Category: general

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

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yet they still call

Flarin' up real good there.
Tuesday morning, and I have enough of a respite from my fever/flu/whatever that I feel like writing. Last night was different, and found me covered in sweat the entire night long – rather than the one or two sweating-out sessions of the previous nights. It was uncomfortable, but I sure felt better this morning. Better still isn’t quite “good” yet, but it’s getting closer. Today my fever is hanging around 100-101, a few degrees cooler than Sunday and Monday – but still high enough to make me feel crappy. My throat isn’t doing too hot either. Hurts to swallow. Taking my mom’s advice, I made an appointment to see the doctor for this afternoon, just to see if they can possibly pinpoint my problem – and maybe even tie it to my mysterious ER visit last week. I dunno, I’m never sick… is this what getting old is like? My body has betrayed me.

I think I worry too much about missing work. Even feeling like crap, I surreptitiously log on a couple times a day and check my e-mail. I have a great fear of falling behind, but honestly, I also have a great love for “dropping out.” Things as they are right now at work, I wouldn’t think of pulling the old “mental health day” thing and taking a couple unwarranted days off – but I have no problem using deserved, malady-driven, sick days. Oh sure, calls still come in on my cellphone… and I hit the “silence” button and think of how I’ll claim I was probably sleeping at the time. I have been asleep a lot, after all. I’m not delusional, it’s not like I think that work will crumble without me. It’s just hard, especially in extremely busy times, to accept that the world will continue to turn should you step away from the small post that you man – but, it most certainly will. Having said that, I guess it’s obvious that it’s more of an ego thing than a genuine concern for the job. Peoples, humans that is, are funny like that – so accomplishment driven and high on themselves.

Sharaun and I have been talking about the things we’ll need to do before Lil’ Chino gets here, and one idea she came up with was to have a garage sale to try and move some of our built-up junk (potentially, for a profit). I thought it was a great idea. There is so much junk I could stand to get rid of (no, I’ll cling to my Garbage Pail Kids collection with my last dying grasp), and Sharaun’s got plenty of clutter too. Actually, it was the idea of a garage sale that got me excited – I’ve only “participated” in one once before, at least that I can remember. I’ll never forget making the decision that the potentially realizable $10 I could get from selling my entire He-Man and Star Wars action figure collections was more appealing than holding onto them for posterity (pure idiocy). There’s something very American about having a garage sale, very appealing.

Late-breaking update: Went to the doctor today, turns out I have strep throat. Means another sick day tomorrow, since I’ll be contagious for at least another 24hrs. That, and I still feel like crap. Woohoo – another day of fevers and sore throats and daytime TV.

Goodnight.

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sick leave

Over and over and over again.
Took the day off from work today (Monday as I write). An endless cycle of fever plateaus and sweaty fever breakings, topping out at 104.2 last night. Maybe it’s just me, but it always seems that when I have a high fever – my skin, especially on my scalp, becomes extremely sensitive – sore to the touch even. Anyway, today’s plan was to see the doctor… but I was so tired and drained that I just ended up sleeping and sweating. And now it’s nearly 8pm, and I’m feeling pretty decent having just come off my last high of 102 – but I’ve pretty much already decided that I’ll be staying home tomorrow as well, to really see the doctor this time and give myself one more day to recoup. I’ve got several important meetings that I’ll likely miss… which does make me feel bad… but I almost feel like I deserve it – I’m hardly ever sick to the point where I miss work. So, pay-up work, I’m calling in my unused sick time right now… cough, cough.

One thing about spending an entire 48hr period in alternating asleep and awake states, it gives you a lot of time to think. TV gets old fast, and the headaches that accompanied my fevers the past couple days pretty much ruled out reading, so sometimes I’ll just lie in bed daydreaming, waiting to drift off to sleep. I like “leading” my daydreams, I used to do it sitting at my desk in high school – I’d imagine vivid scenarios (yes, usually sexual, and yes, usually involving the class being “locked in” due to hurricane – my fantasy high school chicks always got so loose when they thought they were about to die). So I did a lot of daydream-seeding today, about all sorts of things. For some reason, my drifting-to-sleep fantasies are often tied to the position I’m sleeping in when they start. What I mean is, if I start laying out some storyline as I’m falling off, and then I change the way I’m lying – I won’t be able to get the fantasy “back” until I’ve re-situated myself. Weird, huh? At least I know it’s not just me, Sharaun was reading my draft of this post and totally agrees.

Again, being couch-ridden for two days does wonders for TiVo housecleaning. Lying there today, flipping around trying to find something to watch in my boredom… I decided that I don’t have enough interesting and/or varied programs set as Season Passes. Now, you know, I hate to talk TV like it’s all-important to me, but over these past couple days… it really has been. I mean, when I wasn’t asleep, the TV was on and I was watching something. So, I set about trying to find some new programs to add to our auto-record stuff. I’m pretty pleased with the results. First off, Gilligan’s Island, the original. I’ve always loved that show. Next, Timmy & Lassie, again, the original. Holy crap that show sucks. I remember it from when I was kid and Nickelodeon was brand new, and, only having only a few items of original programming, would play a whole bunch of strange Canadian stuff and 50s and 60s programming to fill up the time. Watching it now, it’s clear to me that each episode was just a form of mind-control for kids: don’t play by abandoned mines, don’t get too close to road construction, etc. Next, History Detectives on PBS – a show I’ve always loved. SportsCenter may seem out of place, being that I’m not much of a jock. But, I have some really fond memories of tuning in each night to watch it with my roommate in college – and I figure it’ll buy me man-points if I can at least converse intelligently about Palmeiro’s ‘roid problem. Next, Benny Hill – for a dose of that wacky British humor I’m a fan of. A put a few more on there too, the Honeymooners, PBS’s Nature, etc. Seemed like a good idea being home all day, but I’m sure I’ll be deleting most of it once I’m back to work.

Goodnight.

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wheelchair love is cool and all

Summer summer summer, turns me upside-down.
Today I’ve got a lot of images, some of them big. At first, I considered shrinking them so that those of you with smaller screen resolutions wouldn’t have the site layout being all messed up – but I decided at the last minute that I didn’t really care. So, hope you enjoy this Monday’s entry.

What LP sets my heart a’ pitter-patter these days and nights of summer? This week, it’s a little gem called Underwater Cinematographer by yet another Canuck collective – The Most Serene Republic. Lead croon has a very Gibbard-esque voice, and you can even sometimes hear strains of Gibbard’s work here (Death Cab, Postal Service, etc.). But I don’t want to pigeonhole the band… as they definitely have a varied sound… and really kickass drumming at times. Plus, they scream courses… which for some reason, I love. You give me a studio full of people standing 10ft away from the mics screaming a ragged course at the top of their lungs, and I’m going to buy your album. These guys did it twice, and in a less-freaky way than the Polyphonic Spree’s saccharine-cult mantra version (which I also totally dig). Survey the scene for yourself here, headphones required.

This weekend Saturday was bliss. I swam all day in the pool at Pat’s house, ate some grilled hamburgers, and then ended the night by watching the hotly anticipated remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Yeah, it totally does… I wish that’s how it actually went down. Here’s the real story:

This weekend Saturday was bliss. With weather.com reporting the high that day at 108° F, Pat had called and asked if Sharaun and I wanted to come over to his place for some swimmin’ and grillin’. Sounded like perfect summer fun to me, and it would actually be the first time I’d be able to confidently go swimming without fear of death. I headed over, wifeless, due to headache, around 2pm. Shortly thereafter, we were in the water. Together, we balled our fists and shook them at the summer swelter, symbolically, of course, by drinking cold beer and lounging in the tepid pool. Hour by hour we defied the shimmer of heat on the horizon, beer cans amassing at the pool’s edge at an alarming pace. Before I knew it, 6pm had arrived and more folks had shown up for the cookout. Oh, and I had made an even trade: swimming in the pool for swimming in a drunken haze. Stumbling inside, I managed a burger and a half before laying down on the floor for some rest. Waking up, I wasn’t in any shape for a trip to the theater… so Sharaun took me home where I crashed on the couch alone. I missed the movie, which really bummed me out. I woulda done better for my day by drinking a little less and making the movie… but I guess it all worked out OK. I still had a nice summer day, and my liver got a workout.

You guys wanna hear some crap? Sharaun got her degree right, her Masters in Education. Spent extra time and extra money at school to get that graduate degree. Right now, we’re still paying that thing off – as graduate tuition is like 3x normal in-state tuition. Anyway, she got this degree while we were back in Florida, and would we have stayed in Florida – she could’ve immediately started working at any public school with a Florida teaching credential. We, however, did not stay in Florida; we came to sunny California – for my job. Upon arriving, she learned that her two Florida-earned degrees didn’t hold much water here on the West coast. In order to begin teaching, she’d 1st need to apply for an emergency credential (good for three years) and then take some test. She passed the test, a yawner that most high-school grads would do fine with, and scored her emergency teaching credential. And, for the next two years she applied and interviewed at every school district around. Despite the news’ constant blathering about California’s “teacher shortage crisis,” she wasn’t able to land a job to save her life. Finally, a long-term substitute position was her foot in the door and she scored a full-time position. And, for the past three years she’s been teaching on that emergency credential.

Now we’re caught up to the present, and her emergency credential is expiring. Thing is, the process by which out-of-state degree holders earn “real” credentials is insane. There are a couple options, all of which will cost us considerable amounts of money and her considerable amounts of time and stress. The constant between the options is this test she has to take, the CSET. Far from the high-school yawner described above, this is a comprehensive test which covers a variety of topics – and is not easy in the least. Y’know, I can talk about it all I want and you probably won’t get the proper appreciation for the level of absurdity I’m trying to convey. So, here, painstakingly excerpted from the practice tests online, are some of my favorite questions that California kindergarten teachers are required to answer to obtain their credentials:


I feel like I should know this – but I don’t. I think I could make an educated run at it, but I don’t know it for sure. Oh, I have a bright yellow notebook at home that contains all my notes from 9th grade World History with Mr. Hines – it’s likely in there… but it didn’t make it from there to in my head with any sense of permanence. Here’s another:


Double-header here, fit better with the layout. Re: 43, the Radical what now? I swear I never even learned this. I couldn’t even come up with a good educated guess on this one… does that make me stupid? That second one has got to be a trick right. Even if I had ever heard of this thing, all these would sound right to me on test day. You know, you don’t learn California history if you don’t go to primary school in California… Let’s see what else we got here:

Using my knowledge of geology?! What the… oh yeah, because I would have, of course, studied geology extensively in my pursuit of a degree in teaching elementary school. And here we go:

OK, now, for real. Shut up. Just shut the hell up. These things are making me more and more angry as I go along. Soon enough I’m about to jump out of my CSET desk and jam my two #2 pencils in the proctor’s eyes. This test is so stupid. And now… I’ve saved the best for last… my personal favorite:

Oh. My. Word. What the crap? What class, exactly, would’ve prepped me for this question? Music theory? Every person aspiring to be a teacher in California must be able to read music and identify melody, rhythm, and form. Stupid-ridiculous.

Were she the graduate of a California college, with or without a masters degree, none of this would be required – none. But because her degree is from out of state, she has to jump through innumerable hoops before she’s declared “fit” to teach the budding young’ns of Northern California. I’m all for holding teachers to high standards, but this crap is pretty ridiculous to me. Sure it’d be great if all our teachers, K-12, knew how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem – but I’m pretty sure you can handle 3rd graders just fine without the knowledge. Whew! Now that I’m done venting…

That’s it. Nothing more. Until tomorrow, goodnight.

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one night in a hurricane

Give up, dreamer.
Wow guys, I wrote tonight. I actually wrote. I also watered the parched trees in the backyard. Last year, I finished the sprinklers in the backyard specifically so I wouldn’t have to hand-water the trees. Problem is, in finishing the pavers I had to break some of them… and I never fixed them. So now I’m back to hand-watering. One tree’s dead, one definitely hurting. The smell the water makes when it hits the sun-baked dirt just reminds me how hot it is here during the day… I don’t know where the weeds get their water…

The other day I caught a story on digg (the new version of which, looks excellent, by the way) about the Flaming Lips releasing a new album in on online-only format. The article was interesting enough, then in the comments someone said, simply, “Best modern band.” To which the next poster replied, “Actually the best band this instant is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.” Which I found hilarious enough in itself – that someone is willing to make a blanket statement that not only acts like you should already know (the “Actually…” bit), but unequivocally tells everyone who the best band is “at this instant.” At that precise moment in time, should every hearing-enabled organism in the universe attend a band-off comprised of every band in the universe, CYHSY would be the hands-down winner. Not to mention the fact that PF had barely finished penning it’s glowing review of the group, no doubt where said enlightened reader had learned of them five minutes before posting (as I did). Some of you may say this is my bitterness at people digging “my” music, hopping on that train. But no, I’m trying to make fun of this guy. Anyway, it got me thinking…

“Right now, the best band in the entire world is a band you will never hear.” That’s what I thought. Indie-elitists would be crippled by intense multiple orgasms if they heard of a brand new band that was not only completely amazing, but was also the definition of underground or little-known. That got me thinking: How could I combine both these qualities and craft the perfect indie band? Then it came to me: Create a great band, an excellent, stupendous, sublime band – that no one, aside from gushing critics, will ever hear. If you get really creative about it, you don’t even have to have a real band – since no one will ever hear them anyway. You just invent a band and start raving about them… their varied influences and emotional lyrics, their powerful musicianship and defiance of convention, and their notoriously elusive import EPs. I can almost hear the indie kids popping hard ons in their corduroys now. Eventually, someone would say they’d heard them, at a friend’s roommate’s place, on a crackly podcast of a French radio show that played the EP one night in a hurricane – something huge and mythic. People all around would know someone who heard they were about to sign, or were playing a secret gig under and assumed name down in Deep Ellum next week. Then you could say, much to the chagrin of rare 7″ seekers everywhere, that: “Right now, the best band in the entire world is a band you will never hear.” It’s genius.

Yesterday, Sharaun was watching some show on the MTV, and there was a plumply young lady running on the beach. She was talking about how she’s going to school and “studying marine biology” so she can “hopefully swim with and train dolphins one day.” I didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but I think there are a lot less dolphin-training jobs out there than there are people who want to train dolphins for a living. My brother wanted to be a dolphin-trainer once… or maybe it was Shamu. Either way, I remember we used to make fun of him for having a new passion each week. For a while, he had a hand-drawn picture on notebook paper, tacked to his bedroom door, that said something like “Shamu Riders Only” on it. The next week, it was Bigfoot flying through the air, complete with a debris trail in classic sfumato, its huge knobby tires inches from coming down on a crudely illustrated burning schoolbus and it read “Monster Truck Drivers Only.” Monster trucks gave way to fireworks-making, which waned right as Civil War Reenactor waxed. Man did we give him a hard time about that. But it’s good though, shows he had interests, shows he had goals – even if they were ever-changing.

Really though, at some point in life, who didn’t think it would be cool to be a professional Shamu rider? There’s a difference though, between that and majoring in marine biology with hopes of riding dolphins. I’m not sure, but I just don’t think there is a big market for dolphin-riders. Just like majoring in hospitality in hopes of scoring one of those Travel Channel gigs where you fly around the world and review posh hotels… I can’t say for sure, but it’s probably not going to happen. And kids, I’m not telling you not to chase your dreams – maybe just make them a bit more attainable, eh? If there’s only one guy in the world who’s job it is to test the satisfaction-index of different condoms with different women – there’s likely a large line of prospective replacement candidates. Just count the Shamus in the world, then count the number of people who ride those Shamus on a weekly basis, and figure in the Shamu-rider turnover. Yeah… not lookin’ as real as it was before right? On the other hand, there must be hundreds of Bigfoots… and I’m pretty sure those guys don’t really need degrees…

Mmmm… finished early tonight, 9pm. Calling it good and putting it on autopilot. ‘Night.

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the ghost of blogging future

Hehe.
After dinner tonight (Manwiches™, which were freakin’ awesome), I feel asleep hard on the couch. I mean, I fell out. Woke up to my cellphone ringing, but didn’t feel like answering it when the caller ID said it was work. I dunno… lately… there’ve been things going on that I haven’t really been writing about, for one reason or another I just haven’t. Soon though, I can talk about some stuff that’s been going on – work-related and not, and maybe that’ll shake the doldrums of recent entries. I want to write about stuff, but better judgment tells me to keep things under wraps until I feel a little more comfortable. Don’t worry, nothing too earth-shattering… I’ll still be writing for the foreseeable future. Because, I know someone somewhere was worried about that… yeah.

I wanted to try and get to bed early tonight, break the chain of too-late nights and reluctant getting-out-of-beds in the morning. But it’s nearing 11pm now and I still have to logon and send a few last minute mails for early meetings in non-US timezones. Sharaun’s monopolizing the laptop watching the downloaded season one of Lost, so I have to wait until she’s done with the current episode. I haven’t been fixating much on it, but I’m booking my next round of travel tomorrow. Shanghai in two weeks, Taiwan in September. It will be my first time in Shanghai, so I’m excited about that. I try to rattle off the “plus” side of the pro/con worksheet: skymiles, career-beneficial, travel, company-funded, etc… but I still find myself alternating between reluctance and reservation… neither of which is really that desirable. Whatever, at least it’ll give me something to write about – instead of the same old: “I’m traveling again, kinda want to, kinda don’t,” crap.

Dudes… I am just one referral away from a free iPod, so if someone’s feeling charitable – click here, sign up for one of the crazy offers (I chose the ancestry.com one, but now they’ve got a subscription to Maxim one), let the free period almost expire, then call to cancel. If you find it in your heart to do this, I get a free iPod. Not the 200GB one which I need and Apple doesn’t make yet, but at least a stop-gap for the time being. C’mon, help a brother out – it’s legit.

And, I guess it’s been done to death now, but Arturo’s got his pictures up from our Point Reyes hike as well.

Goodnight.

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here and there

It looked so much greener in the store.
Today I’ve got links! Haven’t had them in a while…

Saturday, I woke up early just so I could have more time to do nothing. ‘Round about noon, Sharaun suggested we paint a room. Sounded good to me, we’ve lived here three years now and have barely managed to hang a picture let alone paint. We moved furniture, covered carpet, and along with seemingly 7000 other folks, headed to Home Depot for supplies. After some discussion, we decided on a greenish-yellow, it looked nice on the little paper sample thingy… young, bright, and kinda funky. Happy, we gathered our newly acquired gear and headed home to dive in. Thing is… the more we painted, the more yellow our chosen green-yellow paint started to look. In the sun, it was downright Big Bird eating bananas in a taxi. Of course, Sharaun began to freak out and I started thinking about having to re-paint everything we’d just done. Still afraid, we finished the room and decided to sleep on it. Sunday we called over an artistic/style-minded friend to “validate” the color choice, and we are (thus far) sticking with it…

I caught a bit of the first Harry Potter on TV on Sunday, and it was at my favorite scene – Halloween in the school’s big common/eating room. Y’know, the part where there are hundreds of jack-o-lanterns floating in the air, all with evil smiles and eyes glowing bright orange? Made me think of Halloween, and how it’d be cool to do something similar as decoration in the house this year. I was thinking of getting several of those (not very cheap) foam jack-o-lanterns you can buy at the crafts store and outfitting each of them with one of those orange-tinted stick-up push lights from the dollar store, then I could suspend them from the ceiling with fishing line for that “floaty” look. Speaking of Halloween, I’ve decided on the implementation for this year’s big prop – you can read about it here. The motor-driven version appeals more to me than the many pneumatic variations out there – since I have at least a cursory understanding of small motors. I’ve also decided to remake the graveyard fence into something fancier, ala this guy’s, since mine is really starting to show it’s age and is falling apart.

Somehow, on Sunday, I started thinking about the old cross-country telegraph systems erected in the late 1800s. That’s how I stumbled across this page, showing how to build a dead-simple telegraph sender/sounder combo from everyday parts. For some reason, having this kind of knowledge in my head pleases me. That, and how to build a log-cabin… for some reason these are things I think I should know. Just in case I ever have to build a post nuclear-annihilation log-cabin settlement and want to be able to communicate with my neighbors via telegraph. It could happen.

Before I go, don’t know if you guys read that this killer/kidnapper guy who murdered an entire family an abducted two kids, one of which he later killed and one who is now safe, kept a blog online for several years. I’ve read some of it, and found it more interesting than I probably would have were there not the context. You can read some of the older entries on the wayback machine, the blogspot archive links on these pages work through late 2004. For the most recent entries, the last being a mere two days before the events described above, you can look at the blogspot archives here.

Also, Pat’s got his pictures from the Point Reyes hike up, and they are decidedly better than Ben’s because they show not only the solemn beauty of the trip but also the full level of debauchery achieved. My theory? Pat has balls, where Ben has none. Enjoy them, if you’re into that kinda thing.

Until whenever.

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skipping lunch

From the lofty loft.
Sitting here squirming around because I have to pee, but I’m not getting up. It’s lunchtime now, but I decided to eat a rather hearty breakfast this morning and don’t feel like eating. So I’ll write instead. It’s one of those days where I feel like I can’t get to anything on my “list” because new things keep coming out of the woodwork. I’m trying hard to get to Smaug’s mountain, but I keep having to deal with spiders and trolls and goblins that pop up unannounced. It’s one of those situations where I end up just staring at the monitor, not sure which e-mail to answer, which phone call to make, what should come first. When I get stuck like that, I do one of two things: Get really serious and start hacking wherever it’s easiest, or bail for a while to clear my head. I think this “lunch break” is my head-clearing bailout.

Went outside to take out the trash tonight and discovered it was plenty cool to open up and let the breeze in. One thing I like about Northern CA’s treacherous 100+ days is the fact that it (usually) cools off enough at night to open the windows and get some fresh air. Right now the cat’s perched on the sill watching what cat’s watch through open windows. Being closer to the outside, perhaps… that fabled place beyond her daily walls. Kind of like me at work, choosing to have meetings in the “breezeway,” where you can see the sun and watch the leaves move in the wind. Not the sanitized wind of air conditioning blowing through the aisles of cubicles, but real, honest-to-goodness fresh air – the kind our ancestor’s ancestors once breathed when they worked the land. You can make good money being a mechanic, right?

Gaw… sometimes I look back over crap I wrote and wanna just delete it all. What’s that BS above about cats and walls and stuff? Was I high? Did I really think I could pull that crap off? One thing’s for sure, I have absolutely nothing to write about. I’d actually rather just call it a night and be happy with what little I’ve managed to get down.

But before I go – you can check out some snaps of the past weekend’s activities over at Ben’s place, so do it.

‘Night.