Digging through the stacks

For the past week or so I've been digging around through the various accounts (gmail, myspace and the like (yes, I actually logged into myspace)) I have scattered around the Internet, not really for any discernible purpose that I can tell.  One thing that strikes me is that I used to have much more and quality interaction with people online than I do now.  There were emails that I had written that were many paragraphs long and if printed may have been multiple pages.  Before the days of everyone having either email or a social site profile, I was a bit of a letter writer, perhaps that explains some of this.  Not to mention I was more motivated to write in general.  Now, not as much.

I was going through a series of messages with someone I originally met online, meet in real life and actually wrote about here a decent amount.  I'm actually going to go see her in less than a month and am pretty excited to see her again.

Back to the point at hand though.  As with real life, my Internet life has become less engaging for a few years.  I mostly lurk on reddit.com, make a status update on Facebook, and then just spend hours going from page to page.  Before, I would occasionally chat with people, write a few emails and try to get a few posts a week down here.  That doesn't happen anymore.  Perhaps I had more free time when I started doing this and being online in general.  Or maybe as time went by, I just got bored.

I look back, and realize in some limited form, I've had this blog for a very long time.  Since 2005.  Sheesh.  Admittedly, I've been ignoring it for some of the last few years.  When I first started writing here, I was still using the dial-up modem built into my iBook G3, a computer that I didn't replace until late 2008.  Dial-up!  I remember how long it would take me to upload a picture to Flickr, and the sound of the modem connecting is etched into my brain.  That kind of connection I don't miss, high speed is definitely and improvement.  The Internet is not the place it was six years ago.

I wonder what's next?

little man

Burney crossed over the Rainbow Bridge a couple of months ago.  It's been a big loss and we all took it pretty hard, especially my brother and sister-in-law.  It's only been recently that she and I have been able to talk about him.  I never wanted to press the issue, but I'm sure she knows how much he meant to me.

Burney was the biggest dog in the world.  Not in size but in heart.  Everyone that met him fell in love with him and I don't think he ever met anyone he didn't like.  He had a gentle soul.  One of my favorite memories of him is how on a warm day, he would come outside, lay down on the brick patio and sun himself.  He couldn't have been happier.  That or crawling into a hamper full of clothes fresh out of the dryer.  He would just look up at you with that little head of his and then burrow back into the clothes.

Like all of their dogs, Burney was rescued.  And from the story they heard after the fact, he was much better off with them than whoever had him before.  That dog found his heaven with them.  They gave him the chance to be the best Burney he could be and he did.

I miss Burney.  When I go to their house, I sometimes think before I realize that I'll get to see him.  But it only makes me sad for a moment.  Because in the end, I was one of the lucky people who got to know Burney.

Ugly Truth

fern
Originally uploaded by surly monkey

Tonight was the night I knew I was getting towards the old side. The realization hit when it dawned on me that old school Metallica is pretty much considered classic rock.

It was at that moment that I looked around and thought to myself that these kids all look so young. Am I now the creepy old guy sitting in a place that I don't belong? I'm not fully convinced that this is the case, but there are placed I'm beginning to think I shouldn't frequent.

Somedays I feel like I'm becoming one of those guy I would see around in the nineties, the ones that looked like they were holding on to a youth that was increasingly eluding them. But at the same time, I'm not so sure. I know what I like, some of it's old some of it's newer.

This process of getting older eludes me even though I know and see it happening to me. I still am not sure what I want, and wonder if anyone ever really does.

My body feels the years go by. Each break and bump has it's own story, and for someone like me there are a lot of stories. But there are days when I still think I'm that lost 22 year old that got off the bus that night in Denver.

I'm not even sure if I have a point here, other than I'm becoming more aware of the years that are behind me. And starting to wonder.

flowers lomo

flowers lomo
Originally uploaded by surly monkey

I've been back in Indiana for almost two months now. When I first got back, I was taking quite a few pictures during long hikes in the woods. As money got tighter for me, this hasn't been happening as much. But there's a couple prospects in the next few days. If something happens and it looks like I may have income on the way, it may be time to have one last deep hike in the woods.

So yeah. I came back to Indy. Mostly because Colorado Springs was trying to kill me and I felt like I was going crazy there. I don't feel nearly as crazy now, I still need to talk to a professional and am hoping once I can get income, I can find one.

Anyway. Hope to get more posted here in the months to come and more photos up on Flickr.

Silly Universe

Why is it that when I finally have a plan, Universe throws a curveball at me? Curse you Universe.

So I have this plan set up to leave Colorado in the spring (looking like late April or early May) and head back to Indy to start over. It's got to better than Colorado Springs. Everything but a job is lined up, and going through my expenses, I don't need that much of a job to cover me in the short them. Crud, the Ambien is kicking in. Part of this plan was an active decision to avoid getting involved with members of the opposite sex.

This is where Universe has thrown me a curve ball. I go up to Steamboat to perform Sam and Juli's (two of my greatest friends} wedding ceremony. The wedding ceremony goes off quite well. The service is short yet powerful. I had scrapped almost every thing I had and completely rewrote it the night be for the wedding (including the vows). I ended up dropping a "cool" in there somewhere that seem to be appropriate. Sam and Juli loved it as they knew it came from my heart. It worked, it was meaningful, powerful and from the heart. And short, we're talking like 10 maybe 12 minutes.

American Relay got back together for one night just for Sam & Juli. If that's not one great gift, then I don't know what is.

Shortly after the band. This young lady (one of the few singles at the wedding, other than myself, Nick (and he's in the band)) and Jay approaches me and starts talking to me about the service and religion (to a lesser extent). I had sort of been avoiding talking to her as I thought that would be age inappropriate on my part. Turns out she's not 21 - 23 like suspected but 26. And she's cool. Like really cool. She knows Built to Spill, which is at least 50 instant bonus points. She's smart, has the face of an angel and in unconcerned by our age difference (to the point of asking me to not bring it up). And did I mention she's into cool music? Yeah. So we hit it off.

I'm not going into anymore details of the night. Between the fair amounts of beer and a smidgen peer pressure, I thought I had pretty much freaked her out. But the next day, things were cool. End result, I got her number to call her next time I'm in town.

Anyway, I didn't wait the amount of time the rules say to contact her. Cool. And now I want to see her again.

And this is why the Universe is playing tricks on me. And the ambien is kicking in.

SE CO

surly monkey

Today I took off for La Junta. There's a pretty awesome skate park there, it's really big and has good flow. When I showed up there were these kids on ridiculous contraptions that were three wheeled scooters. No speed whatsoever and they ended up in the flats blocking flow. I had never seen such a thing.

I skated for about an hour. The local kids were super cool. They know how lucky they are to have a park like that there. It seems like they as opposed to the city are the ones that keep it clean and they were definitely enforcing the rules as far as park etiquette to the scooter kids. Not only that, but La Junta is one of the few parks I've been to in Colorado where the local kids actually skate the full park and take advantage of the pool aspect of the park. Those kids skate old school there.

This time instead of heading straight back to the Springs I headed down US 350 towards Trinidad. I stopped and took pics. Every town between La Junta and Trinidad no longer exists. It was pretty much the first time of seeing ghost towns for me (with the exception of Victor, CO which has no buildings whatsoever standing).

When I finally convince myself to leave the state of CO, this may be the thing I miss the most. Get in my car for a day and see the world change.

15 years

Today is fifteen years since I landed in Colorado. I guess it's an anniversary of sorts. I still vaguely remember getting off the Greyhound at the old Denver Greyhound station and walking down to the RTD station to catch a bus to Boulder. Strangely, I remember this Napoleon looking security guard that I would see the next few times I took the bus back to Indiana.

Sheesh, I was so much younger then. It's hard to remember what it was like back then. I know that I didn't really intend to move here at first, I was just coming to visit a friend for a couple of weeks. And yet I'm still here for the meantime.

Fifteen years later, and I'm ready to go back to the motherland. Even with the humidity and crappy winters. Don't get me wrong, I love Colorado but I don't love Colorado Springs. I could go on and on about why but I won't. And I'll miss it here when I finally heat back east.

And in fact I have this feeling if and when I'm back in Indy, I'll find myself looking to the west and putting mountains that don't exist in the skyline.

Bikes

I can't sleep. Melatonin isn't cutting it this week. Hell, vodka isn't cutting it. What's weird is that whatever it is that's keeping me awake hasn't surfaced enough in my consciousnesses for me to know what words to give it. It must be big because booze would usually work by this point.

It's almost like I'm afraid to go to sleep. And I have no idea why. Crud.

What's even more sad is that I think I'm doing ok. I started commuting to work on my bike back in April. Admittedly, I still drive about one day a week but it's better than I had been doing. And I can already tell I'm losing weight. That and I stopped drinking beer for the most part, which I think was not helping with the weight gain.

But this leads to me wanting to get a new bike as the mountain bike I've had for the last 13 years is no longer cutting it. Not that I want to get rid of it, it's been a sturdy steed and still has lots of life in it. But I'm ready for something different as an everyday bike. My desire is to stop driving as much as possible as long as I live in a place where it's possible to do so(I think I could commute to work at least every month of the year).

At this point I've narrowed it to either a cyclo-cross or touring style bike. And it seems to a degree there isn't that much difference between them these days. But what do I know, I'm new at this again.

Oh yeah, I saw Mogwai the other night. Awesome.

Laws of Attraction

For a long time I've had this suspicion that I'm destined to spend my life alone. Alone in the sense that I will have no true partner in life, someone to share the intimate portions of life. Most of the time it seems that I'm ok with that. The only time that I'm not is when I've tricked myself into thinking that this is not the case. There are times when I lie to myself, and allow myself to believe that there is a chance I may not have to spend myself alone. These are the times that I open myself up, thinking what I know is true is not and eventually get the equivalent of a dagger in my heart.

Oh when will I learn to accept that I am to be alone?

But tonight, I think for the first time I heard what the reason is that I am destined to be alone. I am not attractive. This is what I heard: "I'm not attracted to you, I tried, I really tried."

This is the key I think. For whatever reason, I am not attractive to the other sex. And it's not that I look like some kind of ogre. But I don't think it has anything to do with looks. I'm not a jerk, and the sad thing is, I think to be attractive as a man you have to be a jerk. So I guess either I'm going to be alone or I need to learn how to be more of a jerk.

I want to be a robot.

Back. In. Screw that.

So I'm sitting here listening to this Peel Sessions New Order record I picked up today, and it sounds nothing like the New Order I grew up listening to (ok, the last track "5-8-6" has some of what I remember). Admittedly, it was recorded a few years ago be for most of us over here in the States started listening to them. This was recording in 1982, most of what we know here in the States was recording 1986 or later. Curse the record store. And curse my next trip to Twist and Shout up in Denver.

I keep scouring the used bins. I've picked up what I hope are a few gems. Although I suspect that most of what I've picked up is not really that great. I get the sense that in Colorado Springs either anyone that had decent taste has either died or move away. For their sake I'm hoping for the latter.

As always I'm not sure what my point is here. I suspect I'm riding the waves of nostalgia. Especially since I just put on a record that was released the year I was born "Masters of Reality" by Black Sabbath, another score.

I'm avoiding the issue that I think I'm letting myself get hurt again. It's easy though I tie it all up with all these records again and no one really notices. The only one is me, and that's just because I have a strange sense of impending doom hanging over my head.

And I really think that Black Sabbath in the original line-up was way more hippie that we ever want to admit.

Know it all

So tonight I went down to the local watering hole. I was enjoying a myself just hanging out and talking to the regulars, when the local know-it-all/jerk guy shows up. This fellow is one of those guys that will try start an argument with almost anyone about almost anything someone says. The kind of fellow who will interject himself into your conversation and spout off his opinion even when he has no idea what is being said, he seems to latch onto a keyword or two. That kind of jerk irritates me.

Anyway, I try not to be one of those people. There's been plenty of times where I've just wanted to interject in a conversation but I stop myself. Thanks to social anxiety I never find myself doing that kind of thing. It seems to me that kind of behavior is a form of overcompensation for something. In this particular fellow's case I could see that it may very be the case. This guy (an most like him) is also a one upper. When he left the bar tonight, he made it a point to get the last word as he was driving away.

These people drive me up a wall. I seem to deal with them quite a bit, and usually just wipe it off.

I know how to bite my tongue, and I can't figure out why other people don't.

Oh well, I'll just laugh at them and get over it.

A roof and food

I'm lucky. I still have a job, I still have a roof over my head and I still have money to feed myself (and pay for this Internet connect, if I remember to pay the bill). There are times when I think we all forget how lucky we are to have these things. The scary thing is, if I were to lose my job, I would have about a month before I couldn't pay the rent and end up out of my apartment. And then what? I guess in my case I could head back to the homeland and stay with friends and family until I got back on my feet.

Others aren't so lucky. We probably see them every day and don't even notice. And the way things are going, there are going to be more Americans living on the streets or anywhere they can. Maybe.

One of the big fears I have in life is that I could someday end up one of those people we see walking around homeless and talking to invisible people. I doubt if I would really get that bad, but for some reason I see it within the realm of possibility for me. It would probably take a lot to get me to that point but who knows. I could swear I've seen visions of myself staggering through a city stark raving mad.

What set me off thinking about this was a post on reddit.com. The submitter of this post was not begging for charity, he was describing his day to day life as the newly homeless. And if you read through the replies, he hit a spot in the Internet. His means of surviving are not legal and he could get in some trouble if he gets caught. What's striking is that the community on reddit really came out with offers of support and suggestions. One of the suggestions he took to heart was to set up a blog that is starting to detail his situation. It is new, but an interesting look on the newly homeless.

I fear that we here in America are going to see more and more of this in the next few years. We just need to remember to take care of each other when we can.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

Lurking around in the Internet you can find a lot of the bad and darkness in the world out there, sometimes in fact it finds you. But lately I've been trying to find some of the lightness and good. It started with looking at lolcatz and loldogz. And then it progressed to more things that could be considered cute. Now mind you, I don't spend all day looking at that stuff. I still read the news and get the bad news too (although I try to stay away from overly graphic stuff, unless it's fake). But I do try now to look at stuff that brings a smile to myself a few times a day. That leads me to articles like this. It's a story of a shop keeper in a small town in England who decided to take the day off but leave the store open with an honor box. He wasn't robbed. I'm trying to see the better side of humanity.

And then I run across this article today. Entitled "The Male Spinster", it makes me wonder if that may be what I am. After reading this, I'm wondering if that's the path I'm heading. Lately, I've started to think that I am destined for a life of solitude. I'm not sure if I'm completely ok with this, but I'm not sure if it's possible to fight fate (if that's my fate that is).

I've never really bought the whole "one true love" thing or the "there's someone for everyone" thing either. It could be that I'm just jaded, but I really thing I've never really believed that those two things are true. Over the years, I've just seen to many people in unhappy, unloving situations and yet they stay in them. Emotions and feelings change over time and I'm not buying that each one of us have a soulmate out there (ok, that sounds pretty jaded, doesn't it?).

But, if that's the life I'm to live (at least for now), then I'll just look at kittens and puppies to make me smile.

Poker, I barely know her!

Damn, well at least this time I wasn't very invested this time. Nonetheless, I'm beginning to get sick of learning by experience. Perhaps I'm phrasing that incorrectly, what I mean is, I seemed to gathered all of this experience and for once I'd rather be able to apply it rather than learn from more examples.

And I'm not even sure what if anything I learned this time. I'm sure there's something.

Yes, I'm being intentionally vague, I realize this. Put it this way, for once I put almost all of my cards on the table, and seemingly they were snatched away. Poor analogy I realize but I really don't want to go into much detail. This is a public space after all.

This time I'm really not that upset by it, like I said I wasn't very invested. But it doesn't change the part where I'm a tad hurt.

Anyway, enough crying in my beer. So the other day I picked up Wolves in the Throne Room "Two Hunters" on vinyl. I'd already downloaded the album, but liked it enough that I wanted to hear in on my turntable (and it does sound better). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a LP only track on it. And of course the art is cool too.

After being pointed in the right direction by Hutch, I've started getting back in to metal, which at 37 sort of surprises me. One would think that metal is a younger persons genre. On that I am totally wrong.

Surprise! Or not.

Sometimes I surprise myself. Apparently, once in a while I can actually ask the questions I want answers to in a direct way. It doesn't happen that often, as I tend to beat around the bush. I'm not exactly sure why I do it that way but I do. Tonight, though, I asked a question the way I wanted to hear the answer (after failing at asking it subtly). And it was refreshing to get an answer to it.

Anyway, on to music, I guess. I have this feeling I've been neglecting this part. Tonight after the aforementioned conversation I went out to see my friends' band from Denver American Relay play at the Rocket Room tonight. I completely managed to space taking any cameras to prove my presence so you'll just have to believe me on this one. They played pretty damn good, and ended the show with a bit of a jam session with Reverend Deadeye and Becky Lee. It was pretty fun and I felt my body move a bit. Having only had a beer of two, that's a bit rare for me. But I guess with not having my camera, I didn't know what else to do.

I've been pouring over my music lately trying to come up with playlists. I find it a bit of a challenge. If I'm OCD about anything, it's sorting my music (and photos to a lesser extant), so it can get hard for me to mix genres on a playlist. Trying to make a mixtape/CD is actually hard. Not like making an actual tape back in the day (see Chuck Klosterman for the difference between a mixed tape and mixed CD). But nonetheless, it can be a struggle to come up with the best mix. Especially when you have 25 days worth of music on one hard drive.

Oh well, it's late and tonight I think I drift off with Beruit.