craveytrain

As an Aggie, I catch a lot of flack. Flack from Longhorns, flack from wannabe Longhorns, and now flack from fellow Aggies. You see, I wore a UT shirt while watching the big game. I know, I know, blasphemy. But the way I see it, I am an Aggie, but I am also a Texan. Texans, as you may know, are proud people. As such, I have what I call a delineation of loyalties.

First and foremost, I am an Aggie. That trumps all. However, when Aggies are not involved in the game/match/competition I still have someone to root for. As long as a team from Texas is involved against a team not from Texas, I will root for the Texas based team. If multiple Texas teams are involved, I either root for the underdog, or the one who’s outcome will do the Aggies more good. Assuming no Texas teams involved, I usually root for the local conference/division (i.e. I will root for Big 12 teams). After that, I usually don’t care, though I may pick a favorite based on any number of reasons.

Finally, I wore a UT shirt tonight for my sheer hatred of the Pac 10 Conference. They are a perennially overrated conference (especially in football) who gets more face time and AP votes due to their locale and soft non-divisional games. Yes, USC is an exception (and has been for a couple years). But consider The Pac 10’s #2 team. The team who complained about not getting into a BCS game, Oregon. Oh yeah, I think they lost. And what happened last year to Pac-10s #2 team, Cal in the Holiday bowl? Oh yeah I think they lost. The Pac-10 whines about not getting respect outside of their top team, but there’s a reason. Aside from their top team, they are crap. But I digress.

The game was a great game to watch. In fact, the best game I can ever recall watching. All I can really say is Gig ‘Em Horns.

I get bombarded by questions. Why haven’t you posted anything? Why didn’t you blog about <insert event />? Do you want a bigger penis? No, I haven’t blogged in a while. It doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to talk about, but it may mean I don’t feel like talking about it. There have been many great and traumatic things happening in my life, but that doesn’t mean that i want to share them all. Blogging for me is sometimes soul purging. However, sometimes it is exposing my inner-most workings to the world. I have always tried to be honest and forthcoming on this. If I am not, what is the point of it? Why bother talking if you can’t be honest? However, my friends, my co-workers, my bosses, my family, my everyone knows about and reads this blog at some point in time. So anything I say can be scrutinized heavily.

If I have learned anything from my blogging, it’s the one cardinal rule, anything you say can and will be used against you. Granted, that story belongs more on Darwin Award list than anything. But it rings home with anyone who puts themself out there. So, why do you do it? A friend posted a theory of blogging and her rationale for being exempt. At first I agreed with her. I’m just rambling, I don’t care if anyone reads it. But to be honest, I want the world to read this, and I want the world to laugh when I make a joke. I want the world to cry when I tell a sad tale. I want the world to call for the resignation of anyone I don’t like. You know, completely normal things.

However, I don’t see this as narcissistic. Narcissism implies the cause for the action is based on self adoration, or at least obsession. I am sure there are a lot of people who blog strictly to see their words on the internet. However, there appear to be many more reasons why people may write something. For benign or malicious purposes, some people write to affect others. That hardly seems narcissistic. That is just the example that comes to mind.

That brings me to one of my favorite things about the internet. The equality of everyone. The expert and the novice have the same voice. I love that about this medium. If I disagree with an expert, I can call out the flaw (ironically enough, that is probably the most narcissistic thing I have ever said). I have seen lots of issues hashed out (and just as many become explosive differences of opinions). But the medium puts people on equal ground. For many bloggers, being a part of the community is more important than the individual.

I don’t blog for critical acclaim (that’s why I cook). I blog to share things with people. I blog because I honestly feel I am contributing to this world, however minute.

Oh, to answer the 3rd question, while the public answer is not necessary in private the real answer is always yes.

Some days you just wake up knowing it’s going to be a good day. Nothing special is happening, just one of those days. The funny thing is, the same little crap that sets you off one day is laugable the next. For example, Wednesday we had a fire drill. I work on the 13th floor. While it’s not a severe work out, it, well, sucks. Last night we had a softball game and I always run really hard at games. Hell, I beat out a hit to the first baseman to first base. Sure he bobbled it, but he should have had me. I worked hard to beat him there. So today, the alarm wakes me up at 8, I surprisingly wake up pretty easily, turning the alarm off on the first ring (instead of the typical hour long snooze tag). I kick off the cover and jump out of bed. I have a high bed. When I land, the 2 days of work have taken it’s toll and my knees buckle like the new fall line in an Amish shoe store. I hit the ground with a thud. I do a quick assessment, ok, limbs still moving with relatively little pain. I shakily get back up to my feet and walk to the bathroom, laughing about it.

The other thing I notice different about good days and bad days is what you remember/notice about the day. For example, I didn’t really notice I needed to shave, but I noticed that my jeans, fresh out of the dryer are fitting looser than when I bought them. This is a big deal for me. For a period there, they were so tight I had to register the button on them as a concealed weapon. Every time I put them on I had flash backs of A Christmas Story. You’ll shooot your eye out! Pull the pants tight, suck in, button it. Slowly let go, what is the tensile strength of cotton again? Quick, put on the belt. That way the button will have something to hold it in the pants snap. It got to the point where I was examining how much thread was used to hold the button on when buying new pants. Sure, I could go up a size, but 40 is already so big, I’m already embarassed by it. No need to add insult to injury, just stick with the 40s. Thankfully, today was not one of those days. I had to wear the belt for a different reason today. It wasn’t a projectile shield to protect the eyes of innocent bystanders, it was there to keep my pants up, well, I guess again to protect the eyes of innocent bystanders. Now, after having been washed and and dried on high heat, they are fitting looser than brand new.

And then I step outside, a nice cool breeze blows through. It’s… wow… not in the 90s. This is nice. Man I love fall.

I ride 2 elevators at least twice a day (not including lunch). 1 from the garage to the ground level and 1 from the ground level up to my office. Riding elevators is pretty old bag for me. I know when to push my own buttons or to ask the person in front of the panel to hit them for me so as to not invade their personal space. I know where to stand in the elevator no matter how many people and of whatever gender are in it. Strangly enough, it’s very similar to the urinal rules but add women to the mix.

But the one thing I don’t get is what to look at when you are in the elevator. This seems like a silly question at first. Why does it matter what you look at? Have you have ever been in an elevator, watched the person getting in the elevator, watched their eyes to make eye contact and nod, smile or make other gestures of greeting and after a while realize you are staring at a stranger in the elevator. Even if they look now, how weird is that? You have been staring at them since they got in the elevator. No, that’s not creepy “Mr. unshaven t-shirt and jeans” in an elevator of suits. Even worse is when you make eye contact with the person getting in, expecting a greeting smile (maybe even a nod or a hello if they are especially friendly), but instead get a dead pan look and frequent fertive suspicious glances for the rest of your time in that box. It can make those few seconds seem an eternity. I actually start sweating when this happens.

Again, urinal regime would dictate you look straight ahead, and most of the time it’s that simple. You just look straight ahead at the door awaiting it’s opening. Sure, it feels a little awkward and very unfriendly, but you don’t get the “get the hell away from me creepy unshaven guy” look. So it would appear this is the lesser of 2 evils. However, the 2nd elevator I take up to the office has a full front wall of very polished mirrored steel. So when you look straight ahead, you see a reflection of everything behind you. Today that would be a woman who very obviously thought I was staring at her in the reflection. I focused to her in the reflection after a gruff sigh from behind me and I see a scowl unbecoming of a scoundal, much less a young lady. What do I do now? Do I confess I wasn’t looking at her? Too late, she’ll never believe it. Nevermind, just wait it out. As the doors opened, I shook my head and walked out of the box of awkward hell. I am really stumped as to what I could have done better.

I get people asking me all the time why don’t I blog more? Lemme tell ya why. Cause I don’t want to be just another asshole with a voice. There are a lot of blogs out there. And a lot of them simply say “YEAH! <insert quote from article> <link to article>” While I do that from time to time with stuff that I feel is obscure and would otherwise go missed to my reader base, for the most part I try to keep to my standards of being original and only posting when I have something worth reading to say. Unfortunately, being original isn’t really a forte of mine, so that leaves me to a couple updates a month on average. It’s all about quality over quantity people.

So then another point was brought up to me. I just moved, have my own place, the softball team I am on is doing great (relatively speaking) and in the words of herself, I have a fantastic girlfriend. I have plenty to talk about. But honestly, do you people really want to read about my big new apartment, the softball team’s winning streak (2 officially counts as a streak) or the fact that the girlie made me dinner tonight? Aside from my mom, I’m pretty sure the answer is a resounding no.