Sun 8/15/2004 6:49 PM

Sent via the form at laura.moncur.org

Yes, he is alive. He is a remarkably good person and an extraordinary friend. He is kind. He is compassionate.

He has written many, many poems. Some of them are the best I have ever read (and I have an MFA in Poetry, so I have read at least a few really good poems). Once, he wrote a poem for me and read it on NPR.

I would be happy to put you in touch with him if you like and if it is okay with him.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Peace, Tobie

Sun 8/15/2004 8:53 PM

Sent via the form at laura.moncur.org

I can give you a five sentence bio of a five thousand word one depending upon your patience. But you must know that there are other worlds than the internet or web sites. No one ever asked me, by the way, if they could use that quote, which was originally a poem in the Nation Magazine, NYC, although it has been widely anthologized, and was just translated into Japanese. I’m off to the horse races tomorrow; then golf on Tuesday so I’ll sign off for now. Peace and all good things to you and ours. Bill

Tue 8/17/2004 8:38 AM

Sent via the form at laura.moncur.org

I didn’t go to the races yesterday but would have bet on anything close to Laura, a woman of exquisite taste. And oh, yes, amazon.com does have a new book of mine (though the world of old books is a million times more interesting (and amazon.com doesn’t have a clue). It’s listed simply as Poems: A Collection, by William Claire. Forget the F. If you buy one, you will not be disappointed. Besides having my undying devotion, you will get some astonishing freebies that are priceless. By the way, you seem like a wonderful writer yourself. William

Tue 8/17/2004 2:46 PM

Mr. Claire,

Thank you so much for responding to my entry. You’re right. There is a world outside of the Internet and web sites. I find that it is slowly replacing the library for me. Someday in the future, I feel that if it’s not on the Internet, it won’t exist.

You and Tobie stumbled upon my personal online journal (weblog or blog, for short), but Mike and I run a Quotations website (http://www.quotationspage.com/). It is the oldest quotations website on the Internet, which means that we put it up in 1994, which is young in the publishing world, but old as the hills on the Internet. We started it as an educational site and it has survived all the commercial sites. We have a page for each author and we would love a brief paragraph biography to put on your page. It’s the closest thing to a fan site that you have.

Regarding permission to quote: we usually leave the quotes up unless the author or the copyright holder complains. If you wish to be off the list, that is fine with us and we will remove you from our site. Just drop us a line and we’ll change it however you like. Additionally, if there are other quotations from your work that you would like to see on our site, we’d be happy to put them up.

You should really consider setting up a web page for yourself. It’s something that could be done very simply using one of the free sites like LiveJournal.com. I think you would be surprised at the response that you would receive from fans and the illiterate alike.

There are so many times when we get email for people trying to contact Andy Rooney or some other person that we’ve quoted. If you got a higher ranking than us on the Google search, then you would get that email instead of us. It’s always fun to receive fan mail, don’t you think?

I’m so glad you’re alive and well. You should really look into setting up an online journal. It’s so invigorating to publish your work every day to an awaiting public. It makes writing so much more interactive.

Hope to hear from you soon! Laura Moncur

Unedited Entry from my Personal Journal 08-16-04 3:31 pm:

I feel like I haven’t written enough lately. The truth of the matter is, I haven’t been writing here and I haven’t been writing my book very much and I haven’t been writing on the blog very much. I don’t particularly feel empty. I feel tired, so I have been doing the bare minimum to keep me afloat. Of course, we are starting another week and I have another chapter due for the book and I have some blog entries that need to be written and I am just cracking my morning pages at 3:30 in the afternoon. What is the matter with me?

We went camping last weekend, and I thought that the quiet would give me a lot of free time to read and write. All I did was read the new book that I got from the library. I haven’t done anything else. I read while I exercised at the gym at lunch, but I haven’t done anything else. This is the first real time I’ve cracked the keyboard since the weekend ended. Sure, I’ve been leaving messages on the DDR message boards, but I haven’t really been writing in earnest anywhere. I have a blog entry due tomorrow. I missed Sunday. All I did for today was post a chapter for the book, but I need to get cracking on the book or I won’t have anything to post in a couple of weeks.

I must admit that I like posting chapters once a week because that is a day of the week that I don’t have to worry about writing for the blog. I like to write fiction sometimes and this is a way for me to be published. It’s one less day each week that I have to write personal stuff. What am I hiding from? Hell, I’m even hiding from myself. We are over halfway into the month and I’ve written less than four pages. I must be hiding from something. What is it?

I have been playing a lot of DDR lately. It isn’t the kind of exercise that is really conducive to thinking. I end up with tons of songs in my head, but I don’t end up with a lot of ideas of what to write. I didn’t really get any ideas when I was riding the bike today either because I read the whole time. I must admit that running is really good for thinking about writing. I don’t know if I need to get back to running or learn how to meditate a different way. I just don’t know what’s going on. I guess I’ll just do the exercise that is the most fun and worry about writing at a different time.

Of course, when I’ve had a ton o f time to write, I’ve caught myself just surfing the Internet or reading online comics. Sometimes I get good ideas of what to write while reading the Internet, but most of the time, it’s just escapism. I’ve gotten more ideas for writing while I’m doing my morning pages than from things on the Internet. Sure, they can be springboards, but the best way to think is to actually sit down and think.

I don’t know what I’m hiding from. I’ve been doing really well on eating healthy lately. I ate poorly on the campout, but I decided that I wasn’t going to follow the program and I was going to let myself enjoy it and not feel guilty afterward. Now, I’m going to follow the program strictly for the rest of the week to make up for it. I plan on eating the minimum and exercising really well all week to make up for the weekend. I know it would have been better if I had kept track of everything so that I could know exactly how much I needed to purge, but I’ll just do the best that I can this week and see what happens at the scale. Then I’ll go back to eating five flex points a day, but for now, they are being saved to make up for camping. I don’t feel guilty, but I want to see progress at the scale, so I’m willing to work hard this week.

Camping was simply wonderful. Mike and I want to go camping again soon, but we haven’t decided where to go. Setting up the tent and the bedding was easy and fun. I really liked setting up the tent, even though we had to do it in the dark. I enjoyed it a lot. I thought I would be more bugged by not showering than I was, but it wasn’t that bad. It did make the shower when we got home feel that much better. Mike made the best breakfast for Mom, Reed and me on Sunday morning. It’s amazing how well he can cook on a little outdoor stove. He really seemed to like to camp, despite all his stories about his Boy Scout experiences. I loved it and I want to go again this weekend and take Sid with us. Of course, we have so many things to do that didn’t get done on the weekend. We did all the laundry, though, so that was the important thing. We got a lot done, actually, when we got home. We completely unpacked.

I would like to find a packing list for camping so that we take everything that we need to. We forgot paper towels and soap this last time. Plus, it would have been nice to have a fire poker. We ended up using the marshmallow prongs to poke the fire and they aren’t quite strong enough to handle that big job. I would like to have a perfect little checklist that I could go through because I think that would make getting ready for camping a lot more fun and easy. It was the getting ready that was hard. Once we were there, it was fun and relaxing. It got a little hot, but I didn’t mind that. I just took a nap in the shade and I felt a lot better.

I had no idea how fun camping could be. My only experience with it was through the eyes of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes comics. His dad took him camping and he hated it. That was all I knew. Kids hate camping. From what I saw, the kids loved camping. I just really liked it. I would have liked to have a little more time. I would have like to sight see less because there really wasn’t anything to see at Lava Hot Springs and I would have liked to just sit at the campsite and read some more. Maybe I would have even liked to write something down. As it was, I didn’t write a word. I’m ok with that, but I think that I would have liked a little more down time and a little less shopping. I had to do so much shopping before the trip that I was feeling shopped out. I ended up getting a little sick from all the sun when we were walking around the town.

I’m feeling all this pressure because I have a blog entry to write for tomorrow and I have no idea. I don’t even know what I want to write about. I don’t even want to write. Sure, this feels good, but there’s no pressure here. I don’t have to edit it or worry about spelling or grammar or hurt feelings. I can just write and write and not worry about anything. I can just keep writing until the end of the page shows up and not a word before or more. I can just write everything that I’m worried about and everything that is just randomly passing through my mind without thought or care. I don’t need to worry about what is going to happen if someone I know reads this entry because it’s hidden in a file deep on my hard drive. That’s how writing was for me a year ago. I could just write and write without worry. Now, I’m worried about hurting feelings and looking stupid. Maybe I’ll just go back to writing how I used to write. Maybe I’ll just post this entry completely unedited on the blog for tomorrow. I don’t know. We’ll see…

Here is Chapter Three…

(Continue Reading…)

I think that I have painstakingly fixed all the small problems that I was having with the conversion from our home-brew blog software over to WordPress. I write all of these entries in Word before I post them on the blog software, which isn’t a problem now, but when we used our old system, a lot of the old junk from Word was still there. It was causing problems, but I have systematically removed it all.

Now, please help me. If you see anything weird in my entries, will you please tell me? I know that everything from now on should be ok, but the older entries might have slipped past me. The fonts might be a little screwy. That’s ok, but if you see weird things with lots of strange punctuation then please email me. I’m no e. e. cummings. I don’t write strange poems with lots of parenthesis and carets.

Man, all my writing inspiration has been stripped out of me. I have spent all day just fixing these entries and it has killed all my writing instincts. I feel like I have nothing to say after deleting all the junk that Word put into my documents. Do I blame Microsoft for putting the junk there or myself for using Microsoft products?

This entry is written on MS Word. I guess you just can’t teach me.

Wow! Who let Barbara Walters pick the questions?

1) What animal best represents you?

I think a koala bear is the animal that I feel the most affinity with. They are so cute and cuddly, but if you try to hug them, they’ll rip you to ribbons with their sharp claws.

2) What color best represents you?

I like green the best. Lime green, Kelly green, Olive green, Avocado green, Flourescent green: it doesn’t matter as long as there is a little bit of yellow and a little bit of blue.

3) What season best represents you?

I like all of the seasons and I really can’t choose a favorite. I think that I’m like Spring because I’m bouncy and full of life and color. I think that I’m like Summer because I’m fiery and hot headed sometimes. I think that I’m like Fall because I’m full of the bounty of the harvest and the start of school. I think I’m like Winter because I have so much greatness hidden within me. I am one with the seasons: all of them.

4) What emotion best represents you?

I only have two emotions: manic and angry. You choose.

5) What flower/tree/plant best represents you?

I think that I would love to be like a palm tree. There have been so many times when a hurricane was coming to Florida or Hawaii and I’ve seen the palm trees on television blown nearly sideways with the winds. The next day they are upright and ready for the day. Sure, they are missing a few palms, but they are still there and still alive. That’s how I want to be. I want to be a palm tree.

Yes, I know it’s strange, but I was reading a DDR Forum on the Internet. Ok, it’s not so strange considering how obsessed I am. One of the members was talking about a recent trip to Las Vegas. Here is an excerpt from his entry:

Just came back from Vegas and about to go to Los Angeles. While in Vegas, i tried to play on as many ddr machines as I can.

Here’s the list of where i’ve played

Stratosphere – Extreme NY NY – Megamix (bootleg vr. of Extreme) and USA(upgraded to Max 2) Luxor – Extreme Gameworks – Extreme Circus Circus – Extreme ( the most ddr machine i’ve ever seen in one place, that was cool)

He had gone to My Vegas and played DDR on every machine he could find there. I was feeling jealous and desperately wanted to go to Vegas just to play DDR on as many machines as I could.

Mike convinced me that it might be better to just look for DDR machines in Salt Lake and play them here rather than driving seven and a half hours to go to a different city to play. Friday night, we went to Hollywood Connection in West Valley. They have two machines: DDR 3rd Mix (but it really had the songs for lots of mixes) and a Pump It Up machine (but it was broken). It would have been a great night of playing, but the one machine that worked was surrounded by at least twelve kids. No room for me.

Mike took me back to Hollywood Connection on Saturday afternoon and the place was completely different. The DDR machine was abandoned and I was able to play twenty dollars worth of tokens on the thing. We were there for about two hours and only twice did anyone else want a turn. I gave it up graciously (frankly because I was getting tired).

Sunday, Mike and I went to The Gateway. After lunch, he let me play for about a half hour on a DDR 3rd Mix machine at the arcade. It was a dollar a play (as opposed to 75 cents at HC), but I still had fun. I didn’t have to fight any kids to play there either. I guess Friday night is the big night for DDR among the adolescent sect.

I just checked out DDR Freak Machine Locations and I only have two machines out of eleven under my belt. Who knew that there were so many in my area? I can just feel Mike cringing at the idea of taking me to so many arcades. Please, can we go? Please, please?!

Read Chapter Two here:

Looking For Christ Audio: Chapter Two Download

15 K MP3 file recorded at 64 kbps – 32 minutes 11 seconds

(Continue Reading…)

I just finished Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow. Very fun sci-fi. I love all the new ideas he has about how things are going to be in the future. I want the comm, the TunePay system and the Sony cars. I want the future all right now.

We meet Art on the rooftop of an insane asylum, trying to decide whether it’s more important to be happy or smart. Pencil up his nose, he contemplates the events that lead up to his current condition and whether he should give himself a home-brew lobotomy. Instead of answering the question, Art takes us on a global tour of futuristic London, Boston, and Toronto, with a strangely karmic, “I’ll take both, please” ending.

One of the cooler things about this book is that you can read it for free. You can download it in a wide variety of forms and read it on your computer, print it up or read it on your Palm. I strongly recommend that you buy the book so you can fold down the pages and underline your favorite quotes. Here are mine:

Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff. – Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe, 2004

I see this every day. Fortunately, my engineers work in the heavy duty big stuff instead of pepper grinders and car gear shifts. Normal people don’t deal with the work of my engineers.

You can’t fuck a crazy girl sane. – Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe, 2004

Same goes for crazy boys, by the way. Half the time women who fall for “The Rebel” are trying to, you know. It doesn’t work.

Check out this book. It’s totally cool science fiction and Cory is one of those people who isn’t afraid of the changing world out there. In fact, he may be one of the instrumental people out there changing the world. He’s definitely not coming from scarcity thinking.

Read Part 1

Years later, Mike and I were at Lagoon and I tried to reminisce with him, “Remember that hall of mirrors thing that they used to have here where the Jet Star II is now?” He looked at me with a blank face. I tried to jog his memory. “You know, the summer before they put up the Jet Star II, they had a huge slide thing that you had to climb and climb and climb. You would carry these rug things and once I got stuck at a spot. A kid said that I got stuck because I was fat.”

Mike’s eyes opened, “I remember the big slide. You had to carry your carpet up with you.” I was onto something I knew I would be able to get him to remember it, “Well, the year before they put up the huge slide thing, they had a hall of mirrors thing. It had a big monkey out front and there was a skeleton playing piano. I thought it was going to be a haunted house like the Terroride, but it wasn’t. It was kind of like the Fun House, but not so fun.” He looked at me like I was insane. “No, the big slide was always there until they put up the Jet Star II.”

No matter how well I described the ride, Mike couldn’t remember it. I began to think that I had imagined it and the story that vilified my dad in my mind. I asked my mom about it, “I remember a hall of mirrors thing at Lagoon, but Mike doesn’t remember it. Do you?” I knew that she had been there. She thought that I had been too young for the ride, when in reality, it was my dad who was too immature. She drew a blank. I tried to prompt her memory with the location of the ride and the fact that it was replaced by a huge slide, which was replaced by the Jet Star II. None of it helped, “You just remember more than I do about some things.”

All of this fermented in my mind for a few years. Mike didn’t remember it. Mom didn’t remember it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask my dad about it. I just let it lie dormant and hoped that I would find someone who remembered this ride.

We were going through Mom’s old photographs, dividing them among Stacey, my mom and me. “Oh my God, Mom! Look at this!” I held up the picture for her to see. It was a picture of Mom in front of the hall of mirrors at Lagoon. It wasn’t a professional picture. It wasn’t a beautiful picture, but it was proof. “What is it?” I was truly surprised that she didn’t recognize it, “Mom! It’s that hall of mirrors thing that they used to have at Lagoon where the Jet Star II is now.”

There it all was. It was blurry, but the big monkey was there. You couldn’t see that his eyes were red, but they burned brightly in my imagination. The clapping monkey was actually a cymbal playing monkey toy. It was the kind that were popular in the seventies before Monkey Shines came out. You can’t see it in the picture, but it was behind the guy who took the tickets.

The skeleton band was behind huge monkey. I didn’t remember the rest of the band; I had only remembered the skeleton playing the piano. His bony fingers weren’t even touching the keys. I didn’t understand how the music worked if his fingers didn’t even touch the keys. There was a whole skeleton band that I had forgotten, leaving only a piano player in my memory.

I felt comfort in having proof. In my hand was proof that I hadn’t made it up in my mind. My mom looked at the picture, “You just remember more than I do about some things.”

I remember being lost. I was with my dad and he was lost too. At first, it seemed like he was in control, but the further we went, the more I realized that he didn’t know how to get us out. I think I was four years old and suddenly I was in charge of rescuing my dad and myself because we were lost.

When we started out, I was confused, but he was still in control. Every time I thought I found a way out, I ended up staring at my own face. My dad explained that he knew that there was a way out. He seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but then he couldn’t find the way out and he was touching the mirrors just as I was, trying to find the path. That was when I understood that I was in charge. I had to find the passageway because, once again, my dad was bullshitting me.

I refused to panic. My dad didn’t deal well with crying kids, so I kept my fear tucked in my gut. I tried to keep my eyes on the floor because that was the only thing that made sense to me. It was the only part of this hall of mirrors thing that seemed connected to reality, but it didn’t help me. We wandered. Sometimes I found the path. Sometimes he found the path. He was wandering away from me when I saw it. It was that monkey thing that was clapping. It had been clapping while I waited in line to get in and I wondered if it was the baby of the big monkey out front with the red eyes. If I could see the clapping monkey, then we must be close to getting out.

He had wandered off, so I had to retrace my steps back to him. I told him that I found the way out. I took his big hand and pulled him toward the clapping monkey. He touched the mirror, “See, it’s just a reflection. Now I think I found the way out back here.” He tried to head backward, but I insisted that we were close to being free. I tried to think about where the exit would be if this mirror was reflecting the monkey and looked behind us. He had already started heading the wrong way again when I called to him. “Dad, I found it.” The exit was hidden around a slim mirrored corridor and I could see the feet of the big monkey and the guy who took our tickets when we came in.

My dad didn’t come when I called him. I considered for a moment that I should go back and get him, but the fear of being lost again after finally finding my way was too intense. I ran out of the hall of mirrors, finally allowing the tears to flow. My mom was waiting for the two of us out there and asked where Dad was, but I couldn’t tell her. All the terror of being the only one able to get us out of there had been released and I couldn’t tell her what happened. I considered going back in to save him, but the man who took our tickets wouldn’t let me back in. We just had to wait until he found his own way out.

I had calmed down and stopped crying by the time that my dad finally found his way out. My mom was livid, “See, I told you she wasn’t old enough for this. She came out crying.” My dad looked at me and I could tell that he knew. He knew that I had found the way out when he didn’t. He knew that he should have listened to me. He knew that he shouldn’t have let me get separated from him. He knew that HE was the reason that I was so upset, not the ride. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe next year she’ll like it.”

Read Part 2

There’s a reason I don’t watch the news. I don’t want to hear about dead wives and lying husbands. It’s depressing and scary and feeds my paranoia. I don’t even want to hear about the weather. There’s nothing I can do about it. It will come whether I know it’s coming or not. All I can do is keep a jacket and umbrella in the trunk of my car. I just don’t want to hear about it.

Because of my news fast status, however, people love to tell me the news. I’m a gossip’s dream. I never know what’s going on in the city or the world, so when something big happens, people love to tell me the gory details.

Half the time, they get it wrong. “He used the alias ‘John Longfellow.’” “He stuffed her in the mattress.” “He bought the mattress before he called the police to report her missing.” A quick search online checks their facts, but it also breaks my fast. There’s a reason I don’t watch the news. I don’t want to hear about dead wives and lying husbands.

The entire city is abuzz with stories about Lori Hacking and her husband Mark. All I want to do is notice the blue summer sky and keep my mind free from cadaver dogs at the landfill. Everyone wants to recite the timeline. All I want to do is think about all the happy families that have no lies about university degrees between them. Everyone wants to tell me about insanity pleas and convenience store footage. All I want to do is hope for healing for the family and proper justice when the time comes.

The truth of the matter is that I don’t even want to hear about it. There’s nothing I can do about it. There are people dying all over the world right now and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I can’t hear every story about every death. All I can do is keep a tire iron and a can of mace in the trunk of my car. I just don’t want to hear about it.

Girliest Entry EVAR!

1. Of everything in your wardrobe what do you feel the most comfortable wearing? Why?

Right now, we are having a hot summer, so I’m most comfortable wearing as little as possible. I got some cool skorts at Target in Vegas that look like mini-skirts, but have shorts underneath, so I can wear them to work and not have to be too hot. Plus, there’s no risk of the accidental undie flash.

2. How would you describe your style?

I look like a boring soccer mom, but I’m not a mom and I don’t watch soccer. I guess I would classify myself as Preppy, which is what I used to dress like in high school when I wasn’t going for the punker look or the Mod look. I stop just short of wearing a sweater around my shoulders and tied in a knot on my breasts.

3. How many pairs of shoes do you own and do you wear them all?

Too many. I haven’t counted, but I’m sure there are at least twenty pair in the closet and in the basket next to the door. Right now, I’m in sandal mode, so I’ve been wearing my fabulous sandals every day for weeks because of the heat. I’ll go back to clogs when fall comes around and to the boots when winter hits. They rotate and if they don’t get worn, they go to the DI.

4. Where do you buy most of your clothes?

They go back to whence they came. I also shop at Wal-Mart, Target, Shopko and K-Mart. I am finally thin enough to shop at the mall, but I’m still shrinking, so I am loathe to pay mall prices for clothes I’ll only be able to wear for a couple of months.

5. What was the last piece of clothing you bought?

The aforementioned skorts. Luckily because I love to say the word skort. Skort, Skort, SKORT!

It used to be a Galaxy Diner. It was a short-lived restaurant chain here in the Salt Lake Valley. They littered the city with distinctive buildings and then abandoned them within a few years. One of them was torn down and replaced with a bagel shop. The shiny aluminum walls and red highlights were too much for the bagel shop in Murray. They bulldozed the building and started from scratch.

Not so in Bountiful. The red has faded and is need of painting, but the aluminum walls still reflect the light blinding all drivers who pass its way. The red letters proclaiming China Gourmet are two shades darker than the washed out red on the rest of the building. I ache for the soul of the building that was supposed to fulfill its destiny in Fifties Nostalgia instead of Oriental Gorging.

It used to be a Picadilly Fish and Chips. The Tudor-style building is an anomaly in the Sandy neighborhood. The Picadilly Fish and Chips in Sugarhouse was bulldozed last month in favor of big construction on that corner. We don’t know what will replace it, but the old sign said “Say No To Pancakes” before the bulldozer took it down. The building in Sandy still stands, though. Instead of greasy scallops and shrimp, it now houses a Subway sandwich. I don’t know which is worse, the bulldozing or the appropriation and transformation of the building for its new designs.

The Thai restaurant on State Street and 7800 South used to be a Dairy Queen. The Vietnamese Noodle House on State and 2300 South used to be a Taco Bell. The Mexican Restaurant on State and 5800 South used to be an IHOP. They are all distinctive buildings that proclaim their former selves beyond the paint and the new signs.

Part of my regret is the memory of good food. I’ve never eaten at the Mexican restaurant that used to be an IHOP. For the longest time, we didn’t have an IHOP in Utah after that one closed and no matter how good the enchiladas were, I’d still be mourning the International Passport Breakfast.

I think the real problem is that I feel like buildings have personalities. It’s a human tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, but I’ve never met anyone else who felt sorry for old restaurant buildings. I look at the China Gourmet and I think, “Aww, I’m sorry you’re not a Fifties Diner. I’m sorry you aren’t what you were meant to be.” Unfulfilled wishes. That’s what those recycled buildings represent to me. They were meant to be something, whether it was a Fifties diner, a fish and chips joint, or a pancake house. Instead, they are something entirely different. They are productive places with good food, but they aren’t doing what they were meant to do. It just makes me feel a little sad.

“I have to admit that I haven’t had the courage to read your weblog.”

“Courage?”

“Yes, it feels like I’m snooping into your life when I read it. I know you wouldn’t put it up there if you weren’t ok with people reading it, but it still feels like prying.”

I tried to tell her that it was perfectly ok to read my blog, but I could tell that it did little to ease her feelings. I didn’t know what else to say. I don’t really care if she reads it or not. She’s a great friend and she pretty much hears about all the things in my life without reading my blog. I don’t care, either way.

The idea of prying into someone’s life by reading their weblog is strange to me. I would think that people wouldn’t post things if they were uncomfortable with the world knowing about them. Then again, I’ve known people who have been upset when their spouses found their online journals, as if something like that is private.

It’s a strange feeling to read another person’s journal, but she’s right, it would be even stranger to read the journal of someone you know. To know what they truly think about shared events is a scary thing. None of my friends keep a blog, so I don’t know how it feels to be on the reading end of that sort of thing.

I love to read other people’s online journals. Sometimes, they entertain me far more than fiction. Real life is so messy and random in a way that fiction never is. It can be frustrating, too, because things drag out. Sometimes they never get resolved. Real life is funny that way or not-so-funny as the case may be.

All I can say is, go ahead and read to your heart’s content. You’re not snooping. Snooping is getting on my hard drive, hacking my password and reading my personal journals. Reading my blog is like having a one-sided conversation with me where I do all the talking. Even if you found me by accident, it’s ok. If you like what I have to say, please come back for more. If I didn’t want the world to know it, I wouldn’t write it here for the world to see.

Here is the new blog. All the same entries are still here. Mike has expertly converted everything into WordPress and we worked on the style sheet last night. I have been looking at the screen and choosing the various categories (see them in the left column) for the last hour. I hope you like it. Ok, that’s a lie. I don’t care if you like it because I like it so damn much, but if you like it then that’s cool, too.

Scarcity thinking has driven me my whole life. I don’t know when it started, but I remember being young and worrying about not getting enough food. I think my first thoughts on scarcity were before Stacey was born, so that would be before I was five years old. I remember the first time I worried about not having enough. I was going to the Montessori school that morning and it was time for breakfast. My mom said to me, “Well, your dad ate all the cereal and milk last night, so we don’t have anything for breakfast.” I don’t know what she fed me for breakfast that morning, but I didn’t know that it was possible for someone to eat an entire box of cereal and gallon of milk while I slept.

Of course, my dad’s bingeing problems directly correlate to my bingeing problems. I learned how to binge a little bit from Sceverenia, but I learned the most detrimental eating habits from my father. His late night binges left me with the fear that there might not be food for me in the morning. His incredible eating speed, left me with the fear that I might not get enough food at dinner time because he might eat it all.

None of this is an accurate portrayal of reality. If the milk and cereal were decimated in the late-night binge, I’m sure there were plenty of bread and eggs for a good breakfast. If my dad had eaten all the food that was available for dinner, I’m sure Mom would have gladly given me a sandwich or a dessert if I were still hungry. I’m not talking about reality, however. I’m talking about perception. From a very young age, I have operated from the perception of scarcity.

This perception doesn’t stop with food. It has run through everything in my life. I act as if there is never enough time, fun, money or friends. I could be happily enjoying a Sunday brunch with my friends and I will think about how rare these times are. I’ll be thinking about setting up the next meeting because our days are numbered. For all I know everything is going to change and we won’t be friends anymore. I have to enjoy this moment while I can.

This can be very helpful. Carpe Diem – Seize the Day! The entire philosophy behind that phrase is the idea that we only have a limited number of days. All of it is true on a universal scale. There is a limited amount of everything on this planet: food, money, time and friends. On a grand scale, all of it is finite.

I don’t live on a grand scale. I am just one human being. No matter how poor I was, I always had twenty cents to afford a bowl of ramen noodles. I have never starved in my life because of scarcity. I have only starved because my grandma withheld food from me or I withheld food from myself. Both of those bouts of starvation were followed by father-like binges. No matter how busy I was, there was always time to zone out in front of the television. There was plenty of time for things that I didn’t particularly want to do. Lack of time was just an illusion.

Even my fears about putting my book online are based in scarcity. I’m scared that publishers won’t want my book if it has already been on the Internet, because I think there is only one way to publish a book. I’m scared that I’ll disenfranchise publishers because I think that there are only a limited number of publishers out there. It is true that there are only a finite number of science fiction book publishers, but I only need one to get this book in print form. Print form might not even be the way books are read in the future. For all I know, I AM my own publisher and in the future, this is how books will be read.

I’ve decided to shove it. Even though the finite nature of our planet is verifiable truth, I’ve decided to believe otherwise. There will always be enough for me. If I want something it will be there and I refuse to act as if it might not be there. I know hippies think about this all the time, but this is different. I’m not acting as if “The Universe” or some divine being will provide for me. I’m deciding that there must be plenty of everything out there for me, so I’m going to go out and find it. I’m not depending on voodoo to provide the bounty. I’m going out and getting it because I know it’s out there somewhere.

There will always be enough food. I will never starve. Just like in The Good Earth, I could go out and eat grass if I got hungry enough. Knowing that there is enough food for me really helps me to leave that piece of cake alone. I don’t need to eat it today because it will be there tomorrow. If it isn’t, there will be a different and potentially more delectable piece of cake in its place.

There will always be enough money. Even though things are slow and they’ve cut my hours, there will be enough money. I don’t know where it’s going to come from, but it is always there when we need it. I refuse to accept that I might be poor again. No matter what happens. We will take care of ourselves.

There will always be enough time. When I’m feeling like I don’t have enough time to have fun it’s because I don’t allow myself to play. Setting appointments for fun is just as important as setting appointments for work. Sure, the lawn needs to be mowed and the laundry needs to be done, but I need to play Dance Dance Revolution and Mike needs to get that Gold Medal on Project Gotham Racing. Both are important and there is enough time for play and work and family and for nothing if I just want to sit and do nothing.

There will always be enough friends. Dylan moved to Boston, but Richard just came back to town from California. No matter where I’ve been, I’ve been able to find friends at work and for play. If I wanted a jogging partner, I’m sure I could find one within a week. If I wanted a group of friends to play pinochle with, all I would need to do is ask a few questions and put up with a few old biddies. There have been times in my life when I felt lonely, but the minute I reached out to find someone, there was always a person there.

I’ve talked about Cognitive Dissonance before. I’ve lived in a place where I’ve believed two contradictory things at the same time. I still live there. This is the first time I’ve consciously decided to put myself in Cognitive Dissonance. I know that resources are finite. I know that there will always be enough resources for me. I believe both to be true and it causes me no pain to live with both ideas freely.

Here is Chapter One:

Looking For Christ Audio: Chapter One Download

13 K MP3 file recorded at 64 kbps – 28 minutes 52 seconds

(Continue Reading…)

After converting all of my entries to WordPress, I noticed that I have only a couple of entries in the Fiction file. For all my talk of being a writer, I haven’t given you many examples of my fiction writing. If I hadn’t bothered with categories, I wouldn’t have noticed how slim my Fiction section is. I feel like a fraud.

The fact that I haven’t shared my fiction with you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I write fiction at least three times a week and I have been working on a novel that I have been thinking about for quite awhile. I’ve tortured the closest people in my life (Mike, Stacey and Dan) with my preliminary chapters. Just because they love me, doesn’t mean they want to read my work. Fiction is such a fickle fancy that I can’t depend on impressing my intimates with my tastes.

The novel I’m working on right now is a science fiction piece about time travel. Ambigo Thomas is an elite medical professional called to be on a team of specialists sent back in time to find the truth about Jesus Christ. He finds himself as the sole atheist on the team, which is financed by the Catholic Church. He struggles to keep the team’s focus logical and studious in the dangerous and primitive society we call The Dawn of Christianity. The title of the story is, Looking for Christ.

Something in me wants to keep it a secret. I want to hide the chapters and the plot and even the title from the eyes of the world. I want to finish it before I let others see it. I want to hide the chapters in the desk drawer next to the finished copy of The Falstaff. After five years of stagnating in my desk, The Falstaff is reviled in my mind. I am ashamed at its clumsy writing. It was written before everyone had a cell phone in their pocket, which destroys the story line. Sure, I could place it in the early nineties when it was written, but that isn’t the only plot hole in it. No, it sat in the drawer too long and it will never be a good novel no matter how much I rework it.

Why am I tempted to subject Looking for Christ to the same fate? Fear. I’m scared that someone will steal my plot. I’m scared that someone will make fun of my writing. I’m scared that a typographical error will embarrass me. I’m scared that publishers won’t want my book if it has been on the Internet. I’m scared that I will never finish the book and that failure will be there for the world to see. I’m scared that I will need to change chapters and they will already be published online. I’m scared of so many things that I have four chapters waiting on my hard drive. Instead of posting them when they were done, I’ve started to let them stagnate.

To Hell with all of that. So what if someone steals my plot? I could write ten stories with this plot line and each of them would be different. So what if someone makes fun of my writing? At least I’m writing every day as opposed to most people. Every word I write makes me a better writer. So what if I make a typographical error? Guess what?! I’m going to make tons of them. I’ll do my best to edit it, but only fresh eyes can see mistakes like these. I’m offering these chapters up to hundreds of fresh eyes every day. So what if publishers don’t want my book because it’s already published on the Internet? The publishing world is changing and maybe I’m my own publisher. Maybe publishers will be more likely to notice me if I have a server-crashing website. So what if I never finish the book? I’m more likely to finish it if my throngs of eager readers keep asking me when Chapter Five is coming online. So what if I need to change things in the chapters. This is the Orwellian future that we have all worried about. Big Brother isn’t watching, but all of us Wilsons are changing the past every day on our weblogs.

As of today, NO MORE FEAR. I refuse to hide my fiction anymore and tomorrow morning I will have Chapter One online for all of you to read.

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Ah, the return of summer and people all over the country want to know one thing: why are there so many dragonflies in my yard? What does it mean? Is it an omen? What do they symbolize?

Relax, people. It’s summer. They’re bugs. Look at them. They’re kind of pretty. They aren’t here every day. Stop and notice them. Don’t search the web for them.

who caroline outkast roses girl -mars video �beyonce

I don’t know what this person was looking for, but I have a question about Caroline from the Outkast song Roses. I don’t care who the actress is who played her, which is all I can find out about her. I want to know who the real Caroline is. What’s the story behind that song, because that’s one bitter dude. He wants her to crash her car into a ditch, probably just because it rhymes with the word bitch. If given his wish, she’d probably crash into a semi hauling thousands of gallons of highly flammable gasoline and explode in a fiery flaming ball of toxic chemicals. It’s just that it’s so hard to find a rhyme for the word chemicals.

Why does he hate her so much? Is it just a case of unrequited love or did it turn sour? Does she have anything to do with Ms. Jackson? What’s the story? I want to see the Behind the Music on this song. At the very end of the video, they turn through pages of a yearbook and focus on the picture of one girl. Is she the real Caroline?

rice heating pad

I get so many hits from this phrase that I was going to write an entry about how to make your own rice heating pad. Then I looked online and there are tons of sites explaining just that. If that’s what people wanted, they would have stopped there instead of at my site talking about them. What’s attracting them to me?

i2workout work, i2workout

I never gave you an update. I love i2Workout. It works much better on my computer than it does when I burn myself a CD. I’ve hooked up the laptop to the treadmill so that I can see the workout as it is progressing. Sometimes my treadmill doesn’t hear the command and it doesn’t change the way it’s supposed to, but the voice command always tells me what it should be, so I can just change it myself on those rare occasions.

The guy who made the program refunded the money I paid for the software because he liked my review of it. That makes me feel a little guilty because I really just was talking about it because it was easy for me to use and I was just so happy to be able to make my own iFit workouts. Then again, I’m happy to have the software for free, so it’s a strange feeling of ambivalence.

blonde levi 501   Sorry. I still have no porn here. Keep looking. There’s a ton of it out there and you don’t even have to pay to see it, but you’ll find none of it here.

When Mike set up my blog, he wrote the code and set up the database himself. My site is completely original and unique. The problem with original and unique is that whenever I want to change something, I have to beg him to do it. I have to ask him to upload new pictures. I am totally isolated from the process.

When I first started, I was ok with that. All I wanted was a place to publish my writing every single day. I was producing so much work that had no place to call home. Now, most of my nonfiction writing is able to reside right here. It’s not hidden in the desk. It’s not rotting on the hard drive. It’s here, for you to see and a shocking number of you want to see it every day.

Have I told you lately how much I love you guys? You log on to my site every day and read my words every day. You don’t need to comment. You don’t need to email me. You just show up every day to see what I have to offer and it makes me so happy to see your numbers grow. Thank you for coming here.

After reading Wil Wheaton’s book, Just a Geek, I felt a pang of guilt. He worked so diligently to get his site up and running. He fought long and hard with Movable Type to make it conform to his needs. All I did was ask Mike to write me a fully functioning weblog software package and within a few hours, he had it ready for me. I started feeling like a poser.

Then again, I told myself, I am not a programmer. I am a writer. All I need is a piece of paper big enough for the whole world to see. My blog was enough for that and in other respects not enough. All those little changes were stagnating on Mike’s ever-growing list. He runs the Internet’s most popular quotations site. He doesn’t have time to muck around with my blog and I feel guilty when I ask him to. Wouldn’t it be better if I mucked around with it, even if I broke it?

So, we are working on converting this blog to WordPress. It’s a blogging software package that is suitable for my needs. It may take me a long time to get it looking like my old site. I don’t even know if I want it to look like my old site. Looking at the installed style sheet, it looks a lot cleaner than mine ever did. I might just be happy to stick with that.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! Turn and face the strange. Ch-ch-changes! Don’t want to be a richer man Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! Turn and face the strange. Ch-ch-changes! Just gonna have to be a different man. Time may change me, but I can’t change time. – David Bowie, Changes, The Best of Bowie

1. Who was your favorite band/musican when you were younger?

Hands down, The Cure was my favorite. I’ve talked about this at length before, so I’m reluctant to spend another day babbling about them.

One more note, I am covered in shame. KJQ, the local modern classics station, has been running a billboard campaign. I drove past the billboard that said, “Thuk-Your,” for over a month. I was clueless and I asked Mike what it meant. He explained that it was an inside joke. It’s a band name. I still didn’t get it. He said it was “The Cure.” I have shamed my former punkdom.

2. Why?

They were so angst ridden. They fit right into my internal psyche at the time.

3. Are they still your favorite/one of your favorites?

They will always be one of my favorites. They just released a new album and it’s on my Wish List. My mood changes and they change right along with me.

4. What is your favorite of their songs?

The Cure has a few different personalities, so here is my favorite for each of them:

Manic: The Upstairs Room from Japanese Whispers

Angry Young Man: Like Cockatoos from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

The Pit of Despair: Play for Today from Seventeen Seconds

5. Are there any specific lyrics you hold dear?

The upstairs room Is cool and bright. We could go up there in summer And dance all night!

I just finished Wil Wheaton’s new book, Just a Geek over the weekend. It’s such a cruel twist that it only takes a few hours to read a book that took a year (and sometimes longer) to write. You can tell someone is a good writer when you finish the book and wish there was more. You find yourself perusing the index or reading the back cover or even reading the dedication or acknowledgements in an attempt to squeeze just that much more out of the experience. Fortunately for me, I only have to wait a day or so to read more from Wil because he updates his blog regularly.

In this book, he talks about his experiences after leaving Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it’s not some dorky celebrity thing. He continually runs into a brick wall every time he auditions for acting parts. He starts his blog to jump start his career, but when he asked the universe for a favor, he forgot to specify which career he wanted started. Instead of getting him acting jobs, his blog takes on a life of its own and forays into a writing career. It’s a great underdog story and the best part is that it’s true.

The Dot Bomb was so hard on all of us. When the bubble burst, Mike went from writing several books a year with good compensation to writing one book a year for a pittance. He had kept The Quotations Page as a hobby and before he knew it, he was getting so many hits from it that it was crashing the server. When we were lamenting the loss of income from his book writing career, we were also lamenting the fact that we were paying so much for bandwidth on the websites. The second that Mike stopped looking backward at his depleting writing career and started looking forward at the popularity of his website, things changed. After all his work and dedication, he now has the number one quotations site.

It’s like Wil’s book is a book for our generation. All of us had to reevaluate ourselves after the bottom fell out of the Dot Com phenomenon. He was talking about acting and writing, but for a lot of us, the carpet was pulled out from under us. I’m sure there are people out there blaming politicians or stock analysts for the carpet pull, but the blame really belongs squarely on our own shoulders. It was wrong for us to depend on book publishers, dot com startups, or the acting profession. The only people we can truly rely on are ourselves. The minute Wil started depending on himself instead of the whim of the casting directors, he was free. Just a Geek is truly a book for The Computer Generation.

The reading public is insatiable. What’s next, Wil? Write some fiction for me and please let it be about cool sci-fi, not poker.

My cheekbones are back. I saw them in the mirror yesterday and they scared me a little bit. I have been losing weight steadily for the last month and a half and I’m starting to see the results in my face. The last time I saw my cheekbones; I rebounded and started eating like a pig again. I don’t know if that was because I had been denying myself too much or if I got scared and wanted to hide my beauty again. I don’t know what was going on in my head then, but right now, I’m scared of a relapse.

It feels so good to be back on track. I have been fighting this since the Bosu Incident and I’m scared it won’t last. Man, I’ve been fighting with this since April. I can still see that brown haired girl in my mind’s eye. She is pointing at me behind her left hand, trying to get her friend’s attention, but I can see her in the mirror. She got my attention instead.

Now, I’m going to a different gym. I still go to Xcel on Tuesdays for the Trekking class. If I go once a week, it’s worth the money that I still have to pay until my year contract is up. Mike and I have been going to 24 Hour Fitness at least twice a week. Then there is all that DDR that I’ve been playing.  All of this activity is just helping me melt away until there is nothing left but bone and muscle and tendon.

Where is my next brown-haired girl going to be? Is she the girl in the mirror with those cheek bones? Is she an unexpected injury? Is she hiding in the corners of my psyche trying to undermine me? How am I going to get past this one? Is there another one after her?

I’m so sick of it. Why can’t I just naturally eat healthy and exercise without worry? Why is it still a struggle after so much time? I have been doing this since January 17, 2002. Two and a half years and this is still work for me. I’m still learning.

Of course, I can’t overlook how much progress I’ve made. I’ve lost over fifty pounds. I now see exercise as a way to have fun instead of a chore. I eat all my vegetables and dairy items every day, whereas I used to have trouble getting those boxes checked off every day. I’m thinner now than I’ve been for fourteen years. Soon, I will be thinner than I was when Mike married me. Soon, I will be at my goal weight and learning how to stay there.

If someone were to ask me whether it was worth it, I’d say, “Hell yeah!” Just shaving my legs is easier because there is a lot less square footage of skin to shave. It’s amazing how much maintenance is required to keep a fat body clean and beautiful compared to a thinner body. I can buy clothes at the normal stores now. My shoes are a full size smaller now than when I started. Is all of the work and struggle worth it? Yes, especially considering that I was struggling just as hard at the heavier weight. I was always on some diet or exercise plan when I was heavier. If I have to struggle, I’d rather struggle at a thinner weight than the higher one.

I remember when I had Mike take my “Before” pictures. I straightened my hair, did my nails, wore a new exercise outfit and made sure my makeup was perfect. I wanted to be as beautiful as I could be for my Before picture because I knew I would be done up perfectly for my After picture. None of it helped. I look at my Before picture and I can’t believe that I even thought I looked good at all. There is no amount of makeup or hair products that can make fifty extra pounds of body weight look good. I am a little past the half-way point right now and my half-way picture blows my Before picture out of the water without makeup or shiny hair. There’s no designer dress that can hide obesity. There is no makeover artist that can do anything for an overweight person. There is nothing more beautiful than being physically fit.

Is all of this worth it? Yes, it is. Hello, cheek bones. Nice to see you again.

Ok, it’s time to admit it. I’m completely addicted. I played for forty minutes this morning and I’m contemplating rushing home from work to play some more. I played for an hour yesterday morning and I still hopped on the pad in the evening to see if I could finally get a better grade on Secret Rendezvous.

I thought it had a bug. I got an A on Secret Rendezvous, but when I went to the high scores, it showed my old grade of a B. I backed out of the game to the beginning and played it again. I got another A, but it still didn’t save my score. So, I backed completely out of the game, turned off the console, restarted and played again. This time I got the amazing score of AA, but it STILL didn’t save my score!

After logging onto the forums and talking to the DDR obsessive compulsives with more experience than I have, I found out that DDR Ultramix doesn’t have a bug. It saves the highest score, not the highest grade. Apparently, it’s possible to get a B with a higher numerical score than an impressive AA performance. Somehow those two items aren’t inherently linked. I’m glad to know that there are people out there who are more obsessed than me.

Now, can anyone explain to me why the Workout Mode has different steps for the songs than the Game Mode? And, what am I going to do when I finish unlocking all the songs, pass them all off with AAA grades at all levels and finish all the downloadable Song Packs? Maybe I’ll be obsessed with something else by then.

The Familiar Stranger is a person who you see on a regular basis, but choose to ignore. He is the walking guy with the cowboy hat and the trench coat in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />West Jordan. He is the homeless guy on the corner of I-80 and 700 East. She is the girl at the gym who exercises every day at lunch time on the elliptical trainer. She is the person who drives the neon green car in the opposite direction every day. You never talk to them, yet you recognize them every day. You miss them if they aren’t there.

I had never heard the phrase before May of this year, when Boing Boing directed me to this article at The Feature. I now know that the paper describing this strange relationship has existed since 1972, but I’m so behind on reading obscure research papers from psychologists that I don’t think I would have ever gotten to that one on my own.

Stanley Milgram was the same psychologist that brought forth the idea of Six Degrees of Separation. His idea of The Familiar Stranger is also concerned with knowing people, but these are people that you choose to ignore. Berkley is doing more research on this idea.

Ever since I heard about this concept a couple of months ago, I have been thinking about it. I thought maybe that it might explain the confession problem that I have. Maybe, I thought to myself, I’m talking to familiar strangers, breaking the “ignore me” rule. Maybe that misstep of unspoken etiquette is the explanation for varied and personal confessions I receive on a regular basis. Maybe I notice the familiar strangers in my life a little more than other people do and I end up inviting them into my life by talking to them instead of ignoring them like I’m “supposed” to.

Since my discovery of this concept, a movie is in the works. Some slasher movie, I guess. Sure, the familiar stranger could be malignant, but the idea of the familiar stranger being your savior is more intriguing to me. Why don’t they write a movie about someone who is on the subway every day and sees the same people every day and the train gets stuck or maybe it’s an elevator to a huge building like the World Trade Center that houses many different businesses? These people who see each other every day really get to know each other and eventually fight to stay alive together, creating a bond. I’d rather watch that, but it’s so hard to convey the idea of a person who you see every day, but choose to ignore. How do you do that on film?

This whole concept has me thinking about all of those people that I see every day and ignore. Would I live a fuller life if I talked to them? Would I just be inviting more strange and heartbreaking confessions? Should I ignore them? Should I avert my eyes? Am I overstepping some invisible line every day, causing discomfort in others? Should I just stay in the house and avoid human contact at all costs? Should I get a BlueTooth phone so that I can see how many of my familiar strangers are nearby? Should I purposely go to different places in the city to avoid these people? Do people on the Internet count? If I read someone’s blog, but never comment, are they a familiar stranger? What about the people who lurk on my blog? How does whuffie fit in to all of this? This whole idea has my head spinning and I don’t know how I think about it all.

When I got the mail a couple of weeks ago, I thought it was junk mail. It wasn’t. Our corporate office had gotten a corporate account with 24 Hour Fitness. Our local office has an account with Xcel Fitness and we now have the option of having a membership through 24 Hour Fitness also. “Cool,” I said to myself.

Inside, all of my thoughts whirred. I could go to this gym. There’s no brown-haired girl there. This place is right by my home. I wouldn’t have to change in the dressing room. I could just go there and go back home to get ready for work. There’s no brown-haired girl there. They have a swimming pool. They have a co-ed hot tub. I could sit in the hot tub with Mike. THERE’S NO BROWN-HAIRED GIRL THERE!

Run away from my problems? Hell Ya! Is it silly to think that I might be safe at 24 Hour Fitness? Hell Ya! Do I care? No way. When my year is up on Xcel, I’ll drop them. I know it’s not their fault that the Bosu bitch made fun of me, but I’m not acting rationally. I need a place where I feel safe. I need to be able to go to the gym and get in shape. If I have to dip my head in the sand and convince myself that 24 Hour Fitness is safe to get my butt in the gym five or six times a week, then I’ll do it.

It has been so hard to go back to Xcel. I’ve only gone once a week on Tuesdays for the Trekking class. I have made Mike come with me for protection. The rest of the time, I’ve been playing Dance Dance Revolution and running on the treadmill at home, but I need to work out at the gym.

It’s such a good feeling to see all the healthy people there. It makes me feel like the whole world is fit and healthy and I deserve to be fit and healthy like the rest of the planet. I absolutely hate to go to the food court at the mall. When I’m there, I feel like the whole world is fat and gluttonous and I start to feel the same way. Cinnabon? Sure, no problem. Deep fried cheese? Yeah, I can stuff some of that in too.

It’s different at the gym. Almost everyone there is fitter and hotter than I am. I have the image of what I will look like when I’m thin right there on the treadmill in front of me. I took a tour of my new gym on Tuesday after Mike and I finished our Trekking class at the old gym. They have fewer machines. You can listen to the TVs on the radio instead of using an in-gym system. There is a swimming pool (closed because of chemical problems). There is a hot tub (complete with a skinny old guy in a Speedo). It’s not as pretty as Xcel, I’ll admit, but there wasn’t a Bosu in the place. That alone was enough for me.

Previous: Back to the Gym

I spent my summers with my grandparents when I was a child. We enjoyed Independence Day frugally by watching the fireworks at the park. I always felt guilty because my dad had convinced me that if I received any pleasure from the “pagan” holidays, I would die in Armageddon. It didn’t stop me from enjoying the colors and explosions.

My first true summer in Salt Lake came when I was seventeen. I had gotten a job at K-Mart that year, so Stacey went to Billings, Montana without me. I stayed in Salt Lake. I went dancing at The Ritz. I worked on Pioneer Day.

The other employees complained. They thought that we should be closed on Pioneer Day. I thought they were stupid. Pioneer Day didn’t exist in Montana. July 24^th was just another day. It might be a little too hot and we might get a Popsicle on that day, but that was the extent of celebration that Billings, Montana had for Pioneer Day. Days of ’47 was something that happened on those Utah television stations in Billings.

I worked on the 24^th of July and I had no problem with it. It was just another day to me. We sold a lot of hogi sandwiches heavy with onion and banana peppers. Other than that, it was a pretty slow day. I didn’t mind being there. It was just another day to me, except that there were fireworks at some of the parks.

It’s like that for me now. I make sure to celebrate the day with Mike. We don’t let the holiday go by without setting off some fireworks. We like to watch the fireworks from our house. If we stand in the street, we have the perfect view of Liberty Park’s show. Other than that, I don’t do much of anything else. There’s a big parade that I ignore. There’s a rodeo that I abhor. There’s probably lots more, but it all passes me by.

Happy Days of ’47, to the rest of the world! Utah is celebrating itself while you have to have a hot summer day. Sure, you have your Christmas in July, but how can that compare with obligatory parades and rope-bound cattle?

1. What color ink pen do you like best?

I can’t decide. The color ink that I prefer is the one I wasn’t using last time I wrote something. I like to change colors regularly. I have written in my Moleskine in purple, aqua, pink, red, green, blue and black.
2. Do you prefer plain paper or paper with lines (notebook paper)?

My Moleskine is used when I’m out and about and have a great idea. Since sometimes I like to draw pictures (or I like to think that I will want to draw pictures), I have the unlined version. When I’m writing at home, however, I prefer paper with lines. In fact, I have an MS Excel document that I use to print up journal pages so I can write longhand when I’m in the mood. Mostly, I just type on the computer.
3. What’s better: books from the library or reading online?
It depends on where I’m reading. If I’m stuck at work and I’m not allowed to read a book, then I prefer reading online. If I’m cuddled into the couch at home, then I prefer the library book. Mike has made a great site to read books online. You should check it out if you’re stuck at work.
4. Which would you rather get, e-mail or snail mail?
It depends on what I’m receiving. If it’s a personal note from a friend, I’d much rather get email because I’ll get it quicker. If it’s junk from advertisers, I’d much rather it be snail mail because then it cost them money to bug me. I will just dump it in the recycle bin, so I don’t worry about the trees they are killing. If it’s important bills or official notices from the government, I prefer snail mail because it seems more official than just an email showing up in my box. I don’t want to get anything official in my email.
5. Do you have a paper weight on your desk?
Not unless you count the Magic Eight Ball, Akenaten, Buddha or <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />St. Jude. I don’t keep papers under any of them. Buddha and St. Jude are too small to hold anything down, but Akenaten and the Magic Eight Ball could do in a pinch. I try to clean all papers off my desk each evening. If there is anything sitting on my desk when I leave, that means we had a really busy day and I left in a hurry.

I’ve been brooding about this since March. I know this because I wrote the phrase, “My dad is brave” in my Moleskine on March 8^th, 2004. Each time I scan through my little black notebook, I see the phrase and think about writing an entry about it. I have been brooding about it a little bit here and there for over four months. Yesterday in the shower, I decided that I needed to write about it.

What prompted the phrase written hastily in my notebook was a conversation in my meditation class. I haven’t attended meditation for months and I don’t really miss it, but I do miss the intellectual stimulation I got from it. One of the members of the class talked about a book she had read. There was a man whose life was used as an example in the book. I don’t know if he really existed or not, but she presented it as fact.

The man found out he had cancer. He had always been a health nut and spurned medical science. Rather than change his views, he refused the chemotherapy and surgery that would have saved his life. Her point was that some people are more scared of being wrong than dying. Death is less fearful than being wrong to some people.

After she told us this story was when I pulled out my Moleskine and wrote, “My dad is brave.” My dad isn’t fighting against cancer. The demons he fights are far larger than malignant cells, even if they are also invisible to the naked eye. I have only seen glimpses of his demons and there are times when I worry that I am fighting similar ones.

One of the weapons that my dad has used to fight his demons is religion. We joined the Jehovah Witness religion right before my fourth birthday. I remember this vividly, even though I was so young. He vehemently followed the letter of the law for over twenty years to the detriment of my childhood and the emotions of many others. It was only a year or so ago that he realized that the religion wasn’t helping him and in many cases, it harmed him.

So, he gave it up. He had temporarily disowned me as a daughter because of the religion and he gave it up. He had irrevocably damaged his relationship with his mother because of the religion and he gave it up. He had sacrificed his time and money to this religion and he just gave it up. He stopped going. He stood up to the elders. After all he put me through, he abandoned it.

This made me angry. He had clung to the Jehovah Witnesses and rejected me, my grandmother, and even Stacey because of them and now he was quitting it. He wouldn’t quit it for me, but he was willing to quit because of some Ayn Rand book he read twenty years ago that finally sunk into his thick skull. I was pissed.

Then I sat in my meditation class, listening to a member talking about healing yourself with the power of your mind and I realized that my dad is brave. After over twenty years of clinging to something, he was able to say that he was wrong. Rather than hanging on to something that had damaged his life so substantially, he was able to say, I quit. Unlike that guy with cancer, he was able to say, yes, give me the chemicals, cut into my body, whatever it takes to get me healthy again. And for that, I think my dad’s brave. I’m still untrusting, but I believe you can forgive without trusting the person again.

Good luck, Dad. I hope you heal quickly.

I had eagerly awaited to see it months ago, but when opening day came, we were busy with family things. It took us until Sunday night to see it. Both of us had our reservations about whether it would be worth it to spend two hours of our lives in a cold movie theater. Kathleen recommended it highly, though, so we bought the tickets on Fandango and went.

I have to tell you that I don’t think Isaac Asimov is that good of a writer. I struggled through the first Foundation book and I haven’t been able to return to the series. My favorite of his books were the robot mysteries and short stories. I liked the R. Daneel Olivaw the best. I liked those stories for their ideas far more than their writing. I’m not ashamed to say it: I’m an Asimov fan, but I hate his writing style.

It seems that when an author dies, you’re not allowed to say anything negative about him. Asimov had some great ideas, but he insisted on communicating them through dialogue, which is great if you’re writing a screenplay, but murder if you’re trying to read his books. There have been too many times when I had to go back a page or two to see who said what because I had just realized that I had gotten the speakers confused.

The screenplay writers of I, Robot have done a brilliant job of rewriting the short story on which it was based. I was so happy to see Susan Calvin there, analyzing the robot. Spooner is a paranoid detective, intent on proving that the robot killed Dr. Lanning.

The story deviates from the simplicity of Asimov quite quickly, but the details they have added are humanizing and brilliant. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because it was so fun for me to watch without any spoilers. It’s a shame Warner Brothers didn’t do this movie because this could have been the perfect prequel to The Matrix.

There were a couple of plot holes in the movie that could ruin it for you if you think about it too much. Don’t think. It’s sci-fi. Hell, it’s a sci-fi movie filled with robots. Just enjoy the ride for the fun that it is. By the way, I don’t miss the happy, go-lucky Will Smith at all. I like the brooding, paranoid Will Smith just as much.

Right before I woke up the other morning, I had a strange dream. I was competing in a race, but it was more like a strange scavenger hunt where you had to solve clues and experience moments. It was at an amusement park like Disneyland or maybe it was Las Vegas. I’m not sure, but everything was larger than life. It was a lot like a video game except there were a lot of people competing and I didn’t have a good orientation, so the map and the symbols weren’t explained to me very well and I was confused all the time. At one point, I knew I was behind and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. When I finally found out what I was supposed to do, it was to play a video game and get a certain score. I was nearly there when Mike showed up and started distracting me. I hadn’t totally lost by the time that I woke up, but I was really mad at him.

That was a night for dreams. I woke up at 3:38 am that morning with a horrible nightmare. I was having a terrible time at work. They were sending me north to drive a truck back from Idaho. I was supposed to be home five hours ago and I still hadn’t had a chance to call Mike to tell him where I was and what was going on. By the time I was able to get to my cell phone, I tried calling Mike. The reception was poor, but I could hear him. When he answered the phone, he sounded really worried. I started to explain that I had a terrible day at work, but he preempted my explanation. He said, “Laura, I think Maggie is�” and then the cell phone cut out. He sounded so worried that I was sure that she was on death’s door and I was five hours away from the two of them. I woke up instantly. Maggie wasn’t on the bed when I woke up, so I staggered into Mike’s office. He was there to comfort me and Maggie swaggered in behind me. I guess she had been sleeping in the living room.

Needless to say, I slept in that morning.

I’m empty. The last few entries I’ve written were half-hearted attempts rushed off in a flurry. Showing up at the page just isn’t doing it for me right now. I know I can’t be profound every day, but I feel like I have nothing to say. Maybe I’m just tired. I’m going to take tomorrow off and see how I feel on Monday.

1. Do you remember your first kiss?
Do I remember my first kiss? Yeah. It was summer and we lived in the house in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />South Salt Lake. My friend had a “boyfriend” and we went to his house. He had a little brother and she wanted to have a kissing contest. I didn’t want to kiss his little brother because he had a runny nose and there was snot just sitting on his upper lip. At least it wasn’t green.

The object of the contest was to see who could kiss the longest. I knew nothing about grownup kissing, so the “boyfriend’s” little brother and I just kissed each other very quickly over and over, trying to beat out my friend. I was carefully trying to avoid his snot when I glanced over at them. They were just having one big long kiss and they were making weird moaning noises over and over. I had never seen anything like it before.

We lost the contest.   2. How old were you when you had your first kiss?

I think this was before I got into first grade. I didn’t go to kindergarten, but I think I was kindergarten age.   3. Where did your first kiss occur?

South Salt Lake City, Utah. We were sitting on the swing set in the part that is like a group swing for four kids. I think it’s called the double swing.  I can’t describe it well enough, so here’s a picture of what it looked like (the swing on the right).   4. Where do you think is the most romantic place to exchange a kiss? (locations, not body parts)

In private. I don’t find kissing in public to be romantic. I know I kiss Mike in public, but I at least try to find an empty aisle at the grocery store.   5. What type of kisser are you? (peck, smooch, French, sloppy, etc.)   I have no idea what kind of kisser I am. I’ve never kissed myself. I know I’ve always been present when kissing happened, but I’m always much more involved with the experience than with my performance. That probably means that I’m a horrible kisser, but if I am, I haven’t had any complaints.

I bet a lot of it has to do with my mood. I bet I only give pecks when I’m crabby and smooches when I’m feeling silly and Frenches when I’m feeling frisky. My favorite are the Zerbet kisses. They’re the big noisy kisses that you give to someone’s belly. I like to give those the best.

I cooked a huge pot of Wagon Wheel Soup on Monday night. There were eight servings and I froze half of them and put the other half in the fridge. Oh yeah, I spilled one serving all over the floor and my left foot, scalding it. The dog was nice enough to help me clean up everything that hit the floor.

I like to cook huge batches of food and have lots of servings to bring for lunch. This soup was specifically made for lunches. I didn’t eat any Monday night. I saved a serving for Mike’s dinner, but I made it so that I would have something healthy and yummy to bring for lunch. I love having something to look forward to.

Cooking En Masse has its dangers, too. I can’t bear to look at another bowl of White Chili. It was delicious. It was healthy. My coworkers salivated at the microwave when I heated it up, but I never want to smell it again, much less eat it. Of course, a pot of that stuff was twelve servings, so I ate it every day for almost two weeks. I should cut the recipe in half next time.

For now, I’m still in love with Wagon Wheel Soup, but after I finish this batch, I should wait a couple of weeks until I make another.

Have I told you lately how much I love my Xbox? We bought a used copy of Project Gotham Racing for the Xbox. After playing for awhile, Mike noticed that it had a tiny crack in it that was causing trouble. The trouble got so bad the other day that we needed to decide whether or not to buy a new one.

Can I tell you that it wasn’t a question in my mind? I hadn’t earned more than a Bronze medal on each of the Arcade Race tracks in the easy section. I was THIS close to a Silver medal in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Tokyo. I can’t let all of that practice go to waste. We bought a new disk last night.

At first, we couldn’t find the game. Mike insisted that it must be at Best Buy somewhere because it was a classic game (in a Platinum box instead of lime green), but all I could find was Project Gotham Racing 2. I looked at the sequel and I thought about buying it, but I hadn’t conquered the first game yet. I didn’t feel worthy to start the sequel. I wanted the original, so I asked the guy in the blue shirt if they had it. He knew right were it was. They had moved all the Platinum games to an end cap by the registers. All was saved!

We also got the wireless link to hook our Xbox up to the network. Mike played with that this morning and got it to work. The best part is that we can import music into Project Gotham Racing so that we don’t have to listen to their songs over and over. I’m going to end up knowing the first 1:32 minutes of each song on the new Christopher Lawrence album because I imported the entire All or Nothing album into the game so that I could listen to it instead of the radio.

The radio feature is cool, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes the reception will go out when you go under a bridge and I love it when the DJ’s in Tokyo are speaking in Japanese (most of the time, they speak in English, go figure). The only problem is that I’ve been trying to get enough Kudo points to win the Silver medal in Tokyo and I’m pretty much sick of all the songs that the game came with. Thank you, for The Little Things. It’s a great song, but I never want to hear it again.

If you’ve never played this game, you are probably a little pissed off by this rant. I’m sure I would have been. “Jesus! It’s just a game!” No, you don’t understand. It’s not just a game. I’m going for the Silver medal and I’m going to get it and when I’m done, I’m going to the get the Gold. You hear me?

It helps to live in a bubble. I haven’t kept up with the news, so it has taken me weeks to know of the deaths of each hostage. I stopped watching the news because I feel powerless. There is nothing I can do except vote against Bush in November, and even that is an exercise in futility because I live in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Utah. Our votes go Republican no matter how I vote.

People are dying and I am powerless to change it. There is nothing I can do to stop it. No matter how loud I squawked when this war started, none of the gung-ho guys listened. I imagined the families in Iraq receiving the wrath of our military and I dreaded the future. I could have never imagined the treatment of the prisoners in our own prisons. I could have never imagined this hostage business. It’s completely out of control.

Tony Blair says that the only reason they’re taking hostages is because they can’t beat our soldiers. The only weapon they have to use against us is our own televisions. I don’t know how I feel about that since I don’t watch the news. In fact, the only reason I’ve turned on the television in the last three months is to play Xbox.

In some respects, it feels selfish of me to hide my head in the sand. I should be informed. I should be shamed by my country. But information only makes me sad and I refuse to take responsibility for the actions of my country. I didn’t vote for him, even if my state did. My vote means nothing. My voice means nothing.

I’m not the only one who thinks my vote means nothing. There are no commercials for the either of the presidential candidates running in Utah. I only noticed this when we went to Las Vegas. I saw several commercials on the televisions at the gym in Las Vegas, but both presidential candidates are ignoring Utah. They don’t think my vote means anything either.

Even this blog entry seems like a waste. Why should I talk about the evil in the world when there is so much good around me? I have such beauty around me each day like cabbage butterflies, hummingbirds and dragonflies. A brood of spiders hatched in our house and we have been inundated with tiny spiders, not old enough to know to avoid the light bulb because it might be hot. I saw twenty baby spiders this morning. One of them singed his eight little legs on the light bulb in the hallway. How could something be wrong in the world when there are baby spiders to watch?

Mike Ferry is a real estate guru. He’s pretty much out of the business now and his sons run the show, saying the same things with a new twist here and there. Over the years he has changed a lot. It’s interesting to listen to his old tapes and compare them with the newer ones. The real estate game hasn’t changed much in the last twenty five years, no matter what they want to tell you. Price the house right and it sells. The Seller is happy, the Buyer is happy, the Broker is happy and the Agent gets it in the ass.

Mike Ferry’s first rule of selling real estate is: Show Up. You have a listing appointment? What’s the first thing you need to do? Show Up. You are taking the buyers out to see property? What’s the first thing you need to do? Show Up. You need to get some appointments? What’s the first thing you need to do? Show Up. His first rule of real estate is being in the right place at the right time, whether that place is at a listing appointment, a showing appointment or in the office prospecting for new clients. Get your ass in the door every freaking day and you’ll be a successful real estate agent.

That’s how I live my writing. Every day I show up. I get my butt in front of the computer or I take out my Moleskine and I show up at the page. I don’t know why I think that I should follow the same rules for writing as I did for being a real estate agent. I was a relatively successful real estate agent, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was harder on myself than a boss ever would have been. I would have punched myself in the nose and quit if I could have found a place to stand to get the leverage to break my own nose with my fist.

Ok, this entry has taken a metaphysical trip that I didn’t intend, so let’s start over.

Every day, I show up at the page. Even if I think I feel empty, I show up at that page and I start typing. Sometimes I write a half a page of crap before I get an idea of what to write about in my entry. Sometimes I’m so consumed with something that I can’t write about in public that it’s hard to even think about something else. I just let my fingers complain about the taboo subject and within a few pages, I find something interesting to talk about.

How do I write every single day without fail? I show up. I treat it like an appointment. If I had an appointment with a Seller to list their house, would I blow them off because I “didn’t feel like it”? Hell no. I’d show up at their house, no matter what. That’s how I’ve been treating my writing. No matter how empty I feel, I show up and start typing. Amazingly, there is always something in there to come out. I don’t know where it comes from. Sometimes, it feels like it comes from somewhere else, but I still type as fast as I can to get it out of my fingers and on the screen.

I quit the real estate business over two years ago. Is it wrong of me to keep all those Mike Ferry tapes and inspirational stuff? I remember getting really revved up by them and feeling inspired to get on the phones and get appointments with as many clients as possible. I think I cling to them because they made me feel so inspired to work hard. Man, I worked hard when I was a real estate agent. Now that they’ve cut my hours at the office, I don’t make as much as I did then, but I have no desire to go back. It was so stressful and the broker took half my hard earned money.

Then again, I work hard at this blog every day and it has only earned about three bucks in advertising money. You can’t measure something solely by how much money it earns. I feel such a sense of accomplishment by publishing my writing every day. Every time there is a surge in readers, I rejoice at my higher numbers. Quite frankly, I learned a lot about life being a real estate agent. Sometimes I feel silly for going into the real estate business because I worked so hard for so little money, but most of the time, I’m grateful that I learned so much and I’m even more grateful that I don’t have to do it anymore.

I went back to the gym last Tuesday. Mike and I met there to take a Trekking class, which is a class on the treadmill where the teacher tells you what to do with your speed and incline to music. It’s kind of like my i2Workout CDs without the robotic voice.

The last time I went to the gym was sometime in early June. I used the elliptical trainer and there was no incident, but I still hated it there. I was still mad because of The Bosu Incident. Heck, I’m still upset over it and it’s still hard to set foot in the door.

After all the times I’ve compared it to The Oasis Spa at the Luxor Hotel, I realized that I was wrong. I went to the spa at the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Luxor on our last Vegas trip and my gym is way better. There are more machines and the changing facilities are nicer. The only ways Luxor beats Xcel Spa & Fitness is the hot tub is larger and more luxurious, the showers have their specialty products in them (available for purchase at Dandera’s Bath and Body Shop) and there is fresh fruit in the waiting area. I’d much rather be able to choose which machine to use without waiting than to have fresh fruit waiting for me. The more I think about it, the more I realize my gym is a great place. I just had one bad experience there.

It had been about a month since I last went to the gym. You wouldn’t think a month could change things, but they did. All the signs begging you to narc on your friends were different. They had some Christmas in July promotional going on as well. Then, when it came time to scan myself in, the scanner was gone. Now, I need to hand my card to the person at the front desk so they can scan it and make sure I’m up-to-date before they return my card. Plus, one of their washing machines is broken, so they are low on towels. Other than that, everything still looked the same.

The Tuesday Trekking class has a rotating teacher. Every time I go there, I never know who is going to teach it. Each teacher is different, but they are all good in their own ways. Last Tuesday’s teacher was the small blonde. Every time she gives a command, she says something positive afterward. She tells us to speed up and a few seconds later, she says, “Nice!” She tells us to slow down and a few seconds later, she says, “Recover!” She tells us to change the incline and increase the speed at the same time and a few seconds later, she says, “Keep going!” Just like when Mr. Rogers introduced me as his television friend, I feel like she is talking to me personally. It feels like she notices that I’m working hard and she’s giving me positive reinforcement.

I kept being distracted by a girl on a treadmill in front of me. She was thin and had brown hair. I never saw her face, but from the back, she looked like the Bosu girl and I wanted to punch her. For all I know, it was a girl that was shaped just like the Bosu girl, but that didn’t calm me down. The more I saw her run on the treadmill (she wasn’t following along with the class, she was just exercising on her own), the more I realized that she could have kicked my ass on the treadmill just as much as in the Bosu Synergy class.

While I was exercising, I fantasized about how I could get back at that girl.  The best I could come up with was tripping her and when she got back up say something like, “You should really work on your balance. You know, they have a class called Bosu Synergy. Maybe you should take it some time.” I chuckled to myself as I missed the command from the teacher. All I heard was her response, “Nice!”

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1. Would you rather earn more money or have more time off?

Can’t I have both? Can’t I earn more money and work less hours? What is the saying? Work smarter, not harder. Can’t I have some of that smarter work?

I guess if I had to choose, I would prefer to have more time off. We only go through life once and I want to enjoy it while I’m here. I can’t spend it after I’m dead.   2. Which is more important, the ends or the means?

This is a question straight out of the sixties. You might as well ask me which is more important, the medium or the message? There’s no question on this one, they’re both important, but the means outweigh the ends. If you have to go against your morals to get the desired result, then it’s not worth it. You can’t do good in the world by doing evil.
3. How are our personalities formed, by nature or through nurture?

Wow! Isn’t that the question? I have no idea. I don’t have any children, but all the parents that I know say that the children come with their own personalities. I know that each of our pets have their own distinct personalities, but each of them had completely different upbringings.

Did Linda’s compulsive overeating come from me? What about her dedication to a schedule? Did Maggie’s needy behavior come from being raised by Mike’s over-attentive sister, Kristen, or was she born that way? Her brother, Chester, also was ultra-needy, but then again, he was raised by Kristen, too. What about Sid? Was he born with the need to bark at motorcycle helmets or was he accosted by a motorcycle madman during his puppy years?

I truly don’t know. If I knew for sure, it might win me the Nobel Prize, so I’m not telling.   4. Who do you feel closer to, your mother or your father?

Finally, an easy one. I feel closer to my mom. I never really bonded with my dad. Now if you asked me to choose between my mom and Grandpa, that would be a hard question.
5. Why do you answer these silly questions, out of boredom or out of love of introspection?   Ahh, the love of introspection. I think my entire life has been lived through the myopic eyes of introspection. Unless of course, you mean the Pet Shop Boys’ album, then I would have to choose boredom. What I do here has nothing to do with that album… I Want A Dog… A Chihuahua…

The neighbor with the incredibly huge front lawn is mowing it right now. He is wearing what looks like a flat brimmed fedora, jeans and a gray t-shirt. He is walking up and down the incredibly huge front lawn and his tiny house hides at the back of the lot. When Mike and I moved here, Stacey and Dan came to visit us. We had parked the Beetle in front of this neighbor’s house because the previous residents were still moving out when we got there. By the time Stacey and Dan arrived, all they saw was our car in front of that house and lamented our poor choice. It wasn’t until they checked the address that they realized that we were in the adorable brick home across the street. I look at this neighbor mowing his huge lawn and I wonder how he can enjoy living there. I would hate it if I were him. Back and forth he pushes the mower. If it were me, I’d knock down the tiny house at the back of the lot and build a real house alongside everyone else’s. I guess that’s why I don’t live in the house across the street.

Rick is out of town for the Fourth. He is taking <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Tracy to meet his sister in California. We are looking out for the cats, but there is a house sitter. His black cat, Pedro, won’t go near me since I held him down and brushed the lumps off his back end. Rick had given him a bath, which caused a shedding like I haven’t seen on this animal. Maybe he’ll forgive me in a week or two. His brain’s the size of a tennis ball. How long can he remember?    My cowboy-hippie motorcycle neighbor is dressed in his leathers and boots for a ride on his motorcycle. His girlfriend is all suited up and they are getting ready for a drive on the fourth of July. I’m watching them out of my window getting the motorcycle ready and putting on their helmets. I can almost smell the leather from here. His braided hair falls halfway down his back and her short blond hair fits nicely under the helmet. I know my dog is going to whine and whimper when he starts up the bike, but it’s fun to watch the process. They both climb onto the bike and arrange themselves carefully. The motor fires up and he pulls away from the curb. The funniest thing is that they have strapped a stuffed monkey onto the back of the bike. Have fun, neighbors!