel that great and I'd rather curl up and go back to bed, but not before I make a joke.
Stick leaves. I'll miss that little stick.
Sick leaves. They aren't the ones falling from the tree. No. No. Those are already dead. Poetic as they may be set to music from 1963. Poetic like a plastic bag dancing in the wind or so the Americans would have us believe.
Sick leave. Spending days in and out of sleep, I recall a time when this is what I did. It kind of makes me want to go back to work just so they won't make me go to that place when I had nothing to do with my day except wait for the next one. It also seems like a good opportunity to reflect on the value of health and how easy it is to overlook that on a day-to-day basis. I think I'll drink some orange juice to that. This also provides an opportunity to reflect on all the other important things in my life, but then I realize that I don't feel that great and I'd rather curl up and go back to bed, but not before I make a joke.
Stick leaves. I'll miss that little stick.
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