Category: blogging

Where write about writing, and my website sounds familiar.

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this nest has wheels

Who needs it?
Today I was proud of myself. We’re moving floors at work, so I spent all yesterday packing boxes, and we were told not to come in today – but to work from home. Additionally, I had an optometrist appointment at 2pm and needed to drop my truck off at the stereo place before that at 1pm. To make matters worse, I had an important conference call I needed to be on between those very times. How to manage this? Here’s what I came up with: Throw the bike in the back of the truck; drive up to the stereo place and drop off the truck; ride the bike up to the Starbucks near the optometrist and take the conference call while enjoying ‘bucks’ most secret beverage; meeting’s over at 2pm, walk the 30ft to do the optometrist thing; hop back on the bike and go get the truck. Well, it seemed brilliant to me, and it worked, too.

I think I liked the plan so much because it didn’t rely on a vehicle to convey me. Bear with me for an aside here, but, I work with several folks who live in Shanghai, PRC. A good cut of these folks don’t own a vehicle. They are too expensive, not practical on the city’s congested motorways, or the prefer pubic transit. When I tell them that, between Sharaun and I, we have a vehicle for each of us – it only reaffirms their view of America as a country full of rich people. Knowing people who don’t own cars and live perfectly normal lives, I get a kick out of realizing I’m not really that reliant on the beast. Yeah, not using the car made me happy. That, and I was able to utilize the cellphone to take my meeting. I love technology, it amazes me how it’s changed the way I do some things. For instance, my cellphone has replaced the following: my alarm clock, datebook, calendar, land-line home phone, and Post-It notes.

At baby class, our instructor talks a lot about the urge to “nest” that some couples feel before the baby comes. She talks about women wanting to clean, vacuum, and generally prepare the house for their new arrival. I can understand the preparing part, at least having the necessities on hand – but I’ve yet to see Sharaun go all cleaning jihad. Me, however, I think I just had my first “nesting” freak-out. Yeah. You wanna know what nesting is? Nesting is realizing your truck is so dirty and nasty that it’s not fit to ferry your child. It’s spending four hours in the garage painstakingly cleaning the interior and carpets, wanting to remove every smudge and speck of dust.

When I was in Shanghai, one of the $2 DVDs I bought was Jim Henson’s 1982 classic, The Dark Crystal. I absolutely loved the movie when I was a kid, it was the perfect mix of magic and fantasy – things I didn’t even realize I loved yet. Then yesterday, I stumble on this news online – they are making a sequel! I know most folks won’t care, but I sure was pumped. I mean, you know what they say: the darker the crystal, the sweeter the juice… or something like that.

In blogging news, using those larger images in last week’s Gimp-a-day baby theme, I decided that I prefer them to the tiny 100px I’ve been using for years now. Maybe it’s because I recently switched to a smaller screen resolution, so the bigger images don’t fill the entry as much – but whatever the reason, I’m stickin’ with ’em. Live with it.

Until tomorrow, love ya.

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3 weeks and counting

FetusWatch 2006
Tuesday night and that means baby class, only one more to go and we’ll be fully educated and ready for birth. Things are really coming to a head now, as the FetusWatch logo indicates. The occasion this time is the arrival of the t-minus three weeks and counting milestone. As for the update, not much. Things are progressing nicely. In related news, I’ve actually figured out neat way to post blog entries from my cellphone. While this may seem stupid, I plan to use it to provide real-time short updates to the page when the big day comes. The posts will fall under the new “txtblog” category, and will be accompanied by nice little graphics that will tip you off to their real-timeness.

Last night was Coldplay at the local 18k-attendance arena. I remember when I first “found” Coldplay, via Napster (that should give you an idea of when it was). Struck immediately by their likeness to Radiohead, the Beatles, and U2 – I was smitten. At the time, they’d only released a handful of EPs in their native England, and I greedily stole them all over the wires. I remember reading about the group of college students, how their first couple EP releases had garnered so much praise that they made the decision to give up school and go 100% music. Stories like that enthrall me, bands making it big, chasing dreams and stuff. Anyway, I ate up those initial batch of EPs, and only just recently threw out the 1st Coldpay comp CD-R I made for the car: “EPs.” As the group rocketed to stardom, I never really lost interest so much as I did passion… it’s a byproduct of my “commercial is evil” attitude (I know, I’m working on it). But man, seeing them last night was amazing – seeing how far they’d come, all the way from EPs to CG explosions on huge digital displays… it was a testament to the rock ‘n’ roll dream.

What’s more, the performance was outstanding. The sound was great, as were the vocals, the “artsy” stuff like lights and confetti-filled balls falling from the sky was also awesome. I haven’t been that engaged be a performance in a long time, it truly was an excellent concert – and man am I glad Sharaun scored tickets for my birthday. The band was a class act all the way, from the show-ending Broadway style arms-on-shoulders bow to Chris Martin personally coming on stage to introduce Fee-Owner Apple. I’ll tell you what, when it’s an empty stage, and your band isn’t on for almost another two hours – yet you still walk out to that lone microphone and say: “High, I’m Chris Martin from the band Coldplay. I’d like to introduce Fiona Apple, I know you’re going to enjoy her.” That’s grade-A rock chivalry right there. What headliners these days take the the time to even thank their openers, let alone take the stage to personally intro them. Class act; Class. Fuckin’. Act.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.01 before I hit the sack, fixed my image uploading problem. I love this program. G’nite.

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back to work

Mountains of junk filling my house.
Wednesday night; working… at home… on work stuff. Management is hard. Although, I can totally see how, from the outside looking in, it would appear cushy and lazy. There’s not a lot of concrete results to be had by a manager, rather the sum of the concrete results of those they manage. So, management is hard. I’m really trying to get back into the caring-about-work phase, despite Lil’ Chino’s looming arrival. I did, however, finally communicate that I’m not bending to the tremendous pressure, being placed on me by my management, to do some traveling in mid-March. Only two weeks from the projected due-date, and I’d be gone for a week. Sharaun, predictably, puked all over the idea – and my initial attempts to back out were met with more pressure. However, today I just laid it bare and said “no.” Really, it doesn’t make sense: My first baby, two weeks old, and I leave my just-gave-birth wife alone to care for her? No, sorry, not gonna do it – the world of work won’t stop turning if I’m not up in front of the customer.

You may have noticed the apparent lack of focus last week that caused me to slip and miss two consecutive week-ending days. Oh, and yesterday too. It’s true, I’ve been cheating on the evening blogging routine with a number of things: running, iPod fiddling, and, God forbid, work. Yeah, I’ve picked up that old torch of working during the evenings again – things are really getting hot and heavy, and my “duck it all until the baby comes” strategy is clearly flawed. So, I chose to react, to step up and try and kick ass in the little time I have left. It may sound lame to refer to what I do as “kicking ass,” as there’s not much that sitting getting fatter in front of a monitor and winning a fight have in common – but in my cubicle-dominant world, that’s how we do it. Y’know, like tax bitches do six 1040s in one day – that’s kicking some tax-ass. Me, answering 100 e-mails and attending five meetings – that’s kicking some what-I-do-ass.

In preparing the baby’s room, it struck me last night how “modernized” the process is these days: We got our rocker off Craigslist, our custom-painted letters spelling K-E-A-T-O-N off Ebay, ordered the bedding on the internet, and manage our gift registry in cyberspace also. I swear, Lil’ Chino’s gonna come out watching the latest episode of Diggnation on her PSP (OK, that sounds super-relevant now, but won’t make a damn but of sense in a year). Speaking of “preparing” for the baby… getting a baby means an absolute explosion of “stuff.” We’ve got all kinds of stuff, piled all over the house. I swear, we have enough to fill, like… a whole other room, a baby’s room… even.

Downloaded an album by an outfit called I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness the other night, on name alone. Turns out, they are pretty dang good. Kinda melancholy and a little bit same-sounding throughout, but I like the plodding feel of the songs a lot. Also in music, I found this recent post over at stereogum hilarious – I don’t know quite why, but it really epitomizes a common feeling amongst the greedy hipsters who covet “good” bands. Oh, and, even if this Coachella 2006 poster was a fake – it seems the rumors about the Pumpkins getting together to gig this summer may indeed be true. Being that I was completely infatuated with the Pumpkins once upon a time, I’d love to go seem ’em again for old times sake.

Goodnight.

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slicing stratosphere

Somewhere up there...
Slicing stratosphere on the way home, another tight connection so fingers crossed that the luggage meets us there. Today would be the day my travel-size baby powder runs out, sticky unpowdered balls for an eight hour cross-country trek, what could be better? Laptop’s got enough battery to last the entire flight, but I’ll get tired of it before then. Debating even opening it, don’t really have anything to write, but I wanted to listen to the Andrew Bird album that I’ve been singing all morning. Had a good time in Florida, always do. Will be glad to get back home though, if for nothing more than to try and get tied into the work thing for a short seven weeks before Lil’ Chino arrives.

Speaking of babies, which, when am I not, lately… that little girl is on her way, is coming. I see it occupy more of Sharaun’s thoughts day by day – bringing it also to the front of mine. We start our parenting classes the week after we get back, once a week for six weeks – Tuesday nights for a couple hours. There, I’m supposing we’ll learn to be parents. Picking up skills like shooshing and swaddling and tummy-timing. I’m excited, actually, to go to the classes… even though they’re not free, or anything. I’m sure we’ll learn a thing or two about a thing or two, and that can’t be bad. But, deep down, I’ve talked previously about how I think this thing is just “meant” to work… being that we’ve made it from caveman to here, y’know.

Man these kind of entries are boring: “This is what we did, this is what we’re doing, blah, blah, baby, blah.” It’s easy to complain about the junior-high journal style of writing, but harder to actually do something original; so you don’t, you shoot for just writing instead, and leave lofty goals of creativity for rare moments of inspiration rather than the norm. Plodding on then, faults well known.

Sharaun got me a great little book for Christmas, 101 Things A Good Dad Should Know. It’s got lots of neat little tidbits of knowledge that all dads should have stowed away. Of course, how to throw a curveball and swing a bat are in there… sigh. Not that our daughter will be pitching curveballs that much, but her mom did play softball. What’s the fear, you ask? People, I have no skills; can’t swing a bat, can’t throw a ball. OK, so I can do both, so can a monkey, but I don’t do either correctly. Never did learn, was always laughed at when I tried, so never put much into it. In the book, there’s and illustration of the good dad, we’ll call him Dad Gallant, hanging a tennis ball from a garage rafter for swinging practice. Me, we’ll call me Dad Goofus, I hang a tennis ball from the garage rafter to know precisely how far to pull in the car. I don’t want to be Dad Goofus. Sure, I can teach you how to find the North Star, complete the square, and balance a checkbook – but I’m a wreck on the field. You’ll still love me, right?

I’ve finally decided I’m getting an iPod. I’ve wanted one now for nigh on two years, but so far had been holding off for a larger capacity future model. Yesterday, I just up and decided I’m getting one – perhaps my last vanity purchase before Lil’ Chino gets here. I want the 60GB model, could care less for the video on that tiny screen, but I won’t mind having it, y’know, just in case. While my collection is twice over 60GB and always growing, I think I can pare it down to a good “purist” base that will be nice to have in a pocket. I always rationalize large purchases with some kind of “plus and minus” model where I comb through the last couple months finances for expenses that could’ve been. When I “find” money that could’ve been spent but wasn’t, I then feel better about unexpected cash outflux. In this case, our skymile-funded trip home for Christmas is the plus to my iPod minus. Sane, right?

Before I go, a couple recent disappointments, one expected, one not. Got dragged to a movie with Sharaun and an old friend of ours the other night, The Family Stone. Please, for the love of Jesus y’all, don’t go see this steaming pile. It was, honestly, one of the worst things I’ve seen in a loooong while. At least the old friend sprung for tickets, so I wasn’t lighter in the wallet for the slop. I hadn’t expected much, but I was shocked and awed and how little I got. Second, finally got the Test Icicles album I’ve been wanting since their 1st single did so well. It blows. Don’t waste your money, you’re better off buying this brilliant Andrew Bird record and falling asleep in the sun.

‘Night.

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gummy smiles

I think I've used this before.
Been finding it hard to write this week, hence the picture cop-out yesterday. And, while on the subject, in regards to yesterday’s entry – I was reminded by my friend Bob that I should’ve postcripted the “Florida is busted and full of tumbleweeds” story with a note about how they’ve also recently suffered through four, count ’em, four, hurricanes. And yeah, he’s right – four hurricanes in one season is bound to leave some broken marquees and un-done repairs. So, while you can’t really blame the retail exodus on hurricanes, I am willing to allow that maybe the state of brokedowness may be somewhat skewed by it. Lets move on.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.0 Monday night and it went off without a hitch. I love the new backend, things are simpler and I don’t have to switch around so much between different backend tabs to get a post up. Things seem a bit faster too, front and back, and all my plugins seem to be working post-upgrade as well. Plus, they’ve integrated the database-backup plugin I loved and some hard-core spam blocking technology – two big pluses. And, maybe the best new feature, the post preview is now an embedded frame of your actual blog, using your stylesheets and layout, so you can see what the thing will actually look like once it’s up. If you’re a blogger, or you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, perhaps keeping a list of ideas around for the eventuality, you gotta get the WordPress.

Last night I left Sharaun in bed as I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth. After brushing, I decided to clean up my beard-line (my skin gets mad irritated when I shave, so I like to give it an overnighter to shape up), so the teeth-brushing turned out longer than I intended. When I finally got back to the room, I saw Sharaun lying on her side in bed, sobbing. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I dunno… nothing…” came the teary reply. I climbed into bed and put my arms around her and asked again, “What’s wrong?” “I don’t know… I’m just afraid I’m not going to be a good mom, there’s so much I don’t know.” I chuckled. After some consoling and empathizing, things were fine again. I think spending so much time around our new-parent friends, watching them take care of their kids and all that’s involved, got her a little anxious. Truth be told, there is a lot involved in the whole deal. But, I think, for me at least, seeing all our peers managing happy young’ns was actually good for my confidence – us kids can do it, are capable. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m not too nervous – far more impatient and ready to dive in than anything. Stress is one thing, and I know she’s feeling a good bit of it late, but confidence is another – and I think we’ve both got plenty of that. I expect we’ll each have a freak out or two in the next coming months, par for the course.

One more thing before I kick rocks. I have no idea what prompted the comment assault on my old entry where I reconciled myself to my new allergy, but I did find it pretty amusing. It makes me smile to think someone (yeah, they were all from the same person) took the time to write that much, for whatever reason. Thanks.

Goodnight.

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breaking ground

Onto the new.
In my ongoing effort to prevent this now somewhat “mature” blog from sliding into repetitive boredom, I’m trying to establish a few “new” styles of entry that’ll hopefully help me write more interesting material, and give me something to “fall back” on when the creative juices aren’t exactly flowing. I know, how “creative” is this thing? Not very; but that still isn’t stopping me from trying to make it a little more engaging to the hardy few who do try and read regularly. So, in addition to my “one liners” idea, I’m going to again debut something I think may be worthwhile – new entries that look back on past entries and re-hash or re-examine them. I know that going back and talking again about something that’s already been talked about may not strike you as particularly “new” or original, but I think it has potential to be interesting for me from a writer’s perspective – and that, folks, is what it’s all about if I intend to continue filling pages with words. So, today I’ll kick off the new hotness part II – the “one (or two) year ago today” themed entry.

It just so happens that December 8th’s entry last year was my “best of 2005” roundup, and I didn’t feel there was much more I could write on that – so I cheated, and used December 7th’s entry (hey, I’m all timezone-impaired right now anyway, gimme a break). So, here, in another stunning display of my stylesheet mastery, is December 7th’s entry – one year ago today.

Liar.
Happy Monday to us all. Writing this, it’s Sunday morning. I think we’re gonna use the day to put up the Christmas tree and hang lights on the house. I’d like to get out of my slump and finish the porch in the backyard, since the stone-saw magically starting working again yesterday. I had a feeling you know, that it’s brokenness wasn’t final. So I decided to put it in the garage and wait, just let it relax, maybe not cut bricks for a couple weeks. And just as I suspected, when I plugged her in yesterday to see if she had self-healed, she fired up right away. So, now I have no excuse not to finish… time to get off my butt and get out there. Cut the remaining bricks, make the final adjustments to the sprinkler-head positions, then do the cleanup, topsoil, and finally sod and plants. It may seem like a lot, but having a finite amount of steps until I can be “done” is really exciting to me.

The above is the centerpiece of this entry – another letter Shaine managed to scan in. You can read the backstory here. Looks like I switched to typing in this letter, probably because my handwriting was so deplorable in 6th grade. Anyway, where the last letter was only a tad on the fantasy side, with this one I’ve decided to weave an entire narrative of lies. I mean, read it; it reads like I was making up each sentence as I went. The part about Kristina was true, at least the gist of it. She got mixed up in some deep stuff early on when we moved. Maybe I’ll get into the whole Kristina thing one day, it’d make an interesting story I think. The part about the VCR and cable in my room was true too. I remember saving a lot of allowance and mowing more than a few lawns to buy that Goldstar VCR, $99 is a lot for a 6th grader. I loved that VCR, it enabled us to rent and watch Rebecca De Mornay’s And God Created Woman… remember the pool table scene?… I do.

As for the letter’s main subject, fighting, there are some loose connections to real events I suppose. I do remember the candy-stealing incident of that 1st Halloween… and I did somehow end up with the perp’s candy at the end, but I don’t think there was a single punch thrown in between those events. As for the supposed four other fights, they are bald-face lies. The one with Chad may have been based loosely on an afterschool tussle that actually did happen, but I certainly wasn’t involved. Seems I concocted all sorts of brave tales to impress my long-distance best-bud. I mean, I can recount nearly every fight I’ve been in, and I surely would’ve remembered five fights in one night… anyway, I was a pacifist. Well, if anything, I guess it shows I’ve always had a knack for narrative…

Sunday’s over, back to work in the AM… the weekend happens too fast y’allz, the stench of cubicle is still fresh in my mind from Friday afternoon – and I’ll be punching in again in a mere twelve hours. I did, however, make good use of the day. I put up our new dartboard (in accordance with the standard British pub rules, of course), cleaned/organized the garage, finally put away the Halloween decorations, and put the lights up on the house. We pulled down the tree and in-house baubles, but didn’t get around to setting it all up. Tomorrow night perhaps. Putting up the Christmas lights is always a chore, but today it was OK. Up on the roof in the cool weather, me neighbor across the way was also putting up lights… we shared some light-putting-up banter from rooftop-to-rooftop. At one point, our other neighbor came out and we were all chatting about thisnthat, and it struck me how “suburban” it all was. Here we all our, decorating our houses, shouting to each other from rooftops to driveways, sharing waves and smiles… and I deemed it all very good and enjoyable. In the end we all told each other our respective houses “…look(ed) good man,” and went about our business. Nice. Very homey.

This week is the Arcade Fire show in San Fran. I’m really looking forward to it. I hope they are as good live as I’ve heard, and that they’re worth the drive. Now I’m off to bed, goodnight.

So how do we take this full-circle? The reason I chose the 7th’s entry was the part about making up junk for Shaine – I figured I could write more about that than I could recapping my top 10. I was always out to impress Shaine, he was older than me – and a good measure “cooler” too. In 5th grade, we became an inseparable duo of mischievous friends. So, it’s only natural that, when my family moved away at the end of that year – I wanted to keep in touch, and, use my new cross-country anonymity to spin impressive yarns. So, apparently, I decided to send letters with completely made-up goings-on, inventing fanciful stories of daring-do and lawlessness. I mean, this is a guy who sent me three Mexican Redhair seeds through the USPS, years before I’d discover the virtues of weed on my own. In turn, I’d send him fireworks – which were abundant in the south. I don’t know how long we corresponded after I moved, but I can remember calling him every so often, especially on his birthday, which I remember to this day, and chatting about what was going on.

I can remember talking to Shaine once, and him telling me that he’d let his hair grow to his butt. I remember him telling me that his family had moved up north, and that he’d been smoking “marijuana,” something that, at the time, equated him with serial killers to me. It seemed like he’d become quite the badass since I’d left, and the scared child within me was kinda glad I’d managed to get away before joining him in his descent to juvie. Alas, I would make my own descent only a few years later – but in my pre-hoodlum innocence, who would’ve known? We stayed friends – despite my slower-than-his ramp into true adolescence – and we talked and corresponded for at least a few years. And, believe it or not, we still keep in touch to this day – although my keeping-in-touch skills are admittedly lacking sorely.

Remember how much I was sweating my India presentation? Well, it went great – better than expected actually; much better. Having that under my belt kind of “legitimizes” this trip to me, a trip for which, other than the presentation, the sole purpose was some kind of “meet and greet.” So, my guilt over not preparing and even coming in the first place has been soothed… and I’m back to feeling good about what I did and why I did it. That’s good, right? Yes; I think that’s good.

Leaving this country in just about twelve hours, I bid you farewell.

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something new

Rambling fancy around the globe.
I’m going to try something new today, something I think may be fun and help alleviate “bloggers block” in times of trouble (which, thankfully, has not been a problem lately). I’ll call it “one liners,” and entries of this kind will get their own little category in the sidebar. Hopefully, this’ll be something quick and dirty I can do when time is tight and/or I don’t care to write. Today, however, is neither of those – but I had to kick it off somehow.

I’ve decided to grow a beard, at least until I get tired of it or get enough criticism about it.

Right now I feel anxious, nervous, and restless. Not for me, for my brother.

I can’t help smiling every time I see my wife’s big fat belly.

7pm and I haven’t yet begun to pack; it’s because I don’t want to go.

I feel guilty leaving Sharaun alone for another week of travel.

Our refrigerator broke this week, and we’re currently storing all our perishables in a cooler full of ice on the back porch.

I’ve not yet bought anything for my wife for Christmas, and am afraid I won’t have time enough to get her something meaningful.

9pm and I’m completely packed and ready to go; it’s because I have to.

Well, that’s it; the new thang. I can’t really claim it’s 100% original, as I stole the general idea from largehearted boy’s “shorties.”

Goodnight and, until India, goodbye.