So I'm left with a major decision: what to do about my car? My lover. My soul mate. My Asian persuasion. Cough.
I've tossed around a few ideas in my head. Wrestled with the pros and cons of the whole deal. And what it comes down to is nothing more than weighing the value of the car in dollars (it's monetary worth or the tangible thing) against the personal value of the car (the qualitative intangible). And that's proven to be quite an ordeal.
So here's how I'm handling it...
I've been to the shop twice today to check up on the taco. Ended up saying "Thanks but no thanks" to the mechanic. I'm buying myself some time to do some soul searching. He looked at me like..."what in the world are you doing driving that thing off the lot?" But I assured him I had it under control with a thumbs up and a subtle nod. That kind of nod I'm beginning to learn, if it's delivered confidently enough, can really be the kind of nonverbal language that could really change the world for the better. It says, "Hey listen. I'm not that worried about it and neither should you be." It's something that both our presidential candidates could learn. By that nod alone, I got the funniest smile out of the otherwise uptight mechanic. And by the same nod, got free coffee from the girl at the register. Never mind the coffee was free for everyone. She offered it. That's my point. How many mechanic people have great customers service? Maybe all they needed was a little bit of reassurance that it'll be alright. Maybe all they needed was a good ole nod.
But then again the small voice in my mind tells me I'm being silly. What does a small gesture like that really mean?
So with work piling up on my desk and deadlines approaching and passing. One employee short, I really should be working around the clock to catch up. But what do I do? Come six thirty, alone in the office and with my truck back from the shop, I hop in and take a joyride down to my favorite watering hole (I mean coffee shop) for a quick snack before supper (because I can) and a chance to meet some interesting people for fun conversation.
And I meet my buddy with the funny glasses named Phillip. He was in a car accident a year ago that pulled the tendons in his arms in a weird way. So now he has to wear these wraps like the kind my dad used to wear when he played church volleyball. I used to get into his sock drawer as a kid and wrap them all over my body and act like a mummy. And walk all stiff around the house and talk like one too. I'd keep that up for as long as I could. Until I could get a laugh from my mom. And then she'd tell me to put it all back where I found it. And the fun would be over.
But Phillip I'm sure wasn't having a ton of fun with those wraps. He's a tall man. About 6 3". Has a gorgeous wife. Don't know if they have kids or not. I'm not that close to him. But all I could think about when catching up with him was the way his long arms looked even longer when wrapped up like that. Poor guy.
And I came prepared, mind you, to finish the web page for work and start on some new projects. But what I found was a newspaper. And after munching on the absolute biggest piece of chocolate cake ever cut by human hands, I was emerged in what eventually became the first cover to cover reading of the newspaper I've done in quite some time.
If you want to know the truth, I really didn't enjoy it. As a whole, there's a ton of negative stuff going on throughout the newspaper. They even have a complete section on people who've died. Shows you how much I pick up the thing. I normally just read the sports section and go on. Catch my news online like an internet junky should.
But together with the Pandora project, which is this cool online radio station that uses something called the Music Genome Project to match more than 10 characteristics of your favorite artist up against their huge massive exhaustive database....to bring you all kinds of music that sounds a lot like the music you would otherwise listen to...well together with listening to that and eating the cake, consuming the newspaper was more or less not a drag. Even though I read all the names of the people who died and glanced over all the articles about how bad our economy is doing and how poor the debates were last night. All of that went down with a spoonful of sugar, as the old saying goes.
To bring me close to 8 O'Clock as I turned to the very last page of the news...the coolest part of the whole deal. This I just have to tell. There was a little tiny story about how NASA launched the Voyager project the year I was born, 1977. And evidently they sent out two satellites that year. One of which, this year, has passed our solar system, entering farther (or if you prefer further) than any man-made device has ever been from the Earth.
Just think about that for a second. Here we are. Here I am. Crunching down the world's largest slice of chocolate cake, listening to the coolest jazz/folk/something music I've heard ever, trying to keep my mind off the very stress that pays my way to the coffee shop, to allow me to buy this piece of cake. And all this surrounds nothing more than 30 square miles. My entire life today has traveled no more than 30 miles.
I'm reading of a satellite that's been moving away from earth since 1977. Every waking moment of my life that thing has been moving away from me...more and more. Meanwhile it's been taking the coolest, highest resolution pictures available of our solar system. So if you see a show on the history channel or you see a kid with a science book full of cool snap shots of our planets, thank good ole NASA for sending that thing in the abyss.
The kicker to the story though was that some cat packed these little pods full of American music. LP's. With record players! Why? I sit and ask myself. Why? Well, says the editor, so that if the pods are intercepted by beings from another planet, they can play our music and learn something from us. Very Niiiiice. What foresight. What a way to spend the taxpayer dollars of the 80's.
Wouldn't you have liked to been the person, the luck dog, to select what music gets sent up? Just think of getting that phone call. And to be the artist who wrote or recorded the songs....Yeah. Mr. Lennon. Um. Yeah. You want your b sides playing when it passes Mars or what? It's up to you man.
Blows my mind. Absolutely. Is this stuff real? Am I the only person on the planet that thinks that's the oddest thing ever?
Evidently NASA designed those to only last 5 years, or so says the article. I'm turning 31 this November. That's quite the return on investment if you ask me.
Never mind if the records are constantly playing or just tucked away in a box on the lower shelf, just knowing that a man made anything has passed our solar system and on it's way to infinity has my brain swelling.
If the universe is indeed expanding like the new science has it, then it's plausible that these little guys could be traveling forever! Regardless of how you look at it, or your take on the whole matter of the universe, there's a lot to be gained from just how small we are in comparison to the great beyond.
My problems. Sure they exist. They are real. And I'm so glad to have a maker that actually spends quality time with me. After considering the larger stuff that goes on in our universe and beyond, to actually come back down. To realize his son died for my day to day struggles.
Humbling.
Click here to view more information on Voyager 2 and for cool pictures of it and our solar system.
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1 comment:
"I used to get into his sock drawer as a kid and wrap them all over my body and act like a mummy. And walk all stiff around the house and talk like one too."
Nice...lol...
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