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ain’t no flies on me

At the top of my lungs I yelled, “I DIDN’T WRITE YET THIS WEEK BECAUSE I WAS BUSY.”  The emptiness of the void brought my own voice back to me, diminished just a little, ‘I DIDN’T WRITE THIS WEEK BECAUSE I WAS BUSY.”  Turns out that few minutes each night I don’t write where I feel pangs of regret and maybe even some kind of personal-guilt (which is, I think, a mostly Catholic thing) really don’t matter.  There’s much to be proud of of and happy about.  Out here in my corner of the internet are some 900,000 words, so there ain’t no flies on me.

I guess the past two nights I’ve been doing work.  Not sawmill-work but instead the lustful work that is getting to 80% on the itinerary for our coming RV odyssey.  The approach has been more structured than I first thought it would have to be.  At first I was trying to fit a trip into a number of days, but realized quickly this wasn’t working.  Realizing I had to first set some boundaries, I instead started by defining the average miles we’d be willing to drive on a driving day.  Next, I defined a driving vs. not-driving ratio to ensure we had sufficient “off time” to where things would feel like a vacation instead of an extremely long drive with no real destination.  With those two guideposts, it was easy to come to reasonable totals for both total trip miles and total trip days.

Oh and things are moving forward.  We have a start date, we have budget, we have an end date, we have a better-than-rough route, we have a good number of “zero days” sprinkled throughout.  In fact, today I put $300 down to reserve our thirty foot RV.  Not only that, but I made the motions at work to get the slotted time away.  I mean, things are coming together, and I’m a little more sure this thing is actually happening – even if the cost is somewhat “extravagant” for a family vacation (although, as six-week-long vacations go… eh…).  One day in the future, when I get each night’s campgrounds defined, I’ll share a more detailed itinerary.  But tonight I’m excited enough about the major stops and locations that I just wanted to run them down.

8,200 miles.  Where are we going?  What are we seeing?  A day at Crater Lake.  A stay with my family in Oregon.  Four days in Yellowstone.  Half a day at Mt. Rushmore.  A morning at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  A day at Niagara Falls and a day at Antietam.  A couple days to tour DC.  A two-day drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway with a back-country overnighter.  A dip into the deep south to hang with our southern folk.  A day in the Ozarks.  The better part of three days in the Grand Canyon.  Hoover Dam and a day in Death Valley.  Independence day with friends in the California high desert and then back home again some forty-five days after we leave.  Those “days” I mention are what I call “zero days,” no-driving days, stoppage days.  On top of that we put thousands of (hopefully scenic) road underneath us.

Yes I’m sad that we had to cut Glacier and Badlands and Arches and the Rockies and the Keys and New Orleans.  But man, I think we’re doing really well for six weeks.

There’s still lots to be defined and tons of details to settle.  That means I should get my nose back in these books and websites and sign off now.

Goodnight.

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rocket dream

No re-read; streaming direct; how bad is it?

My family and I were living in a condo by the beach, maybe the sixth or seventh story, high enough that we were afforded a view.  On the south side of the living room there was a large two-panel sliding glass door through which, to the north, you could see the beach, the waves themselves.  Directly outside and below was that kind of pre-beach landscape, dunes and clumps of tall windblown grasses and those kind of ivy-looking bushes that stay low to the sand.

One afternoon we all sat together, watching something on television.  Sitting nearest the glass doors, I noticed a small Jeep making its way through the dunes and grasses and ivy-looking bushes that stay low to the sand, bound for the surf.  I thought it strange, but not too strange.  In the back of the truck I could see what appeared to be several lengths of large-diameter PVC pipe.  I hmmmph’d and turned back to the TV, but only until I saw the smoke.

Now parked on the beach, I could see two figures outside the Jeep.  What I thought was pieces of PVC were now lined up in a row on the sand, the men moving from one to the next.  Suddenly, one of the pieces of PVC belched fire and smoke at the sand-end, and shot upward into the sky at high speed.  That’s when I realized: the things were some kind of rockets.  At first I was amused, thinking maybe these two guys were launching some high-grade fireworks on the sly, hiding out below the dunes to lay low from the law.  But once I saw one zoom higher and got a look at it from eye-level before it disappeared in a point far above my head, I realized they weren’t toys.  That’s when I got scared.

I turned to tell my folks, who were by now also looking outside with interest, when one of the rockets already in-flight seemed to lose power a few hundred feet above our level.  I watched as the metallic nosecone dipped towards the earth and the thing began to fall.  Before it could turn completely nose-down, however, the thruster re-engaged and began propelling the thing nearly horizontally.  I tried to say it out loud, “It’s coming right at us!,” but the thing was just too fast.  It was simply too quick to react, it was smashing through the window.

Directly across from me, I assumed my dad would be a direct hit.  Instead the thing, which I could see now was about a foot round by five feet long and had separated from the conical silvery top, lay smoking and faintly buzzing just to his left alongside the couch.  For what seemed like one terrifying, and shameful, minute – I simply cowered in a catcher’s position with my hands clamped over my ears, expecting to be consumed in a fiery explosion.  I don’t know why my reaction was inaction, I only thought it strange it after I woke from the dream.

After realizing we were all alive and that the thing which had crashed through our window still lay in two pieces on the other side of the room, I came out of my duck-and-cover position and tried to think fast.  Still very much afraid for my life and wondering if we’d all be blown up, with an edge of desperation in my voice I asked my stunned family, “What should we do?!  Should we call the cops?  Should I throw it out the door?!”  No one answered.  I began to panic.

I grabbed the body of the thing, tossed it out the shattered doors.  I watched as it fell, hit the ground, and bounced unrealistically high, near on-level again with our condo on the sixth or seventh floor.  Rockets shouldn’t bounce, I thought.  The thing dropped again, bounced again, lower this time.  Again and again until it settled in the tall grass and sand and those kind of ivy-looking bushes that stay low to the sand, seemingly now malignant and much less threatening out of the room.  Tearing myself away from watching it, I similarly tossed the metal nosecone.  Same thing; bounce-a bounce-a bounce-a and an anticlimactic ending in the dunes.

I love it when I remember dreams this well.  Goodnight.

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providence is something

Keaton got into kindergarten.  Most of the fears I wrote about yesterday were unfounded.

Turns out there are schools in the district who do the “queue-up” thing ala Zeppelin tickets, but Keaton’s future school isn’t one.  Sharaun simply swung by early, grabbed a registration packet, brought it home and filled it out, and returned it.  Turns out the school was fine with a passport instead of a birth certificate, and our city utility bill proved residence in place of the county one they wanted (but that we didn’t have because I stopped paper billing on every bill that would allow me to).  In the end, I believe Sharaun walked away feeling redeemed and good about the whole thing.  Sure, maybe we weren’t strictly prepared, but it all worked out.  Providence is something we’re certainly never wanting.

I haven’t written because work has been crushing.  Sharaun calls around 6pm and asks me if I’m going to be working much later.  I respond, quite honestly yet also facetiously, “I could work until midnight and still not be caught up for tomorrow.”  And I could.  I’m behind.  Maybe a full eight hours worth from where I’d like to be.  It’s funny how the brain prioritizes stuff; in my case almost subconsciously.  Things naturally drift to the bottom, stay there until someone brings them up again.  Our inherent inefficiency; our inability to multi task.  I know I write about the ebb and flow of stress at work, write about it a lot… but sometimes, when I cast my mind back over the day and what there is to write about, if nothing “abstract” pops up I’m left with either not writing at all (last night) or writing about what dominated the day.  So I do.

Goodnight.

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and how would we know?

Tomorrow we have to register Keaton for kindergarten.

Yes, I’m amazed too.  Kindergarten?  Already?  I mean, people, it’s only January.  School doesn’t start until August.  What’s worse, registration for elementary school, even something as basic is kindergarten, is completely blown out of proportion in our upper-middle-class whitebread part of suburbia.  Parents get stupid, lining up an hour before the school office opens in order to secure their kids’ spots.  Spots?  In a public school?

Yes, these are uptight yuppies.  Their kid won’t be bussed to another, slightly more dusky on average, district.  No manches; es impossible.  Their kid’s gonna get the early half of the day, or the late half of the day.  Gonna get the new young teacher with a rep for awesome standardized test scores and a kindred hatred of less-than-whole grains and gluten.  Yeah, it’s uptight around these parts… parents seem just a bit worked-up.

Us, we’re clueless.  We had no idea registration was even tomorrow until a coworker of mine mentioned it in passing last week.  We don’t know what time the school opens tomorrow to begin this ritual, we don’t have a copy of Keaton’s birth certificate, we don’t rightly know if we even need one.  At first, all of this made Sharaun mad.  “What are they going to do?!,” she asked incredulously, “Not let my kid in a public school the law says I have to enroll her in?”  It’s a good question… but the uptight parents answered, “No, but they’ll ship her off to a crappy school if she doesn’t get into the one she’s zoned for.”  This incites fear in my wife, and now she feels all guilty and unprepared.  I hear it in her long sighs as she thinks about how unprepared she is to go down there tomorrow morning (we’re guessing 7:30am, but we heard about one guy who lined up at midnight).  What is this, tickets to Zeppelin?

And how would we know?  First time for us.  I remember, back in high school, my friend Mike used to tell me about everything.  “You know that scholarship application period ends next week, right Dave?”  “You gonna sign-up to take the SAT this month?  You’re running out of time.”  I guess I’ve always been the guy who’s not quite paying attention… keeping tabs on just enough traffic to not get run over, but still sometimes crossing when the signal is a red hand.  Sharaun’s the same.  Maybe we’re doomed.  Slated to always miss soccer registration, always forget piano lessons, be the ones who don’t sign the permission slip.

I won’t tell Sharaun I’m concerned/worried about this whole kindergarten registration thing, I don’t want to make her feel worse than she already does.  But I am; worried that is.  I guess tomorrow we’ll see how it all goes.  Maybe it’ll be no big deal and she can swoop downtown and pick up a copy of the birth certificate without risking Keaton’s “spot” in the stinking public school down the road.  Who knows.

Goodnight.

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a green thief

Two of my friends at work had gasoline siphoned out of their cars while they were in the parking lot; during work.

I wonder what puts one in this circumstance?  Is this person on foot?  With a length of rubber hose coiled and hidden under his sweatshirt and a couple milk jugs tied through his beltloops, maybe?  Or are they driving?  Burning gas to steal gas, likely not even breaking even due to standard fuel economies and the volumetric constraints of such thievery?  It seems such a strange position to find yourself in.  You really need gas that bad?  Wouldn’t it be easier, and less risky, to panhandle on the train for a couple hours?  Hell, if you’re on the train, you don’t need gas anyway – you just got free money!  You’re a green thief.

Do you guys know how to steal gas?  It’s not hard.  Open the fuel door, remove the cap, drop in about three feet of rubber hose, make a loop that touches the ground, and suck hard on the loose end until the gas get to the bottom of your loop.  Holding your loop, drop the free end low to the ground to “pour” out your pilfered gas!  Congratulations, you are now a petty thief.  And, if I may add, I think you’ve chosen a poor field of thieving to focus on.  What’d you get there, maybe five gallons?  I mean, if you got much more you’d have a hard time carting it around, all sloshy and heavy.  So you saved $15 and now you have to carry a five gallon container back to your lair.

Doesn’t seem worth it.  Like those dudes who break into traffic light control boxes to rip out 300 wires for the copper  I bet the copper is a better take.  It’s also a pretty jerk crime.  One of my employees who got siphoned ended up with $600 worth of damage, everyone else just leaves work to find their car on empty.  I guess all crimes are kinda jerk crimes, except maybe jaywalking… that seems pretty innocent.  Illegal u-turns when it’s safe, that sort of thing.  But anyway…

Stealing gas seems to be admitting your stretched pretty thin, nothing better to do, maybe bored or something.  Maybe it’s kids.

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  Goodnight.

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time to read, even

Hey guess what has to happen tonight?!  Nothing!

I have no phone calls, no pressing work for which I only need to “log on for an hour or so,” no overlooked housework, nothing.  I think it’s beginning to feel like I’m “home,” finally.  It takes time, you know, after being away, to get back into it.  We got back a week ago and I went immediately into two all-day conferences at work.  The weekend came and my sickness crowned and stole both those days and one more for good measure.  This left me having done next to nothing at work nor at home to “catch up” from the two weeks vacation we’d spent in Florida.  In all honesty, I spent yesterday and today getting back into it… like we’d just returned.  Put the suitcases away, started attacking the bulging inbox, took down the Christmas tree, shaved.  It feels good to be home.

I have time to read, even.  Been reading again.  Maybe I’ve written before about how I read in fits and starts, I can’t recall but if I did it’s because it’s true, I do.  I wish I could tell you I decided to tackle some of the more “heady” items on my “to read list,” you know like some Pynchon or Faulkner or Dickens or Shakespeare (all on there, all still on there), but I can’t (because I didn’t).  When I was in highschool I started reading Stephen King’s then new Dark Tower series (sidenote: other King books I read back in those days had noticeable influence on my writing of the time).  As with other long multi-part epics I’ve tackled, I gave up when I caught -up to the author’s output and had to wait for new volumes.  When we were at my folks’ place for Thanksgiving I decided I’d like to read them again, so I ordered the paperbacks for pennies used online.  I’m halfway through the sixth of eight books.

I also think I’ve written it before (I mean dang, I’ve written a lot, chances are I’ve written everything before), but as I read more I write more.  Seems impossible, since both take time, but it’s true.  I also write better.  Don’t judge me by this post though, this is not a good post.  I’ll go read a chapter and write tomorrow’s entry; tomorrow’s entry will be boss.

Goodnight.

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happily coasting

Looks like I’m mending.  Not quite 100% yet, demonstrated by just how tired work today made me.

I mean it’s nine o’clock at night and I’m already feeling an hour past bedtime.  I’m here listening to David Crosby’s stellar debut effort, If I Could Only Remember My Name. I think about hearing this album back in 1971 and thinking, “Dang, Crosby’s got it man.  Out of the ashes and here comes the phoenix.  This guy’s got the seventies locked; gonna wow us through another decade.”  How sad would it have been to then not see another album for something like two decades.

Two decades where the man buried himself in cocaine (don’t call it “crack” friends!, that’s for the poor folk;  freebase is puuuure!), made no records, and let himself waste away.  How disappointing to think what he could’ve made (no not the Stills collaborations, which are far from terrible… but the guy was freebasing his way through the studio time).  Anyway… Sharaun’s at volleyball and I’m listening to this amazing record and writing.  Here I go.

I read a story once  (or… did I? ) about a guy who placed a small text-only ad in his local newspaper that said simply:

LAST CHANCE!
 SEND YOUR $3 NOW!
 SUPPLIES LIMITED!  DON’T MISS OUT!

And then supplied a PO Box address.  According to this legend, the man had received upwards of $10,000 in only the couple week’s of the advertisement’s run.

Actually, maybe I invented this story, glimpsed it in my mind’s eye during the fever-dreams the past few nights.  I mean, it’s not on the internet… anyway that I can find (via a totally non-thorough Google search), so maybe it is a creation of my head.  Either way, I think this little piece of lore is a perfect way to start this entry about my “exit strategy” (or lack thereof, or pining for, or creation of).

What is an “exit strategy?”  Well, in the context of today’s blog an exit strategy is that golden idea that’ll catapult me from a working man running the daily rat-race to a young, jet-setting, retiree.  Hey!  You!  Don’t confuse this exit strategy with a “lump sum,” with a windfall, with a lottery bag with three or four dollar signs on it.  That’s not what I’m trying to say.  Sure, money, recompense, clams, that’s a component of an exit strategy I suppose.  But being rich isn’t.  I’m not looking to “get rich,” (I wouldn’t kick rich out of bed, still) no… more like get done… get by… live.  The exit strategy will put me in some happily-coasting phase of life, where the family’s needs are met and we can enjoy each other and enjoy life and – I think most importantly – get me out of a cubicle.

How you gonna do it Dave?!  How ya gonna?  Huh?!

Gather ’round… here it comes: I. Don’t. Know.

Doesn’t matter though, because I finally know where I want to aim.  If you’re a parent today I’m talking Silly Bands or Squinkies.  If you’re my age but don’t have kids yet I’m talking slap bracelets and M.U.S.C.L.E men.  If you’re something like a fine wine I’m talking about the pet rock and those rigid dog collars that make it seem like you’re walking an invisible dog.  Since the dawn of the industrialized age men have been dreaming up stupid little ideas and then sending a set of fabrication specifications to China to get them manufactured out of rubber or plastic or metal so thin it’s stacked atom-by-atom.  Maybe they pay $1 for 500 of their widget, maybe that much for two or three time more (think about the raw cost of a Silly Band).  They then bring ’em over here to the land of the exploitable “everyone’s parents have money to burn” children.

I’m getting on this bandwagon.

Oh, and the end of the “LAST CHANCE” story?  Apparently the man was convicted of mail fraud over his little advertisement. Seems unfair to me, as getting rubes to send in $3 for a promise of nothing isn’t much different than someone paying to see a bearded lady or shrunken head at the midway, but I guess there might be a moral there somewhere.  And, anyway, Sharaun (and my conscience… that too) wouldn’t let me get far with an “exit strategy” that involved dubious ethics.  I’ve got to stick to the straight and narrow and just get it right.

Goodnight.