Waiting Casually

You wanna hear something that freaked me right the fuck out the other day?

I’m more than halfway to AARP age.

Fuuuuuck.

Reason number 110 that I love my wife:

In discussing our friend Josephine, she declares that she does not like Josephine because she’s demanding.

“She’s too needy,” she says, “I mean, it’s not like we’re not fucking.”

They say there’s someone for everyone…

The Mrs. and I returned from Chi-town on Monday wind-blown and full of good food. We had a great time seeing the sites of The Loop including the Hancock building, Millennium Park, Magnificent Mile, the Field Museum and Lake Shore.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Chicago though… It’s a big city, but not as big as New York, and somehow felt smaller than San Francisco, despite having way more sky scrapers and people. Perhaps because we only stayed in the downtown area? Not sure.

In any case, we had a muy romantico time at our fancy schmancy hotel and eating out at our fancy schmancy dinner. When not wining and dining, we were uhh…. wining and dining… and dining… I sense a trend.

Definitely going to go back and maybe see some neighborhoods next time. Lincoln Park, Evanston, perhaps a ball game at Wrigley.

Also, thanks for all the happy anniversary wishes, everyone! We love you all too!

Enjoy the photos:

The wife and I head to Chicago this weekend for our anniversary. Singing micro bales of cotton may or may not be in the cards.

I’m really excited because I’ve never been to Chicago before! Which is crazy, right? I mean, I’ve been to 26 states and nine different countries (soon to be 10! Japan!), but never have made it to Chicago. From what everyone tells me, I’m going to love it and want to go back again and again. I can’t wait.

Pictures coming upon our return.

Ya know… I’ve lost track of the number of people who’ve recommended Freaks and Geeks to me.

…

You think they’re all trying to tell me something?

The Mrs. and I have been traveling a lot for work recently. We counted it up and for the month of April spent only 14 days together. I’d actually been so busy with travel and writing reviews (it’s review time at work right now) that I hadn’t been able to think too much about it.

I was in the airport last Monday though, and something happened that really made the distance between us really hit home. They announced a delay to our flight over the PA system and I watched as everyone waiting at the gate brought out their cell phone to text or call their loved one to let them know.

I didn’t though. Jen was in later time zone and my text or call would wake her up, so I just stood and watched as everyone else around me made that connection to the one they loved. I even brought my phone out and toyed with it a bit just to create a distraction from thinking about her.

You don’t expect to have feelings like this once you fall in love with someone. It’s almost a fear that you won’t be able to see/hear/touch that person again when you’re separated. It reminded me of the movie The Fountain. There are other movies that capture the feeling of falling in love, and there are others that capture the feeling of emptiness once a loved one is gone, but the power of The Fountain is its ability to capture the desperate, sick-to-your-stomach fear that you experience while in the process of losing your loved one. It’s also a beautiful, beautiful movie that you can buy for about $10 on Amazon. Aronofsky continues to impress.

We’re coming up on our two-year anniversary next month and I only see these feelings getting stronger as time goes on. I suppose we’ll have to have conversations with our bosses about travel pretty soon…

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been thinking about the issue of where I live and whether I’m happy here. As one might expect, the topic is pretty complicated. There are things that I love about Ann Arbor (Seriously, how hilarious is that home page? It’s like going back to 1998 on the web. They have a freakin’ weather widget!), and things that make me want to pull my hair out.

The Good (in no particular order):

• Unlike Berkeley, Ann Arbor as a city seems to have embraced the university and its students wholly rather than pretend that the city would be the same without all of the income from university jobs and sales tax collected from all of the goods that the 37,000+ students buy in the state each year.
• The city does a great job of sponsoring local artists. I mean both at the government level and the community level, because there are a lot of sponsorships that are out there for artists, and there is a big focus on buying locally and supporting local artists within the community itself.
• Zingerman’s
• My job (as I discussed earlier).
• The Mrs. and I were able to buy a house that we love at about a quarter or less of what it would have cost us back in the Bay Area.
• We really have made more friends here than we made back in California. Don’t get me wrong - my two very best friends still live in the Bay Area and I miss them intensely, but we have casual friends here that are an absolute blast and we didn’t really make that effort back home.
• People just seem to be nicer in the Midwest. Did I mention that folks who live in Michigan are referred to as Michiganders? Isn’t that just so pastoral and cute?

The Bad (etc. etc.):

• With the exception of Zingerman’s, the food in Ann Arbor can’t hold a candle to the food in the Bay Area. If there are any Ann Arborites reading, I’m sorry, I know that you think you’re in some oasis of high cuisine, but, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Eve is nice, yes, but you have to understand that there are a hundred restaurants in the Bay Area that are as good as Eve, and there are fifty more that are better. You have two good sushi places. The Bay Area has a few dozen that are better. You have some crappy Indian food. The Bay Area has the best saag chicken this side of New Delhi. You have coney island dogs. … Actually, those are really good. We have Top Dog though! My point is that there is wider variety in the Bay Area and it’s almost always better and (when appropriate) fresher than what Ann Arbor offers.
• We miss our friends. My two very best friends live in the Bay Area, so being far away from them is tough. Sure, drunken voicemails left at 2AM are fun, but that doesn’t replace being able to run around together in person.
• We miss our families. Both of our families live in California, so moving to Michigan put us very, very far away. I’ve always been somewhat of a wayward child, but I know it’s been hard on the Mrs. I need to call home more…
• It’s. So. Goddamn. Flat. Where are the hills even?
• It’s. So. Goddamn. Land-locked. And no, the river isn’t cutting it.

So there you have it. There are things on there that really add to our quality of life (happier at work, the house, nice people) and things that detract (geography, lack of close friends and family, food).

At this point we’ve decided that it’s good for right now, but not for the long haul. I’m not sure if that means we move back or move on, but we’ve got time to decide.

OK. I know that in the last post I alluded to some potential job dissatisfaction and I just want to clear things up. As much for myself as for any of you.

You see, up until last night, I was feeling kinda down on my job. Not the company I work for, but for my job and my place in the company. I was been feeling under-appreciated and somewhat unable to drive any change in the organization. Then I read entries I wrote in a separate blog I used to maintain. It was a secret blog that I never mentioned in any post here, but that is still out there and chronicles the day-to-day drudgery and pain I experienced in a prior role in the company. It spans about a six month period and the highlights include some of the absolute lowlights of my work life so far. It was a depressing work environment and let’s leave it at that.

So anyway, in resurrecting this blog, I also ended up reading over my posts there and that really put my head in a better place. It’s funny because I don’t peg myself as a rose-tinted kinda guy, but I really must be because when I thought back of that time before that re-read that blog, I remembered that work was bad but certainly not as bad as I made it out to be at the time.

So the upshot of all that is that I received a nice big shot of perspective and am now feeling a lot better about where I am now. Not a bad way to go into the weekend.

Hope you enjoy yours!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Maybe it’s because I’m old or whatever, but I have. Most of these thoughts have to do with figuring out the answers to big questions. Questions like:

• Am I happy in my job?
• Am I happy where I live?
• Am I happy with myself?
• What do I want to accomplish in life?
• What do I really value?

I don’t have answers to all of these questions as they’re not as simple as a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ There are times that I’m happy with all of the first three and there are times I’m unhappy. There are times when I have a good grasp on the last two and there are times I feel adrift.

The Mrs. and I have been talking a lot about all of these things and charting our course as best we can, but you don’t always feel confident in your course when you don’t know your destination, you know?

Whenever I talk to my parents about these sorts of things, they invariably give me the following advice (best heard in a Southern accent that’s been tempered by 30+ years in California):

Well, Jeff. Life just works that way. You just do the best you can and make the best decisions you can make and everything will turn out OK. There’s no big secret. You just stick with it and
hope for the best.

That was the advice they gave me when I first left home to go to school and I asked how they knew what to do when hard choices came up.

Their answer seemed sort of sweet to me at the time. Cute. The idea that you just worked at making things right and hoped for the best. At the time I still held to the firm belief that there was a singular truth out there that once discovered would obviate any need to work at happiness. As long as that truth was known, you just were successful.

I have to say now though, that that’s a lot of horse shit. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some general principles that keep me centered, but a singular truth? No. In the real world, there are a million distractions that can lead you away from what you actually want. There are habits and patterns that form to prevent you from adjusting to your goal. There can be outcomes that look and feel like your goal, but once you see that outcome you discover that you’re off course again.

Knowing your goal isn’t enough. Not for me anyway. And not for my parents. You have to work hard on figuring your goals out first, and then you have to work hard to keep them in your focus. Lastly, you have to work hard with your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/parent/sibling/whomever to make sure that you’re still on track. That’s what they’re there for, just as that’s why you’re there for them.

So my goal from now on is to actually think these things out. I’ve never been one for introspection at that level (let’s call it strategy). I’m much more of an operationally introspective (let’s call it tactical) kinda guy.

Let’s call that step one.

Hello. I’m not sure if you remember me. I uhh… I used to write to you quite a bit before I… I kinda got off track.

I- I missed you! I really did. I’d think about you sometimes as I was falling asleep… No, not like that, I promise! I mean, my wife was always there sleeping next to me. That would just be wrong…

Look, I’m sorry. This is starting off all weird. I-

What I mean to say is I want to give it another go. I have all sorts of things I want to say to you. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I want to share that with you. Sometimes what I have to say will be funny, sometimes it’ll be sad, and sometimes it’ll just be boring. Probably mostly boring, butthat’snothepoint! The point is I’ll be sharing again. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

What do you say? Are you with me?

I even got myself all pretty for you. New design. Dropped the weight of the old content. That was the old me.

If you stay I shall be a man reformed.

Please?