Stunslinger.com Blog

Last week I tweeted that my wife took the car in to get a new starter. For the past few weeks we’ve been having to finesse our starter. It began not starting properly, and we found certain tricks to get it going: primarily turning the key in the ignition v e r r y s l o w l y.

So anyway, we took it to Pep Boys because it was close. They said it would be done today likely, and they would call us when it is finished. This was good because my wife was off work today, but we both work tomorrow. It would be nice if we could both drive to work. We knew they closed at 9pm.

Before we knew it, it was 8:15pm and we hadn’t heard a thing. I called them at 8:30 and they said, “Oh, yeah it’s finished.” So we rushed over there, and were able to pick it up. The thing is, my wife asked why they didn’t call us when it was finished. They said they did call once, but our line was busy. They said that if it’s busy, they just wait for the customer to call in.

Really? That’s their policy? They said, “Usually it’s people on the internet and we have no idea when they’ll be off.” Right, or the person could just be on the phone briefly. I’m not saying they need to check back every five minutes until they reach someone, but couldn’t they try back at least one other time? Would it really be that difficult to wait 1/2 hour and then call back? I think not! It just seems like good business…but then again, I’m not a business person.

Oh yeah, then they parked it in their parking lot with all the windows down. I’m not saying we have a ton of stuff to steal, but come on!

For some reason, I seem to have this pattern in my life: whenever I know something (school, a job, etc) is about to end, I start to feel burnout.  It doesn’t seem to matter how long I’ve been doing whatever, it just starts to drag whenever the end is in sight.

I was in graduate school for years, and it was good.  In fact, I actually had a great experience.  But then I was matched for my internship, and for the last few months, it just seemed like I was going through the motions.  Somehow, it was as if knowing things were coming to an end sponsored my feelings of burnout.

This same thing happened at all of my previous jobs as well.  Things would go along great, until it was time to go back to college, or until I was about to start a different job.  I used to chalk this up to my jobs being rather intellectually dull.  Arrogant as it may sound, I figured I needed a job where I did more than pump gas or slop food.  I used to think I had a time limit of sorts, but now I wonder if it just had to do with the fact that I knew things were ending.

The reason this popped into mind is, while I love my internship, I’m feeling a bit burned out.  It’s odd, the whole year I’ve been doing 2 month rotations and I’ve never felt burned out before.  But now I do, a bit.  Still love the people I work with and my patients, but I just don’t have the same motivation.  I can’t wait to have a job where I can work longer, have a more lasting relationship with coworkers and, hopefully, a better impact because people believe in my skills more.

Thanks for letting me share.

Do you remember the “very special episodes” different TV shows used to run, particularly in the ’80s?  They would say, “Tonight on a very special Blossom,” or “Tonight, on a very special Family Ties…”  And then, inevitably, they would attempt to teach some valuable lesson.

Uncharacteristically, the main character would do drugs, or drink, or some friend would talk about suicide, and then in the end we all learned a valuable lesson.  All in 30 minutes, brilliant.

The thing is, I actually sort of like the concept of using a popular medium to improve society.  It’s far better than glorifying harmful behaviors.  Yet, I still think those episodes were a bit ridiculous.  On the first hand, they almost always oversimplified everything.  Instead of showing the real struggles people go through, and the conflicts involved in drugging/drinking/suiciding, etc., they opted to present a very black and white, simple view.  Plus, usually these characters weren’t dealing with any of the issues until the “very special episode” appeared.  So, in 1/2 hour, the character engages in a behavior, sees consequences, and learns their lesson.  Neat and tidy.

The consequences were always neat and tidy as well.  The person screws up, and shortly thereafter, they experience the horrid downside.  This isn’t even close to reality.  Most people I know experience consequences very indirectly.  You drink heavily long enough and, yes, there is a good chance you’ll be involved in a drunk driving accident.  But I know a number of alcoholics who drove drunk for years before having a problem.  This is the way the world works, generally direct consequences are delayed.  Not to mention the denial factor that was always absent from TV characters.

Lastly, the take home message was always presented in such a heavy-handed manner.  Instead of communicating a good message, this just makes people roll their eyes.  When an issue is handled with no subtlety, it doesn’t communicate well.

Well, I think I’ve analyzed that to death.  How do I propose to do things differently?  Well, first of all I don’t think the shows should make the main character “fall into” a problem.  I think one of the main character’s friends should gradually get involved in a problematic behavior.  More than one episode would help establish this as more believable.  Then, either instill a consequence on the friend directly, or not.  Again, this could be done much more believably.

But the real payoff could come when the main character talks about seeing his/her friend making mistakes.  Instead of a “roll your eyes” heavy handed moralization at the end, the main character could talk about being concerned for the friend, and how much it hurts to watch his/her friend screw up.  This allows the audience to see the real consequences, your relationships, and the pain you cause others in your life.

I don’t know, I’m not a TV writer, but it seems like a better option.  My perception is that once we got away from “very special episodes” and just haven’t touched sensitive subjects with any sort of teaching involved.  Any more it’s just either ignored or not commented on.  I suggest my option is better than that, agree? disagree?

Yesterday evening Mrs. Stunslinger wanted to pick up a new shirt, so we headed downtown to American Eagle.  Immediately I realized this was a bad idea.  “People like us” don’t exactly belong in AE.  We (late-twenty something professionals) are supposed to shop at places like Ikea* or Express.

Anyway, as we walked in I saw two 16-year-olds standing in the doorway.  Apparently this is their job, to stand in the doorway, because that’s what they did the entire time we were shopping.  Because I’m a good husband, I stood nearby as my wife looked through the racks.  It seemed like everywhere I looked, I saw “super-excited-oh-my-god” high school girls shopping.  They were shouting and laughing and running around, as if they were 5-years-old  on the playground again.  Ugh it was tiring.  So that made me feel old.

But then I kept seeing parents with little kids everywhere.  Knowing Utah, they probably were my age or younger, but it didn’t feel that way.  Every time I see people with three little kids, it makes me feel young.

So there we were, feeling both old and young at the same time.  This is the curse of living in Utah.

* I should say, we’re actually going to Ikea today.  Perhaps I’ll feel more age-appropriate there. 

The last few days here in Salt Lake have been more humid than normal.  We’ve had a bit of rain and several thunder storms.  Normally the air here is super dry, so any amount of humidity seems amazing.

The odd thing is this: just a bit more humidity in the air and all of our doors (office, home) are sticking a bit.  One of my co-workers actually has to kick his door open after unlocking it in the morning.  It’s awesome.

I never thought of Oregon as particularly humid, but compared with here, it’s like living underwater.  Unfortunately, the humidity these last few days reminded me how much hotter it feels back home.  When we went back for my “graduation” in April, as soon as we got off the plane I was moist.  Not sweating, but just moist.  It wasn’t awesome.  So even though it’s been super hot here for quite a while, it’s more bearable because of the extreme dryness.

When we moved here, we actually felt dehydrated most of the time.  I took to drinking more water than normal, and bought skin lotion for both work and home.  The wife of one of my coworkers, when she moved here, freaked out because she had scaly, flaky, white skin all over.  She thought it was a disease of some sort.  The doctor told her it was just dry skin and she needed a serious cream.  The sad thing is, this is not an uncommon story here.

What a random thing for me to blog about!

As you know by now, we’re going to be moving back to Oregon in a little over a month. We’re already trying to figure out what the best services are that will make our move easier. When we moved out here, we rented a Penske truck and car trailer, and drove it. It took a long time (we had to overnight in Boise) and was boring (my wife was driving our second car behind me).

When our friends moved out here, they used ABF (aka U-Pack Moving). ABF dropped off some containers at their place, and they had up to three days to fill them. ABF then came and picked the containers up, and deposited them at their new place two days later. They drove out in their cars, and then had three days to unpack the containers.

Now, if they were priced the same, I’d go with ABF, hands down. We could pound out the drive in one day if we wanted to, or could take our time. It’d be more comfortable, and I wouldn’t have to negotiate pulling a 22 foot moving truck into gas stations and Subways along the road.  However, there is a roughly $150 difference between the two services, favoring renting a truck.  This isn’t a huge difference, but with that difference we could afford to hire movers to help us unload when we get back to Oregon.  And yes, that cost difference already takes into account gas and a hotel stay.

It’s a tough call, especially when you consider we’re paying double rent for the month of August (we had to secure our place a month early) and then the costs of moving.  Any advice?  Please comment!

I’m really tired right now.  I don’t know what to write about.  You see, I have a goal to try and post every week day.  Obviously I don’t live up to this, and on weekends my posting definitely drops off, but still I try.

But then occasionally I encounter a case of blogger’s block.  I try to think outside the box, but sometimes (especially when I’m tired) nothing comes to me.

I thought about writing about the weather, since it’s making me homesick for Oregon.  But I already wrote a tweet about that, and I’ve blogged about it in the past.  So then I looked through my categories, seeing if that would inspire me.  Nothing.  I almost fired up Google Reader to just blow it off, but then I thought I could always write another meta blog.

This is actually similar to something I do in therapy.  I operate from an interpersonal perspective, and a big part of interpersonal techniques is altering the relationship.  For example, most people expect certain responses from other people, and that’s part of the problem.  Basically, people learn problematic behaviors (especially relationship problems) because they’re expecting a weird response from others.  So part of what I do is comment on the relationship, the interaction going on between myself and the patient, to teach healthy behaviors.  I don’t know if this makes any sense at all.  I’m tired and am probably not explaining it super well.

Anyway, I’ve found by talking about the relationship, and my reactions to the patient, I am more effective as a therapist.  There we go, that made sense.  That’s the bottom line.  And this post is sort of an example of applying this technique to blogging.

That’s right, I joined the twitter bandwagon. You can see it at the top of my page sidebar, above the top post below the RSS subscription link. I am using Alex King’s twitter plugin here on my blog, mainly so I can add tweets while I’m at work (they blocked the twitter page).

The funny thing is, a long time ago (before twitter) I thought about creating a blog with extremely short posts. Some sort of minimalist attempt to summarize the day: Worked a lot, watched wife make cards, tired. Thought it might be interesting in theory, but maybe not enough to attract much readership. Now I can have my mini blog posts along with my regular ones. We’ll see what happens.

I’ve been sitting in a classroom every Monday for the last 11 months, and I always look at this poster.  It bugs me.  The more I read about good design, especially using a grid approach, the more this poster stood out to me as a paragon of bad design.

I don’t even really know what the information is, but it definitely is not presented in the most understandable manner possible.  I know the information is blurred, I took the picture with my phone, but I really think it’s for the best.  This way you can look at just the presentation and marvel in it’s chaos.

Ok, maybe my title exaggerated the facts a bit, but still…

Our friends just moved to Salt Lake, and they found out all kinds of things to do here so we’re getting out more.  They found out that there’s some good river tubing not too far away, so we decided to go.

Now, I am not the most adventurous person in the world.  In fact, I have a hard time with new things.  Whenever my wife suggests something new and different, I get nervous.  This is not a good thing.  I don’t want to be the guy who is content to sit in front of my computer and TV for the rest of my life…but that’s who I could easily become.  Of course, often after I try something once, I love it (snowboarding being the prime example of this).

So, we decided to go tubing, and I was pretty nervous.  We had a hard time finding flotation devices, but we managed.  Next thing I knew, we were perched on the edge of the Weber River, ready to take the plunge.

I was in a “two person” inflatable raft, as was my friend, my wife had a little “one person” (not to exceed 120 pounds) inflatable raft, and my friends wife had an inner tube.  Anyway, we took off down the river and things were going well.  It is the safest part of the river (from Henefer to Taggarts), so we had a relatively safe ride.  There were a few little rapid areas, but it was pretty tame for the first 2/3 of the ride.

Then we saw an access road stretching across the river.  We had just gone underneath a train trestle (thankfully we timed it right so there was a train going overhead) and there was a rock quarry on one side of the river and the freeway was on the other.  So they needed a road across the river, which they built very low to the water.  In fact, there was about one foot clearance between the concrete and the water.  Thankfully the river curved a bit and we were able to find a gap of about three feet to slip under.

After that we started to encounter the problems.  First problem: branches sticking out of the river.  Try as I might, I couldn’t paddle out of the way, so I got snagged on a few branches.  Then, the river bed decided to get close to the surface of the water.  At one point I actually ran aground in the middle of the river.  Awesome.

After this, we pulled over to the side for a snack.  At this point, as I dragged my raft onto the shore, I realized it seemed to bend a bit more in the middle than it should.  Sure enough, I was deflating.  My friend offered to trade me rafts, and we took off again.  He found the hole and plugged it with his finger.  Every time we had a slow part I pulled up to him, and blew up his raft.  It was sort of like a mid-flight refueling.

But then we got underneath the freeway.  I saw a pole sticking out of the water, so I avoided it and shouted back to my friends to warn them.  And then I realized I was on a collision course with the drunks.  We had caught up with a family in a large raft and one guy on a separate inner tube.  The father was drinking, and was apparently completely oblivious to anyone else on the river, much to the anger of his significant other, who was frequently yelling at him.

I ended up pinning the inner tube guy between my raft and the big, inebriated raft.  They ended up unscathed, but I dumped into the brine.  Immediately my goal was to grab my raft and not drown.  I had seen my friend hit a few rocks when he was raft-less, and didn’t want to suffer this fate.  So I grabbed my footing and thrust upward (at this point I realized I was not wearing anything on my feet and the rocks were not smooth) and rose up underneath my raft.  Phew.

I was able to take a minute to re-orient to where I was, get my vision straightened out and realize my friends were a bit downstream.  Apparently my wife was none-too-happy during this encounter.  She was worried I actually was in danger, which I guess I could have been.  But overall it was a fun trip.  When we got to the end, where we left one car, we were worn out.  It had taken over three hours, but it was worth it.  I had fun, and now I’m sore.

And this was a long post…