Category: blood

Family, easy!

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better in the cubicle than on the road


Wednesday and I’m back to work through Friday. Let me tell you, trying to get motivated in three working days sandwiched between week-chunks of vacation time is a tough thing to do. I sit here thinking about how, come Monday, I’ll be off for another week and won’t have to worry about all the moving and shaking at the sawmill.

I really am starting to get concerned with my level of “don’t give a shitism” lately – it’s becoming a bit more prevalent than even I expected it might with my sabbatical looming. It’s kind of like a long drive home late a night: The highway deserted and all those little white lines steadily disappearing under the car at that fixed rate; the road’s unintended pendulum lulling you to sleep. I’m driving that road here at work, doing my best to keep my chin from dropping as the monotonous day-to-day and the prospect of a warm bed (read: two months vacation) hypnotize me into autopilot. So I’ll do the same thing I do when I’m driving those late-night highways: Keep my right eye open so my wife can see it and know I’m alert, while letting the left eye slip. It never works, by the way – you always end up snapping your head up and popping your eyes open in shock: “How long was I out?! Oh God, that was close.” Let’s hope I’m better at it in the cubicle than I am on the motorways, shall we?

Anyway, I’m in Oregon again, this time just for an overnighter. I was so proud of myself, I managed to pack everything I need for the trip into my laptop bag so I didn’t need to carry any additional luggage. When I bragged about my packing accomplishment to Sharaun, she was less than thrilled. But, to me, it was quite the task. I saved room by deciding to re-wear the same pair of shoes (figured I could pull of black shoes with khakis as long as the accompanying shirt and belt were also black) and the same undershirt (hey, who’s going to know?).

I carefully tucked a pair of slacks, a polo shirt, and a fresh pair of boxers into my bag, and filled the outer pockets with the barest essentials of toiletries: brushes (of the hair and tooth family), deodorant, a tiny bottle of gel for my do, and my daily regimen of vitamins. Everything fit just perfect, even with my recently downsized and slimmer laptop bag. To me it was a testament to efficiency, everything I needed for 36hrs packed into something smaller than a briefcase. I was even further pleased with my minimalism in not getting a rental car (spent ~90min on public transit from the airport to work) nor a hotel (crashing at the folks’ place instead). It’s the small things that make me happy, really… it doesn’t take a lot.

Remember I had these big plans to watch movies on my iPod all the way to Oregon? Well, being that I had to rise bright and early at 4am to make it to the airport on-time for my departure, I opted to instead catch up on some sleep as I flew. I did, however, use the public transit time between the airport and sawmill to get mostway through Michael Moore’s SiCKO. Man, that flick is pretty powerful. Much better, in my opinion, than his previous stuff I’ve seen. And, by better, I mean less childish and defensive-seeming – but still just as indicting. The film didn’t come off nearly as self-righteous as I remember his others seeming, and was more a portrayal of our dismal system than a finger-pointing fest. I would actually recommend people watch this, it’s a rather self-supporting (not to mention scathing) commentary on our nation’s health care system, and is pretty compelling viewing. That’s not saying it’s right, or it’s perfect, or I’m on the Moore bandwagon (which, is kind of a loony-tunes bandwagon, if you ask me), but I’d still recommend it as interesting and enlightening.

Goodnight.

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stick with me


Tuesday, and my last day of vacation. Well, last day for another three days, at least. Then I’m off another entire week. I return to work on the 23rd, and that leaves me with just five weeks of work left before my two-month “sabbatical.” I am truly excited about this, nearly to the point of advanced mental checkout. Knowing that you only have a month or so left at the sawmill can make a person’s mind really start to wander. I know it’s gonna come up fast, I can already tell. Anyway, last night we went to dinner with the family and some friends, then stole and enjoyed a cam copy of the Cusack new horror flick, 1408. Was a low-key evening and a nice way to spend our last real night together with Sharaun’s folks. Let’s try to write a lil’ bit now, shall we?

Can’t hardly believe it’s July in 2007 already. That’s more than the halfway mark (don’t think I don’t know this means I missed my yearly “half-best” list). The fact that we’re already on the waning side of the ’07 also means that my mind starts turning towards Halloween. Last year, almost every single one of my complicated props broke in some major way. Punks tried to steal my coffin-popper, the flying crank ghost got tangled up in her own puppetstrings and ended up a twisted heap, the ceiling dropper shook himself loose to some degree, and the witch’s rags are looking a bit too… raggedy. (Not to mention I got penis’d.) After last year’s soirée, I had all but decided that it would be the last of it – that I was done. Now, however, coming up on August (usually the first month I start thinking about props)… I’m not so sure. Guess I’ll just see how it goes.

I’m off to Oregon in the early ‘morn tomorrow, driving there in the dark as the flight leaves with the sun. I’ll spend a couple quick days at work there, and an even quicker night at my folks’ place between the two. So, once again, posting may be light for the next week or so – which is kinda nice for me, but perhaps not so good for maintaining readership. Guess that’s the way blogging goes.

Until sometime later, stick with me.

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worth a thousand words


Ahhhhhhhhh…..

That’s one long sigh of relief; in honor of my vacation. As I write, I still have two full blissful days of relaxing to look forward to. Then it’s back to work for a mere three days, followed by another full week of loafing (as more relatives come to visit). Today is Sharaun and my 7th wedding anniversary – I remembered and got a card, she forgot and didn’t. Kinda feels good to not be the negligent one.

The vacation thus far has been outstanding. We spent two nights at the cabin down south, and then had a barbecue at the house with some friends and the in-laws (got to use the BBQ again). Today, which is Monday, as a whole herd of saps are reporting to the old sawmill for another day’s slave-labor, I’m sitting on the couch with no real motivation to get going. This is a good thing, however, believe me. We’re planning to go out to the lake today, let Keaton goof around on the shore and sit in the sand. After that, our plans are… nothing. So good to be off, I’m really just realizing how much I needed the time.

I started to write last night, but gave up for lack of material. I was all ready to call it another lost day, and send the blog down what would’ve ended up being one of the longest dry-spells in its history. Then, I was checking my e-mail on the BlackBerry while I was taking my morning coffee dump (yes, I do this) when a certain configuration of bits and bytes flew through the ether, recombined into a JPEG on my phone, and inspired me. What got me going, it turns out, was a photo that my dad sent. His simple explanation was that it was an “old photo” of me that he thought I “might like.” Check it out (click for a slightly larger version in a new window):

Now, to me, this picture was a treasure-trove of memories. Let’s set the stage first though, shall we? I can roughly date the picture by examining the wall decorations: We’re somewhere in the pre-Beatles phase, and still have quite a bit of post-5th-grade holdover material (the Garbage Pail Kids posters, the Alf poster). I have my TV and NES in the entertainment system, but not my VCR. The lack of Beatles material and VCR mean this picture was likely taken right around my late-7th-grade Beatles enlightenment (I would’ve been thirteen years old). I couldn’t help staring at this thing all “what’s wrong with this picture” style. Some things that I liked:

  • Looking closely at my left wrist, I can see the clay-bead-on-leather-strap bracelet I wore religiously for a few years in middle school. I noticed that an 8th grader had dropped it in the locker room one morning while we were dressing out, and stole it up as my own. I was even brave enough to wear it to school, back into that very locker room with that very 8th grader. I could’ve sworn I saw him looking at it, knowing, but I don’t think he ever challenged me on my ownership of it. The beads were all swirly and spotty and psychedelic, again placing this photo into that 7th-grade time of burgeoning wanna-be-hippie.
  • You can just see the edge of my dad’s old turntable in the left of the shot (by then I had adopted it as my own), and both of my two speakers: one on the right of the TV table with that yellow lamp on it (we used this one as a makeshift stepstool to get a leg-up while sneaking out of the house through that window above it), and the other to the right of the TV stand with some stuffed animals perched atop. Not too much later, I’d purchase another set of speakers from our neighbors garage sale and setup a true quadraphonic system in my room. The first record I listened to in quad was Traffic’s eponymous 1968 sophomore effort – I sat cross-legged in the middle of the room and just grooved.
  • I liked Alf?!
  • In the right-front foreground you can see the corner of my beloved bunk beds. I had these through somewhere late in the 9th grade, when they were replaced with a waterbed. Just barely in the shot near the top right you can see the blurred shape of the ceiling fan which hung directly above the ladder providing access to the top bunk. You had to climb up all hunched over to avoid hitting your head on the thing as it was whirring. I remember being extra super-aware of this on one particularly harrowing evening.
  • I used to keep all my NES cartridges in the little cabinet you can kinda see at the bottom of the TV stand. That’s where my lightgun and ROB the robot lived, too.
  • The stuffed animals on the speaker are, from left to right, “Star” and “Teddy.” Teddy was my brother’s, he was a bear; Star was mine, he was a dog. They used to have all kinds of adventures together, and were the best of buds – as stuffed animals go.

OK I’m tired. Have a good day at work, punks.

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monday in oregon


Sunday in Oregon, and I don’t know if I’ll get past this singular sentence and be able to actually write something worth posting (I’ve tried now three times throughout the day without success, so I don’t have high hopes for inspiration). Came up Friday night to hang with my parents and brother this weekend, and do the working-stiff gig on Monday and Tuesday. As usual, I’m not at all looking forward to working tomorrow… but I do rather enjoy the public transit ride in – makes me feel “green” and “metropolitan.” Plus, I always like a chance to listen to music on the iPod and people-watch – and the train is an excellent place for both of those. Anyway, I’ll put in my two days, work as hard as travel-me does, and we’ll be off back to Northern California.

The weather here was nice yesterday, warm and mostly sunny, only clouding over at night and raining just enough to release that earthy rain-on-concrete smell before the sun went down. We took Keaton down to the little playground that’s part of my parents little neighborhood in the late afternoon. She went on the slides. Today it rained for real, so we kicked it indoors – opting to sit around and read and surf the internet and seamlessly drift from nap to waking. It was a good weekend, for sure. Then, we capped off the evening with a nice family dinner out at a local eatery… twas quite nice. Oh, I also got some time do some blog maintenance I’ve been wanting to do for a while – going back and adding titles to my ooold blogs. I’m almost done, if you care.

Ten o’clock now and I just don’t have the heart to write anymore. Goodnight.

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leaving the blog to rot


Oregon. We took wing and arrived in the dreary rainy state on Friday evening, deciding to come up and spend the weekend with my family – as I had to work at the local office here today and tomorrow. And it is good. My folks get to hang out with Keaton – which is good for her (plus I think the enjoy it too). Anyway, we’re here and I’m writing on a weekend after a solid week of leaving the blog to rot.

It was work. I’ll say that up front: it was work. Work made the blog go untouched, work stole my brain during the day, monopolized my thoughts. It was another week trudging around in circles along my little depressed path, round and round around the millstone, behind the guy in front of me and in front of the guy behind me. I wanted to write, did write, but never finished or didn’t have my heart in it so… it rots.

Before I left, as part of my “doin’ stuff I have to do before I go” stuff, I mowed the lawn. I love mowing the lawn, and I hate mowing the lawn. The part of me which is incredibly lazy (which I figure is a about a 230lbs part) dreads it. The part of me which enjoys hard work and likes exercise (which I figure is about 15lbs of me, consisting entirely of my wang and babybeans) enjoys it. But, I did it anyway, and got to listen to some good stuff on the iPod while I did. Plus, I’ll be please as punch when we roll up Tuesday night and the headlights cast their beams over the neatly shorn grass. Yeah, the fruits of my labor.

Speaking of fruits – and vegetables, but I’ll get to them later – I’m planning on digging some holes in my backyard and putting in some fruit trees this next week. I’m thinking some kinda citrus, likely tangerine, apple, and maybe a plum (I think I like plums). I told Sharaun that, if we ever got stranded at our house – for instance, if all the earth surrounding our horse dropped into a sea of molten lava, and we were to live alone on our little island of land amidst the burning sea of liquid rock – I want us to be able to survive by eating the bounty of our small .24 acre lot. So, with the veggies I’m already trying to grow, and the fruit trees I plan on trying to grow – we should be close. Now I only have to cordon of some yard for livestock… and dig a well… and, and… eh… whatever. Oh, and, speaking of vegetables – everything I planted, aside from the peppers, is now growing. Maybe peppers take longer to sprout or something… which I find odd, as they are buried the shallowest (the least deep?).

Before I go, I thought I’d share some comments from Stephen King on the last blog I bothered to write. Mr. Horror talks about violent writing and the link to real-life violence. See, even Stephen King says I’m probably not going to kill anyone.

Goodnight.

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but it’s free money


Wednesday night and I’m half asleep and have a headache. Just finished the Vonnegut books Ben got me for Christmas, nice books those: Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. I enjoyed both very much, so it goes.

I already took out the trash, did it right when I got home so I could ignore the annoying reminder that my cellphone will screech at me around 10pm. Cleaned out the catbox too (I don’t call it a “catbox” in real-life, but it works better on paper). We watched a movie tonight, and I left the laptop powered-down until now so I could enjoy it. We don’t watch movies much, so that was fun. Feeling better today too, not 100%… but better still. Good enough to do a day at work, blech.

Check out the targeted spam-comment I got on Keaton’s (dust-gathering) gallery recently, right here. Gotta be a one-man effort, congratulates us on Keaton’s arrival, and then tosses us a link to his Ebay-front golf supply website. Hey, if they guy went to all the trouble of entering in the captcha and doing the BBcode to make the link clickable – he deserves all the traffic my modest site can send him (but watch out Mr. Golf Supply, the flood of visitors could bring down your server). Ha!

I don’t talk about my family much here, I guess there are things I tend to keep out of the spotlight. I mean, you know how it is. But, I spoke to my brother today and had an interesting conversation. The VA assessed him as 60% disabled, and now the Army is going to give him money every month – for the rest of his life. I guess it’s not relevant exactly how much money, but you may be able to guess based on the details of our conversation. “Yeah, 60% disabled.” “Wow,” I say, “I guess that means you’re a little more than half fucked-up, huh?” “Ha, yeah. But the Army is going to give me amount every month, tax free, for the rest of my life – and they’re backdating payments back to last year.” “Wow,” I say again, “You know, you could totally live like a king for that much in some coastal village in Mexico; never have to work a day again in your life.” “Yeah,” he says, “I already thought of that.” “Cool, I guess,” I summarize, “Cool except you’re 60% fucked up for it.” “Yeah,” he says, “But it’s free money.” “Yeah,” I say.

Before I go, I wanted to mention a question Sharaun asked me tonight. When we saw an 11 o’clock news teaser teasing “California may ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent, because they use a quarter of the power,” she said “Power. Where do we get out power?” I guessed a bit first, “Hoover Dam, maybe. Maybe Shasta? I think we have reactors too. I think we also get some from Oregon and maybe Nevada.” Anyway, my desire to validate my own guesses led to some fascinating (to me) research on the ever-awesome Wikipedia, where I learned about the completely rad-sounding Pacific Intertie and the X-Files sounding “Path 66.” Check it out if you’re a nerd, you’re sure to enjoy it.

Goodnight.

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lazing around


The cold weather was a fluke – we’re back to the 80s here in Central Florida and it’s nice. I’ve, of course, reverted to my standard t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flop wardrobe and am loving it. It’s hard for me to believe that we’re basically at the end of our vacation – two weeks can really fly by and I’m in no way ready to go back to work. In fact, the bad memories I left with are still fresh enough to put a sour taste in my mouth just with the thought. Ugh, but, back to work I’ll go…

Keaton showed her signs of first post-fever roseola rash today, starting off as just a bunch of spotty red prickles mainly on her chest and back. Apparently, they’ll get a little more pronounced before fading. She also woke up in a nasty mood, fussy and crying and overly sleepy as well as not wanting to eat – she was also tugging on and rubbing at her ear. Now, ear-tugging/rubbing can either mean teething or an ear infection, and I’m voting for teething and I think I attribute the general crankiness to either the same or the roseola residuals – but we’re both hoping she hasn’t somehow managed to develop an ear infection on top of her outgoing roseola. When I was a kid I was plagued by ear infections, and she’s already had one now… just hoping she doesn’t take after her dad in that respect.

Last night our little family spent the night, as we always do when we’re in town, with Sharaun’s grandmother. I actually love that pre-assigned sleepover every time we have the chance to do it. We usually sit up late talking and playing games: dominoes or Yahtzee or Uno or something, and then wake up early and have breakfast together before lazing around the house until noon or so. This visit was all the more enjoyable as it came on the heels of a day spent motoring around Florida, in the heavy Orlando traffic and back, and as such the “downtime” felt all the more down. Those times, enjoying family and friends, are among the few things which make me wish we did live closer to what I still consider “home.” Not that I would now abandon California and pull up stakes – but I do admit I wish Sharaun could be closer to her family. Then again, I wish we were closer to my family as well – so it unfortunately cuts both ways.

As a Christmas gift to a long-time buddy, and fellow music-nut, here in Florida – I spent a lot of time over the past few months ripping every last remaining CD I own, and then doing a massive re-organization and cleanup of my entire digital music library. My goal was to give my buddy a well organized hard drive filled to the brim with every single piece of music I own. And, even though it literally came down to the last few hours on the last day before we headed to Florida a nearly two weeks ago, I was able to get the files sufficiently organized, centralized, and copied over to drives. I stuck them in the pockets of my jeans, folded them, and placed them in my suitcase. Then, when Sharaun and Keaton and I went over to Bob’s (that’s my buddy) house for dinner (a fine southern meal), I gifted him with them. The next day I had a message on my voicemail from Bob, sounding more giddy than I think I’ve ever heard him, saying things like, “Dave, this shit is amazing… where on Earth did you get The Crazy World of Arthur Brown?! I used to have this in vinyl…” Make a body feel good.

Although, I will admit that there were a couple not-entirely-selfless motivations in play here: 1) to have an off-site, remote backup of my music, and 2) to receive those “why isn’t so-and-so’s album ‘whatever’ on here?” for new music leads. Either way, it was a good exercise for me in that it helped me get my collection uber-organized, and since it got Bob smiling it was all the more worth it.

I likely won’t post Monday as we’ll be in the air and technically it’s a holiday, so look for me again on Tuesday – back in the C-to-the-A and back at work chained to my cubicle. Until then, I love your shapes.