2007 wishes revisited

at the beginning of the year, i made some pretty lofty goals for myself. i didn't think about them daily, but they were certainly in the back of my mind. for those of you new to my musings, here they were:

I don’t do new year’s resolutions. However, this upcoming year will be full of blank slate possibilities for me. A new home. A new job. A changing life...
First, I hope for strong friendships. I know that I can count on a lot of my friends for most anything. Some of my friends, I’m not so sure. I’d rather have a few true friends than a lot of occasional friends. That goes especially for those of you that I can see on a regular basis now, because come summer, I’m out of this town. Which category do you fall in?

with my move, i've figured out who my true friends really are. my occasional friends, i talk to occasionally or not at all. my true friends keep me abreast of their lives, return phone calls, and have even begun to visit! i'm making new friends up here, slowly but surely. same problem as gainesville: it's tough when i spend most of my days working with people who are out of my friend age range.

Second, I hope for an excellent new beginning, wherever I land. Overseas will be infinitely more exciting and frightening. I’m scared of what might happen, but I know that now is the time to do it. Any older, I’ll run the risk of not doing it and regretting the indecision. Stateside will also be great, no matter where I wind up. I’ll have old friends wherever I go, this I know. It’s the new ones that I’m looking forward to.

i think i'm off to a pretty damn good start!

Third, I hope for happiness. Not just for me, but for all my friends and family. I’m going to do more this year to ensure that in my own life. Spontaneity is the new trait I’m going to try on. I hope it fits. For the rest of you, do what you need to do in order to find your own happiness. Sitting around, lamenting faults does nothing to improve yourself.. Call an old friend. Make a new one. Learn a new sport. Read a book. Climb a tree. Go roller skating in the sunshine and eat cotton candy...

this move has made me happier than i've been in a long while. i've been more spontaneous with doing things this year. random trips, random fun. less stress about the outcome, more stress on the present. i don't think this move would've been possible without a lot of spontaneity. a month to find a job and a place to live, neither of which i actually accomplished before moving. stressful, certainly. a learning experience, more than i realize.

so those were my wishes for this year. i wish for more of the same in 2008. one thing i definitely learned though: wishing gets you nowhere. i can finally say that i'm not content to let things i don't like bother me or keep me down. i remove them from my life or ignore them. confrontations are still necessary, but there's no longer going to be a build up of weeks and weeks as before. which makes my last prediction or hope for my tabula rasa year the most telling:

Like a phoenix, I will rise from the ashes of the last year and begin anew.
On a tangent from the tabula rasa idea, I also see the first definition [a. The mind before it receives the impressions gained from experience.] Before it receives impressions gained from experience. That’s all well and good. Locke was speaking mostly about infants and their formative years. How little genetics play in how someone turns out. The nature vs. nurture argument. Yes, it’s an oversimplification. A little literary license, please. Some experiences are too painful or wonderful to forget. Painful lessons learned build up and make us more tentative to make friends, try new things, form meaningful relationships. Too many of those lessons, people become jaded and distrustful. I don’t want to get to that point. Yes, I hurt, but some things are always going to hurt. It’s just a matter of how often and how much. As the year begins, I’m going to do my best to get past the painful ones and quit living in the past. What’s done is done. I guess that’s as close to a resolution as I’ll make this year.

buying the cow

There is no such thing as the one. It's more of a mind boggling whole hell of a lot of potential ones. That should be comforting, it's actually pretty terrifying. We would all like to kick back and wait for some magical force to show us who we should spend the rest of our lives with. But the truth is, there isn't a lightning bolt that slaps you on the ass and tells you to pick this person over all others. It's like the rain, rain falls all the time. Sometimes we are prepared for it, sometimes we're not. And depending where you are when it hits, you either get caught in it, or you don't. In fact, most of us try like hell to avoid it.

more than any other movie, buying the cow changed my outlook on life. smart, hokey, and hilarious all wrapped up in a chick-friendly (but not quite a chick flick) package. think swingers meets failure to launch. okay, that combination isn't quite right, but you get the point. maybe.

uh-oh!

"you did a lot better than i expected you to." quote unquote, courtesy of missy.

i went snowboarding today. i apparently did ok. my wrists, knees and tail are a little bit sore. forward, ok as long as there's an incline. turning, ok as long as it's a right and on my toe side. stopping, improving. people in the way sketch me out a bit. i was really worried i was going to flatten a five year-old.

yet another way to fall spectacularly; this time in a spray of snow and spinning snowboard. yet another expensive hobby. at least it's closer than climbing was in florida!

las luces

without snow to look forward to, there's gotta be some other way for south floridians to signal the beginning of the holiday season. christmas lights were always exciting when i was little. searching for them usually put me to sleep in the backseat, but once there, man, was i jazzed! there was one house in north lauderdale that morphed into two; before too long, the whole street was lit up like the vegas strip. there was the house in sunrise that covered their lawn with cotton batting and train sets. the one in coral springs by city hall that had a tiny village in the swiss alps that grew and grew over the years into what would've been several larger vilages and ski resorts, complete with lifts and train sets.

with no white christmas to speak of in the district, i'm glad christmas was back to "normal" for me. the folks and i went out light hunting on christmas eve. these two houses were nothing compared to the ones i remember growing up, but they were the best we found on a whim.

then again, maybe the lights twinkled a little brighter in the eyes of a five year-old. nearly two dozen years have passed since then. does nostalgia make things seem brighter and better than they really were?

amazing

i always knew kris kringle was a climber, but who knew he bouldered! he's pretty hard-core, eh?

christmas greetings

since technology has devolved our communication ability into shrt txt msgs and inserted LOL and BRB into the national lexicon, it seems only natural that holiday greetings would head the same way.

who here is guilty of sending a text message when a phone call would do better? one-to-one txt msgs, at least you're making it personal. mass text messages where it's clear that you're sending the same message to lots of people, i.e. feeling the need to sign your name...c'mon folks. i know the thought's there. i know we're all busy people, but it's just the 21st century equivalent of the form letter hastily inserted into your christmas card. with worse spelling and less detail. i appreciate the phone calls, or the even late requests for a mailing address. the thought's there.

yeah yeah, i'm a grinch, a scrooge. bah humbug and such. i was guilty of sending a few texts yesterday, but most of them were replies, and only one of them was to more than one person. it was to two people, roommates that would appreciate the picture i attached to it.

our techno-addiction should not devolve us from actually remembering that it's nice to hear someone's voice, and if it's possible, to actually see someone. so, if you're having a small gathering, wishing someone a happy birthday (yes, i know facebook and myspace remind us), or there's an obscure holiday, call someone. don't rely on something with a microprocessor to do it. (yes, i know phones have microprocessors, but i think you get my point!)

random movie quotes, part trois: christmas edition

name these flicks. some are certainly gimmes, but some are not necessarily christmas movies either.

1 "Okay, pork belly prices have been dropping all morning, which means that everybody is waiting for it to hit rock bottom, so they can buy low. Which means that the people who own the pork belly contracts are saying, "Hey, we're losing all our damn money, and Christmas is around the corner, and I ain't gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip! And my wife ain't gonna f... my wife ain't gonna make love to me if I got no money!" So they're panicking right now, they're screaming "SELL! SELL!" to get out before the price keeps dropping. They're panicking out there right now, I can feel it."

2 "I took a shower washing every body part with actual soap; including all my major crevices; including in between my toes and in my belly button which I never did before but sort of enjoyed. I washed my hair with adult formula shampoo and used cream rinse for that just-washed shine. I can't seem to find my toothbrush, so I'll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I'm in good shape."

3 "No! No! I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!"

4 "Clarence! Clarence! Help me, Clarence! Get me back! Get me back, I don't care what happens to me! Get me back to my wife and kids! Help me Clarence, please! Please! I wanna live again. I wanna live again. Please, God, let me live again."

5 "You see, Mrs. Walker, this is quite an opportunity for me. For the past 50 years or so I've been getting more and more worried about Christmas. Seems we're all so busy trying to beat the other fellow in making things go faster and look shinier and cost less that Christmas and I are sort of getting lost in the shuffle."

holiday travel

it's been a while since i've flown anywhere on christmas. i thought i was going to miss all the insanity of christmas travel by flying on sunday. misguided, yes. it seems that no matter when you try to travel around christmas, the airport's going to be slammed. delayed flights, people laid out everywhere. one flight was supposed to leave for the holiday hotspot of des moines, iowa at the next gate. their plane was trapped in madison, wisconsin. when my flight left an hour late, their plane was still in wisconsin, so they were still looking at at least 3 hours of waiting. thanks, mom and dad for living where ice storms are uncommon and pretty much unpossible.

spirit airlines is pretty awesome. leather seats, wide open cabin with no divider between first class and coach. lots of kids, none of them annoying. only complaint: a young couple that brought their damn cats in carriers into the cabin. leave a bowl of water and a bag of food, they'll be fine. but no, they had to sit two rows behind me and allergify my bubble of air. oh yeah, and they charged for drinks and snacks on the flight. $2 not so bad, but they wouldn't take cash, and as a matter of principle, i don't use my credit cards for a $2 transaction.

it's great to be wearing flip flops, shorts and a t-shirt, if only for a little while. packing for warm weather travel is so much easier. at least i'm not going to miss a white christmas in the district. everyone do their snow dance and wear your pajamas inside out for a white new year's!

grateful

every year, i get gifts from my students. leading up to christmas break (yes, i said christmas break! p.c.-sensors be damned!), i field many subtle and not-so-subtle queries about what i like to do or what i'd like for christmas. i haven't been one to outright tell anyone what i want for christmas since i was a kid. why? the thoughtful gifts from the heart mean more to me than the ones that i'd tell someone to get me. if there's something i need, sure, i'll let that be known. someone that listens to me can figure out pretty easily what'll make me smile.

i'm grateful for all the gifts received from my students because i certainly don't expect them. hell, some years, i don't even feel like i deserve them! i'm noticing that the cards and smaller gifts i receive from my less fortunate students are the ones that i appreciate more. does that make me an ingrate towards the students that can afford to get me something nicer? or the ones that do it because their parents feel like it's almost expected of them as the price of admission to my room?

one of my students from years ago (listen to me, i sound like an old man) gave me a simple card for christmas. nothing fancy, just a hallmark card. i still have that card because i knew it was from the heart. throughout the year, it was a struggle for her family to scrape together $2 for a field trip or buy pencils for school. her mom wrote the sweetest note in the card that i know my student picked out.

and like a girl, tears welled up in my eyes.

shifted

running late this morning, i sat at an intersection less than a mile from my school. as late as i was, there was a police officer directing traffic at this four-way stop instead of the normal crossing guard with nothing to do. that's twice this week that i've been running that late.

in any event, there were a lot of cars today. one car away from making it through the intersection, two motorcycle cops cruise up, sirens blaring and stop in the intersection. i correctly assumed that they were the lead bikes for a motorcade. and what a motorcade it was! 10 plus bikes, several cruisers, an unmarked crown victoria, and an suv. going through my head: what self important politician is dropping his kid off at school and wasting tax dollars?

long story short, i came to find out that it was actually a granted wish through the make-a-wish foundation. that was the wish of a sick girl who's a student at the school a mile or so from my own, to be delivered to school one day in a motorcade. boy, did i feel like an ass for my impatience in that traffic!

(sidenote: here i sit finally watching today's jeopardy on DVR. one of the contestants works for make-a-wish. in d.c. she interviews the children to find out what their wish would be. i bet she knows the girl who got her wish today. random!)

just to see you smile

this morning on my way to work, it was commercials on all my normal stations, i was 2 blocks from work, and i hit scan. for the first time in a while, my radio stopped on a country station.

and i left it there. on my way home, a tim mcgraw song came on and my mind started rambling. not because of the actual song, but another. i'm not sure why either.

yesterday I knew just what you wanted
when you came walkin' up to me with him.
so I told you that I was happy for you,
and given the chance, I'd lie again.
just to see you smile...

an ex and i used to joke about this song, saying we'd do this for each other if it ever went south. notice, i did say ex, so it obviously did. i always took the lyrics of this song to be from some lovesick fool who can't get over a lost love. though i never saw myself in this mold, i have been in those shoes. where my heartbreak would stay hidden when she finds new love and i unluckily get to meet him.

thankfully, i've never had to lie about it. when it would've been a lie, it never came up. now that it wouldn't be a lie, the same is true. as best i know, all the women in my past are giddily happy with guys they've either married or madly in love with.

...and i couldn't be happier for them. no lie!

mangia!

friday night, i discovered (with a little help) an italian deli in arlington. brought me way back. when you walk into an italian deli, there's a certain smell. the mixture of fresh-baked bread, deli meats, and miscellaneous sweetness, with a hint of nutella for good measure.

after making homemade sauce on saturday, i decided i needed to get some fresh pasta for said sauce. barilla nor mueller's don't deserve homemade sauce. on tonight's menu, purchased from the italian store (yes, that's the name): gnocchi! better start the water...

going postal

no, i'm not going to run amok. i went to the post office on saturday morning to mail granny's christmas present, despite her insistence, "i DON'T need anything." for once, i didn't have too bad of a time standing in such a long line. i got there at 12:30, they closed at 1. line out the door, people short-tempered.

despite all that, the postal clerk still had a sense of humor. did i have a bicycle in the envelope? was anything hazardous, et al? does bamboo count? that's about all i've got. not that i want to mail anything this week, i wonder how chipper he'll be when everyone's short tempers become even more so and the reason for the season gets lost in the shuffle of christmas cards and packages.

art gallery

the initial concept and general visualization for an image always begins for me out of everyday experiences as a consumer, from the subconscious repetition of elements of the mass-cultural landscape which unavoidably, and relentlessly, fall into my perception like droplets into an ocean. mixed with aesthetic antennae willfully combing through this junkstream, and a tempered absorption of history and the patterns of past utopias, my hope is that a synthesis greater than the sum emerges, a nostalgically transcendental phenomenon. this new manifestation of previously unrelated and disorganized facts is an attempt to express something about the places we inhabit, the ones we have lost, the places we hoped to make, and the ones we hope to never see.

this is three sentences. grammatically, i suppose it's correct. no one ever gave this emo artist any hemingway to read. terse text is best; this explanation of his weird art would be better served by something along these lines:

so, this one night, i packed a bowl of maui wowie. after a few hits, i started messing around with photoshop...or was it a pair of scissors? damn memory loss. i found some photos, dropped some acid, and came up with this piece. i don't really remember what my inspiration was. let's say it was a little aqua teen hunger force and the my little pony theme song. asking price: too much money!

all kidding aside, last night, missy and i went to an art gallery opening. i didn't see the road bikes parked outside, they must have left them out back. the emo/scenester kids all around made us feel a little out of place. the photos were pretty, the mixed media stuff was strange, and i forgot my scarf and skinny jeans. we left in about 15 minutes and got a drink at a coffee house. ok, emo bashing blog over...

aggravated

i'm beginning to see that there are far worse problems in education than our supposed falling behind in the world market because of low test scores. i don't know if the prevalence of diagnosed problems in kids these days is merely the symptom or actually the problem. my kids this year are ADD to the nth degree. it grows tougher each year to maintain attention while teaching. i can't even take a breath in the middle of a sentence without their impulsive nature taking over and causing them to call out answers, questions, or random stories that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. i teach a classroom full of id with no superego to control it. one of the more problematic should be in an alternative placement. the reason he's not? an inflexible specialist who refused to place kids in said center. "it can be controlled with medication." aren't we then breeding a generation of pharmacologically-dependent children who can't cope with their issues without an rx? that ain't right. it doesn't fix the problem, it merely masks it, and when the dosage needs changing because the kids grow, their education as well as those of their classmates suffers.

perspective

pardon my french, but yesterday sucked. gray, cloudy skies. two meltdowns by my favorite 8 year-old. a perceived crisis explained to me ad nauseum about one of my students...a "crisis" in name only, i was let in on it 2 months ago by his mother. my heart breaks for the poor guy, i can relate to some of his troubles for sure, but i don't need to hear about it twice from other people in the school who never see him. oil change that took three and a half hours. blah blah blah. you get the point. it's over and done with, and as i recount it, i can feel my pulse and blood pressure rising...

this morning, much more sunshine. i'm feeling better. life put me in my place at school. one of my teammates' fathers is suffering with lung cancer. she's absolutely beside herself with grief and indecision. my minor issues yesterday don't mean shit. a moment of clarity yet again. yet another person in my life dealing with cancer. yet another plea for prayers, not only for her father, but for her peace of mind in doing what she needs to do. for her family, not for her students. to be selfish and cope with this difficult time in her life.

holiday parties

as a kid, i wound up at a few work-related holiday parties with my mother. if i was lucky, there was a kindred soul or two in the form of one of the other teachers' sons. occasionally though, i was left to fend for myself either with the "old ladies", who in reality weren't much older than my mother. as you well know, as a kid, everyone who's either taller than you or can drive is pretty much a senior citizen. now, not so much. rarely was there a male colleague at said parties, so i learned well how to make polite conversation with people that i really had nothing in common with besides knowing my mother.

fast forward a few years to now (ok, more than a few!), and i'm learning that holiday parties can be just as uncomfortable to the invited guests when they're work-related. i have no doubt that my mother was indeed friends with her colleagues, as they often went shopping and did things i thought all mothers did. elliot (dc101's morning host/dj) shared that many companies are doing away with the traditional holiday party because of either the expense or the feeling that it's a forced gathering with people you already spend a lot of time with, or don't necessarily want to see outside of work! in hearing some of my friends talk about their respective upcoming (or already past) parties, i get the sense that both are entirely accurate. yes, networking and such is key to advancing your career. in my field...not so much. collegiality is an important part of the climate of a school, now more than ever with the stringent requirements placed on education and the necessity for a team effort to get all of our charges to succeed. at the same time, it's still a little strange to sit around at a holiday party and drink a beer or a glass of wine with your administrators, all the while talking about work (which i don't particularly like to do outside of work!).

so, yesterday was our staff holiday party. off campus, of course, though we were "on the clock" for the majority of the time. i am fortunate here to have a few teachers that are closer in age to me and have a little more in common. at least last year, though i lacked many things in common, i could always count on talking football with my old...er, former colleagues. feigned familiarity during this time of year still feels weird. i'm still out of my element at work. perhaps it will come, perhaps we all still need to relax a little bit with one another. i'm hoping it does. at the very least i'd like to have discussions at lunch or elsewhere that don't center on work. i guess since i spend so much time here, i'd like to feel a bit more like...myself?

lit up like christmas

favorite christmas activity as a kid: looking at christmas lights. south floridians can go a little overboard with their lights. insane $400-500 power bills. the boat parade. million dollar homes absolutely drenched in millions of tiny, twinkling lights. front yards overrun by cotton batting to simulate snow and railroad sets that would fill a house. i never found such insanity in gainesville, but i'm hopeful to find some here because it makes little kids smile...or big kids who still act like little kids.

in high school, i loved going to tradewinds to drive through the fantasy of lights. junior year, they started a 5K for opening weekend for the spectacle, and i had to keep my senses about me during the race. several girlfriends shared my amazement at the lights. this year, mom told me there would be no lights, which is just as well. i think going to fantasy of lights now would be a letdown without dad's miata to get the full effect. it's just not the same in a plain old car or truck.

no car needed up here for holiday lights in a public place. the national zoo has zoo lights 4 nights a week leading up to christmas. i went tonight with missy. nothing like walking through the zoo, checking out all kinds of cool critters, shivering in pre-winter temps (probably because i had a slurpee in my hand), and admiring light displays that evoke that nostalgia in me. the perfect antidote to the overcommercialization of christmas. the little kids' eyes just plain sparkled at the panda mascot in the snow dome, the lights in motion, and the animals that pushed back their bedtimes just a little bit for their pint-sized visitors. gotta love the season!

new names at a new job

has this ever happened to you?

you start a new job. people introduce themselves to you. they more or less automatically assume that you know their names immediately. as time passes, it becomes more and more awkward to ask, "what's your name again?" you try and try and try to remember this one person's name: overhear it in conversation, wait for one of the kids to say it, steal a glance at their id badge. nothing works. you know if you hear it one time, you'll remember it, but damned if you never do!

yeah, me too. rarely is she ever in the same place as the other teachers and instructional ass'ts, so i can't pick it up there. can't ask one of the students in the room she works in, they're a little less than communicative. tried stealing a glance at her i.d. badge, it's always turned the wrong way. in fact, i'm not so sure that it can be seen. the part that makes me feel the worst is that she greets me by name every morning. we talk several times a week while her 4 little charges play on the playground with my 23 rugrats.

i'm a terrible person!

delayed

snow day, i understand. yesterday, no delay, no early release, no snow day. forecast actually called for a dusting. flurries, if you will. yeah, we got close to 3 inches. kids, understandably excited. hell, i could barely contain myself. we weren't allowed to go out for recess. no, that wasn't my decision. i blame the "liability" excuse on people bent on lawyering up and filing lawsuits frivolously. let your kids be kids. yes, they'll get hurt, but who among us didn't have a broken bone, skinned knees/elbows, busted lips, or stitches when you were a kid? don't lie! the world wasn't sterile, and our parents sure didn't think it needed bubble wrapped. anyways....so i had to be the bad guy and tell the kids they couldn't make snowballs. they couldn't start making snowmen. fact is, i wanted to join them, but these parents and their overprotectiveness would not deal well with wet clothes, wet shoes, or a bruised anything from slipping on the ice...

so, i got to work too early this morning. took some pictures of the beautiful snowy wonderland playground, haven't done much else. i guess i should figure out what my schedule looks like today. pictures will be posted when i get home tonight...maybe.

winter

IT'S SNOWING!!!!

(i know i'll be sick of it come march, but i'm still like a 5 year-old! i want to go outside and play, but i have to work. boo!)

forecast calls for up to an inch tomorrow. snow day?

disjointed

disjointed thought processes aside, last week was pretty amazing. read between the lines of friday night's incoherent babbling, and you'll find that i'm supremely busy. this silly city has me burning my candle at all three ends. perhaps why i slept so well on lee's floor on friday night. i'd edit that last post, but i think it's funnier unedited.

to clear some things up, 9:30 club is phenomenal. i wish it were easier to get to. it is a music venue. it's common grounds times two with eddie c's sound system and pros at the controls (non-gainesville people: just imagine awesome). i went to a christmas show and saw sister hazel play. we missed pat mcgee's set, and i got utterly confused. it had been 10 years since i'd seen them...

this weekend's climbing was marvelous. my guinness t-shirt didn't fail me. i put down two long-standing projects of mine, as well as my first V6--the hueco-riffic the shotgun. (non-climbers: that means i'm improving, in spite of my 2 month hiatus). beautiful weather, good friends, inside jokes, unoriginal thoughts, hazzard-included slumber party.

to clarify further my musings on work, i shan't discuss my troubles outside of work too often. monday and wednesday will be my longer days at school, in order to improve my climbing experience at the gym. lower stress levels for me, hopefully increased productivity. the stress level last week reached its fever pitch. i nearly lost my mind. out of sheer frustration, when it finally abated, i refused to think about it. not necessarily very nicely either (sorry, Ma! do you forgive me?) now that work has affected my relationships with my friends and family, i'm going to redouble my efforts to leave it all there. less surfing, more planning and differentiating and collaborating.

quick recap

it was brought to my attention that i have not written in a while. this has been quite a busy week. here i lay on the floor at lee's apartment in chattanooga with mostly new gainesvillain climbers that i don't know. quick flight, hilarity on the trip from the ATL with palmer, hanna, and the one and only c.p.

anyhow, back to the task at hand.

tuesday evening was spent in the back of my truck, under a sleeping bag, on my crash pad watching the planes land at reagan. i'm not talking crop dusters. i'm talking about commercial jets, 50 feet or less off the deck, bright landing lights illuminating the world ever-so-briefly. very awesome.

wednesday. work, eh. happy hour after work, better. gym bouldering session, best. now mind you, this is before i even got home. i think the grades are a bit soft in the gym. at least sending 3 V6s and flashing 2 V5s in one night is good for my self esteem. we'll see how it translates in the ever-flaccid grades at LRC tomorrow morning. quiet evening spent at home, laughing at eddie murphy and arsenio hall.

thursday. i have come to the realization that i cannot be complacent at work. ever changing, always 100%. i'm not content to be mediocre. something's gotta give: sacrificing my free time activities, and consequently my sanity; or sacrificing my beliefs about my own work ethic. 9:30 Club is like a 2 story common grounds with a pro sound system. sister hazel played a great set. all the stress dissipated as soon as i walked in the door of the club. i have unplanned-edly wound up going to 2 shows in the district, both for gainesville bands.

and back to the present time. time to hit the...carpet. yeah, i'm crashing on the floor. this is what i do for a vacation. i think there's something wrong with me...