Growing Up

I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable — if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.

David Foster Wallace

I have never held a job for more than ten months and as my Dad says, I have never made any "real money." What I take that to mean is that I have never had an annual income greater than twenty thousand dollars (he does my taxes and would know this). I am ok with this.

However, now things are different. I have a full-time job that I am planning on keeping, as long as they allow it, for at least the next three years. I have been employed since January and have the potential to stay employed through December. Meaning, I may just break that 20K barrier.

All of that is great news. However, the truly difficult part is coping with the reality of a 40+ hr a week desk job with three weeks of vacation a year. Three weeks! I am used to at least three months and on top of that, there is no end in sight. This is what life is really like.

GTBKA - Public Radio

It has taken a while for me to come around to the idea. Not because I didn't like public radio but because I wasn't aware of it. Well, I was kind of aware of it. I knew it was primarily talk radio and that it was something a good liberal was supposed to listen to. Anyways, now I love it and even have some radio programs that I will try to tune in for. It it almost like the olden days before TV and America had yet to be "discovered."

So, on to brass tacks. There are two public radio stations in Albuquerque, KANW and KUNM. The former is the official NPR station of Albuquerque and the l latter is run out of the university. At this point I should note, all of the following is based on my observations and no actual research was conducted to arrive at these opinions, which, is also kind of a good general note for my blog as well.

KANW was the first station I found that streamed... or... broadcasted... national programming, mainly, Morning Edition, which is what I want to listen to on the way to work. The trouble was that I would be back in the car at the end of the day and it had seemingly had switched to a Spanish radio station with a predilection for mariachi. When I first moved to Albuquerque I didn't even mind it. I felt like I was really living in the southwest. That was how I discovered the truth behind the transformation. At five o clock KANW becomes an all-request music station. Listeners can call in and literally request any song of any genre they want. It just so happens that the only people who call in are fans of Spanish music. 

As much as I appreciated this, I would occasionally want some All Things Considered on my drive and that is how I found KUNM, a few ticks up the dial. They had the advantage of playing NPR programming both in the morning and evening. Furthermore, KUNM has some unique programming that you can only get away with in close proximity to a university. At noon there is a breathy radio hosts who likes to get high and share her favorites pieces from the latest jazz albums. She is always inviting us to an experience, which I like. Also, I have a feeling that at midnight I might tune in to hear Madame Psychosis on the radio. Which, I also like. 

On a final note, yesterday Kari and I took my car out for Sushi. The radio was tuned to KUNM and it was a little after 8:00 PM at which point, apparently, KUNM switches to a primarily Spanish Music radio station. 

GTBKA - Michael Thomas Coffee

I am in a coffee shop on the southern end of Albuquerque. The place is called Michael Thomas Coffee and they brew have two unique brews, one medium and one dark, at any given time. Each brew has a name and a history, although, today one is called Test Brew #5 (the other is called Tanzanian Peaberry, which is also their wifi password). The girl working tells me they are having a contest to name it. If I write down a potential name on one of these post its and they select it, I could win a free pound of Test Brew #5. 

There are four others inside the small shop with me - it is raining outside. One man with a new apple MacBook Pro. It has six stickers on the cover, mostly related to biking and coffee. He is bald and has the one of the bushiest beards I have ever seen. He is also wearing a teal t shirt. 

One woman. She has a lightweight down vest, thick framed glasses and dark brown hair. She is reading a book that has graphs in it. Not positive graphs but negative ones, graphs that slope downward in a troubling way. 

One man looks as those he has lived in New Mexico for at least the past 100 years. He skin is tanned, wrinkled and looks as though it could keep out any type of weather. He small but content I imagine. He is drinking the darkest roast, black with extra grinds. He has a hat that might be found in a Route 66 museum - the type they advertise for a hundred miles along the hwy - with a placard - first trucker hat to travel across country. 

One guy. He is reading a book I cannot see and is friends with the girl behind the counter. They are likely university students, comparative literature majors, or something fun like that.

I ask for the Test Blend #5 in a mug "for here." The girl rings me up, points to an array of mismatched ceramic mugs on top of the espresso machine. Help yourself, free refills. Chet Baker is playing on the stereo, it is grey outside and I feel at home. 

Albuquerque: An Introduction

Several people have asked me what I think about Albuquerque. I almost always reply the same way. Albuquerque is interesting.

Kari gives me a hard time for this. First she points out that I always say that and second she points out that it isn't really saying all that much. It doesn't tell people what they want to know, which I guess, is whether or not we like it here. 

I say interesting because I am intrigued by all the new things that come with a new city but also because I don't want to take a side of whether or not I like it here. This is primarily due to the fear that I may fall on the less-than-pleased side of the scale. Saying that I do not like a place is troubling, one for the reality of it, and two for the fact that it goes against who I am, which is to say, an optimist.  On my first trip out here my dad told me a story of my grandfather always telling him to look for the good in each new place they moved. Some cities my dad and his siblings we dragged to were kind of boring places to live (the Central Valley has an abundance of these) but they were closer to good skiing, which my dad was quite fond of.

For the most part I have done a good part finding the good in Albuquerque and not focusing on things it lacks. The city has an abundance of outdoor activities, great food, a bike trail that leads straight to my office and, probably most importantly, amazing job opportunities for Kari and I. On a recent trip to Portland, Tanner and I shared a good laugh over how when it comes down to it, geography is quickly out matched, priority-wise, by other factors in life. There may come a time when we push it to the top of the list but for now we are in New Mexico and we should make the best of it. 

All that is to say that there on not things I would immediately change about Albuquerque with a magic wand but to list them would be an exercise in negative thinking...

Things I would change immediately and irregardless of the cultural consequences:

• Crime and Drug Use: albuquerque has its share
• Drivers: it is ok not to think of your own safety when turning across five lanes of traffic but it takes either a jerk or an idiot to show such flippant disregard of others lives. 
• Public spaces: why is there no where go walking other than neighborhoods? The most hip part of town straddles a literal highway - Route 66 - and has sidewalks that barely allow two people to walk side by side. 
• Poverty: it humbling but mostly heartbreaking to see a population deprived of education and opportunity in the ways that parts of Albuquerque are. I don't know either the cause or the solution but when I told Eric that Albuquerque was interesting he bit his tongue remembering a home stay here while on choir tour.