Why I am Trapped In Fargo

I consider my relationship with Fargo overall a good one. But with a lot of relationships until you find that perfect companion, at some point, enough becomes enough and you need to make a change. I hope to elaborate in today’s blog entry on the general experience I’ve had with Fargo.

I moved to Fargo in 2004 after escaping a small town newspaper to return to the safe environs of college by going for a graduate degree. My first apartment was 250 a month, which got me a kitchen and a bedroom. The bathroom was across the hallway, which made locking myself out of my apartment in my jammies a daily possibility. The bathroom also didn’t have a shower, but a small half tub. So every day I washed my hair by sitting cross legged in the tub and using a bucket.

As a graduate student, I didn’t mind this so much, not as much as you would think. Near the end of my grad school time, however, I did mind the fact that I was 90 percent sure the other person upstairs in that house was cooking meth. The smells were as crazy as that guy's teeth and eyes and general lack of weight.

The next door neighbor also found a body just across the tracks one spring. The two aren't connected, but it was time to find somewhere else to live.

I found another studio apartment in a very apartmenty part of Fargo. That worked for a year. In that year, I found a great job related to what I wanted to do with my life – write. And I began to realize that jobs can be fun. Work can be good given the right environment and opportunities. I was proud of what I wrote.

I bought a house, something I never thought would happen.

I also found a fiancé, who, coolest of all coolness, connected with me after reading an article I wrote. This is a secret dream of all writers, probably artists. We were the vaguest of acquaintances in High School from different towns, but she remembered me and did me the great favor of emailing.

Time moved on. The Red Bear closed. Lauerman’s closed. Ralph’s closed. All my favorite haunts became memories.

Fiance moved in with me. Our relationship developed. But there were no steady jobs to be had in a state that we keep hearing is great for jobs. Believe me, she applied for everything and anything. A year of unemployment does a lot of damage to your credit and mental sanity, particularly if you have chronic sinus infections or other health issues. We slowly watched as our resources reached a point where Suze Ormand yells at us in our dreams.

Meanwhile, the awesome things about my job began to dwindle. The pay is great, but the parts I enjoyed were discontinued. I no longer wrote anything I was proud of. The people I worked with left and weren’t replaced, leaving me to take up the slack. They say if you aren’t moving positions every 3 years, you are in a rut. I work with someone who has been doing the same job for 15 years. This place is where careers go to die, and I need to leave. 

So for the past year, Fiance and I have been sending out resume after resume. Getting interviews here and there, but never quite sealing the deal.

Likewise, the things people say about owning a house are all things I have come to hate. I hate worrying about shingles, heaters, and the millions of other things that can go wrong with a house that I will have to pay for somehow. I hate having to keep the lawn looking nice and having a hammock that I never use because all the spare time is spent keeping the house from falling apart. I hate having to worry about floods every stinking year. I hate that people think houses are an investment when they really aren’t. House prices over the past 100 years pretty much match inflation. And everything you do to improve it doesn’t really get you back what you put into it. Basically, I feel like selling and buying houses only makes banks and real estate agents money. I think the only reason I got a house was that was what was expected of me – to fit in with the family and social norms. And now that I want to leave, the house thing is tying me down financially until it sells. My biggest fear is that after 4 years in the house, I won’t break even on the sale. As it is, I’ll get maybe 2000, half of which was already spent getting it ready to sell.

So while Fargo was a lifesaver in the beginning, through jobs, unemployment, house ownership, and so on, it has slowly become a trap that I desperately want to escape. I don’t mean this to denigrate people who enjoy Fargo. There are lots of things I have loved. It’s just that most of those things have stopped, or are now vastly outweighed by the negative. I need to move on or, as my coworker who has pretty much the same job as me said recently, “In 10 years, you can be me.”

I don’t think I hid the horror in my eyes well.

I need to get out of this rut. I need to keep trying to become a better writer and be challenged. It would be easy to keep doing this, spewing out the same stories year after year. But that’s what kills souls. At least in my case.

This blog has helped to slow the bleeding. I appreciate every comment and reader. I went from 150 page views in July to 620 in August, and thank you for that. I have found often in my life that when my work stops being creatively satisfying, I quickly find other avenues to release the demons that don’t like me when I settle. I started my Twitter account after 8 months of fruitless job hunting, and it saved me. Thanks for following.

Still hoping to get some help with the move. It’s a bad time of the week for it, so I understand. If I don’t hear by tomorrow, I’ll be looking elsewhere.

People keep asking what my handle will be once I move. Part of me imagines that for a while, even after moving, I will still be metaphorically trapped in Fargo as I try to start the new life. I’ve got some ideas on a new name, but would appreciate suggestions as well.

EscapedFargo, MidwestMess, FargoJones 

Today our lives changed

So the fiancé got a job offer today. She interviewed at 9 this morning and was driving home. She just got into Fargo and ended up missing her turn and getting lost in West Fargo (or Shelbyville as I call it in my head).

The job hunt had taken a turn after the post a few weeks ago. Although she had applied to one job, she impressed them enough to ask her to apply for a different job. But since then, it's been weeks of not knowing what was going on, and if it was going to happen. It was brutal. 

The guy was ecstatic to tell her she was green lit for the job, and only has to meet with the dean in the next three business days to make sure she isn’t an axe murderer. Then she will be starting the week of Labor Day.

I can’t express how incredibly wonderful this is. We will be escaping Fargo soon. Now to just sell the house, move, prepare for a wedding, start my job search in earnest, figure out how to leave my current position, and so on and so forth.

I want to dance. I want to scream.

I want to run naked out of the office.

Fiance called her mother to tell her the good news. Her mother said, “Well, it isn’t really a job offer yet if you have to meet with the dean.”

Mothers.

Sigh.

I want to do cartwheels.

But I have to remain stoic for now until we figure out the next step for me.

I’ll do what my family has always done. Bottle those feelings up tight.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

(Old Cheers joke) Go to 5:50 in below clip.

Dead Horse for UND logo!

I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said about the UND logo debate, and let’s face it, most people are pretty vocal to the point of not being able to hear the other side anyway. If there are any commonplaces in this mess, they include:

1.     That this whole situation is ridiculous

2.     That the other side is ridiculous

3.     That one’s own side is the only logical thing in the world to believe in and Oh My God how stupid are you to keep bringing up this issue during the time of existence where things were going well for my side and we should have let it rest.

It looks like the powers that be are retiring the Fighting Sioux logo, leaving a Native American sized hole in the hearts of many North Dakotans and UND graduates.

For this reason, I am starting a campaign to submit Dead Horse as the new logo.

There are many great reasons for this:

1.     The name is vaguely Native American enough to vaguely offend some people without being specific enough to cause problems.

2.     Dead Horse loves a good beating, and any UND logo needs to be able to take a good beating.

3.     Zombies are "in" right now.

4.     Dead Horse will love you no matter how hard you pound him and no matter what sorts of implements you use to clobber his bones.

5.     If you have been on a college campus lately, you know that they are great places to go to kill time while you wait to grow up. They are also great for debates that have been talked to death over the course of existence. College campuses are full of students that like to discuss our bullshit bourgeois society and the death of capitalism. What better symbol of this Ouroboros of intellectualism than Dead Horse? Except maybe an Ouroboros, I guess. 

6.     Because how cool would it be to have a dead horse as your mascot?

It has also been suggested that "Dead Horse" by Guns N' Roses would make a great school song. How rocking would that be? Extremely. The answer is extremely rocking.

So vote today, vote often. Long live the UND Dead Horses!

Today I shit myself

So in the scheme of the engagement, registering for gifts should be one of the best parts, right? You get to pick out a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t buy otherwise, and people give that stuff to you. I’ve heard that this process can cause a lot of arguments between engaged couples, and while that might have been true with us, the real argument was between my body and Target. Let’s start at the beginning. 

I got to sleep in today, a wonderful long sleep that lasted until 10, which is pretty good for me these days. I woke up and felt that kind of sleep drunk you get when you sleep late and walking becomes tricky.

Today we were set to complete a bunch of errands. First we had to return a book to the library, return an overdue movie, mail some late bills, make a deposit at the bank, pick up more paint at lowes and make a credit card payment there and at Home Depot (also late).

We had a wonderful lunch at Samurai Asian Fusion. I had a Philly roll and a Tuna roll. I recommend the philly roll, which is salmon, cream chese and cucumber. I highly recommend the sweet potato roll, which is nicely sweet and a bit crunchy in the middle. It’s a great “dessert” roll if you are having three.

Then we went to Target. I’ve written about my aversion to shopping before in this blog, but this was a special kind of hell, since today every newly minted freshman and his or her parents were shopping for college supplies. Shelves were empty, particularly pillows. The place was crawling with emotion – kids ready to start their new independence while contrarily relying on their parents to set them up.

Fiance and I got the scanner from the service counter after a lot of hoopla with the registry machine since she had already done a few things online. We armed ourselves with large frappachinos and a sense of dread. She’s great at lists, and had already procured a list of items from Herberger’s at one of the wedding shows we went to back in February (she’s organized like that. I would have lost it long before March).

We started in the bedding. And after much debate, had decided on a few sheets, a comforter, quilts, and all that jazz.

Sidebar: guys, you must be very delicate in this whole process. There will be many things on your registry that don’t make the slightest bit of sense. Like waffle irons. I like a good waffle as much as the next person, but cleaning them, mixing batter, and the hassle of storage space for them makes me cringe at the idea of having one. Nevertheless, there will be a waffle iron on your registry. The best you can do is resign yourself to the fact that you are going to get a lot of stuff that you don’t want to deal with, but hey, relationships!

Luckily, we both do agree on a lot of things that we don’t need, particularly duvets. Neither of us knew what the hell it was or why we would want one, yet there was a whole aisle of them to choose from. We guessed it was like a summer comforter. I tried to imagine finding space for it in the house/apartment. We agreed to skip it. (Turns out a duvet is like a sleeping bag for your comforter. Yes, your blanket needs a blanket. And its this kind of thing that makes me hate people who invent things.)

We got through the rest of the bedding stuff after much discussion and moving out of the way for others to get through on their way to higher education. Gangs of college kids roamed the store and were too hip for all this.

We started looking at the bathroom stuff, trying to figure out what color scheme to go with, and finding the selection lacking. Any color we liked would inevitably have only a few items left for scanning, and not a full set of towels, hand towels, rugs, washcloths, and so on was to be found. In a store filled with a glut of choice, there was none to be found in the bath section.

Perhaps it was poetry that my body rejected Target in the bathroom section, because it was then that I shit my pants.

Literally. 

And thus, without warning, ended our first foray into registering. I was secretly happy to have a legitimate reason to leave. Fiance was secretly happy this happened, because she hates shopping about as much as I do, and this meant we didn’t have to go get groceries after. We could go home, I could shower, finish painting the basement, and she could nap. We’d work on the registry online and go back another day.

Sidenote: Naps are the best way to escape Fargo, even just for a little bit.

I don’t have much of an ending for this, but I have known about my aversion to department stores for a long time and will just end this with a prose poem I wrote once about Walmart after reading Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”

Out of food, I make my way along the streets of Megaville with the defrost melting the grayish haze on the windshield.

Once at Wal-Mart, I manhandle my cart along the piles of boxes on the ground, almost hitting the pickled herring. I stop to decide what flavor of spaghetti sauce I want tonight, Garden Chunky or Garlic Overload. Florescent lights accentuate the bulbous hips of a sweatsuit-clad woman stockpiling Ramen Noodles.

               

My Viking ancestors had the well-stocked fields of England to shop through; I have tiled aisles with twenty kinds of popcorn.  I have stores that are paved over for bigger stores to give me more options.  Like twenty-one varieties of popcorn.  Low fat, buttered, natural, salted, desalted, light butter, imitation butter extract, movie theater butter, single packs, 6-packs, 12-packs, family size, salted with butter…

I try to decide between the butter and movie theater butter – under the intercom system thanking me for choosing Wal-Mart and the monotone drone of the freezers beyond the Arizona style barbecue chips – before leaving the butter on the shelf and leaving my mule-like cart. I place the movie theater butter next to the TV dinners and walk away, past the lone cashier among the row of registers, back to the frosted car and my empty stomach.

Open letter to Life

Dear life,

I get the joke. Ha ha. That was a good one. I’m amazed at the elaborateness of your prank, how you involved so many people in this thing. You are like “The Game” times a million. Bravo.

It was like you had me on puppet strings, the way you got me to focus on my studies in school with promises that there would be some sort of reward at the end of it. I did my best for you – state competitor in extracurriculars, top of HS class, great scholarship for college. You even got the college to shortlist me as senior of the year. Things were going well, a good high peak, you might say.

Then you had me sell shoes for years as I looked for jobs related to my major. You whispered promises of the baby boomer generation leaving their jobs soon, and there would be a glut of openings in every field. Still waiting on that one. Nicely played, life. I like the way you came in at the last second to ruin their retirement savings so they would never be able to leave their positions. Better yet, you managed to just absorb the jobs of those that did retire so that people are working 2 or 3 jobs instead of one, saving the company money on salary.

You threw me a bone with the newspaper gig, which took about 1 year to sap the strength from my soul, and another to pound the snot out of what was left. All the while, I kept developing my skills as advised – I learned to write quickly on deadline, to express ideas and feelings through story, to meet and interview people on the spot, to collect information and impart that information clearly to others. I like to think I got good at it. I’m still learning, but aren’t we all?

Every good story has some bits of relief, and graduate school was certainly that. I was once again in my element, where hard work is rewarded, and I actually thought perhaps teaching would be a good option. Hey, I’ve always been a good student, and my students seemed to be pretty cool with me even when they were getting bad grades.

That was one of the best twists, since you managed to set up a good system where way more master’s degrees and PhDs are produced than are needed in academia, which leads to a great Ouroboros system where colleges are getting people to pay for degrees and then turn around and work for those same colleges for less than they would make at an entry level job, and with no benefits. They make their own subservient labor force and get paid by people who want to get into that job pool. Genius!

The best trick by far is the way you continually dangle little rays of hope out there – life-changing possibilities that make me believe that maybe, just maybe, you don’t suck so much, that things can be better. The way you set it up so employers can take months to get back to you for an interview, then weeks to get back to you after the interview and still expect you to start the next day – well done. The way you set it up so we have to interview multiple times at the same place – masterstroke.

OK, life, you got me. You got me good. I tip my hat to you. You got me to work my ass off for the American dream that says hard work gets me ahead in you, Life. You even got us to believe in you so much that we dug a financial hole to cover basic medical, food, housing costs, figuring surely you wouldn’t stretch out the joke much longer. But you did, you took that joke all the way to the breaking point. That’s fucking commitment, my friend, and I double salute you.

I’m anxious to see what your next trick is. Perhaps you can have a fourth person leave my office so I can do four people’s jobs for the price of one. Perhaps you can continue to keep me in Fargo, where there are no opportunities for my Fiance. I didn’t think you would be so crass as to go for this type of kick in the balls, Jackass humor, but you did, and it’s been awesome. 

I enjoy a good poop joke, as you well know, but there’s only so much shit you can watch one eat, isn’t there? I think it’s time to stop joking, Life. My sides are splitting. I’m tired of laughing so much. You got me, you got me good. Can we move on, please?

Sincerely,

Fargo Jones

Life of an adjunct teacher

Note: entirely too much of this is true

Hello, Mr. Jones, this is the chair of the local college. I'd like to see if you are willing to teach a class this semester.

No, this semester.

That's right. You will? Great. So, you start tonight. Yes, I said tonight.

Well, that's the thing. We've known about this class for three months, but I'm finally getting around to it now. I know we expect students to work on their projects before the day they are due, but hey, this is the real world, and I had stuff to do.

So, I can’t tell you what class you’ll be teaching, or who is in it. Just take a good attendance for a few days and please let me know. We also don’t like to tell our teachers where their classes are. We find it keeps them on their toes, ready to improvise and be creative. Just ask the students if they have you for a teacher. I know you’ve never taught this class before, but I’m sure you’ll do fine.

We took the liberty of picking the books for this class. However, we only ordered enough for half the students in the class. The others should arrive in three weeks. Until then, prepare lessons as best as you can. Ask if anyone has purchased the books. Someone usually has. You can get the name and the ISBN from that. It might be faster to order it off Amazon yourself, but we don’t reimburse for that. Just borrow a student’s in the meantime. I suggest you go down to the copy machine together and copy what you need. We can’t reimburse you for that.

We also like you to use technology in the classroom and encourage it. What? Oh, no, we don’t supply any of that equipment. But rest assured that whatever computer you have, it won’t hook up to our systems. Since you are teaching after hours, no one is on campus to help you hook anything up.

What? You need to get online? You can using your computer. The directions are all online on how to hook it up. Since you don’t have an office, the IT people can’t find you so they won’t be able to help. The IT people take off around 4 anyway, so don’t expect them to get to you soon.

Our administrative assistants are all gone for the day, so you’ll have to print out your own syllabuses. We don’t reimburse for that either. Budgets are tight this year you know.

If you find you are in the wrong classroom, would you mind just teaching there until the other professor shows up? We find that this kind of interaction can be a good way to meet your colleagues and share styles.

I know the administrative assistants will be back tomorrow, but it’s best not to bother them with things like copies and books and other course-related stuff. Try to keep conversations to how busy things are and how nice it is to see the students back. Weather is also a good topic.

Your office? Well, that’s tricky. We weren’t sure you were desperate enough to do this for us. I mean, we know you have college loans you will be paying off your entire life, so we know there are enough of you out there that we can do this like this, but still, sometimes people say no. In other words, your office is going to be in the hallway next to the men’s bathroom. If you need privacy with a student, I suggest walking around campus until you find an empty room. You’ll have to use your personal phone for student contacts. Call IT about getting an email address. They’ll get back to you in a week or so. Since you are in the system at another college as an adjunct, you probably won’t get an email here anyway. Or a check. Our system doesn’t like you.

Our email system isn’t really good anyway, so I suggest setting up a gmail account. We do have a mail box set up in the department office for you, where everything else you need is. You’ll get keys in two weeks.

I know the union doesn’t like us to hire this way, but we’ll be backdating your checks, so everyone will be happy. Your first check should arrive in November.  It’ll be as if you spent the last week preparing. I know you’ll do well with the class tonight. I suggest ice breaker exercises for the first week until you get your books. Try to make them relevant to the material that you aren’t yet aware of for this class.

You may notice a difference in the class since we recently cut the programs that help ease the transition into college for nontraditional and borderline students. Those programs were bringing down our graduation rate by almost a percent, so we can now safely say 25 percent of our students graduate in 6 years.

Although I don’t know which classroom you are in, be prepared with multiple layers of clothing, as our heating system is on the fritz, causing the rooms to be 90 degrees. Or 50. Depending on the quarter-hour. Also please ignore the other faculty member in the room. That’s also her office.  Look for the room where the previous class is still talking to the professor for the first half hour of your class. The next class’s students will likely help you know when to leave by coming in during the last half hour of your class.

Please bring your own chalk/white board markers.

Bring a white board as well.

Earplugs are helpful as the grounds crew will be tearing down one of the walls of your building while you are teaching.

We have training courses on technology in the classroom, but they are during your class. The first such session is in December.

Your parking permit will work for the lot on the other end of campus. Sorry, but last minute hires don’t get in the close lots. Also it’s 200 bucks. No we don’t reimburse. So that will come out of your first check, so you’ll get paid actually in December. The line at the parking office is pretty long, so get there early. You might not get one, and will get to meet the nice people in the parking office for the rest of the semester as you battle tickets. You could also use the meter system which doesn’t work, but likes money and doesn’t like giving change.

We have about 50 pages of paperwork for you to fill out with the same information. I advise making copies, since none of it will go through right and will get lost with all your personal information including social security number and you won’t know until you don’t get your check in December, in which case, you’ll get paid in January.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with our students at this place of learning. We pride ourselves on being a discourse community of respect.

I think I saw my soul tonight

To the crazy-ass woman who stopped me on 13^th Ave.

Dear woman, 

I never met you before tonight, when I had to fully stop my car on 13^th Avenue to let you cross the street. I know you probably aren’t reading this, but I figure you can mentally collect internet traffic in the room in your head where I imagine there are shit stains on the walls spelling out your various conspiracy theories about salsas that are made in New York City. 

I was dropping off some books at the Carlson branch of the Fargo Library and took I-29 down to 13^th Ave. to stop at Cashwise to grab some non-curdled milk, the best kind of milk in my book, and some other provisions. I saw the bus at the stop in front of Kinkos from the time I got off the highway, but figured it would have enough time to get going before I needed to turn. I figured it would be a waste of energy to change lanes to turn right in front of the bus. 

Some guys with bikes got off the bus and headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and as the bus pulled away, you stepped forward from behind the bus bench. You were a heavier-set woman and wearing some sort of shirt that was a loud turquoise, and your chin length frizzy mop of hair was a color of yellow not before known to man. I guesstimate you to be in your 20s, with a dark tan. 

You walked forward, past the bus bench, and hovered a foot off the curb into my lane. I wanted to turn, but was riding the brake to see what you were up to and to give you time to see me and back the fuck off. The road behind me was relatively clear, and in full sight of me you stepped off the curb into my lane as I hit my blinker. 

You waved. 

I slowed down some more. 

You waved more frantically. 

What the shit?

You were now fully in front of my car, waving to me like I saved your drowning puppy. You then started walking around the car to my window, still waving, and smiling, and I have no idea who the fuck you are. I searched my memory banks for former students you might match, but came up empty. No one, no one on earth that I know could be you. 

I was fully stopped now, and rolled down my window slightly, in retrospect I suppose this would have been the perfect opportunity for you to shove whatever weapons you might have been carrying in at my face, but you still seemed preoccupied with waving frantically at me. 

“Hi.” You said. 

“Hi.” I said. 

That was the extent of our conversation. You wheeled around and darted across 13^th before more cars could approach. 

What the hell? 

I finished my turn, parked, got some groceries, and tried to shake off the encounter. No, you are not anyone I know. Not at all. 

I am now terrified of you. And I will have trouble sleeping tonight without thinking of you crawling through the window while my fiance and I sleep and start waving again from the foot of the bed. You scare me. 

Please stop waving at cars. We are not your friends. 

Sincerely, 

Fargo Jones

My weekend started with my fiance punching me in the face

It drew tears, but no blood. We were both in bed on Saturday, she got up, grabbed a shirt from where I had left it on the bed, and handed it to me without looking just as I was sitting up. I immediately fell back to the bed. If life was going to give me such a strong signal, I wasn’t going to ignore it. Nor could I ignore the sharp pain as I checked my nose for breakage. My glasses were flattened, but I bent them back into shape.

Although the bed and life wanted me to keep sleeping, we had to get ready to go to the cities once again. This time, it was for an eco-triathalon. Her brother was competing.

An eco-triathalon consists of 4.5 miles of kayaking, 7 miles of mountain biking, and 3 miles of trail running. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but the hills near Rochester are brutally unforgiving. We stayed in the cities with friends overnight, and woke at 4:30 a.m. Sunday to make the drive. We were volunteering. Well, Fiance was volunteering, and I was voluntold. I’m used to that.

We drove through about 90 minutes of thick fog, wondering if Vikings were lurking in the mist and ready to attack. I stretched Scooby Doo jokes and impressions to the breaking point and beyond.

We got to the camp where the race was held and pulled in at the first tent we saw, not knowing what we were supposed to do. We got out and walked over to the tent. The person there took one look at us, half a look, and said, “Volunteers, go see Stacy at the other tent, down the road and to the right.”

On the way back to the car, Fiance looked at me. “How did she know we were volunteers?”

Me, grabbing my man boobs: “I have no idea.”

We drove over to the other tent, where Stacy called out our names before we could even say anything. Fiance had joked by email when she volunteered that xl shirts would do, “as long as they fit over my boobs.” I guess that was a giveaway. Being the most out of shape people at an event for athletes makes one stand out.

Also not being able to talk about some obstacle course marathon that several people took part in this summer.

But we were there to support Fiance’s brother. We were set at a watering station for the bikers to help direct them down one path or another depending on what lap they were on. We saw people carrying their bikes, one guy’s pedal fell off early in the second lap and he used his bike as a scooter to keep going. A woman’s blood-crusted hand grabbed a cup of water as she pedaled by, looking as if to say “Why the hell am I doing this to myself.” The racers were a good mix of all sorts of people, evident in the 90 minute difference between first and last place. But everyone finished, including Fiance’s brother, and I’m proud of him for that.

The only other noteworthy piece of this day was the one port-a-potty they had for the event, which smelled worse than any I’ve been in, ever. Apparently, Fiance noted, there is no corn left in southeastern Minnesota, because it all ended up in that thing.

All in all, it was an enjoyable time, minus the fact we stood out like kids at a NAMBLA convention. I’ve never been terribly athletic. I used to run 5 miles during the summers of undergraduate school, more for lack of anything else to do in my small hometown than anything. As the years progressed, I have put on weight, exercising from time to time for a few months, but always losing interest/time/money. We’ve decided instead to focus on eating lots of vegetables, fruits and home-cooked meals. It’s been working so far for mild weight loss/stabilization, which is fine with me. With a wedding, moving, job changes, unemployment, and selling a house all going on at the same time, I’d rather not add another obligation to the mix of insanity. I’d have to punch myself in the face.