atomicthoughts.com

I’ve been going to the gym long enough now that I’m starting to notice trends and regulars. Being the gregarious and sociable chap I am, I know all of them intimately and expect to be a godparent to their children.

There’s red, insane rpm guy, big booty red, waves her arms around on the elliptical lady, the distinguished gentleman, hot old lady, impossibly black hair lady, and guy who reminds me of the produce man at Hugo’s.

I wonder what they’d call me? Sweaty guy who mouths the words and plays the drums on the bike for no apparent reason?

And in other news, watering the plant that sits right over our mail server continues to not be a good idea.

We’re sitting around planning the day and my wife suggests we go to the mall playground.

“Yay!” my daughter proclaims. “Can we see the clothes horse?”

I have no clue what she means, but jokingly (because she is anything but) say, “Well mommy is a clothes horse.”

Mommy, with her best indignant jest tone, says, “No I am not!”

My daughter jumps in to defend her mother, concluding “That’s right! Mommy is an open horse!”

There’s a fairly standard job interview question that goes something like this, “Describe a frustrating experience for you and how you dealt with it.”

Over the last few years, I’ve developed a fairly conclusive answer to that, one of my most frustrating experiences.

“Man on 1st and 3rd, nobody out, and we don’t score any runs. I deal with it by yelling profusely at the television along with some moaning and grumbling.”

Tonight I went clothes shopping for the first time in forever. Well, not clothes shopping exactly, but I happened to get some clothes while there. Anyway … I bought 2 shirts a size smaller than I normally do. This means:

1. I’m losing some size (not weight, since I know for a fact that’s not the case
   
2. Clothing is generally sized larger than it used to be
   
3. I’ve been buying clothes larger than I really need because it’s more comfortable that way and easier than actually trying on clothes.
   

I suspect it’s mostly 3 with enough of 1 to make me happy. Go me.

The joy of parenthood: watching your child spead peanut butter for the first time.

The not joy of parenthood: three week old milk cups under the couch.

Signs of old age keep creeping up on me. Having kids. Buying a house. Falling asleep watching movies at night.

The latest axe to fall is price watching. I now really enjoy sitting down with all the shopping ads and finding the best price on hot dogs, and getting giddy when I can save a buck a pound on a good pot roast. Buy one get one free gallons of milk – woohoo! hold me back.

Next thing you know I’ll be watching the weather channel.

I’ve adjusted to most of the weather anomalies of living in Southern Arizona. 110 summers took a while to get used to; 70 degree winters didn’t.

Rain is the one I still haven’t adjusted to. Mostly summer rain, monsoon rain. For over half of my life, rain was cold and chilly. It was something generally to avoid, something you might end up with the sniffles after. Here, though, it’s just wet. Rain, even here, can smell wonderful, but not in the summer very often. I still wait just out of the rain, seeing if maybe it will lighten up, trying to avoid that chill that always follows. But it doesn’t, and I just get wet. No relief, just wet.

My posts on here have obviously been spartan lately. There are basically two ways in which something gets done with me. It’s routine, or it makes me take care of it. Since a web site can’t really call me at night and complain about feeling neglected, it falls into the routine camp. And it’s a routine I haven’t got the hang of yet.

I’ve tried in the past to cross a routine item over into the alert me camp, by generating alerts and things. The only successful attempt is the same one most people have; the alarm clock. It’s routine to get up every morning, but the alarm clock makes me notice when to get up. Every other time I’ve tried something similar, usually an automatic page to remind me to do something, I invariably ignore the message so often that it becomes pointless to continue with the reminders.

The trick I suppose is to find the right place to insert it into the existing routine, as well as proper motivation to do so. Right now the motivation is to get my current blog idea out of my head, and sometimes that buffer gets awfully full.

The right time of the day is almost definitely at night, where my routine after the kids bedtime is fairly flexible. The biggest problem is sitting down for the night, just for a moment to watch something for a second, of course. But as soon as I make contact my ass becomes 10,000 tons of iron and the couch an electromagnet tapped right into the earth’s core.

Some of the routine things I have (or have had) to be notified of: animals whining because they need food; kids whining because they need food; grass you can hide in; sending any kind of birthday or holiday card; paying bills; waking up; changing diapers; any schoolwork; taking out the trash; today’s date.

Some of the things that have managed to creep into my routine: going to sleep; reading my email; showering; brushing my teeth; cleaning out my ears; reading my email; eating breakfast; reading my email; working; reading my email; visiting some websites; reading my email; eating; reading my email; doing the dishes; reading my email; reading my email.

My original thought about the Natives post was something about the “You know you’re from X when…” lists that every state and region has. But it was too wordy and incoherent so I went for short and simple. Five minutes after I posted it, though, someone forwarded me a “You know you’re from Arizona when…” list.

Most of the arizona list is indistinguishable from any other list. “You think a red light is merely a suggestion” is probably on every other list (except the North Dakota one, which has no need for lights). “You notice your car overheating before you drive it” is on every list south of Iowa. Nearly all the entries are fairly stupid and stereotypical. And my observation didn’t even make the list.

I did find one gem though, if you want to take the test:

You can (correctly) pronounce the words: saguaro, ocotillo, Tempe, Gila Bend, Tucson, San Xavier, Canyon de Chelly, Mogollon Rim, cholla, and Ajo.