The Most Concise Explanation I've Seen

Boy Scout Motto

As I alluded to in a previous post, I've been wanting to learn to live a simpler life. It's part of a broader plan to make me more self-sufficient in less-than-ideal conditions. (plus, I enjoyed camping)

And although the idea is to be less reliant on material items, my plan does require a little gear. This weekend, I picked up a critical piece of that equipment. REI was having a sale, and they had North Face's Big Fat Frog 24 on sale.

I thought it would be fun to take it for a test drive this evening, so I set it up in the back yard.


It went up in record time with almost no effort. The real selling point for me is the rain fly / vestibule.


Even though this is a small 2-person tent, this gives me plenty of room to stash my gear.


I think it's about time to grab the LED headlamp, a book and head out for the night.

Not this time

If you love something, set it free.

Admittedly, "love" is much too strong of a word. (but that's the quote) For the first time, I was presented with the opportunity to live this quote in a literal fashion.

I did the right thing. I let him go, knowing that if it's meant to be, he will be back. But I've convinced myself that I'll never hear from him again.

I'm proud of myself for doing what was right--regardless of the consequences. But that doesn't stop it from feeling like I just got kicked in the chest.

This weekend!

The Onion makes fun of Star Trek? Man, does it get any better?


Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

WTF Copter

So, I'm sitting at home this evening--minding my own business watching a little TV after dinner. I hear a helicopter fly by and it sounds kinda low. But that's not too strange. But after a few minutes, I realize that I can still hear it flying around.

So I step out onto my back porch and there he is--flying really low (~500 ft) and only about a block away. So I watch for a bit and realize he's flying in circles over a point that can't be more than a block away.

I stand there for 10 minutes and he just keeps circling. Then I see another helicopter flying slowly above at about 1,500 ft.

So I grab my camera and decide to snap some pictures. Somebody must be watching because he hovers directly over my house for about 15 seconds before continuing the circling.

That's the strangest thing I've seen in a while. As I write this, I can still hear him making his rounds.

Camping

Those of you that know me probably wouldn't describe me as an "outdoors person". I've always enjoyed my creature comforts--A/C, hot showers and eating food I don't have to worry about having been dropped in the dirt.

Or at least that's what I told myself.

During the past several months, I've been re-examining my personal philosophies. (I'm sure many of you have had to listen to me rant about one aspect or another of this) I'm trying to make some changes in my life (never stop learning or growing), but I've been running into some brick walls. I've stopped short of several goals, and I can give you reasons why. But most of them are crap. Actually, I'm sure that *all* of them are crap.

They almost always stem from a basic fear of failure. I'm pretty sure that everyone deals with this in one way or another. But now that I've spent some time examining it, I found that it's a big negative force in my life. This fear has stopped me from more things than I'll ever admit to.

So I've been doing a lot of reading on how best to deal with this. One of the ideas I came across (and is relevant to the post) is one from Seneca:

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?"

Although this quote applies to many different situations for me, I took it literally when some friends asked if I wanted to go camping over Easter weekend.

While everyone else packed what seemed to be most of their belongings and we had a couple of huge tents to sleep in, I tried to keep it very simple. (at least for me) Essentially, I took a sleeping bag (with a travel pillow and Thermarest mat--I'm not trying to torture myself), a change of clothes, water bottle and Letters From A Stoic. Oh yeah, and I took my camera, too.


We camped in McKinney Falls State Park. It was a nice and well-maintained park. And while the weather was overcast all weekend, the park wasn't too busy. There were times we could hike for 30 minutes without running into anyone else.


We kept the agenda fairly simple: a little food, hiking, bike-riding, some geocaching and just sitting around the campfire (that we wish we could build, but couldn't because of a burn ban).

We left a day early because of a large storm coming through, but I accomplished what I wanted. Two days of living as simply as I can handle and I didn't die. Nope. No permanent damage. I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. I'm planning to head back to REI to buy a tent and make this a semi-regular thing.

TAL: Live

As a devout NPR and This American Life fan, it was fun to go to a live broadcast of their show.

This last Thursday, Ira Glass and the gang staged a live broadcast of their show to over 400 theaters. I went to a local megaplex and saw TAL on the giant digital screen. It was very cool. (although the 3-story tall head of Ira Glass in high-def was a bit disorienting because I'm used to a disembodied voice on my iPod)

In addition to some of the usual TAL contributors, they had Josh Whedon on to sing a song from his DVD commentary of Dr. Horrible. (yes, even the commentary is done as a musical)

(BTW: Adam, don't watch the YouTube video linked above if you are going to the re-broadcast)