Yay, more catching up with people

So, I can't sleep. It just seems to be a truth.

This morning, georgejas and her dad and [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] came into Philly and I took them to Jim's Steaks and we got cheesesteaks for lunch! Yay. George and Chris were stopping in town on their way to take a train up north, and were nice enough to spend an hour with me :) Also, cheesesteaks.

I napped a bit in the afternoon due to no sleepiness.

ag5j called me and picked me up and we went out to Merion. I had a huge flashback being back in Aiton's basement, where he tried to make his Atari 2600 actually work, which failed. So weird being back in all these places lately.

We went over to Chuckie's house and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with her and her brother Joe. I hadn't seen it before, neither had Chuckie (oh yeah, apparently everyone EXCEPT us calls her by her real name these days, heh). I don't know if this is really the best time for me to be watching so many mindbending movies, but, I did enjoy this one, and of course, had to ponder whether I'd have the same thing done, given the opportunity. I think it would piss me off too much to mess with my memory, though it would certainly be nice not to have painful memories surface at inopportune times. It would be more useful if you could just suppress them for a specific amount of time... either way, I don't think this sort of procedure could really ever happen, given that there's simply no way to get all people involved to not mention the erased person, and of course now there'd be the conflict of extricating them from your online presence...

And, either way, it was really interesting to see Chuckie again, I can't remember the last time I saw her (though I could certainly look it up). She's been a farmer for the last few years! It sounds really neat.

I have to say, it was really good to get a chance to talk to Aiton for a while. If nothing else it gave me some great perspective on how all of us have changed and not changed.

When I got home I went downstairs to the gym and did some lifting weights and some treadmill. Unfortunately I think I did a poor job of warming up, or something, and ended up getting not only totally dizzy after running for a couple of minutes, but also had my sinuses explode, so it was hard to breathe. I had to quit and come back upstairs. Oops. I'm not very good at running, but I'm trying to stretch it into a longer time rather than always walking.

On another note -- my dad ordered me an iPod Nano today, after I joked about him buying me one the other day. I guess I'm finally joining the revolution after all.

Oh, and I bought myself a ticket to see Wicked this coming Sunday, (note: even if broadway.com says it's sold out, Ticketmaster may disagree), so I am heading back to NYC this weekend for sure. Yay. Seize the duck and all that.

2009: I will eat the peach Jolly Ranchers, because no one else will

This is my New Year's Resolution post. It's a bit TL:DR, just like everything else I write, so feel free to skip to the bottom.

---

A few weeks ago I spent a few days at my mother's house, which can be a somewhat stressful experience for me in general. Usually when I'm there, my mom and stepfather take me out to dinner one night. This time was a more interesting experience -- we went out for barbecue with my stepfather's two best friends and their wives. One pair lives maybe a 30-minute drive away, the other pair lives 2 hours away. The 7 of us all had dinner together and it was actually quite a good experience; the food and folks were fantastic and fun. I rarely see my stepfather except in the context of being at home, so it was really interesting.

On the drive home, my mom and stepfather got into an argument about New Year's eve. Pair B (2 hours away) wants to host it this year, even though technically it may be Pair A's turn. They also want to go to some local auction. My mom has no interest in auctions, plus having to drive 2 hours to spend New Year's with her friends is, apparently, more than she wants to do.

"Did Pair B come down to do shopping in Ashland today?" she asked.

"No," said my stepfather, "They drove down to have dinner with us."

"Two hours driving both ways just to eat dinner? What for?" wondered my mother.

"Umm," I broke in. "Could it be that, you know, they just wanted to see their friends?"

"Why would anyone do that?" she replied.

---

I've been thinking about that exchange ever since I got back from there. I mean, especially given that I spent a year and change in Japan, I have to admit that if I could just travel for 2 hours and see my closest friends, I would be overjoyed. Would I want to do that commute every day? No. But a few times a month? Definitely! Let's get a move on that Japan-US wormhole technology!

I don't want to be like my mother, who can't fathom the idea of having friends who you would go to all ends of the world for. A family member who should remain nameless told me last weekend that I shouldn't worry about that, I'm very different and there's no way I could be anywhere near as self-centered as my mom, although I have trouble believing that.

It's funny, I'd like to think I'd do just about anything I could do within reason for my friends if they needed me to, and vice versa. I know that I've been fortunate to receive (and offer) countless tangible and intangible things from (and to) my wonderful friends, whether it be crash space, dinner, hugs, conversation, books, music, whatever. I can't imagine how boring my life would be without all of the people who are in it, or have been in it. That's why I would stay late to talk to students, or come early and leave late for baseball events, or give random things to people because I thought they were neat. Seeing people smile makes me smile. It's like a positive loop effect.

I worry, though, that I haven't done nearly enough for everyone as they've done for me. I don't necessarily mean on a 1-1 basis: as with all things, there are people who've done more for me than I possibly could do for them, and I know there are people I've done a lot for that can't return the favor either. And in most cases I don't think there's any sort of expectation of an exact repayment anyway. It's not like we do things for friends because we want them to do something in return; we do things for friends because we love them and care about them. Fundamentally this is why I think it's a good idea to be nice to most people; even beyond the fact that it's just not very nice to be mean to people and there's no good reason for it, and if everyone was nice to each other the world would be a lot more pleasant, it's just true that there's no reason to stomp through life leaving a trail of people pissed off at you.

(I'd like to think I've mellowed out a lot in the last few years. I certainly feel like I have, but it's hard to tell.)

The other night I had a conversation about how people often have the option to do something that is difficult to do but clearly the right thing to do, or to do something easy that is the wrong thing to do, and it's really easy to either do the wrong thing or to do nothing. I'd like to think that a lot of times in my life I've done the right thing in those sorts of circumstances, although I may have just done it by dumb luck. I'm certainly not perfect, and I definitely screw up a lot, but at least I honestly try to never do anything to purposefully hurt another person.

I do, however, wonder if there have been times I could have helped another person, and somehow through inactivity, or just plain being a dumbass, did not.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to lead into what my New Year's Resolution is. It's not really a resolution per se, because this isn't really something NEW, but more of a "something I want to think about more consciously than I have in the past" sort of thing:

In 2009, I resolve to be there for my friends.

That's really just about it.

Goals for the year include:
- Pass the JLPT 2-kyuu exam
- Lose another 15 pounds
- Go to Shikoku

Happy New Year, everyone.