Category: general

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

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five months and counting

Babies...
Sunday night on the eve of a busy Monday. Landscapers coming to quote me some damage for a helping-hand in the backyard, a many-times-rescheduled appointment at the dentist, and sometime to squeeze in a bit of work if I’m careful. My day and a half vacation did me well, especially in the beauty and solitude of the Californian high desert… sleeping under the stars and not taking showers. With another long weekend coming up, I’m looking forward to a continuing recharge.

I can’t wait until Sharaun’s belly begins to show. At this point, the notion that we’re pregnant has pretty much sunk in – but there’s not much in the way of outward signs to confirm it for me. I think, when I can see her belly swollen with this new thing that’s living and breathing and growing… that’s what will really get me. I really shouldn’t have to wait much longer, a month maybe, and I’ll get this visual reward. Somewhere in one of the baby books we have, it talked about the child being able to hear inside the womb. I don’t think it’s until much later, but the thought of that blows me away. Lil’ Chino can hear us talking and laughing and singing and everything. And to round out the baby paragraph, another of our high school friends just had their 1st baby. That makes a uncountable number of people my age that I used to know that are new parents. I guess it’s that time or something, the babies-before-thirty thing perhaps.

This weekend most of the regular and extended friend/acquaintance collective packed it up and headed down south for Erik & Kristi’s wedding. Ceremony and reception were held on her ranch, which has been worked by their family for five generations, since the late 1800s. Surely this was one of the grandest affairs I’ve ever been to. Planned to a tee, and the whole thing going down in the most amazing of locations. Just walking through the tall pasture grass on the property, you get a feeling of history and hard-won homesteader success – the fruits of early westward settlers’ labor. Most of the “young kids” opted to camp on the ranch, in a makeshift shanty village dubbed “tent city.” We had a rock-rung firepit, babbling brook running through, and even a porta-john to relieve ourselves in. If you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings, the chapter about Bilbo’s party – right in the first few pages – that’s what this thing reminded me of. An amazing outdoor celebration, abundant with food, song, drink and dance… lights on trees and candles on tables. The sounds of kids running around and champagne bottles popping. It was an affair to remember; and on top of it all we got to camp and stare into a fire each night – a universally enjoyed spectator sport which I’m convinced is hardcoded in human DNA.

‘Nite.

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dreams

Verdant.
Don’t know if anyone else managed to catch the National Geographic Channel’s Inside 9/11 documentary, but man was it excellent. Crammed with interesting details, the first of two two-hour installments details the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on America. The forming of the cells, flight training, etc. The second installment chronicles the events on the day of the attacks. Masterfully put together and chock full of emotional firsthand stories and tons of amazing footage and audio – it’s by far the best telling of the events I’ve ever seen.

Sunday the backyard beat me again. I’m about at the level of frustration where I’m ready to call in a landscaping crew and just hand the task off to them. I really don’t know what else to do. Every time I put on my work clothes and get all motivated, I only end up pacing around the edge of the pavers wondering what to do. Soon enough, I’m so confused and frustrated by not being able to see the solution – I give up and come inside, take off my workclothes, and sit down on the couch in defeat. I really just don’t know what to do. Moving the sprinklers back is such a chore… and then there’s still the problem of actually placing a border around the porch. Sharaun suggested I call a landscaper, have them come take a look, and then pay them to fix it. Problem is – I know that’ll be thousands of dollars… and I begin to wonder about my priorities, spending thousands on a backyard when we’ve got a baby on the way and aren’t really sitting on a pile of money. My pure frustration and this extended (more than a year) stalemate have me nearly convinced that I’ll never actually get around to do anything – and paid help may be the only option. In fact, I think I kind of silently made the decision today… that I’m going to call on Monday, and have them come out this week to evaluate it and draw up some plans. At least at that point, I could still say I did most of the yard. Bottom line is: I just want this dang thing done.

I’m sure someone else, somewhere, at some point, has written about this before, but I’m gonna go ahead with it. I’m not sure how many of you out there used to (or perhaps still do, I’m not judgin’) indulge in a little recreational drug use. Me, I gave up the weed years ago – but my smokin’ years left me with a question that I still think about every so often. Maybe you’re not too familiar with the world of drugs, that’s good, you’re likely better of for it. But, I’m sure you’ve seen an episode of COPS or Law and Order where they show some kind of drugs (pot or cocaine, maybe) packaged for street sale in those little tiny ziplock baggies. There are varying sizes, but when I was in high school you could buy a dimebag ($10 baggie) if you only wanted a joint’s worth of stuff. Most bigger dealers won’t mess with dimes, since they are a pain to package – but the profit margin is higher the smaller you breakup the brick. Anyway, kids are poor, and dimebags are cheap and easy – so that’s what we bought when we were weaning onto the stuff.

What I’m wondering is, where the heck do people get those miniature baggies? And, under what guise are they sold? I would argue that bags of those size are used almost exclusively for the resale of illicit drugs. You never see them in stores, although I have seen them for sale at a head shop or two before. If I’m a soldier in the war on drugs, I’m gonna start tracking customers of these little baggies. Because I’ll tell you what, the guy that buys 10,000 of them isn’t using them to store buttons. Honestly, what else can you do with a 3/4″ by 3/4″ ziplock baggie? You’re not storing screws or beads in there… you’re hawking crack or coke or something on the streetcorner.

Lately I’ve been remembering my dreams when I wake in the morning, which is unusual for me. Some of them were so strange, I wanted to write them down and try my hand at “interpreting” them. Here goes. Wednesday night: I crap my pants at work. I’m running down the aisle trying to make it to the bathroom, but I don’t make it. Interpretation: I’m afraid of messing up at work. Thursday night: I witness the murder of a young girl on a school playground, Ben and I are chased by the killer. Interpretation: I’m afraid of something, and I’m trying to avoid it. Friday night: Anthony is too drunk to drive, so I’ll do it for him. But, he’s towing a boat and I can’t back it up. He agrees to backup the boat and then I can drive away. However, he backs up over a fire hydrant, overturning the boat and killing two kids who were sitting in it. Interpretation: To me this implies I have guilt of some kind, feeling bad for letting those girls get crushed. Saturday night: I’m back working at Omni Music & Video in Florida, but my coworkers are my coworkers from my current job. Interpretation: Work’s got me stressed, and I’m casting thought back to the simpler days of working at the record store. There’s an underlying theme here… one of work and fear. New job, new responsibilities, new fears.

I don’t know how I missed the fact that the Arcade Fire put out a 7" single with two new tracks, but I did. Consisting of one original and one cover, which are simply gorgeous and OK-for-a-B-side, respectively. The A-side, Cold Wind, is a haunting tune that was supposedly done exclusively for some show on HBO I’ve never seen because we don’t have HBO. Who cares, it’s new Arcade Fire… and it’s lovely. Please, our Father who art in Heaven, please allow this band to continue producing music of this quality. Too bad their September show at the Warfield is sold out. I think we paid ~$10 to see them the 1st time at the Bottom of the Hill… oh how they’ve come along, fetching a cold $25 per ticket now.

‘Night.

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happy birthday sharaun!

Lil' Chino?
Didn’t write last night because I had nothing to say. Went out for some beer and “networking” after work, ended up staying out late and talking shop with some other work-folk. Nearly Wednesday now… or at least Tuesday night, the week is flying by again. Time for another post, so here goes.

Tonight, Sharaun and I watched some show on the Discovery channel that documented the conception-to-birth process through a mixture of following actual pregnant women and some pretty decent CG animations of the baby’s journey from egg and sperm to birth. It was a pretty cool show, documenting the fetus’s development throughout the pregnancy (do you know I had to look up how to make “fetus” possessive? The whole s-apostrophe/apostrophe-s thing is one grammar concept that I still get confused on). Anyway, the show of course culminated with video of the women who’s pregnancies were followed finally giving birth. At several points during the show, I had to stiff-face back some tears, lest Sharaun realize that the whole thing was so blindingly amazing to me. Crying isn’t something I’m accustomed to, but seeing some of that stuff and thinking about it going on in my wife’s belly at that very moment was just too much.

Oh man, I want this so bad. Honestly, I could watch the Andy Griffith Show every day – I always revert to the TiVo’d episodes when there’s nothing else on. These are even better though, because they’re restored and uncut, containing scenes that even TV Land doesn’t air, and as a bonus have the promo-spots that Andy did for products. DVDs are funny because, for the most part, I don’t care about them. The few I own (less than ten), I never watch. So, I don’t normally desire to “own” movies or DVDs of TV shows. However, with things like this set – and the Land of the Lost set I ordered on impulse – the obsessive collector in me takes over. For the completist, these “season” compilations with full uncut scenes and bonus items are like the Holy Grail. Now if they’d only come out with an authorized version of the Wonder Years… because this one is bootleg as hell.

No visible results yet from the deadly poison I administered to my ailing lawn last week, but I’m still encouraged by stories on the ‘net that mention at least a week timeframe for results, and some at two weeks with a couple applications. Hopefully the death will be widespread and completely unexpected by the weedgrass – I’m thinking shock and awe.

Goodnight.

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dressing the part

I make more money than you.
Monday morning, 7:30am. Guess I drank enough water last night to offset the 12-year scotch that coursed through my system as I finished up and published Monday’s entry, ’cause I feel fresh as a daisy. I’m not a fan of liquor by any stretch, and a “scotch on the rocks” is probably the last drink I’d order by choice. Changing subjects, in her haste to leave this morning, Sharaun grabbed my keys on her way out the door – her own keys being in her purse, which she also took. This leaves me keyless. No way to start my car to get to work, no way to get back in the house once I’ve locked the door behind me. Luckily, there are enough folks who work with me that live near here that it’s not hard to score a ride in. It’s kinda nice, sitting here in the air conditioning, listening to some vintage Cure… almost makes me wish I was friendless and had no one to call to get into work.

Lemme hit you with a quandary I’ve been thinkin’ on the past couple weeks. I’ve been thinking lately about “dressing the part” at work. What I mean is, changing the way I dress to be more in-line with my newly bestowed responsibilities. Using my acute sense of perception, I’ve noticed that most “bigwigs” at work wear decent looking slacks and shirts most of the time. So, while I hate “dressing up,” I’ve been considering changing my daily uniform to something more becoming a “manager,” junior or not. I’m not talking long-sleeves and ties or anything, just something a tad “dressier.” I’m even willing to make the long-pants-in-summer sacrifice for this, that’s how much I’ve debated it. Problem is, I’m torn about actually doing it… being able to see it from two totally different angles…

Part of me thinks this is very logical, something that I should definitely do. I think of a new-hire, fresh out of college, and their 1st impression of me should I be appointed their manager. Here’s a junior manager, wearing shorts, sneakers, and a t-shirt. Is he going to respect me more or less than a junior manager who’s sharply dressed in slacks and a nice polo shirt? As judging-a-book-by-its-cover as it sounds, I think the clothes do manage to communicate some sense of professionalism – lending some “cred” to the manager title. Not saying you can’t be #1 stellar manager in shorts and a ballcap, but I also think that dressing the part may help me actually act the part. Odd as that sounds, when I’m dressed up I feel more important and actually act a little more professional. After all, the saying “The clothes make the man” must exists for a reason.

While part of me does see logic in it, another part of me sees the idea as horribly pretentious. Young snot makes good and all the sudden starts dressing like he’s hot shit. I don’t want that at all. Heck, there are people twice my age who’ve worked here three times as long as I have – and here I go getting some minuscule promotion and start dressing like CEO or something. There’s got to be a happy medium between the two extremes. I’ve considered “breaking in” the new look: starting with one day a week, maybe bumping that to two or three after people warm up to the new duds. I’ve set myself up really, since going from my daily vestments of today to Dockers and buttons each day would be a pretty evident change. What a silly thing to worry about, right? You’d think, but it’s been on my mind of late.

I love the new look of audioscrobbler, or last fm or whatever it’s called now. It’s actually a really cool site. My profile’s been linked in my sidebar for a while now, and I’ve been aggregating stats on my listening habits for a little over two months now. I hope the service stays free; it’d be interesting to go back over a year and see if my listening habits line up with what I say the choice albums were for that year. Right now the “overall” charts look pretty accurate for what I’ve been digging the past couple months. We’ll see.

Goodnight.

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killing spree

Moving and and getting comfy before certain death.
Wednesday night already, week’s going fast. Gonna be a short entry tonight, not much to write about and not much time left to write it. Fell asleep on the couch right after dinner, 8pm-ish, and didn’t wake up until around 11pm. Did the dishes, took the trash to the curb, and logged on to do one late-night work e-mail check and finish up the blog.

I’ve got another trip to Taiwan coming up in early September, and I’m super-bummed because I can’t stay at the Sherwood. For those who’ve never read my Taiwan posts before, the Sherwood is a posh hotel that’s practically across the street from where I work in Taipei – and it’s my favorite hotel ever. Turns out there are several conferences in town the week I’m there, and the hotel isn’t offering their “extra low” company price that week. Since their regular rate is more than twice the discount rate – I just conscience spending that much more when there are cheaper hotels in town. You don’t understand how much this disappoints me, half the reason I look forward to going to Taiwan is staying at the Sherwood. I love the hotel, and I love the hotel bar – where I’m good friends with the staff. I have friends there, I’m comfortable there, and it’s familiar. I don’t want to stay at some other hotel. I even went so far as to have a buddy try and work a deal with the front desk to get me the cheap rate hookup. While he was able to score the company rate for a few of the nights, the hotel wouldn’t give me the whole stay – so it looks like I’ll be staying across town. Great. Now I’ve got to pay for a cab to and from the Sherwood bar to the hotel where I’m staying each night.

The other day I popped my head out the garage sidedoor to throw a bag of trash into the dumpster. For some reason, I stepped outside to survey my bleak and barren backyard landscape. Looking closer at my fence, I noticed a large colony of wasps had setup shop under one of the cross members in the fence. Moving in for a better look, I noticed two smaller hives in the same section of fence. Immediately, I was excited. I love spraying wasps with that long-range wasp spray. For them, a poisony death from the sky; for me, a chance to play God, annihilating an entire city – wasp-Sodom. Standing back a good 10ft, I hit them with the foamy asphyxiator and listened for the “plop” of their flightless bodies hitting the ground as they dropped dead. Wasps that were away begin returning, only to find their under-construction neighborhood is now a dripping mass of death, and fly around in confusion.

Guess I’m going to bed now. Two paragraphs is better than none I suppose. Goodnight.

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speaking of “watery”

Scooping.
Oh man… Peter Jennings died. What a bummer. My folks were ABC News folks, and I grew up listening to Jennings do the evening news every night. When my turn for adulthood came, I, too, chose ABC News for my occasional didn’t-get-to-check-the-internet-much TV news outlet – and Jennings was still there. I watched the first tower fall live in the top “window” of a Woodstock-style two window layout, the bottom one containing Mr. Jennings. Not like he was family or anything, but something about people who report the news gives me respect for them… like they are so much more “tied in” then us John Q. Publics. Now he’s just another old-timer reference that Lil’ Chino won’t understand, like Cronkite to my generation.

I don’t know what’s up with this new Death Cab album yet, I can’t seem to peg it. For some reason, I can only get about halfway through before I want to switch to something more uppy like the World Leader Pretend or HARD-Fi albums Ben recently turned me onto. Death Cab have always been good for some melancholic languid indie pop, but this album sounds particularly watery-weak to me after the first few listens. Maybe I’ll get over it, it’s not fair really since I’ve not yet once sat down and listened to it once front-to-back. I wonder if any Mr. Gibbard’s radio-success with Postal Service will spill over into this new album? I’m sure that, since they’re now under the major label umbrella, they’ll release a single proper, and perhaps even have some help payola’ing it into rotation. My thoughts are that, from these first impressions, they’d’ve done better commercially riding the last album rather than this one. But what do I know.

11:11pm and I’m working. Trying to get back into the “swing” I was in before strep took me out of the game. Sure, I’m still busy; and sure, I have crap due tomorrow that I’ll be working on tomorrow… who cares. The whole being sick thing kinda forced me to see that the company lives on with or without me, and I’m not nearly as critical as my swollen head may lead me to believe. That’s good, really, because it gives me some leave to slack a bit – and when I say “slack” I mean not work until midnight.

Wow, what a crap entry. Goodnight.

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call divorce court

Die you microscopic bastards, die.
I’ve had it. Call Divorce Court; I’m not happy in this relationship anymore and I’m gettin’ out. This fever moved in without so much as a word, and took up residence acting like she owns the place. She doesn’t care about me or what I want, and I have a feeling she’s just using me as a warm body. So I’m filin’ papers, I’m done… I’m walking out on this one-sided relationship. It’s 2:30 and I’ve taken 3 doses of the antibiotic that was supposed to “make me feel a world better after just on dose,” and I’m still at 103 laid flat in front of the TV. Fast-forward a few hours and I’ve broken that last one, but still feel craptacular enough that I’m just a couple hours of feeling this way away from surrendering tomorrow’s workday. Tomorrow is Sharaun’s ultrasound and heartbeat appointment. I had planned to take an hour off in the afternoon anyway to attend, and regardless of how I feel I’m still going. Four days. That would make me out of work for four days. If it wasn’t me, if I was on the inside and someone else was out this long, I’d think they were either milking it or must have malaria or something. Four days is a long time to be out of work, especially considering I used up a Sunday “for free” as well.

Wrote that paragraph last night… but my my fever climbed to it’s second highest later on and I never got around to posting it. Thursday morning now and I’ve cautiously upgraded my condition to “feeling better.” No fever yet this morning, and I seem to have my strength back. I even went so far as to make some phone calls to key work folks, y’know – grease the skids before what I see as my imminent return for a hard Friday’s work. Later, I plan to sit down and tackle the e-mail that’s been piling up, see what emergencies I’ve missed and whether or not I should care about them. Being sick sucks, I hope the gods of sick recognize this as my “jury duty” for at least a couple years… the way I look at it, I’m paid up at least through 2007. I mean, half of the torture of being stuck in bed not being able to do anything is the list of things you’re not doing continually running through your head: the crabgrass you had big plans to hit with a second dose of poison and really finish off, finish painting the living room, work, etc. Stupid strep throat.

I’m outta here, don’t care if it sucks.