Weekend of __?__

Well the plan was for me to go to Farmington Hills, MI to help Jenny and Anthony move into their new house. I’d leave Saturday morning, and then Sunday head to Lansing to have dinner with Anne C and Heather. After that a hop, skip, and jump down to spend the night with my brother in Angola.

The first parts went pretty much as planned, except there was less moving and more socializing than I had expected, but you won’t hear me complain. I got to spend time with Steve, Johny, and Sara, Caroline, and Mike, all friends of J & A. I had met most of them before, but it was good to spend some quality movie & food time with them all. I managed to get Sara’s digits by the end of the weekend (LOL), but more because it’d be good to see a new friend next time I’m up there more than anything else.

Dinner with Heather and Anne went well, and the Outback special was delicious. I also had the cheese fries as opposed to the onion; thanks to Big Joe for showing me the power of cheese and bacon combined with fries! It wasn’t a long stay, which kind of made me sad and we all parted separate ways. I got on the road and called my brother to let him know I was on my way.

He was not feeling well and stuck in Fort Wayne with his friend. I told him I could see him another weekend, but something didn’t add up. So I called the parents, and when all was said and done we had Jon’s friend take Jon to the hospital and I met them there shortly after. Jon is a diabetic and he had been throwing up all day thanks to a series of events and poor choices, and basically was in a life threatening situation similar to the one he was in last year this time.

As it stands he’s much better now, but still in the hospital, probably for the second night, and the parents may or may not take him home with them. It freaks me out because Jon’s only been out on his own a little over a month and already this has happened. It freaks me out because I wonder what might have happened if I wasn’t coming to visit him, if I hadn’t called. I cried in the car on my way to the hospital because I’m not ready to lose a brother, but I felt so helpless to prevent this from happening again in the future.

Vocab

Sometimes I use sugar coated words. The two that come to mind are "interesting" and "exciting". I will sometimes use "interesting" where internally I’m thinking "DISASTEROUS!!! RUN AWAY". For example:

JohnDoe: I’m going to set off some fireworks while blindfolded!!!
Will: That sounds… interesting DISASTEROUS!!! RUN AWAY, you have fun with that.

Or "excited" when I really mean "WONDERING IF CLAWING OUT MY EYES WOULD BE BETTER FOR MY HEALTH". Example:

JohnDoe: Hey, I hear you get to take a 18 hour car ride to No-where-sville, Oklahoma
Will: Yeah, I’m… excited WONDERING IF CLAWING OUT MY EYES WOULD BE BETTER FOR MY HEALTH.

Now with that said, depending on how well people can deal with change, work in the upcoming weeks has the potential to be very interesting, … I’m excited.

It won’t be that bad, it could even be great. I am looking forward to the changes, just not any negative responses that may or may not arise because of the changes. That’s all.

Thinking About Matt

Will: dickerson once told me he stuidies his poop every time. I wonder, does that make him a poopologist?
Will: can you take courses in poopology?
Brittany: why on god’s green earth did I need to know that
Will: does it count for a science credit?
Brittany: and yes, though I dont’ think it’s call that
Brittany: and I’m sure it’s part of some sort of medical training
Will: poopology… Purdue didn’t have anything listed like that in the description of classes
Will: I would have been all over that like stink on shit (pun intended)

Taurus for Sale!

As I’ve mentioned to some of you, I’m getting a new [to me] car. That means my Taurus is up for sale. I’ve listed it on cars.com. She’s got a good number of miles on her for only being a ‘99, but she runs just fine. I spent part of my evening touching up some scrapes with a bottle of paint. The interior has been recently cleaned, and I do my best to keep the exterior looking nice, but when you’re driving 75 miles a day, you run into a few bugs no matter how much you swerve. No accidents to speak of.

I’m buying a 2002 Taurus. It’s grey, has a CD player, and cruise control. I’m pretty excited. Now I just need to sell the old one so I can step into the new.

What’s In A Friend

I’m sorry for not posting a whole bunch lately. My excuse is that I’ve
been pretty messed up by some conversations I’ve had lately with a few
friends. The common thing in these conversations was the question each
posed in their own words of "Why do you want to be friends with me?" It
hit me pretty hard, friends and family are all I really care about.
Fencing would mean nothing if I had to always fence alone, a city would
be hell without a friend to visit, I would have no memories, and no one
to remind me of the memories I’ve misplaced.

For a question so complex, the dictionary definition is seemingly simple "A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts."
In all honesty it is the best definition I can come up with, for it is
all that it needs to be. In one case the issue of "likes" was
addressed, in another the issue of "trust". In none of the cases, the
issue of "knows" was not a problem, which leads me to think that
knowing someone is the basis of a friendship. If you think about it,
there are very few times you would say you like or trust someone who
you do not know.

Knowing someone. The best way that I can
recognize knowing someone is presenting scenarios, and guessing
correctly how that person would act. Wondering if he might enjoy a
certain video game, or if he’d think these shades look good are just
the beginning. Eventually you know a person well enough to know if he’d
choose to save the woman of his dreams or a car full of people if he
could only save one.

Trust is an expectation. Once you know
someone, you expect that person to behave a certain way on a fairly
consistent basis. Many of these expectations are not explicitly
discussed often times, but they exist and are often times the source of
broken trust. Say for example, I’ve been to several of your parties,
and I always bring wine because that’s what I like to bring. You
usually have wine on hand, but this particular party you’re out, but
you’re trusting that I’ll bring some like I usually do. I may not bring
wine this time, but if I don’t you can see how someone’s trust is
violated. It was just an expectation that neither party probably never
thought about until something went awry. It is said that once trust is
lost, that it is difficult to regain, but to keep it, one merely needs
to communicate his expectations fully and avoid unexpected behavior
where a precedent has been established.

I think liking someone is similar to trusting that person. The
difference is that you would trust that person to do things you liked.
I would not like the world’s most evil villain, but I would trust that
his actions would be evil. Of course you need not like only those
things which you would trust yourself to do. What makes friends great
is that you can trust them to do things you can’t do or wouldn’t do.
These are the parts of friends that enrich our lives and help us
continue to grow. This is why all my friends are important, this is
what makes friends great.

I’m in a funk

Last week was nothing shy of a disaster for numerous independent
reasons. I won’t go into it, but I will say I hope next week doesn’t
suck so much.

I was in Lafayette/Monticello this weekend. The main purpose of my trip was to check out the Morton Community Center
where RCF will now be moving to on August first. I had checked out the
place before but I was shooting too high before and wanted to rent a
gym. The cost for the gym two nights a week was about the same as
getting the space we have now full time. The room we will be moving
into has been freed up since the construction at the West Lafayette
library has been completed.

The room is awesome, and there’s bathrooms, and it is air conditioned.
Not to mention that we’ll be in a community center where plenty of
people will be walking by. I’m really excited about this move and what
it means for RCF. Plus the gym is available if we ever need to host a
tournament.

I also hosted a small class at RCF. I really just wanted to see the
fencers again and this made for a good excuse. After that I took
Brandon over to see Morton. Then it was home to celebrate my mom’s
birthday.

We watched the Indiana Beach commercials finally and I’m in all 5. The
commercials are really well done and I laughed a lot while watching
them. That was a ton of fun. We then headed to IB’s Sky Room for a
wonderful dinner and then out to the movies to see Star Wars III.

The acting/dialog still sucked dog balls, and it’s still clear that
George hasn’t relinquished his hard-on for special effects because they
were still excessive. But it did tie everything up nicely, and I did
enjoy it, and I would go see it again if someone asked me to go with
them. I totally want a giant iguana to ride to work.

One thing that will never cease to amaze me…

… is how bad the gunk under my big toe nail can smell. I don’t really
feel a need to act on it because well no one smells my feet but me, and
I like being amazed by stuff.

I Hated English

Going through grade school (and college too I guess) I loathed English class. I recognize that it was something I needed to learn, and I am in awe of those who enjoy it, but that’s not for me.

I think a lot of it stems from the build up and let down that there was some sort of hard fast way to accomplish a task in the language. For example,
The build up: "I before E…"
The let down: "…EXCEPT after blah blah blah blah."

Always with the exceptions. Now look at this from a kid’s stand point.
The build up: "Everyone gets candy…"
The let down: "… EXCEPT those of you who have the letter ‘L’ in your name."

WTT? Really.

From all my time on the road…

My name is Mr. Ohio Driver. I have a wife, Mrs. Ohio Driver. We are law
abiding citizens. We never speed, in fact we often drive well below the
speed limit to ensure that police officers do not get us confused with
someone from Kentucky, Indiana or Heaven forbid, Michigan.

Our favorite thing to do is drive in the far left lane. That lane was
made for us. And though some will say that the left lane is for passing
and faster traffic, we like to think it is there for people who like to
cause great anguish to others.

Many times a car will catch up behind us and after a while will flash
his lights, wave his hand to the side, sometimes even honk his horn. I
always make sure to smile and wave back. It’s fun to drive in the left
lane for miles on end and I’m glad to share that with others.

I am Mr. Ohio Driver, and it feels good to be a left lane kind of guy.

Thinking Too Hard

Having my frustrations with current online dating services, I was thinking about what sucks about the system and how I might make it better. I went back and forth with Jacqui on this and came up with some of the following:

1. Dating sites suck because guys have to work so hard to get one response while women are overwhelmed with contacts.
2. Sites that give free memberships to women and not to men suck because they’re penalizing the men for standard service.
3. Who really wants to send a "woo" or an "icebreaker" anyway?

So what works? Is there a way to get women to seek out men instead of waiting for the men to come to them? The answer must be yes. So what motivates women, or people in general?

1. Desperation
2. Money
3. Sex
4. Other?

Well if someone is posting to an online dating service they probably already have a fair level of desperation. So that one is tough to cater to since it is pretty universal and I don’t want to think about how I might go about increasing the desperation levels of lots of women and the social repercussions it would have. Money seems like a good bet. Sex is also probably pretty universal since we are talking about dating, and I’d like to not turn this into a form of prostitution. Other includes stuff like sick relatives, social expectations and pressures, and a whole mess of other things that are too individual to cater to on a wide scale.

So money it is. Money will make the women come to the men… hopefully. My thoughts went something like this:

What if women got a buck or two to email a guy? And maybe a handful of bills to go on a date?
Jacqui pointed out that a) women would just spam guys for money, and b) sounds like prostitution again.
Ok, so what if we change the model a bit, and make it gift certificates, so no one is earning a living on this?
That might work. And then you get the advantage of the companies giving the gift certificates in exchange for advertising.

Let’s think about some other models that seem to be successful. The one that comes to mind is ladies night at a bar. It’s a night of the week that is usually dead, so they offer free admission or cheap drinks for women to get them in the door. The guys show up knowing that women will be there. Everybody wins. The guys aren’t penalized, but rather rewarded with a higher concentration of women. The women get their own financial incentive to come out.

The more I think about it the more I like this idea. And the more I realize I don’t have the resources presently to pull it off. Anyone else want to help with money or time? We could change the way dating works forever…