Windy Nights

There's something about a windy night that makes me feel safe. "Safe?" you may ask, "Why would you feel safe when the wind's howling like a hungry wolf, and the house creaks and squeaks as it gets ready to stand up after a long repose?" Well, barring the fact that you wouldn't probably use repose, you may wonder why, which is great because I'm about to explain.

Growing up, I loved to hear the wind whistle by. Wind almost always meant that some kind of precipitation would hitting our roof in the next few hours, be it snow, rain, hail, etc. And I loved precip! I loved the sensory experience of standing on a green, grassy lawn, my arms raised to my shoulders, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open, tounge out, as I tasted, smelled, felt, heard, and saw the precip falling towards me from 10s of thousands of feet above my head.

Hearing that wind as a child meant only one thing, and as a result, I've grown to love the sound of wind almost as much as what usually comes after. All that being said, when it's windy and Mary's nerviously looking outside for signs of tornadoes, I'm content to relax on the couch, head tilted back, eyes closed, as I imagine what wonderful weather might be coming my way.

Faking It Real

I started working out using P90X, which is famous for its "muscle confusion" approach. Muscle confusion is when a workout keeps the muscles from plateauing. The workout is great, but there is a slight problem with the DVDs I bought. You see, they were supposed to come from Montana, but once I ordered the P90X DVDs from Ebay, I got a confirmation that my order was shipping from China. No, not China, Montana, but China across the sea. As a result (and as you could guess), the P90X DVDs I received were counterfeits! Besides smelling like cheap ink and the obvious spelling mistakes, such as "Are Yoo Readyto Bring IT ?", the DVDs don't work!!! I can Kempo X all I want, but I've never been able to Plyometrics-it-up! Consequently, I called Ebay to complain, and request my money back. They happily obliged. However, I have to send back my pirated copy, which means that I am now P90X-less. Sad day. Well, at least I'll have the real thing in about 5-7 business days. Until then, I'm going to get fat! Hmm... Now, where did I leave that cookie dough?

Houston, We Have Contacts

Every since puberty hit, I've needed glasses. I remember the day when Dad said, with much chagrin, "Son, why are you squinting like a blinded deer?" Dad, the wise sage that he is, knew full-well that, as I sat 5 feet from the TV, trying to peer through my eyelashes as Troy Aikmen handed the ball off to Emitt Smith once again, that I needed glasses.

The following phrase uttered by my father is one that I will always remember because it meant that my way of life would change forever. I find it funny, now that I'm 28, thinking how such a simple sentence as, "Here, Son, try on my glasses and see if that helps", fell like a truckload of bricks upon my shoulders that day. It wasn't that I was afraid of seeing the world around me as I pushed Dad's black and gold bifocals back up to the bridge of my nose, I was afraid of the world around seeing me! As a pubescent boy, glasses were a pain. Not only would glass-ified kids have to worry about keeping their spectacles clean and in functioning order, but they also had to worry about other kids trying to dirty or destroy said spectacles. As you may have guessed, I survived that gloomy day when, despite my best wishes and greatest desires, my faith in a normal childhood did not maintain my sight. In fact, I believe I've done quite well considering my peepers needed persistent adjustments.

The whole topic of corrective lenses floated into my brain, much like a feather floats from a birds nest slowly down to the green, crabgrass lawn below, when I decided to start a workout regine called P90X. The way P90X works is by providing a workout schedule that constantly changes, well..., constantly changes after three weeks of consistency. By breaking up and rearranging the workout routines, the makers of P90X suggest that their product can maintain the "muslce confusion" that helps continually create more muscle mass, less body fat, and a robust "Bring It" attitude. Since this workout regine cost a decent amount of money to start, i.e. some really expensive DVDs with a variety of paper documentation and descretly hidden advertisements for other products sold by this company, I wanted to make sure that I got the most out of my workouts.

As I began to deligently sweat to to Tony Horton's first DVD , which included his witty humor and bulging biceps/triceps/calves/gluts/etc, my vision suddenly became blurry. Afraid that I was having a stroke, or perhaps just some well-placed sweat conduets, I reached up to wipe my brow and adjust my glasses. Lo and behold, as I performed my patiented hand/knuckle forehead wipe and glasses readjustment manuver, I discovered that my glasses were no longer on my face! Amid my huffing and puffing, I hadn't noticed that my glasses had paused their workout video for a drink of water on the floor, but hadn't had the curtesy to let the rest of my face know. Happily, they were not broken, and were soon reunited with some of my best features, or so Mary says. But, amid the few second panic that I experienced as I semi-blindly groped the floor for my spectices, I thought, "Houston, we have a problem!" However, unlike using ducttape and an assorted airfilter to fix the challenge at hand, I had a much easier fix. Contacts! Yup, I'm going to wear my contacts more often, especially when Tony Horton and I are doing a Kempo workout X-style. Who knew that here, in my living room so many hundreds of miles away from the living room where I first encountered the dreaded concept of corrective lenses, I would utter the same phrase I uttered when I realized that Dad's glasses did help my vision: Oh Crap.

My Minority Report

It's interesting being off from work today. Usually, I'm surrounded by people my age, education, and typically, my gender. Since I have more freedom to have additional days off since I'm with the State, I've had the opportunity to do some shopping, eat some food, and sip some coffee when most of the Sioux Falls workforce are earning their paychecks. For example, Mary and I are at Scooter's, which is a great coffee house near the church we attend. Mary and I usually come here in the evenings and weekends, and at that time, the patrons here are the typical bunch: college students, friends catching up, and families getting a less-expensive reprieve from the trial and tribulations of life at home. However, the patrons today are a very different bunch. There are at least 3 flocks of giggling ladies, talking away about their kids, husbands, and friends without worrying about Billy sticking his finger in a light socket or Sally screaming for attention. There's a variety of college students, as usual, but there is also a large contingency of business people conducting their work over two Toffee Nut Lattes.

When we lived in PA, Mary and I never felt like we stood out; in fact, we loved the fact that we could disappear into a crowd or hunker-down into a corner at Crazy Mocha and laugh at each other until our lungs hurt. Yet, here in Sioux Falls, there is not "disappearing", no goofing off without fear of someone we know wondering what the heck we are doing laughing so loud the people around us have to turn up the volume on their iTouch's to hear the lyrics. I think that's one thing about living here that will take some getting used to, especially since Mary and I are in a little different situation than we were in while staying in PA: we are visible. We are visible just like the gaggles of ladies, and the studious college kids are here at Scooters. Just like I'm here at a different part of the day than I usually am, Mary and I have entered Sioux Falls at a different part of our lives than we were used to while in PA. It's that difference that keeps throwing me off every once and a while. It's the situation that we are in that has changed, and as a result, we must adapt to that change, i.e. remember that we are more visible. Usually, I'm the majority, but as I type my report on life's happenings, I'm starting to realize that here, in Sioux Falls, and especially during the day, I'm part of the minority, not the majority.