Joe's Blog

Kari and I are cleaning out closets, attic and garage in preparation for selling our house later this summer. Decluttering our life is an arduous, sometimes painful but ultimately satisfying process. The timing of the project happens to coincide with my 50th birthday, so there is some emotional overlap between the cleanup project and a more general urge to take stock of my life at this milestone.

Decluttering involves reversing decisions made years ago not to throw things away. Kari is less sentimental than me, has no problem throwing things away, and therefore has much less old crap to sort through. I have tons of memorabilia (i.e., crap) that didn't get tossed when it should have. These things have followed me through many moves, slowly growing to fill available storage space each time I move.

I've seen reality TV shows where people with much more alarming packrat issues than me are coached through cleaning up, throwing away and letting go of their huge messes. Seeing others go through this has helped me get a handle on my own emotional ties to old crap. The most helpful advice is the 6-month rule: "If you haven't touched it in 6 months, you don't need it." There are exceptions to that rule, like old photos, but in general it's a good rule. In my case, I can extend it to 6 YEARS and still get rid of 90% of what's in our closets and attic.

Last week though, I hit a 6-year-rule conundrum. What to do with my 34-waist jeans and shorts?

In 2004 Kari and I went on the South Beach diet. We both did very well on it. I eventually lost 70 pounds over the course of that year. When we started I was on the verge of needing 42-waist pants. That was my motivation for the diet -- I couldn't bring myself to buy 42's. By the end of the year I was at my "ideal" weight and had a nice new set of 34-waist jeans and shorts. I hadn't worn 34's since college.

I kept most of the weight off for another year or so, when I found I needed to pull the 36-waist jeans back out of the bottom drawer. I've been on a gradual climb ever since, finally reaching my 2004 pre-diet weight this year.

I'm back in the gym these days, and back on the bike. I'm trying to get a handle on my eating habits once again. But turning 50, knowing myself and knowing what happened every time I've lost weight in the past, I have to wonder if I'm ever going to get back into those 34's. I haven't touched them in 5 years or so, so by my decluttering rules they need to go. But I felt so good when I could fit into them...

# posted by Joe @ 12:09 PM 5 comments

Around the internets and on TV people have been noting the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Watching the launch and mission videos from that time has stirred deep seated, rarely disturbed memories. It's taken me all the way back to a little boy just turned 9, who's deepest desire was to be either Tyrannosaurus Rex or an astronaut.

In those days space missions were a big deal for everyone, but most of all for the 9-year-old demographic. All my friends and their families spent the week glued to their sets. This was a different experience back then, with color TV's just starting to gain popularity and only three channels.

The suspense had been building for years, with each mission getting closer and closer to a moon landing (and just as important for the grown-ups, keeping us ahead of the Russians). Dramatic pictures of the dark side and home-movie style video of Earth rising from behind the moon during Apollo 8 stunned the world. That mission came at a traumatic time, at the end of the year when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. I remember my Dad saying at Christmas that it had been a very bad year, and we should all pray the next one was a lot better.

Along with it's many firsts, Apollo 8 will be remembered for the dramatic reading of the first ten verses of Genesis as the little spacecraft came around the dark side into full view of the fragile blue earth hanging so small and far away behind the barren moon. People around the world were transfixed. At the time it was the most-watched event in the history of TV.

By that next summer of 1969 I'd finished 3rd grade at Comanche Elementary and was ready to start 4th in the fall at Alamo, not far from my house. 4th grade was the year I discovered I needed glasses, so that summer would've been the last of me wondering why I sucked so bad at Little League. The first day of 4th grade I tried on Ned Allen's glasses as a goof, and the world has been a better place ever since.

Kids bedtime at our house was 9:00, but in the summer that would've been relaxed a bit, and for the first landing on the moon all rules were temporarily suspended. I remember the landing happening late in the evening, with the first steps on the surface coming far into hours I wasn't used to seeing. I'm sure I dozed a little during what seemed to a kid to be interminable periods with nothing happening.

I dimly recall they had problems with the picture, which at first was upside down. I remember turning upside down, almost standing on my head in front of the TV. Being so nearsighted I was right up close and in everyone else's way. Thankfully they got the orientation of the signal straightened out before Neil Armstrong stepped off the lander and into history, and before all my blood pooled in my head.

The moon landing meant many things to people, but for a 9-year-old it was pure adventure. My friends and I spent all day every day imitating every word the astronauts and ground control said, recreating the bouncy moonwalks, piloting and landing the spacecraft. This went on for years afterward.

One of the things we used to imitate was the launch sequence and countdown. We had it down, all the way to the little pauses in the announcer's voice, and "Ignition sequence starts" at the 8 second mark.

Watching the launch now, I see very different things. I think how my parents and other grownups must have viewed the launch, living with the Cold War and the arms race, with the jarring image of the astronauts perched atop a converted missile designed to deliver city-destroying warheads. Watching the launch today reminds me of Dr. Strangelove more than the start of a space adventure.

But those are my grownup eyes. My 9 year old eyes, though nearsighted, saw only the start of the greatest adventure ever.

# posted by Joe @ 8:16 PM 0 comments

There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural
areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee
in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of
these "What does America think about culture" pieces comes on,
do I ever see a mid-30's software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of "The IT Crowd"? Fuck and no.

Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:

ANDERSON: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.

UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.

No. No I do not.

# posted by Joe @ 4:41 PM 0 comments

Among those in La Palma for the opening was Brian May, the lead guitarist of Queen, the pop group. He did part of his doctoral studies in astrophysics at the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute.

[...]

Mr. May, who recently published “Bang! The Complete History of the Universe” with two astronomers, Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, said that he was adding the finishing touches to a musical score for the telescope’s inauguration next year.

# posted by Joe @ 9:07 AM 0 comments