Skip to main content

Guilty Pleasures

Friends,

There’s a certain gratification that comes from imposing order on chaos. Whether it’s crafting a story, assembling a puzzle or building a project, every completed stage is delightful, even though there may never be a “finished product”. One of my guilty pleasures, genealogy, has mutated beyond a one-dimensional search for ancestors into a quest to tackle the social fabric that connects me to the world. My genealogical web (family tree seems an inadequate metaphor) has metastasized into a large and eclectic collection of interweaving connections between folks with varying degrees of affiliation. Think of it as seven degrees of JP González. The only rule for getting added is holding some relation with someone who is already on the tree. As you might imagine, this means a good chunk of folks on the tree hold little or no blood relation to yours truly. Still, it’s satisfying to connect the dots and, particularly rewarding when I get to merge individuals. A son is also a husband (perhaps married several times), and a father who, thus, may appear multiple times – depending on the context in which he was found and added. Another rewarding activity is purely circumstantial: it’s when the quantity of people in the database reaches a memorable number. I recently surpassed 66,666 individuals (which warrants celebrating with a screenshot). To help put that into perspective, if we were talking about donuts, that would be 5,555.5 dozen!


I’m betting you too fall down the rabbit hole once in a while. What secret obsession gets you carried away? Or, are you that unicorn that leads a perfectly balanced life? In either event, I’d love to hear from you, so drop me a note whilst celebrating national donut day by scarfing down that pumpkin spice donut (or cruller?)

Happy National Donut Day!

P.S. Not sure what to do to celebrate? Get a free donut at a participating purveyor, or, better yet, stay at a donut-themed hotel room!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Donut Doodle Dandy

Dear Members and Constituents, In trying to figure-out Wednesday’s cool-looking Google Doodle ( Jorge Luis Borges’ 112 th birthday ), I stumbled across a list of Google Doodles you’ll never see. This, and a Rockies game later that day, were sufficient inspiration to get my head spinning around what other doodles Google might never noodle? I’m sure you’ll probably have a few ideas of your own, but I was able to come-up with a couple. How about a former Colorado Rockies player whose unfortunate encounter with a moth put him in the news this week? The Matt Holliday doodle might look something like this… Another item which, surprisingly enough, has not been made into a doodle are donuts. Although I was slightly taken aback to find this delicious pastry has not been featured, after the initial disappointment, I decided to take matters into my own hands and take a stab at one (perhaps Google can use it next year for national donut day )… or to celebrate Greek police having “ blown a ho...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Dozen Rules to Live By

Friends, When it comes to the big questions, there are far too many platitudes, truisms, cliches and BS. Bookshelves are lined with so much advice, you’d think we would have answered them all by now. So, why do people keep doing it? I couldn’t tell you. Whatever the reason, here’s one more exploration to add to the interminable list. I’ve left God out of this post, so these “rules” should come in handy whether you believe life has meaning, or you think purpose is just our prefrontal cortex’s way of sabotaging our limbic system. And, since donuts come in dozens, it felt fitting that my list just happens to have twelve rules.   Do it! (what are you waiting for?). Life sometimes feels like a dress rehearsal. So much time spent preparing for the future, there’s little time left to actually live life. Habit, routine and inertia have a way of filling the day. Try something new, who knows, you might enjoy it. Don’t overthink it. But, what to do? Give-in to a...
2 comments
Read more

Enchanted Donuts

Friends, Mix equal doses of isolation, adaptation, and time. Add a pinch of random stowaway life forms. Remove predators. The result? An eclectic collection of surprising plants and animals known as the Galápagos Islands. Here, iguanas swim and dive for food, the largest members of the sunflower family grow into 45 foot tall trees, and boulder-sized tortoises blow past the century mark with ease. Frigatebird throats of red, boobie feet of blue, moth-pollinated flowers of white. And, having been granted constitutional rights , sea lions own most park benches in town. Surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish of all shapes and sizes, the only downside of spending time in this remote Ecuadorian province appears to be the complete absence of donut shops. I suppose I too can adapt.  Happy Friday!
Post a Comment
Read more