Month: November 2007

Who says I can’t have chocolate cake for breakfast? Huh? Who?

No one, that’s who.

Sleep. Sleep is much like not being. Oh, except for the dreams.

I sleep and might not wake up until I must – which means either work on Monday morning or ahem hydraulic pressure.

Sorry for the late-afternoon edition. Been out running around ‘n’ stuff.

• These are perfect pearls of story.
• I’ve got an interest (obsession?) with the Moon. These high-def pictures of the Earth from the Moon, from a Japanese moon probe, are amazing, and are now part of my wallpaper rotation. (Via Boing Boing)
• Yes, please. Please shorten your voice mail greeting as much as possible. Anymore, I don’t even leave a message. I figure that anyone I’m calling will have Caller ID, see that I called, and will call me back if they want to know why I called in the first place.
• Who knew memory was so widely variable and unreliable? Try to tell that to anyone, though. Our brains trick us into feeling/thinking things for which we have no basis. I could tell ya stories…
• A “Ghostbusters” sequel that includes all the original cast members and is written by Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis? Wait, it’s gonna be a videogame? Oh, please – don’t suck! I want this to be good. Even if I have to buy a freakin’ XBox to see it.
• Is it just me, or do Hayden Pepperspray and Kristin Bell look terrified beyond belief?
• Wow, Multnomah County managers making financial decisions based on personal relationships (allegedly)? That’s… that’s just nuts. Oh, sidenote: I need to ask my bosses about all that CA-supplied ITIL training they’ve been taking for the past year or so.
• Somehow, somewhere, someone will make the argument that this proves God exists. Sure. Have it both ways! Why not?
• Speaking of creationism, John Scalzi toured the Creation Museum and was unimpressed. It was a scathingly funny read to me. And then it made me sad because there’s folks out there who buy into this. People I love. But, I’m heartened by the knowledge that there’s a difference between Christians and Creationists; one doesn’t have to mean the other.
  

  “Will these folks find the arguments they find at the Creation Museum convincing? Again, you got me. I certainly hope not, but more to the point I would hope that these folks don’t come away feeling that their love of Christ obliges them to swallow heaping mounds of horseshit from people who are phobic about metaphor. I really don’t think Jesus would care if you think that you and a monkey have a common ancestor; I think he would care more that you think you and your neighbor have a common weal.”

  And many folks chime in on the comments to echo the sentiments. Yes, please. More like this.

• Lastly, via the kids at the Mercury, this slow-starting but entertaining Duran Duran video that answers the question of what happened to all those Girls on Film, anyway?
  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LPiPOm-Xdw&rel=1&border=0]

It’s been a rough week at work. So busy, so stressful. Today went by fast, but not without its own level of stress.

So I was looking forward to my run tonight. I didn’t care if it was raining. I didn’t care if it was cold. I didn’t care if it was dark.

I was going to run 5 miles no matter what.

Sure, at the beginning, as I was just warming up, and getting used to avoiding puddles, and starting to feel the wind in my lungs, the voice in the back of my head started trying to negotiate a shorter run. It reminded me of my planned 9 mile run this Sunday, and warned that I might be overdoing it tonight.

I shot back with the fact that my two-week average from last week to this week would still only be 16 miles per week, well within my abilities.

It tried to tell me that I could run a shorter distance faster, be out of the rain and cold, and burn more calories.

I countered by pointing out that longer, slower runs burn more calories than short fast ones.

At the decision point, where I have to turn one way to run my 3 mile loop, or another way to run my 4 mile loop, or continue onto my 5 mile loop… I made the right choice. Actually, thinking back, I think that decision was made just after one mile, as I was powering up the long hill in Sellwood Park, and feeling great.

Running my 5 mile loop backwards, though, is a little harder because I don’t do it very often, and the turning point isn’t obvious the way it is when I run it the other direction. So I actually ran farther than I planned.

But the rain actually kept me from overheating. I dressed appropriately (long-sleeved shirt to keep my upper body warm, shorts to keep my legs nice and cool, gloves and a hat for my extremities, and goofy reflective gear and lights for visibility). And after I stepped in the first puddle, I didn’t even notice that my feet were soaking wet.

I just kept running. In the rain.

Courtesy of John Scalzi and YouTube and a bunch of people in a tiny room with pineapple and cookies… a funny/sad version of a song I never really liked, but now, I kinda do.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ6jiZDvX0g&rel=1&border=0]

Too good to wait for Saturday’s “Did you see..?” post.

OK, looks like Apple has put out the first patch for Leopard.

I think I’ll wait for 10.5.2 before I buy it.

Really? Three days since my my last post? My apologies. I don’t normally like to go that long without posting something.

Not much happening lately. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve kinda-sorta given up on this year’s NaNo. Yeah. I’m disappointed, too. It was going so well… for about five or six days. Then… nuttin’. The idea is still good.

I feel a little bad for an encounter at the bus stop a couple of days ago. I was at SE 17th and Bybee waiting for the bus. I had one small bag of groceries sitting on the bench next to me. It was after dark.

Suddenly, wham! a big, unshaven, smelly guy slammed his giant duffel bag down on the bench right next to my groceries. The bag was almost as tall as I was, and it made a hard sound, like there was something solid inside the bag.

My first thought was that the bag would fall over onto my groceries, and I snatched up my own small bag and turned my back to the stranger who had just appeared as if out of nowhere.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said in a loud oddly-pitched voice, “I didn’t mean ta skeer ya.”

I looked back over my shoulder. He was round in every dimension, covered in mis-matched camouflage colors, a little desert brown here, a little forest green there. He smelled like waste, an earthy primal smell. I didn’t look long, just turned back around to look in the direction the bus would come. Seven more minutes, if Tri-Met’s phone service was to be believed.

“Kin ya see the bus?” he asked.

“No.” I said it loudly, too loud for me, but matching his loud voice.

“Kin ya see the bus?” he asked again.

Apparently not loud enough. “No!” It felt like I shouted it.

He walked away, around some tall bushes, in the shadows away from the light over the bus stop. A couple of seconds later, a thin trickle of liquid ran out down the sidewalk from behind the trees and into the street. Then he emerged again, pulling at his pants zipper. He walked back to the bench, muttering “when ya gotta go,” under his breath as if in explanation for his public pissing. Was he justifying himself to me?

I ignored him and just stared down the street, willing the bus to come. I’m not normally outgoing in the best of circumstances, and today I’d been feeling even less social than normal. I really did not want to deal with someone like this guy, who apparently had much lower social boundaries than the general population.

He asked me again if I could see the bus, and I answered again in the negative. Then he said, “Oh, I’m sorry” except it sounded more like surree “I didn’t mean ta skeer ya. I was just makin’ conversation.”

I turned around to face him. Between his smell, his appearance, his strange voice, his nearly flattening my groceries, his choice of place for urination, and his propensity to stand behind me and talk loudly at me, I was honestly feeling more than a little creeped out. I admit seeing things through my own filters and feelings of leave me alone. I just said, “Huh? What? Sorry?” in a loud angry (to me) voice.

“Oh. Oh, OK. I was just makin’ conversation.” he mumbled.

Not today, pal. I struggled internally to just see him as another human being, equally deserving of some empathy. I thought, though, that ignoring him was better than snapping at him or getting angry. I’m still not sure that was the best mindset to have, though.

Just get here, bus, was all I could think.

Is 8 AM late enough to be considered “sleeping in”?

So many dead and wounded.

I wish the veterans, all veterans, my deepest thanks for their service and sacrifice.

I just had a beautiful young woman holding and touching my hands, standing very close to me, speaking softly in an unidentified (to me) accent…

…as part of a sales pitch. She was selling some skin care products from a kiosk in the mall.

She talked about exfoliation, and dry skin, and showed me the difference between my right hand, which had been treated with her lotion, and my left hand, which had not.

I recognized the sales pitch, and felt a brief pang of guilt at wasting her time. Yet I allowed it to unfold just because I feel, still feel, skin-hunger, a desire for simple human touch.

Upon reflection I know that there is only a little difference from the sales transaction that I was a part of (but ultimately declined) and the transaction that takes place in a strip club. She did not choose me out of the crowd because I’m smart, or sexy, or successful, or for my talent of writing. She chose me to offer me a trade: my money for her little blue bottles from Israel, “near the Dead Sea,” she claimed.

I draw a link between that short social intercourse at the mall and my sojourns into Devil’s Point and sharing time with Stormy… and, too, I see a parallel with the spam that fills my inbox, whose subject lines speak of visceral desires and physical needs in the hope of making a sale.

And it saddens me.

It saddens me not simply because I’m subject to the come-on, the come-hither, the c’mere. It saddens me because I seek it out. I don’t simply tolerate it – I’ve convinced myself that it’s my only recourse.

I want to be magnetic. I want to be attractive. I want to be needed.

I am, however, only pliable. I am merely gullible. I find myself needy.