Author: James David (Page 14 of 27)

For the past six weeks, I’ve attended an improv comedy class. Well, I missed the first week with COVID but I’ve already told that story. This was my second improv class. I took another one when I lived in DC. That one had a younger crowd of people in their 20s and 30s. In this one, there was much more variation in age among the participants. This one also had a public graduation show as a focal point instead of just doing exercises.

I took an improv class again for two reasons. One was to have an opportunity to meet new people and make new connections. This didn’t work as well as I’d hoped but I’ll keep trying. The second was to force me to be more present and spontaneous in conversation. Sometimes my conversations with prospective clients can get repetitive, introducing a danger that I go into autopilot, miss their core concerns, and lose out on the business. A similar dynamic can occur in my personal life as I focus more on what I’m going to say next than on what my conversational partner is saying now. In improv, you cannot get away with doing that. You must be present with your scene partner and in so doing get out of your own head. That alone was worth the time and money I invested into taking the class.

On Saturday, we had our graduation show. Only 8 of the 13 people who started the class were there for myriad reasons and there were only about that many people in the audience. Two of the audience members were even people I’d invited. My set was with 5 of the 8 as there were two sets during the show. During the set, I gave a monologue about a certain groundhog (or more realistically series of groundhogs) named Rufus that resides under my parents’ shed. This idea resulted from a prior scene where a young child named a racoon. My three scenes weren’t great in my own assessment. I inadvertently took over the first one about a frog from my scene partner and it stalled. A second saw me trying to buy a Christmas present while hopelessly lost in what became a French shopping mall. And I could not even remember my third scene at dinner afterwards. Overall my performance was better and I had more fun during the practice show we did on Tuesday, but that was largely immaterial.

Will I take more improv classes next year? Maybe. I don’t feel any compulsion to make a run at becoming a cast member of SNL. It may depend on scheduling and what other activities I find.

I flew down to Miami on Friday afternoon, took a rideshare to my brother’s apartment, and then waited for my sister-in-law to get home from work. We ate an early dinner at a place I’d eaten at with them previously, a rare-in-Miami southern place with some very good fried chicken.

I’m not a beach person, much to the constant chagrin of my hosts. This meant that we spent Saturday afternoon walking through Coconut Grove instead of going across to Miami Beach. There was also a visit to another holiday market, my third of the season after the two last week. This one was the worst of the three, even worse than last week’s that was interrupted by a protest, because we also had to drive quite a distance to get to it. We gave up very quickly and ordered pizza to pick up on the way back. On Sunday we did go across to Miami Beach but not to the beach itself as we walked through a section of South Beach before a quick visit to Brickell (after waiting what seemed like forever for a drawbridge in downtown because that’s a thing in Miami). Then we ate dinner at a new cocktail bar that was still finding its feet with its food offerings.

I spent most of the workday Monday watching continuing education videos. It might help my sanity if I spaced those out throughout the year, but I no longer beat myself up over having to endure two days of CLE per year. Only four more hours to go this year. Yay.

The plan was to go to the Titans game against the Dolphins on Monday Night Football. That was the original justification for my visit. Ultimately, we decided not to spend the $200 per person to drive 45 minutes up to the stadium and sit in the nosebleeds. Instead, we opted for a group parrilla dinner at an Argentinian restaurant. On this evening, it would have been warmer had we actually been in Buenos Aires and the meal would have been much less expensive. The amount of English spoken in the restaurant, though, would have been almost exactly the same.

We then returned to my brother’s apartment and watched a roller coaster of a football game that had one of the craziest endings I’ve seen in a long time and left us ruing moments earlier in the season that led to losses that will make it almost impossible for our team to make the playoffs. I’m not disappointed that we watched it on television instead of in person. We yelled just the same and at least this way we weren’t in any physical danger when the Titans pulled off the upset.

I went to two different holiday markets on Saturday, one in Raleigh and one in Durham. Neither was a first-choice activity for me but both were opportunities to spend a few hours with friends after a stop-start workweek.

The Raleigh event was in the early afternoon. It took place in the middle of Fayetteville Street, the main street downtown between the few skyscrapers. It was too warm for a holiday market but a few of the vendors had Santa-themed wares on offer. Did I accomplish any Christmas shopping? Of course not; it’s far too early for that. I also didn’t eat lunch before going. That was a mistake as it left me with a bit of a headache walking around. The dumplings that I ate when I finally did get lunch were very good though, better than my previous experience at the same restaurant.

The Durham event was centered around the lighting of a big Christmas tree in one of the angular plazas downtown that were created by the weird street alignment. The market was set up on a closed side street and there was a stage set up in the plaza for different entertainment acts. When my little group arrived, there was a Latin band playing. The sound was hardly festive, but it was at least thirty decibels too loud to make up for it. None of the vendors seemed to have gotten the holiday memo either as no one was selling anything that appeared seasonal to me. There was even a free Palestine protest starting to add even more confusion to the scene. We ended up punting on the whole idea and walking a few blocks to a place for burgers and fries. None of this was a disappointment to me but I suspect it was for my companions. I enjoyed dinner and interacting with their little one who is really starting to grow into his personality.

I was in Kentucky for most of the last week as I opted to go to my parents instead of having them come to me. Deer season was still open in Kentucky and so going to my parents meant I’d get the opportunity to hunt. I took a small buck, one of two deer we harvested on Friday and one of four for my family this season. It only took two hunts for me to tag out and my brother took only one, a stark contrast from our childhoods and a testament to all of the work that’s taken place over the years on the reclaimed strip mine we call the farm.

I ate the Thanksgiving meal with my immediate family and some of my extended family. The best part might have been the surprise on the little ones’ faces when they walked into the living room and saw that more people than just their mamaw and papaw were there. I was sure to pick them up when they ran to greet me. From what they would tell me while we ate, school is going well. The oldest is at an age that was not much fun for me so that was good to hear. Their brother wasn’t any more interested in me than he was the last time I saw him but I’m not going to give up that easily. We’re going to be buddies.

The rest of the weekend passed in relative ease. I floated several possible trips for 2024 but didn’t receive much interest from anyone, not that that will stop me from acting on any of my ideas. I’ll also have a new batch of ideas by the time we convene for Christmas, but there will be a few adventures between now and then.

I subscribed to ESPN+ a few months ago so that I could watch some sports that I’d been missing out on after some of the recent account sharing crackdowns that have taken place this year in the streaming world. This has created opportunities for me to watch a few sporting events that are relatively obscure in the United States.

Over the past month or so, the cricket world cup took place in India. These games started at 4:30 AM (3:30 after daylight savings time) and lasted through the morning. That meant that I had something to watch when I couldn’t fall back asleep. I ended up watching parts of several games through the tournament.

The final was on Sunday. India, playing at home in front of over 100,000 fans in a packed stadium, came up against Australia. India was favored. India was undefeated. Australia won. It wasn’t Brazil 1-7 Germany, but it was still painful to watch as a neutral. We don’t have anything quite like that in the United States, no sporting event where the collectively expectations of our entire nation rests on the shoulders of those on the field. Sometimes I think we’d be better off if we did as that would at least give us a single thing to rally around as a country.

I have spent most of the last week going from my bed to my chair and back and not doing much else. It didn’t impede our work as I haven’t had very much in recent weeks but that offered only limited solace given the way I felt. COVID has now taken over five weeks of my life directly, not to mention its many other effects on my life. It is certainly one acronym I wish I had never learned.

The worst part of this round of COVID is that I definitely got at least one other person sick during the period when I thought my symptoms were allergies and sinus issues after the temperatures dropped over forty degrees in under forty eight hours. My offer to purchase groceries was ignored, but I will be picking up the tab the next couple of times we go out for dinner. That still won’t help me feel any better about what happened.

The second worst part of this time was that I had to cancel all of my plans. I’ve worked to pack my fall calendar full of opportunities to do things and meet people and this sort of setback, even if temporary, doesn’t help. Everything this year has taken longer than expected and this was just one more example. I’m ready for that to change in the new year and accelerate some of the positive aspects I’m working to build in my life.

In any event, my symptoms have now cleared and I’ve resumed regularly scheduled activities. Now it’s time to throw myself into some activities before the holidays force me to hit pause again.

I attended my ten year college reunion last weekend. In some ways it feels like I only left a few days ago and in others it feels like I’ve lived lifetimes since then. Given the small size of my alma mater there weren’t activities specific to my class, just areas within larger events for various classes all reconvening in some form. That felt about right. Alumni relations aren’t a strong suit.

I didn’t feel compelled to speak with too many people. It was nice to hear how a few people are doing, but I wasn’t interested in hearing any braggarts. That was one of the reasons I opted out of social media. I will admit to making a few snap judgments looking at people. On that score, I’ve taken decent care of myself through the years. It was also odd that there were several people I spoke with where there really wasn’t anything to talk about. These were people with whom I’d spent many hours in college but we’d drifted apart. I haven’t had such a concentration of those encounters before so that was new.

This was also the first time I’d been on campus in several years. There were new buildings everywhere: dorms, academic buildings, athletic facilities. The basketball arena looked very nice, a stark contrast to the old bleachers that would sway under your weight if you jumped up and down on them. Part of me still loves an old basketball gym though. There is something magical about those places when they are really rocking. That said, if I get invited to speak as part of any prelaw event on campus I would like to see a basketball game in the new arena.

As part of my journey to make my home here, I did something almost every evening last week. Mondays are reserved for curling but there was also an e-commerce happy hour/meetup event on Wednesday, a series of short talks on Thursday, and a comedy open mic on Friday. I met a couple of people on Wednesday but I’m hardly a social butterfly. Thursday was a wash. This post, though, is about the open mic on Friday.

I also wrote about the last open mic I attended this summer. That one was in a dedicated comedy venue in what has become the hottest city in America for standup and some of those acts are now headlining comedy clubs around the country. That wasn’t the case this time. This was in the brightly lit barrel room of a brewery with an industrial fan running on low the whole time. The acts were a mix of decent-to-good, vulgar, and downright awful. There was even a ventriloquist for some reason. It was a much more typical open mic than what I witnessed in Austin.

I went to the event knowing that the performances would be hit-and-miss. That’s what you sign up for as an open mic attendee. Even the misses are part of the fun; there is a perverse satisfaction in watching someone else fail even if most people don’t like to admit it. I enjoy watching standup comedy and even though I’ve never had the urge to perform standup myself I have great respect for those who genuinely pursue the craft. Trying, learning, and building in public is hard. Most crafts don’t permit such public exposure. The closest I come is publishing this every week but my writing craft is hardly improved through the manner in which this column is written and edited most of the time.

Long walks have been a part of my life for many years now. I started taking them in law school to break the rhythm of studying for hours and hours. I walked a lot of miles through the back streets of Cambridge and to, from, up, and down the Charles. Then chronologically there have been walking tracks, city blocks, rail trails, and lakefront parks. Now most of my walks are around the perimeter of a college campus.

On Sunday, though, I journeyed about fifteen minutes’ drive to a state park to walk a gravel and rock track along a river. Fall has finally arrived and I wanted to get away from the sounds of cars and traffic and into a place where I could hear wind through trees and some flowing water. The leaves aren’t quite at their peak brilliance yet here, but there is some color already and that offered a nice visual bonus when I wasn’t looking at the ground to plot my steps across the uneven surfaces. I chose a loop trail that was about 2.5 miles, nothing crazy. There was more elevation than I’d anticipated and overall it’s probably not a trail I’ll repeat any time soon as there are several others to try in the same park but it was still a pleasant walk. Also, there were so many turtles sitting on logs in the river. It was a deja vu of sorts after going to the sea turtle rescue center a couple of weeks ago with the little ones while we were at the beach. 

I couldn’t linger as long as I’d hoped as there was some added distance between the trailhead and the parking lot that I had to traverse and I needed to get back so that I could finally have a few guests in my apartment now that it’s fully furnished. Really, this just meant following a toddler around. It was clear that I’ve not set up this apartment for little ones, but everyone enjoyed themselves anyway.

Last week was fall break for lots of schools. My schedule is not normally dictated by the school calendar, but I went to the beach to meet some family who were taking advantage of their children’s fall break. I never had a full week for fall break when I was in school, but it would have allowed for trips like this one so I wish we had.

Work continued in a more-or-less normal fashion, albeit with a few zoom-bombing interruptions from little ones who just wanted me to finish whatever meeting was ongoing in order to get back to spending time with them. During more prolonged bouts of work, I stayed behind while everyone else went to the beach or to go shopping. These periods were either in the late morning or early afternoon so I was able to eat almost every meal with others and was able to go to the park with the older kids to talk to them while they were on the swings. I also didn’t have to miss any of the trips to get ice cream that I enjoyed almost as much as the children did.

It was impossible to get any attention from the youngest one where mom or mamaw was around. And even if they weren’t it still wasn’t easy as he grabbed whatever screen was available and made his way to watch one of several children’s programs I hadn’t seen before last week.

The best part of the week was being around little ones for whom work from adults is just a temporary distraction from the serious activity of having fun with whatever game they are then playing. It was such a refreshing environment after what has been, with the exception of the previous week in Las Vegas, a slower period of work that has brought a few frustrations. Well, at least it was refreshing while no one was throwing a fit because they wanted to watch Bluey or play a game on an iPad. I was also able to commission some new watercolors for my refrigerator, one a rainbow and the other an apple tree. The exact subjects I would have chosen? Probably not, but I still see them a few times a day now and get to think about the time I get to spend with my favorite little people.