i will maybe start a new list, this one for thingsi did not know i could do until i tried them drunk and could. this list so far would include shimmying up a lightpole with bare feet. almost like a monkey.
i’m not sure what else would go on this list so far.
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im back from san diego. it was a nice 4 days, aside from the stomach grumblings (as i ate bad food and tried to get my medicine to work), sunburn and staying with someone else’s family.
we went to the beach yesterday and i missed a few spots with the lotion – namely right by my bellybutton and on the outsides of my armpits. today they are red.
they have nothing on my neck, which got a nice tan/burn on sat playing golf for the first time in my life. i had a really tough time with the long shots. i need more practice to be able to drive well – i think much of the time i got focused on trying to send the ball to the green rather than simply connecting with it. so i would swing too hard, like i was playing baseball and the golf ball wouldnt go anywhere. well, it would go 10 or 20 yards in a sort of a dribble.
but i made the attempt and hopefully made some sort of success at bonding with rachael’s father and grandfather.
its weird seeing another family work. i never saw a lot of karen’s, linda’s was the same…i only really interacted with extra members on ocasssion and not for very long. but with rachael and san diego, i stay with them for days.
i like our family best. we are very…basic. theres not a lot to us.
i hope rachael goes with me/us to the beach one day. i want to show her my version of the same story.
and now im back.
* * *
everyone should immediatly use whatever resources they have to get this song: 50 pence – ‘in the pub’. the most awful, funny, stupid cover of ‘in da club’ i have yet to hear.
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It looks like I’ll be missing my men’s group this week. To attend a breast-feeding class. I think I’m going to have to go ahead and hand in my testicles now.
06-28-03
It’s late and I am sleepy, but I know I should write Not only to preserve the day’s memories, but worse: Tripp may soon move me to the end of the nav!
My legs are thick with fatigue. I put in a dozen miles on muddy trails today, putting my total for the week well over one hundred. I knocked off fifty of those miles yesterday during a long haul on the Katy Trail. It’s all flat and pretty uneventful: a good place to get in loads of miles without worrying about careless or raging motorists. On the first leg of the ride, I passed a lot of riders who were finishing up the 2003 Katy Trail Ride. These folks started at the far western end five days ago, steadily heading eastward to St. Louis. It was interesting chatting with some of them and everyone seemed to be having fun.
On the return leg, I thought I saw something in the distance down the arrow-straight trail. In the dappled shadows, I could just recognize the outline of a wild turkey. As I drew slowly nearer, I saw yet another turkey off to the side, along with something else I couldn’t quite make out. A flock of turkeys, I figured. Another 75 yards or so and I could see what it was: a beautiful doe and her speckle-coated fawn, spots of white serving to camouflage his brown hide. It looked like it was fast approaching his lunchtime so I tried not to disturb them. As I pulled to a stop, the turkeys spied me and took to flight. The doe turned and watched them fly off down the trail, apparently not noticing me. The click of my cleats disengaging from the pedal let her know I was there, and for the next five minutes or so, we stood there in the shade, watching one another.
A shift of my weight from one foot to the other was enough cause for her to draw her white tail up into the air and shake it briefly. The fawn took his cue and crept quietly into the underbrush and disappeared. Then, with her wee one safely ensconced in the foliage, she turned and walked into the woods herself, vanishing as surely as time.
Offspring, it seems, have been on my mind a lot following our visit to the doctor’s office yesterday. Amy’s blood pressure continues to climb and then fall while resting, so she’ll soon be on “couch rest” here at home. Doctor John told us she was about fifty percent effaced, and while I couldn’t immediately remember from our birthing classes what that meant, I knew it meant something was halfway to somewhere. It’s likely that Amy won’t go to forty weeks, too.
So, all this has me thinking a lot about our baby. While the original due date was July 31, I was always kind of keen on him being born in August. Like me. It’s weird. I didn’t realize it until I was driving out to my bike ride. I think I sort of figured he’d be born in August. Like me. That he’d be a Leo (whatever that means). Like me. I guess in a sense I’ve been thinking that he would be like me. I just had to shake my head. This child isn’t even born yet and I am already building expectations of who he’ll be. He’s still in utero and I already expect him to be something, to behave a certain way, to have a certain disposition. Good grief. What sort of father will I be if I can’t allow my child to develop into himself, an individual, not a carbon copy of some idealized self-image I have?
I’m starting to think that it’s a good thing that pregnancy lasts for nine months. The time lets you slowly adjust to the concept of having a child, of being a parent. If you could have a child at the moment you decided you wanted it, just pick one up at the store (“Would you like to supersize that?”), I cannot imagine how bad that would be.
He’s coming, this blessed little gift. I just hope I don’t screw him up too badly.
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The whole Alaska trip was amazing. I saw some of the most beautiful sights in the country, had a new adventure everyday, and met some amazing people.
The trip consisted of me, my father, my brother Joe, my dad’s partner Eddie and his son Zack, another partner Tim and his son Jack, their banker Puan, an employee named Steve, a friend of my father named Ken, his son Stanley, and Ken’s friend Bill.
We arrived in Anchorage and Jack immediately contacted his cousin Joe. Apparently Joe lived with some strippers and was going to take us to the Great Alaskan Bush Company. It was an interesting night. The three oldest guys there, Bill, Steve and Tim, each probably went through a couple hundred dollars on lap dances. This was my second time ever in a strip club, and this place kicked the Gold Club of Charlotte NC’s ass. In the next few days I should be receiving a shirt from the place. On it, a plane is flying into a woman’s vagina. In some weird way, it’s kind of cool.
The next morning we woke up and headed to the airport to go to the Royal Wolf Lodge. Our daily life consisted of waking up at 5:30am, eating breakfast at 6:30 and heading off to the bush planes by 7:30. From there we would fish until around 4 or 5pm, head back, eat dinner, talk to everyone, and then go to sleep. Repeat.
I’m not much of a fisherman. It’s not really my idea of fun, but I really enjoyed the fishing aspect of the trip. I surprised myself.
Some of the people I met on the trip were amazing. In particular, Puan Penn was a great person to talk to. He was born in Cambodia, and in his lifetime he has seen family members die in front of him, been kidnapped twice, and not had a piece of food for over a month. He escaped to America when he was eleven, where he touched a book for the first time in his life. He learned to read and speak English by thirteen, and today is probably one of the most educated people I have ever met. He reads three books a week (mainly non-fiction history books) and has traveled the world many times. He proposed to his wife after meeting her only once. And he really likes chicks that have “junk in the trunk.”
On the flipside, there was Ken and Stanley, who would ask Puan the stupidest questions I could imagine. Some of these included: “What’s this AIDS thing all about?” “What’s it like to starve? Don’t you get really hungry?” and “Did kids like to play in landmine fields?” If I were Puan, I would have punched them out many a time.
I spent most of my evenings reading in bed and letting my mind wander. It was great and horrible all at the same time. When my mind is idle I slowly start to go insane. I think way too much about things I should just let go and forget. It was at many times very lonely. Thankfully, on the last night my mind was preoccupied with Bush League Baseball, which consisted of drinking a ton of beer and playing home run derby with a heavily duct taped wiffle ball and bat. It didn’t matter if you won or loss, all that mattered was how drunk you got.
Two cigars, half a pack of cigarettes, and a couple of cases of beer later I was on my way home. It was a ton of fun, but I was happy to be on my way back. It’s scary that I missed Los Angeles. I brought back a ton of stuff, including my Boba Fett statue, all of my Calvin and Hobbes books, my Fight Club soap and my brand new digital camera. I think I have everything I want from home finally here.
Alaska will be calling my name again next summer. We’ll see if I have the cash to go.
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besides the sketchy part of certain american ‘agents’ apprehending her abroad and bringing her back for trial(illegality has never come between our government and what it wants), the overall tone of the article is sickening. it is coated with so much condescension i felt like the author must have been having some sort of religious experience in calling out shame upon the young smuggler.
the author goes into background detail on how the smuggler and her husband left their country at a young age, and didn’t even have the decency to complete their education. for shame. the author probably assumes they had access to posh private schooling with the tone she takes on the matter. she got quotes from members of the old village, getting people to talk about how much potential the young woman had. of course they don’t say anything about how she could have done better than getting arrested, the author infers that on her own.
the author proceeds to discuss the in’s and out’s of smuggling illegal immigrants. she’s an expert of course. from her expertise she wraps a careful web of greed and disrespect for the american dream as she turns her focus back to the young woman. how could the smuggler be so selfish and greedy to take those poor people to their deaths? quotes from the neighbors mention how they never suspected her of anything bad. its a true scandal if there ever was one.
i’d like to take a bit of a different perspective on the story. all the quotes from the smuggler’s old town show that she was a nice gal. a caring person. i would say that she is just these things. i would say that she was being very selfless in risking her life to smuggle those immigrants into the country. some died, but its not like its a safe business, smuggling. the immigrants knew the risk, so did the smugglers, but they took it. why?
why is impossible for most americans to understand. i didn’t have a strong understanding of it until i left the country. poverty kills. it kills the human spirit. people don’t want to raise families in a place where they can’t work, where their children can’t go to school, where they can’t see progress in the quality of their lives, where things always get worse. this is a lot of the world. it not being like that, in many ways, in america, makes america a very special place. its only natural for people to want to come there. and its one of the most selfish, bigoted, inhuman things for those within to try and tell those without that they cannot enter.
i wanted to reach into my computer screen and grab the author of this article and shake her about. she manipulated her material in a journalistically commendable manner, turning a young woman trying to help people with no future into a greedy, self centered, dangerous(???) criminal with no respect for our country. i wonder which country within our country the author had in mind. i can think of a lot of places these bigoted, shallow ideas might come from. the fact that there are a lot of places where these views come from is the real shame. shame on you, Kate Zernike of the New York Times. stupid bitch.
peace
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i am sweaty and yuck from working out then running errands (dollar tree and wal-mart, where i got the new harry potter for half of list price). i will now take a lovely bath with my yummy body gel and then take adavantage of my roommate-free house and take a naked nap. a naked nap in lovely freshly clean sheets is wonderful. then later, in the role of token female, i am going with micah and jesse and matt duckworth to the track for an early evening of playing the ponies. upon return i will call cheri to meet up to go to TbC. this day feels ideal. well. almost.
now it’s 4.30 and i am clean, napped, clothed, and waiting for jesse to and micah to come get me. i am wearing a dress to go to the track and i’m not sure why. people used to get dressed up to go to races, but nowadays most do not anymore. i think it’s nice. a small part of me wishes i had a huge broad-brimmed hat to complete my look. that part of me is squished by the bigger part that inists i would look like a lameass.
quinn sent me an IM conversation he had with stacy today. stacy was the 4th person in our high school youth group mini-clique, who no one was really friends with but we were thrown into situations with because of youth group, so we always hung out. in their IM she bitches ad nausuem about how evil i was to her at quinn and wendy’s wedding. she’s so wrong it’s almost funny. i have never met a person with a bigger alternate reality problem. it would be one thing if i was being a bitch – heaven knows i have no problem admitting that!- but i do take a little issue with complete slanderlibel. (slander would mean it entirely goes against who i am to be perceived as bitchy, right? see, i’m realistic.) in a way i want to write her and completely go off, but i just don’t know if i have the energy after all these years.
does anyone know why horse-racing horses’ names are so weird? i’m looking at the post’s picks for the races today and wondering why a horse has a kind of title instead of a name. they don’t run around with them at the stables calling them “capwaynesglass” and “irish baronness”, do they?
back from the races; i won the first exacta i bet! a $4 ticket, a $69.20 payoff. woowoo!
waiting for cheri to come pick me up to meet the rest of the girls out at TbC. listening to coldplay and it’s got me feeling dreamy. remembering the time i laid with The Boy in bed and listened to this for hours….
BUT this is exactly the romantic nonsense that gets me in trouble. will make a drink and pop in jay-z instead, practicing don’t-fuck-with-me-unless-i-want-you-to stances in the full length mirror. although i am not sure how well that gels with a dress that i think makes me look slightly like the st. pauli girl. although, this is perhaps, not an entirely undesirable image….?
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question of the day: does humping to pet shop boys make you gay? or, rather, is humping to them gay? thats a better way to phrase it.
i bought the new harry potter yesterday. that too made me feel slightly effeminate. i just wanted to get it cheap – 18 dollars is one thing, 30 is another.
im so sleepy. and its 10:30 in the morning.
and i stare across my floor and see the small stack of ‘heart vs. brain’s that i got in the mail the other day. great stuff and much appriciated. aubrey is rock-tastic when she wants to be. if she woul ever finish reading my book, i think she would like it. (oh, yes, that book. the one i swear swear swear i am going to finish this summer. followed by my ‘meta’ script rewrite.)
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