The Invisible Room

Last year I posted about the messiness of my living room as I rewired it.  I ran all the wiring under the carpet along the baseboards, resulting in an invisibly connected room.  Everything worked the way I wanted, all through a minimally complex set of switches.

Now as I pack, I’m unplugging all those wires and realizing how much stuff there was.  The simple clean surface belied the complexity and engineering that went into the infrastructure.  That’s how it is with life.  It takes a lot of work to make it look like no work at all.

Hospitality

For the past two weekends, I’ve had strangers stay over at my place.  One for the CEA conference, and one friend of a friend who was visiting Boston.  I just emailed oogway to offer hosting her friend also.  Last year I hosted Ron Sider and was totally surprised to find there weren’t a flood of other offers.  What a chance to talk to and live with one of the most ardent Christian social justice advocates of our generation!

But I don’t think I have the “gift” of hospitality.  My friend Peggy in California has that — besides being a full-time mother of two, she is able to make a guest room comfy and inviting, and cook an amazing breakfast to boot.  (I have photos of her breakfasts which I won’t post to avoid embarrassing her further.)  I like to host people but don’t have a knack for making them feel especially pampered.  So maybe I have the hobby of hospitality.  Like a pastor once explained the difference between a gift of music and a hobby of singing in the shower: a gift is when other people enjoy it, but a hobby is when only you enjoy it.

Next California (Bay Area) Trip

My friend Augie is having a wedding reception on 7/11, so I will be in the Bay Area from 7/7 to 7/13.  Time to begin planning the rounds!

Wow

If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls

Loft Update

I’ve been too busy to ruminate about dating lately.  Here’s what 8 hours of loft work buys you:

Running your own 200′ cable line from the electrical room to your unit.  Savings: $350.  View from 12′ up (my cable line is one of the white lines in the middle of the picture):

Constructing and restaining an IKEA vanity after stripping the old finish (18 hours with toxic chemicals — NOT ADVISED):

Hot Flash

I can’t take these 47-degree swings.  At 97 degrees, you could be naked and jello-wrestling with snowmen (maybe to win a coveted gmail account from joyosity) and still be hot.  At 50 degrees, I’m thinking about how many layers of thermals I need in the morning.  Crazy Boston Weather!

gmail

I got mine!  I am eternally grateful (that’s how long it will take to fill 1GB) to shoey for the invite.  Email name is the same as my xanga name and domain name.  I’ll only be using it for commercial email.

This year I had to switch yahoo accounts because my old account got too much spam (porn/viagra/mortage-refinances).  I was wondering how to transfer all my old mail from yahoo1 to yahoo2.  Now I have to figure out how to transfer from yahoo1 and yahoo2 to gmail.  I’ll probably just let them sit there forever; it’s not worth the time and expense to move the old messages, and I can always access them if needed.

Better late and never

I haven’t cleaned my stove in months, so there are all kinds of baked-on stains.    But today my landlady is replacing it, which means I didn’t have to waste a cleaning.  Yay for procrastination!

Unlike Mike

One of my favorite fantasy questions is “If you could be incredibly great at any one sport, which would it be?”  For me, that would be basketball.  I don’t have dreams of doubling my size and being a widebody center.  I’d like to stay at my current lean-and-mean size, but blessed with a superhuman ability to hit the outside shot.  Something like 80%.  From the half-court line. 

In Like Mike (one of my favorite non-thinking feel-good movies) Lil’ Bow Wow plays a schoolkid orphan who stumbles across a pair of old sneakers labelled “MJ.”  They grant him fantastic basketball skills, and he goes on to fame and fortune.  In the end, the shoes fall apart, but he finds true friendship and family. You know — the important stuff in life.  Yada, yada, yada…

At the CEA conference this weekend I had a chance to meet Michael Chang and participate in a smallgroup with him: “Motivation for ministry: living for acceptance and from acceptance.”  Among our Asian American generation, he is probably the closest to fulfilling that sports fantasy question.  It’s brought him great renown, the ability to retire at the age of 32, and a platform to publically share his faith.

MC is an impressive tennis player, but I was surprised at his gift of public speaking.  During his talks on career and singleness, he comes across as genuine and humble, with struggles just like the rest of us.  Finding community, finding someone to love him for who he is really is — that doesn’t get easier with international fame and a seven-figure fortune.  In fact, it probably gets harder.  Loneliness is tough in a sea of strangers, even worse when they know about you.  God designed us to be in intimate relations with people, not autograph machines.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who was much sought-after by many guys.  She didn’t like the attention.  I asked, “Why?  You have so many choices!”  She replied, “Yes, but I only want one.  And too many choices… it’s distracting, like finding a needle in a haystack.”

So in the end, I’m thankful that my sports fantasy is just that.  Unburdened by an unordinary lifestyle.  Unable to buy and unleash weapons of mass self-destruction. Unlike Mike.  But contentment with godliness is great game. [EHV]

Hitting On

I have only been hit on by a woman in a public place once in my life.  It was my first month in Boston, and I was looking dazed and confused while wandering through Sears in the Cambridgeside Galleria.  (Maybe the “dazed and confused” look is my thing, just like “The Terminator” is Arnold’s thing and why he should never be in a movie with Emma Thompson.)

The details are hazy, but I remember bumping into this woman a few times in the store and thinking that was an odd coincidence, and why was she smiling at me?  She was 5’2″, 110, white, with short brown wavy hair, and a slight Eastern European accent.  Eventually she just came up to me and asked if I wanted to go out sometime.  I was kind of floored and flattered, so I gave her my number, and later in the week we went out for pizza, and I saw her place.  Nothing much happened after that.

This past Monday I had the pleasure of watching one of my friends get hit on.    Jane, Dave, and I went to Jose’s Mexican Restaurant after working on the loft.  The waitress (named Iraiz — ask for her if you go to the restaurant) first asked Dave where he was born.  I guess with his dark skin and long lashes, he could pass for Latino.  (And give Abel a run for his money.)  Then we asked where she was from, and we were surprised to learn Mexico, because she had a fair complexion and medium brown hair.  All this time, she was smiling and making eyes at Dave.  Later during lunch she asked him to leave his seat and take a phone call (???) from a customer asking for directions.  Apparently her English isn’t that good, or maybe she was just playing the helpless-female card.

By this time, Jane and I are teasing and smirking, and Dave is turning red.  Not the margarita, but the senorita!  So near the end of the meal, she comes over and picks a piece of lint off Dave’s arm.  And Jane and I nearly bust out.  When she leaves I exaggerate an imitation of her, picking imaginary lint off Dave’s arm while fonding his bicep.  When she returns, she asks why we look so serious.  I guess we were wearing somber expressions, trying really hard not to laugh, .

Near the end of lunch, I write Dave’s name and phone number on his placemat for her.  But she collects all the dishes and crumples the placemat.  So I write on the credit card slip: “My friend’s name is Dave” and his phone number.  I wonder if he’ll get a booty call this week.

I left out the part about the age guessing.  Iraiz thought Jane and Dave were 19, and I was 23.  That was almost as good as watching the flirting.