Category Archives: Life

What are we doing here?

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Once every few months I catch a wild hare and start obsessively backing up everything on my work computer. At last count, I’m working on saving 2GB of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents for posterity. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood if 1500 individual files generated over the last eight months. By most standards it’s not a particularly obscene amount of storage or an abnormally large number of files. As I’m sitting here watching the “% complete” bar click higher, I’m struck with the fact that although I’m relentlessly backing this stuff up, keeping a copy for myself, and sending a copy into deep storage, I’m probably the only person on the planet who will ever actually see any of this stuff again. In a post-atomic or -biological apocalypse world, it seems unlikely that any of the survivors are going to be particularly interested in whatever brilliant PowerPoint slides I’ve managed to come up with.

All of that begs the question, what the hell are we really doing here? I think we all have some conception that we’re “adding value” somehow by performing whatever task has been set for us. We like to think that what we’re doing is good and important work; that someone, somewhere will be better off because we sat behind our monitors and smashed our fingers repeatedly against the keyboard. Since I don’t have a little laminated card telling me where to go and what to do when the warheads start landing, I think it’s safe to assume that whatever I’m doing isn’t all that critical to the preservation of civilization as we know it. Apparently I’m not a national treasure. That realization stings a little.

Look, I’m not saying I want to give up the pay and bennies and head off into the woods to start a commune or anything. I don’t think the situation is all that hopeless. Still, it’s a smack in the head about priorities and deciding what’s important and what doesn’t mean a damned thing. In the course of a career and a life, I’ve made some good decisions and some bad ones. If this serves as nothing more than a gentle smack in the back of the head reminding me to make better decisions in the future, well, then the day has been more productive than most.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

So that’s the good kind of damage?

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The body shop I’m using comes highly recommended from several sources. Even the internet says they do good work and as we all know, the internet never lies. Now that they’ve had a chance to give the truck the once over, they’ve arrived at the strangely specific repair estimate of $7.968.00. I don’t know, it just feels like that would have been an appropriate time to just round up and announce it would be about eight grand. Lower than eight and I’d have been happily surprised, higher then eight and they covered themselves by making it an “about” statement. But rounding to the nearest dollar just seems like overkill.

I almost enjoyed talking to the guy, but that could have had more to do with the memo I was trying hard not to write than anything interesting he was saying. That was until he threw in that I had “the good kind of damage.” Say what? I’m pretty sure there’s nothing about an $7,968 repair bill for a crunched in front end that I’d consider “good damage.” I’m pretty sure he ment that the damage was largely cosmetic and didn’t foul up the drivetrain or frame, still, not what I think of as good damage. Then again, if I were about to get a $7,500 check from my insurance company, maybe I’d think it was good damage too.

Needing a redo…

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Sometimes you look back at a day and feel like you’ve moved the world. On other days you spend most of your waking hours talking to insurance companies, tow services, body shops, and car rental outfits. Anyone want to take a swing at guessing which kind of day I’ve had today? Considering what a massive pain in the ass it could have been, it wasn’t awful. Still, though, not exactly the picture perfect way to spend your President’s Day holiday. But hey, on the up side, at least I get to wake up before the sun comes up tomorrow and go to work. Sigh. Is it Friday yet? I want a redo on this entire weekend.

Left turn, Clyde…

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To help give a little insight into how I spent most of the day yesterday, I wanted to provide a public service announcement to all the drivers out there. In most vehicles these days there’s a toggle switch on the steering column that controls the left and right turn signals that alert drivers around you to your intended course of action. For instance, when you’re in the turn lane with you blinker flashing, the rest of us assume that you are actually going to go ahead and turn in the direction indicated by your flashing signal. Well over 99% of the time, that’s exactly what happens. It happens with such regularity that it’s one of those things that the driving public just assumes to be true. They assume it to be true right up until the moment when it’s not true and they find themselves pummeled by a face full of airbag. You see, fellow drivers, when you signal one intention and then do something else, bad things tend to happen to everyone involved.

In case anyone is wondering, I’m fine. The dogs are fine. The Tundra, however, is distinctly not fine. We’ll find out just how not fine it is next week when the insurance adjuster and body shop get a look at it. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and write that check for the deductible so we can get on with getting Big Red back on the road. Nothing like doing $20,000 of damage to two vehicles because the asshat in the turning lane is perplexed by the concept of a turn signal. Meh. It’s safe for everyone to assume I’ve gone from the thankful not to be hurt stage to the throughly annoyed because my truck is torn up stage of the process.

Despite being throughly annoyed, I do have a few shout outs. Special thanks to the Maryland State Police for a professional and rapid response. Of course it helps that we were less than 500 yards from their parking lot. To my dad, thanks for the loaner car. I’ll do my best not to get fooled by anyone else’s signal while I’m driving your ride. Mom, thanks for not freaking out too badly when I called to give you a heads up. She doesn’t think this is a blog/Facebook-appropriate topic, so don’t give her too much crap about me posting about it ok? Thanks. And finally props to my evil stepmother – thanks for driving over and hauling me and the dogs halfway across the state yesterday.

So that’s the short version of my Saturday. It’s safe to say this is not the relaxing and restful three day weekend I was anticipating.

Ah, Saturday…

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I look forward to your coming all week, Saturday and yet somehow when you get here you’re never as awesome as I expected you to be. You always seem to turn into me sitting here paying bills, cleaning the bathroom, and going to the dump. That isn’t the glorious day off I had in mind when I yearned for you back on Wednesday. I could spend another half hour spelling out all the ways you’ve disappointed me this morning, but I need to go get a few more things done so I can at least salvage the afternoon.

Feeling guilty…

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Occasionally, when the veneer of my being a civilized member of society is especially thin, I find myself sitting in traffic thinking “the only reason that justifies this foolishness is someone being mangled up there.” It’s usually followed by a quiet prayer that they broke something so the holdup isn’t just them being a particularly bad driver. Ninety-nine percent of the time, traffic is just jacked up because everyone wants to slow down and look at the guy changing his tire on the side of the road or because someone was texting and missed the guy in front of them laying on the breaks. The other 1% of the time, some schlep seriously misjudges the speed of oncoming traffic and ends up getting thrown 60 yards across a divided highway and plugging himself head first into a tree. I’d guess I missed that excitement by less than a minute. For a while tonight, I felt bad about wishing ill on the poor driver. Then I read a news report that he was a suspect in a robbery a few minutes earlier at a nearby store. I should probably still feel bad about another person’s suffering, buy all I can really think of at the moment is that sometimes karma doesn’t waste any time in getting even. Suddenly I find myself feeling less guilty.

A look over my shoulder…

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Despite the impressions that I might give here, I usually go out of my way to be at least civil to random people I meet during the course of the day. For the most part, they’re the ones just trying to get through whatever’s on their plate and they want to be left alone just as much as I do. Of course on the other hand you sometimes encounter someone who couldn’t get a clue if they were being handed out for free. That was the kind I ran into this morning while I was waiting to get my oil changed.

I like to use the kind of enforced down time you only get in a waiting room to catch up reading, writing, or some other activity I can do quietly. Occasionally I’ve had people stop to ask questions about the iPad. I do my best to answer their questions without getting sucked into anything resembling an actual conversation. I dispense the requested information and stick my nose immediately back into whatever it was I was working on before they came by. Sometimes, like this morning, it’s just not that simple.

The old battle axe sitting next to me this morning apparently has a tough time taking hints or reading body language. Just because I’m typing away on the screen doesn’t mean that I don’t see you trying to read what I’m writing. It gets a little more obvious when you start leaning further and further in my direction as I move my iPad further and further away from you. I didn’t particularly want to cause a scene and yelling at old ladies isn’t really my style. That left me with only one option: a Google search for BDSM images. Since she was so intrigued with what I was up to, I even offered to let her check out the first page of results with me. As it turns out, she apparently wasn’t as interested in what I was up to as she thought she was. Hopefully next time she’s tempted to mind someone else’s business, she’ll give some thought to how much she really wants to know about the stranger sitting next to her.

Time…

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I’ve had three days off and it hasn’t exactly been one of those nice restful weekends that everyone wants. Between cleaning, vet visits, picking up groceries, more cleaning, laundry, and sundry other odds and ends, I’m not feeling rested at all. I’m sure it doesn’t help that most of those things are what I’ve been putting off for the last two weeks, but still, how about a little time to do nothing at all? Yeah. That’s not going to happen. The good news is that the house is (mostly) clean and there’s a refrigerator full of food again, but that’s not something I can really hang my hat on when I wonder where the long weekend went. It’s all stuff that needed done, of course, but I get the distinct feeling that I’m spinning my wheels, since most of it will all need to be done again next weekend.

What I need is more time. Just a few more hours in the day maybe. Or at this point I’d settle for figuring out a way to better use those six “wasted” hours in the middle of the night when I’m busy just laying there. Ranting about it hasn’t seemed to do much good, so I’d better get moving and make the most out of the couple of hours I’ve got left this afternoon. Sheesh, and I thought time only flew when you were having fun.

Getting right…

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Today is the first time I’ve actually felt well since December 30th. Two weeks doesn’t seem like a long time until you spend most of it feeling like warm death. So, in a phrase, I’m very happy to put the worst of this bug behind me. The house is a wreck, there’s not a bit of food in the pantry, and the dogs seem a little surprised to see me doing something other than laying around on the couch. It seems that the priority for the rest of the weekend will be trying to undo two weeks of laziness. Giving the place a good scrub should probably be the first thing on the list. This house has a creepy ability to attract dust and grime. I think getting rid of it will go a long way towards confirming for myself that I’m actually feeling better. Other than that, plans for the long weekend include absolutely nothing other than possibly sticking my nose in a book and keeping the hot coffee flowing. Some people wouldn’t find that fulfilling, but after not doing much other than staring at the TV, anything that engages the brain is a welcome change of pace.

Rules…

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I’m never going to be nominated for sainthood. I’ve made my peace with that. Still, there are some unbreakable, iron clad rules that I live my life by. They’re not negotiable under any circumstances. Not ever. That’s not to say I’m not tempted to break them on an almost daily basis. One thing I’ve noticed though, is the moments when you’re most tempted to break your own rules are generally the moments when they should apply the most. Rules are pesky things like that. It’s almost unfortunate.