The Money Pit

I have no shame in stealing the name of a cheesy movie for the title of one of my blogs. Does that make me unscrupulous?? I think not, just resourceful.

So recently on a Friday night, Wife goes out to our chest freezer and discovers that lo and behold, the evil thing has stopped working. Now of course these thing always tend to happen to us late at night and on a weekend. First it was the flooding of the basement... 4 months after buying the house, and now a dead freezer full of food.

I was discussing this event with a coworker and he expressed a theory that houses know when you are finally starting to get ahead financially. The house hears you say how nice it was is that there is finally some cash in the account, and WAM, there goes the water heater, or your garage door opener stops working. The house just knows! It is as if the house has ears.

So now, the Wife and I will NEVER discuss surplus funds in the house, we must keep this valuable information from our domicile. But then I was wondering where we could discuss it, certainly not the car, that would just be asking for trouble. Not the lawn...lest the lawn mower crap out on me. Maybe via facebook or email, but then we would need a new laptop. Finally I figured the only safe way was in someone else's house. This way, if anything breaks, I probably won't own it. HA, nothing like out thinking the system.

The Roles We Play

I watched an excellent movie last week. It was called Darkon, and it is a documentary which examines the phenomenon of LARP, or Live Action Role Playing. Now, this is role playing in the Dungeons and Dragons Style, and Darkon is in fact an entire make believe world where people take roles and act them out in real life. Check out the web site for the Darkon Group here.

One of the people in the movie pointed out a fact which has inspired me to do some thinking. He said that everyone role plays all the time, and all that makes the people who do Darkon different is that they have fun doing it. This is a pretty profound thought, and made me think about what roles society forces us to play and how that all works. 

At first I thought of the nervous guy on a first date. He is doing everything that he can to impress his date. Is he really being himself? Or is he roleplaying the guy that he thinks the girl wants him to be. What about the first time you meet your boyfriend/girlfriends parents? Are you really yourself, or a version of yourself you rarely see.

There is also the work version of yourself... do you play a role there? Are you really happy to answer the phone EVERY time it rings? If we were naturally that happy, we would not have to go through training to teach us how to be happy. Are you more polite when in public then in private? Is that even a role?

Are we constantly roleplaying...or are the roles we play the things that define us a person? I lean more toward the second. All the things we do, we do for a reason, and the roles that we play participating in those activities define us as an individual. The fact that I am a husband, and a church elder, and a tennis player all blend together to create the amazing thing that is an individual human begin called Me. I am a function of my roles, and my roles are not avoidances of the true me. To think the opposite is to avoid taking responsibility for your own being. If you like to run around in a field and hit other people with big foam weapons, be proud of it, and don't write it off as something you do that is separate from your true being.

 

Thoughts....???

The Solo Life... In Perspective

So the week of solo living has come and gone. I figured that I would give it some time to put things in a proper perspective before writing about them. So here are my thoughts.

1. It truly is good and healthy to get a break from your partner every once in a while. I don't care how in love you are, you do something that annoys the other party in your relationship. I know that I constantly annoy my wife with how laid back and relaxed I am (read lazy). She bothers me with her slight (ok, not so slight) tendency to be anal. We both have agreed to accept these flaws in the other so we can be together, but man is it nice to not have to worry about it for a bit.

2. Being alone is fun...for about three days. It is great to be able to stay up till 1 am playing video games. It is great to be able to eat pizza every day and scoff at the recommended daily input of vegetation. all of that was fun, then I actually missed being responsible. I know this will come as a shock to those of you who know me, but yes, I have reached a point in my life where responsibility beckons.

3. I am madly in love with my wife, and being without her....sucks. I know this may sound all sappy and stuff, but it is literally true. This, in my opinion, is how you know you have found the one to marry. You just know. So, yes, I was very excited to get my wife back, and to proceed with life as normal. I realized that my life IS with her, and without her, life is pretty sad.

The Boys of Summer

Thats the best logo in all of sports right there. Yankee fans might have a beef, but hey, we have gone to the World Series more recently then them, so they can just be quiet for a little bit. I am a tried and true Tigers fan. I watched them in high school, and back when they were really really bad. But this post is less about the Tigers, but what the idea of them starting to play invokes.

When I think of Tigers baseball I think of many things. The small of hot dogs, beer and peanuts, which is a surprisingly pleasant smell. The sight of the most amazing green lawn you have ever seen. Lazy summer days sitting at the beach listening to the game on the radio while you self-bake. The wave. Cheering so loud when they beat the Yankees in the 06' playoffs that I could not talk for two days (this was by far the highlight of my sport attending life). The hot dog opera guy. Watching the fireworks after a weekend game and wondering if the noise annoyed the people who bought the new condos next to the ballpark.

When it comes down to it, I am ready to cheer for my Tigers, but I am even more ready to relive some of these cherished tastes, smells and experiences. Happy Summer in the D