Category: blood

Family, easy!

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spurned by santa

The molasses pace of this week and a half is more than I could ask for.  Every day I wake up thinking it’s a day later than it really is, and am pleasantly surprised when I realize the error.  So, when today was Monday as I rose, and I realized we’re down to our last two days – it was something of bummer.  But, let’s move on from all the talk of vacation-end and get on to some talk of vacation-happenings.

The other night we took a short walk down to the city park near Sharaun’s folks’ place.  It’s located smack in the middle of the historic shopping district here, and the city has done considerable work over the past ten years or so really shaping the place up.  In fact, it looks really good down there – and the crowds drawn to the park, temporary ice-skating rink (yes, in Florida), shops and food seem to show that the work has paid off.  We’ve walked the short mile or so down there a couple times already this trip, and each time have really enjoyed letting Keaton run around in the park and strolling the shoplined avenues.

This particular night, however, we were there right before dinner and the light was beginning to dwindle.  As we played in the park, we began to notice a man setting up lights around a sleigh sitting central to the goings-on.  Sure enough, Mr. Claus himself showed up for pictures with kiddies just as we were getting ready to make the walk back home.  When Keaton saw him, she absolutely lit up.  She looked at me, looked at mom, looked back to Santa – and just stood there struck like a stone, mouth open and wide-eyed.  I finally said to her, “Do you want to go say ‘hi’ to Santa?”  “Yeah!,” she squealed as she tore off in his direction.

There were several kids flocked around Santa, and she sort of sidled up alongside them in the back row and just stared up at him in awe.  Eventually, the throng thinned and she had a clear shot at him.  She stared right up and him and said, “Hi Santa!”  Only, she said it sort of smallish and demurely, since that’s just how our girl is.  Unfortunately, Santa did not hear her salutation, and instead turned his back to her to talk to some other kids.  At that, Keaton waited there a minute, wringing her hands, and the walked back to me with the sorriest, saddest look on her face I’ve ever seen.  When she got to me, she said, “He didn’t answer me,” in the most forlorn little voice.

I was absolutely heartbroken; felt crushed right along with her.

Trying quick to recover, Sharaun and I both said something along the lines of, “It’s OK baby, he just didn’t hear you that time.  Go on back over and say ‘hello’ to him a little louder this time so he can hear, OK?”  With a little prodding, she walked slowly back over and found another opening for some one-on-one time.  This time, Santa saw her first and stooped to speak to her.  As he did, she was excited, but I could still see the reluctance in her eyes from his initial spurning.  When she came back, she was a lot happier, but I could tell she still had some misgivings about this Santa guy.

Later that night, as I was putting her to sleep I asked her, “Wasn’t it fun meeting Santa today?”  “Yeah,” she said, and her voice turned frost cold and sad, “But… he didn’t answer the first time.”  I about bust out into tears right then and there.  Poor girl.

Sorry for the sob story… I promise it’s not indicative of the week.  In fact, we’ve had a fantastic time – and I suppose I should’ve chosen to relate a funny story instead, but that one stuck with me as something that might “blog” well.

For now, I’m outta here.  Holler at you guys later, OK?

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick-tap from the iPhone to wish everyone a good day of thanks.

For me, I’m thankful for this moment of respite with family, and am trying not to think about getting back to the grind.

Enjoy.

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knocking the dust off

After a nice break from writing while we eased into Florida, I just wanted to stop by and knock the dust off sounds familiar.

So far, our trip to the balmy South has been just as I’d imagined.  Even as we met our ride at the airport and I took those first few breaths of sticky, clean, Florida air – I knew it would be a good week.  And, what’s better,  I haven’t felt that driven to write (you may find yourself asking, “Gee, what’s new Dave?,” but in reply to that I would tell you sternly to “Shut your mouth, smartypants.”).  I figured, however, that I better log on and say something lest folks think our plane wound up in the drink and thought us lost forever.  (Not so.)

Last night we met up with my oldest and bestest friend for a couple beers and two regret-consuming-even-while-consuming cigarettes.  Was a good time, trading stories to bring each other up to date on current goings-on and asking after family and old friends.  We hope to meet up with more long-lost friends as our time winds on this week, and have put out feelers to try and make sure we can do so.  At our age, we can actually use the pretense of “getting the kids together” to catch up with folks we haven’t seen in years and years and years (do we need pretense?).

Well, already this whole blogging thing is bringing me down… feeling tied to writing and such.  So, I’m gonna cut it loose here and give these scant paragraphs to the world before signing off.  I’m pretty sure I’ll do it again tomorrow, as the lazy, gluttonous pace of the holiday usually makes for a good writing mood.

Until then I hope you got where you’re going and with who you’re gonna be with for tomorrow’s day of thanksgiving.  Take care internet.

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looking south

Once upon a time, Spanish explorers flocked to the humid, flat swampland that is our current state of Florida in search of a fabled “fountain of youth.”

Now, near five-hundred years later, this Californian explorer is heading there in a day with similar goals in mind.

Not that I’d like to rewind my life, but rather that I’m looking forward to the restorative power that the Southern state has come to represent to me.  The older I get, and the longer away from the place I’ve been, the more I come to relish our time there.  The weather, the pace, the family and friends, the familiarity… the religion. And, on the other side of the coin, all the “nots” that go along with it being completely separated and across the country from home. Home with all its trappings of work and responsibility and stress.

There’s something about the air down there, like breathing water, like a having a nice steam.  There’s something about the people down there, sitting at Sharaun’s grandmother’s dinner table in the morning sharing coffee or catching a nap in my father-in-law’s chair.  More importantly, there’s something about me down there… something that relaxes inside me, something that either turns off or turns on – I’m not sure.  Whatever it is, I’ve come to almost idealize the place… and I look forward to spending time there more and more. This coming trip being no different – I’m ready to pack right now and get on a plane.

Let’s go; let’s go; let’s go.

Goodnight.

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mushrooms in the lawn

Happy Friday internets.  Sorry I skipped a couple days this week, but, you know… so it goes.

I’m remote desktop’d into my PC at home in California to write this entry.  For some reason, that’s awesome to me.  And, if by the preceding sentence it wasn’t clear, we arrived safe and sound in Oregon Wednesday night – where we were greeted by Grammy & Grampa and the familiar cold, wet welcome the Pacific Northwest.  Oregon is a gorgeous place, I just don’t know if I could deal with all those months of rain.

I think Keaton enjoys hanging out with her grandparents though.  When we’ve been here in the past, we’ve put her down to sleep in a pack-n-play in the large walk-in-closet in the guest room we stay in.  It may sound kinda funny, keeping her in a closet, but the space is big enough to be a “room” proper and it has a separate door we can close to give her some peace.  Anyway, sometime between the last time we were here and now, my folks actually transformed the closet into a little Keaton room.  It comes complete with her name on the door, Backyardigans stickers plastered all over the wall, a bookshelf with books, and a little kid-sized bed.  Now, that may seem even more funny… a converted closet-room… and perhaps it is – but the novelty now more than makes up for the therapy later.

Anyway… she seems to lover her own little space.  So, don’t call CPA OK?

Work today (yesterday as you read) was abominable.  I came here this week primarily for one two-hour meeting.  I had been dreading this meeting all week.  Not because it was going to be particularly challenging or difficult or anything… but moreso because it was going to be a stressful thing for me.  It’s hard to explain, but when I know I have to share a strongly held opinion of mine that’s counter to what the commonly held opinion of the group is – I get all stressed about making my point succinctly and eloquently enough to be as influential as I want.  Anyway, the meeting blew… but not for the reasons I just mentioned… blew though, nonetheless.

Forget it… I’m outta here.  I just have nothing to write and all I can do is sit here thinking about how much I wish it was Friday (remember, I write the night before).

Goodnight.

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imposters!

Tuesday night and I’m stuck here again, right around that part where I begin everything with something like, “XXXday night and here I am again.”  I guess I could just say something like: “Hey Tuesday folks,” or maybe, “One day closer to hump day, one hump day closer to the weekend.”  Something like that.

Ween is on the iPod (Sharaun is at her volleyball game, so I get another TV-free all-tunes evening), I saw these guys when I was around fifteen in some small hole-in-the-wall club in Melbourne, Florida.  Myself and a crew of about six guys got dropped off by someone’s folks, and proceeded to hang out in front of the gas station asking random sketchy-looking dudes if they’d buy us beer.  After striking out, we entered the club empty-handed – no beer, no dope, no nothing.  For fourteen year old punks, the prospects were slim.  But we still had the show.

We regarded Ween as mostly a joke, as we were listening to the Pure Guava album at the time and songs like “Push the Lil’ Daisies” didn’t do much to bolster any “serious musician” cred.  But, at the show, Ween was amazing (I’ve looked and looked and looked online for a bootleg of that particular show, would be amazing to hear it again all these years later… and Ween has a fanatic fanbase of live show collectors, so I assume it’ll show up eventually).  They played a blistering million-minute cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” which proved they could play… so why all the crap on the records?

We begged them for “Big Jilm,” which had become a running joke amongst the group as maybe the most retarded song ever made (sorry retarded people).  They replied that the tape loop for that song was busted, and this had us howling almost as much as when they launched into tracks like “Hey Fat Boy, Asshole,” and, “Flies On My Dick,” which they dedicated to their grandparents – who were actually in the audience.  What an amazing night for some kids…

Oh gosh look, I wrote about it before, and seem to remember there being dope.  Who knows…

OK, let’s move on to the meat.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a “social networking” kinda guy.  Not on MySpace, not on Facebook, not on Bebo or LinkedIn or any of those other all-the-rage sites.  Never will be either, I just don’t cotton to the canned nature of the pages and the stupid back-and-forth banter.  So, that’s something you now know about me.

My brother, however, has a MySpace profile.  Now, I know I don’t write about my brother much here on the bloggy-blog-blog, but he’s a good guy and I like him a lot.  I don’t deride him for having a MySpace thingy – I know plenty of people who have ’em, it’s totally cool.  In fact, I used to visit his page occasionally just to see what he had posted or what his buddies (or whatever MySpace dubs them) were talking about.

Some time ago (been a long while now), my bro set his MySpace page to private.  I think this means only people he knows or has “friended” or whatever can see his stuffs.  I still have the link bookmarked though, and occasionally I’ll go there to see if maybe he’s un-privated the thing.  I never have any luck, the thing’s always still private – but I can at least see his little picture, his “current mood,” and his little tagline/motto thing.

But, what I noticed tonight, and what I wanted to write about, is the bottom of the page.  Down there after MySpace tells you the profile is “private,” it offers you a consolation prize by following up with, “Here are some public profiles you may find interesting.”  I can only assume the logic behind what I may find interesting is MySpace looking at the details behind my brother’s private profile, comparing them to the millions of other profiles on MySpace, and serving up those with some degree of commonality.  I imagine they look at age, interests, school and professional history, taste in music, links, comments, etc., etc., etc.

So, what worries me is the rank-and-file losers it pitches me as “public” stand-ins for my “private” brother.  MySpace, how dare you boil down my bro to this douchebag parade?!

Actually, I don’t know any of these guys… so I guess it’s kinda mean to assume they are, or label them as, “losers.”  Sorry guys.

For all I know, SHoRtYRoC is a Rhodes scholar.  Matt and Brian appear to share hats – so that shows kindness; and S.A.G. appears to be a real gangsta so I better reserve comment on him.  Randy and Scooter… oh Randy, oh Scooter… guys…  And I could go either way on Patrick.  But, just looking at them in aggregate, I don’t think they have much bearing on tho “who” of my little bro.

So, who is my brother?  I wrote this about him a few years ago:

Frank is my brother. His real name is John. When I was in the 4th grade (I think), I was of the opinion that the name “Frank” was one of the dumbest names a human could have (my apologies to all the Franks out there who are offended by that, but I was young). I started calling my brother Frank to be funny, or mean, or a little of both. Incredibly, the name stuck. Stuck hard. So hard, in fact, that by the time he was in high school, that’s all anyone knew him by. He even got “Frank” sewn on his Little League jacket.

Unfortunately, Frank endured many years of torture at my hands – both physical and psychological. I threw the cat in the bathtub with him; I brainwashed him into admitting guilt for things I’d done; I used to punch him as hard as I could every time I died playing Nintendo; he always had to be Luigi. When we were young, we were the best of friends. I remember playing Star Wars in the back yard, we used a shovel to dig the Sarlacc’s pit that Han got flung into (much to my mom’s chagrin). I remember tying ropes around the necks of our stuffed animals, and swinging them around in giant circles, pretending they were on some ride at the carnival. We were best buds.

I don’t know when that ended, but now we’re more like old friends who are flirting with the idea of having a brotherly relationship. My bro dropped out of high school in his junior year. We weren’t very close during those times, but I imagine he had a lot of the same experiences I did at his age… and he, too, lived through them (apparently the family mettle is strong). I hope Frank and I can get back to the days of Sarlacc pits and stuffed animal abuse one day, at least in spirit.

I wrote that sometime in 2000.  I’m happy to say that the sad-sounding ending isn’t really applicable anymore, and my brother and I have a fairly normal relationship at this point.  So, suck it MySpace.

Not comprehensive, but not bad.  Goodnight folks.

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vaporized by a hadron-shooting reverse-vampire spawned from a magnetic monopole

Happy Monday folks.  Was a great weekend.  Keaton had a good time with Grammy and Grandpa in town, she got into full “show off” mode.  We barbecued, enjoyed some beer, and got some great weather.

For today, I’ve got a pretty random entry, ranging a bunch of pretty unrelated topics.  It happens sometimes on Mondays, it’s the prime day for blogging leftovers.  So, I’m gonna slap a bunch of paragraphs on a paper plate, punch in two minutes on the microwave, and pour you a glass of icewater or Pepsi or whatever.  Here goes.

Our neighborhood Fourth of July get-together was fantastic, like a huge hunk of fresh-from-the-oven Americana; with kids on bikes giving impromptu “parades,” lame-style California fireworks set atop folding ladders in the street, even down to the nametags, handshakes, and cakes decorated like American Flags.  We got to meet a ton of our neighbors and Keaton even ended up with a couple “she’s so cute” hand-me-down toys from some of the older girls.  We also put toghether an e-mail list for the block, something I thought was another stroke of genius.  Ahh, community… it’s kinda nice.

Changing subjecte drastically, I want to talk about the Large Hadron Collider for a minute.  Now, before I start, I fully realize you may have never heard of the “Large Hadron Collider,” not to mention knowing what the heck “Hadron” might be.  And, I’ll also let it go if you accidentally misread that as “Large Hard-On Collider,” it happens.  Anyway, it is “Hadron,” and all you have to know is that it’s got something-or-other to do with physics.  See, the LHC (as I’ll cooly call it from hence forward) is the world’s biggest particle accelerator, a device which physics boffins use to smash different kinds of subatomic particles together at super-high speeds.  They do this so they can observe what happens afterward, like new particles or other phenomenon created by the collisions.  To physics nerds, all of this is incredibly exciting.

There is, however, a significant amount of fear mongering and doubt on the internet about the LHC.  See, the machine has just finished being built, and is set to be fired up for the first time any day now.  This has a certain set of folks quite concerned.  These people are afraid that the experiments performed at the LHC may create awful things that could possibly destroy the entire planet.  Terribly scary-sounding things like “micro black holes,” vacuum bubbles,” “magnetic monopoles,” and “strangelets.”  Whatever those are, they sound pretty intimidating, and can, apparently, destroy the Earth.  And, even though the official safety study was incredibly comprehensive and found no cause for concern, it’s still kind of interesting to think of the unintended effects the massive machine may have.  Heck, I’ve even written about a similar scenario before.

OK, I know that probably wasn’t intersting, but I’ve been wanting to write about the Large Hadron Collider now for a couple months, and just decided I’d go ahead and do it.  If you’re interested in when keeping track of how much time you have before you’re vaporized by a hadron-shooting reverse-vampire spawned from a magnetic monopole, you can check this website.

Now then, let’s move on to something equally as off-topic.

I found this site online today and loved it. I mean, regardless of how “real” it is – what a fun escapist fantasy concept. I’ve talked before about how I have this lingering desire to “drop out’ and start/join a cooperative community, and seasteading is like that with an added layer of cool. Yeah, it’s perhaps a tad more isolated than a small community of like-minded individuals taking to an agrarian lifestyle up “in the hills” somewhere (trying to avoid Branch Davidian “compound” esque imagery here), but wouldn’t it be cool to give up modern life and go live on a huge self-sustaining bio-barge in the middle of the sea for a year? Yeah, sure you’d probably get some sort of cabin-fever, end up hating or killing or sleeping with everyone in your little water-locked society… but, y’know.

Told you it was random.  Goodnight.