Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

Posted on

not just for the clouds

Management.Was a gloomy day over nearer the coast, and not just for the clouds.

Paid a visit to the Bay area today, all about getting some business done. It really is a shame about that whole business and pleasure not mixing thing, sure could make working less of a chore at times. But, the sawmill has been good to me, so I’ll continue to give it my time and effort in hopes of some small convalescence. And, while it makes for good writing (or reading, I’m never sure quite how to put that) to talk about work like it’s awful and painful – it’s not really. It’s a good job and I enjoy it almost all the time. But, do me a favor and pretend you didn’t read that the next time I prattle on about the sawmill as if it were Abu Ghraib, OK? Thanks.

I was actually fairly unmotivated today. I sat alone in a crowded café and worked from the laptop with a cup of coffee and my headphones on. I bought these particular headphones because they are the full sized over-ear kind yet they are foldable like an Autobot and can be packed easily into my laptop bag. The only issue I have with them is that they have this fake graffiti all over them, like the flowing spraycan script gangs use in the subway. Tell you what, sitting alone all dressed up manager style with your laptop, a coffee, and these ridiculously childish-looking headphones on makes a guy a bit self conscious. I powered through though, so don’t pity me.

And, if I’m being honest, I wasted a few minutes watching a Youtube video of the resort we’re staying at next week in Aruba. Maybe hoping seeing the place through the lens of a fellow tourist could transport my mind there for a while. It worked fairly well, I have to say. I could almost picture Keaton and I floating lazily down the lazy river, digging and building in the sand, and splashing around in the pool.  Like I told my Mom today in an e-mail: If they called and told me I could go tomorrow I’d be on a plane.

I’ve decided I’m going in to get me a wax-job on Thursday.  I’ve also convinced Sharaun to come along and take some before and after photos.  And, since the wax lady seems really cool, maybe even some action shots to really make the story come alive.  Some readers seem to think I’m gonna cry like a little girl, but I have faith in my strength.  One way or another, I’m going through with it – so I’ll be as objective as possible when I rank the pain.  Should be fun.  Or not.

Until sometime later this week, from the precipice of our vacation, goodnight.

Posted on

work can smell happiness & freedom

Sniffa-sniffa.Tuesday again.

Packed my gym gear off to work with me this morning; changed in the handicapped stall at work around 4:15pm and was on the road by 4:30pm.  Plans were foiled by a work-related call from Texas.  I was the dummy standing outside the gym on his bluetooth talking “business.”  Didn’t get sweating until after five anyway.  Moral of the story: You can never really leave work early; work will hunt you down; work can smell happiness and freedom, and work hates them both.

Recently, through the magic of the internet – I was turned on to a super obscure Southern bluesman named Abner Jay. With no allmusic.com biography, no Wikipedia entry, and scant information available online – he’s something of a mystery. Let me tell you, this stuff is amazing. Most of his recordings are long out of print, owed mostly to the fact that he released them on his own record label (Brandie Records, after his wife) and sold them at his live shows.

A one man band whose instruments were the dried bones of various animals (and, on record, a foot-pedal bass drum and hi-hat) and a long-neck banjo passed-down from his grandfather – his unconventional blues are a mix of storytelling and commentary, all heavily steeped in the slave/field language of the old South (so heavily one must assume it’s partly affected for show). The music is simple, and Jay’s voice is as deep and black as any Looney Toons caricature you saw as a child (before that stuff was deemed unfit for TV).

With songs about cocaine, depression, and sex – this stuff is simply fascinating. Had I known about Mr. Jay’s music back in college, surely his tune “The College Crowd” would have been one of my party-playlist musts.  He sings: “The college crowd. The college crowd. They study hard, all week long; sometimes there’s hardly time to eat or sleep. But come weekends, they put their books away; some sittin’ on the floor some get carried away. Some get as a high as a Georgia pine, some get as high as a cloud. This is the college crowd. The college crowd. The college crowd.”

And although his albums are long out of print (for ordinary folk, that is), some Swedish label put together a best-of recently from which you can get a good feel for his style. Stream it in full here. Oh, and there IS more info about the man out there if you’re piqued – start here for some history.

‘Nite-nite internet friends.  See you tomorrow.

Posted on

same as ever

No better.Happy Monday night internet people.  Join me for a quick blog, would you?

Ten o’clock and I’m fresh back from the gym, where I’ve been steady-working to drop pounds and evade heart-attacks and whatnot.  And, still so-far-so-good in that department.  I’m not near giving up yet, and I daresay I’ve near developed a habit.  (Good for me, since I’m far and away a creature of habit.)

Sometimes people ask me, “Don’t you just feel better now that you’re going to the gym?  Like… you have tons more energy and you just have an overall better feeling?”  I’ve heard this a lot, in fact people used to say it to me as a convincing argument that working out was worth it.  And, as much as it pains me to let folks down I have to be honest and tell them that, no, I don’t feel magically “better” for working out – at least not physically.  Now, mentally, and how well I feel about myself for being disciplined and sticking with it – that’s a whole other thing.  I’ve got pride by the chestful in that department.  But, as far as my body just feeling “better,” I can’t say it does.  Sorry gym rats… maybe I just need more time.

I think work is on the cusp of slowing down a bit; I’m over the major hump I needed to summit before I got a little breathing room.  I cut loose that effort tomorrow and am hoping for a slightly slower remainder of the week so I can catch up on the 800 e-mails sitting in the inbox waiting for my attention.  My job is not “hard” like breaking rocks or building houses hard, but it’s got its own “hard” elements to it at times.  I suppose I do enough to earn my keep,; at least I don’t leave feeling guilty each day.

Now, in you-reading-this time I bet not even two minutes have elapsed.  Over here in me-writing-this time, however, the big hand is creeping towards the little green pip-less domino that represents an eleven on our living room clock (no numbers, we’re fancy like that).  Anyway… that, dear friends, means I shall close the lid on another short entry and call it a night.

Until tomorrow then, adieu.

Posted on

comforting. permanent.

Gleeman.Thursday night.

After some 5:30pm peer pressure from coworkers, I did an about face on my “going home, going to dinner, then going to the gym” evening and instead joined them at the bar for happy hour.  It was a welcomed break.  See, the whole annual review process at the sawmill culminated today, ending in a manager staring-contest worth of Guinness.  In the end, things went as good as can be expected, and, as always, the proceedings were torture.  So, to recap: reviews are done; cold beer was had; calorie intake was monitored.  Let’s go.

The crew that met tonight for happy hour is a crew I’ve run with almost from day-one at the sawmill.  Because of this, we have a lot of history, a lot of stories.  And, on the rare occasion when we all get together (difficult these days, as we now live on different continents), those same told and re-told stories are trotted out and run once around the track again for old-time sake.  Something of a tradition, even though we’ve all heard them before, we tell them again.

… the Cuban arm-wrestling contest in the Shanghai apartment…

… the guy who left a pair of soiled underwear in his desk drawer after losing his job…

Seems like they get funnier and more grand with each telling.  How a story about “finding” an employee who’d  gone completely MIA whilst in Taiwan by seeing him on television, whilst visiting there yourself months later, being arrested in a transvestite prostitution sting can get any more “grand” remains to be seen, but we seem to be able to pull it off.

Every single time we get together.  Comforting.  Permanent.

A good way to start off a weekend.

Goodnight.

Posted on

digitizing

Hi guys.Monday, a holiday in the US… so I’m not at work.

Why, then, am I sitting here working?  I’ll tell you why, because it’s annual review time.

And, that’s what I did all morning, review stuff.  Sufficiently frustrated, and not sufficiently self-flagellated, I chose to take an afternoon break from reviews and do our taxes instead.  Much frustration and a few raised-voice exchanges about receipts with Sharaun later I’d completed at least one arduous annual tribulation today.  Tomorrow work will be about finishing up the other, and getting all reviews taken care of.  I spend so much dang time on the things… demanding a level of perfection in writing nothing like sounds familiar has ever seen.  Get it… it was knock on my writing here…

The other day Sharaun showed me some old scanned-in images one of her new Facebook friends had posted on the internet.  Her new Facebook friend being an old real-world friend, the pictures were of them together back in their youth.  Seeing them made me smile, and also made me think about how neat it would be to have the old family pictures in digital form.  The only real way we look at and/or use pictures now is on the computer, and I think it’d be so neat to have “forever” copies of those old printed images stored digitally for generations to come.

So, I asked my Pop if he’d be willing to ship down all our old family photo albums.  Not wanting to scan in what could potentially be thousands of pictures one-by-one, I instead found a reputable (well-reviewed, at least) place to ship them off to where they’ll be bulk-scanned for pennies a print in no time at all.  If and when I get the albums, I plan to go through them, put the good ones into logical bundles, and ship them off in bulk.  When the resultant DVDs come back I’ll look through and post some of the better ones here after touching them up a bit (the place just does raw scanning, no post-processing).

Could be a fun thing to do, I think.  I’m looking forward to flipping through some photos Pop… so get them in the mail, OK?

Moving on, a quick note about Sunday.  After church we joined friends for a BBQ in the rain and some Daytona 500 watching.  Was  great time, but towards the end of the day Keaton started making more-than-regular trips to the potty – and her #2s became less and less, ahem, “solid.”  Fearing more of the same, we left the get-together a bit early and retired home.  Good thing too, once at home we played around for a while until it was Keaton’s bedtime.  Once she was down I headed to the gym, and upon returning found Keaton out of bed and in a freshly-run bath and Sharaun washing puke out of her bedsheets.

Poor girl.  She lost her stomach another time that night, and Sharaun and I were both by her side to see her through it.  Breaks my heart to see how much it scares and frustrates her; she just stands and wails between heaves, shaking her hands in protest and asking to be held.  I can remember how scary it used to be to get sick, the fact that’s it’s totally beyond your control, the overall awfulness of it all, and the added bonus that you can’t breathe while it’s happening.  She took it like a champ though, and never did develop a fever or any other symptoms.  Monday she was fresh as a daisy and had her regular appetite, so I guess it was something she ate.

Let’s hope, at least.

Goodnight folks.  Wish me a better week writing, OK?

Posted on

give in to the nighttime

Snowballing, curtailed.A good Wednesday to you, internet.  Hope this day finds you well.

Work was a whirlwind again.  I’ve had a pea under my mattress ever since coming back, and have been finding myself uncharacteristically blunt and matter-of-fact in my communication.  Surprisingly, this has resulted in oiling some rusty gears back into motion on things I’d been struggling with for months.  In fact, I feel like the snowball I’ve been pushing idly around on flat ground finally tipped and is headed downhill without me.  Now to hope I aimed it right.

Right now Keaton is yelling from the confines of her (locked) room.  This has become an unfortunate bedtime happening.  For about a week or so now, the process of falling asleep has turned into a prolonged one-sided battle on her part.  In protest, she’ll scream “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” or “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! (whomever didn’t put her down), knock on the door, turn on her light, cry, scream – whatever.  Last night this went on for over an hour.  So far, our strategy has been to just let her have it out… to not intervene… which eventually works.  But man, it sure would be easier if she’d just rest her pretty head and give in to the nighttime.

Changing subjects before I split.

Today saw the official release of Animal Collective’s new record, Merriweather Post Pavilion.  As expected, the music-review community has all befouled their Jockeys.  Rather than write about the phenomenon here, I’ll just link to Stereogum’s article on the whole deal, which is sensationally entitled, “Is Merriweather Post Pavilion the Best Album of 2009?”  Good for some introduction to the hype around the album… and the comments offer a chuckle here and there too.  Unfortunately, you won’t find MPP (as the internet calls it) at your local wax-shop until the 20th when the actual CD drops (vinyl and digital only for today).  In the meantime, I’m sure you can find it if you look hard enough…

I’m taking off my friends.  Goodnight.

Posted on

lamentations

Give it a rest. Before we start (or maybe I should do it at the end, I’m not sure), you can take some time to check out the pictures page – I finally managed to update Keaton’s gallery and bring it current, shamefully having to go all the way back to October to get it done.  So, amble on over there (you can amble with a mouse, right?) and take a look… I’ll wait.  K?  K.

I know… it’s been a while.  Good to finally have some present-day Keaton representation.

Got home from work today and Sharaun said she couldn’t get the bread cooked because the oven wouldn’t get hot.  Hmmm… interesting.  I popped the hood and poked around like I knew what I was doing… looking for a pilot light or something easy.  No pilot light, no obvious “shutoff” switch that may have been tripped somewhere, and the gas burners still lit up and worked fine (yeah, that crossed my mind too).  Sitting there, still dressed in kahkis, brown shoes, and my work sweater… I Googled for some assistance.  Manual says there’s a oven shutoff, hidden deep under the stovetop.  I find it, cut my hand in several places trying to squeeze my fingers around it… but it’s not off, it’s on like it should be.

Calling the number tomorrow, stupid oven is broken.  Worked yesterday; busted today.

Sometime near the end of 2008, the subwoofer in my truck blew. Now, from the rear of the vehicle, any significant bass note manifests not as a deep smooth baritone but rather a rattling paper fart. I hate it, and the loss of the low-end has made the rest of the vehicle sound like a tinny prison where harsh treble tones stab and scrape the ears and make everything sound just awful. It’s amazing how much the bottom-end brings to music (I know, it all works together). I’ve always said that the most important aspect of my vehicle (aside from getting me from point A to point B) is the audio. May sound stupid, but I really do enjoy the music time I get while in the car – so sounding good (especially at loud volumes) is of utmost importance.

[audio:bustedbass.mp3]
Crappy bass sounds crappy.

Looking for used ’97 Explorer woofers on eBay, stupid bass is broken.  Worked last year; broken today.

Work today was a reminder that I’d been “off” for a couple weeks.  So much to do, so much left undone.  I got in before 8am and left after 6pm.  To be fair, the dread over going back turned into motivation to get things back to normal; to solve those problems that had been lingering; to get into some sort of normal, expected rhythm.  I managed… but I’d still rather win the lottery.

That’s it.  Goodnight.  Love you.