Category Archives: Life

Rest for the wicked…

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Aren’t you supposed to feel rested and reenergized after you take almost a week off? Maybe that’s just a fiction created by Madison Avenue to sell timeshares and trips to sunny islands. Fact is, whatever restive effects I had been feeling this morning were dissipated long before lunch. After that, it was just another day at the office. Not good. Not bad. Just the same as every other day. This really isn’t a thinly veiled complaint, because as we all know, I’ve had jobs I’ve well and truly hated in the recent past. By comparison, this one is like puppy dog dreams on a feather bed. If lacking a certain degree of passion is the worst thing I can say, I suppose there’s very little to complain about at all. Of course it’s also possible that I’m a little out of sorts because I’ve spent a week letting my routine get thrown out of whack… and let’s be honest, we all know how much I like sticking to the routine.

Once my internal clock is resynced, things should be right as rain.

Crazy…

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I was halfway through a rant about people who get up early and go shopping in the middle of the night on “Black Friday” until I had one of those pesky moments of clarity. Such moments are painfully inconvenient, especially when they force you to throw 250 already written words over the side. Sadly, I couldn’t in clear conscience continue my rant under the circumstances.

Just as I was about to rhetorically ask who the people were that would get up in the middle of the night just to get things that were available for a few pennies more during normal business hours, I realized that I am one of those people. Sure, I’m not going to crawl out of bed to go somewhere like Target or Macy’s, but let there be a new iPhone or iPad hitting the shelves and I’ll be there in line before Bermuda is getting its first rays of morning sun.

Coming to terms with that little jewel stings a little. Even after years of getting up early on product launch days, I dodn’t feel like one of those people. Maybe it’s because instead of getting trampled to death jamming through the doors at the local Walmart, we’re more likely to be enjoying complimentary Starbucks and granola bars while we wait in a nice orderly queue. Sure, I’m obviously still as crazy the Black Friday crowd, but it’s a much more orderly and serene form of crazy. So there.

Afternoon darkness…

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One of the consequences of getting dark in the middle of the afternoon is that now pretty much all I want to do from 6:00 onward is go to bed. That was a perfectly acceptable feeling when it got dark at 8:30 and bed was only ninety minutes away. It’s less ok now that between the time I get to crawl into bed and the time I start wanting to do that, there are four hours that need to be somewhat productive or the cleaning, laundry, and other activities that keep a household running are going to pile up to unacceptable levels. And so with that, I once again turn to the internet for an answer. Is there something, anything, that anyone uses to gin up motivation to be productive when it’s dark outside? Coffee is getting to be my only salvation, but somehow adding another pot to the one I already drink during daylight hours seems a touch excessive. I’ve always had some issues during this time of year, but this is getting ridiculous. I either need to find some energy or accept the fact that I’m going to go to bed at 7PM until the days start getting longer again.

Putting the fried in Friday…

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This is one of those weeks where the best thing you can say about it is simply “it’s over.” Some weeks are bound to be like that. It’s unavoidable. That doesn’t make me any less happy to see them slide by under the stern. Not that the weekends are any less frantic, but they’re frantic in a different way… You know, full of doing things that I’m actually interested in. Not that churning out 100-page reports, briefing slides, and spreadsheets isn’t fun and all, but I’m more than ready to let my eyes uncross for a few days. A week or two would be better, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to try staying away from the monitor this weekend, so we’ll pick this up again Monday… Unless something really gets on my nerves between now and then, in which case you know I can’t resist the temptation to post right away.

The holiday spirit…

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Let’s go ahead and get something out of the way right now. Trick-or-treating is really just an excuse to send your children out into the street begging for candy from strangers. It’s pretty much exactly what you teach them not to do the other 364 days of the year. If it’s a guy in a van offering you a Snickers bar, stay away… but feel free to go right up to his house and knock on the door. Nice job on sending mixed messages, mom and dad. That’s fine. They’re your kids, so it doesn’t make much difference to me either way. That’s not really my point, though.

Before you send little Johnny or Suzie to knock on my door tonight, I need you to take note of the “Beware of Dog” sign placed prominently displayed in the window. It’s not that my dogs are particular vicious. In fact they’ve never shown signs of it at all, but if I decide to open up the door when you knock, there’s a fair chance that they’re going to bound out of the house in a bit of frenzy. See, they’re not all that keen on visitors and they’ll have a tendency to jump on you and your little darlings until they’re satisfied that you’re not really that interesting.

Sure, I could lock them in the basement tonight, but you see, the thing is they live here and you don’t. More importantly, I like them more than I like you, random neighbor who’s showing up at my door expecting me to give candy to your children. So in order to save us all a lot of headache, here’s the deal: I’m going to set a large bowl of candy and a “help yourself” sign on the deck. Feel free to take something. When it’s gone, it’s gone. If you decide to knock on the door instead of following instructions, I’m going to let the dogs out to jump on you, bark at you, and hopefully knock you down.

Lounge…

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Looking out the kitchen window into the inky blackness of 6AM, while I was waiting for the coffee maker to quit dripping, I got smacked in the head by a memory of a place where I haven’t set foot in over a decade. The old Honors Lounge was a half-subterranean affair stashed just off the boiler room in Guild Center. It had the benefit of not just being secluded, but also of being close to almost all your classes if you happened to be a social science major. Though the furniture was of suspect cleanliness, it was comfortable in that beat to hell kind of way that hand-me-down furniture tends to have. On most days it was a great place to find a conversation or an argument and it beat walking all the day down the hill to Lane Center or Cambridge if you needed to kill an hour between classes. More important than any of that, though, the Honors Lounge had a coffee pot and usually a giant drum of Maxwell House in the fridge. Sure, if you went in too early on a Monday morning there might have been mold growing in the filter or scorched sludge in the pot if someone left it on over the weekend, but the important part was that it was there at all. Fresh, hot coffee on demand. That was living big. As long as you liked your coffee black that is, since your chances of finding creamer or sugar stashed somewhere were nil.

I don’t know what made me think of that this morning. Maybe it was the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting up at me. Maybe it was the last exasperated gurgle the machine made before giving up its piping hot wonderfully caffeinated beverage. Since I’m not a fancy big city psychologist, I’ll probably never know what exactly triggered that particular memory, but for a few seconds this morning, I was standing right there in Frostburg looking out the window towards Old Main waiting to pour a fresh cup before walking down the hall to class.

House call…

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It seems a lot of people working in my office live in a master-planned enclave not far from work. I’m sure it’s nice if you’re into jogging trails, tot lots, and clubhouse where they have a monthly movie night. Lawns are mowed and flowers planted by the Home Owners Association and there’s even a gate to keep out the riffraff. I can’t say I’m philosophically opposed to any of those things, really.

What does make my blood run cold was talking to the new boss a few days ago and him saying “Oh yeah, Mr. Bigwig stopped by the house after dinner last night and we went over some new ideas for Big Fancy Project.” Huh? He came to your house? And then he had the audacity to want to talk about work? Not cool.

I think we’ve established now that I’m not a social climber and there’s a pretty slim chance that I’ll ever get invited to a leadership retreat. I get my work done on time and within tolerance, consistently, and with minimal oversight. I do it for eight hours and then when I leave I don’t think about it until I get back the next morning. It’s a time honored system and it works for me. One of the bosses randomly showing up on my doorstep at 7 o’clock wanting to talk shop is way, way beyond the pale. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded why I live way out off the beaten path rather than in town. It seems physical distance from the office is at least as important as mental distance.

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.

Coming down…

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Coming down off a 4-day glut of not having all that much to do is a tough one. I don’t exactly want to hang out at home doing nothing for a fifth day, but I don’t exactly want to go to the office and sit at my desk doing considerably more than nothing either. I was just starting to get use to a non-geriatric bedtime and not being awake for two hours before the sun even bothered to come up. The only thing that’s certain is that tomorrow is going to be tough… but it’s a toughness tempered by the fact that it’s only going to be a three day week for me and then I’ll roll back into the happy embrace of another long weekend.

Score…

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One of the unforeseen perks of moving this summer and forgoing my usual spring trip was the recent discovery of an almost 70-hour balance of vacation time that I have to take between now and the end of the year. Of course it could also have something to do with needing to take way few Mental Health Mondays too. Whatever the case, if it all gets approved as requested, the last few months of the year are looking like a bonanza of 3-, 4-, and 5-day weekends. Maybe it’s not sitting on a beach somewhere, but it’s a definite score. The Annual Burning of the Leave begins Friday.

Criminal stupidity…

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Last week, one of my mortgage payments went down. Thinking I would do the prudent thing and reallocate the surplus to paying down the another that’s at a higher rate, I logged into the online banking center and changed my autopay settings on both accounts. At least that’s what I thought I did. In reality, I set a brand-spanking-new automatic payment for each of the two mortgages in question. That wouldn’t be so bad, of course, if you caught your mistake right away. It turns into a bit more of an issue when you miss the mistake for a few days and the bank deducts twice the normal payment from your account and leaves you with a balance of $4.37.

Since almost every bill I have is set up to automatically pay every month, I rarely look at the actual accounts any more. Which helps explain the near-epileptic fit I launched into when the bank sent me a friendly “low balance” email this morning. I’m glad to say that the bank was more than accommodating at getting the situation resolved, but that didn’t really help me feel like any less of a tool. Although I’m still glad I found out today and now three days from now when I stop by to pay the rent. Since I spend most says ranting about it, I thought it was only fair to call out my own bout of criminal stupidity. And now you know the rest of the story.