whisper whisper.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” ~C. S. Lewis
just a little note to say…
i am testing out a new theme in a place where it won’t mess up my real blog. carry on. nothing to see here.
the saga of the rubberbands
yay, no one's shooting at us.
i suppose it’s charlie brown’s fault, really. after all, he’s the one who gave me the package of rubberbands as part of my 84th birthday gift (i gave him some charlie brown things, naturally). and it was perfect timing, too, since i’d scoured all the drawers in my cube only to find nary a rubberband. a telephone, yes, empty slide film holders, yes, but no rubberbands. not that i really use them for anything at work, anyway, but i wanted to pull my hair back out of my face.
so charlie brown gave me this bag of rubberbands. and, as i related in the previous post, i tried to shoot one and failed miserably. ashley, one of the girls with whom i work, very kindly took pity on me and taught me how to shoot them with high accuracy and force.
i, in turn, taught susan, our free spirit, how to shoot rubberbands the way ashley’d shown me. susan threatened to shoot chuck but mercifully didn’t. then chuck threatened to shoot susan. it’s quite fun to hear the random comments the other guys in the office will make about all the rubberbands.
i hope we’ll have a full-out rubberband war one of these days. that would be priceless.
so thank you, charlie brown, for your marvelous gift to me of rubberbands. my work week would have much less levity without them. 
all aflunters
from the bookshelves: the word museum by jeffrey kacirk
this book is pretty cool. it’s full of odd, quaint and queer old words that most (“normal”) people don’t use anymore. being such, it gave me the perfect word to describe the shrubbery also known as my hair: aflunters. kacirk says it means “in a state of disorder.” yep, that’s my hair, all right. even when i take the time to blow it dry or use the curling iron or flatiron on it, it still looks more-or-less shrub-like. but there are more important things in life than hair to worry about!
they finally fixed the boiler at work and got the heat turned back on. the temperature rose ten degrees and some of us started to sweat. i came all decked out in tights and many layers of shirts in order to combat the arctic frigidity … and then got to feeling rather warmish toward the end. but at least i don’t have to break out the fingerless gloves just yet. evidently my predecessor was quite the knitter and had many pairs of fingerless gloves. she also knit all her own socks. me, i just stick to the knit stitch and do it really well.
i suppose i should introduce to you my coworkers chuck and sam. chuck is not exactly our boss, but he knows how to do everything and knows everything that’s going on, so he’s essentially the supreme fountain of wisdom as far as our department is concerned. sam and i ran out of things to do about an hour or so before going-home-time, so chuck created two projects for us.
sam: so which one of us do you want to do which?
chuck: oh, i thought i’d let the two of you battle it out. i wouldn’t suggest using rubber bands, though, because she got a whole bag for her birthday.
sam: mm.
me: pulls rubber band out of bag, loads it on finger, shows it to chuck.
chuck: ah!
me: don’t worry, i wouldn’t shoot you.
aims at sam’s cubicle. rubber band goes flying. cue hysterical laughter from chuck and i at my inability to hit my target.
brian: hey, be careful!
me: where’d it go?
sam: i don’t know. it flew over my head.
brian: it’s all good fun until someone loses an eye.
me: and then you’re a pirate.
perhaps i should explain that i sit diagonally across from sam and we can’t see each other because our computers are in the way. i like to think that this is the main reason why i couldn’t hit him.
… i guess i could always try again tomorrow, though …
horizon lines
tunage: cities by anberlin
tonight as i was driving back from the gym there was a light mizzling rain that made the roads dark and shiny. the streetlights reflected off the pavement red, green and pale gold. the air was slightly nippy, but it felt refreshing after my vigorous run. the trees are starting to turn colour and they look as if they’re on fire. it’s beautiful. and it reminded me of how much i love autumn.
the office where i work is freezing right now because they’re doing some painting on the floor below and the management kindly cranked up the air conditioning so we’d all freeze to death rather than dying of paint fumes. very considerate of them, i’m sure. no, seriously, it’s not that bad. although i do think i’ll need to invest in some more tights and a pair of fingerless gloves.
i feel very content right now. lately i’ve been battling bogeys like jealousy, discontent, wounded pride, etc. and so forth, but they’ve let me alone for a while. i read or heard somewhere that people who don’t do much physical labour get fatigues and weird neuroses and things like that because, while their minds are exhausted and just want to sleep, their bodies are restless because they’ve been sitting all day.
my limbs have felt all queer and achey recently, so i decided it was time for some exercise. my chief method of exercising, while sometimes supplemented with weight lifting and/or resistance machines, is mostly to run until i can’t breathe. i’ve found this to be very effective in both awakening and exhausting the body. so i returned home, properly exhausted.
by the way, if you haven’t been able to tell by now, i have no idea where i’m going with this post. my brain exhaustion has caught up with me.
i feel, in a way, as though i’m being pushed inch by inch closer to the edge of a cliff off which i’ve been
footbridge, moline, kansas
instructed to jump. i know i’ll land and be all right, but i don’t know in what i’ll land or what sort of all right i’ll be when i get there. either i can get over my fear of falling and embrace whatever it is God has willed for me in my future, or i can be afraid and stubborn and wimp out.
i really don’t like falling.
but i like opposing God even less. one of the first things i know i need to do regarding falling is fall madly, passionately in love with Him. i love Him, but my love tends to fluctuate with the seasons right now. it needs to be steady and un-adversely affected by trials or blessing.
on the note of not opposing God, though, i learned something about myself today. i realized that if i can’t see something, or just prevent myself from seeing it, it’s like it’s not even there. i knew i was good at ignoring people if i really made up my mind to want to, but this worked better than i would have expected.
expect reports from day two of operation learn to ignore tomorrow.
he goes, she goes
queen of bohemia? well, maybe just imagination.
taylor swift sings a song called called teardrops on my guitar. i am not a huge fan of country music, but i kind of like this song. especially this lyric:
and there he goes, so perfectly
the kind of flawless i wish i could be
only until just now, when i looked it up online, i thought she sang “lawless,” rather than “flawless.” and i actually rather like it better my way. but whatever — she’s the songwriter.
then there’s this other song i like, there she goes, by the la’s.
there she goes
there she goes again
she calls my name …
what called all this walking to mind, besides these being a couple of my favorite songs, was watching someone walk out of a building and thinking, “man, he really walks well.”
don’t go staring at me with your eyebrows all wonky, now. i see you over there trying to pretend you understand what i just said.
okay, here’s what i mean — have you ever known one of those people for whom living just seems effortless? anything he or she does is more-or-less perfect. the walking, the clothes, the style, the panache … the living. yeah.
so it doesn’t make sense if you don’t know someone like that. but i’m sure you do.
he glided out of the buildling smoothly …
and i clip-clopped out behind, cordurouy pants making cricket noises with every step, scamp sweater blowing in the wind, pippi longstockings braids sticking straight out from my head. i thought about the perfectly groomed businesswomen i’d seen and known.
but i decided i like being a scamp.
although he is fun to watch.
