Drama

Lately I've been experiencing situations commonly known as "drama". It's a mixed bag, but a few of the good things to come of it are:

1. Loss of appetite = potential weight loss
2. Creativity up = writing again
3. General warm fuzzies in close proximity to object of affection

The bad things include:

1. Sleepless nights
2. Restlessness and difficulty concentrating
3. Extra sensitivity to harmless comments meant to amuse

I'm a very laid-back person under normal circumstances, so this is rather unfamiliar emotional territory for me. I'm lucky to have friends and family to talk to, but I can see how people in other circumstances can have trouble with this kind of thing. I'll try to be more sympathetic in the future.

Golden age

I've been reading that we're living in a golden age of television at the moment, with more popular series that are also high quality than have been on the air in many years. I wouldn't know, since I rarely watch series TV, but there have been a few things that have caught my interest in the last couple years.

Right now, I'm in the middle of watching the second season of Lost on dvd. I watched most of the first season and lost track near the end, so I gave up on it for a while. Then I borrowed season 1 from Jim, and fell in love all over again. When Julia offered to lend me season 2, I jumped on the chance and I'll be done with it in less than a week. It's that good.

But it's not perfect. The first season really suffered from poor music selection at the end of episodes, where some horrific thing or other was usually glossed over in the last minute with a pleasant guitar strum under slo-mo laughing on the beach. I haven't caught as much of that in season 2, thankfully, but there's also the matter of the pregnant pause. In typical Hollywood fashion, no one can say anything just prior to a commercial break that doesn't cause a complete halt in the conversation for at least five seconds of emoting before the cut to black.

Still, I look back on all those afternoons and evenings of my childhood, when I would watch whatever was on for no reason whatsoever, regardless of quality, and I wish they'd been making material like this at the time. Thanks to dvd, I have the opportunity to catch up on other shows like the Shield, the Wire, and Deadwood. Almost makes me want to get cable again.

Scene from my night

"I don't hold your hope against you," I told her as we stood with our arms around each other in the parking lot.
"I'll call you," she replied.

And just like that, she was gone.

Remembrance

So I hear everybody's posting where they were when the 9/11 attacks happened today. I was at work. I heard the news on a coworker's radio, then turned on mine to listen. There were two television sets in the gym on the first floor of our building. After the first couple hours, we took turns going down to watch. In the days after, I remember news reports saying no one believed the buildings would collapse, but everyone in my office was talking about it as if it was a foregone conclusion. It was just a matter of when. One of my coworkers had been in the Air Force. When I asked him where he thought the president was, he told me without hesitation that he would already be out of the country in flight, so I was surprised when he was in Washington by that evening.

The drive home took me past the DFW airport, and it was immediately obvious there was not a plane in the sky. That was the first time ever I hadn't seen a plane landing while driving that road, and it made me sad.

When I got home, I went to the gas station across the street and filled up. There was a line formed already by 6:00pm. I had cable at the time, so I watched news, flipping from channel to channel until night fell, and then as I laid in bed in the dark, hoping that when I woke up it would all have been a bad dream.

Back in slack

I needed a breather. Buying, moving everything, then getting settled into the new house took a lot out of me. On top of that, my life's been changing in other ways since I turned thirty in May, and I've had a lot to think about.

I went and saw my uncle in Florida two weekends ago. He lives in a retirement community surrounded by golf courses, and I played almost as much golf in three days as I had in my entire life. It was good practice, but when I played again with a coworker yesterday, it was clear that old habits die hard. I need to start going to the driving range.

My right wrist started aching shortly after I got home from Florida, and I chalked it up to all the golf I played, but I'm pretty sure I've got some of that carpal tunnel syndrome that probably doesn't help. I've been playing video games since I was a little kid with an Atari 2600, and last spring I noticed for the first time I was having trouble holding the controller when I was playing my cousin's X-Box because my thumbs were aching. Not a good sign.

The Roky Erickson project is finally seeing a little movement. The Staple! producer left town and gifted me a couple hundred copies of the dvd that I've been letting out as a calling card and conversation starter.

I've been dating a slightly older woman for about a month now. She seems to share some of my sensibilities, while being polar opposite in others. Maybe that's a good mix. Meanwhile, I've been trying to get my head straight over some other relationships in my life, with some success. I'm not much for handwringing anymore, and I've begun using "high school" as an epithet for a way of behavior I used to suffer from, but managed to get over by the time I graduated college.

Other than that, all is well. The Simpsons season 8 just came out on dvd and is probably my favorite of the series. Today is a holiday, the second Monday I've had off in a row. I bought a bunch of new audio equipment and a tripod to supplement my video offerings for rental and production capability. I have to start seriously committing some time to studying for a certification test for work, since my free time there has disappeared of late as I've taken on a new duty that should prove valuable to the firm and my bottom line.

Drop me an email or a comment if I haven't talked to you lately.