Happy, the End

Night Ranger is playing a concert tonight at the Tulsa State Fair in Oklahoma and I am compelled to go. It's only a two hour flight.
We live in the world of acronyms, though, and they have one for spontaneous travel: AWOL. That's our "price for flight".

What do you have to do to play at a state fair? Be on your way up or on your way out, I guess. Doesn't seem like any place for arena-rockers to end up. Perhaps I have the wrong image of a state fair, though. Maybe this is a good-ole-time with lotsa beer and fireworks. A time where all the high-school football stars of yesteryear remember the glory-days to the encore of "Sister Christian"...

MOTORING!

The song itself makes me want to road-trip to Tulsa.

"Just sit still and let me kiss you." We get so caught up in in everything we are doing, DOING! constantly doing that we forget to stop and give audience to everything that is being done FOR us by those who love us. Pay attention to the little deeds done with YOU in mind. Our lovers can't help but make decisions with us in mind: little changes from the days of dating, where you stand in the check-out lane at a grocery store and buy his favorite candy so you "just so happen" to have it in your bag next time you meet.

No lover? There is someone who loves you who makes choices with you in mind. Give your attention to it! "And I meant, every word I said/ When I said that I love you I meant/ That I love you forever."

"You don't just see somebody after you haven't seen them in six years and loose your virginity to them," I heard a student say while on her cell phone. Seems like that might be something that one might consider "closure", "finishing what you start". At any rate, it is better than getting your V card swiped by someone you just met.

There are people here in this department that I am very much enjoying getting to know. We meet every Wednesday to discuss academic journal articles about rhetoric and pedagogy. I really would love to have them over for a dinner party!

But they have toddlers. All of them have toddlers. I don't want to regard them as if they had no children and then offend them by not including their entire family in an invitation. On the other hand, I don't want to regard them as just being parents and offend them by making them feel like they're penalized for having kids. Hopefully this will solve itself organically somehow.

Last night Mike and I talked about our "what were we thinking?" relationships in the past. Gave ourselves permission to laugh about the past, the way some of our friends did during the event. Not to mention any names, but in case you were wondering, I *do* blush with shame at some of the young men I've fancied. We also talked about the perfectly decent people we had to turn down for no-apparent-reason. Who knows what would have happened if we had indeed been attracted to those we rejected, and also un-attracted to those we shamefully were involved with. It was a charming conversation, and as we neared both the bottom of the bottle of wine and the part in our lives where we found each other it was like getting to the sweet ending of a romantic movie.

We both had offers from other people on the night we first hung out. I had a date with a bar-tender who wasn't as cute in the day-light, and Mike got a call from a mutual friend with a flat-tire. Who knows what would have happened if we had indeed been attracted to those we rejected, and also un-attracted to the one we chose?

In the hallway outside my office there has been a fiasco unfolding, an hour and a half in-the-making: a mother allowed her toddler to drop a turd on the floor, and then she failed to pick it up. Baffling! It took nearly and hour and a half to get maintenance down to clean the shit. In the meantime we covered the turds with pieces of paper so no one would step in it. Then we watched and laughed. I like working here!