Tag Archives: christmas

Home again…

Posted on by

Having made the drive and settled in with 2/3 of my critters leads to the inevitable question – What now? I’m not exactly known for my comfort level with “just being.” There’s always one more thing to do. One more post to make. Laundry to do. Etcetera and so on. You see, as much as this was home for 19 years, it’s still a place other than my own. It’s a feeling somewhere between being 17 again and being a random out of town relative stopping in for a visit. Maybe “unsettled” is the best descriptor even though I’ve done my level best to temporarily reposition all the essentials here with me.

So it’s safe to say we’re now well into the period of sitting around wondering what it is I’m supposed to be doing. With nowhere to be, nothing here to tinker with, and even less on the “needs done now” list, I’ll do my best not to drive myself crazy with a day and a half days marked off with only a vague “to be determined.” I’m glad to be here and it’s always good to be right back where I started from, but it does a marvelous job of making mince out of my routine. And that always makes me just a little extra crazy for the holiday.

Preparations for getting underway…

Posted on by

You’d think after spending four Christmases fighting my way home across 900 miles, a quick hop from on side of a small mid-Atlantic state to the other could be accomplished with a minimum of fuss. If you thought that, however, you would be exactly wrong. Traveling with Maggie and Winston in tow is a task table_3_supply_classesso complex that it makes even the planning for Normandy look like amateur hour. Beds, food, fuel, clothes, sundries, health and welfare items, medication – if I added barrier material and ammo I could cover down on all the classes of supply getting loaded into the truck in preparation for getting underway.

There’s a fair percentage – maybe 30% – of what’s getting packed that I won’t actually use or need. Still, I like knowing that I have it. You could fill warehouses with things I like having along “just in case.” For me, apparently it’s just in case I need to rebuild my life from the ground up starting only with what I have on hand with me in the truck. Almost disturbingly, that’s only a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t travel as much as I use to, but when I do, I travel heavy. After all, you never know what just in case might pop up requiring you to rebuild civilization using only contents of your luggage.

Off to the races…

Posted on by

Unless something incredibly stupid happens between now and the 31st, I’ve worked my last day for 2013… and that feels incredibly good. Maybe I should modify that statement a bit, though. What I really mean is I’ve finished working for wages this year. I’ll still be doing plenty of work – giving the house a good mid-winter scrub, bringing order to the piles of random junk in the basement, a few days of dashing hither and yon across the state, and finally ending up back where I started from a few days of legitimate R&R and maybe, if I’m lucky, a little bit of writing.

My 12-days of vacation aren’t exactly off to a slow start, having closed on a new mortgage for the Condo de Jeff this afternoon and then promptly dragging Maggie to the vet for half-priced Friday evening vaccinations before even getting to my first official day of vacation. It should get better from here on out, though. If nothing else, the timing will matter less.

Sure, I’ll probably still reflexively wake up before dawn, but I’m going to do my level best to turn off the little voice in my head that’s constantly screaming at me to hurry up, do one more thing, and stop wasting time. That will probably last about three days before I make myself crazy trying to “just relax”… and after that I’ll be off to the races.

My twelve days of Christmas…

Posted on by

As of the close of business this afternoon, there are 10 working days standing between me and the a year ending 12-day weekend. Sure, some people are all friends, family, Christmas, Jesus, whatever… but for me, it’s the nearly two weeks of uninterrupted time off that gets my motor running. All the other stuff feels more or less incidental to having such an expanse stretching out before me where I’m the only one dictating how I spend my time. OK, maybe it misses the point of the season, but being the non-conforming traditionalist I am, that doesn’t bother me much.

After the past season of professional discontent in service to the arbitrary and capricious whims of the dysfunctional legislative and executive branches of government, the most joyous and celebratory thing I can think of doing is ignoring the whole shitshow for my twelve days of Christmas.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Christmas shopping. I know the old saying goes “It’s better to give than to receive” and while I’m sure there are some very good socio-religious reasons for that adage, my own Christmas shopping does not in any way reflect it. After a week of hitting the sales at my usual haunts, it’s pretty much Jeff: 10, Everyone Else: 0. I’m shooting to get most of my list covered down over this coming weekend. Fortunately, in the finest tradition of 21st century man, gift cards are pretty easy to find and I can have just about all of that knocked out in about an hour. I’m sure I could go spend the next three weeks carefully pondering what the recipients might want, but in the end, shopping for other people is mostly a wild ass shot in the dark. It’s better all around to take my chances with them knowing what they want instead of giving it my best blind guess.

2. Arguing on the internet. I’m a regular member of several online forums. One of the best aspects of the internet is that no matter what you’re interested in, there’s almost guaranteed to be a group of people out there interested in talking about the same thing. From investments to tortoise keeping, there’s a discussion out there for you. What I don’t understand is why so many people spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on these sites arguing with one another over nitpicky details that really make all that much difference. There’s something about having an internet connection that imbues people with the sense that they alone are the herald of the One Truth. I’m of the opinion that there is room for smart people to disagree, for there to be more than one version of the truth, without everyone being a bunch of doucheknockers. Then again, that theory depends largely on it being a discussion between smart people. Which may be the ultimate flaw in my logic.

3. Thirty minutes. That’s how much later than normal I left work on Tuesday. I signed off on it in advance and for once actually wanted to go to a meeting, but that didn’t take into account the fact that apparently leaving 1800 seconds after the end of my usual duty day approximately doubles the duration of my drive home from 45 minutes to nearly an hour and a half. If I wanted to deal with that kind of asshattery, I would have accepted the job down at Ft. Myer and not here in the sticks, thank you very much. File that one under the category labeled “Mistakes I Won’t Make a Second Time.”

Four letter word…

Posted on by

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…

Posted on by

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).

Follow Me (Everything is Alright)…

Posted on by

One thing I know from a misspent middle age is that Fridays are pretty much the worst day of the week to post a new blog. As soon as the whistle blows at the end of the day, people are off and racing to start the weekend – or in this case the extra long holiday weekend. Even a post with all the right content, perfectly archived tags, and on a topical bit of content just isn’t going to have juice. That’s why Fridays are usually the day I don’t bother posting anything. Even on Saturdays you can reach a respectable audience if you get you post up and Follow mein front of people early enough in the morning that they see if before they run off to do whatever it is normal people do on Saturdays.

I’ll be completely honest, I don’t know what my posting schedule is going to look like for the next few days. This has all been a long way of saying that hitting the regular gates for days and times that I usually post can be a little problematic when there’s travel and a holiday involved. I’m not even going to pretend that I’m going to try to sticking to a schedule for the next few days. With that being said, I don’t foresee things going dark around here either. Stupid things that need to be talked about seem to follow me around like damned plague of locusts.

The best way to make sure that you don’t miss any of the fun and excitement at jeffreytharp.com is to go ahead and click on the little “Sign Me Up” button on the upper right hand sign of your screen. That way you’ll get your very own email notification every time something new shows up. I mean if that’s not a Christmas present, I don’t know what is.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Comcast. We’re now on the 3rd monthly bill that’s jacked up as a result of my changing cable plans. This month’s bill got it mostly right, but still shows a $16 charge for a DVR and service that I no longer have. That’s not going to blow the monthly budget, of course, but it’s one of those small things that it really shouldn’t take three months to sort out. Now that I’m not really doing any living in the basement, I think I’ll just have that cable drop turned off and send the box back… At this point, any time I can put fewer dollars in Comcast’s garter, the happier I am. Optimistically, I think we should have everything resolved by sometime in June.

2. Terms of Service. If Instagram changes their terms of service and you don’t like it, go ahead and delete your account. To the best of my knowledge, no one is required to use Instagram. Since their providing a free service to the people of the interwebs, I think it’s only fair that we expect that at some point they’re going to have to figure out a way to make money from their service. If my fancy business classes are to be believed, the whole point in starting a company is to actually make money. Otherwise, they’d be a charity (or an arm of government) and would be interested in providing all of us something for nothing until the end of time. If you think applying filters to your grainy camera pics is so important, go ahead and by a copy of Photoshop and do it up right.

3. The Friday before a Ten Day Weekend. If anyone is expecting great and wonderful things tomorrow, let me disabuse you of that notion before we even get there. Although my body may be physically be shackled to my desk for one last eight hour stint, rest assured my mind has already flown the coop for 2012 and isn’t accepting any additional old business at this time.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Self-Inflicted Crisis. It’s hackneyed because it’s true: A failure to adequately plan on the part of someone else, does not in any way constitute a crisis on my part. Screwing around Boomwith something all week and then dropping it in someone else’s lap at the last minute hoping they’re going to drop everything and fix it over the weekend does not constitute a plan. At best it constitutes hope… and hope, as we all know, is not generally considered a sound planning methodology.

2. Sharing the “wealth”. If you’re hacking up a lung and sound more or less like you could drop dead at any moment, do the world a favor and take a sick day. I don’t care if you’re saving sick days for little Scotty’s tonsillectomy or planning to take a few mental health days later in the month, show a little consideration for the people forced to sit within ten feet of you for eight hours a day and go the hell home. Trust me, you’re not showing anyone how dedicated you are. Even if you’re perfectly willing to drop dead in harness at your desk, no one breathing the same air is interested in your misguided sacrifice on the altar of the workday.

3. Christmas Shopping. Sure, 95% of my Christmas gifts are going to be given in the form of small rectangular plastic cards, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that it’s getting to the point where I can no longer blissfully ignore the impending arrival of the holiday. At some point, probably this weekend, I’m going to have to break down and do what passes for my version of Christmas shopping. Loosely translated, that means picking up a few quality bottles of hooch at the local liquor store and then hitting up a few other places to pick up gift cards. Come to think of it, there may yet be time to order all the gift cards online and have them sent to the house… then all I need to do for the weekend is stop at the liquor store. That’s a Christmas task that even I can get behind.