Watch that first step

Land 'o Goshen! I saw two prancing deer skitter across the road today on my way to work. This is unusual because they were running through a particularly urban part of town. This is in the Medical Center, where hospital buildings abound and natural wooded areas are scarce. It was like they escaped from a zoo truck or something, because their normal habitat shouldn't involve running across six lanes of traffic and through a CVS parking lot. Poor little guys/gals; I hope they made it home safely, wherever that might be.

I read an article about a pristine natural area just outside of town called Government Canyon. It's a state park and is actually pretty wonderful. It even has areas with hanging moss, precarious ledges and crazy contraptions. The article's author inserted a snarky comment about the prosaic name of the state park and the descriptive natural names of the housing developments on the way out there, fast encroaching - places such as Deer Creek, Deer Trail, Deer Ridge, Pine Trail, Sparrow Field, Eagle Crest, etc. The point of his comment was that the housing developments' names describe the (desired) natural place that they evicted to build tract housing. (Making them two stories with a generous back yard doesn't make them any less of a stamp.) But hey, people have got to live somewhere, right? However, it is silly to think that you are moving out to the country if you are living in a walled and gated community with three hundred other families up to their eyeballs in consumer debt.


I can't judge, however, because I'm sure that every generation that stretches its borders through history faced opposition from people who were very comfortable in the middle of town. It's not that they are moving out there, but that we aren't doing much to compensate for the loss of what once was. In the meantime, though, we should support our state and national parks.

One thing that I have learned from being a librarian is that people don't care about things that are free. They really don't. The other day I was giving out raffle tickets to people on campus to celebrate National Library Week. It was difficult getting people to understand that we were giving away an iPod, for free, no strings attached, all just to draw attention to the library, an embedded resource to campus. One girl in a group acted like she didn't speak English, because she wasn't responding to my offer even though she was looking right at me. One of her friends took her by the arm and cautiously guided her away from me like I was a pervert or something. Well, they didn't win the raffle, needless to say. The same thing goes for parks. They are mostly free, but sometimes charge a minor fee to recoup costs of patrolling and maintenance. If they added some dinosaurs and charged fifty bucks a pop, then I bet people would come and support them by the thousands; but as it is, there usually aren't too many cars in the parking lot.

The lack of company in a park is actually nice, because then they won't distract you from all of those leaves. However, they need attendance to justify their existence. If people keep building houses around them and no one goes, then the houses will take over and twenty years from now everyone will wonder, How come we don't have any parks? Where can we go outside and walk and play? My guess is that we'll have invented a virtual park game for Nintendo Wii and Playstation XII which will totally kick ass and no one will care.

Incredible!

Well, it has been almost a week and a half since the KU men's basketball team won the NCAA national championship tournament. It was twenty years since their last such victory. Jayhawk fans had been waiting a long time.

I can't recall why or when my family became KU supporters. We weren't ever huge sports fans, but we had to root for someone and instead of the other state schools we were 'Hawks people. So, all throughout my youth I watched and cheered with varied interest for KU sports. When it came time to choose a college, I didn't even think about going anywhere else. Sadly, though, school became more important and going to games became less, until I went to almost no basketball games my senior year. The five years after school I would catch them occasionally on TV, but I became less and less enchanted, and I can't explain why.

I moved to San Antonio and, as luck would have it, my institution hosted the final four this year. When KU beat UNC to advance to the finals, my friend Clay said he was coming down with Andy because they got tickets through his life-long buddy, Mike. We got to meet up, which was great, and they had another ticket for me. This was very fortunate and was something I didn't expect to happen. When KU made it to the FF, I figured it would be a shame to watch it on TV when I was in town for it, but how was I going to get tickets? The stars came into alignment and I felt like I did when I first went to school and saw games at Allen Fieldhouse.

Going to a game after so many years made the old memories and feelings rush back and I was again reminded how special KU basketball is to KU people. It was like I was never gone, except that I didn't know the players all that well. I kept up, though, thanks to Clay and Andy. You might think that I am a lucky jerk who didn't deserve to go when so many other rabid fans would have sold their children for a seat. Well, you'd be right. But those fans would be wrong to sell their children.

We had good seats and could see all of the action on the court with ease. We weren't close enough to hear the bounce of the ball or see any sweat fly, though. I won't go into game's details, but in the lead up to when Mario Chalmers hit the game-tying three-pointer, we all went from sad, to tense, to hopeful, to elated, all in about eight seconds. I can't recall a time in my life where I've been to an event at which I jumped up and down and hugged other grown men at the same time. I would have embraced strangers in crimson in blue if I wasn't surrounded by friends. It was terrific. Seeing pictures of Lawrence right after the game tells me that everyone there thought it was terrific, too.

All in all, it was a very fun experience, and my thanks to Clay and Andy, and especially to Mike Lage for coming through with a ticket for someone who didn't deserve one, but who is very appreciative.

Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk!

Expectations

A while ago I went to the mall and saw an Orange Julius stand. It had been a long time since I had stepped foot inside those insidious traps of consumerism and depression, so I had immediate memories of me as a happy child, yet to be jaded by the horribleness of wandering around in an enclosed structure looking for something that isn't found inside (dignity). When I had these memories, I recalled the great taste of the Orange Julius. It was different than anything we could get at a grocery store, so it was always a treat when we conned our parents into buying one. The fact that they didn't always give in made it even more valuable. So, standing at one in my late twenties, I had a giant chasm of time to create this legend in my mind. I was literally salivating at the thought of its creamy orange-ish goodness. But after I bought and tasted it, all of that immediately went away. It tasted like the lady had used cyanide instead of their patented powder. In fact, I threw most of it away because I couldn't stand to swallow it. Also, I didn't want Dead by O.J. on my grave stone.

Admittedly, I rely on my id a little too much. Often I impulsively react to stimulus similar to the above without thinking about the previous circumstances. Or I arrive at unrealistic expectations for something because I really want them to be that way. The first time I visited Italy I hoped that Venice would be exactly like it was in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. Boy was I wrong; at the least the part I visited. Had I thought about it like a grown-up and not an eight-year old, then I would have separated real life from a cartoon. But my expectations were dashed and I moped around for a few hours upon arrival. If I could time travel, I would go back and slap that younger version of me. No wait, I would go back to the Venetian era which would fulfill my expectations! Duh.

Sometimes having the wrong expectation can lead to a positive. Like going into a movie and thinking, this will probably be worse than Wild, Wild, West, but I guess I'll go anyway, and then realizing that I, Robot was way better than the previews made it seem. In that case, I wound up liking something that I normally would have thought was a piece of crap if the trailer was made like Superman Returns (which conversely couldn't live up to the hype I had in my mind).

It's tough to settle down the old mind and get a decent set of expectations for something on which you have very little information. When I go to the grocery store, in any country really, I pretty much know what to expect because I've been thousands of times in my life. But I didn't know how to psyche myself up for moving to a different state away from everyone I know. I only had Cast Away as a point of reference. [By the way, my experience has been much better than Tom Hanks'.] Dates are another iffy expectation experience. Having gone on a lot helps, but each person is going to be new and different, and you can't know too much about them unless you read their diary or Facebook profile.

This is why it is important to pay attention to wise-ass remarks made by our elders when we screw up constantly. Remember that old guy in It's a Wonderful Life? When George Bailey was hemming and hawing and being all shy around Mary Hatch, he said, "Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death...Oh, youth is wasted on the wrong people!" Well, he was right. They've got the straight dope on how stuff works in life, so we can have a little more knowledge in the can when it comes time for making expectations. Then maybe we won't act like dumb eight-year olds when it comes to impulse buying juice drinks in the mall. Or other important stuff.
I thought the Meteor Crater would be cool like Dinosaurs and Chocolate Milk. But it sucks like Jurassic Park III, Amarillo, TX and rotten egg sandwiches all at the same time.