pheLog

people change

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:26:00 +0000

Think about someone floating in a river... everything is nice, and it's a beautiful day. A bit farther down the river, though, the current grows much stronger and things start to get a little scary. Instead of getting caught up in the stronger current, the person snatches on to a boulder and clings to it. The current doesn't let up, it just continues to pull and batter away at the person, wearing them down - changing them in different ways than if they had continued to flow through the treacherous part. The change is a constant whether it's downstream through the unknown, or while anchored in one place.

My head is off in metaphor-land because I'm trying to come to terms with something, and I'm writing because it's cheap therapy. It doesn't seem healthy to ignore a harsh wake-up call; but it's hard to see people you care about go through some wicked shit. It's hard to get that people change, and how it is that someone that I was once very close to can get to a place so different. How they could have landed in a situation that makes them someone that I can't even recognize by their actions?

The river I was thinking about is time... or it's life... or it's maturity... or it's whatever force that makes one thing into a different thing. Some people just stop at some point. Maybe it's by choice... like "x" is too much to handle and they can't get past it. Of course "x" could be "the real world" or the pressure of finding a career, or settling down with "the right" person, or parenthood, or a million other things that freak people out. It could also be something that was forced on them like a loss, or a trauma, or an addiction. Other people get forced onto a jam like depression, or some other illness, or poverty, or a crap economy... and despite everything they do to try and free themselves, they just keep getting bashed against it.

It seems like the anchors that people cling to vary just as much... it could be another person, or a job, or a place, or a set of beliefs. Maybe these are bigger, smoother, more sheltered boulders. It could be the rush of partying, or dating, or just having something to chase after. Maybe it's the illusion of youth or simply an overwhelming fear of what's ahead. These seem like sharper & more jagged rocks... lots more places to hold on to, but wicked to get bashed against. The illusions people can cling to there may be easier roads to stuff like addiction or destructive behaviors.

This isn't judgement, or advice, or anything else. Like I said, it's cheap therapy... no call to action, no great revelation. Just me, wrapping my head around something.

Change happens whether people stop and cling or whether they go all Zen and never attach to anything. One choice isn't any easier, or better, or more wise than another. Perhaps right around the river bend, there is a big waterfall, or nothing but jagged rocks, or gnarly rapids... or any other completely valid reason for holding on. It doesn't really matter... attachment or not. What I'm exploring here is that you can have two perfectly identical objects start out together, or meet up together, or whatever - but when they come out the other side they won't look a thing alike.

what do I want in a car?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:45:00 +0000

Aside from what it can provide in terms of fuel efficiency, I don't really care about things like engine size, torque, or horsepower...

What I'd really like to see in a car some day would be the ability for all of the cars on the interstate to participate in an ad-hoc 802.11 network that would allow them to do things like synchronize cruise-control speeds, share GPS information, and alert cars behind to any loss of traction, sudden slowdowns, etc. The department of roads should have access to the data real-time to provide congestion and traffic flow data. Maybe do some peer-to-peer music sharing too, if the other stuff is too boring/nerdy for you? :)

it's a different kind of hurt...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:29:00 +0000

Every once in a while, in Taekwondo class, we get to learn combat Hapkido techniques, which I love. It's a lot of fun.

While Taekwondo is really focused on directly attacking or defending against your opponent. Hapkido is much more about using your opponent's energy against them, and controlling their actions.

Anyhow, I've decided that another major difference is how you feel a day or 2 afterward. With Taekwondo, you hurt because you've had an awesome workout and your muscles are getting their revenge on you. With Hapkido, you hurt because your body (especially your joints) have just been abused.

song dedication

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:47:00 +0000

Lily Allen's new album has a track called "F*ck You" that really resonates for some reason. I'd like to dedicate it to the hate-mongers out there - like Limbaugh or Coulter, that intentionally profit from pushing rhetoric to the extreme and being as divisive as possible. I've had it stuck in my head for days... seems like it's time to share. :)

Dad, why is my lunchbox dripping?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:30:00 +0000

So, we were actually making pretty good time this morning and I was loading my son in to the car to go to school. I noticed it at the same time he said "dad, why is my lunchbox dripping?" and a pretty decent amount of water is leaking out of the sides and zipper of his lunchbox.. a steady trail of drips lead all the way back up the steps into the kitchen.

You know the TV spots for the juice boxes that say "respect the pouch!" as the tagline? This pouch had gotten no respect. The poor thing was sitting in the lunchbox, spilling it's guts out. Luckily the rest of the lunch was all sealed in plastic of it's own, but it meant a nice delay of washing the sticky off of the rest of the lunch and stuffing it all in a different lunchbag. To top it all off, I almost forgot to give him a new juice pouch for lunch. So far we're off to a great start this morning.

Headed out on a canoe trip

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:36:00 +0000

Maybe not the happiest look on his face, but this was a great time. We took a canoe ride with about 12 other people around the big island in Frontierland at Disneyland. This may have been the first time R has ever paddled a canoe before. Our arms were aching by the end of the ride. :)

As a new paddler, he was a bit splashier than the people behind us may have wanted him to be, but at least we were near the very back of the boat. In this photo we're still in queue, waiting for our canoe. We've got the big riverboat in the background :)

Princesses

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Today, we're going in search of princesses!!

The big mouse

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:45:00 +0000

E and I stood in queue to meet the mouse himself. A little nervous, but Mickey was soft and very nice.

Jedi training academy

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:41:00 +0000

While R was receiving his Jedi training, Darth Maul tried to defeat him... silly Sith Lord.

quick look at the turbines

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 04:37:00 +0000

Stopped and grabbed a quick pan of a few of the wind turbines near Ellsworth, KS with our new Kodak Zi6. It still doesn't give a good sense of the scope of this place, but it's kind of cool to see them all moving at once. BTW, be sure to click the "HQ" button that will show up in the bottom right-hand corner of the video to see the video in full quality.

somewhere in central Kansas

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:58:00 +0000

I'm impressed by how well the kids are tolerating all of these hours in the car (we're probably having a much harder time with it than they are). They're whiling away the miles with Nintendo DS, books, coloring, story readers, Leapster, and even my iPhone - but I wish they would look up from the pages and displays for a while and take in the rest of the world from time to time.

The drive from Kansas City to Hays, KS is beautiful. It's carved through rolling limestone hills and lined with groves of twisted oak trees, alternating with fields, pasture, ponds, lakes and hilly grasslands. This time of year, the dominant colors range from grey to a tawny gold to dark greens... and the ever-present sapphire of the sky.

Driving this way in past years, I would see lots of active and lots of old abandoned farms, along with bales of hay and lots of oil wells. It's sobering to think that after Patty's funeral, we probably won't ever have a reason to come back to this part of the world.

The farms (both dead and living) are still there of course, and cranking out hay bales, crops and oil... but it's been a while since I've been this way. I don't know when it sprung up, but I was shocked (can you be pleasantly amazed?) to find miles upon miles of really huge windmills. The state of Kansas has apparently invested in a massive windfarm. It's beyond impressive, and really beautiful to watch these giants turning in the wind. Yeah, it's a great investment in the future and in developing alternative energy sources - but it's also kinetic sculpture on a massive scale. Very cool stuff. The photo I grabbed can't begin to tell the story - I think there are hundreds of these things... and they are huge, but maybe on the way back to KC in a couple of days we can stop and grab a shot or two with a better camera.

Winter wonderland

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:06:00 +0000

We had planned to hit the road yesterday, but ran into a number of problems... I got hit by a nasty stomach bug, which put us behind on packing, and there was an ice storm we would have driven through on the first leg of our trip. So today, we're finally hitting the road to start our adventure. In fact I'm writing this from somewhere southbound on I-435, north of Kansas City.

Some time after Christmas last year, I had this fantasy of not buying gifts for Christmas - instead, we could probably spend the same amount of money and just travel somewhere and be together.

Amazingly, through some extremely generous family, friends, and hotel rewards points, we're making it happen this year - we're going to Disneyland. :) We finally got to tell the kids and - once it actually sunk in, they're over-the-top excited.

I'm sure I'll post more about the trip later, but for now, just wanted to share this photo of the results of the ice storm that we missed yesterday. Really glad we didn't have to drive through it, but it's awfully beautiful to look at now that it's safe. We won't actually be California-bound for several days and many more miles, but we get to start living out of suitcases already.

speaking volumes

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:19:00 +0000

They say that kids emulate their parents...

I just don't see it. :)

Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:27:00 +0000

My family is awesome and I love them dearly.

Tonight is all about family. Here, my son is just jamming with his uncle and cousin while the rest of the family sits back and enjoys. Typically musical, warm, sincere, and fun. I look forward to these holiday nights at grandma's all year, and wish that we would all make up more excuses to get together more often during the year.

Life is good. :)

Keith Olbermann speaking for so many of us

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:49:00 +0000

I don't know who Keith Olbermann is, but take a moment to watch his commentary. He makes a passionate statement on the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and I appreciate what he's saying. Well said, sir.

documenting Barack Obama's life from 2006 through the end of the election

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:32:00 +0000

So it turns out that Edward Norton has been making a documentary about Barack Obama for the past 2 years. This will definitely be a documentary worth watching...

Edward Norton’s Obama Documentary Gets A Hollywood Ending:

"The 39-year-old actor said that he became inspired by Obama’s 2004 speech at the National Democratic Convention and felt inspired to capture someone from his generation — and not his parent’s — inspiring so many and rising in leadership."

This quote from the article especially resonates with me because that (very inspirational) speech at the 2004 DNC is exactly when I started paying attention to Barack Obama. I still carry it around with me on my iPod.

please vote today

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Putting all of the rhetoric aside... all of the divisiveness and the fear. Today is the day to vote and make this extraordinarily long and expensive campaign season that we've all had to endure mean something.

Once I got to vote, my ballot (to the right) only took less than 5 minutes to fill out. After that, I went over and got my free cup of coffee from Starbuck's (which was more full than I've ever seen it).

On a broader note... I hate that, apparently, the easiest and cheapest way to engage voters and motivate them to vote is to polarize the issues and scare the crap out of them. Whomever is elected has the double-challenge of not only digging us out of the horrible mess that we're in as a country, but also of repairing the damage of millions and millions of dollars worth of advertising designed to scare people and tear both candidates down. Our political process is a mess - probably because the general public is so disenfranchised and apathetic about our government that the only way to approach them or to engage them is to terrify them. The vacuum of power left by apathy fosters this environment of fear, confusion, corruption, and the undue influence of lobbyists and private influence.

This is an amazing country full of incredible people... and if we could only try to achieve something together and see through the polarizing "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" we can go back to accomplishing great things.

whazzup?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:03:00 +0000

John just shared this... well done and entirely unexpected. Speaks for itself, so I'll shut up:

Waste

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:56:00 +0000

I need to get over it - it's just the way things are, but it really bothers me to see this. The back of this garbage truck is full of perfectly recyclable cardboard. At least cardboard is pretty biodegradable, but still - hard to see. All we can do is try to make little differences on our own, and lead by example.

We're trying out a different recycling service here in Lincoln, starting this week. RecycleLink has just partnered with RecycleBank, so they've got the dumpsters with the embedded RFID chip and they give you "rewards points" to encourage recycling. It's not like we really need encouragement to recycle... we'll do as much as we can either way, but it may be worth it to see if we can get something out of it in terms of the reward points.

On the positive, the RecycleBank system is single-stream recycling, so you don't need to sort anything. On the negative, they don't take glass or plastic bags... which really stinks. We've gotten used to our current provider just taking everything (taking plastic shopping bags is especially nice). The monthly cost is the same... $8/month, so we'll give this new one a shot for a while and see how it goes.

Autumn

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:55:00 +0000

Cool rainy morning here in Nebraska. I love this season (would love it even more if we could skip the allergies... but oh well). :)

Energy costs, my friends

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:16:00 +0000

I saw gas at $3.09 per gallon on the way in to work. It seems like the closer we get to the election, the more the gas prices are dropping. I understand that gas is less than $3.00 per gallon in Omaha. I wonder if it's going up in blue states to compensate?

Toothbrushes

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:31:00 +0000

I was getting the kids toothbrushes ready tonight and I saw 2 nearly identical toothbrushes for my son. One was light blue and the other was dark blue & I couldn't remember which was the latest. When I went out to the kitchen and asked him which was the right one my son shrugged but my daughter answered, very matter-of-factly "It's the light blue one." Then, after a pause, in the same tone (but with the very slightest hint of a grin) she added "the dark blue one has throw-up on it."

Turns out my poor, mortified, son has been using the dark blue one for a while. When he finally got done shrieking, she (mercifully) explained that it wasn't on the bristles.

UNL Rugby Football Club

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:08:00 +0000

I can honestly say that I would not be where I am today if I had not played rugby for UNL. My first three semesters at UNL were spent on academic probation. Playing rugby was one of the primary things that kept me interested in staying at UNL, and kept me going long enough to learn how to become a halfway decent student... at least enough to make it through. :) I'm not sure what it's like now but when I started, basically, if you had what it took to keep coming back to practice, you could play. Essentially, perseverance, indomitable spirit, and significant stones.

I can't say that I was ever a particularly good player. I'm physically strong, but I'm big and slow and can't run for really long stretches. No endurance when it comes to running... I hate it (give me a bike and I can ride forever... but running just doesn't agree with me). Still, I played second row and loved it. My job was to run from scrum to ruck to maul, collectively pushing the other team off of the ball so that the backs could get the ball and run with it. If an opposing player was carrying the ball (and was actually slow enough for me to catch) I would wrap him up and knock him over. In lineouts, I try to either come down with the ball, or at least knock it away from their guys. Simple (even though I still probably played 3 matches before I really knew what I was doing). :)

Rugby is more than a sport. It has this rich culture of tradition and brotherhood. I can travel anywhere, and if I meet another rugger I instantly have a connection & a bond. I learned songs that I can never remember while I'm sober - but friends that played rugby at different universities can still sing along and know all of the words. You will tackle a guy from the other side, but you know you're going to drink with him after the match so you help him up. It's an old cliche, but it's true... "Soccer is a gentlemen's sport played by ruffians, and rugby is a ruffian's sport played by gentlemen."

I'm on this journey through rugby nostalgia because this is homecoming weekend - UNL Rugby alumni weekend. I played golf with some of my former teammates today, and it was very cool. Amazingly, they all seem to have aged well. Even cooler, I'm going to play in the alumni rugby match tomorrow. Not only do I finally get the chance to introduce my kids to rugby, but they'll see me play it (probably very badly and for a short time), which makes it even cooler.

Hopefully I don't show up to work on Monday with a cast. That would be less cool.

Quality time :)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:35:00 +0000

Getting to enjoy our long-standing tradition of having father/daughter lunches on Monday. Today we're at Bagels & Joe .

This is the kind of stuff that makes everything worthwhile! :)

test day

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Erickson) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:03:00 +0000

R and I tested for our next belts in Taekwondo today. I was really nervous... no worse than getting up to speak in front of a couple hundred people. I did well on my form and on the sparring portion of my test... and only messed up a little bit on the one-steps. R was, of course, awesome. :)

Hopefully mine was still pretty good overall and I should be in good shape for passing (think positive). We will find out in a couple of weeks.

L grabbed some video with her mobile phone so I'll share this very short bit here (it's like 17 seconds). Since it's mobile-phone quality I have to explain that I'm the bigger white blob of the two blobs in the foreground. :)