put a cap on it

I understand most common etiquette. Generally, it's a good thing, because it allows for interaction between people who might not be able to do so otherwise. It also is a means of shielding your true feelings about a situation, which I have heard lauded and denounced. I think etiquette is generally motr og a good thing a bad thing. There are some individual manners issues that I simply don't understand, though.

Two issues I have already discussed are holding the door open for others and tipping. In both of these cases the issue is that the standards for how to deal with those situations are not standard enough. Today's issue is wearing hats indoors, which is more an issue of me not knowing why it matters.

My hair has a very peculiar nature. If I get within a few feet of a hat it spontaneously gets hat head. It could take the form of a yamaka shaped ring on my head or it could take the form of an Alfalfa-type tuft of hair sticking up for the world to see. In some cases what about my hear has changed is not immediately obvious, to me at least, except that something in general just doesn't look right.

There is actually video of me at my college graduation that perfectly illustrates what I am describing. When I put my mortarboard on I knew something was not quite right, but I did not figure that it mattered. However, at some point during the ceremony there was a prayer where the men were expected to remove their mortarboards. At that moment my mom focused the camcorder on my head. There was one tuft of hair that was pointing the wrong direction and it seriously looks like I had a bald spot there in the video.

Because I am so prone to hat head, I have long avoided wearing any kind of hat. There is no use putting one on if I am going to have to take it off indoors and have everyone find out what my hair decided to look like today. Really, in the last fifteen years I have only worn hats with any frequency in two specific situations. The first was to minimize sunburn when I worked for a general contractor in high school and the second has been to keep from freezing when scraping off my car on frosty or snowy mornings.

If hats were not considered a faux pas for men to wear indoors, I might sport one more often. For example, in the winter I could wear a functional hat outside, like a tuque, and I could wear a less sweltering and more stylish hat indoors to hide the hat head, like a fedora. I know that I would be more likely to wear a cap in the summer months as well if I didn't think I was violating some social rule by wearing it indoors. As it is, I don't own any baseball caps that I am aware of because I wouldn't wear them.

I should look at the positive side of things, though. This rule in etiquette is saving me all of the money that I would otherwise be spending on caps and fedoras. Some day I really should calculate how much I would have saved by not buying hats and invest it in a company that makes head gear. If nothing else, it's would be something mildly interesting to talk about.

scrooge

Every year, much of the holiday entertainment I see focuses on the need to not be too busy over the holidays. Don't focus on being busy, but focus on what really matters. I try to do this, but I always feel that if I pushed that point too much myself that I would come across as the Scrooge. The following are examples.

Christmas Decorations: We don't really decorate much more than putting up a tree. Part of the reason for this is that the time spent setting up lights and other decorations could better be spent elsewhere. Yes, that is another way of saying that I am lazy, but I have to ask why someone would spend hours of effort (and added expense on the electric bill) on a display that will be taken down in a month.

Christmas Cards: I should preface this with the comment that do appreciate the opportunity to read what is going on in people's lives. The problem I always have is that the year-in-review letters that often come with Christmas cards are so sanitized and often focus on the things that I find less relevant. I know this is the nature of the beast, but that is why I don't care as much for this particular beast.

We actually got at least one form letter this year that violated some of the rules about what should be in a year-in-review letter. I loved it.

I don't think that we have ever done a year-in-review note, though Golden did want to at one point. I think she determined that it was too time consuming. She didn't really get any help from me on it, though, because I would prefer to leave well enough alone.

One other thing is the constant balancing of who we should and should not be sending cards to. Every year there is at least one family who sends us a card that we didn't send a card to. I know that I have heard other people also mention that they underestimated the number of cards they needed to send out. I presume this is because they realized that they needed to send cards to specific people who they did not initially think would be on their list.

Christmas Gifts: My love language is not gift giving. Gifts violate my natural sense of efficiency because the person to whom they are given knows best what they want, but what is the purpose of the gift if the recipient picks out the gift. I think that gift cards are the about the greatest thing in the world, but I get the feeling that a lot of people think that gift cards are cheating.

On an unrelated note, a relative last year gave me a gift card prominently la labeled, "Happy Kwanzaa!" I wish I had thought of that.

Seeing Family: I wish that the holiday tradition was not focused on a specific date but instead on a range of days, because that would remove a lot of the stress of the holidays. No matter what I do, we aren't seeing everyone on the day of Christmas or Thanksgiving. No one really expects that we will, I don't think, but the strain of trying to give different sides of the family holiday time can take away my holiday spirit.

I really am not the Scrooge that I sound like. I am just not as drawn to tradition as much as most people are and I happen to prefer some of holidays that come with less baggage and more entertaining movies—like Independence Day.

stealth geek

When I was in college my roommate came across an early iteration of this definition of "stealth geek." I liked it a lot, and have since sought to move from a geek to more of a stealth geek.

By definition, a stealth geek is someone who has geek tendencies, but who does not stick out as a stereotypical geek. A stealth geek has a deep appreciation for certain geeky things, but has determined that maintaining a subdued style rather than a flamboyantly geeky style is ideal. The term was initially developed as a way of labeling Fox Mulder in The X-Files. Mulder wouldn't stick out in a crowd, but when you get to know him you can pick out that he has geeky tendencies.

I think that I am still a bit weak on the stealth part of the definition. I am more stealthy now than I was five, ten, or fifteen years ago, for sure. In truth, I probably don't want to be fully stealthed anyway because the goal isn't to disguise my true self, but rather to keep from being completely defined by a subset of my interests.

In short, being stealthy here has very little to do with not being who I am. I just don't want to people's impressions of me to come from their interpretation of one subset of my true self.

painting

When we moved into our apartment eight years ago our contract provided conditions for painting the interior of the apartment. Basically, we could paint the walls any color we wanted, but they had to be white when we left the apartment. I questioned in my mind who in their right mind would paint perfectly fine white walls in an apartment that they do not even own. I did not even fully understand the point of painting rooms that I did own.

Fast forward to today. As of this past weekend, there were two rooms that we had not painted since we moved in. One is the kitchen and one is the bedroom that will be the baby's room. On Saturday we started the process of painting the baby's room. I fully understand that painting the baby's room is part of the standard process of preparing for a baby, so I am not griping that this is something we are working on. There are a few things that make me appreciate the process less, though.

First, I don't know if it is more because I am a guy or because I am colorblind, but I rarely stop and think that the appearance of a room could be improved if the color was just changed. I don't look at white walls and think this makes the decor boring, out of date, or inadequate in some other way.

Second, painting is a process. I don't feel that I can just paint in little bits of a half hour to an hour because there is setup and takedown involved. If I were to take an hour to paint, a half hour of that would probably be spent in setup and take down. This means I have to devote a block of a few hours to the task for my work to be worthwhile.

Third, little things like taping off trim and windows can take forever. I almost took as much time taping on Saturday as I did applying primer to the walls.

One thing that I do like, though, is that the process of painting is relatively straightforward. I do not go into the task without knowing what to expect like I sometimes do in other household projects. So, I don't really have that as an excuse for why I am not done yet.

sandals

When I walked into class last night I noticed something that reminded me that summer is around the corner. The room smelled like feet. The smell was not too strong and it didn't bother me, but it was unmistakable. This was due to the fact that a large percentage of the people in the room were wearing sandals or flip-flops.

For several minor reasons, I have never gotten into wearing sandals or flip-flops myself. They aren't any more comfortable to me than tennis shoes are. They are impossible to run in. There are more rules about what you should and shouldn't wear with them. They just aren't worth the effort to me. Regardless, there is no denying sandals' perennial popularity.

A lot of people appear to have different opinions about the value that sandals provide than I do. As a result I more often than not feel like the odd man out for wearing shoes rather than sandals when doing things in the summer. I don't care, because I love wearing sneakers and wearing sandals would go against my personal identity I maintain for myself. I wouldn't feel like myself to bow to the sandal-wearing consensus.

So, this summer, like every season, I intend to continue enjoying my standard footwear and let the sandal-wearers of the world enjoy theirs as well. To do otherwise would make me feel like a heel.

first and last

According to a story I read a few days ago, a recent study suggests that people are designed to place more value on others who have higher social standing than those who have lower social standing. This is one of those study results that is not exactly a shock, but it is something that I have thought about quite a bit nonetheless.

One of the main themes of Jesus' ministry was humility. He said that the last should be first. He said that we should approach Him as children. He told the disciples that the greatest among them would serve rather than rule. The Pharisees' and teachers of the law's tendency to seek positions of honor earned them some of Jesus' harshest recorded words in Matthew 23. I doubt any of this is news to anyone reading this post, though.

I don't think anyone is immune from some desire to have status. For some people it is holding some occupational position. For others, it is being seen as a good parent. For yet others, it is being known as having good taste. The question I have is at what point this becomes a problem. Is it alright to want to hold some status, be it ever so minor, or does Jesus' call to humility mean that all drive for any status should be avoided?

I think this is quite relevant because, of all that can be considered sin, this is probably the thing that is the most ignored in churches. In fact, church can be a breeding ground for this sin, as there are naturally people who want to gain status within the church structure. Since a church is a social structure, it is unavoidable that people would want to seek status, but the dangers of that drive should be acknowledged.

One thing to note is that I know there is nothing at all wrong with having a status. Someone needs to fill the roles that have a status attached to them. It is simply wrong to pursue status for the wrong reasons. I just want to know where the line is.

judgmental

This post is a confession of my judgmental attitude about some specific things. I need to note that no one who I know who reads this blog has ever triggered the attitude that I talk about here. I wouldn't post this if that were the case.

Try as I may to address this, there are a few things that I can stil be quite judgmental about. A lot of them have to do with how people spend money, so I am sure this says more about me than them. It's really none of my business how people spend their money, and I am definitely not a good judge of the frivolous, but certain key things trigger my judgment. Again, this is something that I am working on.

When I speak with someone who golfs regularly, which isn't that often, I have a hard time not thinking in the back of my mind that a cheaper and less time-consuming hobby might be a better idea. This is wrong on a couple of levels. While a serious golfer may sink several thousand dollars a year into the sport, I know that casual golfers can do so for a few hundred a year. Even if someone does spend thousands on the sport, it's his or her decision on how to spend it.

When I visit a house where the decor has a very expensive feel I make similar judgments. The interior design has to look very exquisite for me to feel this way, but when it does I do. I think about what a waste this extravagance is. I don't think about the things that I might like that are expensive.

When I see someone in a new BMW or Mercedes or similar luxury car my judgmental attitude is triggered again. I wonder who in the world would need such frill. I don't think about the fact that my Taurus would be a luxury in some areas of the world.

The reason that these specific things trigger these bad thoughts is that these are things I always mentally associated with people who were upper class when I was growing up. I don't make those judgments about people who have cable television, for example, because my family as well as many of my friends' families had cable when I was growing up. I judge golf largely because I didn't have any close friends who I knew golfed.

Regardless of my reasons, I know I need to be more careful about how I interpret other peoples' relationships with their money. Mine is the one that I should be concerned about.

purse of happiness

When I was ten my favorite TV show by far was the old Batman series with Adam West and Burt Ward. There were a lot of reasons for me to like the show, and since I was pretty young, none of them had anything to do with its satirical or ironic nature. The episodes were purposely ridiculous, but I thoroughly enjoyed every one of them in spite of the ridiculousness rather than due to the ridiculousness.One thing that I remember liking very much about Batman, and wishing that I could emulate in some practical way, was his utility belt. There wasn't anything that wasn't on that belt. I used to think it would be the coolest thing in the world to be able to have such ready access to anything I could practically need.

For a short while, I used a fanny pack so that I could have access to the stuff that I would need. I did like the fanny pack, but it never made sense to me why I was supposed to wear it with the pouch on my backside, as that made it more difficult to access the stuff that I wanted ready access to. Because of this, I shunned society's rules and wore the pouch near my stomach rather than near my butt. However, since fanny packs faded in 1992, that is about the same time I last used one.As I have gained more things to carry around, I have started to envy previous ages when men could carry bags without the perception that they were carrying purses. As my history indicates, I appreciate practicality in transporting my possessions. I would prefer to not have to use my pockets to carry a cell phone, two sets of keys, a wallet, an iPod, spare change, and whatever else I might need, but there really is not a good alternative. The male fashions to address this are all considered outdated, nerdy, effeminate, or they are generally impractical for everyday life.

This is one area in life where I actually wish I had baggage.

typical white guy

Not long ago someone at work commented that I have a very white personality. This is true to the extent that I probably don't act like I am from any other race, but I don't think that I am stereotypically white if there is such a thing. If there is a standard white way to be, and I am that way, I think I should constantly find that I think the same way as most other white people and have the same types of life experiences. I am more struck by how little this happens than by how much it happens.

Recently, I found satirical a website called Stuff White People Like^* that purports to relay to people who are not white the things that white people like so that they can benefit more from their relationships with white people. While it is a very funny website, by the standard of the site, I am not very white. This is largely because the standard for being white is apparently to be privileged, liberal, snobby, and status-conscious. People who are not rich, not liberal, or have unrefined tastes evidently don't count as white.

I have given quite a bit of thought to how much a person's ethnicity, gender, and so forth should define him or her. While stereotypes usually have to originate with a grain of truth, it does seem a bit unfair and lazy to rely on them. I want to believe that the less a person fits whatever should be the obvious stereotype for him or her, the more intelligent or self-aware that person is. In theory the idea makes sense, but in practice it is very hard to know how stereotypical anyone really is.

^* I just want to give some fair warning. As is typically the case with web-based satire, there are elements to this site that some people could find offensive. I wouldn't add a link, though, if I thought it was overly offensive.

caviar dreams

A couple of days ago an executive in our department sent a big gift basket to the people in my office. It contained a lot of the typical stuff: biscotti, cheese and crackers, summer sausage, chocolate, etc. One part of that et cetera that I did not expect was a jar of caviar.

I have made it no secret that I am not a seafood person. I will eat seafood if I have to, but when I do eat it I typically end up choking it down. If given the choice I will almost always avoid even the few types of seafood that I do not dislike.

I was faced with the question of whether I would have some caviar so that I could say I have had it, or I would avoid the seafood because I am not a fan. I resisted for a while, but reasoned that I would probably not have many chances to have free caviar in my life. After dragging my feet on the idea, I finally scraped some on a cracker and ate it. I do not know if all caviar tastes the same, but this caviar tasted exactly like what it was—salty, raw fish.

This all reminded me of a question that I have always had. Do people really like caviar, or do people just say they like it because it is a high-class food? Furthermore, is caviar considered high-class food because people with sophisticated palates enjoy it or just because it is difficult and expensive to acquire? It blows my mind that someone somewhere once decided that collecting fish eggs and selling them at exorbitant prices as food would work as a business plan. It further blows my mind that the plan actually did work. There truly is no accounting for taste.

hair bands that i like

I know a few people are going to misread that title.

For years now I have had an urge that some would probably find shameful. It's actually a bit of a surprise that I am not embarrassed about it. Maybe I will be now that I am sharing it. I have a thing for hair clips, hair bands, and scrunchies.

For some reason, I find most of the devices designed for girls' hair incredibly entertaining. Give me a banana clip and a hair band (not the 80s rock version) and I can be enthralled for hours.

I think all of this is due to my fidgety nature. I also like fidgeting with office supplies like staple removers, rubber bands, and paper clips. The difference is that few people care if I am playing with a staple remover. Some might be uncomfortable seeing me play with a scrunchy.

The reason I was thinking about this is that Golden just got a couple of new hair clips a couple of days ago, and so I expect to be busy for the next couple of days.

this halloween

Yesterday was NJ's first Halloween in a costume. Golden had picked a cow costume for him. He even had a cowbell (so, no, he didn't need more cowbell). He didn't really like wearing the costume, but he did look good in it.
I debated whether to recycle a costume to wear at work for a while. I finally decided on putting together a "royal flush" costume that consisted of a purple robe, a scepter, a crown (with a toilet handle), and a toilet seat. Generally, in judging a costume for an adult I think there are three things to consider.

1. Cleverness/Originality
2. Appearance
3. Nerdiness/Obscurity of Subject Matter

As is usually the case, I think my costume was relatively strong in originality, but was a little weaker in appearance and was a bit nerdy. Fortunately, in my office originality is more valued than appearance or avoiding nerdy subject matters.

I used spray paint to make my crown and scepter gold. I should have thought twice before doing this. I had a splitting headache all day and I am convinced it is from being in my office throughout the day with those two items.

Also, I carved a pumpkin. As should be obvious, it is a pumpkin inside a pumpkin inside a pumpkin. I though it was an original idea, but my understanding is that this was discussed last year, so it must have soaked into my subconsciousness. Regardless, this is the result.
While it was a fun enough Halloween, I am always content to have completed the holiday.

the shallow end

This past week I came across a story about a wannabe gold digger more than one news source. There is a little doubt as to whether both postings are real, but they are both believed to be likely be serious posts.

In a nutshell, a woman posted on Craig's List asking for advice on how to land a husband making $500 thousand a year, because she has only been able to date guys making in the $200 thousand range. She believes that she is beautiful and cultured enough to land a better guy, so what is she doing wrong? Someone claiming to match the woman's qualifications then responded with a biting explanation of why she may not be having much success.

If there is something I am judgmental about, it is regarding shallowness. I used to be even worse than I am right now. In case it is not already painfully obvious, I hate to see people make decisions about others' value based on looks, popularity, wealth, and anything of that nature. The problem for me, though, is where should the line be drawn.

What qualifies as shallowness? The definition that I used to follow was that shallowness is making a decision about whether I want to have a relationship (friendship or otherwise) based on something that that person either has no control over or that results from that person being fake. Now, I don't hate that definition, but I don't think it is perfect, either.

Most of the time when I hear shallowness mentioned, it is in reference to appearance, money, or social position. Are these things inherently shallow, though? For example, I used to think that plastic surgery was incredibly shallow in all circumstances. I now think that if others judge based on appearance, maybe the surgery is to address others' shallowness rather the shallowness of the person having the surgery. Or at a less extreme level, I don't think it is naturally shallow for someone to use makeup, and I think most people agree with that.

I do think that what society deems as shallow and not shallow is often inaccurate. However, I don't always have a good reason for why I think that something is shallow in comparison to something else that I do not think is shallow.

So, this is another one of those posts where I ask for reader opinions. What is shallow and what isn't shallow? Is there a line to cross or is there gray area?

white after labor day

I pick on fashion quite a bit. This post isn't really going to be any different, but I thought that I would at least acknowledge it.

If you want to wear white clothing you'd better work it into your wardrobe in the next three days. Why? Who knows? Someone somewhere decided that white should only be worn in the summer, and no one challenged it.

Don't get me wrong. It doesn't really impact me, so I barely care. I still have to wonder at the insanity of it all. Why don't women stick it to tradition en masse and wear white throughout the year? Why must they let someone else tell them what to wear? Why not let this be the winter of discontent?

fake

Last night Golden and I watched John Tucker Must Die. While I did have a tiny bit of doubt about the flick, the movie was actually as good as I expected. It is very similar to Mean Girls with the exception that the villain is a player rather than a queen bee. To be honest, I was the one who wanted to see it. This may surprise some people, but I expected this to be more of a thinker than I think most other people expected it to be. Since both Golden and I liked the movie I was not totally off base.

Both movies have one major theme that I greatly appreciate. The main character in each film enters school as a nobody and is eventually catapulted into popularity through some evil scheme to destroy someone else. In the end of both flicks the main character learns that popularity is empty if it is attained through being fake, and that it is easy to become the person that you originally hated.

I think that most people agree that being yourself is a good thing and being fake is a bad thing, but I wonder if people only think that at the extremes. Is letting fashion dictate what you wear so that you don't stick out like a sore thumb being fake? Is rooting for the home team to fit in not being yourself? Is fixing up your house or car to impress others wrong? Is changing some of your interests to match those of your social group wrong? Are the rules different if these things are done by an adult, an adolescent, or a child?

I am deeply concerned about when NJ and any siblings he may have in the future (no, Golden is not pregnant) are old enough to crave acceptance from peers. It is inevitable. God made people that way. How much leeway should I provide in letting my children express themselves, though, when they are really just expressing what is popular in their social context? I wish I knew.

So, even though it appears on the surface that I just watched another dumb teen movie, I think there is a lot to learn from what I saw. For one, I learned that John Tucker doesn't have to die just yet. He is only able to do wrong because his victims allow him through their own selfishness.

that's not news

I have heard a lot of criticisms of the news in my life. I have issued some complaints as well, justified or not. I have heard the opposing complaints that the news is too negative and that a lot of the news is fluff pieces. The natural problem is that most positive news is fluff.

In my mind, this is a big deal because people are influenced by journalists. If something or someone gets a lot of media attention, most people get the hint that this person or thing is important. If major issues are framed in a certain way in the media, people will look at those issues through that perspective, regardless as to their individual positions on the topic.

I have many times complained that celebrities' love lives should not count as news. My mom once told me that when she was growing up in a family with three girls, she did not believe anyone actually watched the sports report at the end of the nightly news. I have often made fun of what qualifies as front page news in small town newspapers, such as a story about flu vaccinations that had been offered the previous day. Should any, or perhaps all, of these count as real news?

Should there be a standard for what counts as news? If the standard is only to report those stories that impact most listeners, this will eliminate celebrity news and sports. It will also eliminate nearly all international news that is not economic.

If the standard for what counts as news is market driven, specifically what people are the most interested in, there is a real possibility that news is just whatever can garner the most provocative headline, pictures, or video. This is not something that I am comfortable with.

A final issue is objectivity. Should real news have no slant? Is there a threshold where something is mere propaganda with no news value, or can a television commercial substitute for the news?

The question I have for you all today is what should count as news. Should it be defined as what impacts the most people? Should it just be whatever the people want to hear about? Is it even possible to define? Is everything news?

for men only

About two years ago Golden read through For Women Only: The Inner Lives of Men and posted on it. The book did present some opportunities for her to understand me, so I appreciated the fact that she read through it.

After coming across the book again a few weeks ago I started wondering if there was a For Men Only companion. When I found that the men's version existed (and still exists) I ordered it. I wanted Golden to get the benefits that I got from her book. Plus, I was curious what this new book had to say.

I already knew quite a bit of what I read, but there were things I didn't. Here are some things I did not already know.

• If a wife is acting like she is trying to drive her husband away, she is probably trying to get him to reassure her of his love. Golden has not ever done this to me, so I have not had to give this too much thought. I would never have figured it out on my own if Golden did do this, though.
• Many women have issues pop up in their minds like computer windows that they cannot easily close. There are often many more windows than just one open. Even if I can put something out of my mind, that does not mean that Golden can. I actually kind of knew this, but it was described in better detail in the book than I understood.
• Emotional security is more important than financial security to most women and most women will tolerate financial turmoil to get emotional security.
• The scenario I described last January about a husband trying to solve his wife's problems was slightly lacking. I did not mention that what Jane needed out of the conversation was for John to validate the emotions that she was feeling. I did not mention this because this is something else I learned from this book, so I was clueless in January.
• "Does this dress look good enough for the party," usually has nothing to do with being properly dressed for the party.

Probably some of this seems obvious. It wasn't to me.

There are a lot of things in For Men Only that I already knew when I read the book, but that I did not know seven years ago when Golden and I married. As a result, I think that For Men Only and For Women Only are probably good wedding gifts, if only so husbands and wives don't have to learn everything about each other the hard way.

oh my pod

I've gone over to the dark side. Well, at least the shiny silver side.

For my birthday, Golden let me order an iPod Nano. It hasn't arrived yet, but I have spent a lot of time the past couple of days setting up iTunes so that I will be able to get use out of it as soon as I get it. I've subscribed to several podcasts already, downloaded a book on MP3, and imported most of my CDs into iTunes.

For the longest time I have resisted getting an iPod, for largely the same reasons I don't typically go to Starbucks. They are stylish, which isn't really my thing. They are expensive, which makes me think twice. The iPod will chain me for life to iTunes (I guess Starbucks doesn't do this). On the flip side, iPods are also the ubiquitous portable music players, and there is a wide variety of available accessories for them.

It actually feels a little weird getting an Apple product since I have been and am very much a PC kind of guy. In the recent Mac commercials I can associate myself much more with character that represents the PC than with the character that represents the Mac ("I hope he got me a C++ GUI programming guide"). Just because I am getting one device from Apple doesn't mean I am converting to being a Mac user, though. iRefuse.

sore thumb

My general goal for maintaining our property isn't for it to look spectacular. It is just to not be the worst looking property in the neighborhood. I don't want to stick out like a sore thumb.

For example, with all the rain that we have had every house in my general neighborhood has been mowed recently with one exception. One house about two blocks from mine has grass that is probably eight or ten inches high. Since pretty much everyone else in the area mowed this past weekend, that yard looks hilariously out of place. I don't want to be the owner of that house.

As another example, one of our next door neighbors rents out his house. The last tenant just left a couple of weeks ago. Apparently that tenant did not tell her landlord that she got a letter stating that garbage is only picked up once a week now. There has been a large yellow garbage bag out by the curb since Sunday. It isn't an eyesore, but it is like a big flashing sign to the rest of the neighborhood that says, "I have no idea when garbage pickup is." I don't want to be the owner of that house.

After thinking this through, though, I might have a change of heart. I think I wouldn't mind ignoring the lawn and putting the garbage out whenever it is convenient for me. If I can just get past the embarrassment of having the most mismanaged property in the area, I could be even more lazy. Maybe it's worth letting my house look like that after all.

gray shirts

Most people who know me well know I like being casual. Few things are more enjoyable than kicking back in jeans and a cotton t-shirt. One thing that I have noticed, though, is that I am somehow drawn specifically to gray t-shirts.

It could be that I just like the color gray. When mixed with a black, especially, gray can be very appealing. It could also be that I don't have to worry about gray clashing with most things. Another possibility is that I psychologically associate gray t-shirts as the most comfortable because I have had a lot of comfy cotton tees that were gray.

At any given time I have one or two t-shirts that I will more often than not grab on a Saturday to wear around the house when I don't have anything important to do. The majority of these have been gray (though a few blue and orange ones have been in the mix).

At some inevitable point I determine that either the shirt is too threadworn or the shirt has shrunk too much to be very comfortable and I move to a new favorite gray shirt. So, I buy a shirt one size larger and the circle of life starts anew.