Thought for the Day ...

The idea is not to hide from life: It is to live life, but without making the same mistakes we did before.

- Harold Klemp -

To paraphrase Winnie the Pooh ...

I am having a "no-good, very bad day" ... all week. I quite naively thought my life turned upside down last week. Little did I know what was in store for me. I've been rattled to my core and left feeling like a hollowed out shell of my real self. Funny how devastating news does that. Can't eat. Can't sleep. Don't wanna' work. Just wanna' pull the covers over my head.

The longer I live the more I'm convinced there is no great meaning to life. Life is just a series of frustrating obstacles to overcome dotted (thankfully) with stretches of happiness and moments of sheer joy. How it goes has everything to do with how you set yourself up in the beginning. Everyday can be a breeze or a struggle. Well, mine was a breeze for a long time and I didn't realize it. Lately there's been a lot of struggle. The upside is that I've learned to appreciate good things, good people and good times more than ever. I've learned that for me a clean house, a full refrigerator and money left over at the end of the week can feel like as much of an accomplishment as finding a cure for cancer.

There's a song with a line in it that resonates strongly with me "it's like I'm living someone else's life - like I stepped outside when everything was going right". That's exactly how I feel right now.

In 1992 someone gave me a postcard with the saying "When one door closes another one opens, but damn those hallways are a bitch". In my opinion whoever coined that particular phrase is a f*#king genius.

.

It wudda' been my ass ... or yours

If you or I had been in an accident, or encountered a policeman for any reason while behind the wheel and been caught without a valid driver's license or insurance we would have received a FAT ticket, our vehicle would have been impounded for a mandatory 30 days and we would have been walking home. I know this is a fact. I've experienced it first-hand and mine was mild compared to what some people are put through. Don't misunderstand ... I'm absolutely not saying it was the right thing to do. I was wrong. I have a handful of rationalizations for why I did it ... but bottom line I was wrong. So was Arnie.

Why oh why is this not what happened to Arnie? What does it say about our system of government that our leader is above the law? What does it say about us that more of us aren't even slightly ruffled about this? This is wrong. It's poor government and an absolute injustice to anyone who has had the hammer come down on them for the same thing.

I'm interested in Arnie's rationalizations and truly bugged that the media and the people have laughed this off. What do you suppose would have happened if he'd killed somebody while driving unlicensed and uninsured? Gives you pause to think doesn't it? Then think about what would have happened if you'd killed somebody.

I confess, the only rationalization I can think of for Arnie on his behalf is that he knew he wasn't going to get in any trouble.

Thought for today ...

We can't direct the wind but we can adjust our sails

Taking the incredibly bad with the somewhat good ...

Well, my whole world sort of up-ended on me in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Some really, really seriously bad and earth-shattering things happened that rocked my world. The silver lining is that there were obviously angels watching over us because, for the most part, it went as well as it could have. Believe me when I say that it could have soooo very much worse. The fallout from these events is yet to be determined. Admittedly some unrelated and marginally good things happened this weekend as well ... so on with the good stuff.

The evaluation show on Saturday night was, for the most part, exhilarating. Especially (and not surprisingly) the tail end of the evening. I saw a few friends there and got some quick hugs and even a belated Christmas present. All in all a pretty good night and a good stress reliever. The highlight of my evening was watching Santa Clara perform. In a word ... OUTSTANDING. I was so proud of them ... and happily surprised ... and I'm excited by their potential and looking forward to what the rest of the season will bring for them.

Saturday's good news was that I was picked for an additional judging gig -- woohoo. Another step in the process of becoming the "real deal". I have to keep pinching myself ... and doing my homework.

Saturday's downer news was that my very favorite guard instructor and get-my-head-on-right guru is not slated to return to Renegades this season. I can't fathom this season without her and I hope the powers that be are lining up to suck the color off her toes to get her there. It's early. I'm crossing my fingers. We'll see what happens.

My Sunday meeting went really well even if it did run a bit long ... 4 hours!!! A lot was accomplished and it's great to know so many of us are on the same page with the same goals. Now the challenge is to forge ahead and make the goals into reality .. and this will likely be the hard part. What comes next could be very exciting for all those involved ... or frustrating beyond belief. The whole thing has "history in the making" written all over it and opportunities abound. I'm juiced (but that's probably obvious).

So now it's Monday. Time for work mode. I'm having a hard time locking down and leaving earlier events behind me but I'm looking forward to the end of today when I'll be journeying down the freeway a bit to Fairfield for something joyful.

Anyhoo, back to your regularly scheduled random chaos.

and so it commences ...

This upcoming weekend is my first busy guard weekend of the season. If you’re not into colorguard this is your last chance to bail out and to turn to another station.

I was invited to sit in the box this Saturday at CCGC's evaluation show in San Jose. It starts at 5:00 and there are a couple of dozen guards on the slate so it will be a pretty long evening. This will be the “first read” of the season and I’m excited to see what’s new and who’s doing what. There’s been some significant staff changes since last season in some of the top guards and I’m anxious to see how all that shakes out in terms of program excellence. Plus, I’m thrilled that SCV is putting out a winterguard for the first time in eons. This is great, great news in my view. I can’t wait to see them. Ok, I’m biased – so sue me.

The first read of a show is always great cuz everything is fresh and innovative … you start looking at it with a more jaded eye once you’ve seen it several times … no matter how good it is. The outstanding thing is that I’ll see a few good friends while I’m there. It’s also my one and only chance to get my notes and head together in preparation for my first paid judging gigs for WGI-circuits. I’m a bundle of excited nerves to have gotten the opportunity to do this. I always hoped to but never really thought I would.

On Sunday I have a meeting with some fellow guard geeks to work on the agenda and training materials for the NCBA judge’s clinic coming up on January 15. I’ve got my part together and have gotten to the point where I just need to stop rewriting and obsessing over it … seriously.

George and George Dubya ...

... on their Hurricane Katrina fact finding mission

:)

Restricted and Unavailable

::rant on

Why do callers hide their phone numbers? It only causes anxiety for the person receiving the phone call. Should I answer it? Should I let it go to voicemail? I don’t know. What to do! What to do! What if it’s an emergency?

In my opinion, a friend wouldn’t want you to go through that anxiety right? I can understand bill collectors hiding their phone numbers. More commonly than not though, it’s some creep hiding behind a restricted phone number so they can harass you with their particular brand of weirdness without you having the ability to call them back and telling them where to stick it.

The thing is that these restricted and unavailable calls are 99.9% of the time, NOT anyone you want to talk to anyway. Given that, I’m lead to finally conclude that when MY phone says “restricted” or “unavailable” it’s in my best interest to simply not pick it up. Let it go to voicemail. Anyone that cares about me or really needs to speak to me will leave a message.

I vote for less stress (or better technology)!

::rant off

What Does Your Profile .....

... really say about you? I set up this blog and then I went back and read it like I was a stranger ... Immediately I was struck by the oddity of my favorite books and movies. For me, they're kind of an eclectic mix of strange tastes. Well, at least they read that way. So to anyone who may read my dribble here, my "favs" are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my craziness. It got me to thinking though, what makes these books, movies, and music my favorites? The list of books and movies are actually pretty easy -- they're the things that made me feel really good, changed my perspective, taught me something new, or just stuck with me emotionally for so long, in a positive way, that they kind of became part of me.

"Dances With Wolves" is a good example. I know that I'm part native-american -- Cherokee and Algonquin. How big a part? Don't know. What I do know is that as a kid I thought it was a very, very bad thing to be. I mean look at all the western movies I grew up with where the natives were portrayed as savage, drunk, abusive, and often stupid, yadda, yadda, yadda ... and besides, the 60's in general were not really a good time to be brown. When I saw "Dances With Wolves" I was moved because it was the first time I had ever seen native americans portrayed as sensitive, thinking, caring people who nurtured one another, had families and worked together as a community. I went to the theatre four nights in a row for that film.

I read "Treblinka" for the first time when I was 13. It's unbelievable that I knew NOTHING about The Holocaust until I read that book but it's true. An intelligent-beyond-her years drum corps friend of mine loaned it to me -- she now writes for "The Wall Street Journal" btw -- and I can't even begin to describe the numerous ways that book touched me and changed my way of thinking. I read it again about 10 years later and it still had the same effect on me. Thanks Nancy.

Music is a little different ... it's more about how it makes me feel or what it says to me ... literally. If a song has words, I want it to tell me a story ... which is why I like Ice Cube's gangsta' rap and Jim Croce's music. Sometimes it's just about the memories that music brings back. Carole King was popular at an idyllic time of my life so her music makes me feel good (no matter what) and it's great background, when played really loud, for cleaning the house.

Why is there nowhere in the profile to put your favorite plays or live performances? For example, I really loved "Les Miserables" on stage. Why has that never been made into a field show? Ya' know, it would make a fabulous winterguard show!! Well, it's probably been done and I missed it ... I was gone for a long time.

Hmmmm.

A Watershed Moment

A few weeks ago I found out that I’m likely descended from Acadians … well, truthfully I found that out simultaneous to finding out Acadians even exist. I had never heard of Acadians prior. I chalked it up to being brought up in the California public school system. This came about because I’m going through another one of my heavy reading cycles. It’s odd, sometimes I’ll read a book every two days for a stretch of months and then I won’t pick one up for two months, but I digress.

So ... I’m reading this book and it’s a detective story with a love twist called “A Thin Dark Line” set in Cajun Louisiana. It’s a quick read full of intrigue and Cajun French phrases. I pulled it out of the lending library here at work one boring lunch hour. The rudimentary French phrases in the story weren’t a problem, but there was one I wasn’t familiar with, “Le Grande Derangement” (again, “thanks” California Public School System). It was referenced repeatedly and I was finally aggravated to the point that I looked it up on the internet and found out it’s a phrase used to describe a great injustice (akin to the word “Holocaust”) visited on the French settlers of Nova Scotia (the Acadians) by the British government. In the mid 1600’s, the British, not uncharacteristically, decided to rid their land (Nova Scotia) of “undesirables”, in this case the Acadians, by forcibly evicting them. They put them all on boats and shipped them off to Louisiana, dividing families and confiscating property willy-nilly. As you can well imagine, the French didn’t happily tromp onto the boats. Some ended up in prison or were deported to France, some successfully evaded the British and migrated to Quebec and some eventually found their way back to Nova Scotia. That’s a seriously truncated and unemotional version of events but it covers the important aspects.

My curiosity now piqued by so much new info I began checking out other areas of the website and found a button for genealogy. Hmmmm, I’d always been told that I had French Canadian roots through my Grandmother (whose mother’s maiden name was St. Germaine - a common French-Canadian name I’m told) and so I pushed the button and started searching for “St Germaine” information. I found some pretty interesting tidbits, and then happened on a list of names, ostensibly of the 24 or so “founding families” of Acadians, and was astonished to find the surname “Roy” there. Roy is my maiden name. I’ve always known it was a French name but I did not know that it’s a common Acadian surname. Wow! A watershed moment for me and I still don’t understand exactly why but it evoked sufficient emotion to bring tears to my eyes. ACK! Probably because I’ve always been envious of those folks who are so sure of their ancestry.

So I’m both French-Canadian and Acadian, and upon doing a bit more research, found this is actually pretty common among French-speaking folks in the Northeast part of North America. Again, wow. Immediately I wondered if they look like me in that part of the world because almost no one around me does. Admittedly this has always disturbed me a bit. I realized when I was about 7 that I am my own odd color palette. I rarely see people like me in California, but I have seen some in the south. Hmmmm. One day I will make a journey, find out what that means and answer my questions for good and all.