Category Archives: Life

Weekly report…

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Yes, I realize I’ve been slacking. As much as I try to keep up a steady stream of 2-3 or more posts a week for the last two years or so, I figured laying off for a week wouldn’t kill anyone. Of course that doesn’t mean I checked out completely. There are plenty of ideas banging around between my ears that just haven’t made it into print yet. I’ll get to those at some point. For now, I’m going to do my best to relax (definitely not my natural state) and enjoy my last few days off. Next time I’ll see more than a weekend away will be Christmas, so I’ll be doing my best to make these count. I’m willing to say that I’ve done well with that so far.

In the meantime I should really go see what mayhem the dogs are causing. They’re being far too quiet and while that’s perfectly acceptable at my house, it’s probably a bad sign here if we ever expect to come back.

Home, James…

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I get to indulge in the most satisfying of trips… The one that takes you home. Sure, I’ve got to cross a third of the continent, but every mile is worth it. The longer I’m away, the more I want to be there. I guess there’s nothing fading about my brand of homesickness. I’m even becoming more generous with what I think of as “home”; a phrase that now encompasses wide swaths of Virginia, DC, West Virginia, and Maryland.

Any trip back east is a cause for celebration, but this isn’t a normal trip home. I get the extra perk of seeing one of my oldest friends getting married to a truly classy guy. Now I’m not usually a proponent of weddings as a rule, but this one is getting my personal seal of approval. Congrats, Sandi and Jon!

Something is better than nothing…

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So it feels like I should at least write something this weekend. Well, technically, I guess I have been doing plenty of writing, but none of it for publication. As much as I love my ranting and raving here, occasionally I do have to take a break to do actual productive work. As everyone knows, of course, I try to keep that to a minimum.

It’s the spirit of something being better than nothing that has kept me busy most of the weekend. I’ve been doing alot of bitching and complaining lately, but I forgot that if you want to change anything, first you have to start. Most of the weekend has been getting up a head of steam for that start. Getting entrenched in the day-to-day is the easy thing to do. Twisting up your fortitude to start making hard decisions, now that’s tough.

Don’t worry, I can’t imagine a circumstance where I’ll quit my bitching… but my hat’s over the wall. Now I’ve gotta go get it.

Catharsis…

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Sometimes it’s important to revisit the lessons of the past. I learned a long time ago that killing zombies was a truly cathartic exercise. “Zombies” is mostly a catch all phrase for anything that falls into my field of fire in World of Warcraft. For the better part of a year, I played at least an hour every weekday – some days a little longer, some days a little less. Through it all, shooting fire from my digital fingertips at my undead enemies, gave me a venue to get it out of my system. I got away from it mostly because it became more of a time commitment than I was willing to keep up with. In the interests of not losing my mind completely, it’s probably something I should get back to. Then again, I’ve been kicking around the idea of picking up an xbox and expanding my gaming horizons a bit. With everything else around here that needs kept up with, I’m not sure either of those is actually a good idea. Having a slight compulsion towards neat and tidy makes sitting around playing games feel like something I shouldn’t have time for, but the benefit of not stapling people to their cubicle walls may make it the lesser of all possible evils.

Steam…

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It’s easy to work up a rant when you’ve already got a full head of steam behind you. The real challenge is doing it when the boilers are cold. Right now, though, I’m not about the challenge. It’s feeling more like a stream of consciousness kind of evening. Actually, tonight is feeling more like a trickle than a stream. Well, that’s not exactly true, either. There’s plenty to say; plenty of things that need to be said in the clear. Not that I expect that would change anything other than adding fuel to the fire. I don’t have quite enough ego these days to think that I can make that much of a difference – That got smacked out of me last fall. Maybe the best thing now is to focus on getting my eight-and-out every day, make self-preservation and sanity-preservation a priority, and stop trying to draw fire. I’m not sure I even remember how to do that.

Something off…

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I should be happy that there was no mayhem and chaos to speak of today, but the wash-over foolishness from last weeks seems to be enough to keep things stupid for the rest of this week at least. Not much likelihood of catching a breath before being plunged back into it… Sort of like getting a swirly that way. It can’t be a good thing when you get use to operating in a constant state of pissed off. Normal should be like that.

I haven’t quite put my finger on it just yet, but I’ve got a sense that something is off. There’s some bad mojo working out there and I need to figure out what it is. The constant casting looks over my shoulder is getting old and being snuck up on just ain’t my bag, baby. Not that I’m expecting the world turned upside down, but my experience has been that any surprise is generally a bad one.

Bible belt identity crisis…

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The south/mid-west, for good reason, is largely known as the bible belt. If you’ve ever spent any time here and have seen the epic size of some of the churches they build, you know it’s true. This morning I had the opportunity to spend five hours driving from Memphis to St. Louis… and what I noticed most strinkingly was that every couple of dozen miles there was one of two billboards… the first were advertisements for what can only be described as a prolific density of “gentlemen’s clubs” and adult novelty stores. The second billboard type were more of the “sinners go to hell” or “end abortion now.” I wasn’t counting, but I’d estimate that easily 1/5 to 1/4 of all billboards along one 50 mile stretch of I-55 were for one or the other of these. Apparently the bible belt has a bit of an identity crisis, as I suspect at least some of the same butts in the pews on Sunday are the ones in the VIP room on Saturday night. I’m not making a values judgement there, by the way. I don’t care one way or another where someone is on Saturday night or Sunday morning, as long as they’re not at my house.

I hate to break this to both sides, but your signs aren’t making much difference (but the guy leasing the space appreciates your efforts). The wanna be pimps at the clubs aren’t going to change en mass because of this media blitz, that given the fading I saw on those signs, has been going on for a while. At the same time, the holy rollers funding those big new churches aren’t going to suddenly decide they need edible panties while driving down the interstate. You’re arguing past one another because neither one really gives a damn what the other side thinks.

I propose a compromise; a truce if you will. There’s room enough for all of us here and plenty of space for reasonable human beings to have a difference of opinion even on what seem like important issues. Truth is that I’ve got maybe 40 or 50 years left on this rock and I’m going to do what I want to do, signs or no signs. Some days that might be going to a club and other days that might be educating myself on the dogma of the faith. Life’s too short to think that it has to be all one way or all the other. In the immortal words of Rodney King, can’t we all just get along?

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Sitting…

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So the Line X manager was nice enough to drive me over to the Barns and Nobel instead of knocking around his shop for the three hours he said it would take. The good news is that there’s way more interesting things to look at here. The down side is that after 11:00, I have no direct way to hassle him about when it’s going to be finished. That’s only a problem in that after sitting around a bookstore and drinking coffee for an hour and a half, I’m pretty much finished with the part of the day where I want to sit quietly. I think I’m possibly more unnerved because I’m effectively marooned out here in the land of the all-day strip mall without even the most basic transportation. The mall is close by, but the walk across the million and a half acres of open parking lot makes me hesitant to leave the well air conditioned table I’ve managed to take over.

On the other hand it occurs to me that at some point in the not too distant past, there was a world without wifi… When there was no nation-wide cellular network… And when having this kind of wait would have meant truly just sitting quietly and waiting. No multitasking. Barely even single-tasking unless you count things like breathing and keeping your heart beating as “tasks.”

Since I’ve gone more and more digital, the book store itself is something of a strange land. Nothing seems to be where it was the last time I was here. Of course that was probably over a year ago. Fortunately, the coffee is still good and I’ll probably manage not to completely lose my mind while I’m here… But I’m really, really ready to get back among the ranks of the mobile this morning.

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Finding the right accessories…

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With the new truck tucked safely in the garage, it’s time to think about accessories. That’s probably a hold over from being a Wrangler owner, where everything was an accessory. I’ve got two appointments scheduled Friday. The Line-X bed liner gets sprayed in the morning and the tint shop is doing the windows in the afternoon. That goes a long way towards getting me where I want to be. Next step is finding a hard tonneau cover and step rails, but that’s going to have to wait for a week or two given a pesky trip for work that has cropped up in the middle of my accessorizing. Very inconvenient, that, though it does give me a chance to do a bit more research before making any decisions. I had a flip cover on the old truck which was great, but wasn’t quite as weatherproof as I’d like. Of course the drawback to the full hard cover is that it basically eliminates the ability to haul anything of size. Then again, how likely am I to manhandle a sofa into the back of the truck anyway? Yeah. Not so much.

If anyone out there has recommendations on brands or personal experiences on the hard covers, I’d be more than happy to hear them. Once I get these few things squared away, I should be set… until I catch a wild hare and feel compelled to start playing with the onboard electronics, of course.

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Let’s make a deal…

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I use to have a blog over at Blogger that went by the working title “Falling into it.” That’s mostly because at odd moments, I seem to trip over good situations. This weekend is a case in point. To say the least, I wasn’t planning on getting a new truck. In fact, I was extremely happy with the one I had. Usually getting a call from a car salesman on a Saturday isn’t something I’d look forward to. The only reason I picked up at all was that I was driving and had the bluetooth in my ear and didn’t feel like fishing for my phone to screen the call. I’m sure it’s an old line in the car business, but he was adamant that they had someone looking for my “exact model truck”and would cut me a good deal on anything they had on the lot if I was interested in trading.

I wasn’t interested in trading, of course, but since I was driving past the dealership anyway, I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to slip in and let them buy me a cup of coffee. My “old” truck was a 2008 and was getting along towards 50,000 miles (a couple of trips to Maryland every year will rack ’em up fast). No way were they going to be interested when they saw the mileage, so I should be on my way in a couple of minutes. I handed off my keys to the appraiser and hopped on the golf cart for a window tour of the lot, commenting on other trucks here and their and throwing out a laundry list of things I wanted: full sized crew cab, power everything, sunroof, 4×4, towing package, cloth seats, and nothing in white, tan, or silver. Pulling through the lot he passed truck after truck that got disqualified for one or more reasons (4×4’s in the south are surprisingly hard to come by). As we pulled back to the front, I was sure that we were all but through. Until, he mentioned that there was one more Tundra in the showroom that he thought I would like… The infamous one more thing. Sure, I though, he wants to get me inside to make it psychologically harder to leave. OK, I’m game. Let’s go have a look.

So there it was sitting in the middle of the showroom floor, with the exact specs that I had told him it would take for me to even start talking about a deal. I still had my safety net, though, as I knew the appraiser was never going to come back with an offer high enough to pay off my loan on the old truck. Well, the short version is that he came back with an appraisal that was well in excess of what I had been expecting and more than enough to pay off Bank of America. Still, I knew there wasn’t a chance of the finance people coming up with a number that I was going to be willing to work with, so it wasn’t even close to a done deal. In my own mind, I was no closer to buying a new truck than I was when I walked in the door.

Their first deal wasn’t bad enough to be insulting, but was way off in terms of where the numbers needed to be to convince me it was worth while. It’s a car dealership, there’s always haggling and that’s half the fun. Back he scurried to the sales manager’s desk, coming back 10 minutes later with an offer that was a little better, but still not sweet. One more time, I say, tell your guy that this one needs to be his best and final offer since we’re not going to do this all afternoon. Back to the sales desk, about 20 minutes this time, and he comes back and hands me a sheet of paper. And that was the offer I couldn’t refuse – 0% financing, and a monthly note that was about $2 more than I was paying already.

So to get this straight, I’ll give you my two year old truck, with 50,000 miles on it and in exchange you’re going to give me a brand new truck, 2 years of free scheduled maintenance, not increase my payment, decrease the length of my loan amortization, and let me use Toyota’s money at 0% to make it happen? Yeah?

Sold.

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