Serendipity

Although I am still wondering at the karmic fate of my right front quarter panel, the whole event had a very serendipitous ending. My friend called while I was teaching class...so of course I had to call him back. Which I forgot to do until my ride home. I actually drive through the town where he lives on my way home from school...anyway, he invites me to join him and a friend for dinner and a drink at one of the local taverns. As I am starving, I accept, u-turn and head to the tavern. Here is the serendipitous part...his friend is the body shop manager for a dealership. He bends my front panel back into shape with a screwdriver and says he'll help me get it fixed. So sweet..so perhaps karma in a roundabout way was looking out for me...but the inconvenience of it all makes me wonder. So to anyone out there whose car is dented, dinged or otherwise in a real honest to goodness accident, I feel for you....

good deeds unrewarded

so I am running late today. I am trying to get to the gym and get home in time to shower so I can drive an hour and a half to work. I go outside to bring the dogs in and someone else's dog is wandering around my yard. He is very friendly, so I check his tag and realize he lives only a couple of blocks away. I think, no problem...so I finish getting my dogs inside, put him in my car and drive him home - calling his owner who is not answering all the way there. The front door is open, so I let him in, leave the owner a message and book it to the gym. I am however, late hit my drive to work. But I am also starving, so I do a quick drive-through at taco bell and manage to scrape my front fender on the red posts that keep you from running into the building. This is an incident that takes less than 30 seconds...but my whole front quarter panel is dented...dented so that I cannot open my car door. Now I ask...why did this happen? Because I was in a hurry? I was in a hurry because I took the time to return a lost dog. What in the karmic universe made me deserve a dented car - not just a ding, but requiring actual body work? What is the message here? Slow down maybe...but it pissed me off anyway.

Ennui...

I am bored. I have a thousand and one things to do but must sit at my desk instead. Of course I am at work, hiding behind my computer screen, making lists of all the things I need to do, but cannot because I am here instead of at home. All my email buddies seem to be busy today - probably getting their work done. I do not have any actual work to do, but cannot leave for another hour and a half. I feel I have not planned well for my day. And I am not particularly good at surfing the internet. I'm sure I won't die of boredom, but it feels like it. No wonder people get fired for playing solitaire at their desks. On a day like today I would be addicted. I so wish I could skip out early and put my energy and motivation to good use. Unfortunately by the time I'm done today, it will be late in the evening and I will no longer care about my long list of things to do - until tomorrow, when I will once again be trapped at my desk. It's a viscious cycle to be sure. Perhaps I could learn to wiggle my ears or some other useless trick to pass the time away. Or practice my surfing....

Gift giving

Although I'd like to say this is a uniquely female trait, I know for a fact many men who are quite good at gift giving. They actually take the time to give a gift the other person wants or would be excited about. And they know the person they are buying for well enough to know what is appropriate and what is not. However, there seems to be out there a rather large segment of the male population that is either really stupid or really lazy. Let me clarify - buying the same gift for someone six times is stupidity. (Particularly if it is a gift that never suited the person to begin with.) Spending an extravagant amount of money on something useless or really ugly is stupidity. Men are not colorblind or immune to decorative style. Pretending like you are is laziness. And buying someone something simply to appear to have made an effort is not actually making an effort, but in fact, a passive aggressive form of laziness. It is truly better to not bother than to half-ass the gesture. Instead, take just a few minutes to think about who you are buying for - think about the kinds of clothes they wear or the way they decorate their home. If you've never seen them in gold jewelry, chances are they don't like or wear it. Don't buy it. If you've noticed that they decorate in bold colors, chances are lace is not their style. And consider the expectation of the person you are buying for. Some people have much higher expectations when it comes to receiving gifts. Know this in advance. The higher the expectation, the deeper the disappointment. And if all else fails, simply have a conversation with them before purchasing. I know this requires planning ahead, (gasp!) but it will win you an enormous amount of respect and gratitude. And it will not necessarily spoil a surprise. And if you just can't manage a thoughtful gift, then do something nice like dinner out or gift certificates. But please quit hiding behind stupidity and laziness hoping it will get you some sort of reprieve. Because it not only makes women angry, it's hurtful and that is by far the worse of the two.

On the other hand - women who do not let their wishes be known are setting themselves up for disappointment. It would be wonderful if all men and women could be in loving, intuitive relationships where it was not necessary to spell everything out in detail. However, that is not the case. So ladies, if you want something, make it known. Otherwise, don't be pissy when you don't get it.

where do brain cells go to die?

I am an intelligent person with quite a bit of education and yet on a daily basis I find I am stumped for words. Or I find myself stumbling over words, searching for wit or candor or subtlety. I can remember when I was an excellent conversationalist and I was quite an eloquent correspondent. I believe this all began to change when I finished my master's. (Or shortly thereafter.) I found that I had little chance in every day life outside of academia to excercise my brain. As a result I think that my brain cells are one by one starving to death. However, my skull does not seem to be caving in, so I wonder, where have these brain cells gone to die? Or are they simply dormant waiting for me to nourish them again. Why is it so much harder to educate yourself outside of the classroom? The usual answers of time and motivation are obvious. Time I think really is the biggest obstacle. I don't seem to have time to read a whole book, so I have donesized to magazine articles. Two-three pages maximum and I am on to the next task. Even with this smaller intake of information, I seem to not have enough time - as evidenced by the stack of as yet unread magazines by my bed. Sometimes I wish I could read and learn by osmosis. I would put a book under my pillow at night and in the morning I would have absorbed all that was in it. Not only practical in the sense of saving time, but also eliminating eye strain! At any rate, I will hence forth endeavor to stay sharp and not lose the rest of my brain cells to malnutrition.

beginnings...

I am in the middle of an epic letter to a friend who lives in France. It occurred to me recently that I procrastinate in sending her the letter because while it is in progress, it is as if I am having a conversation with her. I imagine her reading it and listening - it is comforting to have her "near" - which of course means that when I finally send the letter, I am ending the conversations and effectively "sending" her away as well. It leaves me a bit empty, so instead, it is 3 cards and 5 pages of typing paper long, will probably take her a month to read if I ever send it and I haul it around with me so I can write whenever I get the urge. Perhaps one day I will sever the tie and actually let her enjoy receiving some mail from a good friend.