Seriously? Did Philly really need a rash of people stealing manhole covers? Did anyone? I first read about this in the LA Times some months ago when it hit Long Beach. I guess there was no good reason why only a single city would suffer from this; the high price of metal is not a Long Beach phenomenon. And maybe it's because I don’t see how cities are going to stop this, that it can keep going as long as it wants to, that it really feels like a kick in the teeth. I think that you can get inured to something like graffiti or rubbish-strewn vacant lots—visual eyesores that suggest neglect—more than you can about your streets being gutted. What's disturbing is the suggestion that the only thing holding people back from tearing up their city was that it didn't pay enough.
I feel for you, Philly.
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Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
A List to Build A Dream On
The one thing I learned from the Jesuits is how to complete a project.
-James Joyce (approximate quote)
I'm so jealous. I really am.
Do you ever have those moments when you find yourself being so strikingly true to yourself you have to step back and take notice? Sometimes this happens to me at a low point; I generalize my frustration to all me's and all times, bummed out that I'm making the same mistakes all life long. Tonight, it's a cheerier idiosyncracy: the prospect of "doing a project." I've been reading a lot the past few days--about ancient Greece for school, about finance because I'm a man of my times, and volume one of the kids' series, Pendragon, because I promised my brother I'd read it. Unlike the grueling pace of the past two to three months, though, I'm reading at my own pace and am handling the school/work/housekeeping juggle a whole lot better. So, I did what I always do when the going is good and possibility is in the air.
I make lists.
In a mania, I consider all the projects I'd like to start, and go through them over and over again. Reading campaigns, fitness, cooking, that's just for starters and a perpetual set of projects. Choice is not torment, but a channel-surfing shuffle in which every show is your favorite show. In college, the little maroon College Bulletin was my most well-perused book. It listed every single class offered, and I remember nights spent dreaming up schedule upon potential schedule. I literally filled a spiral notebook with these combinations. And I write small. This is also why I think I've got a hard time sitting down to a movie at home; the prospect of tying down so much time definitively is hard. Even now, a good chunk of each Saturday morning is spent coming up with good reasons for not doing any one thing in particular. And that's the best time to go to the farmer's market, which I've considered and dismissed every seven days for a year. I'm going this Saturday, no ifs ands or buts, how about that? As for the projects intoxicating my brain? More than anything else I'd like to:
Add five hundred words to my Spanish vocabulary. Make my own encyclopedia of gardening and plant care, beginning with each of the twenty or so plants of M's. Cars: how do they work? Make a fitness plan based on one-week rotating intervals in which each successful week occasions a top-to-bottom re-evaluation of the plan. Set a schedule for at least three days out of seven to copy music into portable hard drive with a preliminary goal of one hundred albums. Spend twenty minutes each week reviewing my several algebra and geometry books to come up with a theme for a weekly phone call with j, my youngest brother, whom I already have studying math on his own daily through the summer. I have a guitar once again: re-learn. Start a book club with my friends. Start a book club with M's dad. Greek culture reading project. Geography/Earth Science: worth taking a class? Maybe check out a general book from library and make that decision later. History of the World: I'll have to take a subject test this fall as a first step toward teacher certification, and it will be mostly a chronological survey of multiple-choice questions...draw up a schedule for plotting entire range of facts covered by test in long-paragraph entries with mid-September end date. Enact twenty-one day plan to address self-perceived internet addiction. Make budget. Standardize shopping list. Use a calendar. Learn German, but not before improving my Spanish and French. Play my Wii.
I've been here before, and this is definitely a true kind of me. For now, time to check on the plants, drink some water myself, and not check for the rest of the day if my latest grade is posted online. Good night.
Read more!
-James Joyce (approximate quote)
I'm so jealous. I really am.
Do you ever have those moments when you find yourself being so strikingly true to yourself you have to step back and take notice? Sometimes this happens to me at a low point; I generalize my frustration to all me's and all times, bummed out that I'm making the same mistakes all life long. Tonight, it's a cheerier idiosyncracy: the prospect of "doing a project." I've been reading a lot the past few days--about ancient Greece for school, about finance because I'm a man of my times, and volume one of the kids' series, Pendragon, because I promised my brother I'd read it. Unlike the grueling pace of the past two to three months, though, I'm reading at my own pace and am handling the school/work/housekeeping juggle a whole lot better. So, I did what I always do when the going is good and possibility is in the air.
I make lists.
In a mania, I consider all the projects I'd like to start, and go through them over and over again. Reading campaigns, fitness, cooking, that's just for starters and a perpetual set of projects. Choice is not torment, but a channel-surfing shuffle in which every show is your favorite show. In college, the little maroon College Bulletin was my most well-perused book. It listed every single class offered, and I remember nights spent dreaming up schedule upon potential schedule. I literally filled a spiral notebook with these combinations. And I write small. This is also why I think I've got a hard time sitting down to a movie at home; the prospect of tying down so much time definitively is hard. Even now, a good chunk of each Saturday morning is spent coming up with good reasons for not doing any one thing in particular. And that's the best time to go to the farmer's market, which I've considered and dismissed every seven days for a year. I'm going this Saturday, no ifs ands or buts, how about that? As for the projects intoxicating my brain? More than anything else I'd like to:
Add five hundred words to my Spanish vocabulary. Make my own encyclopedia of gardening and plant care, beginning with each of the twenty or so plants of M's. Cars: how do they work? Make a fitness plan based on one-week rotating intervals in which each successful week occasions a top-to-bottom re-evaluation of the plan. Set a schedule for at least three days out of seven to copy music into portable hard drive with a preliminary goal of one hundred albums. Spend twenty minutes each week reviewing my several algebra and geometry books to come up with a theme for a weekly phone call with j, my youngest brother, whom I already have studying math on his own daily through the summer. I have a guitar once again: re-learn. Start a book club with my friends. Start a book club with M's dad. Greek culture reading project. Geography/Earth Science: worth taking a class? Maybe check out a general book from library and make that decision later. History of the World: I'll have to take a subject test this fall as a first step toward teacher certification, and it will be mostly a chronological survey of multiple-choice questions...draw up a schedule for plotting entire range of facts covered by test in long-paragraph entries with mid-September end date. Enact twenty-one day plan to address self-perceived internet addiction. Make budget. Standardize shopping list. Use a calendar. Learn German, but not before improving my Spanish and French. Play my Wii.
I've been here before, and this is definitely a true kind of me. For now, time to check on the plants, drink some water myself, and not check for the rest of the day if my latest grade is posted online. Good night.
Read more!
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
A Little Bit of Wednesday Nothingness
Hello, world. If you're still checking, thanks for keeping the faith. Just some miscellany to chime in with, no big changes for me. I've learned the important knowledge that you're best throwing out raw chicken that's two--no more than three--days after its use-by date; thankfully, I learned this prior to cooking. So you can add six chicken breasts in a balsamic vinegar marinade to my list of foods I've let go bad and so thrown out. Also, I threw out my third tub of soft ricotta cheese. I really want to use it, and next thing you know it's been four months. Again. Oh, waste. Today, making salt potatoes, an upstate New York dish I've only tried once.
Yesterday I came across a goodreads review of Heidegger's "Being and Time" that warned: spoilers ahead. Really? I mean, it's not exactly The Deathly Hallows. Also, I have the vaguest sense that last night I dreamt about "the economy." I don't have any more specific memory about it. At work--this is real life now--prices and the general badness of times is an everyday topic of conversation. I stay away, mostly, because I've always hated getting into the give and take of political discussion with people around whom I'm guarded anyway. I was asked point blank who I'm voting for and I successfully parried with joke opinions. At least, I don't think anyone believed my line that, "it doesn't matter who wins, we'll never have it as good as we've had it these last eight years."
By Saturday at the latest, I'll be in car dealerships haggling over the price of a 2008 Honda Civic. I've waited twenty-eight years for my first car, so I hope to leverage "playing it cool" against their ploys and rushing tactics. I drove to one place this past Sunday, but it was closed. That was my first attempted visit and it took me at least fifteen minutes to work up the nerve to finally, actually, can't-turn-back go buy a car. It reminded me of the first time I had little league practice. I'd been the single worst player in try-outs--no hits, missed every ball hit to me--and I was ready to vomit on the way to practice number one. He picked up on this and, to my great relief, we skipped it. I made it to all the rest, didn't throw up at any, and got zero hits for the year. Now, on to buy that first car.
Read more!
Yesterday I came across a goodreads review of Heidegger's "Being and Time" that warned: spoilers ahead. Really? I mean, it's not exactly The Deathly Hallows. Also, I have the vaguest sense that last night I dreamt about "the economy." I don't have any more specific memory about it. At work--this is real life now--prices and the general badness of times is an everyday topic of conversation. I stay away, mostly, because I've always hated getting into the give and take of political discussion with people around whom I'm guarded anyway. I was asked point blank who I'm voting for and I successfully parried with joke opinions. At least, I don't think anyone believed my line that, "it doesn't matter who wins, we'll never have it as good as we've had it these last eight years."
By Saturday at the latest, I'll be in car dealerships haggling over the price of a 2008 Honda Civic. I've waited twenty-eight years for my first car, so I hope to leverage "playing it cool" against their ploys and rushing tactics. I drove to one place this past Sunday, but it was closed. That was my first attempted visit and it took me at least fifteen minutes to work up the nerve to finally, actually, can't-turn-back go buy a car. It reminded me of the first time I had little league practice. I'd been the single worst player in try-outs--no hits, missed every ball hit to me--and I was ready to vomit on the way to practice number one. He picked up on this and, to my great relief, we skipped it. I made it to all the rest, didn't throw up at any, and got zero hits for the year. Now, on to buy that first car.
Read more!
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