Life – Page 2 – Grasshopperking(0)

December 9, 2017

Home…

We just wrapped up a move to a new place. There’s nothing like packing up all your treasured possessions to nudge you into a time of introspection.

Introspection and reflection.

We spent the last 4+ years in a massive old house.

Grave's House — This Old House we called home

Old say i? Yes, construction was completed on the house in 1901. That’s two years before the Wright brothers launched a flimsy (by design, it was a “flex-wing”) glider down a beach in North Carolina. So before mankind had even rudimentary flight the house was wrapped up and ready for occupation.

Massive say i? Again, yes. “Colonial Revival Style Mansion” is (i believe) how it’s described on the historic registry. Enough space that we sublet most of the upstairs to friends, had TWO full size dining room tables, and converted one of the butler’s kitchens (yeah, i said butler’s kitchens) into a mud-room/laundry room while we were there.

As we searched for places to move into we saw an ad for the house and called for a walk-through mostly as a joke, something fun to do since we were looking at houses to rent anyway. The first time we walked into the giant we were awestruck by the scale of everything. 12′ Ceilings EVERYWHERE, a set of solid wood pocket doors so massive they looked like castle gates when closed, an opulent dark wood staircase worthy of gone with the wind…

If you told me that one day the scale of that house would be dwarfed by our affection for it… i don’t think i could’ve believed you on that day we first set foot inside the house… But somewhere along the way that’s exactly what happened.

Despite the constant battle with mold and mildew, despite the fact that it cost roughly the GDP of a small island nation to “heat”it in the winter months (“heat” was a relative term there, the lowest i ever saw the house was a crisp 40.5 degrees fahrenheit. 98.3 was the warmest my digital thermometer recorded one balmy summer day as well), despite the fact that it was comfortable for about 65 days a year (those in the Early Spring and Mid-Fall), it stopped being a giant old mansion and became Home to us.

On that Thursday night, the last day of November, when i placed the last of our possessions in a trailer and turned to survey what had been our kingdom for several years i found that it was much the same as saying goodbye to an old and dear friend. i placed a hand on the woodwork of the foyer wall and said my last goodbye. Grave’s House (it was built by the Graves family and over the years that became its name to us) you will always hold a special place in my heart.

Grave's House Foyer — Yeah it was a great space… but you couldn’t do much with it! The wood-work was outstanding though!

Now i lay my head to rest in a nondescript townhome. Embracing the central heat & air, the friendly neighbors (the egalitarian ambiance is nice, you can’t be envious when all your neighbors have the same square-footage as you), and lower utility bills all around. This is now just as much home as Grave’s house ever was, it’s the people you share a roof and walls with that make a place home, now we’re just close enough together that we don’t have to call or text when it’s time to come down for dinner!

But we’ll always have our season in Grave’s house.

October 17, 2017October 17, 2017

The trouble with scale…

Ever taken that photo of that amazing breath-taking vista and then later looked at it and been overcome by just how underwhelming it is?

Me too!

It’s the trouble with scale. When you’re there things FEEL big and grandiose. You snap a few photos to remember the awesomeness of the moment at some later date. But the photos don’t capture what was really there. Those mountains seem so plain and boring, so small and distant. That photo snapped from the ledge feels so flat. That geological feature that loomed over you just feels, weak…

At the risk of sounding pompous and possibly over philosophical, i think life has a scale problem.

Moments that SHOULD be grand and overwhelming sometimes slip away and are forgotten. At the very least they get poorly remembered and buried under the minutiae of day-to-day living.

Sequoia Nat Park — Sequoia National Park

Then moments that shouldn’t even register wind up being these rich and full moments in our lives. Maybe a time you were driving alone in a car and just had a realization. That night you were hanging out with friends doing the same things you almost always do and the gravity of your friendship just landed on you. That fight over some nothing (you can’t even remember what it was about) you had with a loved one that left a scar in that relationship for years.

i remember clearly small moments like fighting with a friend because he was being a total dong and tossing his drink out the car window (first i NEVER litter, and second we had just driven into town to buy said drink). He responded in kind by chucking my own beverage out the passenger window!

i remember a moment laying on a couch, the room pleasantly warmed by the late winter sun. Reading a book (which book? i don’t remember) while two much loved dogs slept nearby.

Glacier National Park — Road to the Sun, Glacier Nat Park

Sitting in my car as a teenager after work listening to the same album i’d listened to a thousand times before.

But important things, life altering moments, wriggle away from my memory… Births and deaths, first days of school and first day on new jobs, or last days on old jobs.

Those moments when you stand at the base of that mountain, or at the precipice of that drop that affords you a view to take your breath away; or those moments when you’re overwhelmed by this new development in your life, or the closing of some door: live in that moment. The problem with scale is that it doesn’t always photograph well….

October 10, 2017October 10, 2017

Yuck n’ Yum pt 2

“Don’t Yuck someone else’s Yum” has become a standard litmus test in my life these days. In putting my own reactions to other people and situations in that scale i may have found an exception… Yum-Yucking.

Yum-Yucking- (verb) Yum-Yucking is the act of yucking someone’s yum. Some people enjoy Yum-Yucking to such an extent that it becomes their Yum. Those people become know as Yum-Yuckers (see Yum-Yucker in this fictitious dictionary).

People who’s “YUM” is yucking other people’s yum have become the exception to my tolerance for other peoples brand of yum.

Brace yourself for this:

IF your Yum is Yucking someone else’s Yum then your Yum is no longer protected by the principle of NOT Yucking someone else’s Yum. When Yucking becomes your Yum then (in my opinion) you lose the protections that not Yucking another’s Yum provide. First Council of Yucking of Yums, passed down generations by sacred scroll writ neat upon grape fruit-by-the-foot.

Yum-Yucking has been around for time out of mind. Whatever the current flavor of “cool-kid” is at the time has always used Yum-Yucking as a go-to. It’s one of the things that i am making an effort to remove from my life. Goes right along with my effort to steer clear of Mean Humor. It’s a base reaction to despise without consideration something that another person finds delight in. This doesn’t mean that every Yum should be accepted. BUT if someone’s Yum causes no harm to others then what is the aim of debasing it?

If you want some background on these thoughts of mine you can see more here:

https://grasshopperking0.com/2017/09/28/i-love-dd-and-the-best-lesson-ive-learned-from-it/ (the end of that post is where i delved into Yum Yucking)

https://grasshopperking0.com/2017/09/25/mean-humor/ (where i began my journey away from mean humor)

October 2, 2017October 2, 2017

We’ll all float on!

We were pointed toward home. We’d spent a month in central CA working our butts off and we were reaping our sweet reward: a long drive back East, drinking in as much of the country as we could along the way.

We were driving through Utah, we’d seen the salt-flats (tip: if you see them from the interstate STOP at the rest-stop and check them out. The next exit you’re going to see is about 70 miles down the road, so take that opportunity when it pops up), and we were heading towards the Rockies and all their splendor.

We saw signs for the western most Zaxby’s in the USA (2 are oddly enough located in Utah) and saw the Kennecott Garfield Smelter Stack. The stack in question is the tallest freestanding structure West of the Mississippi river. Standing a whopping 1,215 feet high it’s a pretty impressive piece of industrial construction. To put its height into perspective for you the Empire State Building is pretty much the same height (if you snap off the radio tower), the Willis Tower in Chi-town is shorter than the stack topping off at 1,450 feet, and if you hail from the Pacific North-West your most famous skyline feature (the Space Needle) tops out at a mere 605 feet. So the Smelter Stack was pretty impressive.

But enough waxing impressed about a toxin-spewing chimney…

The thing that stands out the most to me about wheeling through the Mormon capital of the universe was our brief stop to see the Great Salt Lake. Our plan had been to stop, take a gander at it, maybe dip a foot in just so we could say we did. We were NOT going to get into the lake, that was considered and voted down by unanimous vote. Our plan was waylaid by the friendliest State Park worker i’ve ever met in my life. His enthusiasm for the lake was contagious.

He plied us with said enthusiasm and the cold, hard fact that we were at a minimum over 2,000 miles away from home and when would we be there again? He weaved for us his master-plan for us to experience the wonder of the lake. Change in the gift-store bathroom, dip in the lake (with admonitions to make sure we floated in it, not just waded knee deep), scuttle across the parking-lot to the showers for the marina and de-salt ourselves as best we could.

So what did we do? We did all those things. Wading out his words of, “Once you’re about nipple-deep you won’t be able to keep your feet on the bottom,” proved to be absolutely true. Laying back into the salty water proved to be one of the most interesting experiences of my life. For an instant i thought i had sat on something in the water. It felt exactly like sitting on a float in a pool. It was amazing. It was relaxing. It was a moment i’m glad that my wife and i took a few minutes and made time for. Even hours later when we began to feel like beef-jerky (it’s pretty much impossible to de-salt yourself in a hurry in a marina shower that you’re using clandestinely) i was still so very glad we’d done it.

Floating in one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth was not part of the plan for that day, but we did it! If we had not met that particular park worker, if we had not been willing to alter our time-table, if we had not been willing to do a thing we’d actually decided earlier to NOT do… we would’ve missed an amazing moment.

Some folks never find serendipity in their lives because when it knocks they lock the dead-bolt.

So, try that new food. Take those free tickets. Get in the car and drive somewhere. Take that friend up on their offer to put you up for a night if you’re ever in their town. Float On! It could be one of the most amazing moments of your life…

September 28, 2017

i love D&D! (and the best lesson i’ve learned from it)

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i LOVE table-top RPGs!

i played them when i was young (often in secret, since the evangelical backlash against them had instilled a dread terror of them in the hearts of many who were authority figures in my life at the time)

i play them now, as a 40 year old man who’s primary function on this planet seems to be paying bills. Judge me, i don’t care!

Table-Top gaming is tied with Cycling as my top distraction from the day-to-day stressors of life and all that entails. i love most things about it and here’s some reasons why (plus the most important lesson it’s taught me at the end):

Collaborative Story-telling: One of my favorite things in life is telling a good story. There have been MANY times in my life where i did something knowing it was a bad idea but my rationalization was: “This is gonna make a great story!” Table-top RPGs provide a scaffolding (the rules, sometimes voluminous amounts of rules) for a group of people to tell a story together. Granted the DM/GM holds more power than the others at the table in that process BUT a good DM/GM shares that power and lets the PCs actions, words, or even inactions influence that story. There’s something about any creative process that is rewarding, and when a collaborative endeavor is successful it’s often even more rewarding.
The Escape: Life is life… by which i mean sometimes it gets tough. In those moments a little distraction can do the mind a great deal of good. When i was a young gent sitting around a table in some friend’s basement trying to save a world, or universe, or just pillage some village, i was an uncoordinated blundering mess. i fit the template for “potential D&D nerd”. Those long nights spent with the handful of good friends i did have were some of the best nights of those years. Using the theater of our minds to do heroic (or villainous) deeds sure beat wallowing in self-pity. It also beat the chemical escapes i dipped into a few years later… Today, though the nights spent around a table with friends are shorter (i’m too old to pull an all nighter and my brain gets tired after about 3 hours anyway) they are still just as welcome as an escape. Weather i’m playing a outlandish character bent on adventure, or juggling a detailed universe as DM/GM, i always feel refreshed when we pack up our dice and other implements of nerdom and head home.
It’s Community Driven: Community is an idea that is a central pillar for my family. The life we live with others is often so much richer than the life we live alone (i could slip into a treatise about the dangers of “social” media here, but i won’t). It’s literally IMPOSSIBLE to play a table-top RPG alone! The minimum requirements are TWO people. (but 5-7 are ideal in most situations). i like that you sit around a real-life physical table with other people! It’s true that you can play online, using the digital world to connect over vast expanses, but i still prefer face-to-face play time. i love it all: the sharing of snacks & beverages, the laughter, the heated debating over the minutiae of rules. It’s good to see the same faces weekly (or bi-montly, or monthly, or whatever your gaming schedule for your regular group is). Also; It’s great to do something shorter and sit around a table with a group of brand new people. The main thing is the community, continuing or temporary, that occurs around that table.

The most important life-lesson i’ve learned around a gaming table: Don’t Yuck someone else’s Yum! Its an adage that i’ve heard the most in RPG circles. Someone wants to study for hours to build the most ideal character; tuning every stat and ability for maximum effectiveness within the structure of the rules (or exploiting a loop-hole in said rules)? Good for them

Someone else makes a character that can do a certain feat extremely well… and then NEVER does that thing because they feel like that’s not the personality of their character? Good for them

Someone builds a warrior straight out of high-fantasy honor-bound to break the bonds of tyranny that oppress the less fortunate; someone else creates a bumbling wizard who’s main contribution is comedic effect… its ALL GOOD! At the end of the day people play RPGs to HAVE FUN! That looks different to different people. If someone’s Yum doesn’t make sense to you, that’s ok. Let them have it!

How does that translate to the real world?

Well to quote myself fourteen words ago: “If someone’s Yum doesn’t make sense to you, that’s ok. Let them have it.” Yum-Yucking is often the easiest reaction to something we don’t understand or don’t like ourselves. But i’ve learned a lot from people whose interests were vastly different from my own over the years so…

i won’t Yuck your Yum if you don’t Yuck mine!

September 25, 2017September 25, 2017

Mean Humor

i’m a master at being an A-hole…

i can poke fun of the most deeply held convictions, the most vulnerable spots in a person, the most recent personal or social scandals. i can say those things that shouldn’t be said; and can i step over “the line”? Well yes, but i’d much rather jump over it and do a metaphysical jig.

Here’s a fact about that: that’s a trick that ANYONE can do that. Anyone can pull of mean humor. It’s the easiest route to get laughs. Mean humor is the cheapest way to buy laughs and smiles, you just buy them with someone else’s social credit card.

Here’s another fact: i’ve recently become VERY convicted about mean humor… i don’t like it (the convictions i’ve developed regarding it, i mean). It makes me uncomfortable. i like to make people laugh. But i’m trying to stop doing so at the expense of others.

i’m admittedly NOT doing a bang-up job of it either… We live in a social climate that is chock full of political unrest, where people who don’t like what others have to say rail about how it causes them pain… OR (the other side of the same coin) they rant that if you say/do “that” (whatever “that” thing is for the moment) you should be carted off to a modern internment camp and deported from the United States of America. (But that’s a whole separate rant for another time)

So i’m putting on my big-boy pants and doing my utmost to steer clear of the cheap and easy way of humor. Mean humor denies others the basic respect due them as a fellow human being.

It Devalues other passengers of Space Ship Earth…

Ultimately i’m stumbling along attempting to be a Christ-follower. To live the example that He laid out for us. (Admittedly many days i’m a poor one, limping along and poking at the gray areas of life and spirituality with a stick). i find myself hard pressed to imagine Jesus throwing back his head and laughing at my witty rip on flat-earthers, or my quip about those deluded Republicans, or those silly Democrats. i can’t envision him slapping a robbed knee at a well timed “nice shorts there 1995…” Honestly most days i’m not sure i’d garner so much as a smile from Him if we were chilling around a campfire in sandals, eating fresh fish, and keepin’ it Kosher.

Humor is a gift, a gift to bring light and levity into a world filled to the brim with pain, confusion, hatred, frustrations, etc, etc, etc. It’s a shame that humor has become a vehicle that drives those things it could be so effective at repelling.

i’m endeavoring to treat humor as the tool for good that it can be, and not a cheap shtick to get laughs at the expense of others…

September 15, 2017September 15, 2017

Young Dad / Old Dad

I am unable to produce descendants at a decent age…

When i was fresh out of High School my first child was conceived. In the Photo on the left i am a whopping 18 years of age. My first wife and i began our “adult” lives as statistics used to pressure parents, teachers, and youth alike about the virtues of safe-sex or abstinence.

We were young and foolish with zero clue of what we were getting into! We struggled through years of scraping by and raising kids (2 more followed the first one). It was tough. Having kids that young often equals a lot of sacrifices, and it meant sacrifices for us. My tentative plans to go fart-around at college with my friends was traded for full-time work. She finished up her senior year in an off-campus facility for delinquents (because being pregnant is basically the same thing as selling heroin!). They claimed it was for her protection, but really it was the 90s and can you imagine how unseemly it would’ve been having an impregnated human getting education with the normal people? (we really do need to establish a standard font for sarcasm)

Those early years were some of the hardest years of my life. Hard work, small kids, feeling trapped in a continuous circle of work, pay bills, work, repeat…

But i don’t think i’d trade them in for anything. i got three amazing kids out of the deal. Smart, witty, creative, funny human beings who will have to pick out a nursing home for me one day!

For the last twenty-plus years i’ve encouraged myself regularly with the thought that they’ll all be grown and i’ll be fairly young, or at least “Not-Old”. Not-Old and free to travel, to ride across the desert on a motorcycle, to jet-ski across one of the smaller oceans, maybe book passage to the arctic and watch icebergs calve with my own eyes!

Then on Father’s Day of this year i had a revelation… i looked at my wife… This amazing dynamo of a human who can just power through things, this being of amazing ability who can set a plan in place and move heaven and earth to make it happen, this tiny person who joined forces with me to live out a life together, a life where we go places, live in 20 different places across the country, see the world… i looked at her and i KNEW…

She’s Pregnant!

It wasn’t long that it was confirmed, by not just a single test either- a whole flotilla of tests and an official doctor’s office test! To Quote Slartibartfast*, “Best laid plans of mice.”

So here we are. Like Abraham & Sarah or Jay & Gloria Pritchett: Old(ish) and pregnant! (The photo on the right is me now, at 42) It makes me think back to discovering i was going to be a dad the first time. My life was RUINED, all my plans destroyed! i had that moment again this time around as well.

But then i reflected: Progeny batch 1.0 are all some of the best things to ever happen in my life. My heart is at it’s fullest when i’m together with my entire little clan (which as they get older happens less and less). So Progeny batch 2.0 should be equally amazing!

I’ve been young and i’ve been old… and both times i went and made babies without meaning to!

From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: if you haven’t read it… read it!

September 9, 2017

Hospital SCREENing

Sony-FD-525-Mega-Watchman-TV-AM-FM-Radio-Vintage

i spent the day at the hospital. We found out my Dad had a heart catheterization scheduled. Was it exploratory or to fix things, we asked. He didn’t know… or at least claimed not to. So my sister made her long trek to take my parents to the hospital this morning and i made my much shorter one to be there today myself.

SPOILER ALERT: everything went very well, they did fix some things; my Dad is now the proud owner of a stint and two arteries that are a good deal clearer than they were when he woke up this morning.

Watching my parents today segued right into some thoughts i’ve been thinking and digging at recently, thoughts about the prevalence of screens in our lives and how they effect us.

i’ve been watching my own relationship with my smart phone more closely lately. It’s a handy tool, a means of connection, but also a distractor: a sort of crutch that keeps me from facing boredom.

Most nights i read myself to sleep, but as years pass less and less time is actually spent reading and more and more time is spent scrolling, swiping, and commenting. i still eventually get around to the book at hand but fewer and fewer pages get read before sleep finally conquers me.

Today as we waited while my Dad was experiencing firsthand the miracle of modern medicine, i tried to be aware of when i was staring at my glowing rectangle. It was fairly often, some of it was texting or messaging family/friends but some was just filling time by reaching for my same old distractors that i find comforting.

When my dad got back from the procedure i didn’t see him touch his phone at all. i had the thought that if i was stuck laying prone in a bed, barely moving for several hours (doctor’s orders), the first thing i’d reach for these days is my phone. Keep in mind that my Dad isn’t some technology challenged septuagenarian. He’s a fairly technologically adept septuagenarian. More than once i’ve stopped by his house to see him at the kitchen table with his laptop, ipad, and smartphone all going at once. He hunched over them all like a spry youth of the technology age working on some project of his.

It’s true that he did use the hospital television as a distraction, but he was ever ready to turn his attention from it to his family. Oddly enough the television (playing a marathon of alien conspiracy shows courtesy of the “History” channel) felt less obtrusive than the screen that fits discreetly in my pocket. Why, i wondered as i drove home?

Here’s the embryonic thought i’m mulling over in regards to that question: Television, or even more archaic the Radio, are devices that we engage with in an open setting. They are visible and audible to everyone in the room or space. It is a shared experience (a flimsy one in my opinion but shared nonetheless). The activities we engage on our smart devices tend to be solitary experiences. I play a game, I see who liked MY post, I watch a video, I look at and engage with the device. There’s a part of me that thinks that this is not a beneficial aspect of our constant glowing companions.

Of course, there are clear exceptions to this thought, we all watch videos on our phones with others nearby, we all sit in a room alone and watch TV from time to time. But i think it is the solitary nature of our small screens that makes them more dangerous.

Bonus Post Script: i’m old enough to remember those kids with those portable TVs… there’s no getting around it, those little TVs just felt wrong back in the day!

June 3, 2017September 7, 2017

What am i doing here?

Years ago i had a blog…

i would regularly write as a way to collect my thoughts, and post them there. Over time that collection of my thoughts became something that i cherished. So i did what came naturally: i deleted them all and stripped that old blog down to absolutely nothing… No need getting soft, right?

But here i am, a few years older, probably not much wiser, and thinking it’s a thing i’d like to do again. It provided me with a time of reflection and introspection and gave me a spot to ruminate on ideas. So i’m endeavoring to post something weekly here, for at least the next 3 months (and hopefully beyond). i’ve sprung the minuscule funds to get my own domain, and set-up this woefully simple site; so here goes!

To provide some structure for myself, and whoever else may misstep and find themselves here, i want to post within a few categories, categories pertinent to who i am. So, who am i? My bride once wrote a great 6 word biography for me, “My life is love and mischief.” In my Instagram profile (the only social media i’m really very active on by the way) i’m self-described as: “Part time curiosity seeker, reader of things, spreader of mirth, and Oxford comma advocate.” My everyday friends know that i’m an avid cyclist. My cycling friends know that i’m a pretty hard-core nerd. Life, work, and my quest to seek out curiosities mean that i like to go new places, aka i’m a traveler. At the root of things i’m spiritual, just maybe not like everyone wants me to be.

Those things fairly concisely describe me and most of my interests so i’m going to catalogue my ramblings as follows:

Reading: Books i love, books i hate, books i read, ingredients on shampoo bottles, book club stuff (when i’m involved with one) etc etc etc.

Travel: i go places, i see things, i drink in life. May have an addiction to the National Park Service! When i ramble and my mind rambles i’ll hammer away on my keyboard under this heading.

Spiritual: i made a living as a professional minister for years, my faith is VERY important and sacred to me. It’s probably the thing i wrestle internally with the most in this life. i’m prone to doubt and question… Spiritual moments will be filed here!

Cycling: Life is better on two wheels. traveling down road or trail with only yourself as an engine! Reflections on life as a two-legged-motor will be under Cycling.

Nerdity: i’ve been a nerd for my entire existence. i will passionately debate the finer points of the LOTR mythos, am in a razor thin minority who loves Kirk AND Jean Luc, get frustrated when people can’t tell 12 sided dice from 20 sided dice, have a solid strategy for winning base Catan a majority of the time, and will smite you down (left handed) if you bad-mouth The Princess Bride! i also love Carl Sagan and what he did to make real science accessible and alluring to the average person, think it’s a great time to be alive when Neil deGrasse Tyson is a public figure, want to give NASA more money to do cool space stuff, and have a near encyclopedic knowledge of mammalian life forms on this planet! i’m a sort of renaissance nerd! Post containing Nerdity will be posted under this category.

Life: Someone once said, “Life… It just keeps coming at you, right up to the end.” i have no idea who said that (it could’ve been me, i dunno) but it’s true. Life just keeps happening. The vast majority of the time i drink it in, sometimes though it knocks me on my butt. Posts that fall under all things life and living will be sorted thus.

So… thus this thing begins.