200000

This is a big deal. It's a very big deal.



My Ford Escort crossed the 200,000 mile mark just before it rolled into my driveway last night. You'll forgive me if I come off sounding like a proud parent, but this is an occasion for celebrating. It's been a lot of hard work, and he definitely doesn't have all of his original parts, but he just chugged beyond a historical milestone. I'm so glad I got to take the picture.

Would you believe I traded my Mutt Cutts van for it, straight up? I can get 70 miles to the gallon on that hog. No? Okay, false. I bought it in 2003 from my mom's co-worker (I think) with around 107,000 miles on it. And it eats me up inside to know that the majority of its miles were put on by someone else. Not for long, Escort. You and me, we're heading on into the sunset. We're going down together.

In case you're wondering, 200000 miles is enough to drive from my house to 588 Tigers games at Comerica Park (Happy Spring Training). I could have delivered 40000 pizzas. It's enough to drive to LA and go back and forth between there and New York City 35 times, and then go back home. Or I could have driven around earth 25 times. Or I could have driven 84% of the way to the moon.

Really, I racked up those miles with lots of trips to camp, delivering pizzas to people at unholy hours of the night, a shocking number of trips to Jimmy John's, and a long road trip to Orlando. I didn't expect the car to make it this far. Just figured it would die one day after I paid it off. But it's going strong, still has its stride... it's not limping. Yet.

iTunes

A few months ago, I reformatted my hard drive. Wiped it clean. Best decision I ever made. I backed up everything, all my pictures, my music, my documents - even the stuff from college classes, stuff I'll never use or see again. Just in case, you know, the school comes calling and says, "Hey, we need to see that rough draft of your section of that final group project from Spanish 201, otherwise we're taking back your diploma." Boom, got it. Si, yo tengo. (Am I the only one that hangs onto this crap?) Anyway. I saved everything. Except, somehow my collection of the top 100 hip-hop songs from the 1990s disappeared. My library is now sadly lacking of The Diggable Planets and Nas.

Which leaves me with only 2,653 songs. Most of them acquired entirely legally, off my own CDs or via amazonmp3.com ($1.99 for Andrew Bird, $3.99 for The Killers. Yessss.) I don't know how my collection ballooned that big, but I do know that it's dwarfed in comparison to many others. (Sidenote: What if I started one of those annoying facebook chain letters asking people about their iTunes playlists. How many songs? Ten most listened to? Ten most recently listened to? How many unplayed?)

iTunes is great because it tracks all your music and how many times you've played it. I like this feature, and I assume it's standard for most players... iTunes probably isn't so special. But when I wiped my compy clean, iTunes reset itself. Curses. Back to zero on everything. Time was, a guy could look back and see which songs were played most often, which ones were rated the highest. No more. I know I listened to Intergalactic more than 40 times... but now it's back to zero. And so, I threw together a playlist of the good ones, and slowly sought out my favorites again.

So I made a playlist of all the unplayed ones. I have 1,619 songs which, as far as I know, I've never heard before. And right now I'm working it down to zero. I've found a few good ones - I would never, ever have sought out "Go Faster," by the Black Crowes, but I found it, and I'm sure it will be on the playlist for the gym. And I really like that demo of Jefferson Aeroplane from Relient K's Bird and the Bee Sides album. Also found: A Petra (yeah, that's right, Petra) medley with The Coloring Song, Derek Webb's Please before I go, and lots of other great stuff that would have been skipped over and never been put into a playlist.

I challenge you to do the same. Cuz, life is like a box of chocolates. Or something.

Happy Birthday

Yup. My birthday. Yesterday. And it was a happy one.

Sleep in: Check.
Lunch with family: Check.
Steak: Check.
Sitting on the bull, getting a yee-ha from everyone at Texas Roadhouse: Check.
Delicious birthday cake made by mom: Check.
Moleskines: Check.
Michigan State come back victory: Check.
Watching The Office with the family: Check.
Movie with friends: Check. (sidenote: Skip The International.)
Dr Pepper: Check.
Watching Flight of the Conchords and The Office with friends: Check.

I can't tell you how good the cake was. There are only three pieces left, and if I can help it you aren't going to get any of them.

Africa pictures, 1

When I run out of things to say, it's best to just show pictures. I took something like 2000 pictures while I was there, and there's no way I can share them all. But I do feel like putting up a few. Right click and select "View Image" to see 'em full size.

I saw a picture of Kigali, Rwanda, and someone remarked at how surprising it was. They were shocked at how somewhere in Africa could be so cosmopolitan. Metropolitan Africa is not, by any means, like the big cities of the United States. But there are cars, pedestrians, billboards, paved roads. And people doing their laundry on the roof.



Just a few days after I arrived in Mumba, the ants took over my house. I was reading a book, and Steve came in and told me to come outside. So I went outside and heard ants. Then I saw them. They were all over the walls, assuming control of the place. I left the house in their control that night, having seen enough Discovery Channel shows about ants carrying off people too old, sick, or asleep and eating them alive. The next day, they were gone, and I never saw them again.




We had a fire. I got too close to said fire. Here's a picture of my beard (R.I.P. Beard I. Two weeks before I left, I shaved it off and scattered it in the field where it had been singed. I had a ceremony, it was beautiful.)



Here's a picture of Cory's dogs, peaking through his courtyard in Mbeya. No sentimental memories, just a cool picture, I think.



And going with the animal theme, here's a baboon. They're everywhere. They really aren't so exotic; people shoot them because they're pests. Think of them as big racoons.



Zebras. No big deal. We were hunting, and we weren't allowed to shoot them. They probably aren't that tasty anywho.



To get in shape for Kilimanjaro, I climbed a nearby mountain a few times a week. I would get up there, collapse, catch my breath, and enjoy the breeze. It was amazing. I got a good cell signal there, too, and sometimes I would call my parents. There's no place in the world as peaceful at this one. Until I saw a puff adder up there. That's Jericho, straight chillin.



More soon.

How to fight

Because you need to know this:



And to the crook out there who found my wallet and didn't return it to me: You are a bad man and now I am ready to fight you. I already canceled my credit cards and I get a new license when I turn 25 in two weeks anyway. You can keep the library card and the Blockbuster card and my Biggby Coffee rewards card and the 2007 Detroit Tigers schedule inside it. The only thing I want back is my college ID so I can still save money at the movies. You can't really use it unless you look like me. Which you might. If I were you and I looked like me, I'd use it. Good thing there were only $2 in it, not nearly enough to support your meth habit.

Edit: I got my wallet back today.

The Meaning of the Universe

Two things happened this week that are, I guess, pointlessly small things in life that can be extrapolated into larger meaning or, at least, a mildly amusing blog entry.

First:

I went to the library on Wednesday. The Grandville library, the good one, where they don't yell at me when I come in with a cup of tea, where there's plenty of space and lots of tables and high ceilings so I don't feel crowded, and Wi-Fi to keep me from accomplishing anything. My only qualm is that the place closes at five on weekends and eight on week nights. This is where I begin to miss college: Late night silence in the library. The library is my only respite of quiet from the frappuchino-blending and ambient hipstermusic of coffee shops. But it closes at 8.

So I went to the library with a composition book and Elie Wiesel's Night, which I got for fifty cents at a thrift shop, presumably donated by someone who held onto it after a literature class. I brought with me a cup of tea and a few cookies my mom had baked, because writing makes me think and thinking makes me tired, and cookies counterbalance it all. There's a sign at the entrance about no outside food or drink, and I never pay any attention to it because I assume it's not for me, it's meant for little kids with drippy popsicles and overburdened moms with cups of coffee. I pose no threat with my tea and neatly bagged cookies.

I sat down at a table near awindow and noticed an open checkbook ledger next to me. Soon, an elderly guy came back with a stack of newspapers and sat down kitty-corner from me, and reclaimed his checkbook ledger. I realized I had invaded his space, and that I would probably feel a little awkward myself if someone sat at my table. Nevermind that there are four seats.

He gave me a glare, and shuffled his newspapers. I tried to look unimposing. Just a guy with a book and some tea and - what's this? - some cookies. No, sir, no problems here. I wasn't the teenager who crossed your lawn last summer or the kid with the loud music in traffic. I meant no harm.

But as I presented my bag of cookies, his unnecessary vigilantism came out. "You know you're not supposed to have food in here," he said.

I found it shocking.

So I didn't defend my right to cookies. I just said, "Okay," and put 'em away.

I couldn't read or write, I kept thinking about how weird it was that he called me out. And he was really loud shuffling his newspaper.

So I moved elsewhere, and ate my cookies.

Second:

I went to the mall yesterday, and found the parking ramp crowded. So I stalked a lady and her kids as they found a space, and waited. She took forever getting settled, and cars started to line up behind me. I waited patiently, committed to the space, and a few cars bypassed the line, making the lady who was about to leave the space wait even more. So she backed out and faced me, and just as she passed me, another car, with a punk kid and his girlfriend arrived and immediately took it.

I found it shocking.

I used to wonder about the maniacs out there who flip out over traffic snafus and end up in jail for crippling someone who cut them off in traffic. Now I know where they're coming from.

I was offended. I thought about waiting and telling him I had been waiting for the space for a solid two-three minutes, that I had laid claim to it and backed up traffic for the space he had so callously usurped. Then I thought about throwing the half-full (in this case, half-empty) cup in my cup-holder at his car and leaving. It was only right.

He... must... pay.

Instead, I drove on, and found a space much farther away from the entrance and never saw him again.

Now, I might be blowing both of these little stories out of proportion, but I think they're clues to the meaning of the universe, somehow. And that is why I choose to share them with you.

Kids

I spent last week at my home away from home: Camp. I love how it doesn't need a more specific title than that... It's fine calling it camp. Lots of people have a "camp," and even though they all have different names, they're all just... camp.

Anyway, I told them I'd come up and help last week, and without having found sufficient excuse to get out of it, I made good on my promise. It's always good, no matter how awkward it can be to teach kids how to do stuff I don't know how to do, like cross-country skiing. But they have a way of figuring it out on their own, eventually. Usually. Sometimes. Maybe.

There were a bunch of sixth graders there. We have an indoor climbing tower, and each kid got a shot at it. I saw two grils scramble half-way up the wall quickly, stopped, and insist they had gone as far as they could and wanted to come down. Not more than 30 seconds on the wall, and they were defeated, even though they could easily have made it to the top. I just. Don't. Get it.

We took them on a hike out to the dunes. I wonder why they do this, in January, in 15 degree weather, with kids who would much rather play an x-box than go for a walk. But, like everything else you do at camp, 90% of the kids loved it and 10% hated it. I walked at the back, which was where the haters inevitably congregated. I had to coax a few kids off the ground, tears freezing on their cheeks, telling them that stopping in the snow and waiting for a bus to come was not an option. We got to the dunes, which are always windy and cool even in the summer, and the snow was blowing, freezing into chunks of mixed mud at the surface. The wind whipped across the dunes, breezed through my jacket and my other layers, broke my skin and needled at my bones. It was cold.

But... No one ever sees the dunes like this. Everyone comes when the sun is out and the water is warm. I don't know of anywhere else in the world where you can see a mini-desert covered with snow and break the sandy ice chunks under your boots. It was beautiful in a moonscape sort of way. And that alone makes it worthwhile to brave the cold to see it.

And because I just watched this and thought it was funny....

"Is this real life? Is this gonna be forever? Why is this happening to me?"

Happy janitors

Yesterday, I went with some friends to get some Chinese food. There’s a little restaurant at Monroe and Leonard with an unremarkable name, “China City” written in typically unremarkable Chinese-restaurant-block-lettering signage. But the food is hot and the price is right - $5.25. All you can eat buffet. Count me in. Though, as I tried to remind one of them later, “all you can eat” and “all you should eat,” are two very different things. Not that I always take that to heart. Any other day and I, too, would have gone for thirds, fourths, sevenths, whatever. But I’m trying to keep my girlish figure. New Year’s resolution or something.

Who cares about Chinese food, anyway. If you’ve been to China City, you might as well say you’ve been to First Wok and Golden Buffet and China Palace and Kowloon Abacus and everywhere else. They all make the same stuff, an Americanized version of what Americans think Chinese people eat. And, as a friend who used to fix kitchen appliances once told me, they’ve all got cockroaches. Without exception. But I don’t want to ruin your future Moo-shu pork experiences, so I’ll move on.

We talked about career things. Friend A is still in college, seven years in with another to go, and Friend B is learning that what he is doing isn’t what he wants to be doing. He’s looking for something else, with a little more purpose.

My generation is finishing college just in time to see ourselves get laid off. Lots of us are either looking for jobs or sitting in the last-in first-out position. This puts in me in pretty optimistic standing trying to start a career outside of pizza-delivery.

I’m quick to say I haven’t really felt the effects of the recession. But then I realize, oh yeah, I got laid off a year ago. I had just started my career as an associate editor, a step above coffee-getting guy. (Though, had the staff been any bigger, I probably would have started as coffee-getting guy.) And a few days before the Christmas party, the axe fell squarely on me. The pizza gig softened the blow. Living with my parents helped, too. Life said to me, go start over, this is not for you right now anyway. So I delivered pizzas and went to Africa and came home and delivered more pizzas.

As much as I write about the pizza-gig, you would probably think this is somehow central to my identity. But I don’t think it is. If your identity is based around how you spend your time, then I am first and foremost, a Guy Who Sleeps. Second, a Guy Who Delivers Pizza. And Third, a Guy Who Thinks About Sleeping. But if this job somehow goes away soon and I have to earn my money some other way, my “identity” wouldn't fundamentally change. So, I don’t think that’s who I am. I’m more than my job today. I will be more than my job tomorrow. The pizza gig is blog-fodder that happens to pay the bills.

We all live for something. We need significance, to justify our existence, to convince ourselves that we’re not bums. I guess the go-to identity thing for college kids is their career. Most people I know spent/are spending/will spend their college years trying to figure out the whole career thing. I sought my identity in my career for a long time, groaned over my major, dreaded the day I’d finish college without a clue. And here I am, holding my college degree, delivering pizzas. Sometimes it seems humiliating, and I like to be self-deprecating about it. But then I realize it’s not the most important thing about me.

What you do for a career - not terribly important. Sorry. That’s something I never learned in college. I’m inclined to make the most of my college education and its oppressive price tag, that’s why I seek a “real job” somewhere. But when I think about it, I’d be just as useful doing something else that doesn’t seem so glorious. The career is just a detail. That’s why there are happy janitors and sad lawyers. And lots of unhappy, “successful” famous people.

When you center yourself on anything other than what you were made for – careers, relationships, yourself - you’re probably not going to be happy. I ought to draw the theological parallel here that if God made us, and we don’t feel fulfilled, we probably ought to take a good look at Him to find out what we need to fulfill ourselves.

-----

(Some of my inspiration: Reading "The Reason for God" by Tim Keller)

Obama

I'm looking for a job. Thing is, I don't always want to bank on the thin slice of experience I've got. So I created this résumé:



(I blacked my address here out so no one can contact me and stalk me. Neat, huh?)

Get it? Hope and Change in place of experience?

No?

Oh, I see. You do get it, you just don't think it's that funny. That's okay.

Anyway. Job searching and snarky commentary aside, today was a big day. I'll spare you from having to read another person's thoughts on how important it is to see a black guy become the president. Not that I want to deny the hugeness or awesomeness of it... it's fascinating to see all this happen in my lifetime.

I generally try to stay away from writing politically, or having political conversations because inevitably, I end up being wrong. I wrote a bunch of stuff on my old blog about WMDs and stuff when we were going to war in Iraq. That turned out swimmingly. I've learned that however much I try to cement my political views, they still find a way of evolving. I don't just think I'm wrong. I think everyone's wrong. So I find it's best to stay mum on stuff until it's historical enough to have some consensus. Which doesn't mean I don't have opinions on things, it just means I don't care to share all of them.

So back to Obama. I am doing my best to have my opinions on him shaped not by talk radio, but by what he does as president. It's going to be a bitter, awful four years if I'm shuddering already at the sound of his voice before his first full day in office. And as much fun it is to have things bitter and awful, it's better to give him a fair chance.

And so it is, I've given him my trust. He's the president. He says he's got a plan to fix the economy, I'll hope it works. He says he's cutting my taxes, I'm going to enjoy it. The world says they like him, and I'll hope he keeps us on their good side. He says he's a Christian, I'm going to let his character support it.

I'm going to discard the Chicago politician résumé, the Senatorial voting record résumé, the Reverand Wright résumé, and and focus on the President résumé.

It's hard not to give credence to all of the hope that people have in him. Obama means a lot. He is, if nothing else, a symbol of the change people want and a chance to get things right. There was so much bitterness sent Bush's way. I guess I took offense to it because I voted for the guy. I still see him as a scapegoat for things that aren't his fault. For lots of people, he could do no right. And despite all he did wrong, he did some things right. Obama delivers a chance to get things right for all of those people who stood against Bush. So, now's their chance.

I'll let you know if my résumé gets me work. After all, it worked for Barack.

This is pizza delivery, not AAA.

Last night at work, some guy called and asked if I had a "one of those car chargers that jump dead batteries." I knew right where it was going.

I told him I didn't. He asked if anyone else did, and I said No, I didn't think so.

He told me to check.

So I checked. The other driver, Chris, was about to deliver a pizza (after all, that's what we do.) We asked him and he said no.

Phone guy asked me to drive down to him and give him a jump. I asked if he worked here, or if I knew him, because that was the only way any part of this would have seemed rational.

He said, "No, but I order from you religiously."

Now, most people don't realize this, but religiously ordering pizza from a particular establishment does not obligate that establishment to service your automobile.

I wanted to pass the buck. I told him I would ask the manager and I put him on hold.

Me: "Hey, Dave, this guy wants me to come down and give him a jump. Tell me it's illegal or we're liable or something and that I'm not allowed to."
Dave: "Who is it?"
Me: "I don't know him. He doesn't work here. He's just some guy who needs a jump. Just tell me I can't."
Dave: "Okay." He shrugged.

I picked up the phone. "We can't. We're not allowed to. We think it's illegal, and we'd be liable if anything happened." This is actually not far from the truth.

He started to tell me about his day, how he had a waterfall in his basement or something and that no one could fix that either, and some other stuff went wrong too. I don't doubt he might have had a horrible day. I felt for him a little. I told him I was sorry, and wished him luck.

And ten minutes later, my next delivery went right by his house.

So I put my sign in my trunk.