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i moved july and august — looks like i had enough stuff to write this time around

july | august

JANUARY THROUGH MAY

i'm sorry if everyone has been checking back weekly to find out what i am doing, but not sorry because what are you doing with your time? just email me already. i'll blame work for all the added stress. no time to think, no time to ponder, no time to write [and not very funny nor fun, i belive]. i was reading «u2 by u2» and their talk of the creative process and how living affected their creative process gave me a little push on the back to swing me out of this crazy pace. i'm too much of a «collage designer» or maybe a «mcgyver designer» — i take a whole lot of parts and make something cool out of it. the thing is, i don't create any of those parts but i can assemble them really well. i'm not sure if i like that. it might sound like a cool super power, like «assembly man» or «caption squoosher» but if there isn’t anything for me to use it is like sending «solar man» to the dark side of the moon or «aqua man» to the desert. i would really like to be excel at creating, not just mashing. with all the producton pressure i am under, that won’t happen. what to do? maybe try a job elsewhere.

yes, i know, it is a loyalty that is both good and bad. i’ve been here 18 years and no retirement, 401k, nothing. if i was a cop [hah] i could retire in 2 years. ah well. maybe next time around i will do better.

may5 — serial killer

on most nights my dreams are good and bizarre, but last night wasn't as much fun. we had watched the show «dexter» before bed and man, does that show mess with me. i thought he was a REFORMED serial killer that now helps the cops find the bad guys. oh no, not true. he searches out the bad guys and kills them in his own serial killer way. now that he is almost caught, all of us viewers feel bad for him and don't want him to get caught. how messed up is that?

whatever i ate during the day didn't make my guts happy. i woke up at 2am with my gut aching and that over-clocked processing mind going way too fast. it reminded me of food poisoning, without the hurling. that wasn't the bad part. i woke up thinking i was a serial killer [well, actually sarah and i]. my dream was far too real. i couldn't shake it, either. i would try to not remember what i [hadn't] done, but somehow i thought we had really been offing people. the amount of fear and guilt i felt was incredible. i think i spent an hour trying to reason with myself with lines such as «wait, if i really did do it, i doubt i could live with myself and act fine» which is a very good argument, except my brain would shoot right back with «no, you repressed those memories to function». i've never felt so opressed. to quote nicole's son with a painful cut, «is this what jesus felt like?» it wasn't the same, but it the guilt and fear that didn't belong to me. not fun at all. i'm not sure how people could live like that without being numb or repressing their memories.

messed me up for a good day. now i get those dreams sarah would have after watching melrose place with me having an affair. she would wake up mad at me and stay mad at me for a day+ and i hadn't done a thing. i also get my friends that can't tell reality from fantasy, and how hard it must be to bring yourself back to reality. i might know the truth, but convincing myself of it can be very hard. i almost woke sarah up to ask her if we had killed anyone. stupid dreams.

i still want to watch dexter, but now i'm a bit afraid what i will believe i have done when i awake.

may6 — better dreams

made up for dexter by watching 27 dresses. far better, and the sole dream i had was of a friend getting married. it was a sandy sort of interior with sandy walls with lights pointing up at them, but it was outside. it was a natural amphitheater with trees all around and then the night sky. colors were mostly white with some midnight blue and gold. light and airy, but enough dark to be small and intimate [or at least the dream felt that way]. weddings are good fun, and far better than serial killings. 11 more days until jerms and cori get hitched — woohoo! weddings of people you know and care about are great. i can’t wait until my friend’s kids are getting married, as well as my own.

when i was in grade school we all had the kmart brand bmx bikes. we would ride in the washes and go all around the fun spots in our neighborhood. when riding our bikes cycled around to being the fun thing to do at the time, we would ride until the sun went down. we also had paper routes. my route was 2 miles exactly, while my brothers was 3 miles. we found a small outlet for our cash flow and purchased speedometers for our bikes that also had an odometer. i remember times where i couldn't keep up with my brother [including his extra mile per day for the route] and i would flip my bike upside down and just stand there spinning the front wheel to pump up my mileage. i don't cheat [see the above «guilt/fear» thing] and it really was a silly solution.

i miss those days out behind santa clara school, jumping our bikes off the natural ramps, going up and down the steep culverts. at times i wish we lived out of town so our kids could enjoy goofing off on their own. now there is the fear of cars and perps.

may

i know my body is massively inflexible [i notice it the most on the trampoline] and i really need to work on it to get in a more aerodynamic position on my bike. the shorter the distance i ride my bike, the worse my back feels. yesterday as i sat in the boys room reading «it happened on mulberry street» i hurt my tailbone, just frome sitting. it still hurts. i wonder if i bruised it, and whatever muscles attach to it make it hurt while riding. that, and my back always wants to get scratched. there you go, a little bit of useless dann trivia.

may7 — iron man

saw ironman with a large group, and all i'll say is that it may be the best marvel movie to date. they got it right, both with developing tony stark and his change of heart and gwynneth does a great job as pepper. i'm looking forward to the sequel. i think superB sang the tune to black sabbath's song after i was singing «i am the ice cream man» to the same tune. people in the crowd started singing along.

[side note: we poured the excess ink from the waste container of the large format printer on a curb out by the trash cans. we poured some of it out a few years ago and the curb is kind of gray. this time we covered a 20 foot section and it was beautiful abalone colors - metallic purples and greens. it is eco friendly, and we call it our black curb. we know we can't park next to a red curb and there are plenty other colors that mean stuff. someone suggested it is where people pick up prostitutes. maybe if we wait long enough a movie star or elected official will drive by]

i like looking for things on the road ahead of my bike [other than glass, metal scraps, rocks and cars]. i've been picking up road-worn coins. i've got a good pile started, some with chunks torn out of them. maybe once i get a whole lot of them i'll go buy something old and worn out, saying it is a fair trade.

i’ve also found work gloves, 18" long drill bits, assorted screwdrivers, pruners, and safety glasses. the strangest item i have run across is a prosthetic arm. it was one of those old school ones with the metal claw on the end. i'm sure someone is missing that.

may8

as u2 talks about the meaning of their songs in «u2 by u2» there are plenty of creative gems such as acrobat's hypocrisy of «and I must be an acrobat to talk like this and act like that». how can i NOT think of someone twisting themselves around to be two different people?

bono says on the same page about another song:

i have observed the phenomenon of a person planting a kind of landmine that years later the will accidentally tread on and blow their lives to pieces. you can watch people doing it, willfully getting involved in actions they will pay a heavy price for later.

yeah, it happens far too much, and maybe it is just me getting somewhat wiser and being able to see the landmines and not just «what, isn't that normal?»

i think of friends while growing up that knew no better, that where they were was the way it had to be. kids with abusive parents, lack of money, relationships — «but he loves me» said with bruises turning green. physical abuse is rather easy to recognize, but emotional abuse can make it seem deserved. cutting your arm off? obvious bad choice. other things are not so easy to see, a landmine easily covered by dirt, seemingly harmless. can there ever be enough signs or warnings?

junior high

why this came to mind, i do not know. in junior high there was this big black kid named bubba. he wasn't bright, but he worked really hard, and his family was really poor. in the main entrance most everyone hung out in, i was near the bookstore window and overhead the clerk telling him he could bring in a nickel a day until he had paid of the lock he needed for his locker. i think they were a $1.85 at the time. he kind of stood there like a doberman getting his ears and tail cut — rigid and taking it. he took a lot of crap. years later on my paper route i passed by his house and he had doubled in size and was working out [shirtless] with nunchuks [or the sally field «nun chuck»]. i haven't seen him since. hopefully he didn't go the drug/gang route taken by so many other kids i knew.

that reminds me of arturo, the tiniest freshman ever. i was a senior and we played hackysack during lunch and he would play with us. his cousin once remarked, «art, you remind me of my butt. small, dark, always following me around and making obnoxious noises».

oh, and there was a kid in 7th grade that smelled like pee and wore the same 2 or 3 shirts to school. i got some new clothes and my mom drove me to school and we brought in some of my old clothes to the nurse with directions for her to give them to this kid. i never saw him after 7th grade, but i know a few teachers noticed him wearing my shirts [one was an obnoxious yellow one with the sr-71 on it. i loved that shirt]. i got quizical looks from the teachers, but i do believe they started treating him better. he didn't have much to work from.

may8–rise of everyone else

stewart had mr. zakaria on his show tuesday night and i may need to buy his book, «the post-american world». to pull from the page:

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.".... a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures....the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems."

oh, that so makes me want to buy it. he also brought up how america still has the #1 military and mark twain's quote of:

when all you have is a hammer, all problems start to look like nails

ah yes, everything can be solved with military might. we may as well mortgage our future for that, right? if i had my wallet right now, i may be buying it on amazon right now.

may9 —wired and weapons

i remember buying wired magazine number 1.06 with sonic the hedgehog on it. i'd always have one in my gym bag during volleyball tournaments and i'd spend the time not playing/refereeing ingesting the magazine while on my back. later on i subscribed, but it became lame. i sort of though the rest of the online reporting had caught up and it couldn't cover anything new in the geek world. i was wrong. turns out a big publishing company bought them out and pumping in the money [thanks, kn29] and now i may need to subscribe yet again. the article on ship salvaging was like an indianna jones episode. i've been paying attention to their weapons articles, one of which was reactive metals/casings:

The material can dramatically magnify the yield of conventional bombs, and do away with the waste embodied by a bomb's inert metal skin. The U.S. Air Force's 5,000 BLU-122 bunker buster, for example, contains just 780 pounds of explosives; the other 80 percent is the bomb's thick steel casing....aims to replace that steel with RMs, to create a bomb with a blast four times as powerful. Alternatively, a new bomb could be half the size of existing weapons but twice as powerful.

yes, go read wired. i'm sure you can find a gem once every 3 days. just like the explosive charges.

may9 — markly in uruguay

markly moved up to the US olympic training center in colorado springs to be the onsite mechanic [woohoo!] and a few weeks later they shipped him to the pan-american continental champions. he is in montevideo, 65° latitude difference from tucson. he is texting/im’ing us:

Mark - Tuesday @6:22pm: Happy Tues. Night! Im off to buenos aires then montevideo. Miss you all. Give rex a hug for me.
Karl - Tuesday @6:33pm: I didn't know buenos aires was in thailand.
Mark - Tuesday @6:38pm: And somehow we remain friends!

Mark - Wednesday @5:31pm: Met w/ the US riders. Hotel has Hobbit sized beds. Dinner w/ all the teams. I ran into my friend Kathryn Bertine at dinner! (ask Randy/Dann) 2morrow i prep the TT bikes and help at the track. Going well so far. Will sleep good. Karl, please distribute to Tues thx. Hugs-

mark, friday @9.10am: man, içm getting pooped

city is kinda cool. not much time to check it out yet
got xome cool pics from the fo´llow car doing the tt
´right now, going ack to the track to pack up stuff ahead of time
oh, and i had to ride a tt bike thro ugh traffic to get it ´from storage to the hotelª haha.. crazy

i wrenched for kathryn a little this morning. poor girl. has to do everyth ing pretty much by herself

uh,.. içll try to be on later, gotta get ready to go. no, sheçs adopted by st. kitts and nevisª

for starters, the IM's he sent me at the end — anyone pick up that he isn't on an english keyboard? secondly, kathryn bertine is the american trying to get to the olympics and she got adopted by st. kitts. i really enjoy her writing — funny as all get out, too. an excerpt [i assume 5 years from now all these links will be dead — sniff]:

The guys averaged 24 to 30 mph, and it took every ounce of my strength not to drop from the pack. During one ride, a fellow Bustopper asked whether I was training for nationals. Yes, I am! He advised me to take this year's race as a learning experience and not put too much pressure on myself. "Learn the course and the tactics this year, and kick butt next year," he counseled.

OK, I'll do that! Right after I ask the IOC to move the Olympics to 2009.

Regardless, the Bustop Rides improved my sprinting and pack-riding skills. I competed in hill climbs and road races on the weekends, often passing women who had beaten me earlier in the season. On Wednesday nights, I competed in the Boulder time trial series. On my last Wednesday, I broke the course record. So did one other woman, Anne Samplonius of Canada. She finished one minute ahead of me.

may 10 — mt lemmon

i rode with the team [ben too] up to mile post 12 on mt. lemmon, which happens to be the end of the time trial. why i was practicing climbing i do not know. i haven't climbed at all this year. 3 of us made it to the base together [one being a state champ and a nice lightweight guy] and we hammered at 12mph for the first two miles at which my lungs vaporized and i couldn't hang on. i watched them ride away, passing and getting passed by people. it was a pain fest. i think it took me 6 miles to overtake 2 women and a man, starting from maybe a half mile back? i got really close at mile post 6 but our speeds were matched until i caught them at just after 8. one lady may have weighed 100 pounds, her hips not being much wider than when she was born. on the downhill horseshoe before 7 cataracts i passed them and my mass to drag ration kicked their arses. i got 2 or 3 minutes ahead of them in the next 3 miles. scott and eric had come down and climbed back up to my spot in the shade at milepost 11. i told them i'd ride down much faster than i came up. i went first, sat up like a sail for scott to catch me, and he passed me pedalling hard. i pedaled, took it easy in the turns [my computer lost contact but i'm sure i was in the low 40s] and never saw them until i stopped at the bottom. scott says «you were hard to catch. i was pedalling hard to catch you when i realized you were just coasting». hooray for fat!

i have noticed that long rides do wonders for my body, vs the short commute that makes my back hurt. i'm not sure why, but the longer rides seem to stretch out my body better.

later that day i swam with the kids in our super clear pool, though it now shows the plaster's poor condition. we can wear goggles and see clear across the pool [yes, yes, it only took 10 years to get it clean]. i had trevor go under to watch my entrance into the pool via the diving board. i exploded underwater in a cloud of bubbles. as i pop up trevor yells to me «whoa dad, it was like a million bubbles coming out of your butt!»

i replied, not talking to anyone in particula «sometimes they do, sometimes they do«

may11 — mother’s day

we get a glimpse into spencer's mind as we read the mother's day card he wrote:

Mother

I love my mom because she is my favorite and she reads "Star Wars" to me. She likes to jump on the trampoline and go to Trader Joe's. She doesn't like chicken nuggets or french fries. She likes to eat hot dogs with mustard. She drinks diet coke. She likes to eat dinner. She is happy when I have a good day and a good night. She laughs when movies have funny parts. She likest to go to Target to buy legos for me and Trevor, to Starbucks for hot chocolate and to the bookstore. I would like to give my mom Star Wars books for Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day, 2008!

I love you mom!

Spencer

the middle two made sarah and i breakfast in bed, which consisted of day old waffles from off of the counter. they were more like wood. spencer needed to do something, too, so we each got a plate of oreos and instant lemonade. originally he just brought sarah a plate, and he was adamant that i not get any. he went back with the plate and brought back too. sarah's plate now had plenty of oreos so that spencer could «share» with her, too.

we spent some time at the in-laws, eating leftovers from my father-in-law's retirement party. so good. i had another 2 pieces of cheesecake. sarah then broke out the family photos and the 70's were just the greatest. we found a photo of her friend that is an exact image of her youngest son. sarah had some choice photos to dig through. my poor wife [who, btw, is the best mom in the world] wore massive glasses that were made before miniturazation came into vogue. i think there was also a mandate to have really ugly frames to support them. i'd say allie looks plenty like her. click on each to see a larger image.

jumbled thoughts from 6.1 on...

maybe it should be «love God and shove others» or even «shove God and shove others» with the way we treat people.

Mister Rogers seems to have been almost exactly the same off-screen as he was onscreen. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, and a man of tremendous faith, Mister Rogers preached tolerance first. Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, “God loves you just the way you are.” Often this provoked ire from fundamentalists.

censors come in when little gay kids sing «jesus loves me, this i know» and they are required to sing «jesus loves them, this i know» or «jesus loves everyone else but me, this i know»

two missionaries in ukraine, one using a local interpreter to translate to a kids hockey team. one leans to the other and says «you need to tell her to change how she dresses - you can see her belly at times». the other thinks «she isn't a follower and has come a long way in their relationship — why would i tell her such thing?»

frat brother in college is the one that buys a ton of cheap beer each weekend for the house. he starts reading the bible and 3 weeks later tells the guys «hey guys, we can't do this anymore — i just read that God lives in our bodies and we need to take care of them. we are going to have to start spending more on better beer»

singles used to not be allowed to help out in church [ask darin] and the «singles ministry» is a recent invention.

not allowing single people into our married's classes.

next time some xian goes off on gays, i'll tell them that "it is okay to have that opinion about gays - that is what grace is for"

Martin Luther declared marriage to be "a worldly thing... that belongs to the realm of government", and a similar opinion was expressed by Calvin. The English Puritans in the 17th century even passed an Act of Parliament asserting "marriage to be no sacrament" and soon thereafter made marriage purely secular.

look at a group to see how they live, not what they say they believe [posting of doctrine, etc] - people prefer to align to list of ideas, not a relationship.

do people need to clean up their act before coming to church, or do we just let them come. if this happens, what does church look like [eg, a church full of f'd up people following God without all the shiny happy masks - we have to do what we say]

so jesus loves everyone and invites them to come to him, but that will mess up our churches. we'll have people with problems that can't be hidden, we'll have to love people and just not be happy to have people around us that are like us [exposed or not]. that is where jesus went wrong — he doesn't draw lines or make distinctions like his people do. we've got it right. we can tell good people from bad, and there is a certain level that everone needs to be at to follow jesus as well as how to act and what to believe. [kramer's story about the girl that was being asked to leave as she was a bad influence on the other girls — at what point will the other girls learn/do what they say?]

"making women equal in marriage rather than property, eliminating polygamy, and allowing people to marry for love are all at least as significant as allowing gay couples to marry" - marriage has most often been about economic sense - "People marry for love and personal fulfillment — and that’s what’s driving divorce, because when love disappears and/or one no longer feels personally fulfilled, they see little reason to continue the marriage. In the past, such changes would have been irrelevant given the importance of economic survival and familial pressures."

if we aren't cool and allow others to do what they want, some day they'll start making laws against us. better wording here: «Conservative Christians should support civil same-sex marriage. Why? Because the question of whether to allow civil same-sex marriage is a civil liberties question, and maintaining a respect for people's civil liberties in this country is always to the church's advantage. In fact, it is absolutely essential for the survival of our religious freedom in a pluralistic society.»

so many missionaries that don't meet people/learn the language but are caught up in planning what to do next. they never go back and make a report on what they've done the past year.

the church's success is not based on society's values — they can change all they want and we keep living it out.

quoting stuff from the bible as an argument — not the smartest. if someone starting quoting me reasons from the book of mormon or koran, it probably wouldn't have much weight for me.

THINGS TO CATCH UP ON

this is the stuff i feel like i should write about

spencer and his meds

spencer and yoda

trevor, or me in a time warp

the pool!

markly and the olympic training center [and now uruguay]

battlestations

sarah's semester

regina/kimya/beck and why i hear their lyrics

do it, don't talk about it, along with the weekend chat

klr: quotes, sausage, round the world, ashley, core scripts, missional

«i don't want us to be a church where people know a lot about the bible and behave well» *whew, good for me!*

glenn and i going down greens peak at 45°

not bike racing

into the black, finally

putting landmines in your life and then stepping on them months later and f’ing ourselves up — we do this too often

giving tree/refugees

chicken enchiladas with beans, corn, salsa — bam!

kimya friend lyrics:

I don't need to
but I want to
sing with you
'cause I miss you

daily show and colbert report

boss died

why tired/stressed doesn't work for us

There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "how wonderful. the boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later The boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everybody in the village says, "how terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't cause his legs messed up. and everyone in the village says, "How wonderful."
Charlie Wilson: And the Zen master says, "We'll see."

fear of needles and such, just like kryptonite

color wheel of faith

i must be an acrobat, to talk like this and act like that

mulligan stew, 3-2-1 contact, don't take my word for it http://youtube.com/watch?v=c0HWlrTaN0g

spencer saw the weather report on the tv and was afraid of the potato [trevs also said mountains keep out the tornados]

music to shrivel your junk by

TJ: The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

"We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

aren't you glad high school kids didn't explore and name the items in carlsbad cavern