Baby on BORED

Happy Halloween.

Our Sales Admin department decided last week that we’d have a costume contest this morning at 8am. In true me fashion, I immediately got nervous. What am I gonna wear? What’s considered “acceptable” here? What if I’m the only one who dresses up? What if I’m the only one who DOESN’T dress up? People really need to consider the feelings of Neurotic Insecures (new term, abbreviated NI, prounounced “KNEE!”, coined here today by yours truly, defines yours truly quite well) before they announce costume contests – I’ve had agita about this ever since. No wonder I’m not getting much done at work. … Okay, that’s a stretch even for me. I’m not getting things done because there’s NOT a lot to do, and what there is to do isn’t exactly lighting my fire, but I’m also feeling run-down lately, so I’m being lazy. Sue me.

Anyway, I ended up wearing a baby costume, complete with bonnet & bottle (sold separately) that I bought 4 years ago and haven’t worn since. Totally rocked it. Walked in & people just bust up laughing and telling me I’ve got guts, gumption, gall, etc. (never noticed that almost all words that are polite ways to say ‘balls’ start with a hard g – coincidence?) So they voted, and I won most creative costume because I have “nerves of steel” according to our VP Sales. (She was actually dressed as Measles (the disease), courtesy of her 7-year-old daughter who pasted little red construction paper polka-dots all over her.) Given all the praise, and me being a small-time ham but a ham nonetheless, I’m going to wear it all day. (Never mind that it’s bordering just on the safe side of showin’ off me twig & berries. But as long as it stays on the safe side, or I hide behind a strategically placed notepad, I’ll be fine.)

What’d I win? A $200 gift certificate to Boulevard here in SF. Boy do I feel guilty – I BOUGHT this costume, and I bought it FOUR YEARS AGO and have never worn it, and now all of a sudden I have a sizable gift to an extremely gourmet experience on the Embarcadero. The only way I could feel more guilty is if I played it like I didn’t win, and then used the GC to take R out for her b-day in November. It’s a thought that crossed my mind, but A) was too excited about winning that I couldn’t not tell her; and B) she reads the hell out of my blog, and I had to tell Wyltie about this.

I guess I can just think of it as compensation for my agita over this. But there were a few other costumes that were more original (or at least more homemade) than mine. Two of our Finance managers showed up as handstands – they put gloves on their feet, strapped shirts to their legs, flipped jeans upside down and stuck their hands in a pair of boots, and looked very real. One lady did a full-on black spiderweb ghosty ensemble that I think went undervalued. One of our directors on my team showed up as Nappy D, which isn’t a big deal for most folks but I didn’t expect it at all coming from this guy – he’s built like Homer Simpson, has the brain of Homer the Greek, and the personality of a cold spoon. For him to go full-on with the wig and the Vote for Pedro t-shirt, outdated jeans and huge glasses… well, I’m glad to see he has some humor. He wins for Most Surprising Effort. And one chick showed up as a Fried Egg. She made the costume herself out of a white bedsheet and some yellow fabric. Now Fried Egg is not a very exciting costume, but the execution and authenticity of it was striking.

Look at me getting all emotional and analytical about Halloween costumes. You know what that is? That’s me exploiting any opportunity to be creative/funny & making it more impactful. Why? Cuz I’ve got the bug. I wanna act or perform.

… crap, but now I have to go have a one-on-one with the boss. I thought he was out sick because he wasn’t in this morning for the contest thing. *sigh* Left Brain vs. Right Brain. It’s DEFLATING even when I’m just writing the blog and I have to get up and actually work. (Slacker mentality aside, I actually NEED to do this, and the only time I seem to have is when I’m at work. Sue me.)

WAIT! Bonus! My admin says he’s busy with the new boss (MyLINH, pronounced Mee-LING, I’ve been told). No meeting. More writing.

So I wanna act/perform/create in some way. I can do what I’m doing to enable that… but eventually I don’t want it to be something I’m enabling. I want it to be the only thing. Financially and professionally it really makes so little sense that it puts a sinking feeling in my stomach when I think about those aspects. But dammit, what if I rock at it? Or what if I rock at it just enough to become a cult favorite like Robert Goulet (may he rest in peace)?

There’s a lot to be said for the ‘good’ things that come of being a professional in the business world. And it should prepare me fairly well for my ultimate goal of being a teacher or a professor, providing lots of real world experience from which to draw anecdotal stories to relate to the students yadda yadda. But what about the healing power of laughter? What about the ability to directly affect lots of people from one stage? And what about the practice of being on an ACTUAL stage before getting on stage in front of tons of students? *sigh* Conflicted much? A much too much.

Happy frikkin’ Halloween. Stay the hell out of the Castro and stay off the Bay Bridge so I can get home tonight (had to drive to work today due to the costume).

Posted in halloween, laughter, NIs, the bug | 1 Comment »

Eff Oh Gee, Fog

I’m nearly worthless before 6:30am these days. Two days in a row of turning the 5:30am alarm off and getting out of bed only to realize I’m still asleep. As I fall to the floor, it isn’t until my head bounces elegantly off the carpet that I shouldn’t have gotten up in the first place. My only choice is to retreat clumsily back into bed, still wearing the gym clothes that I wore to make it “easier” to get up and go. Once here, I dream of lollipops and unicorns playing poker, until eventually the fog of sleep starts to clear and I find myself wading through the Bog o’ Guilt & Gluttony. I feel like complete A$$ for not getting up and making myself do what I need to do. And I then start to resent my wife AND our bed for being so damn warm and comfortable.

‘What the hell is his problem?’, you ask. Well I don’t KNOW dammit! If I knew, do you think I’d be here writing about it?!?! I’ve come up with SEVERAL theories though: Daylight Savings Time being in November still f-ing with me; still exhausted from Vegas; my body secretly wants me to go back to being the fat kid in sweatpants and cardigan sweaters; I’m depressed but about what I have no idea; I love sleeping like the fat kid loves cake; I’m not eating enough fried chicken. (Note on that last one: when I eat fried chicken, I rarely sleep through the night – I almost always have to drop the kids off at the pool around 4am – and it’s easy to stay up & get productive.)

So there are several options. So I’ll add a poll here to see what you, my readers, think.

OH, and then I saw a young filly on the train with a copy of Runner’s World sticking out of her larger-than-a-bread-basket handbag today. I took this as (insert deity of preference)’s way of telling me either that a) I should go back to RW for the inspiration to stay active; or b) that my current handbag is not nearly big enough; or c) only young fillies can call themselves young fillies. Bottom line, made me feel inadequate. (Surprise!)

So vote in the poll.

Meanwhile, we’re working on the Thank-You’s for the wedding attendees & gift givers. Now if you’re one of those people that tallies the days it takes to receive official Notice of Gratitude (NOG), keep in mind that we’re only at Day 13, NOT Day 16, as we were still in NJ sans cards for three days after the 13th. So trot over to your little NOG tally pad and erase three hash marks.

Don’t say hash marks.

Alright, that is all. Improv doesn’t start for a whole week. I need it. I’m near fiending for it. OH! speaking of Improv, the wyf and I went to the Improv at Harrah’s on Saturday night. Saw the guy who does the voice of Roger Rabbit do stand-up. Pretty awesome – he basically talked to half a dozen people in the audience, did a funny interview bit, then wove them all together in a song he improvised on the spot while playing the piano & harmonica. TOTALLY Improv’d it up, and he was damn funny (if a bit old-fashioned and dirty – he made the whole “vagina as a wind tunnel” joke about a woman who’d had 4 children – which is, y’know, not classy).

Posted in activity, fog, NOG, polls, roger rabbit | No Comments »

Back in Action Question Mark

I have 18 minutes before the weekly staff meeting is supposed to start. The BRIEF update:

Just got back from the Sales Rally in Vegas. Had fun. Lost money (surprise!). Very little free time. Sampled lots of new products, some of which you’ll love. Met lots of great people, already feeling more at home there than I did at any big meeting of non-Financey people in health care.

New boss starts today. MyLinh (mee-‘lyn). Met her in Vegas, seems nice, just moved here from Minneapolis. She’s already nervous about managing our VP, already scares me into thinking she’s going to kill us both to make sure he’s got EVERYTHING he could possibly need or want. Which means I’m already nervous that I might start hating life here too. But just nervous.

Got lots of friendly emails over the past week I’ve been incommunicado. May not have time to respond to all of them immediately, but between the blog and what emails I CAN write, you should be relatively informed as far as my life is concerned.

Wife’s birthday is coming up in 3 weeks. NO idea what she wants. Pretty sure she doesn’t expect a whole lot, but c’mon. Any ideas, let me know.

Next improv class starts next Wednesday; can’t wait for that.

And for those of you who rely on WYLT for all your worldly news, THIS WEEKEND is the weekend you get an extra hour of sleep by turning your clocks back an hour at 3am on Sunday morning.

Wow, that was quick. Had I known I could get through all that in 8 minutes, I might have also planned a deeper thought for this morning. But alas, I haven’t.

OH, but I did want to catch you up on the running goals. So I was trying to get to 45 miles before Thursday. I’m at 21. So that means either two very long runs beginning at 4:30am the next two mornings… or that I’ll miss the mark. And (here goes…) I’m okay with missing the mark. (Admission of defeat! Ownership of failure! Woohoo!) I thought it was a fairly realistic goal, and honestly, I did GREAT for the first three days I was in Vegas. Then the lack of sleep caught up with me, and I haven’t run since Thursday afternoon.

But this is one of those opportunities where I can either dwell on f***ing up, or I can own it and move on to the next scene, which is training around 30-40 miles per week by Christmas. (That means building up to that distance by the time we peace out for Kiwiland, not running 30 miles next week.) I want to get back on that regular schedule. Keep me honest, folks. Could’ve used your help last week, but the blog went dark so I can’t really fault you for not checking in. But grazie to Mr. anonymous poster, warning me about the perils of shooting for a minute:seconds goal per mile at my first marathon. That’s a good reality check, assuming you’re a runner yourself. If you’re not… maybe your my art teacher from 3rd grade who never wanted me to succeed and sent me to the school counselor for anger management. I still hate you a little bit for that, Mrs. Ressler.

More later, but I’m back.

Posted in new goals, training, work | No Comments »

Intermission

I’ll get back to the wedding stories soon. In the meantime, before I lose my inspiration, I want to tell you that I’ve decided that I’m going to run either a half-marathon or a full marathon in May 2008. I’ve even come up with my personal training plan to get me to that distance, without worrying about my pace, before May. First milestone: hit 45 miles total distance between this past Wednesday (10/17) and November 1st. Since Wednesday, I’ve already logged a little over 11 miles, which is super. While I’m in Vegas next week for the sales rally, I really shouldn’t have a problem fitting in 3 miles a day, and it’ll for sure be cheaper than gambling.

I wanted to put that milestone up here so you guys (all three of you) can keep me honest, and you can ask me how my training’s going, and I’ll be more motivated knowing that I have to report back to my blog if for some reason I don’t hit a goal. R’s a great accountability partner too, but there’s something about the faceless guilt that you, dear reader, can impose upon me that I want to avoid even more than the wrath of my wife (!).

So keep me honest, bitches! I have 5 months (plenty of time) to learn how to run 26.2 miles without dying. But I only have 11 days to run another 34 miles, and I plan to take tomorrow (Sunday 10/21) off so that I don’t go too crazy too quick.

In case you’re interested, I did 5.5 miles today, along this route. It was definitely one of the clearest Saturday morning runs I’ve ever experienced; you could see the bolts in the GGB from the Marina Green. AWESOME. Love this city.

I’ll let you know when I pick my race and hopefully figure out a pace / time goal. The way I’ve been going, it looks like it might take me over 4 hours to finish. But if I can manage to get in some speed work and pick up the pace a bit, I can MAYBE manage to break 3:30. We’ll see where I am after the honeymoon (we get back on Jan. 2nd). If I can finish a 10-miler in less than 90 minutes by then, I should be able to pace it up to 8 minute miles, getting me to a 3:30 finish for the 26.2. But we’ll see.

Posted in activity, GGBridge, new goals, training | 1 Comment »

Married VonVowsaretaken

So PROBABLY, if you’re reading this, you were at my wedding last weekend. In fact, if as I suspect, R is the only one that actually reads this, then I’m basically writing this for my new wife. But given she’s a demanding audience, I’ll write anyway… and maybe there’s one or two more sets of eyes that will enjoy me regaling about the best party of our lives.

Woke up Saturday morning, feeling fine. Got breakfast, said hello to a lot of our out-of-town guests, feeling fine. Got all the groomsmen dressed and collocated in the soon-to-be brother-in-law’s room, feeling fine. Got dressed myself, put on boutonnières with minimal trouble (and a little help from the Maid of Honor), all feeling fine. Went outside for our turn with the photog, went through all the poses we wanted and did a lot of joking around (knuckles in o-rings & everything), feeling fine (save for the knuckles).

Came back into the lobby of the hotel, and holy congregation were there a ton of people hanging out & waiting for the schindig to get underway. Lots of glad-handing, lots of hoping I remember people’s names, lots of “Are you ready?” ‘Yes I am / Put me in coach / If I see you at the reception, you’ll know I was ready’ routines.

NOT feeling fine. So much pressure. Even now, as I write on the train, I’m reliving it and feeling the tightness in my chest. Not like a fun Dolly Parton tightness either. The kind that makes you sweat. (In all fairness, I have no idea if Dolly Parton tightness induces the body’s cooling mechanism, but I also have like zero desire to find out.)

So after the 43rd handshake, and my good friend Sobotka telling me that ‘usually, the groom’s off hidden in secret somewhere but it’s really awesome that you’re out here saying hi to everyone’, I bolted. I grabbed my best man and told him I needed a minute.

We made our way out to the adjacent stairwell, and as that door to the lobby pushed back the voices and the sounds of skin on skin as hands are shaken, my head was buzzing. If you’ve ever been hit in the head in dodgeball, and the ball that hit you was thrown by the beefy surely-a-lesbian-or-Popeye-look-a-like girl in your gym class who proves her surliness at every possible opportunity, you’ve probably felt the same type of dull buzz that I was experiencing at that moment. Things were morgue quiet.

As Shorty & I talked for a while, my heart was gently coaxed into staying within my ribcage walls, but my head was buzzy. Couldn’t concentrate on anything. (If this is what kids with ADD/ADHD feel like, they should thank their deity of choice every day for Ritalin.)

Then Shorty tells me his wood-eye joke. It’s not a long joke, and it’s not a fantastic joke (relies heavily on the delivery, which Shorty of course nailed), but I was able to stop buzzing & focus on it. He hits the punch line, and I bust up. I immediately call out that it HAD to be an Ed joke (Shorty’s father), and all of a sudden am picturing Mr. Short delivering that joke in his yachting t-shirt & baseball cap. I forget where I am, and that I’ve just spent 30 minutes talking to people that obviously care about me and/or my soon-to-be wife but I still won’t remember faces & names after today is over – an example of being socially uncomfortable and feeling less-than-genuine in the worst way… and once again, comedy has saved my life.

I calmed down, I laughed it out, and I felt somewhat normal again. Shortly thereafter, the groomsmen and I are lined up in the hallway, awaiting our summons to appear in front of the same crowd (or gauntlet) I had just survived. If we hadn’t continued telling jokes in that hallway, and making fun of Seth for buying a lemon iced tea, I could’ve gone sour all over again. But the guys didn’t even give me a chance. My hands got a little sweaty, and it got slightly harder to breathe, but that was more akin to stage nerves than being something like the mother-of-all-anxiety-attacks I’d just conquered.

I was going out there, with five of the best friends anyone could ever have to back me up, and I’d walk away with the beautiful bride on my arm. Wouldn’t you be nervous?

To be continued…

Coming up next time on WYLT: will our valiant hero vow his love to his vivacious bride? Will dinner be as delicious as the dancing should be dazzling? Shall families find common foundations and finally ferment into fragrant friendships? Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.

Posted in batman, comedy, friends (not the show), knuckles, the big day | No Comments »

Quickie #2

Made some layout changes, hopefully valuable additions to ol’ Wyltie. Other than that – well, I actually had a LOT of energy and things to write about this morning before I left for work, but because I wanted to get here early & make sure I have time to get stuff done, I didn’t blog at home. So now I’m just gonna blog until my 9am meeting, which gives me 12 minutes to lay it out.

…

… …

… … …

Nothin’. I got nothin’. I waited a whole 10 seconds for inspiration to come, or for my schadenfreude to take over, as it has been active lately.

Oo, I know. So one of the new sections I added was links to places I eat (see Sustenance (Solids)). I was inspired to create that little nugget because of Sunday’s brunch experience at Levende Lounge on Mission. I had been telling R about being conflicted when faced with a Sunday for which we had no real plans, had GORGEOUS weather, but also faced the real risk of turning into any other Sunday (that we could replicate ANYWHERE, not one that was unique to the fact that we live in the most beautiful city in the country). So my fascinating wife-to-be pulls out coupons (that’s right, coupons) for restaurants, and starts pulling out ideas that would cause us to leave our Nob Hill/Polk Street comfort zone and try something new.

It frikkin’ worked. I got us a 12:30 ressy for brunch, we got down there early after running some other errands (including donating clothes to charity & returning books to the library – a very non-consuming set of to-dos). It’s a GREAT space that they’re in down there, lots of creative stuff going on, including a live DJ – at noon on Sunday. Ordered a BYO Bloody Mary – as in Build Your Own. They brought me a glass of vodka and ice, and I went up to the BM Bar and loaded it up with my choice of tomato juice base, horseradish, worcestershire, tabasco, olives, onions, lemons, celery, celery salt… probably the best experience I’ve had with tomato juice. Definitely wanted to replicate that at home.

Short on time, so without doing the food any injustice, I’ll just say R built her own eggs benedict, and I ordered a cheese & rasberry stuffed french toast that rivaled the IHOP’s Rooty Tooty Fresh n’ Frooty. It was all GREAT. If you’re in the hood, check it out.

Maybe more later, maybe not. Leaving for Dirty Jersey in ~13 hours.

Posted in eats, rooty tooty, sf | 1 Comment »

What the Wedding Means

Y’know, I get engaged and then for a year and a half, I’m affected in some way by planning the wedding on a daily basis. Because there’s so much to do, and I’m quite decidedly someone who has a preference for not doing things, usually I would let it affect me negatively. (I’m being honest, here, not mean.) We agreed very early on that what we wanted our wedding to be, above all, is something that will create one huge day of love & friends & family & frivolous eating and drinking & memories for everyone to share, forever.

But since last February, I’ve been kinda leaning towards focusing pretty much only on the less-than-romantic aspects of what a wedding is. Meaning it’s been all of the following things to me.

  • Something for which to save lots of money.
  • Something to help R plan in great detail.
  • Something to look forward to but to use as a horizon at which to stop planning for anything else.
  • Something to use as an excuse for not doing lots of other things.
  • Something with which to fill task lists.
  • Something to fight about.
  • Something to worry about.
  • Something to create strife within (but thankfully not across) families.

But it’s now 5 days away, and over the last week or so, I’ve finally started to see it as… well, what it is.

A day in which I will have the most beautiful person I know, standing by my side, with her hand in mine, vowing to stay there forever. I can’t wait.

None of you have any idea how interesting life is with this woman. And I don’t even mean interesting in the most idealist or romantic sense – I just mean that, when I take the time to sit back and OBSERVE us, we are a fascinating entity. And on Saturday the 13th of October, we put rings on fingers, becoming one family, one whole thing, that will fascinate us for the rest of our lives. If nothing else happens that day, that will be enough.

For example, we’ve been engaged for 18 months, and I’ve leaned towards thinking about the wedding day itself as all those things above. I would be willing to bet the farm that R, if she ever painted a picture with those types of words, probably dismissed them and gave them no weight whatsoever, and moved on to making the wedding hers. Owning it. Planning it down to the tiniest detail. And not stopping to think about any of those other things that I was thinking for us. One would posit a guess that maybe that would lead us to fight a lot about sharing the efforts, about sharing the ambition to have a great wedding, about marrying someone who cares too much/too little about details. It didn’t. We fascinate each other, we balance each other, we are commited to each other. We work out the details of our life together and how to live it, sometimes through heated conversation, but always with both of us knowing that we are going to figure it out, and it will be fascinating.

I think part of the reason I might have been disposed to thinking of it the way I did is because I wasn’t terribly involved in the planning itself. I didn’t even do some of the typical head-nodding, “Yes, Dear”-ing that you would expect the typical guy to do, because I wasn’t even asked the questions. Ask me if I helped when asked, sure, I helped. Ask me if I had opinions about lots of the big things that were considered, of course I did. But ask me what kind of flowers we’re having, the name of our photographer, or what’s on the menu other than the main course, and I would have to ask R for her wedding binder.

Maybe that’s stuff that doesn’t matter to me. I think I saw R start taking this whole thing by the horns the day after I proposed, and I said there’s no way that I’m gonna be able to hop on unless she actually makes room for me to hop on. (The wedding is a bull? Analogy-maker still feet-to-Jesus, I guess.)

As much strife or anxiety or work as my inactivity may have caused R & us as a couple since we got engaged, I guess I don’t apologize for it, because to me, the only thing that really matters is putting rings on fingers. What really matters is saying words to each other that declare us as a husband and wife ’til death do us part in front of 132 of our closest friends & family. Doesn’t matter what’s in the centerpieces or whether the programs match the bridesmaid dress colors perfectly or whether my family members were peeved over not being allowed to bring children. Everything else… well, had we been so inclined, or had we been ten years older and ten times more financially secure, we could have paid someone else to do. But we chose, R chose, to do it all herself, to make it hers/ours, in lots of ways beyond just the ceremony.

I guess the whole point is that, now when I sit back and think about our wedding, as it approaches in five days, I’m NOT thinking about it the same way. I see it as
something that will, without a doubt, be one huge day of love & friends & family & frivolous eating and drinking & memories for everyone to share, forever. That’s all it will be, and that’s all that we wanted. If the cake melts, if the clouds open up & dump rain all over northern Jersey, or even if I’m stuck in a powder blue ruffle-tux from the Liberace House of Crap, it doesn’t matter. At noon on Saturday, I will be R’s husband, and I will continue to lead a fascinating life, with her by my side.

And then there will be lots of drinking. Lots of eating. Lots of great music. And lots of memories for us all to share, forever. Can’t wait.

Posted in fascinating, the big day | No Comments »

whaddyacallit

Last night R & I were out and about at some happy hours (I’m still a bit sick, but dammit it was Friday) with some work friends of hers and then a few former work friends of mine, then finally just Mr. & Mrs. Iwamura-Smith.

R gets along professionally with everyone at work. But only Mrs. Smith, whom she works with (not baking pies), is someone that she hangs out with socially & on a regular basis. I brought them over to Harry’s and hung out with another BH and Timmy V., who used to also work for Big Red Healthcare. We’ve hung out & shared stories, but not frequently, and neither of them would be dudes I’d call on any random weekend to see what was going down. But Mrs. Smith’s husband, Mr. Smith, is pretty much that guy, in spite of the fact that we’ve been too busy to really hang out on any random occasion. So we officially hang out as couples, and then the Missus hang out at work and on other occasions, such as Jeans sales.

What I don’t understand, and what we discussed briefly last night at our third watering hole, was why things click with the Smiths, but not with Timmy V & BH, or with R’s colleagues Jai and Swop. It’s no revelation that relationships are different, that you get along better with some than others. But does anyone know WHY?

Here’s why I ask: I’ve been hanging out with BH & Timmy V off and on for, oh maybe 3.5 years. They’ve invited me/us on multiple camping trips, trips to Tahoe, Vegas stuff, etc. We have never gone anywhere with them, save for the occasional b-day party or Happy Hour. And no, we’ve never really invited them to go anywhere with us – not out of spite or obvious feelings of inadequate adventure, but mainly because I/we just don’t think of them when we consider hanging out with lots of people whilst being involved or traveling to take part in other activities.

It’s not like we have nothing in common. Worked for the same company, doing essentially the same things as one another, for 3 years each; lived in the Bay Area for 2+ years each; all like hiking, camping, exploring, traveling, drinking, etc.; all straight males in their mid-20s; all fairly humorous guys who just enjoy a good time.

But without a poker game, a sports event that I actually want to go to, or some other occasion that calls for a night of extreme drinking, I rarely hang out with these guys, and when I do, it’s usually them inviting me, and I rarely feel … comfortable, I guess. Almost like I’ve been invited to hang with the cool kids but don’t know any of the stuff that cool kids talk about. It’s not that juvenile, but it’s early and my analogy-of-the-day calendar is still sleepy, and my electrical metaphor producer hasn’t sobered up yet. But I go and have a good time and usually get left out of conversations so that I can nurse my beer. We didn’t invite them to the wedding (feel bad for it, but we didn’t) mainly because I don’t feel like we know them, or that we would remember if they were there. They just aren’t people that stick out in the mental family photo. (You have one of these too – when you sit and think about your friends & people that you care about, there are TONS of people there, but only a few of them are making “Oh!” faces or mooning the photog, and for me, those are the people that I recognize when I scan that photo, because they’re the ones that want me to notice them.)

Without admitting to having some sort of social anxiety disorder (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I want to leave clinical psychology out of this), I can’t expect to be one of only a few people to have these types of relationships around him. So I’m open to conjecture: what makes relationships like the ones I have with BH and (to a lesser extent) Timmy V. so uncomfortable compared to the ones I have with Shorty, Mr. Smith, Seth, Cermak, Bob, Choi, Moatzy, Sobotka, Charles, Priyesh, Danny, Dani, Erin, Meg? (Uncomfortable is an unfair word. But if Shorty, Mr. Smith, etc. are the cast of Christmas Vacation, BH & Timmy V. are the cast of The Station Agent. Or for a more direct analogy, Shorty et al = the cast of Friends; BH & Timmy V. = the cast of Monk.)

My first excited conclusion is that I’ve gone through very similar things at the same time as everyone in the latter group, and during that time we leaned on each other in one way, shape or form. Can’t think of what the psych term for that is, but it’s the whole “misery loves company” idea. Problem with that is that we didn’t just one day decide to lean on each other – we were ALREADY the sort of friends that lean on each other. Knock that idea down.

Second: drinking. But I drink, at times heavily, with all sorts of people and can’t call lots of them the same type of friends as Shorty, Priyesh, etc. Throw that baby out with the bath water.

Is it sense of humor? I can say to a great degree of certainty that the people I’m way close to are people I’m always totally comfortable laughing with, laughing at, or causing to laugh. But it’s not like BH or Timmy V DON’T have senses of humor. Though I can’t say that I ever saw either of them actually laugh to the point where they’ve bared part of who they are, or that we’ve ever shared a laugh that had its own harmony of hysterics to it———-
SIDETRACK: if it’s not already out there (Google says no), watch this ‘blog for a new theory on Laughter Harmonics – the concept of simultaneous laughter and its impact on social relationships. I believe that when you truly share a laugh with someone, you kinda transfer a part of who you are on to each other, and that makes it slightly less awkward to be socially present together. More later, now back to original programming.———-
so I won’t go so far as to completely eliminate the idea that our senses of humor are tilted just far enough off of each other that we can’t easily transition in the medium that I’m most comfortable (which is comedy… C’MON PEOPLE!).

But I also don’t really know what it was that Mr. Smith & I laugh(ed) about that has made us comfortable around each other. And the only other thing that he & I really have in common is being (almost) married and having (almost) wives that work in the building at 1 Post. Yeah, we’ve found similar interests such as Wii & running & great food & watching stand-up, but at least half of those things we found AFTER we got “there”, meaning wherever we got to that let’s us know we can just hang out and enjoy life in the same space.

I realize I was harping a bit about BH & Timmy V., but this does happen often enough that I think about it – it’s not like they represent an anomaly or anything. Attribute the focus on them only to recency of incident. But it is something I’d love to understand a little more. It’d just make me happier to know what I need from a person in order for us to be comfortable, hanging out & enjoying life in the same space.

Posted in analogies, comedy, friends (not the show), friends (the show), harmonics, laughter, the smiths | No Comments »

sick

Stayed in the apartment today, worked from home. Sick. Horribly sore throat, congestion, gross mucus coming up – and I was cold pretty much immediately. That’s why I didn’t write this morning, or yesterday morning. Monday I needed to be working early, so I didn’t get to you. Sorry. (You didn’t even notice. Don’t pretend.)

I actually don’t have anything to write about today. Still feel kinda crappy, but def. glad I didn’t go to Oakland today. I mean, I was FAIRLY productive today, but wouldn’t have been any more so had I been in the office, and I might have been even sicker tomorrow or made others sick. You do feel guilty when you take sick time, cuz really, if you had to, you could power through. But it’s important NOT to – the work will still be there when you’re feeling better. Plus, for me, it’s frikkin’ ice cream. My health is more important.

There’s a rant there about Work Guilt, but I don’t have the energy. I’m sure you can imagine how it would go.

On a side note, my good buddy Cermak sent me a link to this Brain Trust thing. Watch for me there…

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Routinterruption

This morning I got up at 6 instead of 5:30, still went to the gym, had breakfast, got a shower, packed lunch, and made the 7:40ish bus downtown with R. But in the process of compressing my routine into a smaller nugget so that I get a bigger morsel of sleep, I managed to forget: my phone, my watch, and the book I’m reading on the train.

Now my entire DAY is probably going to be impacted by the fact that I don’t have at least one of these three things. In fact, I’m WRITING about it here. I walked by a completely empty & thusly discarded roll of toilet paper on the sidewalk outside of a burger joint in Rockridge this morning, but NO, I’m so interrupted that I can’t even write about THAT.

What’s the point? Jesus hates me. And this invective is a little bit more about pointing out the importance/significance that our routines hold, and, had I the time this morning, I’d contrast that against the idea that Johnstone purports about people going to dramatic productions in order to SEE these routines interrupted, in order to see people do things they can’t do because they’re locked in their routines. Like, I could write a short story (albeit a bad one) about how bad my day could be because I forgot three things I normally always have with me, and someone could turn that into a one-acter or even a 10 minute improvised scene. Acted properly & with the right kind of director that’s sensitive to these neuroses, you would be riveted (or at least enjoy it minorly whilst eating some Red Vines).

Posted in jesus, routines, toilet paper | No Comments »