Recent highs and lows of life (rescued from the draft pile...)

(QUICK EDITOR'S NOTE: I INTENDED TO PUBLISH THIS POST WEEKS AGO, ACTUALLY JUST A DAY SHY OF A FORTNIGHT SHY OF A MONTH AGO, TO BE KIND OF EXACT. THAT'S BECAUSE THERE ARE PICTURES I WAS HOPING TO INCLUDE, BUT WHICH I HAVE NO WAY OF GETTING OFF OF MY PHONE. SO MAYBE LATER I'LL FIND A WAY TO GET THE PICTURES ON HERE. OKAY, I'LL STOP CAPS-SHOUTING AT YOU NOW SO YOU CAN READ THE POST...)

Pre(r)amble
Well, it occurs to me that there are basically two ways to start any blog post, assuming that you're me (other than with the word "Well," which is always a good choice). It's either going to be, "Life has been crazy lately," or "Life has been boring lately" - and everyone knows, of course, that there never is an in-between option. So, without further mucking about in hyperspace...

Life has been crazy lately. I'd like to share with you, in somewhat random order, some snippets from recent Joe-history. When they finally make a movie of my life, this will be the part where you think you can get up and go get a refill on your popcorn without missing too much. But then when you get back and whisper to your movie neighbor, "What did I miss?", there's no possible way they could catch you up to speed without missing something themselves. So you'll just have to read on for now.

160/50
On a recent camping trip I took with some guys (including him and him and another, non-blogging guy) to Inks Lake State Park, we explored a swimming location called Devil's Waterhole. I think I know why it was so named. Like a casino, the place draws you in and gives you that kind of reckless confidence that nudges you towards making internal statements like, "I bet I could do more. Why the hell not?" (Such things are quite likely to be said at locations named for the devil.) Only, here it wasn't about spending money you don't have (or soon won't), but about jumping off of cliffs and rocks and risking the physical health that you soon may not have. It was awesome. In retrospect, of course.

The first challenge was about a 20-foot cliff. I don't know if you have much of a sense of distance when you hear numbers like that, but 20 feet is a long way up. Consider that, in the normal course of your life, you are not often likely to jump off of walls that are taller than your own height, or even perhaps twice that. Well, this was in the neighborhood of three Yao Ming's high. The worst part about it all was how slippery the rocks were climbing up to this height. My non-blogging friend who went has been to other places in Austin for cliff jumping that he says are much safer, and where the bottom is deeper closer to the cliffs. Here you had to be sure to jump out far enough, or else you're hitting part of the rock formation closer to the cliff. Anyways, the place is fairly crowded, and kids probably less than a quarter of my age are jumping off this thing like there is a bed of puffy marshmallows below, so I couldn't make too much of an ordeal out of my first jump. So I jumped. A little while later I did it again, if for no other reason than I found myself trying to talk me out of jumping again. At times like this I just have to "man up" and silence my inner chicken.

Okay, now for the numbers. As you'll notice in the picture (that is, if I can ever get it transferred from my phone - anyone want to loan me a laptop bluetooth adapter?), one rock is significantly higher than the cliff I first jumped from. We estimated this at about 50 feet. Ay ay ay. (sp?) Two of the guys on the trip decided they were going to jump the tall rock, since we'd seen some other people doing it and not dying or exploding or anything. So they go up and jump. Great. Here comes the inner chicken again, clucking something about how I'd already proved enough manhood for one day. Stupid chicken. Yes, eventually I make my way over the rock. I start climbing. Right before I get to the top, there it is - BAM! That's the sound of my pulse kicking into high gear. I stop to check it. It's at about 160 beats/minute. FYI, btw - I rarely get up this high when I'm jogging. I step up to the top of the rock. Did the wind just pick up? I swear it did. I look down at my legs. They're shaking uncontrollably. I realize that the longer I wait, the harder it's going to be to jump, and also the higher the possibility that I will lose my balance and blaze a new trail down towards the water. So I jumped. About a week or two later, I hit the water. As I come up, I punch both arms into the air for the whole "did that guy just win a teenage karate tournament?" effect. And then I swim gurgling and sputtering to a place where I can sit down and bask.

Joe, the (sheet)Rocker
I've also been working with a very different kind of rock at our new house. Sheet rock. I'd make some kind of official pronouncement that now I am officially handy, but in the current place we live, I've also fixed a leaky washer drain, so this is simply a status that I am renewing, not recently acquiring. Honestly, there's really not a lot to say about this, other than that I really don't enjoy screwing it in. Or cutting it. Or hanging it. Or squatting to get the really low-to-the-floor screws. I think that about covers it.

I think it's an ungrounded myth that guys like power tools. I would offer that, more accurately, guys like power in whatever form they can find it. Kind of like women with chocolate. But power tools are really just a way to do more damage, faster. Noisier. And I'm not just talking about the swearing that follows the router's excursion away from the straight line. Neither am I excluding it.

No use crying over spilled coffee; no use throwing a trash can over it, either
While I'm on the topic of angst, it would be interesting to note that recently, on a frustrating morning of dealing with a handful of housing "decisions" (in quotes because they're really little stinkbombs disguised as situations that people have to deal with), I thought I'd pick up some Chick-Fil-A breakfast on my way home to pick something up before heading to the office. I arrived at home after smelling dark coffee and various forms of heated lipids wafting through the car's recirculating system, ready to chow down. As I'm adding the finishing touches to my coffee and preparing to replace the lid, one of my fingers (investigation still pending) knocks over the cup. Spilling every ounce of the coffee. Onto the table, chair, and floor. Did I mention that this morning had already been frustrating? Swearing ensued. (Some of you may be of the opinion that such action is of minimal benefit to anyone. I would disagree. In my opinion, this blog would be much less interesting if the story continued with, "and I thought to myself calmly and rationally, Self, you know, this really isn't such a bad situation at all - take inventory of how blessed you are and you'll see that this is no big deal.") I think I strung some words together that made very little sense being together, semantically speaking. I went and got a towel to mop up the mess, placing it on the floor. Feeling as though the situation was reaching a resolution too quickly, I promptly picked up our kitchen trash can and sighted in the perfect spot on the wall where I should heave it. "Yes, that's just the spot. Too far left and this might not work at all." Thankfully, at this point my hippocampus stepped in and told my amygdala that it would handle things from here.

The moral of the story? Sometimes being calm and rational will save you from having to clean up extra mess. But not being so makes for good story.

Ten things I hate about summer
1. THE HEAT.
I have an uncle who moved his family to Washington state several years ago (maybe some time while I was in college). What I heard was the reasoning at the time was perhaps he did it to help his allergies. I can't say that I don't find that kind of thing extremely appealing. I don't know whether he really moved for that reason (in a recent-esque conversation with a cousin of mine, I asked about why he had moved, and I received a rather dramatic response about how they just wanted to get away from family), but finding a climate more conducive to not sweating and sneezing sounds really good to me (I realize that there would likely be tradeoffs, but who doesn't want to live in a place where there's a drive-thru coffee shop every few hundred feet?).
2. THE ROACHES.
Seeing as the Brazos Valley only recently seems to be getting some rain after more or less months of little to no rain, perhaps only recently have the roaches been driven out of hiding on a larger scale. Bad grief, they've been crazy at our new house. I had actually forgotten how big they could get (our current property owner does a decent job of keeping the pest service coming, it seems). Silly me. Oh, and did you know that at that size, they make noise on hardwood floors and concrete (in the garage)? Sooooo creepy. Give me a 50-foot cliff I can 'man up' on (over an army of roaches) any day. But hey - roaches - don't take me for soft. Those of you I haven't already decimated, your time is coming. And you'd better beg for the spray if I have a broom within reach.
3. SWEATING.
Really, this one is pretty much a corollary of no. 1. But I didn't think it should go without mention. I'm pretty sure that, whatever my particular mix of Scottish and English and Polish (and someone told me there may be some Cherokee in there somewhere, I think), it wasn't intended for a climate like Texas. I'd go into details as to why I make this claim, but I am at least aware of this much, that certain things do not make for good blog storying.
4. THE WAY THAT THE AFOREMENTIONED THINGS MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO KEEP ACCURATE COUNTS OF THINGS, AND THINK CLEARLY IN GENERAL.
So I don't have ten things, but I do have a theory about summer. (Also winter.) Fall and Spring are my favorite times of year, being the seasons that the weather in Texas is most bearable and allows for that feeling that things are either cooling off or thawing out. It's those in-between times when the long hauls of sweating and shivering begin to fade from memory as they are eclipsed by times of refreshing, when you can walk outside and for a short time, breathe cool air and enjoy that kind of feeling that you want to make last as long as you can. I think of Fall and Spring more of transition periods. Obviously, Summer and Winter transition as well, but they feel less so since they lie in between the pendulum swings. Every second gets counted when pressure is applied. But who stares at their watch in those moments when you can simply be at ease? I think it's those moments that are like little peeks at the Kingdom. Brief glimpses of something that may not last very long now, but one day we won't have to settle for inevitable disappointment. One day, disappointment will be absolutely evitable. Come, Lord Jesus.

Reunions galore
Actually, this post is incredibly long already! I can tell by the fact that my own attention span is being stretched into some kind of funky yoga position. So this is a little taste of what I'll hopefully be posting soon. Tune in next time to hear a little about Kathryn's family reunion and my own 10-year high school reunion, both of which happened in the span of two weekends. There'll be laughs, wittiness, tangents, and of course, me taking every possible opportunity to magnify any of the stories which highlight my manliness. I can't wait, and neither can you! Blog atcha soon!

Yellow Card

Yep, got my first ever yellow card Sunday night at the Scrubs' soccer game. Let's just say I barely earned it. What I mean is people (self included) have been way more physical in past games, and the referees have been letting all kinds of contact go uncalled. If the games were called by the book, then I would have earned two or three cardable offenses in our previous game. Hardly disputable, in fact. (And I wouldn't probably rank in the top several most physical players on the field, either.) Even assuming this past game had been called by the book, this was a questionable call. And this referee wasn't calling by the book. (Let's put aside for a moment the practice of "taking it like a man" - I've got something to say.) I got pushed out of bounds, shoulder-to-shoulder. No call. Another one of our guys got pushed out of bounds with the other guy's arms extended (a textbook-perfect push). No call. Both cardable offenses, by the way.

If I sound bitter, maybe I am. I don't think I am - it's been two days and I've had time to cool my jets. But this particular referee had more than just a handful of us seething by the end of the night. I don't know, there's something weird about getting fouls called in soccer. In basketball, it's no big deal to get called for a foul - you can even get up to 5 or 6 before they toss you. Rugby? Hockey? I can't say that I really watch the sports that much, but tell me there's not some major jostling and jarring going around, and it's par for the course. But somehow, soccer is different. It's not just that the play gets stopped, it's that the ref has to reach down his shorts and pull out a colored card and wave it at you, signaling to the world that you just behaved badly and would be receiving a low grade for conduct. Does this bring up any juvenile associations for anyone else? Remember those colored conduct systems they had in Kindergarten? (And maybe up through second grade or something...) In mine, green was good behavior, yellow was testing your limits, red was bad and black meant you were a child of hell. (Surprise anyone that my conduct card was pretty much always on red and black? To any educators out there who may be reading this: YOU ARE GIVING YOUR KIDS COMPLEXES. STOP RUINING THE CHILDREN.) You may not agree with the connection, but I think there's something there. I'm just sayin'.

Now, lest you begin to fear that I will leave this story on a sour note, I have good news that there is a redemptive element to it all! It came in the form of a teammate's comment to me upon hearing that I had indeed received a yellow card. "Joe, you're just going to have to stop being such a badass." (Tongue-in-cheek, of course.) You know what? That seriously made my day. Instead of being called up to the front of the class, only to be scolded and sent to stand in the corner, I get to make my way up to the front of the class and take a bow. With the teacher, by the way, directly behind me.

In a Word: Soccer

In four words: frustration, aggression, helplessness and disappointment. Somehow, saying "you can't win 'em all" just doesn't cut it when I nearly clotheslined a guy and volleyball-spiked the soccer ball in the last five minutes because time was winding down and our chances of winning were slipping further and further out of reach. Thankfully, no one said anything of the sort, elsewise they may well have received a beating. Actually, Danny and Jordan were very encouraging: "Joe! You were amazing out there! You stopped like every ball that went up the middle!" I'll call this 'speaking hopefully about reality', as opposed to its alternative, 'speaking accurately about reality'. Honestly, the former suits me better anyways, because I'm much less keen on the whole truth-equals-accuracy myth than I used to be. The eye is the lamp of the body, after all...

Wow, I haven't gotten that worked up in a long time, no joke! Kathryn said that now I can relate to times when her emotions get revved up and how difficult it is to relate gracefully to other people at those times. Seriously - after the game, we wanted Icees, and so we stopped by HEB on the way home because they have a machine. You can guess what's coming. We walk inside the store to find the machine turned off. I literally wanted to take the lids and straws off the counter and throw them on the ground.

After that, Kathryn drove the rest of the way home. ;) While I certainly proved myself worthy yet again of the "Destroyer" title, neither of us had any desire to see what I could accomplish with 1,960 pounds as opposed to 196. About the time we sat down in Burger King to enjoy our Icee - finally - I could feel myself calming down a little bit. Probably the grease from the cheesy tots helped.

I need to go to bed. But first, I have something of a public rebuke. For soccer. Y'all can all listen in.

Soccer, you let me down. You were supposed to be a good outlet for energy and aggression and competitiveness, and instead of making me feel like more of a man, you make me look very nearly like an idiot so many times and make me a loser and not a winner. No, soccer, none of this "everyone's a winner" crap - I stopped buying that line after high school. So stop selling it. Seriously, soccer, you know what? Chicken butt.

Various happenings

Howdy from Aggieland! It's a fine day and I hope it finds you... if it hasn't already. I thought I'd post a few recent life happenings, tidbit-style, to catch you up to speed on my brain waves - surf's up!

Summer Breeze, Makes Me Feel Sweaty
Yuck - Texas summers. That's what all of you with sensitive noses are saying now that those of us with sensitive sweat glands are feeling the heat. I am sorry. Generally I'm a very clean person, but thinking I can effectively manage smelling good in this kind of climate is just like thinking that one can effectively manage anything they set their mind to: it's just plain hubris.

So, I've decided to play soccer again. What better way to make the most of the least logical time of year to be outdoors and active in this great state? We had our first game this Sunday. We tied. Actually, I'm kind of happy about that, seeing as it's the first time I remember not losing an opening game while playing with the Scrubs (though memory could be, admittedly, failing me here). I am a little disappointed with my own performance, though. While I did manage to earn the self-titled "Destroyer" nickname (I'm hoping it will catch on) by smashing the face or body of opposing players with the ball quite forcefully multiple times (I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, they just got in the way), as well as one time knocking a guy down just by standing in his way (this time I got in the way, but hey - he ran into me - and yes, this did make me feel manly), I was otherwise a little pathetic, to be perfectly honest. (Or as Kathryn so frankly put it, I seemed to be getting outrun a lot out there. To be quite accurate, I would think it better to say I was "run" as opposed to "outrun", seeing as frequently the other team was running, whereas I was walking.) In heat like this, I'm afraid that if I over-exert, I may keel over and evaporate or something. But I am over 20 pounds lighter this year than last - whoop! - so that's helping quite a bit.

It's A New Month: You Know What That Means!
Actually, you may not know what that means. What it means is both Kathryn and I get paychecks! Which means a new month for our "budget". (I say that, not sarcastically, but matter-of-factly, given that I'm still warming to the concept that a budget is primarily intended to be functional, as opposed to aesthetic. Tomato, tomato. See? Who can tell the difference anyways?) Which means a new chance to not overspend. Which means renewed hopes of getting to the 15th of the month with some eating-out money left. Seriously, though, it's going to happen this month. At this point, I'm not joking around any more - I know it's hard to tell in print, but it's true. Seriously, ask me at the end of the month, and once you have heard about how we've stuck to budget this month, I'll let you buy me lunch.

Performance Review - Delusions Of Better-Than-Averageness
I had my annual performance review at work last week. It actually went really well, and I would actually go so far as to say it was something of a "glowing" review, without verging on celebrity frenzy. I say that because you're ranked on a scale of "Does Not Meet Expectations" to "Meets Expectations" to "Exceeds Expectations" to finally "Outstanding" - at which point, if I'm not mistaken, you start getting calls from people asking you to run departments and governments and things like that. I pulled off an "Exceeds Expectations" overall, which I think puts me somewhere between a firm handshake/pat on the back and a little eyebrow-raising on the part of the office bigwigs.

What's interesting to me about these measures of how worthwhile of a human being I am (other than our culture's audacity and propensity to so readily quantify people's worth) is the point of shift from culture making great efforts to motivate and assure people, not just of their potential but also of their innate stardom, to the point at which everyone is more seemingly on level playing field, except for the true stars who float above the crowds with their feet and buttocks hitting the rest of our faces. You may recall this transition in your life as the time when you went from being pretty much an 'A' student by default to pretty much a 'C' student by default. And while we've all got variations on this theme, there's definitely a point when the coddling stops and you realize that the world is saying to you, "You're not really exceptional unless you're truly exceptional." The way this seems to be communicated is, "You're not exceptional." In this context, the way someone truly does become exceptional is to elbow their way up and proclaim from the top of the heap, "I'm all that. Love me, hate me - I'm the schnitt." Sure, some celebrities and elitists do this with a touch of class, but such a touch doesn't appear to be required to be admired.

I don't really have any particular point in saying all of that, and I don't claim any originality in recognizing it, either (if I did then you might claw over me in your scramble for a better view of the blogosphere... although, I know most of my blog readership, and you are all much better people than that; and for those of you I don't know, I'm quite certain that reading my blog is already helping you to become a much better person anyway). But despite all its quirks and the bureaucratic nature of this whole review process, I'm not unaware of the significance of the process of being measured up according to this cultural metric. I just hope for a greater measure of the kind of spirit whose value is evident in the kind of redemptive tendencies I exhibit, and a shortened leash for the one inciting me to throw elbows, cross tongues and divide loyalties.

Wrap To The Rap
Well, folks, that's all for now. I'll come atcha again as life gives me a fresh batch of wordiness to cook up on here. Until such time, keep it cool, keep it real, keep it real cool, and try not to lose whatever it is you're keeping.