Posts in category "Daily Life"

Privy To All The New Shit

I’ve been in the strangest mood late­ly. Killing my Top Rated playlist every­where I go, yet I skip through 90% of the songs, try­ing to find the right one. Talking to myself. Replaying con­ver­sa­tions in my head.

I don’t quite feel at one with the Tao. I’ve been let­ting small things get to me. It’s as if I’m falling back into my old destruc­tive habits, but upon real­iz­ing this, I fight against it. The strug­gle, when observed objec­tive­ly, is quite amus­ing.

These are excit­ing times. Along with the excite­ment comes ner­vous­ness. It’s turned me into a jum­ble of emo­tions, bit­ter­sweet, and unlike any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced before.

Wish I could do some­thing with this feel­ing.

Trolley's B-Day '07

Thumbnail: Rock 'N Bowl alley 
Thumbnail: Aaron and Karen 
Thumbnail: My shoes in blacklight 
Thumbnail: The girls bowl 
Thumbnail: Making a wish 

Since he’s nev­er been bowl­ing before, we decid­ed to go for Trolley’s 30th.

Rock ‘N Bowl is an inter­est­ing phen­emo­nen. Aaron thinks it’s for the 14-year-olds to get all hooched up and feel like they’re going club­bing. Didn’t stop us — Trolley includ­ed — from get­ting card­ed at our table when pitch­ers.

Five-pin is hard­er than I remem­ber. Maybe because I was try­ing to spin every­thing, so it would either hit the left pins, or com­plete­ly gut­ter on the right when I tried to adjust. For our two teams, it was a pret­ty close match through the night.

For the pho­tographs, I tried to play around with light set­tings. 2nd-cur­tain-sync would­n’t work for me, and I did­n’t real­ize that there’s a set­ting for it on the 580EX flash which over­rides cam­era set­tings. As a result, the pic­tures are most­ly flash-less to cap­ture the mood of the wild­ly swing­ing light.

The next day, I dis­cov­ered that I some­how pulled my left glute and right groin mus­cles. A gen­tle reminder on Trolley’s birth­day that we’re all get­ting old­er.

Hugging Etiquette

She hugged me yes­ter­day. I thought I was over her, but maybe I’m still smit­ten. Physical con­tact does fun­ny things to the mind.

I don’t under­stand why girls are so into hug­ging. Often, I’ll go for a hand­shake, and as if it does­n’t take, they’ll lean in to hug after­ward. A girl once asked if she could hug me after I explained to her my pro­ce­dure for check­ing a cat before adop­tion. Figure that one out.

The fun­ny thing is that most girls aren’t very good hug­gers. They give limp hugs — more of a press­ing of the arms to the body — and it bugs the crap out of me. It’s like get­ting a soft hand­shake, also referred to as the “limp noo­dle”.

Bronwen’s an excep­tion. I always give and get a bear hug from her when I see her and when she leaves. Sometimes we fight for arm posi­tion­ing, because we both pre­fer to have the arms low­er than the oth­er. I like to have my arms around a girls’ waist, where­as she likes to have her arms sur­round­ed, so she feels pro­tect­ed.

The two Louise’s are/were also good at hug­ging. Nice and firm, with­out being too clingy. Maybe it’s a Louise thing.

It just makes me won­der; if girls are so into hug­ging, why aren’t they bet­ter at it?

The Ass-Slap Ritual

As I opened the front door to walk to work, I remem­bered that Aaron is pick­ing me up for lunch today, so I thought I should check to see if my wal­let was in my left back pock­et (where it always is). The thing is, I always put a wad of mois­tur­iz­er in my left palm so that I can lock my door with my right hand with­out get­ting my keys all greasy, then rub it in while walk­ing.

So I reached with my right hand to pad my pock­et and see if it was there, but feel­ing a bit stiff from the weath­er and the morn­ing, I had to stretch with a bit of force and momen­tum.

Exactly at that moment, my neigh­bours came out of their house. We greet­ed each oth­er, and after repeat­ed­ly refus­ing their offers to dri­ve me to work on such a chilly day, we went our sep­a­rate ways.

Then I real­ized that since I had­n’t com­plete­ly stepped out of my door frame at that point, they prob­a­bly saw me check­ing for my wal­let with­out under­stand­ing what I was doing, and thought I was doing some strange cross-body back-reach­ing ass-slap­ping rit­u­al.

Unplanned Feelings

I found a small boy sleep­ing on the steps with a birth­mark cov­er­ing his face and won­dered what kind of god would give a child that.

—Sarah Miles, The End Of The Affair

I’m in such a weird mood tonight.

Met a nice, loqua­cious young man at the bus stop. I saw him hob­bling there, his man­gled gait vis­i­ble from the win­dow of my house. His voice was loud and verg­ing on uncon­trolled, “My car is in the shop, I have to be there by sev­en, I can’t be late, I’m coach and man­ag­er and med­ical staff of the Generals, so they can’t go on the field with­out me.”

With inno­cent, child­like can­dor, he con­tin­ued. I won­dered if he was aware. If peo­ple took him less seri­ous­ly. If I real­ly under­stood who he was.

He got on the bus first, and in a con­fi­dent tone, said to the bus dri­ver, “Can I get pri­or­i­ty seat­ing?”. I con­sid­ered sit­ting next to him and con­tin­u­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, but by the time my trans­fer print­ed out, he already start­ed with the per­son next to him, “I can’t be late. I’m coach­ing foot­ball…”.

So I cried on the bus because Misery Is A Butterfly, even though it was­n’t loud enough. Even though I put it on. I was doing it to myself, you see, because of this mood. Because I need it and want it and won­dered how I’ve ever lived with­out it.

I’ve been read­ing Beautiful Losers. Can you tell?

I don’t plan on writ­ing these things.

Then again, I don’t plan on feel­ing this way.