May 2008 Archives
I have been listening to This American Life Podcasts while commuting to and from the Good Herb Gardens where I spend my Mondays and Wednesdays. This week they played an episode that originally aired in May of 2001 when I stilled lived in Portland, Or and dreamed of working on that show. I listened religiously and they still did a lot of stuff around Chicago then, so the city would appear in the background like this wonderfully real place. Compared to the mostly fake existence I had at the time it was very real, people had jobs, they talked to their families, would hang out at the lake and at diners. In Portland I worked at a bar and lived in a place I could not afford while I tried to discover exactly how unhappy I could make myself. So once a week I would listen and think about what it would be like to live in Chicago and how great it would be once Ira Glass discovered what a cool guy I was.
Listening now, it is pretty wonderful to know that I lived that dream. That I made it to Chicago from Portland. I had a real life there, with a job and friends, a girlfriend, and a wife. I feel like I really made it there. I may not have worked for This American Life or got onstage at the Goodman, but I did work and made shows and was very happy. So I am feeling pretty grateful for the things that got me to this place.
I did not quite know that part of this dream would involve the Circus class that the F-bomb and I taught on Saturday morning. We had two under three year olds who this whole term have been pretty shy and reserved. This week however, one of them peed their pants and it was like we were dealing with totally different children. One was hanging from one of the trapezes without any pants on (because her mother wanted her to continue with the class even though she had peed. In the interest of full disclosure it was her mother who was holding her on the trapeze) while the other little guy was standing in a corner kissing a mirror. I had been trying to find something to clean up the peed stain with and the F-bomb had been trying to hold it together but we finally had to give up and ended the class early.
Living the dream.
I still am trying to get the rest of my archives up into the database but have fallen miserably behind. I have been feeling the pull of nostalgia so hopefully I will have time soon. Nostalgia seems to strike me around the same time as allergy season.
Whoo Hoo El-Zee
http://gizmodo.com/391587/5-million+piece-lego-boulder-chases-indy-crashes-into-car
This is why I am learning to love San Francisco.
When you do the flying trapeze and rip all the calluses off of your hand they tell you to pee on your hand. Supposedly it will make your hand heal faster. Last week the F-bomb hurt her ankle. The advise she got was to pee on a towel and wrap her foot in it. There is a theme in Circus First Aid.
Earlier today we took a workshop about sideshow acts. There was fire breathing, escape acts, and putting one's hand in a badger trap. I also ate broken glass. Several hours later I experienced a profound sense of cause and effect.
