Play Calvinball

From Gawker.com's 'Thanksgiving Horror Stories', submitted by readers. It just combines the absurdity of the holidays (stress, tryptophan, awkward family interactions) with all the awesomeness / insanity of Jerseyians.

"Ok. I have two stories for you. Roughly 13 years ago my family got together at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. My step mom and her brother have always had a "tumultuous" relationship. After dinner they got into an argument over who loved their long dead mother more. Shit was thrown around, plates broken, the usual. My dad tried to calm them down to no avail. So, he decided he had to distract them. He'd just gotten a Dodge conversion van, so he went out and fired it up and started ramming it at the cars of all our relatives - totaling roughly 10 cars until my step mom and uncle noticed and stopped fighting with each other in order to yell at him.

Now, second story. The next year, my dad decided that having people over to the house for Thanksgiving was a bad idea. So he booked us all into this super fancy restaurant and paid to put all the relatives in a swank hotel next door - on the assumption that people would be more well behaved in public.

Everything went well during the meal, until the check arrived. The waiter then put the check near my uncle rather than my step mom (who insists on handling all the financial shit for her and my dad.)

Her brother then said "See, you can talk about liberation all you want, but classy people know a man is supposed to pay."

My step mom then upended the table and grabbed the carving knife and tried to stab her brother to death. He took me, my dad and my brother to literally hurl her off of him.

In a matter of minutes the cops arrived (small New Jersey town.)

While my step mom and my uncle were trying to tell the cops they didn't want to press charges against each other, my dad walked up to one of the cop cars, unzipped and pissed on the cop car's tires.

Flash forward two hours later to me, my then-wife and various cousins pooling our money to bail all three of them out of jail."

(Source: Thanksgiving Horror Stories)

PS Though I hate Jersey, it is my second favorite state.

... but well, none of them really are sticking.

I open up Blogger with such good intentions of writing, exposing on relevant topics or just informing the general public that still knows I exist on events in my life. Then, I get going and after three different topic starts, everything seems to fizzle out. Maybe I'm not much for fleshing out full concrete ideas beyond the 140 character limits of Twitter (shameless plug: @aFerdC). There are two reasons (that I can think of), of why this is:

1. I'm too dumb to write a full paragraph.
2. I'm too deep to convey my insanities in blog form.

If I had to guess, it would be a nice little combination of both those ideas. (pause). See what I mean? I don't know where to go with this yet there are so many possibilities. Anyway, let's just go to the talking points of the past 90 days.

- Julia heads back east. That was... a pretty exhausting day, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Dropped her off at the airport at 10am, go back to work, pack and then am back at the airport 12 hours later for a red eye to NP. Oh right and this was also the week after...

- UC-Berkeley Extension classes (specifically two finals). For all those scoring at home, here are the classes completed to date:
* Essentials of Business
* Accounting for Managers
* Intro to Microeconomics
* Fundamentals of Finance
* Statistics (Tuesday)
I know these could be a lot harder (and I am thankfully that they are not right now). Regardless, it's taking up two nights a week along with some Saturdays and Sunday afternoons for studying. However, I guess this will be the plan for the foreseeable future and maybe even the next couple years.

- Turned 26. Wrong side of the 20's. Time to start getting shit done. However...

- I'm still in my 20's which means life needs to be a lot more reckless than it is now. Any and all suggestions will be considered on how to make this happen (within reason, and legal is preferred). I have to admit, I look through Facebook and am pretty jealous on a lot of things I see. Most of my GW alumni brethren are holding it down and still causing havoc on the East coast...

- But yet is it really just the coast that makes the difference? Or is it a personality thing? This is a topic I've found myself dwelling on and pondering quite often. I remember hearing a quote saying "Live in San Francisco once, but leave before it makes you too soft; Live in New York City, but leave before it makes you too hard." The first time I heard that, I had the momentary inclination to book a ticket back East. How is being too hard a problem? (Maybe that's the way only a New Yorker can see it). Maybe this city is making me soft. Maybe I am just psyching myself out. Maybe I just need to find 'hard' people out here. It's an ongoing battle.

- Ultimate. I found a pick-up game near me and while it's mostly 30 and 40 somethings, it's a perfect wading pool to get my feet wet before heading back into the deep end of competitive play. I realized that Ultimate was more than just the workouts or the tournaments or even the people; it was a lifestyle that you can pick parts of to hold on to and those parts have been missing the last 3 years. It kept me in shape, it kept my body (and thus, my mind) active and it also continuously expanded my social circle. All of those things have been shrinking so I am trying to reverse that trend. I temporarily attempted to re-enter the soccer spectrum but quickly realized that door in my life has been closed, boarded and dead-bolted and I did that for a reason.

- Personal development. Beyond the business classes, I've been exploring all the things I can be doing with my extensive free-time due to my lack of a social scene. OneBrick is a pretty great volunteer organization that is designed around local communities rather than one specific cause. The couple times I've gone have been mostly park beautification but they also work beer festivals so it's not all weeding and ditch diggin'. In addition, I just completed a speed reading course (thanks to Groupon). And on tap is trying to go into wood working. I remember Julia mentioning that her grandfather is still around and kicking at 90+ (sorry if I'm misremembering) and it's because he just stays active and is working his farm. This struck a cord; I think it's important for me to find a hobby that I can enjoy and participate in for years. I've heard (not sure where) that a common theme of people who live well into their 80's and 90's is something to keep them active, be it knitting, whittling or volunteering. While I am no where close to being an octogenarian, the few things I have built were pretty fulfilling projects, even being grossly unprepared and lacking the right tools or know-how.

There's probably more but instead, here's what's on tap.

- Statistics final
- Maybe a Xmas Party at 1302 (but a silly theme, like Bad Sweater or 80's Xmas)
- New Paltz for the holidays
- More business classes and nonsense
- Alumni Weekend (you guys don't know how to loot)
- Cousins wedding in Cancun in June, bumping up my total countries visited from 2 to 3 (sad, I know)

I always say I'll write more. Maybe this time, it'll stick... (breath, don't hold it).