Downton Abbey

Viewers note....Downton Abbey returns to PBS January 8, 2012. This is a really great series. Catch up on last season starting tonight and see what I mean  :)

Cheers, nca

DEFACED BOOK

What part of  the term 'Social Network' makes me think I can ever properly inhabit virtual worlds like 'Facebook' or 'Linkedin'. Let's face it, I have been and always will be socially challenged. Well, sure...here I am posting to the blog sphere. And I have been a member of both 'Facebook' and 'Linkedin', and some other social networks from time to time. But I never truly fit in on those sites.

From early in my youth, living in a large family of 9 in a little three bedroom two batch house I have been awkward in any situations with more then a handful of people. Socially I am more a observer than a partaker. I love people and personality in small group settings and small doses. But at a party I am as awkward as a nun in a strip club.

The blog works ok because my actual audience is small, and my real audience is even smaller. My audience is the few people that are actually linked to this. The real audience is probably really just myself. Like a diary, writing makes me feel better, it helps me get ideas of my chest, I enjoy it and always have. There is the occasional exhibitionist side of me...but for the most part that gets suppressed by my hermit tendencies.


The main problem for me is 'small talk'. My 'small talk' skills are sorry and weak. I never remember jokes. I love puns, because that is really playing with words which is really writing (poetry), and I'm good with that. But the short interesting tidbits and fascinating subjects and intriguing inquiries completely abandon me at parties. And what comes out on my FACEBOOK entries reflects that too. I get a lot of silence and ? and odd replies on my posts... I never get the 20 posts my daughters get when they post some cute saying or request for advice. Nor should I. The things my mind comes up with just do not work in the social setting.

Puns, innuendos, double entendres, and sarcasm don't seem to fit in well socially. They sometime work in smaller groups, but in larger social networks they fizzle. 

I guess I still get enough out of the social sites to warrant visiting from time to time. It is fun to learn things about my daughters and friends via these networks. But being a shadow lurking in the background makes me feel a lot like I do at parties and other social gatherings...a wall flower or voyeur, there but not really there. I understand why people love social networks, and more power to them, I wish I was more socially adept.

I am who I am.

Cheers, nca

My own Christmas Story

I have Christmas tales worthy of a scene in the movie Christmas Story.  One to share occurred in Mesa when my daughters were little. We had purchased a tree off a lot in Mesa, and by the end of Christmas it was as dry as tinder. I wanted to dump it before it became a fire hazard...so I drove it down to the Fry's behind my house and dumped it in the dumpster behind the store. You, know, the one that says 'No Dumping'. Yeah that one. As I was dumping it....the action flipped my glasses into off my head and into the dumpster.

Yeah, I've told crazy glasses stores before. So it might not be new to you, dear reader, that I'm as blind as a bat without my glasses. Since it was night time, I wish I was as blind as a bat, I was as blind as a hearing impaired bat. Trust me, a few of those four letter words from 'Christmas Story' slipped out.

I had to climb into the dumpster and feel around with my hands for the glasses blindly. Did I mention the dumpster was full of whatever the Fry's folks throw in there. I don't know exactly what it all was, but some of it was slimy and gooey and smelly and generally not too appetizing. Since I was climbing around in a Dumpster that clearly stated, No Dumping, I was scared that I was going to be caught. I was also scared that I would not be able to find the glasses and I'd be stranded. Explain that situation to...who?

By some miracle, deep withing the muck and grime of the dumpster, my hands discovered the forlorn glasses and I was able to get home without a major felony rap.

Merry Christmas...nca

A New Year

It's late at night on December 12th, I'm feeling a little blue, a little old, wondering if I can conjure up a blog worthy of some seasonal cheer.

So here goes...

My brother John used to get together with his brother-in-laws family on New Years day to watch College Football on two or three TVs all at once...one game after another, over another. Pre-BCS. When ASU actually had the occasional chance to make the Rose Bowl (there's always next year).  This particular family was all Irish American and Notre Dame boosters and mainly male...with all the trappings. Beer, and food, and more beer, and plenty of football to go around. One thing always cool about John, he'd get bored after a while and we'd go outside and shoot hoops...and all of this was all right with me, it all worked.

Sometimes on New Years day I would stop by Dad's little apartment on Greenfield and pick him up and he'd join us for the festivities. However, this particular time...I could hear the radio on in his apartment, I knew he was home and yet he did not answer. He was a hermit at times. I can relate, I have that gene too. But I was mad, and I went on to the New Years game, and I complained a bit to John when I got there, don't you know. I was vexed just a bit.

Dad had passed. I did not know, did not know until days later, when John called me at work. I was devastated, heart broken. I miss my Dad still.

Where do I find cheer with that? Well heck, all the years I did have Dad, and the years I have been a Dad, and that I learned not to hermit a bit from that, and that now I have daughters and grand kids and Christmas comes each year...and Christmas means a little bit more, and Christmas reminds me of my beliefs that one day I will see my Dad again. And maybe by then ASU will have played in the Rose Bowl again  (there is always next year).  :)

Cheers, nca