The more things stay the same...

As I’ve gotten some press from good friend and blog (tor)mentor, Brian, I thought it would probably be a good idea to post again. (As that’s what bloggers do, and what he’ll grill me for not doing.) So, here’s the latest attempt at sufficiently-disclosive, on-demand drabble.

Alphi and omegi
The next two weeks mark a significant transition for me: the final switch from ‘worker’ back to ‘student’. It’s been 8 years since I made this far-reaching a change in my activities and experience, and though a meaningful shift in me, I’m looking forward to the new opportunities and the ~1 year countdown to “Doctor” me, and the likely employment and location changes that title will allow.

Yet, while the new school year looms, and my new life as full-time grad student ambles toward me, the summer and various other life items are coming to end:

• Paycheck from full-time work. (Occasional bookstore and new TA checks are nice, but not quite so full-figured…)


• Long-planned student retreat (mentioned last post) went well, with a number of interesting mis-connects between students and faculty. Great colleagues; good work done; and the weather was lovely in San Jose. (Mentally clinging to those cool breezes…) It also was my last scheduled travel out of town, after a busy travel season.


• Just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or “HP7” as we say ‘in the industry’). FYI, the castle sinks, they all die…

So, in flux, here’s to balance!

I just knew I'd be (statistically similar-looking to someone) famous some day!

I'm staffing a college student retreat this weekend and will teaching again this fall, and so (having been off-campus for a few solid months this summer) I've been trying to put myself back in those shoes again --back in the mindset of the traditionally college-aged student.

The shoes still fit, even if the pants don't any longer, and I got to thinking about what I expected from leadership retreats in my day. (I know I didn't expect email/web, much less Wi-fi, didn't have cell phones, and all our music came on cassettes and CDs, to be played in bulky boom-boxes or Walkmen.)

Nostalgia and a few cups of hot tea later (guess what else I didn't expect on college retreat?!), I actually looked through some old, scanned photos, and --long story short-- ended up doing celebrity look-a-like comparisons on the web....

Verisimilitude
Of the various ages I tried, I thought this one yield the most interesting results:



That's me on the left, in my professional "Area Director" photo for the opening of the residence halls in the fall of 1998 --my first full time job, post-Master's degree.

The celebs honored enough to have ME come up when they load their photos include, from top-bottom and left-right, IN DESCENDING ORDER OF SIMILARITY:
1 . Terence Howard (72% match)
2. Tom Cruise
3. Sophie Marceau
4. Adrien Brody
5. Jet Li
6. Hugh Grant
7. Camilla Parker-Bowles
-- Dermot Mulroney (not pictured)
8. Gael Garcia Bernal (at just under 60% match)

While generally pleased at the selections and their multiculturalism, I must say Ms Parker-Bowles was a bit of surprise. (Damn cups of tea!)

Other notables dopplegangers from various age-comparisons: (Turkish singer) Tarkan, actress Selma Blair, Jodie Sweetin (!!!), footballer Michael Owen, (New Zealand Prime Minister) Helen Clark, Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell, actor James Spader, singer Avril Lavinge and unlabel-able Mandy Moore.

Sadly, the "South Park me" (my profile pic) was "not recognized" as a having face by the MyHeritage software.

While I'm reliving my youth (or at least trying to keep up with theirs), take a gander and let me know who's living your 15 minutes for you...

All hail King of the Obvious!

Apparently, with these "blog" things you are supposed to regularly post new content. (In my day, we printed one edition of something and were happy with that....) So, lucky you:

Friday the Thirteenth
While I could step into most any Roman Catholic church in the world, and actively participate (in English) in the Mass, I am not a religious person. Though a keen survival instinct and significant OSHA training prevent my walking under ladders, I do not consider myself superstitious. And despite being told by numerous (likely self-identifying spiritual) people that I strike them as “spiritual,” I don’t feel it an apt description of me. (Nor right for them to accuse me of striking them in the first place.)

And yet, there are times when I cannot help but attend to clear messages delivered to me by the universe. For example, on my recent vacation to “down under, next door” the universe (in this instance taking the form of an accented shop owner) spoke to me, convincingly explaining why I HAD to have the cloak handmade by same weaver who'd made the costumes for a certain movie trilogy I enjoy more than ketchup.

An example you may more easily identify with is when one’s car loses power completely while driving down the street (as mine did tonight), and one is hard-pressed to miss the “take me to your mechanic” content of the situation. When this has happened twice already in the previous nine months, one also begins to see more subtle nuances emerging: namely “new mechanic” or perhaps, “Prius…”

Therefore, it ought not to have come as any surprise that the past few weeks have found a pattern increasingly less subtly hidden in my daily life:

• Within a week of one another, two professional acquaintances whom I rarely see have independently and proactively offered to set me up on sight-unseen dates with “nice” friends of theirs.
• My mother, not one to EVER ask about my social life, has acknowledged and since inquired about whether and how these dates are going.
• This week, a good friend ran into me at my favorite coffee shop, early for her own ‘date’, and we ended up spending a few hours comparing dating stories, looking through online personals for one another and bemoaning the general low level of good grammar among other singles.

Hmmm, spidey sense is tingling that despite needing to concentrate on 1) supporting myself through 2) finishing my doctorate in the next year as 3) a likely ticket out of the desert, could cupid be calling?

To be sure, there are many repeated messages in my life, many arriving by email, that I choose to ignore outright: “bigger!,” “grow hair,” “must stay the course in Iraq” and “UK lottery winner” among them. Others I do miss, however conspicuous they are; such as with my last significant other, who all but asked me out on our first meeting—an interest glaring to everyone else in the entire bar except yours truly.

So it stands to reason that, especially in the realm of romance, the gentle nudge from the universe couldn't possibly be so obvious as the past few weeks seem to suggest. (He didn't mind, and the friends still love telling the story, bless their hearts.)

But just in case, and hoping I haven’t mis-translated it all, I took a step and asked out a cute, nice and refreshingly self-aware and –expressive friend of a roommate of a friend of a friend, whom I met by accident last weekend. (Diagram THAT sentence!) If my google-stalking his email doesn’t scare him entirely, and I have correctly decoded the signs of late, today may turn out to have been less unlucky than it’s widely held to be.

So, chubby cherub of affection, Thomas has heard and answered the clue phone on this one.

You better not be calling just for directions. Or collect.