Category Archives: Life

Breaking out all over…

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This is the story of a dog. Well, it’s mostly a story of a dog. Let me start off by saying that this has not been a good week for Maggie, my usually good natured chocolate lab. On Saturday night, she managed to knock the drip tray of the George Foreman grill off the counter and lap up most of the still warm hamburger grease. Yep, I thought to myself, you’re going to be sick tomorrow. Little did I know that it wouldn’t take that long. Both Maggie and Winston usually sleep in their crates in the back bedroom and that’s why I was surprised to hear the scraping of a furry little paw on my bedroom door at 6:30 Sunday morning. Getting up to investigate, I was greeted with the nightmare scenario of patches of liquefied poo… in the living room, in the office, and all over the pup’s bedroom. In her efforts to franticly escape the rising tide in her crate, Maggie clearly flailed wildly about… as evidenced by flung poo reaching the six foot mark on the wall.

First step… toss the dogs out to the back yard and open the windows. Second step… mitigate as much of the damage as possible with paper towels and whatever cleaning liquids I happen to have around the house. Third step… wait for Walmart to open at 8:00. To cut a tragically long story short, I came home from Walmart (incidentally the only place open in the entire south at 8:00 on a Sunday morning) with a steam cleaner and spend the next ten hours or so washing, rinsing, and repeating. The evidence of evil past was fairly well taken care and I thought the worst was behind me.

I had been fasting Maggie for 24 hours and after the first post-explosion feeding on Monday, I was happy to see that things seemed a little more solid. You can imagine my disbelief when I woke up this morning to one more round of the craptastic chocolate lab. At least this time she didn’t get out of the crate and the damage was more contained. Still, running the steam cleaner at 5:00 on a Tuesday leaves something to be desired. Happily, I managed to clean and disinfect a bedroom, scrub down a crate, and still made it to work only 45 minutes later than usual. I’m hoping this isn’t a category that I need to start thinking of in terms of building a personal best record.

Before leaving for work, I drug the now clean and shiny crate through the house and made sure it was well wedged onto the linoleum. At least if there was another explosion, it would be easier to clean. Of course that was all before I got home this evening and discovered that through the last three days, Maggie has clearly figured out how to open the door to her crate or at least squeeze between the bars. Thinking it was a fluke, I put her back in the crate when I left to take Winston for his annual checkup (and pick up some drugs for Maggie). Of course when we got back form the vet, she was sprawled out in the middle of the kitchen floor sans crate.

It seems my beloved lab is breaking out all over. Tonight we’ll see if she can beat the marvel of zip ties and a newly engineered lock mechanism. I have a terrible feeling that she’s going to be better at breaking out than I am at keeping in. Wish me luck.

The office…

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It’s been raining in Memphis for about 36 hours now. In an effort to stay busy yesterday, I moved all of the furniture out of my home office/back bedroom and repositioned it in what, theoretically, is the dining room. It’s a much better space, with better light, and much, much more room than the 10×10 foot operation I had been running. Plus, it seems to be a much better use of space for the room than storing dog cages and furniture I hadn’t found time to take to Goodwill yet. Overall, I’m very pleased with how the room turned out (although I’m told I need curtains for some reason). I’ll be more satisfied when I get a few items hung on the walls. And yes, I’m just pompous enough to hang my degrees up right here in the dining room.

What I’m not quite use to yet, is sitting with my back to the giant front window. I’ve always hated sitting with my back to wide-open spaces, whether it’s in a restaurant or even here at home. That’s a holdover evolutionary issue with our ancestors trying not to get eaten by lions, I suppose. So, yeah, we’ll see how it goes from here… and how the pups like having their own room.

Prep work…

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There are some who would call me a bit of a neat freak. It’s a habit that with the exception of my brief residence in a run-down apartment on Center Street in Frostburg, I’ve had all my life as far as I can remember. It’s probably a mild form of OCD, but it works for me. The real reason for the pull out the stops cleaning and straightening extravaganza this weekend is the impending visit from my mother… Who is probably the root cause of my neatnik tendencies. Seriously, the lady keeps a house straight like nobody’s business. In an effort to keep her from spending the entire visit cleaning, I’ve kicked it into overdrive this weekend. The living room didn’t get dusted, though, and there’ll probably be hell to pay for that, but overall the place looks to be in good shape and is probably cleaner than it’s been since the last time she was here.

Of course the dining room that is now home to two ridiculously large wire dog crates (and no dining room table) will probably get a look or two. It’s hard to believe that with me and two dogs living here, a three bedroom house doesn’t seem to have enough room… In a pinch I guess I could forgo the home office, but other than the kitchen, it’s probably the room that gets the most use.

I suppose that’s my round about way of saying that after all the prep work my mom will be visiting for the week… I’m sure you can expect a story or two as two seriously hard-headed people live once more under one roof and as she works through first time jitters of flying without someone else along with her. Do you suppose it’s inappropriate to through out the “my house, my rules” line at least once? But seriously, I don’t make it home nearly as often as I’d like to… so sometimes it’s nice when home comes to me.

In a mood…

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I wish I could attribute it to the weather or some other factor, but there’s nothing that I can put my finger on that completely explains my particularly bad mood for the last three days. Bad mood doesn’t really even come close to getting at it. I’m downright angry… hostile even. I’ve been doing my best to hold it in check but there were times today that I wanted to… Well, it’s probably best not to describe those particular ideas. While it probably wouldn’t be considered felonious, it would have definitely been assault. It’s been all I can do to avoid flying off the handle, let alone try to be productive. Then, of course, that annoys me too and the cycle continues. There’s a root cause to this and I know I’ll sus it out in time, but patience is not one of my virtues at the best of times and it becomes even less so when I’m feeling peevish.

Off guard…

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I got a call late this afternoon that one of my second cousins had died early this morning. I hadn’t seen him in years, but had fond memories of him from when I was growing up. I asked how old he was and wasn’t surprised to here 59 or 60 as I knew that was the general neighborhood he would have been in. What only dawned on my after the call had ended was that this guy had was *only* 60. Suddenly that doesn’t seem so old. That’s twice my current age and it occurs to me how quickly these first 30 have gone and that the pace only seems to be quickening. It’s a thought that caught me off guard and one that’s likely to fester for a while. I don’t generally ponder mortality, but tonight I think I’ll make an exception.

Godspeed and rest well, cuz. You will be missed.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Beautiful…

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I’m sitting on the back porch enjoying a cold beer, pulling on a Cohiba la Habana, tapping away on the blog, and keeping one eye on the dogs who always seem to always manage to lay squarely on my feet. It’s probably 70 degrees and there are no bugs to speak of this early in the season. I had a reasonably well cooked steak for dinner and interesting conversation with colleagues I respect. Things will look different at 4:30 tomorrow morning, but right now all is right with the world and that is a beautiful thing.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Lost, Damaged, or Destroyed…

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After one of the longest four-day weeks in recent memory, I managed to get away from work nearly on time. I pounded out a txt on my way to the parking lot, put my bag on top of the truck bed cover, sat my phone down beside it, and tossed my coat in the back seat because I hate driving with my coat on. The bag is tossed in next, I settle in to the driver’s seat and I’m off to start a week and a half of vacation time.

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention picking my phone up. Well that’s because I apparently didn’t. Of course I didn’t know this as I pulled out of the parking lot, drive through the gate, and made best possible speed for the house. I only realized this ten minutes later when I reached down to grab it off my belt clip. There was the clip sure enough, but the phone was ominously missing. I reach behind me, thinking it probably had just popped out of the clip or maybe slid between the seat and center console. No dice there. Not paniced yet, I pulled my coat over the seat and rummaged through the pockets. Sill no phone. It wasn’t in its usual spot on the center console either. This is where the dread starts setting in. I pull to the shoulder, check under the seats, check my coat again, and actually check every place a phone could possibly end up. It, of course, was in none of these places.

So now I backtrack to the office. No one has turned in anything to the gate guard and it’s not lying in or near the parking lot. It’s not lying anywhere inside the fenceline for that matter. I scouted that area pretty well. It’s not outside the gate where I would have made my first quick acceleration. It’s not at the exit where I turned onto the highway. By now it has begun dawning on me that I’m not likely to find it. In a shower of curses not often heard from me, I admitted defeat and accepted that my phone was lost, damaged, or destroyed.

So yes, my pretty and still relatively new 16 gig iPhone is now officially listed as missing in action. I only hope that flying off the back of a fast moving truck damaged it beyond repair because the thought of some schlep using my phone as a high powered iPod makes me crazy at the moment.

I’ve switched over to a back up phone and my number still works, so all told I was off the grid for about three hours. Three absolutely terrifying hours.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Good…

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Sometimes I need to be reminded that despite the petty annoyances, the universe may not just be stringing us along after all. And it’s always amazing that it’s the small things, the things like an offhanded remark, an unexpected message, or a late night phone call that do most of the reminding. Sometimes that’s just enough to carry you through to the finish line. Hey universe, thanks for tonights’ reminder. Seriously. Well timed and greatly appreciated.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Managing expectations

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Through most of my life I’ve never been terribly good at managing expectations. Or rather I should say that my expectations tend to swing wildly from puppy dogs and sunshine to the absolute bleakness usually reserved for 19th century poets. And all of this over the span of five minutes. Sure, I’ve learned to mask both of them fairly reasonably, but still, that’s what’s going on behind the scenes. You learn at an early age that if you keep those kind of thoughts in check you can save yourself a good deal of trouble in the long run.

I like black and white, the known versus the unknown. Some people seem to have a natural capacity or even a bit of a love for the unknown. I’m not one of those. It’s strange and different and therefore scary. Far easier to retreat back to the comfort and ease of what we know.

Maybe I’ve chosen comfort and ease for so long that it’s really all I know for certain and it becomes my default setting. Perhaps, it’s time to to move beyond that. I really don’t know how the rest of the world deals with the dichotomy between blind optimism and abject pessimism. If there’s a trick I’ve got to learn it, because swinging from pillar to post is quite simply exhausting.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

A note to retailers…

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If you are a retailer facing what most are saying is the most foul economic climate in the post war period, the response to a customer walking in your door at 1:55 prepared to spend a few hundred dollar shouldn’t be, “oh we close at two.” Maybe you should find some time to focus a little more on “May I help you?” Really, though, go ahead and stick with your current customer relations model and let me know how that works out for you.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]