I love movies

I love movies. I have always appreciated a good story. My best friends father always had a ton of great stories. As a teenager I was involved in boy scouts and I always looked forward to those camping trips where my friend's dad was going. I knew there was a chance, as we sat in the dark around a dancing fire, he might tell tell us a story from his time in the army or as a kid growing up in Idaho Falls. I think I grew up trying to create stories that others would look forward to hearing.

The truth is, everyone has great stories, some just know how to tell them better than others. For that reason I love movies. Movies are no more than someone trying to tell a great story. Think about the movies you've seen; some of those story lines are ridiculous, but the ability to translate those stories into something that a large audience can relate to turns it into a "blockbuster".

Movies are great because they are viewed from a different perspective by everyone watching and that gives it the ability to be a million different things to a million different people. Great movies speak to large audiences, they deal with broad issues and place them in the lives of people we relate to, people we empathize with. We then place our selves in that situation and are forced to deal with an issue that we otherwise may never be subjected to. Movies can open our minds and expand our horizons in 2 hours, how great is that?

So readers...tell me about a movie you saw that had a ridiculous story line but it still resonated with you it was something you could relate to and see yourself as the main character.

It might be a Jason Bourne or James Bond. Or perhaps its Ricky Bobby or Ron Burgandy. Perhaps your the more sensitive type and see yourself as Don Juan DeMarco

(is that sensitive, maybe sensitive isn't the right description there.)

Anyway tell me about your favorite movie character. I'll pick one and it'll become my first movie review.

Title Change

I don't really know why I changed the title to my blog other than I feel I will be able to capture a broader market this way. If I double my readership I would be infecting two people instead of one. I would say that I am getting twice the amount of people to think like me, but no one wants to think like me, (if you can call it thinking).

I may change the title yet again but for now I feel like a traveler trying to decide which path to go down. I think I've been standing here at this "path" for a long time.

So much of our early life is just doing what we're told; I miss that. Sure it can feel like the iron fist of tyranny, but there is comfort in knowing what you're supposed to do next. It alleviates one of responsibility, you can always fall back on "I'm just doing what I was told."

But that isn't the point. The point isn't arriving, its getting there. We used to live across the street from a bitter old man who added little happiness to anyone he came in contact with. If find myself on a road where I am bitter and of little meaning to others its because I was too focused on where I was going and not enough focus on where I am.

The American Dream!!

Pilgrims gathered their families and collected what few belongings they had to seek a new world, new opportunities, a better life. Since social status was determined by land ownership and land ownership was typically determined by birth if you weren't born into land/social status; there was very little opportunity to move up in society. So given the chance, pilgrims uprooted their lives for an opportunity to get what they could never get in their native countries; LAND!

Well here we are, over 500 years since Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" and the goal to carve out a place of your own isn't just a dream, its a part of your birth right as an American. (For now we'll skip over the fact that I wasn't born in America thereby changing my presumed "birth-right":D).

In fact, to see to it that every American had an opportunity to own land, to "live the dream" as it were, the government went about looking for ways to make this "dream" a reality to more and more people. This might be a good time to say their intentions were good, but isn't that what you say about the guy who just keeps screwing up and can never get things right? "He means well." "He tries hard." These are just backhanded compliments, a thinly veiled way of saying "he can't do anything right".

So with the presumed intention of home ownership to "everyone who wants it" the government privatizes freddy mac and fannie may. Any controls those government agencies may have had to keep up confidences in government backed securities, was traded in for what, public funding to increase the asset base that would in turn lead to more loans? I guess. But at what cost, a failed financial system? An economy on the brink of a not so great depression, falling home prices, high inflation, and rising unemployment??

All I can say to that mess is "I GOT MINE, BABY!" I'm livin the dream!

Ruth and I moved into our first home on October 4th 2008. More than ten years after getting married. The house is a modest looking (much to my shagrin, I'm not going to lie. I really wanted a huge mansion type house with a 3 car garage and a par 4 for a front yard and a driving range for a back yard) ranch built in 1972 with about 1400 sq ft.



Growing up as a generation "X"er patience isn't my strong suite. I want everything my parent's have without the 25 years of hard work and sacrifice. But owning a house has given me a different perspective, a long-term perspective, I'd say about 30 years of perspective. Of course I want to update the kitchen and bathrooms add on out the back to create a master suite and create an outdoor living space; but much to my dismay I'm not made of money nor are any of the trees I own money trees. So those things will have to wait.

While sitting at night in my dark living room my cynical side takes over and I think to myself I'm the proud owner of 30 years of indentured servitude! Then I think about unforeseen repairs that are now my responsibility. I think about my backyard that looks like the surface of the moon and the potential liability it could create. Late at night I leave messages of panic for my insurance agent making sure I have enough liability coverage. (Just out of curiosity why does "the biggest asset you'll ever own have "liability" coverage, shouldn't it be asset coverage?)

But even as the fall sun sheds light on brilliantly colored trees it also casts out the shadows of my cynicism and shows me the "brilliant colors" of home ownership.

My kids will wake me in the morning by piling onto our bed. There we will play and wrestle and laugh knowing that the front of our bedroom wall isn't the back of our neighbor's bedroom wall. When I come home from work to see my kids playing in the yard that is "their" yard, where the outer limits are the limits of THEIR imagination. This last weekend we painted Lilly's room an obnoxious pink, but you know what? It's Lilly's room and she can do what SHE wants with it.

When I think about the American dream it's not really about owning a house or a yard but its about being able to put your roots down. It's about being able to provide for your family and try to give them a little of something they've given me so much of: HAPPINESS

Now that I think about it the pilgrims weren't looking for land, they were just looking for a place where they and their families could be happy.

If I were to venture a guess, that was probably the original "American Dream"

Oh the irony :(

When trying to think of an original, unique, witty title for my blog I was thinking "distrahere" fit all of those things. Well this past weekend was meant to encapsulate the good distractions I had hoped to write about in this blog; the distractions that take us from our repetitive daily lives and transport us to a world where hobbies, past-times, and recreation become our number one priority.

On September the 6th I competed in my second ever olympic distance triathlon. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, I had trained somewhat but there has never been a lot of rigidity to my training. This was for fun, and I was looking forward to it.

The swim was going to be interesting, as Paul and I have always been really good with money and the picture of provident living, we deduced that by not spending money on wetsuits that we could pay for our first child's first semester of college given the time value of money and a modest return on investment. Of course we knew we would have to reallocate the hypothetical investment to adjust for changing risk tolerances. Alright so we're a little cheap and just didn't want to deal with renting wet suits, but perhaps a $40 expenditure would actually amount to our child's first semester in college!??



It wasn't long before we realized that our thriftiness wasn't a sentiment shared by too many others. There were few others who decided to swim without wetsuits. And most of them had "extra layers". In the end it didn't really matter, I warmed up quickly and the water temperature wasn't an issue.










Paul and I were within a minute of each other getting out of the water and onto the bikes. The bike ride was great! It was a loop that went out into the foothills surrounding the Columbia River. Paul and I just stayed together enjoying the exercise and "distraction" from our typical weekend. It was however at this time that the word "distraction" took on a different meaning. Instead of concentrating on the road I was distracted by the scenery and as the road gradually turned to the left I continued on my straight course. By the time I realized I should be turning it was too late, I tried to get back on the road but the combination of a gravel shoulder and raised road proved too large or an obstacle for the tires. The tire lost any footing it may have had and the bike went down.



Paul was behind me and witness the whole thing, as did a farmer working in his fields with his dog. I was okay but the bike was done, it could have been fixed but I didn't all the right tools.

I had to get a ride back to the transition spot in the truck and take the walk of shame down the hill into. Walking, my now, crippled bike.





















I did go out and finish the run but it shouldn't have counted(it did, I finished dead last).




















Maybe I should change the name of my blog to "Focus"

Lazy days

There was a time where I was left up to my own devices. These were good days for me, not so much for my parents. Summer as a kid never fails to let one down. Growing up there was a pretty big field behind my house full of scotch broom. If you haven't seen scotch broom consider yourself lucky, its a big weed with little redeeming value. However when I was about 10 (just a guess, the only time I cared about how old I was as a kid was around my birthday) I looked at that field and thought to myself "its a gold mine". With Paul, my best friend, and Kristian, my brother, we would hand make brooms and then go door to door and peddle our wares.

Thanks goodness for neighbors, who either took pity on us or felt it necessary to reward such ingenuity (probably the later ;), we sold a couple. Keep in mind we were selling them at close-out prices to move inventory. Well after a hard days work we had earned enough to buy large quantities of bubble gum from the "Bi-Mart". This wasn't an easy task, Bi-mart was a "members only" type of a place where once you flash your membership card they buzz the little swinging door to let you in. We as 10-year-olds, had no membership, but we were pretty clever. Besides after biking 3 miles from home, without telling our parents where we were going, we weren't about to turn back empty handed. So we waited outside for a single person who could be our "parent"; and then just followed closely behind like we belonged to them. Pure genius, well that's what we thought.

Once home, we sat on the front porch to enjoy the bounty of bubble gum that was ours. Being fairly competitive we were able to turn chewing gum into a competition. The first was was an obvious test; who could get the most gum into their mouth at one time. We didn't finish this competition before we realized that copious amounts of saliva were gathering in our mouth. At first this was great, all that sugar was a reward for a hard days work. But that didn't last too long it became too much. We started to spit it onto the walkway of the front porch. The walkway had a slight slope away from our feet; and the next competition presented itself. Who could spit enough saliva to create a river of spit to cross the walk-way first? The game was on!

Those lazy days are gone, much to my mother's delight. Not that she didn't love us, she just didn't love us when we were left to our own devices.

These days I have other things to distract me.
Golf
Photography
My kids
Triathlon
Reading (just kidding)

Every once and a while I'll post something here to distract me and perhaps someone else will be a little amused or at least, distracted.

Å Distrahere

Just in case you were curious and asking yourself "what the H?" is "å distrahere", its Norwegian for "to distract".

I honestly don't believe that there are that many people so interested in what I did at work today or how I entertained myself on a Saturday, that they'll be making my page a "favorite" and checking it daily for updates. But I'll post the things that distract and or amuse me. Stay tuned...