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Bad Rap.
I’m curious. As a sci-fi and superhero geek, why did twins always get a bad rap in the ’70s live action shows?
Points to the person that can identify the aliens that possessed these twins.
The Trail.
I hit the canal trail for the first time in 2009 tonight. It was good to get back in the saddle on my bike and I feel pretty good after doing about 15 miles when all was said and done. Aside from the fact that I can find my official cycling shoes and that I was accosted by a four-year old on a Big WheelTM, the ride went pretty smoothly.
The weather doesn’t look like it’s going to cooperate for cycling until next week, so I guess I’ll have to ride the exercise cycle in the basement in the meantime.
White Noise.
I have discovered that having the radio on in the office is really distracting. Especially when the radio station in question is one of those annoying “lite” stations that thrive on the likes of Delilah at night and play boring, down-tempo tracks 75% of the time and then claim to be all fun because they play “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” every Friday at noon. Unfortunately I have no choice in the matter: the station is selected by someone else and is pumped in over the intercom speaker.
I think the fact that the sound is barely audible and coming from a very low-fidelity speaker is part of the reason that I find the noise to be so distracting. I can’t quite figure out what song is on unless I take time out of whatever I’m doing to actually listen to it and then it usually turns out to be a really crappy song. No offense to Elton John fans, but how many times can you listen to “Candle In The Wind” in a given week? Every morning between 8 and 9 they play a Sheena Easton song, yesterday it was “Morning Train”, this morning it was “Modern Girl”. I dare them to play “Sugar Walls” tomorrow. I’m betting it’ll be “For Your Eyes Only”.
So I have installed a program on my work computer that gives me a wide selection of background sounds to play at my desk. Today I have been lulled into relative peace with the sounds of “Rehobeth Beach”. It isn’t just the sound waves crashing against the shore but it’s actually the Atlantic crashing against Rehobeth Beach. Now mind you, I’ve never been to Rehobeth Beach so I can’t verify the authenticity of this claim, but nevertheless there it is and quite frankly, while it’s quite pleasing it doesn’t sound much different than the waves at say, Marblehead, Mass. or somewhere along the coast of Nova Scotia for that matter.
I am enjoying the distraction from the distraction of the radio though. I like to think that the Rehobeth Beach sounds actually kept me calm as a woman called in a with a trouble because she was unable to open an attachment on her e-mail from a Prince somewhere in the Middle East that promised her a huge sum of money if she told him where to deposit it. Apparently she thought that the attachment provided the proper forms and documentation and any guidance from me wasn’t going to help matters, she just wanted to open the attachment.
I told her to take her computer to a specialist.
Reconnect.
“I never finished this book.”
It was a thought that suddenly jumped into my mind as I worked my way around the Jacuzzi, doing a bit of spring cleaning in the master bathroom on a Monday night. Two books always sit on the tiled ledge around the tub. One book I have read over 30 times, the other I was still reading for the first time. It had been at least six weeks since I last picked it up.
The book in question was a gift from my friend Gregory. He thought that I would enjoy the book immensely, and from what I have read thus far, he was absolutely correct. This book is very fascinating to me. The subject fits right into my belief system and the words flow easily as I move from page to page.
I suppose there are a couple of reasons I haven’t sat down or hopped in the tub and read in a while. Life has been hectic. Work has been uneven and very intrusive during the intense on-call weeks. I have been traveling a lot. I’ve been fighting the effects of SAD, even though I swore I don’t suffer from that sort of thing. Perhaps it’s not a full-blown disorder, maybe I just feel a really strong sense of cabin fever or the winter blahs. Whatever it is or was, I feel like I have finally moved beyond it.
The cleanliness of the bathroom, a project that Earl and I embarked on last night, lent itself to a ride in the Jacuzzi tonight. I filled the tub with water that was as hot as I could stand. I lit an incense stick. I turned on the jets, picked up the book and began reading right where I had left off so many weeks ago.
45 minutes later I was still being pushed around by the jets, the scent of the now used incense stick lingered and I was four chapters further along in “Out On A Limb” by Shirley MacLaine.
Several years ago, right after I started this blog, I did a lot of reading, studying and contemplating on the subject of spirituality. I have no interest in organised religion; I see that practise as nothing more than a very large corporation that seeks to make money and control those that go along with their plan, however perverted from it’s original intent it may be. Religion has no place in my existence, whereas I am very compelled to further understand spirituality.
Interestingly, the concept of “hell” is foreign to me. The whole idea of there being such a bad place doesn’t make sense if there is such a thing as an “all-loving God”. I remember as a child asking my mother what “hell” was. She told me that she didn’t really believe in it but if there was such a place that it was probably right here. A formative statement? Quite possibly, but I tend to think of our existence here on Earth as “the hard part”. When we pass on and our spirit leaves the vehicle we call the body is when we truly are home and in an environment of pure love. We do our thing on the Other Side for a long while and then we decide we need to learn some more and we come back and do it all over again under different circumstances.
I think Shirley would concur with my beliefs.
I haven’t felt connected to my spiritual beliefs in a while1. Once upon a time I felt very connected to the Universe: I meditated twice a day, I practised yoga, I had a sense of who I was and where I was going, I burned incense in my office on a daily basis (incense is very transformative for me). I felt very centered. It’s not that I feel disconnected these days but I don’t feel AS connected as I did say five or six years ago. I still see guideposts along the way that remind me of what I believe and have learned along this path; I meet those that I feel connected to in a way that feels like a millenium of familiarity. I stumble into déjà vu like feelings from time to time. The other night I had a dream quite similar to what I thought was a dream I remembered from a few years ago. I flipped through my dream log, certain that I had written it down but I could not find it. It was then that I realised that I hadn’t had that dream before but had worked the scene into my morning meditation back in 2003. My mind had decided that it was time bring that scene back to the forefront, five and a half years later, so that I would remember that I had experienced many of these feelings before and that I probably would again.
I don’t know if he’s conspiring with Gregory (and his gift of Shirley’s book), but David2 has been urging me to start meditating again and perhaps start taking a class in the practise. I’m strongly considering it. Earl and I have talked about the subject at length and he agree that I don’t seem unhappy in any way these days, quite the contrary, but I don’t seem as grounded as I used to be. So the meditation class is something that I’m looking into. As I’m writing this entry I’m listening to the white noise of a thunderstorm from my iTunes. I find the sound to be incredibly relaxing. Perhaps I need the focus, and more importantly the relaxation, of the meditation exercise to get myself back into spiritual shape.
I feel very enriched and immensely lucky to have the life that I have these days. I also have a need to give back to the world in some way, but in order to do that I feel I need to be grounded better in order to make a positive contribution.
Perhaps continuing that book tonight was the first step in getting myself back in shape.
1 I realise that my spiritual beliefs are a little unique when it comes to this sort of thing and I understand that there are those that don’t believe in the way that I do at all. I honour and respect the beliefs that others have, even if it’s a belief that there is no such thing as a “higher power”, and ask that the comments to this entry not be a debate as to the existence of such. In the process, I thank you for being part of my journey.
2 Here is more information on the men I’m talking about in this blog entry.
Absence.
I’m back. I haven’t written in my blog for nearly a week and a few people are concerned that I have vanished off the face of the earth.
Heh. I hear Mars is nice.
Last week I got hit with a 24 hour bug and spent most of Wednesday trying to sleep that off. Thursday I wasn’t in the mood to write anything and then I kept pretty busy this weekend so here we are at Monday.
I wish I could say I was in a great mood today to match the sunny weather, but neither my disposition nor the weather is sunny. I feel I match the gray of rainy skies well. Tomorrow will be another day, I guess.
I haven’t cranked on Daylight Saving Time yet this year but I can say without a trace of humour in my voice or on my face that I am not a fan of going to DST earlier like we have for the past couple of years. Has anyone besides me noticed how dark it is when the alarm goes off in the morning? The alarm did a little dance at 6:30 this morning and it was pitch black out. And I’m suppose to be happy and cheery when I get to work after stumbling in the dark as I crawl out of bed and then subsequently blinded by the light of the bathroom when I discover where I left the shower? Please. Just leave the clocks alone and as they were originally intended, with “noon” equaling where the sun is highest in the sky or a reasonable facsimile of this concept.
I should probably write with a touch of whimsy, as I have been told that I am too surly in my blog lately, but I can’t say that I feel whimsical. Perhaps when the sun comes out, I lose 20 pounds or so and when my skin clears up I will sound less surly behind the words but for now I wait for spring.
Not patiently, mind you, but nonetheless I wait.
Wiped Out.
I just got back from dinner with my blogger friend Mike. I call him my blogger friend because he was the first person to recognise me in the mall courtesy of my blabbering on right here on my blog. Mike is a month and a day younger than me and a really nice guy. We hadn’t seen each other in about two years, it was time for us to reconnect and break some bread again.
I had a really good time and I’m glad he made the drive out here for dinner.
I’ve been completely wiped out today. My latest round of on call really wiped me out to the point that I seem to have caught a little something that threw me off my balance. I’m not sick as I am basically only visiting this planet and am traditionally not susceptible to human like diseases, colds and the like, but something has knocked me off my game a little bit. I plan to have it kicked in the morning.
So for now, I smile in the picture and head to bed.
