The Money Game

"If I gave you $15,000 right now, free and clear to do with whatever you wished, what would you do with it?"

My wife and I use to play a variation of this game where the sum is a million dollars, but it lost it's charm when we focused on the fact that in the San Francisco Bay Area that sum is around the amount needed for a nice house.

I have to imagine that this question plays out differently with your average young college student, than with struggling mid-life family man. Unfortunately, my real answers has no fun, nor glamor, it would go to pay off debt, then be put in the bank to stave off the continued decent into debt. Currently, the tax man is clamoring for his share.

But I know that that isn't the intent of the question, it is designed to delve into a person's sense of value and what one desires. So I will create a list of possible items in no particular order:

• Donate, bribe, influence a spot for Ryan in the wonderful little private school that has an over abundance of boys currently attending.
• A new computer for Erin at home and at her private office.
• Books, books and more books, plus even more books.
• Donation to my favorite UNO professor's house fund.
• A new used car
  

5 Things

1. I own a copy of the Warren Report. This is the official report on the Kennedy Assassination. I have read literally dozens of books on the topic and this is only a section of a large conspiracy theory library I own.

2. I didn't "really" start to read until I was seven. I was still very slow at sounding things out, very resistant and reluctant to read. Now I read four to five usually non-fiction books a month and have amassed a library that could service a small town. I got my undergrad degree in US History and am currently getting my Masters in Library Science.

3. I grew up in a conservative (and by conservative I mean in between orthodox and reform) Jewish family, who founded the local temple. I went to services every friday night, many saturdays, and sunday school every week. I studied hebrew for 7 years, culminating and an all hebrew bar mitzvah. I now celebrate a secular christmas and easter with my non-jewish wife and jewish son.

4. Red is my favorite color, which is partially explanitory of my beautiful red-headed wife, with whom I spend my christmasses with. My wife and I have been together for over sixteen years, eight of them married. For the first seven years our biggest annual knock-down fight was over christmas and my various efforts to resist assimilation and wreak sabotage.

5. I have a remarkably high tolerance for caffine. My typical workday consists of a quadrupal shot of expresso in the morning, a pot of coffee through the day, two cans of coke and an 18 ounce Rockstar energy drink. I started drinking coffee when I was three, sitting in my dad's lap. I didn't understand caffine jitters until I felt a slight tremor into my fifth pot of coffee one night in college.

Dumping Grounds

Ask and ye shall recieve. I have been doing nothing with this spot since I staked it out oh so long ago. I meant to write personal stuff here, ruminations, reflections, thoughts and other such things. But as you can see I either don't have the time, or perhaps the energy to think that hard, so this spot has laid fallow.

So my beloved internet friend muse tagged me with a "five things about me" post, and the also dearly beloved Lisa asked for "five more things", which I make no garentee, but I will repost the original and then use this space as a dumping grounds, with no promises of extended use or regular posts.

This will only be of interest to my internet friends, and they should feel free to ask me any questions they wish, and we'll see what kind of answers I may give.

In The Beginning

I have been thinking of late, that blogging as a relatively wide spread phenomenon, has become a new arena for 'Last Words.' I have posted about blogs of those whom have died of cancer, those whom have blogged before killing themselves, those whom have blogged before killing their mother and going off to jail, I have posted those whom have blogged about dark desires to kill before they actually go off and do so, and in turn kill themselves.

What is it about the human desire to seek truth in the last words of other human beings? Is it the belief that before death people have some how discovered the truth? Or are we looking for some familiar hint of the slow, thick darkness that we want to hide from and avoid? What do we learn from last words, if we learn anything at all? Would we be better off reflecting on first words, would they give us more insight in to the life to unfold, or would they hold equal mystery?

My son's first word was 'ot', which for us (and I believe for him) meant hot. He had learned the word from the many times we had told him to avoid the stove, the light bulbs, and other things on which he might burn himself. But he had also learned it from the 'Last Word' of a story we had read to him hundreds of times, he knew it by rote. The last line from Maurice Sendak's "Where the wild things are"... "And into the night of his very own room, where his supper was waiting for him, and it was still 'ot.'