du Brasil

So I'm trying to learn Portuguese. At least a few lines here and there.
I bought the 6-disc CD set from Barnes & Noble's for about $20. It's the Brazilian Portuguese and I want to learn because my mom is from Brazil. She was born there and came to America when she was 7. When I was growing up she taught me a few words here and there. However we really only spoke English and Portuguese is not something they offered in high school. Or even at my college, so i didn't know where or when I would learn it. Then a friend told me he was learning via the Pimsleur method, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
It's basically just a call and response way of learning. "Listen and repeat" is the phrase I hear most often on this 5-disc set. I say 5-disc because the first one is merely an overview/instruction manual. About 10 minutes into it, I realized it was word-for-word what I read before opening the cd's. It came with a little booklet that was the intro. After awhile I picked it up and read along with the cd thinking, "why am I wasting my time?"
It's split up into 10 lessons, two per CD. I'm on lesson 7 or 8, but I think I need to go back. It's been a few weeks since I listened to the last one.
I'm not sure how much I will know by the end. I can say the requisite "Hello, how are you?" "Good morning/afternoon/evening." "Where is the Hotel/Restaurant?" "Pleased to meet you" "goodbye" and a few other sundry items.
I guess that's enough if I ever wake up to find myself in the middle of Sao Paulo and don't know where to go. What I really want is to have a semi-correct conversation with my mom without stopping to translate back to English and then translate my response back to Portuguese. It would be fun to impress her....

Bipolarity ensues

Back from the reunion and I'm feeling two things. Well, a jumble of emotions, really, but mainly elation and depression. I'm guessing you can figure out the title already.
Let me say, there was a lot of love in the house on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. It was wild to see everyone all grown up. But we thought we were pretty grown up back then! Most people are married and many have kids now. Everyone has their own life far beyond the walls of or school years ago. Most of the people went through Junior High with me, so I had seen these kids every day of my life for 6 years (minus summers). Then we all split up and came back together 10 years later. That's insanity.
We all had to wear nametags and everyone felt sheepish shaking someone's hand while simultaneously trying to read the name on their chest. That part kind of stunk. I was really good with names in school! I even tried to study the yearbook before getting there, but there were still some flubs on my part. Oops.
I may be speaking for myself, but I think if we could have frozen that night in time, I don't think anyone would want to leave. We had so little time that we could only say whether or not we were married, had kids, were working, lived nearby or far away. That was the extent of how much you could catch up with someone. Even as my wife and I were leaving the event we were still shaking hands and introducing ourselves/reconnecting.
Time flew that night and it left me with a greater and more terrible feeling than I thought. I realized that everyone has their own life just like I do. Going to the picnic yesterday was great because it gave us a chance to see everyone in action with their kids. Parenting mode. But then you had to think about getting home early enough to get the kids to bed, because school & work still went on the next day. We all took time out to say hi to the kids from 1994, but 2004 keeps right on chugging along.
So my longing to keep in touch with everyone is back. And I know I'm kidding myself if I think I'll be in constant communication with everyone, but I'd sure like to try again. I know there's more to the last 10 years than the 2 minutes I gave people and vice versa. Most of us can knock 4 years out by just saying "college" but that still leaves 6 whole years. I want to know! These were people who shaped part of what I am today.....i cannot toss them in the junk mail pile!
If I thought about it long and hard enough, I could cry a river. I could also smile for days. The 8 hours I spent stepping back 10 years does not make up for the 10 years "lost." And it's cruel to try and time travel like that when life is still going on.
On the way home last night we were listening to Switchfoot in the car. The song "This Is Your Life" came on and I leaned over to my wife and said, "This is exactly the song I don't need right now..." half joking/half serious. I mean, the lyrics go "Yesterday is a kid in the corner. Yesterday is dead and over. This is your life - are you who you want to be? Is it everything you dreamed that it would be when the world was younger and you had everything to lose?" Just rip my heart out and throw it on the floor why don't ya Jon Foreman! =)
In 1994 I had no thought about where I'd be in 2004, but I do know I love where I'm at. I have the family I've always wanted and life it great! God is good! Sometimes, though, I just wish I had my old friends back....

T.D.H.S. - Yes!

It's that time of life, I guess. The time when I realize that time does not stop for me. "Time waits for no man." It must be true because this weekend is my 10-year high school reunion. Didn't I just leave that place? In some ways yes and in some ways no.
Memories are funny things. Sometimes I can think about things and remember them like they are yesterday. But then I look over some of the names on my reunion list and I think, "sounds vaguely familiar. I know I'm supposed to know you, but who are you?" So I think tomorrow night I'll pull out the old yearbook and do a little who's who refresher.
I remember the principal of our school telling the senior class that high school friends and friendships are the ones you never forget. They're the ones who you keep in touch with forever. He said that some people say it's college friends but that wasn't true. High school is where it was at, he seemed to be telling us. It was a nice encouragement, but I honestly haven't seen or talked to most of these people since the last day of school or the night of graduation. Some have been more recent.
Travel back with me, though to 1994. Would you be able to view a page like this in 1994? Of course not...the world wide web was being born. E-mail was not as ubiquitous. So I did the unthinkable during my freshman year of college: I wrote a few letters, stuffed them in envelopes, put stamps on them and sent them through the mail! Snail mail! I know...it's pretty hard to believe for some of you kids out there. Some went to UC Davis, some Stanford, some UCLA, one Harvard, some stayed at the local JC, etc... Anyway, my point is that I tried to keep in contact as best as I could. At least initially. Then, in 1995, I found out that everyone at school could get an e-mail account!
It was all text-based through UNIX using some program I can't remember right now... I think ctrl-d was send. So I found out a few friends' addresses who in turn passed my name on to other friends. Into my sophmore year of college we had quite a good list going. We would send out mass e-mails every few weeks or so and it was good to hear from a few people. I found out about people getting married, what was happening abroad, what was happening at home...but then it stopped. Or I stopped. Either way, the message frequency dropped to like one per semester (if that). Then, after college, forget it. Everyone went their separate ways...college accounts got deleted...how were we to find people?
CLASSMATES of course. Now, if I remember correctly, it was free when I signed up initially. I found that many of my high school classmates (clever name) had signed on, so I was able to leave them private messages on that site to try and contact them. This lasted for about 4 people. All the meanwhile, I've got a career starting up, getting married, in the process of having two kids, moving multiple times.... So I'm just guessing everyone else is busy as well.
Thank GOD for Classmates (I never thought I'd say that) because that is how I received my invitation to the reunion. It came through e-mail (what a difference 10 years makes) and I was able to see everyone else's addresses. So I e-mailed a few and got a few responses. Everyone is happy to hear from everyone else. And you know what? They're probably friends for life.
This is not to take anything away from my college friends who are going through what my high school friends went through at this stage (6 years out of college and I think I'm down to an e-mail every few months and maybe a Christmas card or something). But my college friends were all over the age spectrum and I didn't feel any ties to my "class of 1998."
Those kids in 1994 are a different story, and I hope to see them all this weekend.

Guy-Pris

I'll start off with a pronunciation: "Guypris = guy - preez"

Today I wore pants that are 32" long. Or so they say... They seemed to fit fine initially, but after each washing I'm beginning to wonder. Now, I know I'm gaining weight constantly (although hopefully not at too rapid a rate) so things can begin to fit snug around the waist/thigh/buttocks area. In fact, that's how I know I've gained weight.

Have you noticed that you can look at yourself in the mirror for weeks and months and not really see a change? But people come up to you at church on Sunday, at the store, or at the family reunion and say "Boy, are you losing weight? Are you gaining weight? Have you gotten taller? Shorter? Wider? Slimmer???" I almost never see it. But I can definitely feel it. Oh yes...once the shirts don't fit quite the same. Or a sneeze really makes to feel the tightening waistline. Oh ho ho yes. I feel it. And so it was with these pants

Anyway, these pants are continually getting shorter. I really don't think I'm getting taller as I'm getting wider. These pants go halfway up my shins when I sit down. As my father used to say, I'm "ready for a flood...got my highwater pants on." Needless to say, it can be embarrassing in a group of people.

So one day, a few months back, when I was sitting down with a group of guys while wearing these pants, I confessed to them my "short"coming. The jokes went immediately to the ladies' fashinable Capri pants and someone thought of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer and George's dad invent the "Bro" aka "Mansiere". So we all had a good laugh about my "man-pris".

But I thought guypris was closer to capris, so I'm sticking with that. AND buying 34" long from now on....

Why Timewaster?

It may seem obvious at first, but there's more to it.

When I was in elementary school my best friend and I (shout out to Mike Winder...haven't seen you in ages) used to have a good laugh at the way we thought adults thought. We thought that they thought that anything exciting was not worth doing and anything that was boring they would love. My family took Mike with us a few times on trips to amusement parks. We would laugh about how some parents must just call rollercoasters "timewasters." You know...as if anyone would want to spend their money on "the timewaster."

It grew, over time, to mean anything fun that we enjoyed as kids. If we went to the mall and saw something we wanted (video games, toys, anything) one would always tell the other "I guess if you want to spend it on that timewaster you can." We'd explain things to each other in terms of "spending time on the timewaster yesterday" or whenever...

Something close to 20 years has gone by since that time and I wish I could spend more time on timewasters. My kids' favorite timewaster now is running up and down the halls. Back and forth. Time and again. Is life still that simple? I'll bet they'd call what I'm typing right now "boring" and wonder how I could waste my time on something such as this...