How you know you're in Montana

When the article on the front page of the newspaper is about a school teacher who while riding his bike to work literally ran into a 300 lb bear and both went tumbling down the road. Both survived.

I may not be a genius, but I am smarter than a lot of people.

I flew to Seattle a couple weeks ago. There's one thing about airlines that continues to boggle my mind. You know how there are different boarding zones to determine what order people get on the plane? This is a good idea.













First class is usually first to board. I understand this. They spent more money on their tickets and they deserve to board first so that everyone else is forced to walk by them lounging in their comfy over-sized leather seats with a cocktail in hand, everyone else jealous of their lush setting while heading back to coach. I understand this.
I also understand having handicapped people and parents with small children boarding early. They need more time.















It's the whole organizational structure of the boarding zones that I don't understand. If I were in charge, I have at least a couple ideas of how I would organize the boarding zones. Perhaps the first people to board would be those in the back of the plane. This way you never have to force your way by someone in the aisle or awkwardly squeeze into the row to let someone pass. No more waiting for that guy to try and cram his over-sized carry-on in the overhead bin. You fill up the plane from back to front. This makes sense.

Another option would be to have everyone with window seats board first. This philosophy seats passengers from the outside in, thereby removing the inconvenience of having to asking your row neighbor to get up so that you can get past them to your seat. No more of that holding your ticket in your hand and pointing to your window seat so that person knows to get up, move into the center aisle (congesting traffic) and allow you to access your seat. This strategy also seems to make sense.
What doesn't make sense is the reality of how the boarding zones actually work. The boarding zones seem nicely organized into a hierarchical structure of numbers, with passengers boarding the plane in either ascending or descending order of zone number. A problem is encountered when one gets on the plane and realizes that the boarding zones are completely irrelevant to the passengers' seat numbers. There are people everywhere on the plane, front and back, window and aisle seats, clearly no organization to how people are shuttled onto the plane. There is truly no reason for boarding zones except to give passengers the false perception of organization.
Perhaps my criticism of the boarding zones being completely irrelevant is unfair. I do allow room for the possibility that the boarding zone correspond to passenger's birthday, favorite color, favorite cereal, phone number, or any variety of personal information. I have not done enough research to verify any of these. The point being that regardless of these possibilities, the boarding zones do in no way increase the effectiveness of boarding the plane, except perhaps by the fact that there will be four short lines for boarding the plane instead of one long line. Within this optimism, there still remains the reality that it will take just as long, just as many people will have to squeeze into the row to let another pass, you still have to wait for the guy to cram his luggage in the overhead bin and you still have to point to your seat and make your row neighbor get in someone else's way by moving into the center aisle to let you by.
Thank goodness I only had to pay $400 for this kind of efficiency. I hope the plane mechanics have a little more foresight.

A Glimpse into the "Depths" of my Mind

You know how people have a terminal velocity? Like when people jump out of an airplane and reach the fastest speed they can go.
I wonder if grass has a terminal height. Like the highest height it can grow to and not get any taller.
The reason I ponder this is that if grass does not have a terminal height, my imagination runs wild. ( I confess that I don't know all that much about when and how the continents got populated and when, but work with me here.)
The way I see it, when the Indians got to America the grass had been growing for quite some time. I'm not just talking days, months and years here. So basically anywhere they wanted to go, they had to trek through grass fields that were hundreds of feet tall. Perhaps thousands of feet tall.
I suppose there were grass eating animals around, but surely not enough to take care of all the grass.
You see where I'm going with this? I see either two options. Either grass has a terminal height or the Indians spent the vast majority of their time forging machetes and hacking their way through grass jungles, the like of which modern society has never seen.
Yes, this is what I think about in my free time.

I Put My Money Where My Mouth Was

I'm a firm believer that our lives should not be lived within the confines of our comfort zones. It is the times that we do the things most objectionable or scary to us that we learn the most. I feel to some extent that this idea continually drives me more to do things that are not natural.
Unfortunately, this philosophy has consequences. Like when some friends invite you to go swing dancing. Those of you who know me know how brutally awful my dancing "abilities" are. Those of you who don't know me, just take my word for it.
So in line with stepping out of my comfort zone, I went for it. Try anything once, right? And of course I knew there would be some ladies there, so that helped.
So there I am awkwardly trying to figure out the basic foot moves when the teachers keep adding more complicated maneuvers in. One of them was called the tuck and roll. Luckily it didn't involved flying out of a cannon as one might expect.
So I'm starting to get the hang of it and feeling a little more confident. We switch partners frequently which prevents any one particular female with getting too frustrated with me. I go through one session in which I'm feeling pretty good, by far the best I've done all night. My partner responds, "Don't worry. You'll get it. Just keep trying."
Of course, all I can think is, "Honey, that's as good as it gets. You want more from me?"
Needless to say, I have no plans on becoming a professional dancer, of any sort.
At least from the evening I was able to take confidence in living up to my life philosophy and stepping out of my comfort zone. Not to mention being able to dance with some nice old ladies.

A Game

Did you ever read that kids' magazine, Highlights? It was awesome. You remember where they had two pictures of similar situations and you had to find all the differences between them? Yeah...that was sweet.
Well, this is kinda like that, but there is only one picture and there are no differences. Sorta.
So here's a picture of me, in my room, wearing a shirt I got in Bosnia for about 10 dollars. I was pretty stoked about it. So your job is to figure out what is wrong with this picture, besides the fact that I don't really look all that happy.

Fun at the Dentist

I went to the dentist recently. It had been a while since I last went. I had to get x-rays, you know, the ones where they try to bring you right to verge of gagging and inducing the vomiting reflex, and have you hold that while the machine takes the x-rays. Clearly this is not my favorite part. At least they give you a lead vest to protect you against the harmful rays. And I say "vest" because it had no arms and stopped at my belt. I can deal with nearly gagging but there is something very discomforting about having harmful x-rays directed toward me and knowing that although this is for my dental health, a possible outcome is that my future child will not have a mouth at all due to the x-rays that have interfered with natural development of the genetic elements that created him. At least the x-rays showed that all me teeth are in the right place. And by that, I mean my mouth. Of which my future son will most likely not have.
There was a new element to the dental experience. Sunglasses. Yep. The lady handed me sunglasses (you know, like the really big ones that old people wear over their regular glasses) and I wasn't really sure what to do. I mean, I had brought my own sunglasses, and frankly I thought my own were a bit more stylish. After looking at the dental assistant a bit awkwardly, I figured I'd put the shades on. Maybe it was just a psychological thing. Like if you feel hip then you won't notice the fact that your teeth are being scraped and drilled by sharp metal instruments.
Despite the less positive elements of the experience, it was not completely unredeeming. The dental assistant was pleasant, attractive, and married. You'll see where I'm going. She told me I smelled good, which was a nice compliment, albeit a bit awkward since I don't take compliments well and she was married. And she still is, I'm not suggesting she left him or anything. She asked me if I wore cologne, to which I responded negatively. I then felt obligated to explain why I smelled good since I was not wearing cologne. I was wearing aftershave. That in itself is not weird, except for the fact that it was obvious that I had not shaved for a couple days. I suppose in my awkwardness of being complimented by a married woman it seemed that if I explained that I was wearing aftershave because my face was dry (as opposed to applying it after I shaved) she would perceive that as a cover-up and trying to explain away that I wore aftershave (since I don't wear cologne) in order to attract the opposite sex via scent at the dentist's office.
Who says I don't have a healthy imagination?

Why it's a good idea to cover your mouth when you yawn

So you don't look like a fool and get captured photographically.

P.S. It's amazing how contagious yawning is. I bet you can't look at this picture for a full minute without yawning. I dare you.

How you know you've been spending too much time with your tax consultant

I went in to H&R Block to get my taxes done the other day. (Yeah, I know I'm 8 months late). I ended up spending too much time in that office and it appears that my tax consultant became quite comfortable with me.
After paying, she handed me my receipt and very casually said, "I can staple this into your packet or you can just put it in your purse." She didn't stutter or anything. I opted to just put it in the packet.