Happy Birthday

He turned thirty-six last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense

He gets off on country music
Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too friggin' old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock and the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy and the silence made him cry
Yeah he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

He's an old hippie and he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

You're Kidding

Mom's supposed to be flying up to see me today for my birthday. She gets to the airport this morning in plenty of time, to find no one that can help her do curbside checkin like she always does. She manages to find one rude person to tell her that Continental has moved to a different terminal. There, she finds no one curbside. She tries to check in at a kiosk, but it won't accept her information. Again she flags down someone who clearly can't be bothered, but who puts forth minimal effort to help mom. "You're doing it wrong!" the attendant snaps. The attendant tries, and the kiosk will not accept her information. After some runaround, they figure it out and the attendant tells mom there will be a $25 charge for her single bag. It's a new fee. So she tries to pay in cash and the attendant snaps that she can't give change. After another 15 minute ordeal mom proceeds to security. At security it was another long string of fairly mundane but typical hassles. By the time she gets to the gate the plane is gone.

She explains what happened and the attendant says they'll put her on standby on the next flight, but gave mom the wrong gate number. Eventually she gets to the right gate and verifies she's "on the list." She waits. After everyone is boarded, even the other people who were waiting on standby, she is ignored. She goes to the counter and inquires only to find that the new attendant can't find her name on the list. An argument ensues and mom produces her receipt from the last gate which finally gets her on the plane. The plane is locked and ready to go, when they shut things down, open it up, and call her name. They need to see her ID! After that 15 minute delay, the'yre finally ready to take off. The plane has started to taxi when it dies on the runway. They sit for 20 minutes, announce the plane is dead, haul it back to the terminal, unload everyone, and say it'll be another hour before they have more information.

This morning my water heater died, and it's supposed to be cold and rainy the entire weekend.

Happy birthday to me.

Life Lessons

I think I'm finally running out of steam when it comes to Facebook. I've reconnected with just about everyone from my past. In general, I find most people aren't as excited about reconnecting as I was. It's disappointing. I'm also starting to remember why I was so eager to get the hell out of Huffman.

Maybe there's a darn good reason why people from my past who are no longer in my life are, well, no longer in my life.

I'm trying to understand why an old friend would claim to be so excited to reconnect, send me all kinds of wonderful emails about how much I am loved, say "call me!" and then not return any of my phone calls going on two weeks now. I know these people are still alive because they've posted on Facebook a few times since. Yeah, it's happened with more than one.

Then there' s slew of people who friend me, but won't respond to any of my messages.

Of my old high school friends, there are several who grew up to be really jaded. I can't imagine going through life with such a bad attitude.

But maybe I'm just the weird one. Or maybe I'm just weird in my own special way. I love the idea of having a community of close friends, but the older I get the more I feel like most friends are really just paying lip service. And maybe they really aren't even doing it on purpose. Maybe they're just too wrapped up in their own issues to pay too much attention to a friendship. I know that's been true of me before.

Tonight Gerard and I went out in Denver for a couple of hours, just to try and meet some people. I get so frustrated and tense in crowds, especially crowds of strangers, that I need to be drinking to enjoy it. Being Sunday night, I only had one beer. I can safely say that the bar scene hasn't changed since I first started going 20 years ago. I, however, have. We left.

On the drive back to our quiet place in Boulder I reflected silently to myself on the past week. Side note: I don't think I've mentioned it at all on my blog, but my old classmate Kelly Danaher was killed one week ago today. I've spent the better part of the week mourning with my classmates via Facebook. I was terribly, terribly bummed out by it and only now am I starting to somewhat get out of the funk I was in. I wrote an open letter which was probably entirely too mushy and posted it on Facebook, but it helped me get my head clear. I actually got a lot of positive responses, which made me feel good. I'll probably post it here. I've been neglecting my blog lately because I've been so wrapped up rediscovering people on Facebook.

Anyway, the drive home. I thought about the ups and downs on Facebook: happily rediscovering people only to have them not be interested in actually making a human connection. I thought about the overcrowded bar full of people who by all appearances were frankly a little pathetic. Like I said, the scene never changes. I sometimes get these nostalgic fantasies in my head: If only I could go back to high school knowing what I know now, it would be so much more fun! If only I were free to party again like I did in college, it would be so much fun! If only....

But it isn't true. I still clam up in bars (unless I'm drunk) just like I did in college. My old classmates are proving they are still very much the same people they were back in high school. Sure some have mellowed. Others have gotten more intense. But my subconscious fantasy that we're all going sit around reminiscing about the old days and forging some kind of new improved friendship is bullshit, I'm sorry to say.

It's also very clear to me that the life I have today is the life I built for myself. I built it because it's what I want. I guess sometimes I start wondering about what else might be, or what might have been. But those are silly things to seriously consider. As I drove back to my quiet home in Boulder, I thought, yeah, this is what I want. This makes me happy.