Category Archives: Life

Four letter word…

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Sure, sure, I know plenty of you out there on the interwebs are enthralled by how wonderful the post-Christmas snow has been. I’m here to tell you that you are, quite simply wrong. It’s cold, it’s wet, and it requires inordinate amounts of effort to move from Point A to Point B. Simply put, snow is just another four letter word. Like most other four letter words, its use is almost always inappropriate. It’s even more inappropriate on days when I’m already off and want to go out and do things and see people. Under the circumstances, snow is pretty much just an enormous pain in the ass with the singular redeeming quality of being kind of pretty.

Like a hot girl with the personality of a water buffalo, sometimes being pretty just isn’t good enough. The frozen nonsense can stop dropping out of the sky any time now.

Christmas morning…

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After reading so many Facebook posts about staying up into the early hours assembling presents and waking up before the crack of dawn to begin the great unwrapping, I’d like to take a moment and really appreciate my incredibly low key Christmas morning. I woke up around 8AM, took the dogs for a quick walk in the snow (their idea, not mine), made a pot of coffee, and eventually got around to unwrapping presets and reading the paper before brewing another pot of coffee and settling in for the morning.

All-in-all, a quiet Christmas morning seems like an invaluable moment of calm before the mayhem and chaos of the rest of the day. It’s not quite zen, but sucking down copious amounts of coffee while the dogs snore in front of the fire vaguely feels like what Christmas is supposed to be. Of course that may just be my own uniquely warped view of how things work.

From my comfortable seat in the living room, Merry Christmas to all my friends and family (and anyone who stumbles across this post by accident).

Logistics…

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Supply Lines As close as I can tell moving me and two dogs from one side of Maryland to the other is the greatest logistical challenge which has faced mankind since Patton’s army raced across northern Europe. At present the packing list includes:

1. Two bags for me
2. Two crates stuffed to capacity with “dog stuff”
3. One Rubbermaid container of Christmas presents
4. Two containers of dog food (they can’t eat the same thing, of course)
5. Two hats
6. Two coats (one light, one heavy w/ zip out liner)
7. One backpack waiting to be stuffed to the brim with computer and networking equipment, a laptop, an iPad, a Kindle, and all the associated power cables
8. Two dogs

I’m sure I’ll be adding to that list throughout the night, but if you’ll excuse me I need to go start working on the load plan for the truck. I think I should have sprung for the extended bed instead of just the extended cab.

What’s next?

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It doesn’t happen very often, but from time to time I hit a point in a weekend where everything I wanted to get done is finished long before I planned on it being that way. As it turns out, I’m not particularly comfortable with sitting around without something that needs doing. Most of the time I try to cram my weekends sufficiently full of projects that I’m still scurrying on Sunday after dinner to get the all finished before the curtain falls. Since I’ve clearly misunderestimated the time needed for things this time around, I’m going to have to call an audible… Now if I can just figure out what else needs done around here I’ll be all set. If all else fails, I can always sit down with a frosty adult beverage, which is a virtual guarantee that I’ll be asleep within five minutes. In a real pinch, I could go ahead and do laundry… but then my plan for Sunday is wrecked before it even gets here. Have I ever mentioned that OCD is fun?

Exile to Scum Village…

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Setting aside the profound constitutional trouble we’d get into for depriving fellow citizens of several rights without some kind of due process, I think out friends in Holland are on to something. With a few tweaks around the margins I could get on board with Amsterdam’s proposal to round up “nuisance neighbours” and exile them into one location where they wouldn’t trouble neighbors who actually give a damn and where they could be constantly monitored by the police and social services. Admit it, you know you’ve secretly dreamed about having their neighbors hauled off for generally being bad at life as an adult.

Sure, there’s a bit of a problematic history of rounding up undesirables and throwing them in camps far away from polite society, but with a few checks and balances, I’m confident we can figure out a way to keep the system from being too abusive. Add a few claymores, a little concertina wire, and I think we can make folks very comfortable in their new shipping container homes… and if they’re not comfortable, well, at least they’ll be out of earshot so we won’t have to listen to them complaining about it.

Sucking chest wound…

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Getting back to the weekly grind is tough after a regular, uneventful weekend. Going back after a four-day weekend is a little more like trying to recover from massive ballistic trauma – without the blood and swelling, of course. Sitting at the computer, staring at Outlook, and making an effort at being productive was just downright painful… and I think just reinforces why I need to win Wednesday’s PowerBall drawing.

I envy that select group of people who jump out of bed in the morning, fully energized and looking forward to the day. Generally the best I can hope to achieve is fully caffeinated and looking forward to going home at the end of the day. That last bit shouldn’t be taken as a slam against my job. As far as work goes, it’s really not a bad one; with a little attention to detail and a willingness to not let common sense get in the way, there’s really not that much to complain about.

Still, a job is a job and like 99.9% of the other working slobs in this country, there are of 687 bazillion other things I’d rather be doing on any average day. Tops on my list is not waking up at 4:50AM to three screaming alarm clocks. It may seem like a small thing, but I think it would go a long way towards reducing my regular feeling of post-weekend trauma. Since my experience has been that one job is more or less like the next, it seems to be that the only real alternatives at this point are to start robbing banks, come up with a Wall Street ponzi scheme, or win the PowerBall jackpot.

With only one of those three not leading more or less directly to prison, I’d say that the only acceptable plan is to win the lottery. Well, either that or somehow learn not to think of Monday as the sucking chest wound on the torso of life. Wish me luck.

Here’s to not feeling like warm death on a muffin…

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After enjoying Thanksgiving with the family, doing more in person shopping in one day than I do the rest of the year, and fighting off what was either a very brief cold or a singularly bad attack of allergies, I’m slowly working myself back into the old routine. Being Sunday, of course, much of that routine involves being annoyed that the weekend is already over. Weekends, even when they’re twice as long as usual, never really feel long enough. At least no one else won the Powerball jackpot last night, so that means I’ve still got a shot at it on Wednesday. That’s pretty much my happy thought for the first half of the week. After that, I’ll make no promises about keeping up a cheery disposition – especially since we’re now in the long stretch of no scheduled days off leading up to Christmas. The last few weeks have spoiled me with the random clumps of annual leave liberally sprinkled across October and November. Somehow I’ll manage to get by with just the normal two-day weekends for a few weeks, I’m sure.

So, now that I’m not feeling like warm death on a muffin, I’d better get on with doing the odds and ends that keep this place from falling down around my ears. With the holiday over, I’ll try to get back to something like a normal posting schedule here. In the meantime, if you really have an itch for more reading, take a look at the five “new” old posts from October 2006 that I put up earlier this morning.

Be thankful, or My Seven Favorite Sins…

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Thanksgiving is without a doubt my favorite holiday. Say what you want about Independence Day or Columbus Day, but for my money, Thanksgiving is that one most quintessentially American holiday. Basing a major national holiday around a table laden with high fat, high carb, loaded with sugar foods is just about the perfect celebration of gluttony. I have to think that no one could pull off that kind of holiday quite as well as America can and does year in and year out.

After our high calorie meal, the vast majority of us are going to spend a good part of the evening lying about the house inspecting inside of our eyelids. Score one for sloth. After we’ve sufficiently recuperated from our meal, as a nation we’ll waddle off into the cold November darkness to our retailers of choice. Once there, we’ll spend billions of dollars on trinkets and baubles of every type. If someone is unfortunate enough to get in our way, we’ll trample them in a rush to the shelves piled high with merchandise. We’ve taken a bite out of wrath, greed, and envy right there.

Now, while we’re waiting in the checkout line or once we finally get our precious haul back to the nominal safety of our respective places of residence, we’ll post on Facebook about what deals we were able to scavenge. Our friends and family will be so jealous! Nice to see you there, pride.

The only thing missing is lust, but look on the bright side… This four-day splurge-a-thon is just getting warmed up.

From the writer, editor, and publisher of jeffreytharp.com to all of you, Happy Thanksgiving!

This is definitely my favorite holiday.

Say anything…

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It’s the day before Thanksgiving, which means it doesn’t much matter what I write here. If historical precedent is to be believed, all of nine people will actually see it. Even so, it feels like I should make some kind of effort to eliminate a little more white space from the internet. That seems particularly important since throwing down a holiday edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week on Thanksgiving seems vaguely inappropriate, Besides, I want to reserve the right to skip tomorrow if that seems like a better alternative given the food coma tentatively scheduled to begin shortly after dinner is served.

In the spirit of the impending holiday, I’ve noticed that many of my friends have been listing the things they’re thankful for in a daily post on Facebook. It’s hard to disagree with most of them – friends, family, a roof over one’s head. I’m pretty sure I even saw Miller Light suck in there somewhere. I’ll simply say ditto. My list probably isn’t all that much different from anyone elses and since they’ve already covered the high points, the only thing I can think to add to the list is this: I am spectacularly thankful to have a shower that is now back in full working order. You don’t fully appreciate how nice a thing a working shower is until you’ve been living for three weeks with one that’s gone haywire.

So yeah, if last year was the year of being thankful for being back in Maryland, this is the Thanksgiving where I celebrate the marvel of indoor plumbing. Given this trend, look for next year to feature a deep, heartfelt appreciation for fire or the wheel.

That’s the spirit…

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There’s a lot going on in the world. Between the incredible imploding generals, John Kerry’s name on the short list for Secretary of Defense, Israel chomping at the bit to bomb its enemies further back into the stone age, an impending fiscal disaster of biblical proportions, and a few dozen other odds and ends that are making the news today, you’d think I could gin up something pithy to discuss tonight… but in thinking that, you, gentle reader, would be exactly wrong. No matter how earth shattering or sensational, my official response to most of the day has been a rather disinterested shrug coupled with the occasional “Meh” for emphasis.

After several minutes of in depth analysis, I’ve determined that the harder I look at the world around me, the dumber it gets… and the higher my blood pressure soars. Perhaps it’s best for the world, and for my long term cardiovascular health if I just start ignoring everything that’s going on around me. That approach seems to work well enough for the masses, so maybe if I stick my nose in a book and pretend that civilization isn’t actually doomed everything will turn out just fine in the end. I mean it’s the approach that works for the inevitable 6 out of 10 who can’t find their state on a map or are more likely to follow news for Justin Bieber than Joe Biden.

So in this new spirit of apathetic mediocrity, I bid you all good night. I’m sure I can find something perfectly pedestrian to take my mind off the world. If a good book doesn’t work, I’m sure one of the 87 channels of reality television will fill the bill nicely.