Bragging

So on New Years Day I went bowling with my family. It's sort of a tradition that we've been doing for the last little while. I figured it'd be a good opportunity to spend time with the fam and roll a few games. I had no idea I was going to bowl the best game of my life.


Yes, I had the girl behind the desk print out the scoresheet. You have to have proof of things like this or nobody will ever believe you. Along with being my highest score ever it's also my first clean game ever. For the 98% of you out there that don't know the term, a clean game is when you have a strike or spare in each frame, so basically no open frames.

Anyway, I'm done patting myself on the back now.

Merry New Year

Compared to others, this has been a shitty year, the last six months in particular, but I know I still have a lot to be thankful for. My friends and family most of all. I wouldn't be anywhere without them. When it comes down to it, bad things are going to happen to all of us, some things worse than others, and it may feel like this really isn't your day... month... year... life or whatever. Things are going to go wrong, that's just the nature of the human condition. You have to keep in mind though, great and beautiful things happen every day. The only way you can miss out on these great things is if you let the bad things cripple you (like they crippled me a lot this year). You may lose a friend but gain another, a grandparent may pass away and someone close to you may have a child, you may lose your faith in God but gain faith in Humanity. Bad things are going to happen no matter what, even if you lock yourself in your room, but you can't experience the finer things in life if you don't come out and play.

I think part of what makes life beautiful (pardon my sappiness) is our ability to overcome the rough times that come our way. We'll be beaten down, but we keep on keepin' on, and we should be proud of ourselves for that and try to lend a hand to those that are struggling.

(Only one more paragraph of my cheesiness, I promise.)

Anyway, my new year's resolution is to be more positive about life and to tell those close to me how I feel about them. To live for the day and not as if I have another fifty years to go. I love you all, and I hope your 2008 is a successful year for you.

Live from Riverton, it's Christmas Day!

Oy vey, it's been a... not very good Christmas. I don't want to say bad, because whenever you're around good food and family things aren't going poorly, but it's sure had it's shitty parts. Was on a plane from Raleigh to Minneapolis to Salt Lake all day yesterday. When we got to the SLC we found out half our luggage was missing, including my bag. The prospect of spending eight days without my happy pills or a change of clothes scared the hell out of me.

Anyway, after that we went to the car rental place to find out Advantage rent-a-car closes at midnight, and nobody else had anything bigger than a compact car, which wasn't going to fit everybody much less the ski's we were lugging around. So we scratched together $50 in cash to get a shuttle to drive us to Riverton. Got in about 3 a.m. (5 eastern) and collapsed.

Wow, I'm talking more about myself than I planned to already. Anyway, the short version of the rest: I got my bag back around 3 p.m. today, yay and all that.

Anyway, I watched Garden State on the airplane, one of my favorite movies of all time, so I'll leave you with my favorite quote from the movie (out of many) that kind of sums up my thoughts on life at the moment:

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your shit that idea of home is gone... you move out one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place."

They call me the Dude

If you're trying to get my attention I answer to three names. You can call me Kubota, sometimes Bobby, or Jason, or you can call out "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!"

At least that's what my three-year-old nephew calls me. When he comes over to visit on Sundays I know when he's there when he pounds on my door and hollers "Dude! Come play!" or "Dude! What are you doing in there!?!"

The name has been following me around for maybe two years now, and it got started completely by accident. Schyler (my nephew) was starting to learn his first words with mama and dada and all that jazz and everybody in my family was trying to teach him how to say their name. I'm a bit of an idealist, and I thought doing that was a tad bit conceited, so I decided instead to sit him down and teach him his first word that he could actually use. So I sat down with him and a couple matchbox cars (his favorite toy) and got started.

"Dude"

It didn't really register to him at first, but we worked on it for a couple weekends and he started saying it on his own. Then one day we were sitting at the dinner table and we were trying to get him to say all of our names: Mom, dad, then he stumbled through Sharlee and Chris, then Momo and Popo (which means grandma and grandpa when you're not even two) and then his mom pointed at me.

"DUDE!"

"No," I say to him, pointing to myself, "I'm Uncle Jason."

He shakes his head at me, "Dude!"

And thus I have been known as Dude ever since. I didn't mean for him to associate the word with me when I first taught it to him, but it stuck, and now I'm Uncle Dude, and it isn't likely to change. When he would visit my parents and I was away at school he would open the door to the basement and yell "Dude!" to see if I was there.

It's not going to go away, either. Now everybody in the family refers to me as Uncle Dude around my nephews, so it's likely to carry on through all of my future nieces and nephews. Schyler has just recently figured out that I have a different name when somebody asked him "Who's Jason?" and he answered correctly for the first time "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!"

I guess being called Uncle Dude is far better than Uncle Lazy Bastard. So I wont complain.