Shallow Thinker

I was doing a bit of housekeeping on the admin side of the blog this morning and realized that I had some draft posts sitting and waiting to be finished.  What better way to spend the Thanksgiving than to try to figure out what I was trying to say?

Self Assessment

March 04, 2010

I have decided that I am slowly changing into something else. It’s tough to narrow down exactly what I am becoming, but I think that I’ve got two options. Either I am turning into a cantankerous old man, or I am turning into a dog. It’s a toss-up right now.

Ummm…..yeah, I don’t know where I was going with this one.  Maybe I growl a lot?  Maybe I pee wherever I feel like…  It’s tough to say.

My Contribution to April Fool’s Day

April 01, 2010

That’s it.  No text.  No pictures.  So I contributed something, we just don’t know what.  Or maybe I contributed nothing. Or maybe the joke was that I actually made some type of contribution to anything.  This may be one of the world’s greatest mysteries…except for Stonehenge.  But we all know that’s where the Banshees live.  And they do live well.

Common Thread

April 16, 2010

I have been involved in some type of organization for most of my life.  When I say “involved”, I don’t mean that I’ve been a member of a group, I mean that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into said groups and I’ve tried to push them to be better than where they would have been had I not been involved.  There were a couple of small groups in high school.  In college, I started doing it to a greater degree (that’s an education pun!) and now I’ve noticed that I still seek to do do it.

Just like before, I have no idea where I was going with this post.  It sounds like it was going to be a serious post, but the flash of comedic brilliance at the end kind of makes me question that logic.  Maybe you should think of a really good life lesson and assume I was about to tell it to you.  Because that’s exactly what I was going to say.  And I was going to be eloquent and charming.  Unlike my normal self.

There you go. That’s it. That’s all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on at this blog. Consider yourself privileged to have been able to see this.  Not everyone can.  (Actually, they can.)

I have posted before about the Warrior Dash.  There was a group there taking pictures so that they could turn around and sell those pictures to the attendees for an amazingly high amount of money.  I saw a few of the ones they had of me, and none of them really looked like they justified the cost.  One of my partners in stupidity, however, found this image yesterday.  Oh boy…

Yeah, I look pretty rough there.  If I’m going to pay $50 for a photo, they should have at least added in some muscle, made me look like I was having a much better time, and made me look like I wasn’t collapsing to the ground.  For reference, they did get a couple of others of me during the event.  Unfortunately, I don’t look much better in those either.  It must be the type of cameras they were using.  But at least there was fire in these.

In my last post, I mentioned something about the emotions of little girls.  It was a complete understatement.  This past week has been an experience in how unqualified I am at being a comforter/teacher for my oldest daughter.

Butterfly turned six earlier this month and has expressed some interest in riding her bicycle without training wheels.  Going into this, I knew that Butterfly was my perfectionist, my crier, and a little ball of impatience.  These create a wonderfully volatile combination when teaching her new things. So, naturally, teaching her to ride her bicycle should be a pleasant bonding experience….right?

Bicycling lessons have not gone stellar.  Butterfly has done pretty well learning to compensate and balance a little.  Physically, she’s getting the hang of it.  Emotionally, she’s a wreck.  She cries when she wobbles.  She wants to stop trying if I have to catch her.  She’s more scared of falling than she is excited about riding.  I tried pushing her over in the grass so that she would realize that it doesn’t hurt that bad.  (For future reference, bad idea.)

I’m not impatient with her or upset that she isn’t learning at a certain speed. I just want her to be willing to give it another try without quitting or having a melt down.  And then I think back on when my dad was trying to teach me how to hit a baseball and how I reacted.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but I sure hope she does better with the bicycle than I did with a baseball.

I am not a wise man.  I do have a little experience when it comes to raising children.  Just over six years worth, as a matter-of-fact.  But I was still surprised and humbled to get a note from a friend who was asking for a little comfort on his new journey.  It seems that he and his wife are expecting their first child, which just so happens to be a girl.  I have no idea why he would consult me on such a serious issue, but I can’t fault him for choosing his friends poorly.  At any rate, I don’t know if my insight will be valuable to him, but perhaps it will provide some help to you, weary internet person that has happened to stumble upon my blog and just happens to need some insight on raising a young girl.

From A Friend:

As the Father of two girls tell me, how hard is it? It’s obvious to me that you love your daughters completely. I have no doubt that I will, too. Hell, I already do. But. But I don’t react well to feelings, emotions, etc. I’m a CHB, for crying out loud. That’s Cold Heartless Bastard, by the way. I dunno, I guess I just need some affirmation from a peer that I can do this, you know? That I’m not going to completely damage my daughter irreparably just by being me.

My Sage Advice:

Oh, the emotions. Yeah, there’s not much you can do with that. Butterfly is a crier. If I try to sit down and talk with her calmly about something so that she doesn’t get upset, she still bursts into tears. I don’t know if there is a way to handle them properly. I usually take the “give up and let Kelley handle it” approach.

From what I can tell in my general observations, girls are a lot easier at the start. Boys are wild, full of energy, and always bouncing off the walls. Girls tend to be a lot calmer, relaxed, and able to sit down and play quietly. The problem starts when the hormones and the emotions start to kick-in. I have solicited a lot of advice for the upcoming years and from what I can piece together, the key is to just always be there and keep loving them. Which is going to be tough because I had decided to move into the garage once puberty hit.

I think you’ll be a wonderful father. Having a girl will give your wife somebody to doll-up, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a buddy for weekend projects. Butterfly and Ladybug both accompany me to Lowes and love to “help” when I’m working on a project. (Helpful hint: always have some extra boards with holes, screws, bolts, and screwdrivers around when you’re working. That way they have something to mess around with instead of knocking holes in the sheet rock.)

Oh, and you’ll have to learn how to dress Barbies. Which is kind of cool because it’s permission to look at little naked ladies. WIN!

So there you have it.  Deep insight from a loving father.  I thought about writing a book about all this stuff so that everyone could learn from the patience and the devotion that I have for my family but those annoying little kids won’t leave me alone long enough to think straight.  So if you need advice, feel free to submit your questions.  I will answer them with all of the honesty and dignity that I can muster.

I’m somewhat introverted.  Especially when it comes to  some of my daily tasks.  At work, I like to use the restroom that is located away form the offices and is unlikely to have someone walk in and disturb my quiet time.  This morning I ventured to my favorite spot.  As I was concentrating on completing my task, I heard an alarm sound.  A wave of panic crept over me because my first thought was that this was the fire alarm.  I tried to figure out what to do before I talked myself into believing that it was the security alarm (one of the panels is located just outside of the restroom door) and that someone would eventually turn it off.  (Side Note: Shouldn’t the alarms have a voice that intermittently tells you what kind of alarm it is.  That way you don’t run outside because of a fire only to find out it’s the tornado siren?  Sorry, I digress…) Luckily, I was right, the alarm was soon silenced, and was able to complete my duties (pun!) in the peace that I enjoy.

But this got me to thinking.  (Hey, it’s quiet in there. It’s a good place to ponder things.)  What if the fire alarm really did go off while I was in the middle of my business?  What would you do in that situation.  If you stay with the building, you risk being burned and found by the firefighters/coroner in a very compromising position.  If you run out of the building, you’d be standing outside forever with agonizing pressure building up inside of you.  And you know that the alarms take forever before they sound the “all clear” and let you back inside.  Especially when it’s cold and rainy.

I came to the conclusion that I would probably risk my safety for a couple of minutes in order to finish my…um…”work.”  Here’s m reasoning: Obviously, the fire wouldn’t have been in the bathroom because I would have seen it when I walked in, so I would have a little time to work with.  Worst case scenario is that the flames begin to close in on me right as I’m finishing. But fortunately, I am in a room with a lot of water at my disposal. I could turn the sinks on and protect myself for a while if I had to.  But I wouldn’t have to.  Why? I would run through the flames to safety.  If I were found alive in the bathroom, everyone know what I was doing in there.  and they’d all know about my great pooping spot.  But if I ran through the fire, not only would I keep the secrecy of my sanctuary, everyone outside would see me running out the door through the flames.  I would be legendary.  And I would further my legend by telling people that I was trying to rescue valuable company property…but I just didn’t have enough time before it caught fire.

Yes, this is the kind of thing I think about on a daily basis.  I’ll save my story for what I’d do if I survived an epic disaster that wipes out most of the population for another day.  (Hint: Take a car from a dealership, rest their souls, and drive it as fast as I could.)

This past weekend I ran in the Jay’s Hope 5K.  My time wasn’t near my best, but I was happy with it considering all of the physical therapy that I’ve been doing and the continuing pain that I have.  But I started wondering how this run compared to some of my official runs and I did what any fun-loving number nerd would do.  I graphed it!

While I don’t have a lot of data points, I think that you can see that in the past two years, I have gotten a bit slower.  This was a little troubling to me and I needed more data.  Luckily, I have my GPS watch with tons of information waiting to be gleaned.  Here are my average mile paces for all of my workout runs included:

Wow.  Those are a lot of dots.  What does this mean?  Here’s what I get from it:

• The trend indicates that my workout runs are getting slower as time passes.
• I am no longer concerned about my official 5K times anymore.
• I should only run in official races from now on.
• Extrapolating to the right, it will take me 20 minutes to run a mile when I’m 40.
• Extrapolating to the left, I could run 3 minute miles when I was 15.

So there are the statistics for you.  I don’t make them up, I just run them.  Except for the next few weeks when I’ll complain about my shins hurting.  And then I’ll start back running again, but at an even slower pace.  But it’s OK because it’s what the data says to do.

As I was leaving my grandparents basement, I saw one more box on a shelf that I decided to look through.  I opened it up and instantly remembered sitting in a pile of sand on their property and playing with trucks and tractors.  I grabbed the box, took it home, and sat it in the garage with my other treasures.  I thought that I could maybe display these items on a shelf or something, but really didn’t know what use they would be other than a great trigger for nostalgia.  Later that week, I came home and my girls had discovered the toys.

Yes, that’s Luke Skywalker driving a tractor.  Apparently, the Jedi Council isn’t paying as well these days as it did long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.  He’s actually Butterfly’s toy.  I think she has a crush.

The Lego people were Ladybug’s addition.  She wanted some people to drive, too.

These were actually in my feed in this order…

Sometimes I wonder how facebook knows me so well.  Here’s an advertisement that was recently on the side of my page:

You know, I could use some tips for shaking up my workout, but this dude has some secrets that I really don’t want to know.  I wonder if he can even scratch his head.

The first two items displayed here can be argued about their usefulness.  But not the third…

I know that the dehydrator had been opened, but I don’t know if it had ever been used.  All of the items in the box were still wrapped in plastic and the instructions sat neatly folded at the bottom of the box.

The possibilities with the Fry Daddy are endless.  Well, endless as far as small items that can fit inside it go.  I’m thinking about trying to fry one of everything in my refrigerator just to see if I can develop the next big fried-food craze.  Potatoes have been done.  Now it’s time to start on the spiced meats.  Fried pepperoni?

The awesomeness of this jacket cannot be conveyed in a simple photograph.  But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll see me wearing it around in the near future.

On Tuesday, I helped my dad and his brothers go through some of the stuff at my grandparents’ house. I have heard that people who grew up during and soon after the depression had a much different mentality on keeping things than we do today.  I couldn’t stop laughing at some of the “collections” that we came across in the basement.  There were at least 30 large, plastic bottles along the shelves.  They kept every electric razor that they’d ever owned.  Old hypodermic needles?  Yup, kept those too.  The things in the basement ranged from “Wow. This might be worth something!” to “um…..”

Since I offered my services to just load stuff for whoever needed it, one of my uncles found some joy in handing me a pieces of randomness and saying “here, go load this into your dad’s truck.”  The old Sunday School award that was given to a long, lost relative in 1964 had some sentimental value, I’m sure. And that’s probably why he wanted me to hide it to where my dad wouldn’t find it.  I wonder if my dad is now questioning the lesson that he taught me about respecting my elders and doing what they say.

At any rate, there were a few items that I came across that I couldn’t pass up.  This is my first installment of a few of the treasures that I brought home.  It should be noted that my wife did not know that I was bringing these home.  I think the look on her face when I pulled some of them out was pure joy.  Either that or disdain.  It’s tough to tell.

Lawn Darts

That’s right.  This is a full set of head-wounding action.  A wise man would have just let these sit on the shelf and pass right on by.  But I am not a wise man.  I can’t wait until Butterfly has her birthday next month.  I’ll bet this is the perfect game for a bunch of 5 & 6 year olds.  It’ll help narrow down the number of kids that need to eat cake at the end of the party.

Duck Glasses

I’m not sure what the official name for these glasses are, but there were 2 beer steins, 3 tumblers, and one shot glass, all with ducks on them.  If you’re going to be a man, you need to drink from a man’s glass.  I can think of nothing more classy than drinking scotch from a duck glass.  Unless, of course, we combine the drinking and the lawn darts. Brilliant!

Have you ever read a headline from the news and thought, “What in the…”  And you knew that you shouldn’t follow-up the story and find out what’s going on, but there’s a part of you that really needs to know?

I present to you a screen capture of headlines from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution’s front page: