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3 Days Ago: This weekend I’m going to try to find out if I’m connected to the moon.

18 Minutes Ago: I’m pretty sure I’m connected to the moon.

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WOW. It’s almost like you’ve snuck into an insane asylum, managed to sneak to Mr. Lynch’s padded room and now you’re lying on the floor, behind his door listening, undetected, to him as he adds to an ignored chain of words, secrets of the universe.

It’s not as much the words that are creepy, but the context. This man tweeted last Friday some odd comment about being connected to the moon. Now, in the course of his weekend did he forget about this comment? No. Not at all. He follows up and indeed confirms that he truly spent the better part of the weekend trying to figure out if he’s connected to the moon. It’s just SOO creepy…

If your mental state is strong enough, you can follow Mr. Lynch on Twitter.

Let’s say I look at the folder and it has 100 messages in it. I’ll delete all of those and a few minutes later happen to look and notice that there is now 1 new message in there. I can’t help it, I feel like I MUST delete that new message. It’s driving me crazy!!! Why can’t I just let those messages pile up in there and forget them? Why am I so obsessed with keeping that folder cleaned out?

AHHHHHHH!!!!! Help!

One of my favorite memories from the summers at Nanny and Papaw’s is the tea. They never had much money but there was always a tall jar of Nestea in the cupboard. The not-so-fine granules never really tasted very good, and the strange dark brown spots all over the otherwise white foam atop the drink never seemed very appetizing either. But once in a while, when Nanny had the time, we got a real treat. A large pitcher of homemade sun tea.

I loved to stand next to her in the kitchen as she prepared the tea. She always used the same clear pitcher with yellow wheat plants imprinted into the glass. She’d fill the pitcher with water and then gently float the tea bags atop the water, sealing the top with a towel and a rubber band. I knew that later that day we’d be able to drink tea sun tea; and not just any sun tea, Nanny’s sun tea with lots of sweet sugar and large blocks of ice.

Throughout the day, between our trips to the creek and out to the wood shop, my brother and I would walk past the jar, looking closely to see whether or not the tea was “ready” for drinking. “No, it’s not ready yet” she’d say, but it was never more than a half our or so before we were back to check again. Later in the evening after the sun had gone down and there wasn’t enough light to venture back down the creek, we’d sit outside on the back porch drinking the sun tea we’d waited for all day with lots of sweet sugar and large blocks of ice.

Evan today, though they’ve been gone for several years, every time I order iced tea I can’t help but remember Nanny and Papaw, our summers and the sun tea.

I find it amazing that no matter how many times I’m reminded of this I still find myself wanting, or even obsessing about a material possession that I must have. Then, after I’ve gotten it, I (again) realize that even the newest, most amazing “thing” fades quickly to old hat and commonplace. And by achieving that thing you’ve raised the bar on what material item you’ll have to get next time to satisfy your craving for the next big thing.

How do we stop this cycle of materialism? What can make us content with what we already have?

I’ve been doing some holiday purchasing on eBay over the last couple of months and I’ve been very unhappy with the quality of service the postal service has been providing. Sure, they get the packages to me in a timely manner, so they’re fulfilling that purpose just fine but there are some other customer services that they sure could improve, not the least of which is their online package tracking service. Here are a couple of problems with the service as it is:

1. It’s only updated once every 24 hours. This means that there’s a good chance that the package will show up on my door before I’m even aware that it’s going to arrive that day.
2. The system provides no information about the current location of the package. It appears as though the only purpose of the system is to let you know when the package arrived, and there’s actually no “trackingâ€? service of any kind.
3. I’ve had several instances where I get the standard “package information has been received but this doesn’t mean that the package has been shippedâ€? message even after the package has been delivered, suggesting that in some instances your package doesn’t even enter into the tracking software.

Why doesn’t the post office have an infrastructure similar to UPS, FedEx or DHL which allows them to track packages as they enter/leave a processing facility? Would it be that hard?

As we passed the front entrance and made our drive down to the beach I couldn’t help but notice the lack of other cars. That’s when it hit me, it was mid-october and we were heading to the beach. It hadn’t occurred to me that our plans were so out of line with the season but even after it did I didn’t care, it was far too cool to swim but that wasn’t our plan anyway. We wanted to get away.

As we made our way through the large trees down the curved roadway the display of colors was amazing. I could easily remember what this same scenery looked like during the summer and the scene that day far surpassed the beauty of my memory. When we finally made it all the way to the beach there were only 2 cars in what would be a filled lot during the summer. We parked, in the front row on top of a large hill that flowed down to the water’s edge. It was beautiful. It was then that I realized that even though we couldn’t get into the water this was the most beautiful time of year to come to the beach. There were people on the lake in their boats, there was a group of young kids playing in the large grassy lot next to the beach and there were amazingly beautiful tree-covered hills in the distance no matter which direction I looked.

The water was still warm enough that it wasn’t too cool to put our feet into so we walked down the water’s edge. Pepper’s not a big fan of water so she wasn’t as excited as we were to be that close to the water. I had brought my camera with me and I was snapping pictures as quickly as I could to try and capture the moment when John Mayer’s 3×5 came to mind “Today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame”. Sadly I haven’t overcome that desire.

The whole experience got me thinking, how many other wonderful opportunities do we miss out on because we aren’t willing to do things that are outside of the box? Maybe ice cream tastes even better in the winter? I can’t help but think the person who decided to try using snow skis on the water might agree.

Sure, there was CSI, Law & Order and a few other token shows that were known for their popularity, but other than the backstories of the cast that were so delicately woven into the storyline of each show there wasn’t really a story arch that spanned the show as a whole or even that particular season. Each episode was designed so any given person could start watching that evening and not feel like they had missed out on something. I wanted more story, I want to be invested in the characters. I wanted a TV show that was more like a movie cut up into smaller pieces.

I’ve found myself watching more TV over the last year and it wasn’t clear to me why my watching habits had changed. First it was Lost which I caught on the opening episode of season 2 and have been hooked ever since (and have since watched the first season on DVD). I also watched most of the show Treasure Hunters, which intrigued me when I first started seeing the promos. Add to that my yearly favorites like Big Brother and several other guilty pleasure shows that I enjoy during the summer hiatus and you’ve got a lot of time spent in front of the TV. Why the increase all of a sudden?

I’ve heard it said by various TV personalities in the last week that we’re in a new Golden Age of Television, and I would have to agree. After watching the Emmy’s last night it has become clear to me that we’re seeing a new level of quality from television shows that we’ve never seen before. Some believe that this new age should be credited to the rise in competition for TV writers but I believe we’re also seeing an improvement in the quality of the acting in most of these shows.

I’ve been seeing teasers for new shows starting this fall like Jericho and The Shark and I have to admit that I’m getting excited that I’ll be able to turn on the television on any given night and watch a quality show. I’ve also found myself wanting to catch up on a couple of shows that have already finished their runs on network television. I’m even thinking about trying to get caught up with the popular shows like 24 so I can enjoy the ride with everyone else.

So, do you think that we’re in another Golden Age of Television? What are some of your favorite shows on TV right now? How faithful of a watcher are you?

I tend to open up to people very quickly electronically; maybe I’m afraid of the vulnerability of face-to-face communication, I’m not sure. Either way it’s very annoying to me (and I’m sure others sometimes). But, is this problem being worsened by my participation in online communities? Would I grow better in face-to-face situations if I didn’t have the excuse of communicating with people online? I’m not completely sure that I would due to the sheer number of social settings that I’ve been in compared to my relative comfort level in such situations. It’s an interesting question to ponder though for we introverts.
I’m not so much talking about the people from all corners of the Earth that you’ll likely never see, I’m talking about the people that live here, in my county and most of the time even in the same city as me. There have been several cases in the last few years where I’ve see someone that I’ve interacted with on a fairly regular basis electronically and I’ve felt very uncomfortable.

Here’s a real-world example. One of my Flickr contacts is a local woman who happens to be a pretty good photographer. She’s around my age and has a lifestyle that isn’t alltogether different from mine. A few months back I was in a local coffee bar and happened to see her across the room. I’ve never met her officially but we’ve communicated some online. Seeing her I was instantly afraid that I would be confronted in some way by her. I worried that she would want to talk about my photos and (gasp!) I would have to communicate! So, I spent the entire evening focusing more on avoiding a confrontation rather than focusing on having a good time with the people I was there with.

These types of situations don’t happen to me often (and I’m probably making it sound like a bigger problem than it really is) but nonetheless it does bother me. And I can’t help but wonder if I’m making the problem worse by being so involved in these online communities.

Do you have any similar, unjustified fears that you worry you’re promoting by your participation in online groups? I’d like to hear about them.

Scholarship Winner for 2006 Announced

Congratulations to Evan Agee of Year 11. Evan is this year’s Quest scholarship winner.

The scholarship leads to a Certificate IV in the Arts – Multimedia. The Scholarship is available to one student in Year 11 and one student in Year 12. The Scholarship is to be used to pay the enrolment fees in Quest – a value of $1,600.

taken from: http://www.smithfieldshs.eq.edu.au/Quest/pages/news.html

Strange eh?

Like I said, this has happened at least once before that I can remember. Did it make such an impression on my subconscious that I somehow knew to look in my drawer and see the watch at that moment? Who knows…

Those songs encapsulate that time period. I listen to Eric Johnson’s "Song For Lynette" and I’m back in my old, blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 and I’m driving down 70 towards Richmond. It’s strange that I drove to Indianapolis just as many times as I drove home, but most of what I remember are the trips home. The feeling of being done with work for the day and the excitement of a long car ride combined into a moment of complete happiness. The comfort of an air conditioned car on a 90 degree summer day and the time to enjoy it all on the way home.

Why are things always better looking back? I romantisize that time period of my life so much, mostly because I’m not there anymore. I’ve moved on, I’m married, I don’t live with my parents and I have a job that I don’t dread going to every day… why do I even think about the past? I sure didn’t enjoy it much at the time.

For whatever reason I’ve somehow recalled much of the respect and admiration that I once had for Michael Jackson. I was, as most people were, a big fan of his throughout the eighties and early nineties. I would watch the making of Thriller video, which we had on tape, usually several times a week and even then I had a sense that he was very talented and larger than life. I realized yesterday how sad it is that this same man is now the "freak" that you hear almost nothing good about anymore. He should be highly respected for what he offered to the music industry, but instead he is looked upon like a dirty old man completely void of any accomplishment.

I’m tired of hearing people say that he "should have been found guilty on at least SOME of the charges". This makes absolutely no sense. Some of the charges were that he had molested a young boy, and the others were that he had gotten them drunk to do so. How can he be found guilty of getting the boys drunk so he could take advantage of them if he wasn’t found guilty of taking advantage of the boys? It doesn’t make sense.

The fact of the matter is that he has been found not-guilty and therefore should be treated as such. People need to leave him alone and allow him to go on with his life, whatever that means for him professionally and personally. Myself, I enjoyed his last album Invincible and hope that he releases at least one more studio album. However, since the sales of Invincible were so low I’m guessing that he’ll start a farewell tour singing the songs that made him famous to packed houses across the world. He deserves a grand departure.