Strength Is Overrated

It feels like there’s been a lot of talk recently about being strong, and it annoys me because so often it feels like the only thing being honored when there are so many things that make people amazing. What gets us through the grey and darker times isn’t just strength. It’s tenacity, flexibility, courage,  resignation, ingenuity, cussedness, and possibly knowing someone will come back from the dead to kick you in the ass if you do something too stupid.

During the workday, I entertain my brain by designing the parts of buildings that keep the building standing - the studs, the trusses, the beams, the columns, the connectors and the bolts. The question as I design each of these pieces is rarely how much strength do I need to make this part of the building stand. Invariably the question is I have these two/three elements with known properties, how many do I need to carry the load and where do I need them? Strength is part of what I need to know about the elements; but, just as important are geometry, constructability, shape, finish and ductility.

In fact, I often don’t use the strongest material possible. We don’t talk about it much; but, there are problems with too much strength. The easiest, and most accepted reason is that the higher strength material just costs too much. The shape of structural elements also matters more than most realize; often, I find myself in a situation where I could increase the strength ten times and the amount of material I need wouldn’t change because the performance requirements, like deflection or the ability to make the required connections, dictate the shape. The quietest reason for not using the strongest material is that it tends to break in a bad way.

Yeah, I know it’s hard to think of a good structural break. But, the higher the strength, the more damaging the break and the more unexpected. They’re called brittle failures. They come with little warning. They’re often catastrophic. And, by simply using a lower strength material - with more redundancy and more warnings - we have a better chance of catching a failure before it costs lives.

I worry about the focus on strength as a character trait. Too much strength is a liability. It makes us brittle. It means that little things we could work through become catastrophic more readily. It’s a waste of resources when applying something else - like flexibility or cussedness - would be a better use of our energy. It’s a limits what’s in the tool box to get us out of our holes.

Water and time made the Grand Canyon.

In Style

I come north for a visit and we do things with style. There's my favorite, dining around the table. And a wee bit of separate activities in the same room. And humorous moments at the oddest times. Like the knife that gets stuck in the ice cream cake. Good, simple times where I feel like I'm at home. Thank goodness.

Not the Desired Message

I thought I was being clever.

Today I'll leave this nice container of paella sitting in my fridge with only the company of an onion, some chocolate and the soda hiding out on the bottom shelf.

I was going to surprise Squid with it. Until I realized - only this morning - that giving a transplant patient paella, with it's beautiful shrimp and chicken and onions, that had been unrefrigerated more than seven hours would be saying, "Thanks for letting me visit. I brought this wonderful dish you really enjoy when you visit. Too bad it just may kill you."

I guess I'll stick to flashcards.

Givin' Grief

One of the most often commented behaviors of mine is the habit I have of saying "good morning" irregardless of the time of day. I picked up the habit from one of my Shoney's bosses, Thom, the guy who worked the split. i didn't realize I'd picked it up until I landed at my first engineering job where i actually had to answer the phone. Most of the time, the bloody thing gets answered so that it stops ringing, not because my thought process has switched to answering it. So, I say "good morning". It's been pointed out to me often enough that I'm usually aware of saying it. I keep it up because I like to mess with people's heads. Or, what Dad would have called "giving grief."

He was a big believer in giving someone a hard time - especially if he thought the experience would teach them something. To improve my confidence in deep water he'd grab ahold of an arm or a leg until I freed myself. That experiment only lasted until the day I panted a heel in his groin. To make Squid aware the dangers of driving on ice he pulled the parking break during parking lot drills. I thanked God I learned to drive in the summer when I heard that story. And, to keep me from getting a big head he enlisted help from a school bus driver.

Now, if you read yesterday's post you know that I walked to school my entire childhood. That much is true; but, on about twelve Saturdays a year I'd roll myself out of bed to get ready for a speech meet. Like the band, we traveled as a team and for the better part of four years Buck drove our bus. I didn't know it at the time; but, we had it made. He'd show up on Saturday morning with a warm bus. He hadn't just driven the bus over from the bus barn next door; he'd driven it from his friend Mark's barn where he kept the bus. Sometime during my sophomore year, I began to notice that every time I went to get on the bus after a meet Buck would let the bus coast forward a bit. He did it at every meet, and I played along, until his last one as our bus driver. As I exited the bus that time he said to me, "Tell your Dad I did as he asked." Turns out, Dad worked with Mark who kept the bus for Buck and had passed word to give me a hard time.

I thought of this grief givin' today because The Bert Show did a follow up to yesterday's screed about fat people. I listened to part of what they had to say and realized that what set me off about the piece was the tone. Grief givin' as Dad practiced it was usually obviously mischeveious and had a take away I could find. The Bert Show opinion is a piece of writing meant to be hurtful. The writer vented their spleen in a way that wasn't helpful, it was just mean.

I do have to say though, that I'm glad Dad gave grief. It was like passing though the school of muted knocks and made me aware that things could not end (or have middles) in a way I would hope.

Yes, I'm Fat

Warning: The following includes language not typically found on Quo Vado?

This morning on my way into work I heard The Bert Show anonymous screed against fat people. I listened to the whole thing, said a mental "fuck y'all" and then changed the channel. Only the piece stuck between my teeth like brussel sprouts all day. So, what follows is a pseudonymous response to the author.

I am a fat person.

According to my medical records I've been on the high side of the BMI scale since I was five. As a kid I walked about 20 minutes each way to and from school, my family ate a low fat, low sodium, low cholesterol diet well before it was cool and I attended my first aerobics class when I was in the seventh grade. I was still fat. I did the things you are supposed to do, and it didn't change my build or how I metabolized food.

These days I could stand to loose between thirty and thirty-five percent of my body weight. I'm making no concerted effort to do so. In the grand scheme of things wearing the perfect size 8 ( or 6 or 2 or 0) ranks low on the list of things that are important to me. I've tried exercising and changing my diet. The former bores me to tears in most cases and the one activity I like doing isn't in my budget - never mind that there's no place w/in a 20 min drive with classes at times I could take them. The latter I've tried, several times in several variations. The longest I've made it is eleven weeks. I don't like who I become when I'm dieting; way too much of my energy goes to thinking about food. My life revolves around what I have to eat, what I cannot eat and my regular cranky demeanor becomes a continuous full on bitchy. I chose not to dedicate time or energy to things that bore me or make me meaner than I already am.

You think that I'm a lazy failure of a human being. I'm not. I'm just a human being. You know? There are things I do well, things I do decently and things I choose not to do at all.

Your problem with me seems to be that I don't value the number on the scale as much as you do.

Tough shit.

You can't make me care enough to change my behavior. So, go ahead, rail away. I'll keep changing the channel.

It's Not Art

I recently started painting. I don't consider there to be anything artistic about it, I'm just applying paint to a canvas until it looks nifty to me. I have no image in mind, nothing I want the result to mean, or say or imply or emote. I just want the feedback from drawing the brush across the canvas and the joy of watching the colors blend or not as they will.

I tend to draw curves as the bobble that invariably occurs in my straight lines inevitably bothers me. I've decided to forgo classes in the hopes that I avoid the obsessive trap of doing right to the detriment of the joy of painting at all. The lines will never be perfect and I hope to learn to live more with imperfection and maybe find moments where I cease to hear my brain.

That Time of Year (Again)

Once again, my birthday has come and gone with little more than a whimper. I wish I could say that it doesn't bother me; but, I'd be lying. I don't want or need a large party or lavish gifts. I would love a meal with friends (and family who also qualify as friends) that I didn't have to prepare or clean. Even as I sit here and whine about what didn't happen for me yesterday, that logical side of my brain screams, "You dumb fuck; you haven't made any effort to connect to local humans this year. What did you expect to to happen?" Then I'm left arguing with the cranky smart ass that it's only partly correct. I made an effort. It was lame, half-assed and sporadic; but, an effort was made.

In trying to leave that argument behind, I've spent some of the evening contemplating the last year. The year was a rough one for me.

My improv team finished exploding in a drawn out, for the love of all that is holy would the rest of you admit this isn't working kinda way. I wish i could say the end was messy; but, it went out with two three-person Harolds and a whimper.

An improv teacher told me I was so fucked up that he didn't have anything more to teach me. Which while honest and not entirely wrong pissed me off. I do have difficulty connecting to characters too different from myself; but, in a place built on acceptance and everyone having a place (unless they're a total asshole) being told I could play with the group even though I didn't belong totally threw my confidence and filled me with hurt covering self-righteous anger.

Work has also been a pain. It moved from being furloughed one day a week to working an extra six to ten hours of overtime around June. I don't like either mode. Just working four days a week was hard because i didn't have a dedicated social activity and spent too many three day weekends avoiding the world. The fiscal element to not working as much also sucked. The pressure cooker cycle we're in now is painful in a completely different way and I miss having a dedicated CADperson in the worst way. I just keep reminding myself that it's not forever and ive taken steps to never be the boss so I'll survive.

The year hasn't been all bad. I've enjoyed living alone. My cozy three room apartment has been just right for me and the fuzzies. Duncan and Annabelle have been awesome. One or both of them make me laugh every day. I recently started painting - in the applying acrylics to canvas/ boards for fun and not to be artistic sense - and I've jumped back into improv.

The Drive

MHP’s office is in one of the far west suburbs of Atlanta and about a two hour dive from the office. The drive makes going to bang my head against the wall at the MHP’s worth the fuel. To save ~an hour, surface streets are the name of the game to get over there. More than a year ago, storms washed away a bridge along the path and I found myself driving by the seat of my pants, making directions up as I went along without a Waldo or a map that extended out as far as I need to go. This modified route is even better than the original one. There are four “Oh, shit!” turns, green trees, grazing cows, and the worlds dumbest traffic circle. Yesterday, there were even peacocks crossing the road in Roscoe.

We Made It!

Just after seven o'clock tonight Annabelle, Duncan and I passed a milestone. We've lived together for a year. It seems like just yesterday when David opened up their cages in the kitchen releasing them to my three room flat. They didn't quite know what to make of it at first; sometimes, I think they still don't know what to make of it. Annabelle was annoyed there wasn't a bed to hide under but soon made her home above the kitchen cabinets. Not being a great jumper, Duncan just moseyed around and hid behind or under stuff when he needed.

I've learned a lot in the last year. Cat scratches to the body can be more easily treated than cat scratches to the lip. Switching foods is best done slowly. A warm cat in the lap makes it more difficult to dredge the will to go to work; two warm cats make it darned near impossible. I'm a better selector of cats than I am of friends. I too can be a morning person, kinda. Black cats are hard to see in the dark. Sometimes we all just need a time out. Even the serious can be goofy.

So, here's to hoping that the next year is just as fun.

An Addenda to the Lemming Toy...

Ahhh, Squid's Christmas present arrived today, it's a wireless keyboard for my iPad. I can feel already that it's going to be useful. It seems somehow right to be typing on something on a different knee than the screen. It takes away the distractions related to spelling and capitalization. I know I can go back and fix those things; but, sometimes it is easier to let the thoughts flow out of the fingers when you don't have to look at the screen. Though, now that I have it in my lap I'm kinda wondering just what Duncan will do to the iPad settings the first time he steps on it. Oh, well, yet another adventure. Now, I don't have a keyboard excuse not to write. So, maybe I'll find more to say alters.

A Snowbound Holiday

Vacation for me is a very mellow thing. Mother nature made this year's Christmas trip northward even more mellow than usual. I made it into Beantown in that pocket of good weather on Christmas Eve. The snow was plentiful enough to encourage hibernation. Squid ventured out to walk the dog, but the rest of us hung around just reading or playing solitaire.

The big doing of everyday was the evening meal. Nothing much might be said around the table; but, I do hold on to the moment of sitting down together to chat (or in our family give each other a hard time and talk about bodily fluids). Someone even tasked me into making a meal while I was there. Luckily beat-up chicken is fairly easy to remember how to make - even if the number of dishes required is somewhat absurd.

But, now the fuzzies are home from the kennel and I'm home from the north. The next grand adventure is the grocery store. Yea!

Lemming Toys With New Features

So, I've had the iPad for about three weeks now. I've really enjoyed using it.

Angry Birds is entirely too addictive - even for a structural engineer.

The Kindle application became a much better thing for me when I figured out that I saw things so much better when I flipped the screen settings to white text on black. The iPad's been my primary non-work reading medium for a bit and I have really enjoyed that. The ability to switch from book to book without getting up has been helpful in keeping the window seat free and clearer. At the moment trying to decide what to do with the library. Many of may books are soft-cover pulp stuff that I'm more than willing to let go. All that's left is figuring out which ones to get in ebook versions and which ones I really won't read again.

Today's new toy is the Squarespace application that just released. This is the first non-140 character typing I've done. It is easier than I expected; but, I can see that I will not be typing with my eyes closed anytime soon and the number of contractions in my writing is likely to go down as it is no longer a simple shift + key thing to get the apostrophe.

I have experienced some of the reported wi-fi crankyness so this will not be taking over the laptops television duties any time soon.

Reverb10: Make

December 6 Make

What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it? 

A pile of overly well used tissues. No, really, that was the last thing I made. It took tissue, saline (why on earth do we expel that too?), phlegm, and some figurative head beating. I’m sad and frustrated, not angry almost to the point of being enraged so there’s no literal head beating. Expression of emotion in it’s fullest, I really can’t breathe, form hovers over my life as that thing to be avoided. It’s not that I don’t get cranky, or bitchy, or even really mean. It is that I don’t get that way in an overly uncontrolled way. I usually shut up before I get to the fourth line of vitriol. The big emotion get stuffed. It’s not an appropriate time to express the feelings or the feelings represent something ugly/bad that I don’t feel like sharing with the world or I’m just afraid once started it’ll never stop.

So, tonight I made a pile of dirty tissues while I gathered the mail, climbed the stairs and fed the cat. Right now I’m sad and discouraged because in someone trustworthy’s opinion my improv hasn’t improved in a year and I’m so fucked up that without dealing with the personal stuff he doesn’t see that changing  ever. Tomorrow will be a better day, right?

Just now, I’m going to mess up some more tissues.