another curve ball in the election

maybe since i'm from minnesota, and everybody here was all atwitter about the possibility of pawlenty being the vice presidential candidate, i didn't see this one coming. mccain chose a woman (gov. sarah palin of alaska) for a running mate. this clinches it - no matter who wins, history will be made. it's either our first minority president or the first woman veep.

i give a nod to mccain for his choice. she's cute. :) it's also a smart choice for a couple other reasons (in my relatively ignorant opinion). he may get a few voters who really wanted to see a woman in the white house, and aren't happy with obama's running mate. and if he wants to play the american oil card, he's positioned himself well.

i bought circus peanuts (aka sugar bombs with artificial coloring) in honor of this historic day.

they were fresh. nummy.

i'm still not voting for you, though.

friendship (postulate #1)

a good friend will bail you out of jail.
a true friend will be sitting next to you, saying, "boy, that was fun!"

in the big world of web 2.0, there are tons of social networking sites around, such as linkedin, facebook and twitter. i have friends on these sites, but am a rather passive friender. if you find me and want to be my friend, i'm very happy to be your friend. otherwise, i'll just see you in real life.

i have this theory that everything obeys the laws of physics. i'm sure you've heard me blather on about this before, and now i'm going to apply the laws of physics to friendship. to start, let's postulate that each person has a set amount of time and energy available to them on any given day.

next, let's acknowledge that there are different levels of friendship, and that each level of friendship requires a different level of energy.

friend type: acquaintance
characteristics: talk to them at the club; have a beer with them after a ride
energy requirement: minimal (quantified as 1)

ft: actual friend
c: we have gone out to dinn'r; i have invited you to my home
er: moderate (2)

ft: good friend
c: i've driven your drunk ass home; i've picked you up when you were in a bind; i probably owe you money, or you owe money, but neither of us keeps track (except for razzing purposes)
er: high (3)

ft: true friend
c: you've slept in my bed, perhaps because we had sex, or perhaps because i was too drunk to drive your drunk ass home
er: higher (4)

for simplicity, let's make this analysis time-independent. time has all sorts of significant effects on friendship, and good experimental design is based on isolating a single variable. if you're not the scientific type, just trust me on this.

let's say that you have 8 units of time/energy in a day. with minimal math, you can see that if you only had acquaintances, you'd have time for 8 of them. if you had only true friends, you'd have time for 2 of them. from this, we can conclude the following:

friendship postulate #1: the number of friends one can have is inversely proportional to the quality of the friendships.

another year wiser

i had a birthday this week. i have successfully completed ** years on planet earth. good job me.

i have an affable yet unconcerned attitude toward birthdays. my mommy no longer bakes me a cake*, so there isn't much reason to get too worked up. nonetheless, i do have one unfailing tradition. i take the day off of work. my reasoning is, if i don't have to work on jesus' birthday, i don't have to work on mine.

birthdays are a personal inventory time for me. sort of like my own new year's day. i look back at the big ticket items for the past year: i went somewhere new (seattle); participated in some bonspiels, bike races, racquetball tournaments and golf tournaments; volunteered at women venture; did some home improvements; worked enough to stay financially solvent; took a residential wiring class; completed my 2007 resolution to eat at an alphabet of new restaurants; missed my deadline to get barnithebus.com up and running.

all in all, a good year.

and of course, i also look forward. for the coming year, i'd like to: go somewhere new; compete; volunteer; finish the upstairs remodeling; go live with barni the bus; maintain my weight over the winter months; go to a seminar; take a class; have friends over for dinner once a month; get puppies.

nothing left to do but make it so.

*this seemed to stop around the time where i got too old to blow out all my candles anymore. :-\
**42

no turning back

the remodeling project has begun. you may follow along on the web if you like.

meaning from abstraction

do you ever stop to consider all of the assumptions we have in the world that allow us to function? just the other day, i wrote down my name. based on that simple action, i got a bunch of tangible, useful items in return.

think about this for a bit. i flexed the muscles in my hand - while holding a pen and touching it to paper - and somebody gave me some valuable stuff. how abstract is that?

the other day i gave blood. again, i had to move my hand in a prescribed manner, to give my solemn oath that i have not indulged in any bad behavior which may have tainted the vital fluids somebody else may need.

what is so special about a signature? you are merely writing your name. anybody could do it, even a monkey. yet the power of a signature is staggering. scribbling out the letters to my name (in proper order, of course) got me the house i live in. scrawling out someone else's name could send me to jail.

very abstract, indeed.