pippinsrosy was doing a meme, where someone picked five things that they associated with her, and then she offered to choose five things about other people. And, if you comment, I'll pass it on. In the mean time, I have insomnia, so here are her five things, and what I have to say about them:

• The SCA. The TLA stands for the Society for Creative Anachronism. The Society grew out of Diana Paxson's graduation party from UC Berkley. Boiled down to its base elements, it's about people dressing up in funny clothes and having a good time pretending to live in an idealized version of the middle ages. But the details... ah, the devil is in the details.
  
  I first became aware of, and active in, the Society in Bisbee, Arizona, when I was living there with my biological father. I think I was thirteen the first summer Bisbee had a renaissance fair, and invited SCA folks down from Tucson to do a demo. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I was active with the local organization. I fell madly in love with dorinda2212, who was also an active member, and got myself halfway across the Phoenix metro area on a regular basis to see her, and participate at fighter practice -- a not inconsiderable feat, when you remember that I didn't own a car in those days, and Phoenix mass transit is a bad joke.
  
  Along the way, though, I discovered kind of the negative face of the SCA... there are pockets of people involved who forget they are playing a game. At a certain point in my life, that really alienated me, and I wandered off, and developed a bit of an attitude about the majority of SCA folks.
  
  However... after coming home from New York City, a large number of the friends I made, or reconnected with, were active members of the SCA. And I kept having cognitive dissonance between my image of the society, and the kinds of people I knew who were involved. So, on my birthday this year, with no one in Flagstaff who knew (or cared) that it was my 40^th birthday, I found myself drawn out to Crown Tourney (there's one held every six months), and I had a good time. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet way. And I talked with some people who made me feel welcome, which is something I haven't felt much of in a while. People whose eyes didn't glaze over when I started talking about the history of tartan.
  
  So I rejoined that day. And since then, I've become an officer in the local branch, the College of Sankt Vladimir. And while I still face some isolation issues, and I'm still twice as old as virtually everyone I know in Flagstaff, at least I have people I can call and say, "Hey, I'm lonely and feeling isolated, and think you should come with me and eat too much chocolate."
  
  And really, what else does one want from a social organization?
  
  
• Love. Um. This is some kind of sick joke, right? I haven't been in a serious romantic relationship in over a decade. The last thing she said to me as she was leaving was, "you know nothing of any importance, and on topics I consider important, you're woefully ignorant." Oh, and just before that, she said, "You're good at romance... it's all the other stuff you suck at." Love? Really? You associate me with love? Huh.
  
  
• Nursing. Well, okay, yes. I am a nurse, like my father before me. (Should I dramatically throw my stethoscope aside?) I was working as The Computer Guy, and one day I realized how much it sucked. How I woke up every morning wondering if I could call in sick. So I looked for something that would make me happier. And, when I'm doing the work, and being a nurse, I usually am happy. It's just this damn Nursing School that has me ripping my teeth out.
  
  
• Anime. I like anime. I particularly like silly anime. It's such a stress reliever... they live in a much simpler world than I do. They have friends, and even when they're going through tough times, there's a feeling of camaraderie and optimism that, all too often, seems lacking in my own world. They make me smile, and forget about the real world for a little while. And did I mention that the sillier, the better?
  
  
• Literature. I read a lot, it's true. It's not that I'm indiscriminate, as anyone who's ever heard me rip into Stephen King or James Fenimore Cooper can attest. It's that there's a lot of pretty good writing out there. My mother tells me that I initially had a hard time learning to read, because of my agraphia (you should see me write without a spell checker, some time) but I don't remember that. I remember always having been enthusiastic about books. If I hadn't let my 50 books list go by the wayside, you'd see that the stuff I read is pretty eclectic, though with a strong bent towards SciFi.

So. There's my five things. Comment, and I'll trot out five for you.

On my way home tonight, I found myself unable to resist stopping at Casa Video. They had the Phantom Menace on DVD, and I was interested in watching the extra material, so I rented it.

There's a very interesting scene in the 'making of' bit where Ewan McGreggor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) chooses his lightsabre from a box with several in it. They're interesting, the ones the Jedi Council use in the movie. Most of them are fairly simple.

Am I being unreasonable and geeky about the whole 'building lightsabres' thing?

Watching the documentaries has made me think about a life I passed up. In my late teens and early twenties, I was involved in the family business... I was an actor, a theater tech.

My first serious girlfriend was a theatrical carpenter.

It was marvelous to be part of something creative like that; it was marvelous to get applause.

The other day, we were complaining about self-portraits asked of us by our Art Teacher. Why am I so resistant to drawing myself, she asked.

Because I don't look at myself. It's taboo. My father, you see, was somewhat vain. He would never talk to you; he'd always be talking to himself in a reflective surface. So, by way of reaction, I don't look at myself. I barely look at myself in the mirror in the morning, when I get out of the shower.

I could easily live without any mirrors at all.

I was in the Navy during the Gulf War, onboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN-72. Like most sailors aboard most ships during that conflict, my role consisted largely of floating around the Persian Gulf, casting occasional worried glances at Iran, looking at navigation charts with the range of their missiles marked, and noting how often we were inside those arcs. (Yes, that's right... I wrote Iran, not Iraq. We knew Iraq was beaten; we were worried about a sneak attack from Iran).

I didn't come home from the war with Lincoln, however. My active duty ended in the middle of the cruise, and I was sent to Dubai to catch a Military Airlift Command (MAC) flight home to the states. The MAC flight went to Italy, to Ireland, and finally landed at Philedelphia.

There were people there, outside the MAC terminal. As each soldier, sailor, marine or airman came out of the terminal, the crowd would applaud. There were many yellow ribbons in evidence. I wondered, at the time, why they would come out, why they would take the time out of their day to come down and greet men they didn't know, coming back.

Now that I'm older, I think I understand better. If there were a MAC terminal at Tucson Airport, I think that I might well go down there, and applaud our boys (and some girls) who've been in Afganistan.

---

My father is dead. It's not a surprise... he's been dead for twelve years now, and is still dead. I expect that, in the next twelve years, he will go on being dead.

Sometimes, though, I think about it. My father was in his early forties when he died. I woke up this morning and realized that I'm 33... in a very small number of months, I'll be 34. When my father was my age, he had a 13 year old son. Now that I'm my age, my father is still, in my mind at least, in his early forties.

There will come a day when I wake up, and am older than my father.

auophir is out of town for the weekend again. childofsnow hasn't gotten back to me about ice cream. evilgenius is in New York, which is too far to go for ice cream and commisseration.

I'm torqued up about this final. My mind is running a million miles an hour, but every time I sit down and try to write something, it comes out looking stupid and trite.

If Sesame Street had matured at the same rate I have, today's episode would find Elmo mysteriously murdered, the only clue the red cape that was used to strangle him, which bears the initials "S.G."

evilgenius is talking, in her journal today, about her adventures with agents and agencies. It made me think about my father. One of the few things my father left me is a stack of headshots. I forget what agency they're from. It's a good picture of him, and I guess, as things to have go, it's a decent one.

I mean, it's not a trust fund, but hey... what is? (I'll shake my finger sternly at the first person who answers, "Well, a trust fund is!")

When I was a teenager, and a little older, I did a fair ammount of time on stage. I enjoyed it. It was a link to my father.

My father was an Actor (note the capital letter). He even had a line in The Outlaw Josey Wales, which he took me to see when I was way too young to understand it. His whole life he chased the dream of Acting.

I couldn't do that. I have so much trouble with rejection, so much difficulty resubmitting work, I can't imagine going to audition after audition, for year after year.

I admire evilgenius for being willing to go through all of that. I also think that, in the long run, it'll pay off for her.

Hell, I have such a hard time with rejection, I'm dreading the whole Medical School Admissions Board rigamarole.

I'm also dreading the final tonight.

I found out that my tuition for summer session isn't due for another month, so that's okay. Sort of.

At some point, the savings in rent at this new place are going to kick in, and my finances will stabilize.

No, really.

Gah. I should erase all this babbling.

This is a two-part entry. The first part is me ranting about my day; the second is me ranting about the way that people treat other people they say they're in love with. Actually, come to think of it, I guess they're kind of interrelated.

I've had a long and somewhat stressful day. I woke up about seven, got up, showered, dressed, took a load of boxes over to the Little Ship of the Desert (as I've decided to call my trailer, to sort of disguise the fact that I'm living in a (wince) trailer).

I was back at my house and finishing some details of packing about half an hour before I'd asked Mr. Smith to show up for to help me move. I worked on packing and then loading my car for about an hour, which put me half an hour after the time I'd asked him (and he'd agreed) to show up.

I'm not really surprised by this. Mr. Smith does something that my father used to do; something which drives me right up the wall. When I was a kid, in the years we all lived in Tucson, my father would make plans to do things with me. When the time came, he would most often not show up.

Sometimes, he'd call later, and say that "something came up."

Something came up is my least-favorite excuse. If you use it to me, I'll probably forgive you, but I won't forget it... and if you use it to me a lot, you'll probably stop being included in plans I make to do things.

Mr. Smith uses it a lot. What he really means, of course, is the same thing my father really meant... something more interesting came up, and I didn't feel obliged to come and do what I said I was going to do, because that's a drag, man.

Yeah, I have some unresolved issues with my father, even though he's been dead for eleven years. Heck, I guess I have some unresolved issues with my father because he's been dead for eleven years. If he were still alive, I could drive over to his house and scream and throw things and demand to know how he could treat me that way.

Instead, I just have bits and pieces of the puzzle that he was to try and fit together, to try and understand who he was, and why he did things the way he did.

His brother, my uncle Tom, has always been a better father to me than he was.

But today, I was irritated at Tom, too. On Tuesday night, at our D&D game, both Mr. Smith and Tom had agreed to help me today. Tom said that he had to work in the morning, but could help me in the afternoon.

So I said okay, and today, I called him and asked when he'd be available, and he said now, and then asked, in a really annoyed tone of voice, how long it was going to take, because he had things he had to do.

sigh.

I got him to come over, and we did one load of the things I couldn't carry in my car... the bed, the chair, the weasel cage... and then I said, "Okay, thanks, that's all I needed!"

So I'm doing this move 95% by myself. Argh. Plus, I have no hot water. Plus, I have no phone.

If I were Hagar the Horrible, there'd be a line of punctuation in my word bubble, now, to show that I was cursing without actually having any cursewords to offend the easily offended.

Anyway, I decided to take a break in the heat of the day, and came in to work, so I could check my email and glance at LJ and stuff.

You know what really makes me see red? Disrespect to women. No, really, I'm dead serious. I know that it's an antiquated, rusty idea, but I happen to think that women deserve respect. Especially women you say you're in love with!

Look; we're all of us human beings, and we all of us have failings. We're all hurting in different ways, and looking for someone to heal those hurts. I understand that. My god, if anyone understands being hurt, it's me. I'd show you my scars, but who cares, right?

All of that aside, your romantic partner deserves your respect! This is the person you've chosen to walk down the road of life with... to share your good times and bad with. And let me tell you, none of us has our act so together that hanging out with us isn't occasionally an act of generosity!

When people treat women... particularly women I admire, women who are smart, and with it, and working on their lives, who are trying to make a better life for themselves, and their children, as if they were a possession, as if they were a lodestone, as if they were... bottom line, when people disrespect women like that, it pisses me right off.

It makes me want to take them aside, and say, "Hey, yo, do you understand what you're doing here? You're taking that woman's feelings, and tramling all over them, and you're gonna end up the loser, in the long run!"

If there were one thing I could say to women, all women, and I guess to all men, as well, it would be this. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE!

You are not responsible for other people's choices. You are not responsible for other people's happiness. You are not responsible for anyone but you, and your children, until they're old enough to be responsible for themselves.

Gosh, as I look back on that, I guess it's a little bit sexist, or could be read that way. I didn't mean it like that.

I'll go back to moving, now.