| 30 apr 2001 so i did my class page yesterday for the 5th year reunion. there was a section called something like "most memorable memory" or whatever. i thought about it. was it a particular party? nah... drunken moments were plenty, but nothing was really special. freshman year? yeah... it was the best time i've had my whole life. could i distill it into a single moment? then one thought popped into my mind, and as i had a cigarette outside the office, i decided that was probably it: one night, before we were going out, kristie and i missed dinner at gavilan, our freshman dorm. we decided to hit tress ex(press), a little mini-mart in tresidder union. we got a couple of crackers, some salami or something, and i think some ice cream. it was a little mini-picnic! as we walked around looking for a place to sit down and eat, i spied the bottom of the spiral staircase in tresidder, where there was a little platform in the back. so we had our piecemeal feast there. it was a fun, playful night. things were so innocent then. it was kind of like our first date, although neither of us placed it in that context, not knowing that a few months later, we would be totally in love with each other. funny how things work out and then blow up a year later. ----- i was having a smoke outside the office today, and saw two ducks on the loading dock ramp. a male and a female. it was really odd seeing them walk on concrete, and what's more, they sat there for a while. no grass or water! just two ducks in an urban site, roaming around. cute. one of my favorite children's stories is _make way for ducklings_. partly because it's cute, and mainly because it's set in boston, my childhood haven. mallard ducks. green heads. and it's got a father ducks taking care of seven(?) ducklings. i like the idea of being a dad. seeing a dad out there taking care of kids warms my heart because fatherhood isn't nearly as celebrated as motherhood is, yet i think it's just as important. i think a lot of my appreciation for fatherhood is because when i was a little tyke in boston, my dad was my primary caretaker. my mom was supporting the family by working at massachusetts general hospital, while my dad was getting his ph.d. at mit. so i spent most of my time with him. in his campus office, i spent a lot of time drawing and stuff on a little plastic desk right next to his. i have a couple of favorite books. one of _trumpet of the swan_. that is probably my childhood favorite. yeah, _charlotte's web_ and _stuart little_ are really good, too, but... i dunno. i think the combination of beautiful white swans and music really struck a chord with me. i like birds. my college e-mail moniker was "darkwing." i know there was a cartoon series called _darkwing duck_, but that's not what i was really going for. "darkwing" just evoked some kind of mysterious flappy creature that sat there on a tree limb, brooding and contemplating stuff like an airborne vigilante. it was kind of evil, and i liked that. i think kristie gave me shit sometimes because i would hide behind that anonymous-like e-mail persona too much. then, after i graduated, i chose "choccobo," which is really spelled "chocobo," but some 14-year-old already took the name on yahoo. it's a big departure from "darkwing," because a chocobo (from squaresoft's beautiful final fantasy videogame line) is a big, fluffy bird, kind of like an ostrich, but with more feathers. they're cute. so my bird fetish continued. anyways, back to my favorite books. my favorite high school book is _lord of the rings_. it was truly epic. i was obssessed with tolkein's works in high school. i even learned how to write my name in the dwarven runes and elven script. i'm totally stoked about the fact that they're making the book into a sweeping trilogy. the only bummer is that the main character, frodo baggins, is going to be played by the big-eyed dunce elijah wood. blech. and then there's my college-era fave... kundera's _the unbearable lightness of being_. kundera has so much insight into human nature that it's scary... i found myself dogearing page after page of cool and meaningful quotes. the milan kundera phase was inspired by my friend jan, and i think i read at least three of his books that summer between freshman and sophomore year. i'm a lazy ass. i really want to read more, but it's so much effort compared to just watching television. i think it hurts even more because i'm such a slow reader. i actually sound out the words as i read along, which makes it orders of magnitude slower than scanning the words like most people do. i suck. thank goodness i'm wasn't a liberal arts major. i would have died. so right now, i have about 18 inches of books stacked up near the foot of my bed. i admit that i collect books that i find interesting, especially when i was in my amazon.com buying sprees. i just need to sequester myself with a nice armchair, some raspberry daquiris, and just read away. if only i had the time or motivation to do that. speaking of raspberry daquiris, my dream junior year was to play mah-johngg with my buddies while sipping them. ah... i even had a mah-johngg set! it's such a fun game... it's one of the few times when i'm doing something without noticing time passing... i could easily play until sunrise if i had three other buddies. alas, i don't know how to score the willing tile sets, so that's pretty bad. hm. now i'm inspired to go on the web and learn about this stuff. ok. this one was pretty meandering. i had no intention of talking about ducks or books or raspberry daquiris. i guess my tourettic mind is still at work here; random! |