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.