From Skittles to the Habsburgs...

Everyone has their own process to forgiveness, to love, to life. Not to mention their own thought process. I have a mess of a mind. Useless knowledge like knowing that squid are cephalopods is filed somewhere with how to check the oil in my car. Retrieving this knowledge is a quite interesting process. Sometime a random occurrence like walking past a great shoe store reminds me that I bought these cool blue shoes that look like they have fortune cookies on them at a shop in Holland with a name that reminds me of the song DVNO by Justice and did you hear that the UK has imposed direct rule on the Turks and Caicos Islands today? Oh! Those may be shaky linkages to you my friend, but it is a logical string in my mind. Even more fun then following my ramblings whilst reading (and possible re-reading, then hitting up Google), Dear Reader, is following along with one of my loose conversations.

When needed I can be succinct and to the point, but if I want to give a more zealous rendering of the affairs at hand or a personal account of an event then I have the tendency to be... well verbose doesn't even begin to describe it. Some people love this as we bounce from topic to topic everyone tossing in something. Others, who don't think that way, seem to hate it and lose interest in our chatter.

I have learned that in order to have a true conversation with me- not just hear the words I say and throw in a non-comment or two, but actually converse, add something to the dialogue, be an active participant - you need to be able to do two things: 1)Not be afraid to interrupt or be really good at finding the pauses I build in. (I know some of you don't think they exist, but they are there you just have to really listen for them. If you miss them I'll just assume you had nothing to add) and 2) have a brain that works like Wikipedia.

The best conversations I have link all over the place. You know how you can start by looking up something on trimming Crape Myrtles and end up reading about the Dutch East India Company after taking a left some where while pondering a vacation in the Maldives? Well it is something like that. This is how my brain works and often this leaks in to my casual conversation. Everything is linked. Someone can be talking about vegetarians and I will think, "really want some skittles." This is because once a friend of mine was out with someone who was one of those holier than though vegetarians that still eat dairy but not eggs or products from dead animals but was eating a bag of skittles and my friend so astutely pointed out that skittles in the US contain gelatin and even overseas they often have "natural flavors" which often means a flavor derived from something you don't want to know about.

Basically, every point I wish to make is linked to a certain group of details and I cannot get to it without explaining the details. It is sort of a crazy combination lock in my memory. If I don't describe something in a certain pattern I can't seem to get what I want across. This drives my Dad nuts. Then again my sister and I often compare notes on who has the record for longest conversation with Dad on the phone before he says, here let me find your Mother. I think my Personal best was around 10 minutes.

I guess the point of this passage is that I promise to try and keep my blogs a little shorter. ;-)