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About Last Night

Three martinis down
Dizzy like dancing snowfall
Have the cats been fed?

A Very Beary Christmas

Horizon On Horizon

Horizon On Horizon, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

I had a short flight from SeaTac Airport to Portland. I bought the ticket through American, and it was a code share with Alaskan, and operated by Horizon. When I arrived at SeaTac, I had no idea where to go, and the signage in the airport was terrible -- in that the gates were labeled properly, but there was little information as to what airline was operating out of what gate. In addition, with so many code-shared flights between Seattle and Portland, the departures board kept scrolling faster than you could actually read it.

The flight was a little bumpy, and as such, the captain instructed the flight attendants to remain seated for the 29-minute flight.

Our flight attendant, Nancy, who has not seen a new pair of eyeglasses since circa 1983, announced her disappointment; she loves to serve drinks. Used to be a waitress at a tavern in Elkton, Oregon, serving truck drivers until the bar closed for good in the late 1980s when the timber industry lost its battle with the spotted owl. Her raspy chuckle laughed off years of smoking, and made way for a smile that sparkled of silver. She wore no makeup and her hair had the bounce of a woman who worked hard for a living, supporting men who work even harder.

"So when the tavern closed, I thought, what the heck. Why not be a flight attendant. I can serve a drink. And besides, at least twice in a shift, I know I'm going to have to sit down."

Her grin was constant, as if handling the flying public was the easiest thing she's ever had to do in her life.

"So I applied for the job, and I got it. Love it. Never thought I'd travel so much. I've been all over. I'm based out of SeaTac now, but live out in the country. Got to have some land. But I've been all over. Wenatchee. Spokane. Reno. Sacramento. Vancouver. Ankorage. Burbank. Eureka. Boise. Lewiston. Idaho Falls. Billings. Bozeman. Helena. Great Falls. Missoula. Eugene. Pendleton. Rendmond/Bend. Pasco. Bellingham. Yakima."

She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose.

"Yeah, who would have ever thought a girl from Elkton could go so far. Love it. So you ask if I'd rather be seated or I'd rather be serving, I want to serve."

Early Sunday Morning Haiku

Light dances around
Fog envelops techno beat
His beauty sparkles

Snapshots from the Georgia Coast

Sunset over Darien, Georgia, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

I've posted photos from my weekend on the Georgia Coast. Check them out!

Tea Time, Brunswick, Georgia, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

Exploring Darien, Georgia, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

Near Brunswick, Georgia, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

Exploring Jekyll Island, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

Exploring Jekyll Island, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

Irene & Jim's Back Yard, originally uploaded by Timothy State.

Take Back Your Life: Drudgery!

Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized by Sally McGhee


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Terrible, terrible read. The only redeeming value is for the tips on how to customize Outlook 2007 so that you can actually use it in a functional manner. Sally McGhee is so redundant, and the pop psychology scattered throughout the books feels elementary and cumbersome. What is over 300 pages could easily be 150 pages and a quick one-weekend read. But Sally drags it out. I've been in this book for two weeks, and I found reading it like trying to discover the depths of any Microsoft product: clumsy and un-elegant.

If she focused on providing insight solely on Microsoft Outlook, and not on guiding one on a journey of internal reflection (which she's bad company for), this book would have kicked some productivity ass.

View all my reviews >>

The Rules of Dating

The Rule Out Factors for Dating eventually lead my friend Cindy and I to come up with the list of rules for dating.

1. Always have a condom. For the boy who doesn’t have a condom, but remember -- he doesn’t have a condom, so proceed with caution, even if you have a condom.
2. Never drink anything blue. Or be party to the consumption of 10 bottles of wine between four people over the course of one night. Excessive alcohol consumption is the mother of all invitations for your darkest demons.
3. Don’t enter a boy’s number into your cell phone right away. Enter it into the notepad. You’ll be able to differentiate all the Michaels, you can add a few notes, and if he’s just about being Mr. Right Now, he’s not clogging up your address book becoming the person you won’t remember in two years.
4. No bars on first dates. Well, you can end up in a bar, but just don’t start there. It’s hard to hear in bars, so how do you have a meaningful conversation?
5. Call a trusted friend for a quick reality check before doing something off-the-charts impulsive. Word.
6. Keep perspective: the way he treats you, he treats all his dates. If a flight attendant finds you by looking at the manifest to see your frequent flier status, know that he looks at every manifest on every flight.
7. Call out a boy’s bad behavior when apropriate, and never enable bad behavior. It’s not that you’re doing him a favor, it’s that you’re doing yourself a favor by reaffirming to yourself that such behavior is unacceptable. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to call your date out on it, but if your date is 45 minutes late, get up and leave. Don’t pretend the offense didn’t happen, but don’t become your date’s mother.
8. Keep living your life. Don’t wait around for the date to give you a call -- live your life, collecting interesting stories and achievements along the way. Let him know what he’s missing.
9. Drink a glass of water. This might possibly be the greatest secret we’ve learned all summer. Who know that water was the secret juice of enlightenment?

You got any others?

Rule Out Factors for Dating

It’s taken a summer of dating, but my friend Cindy and I have compiled a list of rule out factors to consider when dating any guys. Any one of these, if true, is reason enough to rule out a potential boyfriend.

1. Wants you to move in, or you move in within the first 12 months. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be; it doesn’t need to unfold right away. The gift to ourselves is to take our time and let things unfold in a fashion where we can drink in every detail.
2. The Adore Factor is out of balance. He must adore you as much as you adore him. The flirty texts, the random e-mails, the phone messages of thoughtful sentiment must go both ways, and be filled with equal passion.
3. He fails to deliver. If he flirts with you shamelessly on end, but then says, “I can’t be intimate with you, but I hope we can be friends” then cut him loose. Friends don’t flirt shamelessly, and he’s got no sense of appropriate boundaries.
4. He is only partially available. No scraps; he must be wholely available. The “I love yous” and “You’re my soul mate,” and “I knew instantly that you were the one I’ve been waiting for all my life,” must come when he’s sober, not just when he’s drunk. This is a clear sign that he’s at war with his emotions, so that you don’t get caught in the battle.
5. Has bad punctuation and lazy spelling in text and e-mail. “U wanna hang 2nite?” Seriously, is he a 16-year-old girl? “going out” Is that a question or a statement? If you can’t diagram a sentence to understand what he means, it will only lead to disaster.
6. Suggests going to a bar as a first date. Cliché. If he can’t come up with something more creative, then it’s not with your time.
7. Needs work in the art of conversation. He must be a good conversationalist and an equally good listener. If he’s no good at talking about himself and his life, then no go. And if he’s no good at asking you about your life, well, that’s a no go, as well. He must be just as inquisitive about you as you are about him.
9. Doesn’t have a condom. If in the heat of passion at his place, you say, “Do you have a condom?” And he replies, “No.” Ask, “Did you just run out last night?” How he answers that question will reveal so much. Hope he just finished burning through the family pack, and didn’t have time to replenish, because if it’s been months, either he’s a rusty lover, or he’s not being honest. Seriously, what kind of responsible boy doesn’t have a condom? Is he not taking care of himself and others?
10. Needs practice at kissing. There is no time for amatuers. Word.

What are your rule-out factors?

Saturday Morning Wakeup

This is fun.

Panchakarma Treatment 4, 5 & Beyond: The Emotional Rollercoaster

        I’ve received messages and comments from you wanting to know what happened after the fourth and fifth Panchakarma treatments, and what’s been taking place since then. I’ve not been able to post, because, quite frankly, it’s been a wild ride. Not unlike Space Mountain at Disneyworld, where you hop in a car, strap in, and then venture out into complete darkness, unsure of what the next turn or dip will be. It’s wild, amazing, stomach-turning, and a twisted sort of way, fun.
        I’d like to think I’m achieving some sort of balance, although after speaking with a friend yesterday, he pointed out I still had a long way to go. And when I told him that I’m realizing this summer has been a lot more challenging that I originally thought, his response, “Thank you for finally saying that.”
        The 24 hours after the third treatment were filled with great sadness. Great in both senses of the word: gargantuan in size, but also good. It wasn’t a painful sort of sadness, but floods of weepy sadness were seeping from my body, tipped off by almost anything: a picture of the dead cat; a Hallmark commercial; a thought. I couldn’t go anywhere near Lifetime Television.
        But by the morning after the third treatment, the weeping had begun to slow. And in between the fits of explosive weepiness--incredible joy. A joy I had never felt before. It was as if the sadness was leaving, and all that was left was joy, and a joy that had been overshadowed by such deep, cellular sadness, I’d never been able to experience it before.
        When I showed up for my fourth treatment, Dr. Shambu asked how I had been feeling. I explained the sadness. He asked about anger. Had I experienced any anger? I hadn’t. Just sadness and joy. He nodded.
        “If you feel yourself wanting to react emotionally,” he said, “try to just observe. Feel the sensation, and observe. Don’t react, just drink a glass of water.”
        Following the treatment, he asked how things where. Nothing, really. Not necessarily relaxed. Not sad. Not agitated. In fact, I began to wonder if it even worked. With one treatment left, was I completely stuck?
        He explained that when my emotional damage left my body, it created a space. And now, that space will be filled with something.
        Panic.
        “What will it fill with?” Could it fill with something worse than my emotional damage?
        “I can’t say. It could be a person. It could be new people, or a person who you have not heard from in a while. You have changed, and the vibrations you are sending out to the universe have changed, and the universe will respond. You’ll begin attracting new people. You’ll just have to wait and see.”
        His words were not completely comforting, but his statement, you’ll just have to wait and see, shifted something. It was as if fear of the unknown had melted into a curiosity of what might happen next.
        When I got home, everything about my evening was irritating. My roommate. The dogs. The lack of food. The fact friends were not calling. Everything seemed to irritate the heck out of me. And that’s when I realized this was not irritation, but all these little things were setting off anger. This was the anger Dr. Shambu had been asking about.
        I had a glass of water and went to bed.
        I woke up on Friday and went about my day. The irritation continued. In fact, I found myself exploding at the office of silliness.
        I ran to have a glass of water, and came back to apologize.
        On the fifth treatment, I explained the sensation of anger, Dr. Shambu nodded. We did the final treatment, and he explained that we have now completed a cycle. I felt as I had at end of the first treatment: complete relaxation and a sense of calm. He said that if I felt stuck, I could come back for another treatment, but he sensed the way I had responded, and the progress I had made during the week that I was well on my way and wouldn’t need a follow-up. I asked him if I should come back in a year, or how frequently I should do this.
        He explained the total process is 21 days, and I asked what the difference was between five days and 21. He said it just speeds up the process, but I’ve completed one cycle and it works automatically from here.
        He encouraged me not to make any major life decisions regarding relationships, finances, or career for the next six months. I now see how that is connected to the cycle, and that in moments of great sadness, or even irritation and anger, the urge is to act, but drinking a glass of water slows that down.
        “In life,” he said, his final words to me, “those with compatible energy can stay. All others must go.”

* * *

        What has happened since then has been a continuation of the cycle: groundedness, sadness, anger, calm. It continues now, over a month after my last treatment. The cycle seems to have shortened, where immediate weeks following the treatment, I’d experience those segments for sometimes days at a time, even feeling stuck in sadness and anger at times. But through exercise and meditation, I’ve been able to push through to a point of grounded emotional clarity.
        Of course, the cycle suggest it’s not all up, and I have to say the low points have sometimes been very low. At one point, I found myself declaring enlightenment is for the birds! Medicate me! I was listening to Terry Gross on NPR and she was interviewing a zen meditation master, and he said, “Now that I’m enlightened, I realize I’m just as unhappy as I was before.”
        It’s getting to the clarity that is the most exciting. Today, knowing and being able to express the difference between sadness and melancholy is incredibly powerful. To feel those emotions, let them flow, and reach a point of understanding as to why those emotions are there is something that I’ve never been able to experience before.
        My coworkers and those in my daily life have noticed, too: “You’re more confident. Not that you weren’t confident, but you’ve got this confident confidence, like you can do anything.”
        Confident confidence. It’s like walking into a room, and rather than clinging to the wall and watching events unfold, it’s like standing in the center of the room, having it revolve around you, and observing from that perspective as things unfold. It feels good.