Q.E.D., being a grown-up, living deliberately green, Mark Twain, vampires, mummies & the Holy Ghost
Had some interesting breakthroughs this weekend, particularly interesting those which steered away from being breakdowns.
One of my New Year's Resolutions for this year is: Act in a manner consistent with the results I want to achieve: love for love, respect for respect, humor for humor. Or in other words, "Stop acting like an asshole, thus promoting assholish behavior in others when you'd really like them to just plain stop being an asshole in the first place." (Sidenote: The word "assholish" has now been added to my spellchecker.) (As have "sidenote" and "spellchecker.") (So there.)
Ian had a tiring week -- I expected this. He moved right from the frying pan of finals into the fire of his first real(ish) job in the video game industry - full-time - in his internship with literally no break. Finals one day, job the next. I knew it would be exhausting in a lot of ways, and indeed, he has described last week as "draining" amidst the many good comments I've passed on, one not necessarily diminishing the other, just adding on top of it into one big teetering stack, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Last night we went out for dinner and talked about what needs to happen in his art portfolio this summer before Austin GDC and the official "opening day" of job hunting for Ian in mid-September. He talked to me a lot about Time -- he has this amount of free time, and this and that demand on his time, and this time isn't free, time time time. So, silly me, I launched into a discussion about time management and how we could free up more time for Ian to work on this stuff. That wasn't the right answer. I'm still not sure logically and intellectually why that wasn't the right answer since it seemed like my words matched his words. Emotionally, however, the argument which ensued told me loud as a shout that I certainly had missed the mark. Ian's words may have been about time management, but the message was about something else, and I missed it. He snapped at me, I snapped at him, I barked - very reasonably - not - "Fine! I'll just agree with whatever you say from now on!" because that was mature and the way to respect the #1 person in my heart! I'm awesome like that, yo. And I stomped out of the restaurant (after we'd paid the check, to be clear) and huffed all the way to the car.
Cut back to earlier in the day when we had a random discussion about good and bad driving habits. I named Road Rage as my #1 area for improvement in my driving. When I experience negative emotions when I'm behind the wheel, my safety and awesome ratings plummet. With a nod to that, I decided not to continue the argument in the car, and just chill out, and drive the few miles home in steaming silence. This also gave me the chance to cool down, and examine consciously whether I wanted to then pre-meditate being an asshole, or perhaps if I could rescue this and go someplace better. Go me, I decided to press the Adult button and go that direction instead.
Once home, I said to Ian that obviously I misunderstood what he was saying, and I want to understand. I asked if he'd sit on the couch with me and try to explain it differently. This part was something of a combined suggestion of the book I'm reading, The Five Love Languages, and a suggestion from some married friends. Ian receives the message that I love him through touch, so a friend suggested that sitting next to each other on the couch for A TalkTM might seem less adversarial than being across a room and facing each other, like at a board room table. He tried again, and to be honest, I feel like I heard exactly the same words as the last attempt: time, time, time, time, time. The message seemed to be, maybe, that he wasn't sure if or what he could accomplish. I'm still not sure. That second time, I just asked questions to get more detail and get him to expand his talking points rather than offering suggestions or trying to manage the situation.
We ended up in three hours of really detailed, really awesome discussion about his portfolio. He got his laptop, I got our chalkboard, and we went item by item on his finished pieces in review. Is it ready to go in the portfolio as is? If not, how many hours does he anticipate it might take to get it ready? Some negotiation on hours to "Acceptable," and hours to "Awesome." Then some negotiation on whether "Acceptable" is even worth putting in the portfolio.
At the end, we finished with a numbered To Do list for what needs to happen to get Ian's portfolio in shape to display in September. We went over all his artwork and decided what will go in and what won't -- for the most part. There's one section which needs further examination, but we also made a plan of examination for it, and put that on the list. Very exciting, really! We ended up with a solid plan, I think, which is great in the practical. On the emotional side -- what started as a stupid argument, and which could easily, oh so easily have spiraled into Stupidity just didn't. I made a choice to be a grown-up, and big shock! Huh. That New Year's Resolution paid off. This makes me happy on a number of accounts, as you could guess.
The Rest of the Weekend
Movie Night: "Wanted"
Saw "Wanted" yesterday. The plot of this movie is quite possibly the most far-reaching, far fetched, ridiculous, idiotic, unbelievable, asinine, and just plain outright stupid that I have witnessed. Ever. I couldn't even try to tell you the plot of this film with a straight face, it's so stupid.
And yet...
This film was 50 times more entertaining than it had any reasonable right to be at all. It was, in fact, thoroughly entertaining! Totally unpredictable action sequences, really stupid abuses of the laws of physics -- and yet... fun. I liken it, actually, to say Ravenholt v. Madrigal (let your eyes glaze over if those names mean nothing to you... move along... move along...). Sometimes the stupid and campy and downright inane is just plain raw fun. I give this movie a thumb's up for the el cheapo show, and definitely for a rental. Not full price, but worth seeing at some point.
It's Not Easy Being Green
Week #1 of trying to drive a little slower, leaving earlier and so forth was okay. I'm still not into the routine, but I see that it's a good one. Among the many positive benefits, I find that the need to drive under the speed limit encourages me to pay more conscious attention to my driving. I drive less on "autopilot." This does take an effort, but it's good. I like it. I'll continue these efforts.
After reading an article in Money Magazine entitled, "Drive a little greener, save a little green," I'm trying to "drive greener" by making fewer trips. Decided to move my grocery shopping from its own errand on the weekends (about 5-6 miles round trip) to a stop on the way home from work since I pass the store(s) anyhow. This wasn't nearly as pleasurable as my usual routine since I was tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk after work on Friday. I must say that it is nice to have the errand out of the way, however. I'll give this a try over the next few weeks.
The Civil War: Alive and Well In Conversation In This House
Read some interesting articles in the recent issue of Time which has Mark Twain on the cover. (Caution: Time.com crazy with the popups!) One article suggested that Catholics comprise 24% of the American population. Really? I'm stunned by that! I guess when I take into consideration the growing Latino population, it makes sense, yet... I tend to think of the United States as being predominated by Protestant religions. I'm surprised the Catholic percentage is so high -- really surprised! Time published a very cool map of the U.S. with color coded concentrations of Catholic populations. I was very slightly surprised to see a nearly visible line drawn around what had been the Confederate States as they are very much Not At All Catholic with very few, tiny exceptions. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Having received my primary education in a state which couldn't possibly give less of a shit about the American Civil War, this is indelibly a Dead Issue to me. I think about it (and argue about it and blog about it) so much because nine years in the Deep South really brought home that the issues of and surrounding that war are very much still alive for a huge portion of the United States. No matter how I try to wrap my brain around that, I just can't understand it emotionally. It's like... it's like anybody giving a shit about the Peloponnesian War or something! (Sidenote #2: Oh, but "Peloponnesian" is in my fucking spellchecker! Okay, so I recognize that's because it's a word, whereas my other three examples are not. But still.) I just can't understand why something that seems to have happened so long ago has such lasting and active effects on culture now -- and yet, there it is in red and white in Time Magazine, how the Catholic vote will affect the Presidential election. Huh. Who knew?
An Article Recommendation for You
Further in that same issue of Time (which issue? Why, the one mentioned under the cut, if perhaps you did not click) was an article entitled, "10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas." If you've got about 5 minutes right now, give it a read. I found this to be really eye opening. The article describes some very positive secondary effects of the high price of gasoline, like what driving less means in various ways. It made me think that this gas price crisis might be to this country what "Grosse Pointe Blank" describes with shakabuku, the swift spiritual kick to the head that changes everything.
And in Vocabulary News...
Ian and I made a bet about the spelling of Apocalypse. I won. Reading those eleventy billion books in the Left Behind series should have been good for something! It may interest you to know that this word is from the Greek roots for "to reveal" and "to conceal," like it the revelation of something that's been hidden. Sometime in the next seven days, Ian owes me one special trip to the freezer to get my choice of Fudgsicle or Popsicle when I make the request.
Today I learned what Q.E.D. stands for in Latin. (I love that Ian knows Latin! I wish I spoke Whale.) You know, English is a really poor language. The translation of something that works very eloquently in Latin (quod erat demonstrandum) gets mangled into the monstrosity, "that which was to have been demonstrated." Shee-it. This mangled trainwreck of a native language of mine still owes me money! It does demonstrate some verb tenses in Spanish which have always been confusing to my English-speaking mind, however, such as distinctions between "actions started in the past and wholly completed in the past," and "actions started in the past and continuing uncertainly into the future." Ah, have been, why are you such a black sheep fuck up of language?!
And that better be it for the weekend report, because I think I've exhausted the Internet.
T$
One of my New Year's Resolutions for this year is: Act in a manner consistent with the results I want to achieve: love for love, respect for respect, humor for humor. Or in other words, "Stop acting like an asshole, thus promoting assholish behavior in others when you'd really like them to just plain stop being an asshole in the first place." (Sidenote: The word "assholish" has now been added to my spellchecker.) (As have "sidenote" and "spellchecker.") (So there.)
Ian had a tiring week -- I expected this. He moved right from the frying pan of finals into the fire of his first real(ish) job in the video game industry - full-time - in his internship with literally no break. Finals one day, job the next. I knew it would be exhausting in a lot of ways, and indeed, he has described last week as "draining" amidst the many good comments I've passed on, one not necessarily diminishing the other, just adding on top of it into one big teetering stack, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Last night we went out for dinner and talked about what needs to happen in his art portfolio this summer before Austin GDC and the official "opening day" of job hunting for Ian in mid-September. He talked to me a lot about Time -- he has this amount of free time, and this and that demand on his time, and this time isn't free, time time time. So, silly me, I launched into a discussion about time management and how we could free up more time for Ian to work on this stuff. That wasn't the right answer. I'm still not sure logically and intellectually why that wasn't the right answer since it seemed like my words matched his words. Emotionally, however, the argument which ensued told me loud as a shout that I certainly had missed the mark. Ian's words may have been about time management, but the message was about something else, and I missed it. He snapped at me, I snapped at him, I barked - very reasonably - not - "Fine! I'll just agree with whatever you say from now on!" because that was mature and the way to respect the #1 person in my heart! I'm awesome like that, yo. And I stomped out of the restaurant (after we'd paid the check, to be clear) and huffed all the way to the car.
Cut back to earlier in the day when we had a random discussion about good and bad driving habits. I named Road Rage as my #1 area for improvement in my driving. When I experience negative emotions when I'm behind the wheel, my safety and awesome ratings plummet. With a nod to that, I decided not to continue the argument in the car, and just chill out, and drive the few miles home in steaming silence. This also gave me the chance to cool down, and examine consciously whether I wanted to then pre-meditate being an asshole, or perhaps if I could rescue this and go someplace better. Go me, I decided to press the Adult button and go that direction instead.
Once home, I said to Ian that obviously I misunderstood what he was saying, and I want to understand. I asked if he'd sit on the couch with me and try to explain it differently. This part was something of a combined suggestion of the book I'm reading, The Five Love Languages, and a suggestion from some married friends. Ian receives the message that I love him through touch, so a friend suggested that sitting next to each other on the couch for A TalkTM might seem less adversarial than being across a room and facing each other, like at a board room table. He tried again, and to be honest, I feel like I heard exactly the same words as the last attempt: time, time, time, time, time. The message seemed to be, maybe, that he wasn't sure if or what he could accomplish. I'm still not sure. That second time, I just asked questions to get more detail and get him to expand his talking points rather than offering suggestions or trying to manage the situation.
We ended up in three hours of really detailed, really awesome discussion about his portfolio. He got his laptop, I got our chalkboard, and we went item by item on his finished pieces in review. Is it ready to go in the portfolio as is? If not, how many hours does he anticipate it might take to get it ready? Some negotiation on hours to "Acceptable," and hours to "Awesome." Then some negotiation on whether "Acceptable" is even worth putting in the portfolio.
At the end, we finished with a numbered To Do list for what needs to happen to get Ian's portfolio in shape to display in September. We went over all his artwork and decided what will go in and what won't -- for the most part. There's one section which needs further examination, but we also made a plan of examination for it, and put that on the list. Very exciting, really! We ended up with a solid plan, I think, which is great in the practical. On the emotional side -- what started as a stupid argument, and which could easily, oh so easily have spiraled into Stupidity just didn't. I made a choice to be a grown-up, and big shock! Huh. That New Year's Resolution paid off. This makes me happy on a number of accounts, as you could guess.
The Rest of the Weekend
Movie Night: "Wanted"
Saw "Wanted" yesterday. The plot of this movie is quite possibly the most far-reaching, far fetched, ridiculous, idiotic, unbelievable, asinine, and just plain outright stupid that I have witnessed. Ever. I couldn't even try to tell you the plot of this film with a straight face, it's so stupid.
And yet...
This film was 50 times more entertaining than it had any reasonable right to be at all. It was, in fact, thoroughly entertaining! Totally unpredictable action sequences, really stupid abuses of the laws of physics -- and yet... fun. I liken it, actually, to say Ravenholt v. Madrigal (let your eyes glaze over if those names mean nothing to you... move along... move along...). Sometimes the stupid and campy and downright inane is just plain raw fun. I give this movie a thumb's up for the el cheapo show, and definitely for a rental. Not full price, but worth seeing at some point.
It's Not Easy Being Green
Week #1 of trying to drive a little slower, leaving earlier and so forth was okay. I'm still not into the routine, but I see that it's a good one. Among the many positive benefits, I find that the need to drive under the speed limit encourages me to pay more conscious attention to my driving. I drive less on "autopilot." This does take an effort, but it's good. I like it. I'll continue these efforts.
After reading an article in Money Magazine entitled, "Drive a little greener, save a little green," I'm trying to "drive greener" by making fewer trips. Decided to move my grocery shopping from its own errand on the weekends (about 5-6 miles round trip) to a stop on the way home from work since I pass the store(s) anyhow. This wasn't nearly as pleasurable as my usual routine since I was tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk after work on Friday. I must say that it is nice to have the errand out of the way, however. I'll give this a try over the next few weeks.
The Civil War: Alive and Well In Conversation In This House
Read some interesting articles in the recent issue of Time which has Mark Twain on the cover. (Caution: Time.com crazy with the popups!) One article suggested that Catholics comprise 24% of the American population. Really? I'm stunned by that! I guess when I take into consideration the growing Latino population, it makes sense, yet... I tend to think of the United States as being predominated by Protestant religions. I'm surprised the Catholic percentage is so high -- really surprised! Time published a very cool map of the U.S. with color coded concentrations of Catholic populations. I was very slightly surprised to see a nearly visible line drawn around what had been the Confederate States as they are very much Not At All Catholic with very few, tiny exceptions. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Having received my primary education in a state which couldn't possibly give less of a shit about the American Civil War, this is indelibly a Dead Issue to me. I think about it (and argue about it and blog about it) so much because nine years in the Deep South really brought home that the issues of and surrounding that war are very much still alive for a huge portion of the United States. No matter how I try to wrap my brain around that, I just can't understand it emotionally. It's like... it's like anybody giving a shit about the Peloponnesian War or something! (Sidenote #2: Oh, but "Peloponnesian" is in my fucking spellchecker! Okay, so I recognize that's because it's a word, whereas my other three examples are not. But still.) I just can't understand why something that seems to have happened so long ago has such lasting and active effects on culture now -- and yet, there it is in red and white in Time Magazine, how the Catholic vote will affect the Presidential election. Huh. Who knew?
An Article Recommendation for You
Further in that same issue of Time (which issue? Why, the one mentioned under the cut, if perhaps you did not click) was an article entitled, "10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas." If you've got about 5 minutes right now, give it a read. I found this to be really eye opening. The article describes some very positive secondary effects of the high price of gasoline, like what driving less means in various ways. It made me think that this gas price crisis might be to this country what "Grosse Pointe Blank" describes with shakabuku, the swift spiritual kick to the head that changes everything.
And in Vocabulary News...
Ian and I made a bet about the spelling of Apocalypse. I won. Reading those eleventy billion books in the Left Behind series should have been good for something! It may interest you to know that this word is from the Greek roots for "to reveal" and "to conceal," like it the revelation of something that's been hidden. Sometime in the next seven days, Ian owes me one special trip to the freezer to get my choice of Fudgsicle or Popsicle when I make the request.
Today I learned what Q.E.D. stands for in Latin. (I love that Ian knows Latin! I wish I spoke Whale.) You know, English is a really poor language. The translation of something that works very eloquently in Latin (quod erat demonstrandum) gets mangled into the monstrosity, "that which was to have been demonstrated." Shee-it. This mangled trainwreck of a native language of mine still owes me money! It does demonstrate some verb tenses in Spanish which have always been confusing to my English-speaking mind, however, such as distinctions between "actions started in the past and wholly completed in the past," and "actions started in the past and continuing uncertainly into the future." Ah, have been, why are you such a black sheep fuck up of language?!
And that better be it for the weekend report, because I think I've exhausted the Internet.
T$