Backflip

WARNING: Super, x-tra long post ahead. Continue at your own risk!

What an awesome weekend.

It all started on Thursday after work when I stopped over at Glenn’s house to hang out for a bit and then head down to Cincy to meet Greg and Nate. The plan was to go to Kings Island on Friday and hopefully avoid the crowds since it was a work day.

Let’s start back at Glenn’s. Right before we left I was super surprised to hear Glenn ask, “Should I bring Settlers?” He was speaking of Settlers of Catan which is this x-cellent board game that I was introduced to a few weekends ago by Josiah. The real excitement was that I had ordered the game in hopes of taking it to Cincy but it hadn’t arrived in the mail yet. The big rush was due to the fact that Nate refused to play the game due to circumstances at work and it would be a good prank to bring the game (especially since he knew I wasn’t getting my copy in time). Glenn knew nothing of all this so it was pretty horkin’ amazing he mentioned bringing it. Armed with Settlers and some other gear we headed down to Cincy.

After some good conversation and music we arrived in Cincy and hung out with Greg and Nate. Eating at B-Dubs and playing some Rock Band made the night very enjoyable. But the real fun started when we broke out Settlers and had a go. I know inside jokes are only fun if you know the joke but I have to make a record of the events for future reference. Apologies for not explaining, this post is already super long and it’s still only Thursday night. New lingo for Settlers – shale (instead of ore), forest (not lumber), brick (supposed to be clay), wheat (instead of grain), sheep (for wool) (we actually didn’t get any of them correct, whoops), Soldier Boi, Indiana Jones Theme Song (this became a re-occuring song for the whole weekend), House (for settlement), and Hotel (not city). Heh heh. Good times.

We awoke pretty early and headed to McD’s then to Kings Island to ride the new coaster named Diamondback. It was pretty sweet. Super smooth and fun. The wait wasn’t bad at all either (just 45 min.). Another sweet ride is the Firehawk which has riders lying on their backs or stomachs and moving parallel to the ground. Completely different than any other coaster and very enjoyable. Other happenings at KI included us stopping some line cutters and getting into an argument, an interesting discussion about being prudent, the Indiana Jones Theme Song, the line – “She was with another man” – from a song by some guy with a crazy voice, picking up a balloon with my 5-finger shoes while on a ride only to get it taken away by a nice KI worker named Emily, accidentally popping the same balloon in line and people freaking out, bing! bing! bing! (watch the commercials for the Palm Pre and you’ll know where this comes from), some comments on my 5-finger shoes, a sweet ride called the Crypt, stealing a table from a kid (me, not one of my prouder moments), giving it back to him (thanks Glenn) only to have a different group of people take it (ah well), perfect weather (cloudy and cool), beating Greg and Nate on the Racers and talking smack to ‘em the n-tire time on the ride, and conquering the park by 4:30. All in all it was a great time.

After grabbing dinner at BD’s Mongolian grill Nate headed back to C-bus (boo!) and Greg, Glenn and I headed back to Greg’s and then into downtown Cincy to look for a hotel. Using technology (laptop computer getting free wifi + a GPS) we ended up in a decent hotel (even for Kentucky, haha!). We played some Settlers and then headed out to meet some of Glenn’s friends at Bar Louie. We hung out there most of the night and had a good time. Parted ways with Glenn’s friends and Greg and headed back to the hotel for some more Settlers (1v1) and some pizza (yum!).

Saturday morning we got up early and headed over to Lis and Brian’s house to help them move. A tree fell on their house on the 4th of July and they were finally able to get in to move all their belongings. This also meant that nothing was packed. So we moved from 9:45ish to 4:30ish. It was tough work but there was lots of help (thanks Glenn, Dan and Allison!). And it was a pretty fun move. Dan and Glenn are x-cellent at keeping things light and funny. This helped time pass uber quickly and we got Lis and Brian all moved into their super nice house (quite an upgrade in my opinion) safely. I was pretty toasted after the move and after an enlightening car ride back to Dayton to drop Glenn off I headed home and vegged out the rest of the night.

I did start reading a book titled “Scratch Beginnings” by Adam Shepard. It’s a story about a middle class guy who sells everything and tries to make a living with just the clothes on his back and $25 in a completely foreign city. His goal is to get out of poverty and to show that the American Dream is still alive. He’s sick of hearing crap from Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) about how the American Dream is dead. So he sets out to prove it’s still alive. It’s a very intriguing story and I ended up finishing it on Sunday. More on that later.

Saturday night also heralded the arrival of my friend Josiah. We hung out for a bit, watched some TLJC movie previews  with Jordan (which are x-cellent) and then called it a night.

Sunday was church (“Faith comes first – everything else follows”), the rootbeer stand with my parents, and bowling with peeps from Sogeti. I bowled a 160 and felt pretty good about it but didn’t come close to Glenn or Todd who both bowled a 212. Sogeti bowling team anyone?

The rest of Sunday was spent doing laundry, going to the grocery, grilling (no burnage!) and reading. I finished Scratch Beginnings and had a great conversation with Jordan R. about poverty and class differences. Some startling revelations from the book and convo are included below:

Speaking about why people aren’t happy, “So many of us don’t have five-year plans on how we are going to better our lot over time rather than search for quick fixes. A five-year plan is invaluable. It gives us a sense of purpose in our present lives, the peace of mind every day that what we are doing has a purpose, a means to an end.”

“Unfortunately, few of us take ownership of our lives. We live in an “It ain’t my fault” society. Nothing is our fault. Ever. We’re fat because of genetics, we suck at math because we had a bad teacher… it has nothing to do with the fact that we aren’t eating right or exercising, or that we aren’t doing our homework… It’s everybody else’s fault. It ain’t ours.”

“3 types of people in life:
1. Those who make things happen
2. Those who watch things happen
3. Those who sit back, scratch their heads and think, “What the in the hork just happened?”

There are actual differences in speach patterns in different classes. Lower classes tend to speak in circular patterns, never getting the their point. Middle class people are usually direct and don’t waste time.

Pretty interesting eh? It is a great book and a quick read. The whole poverty topic is very strange to me and I look forward to finding out more about it.

As a good end to a great weekend my Monday has gone super well. To start things off I began billing at AO Smith in Tipp City today. I’m doing some Project Management and Business Analyst work for their Matrix One system. Billing rox (I’m a productive member of society once more!) but what really made my day happened in the lobby at 8 a.m. I was signing in when a lady who must have been behind me while walking in stops and stares at me.

“You must be a Lindeman.”

Shocked, I look up and don’t recognize who was speaking. Then she introduces herself, she’s the daughter of a guy that goes to my church. I have seen her a few times at picnics and such but had never talked to her. She was happy to see me and I her. It was a great start to a great day.

As a side note. That was the second time I had been pegged as a Lindeman in just about as many weeks. So strange and so flattering – or should it be embarrassing? Haha, who knows?

A few recent events have spawned thoughts in me about my heritage. Namely, where did my families come from and what were they like? My thinking hasn’t uncovered much information at the moment so this post is going to be mostly about separate events that led to me gaining this new appreciation for my heritage.

I will say I’ve never been overly interested in the past. I’m inclined to live in the present moment so past events normally holds little meaning to me. However, that’s lookin’ to change.

The first event was a potential consulting opportunity in Germany. I do know I’m 1/2 German so the prospect of going to Germany was pretty neat. I was toying with the idea of looking up where my grandparents were born (if they were even born there, I don’t even know!) and seeing if any family members were still around. This was in the back of my mind as the other events took place. The Germany opportunity is still up in the air so this might happen for realz, I’ll have to wait and see.

The second event was just last night. I was leaving my Alexander Lesson and walking out to my car which was parked on the street. A random guy on a bicycle was riding past, being a fellow biker I said “Hi” to him. He looked at me and said, “You must be a Lindeman.” I didn’t really know what da hork to say so I just said, “Yup” as he rode away. I know Troy is a smallish town and my Dad is well known since his picture is always in the newspaper next to his columns.  However, that seemed pretty strange. Perhaps the man on the bike is a long time family friend or something, but I didn’t recognize him. This event got me thinking about my family and what is unique about us that a person riding by on a bike would notice. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. I mean, doesn’t everyone have 3 eyes? Heh heh.

Then the real kicker came at work today while I was talking to one of the sales guys named Brian. We were talking about possibly opportunities for me and I brought up the Germany gig (explained above). This prompted him to start grilling me on my heritage. Of which I quickly discovered I knew nothing. Attempting to turn the tables I went on the offensive and tried to find out about Brian’s family (Brian is very intense so while we weren’t really battling it can feel that way at times). He has quite an amazing story which I’ll attempt to summarize below:

My memory isn’t that great so I’m gonna be vague about the details. Brian was born in Madagascar, and his parents are from Finland. Members of his family fought in the Finish army in WWII against the Russians. He moved to America when he was nine, which was quite surprising. He was in the US military (air force possibly?) and later discovered that many of the medals and accomplishments he earned in the US military his Grandfather had earned in the Finish military. It was very neat listening to him spin his tale. And it didn’t stop there.

He went on to clearly explain something I’ve believed for a long time. Which is that even if we don’t know it our families strongly influence our behaviors and actions. We learn from our parents and imitate their actions even if we don’t realize we are doing it. A good name for these actions and behaviors is parent tapes. We’re simply replaying what we saw and heard growing up. Now, it’s quite obvious we aren’t carbon copies of our parents but if you dig under the skin I’m sure you’ll find a whole host of similarities passed on to each generation.

All this heritage talk has got me interested in finding out where I came from and what events took place to get me to the place I am today. Not sure exactly how to go about this but I’m gonna start with my living Grandparents and go from there. I’ll let you know if I find out anything interesting.