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moving

It’s 8 o’clock and Keaton and I are watching an episode of Chip & Dale’s Rescue Rangers.  Yes, that show from when we were kids.  I torrented the whole thing.  Been doing a lot of that, mainly nostalgia but also in response to how incredibly terrible most of the cartoons are today (yes, this coming from an adult – and one who won’t watch anything from Japan or with roots in a trading card game on principle).  She likes cartoons, so it’s an easy way to please us both.

At work I exist in a cubicle.  All day long I work in this little space about twice as big as the water closet in our master bathroom.  I never minded all that much, it’s been that way for ten years now.  Last week, however, while we were in Oregon, our site “decompressed.”  This means that our tiny cubes were expanded into bigger cubes.  I got to see my new decompressed cube for the first time today, and I was impressed.  No longer is my monitor facing directly out into the aisle, no longer does my chair risk hitting the back wall when I push-off from the keyboard, no more do I have to look into the rearview mirror on my monitor to see if someone’s lurking (yes, I really have a rearview mirror on my monitor for this purpose).

Before the decompression, I took an opportunity to “downsize” while packing up my stuff.  Got rid of a ton of crap I’ve collected over the years and ended up with three little boxes of stuff I took to the new cube.  I unpacked those today during a conference call and tried to make the place a little more hospitable.  But with all the new wall space it still looked sparse. That’s when I remembered a cardboard tube in our garage.  In that tube are all my old posters from highschool.  Beatles, Tolkien, Zeppelin, etc.  Now, I’m a little too grown up to pull out most of these… (and in fact don’t really know why I’ve saved them) but I did dig through to find the Beatles’ White Album portraits poster… because I have no shame hanging that.

So I’m the old dude with a Beatles poster in his cube.

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whatever it is we do on a regular basis

A nice long week in Oregon, away from the hustle and bustle of whatever it is we do on a “regular basis.”

We had a great Thanksgiving.  Spent some much-needed time with family.  Grammy and Grandpa watched Cohen one afternoon while Sharaun and I took Keaton to see the new Disney movie Tangled (which, by the way, I truly enjoyed), and then watched both kids another evening so Sharaun and I could have a nice dinner together.  We needed some time off as a couple I think, I it just reminded me that we have to make time for that more often.  We grabbed some Thai food and bummed around the mall for an hour or so… the kind of “old people” date we’ve come to accept as what we now enjoy more than $12 cocktails, barstools, and thumping bass.  As we trod the aisles of the Hot Topic, lamenting the capitalistic misappropriation of our youth, we happily agreed that we are now “parents” and are fine with it.  Old-people dates: best enjoyed tepid.

I thought today about how the year is already almost over.  Over!  I sometimes don’t understand how time moves so quickly.  Next week I have a mandatory all-day training that lasts three days.  That’ll kill the week.  Two weeks after that and we’re off to Florida to ring in the new year for another couple weeks.  I’ll be a blur, like it always is, and then it’ll be next year and we’ll be racing to Keaton’s birthday and all the other markers that we measure.  I sometimes think I “conceptualize” the passing of time in the wrong ways.  It almost feels like I think about time “in between” these milestones, and sometimes miss what’s happening day-to-day in between.  I’m always thinking about what happened “between” this thing and that thing… I want to start thinking about how long each day itself is – what we can do with the time that’s right on top of us.

Goodnight.

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cold turkey

It’s 18° in Oregon and I’ve been cozied-up on the couch at my folks’ place since Monday night.

I had to work yesterday and today, and since a good portion of folks are already on vacation I found myself busier than I expected for what was supposed to be a couple of “slow” holiday workdays.  I found myself feeling guilty, which is wrong, but I had this notion that these would be “easy” working-from-home days and I’d be spending time with family moreso than turning the millstone.  My fault really, if I’d really wanted a vacation I could’ve burned the days instead of trying to cheat them out.  Maybe today will be better.  Maybe it’ll teach me the rest of my lesson.

We got in Monday night around 7pm after a little more than an hour of flight delay.  None of us were groped, scanned, or otherwise molested by the TSA – security was as it’s always been and altogether uneventful.  My mom had a late dinner prepared and waiting for us, which was much appreciated.  Keaton, being excited to finally be at Grammy & Grandpa’s place, was granted a “stay up late” night and got to play until around 10pm.  At about 9:30pm she peeked out the front door and announced that it was “snowing hard.”  Already in her pajamas, she ran to get her shoes and jacket and we both went out into the driveway (me in shorts, an undershirt, and slippers) to make prints in the newly fallen snow.  She really likes that less-than-an-inch of snow.

I’ve got my sights set on Thursday for some turkey, beer, and football.  Brother’s coming over with his wife and the new niece we’ve yet to meet and I’m anticipating an incredibly lazy day spent reading, continually nibbling, and hanging out.

Goodnight.

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between classes

There were practice fields at the high school, with dugouts and everything.  Maybe they used to play real games there before my time.

The fields were at an end of the campus I spent little time in; places to practice sports, the auto-shop bays, and the ROTC range.  No surprise then, that I was only ever in the dugout once in my life.  We were both supposed to be in class by the time you showed up.  I was waiting nervously, I’d had to sneak through a chained gate to get onto the field and was worried we’d be seen.  I knew you had to sneak past the same security and liked imagining you sharing the butterflies in my belly.

The longhairs used to play hookey and smoke cigarettes in the dugouts, the reason for the chained gate and butts on the ground.  Neither of us had any cigarettes, but you had a flower-print bra with thick straps and I had a teenage curiosity.  You with your shirt off, outside and all… sun on forbidden skin is really something.  So what if we only had five minutes before the “good kid” in each of us kicked-in, pulling us both back to class after hands came above waistbands, buttons buttoned, and hair straightened.

Amazing what kids can do with a few minutes between classes; the magic of equal parts fifteen, ideas, means, and gumption.

Goodnight.

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digging out

People… this week.

Work snowed me in.  I did a lot and put in extra hours to get it done and still came out behind in the end.  Mostly this is because I used about eleven hours of the week to sit down with my employees and talk about “professional development.”

These are those HR-sounding meetings where we talk about goals and expectations and measureables and deliverables.  I spend a lot of time preparing for the things, and then a lot of time actually doing them, and then a lot of time following-up afterward.  In short, they are a lot of work and on top of my regular a lot of work that means things pile up.

I’ll get back to right.  Use today and use some of the weekend and then next week we’ll be in Oregon and I’ll work until Thanksgiving and hopefully the slowness and deadness of the holiday week will allow me some catch-up.

Sorry for the sucky week.  Goodnight.

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a family portrait

Sharaun posted this on her Facebook the other day (I know because I lurk), so it’s nothing new to the internet – but I love the drawing so much I wanted to share it here.  I don’t know if it’s as awesome as I think it is, but I’m impressed with the skills of my not-quite five year old up in here.

Above is a drawing of our family, done by Keaton this weekend.  Please note the details:

  • Sharaun’s lovely flowing tresses
  • Cohen lying down, which is pretty much all he does
  • Dad is bald, not a hair to be found
  • The proportions are strikingly reflective of real life; Dad’s the tallest, then mom, then Keaton and Cohen

Other things I love about the drawing:

  • We all appear to be happy and smiling
  • I don’t think Sharaun has arms, or they are hidden in her hair
  • We are legs attached to heads (to be fair, so are all the people Keaton draws)
  • Her handwriting seems consistent and impressive to me (I am her dad, after all)
  • We all have just three fingers

One day I hope to show this to her when she’s older… so cool.

Goodnight.