2013 so far

The year of the flu, it seems like. Lots of sick people around. Good things, bad things, we have a lot of all of it right now, but at the same time I'm feeling peaceful. My wife took her retirement and that has definitely improved my quality of life. She is mellowed out like she hasn't been for years, and now we have time, so much time, that I didn't truly understand what I was missing before. I hope this to be a year of music, surfing, and the time that some things get figured out in our lives. One thing I'm starting to get, is there is no fixing everything, there is a lot of doing the best you can, and hoping it helps. I can now see that for one person, this will be one of the best years in their life and another will have one of the worst. I'm looking out at a gloomy horizon, when just a couple of days ago, we had some of the most perfect weather you could imagine anywhere. Maybe our life is like the weather, instead of feeling robbed by a overcast, rainy day, I should remember that this is exactly what makes the sunny days so beautiful.

Finding the 5th Way Out

It's been a long time and many things have happened worth writing about, but I have found it almost easier to write short snippits for Facebook. That aside, it's about time I addressed this year's Adapt Or Die at work piece. We moved to a new building, built just for us, something cool, that young people would love, and old folks would get used to. Bottom line, the company saved a ton of money and we all get to work like we are in a boiler room for a time-share business. The first day, I didn't think I was going to make it, I mean I could BE there, but I could not seem to work. I was truly struck numb by the volume of noise and movement of people. At the time, my best comparison to friends was I felt as if I had parked my computer at an end-cap at Costco. I quickly invested in expensive noise-cancelling headphones, but found they did not address the constant visual distractions. We had almost 400 people packed into this place and it seemed like all of them went by my desk at least several times a day. There were good things, really good, free coffee, and soft drinks, even Red Bull. The building boasted the best WiFi I have ever used and it is entirely possible the WiFi saved my life and sanity. When I was a kid, I read this Science Fiction short story by Robert Heinlein and I can still remember the dramatic first sentence: As part of an experiment, a monkey was put in a box with only 4 ways out...the monkey found a 5th way out. As I sit here, at a picnic table, outdoors in 60 degree weather, enjoying the sunshine, the sound of the wind through the trees, sipping good coffee, working on my laptop, I realize that I too, found a way out that was not imagined by the builders. Who knew that happiness was less than 1000 feet from misery...

Hunger Games: the missing scene

I saw the movie Hunger Games last evening and was a little confused until I later found out that a scene had been removed to protect the rating of the film. The missing scene would have helped a lot:

- Catness (our heroine) and Rue (her younger and smaller friend) are walking through the woods when they suddenly encounter one of the competitors. He is poised and ready to throw his spear in an effort to take out Catness, the main competitor. Catness moves quickly and grabs Rue and uses her as a human shield. Rue takes the spear in the chest and appears mortally wounded. Catness sees this and in one move, snaps Rue's neck and tosses the lifeless body aside. Still moving, she draws her bow and brings down Spear boy with a single arrow. He is lying on the ground moaning as she pulls his head back and starts sawing on his neck with her bowie knife. There is an terrible scream that is suddenly silenced, until it is picked up by the mocking birds. The camera switches to a silhouette shot of Catness holding his severed head up to the sky. Jumpshot to each of the remaining competitors, trembling as they hear the awful echoing sound from the birds and the sudden realization that it wasn't the evening gown they feared, it was her Heart Of Darkness...

The Top 5 Things That Need To Change Before 2012

Seriously? You really believe that I would steep so low as to create a headline that would pull in more readers? Maybe I should have put something about Casey Anthony or Michelle Parker in the title too....sheesh! Still no surf, but upcoming camping trip with the boys looks to hold decent weather, and it IS near the beach. Maybe I'll bring the surfboard along just in case. Anyway I will attempt a list, just so I cannot be accused of deception: 1) I need to quit wanting more stuff - the house is overflowing, the attic is overflowing...I need to just play with the toys I have. 2) I need to use my mornings more wisely. I'm getting up earlier, but I seem to spend a lot of it puttering around, surfing on the web, etc. 3) I need to get back into making music...I don't know, slump or what, but I need to snap out of it. 4) I need to spend more time enjoying the current moment and less dreaming about the future...or worrying about it. 5) I need to be more inventive with my blogs!

A Cold Day In December

It's been a long time since I have written. The waves have been bad for every weekend for more than a month now and the last time I could have surfed, I was recovering from have a bit of skin cancer removed from my head. Today is the first day this season that I had to wear a coat to work, almost a 40 degree drop in temperature in one day. I guess that it is days like these that make us appreciate how balmy it usually is in Florida. I'm actually enjoying the cold today, but it did prevent me from running this morning. If I had this weather for a few weeks, I'd probably go out anyway, but a cold day here and there means a day of rest once in a while. Before the cold came, I was working on a new plan; running 5 miles and then paddleboarding around the lake...all before work in the morning. I found that by getting up at 4am, I could do this and really enjoyed the outdoors before the 9 hour day of computer work. The only problem is that it leaves me sleepy by 8pm at night...we will see how long this lasts...

Again...

There it is again...a restless night full of dreams, another version of the same dream I've seem to have had forever: Everything has gone to hell, but somehow I'm happy, living on next to nothing in a efficiency apartment. It's just me, my surfboard, and a bunch of empty beer bottles. Nothing much else matters, because I'm across the street from where I like to surf, and no matter how horrible my job is, I've got time to hit the waves every morning. There is nobody else in the dream and I'm acutely aware that I might die any time and I'm not really sure who would handle the details, nor am I that concerned about it. I'm not sure if this represents my happy place or is it just the final solution to problems I can't fix..

The Dream Day

I've had an infrequent dream for years, that I'm 15 years old, skipping school and learning to surf with my friends. A lot of it is some sort of twist on a real life event. The water is perfect glass, I'm wearing cutoff jeans and riding on the bruised banana, a 8 foot yellow surfboard, with a large brown softspot on the deck. For some reason in the dream, it is important that the fin is a clear red plastic. I'm not sure if that is a dream of lost innocence, or some kind of perfect happiness that I have been pursuing, but today I caught it.
We pulled up to the beach this morning and saw waves right off. They should have been smaller, according to the forecast, but we saw many surfers out and many catching waves. Old guys on longboards, paddleboards, girls, young ones on short boards and it just seemed to be a picture perfect day.
I looked to the south of the pier, and only saw 3 surfers there. We headed that way and got right out. It was nothing but fun. Hooting, hollering, laughing and cheering each other on, it seemed to be that my dream day had come to life. There were so many ridable waves, that we finally had to let some go, just to rest up.
When it was time to take that last wave in, I stalled a bit, thinking I wanted a memory that would last a while. I got it when I took off across the face of one of the larger waves in the set and saw my friend watching from the beach. This wave held me through the middle section and actually started curling over my shoulder. The perfect end to this was not the wave, but seeing a young surfer girl paddling out, getting that perfect camera view of me coming towards her down the line. That's when you know it really happened, when you see the look in their eyes.