Category: Blog

Thoreau

My reading more books plan is off to a poor start. Though I’ve been able to streamline my otherwise time consuming activities, I haven’t yet gotten into the habit of picking up a book when I find downtime. Working on that.

Presently reading Walden…still. It’s a rather short book, but I had several stretches of days (weeks) where I didn’t pick it up, so I’m still working my way through it. One of the most striking things about this book is how much of its sentiments have worked their way into our contemporary culture. I was going to write ‘mainstream culture’ instead of ‘contemporary,’ but that’s probably not correct. I tend to have a poor grasp on what is common knowledge and what isn’t. But its ideas and sentiments are quite familiar to me, which is quite impressive for any work. Thoreau is a very witty writer, and I can see why he is quoted so often. It took me a few sections before I started highlighting passages and lines I found exceptional. At the same time, he can be incredibly pretentious (as he is with books) or dry (as he is with sounds).

Thankful

I had a doctor’s appointment recently. Just a check-up, nothing in particular concerned me. I guess what prompted it was losing my insurance when I graduated from college, and seeing what garbage Nishi had to go through while she wasn’t covered. It had been four years since I’d been to the doctor’s, and I figured I was due. And the results were pretty much as expected – I’m in near perfect health. I could exercise a bit more. Otherwise keep up the good work. It was kind of nice hearing the doctor go through the list of lifestyle questions, then on to asking about any possible symptoms and so on, and just responding, “No, no, nope…” I’m really thankful for my good health. I take it for granted far too often. Apparently I’m not due for another check-up for two years, so I guess I’m doing alright.

Phone

The Atrix is out, and though I was pretty convinced it would be my new phone, I’m reconsidering. Largely because of Motorola’s lockdown on the phone. It’s been rooted, but no custom ROMs yet. I’m not sure if I’d even be interested in it if it was freed up. There was a phone that Nokia was going to release which was tentatively called the N9-00. It would have beaten the hell out of the Atrix, and had a far more robust operating system on it. And most importantly, it had a physical keyboard. I’m still not sold on software keyboards. Moreover, I don’t yet see the need for me to get a new phone. I really want to play around with Android, and I’ve even considered the possibility of developing apps for it, but my current phone really does fulfill all my needs. It’s approaching four years since Nokia released the N95, and there hasn’t been another device since that could stay as relevant for as long as it has. I need to work to keep my gadget lust in check, and stay practical.

Rubberneck

Driving home today, we were on 95 North and traffic started to slow for no apparent reason, and I could see further up the road it was moving fine. As we got closer to the slowdown, I realized that people were slowing to gawk at an accident on the South-bound side of the highway. It wasn’t a bad accident, but it was interesting to look at, like most accidents, and people were getting eyefuls as they drove by. I was about to make a remark to Nishi at how stupid it was, when I see a limousine come screeching behind me in my sideview mirror. It was swerving back and forth trying to slow down, and slammed into the car directly behind me. It didn’t look like anyone was hurt. They both came to a stop, and blocked off North-bound traffic. I hope two accidents at the same point on either side of the highway is such a spectacle that people will just drive past other less interesting accidents in the future.

Jorb’d

I got the job I interviewed for yesterday. I’m not sure I’m going to take it. In fact, I’m becoming increasingly sure I won’t. There are practical reasons not to take it – it’s a commission based job that requires initial investment in the form of time and gas – but I worry there are other reasons at play. My dream job right now is a simple job that makes me happy and doesn’t burden me with much responsibility. This job could be part time, it could be minimum wage. It could be stocking shelves or greeting people at Wal-Mart, as long as it’s a regular source of income. Amazingly, I haven’t been able to get any such job, and I’ve applied to many in the past weeks.

I’m gonna keep looking.

Stairs

I don’t know why this is, but I’ve found that in buildings of a certain size, there are often stairwells that are barely ever used. Either because of their placement in the building, or because of nearby elevators, there is always a stairwell that exists for fire escape purposes, but is rarely used day in and day out. I guess I have a preference for stairs, but I always seem to find these stairwells in buildings. I knew my way all around the buildings of UConn because of this, and would often travel stairwells that I could tell had not been used since my last visit.

I always find these places interesting, for the same reasons I find abandoned buildings interesting. Perhaps even more so, since they’re so close to an actively traveled space. There’s something a little magical about being in a place that took so many resources to put together, and so much collective knowledge, and being the only person getting the use of it. I get a similar feeling by walking down empty streets at night. It’s nice to be able to find these places that aren’t far off the beaten path, and stairwells are the most common I encounter.

Good Enough

Alright, it’s not back at its full strength, but it’s good enough. And I’m growing it in fuller this time, not just the goatee. It’s winter, after all. I don’t think it will be an even beard, or even a good looking beard, but it will be my first, and I’ll be happy to greet it when it arrives.

Snuggie and Sales

Several members of my family got Snuggies this year for Christmas – and not as a gag gift. When I first heard about the Snuggie, I gave it no respect, dismissing it as the next As Seen On TV product, and I thought other people held similar views. I’ve been discovering more and more that people are just laughing off the commercials and buying the product as a genuinely useful thing, and giving it as sincere gifts.

It’s been almost a month since I stopped selling helicopters, but everyone in the company used (and wanted me to use as well) similar over the top sales strategies. They want to get people excited about the product, and stimulate an impulse buy. And though the helicopters I was selling were actually of pretty good quality (compared to versions of years past), it’s still ultimately something you get for someone for whom you don’t know what to get. Using the bare minimum of these sales strategies, I was able to sell hundreds of the things.

The Snuggie, on the other hand, isn’t a particularly useful product. In my opinion, the Snuggie is the unholy union of a sweater and a blanket, with some of the benefits and none of the versatility. It accomplishes something that nearly everyone was capable of before, but it does so in a novel way that is different enough to be seen as distinct. It’s interesting how keyed in sales people are to the fact that we’re not good at predicting happiness, and how often we fall in that trap.

Blue Highways

I finished Blue Highways recently, and I’m not quite sure whether I liked it or not. It has many lovely stories about small towns all across America, which I loved to read about, but it’s also littered with little throw away facts about towns he drove through. It felt at times like the entire premise of the book was just an excuse to tell stories about small towns, but there’s a point of separation from the story when he just rattles off facts about a town without having stopped in it or talked to any residents. It feels like it would have been better as a collection of short stories, each with their own setting and characters instead of pulling them all into this larger narrative. I realize it’s all true, it’s just that I didn’t find his voyage all that interesting in and of itself.

Although I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, since the author/narrator didn’t really either. From the last page:

The circle almost complete, the truck ran the road like the old horse that knows the way. If the circle had come full turn, I hadn’t. I can’t say, over the miles, that I had learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn’t known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn’t know I wanted to know.

I feel a similar way about the Tour, and often replied as such if anyone asked what I had learned. That’s also why I probably won’t ever write much about the trip, save a few events. There was a more revealing passage, several pages earlier, that had also echoed what I had felt about the Tour. Looking back, it really reflects what I feel was the purpose of the trip:

In a season on the blue roads, what had I accomplished? I hadn’t sailed the Atlantic in a washtub, or crossed the Gobi by goat cart, or bicycled to Cape Horn. In my own country, I had gone out, had met, had shared. I had stood as witness.

Free Thought

I love the fact that I have Applied Daydreaming on my resume. In it I describe the club as “an on campus organization that encouraged setting time aside for unstructured thought.” It’s something I don’t do often anymore, though I really should, and want to (much like reading, I suppose). I drove to my parent’s house and back for dinner tonight, to see my sister off to Italy, where she’ll be studying abroad for the semester. On the way back, I found myself wrapped up in thoughts like I used to be while at the daydreaming club. Kind of an odd occurrence, since on the way there I was tired and bored, to the point where I was fighting to keep my eyelids from getting heavy. The next few posts are me trying to capture what I thought about, but they’ll be woefully incomplete, and probably half-baked, but that’s ok.