A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

16 May 1999 - What I Learned This Week

Before getting into this week's rambling, I have some meta-rambling to do. The journal part of my website will be moving in the near future. Yes, I've jumped on the bandwagon and bought a domain. I'm planning some design changes as well and am expecting to start doing updates more than just once a week. It will take me some time but look soon for www.areasofunrest.net in the near future. Why that name? "Areas of unrest" is one of the euphemisms I've seen a lot for what normal people call the Los Angeles riots. And, well, I do live in Los Angeles and I'm a riot...

Anyway, this has been a most educational week. Each day has held some little lesson, all of them entirely trivial. But since when has being trivial stopped me from writing about something? So here, a simple list of things I learned this week:

1. Monday I learned that our new Army liason at work (I work on a joint program so we get one Army lieutenant colonel at our office) is a Red Sox fan. He saw the toy Red Sox cap that Mary Joan had given me (which she had gotten from an ice cream sundae if I understood her correctly) and asked me if I was a fellow sufferer. So we had a nice chat about the changes in baseball since we were kids and what the fate of Fenway Park is likely to be and assorted related subjects. It's nice to have someone else around to discuss these important matters - most of the other people at work are either entirely uninterested in sports or are fans of a sport I don't like (e.g. college football).

2. Tuesday I learned that John had actually arranged for me to be at his table on the R.M.S. St. Helena. Seeing as how having dinner with him every night for two or so weeks was how we got so friendly, I was surprised and interested to find out this wasn't sheer luck. Maybe I should say that I learned how clueless I can be about men?

3. Wednesday I learned that Redfish in Boulder, Colorado is still just as good a restaurant as ever. I hadn't been there since I've been back until this week, but seeing as how Mary Joan wanted to go somewhere she hadn't been before, it was a logical choice. Trout in spicy ginger sauce - yum!

4. Thursday I learned that I am not the only person who doesn't like the method we've been using lately at Community Storytellers of putting names in a hat and picking tellers at random. I recognize that this solves the problem of nobody wanting to tell first and that it keeps people from feeling ignored. But it also makes the energy flow unnatural as the emcee can't balance the evening by calling on someone he or she thinks will change the mood. There's no real decision yet on whether or not it will continue, but Barry more or less overrode it this month.

5. Friday I learned that one of the new CDs I bought is thoroughly addictive. I've played Snakefarm's Songs From My Funeral about 10 times already and I've owned it maybe 48 hours. I'm not sure why I like it so much as it doesn't fall into one of my normal musical categories. But I keep playing it.

6. Saturday I learned that I should really get myself moving earlier in the morning on weekends. I dawdled for over an hour before going out to walk and then I was annoyed that I didn't have time to do more than 6 miles. I was at the southeast corner of the Rancho Park Golf Course, thinking how much I wanted to walk back along the southern edge of the park back to Motor Avenue and go home that way. But I knew I'd need time to shower when I got home before driving down to Long Beach to perform at the anniversary celebration for the El Dorado Nature Center. So I muttered to myself and just headed straight south. Good thing I did as traffic on the 405 was heavy and I made it to the Nature Center only about 15 minutes before I was on. But I would have liked to have done that extra mile.

7. Sunday I learned that I'm far more interested in furniture and rugs than I am in actual art. I spent about two hours at the Beverly Hills art show and the only things I contemplated buying were a coffee table and a floor cloth. Okay, I did buy a note card and a small bronze frog holding a black ball, but very little of the fine art tempted me at all. The problem is that I don't have any place to display most of it. As it is, I don't have enough suitable wall space for all of what I own now. If I could afford a real house, though, decorating would be tremendous fun. Maybe I should change careers and become an interior decorator?