That's the sign that greeted me in the cafeteria about two weeks before the company picnic. I sort of laughed and shrugged it off at the time, but it was certainly strange. Where had these ridiculous team names come from? Was the email about uniforms serious?

Things, of course, proceeded to get stranger. What I had thought was a friendly match up with our colleagues at LiteBrite West Campus, was taking on a more serious tone. Word filtered down to us that our opponents had started practicing three days a week and in the week prior to the game they'd practiced twice. Rumors started reaching us of ringers, players brought in to improve the level of play. Had they been hiring based on this? It was hard to tell but it was clear they were taking it all very seriously and were prepared to play hardball. People around our office were getting slightly nervous, especially when there was a call to bring the trophy (yes it's a real trophy, a cheap one, but still real) to LiteBrite West, ahead of the game. Pretty serious.

At no point had I felt like they were a threat. I mean, friendly game nonsense aside, they had never beaten us in any games we'd played. They were slow, old, and with the exception of one or two players just not as skilled. I am not some sort of soccer prodigy but I knew there was no way we would walk away from the game defeated.

So comes the day, and we all arrive at the picnic, only to notice that the mental game was already being played. The opposing side (the "Saints") had all shown up sporting their jerseys. They congregated together on the far side of the picnic area, talking in low whispers, occasionally looking around and laughing. Was it paranoid to think they were laughing at us? Perhaps not, but the day was shaping up like an episode of Friday Night Lights.

Unfortunately the only real drama once the game started was on whether or not every member of our team would score. The demolition started fairly quickly, with hoots and cawing in honor of the "Falcons" (honestly, who came up with these?). It continued in a one sided manner in front of a dwindling crowd for about an hour, with one face-saving goal for the opposition being the only thing that broke up the monotony of our overall domination (humblebrag? Perhaps). As we assembled post-game to loft our trophy (in front of a crowd consisting of only ourselves), there was some rejoicing but mainly awkward milling about and trying to figure out if we had gotten enough to eat during the actual picnic part. Which showed us that we had actually lost in a sense.

My very good friend Angry O is the son of a prominent Sudanese man back home. His father is very accomplished, very well educated, and by all accounts quite formidable. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's probably 2 or 3 years ago formally, though Angry O was noticing his slowly deteriorating state. They've been on the lookout for an experimental treatment of any kind to slow the progress of this disease but have had no luck. Days are good or bad, with periods of lucidity alternating with confusion, anger and lashing out. Angry O bears it patiently, and takes the load on himself. He is stronger than I imagine I would be in the same position, praying with his dad, prompting him to recite poetry, and talking about what's going on in the world. It's a tough position to be in and it frightened me at a level I hadn't thought it could. It made me think about ...

My Dad is my hero, and I don't mean that in the "I want to be a fireman" sort of way, but in a more substantial way. In some ways I have always wanted to be like him, and of course as I get older I find that I am more and more like him, more in fact than I wanted. He's older now, and more ornery than I remember, quieter as well. He forgets things, but you can never tell if he genuinely forgot or whether he's just being contrary, and forgetting things on purpose. He passes everything off with a smile or a smart aleck comment, so I'm left to wonder how much is bluster and how much is really forgetful. What if he forgets me?

What if I forget everyone? My memory has been bad for as long as I can remember but if you're forgetful that's not a very long time. It feels like it's gotten worse lately, but it's hard to say. So this article came at the "right" time. While the fear that it talks about does not take notice of the rarity of this disorder, it strikes at a universal soft point: without my memory, is it still me in here? And if it isn't then what does any of it mean?

This seems overwrought and it probably actually is, but it's something that keeps me up at night.

As a result I would sometimes "come to", or suddenly "realize" that whatever was happening at the time was, in fact, happening to me right then. The sensation was unsettling, but it would fade, usually quickly. At the same time as one bout of "realization" I was starting to think about photography, which was something I was doing a lot of at the time. I was taking a photography course, I'd recently acquired a second manual camera and was about to buy a brand new digital camera.

In particular I was thinking about how photography removed me from the events I was recording. I was very sensitive to this remove, due to my experiences, and wondered if one caused the other or if they were mutually reinforcing. Was I taking pictures in order to build a framework where I could hover above my life, or was the hovering making me take more pictures since I was already detached, or did the detachment make me take pictures which made me more detached etc?

This morning I ran across this NPR blog post. It asks one of the questions I asked myself succinctly but doesn't really answer it. It did make me think, though. As we all become producers of pictures (and other content), are we increasingly packaging and framing our lives for consumption? Even if that consumption is by us? If so, what does that make our most meaningful moments actually mean? Is a happy occasion truly happy when the main point of it is pretty photo? Will the experience of seeing something extraordinary be captured as easily as the image of it is? If, as we tacitly assume we will, we share our images, is that really an attempt to share an experience or are we shaping the experience mainly in order to share it? With Facebook and Twitter and forums like this blog you are reading right now, I feel like the purity of the experience is sullied since the likelihood of sharing images from it increases, or worse since the first thought when you see/do something interesting you think "this would look great on Facebook". I may be over-thinking the whole thing or caught in a tautology based in my detachment, but it's making me think pretty hard about my upcoming wedding. It would be easy to let it turn into a series of "staged photo ops" as the article mentions, but what will that do to the experience of the wedding itself?