R is for Retro

On Sunday afternoon, I wanted to get a little exercise, but it was too cold outside. What other option did I have? Pull out the good ole DDR pad and get busy! I was remembering some of those great college days of arrow stamping, smelly footed joy. For those of you who don’t know. I sadly do have some DDR skills. Running through a series of songs on heavy, followed by push-ups and crunches is a decent workout.

After my rousing DDR session, I found myself even more nostalgic for those long lost college fads. I therefore decided to do some target shooting with my air soft gun and even played some Super Monkey Ball. After rocking the beginner stages, I headed straight for Monkey Target to land on that small yellow beacon in the middle of the water. What a wonderful time! Thank you college me for your silly, fun-junkie, finely honed skills.

Que?

I’ve spent the last few days occasionally thinking about what I wanted to write for my Q post. There are a number of words that start with the letter Q, but I couldn’t manage to fit a Q word to any of the events of my life over the past week. In fact, nothing very interesting happened to me over the past week. I did have the opportunity to be an expert witness for questioning in a bankruptcy court. However, that ended up not being a significant event as I drove all the way to Wilmington, DE to find out the judge approved our motion outside of court, and I turned around and drove back immediately.

I considered writing about the humorously boring evening that Keith and I spent walking around Best Buy talking geeky tech talk. I kid you not, it declined to serious discussion on the type of washing machines and refrigerators we might one day purchase. But then my thoughts trended toward the letter Q itself, and how peculiar it is. Liz and I occasionally play the alphabet game on our trips together. Though she normally dominates me, the key to victory is finding the Q. It is all down hill from there. It’s hard to find words with Q because I honestly think the letter is not all that important. Are there any words with the letter Q that couldn’t ultimately have the Q replaced by a C or K? It would make some words look a little funny, because we are familiar with the Q, but I believe it would work. At the same time, other languages rely on the Q a bit more that we do. I think the French might struggle to erase the letter from there language. “Ku’est-ce kue tu dis” just doesn’t work the same.

That concludes my thoughts for the day.

Merci pour la lecture

P is for Pompous

Do you have conversations from deep in your past that you wish you could go back and change? Sure people have regrets and wish they could do things differently in retrospect, but I’m talking about something a little different. Just a brief conversation where your words got away from you, and though you realize it soon afterward, it is too late to bring it up again and apologize to that person. This happens occasionally to me, but normally after a couple days I forget about it. However, there are a few of these moments that have stayed with me for significant periods of time. I have decided my blog is a good forum to at last apologize and hopefully move on.

Item 1: Bowling manager Kevin.

This is just so silly, but when I was 15ish I walked into the bowling alley wearing a Colorado Avalanche jersey. Kevin made a simple joke exclaiming “Avalanche! Man, I used to like you.” I had to come back with something, and though I should have pursued something about the strength of my team or the weakness of his, I blurted out “well I never liked you!” He was on his way out the door and paused for a moment at the peculiarity of my response, and then continued on his way. He probably forgot about it 2 mins later, but I felt like a jerk. It was a crappy joke that was borderline mean. Kevin, I’m sorry for my stupid response. You were an alright guy and my statement was untrue.

Item 2: Keith

You read by blog which makes this a little more personal than the last item. There is very little chance of this ever coming up in conversation, so this is a good opportunity. When we had our last young life bible study (campaigners) of senior year, we took some time for everyone in the room to say some good things about the graduating seniors. When it came around to your turn, I was struggling to come up with the right thing to say on the spot in a group setting. There are a multitude of things that I appreciate about our friendship, and much more importantly, about you as a person. I failed to say anything along those lines, but instead said some crap about my appreciation for how much you cared for me and being instrumental in me becoming a Christian.

Not only did I make your moment about me, I also accidentally insinuated that the thing I appreciated most about you was how you cared for me. How terrible is that? I’m sorry buddy. Furthermore, I often joke about how much I look forward to the wedding that you will someday have. Planning your bachelor party, giving a speech, etc. First, I shouldn’t put that kind of pressure on you. Though it would be an incredible honor to be your best man, you have brothers and many other close people in your life. I am saying this to you now to avoid an awkwardly bad moment whenever you announce your engagement. Second, every time I make one of these jokes, I always secretly think about that moment at our last bible study. I think to myself “he would never want me to give a speech about him. He saw the train wreck that ensued the last time I tried to talk about him in front of a group.”

Item 3: Aunt Linda

This one is a little more recent. A couple months ago, Liz’s family was gathered for an event (don’t remember which one). The Gibson’s brought their newly acquired Rock Band for the family to enjoy. We all had a wonderful time, and I must say, I was quite impressed with some of the playing and vocal talent. Especially Aaron singing “Roxanne” on expert. I didn’t think he could pull it off, but was pleasantly surprised. Well done dude. Some time after we finished playing and were getting some refreshments, Aunt Linda kindly complemented my singing ability. The appropriate and reasonable response to someone complementing you is of course “thank you.” Perhaps even a “how nice of you to notice.” Either way, accept the complement and move on. I chose a much different and horrible approach. Despite human decency, I used her complement to segue into a list of my notable musical achievements. You can just picture the terrible situation.

Aunt Linda: “Zack, you have a very nice signing voice, I enjoyed listening to you”
Me in an overly obnoxious voice: “oh you didn’t know I was a good singer? Why when I was in high school, bla bla bla bla bla. Then in college I blobbity bla and even bla bla bla…. Me, myself, and I bla bla bla…. Meeeeee!

That’s right, I was a “Me Monster.” What a pompous douche! I can’t believe I did that. When I realized the horribleness of my response later that evening, it was too late. I can only imagine the thoughts she and the other people at the table had after I left. I would in no way be surprised if my stupidity in that moment altered her family’s viewpoint of me. Aunt Linda, I apologize for my foolishness. I hope you don’t think less of me.

I am certain there are more cases such as this that didn’t come to mind while typing this post. To all: I am sorry for the dumb things I have said in the past. As you can tell from the above items, I am not an eloquent speaker. I hope that you will forgive me and we can move forward with sound relationships.

Thank you for reading.

O is for OPEC??

Can you believe I am actually writing a blog post about OPEC? Me neither. To be honest, my first thought after reading this request was “what is OPEC again?” I admit I have heard the acronym, but had to double check exactly what it stood for. I thought that I would study up on the subject and write a very educated position paper, but after reading just the wikipedia page, I was ready to tap out.

OPEC of course stands for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. This group of 12 countries gathers from time to time for the goal of safeguarding their own interest of the exportation of oil. They discuss economic conditions to set proper competitive prices that best protect the economic needs and goals of their country. As you can undoubtedly surmise, this is one international organization that the US is not a part of. Though we do export a small amount of oil to Mexico, Canada, and some other countries, we wouldn’t dream of exporting enough to be a part of this group since we need to hoard most of it for ourselves.

I do understand the goal of OPEC and if they are indeed seeking the best interest for all the exporting countries as well as the global economy, than it is a good thing. However, one organization setting oil prices with the primary goal of protecting the oil producers is a very scary thing. That is why many people are against the existence of the OPEC leading to many conspiracy theories and criticism of their actions.

I do not know enough detail to formulate my own opinion about whether or not this organization should be in existence. I do think it is fairly interesting topic for discussion. What is your opinion?

N is for Nonsense

I spend an unreasonable amount of time in my life drifting off into long trains of meaningless thought. About what I am doing later today, or where I’m going in life, or things going on around me. I’m sure many other people do the same. You can tell when a person makes some crazy off the wall comment that fits right into the conversation from their point of view. I decided my blog needed a little more nonsense and therefore thought to type out one of these useless strings of tangents that I claim to be a thought process. It reminds me of a scene from The Weatherman where Nick Cage is tasked to pick up some tartar sauce. Ah, what a humorous scene.

 Nick Cage was awesome when he was carrying that bow around the city
 I should get into archery
 I did just find that old bow, but where would I shoot it
 Can you target shoot at a public park?
 Probably not, but what are they going to do? Will the park police approach me with their flashlights while I’m holding a freaking bow and arrow
 Shooting in my back yard would be a bad decision, too much room for error
 I need a bigger back yard
 We should buy a house
 But then we are stuck in central PA for the indefinite future
 We should move, but where?
 I like my job, I shouldn’t leave it
 Is a good job worth staying in an area you don’t want to live?
 I want to live in Colorado, but that wouldn’t go over well with the family
 Whenever I do move, we need to have some space
 Then I would need and lawn mower and a bunch of tools
 I want to get back into forging
 Wherever we move, I need to have a work shop for my forge
 I could make some sweet swords and other items for around the house
 I should ask for an anvil for Christmas
 That would cost like $500
 But that’s all I need, an anvil and a big bag of coal
 I was in great shape last time I was forging steel
 I need to get back in shape, I should go for a run later
 I really dislike working out
 I should get a good cheeseburger instead
 But then I’ll just get fatter
 When we move to Colorado, I’m going to buy a nice roadbike
 I wish I went on the motorcycle trip
 We’ll go next year, but we already have so much planned
 I need to schedule vacation time
 I really should get back to work

M is for Melancholy

I have lost my happiness
And I do not care to go searching
Though I remember how good it was to have
I would rather sit here and sulk

Even if I wanted to go looking
Where would I begin
It is best to retrace my steps
But I doubt that would be effective

Did I lose it when I wasn’t feeling well
Or when you were mad at me
Maybe while visiting a stressed family
Or when my dreams felt crushed

I know it was dropped somewhere in there
But there’s just too many places it could be
For now I’ll ignore it and sit here forlorn
I’m certain it will turn up again someday

L is for Lacking

Keith and I traveled the long journey to King of Prussia on Friday for the premier of Boondock Saints 2. Despite some minor challenges of detours and meeting up with friends, we had a great time. We arrived at the theater nearly an hour early which was convenient because we were able to get into the theater 40 mins early. We got the best seats by my opinion and we watched as the people slowly filled up the theater beyond capacity. Not only were most of the seats filled, people were actually sitting on the floor in the front and 10-15 were standing at the entrance for the entire movie. Crazy right? But I would have done the same.

If you have not seen Boondock Saints, then shame on you. Get thee to a movie store and prepare for an awesome movie. I am not going to speak to the details about the sequel since most of you have not seen it, and there is a slim chance you may someday. Ultimately I would rate it as a 6 on a scale from 1 – 10 with 10 being Boondock Saints. At first I thought I really liked it, aside from 2-3 scenes that should have been done another way. But after some discussion with the others that joined us, I came to dislike the movie more and more. The intensity of the first movie was lost and some of the characters just seem to be trying too hard to be funny. Especially the 2 characters that were made to replace lost characters from the 1st movie. I greatly appreciate the comical aspect of the first movie that existed amongst the intensity, but some of the action scenes of the second movie were made to be too fun and humorous. They were but a step away from throwing up a big “BANG!” after a gun shot like the old Batman tv show. I have already heard talk of a 3rd movie, but am even more concerned than I was with the 2nd. If you are a Boondock Saints fan, then you absolutely need to see the sequel. But don’t get your hopes up too much, nothing will ever match the fantastic glory that is Boondock Saints.

Beside the movie, we had a wonderful trip. I always enjoy a solid piece of time to have deep conversation with Keith. I also got to hang out with Pat Brown and some of their friends from West Chester that I’ve met a few times. We went out after the movie and had a wonderful time catching up. We also met up with one of my old friends from Lock Haven that I haven’t seen in a couple years. Great trip and relatively decent movie. I believe one of the local theaters in my area is going to pick up Boondock Saints 2, but I in no way regret catching the movie on the day it premiered with some good friends.

Thanks for reading.