Friday, June 25, 2004

Big city dreams

Sometimes when I'm suppose to be working or studying, I like to search for old friends online. I usually just head over to Yahoo or Google, type in their names and hope for the best. Usually I don't come up with anything. Occassionally I do find someone that I used to know, many years ago.
I've noticed that a rather large number of these people I used to know have taken up residence in New York. I don't know why that is, but there are an unusually large number of them residing in the NYC area. Perhaps it's because I went to an arts high school and so many of my former classmates went into the entertainment industry. At any rate, I often wonder what it would be like to live in a really big city like New York.
I've never been one of those people who dreamed of moving to New York after graduation and making it in the big city. When I was much younger, I toyed with the idea briefly. When I informed my mother of my decision to move to New York, she looked me in the eye and said "Why would you want to do that? You know its very expensive there."
It wasn't my mother who caused me to abandon my plan to move to New York. It was my first visit. The city smelled, it was crowded and everyone acted like they had something REALLY important to get to. It was maddening and I hated it.
So after I graduated high school, I moved to Tallahassee to attend Florida State University. That was back in 1995 and I'm still in Tallahassee. I never intended to make this a long-term arrangement. Tallahassee has really never excited me all that much. When people ask me about it, I usually just reply "it would be a nice place to raise a family." This essentially just means that it's quiet, clean, and relatively inoffensive. Translation: Boring as hell.
Next spring I'm graduating with my second degree and planning on leaving Tallahassee. I imagine I will probably end up somewhere like Orlando or Tampa. Those are safe choices. I know those cities and I have friends there. There are times though that I think about just picking up and moving to New York. Not because I love it there, because I don't. But because when I run across those old classmates online who are living there and I see the lives they are living and frankly I feel a little jealous. I'm jealous of the fact that they had big dreams and they followed them. I'm jealous that they had the guts to move to a strange city and build their lives.
Maybe someday I'll take that risk and stop playing it so safe.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Dead duck on the highway

Well, it's not exactly a highway. In fact, it's not a highway at all. It's the road that circles around the lake by my house. It's a two way road, lined with trees and well kept homes with lawns that tend to be neatly groomed.
The lake in question isn't really a lake. It's a retention pond, or something along those lines. It essentially serves to catch storm water. At any rate, there are these ducks who live in the lake/retention pond. They're not the most beautiful ducks. Some of them are down right ugly. They're also not the smartest animals. This is demonstrated time and time again when I see one standing in the middle of the road, staring down a car. It's usually the bigger, male ducks who do this. I guess it's the testosterone. They stand in the middle of the road, shaking their little tails, and hiss. Yes, the ducks hiss. It's not a really threatening hiss. I myself have been the target of a duck hiss and I wasn't worried that the duck was going to charge me or try and drag me into the lake/retention pond. Frankly, if I really wanted to be a jerk, I could just give the duck a swift kick in the ass and he would pretty much be screwed.
But I digress.
Along with the ugly, hissing ducks, live a group of mallards. Ah, the lovely mallards! They are truly the king of the duck, in my opinion. There are about four mallards who like to hang out with these two white ducks. I love the mallards and their white duck friends. On some nights, when the mallards are feeling frisky, they chase the white ducks along the shore and try to pin them down for a little "duck love". As I watch them chase each other, I quietly hum the theme to Bennie Hill, since it seems to be the most appropriate accompaniment.
Of course, all of this was before the accident.
One night as we were coming home, we passed the battered corpses of the two white ducks in the road. It was quite a gruesome scene. Duck feather everywhere. I felt angry that someone had done this. It's not as if this was the first time a duck had been hit. At least once a month, a duck is found smashed across the pavement. I normally have very little sympathy for the ducks who get hit, since it's usually the same ducks who have a penchant for standing in the road and hissing at cars. I figure, if I was stupid enough to stand in the middle of the road and hiss at cars, than I deserve to get hit. It just seems logical.
The difference this time was that it was two, non-road standing, non-hissing ducks. These were the watch me run away from my horny duck boyfriend while you hum the theme to Bennie Hill ducks. These were my favorite ducks and someone killed them!
The next night, I took a walk around the lake and noticed the mallards sitting quietly by the shore. There was no running along the shore that night. I almost felt like I could sense the sadness in their little eyes.
I wonder if they could sense mine.

Friday, June 18, 2004

New beginnings

Todd's Web Page Dot Com is dead.

First the server crashed and then the domain came up for renewal. I thought about trying to revive the site, but ultimately decided that it was far too much trouble. I have decided instead to publish my thoughts through a site hosted on Blogger.

I'm not making any promises on how long this damn thing might last.