For eternity, or so we can assume

I went to Mark and Cori's wedding two weekends ago in the Redlands, CA temple. It was lovely, and they seem happy enough. It was a special and joyous day for both of them, in part, I am sure, because they were joined in the eternal bond of marriage. And also in larger part because it's the first time that either of them has seen me in more than a year. It's enough to make anyone ebullient. Something like that, at least.

The ceremony (using the non-secular term here, for the sake of reverence) itself was inspirational. They always are. To be honest, though, it would have been a little more pleasant for all if Mark hadn't cried like a toddler stripped of his binky. I think we all wanted to walk up and punch him in the arm or put him in time out until he composed himself.

It was nice to see a few old friends and both the families of Mark and Cori again. I have fond memories of all of them, way back from my college days. (You know, way back 13 months ago.) As I watched them and their families and friends interact, I started to think how incredible it is that more marriages don't end in disaster. I don't say this as a cynic whose longest relationship has lasted 3 weeks (with whom, for the sake of this post, will go unacknowledged ...), but as a realist. Or -- how does it go -- a cautious optimist.

There are so many moving parts. Marriage, if it were just between man and woman, would be (is?) terrifying in its own right. You could have done better. It is always true. If we assume otherwise, then we are assuming that we have lived our lives perfectly. If you were more kind, more dedicated, more athletic, more hygienic, you could have married a better woman. But you aren't, so you take what you can get. That will haunt you the rest of your life. And, of course, the same is true of your wife. She could have done better. As it is, you have settled for each other. You are both entering marriage with a somewhat deflated version of your true potential, simply because you are imperfect.

In life, there is such a thing called repentance and agency. So if you have chosen a path that is less than perfect, there is a chance to right yourself. That is your choice. But once you are married, you can't go back. If you have settled for a wife, regardless of how drastic of an upturn you take in your own life, you can't change who you have married unless she changes into a better person as well. (For the sake of this argument, of course, divorce is not an option.) This is not true of anything in life anymore except for marriage. Career paths constantly change, we cycle through friends and lifestyles and cars, but that ring is one eternal round. That always sounds so ominous, like swimming towards the surface and never being able to reach the top. One eternal round indeed.

And then come each of your families, and that has to be a mess. No one likes their in-laws, for whatever reason, and the inlaws know that their children could have done better. Parents hate to see their children settle, or so I would assume. That's how it worked out, at least, in The Fiddler on the Roof. Siblings are all over the place, aunts, uncles, pets. If I took a girl home and Winston didn't like her, it's over, no questions asked. (Yes, I trust my dog's instincts over my own.)

Beyond the actual people involved are each of their distinct eccentricities. I would live in Seattle, but not Portland. I eat peanut M&Ms individually, but chocolate M&Ms 3 at a time. Does that make sense? No. But what if, 7 years into our marriage, I find out the opposite is true of my wife. All of a sudden everything is upended. I'm not sure if we could work it out with such differences between us. I know there have been rumors of compromise in marriages, but it seems like a more-pronounced form of settling.

It is like unboxing a puzzle, throwing it on the table, and hoping that all the pieces fall into place. There are too many variables. It will never work.

In the end, I find it miraculous that divorce rates and uxoricide rates are as low as they are. (Uxoricide means the murder of your wife. I had to look that up, so if you are ever browsing through my search history, don't be worried when you see things life "Kill my wife," "Spouse murder," "Spousicide," etc.) To all those of you who are married or to those of you who have had a relationship that has lasted for more than 3 weeks, I tip my hat.

Schwinn to Win

A lot has happened in terms of bloggables lately, and I guarantee that I won’t cover all of them. But I will try to touch them all, at lease in brief.

In early May, I bought a bicycle. It was a $100 Craigslist job that had brakes that worked (kind of) and wheels that only slightly wobbled. It is a Schwinn Continental road bike that is the beautiful burnt umber ubiquitous in the ‘70s, complete with chrome hardware and lugged joints. It even has a steel kickstand lugged into the frame. In sum, it’s a tank of a bike.

My plan was to ride the bike to work. That, I figured, would make the city more Rexburg-y, which in this context I am referring to as a good thing. It would free me up to softly whistle to myself as I rode, liberating me from the social pressure on the subway to not whistle. I could, much in Rexburg style, ring my bell and wave at people on the sidewalk as they walked jealous of my freedom. I could take Sunday afternoon rides through the alfalfa fields and past the rope swing over the irrigation canals full of crystal clear, clearly potable water. It would transform my world, that tank of a bike.

Once I bought the bike, I knew that, regardless of my naïve Rexburg-y attitude, I should purchase a lock. Before I proceed, I must point out that during my 3 years at BYU-Idaho, I locked my bike once. This was during an overnight trip to Sun Valley I was taking for the Steinbeck festival in Sun Valley, and I thought to myself, “What the heck. Might as well throw this thing on here.” Upon my return, my bike was gone. It seemed strange to me.

It turns out that the bike was stolen by some local hooligans (referred to by the Rexburg police as "Mexicans") and later thrown into a half-empty canal when they were pursued by the authorities. I was able to recover the bike, and, as it turns out, I did not use the lock properly. I locked the frame to the front wheel, but not to the bike rack itself. A minor oversight, I assure you.

Anyways, I go to the local bike shop here in NY and ask what kind of lock they recommend. Their response: “We don’t recommend any of them.” Interesting response, right?

“I see. Then what should I do?”

“Just don’t lock your bike up, ever. If you do, it will get stolen, we guarantee it.”

“Oh, I see. What about that big one there, with the inch-thick chain that weighs 18 pounds.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t work. You see, a hacksaw right here and a hydraulic car jack there … just like that your bike’s gone.”

“So if I can’t park my bike inside …”

“Just don’t ride it. You’ll be throwing it out the window.”

I turned around and walked out, a bit dejected and feeling like a failure. I was a victim of the worst salesmanship of all time. It seems like a counterproductive business model for a bike shop. Not only did they not sell me a lock (which can run up to $80), but they did not give themselves the opportunity to sell me a new bike once mine was stolen.

Eventually, I went to a place closer to my apartment out in Queens where no one speaks fluent English. Even if they wanted to discourage me from buying a lock they couldn’t. (This is just an example of how complicated the path of least resistance can be.) I then had everything that I needed, happiness just moments away.

A quick anatomy of my commute. From Sunnyside to Long Island City, a piece of cake. There is a marked bike path on Skillman Avenue until you hit Queensboro Bridge. The bridge has a bike/pedestrian path seperated from traffic by a cement barrier, so the level of danger is very low. I mean, I get dripped on (I find it best not to ask what is dripping, as a general New York rule) and have to avoid bums driving shopping carts occasionally, but nothing to complain about.

However, once across the bridge, things get a little more complicated for a cyclist. You then hit midtown Manhattan. This is a place where lane markers are only gentle recommendations and where blinkers only indicate that you are from out of town. As I came off the bridge and ventured into traffic I felt the same as I felt wandering into Mrs. Webster's Kindergarten class 18 years ago. Where to go, what to do, TBD.

The first few days I just parked my bike on a corner and waited for a fellow cyclist who looked like he or she knew how to ride without riding under a bus. I would then try to keep up, learning the unwritten rules of riding in NY.

And so it went until I soon became more comfortable and knew where the danger zones were. I soon realized that I needed to be in the right-most lane at 58th Street or I would be toppled by the traffic turning left onto the bridge. And that pedestrians are equally as vocal in their dissaproval as cab drivers. I learned that two-lane roads are scarier than one-lane roads, especially when you are riding down the double yellow. I also learned that one-lane roads are scary when you're going the wrong way down them.

I am happy to say that in almost 3 months of parking my bike at Bryant Park, it has not been stolen. And I am also happy to say that since I started riding to work, I have lost more than 20 pounds. I attribute 60% of that weight to excercise and 40% to the anxiety of 19 blocks' worth of vindictive motorists and pedestrians with an inordinate sense of entitlement.

The True NY State of Mind

This post is long overdue, but it is about something that burns every time I think about it. I am generally an ace at pretending that things that hurt don't ever phase me. It is part of what classifies me as a bona fide badass. (Poll: Can I be a badass and still use words like bona fide?) So for the most part, I like to bring up painful topics before someone else does, just to prove that I have moved on, much as you would expect from a badass. You know, like, "You remember how Boise State lost to East Carolina in the Hawaii Bowl? Yeah, I don't even care about that."

Well, this is different. I get so frustrated and so bitter that I have just trapped it inside, which is the healthy way to deal with problems, as I understand it. Anyways, I take us back to May 10. I have a few friends at church who wanted to go to a Mets game. That is fine, of course, but they aren't what you would call true baseball fans. As a matter of fact, they had never been to a baseball game and were in it for the baseball experience. The problem this created were 1) the Mets and 2) the weather.

The Mets have not been the creme de la creme of baseball teams lately (read "for the last two decades"). And unless you can really respect fielding errors and drunken fans, you will have a hard time getting the true baseball experience out of the Mets. As for the weather, it was raining.

In an unfortunate lapse of judgment, we had decided that I would purchase the tickets and the others would pay me back at the game. In total, I purchased 6 tickets, one for me and one for the five others who agreed to go with me. Come the day of the game, the other five decided they did not want to go, for various reasons (mainly those listed above). This left me with 5 more tickets than I needed and five fewer friends than I thought I had.

It was a gametime development, so I couldn’t sell the tickets on Craigslist. But it seemed like such a waste to let the tickets go to waste. I figured that I could give the tickets away to whoever needed them, but the problem was finding people who would actually take them. I would say that 95% of people coming off the subway already had tickets, so it would be so inefficient to stand around trying to find the 5% interested.

I figured that the only place where 100% of the people passing through are actually looking for tickets would be the ticket line. I know that selling tickets is illegal on the Shea Stadium premises, but I figured that giving tickets away would not hurt anyone. Just doing my nice deed for the day, and who would possibly want to punish me for that?

Four people approached the ticket booth, I told them I had tickets I was giving away. Then a short fat man wearing a Mets cap and bug-eye sunglasses came over. “See those cameras over there? The NYPD now has evidence of you attempting to sell tickets on Shea Stadium property.”

“But I was just trying to give the tickets away, and …”

“Sir, just shut up and listen to me. You don’t have to be difficult about this. Do you want me to call in the authorities?”

“Are you serious? I was just giving these away …”

“OK, because you are trying to give them away, I already know that you are doing something wrong.”

Eventually I walked away and threw the tickets in the trash. “Because you are giving them away, I know you are doing something wrong.” That made me so mad. It was one of those New York moments where the city is so well-trained to distrust any unselfish act. If there was ever a moment where I wish I could have roundhouse kicked anyone or anything, it was that moment right there, where I wish I could have roundhouse kicked those bug-eye glasses right off his face.

Because you are being nice, I know you are doing something wrong. What belligerent arrogance. There is no other attitude that will destroy a society more quickly or more viciously, but probably the one phrase that best sums up the New York state of mind.

Put that on a t-shirt.

My new best friend ChaCha

Walt Mossberg is the personal technology columnist in the Wall Street Journal. I don't like the guy because he is a shameless Apple fanboy, but I'll read his column because I subscribe to the paper. And because he has a sidekick by the name of Katie Bohret ... and I like her.

Anyways, his latest column was about a new service called ChaCha. It is a free service that allows you to call a toll-free number, ask a question, and receive a response via text message. There are actual real live people who receive $.20 per repsonse as questions come through the queue. Mossberg said that they are mainly stay-at-home moms and college students who search online for the answers, but I don't really trust what he says all that much. In my mind, I see hundreds of grey-haired, monacled men who are frantically scrambling around the Library of Congress searching for answers. You know, they are knee-deep in scrap paper woth one or two of them clinging on to those ladders on wheels as they try to find the right page of the right book.

However it happens, in about 3 minutes you receive a text message response. The first time that I read about the service, I was between Queensboro Plaza and the 45th Road Courthouse Square stop on the 7 train on my way to Manhattan. I wanted to give it a shot, but didn't want the hundreds of people that were pressed up against me to think I was strange if I just asked a random question to my cell phone. Part of me wanted to ask something like, "Hi ChaCha. How do you stop explosive episodes of diarrhea every five minutes?" just to see if I could get a little breathing room on the train, but I thought better of it.

Instead, I asked it what the population of Boise was. About 3 minutes later, I received the following text: "The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Boise's population to be 190,117 in 2003. Idaho's population is 1,366,132." Just like that, above and beyond the call of duty. I was impressed, but also had to think it ironic that there were more people on my subway line that morning than there were living in the great state of Idaho.

Now, ChaCha has not been perfect. For example, I asked the question, "What is the day Cinco de Mayo," and it told me that it meant "May 5th." Kind of a slap in the face. I responded to the text (one of the features is that you can follow up with text messages, as if it were a regular converstion) with "No no, what is the holiday's significance?" Pretty straightforward stuff, right? Well, I got in return, "Festivus is an annual holiday invented by writer Dan O'Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a scriptwriter." Although informative, and a great episode of the '97 season of Seinfeld, obviously not the answer to my question.

An interesting system nonetheless. But it seems like a hard system to monitize, especially since it is run from the phone, not the Web site (i.e. little advertising space). I figured that some company is buying the questions and answers for market research. Or maybe this is a way for the government to collect information about me to sell to the Russians. Something like that. I had a question, I needed an answer ... Where could I turn? Where else but to ChaCha? I called and asked the question, "How does ChaCha make its money?" The response: "ChaCha generates revenue by its strategic partnerships with various entities." AKA Russians.

It has been fun to play around with it, although I'm not sure how productive it is. In many circumstances it may be, but in the context of me sitting at work in front of my computer with Internet access, not so much. I will have you know that through ChaCha I discovered that my horoscope calls for success in professional endeavors and that April 25 is the National Day of Silence for an anti-bullying campaign (sure, that'll convince the bullies to stop beating you up. Just sit quietly.).

The best part, by far, is getting text messages that I pretend are important. It's almost like having a real friend.

Problem solved

UPDATE: Earwax debacle solved, thanks to Guy Lin, MD. I would classify him as one of my heroes, but by rule my heroes have to be able to fly. He had great head of half-silver hair. I was thinking about how I could talk about this without sounding a little too impressed with him (i.e. "If I were a woman, I would have wanted to play with his hair."). Instead of saying that -- because that would have been awkward -- I am going with this: If I were a 6-year-old boy and my mom bought me a GI Joe, I would want that GI Joe to have hair just like Dr. Lin. There we go. Not awkward at all.

The first of the three pigs

I have now been out of college/out of Idaho/in the real world for close to 9 months now. That means that for nine months I have been my own fall-back plan, my own caretaker, my own shoulder to cry on, etc. In short, I have been my own mother. What have I learned? Well, it's harder than it looks.


I won't go into a lot of detail, but I will give some examples from the past two days. Two days, out of more than 250. Just two days. Keep that in mind.


My most recent calling in church is Sunday School teacher in the Young Single Adults class in the Queens Astoria Ward. (Who counted the qualifiers there? Diagram that one, Petra.) The lesson was on Jacob 5-7, the allegory of the Olive Tree/vineyard. I casually spent my Saturday preparing the lesson, along with watching the Mets lose to the Brewers and the Yankees lose to the BoSox. You know, graft a bit here, dung a bit there. I had it pretty well figured out.


Come morning, I was ready to rock and roll. I woke up, I showered dressed myself, chose a good spring tie, put on my stripey shirt, ready to go. I arrived on time and even sat through sacrament meetings without falling asleep. I know, impressive. Then came time to teach my lesson. Once we were through the class announcements and had gotten over the "... Because you're engaged ..." joke (which goes, "I had a good weekend ..." [interruption] "Because you got engaged?!" [blank, dry stare; scattered, sympathetic laughter]), I had 18 minutes to teach. That threw me off a bit, but nothing summarizing and ignoring raised hands couldn't solve.

When there were about 5 minutes left in my lesson, I noticed that my left sleeve was sagging a bit more than my right. Strange, but not uncommon. I looked down again and saw that I, in fact, had a hole in my sleeve that exposed my entire elbow worn into the shirt. I stopped teaching and just looked at it, inspecting it as if that would help. "Did you see this whole in my shirt?" The class's response, "We just thought you had a rough morning." A rough morning. What, was I dragged behind a bus on the way to Church? Why didn't someone tell me that I had a hole the size of Cuba in my shirt?

Then it occurred to me that such wardrobe matters as gaping holes in the elbows fall under Mom's jurisdiction. I'm sure a Mom invented the elbow patch. And the phrase, "You're not actually going out in that, are you?" Neither of which I had the luxury that morning before leaving the house to teach Sunday School. A first example.

A second example finds us in bed this morning, 7:00 as the alarm goes off. I woke up and I felt that my ear was a bit waxy. I may have overactive wax ducts, but every so often I need to give my ears a good cleaning. However, from past experience and from myriad warning labels, I knew that Q-tips were not the answer. Once when I was on my mission (during which time, I must mention in this context, Sister Peixoto was my surrogate mother) I had Q-tipped (i.e. ramrodded) ear wax into my ear to the point that I could not longer hear anything. I was effectively deaf. Not a pleasant experience, believe me.

So 7:00, I knew that Q-tips were not the answer. When Sister Peixoto sent me to the doctor, all he did was use some special water squirter to blast the buildup out. If some doctor can blast out earwax with water, then why couldn't I? Now just to find enough water pressure ...

My first thought was just to turn my head sideways in the shower. If figured if I just positioned my head just right the water would shoot down my ear canal. Well, I did get water in my ear, but to no avail. I had to take a far more proactive approach. I needed to concentrate the stream.

I turned to turning on the bathtub faucet. That's a whole lot of water coming out of one place, right? PhD nothing. Water pressure, here I come. I turned it on full blast and stuck my head directly underneath, my ear facing upwards. Water came blasting in, into my ear, up my nose, all down my back, onto the floor, under the door and onto the carpet in the hallway, you name it. But after all that fanfare, it did nothing to solve my problem. Now it was personal.

I looked in the kitchen, no turkey baster to be found. I looked under the sink, no squirt guns. No funnel, no enema kits, no water picks. What was left to do? I had to be resourceful. I had to tap my inner Macgyver.

I started started to shuffle through the medicine cabinet until I found it. The perfect makeshift medical instrument. A tube of toothpaste. It was genius. All I had to do was cut the back end off, remove all of the toothpaste, fill the tube with warm water, stick the squirty end in my ear, give it a good squeeze or two, and just like that, no more earwax. I was so proud of myself.

After executing the plan, I was a little disappointed to discover that water being discharged from a tube of toothpaste has the same effect on excessive earwax buildup as a Q-tip has. At that point, I had to go to work, completely deaf in one ear. I then realized that I had no idea who to call. Was this an emergency? I wasn't bleeding, and it was by no means life-threatening. But then again, it rendered one of my senses virtually useless, and I've only got five of those. Should I go to the hospital, or a pediatrician? Where could I find a pediatrician in New York, and could I explain my problem to him if I didn't know Yiddish?

After looking in the yellow pages for a pediatrician for about 30 minutes, I realized that I really should have been looking for a physician. Ok, physician it was. But they all had such difficult names to pronounce, and what if they only worked on a referral-only basis? And what about insurance? I knew that I have insurance, but is it PPO or HMO or HIPAA? BlueCross, BlueShield ... BlueCross, BlueShield ... which one was it? (I later came to find out that it was BlueCross/BlueShield.)

As I sat at my desk with my headphones in (so that I would have an excuse to be unresponsive when people called my name), I finally decided to call St. Clare's Hospital, and they could at least tell me where to go. I dialed the number. "For English, press 1, para Espanol poste 2." Ok, 1. Well that was easy. "You have reached St. Vincent's Hospital, formerly St. Clare's. We are closed, effective August 31, 2007 ..." (212-586-1500. Try it yourself if you don't believe me.)

I then called a big general family physician place, their number was disconnected. (212-687-4106. Try it yourself.) I called the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital (MEETH), the automated system told me to enter the extension that I was trying to reach. I didn't know, I dialed 0, not a valid entry.

At that point, I needed to get to work. So I went about my work throughout the day until about 8:00 at night, at which point I went home, still as deaf as I was when I left in the morning, and as deaf as I am as I finish this post. I'll get it taken care of tomorrow, I'm sure. (Keep in mind it doesn't hurt, isn't infected, etc. It is just plugged up, so no risk of permanent damage.)

I wonder at what point the first of the three pigs realized that straw was a bad idea. My bet is it was now when the wolf came knocking at his door, but far before then, when he went to Church with a hole in his shirt, or some morning before work when he found himself in the bathroom with a re-purposed tube of toothpaste filled with warm water shoved into his ear.

Malcom X Blvd.

I live in Sunnyside on Bliss St. How could life get any better? I admit, it may be a somewhat deceiving name for a blue-collar street in a blue-collar neighborhood in Queens (in 7-line Queens, nonetheless), but it is safe and relatively clean. Clean by outer-borough New York standards at least. I cannot think of a time in which I felt in any significant danger. Well, other than the one isolated road rage-turned fist fist fight-turned 7-iron assault incident, which was technically in Woodside, not Sunnyside.





I live here for various reasons. I work just a few steps from the Times Square stop, and that is the terminal destination of the 7 train. It gives me a 25-minute door-to-door commute, which is better than anything you'll find outside of Hell's Kitchen. So one reason i live here is the commute. The second reason is that it is about 10 minutes from Shea Stadium and Arthur Ashe tennis complex. I can literally leave my apartment as the Met's pregame show starts and make it to the stadium for the first pitch if I wanted. And since Shea has $5 seats in the nosebleeds from time to time, it is hard to pass up. I love me some baseball.





I also live here because the rent is cheap compared to anything that you'll find in Manhattan. That is to say cheap compared to anything not on the Lower East Side or in Harlem/SpaHa. About a month ago I was a signature away from moving in with a friend in a reasonably-priced apartment on 111th, just north of Central Park, just on the Harlem of the Upper West Side/Harlem border. I guess that I regretted it a bit over the past month since there are benefits to actually living in the City: the NY, NY address, easier access to the rest of the city, (for us young single adults) membership in a YSA ward, etc. But then I went and visited that same would-be apartment this week. Never again (never) will I consider moving to Harlem. In comparison, Bliss St. in Sunnyside lives up to its name.





I took the 7 to the 2, where I got off and started walking up the stairs. In the break between stairwells I came across a dilapidated tile mosaic with broken excerpts from a quote. The legible part read, "We are all brothers and sisters ..." before the tiles became too broken and scattered to read. Plus, it's not good manners to stop in the middle of a staircase.



When I came out of the staircase, I was confronted (as a manner of speaking) by a disheveled man selling a Velcro wallet. After having living in NY for as long as I have now, I consider myself somewhat of an expert at coldly ignoring beggars/salesmen. Or so I thought. When he asked me, I shook my head without making direct eye contact and continued walking. "Sir, excuse me. Sir?" Persistent little bugger, he was. Then I made eye contact. Once I did that, it was all over. After all, he wasn't going to buy rugs or booze with the money (his words, not mine), and he had just lost his job. He just needed money for a bit to eat and (again, his words not mine) I do have a good heart. So yes, I gave him a dollar. Damn my good heart.

The first street intersection that I came across was Central Park North and Malcom X Blvd. All I could think to myself was, "I don't think I'm in Sunnyside anymore..." I can't explain how or why it felt different, it just did. For some reason I felt like someone was going to pull a prank on me. Like they were going to give me a wedgie or "Got your nose!" me. I made my way to my friend's apartment. It's a fairly nice place, but about the same as what I have in Sunnyside, only a few hundred dollars more. Again, what you might expect from anywhere in Manhattan.

That night I went out to grab a bite to eat because I often get hungry. I'm funny that way. I went to this pizza and chicken joint that looked like a place where good fast food went to die. Inch-thick Plexiglas separated the customer from the staff, with a hole cut out through which you could fit any various-shaped food containers, but probably not large enough for a man to fit through if he had the occasion to. As I contemplated my order (and the choices were many) a man who smelled of hard liquor and a hard life asked for something to eat. Just a slice of pizza, that's all. Again, I looked him in the eye. I'll learn better some time.

As he waited for his slice of pizza to be heated up, he and I shared some casual conversation.

"You know, we like you people in Harlem."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, we want more of you whites here. You respect our women, and we respect yours." For a moment I felt like we were having some sort of cowboy-Indian barter. I believe that they used women as currency.

"Gee, thanks!'

"Lots of good white people out there. I even like Obama." Obama ... is he white? I thought it best not to ask.

"Obama, good guy. He's a democrat, you know ..."

"I don't like that Hillary. My man Obama, he's about equality and change. Hillary's all about asses. (As he said that, he put his hands where his ass might be if he were Hillary, apparently.) Who do you vote for."

"Me? Well, I don't generally share my particular political persuasions in such an informal forum." A slight pause, him looking me in the eyes.

"You're a good person. And I can tell in your eyes that you have a good woman. You do, don't you? And when you have a baby, I can tell. It's going to be a beautiful baby. I can tell that in your eyes." I wish that I had a pen and paper at the time. I wanted to put it in my scriptures as an amendment to my patriarchal blessing.

What an interesting place for so many people to live, Harlem.

A wooden ring

NOTE: I do not write this post to incite sympathy, because things are pretty darned good. I only write this because I feel it is worth writing about. In fact, it seems a shame not to. So to those people who care about me, don't offer me your condolences, just savor in the irony with me.

NOTE II: I have finished this post and have now reread it. I think it is fairly well written, so I will post it. However, I warn you that it is overly melodramatic (read pathetic). So much so that I was about to delete it. But I hate to let a good post go to waste.


According to universal missionary lore dating back thousands of years, there exists the Law of Wife Points. This law states that for every hardship a missionary endures without complaining, he gains Wife Points. For every long night spent in the cold rain without an umbrella or afternoon spent under the scorching sun walking on the dusty roadside, in a parallel universe a missionary's to-be wife is perfecting the art of brownie baking or is putting in a few extra hours on the treadmill. (This law may be derived from the same eternal truth as the 40 Virgins in Heaven for a Muslim Suicide Bombers Law, but let's pretend it isn't.) It is a beautiful principle, in principle. In practice, we can only see how it works in retrospect.


I lived by this law (among many other laws, of course) for two years of my life. Ah the sweet flavor of Wife Points! Some say that they are the best two years of your life, others say that they are the best two years for your life. I was much more of the "for your life" school of thought because it promised such a bright future, that it only prepared you for better things. Yes, it was a time to accumulate Wife Points, only to cash in once the investment had time to grow.


In my mind, I had everything figured out. As I neared the end of my mission I had accumulated a nice cache of Wife Points. I picked up a few when I was bent over the toilet at the hospital in Chapeco, I caught a few more that leaked in through the silver-dollar-sized holes in the bottoms of my shoes in Ipomeia. I was pretty much set, ready to cash out. And I knew exactly where I was going to invest. My own personal soy, you might say.

Her name was Girl A, who, although she was (is) a real person, was of more an idea than anything. I met her when I was 16 years old and didn't see her again until much later in my life, just before I left for my mission. During that time, I referred to her as Girl A to my friends; she was all that I wanted in a woman. Attractive, spunky, coy, unattainable, etc. I never knew her well enough to know what she was really like, but I knew who she was in my wandering imagination, which is all I ever needed.

During my mission, we corresponded three or four times, which was three or four times more than I corresponded with any other girl not related to me. It may have meant nothing to her, but it meant everything to me. It was as if I were confirming that my wife points were indeed accumulating. Kind of like when you peek in the oven to make sure that the bread is rising - perhaps a perfect analogy, since in both cases the result is a deflated, dissappointing reminder of what could have been.


Ah, Girl A, the idea, the person, either one. As I neared the end of the mission, I purchased two wooden rings, one that was the size of my finger, and one that was whatever size Girl A's finger would be. (I knew that it was cheezy at the time, as I know now, but everything related to love before a couple is 70 years old is cheezy. After 70, it's cute.) I put these rings in a small cardboard box that was to be saved for when the time was right, when I would give the ring to Girl A as a present. Not as an engagement ring, but just as a present, just to make sure that I was being cheezy enough.

Fast-forward a few months, I am in Rexburg thumbing through a set of index cards nervously in one hand, my thumb hovering over the talk button on my cell phone in the other. I will not fill in the details here because they are too painful for a third party to bear, but in sum Girl A never answered my calls again. And so I was left with nothing else to do but wonder about those Wife Points, figuring that all that happened was that this supposed Girl A must not have actually been Tony-caliber. Or that the ring wouln't have fit. Her hands were far too petite and perfect for my wooden ring, I was sure.


And thus Girl A the idea went elsewhere. She went for a short stint somewhere she never belongs, and that is to a girl with a real name, with a real connection to me and to people close to me. Again, just a short stint (I never even sized up her hands to see if the wooden ring would fit) and now she is back where she belongs, far away from me. And apparently just moments away from being engaged, although that is strictly heresay because she is where she belongs, far away from me.

Two days ago I was looking for my W-2 form to do my taxes, and I stumbled across the small cardboard box that has sat unopened for two-and-a-half years. I opened it and looked at the two rings lying there, happily unattached. But carpe diem, I thought. I put on my ring because I wanted to. Because even though my Wife Points had fallen through the cracks, and because even though I found it painfully awkward to talk to girls with any Girl A qualities, and because even though I am carrying 7 or 8 (or so) extra pounds from a few years back, I can wear this ring.

I can put it on and remember everything that Wife Points stand for, that we are rewarded when we do the right thing. I can remember the long days and restful nights in Brazil, and why those two years were the best years of my life. It was like a CTR ring that carried so much more weight, so much more meaning. That's not to say that I was cutting off Girl A, but that I was putting her back where she belonged, far away, farther away than she had ever been before. Maybe far enough away that I could stop caring.

Today at work , a colleague who I am close to (I actually referred her to her job), who is married, who is a member of the Church, saw my ring. She, of course, didn't know what it was or the value I had arbitrarily assigned to it. but she looked at it and laughed at it, in a way that I have not been laughed at since 6th Grade. You're wearing a ring? Nice jewelry! It was painful, silly as that may sound. As I walked away I took it off and put it in my pocket.


It's now back in its cardboard box with Girl A's ring, where it belongs, with the lid closed. I never was able to find my W-2 form.

My Pipedream

So I have now been working as a real, salaried worker for 7ish months, and it's great. Really, I love it. I work in a cubicle, I deal with IT and HR, I stare at a computer and occasionally change my wallpaper. In short, I've done everything that is requisite to laugh at all Dilbert jokes. But I really do enjoy it. However, every man has a dream, and if that dream is reality, then what more can we dream?

So at about 2:30 or so this afternoon, I came to terms with my dream job. The job that, in a perfect world, in the perfect time/place/position in society/etc., I would have. This, mind you is a very fluid concept in my mind that was a basketball player from ages 0-12, a lawyer from ages 12-16, a journalist from ages 16-17, a firefighting journalist from ages 17-19, a seminary-teaching puppy-rescuing child-adopting hair-parting philanthropist from ages 19-21 (ah, the dreams of young missionary minds), and something just a skosh better than superman from ages 21-23. But now, the tides have sloshed towards something better than all of that. Yes, better than Superman.

The new dream is to become a pipe organ builder. Wouldn't that be great? A highly skilled profession in which you get to work with metal and wood and buckets full of power and hand tools. You work with your hands and when you tell people that make organs for a living, they have to be interested, right? And when we talk about job security, there is nothing that can replace a pipe organ, other than 23,000 floutists of varying shapes and sizes. Or at least 23,000 floutist of the same size with flutes of varying sizes.

Now, this idea of course came from my time listening to the best radio program that American Public Media offers, Pipedreams. My BFF Michael Barone takes me on these virtual tours of pipe organs throughout the world and makes me feel so smart by saying things like, "As you probably guessed, this piece was originally scored for the harpsichord," and I nod my head and say, "Of course, it was, Barone. Nothing new here ..."

Today, we went to Macon, Georgia, of all places (Baptists love themselves an organ!). This was the first time that Pipedreams featured the C.B. Fisk Organ , which was (as I already knew, of course) installed in 2000. I guess that it had never occurred to me that people would still be making organs. I thought they might have died out years ago when Rock n' Roll was invented. (I blame Elvis for everything bad that exists.)

But then there's these Fisk Organ folks, out there in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with technical facilities with 2 cranes and 3-D design rooms and a paint and finishing shop and "A fully-equipped woodshop and mill room capable of making every kind of wooden part or structure, with dedicated space for seasoning 5,000 board feet of lumber." And there it is on their Web site, the job description: "C. B. Fisk, Inc. is always interested in talking to talented individuals about joining our team." I wish you could have see the smile on my face.

As you can imagine, they will soon have to be more specific about what they mean by "talented individuals." Because I'm ripping into a "talented individual" resume with bullet points cascading off the page, things like "Learned to juggle with tuna fish cans in one day" and "Proficient at inserting both of my contact lenses at one time" and "Obtained complete mastery of the between-the-legs desperation tennis shot" and "Able to play 'That Old Grey Mare Ain't What She Used to Be' on the trumpet in every major and minor key in the chromatic scale. Also able to play the same on the harmonica."

I'll tell you how it goes. And, if you need a pipe organ made, go ahead and give me a call. Shouldn't be long now before I'll be your go-to guy.

It is not dead, nor doth it sleep

Who said romance is dead? Not this guy. Now, don't get me wrong here. Although in my own life it is - ummm - dormant, it is alive and well in the streets of NYC. Thank you, St. Valentine. I'd like to shake your hand some day. Maybe even give you a noogie.

For one day, the city changes. While 364 days a year millions of people walk the streets with the phrase "Go f*** yourself" deliberately written across their foreheads, Valentine's Day changes that, somehow. Instead, they walk the street with a stem rose in their hand. Suddenly, the phrase on their foreheads is different, friendly. Something like, "So I'm holding a rose. Go f*** yourself." If that's not romance, then what is?

My roommate flew off to Arizona and then to Las Vegas to spend Valentine's Day with her beau. Romantic? Afraid not. In order for romance to exist, there needs to be some sort of conflict, some sort of gravity. If two passionate lustbirds take a week off of work to go to Vegas and spend a lot of time yowzering each other, there is no conflict, there is no passion. In order for it to be romantic, there needs to be something else, something to make it real. Like if they lost all of their money and had to sleep in a sleeping bag in abandoned construction zones. Otherwise, it would be like sitting on the couch and eating fudge for a week.

Along those lines, there is no romance in the young man and woman who sit on the train and take turns licking each othersl ear lobes, unashamed of their busy, inquisitive hands. Romance inolves self control of sorts, like the couple who sit next to each other with almost no physical contact, but somehow interested in what the other is saying. No licking or nibbling involved, dull as that may sound.

By far the most romantic couple that I saw were two women who obviously had clearly defined masculine and femenine roles to play in their partnership. The woman of the women was doing the nice womanly things like telling the man of the women to tuck in her shirt, not to scratch herself, etc. Basically, telling her not to be a man, which is, of course, ironic given the situation. As they sat there on the train the "man" started to beat box and rap real seductive-like. Much like you'd imagine from Sinatra if he were an egg-shaped hispanic lesbian from the Bronx. And the woman seemed so taken by her, so happy to have found such a lovely masculine woman. It only seemed romantic because they found each other, somehow, probably online.

So romance exists, regardless of what the cynics (read "I") may say. And whether you consider it romantic to do things like waking up at 5:30 in the a.m. to clean the toilet and looking up the optimal viewing distance of a 32-inch LCD screen and rearranging the living room accordingly to accommodate what would be loosely classified as a date - and even more loosely as a Valentine - doesn't matter. What matters more is whether you consider it romantic to get a call at 7:45 at night with an excuse on the other line. I'd like to think it is.

Bland Insight

Friendship will only get you so far into a person's personal life and I, with much hesitation, am going to give you an uncomfortable amount of insight into me, who I am, and (realistically) why I have very few long-term relationships.

All of this information is probably accessible somewhere on Facebook (what isn't?), but I think it will streamline the process if I just list it here in one place. After reading through this, you will know me about as well as I know myself.

NOTE: I did not know that my bullet points show up as sunflowers. Not sure how to change that, but not my personal preference ...

My Pandora Radio Stations, in order of creation:

• Miles Davis
• Earl Scruggs
• Mark Murphy
• Cyrus Chestnut
• Louis Armstrong
• The Vocal Majority

Books that I am currently reading:

• Merle's Door, Ted Kerasote (about dogs)
• An Inconvenient Book, Glenn Beck (about sarcastic solutions to serious problems)
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynn Truss (about grammar)

Last movie that I watched:

• Fiddler on the Roof

Solution to the world's problems:

• Apologize and split a Snickers

My perspective of the true puropse of life:

• To come out with a good story to tell. This means that regardless of what happens, it is worthwhile as long as it makes good dinner conversation.

General storyline of a majority of my dreams:

• I marry someone because she pressures me into it, I am too scared to tell her "no," and I end up living the rest of my life with someone that I loathe. Someone like the wife and/or mother on Everbody Loves Raymond. And the dream then concludes with some sort of treasure hunt and foot race.

Publications to which I subscribe:

• WIRED
• GQ
• Wall Street Journal

Favorite color of socks:

• Brown

In retrospect, this post was kind of lame. Maybe that is the bigger insight into my personality. If you read this, give me a call and I can send you a check to reimburse you for the precious time of your life that was lost. My bad.

The result are in ...

So it turns out I am a INFP. Not exactly sure what that means, which is to say that the entire excercise is wasted on me.

But I have a problem with the whole thing. We did the exam in two parts, one that was done online beforehand and the other that was done in a group. My primary concern is with the introverted/extraverted deal. The online portions that we did were very pointed towards our relationships with people. So things like, "Do you prefer large groups at parties," to which my answer is obviously "yes." But then when we did this group portion, the questions were like, "Do you like to interact with people/things?" Do I like to interact with things? What kind of piss-poor question is that? Of course I interact with things. I can think of few questions that could be more broad.

Sure, I quite enjoy breathing air. Technically, that is interaction with air molecules, which are technically things. Or if I go camping for a weekend to reflect on nature, would building a fire for warmth classify as interacting with a thing? I think by definition it would have to be, right? So in the group portion I definitely classified as an E because, yes, I like to interact with things. At the end of the group portion we got our online portions back, and, of course, I scored a 30/30 as an introvert. After that I lost a lot of faith in the Myers-Briggs test.

My second major concern with the test is that we would separate ourselves into groups to provide insight on how the different sides of the dichotemies think about and manage life differently. But no one answers honestly. We all answer with our lettered caps on, depending on what we just jotted down on our grids. So, for example, we were asked to analyze a tea bag. The Intuitives vs. the Perceptives in this one. And we all knew exactly how to answer, it didn't matter what we actually thought. We just wanted our instructor to stand back, look at the boards at the opposite side of the room and say, "Now that is interesting. Isn't that interesting, class?" And then we can look over to the other side of the room, to those Ps, and say, "Oh, you're all bad people, thinking about a tea bag that way ...", and so that they can do the same.

But in the end I am an INFP and there is only 4.5% of the U.S. population that is like me. I was hoping for ENFJ, because that's the creme de la creme, the exculsive 1.5%. After all, diamonds are expensive because they are rare.

Myers Briggade

Back on the home front, my friends and I had somewhat of a weekend ritual of sitting on what we called "the bench." It was, as you might imagine, a bench. It was downtown on Idaho St., and we would go there as spectators in a phenomenon common to downtowns nationwide called the cruise. This was a time and place where teenagers would drive around in circles waiting for something to happen, although I was never sure what. Instead of driving around, we sat on the bench, ate pizza and drank Dr. Pepper. Good times, fond memories, etc.

At one point, we thought we could make good (better) use of our hours spent on the bench by finding me a date to homecoming. You see, I was a rare breed of social outcast, one who thought he was better than everyone else, yet was petrified of the world outside of his basement or beyond the sound-proofed walls of the band room. As such, I did not go to many school dances because I said I was too good for everyone but actually because I was scared of everyone. Anyways, we actually Kinkoed ourselves some flyers to hand out on the cruise which consisted of a brief checklist that would qualify or disqualify my would-be dates.

I will not go into too much detail, but generally things like "Are you an heiress to a thrown" and "Do your friends describe you as 'easy'" (there was much dispute as to whether this was a qualifier or a disqualifier). One of the questions that to this day I consider to be most brilliant was this: "Do you take offense to fat jokes?" Although it gets the point across, it does so with the utmost diplomacy. It is a question to which no one can take offense, but that everyone has to answer honsetly. That was the idea at least.

The reason I mention this is because I took the Meyers-Briggs exam today and I found a lot of the questions to be along the same lines as "Do you take offense to fat jokes?" Now, I don't know the results (I will find out tomorrow morning), but here's what I understand so far. You don't want to be an overly emotional, paranoid loner who can't mind his own business. However, the questions in the exam try to ask you exactly this as subtely as possible.

• "So, ummm, do you have a lot of friends?" (Are you a complete loser?)
• "And do you generally trust those around you?" (Are you paranoid of everything in life?) "
• "Do you frequently give others advice?" (Are you a nosy busybody?)
• "Okay then, do you eat brownie batter and watch SpongeBob Squarepants late at night on Nickelodeon?" (Are you an absolute emotional wreck?)

In the end, I think that it just tells you if anyone will like you. Any bets how my test results will be?

Conde Nast, etc.

I have a friend here in my ward in Queens who works in the Conde Nast building just across the 43rd Street from me. She and her husband are good people, the kind that make other people better people. You know the kind. Anyways, she works at Vanity Fair (the 22nd floor of the building, for those who care). I think that Conde Nast is such an interesting company because it has its hand in so many cookie jars at the same time. They have magazines that are self-proclaimed competitors like Vogue and Glamour and Vanity fair. They have their own sort of autonomous capitalistic organization within an organization.

I bring up Conde Nast because I subscribe to two publications, both of which cater to men's interests, both of which have a substanital readership, and both of which are under the Conde Nast umbrella. One is Wired, the other GQ. I got both of the latest issues in the mail today, which is always fun, mail. On the cover of each is a picture of a woman. Same overarching idea, of course, that sex sells. But here's where it gets interesting. (Yes, I put in cues like that in hopes that someone will keep reading, not necessarily because it will be any more interesting.)

The GQ cover is a picture of Rachel Bilson (I only know her from Chuck) in a patriotic bathing suit, saluting, because that's what you do when you wear patriotic swimwear. Anyways, it is tactful, but alluring nonetheless. The message is, "Yes I like to dress nice and read about men's fashion, but it's cool because this magazine has a girl on the cover." So there's GQ.

Then we have Wired. Again, a woman on the cover. But this time the message is very different. The featured female is Sarah Silverman. Those of you who know she is know that she ain't in a bikini. She's in jeans and a t-shirt that reads "tech support" across the front and, although she is not saluting, she does have a hand to her head scratching it as if to say, "I am pretending to be thinking about something." Interesting, right? The message here is, "Yes I like to write in my diary in binary code and introduce myself to people by my gamertag, but it's cool because this magazine has a girl on the cover."

I guess the only difference in men is that some like bikinis and others like tech support.

Gesundheit

Cont'd from previous post ...

For the scores upon scores of friends (read Purple Petra) who read this, some of y'all may have heard this story before. It is something that Mark and I have told after every reference to New York over the past year, which is quite a few times considering I started at least two out of three sentences with "When I was on my internship in New York last semester ..." to try to impress girls at school. This story admittedly will lose a lot of its effect because Mark can't contribute with his tactful reenactment. And because we can't hand the baton to each other using subtle verbal cues such as "You'd never guess what happened next!" and "And then when I thought it couldn't get worse" etc.

Mark was in town visiting me during my stint as a NY intern and we were on our way back from a thumpin' (or bumpin' or jumpin', whatever the cool way to say it is) Mormon party at a yet-to-be flipped 5-story townhouse. For those of you who don't know, Mormon parties are much like regular parties, only people act drunk as opposed to getting drunk. And instead of having sex we wink at each other. Anyways, we are on our way back and we find ourselves in the tunnel between Port Authority Bus Terminal and the Times Square stop. Those familiar with the matter say that we were right next to the vendors selling "You're going to hell, sinners!" signs in 45 different languages. Again, a somewhat late night (by Mormon standards, of course) and a moderate walk ahead of us.

As we were walking, a man who appeared to be looking for something better in life (i.e. a shower, shoes with soles on them, perhaps a home, more vodka) was walking towards us. He stopped, looked contemplative. Now, this was not going to be the first time that I had been asked for money, and, being the philanthropist that I was (not am), I often obliged (not oblige). I began to feel through my pockets for change or scraps of food when he deliberately brought a finger to one side of his nose, wound up, and blew out a (this is where Mark would come in handy, not only for visual support but also for adjectiving) snot rocket. But all in slow motion.

I spare many details here because they are both nauseating and insufficient to describe the scene, but I give you a few: grey, viscous, 5' 7", remarkable. It was perhaps my first true MTA moments, the kind you can't forget. The evangelical signs, the transcient suddenly realizing he left his kerchief in his other jacket, the woman shielding her son and gasping "Oh come on!", all came together and made a story worth telling. Not like the story, "You know ... that one kid who rides a bike with baskets."

Next time I'll take a picture.

Another hundred people (Sondheim reference, FYI)

So the best part about living in a big city is mass transit. Serious. When I was back in school (way, way back seven months), I rode a bike everywhere. It was a yellow-and-black Raleigh Retroglide with whitewall tires, fenders, paperboy baskets on the rear, headlights, tail lights, a bell, brakes, the whole works. (Sometimes I avoid blogging about my life because as I read back through the post I want to beat myself up. This is one of those times. The bike was a lot cooler than it sounds, I swear.)

That bike (along with my feigned casual yet charming disregard for intrapersonal relationships) defined me as a person. I took pride in having pedaled my way across campus every day of the Winter Semester '06, even on one morning that was rumored to have dropped to -40 with wind chill. Even when I reasonably had enough money to buy a car and enough roommates with cars to get a ride. Even then, I rode my bike to school, ringing my bell when I felt the urge, no helmet, no worries, no rules. (Well, I was pulled over once by a loyal member of the Rexburg police force, but only received a warning. I was clocked going 18 in a 5 zone. Lucky I didn't get my library card revoked.) I rode my bike not because I loved the environment or because I wanted to stay in shape. I rode that bike because I was the only one who would.

Fast forward seven months, and that bike is sitting in my parents' garage. I now ride to work through a system of tunnels that millions of other people also ride through. There is nothing that sets me apart, nothing unique. Some days I sit, others I stand. I usually try to enter through the middle door on the second-to-last car at the 46th Street stop so that I get off directly in front of the escalator at Times Square. Again, nothing unique. But the hours that I spend in those musty tunnels wearing a badge that mutters "Nobody Special" tell the most interesting stories of the last seven months.

Vegas, a big well-lit place

Vegas is amazing. I went there last week on work, and I was fascinated by the intricacy of a city built on nothing. The city is host to many of the modern architectural marvels of North America (Of course, since I know nothing of architecture, that is simply an equally meaningless, slightly more pretentious way to say, "It has lotsa neat buildings"). I didn't know that the world still produced that much marble for columns and floors and ceilings and fountains. But it apparently does.

The city must put on more Broadway shows than Broadway does now. Every taxi cab and every buildingside is covered with an ad for Phantom or Spamalot, although all the shows are advertised as being able to turn me on or to excite my desires. Not sure how they do it, because when I saw Phantom of the Opera in San Francisco I don't remember getting all that randy. Of course, I was pretty young so maybe I just missed it. Whatever the reason, Vegas has a knack for making everything sexier. (Case-in-point: Madame Tussuad's Wax Museum in New York came out with the first-ever interactive wax figure. Her name was J-Lo, and when you whispered into her ear she would blush. Vegas also came out with an interactive J-Lo who also blushed, but not when you whispered into her ear. She blushed when you grab her "back forty.")

What I could not believe was that all of this exists not because of people's hard work and vision of a brighter future. This exists because of gambling, alcohol and sex. I love the place, don't get me wrong. But I find it a bit unsettling that the most opulent, beautiful parts of our culture exist thanks to what can be accurately called dirty money. As far as I see it, the only things that are built to this scale are funded by one of two things: sin or religion. Maybe that's ironic, maybe it's convergence. I hope it's ironic.

The excitement I call my life

So today I realized that the person in my life with whom I have shared the most intimate moments in the last 7 months is the Mexican woman who works in the laundromat. I don't know her name or what her situation in life is, but I do know that I have folded my underwear in front of her. That's something that I have done in front of a select few people in my life. My mom, my missionary companions, peeping toms as the case may be. It's an exclusive bunch.

We are not so intimate that I let her actually fold my laundry, but she's seen me do it. If there is a more accurate measure of intimacy, I don't know what it is. We are so close that I saw her in the street walking her dog once. Kind of awkward to meet her out of context, of course, half expecting her to ask me about my underwear.

I am afraid that she will some day confront me about overloading the washers (I try to get my money's worth at $2.50 a pop) or about putting my wool blend pants in the dryer. Or the fact that I put my detergent in at the beginning of the cycle as opposed to waiting after the prewash just because I don't want to wait around. Or about occasionally mixing my lights and darks/reds and whites etc. You know, all the classic laundry faux pas. I'm sure she would if she could speak English or if I could speak Mexican.

My dream is to some day be more intimate with a woman than I am with my stocky Mexican laundry mat attendant. Preferably someone who speaks the same language as I do.