A Hyphenated Note For TB On His BD

A few years ago, after just enough clashes with the powers-that-be and just enough I've-had-enough with the other powers that be, I left a somewhat sure-thing, possibly-cozy, career-culminating path to do something else, only mildly different. On the face of it, this isn't an entirely interesting story to hear or tell, seeing that I'm in the standard buzzard's pattern moment in my generation's forty year old mark, not quite old enough yet to have learned anything, not quite young enough anymore to have done anything, I've got that bullseye on my t-shirt that every New York doer would rather avoid, the one that exposes me as too-slow-a-moving-target. I remember when my father turned forty. We had a big party at our house that went late and is the last time I remember, or imagine I remember, having any large amount of booze provided by my parents. Everyone was given powder blue t-shirts and high-peaked mesh back caps that said "over the hill" in puffy letters pressed undoubtedly at the puffy letter t-shirt store in the Bellevue Square. I still remember that shop, nestled in the southeast corner, right next to the entrance to J.C. Penny. On a later birthday we would get my dad the same hat, in a more royal shade along with an accompanying sweatshirt sporting "somebodies gotta do it" in bulbous, velvety marquee red letters. My father, foreshadowing my own brand of late-startedness, had himself just come to fruition not long before his 40th birthday, having jumped into medical school a good ten or so years post the traditional age after unsuccessfully successful stints at the U.S. Army and IBM. At this point I can take consolation from our similarity, something until this moment perhaps I've never been able to do. All to say the jump from one ship to closely passing other ship has been a good one, one I'd recommend to many, in a sort of why-not shrug of the shoulders, pocket full of war-of-attrition-esque phrases about the meaning of life. No sense in worrying about it, I keep telling myself, it's either right around the corner or it's not, and in the meantime if I'm peeking I'll miss it completely.

Today I listened to the Prairie Home Companion radio show while cooking dinner. One of those Garrison Keillor characters said something like "I'll never be able to choose happiness, that's not something you can choose. But I can choose to be cheerful." I also listened to a whole episode of Car Talk this morning.  Curious.

The waves were good at some point in the last week around here in New York.  Small, clean, slushily slow but crispy all the same. At least that's what the photos said. I purtook not.

Mick sent this through today and it, and much of what it's surrounded by, is good reads.

Happy Birthday to Mr. Tyler Breuer, a real inspiration for those of you looking for that sort of thing.