Letter Never Sent

We had a party for Phillip last night. I was charged with getting him to Sab’s so he could be surprised. Phillip said he thought something was weird about the fact that I actually gave him a time to come over since he had never experienced such a thing. Once he got over to the house to pick me up he forgot all about it since I was all slobbed out. Then we went to Sab’s and Sab opened the door and says ‘Surprise!’ and blows one of those unrolly party horns as he snaps a hat on Phillip’s head then everyone else jumped out of nowhere. The look on Phillip’s face was priceless.

After the food and stuff we played Scattegories then Sab started going through his old clothes and giving them out. He also showed us his collection of ‘Williwear’ which apparently was this big deal in the early 80’s. It looked a lot like the kind of clothes in Weird Science and The Breakfast Club. Phillip, Michael, and I made out like bandits. We all left Sab’s apartment with Banana Republic bags stuff with clothes things. Sab even gave me a black wool suit he had never worn which I will put to good use at the company Christmas party and a pair of Kenneth Cole shoes. It was almost like my birthday too.

I often wonder how much a person’s ability to see has to do with how introspective they are. I think if your vision is deficient you might be more inclined to look inward as your surroundings would appear blurred or would require squinting to fully appreciate. Even if you were just slightly near-sighted to where your vision weakened outside 20-30 feet could it have some effect on the way you think? A weakened sense of vision could simulate a more isolated environment like a bubble surrounding you. I just know that when my eyes get tired, it is harder for me to even look around myself and that this makes me get really lost inside my own head. A lot of the more introspective people I know have really bad eyesight but maybe it is a stretch to suggest a link between the two things.

The Connection had a nice program about quality of life and how having things does not make you happy. Clearly, poverty and lack will make you unhappy, but abundance and materialism does not result in happiness and satisfaction with life. I often wonder if people normally feel happy, if it is a natural state. I also wonder what is it that can make people feel more satisfied and happy. My gut feeling is that social communion, health, autonomy, and work (purpose or meaning) are the basic requirements of happiness.

Why am I so tired all the time? I wonder if I’m getting old or if I’m succumbing to some mid-late-twenties ennui that people write books about. Maybe I’m suffering from some sort of sleep disorder that is preventing me from getting sufficient sleep. (I will snore especially if left on my back, but this has always been the case.) It might be because I have been especially physically active this week…moving boxes, travelling, dogsitting, doing the xmas preparation thing, and etc. All I know is that I seem to sleep a lot and often. I don’t feel as restless as I have in the past and I always seem to be looking forward to the next opportunity to sleep, walking around winking with drowsiness shambling around like an old dog trying to sneak away to doze under the porch. Today I laid down to read through some new books and couldn’t keep my eyes open. My daydreams are filled with images of hammocks swinging lazily in the shade of welcoming trees.

I was stringing up the Christmas lights on the house this morning and I needed a ladder so I went over to finally introduce myself to the elderly couple next door and ask to borrow theirs. Sarah likes to hang out there during the day and Mr. Bergstrom (that’s his name as I found out) seems to really like having her around. He told me that he has never seen another cat like her. By that he meant one that liked people so much as she does. I told him that she’s pretty popular in the neighborhood and has made a few friends. One of the neighbors lets her in to nap with her on her recliner.

He told me a lot of neat things, and I really enjoyed speaking with him. Apparently, he was in the air force during the war (WWII) and was actually born here in Austin out near Anderson Lane when that was out in the boonies. Now it’s just known as North Austin. I told him about how I had lived for a while out near Copeland and Rice’s Crossing which is near Hutto where he graduated from high school, and I mentioned something about how I remembered Hutto as having water known for its saltiness. He said they used to call it Pluto Water.

He worked at UT for many years doing hand-lettering for all the signs and even the football scoreboards for each game where they would need to have the name of the opposing team painted onto it. This explains the hand-painted signs he has attached to the shed outside his house. One of them says ‘No Parking’ even though there is no place to park anywhere nearby.

I took last week off for Thanksgiving. I spent a few days helping Jody move to her new apartment. It was a lot of work since her new place is on the third floor. Later in the week we went to my grandparents’ house where my family did the Christmas gift exchange and Thanksgiving thing. There were about twenty-five people there this year which is about ten or so less than last year. Due to last year where a few people brought liquor and alcohol-related items as gifts my Southern Baptist grandmother made sure to get the word around that no such thing would be allowed this year. It’s funny how in my family there is this pushing of boundaries especially with my grandmother. I think it is done tongue in cheek, but sometimes it does seem immature sometimes. It’s like the same joke year after year. She can be fussy at times, but it is her house and she does go to a lot of trouble to make dinner and have everyone over.

On friday morning, we went up to Oklahoma to visit with Jody’s family for Thanksgiving. I always enjoy going up there and being outside and doing strange and novel things like waking up when the sun comes out. I think I could live out in the boonies if I had a good enough internet connection. Otherwise, it’s totally out of the question.

I’m dogsitting for a friend of mine so Truffles came with us. She had a nice time I think. Here she is sitting on a bale of hay:

It is freezing cold outside. According to my weather plugin for Trillian, it is forty-one degrees. I had to crank up the heater and dust the mothballs off the thicker blankets.

I watched a good movie with Jody tonight. It’s called ‘All the Real Girls‘. I’m not really a movie critic or even really a movie buff (I don’t feel I have the gift of analysis that way as I tend to get to caught up in things I watch), but I will say that I found many things about it have come close to my experiences of male/female relations and some things about life in general. By virtue of that similarity it was enjoyable and illuminating. It made me think a lot about what it means to be a human being navigating the joys and sorrows of relationships. Not just between men and women but also between friends as well as parents and children. It also made me think about how in relationships each person perceives and acts from their own point of view and in that sense you can never completely know any other person because even if you could somehow totally experience another person’s point of view it would still be interpreted from your own subjective and potentially skewed vantage point. Not only that, but sometimes when people act completely unpredictably it calls into question what you see when you see the other person. Does the other person in any relationship even really know themselves? Do you see the other and their behaviors and personality or just your idea of who they are?

I went outside for a moment to take the trash out and looked up into the cool, clear sky and saw Orion and its stars twinkling brightly. Then in a flash I spotted a shooting star streaking across the sky under Orion. It’s been years since I’ve seen a shooting star. For some reason, it made me feel good. Like things were still right in the universe.

I’m in the process of reincarnating my website. I need to do a complete rebuild. Remove the extra stuff from the past and just generally reorganize it better. I’ve got a little started. Pared some things here and there.

This weekend a friend of mine from work was killed in a car accident with two of her friends. A few of us were at work when we found out the night it happened. Someone had IMed looking for a phone number and told us Sheri had been killed. At first we thought they were playing a really stupid joke because it seemed so totally unbelievable. She was one of those people who are just really nice and sweet and vivacious. It was impossible to imagine her not being around. It still is.

One thing that was eery was that I had just chatted with her on AIM about two hours before. Before she signed off she apologized for having to leave abruptly because she had to run off to meet her friends.

I haven’t been back to work since Saturday, but I’m sure everything is completely turned upside down.