Longer than it looks

Last Saturday I ran the Salt Lake City marathon. Although I did not win - disappointing, I know - I did finish. Going in my goal was to come across in under four hours, which is a fairly common marathon goal. I missed that goal by just over a minute, at 4:01:15 according to my timing chip. I'm not complaining, though, because after 26.2 miles, turns out my time didn't matter that much to me. It probably means a lot to other people who were further from dying in a pool of tired sweat. But to me, all I wanted to do was cross the finish line and eat a Creamies. (That was one of the sponsors. Chocolate ice cream popsicle after a marathon. It seemed like a good idea to someone, I guess.)

The course was pleasant, and the weather almost ideal for marathoning. The first half was cooler, about 50 degrees, with no wind. After rounding the 13-mile marker - at about 1:57 for me - the clouds blew away and the air started to heat up, but nothing more than 60 or 65 degrees. It made for a beautiful, excuse-free day for a run.

I am a heart-rate runner. It is a more consistent measure than running on pace alone since pace highly varies depending on GPS accuracy, and since it is easy to over-exhert yourself trying to maintain a pace when other variables are in play - elevation, heat, hills, etc. For the first half of the marathon, I kept my heart rate at a fairly even 147-148. After that, I wanted to push myself up to about 155 and then, with 4 miles to go I planned on "throwing the hammer down" (as I referred to it in my head, amused) to about 165-170, depending on what was left in the tank. It was especially amusing since my last four miles felt like I was trying to tow a truck and "throwing the hammer down" in reality was just maintaining an 11-minute mile.

What amazes me about marathons are the people who run them. Mainly the ones who run faster than I do. Like the 60-year-old women who run it in three and a half hours. Or the 250-pound cleidsdales that cruise on by down the home stretch. They just blow my mind. Our bodies are just miraculous. That's what I told myself as my hamstrings started to seize and my vision started to blur.

When I burst (kind of) across the finish line, it was amazing. It was almost as surreal as the time I ran my mom's new Jetta into a Hastings signpost or as walking through the Boise airport when I got back from Brazil. I am so happy I decided to do it. I wish I would have won, though.

Montauk or Bust

This weekend I rode my bike to Montauk, which is the city at the end of Long Island. From my house to Montauk is a total of 136 miles, which I covered in a total of 7 hours and 15 minutes at an average speed of 18.25 MPH. I was pleasantly surprised with how well I held up to the distance and speed, especially considering last year I was averaging a max of about 15 MPH on my longer rides. (Boston, Poughkeepsie, Philadelphia, etc.) Granted, the ride to Montauk is almost perfectly flat, which obviously helps the pace, I was still pleasantly surprised.



I enjoyed most all of the ride. The weather left a little to be desired, but that comes with the territory of Long Island in the early spring I think. It didn't rain, but was gray and windy. I probably should do it again in May or June when the trees are blossoming and the family money is out and about. There's just something about getting nudged off the road by a Land Rover that makes me feel special.

The key learnings:

• Montauk is kind of nasty during the first week of April
• Life is better with a tail wind than with a head wind. It's the difference between 23.5 MPH and 15.5 MPH.
• I need a home in the Hamptons. It is the only way I will ever truly be happy.
• Any food tastes good after 136 miles.
• Riding in Manhattan after riding on the peaceful, uninhabited streets of Southampton is stressful. I enjoy riding in the city, but I am sure it is taking years off my life.
• I don't take pictures because when I do I regret having not taken better ones.
• Having the right equipment makes a world of difference.
• Being prepared doesn't always pay off.
• I think I'm a lot cooler than other people do. Really, I think I am like the coolest person in the world. Really. Like almost every mile, I thought to myself, "I'm riding to *Montauk*. How cool is that? Just me and 136 miles of coastal beauty. What a story am I to tell!" But no one really cares all that much. And I'm ok with that.
• Helmet hair looks a lot like homeless hair.

If you have any recommendations on where I should go on my next weekend warrior trip, I am open to suggestions. I am thinking Atlantic City or Scranton. Or maybe San Diego.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 3 - The Results

So I am not entirely sure what I was expecting in the results. Well, that’s not true. I knew exactly what I was expecting - 29-for-29. And that previous estimate of 16 to 18? That was obligatory modesty, like when rich people say, “There’s more to life than money.”

Having known myself for 24 years now, I can’t imagine why any reasonable, rational woman wouldn’t jump at a chance to go out with me. According to my daily affirmations, I am devilishly charming, fashionable, suave, unbearably handsome, etc. I sing in the mellifluous tenor of an angel, I am a high-powered public relations executive, I can juggle, I literally could go on for hours.

But I won’t. Instead, I will outline the results. To warn you, they are a bit unsettling:

Total number of girls with whom I met: 29
Total number of girls in whom I was interested: 7
Total number of girls who yesed me: 18
Total number of girls who yesed me that I was interested in: 3

So yes, I hit the modest estimate of 18 yeses. That leaves, however, 11 girls unaccounted for, and, more importantly, 4 girls that I was interested in that were mysteriously omitted from my list. As I said before, unsettling. “Maybe you just weren’t their type” is an empty excuse made for and by people who aren’t yet ready to face reality.

The truth is that most of these 11 girls were omitted from my list due to clerical and administrative errors. I mean the event was well organized, but off the top of my head I can think of three rudimentary organizational oversights.

1. The importance of writing legibly on our name tags was not made clear at the outset. When we wrote our names and numbers on our name tags, we were not told, “Please write in such a manner that people will be able to read them.” I was somewhat careless and let the 3 in my 63 spill over the edge, which meant that it was easily mistaken for a 65 or even a 68. Since my number was really the only way that my yeses were registered, I imagine 10% of my dates were lost to lucky numbers 65 and 68. You’re welcome. We’ll say this accounts for 3 of my non-yeses.
2. The boxes were not in the most-convenient locations. At the end of the event, we were instructed to help ourselves to food and drink, and to put our lists in the boxes. However, no specific instruction was given on the location of these boxes, nor if there were boy boxes and girl boxes. I did notice a considerable confusion as we left the dating arena as people tried to locate the proper receptacles. I would estimate that an additional 10% of all attendees were not able to find the ballot boxes, or threw their lists in the garbage by mistake. Garbage cans are, after all, just large boxes. Another 3 non-yeses accounted for.
3. How to mark “yes” on the lists was ambiguous. The lists that we received has a box above which was written “Yes/no.” I wrote in mine either C or D, which was a code I used to keep track without having to risk my dates seeing my actual number of yeses or nos. (The inside scoop: C was for cat, D was for dog. Before you pass judgment, D was “yes” because I like dogs better than cats.) I saw many people who were just making a check mark or slash in each box. However, a slash is neither a yes nor a no. It is just an annotation. So what if I put slashes through every person I was not interested in, but the organizers thought the opposite was true – that slashes were affirmative responses? An innocent mistake with disastrous results. I would say, in fact, that this confusion spread as far as an additional 10% of participants, accounting for 3 more non-yeses.

In sum, we can reasonably blame 9 of the 11 non-yeses on simple clerical and human error. The other two? Come to think of it, there was one “date” that had me sitting in front of an empty chair, which I did put on my list as “Empty Chair.” The empty chair could not say yes, clearly. And the last one? The last one may have been a girl with such egregiously poor taste in men that she consciously, deliberately marked “no.” Her loss, I assure you.

I look forward to many weekends rich with dates from my yes list. That is to say weekends starting in April after the conclusion of March Madness. I have to keep my priorities straight.

Orange Juice like it should be

Every once in a while I am blown away by developments in the packaging industry. Like 6 or seven years ago, someone decided that instead of selling 12-packs of Coke in boxes stacked on a 2x3 footprint, they would sell them on a 1/6 footprint. At the time, they were labeled "fridge packs," because the packaging fit better into conventional refrigerators, and, more importantly, you could easily access all the cans without tearing the box to pieces. Now all 12-packs are sold in this packaging.

I could go on and on, but I can just think of this one example in recent history. I will make the assertion that these kinds of developments are happening constantly, but I have no idea if it is true.

Yesterday I went to the store for my weekly health-food-and-junk-food shopping trip and picked up a carton of Tropicana orange juice. When I came home, I was giddy with excitement when I went to pour myself a glass.



I am not sure if you can tell what is going on here, but instead of the cap being flat on the top, it is a hemisphere shaped like an orange. How fun is that? Instead of twisting a boring cap, you are twisting diminutive plastic orange. It may seem just like wasted plastic, but I, for one, am now a Tropicana man for life.

The packaging also reads "squeeze, it's a natural" surrounding the cap. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I can't help but giggle at its sexual undertones.

Advisory: My Blog has Changed Names

I changed the name of my blog from "The Nuances of Life" to something that more accurately reflects the content of the blog and that has more substance: "Tony's Blog." I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking when I named it "The Nuance of Life." Although they are important, very few were covered in my posts.

I do not foresee this changing the blog at all, but it is now more honest with itself.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 2

So I am now back from the speed dating night hosted by the Manhattan 3rd Ward, and I have to say that overall I was impressed. There were at least 200 people there, split almost evenly between men and women. In fact, there were a few more men than women, which, by Mormon standards, is nothing short of a miracle. My props to the organizers, although my props unfortunately have no cash value.

Each microdate was 3 minutes or 90 seconds long, depending on the flight and fancy of the guy with the whistle. 90 seconds is, consequently, my attention span. Convenient. It is also just about enough time to decide if you like a girl's lips, eyes, and accent. Which are, consequently, all I really care about.

We were given a paper with a number (mine was 63), and a grid with about 30 spaces in which we wrote the name and number of your "date," and whether you would consider to go on a real date with her in the future. At the end, they collected the sheets, compared them go each other, and advised each party of any yes-yes matches. A simple, smart system. That's why I feel kind of bad for abusing it.

There is only one way to find out what each girl thought of me if I "yes" only those I was interested in - 8 of 30, as a point of reference. I would essentially only have a sample size of 8, because only those 8 would be "yes-yes" candidates. In order to increase the sample size to 30, I would have to "yes" all 30, which could make it hard to sort through those who were actual yeses. Unless, of course, I recorded all the genuine yeses separately on a list I kept privately. And that's exactly what I did.

Of course, this was a clear abuse of the system, which probably makes me a bad person. Or just a sucker for data.

I will not go into details about the microdates specifically in order to protect their privacy. Sufficient to say, intimate details changed hands. What I would like to do, however, is make some predictions on a few key outcomes. These predictions are fairly indicative of the evening in general.

L - She will say yes because I wear hipster glasses that make me look cooler than I really am. She would not dare say yes to anyone who was not a cool hipster, or at least had glasses that played the part.

J - She will say no because she knows me well enough to know that she couldn't stand to spend more than 90 seconds with me.

M - She will say no because she was the most attractive girl there, by a wide margin. If she says yes, I have been grossly underestimating how attractive I am to the opposite sex.

R - She will say no because I asked her what she did for a living twice in a 90-second span. Asking someone what they do for a living says, "I am a boring conversationalist." Asking them twice says, "I am a boring conversationalist, and I don't listen to you."

Overall - I estimate that 18 of the 30 will be interested in a date. That may seem high, but I am an optimist. I might as well be an optimist now before I get the results and find out that only 3 could bear me for a real date and be forced into pessimism.

Even if no real dates materialize from this activity, I will at least learn that being rejected hurts, but it hurts like getting hit in the head with a kickball. It stings and leaves a big red mark on your face, but it doesn't do any permanent damage. That's a good lesson, one that most people learn in grade school.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 1

I am going speed dating this evening, which is hosted by one of the Manhattan singles' ward. I have never speed dated, although I have seen it done on TV, never with remarkable results. Although I will withhold judgment until later tonight after I am all speed-dated up, I would like to propose a model for fool-proof (read "Tony-proof") speed dates.

The advantage to speed dating over conventional dating is its efficiency. With that in mind, the key has to be total transparency. Going into each micro-date, both man and woman should know everything about each other. So instead of being forced to slowly find out their talents and eccentricities through months of expensive and time-consuming dating, they can cut right to the chase.

I am not just talking about likes and dislikes. Who really cares if my favorite color is green and if I like ponies? The kind of woman that I would never be interested in, that's who. I'm talking about medical records, academic transcripts and bank statements. How many pushups can you do? Does anyone in your family have a history of glaucoma? Do you have weak ankles (which Mark refers to lovingly as "wankles")?

It would, of course, also cover uncomfortable questions that would potentially emerge in the developmental stages of a budding romance. It makes no sense to wait until 6 months in to address these kinds of deal-breakers when you could address them up front. How many children do you want to have? Do you want a TV in the bedroom? Would you ever consider naming your son Tiger Woods Sheehan? In terms of toothpaste tubes, are you a squeezer or a roller?

Each party would be given five minutes to review their documents, then they would be given five minutes to converse, and then they would move on. Based on their impressions from the quantitative and qualitative analyses, they would decide jointly to further pursue a relationship, and whether it would on a long-term or just-for-fun basis.

They would each be required to attend speed dating sessions at a predetermined interval - every three months, for example - to confirm that they are really not interested in pursuing other options. So they would sit through the session, and if they still are most compatible with their current girl/boyfriend, then the relationship can continue. If not, they should try other candidates that they are better matched with. No hard feelings, no tears.

It is undoubtedly the best way. Or so I say prior to my speed dating rendezvous. I'll let you know how I feel in a few hours afterward. My gut tells me it will be something like, "Speed dating is stupid. And girls are stupid. Where's my Xbox?"

If this type of speed dating were common, or even mandatory, time could be spent more productively

A Marathon Post

I am training for the Salt Lake City marathon. Now, I realize that there are a few fundamental logical flaws about that statement – “Why Salt Lake, when you live in New York?” and “But marathons are for athletic types, Tony!” just as a couple of examples. But I am going through with it nonetheless.

The main reason that I am doing it is squarely in line with the assertions outlined in the disgustingly accurate blog StuffWhitePeopleLike.com. Beyond that, I am doing it because (a.) Lance Armstrong did it, (b.) girls do it, and I am not one to be beat by a girl, (c.) training for it is cheap entertainment, (d.) entrance into the New York Marathon is on a lottery basis and (e.) it gives me an excuse to wear running tights.

Although I am far from being ready for the marathon – I am about 1/3 of the way into my training – I have a few observations thus far. I’ll keep it to four for the time being, although I could offer many more. Running gives you way, way too much time to think.

(1.) There are few physical sensations that are more persuasive than having to go to the bathroom. Granted, I have never been water-boarded, which some say is unpleasant, but when you are running and you know you are 5 miles from the nearest bathroom, it is stressful. At the first inkling of tinkling, you start to run both more quickly and more smoothly. It makes life one big cardiovascular potty dance.

(2.) You only meet people who are running faster or slower than you. Everyone who is running at the same pace as you will stay the same distance in front of you or behind you. I’m sure there is a life lesson to be learned in that somewhere.

(3.) 26.2 miles is long. To date, the farthest I have run is 18 miles, and that was actually a 16-mile training run during which I got lost running circles in Brooklyn for 2 miles. Our bodies are remarkable adaptive because I remember when my knees gave out after 3 miles. (That is not a testament to my body specifically, but to bodies in general.) Or maybe it’s just a testament to how much I complain.

(4.) There’s room for improvement. Always. I am looking at finishing the marathon in about 4 hours, 3 hours 45 minutes best-case scenario. That’s chump change by marathon standards. But I won’t be able to run better than that until I’ve run at that pace. It’s like lower-tier mediocrity is a necessary step to upper-middle-tier mediocrity.

I'll try to provide periodic updates on how goes the training. And trying is half the battle.

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.