your thoughts requested:

Dare to be mediocre.


This is a phrase I read in a book my sister recommended and I've been thinking about for a while.

I'd like your input.

Your thoughts, please?

come on, y'all

in short disclaimer : I may disappoint some (sorry Linds H) when I say that this blog will stay rather unconnected with the brand new event in our lives. But suffice it to say, there has been a brand new event and I cannot believe I have embarked on one of the most exciting, challenging, amazing, wonderful, and everything-in-between adventures of my life. I'm ready, though, and can't wait to see what unfolds.



I did, however, begin the following post before this grand event occurred (it surprised us). I hope you enjoy.



For Memorial Day weekend we took Friday off and made a weekend of it complete with a written list of stuff we wanted to do that weekend (we needed a break, can you tell?). The list was full to the brim with things we've always wanted to do. Among them was a trip to what is affectionately called "Brat Fest" by the locals but what I found to be officially named "The Worlds Largest Brat Fest". This thing breaks all kinds of bratwurst related world records I'm told.Turns out, Brat Fest was going on right outside our big city hotel and was a mere walk from our room. As we passed the parking lot volunteers we thought it ironic that the Fest would be held right across from a pre-race marathon gala.

I ordered the Veggie Brat. The man helping us thought I was crazy, but I was intrigued and curious. I am however, curious no more and wouldn't recommend the Veggie Brat no matter how much delicious mustard and sauerkraut you put on it.Good ol' K didn't break from character (it's amazing I still get surprised) and went big with the "Double Johnny" or something like that. Yes, that is two brats in one bun. Crazy.

But I did have to have a bite.

All in all, a grand time. And now I feel a little more like a Wisconsinite. A Wisonsiner. A Winsconsinan.

white coral bells upon a slender stalk

God knew what he was doing when he created families.

and

God knew what he was doing when he created sisters.

hey, Victor

Does it ever bother you that there is an endless amount of knowledge of which you will never know anything about?

I go through this realization almost weekly.

Saturday night... actually, I should say Sunday morning, I came to this realization once again as I awoke at 3:30AM and couldn't regain sleep.

Normally, I would explain my seeming insomnia to a worry or concern. But for the first time in my life, I awoke early in the morning only to remain awake because I was thinking about, well, not much.

The topics my brain chose to linger upon were these:

Homemade tortillas

and

Iron Man 2

I don't have much to say about Iron Man 2 except that my brain tends to run through an entire movie in my head several times after I've seen it once. Not really sure why, but nevertheless it does.

The the homemade tortillas, however, are what bring me to the question with which I began this post. Will I ever know everything there is to know about how to make a good tortilla? The answer, of course, is no. And this is aggravating. Most especially because I've yet to attempt to make even one homemade tortilla. Not only that, but there are so many other things I have yet to learn about and/or try out.

So my question to you. Does this thought ever bother you? Do you ever feel that no matter how many Nova's you watch on black holes you still feel like there is nothing intelligent you can say about them? That no matter how many "facts" you can cram in your brain, you'll never get them all in there?

If so, know you have a friend in your frustration.

why this place just keeps getting better and better

Peeps.

So it wasn't someone starting their motorcycle on our front porch.

Turns out it was a meteor. Yep. You heard me correctly. An actual meteor.

Lesson learned: If a meteor big enough to destroy just one apartment ever came our way... sadly, I may not be saved. I came to discover that several people called the police to report the noise and to inquire as to its origin.

And what did I do?

I hit the hay.

Lesson learned, my friends. Lesson learned, indeed.

photo taken by UW Madison webcam,

found on chicagobreakingnews.com

thus far... one more thing

A film festival. That's what came to our little town and I can't tell you how excited I am. The films, many of them, are a few years old. But that didn't matter to us. Something to do on Friday night! And free!

We watched the documentary Garbage Dreams which followed three Zaballeen teens as they navigate a couple of those rough growing-up years in the trash trade in Cairo.

A couple of things I know absolutely nothing about? Cairo. The trash trade there.

But we both enjoyed this film quite a bit and now I know a couple of things about Cairo and the trash trade and I tell you, I've never been quite so inspired to recycle (Sorry Al Gore, no offense of course). Those teens know more about recycling than I think I'll know in my lifetime.

Enjoy this trailer, if for no other reason than that I finally learned how to embed (very simple) code.


www.documentary.org

...he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich

I was just told, for the second time, that I have an Australian accent.

Other than the fact that I've made a conscious effort to pronounce my "t"s in words like "mountain" and "Brighton" I have no idea where this comes from.

Though, it could have been because I greeted him with a "G'day mate", made several references to "Down Under", and called my cookie a "biscuit".

Just kidding.

Now I'm curious what accent an Australian thinks I have...

bowerbird

I love moments when you discover that something you thought was universal turns out not to be universal.

Consider a conversation I had this evening.

We enter mid-conversation:

Kap: [deep breath as if to say something--silence]
j: What was that you were about to say?
Kap: Well, I wanted to say something at this point in time, but I didn't come up with an idea of what to say quickly enough. So I chose to be silent. [Pause to ascertain understanding] Does that ever happen to you?
j: [Thinking] I don't think it ever has. [With a laugh] I can't seem to get the things I want to say out fast enough. They always seem to get backed up in my brain, fighting against the queue to get out.
So, really? Sometimes you don't have anything to say at the moment?
Kap: Really. Or more accurately, I don't have anything that I find interesting enough to say.
j: Wait, so you're telling me you rifle through the Rolodex of interesting topics and sometimes decide that there isn't anything interesting enough to verbalize?
Kap: Yep.
j: Fascinating.

Needless to say, I could learn a thing or two from our good friend, Kappy.

Has this type of revelation happened to you? Or is it just me that tends to think that everyone is just like me?

p.s. Some people actually like the movie "The Pacifier". This was news to me too, and I learned the hard way. Remember that backed up queue of thoughts? Yeah, that can get you into trouble.

Dear 19 D:

Dear 19 D:

I hope I'm not inconveniencing you too much if I ask that you please reconsider.

Reconsider, that is, your choice to bring lunch onto the aircraft. It is not merely that you have chosen to bring lunch with you, but that you have chosen to bring a burrito lunch with you.

Considering that this DC9 has only 21 snugly spaced rows, do you think that was the wisest choice?

Imagine my chagrin when halfway through the flight I am hit with a wave of recirculated carne asada only to find you noisily (I assume by the look of it) gnawing at your lunch with nary a care as to what your co-passengers might be suffering. What seems to you to be a private luncheon leaves us a captive audience to your olfactorily offensive exhibition.

I would appreciate your careful consideration in this matter and all others like unto it.

Sincerely,
20 B

jackie smaz is: what's on your mind?

I remember the first time I heard the phrase, "If you think it will happen, it will happen." I was immediately struck with silent terror.

"That can't be possible," I reasoned, "That much power is terrifying."

I could be considered an expert in formulating the worst case scenario and I had made a habit of playing back each possibility in my mind just to make sure I had run a thorough analysis of the situation and had time to formulate a back up plan should some unfortunate situation arise.

And plan I did.

So much so, that when the time came for me to be introduced to, "If you think it will happen, it will happen," a wrench was thrown into my well-oiled routine.

You can imagine how frantic my efforts might have been. "Test today. My pencil may not be a No. 2. One can't be entirely sure of that. I may sit behind a throat-clearer, or in front of a seat-kicker, or encounter some other form of distraction. Or I might blank entirely, or misspell 'bourgeoisie' or forget to put my name on the exam, or forget to go to the exam, or forget there is an exam, or--" and then it would hit me, "If you think it..."

Then my fear index would increase several points making it entirely impossible for me to not "think it". So I came up with a back up plan.

"I am not thinking it," I would repeat to myself, "No really, no joke, I am NOT thinking it."

My thinking? If devote a tremendous amount of time to thinking about NOT thinking about the things I'm actually thinking about, wouldn't it stand to reason (based on this new mantra) that I would begin to not think about them? My thoughts exactly.

And to this day I still occasionally catch myself demanding that I not think about whatever worst case scenario I've created.

Really.



No joke.



I am not thinking it.

the K12 dude

I was washing a bag of home grown carrots our neighbors gave us when this friend came to visit.

A little reminiscent of Better Off Dead's french fry montage. Which kind of makes me shiver. And then, softly, Van Halen began to play...

Orion, and his belt

It's late and I think I'm getting sick. I can feel it behind my nose getting swollen and painful. I don't get sick a lot, but when I do this is where it starts. So I got up to make myself some tea and ended up burning my finger.

I can't help thinking it's a kind of metaphor.

Or an Aesop fable of sorts. You know the kind. Fox selfishly gets ill then selfishly gets up to make himself tea. Fox ends up burning his finger. Wait...

Anyway, you get the point and that is, I wish I could start over. Start over getting sick, making the tea, moving here, starting my job, this post.

But since we're this far in on all counts, I need to find a way to put some ice on the proverbial burns and make the most of it. Like now, for example. I think my tea is cool enough to drink. Now that's a happy ending.

Hey, Wal-Mart.

Bananas don't need their own plastic bag.

You can put my avocado and Golden Delicious(es) with them.

Thank you.

p.s. I rode the cart like a scooter out to my car today unashamed. Kapital B, you'd be proud.

enchilada style?

Friends!

We had a little Cafe Rio away from home. I came upon a recipe very much like their delicious pork via a fellow fan and then tried to make it an authentic experience complete with, "Black o Pinto beans?"

And was it delicious?

To that I say emphatically, "Indeed."

And the only thing it lacked, I am happy to report, is a fuss made over a Free Meal.

Next step: Learn to make a delicious flan. But I'd settle for Tres Leches too.

thus far: 4th edition

Three more things I like about, WI:

Giving me the chance to give running a chance.

WI and I... we like running. I have to send

all of my positive energy to my shins...

they don't like running.

Our first harvest!

That's one nice looking banana pepper.

Here's to more tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers,

carrots, onions, beans, basil, rosemary, and oregano.

That good ol' WI way of doing things.

Farmer's Appreciation day this weekend folks.

I'm told there is a killer parade.

to be continued...

weather and me

Being from the Great Basin I never thought much about what I would do in a tornado situation.

Sure, we had the earthquake drills every year (because, as was the buzz around our elementary school, each year was thee year that the fault hugging our neighborhood boulevard would violently give way) but a tornado? That was something that happened in places where people had shaky video cameras and southern accents.

These were the thoughts that crossed my mind as I sat late at night in our stuffy bathroom staring at the old can of baked beans I had clumsily taken from the pantry and listening to the who-knows-what-sized hail batter our windows. "What does one do in this situation? " I thought. "One certainly doesn't just sit here staring at baked beans reminiscing about the good ol' days when it was unlikely earthquakes we were worried about."

Earlier, as the tornado siren blared it's warning through the air and before the baked beans we checked the national weather service to "make sure" and as I read over the storms predicted path I saw our little town mentioned followed by, "STORMS MOVE QUICKLY. TAKE COVER NOW!"

And that cover, in our apartment sans basement, is our little bathroom.

I gave our Survival Radio/Flashlight a couple good cranks on the charger and attempted to tune the station to something other than country music without much luck and in the end settled on a tune about a man's truck and his dog. We listened for a half second frightend by the thought that this could potentially be our only link to the outside world during the storm. "At least we know there's still a radio tower out there," we said trying to laugh.

And the tornado never came. And the hail stopped, and the warning was lifted, and the trees settled down. And we started feeling stupid about actually being afraid. I watched as the sky sparked with a million bursts of lightning and the clouds rumbled in frustration.

And even though this tornado never materialized just like that terrible earthquake we are supposed to get back home some day, I'm still amazed at how flippantly our weather can forget about us, almost like a bad friend, as if to say, "I'm getting tired of you and I don't care about you and never have. And I don't care how that makes you feel," knowing that we'll call again the next day needing a friend.

And now that I've gone all Ira Glass on you, I promise not to start my next post with, "Our show today - in three acts..."

so, here's my dilemma

I cannot seem to get very far reading The Omnivore's Dilemma.

But I feel like I should. I mean, I'm an omnivore, and I often find this problematic. You might say, I find it dilemmatic at times. Also, I was given the book to borrow close to a year ago. I'm pretty sure I've crossed over from being politely interested to being a thief. This whole situation might end with a phone call that begins something like this, "So, hey, did you think that omnivore's dilemma book was yours?"

So, I've abandoned the idea for a time. It seems only logical.

And now I'm on to birds.

other than mustard

A list of things I really appreciate this spring:

1. St. Joe's Fish Fry

2. Red-winged Blackbird calls

3. noisy geese

4. green paths

5. Moonlighter frisbee

6. voices of family coming through my phone

7. growing up...

8. spinach

9. shoulder and chest fit-model for "Jack"

10. This American Life

What are you grateful for this spring?

checked at the style level

Ok, so maybe office life isn't for me. I think I've made that abundantly clear. So here's one more thing and I'll leave you alone about it.

I moved desks... again, which is exciting I suppose except for one thing. When I arrived at my new cube it took me all of two tenths of a second to notice a tone. A tone of the kind that catches the material my head is made of and reverberates infinitely there in a way only physics can explain. A tone that has the potential to drive one mad. After a few frenzied moments in search of its source, I discovered it and resigned myself to the sad truth. The tone would remain. And not only that, but it creates a kind of "white noise" effect around my little space so that when others walk by muttering salutations, or grumblations I find that I hear nothing.

So to ensure that I don't grow even more mad than I already seem to be, I came up with a quick solution.

24-hour NPR program stream.

It's great. They repeat themselves quite a bit, but it's much better than the alternative, and I find that I can repeat news tidbits with almost 100% accuracy by the end of the day.

On Mondays I treat myself to the previous week's episode of Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! (Hang with me here, I have a point... of sorts) where they cited a study that said that those that blog about their personal lives and woes are happier than those who do not (we can thank Wait, Wait for this kind of random, lacking-in-the-repeatability-area, study).

So, here goes:

When people say, "Everyone has these kinds of anxieties..." I wish they would elaborate.

And there you have it. I'm testin' the theory.

By the way, someone mentioned also (on NPR) that people with jobs, even if they aren't the best fit, are happier than those who do not. And at the end of the day, I'm extremely grateful for my job.

Thanks, NPR for saving me from madness.

because it was finally above zero instead of below

Check this out...

July

vs.

January

Eventually we snowshoed across the lake and up to the top of the hill to overlook the other lake. Then we slid down, cut out chunks of hard snow and attempted a discus tournament (I won), and went home to get warm. Beautiful day. I can't believe this is the same place.