Season of Many Adventures & Our 1st Adventure: The Liberry

The Season of Many Adventures

Rusty and I like fun.  But, like many couples I assume, we sometimes fall into routine.  So we have devised A PLAN! A plan to keep the fun in relationfunship!  Wait... is that not how...?  Nevermind.  At any rate, we are going to embark on a journey of adventures.  The rules are simple. And they're more just guidelines, really.  

1.  We must get out of the house. 
2.   We must do something we wouldn't normally do. And if we do something we normally do, we have to put  some sort of spin on it to make it not so normal.
3.   It doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive.
4.   We must take pictures.
5.   We have to plan it as an adventure.  We can't say, go to a party and then just count it. 
6.   We will each take turns planning and go on as many adventures as we can muster to prevent us from becoming one of those boring couples.
7.   We must have delightful, cheery attitudes about whatever the other person has planned. (Ahem, Rusty.)

So away we go!  A note to other friends, couples, whoevers: We are totally open to sharing adventures so if you are interested in having one with us, see above rules (guidelines), come along, and enjoy the ride!!

Our 1st Adventure: The Liberry

Salt Lake City Library of Awesomeness

Today I took my Rustykins on an adventure to the Salt Lake City Liberry. For any of you who are not familiar with this incredible establishment, you are Lamesauce McGee!  This place is so full of adventures, we could probably fill our whole season with it. 

Our destination: Children's section

Our mission: To each find a book that had personal meaning and read it to the other!

An illustrator I find amusing is Gris Grimly.  I selected a book written by Neil Gaiman called The Dangerous Alphabet.  I guess the emo side of me gets a thrill out of this guy because he draws the most creepy, twisted illustrations.  I've always had a weird fascination with books that stray a little to the weird side. The preface of The Dangerous Alphabet reads:

The Dangerous Alphabet is a tale of  piracy, danger,

and heroism told in twenty-six alphabetical lines-- although

 the alphabet is NOT to be relied on here.

The preface speaks truth, as V and W are in the wrong order, and many of the letters don't even stand for what the say they do. For example, "C is the way that we find and we look." Here's a picture of me not even reading the right book.  (But it is another Gris Grimly sinister selection, Boris and Bella.)

Rusty loves I Spy books.  Like, loves them so much, he'd probably marry them if he could.  One of the co-authors, Walter Wick, has a spin off series called Can You See What I See? It is a wealth of search-and-find goodness.  We spent the greater part of our liberry time looking for skulls in clouds or thimbles in tiny village scenes.  I guess we had an unformulated theme here because we set our spying sights on Walter Wick's On a Scary Scary Night.  I was really impressed with Rusty's selection, we could've spent many more hours working on each page, and what cooler way to spend time together?  We got so excited when one or the other found a particularly well hidden broom, or upon discovering that "find 3 bats" meant 2 animal bats and 1 baseball bat.  Pure awesome.  I think I shall make it a point to collect this series for... eh, probably just to entertain the nieces and nephews, let's be honest here.

 

All in all, adventure #1 was a great success!  We had a grand old time at the library, and I highly recommend taking your kiddos or selves to enjoy the many wonders of the Children's Section-- books, it turns out, are just the beginning.  Rusty remarked as we left that it was too bad the parking meter had run out, he would've  loved to stay and wile away the rest of the afternoon. And I quite agreed. 

Old Time Fun

Okay, so Sunny suggested that I write a blog about Old Time Radio. So I am. Here goes. When I was about 10, my Dad introduced me to the wonderful world of old radio programs. Comedies, mysteries, and adventure stories all produced in the 30's, 40's, and 50's. The very first one I listened to was a Jack Benny episode where he cut holes in his toupee so he could go to a Halloween party as the wolf-man. It's funnier than it sounds.

It was then I began my infatuation with the art of Radio Theatre. This stuff is amazing folks. The stories that are told, the techniques they use, the acting, sounds, and production quality is astounding. I have never been so terrified as I was listening to "On a Country Road" starring Cary Grant. I have never laughed so hard as I did whenever Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve would get frustrated with his nephew Leroy. These stories are magic. I want to name a few of my favorites, and maybe give a background on them. One of my favorite programs is called "Suspense". It was produced by CBS Radio, and aired every week for about 20 years. That's a hell of a run. The stories were usually original mysteries, dealing with murder, intrigue, and occasionally the supernatural. "On a Country Road" was a Suspense episode, and it was so popular it was aired about 4-5 times throughout Suspense's run, each time with different actors. I'm partial to the Grant version myself.

Sunny and I have listened to a couple dozen of Suspense episodes, and she digs folks. It's hard not to. One is transported to another world, and another time really. We always discuss the episodes the next day, as we usually listen right before bed time. The fact that she is into them as much as she is really means a lot to me, as these old radio programs are a significant part of my life.

One of our favorites is a Morse Adventure serial called "The City of the Dead". This 10 part series takes place in a graveyard over the course of about 3-4 days. Murder, bodies, graves, ghouls, and treasure all await the listener. To this day, being 31, I STILL get terrified at the sound of the ghoulish antagonist Clawfoot's wailing moan. I remember being about 13 when Dad brought this particular program home, and we laid on his bed listening to the first 2 episodes. He fell asleep. I was enthralled. I took the rest of the tapes downstairs, and listened to the whole series with my sister Candice. It was epic. Truly, one of my favorites of all time, in any media format.

Lastly, a nod to "The Great Gildersleeve". This program is a comedy about a man who takes in his nephew and niece when their mother dies. Think the Bernie Mac show. Gildersleeve was played to perfection by Harold Parry until 1950, when Willard Waterman took over. This show is probably my family's favorite. We have all listened to more Gildersleeves then you've had hot dinners. Really good quality comedy in these shows. They're a bit dated for today's audiences, but honestly, if you suspend your too-cool-for-school attitude, you will get a good belly laugh out of almost every episode. So those are a few of my favorites.

If you want to check any of these out, go to http://www.archive.org/ and search for OTR. You'll find lots to listen to. These programs are dear to my heart, and listening to them in my adulthood, they haven't lost any of their appeal. In fact, with the crap that's on TV today, it's actually more appealing to listen to GOOD, SCRIPTED entertainment, instead of watching a fatty try to be less fatty than the fattest fatty. That is all. End transmission.

Harold Parry as the Great Gildersleeve

The Irritation of Motivation

Caution: This post is not particularly witty OR interesting. You've been warned.

Today at work we had a training meeting focusing on Execution. Not of the beheading or electric chair variety, mind you-- the achieving goals sort of execution.  Before I launch into the significance of this, I suppose some back story is in order.  Last July, my company underwent considerable changes which have turned my life into a 16-year-old's summer job nightmare:  A call center.  My promising career in the vacation industry, which endowed me with autonomy, personal & fulfilling relationships with select clients, excellent benefits, job satisfaction and engagement has been stifled into a grinding trudge through incessant eyeball-flaying monotony.  Work has become something I go to only as often as is necessary to remain employed and collect a paycheck --with mounting dread and anxiety as every new shift approaches-- where I perform my duties adequately enough to fly under the radar.  Needless to say, I have not been the most valuable employee of late.  

This is not the way I normally behave, and it has caused me great distress for these many months.  I am a firm believer that every act is a choice and that each choice should be owned and accounted for.  I didn't choose the direction my company has taken, but I have chosen to be a jerk about compliance, and subsequently, must be held entirely accountable for my job-related misery.  These choices have me feeling this:

This is no way to get anywhere.

Which brings me to my meeting today.  I dragged my feet all the way, expecting to take a good morale beating with more unreachable goals and unreasonable expectations.  Far from being battered, I was actually inspired by the content!  I despise this phrase, but I have to admit I felt like it was speaking to me. I left feeling an odd juxtaposition of motivation and irritation. Funny thing about motivation is that, when properly applied, it leads to action. And somehow action and laziness don't get along.  But I feel that laziness is the avoidance or refusal of accountability.  And like I said, I'm not so down with that.  Lazy is easy, but not fulfilling. So as irritating as it is to acknowledge my imminent departure from the easy, now that I've been given the tools I have to go to work. 

The 4 Disciplines of Execution, by Stephen R. Covey and Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan provided the blueprint.  

I'm not going to do a whole seminar on achieving goals here, never fear.  I just want to outline the points that spoke to me.  

• 80-some-odd-% of people don't achieve their goals because they don't know what they are.
• Companies that had 1-3 clearly established goals met all of them.  Companies with 4-10 clearly established goals accomplished 1-3 of them.  Companies with 10-20 clearly established goals met... drumroll... 0 of them.
• Accountability is key.  
• If you focus on your "wildly important goals" (Covey's term, not mine) then your subsidiary aspirations will fall into place.
• The "whirlwind" (every day distractions-- otherwise know as LIFE) keeps us from maintaining focus thereby pushing our goals further and further down the to-do list until they disappear from it altogether.
• Procrastination is a death sentence for your goal.
• The equation your goal has to follow is X to Y by When.  You have to know where you are, where you're heading, and exactly when you want to be there.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution are as follows (in as precise of terms as I can recall):

1. Know the goal
2. Know your strategy to achieve the goal, and focus on it like crazy
3. Keep score
4. Establish a cadence of accountability

Work, being a black hole of misery, was an obvious target to shoot my newly acquired insight at.  And I will, I swear.  But although the seminar centered on company goals and success, I was thinking how the principals taught could be vital to my success at life itself.  Relationships, finances, experience.  I am firing off so many goals in too many directions, it's no wonder so many of them fall by the wayside.  And I am expecting Rusty to innately know and be on board with my goals as well, so it's no wonder we get frustrated and feel like we're letting each other down from time to time.  

So I am going to experiment with these new Execution techniques!  Rusty is my reluctant accomplice.  We will very clearly establish 1-3 wildly important goals.  We will construct measures of achievement as well as consult historical evidence to be sure our goals are challenging, but attainable.  We will discuss our strategy and revisit it weekly to keep ourselves on track.  We will keep score so that at any time we will know if we are winning or losing.  And finally, we will have to go to our rooms if we fail. Wait, that's not how grown-up accountability works..?  Ok... well, we will determine what's at stake and know that if we want it, we must succeed.  

Or be EXECUTED.

I don't know anything about blogging.

I know a thing or two about writing. I've been going to college for like 17 years now, so I've written a fair few essays.  I am not proclaiming to be any glorious gift to wordsmithery or what-have-you, just that I know my way around a pen and paper. Er... keyboard and screen.  At any rate, writing and blogging, it turns out, come from completely separate realms of the vernacular universe.  I have written many things, but this is my first attempt at blogging. This is what I've learned so far.

1. Blogs should be pretty.  Ok, so mine is conspicuously NOT pretty. At least not at the time of this posting. I spent about two plus hours trying out the various templates, backgrounds, and fonts... and this is what I came up with. I suppose the design and layout of the blog ought to reflect one's personality, interests, and distinctive style. I would hope that I'm not boring, bland, or unimaginative as a person, and yet this is the best I could muster. I shall have to inquire amongst more experienced bloggers how best to surmount this glaring inadequacy.

2. Blogs should have pictures.  Not too many, but not... none.  Too many pictures will bore your audience, but enough are necessary to capture and retain attention.  I have fallen out of the habit of photo documentation, as I prefer not to experience life through a view finder. Alas, I regret my lack of evidence of experiences had and shared so I firmly resolve to... buy a camera with my tax returns and start using it, gosh dangit.

3. Blogs should be written.  No really, they should!  On a semi-regular basis, no less!  They don't compose themselves, you know!  This is my first post, and I am determined that it NOT to be my last. Enough said.

And thus I welcome myself to the world of blogging. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.  Or at least an amicable one.  I have a lot yet to learn, but I look forward to the journey.