The cockpit of my life
May 22, 2010
There you have it. This is where my life happens. From this one chair, I waste time at the computer and I waste time watching television. ???Happens??? might imply a bit too much proaction on my part. From this one chair, my life passes before my very eyes in the form of RGB pixels.
This would be an appropriate time to make one of my periodic declarations that I???m on the verge of canceling my cable tv subscription. We all know that will never happen. It???s not because I???m too lazy to get shows online or join NetFlix. No, it???s because the Comcast machine makes it really easy from a financial standpoint to stay. The last time I attempted to leave, I was informed/coerced that if I unbundled, the price of my internet service would go up and that I???d be saving less than $15 per month. One could stand on principle and go ahead and cancel. I caved. The internet doesn???t help either. Unlike the television, I don???t see spending time with it to be as much of a waste, thought it certainly does chew up time. I got this chair, this comfy chair, from IKEA. I had previously sat a cast-off old desk chair from my office, but because of the amount of time I spend sitting in this one location doing both computer and television, I decided I wanted a better one. It was only about $80, but it???s a whole lot more comfortable than my fancy desk chair at the office which I know they paid over $200 for. Oh, and the cushion for a little extra lower back support? That???s the bottom pillow from the cat bed I got for my sweeties a couple of years ago. I didn???t really understand its purpose in its original application. So this is the location from which I conduct a large part of my life. On a typical night I would be writing my blog entry from there; tonight I am in a hotel room in Schaumburg, Illinois, where I will be bowling in a tournament tomorrow. It???s a little strange, because due to not having packed any long pants, such as sweat pants for lounging, and having the air conditioning on at full blast because it???s very humid outside and will be warm tomorrow, I was cold, so I pulled the comforter off the bed and wrapped myself in it while sitting in the desk chair with my feet up in a second chair. At home, I never wrap up in a blanket because I can just add more clothing layers. Here, burritoed as I am, all I can think of is how movie characters wrap themselves in a sheet or blanket when they get out of bed after sex. That???s my mental image, but it turns out it???s a really cozy, comfortable setup. But I digress.Appreciate your hot shower
May 3, 2010
It was brought to my attention a week ago just how for granted I take things like water, both potable and, as it applies here, hot.
I don???t ask for style from my person hygiene routine, only cleanliness. In February, I stopped combing and blow drying my hair after my daily shower because I discovered that as my hair gets ever longer, the absence of those two actions allows the natural curl to flourish. I did not stop taking the shower itself, though.
However, due to my own laziness and fiscal irresponsibility, I ignored paying my natural gas bill to the point where my service was cut off. Since it was the end of April (and now the first weekend in May), that wasn???t too much of a problem from the heat standpoint. But from the morning shower standpoint, it was nearly devastating.
The gas company doesn???t let you off easy. They freak you out. Their website says things like, ???Please allow two to five business days for your payment to be processed. After that, please allow five to ten business days for your service to be reconnected.???
It was on Thursday that I came home to find the disconnection noticed stuffed between my doors. It was too late to make a payment yet that day. I freaked out. I love my shower. I had plans to go out Friday night.
I have this Pavlovian routine with my hot water heater which is fueled by gas. At some time in the evening after about 8:00, I run the hot water for a minute or a few, until I hear the burner poof on. That way, I know I???ll have water as hot as I desire for my shower the following morning. When I don???t do that, the water is warm, but not satisfyingly hot hot.
So when I read the disconnection notice, I didn???t think about the dishes to do on the kitchen counter or the loads of laundry that I still haven???t done. No, my only thought was please let the water be lukewarm enough to be tolerable for a shower Friday morning.
It was. Barely. But enough. It was like when you were a kid and went to the swimming pool in August. The water had been sun-warmed all summer and it felt a little cool when you first jumped in, but after a few minutes you were used to it. Only difference was, I wasn???t out in the high summer sunshine.
I called the utility company to make payment arrangements and was thrilled to find out that the gas guy could come over Saturday morning to reconnect the gas and relight the pilot lights on my furnace and hot water heater. He said to give the water forty-five minutes to heat up.
I did, and it was my most enjoyable shower in some time.
April 27
I love to sleep
April 29, 2010
Don???t most people? I would think so. But I know one person, @aaronh, who seems to have superhuman abilities to exist on subhuman amounts of sleep. Four or five hours a night for weeks on end? Come on. I???m tanked if I have two nights in a row of seven or fewer.
I know other people who keep vampire hours and don???t go to bed until the wee hours of the morning. But that???s a little different, because @someToast doesn???t seem to knock himself out getting up in the morning, so the quantity of hours is probably still there.
I, on the other hand, neither stay up late nor scrimp on hours.??
That doesn’t mean that I don’t often feel like I wished I had slept more. In reality I get seven to nine hours of sleep most nights. The exception is Thursday nights when I stay out late after bowling, whooping it up at karaoke. I get to bed between 1:00 and 2:30, depending on how much I???m singing.
But most of the time I go to bed between, say, 11:00 and 12:30 and actually get up at 8:00. Since I???ve been writing this blog, bedtime has crept later. I sit down for some quick writing and the next thing I know, what I thought I???d dash off in thirty to forty minutes has taken me an hour and a half,??????????1` (cat landing on laptop) and it???s an hour later than I had in mind. That lateness is facilitated as well, I believe, by my afternoon coffee habit, which I am seeking to get out of this week. Caffeine has a marked effect on me and even if it???s only mid-afternoon when I have some, it???s enough to keep me feeling peppy later than I should at night.
Sleeping more than is practical isn???t helped by the fact that I have a nice bed, and give myself a sleeping environment that is low on temperature and high on covers. When you???re that comfortable, can fault be found that you just want to stay there? And if you???re laying down you might as well stay asleep. Plus, for me anyway, when I???m half-sleeping in the morning because my subconscious knows that I should really get up so it doesn???t let me fall fully back to sleep, my other subconscious is going to town giving me absolutely wacky dreams. I like those dreams a lot and I treasure the experience. It???s especially fun when the dream involves people you see frequently in life and is so vivid that the next time you that person, you have to wonder for a few seconds whether that actually happened or not. Sometimes in those dreams, I even do fictional work work, such as writing It???s a Baby Armadillo, and hang out with people I???ve never met.
There???s nothing not good about sleeping. Plus, you get to snuggle with critters.
I have two mottos
March 8, 2010
I don’t hold myself to very strict standards in most areas of my life, but I do seem to embrace two credos. From my parents, I get “it doesn’t hurt to ask.” From bowling, I get “it’s only fun if you make it fun.”
It doesn’t hurt to ask
This is a philosophy that was instilled in me by my parents from an early age. In my young life, I was made to practice this by having to make my own requests about things. When I was eight or nine, I had come across a science activity to make my own bouncy ball by mixing certain chemicals together. I don’t remember what the substances were, but I do remember that it was very convenient that one of my best friends’ dad was, in fact, a chemist. As much as I wanted my mom to make the phone call for me, I had to do it. He was more than willing to bring me a little of what I needed. What still stands out in my memory though, is that, having never really directly addressed the dad before, I just went ahead and called him by his first name. Nowadays it’s common for kids to call adults by their first names, but back then, there was a brief hesitation from Mrs. H on the other end of the line as well as the suggestion from my mom to call him Mr. H in the future. I also remember that the ball did not turn out very round.
More recently, just asking is how I got Lagunitas Brewing to sponsor one of my bowling teams, even though they’re in California and I’m in Minnesota. I had the opportunity to meet the owner and brewer toward the end of last summer, and the idea hit me like a lightning bolt. So when it was my turn for a few minutes of conversation with him and I had finished gushing about how I absolutely love his beer, especially the India Pale Ale, I said, “Hey, I’ve got a promotional opportunity for you!” And his answer was, “Sure, we love doing things like that.”
It doesn’t hurt to ask.
It’s only fun if you make it fun
This one has developed in the last few years as a result of bowling with better bowlers in better leagues. Everybody wants to be good, including me, and there are some really intense people in these leagues. I always try to do my best and even when I’m having a game like the one pictured above, I try not to give up or get crabby. Being upset doesn’t benefit me or my game. But a lot of people don’t see it that way. They throw their towels or smack the scoring console or swear loudly at the foul line. I don’t believe that those things make them feel any better or help them figure out how they could adjust to improve their shot. It probably only raises their blood pressure a little. If we were that good, we’d be out on the PBA tour with a sponsor. We are good, but it’s still just a game and not a matter of life and death. We should enjoy ourselves while we’re out recreating.
It’s only fun if you make it fun.
And now I will refill my glass, even though it’s still half full.
Chick in a tin can
January 3, 2010
“Show us the road ahead.” How apropos that this came up at the new year. This is a subject I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately. I feel like I am at a crossroads in my life. It might even be a midlife crisis, as it is only three and a half years until I’m 50 and I don’t feel like I’ve done anything particularly outstanding in or with my life.
There. I said it. 50. God, that sounds horrible when I say it out loud, especially since most of you (who I know) are younger than I, in some cases quite a bit younger, or even so much younger you’re like the children I never had! Well, at least I don’t act that old. I take some comfort in that.
You may rest assured that I will not be purchasing a red convertible.
What this crossroads business boils down to is that I feel under some time pressure to accomplish my goal of getting to London. I have set an arbitrary time frame to do it by the time I’m 50—my geographical clock is ticking. The older I get, the less job-marketable I will be, especially in another country. Hell, the less job-marketable I am in my own country. The older I get, the older my parents get. Think being an only child’s a breeze? I’ll have no one to help me with my parents in their dotage. I would like a few years to enjoy myself in England. Selfish? Yes. When I was in my 30s, I figured reproducing was the way to achieve fulfillment. That didn’t happen. Now all I can come up with is doing this huge thing for myself that at the moment seems quite monumental indeed. I ponder the idea of volunteering as a different way of developing inner peace, but it hasn’t quite taken hold.
So what I said this afternoon was that I need to resolve to put effort into taking the steps necessary to achieve the London goal, or I accept that my life will go on as before because average is just the way I am. I have ambitions but little followthrough.
And that’s what I like about sharing, even though I hardly know most of you. I was quickly encouraged to be better than average. I was quickly admonished for “premeditating” to choose to remain average (I interpret it as admonishment, let me run with that). Both sentiments are inspiring in their own way.
I feel change pecking at the shell, trying to get out.
Image from Shutterstock
My favorite scar
January 2, 2010
Of my four scars whose stories I remember, my favorite (big surprise) is the rabbit-generated one, resulting from a bunny kiss FAIL.
The other three stories that I remember, in age order are as follows:
Right eyebrow: My parents tell me that when I was about five years old, I fell out of the car head first into loose gravel. I don’t remember the incident, but there is a slight bare spot in that eyebrow, so I’ll have to take their word that something happened.
Left knee: Virtually immediately after getting a brand new, red Schwinn 3-speed bicycle when I was about 9 years old, I rode it down to the end of the street, made too sharp a turn to come back, and promptly wiped out.
Left breast: When I was in college, I had a small lump removed. Nobody ever thought it was cancerous or had the possibility to be, but it was one of those peace of mind things. My surgeon was Dr. John Najarian, a pioneer in organ transplant. I did not know that at the time. He went from fame to infamy to acquittal.
Lower lip: My second rabbit was Hilda. (For those of you keeping score, she is the rabbit who Chris Gargan named. (I should really give Chris his own tag!)). She was a regal Checkered Giant (aka Papillon to you Europeans). The breed is described as “lively” and it’s no lie!
I had decided on her breed long before it became necessary to have something in mind, and picked her up at a rabbit show in Hutchinson, Minnesota, when she was about eight weeks old. She was a large personality from the get-go. She and the cats (my two former cats, Dhia (tortoise shell) and Yul (black)) had a mutual admiration society.
Hilda and I got along just fine, too, after I learned about her personal space issues.
One evening when she was still fairly young, she was lounging (rather than chewing) on the couch. She just looked so adorable that I had to lean in for a bunny kiss. My previous rabbit Hazel had been good at that, my current rabbit Robbin is very good at that. You meet the rabbit halfway, and he or she bumps noses with you.
Well, not Hilda, bless her sweet heart. There were still inches between us, but she lunged up and grabbed my lip with her pointy teeth. I think we were both surprised. I looked in the bathroom mirror and through the blood, discovered that there was a V-shaped piece of skin flapping in the breeze.
In hindsight, I certainly should have gone to get stitches. Instead, I’m left with a permanent reminder of my Peanut.
It comes with centipedes and a nice draft in winter
December 17, 2009
I had no business being given a mortgage. I wasn’t even UN-seriously looking for a place. Yet two months later, there I was in my very own condo.
It all started with simple curiosity. The Twin Cities, like most places, had been going through condofication for a number of years. The majority new construction, but a lot of the old apartment buildings were being converted from rentals to condominiums. There was one such building in my old neighborhood, and I was very curious to know the asking price on an apartment that was for sale in it. I was not entertaining any notion of buying it or anything else, but I just wanted to satisfy my smug self that it was going for far too much. In the course of trying to find its listing, I came across the listing for my place. I was basically convinced immediately upon seeing the character of the exterior of the building. I met the estate agent to see the interior, which was just fine, and had plenty of character of its own. The building is a Swedish row house (Minnesota is the land of Scandanavians), and the apartment was long and narrow with no interior walls (no distinct rooms) except for the bathroom and three good-sized closets. I explained to the realtor the realities of my financial situation and that I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t actually be able to make a purchase. She gave me the name and number of a fellow who she said might be able to help me. Turns out he was a miracle worker. I have been in my place for about four years now. Whereas I used to be completely squeamish about spiders, I now squish centipedes with aplomb (even the ones with inch-and-a-half long bodies) and scoff at puny spiders. It helps that centipedes aren’t crunchy. The building was, apparently, constructed in the 1890s. Although the interiors were redone relatively recently, there’s still no denying its age. The building is constantly in motion and my floor has an ever-evolving contour (I’m on the ground floor, “garden level” as it’s quaintly called), so there are ample little cracks for frigid winter air to draft in. The windows are in good shape, but I’ve found that it nonetheless helps tremendously to seal them off with the 3M shrinkwrap stuff. When there’s a north wind, I watch the plastic over my bedroom window “breathe” and am pleased that I neither feel that breeze nor have to pay the extra heating bill. My building is also part of the Minneapolis music scene. Morris Day and the Time shot their debut album cover photo ON MY FRONT STEPS! They were a Prince spin-off who established a reputation in their own right. Although there are reasons why I wish I didn’t, I know the prevailing opinion is that it’s sensible to own rather than rent. Yay.
Solitude
December 15, 2009
One of the things about being an only child is that I’m used to being on my own (especially as an only child who’s been single all her life, more or less). I experience solitude most of the time that I’m not at the office. It’s just who I am and I absolutely don’t mind it.
As today has worn on, I’ve realized that there are two kinds of solitude—happenstance and self-imposed. I suffer from the self-imposed. Not suffer, rather, experience, because I’ve chosen it. Suffer implies that it’s thrust upon you. I embrace it. Oh, I can put on the social butterfly face if I must, if I’m well-rested, have psyched myself up, and perhaps, just perhaps, have had a tasty beverage or two.
(That’s what I like about writing these blog entries— suffering? tasty beverage? Where did that come from? This is supposed to be about being a loner and sitting next to big water.)
I tried having roommates way back when. The three of us had rent payment issues. We had “I thought I didn’t have to share a bedroom” issues. I swore I’d never have another roommate until I was, you know, married. I’ll be living by myself forever, it seems.
Right, then.
When I’m in the mood for meta-solitude, I seek out water.
It can be as simple as small running water, such as a faucet, my morning shower, a public fountain. There’s something about that trickling sound, that dance of a stream of water small or large, the feel of it beating against your chest in the shower, the warmth of it flowing over your fingers, the sound of it dancing through the leaves of the trees outside your open window in the summer.
Big water is even better. I used to hang out on the shore of Lake Superior at a friend’s place. You get lost in the lack of horizon. You get mesmerized by the sound. One of the best times of my life was singing Del Amitri songs to myself out loud on the shore of the Firth of Forth in North Berwick. Scottish in Scotland. It was late in the evening, late in June, which meant that there was ample lightness still at 11 p.m. It was just about perfect. It was just about opposite of current conditions.
Boats are good, too. I tend to get seasick on the larger ones, such as ferries going between, say, Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly. But conceptually, I love boats and being on the water and will always say yes. I’ve floated up the Thames to Greenwich; I think it would be very satisfactory to go on a longboat in the the other direction.
Just this morning, I engaged in solitude with my sleeping bag winter coat. When I got on the train, I didn’t push back my hood to embrace my environment. I left my parka snorkel in place and enjoyed being antisocial and diddling on my iPhone.
Antisocial. There’s a whole other topic.
Postscript: I was going to end with the above, but in rereading I realized that I didn’t even mention how much I love sitting on my front step in the summer. I like it when I’ve walked or biked home and been inside to change into something cooler and go back outside, and then am finally still, just enjoying breathing the air, listening to the birds, squirrels and maybe the neighborhood people sounds, and maybe sipping on a tasty beverage.
And don’t even get me started on how much I love roadtripping by myself (apparently you didn’t). I get into tiffs with bowling friends because I refuse to carpool with them to Chicago for our annual tournament. I just love driving alone, staying off the interstates, taking instead U.S. and state highways, going more slowly and passing through every small town. That is so incredibly relaxing to me, a little holiday inside my car for eight hours.
Water and driving, for the win.
How I came to love the word perspicacious
December 13, 2009
One day, Chris Gargan and I were talking. He called me perspicacious. People respect and admire him and hang on his every word at times. You might remember Chris from a couple of my other posts as a big influence on my life. He also influenced my vocabulary. (Chris and my career; Chris names my rabbit.)
I like to think that I’m good at reading people and situations and picking up on subtleties that other people miss. Maybe that’s why I don’t like talking on the telephone all that much, because I can’t see the body language.
Granted, a lot of the time you don’t need to be hit on the head to sense the vibe. That often happens in relationships. Particularly the ends of relationships. But sometimes the other person might need help saying something. If you know what they want to say, you can help them get there. I assisted one boyfriend that way in breaking up with me. You don’t want to stay on a sinking ship, but by god I was going to make him be the one to say it. It wasn’t the most exciting relationship I had ever been in, however, I would have been okay with going on, but once I sensed that he had left mentally, well, what’s the point if the other person’s not into it?
I read between between the lines. Unfortunately, this can also lead to a certain amount of paranoia, even on a good day.
It was quite a lot of fun figuring out how to illustrate perspicacious for Tweak Today.
perspicacious [pur-spi-key-shuhs] –adjective
having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning: to exhibit perspicacious judgment.
7 lines of togetherness (vs. 6 degrees of separation)
December 10, 2009
So far, my life has five tangents, mathematically speaking with regard to the straight line between two points. I consider there to be two more lines of possibility for me, which makes seven in total. Two more lines of possibility and three more possible stations, one of which is not different than my current station (wild is the wind, TVC15 uh oh). I could do nothing and stay in MInneapolis which would add nothing to the total. Nobody doesn’t know that I want to move to London.
Not as many people know that I’d also be happy moving to San Francisco/Silicon Valley. I don’t mean for it to be a secret, I just don’t talk about it nearly as much. It would certainly be easier—it’s in the same country, after all. My rabbit and cats could ride in my car with me. But London is my overwhelming first choice. One of my best friends from Minneapolis moved to Silicon Valley three years ago. Since then, I became twitterrific and acquired many of his new California friends because they’re just friendly that way, and I love it. These are the folks that I have previously referred to as my first-generation of online friends. A lot of the time I feel very isolated geographically. Well, emotionally, too, but we’ll save that for another time. Two of the California people (three, counting their offspring who I don’t mean to discount, but she’s just so much younger, yet very mature for her early teen age) have ended up here. I don’t get the impression that this was their first choice, but sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. My point is, they probably understand about feeling like you’re not in your final place overall. The seven lines business comes in this way: after my parents have been here for a few Christmas days, my new London friend is laying over at my airport at about the same time that my friend who moved to California is arriving from his Christmas weekend with his family in Wisconsin. Two other Californians are also coming here to visit. I’ve lost my train of thought. For a few hours, later this month Minneapolis will be the center of the universe, the place where all line segments intersect. It will be fun. [Ironically (and this time I do use ironically as opposed to coincidentally, which is most often more appropriate), a friend from here is from the same town I was born in–five lines separated.]
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 