Category: general

No real blog today.

I’m listening to the new Grizzly Bear, yeah it leaked.  The press is abuzz, calls for “album of the year” abound, a battle royale: Veckatimest in the blue trunks, Merriweather Post Pavilion in red.  Sure I’ve got it, I got it within hours of when it pre’d – I am that awesome, an IV into my mainline pumping leaks.  I don’t know though guys… sometimes Grizzly Bear sounds boring to me.  Slow, sleepy, boring.  I will grant you that the first half of the album is rather peppy… but so far the second “side” seems to have some sleepers…  I’ll give it more time, see what happens.

Did you guys know I have a dear friend who has Lupus?  I do.  Do you know what Lupus is?  (Hint: It’s not a werewolf… pretty sure).  Anyway, she appealed through her blog and I felt the cause worthy, so I’m linking here and hopefully sending you there to help get that Lupus all out peoples’ junk.  I think I missed the “official” day, but I asked and Sheila said better late than never.  Look, nobody has much love for debilitating, incurable diseases, right?  So go check it out, OK?  (Hey Sheila, it’s not a werewolf… right?)

What?  Midnight already?  Time to go to work again?  Is this not over for the week yet?  Man who threw me into this timewarp?  Goodnight.

Broke down and did it; don’t hate.

My decision came over the weekend. Full lawn and landscaping, weekly; the all-out rich-guy level of service. I’ve now joined the ranks of the bourgeoisie, compensating a working class for work I’m totally able to do myself – but don’t. The “why” for the “but don’t” is what still bugs me. Laziness, I say. Busyness, some of my friends say (the pro-lawn service bunch). It’s somewhat due to being busy, sure… but maybe being busy being lazy. All comes down to a question of time. How much time do I spend monthly taking care of the yard, and what dollar amount do I feel my time is worth to me. I guess I broke down. Reality now is that I’m just not getting it done, so now I’m paying the price (literally).

And, if I wasn’t already feeling guilty/unsure enough about the whole thing, Sharaun said the man who came to walk our property and give the estimate inquired with her as to my level of laziness. His exact words, in her words, were, “So he doesn’t want to do nothing?” That’s right my good workman, I don’t want to do nothing. Believe me, it hasn’t always been that way. But… nowadays… I don’t want to do nothing.

As the service starts, and (hopefully) the yard begins to glow, I suppose I’ll be able to either justify the expenditure or not. As it stands now I feel good about it, mainly because I don’t have the guilt over the outstanding work hanging over my head anymore. I try and think about how nice it’ll be to not have to worry about getting the yard in order for a summer BBQ, and that makes me happy. Then I think about how relatively easy (albeit time-consuming) the work is to get done, and how I’m a no-good fatty-American for paying “workers” to do it for me. Sigh… it’s a moral quandary for me, as stupid as that seems. If you’re a friend of mine, make sure to mock me about it… just so I know you love me.

And, playing rich by outsourcing my yardwork got me thinking about money and budgeting on the whole… so I wrote the following.

A month or so ago I mentioned here that I’d cheaped-out and downgraded our satellite TV service to the lower-end “package.” In doing so, I lost some channels I enjoy (namely MSNBC and Fox News, mostly because I like to put them side-by-side using picture-in-picture and hear the 180° out-of-phase opinions of Hannity and Olberman completely cancel each other out), but nothing that was too hard to deal with. Thing is, that only took the bill from around $85 down to about $55. A good savings, to be sure, but $55 a month is hardly what I’d call a “deal” for TV – which is something I don’t want to feel compelled to watch in order to get our “money’s worth.” (See my rant about HDTV from back in me pre-HDTV days).

Anyway, I was complaining to friends the other day about the cost of “things” (more on that later), and someone mentioned that Dish now offers an “HD only” package on the cheap. Once I remembered this later in the week, I ran a check on their website and sure enough they are advertising an HD-only “bronze” package for $30 a month. Add $5 local channels to that, and the “privilege of having a DVR” fee of $6 and you can get out the door for $40 monthly. Sure you lose a few key standard-definition channels (Sharaun lobbied for MTV and VH1, Keaton for Backyardingans on Nickeldeon, and I was a little bummed to lose Comedy Central), but for a $15/month savings I figured we could either get Keaton some Backyardigans DVDs or have her start watching Handy Manny instead (plus, we still have ~60 episodes on the DVR). So, I did it.

Down to $40 a month. And you know what, I still think that’s too much to pay for TV.

In fact, thinking about it, I decided I know about what I want to pay for things – and wondered how close my dream-prices are to other folks’ ideas of what common services should cost. So for kicks, here are some common services that Sharaun and I pay for, and the price I feel like I should be paying to use them – not what we actually pay. This is just what “feels” right in my head for how much these things should cost, no more science behind it than that.  Check this:

• Television, $30/month maximum
• Broadband internet access, $50/month maximum
• Cellular, $40/month per-person maximum

Yeah, and that was before I went all wallet-open and got a lawn service.  Seriously though, why should I have to pay more than $30 a month for TV?  I freakin’ shouldn’t.  And cellphone, much more than $40 a month for that seems like a blatant ripoff.  Call me cheap.  Maybe I am.

Goodnight.

Friday the sun was out and shining in Northern California.  Oh and I was enticed… started thinking Spring and Summer thoughts: barbecues, camping, hiking, swimming… I was enticed to be sure.  Even the trees agreed with me, as some are sporting premature pink and white buds as if the weather really were changing.

Saturday the blessed weather held.  Sharaun had a New Kids on the Block fan “meetup” in the city, and so Keaton and (no, wait… you’re still thinking about that bit before the comma, right?  Yeah, a New Kids on the Block fan “meetup”) so Keaton and I had the morning to ourselves. Me with designs on heading to the gym later, and her with plenty of energy to expend, I decided on a course of action which would take care of both and afford us a chance to enjoy the unseasonably nice weather.

I hitched the kiddie trailer on the bike and trekked to the local park where we met friends for playtime in the warmth.  Others shared our idea, and Spring-enthusiasm, and the place was packed.  The smell of charcoal filled the air as folks grilled hot dogs and burgers, the premature pink and white buds of humankind I guess.  Keaton ran around with her compatriot Jake, swinging, climbing, and running around the bases on the baseball field; was a great time.

Sunday the cold and rain returned.  It’s good, really, we need the rain something awful.  Against my Spring fever, I do hope it sticks around for a while and fills up the Sierra lakes and streams which so badly wont for it.

All the rain, and a dosing of fertilizer, has nearly re-greened my lawn to good-neighbor standards.  It’s also got the weeds in full-season, choking out any area where the grass isn’t thick enough to fight them off.  I wrote briefly before about how I was considering a lawn service, and I think I’m even closer now to making that decision: I want a lawn service.  I want to pay someone my hard-earned money to come in and make the place beatiful.  Or… do I?  Man, this is a tough one.

Anyway, it was a good weekend; for both the sunshine and rain.  Let’s see where the week goes, shall we?

Goodnight.

3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon and the clouds in the sky are dark and look heavy with threats of rain.  Some live Wishbone Ash just shuffled up on the iPod and I’m bound to write.

I’m fresh back from the gym and am having trouble stopping the sweat.  The workout is over, my body, the workout is over.  And yeah, I’m still going to that place… still working out, still enjoying it  – and have shed 15lbs since it all started.  It’s encouraging, to say the least, especially so far getting measurable positive results in short-order.  I guess I’m not missing my calories, I mean I don’t feel starved or anything… so that’s a plus.

You know, I’m by no means a gym-rat after my measly not-even-enough-to-establish-a-habit three weeks of working out, but I have learned that one thing is constant: When you tell people you’ve started going to the gym, started working out or eating right in the pursuit of fitness, everyone becomes an expert; everyone knows the best regimen for you.

I know folks mean well, and I appreciate that.  But, in practice, I find myself shying away from mentioning the whole “working out” thing because I’m sure of the interrogation that’ll follow:  “Oh yeah?  How often you going?  You doing weights and cardio?  How many calories you eat per day?”  Now, this line of questioning alone wouldn’t even be that bad, I don’t really mind talking about what I’m doing, about my own personal little thing I’ve worked out and am doing.  No I would mind, except that I can have no 100% right answers for any of the inquiries.

If I’m going every other day in the evenings, I should really look into goings mornings three-days-on two-days-off.  If I’m eating three squares a day, I should actually be targeting six-to-seven smaller meals instead.  If weights on upper and lower body on alternating days, I should really try doing a little of each every time instead of breaking it up.  If I’m keeping my heartrate around the 160s during cardio, I really want to be around 130 (or is it 140, or 150) to get into that “zone” where the pounds will just drip off.

Yeah, well, I just keep to my own thing, thanks.  Maybe later, when I’ve decided I’m truly doing this and I’m not just gonna fail again, I’ll put some more rigor to the process.  For now, I’m just glad I’m getting in there and breathing hard… sloppy or not.

See ya there; I’ll be the dude doing everything wrong.

Friday already?  Awesome.

The other day, Sharaun joined Facebook.

Since then, I’ve been demoted to fourth place.  Keaton, New Kids on the Block, Facebook, and then me, laboring along trying to catch up and bringing up the rear.  That’s how the race is shaping up.

Over the years, I’ve always managed to stay away from the social networking thing.  When MySpace was the jam, I chose to abstain.  When Facebook’s more “college” clean and neat look became so obviously better than MySpace’s “highschool kid” clutter and everyone jumped ship, I kept my distance.  Friendster, no sir.  Bebo, heck no.  And, when every person I’ve ever worked with, all the way back to the skeezy dude who slammed lines on the prep table at Subway when I was 16, asked me to join them on LinkedIn, I made a special e-mail rule to send the requests directly into the bin.  “No thanks,” I thought.  The blog right here has always been enough “putting it out there” for me.

People have come to know of my social networking resistance, and chide me for it.  I’m too good for it, they say.  Too cool.  Think myself above it.  Am just reveling in the “coolness” of being the last holdout.  I’ve heard it all.  I dunno if it’s something like that or not, but I do kinda get a kick of someone asking, with a touch of incredulity, “You’re not on Facebook?”  In fact, people have gone so far as to send me articles about Facebook.  Here’s one of the best: “You Have No Friends. ”  After you read it, I bet you’ll be almost convinced you should join… I was.  Almost.  (Who am I kidding, I’m sure you’re already ‘bookin’ with the others.)

And so it’s come to pass that I, a social networking virgin, have watched my wife lift that pipe to her lips and draw deep – and end up hopelessly addicted from the first hit.  It’s been a measley two days and she’s strung out on the thing like a Facebook junkie.  Each night I get to hear about who she “found” that day, get to share in the rejoice as lost souls from the gradeschool-chum milk cartons in her mind are found alive and well, working in Des Moines for the school district.  Hey, did you hear that awkward skateboarding kid from Bible Camp is a fireman and noted philanthropist in Boston?  Dude, Dylan is a roughneck?  Wonder how he ended up in that line of work.  OMG, Amber is totally into chicks!

I gotta admit, it all looks a bit fun.

Not quite fun enough that I’m compelled to sign up for myself, but there is a certain appeal to seeing pictures of things you remember from the past (Tuesday’s entry, anyone?).  I suppose, now that Sharaun is on, I can kind of peek over her shoulder now and again for my own secondhand-smoke fix.  Can surreptitiously stay caught up on who went to the dentist, who just got a new Jeep, and whose kid is in swimming lessons via the nightly Facebook status reports.  I’m sure soon she’ll put it on her iPhone and I can get updates at any and all times.

So, if you see my lady in and around your Facebook area… can you spraypaint on her fence or whatever and let her know I’m gonna be gone for an hour or so up at the gym and Keaton’s running wild in the backyard?  Thanks; I can’t get her to turn her head from the dang screen.

Goodnight.

Sunday.  By tradition (or decree, depending on your bent), a day of rest.  And, who am I to mess with tradition?

(Note: I read somewhere that Stephen King once said to an editor something along the lines of, “Whoever made the rule that sentences can’t start with ‘and’ is an idiot,” and went on to note the usefulness and impact of doing so in literature.  And I gotta say, while I’m not a bona-fide writer, I totally agree on this one.  It’s got to be one of the worst, most limiting rules of grammar.  So, I do it.)

My sabbath plan includes a trip to the gym, listening to some music, and reading a little from my book (ten years later and I’m once again trying to finish the Wheel of Time series… but we know how that’s gone for me before).  The iPod is on a Grateful Dead thing, shuffling them up disproportionally – not a bad thing, it’s a good day for some Dead.

I talked about the rain the other day, in the context of our night-of-horrors with sleep-averse Keaton.  Well today the sun’s out and (most of) the clouds have retreated to wring the mountains dominating the eastern horizon.  Most of the time sun after rain is a welcomed change, but we could really use some more rain here… and the bright skies did none-too-much to drive off the chill in the air – so it’s more the kind of sunshine and blue skies you admire from behind windows.  It’s does pick-up the mood a bit though, cheerier than grey and wet to be sure.

So after the gym, and after a quick contorted nap on the loveseat (Sharaun had the couch), we piled into the car as a family and went grocery shopping together. This is a rare treat for me, as more often than not I’m banished from trips to the grocery store.  Sharaun doesn’t do well with my experimentalist approach to  discovering new foods – and has a low tolerance for my aisle-wandering in while I search for interesting stuff I’ve never eaten before.  I want to buy steel-cut oats in bulk, am drawn to the cans with Spanish labeling and a picture of a rooster in flames perched on an ear of blue corn (what the heck could that even be, I wonder), all of the sudden get a hankering for some braunschweiger on rye toast.

In the end I went along with “the list,” and we stuck to our normal fare.

And now I’m outta here to read a little bit more.  Goodnight.

I try to explain: When I take a call, I have to bring the rock. My customers come first. Women don’t understand this.

Fight after fight after fight, woman after woman after woman, and none can appreciate my level of commitment to the game.

It’s not that hard, at least to me: Dude calls needing a fix, I answer, tell dude I got his fix, dude and me meet and I get paid. If it was any simpler, I’d be out of a job and you could get rocks from a vending machine at the corner store. Anyway, with the pot of gold at the end of it all you’d think a woman wouldn’t care about the means (women like money, mostly a man’s money).

Simple job yes; easy to be good at it no. For my part, I bring people skills, finesse, character. Dudes don’t buy from me just because I’m holding, dudes buy from me because they want in on my action, want to be around me, know me.

And I know them.

Broke, hungry, tired, and willing to ignore it all for my junk. It’s the cycle: Trading junk for money and money for junk; taking significant losses with each exchange. So they come to me with crumpled money and crumpled spirits and I give them a toothy smile and a baggie that’ll send them over the moon for a while, maybe help them forget why they traded the junk for the junk in the first place. They’ll come back.  I got a record, I get repeat customers. My rock is the same as any rock on the street, but with my rock you get my record of service, my smile, my lighter if you need a light.

I have a reputation to maintain, how do you think we pay rent? I’m not the top and I’m not looking for the top, dudes know that and feel comfortable with me. They keep coming, they tell friends, they put my name in their favorite songs and sing funny lyrics about me and the rock they buy from me. I’m their connection to what they need so I need to be there when they need me to be there. Money doesn’t come on your terms, comes on money’s term.

Just cut me a break OK? I’m gonna run out, move this rock, and be right back to clean up the dishes. You just keep turning out the flapjacks, put them on a plate in a stack, and put another plate over them to keep them warm so my butter still melts when I’m back. You can’t be mad, I’ll come back with at least $20, more than you’ll take standing here my old boxers and t-shirt making pancakes… right? Yeah, I know it’s right.

So look: When I take a call, I have to bring the rock. You want me to say it again?

When I take a call, I have to bring the rock.

Thanks for the pancakes.