Code Monkey Happy Ninja Banana Surprise!

I’m motivated to write this because frankly, I’m running into too much fear lately. I’m running into so many questioning, non-understanding faces that it’s ridiculous. And it frustrates me, because I want to shake so many people and say “LISTEN, just LIVE your freakin’ life!” Seriously.

But first, let me tell you how my sister and I got the Mary Poppins show canceled last Saturday.

We did. I can tell you how. Drum roll please…. O’Neal’s Law™ strikes again!! YAY! Yippeee! WoooooHOOOOOO!! For those unfamiliar with O’Neal’s Law™, let me state again: Murphy’s Law says “what can go wrong, will”. Neato. BOOORRRRRINNNGGG. O’Neal’s Law™ says “what can go wrong, will, but will go wrong in a very spectacular, quite possibly dramatic, and in the very least, entertaining fashion. Also, whatever has go wrong, will go wrong specifically because everything else was going oh-so-gloriously.”

There. Now you know. For instance, Murphy’s Law™ would have your car break down in the middle of the night, when you’re only 30 minutes from your sister’s house in Nashville. O’Neal’s Law™ has the car break down as you’re driving 55mph at 2am around a curve at the top of a small mountain pass with only a concrete wall and a grassy area ahead of you and because the car is completely electric you have no brakes, no steering, and no lights. And your sister is out of town, somewhere in Georgia. And your cell phone just died.

See? Two totally different cases of experience.

Supercalifragilisticexpi – - STOP PLEASE. STOP PLEASE.

So my sister came up for my birthday weekend and she took me to see Dave Brubeck who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of a most awesome tune called Take Five and also the album it was recorded for and that was super cool. Dude is old. Dude can play. I also had lots o’ beer at my favorite place, and then proceeded to have conversations with my sister I don’t remember. But she was laughing the next day, so I guess they were fun.

Saturday was The Perfect Chicago Day™. Low 80s, breeze off the lake, clear blue sky, holy cow I live for this. And we had an awesome day. Went to a couple cafes, went shopping, went for a tandem ride. Evelyn is still alive, thankyouverymuch.

And then I decided to surprise my sister with tickets to see Mary Poppins. And I was going to do it right. I was going to get floor seats, the good kind, not the ones behind the speaker/rope/technician/curtain. No, no, real. Frackin’. Good. Seats. How good? Ninth row, center section, aisle good. Awesome. Evelyn was stoked, super excited, and “chiding” me because it was MY birthday weekend. Whatever. She’s my sister, she’s my LITTLE sister, and dangit, I gotta do stuff like that for her. Done.

We go to see the show. It is still beautiful out.

The show starts, and it is awesome. The singing is good, the set creative in its transitions and there ya go. We see/hear/enjoy two songs and then the third one starts and Bert is singing, painting in the park and then some lady all in black steps from stage left and says “STOP. STOP PLEASE.”

Curtain down. House lights up. Ms. Announcer Voice™ saying “We apologize to you for the interruption, but we are having technical difficulties and will resume as soon as this is fixed. Again, apologies for the interruption.”

20 minutes go by. And I realize, O’Neal’s Law™ has just struck me down. In fact, I’m SO sure that O’Neal’s Law™ is striking that I make a bet with Ev, for $1.00, that the show will be canceled. Evelyn immediately realizes that this is unfair, she’s just lost a bet, but I force her to shake my hand anyway. Done.

Another 20 minutes and I realize, just as a watched pot won’t boil, a watched curtained stage isn’t going to do jack. So I decide to help it along, and excuse myself for a smoke.

I go outside, and it’s raining. I roll a new one, light it, and just as I’m getting ready to enjoy my time of vice, whaddayaknow I get a text from my dearest sister that yes, indeed, “CANCELED”.

I won a dollar.

And there you have it, another splendid example of what happens when you put us two together and things are going swimmingly. Sooner or later, it will all crash down and there is nothing, NOTHING you can do against it. You can only go with it. And laugh. Which we did. A lot.

Which brings me to the title, the real subject for today: how do you live with the “unknowns”?

For those of you in denial, you think you DO know. You’ve got a great plan. You’re going to work tomorrow. You’re going to buy a house in the future. You’re going to get a new car, or a new computer, or go on that trip or hell, run errands this weekend and hopefully find that cool piece of clothing at the store you saw on sale two days ago. And they’ll still have it in your size.

Really? You know all that? No you don’t. You don’t even know if there’s a random small, but vicious blood clot running through your system this very minute just itching to get stuck in the wrong place and suddenly place you in a position of life or death.

You don’t know next week, you don’t know tomorrow, and you certainly don’t know the next minute.

So how is it that I find so many people living in fear of the unknown? It’s not like we’re not familiar with it. It’s not like it’s some stranger who just knocked on our house of life and said “Hello, I’m Unknown, and I’ve come to visit! Do let me in, and do you have pickle soup?”

No. Our unknowns exist beyond as small a span a time as the next minute, around the corner merely five feet ahead, or just over there, ten feet, in Aisle 10, next to the orange juice.

I have people wondering how I’m sane, not knowing where I’m going to live in a month or so, or what job I’ll have or what the hee haw is going on with such-and-such and isn’t that driving you mad?

Sure, it’ll drive me mad, if I insist on KNOWING. And it’ll drive you mad too. Certifiably.

Instead, I insist on living. I take the moments as they come, the days as they unfold, and the nights as they linger.

That doesn’t mean I don’t make plans. That doesn’t mean I’m a wish-wash of Charlie Brown indecisiveness. It doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes, dreams, and big ideas of which I’d like to see tangible evidence of progress in the future.

But what it does mean is that I don’t live in fear of the unknown. I don’t shirk away from something new, a “what if” or a “but it might…”. If there’s something that I think I will enjoy, and the experience presents itself, then I step forward. If I find that stepping forward gets me struck by lightening because I happen to be the same height as Pikachu, then I try stepping back and see what happens.

And, quite often, I find myself laughing.

Hopefully, sooner than later, any writing I do will be from a completely different place, geographically.

Some of you had noticed that I hadn’t been posting consistently since pre-holidays. A couple of reasons for that: first, it was the holidays! Mwaaaaaa… time to take a break, chill with fam, etc. Secondly, since then I’ve started teaching a lot more – four out of the five nights during the week. Prepping for those around a standard work-week schedule of an essentially full-time job and well, Saturdays is for laundry/chores/chill time and Sundays (was) for seriously doing nothing. Not too much time to write consistently, or continue to put together materials for the *very* short-lived tutorial set.

So – all that to say – there may be an end coming soon to this particular blog-phase of my life. And, what may not be clear by the first sentence of this post, is that there may be soon a nice shift in the “rest” of my life. As in, out of the country. To Mexico. w000000h000000!

The photo is looking south over Cristo Por Su Mundo, a mission for orphans and the surrounding community that’s south of Oaxaca, Mexico a bit. [ Google Map ] I seriously hope to be down there soon, once again in an environment that will allow me to interact and work with kids.

The application is in, forms filled out, a couple other little things to tie up and then I basically wait for the ok to go down! :: crosses fingers ::

Now you know.

I have a Wii. I love my Wii, more than any other platform – and, although I’ve mainly been a Nintendo fan, I have played quite a bit on Sega, Playstation 1 and 2, and Atari. And I will have to say, for all those fanbois out there for PS and XBox, I wouldn’t trade my Wii for either of those even though YES, the graphics on those kick Nintendo’s ass. Every. Single. Time. On top of platform games, I’ve had my faves on the PC as well … notably Delta Force (years ago!) as a kickin’ sniper (I miss my 50 caliber Barrett, *sniff sniff), and still, to this day, Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2k4). Some days you just need to get frustrations out in a cathartic all hell’s loose, no holds barred killing session. If only I were a vampire. Yum.

ANYWAY. Off that tangent, back to the Wii.

I got a Wii Board for Shaun White’s Snowboarding game and A: it rocks and B: the Board also came with Wii Fit. Which has the worst graphics ever. I’ve never been turned off by the human anatomy like this. But – it’s pretty cool. And tracks your weight, how long you’ve used Wii Fit, and what exercises you’ve done etc.

Stop laughing. I know. I said “exercises”. I’ve just started, and I’m working thru the Yoga stuff and the Aerobic stuff and those seem… they’re not heavy, yet, but what I know from years of cycling is that exercises isn’t just about difficulty, it’s a lot more about consistency and repetition. Your body is just like your brain: you don’t have do f’in’ solve quadratic differential equations every day to keep it strong, but you DO have to use it. That’s why Soduko and Crosswords in the morning are not only great for passing time on the bus, they’re also a great way to snap those sleepy brain cells into action.

And some of you wonder why I’m all bright-eyed and bushy tailed in the mornings BEFORE I’ve had my crack coffee.

ANYWAY. Omg so sorry I’m a massive tangent mode today.

I’m going to do Wii Fit consistently (hopefully every night or afternoon) for a 3 months and see what happens. This will not be a scientific test because here’s my main curiosity: will it retain my attention/desire, and, will it progress enough challenge-wise in order to keep my competitive nature occupied/interested? If any weight loss occurs, that’ll be considered a bonus. If I get back to my stretches that I used to do years ago, that’ll be an awesome bonus.

Also, concurrently, I’ll be cycling on rollers (see image left). Soooo… I may die in the next week, as I haven’t done that before. Don’t confuse rollers with a stand. Rollers force you to balance, but the tricky part is that if you do go off the rollers, well… say you’re doin’ 20mph on your bike and then you’re on a carpeted floor. And there’s a wall in front of you.

SpeedofBike / CarpetFriction – DistanceFromWall = RateofImpact.

Now that’s a differential equation! HA!

Happy Thursday.