My Life in a Photo Stream

Technology is amazing, kids. I'm not going to bother trying to deny it. What is also absolutely mind-boggling is my capacity to take pictures (accidentally) of the lock screen on my iPad.

It's also amazing how fast my hair grows. No, seriously. Check this out, people.

By the way, there are a LOT of pictures in this post. Sorry!

Anyway, a few months ago I installed the iCloud thing which allowed all the pictures I take on my iPhone (which, lets face it, is my primary camera anymore) to be automatically uploaded to a file on my computer. They also bounce to my iPad, which is how my iPad (which I left at home all weekend) has all the pictures from this weekend's trips to Arcadia Beach, Manzanita, and Short Sand Beach.

I was fiddling with the Streaming Photos on my computer earlier trying to get it to unlock them so I could use them in posts and things (I'm still fairly new to this, mind you) and I discovered on accident that I have pictures on there going all the way back to March of this year. That's like 6 months of my random photo taking. I realized that, by analyzing my own streaming photos, I could probably learn a lot about myself. Here's what I learned, in no particular order:

#1 - As I said, I manage to take a LOT of pictures of the lock screen on my iPad. I think this happens when I close it without turning off my bluetooth keyboard, but I'm not completely sure.

#2 - There are WAY more pictures of my cat than I'd like to admit. WAY more.

#3 - There are also a fair amount of pictures of the Chamaco and the Old Curmudgeon. (Who I think I shall start referring to in the blog by his Air Force nickname - Train. It's shorter to type.)

#4 - LOTS of pictures of beaches. You'd think we do nothing but go to the beach.

#5 - Also lots of pictures of flowers. I was aware I'd suddenly developed a weird obsession with flower photography (as anyone who follows me on Instagram is probably aware already), but I didn't realize the full extent of my own illness. I have acute floweritis.

#6 - Several pictures of sunsets. It seems I have more appreciation for nature than I was aware of... I'm not what you'd call "outdoorsy".

#7 - Some pictures of my recent culinary experiments. This has been a pretty good year for me and cooking. I'm baking an eggplant as we speak. This time last year I had never actually eaten an eggplant, and now I'm cooking one. I've also learned to make homemade egg foo yung and a decent stir fry. I plan to master hummus before year's end.

#8 - Random pictures from the internet that I thought were funny. (Esmarfon... chortle!)

#9 - Loads of Grumpy Cat. For a while there, Train (See, I started already!) was in a Grumpy Cat phase and I would find new ones he hadn't seen and send them to him at work periodically because it made him happy.

#10 - More work-related pictures than I care to think about. Seriously, I went through (and deleted) a ton of pictures of yards full of dog poop, apartments full of abandoned property I was inventorying, fire damage, and other random damage/violations that I was documenting for work purposes. (For anyone who hasn't caught on yet, I managed apartments for a year and then just recently moved up to what I guess you'd call "middle management". Not administrative staff yet, but getting there!)

#11 - Enough selfies to make you think I think a lot more highly of my looks than I actually do.

Now you might ask, what is MISSING from my Photo Stream? Well, if it's going to be an accurate representation of my life and times, there are a few things that aren't included but should be. Things like:

#1 - My parents. Notice I have no picture here to insert.

#2 - My siblings. Again, I got nothing.

#3 - Work friends. I spend most of my life with these people. Almost everyone I work with, I would socialize with voluntarily outside of work. Where are the pictures? Nowhere, mon frere. 

#4 - Church friends/other friends. Again, no pictures. Either I have a lot of camera-shy friends, or I'm missing some photo ops. 

Here's where we're going to get philosophical, so hang on... If I were to look at your Photo Stream (which is an option, by the way... they are shareable!) what would I see? What would I learn about you? Are there things in your Photo Stream you wouldn't want me to see? Are there things that are missing from your Photo Stream that you feel should be there?

Feel free to express your thoughts on my maunderings in the comments... it lets me know someone's actually reading this stuff I post!

One Year of Curmudgeon-y Goodness...

Image completely unrelated to blog post. I just like it. :)

Some of you may have caught on to the notion that this weekend was something of an "anniversary" weekend for the Old Curmudgeon and me. It's true... we started going out on weekends in early July of 2012, and we became official sometime in the early days of September. The truth is I don't know exactly when. Because I'm emotionally retarded, that's why. Here's the scoop:

Sometime in the early portion of September of last year (I want to say it was the weekend before my birthday, so probably the 8th or 9th, somewhere in there), we went out one evening with a couple of the Old Curmudgeon's friends. One of them I shall call Chuck, because this is actually his nickname even though it isn't his real name by any means. Chuck is an Air Force buddy of the Old Curmudgeon's. The other is Chuck's wife, and I can't really think of anything creative for her because I still don't know her that well. We shall call her "Stacy" (which is not even close to her real name, and in fact only has 1 letter in common with her real name).

So, naturally, it turned into the Old Curmudgeon and Chuck playing catch-up at one end of the bar and me and Stacy socializing at the other even though we didn't really know each other. And I forget what brought it on, but Stacy felt compelled to ask me, "So, what exactly is your relationship to Train right now?" (Train, BTW, is the Old Curmudgeon's Air Force nickname and I've learned that anyone who knows him primarily through the Air Force will refer to him as "Train" or "Night Train" 9 times out of 10. It's an interesting subculture... I've heard how he got the nickname, and I've heard how Chuck came to be called Chuck. Both are funny stories.)

Anyway, back to my narrative, the question gave me pause. I reflected for a moment and wasn't really sure how to answer. The Old Curmudgeon and I had been hanging out on weekends for a couple of months by that point (as friends, I thought) but I was beginning to maybe pick up on a fuzzier vibe unless I was mistaken. So I confessed to Stacy that I actually had no idea. She grumbled something about, "Well, we'll see about that."

At that point, the Old Curmudgeon had accompanied Chuck outside to smoke (Chuck smokes, the Old Curmudgeon does not, for the record) and as soon as they came back in Stacy grabbed Chuck's arm and started whispering something in his ear. Chuck then grabbed the Old Curmudgeon and they went right back outside. I was mildly intrigued by this, but there was a live band in the bar and it was really way too loud to hear what anyone was saying anyway unless they were yelling directly in your ear.

Finally, Chuck and the Old Curmudgeon came back in, and this time the Old Curmudgeon (who may need a shorter alias if I'm gonna type it so much) came over and sat by me. He said, "So, I hear that you don't really know what's going on between us." I told him that I didn't, and reminded him that I was emotionally retarded and had warned him about that. He said, "Well, we're together and we're going to be together for a very long time, as long as you're okay with that."

I was okay with that.

Anyway, by the time I actually got let in on the fact that we were together, apparently we had been in the Old Curmudgeon's mind for an indeterminate period of time. So I just split the difference between the time I began picking up on some not-so-just-friends vibes (mid-August-ish) and when it was actually confirmed for me and call it August 31st-ish.

Happy Anniversary to us! And yes, we do plan on getting married "sometime". We've discussed it. No concrete plans at this point, so don't get excited. :-)

My Own Personal Fairytale

For anyone that missed it over on my other blog, let me bring you up to speed. I'm currently in a serious, long-term relationship with my best friend from grade school. We reconnected via Facebook last summer after 19 years of separation (we lost touch in summer 1993 when my family moved) and have been rather constantly in each other's presence ever since (aside from things like work and sleep and school which tend to separate us).

We became friends in 3rd grade in TAG class. We weren't in the same homeroom class that year. By 4th grade we were spending a lot of time together outside of school. I liked to go over to his house because his parents were wealthier than mine and he had cooler toys (like a GeoSafari... we're TAG kids, remember?), and his mom took us to OMSI fairly often. I also remember his mother as being the one who taught me how to swim, and I was sad to learn that she passed away a few years ago.

I'm musing this evening on how things eventually come full circle. Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time there was a 10 year old girl who was friends with a 10 year old boy whose parents were in a decidedly different tax bracket than that of her parents. The 10 year old boy's parents decided one year to take him to Hawaii. When the boy returned, he brought the girl a ring carved from a single seashell in the shape of a leaf. The girl wore the ring all the time (on the ring finger of her left hand, she seems to recall) until the day it was tragically broken in a freak bleacher-crushing accident. The girl picked up the pieces from the floor and took them home and put them into the locked "treasure box" where she kept all sorts of priceless items like a purple, heart-shaped bead a Mexican boy had given her in kindergarten. 

Later that same year, the girl's parents decided to move to a town far away to have a house with more space. The boy managed to persuade his mother one time to drive him out to visit the girl, but eventually time and distance separated them.

Almost 20 years later, the girl (now 29-going-on-30) received an unexpected message on Facebook from the boy (who had just turned 30). "Remember me?" he asked. "Like I've ever known anyone else with a Finnish last name," the girl responded, as she had grown up to be rather sarcastic. Fortunately, it seems the boy liked this. The boy and the girl began spending Saturdays together. Then Friday nights and Saturdays. Then Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sunday afternoons which included the girl's son (who, interestingly, was about the same age the girl and boy had been when they'd last seen each other).  

Another year later, the boy decided he should take the girl and her son to Hawaii, as he remembered going when he was about her son's age and remembered it fondly. Plans had been in the works for  several days before the girl finally remembered the shattered ring that she was pretty sure she still had in a box somewhere at her parents' house. She ran into the other room to tell the boy excitedly, "I just remembered that I remember when you went to Hawaii before! You brought me a ring and I used to wear it all the time, then it got broken and I was really mad."

"Aww," he said, pulling her into his arms. "Well, when we go in December I'll buy you another one."

This story, by the way, is completely true. And the bit about me suddenly remembering this ring I hadn't thought of in probably 18 years or so just happened tonight.  Yes, this is the fairytale that has been my life for the last 13 months.... I'm dating and not-so-secretly planning to marry (at some indeterminate point in the future) the guy who was my best friend in grades 3, 4 and 5. You hear people all the time say, "We were high school sweethearts." Well, we were elementary school sweethearts... let's see you top that. And he already gave me a ring a long time ago. Yeah, it broke, but he already said he'd get me another one. And until then, I still have the pieces in a box... which I intend to retrieve the next time I go out to my parents' place.