Category Archives: The Great Adventure

Thoughts from the front lines of love.

Road Trip!

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That’s right, kids, tomorrow my sweetie and I will be hitting the open road, just the two of us, a few clothes, and a cooler full of munchies. Good times!

We’re heading down to Los Angeles where my brother is currently hanging out. He was working on a movie, but it got canned, so instead he’s devoting his time to making a series of short films all tied together thematically. My better half and I will play a married couple, in a very very short film based on a story that first appeared right here at Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas — though I didn’t write it. (The story was posted as a comment before I moved the blog to the new platform, so it’s in the old comment system.)

fuego and company will also be filming a short based on the original blog episode that inspired the comment, and a couple of other shorts as well. Filming is under way already, but I haven’t heard how it’s going. They have a good crew of people and a good camera, though, so I’m optimistic.

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Thanks!

Table Manners

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I am not renowned for my grace. While I’m not infamous for my clumsiness either, when pressed I’d have to admit that on the scale of dexterity I have a definite sinister leaning. Thinking back on my life, I’m pretty sure I’ve always been that way, but it’s only recently that I’ve come to really appreciate my awkward ways. My spazticity is particularly obvious when I’m eating salad.

Take tonight, for instance. I was eating salad, from a plate, using a fork. As I raised a mouthful toward my maw a leaf of spinach leapt from the fork, and flew at my head. I dodged and the leaf hit my shoulder before falling into my lap, leaving red spots of raspberry vinaigrette behind. My sweetie, who caught all the excitement in her peripheral vision, reacted with alarm, perhaps because I had already dropped a steak knife on the floor near my bare foot.

Salad seems to be particularly tricky. Often as we sit sharing a big bowl of salad, I end up dropping significant chunks in my lap, or dripping salad dressing on my clothes, or finding some other way to get food where it was not intended to go. I’m not sure a fork is even the right utensil for eating many of the items we put in a salad, anyway. As I ponder, I wonder if something with more of a grabbing action would be appropriate for items that are difficult to pierce when they’re in the bottom of a bowl. Maybe a miniature version of the tool we use to serve the salad in the first place; a hinged tool with a pair of sporks at the end that could be used to both grab and scoop. I think that would increase the percentage of items that reach my mouth, but the transfer at that point might be tricky.

Still, I think I may be onto something there. In the meantime, I’ll make sure I have towels handy.

Thanks!

Habits

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For a couple of weeks now I’ve been living with my sweetie, an arrangement that takes some getting used to for all concerned. It’s also an opportunity. What I do for the next few weeks will likely form patterns that shape the rest of my life. No pressure or anything.

Generally I’m a pretty agreeable guy, not a bad roommate overall, but I can be lazy. I like having someone take care of me, and the love of my life enjoys doing it. Over fifty years, however, that could get old, so I’ve tried to find a couple of things I can do to make life go more smoothly, like drying and putting away the dishes. That one is fun because we’re in the kitchen together, and it’s something that doesn’t have a lot of “you’re doing it wrong!” potential (at least once I figure out where everything goes).

That and I carry stuff. Hm… maybe I need to find a couple more.

Other new habits I’ve inherited. I now work out three times a week. It still seems a little odd to me to stay indoors walking on a treadmill when it’s a nice day for a walk outside, but the exercise excursion is a group thing, which means I actually do it, rather than idly think about what a nice day it would be to take a walk.

Diet has also changed dramatically. Where I would prepare myself a dish, my best friend makes meals, complete with the healthy parts. Friuts consumption is way up, and also leafy greens. Even… broccoli. A while back my girlfriend said, “if I could change one thing about you, it would be to have you like broccoli.” Considering all my other warts, it was pretty generous of her to put that at the top of the list, so I figured I’d give the nasty things another shot. And you know what? Add broccoli to the list of things that should never be cooked. Whoever first cooked the stuff and then did it again knowing the result is a sick individual. I won’t say that the broc is my favorite veggie or that I go out of my way to get the biggest chunks in the salad bowl, but I’ll eat the stuff and know that it’s making me healthier and my sweetheart happier.

Tonight is steak, with other stuff, and a big bowl of salad that we share after the main meal. The salad part is a new tradition that I really like. It’s healthy and fun! Now we just have to break the bad habit of watching tv late and sleeping too late in the mornings. It’s just so nice hanging out together in the evenings, eating salad or other snacks, and enjoying the company.

So here I am, a dish-towel-totin’, broccoli-eatin’ dude, in charge of opening the wine. Don’t worry, though. I still say ‘hefti’ after I belch.

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Thanks!

The Beginning of a Great Adventure

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Here I am, in one of the nicer corners of San Jose, California. San Jose would not be my first choice for city of residence, being not so much a city as a large chunk of the continuous sprawl of alternating housing developments, strip malls, and office parks that is Silicon Valley. The city does have one thing going for it, however: That Girl lives here, and now I do too.

This marks a pretty major turning point in my life and therefore this blog as well. Up until now That Girl has been on the periphery of the blog, someone mentioned occasionally in passing but not a major figure. That’s not because she hasn’t been a big part of my life the last year and a half, it’s because I haven’t really figured out how to write about it. Plus, when one is a third of the world apart and communication is intermittent, a poorly-chosen blog word could lead to undue strife that would be resolved in seconds face-to-face.

I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to approach this, but perhaps now it will be easier. We’ll see. Inevitably there will be times when That Girl reads something in my blog that really she should have heard straight from me. There will be times I’ll have to choose between telling a good story and watching out for my sweetie’s feelings (and, well, some of it’s none of your damn business), and often the story will come out on the losing end. That’s just how it’s going to have to be. The other thoughts can go into my fiction.

Having a relationship is not scaling Everest, but in it’s own way the risks and rewards are even greater. It would be foolish for me to attempt Everest in my current condition, and I’m afraid that my good-boyfriend skills are also alarmingly atrophied. Still, I’m really damn excited about this journey, really happy that That Girl found me and spent years pounding against my cluelessness until I got the idea that she might be interested. All credit goes to her for that.

It’s an adventure almost all of us experience at one time or another, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I’m not sure how I’m going to approach writing about it yet, but I’m still the same guy that can be fascinated by the tiny things, and I hope that there will be enough of those to shine a little light on this thing we call love.

So, welcome to the Great Adventure!

Thanks!