i seem to have read 0 pages this week, so i didn't finish "the memory of running", so it looks like i'll have a carry-over book.

the past week i've been looking for running tights. let me clarify - CHEAP running tights. i got an expensive pair for xmash from junior - a $50 pair of underarmour tights. they are incredibly comfortable, perfect fit, superior temperature control. but, $50?! that is not in my everyday budget. these will be my good tights for races and shizzle. my formerly good tights will become my semigood tights for like group runs and shizzle. my regular, everyday tights for when i am just out running at lunchtime and it's just me - these are of the CHEAP variety.

i have had 2 pair of cheap walmart leggings for like... well, forever. sometime during the past month, i lost 1 of those 2 pair and this is quite distressing because it's not like there was anything wrong with them but now they have to be replaced. so, fine. i have been shopping. i looked at the mall, and at academy sports, kmart, and target. nothing. i finally broke down and went to walmart and bingo! leggings for $5 a pair - and, organic, no less. they are a brand called "seed supply company" and of course i cannot find good pic of their logo. i wore one pair today and they felt great. now, there's no telling if they will hold up, but hello - $5? if they don't hold up, i'll replace them. the thing is that for everyday wear i want something that i am not going to care if they get muddy or torn or like... lost.



also at walmart - $5 sunglasses. over the past 18 months or so i have gotten used to wearing sunglasses while i am running and let me tell you there is really a lot to be said for not squinting while running. it's kind of amazing how much difference it makes to not be squinting. if you don't wear shades while running, you should try it.

but one thing about wearing shades while running is that they take a beating. the normal wear & tear alone - for sports equipment, for anyone - is high. then, there's all the sweat which in its copious wet saltiness deteriorates the screws if there are screws or the adhesive if there is adhesive or whatever it is - it deteriorates. point b - the droppage factor. i am forever dropping shizzle onto the hard concrete locker room floor. garmin? timex? contact lens? prescription glasses? mirror? hairbrush? mitten? okay, that last one not such a big deal with the breakage, but if you can see the general drift here is that if it's in my hand, there's about a 42.368% chance at any given moment that it will go directly to the floor. it's not like i am brobdinaggian, but falling from my hands to the concrete is not generally beneficial to material belongings.

so, there's the normal wear & tear, the sweat, and the droppage and altogether you get a rough life for a pair of shades. maybe the expensive ones would last longer, but who wants to worry about them? plus, at $5 pop, i can have a pair or two at home and a pair or two in the locker.

everything i was looking for - cheap tights & cheap sunglasses - was on the shelf at walmart. what could i do? i bought the shizzle. and really, when you think about the big picture, it's all good because if he wasn't sewing my tights - that 4 year old in vietnam would probably fall in with a bad crowd, be smoking cigarillos and sleeping late.

what was it... something about... it was like... ummm.... what was it?

today while i was running i thought of something i wanted to tell you - something about work that was really funny and i planned it out including the punctuation which included brackets. unfortunately, i have completely forgotten the SUBJECT and only remember the GRAMMAR. what a goob.

sooooo.....

in case you haven't heard - the terrorist bomper guy from the christmas day airplane event is a follower of the same imam as the fort hood crazy psychiatrist shooter guy. i really don't want to get into all of it because there are myriad undiscovered and undisclosed details, but i just thought you should know that little tidbit.

in case you haven't heard - the senate passed health care legislation last week and part of the legislation is that nebraska doesn't have to pay the costs of new federal medicaid mandates. the rest of us would have to shoulder the load. hey, now, that seems fair, don't you think?

in case you haven't heard - gmac has received another $3.79billion from the u-s treasury. just to clarify: the u-s treasury gets their money from you. would you want to give money to gmac? given the choice, i would not even give money to gmac in exchange for an actual gmac vehicle. but we weren't given the choice.

in case you haven't heard - tomorrow night's new year's eve and also is a blue moon, which is what you call the second full moon in one month. full moons occurring close to the winter solstice rise higher in the sky than those occurring at other times. when the sun's low, the moon's high. should prove to be an interesting night, eh?

sooooo.....

i still haven't remembered what i was going to tell you, damblit! what a goob. what a freakin goob.

sherlock holmes

we went to see sherlock holmes the other night, and it's a very good movie. it's got suspense and mystery and intrigue with a dash of science and large helpings of both humor and adventure.

jude law is really superb as watson. he's not the bumbling sort of watson you might have imagined from the books. at least, that's the sort of watson i always imagined - a rather dumpy, middle-aged, dim-witted yet stalwart companion to the more-dashing, smarter holmes. but law's watson is young, attractive, and while no less stalwart than i'd expect, he's a great deal smarter, shrewder if you will, and exudes patience as he manages holmes. he is a bit of a caretaker - getting holmes up out of drunken stupors and pointing him in the right direction.

i adore robert downey jr and am always happy to see him out of rehab and on the big screen, and overall i enjoyed his performance. heaven knows, he can carry off the addicted, womanizing, scheming holmes to a tee - but his interpretation of an british accent seems to be mostly contrived of mumbling & slurring his words. the subtle verbal interplay between holmes & watson was at times lost in downey's mealy-mouthed approach to the accent.

the young ladies - mary, watson's fiancee, played by kelly reilly - and rachel mcadams as irene adler -- are both superb. mary's patient indulgence of holmes's eccentricities matches that of her man watson, and it's clear she gets it - she understands that these two men are lifelong friends, and she's amused by them. irene is clearly in love with holmes, as he is with her, and these two make the merry dance of adolescent avoidance believable.

these main characters and the supporting ones - inspector lestrade, mrs hudson, lord blackwood - all the characters are very well acted. the plot is intriguing. the pacing is excellent. the costumes are lovely and while of the period are also vaguely contemporary - very well done. the special effects are extraordinary - especially the scenes on the docks and on the under-contruction london bridge.

bottom line? two thumbs up!

if i had to be around people all the time, there'd be a lot more people with black eyes. that's all i am saying. yo.

so here's the thing. i & this other project manager at my work have been co-managing this project, and it needed remedial help but was starting to shape up and is supposed to wrap up on wednesday, as in 2 days from today. we were both on vacation last week, but we're back today and we're like - woowoo let's hit it! and we're all enthusiastic and shizzle and we email the vendor with a couple things to get the ball rolling. we're thinking it will be an intense couple days back & forth with the vendor in the final test-modify-perfect cycle, but by wednesday we'll have everything in ship-shape. the vendor emails back -- "the guy working on your project here is on vacation this week, but he'll come in on wednesday and wrap it all up." what the heel? vacation?! who goes on vacation the final week of a project - and really more so -- is there no way they could have mentioned previously that he was going to be on vacation? like, last week they could have said - Important Guy Will Be Out Next Week. ?? oh, wait. i forgot. he's going to come in on wednesday to wrap it all up. in one day, he is going to accomplish three days of work. ga-a-a-a-ah!

so here's the thing. i was at the grocery and was placing my selections on the conveyor belt that would convey them up to the cashier who would then scan them, allowing the computer to compute a total amount of money required from me to turn my selections into purchases. so, i am doing this thing - placing selections - when this guy enters the checkout lane behind me with his cart. he reaches IN FRONT of me and takes the separate-order-bar and reaches further IN FRONT of me and places the separate-order-bar IN FRONT of me and proceeds to then place his selections IN FRONT of me on the moving conveyor which conveys the separate-order-bar and followed by his selections right on up to the point where the conveyor disappears to continue its trip around and where the separate-order-bar triggers the conveyor to stop. and so i am standing there with selections in my hand looking at the cashier like - what the heel? and i look at the guy and he is looking at a mag and won't look at me and i am really feeling a "really" coming on, but i resist the urge to yell "really" or to toss my freakin pineapple at his freakin head, and i hand the cashier my remaining selections, and every time i reach into my cart to retrieve a selection, i look over at him to see if he sees me taking my time getting the stuff out of my cart and handing it to the cashier one-by-freakin-one because he's put his stuff on the conveyor IN FRONT of me. ga-a-a-a-ah!

ANNUIT COEPTIS - NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM

word on the street is that the fort hood attack and the christmas day aeroplane attack are each stand-alone terror attacks, that they're not related and that neither is a part of some larger terror plot. i posit that this is naive and potentially dangerous viewpoint. when it comes to trained terrorists, it would behoove us to err on the side of conspiracy theories. working alone would be an analomy -- these guys have a proven track record of conspiring.

the obama family is in hawai'i celebrating christmas and vacationing. i find this to be highly appropriate, as i did all the times the bushes spent in texas. when bush was president, the press would beat him up over spending so much time away from washington, and i always thought this was wrong because the connectedness of the world today - online, mobile phones, et cetera - allows one to travel without losing touch at all. the president can really be just as effective on the majority of fronts he faces, whether he's in the white house or elsewhere. the only thing you cannot do over distance is meet face-to-face. [durr.] pres obama has travelled a lot in his short tenure, and i don't think his leadership has suffered. i mean, his approval rating is down, but i don't think that's due to his travelling. whether we disapprove of the president's travel can largly be credited to whether the media disapprove. we do tend to believe what we're told, whether we like to admit it or not. i am glad they're not giving pres obama down the road about being away from dee-cee, but i don't appreciate their hypocrisy.

but, like i was saying, i don't begrudge the obamas their time away from washington, but i don't think the presidency is the sort of job that you can take a vacation from. i don't think MY job is the sort of job that you can take a vacation from, totally. i shuffle through my email every day and keep various projects moving along in my absence. checking email for 30 focused minutes and then off & on throughout the day doesn't detract from my vacation. and, i know it would be okay if i did not check email at all. it's not an expectation that i check it -- but checking in while i'm on vacation sure makes things easier when i get back. there's not all that re-entry time.

however - i don't think the president of the united states can step that far back from his job. i would say that while not on vacation, he probably works 10-12 hours per day, and so when he's on vacation i think he should work 4-6 hours per day. i don't think that's unreasonable. in fact, it's probably not enough. this is an incredibly demanding position and cannot be put on hold. plus, if it's too much work, then he can quit in 4 years. it's not like it's a lifetime thing.

it sure is quiet when he leaves

we're watching ncis which we never watch even though it's a good show and the lead guy is mark harmon and his character is called jethro. i have never met a real person who's called jethro. in the bible, jethro is moses's father-in-law. i know of the fictional jethro bodine and jethro PEE coltrane, neither of whom were as bright as this fictional jethro on ncis. also there is jethro tull which is either a band name or is the adopted name of the main guy in that band, a guy who played the rock flute. i am not sure which it is - man name or band name - but the man in the band must be bright because not that many people play the rock flute. pretty much only jethro tull does that. jethro tull the band or man [modern] is named after jethro tull the man [historic], and the historic jethro tull was extremely bright. he introduced many advances in farming in england in the early 1700s and is credited with bringing about the british agricultural revolution. who knew, right? here's two pics of the two jethros. guess which one is which!

yule like this poem!

12 eggs scrambled
11 thomas stickers
10 puzzle pieces
9 cups of coffee
8 burt's bees balms
7 kinds of cookies
6 o'clock wake-up
5 chocolate santas
4 quarters of football
3 new computers
2 wish-list books
and a pair of peed-thru overalls!!!

meanwhile, back at the ranch....

29 years ago, i received what some would perceive as an odd gift -- a radio alarm clock. i didn't request it and i have no recollection of how i got up before i had it, but i do remember using it.

as previously covered here, i didn't know all that much about what you'd call popular music. the first day that the radio alarm went off, it was playing longer by dan fogelberg and i thought to myself, "welcome to the world of popular music!" what kind of dork relies on a radio alarm clock to change their musical life? yeah, don't answer that.

right before the alarm goes off, the device makes this sort of low popping sound. when a pencil was dropped and the eraser end hit my grade 10 biology class floor, it would make the same exact popping sound. same exact sound. same. exact. it's not like i tested this out -- one day a pencil dropped and made the sound and i just about jumped out of my chair. hearing the sound of your alarm during the normal course of the day can make one jump.

the clock went with me from high school to college and on into Real Life. when i'm on holiday, i don't use an alarm, but nearly every day for nearly 30 years that low popping sound followed by wildly blaring music or talk has been my wake up call.

for the past couple years, the device has been wearing down. the volume only works at one setting and the radio only reliably brings in one stations, so we wake up to blaring talk radio. my old man has a fancy-schmancy alarm clock radio with cd player, but it's so complicated that we've never been able to rely on it because we're never sure we have it set correctly. [yeah... no need to comment there.]

this morning, the clock on my faithful alarm clock radio is portraying only the minutes, no hours. the time is currently ":31". the ":" is still blinking off the seconds like it should. the one volume setting still works. the one radio station still comes in loud & clear. but, no hours. i have given an inordinate amount of real thought to how i might be able to use the alarm with no hours, but i am having to face the reality that it's simply not going to be possible.

it's kind of weird the things that make us sentimental, isn't it.

yule see some pictures here.

running

the ironic beauty of running lies in its simplicity - it is what it is. and yet... it is also whatever we make of it - what i bring to it, what you bring to it. it's only self-propulsion, nearly anyone can do it. running itself is not a mystery. what happens while we're running - that is the mystical part. that is what escapes the non-runner and that is what keeps me running.

the true beauty of running is that you are a runner and i am a runner, and our running is so different, and yet it is the same.

april 7AM

it was midday but the sun was low -
low & angled & sort of in the northeast.
trees reached bare-branched far into the street
with their long shadows.
a low haze dulled the sun's already dim efforts.

i entered this first winter day perhaps a bit overdressed
but not uncomfortably so,
to self-propell at a leisurely pace.
lah lah lah. taking it easy.

coming up the backside of the last hill
with the sun heating my cotton tee,
over the silence all i heard was the
tap-clap, tap-clap, tap-clap
of my steady but uneven gait.
i had to wonder if this gait is why
my left anklekneehip is always the one hurting.

but not today. no pains today. no issues. no worries.
tap-clap, tap-clap, tap-clap.
up the hill and into the winter midday
with the sun pretending it is april, 7AM.

books 2009

currently:
the memory of running
[ron mclarty]

complete:
dead until dark
[charlaine harris]
the tales of beedle the bard
[jk rowling]
syren
[angie sage]
the witch is dead
[shirley damsgaard]
stargirl
[jerry spinelli]
the telling pool
[david clement-davies]
eye of the god
[ariel allison]
first among sequels
[jasper fford]
north river
[pete hamill]
dragonlight
[donita k paul]
world without end
[ken follett]
the associate
[john grisham]
dragonfire
[donita k paul]
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

storytime

i admit, i can be a bit of a scrooge. around solticefest, besides the obvious gift expenses, we do more eating out and more going to the movies and more little extravagances like stopping for a grande christmas blend. and i really do want to do it all, but i can't help but think about the cost. i have gotten somewhat better about keeping these concerns to myself, and i really don't mean to spoil anyone's fun. it's just my thang, that's all.

the two solticefest stories i've shared here the past couple days are about the sum total of my solticefest memories. okay, not exactly. i have plenty of snapshot memories - from giving my jr high school bff an album by that new comedian steve martin to receiving the annual pearl for my add-a-pearl to creme drops and oranges in stockings. i remember big pans of scrambled aiggs at granda-bec's house. i remember spiced round and fruitcake at the matriarch's house. i remember sweet rolls with family at my own house.

my memory doesn't work by storing a lot of stories. i have more like boxes of snapshots than reels of 8mm in my head. sometimes something someone says can trigger a story, but i can't usually dredge them up on my own. so if you want to hear a story you think i might know, you're going to have to ask.

i'll finish this one before year's end & don't know whether to start another. would be nice to start 2010 without a carry over.

currently reading: dead until dark by charlaine harris - the first book in the southern vampire mystery series on which the hbo series true blood is based.

it's billed as "a delightful southern vampire detective series" and i thought maybe it would be like vampire-lite, but there would appear to be no such thing. the whole drinking blood issue makes me a bit peckish, and no amount of humour is going to cover that up. on top of that this isn't a particularly well-written book - not totally surprising for a first book in a series, but still, i had hoped for better writing. good fiction will show, not tell, and this is all about tell, tell, tell -- too much description. the dialog is okay, not a distraction, but nothing special. the characters are oddly not compelling. all the description makes you feel that they should be compelling, but they aren't. [not sure that makes sense.] the plot lacks pacing, sort of bumping along with no coherent waxing & waning, no build up and release, no clear tension and resolution. instead, there's a sort of constant low level tension buzzing around like an annoying gnat, but it's not like real suspense. i guess that's the "lite" part.

the thing about the whole vampire subculture is that there is one -- there are rules and a hierarchy and a system of beliefs. this book purports to be in part about a young lady getting to know her first vampire, and so she doesn't know these rules, but yet her vampire doesn't exactly reveal much - which should lend an air of mystery but is simply frustrating. therefore, because it's frustrating and not mysterious or intriguing, i contend it's not well written. i'll finish it because it's okay as far as entertainment goes, but i will not feel compelled to read any others in the series.

i thought i might like it because i thought, as i said, it might be a sort of vampire-lite, but the descriptions of drinking blood - both by vampires & humans - are just a bit much for me. i would like to say that durr, i know vampires drink blood and that's the whole point of vampirism, so yeah, i don't know what i was thinking there.

this is why i don't think i'd like the stephanie myers books. i get the whole "vampires are really good looking" thing and the whole "vampire subculture is really intriguing" thing and the whole "can't live forever without drinking blood" thing. however - i am sure the descriptions in stephanie myers's books are more graphic than those in dead until dark, so if the ones in this book are repelling to me, then why would i like the other?

books 2009

currently:
dead until dark
[charlaine harris]

complete:
the tales of beedle the bard
[jk rowling]
syren
[angie sage]
the witch is dead
[shirley damsgaard]
stargirl
[jerry spinelli]
the telling pool
[david clement-davies]
eye of the god
[ariel allison]
first among sequels
[jasper fford]
north river
[pete hamill]
dragonlight
[donita k paul]
world without end
[ken follett]
the associate
[john grisham]
dragonfire
[donita k paul]
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

i have spent this entire grey, rainy day in my house in my pjs in my chair in my book.

i searched and couldn't find this christmas story on here, either. i simply cannot believe i have not told y'all this story already, but here goes:

back in the day, we kids would get gifts from santa in our stockings and the old codger would also leave unwrapped stuff sort of laying around the den. each kid's stuff would be in a pile. one year after the crown prince & i were old enough to know better, elvis & sweet baby james were still receiving lots of santa gifts. i suppose the crown prince & i were receiving some larger gift directly from the santa-source in place of the unwrapped stuff. i don't remember all the particulars of the gift situation, but i do remember that we each got a few things in our stockings but the little boys got santa gifts, too.

they got n-f-l gear. not the pretend uniforms with helmets, but rather the raincoats and boggin hats, each tagged with the logo of an individual team that was apparently randomly selected by santa from the sears catalog based on raincoat & boggin hat size. elvis got the bengals, and he became a sort of ersatz bengals fan because of it.

after all the stocking-emptying and general santa gift excitement had died down, elvis came over to me and said, "what did you get from santa?" and i showed him the stuff from my stocking, and said, "this stuff here. this is what i got." but he knew that the stocking stuff didn't really count as santa gifts so he said, "no, really. what did you get?" and, i showed him the stocking stuff again, and said, "this."

now, elvis was puny and i was not. the clothes he wore were umpteen sizes smaller than my right foot. but he looked at me, and he put his wee tiny hand on my shoulder, and he said, "that's okay. you can wear what i got anytime you want."

4000+ words

oooo - sweeeet donuts.....

oh, no - mr donut! you lost your head! oh, no!

this is my coworker. wearing a hat. she does not have cancer.

because nothing says "happy christmas" quite like a gingerbread man with a stick up his butt.

good things come in small packages

i looked all through here and couldn't find this christmas story. can't believe i haven't told you this one before, so here goes.

back in the day, when we were in elementary school, the crown prince & i would walk to a babysitter's house each day after school. this was an older lady who kept several kids in her house. her husband worked nights, so we had to stay quiet, which was a wee bit difficult for us and also really begs the querschun... why would you keep kids during the day if your old man had to sleep?

at any rate, we were there every day that autumn and into the winter and then christmas came. sitterlady had gifts for all us kids. she gave this one girl a huge - and by huge i mean like 3ft x 3ft with like 50 pieces - plastic tea party set. wow. it was all there in a huge box with the clear cellophane window in the boxtop where you could see the contents with each piece in its little slot. she didn't wrap it - just put a ribbon & bow on it - because how could you hide such beauty, such perfection. ::sigh:: oh, how i wanted that tea set. and, i mean, w-to-the-a--to-the-wanted. wow.

and, what did she give me? a tiny package that i could hold in my hand. it weighed about 2oz. what could possibly be in there? nothing probably. gosh. what a supreme disappointment. so, what did i do? well, of course i threw a fit and cried and said i wanted the tea set. i was just a kid, but old enough to know better, and i know i was old enough to know better because i remember knowing better. i also remember being sort of dragged away. not pretty. but, hell, i wanted that tea set!

i was sure that sitterlady didn't love me at all, at all.

when we got home, i put that crappy little package under the tree. bah! on christmas morning, it was there, so i opened and found that it contained... a hand-knit cap that fit just exactly on my bratty little head and tied under my selfish little chin and had two pompons, one to warm each spoiled little ear. ::sigh:: i distinctly remember feeling crushed by the weight of my terrible monsterness.

i was sure that sitterlady did love me, and i learned a valuable lesson.

good things come in small packages.

football statistics

finally got around to that nfl spreadsheet i mentioned some time back. i have gotten the AFC complete for the most part, but the one big remaining piece of the puzzle is the conference per college. i have this: jersey #, name, position, height, weight, date of birth / age, yrs in league, college, team. the height and DOB / age are inconsistently formatted across team websites -- well really the entire body of data is inconsistently formatted, but the worst is the DOB / age and height. the years in league is also somewhat inconsistent, and because the position and college are verbiage, i doubt they are consistent, either. however, my brief analysis reveals that when i collected the active rosters on 27 septembre, there were 848 men on active AFC rosters and their total weight was 209633 lbs - that's just under 109 tons and an average 247 lbs per player.

i sorted on college and got only marcus buggs and jovan haye from vanderbilt. interesting. i know there are 3 bears from vandy which means there are more bears from vandy than in the entire AFC. some schools are listed differently, such as "kentucky" or "university of kentucky", but there is mostly consistency enough to sort it out. there are 9 players from hawaii, 20 from lsu, 5 from marshall, 18 from purdue, 1 from william & mary, 3 from harvard, 1 from nicholls state.

what i wanted to find out is which conference sends the most players to the NFL. i am not really much closer to learning that, now am i. after i get the NFC done, i'll work on the conference thing. maybe i'll get the NFC done tomorrow. goodness knows i'm not doing much at work. [haha.]

4000+ words

end-of-order marker bar a good 6" from the end of order. poor use of conveyor space. fail.

the waffle house 911 hotline red phone. really? you want to eat in a place with a 911 hotline red phone? really?

one slot to a customer, eejit.

scramble word-of-the-day staff needs to get a dictionary.

books 2009

currently:
the tales of beedle the bard
[jk rowling]

complete:
syren
[angie sage]
the witch is dead
[shirley damsgaard]
stargirl
[jerry spinelli]
the telling pool
[david clement-davies]
eye of the god
[ariel allison]
first among sequels
[jasper fford]
north river
[pete hamill]
dragonlight
[donita k paul]
world without end
[ken follett]
the associate
[john grisham]
dragonfire
[donita k paul]
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

tomorrow may rain, so i'll follow the sun.

as anyone who's done it can tell you, there is a certain melancholy to growning older. in an interview on the morning show today, paul mccartney said when asked if he were a nostalgic guy - »i like to look both ways.« good advice when crossing a busy street, or... say... the busy street of time. »i like to look both ways.« yeah, paul - me, too.

i like to look to the future & imagine the growth of technology and hope for the growth of human understanding. we are sure to conquer diseases while simultaneously conquering overcrowding. sure, we're exploring the moon, but at some point, someone in some overcrowded city somewhere is gonna say - »hey, what about nebraska? there's plenty of room there!« we are collectively brilliant, and it's astounding to hear what's been invented or discovered every single day. we will figure out so many things, in the future.

ah, but... one thing i am sure will be missing in the future is a certain differentness in each of us. i mean, yeah, partisanship is ripping us apart, but that is not true differentness - that's just the sheen of politics over society. there is a fearful sameness pervading the world - the indisputable symptoms being the everything from mcdonald's in paris to the defeat of the recessive blond-haired gene in the universal pool.

i like to look to the past & appreciate that differentness, the uniqueness of a variety of existences isolated by the difficulty of simply getting around each day, and the innocence. yes, the imagined simplicity of the past is a facade we paste over the deep & painful complexities just like the pasted-on smiles of the ovaltine mom, but while perhaps not truly simple, there was yet an innocence. good girls didn't dress that way. good boys didn't write on the walls. there were limits to the behaviour that decent society would tolerate, and these limits served to keep the general order, keep the traffic moving on that busy street of time.

of course, where there are limits, there will be rebellion, and rebellion in the 60s led to a society today that is more open, tolerant, transparent. but the incessant transparency of today's world can leave one a bit frazzled, and when everything is available, there is nothing left with which to tantalize each other. secrecy, mystery - they've gotten a bad rap. hidden lives of the tiger woods variety are all kinds of wrong -- but wearing your skirts a wee bit longer in public to leave wee a bit o' something to the imagination of your poor, frazzled old man - something you in turn provide to him in private. ah, there is gold in that secrecy, there is.

paul's right about looking both ways. there's is a lot of hope in the sunrise, but there is a lot to cherish in the twilight, too.

day off

move along. move along. nothing to see here.

a wee bit less than 1000 words

i was going to show you some pix demostrating the wackitude of my fellowman. tis the season and all that. however - i don't know how or even if there is a way to post pix from the iphone. i did learn that i could use google calendar in the native calendar app in the iphone -- if i weren't already using the exchange acct for work email. why the hula do they allow only one exchange acct? freakers. they're just out to destroy my productivity.

the inimitable mr joel

he's a grammy award winning member of the rock & roll hall of fame. clearly, i am not his only fan. and, yeah, i am not his biggest fan - not a groupie - don't have a room dedicated to pictures of him - don't scribble his name in the margins of my notebook.

so from his side, there are people who love him more, but from my side, he is the best. he is my favorite singer, favorite musician, favorite lyricist. i heard once that he wrote his music first, then his lyrics, and that's simply amazing to me because i am a poet but not a musician.

when i was in grade 7, i started a new school and had to carpool with strangers. one of the carpools was driven by a dad instead of a mom, which was odd, but his car had a cassette player and he had a few pop music cassettes. i knew absolutely nothing about pop music. less than nothing. i was completely ignorant of pop music but could have sung all 487926 verses of that freakin song about that guy that got on the mta and couldn't get off again. get off the damn train, charlie! sheesh.

at any rate, this dad had in his collection the stranger. the first time i heard it i was like... i don't know... like electrified, paralyzed, thrown into my own hemisphere. i could not believe someone had written songs so precisely for me.

this dad, whoever he was, must have sensed that i was [A] new to this school system and therefore knew no one and [2] was a complete & total geek and would never be friends with the likes of his daughter or the others in the carpool. this was the carpool of cool. except for me.

at any rate -- my point here is that he'd let me pick the music. it got to the point where he had to not let me pick anymore because i'd always pick the stranger and the other girls in the carpool were in danger of losing their eyeballs completely, the way they violently rolled their eyes at my choice. they knew every time what i was going to pick. they were sick of it. i couldn't get enough.

the next year i got my first record player -- a really simple stereo model for like $70 from zayre -- and i collected everything mr joel had published at the time. the stranger, piano man, turnstiles, streetlife serenader, then later i added 52nd street, cold spring harbor, nylon curtain, and glass houses before moving to cassettes for innocent man, the bridge, kohuept, storm front, river of dreams. those four later ones, i must admit, i didn't give a fair listen to. mini-me gave me songs in the attic last year - and it's an interesting mix of live recordings which she transferred from vinyl to cd which i ripped to the computer and moved from there to the ipod.

anyway - where the hell was i?

billy joel. greatest singer, musician, lyricist ever. yeah, i am not the only one who thinks he's great. but when i was a lonely 12-year-old who heard the stranger in a car full of strangers, i swore that no one would ever understand me better than a man i'd never meet.

sorry but there's really nothing going on here.

these two headlines were just now on google news.

AT&T Takes Aim at iPhone Wireless Data Hogs

Triage: Flu Outbreak Hogs Public Health Resources


OMG we're being overrun by hogs!

i was going to use running as a metaphor for life, but making the connection was just too much effort.

there's a bit of an interesting discussion about running going on in another corner of the internet. folks are posting about their workouts including when they run hard or easy, how far they run, what pace they accomplish [or try to accomplish], whether they run on flat or hills or roads or tracks, et cetera & so on & so forth.

part of the discussion got me to thinking a bit about the inputs & the outputs. effort is what you put in. for running, that would be how hard you run, how much you try to keep running without walking, how fast or far or long time-wise you attempt to go. the output is the pace or the mileage or the time. you put in more effort, you should get out a faster pace, a longer mileage run or longer time run.

it's not always so simple, though. sometimes you put in a ton of effort and you don't get out the result you would have expected based on your past workouts. this could be because you don't have the experience of lots of workouts under different conditions, so maybe you simply don't know what it takes to get the outcome you're after. or, maybe you do know that, and still can't get the result, so maybe you have a burgeoning injury, or you're coming down with an illness -- you can't always tell at the beginning of an injury or illness that something definite is going wrong. maybe you didn't eat the right foods to fuel your body. maybe it's simply not your day.

there are a lot of factors that go into it and they're not all under your control and even the ones that are under your control might not go as expected. like, say you do all the nutrition stuff "right" but you don't get the outcome you'd expect from this nutrition - well, could be your body metabolizes the food slightly differently than the bodies of those folks in the study you read to learn how to do nutrition. or, you might be getting sick, so all that correct nutrition is going to fight the growing illness and there's nothing left over for running.

then - what about the factors that are outside your control? weather's a big one. if you are running in wind, rain, sleet, and snow, you will have to put forth more effort than you would to run in calm, 72º weather. flat or hills? treadmill or road? there are lots of choices that go into each run, and each choice plays a part in the overall. like - i would rather run outside and really hate the treadmill and find that running on the treadmill takes a ton more effort for me, probably mostly a mental thing. but, if it's very windy and raining, then running outside is going to take a helluva lot more effort than running on a treadmill.

so what you put in is the effort and it is subjective, id est: cannot be measured from the outside. you determine how much to put in and you also say if you reached that level. "i am going to run at 50% of 5k race effort." you define 5k race effort, you define 50%, and you judge after the workout if you did indeed put that amount of effort in. totally and completely subjective.

somedays it's easy to run far, fast, forever. somedays it takes all you have to get nowhere at all. the trick is to remember that the result does not define the effort. the effort is the input. you define the input. the bottom line is that it's all up to you, really.

you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find - you get what you need.

goals are an invention of the man -- an artificial measuring stick designed to keep us compliant & productive, suppressing spontaneity through a continual disappointment feedback loop, and distracting us from the truth: life is not given us to measure; life is given us to live.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

that's my diatribe on goals, but here's the thing - goals are wack.

if you'd axt me in grade 5, i would have told you that in high school, i'd be playing clarinet in the state champion high school marching band. what i didn't know is that after 5th grade, we'd move to a new school district.

if you'd axt me in grade 7, i'd have told you in high school, i'd be playing on the varsity soccer team. what i didn't know was that after 8th grade, i'd be sent to a different school that didn't have a soccer team.

if you'd axt me in grade 9, i'd have told you i'd be on the high school debate team. what i didn't know was that speech coach was only recruiting debaters who'd be willing to... um... have extra practices, ifyouknowwhatimean.

if you'd axt me in grade 11, i'd have told you i was going to drive that toyota to boston university to learn to be a journalist. oh, so many things i didn't know about how i'd end up somewhere else doing something else with someone else.

if you'd axt me i would have told you these things were going to happen, but i don't remember making plans for these things to happen. it's simply that i could foresee that the path i was on would lead me from where i was to where those things were. there wasn't any planning or dreaming to it - it was to be what it was to be.

but the path was disrupted by falling trees and washed out bridges and little houses made of candy where the witch lived. did i care? eh. maybe here & there i cared about this or that, and okay, i cared about boston quite a bit, but people who really care -- who REALLY CARE -- figure out how to make things happen. if you care, you plan. you look at where you are and compare to where you want to be and you make a path to get there. you have strategy and tactics. you have a goal. when the path is disrupted, you focus on the goal and you stay on the path. you get THERE because you care about getting there.

me? i care about being here.

different is not inherently damaging. different is simply different, and without differences, well... we'd all be the same.

back in the day, elvis used to be our go-to babysitter for mini-me. he exhibited a modicum of good sense, had a working vehicle, and aside from the second-hand smoke, was a relatively good influence. one of mini-me's prevailing memories of their time together was that elvis would buy her ice cream for breakfast. see, elvis is a big coffee drinker, so he'd take her to some joint to get his coffee fix, and while there would get her some ice cream. she loved it.

did we care that he was allowing her to have ice cream for breakfast? well, hell no. in the first place, i had already fed her an actual breakfast, no doubt something with a great deal of redeeming nutritional value such as a poptart. so it's not like she was depending on elvis to provide an actual meal. in the second place, it's not like they did this every day. it obviously occurred more than once, presumably on a sort of semi-regular basis, but the simple fact is that mini-me was not with elvis every day for years on end. if anything, this happened a few times over the course of that summer elvis made his home on a mattress in our front room.

while not being necessarily beneficial, ice cream for breakfast is not detrimental, either. every single meal and snack does not have to be analyzed, planned, and examined. sometimes it's possible to eat something simply for fun. having ice cream for breakfast was a wee bit of rebellion for mini-me. labelling the consumption of snack foods before noon as "rebellion" should tell you everything you need to know about the general length of the leash we kept mini-me on. yeah, we were quite the tyrants. ::roll eyes::

but really, the most important thing here is the trust between me & my old man & elvis that allowed this relationship between elvis & mini-me. elvis knew the limits. it's not like he was putting her in a knife-juggling act. we knew that whatever happened, he'd put her safety & well being first. beyond that - it just doesn't matter. nothing he could have fed her, no place he could have taken her, nobody he could have introduced her to... nothing he could have done wrong, really, because he put her safety first.

elvis has a way of doing things that is different from the way we do things, and that's okay. different is not inherently damaging. different is simply different, and without differences, well... we'd all be the same.

everything else is just gravy, see? it doesn't matter. if you trust someone you love to keep your kid safe, if you really trust that person, you will understand that it doesn't matter WHAT they do together - it will all be good.

so, now when elvis & priscilla leave beavis with me & my old man, we feed beavis blueberries and we don't make him wear pants.

and that, my dear readers, that is the circle of life.

forkiosity [26 novembre 2006]

there you are at the fork. same old thing - two paths, two choices. if you do this thing, you can't do that other thing.

you can see a little ways down both roads. down one, there's a rainstorm, and down the other, it's all sunshine & blue skies. you've been travelling long enough to know the weather's always changing and just because it's raining now, doesn't mean it will be raining later. rainstorms are sometimes very short. sometimes refreshing & cleansing. sometimes, though, the rain is a setback - forcing you to stop for a while, seek shelter. sunshine can be deceiving, too - unfriendly, scorching. so, the weather's not a deciding factor because it changes, it's deceiving.

consider the geography. one path goes uphill - the other is flat. you really can't see far enough to tell if the pattern holds. sometimes flat is so boring that it's just not worth the ease. hills are challenging, but only through challenge will you grow. on the other-other hand, if the hills are too big, they'll defeat you.

you might be able to go a little ways down a path, and turn back if it's not working out, but that's not dependable. proceeding changes your perspective, and you can't count on finding the fork again. even a few steps can remove turning-back as an option.

you could go off road, blaze your own trail. that's appealing in thought, but doesn't often pan out in practice. too much work for too little reward. easy to go totally wrong and fall in a snakepit or run up against an angry bear. sometimes there's a chance to go offroad, in a kind of controlled offroad situation - a limited engagement, if you will. better to get a few more of those under your belt before taking off totally on your own.

so - - you'll choose a road this time, and there they still are, waiting. the flat one is growing a hill and the rainstorm is slacking. the birds are singing over here, but over there, there are horses. funny thing is, if you don't move and choose one, they will both change into something else, and you will still have to choose. you never get out of the choosing.

you can choose not to choose, but that's still a choice.

surrendering to christmas, part deux

so here's the thing about christmas - it's a christian holiday. i know, right? but, see here's the thing - christmas is historically a minor christian holiday. easter is THE holiday, or "holy day" as it were.

christmas is a celebration of the birth of the christ - a commemoration of the birth but not on the actual birth date because the actual date isn't know. it's highly likely the actual birth of the christ did not even occur during the part of the year during which christmas is celebrated. christ was probably born during the spring.

so how did christmas come to be during december? well, there was this huge pagan celebration surrounding the winter solstice - the day on which the daylight hours begin to outweigh the nighttime hours during each allotment of 24 hours. that is, the days begin to become longer again - longer & longer until we reach the summer solstice at which time the tide of daylight turns again.

anyway, there was this huge pagan celebration surrounding the winter solstice, and the adherants of the fledgling chritian movement in the... oh... say around the 1000s or so -- they were looking to convert all the world to their way of thinking. one of their bright ideas was to subsume the existing celebrations, the thought being it would be easier to assimilate existing celebrations rather than creating an entirely new system.

it's a good basic idea - work within the parameters, take what you're given, love the one you're with. it's still going on to this day in the "trunk or treat" or "fall festival" type celebrations which you'll see at many christian churches in place of samhain gatherings.

but the problem is that the solstice celebration was a bigger focus on the pagan calendar than the christmas celebration was on the christian calendar. so, as the christians adapted the pagan holy day, their own holy day grew out of proportion to its original importance.

start with this history and add the inherent gift-giving element of a celebration of a birth and on top of that add the consumerism which is inherent to gift-giving, and you have a recipe for a christian+capitalist explosion of... well, of greed, quite frankly.

i feel that these thoughts are not holding together well... the point i am trying to make is that christmas isn't the most important holy day on the christian calendar, but because of all these other factors, christmas has been transformed into the one given the most importance by modern pagan society. and, christians have let it happen. and, christians even fight for the merry-christmases over the happy-holidayses because they are all over the "jesus is the reason for the season" thing and... and... oh, i don't know... getting all het up over christmas being celebrated as it "should be" when it really should not be celebrated this way at all, at all!

easter is the important holy day on the christian calendar. easter.

::sigh::

shortened version of email exchange from today

coworker - can you provide a brief analysis of the feasability of extracting content A from document files containing both A and B?

ace - sure. place the files on the shared drive, and i'll take a look at them.

coworker - please explain to me which files you need to see.

ace - uh... the ones you want my opinion on?

coworker - you have to understand that i do not understand "production" or the intracacies of the filing system. if you can tell me which files you need to see, i will try to find them.

ace - uh....

6 novembre 2006

late leaves,
plucked from precarious purchase
by whistling western winds,
swirl swiftly -- snowlike
to drift down dead in ditches.
rake! rake! rake!
cursed clogged culvert -
filled with fall foliage!
waiting water whirls while
sticks obstruct the stream.
dangerous depths drown daisies,
and wildly wash away
late leaves.

17 avril 2006

you are getting some reruns from the past b/c that part of this blog no longer exists online, and it had some good stuff in it [although some of it was crap], and plus i am not feeling very writerly right now.

-------------------------
i have a place inside
a place to hide
inside
it's kind of dark
and cold and bare
reminds me not to try to care
don't go out reach out be outside
don't play don't swing don't climb don't slide
stay in here while they're out there
sit or stand and stare out there
but stay don't go
because i know
the place inside's
the place to hide's
the safest place to go
outside are games and toys and fun
outside they play and laugh and run
outside are potholes, shards of glass
snakes are writhing in the grass
they don't know anything about it
they are safe and never doubt it
they have no eyes, they cannot see
there's danger everywhere for me
that's why i have this place inside
where i am safe, where i can hide

the sink less traveled [2006-03-03]

two sinks by side in public stood,
and glad i would not use them both
as i'm one traveler, long i stood
and looked down one as far i could
to where it bent into the germie growth.

then took the other, far more fair,
having for certs the better claim,
because its clean and sparklie air
was for the lack of passers there
fresh as daisies and smelled of same.

for that morning they unequally lay
one germie, grimey, sodden, black.
oh, i left it for another day!
full knowing how way leads on to way,
took comfort in this simple fact:

i shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
two sinks stood by side and i -
i took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

mighty mighty good song by the mighty mighty bosstones

The bells, the bows, the flashing lights,
the mistletoes and the 'Silent Nights'--
It's all for show, but that's all right.
That's not why I love this time of year.

This time of year,
It gets me, and never lets me
Act like I don't care.
This time of year,
Is my favorite time of year,
'Cause all of us are here together.

The stores are packed
With stuff for us to by.
The shelves are stacked
A mile high...

But let's get back
To what I love about this time of year.

It gets me, and never lets me
Act like I don't care.
This time of year,
Is my favorite time of year
'Cause all of us are here together.

There's crap - it's true --
What can you do?
It's simply spending it with you
That keeps me looking forward to
Lookin' forward to this time of year

It gets me, and never lets me
Act like I don't care.
This time of year,
Is my favorite time of year
'Cause all of us are here together.