It's a Big Stage After All!

I don't often write poems, but here's one I came up with just now.

Gone to the mountain, the uppermost peak.
Triumphed, lived joyous, then found myself weak.
Drank from the fountain, learned pleasure and love,
felt pain destroy it, then raise it above.

Often I wonder wherefore am I here.
Some offer answers and speak most sincere.
Oh what a blunder, claiming to know,
when just a dancer, here in the same show.

What is the mystery you want me to see,
when clouds filter water from the deep sea?
Why suspect trickery when ill befalls life,
and fall off kilter from toil and strife?

There may be a reason guiding our rhyme,
not one you'll learn now, life frozen in time.
Live in your season and love what you find,
don't trouble on how your soul came alive.

Whatever the cause, purpose or meaning,
figure it out right after this screening.

A Return to the Blog

After an extended departure following a very short-lived spurt of blogging when I started this blog, I have decided to write once more. I have very little to write about, because I am exceedingly busy with work.

Today, I attended a working-lunch with my boss and some other attorneys. We went to the Dixie Cafe. I wanted to write briefly to address the sham that is Dixie Cafe's shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie, for those of you who didn't grow up with an Irish woman who cooked it once every two weeks, is meant to be a stew of red meat and vegetables covered with a thick and insulating layer of mashed potatoes. Dixie Cafe's shepherd's pie, however, is nothing of the sort. It is a hunk of meatloaf topped with a scoop of mashed potatoes. I will, however, say that Dixie Cafe's "shepherd's pie" is tasty, if not in any way, shape, or form an actual shepherd's pie.

I resumed jogging several months ago and have maintained a fairly regular schedule of jogging. I switched from jogging 5 miles every now and then to 2.5-2.7 mile jogs much more frequently. For a while, I was doing 2.5 miles 6 days a week. Now, I'm lucky to get in 2.7 miles 3 times a week. But, it's still better than nothing.

Interesting thing about spending all your time at work: if you work all day every day, you don't have interesting experiences that you feel are worth sharing with the world via blog. I guess I could talk about work, but that would amount to: today I spent 9 hours reading through a thousand pages of documents, and then I spent three hours writing a legal brief. It's just not...exciting.

Shreveport

I have arrived in Shreveport! In the morning, I will go to the Stoner Boat Launch...or Stoner Boat Ramp, I forget what it's called...and participate in the 23rd annual Turkey Trot! For some reason, I really like the phrase "Turkey Trot." Couldn't tell you why except that I always say it in a hyper-enthusiastic childish voice in my head.

Although the Turkey Trot is only a 5K, I would like to try and make a streak out of my five mile run on Monday, so I'm going to aim to run 5 miles then walk a bit more. Not sure it's possible since my legs still feel pretty beat up.

I'm very happy to be out of Arkansas, even if it's just going to be fora few hours! Not that there's anything wrong with Arkansas; I just like to leave regularly.

It's Like Finding a Mailbox in a City!

People like to talk about how difficult it is to find needles in haystacks. Well, lemme tell yuh, I have found needles in hay stacks before, but I have almost never found one of those durn blue post office drop boxes if I didn't know where it was when I started looking for it. As part of filing some documents for a case, I had to mail copies to opposing counsel. I drove around for 10 minutes, stopped and asked a pedestrian for help, stopped at a restaurant and asked a waitress for directions, then FINALLY just went to the nearest post office. That was a hassle.

In other news, I am about to leave Little Rock for the lovely city of Shreveport, where I will "Kick Some Bird" and participate in their 23rd annual Turkey Trot! I'm very excited about this opportunity to kick off my "Joggin' 'round the World" program down in Louisiana! Unfortunately, the forecast for Shreveport and Little Rock is absolutely awful. I'm going to be running in thunderstorms, then driving through thunderstorms, then celebrating my Thanksgiving in, literally, freezing weather in Little Rock.

At least it will be eventful. In the past, Thanksgivings have been kind of boring for me.

Also, on Saturday, my sister is hosting a party to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks play the LSU Tigers. Seeing as how I'm somewhat of a Louisianaphile, I can't 100% root for the Hogs, but I'll be there. Folks reading this who know me and my sister should totally cancel whatever other plans they may have and come. I'm told that if any other teetotalers show up, I will be allowed to play at least one game of Diet Coke pong on my brother-in-law's beer pong table. The invitation and Diet Coke-inducement are not directed at anyone in particular. <whistles all innocent-like>

Quick Update

Today:
5 miles, no stopping
Exactly 1 hour
Average pace: 5 mph/12 minute mile
Boo-yah

Yesterday:
Starbucks Gold Member
Boo-yah-kah-mo-fo'in-shah

How to Tell When Someone Isn't Listening to You

Earlier today I was sitting outside of Starbucks enjoying a cup of coffee and an unseasonably beautiful day here in Little Rock. A woman walked into Starbucks, leaving her dog outside. The dog was, itself, kind of interesting. It was the breed of dog that looks like a greyhound but with really long fur. The woman left the dog untied while she went inside, and it did an admirable job of behaving itself like a well-behaved dog should. A few minutes later, a couple of young women--not sure how old they were but probably early college-aged--walked by and immediately starting gushing about how "pretty he is." After recovering from the shock of two girls were calling me "pretty" I realized they were actually talking about the dog. They had both gone over, about ten feet away from me, and were leaning over the dog and fawning. A woman who works at that Starbucks--Joley or Jolene or Jo Lee or something like that--was just arriving for her shift and stopped to give a lecture to the girls about how dangerous it is lean over a dog they don't know. According to her, at least, dogs will jump up and bite people if they feel crowded, so it's actually pretty dangerous to do that if you don't know the dog very well. Throughout this lecture, the girls continued to say how pretty they thought the dog was. The end of the conversation, which lasted well over 50 seconds, concluded with

Jo Lee/Jolie/etc: Just be careful and don't lean over dogs you don't know in the future.
Girl #1: He really is pretty.
Girl #2: Yeah, real pretty.

This made me think a little bit about listening. I don't know how J however her name is spelled felt about her interaction with these two young women, but my impression was that those two little punks didn't listen to a word she said. Anyway, ultimately, my point here is to say that if you have a conversation with a person and they're still saying absolutely nothing other than what they were saying at the start of the conversation, chances are that they weren't listening to a single freakin word you just said to them.

This is important because I have occasionally fallen victim to bad listeners and more often been a bad listener in the past. It's something to work on; being a good listener is something I've prided myself on and is definitely the best skill a man can have.

Luckily, since this is a blog, I probably don't need to feel bad about doing a terrible job of making a point here. But I will try to think of something inspirational to say just cause...hmmm...

"To end a sentence with a preposition, that is a thing up with which I shall not put!"
-Supposedly said by Winston Churchill, but there are a lot of variations on this one and no one knows when he may have said it, so it's probably just a made up line.

It's Hard to Hold a Candle in the Cold November Rain, but it's a great time for holding a mug!

Hello!

November is the best month for hot chocolate.

Now that I have your attention, I should probably back up that bold assertion.

Most people think that winter is the time for hot chocolate. The chocolate fills your tummy up--which feels especially great in the winter--and the hot makes you warm all over, which contrasts magnificently with the cold of the season. While I certainly agree with these sentiments and think that hot chocolate is great during the winter, the simple fact of the matter is that the flavor, consistency, warmth, and radiant good-feeling you get from drinking hot chocolate is a perfect match and complement for the colors, smells, activities, and general mood of late autumn. A golden/orange/red season like late autumn deserves a rich and robust drink like hot chocolate! Autumn conjures up recollections of a year well-lived, or sadness overcome, or warm and pleasant times gone by, or just a satisfied reminiscence of finality to the year before the hectic holidays befall us, or one last pleasant day before bundling up and away for the wintry end of the year. In short, the feeling you get from late autumn is just like the feeling you get from drinking a cup of hot chocolate before you go home for the night to end your day and go to bed. With marshmallows!

Unfortunately, I have not actually had a cup of hot chocolate at all in the last year. I think I may have to remedy that tonight.

Introduction

Good afternoon folks!

In this, the next logical step in my gradual descent into egregious narcissism, I will be bringing you periodic--and likely very frequent--updates regarding thoughts, observations, happenings, and goings-on from my life. The goal, ultimately, is to explain my thoughts and feelings about various things that I encounter in the course of, you know, life in the hopes of imparting some...thing to the world. Hopefully I will be able to share these random musings with folks so they'll be able to have an idea of what interests me in case they get a hankering to have a conversation with me.

There are a few housekeeping matters that I would like to discuss. First, the title is entirely misleading. Several months ago, a friend of mine suggested that I should start a blog called "Dinner and a Movie with Alex Owings" because, at the time, I would regularly go out for dinner, see movies, and then give her an exhaustive explanation of my thoughts concerning the restaurants and movies I went to. Now, however, I very rarely see movies, and I have not eaten what would traditionally be considered a "dinner" in over two months. However, I still liked the name, so I decided to go with it. Also "dinner and a movie" is the traditional first date and I figured that if I showed this blog to any woman I was interested in then she'd have an idea of the sort of person I am and whether I am the sort of man she'd be interested in...thereby obviating the need for a traditional first date. Although I guess if I really liked a girl and said "hey, go check out my blog" chances are she'd immediately start by thinking "he's not the sort of man I'd be interested in"...so, yeah, I probably won't actually be telling women I'm interested in to look at this blog on the principle that that's a pretty lame way to flirt.

Also, my posting name is Office JD. That's supposed to be a pun on House, M.D. Cause he's House...and I'm Office...and he was a M.D. and I'm a J.D. ...? Heh...heh heh heh... Whoever you are, I hate you for not even cracking a smile at that.

More to come...