Category: Point of Order

I Made My Goal: Have You Made Yours?

BobbieLeave a comment

Donate here: http://action.lungusa.org/site/TR/RunWalk/ALAMP_Mountain_Pacific?px=4415558&pg=personal&fr_id=2590

Yes, my individual goal was $500, and yes, I’m currently above $900. This has been due to the amazing awesomeness of those who have donated. One generous lady in particular, in honor of her father, is having the Budweiser logo tattooed on my bicep. I may just put one on each side, that’s how awesome her story was.

This is a gentle reminder, along with the tax man and the Rides of March, that donations are tax-deductible. So if you’re looking at your return for 2010 and saying, hmm… I could totally have used a break: consider donating.

In other news, I have purchased running shoes, I’m getting better at the PT, and I definitely have osteoarthritis in my knees. This is not surgery-requiring, merely some shots and some life changes. I am to lose 20 pounds. Since I found out I have lost two.

Plus One To Self Worth

Bobbie2 Comments

In Dungeons and Dragons (yes, I used to play D&D, get over it) the very first thing you do, once your DM has declared the arena in which you are playing (or RIFTS — we did that too), is you wrote up your Character Sheet. Inevitably a piece of Xeroxed paper, it had check boxes and blank spaces for you to detail your character’s physical appearance, social abilities, physical, mental, and emotional abilities/proclivities, as well as a back story. It was not uncommon for everyone’s character to be a fantastically good-looking crack-shot nuclear physicist and ace-pro lover, ala Buckaroo Banzai, but there would be the “fatal flaw” they’d introduce in their character: you know, to remain interesting.

Life doesn’t hand you a character sheet. You are given the looks you inherit genetically, you are alloted the IQ points that amass themselves in your grey matter. Your character, however, is something you can develop and change. (Yes, you can “train your brain”. Yes, you can use surgery to enhance your physical appearance. But really, your character is something both easier and harder to manipulate, and it’s what we’re discussing here, so let’s ignore the caveats and nota benes, shall we?)

One of the best speeches in recent movie history was in The American President, where Michael Douglas’ president makes the statement that a the upcoming presidential race would be *entirely* about character. Any race: presidential, rat, or otherwise, is about character.

I’ve spent some time evaluating the things about myself I don’t like: I send emails too quickly, I take things to heart too easily, I spend too much time worrying about others opinions, I continue to not have the discipline to have the physique I’d like. Some of these are correctable via self-direction, some of these I will have to run into a brick wall or two in order to acquire the necessary mental note. Others seem doomed to compromise: my weight being one of them. 

I’ve known a few people who have taken stock of their life completely, and turned it around in a fashion amazing to those who knew them well and those who knew them casually. One good friend lost nearly a hundred pounds,  got divorced, acquired all sorts of new hobbies (including running, triathlons, and barhopping); another lost a significant amount of weight (she is not telling, nor should she), stayed married, took control over her education and career and is literally living the dream in Hawaii. Some friends have made changes not so sweeping: leaving an unsatisfying job, taking on new hobbies, reinvesting in their health; I think part of the human condition is to self-evaluate and, for some of us, to target improvements.

I have no idea how much of this is driven by the checklist mentality or the presumptive dopamine rush that comes from living this way. I do know that I have a few things I’d like to change, and maybe if I’m open and outward about them, and write them down, and profess them, if not in a character sheet with 8 or 12 friends and a 20-sided dice but in a blog with 8 or 12 readers and a 20-sided life, maybe then, I can upgrade my character.

New Beginnings

Bobbie1 Comment

There are a *lot* of changes I have on the horizon this year, most of which I’m not going to go in to. This is good project management from a “managing up” perspective: if I don’t tell you exactly what I’m planning, you can’t snipe at me that I didn’t quite do what I said I was going to do when I change my way halfway through the year based on the newer data. But trust me, when we get to the end of the year, you’re totally going to be amazed at all of the changes.

Seriously, I don’t do that in my work life. In my work life, I typically have the goal-promising restraint of say, Superman, and the social skills of say, Batman, and the subtlety of say, the Thing. I have no idea if they all belong to DC comics or Marvel or if I’ve mixed superheroes who oughtn’t. That’s your job, I’m just metamorphizing here.

At any rate, many things planned! Many goals to achieve! They are not resolutions, though, because that would be stifling. One of them includes increased fitness and banishment of the three (3) lbs gained over the holidays. Please note I am not blaming my mother. This is not just because she reads my blog; this is because the actual weight gain was realized *after* Christmas and I can only assume we lay the blame squarely at Top Pot’s door. However, please do note that I was attending my gym spin classes 2x-3x per week and Group Cyntergy the other day of the week (so that’s 3-4 times per week, got me, kiddo?) that I was going regularly pre-Christmas.

Oh My Goodness, the Resoluters are in. Spin Class (Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday) and Group Cardio (weightlifting) Monday, and the Pool yesterday? All completely packed. The parking lot? Packed. The gym is full of Resoluters, and the office has a waiting group of people eager to sign over what amounts to four figures per year to attend. I do not blame them, I do the same thing. But I’ve been doing it longer, and somehow that entitles me to all of the self-satisfied snobbery a person can develop. I don’t mind Resoluters, per se. I mind that they all come at ONCE.

If you think about it, New Years Day is an abstract day. There is no logical reason (with exception of the break between December and January as provided by the Romans, who by the way went from 10 months to 12 by shoving in 2 more months (one for Julius and one for Augustus Caesars, guess which months those are?)). Most Asian cultures celebrate a different day for New Year, as did the Mayans and Aztecs. The fact that we choose Jan 1 is completely arbitrary; to my way of thinking we would be better off to choose December 21 or March 21 or June 21 or September 21 (and if you want to know why look up “solstice” and “equinox” — although to my way of thinking Dec 21 makes the most sense). However, I am not yet the Dictator and I do not get to choose, so stuck with January 1 am I.

It would be ever so much nicer, though, if we took the extra — call it 100? 200? — people who come in for the New Year, throughout the year. My spin class would go from say, 10-12 in December to 12-14 in January to 14-16 in February, etc. Not from 10-12 in December to 30-32 in January. That causes consternation, awkward bike positioning, and massive delays while we have the instructor take time to set up all the newbies properly on their bikes. Tuesday’s class started 10 minutes late courtesy of the new folks. Again, wouldn’t mind so much if they came early. Or spaced themselves out. But please, not all at once. I give it four more weeks before the real bleed off happens (I hope).

I am totally caffeinated by the way, and we will blame my new CoHort at work. His floor has no shiny coffee maker and so there is no decaf to be had.

Holiday

Bobbie1 Comment

I am, perhaps regrettably to others, without the ability to take some things on faith. That is to say, I have faith in science. I have faith in the abilities of my brain. I have faith in the abilities of my son’s brain. I have faith that the sun will rise (and I equally have faith that I will not see it, for I live in Washington and here there is a permanent cloud layer from October to April).  “Faith” is defined in Merriam-Webster several ways, including: 1. allegiance or fidelity to a person or duty, 2. belief in God or religious doctrines/a firm belief in something in which there is no proof, and 3. something believed with an especially strong conviction.

So this post, then, is about that #2: firm belief in something in which there is no proof/belief in God/religious doctrines. Like most “simple” words (note: there are more definitions for small, “simple” words like “set” than there are for long, obnoxious ones like “onomatopoeia”. Check it out for yourself) this requires checking into what “proof” means, and that is defined in the MW as “the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact b : the process or an instance of establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning”. Well that certainly clears things up.

What I am writing here is that I am devoid of the ability to believe in something that does not have a solid foundation of evidence or has not gone through a process to establish its validity. I believe the sun will rise tomorrow because it’s been doing it on this planet for some 5 billion years and I believe the science and the methods used to determine that. This does not mean that if Aliens blow up the Sun tonight I will have been wrong — that’s what’s called introducing new data and would require a new scientific review. Unfortunately, a small side effect of Aliens blowing up the Sun is we’d all kinda be dead.

I digress (always).

What I’m getting to is Why Then Does Bobbie Celebrate Christmas? (Bobbie, it should be noted, celebrates the following holidays in some form or fashion: New Years’, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Bobbie will gladly participate in your celebration of Hanukkah, Solstice, etc. Bobbie thankfully takes the day off presented at Presidents Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, and really and truly does reserve a moment of those days to thank those nameless (and named) who have served and sacrificed.  Bobbie does not acknowledge the existence of Valentines Day).

So if I have no faith, why celebrate a holiday *built on faith*. The very idea of it is a prophecy culminated in the birth  of a child to newlywed yet somehow chaste parents, and that child grew to be Jesus Christ, and he was nailed to a cross for living in what amounted to a non-free-speech state, and he purportedly rose 3 days later and thereby proved his status as the son of God (and also God and also the Holy Ghost). Schizophrenia jokes aside, this is not what I celebrate when I celebrate Christmas. I could start by pointing out the new spring lambs referenced in the Bible probably had no business being around December 25th at the time of birth and it’s far more likely he was born in Spring, but that would have messed up with that whole Catholic-Church-Taking-Other-Peoples-Holidays-For-Easier-Assimilation thing. I could also point out that the Romans kept meticulous tax records (our IRS has nothing on them from what I understand) and yet there is no Jesus or Yeshua etc. in the areas he was supposed to be at that time. Perhaps he was also got for tax evasion? At any rate, no I do not celebrate that Christmas. You are absolutely, totally, and completely welcome to. I personally like the way Churches get all dolled up for the occasion and actually liked going when I did.

I celebrate the one with Santa Claus. And Reindeer. And getting a large tree (fake or real, your choice) got up in the gaudiness apropos to a 1970’s disco dancer. I celebrate the making *and burning, occasionally* of cookies, of lax gym use, of exchanged fruitcakes and dubious stocking stuffers. I celebrate the silliness of a jogger in her Santa hat and sleigh bells on her shoes (hi, Christine!), of family photos posted in seriously cute sweaters, of Norskie brunches (hi, Mindi!) and a plethora of baked goods coming in to the office and into homes (hi, Jim!). I celebrate the lights people decorate their houses with, of two weeks off of school, and the casual observations of frenetic shoppers. I celebrate the adventures of new families (and growing families) as they navigate the season, baking and prepping for days of delicacies and fun (hi, Ali!). I celebrate your best friend calling to inquire if she can in fact get the missle-firing droid robot with extra death-kill stuff for your son, because she spoils him every year (hi, Candie!). I celebrate folks who have the sanity to leave and celebrate it somewhere else (hi, Cindi!) and folks who are willing to celebrate even though they swore, they absolutely swore, they would never do it again (hi Jeff!). I celebrate a time where you can ask your coworkers, family and friends to donate money or toys or food to complete strangers, and even if they have already done it, this season, they will do it again (hi, Expedia Stairing is Caring team, and your $3000+ raised for kids!!).

Most of all, though, I celebrate a time of year where it is *expected*, almost demanded, that you are a better person. This is the time of year that you at least have to pretend to be nice, to care about your fellow man, to do the Right Thing. You may do it all year round — or you may do it this once, as a sort of Red and Green Yom Kippur. But you do it, because it is What Is Done. For about two weeks every year, people, for the most part, are Who They Should Be. They may be crowded in elevators but they’re smiling, they may be racing through Target but they’re making way for others, they may be frustrated in the baking aisle but offering recipe tips.

I celebrate that. And maybe *that* is what others celebrate, and maybe not. What do you celebrate?