Doubting Thomas Blog

I hope I’m always capable of seeing the bright side.

Last night, when I was riding up Delaware Avenue, I overhead two men greeting each other from opposite sides of the street. The first one must have asked the other guy to join him, because the answer I heard from the second man was “No, I’m on my way home, I had a great night!”

The second man was pushing a shopping cart down his side of the street, and as it hit each crack in the sidewalk, the bottles and cans rattled. The cart was full, and he had a couple large plastic bags full of more bottles and cans that were hanging over the sides of the cart.

It made me think of how often people ask me how the bike taxi business is doing. My definition of a “great night” varies, because some nights are great for different reasons. Sometimes it’s a great night because I earn a decent amount, but some nights are great because the weather was perfect, or because I met good people, or saw old friends, or made a new contact with a future customer or potential business partner.

I know the cynical among us have already dismissed my comments above as sentimental and lacking any real social commentary. Bah to them.

The cynical among us need to take a moment to think about the fact that the two men I saw last night are real men, not something made up to tug at the heartstrings of the liberal and sentimental. If the cynics can’t step outside of their postmodern grumpiness long enough to think, just think broadly and considerately, then they are stuck in a rut of recycled, ready-made conclusions, and aren’t living a real life themselves.

I think most intelligent people agree that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. A cynical approach to everything may seem like they’re examining life, but if they’re always coming to the same grouchy conclusion, is it?

…they would have done this first (and maybe better!):

drhorrible.com

I was lucky to have friends in town for a mutual friend’s wedding this weekend. It’s amazing how many people I know from “the old days” that I’m not in touch with anymore, even though they are good and decent people… we just don’t make the effort to drive to faraway cities (or to the West Coast, for that matter).

The men I talked to were mainly all dads, and I think the consensus was that we take trips mainly with or to family, so other trips to see friends are squeezed out of the schedule. I mentioned to another friend the other day that I’m trying to get all my friends and family in one place, something I called “Total Thomas Convergence” (or TTC for short). I have a few great friends in Buffalo, but in fact everyone I know is extremely busy, as is my little family, so we rarely have social time with grownups who are not immediate members of our family. (Fortunately, the grownups who are immediate members of our family are also good and decent people!)

We did end up having a little bit of a pool party, too, because we had a few people who were in town for the wedding come over. The thermometer in the pool said 80, but none of us who went in the water felt that was an honest reckoning. In fact, one swimmer was sure it was 80 Kelvin, not 80 Fahrenheit.

And I did manage to finish the steps up to the deck before the guests arrived. After they left, I finished the railing and the gate on the deck, so it is now as safe as could be. I have a little more to do on the deck, however, including a handrail for the steps. I’m also going to do a little wiring, so that there is an outdoor, grounded power outlet for the pool filter, and I’ll install a motion-sensor light on the peak of the garage to shine down on the pool. (The web-cams are already installed, but they are not infrared cameras, so the lights will come in handy at night.)