Mishaps and other haps

The next couple of weekends, our roommate will have to hold down the fort and tend to the demands of the kitty overlords.

This weekend we are visiting Matt in Chicago.  I haven’t seen his new apartment which, I am assured, is a vast improvement over his old place.  Michael helped supervise the move in March.  No big plans, except the likelihood of good food (really, this is all we need for a good weekend at home or traveling).

Next weekend (Memorial Day weekend), Joe graduates from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.  Strangely, I believe it will be the first college graduation ceremony I have attended.  I have three degrees, but did not attend any of my Big State School Graduations … it didn’t really seem important at the time and they were huge (in terms of sheer numbers) graduation ceremonies.  Bowdoin is a much smaller, private (also old and prestigious) Liberal Arts college, so I am of the impression that the hordes of graduates will be somewhat smaller.  In fact, it sounds like we can all attend the ceremony and there will be a Lobster Bake for friends and family after the event, so hooray!  I haven’t seen the campus, the city of Brunswick, or the state of Maine before, so it should be fun, exciting, and new!

Co-workers are lobbying for fresh Maine blueberries.

1 & 2:  Well, I increased my bodily injury coverage for my car insurance today (seeing how much it could set us back financially if either of us were subject to a Wrongful Death claim–OMG, Instant Financial Ruin!) and opened a Roth IRA.

I don’t think either of these are bad “future planning” moves, although I felt a little under-prepared for my insurance review today.  Maybe we were trying to cover too much ground in two hours– homeowners’, auto, life, retirement savings … and dealing with a salesperson– not my strong suit.  Not that I buy every product in sight.  Rather, I tend to become defensive and argumentative and my decision-making ability shuts down.  Also, my ability to keep processing the information flood shuts down.

3:  I did not increase my life insurance coverage, although I probably should.  Michael is doing better than I am in this department.

4:  Will/Trust– yeah, we need to have these.  I’d really prefer both once we have offspring.

In my free time, I read a few blogs that are oriented more toward philosophy and “life balance” type issues.

I was surprised to find one suggesting “stop planning” as a route to higher productivity and success the other day.  I could see the point on one hand, going with the flow and relinquishing control in situations where you have little or no control.  Life does not happen according to plan.  However, “stop planning” flies in the face of what our culture has taught us about success.  American culture suggests that you should plan hard, work hard, and have specific goals in mind in order to be successful.  Moreover, success is strongly centered around career and finances in our culture.

Perhaps this calls for more evaluation and rethinking of what the squishy word “success” means.

I certainly didn’t choose my spouse for his organizational or achievement-oriented qualities.  However, I consider him much more successful than pretty much anyone I have ever met.  He has his priorities straight and is an emotionally-mature, well-adjusted, optimistic, reasonable, and extremely tolerant adult.  I can say the same of very few others, including myself.  Frankly, my husband has it “more together” than I do and I can learn quite a bit from him.  Achievement-oriented people have more in common with me personality-wise, but they bug me and I don’t find that I have much to learn from them.  They have the same flaws I do, probably many of the same worries, stresses, and other issues holding them back … from … true success?

Yes, I am definitely looking at a redefinition of success here.

However, I still think that plans shouldn’t be entirely thrown out the window.  I do think that people are motivated by plans and setting goals for themselves.  The important point might be to identify goals that are achievable and that produce results.  In a Project Management class I took, I learned that 75-90% of projects ultimately fail.  Why do they fail?  Well, there are various reasons, but failure in the planning process is definitely one contributor.  Plans should be workable, flexible, and should have a finite time line.  Results should be clearly defined, tangible, and readily produced.  Life changes, plans must be flexible.  You must be able to forget the plan for it to work, ease off on control.

I’m still working out how these ideas work in my life and for our family, but I feel like we will be successful regardless (perhaps in spite) of how it’s defined in American culture.

Every Tuesday night for the last two years or so, we have been inviting friends over to our house for movies and pizza.  We usually choose the movie, as a group, a week in advance so that the person who owns a copy or has access to a copy can bring it the following week.  Occasionally we have longer discussions about movies that should be viewed at future movie nights.

Here is a list of movies we have watched over the last few months:

The Shawshank Redemption

The Scent of Green Papaya

Man on the Moon

UHF

Team America

Kubrick’s Lolita

Help (the Beatles movie)

Zero Hour

Barry Lyndon

Quick Change

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Waiting for Guffman

What are the benefits of having a weekly movie night?  In general, I’d say that we have watched many movies that we might not ever have taken the time to see (or even known about) because of movie night.  Also, our primary crew for movie night includes Colin, Lindsay, and Keith, friends we didn’t see very often before we started having movie nights.  It gives us a chance to catch up with friends.  It’s a good weekly routine

I’m not posting a lot right now, but I am appreciating these long weekends.  We’ve had several weekends at home recently and it has been nice to hang out, chill out with the cats, and enjoy the warm weather.  We’ve spent a bit of time outside the past couple of days.  It was supposed to rain this weekend, so we didn’t really make any plans involving lawn care or the Farmers’ Market.  We had two gorgeous days this weekend, though, and were lucky enough to spend some time basking.

We had a picnic lunch outside today with the Dotzours and spent a few hours over at their house.  Most of us were outside for a good portion of that visit.  Michael and Andrew have been playing Plants vs. Zombies on Michael’s iPad lately and Michael had another game on his laptop that he wanted to share, so they spent more time inside than the rest of us.

We don’t have too many plans for May so far, apart from our trip to Maine, so maybe we will have several weekends when we can just relax at home and enjoy the peace, quiet, and good weather.

When we switched from cable to digital satellite a while back, we inadvertently picked up BBC America.  Granted, I had wanted this channel for years, but never felt strongly enough about television to even subscribe to cable while living on my own, much less pay more for the premium package.  Since we’ve been in our house, we’ve had cable, but no BBC America until we began subscribing to DirecTV.  So I missed several years of episodes when the BBC suddenly started making new episodes of Doctor Who again in 2005.

A friend first introduced me to the original series when I was in eighth or ninth grade and I watched large chunks of the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker years on PBS in the early 90s, as well as a smattering of Patrick Troughton, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, and Sylvester McCoy.  I’ve also been lucky enough to have several friends and significant others along the way who have shared and enabled this geeky interest.

The first season with the eleventh Doctor started a few weeks ago and I have been watching with renewed interest.  Since earlier seasons of the new series are available on Netflix for instant play, I expect I will do some catching up over the next few months.