Last night I saw a man (I think it was a man) practically asking to have his life taken away.

I was driving home last night just before 8:30. It wasn't completely dark out, but enough that playing next to (or on) the highway was probably not a good idea. Probably really not a good idea. Traffic was pretty busy for that time of night, and I noticed up ahead that next to all the oncoming traffic was a single unmoving light. It looked like a motorcycle, and I figured someone had just pulled off the road for some reason.

As I got closer, I saw stuff scattered all over my side of the road, and before I could figure out what it was, I noticed a person standing along the right edge of the road (on the opposite side of the road as the motorcycle). If you've never had a person appear out of nowhere, right in front of your car, in the dark.. well, it's kind of frightening. So now I had to move over to give him room, and avoid whatever the hell was all over the road.

I managed both.

But looking in my rearview-mirror, I saw a mighty *fwooosh* of papers flying in the air and scattering further on the road and realized what it was that I had just swerved to avoid hitting. This guy must have dropped a bunch of paper while he was riding, and was now playing a real-life version of Frogger, trying to reclaim whatever these papers were.

What could be on those dozens of sheets of paper that someone would risk their life for them?

I'm realizing more and more that most people, myself included, seem to live most of their lives completely backwards. So much time and effort is put towards achieving goals that haven't really been defined, or are vague enough that they shouldn't even be referred to as "goals".

Define your goals

If you don't know what you want, or what you're working towards, you'll never get there. You have to figure out where you want to be rather than trying to figure out what to do to chase down the ellusive goal of happiness or contentment. It's only once you have the goal in mind that you can start taking steps to get there.

Without knowing your goals, it's like you're running in a race where you can't see any of the other runners, and you have no idea where the goal is - for all you know, you could have reached the end of the race a long time ago, but you had no idea that that was where you wanted to stop.

Be realistic

Setting goals like "I want to be an olympic swimmer by the end of the month" just doesn't work. Even attempting something that's unrealistic will just leave you frustrated and deter you in the future. Know yourself, know your strengths.

Know your limits

It's important to know your strengths and utilize them, taking advantage of anything you have that may get you ahead. But even more important is to realize your limits - and not accept them. If something is going to hold you back from your goal, that something needs to be overcome.

Don't give up

Life is really good (really really really good) at throwing you curveballs when you least need or expect them. Don't let these cause you to lose sight of the ultimate goal. Each hardship just makes you appreciate everything that much more when you finally get where you're going.

Don't forget about the others…

Everyone else is (more or less) in the same position as you. Don't knock other people down to get ahead. Destroying other people's goals will just make reaching yours seem less fulfilling and leave you feeling like you're missing something. Treat people the way you want them to treat you. If you treat people like crap, or crush them physically/financially/emotionally - it will come back to haunt you.

Saturday, September 20th. I'm officially supposed to sing at this Red Cross fundraiser festival thing. Thingy.

It's going on from noon until mid-night (I think), it's for a good cause, and it's going to rock… and I'm going to be there singing. It's going on just south of Whitewater, WI - about 20 minutes from where I'm currently living (actually, it might be considered part of Whitewater, it's surrounded by cornfields and I forget what the official township name is).

I might be able to house a few people for the night, and I'm probably going to be hosting (or at least co-hosting) an after party, so I encourage everyone to mark it off on their calendar and make the drive.

Did I mention that I'm singing? I know a few of you have expressed an interest in witnessing that - this is your chance.

To make up for last week's abysmal lack of lolcats - I present to you… A SUPERSIZED lolcat Friday! (That means there are 12 pictures this week)

Yay!

Bomb squad kitteh Decides to cut blue wire

grampa kitteh duz not undrstd techanogoly

Get the rest of the "SUPERSIZED" lolcats!

Photo: Leo Reynolds

Oh, poor letter "G". It doesn't even get pronounced with it's own sound. It's entire existence depends on the cooperation of the cruel and uncaring letter "J".

We should all show "G" a bit of respect and pronounce it as "gee" (like "geek" without the "k") instead of "jee".

Every morning for the last week or so, I've been greeted by an amazing display of talent and architecture.. on my car door.. in the form of a spider-web. The first morning the web was about 6 inches in diameter, a decent sized web, especially considering that it was made in one night - I'm not sure how fast spiders can build webs, but I was impressed by this one. It wasn't just the size, but the spacing between the strands was almost perfect. The web spanned from the outer corner of my mirror to the door. I left the web alone, assuming that the drive to work would displace it, I clearly underestimated the strength of spider webs - it was completely unscathed.

I think it's important to mention at this point that I absolutely hate spiders, they give me the creeps.

The next morning I removed the web. After work there was no sign of an attempt to rebuild the web, so I figured maybe he had found a new home since the last morning. But no, he was just waiting until nightfall to retaliate. The next morning the web was probably just over 10 inches in diameter, and was an absolute mess. The web could not have effectively caught any insects, it was clearly meant as a warning for me. It was quickly removed.

This trend has continued - me clearing the web off in the morning, him rebuilding at night, and me finding a bigger, and more precisely formed web the next morning. This morning he had picked different points on the door to put the corners of the web, making the web over a foot wide, and once again with the perfectly spaced precision between the strands. He's getting stronger, faster and more accurate. And on the way to work, he peaked out from my mirror to taunt me. I was picturing a little spider doing this amazing feat, but this guy was enormous.

Did I mention that spiders absolutely creep me out?

It's my determination that this spider has given up on insects and decided that I am not only his new enemy, but also his new prey. He is taunting me, his methods and skills are improving allowing him to create massive webs in short amounts of time.. he's training. And that is why tonight he must be removed. I'm not big on the idea of killing him, out of respect *cough* fear *cough*, so I have to come up with a way to out him from the mirror that he is now calling home. It's either him or me.

My new apartment is right next to a small pond. This pond is large enough to be home to what sounds like 10 billion bullfrogs. It's probably just 3, but 10 billion sounds a lot more impressive. My apartment is also on the 3rd floor and tends to get pretty warm. To compensate for the heat, we need to keep the windows open and the fans going to maximize the airflow.

Keeping the window in my room open presents a problem - it forces me to try to sleep through the bullfrog's not-so-glorious symphony of disturbing croaking sounds. I can do it, but I really haven't had many decent nights of sleep for the almost 2 months that I've been there.

The only consolation in all of this is the shadow from the street lights. Usually lights are very good at keeping me up, so much so that when I needed to get some really good sleepage going on I would black out my windows with whatever blankets/garbage bags/etc that I could find. The street lights are shining through a tree though, so it blocks out a bit of it, but it also casts a really neat shadow on my wall. I've thought about taking a picture of it, but at that point I'm too tired to get out of bed, and I have a feeling that it doesn't look nearly as cool when my eyes aren't half closed and I'm not about to pass out.