Life is Beautiful
Golly, I've been so negative lately... Today I think I will start the "Life is Beautiful" series. Let's see if I can stick to only finding and talking about the good things I see all around me every day.
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!! I found a health club that doesn't cost over $100 a month... of course, if I go often it will still be up there in cost at $4 a day. I would hope I would use it somewhat frequently, even though it is a 15 minute jog from my work.... that's not beautiful! I don't want to have to jog to a health club... it's crazy madness!!
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!!! I did jog to the health club tonight, (after making a trip home to change clothes and then paying another 130 yen to go back to Kichijyoji (where I work). Anyway, I jogged there and found when I arrived that before I can use it I have to take a special beginner's course on how to not kill myself. The course starts everydy at 6:00 though... what about people who work?!?! It's crazy madness!!!!
But WAIT!!! that's not the beautiful part... On the jog back to the station where I would have to pay another 130 yen to get home after doing absolutely nothing, I noticed a fishing gear shop. I recently bought a pole to use while I am kayaking, but when I bought the pole I got tricked into buying the wrong kind of bait and gear... I bought some crap that you drop straight down in the water and the bait doesn't stay on the hook, rather it disperses around the area I am fishing in... this draws the fish to the area so they will get snagged on the hook obviously. Unfortunately, as I found when I tried to use it, a kayak in the ocean does not stay still. I wound up pouring a lot of fish food in the water to attract the fish, and by the time they came (if they ever did) my boat had floated far far away... and of course by now any fish that may have been at my current location have now all gone to where I dumped all that expensive bait.
But WAIT!!! That's not the beautiful part,,, as I jogged by the fishing gear shop I stopped in for advice and learned everything I will need to become a near pro. I will never pack food when I go out in the kayak again. With my newfound knowledge and fishing-pole knot tying ability (the salesman taught me that too) I will never starve again. I also may be catching some yummy squid!
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!! I spent the better portion of the day vacillating over whether or not I should go to the has tonight... I was not really in the mood, and basically the only reason I could think of to go is to trick myself into thinking that I am not anti-social. Should I go... should I not go... go? no go? such a difficult decision to make no? Well, a beautiful thing happened when I moved a pile of books that had been growing on my desk for the past month... I found my calculator! After that it was a simple matter of typing in the amount money I had in my wallet (about 15,000 yen) and subtracting the price of the hash (4,000 yen). Then I compared the result with the original 15,000 and quickly came to the conclusion that I would have more money in my wallet when I wake up the next day if I don't go to the hash. (the beautiful part was when I found the calculator)
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!! I learned something cool about sky scrapers today from a reader who saw the link I posted about skyscrappers...
Did you look at the tallest buildings never built? The Illinois Tower, designed by Frank Loyd Wright? When I was in some engineering class in college, we talked about that building. Apparently, FLW never thought about the feasibility of a building 1 mile tall. If you look at other office buildings to get info like # of workers per square feet (and all kinds of other info) and apply it to this building, it would be impossible to get that many people into and out of the building in 24 hours. Even if there was a high-speed train shuttling people into the 1st floor as fast as possible, it would still be impossible because the entire volume of the building would have to be elevator shafts to move people up and down the floors.
Life is not so beautiful for 12 people and their families in Idia and Nepal where an elephant went berserk and rampaged through villages killing 12 people. Ihear about a suicide bombing that killed 12 people and wonder how people live knowing that it may be them next, or their children... I have never thought about how people feel when an elephant rampages through the village and kills their family. I wonder if they ever have either... "At least" (I really hesitate to use those words) a sicide bombing is something that everyone in Isreal and the West bank must consider a possibility, but did these people in India ever think this would happen?