It’s awkward when you’re having a conversation with someone and they reach into their pants and start messing with their junk.
Wait. Here, have some background story.
Some years ago I moved in with a good friend of mine. He was under lease and his roommate bailed on him. I was on a month-to-month, so me and my then-girlfriend, the EVIL-EX, moved in with him. We’re still good friends, despite the adage that one should: “make your roommate your friend, but never make your friend your roommate”. But thankfully, we’re no longer roommates.
One thing that irked us was having to repeatedly ask him not to stick his hands down his pants.
I mean, he’d dig down deep with one or both hands and really go to work. He didn’t have an STD or anything, he just really liked to scratch. He didn’t do this in public, but, as he explained, he figured it was OK to do around people he trusted. Let me reemphasize that: He put the energy into behaving better some times, but not others.
Fallacy one: It’s OK to behave the same way with your closest friends / family /loved ones as you would when you’re alone.
Related story. Bear with me, this really is related.
Back when I was a young man in college I was in a relationship with another winner (as bad as the EVIL-EX). This was the girl who later, two boyfriends later, liked to brag that she’d cheated on every boyfriend she ever had. This was a point of pride for her. Actually that has nothing to do with this story I just wanted to bitch for a second.
Speaking of bitch — while she was always sweet to her casual acquaintances and everyone around her loved her, she was far less good to her close friends, her family, and you guessed it, her boyfriend. She was short tempered, rude, inconsiderate, and selfish. She would snap and insult. She was this way with: Her parents. Her sister. Her me. It didn’t matter. (And yet she doesn’t make the cut as “the evil ex”. I’ll just let you imagine other details.)
What boggled me for the longest time was how she could behave so badly and then the phone would ring or a less-close friend would show up and suddenly she was all glitter and rainbows. The instant she was off the phone / friend was gone, the fangs came out.
I tried to talk to her about this. She said she had to work to be nice around other people. With her loved ones, she could really relax and be her true self.
I might have then asked her if her true self was a raving bitchcake. Cut me a break; I was twenty-two — still very young — and still had a lot to learn. Of course in hindsight what I should have said was “I’m breaking up with you” and never looked back. But no. Of course I tried to make it work and … well that’s another, crappier story.
Anyhoo, she was essentially willing to put her hands down the pants of her id and mess around with her figurative junk in front of us.
See what I did there? I related both stories.
Fallacy two: It’s OK to be your worst around those you love the best.
In both cases these people were mistaking “being yourself” with trust.
OK, you get it, but you still don’t really get it. Let me try again.
Role play this with me. You’re coming to visit me. I’m your best friend or your boyfriend or your brother or your priest or your shrink or your father, mother, concubine, pet dachshund, … shit I don’t care. I’m something really close to you is-the-point and you’re equally close to me.
You’re really excited to see me. I’m really excited to see you. One thing though, I’ve had a terrible, fucked up day and I’m going to let you know that, because we’re besties, or bros, or wtf evar. (Yes. I used both “wtf” and “evar” in a sentence. I’m hip! This is the blogosphere! Who are you to judge me?!)
There are two ways I can do this:
One, I can “be my true self”. I can stick my hands down my pants and scratch, literally or figuratively. I can snap about you getting in my way in the kitchen right after I asked you to get something for me in the fucking kitchen. I can forget to tell you how important you are to me because you should already effing know that and this is about me.
To describe this method: I can fail in a bad way.
Second option: I can talk about my true feelings while behaving as your favorite person. I can tell you how important you are to me. I can get things for myself in the kitchen, or ask you to do it and then thank you. I can tell you the things that bothered me that day, without putting you down.
Let’s go all meta again. If I choose option one, how do you think you’re going to react? I mean it. Even as my forgiving, loving, non-judgmental, best gal, you’re going to put up a wall between us. Maybe you just won’t put up with that shit. Or maybe, this one time because we’re such good friends / relatives / etc.s, you will put up with it. But you’re not going to be particularly sympathetic and I’m going to feel your lack of sympathy. Your closing off will fuel my rage.
Cycle repeats.
On the other hand, if I choose option two, you will open yourself up to me. If when I first see you I tell you, verbally, how excited I am to see you because your wonderful and I’ve had a shitty day, you will make yourself emotionally available to me. All the way. Now I can talk about everything that’s bothering me. You’ll put up with it because you like me and care about me and I’m not mistreating you, and you’ll work to make me feel better. Your compassion will fuel my healing.
Obviously, there’s a limit to this, I can’t do it all the time, it takes too much energy from you. But if I were the kind of person who did this all the time, I wouldn’t be your bestie, now would I?
Anyway, about that option two, it’s the only option to choose. Ever. You’re going to compartmentalize your feelings away from your behavior. You can absolutely trust the people you love to accept anything you need to talk about, but not to accept any shit-ass way you want to behave.
Does this balance sound familiar? It should. Pretend you’ve started dating someone. Things are going really well, you’re out on your third date. The third date is significant. You know you’re in good, but you can still fuck everything up. Oh, and because the universe has a sense of humor, you’ve had a really shitty day. You can’t not talk about your day because it’s so obviously affecting you, but you can’t be an asshole or you’ll lose the person. So you talk. Your talking will actually bring them closer to you, but you’ll guard and not offend. That’s why I call option two the “Third-Date Rule”. Because that’s how you’re going to behave with the people you love.
Never ever relax beyond the Third-Date Rule. Not with your lover. Not with your best friend. Not with your brother or mom… OK, “Third Date” is kind of a stupid name for a rule you’re going to follow with your family — unless you’re from West Virginia in which case it’s a perfect name. If you think of a better name for it, you can put it in the comments.
At first the energy required for the Third-Date Rule is daunting. It takes work. You don’t want to work, you’ve had a bad day. You want to stick your hands down your pants or tell your mother she was a lousy cook. Or whatever you want to do because… well I don’t really care what your “because” is. What you’re failing to consider is that there are two “fuel tanks” that are low here. There is your energy required to behave deliberately, and there is your emotional-well-being energy. You have a choice, if you don’t work to control your behavior, it will cost you in emotional-well-being. But if you do work to behave better, your emotional well being will be filled by the people closest to you.
Ultimately, this becomes freeing. When you start treating your happiness as a marathon instead of a series of sprints, you really start to get there. This is how to make your long term relationships solid. You’ll find that when you keep this little part reined in and not let it poison your actions, the person you need close will get closer. It will make you feel more connected, not less.
Confession, I don’t really know how to make your long term relationships work, so I shouldn’t say that I do. But I do know many ways to make a relationship to fail. Breaking the Third-Date Rule is one of them.
That might be why I have cats.
Look, point being. Always try to enrich the lives of the people around you, even when you need to ask them to enrich yours.
This is a brief post about wrists. Your wrists are good to you, be good to your wrists. If your wrists are hurting, it’s your fault. Not theirs. Stop being a dick to them. As per normal, I’m just going to link to people who are smarter than me. Actually it’s wrist and shoulders… moving on.
This post isn’t really for regular folks, it’s for people who ask more of their bodies. If you’re a regular folk whom happens to have pain from too much time on the computer or other repetitive, sit-on-your-butt work, try this post from the good folks at BoingBoing. And remember to “hold your wrists in a neutral position” while using a keyboard or mouse. That means elevated (flat). Not wresting on the desk or a gel pad. Actively holding up your wrists like a pianist will take care of most simple pain. It will also make you stand like a dinosaur for a while, but you’ll get through it.
For athletes — hand balancers, equilibre, acrobats, aerialists or anyone who asks a more from their wrists:
Start with this forum post. Did you click on it? Those bold-blue words are a link. What? Are you new to the internets? It’s like a series of tubes, invented by Al Gore or some bullshit.
If you’re lazy or in a hurry, the short version is:
Get into a pushup support position on your fists with your hands turned sideways. As you lower into the pushup, allow the wrists to bend outward and your bodyweight to descend upon the back of your wrists and hands. As you ascend out of the pushup, straighten the wrists simultaneously along with the elbows returning back up onto your fist.
– Coach Sommers
And watch this:
But really, that forum is great. Go spend some time there.
That was from Coach Sommers, who has raised a lot of Olympians and has long preached gymnastic training for strength.
As you can imagine, pushing his kids through such rigors he’s also very concerned with keeping them healthy. Thus, the wrist exercises.
I came to his website through this post by Ido Portal (who I was lucky enough to train with last fall). And this excellent post on daily preparation for training.
If you’re lazy, then there is no help for you. Go read that post.
I do all the wrist stuff he lists there, as well as all the shoulder stuff there and on his other post here.
I don’t do the capoeira stuff. Just the shoulder stuff.
The two important shoulder series are here:
And here:
And another great one from Coach Sommers is an exercise called Wall Extensions.
Just as a frame of reference. Ido had us warm up any handbalancing with:
1) 10 dorsal pushups
2) 10 finger-tip pushups, elbows in. The fingers should “gather” the ground actively, not passively resting on your fingertips.
3) 10 wrist pushups
4) 10 “first knuckle” pushups. That’s just a pushup where your elbows are locked (they never bend during the exercise) the thumb stays off the ground and you push the palm off the ground until vertical while leaving the fingers flat. Push into the knuckle behind the index finger. Don’t let your thumb touch the ground. Lower back down to your palm. Never let your thumb touch the ground. It’s only a movement in your hand, not your arms. The elbows stay locked, the inside of the elbow angled toward the wall in front of you (like you’re doing a handstand).
Why should you listen to Ido? Because Ido is an unbelievable badass!
OK. That’s the short version. Now go do wrist pushups!
-UglyElf
So I haven’t been writing much lately. It’s one part busy, one part feeling like nothing I have to say is worth saying. It looks like Both TeaElf and TangoElf are now blogging on their own blogs, which for some weird reason makes me feel like I failed them a little. And in truth, all writing has been hard for me lately, fiction, reviews, and journaling. I don’t know what’s up with that.
Anyway, I’m going to try and get some updates made for the site. I have two books I want to review. Renovation is coming up. Circus training is crazy and fun, if equally frustrating and discouraging. And I should probably write something about the frustrations of recovering from minor surgery while training like an eighteen-year old at age thirty-five.
Edit: It was a combination thereof, plus not realizing there was a plugin Gregory uses that I don’t have.
I’m currently blogging on another wordpress site. Unfortunately, apparently the person who set it up thinks I will explode it. I want to verify that my inability to post images stems from their decisions, not from my incompetence. To do so, I need to make sure I can post media on here. So – test one
Now on to other things. There is an interesting possibility up in PDX, maybe on over to the east coast. Then there is always
oh, what? Yeah, that thing. Finally. Long enough, you ask? Well, yeah, always takes longer than you think, no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy, don’t count your chickens, you know how these things go. So.
When you start if feels so far away that you can’t even imagine it. Half way there, past the first rush of grad school and the stress of the first couple of years and papers, and you aren’t thinking of anything except the next hypothesis, the next experiment, and the next beer.
By the third and fourth year, it’s mostly the beer, and you don’t want to think about it. You’re not ready, but some of your cohort have already graduated and you are feeling a little stale. Is this really the thing? Is this really the One career? Should I even finish? Starbucks has openings.
Finally, the topic, an idea, maybe this is good enough. They agree, suggest a few changes, another experiment here, drop that one, these analysis. Move on. Next. You have real work to do.
Writing….
Writing….
Writi….no, not quite, a little more. Actually, no, not entirely sure. I’ve started looking, of course, I plan to do more of the same: more research, more teaching…
Writing….
Then there is that bright line. This term, this month, this week, and they have their copies, and the date is finalized, and now they are there, in the room, watching your talk, giving comments asking questions and you think, reply, and then you are done. The talk is over. Some more questions, then silence. Everyone leaves the room and you pace, outside, as they talk, inside.
What is the usual time on these things? You don’t remember from those other defenses you attended. At least, it never felt this long. Who the hell is allergic to apples, anyway? Will he hold it against me?
Then the door opens and you go back in, the handshake, the , “Congratulations, Dr. …” and then silence again. And nothing has changed and everything is the same and yet, it is like looking at the train station as you pass. From this side it looks different.
And now new questions, new hypothesis, wondering, should you get off at the next stop or ride longer, see what is on the other side of that tunnel? You don’t know. But you learned at least one thing in grad school and this train has a good dinning car.
This is pretty much just copied from an fb comment I made. I’m a little loopy on percocet/oxycodone, so it’s not the best post in the world. Go figure.
Hey, all! Thanks for the well wishing! I’m doing fine. I knew I shouldn’t have worried, but I did. Here’s the short version. I had three procedures: “Right endoscopic maxillary antrostomy”, “submucous resection of turbinates”, and “septoplasty”.
Stop reading now if you are squeamish. I’m not kidding. This is all pretty gross.
The first one was removing an area of bone to increase the opening between the right cheek sinus and the nasal passages. Then he removed a bunch of “gunk” — apparently a technical term — from that sinus and put a piece of degradable padding in there. This will take a year to fully heal. Yuck.
The second was carving out some tissue from my over sized turbinates, basically just making the breathing passages a little bigger.
The third one was more intense then he thought it was going to be. He wanted to carve down the deviated septum a little, again to help me breath, but it turned out to be the bone that was deviated, not just the cartilage. It’s what I get for having a rough childhood. So he detached the cartilage, cut off some of the bone, scraped off some of the cartilage, and then sowed it all back together. I now have something I think he called a ‘mattress stitch’, as well as several individual stitches, holding the inside of my nose together.
Spring has sproinged and I’ve notice a lot of my friends are making newly-woken-from-hibernation grumbling noises about wanting to eat better.
Awesome!
Of course I encourage this. I’m posting a primer on how to eat well, linking to some good articles on MDA. Mark’s Daily Apple can be a little overwhelming, so I’m suggesting you start with four specific articles, acquaint yourself with the site in general, and read more when you have time.
Congratulations on eating better! You’re doing a great job!
Caveat: this site (and my own diet) are on the extreme side. I think if you push yourself too far in too fast, you’ll abandon it. Maybe I’m wrong. But my gut says that for you, you should learn all you can and implement what you’re comfortable with. Think of it like a dietary grammar, you should know the rules before you break them.
This (go briefly glance but then come right back) — http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ — is the site I get much of my information from. But please do click through the links within the articles to their sources. I sometimes disagree with MDA, but I also often agree. It’s a little dizzying, so to get started, go to the getting started page (again, just a quick peak please, then come back): Getting Started.
Maybe read all the titles before you click on any of the links? Did you notice there’s an entire section with eleven articles on Eating Well on the Cheap? So don’t think you can’t afford it. You can!
OK, that’s still overwhelming. For you, start with the discussion about protein, then learn about sugars, make friends with fats, and last (for now) get to know grains.
2. Sugar — Definitive Guide to SugarsNote: This is really important. Remember when I said you should click through to the links in these articles? You SHOULD. One of the best sources of information on how the body actually WORKS with food is in this article. It’s the link to Dr. Lustig’s Video, The Bitter Truth About Sugar. It’s long, but you really really should watch it. I watched it a little bit at a time. That was the only way I could fit it into my schedule. So even if you can only watch the first five minutes now, go ahead and start. I’m not linking to it, you should have no trouble finding it in that sugar article if you’re actually reading it!
3. Fats — Fats and Getting over you fear of fats (and getting rid of your mood swings). Do click the link to read the rest of the story.
Optional (I promised you’d only have to read four). I thought the article on cholesterol was really interesting.
True story (and I can show you the letters from my doctor), a year ago my doctor threatened to put me on statins. This year, with nearly the same scores, he says I’m super healthy and doing great. He now believes the same things that article says, but a year ago he didn’t at all. Doctors are funny people.
Notice you’re missing something SUPER important in that list I gave you. Vegetables. For now, eat as many vegetables as you can of as many colors as possible. What you’re building towards is five colors of vegetable per meal, every meal (even breakfast). But for now, just eat a lot of vegetables and have a lot of variety. Then look up better information when you have time. (hint: make the time.)
When considering fruit, it makes a great dessert and a great snack. Enjoy. But keep it to snacks and desserts. Don’t let it kill your appetite for protein or veggies.
Wait! You say. What about my ?! Everything in moderation? Right!?
We need to define moderation. Moderation is an exception to the rules that keep you within your goals. Are you within your goals? If so, there is some room for “moderation”. If you’re not, there is no such thing as moderation. Don’t cheat yourself.
That said:
I think the most important thing you can do with food choices right now is to celebrate your successes and not dwell on any lapses. Positive reinforcement will guide you down the right path. The mind is a powerful thingum. If you try this way of eating, you’ll see positive changes and like them. Don’t think about your weight, just watch your shape. Give it two months and be amazed! Last note: this is not a diet to be followed for a short while before reverting to your previous crap way of eating (yup, I said it — crap), better eating is a way of life.
I’m helping a friend set up a WordPress site for the first time. In the process, I needed to send her the plugins I use, and a brief explanation as to why.
I figure that’s useful stuff to know, so I’m going to put it up here and you can use it too.
What are your favorite plugins? Add them in the comments. Extra points if you can tell me a good plugin for a flickr widget, and one for a flickr gallery.
I’ve divided the plugins I use into three groups.
Green for those you should use.
Blue for those you may want to use
Red for those which you probably don’t want to use (I use them for my special project)
Akismet (A must have plugin to prevent spam from comments and contact forms)
All in One SEO Pack (A must have way to add Search Engine Optimization to your site and every page)
Contact Form 7 (A simple contact form. There are others, you’ll probably need one and this has been fine for me.)
Executable PHP widget PHP Code Widget[edit: this was renamed at some point] (A nice plugin that lets you use WordPress PHP inside a widget the same way you do with pages / templates / posts. I use it to list recent blog posts, excluding my private members posts)
Google Analytics for WordPress (A must have plugin to track the traffic on your site)
Google XML Sitemaps (A must have plugin that makes it easy for google to map your site accurately)
Really Simple CAPTCHA (A simple way to cut out bots from using your contact forms)
WordPress.com Stats (Gives a nice graphical way to see how your site is being used)
WordPress Database Backup (It regularly emails you a copy of the text from your database. If you have to move your site suddenly, you could use this to recreate the content — except the pictures)
WP Super Cache (Speeds up the delivery of your site by caching pages that haven’t changed. I believe I remember configuring this to work with nginx.)
Reliable Twitter (It nice to keep your front page always a little different. Mirror your twitter posts to your site to do just that!)
WP-Polls (People like polls. — actually I’ve never used them. But I like knowing that I could…)
This stuff is all used to make a private area of my website for me and my friends. Posts can be private; public; or first part public, second part private. I had to fix a bug in
WP-Members, and another one in WordPress Access Control by hand. I couldn’t figure out how to let the authors know. Anyway, you probably don’t need this unless you’re trying
to do something complicated like I am.
WordPress Access Control
Frontpage Manager
Profile Pic
WP-Members (Not to be confused with WP-Member — not kidding, that’s different)
I’m sitting at the end of a five & 1/2 minute hallway.
Unknown Highland Ruins
Actually it’s only about a minute long, but the musically obsessed / literati out there will appreciate the reference to a song and a book written respectively by a sister / brother duo. I got a good four hours of sleep last night, then my good friend Insomnia dusted the sand from my eyes, I eventually got bored, showered, and grabbed my laptop and headed outside so I wouldn’t borrow my travel mates. I’m now sitting in the hallway outside our room (room #5 at the Bazpacker’s hostel) taking advantage of the free time to catch up with you, dear reader.
I’m not going to spend to much time on Day 2. I want to get to the next, Day 3, because it was awesome. That should hint to you that I’m at the beginning of Day 4.
When I left you last time, Insomnia and I were hanging out in the common room and the whereabouts of my travel companions were unknown. I wish I could tell you they were on a great adventure: fighting soccer hooligans, trapped in The City Below, walking with ghosts, carousing, fucking, haunting a graveyard, or even pulling the comely inhabitants of Scotland. They were none of these things. At six in the morning when I left the library of Castle Rock Hostel, I passed through the common room and they were there, sober as dowagers, chatting away. They swore they hadn’t moved all night and Axel had only recently left them. I don’t know how I could have slipped past without running into them, but I had. Good thing too, Day 1 wouldn’t have written itself.
So my insomnia worked out for me then, we were all sleepless. It’s not as welcome now, they’re sleeping like babes, and I shall be tired today.
Anyway, we met up. I tried to get another half hour of sleep and failed; Cameron cleaned up and Adam read. We regrouped and headed into the Edinburgh morning. It was beautiful. We’ve been damn lucky with the weather.
Cameron & Adam, CityLink bus station, Edinburgh
We found the bus station with oodles of time. We didn’t find our tickets. More properly our ticket numbers — all you need to ride with Megabus. We hunted for wifi and breakfast. We found wifi at McDonald’s, and they found breakfast there too. I had a pemmican bar. I think I won that round.
With wifi we had our ticket numbers and went back to the bus terminal. The bus ran late but we met and chatted with another American expatriate. His name was Jay, he played American Football for the University of Edinburgh while pursuing his graduate degree in creative writing. Nice guy. He’d personally met a (grammar) hero of mine, Geoffrey Pullum. Jay said Pullum was a brilliant but intimidating and snarky professor. I wasn’t surprised.
Taken from the window
On the bus we slept. I slept a little they slept a lot. I got some beautiful photos of the Highlands out the window.
We alighted in Inverness stumbled groggily to our hostel and then did stuff. OK! OK! I’m tired! I’ll try to be more descriptive than that. We at at the Castle Tavern, which is right next to the Hostel. Adam and I each had the cod and loved it. Cameron had a vegetable panino and hated it. We all drank scotch (my notes are in the room, I’ll have to remember to add them. I’m too lazy to add them. Ask me if you’re interested in my opinions on scotch.)
Cameron & Scotch
After that we went and checked out Inverness Castle. Although the site has been home to castles since 1057 — nearly a thousand-effing-years! — the current castle was built in 1837. It’s home to the Sheriff Court of Inverness and as such is not open to the public. But we walked about outside it. It was good.
I have to be honest, this day is a blur. Sleeplessness is not good for one’s memory. We did have a beautiful walk along the banks and over the bridges of the river Ness.
Shut up and eat your muffin
And the quote of the day was: “Why are you sitting on my chest?” “Shut up! It’s time for your muffin.”
Day 3 will be a much more epic post, I promise. For now, I’m waking up the troops so we can be on our way. I’m doing it with this song (is that cruel?)
