Gimme Some Deep Thoughts
-- It is weird to think that we here at The 'Pent feel so very privileged to have a particular animal in our lives, instead of the other way around?
Our cat Rudy is just such a wonderful and magnificent creature that we feel lucky to have her here with us in Apartment 404. She is kind, playful, fun to be around, neat and tidy, a good soul, and awesome to play fight with. Is it strange to feel this way? Because it seems that most humans congratulate themselves for saving an animal out of the shelter. We feel she rescued us, not the other way around. Thanks, Rudy. We love ya, kitty.
-- How can anyone NOT be rooting for Cornell against Kentucky this week?
We here respect Coach Cal for being a tremendous basketball teacher, several of whose players are sure to be stars in the NBA, but as far as having tremendous young men who are destined for great and rewarding lives, the Big Red are the clear cut favorites Thursday night and well off into the future. But clearly the safe bet to win the game is UK, though I imagine the rest of the country is as sick of seeing the preening Ashley Judd cheering her heart out as we are. We get it, CBS; Ashley loves the Big Blue. And further: it wouldn't shock us in the least to see Eric Bledsoe have a great career at the next level, possibly as good as The Wall. Bledsoe is a tremendous, lottery bound talent who plays a lot like Russell Westbrook, though none of the draft sites have him going that high. They will.
-- Does anyone else worry about what the cashier at the grocery store thinks of us/you?
Many years ago, back when The 'Pent staff was located down in Charlottesville, Virginia, a cashier laughingly commented that our groceries were "gross" since we, as recent college grads with no cooking skills, were buying a lot of Super Sugar Pops cereal, Pop Tarts, TV dinners, and the like. She was right and she may have even been trying to flirt with us, but it stung and has stayed with us. Today, sometimes we worry about buying too much toilet paper: does the cashier think we go to the bathroom too much? (Does that even make sense?) Are we buying enough fruits and vegetables? Too much junk and desserts? Worrying about what other humans think of us is generally a healthy instinct, but if out of control and unchecked, can lead to a lot of bad stuff. There is a balance that needs to be reached. If anyone ever tells you that they NEVER care what other people think, run in the other direction. They are either lying, exaggerating, or nuts. We need to care what others think of us, but if The 'Pent staff spend too much time worrying about cashiers judging us negatively in regards to our groceries, then that's not healthy. To give another example, this one of how sick we can get: back in our days of thinking we were being watched 24/7 by cameras and the government, The 'Pent bought a few items at the Hannaford across from the Maine Mall. The cashier seemed to make a big show out of cleaning her register with Windex prior to ringing us up and we were convinced she was intentionally being rude to us since we were such notorious scumbags. We got pissed, walked away, and threw over a trash can as we stormed out of the store that morning. That's the kind of unhealthiness we can find ourselves obsessing about should we care too much or even too little about other people.
-- In twenty, thirty, fifty years, our bet on the 2009 film that is watched the most will be Michael Jackson's "This Is It."
We've seen it maybe five times so far and enjoyed it just as much the fifth time as the first. A great concert film and surely one to go down in the history of film as one of the great modern musicals. Kenny Ortega and his crew did a magnificent job putting the movie together.
-- The healthier we get the less we argue with people.
This attribute is a wonderful gift of sobriety and sanity; the lessening of the instinct to prove to others how smart we are. A few days ago, on the insightful and rewarding message board SongofSamHorn.com, we posted about how we were disappointed in the Red Sox book put out, in part, by some of the members of the board. And the snark we received surprised our staff, and it hurt. But we did not respond, not that we didn't want to, but because we knew that it would only lead to further angst and turmoil. The need to always be right is not a healthy one, in a lot of cases. If someone disagrees with us, feels we are wrong on every level, fine. That's OK with us so long as we feel good about ourselves, which is a tough enough job on all on its own.
-- Speaking of sobriety and movies:
Something that got us through our early days in AA were all the flicks we attended in 2008 and 2009. There were times we were attending four or five movies a week. Ask us about pretty much any release in 08 and the first half of 09 and we have an opinion about it. The one regret we have is all of the films we gave up on after about a half hour, including the last Tarantino, "The Hurt Locker" (which we have blogged about in the past), "Twilight" (no regrets about leaving) and many others. We certainly wished we had stuck with THL to the end, if only to see what the fuss is about. Since we don't believe in stealing movies online, we'll just have to re-up with Netflix.
-- Sometimes it's hard to separate the mental from the physical.
The past week has been a hard one for Apartment 404. One of our staff members hurt their back lifting weights last Monday and then aggravated the injury sitting in the backless benches at a Maine Red Claws game on Wednesday night. In addition, that staffer came down with a cold or flu (we're not sure which) that led to some lethargy and awkwardness of feeling. Readers of the blog may have noticed some strange postings in the last seven days or so, and we are not ashamed of them. Honesty is the goal here at The 'Pent. But some of the weirdness was caused by our physical ailments. Today, though, is gonna be a rockin good day. We're going back to the gym for the first time in ten days, with a new weightlifting routine to work on, we're gonna have lunch with "The 'Pent Momma" down in Kittery, and we have our home AA group tonight.
It should be a great day.....
Our cat Rudy is just such a wonderful and magnificent creature that we feel lucky to have her here with us in Apartment 404. She is kind, playful, fun to be around, neat and tidy, a good soul, and awesome to play fight with. Is it strange to feel this way? Because it seems that most humans congratulate themselves for saving an animal out of the shelter. We feel she rescued us, not the other way around. Thanks, Rudy. We love ya, kitty.
-- How can anyone NOT be rooting for Cornell against Kentucky this week?
We here respect Coach Cal for being a tremendous basketball teacher, several of whose players are sure to be stars in the NBA, but as far as having tremendous young men who are destined for great and rewarding lives, the Big Red are the clear cut favorites Thursday night and well off into the future. But clearly the safe bet to win the game is UK, though I imagine the rest of the country is as sick of seeing the preening Ashley Judd cheering her heart out as we are. We get it, CBS; Ashley loves the Big Blue. And further: it wouldn't shock us in the least to see Eric Bledsoe have a great career at the next level, possibly as good as The Wall. Bledsoe is a tremendous, lottery bound talent who plays a lot like Russell Westbrook, though none of the draft sites have him going that high. They will.
-- Does anyone else worry about what the cashier at the grocery store thinks of us/you?
Many years ago, back when The 'Pent staff was located down in Charlottesville, Virginia, a cashier laughingly commented that our groceries were "gross" since we, as recent college grads with no cooking skills, were buying a lot of Super Sugar Pops cereal, Pop Tarts, TV dinners, and the like. She was right and she may have even been trying to flirt with us, but it stung and has stayed with us. Today, sometimes we worry about buying too much toilet paper: does the cashier think we go to the bathroom too much? (Does that even make sense?) Are we buying enough fruits and vegetables? Too much junk and desserts? Worrying about what other humans think of us is generally a healthy instinct, but if out of control and unchecked, can lead to a lot of bad stuff. There is a balance that needs to be reached. If anyone ever tells you that they NEVER care what other people think, run in the other direction. They are either lying, exaggerating, or nuts. We need to care what others think of us, but if The 'Pent staff spend too much time worrying about cashiers judging us negatively in regards to our groceries, then that's not healthy. To give another example, this one of how sick we can get: back in our days of thinking we were being watched 24/7 by cameras and the government, The 'Pent bought a few items at the Hannaford across from the Maine Mall. The cashier seemed to make a big show out of cleaning her register with Windex prior to ringing us up and we were convinced she was intentionally being rude to us since we were such notorious scumbags. We got pissed, walked away, and threw over a trash can as we stormed out of the store that morning. That's the kind of unhealthiness we can find ourselves obsessing about should we care too much or even too little about other people.
-- In twenty, thirty, fifty years, our bet on the 2009 film that is watched the most will be Michael Jackson's "This Is It."
We've seen it maybe five times so far and enjoyed it just as much the fifth time as the first. A great concert film and surely one to go down in the history of film as one of the great modern musicals. Kenny Ortega and his crew did a magnificent job putting the movie together.
-- The healthier we get the less we argue with people.
This attribute is a wonderful gift of sobriety and sanity; the lessening of the instinct to prove to others how smart we are. A few days ago, on the insightful and rewarding message board SongofSamHorn.com, we posted about how we were disappointed in the Red Sox book put out, in part, by some of the members of the board. And the snark we received surprised our staff, and it hurt. But we did not respond, not that we didn't want to, but because we knew that it would only lead to further angst and turmoil. The need to always be right is not a healthy one, in a lot of cases. If someone disagrees with us, feels we are wrong on every level, fine. That's OK with us so long as we feel good about ourselves, which is a tough enough job on all on its own.
-- Speaking of sobriety and movies:
Something that got us through our early days in AA were all the flicks we attended in 2008 and 2009. There were times we were attending four or five movies a week. Ask us about pretty much any release in 08 and the first half of 09 and we have an opinion about it. The one regret we have is all of the films we gave up on after about a half hour, including the last Tarantino, "The Hurt Locker" (which we have blogged about in the past), "Twilight" (no regrets about leaving) and many others. We certainly wished we had stuck with THL to the end, if only to see what the fuss is about. Since we don't believe in stealing movies online, we'll just have to re-up with Netflix.
-- Sometimes it's hard to separate the mental from the physical.
The past week has been a hard one for Apartment 404. One of our staff members hurt their back lifting weights last Monday and then aggravated the injury sitting in the backless benches at a Maine Red Claws game on Wednesday night. In addition, that staffer came down with a cold or flu (we're not sure which) that led to some lethargy and awkwardness of feeling. Readers of the blog may have noticed some strange postings in the last seven days or so, and we are not ashamed of them. Honesty is the goal here at The 'Pent. But some of the weirdness was caused by our physical ailments. Today, though, is gonna be a rockin good day. We're going back to the gym for the first time in ten days, with a new weightlifting routine to work on, we're gonna have lunch with "The 'Pent Momma" down in Kittery, and we have our home AA group tonight.
It should be a great day.....
posted by joe sweeney at 4:59 AM
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