Ponderings and Musings

Rosie O’Donnell has been asked in interviews why she has a home in Miami. After all, she was raised on Long Island and for most of her adult life she has lived in the New York area. Rosie simply responds that the first time she landed in Miami, something inside clicked, she felt something magical and she felt like she was “home”.

I felt like that the moment I arrived in the City Centre of Dublin. I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled to many cities in the United States and Canada. I’ve loved many of these cities. Albuquerque is beautiful. Phoenix is stunning. Denver in breathtaking.

None of these cities have stirred me the way Dublin has.

I realise that I’m looking at this beautiful city through the eyes of a tourist. However, I’ve loved everything I’ve seen and what little I’ve experienced in the past 48 hours.

I’m looking forward to visiting Dublin again soon.

Today we took a bus tour that pointed out many of the landmarks sprinkled throughout the city. It was a double-decker bus and naturally we rode on the top bunk. The sites were beautiful and the history is impressive. We spent the rest of the day walking the busy, pedestrian only Dawson Street shopping district. We looked at a lot of things and bought a few. Earl and Rick & Helen were ready to take a nap in the mid-afternoon, I secured them at the hotel and went back out and explored more of the city at my own pace. I wanted to drink in the energy, the friendly nature and the beautiful accent of the natives. So I walked and walked at a brisk pace for more than two hours, walking down cobblestone streets and looking down narrow alleys. I sat on a bench for a bit and just watched the passerbys. I made observations and comparisons to their counterparts in the States.

I have to say it, I loved what I saw.

Tomorrow we head home on a jet plane. Through pictures, blog entries and vivid memories, I hope to take a little bit of Ireland with me.

And I look forward to coming back soon.

I’m not perfect. I don’t pretend to be perfect. I do strive to be perfect, but if I were perfect then I would not be human, and the last time I checked I was still human.

I don’t expect others to be perfect. But I do expect others to try to be the best that they can be. Whether a person is driving on the freeway, pushing a grocery cart or watching television, I expect a person to do it to the best of their ability.

I have one rule in my life that I never waiver from. “Always be aware of your surroundings.” Whether you’re driving, your walking or your watching television in a hotel room, know where you are, who is near you and what is occurring at any given moment. I believe that if you adhere to this little guideline, you’ll be two steps ahead of anyone around you that may not be aware of their surroundings.

There are many that stumble through life without a clue as to what is really going on around them. Such a person just tried to mow me over in Panera not ten minutes ago, as she balanced her lacha chacha aiy ya choo choo with one hand and cradled her cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she made a bee-line for a table. She was completely oblivious to fact that other people were standing in the same general area as she. Had I not stepped back and allowed her blind passage, she would have smacked directly into me and lost her lacha chacha aiy ya choo choo and cell phone. It would have been messy.

As it now stands, she is able to continue to waltz through life oblivious to all around her. Perhaps I’ve done the world a disservice.

So today’s topic in Health Class was sexuality. Any word that contains “sex” somewhere in it always piques my interest, so I was curious to see how the class would progress today. Would the professor treat it like my high school health teachers did so many years ago – by running a well worn 16mm film on the Singer film projector, out of focus, so we couldn’t see the important parts?

I’m glad to say that he did not. Instead, he invited a speaker from the local Planned Parenthood to address the class.

The speaker blew me away with his frankness, personality and confidence he displayed while discussing a potentially taboo subject. If I’m to be honest, there are few subjects, when it comes to sex, that will make me blush and it was refreshing to hear a speaker address the class in much the same manner.

During the presentation he threw out several statistics that I found startling:

1. HIV infections are back on the rise.
2. 20,000,000 Americans per year are infected with a sexually transmitted infection and this does NOT include HIV infection.
3. Of those 20+ million, a good share of them are young adults aged 16-24.

Cluephone ringing for our conservative folks, the whole “let’s ignore it/abstinence” approach isn’t working.

Don’t be surprised if I hand you a condom sometime.

I’m wondering if I’m expecting too much from this college experience. Today I had one class, Surveying I. I don’t plan on becoming a surveyor, however it’s a required course for all of us that wish to work in the civil engineering field. I might have to survey someday, and though we are being trained on equipment that became obsolete during Donna Summer’s “Last Dance”, by god we must take this course.

My Surveying class is compromised of 29 men and one woman. I’ve bonded with Jennifer to an extent, she’s very attractive, a little rough and what you might expect of a female civil engineer, not that I like stereotyping people, but she fits the image. Of my classmates, I’d say that I’m tied with another guy for being the oldest and many are in their mid or late 20s. There are a couple of freshmen as well. Some are stoned.

Today the professor handed out a 35 page packet on Trigonometry with the following instructions: read it, do the problems and turn in the homework next week. Now, I don’t expect him to teach us the fundamentals of trigonometry in 50 minutes, but for many of us in the class we haven’t had trig since high school. Heck, I was in the first round of students when New York State changed the traditional “Trigonometry” class to “Course III”, which was an advanced, unique blend of algebra, geometry, calculus and trigonometry that focused on the latter. I don’t know why the class of 1986 was selected to be the guinea pigs for the “mix it all together” approach but I think it kind of puts me at a disadvantage. I’m already suffering from the elementary school math experiment with the class of 1986: “let’s teach them only metric!” That went over so well when the U.S. converted to the metric system and all.

But I digress.

Now, I know that for every hour of class I should spend two hours studying and I try to adhere to that guideline to the best of my ability. But I think perhaps we should have spent some time in class talking about the contents of the packet. Instead he popped a quiz and told us we could leave when we finished that. I’m not a fan of the disinterest.

Boo.

Maybe I’m expecting too much. Perhaps I was spoiled when Miss Chontosh (high school math teacher) took time to walk us through problems and had after school tutoring sessions to coach us on the regents exams. It could be that I’m just putting too much pressure on myself and setting my personal expectations too high.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just bag it all and get a job that pays the bills and spend my free time in community theatre or something.

Imagine my surprise when Time Warner sent a full cable crew, complete with bucket truck and hard hats, to our home only 45 minutes after the cross-eyed, twangy sounding tech and the four kids in the back of his truck left the premises.

Wow! Color me impressed.

The cable crew replaced everything aside from the cable that runs under the driveway (which is completely intact and passes all tests with flying colors), ripped out the booster that the tech installed three weeks ago, explained everything they did and gave me an internet experience that’s faster than passing gas after Burger King.

I am once again a happy geek and surfing at high speed, baby.

Bring on the porn news and family friendly entertainment.

Earl has been out of town for the past two nights. He was expected home this evening, but during last night’s call he let me know that he’ll have to spend tonight out of town as well.

This kind of has me bummed. It also has me thinking.

Since he’s out of town tonight and tomorrow night he has a sleep study for his sleep apnea and then on Thursday he’s out of town again, I’m rethinking out overnight plans we have for this coming weekend. We were going to go to Buffalo for the last half of a bear run but now I’m thinking that might be a bit much, especially for him.

Maybe I’m getting old.

I guess we’ll have to discuss it tonight.

I think I’m starting to kick into hibernation/homebody gear in tandem with the color change on the trees and the cooler temperatures. For the past 24 hours or so I’ve been really in the mood to bake a pie. I’m in the mood for stew. I want to eat some squash.

Interesting that my thoughts of autumn gravitate to food.

I’m noticing an increasing trend in this area. While making an occasional fast food stop, whether it’s at Subway, Quizno’s or one of the burger places, I’m noticing more and more people aren’t picking up their garbage and putting it in the trash bin when they’re finished.

What’s up with that?

Are people becoming so arrogant that they think they can just leave their trash lying about? Have the fast food chains instituted some table-side service that I didn’t know existed?

The next time I see an ignoramus just leave their trash lying on the table in the middle of McBomb or whatever, I might be tempted to stand up and say “Hey! You forgot your trash!” I’ll leave the “asshole” off the end of the sentence so I can give an air of being polite.

I don’t know why I think I must be the manners police in these situations but this new trend is driving me crazy.