The Fourth R

When I was in college, the band put on an elaborate city-wide scavenger hunt once a year. I only did it once my junior year. Through a variety of circumstances I ended up on a team with several younger trombones and we hurtled around Atlanta in an old minivan finding and deciphering clues.

Since it was the band, there were shenanigans. The instructions said to bring, among other things, water guns and towels. One of the trombones I was with brought his Super Soaker, and once when we encountered another team at a clue site he shot it at their car and almost got them. We definitely weren't near first place but we were progressing decently until the evening when things started getting weird. We reached a clue site where the clue for our team was defaced. We called in to the command center and the person on the phone said they were calling us cheaters and jerks who didn't deserve to go further in the competition. Because the guy shot a Super Soaker! It was confusing that they were so mad when they said to bring water guns, and since he didn't get anybody wet (much). They claimed he almost got a laptop inside the car wet. But still that didn't have anything to do with us cheating at the clues. In any case we ended up stopping a clue later or so.

But the disturbing part was afterward. The competition had a website that listed the teams, and after the competition, the winners. A few days after the competition I noticed on the website that they had posted on the website that our team were disqualified for being cheaters and jerks! I forget the exact phrasing they used, but something along those lines. Our entire team's real names listed with defamatory comments. You found the website when you searched for our real names.

I was MAD. One guy shoots a Super Soaker and our whole team gets vilified on the Internet? Whiny, over-share blog aside, I'm very conscious of my "internet presence" and don't want false, negative comments about me online. So I tracked down the event organizers and called.

The thing was, each year the scavenger hunt is organized by the previous year's winners. And alumni can play, so with their advanced age and additional resources they tend to win. The organizers that year was a group in their 30s who had long since graduated and supposedly moved on.

So I, a 20-year-old college student, called and argued with the lead organizer guy, a married engineer in his mid-30s about why it was inappropriate for his team to defame innocent parties for a stupid water gun. He was so irrational and so unreasonable (though they did finally take it down), I had this thought over and over: "I shouldn't have to be the adult in this situation."

I've been feeling like that lately. I'm an adult. And a defining characteristic of being an adult is being reliable.

Being reliable is returning emails and phone calls promptly.
Being reliable is showing up prepared and on one time.
Being reliable is keeping plans and not changing them unnecessarily.
Being reliable is doing your job.

I'm really tired of being reliable when very few other people are.

I'm tired of being the adult.

Admit It

So, I'm pretty sure my asparagus fern has bit the dust.

Fluffy has been a good plant. I bought him sophomore year of college from Kroger. Karen bought a plant at the same time, and named hers "Penny" because she was annoyed when I paid for mine in coins (and the self-service kiosk stopped accepting quarters so I had to use smaller denominations). He survived the indoor heat wave of Spring Break '04, and a summer with Karen in which she decided he wouldn't fit in her car so she trimmed him an inch above the dirt. He survived all that.

So I guess I kept expecting him to come back from turning entirely brown this winter, but no dice.

Now I'll have to find something else to plant in the giant pot I bought him.

I completely zoned out at work today around 4 pm. I was working on a journal paper I've been supposed to be writing for nigh on two years. I know I just need to knuckle down and do it, but I find writing a journal paper very intimidating. The style of writing in journal papers is completely different than how I write.

I write so you can understand it.

4 pm really is my desired quitting time. After 4, I just don't want to be there. Not that I can't be totally productive after 4. Not that I haven't spent 12, 13-hour days at work. I've seen the south side of midnight more often than I'm comfortable with. It's just that that's the time of day where I don't want to be doing anything related to work. Though normally doing something interesting, like data analysis, keeps my mind off my desired quitting time.

And turns out writing a paper isn't consuming enough, so I felt the 4 pm very strongly today. And then, in looking for something else in my email, I saw my boss's boss said she wanted the paper by the end of June, not by June. So I went home.

Tomorrow will also be a short day at work. I'm taking time off to go on a homes tour with a real estate broker because I've decided to buy a place of my own this year for the following reasons:

1. Real estate prices are down, so now is a good time to buy.
2. Interest rates are currently down but likely to go up, so I want to get in before that.
3. I anticipate heavy inflation coming down the pike, which benefits debt-holders, so it's good to buy now before prices inflate.
4. I have saved enough of a down payment to avoid an FHA loan.
5. I want to be able to paint walls.
6. I want more outdoor space for plants besides three feet of walkway outside my door.

Of course, with what I think is a responsible monthly payment, the only places I can afford are next to the railroad tracks or the highway, are being sold "as is", or are in an area of Redwood City in which all business advertise only in Spanish. The houses my real estate broker thinks I can afford are nicer, so we're going to disagree. Though the prices I told him were 10% below what I'm actually willing to pay so we might be able to find a middle ground.

We'll have to see. I'm fine with ugly but I want structurally sound.

All About Me

I was going through Picasa today and realized that in four years of primarily only having photos of myself that I took on my own, I have chanced across some instances of honest, true portraits of realistic expressions on my face.

Since I'm feeling maudlin and unimportant lately, I'm going to indulge myself by posting some.

Honest happiness when showing off the quilt I made Karen for her wedding.

Ditto for a quilt for Project Linus.

Pensive in Virginia the summer I interned in the middle of nowhere.

Slightly suspicious smile in current living room.

Calm, ordinary smile.

Tired outside a pizza parlor in San Diego.

Lonely in Rothenburg ob der Tauber , Germany.

Speaking At Full Speed

At work, there used to be a guy who was very outgoing. If I hadn't already nicknamed a guy in college Overly Enthusiastic Mark, this guy would have gotten that appellation. He liked talking to people; his frequent laugh would echo raucously over the cubicle forest; he seemed happy.

That changed.

Over time, he gradually got quieter. His laugh didn't echo around the office area. His hands didn't gesture as widely when he talked. And then he left for another job.

The other day I happened across an AIM conversation I had three years ago and which I didn't remember. More importantly, I didn't recognize my own writing. It was witty, pithy, insightful. The me from back then greatly entertained the me from now. But I don't talk like that now. With that certainty, confidence, intelligence.

What the hell happened?

Part of the reason might be that with that particular friend I decided initially to hold nothing back. To immediately shoot down his stupid ideas, not even bother to entertain them. To give my opinion unabashedly, defend my position. "No, you can't wear red shoes with your interview suit, you'll look like Ronald McDonald." "Giving your girlfriend a RockBand action figure as a gift, while fun, says 'we're not serious!' exclamation point included."

But more, I worry I've changed. Have the constant pressures of being polite and PC at work and church repressed me? Is this the price I pay for the improved social skills I've gained from those environments - a loss of myself? That the socially acceptable me isn't really me?

When I was a senior in high school I was frustrated with writing a PC, smarmy, self-aggrandizing college essay and drafted what would be an honest, accurate description of myself.

I'm a weird little nerd who plays trombone, actually has a moral compass, is too mature for her age and her friends, enjoys spending time alone and playing on the computer, sews, knits, cooks, and bakes because she's fifty years behind today's modern woman, who no one understands because I use big words and say what I think.

I think I'm just revisiting that last clause. I want to speak at full speed again.