Falling Slowly

(right-click and open in new window to listen along as you read)

I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along

lame or not lame?

online outdoor activity groups: lame or not lame?

meetup.com hosts a variety of sports-themed online clubs that plan events and then arrange to meet up and do them.

i recently signed up for the sacramento hiking meetup group. i figured there was nothing in flat, fat stockton and i needed to venture north to get the fun i was looking for. unfortunately, i don't know my way around all the good places to go- i could research options like i've done in the past and just 'go'... but i like the idea of someone already equipped with that information passing it on to me.

so... creepy or not creepy? will i get mugged/violated/lost without help for miles? alternatively, will i have the fun i've been waiting for? is it time to stop feeling weird about online lifestyles?

dealing

i went shopping for a replacement phone tonight, hoping to come across a labour day deal. the guy at the sprint kiosk at the mall assured me he could get me a cheap phone... he's gonna check some stuff out with his friends in a day or two and call me on my home number. it feels like a drug deal. it makes me chuckle.

the life of a mysterious mobile phone dealer is probably more exciting than we know. late night rendezvous with shipyard crates and stolen product. secret workshops tweeking salvaged phones. hacking lock codes until the break of dawn...

loserville

i want to play outside.

i didn't have the brainpower to plan ahead this labor day weekend... so now it's monday afternoon... i've got my bike in the boot, cooler packed with ice and the car's got petrol... and i can't decide where to go.

andrew the nephew said he'd join me, if i 'really needed a buddy'.... but at 8 years old, he'd rather stay home and play with his cool K'NEX. they're like high tech legos. who can blame him.
...ah well.

my phone is dead so i've lost my contact list, the dog wants to come but he'll just commit suicide under my tires, ilana the genius niece is happy enough reading books all day long...

guess i should just get in the car and end up somewhere bikable.

phone dates: when distance is the evil bandit

my brain is still struggling to function- i've got a date in an hour... and it's 7am now. do i shave my legs? do i brush my hair? the answer is no. and i won't even put on clean socks. i might, however, have my breakfast.

being up early on a saturday after a late friday night will be worth having a few hours to hang out with my man. currently living on opposite sides of the planet and separated in time zones by 8 hateful hours, it's enough to keep the phone calls from coming more frequently. alas, we don't often get to talk about anything and everything all in one go.

this phone date, ideally, will happen without the pressure of time. there would be no skipping the small talk in order to jump into the important stuff because we only have a crappy 30-minute window to chat. the rest of the world will NOT be waiting for our interaction. why would it? we're on a date.

or?

or not. it's very possible we'll not have anything great to discuss and it'll be lame and we'll be like, "cool. so... you're good? yeah. i'm good. cool. so... okay. cool."

don't get me wrong. i love a good chat. but unfortunately there's nothing more dork-infesting than saying, "right, here we go. we have 3 hours. now talk!" it's a switch you have to flip to on whether you're ready or not. so hard. no room for spontaneity.

what makes things trickier, is it's not easy for me to talk about yesterday's news. once i've lived it, been traumatized by it and left it by the curbside, i don't really want to 'go there' the next day. the story is SO much better when it's fresh, don't you think?. i'd be doing an injustice to the listener by dishing out a stale story. i can guarantee that after some time has passed, it won't be accompanied by an animated voice and great details and maybe even a flood of tears or a fit of giggles.

nevertheless, if phone dates happen only once a week and you commit to only talking only about current events, well, then this morning's call is already written off for LAME. i ate cereal. it had milk in it. i blinked.

phone dates would be so much easier if you didn't have to talk all the time. i'd kill for a good tree-climbing-while-on-the-phone date. way cooler. spot a tree, get in it, climb around, drop phone, fall out. the instructions are practically stamped on your forehead.

who knows what'll happen. we may joke and laugh. it may be sweet and romantic. we may get on each other's nerves. we may play a game of online scrabble. we may talk for 40 minutes and go because we've not really taken the time to steal away from things around us. (which would tick me off, frankly.) we may have to fight the background noise and lack of privacy in either home.... we may miss out on an important word here or there... we may get frustrated and throw our phones against the wall. and when i say we, i mean me. i have this growing angst with phone calls being the supreme ruler in my relationship.

or, it may be like high school again... when i had the endurance for phone calls that lasted 5 hours at a time. crazy. remember those days?

come to think of it, i'd quite like a 5 hour phone call. there's a bit of romance tucked away in that, isn't there, girls? your man, unable to tear himself away from your presence for hours at a time. slightly sickening... but an excellent way to win secret girly devotion.

ah... look. it's nearly 8am now. do i detect a little bit of excitement...?

because blogging about it stifles the blow

ever have such a hard time keeping your cool that you get the shakes?

we're supposed to 'kill 'em with kindness'. we're supposed to smile, hope they one day will understand the grief you're experiencing (perhaps even make amends) and we're supposed to have the patience to let that one day come in its own timing.

i crawled outside that jesus-attitude box once today and wished i stayed in it. silence is better sometimes, especially if you want a letter of recommendation one day. i was kind, tactful and quiet. but i still opened my mouth.

regardless of their mature delivery, my words were more than silence. i failed in letting my actions speak for themselves.

how badly i want to put people in their place, today.

i shoulda gone ghetto

did you ever have a clear sign something was going to bomb from day one?

my phone died. my razr v3m 'all the rave' phone. it pooped.

i guess i sweated a bit too much on a run last week... brought it home, set it on the counter and it died. granted it was probably high 90's at the time- i was pretty grimy.

anyhow it's dead and sprint isn't going to replace it. i had no insurance on it and i don't have enough seniority with my plan to get a deal on a phone.

i should have seen this coming.

got a bluetooth for my birthday. the bluetooth didn't like my phone.

got a micro sd 2 gig for my phone so i could hold more music on it. coincidentally also for my birthday. it too didn't like my phone.

i have cool phone accessories sitting around, unhappy with my phone. my rude, snooty phone. it does not play well with others. it does not participate in class.

and now it's dead. i did try to revive it. i used the blowdryer on it. that didn't work, so it's currently ziplocked with a silica gel packet to suck out the condensation. it may come back to life in a month. may not.

here's to my next phone. cheap or free, it's gonna be ghetto. i shoulda gone ghetto from the beginning.

i'm facebookin'

myspace got creepy. and just as well- facebook is the better community to have. i'm still new in town, but the place is growing on me and i like it.

i once thought i valued my privacy. now, i display my life online. my personal security is on a downward spiral and i can't seem to want to stop it. what is it about having an online presence that appeals so darn much?

this video scares me, but not enough. sometimes i wonder just what exactly this foreshadowed doom-bringing 666 will be and if we're already exposed to its source... and then i think of my old myspace page. my website. my flickr account. my vimeo. my shelfari. my blogger. my yahoo messenger, my skype phone list, my many forums, my ebay, my paypal, my online banking, my saved googlemaps, my bookmarks. and now, my facebook.

we're so far gone- it's too hard to pull out. it's scary. it's unstoppable. it 'hurts so good'. a life before all this tech is unfathomable. even the most simple of us are so glad we switched from dial up to broadband. we celebrate every aspect of the advancement of our technological souls.

even tonight, i made 3 new facebook friends and it felt like an accomplishment. ... i love that i finally have friends listed in the 'regional friends' section on facebook. yay. genuine pleasure but realistically, i just linked myself to more people for the CIA to find and track me through. watch the video. you'll flip out.

these virtual communities are insane and yet, entirely addicting. is it better to stop before i'm in over my head? and what's over my head? have i reached it?

cartwheels on the brain

the bug is gone.

being ill and unable to move much, i got to watching the telly a bit... and caught the national championships for gymnastics last night. reminded me how i still "one of these days..." want to take gymnastics. yeah. grown-up me in a class with a bunch of 4 year olds learning to tumble. can you see it?

if i could change one thing about being little, i'd have had my hand at the balance beam or the uneven bars early in life, when i had less fear of breaking my face.

ah well.

belly up

aloha!

it takes a 24 hour puking bug to get me back on the blog... with a new determination (i have a feeling i've said this before) to contribute more frequently.

i don't like puking.

each time it's different- isn't that funny? you think if you puke, you puke. end of story. but some episodes are remembered to be more violent than others. some leave more exclamation points behind the eyelids. some come with a force that shouldn't be reckoned with. some make you cry like a baby. some taste like chocolate. and some, are rather wussy. all of them unwelcome, however, and i will fight each one to the death.

saturday night's was something i've not quite experienced before.

my insides were squeezed like a toothpaste tube at an uncontrollable speed. over and over and over again... super squeeze. super squeeze. super squeeze. and i couldn't quite get a breath in. i was pretty sure i was dying. or at least turning blue. i paid homage to the sink for most of the night.

wiped out and without sleep, i'm left with just enough energy to justify typing away at this blog.

i move as slowly as a brick and i'm convinced i'm wearing a concrete jumpsuit. i long for shade because the sun dries out what half-dead braincells i still own. i can't make decisions and i'm lucky if i can keep down tiny sips of water. i don't ever want to be 100 if this is what it's like.

ah, well. what's the fun in feeling well all the time?

too many options and no friends

whatever will i do this weekend?

this was the weekend i set aside for the shooting star mini adventure race. it bonked- flat disappeared out of race schedules nationwide, so no race. lodi is having a half marathon at a winery and is offering some cool perks to entering... but i held out to do bay to breakers with my dad... who decided to go to carlsbad with his brother instead... bummer.

although my more challenging weekend plans have caved in, i can always do the 5k fun run at the strawberry festival in galt, or the 5k at the chocolate festival in oakdale... both on saturday. the lazy distance and the lack of friends available tomorrow to tour the festival grounds keep me from really wanting to do either.

or.... i can jump a frog in the calaveras county fair frog jumping contest.

i'm not kidding.

if you don't have a frog, one will be provided for you.

it'd mean driving far from home. for a frog. that's weird. and no one would be there to point at me and laugh.





i bet you're dying of curiosity to know where i'll end up.