Lucky in Love

Every once and while I like to google my name just to see what kind of stuff pops up. Today I came across this gem about my wife and I. It from the campus newspaper from our last year at Bradley. It was from a Valentines Day article on campus couples. Real names redacted

Published: February 14, 2003

Lucky in love
Campus couples discuss the ups and downs of college relationships

This is the real thing!

So can campus couples really end up together forever? They can in the case of senior K. P. and Bradley graduate A. F. The two are engaged to be married June 21, and the spark started at a fraternity party.

“I was looking for a friend and I asked A where I could find him, when I looked up I was like, ‘Hey, wait, I know this guy, he’s cute!’” P said.

The stayed up talking until 7 a.m., and both knew there was something special right away.

The relationship grew from there.

Yet the couple was immediately put under tremendous pressure. Soon after they began dating, F departed for a semester in Malta.

“Phone bills were expensive, and the emotional stress huge, but we both learned that it made us stronger,” P said.

Being from California and Colorado — two unusual places for Bradley students — P believes their relationship was destined from the get-go.

“It was an odd choice of schools for both of us,” P said.

The couple will wed on a riverboat in New Orleans, then plan to move to Louisiana where F will attend graduate school.

“Love is where you least expect it,” P said. “Neither of us expected we’d meet one another at the most cliched place — a fraternity party!”

Happy Birthday, Nate

Happy birthday little brother. You would have been 26 today. Hard for me to say anything other than I miss you terribly.

Car Chase

I stumbled across an online discussion on the list of things that people would like to do before they died. It made think of something that use to always on my list of things to do before I died, one that I got to do and found it to be not at all what I hoped it would be.

Growing up I had always loved the car chase scenes in movies. They always looked like so much fun. I though abstractly that it could be a lot fun to be in car chase some day, but since I was not planning being a cop or running from the cops, I never really though that I would get participate in one. This in not how things turned out

Back when I was a graduate assistant in New Orleans, two years ago, I was tasked with taking pictures of all the abandoned properties in the now infamous Lower 9th Ward (which before Katrina wiped it out was probably one of the most destitute neighborhoods in the nation). It should been a big red flag when my advisor told me that it would be a very bad idea to get out the van to take the pictures and that we should do it just after sunrise when the junkies were most likely to be asleep. But, I was bright eyed eager new grad student and took on the project with vigor.

For the first couple of months the project went fine, it was an eye opening experience on the depths of poverty in urban America. Then one morning we noticed that we were being tailed by a late model Lexus SUV, with completely tinted windows. We didn't think much of until noticed the driver making angry gestures and honking at us. This seemed like a good time to go back to campus, so we decided to end the day early.

As we began to leave the neighborhood the Lexus speed up began following us inches from our back bumper. All the while he contoured to honk and flip us off. Then we hit a red light, which allowed him to box us in. At which point the driver, a dishelved man with bloodshot eyes, who looked like he should be pushing a shopping cart under an overpass somewhere, and not be behind the wheel of Lexus, jumped out and ran up to driverside door. He than began to scream at us, his words so slurred that he was barley understandable.

At first, he just screaming over and over “why you taking a picture of my house, why you taking a picture of my house.” Before we could it word edgewise to offer an explanation he began to threatening to kill us, stating that he would hunt us down and that we could not get away from him. At this point I was as terrified as I have ever been, I hald expected him to pull a gun at any minute

Fortunately at this point the car in front of moved so, so my partner hit the gas to get us out of there. The crazy dude jumped back in his Lexus and began to chase us. We got onto the interstate and he continued to follow. Unfortunately a 1990 Astro Van is the best vehicle to have in car chase, especially when the other party is driving a late model Lexus. As we speed down the interstate he would pull along side us and then suddenly and violently swerve at us in an effort to force us off the interstate. This continued for several miles.

While this going on we are on the phone with 911 trying to get some police help, but none came. Finaly as we came to the edge of New Orleans and he gave up the chase. Needless to say this incident ended the project uncompleted. Which ultimately didn’t matter when a year latter Katrina wiped these neighborhoods literally off the map.

Still I got to cross something of my to do list, ultimately car chases are better off left to Hollywood.

Sick

I am sick today, I have a over a months worth of sick leave accumulated. Yet here I am at work. I want to go home, yet I will not. Guilt over using sick hours when I am actually sick keeps me shackled to my desk.

It is not is if I am a workaholic that has a hard time taking time off. I make good use of my vacation time and any comp that I accumulated. But for some reason admitting that I am physically too sick work is nearly impossible. It feels like a terrible admission of weakness, I know it is irrational, but I can not escape from it. If can mange to sit upright in a desk chair, I feel obligated to go to work.

I am sure that part of this insane attitude was passed down to me from my parents. I am descended from farmers and shop keepers in rural Iowa and Minnesota, not exactly the kind of culture that looks kindly on the sick day. My parents did not forbid my brother and I from taking sick days, if we were sick and asked they always let us take the day off. Rather I think I am prisoner of the example they set, I can not remember them taking a sick day other than the times when they were too sick to actually get out of bed. It is not as if they were workaholics either, my dad towards the end of his career stoped going to work on Fridays because he didn't feel like it, and he hundreds of hours of vaction time.

Likely I bigger part of my reluctance to take sick time when I feel sick is a strange outgrowth of my marathon running hobby. After ten marathons I have come to believe that success in running a marathon can boiled down to one simple thing, taking the next step, when taking the next step seems like the hardest most painful thing to do in the world. While this is a great attitude for running a marathon, it is not always so wonderful when it spills over into other parts of my life. It seems to have combined with my inherited antipathy of taking sick days to form some sort of weird mutant hybrid attiude that keeps from taking sick time.

On the plus side at least when it comes time for me to take paternity leave in the next couple of years I will have a metric butt load of sick time to draw from. I will feel no guilt for using sick time for that purpose.

Cuba is Not in the North China Sea

I came across this entry in one of my favorite blogs and was totally able to related to this sentiment.

For Betsy Land of The Enquirer-Journal team, getting ousted on the word "sacalait," which is a small, delectable fish from the crappie family, came with a chuckle."It has a beautiful irony," said Land, whose former job with ESPN centered around fishing and fish enthusiasts.

Back in 1993 when I was in the 7th grade I participated in the National Geogaphic Geography Bee. For the third year in row I had qualified for the state championship competition. Unlike in previous years I did exceptionally well in the early rounds. By late afternoon the competition had been winnowed down from 100 to 2 competitors, and I was one of the two left standing. I quickly took the lead in the final round, and finally got to the point where I was just one question away from becoming state champion.

The prize package that one got for being state champion was impressive, you got a free week long trip to compete in the national competition, in Washington D.C., a four year half ride scholarship to the University of Denver which was worth well into the five figure, plus an assortment of other goodies. So not too surprisingly my excitement level was through the roof as the moderator read out the potential state title clinching question.

The moderator read out the question "Russia, China and which neighboring Communist nation are attempting form a free trade block?" Tragically in my excitement I did not hear that oh so key word, neighboring. Not hearing that key qualifer I blurted out the first communist country that came to mind, Cuba. Obviously only in sense that they are located on the planet Earth are Cuba, China, and Russia all neighbors, the correct answer was North Korea.

With this I fell into a tie breakers which I, being totally deflated, promptly lost. Ironically the next year I would again come with one question of winning the state title, but at least I missed that question because I honestly did not know what island Chian Kai-shek was most strongly associated with, Taiwan.

I miss the geography bee, such as shame they have nothing like this for adults.

Speaking

During my senior year of my undergraduate education I had to give a presentation in class, whose name and subject totally escape me. I would probably not remember that presentation either, if it had not gone spectacularly wrong. I do not even remember the topic, but I do remember that it was an end of the semester 15 minute presentation. At the time public speaking was something that terrified me, I was a wretched public speaker. However this day I would drop a particularly large bomb.

I got up to speak and was quickly drenched in flop sweat. I began to mumble through my prepared speech, sounding like my mouth was stuffed with a fistful of marbles. Not once during the the enitre presentation did I look up at the audience, keeping my eyes firmly locked on my writen speech. I kept loosing my place, as I stumbled over words, causing me to frequently lose my place and forcing me to backtrack. Because I had pulled an all nighter preparing the accompanying written report I had ingested prodigious amounts of coffee, enough to the point where it made me twitchy.

After the class had mercifully ended the professor discreetly pulled me aside, put his hand and asked me earnestly "Are you OK? Are you on drugs?" How humiliating, apparently my quality of my speaking was so poor that the only explanation that professor could think of was that I was under the influence of something. That moment was definitely a nadir, in my academic career. I resolved to turn my self in good public speaker.

I now have a job that involves lots of public speaking, I present to the public, the Board of Supervisors, and the Planning & Zoning Commission, several times a month. Taking this job the public speaking part was the only part that scared me. I had become somewhat of a better speaker during grad school, but it was still a very awkward and uncomfortable thing for me to do.

The first time I had present to the County Board of Supervisors it was terrifying, not only was I presenting to elected officials, who were my employers, the meeting were televised, granted it is just on the crappy government channel that no one watches, but still someone could be flicking through the channels and get stuck on the county channel when the remote batteries die. But, I got through it, it was not great oratory but no one asked me to pee in a cup.

Over the next two years my public speaking skills, and my confidence in them improved. This really struck me last night, when I was hosting a neighborhood meeting. For two and half hours I was in front a large room full of people leading the meeting. Most gratifying was that I felt natural doing it, there was no terror. To me it was even more amazing that I did whole thing almost entirely done ad hoc. Though I have been growing more comfortable with public meetings for a while now, last night was the first time that it explicitly struck me that public speaking does not bother me anymore. What a nice feeling it is conqueror a fear like that.

The Car That Haunts My Dreams

My first car was a 1980 Chevrolet Chevette. It had been one of the family cars for as long as I could remember and when I started to drive it was handed down to me. It was a horribly made car that was on its last legs, if you accelerated to fast it would backfire and shoot flames out the tailpipe, it other defects to numerous to mention, and I only drove it for a year. Despite all of this, it is car that I have a reoccurring dream about.

In this dream I discover that I did not actually get rid of the Chevette, but instead have been keeping it in storage. When I discover that I still have it a sense of relief and happiness washes over me. I hop into the Chevette and drive happily off into the sunset.

It does not take a degree in psychology to interpret what this dream means, doubtlessly it has to do with the events going on in my life around the time that I disposed of the car. A few weeks before getting rid of the car my younger my brother committed suicide.

His lifespan convinced almost exactly with the period of time that m family owned that car, so it pretty obvious as to what the car represents in my dream, my brother and the life I had before his death. God, how I wish that like in my dream that it was not actually gone, but rather stashed away somewhere waiting to be found. I wake up from this dream feeling wistfully sad.

It is dream that I have with increased frequency around certain anniversaries. Which mean that I will be having this dream much more often in the next few months. About a week from now will be what would have been his 26th birthday, and then in July the 1oth anniversary of his suicide, an event I look forward to with great trepidation, will occur.

Looks like I will behind the wheel of 1980 Chevette a lot more in the near future, sadly it will be only in my dreams.