inconsiderate american questions

[08:27] Apurva: yo
[08:27] Happy Dog the happy dog: yoyo
[08:28] Apurva: having fun yet
[08:28] Happy Dog the happy dog: boat laods
[08:28] Happy Dog the happy dog: loads
[08:28] Happy Dog the happy dog: of fun
[08:28] Apurva: thats good
[08:28] Happy Dog the happy dog: why do people ask me that
[08:28] Happy Dog the happy dog: "having fun"
[08:28] Apurva: any cool old people to talk to..
[08:28] Happy Dog the happy dog: what the hell kind of question is htat
[08:29] Happy Dog the happy dog: I'm not working yet...
[08:29] Apurva: ooo touchy..
[08:29] Apurva: this morning.
[08:29] Happy Dog the happy dog: no I'm serious
[08:29] Happy Dog the happy dog: that's a weird question
[08:29] Apurva: its a very american question..
[08:29] Apurva: :P
[08:29] Happy Dog the happy dog: IE dumb
[08:29] Apurva: i agree
[08:29] Happy Dog the happy dog: anyways, yeah, I'm at work early
[08:30] Happy Dog the happy dog: I thought I was gonna get some extra work done
[08:30] Happy Dog the happy dog: but I'm reading blogs
[08:30] Happy Dog the happy dog: avoiding work
[08:30] Happy Dog the happy dog: trying to keep warm

the only difference is the depth

I'm in a rut already. I hate feeling like I'll never get out of this job, or this mundane routine whose only determinable positive effect is the bi-weekly increase in my bank account balance. I'm right back where I was two years ago, watching people 10 years my senior, with kids and degrees and homes and cars, living on the same wage I am, doing the same thing I am, and just grinding it out for their families. I've only been employed and back in Omaha for a month and I'm begging for a reason to quit. I might as well be asleep all week, I'm truly living for the weekends these days and praying I'll wake up to August.

I once read that the ancient chinese considered it a curse to wish someone an interesting life, and maybe there's wisdom in that (interesting being the catch-all that it is, "interesting" could be construed as bad or good based solely on mood), but I'm getting bored... bring it on life. I'm totally aware of the consequences of what I'm saying here, I'd just rather have had an interesting life and end up in a gutter somewhere than cruise the rest of the way through my life like I did through my childhood never having failed for never having tried.

It's weird having a schedule, I know the weatherman by name (sup Charles Thonklin of KETV Channel 3 ("Clear, Accurate, to The Point")). I hear the radio guys on KFAB whining in turn about whatever the days news is. Lately it's been incessant back and forth about Omaha expanding westward, annexing Elkhorn, Elkhorn fighting back trying not to get annexed. Who cares! Two people have been found murdered within two blocks of my house in the past two days, where's the news stories on them? Oh, but they were just some black guys, probably gangs, probably drugs, who cares. At least the traffics not bad when I'm going to the office in the morning, and noone's going to North O when I drive home at night!

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

I remember being confused

Work is getting to me:

[10:03] MikeyItaliani: hey
[10:04] MikeyItaliani: do you remember me calling you last night?
[11:04] GPtotheC: barely
[11:15] MikeyItaliani: do you remember what you said, because it was really funny
[11:15] GPtotheC: no
[11:15] GPtotheC: not at all
[11:15] GPtotheC: I just remember you asking if I bought that cd
[11:16] MikeyItaliani: yeah, you mumbled something about, "i was trying to link you to it, mumble mumble, then you go to file and click, mumble mumble"
[11:16] GPtotheC: shutup?!
[11:16] MikeyItaliani: yes, you totally did man
[11:16] MikeyItaliani: and i was just like, wow, well, i'll let you get back to bed
[11:17] GPtotheC: I don't remember that AT ALL
[11:17] MikeyItaliani: i figured you didn't
[11:17] GPtotheC: I remember being confused
[11:17] GPtotheC: apparently I was very confused

Tuesday!

I drove home last night after adoration with the radio off, just trying to bask in the silence and peace that I always find there. With all the mental static I have to try to focus through, turning off the radio is like, my dreams of sanity objectified, I wish I had a switch sometimes.

I went in to adoration reluctantly, although I can never really keep myself away. I went in feeling upset, and realizing with striking clarity that I sometimes resent God with the same childishness with which I sometimes resent my parents. It's in a moment like that, when I catch myself choosing to turn away from God, that I long to be a more holy person.

Since I've been attending daily Mass, I've had those moments more frequently. I look forward to starting my day in communion with Christ, and I love the silence and peace in contemplation before the Blessed Sacrament before Mass. But then at some point in the day I'll find that I've let Christ slip from my presence, ignored Him and He took my hint, free will is vicious like that.

Lately I've taken to love the sound of a crying baby. It's the same thing we all do every day, cry, for attention, for hunger, for discomfort's sake. But a baby's crying is purer, it announces life, raises a defiant flag of revolution against death.

Well, no point here, just rambling, just Tuesday

but I still dread going back to work

So I had last Monday off so I could get my physical and psych eval done, and I thought "great I get a day offa work and go get some inane testing done". Boy was I in for it.

Went to the physical, and that's no big deal, kinda cool actually, got to talk to Dr.Kramper whom I haven't seen in 10+ years (he was my mom's doctor when I was born and our family doctor when I was growing up). Never had blood drawn before (as far as I remember), and that was kinda neat in "I'm a tough guy and am not bothered by needles" kinda way.

So then I get lunch and some paperwork done, stop by the Chancery to drop some stuff off and say hi and then I'm off to my 1 o'clock at the psychiatrist's office. I'll try to be brief but literally, the next four hours consumed a large part of my week because I couldn't get over what happened. Over those four hours I answered a few ...oh make that 700+... true false questions, interviewed with a doctor for about an hour, filled out a 20 page questionaire on everything from dietary habits to masturburatory habits, and completed a couple timed skills assessments to where by the end of the day I had disclosed my entire personal /health /religious/ social /criminal /family /academic /sexual history to someone I've never met before and have no reason to trust. And the sexual history! Good lord, there's no reason you need to scandalize someone in the process of determining their sexual history. I mean, I thought I'd had depraved thoughts, but damn, no tact at all.

My contention, (that I'm pretty much over now(Id've written something mon night, but it would have been incoherent))was that the way the testing was designed seemed to assume all kinds of huge problems, sexual deviance, severe depression, criminal history, drug abuse problems, which I do not have, but my problem is that even if I did have some slight pathology or psychosis, nothing (in my opinion) was nuanced enough to pick up on it. I found it insulting that they should feel the need to have a computer ask me essentially the same 30 questions 25 times. I lived for the occasional nonsense question, "have you flown over the Atlantic 30 times this year". I'm not sure if the test was adaptive, but "do you sometimes think people are out to get you", man I must have answered some form of that paranoia question 50 times.

I just felt kinda beat up after that. This was partly my mistake, I went in there with the idea that I was going to able to get some feedback and have some of my concerns regarding my mental health addressed, but that was not what the Dr. was there to do, and I see that now. But I didn't monday night, so what did I do? I got pissed, went and drove around really fast, picked up APR and went driving around so we could smoke for awhile so he can listen to me whine about my day, luckily he didn't really care, he just was glad I'd given up on giving up smoking, at least for a night.

So then Tues, still boiling over my perception of this Dr. and his cruel ways as totally unhelpful and potentially scandalous I go to the chancery to talk it out with Fr.O. I went in there planning to give him an earful, but he has the uncanny ability to tell me exactly what I need to hear, which is nice, even if I have to realize I'm being unreasonable in the process. This is where Fr. clarifies for me the fact that the good Dr. was there to make a determination, not provide any service to me, and that the good Dr., at onetime a seminarian himself, is a consummate professional, has unique authority on the validity of the process and wouldn't use it if he or the Archdiocese didn't find it useful. So I calm down, go back to work, have a good day.

The rest of the week was pretty stellar. I've got one more piece of paper work to give to the Archdiocese and I'll have officially finished the application process! I had a good discussion with Fr.R, I payed off ISU and shipped my transcript to the Archdiocese, I found my other W2 so I can do my taxes now, I got my autobiography finished (although it'l go through an update if Fr. requests it), I found a bunch of my favorite CD's at the house :) I got caught up on my backlog at work so I'm not stressing about that anymore, I got out to see my parents this weekend, I went and had a sit down with Fr.Leo so he has some basis upon which to give me a recommendation (which the Archdiocese requires), I got to pray allot and despite Mondays foray into smoking again I'm doing pretty well with my Lenten penances and finding them rewarding and challenging.

weekend pictures to come on theresfire

peace

Physics and Prayer

Here's a thought tangent for you: Praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament tonight my thoughts strayed to all the people streaking over the arc of time, everyone in their own sphere of existence (like the sphere of the limits of their ability to perceive), God present to all of them. For some reason I starting thinking about how the arc of time is like planetary motion, and how time itself is kind of like the attraction of gravity, we're all in our sphere of existence, streaking across this arc of time, constantly falling towards the center of the attractive force of time, towards God, towards eternity.

Well, what if time IS like planetary motion, then Keplers laws are true, and you have all these definable facts about how the object in motion will behave. Well that's interesting but what is the resolution of time? Is time the same for all matter in the entire universe? If so and our time's orbit is elliptical, like planets, then we'd never notice these shifts in time's linear velocity. But what if time is different for each and every subatomic particle. WOAH! Well that means every single subatomic particle is on it's own trajectory, speeding up and slowing down (relative to some master time, we'll call it God's time) and causing seemingly random motion at the sub-atomic level, hence the unpredictability of subatomic particles. Neat!

Just then a man and his handicapped son came into the chapel, knelt down and started saying the Rosary aloud, putting me and my silly wandering mind to shame.

coorelations

There's nothing like a pocket full of money, a cigarette and a stiff drink to make you think the world's alright, like the warm feeling you get right before you die of hypothermia. We (me, APR and BAS) went out to Upstream brewery this afternoon to shoot some pool, met up with my bro, it was a good time, I imagine we'll be spending some quality time there this summer, I might get good at pool again.

It's cool to find out things about your hometown. For example, I just found out that the office where I now work is on a piece of land that once belonged to my great grandparents, my grandparents ran a hotel that was there back in the late fifties and my dad grew up there in the sixties. He also went to the school at Christ the King, where Fr.Richling and MBK both went to school and where I continue to run into people. I went there after hanging out with the guys to go to Eucharistic adoration and ran into an old friend, Joan. Joan said we should hang out, so after spending some time there in front of the Blessed Sacrament, we went over to the Passo's house; kids I grew up hanging out with, but haven't talked to in at least a year. Crazy!

I recently read that St.Augustine had a thought about nature being sacramental, that all of existance is a sign of God's existance, a channel of grace, and a participant in man's salvation. This didn't come up in Confessions so I imagine it's part of City of God, his other major work. It strikes me as an ally of my philosophy of beauty, or rather, it's statement in much more pious and Catholic language. I like it. Between Fr.O, my experience, and another account of a moment of grace, nature can be a great catalyst to devotion. Such simple things, it's almost surprising that we can be so fascinated by nature.

I was at the junkyard today, looking for pieces for my car, didn't find exactly what I needed but me and BAS managed to fix my winshield wipers (which haven't worked in 6 months) and it was a good thing we got it done too because it started to rain on the way home. It's also good cause my grandpa won't be able to give me crap about it anymore. He went so far as to compare my procrastination to that of his coke-head, convicted felon son. He can say some pretty biting things, and I'd just as soon bite back but I don't have the heart. The man can be so childish at times, but between his car accident and his stroke he's a little slow, I try to let it go. The man is pretty astounding in his own completely unastounding way. Carpenter, Korean war vet, business owner, and family man, he never finished highschool, never went to college, lives on social security and holds a part time job. The car accident that broke nearly every bone in his body thirty years ago is returning to haunt him in his age in the form of osteoperosis and arthritis; he walks with a hump and a limp, his legs aren't the same leangths anymore. But he's in his mid seventies now and he says he'll live till he's a hundred and ten. We've talked allot about religion, not really at all about faith, but I see evidance of his, and every morning he gets out of bed he reaffirms mine. He's a knight of columbus, and used to be a pool shark; maybe I can follow in his footsteps.