The fading holidays

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

Get me outta here

The Return

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.

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.

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

A funeral for Ultimate Frisbee

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,

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

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

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

Happy Halloween!

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

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

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...

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.

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

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.

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

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

"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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The first degree was a riot

What I do in California...the work segment

"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

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.

"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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.