Without

Without hesitation
he moves to her side
Without fear
he looks into her eyes
Without question
he follows his heart
Without shame
he proclaims his love

With tears in her eyes
she waits for him
With love in her heart
she feels for him
With a sigh in her voice
she tells him that
With no doubt
she loves him

but...

Insults

Having been the subject of many in my time, I can safely say without prejudice that most insults suck.
And by "suck", I mean they have no imagination. What's the point of stuff like so-and-so's fat, or ugly, can't do this, can't do that. You may as well start with "your mother's so fat that.." Have some flair. Here are some examples compiled by Walgreens' CEO and sent in a newsletter a while back.

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill, statesman, orator and historian

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
- Clarence Darrow, attorney

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
- William Faulkner, author (about fellow author Ernest Hemingway)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx, comedian

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
- Churchill's response

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
- Paul Keating, Australian prime minister, 1991-96

"He had delusions of adequacy."
- Walter Kerr, playwright

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
- Mark Twain, writer

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
- Mae West, actress

"Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee"
- Lady Astor’s remark to Winston Churchill at a dinner party
"Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it."
- Churchill's response

I found the ones from Churchill particularly amusing. Here are some others =)

"We've been through so much together, and most of it was your fault."
- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week."
- William Dean Howells

"I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork."
- Irving Brecher

"Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you."
- Groucho Marx

"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech."
- George Bernard Shaw

"Some folks are wise and some are otherwise."
- Tobias George Smolett

"A dork is a dork is a dork."
- Judy Markey

Some of my favorite quotes

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning ——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
- you are my sun,moon,and all my stars
-e.e. cummings

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
-W.C. Fields

There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.
-Ansel Adams

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
-Plato

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence;
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty!
For Yesterday is already a Dream,
And Tomorrow is only a Vision;
But Today well lived makes every
Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, and every
Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn.
-From the Sanskrit

"I miss, I miss, I miss, I make."
-From golfer Seve Ballesteros, describing a four-putt in the Masters

Practice puts brains in your muscles.
-Sam Snead

People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball.
I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
-Rogers Hornsby

I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it.
-Rogers Hornsby

A word to the wise ain't necessary...it's the stupid ones that need the advice.
-Bill Cosby


I know I'm missing some. There's one in particular by John Muir that I can't seem to find anywhere, I had it on a bookmark...and lost the book =>:-(

*EDIT* Found my quote. Not the bookmark or the book though.

Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.
-John Muir

This is so true. All my life I've been drawn to nature, in particular the ocean...which is somewhat ironic, because even as it soothes me to be there, I'll never go in the water..my greatest fear is drowning..which is REALLY ironic considering where I come from. But whenever I'm down that's where I invariably go to unwind, decompress, to relax. In my mind, there's nothing else like it. Muir was right. Nature heals...whether in rocks or water or sky...but especially in hearts.

There are others, to be sure...mostly lover's laments and whatnot. And I haven't even started on movies, TV or music lyrics yet.

As Barney or Ted would say, "wait for it...wait for it..."

softball

Today I played the worst softball game I have ever played.

As I look back on it, there were 7 balls hit to me. Of those 7, I fielded one cleanly. ONE.
One ball I had drop in front of me due to a misread. One I had to dive for (and missed) because I froze on it and broke in late. One hit off my glove. One dropped in BEHIND me because I overran it. Two more went over my head, including the game-loser. Of these six balls I missed, I had legitimate shots to catch them ALL. And missed them ALL.

At the plate, I had two at-bats. Clean single past the shortstop in my first AB. Promptly ran us out of the inning because I lost track of how many outs there were, and got doubled off to make out #3.
Second at-bat, we had closed the gap and had the pitcher seemingly on the ropes. So what do I do? Swing at the first pitch, ground out weakly to second.

The walk back to the dugout was the longest, loneliest walk I've ever had to make.

To top it off, at the end of the game instead of sticking around to apologize to all the guys, I walked right out and drove away. I felt bad about the game, but to leave like that was inexcusable conduct for someone who should definitely know better and I feel worse about that.

dream

You ever had one of those "blur between dream and reality" things?

So here I was, dead asleep (finally after being up till almost 4...long and very caffeinated story) and I am dreaming. Dreaming of running, and suddenly I hear a dog barking. Loudly, and getting closer.
Looking around, surprised, I see my roommate's dog. Yapping. Again and again. Suddenly, I wake up and frown as I still hear the barking. Then I realize what happened. My roommate's dog was yapping in reality and it somehow managed to jump into my dream. Weird.

...sigh...

I am back to work tomorrow after almost three weeks off. So say that I'm not particularly looking forward to it would not do it justice. But it's been a great time.

..sigh..

Ahh, the dreaded sigh strikes again. As I pack my stuff for my return to the Bay Area tomorrow morning, I hear the one song in the iPod that I really didn't want to hear tonight. For although a bunch of it doesn't really apply, the chorus most certainly has in the past and does in the present.

"What a Fool Believes"

"He came from somewhere back in her long ago
The sentimental fool, don't see
Tryin' hard to recreate
What had yet to be created once in her life

She musters a smile
For his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He's watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...

Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe there's a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He's watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
Than nothing at all
But what a fool believes he sees..."

The bad part is that I can blame no one for this but myself. I was not led astray, not pushed, certainly not misled. Not the first time, nor will it be the last. No apology necessary...for it is simply to a wise man...without the power to reason away =)

Although it comes with the knowledge that a return to work is shortly thereafter, as a Debbie Downer reminded me earlier (rolling eyes), it will be nice to be home. See you all soon.