Long Week

So this has been a good week for staying busy and making money. I’ve been working every day since my parents were here, and it looks like I’ll me able to pay my cable bill this month.

Of course, working at the shop means reading sweet books, and the one I’m reading right now is called “Escher, Godel, Bach: Eternal Golden Braid.” it’s a doozy, and I’m only a quarter of the way in. So far though I like it a lot. Seem to be about the unusual properties of formal systems, and a little about the nature of intelligence. It’s a bitnoverwhelming actually, but as soon as I digest it I’ll be blogging about it. I’m looking forward to it.

Shop days

So due to some travel plans and an unfortunate dental emergency, my two days off work for the week are now days on. I need the money, and I like what I do, but 9 days in a row working a retail counter can be a bit of a drag.

We haven’t had any real weirdos this week, just the usual people. Guys wanting to buy liscense plates, guys telling us about the hookers they may or may not be seeing regularly, guys that saw the same piece at a festival for like 20 bucks. The usual crowd.

Now, to be clear, customer service is totally my game. I worked for SCDS for years not only working with customers directly, but also training student employees to be good customer service representatives for the university. I know my business. I want to assure you readers that I do my very best to answer any question as accurately and politely as possible. At the same time, when these idiots leave the store, you can bet we’re going to discuss it.

That’s how you get through a day happily, laughing at the customers. In fact, much like at an indie record store, a slight air of superiority lends to your credibility as a customer service professional. I seem to have found myself in an industry where good service means being aloof almost to the point of being rude, and having no fear of pointing out that the customer may just be wrong. In fact, if you come in and act wrong enough, we’ll throw you out. Makes for an interesting work environment.

Anyway, hope y’all enjoyed yet another post about my regular life. I promise I’ll get to some more serious content as soon as I get a good opportunity to type with my whole hand. Topic suggestions welcome. Hit up the comments section

Back to Normal

So the parents have gone on to Wisc on their way back down south. Everything up here now returns to normal. Aside from earlier issues I had mentioned about my recognition that my concerns over their visit were entirely unwaranted, I am forced to recognize that there really isn’t a whole lot of normal to return to.

Everything’s a little topsy turvy right about now. Came back to a Lansing which is different in many ways from the one to which I had expected to return. Of course this is the case, but it’s still a challenge to live out the differences.

Basically I’m just feeling a bit down and it’s impacting my interest in and attention to the activities of my day to day life noticably. Luckily, more than a few event chains kicked off months ago to pay out with big boost to my well being in the near future, little gifts from myself in the past.

There’s a whole year out in front of me. The plan is to enjoy it as best I can.

New Bike/ Parent visit update part 2

Yesterday I had the day off work, and so I took the opportunity to spend the day with the parents, who will be leaving tomorrow. We went to go see the new harry potter movie. I thought it was ok. We also spent some time at home depot getting the necessary supplies for me to take proper care of my house and yard. We’ve been getting along very well, so well in fact that I feel very silly for ever worrying that we might not. It turns out, as was predicted by a very clever friend of mine, they just wanted to come see me. No get-Shane’s-life-in-order motives seem to have been present.

I really should have known better, but I think the historical parent-child relationship that we had, plus my own doubts about exactly what it is I am up to had me thinking there was to be an inquisition. Silly me.

The real news from yesterday though, is my new bike. Well, the bike is new to me. As I understand it, it’s been on the earth for a while. It’s a nice bike though, new tires, 15 speed, and very light. I look forward to cruising the town on it. Any bikers willing to roll around with me, please leave your reply in the comments

Parent Visit – Update

So the visit from my parents is going very well I’d say. I haven’t been in Stillwater in some time and they were last in Michigan for December’s graduation. It’s nice to see them. It’s important to know, I think, that there are people in the world that are
so happy to spend their time with you, they will work at it. Makes me feel loved.

So Monday my parents and I sat with a friend of my father’s and Charles and chatted all afternoon. Today we went to Lake Michigan, at Holland, where I have not been since my first time in 2006. The weather was beautiful. I couldn’t have asked for a better day.

I promise I’ll get back to daily updates by the time my folks take off. Thanks to those of you who have been patient. It’s been quite the month.

Monday Morning

It is Monday morning. Thankkfully I am off work today; my parents will be arriving in a little less than an hour. Yesterday there was a lot of cleaning I was supposed to do in the evening. I should have got the paint supplies out of the room they’ll be staying in until saturday. I should have cleaned out the storage closet and filled it again with the odd collection of boxes and chairs currently obstructing the path to the downstairs basement. I am not sure exactly what I was doing instead.

Perhaps if I knew I could explain how my left big toenaul came to be split in half and bloody. I guess I ran into something. Yesterday seemed to be a pretty good day for drinking. So instead of getting my house ready for my parents, thats what I did. Anyway, now I have about a half an hour until they arrive, and instead of actually trying to do this cleaning, I’m blogging about not cleaning.

Maybe I’d better go….

What a month

So I have been terrible about keeping up to date with the blog. In addition to the normal troubles of coming back to a place, I’ve had the added confusion of a really troublesome situation with a certain girl I know. On top of all that, my parents have decided that now, out of three years of home ownership, is the time to drop by for a week to see how I’m doing. Only time will tell if this is in any way connected to their increasingly naggy questions about my plans for this next stage of my life. (if you’re a regular reader, you know I have none.) anyway, these are excuses, not reasons, for not posting. I hope I can get my shit together soon and keep you all updated. I have a couple of good posts in the pipes about assumptions and about how I don’t take my own advice very well. Stay tuned

Rothbury Recap and more

So as many of you know, I spent the fourth of July weekend at the rothbury music festival, enjoying the music, the sun, and some friends who will soon be leaving. This was my first big music festival, and I was really excited to go. Even though I probably overhyped it in my mind, and I brought a whole hell of a lot of mental baggage with me, it met all my expectations for being a roaring good time. I had a blast just sitting around outside and listening to good music for a few days.Its nice not to worry about anything, even if only for  moment.

We arrived on thursday morning well before sunrise and set up camp fairly close to the entrance. I think I remember sleeping a bit during the afterrnoon somehow, and then in the evening the festival began. Luckily for me, I lost my phone on the first night. Of course, it was a bit of a hassle to be without the phone, and I blew an opportunity to do a favor for a friend b/c i couldn’t get the details organized, but overall I’d say I’m pretty glad I lost it. The rest of the weekend I didn’t even have a clock to command my attention. I just did what I felt like doing, uninterrupted for the whole weekend. For four days I was connected to the world by eyes, ears, and hands alone. No more digital self to concern myself with, I was a tangible being for one weekend.

On that note I’m going to shift gears. If you’ve been reading, you know I love the ever growing capabilities of my digital avatar to help me process information, keep in touch, and find new things to explore in the real world. I don’t mean to hate on digital me. Yet, as I come back to Lansing and real living breathing Shane steps into the shoes of digital representative, I’ve been experiencing some adjustment pains.

I’m not sure I can explain fully what I’m getting at. I just really want to emphasize that despite the number of ways new technolgy can enhance ordinary old fashioned human experience, it is not a substitute for it yet.

Well, its been a while since i’ve posted and i’ve got a hell of a lot on my mind. I think it shows a bit. I promise to do a little better on the next post. In the mean time, does anyone want to try and help me save this digital versus real self thing. Have you ever expeienced a bit of a disconect between the electronic and biological versions of yourself?

Back in Lansing,

Wow, I’ve been back a little more than a day, and I have so much to write about I don’t think I can write about anything. One of my roommates got engaged. Great News! One of my roommates I almost didnt recognize because he looks so different. I got to see a few of my freinds yesterday that I haven’t seen in a while, ate some hippie hash at Fleetwoods,  stopped by the shop., played video games. played my bass, and chilled on the couch with the boys for a while listening to some crazy music of Chales’ computer.

Basically, I went through a typical Shane-is-off-work-but-recovering day. In other words, I time travelled right back to february. I’m going to take the opportunity to synthesize an idea my dad had with a few i’ve posted before. As many of you long time readers know, when I was easrly in my trip, I took serious issue with some of my close relatives view that going to Taiwan would change my life in a significant way. My dad responded by saying that he had never said going would matter, but only coming back. I have been waiting to see if the facts bear him out on this.

As I have heard him say it, his time abroad introduced him to a whole new set of norms and values. That is, people had different ways of getting the things that everybody wants, and they also wanted some different things. When he came back, it seems like he found his new values out of sync with the society in America. To hear him tell it, he has never quite recovered from this.

I took issue with this for several reasons, though mainly because I think it overpriviledes the actual act of travelling in what was obviously an internal process.  I think it is more than likely that he was already a bit out of sync before he left than he might have realized, and that values change for several reasons, all of which were attributed to africa for various reasons. So the premise is a bit of a stretch, though I can see the truth behind it.

Secondly, I have to dispute the similarity to my trip. He was in Africa for two years, with extremely limited contact to the States. I was in Taiwan for 4 months, and was in constant communication with everyone I know. I talked to a few of my closest friends nearly every day.  Lastly, there is the fact that we are just different people.  A lot of the lessons I was supposed to learn by this experience, I already knew, so i just didn’t expect the impact to be very large. I figured, “this is a phenomenon with which I am well familiar, so it won’t really affect me.”

Basically, I was being a bit arrogant, and blinding myself to certain facts. By focusing on something I know was true, simply changing your location does not necessarily change your life, I ignored some other influnces. Things I couldn’t do in Taiwan, like play my bass, play video games, or chill on the couch, I didn’t think about. Friends I couldn’t keep up with I didn’t think about.  If i had thought about them I’d have been hurt for the seperation. Instead, I thought about new things, new people, and occupied my time differently. This is where the difference happened.

Those things I was thinking about, have replaced my old habits for my attention. Those people I could keep up with are now my closest friends. Yet, the architecture here doesn’t quite support those priorities, and in some ways it is hostile to them. My dad was partly right, or at least I can identify what he was trying to say while he was saying it wrong. My list of things I want the most has been reorganized (i’m different), with new additions and place changes, and my life here is built to maximize value using the old list (home is the same). It looks like the list and the environment will both need some adjustments. Whichever one is more flexible is getting changed until I get what I want and want what I get. Work starts today.