Clever Title Goes Here

We have reached that critical mass point in the summer where fellow bloggers are apologizing for not posting more often due to busyness or 'unblogworthy' content. Surmounted by work, too busy with play, 57 channels (& nothing on), etc.

I'm guilty of all of those things but won't apologize here. Instead I will try to distract you with photos from my little excursion to Coon Lake with the boy a couple of weeks (already) ago.

The shakedown went well. The motor ran, the depth finder worked, the boat didn't leak, and everyone made it back to shore safely. Sunfish were caught and the fishing bug is now coursing through the boy's veins.




Of course so rarely are things perfect. The lake itself was a haven for jet skiers, tubers and drunken party bargers. These guys actually were some of the tame ones... I just took their photo because I thought their pontooon modification was impressive. In the second photo they are very close to a fishing boat though in all fairness I don't know who approached who.




Ultimately the boy needed to be dragged kicking and screaming off the lake, which secretly pleased me to no end. On the way home we stopped for a dilly bar, which seemed to go a good ways toward smoothing things over. As a man, I have the inexplicable need to take photos of my vehicle and my rig. I believe it is the Y-chromosome equivalent to females needing to take pictures of the food whenever there is a party.



That is all.

Hibernatin'

Tons going on in terms of my non-blog life. Overwhelmed by work, family health concerns, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, so on and so forth. Patiently waiting to get the data cable for my phone so I can start pulling photos off of it. I got the thing over six months ago and promptly filled up the memory. Haven't taken a picture with it in months.

Going Ice fishing tomorrow. Don't expect to catch much but plan on having a blast in the warm 36-degree weather. Not taking the house, fishing old school in the open air.

Stopped by a local sporting good mart over my lunch hour and hit the clearance racks. I picked up a nice pair of convertible pants for $15 and an ice fishing rod & reel combo for $11. Score!

In the cold distance

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

On Saturday 08/11/2007 I went on a road trip to Northern MN to flyfish for trout.
This is what I saw.

	Friday night to Saturday morning it stormed. I drove north through the aftermath with lightning crackling through the clouds above me as I drove. The river was going to be muddy and I knew it. But there was nothing else to be done. My fishing day was my fishing day, and I had to take it come rain or shine. I had several potential entry points circled on my map, and as I prowled the back country roads I happened across a whitetail family set up near the road. They gave me all the time in the world but by the time I had the presence of mind to dig out the camera and snap a photo, they were all but gone.
	After exploring several of the tributaries to the Nemadji River, I finally settled on an entrance point on the river proper, where Highway 23 passes over it. There was a nice parking area that was empty, except for a fellow who was scouting for grouse hunting spots. I wasn't much in the mood for company. It is hard enough to find a free day to depressurize once a quarter. Added to that I recently lost a cousin from complications involving a gall bladder removal. She was 43, died three days after my 39th birthday. She still is 43, and always going to be 43 from here on. I had been been easing into the mindset where I realistically know I could go at anytime, but now the 'easing' phase is officially over.
	The river was muddy as I suspected. I spent a long time along the banks, watching for activity. It looked pretty dead. Given the lack of surface activity I started out nymphing, using a black wooly bugger with a strike indicator. After only a few casts I had two separate hits on my strike indicator. I quickly switched over to a #12 wolf adams and promptly hooked this little baby through the nose.
	I worked the river for a few hours and that chubby little shiner was the only luck I had. I practiced my casting. I listened to the world around me, paying no mind to the occasional bridge noise in the distance. There was no sense to be made from my cousin's death. I hadn't seen her since my mother's funeral, had scarcely even spoken to her then as there were just too many people to talk to. I had no idea that she was even having the surgery. I was not a factor in her life, nor she in mine really. And that is what the sadness is about, the guilt. The feeling that yes, we played together as kids and that somehow that childhood friendship should have carried over into adulthood. Up to now I had been able to live with the idea that there was time to make that connection, that it was ok to put it off for now. Except that now there isn't any more time. I finally crawled up a muddy bank and set back to my truck for some lunch. There was no real trail to speak of so I bushwhacked through the forest, keeping the the river in earshot. I have humped through some tough brush in my day, and this was some of it. It was definitely not a friendly environment for a chubby guy lugging a flyrod. After I ate I broke out the camera and explored for some good shots. Several attempts netted me some local insect life. Insects live hard and die fast. They don't have complex emotions like guilt and angst. They just get on about their business and make way for the next generation. The local plant life echoed that sentiment, as the air hung thick and sweet with the smell of pollen and nectar. Every plant and tree was in the midst of a giant bender, drunk to the gills on the rainwater from the previous night. The cicadas trilled from the treetops, like an alarm to let us know that September is coming. And when it does the nights will turn cold, and no insect plant or tree will wonder why nobody told them that it was coming. I didn't have much heart to try the river again in the afternoon. I packed up the truck and made my way a few more miles up 23 to a scenic overlook. I have passed it a few times and never taken a picture there. Since I had the tripod with me I did a panoramic. After that I turned to the south and made my way back to my family like a homesick puppy.

Perfection

A great quote from Henry David Thoreau,
over at The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:

"Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit."

This quote led me to think of our society's opulence, how we have become perfectionists who dig through the fruit bins looking for the unblemished specimens while spotted fruit gets moved to the side and ultimately is thrown out. All this goes on in our nation on a daily basis while a part of the larger world starves. To meet our demand and to get our dollars the food growers have responded by increasing the use of pesticides, preservatives and artificial fertilizers (Insert Joni Mitchell lyrics here).

I'm part of that system and most likely you are too. I only bring this up because I have been wracking my brain around finding my own way out of the system, to get my family to the point where we can choose what level we will participate in the economy. We are doing quite well for ourselves but I continue to have the uncomfortable awareness that if prices were to skyrocket without a signifigant change in our income or God forbid there was a downturn in our income due to layoff or illness, we would fold up. Not right away, not even in six months (at current market rates), but savings can only last for a finite period and even that is uncertain if you introduce a scenario where the dollar plummets in value.

The gold standard is worthless if nobody is interested in buying any gold. What carries intrinsic value that would survive a market crash? Corn on the stalk, potatoes in the ground and animals in the field.

There are plenty of blogs out there with a lot of people trying to find their own paths away from dependence on the market based economy. This one, my blog, isn't really one of them. It's pretty much an over glorified cat blog. But nevertheless I will continue to document this attempt of mine to shift my paradigm (In between posting pictures of flowers).

inconsistent, obscure and hebephrenic.
That's my promise to you.


PS - That's a really nice service that some poor soul is doing, over at that Thoreau blog. You should really go check it out. I wish that blogging existed back in the days of the founding fathers up through civil war time. I bet Franklin would have cranked out 3-5 posts a day.

Speeding Ticket

Note to all Twin Cities motorists who travel 694:
Watch your speed, because the 5-0 are using lasers.

This morning:
78 in a 60, first ticket in nearly 7 years. Unexpected expense, conflict within the household and now my budget for the fall trip is otherwise spoken for, as in there isn't going to be one for me this year.

Crap.

In the midst of Life

There is a busy road near my house that cuts through a wetland, and at 7 in the morning it is congested with me and all of my neighbors from the surrounding developments as we race from our homes to our workplaces. The posted speed is 50, which means that everyone goes about 65.

This morning I was in the left lane when the car in front of me came to an abrupt halt. I had to stand on my brakes to avoid hitting him - I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as I heard the screeching brakes behind me and I waited for the impact. It never came, because thankfully the drivers behind me were alert. The car in front of me slowly started rolling forward, and I saw that he had come to a stop on top of a group of ducklings. The mother hopped up on the median and turned back to look at her brood. It was too dangerous for me to even think about staying stopped in the road, or getting out to check for survivors. I too rolled forward, over the crumpled bodies of her young.

It doesn't take a lot to change your entire perspective for the day. As I continued on to the babysitter I looked over my shoulder at my own 'duckling,' in his carseat, so helpless and at the mercy of his parents. I voiced a prayer of thanks that we were spared from an accident.

That hen led her ducklings into a slaughter because she could not understand the danger that she was walking them into. Thankfully for me there is a higher wisdom to lean on in my own life, and the undertakings that come with it. I just need to remind myself daily to lean on that wisdom, rather than my own understandings. I prayed for myself and my wife for more wisdom & foresight, so that our son might never have to bear the consequences of a lapse in our judgement in such a terrible fashion as those ducklings had.

It seems to be a little perverse to suggest that the deaths of those baby mallards achieved some sort of meaning because some fat white suburbanite who played an active role in their demise was reminded to put his trust in God. But then again, are there many things more perverse than a meaningless death?

Blood Money

Well it looks like the predicted winter weather is about as serious and memorable as a Viking superbowl run. There's about an inch of crust on the ground here. It'll be a bear to drive on in the morning but not even worth shoveling. It will be gone by Saturday.

It's true that I love the snow and the cold weather even more so than the average Minnesotan. This never fails to mystify my Filipino friends and relatives, who left their island paradise to come here and brave the Minnesota winters for the purpose of sharing in this great prosperity that we Americans take for granted. Wearing your clothes in layers, warming up your car in the morning, keeping a survival kit in your trunk, all these things are alien concepts to my compatriots. Winter to them seems to be something to be endured, rather than enjoyed.

But not me. I have always loved winter, always embraced the cold. The fact of the matter is that in the winter of 1994 I actually donated plasma to raise up the $50 I needed to purchase a snowshoe kit. I was terribly broke in those days and I was desperate to get my hands on a pair of snowshoes. Every other day for a few weeks I would go to the plasma center on the East bank of the U of M campus, Near the Arbys and the Oriental garden resteraunt, and wait with the drunks and the other poor students to sell my plasma.

How it works is that they run a needle into a big vein on your arm and they hook you up to a machine. The machine takes your blood, seperates the blood cells from the plasma, sticks the cells into some solution and pumps it back into your arm. It hurts like a bitch when they reverse that flow, let me tell you. My original plan was to earn enough money to buy a set of snowshoes and fish flasher. To this day I have still to realize the dream of winter lake trout fishing & camping in the BWCA. I was really hot for the idea at the time but my enthusiasm for this money making scheme waned after an incident where they couldn't hit my vein straight on with the needle but instead nicked it and I ended up with a large & nasty-looking splotch of blood under my skin from my bicep t about midway down my forearm. I had enough bread to buy the "Build your own" snowshoe kit so I stopped my visits to the plasma clinic and tabled the idea of getting the fish flasher.

It takes several cycles to get the plasma out of you. The blood comes out, the cells and the saline go back in. Repeat. I would guess that you are on the table for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. Your options are pretty much to read, strike up a conversation with the transient on the table next to you, or watch the movies that they so graciously provide on televisions suspended from the ceiling.

The second to last time I was in there (The last time they got a good harvest from me) They showed "The Bodyguard." I remember that I was reading Love in the time of Cholera and did not pay attention to the video at all, yet somehow the movie must have permeated my brain, because that night when I slept I dreamt that Whitney Houston and I were working together as prison guards. She was guarding the chicks, I was guarding the dudes. (It must have been some sort of Co-ed prison) While I was watching my group out in the yard one of them shivved me. Whitney stayed with me until the ambulance arrived and we fell in love as a result of this simple act of devotion. We went on to get married, buy a house, raise kids, etc. It was pretty messed up. It was one of those dreams where it seems like a really long time has passed, and when you finally wake up you are disoriented because only a night has gone by. The dream has never recurred, and Whitney has never crossed over into my dreams again since. I was never much of a Whitney Houston fan to begin with so why I picked her for the dream never really made sense to me, but I will tell you this: Even though we were only together for a few hours, we loved a lifetime's worth. Dude! Isn't that a quote from the Terminator?

That winter I ended up spending a weekend at my sister's cabin instead of going to the BWCA. Although I did not winter camp or fish for lake trout I did have the chance to put my snowshoes to work. I remember resting by the warmth of the woodstove and following to the Olympics at Lillehammer. It was a good dry run for the winter trip to Eagle Mountain that I took in 2000.

I wish for one more warm day so that I can get a coat of varnish on those snowshoes. I plan on getting some miles out of them again this year. It would be a shame to let them go unused, seeing how I paid for them with blood money.

Hunkering Down

It sounds like we have a little winter weather headed our way. I took the precaution tonight to get the sandbags into the back of the truck and move it away from the garage wall so that we can all get in easy tomorrow. Space is such a premium in the garage that I usually park it up against the wall, so that we have more room to get in & out of the small car. But tomorrow we will take the truck, just to be safe. It's not that I think that there will be enough snow that we will be at risk of being stuck. Nope, I pretty much just want to surround my family with as much metal as possible when the weather is crappy and we need to drive somewhere. All my other winter stuff is at the ready, too. Coat & gloves, snow shovel, extra boots in the truck, etc. Inside our shelves are full and the fridge is stocked. This isn't preparation due to predicted weather but rather because Sundays are grocery day and we just stocked up for the week. My assessment of my family is that we are hunkered down and ready for whatever nature decides to throw at us.

While I was cooking dinner tonight I monitored a documentary on PBS about WW2 Conscientius Objectors. While I don't have a specific opinion to weigh in on that topic it did get me to thinking about the peculiar window in US history that my life has passed through. Both my Father and my Grandfather were drafted to fight in the world wars. My two older brothers served in the military but were young enough that they just missed Viet Nam. Had I chosen to enlist I would have ended up in the first Gulf war. But I didn't. Our country has not faced a serious threat since the second world war and I never saw the need to volunteer unless the country was threatened.

But as I get older I am finding that the perils that our country faces in modern times are not like those of 60 years ago. We seem to be imploding from within - We're drunk on the oil and other goods that we import. We are gobbling up our resources and outsourcing our jobs. We have restructured our families into dual income entities, yet are mystified as to why the traditional family structure is failing. As a country (Not me personally) we silently endorse the genocide of unborn children as a means to keep the population in check. Yet at the same time we wonder why there are children out there who have so little regard for human life that they are killing themselves and each other.

Before I go to bed at night I like to watch my son sleep. I take a few minutes out of my night and stand over his bed and I study his face, listen to his breathing, and tuck his blanket. I think about what kind of a world I am leaving him and I have to honestly say that I am not comfortable with the thought. There is still a lot of beauty and majesty in it but there is also a lot of ugliness and danger in it as well. I think about how I have never had to go to war, but someday he might, because somehow I failed to act in the here and now. Most nights I pray silently over him, not just for him and what type of man he might become, but also for me and his mother. I pray for what type of parents we will be and for the foundation we will give him to build his life on.

It's like getting ready for a storm that you don't know when it will hit or how bad it will be.

Where Heaven & Earth Meet

Click to enlarge (Opens in a new window)


Words mean little in the north country. When hunting grouse, an unnecessary word can cost you a shot. It was Sunday, almost noon, almost the end of our weekend excursion. We advanced up a little road with caution, careful to make as little noise as possible. For a brief moment in time we had been able to tune out the outside world. We had replaced the mundane daily tasks of our lives with the excitement of keeping a canoe upright and the serenity of gazing at a distant shoreline. We had challenged our senses to identify shapes in the underbrush and to feel a tap on the line. We had experienced the adrenal rush of flushed birds and the tranquil peace of laying on our backs and gazing at the night sky. We had slept on the frosty ground, drank hot black coffee from tin cups, cooked meat over an open fire, used our compasses in real life situations and howled at the moon. None of these things necessarily in that order, of course. But now it was Sunday, and each man was starting to feel the outside world tugging him back. Each of us had lives that awaited our return: Household chores, Monday morning blues and joyful reunions with wives and children.

Q: So what of this fatal moment in a trip, when our inner mountain men must relinquish their hold on us?

A: We faced the moment as neither a mountain man nor a civilized man but rather as some sort of hybrid.

Such were my thoughts as I made my way up that twisting, claustrophobic little road with my two best friends flanking me. We encountered a set of gateposts and stopped to consult our maps. We advanced into unposted private land. Ahead was a clearing and some blue. The road emptied out onto a undeveloped lot that according to our map was the only access point to a small lake. Respectfully we lowered our guns and made our way to the shoreline. We did this not as hunters but rather as pilgrims, for in front of us was a vision, of Heaven meeting the earth.

A sheltered little bay reflected the sky and the fall colors. The campsite behind me had probably been there for a thousand years, with different men calling it home. And they would have been crazy not to. The blustery wind that had harassed us on Fourmile lake was reduced to a shocked gasp, as though we had stumbled across one of the wood's secrets. The wind weaved through the pines and the stubborn Birches like a busybody at a party, shushing us to secrecy. I closed my eyes and felt the clean air on my face and inhaled the scent of the woods. They smelled sweeter here than anyplace else I had been all weekend. As I entranced myself with the tranquilizing colors of the lake I felt my worries and troubes slide off to one side like butter in a hot skillet. Unencumbered, I reveled in the moment. My inner mountain man had been turned loose for a little longer.

We had stumbled across a site that was the quintessential wilderness to us, a place where earth and sky meet water, where a man and a campfire make a welcome part of an elemental foursome. I turned away with a certain degree of melancholy, because allthough I had felt the exhiliration of discovering this beautiful and unique listening point I also felt a certain amount of guilt, knowing that I had trespassed in order to make that discovery. Our only judge and jury that day were the trees, and they were not returning a verdict to us. Left to interpret my own case I would like to think that the end justified the means, as long as I don't repeat the crime. But I let myself off with a warning. Even though I know that this place exists I do not feel as though I can go back, and that is perhaps the most bitter punishment of all.

As we made our way back to the truck we maintained our silence. We weren't hunting now and could have spoken at any moment. But each step away from that stunning vista was another step closer to our exile from paradise - back to civilization and our 'normal' lives. In an hour we would be eating our last lunch as we broke camp. In two we would be creeping along the edge of Superior, returning to our normal lives like a slumbering child returns from his dreams.

A new Angle

I remember a time in my life when July was the funnest month of the year. This month has been anything but. My mom is still laid up in the hospital. At work I have several projects coming due at the same time. At home I have doors that won't latch and a steady stream of water coming out of the bottom of my furnace due to some central-air problem. And last friday the fuel pump on my truck went out, preventing me from taking a personal day on saturday to go fishing. It almost sounds like a country song of some kind. If my dog up and died on me I would be all set.

Then I watched a PBS documentary on Beslan this evening. There are many words that can describe the horror and the anguish that those families experienced last September, but I will not go into them here because I feel that by and large they have already been spoken and really it is not my place to weigh in when the people themselves did so very well. As a parent I was more focused on the faces, the voices and even the physical environment of the town of Beslan itself. I saw hard-working people, thin but not malnourished, living in a concrete and all-right angles sort of working class town. No sign of the flabby opulence that we Americans enshroud ourselves with.

If the 9/11 attacks could be summarized as an attack upon America's way of life, then Beslan could be summarized as an attack on the Russian people themselves. The men, women and children who were brutally murdered, the families which were shattered, all of these people were the salt of the earth, as far away from the cause of the Chechnyan conflict as you could ever hope to get. And my heart went out to them, because they were me, their children the same as my own child, just as innocent, just as precious, their lives just as valuable.

In short my viewing experience led to a paradigm shift for me, in terms of my perspective: My mom is getting first-rate health care. I have a secure job at a company with more work than it can handle. I own a home that can be cooled on my whim. In my household we not only own two vehicles so that we are never really stranded if one breaks down, but we also own them free and clear.

In short I got no complaints.

My job, in a nutshell

Office Observations

A bad work environment is like a captivity narrative, where the workplace is represented by the prison and the boss by the tyrannical warden. Except in this prison there are no bars on the windows and the cells have no doors. What keeps us inside? Our own motives - We need the money to pay for all of our stuff, we need the experience, we need to advance our career, etc. Two things to note here - We keep ourselves locked up, and everyone's motives are a little different than that of their colleagues.

My world war 2 generation parents taught me that you get yourself a job, you stick with it for 30 or 40 years and then you retire. The ongoing trend in today's society is to bounce from job to job, looking for that greener pasture. While it does make sense to me that one should transfer to a nicer prison whenever a cell becomes available, it seems to me that a large portion of the restlessness and unhappiness of my generation can be attributed to the fact that no matter what prison we serve our time in, we drag those bars along with us. The intensification of materialism has made it difficult to find jobs that compensate enough to pay for all of the stuff that we want.

I'm not harping against materialism, because I like stuff as much as anyone, and I'm always interested in accumulating more. But the next time that you find yourself complaining about your job, ask yourself this:

Does the problem really lie with your job, or does it lie with the things that keep you at your job?

Slow Climb

Resting Pulse: 68 bpm

I noticed an improvement last night. I still had to walk when my heart reached trip hammer status, but what I noticed was that the acceleration from resting to trip hammer was more gradual. My legs are still sensitive to the trauma when I run, so I am still using the fast/slow cycle that I described a couple of days ago. That seems to have paid off as well, as overall my legs feel pretty decent today.

Uneven Tire Wear

Resting Pulse: 70 bpm

I was lazy last night, didn't do my sit ups. Tonight I will run again.

I have been studying up on the wear of my shoes and see that I am an underpronator.

According to what I have read, how your feet feel and how you walk on them has a lot to do with how the rest of you feels. I am going to set up a meeting with a podiatrist and have my feet looked at.

Stop & Slow

Resting pulse: 70 bpm

Things are still coming slowly. I have slow down to walk during my runs and my shins are sore the next day. I have reverted back to a strategy that got me through 7th grade cross Country- I pick a landmark and run until I reach it. Then I pick out another landmark and continue walking until I reach it and then start running again and repeat the cycle. It's probably not a pretty sight but what it does allow me to do is keep moving and keep my heart rate up there without bursting the sucker out of my chest. Also it allows me to exceed my comfort level with my legs slowly instead of one big cataclysmic sprint which ends in me vowing to never try this again.

Until I get into better shape I'll just have to stick with it and do what I can.

Beat counts

Resting pulse: 72 bpm

I have taken to checking my pulse in the morning at work. I didn't run last night but will tonight. Also now that I don't spend the next day feeling like I was kicked in the ribs, I am also going to increase my situp count.

Quality of Life

I am not going to weigh in on the whole Schiavo deal because most people already have their opinion on the whole thing. One fat white guy's opinion isn't going to make much of a difference. But there is one thing that sticks in my craw and that is the notion that death by dehydration and starvation could possibly be considered a "calm, peaceful and gentle death." Life means different things to different people. Whether or not you view life as a gift from God has a lot to do with how willing you are to throw it away. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Pope's feeding tube to be removed any time soon.

Tonight I learned that one of my former Cub Foods colleagues committed suicide back in February. He was 41 years old, a husband, a father of two, with both parents still alive. I hadn't seen or heard from him in years and obviously have no idea what could have been so wrong that he would have killed himself. And it's not something that I want to understand. Life is just too good right now to even imagine wanting to end it prematurely.

As I spent my spare moments this past winter poking at my flabby white belly, the realization slowly dawned on me that I am carrying around my waist roughly the same weight and bulk as my two year old son. I set two goals for myself and they are simple ones: Fit into my 2002 clothing by spring and fit into my 2000 clothing by fall. I have actually been employing my methods for a few weeks already- I completely stopped drinking pop and started carrying around a bottle of water wherever I go. For treats I will drink green tea or coffee. Also I have seriously cut back on sweets. I have cut back my starch intake (No easy task when you are married to a filipina who serves rice with everything, and most importantly I started excercising. I do situps at night before bed and tonight for the first time in ages I went jogging. As I anticipated, it was quite an unpleasant experience. I irritated portions of my lungs that I forgot that I even had. My legs don't feel that bad all things considered. But then again this first time out I only went .5 miles and had to stop three times. For those of you who are fit & trim and just don't get it, try strapping a 40 pound bag of salt pellets around your waist and then running around the block.

Well I am off to bed now, there's still one more workday yet this week. I imagine by the time I wake up all the joints in my legs will feel like they are constructed of broken glass.

Intangibles

I'm glad that I'm writing like this but man, I gotta tell you that there is a lot in my memory banks and I just don't know how to write it down into any context. I am a cornucopia of stories that contain no ascertainable point. Neither concrete starting points nor tangible endings. It isn't really that I don't have anything to write about. It's just that I struggle with finding a centralized point. Kind of like a truck with a bad drag link, wobbling down the road.

Perhaps a nihilist would jump in here and offer this diatribe up as proof that life is full of pointless moments, grouped together into larger, equally pointless coexistences. I am not a member of that camp, although in the past I have warmed myself by their fire from time to time. Most days (and today is no exception) I feel that there is great signifigance not only to to our lives but even to every little mundane moment that the things are made from. It's on days like today that I look at the apparent pointlessness of a nondescript moment in time, any given moment in my day, and say, "OK, so the significance of this moment is not readily apparent, but I trust that it will be revealed to me in time."

I think that most people can agree that this is one of the rewards that we anticipate upon reaching Heaven. We of course dread the moment when our sins are revealed and we are held accountable, but we are also dying of curiosity to see the final numbers on how much time we spent sleeping or waiting for the bus, how many hot dogs we ate, the actual mileage between each and every oil change and how many times we swallowed our gum vs. folding it neatly into the wrapper & throwing it away.

We wonder about things like these because life is cumulative. One of the hardest things in life is when we outlive our ability to maintain our own residence. When you have to get rid of your possessions in order to fit into a nursing home you are getting rid of more than just things. You are getting rid of the physical components of your collective history here on earth. Or perhaps in more direct terms you are destroying the evidence that you were ever here. We are more than happy to replace or upgrade our stuff- Cars, houses, golf clubs, etc., but nobody really wants to take a loss. That's pretty much why nobody wants to buy what nursing homes and planned retirement communities are selling. It's like conceding to our eventual defeat.

This of course is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the Christian faith. I cannot honestly say that I have truly denied myself, not even just a little. I will close this rant today by declaring my intention to confront my own obsession with my belongings by by getting rid of something(s) that I have been hoarding for no good reason. I may not need to find significance in my life by understanding every single moment of it, but I have at least learned enough from the example of my parents to know that the sum total of my life's meaning cannot be defined by how much crap I have in my basement.

Rude Awakenings

45 degrees in the shade. It wouldn't suprise me if some misled crocuses pop out, foolishly expecting the sun to stick around for a while. It will, at least through sunday. that's when old man winter is supposed to crack the whip and send us back into winter weather.

In the past two weeks the wife and I have been engaging in a new morning behavior: Intentional oversleeping. It is almost like an adult onset game of don't-touch-the-floor. It usually works something like this. Between 4:30 and 4:50 or so the child lets out wail because he has kicked off his covers and become cold. I get up and cover him, quietly coax him back to sleep, which he readily does. At 5:00 my alarm goes off for the first time. Now up to a couple of days ago I was simply engaging in 9 minute bouts of sleep between snooze button stabs. Lately I have just been resetting the alrm for 5:45 which is when I will be getting up anyway. I am not fooling anyone, least of all me.

The wife's alarm doesn't go off until 5:30, and she isn't fooling anyone either. She doesn't get up until 6:00. Lately I have been figuring that if you cannot beat them that you should join them, so I haven't been getting up until 6:00 either. Amazingly I am consistently only 15-20 minutes late to work every day. I would be in business if I could get up at 5:30 every day. If I were in business for myself maybe I would want to.

Downsizing

Not a lot to write about today because the trivial things are too trivial and the deep things are too deep. Why is it that we can be lulled by notions like, "Yes, he has leukemia but it's only a mild form." That's about as comforting as knowing that people will be shooting at you, but they will only be using .22's. Sooner or later the stuff is going to kill you.

Doctors take their time scheduling you or calling you back, the unspoken rule being that a crisis on our part does not constitute a crisis on their part. I know how it is. Anyone who works with people knows that you need a certain degree of insulation in order not to be consumed by other people's problems. I just wish that the doctors and the people who run nursing homes weren't so damned bulletproof.

It's still hard for me to imagine the day when I need to hang it all up. When that time comes I just hope I still have the good sense to go out like an Eskimo and just wander off on to the ice pack.