Some time in the mists of history, I developed a love/hate relationship with the phone. Without going in to exhaustive detail, I don’t answer it as often as I should or even could. (I can imagine all of the nodding of heads right now).

I did some thinking about what might drive that behavior, or even how it got started. And, after splunking my soul and a trip to meet with the Dalhi Lama which in reality amounts to a good bout of driving, I divined the probable reasoning: An over-reaction to bad phone etiquette.

Sound lame? With apologies as I revert into complaint mode, I have to say that the ubiquitousness of cell phones has degraded common sense and etiquette to primeval levels. Numerous times have I found myself behind someone in line at <insert consumer facility here> two back from being waited on, and they take a call. Now, they could just let it roll to voice mail or even take the call and say, “I’ll call you right back.” Almost invariably, they not only take the call but start carrying out the conversation… leaving the poor customer service person to gawk at them expectantly as they wait to help them. The best part is that it’s never the President calling or a citywide threat. It’s a call that, subjectively speaking, could very well wait. But, this isn’t about them.

So as I’ve seen this example and many others of its ilk over time, I started becoming averse to taking calls in situations such as those. I then think it trickled over to many more situations, most often when I’m with or in the company of others. The ability (or at times inability) to take personal calls at work only exacerbated the situation.

Invariably what would happen is people would leave me voicemails to give them a buzz back. Urgent stuff and/or work items were always attended to promptly. Other calls, personal and otherwise, always slipped into a “I’ll find time to get back to them tonight where I can focus on the conversation.” And “tonight” invariably would turn into “shamefully later” or “never”. The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.

So now, I’m endeavouring to shake of this bad habit, because (as many are aware) I do love to talk. I’m only not taking calls when it’s truly inappropriate or disruptive, and taking a call briefly when it’s not convenient. If anything, to let people hear my voice and for me to hear their’s instead of a recording.

This may be stupid, but I think there may be others (for perhaps different reasons) do the same thing.

[flv]http://haveagoodsandwich.org/files/mercedes.flv[/flv]

This one goes out to my best friend, a goodie from 1997. Still one of my favorite commercials of all time.

• Grass seed takes a lot longer to sprout than you think.
• I must be the only human being on Earth that has trouble with semi-rigid dryer ducts.
• Never, ever move into your new home during a U.S. Open.
• Women cannot look at white walls for longer than 24 hours.  It’s a rule.
• When your DirectTV installation guy pulls up and his shirt is three sizes too big with his pants hanging down to near his knees, it could mean trouble.
• I never thought I’d say this:  I’ve been to Home Depot so many times that I actually know where stuff is in the store.  This should scare anyone that has known me longer than 10 seconds.
• Related to the above point, I’ve realized I can do more handy stuff than I ever thought possible.

All in all, it’s been a pretty successful adventure.  Now that I’m back on the grid, I have lots of catching (and making up) to do with family, friends, and associates.  WearLocal took a big back seat too, so it’s time to tie up the loose ends and launch that badboy soon.

Nice.

Mitigating circumstances responsible for this outage:

• A birthday
• A new business
• My best friend’s wedding
• Bootcamp Pittsburgh – pre and post activities
• Building a house – which is not for the faint of heart
• My day job – craziness ensues
• Imminent travel prep – to Seattle and beyond

This is just a brief list.  But, I’m back.

I’m not tanned, somewhat rested, and pretty much ready.

One thing that seemingly slows down my entries is time (I only have internet access at work and I have been super busy), but also, sadly, my life tends to lack inspiration. I could write about the annoying things, like teaching some undergrad students – my most recent experience reminded me why I am not destined to be a teacher. I believe I lack that loving/caring/tolerance gene, or perhaps some students are really, really annoying! And you may get to hear more about him in the near future if I can’t convince my supervisor that now that he has done the required course hours in our lab, that we should send him on his way.

But I think I’ll run with something more positive for my first entry in a few weeks. So after christmas and the previous year spending 6 months ill, I realised that the weight had mysteriously packed on. I had no idea when it had happened, ok so I did know but none of us wants to admit to the “getting older and can’t be slack and eat badly anymore!” Having accepted that I may never be tiny again, but that I didn’t want the doctor to start talking blood pressure medication at my age either I have determined that I need to start living healthier. The food part, no so hard. Already eat mostly fruit, vegetables and unprocessed foods; so small cutbacks and changes here and there were no big problem.

But on the flip side is my nemesis – exercise!!!!! I have never been remotely athletic, or even basically coordinated. To give you some idea: I was the kid in school who won the maths award each year, not blue ribbons at the athletics carnival (heck I didn’t even get participation ones as I didn’t participate!). I was always ok at swimming, and clearly more coordinated in water, but hardly olympics worthy. So for years during my 20s I have made tentative forays into the gym and aerobics classes, but nothing has ever lasted more than a few months. I decided that this is in part because I can always skip them – you’re generally not enrolled in anything specific and its up to you if your too busy or too tired that night. Suddenly you realise you haven’t been in a month and it is all over. So this time I needed something to which I was committing, and the best way to guarantee that is to make it a financial commitment (my scholarship doesn’t stretch very far so you have mean each and every dollar you spend).

So with commitment in mind I checked out the sport and rec union on campus, as a student it is guaranteed to be cheaper than anywhere else. Team sports require coordination and I still don’t have that. I don’t think I would like Boot Camp (they push you through the workouts, kind of like an army boot camp), I don’t really take orders too well. A pole dancing work out sounds cool, but was only for 6weeks and was kind of pricey, and certainly wouldn’t seem to be a particularly useful skill although some people may differ in there opinion on that. And then I found them – martial arts. Could I do something like that? They are offering beginners courses so they clearly don’t expect me to start with any actual knowledge or talent. Then I realised there were 10 to choose from and I had no idea about any of them. After carefully reading the sport and rec handbook descriptions and discussing it with a friend’s husband I have made my choices. Tomorrow I am off to observe an aikido class to see if its for me. Next week I’ll check out Yu shih tao kung fu. Here’s hoping one of them is for me, and I’ll be enrolled by next week. Let’s see if this time around I can find that commitment that has been so lacking in the past; if nothing else now that it’s out there on the web, I guess I am going to feel pretty stupid if I don’t follow through. Ah guilt – the greatest inspirer of all! ;)