Glass half full

If I was a melancholy individual I would see a glass of water as pre-tears. Tears waiting to be. Or tears that have been already been done. Seeing myself as crying tears that have been cried before, by sadder individuals. The tears then are borrowed. Traded. Traffific by those who rate reasons for tears as more sad than others. More desperate. More hurt, therefore more worthy of the limited supply of tears.

But I am not a melancholy individual. That was pretend.

6 word memoir of the day

The six word memoir is a thing I was introduced to by a classmate in Paris this summer. She writes one every day.

I will write one for today.

My mittens aren't lost any more.

Improv comedy haiku

Improv show the night of the game
Chips and salsa. Ha-has.
Cheese heads, Vikings
Fajitas were the winners

1/3/13

First Friday night of 2013! Woo!

That's all I got.

Crowdsourced Muse

What musings would you all like to hear today?

.....

Anyone?

Seriously, I'm asking. I've noticed on Facebook that people do a lot of crowdsourcing. You know, the whole " I am thinking of getting a vaccum, which one is best?" or "Does anyone remember the name of the film in the late 1980's that starred Dolly Parton as a radio host?" (That movie is Straight Talk and don't you forget it.)

But then there is the lazy type of crowdsourcing like "Hmm..theology, what do you guys think about it, please include a bibliography." for those that are cleary justifiying thier time on Facebook as research for their midterm.

There's also "Wow, two workouts in 8 hours for the third day in a row, I just can't keep myself away! Who am I? How often do you guys work out?" This poster really does not want a list of how often their FB friends workout. (And if they did, that would be super creepy.) The motives behind this poster are about showing off and knowing that they are working out more than other people. 

I've tried the Facebook "ask the world post" twice. The first time, no one responded, leading me to comment on my own post "Don't all speak at once." (That's not really want I wrote, I wrote something along the lines of "well that worked" but the subtext is the same.)

The second time, I did some recommendation gathering on plays to read with specific elements. It was fun to get responses from folks I don't normally interact with (Then why are we Facebook friends?) but I felt like I was cheating by not doing the research gathering myself.

I guess my feeling is sometimes with these posts is, as they get more frequent it seems like if you ask the internet you are supposed to just get it. Whatever it is: a good restaurant, a job, a date, a title for a book. Like as long as you ask the responsiblity to do it yourself has been lifted and now the responsibility is on the seven Sarahs and fifteen Jeffs you know on Facebook.

So I am going to to try crowdsourcing right now! What do you, reader of Culture of Doing Things, want to hear more about on the blog?

6:30 Club

I heading out at an earlier time than normal.

It's dark out and also cold. I was excited to wear all of my layers of warm clothes until I remembered my job's new building is super warm.

So it's just me with what I call the 6:30Club.

The 6:30 club is the selection of folks in my neighborhood who leave at 6:30am to go to work. In my previous job, I left work work every day at 6:30 am. Usually, it's pretty routine and alone, though you can see a few others walking their dogs or heading out to work as well, this is not the 6:30 Club. The 6:30 Club only meets in the winter months. You can see when the meeting convenes by the sound of multiple people starting their cars, then getting out and scraping the ice of off their windshields. We don't talk to each other, we don't know each other but we all know that the ice must come off the windows. If you observe closely, you can see each individual rationalize at what point is 'enough' ice removed from the car, knowing that the defroster will eventually be able to melt the ice.

I am not quite early enough to see the 6:30 Club, but I will be joining the 7:05 Club. Usually, I get to be a part of the 8:44 Club, which is a great club because the sun is up so even if I have to scrape my windows, it's not in the dark and the odds of the sun helping melt the ice have increased. So the 8:44 Club isn't even a club, we don't need each other. Not in the way that the 6:30 Club needs each other because knowing that you are not alone in the dark, negative single digits of the morning helps you get up to exist in the dark negative single digits of the morning.

January 1, 2013

January 1, 2013.

I wrote a check today, which is only remarkable because of the rarity in which checks are written. (Did you notice that sentence had the word 'which' in it twice? Is that ok?).

I write rent checks so that's 12 checks a year. It seems that this time of year, we always start saying things like "better start practicing [new year number] or "just a few more days to write [current year.]"

There's something to that. Is like an addtional small talk item that we only can use in a very small window of the year. We get to talk about the weather all the time but we can only talk about the year the first and last days of the year and maybe if you stretch if a day or two before and after.

But why should this wonderful conversation starter be limited so? Why can't I use it all the time? I think I will, modified of course like in April I can say 'Fifteenth time I've written 2013 on a check' (obviously that is assuming I have secured 15 items or services that I paid with checks for, if not I will substitute the correct number for 15. I am just using 15 as an example here. I clarify this because earlier in this post I stated that I write 12 checks a year at least for rent and by April I would have written 3 rent checks, because I wrote my January one in 2012.)

So that's a whole thing.

Happy 2013!