Category Archives: Life

Fruit fly…

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I pride myself on a whole host of things, but one of the most important has been being able to keep a precision focus on whatever task happened to be at hand despite multitasking to keep up with emails, text messages, and the six dozen other things that crop up to distract us in the course of the day. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but being able to hold multiple irons in the fire is a point of personal pride. Or it has been until the last couple of days.

I don’t know where that part of my brain that usually handles multiple relatively complex tasks at once, but it’s well and truly out of service at the moment. Focusing in on just one thing at a time has been more of a challenge than I really want to admit. Thank God it’s winter. If the weather was better every bird or squirrel passing the window would be cause to send me off on a wild tangent. Just keeping my focus with the myriad of conversations going on around me has proved to be something close to a full time effort. Quite frankly, work is traumatic enough without also dealing with the attention span of the average fruit fly.

It’s one of those inconveniences that I’m sure will sort itself out in a few days or a week, but in the meantime, I’m driving myself bloody crazy over here. The number of Post It notes now decorating my desk at work and the kitchen table is bordering on ridiculous. Getting back to an even keel where I can remember to pick up dog food or make a phone call without a reminder would be most appreciated. Until then, if I’ve told you I’m going to do something, feel free to remind me often, because there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to forget about it completely before it actually gets done. I really hadn’t planned on hitting the “always forgetting stuff” part of my life until much later, so hopefully this is just a temporary sneak preview of the impending joys of much later middle age.

10 years on…

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10-year-anniversaryAround this time a decade ago me and about 30 of my brand new friends were herded into an auditorium that would be our home for the next six months. We were handed about 371 pieces of paper needing our signatures, took our oath of office as government employees, and, as I recall, spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the hell we had gotten ourselves into after accepting a rather vague sounding job from an obscure sounding Army office.

I’m not going to lie, this career hasn’t been what I expected. It hasn’t been all good, but it hasn’t been all bad either. All things considered, Uncle Sam carved out some amazing opportunities for a guy with a history degree whose only real ambition in the winter of 2003 was to get as far away from teaching as possible. Ultimately, work is work. I’ve had some good days and there have been some spectacular flops too. On balance, it feels like there has been more good than bad, though.

Ten years feels like a pretty impressive milestone for a guy who up until that point had never stayed with an employer for more than three years… of course the pessimist in me can resist pointing out that all a ten year anniversary means is that I’ve got twice that amount of time before I can even think about hanging it up. That sounds like an awfully long time until I remember just how fast the last ten years have seemed to go. I have a disturbing feeling that I’m going to wake up one morning a month from now and see the 20 or 30 year mark coming over the horizon.

Apparently time doesn’t just fly when you’re having fun. Time just flies.

Misfire one and two…

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Like most of the things I do when driven by good intentions, I should fes up to two misfires in the last 24 hours. The first, a blog post that went live on a Friday night around 8:30 based on the assumption that everyone would be paying attention to other things, proved to be my single most viewed post since March 2011. The next time I try sliding something past you people, I’ll show up at 3:30 on a Wednesday morning.

The second misfire came this morning, with my plan to drop in on the first big local gun show of the year. I’ve got a list of items I’m looking to pick up… some functional, some esoteric, and others, as the saying goes, just because I can (at least for the time being). That was my thinking anyway. Since my experience with gun shows has been almost exclusively in states that once rebelled against the Union, I was decidedly unprepared for the strict scrutiny, litany of nausea inducing rules, and sheer tonnage of regulations that the state of Maryland applies to it’s subjects who wish to exercise their rights enshrined in the Second Amendment.

The bottom line is that I opted out of the circus that I’m sure descended on the state fairgrounds this morning. For the time being there remain more efficient and still legal ways of doing business. I have no interest in becoming a felon, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to subject myself to the whims of the state legislature and of our most mighty and exalted lord governor unless I absolutely can’t avoid it.

1994…

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Because it’s a Friday night and that generally means that blog posts pass by with a minimum level of attention paid, I’m going to go ahead and let this one slip out despite my better judgment. Now before anyone comments, I want to say for the record that this photo was taken in, as close as I can figure, late Scanned Image - Version 2April 1994. I know this because that was one of only two time in my high school career that we sprung for charter busses to take the band from Point A to Point B. The other time was in November 1992, and I’m just making an assumption that I would have been wearing something heavier than a hot pink pullover windbreaker to take on the frozen astroturf of Lackawanna County Stadium.

To my best recollection, this photo is the only surviving image of my having attended a long ago Azalea Festival parade in Richmond, Virginia. See, when you’re a band geek, even you spring trips are geeky. Even so, those times, and those people are some of my best memories. Thanks, Mike, for this little jewel and the opportunity to stroll down memory lane.

Trauma…

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Going back to work today was every bit as traumatic as I thought it was going to be… and I’m trying hard to resist the temptation to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and pretend that the who experience was a bad dream. That seems like a perfectly reasonable idea right up to the point where rent needs paid at the end of the month. Such is life for a cog in the machine.

While I’m bitching, I should note that my nose has been bleeding off and on since around 2:00 this afternoon. I’m officially over winter and the cold, dry weather that comes with it. You can only spend so much time sitting at your desk with the better part of a tissue jammed up your nose as a makeshift pressure dressing so you can do something other than stare at the ceiling until the bleeding stops. Fortunately, I think it’s slowed to a trickle. Hopefully I can make it through dinner without feeling like a stuck pig.

Happy Monday.

Officially settled in…

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After a weekend of furiously breaking down boxes and moving crap from one room to another, I’m please to say I seem to be more or less settled in here. Of course there is the spare bedroom that is crammed full of things I’m not at all sure what to do with and a garage stacked with cardboard boxes that need to be bagged, but for the most part stuff is where it’s going to go.

I also had my first visitor yesterday. The spaghetti seemed to turn out well, confirming that I can still boil water (with only one slightly alarming boil-over). The conversation was pleasant and all-in-all it was nice having someone around… especially when it came time to clean up. Any time I can avoid actually doing dishes, I’m pleased as punch (Thanks for the company, by the way. And come back any time).

One thing that has consistently amazed me over the last two weeks is not so much how much stuff I had actually been living with, but how many things I find I need that I didn’t have. I’m not actually talking about frivolous purchases here, but things like ladders, random hand tools, and a solid grip on basic carpentry. I’ve probably gotten more use out of my old set of Craftsman tools in the last two weeks than I have in the last five years. God help me, I actually spent time on eBay this afternoon looking for one of those big red tool chests for the garage. And after a week of using the kitchen counter as base of operations, I have come to the conclusion that I’m actually going to have to build a workbench in the garage. It can’t be that hard… right?

Yeah, I’m already planning on ordering at least twice the amount of material as I think I’ll need.

God bless America…

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It’s Saturday… and here in Ceciltucky, Saturday means the weekly grocery run to Walmart. Now Walmart being what it is, I rarely leave with only groceries. Today’s plan was to pick up a few backs of the D-cell batteries that there are never enough of at the store before a hurricane and check prices on a variety of ammunition over in the gun aisle. Let the record show, that I was at least successful at scavenging sufficient batteries for the next power outage.

Ammunition was a different story. Aside from a few boxes of assorted 12 and 20 gauge shells and even fewer boxes of .30-06, Walmart’s cupbord was looking pretty bare. I guess at least a few of the people around here have been paying attention. Usually I’d be annoyed that what I had wanted wasn’t in stock. Instead, I looked over at the guy running the gun counter, nodded hello, and simply said “God bless America.”

Feels like Sunday…

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So this is the last weekday of my extended winter vacation. Since I didn’t take much of a summer vacation this year, I had plenty of days saved up and taking them sounded infinitely better than letting them disappear. Sure, I could have donated them to an allegedly worthy cause, but let’s be honest, does that sound like something I’d really do unless I was backed into a corner?

Make no mistake, when you’re use to being at your desk four or five days a week, every week, month after month, two unspoken for weeks are a real think of beauty. I had some minor concern that boredom would set in sometime around the end of week one when the mayhem and chaos of Christmas cleared, but that really wasn’t a problem. Honestly, the thought of being bored never occurred to me. Since I’ve been back here at the rental casa, I’ve done some reading, some writing, some cooking, some general running around, and caught up on a lot of quality television I’ve missed over the last few months. When any one of those things has started showing the least sign of being boring, I just change up the order and do them all again. Honestly, it’s probably a snapshot of what my life would look like as a lottery winner. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to more or less keep myself entertained. When you’re an only child as a kid, you learn the value of not relying too heavily on anyone else to make things interesting.

But yeah, today feels a lot like Sunday… or specifically that general feeling of “Eff this I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow” feeling that always seems to show up sometime during the day on Sunday. That feeling has been held blissfully at bay for the last two weeks and I wasn’t quite ready for it to show up already. Intellectually, I can accept that I’ve got to go back to work at some point… but emotionally, my inner lottery winner wants to keep this party rolling. There’s so much reading, writing, and cooking that I just haven’t gotten to yet. I guess that means I’ve got to cram a whole bunch of stuff into the next to days, because Sunday is coming on fast.

The way ahead…

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If New Year’s Eve is our annual opportunity to look back on the year that was, then New Year’s Day seems to be the natural counterpoint – a day to look at the 364 days ahead and try to discern the way ahead. Since I’m not psychic, the best I can do is assume that 2013 is going to look fairly similar to 2012 in some ways… and bear no resemblance to it in many others. History, at best, is an inexact guide to what might happen in the future. Like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Still, the year that was sets the starting point and the foundations of the year to come. That means you ignore it at your peril.

So what does 2013 hold? For me, I like to think it holds more time to focus on writing and less time being annoyed by work. I hope it means less money spent fixing rental property and more time spent enjoying the fruits of my labor. Optimistically, I would love it to mean that the blog finally breaks through the 10,000 visits per year mark. As a reach goal, I’m still holding out hope of becoming a professional lottery winner and finding some nice out of the way island to call home. Yeah, so some of that wish list is more practical than other bits. Even so, most of it seems to be in reach and that’s a comforting thought.

Come on, you guys weren’t expecting some batshit crazy idea like find the love of my life, move into the house with a picket fence, and raise 2.5 kids and an airedale, right? I said history is an inexact guide, not that I was going to throw it over the side and charge off in the opposite direction. I’m feeling a touch nostalgic, not suffering from head trauma after all.

I hope this little note has helped set the tone for 2013. It’s a brave new year with more snark, less tolerance of stupid, and even better writing than ever before… so stick around. I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be a real trip.

Tires…

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I ordered new tires a week ago. Then of course the shop wasn’t open the day before Christmas. Then it snowed and everything was closed. Then the tires didn’t show up the next day as scheduled. And as a result, here I sit, 6 hours after I had planned on leaving still waiting for the tires and the truck to actually come together. I’m a man who lives and dies my having a plan… and currently my plan is jacked up to the point of being in recognizable. If I’m surly the rest of the day at least you’ll know why.