Ryan's Journal

The fifth annual Meat Massacre is now in the books. Cows should slowly begin coming out of hiding during the next few weeks, and the world’s remaining chicken population can breath a collective sigh of relief. This year’s innovation, which can only be expressed in technical terms as “marinate longer”, seems to have been a big hit and will definitely be incorporated in future events.

Greg and Thalia sent news that Fernandina volcano is erupting. Not surprisingly, Greg immediately set off to film it, and it is likely that he will again be proudly showing off footage of himself and others running from a lava flow during the Galapagos trip next May.

Not much to write about, so in lieu of something original that might require exerting the effort of thought, here’s a story I read a long while back that has stuck with me. I tried to find the original author (although not too hard) and failed miserably, so apologies if I’m stomping on someone’s copyright.

An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.

“Only a little while.” the Mexican replied.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” the Mexican said.

“But,” the American persisted, “what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, and then stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “But you could do so much more with your life! If you spent more time fishing then you would be able to buy a bigger boat.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “Why would I need a bigger boat, senor?”

The American continued, “Well, with a bigger boat you could catch more fish, and make a lot more money. Eventually you might even own a fleet of fishing boats.”

To which the Mexican replied, “But what then, senor?”

“Well, once you were catching enough fish you could form your own company and sell directly to consumers, instead of relying on a middleman. When the time is right you would be able to sell your company and reap millions of dollars in profits.”

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos…”

For whatever reason insomnia strikes me nearly once each month, and this month’s installment is a particularly fun one. Last night I think I finally fell asleep around 4:00 AM, and the night before bedtime didn’t arrive until after the sun had started poking over the horizon. Since this has been going on for more than a week now I’ve finally given up on trying to sleep, and am searching out new and exciting activities that can be pursued in a diminished mental state. For me that’s saying a lot, considering that my normal mental state is much closer to “functional” than “intelligent”.

Thus far the attempts at finding suitable activities haven’t been good. On Wednesday I naively started trying to read Homer’s Odyssey at 1:30 AM; Green Eggs and Ham probably would have been a challenge, and Homer might as well have written in Swahili for all the progress I was making. Thursday night was spent attempting to fix up some code I’ve been writing, the result of which is that I now have lots of code with comments in it like “FIXME - this worked earlier, didn't it?“. Tonight my plan had been to partake of unhealthy quantities of alcohol in an effort to induce a sleep-like state, but after failing to locate suitable drinking buddies I settled for an evening of admiring Natalie Portman’s (acting) in Garden State, and now, at nearly 3:30 AM, have spent almost a half hour attempting to put together just two coherent paragraphs. At this rate future activities may be limited to finger painting and playdough.

I’m probably the last person on earth to hear about this site, but on the off chance that one or two others haven’t seen it, postsecret.blogspot.com is a site where people send a postcard with a secret that they’ve never told anyone else. It’s incredible how real some of these are. And of course, some of them are just goofy:

From an email I wrote in January 1998:

“Keep in touch, ’cause otherwise we’ll be out of touch.”

And the scary thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m getting dumber as I get older.

Aaron came to town for the weekend, and as always happens when he’s around events were slightly out of the ordinary. Friday night we met up with the Mormon twins at the local church for some evening basketball, and didn’t leave until three hours later. By that point Aaron had a spasming back and Dave had some pain in his elbow from knocking one of my teeth slightly askew. I had made the mistake of running seven miles prior to Aaron’s arrival, and as a result the evening’s activities left me capable of doing little more than curling up into the fetal position on the bathroom floor once we got home. A good time by any measure.

Aaron and I were both capable of limited movement again by noon on Saturday, so we grabbed Dave and headed for a late lunch at Zachary’s, home of the world’s finest pizza. I don’t know how it started, but somewhere between the discussion of the Meatloaf and Kenny G lookalikes sitting next to us with their rather scary dates (“Look at these girls Kenny, our years of singing are finally paying off!”) the conversation took an odd direction:

“So what about a rodeo bull versus a brown bear?”

“Woah, that’s a good one. Badger versus a wolverine?”

“Wolverine, no question. How about a rhino versus a chimpanzee, but the chimpanzee is driving a monster truck?”

…and so on, with numerous heated arguments, until finally it was decided that nothing could defeat an elephant. Unless the elephant was in a swimming pool with a great white shark. An excellent weekend indeed.

The picture below was taken way back in 1997 during my first solo roadtrip, but for whatever reason I had never put it up on the site. That trip rather profoundly shaped my life; thereafter I wanted to get out and see things, and didn’t let issues like lack of travel partners, lack of accommodation, or even lack cash get in the way. It was the trip that taught me that things wouldn’t always be smooth, but that they would almost certainly be memorable, and that the only thing standing in the way of getting started was me.

Waking up cramped and stiff in the backseat of a tiny Geo Prism with my knees practically bent up to my chin wasn’t something that anyone would really want to do, but enjoying a cool desert morning, watching the sunrise, and having the freedom to go wherever the winds blew me — life hasn’t been the same since then.

The retirement is now stretching into its eighth month, so I thought maybe it was time to sort of casually peruse a few of the online job sites. I wanted to do it in the same way that a woman will when she goes shopping but leaves her cash and credit cards at home — just browsing, thank you. Luckily there wasn’t anything interesting posted, but afterwards I felt a bit like an alcoholic who has gone into a bar and purchased a Dr. Pepper; I didn’t do anything evil, but I put myself in a position where I could have. It’s not that whoring myself out for a few buckets of cash is so awful, but going back to the corporate world after being away…

Anyhow, long story short is that for the moment the retirement continues. There’s a pile of books from the used book shops still needing to be read (if anyone has any good book recommendations, let me know), the Subaru still has a sleeping bag and comforter laid out in the back, and as of noon on a Monday I still haven’t showered. As Joe Walsh said, life’s been good to me so far.

“And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire… ” — Milton

After some merciless deletions and a handful of new additions, Aaron has updated his corner of the site.