Relationship Struggles
Mykala and I are currently riding a frighteningly violent relationship rollercoaster full of hairpin turns and terrifying drops. Three years: the stakes are high, very high.
Presenting Mr. and Mrs. Prestegord
Mykala and I are currently riding a frighteningly violent relationship rollercoaster full of hairpin turns and terrifying drops. Three years: the stakes are high, very high.
There are frequently crickets in the basement of my parent’s home, which nobody likes to kill. So, after accidentally amputating the legs off one too many crickets in attempts to remove them from the premises, my mother devised a system whereby a check box (remember checks?) is used to scoop up the crickets. Recently, my dad was trying to save a cricket, so he asked after the whereabouts of this box. He found it. It’s labeled in permanent marker: “Box for catching/releasing crickets.”
Speaking of crickets (and by that, I mean I have no transition at all), a personal trainer at Lifetime had two women standing on squishy half sphere exercise platforms. They were hitting each other repeatedly with long foam sticks.
And speaking of war, I drove by protesters today on University Avenue. One of the signs stuck out: “Let’s be friends with the world again.”
Behind the pay-wall at the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes about the sad state of United States broadband internet.
Even more striking is the fact that our “high speed” connections are painfully slow by other countries’ standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here.
The main idea of the article is that the ideals of a market driven economy are just that: ideals — sometimes federal regulations are the only way to guarantee a situation where competition drives prices down. He goes one (emphasis mine):
Meanwhile, as a recent article in Business Week explains, the real French bureaucrats used judicious regulation to promote competition. As a result, French consumers get to choose from a variety of service providers who offer reasonably priced Internet access that’s much faster than anything I can get, and comes with free voice calls, TV and Wi-Fi.
I left those long quotes in, as I know that most of you won’t get to read the article. Silly newspapers: subscriptions are for paper newspapers!
I really enjoyed this comment about the changing place of email in today’s digital communication landscape.
“A ‘social network’ is next to useless for building professional contacts if it’s just full of other dumbass teenagers texting OMG WTF BBQ at each other all day.”
Dear Matt and Shayla,
I write to you both during a very exciting time: you two may not get a chance to read this missive until you return from your honeymoon to Hawaii, or even until you are moved in to your new home in Iowa… or perhaps, not until after you each complete your first semester of vet school. So many big changes! The entire thing hit me when I was standing at the back of the banquet hall at your reception: you two, just married, walked in for the first time, wearing the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen. It may sound cliche, but there’s no other way to describe it: suddenly, the years past came rushing back, and I swayed a bit, surprised at it all — the magnitude of this most auspicious day. I can only imagine what you two were feeling and experiencing: it must have been orders of magnitude greater.
I’d like to say that I didn’t quite express how happy I was for you both at the reception this past Saturday. I got up to speak, and I knew what I wanted to say, and yet suddenly the gravity of the situation hit me. You see, I’m very used to speaking in situations where I have little emotional attachment to what I am speaking about. It was wonderful (and scary) to speak of and to honor two people so near to my heart. Regardless, I would like to share something from the reception that stuck with me:
The dollar dance was winding down, and Matt found himself partner-less, looking out over the crowd who were watching the dances. A minute or two went by, and Shayla danced with her last pardner. As she walked toward Matt across the floor, he reached out his arms and pulled her to him — it was a simple gesture, but one so full of love, I couldn’t help but smile. I know you two will go through life this way, pulling one another close and savoring the love, friendship, and happiness you share.
Here’s wishing you two many wonderful years ahead.
Most sincerely,
Alex
P.S. Have a blast in Hawaii!
Give tumbledry the ol’ hard refresh, and you’ll find the newest, very centered, version of the layout. 50% of the people I’ve surveyed love it this way! That’s one out of two!
Evan Ferstenfeld has a home-run of a t-shirt on his hands with this Threadless shirt: I Listen To Bands that Don’t Even Exist Yet. Helps you take your musical tastes less seriously. Again: thanks, Mykala!
The video of the “spider pig” part from the upcoming Simpson’s Movie is hilarious. Thanks, Mykala!
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