So, my strategies seem to be working. I slept in until about noon today, which is better than 2pm...so don't go on the internet at night, and leave the door open so I get daytime sunlight (remember, no windows! And the sun resets your sleep cycle, basically telling your body to get its ass out of bed). I'll bet though that the workout from Wednesday had something to do with it; I was a lot more tired when I went to bed around 11:30 last night than I have been in a while.
Tooling around the internet via digg (great site, forgot how much I like it, and I really don't care that much that only 40 or so people are making most of the recommendations, cause they find interesting stuff), and I found a site you might want to look at, and something worth a minor quip. First, check this site out:
109th Congress | Congress votes database | washingtonpost.com
You go into either the House or the Senate, and you can look up a short bio and voting record of any member of Congress. More importantly, the Post summarizes the really important votes, and for all votes takes note of the party line. So you can discover, for instance, that the Honorable Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, occasionally deviates from the party line, which is commendable. Even better, there's an RSS feed available for every member of Congress that will tell you when they vote and how they voted. Pretty damn cool if you ask me (cause honestly, how many of us actually hold our representatives accountable for anything? How many of us watch C-Span? Like, ever? Do any of us have any real sense at all of what's going on in D.C.? I certainly don't.)
The minor quip comes from an article about Symantec, makers of Norton Internet Security among other things, whining that Microsoft's inclusion of a firewall and anti-spyware software in Vista (and XP SP2) "reduces consumer choice." Now, its not that I don't disagree with this statement, but it bothers me: why the hell does Microsoft get in hot water for this, while no one says a thing about it concerning Apple? Apple bundles EVERYTHING with OS X, and no one that I have ever heard has ever complained about this. Hell, bundling a firewall is part of OS X's marketing for crying out loud: "Mac OS X was designed with security in mind. Windows just wasn’t built to bear the onslaught of attacks it suffers every day. A Mac offers a built-in firewall, doesn’t advertise its existence on the Net, and isn’t compromised within an hour of being turned on." (From Apple's website) But when Microsoft tries to improve Windows' security features, it gets burned. Hmm...
You might notice that there are times that I deviate completely from anything even remotely related to running. Well, for now, I say, so what? This is a blog meant for family and friends to keep up with me, but 'me' is a lot more than a runner, hence, I'll go on tangents from time to time...if you know me at all, you also know I can be pretty opinionated, and its fun to put opinions out there (especially when they start conversations).
You might also notice that I used to have another blog out there that was only opinions. Well, if people ever reading this thing in large numbers, and I start getting complaints that I don't stick to talking about my training regimen, what I eat, how much I sleep, and what shoes I wear enough, perhaps then the opinions will be returned to the other blog (which I haven't written in since 2004 or so...). Until then...well, enjoy, I guess.

So...yesterday's workout was killer. Wasn't really expecting it, and in the middle, I certainly wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish it. This was the first interval workout of the year, a 4x4x400m piece of tortured goodness. The setup was at the front of the school, read: very bad footing, hard to go fast on. Its our standard location for cross country 400 interval sessions (funny, I'm not really doing cross this year, am I...). Anyway, the workout was, as I said, 4x4x400m, with a minute between intervals, approximately 3 minutes between sets (turned out to about 3:30 each time). The pace was set at 66-68 for Pablo, Adam and me (Adam didn't have class in the afternoon, so he joined us. 66-68 is approximately 4:24-4:36 mile pace, just for reference. And yes, I know that wasn't proper grammar when I said Pablo, Adam, and me.).
We got off to a good start, hitting paces, and I felt pretty strong...but not four sets strong. I knew it would be a struggle later, and it was. But not exactly how I thought. I more fell asleep at the wheel than fell apart, and as long as I was able to wake myself up, I did just fine. Only two intervals were 69, and most were 66 or 67, right on pace, and faster that I ever expected I'd be able to hold.
I am certainly still feeling that workout today. Did about an hour run around lunch time, sore all over, took it pretty slow. Although it was one of those runs where I was still pretty aware of my body, not just sort of stumbling through it. What I mean is, sometimes (and I don't know how many other runners feel this) you'll be on a run, and your legs hate you, you feel tired, sore, and you think you're struggling...but then you step back for a moment, and sort of observe what you're feeling more objectively, and realize nothing really hurts, your legs are just being recalcitrant, like whiny children. They are actually capable of not only holding pace, but in fact staying at a faster pace, and its not painful, just uncomfortable. Somehow, you disassociate the two, and suddenly holding pace or even going faster isn't that big a deal. (This is on an easy run, post workout, though I suppose the same can apply to hard runs...but not always. Sometimes, it just HURTS.) Bottom line is, discomfort is the runner's bread and butter, and if you can realize that what your legs want you to think is pain is really just unpleasantness, you find you can just keep chugging along...
Hard runs, well, like I said, it sort of applies, but in the middle of a workout or a race, its a matter of constantly fighting your body into remembering that. Because often, all your body wants to do is stop.
I don't feel like that's the best description of what a hard workout is. If there are any other runners out there (Rice guys? Anybody?)reading this, it'd be cool if you put up your own take on a hard workout. Now I know that just sets me up for the embarrassment of no one posting a comment with such a description, but look, look at my face...thats me caring that no one reads this.
I write it mostly for my own edification anyway.
So there you have it, a post completely about running in a blog about running. Fancy that.
PS The battle for a regular sleep schedule continues. A new trick: don't check email, or the news, or anything even related to the internet before bed, therefore keeping me from being up for hours watching video demos of the gaming possibilities of the new quad-core processors Intel is cooking up, or of a dude who solo speed climbs El Cap with no protection to the amazement of other climbers on the route, or of the Cal/Stanford game with the incredible finish from like 1985 (all of which I watched this morning rather than last night, courtesy of digg.com, a great site). Old problem: I'm still tired but unable to sleep until a late hour that I won't mention, even if I don't get caught up with crap on the internet...
Oy.

The desire to write, the whim to read, the inclination to create, or read a book, or take a walk, to invest in life in a way that can not be captured the conventional day to day chores and activities, never seems to strike except at the most inconvenient times, like now, when I should be asleep, but instead find myself driven here, to record something that I am more channeling than creating, as small and inconsequential as it may be. I wonder why that is...
Perhaps it is because when you get it right, and you go to bed with no concerns or worries, your mind is able to float free, and go where it will, instead of being slave to the random senseless stimuli, pressures, and commitments of the mundane. So you stand for a moment before going to bed in front of your bookcase, and realize you're in the middle of three books that you haven't touched in months, and that it really would be nice to take yet a fourth untouched book down, go outside, and read in the warm sun.
Granted, of course, you could find a patch of grass in the middle of a city where you wouldn't be distracted by people, cars, planes, or even just birds and bugs.
And then something clicks, suddenly you have something to say that you want others to hear, so you get up and go to write it down, not really knowing why, knowing full well you're reneging on the commitment you made not twenty four hours ago to change, to get to bed on time, to get good sleep, to not give in to what really amounts to a pointless whim...yet you don't really feel like letting it bounce around in your head for the next hour before you get to sleep is really an option.
So here I am...and there it is.

I would say I'm out of whack, but I don't FEEL out of whack, I just look back at a day like today (slept until 2pm or so, got almost nothing done, and was doing homework for EMT-Intermediate just before class, such that I was late to class and I didn't get it all done anyway), and think, man, I'm out of whack.
I'm not on any regular schedule, mostly because none is being imposed on me. I don't work regularly, I don't run at a regular time, I don't eat at regular times, I don't sleep at regular times...well, I go to bed a pretty regular time, but its too late, and I haven't been getting up at a regular time...so its weird.
I'm just as scatterbrained as ever. Some days (most days?) I get little done, even though I have lists of things to do. Other days, or maybe just other times, OCD will hit, and I go into a flurry of productivity, and lots of things get done. I don't know whether to embrace this polarity as who I am, or fight it and force myself to be more regular. Obviously I should be more regimented for the sake of my training (the reason, of course, that I write this from Houston and not from Portland)...but sometimes I wonder if its even possible. I have been telling myself I'm working on changing these things about myself for years, but I can't really say if I have been trying and failing, or if I have never really given it the effort that it deserves, or if its even possible to change these things about myself. I also think people sometimes drive themselves nuts trying to change something about themselves when the better route would be to just accept who they are and work around their quirks. But then is that conceding defeat when I should be working harder? Such are the questions of life I guess...tricky when there is no instruction manual, mostly because there is no "right" way to live, just different ones...
Well, at least its not too late while I sit here writing this tonight. And tomorrow my car will hopefully be finally put back in order such that it will pass state inspection, the first step towards registration, licensing, etc, which means the car will get Texas plates, I'll get a Texas drivers license, and I'll somehow feel more permanently situated. I feel like the car has been on the back burner for a while, and once its taken care of I'll finally be able to move on and take care of everything else...
...but maybe I'm just fooling myself there too.
Funny, all of that just sort of exposes a lot of who I am, huh...I can be very self-assured, but I can also be very uncertain of what to do, or if its worth it, or even feasible. Character flaw? Perhaps. But if there were no flaws...well, actually, what would that be like? Just so happens I'm in a very philosophically rambling mood at the moment, you'll have to bear with me. I was going to say, but if there are no flaws, there'd be nothing interesting to look at, but I don't know if that's true either. I think that could very easily pass as just something someone might say to make excuses for flaws that have not been fixed. At the same time, I genuinely believe not all "flaws" are flaws, and that it is not necessarily a good thing to think that we should always be striving for perfection...I could very easily fall into a stupid little circle of pointless philosophical reflection here, and it'd all be legitimate, but it'd also all be something said before. My problem is I sympathize with both sides of the argument, and therefore get stuck between them. Yeah, that's my problem...
Man, that one was no fun. Sorry about that. If you're still reading, I congratulate you. Cause I'm not sure I had a point there except to drone on about the ridiculous and relatively inconsequential problems in my life. Maybe some day I'll come back and actually make something useful out of it by linking it to an argument about Prozac, Ritalin, and the like. But not tonight.

Yuck. How boring was that?

Week's summary:
Monday- 45 min easy, ~7 miles
Tuesday- Workout: 2 mi warmup, 2 mi @ 5:05 pace, 1 min rest, 2 mi (supposed to be around 5:30 or so, actual: 1st @ 5:11, 2nd @ 5:25) , 1 min rest, 2 mi @4:45 pace. 2 mi cool down. ~11 mi. Best workout I've had in a long time, indicates I'm in a lot better shape than I thought.
Wednesday- 1 hr easy, ~9 mi
Thursday- Rest (oops)
Friday- 47 min easy, ~8 mi
Saturday- 1:30 easy, ~14 mi
Sunday- 40 min moderate, ~7 mi
Total: 56 miles

An apt critique of our times, re the Pope's recent speech at the University of Regensberg:
"The pope forgot that the present era is "logocratic," an era in which life or death are determined by labels. The Holy See - like Mohammed, like the Catholic Church, like Islam - is a deep, complex and multi-layered historical institution. But in a world like ours, where ideas and values are constantly reduced to little packages that are easily identified and quickly digested, there is no longer a chance for complex messages." (Dan Rabinowitz, "The Return of Manuel II," opinion column for Ha'aretz Newspaper, Sept 21, 2006)
Is it really true that not only in America but throughout the world we are no longer capable of digesting multi-faceted issues or statements? Have we all truly been reduced to consumers unable to process anything more complex than the standard and often horribly inadequate (and appropriately named) Sound Bite? Why is it that we increasingly want everything to be reduced to black or white, never gray (or grey, or off-white, or jet-black as opposed to coal-black as opposed to bright-white as opposed to true-white...)?
Its really a shame if this is the case, especially since I firmly believe that God, if He is to be found, will not be found in black or white, but precisely in that complex and frightening uncertainty of gray.
Ha. As if any of that was original. Sorry, this particular post, while I wanted to post it, just strikes me as just another voice in a cacophony of gnats and mosquitoes, not really contributing much, not saying anything new. And what is there new to say? Its all been said before, in one form or another, by both the brilliant and the demented. Reminds me of that scene in Garden State where Zach Braff is asked to do something completely original, something that has never been done before in the history of the world...and he sticks out his finger and goes, "boop." (Or something like that...) I wonder if that really is the story of humanity. I wonder even more if there really is a point in hoping for anything different. Is there anything wrong with boop?

Had a close encounter with what you might call real life today...twice actually. First, I met with my friend who's in the financial business to talk about health insurance. He showed me around. He's got a pretty sweet cubicle in a corner, which means on two sides he's got open windows with an 11th story view of the 610 loop, looking northwest. More importantly, this guy has a "real" job; he goes to work every day in a tie, there's a secretary who calls him to let him know clients have arrived, and he's on a career path. Walking out of his office, looking around, I realized that when we speak of the "real" world (outside the hedges as we say (said? shit...) at Rice) in hushed tones with apprehension, awe, excitment, and a little bit of fear, this is what we're referring to. My friend had arrived. I, most certainly, have not. Or maybe I have, but its a completely different post-collegiate world than his, at least for the moment. I'm not exactly sure what I was feeling, or even what I am feeling, I just thought it was a really interesting contrast...a glimpse of "normal" life, which, owing to having a doctor for a father, I really have had very little contact with. I guess seeing my friend at work today (as a client no less) made a world that has been more or less mythical to me until now very much more concrete. It was an interesting experience...
...although not nearly as interesting as what happened later today when I was babysitting my coach's daughter. Maybe "babysitting" isn't the right term, as he was within 100 yards of us the whole time, but he had asked me to look after her while taking care of coaching duties. Suffice to say I was pretty much following her around, and owing to being in a public place, eventually among people who didn't know my coach, his daughter, or me. Suffice to say, people were watching me follow around this two year old kid, and eventually, two of these bystanders, separately and in passing, complimented me on such a beautiful kid. I was taken aback, and had to laugh; they thought she was my daughter. I mentioned it to my coach. He replied that its not all that unbelievable; apparently I look old enough to be a dad. I can't really describe what that felt like either...another glimpse perhaps of a life that I'm not living at the moment, but likely will be living in the future. It was a mix of things, really...pride at recieving a compliment which somehow seemed to simultaneously be an unstated approval of my alleged parenting skills, amusement at the humor of the babysitter being confused for the father, interest that somehow I fit some undefined profile that allowed me to be pegged as her dad. Again, an interesting mix of feelings in the midst of an odd peek of a different path I might have taken.

I've finally gotten my posters up, which means my room is starting to feel more and more like a room and less like a closet. This morning also happened to be absolutely GORGEOUS: low humidity and cool temperatures, in concert with a fantastic sunrise made for one of those mornings where you're just happy to be alive...cliches are really the only thing that can describe such mornings, because I don't know what else to say except that you could almost taste life itself in the air (ironic considering this morning confirmed that fall--the season of life going dormant for winter--is indeed on the way. Only fall could make such a beautiful day in Houston!).

I can't help but wonder how many people are reading this, and if there are any whom I don't know, who somehow stumbled upon it through Facebook or literally by chance on the web. Feel free to leave comments if you like. I'd be curious to see what people think about these missives of mine.

Just a quick note about our President, Shrub. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting sick and tired of the continual attempt to gloss over issues by trying to blanket them with names like "Freedom Agenda" "Patriot Act" "War on Terrorism" etc etc, and always framing arguments in such a way that whatever is actually the weakest point in policy as far as favor goes with the public is suddenly the central issue (the Middle East is the "central battlefield" of the war on terror, etc). I think the public is smart enough by now to realize that just because the President and his advisors are framing everything in patriotic and/or all-or-nothing terms doesn't make them so. The War on Terror is just as much a sham as the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, and the War on Hunger. These are not things on which war can be declared. They will always exist in one form or another, because people will always want cheap thrills, wealth will always somehow become unevenly distributed (or there won't be enough to go around), and people will always seek ways to achieve power over others. Wishing that these things were a matter of national pride, national security, patriotism, or all-important matters of state does not mean that they are. More realistically, they are matters of reelection, and then only if the American public lets the politicos get away with it (and that's a term with specific meaning, you should look it up, because it applies directly to this administration, and most of all to Karl Rove). If you know me, you know that I actually find such rants against our President pretty pathetic and annoying (as bad as he is, he's not Hitler. I mean give me a break). But more and more, Shrub strikes me as even more pathetic than the rabble being roused by the masses against him.
The real point is that both our President AND his opponents are one-dimensional whiny bastards who aren't really thinking about anything except getting elected, getting reelected, or seeing to it that their will is done, "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead." And that says something pretty sorry about the state of politics at the moment in this country. Maybe its always been this way, but I don't think we've always been so sterotypically and American-ly selfish.
Jon Stewart for President? Sure, I'd vote for him.
Anybody but a politician.

Fall made its first appearance tonight. Actually the first touch of winter's chill. That may sound ridiculous in September, especially in Houston where fall's first appearance means it was about 75 degrees, with matching percent humidity...but the air definitely felt different on my run. There's something that I almost smell, even though it has no scent, when the seasons change. I could sense that not-quite-smell tonight. Its really hard to describe, but if you've ever felt it, you know what I'm talking about.
I finally acquired a desk and bookcase. I don't know what it is about furniture that makes me feel this way, but when I was putting up the bookcase I definitely started to get the sense that I was moving in, not just into my room, but into the part of my life that comes after college. This is no longer the furniture provided by Brown College or Rice University, this is my bookcase, my desk, which (for better or for worse, but certainly in part because I'm poor) I picked out myself. And then there's always the possibility that when I move into a house, maybe even have a kid, they could one day be using this desk, or have that bookcase in their room...I still need a dresser.
Summary on the week of running:
Monday- 40 min easy, ~6 miles
Tuesday- Workout: 2 miles easy, 2 miles @ 6min pace, 2 miles @5:30 pace, 2 miles @5:11 pace. With warm up and cool down and strides, ~13 miles
Wednesday-40 min easy, ~6 miles
Thursday- Workout: 2 minutes hard, 2 minutes jog, then 10x~60 sec hill circuit w/~60 sec recovery. With warm up and cool down ~10 miles
Friday- 1:10 easy, ~10 miles
Saturday- 2:05 easy, ~18 miles
Sunday- 1:07 easy, ~10 miles
Total: 73 miles

So I'm off and running...

So a friend wrote me, wanting to know more about my life here in Houston..."where are you, exactly? Making a home for yourself in a closet, okay. In Houston, okay. But where in Houston is the closet? Are you in a house with a bunch of folks, on your own in a creatively-built apartment building? Is this a free-standing closet? Let me know how I am to imagine your life when I think of you and go, 'I wonder how that guy is?'"
All pertinent questions which I apparently haven't answered, which could probably stand to be answered in a blog about my life. So, here's most of what I wrote back:

...where in houston...well, as it turns out I'm living in what for all intents and purposes could be considered an athlete training complex, as something like half the men's track team lives in my apartment complex. Its maybe a third of a mile from campus, so I train with the guys all the time (actually did an 18 mile run with them this morning, now at work, and dead on my feet, haven't done an 18 miler in some months...). I'm living with two other old (old, we're only 22-24!) guys, Scott, a great guy who actually graduated with me last year as a fifth year, and was my host when I was being recruited by Rice way back when we were in high school, and Adam, a blazingly fast 800 meter runner who is now in med school at the Baylor College of Medicine. I just bought some dining chairs from Ikea yesterday, so now the downstairs is pretty much fully furnished (we hardly eat at the table, or together, so we weren't in that big a hurry to replace the fold-up camping chairs we were using).
Third, how is that guy...well, owing to that 18 miler this morning (which involved waking up around 6:15 and running by 7), I'm pretty tired, dead on my feet really...but life is good. I suppose I'm in a bit of a crisis at the moment, as there are too many people working at this little store, which means I'm working maybe 20 hours a week, and it looks like my monthly income at this rate will be about $500 or so...I think between rent, insurance, etc, that leaves...well now that I think about it, I don't think anything is left over. So basically, I need a second job. Now. I should probably be more concerned about this. I"m sure it'll kick in soon...
I still don't go to bed early enough. I'm often awake at 2am for no apparent reason. At the time I'm sure it seems relatively important, or I tell myself I'll be done in five minutes with whatever it is I'm doing (reading the news, shopping for the bookcase, desk, and dresser that I need...well, would live much more comfortably with, or just randomly surfing the internet...)
But other than that, not having those pieces of furniture, and having to go to the grocery store at what feels like two day intervals, I'm doing really well. Like, really really enjoying being out of school, hanging out, and just...living.
Its lonely sometimes. I've made creepy forays back on to campus probably more often than I should (not really creepy, its always to see friends), but honestly there's just not much socialization to be done off campus, or at least so it feels. Its mostly just hanging out at the apartment, which I'm not actually doing that much of, because as little as I'm working, when I'm not working, I'm always doing something else it feels like.
So I guess I just really like everything right now. My knee has stopped rebelling, and what with the long run today with no trouble, I think I'm ready to get back into gear and get some real training going. And that will be good, get on track for why I'm actually here.
I really liked your analogies there (contorting yourself in limbo when you know the bar is too low but you go for it anyways (maybe that's what I'm doing right now?)).
I miss Portland a lot too. If there were guys in Portland to train with, I'd head back there in a second...but for the moment, I'm here.
So yeah...that's a slice of my life at the moment. I'm poor, not really sure how its going to work out, and maybe just a touch lonely...but pretty darn happy with things for now. And if I can say that living in a closet with my clothes on the ground, most of my stuff in boxes, and unsure how long I'll be living (if only partially) on savings, then I must be doing something right.

Like I said, there it is, a slice of my life at the moment...which hopefully gives a bit more of a picture of what exactly it is that I'm doing.

Where I live

So...I live in a closet. Here's what I mean:

Outside the door. No, I'm not completely moved in or unpacked. You'll see why in a moment...notice how narrow the door is. Also notice the light switch on the OUTSIDE wall. That's because...I live in a closet.
















And through the door...here you can see my bed. Which is actually a futon. But its surprisingly comfy.




















My room. I mean closet...yes, I know its a mess.















But here's part of the reason why: no furniture! So my clothes at the moment are laid out (neatly) on the floor.















Shot back towards the door...that's no desk, its a TV table...with no desk chair (a problem actually fixed today). Notice also all my books in boxes and stacks in the corner--no bookcase either!















...and back towards the door. That little divider to the left hides the HEATER that I live with....it cycles on every once in a while, but isn't nearly as annoying as you might think.




















And that's my room (closet). The plan tomorrow is to get a bookcase at least, and possibly a dresser and desk, so that I can make the place look more livable...

...and DEAR GOD BLOGGER SUCKS FOR PHOTOS. If anyone knows any tricks to make that process easier, please tell me. Cause that was ridiculous.

While chillin at work...

Getting better at posting somewhat regularly...hopefully I'll keep it up.
So, it occurs to me there really isn't anything on this blog about my life as a semi-professional runner yet about being a semi-professional runner. Funny thing, seeing as how that's supposedly the topic of this whole thing...
So. First off, I'm not really a pro. Pros have sponsors, get paid to run, get free equipment, get endorsement deals...not the case for me. The only reason I can claim any kind of professional status is that since I am no longer a collegian, I can finally take prize money if I win something. Of course, I have yet to enter a race as a post-collegian, much less win one, so maybe it would be more accurate to say I'm an aspiring semi-professional runner.
What do I do? So far, not much. The last few weeks I havent run much because of an intermittent knee problem. In the fall, months away from the spring and summer track seasons, this means that I take time off and get healthy. So that's what I've been doing. My knee hasn't given me problems in a few days though, which means I will soon be ready to go full force. In this context, full force means eventually running 90-100 miles a week, with eating and sleeping habits to match. In a nutshell, that's what being a competitive runner is: running, eating, and sleeping. A lot.
For now, being a semi-pro runner means I work at a running store, train, pay the bills, and try to keep busy. So far, keeping busy isn't hard: My car still isn't registered here, I have hardly any furniture in my room so I haven't finished unpacking, my one job won't pay the bills so I'm applying for a second job, and I need things like health insurance...but eventually, it will mean a steady routine of sleep, run, eat, work, run, eat, repeat.

In more concrete terms: I want to qualify for the USA Championships. The A standard last year was 8:43. My current PR (Personal Record) is 9:04. So I've got some work to do.

Lots of people have asked me if I'm going to the Olympics. The truth is, almost certainly not. As the saying goes, you have to be so lucky after being so good, and I'm not even that good. Sure, to most folks who jog 20 miles a week at best, talk of a 100 mile week sounds superhuman. But in the world of elite athletes, what I am proposing is modest at best. Are the Olympics possible? Yes. Are they likely? Hardly.

But here's the whole point of what I'm doing with my life at the moment: I'll never really know unless I give it a shot. And right now, at this very moment, is my only opportunity. Its now or never.

So why not?


Cliche, I know. Trite even, maybe. But that is my life right now. I'm taking my shot. I'm going to do the best I can to run as fast as I can, and see what happens. Most likely all you'll ever hear from me about it will be what you read here.
But who knows, maybe in a few years you'll be able to say you know someone in a USA uniform.

Stay tuned.

Intentional crisis

Ok ok wait, so blogger's got this thing that scrolls recently published blogs so that you can sort of randomly tap into them, see what's up...maybe it just cause I don't know these people, but they're SO MUNDANE...is it trite to hope that just by writing a concieved-on-the-spot defense of myself I somehow transcend that state of utter blah? I write here because, hopefully, occasionally, my thoughts, musings, observations, etc, will be entertaining or interesting to someone, somewhere. Most likely someone I know, because they're the most likely people to read this.
However, if I'm ever boring you with details that don't matter for shit, anectdotes that simply aren't interesting, or observations that are stupid or not entertaining in the slightest, for godsakes let me know. I am NOT doing this to be just another one of the pathetic voices who are vomiting grey matter onto the net (am I? shit...). I'm doing it because what I'm doing with my life at the moment is somewhat unique (except I haven't really written about that yet, fuck...), and I have been told in the past that the mass emails I used to send to family and friends were found entertaining, at least by some. So I figure maybe, just maybe, it might also be the case here.
So, enjoy, read at your leisure, but feel free to keep me in line as well. Cause lets be honest, this is at least partly about consumption by the public...if it were just about me, I'd keep it all in a journal.

A little Bible reading to get us started

I feel like something dramatic.
Genesis 11: "Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.' Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.'

God came down to look at the city and the tower that man had built, and He said, 'If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech, so that they do not understand one another.'

Thus God scattered them from there over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there God confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there God scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

Truth is we don't really understand each other even when we do speak the same language. Words hide, distort, confuse. We use them thinking they have universal meaning, but they don't, because you will never be inside someone else's head. Worse, even if you can find a way to wiggle inside, just a little bit, you might just as easily reject what you find as nonsensical, something you simply don't agree with.
And that's even if you're lucky enough to have gotten the message right.
But who really knows.

Do you really understand me?
Do I really understand you?
Did we ever?
Will we?

Does it matter?

Its interesting to note that contrary to the commentaries I've read before, man did not build the tower to try to reach God, or to assert his might, or to equate himself with the Divine, but rather simply so that he would not be forgotten and scattered to the winds. More importantly, God did not confound our speech for our alleged haughtiness, but rather because with unified language He apparently feared that we could do anything.
So maybe that's what our failure to understand each other, whether because of differences of language or otherwise, is all about. Its a hinderance, a challenge to be overcome. Because if we could overcome it, nothing would be impossible.
If we could only understand one another, the only limit to what we could accomplish would be our imagination.

If only it were that simple.

Too melodramatic? Ok, I'll stop then.