Heaven Holds a Sense of Wonder

I think it would be fun to imagine that we are all guests here on this planet, that if you drew a line segment from the sun, through the Earth's position when you were born, and off into the never ending distance, that would be where you are really from.

Around the Sun in 365 Days!

I turned 26 recently. Kev doesn't know it, but he won a bet with me, because last year I bet him that I would act normal about my birthday, and throw a big party. I was secretly planning to invite everybody but him out of spite. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about my birthday. I spent most of it on an Airbus next to a small child that liked playing a game where she handed me a large quantity of small strips of paper, one at a time. This game didn't appear to have any rules, but we played it at least three times. Her name was Samantha, and her constant attention (at least while she was awake) melted through the all of the antisocial tendencies I could muster.

Now that I am 26 I am, officially, older than I've ever wanted to be. I understand you have to be at least 35 to be President of the United States, but I'm pretty sure neither of our incumbent political parties would ever let that happen. If they are even separate parties. I wrote a big melodramatic bromide about being so old and something about regrets, but I wrote it in Notepad (best Microsoft program ever) on my laptop, which is all the way in the other room. So instead, here, I will simply reflect on what I've learned over the past year. Last year actually started pretty bad. I think I got dumped/rejected by three of the four girls I've ever fallen in love with, pretty much all in a row. So the year only got better. Highlights include Bailey's New Years Eve Party, Betsy, Nicole and Scott's wedding...and pretty much every other time I've been to Philly. I'm sure something good happened in Seattle too. Seattle is great. Oh yeah, the Halloween party. That was in Seattle, and that turned out WAY better than the previous Halloween.

As an introvert trying to be an extrovert, I have learned the following things in the past year:

something about looking people in the eye, and smiling. You can't really look people in the eye without smiling, because people think that's creepy. Kyle says people like hearing their name, and he is dead on, however I'm still forgetting everyone's name, so thats out

something about doing what your afraid of, at least when it comes to interacting with people. Whether its confronting someone about something, or asking someone to dance, or talking to a girl you've never met before, spending 90 hours one on one with a total strangers who intimidate you, taking baby steps to be the opposite of passive-aggressive, putting effort into conversations with strangers on planes, going to NYC and spending all day trying to talk to people, asking out that hot girl you met on the plane that blew you off, going to a party where you know exactly one person...it all helps. Every other week I do something that I realize I would have never done a couple years ago.

saying it out loud when you need to tell someone they're beautiful. I hate telling girls they are beautiful. I tend to avoid* girls that know they are beautiful, because they tend to be impossible to deal with. However the girls that don't know it often won't believe it when you tell them, which leads to a strange sort of argument, one that I know from experience you can't win. Nevertheless, in my opinion, saying it is better than silence. Also, fun fact: if I think you are beautiful, that puts you in the 7th or 93rd percentile or something. Ok I don't really understand the math anymore, but I ran the numbers (don't ask how) and out of every 100 girls I meet, I think about 7 are attractive. I'm not exaggerating.

*avoid...get rejected...very fine line

Usually around my birthday I identify about 20 things that are wrong with my life (with being single near the top of the list, except you can never say that out loud because all your friends start acting really annoying) and about 250 things to do to fix it. Learning to fly was a line item in such a list from about two years ago. So you can see just how efficient that system is. I think this year I'm going to limit myself to one change: do less things that will theoretically benefit me at some distance point in the future that I don't want to reach, and spend more effort trying to enjoy my life. As soon as I finish the flying lessons.



In other news

What else was I going to ramble about...my checkride is Sunday. I need to prepare a flight plan to a destination of the check airman's choosing. My check airman has decided not to call me back yet. Work is getting pretty lame...my schedule sucks and for a programmer I sure haven't done much programming lately. I watched an awesome movie called Primer because it was in an XKCD strip. It was amazing. Unfortunately, it was unecessarily confusing, which could have easily been remedied by spending more time on certain key pieces, but I can't complain since it was done on an indie budget, and despite the fact that it was about something as ridiculous as time travel it had more (real) science in it than...probably every mainstream movie I've ever seen, put together. I'm planning on watching it another 5 times to understand what happens.

I've continued work on my version of Taylor Swift's love story. I am considering taking Kyle's advice, and recording the guitar in one track and then sing in another track while I listen to the guitar part. I had really wanted to make a youtube video, with the secret hope that girls everywhere would fall in love with me, and Taylor Swift would see it and one thing would lead to another and we'd play a duet on a stage somewhere. However, instead of doing that, and beacuse Adam and I spent a lot of time perusing the Lego store in King of Prussia, I am considering making a music video with Lego bricks (<- thats how the Lego company actually expects people to refer to legos). It would certainly give me an excuse to have legos again...but it could easily be more detrimental to my social life than even the flying. So we'll see. If I end up dying cold and alone, reast assured they will have to dig my body out from under a mountain of legos.

[Update]...

I forgot to write about the karaoke bar I went to with Betsy, Kat and Natasha. It was awesome. I'd read about these places on the internet before; apparently its a big thing in Japan to like get all serious about Karaoke and have your own private room and stuff. There is a place in chinatown (Philly) that does it. They serve sushi and drinks and there's a big tv and two mikes you can pass around. And its a Japanese system so all the American songs are labeled "foreign." Its hilarious. Anyway, I want to go back.

Also, I got bored in a meeting once when I happened to have also gotten McDonald's food, and starting peeling off the monopoly pieces. I don't know if it is still going on, but if it is, I have Reading Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad, and B & O Railroad. So please check your monopoly tags the next time you go to McDonald's. The set is worth $500...which ironically isn't worth much in this town. Also, if you could just tell me what the fourth railroad is, I'd appreciate that as well; I can't remember it. I haven't played monopoly since that game with Chris, Adam, Owen and Erin where Chris screwed me out of winning.