A well-placed remark

"You have a nice skull shape," she said to me. I am taken aback. What does that even mean? Apparently she thinks I'm one of the few people that can pull of a head scarf. And so she tells me.

Those are the kind of compliments you don't forget. "I like your outfit" or "You're a good dancer" are nice compliments but you tend to mush them all together in the back of your head where they float around and you don't refer to them often.

The weird ones are great. I'll never put on a hat or scarf (both of which I do often) without thinking about it. And even though I doubt this person will be a large part of my life, she will be forever in my mind.

No news is good news?

Last week I read about a man with autism who was missing in the woods for a week . My heart ached for the family while they were looking for him. Their hope was beginning to wane and I began to expect the worst as I'm sure they were trying not to. (I'm the kind of person that can't look at a missing pet poster or I might burst into tears.) Then came the news. They found him. He is alive.

And it was on the front page of our newspaper in Minneapolis. And I rejoiced. I can't imagine the feeling it must have invoked in his family.

Read the article here:
http://www.startribune.com/local/east/20727164.html?location_refer=$urlTrackSectionName

How often is good news like that on the front page? I've spent my life wrestling with the choice of being informed or being jaded. It seems like the two have become impossible to separate. At least in my mind.

I'm looking for the good news in the newspaper. I might be hiding but I can't believe it's not there. And it might just be something amusing, like the state of North Carolina issuing thousands of license plates beginning the letters WTF. Now that's something to make you smile.

So Hannah Montana is kinda like cupid?

June 22, 2008 - Sunday

Some things I did today:

-Bought a bike helmet that may or may not have a Disney character on it. And I like it.
-Threw out the gazpacho I made. Maybe cold soup isn't such a good idea.
-Told a big dude to cool it at the gym when he impatiently asked me after every set if I was done with my machine...it's Sunday man!

At one point I would have felt bad or said I was sorry about these things. No thanks. Not anymore.

I'm not sure if I grew up apologizing for everything I did or if it is a habit I picked up along the way, but I've decided to stop. Partially because I know a few people who do it and it makes me uncomfortable. But mostly because I think it's a bad idea to be sorry all of the time.

Sometimes we're not sure what we're apologizing for, which is just plain stupid. Other times we're not sorry and that makes us liars as well. And it takes away from the times when we truly are sorry because people don't know whether we said it out of habit or if we actually mean it.
Whatever the case, it's something that's nice to be free of and it makes me wonder what other little habits we all have that put more weight on us than we realize.

Would you be suprised if Christina Aguilera was on my list?

June 19, 2008 - Thursday

So a friend of mine tells me the other day he dislikes the idea of ranking things. I agree and chime in how I like the phrase "in no particular order."
But really, isn't the list with no particular order an order in itself? If I asked you to list the 10 albums that most influenced you, wouldn't the first album that came to your head be the most influential?
Ah, but what about the one that comes around the time you get to number seven and it comes to in a flash and you say, "I can't believe I almost forgot about that album!"?
So is it really about your gut feeling or is it after careful consideration? I find that the latter breeds doubt in your decision-making. But what if you don't trust your stomach?