The Unthinking Soldier...i.e. The Traffic Cop

Living in downtown Indy has its perks...And when I think of one, I'll let everyone know about it. In any case, after a long hard day at work, like today, nothing could be better than driving all the way home, parking on the 2nd floor of the garage next to the elevator, crossing the street to my apartment building, kicking off my shoes, and relaxing. For me, there is no such luck.

As Richel once pointed out, nothing ever comes easy for me. I had to claw and scratch my way from one stage of my life to another. Confronting life's challenges and overcoming them is all part of life; there's no avoiding that. But when I have to claw and scratch just to get home on a Friday night, that's when it gets to be a bit too much.

Every few days, the Conseco Field House is jammed packed with Pacers fans from the wood-work. And for some God-forsaken reason the police block off the streets around the Conseco Field House before, during, and after the game when all the fans are crossing the street to and from the buidling. The problem is I live across the street from the stadium and I can't drive home with the streets blocked off. So every time this happens I always have to drive up to the blockade and argue with the cop about letting me through.

The first time it happened, Richel and I were on our way back from the pizza place. I slowly crawled up to the police blockade and this young cop looked at me like I was an idiot and kept pointing to the right, indicating that I should turn that way. I rolled down the window and told the cop,
"I live in that building," as I pointed to the Harness Factory Lofts.
"What building?" asked the budding Einstein law enforcer. He didn't even turn his head to look in the direction I was pointing. Then another voice chimed in. It was an older, more experienced-sounding voice with authority.
"Let him through!" the voiced called demandingly. The young cop backed away and waved me through with his vacant expression.

Chance would have it that I run in to the very same brainiac cop, again. Same deal. He kept directing me to turn away as I slowly crept up to the blockade. Once more, I opened the window and told him that I lived just down the street from the blockade. For some reason it took several repetitions for this to finally sink in and the guy finally let me through. I guess I should be thankful I didn't have to repeat myself 5 times instead of 4.

Christmas at Home

Well, a lot has happened in the past week. I finally went home to visit last week. I believe it was 12/16 or so. Anyhow, everytime I go home it seems that everything was smaller than I remembered it. Oddly enough, the more time I spend at home, the more things "grow" back to normal size.

For example, when I first arrived at Mom and Dad's place the first thing i noticed was how low all the counters were. Then I noticed how low all the sinks and chairs were, and then how low all the door knobs were, and how low all the doorways were. The streets seemed to be narrower and the blocks seemed to be shorter. But over the course of a week, everything seemed to slowly 'grow' back to normal: by the time I left the counter tops weren't as low, anymore. Nor were the door knobs or doorways. I don't think I shrank in that period of time.

Goh thinks I'm probably more accustomed to how big things are out here in the mid-west. Possibly.

In any case, it was good to see all my brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, friends and relatives, again. I can't believe how much my nephews and nieces have grown. They're the only things that seem to get bigger and bigger each time I visit home, unlike everything else.

Opening gifts was always an impressive spectacle: 15 people randomly tearing open gifts and boxes until Goh's living room was nothing but a sea of moving wrapping paper being torn open and scrunched in to balls accompanied by the cacophony of rustling paper and 15 people speaking all at once . And of course there was the occaisional camera flash every 10 seconds. In the middle of all that, Quinn managed to actually converse with a few people over my cel phone.

Eventually, the chaos and excitement came to an end. The presents were randomly placed all over the living room and people went back to their activities immediately preceding the ritual: for the adults, it was hanging out in the living room and for the kids, it was playing video games. That lasted for another 30 minutes or so before people started going home.

Eventually, by 10pm the night's festivities came to an end. We all said our good-byes and parted once, again. Another Christmas Eve had come an gone just as the year had.

Digging for Treasure

This week I came home to San Francisco to visit the family, take care of wedding business and believe it or not, to clean. Yes, clean. That was one of the things I had on my agenda: to clean up Mom and Dad's place. Well, nobody has ever had to worry about Dad when it comes to cleaning and organizing. In fact, my super anal/organized brothers learned their habits from Dad, himself. Meanwhile, my sister and I learned the not-so-organized method and madness from Mom. In any case, over the past few years I've been trying to become more organized.

Messy is one thing, which I am. Absolute chaos is another, which is what Mom's room was like. Just imagine if you took a stack of papers and threw them up in the air as high as you could and allowed it to settle wherever, that is what Mom's desk looked like. And even I set limits when it comes to messiness these days. Needless to say, I took it upon myself to clean the room up (I couldn't stand it any longer). Interestingly enough, here is a list of the things I found at her desk:

1. Christmas photos from 2004
2. A tube of Ben-Gay
3. Random jewelry consisting of necklaces, rings, earrings all mixed within stacks of papers.
4. Bank statements from 2003.
5. Child psychology notes from the 1970's. Could be 1960's.
6. A nail filer
7. Pens without ink
8. Paperclips
9. Hole punchers
10. Numerous business cards
11. Numerous restaurant receipts from 2004-2005
12. Pilates instructional booklets
13. Dental floss
14. A brief case with an inch of dust sitting on it with papers dating back to 1989
15. A brand new credit card that has not been activated, yet but is expiring soon

Any of this sound familiar?