Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

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all ugly bruise-yellow

Hey y’all.

Totally Monday here, and the smoke around Ourtown, CA is stinky and so thick it makes the sunshine come through all ugly bruise-yellow.  The news said I shouldn’t go outside, as the air was bad to breath.  Let’s think on that: The air is bad to breath.  Where can I run?

As I walked to my car after work and looked off into the hazy distance, I tired to imagine this place void of all modern construction: Rolling foothills of mostly grass and dotted with trees and loose rocks of all sizes.  I pictured a tribe of Native Americans encamped in one of those copses of trees, maybe near a small stream or decent hunting – and tried to imagine what the blanket of rank smoke would have meant to them.  Move; maybe.  Pick up stakes; fire is coming.  Check which way the wind is blowing and throw the kids in their papooses and head right along with it.  Life sure is easier when you can hit the grocery store with a rock from your couch.

I worked a little bit tonight on setting up a blog for Sharaun.  See, she’s been asking me for a while if she can have a blog (she reads some other “mom blogs” I frequent).  She’s not sure she’d be diligent enough to write regularly, but I figured I’d set something up for her and let her play around to see if she likes it.  She mostly wants to tell stories about, and post pictures of, Keaton.  Secretly, I think this would be awesome – and I kinda wish she’d decide to do it.  Anyway, once she’s up and running I’ll see about getting a link here on my  blog so you can check her out.

Gosh.  I just have nothing left to write.  I was so happy it was cool enough to open up the house last night after the sun went down – then I remembered the smoke.  I did it anyway.

Saving money.  Goodnight.

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scratching

Big sawmill conference Day One. I presented today. Today and Wednesday. I left home around 5am to make time for the drive over here, and was due to present “around” 11:30am. Arriving around 9am, I had a quick breakfast with my boss and then found my conference-themed polo. I stripped to the shirtsleeves in some abandoned room filled with shipping containers and donned the just out of the box and still wrinkled “official garb.” I walked into the conference room around 9:30am and was surprised when they asked me to present right around 10am; imagine my double-surprise when they told the first presenter had flaked and they needed me to fill an hour of time rather than my planned half-hour.

Great. Not much additional time to prep, but thankfully I’d used the car ride over to do some last minute run-through and tweaks (nothing like editing PowerPoint at 70mph in the passenger seat). Anyway, unexpected as the early start was, and unsure I’d be able to pull out over 30min of talking, I walked up to take my lavaliere and plug in my laptop. One big sigh and a sip of bottled water later, I began.

“Good morning folks, I’m Dave Lastname and I was supposed to have about 30min today to talk to you about ThingX. Turns out they tell me I have more like an hour, so let’s see what I can do. I drove over this morning from PlaceX today, so I’m gonna pass around a little jar for gas money here at the end of my presentation. If you like what you hear, please show me some love.”

And with that I was off. I managed to go for about 50min, and everything went much better than I had envisioned. It still wasn’t the smooth, practiced patter that comes from doing a presentation for the tenth or twentieth time, and they managed to stump me a couple times – but I got some instant feedback that I was the most engaging presenter that morning. That can make a body feel good, y’know? So, after all that fretting, it looks like the medium amount of preparation I did was sufficient. Well, at least for Monday’s session it was… I still have to do it again Wednesday (but typically things get better, not worse). Glad you guys were here to see me through it all.

Anyway, I’m back from the bar now. One too many celebratory beers and I realize I have to cut this thing short for it to make sense. I went fishing at 5am on Saturday in Florida, and I got canvassed by no-see-um bites before the sun was high enough to force them back into hiding. Two days later and I feel like I have the chicken pox or something: my legs, arms, and lower back are literally covered with red itchy welts, and I can’t stop scratching. Please, Lord, help me to stop scratching.

Goodnight

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humidty & fried gator

Home from a great-but-short trip to Florida.

Sorry for the lack of writing while there, but the whole vacationing thing really did consume our hours fully.  We did an impressive amount of stuff for such a short getaway, and, on the other side of that coin, I got precisely none of the blogging I had planned done (my halfway best-of list for this year and a new batch of pictures for Keaton were on that list).  So, it’s time to catch-up this week if I can.

While we were gone, the birds ate all my almost-ripe apricots (I was looking forward to picking them upon our return, as they looked almost ready the day we left) and the little ants mounted their annual summer invasion of the kitchen to get out of the heat. I was more mad about the fruit – seems like I’ll never be able to grow anything sweet in this yard, ants are just a nuisance. I may have to think about netting in the trees, as they pecked every single fruit, about six in total, right down to the pits – leaving nothing behind. Y’know, you plant a fruit tree, you wean it, you care for it, and then the dang birds come and pillage your fruit. Stupid birds.

I don’t know how I’m writing right now, I’m just doing it in spurts between fretting and sweating over tomorrow’s presentation. I used the flight home today to work through the material I couple times, honing it , analog-style, with a pen so I could do the touchups in PowerPoint when I got home. And, with about an hour of massage the thing is, I think, where I want it. I’m still freaking a bit on time though, as I have to unpack, repack, and practice the deck a few more times before I’m comfortable with what I’m going to say. It’s just an unusual amount of procrastination on my part, and I’m usually comfortable with quite a large amount of the stuff – so this means I’m procrastinating a lot. By tomorrow’s entry, I’ll be able to either share with you my shame or trumpet my by-threads victory.

But, for now, I really have to get to bed.  It’s going on 10:30pm and I have to be up around 5am to shave and shower and get all coffee’d-up before heading over to the bay for the conference.  I’ve done three “dry runs” of my material now in front of the mirror, using the iPod’s stopwatch functionality to time how long I linger on each slide, and the total time I take for the whole of the material.  And, while I’m still not as practiced as I’d like to be, I’m as good as I’m going to get tonight.  And, I still have the carpool on the way over tomorrow to get in a few more goes.  But, I also need sleep.  So…

Before I go, I noticed that Pat has decided to blog through his sabbatical. Might be something worth checking out when ol’ faithful sounds familiar skips a day or disappoints.  I also added a link or two to the old “blogroll,” if that’s what they still call it (do they still call it that?).  So, poke around there while you wait for me to resume some sort of schedule again.

Until next time though, I love your bones… and, goodnight.

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all talk, no action

Yahtzee, 10pm and the fleshy part of my forearms is sticking to the table in the humidity.

Yeah, we’re in Florida.  You’ll have to excuse the break from daily (or somewhat-daily) writing.  It’s a short vacation, but so far it’s been a good vacation.  Chiefly comprised thus far of the pool, the beach, and some evening drinks outside by the ocean.  Like we always are, we’re a bit smooshed in the time department – lots of things we want to do and people we want to see and not a lot of time to do and/or see them all.

Our flight out was eventful, with an emergency landing in Denver for a medical emergency which emerged, medically, about two rows behind us and across the aisle.  Some poor soul had a (very frightening to watch) seizure-type thing back there two rows back and across the aisle.  The crew put an open-ended request for a doctor on the PA and a man in a maroon shirt strolled back from the front, feet guided by his Oath.  In the end, the afflicted gentleman walked off the plane in Denver under his own power, and we were off and running again after a brief refueling and visit from the cleanup-crew (this was not a clean medical emergency).  And, with a sufficiently accommodating layover, we arrived in Florida later that evening spot-on time.

Tomorrow we’re off to some new waterpark, another day with sweaty skin and wrinkled fingers.  Sun and water, water and sun – and I have not practiced one single minute for the presentation I’m giving morning-Monday the day after we return.  In all honesty, I’m feeling pretty guilty about my total and complete lack of preparation.  I mean, I’ve been under-prepared before, but this time it’s aggregious: I don’t even have my material finalized yet, and I don’t know when I will… maybe not until Sunday night when we get home.  I’m doomed, I really am.  Woe; woe is me.

I won at Yahtzee, but it’s only because I add so poorly.  Goodnight.

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mondayfriday

Sunday evening, the sun on it’s way out and the house is at it’s warmest from being open all day, baking.

I just came in from an afternoon spent working around the yard; one of my rare fits of activity. Was a good one though: got the lawn mowed, fixed a couple busted sprinklers (the tough ones, where you have to dig a trench and redo pipe and whatnot), tinkered in the garden, and finally got around to finishing up the mending I had to do on the fence ever since it blew down waaaaay back when (seriously, it was a long time ago). The work got bonus points because I got to use both my circular and jig saws, as well as my sawhorses. Any man’ll tell you, he loves getting to use the tools he spends so much money collecting. Makes me feel virile… might not wanna get near me, may end up with twins just from my scent.

Today is both my Monday and Friday this week, as we leave bright and early tomorrow morning for a week-ish long (or short, rather) vacation in Florida. The plan is simple: Some beach time, some time by the pool, maybe some molasses-based Southern barbecue, and a good bit of time with family and friends. I’ll tell you this: I’m ready for a vacation. Work has picked up of late, and looks to be aimed in that general direction for the next few months. I actually think I may have squandered my downtime… shame on me. At least we’re getting away though – and I can’t wait to see if Keaton is a little more keen on the sand and waves this time around, since she’s getting so much better in the pool.

The other day Sharaun found one of these Fisher Price kids’ digital camera things at the local Goodwill. I’d never heard of the things before, but she apparently had – and she realized the $3.99 pricetag was a steal, even if the thing didn’t turn out to be in working order she figured it for a worthwhile gamble. When she got it home, I opened it up and put in 4 AA batteries and one coin battery, put it all back together, and turned it on. Thing fired up and worked perfectly. I bet the folks who sold it either didn’t realize they needed to replace the coin battery, that, or it was stolen… one of those.

Keaton absolutely loves the thing, and acts like a professional photographer when she has it. She point it at you and say, “Onetwothree smile!,” before she snaps. The pictures are fairly poor quality, something like a tiny cellphone camera, but she still enjoys it. It has enough built-in memory for her to take about sixty or so photos, but I noticed it also had a SD card slot. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any spare SD cards, but I did have a gig MMC card I’d bought long ago when I was in Taiwan, it was for an old Nokia phone. Since MMC and SD are pretty much the same thing with just slight physical differences, I figured I’d try. I slid right in and worked great.

Anyway, I figure I may feature some of Keaton’s photography soon here on sounds familiar, so keep an eye out for that. And, while I have no firm plans for blogging or not-blogging while we’re in Florida, I can forsee a slow week (or, maybe all that free time will mean lots of writing… who knows). One thing I do want to try and do is my annual halfway best-of list… but, again, who knows.

Goodnight folks!

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the crick in my neck

Ermmmm… head so heavy. Wrested from my couchful slumbers by the phone ’round 7pm: The wife’s on the cell. “On your way home from the city?,” I say. I fell asleep on the couch; guess it’s time to heat up some leftover lasagna and figure out what I’ll be writing. Ugh, but not before I work this kink out of my neck. Why I do I sleep on this little loveseat vs. stretching out on the full couch? Every time I get this sore neck, yet I never learn. Next time – big couch.

Next week we go to Florida. It’s a short trip, only about six days, one and a half of which are arguably lost to travel. I’m excited. Some friends of ours are coming along, and I’m pretty pumped about showing one of my modern-times California friends a little of the olden-times place where I grew up and came into my own. Not that I intend for the trip to be a tour or something, but, still… the prospect has me excited about getting to impart some “color” to the local scene for them. Now then, I started that thought not to talk about how I’m excited to go “home,” which I am, but to talk instead about what happens when I get back. See, the day after I get back I have to give the first of two presentations.

I haven’t given a real presentation, like to a decent sized audience that will ask challenging questions, in a good while. And, as almost always, I’m woefully underprepared. Dave, you may say, you still have a week and a half to get ready. Yes, yes I do. But, you see, this kinda of unprepared isn’t because I simply haven’t looked at or studied or practiced the material, it’s just that I’ve not assigned a whole heck of a lot of gravity to the thing in my mind. So, I’ve given it the cursory look, practiced a loose patter, dreamed up some witty bits to add here and there to keep the crowd awake… but it’s far from what I’d call “polished.” In fact, the material is still fluid, and I fully expect it to stay that way right up until the night before I go on stage.

I’ll invest some time readying myself and the material, to be safe… but to be honest the whole thing just isn’t doing a lot to rise to the top of my task list, you know what I’m saying? C’mon presentation, you gotta fight for my attentions, I’ve got a lot going on. If you want to be good, you’d push to the top of the list. But no, you just lay there expecting me to breathe life into you. You’ll get it, but it’ll be weak.

On the way to lunch the other day, as the small group of about-to-be diners walked through the parking lot to our vehicles, ready to burn close to five bones per gallon to fill our physiological need to eat, I happened to look down and found $40 in folded twenties in a vacant spot. In one motion I bent to scoop up the money as I exclaimed, “Oh my God I am rich.” (Delivered in deadpan homage to the “Oh my God I am the winner” line from Sandler’s Billy Madison, like I do with so many other “Oh my God am I am…” starts.) I stood there for a moment, looking around me, half expecting someone walking nearby to be checking their pockets before turning around. I waited, and waited, and finally decided that the Lord had ordained I receive that money. I like finding money. When we got to lunch, I spent the $40 buying the meals of those in my car – flexing a little philanthropy in case karma was watching (I even put the dollar change into the tip jar, at Jeff’s behest). Easy come, easy go.

Goodnight.

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back to work… forever

I know, two days without writing. Don’t worry though, nothing horrible happened to me – I’ve just been spending time with our guests in from Florida, and taking a break from the daily routine. Yesterday, however, I, like millions of other dragging Americans, made the sad return to work.

Monday though, we took Sharaun’s cousin Mia and her son Tate up to Tahoe to see the sights. Even though we were initially bummed that the mid-80° temperatures that we had last weekend had disappeared in favor of cold, clouds, and rain, we ended up having a great time despite the weather. Once we got home and got all dressed-down we lounged on the couch while Sharaun got on the phone with the Chinese joint up the street to order dinner. Finally we capped off the day-off watching Cloverfield, a movie I actually really enjoyed.

I wish I could take more vacation while they’re here, but I’m all booked up through the end of the year and will have to resort to sneaking out early here and there while I can for the rest of the week. Also, it’s tough to write with company in town… so you’re gonna get a mixed bag of stuff today (and perhaps for the remainder of the week).

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to work at my job forever. On one hand, I feel like I might like to do just that. I’m good at it, I like it, and it’s not that hard for me. Why wouldn’t I want to stick around and do it until I retire? On the other hand, I feel like there might come a point where I’m just “done” with it. I often fantasize that this will take the form of me finally having my fill of the modern business world and running off into the country with Sharaun to grow alpacas or something… but that’s probably not too realistic. Anyway, I think the whole alpaca thing is a scam anyway. In fact, maybe I should try to invent the next “alpaca.” I could popularize some under-the-radar animal that no one wants, sing its supposed virtues and sell poseur hippies like me on forsaking their careers and disappear into the country to tend to the beasts. If not though, I bet I stick around here for a while. I’m a creature of comfort, you see, I tend to settle into a routine and stay there. Upsetting that routine upsets me.

For now, I plan on taking it one day at a time. Things seem to be moving pretty fast under that approach thus far. Too bad the same days, weeks, months and years I’m at work to go fast that I want to go slow as Keaton grows. If anyone figures that out, let me know, OK?

Goodnight.