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the ways things are

Posted by tripp 30 Aug 2010

I’ve realized exactly what gets my goat. (Not every little niggling thing, but the bug thing that I can’t seem to wrap my head around). It goes like this:

We have traded quality for quantity in the 21st century.

I want to use the money I make and the time I have to improve the quality of my life: the food I eat, the experiences I have, the interactions I have with others.

Instead, I find that my options are to sign onto X-Box or go to the movies or drink in a bar. I’ve been ruminating on this for weeks with a decent amount of frustration and anger.

I don’t want Ikea furniture and plastic-made crap in my apartment. I want open windows and wood and a garden. It’s the future, right now.

I’m clearly doing something wrong here. And it’s solvable. But even once that’s solved, my question remains: how have we reached this point as a culture? How is it that we don’t all have amazing lives, every day? That we aren’t using money and technology to make life more fun? Instead, we have TMZ and Starbucks.

I’m not trying to be cynical here, this is a real question. What can we do to improve the situation? What can I do?

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‘a quiet revelation’

Posted by petunia 27 Jul 2010

how embarrassing that i have been so terribly delinquent in the last week after making such a huge declaration to be back on here and writing just a few weeks before that.  embarked on what now feels like a whirlwind comeback/reunion tour as i blaze through dc, nyc, now richmond, then back to dc again, all in a week and a half.  it’s been exhausting but amazing.  have seen sooo many friends – jill & matt, carter, jenny, sara, cheri, jane, and jesse and tracey  tomorrow and wednesday.  i really feel like my batteries have been recharged, especially making my way through each of these cities in which i used to live and somehow realizing that those times were then and have led me to the place i am now.  it brings to me a real sense of peace i think i have been missing.

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we now return to your regularly scheduled…

Posted by tripp 17 Jul 2010

Hi.

I went MIA for quite some time, for a bunch of unrelated (though probably actually semi-related) reasons. The chatter on here had died down. I was writing more seriously than I ever have before. R finished school and is back here. And a bunch of other stuff.

We went to Italy last week, for 10 days. The timing was mostly right and we leaped. 4.5 days in Florence, 3.5 in Rome. It was amazing. Pictures and stories will follow.

But I came back to find a zillion posts on here. And though I thought that, after 10 years, the site was winding down, I think I was wrong. And though I took the last 3 months off from writing on here (and being online in general), I am more interested in seeking a balance now.

I wish I could call all of you up and go out for a drink. There are so many stories from the past 3 months I would love to share, but this isn’t the place. It sucks to get old, to find your life silo-ed and organized into weird boxes. Posting was much easier when I only had to worry about pissing Petunia or Matthew off.

Of course, this is the real reason I’ve been so silent.

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‘time is the coin of your life’

Posted by petunia 15 Jul 2010

this little stack of books represents my life from 1993 until now.

i guess i was a junior when i started keeping a planner.  not sure why it started.  i have always used them to keep track of my life and upcoming events, but even from the very beginning, i used them as almost a journal for the events of my life.  i still go back and fill in what happened yesterday, or a couple nights ago, even if it’s not something i had scheduled or planned on.

my first few look a lot like this on the inside:

at face value, that strikes a very scholarly image of me at the end of high school, which i think was my sly intention back in the day.  i recorded significant events in my own little shorthand, most of which i still understand.  ”OFK” for “our first kiss” made me smile when i saw it today.

once i got to college, besides recording classes and assignments and exams, i chronicled nights out, parties, and drunken debauchery.   hookups were signified with initials in the right hand corner of a date, circled.  the planners were a lot more juicy in those days.

nowadays, my planner looks more like this:

i honestly don’t know what i am doing on a given day without my planner.  i’ve definitely panicked when it’s been lost, driven back home on my way to work as i realize i left it there.   i’ve tried to move it online to google calendar, attempted to marry it to my beloved crackberry and for some reason, it just doesn’t flow for me.

i like thinking that someone can tell me a date, any date, since august 1993, and with a fair amount of certainty, i can pull out one of these well-thumbed, stickered, and wrinkled friends and tell you where i was and what i was doing.

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Triathlon: Attack of the Jitters

Posted by ray 23 Jun 2010

The final pre-race email came today and I am a nervous wreck. Swim wave assignments were posted; I’m in the first wave. I keep telling myself that since I actually hope to do well maybe this is a good thing.

The swarm of butterflies in my stomach thinks otherwise.

This is silly, I tell myself. “Self, this is silly.” I’ve been in dozens and dozens of races. I’ve won and placed in both running and biking events. I’m cool. I’m cool with this. This is what I’ve trained for. I should be cool like the other side of the pillow. But I’m not. For some reason, I’m freaking right-the-fuck out.

Usually, if I get pre-race jitters, its a day out, but most of the time I’m cool. I’m the epitome of cool. I’m The Fonz.

Wait. The Fonz hasn’t been cool since the late ’70s, right? Poor choice.

I keep trying to remind myself I’m ready for this. I can do the swim. I can do the bike. I can do the run. I’ve been through the transition dozens of times in my head. I’ve trained nearly nine months for this. Time to give birth to this baby. Bad analogy. Now I’m more nervous and feel slightly uncomfortable in my pelvic floor. Wait. Do guys even have a pelvic floor?

The truth is that with all that I’ve done, with all the preparation I’ve done on my body, I’m still nervous about the start of the swim. In open water. Yes, YES, YESS! I KNOW I was supposed to do an open water swim BEFORE the race. Easier said than done. Do I just drive up to some random farmer’s cow pond and jump in? The only nearby open water deep enough for swimming is the Missouri River at flood stage. No thank you. I’ll be content with seeing my Gulf of Mexico oil booms on TV and not in person, if you please.

How will I do swimming in a bunch? How cold will the water be? Should I really shave my chest? How do I handle getting kicked? Do I wear the swim cap even if I’m bald and don’t need one?

My mind flicks back to something I read once about the bright swim caps supplied at races. They say you shouldn’t wear your own black swim cap because that makes it more difficult for S&R to find the body.

Okaaaay. I need to *not* think about that.

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Parenting: Ho Ho Ho

Posted by ray

I suppose there are just some times when, as a four-year-old looking to go to bed on one’s own terms, it becomes necessary to curl up in bed with your santa hat firmly on. And dream of Christmas, I’d reckon.

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Triathlon: QUADZILLA!

Posted by ray 19 Jun 2010

I shoe-horned my fat ass into my first pair of tri shorts today. Though they fit tightly like bike shorts, they’re about two inches shorter in the leg. For increased hawtness, I suppose. Because, hey, who doesn’t want to see even more sexiness from a 200+ pound guy wedged into skin-tight lycra, amiright?

I am a tad concerned about the tight nature of the leg hem, which hits right across the back of the hamstring. Either my giant thighs are going to shred these things like a pair of Lou Ferrigno’s pants or they’re going to give me a hella cramp during the run. We’ll see. I kinda like the idea of jogging to the line with my pants in tatters, though. HULK SMASH!

Today was a big weight room day. Not ‘big’ for a football player or even for anyone who lifts a lot regularly, but out of the norm for me as I’ve been working a lot on cardio and neglecting the weights, something I noticed recently in the pool. Hopefully a few more days lifting will see me regain a little of that snap in the water. Today was a couple rounds with pecs, upper pecs, shoulders, lats, delts, back, obliques, abs, quads and some nasty little tri/lats combos to mimic the pull on the freestyle swim.

Thusly, I am tired and having filled up on ice cream and two whole Girl Scout Somoa cookies, I am ready for bed.

(Wait… Did I start off by bitching about my fat ass?)

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