#uncoffeed...

Skyfish - fancy goldfish I took the day off work so I could score tickets to a museum for my book club.  I succeeded. This may sound silly (and if you've met me you're unsurprised) but I assure you it was very serious.  Glenstone allots free tickets monthly, two months in advance, at 10 AM precisely on the first of the month.  By 10:03 they're gone. We do something like this at my day job.  There's a set opening date and time for convention exhibitors to book blocks of 5-50 hotel rooms.  Madness ensues as people all over the world vie to get into the preferred  hotels.  We usually have juice and bagels on opening days; we discuss strategies for moving phone conversations along because every second counts.  So when I tried on April 1 to get Glenstone tickets, and failed, I knew what had to be done. At home and unencumbered by other duties, I set my alarm for 9:55 and loaded the website. Hit snooze when the alarm went off, refreshed the ...

Patrice used to take a personal interest in my looks. "You need concilla ," she told me in her South Cackalacky accent.  I made her repeat the word a few times and finally spell it: C-O-N-C-E-A-L-E-R.  She had a point - my dark eyecircles are legendary.  Patrice was a beautiful woman, masterful with fashion, trying to help me out with the obvious.  Over time, though, I found an awkward trend to her advice.  One day she was adamant - adamant - that I should try parting my hair on the side. "Just do it one time. You'll love it," she insisted.  She'd done her hair with a severe side-part . Obviously it would be good for me, too, because she liked me. Understanding her motivation is exactly the kind of thought that plagues me for years, but I think I've finally sorted it:  Patrice felt an elation when she found herself beautiful with side-parted hair.  I think she was trying to recapture that elated feeling by replicating the action on me. ...

I just found out someone I know is amazing. It's so great when that happens, and you should give people more opportunity to show you what they've got. Try to grasp what they are presenting, rather than looking to find something they offer that's already in a language you understand. We hide ourselves because society is quick to throw rocks at anything they don't understand. Quick to try and put the Other outside  the wall. This is a defence on the part of people who don't get you, and everyone has mechanisms, but you know what? You are not responsible for their defences. You need to worry about your own. Let those defences work for you, not against you. Don't try to do everything at once. You will quickly discover that you can't. My World History teacher noticed, in what should have been my senior year of high school, that I was not taking notes but copying a black-and-white photo out of the textbook. Other than the graphite being too shiny in the d...