I'll never understand this emptiness.

That's right the squirrels of Portland owe me a favor

2009-03-16T02:55:00.000-07:00

The best fortune cookie I ever received said simply:

“Your kindness to small animals will soon be rewarded.”
And I thought to myself after reading it:
“Its about time!”

....it stayed in my wallet for 5 years.

Lent

2009-03-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

So to honor the season and give a nod to tradition I have decided to list the things I have given up for Lent. They are listed in no particular order.

Coffee and tea
Milk with my cereal
Condiments
Chocolate cake and brownies
Gushers
Smoked Salmon
Public Speaking
Fruit
Self-help books
Tapioca and related gelatin or pudding foodstuffs
Smoking
Reality TV shows
Hummus
Precise spelling
Using the treadmill
Optimism

I am on the mend. At least now I can say that I am trying.

2009-02-26T02:05:00.000-08:00

My summer has now taken form and been graced by the first significantly good news of the year. First of all the cyst I had developed and had mild surgical treatment for has healed in such a way as to preclude further surgery. And after the agony of the initial work that is incredibly good news. Secondly Elaine and I will soon be able to attempt the pregnancy thing again. The hormone levels that had been worrisome are finally giving up the ghost. Also I have achieved gainful employment for the summer.
I will be looking and listening for these: Marbled Murrelet In this: old growth forest

It is an avian survey job at the coast with provided housing and the ability to come home on the weekends. It makes me nervous every time I start a new job and when I was hired it was made very clear that I need to do very well at this job to warrant my being hired without all the experience they were looking for. At least I have a little more than a month to prepare myself as best I can before the official training and the start of the job.
It is good to have work lined up, the pressure has evaporated somewhat. The only place left to hear from is college.

The sign language of the mad

2009-02-05T03:56:00.000-08:00

So among my Christmas gifts I received this shirt from my sister-in-law so in honor of the shirt I will post the most recent installment of “mixing with the crazies.” I should also mention that my friend Stacy received a similar shirt since she is in this story as well.

Ok so I had gone to Henry’s downtown with friends to grab a beer and after the bar closed everybody took off but Stacy and I decided we would just move to a different bar since we didn’t have anything going on and we were having a good time. We moved over to the Mcmenimans on Burnside sometime around 1 am. We grabbed a booth by the window and ordered drinks. We had been there awhile when this guy walking by outside stops outside our window gives us a huge smile, blows Stacy a kiss and begins to attempt an involved conversation with us via hand motions. Now I can tell you for sure it wasn’t sign language, there was no swiftness, no economy to the hand movements the motions were sloppy, wide, imprecise things that bore no resemblance to any common hand signals. It was as if he were attempting to elucidate Hegel’s’ notion of freedom using interpretative hand gestures periodically thanking us the audience by blowing the odd kiss. We stared at him blankly, completely lost and he, feeling that his point had been made, he gave us one last smile a nod as if to say “there you understand, I knew you would” and turned and continued down the street. That by itself would make a convincing argument that we deserve those shirts but wait...it gets better.
About 30 to 40 minutes latter a guy who had been sitting with his back to us at the bar got up and shambled somewhat unsteadily out the door and proceeded up the street. When he got level with our window he stopped and looked in at us and broke into a huge completely inexplicable beaming smile. His hands flew together and then apart towards us in a motion that looked something like he was trying to make shadow puppet doves and spoke of him being stirred by some great and completely unfathomable emotion. We stared at him blankly in shock that it was happening again and he blearily began his own hopelessly obtuse instructive lesson. Like the other guy even though we gave him no encouragement he never repeated a single hand motion to him apparently we were totally on the same page. He too talked at us for awhile and then with a final hand gesture and beaming smile walked on down the road. I to this day have no clue what they thought they were saying. But hey what can you do. It’s just one more night with the crazies.
I think part of it is Stacy and I both on our own attract nuts so with our forces combined we were a magnet that would suffer no crazy person to pass us by without paying homage.

wow thats a unflattering picture

Decision to decisions are made

2009-02-05T03:36:00.000-08:00

People sometimes ask me what I am up to and I never have an adequate response. What I am doing right now is waiting. Waiting to hear back from the colleges I have applied to. Waiting to hear back from the jobs I have applied for already and applying to more as I find them. But what I am doing at the moment isn’t much. I clean the house, fold the laundry, clean the kitchen and just am all around domestic. Soon I should have a clear picture of what it’s all going to be. Until then I play Magic at the card shop on Thursday nights, play D&D on Saturdays when the option is open and hang out with Elaine when she isn’t working.

......................Oh and I add more flair then I need to me cork board of face book. It’s the lazy person’s way of doing a profile. Rather than typing in your favorite shows and objects of interest you simply slap a button on cork and let people figure out for themselves what it means.

Having thought about it I would describe the online personal sites thusly:

Facebook: It is the big party you go to. It’s crowded and loud and you can forget trying to communicate in anything more than fragments of conversation but everybody is there.
MySpace: It was the big party until better parties started and now everybody has pretty much left. It was the quieter party with lounge music where you could say a lot if you took the time.
BlogSpot: It’s driving alone in your car listening to music and letting your mind wander. Or if you prefer its like writing a journal that you insist your friends read.

Since I can't seem to post the flair anywhere else

2009-02-01T02:52:00.000-08:00

I just signed on to Face book………..it has so far engendered only frustration and rage. The interface is horrible and unwieldy personalizing is a hopeless mess…..sure you can find anyone but so far I can’t seem to do anything to the page but add occasional updates of the “Jeff is…” nature that only document my growing disgust.

In the midst of this I realized one of my pet peeves…people using pictures of their kids as their profile pictures. Nothing is more annoying than pulling up a profile for a recent college graduate and seeing the picture of a four year old chasing a butterfly. If you weren’t sure if you knew the person by name only then too bad. Never mind that the person is named Daniel and listed as guy though the picture is of a little girl in a pinafore seriously people put those pictures in your album section….it isn’t your kids profile…I know this because I can guarantee that your five year olds favorite movie of all time is not Love in the Time of Cholera.

Ask the spacebaby

2009-02-01T00:59:00.000-08:00

I am at somewhat of a loss figuring out what has happened since I blogged last. Well I guess I’ll summarize as best as I can even if the substance behind the remembrances is lost. I have been reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and I found a set of lines that perfectly encapsulates this.
“…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes its truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream – alone…”
The idea has been on my mind of late driving alone in my car at sundown when the horizon puts on subtle pastels and jet contrails look like brushes drawn across the sky and you know that even as it passes before your eyes it will fade from your memory with no way to hold it or share it with anyone else.

Well anyway…so Christmas was pretty good this year. Elaine and I did the family circuit, which put me in mind of the fact that the holidays are times that we get together with our families and are reminded how much they drive us crazy, though the beer tasting party we had was fun (incidentally that proves how most anything can be exponentially better if alcohol is involved).

We went to California briefly to visit Mary and Eric which was a lot of fun. I went to a metal show with Eric which was a new experience (only time I have ever had to wear earplugs at a concert). The band was pretty good and I had a good time even if afterward when I tried to remember the songs they played I could only hear the song Jack Blacks band plays at the opening to School of Rock. We drank a lot of beer and played a ton of the game Okami. If I were to rank the top five people I enjoy getting tipsy with, spouse aside, it would have to look like this. They are arranged in an order that holds no significance.
1. Jason (Dawn’s fiancé)
2. Eric Youngdale (you made my top five…good work)
3. Greg Davis
4. Stacy (late of the St. Patrick’s Day adventure)
5. Ryan (even though it was only that once and all he did was get really tired)

Other than that I have just been applying to a few jobs and colleges. Not a whole lot to report.

maybe this is not your year

2008-12-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time
When we were young
We thought we'd escape from it all
But we were wrong

Then unexpectedly
We’re in a dream
So faintly we didn’t notice
Or did we?

Enter the other side
It sounds like a lullaby
In this twilight
We are pale
On this frail side
Nothing else could be so real

Is it nostalgia?
Is it the sun?
Cause it wont leave us alone
And we’re still young
When we sat down to pray
If you saw my eyes
You’d know I just couldn’t close them
Not all night

Enter to the other side
It sounds like a lullaby
In this twilight
We are pale
On this frail side
Nothing else could be so real

Lights out, shoot up the station

2008-11-10T14:44:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I present to you, for your enjoyment, an internet radio station that kicks ass. All you do is type in a band or a song and it makes a whole radio station that plays similar music. It’s worth a look.

Also, I am a janitor no more. After a mere two months they found a replacement of dubious quality. But I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. By the way if anyone is interested in the meaning of the phrase I will enlighten you.....

It is fairly clear one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth because it would be rude to do so. Understanding the origin of the phrase further expands on meaning. There are two possible sources for the phrase “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Both suggest it is impolite to inspect a horse’s teeth, which generally is a good indication of age and value. The receiver of the gift horse should instead prove him or herself grateful instead of trying to instantly examine the worth of the horse.

Now my only job is to get into a grad program...then once I am in find a new part time, degree correlated job. It never ends, I spend this life allways in transit.

You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?

2008-11-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

Good news on the procreation front. Our doctor, who rocks, has identified the problem. Apparently there is a critical low of progesterone. Thankfully the treatment is simple and 97% effective. Elaine will take supplementary doses until the placenta takes over and that should carry the pregnancy to term. Knowing the cause, and thus knowing that we can fix it makes this soooo much easier. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

The quiet things that no one ever knows

2008-11-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

I had a dream yesterday afternoon. I dreamt that I had three fish tanks and all the tanks were connected by a series of tunnels. I was watching the tanks trying to make sure the fish were ok. For some reason a squid had gotten into the tanks. Since they were freshwater tanks I watched in disbelief thinking that the squid couldn’t survive in the tanks but the squid showed no adverse effects. I watched helpless as the squid moved quickly into the farthest tank on the left. In that tank were two dwarf Gourami’s they were both weak and the squid immediately pounced on them and ate them both as I pounded on the lid of the tank trying futilely to make it stop. Once the squid had finished with the fish it buried itself into the sand on the bottom of the tank apparently waiting for another fish to swim in. I grabbed the tank and sloshed it around trying to get the squid to swim out. My actions only stirred up the sand and revealed the body of a small sculpin that had died previously. The squid had only been temporarily dislodged from the sand and it reached over and grabbed the fish, a previous victim I believe, and reburied itself. Then I woke up then leaving the dream with the undying squid in the sand waiting and me powerless to do anything about it.
The meaning of the dream is simple. The fish are my children, the tank is my wife and the squid is the nameless undying thing that takes my children each in succession.
This is our second miscarriage. They were twins, most likely identical. I never thought about twins and indeed I never knew I had any particular desire for twins until they told us Elaine was carrying twins. I realized immediately that it was something I wanted and probably always had wanted. Identical twins especially were a hearts desire I never knew I had until now. It makes the loss all the more heartbreaking. It is a 1 in 100 chance to have twins, 1 in 100. To achieve and lose that is like winning an important contest and then finding out a week latter that because of a technicality the prize was sent back to the manufacturer. My initial response was despair and rage. Now I am just spent.
My feeling now is best summed up in the verse “Though he slay me yet I will follow Him.” But sometimes it’s so bitter…so bitter.

So keep the blood in your head

And keep your feet on the ground

If today's the day it gets tired

Today's the day we drop out

“I am from Canada and I have never seen anything like that.”

2008-10-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

As I previously stated, I just returned from California. I went down for a week to visit friends from college. I could describe the trip in greater detail but there isn’t much to say, we did what we always do. It was a good trip, but short. It’s unfortunate that the people you love the most end up being the people the furthest away. We spent most of the trip in San Diego and drove from there home in one straight shot.
We drove through the night, the only incident of interest happening in Kettleman City.
I have stopped there every time I have driven from southern California to Portland for several reasons. First, it is the last In-N-Out you will see heading north out of LA and second, it is spaced perfectly for refueling.
We pulled in at about 11:45 to the chevron and I began to fuel the car while Elaine went in to grab me a soda and use the bathroom.
The Chevron gas station is joined to McDonalds, together forming a rectangle parallel to the freeway. There are four gas pumps in front with parking in the front and on one side where there are also bathrooms. The complex sits on a corner with roads in front of the pumps and then running downhill on the side opposite the bathrooms
While I was fueling, there was a white passenger van and a small Honda(?) with tinted windows parked down by the bathrooms with a group of guys standing around. These guys started to get really worked up about something but since I don’t speak Spanish I had no idea what was going on. At this point another guy walks out of the convenience store and, as soon as he sees the crowd by the bathroom, turns on his heel and flees, disappearing around the side of the McDonalds. The crowd by the cars sees the guy running and raised a shout, then piled into their cars and peeled out after him; the white van going around one side of the McDonalds and the car going around the other to head him off. As the cars disappear from line of sight a semi going down that road blasts its horn indicating that in his flight the guy had run out into the road.
Once they were gone the guy at the pump across from mine looks at me and says:
Guy: “I am from Canada and I have never seen anything like that.”
Me: “Yeah, I don’t even know what was going on.”
Guy: “Man I don’t have a clue.”
I then went back to waiting for the gas tank to fill. Moments later the guy who had been pursued came back around the corner by the bathrooms with the white van following about fifteen feet behind. The guy on foot had a handgun which he would periodically brandish at the guy in the van trying to get him to back off. The guy with the gun continued to walk up towards the pumps and when he got close enough, opened to driver’s door of our Subaru and jumped in! I immediately rushed forward and jumped into the passenger side, told him to get out, and pushed him out of the car.
He got out and continued to move toward the McDonalds. I at that point got back out of the car, shut the driver’s door and locked the car. By then the guy and the van had moved out of line of sight back around the McDonalds. At that point the other folks at the gas station began to think that maybe it wasn’t such a hot place to be. The few cars there began to peel out, aiming for the freeway. At that point I heard 4 to 5 gunshots fired on the other side of the McDonalds and then the white van rolled by going back up the road.
I waited for Elaine in the car while the Canadian guy left in a panic only to realize he prepaid his gas and return to harass the attendants for his money back (Elaine said he was screaming and cussing her out - and that she though he was the problem!). Elaine and I were the last car to leave and, once we got on the freeway, we saw two squad cars tearing down I-5 South aiming for Kettleman City.

I have always wondered when faced with a dangerous situation if I’d freeze and let fear get the best of me. Now I know that I will be fine. There was a moment when I first saw the gun that I felt myself shake, but it was only momentary. I didn’t leave the pump because the guy was focused on the van and I didn’t want to attract his attention. I didn’t want to be the guy who got people killed because he ran. So, as long as he was only seeing the van we were all relatively safe. When he got into our car I cursed myself for not locking it, but I wasn’t scared. In the fraction of a second before I got in the car I had three things run though my head:
1. An image of Elaine and I stranded in the middle of nowhere.
2. The thought "Not on my watch".
3. The idea that I couldn’t let the guy get away. If he was at the gas station he was contained but if he got away in my car armed and desperate he could hurt other people.

That, in the end, is what made me get in the car. The truth is that when I got in and pushed him, he was already on the way out since he didn’t see keys in the ignition. (Thankfully Elaine insisted that I not leave them in the car - just in case.)

So yeah…Kettleman City

“A Kettleman City gas station turned into a murder scene just before midnight on Tuesday night after a 33-year-old man was shot down by an unknown number of suspects. Kings County Sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the 27500 block of Ward Drive at 11:57 p.m. on a call of shots fired. When they arrived at the Kettleman City Chevron Gas Station, they found an unresponsive Hispanic male suffering from apparent gun shot wounds.Officers pronounced the man dead at the scene.The suspects were last seen fleeing the area in a white passenger van towards Highway 41.Investigators contacted regarding the case would not answer questions regarding the nature of the shooting, stating only that "the case is still being investigated at this time."
Other than his hometown of Portland, Ore. and his age, law enforcement officials are not releasing additional information on the victim until contact can be made with his next of kin. An autopsy on the victim is still pending as of this afternoon.Anyone with information on this case is requested to contact the Kings County Sheriff's Department at 582-3211, ext. 2790.”

- The Sentinel

Well I confess, I don't know what to make from all this mess

2008-10-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

So follow the leader down
And swallow your pride and drown
When there's no place left to go

Well I suppose its time for me to reveal my performance on the GRE. I arrived home from California to find the final scores in a pile of mail on the kitchen counter. The results are disappointing, more so than I had initially anticipated. I scored a 600 on the verbal which puts me in the 85 percentile. The result of the math section was a score of 620 with a percentile rank of 65. The essay portion was a 3.5 out of a possible 6 leaving me sadly in the 20 percentile. Overall it was a pretty poor showing. I still am not sure if I should retake it. I suspect I won’t. Now I get to put everything together and try to begin the application process. Next week will be busy with that.
The weather has changed in Oregon. Fog gathers in the hallows now and the air is cold and carries the promise of winters arrival. I am rapidly running out of time. Despite that all I want to do is sleep and dull my mind with pointless diversions.

A nod to the spirits of the past

2008-09-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

I am in a Burgerville with Elaine and we are grabbing a quick bite between errands. It’s the location close to my old high school and as a nod to an old tradition and the ghosts I used to share it with I request the two songs out of the jukebox.. The first of these is Land Down Under by The Men At Work then the second comes on.
Elaine: “who is this?”
Jeff: “It’s Toto. The song is Africa.”
Elaine: “I like it.”

Guy sitting with some co-workers several tables away bursts into song: “I guess the rains down in affffrriicca…” Then he says to his co-workers “Good old Toto, they never let you down.”

And then I smile to myself.

Take that King George....

2008-09-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

Then

Now

I am a quasi-historical figure. I took part in the Boston Tea Party…I just joined it about 300 years too late. In Boston Harbor is an old sloop (or schooner I can’t remember exactly what kind of ship it was). The ship is a floating museum to the Boston Tea Party complete with historical enactors and fake boxes of tea that you can throw overboard. Since the boxes are tied with ropes to the ship they are never lost and so your participation, as it were, is somewhat of a fraud. So I decided that I would do my part to protest the taxes imposed by the British and toss a spot of tea into the harbor myself. I reached down, grabbed the box and threw. Just as I released the box I heard my sister cry out “Jeff! NO!” But it was too late and as the box flew over the side…the rope tied to it followed…all of the rope that was supposed to secure the box to the ship followed. The rope had been cut. My sister and I watched the tea box drift out into the shipping lane and then out of sight. I proceeded to go below decks and hide.

I was probably around 13 on a long flight to visit my mom’s family in Minnesota. Me and my sister we sitting together in one row and my parents were in another. I was in the middle and my sister was on the isle. The guy in the window seat was this young really tall black guy who was just huge and built like a line backer, all muscle. I only make those observations to fully establish just how great my error was. So early in the flight I fall asleep. Not long after, in a state of only partial wakefulness, I sit up and somehow I think that the guy in the window seat is my dad. So I turn, to him pat him on the arm affectionately and give him a huge idiot grin and then I lean back into my seat and instantly fall back asleep. When I wake up a half hour latter I vaguely remember the incident but can’t tell if it was a dream or it actually happened. The remaining hours of the flight are awkward as hell. It is only as we descend into Minneapolis that I finally get up the courage to ask him if it happened. I only got as far as “Excuse me sir but I was wondering…did I...” before the man erupted into hysterics. He was laughing so hard that he began to cry and could only answer my question by nodding his head. He was really nice about it and didn’t make me feel bad despite the laughing.

Infinite Loop

2008-09-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

Picture this if you will:
It’s a nice sunny summer day in Oregon.
Elaine and I are weeding the side-yard.
A high school kid cruises up on his bicycle and stops next to where I am weeding.
Kid: “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
I stop weeding and walk over.
Me: “Sure man, what do you need?”
I am thinking “Sorry bud but I am not buying a magazine subscription, even if it means you won’t earn enough to go on that reward trip to Antigua with the rest of the junior sales team.”
Kid: “Why were the cops here?”
I look up and down the sleepy residential street.
Me: “The cops were HERE?”
Kid: “Yeah, the cops were just here so I rode down to see what was going on.”
Me: “Really? Well sorry man but I haven’t seen any cops.”
Kid: “Yeah, they were just here. Do you know what they were here for?”
Me: “No, I didn’t see any cops. I ran an errand about an hour and half ago so maybe I missed them…or something.”
Kid: “Did you hear anything last night?”
Me: “No, I didn’t hear a thing.”
Kid: “I heard a loud noise…it woke me up. I thought that maybe that’s why the cops were here.”
The kid looks at me imploringly.
Me: “Yeah….well I am a pretty sound sleeper soooo…”
Kid: “So, why were the cops here?”
Me: “Look man, I am really sorry but I didn’t see any cops…at all.”
Kid: “Yeah, well, ‘cause last night I heard a really loud noise. Did you hear it?”
Me: “I…No I didn’t hear a thing. I slept right through the night.”
Kid: “But why were the cops here?”
Me: “Look, I didn’t see any cops. So I have no idea. And I didn’t hear anything last night.”
Kid: “Yeah, it woke me up. Did you hear it?”
At that point I begin to worry, there is no exit strategy for this type of conversation…it becomes an infinite loop driven by undeniable madness.
Me: “I heard nothing.”
Kid: “Well it woke me up and I thought that maybe the cops…”
Me: “I never saw any cops, I never heard any sounds. I really don’t know what to tell you.”
Kid: “There were people outside my bedroom window last night.”
“Possible” I think to myself “but highly unlikely.”
Me: “Well…that’s scary. Did you tell your folks?”
Kid: “Yeah there were three people outside my bedroom window.”
Me: “Three of them….outside your bedroom window?”
Kid: “Yeah it was three girls and they were there and they were naked.”
I think to myself “Well that’s probably the average high school guys dream”, and with this new information I can officially judge this lad’s story a complete fabrication.
Me: “….Nice.”
Kid: “But I’m 17 and I am too mature for girls. I was into girls when I was a kid but I am too mature now for girls.”
The kid regards me as if waiting for me to say something and I just stare back. I am trying to decide whether the presence of a girl weeding with me or the wedding ring on my finger, should be the most compelling clue to this kid that apparently I don’t share his sentiment.*
Kid: “Yeah, my three friends all have girlfriends but they are too young and immature they shouldn’t be dating.”
The kid looks at me for confirmation.
Me: “Look man, I don’t know your friends so I am in no position to evaluate their relative fitness for dating relationships.”
The kid looks at me with distrust and I raise my palms in a helpless “What the hell did you expect gesture?”
Kid: “Well I am 17 so I am too mature for a girlfriend.”
Me: “Hey, if that helps you sleep at night.”
Kid: “Well last night, did you here anything?”
Me: “Nope! No noises, no cops and as it so happens my bedroom window was not graced by a parcel of naked chicks.”
Kid: “I rode down here because I saw cops.”
Me: “Indeed. Well I have to get back….you know weeding and all.”
I turn to go
Kid: “But WHY were the cops here?”
Me: “If they show up again I’ll be the first to ask.”
Kid: But did you hear anything last night?”
Me: “No. Have a good day.”
The kid mumbles something unintelligible and rides off up the street.

When I told Ryan this story he began to laugh and asked if I had some sort of sign on my back that invites crazy people to talk to me. I thought about it and, yes, I do attract the crazies. Let’s, just for kicks, review the highlights.
Ferret-loving drunks: where cheap wine and weasels meet.
Crazy women who want to use animals as punishment: why abuse just children or animals when we can do both at the same time!
The effortlessly confused, picture illiterate people.
That homeless guy who insisted I owed him two dollars because I “lost a bet” about whether or not he could remove his prosthetic eye.
The other homeless guy who told the junior higher in my charge to “bleed me like a stuck pig” if I were an adult.
That guy in the waiting room who chose me out of five other people to address a highly cryptic somewhat incriminating philosophical non-sequitor immediately following which he went back to reading his book and ignoring me.
My high school stalker; thanks for the awkward memories, and scores of guilt trip laden letters.
Those are just a few of my many experiences with the less mentally settled segment of our society. But hey, at least I never got felt up in Santa Monica. (That’s right buddy, all of us got ammo.)

And we sleep inside of this machine

2008-08-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

Music is worthless unless it can make a

Complete stranger break down and cry

This is an intentional overstatement but it still makes the point. Music is powerful. Even without lyrics music can tell a story or paint a landscape just as clearly as a book or a painting. Those pop songs with insipid lyrics about some jackass’s car truly are worthless in most ways that matter. Music like literature can transport people and it can crystallize ideas. I have always thought so. With that being true why then do Christian praise chorus lack so much? With the weight of the truth that they carry why do they often sound simple, repetitive and empty? It hit me the other day as I sat in church. The music was the standard set of songs we usually sing and I began to get annoyed because the music sounded like I felt, empty and tired. I thought about it on the way home and I think it is sad that there are so many powerful songs we don’t sing just because they are not in the conventionally held worship rotation. So I decided that I would write my own alternative worship set, one that would be moving particularly for me. I only put nine songs in keeping with the traditional amount in any given set.

The Transfiguration - Sufjan Stevens
Come, Lord Jesus – Andrew Peterson
40 – U2
Let That Be Enough – Switchfoot
Be Thou My Vision – (full band w/ Celtic overtones style)
Call Me Liar – Plankeye
Don’t You Know I’ve Always Loved You – Third Day
Some Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape – Underoath
Revelation Song – (The John Warren, Full Band version, not the sappy version that seems to be everywhere right now.)

I am not sure about the Plankeye song but I like it as a lead in to Third Day and Underoath. It just seems a bit disjointed from Be Thou My Vision.

Other songs that I would have put on an extended set include:
Lifeline – Brooke Fraser
Abraham – Sufjan Stevens
To Be Alone With You – Sufjan Stevens
The Artist In The Ambulance – Thrice
Dare You To Move – Switchfoot
Learning To Breathe – Switchfoot

And if you did want to use artists that are stock for the Christian music scene:
Consume Me – DC Talk
Entertaining Angels – Newsboys
(Those happen to be two good songs ok! Stop rolling your eyes!)

The answer's in the question.

2008-08-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

(I present a true-life nanny story. I will henceforth refer to my charge as "the kid" to keep from embarrassing anyone.)

*The kids and I are sitting at a table playing Attack Uno.*
Kid: “Can I ask a question?”
Me: “Sure man, shoot. We don’t stand on ceremony here.”
*Kid looks at me in confusion. I sigh.*
Me: “Ask away bud.”
Kid: “Would it be OK if I went to the bathroom right now?”
*The game slides to a halt with everyone staring at the kid.*
Me: “OK, before I answer that let me just repeat what you just asked so we can be sure that I heard you right. You are asking me whether it’s OK if you pee your pants right now?”
*Kid half-nods.*
Me: “OK first let me just say that no, it is most certainly not OK for you to pee your pants; and second, intentional pant-wetting is just wrong on so many levels.”
Kid: “Well, I am wet anyway.”
Me: “Right, the crucial difference being that right now it's water not urine.... in fact why don’t you go put on some completely dry cloths before we play anymore.”
*Kid walks to his room to get his clothes.*

To tell it straight, I'm trying to build a wall

2008-07-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

Change, change, change,
I want to get up out of my skin
tell you what if I can shake it
I'm 'a make this something worth dreaming of

So folks.... I am back from Hawaii for awhile and, much in the same vein as Eric, I have delayed far too long to post about it. I might do a post with some of the pictures I took later on. It was a good trip overall. Elaine has done me a service in posting a complete record. I was there one more day than she was. Good trip even though the family aspect can be hard at times. I never quite feel like I belong. I love my family but sometimes being with them, especially on long trips, I feel really alone. Anyway, since I returned I haven’t been up to that much.
The current status of my higher education is me preparing to take the GRE in August and apply for my masters program for the winter term. So there it is. It won’t happen in the fall. It is a relief in the sense that it gives me more time, but it also creates a huge gap. I intend to get to California in this gap.
It’s scary, honestly, pushing forward again. I don‘t feel ready for the GRE and things always seem to get so busy. I am now in a place where I have so much riding on it. I have been telling people my plans for such a long time, as if it were a sure thing - as a way of explaining why I don’t have a job in the field I spent so long studying for, as a way to justify not making enough money and even just so that I can still have a path to follow. It gets murkier each year and now with the next set of hurdles fast approaching all the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear. I am pursuing this goal, even though it seems that I never get closer, because it is the only thing with vocational applications in life that I am really passionate about. If you have to work you might as well do what you love, what’s the point in anything else?
It’s weird how foreign the idea of pursuing your great loves and personal fascinations vocationally is to so many of the people I know. They all have this idea that the goal is to maximize income doing whatever job has the best and easiest opportunities, and so it seems wasteful that I would give so much to this quest.
God built me in such a way that I see him most clearly in nature; I was born for this in a way. Granted, I am not the smartest person and many other people will be better in this field than I will. But for me anything less than seeing this through would be settling, not because it was right but because it was easier.
In the meantime I am working two jobs as a way to ease our finances and do my part, so it’s not all on Elaine. I work at our church as a glorified janitor. And now I am also be a nanny for the rest of this month as well as the next. I am watching two boys for a friend’s brother while he’s at work during the day until school starts. The boys are 7 and 8, good natured and well behaved. I feel burnt out after a day watching them, but not because of them acting crazy. It has even, so far, been an interesting experience and I will probably post more on it later.
The jobs are both ok but sometimes I catch myself wondering what the hell I am doing with my life and begin to feel like a failure. Soon enough I will move on and I know I can accomplish good in these positions. It’s just that some nights I can hear the old voices and mocking laughter on the wind and see the raised eyebrows in my mind’s eye. Aren’t we all just so wonderfully haunted?

Part 4 (the guitar)

2008-07-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

We went to the Shirock's house (the pastor who married Elaine and me) and he showed us this guitar he hand made. It was the most beautiful guitar I have ever seen. No picture could do it justice.

Part 3 (fishing)

2008-07-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

While we were in Michigan we stayed at homes immediately adjacent to lakes the entire time, and they were awesome. The Griffins, who we spent a lot of time with, were soooo generous. With them the soda and beer flowed like an unending river and candy was as numerous as sand on the seashore. Their lake house was gorgeous, and the lake it was on - picturesque.

Being on the lake so much afforded a few little moments that I could snatch to fish.

The first house we were at I only had time to fish a little, and never had any luck…except losing a lure and having a huge bass taunt me by swimming around the dock. Of course, it hid anytime anyone else came out onto the dock. “There was just a huge bass here!! I swear”! They would nod, walk off and only then it would swim back. I named it Starbuck the Bass of Reason, Bringer of Madness.
At the Griffin's lake house the fishing picked up and I landed a Crappie (pictured) a large Bluegill, and hooked two fish big enough to break the fishing line.
We spent our time there hanging out, drinking soda, playing pinball, going for boat rides, and fishing at their lake house. It was easily my favorite part of the trip.

The wedding itself was good. It had the best wedding slide show I have ever seen. That is saying something as I usually really dislike wedding slide shows.

damn she's hot

Post 2...(if I had a bakery)

2008-07-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

While I was in Michigan I got this idea for a bakery name.
So I present to you the bakery I don’t own…

I also thought it would be interesting if the quote on your tombstone was the last sentence you said while still alive. If that were the case and I was about to be in an obviously fatal car crash, I hope I would have the presence of mind to turn to whoever else was in the car and say “prepare to end your life in a glorious fashion”!

Michigan part 1 (Henry Ford Museum)

2008-07-08T16:45:00.001-07:00

So now that I am well over two weeks overdue, it’s time for me to post. I begin with the Michigan trip. Elaine has pretty well covered a generalized timeline of each day and, as such, I feel no need to repost the same thing. Simply put, it was a decent trip. I mostly enjoyed myself despite spending a significant part of our time with strangers and tending several accident prone children. So, outside of the wedding stuff, I will post the events of most interest to me.

We will begin with the Henry Ford museum. I like museums and so our time there was a well spent afternoon. Let’s just say it had huge, and I mean HUGE, trains - a tank seems flimsy and small by comparison. I was impressed. The museum is dedicated to transportation which means that some of the exhibits were….not so impressive. It is true that cars like the 1980ish Honda Accord do represent significant steps forward in the automotive trade, but the fact remains…it’s a 1980 Honda Accord and nobody is impressed. I passed at least 5 cars that were in the museum... and also in the parking lot. That aside, it had a lot of very cool stuff.
The other thing that was weird was that since it was a “transportation etc.” museum, they didn't address anything war related or anything that had military connotations. It kind of annoyed me. Not that they were trying to, but I hate it when people ignore parts of history. History is what it is and it should not be censored or modified just because some aspects of it are uncomfortable. Even in the darkest parts of our past there are still valuable lessons to be learned and valuable innovations it would be foolish to ignore just because their setting is awkward.

In the section on flight they omitted World War I and World War II. Never mind the fact that virtually all advances in aircraft technology arose from military research and applications initially designed for war. It made the exhibit choppy. I mean, you look at one exhibit and it’s a very early model French plane; the next exhibit is a Curtis Jenny with a huge number of advances and technological improvements that were developed over the course of WWI.

Oh well... it was still a cool museum.

The other aspect of the museum that really almost deserves a post on its own was the live music. They were called the Mom Candy Band - that should say a lot on its own. The musicians (a term I use loosely here) were three women in their 40s. The vocals were, how I say this nicely…abysmal. The biggest problem, however, was their song choices. The ABC song is simply the ABC song. It doesn’t matter how fast you play it, how many guitar hooks you throw at it, whether you attempt the lyrics as if you were a emo-screamcore band, or try to harmonize with your band members - it is still the ABC song. No matter what you do, it will never “rock.” The same goes for Oh Susanna, Frere Jacques, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or any song designed specifically for an audience that has difficulties with basic motor skills (and yes I know Oh Susanna is a traditional American folk melody but irregardless at this point it is a kid’s song despite its history). Needless to say, they played all these songs in a fast, scream core style.

Yes there were a few kids there who seemed to like them and danced to their songs, but those kids were a very undiscerning audience who would have danced to a recording of cats yowling played at high speed. Mostly, people avoided the portion of the museum where they were playing. Come enjoy the trains but for your own sanity bring ear protection.

The other thing that I thought was odd was that on the museum’s signs they have as a subtext stating: “the best museum in the united states”. This seems a bit presumptuous to me; better than the Smithsonian? Really? You want to claim that? Ok.

I got to thinking - what if museums were honest about their limitations? Maybe it would look something like this:

If you can't read the subtext it says "you wouldn'y fly out here to visit us, but since you're here you might as well."

Posts about Michigan to come soon.

2008-06-10T17:39:00.000-07:00

Remember that goldfish you flushed down the toilet?

He remembers you too.

You know, good night

2008-06-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

Well as Elaine already said we saw Coheed & Cambria. The show was awesome…I got a kick ass shirt. We were closer to the stage than I have ever been at any concert. The sound quality was pretty poor due to the venue but its Coheed…and that’s never less than awesome.
It was Elaine’s first true concert experience. And that was an amusing thing in itself. Allow me to expound.

Elaine: *on the way there* “We should hurry so we get good seats.”
Jeff: “Seats?”
Elaine: *with confusion* “Well you know….so we can sit in the front middle and get a good view.”
Jeff: “Yeah about that…..there won’t be seats.”
Elaine: *shock* “What? You mean we’ll have to stand the whole time?”
Jeff: *with grim finality* “Yeah….concerts like this…seats become fatal.”
Elaine: “Really……..oh.”

Elaine: *During the show* “These girls in front of me are pissing me off!!”
Jeff: “What are they doing?”
Elaine: “They keep bumping into me and stepping on my feet!!”
Jeff *ponders how to explain this* “Yeah…they are going to do that…in fact I suggest dispensing with any concept of personal space... at a concert like this it doesn’t exist.”
Elaine: *considering that for a moment* “Well ok, but trade spots with me.”
Jeff *slides into position and immediately ends up close enough to the girls to get a harassment suite anywhere else*

Don’t get me wrong Elaine came around and was soon in the front packed tight with enraptured people covered in sweat having a wonderful time. It was just funny to me, watching her experience the scene for the first time.

The end complete

2008-06-10T16:50:00.001-07:00

Come break me down

Bury me, bury me
That’s what you get
When let heart win
Emotive unstable like an unwinding cable car

Listening for voices, but it's the choices that make us who we are

Glory, glorious.

Oh, I don't know how I was made.
And why do we like to hurt so much?
And why, all the possibilities
Well, I was wrong
I have a ringing in my head

And no one to help me answer it

Even with you close enough to kiss.
Talk, talking a lot, but it's still talk
Say whatever you want

'Cause I can laugh it off.
But thinking about it can't help me let go, I know.
I must look like I'm running away

To you at your faster pace

I wonder what it is you could have seen, in me.
Glory, glorious.
We are glory, glorious.
Not from what good we have done
But from being the least.

Then your love came to me

Stood next to mine, and I saw that I was poor.
This is the correlation of salvation and love

Don't drop your arms
Don't soon forget
Grace marked your heart
Don't drop your arms

Elaine had the first shot at it so by this point much of what I would say would be just reiteration but blogs were built to be updated just as birds were built to fly. By now the results of the second ultrasound, our child’s death and Elaine’s subsequent medical care are well known. I compiled the choppy pseudo-poem thing at the front of the post entirely from a handful of songs/music videos that I watched almost exclusively during the 2 or 3 day crisis climax. I tried to use the lyrics to embody all I felt and arrange them in such a way to give an indication of my progression of thought. Lord only knows if it worked.
I almost put a post on my blog the very day before the second ultrasound and I was going to say something about how things were 90% angled towards a good resolution, that’s how confident I was, I am glad now I restrained myself. And what is there to say about it really? What do you do with it? That was where I stalled out. Because as early as it was in the pregnancy it was almost losing an idea, a possible future, something you wanted and was close enough to touch….just barley. I never even knew the gender, something that basic and we never even knew. I am ok with it now? Was I then? I don’t know. I was sitting there and when I first found out from the ultrasound tech I wanted to throw the novel I was reading at the wall. The bitterness being of course, everything else has gone wrong. But that passed and it passed quickly because I am one of those people who shunt the emotions aside to do what needs be done. “Ok, what do we do next? What are our options now?” Really it’s a survival method, keeps you functional even with the building falling around your feet. After that it fades back in slowly.
So, after the initial crisis after we reached decisions about what course of action to take, how did it feel? It was like this, a weary emptiness…and that “what do I do with what happened" feeling.
I mean I saw the heart beat….and now there isn’t anything…what do you do with that? It never even had a name or a gender that we knew but it was still our child…..what do I do with that? Helplessness is the shot and emptiness is the chaser. But it’s the kind of thing, at least for me, you don’t want to talk about…out with good friends, parties if you can find them, and a bit of alcohol that’s how you ease back into static life again. Still though depression from that and the, what I would term, betrayal by a friend in conjunction are still in my system somewhere and even though they aren’t constant companions they still drop by for visits every now and then.
But overall, Elaine and I are ok. I am really fine with the lost of my child, in the sense that I understand why it had to leave and I can support the reasons. A lot of people expect some anger towards God in this but I have none. He created the very complex biological systems that regulate our physical selves and he put in them safeguards. Our child was suffering from the curse of sin and death and rather than being born into this world with deep physical problems it was lucky enough to pass painlessly on to a future that I can only believe is better. If anything God has shown his love through the concern and prayers of our friends and church. In the comfort my wife has receive from God and can only raise my arms in praise.
And that’s where it ends, my faith in God and his fundamental goodness unshaken. I am doing well now, looking forward to trying again. Yes I am still sad sometimes but mild depression has been one of the few constants in my life.

You were the beauty, that we had to leave behind.

A drive home filled with animals

2008-05-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight driving home late from working at the church I saw a deer and a raccoon. The deer was standing at the roadside waiting for me to pass before crossing the street with disinterest. If I had opened my door and reached out I probably could have touched it. The Raccoon scuttled across the street with a sense of purpose, no doubt out foraging in the traditional Raccoon way. It just makes me happy to see some sizable animals persisting even after we have snuffed out their contemporaries like candles. We have turned their homes into urban strip mall wastelands and reduced the forests to small patches of wooded areas choked with ornamental plants that spread like Triffids across the landscape and yet the persist and in some cases they even push back. Tonight I raise my beer to the species that refuse to go quietly into the night. I raise my glass to the Wolves that have not only recovered in Idaho but are now moving into Eastern Oregon despite the ranchers committing the sins of their fathers and trying to exterminate them yet again. I raise my glass to the Elk of Tillamook Oregon who spend the hunting season on the air museum lawn and local land owners gardens only returning to the huntable area just after the season closes. I tip my glass to the ubiquitous Coyote, yes you ate my neighbors pet rabbit but we took out your specie’s prey and covered your home in asphalt so I can’t fault you and in fact I wish you luck. I dedicate a sip to the Mountain Lion, the common mole, the Peregrine Falcons of New York, all the species that just won’t quit. I only wish the other large North American mammals were so lucky. What can I say; I have always loved nature and animals. My picture of Heaven is a wide undisturbed world teeming with life, a place of natural beauty to be explored with countless species to be catalogued. That’s why I am trying to become a marine biologist, conservation biologist and or an aquarist I was born with it in my blood. That is why tonight as I drove home I couldn’t help but smile and wish the animals that crossed my path godspeed.

If...

2008-05-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

Be calm, be brave, it'll be okay...

Today was Elaine’s first doctors appointment, the one where they haul out the “observe the baby in its natural environment” machine. We were in this small tastefully decorated room, Elaine on the couch/bench/chair/electric thingy, and me in a small chair on the side. Our doctor fired up the machine and the screen filled with that grainy black and white haze that defies easy identification. Then there was a black void and in the center a single white spot, like a star, as I watched it flickered as the heart beat. I think I may have gotten a little bit misty. That’s when I noticed the doctor looked very concerned. The problem simply stated was and is this: our child is a normal healthy looking 5 week old baby but Elaine has been definitely pregnant for 8 or 9 weeks. The doctor was happy at least to see a heart beat but there are only two possibilities with this situation. The first being that Elaine released two eggs in delayed sequence the first getting fertilized and giving all the tests positive results but not developing while the second fertilized egg followed latter, keeping the tests positive but screwing with how far along we thought she was. The second option is that the child isn’t developing properly. If the kid isn’t growing Elaine will miscarriage before a week is over. On next Thursday we go back in to the hospital and get another ultrasound (with a higher resolution machine). That is when, barring something happening in between, we will find out whether our child will be pulling through. Elaine and I are doing ok, and I know we will be fine no matter what. It’s the waiting that’s hard, not knowing how to feel because it could go either way. High risk pregnancies must be hell. The weirdest thing is the possibility that all those plans we started making could become meaningless in a mere moment. It’s tense and since I found out this morning I have had trouble focusing on anything. My folks know, because my mom had called and I wasn’t going to lie about it. I told my sister too.
The thing I wanted though was to be with friends today. Friends who would want to know how I was doing but also that I would be able to just hangout with and not think about this morning.

I did talk to one of my friends tonight, because he called. It went like this in paraphrase.
Friend: “So how are things? Was your day ok?”
Me: “Today I found out that there is about a 50% or higher chance that Elaine will have a miscarriage this week. I won’t know until next Thursday if our kid will make it.”
Friend: “Oh man, I’m really sorry to hear that. I’ll let my wife know and we’ll pray for you guys.”
Me: “Thanks.”
Friend: “Yeah, my work has been rough this week, but your situation is worse. Well I just got home and I need to get some sleep. Let me know how that comes out.”
Me: *After he hangs up* “Thanks a lot…..jackass.”

Sometimes I think I am using the term friend in situations like this too liberally.

And there it is..

2008-04-24T15:50:00.001-07:00

Most of you know by now that Elaine is pregnant. That’s right, despite frigid ocean water, scalding hot tubs, and other assorted stressors I have sired a progeny. Elaine beat me to the post. I don’t feel scared or worried about having a kid. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t feel completely real yet. (Except for the fact Elaine has felt exhausted and a little bit nauseous for about a week and a half now.) The parenting concerns that keep most people up at night don’t bother me though, I have a “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” mentality that keeps me from worrying. It’s still weird though, the idea of me being a dad. Its funny how I feel old in general but on this topic I feel young and neither is particularly accurate.
I know the post is short but I haven’t figured out the whole telling people yet. Usually it goes like this.

Rob. “Hey man how’s it going?”
Jeff. “Oh hey, things are fine. How are you?”
Rob. “Good what have you been up to?”
Jeff. “School and stuff…you know normal stuff. Elaine’s pregnant though, so that’s new.”

This post then is the electronic equivalent.

Every morning I sit across from you at the same small table, the sun all over the breakfast things

2008-03-27T02:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have to hurt that which you love

2008-03-27T02:21:00.000-07:00

I brought the bad news

Could you take it from me

Coming from me

Came as a gift from a good friend

That dissaproves

But understands

Consult your friends adults and kids

Hear out what they have to tell you

Even if it hurts you

Even if it kills you

Sometimes loving someone means hurting them. When I say that I simply mean that sometimes the most loving thing is a difficult thing that hurts both parties. Nobody wants to have those hard conversations with a friend, spouse, or person their dating where they point out the problems. I think though that the people the people close to us who confront us when we are in the wrong are the only true friends we have. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people say that they don’t want to do anything to hurt someone because they love them so much. It seems to me that the truly loving thing to do is to give the person the truth, give them the chance to learn, give them the chance to improve and become a more mature and developed person even though it hurts. Life hurts and attempting to shield someone at the expense of the truth only stunts them. I dated a girl for two years before I married Elaine. When I broke up with her it wasn’t easy because I knew it would hurt us both but I also looked at it from the long term perspective. Yes it would hurt in the moment but I saw only worse from staying in it. If I had stayed in it because I loved her to much to hurt her than what I would have been doing would not have been love, it would have been conflict avoidance. Elaine and I are honest with each other and call each other when we are out of line, it’s not always easy and it can hurt but honesty from a friend is better than well meaning half-truths or lies. In so many marriages I have seen it is so common for spouses to “pick their battles” usually meaning they don’t call the other on anything except for those acts that are so obviously wrong that even they can’t justify ignoring it. I don’t know. The more I think about it I have to admit I doubt this approach. Keeping your head down to keep a functioning home seems to me to be short sighted. Marriage is about helping the other become more Christ-like and if that is the end goal than aren’t we abandoning our role if we don’t help our spouse grow. Growth is hard, growth is painful, and growth requires change. If we approach our marriage as just maintaining than how are we acting in love? It seems more self-preservation than love. We are only responsible to do the right thing, not how the other party responds. If you point out what’s wrong and try to work with your spouse to fix it that’s all you can do. They may despise you for it, they may leave you in the worst case scenario, but regardless you have to do the right thing. People let so much go, selfishness, and all those verbal swats of disrespect just to maintain. If not for the betterment of your spouse or your emotional health than call it for the kids you might eventually have. Trust me kids see everything; I know I did, and it won’t be good enough for them to watch you let things go no matter how you explain it. You have to fight to make you marriages function in a healthy way. You have to be honest despite pain to be a good friend. You need to be willing to cause pain, when it is the truth, to be loving. You are responsible only for your actions not the others response.

Luke 21:
21 When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"
22 Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."

you're a voice that never sings, is what I say

2008-03-21T04:33:00.000-07:00

But now that the sun sets

Wasn’t it a perfect storm?

The thing about the whole getting drunk thing that really bothers me now is not so much that it happened. Granted there are things about it that I don’t like, but overall I don’t care. It has driven me nuts the way so many of the people I know react to the information with an awkward “hmmmm…..well…..that’s not good” and look down with awkward disapproval. So this is what it feels like to be on the outside, I have always felt like an outsider but usually people don’t seem to notice it. This time they did. The only people who seem to be at all amused are Elaine, Ryan, Stacy, and my dad. This was a new experience and of course I want to talk about. Why then do these people insist on acting as though I wronged them or embarrassed them in some way? The only people I embarrassed were myself and Stacy. Then-in is my only regret. So Stacy if you read this here is my apology.

1. I’m sorry I got so hammered I wasn’t able to look out for you. Next time we go out, I’ll stay sober enough that we can look out for each other.
2. When I left I am really sorry I didn’t make sure you were ok for getting home yourself, which was negligent.
3. Lastly I’m sorry I ended our night at 11. The U2 cover band hadn’t even come out yet and I regret it largely because I had such a good time with you I wish it could have lasted longer.

That, as far as I am concerned, is the only thing that needs apology and the only thing I feel bad about.

WWJDD

2008-03-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

On and on, reckless abandon

Something's wrong, this is gonna shock them

Well what update about my life would be complete without some recounting of my Saint Patrick’s Day first. Ladies and Gentlemen I, Jeff Eckmann, got totally hammered. I had no intention of becoming drunk….it just sort of happened. To make the point that I am not exaggerating let me explain. I couldn’t see my cell phone when I held it in front of my face…it was too blurry. Ok where to start.

Elaine is in Alaska this week visiting her sister. She knew I had always wanted to go to the Irish festival on St. Patrick’s Day at Kells Irish Pub downtown. Since she wouldn’t be here she set it up so I would go with Stacy our close mutual friend and several other friends. In the end everyone was unable to attend except Stacy and I. I was dropped off there an hour and a half or so before her. I got a few beers…three I think. Then I went into the Kells portion to listen to the traditional Irish band. There was this girl doing traditional Irish dances there which totally rocked. The only reason I mention her here is she crops up later in the story. Stacy arrived latter and by then I might have been close to tipsy. We went together and got another beer, and a shot of whiskey….or was it a shot of whiskey and then another beer…I don’t know. This is when the memories start to get a bit disjointed. At some point I got a free tee-shirt…I dropped it so much that Stacy had me put it on so I wouldn’t lose it. At some point we got free cups…at some point we filled them an indeterminate number of times with alcohol. When we were back in the tent I was telling Stacy about the dancing girl. I remember this part fairly well so I can narrate it.
Me: “Yeah that awesome girl who was dancing is that girl in the green tank top.”
Stace: “Ok, follow me.”
Me: “Wait…why? Where are we going?”
Stace proceeds to walk over to the girl and start talking to her. The rock band is loud and I don’t here a single word of it. The dancing girl looks at me and holds out her hand.
Girl: “Here.”
Me: “Ok….”
I take her hand and she leads me to an open space.
Girl: “Now hold my hand up in the air like this.”
I do and then she does a few turns of dancing around me.
Girl: “There you go.”
Me: “uhhh…Thanks a lot.”
I sheepishly walk back to Stacy who is trying not to laugh. We walk away and she starts laughing.
Me: “What the hell was that?! I couldn’t hear a word you said.”
Stace: “I told her I heard she was a great dancer. And she asked if I had heard it from the guy standing next to me and I said that you said that if I talked to her that she would dance with you.”
Me: “Are you serious?”
It was pretty funny actually, even then. I am pretty sure that I know now what kind of drunk I am, though Stacy is really the only one who can know for sure. I am not a mean drunk, or a loud drunk. I am a maudlin drunk. I am one of those guys who gets really emotional and does the whole “no seriously, you are the greatest friend I really love you, no seriously I mean it” thing. I think at one point I might have even kissed Stacy on the top of the head (like you would a child) to make the point clear. That was the part of the story that Ryan Sey laughed the hardest at; me, sloppy drunk and emotional, kissing Stacy on the top of the head like she was five just because of what kind of a drunk I am. I view her almost as a sister so I don’t feel weird that it happened at all. Still though overall, being drunk wasn’t my proudest moment. The whole last part I was so gone that if I didn’t have a wall to lean on I had to hold on to Stacy to keep from falling on my ass. I was even marked by an alcohol monitor with the red X of inebriation. Stace had gone to the bathroom and I was leaning against a wall and this guy walks up to me. “Can I see your hands?” He says. And though I think its an odd request (I couldn’t actually see straight enough to know he was an alcohol monitor at the moment) I gave him my hands which he marked with a big red X. Stace came back and explained what it meant..We tried to remove it….but they planned for that and used semi-permanent marker. Those tricksy devils. And as far as memories go that about covers it. I did try to buy Stacy a drink. We went to the bar proper and I pulled out a ten…..after I wrestled my wallet out of my pocket…not an easy feat. To be honest removing the ten was just as hard and getting the ten to the right spot on the bar took a couple tries. The bar tender took one look at me…one look at the ten and then he helped somebody else. Stacy took the ten and got the beer for us. I don’t know if we both got one or just her. By that point anytime we walked anywhere I had to hold her hand so I wound up in the right place. Needless to say by 11:30 Stacy helped me call my sister to drive me home. I spent the next two days recovering. Apparently since that was the first time I have ever been drunk in 26 years of life my liver had a rough time of it. Sort of like if you only ever painted with those paint by the numbers, just add water sets and suddenly someone gave you oil paints and expected a well executed Flemish landscape by the weekend.
So there go folks….as Ryan says it “wwjdd.” What Would Jeff Do Drunk. I wish I could remember that myself.

Stacy, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for being my gaurdian angel, keeping me upright, and making sure I left with my free shirt. You're a great friend, and no I havent been drinking again.

Sure it looks like a Quagga, but does it taste like a Quagga?

2008-03-21T03:14:00.000-07:00

The title is a direct quote from Ruedas, my conservation biology professor and one of my favorite teachers of all time.

Well it’s come to my attention that I haven’t posted a blog in two months. Two months…that’s some serious neglect. So what’s going on in the world of Jeff? Well I finished up the term this week. I have to say I liked my classes a lot and I feel like I did pretty well in them. Even if I did let myself get a little under the gun at the end.
Elaine: “So when’s this 10 page research paper due?”
Jeff: “Oh……well….Tuesday.”
Elaine: “This Tuesday?! It’s already Friday!”
Jeff: “Look I’ll get it done…..then I’ll write the other paper for Wednesday and then get my in class presentation good to go for Friday.”
But hey it came together; my paper was pretty damn good. The two classes for those interested in the details were Conservation Biology, and Ecology of Rivers and Streams. Just for kicks I will share some highlights and memorable characters.

First I present the “Loud Guy” from conservation biology.
He was the guy who always had to put in his own two dollars to every conversation. One of those guys who always uses the animal’s scientific name, even if he doesn’t know it. One of those guys who says things like, “oh yeah like the Potamopyrgus antipodaru, I heard those are all over the place in Colorado” on a regular basis. I will present my personal favorite moment.
The guy starts off in class on a tangent about some animal.
Girl next to me turns to me and says: “I don’t think that he knows what animal he’s talking about. He said concolor and I am pretty sure that’s a cougar…..but I think he is trying to talk about a toad.”
Me: “Well….what can you do. Trying to look smart can get squirrelly on you pretty quick.”

Next I present the “The Professor Needs My Approval Girl” from stream ecology.
She was the girl who nodded enthusiastically to every point the teacher made. Without fail she would give some assent, be it just barley audible or through obvious body language.

There was the “Naive Girl” from conservation biology who got manhandled by the teacher on the last day of class when she said that one could “take the conservation lessons learned in the class to poorer nations and educate them on stewardship so they could apply them to their natural resources.” If anyone doesn’t see the inherent stupidity in this statement I can elaborate for you. The professor response was awesome.

One thing these classes did for me was give these weird moments where I actually felt smart. I mean really ahead of the game. Just times when I could see the flaws in the others statements even before the teacher pointed them out. I haven’t ever felt more than average and so those rare moments were I do feel more than that are really surreal for me. Like the time when we picked topics for the in class presentations.

At the front of the room is a list of possible topics. Under invasive species are aquatic plants, or invasive fish species. Both topics catch my eye but while I am deciding a girl comes up to the front.
Girl: “Do you mind if I slip in here and sign up.”
Me: “Oh, by all means, go for it.”
The girl selects aquatic plants and goes back to her seat.
I sing up for invasive fish species and sit down too.
Girl: “What did you sign up for?”
Me: “Invasive fish species, I know a bit about it already. What about you?”
Girl: “Aquatic plants…”
Me: “Oh cool, I almost signed up for that one. It’s a really good topic. The Mediterranean is fairly overrun already, a lot of these plants they can’t even stop. All it takes for the worst one is a plant fragment for it to grow and establish itself.” I was starting to warm to the topic.
Girl: “Really?”
Me: “Yeah….its a pretty big deal.” I had assumed people just generally knew this stuff.
Girl: “Oh….I just chose it ‘cause I thought it would be easy.”
Me: “Yeah, it should be.”
And then that was it and it occurred to me she had asked not because she cared about the topics. She had just wanted to chat with me. “Look”, I thought “talking about ideas and animals I can do. I can do it like a champ. However if it’s small talk you want, some sort of relational beginning, then unfortunately I got nothing. May I suggest the loud guy for that endeavor, sure his jokes are terrible but I can assure you he can do the small talk thing. He likes that.”

Soooo where was I? Oh yeah class was good and now its over until the next term.

Next term; Ecology and Biology of Phytoplankton, and I am pretty excited. Biology of Phytoplankton….can I get a hell yes.

Truth Of My Youth

2008-01-12T23:20:00.000-08:00

It’s 11:30 and I’m sitting alone downstairs. I should be cleaning, or beginning the process of moving furniture back into the upstairs but instead I am here glancing at old friends blogs and myspace pages asking myself why I bother anymore. Generally at some point history becomes irrelevant, and a lot of what we deem history is merely imagined or experienced only within ourselves.
Were I left to myself I would have eaten out tonight and rented Dragon Wars and gotten tanked alone eating caramel-toffee scones in the basement. Elaine says I have fallen out of the habit of being alone since California. She’s partially right. I know it’s been years, but I miss nights where the party never really ended you just joined with different groups over the course of it.
This I suppose puts an odd counterpoint to the fact that I started my Master’s classes. I had planned to begin to get journal articles together and begin on any one of a handful of major papers and presentations required by my classes. I am stressed out about this graduate deal and I am desperate to do really well in these classes. The thing holding me till Monday is my ability to access both the online content of my classes and the libraries journal network expired and I can’t restart it over the phone. Meaning on Monday I have to walk into the college network overlord’s basement. “Can I have a new password?” “Oh sure…..sit over there for an hour and then I’ll give you a sixteen digit binary code that will be impossible for you to remember and I am unwilling to write down.”
I have been trying to write down the stories I created in my head but its slow going and the results are disappointing.
My time has been consumed by home improvement projects and now that that is winding down I think it will take another three days before I even begin to feel settled in my own home again.

I need to go and clean the basement…..*sigh*

The morning after

2008-01-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

So this is the new year.

And i don't feel any different.

The clanking of crystal

Explosions off in the distance.

So this is the new year

And I have no resolutions

For self assigned penance

For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on

Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once

Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn

As thirty dialogs bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days

Then i could travel just by folding a map

No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways

There'd be no distance that could hold us back.

The fading holidays

2007-12-26T23:51:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas All!!!

To commemorate the holiday I present Imogen Heap lyrics.
I can relate to them from my own holiday experiences over the years.

Just for now

It's that time of year

Leave all our hopelessness's aside

If just for now (just for now) leave awhile

tears stop right here

I know we've all had a bumpy ride.

I'm secretly on your side

How did you know?

It's what I always wanted

Could never have had too many of these

Well I, quit kicking me under the table

I'm trying; will somebody make her shut up about it?

Can we settle down please?

It's that time of year

Leave all our hopelessness's aside

If just for now (just for now) leave awhile

tears stop right here

I know we've all had a bumpy ride.

I'm secretly on your side

Lie down

Deep breaths

Count to ten

Nod your head

I think something is burning

Now you've ruined the whole thing

Muffle the smoke alarm

Whoever put on this music?

Better quick shop remove it

Pour me another

Oh, don't wag your finger at me

It's that time of year

Leave all our hopelessness's aside

If just for now (just for now) leave awhile

tears stop right here

I know we've all had a bumpy ride.

I'm secretly on your side

Get me outta here

The Return

2007-12-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

Well I am back in Oregon now. I have returned from my stint in Los Angeles. It has been pointed out that I need to update my blog.
I enjoyed the job I did in Long Beach. The internship at the Aquarium of the Pacific was educational and will look good on a resume. Granted there was still a lot left unlearned when I left, but that was just an unavoidable byproduct of the constraints imposed in the nature of the internship. I spent most of my working time doing fairly routine feedings, maintenance, and other animal care. Much of what I did sounds a lot more exotic than it actually is (i.e. feeding Black Tip Sharks). Than again mot many people get to do things like that so who’s to say what’s exotic or not, it all depends on the standards of comparison. I won’t go into detail about the specifics of what I did here since most people wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway. If anyone has any specific questions I will answer them but in this forum I will be vague. I was scheduled to work twenty hours a week but I worked late most days. I can see myself doing this job or something similar for a career. I was deeply content at work. I tend to rate the jobs I have had by the baseline feeling I have for them. I was interested in staying on but as I am now I am not considered really ready. I need my master’s, a dive certification, and more experience. So I have moved back to Portland to try to accomplish those goals. When I wasn’t working I just hung out with my friends. It was like finally being done, being free of the unending struggle to reach a place in my life where I can say I have arrived at a destination. I got a lot of the you're “reliving college again” sentiment from others and I think it was an inaccurate assumption. Life is better lived in close community with ample time to pursue your hobbies and interests. By all means work hard, but there is much more to life than that.
So that I guess is the job summary. I spent three months working in an ongoing effort to pursue my strange obsession. The ocean and its denizens fill me with a great sense of joy and wonder, I can lose myself in them for hours. I figure I have to work, and I figure that though I may not be the best at fisheries science I don’t feel nearly as passionate about anything else. So you have to do what you love.

The other most significant part of the three months was living with Ryan and living close to Eric. I am back in Oregon now and it is colder here, in every way. I miss already the relational closeness I feel toward those men. Forgive me if I become maudlin, I blame Sigur Ros who is supplying this posts soundtrack. Here in Portland my relationships are either figments, strained in odd ways by circumstance, or just beginning. I once wrote of this place as an empty place where ghosts lived, overdramatic certainly, but somewhat accurate. What can I say for the three months I lived with my best friends? These are people I could tell anything, there are no secrets. I already have had the urge to drive south again. My friends down there are the greatest men I have ever known.

So I am here in Portland trying to find my way again.

The one where Jeff saves a shark.

2007-11-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

Today I saved a Bamboo Shark from an ill-advised, but brilliantly executed, attempt at escape. The lid to the tank for the sharks is a big flimsy plastic plate that has a line of very small ventilation holes at the front of it, apparently on rare occasions the sharks find a way out. Now the shark in question was about half the length of my forearm and this hole, as priory stated, is small. So this shark had to get the momentum to clear the water and had to angle to go through the hole just right after breaking the surface. Basically this sharks little maneuver required physics at a level that is frankly beyond me. (I know this from personal experience as my second term of physics at Portland State can be accurately described as a complete rout.) But thankfully I saved the little guy. So here is the story on its unabridged format.
I was going around today to begin my second feeds and when I got to the Bamboo shark tank I was startled to see this shark sitting on top of the tank lid looking fairly dry and as much at peace as a shark can look. I thought at first that the shark had exited this life and been placed on the lid by someone while they went to get the paperwork for it. I think I can summarize my thoughts like this. “Ooohh poor little guy. I bet Jen was really bummed….wait why isn’t it in a mortality bag?....HOLY SHIT the gills are moving!!!!! It’s still alive!!! It’s not supposed to be out of the water at all!!!” So I picked up the shark and put it in the tank, supporting it with one hand. I held it there and it sat quietly on my hand and it occurred to me that I didn’t want to just let it swim off in case Jen wanted to keep it under observation and then I further realize that I hadn’t seen Jen all day. So I stood there for a couple minutes holding the shark with no where to put it, I got a net which I used as a quarantine compartment until I was able to find Jen. We watched the shark for a bit but it was fine so we let it go back and mingle with the others. And that is the fairly boring story of how I saved a small shark form a tragic fate.

The one where Jeff eats himself to death.

2007-11-29T22:12:00.000-08:00

Big trouble losing control,

Primary resistance at a critical low,

On the double gotta get a hold,

Point of no return one second to go,

No response on any level,

red alert this vessels under siege,

Total overload, systems down, they've got control,

There's no way out, we are surrounded,

Give in, give in and relish every minute of it

Freeze, awake here forever, I feel a weakness coming on.

I am beset by dessert, soda, and lethargy. My folks sent a cheesecake, Rachelle bought anther and a cookie mother lode for a party thingy she threw and there is so much soda there is room for little else. I have been…..unwise perhaps in pacing myself as far as eating the dessert before it expires. Tonight I shot the cheesecake moon and lord, it could be fatal. The last two days I have spent effectively dead watching friends when not at work and eating mind-numbingly high sugar meals. Let’s just say, even in this short of time, I can tell I am losing my lean, malnourished looking physique in place of something a little more reminiscent of my junior high self. (I apologize to my wife.)

paper boats

2007-11-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

A funeral for Ultimate Frisbee

2007-11-18T19:02:00.001-08:00

Today since Eric was not attending the bible study I usually accompany him to I decided to take the time and join a pick up game of Ultimate Frisbee. It is a game I love, and I haven’t been able to find a game for the last three years. I used to play every Sunday while I went to Biola University and I was pretty good. I was a little better than the average player but wasn’t spectacular or anything. So since they still have pick up games on campus I decided to give it a go. I would rate my experience on an embarrassment scale of 1 to 10 as a 7.8. I played for one painful hour and I was horrible, I could catch and throw just fine but I couldn’t run worth anything and as a result my attempts to guard other players were little better than a joke. I attended a funeral for my Ultimate Frisbee pick up game experience. I just have to remember being back in this place steeped in history that all those things I tied in my mind to the places are all dead and gone. Ultimate Frisbee today joins the ranks of the buried and I won’t try to resurrect it again. Maybe another time and place with equally informal players I will create a new thing but what I remember so fondly is dead. I bailed as soon as I could from the game without seeming like a quitter though I am sure everyone was happy to see me go. I was passed from team to team like the fat kid in a pick-up game of basketball at a junior high and I don’t blame them for doing it. I got back here to find the house empty and everyone gone. I wish I would never have went to the field today…and besides my legs and pride are sore now.

Yeah, we're stubborn and melodramatic,

2007-11-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

I am a socially awkward person. If you know me you are probably cocking an eyebrow and wondering how this could possibly be some kind of new revelation. Yes, you all already know. But my conversational difficulties result from an overly analytical mind with a nihilistic bent. My awkwardness was driven home to me two days ago at work as I waited for the unaccountably slow freight elevator with another female associate who works as an aquarist in a different part of the aquarium. (As an aside….was that sentence of legal length? I don’t have Elaine here so we are flying solo without a proof reader………….please assume crash positions.) At any rate we’ll just keep moving along with the story, run-on or no. So I was waiting at this elevator and the minutes just start ticking by. We are both standing there avoiding eye contact, pretending the floor has an interesting tile mosaic rather than mere stained concrete and I realize I can’t think of a thing to say. Well to be fair I could think of something to say, a single line of completely obvious banality. “Man, this elevator is slow.” But it’s a conversational dead end isn’t it? I mean what is there to respond with other than “yes, yes it is a slow elevator.” If she was unusually chatty the best it could evolve into is a discussion about various elevators we’ve ridden and their relative speeds and let’s be frank, does anyone really want to have that conversation? Elevators are poor story material. I heard an elevator story from a camp speaker back in high school that was funny but that was because it involved a little bit of unintentional public nudity and a little bit of that can make any story a bit funnier. I don’t have a single memorable elevator story but I have a fair repertoire of situational nudity stories. * And furthermore what would be the ultimate point of said elevator conversation. Now most of you are probably thinking “well forget the elevator, you both work at the aquarium you could talk about that.” Here’s the thing though, yes the elevator is long but it will arrive within five minutes and we will arrive at our destinations a mere three minutes after boarding. The ground we could cover in the time allowed would be so minimal I just couldn’t see the point. Lets, just for kicks, play out a conversational scenario. The portion in red contains actual words spoken.

Jeff: “So do you work with the marine mammals?”
Girl: “Oh yeah I do. Are you with fish?”
J: “Yeah I am an intern over at the tropical wing.”
G: “Oh that’s cool. Do you like it?”
J: “Yeah I do my names Jeff by the way.”
G: “I’m (insert name here). Good to meet you.”

G: “Yeah, I know its only one floor but the stairs get tiring after having run them all day.”
J: “Yeah, it’ll do that.”

G: “See you later.”
J: “Have a good day.”

Now wasn’t that just deliciously worthless? I myself would go for the short awkward bit of silence which is exactly what I did. If we were both at a party and I had time, I might go for the chat just to pass the time.

* This story contains a significant portion of my bridal party, the groom’s dinner, a brunt out headlight, and a police officer.

and if anyone can correctly identify the picture they get a cookie.......(Daniel Webster I am so sorry, I know not what I do.)

I spent my whole life blaming the piano

2007-11-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

I have decided, as per Elaine’s suggestion, to begin to write a series of short stories encompassing some ideas I have. My thing is ideas; I have created two universes one more based in science fiction and another more fantasy themed. I have given each its own history, races, and ecology. It’s the thing I bemoan the most probably. I have these ideas, I am continuously expanding them. The thing is I am not a good writer, I never have been. Maybe I should rephrase that a little. I am not a good enough writer to be even close to satisfied with my own creations. For my whole life I create things in my mind and lacking expression they are eventually lost. So I am going to try to remedy that. I have given it some thought and if I could emulate or absorb the skills of various writers this would be my top five listed in descending order.
1. Steven King; for his range of topics, amazing character development (i.e. The Dark Tower Series) say what you will the man is gifted.
2. Nick Hornby; I love his books, his characters are excellent and I love the way he does his dialogue.
3. Susanna Clarke; is another excellent creator of characters, plotlines, and settings. The thing in particular that makes me hold her in such high regard is the use of footnotes that cite other books, fictional legends and histories that she makes up in such a way as to create a comprehensive world in which her novel is set. It always bothers me when you read a sci-fi and the characters are discussing a book published in 1994 when the story is set in 2257. Did they just stop writing books in 1995 or something? Seriously, just make up some novels for your characters to read.
4. Douglas Adams/ P.G. Wodehouse; their humor and grasp of comedic timing have yet, in my opinion, to be matched.
5. Dan Simmons; this one may come somewhat as a surprise but the thing about his writing that got me wasn’t his characters (though they were quite interesting but not necessarily stellar) and it wasn’t his plotlines (though they were original). The reason Dan Simmons makes this list is because when I read the book Hyperion he was so good at describing the terrain I could almost see it. The book is interesting and definitely worth reading but what I wish I could do with my writing is make the audience see what I see. When I imagine my stories I see them as a movie in my mind. When I write about the guy walking back to his house on the edge of the marsh I see the tall grass and the low lying fog with a few small motes of bioluminescent insects. I don’t know how to describe it and sometimes it feels like these images and these places are trapped inside my mind.

So that’s my list of authors whose skills I wish I had. I could do the same thing with artists. Because I would make field guides to the biology and ecology of all my worlds in which my stories and novels were set. But that’s the thing isn’t it. I am lazy and a part of me doesn’t even want to start because the outcome would disappoint. Elaine is right though, something is better than nothing. I don’t know it’s late and I should be asleep but I am sitting here still. I see clearly in moments how I hold back from action in fear of failure. I guess in a way giving up is merely aiming for small comforts and letting myself fall backward into the void that has pursued me my whole life. The only way to keep from falling is to keep moving. Tomorrow I will call PSU and get the ball rolling on my Master’s and I will start looking for jobs for December. I will plan my stories and write them simply because it is in me to do so.
….and who knows, getting published was always on of those dreams for me that was equitable with the whole Monday Rising post-punk band daydreams.

"So what's the deal with wisps?" - Eric

2007-11-16T22:09:00.000-08:00

Well I know it’s been awhile but sadly I have nothing much to report. My prior employment provided fodder for humor courtesy of the stupidity of others. This job is more dealing with animals and so there isn’t quite as much to use. After all “today I wiped the algae of the sides of a tank….a catfish bit me….it was like being pinched by a very weak child….and then I put my hand in a sea urchin” just doesn’t cut it, does it. Maybe I should stylize it a bit.

Jeff vs. The Sea Urchin and its Mercenary Catfish forces

So a week ago I went to set down a hose and it fell on the handle spraying me in the crotch with an obscene amount of water just before I had to do a feed in the public part of the aquarium on a busy day. I mean it soaked through the pants, and the area of effect for this particular attack included the lower portion of the seat of the pants. As far as unfortunate hose accidents this one was epic. I remember thinking “someday I’ll be able to look back on this and laugh….but defiantly not right now….or maybe even next week.” The next day another hose (which was turned off) let a liberal spurt of water directly into my crotch “What?!! Oh COME on!!” I could stylize this story and name it.

Jeff and the Day of Errant Hoses

Just for kicks I think I’ll select a few of the events which have achieved title status and throw them out there.
The Spider Caverns Incident
The Sourdough Incident
Jeff and the Slippery Boots
Jeff vs. Bryan Chan
The Field Trip, The Roommate and the Pack-out Sandwich
Ryan Fills a Love Cup

Well I will call that a post. Remember folks, if an event is worth remembering, it’s worth a moniker.

Greg's 4th of July party is where it's at

2007-10-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

my Halloween rant.....I apologize for the length

2007-10-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

Ryan: “So this lady was making a huge deal that the church call it a harvest festival and not a Halloween party.”
Jeff: “Well, why don’t you call it a festival of darkness instead, that would really screw with people.”

I know my colleague Ryan has already posted a blog about Halloween and I am sure he is much more convincing than I but since it’s that time of year I thought why not give it a shot too. The thing that really pisses me off about this time of year is the ignorance it brings out it many Christian communities. I can’t tell you how many churches and church goers are adamant about not celebrating Halloween and instead focus on producing harvest parties. The sad thing is this just shows the lack of thought, research, and historical perspective these Christians bring to the table. Lets ponder this first, how the holiday is celebrated. It is the same whether you call it Halloween or a harvest festival. Both ways you let people get dressed up for a party and provide games and free candy for the attendants. So really though if you are trying to move away from the “dreaded pagan origins” and you think that calling it a harvest festival is doing that let me enlighten you. The holiday is believed to have originated in Ireland, and is known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna, literally "Samhain Night". Pre-Christian Celts had an autumn festival, Samhain, "End of Summer", a pastoral and agricultural "fire festival" or feast, when the dead revisited the mortal world and large communal bonfires would hence be lit to ward off evil spirits. In summary the original pagan event was pretty much a harvest festival. Halloween is actually a holiday instigated in part by the church. Pope Gregory IV standardized the date of All Saints' Day, or All Hallows' Day, on November 1 in the name of the entire Western Church in 835. As the church day began at sunset, the holiday coincided exactly with Samhain. So really if a historical and even logical approach is taken is makes more sense that we call our celebrations Halloween celebrations rather than calling them harvest festivals. Now a lot of people object to the pumpkins, costumes, and trick or treating because of supposed roots in evil but I think this too is rather foolish. These symbols even if they were at one time symbols of darkness have by this point lost any connection to their past. The vast majority of celebrators world wide have no idea where the symbols come from or regard the holiday as anything more than another excuse to dress up, party, and get loads of free candy. I would argue that most of the Christians who object have very little idea of the origins of the things to which they object. Let me run down the list of the top three focusing primarily on their appearance in the States.
The jack-o'-lantern can be traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard drinking old farmer who tricked the devil into climbing a tree, and trapped him by carving a cross into the trunk of the tree. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack which dooms him to forever wander the earth at night. For centuries, the bedtime parable was told by Irish parents to their children. So basically the origin is a superstitious urban legend and just because the story involves the devil it doesn’t make it anymore than a story. Many early American folklore tales involve similar storylines. The carved pumpkin was associated generally with harvest time in America, and did not become specifically associated with Halloween until the mid to late 19th century. So honestly the American association is almost entirely benign. You who are objecting to these, do you know the legend of stingy jack and more importantly does it matter? When you watch those anti-Halloween propaganda films they usually tie the tradition to Scotland where Children used to dress up in costumes and carry around a "Neepy Candle," a devil face carved into a hollowed out Neep, lit from inside, to frighten away the evil faeries. Yes ladies and gentleman fairies, not evil spirits as the narrator will try to convince you. Are you really worried that your children will be influenced to believe in fairies if they light a pumpkin? And if so did you let your kids watch Peter Pan or read Anderson’s Fairy Tales? I rest my case.
The main event for children of modern Halloween in the United States and Canada is trick-or-treating, in which children disguise themselves in costumes and go door-to-door in their neighborhoods, ringing each doorbell and yelling "trick or treat!" to solicit a gift of candy or similar items. Halloween was perceived as the night during which the division between the world of the living and the otherworld was blurred so spirits of the dead and inhabitants from the underworld were able to walk free on the earth. It was believed necessary to dress as a spirit or otherworldly creature when venturing outdoors to blend in, and this is where dressing in such a manner for Halloween comes from. This gradually evolved into trick-or-treating because children would knock on their neighbors' doors, in order to gather fruit, nuts, and sweets for the Halloween festival. Once again I want to point out that the origins of the costumes are almost entirely unknown to the majority of and therefore irrelevant. People don’t dress up to fit in with the spirit world they, at present, dress up to fit in at the office party. Furthermore in an American context although the practice resembles the older traditions of guising in Ireland and Scotland, ritual begging on Halloween does not appear in English-speaking North America until the 20th century, and may have developed independently.
The imagery surrounding Halloween is largely an amalgamation of the Halloween season itself, nearly a century of work from American filmmakers and graphic artists, and a rather commercialized take on the dark and mysterious. If you are against Halloween I would suggest that the position is largely one you were likely fed by another uninformed person and I suggest looking into it yourself. If the “suspect origins” bother you let me give you another reason to just get over it. Let’s, just for kicks, lay out the origins of Christmas. A winter festival was traditionally the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included less agricultural work needing to be done during the winter, as well as people expecting longer days and shorter nights after the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. In part, the Christmas celebration was created by the early Church in order to entice pagan Romans to convert to Christianity without losing their own winter celebrations. Most of the most important gods in the religions of Ishtar and Mithra had their birthdays on December 25. Various Christmas traditions are considered to have been syncretised from winter festivals including the following: Saturnalia, Natalis Solis Invicti, and Yule. Another example of a tradition with pagan origins that was lost its association with them entirely and become benign would be the twelve days of Christmas which were derived from the winter festival called Yule, held in the late December to early January period. Yule logs were lit to honor Thor, the god of thunder, with the belief that each spark from the fire represented a new pig or calf that would be born during the coming year. Feasting would continue until the log burned out, which could take as many as twelve days. I would argue that if you are overlooking all the associations on other holidays why then do you focus your lens on Halloween? Admit it’s just because it seems darker than others but if all you have is a gut feeling without evidence than it is useless for arriving at truth.

In closing I have this to say. This Halloween spend time with the people you love, get dressed, go to a party, give kids candy and try to make everyone’s night splendid. Let the church provide kids with safe places off the streets to get their sugar fix, let them be artistic with a gourd. Honestly I am positive you will be a better witness for Christ, more loving to others, and make better use of the life God has given you.

Me trying to explain why I can't seem to blog right now

2007-10-29T01:17:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here in Ryan’s living room. All is quiet except for the faint hum of our laptops, Death Cab for Cutie and the faint wail of sirens. I wanted to blog I guess. I even selected topics and yet here I sit. On Saturday my wife is coming down for a week. I haven’t seen her in two months. I know for many marriages this is nothing. I mean to someone like Jenn reading this any complaints on my end would be laughable. It’s all about perspective I guess. I have always hated those married people who make a big scene if they haven’t seen their other half for a week. I keep as much as I can to myself about the distance issues. Mostly I can deal with it fine, it’s a choice really, and life is full of situations where doing the best thing requires sacrifice and we can adapt to anything. Dealing with life quietly, excepting hardship with dignity, these are things I have always thought honorable. This week is atypically hard though, mostly because she will be here soon. It’s the same as the way a child can accept that Christmas is a long way off all year with out a complaint but that last week before the day seems to encompass more hours than the rest of the year.

I've been trading ideas with intriguing men, and I...

2007-10-20T23:57:00.001-07:00

This weekend I was lucky enough to get to spend a ton of time with Eric’s friend Steve. I really love this guy and we get along really well. We spend most of our time making fun of stuff. Today for example a truck passed us and as we were driving to a movie and we only got a glimpse of the bumper sticker. This is the conversation that followed.
(After we got our first glimpse)
Eric: “Does that say ‘Pist Control’?”
Jeff: “So what the hell is a pist?”
Steve: “And extending that, why do we have to control it?”
Eric: “Pist….maybe pest control?”
Jeff: “I thought it said pist.”
Steve: “That’s what I saw.”
Jeff: “And was it just my imagination or was the picture under it of a shark eating a mermaid.”
Steve: “Really…..I thought it was a weasel in a firefighter’s jacket.”
Eric: “Well at least the guy is making his point clearly.”
Steve: “The funny thing is the standard of deviation between what we saw makes it so there’s no plausible middle ground.”
Jeff: “Maybe it’s a mermaid in a firefighter’s jacket eating a weasel.”
Eric: “…while riding a shark.”
Steve: “Or it could be a mermaid in a shark costume wearing a firefighter’s jacket balancing a weasel on her head.”
Luckily the guy parked his truck in the same lot as us so we walked over to have a look at the bumper sticker.
(On the way to the truck)
Jeff: “I bet it’s going to be a shark attacking a boat which contains a mermaid and a weasel in a firefighter’s jacket.”
Eric: “It’s going to be lame.”
Once we got over to the truck the results of our inspection were predictably lame. The title of the icon was “pest control” and showed a shark eating a seal. Now I could start on a tirade of abuse against this “it’s the seals fault we killed all the fish” mentality but I won’t.
(As we viewed the sticker)
Steve: “Well….”
Jeff: “That’s lame as hell.”
Eric: “What did I tell you.”

Yeah, I know my game play is sub-par.

2007-10-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

Readers of my blog rejoice with me!
This is an auspicious day. This is a day to be remembered. On this day I have survived an epic zealot rush. I did this with only a single siege tank and two fully loaded bunkers. My use of supply depots as walls (and yes it’s an old tactic I should have started using years ago) gave me the edge I needed to send those zealots packing.

Of course they came back with a parcel of High Templar and a Zerg Queen and did a bit of damage but with Eric’s fleet and mine we finished off our 6 opponents.

By the way….Starcraft II is coming out. You should be excited, you should watch the trailer, and you should be even now planning attack strategies based on the Terran and Protoss game play trailers.

And in the faces you meet, you'll see the place where you'll die

2007-10-15T20:56:00.001-07:00

I have thought a lot about funerals. I think I posted on my blog early on about my general dislike of them. I am not sure I even want to have one. I was talking about it with Ryan and he made the point that funerals aren’t for the person who kicked it anyway, which is true. I think my biggest objection is that when someone dies no one seems to be able to view the person objectively. Everyone is so afraid to say something bad even if it’s true. That’s why I have always been somewhat opposed. I know my failings and they are fairly large and I want in my death for people to be able to be honest about them rather than try to pretend I never had them. The other thing is I don’t want to have a bunch of people hanging out being miserable; funerals tend to be too formal and to rigid for me. When I go I want the service, since I am sure it will happen, to be short. I only want one person to stand up and speak, that person being Ryan Sey. Elaine has already agreed to be my speaker for the dead and to take it upon herself to say all the things I never was able to or took the time to say in life. I trust her to be totally honest and I know she knows more about what I feel than anyone else. I only want two songs to be played, no more. The first being Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape by Underoath and the second being Come, Lord Jesus by Andrew Peterson. I already decided to go the route of cremation and I would rather not have anyone do the whole distributing of the ashes thing. I have had to do that myself for grandparents and it’s not something I recommend. Elaine can dump that stuff in the ocean in a manner of her choosing accompanied only by those she selects. Eric mentioned that he sort of wants to leave a written note to be read by somebody. I think it’s an interesting idea but honestly I would only be inclined to write something irreverent. “Since you’re all hearing this I guess I snuffed it and that kind of sucks. Anyway since I am dead I suggest the open bar, go on get lit, it's what I would have wanted.” That or place a profanity at the end so as to force the reader to swear in front of the assembled crowd. If anyone can work up a good eulogy lament based entirely on Starcraft and or World of Warcraft then they should throw that out there too. I just don’t want it to be a huge depressing, stiff formal, event where people lie about what my life was. Keep it short, let Ryan do the talking, give those who came access to good food plenty of alcohol and by all means keep it light and have a good a time as you can. Dying is far from the worst that can happen, after all what waits after death is closer to life then this ever was. And even if, though I don’t believe it, death brings oblivion I am at least content with the way I spent life.

Now before you all are horrified by the picture I put up of death with a kitten I need to make one thing clear. First I can't seem to remove it and second this is Death, as in Death the character as conceived and written by Terry Pratchett. His version of death is one of my favorite of his characters, anytime death speaks its allways in all caps. Here a just a few quotes to illistrate.

"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worth while?" Death thought about it "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.”

"I MUST SAY THESE ARE VERY GOOD BISCUITS. HOW DO THEY GET THE BITS OF CHOCOLATE IN?"
-- Death has a snack (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

"DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING", said Death. "JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH."

"DID YOU SAY HUMANS PLAY IT FOR FUN?" "Some of them get to be very good at it, yes. I'm only an amateur, I'm afraid" "BUT THEY ONLY LIVE EIGHTY OR NINETY YEARS!"
- Death discusses the difficulties of bridge

You have caused confusion and delay.

2007-10-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

I randomly get the urge to mess with people. I haven’t ever done it but I am always inclined to. What I mean by that can best be explained by a few examples.

A couple of nights ago I went to BJ’s with some friends. It was really busy at the restaurant and they eventually seated us on the patio next to a 10 or 15 year high school reunion. As a result the patio was so loud we could barley hear each other. I personally wasn’t annoyed; I was actually sort of energized by it. What I wanted to do but didn’t was walk over to the reunion and try to pass myself off as part of their class. I figured I could accomplish this by outright fabrications or the equally effective misdirection. I just thought it would be fun, because making crap up is one of my specialties and it would also allow me to partake of their open bar.

Tonight I was at Claim Jumpers and when I walked into the bathroom there was this guy standing in front of the mirror alone in contemplation. What I wanted to do is walk over to him and say something like this.
“Hey, I am doing my best working the table. Now I’ve put in some good words for you and prepped it for you triumphant return from the restroom. But man I got to be honest, it’s a tough crowd. So it’s up to you now to get in there and bring this wagon home.” Then grab him by both shoulders and stare right at him and say “Good luck buddy” and then turn abruptly and walk into a stall before he can react.

Sometimes if I am walking past someone in a fast food line I have the urge to say as I pass something like; “I checked the meter like you asked me because you were worried about the parking here and I want you to know we are in the clear. The thing that you parked next to wasn’t a meter, so no worries.”

P.S. Thomas the tank engine is by far one of the dullest shows I have ever seen. Horrible does not even begin to adequately describe it.

We'll go out babe, drink moonshine

2007-10-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

One hand must wash the other
Each man must be a brother
Band up and take cover
We'll go dancing, set fires
Tag buildings and slash tires
Drive go-carts like Shriners

We'll go out babe, skateboarding
Go looting, food hoarding
Whatever you desire

Understanding In a Car Crash

2007-10-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

"Death hangs over thee. While thou still live, while thou may, do good."

I was driving back from work today on the 710 north and I very nearly was in major accident. I was lucky because it was close. The weirdest thing is that even as I watched what could have been my approaching injury and or death I felt nothing. I felt no worry or concern, my body didn’t even tense I just watched the car coming with a sense of bemusement so small it was practically nothing.

Here is what went down.
I was driving North on the 710 going between 55 and 60. I was relaxed and listening to Modest Mouse’s song Life Like Weeds so there was a good sized gap between me and the traffic in front of me. Traffic was heavier than usual but moving really well. Suddenly everybody slammed on their breaks. It was one of those 60 to 0 things that I noticed first as clouds of smoke announced the desperate attempts of the cars in front of me to stop. A couple of cars were even forced to swing into the shoulder to avoid collisions. I was humming along with the music and as I watched the cars in front of making panicked stops I remember thinking “oh I guess we are stopping now.” I laid my foot down on the break still humming and completely relaxed. I got my car stopped in time, mostly because I had left myself the room. I was almost touching the guy in front of me when I had got it stopped. I looked in the re-view mirror to see how the guys behind me were doing and saw that the guy behind me was in trouble. He had been going a little faster than me and when he had jammed on his breaks he had trouble keeping it in line. He was fish-tailing all over the lane first to one side then to the other smoke pouring from the tires the whole while. I just sat there watching him approach and I only thought “hmm, well look at that.” My body didn’t even tense. I only looked away because my peripheral caught the guy in front of me moving again. The traffic went from 0 to 45 in a tenth of a second, no indication why we had stopped. I thought to myself “interesting” and accelerated forgetting about the car behind me still slewing sideways across the lane. The combination of my moving again and his slight reduction in speed meant that there was no collision. Had traffic not started moving again that would not have been the case.

I didn’t even think about it after the fact until I went to merge onto the 91 East and the guy cut me off. Then it struck me that I hadn’t felt anything even as I was almost run down. It doesn’t bother me, it’s just strange. Honestly in that moment I probably could have watched a semi barreling down on me bringing death and had no stronger a reaction than to think “hmm, well now” with a almost complete detachment.

I dream of Warcraft

2007-10-05T03:21:00.000-07:00

So I had this dream last night and I have decided its worth sharing with the rest of you. No, it does not involve raptors, it is not inspired by Oreos, and in no portion does it include an animal pelt made of pure evil. But here it is anyway, submitted for your approval dream #4,568.37.
I dreamt last night that Ryan decided to help me out a little in the gear department by taking my level 51 night elf into a battle ground to get some honor points. I had gone to check on Elaine because we were supposed to be leaving for a trip of our own. She was still chatting with her folks even though we were running exceptionally late. We were running late on a level that leaves you pacing anxiously making little whimpering sounds and nervously wringing your hands. Since we wouldn’t be leaving the house anytime soon I went back to the computer to see how the leveling of my character was progressing. Arriving at the laptop I was horrified to find that Ryan had given up on my character and she was sitting in the middle of an active battle ground doing nothing tagged as away from computer. While I was watching an aura descended around my character accompanied by the text “fear and hatred envelope you” which quite clearly meant in the dream, as it would in real life, that all my teammates were ready to kill me for not helping them out. So I began to quietly fret and then Ryan’s character Sloppy Joe came running up to me all the while texting “Feign death! Feign death!” which really makes no sense as it is a skill Druids like my character don’t have. For some reason though in the dream I can do this and I did, thereby making it look like I got wreaked by the Horde which pacifies my team and doesn’t cost me a death with is pretty good for me. After that I headed out for the enemies base. On this particular battle ground there were a bunch of ambient animals just wandering around. They were the species used by the Draenei race as mounts and for some reason they all were hostile. I went for the base but was bum-rushed by a herd of elephants and had to tuck tail and run. Also the enemy’s base was guarded by a nice colony of Orc NPC’s. (A NPC is a non-character player for those of you with limited experience.) So I gave up on the idea of a frontal assault. After that I wandered around and came across a Troll rouge sneaking up on a Human warrior. I dropped into cat from and stealthed. I hit her from behind before she could go after the warrior and I got one shot off but when I went for my second strike Ryan had changed all the keys and so instead of smacking her I switched to bear form. Now in this situation bear form was exactly the wrong way to go firstly because its crap as strategy and secondly because of Ryan’s nonsensical key changes. On entering bear form I found that all my attack keys had new icons which was the same for each one. The normal icons depicting bear claws doing unpleasant things to a persons stomach had been replaced by a cartoonish image of a pig's smiling face. My attempts to use my attacks only caused a corny piece of country-ish instrumental music to begin playing and my character to hop around like she was having a seizure. The rouge I had been fighting stopped attacking me and emoted a shrug then ran off.

That’s right folks I had an anxiety dream about online gaming, I am the biggest nerd.

Performance anxiety
It’s not just for the bedroom anymore!

Lives

2007-10-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

Everyone's afraid of their own life

If you could be anything you want

I bet you'd be disappointed, am I right?

I had just feed the Leafy Sea Dragons and was standing in the aquarium on the public side watching to make sure they all ate and I got to talking to this guy. He was pretty young and on his way back from a two week trip to Catalina Island. He worked at an aquarium store in Northern California. The point of this was that as we were talking it became apparent that he viewed my job and my participation in it as living the dream. It made me feel weird, because though I love my job I don’t feel like I am living the dream. It occurred to me that a good portion of other people would look at this guy’s vacation and his boat he took it on as living the dream. I wonder if to some degree everyone spends much of there life staring at the horizon. The Counting Crows say “If you've never stared off into the distance then your life is a shame” and it’s true but what are we to make of the obsessive focus on the next thing that reduces what we have accomplished to an unsatisfying interim until the next thing. I wouldn’t say it’s a “the grass is greener” thing, it’s more of a pursuing the horizon. This job, that degree all are ends to other things and so are unfulfilling in themselves in the meantime. It’s like we focus so much on the horizon the present is lost. To this guy I am living the dream. I love my job but my mind is full of the next steps to make a job like this a more permanent reality. He sees me behind the tanks working and I see the eventual December. It seems that this excessive forward focus and marginalization of the present is fairly universal. Its either that or people squander their lives by focusing on the immediate pleasure and one day look up to realize that their life is ending with nothing worthwhile or lasting attempted.

It’s scary to think that we could be living the dream, that this reality in the present is what we have to work with. It’s scary trying to pursue your dreams. The more effort you make the greater chance of failure. Apathy and small comforts will ensure a fairly painless and trivial life. I spent so much of my life afraid, and I’ll level with you, I am scared now. I keep moving forward in small steps. I know another more capable person given the same materials and experiences could have fashioned them into something far greater. Maybe the greatest challenge is to enjoy how far we get without becoming prideful or comparing ourselves to some non-existent standard of performance.

Night

2007-10-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

Do I divide and fall apart?

Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark

And the ship went down in sight of land

I went for a long walk last night, across Biola and beyond it. I found myself staying in the shadows avoiding the pooled light from the street lamps. I was feeling down, a diffuse sort of black absence that left a dull ache. It came on suddenly, no clue why, just another compelling proof that I am a stranger even to myself. I went for a long walk to help it pass.

I am just a man who knows how to feel.

2007-10-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

One of the more routine things I do at work is algae scrubbing. This job consists of taking a sponge and wiping down all the interior tanks surfaces with it thereby removing algae. The task is simple, easy and almost guaranteed to soak at least part of your torso, particularly if you are trying to clean the jewel tanks. These are a set of four small tanks that are gorgeous but their placement in a surrounding mass of pipes and low walls makes cleaning them a shirt-soaking series of awkward body contortions. The thing that blows my mind about the job is that everybody loves it. No sooner do I put my hand down in the tank with the sponge then the tank begins to flash as people on the other side begin to frantically take pictures….of my hand…holding a sponge. I remove my hand and the flashes taper off. The same effect is scene when I use the gravel vacuum. Sometimes I go out into the aquarium proper to view the tank from the public side to make sure it looks good. Sometimes I get stuff like this:

I walk out and look at a tank to make sure I got all the algae off.
Lady with two small kids: “Was that YOUR hand in that tank?”
Me: “Oh, yeah. I was just getting rid of some algae.”
Lady with a sense of wonder: “Boys come here. That was this guy’s hand. That hand you saw in the tank a second ago was this guy’s hand.”
Ladies son giving me a big eyed stare: “wow”
Me embarrassed: “Yep…that was me…well you folks enjoy the aquarium I am going to go and tend more tanks.”

Yes folk’s aquarists are rock stars…accept not really.

Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away

2007-10-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

Now most of you probably have a further question following my description of work. I hope you enjoyed the intermission provided by the 4th of July party picture I posted. The question you most likely have now is this; “But if you only work about 16 hours a week, what the hell do you do with the rest of your time?” The answer ladies and gentleman is simple. Let me give you a bit of background. I am writing this after taking a break from World Of Warcraft which I was playing with Eric. He is now playing Guitar Hero 2 beside me while I type this and Ryan is on his laptop in the dining room. What I have been doing can be best described in terms of accomplishments.

1. Last night I beat Halo 3. Ryan got it two days ago. Eric, myself and him have also played a ton of vs. rounds.
2. I began a new game of Fable.
3. I got Ryan the game Viva Piñata and really enjoy watching him build his garden.
4. Almaarea (which means blessed in elfish) my WOW night elf character is now level 51 and a half.
5. I bought Crimson Sky and I am half way through that game.
6. Eric, Ryan, and myself have play Starcraft at least 3 times a week.
7. I have watched the first two seasons of Venture Brothers.
8. I have failed countless songs on Guitar Hero 2.
9. I am about halfway through season one of Futurama.

Does anyone see a pattern? That’s right I go to work, play videos games, and spend a ton of time just screwing around with Ryan and Eric. It’s fun and relaxing. Stay up late sleep in late etc. I do my job, I do my best there and stay late if they have work for me and when that’s over I indulge in my hobbies. It is a good life. I just wish my wife were here.

Shimmering like a penny out of reach in the subway grate

2007-10-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

"A camera, pool and a trampoline equals fun." - Jared

The first degree was a riot

What I do in California...the work segment

2007-10-01T21:40:00.001-07:00

"another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults"

So you might be wondering “What has Jeff been up to? How is his job? What does he do all night? Does he sleep anymore?” I’ll attempt to answer those questions now.

I am an intern at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. I work four shifts during the week. My shifts are 8 am to noon on Tuesday and Wednesday and 1 pm to 5 pm on Thursday and Friday. The aquarium consists of three main wings (Southern California and Baja, the Northern Pacific, and the Tropical Pacific.) and an outdoor portion consisting of Shark Lagoon and the Lorikeet Forest aviary. For this internship there is an intern assigned to each of the wings as well as an intern for shark lagoon. I have been tasked to the tropical Pacific portion.

Each day of the week I work I serve under one of the four different main aquarists who manage different sets of tanks that are all contained within the tropical wing. I spend my entire time back behind the scenes doing routine tank maintenance and animal care. Things like cleaning protein skimmers, changing filter bags, performing water changes, cleaning the insides of tanks and scraping algae, preparing food and feeding the animals, hydro-vacuuming tanks, and checking temperature gauges and observing animals to ensure health. I am still learning the more complicated portions of the job but everyone I work with has been really encouraging and helpful. They have even given me the opportunity to do a little bit of work in shark lagoon and suggested that I might be able to go with them the next time they go to the wholesaler to buy more fish for the aquarium. (The wholesale store is a vast warehouse filled with tanks of saltwater fish. It’s an aquarists toy store….I am so excited.) The job was stressful at first but as I have worked more into the habit of my activities I am feeling more comfortable. I like my job a lot. It’s great. The water quality testing and large scale maintenance (for the huge sand filters etc.) are farmed out to specialty portions of the aquarium staff. After I have learned more of the aquarist end of it I hope to be able to learn a little about their jobs. In my job I thankfully don’t have to deal with the public. Last week I ended up having to go into the public areas for a short time to observe a Bonnethead Shark to see if it was feeding. It went like this.

Visibly upset lady: “Are you a volunteer?”
Me: “Well, I’m an intern so not exactly...”
Lady interrupting: “Well you work here. Fine. I come here a lot and one of your seahorses over there is lying on its side. I think it’s sick.”
Me trying to talk to her and keep an eye on the shark: “Oh well thank you for telling me I’ll head over there in just one minute to check it out.”
Lady snorts in irritation and storms off.

That’s just one more reason why I am glad that I don’t work with the public on a regular basis. The sea horse was of course fine, when I got over there it was holding onto sea grass laying on the bottom looking around to see if there was anything interesting to eat.

On any given day it works like this:
1. Arrive and find the aquarist I am working with.
2. Change filter bags, clean protein skimmers
3. Prepare food and feed
4. Clean up after food prep
5. Hydro clean tanks, maybe algae scrub
Etc. etc.

Interesting things I have done at work:
1. Hand feeding Burrfish (a type of small puffer fish)
2. Standing in waders inside the Stinging Catfish tank to scrub algae
3. Feeding Stonefish
4. Helping move a sea turtle out of a tank so the vet could treat it.
5. Feeding Black Tip Reef Sharks and Zebra Sharks.

I'm tired, and that's never conducive to lucid writing

2007-09-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

I for a handful of weeks I will show up to work and stare across a wide bay, knowing that I have come closer to my dreams than anyone in high school would have ever given me credit for. I realized today that my life has been fairly unpredictable. So many people have predictable lives, ones that you can lay out in a long sequence of expected events long before the events actually come to pass. Many people seem to flow like water down the path of least resistance, making all their decisions by never actually making their own. It’s like that line from High Fidelity. “I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.” Making those decisions that aren’t really decisions as much as they are intellectual delaying actions. Caving to someone else’s idea of what you should want to do or think, simply because it is easier to adopt someone else’s view than to parse one out for yourself. Taking a job or staying in a career just because it’s stable rather than because it’s anything you care about. Putting off those tough decisions only to wake up one day and realize it’s already been decided by inaction and now it’s too damn late to do a thing about it. Not that I can claim any real ambition. I have to set a course or drift. This is my course; this internship, this degree, these jobs in field biology or aquatic husbandry. But I still coast more than I would care to admit. I don’t know where I am going with this so, to spare you any more of my rambling...

Go see High Fidelity, read the book or better yet do both.

Then fail to represent your life as you know it.

2007-09-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

"Is it the dream that one day you might be something you're not? Is it the dreams that make us real?"

"Even needs have needs, tiny giants made of tinier giants..."

I have an update. It’s long overdue.
I quit my job. I gave them three weeks notice so they could have an easier transition and my last working day was last Saturday. Letting them know of my impending exit went about as well as it could have. They offered me more money, part time work, and every other inducement they could think of to keep me on but I refused. And really, I think it would be dishonorable to fake quitting in an attempt to get a raise. If I felt that a raise was required I would have talked to them about it, not tried to manipulate circumstances. So needless to say, the Petco chapter is over. I liked the people I worked with. My complaints rested entirely with corporate and those customers who made life difficult. I quit my job with no sure next step. I am going to work on a Masters in Fishery Science out of OSU but hadn’t decided exactly which term I would start work on that.
This brings me to my next portion of the update. Just about the time I was nearing my last day I found out that I had been accepted for an internship at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. It’s a 15 week program that allows me to train directly under one of the head aquarists, and teaches me how to be an aquarist myself. According to them, it will set me up so that once it's done I will be prepared to be hired as an entry level aquarist at a major aquarium. It’s a good deal and I am excited about the program. So as I pen this bit of info I am sitting on a couch in LA where I will be for the next 15 weeks. I will be living with my old college roommate which is another bonus for me. Elaine and I were coming into LA on vacation anyway and so for the first two weeks of the internship I’ll have her around. After that I will regrettably be deprived of her company for some time. But what can I do? This truly is a rare opportunity and I would be a fool to pass it up.

All you folks in Oregon wondering if I have fallen off the map or something, in my defense…..I sort of have.

I'm not bad, the sorting hat just cast me that way

2007-08-14T14:53:00.001-07:00

They had a fake sorting hat at the place we got our new Harry Potter book. Guess which house I was? Fits don’t it? One Guess what Elaine’s was.

I am backlogged again on my blog. I have nearly 10 events, developed thoughts and general ideas that I had aimed to land on this page. But I didn’t take the time and now I am tired. So I’ll do it one sad little nugget at a time.
Action point 1. (This one has been sitting for about two weeks) Petco corporate has filed a grievance with my store. It seems, by their standards, too many people are coming into our store and buying singular items. This condemnable purpose in shopping has lead to the reinstatement of the dreaded “One More Item” policy. What everyone at the store is content to view as people just knowing what they want to buy before they arrive at the store, has a much more sinister appearance to the desk jockeys at corporate (What would a real desk jockey actually look like I wonder?). Because you know, we can’t have people just buying one item, its just unpatriotic!

Clerk: “Anything else for you today sir?”
Guy: “No just the soda.”
Clerk: “Well you know what goes good with a soda…….brine shrimp!”
Guy: “Uhhh…yeah, don’t have any pets, I just got thirsty.”
Clerk: “No pets?!! Well I’ve got just the thing!”
*A few minutes latter the clerk is trying his heart out to make the hamster he’s holding stop trying to bite him and look cute for the customer*
Guy: “Did that hamster just pee on you?”
Clerk: “ummmm…no….not at all…..he just...ummm yeah he did. Normally they don’t do this...”
Guy: “Sure look, I’ve got some friends coming over later so I gotta skate.”

So on top of pressuring us to try to sell people more stuff, they have required each employee to have an item they personally recommend. You will all be pleased to know I tackled this new challenge with the “oh I’ll give a hand... course the only part I’m offering is my middle finger” attitude you can expect from me.
So then my personal product recommendation is……drum roll please… Otocinclus sp.!!

There are two main reasons:
1. It benefits the customer.
It is a peaceful freshwater community fish that stays around 2 inches full grown and eats brown and green algae very effectively. The small size, voracious appetite, and peaceful temperament make them a good addition to any size freshwater community tank. Most of our customers have tanks 20 gallons or smaller and need something to eat algae but really do not have tanks big enough for most species of Plecostomus they are likely to find. Also this fish is inexpensive, which is always a plus.

2. It gives corporate the finger.
The company is trying to push the sale of the plecostomus, so my personal recommendation directly contradicts the company recommendation. The fish I recommend is the least expensive algae eater we carry. And finally we don’t even have it in the store half the time, so I end up sending people to one of the local tropical fish specialty stores. Now this isn’t me just being vindictive against a soulless corporation, though that’s part of it. The customer who has a small tank usually has community fish, which rules out Chinese Algae Eaters and Plecos, leaving the only obvious solution... the Ottocinclus. I simply refuse to sell the Pleco just to make the company an extra buck but leaving the customer with a fish that won’t even be able to move around in their tank in a year’s time.

The other criminally stupid stipulation corporate gave was that our item had to be recommended to each customer we served. Muse on that for a minute, ponder what that would require, and shake your head in disdain. Most people have a dog or a fish; few have one of every animal we carry in the store. Almost everybody else chose dog items. How are you going to sell that to the guy with the reef tank? “Pardon me sir, but could I interest your sea anemone with a marrow bone?” In closing I will share one of my coworkers reactions to the whole bit.

Clerk: “What’s this thing?”
*gesturing towards the signup sheet*
Manager: “Personal product recommendation, corporate wants each employee to have one.”
Clerk: “You’re kidding. No wait…you’re serious?”
Manager: “Yeah you have to pick something.”
Clerk: “Oh oh can I pick anything!! I want to pick the most random item I can.”
Manager: “Well it has to be something you recommend to every customer.”
*looking tired, because after all it’s not something he wants to do either*
Clerk: “To everybody!? But that’s impossible….oh wait….ok I know what I want to recommend. It’s perfect. I recommend a diet Coke; it’s refreshing and has less sugar than regular coke.”
*manger just gives her a helpless and completely pained look*
Clerk: “Oh alright I’ll think of something good. Don’t worry don’t worry.”

As my last act of consciousness in this post before I release it to sleep in the folder with its brothers I make this request - Watch the music video for the Modest Mouse song "Dashboard", it’s about fishes and technology and old men in bars….I was amused.

You know I could still try to answer it for you.

2007-08-02T14:52:00.001-07:00

A girl I know and deeply respect captioned a picture of hers “I should know who I am by now.” It got me thinking.
Really who the hell are any of us? I don’t think it’s a question we will ever be able to answer satisfactorily. I don’t know myself and I think most people haven’t even taken the time to be introspective to pose the question much less seek an answer for it. I don’t know who I am, I have general ideas of my characteristics and I find them disappointing but I don’t know who I am. I imagine she was saying something similar. That feeling you get some days as you stare out the window and try to figure out what the hell your doing with your life, are you living it well, what does it mean to live your life well. The questions of who am I and what am I doing have always been tied for me.

This girl posted the caption and people responded, I mean droves of people; she’s that type of girl. We pass through this life leaving a trail like a ships wake, some are larger than others. The replies all attempted to assure her that they knew who she was. I don’t think it’s accurate, even the people we know the best are on some levels strangers. My wife who often feels like an extension of myself is still to some degree unknown by me. If I were to answer this girl it would only be me showing her the version of herself that I perceive. We all have versions of those we know, they are not the same versions that others who know them have and may not even be accurate. We can’t answer these questions for ourselves and its no surprise we can’t answer them for anyone else.

My typical morning

2007-08-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

I wake up, it’s around 8. I used to sleep in, but with my work schedule I have become more jealous of my time. I have begun to view everything in terms of time. Sitting here staring into the mirror thinking that each dollar I spend represents a portion of my life bartered. If I had more money I think it wouldn’t be so clearly defined as such. But in a handful of hours I will trade a small but significant portion of my life for a few bucks. Each soda I buy for a dollar fifty represents twenty minutes of my life given away, makes that slurpee all the more precious doesn’t it. But even as I am stumbling into the bathroom I know my wife would decry such a suggestion as the worst kind of melodrama. It’s a vice. Melancholy, melodrama, and apathy are the vices that characterize my life. Turn on the shower and step in, steam rising across the window pane, today will be a scorcher. I wonder why Oregon is associated with rain. It’s as if all the travel reporters came out for the winter under some delusion that they’d get a white Christmas. They came out and Christmas morning came grey and wet with a metrological depressiveness on usually associates with Britain and then they went home to condemn the state as a land of rain. I don’t think they ever saw the summer here. The summer was when I always felt the most alive; windows down, music loud. I just try to let me mind go blank as the water washes over my shoulders. The water is unreasonably hot; I turn the temperature up to the point just before it would start to hurt. For some reason I am thinking about travel reporters and Christmas again. I understand why it can be a let down. Let’s face it our perceptions of Christmas are shaped by TV and movies and Dickens novels. But here we are in a fragmented society celebrating our holidays alone or with people we don’t even know. Even our family members orbit around each other without even really touching. When we were kids we made lists and expected less. But now we are adults and the only things left to care about are people. We placed all our faith in the commercialism and glitz and we grew up without ever giving the underlying religious significance of the holiday its due and now we can’t feel a thing. I am out of the shower and toweling off and I can’t help but think of my dad. Talk about orbiting bodies with no overlap. Neither of us was ever much for self-expression. I learned from his stoicism and now we both can’t speak. When I have a child I want him to be the first to hold my child outside of myself and my wife, I was never good with words but symbolism…now that’s easy. I put on my crappy khakis that go back to freshman year of high school, vintage 1996. Getting dressed in as much of a rush as I can, work is coming on fast. I still need to make a lunch and get over to the library to look for jobs and blog. In the kitchen and there is nothing easy to make. I am such a bachelor when it comes to making myself food; what’s here, what’s easy, what can I make with the least amount of effort. Awhile back we had the Baileys staying with us Jared and I were at my place alone responsible for our own lunch. It went like this.

Bryon walks in the front door and sniffs the air.
Bryon: “hmm…burnt grilled cheese right?”
Me and Jared look at each other in surprise
Bryon: “Batching it today eh?”
Jeff: “Yeah, how did you know what we made?”
Bryon: “I lived alone for awhile. I recognize the smell.”

I am out the door and as I walk down to my car I already feel whatever blogs I have composed evaporating. It like the counting crows said:

“She said "everybody loves you,"
She says, "everybody cares"
But all the things I keep inside myself
They vanish in the air”

Why did I make this blog anyway?

Come break me down. Bury me, Bury me

2007-07-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

Does it bother anyone else when a company does a donations drive that runs some thing like this? "Beaverton Cycles will donate 5,000 dollars to a wonderful charity just as soon as we sell fifteen motorcycles!!" My company Petco does the same sort of thing. Oh yeah they donate money but most of the donations come from customer generosity rather than out of corporate income. It just seems to me that if these people really had any interest in actual donating they would just give the money. The new trend is profit motivated giving. I suppose since profit margins drive almost all decisions in this world I shouldn’t be terribly surprised. But these companies act merely as middle men moving money from the consumer to a charity only if their cut is large enough. Not to say that Petco or other companies don't do some good things but it comes across as merely a means to increase their own status and secure more profits. If they care enough to give, they should give from their profits, and give without trying to use their donations as a pedestal to elevate themselves.
Yes profit motivates everything in this culture, even relationships. I mean think about it, the frequency of divorce can be used as an example. Though the single greatest cause is most likely unchecked selfishness another common one would be people who enter marriage in the belief that it will make them happy, provide some emotional of security benefits. And in a healthy marriage it will, but you can't expect your marriage to succeed if you are in it for your own edification. Someday your pursuit of your own benefit will cause a collapse (which in our modern climate means divorce). You have to come to a marriage as you should come to a charity, you give freely of yourself without looking for a way to profit yourself. Seek first the benefit of others and your life will afford you more pleasures than any other path, but do it for those around you. It will be hard and therefore worth doing. We all want to live and die with honor and this is how.

I can't respect the current corporate giving structure. It surprises me that so many people don’t see through it.

2007-07-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I am adopted. I generally never speak of it and it hasn’t been particularly important in my life. I am not one of those people who obsess about the situation. The only thing being adopted has left me with is a feeling of mild debt. I often feel like I owe the girl who decided first to give birth to me and then to put me up for adoption a thank you. The only thing I know about her was she was 16ish, unmarried, lived in Portland and kept me for a week before giving me up. I have known some complete idiots who resent their birth mother. How stupid is that, she realized she couldn’t provide any good outs for me so instead of dooming us both or killing me she gave me the best possible chance for some sort of success. At any rate that’s all I know about her. I have come to a point where I just wish there was a way that I could let her know that I appreciate not being killed, and give her a very brief account of myself. I wish I had a name and picture or something about her. I don’t want to really have a second family; I don’t even really want to do anything more than just a brief interaction. But there it is. I have no way of doing any of this of course and I suppose it isn’t so bad as I don’t want the complications of having to treat anyone else as family.
The only reason I bring this up is that a few days ago while doing some mercenary birthday shopping for a friend at borders something odd happened.

I was in the CD section cruising along and this guy who worked there glanced over and saw me and acted like he recognized me. Not a “he looks familiar” reaction but a full “it’s my favorite cousin I haven’t seen in years” look. So he comes over and says that I look exactly like a friend of his he used to know in Illinois. In fact I had a striking resemblance according to him to the gentleman in questions whole family. He tells me the guys name is Brandon and asks if I have family in Illinois. I still recovering say that I don’t know if I do. And he mentions that the family has ties in Chicago and do I have relatives there which of course I don’t know. I mean this guy is near convinced that I must be related to the family and after a few minutes of conversation he shakes my hand and walks away bemused at my similarity in appearance to Brandon.

Do I have blood relatives in Illinois? Do I have a brother, a clone, or possible a visible match in a man named Brandon? Could there be some town in another state over-run with Jeff look a likes? Is the lady who birthed my still alive and did she pass through Chicago?
I have no clue.
Coincidence, design, or simply a guy who wasn’t that good with faces making an error.
That is the weirdest thing for me about being adopted.

2007-07-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

We're the kids who feel like dead ends

We're the kids you used to love

But then we grew old

We're the lifers here till the bitter end
Condemned from the start

Just don't ask me what I think, trust me you don't wanna know.

2007-06-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

“Everyone's a building burning
with no one to put the fire out.
Standing at the window looking out,
waiting for time to burn us down.”

“I've never felt so hollow.
I'm an old abandoned church with broken pews and empty aisles.”

It’s easier to make light of a horrible thing and make it a joke than be completely forward with it, its how I’ve dealt with things most of my life. I am not good with emotions, dealing with them, mine or anyone else’s. A lot of that is a result of personality and my childhood, both of which are both joined anyway. That then pertains directly to my blog. I have taken the little points of my days at work and written them as humor, making light of things. You all know that I don’t like my job. But I have been depressed for weeks now. It’s been one of those black moments where I couldn’t even find the words to explain it, so I stopped blogging. I keep having these “what the hell am I doing with my life?” moments. I have no real plans and no real goals. When I was young I remember standing in the parking lot of the Hatfield Marine Science Center building and thinking some day I want to work here. And I did, for a summer. And the transition from coming close the achieving something to working a job that feels like a form intellectual prostitution has been harder these last weeks than it has before. (I call it a form of prostitution only because I am selling my life, my time, and my hobbies for a few bucks every two weeks.) I almost want to sign back up with ODFW and head back to the coast in June but I wont. And yes I know that at least I have a job etc. etc. but it consumes almost all my time and even then I am barley providing. To everything there is a positive side and a negative side and I have always been a pessimist. I am just lonely in this town that was my home feeling like a complete and predictable failure. So maybe I’ll start aiming for a masters, but after that what then? I am just setting the course at random. In those few moments when I talk to people about fish, the ocean, or any of the worlds I have created in my mind, or aquarium design I feel like I am waking up from a deep sleep. What the hell am I doing? There is no one in this town I can talk to except my wife. Damn do I miss California sometimes.

A comic for all y'all.

2007-05-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

Jeff, The Drunk Guy, and the Ferrets

2007-05-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

If this job has taught me nothing else it has taught me this: drunken men love ferrets. Maybe it’s the animal’s quick and erratic movements. Maybe it’s the fur. Maybe it’s the cuteness. Whatever it is when some guy comes into the store drunk there is only one thing they have eyes for, the ferrets. They want to hold them and be near them. And we, being responsible, busy ourselves elsewhere and begin a waiting game, us vs. the drunk with the ferrets riding in the balance. I could write a very dull and plot less book out of all the drunk-to-ferret interactions at the store. But to you I submit my personal favorite:

Drunk Guy: “That’s an albino ferret.”
Me: “Yeah, yeah it is.”
DG: “You have albino ferrets?”
Me: “Uhhh Yeah, two of them actually.” Thinking *Like the one you just pointed at?*
DG: “That’s just cruel.”
Me: “Pardon?”
DG: “Albino ferrets, its cruel. They can’t walk, they can’t run or jump, its cruel.”
*Albino ferrets run around cage tackle a cinnamon colored one and take a flying leap at a hammock*
Me: “They seem to be able to run ok.” *I briefly consider trying to explain that an albino simply lacks pigment in skin and hair and then moving on to the genetics of it. Then, realizing that it would be an exercise in futility, I let it go.*
DG: *Looks at me with blurry disbelief* “They got pink eyes. The light hurts their poor little eyes.”
Me: “Well actually…”
DG: “They can’t see. They are helpless creatures.”
*The albino ferret stands on its haunches and looks at us both and then pins the cinnamon colored ferret.*
Me: “Our albino ferrets do just fine.” Thinking *Just look at the damn ferret! It could tackle a fricking Wildebeest skin pigment or not!*
DG: “Who would do that to an animal?”
Me: “You can get almost anything albino these days.”
DG: “Well I’ve never seen an albino woman.”
Me: *Touché* “Well….they exist, I assure you.”
The drunk guy shoots me one final look of blurry doubt and the puts out his hand. I figure if shaking this guys hand will help him move along so be it. I take it and give it a quick shake and then apparently the conversation is over. Out into the night goes the drunk leaving only the lingering scent of cheap wine.

Another time this drunk came in and he kept asking the same three questions:
"Where are ferrets from?"
"They are basically mice but they have cat feet how weird is that?" (After my third attempt to explain that ferrets aren’t rodents I gave up.)
"What do they eat?"
And he would ask them in sequence with no memory that I had just answered them. At some point I wanted to finish his sentences for him.
DG: “They are basically...”
Me interrupting: “…mice but have cat feet how weird is that. JINX, now you have to leave the store.”

Jeff makes more enemies.

2007-05-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

A couple comes up to the register with a coupon.
Guy: “I can’t find this item the….uh *consulting the coupon* mini-deluxe habitat. Where is it?”
Me: “It’s either over there on isle 1 by the window or on the rack by the tank.”
*The guy nods and plods off in search of his mini-deluxe habitat.*
Girl: “Why don’t you actually go and help him find it?” *said in the snottiest ‘you’re and idiot’ tone I have ever heard*
* So I walk over and find the item*
Me: “Here it is sir.”
Guy: “That’s not it.”
Me: *pointing to the tag that says mini-deluxe habitat* “The mini-deluxe habitat? I believe it is.”
Guy: “The sku on the coupon isn’t that same. That’s not it.”
Me: “That’s the coupon sku; it’s not the same as the item sku.”
Guy: *with agitation* “The numbers different, and the coupon one is for a kit” *he points at the picture on the coupon which shows the habitat with a Betta and a plant in it.*
Me: “It’s not a kit. They just did that to give people ideas about what they could use it for.”
Guy: *now looking at me like he wants to flay me alive* “Then why did they make it look like a kit in the picture”
Me: “Because it’s a pathetically small plastic cage and that’s the only way they could make it look half-way decent. There are other things you could use the coupon for.”
*at this point the girl comes around the corner*
Girl: *looking at me with anger and distrust* “What’s going on?”
Guy: “He is trying to tell me that this is the cage and it’s not a kit.”
Girl: “Well we can always go to another Petco.” *and then directs a glare at me so I know that she finds me repulsively incompetent*
Me: “Feel free to but the cage will be the same there.”
Guy: “Well can I credit the coupon towards a kit?”
Me: “Can you use it towards another aquarium?” *caught off guard by the request*
Guy: “Yeah can I use it to get what you’re calling the mini-deluxe habitat and then return it and use the credit towards a kit and then pay the difference.”
Me: *thinking* “The mini habitat if returned would get you zero dollars in exchange!! What kind of madness is this?! Sure sir, here’s a blank gift card with the credit of your return the balance is at zero.”
But what I said was:
“No, I am sorry but the coupon is for that tank, it is what it is.”
Guy: “Ok, can you get me a manager.” *cold rage folks*
Girl: “Yeah, seriously.”

Now for all those out there wondering what a Deluxe-Mini Habitat is I present to you, the object of the couples desire and reason for wanting me dead, the Mini-Deluxe Habitat.

I told you it was a piece of crap.

Jeff Makes an Enemy

2007-05-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

So awhile back a guy came in to the store wanting to make a return and on that day I made a mortal enemy. So this guy walks up to the desk lays down a receipt and says that he wants to return a hamster cage as a corner was broken when he bought it. Then came the madness. Yeah, believe it or not he didn’t have the broken cage with him. He wanted me to give him a new cage and trust him to bring back the broken one latter after he had moved the hamster to its new home. After I patiently explained that I couldn’t trade the nothing he brought for a new cage (and mind you he was PISSED) he said that all he wanted was a replacement bottom to the cage and I said sure we can do that but I would need the broken piece to do the trade. He seemed mollified and so I went back to helping another customer. Only then he came back up to the front and told my co-worker that I had said that we would let him leave the store with a new cage bottom. So I turned around and had to explain yet again that we couldn’t make the trade. He stormed and raged and threatened to return the cage, the hamster, and everything hamster related he owned. He threatened to take his business elsewhere. Which I always think is funny that the worst customers do that. Do they really think we would care? We have been dreaming of that day since the first time they bitched about waiting in line for 24 seconds. At any rate he threw a tantrum all about how he bought the cage in good faith and we betrayed him and how I was an idiot etc. etc. The whole time the only thing I said was “I am sorry you feel that way. But surly you have to recognize my position, I want to help but my hands are tied.” Yeah he didn’t recognize my position. The only nice part was the people I had been helping whispered to my co-worker during his tirade “Do you want us to explain to this idiot that you could lose your job for doing what he’s asking?”
Ha, Vindication!

Return of the hamster guy
So four days latter I am at work. Which is the story of my life right now, but no matter. I was working in the back and when I came back to the front all my co-workers said:
Coworker: “This guy came in and he hated you. What did you do?”
Me: “I’ve only been on duty a half-hour. I have no idea. What did he want?”
Coworker: “He returned a hamster cage that had a tiny little crack in one corner.”
Me: “Ohhhhhh right, the hamster guy.”
Coworker: “Yeah, he said he wanted to talk to a manager and that he wanted to return his hamster and then he changed his mind because he liked his hamster. When I asked why he mentioned it he said that there was some little, pimple faced, 18 year old manager who wouldn’t help him. He said that the hamster was peeing out of the crack onto his furniture.”
Me: “Good for the hamster I hope it ruins his entire sofa set.”

blogs frozen in time

2007-05-01T16:50:00.001-07:00

I have been busy. My blog reflects this. I have not been busy doing anything important or anything fun really. I just work; sometimes it feels like it’s all I do. So today I have a brief moment to take the time to write an update and here I sit in some library realizing that it is very hard to write in libraries. Between the screaming kids running up and down the stairs and the fact that I am sitting shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers I feel my writing impulse curbed. This is the sort of environment that leads to updates like “Things here are good…Tonight I am going to eat cheesecake…I recently bowled.” It's all very dull. Not to say that this isn’t. My blog until I posted today had stopped moving forward. It had become not a present description of my life but a relic. I have run across other blogs that stop at some point and stay that way. A blog that saw its last post in 1998 is a monument to a dead man even if they are still alive in 2007.

pin your wings down

2007-03-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

And when I fell asleep it plagued my dreams,
And 30 bits of glass had become my teeth

they were breaking each and each and every time I tried to speak…

I was thinking about the common complaint in marriages “we don’t talk like we used to”. In most cases the party complaining has the dating relationship as a reference and comparison for the marriage relationship. I even remember feeling a little worried that Elaine and I had less in the way of conversation after getting married. The thing that I have realized though is that there simply is less to say. When you get to know someone pre-marriage you progress through a slow sharing of all the stories that you feel define you as a person and the conceptions you have about life. (That is if you don’t rush it.) By the time Elaine and I got married she either knew or had been around for almost all of the stories that serve as both definition of who I am and what I believe. There was no need to establish those again. She doesn’t need to ask what I think about most issues as she could just as easily as I could state my position. There can be a lack of communication in marriages and when I refer to less talking that is not what I refer to. I still tell Elaine about what is currently going on with me both internally and externally and that is important. We just don’t sit up talking for hours like we did when we were dating. I think in some relationships that change ends up being a needless and somewhat stupid source of rancor. Relationships are fluid and are always in motion it is foolish to expect a relationship to always operate the same way.
I say all this as a backdrop because Elaine and I had a good talk a couple nights ago. I told her how I wanted to just get away from here for awhile. Take a slow drive down to LA with my friends from up here and then once in LA stay with my friends down there until I felt like it was ok to head back North again. She listened and then simply pointed out that I am discontented with my life as it stands. I just think it’s cool that she can acknowledge my discontent and not take it as any reflection on herself. It somehow makes it a little better.

Every few days I look at I-5 south and debate just saying to hell with it and making the drive. It reminds me driving to school with my sister in high school. Every few days I would ask her if she would be down with just ditching school and going to the coast instead. She would always respond by pointing out that it didn’t matter as I would just drive straight to school anyway. I wish I would have in retrospect, sure I would have gotten us both a detention and caught hell from my folks, and I can’t help but feel like it would have been worth it.

I have always noted the times in my life that were the most enjoyable and seemingly worthwhile were the time that had the greatest freedom and the least responsibility.

A day in the life of a Petco employee

2007-03-13T13:21:00.001-07:00

This couple comes into aquatics and says they want some fish. So I say ok which ones you want. They walk over to a tank that has Marble Platys and Sunset Platys. Below the tank are two huge placards with the fish’s names and pictures. Now as you would guess the Sunset Platys are red and orange and the Marble Platys are white and black. So they say that they want a Marble Platy and I point to the picture and say “ok, so one of these then.” I capture the fish and when they walk back over they take one look at it and say “Oh no, not that one. It’s not orange.” Just brilliant, eh? After that the following occurred.

Man: “Oh and we want two of these.” *Gesturing vaguely at a tank holding Neon Tetra’s and Ghost Shrimp*
Me: “Ok, so do you want two Neon Tetras or two Ghost shrimp?”
Man: “Oh I don’t know which it is. I should ask my wife” *glancing around for his wife who was wandered off*
Me: “Ok so is it one of these?” *pointing to a sign under the tank that says Neon Tetra in big letters with a picture of the fish next to it*
Man: “I don’t know. I want two of the things with blue and red on them.”
Me: “Neon Tetras then, let me get those for you.”
-What I was thinking but didn’t say-
“Good lord man! Can’t you tell the difference between a shrimp and a fish?!! One is a flipping crustacean and the other has flipping fins!!! And what type of ghost anything is decked out in bright red and blue!!?? And why can’t you see the signs, are you picture illiterate?!! How do you have a fish tank, when you seem to be fuzzy on what a fish is to begin with??!!”

Ok and customer conversation number two.

Lady: “Excuse me, where is the Chinchilla food?”
Me: “Oh, its right over here. Let me show you.”
Lady: *Looks at the picture of a chinchilla on the food package* “That’s not what I have.”
Me: *thinking to myself “fan-fricking-tabulous”*
Lady: “What’s that thing right there?” *pointing to the picture of a Gerbil*
Me: “That is a Gerbil.”
Lady: “Yeah, that’s what I have.”
Me: “Well in that case the food is right over here. Can I print you off a care sheet for Gerbils as some extra material for you?”
Lady: “No thanks, if they are anything like Hamsters I know exactly how to take care of them.”
- What I left thinking but not saying-
Ok, I’ve got an hour left on my shift and I am really tired so good luck with your pet Hambil. I could get you a care sheet or perhaps a small animal identification field guide but you seem to have it covered so carry on.

Just let me run where I want to run

2007-03-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

At work yesterday two girls came into the store. They were around Elaine’s and or my age. I was at the register but my co-worker overheard them talking about me. They asked him to go to happy hour with them. I was not invited. Here is what they had to say about me.
They referred to me as the “all-American guy” and said that they thought I looked like I was 12.
Now any ladies out there what the hell does the idiom “all American guy” even mean?
I take it to be somewhat derogatory. It seems to me that it more or less says that I fit a stereotypical image, one that they had no interest in. After all when they came to the register they didn’t talk to me more than what was required to purchase their items. Furthermore in the present political climate, any thing all-American is generally regarded fairly poorly.
Elaine said that it probably meant that I was “attractive in a common way, lacking any distinguishing or memorable features” and thus replaceable.
I have always been replaceable and was the guy who the girls never noticed, and usually when girls were asking the guys with me to go places with them I was left out. That to say this situation is normal. I told Elaine about it and she pointed out that what would it have mattered if they asked me out to happy hour anyway. I agree I would have said that I was married and that would have been the end of it, but we all want to feel attractive.

I think that guys need to feel attractive just as much as girls do; they just gain that feeling in different ways. For Elaine that fact that I think she is gorgeous is completely enough to fill her need to be beautiful. For me the fact that she thinks I am good looking is enough to make me content. But for me, and I would argue for many men, that a portion of feeling attractive is having the spousal opinion confirmed by outside sources. I don’t dress to impress anyone else and I don’t flirt or anything of that nature with anyone but my wife, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be attractive enough to be noticed by others. The thing about that feeling is it’s hard to explain to your wife without her feeling like you want the attention of other women. See it sounds paradoxical but there is a difference between attention and acknowledgement. I am happily married and love my wife and I don’t want other women trying to focus attention on me, it would just be nice to know that others find me attractive.
The reason I put so much detail into this was just that it’s hard to explain and this is the sort of conversation bull that will trample you straight to death. Caution is required.

I don’t know. For the guys reading this, was I somewhat accurate?

Oh and this is the second time a woman has believed me to be around 12 or 13.

Ladies and gentleman, submitted for your approval, a all-American guy having a all-American Christmas with his all-American family…in an all-American apron.

Work faster with templates!!

2007-03-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

A moment of silence please, my external hard drive has died again, taking with it to the grave all my music.
In the hopes of a resurrection I turn to a file recovery service. Pray for the redemption of my music collection.

It sucks but I am ok. I am not that attached to anything I own. This mostly hurts because it is the one thing I own that I invested time and effort into. I spent one full summer loading all my music and another month recovery and backing up the files when my MP3 player went down the first time and now the external hard drive with the back ups gave me the finger. *sigh*

Cause honey it's over

2007-03-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

Since the time I got married and got my first apartment, Elaine and I have had people living with us off and on. Greg for a little while, one of the couples in our Bible study, Elaine's parents. This summer we are taking on two new boarders, my sister Joy and Jared’s girlfriend Megan. The first thing people ask us when we tell them is, “Won’t that be hard?” I actually like having people around like that. Yeah it’s somewhat limiting and yeah, it adds complications. But there is something to be said for living in community (I would like to modify that by saying living in a community of your choosing). It wouldn’t be fun to have someone live with you that you dislike or don’t know. Maybe it’s an attempt to re-create college because I liked it so much. I really don’t know. My abilities along the lines of introspection are not as developed as I had hoped.
We all know how isolated our society is. It’s unavoidable and I do nothing to change my own role in the extending isolation. I just think its interesting how, to most people, the idea of having other people live in your house is so foreign and unthinkable. We go to our jobs where we have work “friends” and then drive home to our neighborhoods where we don’t know the neighbors. I think the idea of an existential connection between all people is somewhat funny. I think we have all felt it at one time or another, standing a large crowd and instinctually feeling the way the choices made by one affect all to some degree. The feeling that we can understand each other's pains because we all have felt similarly. (The mood is encapsulated by the song Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run and the associated music video). That said though, I think that view is merely looking at things to widely. Sure there is a brotherhood of men, but nobody in that crowd you are viewing knows you and would never notice that you were gone, nor care. Thus we are as individuals fundamentally alone. These two concepts, the brotherhood of man and the isolation of the individual, are really just looking at the same thing on different levels.
Besides the fact that I like having people live with us, sharing what I have is a ministry for me. It’s my way to help people where I can. A lot of people I know feel the need to go downtown to give the homeless food, and that and if they don’t do things of that nature, they don’t feel like they are serving others. I think we all are presented daily with the opportunity to serve others, and I really don’t think the relative depth of someone’s need makes the giving more or less valuable. Besides, the thing that gets me is what could I possibly offer the homeless guy downtown? A sandwich maybe. What good is that long term? I helped him for a couple hours and the need is still there. It just seems that a lot of people’s needs are out of proportion to my limited ability to give. I am not good with people, with words, or with thinking on my feet and I never have been. Let’s put it this way, I try to be as honest as I can and I am logical to a fault, a lot of questions that would be matter of course to most, become linguistic nooses to me.

A "I know you. But how?" moment

2007-03-06T14:46:00.001-08:00

My wife’s stepfather’s mom has moved with his sister to Oregon. The situation there is…complicated. But since that's not the point of my blog we will let that particular dog lie. The point being, I went with my wife and her parents to the airport to pick them up when they arrived from Florida. I was standing at the baggage claim when I saw this young woman who looked really familiar. Not “I think I stood in line behind you at subway last Thursday” familiar; more of the “You dated my best friend and we went to your house to give you root beer on your birthday” familiar. So it just started to drive me nuts. She was with what I assumed to be her boyfriend. Well, it was an assumption I revised when she hoisted a daughter I hadn’t seen onto her shoulders. I mean I was standing there shifting my weight thinking something like “Crystal Jordon, I swear its Crystal Jordon…either that or someone who went to Biola. But which is it?!! By all the gods the Greeks ever invented which is it!!!???” I very much wanted to grab her by the shoulders and say.
“Are you, in fact, Crystal Jordon?! No…ok. Ever go to Biola? No? Ok, good deal. Sorry, didn't mean to scare you.” And then I could let go a big sigh of relief and go about my day.
There are three reasons I didn’t:

1. Grabbing a girl by the shoulders and blurting out questions at airports gets you out of airports via law enforcement officers.

2. What was I going to say if it was Crystal Jordon? Fancy that introduction to the husband. “Yeah, my names Jeff. Your wife was my best friend's ex. We hung out a couple times and made out in her drive way for an hour once. I was so late for my curfew” *Chuckle* “Good times, good times.”

3. What would I say if she did go to Biola? “Oh ok so you did. Yeah I did too. I don’t think we ever actually met. So maybe we should just, you know, not upset the raft by changing course now eh?

Yeah but man, those moments can be intense when you just want to know something that bad.

upping the anty

2007-02-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

So a couple days ago at work I got a call, one I was sure had to be a joke. I thought that the person on the other end was putting me on and since it was the end of the day and I was tired. I got a little miffed and thought, “Oh, you want to make up crap eh? 'Cause I can bullshit 'till the Cascades erode down to hills. You want to dance, lets @#$$%## dance!” Needless to say she eventually hung up on me and my coworker claims I lost us a customer, but I feel justified. Here is a transcript of the conversation, submitted for your approval.

Me: “Tigard Petco this is Jeff. How can I help you?”
Her: “What pet would be good for *remainder muffled*”
Me: “I am sorry? What pet would be good for what?”
Her: *aggravated sigh* “I said what pet would be good for a little *remainder muffled*”
Me: “Ok, well how much space do you have for the pet?”
Her: “I want to keep it in my son’s room”
Me: “In that case I would suggest a rat or a teddy bear hamster. Rats are intelligent and if you get them young, they become very friendly. Hamsters each have their own personalities so they aren’t as sure a bet.”
Her: “Do they bite hard?”
Me: “Well, I suppose they could. They don’t bite that often and rarely all that hard.”
Her: “Because I want to get a pet that bites hard so I can use it to punish my son. Like when he’s bad throw it on him or make it bite his fingers or something.”
Me: “um………………………….that’s not good. We really don’t give pets for that...”
Her: “I just want to know. So would a rat bite harder or…?”
Me: *having had enough* “Well yeah they bite pretty hard. We also have scorpions which can sting and it hurts like the devil. We have tarantulas too but I doubt they would be aggressive enough for your tastes.”
Her: “So do the scorpions always sting?”
Me: “If you irritate them enough I am sure they will. We also have lionfish; of course they are harder to take care of.”
Her: *sounding irate* “I am not special &*@#@ Ed. I know how to take care of fish. Do they hurt?”
Me: “Yeah it would be like having your hand skinned while conscious, but they are expensive.”
Her: “How much do they cost?”
Me: “Oh ...like 150, 200 something like that.”
Her: “So how much do they cost?!”
Me: “Well, the thing is, Lionfish are worth their weight in gold...”
Her: *interrupting* “Worth their weight in gold? But how much…”
Me: “Precisely. The thing is though, the prices change every half hour. It really depends who is on shift. We once thought about standardizing our pricing but we had been drinking and…
*she hangs up*

Final score:
The Eckmann 1
The crazy lady 0

The thing that kind of scares me though... what if she was serious? *shudder*

Where do you go when you're lonley...

2007-02-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

Sit around, dream away the place I’m from

Used to feel so much, now I just feel numb

I could go out tonight, but I ain’t sure what for

Call a friend or two I don’t know anymore

Sit and listen to the rain

Gonna ride down to the river where it runs

Gonna watch TV and pray for decent reruns

Sit around and dream away what I’ve become

Used to feel so much, now I just feel dumb

Sit and listen to the rain

I’ll never understand this emptiness

I’ll never really try and understand, I guess

I’ll never understand this emptiness

I’ll never really try and understand,

Try and understand, I guess

Following this stream of conciousness all the way to the ocean.

2007-02-20T12:47:00.000-08:00

Occasionally when I am closing out registers at work I find some really cool coins. Yesterday I found a penny from 1947. Granted pennies of that era are still fairly common it was still interesting. I mean that penny was minted shortly after World War II and has been slowly wandering the country since then.
By far the coolest thing I found was a nickel from 1887. This coin was minted just 22 years after General Lee surrendered his forces at the Appomattox Court House. The coin had been in circulation for about 120 years. It was in pretty bad shape and so couldn’t really be sold but that is irrelevant. Just to hold the thing and feel the weight of the history behind it, wondering where it has traveled and who has had it. One of the guys I work with is a coin collector and so he swapped out that nickel for a new one out of his own pocket so he could keep it safe and display it. He asked me if I wanted it and I said no at the time, deciding that he could be better entrusted with it since that was his hobby, but a part of me wishes I had kept it.
Things that old in this part of the country end up in museums, and so I was shocked to find it in a cash register at work.

Thinking back to the time I went to England though puts the age of the coin in some perspective. We were at Newgrange and while inside the structure I noticed graffiti cut into the walls and just as I was mentally cursing the idiots who did it I realized all the graffiti was pre-1820. Yeah our stuff is brand new by comparison.

Newgrange

Originally built between c.3300-2900BC according to Carbon 14 dates (Grogan 1991), it is more than 500 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and predates Stonehenge trilithons by about 1,000 years (although the earliest stages of Stonehenge are roughly contemporary with Newgrange). It lay lost for over 4,000 years due to mound slippage, until the late 17th century, when men looking for building stone uncovered it, and described it as a cave.

Mortal Wombat!!

2007-02-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

I was selected for jury duty. That is what’s going on with me. I am sure that you will all think I am crazy but I was actually interested in doing it. I can’t though, several reasons for that, 1. I can’t afford to miss four days of work and 2. The boss said that they can’t spare me right now and they need me at the store.
I am disappointed because I have never had jury duty before and it would be a new experience, not to mention four days off with nothing to do but read novels, play world of warcraft, and relax. I don’t feel any calling of civic duty to perform jury duty nor do I feel like it would be a meaningful participation in local government, it would just be something new and interesting. *Sigh* oh well.

Elaine thought that I wanted to go just to play hell with the system. (I gave her that impression due to our first conversation about jury duty.)
I mentioned passing notes to the other jurors during the court session. Things like; “I don’t think that color tie really goes well with the lawyer’s skin tone. Wouldn’t you agree juror number….whatever” or maybe something more simplistic like “That guys an ass.” Or maybe I could slip the bailiff a note asking when lunch is.

Probably the most fun thing to do if you truly didn’t care would be to totally BS the questions you get asked when they decide whether they want you or not.

Interviewer; “What is your opinion of robbery at knife point.”
Me. “Well I personally think its lame. I mean the knife, seriously overdone; it’s just not scary anymore. See, when I knock over an ATM I use something original, something scary. I have this trained attack wombat, and yeah at first they don’t respond appropriately, but when that little guy latches on to their calf…well, I get paid. And then I buy the little guy a wombat treat.”

So sleep tight little boys of the new damned.

2007-02-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

In Honor of Valentines Day

"Sleepwalker"

“Maybe I could be the one they adore

That could be my reputation

It's where I'm from that lets them think I'm a whore

I'm an educated virgin

Sleepwalker, don't be shy

Now don't open your eyes tonight

You'll be the one that defends my life

While I'm dead asleep dreamin'

Cupid, don't draw back your bow

Sam Cooke didn't know what I know

I'll never be your valentine

The sleepwalker in me

And God only know that I've tried

Let me in, let me drown or learn how to swim

Just don't leave me at the window

I could be the one to be your next best friend

You may need someone to hold you

Sleepwalker, take this knife

You may see someone tonight

You'd be the one that saves my life

When I'm dead asleep dreamin'

Cupid, don't draw back your bow

Sam Cooke didn't know what I know

I'll never be your valentine

The sleepwalker in me

And God only know that I've tried

I'm in your movie and everyone looks sad

But I can hear you, your voice, the laughtrack

But you never saw my best scene

The one where I sleep

Sleepwalk into your dreams

Now, sleepwalker, what's my line

It's only a matter of time

Until I learn to open up my eyes

When I'm dead asleep dreamin'

Cupid, don't draw back your bow

Sam Cooke didn't know what I know

I'll never be your valentine

The sleepwalker in me

Now, the sleepwalker in me

And God only know that I've tried”

Most of you who know me know that I personally am not a fan of Valentines Day. I was fortunate enough to marry a girl of similar mindset and so I continue to largely ignore the holiday. I think that anyone who can objectively view it will agree at least to some degree. My problems are thus.

The holiday is a time to show your partner, friends, family etc. that you care about them. (I will refer only to a couple from here on out for ease of communication from here on out but it applies relatively evenly for any relationship.) My thought is that showing your significant other that you love them should be something you do pretty much everyday. So simply put it’s a holiday designed for you to do something you already should be, which makes it kind of pointless. Further, if you aren’t showing love any other time it is irrelevant what you do on Valentines Day. You could pull out the most romantic wonderful day ever but if this one day is all you got than it is worthless. Conversely if you sacrifice for the other and show love throughout the rest of the year, if you do nothing on Valentines day the prior consistent action renders this one day irrelevant.
Now think about this because I know a lot of people would say “oh, but they should know to do something special on Valentines Day. And so if they don’t then I have a right to complain.” And to that I say you are letting a single day nullify an entire year. If you really think about it this day is setup in such a way that any action taken is not spontaneous and should mean less. Any person who doesn’t do something for Valentines Day is a practical social pariah in our society. People are almost required to perform today. I just think in life consistent action is the only thing that means anything. Those times you see that you’re are lacking in an action be it performing acts of love to another, spending time in prayer, or taking care of your responsibilities if you don’t consistently do those things but only do it only very occasionally it is nothing more than twitching while in a deep sleep.

Now I would like to address the ladies particularly. Now I know many women do nice things for their man on Valentines but if you are honest with yourself you know that this holiday is largely about the man doing something for the woman. Just consider the average post-Valentines day conversation. The women generally ask each other what the guy did whereas the guys generally ask what they did for the girl. By placing such weight and expectation on this day ladies you are really shooting yourself in the foot. By that action you are creating a circumstance where a guy could have his entire year trumped by a lackluster Valentines. And if the reward is largely dependant on a single day the others matter just a little bit less, hence less effort on the others more on the day of reckoning. And honestly wouldn’t you prefer spontaneous acts of love that come straight from a guy rather than annual actions created at least in part by a marketing frenzy and your own expectations. If you want a guy to truly show love than you need to stop trying to force it too look a certain way or ignore long term action in favor of a single day. Simply you have to let go of Valentines Day. And gentleman, get her flowers next time you’re thinking of her on your way home from work. In short, if you aren’t willing the rest of the year, who gives a damn what you do today.

And one final quote to all those girls out there who suffer Valentines Day wounds out of unmet expectations they had of good guys who try the whole rest of the year. We speak with one voice and say.
“You murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet a while.”

If you were a ghost where would you haunt?

2007-02-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

After giving it much thought I have decided that if I ever was forced to do a little post-life haunting I would select as my place of residence, without a doubt, Alpenrose dairy.
The high school I went to used the theatre there for most of our plays. And my opinion of the place has remained the same from the time I first laid eyes on it till now. By all means anyone who is familiar with the place, feel free to throw your thoughts but to those who have never seen it let me try to set the scene a little.

The complex consists of the main dairy, housed in a large concrete box of a building on one side and a velodrome, baseball fields, and racetrack of some sort on the another end. In between those is a miniature town. I say miniature not because it is particularly small but that it was originally designed for children and as such the buildings are built more closely to a child’s scale than adults. On the far side of the town there is a large man-made “pond”. It was never landscaped and looks like a concrete bowl. This body of water is surrounded by a 6-7’ chain link fence covered in signs saying that the water is too be avoided at all costs. The water has over time become an unhealthy looking lake that is black in color and smells unpleasantly of something that is not readily identifiable.

The story goes that when they first built the dairy they built the “town” as well and had puppets and handmade dioramas and other amusements designed so people could take there children to the dairy and let the kids walk through the buildings looking at motorized dolls acting out fairy tales. Well the idea crashed and though the diary still functions the town has been abandoned to a fate of slow decay.

The town has no lighting and at night is left in the dark. There are only two buildings left functioning in it. The rest are filled with cobwebs and weird archaic farm equipment and random items (I know this because you can still look through the windows into the buildings.) The theatre which was what my school used was a good example of why I would choose that place as my place of haunting. In the theatre the only well lit places consist of the main entry, the seating area, and the stage. Everything else, all the side rooms, passageways, and corners were always dark and filled with cobwebs. The unsettling thing was if you walked out of the light and into the shadows you would start to find things; a broken child’s doll here, a single shoe there, an old work shirt, newspaper clippings, things like that.
At night when we held the plays the rest of the town shrouded in darkness would crowd up against the few lights in the theatre. It was like the slow decay had seeped into the corners of the building and eventually it would overwhelm the faint light in the center,

The place just looks like a physical manifestation of someone’s dying dream.
It is the perfect place for a modern ghost.

The gnomes will go to war, and the forests will burn.

2007-01-29T09:59:00.000-08:00

I had this idea, the timing as it usually is for me was terrible, but I couldn’t resist devoting a great deal of thought to it. There was a gnome statue at a friend’s house and while we were all together for bible study I just kept starting at the gnome imagining it with a musket and regimental markings on its cap. I envisioned whole brigades of armed gnomes fighting so titanic Civil War style battle. I was entirely anti-social that night for obvious and really pathetic reasons. Ah the supple joys of being introverted and imaginative.
Today I devised a story to go with the image. I shared it with my wife whose response of “Enchanted yard gnomes?” was accompanied by a raised eyebrow. Her view which I understand actually is part of the reason that I think the story works.
Ok so lawn gnomes are made in the fictional world where magic is an everyday occurrence and these yard gnomes are enchanted in such away as to enable them to actual tend people's lawns. Thereby providing cute little grizzled men to adorn and care for people’s gardens. My idea has it that the nature of the enchantment eventually allows these mass produced gnomes to achieve sentience. They, upon achieving self-awareness the gnomes arm themselves (insert another sympathetic race to make the weapons) and revolt against the humans who made them. After throwing off the yoke of their makers the gnomes are plunged into a civil war between a uneasy alliance of gnomes who seek either magic used to destroy their enchantments and sink into oblivion on their own and those who would use human ends to erase their self awareness and return to the vague nearly catatonic haze that they enjoyed as yard workers. Their opposition would be from gnomes who seek independence from the makers they despise but refuse to lose what they see as a gift and a curse. So the story would follow their creation rise to sentience, civil war and eventual establishment as an independent empire.
The kicker, the part that really gets me is bound up in my wife’s response. To her they idea of yard gnomes in general is a ludicrous one. They are in our eyes laughable. So then this documentary about their real (ok fictional but you know what I mean) struggle to define themselves and find their place in the world would be rendered comic. Do you see it? Even in their attempt to define themselves they are rendered by their very nature to be nothing more than a joke.
And for me, I can relate.

These are the pants that fit me...

2007-01-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

“Change your life into a postcard version of white snow or so the story goes
and the horse that you rode in on will be the horse that’s taking you home”

I am an introvert. I create worlds and galaxies in my mind. I have populated them given them whole ecosystems, and histories. Someday I will detail them in a post but for those who know me you the depth and extent of my world building. All that to say I spend so much of my time in my own mind it’s almost sad. The creation of these ideas and places is something I really really enjoy but sadly my ability to manifest these things outside my own head is limited. I don’t draw that well and I don’t write very well on a single topic for very long. Basically I am like a guy whose heart is in running but suffers from a severe limp.
Introversion is almost like a character flaw or an illness. People sort of avoid introverts, don’t tend to notice us or be particularly inclined to get to know us it’s almost as if they are afraid close contact will get them infected to. (Run from the introverts, lest we become one of them and share in their social awkwardness.)
As an introvert you will be less likely to have connections, to get the job, girl, and or social recognition as that happy go-lucky extrovert that everybody loves so very much.
That said there is one thing left to us, the introverts of the world, and that great calling is heckling and a fierce devotion to cold solid logic…and computer games. That’s right we alone together will stem the tide of extroverts by posting witty criticisms on blogs and world of warcraft forums. We will play Magic and Killer Bunnies and many late nights will be devoted to Settlers of Catan and we will scoff at their nights at clubs, bars and massive parties. What uses have we of other people when we have ourselves and science fiction novels. We win by default, blessed default. That default by the virtue of self entertainment.

All of that was said tongue in cheek but…I really do love all the pursuits I mentioned…yes folks an introvert and a geek. So put that in your canoe and row with it.

'Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose got tossed along the way...

2007-01-29T09:54:00.000-08:00

Today our small group had our garage sale. Two purposes really, 1: to get rid of all the crap that builds its own empire in our assorted garages and 2: get some money to donate to charity. I sold a bunch of my old cloths and afterward Elaine and I were talking and she said that it was sad in an illogical way when the cloths were sold. I know why, items are tangible memories. They help to keep our memories from fading. That’s why it is such a tragedy when pictures are burned not only can you not replace them but the memories that they represent will blur and fade from our minds. Even the people and times we hold the most dearly will fade into obscurity over time. Time heals nothing, it merely obscures it.
When my wife said it was sad in a way I could help but think that I have sold much more of myself than that. As we pass through our lives we are continually hemorrhaging the things and memories we have. Life is a slow loss of the things we have or had hoped to accumulate. And of what we lose the lesser of that consist of actual things. It’s unavoidable and I don’t mean it as bitterly as it sounds.

All I can see are dark grey clouds in the distance getting closer every hour.

2007-01-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

“And here I rest where disappointment and regret collide”

“I've got a mouth full of blood.
Well I'll carry this casket if it's what I have to do.
So bring on the dark sky and let it cover me entirely.”

I’m sitting outside my job thinking. I was promoted to team lead. And this means more responsibility, slightly more pay, and significantly worse hours. I work almost all closing shifts now and as such I don’t get home most nights till around 10ish having a few hours spare in the morning before I have to go in. I feel the same about my job as I always have. These new cashing out registers and nightly book keeping responsibilities aren’t especially to my liking. I feel somewhat trapped in this position. But my feelings have hallowed over time (as all feelings do).
I am ok with this job, resigned would be the word.
The promotion will look good on a resume and I am slowly becoming more proficient at the job so it’s all ok.

unknown titles

2007-01-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

It snowed in Portland. A while ago, this shows how long it’s been since I have enjoyed an internet connection. But the weather was fun and gave me the opportunity to go down the hill to my house sideways in the car which was interesting. Snow isn’t that common here, especially this late in the season. So it was a big deal here.
As another update, many of you know I was adopted. I never much cared about it of felt any different for having that in my past. I was adopted as a baby and so it made no practical impact on my life. The only way it has affected me is just these last couple years I began to want to know my mother by births name. I just wanted to know a little bit about her. I just felt I owed a debt, she allowed me to live. I appreciate it, sometimes it almost seems like I should thank her somehow. So I asked my dad if there was anything I could do and he said that the lawyer who arranged it told them that I wasn’t going to have any ability to learn anything. And its fine, I just feel a little disappointed. I understand why the rules are setup like they are. But still…I just wanted a name.

So what's it feel like to be a ghost...

2007-01-29T09:45:00.000-08:00

“She said "everybody loves you,
"She says, "everybody cares"
But all the things I keep inside myself
They vanish in the air”

I woke up this morning and tried to write a bit and was dissatisfied by everything I penned. My blog is one of feast or famine. No posts or a large number of them. This is due to a lot of things, busy schedule, lack of an internet connection, but mostly it is just a steady fading of my ability to write (especially humorous writings). There was a time several years ago where I would have filled with stories and lists all which would have been hilarious, at least to myself. I don’t know what happened to that part of myself but it slipped away. I liked and valued that ability and it always is strange when we lose the things that we once used in part to define ourselves. I am now almost entirely dependant on being in the right mood for writing as to keep my ramblings from sounding contrived. That was partially why I never kept a steady journal, despite various people suggesting I should.
I have always been unremarkable easily overlooked. I would define myself as an acquired taste. I often feel invisible, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if there was a time I had more substance than this.

We realize what’s become of us while the snow falls outside and we watch out the windows while cleaning the kitchen as the neighbors and children grab sleds and walk to the nearest hill.

Close your eyes, just settle, settle

2007-01-05T21:46:00.000-08:00

Do you suppose big fluffy cats are the biggest joke in the animal kingdom? Cats are after all voracious predators with a propensity to kill smaller animals even when they are not particularly hungry. The traditional body form of cats is lithe and slim, designed for stalking. If you consider the jaguar or any of the large cats you must admit they look ready for a spot of business in the line of predation. Leave it to us to breed cats specifically for big time fluffiness. So returning to the original question, these cats that are mostly huge balls of fur aren’t they almost a caricature of all other cats? I just look at them and think that if cats magically became sentient; those fluffy cats would be a laughing stock to all other members of the family Felidae.

In other random thoughts, I was thinking about how in my blogs I have occasionally introduced literary references and song lyrics as a sort of companion ideas to the words I write. It’s a way I guess to clarify for myself what I feel. I wonder if when other people do that it isn’t a way to see if anyone would take the time to really attempt to get to know them. I guess in a lot of ways a blog is just a person reaching out to be known in a very impersonal way.

As an addendum to that thought I write for people that know me already and as such my relationships outside this virtual world give depth to my words rather than me attempting to reach out to an unknown audience. I spoke only in generalities, as I often do.

"Everyday, in every way, I grow more and more like a fish.

2007-01-05T19:04:00.000-08:00

At my job one of the greatest services we provide to the customer is we help them not to buy fish. For every 2 fish I sell I make sure another 5 remain safely in their tanks. Not that I particularly don’t want to sell the fish, its just sometimes you have to make a judgment call.

There are three main strategies of avoiding fish sales.
Distraction; for example, directing a customers attention away from the blood parrot he wants to put in his 20 gallon tank that is currently housing a thriving community of tetras.
Detail; for example, using a thorough and overly scientific explanation of salinity and osmotic potentials to that one costumer who just refuses to accept that he can't put a dozen guppies in the same tank as a chocolate chip starfish.
Hiding; Finding something to do at the other end of the store to avoid that one costumer who is completely convinced that they want one of those Nemo fish and no they won’t be getting a heater or sea salt thank you very much for suggesting it. (No matter how many times you say clownfish they give you a look and refuse to call it anything other than nemofish. Yes madam the scientific name is Nematias nemo; we all just call it a clownfish because we watch too much discovery channel on our off time.) With a person like that so long as you keep out of their sight they can’t buy the fish and, given enough time, they will lose interest and begin contemplating purchasing another poor doomed animal. It breaks down to a waiting game - me vs. them. My ability to stay occupied elsewhere vs. their attention span concerning the fish.

It is store policy to make sure the purchaser is capable of keeping the pet in good health, so these tactics are for the good of the customer. Sometimes you have to save them from themselves. That guy who wants to buy a dozen neon tetras and 5 tiger barbs for his already full mid-sized aquarium doesn’t want to waste money on fish doomed by his error and it is your job as an aquatics department servant to politely suggest a different purchase... that of ice cream from the Baskin Robbins next door.
You see, when the person doesn’t believe you that saltwater fish need to be in saltwater (and yes this is not uncommon) and you tried all three tactics, you might need the good old blunt force trauma to help them realize that they are on their way to becoming a serial fish killer. By blunt force trauma I mean something like this. “Well Sir/Madam the best advice I can give you about your tank right now is to just go ahead and turn around, walk out the front door, grab an aquarium manual on your way out and stand in the parking lot. Breath deep and say to yourself. ‘I’m not a bad person; I’m just opinionated and ignorant.”

And, if you were curious as to common errors made by nubies, here you go:
Overcrowding; it’s a five gallon tank and they have a shoal of neon tetras (these fish have to work in tandem just to make room for one of their brethren to turn around).

Improper equipment; It’s the Pacific Northwest and they have a bunch of fish from the South Pacific and no heater. (This is an easy one to point out. “Ever been to Maui? You have, good. Remember how nice it was and how warm the water was? Now think about your house and how you don’t need a refrigerator to keep your drinks cold. I rest my case. Buy the damn heater).
Lack of Foresight; Buying the cute little fish for a tank without bothering to find out how big it will get. And then having to face the difficulty of a fish that only is able to keep a fourth of its body in the tank and submerged at any given time. (If the customer says the plan to release over sized fish into a nearby lake, I like to ask if there are any other pets we can provide to them for illegal uses - Ferrets for minesweeping perhaps.)
Lack of commitment to the tank. If the customer says they had a Betta but gave it away because it was too much work and they are looking at saltwater aquariums, I just sigh, shake my head, and point to the front door and thank them for stopping by.

I suppose it’s the same with any animal. Reptile stores must have the same complaints.
“Oh I want that little snake for my son.”
“Lady it’s a Reticulated Python.”

She chose poorly.

It's been a long December.

2007-01-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

"The New Year"

by Deathcab For Cutie

So this is the new year.

And i don't feel any different.

The clanking of crystal

Explosions off in the distance (in the distance).

So this is the new year

And I have no resolutions

For self assigned penance

For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on

Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once

Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn

As thirty dialogs bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days

Then i could travel just by folding a map

No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways

There'd be no distance that could hold us back.

There'd be no distance that could hold us back [x2]

So this is the new year [x4]

This song perfectly encompasses how I always feel contemplating the new year.

(Does anyone else feel sense of emptness and sadness around new years?)

I never have resolutions because if you want to change your life simply trying to do so without making a big fuss about it seems the most logical way. Most of the "in the next year" crap is just a way that people can make themsleves feel better about a problem they refuse to do anything about in the present.

be it ever so be-lated

2007-01-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

Merry Chirstmas!!!!!!!

timeless peace in the deepest void

2006-12-22T02:49:00.000-08:00

Tonight while I was driving I happened to glance up. The stars were so bright. They were so beautiful and serene standing completely apart from the freeway lights. Tomorrow I am flying out East for a family gathering, but tonight there were the stars. Praise God and there were stars. Words won’t do it, they reminded me of some things I had forgotten, and I honestly can say I wish you could have been here to see them.

A moderated view

2006-12-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

At the small group from my church my wife and I attend we recently had an in depth discussion concerning musical styles and preferences as it pertains to worship. Having thought about it myself I propose a moderated view of worship in the context of a Christian church setting.
First I would like to point out that I think it is foolish to try to ignore that fact that musical style and tastes will effect how easily a person can actively worship God. The music a person likes is a reflection of the person’s personality and their view of the world. And that will not be the same for everybody. We all see God more clearly in different areas, whether we see Him in nature or people or something else. None of us would expect it to be the same for everyone. Music is no different.
That said though, just because the musical style chosen for worship does not match a person’s particular tastes doesn’t mean they should not attempt to reach out to God. You choose to seek God in worship. The music might not make it easy but that is irrelevant to the choice. There is no justification for quitting or not trying just because it isn’t easy.
The worship leaders are there to serve to help the most people that they possibly can worship effectively. That means the music chosen should be agreeable to the largest number of people. The music should serve to help the church worship as much as it can. There will be people the music misses, as in any democracy there are those left on the side lines. These people should not try to force the people to bend to fit there preferences and should instead use whatever kind of music is at hand to try to worship God, realizing that worship isn’t about them.
The thing that I find interesting though is that most of the people who are really against what they perceive as people being “musically picky” seem unaware that the music played in most churches are essentially of one general genre. Because it is the one they connect best with they are inclined to look down on those who can’t connect with that music as well. I look at them and can’t help but think that they are their parents in another ten years. When the next group comes through bringing their new music with them, the old guard who now forms the new movement will probably oppose the change just as much as their parents opposed the inclusion of the electric guitar.
It makes me laugh, but not because it’s funny.

written while listening to Nyana by Tiesto

2006-12-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

“Daylight fading

Come and waste another year

All the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear”

Last Saturday Elaine and I were graciously allowed to attend the Andersons Company bowling night. I had a really good time. Jared and his girlfriend Megan were there as well as his brother in-law Nate and his sister Heather. We all bowled on a lane together, drank beer and enjoyed ourselves and the alleys exceedingly inaccurate computers. (I.e. A gutter ball might get you a score of three pins and a strike might only get you eight.) I got an award for most unusual approach. Apparently I bowl as if the lane personally wronged me. Megan asked if it had perchance killed my father.
It was a good party and I was struck by how nice it must be to work for a company that does that kind of thing. It wasn’t just that they threw their employees a party, the manner in which they did it really, in my opinion anyway, showed the employees that they were valued and that they had a direct stake in the company. I wish the jobs I have had were more in that vein. I have had some jobs I really liked but they all lacked the sense of community that the Andersons company has.
I thought about it and the answer was very simple. In every job I have ever had I was replaceable. Then again I have always been replaceable. I am and have always been supremely average. I am a hard worker. Any job I am given I do to the best of my ability. I guess the truth is my ability just isn’t that impressive. In the second part of my college experience I focused to graduate, I worked hard for the average grades I got. I got my degree and the act, though it is meaningful to me, is still average. The fact that my degree is not that wonderful has been made readily apparent by my employment difficulties. I can’t get the experience I need. It honestly looks like I am going to need to get a masters after all. And get it sooner than I had planned.
This last week I guess I have just been discouraged by the way it’s gone. We all want to be important, respected, and talented. Sometimes I am fine with being average but every so often; when the day dreams are vivid it almost makes me sad. I know how Eric feels with his writing and his programming because I feel exactly the same with my degree, accomplishments, and the little I have learned vs. the majority I have forgotten. When I was younger I used to get angry and vow I would come back to all those people who said I would never amount to anything after I had “made it”, whatever that meant, and show them. I suppose I have accomplished more than a lot of people would have assumed I would. But I haven’t been anything more than average, so it’s nothing to brag about, nothing surprising.
This whole last week I haven’t called any of my friends, not that I didn’t want to talk to them, its just I couldn’t find the mood to dial (I hope that makes sense to somebody). I feel bad about it.

“Eventually guilt will be our defining characteristic.”