making friends

My friend docrpm came out for work last week and I was lucky enough to spend a few days with him. I always have a great time in his company. I was relating his stay to a friend of mine and recounted how we met and it made me think about two interesting things.

We met at a Stanford meet and greet where they try to sell you on attending their grad school. Most of the people there were who you'd expect. A lot of nerdy socially inept people. I remember docrpm stuck out for some reason. He didn't seem so nerdy or socially inept and he was a little more edgy looking. So we got to talking. We had a lot in common. We even had tickets to the same music show albeit in different cities - Peter Murphy with Nine Inch Nails opening.

This brings me to my first point. While we hit it off we didn't know what school we'd end up going to. And we never exchanged contact info. And why was this? I'm sure it's because we didn't have cell phones, blogs, instant message IDs, and email addresses back then. This was 1990. Exchanging contact info now is so simple. This got me thinking about how did any social activity really get set up back then. I don't recall carrying around a black book of home landline phone numbers but clearly I must have. It's amazing how communications are so easy now and seem so obvious and ubiquitous that I've completely forgotten how I hooked up with friends before they existed.

As a result of this, when he attended Berkeley and I attended Stanford, we had no idea we were even in the same state. This brings me to my second point which is that we did end up running in to each other. But it wasn't at Berkeley and it wasn't at Stanford. My memory is a little hazy but I believe it was in the Haight Ashbury district in downtown San Fran. I was walking down the sidewalk with some friends and he was (he can correct me if I'm wrong) in a bar having a drink and for the two seconds that I was in view walking past that bar, he also happened to be looking out the front. And I guess at that point we did exchange phone numbers.

Because I value Doc's friendship so much, and this value has grown over the years, I'm struck now more than ever by how friggin unlikely it is we ever hooked up again. If he or I had chosen a different part of town or not gone out that night or I had crossed to the other side of the road at the previous light because I just missed the walk signal or he been ordering a drink or talking to his friends when we passed by, then we never would have become friends. I'm sure the odds are a million to one over the course of the 4.5 years I was at Stanford that we would have met this way. This is one of the many reason I consider myself a very lucky guy.

iraq choices

There's a viciously honest op-ed in the NYTimes by Thomas Friedman about the choices we have in Iraq. It's a somber and direct piece but evenhanded. It's extremely well written. Especially in light of its brevity. I thought it was a gutsy piece and it is worth a read (note Op-eds are free this week if you don't have a NYTimes subscription. So read it now). Some quotes,

Our only two options left today in Iraq are “tolerable” and “awful.” “Good” is no longer on the menu. When you read stories from Iraq saying that all we need to do is get rid of all the police there, get one-third of the soldiers in the Iraqi Army to actually report to duty regularly, and replace all the ministers who are corrupt, you know why “good” is not on the menu anymore.

It’s time to make a final push for the tolerable, and if that fails, quit Iraq and insulate ourselves and our allies from the awful. This can’t go on.

A U.S. withdrawal under such conditions would be messy and shameful. But when people are that intent on killing each other there’s not much we can do. As bad as we’ve performed in Iraq, what Iraqis have done to each other, and the little that other Muslims have done to stop them, is an even bigger travesty.

where there's smoke, there's planes

I have a nice view of New York from my 34th floor office. I can see most of New York from midtown to the Bronx. Rarely a week goes by when I don't see some smoke billowing skyward in the distance. This morning the smoke was a little closer. About 10 blocks away. But the interesting thing is the source of it was just blocked out by the Plaza. So to me it looked like it was coming from the GM building which is located on the southeast corner of Central Park (where the new Apple store is). Couple that with a conversation I had last week about how our offices used to be located in the GM building and that during 9/11 people with a view of the park realized that any plane had a straight shot into the building over the park, and you mind tends to wander. Turns out it was a building collapse. I wonder how many other people had obscured views and thought, 'hmmm...'

like tears in rain

I have always known that I have a poor memory. When people claim I am smart I attribute it entirely to my poor memory. I was never smart until I realized I had zero capacity to retain information. I suffered through charitable B's and C's in grade school. Math was my worst subject because there is technically an infinite amount of material to memorize if you don't understand what's going on. Once you realize you can't remember equations or facts very well then you try to compensate by innately understanding whatever you are trying to learn. While people were scribbling notes in high school and college I used to just listen; hoping that I could understand the overarching fundamentals of any given topic. Often I rederived equations during tests from first principles. This is why I studied engineering and physics in college and not history or biology. This is why math became my best subject.

This last weekend I attended the wedding of an old friend from my Ph.D. days. The effect of this weekend was for my lack of memory to reassert itself in my mind. I stopped by to see my graduate advisor at Stanford and also spent the wedding day talking with friends from that period. Effectively seeing people and places I hadn't visited for over a decade.

It was a jarring experience. When I visited my advisor I discovered that he didn't retain an office in the building he used to reside. He was now in the mechanical engineering building. I had attended at least one class in that building. But how you got there from the chemical engineering building, what that building looked like, and what classes I had taken there escaped my grasp. I wandered around aimlessly on campus. I'd take a left or a right turn expecting to walk upon a certain setting that didn't exist in reality. Typically my mind had shortcutted the actuals. There were more filler buildings and pathways than I had remembered. Places I had walked by hundreds of times had become more condensed in my mind. Possibly because I had never really spent the energy to be aware of my surroundings.

I came away from that visit slightly disoriented about what had actually occurred in my 4 years at the school. Who had I known, what classes had I taken, what extracurricular activities had I done? Names came back but not necessarily the faces. Faces but not names. Trips I had taken started to form in my mind but I had no clue who I had taken them with. Chronologically, events had no foundation. I visited Point Reyes once but with who and when? And did we also go to see the big redwood trees during that time or was it some other trip? I tried to put it out of my mind, slightly frustrated with my lack of recollection. I did drink quite heavily during this period but not all the time. It wasn't an excuse nor would it be completely comforting if that was the source.

The following day was the wedding and I knew there would be a few people I knew quite closely from that period. I had a certain amount of trepidation. When I arrived I wanted to stand back from the crowd so I could scan faces and allow myself time to reconstruct events and names around those people. In general everyone was quite recognizable. A few more grays and wrinkles perhaps but nothing too drastic that stopped me from identifying a face as someone from my past. But again names and events that I had experience with these people were less than forthcoming. What exactly happened during those four years where I spent practically every weekend in the city or in Berkeley? The groom I had met at a Stanford pre-acceptance dinner. But we never exchanged information and luckily he spotted me a year or so later walking by a bar he was in. I don't even remember who I was with at the time. And even now as I think and type about this event I remember other faceless people surrounding that event. But everything is hazy.

At the same time I suddenly wondered why had I lost touch with these people? All but the groom at least. And even with him, there were vast swaths of time when we didn't stay in touch. It's fairly inexcusable and maddening at the same time. But oddly many of these people had failed to keep a strong connection with each other even though the geographical limitations were much less imposing than mine; many stayed in the Bay Area. Life changes. People take on new jobs and new friends and new hobbies and new spouses. There was clearly a strong connection between everyone. Conversations weren't stiff or contrived. The attraction that originally existed was still in force. But clearly people's lives had moved on. The spheres of their lives intersected a little less often.

Why didn't I keep in touch? I've moved around a lot in my life. On average I'm in a new city every 4 years - St. Paul, Paris, St. Paul, London, St. Paul, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, New York. Only recently have I more actively spent energy keeping in touch with people. For example, when I left San Francisco I have almost no recollection of saying goodbye to people. I graduated, I accepted a job, and I was off. I don't think there was a big goodbye party for everyone. I can't recall the last time I saw the groom from that period. I actually do recall my flight out but only because it was slightly traumatic with a crying girlfriend left at the gate (maybe some trauma is good in life for this very reason). But I don't have any internal feelings of loss or sadness from this end of an important part of my life. I'm sure I didn't give this girlfriend the kind of explanation or compassion she deserved. I metaphorically walked quickly out the door. That of course wasn't true when I left Seattle. Maybe it's maturity. No one teaches you how to say goodbye and keep in touch. There's no class for that. Maybe I was too excited about the opportunities I was about to undertake. Maybe now these opportunities seem quite small in the scheme of things. A new job does not equal a friendship and it never will. But back then it seemed like it did.

And then again my mind wandered to people who weren't at the wedding but I had spent a lot of time with. Ex-girlfriends, drinking buddies, peripheral acquaintances, etc. What has happened to them? What things did I do with those people? Why didn't I stay in touch? It was both nostalgically saddening and energizing at the same time. Am I going to look back in 10 years and wander what I was doing in New York? Who I was hanging out with? Maybe I better do something about this.

This is good mid-life crisis shit. You can see where this fear stems from. I'm 80 years old at some point and I don't have many friends and huge chunks of my life never happened. I might have well have lived for 20 years because the other 60 are lost. That is why I say this kind of experience is energizing. This 'anti-flashback' clearly gives me some incentive to be a little more observant and careful in nurturing moments and friendships. You tend to get up off your duff with this kind of realization.

I'm also glad that I'm now armed with two pieces of technology - a digital camera and the modern day blog. Let me explain. I have one picture of my mother when she was about 2 or 3 years old. One of my father when he was around 8. I have about maybe 100 pictures max of myself up to about age 10. I have thousands of pictures of my 1.5 year old daughter. There is no blog or written material of my mom. No blog of my dad. My blog started in 2000 or so and wasn't particularly documentary in its content or prolific until 2 years ago. Even then, it's not event driven. My daughter's blog has hundreds of entries detailing where we went, with who, when, and what we did including the day she was born and the day she was conceived (no picture of that event thankfully; just the resort we were at and later a pregnancy test strip).

I can't imagine on some level the experience my daughter will have when she is 80 years old. Presuming I can interest her in using a digital camera and a blog to journal her life on some frequent basis, she will not have a pang for lost moments. In fact she'll have the joy of possibly reading about a moment that she has no memory of ever penning. And then on another level I can't imagine what my days in San Francisco would be like if I had a digital camera and a blog back then. And would that have spurred me to keep more in touch with people when I wandered back and read a post about some party on some odd weekend. "Maybe I should give so and so a call?", I might have told myself. Or what if all my friends had kept blogs? Even if we didn't communicate directly I would know the big events happening in their lives. It's certainly one way I keep in touch now. But these recordings do not exist. This was all not meant to be.

So perhaps tomorrow I'll carry my camera around a little more frequently. Maybe I'll blog a little more often. And maybe I won't have to write this piece again in 10 years after I have forgotten that I wrote it today.

nepal & iran

I'm struck by the different turn of events in this article about Iran and this one about Nepal (registration is required). In one case (Iran) you've got a disaffected youth letting events pass them by and in the other (Nepal) you've got a group taking matters into their own hands. If the U.S. is serious about 'nation building' or at least nation influencing it would do itself a favor by getting some social scientists on the ground to understand why the people of these two countries respond so differently. I can guarantee fostering a Nepal approach is a hell of a lot less expensive, bloody, and time consuming than an Iraq approach.

waiting for the apocalypse

My friend Tonynet says don't rely on the government to save your ass in times of crisis. I went through the exact line of thinking during Katrina as he did. In fact I've thought about these types of events a lot. It's the way my whole family thinks. We're all risk averse. While my last post focused on how when things are bad, they are never as bad as you think. It's also true I'm a bit of a fatalist when things are good. In other words, when things are good, they are never as good as you think.

Our daily lives are filled with things that are extremely fragile and that we take for granted. For example, the thought that law and order is largely prevalent in our daily lives. That all my savings locked up in stocks and bank accounts are at my disposal when I desire. That my claim to my apartment (beyond what the bank owns) stands. That electricity and clean water come out of their respective outlets in my apartment 99% of the time. That the grocery store down the road has food and I can purchase it. But I'm not entirely blind to the concept that not much has to happen (however unlikely) for all of these things to vanish. I'm extremely well prepared for things like Katrina but something more global or national could be different. I'm completely aware that we are animals and will revert to behaving like animals when backed into a corner. You can look with disdain at how some people acted during Katrina but I'm sure a large portion of them were in pure survival mode with no 'assets' at their disposal other than guile.

If all those luxuries above were to vanish - life savings, ability to get shelter, warmth, food, and water - would I get by? The biggest thing I would lose however is that once we're reduced to savages I don't have a whole hell of a lot of useful skills to get around. I would go from someone in demand to someone figuring out how to get by. I'm an engineer. I can do business development. I can pick stocks. I cannot however skin an animal. Hunt. Build shelter. Find clean water. Hell I got kicked out of the boy scouts when I was 14. I missed that whole 'making fire' thing. Millions of men in this country are fire creating experts and I'll be scrounging for matches. If the 'apocalypse' does come (meteor hitting, the plague, etc.) I'm not exactly the most useful person in the world. I'm thinking the Amish probably get some comeuppance at this point. And the Montana Freemen probably get a laugh too.

But there are things I could do that don't cost much nor take a lot of time. Stock away potable water and food. Matches! Read a short book on basic survival skills. Have a plan if x, y, or z happens. How many of you want a gun and want to know how to use it now after Katrina? It's fatalistic but it doesn't take much energy to do these things. But then again, I probably won't.

effectiveness of terrorists

It's that time of the year again. The two beams are turned on once a year. If it didn't have ominous connotations you could only describe them as beautiful. I wasn't living in New York on 9/11/01 and if I hadn't seen it on the news, I'd never really know anything happened in this city except for these lights. The scar probably exist in people's minds but there are no obvious external signs that something happened unless you wander over to Ground Zero and notice a huge open area, heavily concreted over. Developers usually like to get their hands on something like that in this city so something must be amiss with that spot.

And now we have another catastrophe down in New Orleans and many other areas. These types of events always make me wonder about two things.

First, why do our behaviors change so much during these events. For example, why do we as a nation feel it is necessary to have our leaders parade through areas where this damage occurs? Don't we think their time would be better spent on a phone or in a meeting trying to get things done? If a factory shuts down because of a problem does the CEO make his way through the CEO doing photo ops? Why do we feel any president has to be onsite? And how many people also thought, "Maybe I'm not so against gun control now" or "Holy shit I need to get an emergency kit together."

Second, why do we collectively overreact during these events with regard to the fear and apprehension we feel? Why are we so doomy and gloomy? We can blame it on the media but they are simply serving up what we collectively want. Will Katrina ruin the economy? Will the city and other areas ever get rebuilt? Will anyone go back?' Similar questions were asked after the 9/11 regarding NYC. I've never seen any impact of that day on the people of NYC except for the annual lighting of the 2 spotlights that beam 'towers' up into the sky. Even rents and condo prices dropped precipitously for only 6 months before resuming their prior prices.

Of course New Orleans will get rebuilt and people will come back and it won't ruin the economy forever. It's a moot question. It will be rebuilt. While the cleanup will take significant time, the fixing of damaged flood walls and the pumping of water out doesn't require too much effort. The pumps are there (and you'd be amazed at how much water they pump out) and building flood walls is as difficult as dumping earth. It will get done. I guarantee one year from now we won't think much about New Orleans or the other cities devasted by Katrina, and we won't see obvious signs these cities were in trouble.

But we focus on singular pieces of data and blow the logical conclusions too far. Two particular facts point this out more than any other. Ask someone what they thought of what happened on 9/11 and they'll tell you something. Rarely will that something have anything to do with the hit taken by the Pentagon. It's almost forgotten in relation to the WTC buildings. And even less, the plane that went down that didn't affect any buildings. The other data point is Katrina. Forever Katrina will mean New Orleans. And while they took the brunt of the damage, many people died and lost homes in other areas of Louisiana and other states. These secondary events are largely irrelevant with regard to our fears of 9/11 or hurricanes or other catastrophic events. Take away the World Trade Center and I'm sure the Pentagon would take it's place. If none of the planes hit any buildings we'd substitute the plane that was brought down in that empty field. Our collective fear wouldn't be any less. But we don't overreact to Biloxi or the Pentagon. We over react to the most significant point of damage. The point is why don't we feel the fear associated with these other events. I think it's because our responses are not rational.

The terrorists must be keenly aware of both of these human effects. It's what makes them 'effective' in our eyes. The ability for them to radically alter how we operate (presidents touring damage sites or families building fallout shelters in the 80s) and to create these moments of heightened overblown irrational fears within us. It's a level of control over us.

Likewise we underreact when nothing is happening. How many New Yorkers have more emergency potable water on hand versus emergency wine in case they are going over to someone's house. I'm sure it's everyone. Myself included.

But when you get right down to it the terrorists are on the whole, extremely ineffective. While 9/11 was traumatic, not much has happened since. In the last 4 years we've had something like 3,000 civilian deaths and 1,500 military deaths either directly or indirectly related to the terrorist movement. So a little over 1,000 deaths per year on average at most. I was curious how this compared against leading causes of death. This is from the NCHS. It's 2002 data. Leading causes of death for that year:

Heart Disease: 697,000
Cancer: 557,000
Stroke: 163,000
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 125,000
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 107,000
Diabetes: 70,000
Influenza/Pneumonia: 66,000
Alzheimer's disease: 59,000
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 41,000
Septicemia: 34,000

How many of you know what nephritis or septicemia is? Nephritis is an inflammation of the kidneys so presumably all of those are kidney related diseases. Septicemia is is bacterial poisoning of the blood. Isn't it strange that we know the name Bin Laden but don't know what one of the more likely causes of our death is? 9/11 is much more impactful than septicemia on our lives yet it should be 1/34th as impactful.

The second point is how dumb and unresourceful are these terrorists? Think about this. Assume you were politically motivated to create terror in the U.S. Don't you think after 1 hour of thinking about it you could come up with a whole list of horrible events you could cause with very little money, very little network, and very few people. Look at the terror those 2 snipers in Washington created over the course of a month. While 9/11 was big, we've had nothing since. It's appalling how incompetent they are. It's why I don't worry that I'm going to get taken out by a terrorist event in New York.

The only thing that scares me is that in general the terrorists couldn't be any less effective. If they ever recruit someone slightly resourceful a lot of damage could be done.

random acts of humanity

Every now and again something happens in New York that I don't have a name for. It doesn't happen that often. When it does it's quite a spectacle to watch. If you've ever seen The Fisher King with Robin Williams you'll remember a scene in Grand Central Station. I'm convinced that this scene is a way of paying respects to this event. Let me set the stage.

Summer has arrived in New York. The heat and humidity are something akin to my days back in Minnesota but my constitution has flagged dramatically since those days. The absolute worst place to be in this kind of weather is in the subway. It can be stifling. Not to mention the aromas that come alive under that kind of heat and the sweltering vapor transport that spreads the love around.

To compound matters it's a work day. People are in suits and ties. Carrying heavy bags filled with stacks of reports and laptops. Everyone is tired and anxious to get home. You try to move slowly to the station to keep your body temperature at a minimum. If you are lucky, the moving cars above you happen to be aligned perfectly to send a few puffs of polluted air down the grates to cool you off a bit. You face the breeze to maximize the cooling. You feel drops of perspiration collect on your back and slowly make their way down the small. You wonder how long before large patches of sweat announce to everyone, "Hey! I'm a little ripe."

To make matters even worse this happens to be present day New York where the subway is deep in debt. Random fires are starting in the subways. Trains are dirtier than they used to be. And on this particular day your F train is curiously missing from what you guess to be it's time slot for arrival. In fact 3 or 4 trains seem to have taken the day off and gone out for a drink.

Meanwhile next to you a man takes his hat off, puts it on the floor, and slings a guitar over his shoulder. "Oh God what is he going to play?", you think to yourself. "What unbearable song am I going to have to put up with for the next 5 minutes."

And then something strange happens. I see it about once a month.

The man is in his late 20s. African American. Well dressed. Especially considering the heat. If he wasn't playing in the subway you would just think he was any other person that you see walking on the streets. And so he begins.

"How Deep is Your Love?" by the Bee Gees. You think you are going to scream. But about 10 seconds in you realize this guy is good. Really good. I'm thinking to myself, "Now...why did I hate this song so much?". You notice people around you too. A few non-chalantly look over at the man. A young man next to me starts tapping his toes and bobbing his head. People start swaying. A lady to my left turns around and faces him. She has a very perplexed look on her face. She's mumbling the lyrics under her breath. She's very confused. The singer knows exactly what the problem is. He's probably seen this before. The song is played so well, and he's adding such interesting guitar embellishments to the song, that she just doesn't know what song it is. It's driving her crazy. He pulls back from singing and just plays the guitar.

"The band name begins with a B". She stares at him. Nothing. People are watching the conversation. "The band's first name is Beeeeeeeeee," he draws out. Nothing. "Beeeeeeeee." A moment goes by and then it slowly dawns on her. He starts singing again. She smiles. The song ends and unlike the normal silence two or three people start clapping. He moves into the next song.

It's at this point that I have no memory of what song he was playing. But after he sang the first refrain he looks back at the lady he was talking to and notices she's lip synching with him. I'm not sure what he did but on cue he stopped singing and she picked up. After a little confidence was gained from the fact that no one was laughing, she sang a little louder. People now fully turned around to see what was going on. A few more started tapping their toes. A few more started bobbing their heads. Others started lip synching as if they wanted him to pull them out of the crowd to join in. The whole section of subway I was in was smiling and dancing and enjoying themselves.

As the song came to a close both trains coincidentally pulled into the station. Most people started clapping as the song ended. A few "Wooo Hooo"s. The lady ran up and gave the man a hug. A huge smile on her face. She quickly backtracked to get into her train car. People ran over to place money in his hat and then ran to get into their train cars. In a matter of seconds the station was emptied and quiet. The doors closed. Inside everyone was hot again. Expressionless faces. No one looking at anyone. I glanced outside. The man was standing looking down into his hat with a smile on his face. He had made 100 friends in a few minutes and now they were all gone.

And like that... it was over.

you can't judge a book by its cover, but...

"Well what do you make of me?", my host offered. This weekend my wife and I were kindly invited to dinner at the house of an old colleague of my wife's. I have a terrible habit of looking at the bookshelves of people I just meet. I find you can get a very decent high level read of that person and figure out if there are any commonalities between you and that person. Obviously the host felt the same and knew exactly what I was doing.

"I'm not sure we have much in common", I responded. His book collection consisted primarily of political nonfiction and current day best seller nonfiction (e.g., The Tipping Point). A smattering of classics thrown in. The titles suggesting they were more than likely vestigial books from college English courses so I discounted these. I had read very little of what he had. And sure enough through the evening I decided we had very little in common. He was a very nice and interesting person but there was no soulful 'click' that you feel when you meet someone who you'd be happy to see again.

There are a few other tell tale signs. Music is an obvious one. But it's hard to read CD titles unless you get up close. Furniture is an odd one that works often as well. Perhaps not furniture but the rather sense of style of their abode. How you live says something about you.

This got me thinking as we walked home. Is this entirely fair? Some of my best friends read very little or listen to music very little. Maybe I become judgmental when I see that someone doesn't have similar tastes or interests. Thus, putting the kibosh on any chances of a relationship. Did I just shut this guy out because he didn't have the right books. I'm not sure. I don't think so. But I do think next time I am invited over for dinner I'm going to check the bookshelf out at the end of the night.

strange encounters

Last weekend I called a buddy of mine out of the blue. I hadn't talked to him since...I'm guessing 1999 or so. At any rate a while. This weekend I'm going to call another friend of mine that I haven't talked to since...I'm again guessing 1986 or so. I lost track of this guy shortly after high school or college and never found a way to hook up again. I recently found him on a hospital website in Idaho - he's a doctor. I have two points I'm getting to here. The first one is why on earth has it taken me this long to get a hold of the first guy and why did I ever lose contact with the second. There's actually a third person who I just haven't been able to find on the internet at all. We haven't talked since college as well. I attribute it to two things. First, and foremost is laziness. I just don't get off my ass and call people that I should. Second, I'm a guy. I don't think guys do this kind of thing well. I look at my girlfriend and she expends a tremendous amount of time keeping up with approximately 4-5 times as many people as I do. Guys also don't like to talk on the phone. What the hell are we going to talk about any way? We need things to talk about because we usually don't like 'talking about our day'.

The second point is that when I talked to my buddy docrpm it was like we hadn't missed a beat. We talked about the same things - music, movies, art, and books. I found the same attributes in him attractive, that I found attractive all those years ago. Ours was a quick bonding during a time when we were visiting graduate schools that had accepted us. We ended bumping into each other at a social. He talked Nine Inch Nails and I talked Peter Murphy and ironically we both had tickets to see Peter Murphy with Nine Inch Nails opening. When we talked again we just picked back where we had left off. I believe that is what will happen when I call this other person but it's been so long that it's tough to tell. I'm sure he's married and I would suspect he probably has kids now too. So things could be different. I hope the call goes as well as I think it should go. It will grieve me if there isn't a connection still. As if I had never lost him as a friend until that call.

stop me if you think you've heard this one before

I was perusing through the book store the other day and was hit by the picture on the front of a magazine I had never heard of. The cover had a picture of Morrissey (Sorry I can't remember the name of the magazine). You know... of The Smiths fame. What was shocking was how old he looked. I'm often struck by famous people, usually rock stars because they fade so easily from the limelight, that pop into the news at a later date looking so much different and older than they did when I paid attention to them. Think James Brown or Nick Lowe. In this magazine picture Morrissey had grey hair around his sideburns and his hair had a little less gleam to it (maybe less pomade these days). Usually I just think, 'boy that guy as gotten old'. But Morrissey is someone who I paid a lot of attention to when I was clearly a young lad. He's still a lot older than I am - born in 1959 - but nevertheless it drove home that whole getting old aspect of life that hits you around my age (35).

I don't consider myself a vain person. I don't check myself in the mirror. I try to keep fit and trim but I'm not obsessed about it. But growing old does not seem like an attractive process. I'm less worried about the vanity aspects as I am about the fitness aspects. As I looked at that photograph I wondered what it would be like the day I no longer could really run or jump or exert myself physically. I expect I'll look back at when I could and wonder why I didn't run more or play more sports. And then a quiet realization will enter me that it's not worth dwelling on these things. But I'm not old right now and I can still run and jump and so I can do something about this.

Reminds me of the 'rocking chair' game I used to play when I was in my 20's. It's my version of What Would Jesus Do? When I'm 80 and sitting in a rocking chair am I going to regret anything in my life. Will I regret who I married? Will I regret not working or trying harder on something? Will I regret something I said to someone? Because the regrets I do have in my life right now are the most painful things I have to live with. Which by any measure means I have had an easy life. And indeed I have. Still all things are relative and that's my particular piece of baggage in life. So I better deal with this potential for regret now. Man I have to hit the gym. Tomorrow.