Dastardly sayings

Yesterday, the theme was, “The more you know, the more you realize how little you know,” as pointed out in the comments by A_B. And I agree with that 100%

Today, it’s, “If it’s not worth doing right, it’s not worth doing at all.” This one, I have to disagree with. Same with, “Don’t start anything you can’t finish,” which is pretty much the same thing. Screw that.

It’s an idea that I’ve always let rule my actions, and if not my actions, my judgment of those actions. And it’s been debilitating. I’ll look at a project and be filled with horror and stress at how long it’ll take to get perfect. I’ll look at the bathroom and know in my head exactly how long it’ll take, exactly how much work it’ll take to get it up to the level of shininess I think is acceptable, and think to myself that I don’t have that kind of time right now (which is always).

It seems so fricking obvious, but realizing that a hefty portion of my procrastination had to do with my inability to consider a half-done job as being ok progress has been really freeing.

Looking back at the last few years, this is so obvious that I want to poke myself in the head. Not that I know what that would accomplish. Anyway, it’s one of those things people constantly say, and you think to yourself, “Yeah, duh,” and roll your eyes that some moron thought they needed to put it into small words so that your small mind can understand it.

But seriously? I let it rule so much of me. I think I finally really get it, as it applies to me.

When was I most able to enjoy writing? When I shed the restrictions I had put upon myself, when I stopped micromanaging every word and phrase that came out of my mouth, when the month of working on NaNoWriMo flew by in a haze of triumph.

When was I able to lose weight? When I decided that I didn’t need to have lofty goals and be perfect and stick to such strict rules. It took so damn long before any noticeable change, but it’s been working and I’m still on my way.

When was I able to learn to exercise? When I decided not to put “real” exercise (i.e. working out in a “natural” way, not at the gym) on a pedestal and value the convenience that the gym offers. Well, I’m still learning.

The last week, I’ve been doing tiny little cleaning exercises — not enough that other people can tell, I’m sure, but enough that I can see how easy it would be to incorporate the small actions into my everyday life as a subconscious habit. No, the bathroom is not nearly as spotless as I think it needs to be in order to be considered clean. No, the kitchen is not reorganized yet. But I’ve been scrubbing sinks and tubs and toilets in the last few days in a matter of minutes per task. When I have something I’m waiting for, like food to heat up in the microwave, I whip out the vaccum and run it over the rug in the livingroom. No, I didn’t get the entire room, and no, I didn’t get the entire house. But the rug is almost dogfur-free, and it took me almost no time. I’ll get the other parts of the room when I’m waiting for something else. And something else after that.

Feeling like I don’t have to stick to my mother’s top-to-bottom routines has left me feeling quite free. Feeling like I can straighten half a table at a time has made me feel like it’s not a problem, it’s progress.

I can’t wait to figure out what other things I can apply this knowledge to.

Knowing yourself

I feel like I know myself pretty well. But the other day, I stopped to think about what I know about myself (and the world) now, versus what I thought I knew about myself (and the world) ten years ago.

I thought I knew it all! I already thought I knew myself pretty well back then. I honestly thought I could assess myself, my motivations, and my actions pretty well. But when I think about how much more I know now, I realize I was a buffoon. And certainly, my 20 year old self thought my 10 year old self didn’t know crap, but I was already a know-it-all by then.

And most undoubtedly, I will think of my almost-thirty self as a buffoon of supposed-self-awareness when I am forty. 😀

And I’m ok with that. As long as I realize that I have a long way to go, and that I do not in fact know it all, I think I’m doing ok.

A part of the problem of maintaining a web presence is that I can find crap I wrote 10 years ago:

in 7th grade, i was what they called in the earlier sixties a hair-hopper. go rent “hairspray” if you don’t know what i mean. anyway, i had big hair, and i was much into being popular. hahahahahah. will i be laughing at the way i am now, in about 10 years? nah, it’ll happen much sooner than that. [snip] since i am now 20, i can act as if it’s been ages since i was a teen. it’s some sort of a law written in some sort of a guide book for ahem, adults.

OMG, I read some of the stuff on that page and want to run away screaming in horror, but hey, a part of self-awareness is looking back at who I was and… uh… shaking my head at myself and running screaming into the night examining the multiple ways in which I have changed.

I used to be much harder, harsher, judgmental, self-righteous, and black & white about things. I’d so kick my ass if I met past-self on the streets. Except I wouldn’t want to be a bully. Hmm.

Now, I’m much more cognizant of subtleties of individual situations and the grays in life. I’m much more loving & forgiving of myself and the people around me. I’m much better at being a friend to someone, although I still need a lot of work ahead of me.

Overall, I’m quite happy with who I am and who I am learning to become.

When I’m 40, I’ll surely link back to some crap I wrote this year. 😀

Godfather Dopplegangers

We watched Godfather last night. I had seen it before about 10 years ago and I recall it being incredible. Luckily, I had forgotten enough of it that it felt like watching it for the first time again. It was great.

The level of acting talent involved with the movie was incredible. However, sometimes it was distracting because I kept thinking of more contemporary/younger/random other actors & actresses that resembled the actors/actresses in the movie.

Disclaimer: These are not original comparisons and I know that people have made them countless times in the past (with one notable exception).

For example, seeing Al Pacino at that age reminded me of Andy Garcia. Of course, it’s really that Andy Garcia reminds me of Al Pacino, but you get the idea that I kept thinking of the wrong people as I was watching it. The woman who played Connie (the Corleon daughter whose wedding is taking place at the beginning of the movie) reminds me of Annabella Sciorra. The one that Seppo felt was insane was my thinking that Robert Duvall‘s character reminded me of a taller Peter MacNicol‘s John Cage. Heh. There were more, but they were less interesting. *cough*

Now that I have mentioned movies and dopplegangers in the same breath, I have virtually guaranteed that A_B will comment on this, possibly on the fact I’m comparing these great actors with lesser actors. *waits* 😀

For the record, there is no real comparison to be made, acting-skill-wise. These people were incredible.

Tics

It’s strange how something won’t bother you at all, but something else really similar will. As far as language, I’ve noticed that misspellings, mispronunciations, and misconjugations don’t bother me, but using entirely wrong words and pronouncing things that aren’t there do bother me.

To be more specific, here are examples of things that don’t bother me at all:

• Pronouncing “salmon” without a silent l, i.e. making the first syllable rhyme with “Al”.
• Reversing the “i” and “e” in various words (with the exception of the word “weird” — this one bothers me everytime I see it as “wierd”)
• Mistaking the verb root of “conversation” to be “conversate”
• Ending a sentence with a preposition

These are big huge no-nos to a lot of people, and I do entirely believe [ETA: I totally typed this as “beleive” the first time. Hee!!] that people should work on fixing them, but the reason these kinds of mistakes don’t bother me on a personal level is that when people make these specific types of errors, it is clear that they are still trying to do the right thing by following the known rules. “Salmon” is definitely an example where the correct pronunciation is an exception to the rule in English. I don’t know many words where the “l” is dropped. So I feel like, ok, the person hasn’t learned the one-off rule for this word — that’s ok. They just need to learn it and the problem is fixed.

The “ei” versus “ie” has so many exceptions that it’s again a matter of learning the exceptions rather than someone being ignorant of the overall rule. There is that little rhyme but my undestanding is that there are exceptions even to the exceptions themselves.

As for “conversate”, let me first be clear in saying that no, just because people mistakenly use it often doesn’t mean that we should allow it into the accepted vernacular; I am not saying that at all. But I’m saying that it is not an indicator of stupidity and lack of learning, as people seem to often feel. My take on it is that it’s a lack of specific learning, not learning in general, and can easily be fixed because it in fact demonstrates that the person is capable of solid reasoning techniques. In this case, you have a word that is presented in its noun form. The person knows that it shares a common root with a verb. Take the example of “commiseration”. The verb is “commiserate” not “commiser”. Another example is “fascination”. The verb is “fascinate” not “fascine”. In a similar vein, the person clearly has applied the same reverse engineering method to the word “conversation” to come up with “conversate” rather than “converse”.

The problem with this specific example is that the word “converse” is quite a common word in both common speech and reading, so this usage could demonstrate either that they are not well-read or that people are always using the wrong conjugation in front of them. But I don’t think that makes a person stupid. We learn language by listening to our surroundings. It isn’t an indicator of innate capabilities.

Ending a sentence with a preposition (in non-technical or non-legal writing) doesn’t bother me because, sometimes, the sentences sound so unnatural in casual conversation when you follow the proper rules of grammar. I allow myself and others a lot of leeway in this rule (and others, like using “they” or “you” instead of “one” when discussing a single hypothetical person) just because casual conversations don’t need to sound so stiff and stilted.

I could make a general hypothesis at this point that I don’t mind mistakes that are made when I can expect reasonable, intelligent, and capable people to make them, depending on lack of exposure to the given word or phrase, but I’m not sure that’s defensible.

Take the specific things that DO bother me:

• Using “deep-seeded” instead of “deep-seated”, e.g. “She has some deep-seated, unresolved issues from her last relationship.”
• Using “balled” instead of “bawled”, e.g. “I bawled my eyes out when the two main characters finally got together in the end.”
• Using “would of” instead of “would have”, e.g. “I would have bought that pony, but I couldn’t figure out how I’d take care of it.”
• Using the “____ and I” construct to the total exclusion of “____ and me” even when proper grammar strictly calls for it, e.g. “Paul decided to join Amy and me for dinner.”

I can’t actually think of a specific example of when people add or drop syllables in words at the moment. For the other examples listed above, I can come up with plenty of scenarios why a reasonable, intelligent, and capable person might consistent make these mistakes, but I can’t get away from the fact that they still bother me.

On reflection, maybe I’m just an self-centered bastard and if I think it’s a mistake *I* can and have made, then it’s ok, but if it’s something that I don’t do, then I get bothered by it. How terrible.

Let me add for clarity that those mistakes listed above don’t make me think less of a person or make me question their intelligence; rather, it’s the mistakes themselves that bug me. I don’t tend to extend my annoyance at the error to the person who makes it.

Furthermore, I had to correct this entry a billion times for errors, and I’m sure it’s still riddled with them. Heh. When I read Eats, Shoots & Leaves, I found that I consistently made certain mistakes in grammar that I hadn’t known about until the moment I read about them. Heh.

I’m coming clean

So, my “big” do-before-turning-30 is trying to be neater, using a system I found online. All your systems are belong to online. There is a “first 31 days” guideline for what to clean and when. This is what I intend to complete before my b-day.

The first task (or “habit to install”) for me is keeping the kitchen sink sparkling clean. The focus is on small tasks, so I keep doing this for a few days until it feels a part of my natural routine, and in the meantime, I’ll also add small 2-, 5-, and 15-minute cleaning/decluttering sprints. The idea is to do whatever you can in the time limit without going over, so that it never feels like too much, so that you never stare at the mound of stuff on the desk and wonder how you can get it all organized, because you are only thinking of the next two minutes. There are also specific guidelines for certain “decluttering exercises” such as finding 27 things in a room that you want to donate. It’s these concrete little things that will help me.

Here is a little background on me & the history of cleaning: My mom was a neat freak. She kept the home pristine and sparkling and had rules for everything, and I mean everything. I love her to pieces and thank God everyday that she was my mom, but I have to admit that one of the reasons that I grew up to be a slob is that I was totally exhausted mentally by the time I hit independence. We had regimented chores we had to do on a daily basis and on a weekly basis.

On a daily basis, we had to keep the house neat in general, wash the dishes, set the table, clean up the food, sort the mail, wipe down the kitchen sink & counter & stove & fridge, wipe down the bathroom sink & counter, rinse down the shower walls, pick up after all the hair we shed, walk the dog, feed the dog, make sure all the tables were clear of random stuff, help cook dinner, etc. They are all totally normal things a kid at home is supposed to do, but it was mostly that it was so… regimented. There was only one way to set the table, there was only one way to leave the shower curtains, and there was only one way to wash the dishes. I felt like I was always suffocated by walls of chores and rules.

On a weekly basis, we vaccumed all the rooms, scrubbed the tub & toilet, took out the trash, mowed the lawn/shovelled the driveway/swept up the leaves, dusted all the shelves in all the rooms, Windexed all the windows, waxed all wooden surfaces, washed/dried/folded the laundry, mopped the kitchen. As needed, we helped my dad pack up his van in the morning and put away all the tools in the evening.

On a less frequent basis, we washed all the curtains, wiped down all the fridge shelves, washed/dried/waxed the car, and whatever other seasonal things needed doing.

All this was on top of going to school, doing all my extracurricular activities, going to church, and maintaining my part-time job. I never felt like I was doing things up to par. The chores were frustrating because there was never a real sense of reward from doing them; they just needed to get done. It was just drudgery.

My room was my personal haven of “leave stuff wherever I want them”-ness. I had stacks of books on my desks and stacks of clothes on my bed. I knew exactly where everything was, and I always moved entire stacks at once, so I could keep mental tabs on them.

When I went off to college, there was simply no time for any personal care. If I wasn’t dodging my horrible roommate, I was studying or trying to catch some sleep or grabbing a quick bite between classes. Let’s not talk about the college years.

Anyway, there were a few problems with the way I was taught to be neat when I was younger:

• It was too regimented. Any cracks in the regiment and it was all over.
• It was completely unrewarding in everyway. In fact, it was punishing because it took time from the other things I loved to do.
• It was based entirely on external motivators and never crossed over into being a positive priority for me.

Now that I am older, it IS a priority. A person can’t spend all their lives blaming their actions on their past. It’s time to take action. It’s a matter of solving the problem on a practical level.

I know myself, and the “just do it” approach will not cut it. I need to start small and build slowly. The housemates and I put together a chore checklist which has been helping us to be a lot more neat on a higher level. We need lots of work on the details but it’s clear that everyone wants a cleaner home. Yay for a cleaner, neater home!

Once, a person (honestly, I don’t remember who it was) I know said to me, “I’m sorry, but your house is a dump.” I was really, genuinely pissed off (you’d think I’d remember given how pissed off I was, but I don’t). The problem isn’t that I am in denial about our house generally being messy; it was and it is, and it can definitely be better. The problem was, why did this person tell me that? Because they thought I didn’t know and I needed to be enlightened? That is disrespectful to my intelligence & my vision. Or if they thought I knew it, that I need to shame me about it? It’d be like me going up to someone and telling them, “I’m sorry, but your car is ugly.” Or, “I’m sorry, but your jaw is ginormous.” No, you are not sorry. You are just being a jerk and assuming that your judgment of the situation has a higher priority than anything else. I wanted to put my fist through this person’s face. Since I know many of you have thought it, I thank you for having the respect & tact not to say it out loud.

Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent.

The point is, this change is not a response to other people’s need for me to have a cleaner house; this change is a response to a desire in myself to enact a positive change in my life. It’s a set of life habits that I’d like to acquire so that our home is neater and happier.

I feel like I am ready for this change now. I’ve been going through small steps of self-improvement in the last few years: exercise financial responsibility, eat better, exercise, and, now, be more organized. I hope to carry that into my mental life as well, clearing up the clutter and being more focussed.

Might have found it

As I was contemplating turning thirty in just under two months, I wrote:

I thought to myself that I have about a month to decide on something I’d like to do before I turn thirty (which would give me just under another month to actually do it).

I think I may just have found the thing. I need to research the idea and find out what the best way to go about it is, but I think I have just the thing that will give me a sense of achievement and help me going forward.

It’s not like I need to be secretive, but I don’t want to link anything until I have a better idea of my methodology. If I stick with what I have now, I’m already on Day 1 of the plan. 🙂 Woo!

My President

I weep.

Update: The video got pulled from YouTube. You can find a different link at Crooks and Liars.

Back to [Non]-Routine

So we have been back from outer space for about three weeks now, and things are definitely starting to settle into a routine of sorts. Yet “routine” doesn’t seem to describe the changes in our lives well.

Seppo has been at home, cleaning, organizing, and cooking his butt off. And I have been reaping the benefits. Boy, have I. He’s been making me breakfast with a cup of cappucino every morning, packing me lunch, and making me dinner every night. And doing a bunch of insane work around the house too. I’m really getting spoiled. I had better not get used to this. 🙂

We joined a museum membership to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since getting back, which lets us have unlimited access to the Legion of Honor and the de Young. We visited the de Young a couple of weekends ago. We’ve been trying to take our momentum from Europe and transfer it to our own area. 🙂

As a part of that effort, last weekend, we attended an early showing of Over the Hedge (which was hysterical, cute, and endearing in every way — I’d bet that it is going to be a big hit with young & old alike) with Holly (which she helped to make, so stay for the end credits!) at the Metreon then grabbed lunch and sat out at the adjacent Yerba Buena Gardens to take in a free outdoor program put on by The San Francisco Ballet School as a part of the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. Wow, that was a lot of links.

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Prison Break just aired its season finale, and it was nail-bitingly good. I constantly feel like I’m going to suffer a heartattack when I watch this show. American Idol will also have its season finale soon (I think next week), so less tv watching for me, which coincides well with longer days and great weather!

It looks like PB is now available for purchase via iTunes. And even better [!!!!] Firefly is too!!!! If you haven’t seen it yet, you have no excuse.

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I am thinking that I want to go in to have a complete physical soon, so I know what things I need to focus on. I worry about the “invisible” things that I don’t know about like high blood pressure, cholesterol, insulin resistance, random allergies, bone density, etc. Not to be paranoid, but you never know. Anyway, I am going to make an appointment sometime this month.

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In other news, Colin is intent on destruction (of the good kind) and construction. Woo! I can’t wait!

Internet Addiction Test

I took the IAT (Internet Addiction Test). My results:

Your score: 42
You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

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I misspelled “addiction” as “addition” both times in the title and in the first sentence the first time around. An internet addition test would be quite different.

Food Gaffes

When I was 10 or 11 years old, I read a book called Making friends (The Girls of Canby Hall, No. 18) about three very different girls who end up as roommates at a boarding school.

As I’ve Googled (goodness knows my memory is shot), the girls are from Boston, Chicago, and… Texas. I don’t know why they didn’t say what city the third girl was from. Anyway, they all have very lame names and the characters are quite the exercise in regional and socioeconomic class stereotypes — it was the 80s after all:

• Jane Barrett from Boston: prim & proper, quite the blueblood WASP blonde
• Andy Cord from Chicago: fun-loving black girl from a boisterous middle-class family
• Toby Houston from… Texas (I believe she was not actually from Houston): naive but sweet redheaded farmer’s daughter who had never been to the big city

As I sliced some brie tonight (yes, I “cut the cheese”), I was thinking of the time I was at a friend’s house for a dinner party and I was jokingly taken to task for a breach in etiquette in cutting cheese. Do you know the proper rules for cutting cheese?

Yeah, I know. I guess it makes sense, but how are you to know without someone explicitly telling you?

Anyway, I swear this has something to do with the Girls of Canby Hall.

At some point in the story, the three girls go to Posh Spice a.k.a. Jane Barrett’s home for a weekend. Baby Spice a.k.a. Toby has trouble with the artichoke, which she’s never seen before, whereas Sporty Spice (or maybe Scary Spice since people from cities will cut you ;p) a.k.a. Andy, despite the fact that she’s never seen it before either, manages to successfully mimic the Barrett family. Or wait, maybe it was the other way around. Anyway, one of them chews and chews on the entire leaf for a while until someone shows some mercy. I think the Jane character then painstakingly shows how to properly eat an artichoke.

It was a humiliating experience for whichever character it was.

Meanwhile, I was this 10 or 11 year old, full of pre-teen anxieties, as well as being a relatively new immigrant to the U.S. I had no real idea of what “Americans” ate in their homes, other than what I saw on Growing Pains or Family Ties or what I observed at lunchtime in school. I had friends of various backgrounds, but I was rarely allowed to go over other people’s houses, so it was largely a mystery what the theoretical “average American family” ate on a daily basis. So you can imagine my interest at this odd foodstuff that even other born-and-bred Americans had trouble with.

I had all these fears about food because I simply didn’t have contact with various foods. Man, when I had real Indian curry, you should have seen how weirded out I was that it wasn’t like Korean curry. I was like, “Where is the real curry?” Stupid, eh? Heh.

In high school, I made the dumb mistake of putting both lemon and cream in my tea. Curdle-rama. My friend called me an idiot. 😀

Back to Canby Hall… So I went off to college at some point, and I wanted to try artichokes, filled with fear and trepidation and excitement at the prospect of eating this Very Exotic Food ™. My then-bf and I went out and bought some, cooked them up, and ate them. They were tasty. But somehow, the book had made it seem like it was just impossible to figure out how to eat properly. But all you needed to do was see someone eat one leaf and it was easy as pie.

Once I learned the hows and whys of cutting cheese, it was not difficult to remember, but it was embarrassing when I was told I was being greedy by cutting the tip of the brie. I only meant to cut the smallest part so I didn’t look greedy. Oh well.

Seppo and I always sweat bullets at some of the fancier restaurants for fear that we’ll use the wrong utensils. I know the general rules, but there always seems to be some exception. Alas.

So, you guys have any embarrassing food-related gaffes?