January 2007 Archives

did some deadlifts today as i ease into a new routine, and afterwards, i tried some military press. i hate the military press because i'm weak on it, and i overestimated the weight i should do and only got a couple reps on my first set. ugh. so i finished the set doing a push press, and then, for the next two sets, i did clean & push press. that's nice! good bit of lung work.

finally got a new flat bench. wanted one since last year, when i wrote myself a note in my lifting log to get one. the old one is too tall (20 or 21 inches, versus the powerlifting "standard" of about 17-18 inches) and leaves my legs in a bad position for bench pressing. plus, when 203 tries to bench from it, she can't really reach the floor at all. so i set out to get a new one.

that didn't go so well -- none of the major "fitness" brands that i could find sold a flat bench under 19".

then, yesterday, while trying unsuccessfully to sell some rollerblades at a used fitness store, i found a 16" bench for less than my budgeted price, new. bought it, assembled it, and used it this morning. it didn't make benching any easier and i'm not quite used to it yet, but it did seem to put me in a more stable position.

now i just have to shake the bad habits i developed over 4 years of benching on my 21" no-place-for-the-butt bench.

orange manilla buckets
filled with buzzing knees

sightless purple broccoli
zipping through the trees

thirty score angry donuts
colored as they please

through binded eyes all this and more
the creator sees

a coworker of mine is an head-fi or some crap like that. he likes headphones. and since he has money, has has some really nice ones. headphones that require separate headphone amps to work.

well, he convinced me to get a nicer pair of headphones myself. so i picked up a set of akg k81dj's, and though they're uncomfortable, on account of the earpieces are too small and too tight, i've been impressed with them these past few months.

whelp, right now i'm being blown away. pink floyd's "the wall" came on my mp3 player, and though it's compressed, and though i've listened to the album a million times, i'm hearing incredible new things on each and every track.

the operator calling from the US and reaching the dude sleeping with pink's wife is now crystal clear.

new instruments are springing up all over the place.

comfortably numb is even more amazing than ever before.

and best of all, it's not hardly even distracting me from work.

i really hope i dont end up blowing wads of cash on more comfy headphones, but as of now, i'm thoroughly convinced of how *big* of a difference a set of quality phones makes.

A: yes

xkcd out-succincts me.

Q: pick one word to describe the current state of affairs AFAYC
A: tumult

a couple years back i was invited to a wedding. i figured people wear suits to weddings, so i went out and bought one. it was expensive and fit me nicely and i got two shirts for it "just in case". the total for the suit, shoes, ties (got two of those, too, "just in case") and cufflinks (didn't realize i needed those when i bought the shirts, alas) and belt and socks came to well over too much.

i went to the wedding and i was the only person not "in" the wedding who was wearing anything fancier than jeans. people kept mistaking me for a groomsman or whatever those guys are called who get free tuxedo rentals from the groom.

my embarrassment at that point is beside the point. the point is this: because i paid so much for the suit, and because i have no use for a suit (not even for an interview, no sir) outside of weddings, to which i am rarely invited, i jokingly dubbed the suit my "burial suit," proclaiming that i paid so damned much for it that i expected to be buried in it, since i certainly wouldn't be buying another one before my demise.

i wore it once or twice to go with my mom to services. i left it at my folks' house because i had no use for it at my home.

and then, my grandmother died. and, much later, but not too much later, her sister died, too. both times, i wore my "burial suit," oh, so cleverly named, to their burials. i buried both my grandmother and my great-aunt in my damned "burial suit", and i that's only slightly metaphorical, since both were buried under the aegis of jewish tradition, which demands that family members perform the act of piling dirt on the coffin in the hole.

jewish tradition also involves the tearing of garments as a symbol of mourning. because we live in more enlightened times, nowadays, the rabbi brings a little black ribbon pin which you can stick on your lapel and have him cut with a swiss army knife. that satisfies the demands of tradition, at least to reform standards (interestingly, the internets do not reveal a torahic basis for rending (keriah). seems it's all "custom" and not especially "law", for whatever difference that makes. in my case, i suppose, it makes a difference: since personally, i value custom more than law.).

when he put that goofy little pin on my lapel, i didn't want it. i wanted to do the real thing: to tear up my "burial suit" and never see it again. all around me stood my living family, the few people in this world for whom i care deeply.

i realized: the next time i wore my burial suit would be to bury one of them.

i don't believe in much, but i do believe in this: if we can't take something useful away from any experience we have, then we're wasting our very short time having those experiences. the same goes for customs and traditions, after a fashion. those that can teach us something are worthwhile, those that cannot, are not. if we partake in a custom or ceremony, yet bring away nothing from it, we have wasted our time.

aunt ruby is buried, but she was a smart one. by giving of herself she achieved immortality as well as most any who have lived. things mundane may be sublime: aunt ruby's pencil sharpener sits on my desk at work, her paper shredder eats my junk mail. her spirit lives on in my print queue: a poem that i wrote her for christmas waited until this morning to find its way onto the paper of a freshly powered-on printer. but these things are all of her, these are her accomplishments, and what i bring home from my family's (evident) burial ceremony of post-burial joviality is that i am still alive, and kicking, and all that, and able to keep on keeping on.

but to what end?

maybe i'll get back to that. for now, a digression that may bring us to a point: for this sort of retrospective i often dig around in the archovies. naturally, then, this came up, and, a few clicks away, this.

i wrote myself a note last year for a blog post i really do intend to write. maybe it's this one, i hope. last year, i entered into an adult relationship, and in doing so, i became myself an adult. i was astonished by this just this weekend when i found myself doing such adult things as directing a move-in and paying for an expensive dinner. and yet, i am still a kid when it matters.

i don't believe in much, but i do believe in this: i picked the right woman. i've got problems and worries and obsessions and difficulties and imaginary conversations and logic and illogic but at the end of it all, when i ask myself "so what?" i always answer: "i love her, and she loves me." there's really nothing more to ask after that point but "where to now?"

it pleases my mother that i'm a romantic. yesterday was the longest span of time i've spent away from 203 since she surprised me at work. it was too long. that's me, the romantic.

i write things carefully, sometimes, and sometimes i despair that the things i write carefully do not receive a careful reading. my folks gave me a ribbing about this, apparently they read the blog but did not understand what hubris it is that elevates me five stories above earth eternal. in my diggings i found, linked above, the uncommented-upon explanation that my previous relationship was founded on a childish retreat and sheltering from reality. perhaps even i did not read it closely enough.

two times in the past twenty four hours i've hinted at something that was on my mind, and 203 told me exactly what it was. 203 reads me closely, and i like it.

i fiddle and play with religion and the like because that is my hobby. it is my hobby because it has consumed humanity since the dawn of time and though i feel no pull to virgin or pigeon, the pull that others feel fascinates me. but i do not believe in nothing. i have thoughts on what's important and on what's going on. but the other day i wondered, should i just give up on the whole mess and spend that part of my time dealing with more productive things?

that's one of the tragic jokes of life, though, to not know what the productive things are, ever. you've just got to pick what's important based on the best available guess of the times. and there, in my burial suit, discomforted by the watered down cherry-picked subset of traditions that we were practicing to commemorate my aunt, my thin strand of core beliefs was reinforced, and in my disgust at a joke turned ugly, i reflected a little on what we have, all of us but aunt ruby: the future.

when 203 read my mind, she saw what bothered me: that she has a past. i have one too, but mine's about 2 years of real time and five minutes of story time. hers is about <really big number> of real time and 2 years of story time. that disparity (and the events that comprise it (or more accurately, my absence from them)) is difficult for me to handle, but of course, handle it i will. (aunt ruby didn't teach me to ramble: i picked that up on my own. i'm coming to a point, i can almost feel it.)

those pasts, like aunt ruby, are gone for good. we can look back at them and learn from them, or wish that we'd interacted differently with them, and miss them, or not miss them; we can remember them with sadness and longing, nostalgia or revulsion, jealousy and fear, understanding and confusion, happiness and contentment. but all we can do is remember them. the past is a set of tools to help us deal with the future, where our eyes are set.

eventually, i'll bury my parents and maybe a lot of other people too. but that realization, like my worries and my difficulties, should be faced in my burial suit, buried by loving hands and thanked for all their guidance, remembered with honor, and then left behind as i move on into the future i create.

still in love.

she: my folks left me a voice mail
me: didn't you tell me you talked to them maybe once a month?
she: every other week, yeah
me: and now that you've got me, they won't stop calling you
she: that's right
me: i bet that voice mail isn't even for you, i bet they just want to talk to me
she: <dialing> omfg wtf?
me: what?
she: it's my mom, she wants you to call her

ow.

bounce bounce bounce goes the xmas flab. it's my winter coat!

i'm not even married yet and already i've let myself go.

the other day, when searching for an answer to "why does this good coffee taste kinda crappy?" i came across some brewing recomendations from the estimable Thom:

- 1 blue scaa scoop of beans (well, grinds, technically) per 8oz water
- wait 1-2 minutes off the boil before exposing the beans to your hot water

i was using about 2 blue scaa scoops of beans per 8oz water, and waiting about 15 seconds off the boil. since my coffee was overly bright (to the point of sour astringency) i suspect my problem was more the former than the latter.

the new coffee, brewed to thom's specs, is fantastic. same bean, more chocolate, no unripe-banana. less body, yeah, but far more depth and range of flavor. a much more balanced and likable cup. the difference is extremely obvious (and good!).

this morning, when roasting up a batch of vienna moka kadir, an explanation occurred to me for how i had gotten to this sorry state. perhaps, once upon a time, i roasted some coffee fartoo dark, and in compensation, i piled on the beans (which is what you do with a bitter, overroasted bean). then, when i began roasting lighter, instead of decreasing my bean proportion, i kept it artificially high, resulting in perpetually over-extracted coffee. oops!

in any case, now i get to go back and re-try all those "ick, too bright" coffees of the last 6 months or so (sigh) (yay!) and also, enjoy a nice, vienna level moka kadir.

plus a bit of new knowledge.

isn't that special?

isn't that special?

less than a year after i had this to say, aunt ruby passed, at the well-lived age of 95.

i'd like to think that over the past year i've become a little wiser; at least wise enough to see the flaws in my own self that come through in my writings past. aunt ruby was ready to go, back then, but she wasn't.

At the end of the movie "Blade Runner," the character Roy, faced with his own inevitable death after a life too short, says, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die."

And so it is with the best of us, if we're lucky. If we manage to hang tenaciously on to life as aunt ruby did, long enough to see things you people wouldn't believe. To have a life full of wonder and love and good stories and hard times, a life full of character and giving. aunt ruby had such a life, but life always has more to give. In the time since last feb. when I thought she was ready to go, she has shared in some of the greatest joys of my life so far -- and not only shared, but contributed in ways too wonderful to describe in a place as goofy as this. she was pulling for me in my new life, and she got to meet and love 203.

and then, less than two weeks after we last saw her, she's gone.

so it goes, and i still stand by the sentiment that formed the undercurrent of last year's posting: there is no tragedy in her passing, no sorrow that she did not live life to its fullest, in the fullness that she desired. she had shortcomings and made mistakes like all the best of us, and she had unfulfilled wishes and desires like all the best of us, but she had as fair a shake at it as any of us could hope for and she didn't squander her time.

aunt ruby made it through life without ever having to life in a "home" and without taking a long and tragic descent into passing -- all this at age 95.

but there is still sadness, despite the fullness of her life: that i was too foolish to properly mine that fullness. 203, a better person than i, talked with aunt ruby with an interest i failed to show, and in one short visit found out wonderful things about aunt ruby's past that i didn't know. so it goes.

i'm sorry that i didn't get to know her better, but i know that i benefitted greatly from her loving attention. i'm sure that anyone who knew her would say the same.

two different people asked me independantly today whether i got a perm over the holiday.

no, dammit! that's just a little bit of hair gel. not even very much! i dont need no steenkin perm.

isn't that special?

man, slow blogging year so far...

tough

'twere a good xmas. longest present opening ceremony ever, of course, 'twere also the first such in recent memory featuring five full-fledged openers.

some things happened.

then some other things.

then i woke up on 1/1 in 831 with 141 and 203.

isn't that something?