Stay of Execution

Decision

Back in November I decided this would be the winter I really paid attention to cross-country skiing, and got confident at it.  I got friendly with the XC ski coach at the college and started doing workouts in that team's special room.  I set as my goal a 25K tour on March 4th, figuring there would be plenty of time to practice up for it.  And I kept planning to do lots of skiing as soon as there was snow. 

But there's been no snow.  I've gone skiing exactly once, a six mile solo backcountry adventure that would have been better attempted on snowshoes.  It was pleasantly tiring but not impossible.  Instead of skiing I've been running and walking and doing yoga and lifting weights.  I'm happy with the shape I'm in, generally, although I'm not yet close to as buff as I'd like to be this summer.  Still, I'm not feeling exactly prepared to ski 25K. 

I need to register today if I'm going to do it.  It seems absurd and inconvenient -- it's 3 hours away, on my only free day, and I'll be flying to Montana the next day.  I haven't trained at all.  I won't get to ski before then.  I'll be doing it alone, on crappy no-wax skis and poles that are too long.  I am a clumsy skiier at best, prone to falling over on flat surfaces, and without much of a clue how to climb or descend hills.  It will be cold and unpleasant; I will ache.  I haven't been exercising outside for long periods of time much this winter, and I won't be confident about how to dress for it.  I don't even have any idea how long it will take.  Conditions are pretty crappy -- they have a base of only 4" to 10".  There seem to be pretty valid reasons not to do it this year.  My sincere intentions were foiled by the weather.  Next year can be my year for cross country skiing. 

And yet, and yet.  I said I was going to do it, way back in November, and I haven't let go of it as a goal.  I can do it.  I'm sure I can.  I'm sure it won't be fun, but it won't be terrible.  I'll feel like an excuse-making wuss if I don't do it.  I will feel proud of myself if I do it.  I think I have to do it.  The cross country ski coach will razz me if I don't do it.  And I'll be disappointed with myself.  Sigh.  I'm going to sign up right now.   

No Way, Nohow

Oh dread.

I just made an appointment with an orthodontist, at the suggestion of my dentist. 

I made the appointment with my dentist because I've just this week noticed that my teeth don't seem to fit together quite the way they used to, and it's a little bit strange, and my jaw is clicking sometimes on the right side, near my ear, when I open and close my mouth. 

I don't make dentist appointments voluntarily.  I suspect dentists of being a scam, generally, with their eagerness to book you for another cleaning with your teeth still ringing from the latest one, and their insistence that you get another set of X rays taken.  I generally decline their offers of X rays most of the time, and I refuse to make another appointment, telling them that I will call them when it's time for my next cleaning, thank you very much.  I have been regretting this habit as I worry about my teeth shifting around.  My paranoia is made worse by the fact that a lawyer buddy of mine's jaw shifted and gave him miserable migraines for a time, and had to be corrected by braces (at age 34) which were themselves excruciatingly painful.

The good news is that my gums are in great shape despite my sporadic flossing habit.  The bad news: a little cavity, two sealants that need to be replaced.  And, oh yeah, a looming trip to the orthodontist.

When I made the appointment at the orthodontist, the receptionist was very friendly and likeable.  I gave her my information and then raised my voice and insisted, "I DO NOT WISH TO EVER HAVE BRACES EVER AGAIN!"  She laughed at me.  "I'll note that right here on the sheet."  Thank you. 

Well Knock Me Over With A Feather

I hosted book group today, and it was my job to lead the discussion and my privilege to choose the book we'll read for next time.  I wanted us to continue a theme of books that let us talk about women protagonists navigating social class and money issues.  I gave the group a choice of two books: Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.  This book group is somewhat snooty, although the book snobbery is mostly the product of two or three people with extremely rarefied taste in books.  The rest of us gab happily about Harry Potter or science fiction or mysteries we like with undisguised enthusiasm.  But there is certainly a strong bias toward Literature and away from Popular in the book group.  So I was pretty sure we'd end up reading Thackeray. 

But the group picked Gone With the Wind.  Only one of us hadn't read it, and she was very interested in it.  The rest of us had all read it when we were 12 (even our eldest member, who's about 70).  We all have strong memories of the book, though none of us had read it critically.  The group favors women authors, although we don't limit ourselves to them when we choose what to read, and I think that tipped the scales.  And, people admitted guiltily, the prospect of reading a page-turner, bodice-ripper romantic drama sounds appealing.  Thackeray will wait.   

TED Sounds Great

I've been enjoying the posts by various bloggers about this year's TED conference.  It sounds great.  I found the summaries of Helen Fisher's talk about love, Jim Crupi's talk about modern military strategy, Tony Robbin's breakdown of human drive into six basic emotional needs, Burt Rutan's talk about breakthroughs in aviation, and Penny Boston's talk about life forms in unlikely places particularly thought-provoking.  Wish there were podcasts available.   

Bloggers posting about it include by Ethan Zuckerman, Ory Okollah, Renee Blodgett, Bruno Guissani, and Tom Guarriello.  I find Ethan's posts the most comprehensive, although he arrived partway through. 

Break

I'm going to take a little break from posting.  I'm thinking about a lot of things but am not ready to write them down.  That's not true.  I'm writing them down, but I'm not ready to publish them, here.  And whenever I sit down to post and I don't write about what I'm really thinking about, I feel boring and fake.  Which is no fun for any of us.  See you next week.

On The Ball

I've been doing a bunch of lifting and core strength exercises.  There are a bunch of them that are new to me, and tough.  My favorite pair, though, are not the most challenging, but are somehow really fun.  You sit on one of those inflatable balance balls and take your feet off the floor and balance there for a minute.  When I first tried this, I kept rolling off the ball, and so it took me a lot of tries before I could balance even for 30 seconds.  But this morning I did it for two minutes.  To make it harder you bring your hands (which initially I have holding onto the ball right behind or beside my butt) up into a prayer position in front of your chest; to make it really hard you bring them over your head to raise your center of gravity.  It's not a major strengthening exercise but your abs are engaged to balance you and for me it's really satisfying to see the amount of time I can stay there increase.

The other one is similar, only for this one you kneel on the ball.  Knees are slightly spread, maybe hip distance apart.  Start with your hands on the ball, and then as you get your balance raise yourself up and bring your arms in prayer position to your chest, then over your head.  This one works your inner thighs and your butt as well as your abs as you make lots of tiny adjustments to stay balanced on the ball.  I think it's a little harder than the sitting one. 

All Requests: How Important is Chemistry?

Melissa wonders about the importance of initial chemistry as she ponders how to respond to a guy who asked her out:

He's nice enough, smart enough, stable enough, not terrible to look at, etc., but you don't feel any sort of spark or chemistry with him. Do you decline because of the absence of spark, or do you give it a try thinking that maybe the chemistry will come later?

I wrote a long post about this but for some reason I don't really like it.  The essence of what I said was this: go out with the guy. 

In general, some guys will make you recoil internally, even if you could make a long list of their positive attributes.  (Maybe your mom already has.)  Don't go out with those guys.  And some guys you see across a room and even as you pretend to make conversation with your friends, most of your attention is spent tracking that guy for the rest of the evening and plotting how, inevitably, you are going to get near him.  That's the obvious chemistry.  I've only met a few people, fewer than five, who really grabbed my attention like this.  Do go talk to those guys, and enjoy the tingle and excitement, but don't confuse that kind of attraction for anything significant, or for an indication of true compatibility.  I think it's as rare as perfect pitch, and probably no more relevant to the foundation of a strong relationship. 

But with everyone else, I think chemistry emerges on a date in a way it doesn't in groups. 

All Requests: Asking Parental Consent Before Proposing

I love all-requests.  They really stretch me.  SLR leaves this request:

I was wondering if you have any opinion on the tradition of men asking their potential bride's father for permission to marry his daughter. I had always thoughts this was an outdated, offensive, and silly tradition in today's world, but am surprised by the number of friends and acquaintances who seem to think its the proper thing to do. Is this still the common practice?

1) I have no idea whether it's still the common practice.  But anecdotally, I know at least a handful of folks whose parents knew about the marriage proposal before the potential bride.  So I think it's alive and well, if not "common." 

2) Is it outdated and silly?  Yes, I suppose so, especially if it's phrased in terms of "permission."  One hopes nobody is actually asking for permission.  A blessing, that sounds a little bit better.  It's outdated that the convention remains that the man asks the woman.  I'm not sure the parental consultation is more outdated than that standard convention.  Neighbor (fka "Housemate") asked 517 to marry her.  He said 'maybe, I need to think about it' and a few days later got Grandma's ring out of the safe-deposit box and proposed to her.  That's a nice story.  Neither asked one another's parents beforehand.   To me, the tradition of letting the parents in on the plans is more about family goodwill than about permission.  It's about trust, and about communicating to them their importance in your future plans.  It gives them a way to feel involved, even as you make plans to build a family that's independent and separate from either person's connection to their parents.  If it were a transaction strictly between men and about some kind of passing of ownership or custody, I would find it reprehensible.  But I don't think that's how it actually operates.  And it's no more sexist than the 'boy-asks-girl' convention that you didn't ask about.

Outlier

Is there a point on the dorkiness spectrum where you pass out of dorkiness and back into cool?  I'm hoping so. 

I was at the sports bar yesterday to watch the UNC/Wake Forest game.  It was surprisingly busy at the bar, and I learned the Daytona 500 was going on, as well as Olympics and some kind of soccer game.  All of those things drew in their own crowd.  NASCAR was on the big screen, with the sound up, so I found a table in back near one of the TVs showing hoops, ordered myself a beer, and watched by myself.  And during the commercials I read my book.  That's the dorky part: I am reading Thackeray's Vanity Fair.  It's a hardcover, and huge, and it's quite absorbing.  So I sat there in the sports bar, surrounded by NASCAR fans and soccer fans and olympic fans, alternating between clapping, alone, for the Tar Heels, and reading a 19th century novel.  I did watch a little bit of the Bon Jovi performance that kicked off the Daytona 500, and studied the speeding cars from time to time trying to discern what is so exciting about it.  But mostly I watched the game, and ate mussels, drank some beer, and read my book. 

All Requests: More About The Pencils

Kelly requests a post following up on my "doing things you're bad at" post.  She asks me what I consider my "pencils."  Just go read the other post: it's quicker than trying to translate what she means by "pencils." 

I don't want to answer this one.  I don't want to answer it for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that I think in some ways we all have the same pencils, and we just choose to ignore or cultivate different ones.  The bundle is universal, but the heights are different, as is the rate that they grow.  I think there are a lot of ways to name the inventory of pencils we all have to tend to.  Getting explicit about the contents of the bundle starts to get kind of groovy and new-agey.  I don't mind thinking it, but I start to feel a little bit self-conscious if I start talking about it out loud.

The other reason I don't want to answer it is that I think Kelly was trying to ask not what the whole bundle is, but which of my pencils are the ones that are the most prominent.  I don't want to answer that both because I'm modest and because I'm vain.  If I tell you the things I'm most naturally good at, that come most easily to me, that it's easy for me to tower over other people at, well, it sounds like boasting.  And that would be bad enough, but I'm also insecure enough to worry that if I did that, those of you who know me would read my professed natural talents with a raised eyebrow and think, "um, hold it right there, Fowler.  You're not all that, you know." 

So that's why I don't want to answer the question.  But the deal with these all requests is that you ask, and I answer as honestly as I can.  So I'll try.  Just go easy on me in the comments, please.  Know that I'm way out of my comfort zone on this one.