Slacking Off

This last week and weekend was the hardest of my moving process. Why? I don't know but it was hard.

Nothing has changed significantly at work or in life. I have sort of kept up with my running goal and I am doing well on my reading goals. Clearly I am slacking on the blogging front. But I am trucking along.

It may have something to do with me being so sick of living without my wife and working completely alone.

So in an effort to not completely fall off the blogging bandwagon, here is a lazy ass blog post in a list-update format:

1. I have shined my shoes 3 times. Current cost: 100 bucks a shine.
2. I was in Austin during SXSW Interactive. This was like visiting a city I like that was hosting a mashup of the worst of a Dungeon's and Dragon's Convention mixed with worst of the cool kids' table in middle school. Thankfully, the wedding we attended was lovely and the BBQ was, as always, epic.
3. I am going to see the wife for a week! It is also our three year anniversary tomorrow.
4. My sister, who is a total bad-ass and a third year medical student, went on a heart harvest. The text messages from that day will be saved forever.
5. It appears that Slap Cancer, Save Lives, a pretty cool and innovative fundraising concept that I am helping promote and such, is already generating some fun attention. It would also seem that hipsters are just snobs who don't shower or have jobs.
6. Something else I have done over the past few weeks and a snarky remark about it.

I told you I was feeling cranky. But that is behind me now...or at least I am telling myself that.

Power: Africa, Social Media and Meaningful Change

For those of you who do not choose to earn a liberal arts degree in the International Relations and have not sat through a number of courses that focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, here is the 30 second version of history:

There were thousands of small and large communities, states, and nations that lived, grew and shrank for thousands of years in Sub-Saharan Africa with as many government, political, and religious structures as there were communities, states, and nations. There were times of peace and prosperity and times of strife and war.

Then Europeans showed up. Stuff started changing. We can talk about the raping and pillaging if you want but what is key is that European powers saw the continent as a place for raw materials, from minerals to rubber to slaves. LOTS of things happened over the next five or so generations but here is the take away: Africa was a place for resources and nothing else.

Then "Africans" -- that singular group of people (...) -- started demanding independence and started getting it. Through this process some bad stuff happened, most notably the violent expression of repression tactics employed by the Europeans to control different groups identified as different by the Europeans.

You are now up to date.

Clearly this is unbelievably abridged and painfully flawed but so was that video you told me to watch yesterday.

Good for Lifetime

Today I became a lifer.

I get shines for life baby.
You see, Famous Wayne and his shoe shine stand at the foot of California Street have been a San Francisco institution, as he tells the story, for 35 years. He also, as the Yelp page mentions, finds a way to get his punch cards into the conversation early and often. But today I sat down for simply a shine and I left a lifer.

I love a shoe shine and believe that well shined shoes is a sign of a man who takes care of himself -- he understands that there are appropriate times for every kind of dress. Here in San Francisco, ties and suits are for special occasions; and while I have adopted the open collar, I have yet to move to the Chuck Taylor's as business kicks, no matter what Foster the People say.

Equality and Differences

The debated surrounding access to healthcare products and reproductive choice has jumped from a question of religious liberty to one of sexual liberation and sluts over the last few weeks.

Democrats have responded to the atrocious attack on women's rights by attaching rectal riders to abortion ultrasound bills and hairy palm reduction amendments to so-called personhood bills to "prove a point." (Mind you this is because we have Republicans seriously putting forth forced ultrasounds for women seeking legal medical procedures and the codification of religious doctrine in states' legal codes.)

I believe the reactions don't make sense. Men and Women must have equal protections under the law. However, men and women are different. These games being played belittle the harassment being put forth by the right under the thinly veiled name of religious freedom or whatever else they are calling it today.

While these masturbation prohibitions and pre-Viagra-Rx prostate exam regulations attract a whole hell of a lot of media attention, they don't address the issue. I get that without the glaring light of public outcry these horrific bills will be come laws, but is joking about this the only way to do it?

The power of social media and the nearly unbearably divided nation should give to some powerful outcry. There is time for jest, but I have trouble with this being that time.

Perspective

The wife and I went out to see some very big trees today.

Cute, no?
During our trip to Muir Woods, driving the somewhat death-defying roads and taking in the forest that has been standing since long before they started fighting in the Middle East, it was easy to get all philosophical.

It has been two solid months of living apart now and we are into the final two and half months until we live together again. Time is relative, as they say, and for me these past two months have passed both slowly and extremely quickly. For those of you who went to camp, you understand that days have the value of a week, a week a month, but those summer nights...

More often than not however, time moves slowly. But life is good for me. I have no complaints. So I will spare you the painful analogy between the the trees' lives and mine and the feeling really small thing and simply say, two and half months to go and I am pretty happy about that.

Also I get to see my lovely wife at the end of this week, so that is an added bonus!

Big Trees for Big Thoughts