Hills

Lake Oswego... it has them.

Originally, the place looked like a dream come true. Open Google Maps on your browser, zoom in... and Wow! Trails, trails, and more trails. Not those half-hearted trails you see meekly following the shoulder of a main thoroughfare. These are real trails.

Unfortunately, they're a bit more real than I would like. Lake Oswego sits on the slopes of Mt. Sylvania, a dormant shield volcano with a peak elevation of 978 feet. And--wouldn't you know it--our new apartment is near the peak.

Fun times.

I won't complain, because--after all--dedicated running trails are rare and a treat, no matter how steep they are. And these trails are prime strength training material. In 20 minutes, I get the same workout as running 60 minutes on the flat. No kidding.

Unfortunately, my fiance--who has begun building a running habit--will have to deal with them too, and soon. While these hills are intimidating to me, they're bound to have debilitating consequences for her. We may have to compromise.

Fortunately, hills (especially Lake Oswego Hills) are the master of compromise.

A downhill says, "run me for fitness"

A flat says, "jog me for fitness".

An uphill says, "walk me for fitness".

Lake Oswego says, "crawl me for fitness".

So, you see, by merely walking in our neighborhood, we'll achieve a level of fitness we never could have achieved in our respective former neighborhoods. By running, we're bound to get our names printed in Demigod Running Magazine. Fame and fortune will follow.

Okay, not really, but you get the idea.

Now, I won't deny that running must have a measure of fun, otherwise you won't do it. Also, I won't deny that running hills isn't technically 'fun', at least--not in the truest sense of the word. Fortunately, even though the Boring Lava Fields (no, really, that's what they're called) are steep and intimidating, they aren't all encompassing. There are flat alternatives. They just require a bit of driving.

Exhibit A: The Springwater Corridor

It's a dedicated multi-use path, with reasonable contours (both in the horizontal and the vertical). And... it's only 6.3 miles away from our apartment.

So, you see? All that worry, it was for naught. Running we can do. Walking we can do. Even crawling we can cope with. And Lake Oswego? It'll suffice for all three.

Until next time,
- Daniel

Moving

It's probably true that people who switch homes regularly have less clutter than those who don't. That is to say, if you buy something, you'll (at least subconsciously) be thinking about what it would mean to move it from point A to point B.

So, consider getting a Queen-size bed instead of a King (or that California King they had in the mattress store down the street).

Similarly, people who live in smaller houses have less clutter than those who live in larger houses. This is a simple extrapolation of Parkinson's Law that "work expands to fill the time allotted to complete it".

If you haven't guessed, I will be moving in the near future. Tomorrow, to be precise. Fortunately, it's not a long-distance move (which would be tiring), or a household-of-ten move (which would be back-breaking and tiring). This hop is a short one, and it's just the two of us.

Two of us?

Okay--so, I'm not just moving. I'm also getting married. Perhaps I should have led off with that. I'm living in a new apartment as of tomorrow, and my wife will be joining me after our wedding and honeymoon.

I'll elaborate later, I promise.

All that said, moving two people into the same house is not nearly as intimidating as it sounds. First off, single people rarely own large houses with lots of stuff in them. Second, they are resistant to things like pulled muscles and wrenched ligaments. As long as they don't get a particularly ornery dresser dropped on them, they'll probably be fine.

Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from here (from a clutter perspective, anyway). As soon as you have somebody close to buy things for, you tend to do that very thing. And as soon as you have kids… well…

But maybe a cluttered home can still be a happy home. And maybe you can compensate by not moving as often. And when you do have to move, maybe it's okay to give part of your gold mine to Goodwill.

In fact, maybe clutter doesn't matter much at all. And maybe I should be blogging on more consequential topics. Hey... you know... I bet marriage qualifies as consequential. ;-)

...

Spontaneous inspiration. It's a wonderful thing.

Until next time,

- Daniel

The Loupe Man

Remember the old days? The days when it took 6-8 weeks to get something by mail order? Well, those days are still among us.

See, I have a watch.

Unfortunately, this watch was defective. The crown was loose, allowing the date mechanism to change on an hourly basis. Frustrating stuff. Fortunately, we live in an age where you can still get your things repaired instead of replaced.

Being a good, eco-conscious citizen, I decided to take it in for repair.

Watch shops aren't terribly easy to find. Well, they are, but half of the shops in Beaverton seemed to be either closed or out of business. Fred Meyer to the rescue.

Fred Meyer--that superstore of all things home and household--has a watch repair guy on staff. Yes, ladies and gentleman: a genuine repair guy. Loupe and all.

I handed him the watch, and--lo and behold--he couldn't fix it. Not on-site, anyway. Apparently, replacing internal components is a surgical operation of monumental proportions. He said he would send it away to "The Shop" and get back to me.

This was mid-January. A loooonnnng time ago.

You see, I'm not used to waiting.

And face it--this is an age of two-day free shipping, with magical warehouses that operate 24/7 and have zero turnaround time. This is an age of McDonalds, with service efficiency that borders on perfect. Low margins, high volume. That's the name of the game.

Nobody told Freddy's.

Two weeks later

I went back to the store. Surely, my watch had been repaired and he'd just forgotten to call me. Nope.

Four weeks

I received a call. "The Shop" had evaluated my watch and plotted a course of action. $118 and change to repair. I felt seriously committed at this point. They would fix it or I would die a disillusioned death.

Six weeks

I returned to the store with renewed hopes. The man with the loupe dashed them again without sympathy or fanfare.

Eight weeks

I flung myself upon the mercies of God. If it was His will, I would face death without my watch: the glories of Heaven being superior to the fickleties of Earth. He was silent on this point. I continued to wait.

Ten weeks

I sat subdued in a bean bag chair, reading a travesty of modern fiction. To what depths I had fallen! Every fifteen minutes, I rummaged around in my pocket for my iPhone: to check the time. Watches were invented to solve this problem, but I had no watch. Fred Meyers had taken it from me.

The phone rang.

I answered.

It was the man with the loupe! My watch had returned!

And now--here I sit. Ten weeks of patience have paid off. However, I do not plan to revisit the watch repair man at Fred Meyers. It would take a better man than I to endure that process again. Consider yourselves warned.

Until next time,

- Daniel

The Hurt and the Lonely

People cause pain. Much of the pain in your life is caused by people: yourself or others.

A logician might come to a hasty conclusion. If people cause me pain, and pain is bad, then I should not associate with people (as though people were like hot stoves or mountain avalanches).

But what is worse? To be lonely or to be hurt?

The lonely man loses much, because he has disassociated from the ebb and flow of his fellow man. He has lost the opportunity to love others, and be loved by others.

The hurt man loses little, because for every person who stabs, there are two others who heal. He is an interesting man, full of experience and memories, able to instruct and inspire. The hurt man still capable of love has lost little indeed.

And yet the hurt man often turns into the lonely man. This is because--once hurt--his reaction is to withdraw from others. To hide in his castle and mend his wounds. Assuming this can be done. Sometimes, the wounds run so deep, they turn into scars. At this point, the hurt man must make a decision. Will he let others love him in spite of the scars, or will he sequester himself in his castle, like Beast before the Beauty?

I don't think there's a clear transition between the hurt man and the lonely man. However, one day, the lonely man wakes up, and sees himself as alone. He sees the friendships he has discarded or ignored. He sees the friendships he rejected. He sees that his acquaintances are few and his friends are fewer. He realizes that he is at a crossroads.

Will he take the road less traveled by? Will he learn to love in spite of his scars? Will he do the hard thing? The right thing?

He feels unlovable. He feels unworthy. He feels grateful for his friends and lover, but not strong enough to seek out more friends. He knows he should, but thinks he can't. He prays, he pleads, he digs deeper into the hole he has dug. He feels destined for a life on the fringes.

But there is hope. He may be entirely correct, that he--in and of himself--cannot love. However, those who are loved can learn to love by example. Even the man without friends has a loving Creator. Most of us have other friends as well. They can teach us to love.

Do you dare try?

Until next time,
- Daniel

Astrophysicists

Don't get me wrong, I love big things. The only thing cooler than a big thing is a bigger thing. But, when it comes to big things, nothing is big enough for an astrophysicist. They tend to deal with things that are many, many orders of magnitude bigger than what we mere mortals deal with. It's a little sickening just how big.

And, if this weren't bad enough, they're constantly discovering things that push the borders of what even "they" consider to be big. Don't get me started on dark matter.

But really, what's bigger than stellar objects and the galaxies they float in? The universe itself is an estimated 93 billion light years across, which comes out to 8.798 X 10^26 meters. That's 879,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is still a piddling number compared with stuff like the number of atoms in the observable universe, which comes out to 10^80.

If your brain hasn't melted yet, perhaps these two headlines will finish the job:

Scientists baffled by gangantuan black hole
A black hole in the middle of galaxy NGC 1277 with a mass equal to seventeen billion suns.

Quasar sends energy blast 2 trillion times more powerful than sun
Pretty self explanatory.

Sizzle pop much?

In a world self-absorbed with tiny dreams, we should be doing more to grasp the enormity of the universe we live in. People are currently vying for a shot at the Powerball jackpot, at $5.5 X 10^8 dollars (:psh:), and--if this absolute quantity weren't small enough--their dreams are smaller still...

- Start an internet cafe.

- Buy a car.

- Pay for their children's education.

It makes me sad to live in a world where most people have ambitions in the 10^6 range. Even if they caught that 10^8 monster by the tail, they wouldn't know what to do with it. I shudder to think what would happen if a 10^26 goliath or a 10^80 colossus fell into their lap.

Honestly, at that scale, thinking in multiples doesn't do much good. One-hundred Lamborghini's isn't going to make in dent in numbers like that, even supposing you could drive them all at the same time.

And--speaking of big numbers--perhaps I should mention that the odds of winning that jackpot are one in 1.75 X 10^8. But then--most people actually putting money into this aren't going to comprehend the ramifications of those odds. That's sad.

Until next time,
- Daniel