The biggest test in 16 years

Age: 16
Goal: 70% and the freedom to wake up in the middle of the night and drive to McDonald's.

The parallel parking did not go as smoothly as hoped. Chalk it up to nerves. Stopped on a large hill, the instructor informed the young driver that those with manual transmissions deserved an extra level of scrutiny, not extra credit as he had hoped. Stopped at a stoplight, a wee bit too close to the car in front. Marked for various other infractions Returned to the DMV, nervously.

Grade: 70%. Passing is passing. Freedom in the eyes of the law. Restrictions in the eyes of the parental units.

"Well I'm not bragging babe, so don't put me down"

A pink learners permit folded and crumpled at the edges sits between 15-year old boy and his parent as they wait together at the bottom of the hill in suburbia. The boy sits on the left, his hands are tightly gripping the steering wheel. With his left foot jammed on the clutch and his right poised to dart between gas and brake, he nervously prepares another go. Slowly letting out the clutch, he slams his foot on the gas and the engine revs its disapproval. Startled, the boy pulls his feet off the pedals and the car lurches to a stop again. After the neck bouncing ceases, a discussion of feathering the clutch, of feeling for that point when the depressed pedal is ready to pounce and unleash a life of cruising for Big Macs and open road, occurs. The left foot raises slowly and the right foot does not jam on the gas, it depresses the pedal inversely of the right and the car rolls to life. It sounds simple enough, though the boy doesn't really know anyone else going through this ordeal. Automatic transmissions, the go-karts of the adult world are what his friends ride. The boy does not have that option. It's either manual in the little red Saturn or the mini-van. If he can just get this now, freedom awaits. Freedom to avoid steep hills, especially at the light on Troost where he imagines the cars lined up behind him and honking as he struggles to find that point on the clutch under pressure, but freedom all the same. This will not be the last day of practice, but the neck snapping, car lurching cannot go on forever.

The ups and downs of my existence

A little piece of the dream cracked today. You may have won the battle, Friend, but I'm resilient. I'm like silly-putty and I am a b*tch to get out of your hair.

That was the down, the up was Stranger than Fiction. It was everything I wanted my movie-going experience to be. I'm calling this the performance of Ferrell's career. Take that Ron Burgundy.

Is it just me or is this mock turtleneck getting awfully tight?

I'm letting my world shrink. Ultimate. Work. TV. Intergalatic planetary space travel. Repeat. There must be more...

Every so often I stumble across some details that I truly appreciate about people in the general sense, even though my stumblings are about a person in the specific sense. Today those details are:

1. A man who likes to read in the outdoors. He takes his books on a walk, finds a spot, and reads. Between paragraphs and deep thoughts, he picks up flowers or leaves or blades of grass and toys with them as he returns to his reading. Twirling, pulling, caressing the pieces of nature, he eventually grows tired of the words and the greenery and folds the latter into the former until eventually all of the books in his library have the pressed remains of outside.

2. A woman who recalls with pride that she was the tallest girl in middle school. Everyone around looks down and laughs at her 5-foot 3-inch frame. Height can be relative. Pride can too.

Fighting uselessness with futility

I felt useless all day long today. My brain then determined the best way to combat this feeling was to escape into the world of Tony Hawk Project 8, aka the gazillionth in a series of addictive video game skating games. Thanks, brain. Nothing makes me feel more useless than the never ending list of challenges with the three-tiered judging and the impossible trick combinations. Why, now I'm so useless that the garbage takes me out.

We're a very cute couple. And completely useless.

The turning point

There's a moment in sports movies where momentum shifts, fortunes change, and underdogs begin their final push to shocking victory. Yesterday, I thought I was in that moment. Facing the perennial local league champs, my scrappy team was tied at 3 all. We were playing well, but it seemed like we didn't believe it could last. They were so tall, so fast, could jump so high, and throw so well. I broke deep, running toward the end zone with my defender on my heels. A big huck went up seemingly out of reach. I raced after it and then left my feet in pursuit of the soaring disc. Laying out, I stretched out my left hand because I needed every extra inch. The disc hit my hand and stuck and moments later I slammed into the ground. My hand gripped the disc and I raised it slightly above my head to signal that I had held on to make the score 4 to 3. For the first time in a long time, it felt like we could win. We seemed to match this team in skill. The other team was fighting for every point and we were fighting back.

Unfortunately, they struck back and took half 8-6. From there, we could never close the gap and they went on to win 14-11. I saw, and I hope my teammates saw that winning is possible. Perhaps we'll meet this team again in the championship game. Maybe that was the turning point and this is one of those really long sports movies with lots of false climaxes.

Voting on the run

I have a long-sleeve white T-shirt that says, "Runners. Yea, we're different."

I like that shirt. It says a lot about who I think I am. I ran to the polls yesterday. I stretched while I waited in line. I cast my vote that mattered a very very very little and then I ran out of there and on for another 3 miles. While I was running through the mist and past the lined up cars waiting to lurch through another traffic light, I started to think about my sixth favorite topic of late. (1. Ultimate 2. Hotdish 3. Offices 4. Hot drinks 5. black licorice) That's right, I was thinking about planned communities. What the world needs now is love sweet love, but also we need communities that allow and encourage people to walk places. Communities with sidewalks and public transportation instead of suburban sprawl would be very good for people that can no longer drive and people that don't exercise and pretty good for the rest of us. If walking to the store was part of the culture, if not always hopping in a car and spewing exhaust into the air wasn't part of our daily routine, if polling places, haircutteries, restaurants were near by, imagine how wonderful life could be in terms of exercise (and stress relief), air quality, and general neighborliness.

That's my life and I approve of this message.

Verrrry interesting

Emergency Preparedness Day at work coincides with the elections.

('Cause they want us to be ready for the outcome.)
(And the ensuing black out.)
(And panic.)
(Don't worry. We'll be trained.)
(And so will our newly elected officials)
(They will protect us)
(as usual?)

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Remember Halloween...that was wicked







A younger, smaller me once said, "Give me a box and I can be anything." So much wisdom and considerable thrift in someone without all of his permanent teeth. That quote was probably in the year of the aluminum-foil robot costume, or the spray-painted green dryer get-up. It may have been the year of the third-tallest hat in the world complete with King Kong action figure hanging from the radio tower, not a Halloween costume granted, but still an impressive box-making feat. I know it wasn't the year of the punk rock ghost or the regrettable decision to be a cross country runner when I was in fact a cross country runner. Of course, there were no boxes involved during the cross-dressing years.

Halloween is a challenge that I particularly enjoy. Unfortunately, when my creativity gets going it often outstrips my building abilities, even in the box construction area. There was an ent a few years ago that looked a bit like I tripped and fell into our recycle bin. Sometimes both my construction abilities and my creativity fail me at the same time. I'm wondering if that was the case last year, since I only recall wearing my cowboy shirt to work and no other costume.

In the year 2006, the story is very different from just a year ago. Saturday night I attended a party as a Frosted Mini-wheat. I make a fine breakfast cereal if I do say so myself. I don't have pictures that I feel like sharing, mostly because I think there need to be a few benefits related to seeing me in person. A Frosted Mini-wheat me just moved to the top of that list right past watching me raise my eyebrows at salacious stories. I am, however, willing to share my work costume. I would've been a Mini-wheat at work, but that get-up didn't allow sitting, so I racked my brain and finally settled on clever over construction. I know clever is in the eye of the beholder, but I taped two dimes to my chest and proudly asked my coworkers, "Do you like my costume?" They looked at me strangely while I pointed to my chest. "Does it help if I shift?" Every time, it did not. And then, fully anticipating the eye rolls I received, I announced, "I'm a Paradigm Shift."

I think some of my coworkers have stopped talking to me.

There's a tic in frantic

I wrote a note at work today. Somehow it seemed easier to just rip off a sheet of lined paper, scrawl some words and addresses on it, and sign my name. The signing gave me pause. There's no automatic signature on the pages torn from a notebook. After struggling through the closing, I felt refreshed. This was the pace of work at one time. The pace of writing. The pace of mailing. The pace of waiting. I had a coworker who used to talk about the days before computers. It wasn't all typewriters and carbon paper. She said mail would come in daily some time near 11 AM. The mail would get opened, sorted, letters would get answered and sent back out into the world. Sometimes in a day. Sometimes not. They didn't follow up on the same issue three times in an hour. They were buried in paper, sure, and they had occasion to use a tickler which makes me giggle a little bit, but work was different. For five minutes, I felt that today. It relaxed me. We go so fast. We get things done; it's true. Some of them get done multiple times. We are doing more than ever before. And that's what matters... That's what matters....

Checked into the boards by Mr. Universe

I'm not sure about heaven, but Oklahoma...

Not how I wanted to start. Sorry.

Let me start again. There's a beauty in the universe and I suspect it's hanging around everyday. It's like beauty smog and it just sort of infiltrates everything around us. We breathe it in and stare it down and sound waves ride gondolas steered by able-bodied smog Venetians through it on the way to our ear canals. Most of us get caught up in too much other stuff to notice the fog of the smog of beauty flatulence. It takes an elbow to the throat to jolt us into noticing. I've had great fortune this week to take at least three elbows to the throat.

Elbow the first: I know that babies have a high cuteness quotient, but so few of them run with my crowd so I don't usually realize the depths of that power. Last week, I met Anya for the first time. It was a pleasure. She was fascinating. She'd move her hands while dreaming and the room full of people who had not stopped staring at her would collectively smile as if we were her puppets and she controlled our mouth muscles on strings. I was not immune to her power. It was a calming sensation and it put my whole week into perspective. The false complications, the various manufactured stresses- what is all of that compared to a tiny baby? Nothing. Each of us was once that small and that helpless. Each of us started out only wanting to eat, sleep, poop, or some combination of the three. We only pretend we have passed that stage.

Ulna the second: My iPod mini is full of music. Some of it makes me want to shake my tailfeathers. Some of it makes me want to grab my banjo and slow dance with it. There's music that makes me smile, makes me rock, makes me appropriately sad, fired up, or makes me want to break out my falsetto. There is one band though that reaches down inside of me, plucks out my soul, and serves it with cream of mushroom soup as part of the growing-in-popularity hotdish. That band is Hem. This weekend I got to sit in the front row while they served my soul as a delicious meal. Somewhere in the last few years I lost track of how much meaningful music they have put out. I delighted in nearly every song as they carried me through love, loss, and that place of peace that I can only recognize when I hear it in my innards.

Codo de tercero: High on a hill in grassy field in Virginia, framed by the Autumn colors of reds, yellows, and greens, chilled slightly by October air, a group gathered to play a game that has come to mean so much to me. That game- Ultimate. My mistress, my salvation, my social network, my release, my happiness. My first game of the season. I twisted my "good" ankle just before we began to play. With my bad ankle and my quadriceps already causing concern, I feared that I was done, but the switch clicked when the game began and the pain vacated. White plastic cut through chilled air and I gave chase. We carved tracks back and forth across the grass and let youth, joy, and beauty run into the indentations our pounding cleats left. The indentations overflowed and so we leapt into the air, diving, bounding, jumping, and hollering to pursue it all. Beads of sweat formed, deer appeared to watch this display of natural beauty as the disc spun on sometimes just out of reach. Bodies extended to fly through the air, feet darted, sometimes slipping, but panting and smiling we soared to meet the high of activity.

Excuse me, did you say Hot Dish?

I don't remember how the topic came up, and I refuse to admit that I might have been swapping recipes. Nonetheless, there was a "hot dish" (apparently that's Minnesotan for "casserole") that sounded pretty delicious and pretty easy in this conversation, which may or may not have extended beyond hot dishes. Anyway, I came home, whipped it up, slathered it with ketchup, and put it in my tummy for the last two nights. It's so good I wrote all three ingredients down on a recipe card and wrote "Hot Dish" at the top so that my grandchildren can some day enjoy a hot dish of their own.

Hamburger (or soy crumble)
Cream of Mushroom soup
Topped with Tater tots
Cooked for 45 minutes

Hot Dish. It's almost as fun to eat as it is to say.

The Garter family

It never feels right trying to catch a garter from a barely-known groom. It always feels like there should be some bond between this groom and the "next one." At least that's my excuse for only coming up with one garter in seven tries this year. Those in attendance might call in to question the word "tries" for several reasons. At least two of the weddings decided to forgo the dive beneath the bride's dress, so they were out. I caught the one. I don't remember how two others went down, which leaves us with just two.

In the first, my young cousin took one for the team with a stunning diving grab. I was quite proud of him for his catching ability as well as his generosity in taking the heat off those of us that have actually reached marrying age. Good man. Good show.

The second of the uncaught garters came much much closer. The garter whizzed out to my left and above my shoulder. It was catchable; I should know, I like to catch whizzing things for fun, however, it didn't seem right to steal the moment from the gentleman to my left who was not only in the direct line of flight, but was also about a head taller than me. Quickly considering these factors, it only seemed fair to let him have the prize. He must have been considering a different set of factors because he politely stepped out of the way to allow the garter to fall to the floor. Like befuddled baseball players, we looked at each other disappointedly before recovering our dignity. "Dear sir. I believe that was yours. Please do pick it up now," we both said. This back and forth went on for an awkward stretch before a young lad saved us from further discussion and plucked the garter from the ground. This seemed like an excellent compromise to all parties involved.

The wedding wave crashes

I thought that I'd feel a bit more jubilant now that I have my weekends wrestled back from the marriage monster. I closed out Wedding Wave 2006 with my seventh and final wedding over the weekend. My suit will head to the dry cleaners. My tuxedo will head to the tailor. (There was a crotch-ripping incident. It was a good year....) It's odd, not knowing what's next. I can only wonder when I'll be able to vogue again. I don't know whose Mom will be the next Mom I get to hug or whose Dad I'll get to struggle through a conversation with. It could be six or eight months before I see another bridesmaid. I may be calling my friends to give toasts during my meals, just to ease me back into the weddingless existence. I thought I'd be happy right now, but I'm a little lonely. It seems that... uh... there ain't no party like a 19,000 dollar party, 'cause a 19,000 dollar party don't stop. Say what? er. They do stop. And people sort of stumble off the dance floor, hug, kiss, and wish the sharp dressed man and that happy woman an enjoyable visit to somewhere romantic. The rest of us return to our lives already in progress. Maybe we caught up with some old friends, but by Tuesday four days will be just like four years. Maybe we made some new friends, but by Wednesday who knows when we'll see them again. At least we've got pictures, and also CDs, coasters, coffee, small bags of edible goodies, and our memories. Someone will drink to that. They always do.

Ways to look a gift horse in the mouth without sustaining serious injury

-Sneak up on the horse while she is sleeping.

-Stand perpendicular to the horse and use peripheral vision.

-Two words: Magna Fication

-Translated as one word: Binoculars

-Become a gift horse dentist, then it will be an occupation and OSHA will print guidelines for the bulletin board which will be oh so helpful.

-Wait until the gift horse is dead.

Or follow the advice passed down by generations of folks wiser than Salman Rushdie and don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Plant it on my cheek

Zach Braff is all the rage. Or at least he was like 10 minutes ago. I don't know why anymore. I saw Last Kiss and I'm depressed. It's a sad movie about how life sucks. I don't like to go to movies to find out life sucks. I go other places for that; country music stations for instance. I go to movies to escape, not to be reminded that at the end of this whole show we're all just going to end up dead anyway. I mean according to this flick, life is pretty much over at 29. Come on Braff, not all of us get to mambo with Rachel Bilson. I don't know what that means exactly, but I'm pretty sure that it adds rather than detracts from my ill feelings toward Last Kiss. The movie isn't dark and meaningful. They curse a lot, so it sounds dark, but it doesn't do it for me. It has some good music, but I wonder if it has the same problem that Garden State had. In that one, I found the soundtrack more moving than the movie. I can't confirm this on the Kiss yet, 'cause I haven't heard the soundtrack separately. It's just a theory at this point. Rachel Bilson had a really short pleated skirt. This factoid also seemed worth mentioning, though unconnected to much. Although in this case the pleats improved my opinion of this movie. In fairness to the folks that like men, Braff took off his shirt. This neither added nor detracted from my experience. Overall, I have to say that I wasn't pleased with the first movie I've seen in a theater since California*. Save your money.


*I'm looking into new ways to mark time. I have not ruled out states.

A Public Service Announcement for my New York readers Or is it reader, now?

The baring of one's teenage soul seems like loads of fun. Or at least worth a cringe.

Let me know if you end up on TV.

The ballad of disease

Here's the profanity-laced follow-up to my first *hit* single, The stability song. This one was inspired by a heart patient with pneumonia. I figure it has to brighten her mood just knowing that I won't be singing this to her.


Just because it's still dark
Doesn't make it night
Just ‘cause they removed the fat
Doesn’t make it lite.
She’s out of bed,
But fighting a foe.
You can call him Murdoch,
But I’ll call him Moe.

He’s pneumonia
A mean ol’ lung infection
He's pneumonia
Nobody’s candidate for re-election

He’s banned from the A-team
And cut from JV
If he were walking
I'd kick his knee
That surly bastard
Attacking the impaired
Come on, Moe, bring it.
Are you scared?

He's pneumonia
Doesn't rhyme with Jack Sh**
He's pneumonia
Y’know she’ll get over it.

The immune system sounds the bell
does its Truman
And gives him hell
Pneumonia goes down
With a right to the jaw
The crowd cheers wildly
And sings this song

He's pneumonia
Doesn’t rhyme with Jack Sh**
He's pneumonia
Y’know she’ll get over it.

Immune system dances
Cha-cha in the street
Pneumonia shrinks away
He's been beat.

Just because it’s pink
Doesn’t make it dusk
Just because it's perfume
Doesn't make it musk
She's out of bed
And besting her foe
This song should've ended
A long time ago

Pneumonia!
Bloody hell.
Pneumonia.
Go on, get well.

Here's a quote

From Eugene Mcarthy, "You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important."

Pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?