My Weekend...

This week I was maybe a little foolish in my physical exertions. I got an email from Josh Chambers on Wednesday saying Jordan Singleton and his wife were living at his parents this summer before going to med school in Wisconsin. He was going out of town this coming week and Jordan was leaving soon after, and he wanted to get together for lunch. So, Thursday afternoon I was sitting around doing nothing and decided to look up the UTA routes to see how far north I could get on my bus pass. Turns out there was a commuter bus that runs from the train in Ogden to Brigham City. I figured I could ride my bike over Sardine Canyon, so I immediately packed my bag and dashed out the door. I only had about seven minutes to ride from my place down to the Salt Lake station on 6th west, but surprisingly the lights almost all went in my favor and I made the train.

The Frontrunner takes about an hour to go from Salt Lake to Ogden. From there the bus took like an hour to get from Ogden to the intersection of 11th South and Main in Brigham City. That's the light you never make when coming down out of the canyon on the way to I-15. I got off of the bus at about 3:Something in the afternoon. It didn't take me a really long time to figure out that I might have been a little foolish to go at this time. It was very hot, about 93 degrees, and I probably didn't have enough water in my bottle. It was a hard ride.

By the time I got to the Stake Center Hill in Millville I'd had it, and I walked up it. When I got to the top I went over to Jordan's parents house. Jordan was in and we sat around and talked all evening while he worked on a commercial appraisal for his dad. His dad is an appraiser. Anyway I spoke and spoke and spoke. It's weird for me. Jordan is actually becoming pretty good with probing questions. He was a dual major in psych and philosophy, and I think the idea is that he's going to med school to do psychiatry. It's kind of funny because he didn't believe in it at all when we were kids. I remember waking up in the night once when we were having a sleepover at his house when we were kids. I was having a small panic attack and was getting ready to go home. He was angry, (this was what happened about every time I slept over in those days), and he said, "It's all in your head!" It's interesting to see him choose this line of work.

Anyway, we ended up playing Wii (my first time) till like 1:00AM, then made plans to go to lunch with Josh the next day, and I went home. Jordan can be a little ADD, and I couldn't get a hold of him Friday and I had his cell phone number down wrong. I didn't know Josh's number, and I didn't think to simply look his law offices number in the book. So, instead I spent the day working on that old Peugeot that I'm converting to a single speed. I actually got it more or less running, but then I decided to true the back tire. A spoke broke and that ended the project till I can get some new ones. After that I spent a few hours working on cleaning out the trench in yard where I shall soon lay the foundation for the rock wall I'm going to try to finish before going back to school. So that was good, but involved more dehydration and very hot weather.

The slept poorly that night and decided in the morning that sooner was better than later for riding home. I had to pick my Mom and Dad up at the airport at about 8:30PM, and I was thinking of sticking around till the afternoon to see of Jordan and Josh would want to get together, but instead I just left. I rode out around 9:15, and found that Sardine Canyon is easier from the Cache Valley side. You can see on the elevation graph on the route map that you descend more than you climb when going from Cache to Brigham.

Anyway, I figured on catching the bus back at that intersection, but when I arrived I was feeling pretty good. I could ride on down highway 89 I thought. I would have to sit around for 45 mins if I waited for the bus there. Why not ride on to the next stop, then the next if I was ahead of the schedule. So I did, and eventually I was thinking, "I could just ride into Ogden to the station."

About the south side of Willard I lost it. I was done, and I guessed that the bus should be coming soon. The stops were a few miles apart now, and I stopped and waited at a couple before going on. It was too hot and I was too sore to stand in the open on the side of the highway. My legs started cramping when I did. In my head, also, was a voice saying, "Ride on. Ride on. Be a man. Make some progress. It's only about 10 miles to go." I was thinking about riding with my Dad when I was a kid. We'd be dying, but he rode on and on. I always thought of rides in increments, but for him it seemed to be binary. Either you were done or you weren't, and you weren't done until you reached your destination. So he'd ride on, and on, and on.

So I was riding on, and was in between two bus stops in Harrisville when the bus passed.

I stopped at a Chevron and lay on the grass under a tree until my heart stopped racing. When I got up I was sore all over, so I finished my water bottle and went in to refill it, then got back on my bike and rode. I play these tricks on my mind when I'm riding. I say, "Man, I'm tired, but I can make it to that mile marker up there. Then I'll decided whether to stop and rest." When I reach that point I convince myself that I'm fine, that in fact I'm getting a second wind. So with that renewed energy I choose the next mile marker. I tried doing that with the stop lights, which in Harrisville and North Ogden are relatively far apart, but my body kept betraying my mind. I was done, and no manner of mind trick was going to change it. But I didn't have a choice so I kept going.

I was feeling kind of foolish. Somewhere there's a picture of Peter, Dad, and I in Roy getting back on our bikes. I was probably like ten. That day we rode all the way from home to Salt Lake. I'd managed that at ten, and here I was, almost thirty and dragging myself into Ogden. It felt a little pitiful. But I got there.

I had forty-five minutes until the next train left so I went into a gas station Burger King. I figured I could buy some food and wait in the air conditioning. I should have known better than to choose Burger King. I don't know if I've ever enjoyed anything I've bought there. I bought a hamburger, a chicken sandwich, and a small chocolate shake from the value menu, and went to sit down and watch CNN on the wall TV. I got through the shake and it gave me a little stomach ache. I probably consumed it too fast. But I'd bought the sandwiches and felt obligated to eat them. I started with the hamburger. I think it was about 30% bun, 10% meat, 1% cheese, and 59% mustard (0% ketchup). It oozed out all over the place, and eating it was unpleasant. The stomach ache grew. The chicken sandwich was similarly comprised, but substitute mayo for mustard. I made it half way through and knew I couldn't take anymore. I imagined I was throwing two quarters away as I all went in the garbage. It gave me a twinge of guilt, but it was a fair price not to have to keep eating.

Anyway, I got on the train and went home after that, but I'm bored of the relation of this story. So that's all you get.

This Week's Ride...

So, durring the week I decied I was going to do at least one big ride or hike per week. So my ride for this week was going to be to go up Emigration Canyon. I went yesterday (Saturday), and all the way up to the UofU campus I was wondering if this was a good idea. I thought, maybe I'll take it in steps. Today I'll ride to the top of campus. Next time I'll ride to the mouth of the canyon. Next time I'll bla, bla, bla... You get it. Anyway, that is usual for me, to feel doubtful as I begin. Then I ignore that and say, I'll just go till I can't anymore and see where that gets me.

I continued on up the canyon at a fair clip, but there were people in spandex passing me pretty regularly. "Oh," I thought, "to be a person in spandex. To have slightly less air resistance." Ok, not really, but I was thinking how nice it would be to be on a road bike and have less resistance on the ground. But I carried on.

Eventually my lower back got so sore that I had to stop for a moment and stretch. As I was doing that one of the few people in spandex that I had passed passed me again. When I got back on the bike and started to ride again I approached him relatively quickly and overtook him. As I passed him by and looked at him as I went I began to feel a little sorry for him. He looked about 40, and was well rounded. He was riding a flatbar Trek roadbike, and looked uncomfortable in his spandex. I figured he'd been sold the whole getup and had chosen the flatbar because he wasn't quite sure he could commit himself to a full dropbar road bike self. He was buying the dream of being fit, but probably knew a comfort bike was more his speed. Its the struggle between the desire for the image of fitness and the reality of the need for better health.

I knew from how easily I'd passed him that he probably had felt bad when I had gone around him before and was pushing to get back where he thought he belonged, in front of me. After all, he'd bought spandex, and a relatively expensive bike. He wasn't that old. Being in front of me with my baggy shorts and my fat tired mtn. bike would prove it, would justify the purchase. So when I passed him again I knew I was disheartening him. But it would be just silly to fall back because of this, and I put it out of my head as I went on.

Originally I had planned to ride to the first switchback. I thought it was a reasonable distance for me. But I was running out of juice. I was most of the way through Purple, the second album by Stone Temple Pilots, and I decided I'd ride to the end of the album. So I continued on for three songs, flagging, and when the fourth began I thought, "That's it. I'm done." (I'd misremembered how many songs there were.) So I stopped, and rested for a moment while I fought myself over turning around. Eventually I decided to go on. I rode for about a hundred yards and the trees opened up and I found myself at the switchback. I'd almost turned back when I was about a block away.

I got off there and sat on a concrete guard and drank some water, and thought about my near failure. It made me a little ashamed of myself and raised my ire. At that moment the well rounded 40 year old in spandex passed with a triumphant gloat in his eyes. "Good for him," I thought. "And shame on me." I decided that I would ride on. After a couple of minutes I got back on my bike and started on my way up.

Here the shoulder widened and so did the view. More people in spandex passed me now, most of them spindly tall guys about my age on very expensive bikes. There were a few women too. One of them I thought was a guy, when I saw her arms and shoulders (they were bigger than most of the guys I'd seen riding), then I saw her breasts. She was scary.

The view was really nice at this point in the canyon. All of the sudden you are above the bottom of it and you can see back down toward the valley, and how and high you have come.

I continued on for a couple of miles, and at one point the well rounded fellow passed me coming down, wearing a satisfied smile. Eventually my second wind was running out and I saw a summit, hoping it was the top, and as I rode up and over it, it was. There was a scenic pull off and about twenty five or thirty bikers were standing around smiling and chatting with each other and the other members of their parties. I smiled and looked out at the reservoir below, and then I turned around and rode down.

I ran a couple of errands in town on the way home, and when I put my route into Bikely it came out at about 30 miles. I'd planned on doing 22. It was a very nice way to spend a Saturday morning.

A Ride Through the Mountains

I've been going home to Cache Valley to help my parents out for a few days a week. They've been watching my sister Miriam's four boys while Miriam, Nathan, and the girls move from Florida to Alabama. It's been a little rough on Mom and Dad. If they could institute a mandatory four hour nap for the boys I think they'd have done it on the second or third day. It doesn't have to be as hard as it has been, (Abe, you know who you are), but it has, and I end up running interference.

Anyway, I got this brilliant idea that I'd ride my bike there and back to keep from paying $4+ a gallon. I wasn't about to try riding all the way, at least not on my first time, so I planned rather to ride the Frontrunner to Ogden then ride up one of the canyons and go through Liberty, over the mountain and down to Avon where I'd have someone come pick me up. Well it so happened that Mike Forsberg was going up the day I intended so I hitched a ride with him and spent the 3rd (yea USU fireworks show, ((not really, (((fireworks don't appeal to me like they did when I was a kid))) )) ) and the fourth (yea getting second degree burns from a blow torch ((not really, (((burns don't appeal to me like they did when I was a kid, ((((reference posterior of right hand)))) ))) )) ) (too many parentheses?) up there.

So at 3:30 in the afternoon on the 5th, Dad dropped me off in Avon. I took my bike out of the trunk and started to ride up state road 162. I'd ridden it once when I was a little kid on a road bike, which seems insane to me now. Maybe it was graded then, but even on a mountain bike, with cantilever brakes and a front shock I was sometimes worried a little.

One of my goals this summer, since I don't have a whole lot to do for school, is to ride my bike and hike a lot, and to take a lot of pictures that I can post of Panoramio for Google Earth. Anyway, by the time I got to the top of the pass, which is by far the most senic part of the ride, I was too tired and sunburnned to really care about photos. Anyway the top is really nice, and you should give the ride a try sometime. The wild flowers were just starting to wilt, and there are these long rolling meadows full of them. It looks like Switzerland. Its really very beautiful.

The descent was kind of scary. It goes down into Liberty pretty quickly. The terrifying part was how people in ATV's race up it. That sucks too because if you didn't bring enough water, as I didn't, the inside of your throat gets coated in dust. It's two or three inches deep in a couple of places. Also there were a couple partial washouts on the switchbacks on the road. There were several 4-wheel drive vehicles on the road on both sides, and strangely enough I saw about three or four passenger cars. I pity their parts.

I rode through Liberty and Eden, around Pineview Reservoir, and down Ogden Canyon. Even though I've been riding around town a fair amount, it hasn't built up that much tolerance to the effects of spending hours straddling a bike seat. By this time my crotch hurt. Alot. Anyway, I foolishly followed the map on Google rather than the address of the train station and common sense. When I hit North Ogden I knew something fishy was happening. I stopped and asked a guy spraying weeds in his driveway. The station was something more than 24 blocks the other way. I think Google was going by county road numbers or something.

The guy was super nice. When I asked him if I could fill my water bottle from his hose he went in and got me a bottled water. Looking like one of those bums who ride around on thriftstore mt. bikes with a Colt 45 oz. I rode the last couple miles to the station. I was very tired and covered in dust and grime. I boarded the train, strapped my bike in and plugged my earphones into my head. I was pretty much done for the day.

The worst part came afterward though. We were about to pull into the Salt Lake station when this girl came down the aisle and sat across from me. She looked at me and I kind of tried to smile. She started talking to me but I was too tired to want to take my earphones out, and I couldn't really make out what she was saying. So I just nodded a little, smiled and said, "Umm." Then she kept talking and from her tone I could tell she was asking me something. I'd have to take my earphones out.

When I did she started telling me about her troubles. She said she was so stressed out she felt like she was going to lose her baby, (she looked about 18, rundown and dressed poorly). Her husband had got hurt at work and had burns from his fingers to his bicep, and he couldn't work anymore, so they were moving in with her parents. The way she said it made it obvious it was the last thing she wanted to do. What was worse was that her husband was super depressed now because he didn't feel like he was helping his family. There seemed to be the implication the way she said it that he felt like they'd be better off without him. So she was starting to cry, wiping tears and holding her stomach with one hand, and I knew it was my turn to speak, to make her feel better.

And I couldn't. I was so tired that I decided not to muster up the courage to offer anything real by way of advice, or simply commiserating or sharing her feeling like a good human would do. Instead I said in a bland voice, "Things will work out." And then I looked away uncomfortably, in a way that would make her feel that I was embarrassed by her tears and her forwardness in telling me about her problems. It worked. She left me alone after that and a moment later I got my bike and I transferred over to the Trax.

The whole way home, riding the Trax then walking my past the reflecting pond and all the fountains at Temple Square and up 2nd Ave, I was thinking of the things I should have said to her, the experiences I should have shared, and feeling bad about it all. What bothers me is that this is becoming a pattern with me. Somewhere along the line I was offered some human contact and I said no. The next time it was easier to ignore, and the next, and the next. And now I've become one of those people who are shut off from everyone. I was thinking about my picture on my profile. The older one was monochromatic. No color. This newer one is even more honest. I look a little like a ghost.

So anyway, I've been trying a little to change that. A little at a time. I hope one day to be the type of person who would give that girl whatever she needed, the type that would make her feel better.

About That Last Post...

So I was going to relate like three stories, one of which was the real thing. Then that story stretched out and got too long and then I wanted to go do something else, so I just published it and left it alone. The real story was that I was riding my bike home from school and got hit by a car. And for my troubles I was rewarded with a $70 traffic ticket.

I was heading east in the bike lane on 8th south, and I turned left to go north on State st. A couple of the other teachers from my school were waiting a few cars back at the light and they honked and waved. I was waving at them as I turned, and didn't realize that the light was about to turn. I looked up and saw it change as I was crossing the first lane of eastbound traffic. As I entered the second lane I looked to my left and realized the car that had started toward me wasn't going to stop. He didn't.

So I got kind of mashed up and someone called an ambulance. They took my up to LDS Hospital and they cleaned me up and put six or seven stitches in. I have to take them the forms from the other guy's insurance. I've been putting it off as is my custom when dealing with forms. I don't know why, but forms make me anxious.

Anyway, school ending has been a good excuse. Graduation is on Wednesday evening and Thursday is the last day of school. After that I'm going away to California. Things are going to be a little weird when I get back.

This has been a strange year for me. I'm probably mis-remembering Moon Palace, by Paul Auster, but the beginning seems to me to have been an overly long but cool description of a guy who looses his grants for school and decides to just see how long he can last without any income. He starts rationing his food, then his energy, and in the end he almost starves to death.

That's what I did this year, but with human contact. I guess it's been going on for a couple or three years. I had a lot of friends around me when I graduated the first time and moved to Logan. Then that whole group of friends seemed to graduate all at about the same time and move away. I tried to keep relationships going for a while...

This is the type of stuff that it seemed like it was important to write in the past. Now I can't imagine anything duller. I guess I stopped caring at some point.

The other day Mark LaRocco was telling me about this first date he went on the other evening where the girl is really free spirited and just asked him to stay up all night with her. He did, and they talked for like eight or nine hours straight and told each other their whole stories.

It made me think of a few weeks ago when I went to one of Mark's parties at his house and I was hiding from people by making burgers and manning the grill. This girl came out and sat down and started asking me about myself. In less than two minutes I ran out of things to say. We lapsed into silence, then about fifteen minutes later, when all the burgers were cooked, I went home and watched old episodes of Law & Order on my computer.

Oh well.

Anyway, my face is better now.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

So this happened on Wednesday. I figured out pretty early on that I didn't really want to explain it a thousand times when I went to school, so I started thinking of stories to explain it. Here they are. You can choose your favorite.

Story #1 - I was feeling restless on Wednesday night. All evening I'd felt like there was something happening down in my sub-conscious, something I couldn't see or understand. It frustrated me. So around 10:30 I got up out of my chair and I went for a walk up into the Avenues, climbing higher and higher up the hills.

Eventually, near the top of the hill, where the streets peter out and the mountain climbs on, I came to a cemetery (I don't remember the name of it right now). I decided to go in and walk around. I was still feeling like I was in the middle of something on the inside of my head and I guess I felt like maybe looking at the graves might fit with the moment. I was walking along, looking at some of the really old headstones, folks who might have been among the first pioneers into the valley, I remembered a personal narrative that one of my kids had written when I was doing my student teaching. This kid was super quiet and truthfully, I didn't think he was very smart. But one day I was reading these narratives and his popped out at me. It was a story about him trying to start dating and having this really embarrassing experience taking this girl who was much more popular than him to a dance and for the date they helped his mom, who was the PTA president decorate the gym for it. He wrote about how he felt foolish because his mother treated him like a little kid even though he was supposed to be on this date. His story ended with him going out for a walk while remembering the experience and deciding to climb a tree. He got to the very top and felt very free, swinging around as he leaned back and forth.

I saw a tree and wondered if I was still up to climbing. I'd been pretty good at it as a kid, maybe even better than most. I thought the view from the top of a tree must be amazing, so I decided to climb a very tall pine tree that I was passing on the little road.

It was hard to get to the bottom branches. I tried to run up the trunk and jump to catch at them, and it took several tries to get it, but I finally did. I was scratching my wrists and knees on the rough bark as I climbed, but I went up, twisting and stepping through the limbs. It was gigantic tree, probably planted around the same time as some of those old headstones below. I went up and up until I got as high as I dared because the narrow trunk was leaning and I was worried about the branches being able to hold my feet.

For a moment I didn't feel like I was almost thirty years old with a life curiously devoid of the status markers I usually missed (wife, kids, house, even a car whose title was in my name). I felt like a kid. The view was fantastic, the valley a sea of lights that showed the shape of the low puffy clouds underbelly's. There were a few places where the overcast broke and you could see the night sky above. It was beautiful, and I was feeling so good that almost unconsciously I began to sway around in a lazy circle, like my old student in his story.

The circles got bigger, and all of the sudden I realized I was too high on the tree and it wasn't very stable as the top began to lean out farther over the ground. Panic was rising because the arcs kept getting larger, and no matter how I tried to restore my balance I couldn't get the tree top to quit swaying. In fact it was moving faster, and creaking loudly.

Then there was a loud crack and I don't remember very well what happened after. I think I remember hitting the branches on the way down. There was a really good whacking branch that caught me on the left leg and left a bruise as thick as my hand, and one that dug some ruts in my left shoulder. I think it might have been the truck that dug out my face, but I'm not sure. I remember hitting the ground and having the breath knocked out of me. It seemed like forever before I could breathe again.

Almost immediately I got up and walked started walking around, maybe a shock reaction to the fall, but I thought better of it and sat down. I ran my hands over myself looking for the injuries, and found where I was bleeding. After a while I staggered out of the cemetery and flagged down a passing car, which took me to LDS Hospital and dropped me at the emergency room.

Bla...

On Thursday I was at the library checking out the Viking Portable Jung. I had been reading something else on the internet and it was making references to archetypal characters identified in Jung's writing and I got interested. I thought it might help me figure myself out a little. Anyway, while I was scanning the shelves around it a children's book caught my eye. It seemed a little out of place in the psychology section. So I picked it up and began reading it.

It was titled something like "Let's Make Some Friends!" At once I began to mentally criticise it. It was like so much other self help literature that I don't trust. "Follow our proven program to happiness..." But I continued to flip through it. One of it's first admonitions was that if we were going to make friends then we had to like ourselves. Why would we ask someone else to like someone we didn't, even if that person was our self? It was an interesting question; one to which I've struggled to find the answer for years. I'm still looking.

Anyway, as the solution to the problem of self-esteem, the book suggested sitting down and making a list of everything that we did well. The illustrations on the page showed a little black kid with a curly hair sitting at a school desk scribbling on a piece of paper with his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth in concentration.

From there the book went on, but I was kind of stuck there. How did the boy determine what he did well? What did "well" mean? By what standard was he measuring himself? To whom was he comparing himself to determine his worth? Could it be arbitrary? I am the best at brushing my teeth the way that I brush them, but I am horrible at brushing them the way the dentist wishes I would.

When I was a young boy I compared myself to members of my family. If I was better than Peter at something then I was thrilled and exhilarated. I knew I was good, but I was scared too, because it upset the natural order of things. Later on I compared myself to my classmates. I was all about being better than them at the things I wanted to be good at. There were a lot of problems with that standard too, the least of which was that I kept running up against the fact that no matter how good I became at anything that you'd turn over a rock and find someone else that did it twice as good without even trying.

At that point being the best at anything started to become meaningless to me. I couldn't compare myself to anyone and try to be better. I tried to go by the standard of pleasing myself with my efforts for a while. I guess it didn't stick, or I lost it along the way somehow. Obviously it didn't make enough sense to me to try to really run with it.

My mission changed things a lot. I got stuck on the idea of justification. I just wanted to be good enough, to be a good enough person to please God. I didn't ever feel so good about how I was doing though because of that whole "Be ye therefore perfect," thing. I know everyone who reads this is going to think, "But that's what mercy is for, because no one can live by that standard at this stage of life". Sadly, mercy doesn't make sense to me. I kind of get it intellectually, but it's like most math to me. I can see how to do it how to do it sometimes and why to do it, but it doesn't make much of an impression on my mind, and I resist it. That analogy doesn't work all of the way, but hopefully enough that those among readers will remember having tried to explain math concepts to me and get it. If you've stumbled here accidentally and are reading incidentally them mazal tov, welcome to my life.

Anyway, bla bla bla. So, the standard was perfection, I wanted justification, I don't deal well with the concept of mercy, and I didn't go anywhere for a lot of years with that. Somewhat recently I got tired of trying to be anything and kind of gave up. So all of this leads to Friday.

Mark invited me to go to an International Dinner with his ward. I was picturing going eating some food and going back to his place to do something else. We made some Thai peanutbutter grilled chicken. Somewhere along the way Mark was talking about going on a date with a girl the other night. I asked how he felt about her and he just kind of shrugged. He said he should have known because it was almost a year between when he asked her out the first time and took her out again the second time. He said he just couldn't feel that interested and that he had tried. I asked you could ever really honestly make yourself feel anything by trying. He replied you probably could not but then said maybe just by force of will. I didn't tell him I disagreed. That's why I stopped trying to date about a year ago.

I felt weird pretty much from the moment that I walked in. I haven't really been to any church activities at all for a while and I just felt a bad feeling being there. I felt really uncomfortable, but I tried not to let it get to me. Mark wandered around talking to girls and I sat at a table surrounded by people I'd met incidentally but didn't feel like I could talk to. The children's book was in my mind. So was Dad's comment to me the other day that he thought that my discomfort when I went to church wasn't with church but transference of my own feelings about myself. I tried to think of things to say to people, and tried not to feel as bad as I was beginning to feel.

I couldn't tell Mark outright that I wanted to leave and get on with the evening, but I tried to let him know. Then someone found a basketball and my heart sank. Half an hour later I was sitting alone, and a bunch of guys were alpha-maleing. Mark asked me if I wanted to play and I told him that I felt like I was flashing back back to p-day's from my mission. He didn't get it. In that moment I was feeling about as depressed as I tried not to realize I felt most of the time on my mission. It was a trapped feeling. After a while I realized that I wasn't on my mission and asked Mark if he could find a ride home, and I left. I was really miserable as I drove home. I went immediately to bed even though it wasn't quite nine yet. I had to get away from feeling as bad as I felt.

So it's Sunday night, and I'm realizing why this was all so disturbing to me. Mike Forsberg lost his job at the DA's office last week and is probably moving back to Cache Valley, and Mark is going to be moving to Provo again to work as a law clerk. Summer is coming and I won't have school to distract me. I see another crack up on the horizon.

Anyway, in the grand tradition of Mike-ness this is all pretty pathetic, and I'm tired of it myself. As sang Billy Joel, "The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems." I'm sure things will be fine. It just won't seem like it, but that's probably just because I'm me.

Holy Crap, People Read This...

I spoke to my brother Peter on the phone the other day and he said that Cami had put up a new video of Calvin on their blog. I went to it and watched it, and realized two things. First, their life is far more interesting than mine. Second, Cami really kind of has a knack for blogging. Maybe I'm biased because I'm interested in their lives, but she really seems to put things together in an appealing and intriguing way. In any case, I was looking at all of the links on the side of the page and saw one to my blog. Following this link I found that I hadn't posted in a very long time. Also I noticed that there were some comments on the last post. I was astounded to find out that people actually read the blog and checked it from time to time. That kind of blew me away, and I decided that on the off chance that anyone was still checking back here from time to time that i should really post something new.

So, I went out and got in my car and drove to the Albertsons to buy some milk. This is an illustration of how I feel about writing and about sharing anything about myself these days. If there's anything else I can distract myself with, I'll do that instead.

On Sunday I looked at my phone and realized that there was a message from Mark LaRocco. I called him back and he told me that there was going to be a birthday party for a girl he'd introduced me to a year or two ago and he asked me if I wanted to go with him. I guess I was lonely, because I said yes. We arrived at her apartment and there were about five people there. We sat down and I watched Mark talk to people, then the room was filled. A few times girls came and sat down next to me and asked me who I was and what I did, so I told them and when I didn't ask them anything about themselves or try to figure out what we had in common they would drift away. Then this really pretty girl came in and all of the guys in the room immediately approached her like iron filing to a lodestone. It was really kind of funny. It looked choreographed. They all broke their conversations and walked directly to the center of the room where she was standing and encircled her.

After a while she sat down next to me and didn't speak to me. I thought she was waiting for me to speak to her, assuming that because she was the pretty girl that it was my responsibility to be the aggressor and she the defender. I really enjoyed ignoring her as we sat there, less than six inches apart. I could tell it was throwing her that I didn't even look at her.

Finally they cut the cake and I ate a piece, then Mark and I left. As we were getting in Mark's truck we started talking about the pretty girl. He said that he'd gone out with her once before, but hadn't asked her out again because he figured that she was too pretty and he didn't want to deal with that baggage. I told him about how much I'd enjoyed not talking to her, and watching her squirming when I didn't pay attention to her. He said that was kind of too bad because it wasn't that she was conceited, but rather that she was notoriously shy. In that moment I realized that I had acted kind of like a jerk, and also that I'm hopelessly far from being capable of developing a significant relationship with a girl and that I won't be doing so any time soon.

Anyway, that's probably enough about me for just now. So, I guess I should put a picture up. I haven't taken any for the last couple of weeks, but here's the latest of me. There's a good chance you've seen it elsewhere.

Sunday Morning

These are minimally photoshopped pictures of me this morning:

Me

Me more.

More me.

Today my head is a pinball machine, my attention the ball. It's all sound and fury, but if I don't let it run like this I'll be fighting a panic attack. I've started lots of things this morning, but the only thing I've finished is folding my laundry. I'm terrified of going back to school tomorrow. My kids are supposed to be ready to start the editing process on their personal narratives and only one in ten of them is going to have written it.

About 70% of my kids are going to fail this trimester. I can't help but feel like I've failed them. And I feel bad about it because I feel like I've done about the best I can and it's not good enough. I've never realized my inadequacies as a teacher like I do now. I don't think I'm very good at it.

I don't have enough patience, and I don't understand why they can't do the things I can do easily and have always been able to do easily. I don't have a high opinion of my capabilities. I haven't since high school. So the fact that I can do most of these things without trying, when I think I'm no great shakes, makes me feel like there's something really wrong with these kids.

I just don't know how to get them to do what is expected of them. Either they just don't want to, or I've failed. It's hard for me to believe that the whole lot of them but for a few are ok with failing and don't care about the future, so it's easier to believe it's my fault. I don't feel like there's any objective way of determining the truth of the situation, so I'm kind of stuck feeling awful.

One thing I'm more certain of than ever. I don't think it does much good to have compulsory education. I can't force anyone to learn anything, so for many of my students school is like training prison. It's just a place they're confined to before they get started on the real thing. I've already had about 10% of my students get started on it because of drugs in this trimester alone. From what I can tell, about 25% more just haven't got caught yet.

Here I Am

I've been meaning to put this up for a while now, just to let people know I'm alive. I am still alive. Mostly. I'm kind of having a rough time right now, and I thought it might make me feel better if I pointed my continued existence out to the world.

I know I've got email from some of you and haven't replied. Sorry about that. I've been pretty wrapped up in school, and probably enjoying my anonymity of being new in town too much. It's coming back to bite me. Anyway, here are some pictures with some descriptions.

This is the front of my building. It's old. I think the art deco entry is the newest thing about it. I kind of like that it's old.



This is looking down 2nd Ave toward the church office building, taken from just above my building.

This is the rear of the building. I'm on the bottom.

I was told by the landlord that the garages were built for the width of model T's. They seem wider in the old films than anything I can imagine fitting comfortably in these stalls. I'm glad I drive a small car.

This is the view of the capitol from the garage area behind the building. There's about a twenty foot drop here to the parking structure for the apartments in the foreground.


This is the living room with the shelves I made, the futon I bought at the DI for $20 and the camp chair I've replaced with an uncomfortable but expensive looking micro-fibre office chair, also from the DI. The chair is in front of my computer.

This is a composite of the kitchen. The sink and counter are parallel in real life, not angled toward eachother on the wall.

Oh well. That's it for this post. Maybe on the next one I'll post pictures of myself. I've got different facial hair than I've had before. Some of my kids say I look like an Irish Biker. My kids are weird.