Interlude and "Girl with the crooked smile, Ask her if she wants to stay awhile"

Recently started listening to some work by Maroon 5, because some stuff just starts rolling around in my head (which happens far more frequently then I care to admit) and some of their tunes just appeal to me (along with Adam Levine's stated desire to create a well-designed, marketable music style (one which does appeal to me particularly on the hustle to the morning stand-up status meeting at 8:30)). Rather than going on at length (I do usually get to my point), I'll just post them with some minimal comments. The first is from "Songs About Jane" and titled "She Will be Loved" (I've told Janet I think of it as "Songs about Janet" during what, thankfully, thinking back, was the beginning of the end for "Night2night, the lost years"):





The second tune is from the more recent "Red Pill Blues" (Love the tucked in reference to "The Matrix") and is titled "Lips on You", because I've never been able to lose the inclination we're designed to fit together and you're missing something remarkable in the human experience if you avoid the opportunity when it presents itself, or believe it limited to the shallow depths of casual liaisons; we're capable of so much more if you'll just allow yourself to believe and be that person with someone else. The vagaries of the human heart are infinitely more complicated and varied than what can be perceived on initial meetings. I think it's worth taking the time to really come to "know" the intimate partners of our life in more than the usual sense.





Analogously (at least for me!), following years of moves, studies, unexpected detours, raising children, surviving a severe surgical accident and pursuing degrees, Janet got an opportunity this past January to participate in a long dreamed of Haiti Medical Mission Trip with a number of volunteers from Good Shepherd Lutheran. Outside of the challenges of creating a sustainable health care enterprise in a desperately poor country and under-served population (subject for another day), Janet's joy in participating was palatable in this picture; a validation of the notion of love being greatest in the service of others and also of Janet's favorite "Grand Theory of Nursing" from her MSN studies, "Nursing is Caring" (succinct, but true). Maybe, particularly following Good Friday, we need to recognize real love is not always simple, or natural (we never fight (LOL)), exists most fully in the service of others, and aspire to empower and elevate our loves to actualize in the highest possible terms those capabilities God has blessed them with.

Tenabrae

A late night meditation on "Good Friday" following services that night, but held until today due to issues which took priority during the weekend and a day off yesterday.

From Isaiah 53:2-6 (NIV):

2           He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

               and like a root out of dry ground.

             He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

               nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3           He was despised and rejected by mankind,

               a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

              Like one from whom people hide their faces

                he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4            Surely he took up our pain

                and bore our suffering,

              yet we considered him punished by God,

               stricken by him, and afflicted.

5            But he was pierced for our transgressions,

               he was crushed for our iniquities;

              the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

               and by his wounds we are healed.

6            We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

                each of us has turned to our own way;

               and the Lord has laid on him

                the iniquity of us all.

The Good Friday service at Good Shepherd Lutheran in Irvine this year was the traditional Tenebrae Service (which I've been informed is from the Latin for "darkness"). It begins in silence, continues with the gradual extinguishing of candles on the altar as gospel accounts of Christ's passion are read, and ends in near total darkness with either a door slammed shut or the lectern bible slammed shut ("strepitus", signifying the closing of the tomb with Christ's body within). Communion is never distributed on Good Friday and attendees are asked to leave in silence at service's end. Although never intended to be a joyful experience, the experience of that service always seems to emotionally resonate with me and did again this year.

I remarked on this originally back during Lent in 2010 when I was creating some early entries for this blog. At that time I mentioned some writer's observation on people easily "getting" the wreckage of Good Friday and our horror on finding ourselves periodically in circumstances where even hope seemed a luxury. I would add here, I think part of coming to faith in Christianity is coming to the recognition a fair deal of the "wreckage" we personally encounter in our lives is devised by ourselves and is not simply our "natural" reaction to circumstances which befell us. We make choices based on our desires at the time events unfold and some times those desires reflect the corruption within us. Christ, undeservedly, suffered agonies which were rightly deserved by our actions. "Tenebrae" services helps to clarify that paradigm and helps me recognize the potential for darkness within me when I look in the mirror.

I think that recognition, even within the confines of the "grace" Christ offers us, is a reminder we need agape, and in our daily lives should aspire in extending it to others even if only a weak reflection of Christ's actions for us.

"That's my secret Cap, I'm always angry."

And an even longer time since my last effort at rebooting (7 years, really?). Florida is somewhere far behind us and things worked out okay after a fair degree of effort (particularly from Gary Singer, staff and partners), but I still miss our old place. Jan's and mine children are all grown and in various stages of their adult lives, recognizable and unrecognizable.

My folks are still around, but age has encroached upon their forthright independence (which was also further enabled by both good fortune, good health and good finances). Now none is enough to reverse the receding tide and, hopefully, some choices will be made this week to best preserve functional independence for both of them to the largest extent possible. And I, alias Night2night, look back at the relationships, the places I went to which would never result in a materially successful life, the houses, the loses, the renovations, the different jobs done and skills learnt though practice and necessity, and realize I never really wanted that standard successful thing; the 3/4 acre luxury estate, the picket fence, the local girl, the single community where we all knew each other, complemented each other on how swell we look and took week long vacations in distant places staying in places that looked like upscale versions of home.

So I've been on a different journey. I truly love some of the things I've had the opportunity to do, and sometimes just the opportunity to contribute and participate in enterprises and goals bigger than me, even when the endings were not capable of justifying a social media profile which claimed, "everything was the greatest". If they always had been, I suspect I wouldn't be capable of doing some of the things I've done over the last few years, and wouldn't have had the understanding you can't step up to the edge of the stage and pull a rabbit out of a hat every time. I tell my team, experience simply means you've had a chance to fuck it up. The only real setback is quitting.

I think Jan and I are going to move (again, LOL), because we'd like a little larger place with some better aesthetics (it's all temporary) and we've been in this temporary place for 5 years. I think within two years we should be back in a place of our own (maybe?) and I think, at least as far as our adventures and travels have taken us, I can think of worse places then southern Cal to retire in (and who knows, maybe this "black sheep" was always intended to wander in the far pastures for as long as I could and as long as it makes sense for the security of my pack). I think it's also time to finish some long abandoned studies and finish some graduate work in applied statistics (I need the larger tool set to do those things I'm working on).

I like a movie clip from "The Avengers" which kind of squares up with this view (not that I'm a real fan of super hero movies, but I love this particular line). Dr. Bruce Banner, who due a freak accident becomes "the Hulk" when angry (at least in the MCU), reluctantly returns to join the Avengers when an alien threat arises. Although Banner initially struggles to maintain his composure following the accident to prevent his transformation, in this scene we realize Banner has accepted who he is and realizes the capability his "accident" has wrought in him can make those emotional triggers and his transformation useful under the right conditions. I may not be an angry superhero, but some experiences which changed me I'm not going to forget and that's OK because they've brought me to this place and stand today and they're of some use under the right conditions.

Reboot

It's been a while. The last nine months of 2010 were consumed with proving that where we claimed we were, was actually where we were; which was a heck of a lot more complicated than it sounds and mainly involved little sparkly pieces of plastic and a bunch of statistics. Following that we had an unscheduled end to a 3 year brawl involving some friends in high places who stuck their necks out and the leave taking of "The Nemesis" (nothing personal dontcha know), and then a really frantic push to validate about 7 test methods (validation implies adequate resolution and limiting the amount of variation due to repeatability (system noise) and reproducibility (user interface variation)) which ran for about 11 hours a day for 6 days a week for 6 weeks. And then we finished (sometime in May). The protocols and reports were filed, the PDF's were created and stored, I looked around, and took a very self-conscious and relieved breath, and, then, squinted out into the internal mental room I really live in; which, at least for me, stores my evolving identity, consciousness, beliefs, and perception.

Whenever I indulge in that exercise I always spend some time remembering the things I didn't do (or simply let slide), like this blog (which sometimes is an excuse for not attempting more serious writing with the focused discipline it would require). Still, while this exercise is a personal vanity, it helps to focus my thoughts and, sometimes, clarify my arguments. It's always, somehow, more rigorous (or maybe real) in writing. Of course, if I could develop more of a sense of myself as a "writer" that wouldn't be bad either.

A few month ago, after foregoing the opportunity to see "Tron Legacy" with "the boys" in the theatre, I finally got around to see the Blu-ray version during one of our Friday night "pizza and a Blu-ray movie with surround speakers on" at home events (Gawd, I love Friday nights). The story is silly, and yet, the movie stuck in my head due to a couple of marginal themes buried in the plot and the music of "Daft Punk" (who I never had heard of before this flick, but composed a great soundtrack). With the movie still stuck in my head (appropriately, or not), I'm attaching one of my favorite penultimate clips from the movie to conclude today's post (which, after all, is titled "Reboot"). Reflecting on a friend's question to me numerous times on "Where am I going with this?”, I'll mention a few pertinent personal themes I'll probably write about in the future as a "lead-in" to the clip:

1. We may not be able to control the circumstances of our existence, but we can choose those beliefs and responses, we believe, or desire, to define us.
2. Our largest nemesis, and ally, is our earlier incarnations.  The child truly is father to the man (or the genesis of our destruction).
3. Even if forgiven, mistakes in real life must be atoned for.  Actions have consequences, and those seeking true redemption must at least recognize the potential for self-sacrifice as the only adequate penance.  Likewise, for the granter, forgiveness implies the "debt" is forgiven without remaining prejudice.
4. Life, without love, is at best an accounting exercise, a strategy for playing a time consuming, but pointless game.  The real treasure in life is the relationships we have and the time we spend on them.
5. No one gets out alive, you might as well do the right thing.

Welcome to Wednesday.

"Until death do us part"

One of those odd bits of news that still comes as a bit of a surprise.

Al and Tipper Gore separate after 40-year marriage - Yahoo! News

I don't identify with his political beliefs and find his climate change alarmism bordering on cartoonish until some better data establishing a relationship between atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and climate conditions over the last few millennia is developed (following link gives an approach which might work, although it will take a few years to collect Antarctic ice core samples and perform the necessary analysis):
 
Unearthing Cold, Hard Facts About Climate Change in Antarctica - WSJ.com

But, that's one of those things hopefully we'll be able to figure out and know with a higher degree of confidence than we do today. Our emotional reactions to things which we don't know about, but only react to is something else. I sometimes fear my empathetic and sympathetic responses to events reflects as much my experiences, age, and general state of mind at the time as they do the actual event. Still, that being said, the Gore's separation after such a lengthy marriage and public live leaves me sad. I can't really say why and instead will relate one of those anecdotal tales which I store in the recesses of my brain.

Some years before meeting J, I had a short lived first marriage which ended with the girl leaving. The days and nights which followed that misadventure changed me in ways which reverberated through me for more than a few years. It's main effect on me was I misbehaved. To this day I hate meeting some of the people I knew during that time because I was not exactly the most effective, brilliant, or honorable individual during that time of my life. I seemingly lost the capability to care about things which had been very important to me just a few years earlier (it was still there, maybe I just stopped caring about caring). On weekends I would go down to the local nightclub/bar on the hunt for random female company. Most of the time I would meet someone who liked to party or drink. Sometimes both. Rarely did I meet anyone memorable, although I suppose I would've had to first define memorable requirements, which I really didn't care to do at the time.

And so we present, a typical evening at "Avenues" (a "true" story):

"I'm so happy tonight!" she exclaims as she slides close to my right elbow, which in turn rests on the heavy poly surface of the bar. I'm nursing some type of whiskey on the rocks, periodically poking at the ice with my index finger.

I turn and smile and simply respond, "Oh, that's good", the response tempered as much by my drink as a desire to engage. She's about my age, mid twenties (definitely no longer a teenager), blonde hair with dark roots showing, nice smile, nice figure, but a little too eager to compliment the place which my drink has taken me to. That place was uncomplicated by sharp edges, detailed examinations of memories for clues, and consideration of life's complexities. That's gone. That's why I'm there. Again. On Friday night. I just need a little company and it'll be perfect. I'm in a pretty good mood and continue to smile as I check out my new found companion.

"Aren't you going to ask why?"

"Well, I wasn't going to, but I don't mind listening if you want to."

"I got my final divorce papers today!", she exclaims before I can really finish saying "want to".

I hesitate just a smidge (maybe the drink?) and simply say "Oh."

She notices. "Well, I'm just glad it's over. It's been such a long time and now it's finally done and I've got my papers". She gives me a look like she just remembered something, and I really don't want her to just leave, but I'm feeling the effort of coming up with something to say that will keep her talking at my right elbow.

"Well that's good for you then. I'm just never sure what to say to people when they tell me that because I don't really know their story or the people involved. You know. Most of the time I just tell them I'm sorry, but I can see that's not where you are."

"Well, I'm not and it's a really good day for me", she insists.

"Well then congratulations," I say and smile.

She stays and talks about a lot of things. Her just concluded first marriage. Her two children. Why she left him. "He just wasn't growing anymore, you know?"

I drank during that time to take the edge off. To make the memories not so overwhelming. Yet, something about that remark penetrates my consciousness and I feel offended. Should I have? No, this was just a girl I didn't know in a bar on a Friday night, but the wiseass part of me uncoils a little bit, "Couldn't you have got him elevator shoes or something?" I inquire while smiling gently. "No", she says quickly, "I don't mean like that." She doesn't laugh.  And she continues talking.

"Oh", I say somewhere in the middle of things.

Her kids slept at her mom's house and she had dinner with them. This was beginning to attract my attention on another level. "Gee, do you really think that's fair?" I quizzed.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know. Your mom raised her kids and now she's got a fair amount of responsibility for yours. That doesn't seem fair."

She pauses for a minute while looking at me. "No, I don't think so. I mean, how else could I go out like this?"

I smile slower this time, close my eyes for just a moment while still smiling, and realize all of these places have the smell of stale beer, cigarettes, sweat and old perfume (I usually put my clothes from Friday night in a plastic bag until I could get to the Laundromat). For a second I just didn't want to be there, but then I simply responded, "Yeah, I guess you couldn't".

We leave together, but I still have this feeling I wanted to be somewhere else. I wind up following her in my car with a growing conviction the whole evening is wrong.  In the end my memories of who I had been a year earlier were more dominant than any opportunity available that night.   So as the evening draws to its' inevitable conclusion, I decline to cross a doorway, and with as much grace as I could muster I excuse myself and go home before I compound the mistakes of that lost year. About the same time I also started to realize no amount of drink, or passages through new rooms, would ever change the fact that what had happened to me in my life, had happened.

A long time later I still don't know why we're all so damn prickly. I realize, like Woody Allen once said, "The heart wants what the heart wants", but somewhere along the border between id and ego, between individual liberty and social constructs there are casualties and I think something is lost even though I understand it can all be explained. So, for Al and Tipper, although I don't know you and often disagree with you, I'm sorry to hear the news and I hope things work out for the both of you.

As for me, almost thirty years ago, the Friday following the above tale I was back at "Avenues".  Today, I'm much more reluctant to trust the emotions of any one moment.

Aftermath

It started with a light whirring noise in the engine compartment while on route 75. What goes through your mind? One, nuts, not another engine problem, and two, what is that? And now that our attention is pricked, we start to notice other things. The car doesn't seem to be moving as rapidly as normal (eyeball the speedometer, 65 mph, not the normal 75; depress the gas pedal and the engine doesn't respond as it normally would). Fortunately, my exit is coming up so I exit onto local two lane road through Weston. There's a light at the intersection for Indian Trace and the engine just doesn't sound right. I accelerate onto Indian Trace after the light turns green and the engine stalls. Night2night editorial voice: from whatever root cause precipitated the series of events for that night as I've described it so far, opportunities for meaningful risk mitigation sufficient to preserve the car, and in retrospect, me, are rapidly vanishing.

The inertia of the car's motion was enough to allow me to steer to the curb. I try to start the car, but the entire instrument panel is dark when I turn the key in the ignition. Light colored smoke is coming from the engine compartment, but I figure the radiator is busted (for whatever reason) and get out of the car to call J for pick-up (about 1 mile from home) and inform her I'll call Allstate Auto while I wait for her. I get back into the car, try the ignition again, the instrument panel lights up this time and engine starter cranks, but no engine ignition apparent. I exit car again and smell still light smoke from engine compartment and note it doesn't smell like antifreeze. Again, although opportunities are shrinking for possible responses, I'm unaware how close to the Volvo singularity I am.

I look under the car and some type of fluid is exiting the engine in a thin stream. Crap. It ignites.

Fire school training while at Shoreham with demo of car fire. Very short time until flames engulf the car.
Don't lose work. Grab laptop, car emergency kit and sunglasses.
911
Back off.
(Inane conversation with 911 operator, "What color is your car? (orange and yellow, soon to be ash black, my car is on fire)"; "What direction are you heading in? (intersection of 84 and Indian Trace Road, my car is on fire, get a blankin fire truck here lady!)" First Broward County Sheriff’s unit responding tells me when he stopped he saw some small flickering flames under the engine; three minutes later the car was engulfed in a fireball.

There's a rather rapid series of events following the start of my return home that evening (we left for Rochester at 4:30 the next morning for R's graduation from Nazareth College).  J shows up in rather wide eyed disbelief after seeing the spectators gathered to watch.  A flatbed tow truck shows up to remove the dripping wreck, and the spot where she burnt is marked by a set of brackets formed from the molten remains of the bumpers.

I get a couple of shots of the car's remains in the towing yard with Allstate's field investigator.  I'll probably start one of my infamous letter writing campaigns asking Volvo (Ford?) whether this usually happens with their cars.

Nothing was recoverable.  Time to look for another car before the boys go back to school.  I walked away and at least saved my work from the last few weeks (maybe I should consider backing up better to the corporate network).  Could it have been a worse outcome?  After I had a chance to think about it, yeah, I think it could have been worse.

Appropriately, this seems like a good place to complete this set of blog posts addressing liberty, risk, the need for both personal and public security, and those mechanisms available for addressing all of it.  I think we like to think things are more rational and predictable than they actually are.  We want all risk mitigated to the point of insignificance, but the reality is that's impossible.  And at those rare points, when we approach those singularities, when we stumble upon an ill-intentioned "black swan", sometimes we can only draw upon our gut instincts, beat the clock, and hope for the best.  Of course, in those situations, you best have your own estimation of acceptable risk, and some general plan for dealing with hostilities.  You can't always count on help arriving in time.

I suspect the occasional reader I have will look at this and say, "Ah, it's just some set-up for another crazy rant of his."  Well, maybe, but, our destinations are pretty uniform and I suspect most of the meaning to be had is in our conduct during the trip.  So here's to the guys and gals who recognize the threats out there, handle them as best they can, but understand risk is never negligible, not in this life. 

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Travel, projects (personal and professional), and an unplanned disaster has compressed the time I had available for extracurriculars over the past month. Today I find myself back in Rochester, NY celebrating my daughter, R's graduation from Nazareth College (first of the offspring to complete their undergraduate studies, hoorah). Still with some time, some sleep, and a general predisposition to mulling over what germinated in my mind some weeks ago, I've decided to complete and publish these few entries (which sort of follow my recent thinking on the limits of federal government and the proper mitigation of public risk), just ex post facto.

Some weeks ago I came across an essay by Penn Jillette in the weekend interview in the Wall Street Journal which I think addresses an important, pragmatic essence of liberty. At its most basic, liberty is the freedom for an individual to pursue his or hers prerogative, even when the outcome is stupid. Of course for most of us, putting up with our fellow citizens stupidities (which are so much worse than our own) is the biggest trial of liberty. If only those other idiots could be more like us. If you can, follow the link and read the essay.

Penn Jillette's Homage to Hummer - WSJ.com

I worry our preoccupation with better outcomes (particularly the ones learned experts prefer), with maximizing the government planner's capability to forbid bad outcomes, and with our desire to control the free agents (out of either jealousy or a desire to control what is perceived as chaotic, and therefore, undesirable) will result in a loss of liberty, in a loss of those attributes of freedom which make so much possible in this land. Ironically, although some classical liberals (which Penn Jillette always seemed to me because of his contempt for all religions) and authors like Kurt Vonnegut (whose work I got to love in high school) do seem to recognize the threat to our liberty implicit in following these preoccupations to their logical ends. In light of that observation, one of Kurt Vonnegut's earlier short stories, "Harrison Bergeron", is probably worth reading as a chaser for the Penn Jillette essay.

Harrison Bergeron

What do I conclude? Hang on to your stupidity and the unfairness of life, if the alternative is the sacrifice of your liberty.

Music soothes the savage beast.

Lot of writing procedural stuff today and Bank of America comes across with a lousy loan modification deal (we'll do the back and forth of course because no business I know of would unilaterally accept the losses I'm looking at it without pulling their partners in to share liability; screw them, they want to take title to property basically making their note worthless they're welcome to it. I've been through this with Aurora already.).

While all of this is going on I'm plugged into my IPOD. Two Goo Goo Dolls songs remind me of some other challenges and beginnings back on Long Island circa 1983/1984 (even though the songs and the band didn't exist back then). The first "Here is Gone", hearkens back to letting go of some personal losses while doing a lot of riding across the 2 lane highways of the North Shore on my Kawasaki KZ750 (sometimes I would get on the Orient Point Ferry during the evening and cross the Sound to Connecticut). Not sure I can really adequately describe those moments; the feel of the leather seat as I'd tap into first gear after kick starting the engine; the dull vibration of the motor reverberating as the wheels unwind on the highway underneath me on an early fall day with the sun setting; the black soft separation from family (a lot of time out at night simply screaming down roads overnight), school friends, and old associations slowly growing and being replaced by the embraced solitude of a semi-rural environment; the realization I was moving on and not going back to my parent's home or the aborted adult life which had crumbled before me, ever. The beginning of a smile that could make the right woman blush. Some stuff sticks in your head (Even now, I still smile, and J, sometimes, still blushes). So, here's a decent YouTube video of "Here is Gone", which, at least for me, creates some neural triggers (you can minimize the advertising embedded in the frame). I usually turn the volume up on this and try to damage my hearing or at least a couple of synapses when listening. It still seems appropriate and I'd probably recommend the same for anybody in similar circumstances (Hell, if you're crossing that type of mental terrain with that little light, would you even want to live forever? Just go and turn the volume up and feel the wind in your hair.).



Click thru the embed (which YouTube has disabled) to the YouTube site for the WB official video and tune.

My favorite set of wheels at rest on the patio where I kept her.

The second tune is "Let Love In".  Like this year, 1983 brought a lot of issues to disposition and unfamiliar places to travel through.  You find yourself making up a lot of stuff as you go along.  At some point in time you hit your stride and realize you'll get to exit another tunnel, at least for that day.  Twenty eight years ago I had found my own pace on a tough piece of road, but started to recognize my solitary shadow when J popped up as a medical assistant collecting blood samples at the nuclear power plant I was working at.  It starts like this; you walk into some make believe examination room in the back of a tractor trailer and find yourself in front of some medical tech with candy blonde hair, large blue eyes, a kiss of freckles across her upper cheeks and dressed in a short white nurse's dress (from southern California yet).  After two years mainly by myself and a lot of time on the road I just stared alot and in the following days found myself trying to hit locations where my eyes could drink things in for just one more time.  Lots of stories here, and both of us had enough history that it felt like being released from some decrepit prison where even the guards had lost interest in performing their duties.  For now, just a snapshot of an intense late spring/early summer.  First, a first kiss at the center of the Brooklyn Bridge ("That's not NYC, I'll show you NYC", in laughing response to her tale of the NYC tourist tour) and today a copy of Roebling's engineering plan for the bridge hangs on our stairwell wall.  Second, a memory of my hands slowly encircling her waist following a dinner date during May 1983 and really fighting a desire to let my hands see for me (I mean really fighting that odd mix of "I want you" and "I stopped caring about things some time ago, so why don't we enjoy tonight"; I really liked this girl.).  She asked to go home at that point, but something unspoken passed between us that night.  It's hard to capture the thousand small gestures, sights and sensations that comprise the start of a relationship.  Suffice it to say a mix of forgotten intimacy, desire, talk, and some personal, quiet contentment marked her sojourn and mine as accidental fellow travelers at Shoreham late in the spring of 1983.  Six weeks later, with J returning to the left coast, I asked her to marry me and on May 12, 1984 we married on the anniversary of our first meeting in a tractor trailer where I gave up some blood and remembered what it felt like to be a young single man.  So here's my emotional memory of that six weeks.



As before, click thru the embed (which YouTube has disabled) to the YouTube site for the WB official video and tune (not as good as the first video, but the lyrics and tune catch the moment right).

And in the fullness of time, a very happy, but tired Mom and Dad posed with their daughter Rachel.  And we started down a new road.  It was a nice time.  I really didn't appreciate it enough at the time.

And some came running.

I went to the Fort Lauderdale Corporate Challenge 5K Run this past Thursday (I'm trying to make an effort to generate "real time" blog entries, but time is always limited, and, so, here I am playing catch-up with my own online enterprise. Sigh.). Anyway, it was a nice night (typical for southern Florida this time of year) and a chance to traverse and linger in some places I don't usually get to. The number of participants was smaller than in the past two years, but I'm guessing that probably reflects the economic downturn of the past year. The race itself has the competitive, "seeded", runners staged in the front of the field, and the "hoi polloi" (which includes your humble correspondent) in the rear. For myself, the days of running a six minute mile across a 5K course are somewhere behind and north of here.

I spent the two days after the race dealing (or, better yet, suffering through) with the side effects of an acute bout of Achilles tendonitis (which infuriates J, who sees a refusal to deal with a problem which should be fixed; I, of course, see only reminders of an inevitable decline which concludes with nothing left to decline). More curious yet, I suspected that might be the most concrete outcome of the evening and still found it hard to relinquish my performance, if not my participation. So I hung out amid the corporate tents, talked with some coworkers about things other than work, broke some bread (over veggie lasagna), and covered 3.1 miles in about 33 minutes.

Still, for that evening, I was in a semitropical, semiurban outpost with fountains framing the high rise condominiums of the Fort Lauderdale skyline.  My old sneakers were laced up and my running shorts were on.  There are some moments it's just good to be there, in that moment.  This was one of those times.

Some companies run as teams with their team members sporting shirts with corporate colors or logos.  They line up with everybody else under the city parking garage and wait for the starter's gun to go off.

And when it does, the seeded runners burst forward to hopefully establish some personal best record for themselves.  The remainder of the pack slowly surges forward, first walking, and finally passing beneath the balloon festooned starting gate.

Eventually, the pack breaks up enough for us to all find our personal pace, and our associated "personal best".  I've come to prefer starting behind and coming forward, rather than starting with an unobjective bravado and falling back in exhaustion.  I find my place in this river of middle class, middle aged denizens of the corporate woods and look for the ocean with them.

Eventually we finish, congratulate each other, inquire after finish times, bust chops, and watch the sun set overhead behind the towers fencing the park we're gathered in.  I hope the ankle supports I'm wearing might spare me any real discomfort in the next days, but time and circumstances have moved on, as has that day.

Altered States

Really stormy day yesterday (a weak tornado touched down somewhere in southern Florida flipping trailers, knocking a commercial garage door off it's tracks, and splintering a fair number of trees). I'm tired of this winter (at least relative to what out winters normally are). Pressure's on at work (again, and again, and yet again). Get the project clean; put together a solid set of DHF deliverables; understand the risks, mitigate appropriately; specifically identify those requirements necessary to meet functional requirements and overarching QSR dictates and then verify you met them (Go ahead, make me shiver, say it again, verification and validation.  Ohhh, I've got goosebumps.). Get to commercial release on time while conjuring up real challenges before they materialize on critical path. Stay ahead of the attention of eyes looking for things amiss.

Take a breath and stop growling.

There now, feel better?



So we conclude a happy looking corpse is better than an anxious one and leave for the day.

And found ourselves back at the YMCA pool as the temperature drops back into the fifties, the sun sets, and the wind again picks up.  The younger lifeguards sulk and hide air cooled brows beneath knit snowcaps while waiting for the opportunity to unfurl the pool thermal covers and sail off into the night.  Meanwhile, the recalitrant patron slips into the warm (relative) depths of the deserted lap lanes and falls into his 40 year old freestyle rhythm and seeks transcendence in much practiced motions with small opportunities to draw breath.

And yet the world is turned oddly about during my sojourn here.  The eternally young and tanned guards sit shivering in winter garb overlooking the slowly emptying olympic sized pool (water polo practice concluding).  The scent of chlorinated water is less than one normally experiences during the height of the summer when the pool is heated by the sun to almost bathtub temperature.  Now, the water temperature is heated to almost 78 degrees F (a good 15 to 20 degrees warmer than the air temperature), so, the water beckons as I tread across the uncommonly cool concrete deck,  "Come on in.  Immerse yourself.  Find your rhythm within my world, within my body, and forget the assassinated smiley face.  The only reality is the lap count and the ability to draw breath.  Follow the blue lane markers.  Are you comfortable drawing breath?  Follow the blue lane markers."  And I do.  And begin to count.

So I settle into the routine of 36 laps, or 72 lengths, or 1 mile.  I alternate flip turns with wall touches and advance stroke by stroke to my goal.  I'm late (again), so the staff has already started to roll out the thermal plastic blankets covering the body of the pool overnight, working from the ends in toward the middle where I progress stroke by stroke.  Normally the air is warmer, and the water cooler, but now the situation is reversed with the water providing warmth the air will not.  So I feel like I'm swimming low in the water, beneath the cooler air where I draw breath.  I unconsciously, or consciously, maximize my time and depth immersed, timing my breathing to still maintain my comfort in this "other" place I transit, where I guess we all originated from and now only visit, like me, beneath the blue halogen lights.

I'm most acutely aware of my need for air at the flip turns.  I normally exhale through my nose until I've leveled out and reversed, but sometimes I run short of breath and can feel the sting of the chlorinated water up high in my sinuses and think "find your rhythm. . . ", but there's always that little hit of desperation, of not having enough air and wanting to inhale deeply.  The count progresses.  As it does, my peripheral vision first picks up the shadow of the thermal blankets darkening the water.  They advance inexorably toward my location.  Sometimes I think, I'll feel the snap of the nylon rope over my shoulder and find the blue tarp being pulled over my head in this place I'm visiting, but where I don't belong (get to the side and lift yourself out!).  But, Chris is out there, and we talk together, and he makes sure I get the most time possible.  And I keep pulling myself through the water until length 72 is behind me, and slowly blow bubbles while floating just beneath the water before lifting myself up onto the concrete deck and pulling my goggles up onto my forehead.

Of course the night ends and I wash as much of the chlorine scent as I can off myself in the locker room shower and change into shorts, t-shirt and birkenstocks for the final trip home.  As I start the car, the check engine light comes on as it has for the last month.