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every once in a while someone gets excited about something [often something that is new to them but old to everyone else] and they attempt to get everyone to start doing this new great thing. i need to keep track of how many times i see it happen as it seems that those that already know it just nod and smile. eg, if someone discovered how changing their oil helped out their vehicles, they want EVERYONE to do it and set up schedules and plan it out. but most everyone does it already. well-intentioned, but it is just their excitement about a new discovery for them.
tied in with that is understanding. THIS might be THE thing to do, but it only seems that way as that is as far along as they have come in maturity/understanding/wisdom. it is like an 8 year old boy saying «ew! who would want to kiss a girl! that is gross!» with the adults all thinking «you might say that know but just wait, you little whipper-snapper [whipper-snapper added for emphasis]». given time, THAT THING often fades in importance as it finds its proper place in life. things change and grow — i fully expect my current viewpoint to change and morph as i mature. i also hope that i remember what really matters and to not squish too many kids toes along the way.
one fun thing to bring up is the whole bible-centric crowd with «The Word». if you don’t know, consider yourself lucky. we were sitting around chatting once and someone brought up the idea of losing a book in the bible. would it devestate me to find out that the book of luke should never been inserted? nope. it goes back to what a friend once said «jesus loves me, this i know» and he ended it there, without the customary «because the bible told me so». the bible didn’t need to tell him — he knew it from experience. that is a great place to be, but incredibly hard for those that haven’t gotten there.
dovetailed into entry 3.8 above, a friend of mine was telling me about xians in other countries, helping start people to find and experience god. the only problem was, they would tell them too much and not let them discover god for themselves, so when they would leave the people would collapse in on themselves from lack of ability and they would end up in a heap. as my friend was mentioning how that worked in other countries i kinda chuckled as it can be the same here. a bunch of guys i meet with on thursday night did an intensive 6 week course and they were then all fired up and excited again. how does that work? when i played volleyball, i spent a lot of time practicing [often uncoached] and playing [often uncoached]. i chose to play volleyball and put the time and effort into it. i didn’t play halfway and neither did the rest of the team. we all wanted to do our best. at the end of my «career» we weren’t coached at all and we did very well. we helped each other out and got better. we wanted to win.
in the church, that isn’t the same. i think a lot of people have found them in this place, not really wanting to put out the effort and time to practice and perform at their best. we look for coaches or others to tell us what to do and how to do it instead of working together. at the very beginning there was some coaching on how to do the basics, then there was years working on them and doing a lot more than could be coached. you have to experience different players, different hits, changing physical abilities and so much more.
i think i bent some of the 6 week guys out of shape when i made the comment «why don’t you bring your A game every thursday? and maybe not even your A, but your B, C, or even D?» referencing their effort. if we are on the same team, everyone should be putting in effort.
facebook is so friendly:
small people vs. big people problem #8:
big people’s clothes are larger and the amount of material in them takes up a lot more space. one of my sweatshirts in a suitcase takes up almost as much room and 4 days of clothes for spenglar. if i had to go to a laundromat, i would pay more there, too. it isn’t right.
i do believe the mystery men has some of my favorite quotes:
The Bowler: The police ruled my father's death a suicide. They said he fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets.
Mr. Furious: I don't need a compass to know which way the wind shines.
The Sphinx: We are number one. All others are number two, or lower.
Monica: [She nods without looking up] Yeah, what kind?
Mr. Furious: It's a Harley...
Monica: A Harley!
Mr. Furious: [He nods, then lurches into honesty] ... compatible. It's a Harley-compatible. Basically the same engineering.
and the king: Mr. Furious: My pants feel like they're shrinking too.
did i mention that one of the bolts that hold the little insert for my keyboard snapped? i’m guessing i’ve had this desk for 15 years and the bolt head snapped off. i’m hoping that happens only to hardware, not to other things. like me. i’d prefer keeping my head on my neck.
it might happen, though, because of my crazy dreams. last night i traveled to the moon with two friends and the moon was really flat and dusty, like a cross between fine ash and sand. our space craft was small, 3 seats up front and then space in the back [which later on turned into a form of a hatchback]. we had a small cabin on the moon, nice wood that was heavily weathered, and the sky was a dark blue with clouds strewn about. i think one of us took off his helmet, and there were two cypress trees next to the cabin. i laid down and took a nap [what else would one do on the moon]. marco's wife and two kids showed up and we figured we would have to leave with the added weight. they all climbed in the hatchback and we were gone.
it was a wonderful color palette, all rectangle shapes. gray mottled landscape, square cabin almost black, deep deep blue sky. i can’t believe i took a nap.
is there a healthy point where men and women can be friends and be just friends? i asked a friend about some other things this was just a snippet of what he wrote:
The whole idea of "finding" that other person, guy or girl, is a stupid one. People waste to much time looking for someone. People can tell when a person's focus is on "finding" someone and take it from a person who has been on both sides, those people are pathetic and no one wants to or for that matter should be with them. A searching person is too busy trying to be what they think the ideal is and the thing is that everyone can tell their trying so they just come across as sad. Searching people are co-dependent and more than anything else will suck the life and excitement out of a relationship. I ascribe wholeheartedly to the thought that if its meant to happen it will happen and we should enjoy life until then. We can be intersted in other people, but the singular goal of finding someone to be romantically involved with is just sad. I can speak like this because it took me all of High School and half of college to recognize this. I think that the church should do a better job of making it ok to be single.
ah, the searching person, and one trying to get their needs met through another person. i wonder if by being in a healthy relationship [as well as an intimate one] that those needs aren’t pulled out/filled by someone else. sure, sarah and i won’t have all our needs met by each other [i don't listen emotionally very well and she doesn't have the same kind of processing as i do] but who does? to love and be loved. we have learned to do that.
if i can have a good, healthy relationship with my wife, what does a good, healthy relationship look like with my close friends? could it be rather close to the same?
i have been full of time intensive jobs lately which is both good as well as exhausting.
all the stuff for the trisports along with redesigning the catalog a bit for someone else to lay out and some good concepts for magazine ads, plus a large website for an international conference in las vegas and then a high-end furniture piece that i made interactive in flash [we may redesign their website, too]. this is all counter to my fears/questions from a year ago. hopefully i can keep up the quality and grow. i’ve spent a lot of time learning css because i had to, as well as things in my apps that i didn’t know i could do [like use any shape as a distortion shape in illustrator — it is awesome].
i get to play with adobe cs3 a bit early as part of the adobe service network. i’ll see how well all of our equipment likes to play with its files. i also get dreamweaver and flash, though as clay has mentioned, those programs have moved more towards the progammer side of life instead of the artists. hopefully i can figure it out.
the best part so far? instead of shapes that are hard to see on the documents in the OS, the are solid colors. they are so easy to identify. i look forward to more gems from adobe.
i dinged my head on some equipment a month or so ago[?] and i now have a harry potter scar without the zigs. it has been hurting lately [am i channeling harry?] and getting larger. today i pushed on it and i realized it was a zit, a huge one. i’ll spare the details, but harry may be battling these in the next book. my skin is floating above the other skin like a burst blister.
my parent live in «ukraine». not «THE ukraine» or as my sister calls it, «ukrainia». why is it so hard to not add «the» before it? is it a sound problem? we don’t call it the great britian, the russia, the romania. i will attempt to be better at saying you name, ukraine.
corcor may return to ukraine with my parents after summer holiday, and i may fly out for her fourth week there and hang out and then fly home with her. what an opportunity. mazatlan, mexico is the furthest i’ve been out of the states. not even canada. how difficult was that for me, just 60 miles to the mexican border? i’ve never sailed into international waters, either.
i used to joke that at least one person in our family needed to stay in the states to take the call, but it is just silly. eastern europe? so cool.
we blew a fuse a while back and the power was out long enough in the ucky fish tank for them to drown. poor fish. we’ve had this one 4 or 5 years. that is a 10" pan and he was huge. no more fish for us.
oh, and the fuse was not a breaker or a glass fuse but one of those old charge fuses. we’ll be updating soon [lisa’s dad who helped us said he hadn’t seen a charge fuse since being on the reservation].
it has been a pretty crazy month so far with plenty to blog but no time to blog it all. i’ll see if i can catch back up without turning this into a laundry list of what happened these past 11 days.
i will start with the artwork for trisports.com. they had more work than could be done at work [at the time] so i did a magazine ad at home a few months ago. i was also working on signage for their retail space and it was far easier to do it at home other than it was having to be done at home — i wouldn’t mind sleeping or relaxing a bit too. all work is not good. it has been good creative work. i’ll post more of it on a real space on mbtween.com but here is both a banner i fixed as well as sets i had done that are as large as a sheet of plywood to hang from the ceiling. i finally finished those up, plus magazine ads and all the signage for their retail section this past week. it looks real good — i’ll take photos. this leads me into the entry for march 12th, and it will be out of order. after that this blog will be all over the place.
i did a triathlon yesterday! well, just the bike part — it was the relay. keith [my boss] did the swim and his wife did the run. they play soccer a ton and are quite fit, though not trained specifically for the event. keith put in 30 miles or so before he did a marathon and did it in less than 4 hours. what a butt. i was hoping to do the 12 mile ride in under 35 minutes with my new aero bars [i haven't felt good in almost 2 weeks]. i rode in the dark to the start as my warm up and keith was in the second heat. as i waited i noticed that michellie jones’ bike was racked in the relay section. great. the ironman hawaii winner in the relay. that’ll be fun. she popped out rather quick, then some of the trisports people [emily was first. i’m sure markly may have already told you]. then a 12 year old girl and then a 7 year old boy came out, both freezing. everyone around cheered for the kids — how could you not? they just smoked a bunch of adults and made it look easy. keith came running out of the sun and tagged me and i headed out. it is a crazy square, two parts down and two parts up with one of the up legs on what some might call a road and other might call and extended pothole driven over by tank treads. by the time i had made it just over 1/2 of the 3 laps i had caught all the trisports people save one that was going to be long gone. i kept yelling «on your left!» to pass people and with more road skills than i think most of the tri people had, i would dive through the turns and then accelerate up to speed again. i was humping it and the aero bars helped me stay in a better position. each time i would pass the crowds next to the transition area i would accelerate as it was all downhill and often passed them in the low 30s. as i neared the final corner on speedway i was catching a guy in basketball shorts and tennis shoes and he was hammering away. i wasn’t sure if it was because he saw me coming or if he knew it was the last half mile. i had to wait for him to turn first [if it was a crit i would have gunned it in the corner with him but i didn’t want to scare him — or have him clip me] and he out accelerated me. i couldn’t pass the crowds behind this guy so i sped up and got around him. i dove into the turn into the transition area and a trio was standing there, watching. they all exclaimed and jumped back as i almost clipped them all as i was leaning over at a steep angle. as i hit the dismount line the shorts and shoes guy must have tried to throw his bike at the line and he was a mass of arms and legs and bikes right next to me. maybe he passed out from the effort. i jogged in my slippery shoes to tag aimee and i was done.
from start to stop i did the 11.6 miles in 30:40 at 22.8mph which wasn't bad. maybe my goal for the firecracker tri should be under 29 minutes. glenn and nicole should be my teammates that time — it should be fun. if nicole welches again [glenn is surfing in chile] i may ask jason’s wife beth if they would come down and race with us. she only has a silver from the seoul olympic. i believe if she shows them the medal, she only has to swim half as far. i’m sure of it.
later that evening i took corcor out for a run. she is totally a long distance runner, she just doesn't know it. if she was a mermaid, she would be a great swimmer. i had to push her on the run as it wasn’t easy for her and we ran 1.5 miles. she walked 1/4 of it, but when she got mad and took off running, she ran 1/4 mile faster than i know i could in the next 2 years. crazy girl. if she puts out the effort to get the endurance she’ll kick major butt. that is the problem, though — will she put out the effort to develop herself or will she attempt to do the things that come easy to her? i hope she puts in the time.
a quick update with the traithlon results — turns out we got 3rd in the coed race and 4th overall. keith and i figured that we had ammie on the run by 44 minutes and change. a 22 minute would have gotten us second [28 minutes did not]. i think we get towels!
andie mcdowell is the antichrist. seriously.
years ago i knew a girl from the colorado school of mines. the problem with that school was that we all thought she said MIMES, not mines. i had to check to see if their school colors were black and white stripes. they aren't.
little spenglar got his quarterly review and it is somewhat disheartening to see that he isn’t improving much. we know he can’t sit still unless he wants to, that he isn’t fond of listening and most of his sentences are lucky to break 3 words. what do we do with him next year if he isn’t ready for school? he is a great kid, just not a kid that will do well in a classroom.
sarah called me moments ago to say that the power is out in our house, but randomly. a light here works, the fridge doesn’t, the laundry works, etc etc. hopefully we can rely on family that knows electricity to help us vs buying an electrician’s daughter some braces. enough already.
sarah was telling me about spencer misbehaving on the school bus and asked him about it with those big «oh nooooo!» sounds that you talk to little kids with to make things sound real bad: «spencer, were you spitting on the bus? the bus driver said you threw some trash out the window!» to which he replied very matter of factly «i wecycling».
i could not keep a straight face.
from 3.20, spencer's quarterly review paper was about a week old at the time. since then [and maybe some focusing on spenglar by us and others] he is starting to sound a bit more conversational. instead of 3 words at a time, pieced together like a phone computer [you pressed... 4...5...9... is this correct?] he has longer sentences and they flow together. woohoo!
i could almost care less about the march madness basketball contests as i only paid attention as long as arizona was in it. we made a first day exit this time. good for us. todd, ray and i have played the espn game since it began in 1998 i believe, so it was mandatory that i play. i started the first weekend off so-so, then halfway through the next i was in the 90th percentile, and now if ohio state wins i am poised to win the whole shebang. how did that happen?
i fixed trevor’s final flat and took our three oldest as well as three neighborhood kids on a bike ride. while they were doing laps around one building in the medical complex that has several speed bumps and a big dip, corcor attempted to pass trevor and told him to not turn. he turned, of course, and many tears later her knuckles are bruised horribly and she doesn't want to use her hand. a friend used a tuning fork and we are pretty sure her fingers aren't broken. we'll wait on it.
as she walked home after the wreck [they all wreck] i taught the other 5 how to hold their line. i don't think it will stick but at least i tried.
here is another song to ruin:
I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me;
Make the lame to walk and the blind to see;
Opens prison doors, sets the captives free;
I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.
Spring up, O well, and flood my soul;
Spring up, O well, and make me whole;
Spring up, O well, and give to me that life abundantly!
i remember we alway added after «spring up o well» really-loud-with-hand-motions «gush gush gush gush!»
way back when i would think of it as «oh well», not as a «well» for water. as i drove in today i turned it naughty with «i’ve got a river of life flowing out of me gush gush gush gush!»
consider it ruined. i didn’t know it could do all those other things, too. i would think more prisoners would have escaped that way by now.
i drove to work today and it feels odd, hung up in traffic for such a short distance. work is so close — i feel as if i am going down the block to see our neighbors and i drive. it seems wrong. at times i wish gas would go up to $7 a gallon and the fleet ever inflating trucks would be pushed off the coast of florida to help jump start coral reefs. if you use it for something, sure. if you don’t, i’m not so sure.
i marvel at people when they discuss hybrids and they say «but it won’t save me money.» is money the only thing that matters here? how about all the other variables? if your life is about cost, maybe you should rethink what that is costing you.
we purchased a flatbed scanner to replace our old one. things have changed. i spent $69 for it with decent resolution and speed. compare this to our first color scanner [hp] which was $1,500 and at 300ppi the elements had that halo from the bleed in power to other elements. it directed the light to a series of mirrors at the far end and then it read the colors. the last two scanners move the element and are nutty fast with good quality. i wonder if we’ll ever fire up our $26,000 scanner again.
this is the view we get of the middle two every morning as they wait for the bus. today i was going to take them to school but trevs is very worried about being late. he opted to take the bus instead. even if i was to get him to school 15 minutes earlier while he got an extra 30 minutes at home, he would still choose the bus. click to zoom in.
i’ve been coloring more hair and i’m beginning to get better at it. i’ll post more photos later [funny how unloading the camera of images reminds me of all sorts of things to post]. sarah’s has gotten to be pretty good. hard to go wrong coloring my hot wife’s hair.
while we were at sally’s hair supply shack [or whatever] spencer came up to us with 6 cans of spray on color, all the primary colors and said «i want wainbow». he ended up getting the blue and he looked like a who from whoville [grinch that stole xmas] or a muppet — your choice. maybe that will be the blog image for april.