Proof that Fran is a Cool Mom

Fran's brother Rick: Wanna ride on the Harley?

Fran: Sure! Let's go right now!

She's always surprising me...

I noticed that when we went to the zoo, Fran would always dress Ryan in a bright yellow shirt. I suspected that, since there were crowds, she was putting him in something that we could spot from a distance, because Ryan likes to run off, laughing at us for trying to possibly keep up.

When it popped into my mind at some point, I asked her.

She told me that she dresses him in bright clothes so the animals will notice Ryan and he'll have more fun.

Now that's a cool mom!

Birch Trees (A photo, a poem, and a comment)

Birches in New Hampshire (photo by me)

Birches

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the line of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches;
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Robert Frost


I tried telling a friend about this poem, and he said "Robert Frost? Yawn..."

There was something about seeing these trees, after never having seen birches (or at least never noticing them), that really got my attention. The towering straight trunks and white bark caught my attention.

My friend, Mark, told me that they grow very slowly, and the American Indians would cultivate them for future generations to use for bows and canoes and who knows what else. Conservation. I thought I was doing well by putting my newspapers in a recycle bin...

The reason that this poem stuck out in my mind (like in many Robert Frost poems) is the last line:

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

When I read that line 8 years ago I went out and bought the complete poems of Robert Frost and I used to read them to Ryan when he was a baby...he wouldn't sit still for them now, I guess, because they are subtle.

I could write a whole entry on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". I have secrets about that poem...

To me, that line means a few things, like mourning the passing of youth, but, more importantly, a reminder of how to live your life today. Enjoying the moment, and having fun with what is around you (you might as well, you're stuck with it!)

Sometimes I paraphrase it to myself, incorporating whatever situation I find myself in...

One could do worse than to come home to my family every day
One could do worse than to have a nice lunch with a good friend
One could do worse than to go fishing on a calm Saturday morning with my son
One could do worse than to work long hours by the ocean for a week

It meant a little more to sit under the birches and think to myself--this is a pretty good life...

A confession

(I stole this picture from a website on shark attacks. It has come to my attention that some people feel the need to go ape-shit crazy when someone steals their artwork off the freaking internet. This completely confuses me. Put a credential as part of your image or something if you want credit for it. The other day I saw a cold-blooded one--a guy must have just linked to an image on another site. The site where it orignated changed the photo to say "People like me steal images off the internet") These images are such low resolution that you can't print them out and use them for artwork...I just don't get some people who want to just complain about whatever...

Here's my confession. I think I've mentioned at least once if not more times that I didn't go to the ocean until I was in my 20's. Here's why: Jaws. And I am very serious about that. I'm a fast learner.

Every time I swim in the water I think I'm going to be bitten by a shark. Every time I go fishing in the ocean, and I reach down to get a fish out (on such rare occasions...) I think a shark is going to zoom up past the dying fish on my line just to gnaw on me.

It seems like such a bad way to go...

Every time we go to the beach I make sure Fran is in the water a few minutes before I go in (just kidding).

Yes, yes. I know the rational people who say you have better odds of getting struck by lightning or getting hit by a taxi in NYC. Guess what? I kinda stay inside when it's lightning outside...and in NYC--I watch where I'm going. These are called precautions. If you want the bean-counter version of why nobody will ever get bitten, check out the website referenced above. According to it, falling coconuts kill 15 times more people than sharks each year...I say bring on the coconuts.

I think the stats should be adjusted according to the following: When Mike is in the water, multiply the odds by...

I had a brush with death one time. On my honeymoon to Cancun, I went skin diving off the coast of Isla Mujeres. When I got back, my scuba diver friend told me: "Isla Mujeres? Why, didn't you know that's the 'Island of the Sleeping Sharks'? The current there is so strong underwater that it oxygenates their blood, and they can stay still and sleep, which they do under the island."

The brush with death--I came face to face with a razor-toothed, huge, green, moray eel on a reef under the island.

I guess it was nap time for the sharks.

I'm trying very hard not to pass on this phobia to my son, but he's very intuitive and he's already trying to spot sharks in our lakes around Dallas.

Don't laugh--he made me look...

A new chapter to the book of "What goes around..."

Hey, it's Monday and I'm feeling positive!

Quick story: I mentioned a couple of months ago that I had done one of my customers a big favor by letting them use a piece of equipment for several months while theirs, which was way out of warranty, was fixed. That's a huge risk on my part, and I had to stand on my head for about 7 hours to install it because it was a complicated, robotic thing.

I did this in spite of the fact that the customer had just purchased a piece of equipment from my competitor, without even giving me a chance to discuss their application with them. I felt quite stupid about that and taken advantage of.

So, here's the obligatory disclaimer: 1) I realize that I am doing this to make money. In some ways I'm not doing them a favor--I'm investing in goodwill that perhaps will come to fruition via an order. 2) I know that the customer is not obligated to buy from me, no matter what I do or how nice I am to them. 3) I know that the customer isn't required to consult with me before purchasing something from my competitor. 4) blah blah blah...

My point is: I thought it was pretty bad form for them to do that because I had really been working hard to take care of them, going beyond anyone's normal expectations for on-site help including extra free training sessions and free equipment rental. They were very complimentary of me and kept telling me how much they appreciated, me, and I, like a dummy believed them and was a little hurt when they didn't even extend the courtesy of considering our product (which they knew about) before going with the competitor (who installed their system and never went back...so there!) Here's the kicker: I wasn't the one who sold them the original equipment so I was never paid one dollar to do this for them.

I also think it's okay to be mad about it, but not okay to confront the customer about it. Part of this issue is that I should allocate my time responsibly, which includes weighing a customer's relative importance (an ugly truth, and sometimes you get it wrong (like this time)).

Anyway, last week I got a call from this customer and they ordered a huge order from me on the spot over the telephone! Wow!

It's kind of funny how this works--I'm sweating my butt off in the Texas heat to eke out as many tiny orders as I can, checking my Email daily and praying that something comes in...been in kind of a drought for the last few months...about the same time as I have dedicated to blogging...coincidence? Hmmmm...

But then, out of the blue, here comes this huge order which eclipses the sum total of my previous 3 months worth of orders...when I wasn't even expecting it and wasn't required to pursue it...

What you sow, you shall reap, I guess. I am a believer in that.

The Comeback Kid

I know this is a common weakness that people have--I hear it all the time...They can't think of a great comeback right when someone pisses them off.

Here's one of my favorite jokes:

A guy from Arkansas goes to Harvard and stops someone to ask them "Excuse me, could you tell me where the library's at?"

The Harvard professor looks over the tops of his glasses and down his nose and informs the man "Here at Harvard, we never end a sentence with a preposition."

So the guy from Arkansas says "Okay, can you tell me where the library's at, asshole?"


The other day I had someone treat me pretty badly while I was out of town. Since I had a car, I had been asked to help shuttle some of the "students" from the class to a picnic we were having--the only problem is that there apparently was no map, no roadsigns, no nothin'.

One of the "brains" of the outfit, who is in fact quite brilliant, was trying to give me directions. Fran and I joke about our trip to England, because there is just a certain way that they give directions that just don't match up with my Krispy Kreme, McDonald's French Fry, and Starbucks-soaked American brain.

Here's an example of an answer to "How do you get to the British Museum from here?"

A: You'll have come out and gone diagonally through the park. The museum is about four blocks down adjacent to next park."

Huh?

The issue is that there are 10 parks in Bloomsbury and all the sidewalks seem to be diagonal. They are technically describing where it is situated but are not giving directions for someone to get there...as helpful as they are trying to be.

So, this guy was trying to tell me how to find this unmarked campsite in Acadia National Park. My idea was to follow him there, but he insisted on me going by myself.

"Turn right here and then go over the bridge on the way out of town. Before you go across the 2nd bridge, it's the unmarked turn-in on your right..."

Wait, wait, wait. Number one, it doesn't matter if I turn right or left here--it's a circle drive..."out of town"? I have no idea which way that is--I came here in the dark, 10 days ago and have worked 100 hours since then! Plus--bridge? What bridge? Which town am I going out of? How can you know before you get to a bridge? Can't these directions possible be drawn out on a map or be given in terms of North, South, East, West, or, at a bare minimum, Left and Right?

Here's what I said: "Wait a moment--turn right when I get out of the circle drive?"

Answer "Drive as though you were leaving the island. There are people already there getting the fires going."

Me: "When I get out of the circle drive, turn right?"

Him, Lord of Bar Harbor Geography: "What, were you helicoptered onto the island? I mean, you did somehow manage to materialize here, right?"

Thinking, where's the library at, ...

Saying "Mnah, muh, ummnh...okay." Yeah, thanks for all the help...

Parting shot "If I get there and you aren't there already, I'm going to really worry about your intellect..."

me: speechless.

Flash forward 12 hours...

I did, in fact find it on the first try and there were, in fact, no people getting the fires going.

I was now on a road trip of my own because I had the day off. Then it hit me, the perfect reponse to this guy (which, I'm sorry, is only funny to about 0.001% of people in the world): "Hey man, week-long timelapse with High NA and short Working Distance!"

If I had said that, the guy would have laughed and thought I was a genius.

A joke that has to be explained, by definition, isn't funny, but I'll enlighten you--The guy was a physicist lecturing on the light-gathering properties of lenses, namely, microscope lenses.

NA is Numerical Aperture--it is a measure of the resolution and light-gathering ability of a lens.

Working Distance is a measure of how far a sample is from the lens, or how much space you have to focus in.

The higher the resolution of a system, the shorter the working distance.

If I had said "High NA, short Working Distance", it would have been answering back in his own, respected, technical terms and would have described my activity over the previous week.

High NA because I was completely focused on the workshop, teaching, and lab work that we were doing all hours of the day and night. We were cooped up in a small 200 square foot lab right by the ocean...which is analagous to "short working distance"

Damn, that would have been perfect!

Or, I could have said "Where's the picnic at, asshole?"

I really should learn...

Sitting in the lab, I realized that this girl had piqued my curiousity all week, and it bothered me a little bit. She was very weird-looking, definitely not American, maybe European. Not one drop of makeup, but that was not what was bothering me, it was just something else that I noticed about her. It was something that I couldn't put my finger on....boyish. Yes, definitely boyish. She must be in her early 20's with a small, boy-shaped body and cropped, spiky blond hair and small, angled, crystal blue eyes. And her head was triangular, like a cat. Not at all pretty, not even potentially, really. My first impression, matter-of-factly, was that she was a lesbian. Intriguing, different. For some inexplicable reason, I decided that I didn't like her without even talking to her. There was lots to do, and I had made the decision within milliseconds and had mentally moved on. I later came to know that her name was Janie and she was a lab worker in the group that was supplying all the cells and reagents for the rest of the Ph.D's, so I would see her come and go with vials of God-knows-what all week. It was quite an insignificant thing at the time to just write her off in my mind.

I've been wrong before. Sometimes I suck at interpreting first impressions.

One such case that comes to mind immediately is Eleanor, an older woman who I worked with (there's no way it's) 15 years ago. She seriously looked like the meanest person on the face of the earth. She had a loud, hoarse voice and she would spit and sputter and "holler" (she was from Mississippi (wow-that was fun to type) and that's what they do in Mississippi (had to get it in just one more time) when they get mad). Everyone in the office truly hated her.

I got stuck pulling "crap duty" with Eleanor, which was the shift where we both came in at 4:00 AM on Saturday to do a quick systems backup and power on the mainframe so the computer operators could have the day off. At first I dreaded working this with her because I was crabby enough about missing my Saturday having to work (I was in college and I would use the day off during the week to cram in as many lab classes as possible each semester).

The first month wasn't too pleasant, but as weeks went by I learned a lot about Eleanor and her hard life. Her and her husband were Red Cross employees overseas (Eleanor had been an RN), and her son, Michael, who would have been close to my age, was hit by a drunk driver and killed at the age of 4 right in front of her. Then her husband had died at a young age. She had gotten tougher and she had just continued living life.

One time, when the topic came up, I asked her if she had ever done CPR. She answered "Yes, on my son." It was heartbreaking. Because my name is Michael and I was born around the same time as him, as we got closer I knew she would gaze away and make a connection that wasn't really there...

As weeks stretched out to months, we unexpectedly became good friends. She had lived in Europe, and she told me that she loved cappuccino, which I had never had. She brought her machine up to work and we celebrated "crap duty" with a 4 AM cappuccino, and she taught me how to steam the milk with the machine. We made it a weekly tradition, and she would secretly store the machine in a cleaned-out bottom drawer of her desk, putting her reference books on the floor to make space. "Crap duty" started to become fun for about a year and a half until Eleanor moved on.

Don't get me wrong, she really was mean as hell. But I came to appreciate her, and realize that there's more to people than first impressions. But that didn't stop me with Janie, for some reason...

We all had gone to the wine and cheese party on opening night, and I had purposely avoided meeting her in particular when the opportunity arose--it was easy enough in a group of nearly 100 people.

In and out of the lab, all week, without a word. Maybe she sensed that I just was not interested in talking to her. I mean, I have enough friends in the world, and I was working with 5 people that I didn't know very well, becoming friends with them. It takes a lot of energy to make friends, doesn't it? I don't want to be one of those idiots who just gushes at everyone they meet and confides the details of their life without any discernment, do I? Well, dude, you don't have to be a judgemental asshole, either, do you? (sorry, I was talking amongst myself for a moment).

So there I was, sitting in the lab. The first time I realized that there was more to Janie than meets the eye was when, bleary-eyed at 11:00 PM, I was working with a group on an experiment. Our cells were undergoing changes and we were graphing them over time. When the experiment had ended, Janie walked in carrying a beer (pretty common during this course). She was wearing shorts and a white, worn-out t-shirt, guys' shoes, and her wash-n-wear hair was looking as cropped and spiky as ever. She walked over to the experiment, which was still set up although our work was done, and with her right hand typed a couple of characters on the keyboard and with her left hand slowly poured beer over the cells.

Okay, now that's my kind of science. Weird science.

We graphed the reaction out, and I pulled up both graphs in succession, saying very dramatically. "These are your cells. These are your cells on Guinness. Any questions?" And she laughed. Man, I guess I'm just a sucker for that.

The next day, after Janie had left the lab, I found out that one of the girls that I was working with, my friend Laura, knew Janie.

"She's cool. She's from Sweden. She works in the lab and she really knows what she's doing."

That night, Janie came into the lab and had to do a quick set-up of some equipment. I considered myself pretty skilled with my hands, and I recognized that she knew exactly what she was doing with some very complex stuff. It was impressive, because as I watched, I appreciated that she didn't waste one movement, and she didn't get anything wrong. She easily estimated the size of the bolt she was putting in and picked the right allen wrench out of a kit and there's just something in the hands that you can spot and know that someone is on the ball mechanically. Janie had it. Then I realized that of all the lab workers that I was running into all week during these long days, Janie was the most competent and cheerful while others were kind of breaking down mentally through the stress of the 12-20 hour days.

Then I felt like a total dork for snubbing her for absolutely no reason. At least that's the story I'm sticking with. I would hate to examine my motives and find some other, more sinister thought lurking in there that I have to retract, but maybe it is in there. At any rate, I decided to grace Janie with my acquaintence, and she forgave me for being such a jackass by hanging out in my lab with my group.

Laura introduced us and we sat around chatting at 1 in the morning after all the work was done and all the equipment was cleaned off and shut down.

We were discussing a trivial incident, and she mentioned that it will probably end up in someone's blog somewhere.

I squirmed.

Laura shot a glance over at me. She was the only one around that knew that I kept a blog, and she didn't even have the URL, although I had sent her several very short stories in the past. She had just read "Memoriable Day Weekend" earlier that day.

Janie continued, saying, "In Sweden, everyone keeps a blog. It's kind of the thing to do..."

I inserted a comment "Well, then, you could put it in your blog, then." It was the first comment I made directly to her, and she smiled, blushed, and looked down. I wonder if she keeps one...but I didn't want to talk about mine.

"Mike is a writer", Laura blurted out.

"Really?"

"Well, short stories and such..." I tried to minimize the damage. Damn it! Doesn't she know I'm shy about that? I'm glad some people push me out of my paranoid shell.

"...vignettes" Laura continued. Is that good? That doesn't sound too flattering to me...plus, she really hasn't read too many things I've done...

"Yeah, I try to write but it just sucks. So I keep writing."

Laura didn't correct me like I was hoping she would.

Janie bought my self-deprecation. "You don't have to say it sucks."

"Well, I'm working on it." I think she saw through me.

So my secret was somewhat out. I'm glad Laura didn't tell her I pound out copious mundane observations in a very boring blog, because I think I would have been humiliated. Like, everyone would think "Yeah, that's what he does with his time instead of doing something smart like we do..."

But, over the next couple of days, I went out of my way to talk to Janie when she came in the room, and realized that she was a kind, smart, and extremely competent person.

On the last night, there was a lobster bake. (If you are a person who is not from anywhere near the ocean and are ever invited to a lobster dinner near the ocean, here's a tip: It's not a fancy occasion. It's like a backyard barbecue. So don't wear your nice dockers, new shoes, and button-down shirt, cause it's possible that you will look like a moron. You could also conceivably find yourself on the beach searching for seaweed, soaking ocean water into your once-new shoes...) I realized that, in this large group of people, I felt myself gravitating to Janie and I had a great chat with her by the bonfire.

For some reason, up til this point, I hadn't told her that, in 4th grade, I had written a report about how I wanted to go to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and all the things that I had researched and wanted to see. She was shocked. Then she laughed and laughed. But I could tell that she was very pleased.

Janie told me about her family and what it was like to grow up in a village of 32 people. She was dreadfully homesick.

I asked her about the movie Insomnia (if the first thing you think of is the Robin Williams/Al Pacino version, think again--the first one, in Norwegian and Swedish, is fantastic and darker.) I asked her about a scene where a boy is offended by a Swedish guy speaking Norwegian to him, and his accent. She told me a lot about how the different accents sound to her. I remember her saying that people from Denmark sound like they are speaking Swedish with a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

I said good-bye to Janie and hugged her. Then it was a little awkward because I didn't leave right away and ran into her again. I told her "I've already said goodbye to you so I can't talk to you anymore." She laughed again, but I hugged her again (which is really good for me, who really isn't too comfortable with that kind of stuff most of the time). I know I'll run into her again somewhere.

I can't believe I almost missed out on making a cool new friend, definitely one of the most interesting and kind people I met all week.

You know, most people have really good hearts. Be good to them.







Hannibal Lecter version of the moral of this story: "You know, most people have really good hearts...try them with fava beans. And a nice chianti..."

I NEED A STARBUCKS!!!!!

Could somebody get me a Venti Mocha, please?

I mean, if you're going to get one for yourself, could you pick one up for me?

I'm dying over here...

Have a Great Day!

Mike

Ripped off (?)

For people visiting my blog for the first time--Sorry for the long, crazy posts about my trip to Maine--I promise to work it out of my system soon. Considering that there's no feedback on that stuff, I assume I only amuse myself, but that's okay :) .

I put a stat counter on my blog, and it seems that about 51 different people visited today (!), and many stayed for a few minutes anyway, so...thanks!

If you aren't interested in Maine, or random thoughts buzzing around my head while I was channeling Hemingway while reading "For Whom the Bell Tolls", maybe you could check out my "favorites" to the right...--->

For now, I'm taking a break from a project that I've been working on--it's 5:20 in Dallas and I foresee an all-nighter in my immediate future in order to have a proposal ready to hand-deliver at 9:00 AM tomorrow...

Here are other books I've read since Hemingway: Train, by Pete Drexler, and A House on the Heights, by Truman Capote.

I was really trying to find Deadwood by Drexler, but the bookstore in a certain far northeastern state which I am deciding not to mention again in this blog entry didn't have it available. Train is a pretty rough read--the main gist involves a soulless survivor of the USS Indianapolis, which was torpedoed and the sailors on board treaded water for days--and many got eaten by sharks--and his schemes and adventures in Southern California, where he collides with an innocent, black, golf caddie who tries to do right but keeps getting caught in the middle of things.

(Side story: I had a great-uncle, Uncle Bud, who was supposed to ship out with the Indianapolis, which delivered the atomic bomb. One night, he went AWOL for a while to go out drinking and partying and got thrown in the brig. Before he got out, they sealed the ship and wouldn't let anyone else on, so he got reassigned and as a result was spared that horrible experience).

Back to Train: The writing flows fantastically, but it is a dismal subject. Murders, rape, corruption, torture and mutiliation. Train is the name of a black caddie back in the 50's who experiences racism as a matter of course, and social and economic disappointment at many levels. I'm not sure what the point was, but it is definitely an interesting read.

But here's where I'm wondering if I got ripped off:

A House on the Heights, by Truman Capote

Capote was a writer that I considered to be a little secret from the rest of the world. Reading his work is, to me, akin to savoring fine cognac--so smooth and it is overwhelmingly beautiful. Breakfast at Tiffany's' Holly Golightly is one of my favorite characters (the movie is good, but is a much different story than the book).

So, Fran got me a calendar with a suggested book for reading for each page. Did I wait and look at it day by day? Oh, no, that wouldn't fit my Type A thing that I've got going--every couple of months I just rip through it and pick out 3 or 4 books and just order them...A House on the Heights was recommended as an "alternate" T.C. book, and I hadn't read it, so, did I take the frugal way out and go the the library? Noooooo...I just ordered it from Amazon like a dope.

First of all, the book was misprinted and 2 pages of the intro by George Plimpton and 1 page of the story itself were just omitted.

Secondly, the story itself is only 37 pages long! And I got it in hardback for like $10. Ripped off, I say. Here's a review--I was looking to see if the whole thing is published on-line somewhere...

But I decided to read it and, you know what? You just can't pay too much for fine cognac these days...

I hope I grow up to write like Capote someday...

It Tolls for Thee...

The parallels were clear to him.

Not fictitiously funny or manufactured like previous ones. There was truly dynamite paralleled with his mission. And he was on a mission, just like Robert Jordan in the Hemingway novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls", which he was reading. Also, like Jordan, there was both an intermediate mission and a much more critical final mission. This trip to Maine, with the unexpected side trip to Boston, became a setting as inspiring as the mountains of Spain.

It even occurred to Michael that, while others slogged through the week, placing tally marks on their calendars to mark the passing of another identically exhausting day, he was having an experience. A literary experience. A deeply moving time of quiet introspection and appreciating inner strength. And he remembered wise words which reminded him that "it's not what you do, but who you are while doing it". Once removed from the grind of working successive 15-20 hour days (he worked those long hours, but just stopped considering them a "grind"), he appreciated the experience for the boot-camp feel and challenge to fight through mental exhaustion to see what material he was made of. He drew strength from the beautiful rocky beach, the beech trees, the people around him. He rose above it all.

But he also appreciated the focused single-mindedness of those in the trenches who didn't have the inner strength to rise above it. They got bogged down and started flaking out. But isn't that the common response?

The intensiveness and long hours reminded Michael of the young boys of the American Indians who, in a rite of passage, went into the woods without food for many days in order to be accepted as a man. Not a bad idea, he thought.

The master of the course, Simon, drunkenly wandered over at 2:00 AM while things were winding down one day and sat, his whole body swaying, next to Michael. He wasn't just drunk, he was almost completely out of control. He pointed a quivering finger and flung it around in the general direction of a group of exhausted people, almost like a quasi-paraplegic with limited motion control, flopping the finger back into his lap.

"These people are all naked" was all he said.

Damn, he's smarter completely wasted out of his mind than I am when completely sober, Michael thought.

In addition to the critical missions resembling wartime duties, the cast of characters lined up startlingly well, practically attesting to the universality of Hemingway's novel design. The interplay is timeless.

Pilar was here, bruta, que va! She openly stole french fries from his plate across the table and would brutishly slug him in the arm occasionally while making an embarrassingly loud point. She was the senior ranking official in the band of compatriots, and here to help, but she couldn't enact everything that needed to be done, only lend her lip-service to support it. Pilar was likeable enough, but rough. Our Pilar, like Hemingway's, was a professional politician.

Pablo. He laughed to think of Pablo. Herb represented Pablo in our little band of misfits. He had worked with Herb before as an employee of the same company--indeed, they had landed a huge sale while working together, but, exactly like Pablo in Hemingway's novel, he had "gone bad". He had developed a negative attitude and had subtly turned against our company, defecting for a different company who was still associated with our product. As a result, Pablo was still in close association but had to be observed carefully...

Pablo was a traitor who would viciously turn on you when you least expect it-in a moment of weakness.

El Sordo was his friend Laura, who led the band of girls that worked side-by-side with him all week. Competent and fierce, they were truly heroes who fought like lions as El Sordo did on the side of the mountain.

Even lesser characters were there: Fernando, who talked much but did precious little. Anselmo, the reliable but ignorant old man who fights valiantly but dies in the mission--our Canadian rep who came and worked relatively hard but was slightly in over her head. And the gypsy, who leaves his post to hunt rabbits but lets an enemy into camp--we had one of those, too. She answered Email all week and never lifted a finger to help in any way. Just like the gypsy, she skated through untouched by the mission, focused on the wrong things without even realizing it.

And, of course, Michael, being the Greatest American Hero, represented Robert Jordan in this parallel scenario. The omniscient author of the tale. His initial mission was to teach the workshop, but switched almost immediately to preparing for the very important meeting in Boston that came about suddenly and unexpectedly as a result of his presence in the region. That was his bridge--he must blow it to pieces. Destroy the enemy and gain a victory for his side. He mulled it over and over in his mind all week.

Then there were the introspective thoughts which also paralleled Jordan's inner voice. Thoughts of romantic love. Disappointment in his father's self-destruction. Worries about the future. Reminiscences of the past. Were these original thoughts, or inspired by reading the novel in parallel with living through the events of the week? At this point, it was impossible to separate the two.

Michael went out to dinner with Pablo and almost got dragged into a fight with the entire Bar Harbor rugby team! Pablo had had enough of the 18-year-old, overgrown, obnoxious, roughneck idiot clanging in and out of the fence gate behind him on the patio--instead of asking him nicely to go through the "real" entrance, 15 feet away, Pablo grabbed the gate, roughly slamming it shut in front of him, and turned to the kid: "Enough of that-Go around!" Just then, five other equally gorilla-shaped guys rose around him from the table that Pablo had his back to and couldn't see. Great, Michael thought, time for my ass-kicking now...and all I wanted was to eat a meal! Thankfully, they backed down after just a little bit of backtalk, but it revealed that Pablo's volatile nature was still there, barely under the surface.

The initial mission, like Jordan's winning over the band of guerillas to help him with the bridge, was to make a good impression during the workshop--and he succeeded in this part of the mission. But blowing up the bridge was his focus, now. And, just like Pablo stealing the dynamite in the novel, the bridge did not go as smoothly as he wished. Despite receiving multiple documents describing what needed to be done at Harvard, "Pablo" led the customer into the realm of confusion by introducing undiscussed options that were inferior to the original design. "Jordan" wondered why the hell did he ever let him come along in the first place? Yes, his new company was involved in some ways with this design, but it was foolish to place your trust in Pablo. To turn your back on him and let him have access to derail your project.

Damn you, Pablo! Why didn't Jordan see it coming? Hemingway left a warning from so many years ago, but the clue wasn't unlocked in time...

The fuse is lit--will the bridge blow? I'll keep you posted. But life is about lighting the fuse--regardless of the results.

In Ernest

Shifting his 6'2" frame in the cramped seat, Michael contemplated pulling out the Hemingway novel that he had started, and was thoroughly enjoying. For some reason, he was drawn to Hemingway's writing more than any other author. He recognized the deficiencies in style, particularly the occasional literary criticisms of the odd characterization of women in his novels. Hemingway's women are subtle, sometimes less-developed in the stories than the men, but nobody could call them simple and stupid--they were complex and extraordinary.

It's a wonder that anyone reads Hemingway at all, after being bombarded with "The Old Man and the Sea" crap they make everyone read in High School--what a lame introduction to Hemingway, Michael thought to himself. It's probably because it's the only novel that he's written that doesn't dwell on drinking and screwing, death, suicide, hopelessness.

Reading the novel on the four-hour plane ride from Dallas to Boston, he had really gotten into it and was focused on the story. It was almost a relief--he had loved reading Hemingway while in college, but perhaps he was trying too hard to be vogue--picking an author that is perhaps not so popular, and selecting him to be a personal patron saint of literature, representative of your taste in reading. Michael feared that, now, reading with a more refined palette and in a more critical manner, he would be disappointed. He couldn't even stomach the reading of a Stephen King novel, or a Tom Clancy--the characters were wooden and predictable, the dialog was absurd. The worst was when characters would define themselves immediately and summarily, which Michael felt was so artificial as to be inexcusable. But Hemingway did not disappoint-in fact, he was exhilarated with how refined the writing was, and retroactively impressed with himself for having appreciated this in his younger days and keeping this novel as one of his favorites despite having read it over 10 years ago.

Another fact that struck Michael was that much of the dialog was written in the grammatical style of Spanish, which he had since learned. This exponentially added to his enjoyment of the book, because there were subtle, inexplicable differences in the way things were worded that added to the mood of the book. Unfortunately, he had seen a terribly boring movie version starring Gary Cooper as Robert Jordan, the hero, so no matter how hard he tried, Gary Cooper kept popping out from the pages occasionally as the lanky, dusty dynamiter from the Spanish Civil War.

Then a manicured hand reached over and gently brushed him on the right arm, making him start a little in the tight-fitting airplane seat. The woman two seats over (the middle seat was miraculously empty) had reached over and touched his arm to get his attention--he had his Ipod going quietly over the noise-blocking headset in the background as he read to drown out the airplane droning, so she was trying to get his attention to show him something. He turned his head quickly and she smiled up at him and casually pointed to an article she was reading--it was about Hemingway?s home in Key West, Florida.

Interesting, he thought to himself, she's been paying attention to what I'm reading. I wonder why? He knew that she was traveling with a group of friends because they had been talking briefly across the airplane with each other at times. She was about 32 and relatively well-dressed, but it was a long flight and Michael hadn?t taken the energy to start a conversation with her in case she was boring or in case he was called on to share something more than the superficial information about his family, his job, where he lives, and what he does for fun. He didn't want to get below the superficial with any strangers for now. There is a lot there, he knew, but it was tiring to go through it, and he had things to hide. Things he would be hiding for the next 10 days if he could get away with it.

But, from riding on planes almost two dozen times a year, he had a strategy employed to help him deal with airplane conversations. Two stories to tell--One if the person asking was someone's 72-year-old grandmother from Kalamazoo, the other if...but both stories were shades of the the real truth, which was too complicated to get into. One stopped the conversation, and the other was intriguing, slightly self-deprecating, and endearing.

Michael smiled and nodded, pulling the Ipod earphones off and said, "Wow--coincidental, huh?"

She smiled at him.

"Do you like Hemingway?" He had never met a woman who does, but was sure there's one out there. Remember your hyphenated-last-name college English teacher who loved you to death but bashed Hemingway mercilessly? She made you choose a short story to comment on that emphasized a strong woman, and you had resented her a little for that. She shaved her head, and part of you suspected she was a wiccan or something slightly edgy like that. But he considered her class to be the one that awakened the writer in him. Everything before her was total crap. After her, he noticed that he would receive compliments by people who read his reports, write-ups, descriptions. She even read your entire essay test to the class a year later when you took her again, and the class sat stunned in amazement at your writing--for just a moment you were a celebrated author, and it was the beginning of a desire in your heart...

The woman suddenly looked slightly uneasy, then smiled "I've never read any of his work." Then she firmly yet politely snapped the paper open with both hands and turned her head to signal that the conversation was over and went back to reading. Maybe she was a little embarrassed. Boy, you sure knocked one out of the park with that one, he chuckled to himself.

Good, he thought.

Brief Quotes

Couldn't let this one go:

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

-Grouch Marx

And more from my secret desire to Haiku--just came to mind while looking at my workload for this week:

Slaughtered tree corpses
thinly sliced, groaning, winking-
my desk aches from thee

Electrons backed up;
brown unopened envelopes...
...behind on email.

And I thought this quote was interesting, because I noticed this while driving around in Vermont by myself for just one day a week ago...

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind"

Albert Einstein

Backin' up Fake Nate at Fenway

So here's kind of a weird story that I wanted to tell about my side trip to Boston.

During my working time in Maine, it turned out that I received an important phone call from a potential customer at Harvard who is moving to Dallas in the next month or so. They have a very complicated application, the kind that it's best to sit down and look you in the eye and talk about instead of trying to interpret things over the phone. If we get the deal, I'm going to be working with these guys for years in their lab--you only get paid once, but you have to face the decisions you make about their equipment for the rest of your time with them...

During the workshop in Maine, I met a guy named Mark, who was a cool guy. Very cool, in fact--I don't think he said 10 words in a row for the first 3 days (the four girls that I was working with started calling him "the mummy"). Then one morning I went down to the beach for a few minutes to get away from all the political BS that was going on at the workshop. The water was just so beautiful and fragrant, there was a cool breeze coming off the water, and I was just hanging out and checking out the scenery and dead ocean stuff on the beach.

It was kind of a cool party trick that I can tell people: I didn't get to touch the ocean until I was in my 20's (which was true although I had been to Boston, Washington DC, and Seattle, for some reason I was always being whisked to one place or another and never got to the water).

I'm not sure if Mark had a different impression of me because he had been around while I was teaching for 14 hours or so the previous day. When you have a roomful of Ph.D's, you have to be in control of the situation, so maybe he thought I was a know-it-all dick or something. The truth is, I was pretty competent at the things I had been teaching, and my portion of it was over at that point, so I was just relaxed about the whole thing.

So on that morning, Mark and I hung out and chatted there on the beach for about half an hour, and, as these things go, found out we have lots in common. He's from Boston and I'm a big Red Sox fan (yes, you sarcastic bastards, even before they won the world series--in fact, when I was cheering for them during the World Series last year, I seriously had to prove this to my friend Chris, a huge Yankees fan, by bringing in my Red Sox t-shirt to prove that it was tattered from years of wear).

When Mark found out I was going to be in Boston, he called in a favor and got us tickets to go to the game together. After my meeting at Harvard, I met him in the lobby of my hotel and we took a cab to Fenway.

I'm from a pretty large city, but Boston blew me away. This is a REAL city with ghettos that you have to go through, people sitting out on the stoops watching you walk by, bums peeing in the vestibules of buildings, and "that smell". The first night there, I went to a sports bar with a buddy of mine to watch the game on the big screen and soak up the atmosphere. I went home feeling like I had smoked half a pack of unfiltered camels and then sucked on the tailpipe of a 73 impala from walking through all of the traffic. The atmosphere of the sports bar was kind of rough, too. We walked in and there were tons of drinkers but absolutely no one behind the bar and no waitresses or anything! We just sat ourselves and it took 3 hours to get drinks, food, and get out of there--we barely dawdled to watch the game at all after we were finished eating. And then there was the drunk guy that came to our table just to hang out--I think he needed a hug or something. The floor of the pub was uneven in areas, and I think this guy would have had a hard time even if it was level, but it was kind of comical to see him sliding sideways around the bar. Overall, people are really different there, and I felt very unsafe just because I'm not used to it. Thinking about it, I could probably find a similar crowd in Dallas if I went looking for it, though.

After posting on my blog that I was going to Fenway, I got some cool Emails and calls from friends, especially from Don, who called while I was waiting for Mark in the hotel lobby. It would have been cool to have other friends coming with me, but maybe some other day. So, by the way, even though he doesn't EVER leave comments, I guess Don does read it...

On the way to the game, the cab zipped through back streets of Boston just inches on either side from unbelievably long rows of parked cars, I guess in blind faith that none of them will suddenly pull out in front of us. I had gone with the doomsday packing plan in case I got mugged or something--I took everything out of my wallet except about a hundred bucks, my driver's license, hotel key, and my credit card, and put those things in my front pocket. Didn't bring my camera because I didn't know what to expect (downloaded the picture of Fenway from the Red Sox website). Mark had completely changed: he was in his element, now, and we were talking about our families and work and the Sox.

When we rounded the corner and saw Fenway, it was breathtaking to me. I mean, I know the park is old, but it just represents baseball to me. Americana--something that truly belongs to MY country. Things I had been contemplating during my time alone driving around in New England, where I somehow felt closer to the heart of America with history that goes far beyond what I sense in my hometown of Dallas. Almost like thinking to myself "This is really America."

The crush of people to get in was amazing as well. We went through the gates and grabbed a couple of hot dogs and a coke--While we were eating, Mark asked me directly "Do people look different to you up here?"

"Yes, they do. I can't put my finger on it, though."

"You know what's the most common race in Boston?"

"What?"

"Irish-Italian." We laughed. I didn't want to hurt his feelings and tell him that I thought girls in the south were a little softer and prettier and perhaps a little more refined (this isn't the same as saying they are meek or not outspoken, because that's not it). Growing up with that, you kind of expect it and get a little shocked when ladies act differently. At this point, I don't know if it's real or just in my mind--it's one of those stereotypes that you pick up on when you travel around.

The next day, I was going to be headed for home after being gone nearly two weeks, and I was really missing my family, especially Fran. We had talked on the phone every day, but the reception was horrible on the island so we had pretty short conversations about the things that were happening. Now, I felt like a person seeing mirages while stumbling through the desert without water: eating a hot dog standing up with a father and son across from me, I remembered talking on the phone with Ryan, and how he was disappointed that I couldn't come home and get him and take him to the Red Sox game with me.

A woman walked by wearing Fran's perfume, and my heart beat a little bit faster and I really would have had to consider trading the game for an immediate trip home. When we sat in our seats, I noticed that the wrists of the girl in front of me and 2 seats over to the left had the exact same wrists as Fran. Poor thing, though--she really needed a nose job. But I remembered the wrists because Fran and I used to play a game before we had kids. I would grab her by the wrists and tell her "When we have kids, this is how I'm going to hold onto them so they can't get away." Then she would wait and try to catch me off guard, yanking her tiny hand away and running away from me laughing.

I didn't mention any of this to Mark. We talked a lot about his recent trip to Italy, where he stayed in a town that was the same as his last name.

Then my attention was distracted yet again. When we were sitting down, a guy and a girl sat to my right. The guy WAS Nate! Nate is my sister Nicole's boyfriend, and he's a very cool guy. He's actually a real scientist, whereas I'm a half-assed science wannabe, and a real fly fisherman, whereas I look like I'm whipping horses with a buggy whip and my roll cast looks like a guy wrapping cotton candy around a stick. He and Nicole sent me the coolest hand-tied flies for Christmas. And, somehow, through some time and space distortion, Nate was sitting 2 seats away from me at Fenway! It was even weirder, because I've only met Nate one time, almost a year ago now, and I have a picture of him with Nicole and he's wearing a ballcap--of course, "fake Nate" was wearing a ballcap, too.

Okay, maybe he wasn't Nate, but he looked EXACTLY like Nate! And he seemed kind of cool and mellow like I remember Nate being, and was wearing a ball cap like I remember Nate wearing. The girl and the guy were kind of into each other, so I didn't strike up a conversation, but they were nice enough. The stadium is 100 years old, and I guess that was before fat-asses like me roamed the earth, so I was squeezed in there pretty snugly against his girlfriend, who, incidentally, did not remind me of Fran at all.

To me, anyway, during the course of a ballgame you kind of get attached to the people that are around you. Unless they are annoying like the chi-chi mamas down the row from me that must have a bladder the size of a thimble and had to get up every inning. So I started joking with Nate and the girl "I guess it's time for our aerobics again" and "let's do the mini-wave" because we kept having to get up because sitting down my knees were impacted against the seat in front of me--I guess 6'2" wasn't too common 100 years ago, either.

So Nate gave me a hard time because I clapped at the wrong time during the game--the other team scored but I was admiring the throw that the outfielder made...anyway, he busts out with "Hey, who's clappin' over there? Don't you see the other team just scored?" and I turned around and smiled sheepishly and he laughed, casually leaning back against the arm of his seat.

So toward the end of the game, one of the old guys behind the couple accidentally spilled beer on the girl. Nate got really pissed off and whirled around and jumped on them pretty badly, saying "Hey man, that's out of line--you've gotten beer all over her seat and in her hair--why don't you be more careful! You've ruined her evening!"

The old guy behind the girl was clearly drunk, and started talking back, slurring "I said 'I'm sorry', what else do you want me to do?" So I started thinking to myself, Anything can happen here--I need to get Nate's back. Seriously, I was closer to the old guy, and for a brief, IQ-drained moment, if he had done something, there is no question that I was going to grab him to back up Nate. I felt my arms tense up and I was on edge.

What????!!!!!!

IT WASN'T REALLY NATE!!!! And I was going to get in a fight with a drunk in Boston over this guy? I wonder if the Boston jail is painted kelly green like the rest of the whole damn city seems to be?

What's wrong with me?

So, the situation kind of calmed down and diffused, and Mark and I got to talking about literature, and he recommended some books to me, a few of which I'm already reading now, and the Red Sox won 10-3 and Manny Ramirez hit a home run in the 6th that landed near us.

Walking out of the park, I decided to tell Mark my idea about southern girls and he actually agreed with me (he had tried to date a girl from Georgia and he told me "I didn't know what to do with her--she was too sweet" so I thought to myself that couldn't help him out there...) so I guess we're still friends. We walked halfway back to the hotel and grabbed a cab, but the cabbie was on drugs or something and we zig-zagged our way back to the hotel and it ended up costing as much as the cab ride door-to-door from the hotel to Fenway, but I didn't complain--I was still buzzing from the experience--it was one I will never forget.

Luckily, for all the right reasons.

Remembering Maine

As the small plane tipped its left wing downward toward the rocky coastline below, Michael fought the urge to dig the camera out of his bag and start shooting pictures through the window. The sun was setting to his left, and the tilt of the plane gave him a beautiful view of the horizon over the wing behind him. A beautiful canopy of clouds was greenish-blue over the land, but was washed over with pink and orange as if on second thought.

Already feeling embarrassed, Michael reached into his backpack which he had kept under his knees on the tiny plane and, within a second or two he had his camera out and was framing the pictures to not include pieces of the plane and window in the foreground, using the photography tricks he had learned to eliminate glare from the double-paneled window by tilting the lens slightly and making sure the flash was turned off.

Oh, please make sure the flash is turned off, he thought to himself. He already felt foolish for taking pictures out the window. Number one, because he had a suspicion that the shots wouldn’t come out well, anyway. He remembered his parents coming back from a trip to Hawaii, mocking a woman who was taking pictures of the USS Arizona from the island-hopping airplane at dusk.

He could still hear his dad telling it to his grandparents over a cocktail: “Can you believe that? Wasting money on a picture like that? It’s just going to be a gray blob on a bigger, darker blob! What an idiot!”

Well, now you’re that idiot, he thought to himself. Someone’s going to go home and tell their 10-year-old how they were on the plane with an idiot taking pictures out of the airplane window. Funny, though, aren’t they entitled to say what they want? You don’t know these people anyway--what do you care? But, for some reason, you do, don't you?

The second reason that made him think to be embarrassed was that he was so uncontrollably inspired by a sunset. You’re acting like a 13-year-old girl who’s into purple, he admonished himself, chuckling a little.

“Yes, I like sunsets and ponies and going to the mall. I’m a Capricorn and I’m getting my braces off in March…”

He shot the pictures on his digital camera, switching out a couple of the settings to highlight the scenery and minimize the foreground. One, zoom out, another, change the zoom, another, reframe with the sun to one side, Lens flare effect-grab that one it might be interesting—you’ll never know what you can crop and change and get a good shot from. Just grab raw data right now to work with. He rolled his eyes thinking of pictures as “data”, but that was just a side-effect of his job.

A slight commotion shook him out of his mental focus a little. The couple to his right was rubbernecking across the aisle and out the window to see what he was documenting so fervently. Michael flushed a little, truly embarrassed now, and now with all the reasons to be so spelled out in his brain, which made him a little apologetic and shy. He looked somewhat sheepishly at the man and woman, who were still curiously focused on the window like they were trying to see if there was a car accident or some other event happening which required such vigorous picture-taking. The man looked at Michael and seemed a little irritated, shot a glance back out the window for a second, and then leaned toward his wife and said something.

Gee, dude, I’m sorry I made you look—you can go back to reading “American Way” and shopping in the crappy catalog for porcelain frogs, Michael thought to himself. Like you had something else to do. He flicked the switch on the camera and looked at his pictures. Pretty good, he thought—these will work very nicely.

Then he tilted his head a little and looked down at the jigsaw-puzzle coast and waterways below. So this is Maine, he thought to himself. Somehow, his thoughts were brought to a puzzle of the United States that he was putting together when he was about 5, sitting on the tile floor of his white house in Texas. It was a wooden puzzle with little pegs, and, as he remembered, a lot of the smaller states in the northeast lumped into one wooden block with a red peg sticking out over New Jersey. He could always remember Maine because it was the top one, like a pointer finger aimed to the right. But that was his first consciousness that there were far away places, and now he was here, and retrospectively he wondered if as a five year old he had thought he would ever get to that top piece of the puzzle.

Maine had an allure to him. It was a place that you couldn’t really get to see unless you tried hard. True enough, he thought to himself, this trip has taken forever today. Now the sun is going down and you still have to drive out to the island.

Content and hopeful, he quietly turned off the camera and slipped it into the bag under his knees, and for the rest of the flight, Michael thought about the things that worked together in his life to bring him to this beautiful place.

I'm Baaaack!

Well, whaddya know? While I was gone for 12 days to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts (nobody look that spelling up--I just winged it), I had about a total of 30 minutes and a bad keyboard and left a couple of entries, pushing my total # of entries over 100! Cool! I stuck with it!

Getting serious now...

I had an unexpected moment yesterday while traveling--I had to change planes in New York, and as we circled Manhattan, I realized that we were going right over ground zero. The plane was tilted on its side and I just looked out my window to the left and there it was, a blatant void, shocking--like a mastectomy scar.

Five years ago this week I was sitting under the two towers on a bus. There was a place where the building curved specifically and if you held your camera up, you could take a picture of yourself taking a picture. This wasn't insight of mine, the tour guide told us all to get ready and explained it and I guess it was just a neat tourist thing to do, so I did it. I thought of that picture.

The commotion and excitement of the plane stopped and everyone was silent. People had been trying to pick out Broadway, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty and they froze in their seats and stared down at the two dusty footprints of the collapsed buildings.

It was also a Tuesday when they fell, I thought to myself. People were sitting in an airplane just like me, trying to get to work or to see loved ones. On the day they were destroyed, I was in Oklahoma City--at the time it struck me that the people there empathized better than anyone in the country, and were shaken to the core. The Oklahoma City momument is chilling to visit--an empty chair represents each of the victims. On September 11th, TV's were on everywhere in the city and, just like the rest of the country, we were watching the footage over and over and over...People walked around in shock. I got in my car and drove the 200 mile trip home in a complete daze--I actually had a hard time believing what was happening.

It made me reflect on my trip and the people that I met all over New England. It was very cool to drive through small towns and see the patriotisim through signs, flags blowing in the wind, ribbons, monuments. These people are very much different from people in Dallas. It was funny to hear them speak but mainly to listen to their thoughts expressed and to know that people see things differently and believe them with their whole heart.

Flying over ground zero, I couldn't help but ask--who was the target of the attacks? Surely not the people from Dallas, or New England, or even the people in the towers and planes. It was the ideals of our country. It really pissed me off. What an act of cowardice! And I felt grief--unexpectedly strong grief. Was I the last one in the world to have this sink in?

Then I started to feel bad that the reality of the situation hadn't hit me until I saw it with my own two eyes. Til I put myself in their shoes, and considered the situation fromt he view of how it would affect MY family if I didn't come home today. Why was it a more potent lesson when I applied it to myself?

This trip has been one of a lot of introspection--probably because I've had a lot of time to myself that I normally just don't get. But I did live in the moment as much as I could, and enjoyed experiencing the emotional swings of peace, hard work, exhaustion, excitement, and satisfaction--and this moment of grief.

There are an unbelievable amount of stories from this trip...not even sure how to start...maybe I'll start tomorrow. Thanks for the calls and Emails!

Greetings from Boston

The Sox Win!

It was wicked awesome...

I'm going to go eat some claam chowdah now!

If you're looking for me...

Tomorrow, I get to cross off one of the "things" on my list of stuff to do before I die: I am going to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park!!!!

It was a series of odd events that brought me to Boston for 2 nights after being gone for 10 days in Maine.

I mentioned to a newly made friend that I love the Red Sox and, when he found out about me coming to Boston, he arranged the tickets.

It's the oldest stadium in baseball! I'm pumped!

Here are some things left:

1) Catch a Marlin
2) Visit all 50 states (Still need: Hawaii, Oregon, Connecticut, Montana, Wyoming, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, Deleware, Iowa, Nebraska, and N and S Dakota)
3) See the Grand Canyon
4) Visit Italy, France
5) Moose Hunting in Alaska
6) Bow hunt for deer
7) Write and publish a book
8) Other, more private and boring stuff (ex: financial goals, read certain books)...


I've got a million great stories from this trip--what a great experience. It's funny how it was the trip of a lifetime for me, with unforgettable experiences at every turn, and I could see that others went through the time with an attitude that it was tedious and grueling.

Here's the best joke of the week (and I didn't tell it)

We were driving around looking for something to eat, and we passed a pub called The Jack Russell.

Deb: "We could get Jack Russell for lunch"

Me: "I don't know. I don't like the sound of that."

Frank: "What, you don't like Korean food?"

I laughed so hard my sides ached. If you don't get it, sorry.

The ache

I am swamped right now. I am out of town and I spent 14 hours talking (teaching hands-on) on Sunday. For those of you who know me, that's not a huge challenge, but my vocal cords were swollen after that.

I'm working at a very intensive technical course right now as a workshop instructor. It's a very prestigous assignment to teach people from all over the world, and it's absolutely fantastic. Also, we are working in a lab that is about 30 feet from the Atlantic ocean, so I get to look up periodically and zone out with the view.

I've got pictures...

Anyway, I'm sneaking reading sessions on For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I feel like a coke addict must feel--sneaking off for a few minutes to get through a particularly engrossing section or purposely being late 20 minutes just so I can finish a part that I'm craving to know the ending to.

HOWEVER--I have not had a decent cup of coffee in 5 days now, and I'm starting to get pissy about it.

Also, they are feeding us swill from a dining hall--I picked up some power bars because they gave us tomato soup that looked like that blood/milk mixed stuff from Africa--I guess I've gotten soft and high maintenance. I used to be able to just deal with whatever food dropped on the plate in frontt of me.

So, the aching that I am feeling is to write a short story about some of the craziness that I am seeing here--it is a mini-drama with heroes and losers and villians and heartbreak. Everything except thankfully a love story, but I'm sure I could work one into the story somehow.

Here's a scene, written briefly and badly without my "magic" keyboard that lets me type at the speed of thought--I'm ruthlessly pounding this out on the normal keyboard on my laptop which makes me more carefully consider what I'm doing...

Sitting across from lunch from a very experienced co-worker. She's just reached over and taken a french fry from my plate, saying "I'm gonna have to take a couple of these..." (not asking--in Spanish, we call this "bruta"--a brutish woman).

"That's okay."

"Well, I'm gonna tell you something that no one else knows yet. I've just been given the position of manager of Region 3."

Inside, my heart sank and I got a feeling of dread. My boss was supposed to get that assignment. Once he did, I was going to get promoted and all my cares in the world were going to go away.

Forced smile, but unnecessarily so, for you see she was so self-absorbed that she had no idea that this had any ramifications for me. I felt like one of the Oscar candidates with the camera trained on me when it is announced that...someone else has won.

"Congratulations. I know you'll do a great job."

"Yeah." She reaches across and grabs another fry, dunking it in the ketchup.

There's a lot more--I'm trying to make mental notes, so I'll do the best I can.

No Man is an Island

I'm starting a couple of books--Anna Karenina (starting for the 3rd time, never got past chapter 2) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (for the 4th reading).

I usually jump right into the book, but when I started the Hemingway book, I noticed the John Donne quote on the introductory page--It was kind of cool, so here it is:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

John Donne

It's one of those things that I've seen snippets of that now seem out of context, but maybe I wasn't far enough down the road of life to grasp it yet...

When nobody was watching, he sneaked away and...

Without going into it too much, this was a psychological test that I saw when I was a freshman taking psychology (seems redundant, but it's 4:00 in the AM). The test was, you are supposed to complete the sentence, which I guess exposes either what you do that you don't want others to see or know about, and also what you think is behavior that should be hidden...hmmm, interesting.

Reminds me that I was going to do an entry of my most embarrassing moments at some point, but they were, well, too embarrassing...

Thanks for tolerating my overly sentimental entry yesterday. Sometimes it's good to go there...

I may be signing off for a couple of days--I'll be traveling--but I'll update you when I can.

I think I have been provided with a glimpse at an alcoholic's world, at least in a small way. Last year, I made a commitment to myself to no longer eat food from Jack in the Box. A couple of reasons: desire to be less of a lard-ass is the primary one.

My friend, Robert, while we were in high school, introduced me to the Ultimate Cheeseburger, and I was immediately hooked. Apparently, seriously, it has the amount of fat that the USDA recommends for you for an entire week! Damn you, Robert. I love those things, and can't get enough. Then, there are their Jalapeno poppers. What are these things essentially? Fried cheese with a sliver of jalapeno (I'm not taking 30 minutes to figure out the cute way to put the tilde on top of the n by the way--just use your imagination).

So back to my commitment--I quit Jack in the Box cold turkey back in December. Since then, every time I've driven by it I get this weird feeling, like I never got to say good bye and I have unresolved issues. Like the girlfriend I had for a brief time in college that I broke up with by just moving one day and never calling her back...that was kind of ugly, wasn't it?

There were even times when I would traditionally get Jack in the Box--like when I would go out of town. So, naturally, when I went out of town I would really start to crave an ultimate cheeseburger (I call them Ultimate Deathburgers because of the fat gram thing).

Tuesday, I broke down and got an ultimate cheeseburger and order of jalapeno poppers. And then again yesterday. And I'm kind of getting hungry right now writing this...Somebody stop the madness!!!!!

After eating these, it feels gross like I just ate a bucket of crisco (including the bucket). I've gotta get back on the wagon.

I went and saw the new Star Wars movie (episode III). Guess those guys that camped out for years or whatever kinda overdid it...Hope it was worth it.

So, one day, when nobody was watching...

This was the funny part, and it's never happened to me before--I was the ONLY one in the theater! How could this place make $$ doing that? I was a little afraid when I found myself alone in there. However, the theater smelled like the inside of a kid's shoe, that sickly sweet sweaty smell--uh, gross. Almost so gross that I wouldn't eat an ultimate cheeseburger off the floor of it.

Here's my theory: This movie is the best made movie of all 6. It's unfortunate that the special effects and computer graphics capabilities crescendoed in an odd order of the story's telling. I really love how the movie storyline takes you through the deception that Anakin goes through to become Darth Vader (hope I didn't give anything away there...ha ha, especially since I'm the last one to see this movie). It's almost as though you can relate to him with only one small leap of faith in believability where he attacks Samuel L. Jackson...then the quite disturbing point of no return in the movie where he kills all the Jedi.

But back to the consequences of advanced special effects: One example is that computer graphics enable George Lucas to insert a bazillion people and little ships and stuff into each scene now and have them move independently. In Star Wars (episode IV) there are instances of the grandiose scale (which they did with like a flashlight and a set of watercolors from Target), but it's not present in every scene. In the original Star Wars there is more emphasis on the primary characters and the scenery within the 10-20 feet directly around them--more physical acting which enables the actors to respond to what's going on around them.

Which brings me to my next point--I would really like to get one of those Natalie Portman robots that they had do all the acting...what the heck is that all about? Very, very stiff acting, to the point of distracting (yes, my Jesse Jackson rhyming is on purpose).

Fran's theory: The 3 new movies lack the dimension of Han Solo. The random, maverick, good-looking guy for comic relief gave believability to the movie and made it more personal with kind of an anti-hero effect.

(Please don't like Fran's theory better than mine--it'll go right to her head). Damn it, she's right, isn't she?

Happy Birthday Don

Here's your freakin' card:





It was too good for just you to see...

Anyway, here's something that may be written inside:

Dear Don:

I remember the day you were born. Unfortunately, the colors weren't as bright back then--I just remember a shade of blue over everything.

I remember playing in the backyard because there were too many people in the house. On the day you were born, I got a little plastic golf set. Coincidence? I think not...

You were a very cute baby--I remember everyone striking up conversations with our family because your bright blond hair and blue eyes were so beautiful. I think some swingers tried to pick up mom and dad at Pizza Inn because of you, so...congratulations on that.

We had a bunch of fun growing up together. We collected baseball cards and played soccer and baseball and with adventure people--remember how we used to try to flood the backyard so we could float the boats? And we created a rapids for them by digging and eroding a part of the yard--good times.

We would go hang out at the school and play golf and baseball--back when baseball was cool but golf wasn't. Remember how we had 5 golf balls and we thought they were the last 5 golfballs in the world, til we figured out that Target had them for, like 50 cents each?

I thought you were going to be the best baseball player in the world...but you ended up sucking...

We would go crawdad fishing and try to catch the Red Baron. Ryan loves to hear about our crawdad fishing trips on our bikes. He asks me to tell the stories at bedtime.

Remember when you got lost at that big activity at the park and they pulled you up onstage and wouldn't let me get you because I was like 7 years old. We ended up getting unlimited twinkies and ding dongs outta that deal, so I guess it was worth it...

Remember going on our "picnic hikes"? In the freakin' 100 degree heat! What were we thinking? Also, our renegade trip to Toys 'R Us when you were only like 6 years old? I guess 10 miles seems closer by car...sorry you almost died--water would have been a good foresight.

And then there was the time the guy tried to kidnap us both and we had to ride around with the police officer...again, good times.

Sorry I crushed your head with a sledgehammer. I really think it was an accident.

Remember how I ran to the top of our hill holding my gold aluminum baseball bat over my head like a drawn sword, screaming "AAAAAAHHHHHHH!", ready to kill Mrs. Miller for taking your bike away? That image still cracks me up, but I think you thought I was a hero...

I always thought it was cool how you would go hang out with Grandma and Grandpa--they seemed to click with you--I think you made them feel comfortable using the F-word somehow...

I was always jealous of your ability to make a gazillion friends wherever you go--I'm doing good to make 3 or 4 close ones in a lifetime.

Why do you keep trying to psyche me out that there are alligators on your golf course that are going to get me if I hit my ball in the rough?

Remember when I got a couple of "8"'s in a row in golf and you started singing "Frosty the Snowman" because you said that getting an 8 was a "snowman"? Sorry I punched the crap out of your arm....last summer.

I had a great time hanging out with you all last year while I was working down in Houston every week. I felt like we got to know each other all over again.

I can smoke your ass at darts, anytime, anywhere.

I was flattered to be your "best man" at your wedding.

You've been the hardest worker I've known--you've been working and earning your own money since you were 6! You deserve the success you've had. We delivered magazines together for 5 years with the best record in the company!

Hey bro, you're my best friend, and I love you.

Mike