- Logtar's Blog -

One of my favorite coworkers is someone that I have only talked to a handful of times. This person is one of the most genuine I have met here and actually puts their defense down when they are having a conversation. They report to one of the managers that I took my management course with so it was funny when I bumped into them in the lunch room and they were talking about one of the projects I am working on. We had a small conversation and I moved on to consume my cafeteria food.

Today I saw that coworker in the elevator and I said, “Wow you have a lot in your mind.” Then she surprised the hell out of me by not trying to cover up her expression or totally put things our her mind to converse, she continued to be deep into thought and smiled. She smiled and said, “you are totally right, but there is always tons of things going on at the same time here. (pointing to her head)”

Non verbal communication and facial expressions are very easy for me to read. The people I know the best or interact with the most are the ones that I can read the best, and for the most part they hate it. From my wife not being able to hide that she is super worried about something or annoyed with me, from my Mom’s or sister’s faces when they have not told me about something.

I had a long conversation with a friend I have not talked to for 15 years. We went to high school together and he got kicked out of school a year before I left. We lost touch and we never really used to hang out at school. I was friends with him because his grandma live across the street from us, and I was good friends with one of his cousins. At school he hang out with another “clique” one of the members being one of my biggest bullies. The bully did come up during our conversation but it had been from him not really talking or wanting friendship with the dude anymore after some bad business ventures they had engaged on after college.

Being bullied in high school made me very introspective. There had to be something wrong with me for people to want to pick on me so much. I found many answers, but the common theme of why I was being picked on (and even what my friend told me) was age. I was younger and while they were worried about screwing the brains out of their girlfriends I was still excited just the thought of getting to second base. It actually was nothing that I could really help, but still the source of much of my torment.

My fascination with non verbal communication was also due to loving being around grown ups. I always wanted to see if I could hold a conversation with someone way smarter than I was. I also loved talking to my grandpa and hearing his stories. It made me more aware of all the facial expressions and adults became easier to read with time. I knew which ones were just humoring me and which ones were actually talking to me. I still experience that feeling with the people that make small talk instead of having real conversations, that is the way that adults that don’t care much about kids talk to them. I have always found that if you talk to kids like a person they react way better in most situations.

During college I was made aware of things that I said too much. “you know” was and still is one of my sentence completion quirks. Also when I first lived in Michigan I could not shut up about Chicago. I was and still am very unaware of what I say sometimes, despite the fact that I try to watch what I say. Others can recognize those patterns a lot easier than we can.

Going back to my coworker. The first time we actually it was right after our cars almost crashed in our way to the parking lot. I was making a left turn and she got freaked out possibly because she was not paying attention to the road. We parked our cars and I apologized for startling her and she said no biggie. It turned out that I actually had to do something for her group the week following. Later I found out who she reported to and I’ve had to have a couple of conversations since the. She is always very relaxed and does not put on her poker face mask when engaging in conversation. I don’t know many people like that.

This weekend I witnessed one of the most exciting hockey games of my life.  I don’t even know half of the rules, I still think of soccer when I hear offside, but I enjoyed the game a lot. Maybe because some of the best players on either side are Blackhawks and it makes me think, this might be the year? But it was just a display of playing hard every single minute of the match.

I wanted to watch the game with my wife who wanted Canada to win, of course, but I wanted the U.S.A. to go all the way. I think the match was played a little more aggressively by the American team, and Canada played a superb defense. It ended in overtime after Parisi scored a last minute goal that made a whole country wonder if they had just seen the gold escape them.

In very Hollywood fashion Crosby came back to be the hero for the nation by scoring in during sudden death leaving the Americans with silver, which is no small accomplishment.

I am happy for Canada. Crosby and company got it done! Congratulations!

Most people clean up their clutter during the spring. I personally don’t like to acquire stuff at all. I am not a pack rat, but I have a hard time getting rid of stuff. Thank God for my wife!

We are making progress on getting ready to move. Even though packing its going slow we are getting rid of stuff. We are almost done with the office which needed to be de-cluttered long ago, but I just could not do it. With her help we got ride of about 4 big large garbage bags worth of crap that I had stashed away in closet and about 4 boxes full of junk. I still kept a lot of the cables that I know will be useful and are expensive, but gone are the badly manually crimped cat5 cables that I kept just because.

I still had 3.5 diskettes that have not been inside of a computer for over 10 years. Most of it was from my college days when Travis would spend all night downloading the latest game from some sever in England… lol remember that. And then 14 disks later we were all playing GTA. Also my unreal collection of Zip disks that probably had every single build and fan made map of quake. While it would have been fun to find out what was in all those disks I would have never done it… I know because I tried before and quickly gave up. There was nothing on those old disks that I really need.

I think with our book, dvd and video game addition Bea and I have enough stuff to haul around. Getting rid of some of the stuff that was being kept for “sentimental” value felt liberating. Since I moved out of my parents house this will be the first time truly downsizing to a smaller place, and I have to say that being forced to get rid of stuff that I truly don’t need feels a lot better than I could ever have expected.

The wife and I just celebrated two years together in matrimony. Being the both of us had been married before, many people have asked, Why would you do that again? The answer is that marriage is the most sacred covenant for a reason. I don’t believe that marriage should be just for heterosexuals because I think that loves come in all different shapes and sizes. The emphasis on the word sacred has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the importance of that bond.

I think movies, society, and at times even Disney tell us that with love everything is possible. While I do believe that is true in many levels, when it comes to relationships it also requires a lot of work.

I am in love with my wife, but I know that it is more like a plant and a statue. In my life my rock is my faith, not only for God but also our relationship and most importantly my wife. I also know that I have to work on keeping that love alive and strong.

Loving is easy, being in a relationship is not as much. My experience with marriage has taught me to be very realistic about expectations and to make sure I am aware of them on both sides.

The biggest challenge we have faced is actually communication. You would think that having two languages in common one of them being our mother tongue would make that easier. We are learning more and more about each other every day, and now know that we all have a chance to be who we really are, a concept that we had never really experienced in the past.

This weekend we did a lot of things to celebrate, but the most significant for me was to watch the movie Fireproof. It is a Christian movie, and some people might not be able to get past that. I did take a lot from it, and one of the most important things is that before we get married we might have a high school level knowledge of our partners. As life continues we should not be satisfied with that level of knowledge, we should keep on learning about our significant other for the rest of our life. I am not sure where I am with my knowledge of my wife, I think that is for her to answer. What I do know is that I am happy learning more and more each day about her, and experiencing life with her is a blessing that I am thankful for each day.

One of the aspects of journalism that has always fascinated me is the interview. I admire good reporters that can get information out of people that they might not want to give out. I enjoy the cat and mouse game that is played during an investigative interview. I also enjoy relaxed interviews and find weird shows like “the true Hollywood story” where they completely remove the interviewer’s questions.

I have been watching morning television for a while. I used to watch the Spanish channel’s morning show for years. I would get my weather online the night before so there was no need for local news. Weather here in KC changes so quickly that a look at what the day might bring before I leave out the door is actually useful. So I started watching the morning show which injects local weather right into their broadcast.

It has been an interesting experience because of their interviews. Celebrities peddling their latest project look like they are still sleeping. They are in a daze so deep sometimes that they are only somewhat aware that they are on TV.

Those are not the ones that entertain me the most. The celebrities are used to being interviewed so they enter an almost robotic state where they spew out canned answers probably crafted by some publicist. Regular people are the ones that just seem to be caught off guard when the camera begins to roll and their tongue gets all tangled.

Once in a while the interviewer can snap them out, but most of the time it becomes a monosyllables game. The interviewer trows the slowest ball about the subject or situation and anyone with a functioning brain can hit it out of the park, however the trance is not broken so they go to phase two. I call phase two when the interviewer actually spells out the answer for the person in order to get them talking again. This attempt I think fails the most and people just sit there looking at the camera like it hypnotized them completely.

I can almost hear the director in the background saying something like “we got a sleeper.” or maybe a producer saying “I swear I prepped them, I swear they were talking before.” Overall is just simply amusing to me, but it makes me appreciate the work that the interviewer does that much more.