Almonds and other road hazards

I don’t have anything significant to say today, just a string of random thoughts without any connective tissue.

- Driving my car is one of the best sources of stress relief that I know. Saturday morning’s road rally with the good folks of HMMS was a perfect tonic for a long, crazy week (bad weather notwithstanding). I know I’m not a talented driver; I’ll never be on the cover of an Xbox rally racing game, but I can fake it from time to time. To spend several hours with little on your mind but gears, lines, and draft braking is definitely my idea of a good time. Plus, the aftermarket floodgates are about open. Within a couple of years, I hope to have remade Vesper into a lean, mean, autocrossing machine.

- I made a Sesame Street joke this weekend, and was subsequently asked how long it’d been since I’d watched the show. The answer is probably close to 20 years. Wow.

- I’ll be blogging later this week about my Lent reasons and experiences so far. Suffice to say that while I’d hardly be considered an alcoholic, I drink a lot more than I thought I did.

- I think that An Inconvenient Truth should be renamed the Passion Of The Gore. Watching the way everyone was loving on Al Gore at the Oscars last night was worse than what happens when a new girl shows up to Monday nights at the Saucer. Everyone was falling all over themselves to call him a great man and yadda yadda I think I’m actually getting ill just remembering it.

- On the heels of the rapturous post that I made about hanging out with the guys from Ethan Durelle, I’ve realized that I’m going to miss both of the Houston area concerts they’ve got scheduled for the next month or so. Supposedly I’ve got to “work” or something instead. It’s not as though I imagine the band hanging around before the show, nervously checking their watches, waiting for me to walk through the door, but I am disappointed that I won’t be there. Oh well.

- In one for the “be careful when you think you stand”, I’ve been assaulted with various temptations and discouragements in the days since my “wow, I’m optimistic again” post. Gee, who didn’t see that coming? The optimism is still intact.

- I was told this week that my blog may be too “edgy” for the tastes of any women that I might be interested in dating. I don’t have a joke here, I just wanted to share.

- Finally, one picture from the road rally. Sure, it’s off center and all that, but it’s the best I could do at a stoplight with my seatbelt on.

Clarity

Sometimes it all just comes together at once.   No, not the fact that Achewood and The Dugout are in the middle of two of their best weeks in recent memory, or that pitchers and catchers are working out in Florida. This is actually pretty serious.  

I’m feeling unabashedly optimistic for the first time in months.  The odd thing is that it’s not for any one reason in particular, rather it’s the convergence of several things that have been building up for a while.  Today is Ash Wednesday, and for the first time in my life I dragged myself out of bed and went to the service that Christ the King had this morning.  I’ve been really wrestling with my sin recently, after an extended period in my life where I was getting frighteningly good at brushing it under the rug.  For a number of reasons, what was once cold is warm again, and the service this morning was another big step in that direction.  When Paul handed me the wine with the words, “Taste and see that the Lord is good”, it actually meant something to me for the first time in a long time; moreover, it did taste good in a way that I can’t even put into words. 

After the service, I went out for coffee with friends, which served as a reminder of the great level of fellowship and encouragement that I have been blessed with, and that I often fail to recognize.  I’m a very social person, but I very rarely avail myself of the resources that my circle of friends represent.  Having been burned in the past has made me reluctant to open up at any significant level, and as a result people don’t always know what I’m really dealing with on a day to day basis.  Trust has been built up over the past couple of years to the point where I have many sounding boards for my wild-ass theories and plans.  I don’t thank my friends enough (mostly because there’s no greater conversation killer among guys than that kind of Lifetime Original Movie emoting), but I’ll take this as an opportunity to do so. 

Finally, it’s absolutely gorgeous outside today.  The sun is bright, it’s in the mid-70’s, and there’s a gentle breeze fluttering around.  It’s sunroof weather.  The new Explosions In The Sky record came out this week(it’s phenomenal, “hairs on the back of your neck stand up” kind of stuff), and with that in the cd player, the sunroof open, and the Mini fired up, it was awfully tempting to just blow off work and drive around for a few hours.  But then there’s the other piece of good news: I closed my first official sale for the new job yesterday, so there’s a lot to take care of related to that.   

Life is good.  I’m more blessed than I ever could have imagined, and way more than I deserve.  And I believe it’s going to get even better.  Not bad for a day that began with anguish over my own brokenness.

I’d Hold Your Hand And You’d Understand

With the passing of Valentine’s Day, and as spring approaches, a young man’s heart turns toward love.  Or in my case, the absence thereof.  In considering this absence, I’ve found myself considering my approach to the topic, questioning what I’ve really learned from past mistakes and successes, and trying to ascertain what the most Godly course of action would be in the future.  I’m asking these questions not because there is a particular girl on my radar at the moment, actually quite the opposite: for the first time since college, I find myself in the acquaintance of a great number of beautiful Christian women.  So now what? 

On that last occasion when I knew lots of fine (and I do mean fine) upstanding women, I developed a bit of a reputation.  In fact, one of my first posts on my old blog was about that reputation: I was considered somewhere between a player and desperate.  I wasn’t successful enough to warrant “player” status, nor was I so universally unappealing that I became “desperate”.  For lack of a better descriptor, I was simply girl crazy.  In my college years, a number of my close friends called me to account for my behavior, rightly pointing out that I was not honoring my sisters in Christ as I should.  Ever since then, I’ve been very paranoid about any behavior that would link me to this time in my past.  Not to say that I’ve done a perfect job of avoiding my own self-imposed stereotype, but a conscious effort has been made. 

Flash forward eight years.  I’ve lived by the above credo, doing my level best to treat all the women in my life with respect and only informing them of my affections when I can’t hear the chorus to Wilco’s “I’m The Man Who Loves You” one more time lest I explode.  But the game has changed around me.  My old attitude is as relevant today as the eephus pitch.  Not that I’m going to revert to the 18 year old me, who had much in common with a Labrador Retriever who needs to go pee outside; it’s more complex than that.  I’m in my mid twenties.  Most of my college friends are married or heading that way.  Both of my brothers are married.  I don’t say this out of self-pity: my point is that this is the time of your life when you get married.  Plain and simple.  Moreover, I seem to recall some passage near the beginning of the Bible telling everyone to get busy.  Or be fruitful.  Or something. 

The stakes are different now.  This is what I should be doing right now, not what I should chill out and wait a couple years for.  I’m not saying that I’m going to enter a suicide pact with some equally mopey chica, stating that we’ll marry each other on our 31^st birthdays or some nonsense like that.  But there is a certain urgency at work here.  Not the urgency of a deadline, like when you’re studying for an exam the next morning.  It’s the urgency of committing every resource you have to achieve a goal that you’ve been aiming at for a long time, like winning an endurance race.  There’s no reason for me to screw around with niceties any more than I should mess around with women I’d have no business with if we weren’t liplocked.   I want to get married, and if I’m going to achieve this goal, I have two simple rules that I’m going to have to abide by: 

1. Be risky.  The old saying goes that you have to risk something to gain something, and this is no different.  I’m a sales man.  I approach dozens of strangers each week and try to convince them that I have something to offer that will make their lives better.  There’s no reason for me to sit in an emo corner and wait for some girl to make her affections known to me.  I’ve gotta be proactive.  If that means a certain rejection percentage, so be it.  So long as I’m asking out girls who are actual marriage material, there’s nothing to lose.  If I’m still worried about coming across as girl crazy or whatever, here’s a clue: I am.  And that’s ok.  This is part of what I believe God wants me to do right now. I’m not playing with anyone’s emotions, I’m just making an offer that can be either accepted or rejected. The law of averages will work.  Playing the field is not an invective anymore, it’s just common sense.  I’m not a threat anymore; I’m an asset waiting to for investment. 

2. Be committed.  I can’t half-ass anything here.  Love isn’t worth doing if you’re holding anything back.  I bear the scars from this practice, but I realize now that it’s one of the things that I’ve been getting right all along.  I’m not going to be masochistic about it, though.  I need to sense better when I’m ahead of my companion and either match pace or go home.  I also need to date girls who aren’t so inclined to put the entire burden of the emotional risk on my shoulders; the stakes should be equally high for everyone, even though I do have the responsibility to initiate and protect.  But I shouldn’t let past experience keep me from risking the possibility of getting hurt.  If I want to play it safe, I’ll go skydiving.

That’s the manifesto.  A lot of credit for challenging my underlying thought processes goes to the inimitable Mr. Hon, who bears no responsibility for how this plays out.  Thanks are due to him and everyone else who has put up with my crap over the past several months.   I’m only brown nosing now so that if/when this goes horribly wrong I still have a supportive cushion to fall back on.

Tagg’d

Meanwhile, I got tagged by the itinerant Dr. Dennis this weekend, but was so befuddled by the assignment (read: I forgot) that I’m only just now getting to it.  The task was to identify six weird things about me.  This should be a walk in the park.

1. I’m a car nut, but I can’t drive stick.  To my everlasting shame, I grew up in a family whose car buying decisions were based on pragmatism and cupholders.  Driving excitement wasn’t really on the menu, and as such there was no manual transmission car for me to learn on.  There have been other opportunities in the past, but all have been too short (“Hey, go back my truck out of the driveway.”) or in treacherous circumstances (“Let’s learn on this unpaved country road with a 20 foot drop on your left.”).  I’m fully open to the idea of learning, but I’ve yet to find a friend in my social circle who would be willing to let me abuse their clutch for an hour or two until I figure it out.

2. I’ve got a highly technical college degree in a field that still interests me, but I don’t use it.  My dusty diploma says “Cell Molecular Biology” all right, but I haven’t touched a test tube in more than three years.  I’m still passionate about genetic research, stem cells, and bioethics, but it’s not my profession anymore.  Why?  Because I just plain suck as a scientist.  I’m a much better salesman.

3. I own more shoes than my last girlfriend.  And I’m still buying more.  I’d take a twelve step program only if I could find a pair of casual black slip-ons to wear for the first 6-7 steps.

4. I love telling scar stories.  It’s not like I’ve been cut on a lot, or had a ton of injuries, but telling the stories behind my various scars provides a window into who I am and how I approach life.  From the childhood slash that runs across my forehead to the invisible one in my scalp to the disappointing collection on my torso, each one informs a period in my life.  Plus, when you get other people to tell their stories, it’s the same: every scar tells of a moment of weakness or strength.  I can’t think of a better icebreaker.

5. My fingers flex funny.  I don’t have much cartilage left in the third knuckle of any of my fingers, so I can bend them all backwards and stuff.  I don’t know if I was born this way, or if this is the result of years of not being able to catch passes when I played basketball.

6. My brothers and I descend in height in reverse birth order.  I’m the middle of three brothers; my older brother is 5’9” and change, I’m 5’11”, and my younger brother is 6’2” (I think).  All the bullying that Rick did finally caught up with him, once again proving one of my all-time hypotheses:  God has a very ironic sense of humor.

Since I’ve gotta tag people now, I’m going with Daniel, Kyle, Jen and Liz.  Get crack-a-lackin, y’all.

We Pass The Savings On To You!

I’m not doing anything for Valentine’s Day except watching Lost. The Jack-Sawyer-Kate drama is a helluva lot more entertaining than my love life. Unless you’re a sicko. Allow my friend Don Hertzfeldt to summarize:

I’m really ok with this. I think that there are a lot of other things coming to fruition in my life right now that would be interrupted by the presence of female attention.

Besides, I just finally paid the taxes on my car and got it titled in Texas, and I’m broke like MC Hammer. It’s going to be a long two weeks until my next paycheck. And for those of you keeping score at home, chicks are expensive.

Pretty good rationalization, no?

Let It What?

Not only have I lived in Houston for the great majority of my life (my three year stint in College Station is growing smaller in my rear view mirror, and encompasses a much smaller percentage of my years than it used to), but I haven’t traveled nearly as much as most of my friends have.  Most of the travel that I have done has been during the warm weather months, when it makes most sense to flee screaming from Houston’s humidity and mosquito infested summer cauldron.  For whatever reason, my family opted not to travel during the winter, when Houston is actually quite nice.  The end result is that my exposure to cold winter weather is extremely limited.

Sure, I’ve seen snow before, and I’ve been in weather colder than 20 degrees before, but I’ve never driven in real, hazardous snow, and I certainly haven’t been called upon to do so in the interest of my job.  (One of the few things that I miss about PreCheck: having Florida in my sales territory.)  As I wait here in the airport in Oklahoma City, I can’t help but think that I’ve finally had an experience which many of my compadres has already had, and I have no idea why I felt that I was missing out on something.  Driving in snow isn’t fun.  It’s not all goofy harmless sliding and sticking your tongue out the window.  It gets old reaaaaally fast.

Today I drove from OKC to Tulsa and back so that I could visit a trio of hospitals.  About 45 minutes outside Tulsa, the snow started, and it would not abate until I was almost back to OKC again.  The snow eventually gave way to slush, and the slush gave way to numerous vehicles in ditches.  I thought that I’d have a leisurely trip back; between a 45 minute delay on 44 and the necessity of refueling my rental car, I found myself doing the 200 yd. Terminal Dash tonight.  Of course, the flight is delayed, because of the weather.  At least I had U2 and Cold War Kids to keep me company.

Why did I think I was missing something?