Friday, December 19, 2008

Pics from Tyson's visit

Tyson and I decided to dress up as Santas and paint the town red...and white....or green, as it were. We were warmly received at the local watering hole.





We also decided to make Georgian dumplings, aka 'khinkali'.
Morning...oats.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

"Don't Make Me Get All Virtuous up in this Piece," or "When Various Facets of my Greatness Collide"

I am the most punctual person you will ever meet. I would say that punctuality is my foremost virtue. You will never have to wait for me nor will you have to be inconvenienced by my dilly-dallying. If I cannot make an engagement on time, then I will just not attend the engagement. For example, if I cannot get to the symphony on time, I will not go. I will not walk in late or even wait until intermission. If you invite me to dinner and I know that a prior obligation would result in my being late, I will politely refuse the invitation. Much to my dismay, others are not as punctual as I am, nor are they as considerate as I am when it comes to avoiding showing up late, holding up the show, etc.

Group dinners always annoy me. You try to assemble 7-10 or more of your friends to go to a restaurant. There's always someone running late that makes that planned departure time of 7:30 become 7:40, or worse, 7:45. That person ought not to go, in my opinion. If you cannot leave at the scheduled time of departure, you forfeit your place at the table or in the carpool. And of course, sorting out the check is another fiasco that invariably occurs in such situations, but that is another story. My summer job confronts me with situations like these at least twice per week.

Students coming to class late annoys me. It is disruptive and disrespectful to the other students and me. If you can't make it one time, drop the class and sign up for something that fits with your schedule better. You might also consider dropping out of college because you're not gonna be able to keep that fancy job you get when you graduate if you can't get there on time.

If you are chronically late, take this into account when making plans. For example, suppose you are always 10-15 minutes late. You want to have dinner at 7 pm with friends, whether you are planning to meet them at the restaurant or carpool, it doesn't matter. If you are the planner, take that hungry time of 7 pm and add a buffer to it. Do not fudge and say something like "7-ish". What does that even mean? Commit to a time, be there at that time (or slightly beforehand), or forfeit your right to make dinner plans. Don't punish other people because you are too disorganized or plagued by constant bad luck which makes you late.

In short, I value punctuality in others. I know there is no one as punctual as I am, and I'm becoming resigned to the fact that I will never have a friend who cares about the fact that it causes me severe annoyance and anxiety to be late or pressed for time. It is a sad, sad world when I find myself feeling like it is Christmas morning when someone is actually on time. Planning effectively is not a superpower. Anyone can do it, though no one I ever know ever will. This brings me to my second most prominent virtue: patience.

These two virtues often conflict. I am very patient when it comes to some things: restaurant mishaps, my dog's whining, slow traffic, slow people, crazytown, etc. I *cannot*, however, deal with tardiness. I may don a veneer of cool indifference at your lateness, but inside my organs are quickly poaching in my boiling blood, and in the back of my mind I am considering 1. all of the various terrible curses I would cast upon you if I had one of those Harry Potter magic wands, or 2. if I set your house on fire while you slept, whether you'd wake up in time to get out, or 3. the street value of your first born's kidneys.

My general malaise is only exacerbated by the fact that tardy people trigger this cognitive dissonance, i.e., the inconsistency of these two virtues I exemplify. I cannot be a nonhypocritical servant of punctuality and also be patient in matters of timeliness. I may be a bastard, but you made me this way.