Category Archives: Life
I wrote recently that I have fairly poor eating habits despite much effort on the part of my parents who do have better sense with regard to food.
Part of the problem may have been a counter-lesson involving food-as-reward. We were fairly poor growing up, so getting a pizza (which was a fairly new thing back then) or ice cream was our reward for good grades in school.
I always got pretty good grades in school (although not really for the food reward; I just really liked learning). But food did become associated with good times, not that there’s nothing wrong with that. I seem to have dodged the bullet of using food as comfort, but I have discovered I eat more when bored or frustrated.
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20 Comments | tags: bagels, brown sugar, cheese, Demolition Man, food, hot dogs, pasta, pizza, rat burgers, Tex-Mex | posted in Life
I was on a supply run to the grocery store this morning and was stuck behind a Toyota Camry for most of the way. My trip takes place on two-lane roads that are hilly and curved enough to prohibit passing, so I was trapped. It was a mellow Sunday morning, and there’s no use (ever) letting other drivers get to you. I’m not one to play the tailgating game, but the four vehicles stuck behind me were stacked up tightly.
In fact, once I realized it was a Camry, I started laughing. For a long time now, I’ve had a perception that when you’re stuck behind a particularly bad driver — one that stands out from the usual bad drivers — there is a good chance the car is a Camry. I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one with that perception; I’ve heard others make the same rant.
But it is a fact that there are a huge number of them on the road, and they age well, so odds are high on any car in front of you being a Camry.
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4 Comments | tags: bad drivers, drivers, horrible drivers, LA Story, slow pokes, speed limit, Steve Martin, Toyota Camry | posted in Life, Rant
The other entry for Skydiving Saturday is another USENET post I made to rec.skydiving in August 1999.
And there’s a nice connection to posting these in August as I did with the three last year describing the first and second Tandem jumps and the first AFF jump. The girl friend and I made those two Tandem jumps in August of 1997, so August is the month it all began.
While we started AFF school that September, and finished the following March, the day of jumping described below (one of our most fun times as the drop zone) took place on a very hot day in August of 1999. A lot of things started to go downhill after that, so in a number of ways this represents one of the high points in our lives. It was definitely one of those days to press in your memory book.
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5 Comments | tags: boogie, CASA, rec.skydiving, skydiving, USENET | posted in Life
It’s Skydiving Saturday at Logos con carne! I’m working on the upcoming TV Tuesday, so this weekend I’m going to coast a bit with some easy posts and archive excavations.
It’s also a good time to enjoy the end of lazy summer before we go back to school. After all, Logos CC is also about philosophy and computers and science (oh, my).
There are many meaty topics on the grill for later, but for now it’s free fall time!
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3 Comments | tags: AFF, AFF jump, rec.skydiving, skydiving, USENET | posted in Life
This is a companion piece to yesterday’s post about my high school English teacher, Mr. Wilson (which may—or may not—be his real name). This piece concerns something that happened in high school that changed my life. It’s one of those moments when you turn onto a new road that ends up becoming a permanent part of your path. As we say these days, it rebooted my life.
The road turn took place in 1970, but the first real seed was planted the year before. It was my first year of high school, and I went to see a play, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, put on by the high school. The play was staged in the school’s auditorium, a 1000-seat genuine theatre complete with fly galleries, lighting positions, and a booth at the back for projectors and the main spotlight.
It was the first time I’d seen a live play or a theatre like that.
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24 Comments | tags: Cloris Leachman, drama, Ed Asner, high school, lighting guy, Mary Tyler Moore, theatre, theatre lighting | posted in Life, Writing
(Not Mr. Wilson)
I’ve spent so much time today reading and commenting on other people’s blogs (and a few on my own) that now I’m feeling a bit weary of writing. Still, we’ll see how this one goes. It’s a combination bone to pick (albeit a small and arguable one) and remembrance of things past. Distant, dim past. High school past. Nearly forty years past.
I’ve been remembering the past for a variety of reasons. A high school friend, one of the very few I’m still in touch with, is also facing looming job elimination.
And just yesterday, someone else from high school sent a message to my Facebook page (which I maintain for the purpose of old friends finding me, and only for that purpose).
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12 Comments | tags: Chaucer, classy, English class, high school, Mr. Wilson, Neil Gaiman, Sandman, unique | posted in Life, Writing
This is actually a comment response that ran so long I decided to post it as a new article. It’s in response to a comment from wakemenow on my Venus & Mars post yesterday.
I’ve heard many a tale about the competition among women. There have even been some articles published in work-related blogs about women in business being far harder on other women than on men. I’ve long assumed it was primarily based on competition for a resource (position, power, money) that was viewed as scarce, but I have come to wonder if there isn’t something else at work as well.
This is a fairly fresh line of thought, so bear with me if it seems poorly thought out (or just flat-out wrong).
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15 Comments | tags: Ana Marie Cox, competition among women, group betrayal, inner voice, women | posted in Life, Philosophy
Had a pair of interesting dreams I want to record. They were odd enough to stay with me once I awoke, and interesting enough (at least to me) that I want to record them. They seem possibly related to my current job situation.
(NOTE: This post is intended more for me — a true web log — than for any putative readership, so you may not find it very interesting. This is your one and only warning!
Continued reading may lead to a why am I reading this syndrome!)
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4 Comments | tags: Cousin Itt, dreams, Morticia Addams, retirement, work | posted in Life, Writing
Before the age of blogs (or even web pages), those of us on the internet had other places to hang out and exchange thoughts.
In fact, in many regards, the “Bulletin Board Systems” (BBS) and “internet news groups” (USENET) were more conversational than blog or Facebook comments. They were more like chat rooms where conversations took place over days and weeks (and months).
Like chat rooms, they involved a group of people having a conversation. I miss those days… blog comments are too brief and passing to be a conversation. At best, brief remarks are exchanged for a half-dozen rounds or so, and then the river flows on.
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2 Comments | tags: Borg, Captain Picard, Star Trek, The Next Generation, transporters | posted in Life, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
There are things you can’t unsee. I don’t mean the walking in on your parents kind of sights. And I also don’t mean certain movies, such as Cop Out or MacGruber (two movies I had to stop watching after about 15-20 minutes least my brain melt; oh, Bruce, what were you thinking).
I mean things that, once you know they’re there, you can’t look at that same context ever again without seeing it.
This post was triggered by a, what I believe was a tongue-in-cheek, post on (if I recall correctly) io9. [The qualifications here come from not being able to find said post anywhere, even though I know I saw it this year. Even paging deep into Google results digs up nothing.]
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3 Comments | tags: Betelgeuse, big dipper, little dipper, M42, NGC 1976, orion constellation, United States | posted in Life, Science
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