Jerry Sienfeld jokes that “Fun for the whole family… isn’t.” Today, I groused to my paralegal that practicing law used to be fun. She’s recently divorced and groused back that dating is supposed to be fun but isn’t anymore. We agreed that going to the movies is supposed to be fun but often isn’t because of cost and ill-behaved fellow moviegoers.
What else is supposed to be fun but isn’t (or more optimistically, isn’t supposed to be fun, but actually is)?
Dating is supposed to be fun? I *knew* I was doing it wrong.
Grocery shopping is supposed to be a chore, but I think it’s grand fun.
Reality TV shows are supposed to be fun, but they make me look for the remote.
Ditto on both counts.
Reality TV was never supposed to be fun. It was just supposed to be Cheap.
Who actually thinks dating is supposed to be fun? The only fun part of dating is joking about it with your loved one after you are done with dating.
Airline travel isn’t supposed to fun but i’m usually somewhere between fine with it or actually enjoy it. I always have movies to watch on my laptop and books to read. Of course its better when you aren’t crammed in but i enjoy traveling so the flight is all part of it. I’m also pretty good at shutting other people out.
I love air travel. Flying is magic.
Flying is magic but air pressure changes is black magic. Hell is popping or clogged ears. I have narrow ear canals, there have been flights, especially unavoidable ones where congestion inevitably jumped me, where a week later I was very seriously considering taking a screwdriver to the side of my head.
I have this problem too. Flying is still magic, for me (except see below).
I love to fly – I have had some of the most aesthetically wonderful moments of my life while airborne. But air travel is just no fun anymore – TSA security theater, decreased seat space, decreased services. Everytime I have to go through security I feel like I’ve been assaulted.
“Everytime I have to go through security I feel like I’ve been assaulted.”
This is why the TSA is a great evil. It destroys magic.
Pat, If you really want magic and flight take a ride in one of these magic carpets!
Be happy to take you for a ride when I’m out west this summer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_VYY7Rx6ys
Gorgeous flying sequences from the 3:00 on. Nothing short of a delirious and enraptured state of being. God, it is so great to be alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Tz3pVb9Dg
I like air travel, too, but maybe that’s because I don’t have to do it on a regular basis.
Flying is a blast, when I’m at the controls that is. There’s really nothing like flying in a small plane and doing whatever you like, see something interesting on the ground? Circle around it. See someone looking at you? Wave your wings at them.
Recommendation: Hang out at the restaurant of your local private plane airport. The food is reasonably good and cheap and there will be a ton of private pilots hanging out there too. Get to know one of them and ask what they fly etc. Odds are one of them would take you up for free on a good day, or would even more happily do it if you offered to pay for the fuel. Those guys are hanging around at the airport because they’re just looking for a good excuse to go flying and /you/ might be just that excuse. If you’re reasonably polite and not apparently handicapped you can even ask to take the controls when you’re in the air. Almost any pilot will let you for awhile, of course you need to give them back for landings and other maneuvers.
Patrick is right, flying is truly magic, perhaps the most magical thing we get to do. We’re up there with the angels and 99.9999% of humanity couldn’t even dream it, let alone do it.
Beautifully expressed, wardsmith! You certainly get it–think you’ll like this poem. Now if you’re an atheist, please don’t let that last line ruin the general sentiment of this poem which is about unrestrained joy, beauty, and freedom.
“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunwards I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a thousand things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air,
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of god.”
“Who actually thinks dating is supposed to be fun?”
Women. Beautiful women.
And the men who date them.
Air travel is a lot less annoying now that I get the extra legroom, though my inability to take direct flights is annoying. Ditto smoking regs at airports (G-d Bless Salt Lake City and curse Minnesota). Oh yeah, And the stupid electronic rules for takeoff and landing (which I have to do twice due to connections).
I used to love flying.
Back on the general subject, I find a lot of social engagements that are supposed to be fun aren’t for me.
I like some things that are supposed to be dreadful in smaller doses if I can listen to music or audiobooks while I do it. Sidewalk shoveling, for instance, or grocery shopping.
I find folding and ironing laundry oddly enjoyable.
I love sorting the dirty clothes while I watch an episode of Fringe and I love playing my games while I do laundry proper. I really love how Maribou puts the clothing on hangers or folds them and puts them away after I take them out of the dryer.
Christmas shopping. Loathe it.
Christmas decorating. Loathe it.
Christmas undecorating. Loathe.
Mowing the lawn. Love it.
I’m there on three out of four. My ideal yard is 40 acres of trees; lots of space with no lawn to mow.
Well, I have 6 acres of trees, and not much grass to mow – but the leaves, the leaves.
Can you burn leaves where you live? When I was a kid in Iowa that was one of my favorite smells.
I never rake my leaves. Mostly it’s because I’m too lazy, but if I saw a good reason to do so I would rake them (e.g., I do scoop them out of my pond). Really, can someone tell me the value of raking leaves? As a kid my parents made us put them in trash bags and put water in, then next summer we’d use them for mulch in the garden. I get that. But not only do I like the way they look, I figure they naturally replenish nutrients in the soil. So what’s gained by raking them? (Other than to get the great smell that Mark reminisces about.)
If I tried to burn all the leaves that fall on my place, the pillar of smoke would look like Mt. St. Helens.
I don’t rake them either, that would take a week. I just sort of move them around with a leaf blower.
Nature routinely provides a free blower for us. It got turned on “high” to the dissatisfaction of several insurance companies over the past few days.
Fortunately, James, in the desert they have managed to limit the amount of lawn to limit the use of water. This makes mowing a 20 minute affair as opposed to some of those huge midwestern lawns I got to mow as a kid.
Mark,
If I lived in the southwest I’d xeriscape, no doubt. But I just don’t like the way it looks, so I’m happy to live in the Midwest. I rarely water my lawn, even in drought. Sometimes the front lawn, just out of courtesy to the neighbors, but never the back.
I’m the anti-Hank Hill.
There is a limit to xeriscaping, no doubt. Some houses just put rock down. Like nothing but rock for 1000 square feet. I don’t mind xeriscaping if it’s broken up by a shrub or some other desert plant every so often. The swaths of egg size rock gets a bit monotonous.
Gentlemen, get a Red Max 500 leaf blower–the most powerful, awesome blower in existence! It will be one of the greatest investments you’ll ever make. Trust me, your back will thank you for a lifetime. They’re not cheap-$500, but worth every penny–you will love and have fun with every leaf that falls!
Social gatherings where no activity is specified, just meeting and greeting are supposed to be fun but are boring and tiresome (exception if it involves a dinner).
Games that have no underlying story or theme like Sorry, Pictionary and the like are supposed to be fun but I’d rather cut off my own foot and eat it than play such a game.
Snow. Used to like it. Not anymore.
Yes. This. Lovely to look at, hell to dig out from under and commute through.
Yeah, I always thought that Xmas needed to be near the end of February back when I lived in the midwest, that way as soon as Xmas was over, we could put the shit away and go right into spring. That whole “another three months of winter” thing really sucked.
Hot summer days. Every time the weatherperson says, “another beautiful day with a high of 90,” I have to fight the urge to destroy my TV. Hot weather is for masochists.
Come to think of it, sunny days. I hate the sun. I loved the Pacific Northwest.
I’d take sunny, hot and dry in the 90’s any day over the 60 days of weekly blizzards and snow cover I had last winter here in CT.
I’d take Arizona 90-degree days. Not New Orleans 90-degree days.
Anything above 75 is too hot. Sunny (or partly cloudy) and 60 is ideal to me. But, yeah, if it has to be 90, please, dear God, let it be dry.
And these are a million miles apart in terms of being comfortable. If humidity was as intolerable in Iowa as I remember, I can only assume living along the gulf coast must be the final circle of hell.
Back in ’94, I was dragooned to hand-deliver a proposal to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX.
It was 110 degrees in Pasadena when I left. I had a 30 minute layover in Phoenix, where it was 122. I was a smoker at the time so I was out in that 122 during the layover.
It was 90 degrees when I landed in San Antonio and when I walked out of that airport I was 30 times more uncomfortable than I had been the entire day, because the humidity was sky-freakin’-high.
I don’t like hot weather, my ideal day is 65 degrees with a 8 mph breeze and a couple of puffy white clouds in the sky. Football weather. But I’d rather live in Death Valley than ever live anywhere that doesn’t have a mountain range between it and the Gulf of Mexico.
Try New Delhi in mid to late June…. Trust me, you’d take Texas over that.
No bet.
What used to be fun but isn’t anymore due to I-95 traffic congestion: Going to the range in Connecticut.
What’s still Fun: Arriving at the range and discharging that really fun new toy!
What has never been fun: Paying $40 for 45 minutes of range time.
Gotta to move to Florida or Texas or get me a section or two of land in Montana.
I cannot recommend Montana enough.
Crossing the border into Montana drops my blood pressure by about 15 points.
Granted, I’ve never been there in the winter.