Birthday wishes

If you’re reading this, head over to Tracy’s blob and post a Happy Birthday wish! Today she turns 36!

I’ve known Tracy since I started at the county back in the 20th Century. In the beginning we didn’t get along so well (she says it was because I hung out with an undesirable-type) and we even had a few fights. But once we each figured out that the other was basically honest and straight-forward, to the point of bluntness, we realized that we were much more alike than different, and it started us on a long road of friendship.

So, here’s to Tracy!

Smacky hates banner ads

Last night I was sitting at my desk, surfing, Smacky curled up asleep in my lap.

I was checking out my MySpace… uh… space (why are MySpace pages so ugly?) and found a bulletin from a friend. While I was responding, a banner ad loaded. It showed a cartoon kitten wandering back and forth, meowing loudly and robotically. I think the idea was to click on it, much like the evil “click on the monkey and win a million dollars!!!!” banner ads of a few years ago.

As soon as the meowing started, even though to my ears it sounded cartoon-y and false, Smacky woke right up. He looked around, and immediately started hissing. He tried to figure out where the sound came from. His ears went (further) back and his back fur stood up.

I started laughing at him. “There’s no cat, it’s a stupid banner ad! Go back to sleep, cranky!”

He paid me no mind and jumped up on the table and looked out the window. He was dead certain the cat was outside.

I turned up the sound on the speakers, still laughing. Smacky looked back at me as if he was trying to shut me up so he could figure out where the sound was coming from. When the volume went up he got confused and looked back at me and the laptop; circling around behind the screen, still hissing at the noise, he thought he was being sneaky. I muted the speakers; after a second he stopped hissing but was still giving off the body language of a cat looking for a fight.

I un-muted the speakers. I wanted to save this banner ad, but didn’t feel like clicking through. But, hell, this was way too entertaining.

When Smacky started reaching around the screen and smacking at the speakers and display, I decided enough was enough. I didn’t want him scratching my beautiul display. I muted it again, and picked him up and plunked him on the floor. He immediately started licking and cleaning himself and trying to calm down. Poor guy. He’d been pretty worked up…

I’m adding this to my “Things that make me laugh” list. If I ever come across that ad again, I am so going to save that sound.

Typos are a good thing

In a text message to me, Tracy had a typo that I have decided is worthy of being a real word.

She typed “ammuniacting” instead of “communicating”.

I kept using it, and Tracy thought I was mocking her. I was not. I just liked the sound of this new word. But when she challenged me to use it in a sentence, I wasn’t sure of it’s actual meaning.

Until now. I present the formal definition of the word. Feel free to use it and link back to this post for (my and Tracy’s) future posterity.

Am • mun • i • act: (uh • MYOO • nee • akt) – Verb – to appear to communicate, especially regarding ones’ feelings or emotional states, but instead to actually confuse the target even further. vt., am • mun • i • act • ing; am • mu • ni • ac • tion

Sports photography

I finally updated my Picture of the Week (over in the left sidebar). Started to do it Sunday night but I lost my internets (probably due to the storm) and it had to wait until today.

The pictures I added have all been taken by my dad, and are from the races that my nephew, Max, and I have run together. The folder labels should be sufficiently explanatory…

The Picture of the Week features myself and Max, and is from the start of my second-best-ever 5K race, which I blogged about over on my running blog.

Thanks to my dad for supplying the pictures!

Close but no aardvark

I was excited this week to learn that the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” had been added as a download to the iTunes Music Store.

Since I got turned on to “Lost”, I’ve been missing Adam and Jamie (and Karirowr) since they’re on opposite the survivors on the mysterious island (at least on my cable lineup). I looked forward to watching “Lost” last night, then downloading “Mythbusters” and watching it on the bus to work.

But only Season One of “MB” is available yet.

Hurry up and add the actual new episodes, Apple!

Basic assumptions

In a conversation with a friend today, I both explored and explained my basic assumptions about life. My friend was feeling uncomfortable and uneasy and didn’t really know why – a painful place for someone not used to introspection, to be sure.

“I feel lost” was my friend’s summary statement, after some verbal exploring.

Which I took to be a good thing. Being lost, in my mind, is the essential human condition (which I further believe has a basis in biological limitations we all share, but that’s a side trail I’ll follow at another time).

Admitting one is lost is an admission that you’re in unfamiliar territory, and you’re not sure how you got there, and how to get back to familiar territory. Right?

Well, since we’re all making this up as we go (life as improv), isn’t most of life unfamiliar territory? Especially if you’re seeking improvements, of yourself or for others you care about. Improving is about seeking different ways to do the things you might do automatically… and if you don’t find yourself in unfamiliar territory when you do that, you’re still not trying hard enough.

Being lost is admitting that I’m probably never going to see the whole territory, and likely neither is anyone else. In fact, I’ll probably never even see a map of the territory, or even the small area I’m in right now. But I still need to take action.

It’s the folks who insist that they’re never lost that worry me… or rather, the ones who were lost and are now found and therefore are gonna be OK. Those are the folks who have forsaken the terrain they’re in and are focused on another, later, trail… one for which there is little evidence even exists. Those folk are asleep and dreaming. And not in such a good way, I think, because they’ve abandoned any responsibility for the region we share.

They’ve decided to not think of themselves as lost in order to prepare for a time when they’ll be shown the map. All secrets revealed.

…sorry, friend, I’m not trading my current view for a possible look later. I’ll just sit here and admire what I can see and see how it all connects to where I’ve been.

If this seems deep, it shouldn’t. It all flows from my bedrock assumption about the universe, and that is: I don’t know. And I’m OK with that.

…but while I’m here, why not try to find out as much as I can?

It’s the ears

Smacky must have had a horrible fight last week. One day, I forget when, in the wee early hours of the morning, he came limping back home after being gone for a day and a half. He immediately polished off all the food and most of the water I put out for him, and then curled up in a dark corner of the apartment and slept.

He would tolerate me being around, and occassionally would even climb up into my lap, but if I tried to pick him up he’d yowl and claw at me. I didn’t feel any broken bones, though, just scabs across his chest. Bad sign, if an enemy got to his chest in a fight; it means he was on his back, probably. I’m guessing he lost that fight.

He mostly avoided going outside for a while.

Then, when he asked, I let him outside again Saturday morning, and he disappeared again until last night. Not limping quite as bad as the time before, but I still think he lost the fight. He looked… odd. I couldn’t put my finger on what had changed, though.

He kept head-butting me, and pushing his head against my hand for petting – but if I actually touched his left ear, he’d shiver and shake his head and pull away. I tried looking down inside to see if there was any blood or something stuck in there but he simply wouldn’t let me.

That’s when I noticed that his ears were flattened out, almost pushed back, like a cat does when they’re cornered or frightened. He wasn’t acting scared, they weren’t that far back, but flattened out like that it gave him the cat-equivalent of a scowl.

He was super hungry again, so I fed and watered him (it’s been very hot so we’re both going through a lot of water), and let him rest on my lap while I listened to the iPod and read for a bit. I felt sympathy for him and didn’t shoo him off because it was too hot. I had to carefully move him aside when I had to get up to change the laundry (yeah, doing laundry sucks in the heat but it had to be done), and the second or third time I did that he’d had enough. He walked into the kitchen and fell over onto the linoleum, soaking in the coolness of the plastic.

That’s when I realized that Smacky is looking more and more like Bucky Katt every day… the ears back expression is almost identical.

Be careful what you name your cat; it will affect their personality more than you will imagine.

Another girl rides the bus

On Sunday afternoon, I found myself on the bus, as I often do. I felt scruffy and unwashed, unshaven, wearing casual grubbies for kicking back with the family eating BBQ and drinking and getting on each other’s nerves, only now I was headed home.

And this amazingly beautiful girl got on the bus and sat down just a few seats away.

I couldn’t tell if she was Hispanic or Asian or some exotic mixture or something else that I was too uncultured to recognize. Black hair, cut short and falling past her face and ears, showing off a graceful neck. Almond-shaped eyes with pupils like black pearls, if pearls were the size of quarters. Full lips, tastefully colored with a sensual and subtle red. Shorter than me. Curved and shaped in a slight exaggeration of the perfect ratio for the female form, shoulders flowing into breasts tapering to belly and flaring out again in hips and butt. Dressed, in spite of the heat, in a black long-sleeved shirt, black knee-length skirt, and tall black boots encasing her calves, the silver hooks delineating the ell-shape from the top of her foot folding upward along her shin. Just a touch of gorgeous brown skin showing between the top of the boots and the bottom of the skirt… and just a little bit more skin when she sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

I’ve been practicing. Practicing noticing these girls and practicing talking myself into saying something to them. All I need is one (or several…) to say yes and I’ll start practicing the next step, too… but first I have to go talk to them, one at at time, and see if any of them are interested in what I have to say. Little Miss Dressed-In-Black-But-Not-In-A-Goth-y-Way was next.

Only my common enemy was busy interfering. That enemy being me. Or, rather, the negative voice in my head. I was too old, too dirty, too smelly, too shy, too geeky, too non-verbal, not classy enough… The Voice didn’t use those words. It just sat in my brain and projected those feelings at me, paralyzing my legs and body and mouth. All I could do while under the influence of that Voice was sit and watch and wonder and fear.

Bah. I hate fear. I fought the fear, straining against it as if it were actual ropes holding me back. No go. Not working.

I tried a visualization exercise. I imagined myself getting up, moving up a few seats, moving around in front of her so as not to startle her, saying “hi, how’s your day going?” and taking it from there. I pushed, and the images formed in my head… only it wasn’t working.

All the while, I was talking back to the Voice, treating it like a scared three-year-old, telling it that everything will be OK, it will not be hurt, in fact, no matter what happens I’ll have a story to tell Tracy and Ken and Christi and my other friends and blog about… Even if she screamed and yelled at me, or slapped me in the face, showing herself to be just a crazy scared woman… that shit would be funny, later, and as long as I was respectful and polite but interested, it wasn’t likely that she’s freak out that bad, anyway.

The problem was, I was watching myself do all that, and go through the consequences, from a third-person perspective. I, the one doing the viewing, was still sitting where I was, and watching this phantom-Brian get up and walk over, and talk to her. I was disassociating from myself, and admiring someone else much like myself do the thing that I wanted to do! No wonder it wasn’t working.

I mentally shifted my perspective – and suddenly, I was the one moving over, and watching her as I did it, and sitting down in front of her and facing her and saying “hi”… I mean, I pictured myself doing it…

…and then, I did it. I was sitting there, in front of her, and smiling at her. She didn’t smile back, but merely looked at me, interested but non-committal.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said, carefully, smiling tightly, politely, but not invitingly.

“I just wanted to tell you,” I said, smoothly but finding it hard to make full eye contact, “that I think you are very beautiful.”

She smiled a tiny bit wider, and blushed just a little. “Thank you!” she said.

“You are very welcome” I said back, and realized that she seemed a little bit freaked out. My stop was approaching. Did I have enough courage to keep talking to her?

I didn’t. Perhaps for some future girl I will. Perhaps I just wasn’t getting the right, subconscious signals from this girl, but that didn’t make this a mistake. In fact it was exactly the right thing to do, but I could tell that, either from her caution or fear, and my fading confidence, that the best action now was to end this on a high note and make my exit. I pulled the cord, rang the bell, requested the next stop, and got off the bus without looking back.

I hope that by leaving like that, deliberately but after a sincere (on my part) compliment, that I gave her a smile, and a story to tell. Just as she has given me a story to tell.

And I’ll keep trying, until I find that girl (or girls) who react a little more openly and interestedly. Or until I can project enough confidence for both of us and lead her through the encounter.

Just need a little more practice…

Tears

My sister almost broke down into tears when she discovered my Mother’s Day present to her.

My brother-in-law had a BBQ yesterday to celebrate their new deck Mother’s Day. The steaks he grilled up were delicious and tender and awesome.

Shortly before the food was due to be served, however, I discovered that, even though there was plenty of booze, there was an absence of mixers. Since I hadn’t (yet) been drinking I offerred to drive down to the store and pick some up. I collared my nephew to help me carry stuff and borrowed my sister’s car.

Of course, my sister’s car was running on fumes – the needle on E and gas light on steady. So I filled up the tank.

Ouch! No wonder she doesn’t fill it up often. The car required premium, even. I might just skip getting my sister a birthday present this year… sheesh.

So even though I told my sister that she was over-reacting a bit when she found out later what I had done… Down inside I think it was an appropriate reaction. Holy crab! That shit’s expensive!