We Could Be Married

Now Playing: Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress

How can you not love this band? I traveled home this weekend for a wedding and the three albums of theirs that I own (Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant & The Boy With the Arab Strap) were my car tunes for the trip. If you haven't heard them, give them a try, you will not be disappointed. Side note, Pitchfork's reviews can be a bit pretentious at times (OK, all of the time) but since High Fidelity is one of my more favorite movies, I enjoyed the FYHC,YWLaP review. Holy Acronyms Batman!

So yeah, I was at this wedding this weekend. It is a bit ironic/funny/sad because the bride was the first girl I really dated. That was way back during my freshman & sophomore years in high school so any feeling of ill-will or animosity are far gone. I tell people that I went to a former girlfriend's wedding and they're like "you went/were invited/are going?" And this isn't even the first ex-girlfriend's wedding I've been to. Out of my 4 relationships I've had in my life I've gone to 2 of their weddings. That's 50% folks. I'm not sure what to think about that. I mean is this normal? Or am I some sort of statistical nice-guy oddity? The whole "we can still be friends" cliche is supposed to be just that, a cliche, not something that is really supposed to happen. But here I am, remaining on good-enough terms to be invited to ex's weddings. Obviously they still think highly of me to invite me. At least I don't think that either of them were curtesy invites.

I enjoy weddings though, no matter who it is. For one, I get to dress-up. I enjoy looking good and wearing shirts & ties and what-not. I again sported my bright-green shirt with matching green & blue tie. This is a good combination for me, as I get many a complements on it. But I need to lay-off of it for awhile. I mean if I wear the combo too often, it will become devalued and lose its luster and allure. Gotta switch it up to please the ladies, ya know? That leads to the second reason I enjoy weddings, the women. Not that I've really ever been successful at picking up women at weddings, given the circumstances I should have a better track record. Usually there are a fair number of attractive, single women out there to be had. I think the thing is, the last few weddings I've been to, I'm friends with everyone there and they know me too well. Shoot. So this leads to the third reason I enjoy weddings, that being the requisite open bar. Alchohol that you don't have to directly pay for is always welcomed.

Of course weddings get me thinking about my own situation. Wondering if I'll ever find someone that I'll consider marrying or if I even actually want to get married someday. I'll be honest here, there are a lot of times I don't see myself getting married. There is a myriad of reasons for this. I am deftly afraid of a failing marriage. For whatever reason, I see that as the ultimate failure. When I get married I want it to be for good. Its funny because I'm really not afraid of failure in other aspects of my life, but for whatever reason I place a high value on marriage. I think that too many people out there see divorce as an easy way out of a bad situation and don't give much thought to the worse part of the "For better and for worse."

Over the last several years, I have started to realize my own sense of self. OK, what I mean is that I enjoy my independence and doing stuff on my own. I'm a very solitary person and enjoy being by myself a lot. There are things I want to do in life where I see having a life partner getting in the way. If I want to go take 3-4 months off and climb Mount Everest or sail down the Mississippi or walk the Appalachian trail I see a wife vehemently objecting if I do one, let alone all of these things. Really though, I'd want to find someone that would allow me the freedom to do things like this. And who knows, I may find someone that does, and that would be just fine by me.

I do know that I want kids. This may be a bit self-centered, but I know that my genes are too good to go to waste and I want to breed genetically superior offspring. It is kind of hard and still pretty socially unacceptable to do this by myself, especially for us males. At least women can go to a sperm bank and get pregnant. I really can't go to an ovum-bank, buy an incubator set and grow-my-own-kid.

But this doesn't mean I won't get married, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. I'm too focused on my schoolwork and a career to worry about supporting a family. Honestly I do hope to get married someday. I see my married friends and my parents who've been married almost 32 years now and see immense amounts of love, devotion, and happines. And I know I want that someday.

Naked Naked Foul

So I moved into my new room on saturday. I'm enjoying my new digs. For one, my old room was in dear need of major cleaning/reorganization so this move helped me to do that. I've got more storage room then I know what to do with. I'm sitting here looking at the bookshelf and only 1 of the 6 shelves is full. And 3.5 of them have nothing on. I need to fill up on books or something. I also took time to reorganize my CDs. It has been quite awhile (years) since I did that. So they are now in alphabetical order. We'll see how long they stay that way. Then there are the walls. I've got too many of them. Or more specifically, I've got too many BARE walls. I need to spruce the place up. Give it some of that great Mark personality. I did go to the poster store yesterday. I picked up a new R.E.M. poster. It appears to be from the 2001 Reveal-era. I also got a poster with a very vivid red rose and it says "Passion: Nothing in the world has ever been accomplished without passion." I really bought it for the imagery of the rose. I could do without the hokey saying on it, but I'll live. I also picked up a couple of 8 x 11.5 poster cards. One is the CBGB logo and the other is a 4 x Marilyn Monroe Warhol. I'll have to pick up some more to express my personality and give warmth to my room.

I didn't move far, just up to the 4th floor from the 3rd. A seemingly innocuous transfer. I have noticed, however, that I have been using the elevator more. Primarily going up. I can actually justify using the elevator now. The 3rd floor is kinda the limbo floor of the elvator world. Yeah, you can use the elevator to go up, but it's 2 floors man, you can walk it. Whenever I did take the elevator to the 3rd floor I felt like a sham, a scab. I could feel everyone's eyes in the elevator looking at me and thinking to themselves "who is this guy that can't walk up 2 flights? That makes one more stop and wastes my time to get to my room." Now that I am on the 4th floor, I can rightfully justify using the elevator. Not just that, but I've started to become an elevator snob myself. I find myself looking down on those that take the elevator to any floor below mine. Does this mean that those on the 7th floor are the ultimate elevator snobs of my building. In their eyes, do they think that anyone below them should take the steps? The only time I take the elevator down is if I'm doing laundry or moving something. I always take the steps down and it abhors me when I see someone standing on the 2nd floor waiting to go down. Its kinda funny because I'll see them waiting and I'll be down on the ground floor before them. It takes what? 10 seconds to walk down 1 flight of stairs. And here they are waiting for an elevator to come. Then they have to wait for the doors to open, get on, doors close, then move. That is an eternity folks. Just walk down the damn stairs. I tell ya, elevator culture is tricky subject.

The Trees Will Bend

So I'm moving over the weekend. Nothing special, I'm just moving up a floor so I can be in an official ResLife room. A bit of a different set-up to the room and it's got A/C...those are about the only difference. Anyway so I'm looking forward to this. A different view of things. And it's an excuse for me to clean up my room and decorate it a bit. So I was at Home Depot tonight getting some stuff and I saw some woman with some big plants. So I decided to check it out. They must be trying to get rid of their foliage because all these big potted plants are $19.99 or cheaper. So after examining them a bit I settled on one. To say its a plant is a bit of an understatement. There are 3 palm tree growths coming out of the pot standing a good 5 feet tall. It's an impressive thing, this tree I've got. I even left the room, came back, and was surprised a bit when I came back into the room. It'll be the centerpiece to my new room. I'll have to add some other stuff, but methinks I'm going to be liking this here tree.

I Was Sleeping On the Couch

Bring Back the Couch Campaign.
Not much to report tonight. I've been going through training for my oh-so-sexy ResLife job. It's all day and I don't get a chance to rest so I'm plum snookered. Add to that the crazy hot temps we've been having which have caused me to sweat uncontrollably. In spite of the multiple showers and multiple shirt changes throughout the day, I still feel gross. Anyway, click on the above week to help bring back the Daily Show's Couch.

We Are All On Drugs

Rafael Palmeiro tests positive for steroids.
Huge news here. Rafael has had quite a productive year. Recently he became only the 4th person in baseball history to have both 3000 hits and 500 home runs. Additionally, last spring he testified in front of Congress that he has not taken steroids. So far the majority of players who have tested positive have either been no-name minor leaguers, or no-name major leaguers. This is by-far the biggest name to test positive. He is a potential Hall-of-Famer, but this will certainly taint his image and all success he has seen in the sport. You have to question the guy's intelligence in the fact that 1) he denied under oath of taking steroids and 2) that he would have the gall to actually go out and use them after the fact.

Naturally he has appealed his 10 game suspension. OK, maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions. Perhaps he is innocent and that the positive test is merely because of some OTC or prescription "cold" medicine that he is taking. There have been more then a few instances in the past in various sports where athletes have tested positive for a banned substance that is in a common medication. No matter what the case, when you reach a certain level of competition where testing is common, it is both the responsibility of the coach and athlete to be aware of the banned substances and which of those are in the medicine they are taking. Yes, on the international level, the list of banned substances is extensive. It can be hard to keep track of everything, but that is not an excuse. In the end, it is each player's responsibility.

We'll see what happens with Raffy, but it will certainly shift opinions about him. Even though the guy has HOF numbers, there has been discussion if the guy is truly a HOF caliber player. This test will put a skeptical eye on all his numbers. I will not be surprised if he eventually does not make the HOF, or isn't elected for a truly long time.

For those that read this, I'd love to hear your comments.