The answer to this question depends on the desk’s location. I try to keep my desk at work very organized. My desk at home is a completely different story. I would like to keep it organized, but I hate to file, so I have piles of stuff all over the place. It’s not organized at all. When I do finally get around to filing and/or throwing stuff away and the desk is clean, I’m really happy. I’m not just very consistent.

My desk is just one area of my life that does not imitate work!

I haven’t been to very many weddings. The last wedding I went to was last year. The only song I really remember not liking very much was a country number about Cotton-Eye Joe. What is a cotton eye anyway? I’m not a big country music fan, and I really don’t like twangy stuff. It was like hoe-down music. I probably didn’t like it because I’d never heard it before. I will say that there were several people who were really dancing up a storm to the Cotton-Eye Joe, including a guy I work with who I would have NEVER expected to cut a rug like that. So even though I don’t really like the song, I really enjoyed the dancing.

And I don’t really like the Chicken Dance at weddings, either.

They probably should not play “I Will Survive” at weddings, either. It just doesn’t seem right even though that is a righteous disco song.

And of course I wanted to be a rock star!!

I’m behind on posting here…sorry Red!

Favorite sport:
I think my all-around favorite sport is probably baseball with tennis being a close second.

I came to baseball fairly late and I don’t have the obsessive stats thing like a lot of people I know but I enjoy root root rooting for the home team.  I like the magic that can be in it.  I like the experience of it.  I like the different levels of it and how each one can have its own poetry.  I love all baseball movies and most baseball poetry (c’mon “Casey at the Bat”?  a classic!) I like spring training.  Baseball just has an aura to it that other sports try to live up to (basketball has a similar aura for me).

I played tennis for a few years and I was really good at it. I keep thinking I’ll pick it up again one of these days.  It could happen!  But I love to watch tennis. Men’s or women’s.  There are always players you prefer, “good guys” or “bad boys.” It’s a cool athletic skill to me, that’s much harder than it looks.

What I wanted to be when I grew up:
For some reason, it feels like we’ve talked about this before.   When I think about this, the things that come to mind from childhood are teacher, rock star, florist.  Quite the random combination.

As I got older, I got more into books and thought bookseller or librarian.  There’s just a romance to them that I simply love.

In high school, there was the dream to be a writer.

Look, ma, dreams do come true!

There were three things I remember wanting to be: a librarian, a teacher, or a travel agent/guide.

I’ve always loved to read, and I liked the library. My mom was friends with the librarian in our home town, and I thought the librarian (Nita? Nina?) was so cool. She had long black hair and reminded me of Cher. And she got to work at the library! How lucky was she?

I wanted to be a teacher because it was pretty easy to teach my sister (she’s pretty smart, it turns out), so I didn’t think it would be too bad to teach other kids. Now my mom is a teacher and I can’t imagine how she gets through the day teaching all those little kindergarteners. It would be neat to have a few months off in the summer, though.

My grandfather was a tour guide in Barcelona. I really loved going on his tours. No matter how many times I’d go on his tours, he always made the places sound really fascinating and exciting. After going on a tour with him, I briefly thought it would be fun to drive the tour bus, but I no longer think that at all. What a hassle!

I thought it would be fun to be a travel agent because mostly travel agents work with people who want to go somewhere and it would be fun to help people make their vacations just perfect. But the reality is that sometimes people aren’t very nice, and there are some people who will find something, anything, to bitch about even if the place you recommend is wonderful in almost every way.

The travel agent I normally work with makes the job look appealing again. She gets to travel a lot to check out new places and adventures to recommend to her clients. How cool would that be?!

That’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid. Now I think it would be interesting to work for a professional sports team or be a travel agent. Or raise dogs, you know, like a puppy farm. Random, right?

I love sports, so my answer at work was…it depends on the season, and that’s pretty much the truth. I’ll break it down:

This is March, so I’m really looking forward to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. I listen as the college basketball season goes on to find out who is ranked number one, but I rarely watch men’s college basketball at any time other than the two weeks of the tournament.

After March Madness, it’s baseball season. From April through June, I watch baseball and NBA basketball. In May and June, if the Jazz are playing, forget about anything other than the NBA.

Throughout the spring and summer, I’ll watch the major golf championships and a little bit of the major tennis tournaments.

After basketball season is over, then I’m all about baseball, especially after the All Star break until the end of the World Series in October.

In the fall, I’ll watch college football or the NFL if there is no baseball that I want to watch.

After the World Series, I’ll watch football on the weekends, but I don’t set aside time to watch. I’ll just have the TV on while I’m doing other stuff. Football really relaxes me. I usually take a nap during the game.

The only one of the four major sports I don’t get into is hockey. I like to watch soccer when Tristan is playing, but I don’t watch much on TV unless it’s the World Cup. We do have a professional soccer team here in SLC, and I hope to get to one of their games this year.

So I like all sports, but what is my favorite? My work friends told me that my answer is a cop-out. I don’t agree, but I’ll try to choose. My favorite sport to watch live is baseball. My favorite sport to watch on TV is Jazz basketball. My favorite sport to play is golf.

Grey said it so perfectly that there is nothing I can add except congratulations, Mom and Dad! I’m proud of you for sticking together all these years. I love you and I’m looking forward to seeing all of you tomorrow!

I don’t know if Red feels this way, but I am often taken aback when I consider that our parents have been married now for 44 years!  This marker of time, while completely logical, is still a wondrous thing to me.

I once was, in some ways still am, a letter writer, a collector of past histories.  When I think about our parents and their marriage of 44 years and going back further than that when they met and dated, and further beyond that when they were children, I am fascinated by the way things happen.

I have letters from Dad to Mom and her family when they were dating and considering marriage.  When I moved last year, I was reading through some of them and it struck me how I didn’t know the man who wrote those letters.  I know him know and can project back to what he might have been like, similarities to who he has become, but then in those words, those dreams, there was still everything ahead of him.

And my mom, though I don’t have her responses to the letters, has told us both plenty of stories about her youth in Spain and her own personal evolution to who she is today.

It is often difficult, as children, to pull away and see your parents as individuals, to see the arc of their lives, where they began to overlap as they became a couple, where they took up a separate path while remaining together, to pursue career, education, advancement.  And while there have been struggles and strife, there has also been perseverance and acceptance.  They each created, out of their togetherness, a way to be a whole and complete person on their own. And one of the unwavering attributes to both of them that I am extremely grateful for is their desire for Red & I to just be happy.  I am repeatedly overwhelmed to have been created in their particular story and I celebrate their dedication of 44 years today.

See you all(!) this weekend!

On Friday I went to Pocatello to watch Caz play in his final regular season home basketball game. It was also Senior Night, and he escorted his mom on the court and she got a pretty flower and it was really cool.

It had been a LONG time since I’d been to a high school basketball game. Century High is the newest high school in Pocatello, and it’s definitely the nicest school in town. The gym wasn’t that cool, though. I couldn’t help but think about my own high school gym, and that made me think of watching the boys play basketball in that gym while I was in high school.

I went to high school in the small southeast Idaho farming community of Burley. The high school was pretty old, I think. It was built of dark yellow bricks. The walls of the gym were these bricks. There were two levels of bleachers. They were wood and could be pushed in to make more room, or pulled out to accommodate the people watching the games. The lights were bright enough, but not the fluorescent lights in today’s gyms. In my memory, the gym had a warm feeling about it – not the temperature, but the colors: the bricks, the wood bleachers, the polished hardwood court, the lighting.

In my memories, the gym was always full of people on game nights. There were lots of students; it seemed like everyone came to the games. There were lots of people from the community, too, not just parents and friends. It was loud. The band was big and noisy. There were lots of cheerleaders and they made a lot of noise. I remember it would get so hot in the gym because of the action on the court and the number of people in the stands.

The gym at Century was so white and almost sterile compared to the memory of my high school gym. The student section was small and not full. Maybe mine was so full because I did live in a small town and there really wasn’t much else to do but go to the games.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if I still lived in Poky and went to all of Caz’s games with LA. Probably then it would feel like a second home. I don’t know. It was just a little strange how much those memories came to me last night!

Grey played high school basketball in Southern California, and I’m sure she has memories of her gym, too, even though she probably hasn’t thought about it in many years (like me.)

One more thought on high school sports. For Caz, his mom has been to probably all of his home games, and probably most of the away games, too. His dad hasn’t come to as many of his games for various reasons. For me, my dad came to my games. My mom came sometimes, but I mostly remember Dad being in the stands. For T’s games – basketball, soccer or baseball – MT comes when he can, but I’ve been to all of them, I think. Just an observation, no judgements!

In response to Red’s question on Monday (see post below), my answer is the same as hers.  I have not seen a show on Broadway, but have seen shows that were once on Broadway.  “Wicked” was simply spectacular when I saw it in Los Angeles in August 2007.   The songs, the set, the energy of it was unreal.  I would see it again in a heartbeat.

I have also seen “Love, Janis” which I don’t think was on Broadway but qualifies as a musical

I would like to go see more musicals, and San Diego has a great theater scene, but we just haven’t gotten around to it.  I mean, hell, we have the La Jolla Playhouse which is often where plays are done before they go to Broadway.  There have been some awesome shows there that I have sadly  let pass by (700 Sundays,  Carmen, Tommy, Cry Baby…).

Hopefully this will all change in a little over a year from now.  For his 40th birthday in 2010, Han wants to go to New York to see a Broadway show and then to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I’m sure there will be tons of other stuff, too, but those are the two big priorities.  We’re inviting anyone who wants to join us so…who’s in?