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A friend in a previous life was moving to Florida to try to reboot her life and was having a Going Away Bar Night.  I don’t drink but it was nice to see people I’d not seen for a decade.  The person for whom we were having the evening was going to make it as an actress in Florida.  She didn’t have a plan should that not work out and I don’t know if that’s to be applauded or disparaged.  I hope it works for her.  I met up with someone I knew that was the rare “English major who was using her degree that wasn’t a teacher”.  She works for a publisher in New York City and commutes there daily.  She loves what she does.

The final person I spoke with was a pretty girl who I hadn’t seen in nine years.  She has been dating the same person since then and is slowly warming to getting married.  Each summer she spends a week in Delaware and that seems to be the highlight of her year.  She wanted to travel more but thought it expensive.  We talked about doing a day trip to New York.  We agreed that I’d make the arrangements if they covered my train ticket.  I gave her my card and asked for her to poke me when she had an idea when in May she’d like to go.  I very much hope I get a call.

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Taking a train to work has produced a new type of person in my life, the bystander.  I regularly see about three or four hundred different on the train and I see them just enough that I recognize their faces but not often enough to place them.  When I see one of these people, my brain tries to figure out who they are and how I know them.  Only recently has “train person” been added to my brain’s list of types.  This has made my rides home calmer as I no longer ask “who is that person” quite so much.

I also use an elevator bank at work and interact with another 40 each day that way.  There’s a part of my brain that feels like I should know these people’s lives or at least their names. That seemed aggressive, so since the new year, when someone hits an elevator button, I ask what happens on that floor.  This has worked for the last two weeks and breaks the silence of the elevator.  Today, I had a step back:

Me: So what’s on floor 25?
Him: Benefits consulting.  Just like it was yesterday, and just like it was when you asked me last week.
Me: Oh.

Maybe I need to write this down.

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Twice a week my lunch break consists of me just walking around Center City Philadelphia.  During about a third of these walks, I pass a lunch cart on 16th Street that looks like standard hilal fare but for which the line seems to extend three times further than most other lunch cart lines.  I made a note of which cart it was and wanted to come back again another time when the line was shorter.  Today, I took lunch at quarter after 11, ran to the cart, ordered the chicken kabob and was met with a wholly unspectacular meal.  Why was the line so long?  Was there a massive craving for mediocre dry chicken in some unknown sauce served on meat spears?  Did I have strange tastes?  I had eaten at a mall food court and on the way back passed again the street the Amazing Cart was on and found out why my lunch may have been unimpressive.  I had gone to the wrong cart.  There were two hilal lunch carts and I had missed the one with the now massive line as it’s not visible from the north due to a news stand.  The thing you saw from my vantage was the massive line and nothing more.

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Philly Tech Meetup is a meetup.com group that runs monthly technology startup events in Center City.  Every first Wednesday, they have demo nights and firms present software, hardware, services, and other tech related business plans to create buzz and find investors.  I was contacted by the organizer of PTM to be their photographer and tonight went to The Quorum at UPenn to get pictures of the meet-and-greet beforehand and then the presentations.  The room was filled with slightly overweight white and Asian men with a smattering of women and other minorities.  The presenters were off to one side rehearsing their slides and nervous tics when the organizer approached me.  He thanked me for being there, introduced me to the members of his staff and introduced me to… the other photographer.  I didn’t mind that there was another photographer there, so much as I wish I were warned.  An event that takes place in a single room doesn’t need two people snapping pictures and my time could be fruitfully filled another way.

The other photographer and I exchanged business cards and I saw the camera he was fumbling with and offered him some pointers.  He kind of ignored me but after complaining about zoom, I switched to my 70-200mm lens.  My 70-200mm f/2.8 L lens is a bit obscene for a consumer lens and represents the triumph of “I will have this lens” over common sense and budgetary prudence.  It’s white, well designed and screams “expensive”.  It’s $800 more lens than I need but I feel that half that value has been made up with in being able to inspire lens envy.  The other photographer looked at my kit and hung his head a little.  I was still annoyed that the job had double coverage but at least my dickhat had grown a few points.

Presentations that evening were all for smartphone apps and I strained myself trying to figure out how to properly photograph people talking about smartphone apps.  My solution was to take 400 pictures in about an hour with periodic attempts at trying to get Stock Art Shots of audience members talking, asking questions, and “interacting”.  I probably have a shot of someone tweeting about wiki or SnapChatting about Foursquare.

At the end of the evening, the organizer again apologized for there being two photographers and told me we’d work out something for the future.  On the way home, I brought up the web page for the other photographer and after seeing his work I feel confident that I was not going to be replaced.

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The surgeon was in a fine mood when we talked about the recovery times and limitations of my dual gynocomastectomies and abdominoplasty.  He’d be making an incision from hip bone to hip bone which would take six months to fade and one below each of my man-boobs that would be white in an equally long time.  There would be drains in me for two weeks or so and I’d need to get very comfortable sitting rather than lying down.

The surgery didn’t sound pleasant but the most painful incision would be to my wallet.  I was dressed in a gown and booties on an exam table when I was asked how I wanted to pay.  I said I wanted to arrange credit terms and was told this needed to be done ahead of time.  I said I’d then need to delay the surgery but the receptionist had an idea.  She handed me an iPad with the webpage for a medical loan firm on screen and I placed a quick call to my father to get his driver’s license number.  The form completed, I hit submit and moments later I was approved for a $12,000 loan.

I received a $12,000 line of credit while in a surgical gown on an exam table.

When did the future get here?

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Dave and I were friends in high school, both members of the AP Bubble for which Great Things were destined. We did Great Things like after school activities and watched movies between Great THings and then went on to Great Things with the thousands of other people in their respective high school analogs who were also destined for Great Things. We both settled out into the lives that were appropriate for us. He as an investment banker and I as a whatever I was until I became a whatever I am. Dave and I got together once every two years or so when he was visiting family.  I was a 405 lb lump of man during the one time I visited him and he met me at the door while my arm was still partly covered in blood and my pants were ripped. Dave also took the most important picture of my life so far.  The Golden Gate bridge is behind me and I have the tallow pallor of a copse.  I was wearing a baby blue oxford, khaki shorts, and a hair cut appropriate for someone in a mental institution. That photo is in my Dropbox folder labeled BigMe.jpg and I try to keep it around as a reminder of where I was.

Dave, to me, hasn’t changed. He’s still smart, he’s still driven, he’s still slightly nervous to talk about his personal life.  He still moves his forearms in and out when his arms are propped on a table and he is speaking.  My opinion of him has risen over time as I overcame a neverrivalry.  I wonder if he views me as equally unchanging.

We met for breakfast near Carnegie Hall and he talked about lady troubles while I talked about my recent unwinding of romance from my life.  He asked me why nothing ever happened between a friend and I and then asked the question again about another friend.  In both cases I simply smiled the smile I give that reveals nothing of how I feel.  Sometimes it’s a smile that says “I’m happy” other times “I hate you” other times “I forget your name”.  Were I to make resolutions, it’d be to stop using that smile except on my enemies.  He asked what I thought of actuarial science and we compared places we liked to go running.  This was the big kid version of the conversations we had before but now they had an added weight.  Our time was more valuable.  The fact that he and I met randomly in New York City, a place home to neither of us, meant something as did the fact that we were both wearing collared shirts and been in bars the night before.  This summer, I will make a good faith effort to meet up with him.

On the train ride back, I chatted with my seatmate who was visiting the US to see her boyfriend for two days before she returned to Germany where her father, an Air Force officer, was stationed.  She would see him next on July 4th.  Her mother was in the armed forces too.  A family of soldiers.

I got back to my house sixteen hours after I thought I would and my dad met me at the door.

Dad: How was where ever you were?
Me: Interesting.
Dad: Good to hear.

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Whit Leyenberger is the actor I know. I know no one personally with his level of skill or his drive to make that craft their own and for that I respect him. There is an almost foolhardy bravery to trying to be a professional Shakespearean actor in New York City. He has the tenacity to not be consumed by the tournament-style meatgrinder of theater and I think he will thrive. Tonight he performed as Sir Tobias Belch in a hit and run production of Shakespeare’s 12th Night.  In a hit and run product, the cast members have memorized their parts but have not rehearsed, meaning they’ve never said the lines to one another.  If a character is directed by the script to use a prop, they must choose from items the audience has brought and strewn about the stage.  If violence is called for, a pillow is used.  Finally, for each error made a character gets a point.  If he or she gets three points in one scene, they must wear the cloak of shame (a large piece of display board with the text “IDIOT” on it).  Each character furnished their own costume and one prop, and Whit’s prop was a 24 case of Yuengling. PA pride.

I went to New York City with Whit’s mother and I had some time to kill before I met up with a friend of mine so I walked around Time Square as it seems like I’ve been doing forever.  The place was littered with tourists, current company included, and a group had the most agog face I think I’ve ever seen.

From 2013-01-05 Time Square

There were stilt walkers and people in costumes and people hawking tickets and scarf vendors and the dozens of flavors of people that make this chunk of Manhattan its own thing. I’d like to spend a day here doing a panoramic shot every hour. Each one would seem a different place.

The show started around 7 and the theater was packed. The ticket sales doubled the Accidental Shakespeare Company’s last show and people had to be turned away. The show was a riot.  I snapped away during the show and for the first time in my literary life, felt I could follow what was happening on stage without previously knowing the plot.  Whit drank seven Yuenglings in the course of the show and I think that helped prevent the second act from dragging. The lead was nearly flawless, Whit, the Fool, and Malvolio less so. The comedic timing and usage of stage magic was excellent and the presence of a tampon and condom as proffered props proved appropriate.

The rest of the pictures:

Acting is a craft that I don’t quite get, but tonight’s show got me a little closer.

From 2013-01-05 Hit and Run of 12th Night

After the show Janine and I walked across the street for dinner at the upstairs of a restaurant where the cast and audience were drinking downstairs. I got a caesar salad and Janine barbecue spare ribs much to the confusion of the server. She settled the check, again to the confusion of the server and I waited for a call from Whit’s mother saying that we were leaving. This call never came and I rebooted my phone just in case. My homescreen loaded and I saw that I had missed two calls and four texts from about 30 minutes ago indicating that Whit’s mother didn’t know where I was and would be leaving in a few minutes. By the time I called she was well on her way back to PA but she offered to pick me up from the Trenton Train station the next morning. So for now I was stuck in New York City because I hadn’t received a call from someone located at most 25 feet from me for most of the evening.

Janine departed, the cast departed, Whit and I departed, and Facebook informed me that a friend from San Francisco was in town. We made arrangements to get breakfast the next morning and serendipity shined on my accidental lay-over.

Whit and I made the long walk back to the subway and he talked about his craft. His bravery is astounding. Actuarial science is entirely meritocratic. There are exams, you pass them, you get paid more. You write papers, they are found true, you advance, you get paid more. Acting seems to have no analog. While famous actors tend to be good, good actors are by no means famous. Casting directors are fickle, union politics are byzantine, and this is woven in with the capricious preferences of the public. Whit works hard at his craft and can identify what he thinks is improvement in himself but the lack of a tie between effort and reward would drive me crazy. I guess that’s why I’m not a professional artist and still look with a little envy at the peaks of his professional life compared to mine. At best I have beaten back suffering for a few people for a little while, he can claim to have inspired.

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Jan 1 is a special holiday in reinsurance. Ties get loosened, feet are on desks, and offices empty to people leaving for long vacations. January 1 is when about 1/3 of reinsurance contracts are placed so actuaries are in a mad scramble leading up to that date. After, we are clear to merrily actuary at a lighter pace until the juggernaut of 7/1 approaches.

In the wake of 1/1, I took long lunch breaks and today walked to get a dessert torch to caramelize creme brûlée for someone this evening. I zigzagged my way to Fante’s Kitchen Supply in the Italian Market and the murals were lovely.

Mural Project

and

Airbender.

Fante’s seems to have two varieties of everything and being a true kitchen warehouse had a rack of stand mixers in seven colors. I grabbed my dessert torch with its chrome accents, diamond hatched grip, and plastic stability base and headed back to work. Around 6:00pm the office emptied and I filled the torch with butane. The maniacal laugh I issued upon first light would have been much less awkward had a night owl coworker not passed in the middle of it.

I met up with someone at Suburban Station, removed the torch from my bag, unwrapped the creme brûlée, added a packet of sugar to its top and toasted it to a proper sugar glass top. A lady with a box of candy walked up to me and says “well, I guess you don’t need any of this then”. I smirked, she walked away, then out of the corner of my eye I see her dancing with the box of candy on her head. I asked her if I can take her picture, she gave me the ok and after I took my camera out, a vagrant on the bench behind me said “take my picture!” and he turned on the blinking LEDs around his glasses. I take his picture, he says “that’ll cost you a cup of coffee” and I give him $2.00. He does a literal heel click, gets a cup of coffee, sits down and that wakes up the vagrant next to him who sees the guy next to him with coffee and blinking glasses and the woman dancing and says “wut I miss?”

My companion looked at me and says “this is normal for you, isn’t it?”

Candy Woman

Seems to be.

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Winter running seems to be a particular type of masochism where the runner alternates between being too cold due to the season and too hot due to running. Skilled runners seem to manage to be slightly uncomfortable for the whole process until they stop running and then turn into fitsicles when hit by a stiff wind.

I have avoided winter running so far and don’t venture out when the temperature’s below 45 degrees. I have a nice treadmill in front of a nice television, and my version of managing layers is being in a climate-controlled room. But, beating myself up has again become a hobby so I looked into winter runnning gear like leggings. I did my homework, went to Amazon, purchased a highly reviewed pair, selected my size and received a set of youth XL leggings. The item clearly listed the size of XL with Youth XL as another option, so I’m pinning this squarely on the sender. Regardless, I don’t know if it’s a testament to my weight loss or the elasticity of polyester, but I fit in them regardless.
2013-01-07 22.14.09-1

If they didn’t crotch about three inches below where they should, I could actually run in them, or so I thought. After the minute it took for me to take this picture my feet had gone numb.

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My view towards resolutions has changed over time from “iron framework of the futureself” to “maybe this would be nice”.  This past year I had composed a list of things I’d like to do in that year and wanted to do six of the ten. I feel no remorse for not having done them as I think I’ve filled my time well.  Over the course of 2012, I started to compile a general list of “things I’d like to do” and for 2013 may try to just knock those off at some rate.  Monthly seems appropriate, but I tend to do poorly with that kind of procrustean pacing.  I think my compromise may be “10 neat things for the year” and some target for quantity of photos. That happens in four days.  I’ll lose a month or so to recovering from surgery but I hope the slightly faster Terry will be able to make up for lost time.

My first planned one is “See Whit in a play”.