Category: blogiversary

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Whatever I may have thought of him when I was a teenager, it’s obvious that George Lucas has become a hack. His genius is not in writing – it’s in designing toys and marketing. Here’s a post from a few years back that reacts to this saddening news.

*****
What the fuck? George Lucas had to force himself to write Episode III? He lacked “inspiration”?

What a crock of shit!

Listen, this is the middle part of a story that has already been told! There are no surprises here, none. We already know that Anakin is going to become Vader. We already know that Amidala is going to give birth to twins. We already know that Obi-Wan and Anakin are going to fight it out, probably above a volcano. We already know that Vader’s going to hunt down the Jedi, and that Obi-Wan and Yoda will escape.

This movie should have practically written itself!

What, did Lucas need inspiration in how to fuck up everyone’s childhood memories? Did he need inspiration in how to include stoopid CGI characters that nobody liked? Was he not “feeling it” in trying to figure out how to include characters like Han Solo, in order to make his galaxy seem as small as a rural country town?

…oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ll see it. I have to. It’s a compulsion, like buying Cake CDs just so that you don’t have an incomplete collection. Argh.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

New diners just don’t appear out of nowhere, one day nothin’, next day a little trailer, weathered and worn down. It just doesn’t happen… except with a little help from some magicians, maybe.

*****
I carpool with Tracy and her mom every day, and our morning route goes down SW Naito Parkway.

Friday morning I saw a little diner under the Broadway Bridge. It looked old, like it had been there for years, and yet I didn’t remember seeing it before. I don’t want to bust out my “native Portlander” stories, but believe me, I’ve got native cred like you wouldn’t believe, and for all the times I’ve been around that end of the Broadway, I didn’t remember seeing that diner, called, apparently, “Bridge Diner”.

Tracy and her mom were talking when we drove past, and I’m pretty much non-talk-y in the morning, so I didn’t say anything at the time, which means I have no witnesses to verify that I noticed anything unusual Friday morning. And it promptly fell out of my head as the day went on, so I didn’t google it or anything.

Until this morning, when I checked in on the Portland Mercury blog and saw a post about a movie that’s being filmed in Portland, starring Sly Stallone and Diane Lane… and the fake diner they built under the Broadway Bridge for a set, and how it’s all weathered and Portland-ized and how Diane Lane was in “Judge Dredd”, which I clearly don’t remember at all because that movie sucked.

Not that this will convince anyone, but I’m just happy I’m not crazy in that way – the way of “not remembering diners that have been there for years” way. Yay, me!

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

I’m always amazed at the people I meet, and the stories they embody. Like this old guy I ran into at the bus stop one night. I don’t think I ever met him again.

And I never did find out what skills he had or learned.

*****
I slipped into the bus shelter behind the old man, where it was dry. I bit into my apple, a juicy delicious Honeycrisp, sweet and mixed red and green in color. The old man, tall, white hair cut into near-invisibility in a buzz, barrel-chested and skinny-legged, looked like a football coach, his back to me as he watched for the bus. He jumped at the sound of my apple bite and looked over his shoulder.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear ya sneak up on me.” His voice was kind and a bit sad, not accusing me so much as he was wistful. He picked up his bag, which had been sitting on the bench.

“No problem,” I said. I was content to stand and try to finish my apple before the bus showed up.

He turned completely around. “You know,” he said, “30 years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to do that.” He had a slight lisp, and it looked like his nose had been broken and reset oddly. His lip half-curled. “I’ve lost some skills since then.” His eyes lowered and he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets.

I wondered what he was remembering. Did he serve in the military? Or just have to spend a lot of time in places where one doesn’t let their guard down? I smiled around a mouthful of apple. “I’m sure that you’ve gained some skills in that time, though, too.”

“Oh, maybe so, maybe so,” he conceded. “It’s hard to know whether the gain has been worth it, though.” He turned and looked down the street. “The bus’ll be here in, oh, about two minutes.”

“How true. We take what we get and do what we can with it.” In the span of just a few minutes, I’d come to like this guy. I silently wished him luck.

It’s an odd feeling, liking strangers. I’m not used to it, yet. And it may only be for today.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

This week I’m especially thankful for my friends. I was going to re-post the following on Thanksgiving Day, because that’s when I originally wrote it; but no. I’m going to re-post it now.

And I’m still thankful for everything on the list. And they’re all still in my life. Well, except for Smacky. I hope he’s chasing down his kill and feasting on the still-warm remains, out there, somewhere.

*****

• Thanks to my family for reminding me where I come from and for always feeling like “home”.
• Thanks to my sister’s in-laws for never even noticing that there’s a distinction.
• Thanks to my friends for being the most honest, straight-forward, and ethical people I know. Plus, you’re all hilarious. Have I mentioned that lately?
• Thanks to my coworkers for always trying to just fix it.
• Thanks to Smacky for being about as “cat” as anyone can be.
• Thanks to Apple for making such sexy sexy hardware and software.
• Thanks to my negative voice. Without you I wouldn’t have a challenge to overcome.
• Thanks to the netroots for finally becoming a progressive, political force.
• Thanks to everyone who voted Democratic in the last election. I was so scared that… shudder… well, let’s not think about that.
• Thanks to redheaded women, everywhere. Just thanks. Damn. Yes, even the crazy ones. Especially them.
• Thanks to Brooks running shoes for making the perfect shoes for my feet.
• Thanks to the framers of the Oregon Constitution for all the free speech protections. I appreciate and use them almost every day.
• Thanks to the New Atheists, like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and James Randi. It may take another 500 years but ours will be the majority view someday. Or we’ll be dead and unable to care.
• Thanks to the Iron Horse, Maya’s Tacqueria, Backspace, Twin Paradox, the Limelight, the Acropolis. It’s not just the food that keeps me coming back, although that’s excellent, too.
• Thanks to all my favorite living authors, too many to mention, but here’s a few: Tim Powers, Bruce Sterling, Carl Hiaasen, Arthur Nersesian, Neil Gaiman… the list goes on and on and deserves it’s own post, if not it’s own site (but www.bookslut.com is already taken). You inspire me, amaze me, and fill me with envy and I would read every word you write. Fuck that – I would pay for every word you write.
• Thanks to God, for not existing or showing any evidence of ever having existed, in spite of everyone looking for You. You’ve got everyone fooled, and boy, is everyone going to feel silly when they realize You’re not there. Then we’ll all have a good laugh and finally get around to that whole “world peace and love” thing people have been promising for centuries.
• Last, but not least, thanks to each and every one of you who reads this, or anything else I’ve ever written. I do it for myself because I’m a selfish bastard, and I’m still amazed that anyone else even understands it, let alone enjoys it and wants more. I wouldn’t stop even if I could.

…I’m sure I’m missing people. I’m sure there are people out there who would prefer a specific mention rather than being included in a broad category. I’m sure that I will think of much much better/funnier things to say immediately after clicking “Publish Post”.

But I’m also sure that you’ll understand. Happy Thanksgiving.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

By February 2006, I was stuck in a rut as far as blog posts went. I was mainly blogging about my running and diet. Big whoop. I mean, it was important for me to keep track of my exercise, and keeping a journal, online or whatever, was part of the process that kept me going and kept me honest. But it wasn’t exactly electrifying reading.

And then, one rainy night, walking in my neighborhood, I ran across something new, and it sparked a little experiment that I called “Creative Week”.

But first, I blogged the inspiration. Enjoy!

*****
Last night, after being out all day, I got home to discover that Smacky was out of food. He was visibly agitated about it. I decided to walk up to the grocery store to replenish his supply.

It was raining a little bit, but I didn’t mind. Was bundled up warm.

When I got to SE Milwaukie and Bybee, there were trailers parked all down Milwaukie Ave., and tents and people with walkie-talkies and headsets. As I got closer, I saw little “No Parking” signs that indicated the reason for all this activity.

They were filming… something.

Since I had to go past it all to get to the store, I poked around. For a moment I thought they were filming in the Moreland Theater. But when I looked in the Limelight Restaurant next door, I saw a whole crowd of people, in chairs and standing up, all staring at a bunch of monitors, and at the bar next door was a yellow sign saying “Bar Closed – just for today”. Looks like the bar was the set.

The parking lot of the Wells Fargo bank next door was packed with more trailers and tents, and one tent was marked “Extras”. In the street was a little sign:

Sorry for the blurry pic. Camera phone.

I walked on up to my grocery store, bought a bag of cat food (almost NINE BUCKS for a 5 lb. bag! That seems expensive, but then, I guess that bag will last me a couple of months. I wish I could eat for that cheap. Except delicious food, not cat food). I asked the checker if she knew what was going on down the street. She shrugged. “I don’t know… I heard, it was just a rumor, but I heard that Rebecca De Mornay was involved somehow.”

“Really? That’s cool!” I said.

She shrugged again. “It’s just a rumor.”

On my way out, I saw another grocery girl. “Do you know what movie is being filmed down there?”

Fumbling with a cigarrette, she shrugged. “I heard…” – she looked around as if someone might be listening in – “The Rock.”

“The rock?”

“You know…” she said. “The Rock?” She was a tiny girl, shorter than me, but she indicated a giant of a man with her hands, smoke trailing from her now-lit cigarrette.

“Right. The wrestler. I gotcha.” I headed back into the rain.

As I neared the bar set again, I spotted a guy hauling a box of stuff towards the base camp. “Hey,” I stopped him, “What’s going on?”

“It’s a movie” he said, with a smile.

“Right. I kinda got that,” I said. He was walking away. The box didn’t look heavy but it did look bulky. “What’s the movie?”

He turned around part way and spoke over his shoulder. “It’s called ‘The Music Within’. Go take a look. The set is just down there. It’s kinda cool.” He pointed down the street with his chin.

‘Kinda cool’? He didn’t sound like he worked with them… sounded like a fellow sightseer like me.

I looked around again, and made eye contact with the folks guarding the doors at the Limelight. I got nods of recognition in return, and smiles, but couldn’t bring myself to talk to them again. They seemed so… busy.

After I passed all the activity, I called Tracy. After filling her in on the movie being filmed in my neighborhood, I asked her to look it up on IMDB to see who might be in it.

She found it listed, but didn’t recognize the one star listed. A bit more googling but she couldn’t find much more info on it.

But, you know… I had a cat to feed.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

With my struggle to control my eating habits, there’s a phrase I use often that tries to encapsulate the helplessness I feel, but which really just serves to deflect any sense of agency I should feel.

That phrase is “accidentally ate”. As in, “I accidentally ate an eggnog milkshake and it was delicious.”

Here’s the (short, but sweet (like chocolate cake)) post where I first used that phrase publicly.

*****
Suddenly there appeared left-over cake in the break room this afternoon. German chocolate cake, and a lemon cake. Several of us were in there accidentally eating some.

One lady commented, “Well, we don’t want this to go to waste, do we?”

I replied, “Right. Eat up! There’s people starving in Gitmo, after all!”

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Anger is funny. At least that’s what my friends tell me. So when I go off on a rant, about something as simple as trying to find a bowl of soup, it produces something that makes my friends laugh, even as I’m seething in thwarted anger.

Which, now that I think about it, makes me laugh, too. Eventually. Everybody wins!

*****
I’ve spent the past half-week fighting off that stupid cold virus that’s been beating up my co-workers and friends (“that’s a pretty big virus”) and it’s taking its toll.

My days have consisted of work and sleep, with intermittent periods of eating and the occassional email exchange with friends. Lots and lots of sleeping. In fact, I’ve spent more time asleep since Sunday than I have at work. No, I’m not sleeping at work, although a couple of floors down in the building where I work is a little room with a cot and an alarm clock that’s expressly there for the purpose of taking a quick nap at work if necessary (I love the county sometimes).

I haven’t been running, either, because running lowers the immune system or something and I want to fight this crappy giant cold virus (I picture it being much like a red-orange-yellow beach ball, with spikes) so I can get back to running and breathing and enjoying things like coherent thought and not blowing my nose and such.

The world takes advantage of my confused, doped-up-on-over-the-counter-medication state by dangling things that might relieve this misery a tiny bit and then sliming it in gelatinous oozing confusion. I wanted some soup for lunch. Soup. Simple hot liquid with something tasty in it. Kinda hard to find downtown, but I walked past this sandwich place I’ve been meaning to try and, sure enough, on a little sandwich (ha-ha) board out on the sidewalk they list their “specials”:

Grilled: Roast Beef, cheddar, roasted red pepper, red onions, blah, blah, I’m losing focus here… Soup: Black Bean

Coolio! Soup and a sandwich. I walk in. To my doom.

I see that they have two“soup and sandwich” items on the menu: both of them have a 12 oz. soup, but one is a “half” and one is a “whole”. Obvious first question: How big is a half? I ask the counter girl that, and she pauses.

“Uh… well” she hems and haws, making vague size motions with her hands “it’s, uh, half of a whole sandwich…”

A bespectacled boy with a blonde soul patch pokes his head out from behind an oak wall, holding a loaf of bread in his hands, muttering something that may have seemed, to him and the counter girl, to be an answer to my question. Already confused, I decide to order a “whole” and hope I don’t get a “whole” loaf of bread. I guess I could save it for dinner. They’d better not charge me more than the menu’s stated price of $8.25, though.

“OK, I’ll take your roast beef and black bean special.” I state this as decisively as the phlegm in my throat allows.

Again, counter girl looks lost. “Um… well, you’ll have to” she hands me a little clipboard with a chart full of options on it “fill this out.”

“I can’t just order the special?”

“You can customize it however you want.” She replies. I step aside to study my options, getting a bit frustrated.

Roast Beef wasn’t even an option on the menu. A sign hanging over the register explains that if I want Roast Beef or Pastrami that I’ll have to write it in, and apologizes for the menus being confusing. Yay. Some validation. Yes, yes, I am confused.

I manage to fill out their devilish form with only a couple of mistakes. I accidentally checked an option that made the counter girl think I wanted the “Kid’s brown bag” special, when instead I wanted the “whole sandwich and soup” special. I also marked “Orange” on one part and “apple” on another for my choice of fruit, but I did that on purpose to highlight how confusing the menu was. Either I was too subtle or not subtle enough because it went right over countergirl’s head.

I probably won’t go back, even though the soup was pretty good. The sandwich was average and the oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookie was kinda thin. And, no, I didn’t get a whole loaf sandwich, either, so the value… not so good.

I just wanted some soup, dammit.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

In reference to my recent post mentioning my TV addiction (which I am trying to break, or at least modify), here’s the post where I admit that I gave in to social pressure to start watching “Lost”, along with the rest of America.

*****
Note: This post contains no spoilers for “Lost”.

My friend Ken * has been a fan of “Lost” since the beginning. Every Thursday morning after a new episode, he would come to work, sit down, and start out to tell me about the cool things on the show, and then realize that I don’t watch teevee. He would then proceed to pity me and belittle me, because “Lost” was not just some dumb sitcom. It was special.

I resisted watching the show for several reasons. First, probably just because of my contrarian nature – if it was popular, how could the show be any good? I did relent once during the first season, figuring if someone cool like Ken liked it, maybe it had some redeeming qualities. However, the show I ended up watching, while interesting character-heavy drama, didn’t have enough of the “Lost” mythology to project its appeal to me, and I stopped watching. I remember Ken’s disappointment the next day. “Yeah,” he admitted, “that wasn’t the best first episode to watch.”

Then, as Season Two approached, Ken began obsessing even more, joining online forums and discussing the show. I was a bit more intrigued, and when Ken bought the Season One DVD set and offerred to let me borrow it, I relented once again.

So for a couple of weeks I made my way through the DVDs, and I got a little more hooked. The mythology of the show was interesting, but more interesting to me was the characters. Seeing their backgrounds in flashbacks, compared with their current actions on the island, and watching as they developed the characters over the course of a season made me glad to have been there when all this long-form television got started. “Babylon 5”, “The X-Files”, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”… I’ve done this before. I like the greater depth one gets for characters and situations when they’re not resolved and wrapped up neatly in 60 minutes (42 if you subtract commercials). Ken hadn’t ever gotten into those previous shows (he was off serving his country in the Air Force during most of the 90s) so I saw why “Lost” would feel so new and fresh to him.

And, honestly, the writing on the show was very good. I liked it.

So much so that, weekend after last, when I was done with the Season One DVDs, with the prospect of new episodes being aired, I did something that, until this point, I had never done before: I spent money at the iTunes Music Store. I bought the first two episodes of Season Two for “Lost”. It was the weekend, and I knew that several others I worked with were sufficiently geeky to both watch “Lost” and save it in some digital form, so I could probably find the other episodes for free… but, what the hell, I have a 5th Generation iPod capable of playing video **, so why not?

I bought and watched those two episodes, asked around at work the next Monday, waited another day, didn’t hear back, and that night splurged and bought the rest of the season. Total of 12 episodes so far.

It worked pretty well, although they take up quite a bit of space and I’ll be sure to remove them when I’m done. The screen on my iPod is actually slightly larger than my actual teevee set when I hold it at a comfortable viewing distance. Y’know… visually. So I’m not losing much by watching “Lost” on my device. Plus, it’s good to know that one more capability of my gadget is being actually used.

And using the iTMS is also good. But there was one episode that wouldn’t download. The 7th episode of the season. I kept getting my favorite ironical computer-type-error, the “unknown error”, after the little progress bar crept its way across the screen the entire way. Argh.

And I couldn’t watch these episodes out of order. That’s just not right.

I figured that in this instance, since I’ve been all legal ‘n’ stuff and paid for the privelege of viewing it, that I could justify finding a quasi-legal copy on the internets. And I did, eventually, find one, even one that had already been pre-formatted for my iPod. And it took fourteen hours to download via BitTorrent. Glacially slow. I started it at night, and by the time I had to leave for work in the morning, it hadn’t finished.

While waiting for the quasi-legal copy to download, though, I fired off an angry email to Apple about their failure to satisfy my need for instant gratification. I outlined all the things I’d tried and carefully provided the text of their irritatingly-vague error message and asked them to fix it.

I was losing valuable time – a new episode was coming soon, and I had to catch up. I still had 6 episodes to watch and less and less time to do it. The following day after work, I got home and found that both the legal download worked, and the quasi-legal download had (finally!) finished. Argh. More frustration, but no time for that. I had “Lost” to watch.

Yeah. I’ll admit it. I’ve become hooked on the show. Ken was right. It is the coolest. Ken also likes being the superior one who has already hashed out much speculation and observations about the island and the people on it… but that’s OK.

In the meantime, I got an email from Apple, apologizing for my inconvenience, and explaining that they are crediting me the cost of that download and giving me 5 free downloads at the iTMS. Yay! Now I can enter their “Billionth Song Download” contest without spending any money!

When I win, all my friends get iPods. Just sayin’.

* Yes, I’m linking to his site even though he hasn’t updated since September just because I can and because I’m trying to shame him into updating again.

** I know I haven’t blobbed about upgrading my older one but it’s an embarassing story involving me dropping my old one, the one with the Radiohead lyric on the back, into the toilet so you can understand my reticence. Just go with me, here.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Helping the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, with all the hope in having someone finally oppose the toxic Bush Administration, felt very good. And one of the early victories of that effort was seeing Donald Rumsfeld step down as the Secretary of Defense. Buh-bye.

*****
Bye, Rumsfeld!

The Donald becomes the first recipient of Lunar Obverse’s “Yellow Undies” award. I hope (oh, how I hope!) that there will be many, many more.

Don’t let an IED hit your ass on the way out!

And, sadly, Bush had to reverse himself, after defending Rumsfeld time and again. But when the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Times and Air Force Times newspapers all join in calling for the Defense Secretary’s resignation, truly… it’s time to go.

Wait, did I say “sadly”? Sorry, it’s hard to read what I’m saying while I’m wearing this huge grin on my face.

I hope our president likes the taste of crow…

Good news comes in threes, they say. But I’ve lost count of all the good news for our country that I’ve heard in the last 24 hours. Still, if there’s more to come, I’m so ready for it.

Truly, this is the best day of my political life.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

I’m single. I know, hard to believe, huh? But I date. And, more than that, I’m mystified and confused and in wonderment about the opposite sex (which would be the female gender, for those of you not keeping score at home).

And I think that pondering said mysteries, confuzlements, and wonderments has led to some of my best posts. Like this one.

*****
Walking in to work one morning with Tracy, another group of employees were heading out. One of them is a lady I’ll call H. H and her co-workers were in charge of a county work group – people working off minor crimes and misdemeanors through community service work. As such, H was dressed in grungy work clothes; baggy jeans, old boots, a sweater, down vest, hair tucked up under a baseball cap, everything looking worn out and dirty from use.

I’d talked to her before on a normal, “I’m here to fix your computer” basis, but before she started with the work crews, so I was used to her wearing business casual clothing, very conservative business casual clothing. In fact, H struck me as conservative in personality, friendly but mostly quiet and polite and practical.

Even that morning, seeing her in completely different clothes, after I had the shock of recognition, I didn’t see her as anything other than a co-worker whose computer I’d fixed from time to time. She recognized me and said “Oh, hi, Brian” and I said good morning back to her.

Tracy asked me about her, later, and after my memory had been jogged (it was eight hours later when Tracy had asked) I told her.

Tracy mentioned that H, even in no makeup, struck her as very beautiful. Tracy mentioned a resemblance to Jennifer Garner.

I gave Tracy a look, because, as I said above, I had never seen that in H at all. H was older than Ms. Garner, for one reason, and there’s a mental space that movie stars occupy that’s separate from the space everyday people occupy, which is why it’s difficult sometimes to recognize a star encountered unexpectedly on the street (have I ever told you the story about flirting with Heather Locklear?) As Tracy’s thought percolated my mind, however, I could feel my perspective shifting a little bit. Remembering H in the previous setting and clothing I knew her from, I joked, “She could probably pull off the ‘sexy librarian’ look!” Tracy agreed whole-heartedly. But eventually I shrugged it off.

The next night I had a dream about H. An intimate one. It startled me. I laughed about it the next day with Tracy, who offered me a high-five in return.

“Right! ON!” she said.

Later that day, I was leaving the county motor pool and I saw H again. She was crossing the street heading in to the parking lot. She was dressed similarly (or exactly; the clothes are so generic I couldn’t tell the difference). As she walked, her back to me, I noticed that her hair, even though it was pulled through the back of the baseball cap and held with a Scunci… it was very long, hanging down to her backside (hidden, dammit, in the oversized jeans). Again, I felt the contradictory mental images of her clashing, in this case several images: H in make-up and glamorous Hollywood clothes (like Jennifer Garner); H in generic business casual clothes (the librarian before she lets down her hair and takes off her jacket that hides her curves); H in glasses, a white blouse, and short skirt, hair flying wildly (sexy librarian post-revelation); and H as I saw her before me, in dirty grungy baggy work clothes, but with her hair falling down her back.

Trying to reconcile all these images, I nearly rear-ended a Porsche Boxster S. While driving a county car.

Damn.

A shifting perspective is a wonderful thing to experience. Even if nothing comes of it, I’m going to remember that moment when my consciousness changed how I looked at someone else. I live for those moments; they are as special to me as moments of epiphany are to a spiritual or religious person.

So much of what we see is filtered through our expectations. Change your expectations and you can literally change how you see the world.

In this case, you can learn to see a hidden beauty you had never before noticed. The value of that shift is incalculable.