Newsworthy

I feel like I've shut off my mind in the last 6 months. I haven't been reading a lot, I haven't been writing much, and what I have been writing has been less coherent than I'd like. I'm going to pass the buck and put the blame on the fact that I've been sick a large portion of the last 6 months rather than examining the fact that maybe I've chosen not to think about anything too much.

One thing on my intellectual radar has remained (aside from television viewing which I still maintain is not necessarily a brain off activity). I love reading the newspaper. I don't read it cover to cover like some people. I pick and choose the articles I'm interested in. I sometimes do the crossword puzzle (or try to depending on the day). When I moved a while back I had to cancel my newspaper subscription because my new apartment is a lot more expensive than my old one and I was trying to save money, but my mom, knowing how I love my daily paper, got me a gift subscription so I wouldn't have to sacrifice that small pleasure.

Lately though I've noticed an alarming trend. I don't know if the people writing the news are as (alternately) bored, frustrated, and angry with what's going on in the world as I am, but the writing of those articles (in the world and business news sections) is severely less compelling lately than that of the arts, sports, dining and travel sections. I'm not talking about the stories themselves. A riveting story can lose a lot when poorly written and a boring one can gain a lot. I'm talking about just the writing, and the writing is markedly better in the more frivolous sections of the paper lately.

Since I'm on the subject of the paper I think I'll talk a little bit about some of the more interesting things I've read there lately.

In today's Seattle Times Jerry Brewer wrote a great column about how people shouldn't blame the negativity of the reporting about the Mariners (and Seahawks, and Sonics) on the reporters. He makes the excellent point that it's hard to put a positive spin on repeated losses, arrests, and legal battles over relocation of a long standing local team. I'm not interested in arguing the point. I agree with him and while that alone isn't enough to keep me from arguing the point I'm also distracted by something else he said. He referred to the Seahawks as "by far the most dependable Seattle franchise". I know I may date myself here, but I remember a time when the Seahawks were the local joke. I can't really say that any of the Seattle sports teams have ever been dependable (if dependable means that they win on a regular basis). The one truly dependable thing about Seattle sports teams is that they are constantly falling short of greatness (sometimes just barely short, making the playoffs but not to the championship, or making it to the championship but not winning it). I can only assume that he means the Seahawks have been the most dependable local team recently.

Yesterday's New York Times also had an article with a statement I found odd. The article was about the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". The film's star Viggo Mortensen is quoted in the article saying this about his 11-year-old costar Kodi Smit-McPhee, "...I don’t even think of him as a kid. There are things he’s done on this movie that I’ve never seen anybody do before. And there are many adult actors who never have a moment like he has every day." I'm not at all surprised that a kid is able to portray emotions that are elusive to adults. Kids are way less afraid to show any old emotion they have. It's true that with experience comes a complexity of emotion that kids might not yet possess, but with experience also comes a reluctance to share those emotions with anyone. Of course, it becomes a lot less scary to share your emotions when you're able to couch them as not really your own, but belonging to a character you're playing. However, everyone knows that they come from somewhere.

And finally, there's Huffington Post, which I know isn't technically a newspaper but we'll just look the other way for now. Huffinton Post gives us pearls like this article on how to identify a New York Woman. I think it's safe to assume I will never be mistaken for a New York Woman (nor would I want to be).

It's the little things

A friend of mine has a blog called "Little Moments" that's dedicated to tracking her progress in a photography class she's taking. I, of course, am so impressed with her for taking up photography, but also the title of her blog brings all sorts of other things to mind.

I'm a fan of little moments. People who know me well have probably seen me, at least one or two times, stop what I'm doing just to take in a moment and commit it to memory.

Right now, I'm on vacation. I'm two and a half weeks in to my third sinus infection in six months (during which time I also had strep throat once). I went to the doctor on about day nine of sickness but they told me to wait it out. Then, the day after I landed in Colorado for vacation, it got much, much worse. Luckily on day three of vacation I was able to get a prescription for antibiotics called in to a local pharmacy, but as is usually the case for me the antibiotics made me feel worse at first. Given my current state you might imagine my vacation to be ruined, but it hasn't been, because there have been some great moments.

First of all when I went to pick up my prescription a Three Dog Night song came on the radio in the drug store. The song was "Never Been to Spain" and it's one of my favorites. I love it for a few reasons, first of all it's a great song, second it reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of my all time favorite TV show (but that's another blog entry), and third it reminds me of some of the great little moments I had when I did go to Spain last year. The song seemed like a good omen so I started to cheer up. I even had a pretty good day despite being sick; I got a massage and sat in the vapor caves. It turns out I'm in a perfect vacation spot for rest and recuperation anyway.

Later that night my mother and I were trying to decide where to eat dinner and a woman called out to us that the restaurant we were passing had the best food and live music so we decided to try it out. We'd been there about twenty minutes, and the band (actually just one guy with a guitar and an amazing voice) started into "Never Been to Spain". It was a really great moment, sitting with my mom having a fabulous meal and listening to some great live music. Even if the set list hadn't consisted almost exclusively of my favorite songs it would still have been a great moment.

The next morning I felt worse though because, as previously noted, I'd started on antibiotics. I really didn't even want to get out of bed but my mom and I had plans to go see some old friends so I did. We drove about an hour to meet them and I slept the whole way there so I started to feel better. The town we met them in was super cute (I'd say it was so cute it freaked me out but I think the reference might be lost on most of my readers) and while we were there it started snowing. Now, my disdain for snow is pretty well known among my friends and family, but it is entirely based on the practicality of having to drive to work in it. So, when I'm on vacation, in the mountains, and my mom is driving because my birthday was just before we left and I haven't had the chance to renew my driver's license yet, and we're with some really great people who I haven't seen in a long time, well, in that case I love the snow and it makes for one of those really great moments. It was only a little bit of snow but it was enough.

The reason we came to this particular town for vacation was because I'd read an article in the New York Times about it that said it had the largest natural hot springs pool in the country (or maybe the world, I don't remember). However, the first day we got here it was threatening rain and I wasn't feeling well so we didn't go to it. We'd heard the weather was supposed to get better towards the end of the week anyway. The next day it did rain and also we had a bunch of other stuff we wanted to do so, again, we skipped the hot springs pool. Finally today we decided we had to go since it's our last day here before heading back to Boulder. We made the plan to go to the pool after we got back from the above mentioned lunch with old friends, but when we got back it was raining pretty hard. My mom wanted to go anyway. We were standing under the awning at our hotel and I said if it didn't stop raining I refused to go in the pool and she said it looked like it was about to let up. So, we went across the street to the pool and we changed and by the time we came out of the locker room there was no sign it had ever been raining. It was beautiful, and the "healing waters" were remarkably relaxing and actually did make me feel a little better, but that moment when we stepped out and the sun was shining was really terrific.

Some of my favorite little moments involve firsts, especially the first time I eat something I've never tried before. One of the great moments of my aforementioned trip to Spain last year involved my first ever taste of gazpacho. I was with a friend who didn't know me very well at the time so my stopping with the spoon half way to my mouth to enjoy the moment may have seemed a little odd to him. Tonight though, I was with my mother when I had my first bite ever of lobster. I'm not much of a shell fish eater, I've never really liked it (with the exception of crab), perhaps the distaste for shellfish is in my blood, my brother calls lobster (and shrimp) bugs of the sea. I really liked the lobster though. Not only that but just ordering it and the anticipation of eating it, and being here, on vacation with my mom (who is also one of my best friends), made me really, purely, happy.

You don't always have a camera handy, and a photograph won't always capture what makes one of the little moments in life so perfect, but I really think it's great that my friend is cataloging her efforts to capture them on film. While I don't have any pictures from this trip (yet), I think the little moments will stay with me anyway.

I still have my pride

A lot of people seem to spend time and energy trying to figure out what their "type" is. Of course I'm talking about the things they look for in a mate and everyone has some things that they are attracted to, obviously, but personally I don't put a lot of stock in the idea that I have a type. I did recently find myself exclaiming that all the cute boys in the world seem to share the same astrological sign (Leo), and I do wonder at the fairly large coincidence that all of the guys I've ever had any romantic interest in have been Leos, but they don't share much else in common.

The first guy I fell for, in the 8th grade, was very Catholic. I asked him once, in jest, if he was going to come to school with ashes on his forehead the next day (Ash Wednesday) and he said no, in all seriousness, that he was going to church after school. He was tall (6'2") and skinny with light brown hair and he was painfully shy. The only reason he started talking to me was that I called him (to tell him that I didn't like him).

The next guy that caught my eye was a total Birkenstock wearing, tree hugging, granola head, hippy. He had blond hair and blue eyes and wasn't much taller than me. He was totally confident and focused. At 17 (two years older than me) he knew exactly what he wanted to do and be. He was going to go to Western and major in Environmental Studies and then become a park ranger. And that is exactly what he did. He was the first, and really only, person (so far) that made me feel like I might have that great personality I'm always hoping people will say I have. He gave me the brush off, but as he was doing it he told me, and I couldn't help but believe him because he wasn't the type of guy who said things he didn't mean, that he really liked me and that he was sure if I just let people really get to know me that other people, other guys, would like me too.

After that there was a punk (in both attitude, style, and taste in music). He had long, dark brown hair, shaved on the sides and dyed purple (my favorite color). He had 14 earrings and one belly button ring (he pierced it himself with a safety pin by the way). He played drums and wore golf pants cut off at the knee with converse and he smoked like a chimney. Every girl that met him wanted him (no matter what she thought her type was). The fact that he even looked twice at me was enough to have me fall head over heels for him, but he could not be tied down. I suppose I should have been flattered rather than profoundly confused when he was making out with me one day and trying to fix me up with his best friend the next day (and I mean that literally, it was the next day).

I fell pretty hard for the best friend ultimately too but it took me so long to make the transition that I missed my window with him. He was on the swim team at school and had the build to prove it. He was a huge U2 fan and had the self righteous attitude to prove that (but then so was I and so did I). He was somehow simultaneously confident and self conscious. I'm afraid I might have hurt him with my indecisiveness, but I don't feel too bad about it since he humiliated me with his indecisiveness.

My senior year I went out with a guy who was two years younger than me. I don't know that I really "fell for" him though. I liked him a lot, and at the time I said I loved him, and I probably did in a way, but not in that way. He was the younger brother of a guy I'd gone out with briefly the year before. My friend and I decided to adopt him into our circle of friends, to keep an eye on him because I was still sort of friends with his brother who'd graduated the previous year. We spent a lot of time hanging out with him over the summer and by the beginning of senior year he and I were a couple. I think he really wanted to go out with one of my other friends but she was taken so he settled for me. Not my most romantic relationship but (at 6 months) it was my longest at that point.

After high school I thought I met The One (that was when I believed there was only one person, a soul mate, for every one). He was hard working and smart and funny and good. I don't know how else to put it, he was a really good guy. I knew before I even met him that he would be someone important in my life and when I did meet him I fell in love quickly (if not immediately). It wasn't so fast for him and when he finally did fall in love with me he said he didn't know how he could have been so cold in the face of such kindness. What struck him the most about me was not my big brown eyes, or my hair (which I was quite proud of at the time), or my body, or anything on the surface. He was attracted to my kind heart and I think I loved him all the more for it. He was the kind of guy that you knew would never fail at anything he set his mind to both because he had natural talent (intelligence, athleticism, etc) and because he worked so hard. You could never begrudge him the good things that came to him because you knew he deserved everything good and that it couldn't happen to a better guy.

I became very picky after that. Before I had a new crush every time I turned around. I fell in and out of love at least once a year, but now I'm looking for a whole package. You know, someone who's got looks and personality, who gets me, who I'm attracted to but also have real feeling for. The first date I went on after my one serious relationship ended was with a Jewish boy from LA and I joked that perhaps Jewish boys from LA were going to be my new type. I didn't fall for that first guy though and for the life of me I can't figure out why I didn't feel anything for him since he was smart and funny and cute, too tall but that wouldn't stop me (I don't think), maybe it was just too soon after the break up (that's what I told him).

While I didn't fall for him the joke about Jewish boys from LA becoming my new type did turn out to be kind of apt because the next guy I did really fall for (two years later) was also a Jewish boy from LA. He has a talent that sometimes makes me feel very small by comparison. He'll ask me for my opinion about things he's written and I'll just wonder why. I wonder what he thinks I have to offer. I don't write poetry or short stories. I don't know anything about them. I write fluff. I am a hack. He writes things that are complex and interesting and subtle and often funny. But rather than being discouraged by it I'm challenged. I think that is one of the things that is so attractive to me. For the first time I don't look at someone who decides they want something and goes after it and just think, damn that's hot, I finally also think, damn why don't I do that.

They are an interesting mix aren't they? You want to know what they all have in common (all but one at least). They were all born between the 21st of July and the 22nd of August. I'm generally not a big believer in astrology. I read horoscopes mostly for laughs, but I can't really ignore this level of coincidence. In truth even random guys I meet and think are cute, like the bartender at my new favorite pub, turn out to be Leos. If I did buy into astrology this fact alone might actually be pretty good evidence against its precepts since I am Taurus and I've been told by people who do follow astrology that Taurus and Leo are supposed to be one of the worst combinations in the Zodiac. But of course I don't buy into it. And I certainly don't have a type.