Kibitz

Two years later

2016-08-16T16:05:00.000-04:00

Went through some bookmarks in my browser today, noticed that all the old blogs I've read over the years haven't been updated in quite some time. Then I remembered that I had this thing here, and felt a little silly that I haven't updated in a while. A long while.

So let's see: last entry was about our crazy neighbors across the street. Well, they moved away. New neighbors over there now, but they never talk to us. Maybe it's because it's too hot, or maybe they think we're nuts because we have this huge overgrown garden.

Oh yeah, the garden. It's immense. Every year it seems to get bigger and brighter. This year our tomatoes did really well. Peppers, too. Even tried broccoli out for the first time, and it did really well. The chickens have been a roller coaster ride of emotions ever since we got them. First we bought six, ate one because it was a rooster. Then we bought six more birds, three chickens and three ducks. Then something came along and started eating all of them. We're down to two of the original chickens.

Work has been decent to me lately. I've gotten to the point where I've removed all previous crap from the last IT guy and have replaced it all with my own doing. Feels pretty good. Everything's working. When I have to make a change, most of what I need to do can be done from my desk so long as there aren't any serious network issues.

This means that between mini projects and minor complaints, I can really daydream about projects. And I've come up with some real whoopers. Things like making a smokehouse to smoke meats and veggies and cheeses and fish. Various food preservation techniques like dehydration and canning and etc.

A few years ago I started using Mint to track my spending and help me make a budget of sorts. Every year I check out the various categories of spending and note that our number one cost center of everything isn't rent, or shopping, or anything else: it's food. Specifically eating out at a restaurant. So every year I make a silent vow to cut back on food costs. So far, it's been working, but that cost center of food is still highest on the list. We made the garden, eat all we can from it, but a lot gets wasted. Which then means that we fall back on ordering a pizza or hitting the local diner.

But now that I have at least two methods of preserving foods (dehydrator comes tomorrow), I'll be able to stretch out the usefulness of what we grow. Also I'm hoping to save some money by buying big package deals from the local butcher. Once I build out the smokehouse, shit's gonna get cray-cray.

I've done probably six or seven canning experiments so far. I think my most favorite was the whiskey butterscotch sauce, even though we didn't grow any of the components and it really isn't preserved at all. But it's in a jar. Preserving-wise I think the pasta sauce is gonna be the most tasty, maybe the pickled carrots...

Daughter got a job at the local farmer's market, so I go there every week. Pies are good there, sausage guy knows my name, and I'm starting to get addicted to these crazy garlic varieties that a farmer brings weekly. I don't know if we'll ever be able to produce enough food to support a booth there every week, but wife thinks we can. Maybe if we add in another field to the grow table... I don't know.

This isn't Philadelphia

2014-05-08T09:46:00.000-04:00

There are times when I get started on something and don't know when to stop.

Yesterday when I got home from work, the neighbor across the street comes up and asks if I have a saw she could use for a project. She knows perfectly well I have a saw, I've used it in the yard a few times to build our huge raised bed boxes. She's just being polite, I suppose. Rather than just entrusting my brand new saw to her, I crossed the street to see what she was gonna cut to see if it could be done with a different tool.

Her front yard is about four feet long by about twelve feet wide and the grass has been trampled by frequent foot traffic to the point where there is very very little grass at all. She acquired some small pallets (think 2'x4') and wanted to reuse them as a sort of fence. The bottom two skid boards needed to be removed, and she wanted a single central board cut off. She said she had tried to pry the skid boards off, but couldn't with their claw hammer.

I knew we had the tools, but I had just gotten off work. She kept talking about how she needed a fence, but had no money to buy a fence. We had picked up a little wire border fence thing for our front section next to the road for $20. It protects the cacti and weird little plants the wife has planted in there. I think the lady was trying to guilt trip me into helping her, I don't know.

Anyway, I went into my house, grabbed a mallet and a rock hammer and proceeded to take apart all seven pallets. I had to hammer the rock hammer's chisel back between the boards, pry them apart, and move on. It was hard because the joints were all connected by four long nails. Once the prying was done, I left and came back with the circular saw, made the seven little cuts, and then told the lady I had finished. She was very glad and said she'd pay me something when they were able. Then I was able to really "come home from work" and get on with my evening.

I could have initially just told the lady I couldn't help her, or that she could use my tools (probably not ever see them again), or that I would help her later... But I had the equipment, had the knowledge, and had the ability to do the thing that she and her husband couldn't do.

I think it's important to help people if they truly cannot do what needs to be done, but sometimes I get so far into something that I realize later I could have saved myself an hour of work if I were just a bit more selfish about my time.

Speaking of the boxes, we now have almost seven of them prepped out and ready for the dirt delivery. I just got paid, so we'll be making the trip out to see if we can find some decent compost/manure/soil for delivery next week. Hopefully we can get everything finished up and in the ground by the 14th. Any later and we'll be hedging our bets for final harvest time in the fall.

A Return to a Simpler Time

2014-04-09T08:00:00.002-04:00

So much has changed since I last posted. I remember typing it up, now, and times looked pretty bleak.

I managed to find a contract to hire gig doing cell phone migrations, of all things. The company I was contracted to needed someone to assist with helping people shift from using Blackberry phones to iPhones. A worthy cause I was behind all the way, but I was curious to see what would happen after all the phones were switched.

During my stint there, I showed them what I could do. They were shifting lots of things around and changing their entire WAN topology. There seemed to be a revolving door when it came to the network guys, and most of them seemed to just want to browse facebook instead of fixing all these weird little issues that came up. So, I jumped in and helped out where I could.

Things were going pretty well, but as the job was contract to hire, I ran out the contract, but still no hire. I could tell they were squirrely about it, so I reached out to the recruiting community and found the job I'm in now. Good pay, decent benefits, and I'm essentially the only IT support staff this company has.

It reminds me a lot of previous jobs I've had where it seemed like people had a pretty good idea of what needed to happen, but nobody would pull the trigger and start any projects. Maddening.

Our landlords came by last week to check out the house since they hadn't stepped foot inside for over a year and a half. They seemed pleased with how we were taking care of things. At some point during the walkthrough, they indicated that they really were interested in selling the house, as they weren't interested in owning more than one house anymore. I get it, you know, they're both working, both busy, and I don't think they make a lot of money on the rent they charge us. Rather than ramp up the rent, why not just sell it?

First of all, I'm not even sure we are financially able to buy a house right now. I still have some student debt, just bought a car a year or so ago, and there's some rascally hospital bills that are still slipping through the cracks every month. We love the house, but I'm not sure we can really scrape the barrel and afford the house...

I have been bitten with the builder bug, recently. I bought a decent drill and circular saw, and have been eyeing various things in woodworking magazines. Last weekend I bought some wood and built two sawhorses and three raised beds for gardening. The beds are pretty big: 4'x8'x1'. The wife painted them yesterday and we're preparing for a dirt delivery sometime this weekend. Seeds are ordered, so that is that. Now I just need to buy the wood and build six more boxes and we'll have a decent amount of food for the year, so long as the weather and the plants cooperate.

At various points during our marriage, I've noticed that if Shannon mentions something three times, I should pay attention and follow through. I don't mean a Beetlejuice kind of thing, more like over the span of a few months, if she mentions something it means she's seriously considering it. The latest idea: raising chickens.

Turns out, it's totally legal for us to raise a maximum of 8 chickens in our backyard, so long as the area is kept clean and decently quiet.

I've already formed the coop and run plans in my head, and have even extended it so far as to include a rabbit hutch and perhaps an in-run compost bin. Chickens apparently are awesome compost stirrers, and we have a ton of compost stuff every year that just gets added to a stack without real decomposition happening.

It's weird, I always had this idea that I would gather information, pay off bills, buy some land, and THEN start the big homestead. But now, I think perhaps the homestead is happening in our current house, essentially right in the middle of a decently large city. I've seen pictures and read stories about how things used to be, you know, back in the "old days", when a family would have a garden, canning surplus, and even keep small animals to raise for food no matter where they lived.

Maybe I'm more old-school than I thought?

Setbacks and delays

2013-01-16T09:39:00.002-05:00

Seems like it happened just a little bit too early.

Moving closer to the river, moving south to be in a slightly warmer climate, moving closer to the center of the business of the city... These were all shifts in the right direction. Getting the kids into a different school system, being five minutes away from work, having lots of businesses close to us for the wife to get a job... All good moves. Checks on the list, if you will.

Getting into a different state, learning new tax rules and payment laws and all the rest. It was a good idea, right? Starting the slow crawl to get out from under debt and start saving money for the big move out to a farm somewhere and be free of at least some of the rat race.

I got terminated from my job last Thursday (or was it Wednesday?), and although the reason given was something about getting a complaint from a client, I'm pretty sure that if it were something so banal as that, I'd be written up, scolded, and we'd all move on.

Regardless, here I sit, after sifting through ten job posting sites and calling a few staffing firms, feeling lonely and a little out of sorts. I have enough cash to pay for the rent and regular bills, enough food to keep my family from starving, and hell, I'm listening to Pandora and typing this from my couch in the warmth of my house. Things aren't so bad, I guess they just happened too quickly for me.

Had my debt been paid off, had I amassed some savings for some land, had I been just a bit further in the grand plan, I'd be fine with getting term'd for no good reason. But instead, I have to shift things around, ensure that bills get covered, put on the smiley face for interviews, and try to stick myself back into the rat race for a few more years.

The weird thing about the season, though, is that lots of people are getting the flu, having to reschedule interviews and sit-downs... So things get delayed even more.

Charlie Brown

2012-12-20T14:18:00.001-05:00

I knew a guy once, he went by the name Charlie Brown.

He was a hood rat, the kind of guy that would tell you his down and out story while chomping on an eight dollar cigar. He preferred Micky's Malt Alcohol to most any kind of drink, but that was probably because it was more punk rock than PBR at the time.

Charlie knew a lot of people. He went to the right shows, made the right kind of friends, knew the right things to say. He had an easy laugh and a sharing smile. Charlie never ratted to the cops. He didn't share secrets. He probably knew more secrets than anyone.

I met Charlie Brown at a local coffee shop back in the nineties, during a time that I was doing a lot of the same stuff; I went to shows and made friends and tried to say the right things. He told me he was on the street, and I kinda took pity on him. At the time I was still living at home with my parents. They trusted the people I trusted, since they knew I knew how to read people pretty well.

I knew Charlie Brown wasn't really down on his luck. I knew he could go home any time he wanted. I knew he could make a phone call and get a few hundred bucks from an uncle or other family member. I knew he wasn't the kind of guy that didn't have nothing to lose. I knew I could probably trust Charlie Brown, but I didn't know how far I could trust him, if that makes sense.

So anyway, I took Charlie home, gave him some good meals, had some good parties. Back then, I knew how to throw a party: invite the right people together and everyone shares a little of what they have, be it smoke, drink, or whatever. And as long as nobody acted like a dick, everyone had a good time. Reflected well on me, and on everyone involved. It was what I did.

Charlie stayed with us about two months. He did dishes. He swept up the floor. He folded his clothes and didn't steal the bait money we would leave on cabinets and tables. He did all the right things.

One day Charlie decided he had fattened up enough. His winter with us was over, so he had me drop him off at a restaurant where a girl worked and said goodbye. I saw him a couple times after that, but it wasn't like seeing an old friend, more like seeing someone you went to school with a decade ago.

Sometimes I think about Charlie Brown, you know, I wonder what he's up to. Maybe he's got a beer belly and three kids and a dog that won't shut the fuck up. Maybe he's got a mortgage and a rich wife and he spends his days waxing their four cars in the garage.

I think he came up with his own street name. I think he did it because of the old saying, "You're a good man, Charlie Brown." But I don't really know if he was a good man. Or is. I think he was a way for us good men to realize we were really the good men. Not that he's a bad man, you know. He never took the twenty from the kitchen table, never stole from us. He knew we were open and honest with him, and I'm pretty sure he was smart enough to know you don't fuck with those kind of people.

Sometimes you have to roll-start

2012-10-01T09:46:00.003-04:00

There's an odd feeling that I've done all this before. Sometimes I focus on the thing I'm doing and it feels fresh, new, inviting, and requiring bravery. Other times it feels like I'm adding another mark to the list, but it's the same mark as so many other days.

I think I get this feeling the day after payday every time. Usually it's when most of the money is accounted for and is already allocated to bills and food and etc. Truth be told, I make enough money to have shelter and food to eat and even some fun stuff on the side, but it's always so close.

I guess this is what it's like to be in near-poverty? Or maybe what it's like to just not be really rich?

We attended a wedding this weekend, sans children. It was a nice, humble, quick, non-religious wedding with a full open bar at the reception. The food was good, the people were nice, and everything felt right about it. WHY CAN'T MORE WEDDINGS BE LIKE THIS?

After the wedding we hung around for a while, listened to the toasts, ate some dinner, then rushed out to go to a drag pageant our friend was competing in. He didn't win, but was very delightful.

We pretty much slept in all Sunday, didn't get anything done that we needed to do, and now it's Monday!

Maybe that's why I feel so shitty: I didn't get to finish anything on my internal list. No check marks. And now it's back to the grind-stone and doing the same shit I always do.

A recurring check-mark that is always a positive is the kids. I think people have kids just so that they can keep track of the passage of time. Both are getting so big, so wise even though they're still so young. They say things some times that just... weird me out they're so precocious. One will be talking to the other and (in a way of teaching the other something that neither really knows about, like how the brain works) will say something so profound it just makes me wonder. But then they'll turn around and just be kids again.

Life is good, though. Fall is essentially here: the windshield of the car/truck/thing is fogged up in the mornings, jackets have to be on if you're outside for more than ten minutes, and I can almost smell cinnamon everywhere. Soon it'll be time for the sweaters and then hats. And football. And snow shovels. But then later it'll be time for digging and planting and growing.

And I like that kind of cycle.

Paul Bunyanish

2012-09-24T09:36:00.003-04:00

Our back yard is what some would describe as completely overrun by bushes, vines, and other nefarious plants and weeds. The guy that lived in the house before we did tried his best, I think he really did, but he didn't dig deep enough. He cut the vines but he didn't pull them down from the trees. He trimmed some tree limbs, but didn't do a proper job of it. Really, he just didn't really know what he was doing.

So there's a fenced-in area, about fifteen or twenty feet deep, then behind the fence there's another six feet or so and then there's a stone wall that's around four feet tall. Then behind that there's another fifteen or twenty feet, and then what's left of an alley.

The fenced-in area is pretty clear of debris and weeds, the only issue is a huge pine tree that has had free reign over the back yard. The branches were everywhere until my wife did some proper pruning, and now it's more manageable.

The area behind the fence, the little six feet section? Yeah, it's completely filled in with old brush and cuttings from whatever pruning the dude tried to do in years past. So the whole area is about two feet deep of leaves, pine needles, and otherwise carpeting filled with spiders and bugs of all varieties. Scary.

The main source of all the vines that have been strangling the trees in the back yard seems to be coming from around some honeysuckle and mulberry trees, the two species lending themselves greatly to split branches and great highways for the vines to travel up.

One of the trees we decided to cut down yesterday.

It's weird, the amount of sunlight one tree felling can grant you when the space it occupied is no longer occupied. And now we're able to see back into the back-back-back yard, and we've seen things like baseball mitts, broken TVs, old tires, big round bouy things, and all manner of other debris from years forgotten.

We've planned some of this plant removal from before moving in, noticing how completely overrun the area back there truly is. But now that we've actually taken that first step into the great beyond, it's as if the job is just too big. There are just too many vines. The honeysuckle is just too overgrown.

But there's still the remains of the mulberry in the back yard. The eight or so big branches and the hundreds of small branches that are in piles, waiting to dry so we can then burn them all.

And then, perhaps, we can start to cut down another small tree/bush and continue the process until the back-back-back yard is reclaimed.

Tides of Change

2012-08-22T08:34:00.000-04:00

So today is the first day of school for the kids. As a parent, I'm hopeful that they make new friends, learn new things, and generally have a good year at their new school. But for us, today is a milestone that is a little more significant than typical first days of school.

Almost a year ago, both our kids kept coming home from school in a bad mood. Not a typical bad mood, but seriously depressed. We asked both of them what was going on, and their stories were almost identical: the other kids in their classes were inappropriate, and their teachers had no idea what to do to keep everyone in line.

Granted, kids are kids, and they could have been just as much of a bother to the teacher and their own peers and could have just been giving us lip service, but we investigated and found that their teachers were relatively new to the gig and basically had no idea how to handle discipline problems.

Instead of singling out a bad student and isolating them, they would punish the entire class. Instead of rewarding good behavior and performance, they would ignore the good stuff and focus on only the bad. Instead of proactively reaching out to parents or other staff for assistance and behavior modification, they went with the status quo and treated the class as if it were an army platoon. Everyone had their collective benefits taken away (no recess, no free time, constant yelling), and everyone was shifted into the guilty category instead of seeing any sort of reward for good behavior.

Both kids were exhausted by the end of the day. They got good marks on tests and homework, and both kids always got good behavioral notes, but they acted as if they were being punished all day every day.

My son's first grade class seemed to be run by a group of three children, with the teacher doing all she could just to move the class forward by inches. My daughter's fourth grade class seemed as if it were a boat left adrift with barely a paddle amongst all thirty kids.

My wife and I tried to console the kids. We tried to advise them on things to attempt to get the other kids in line. Nothing seemed to work.

The district as a whole seemed to be flailing in failure. Test scores were at the bottom rung of the scale. Funding was being cut right and left. The public school seemed to cost more than private schools in the area, what with the uniform costs and the fees and the supply list to purchase every year. Seriously, the cleaning supplies they wanted every kid to bring in was enough to keep a whole house clean for six months... Why ask thirty kids to each bring in four large containers of Chlorox Wipes?

But we knew the thing that would help our kids quickest was to get the fuck out of there.

Now, there were other benefits to us moving, don't get me wrong. I'm a lot closer to where I work now, so my morning and afternoon commutes are a fraction of what I once had to endure. And now we're much closer to commercial areas where my wife can hopefully find a job while the kids are in school. But I believe the main meat of the move was to get the kids in a school where they wouldn't be victims of a beaten down drill sargeant trying to corral all the kids together in a boot camp.

And I understand that by moving out of the district, we could be seen as adding to the problem. Less kids in the area means less state funding. Less state funding means less money going to the kids. But really, why continue to pay for something that just isn't working? And I'm not just talking about money, I'm also talking about the future of my children. Why pay with their time for other kids who just aren't getting it? And the whole argument about public schools being a catch-all for everyone and that everyone must share the burden is bullshit. There could be classes separated by abilities and behavior. I went to public schools almost all my life and the best schools had different tracks available for high achievement kids. That district just didn't care, or was broke, or the governing parties involved just didn't get it.

I just hope our choice of venue was good, and that the kids can find peace and enjoy their quest for knowledge in this new school. If not, we can always move again.

Scary Funnels

2012-08-01T08:28:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I turn off the wake up alarm in the mornings and drift back to sleep. Usually when I do this, I seem to drop right back into deep sleep, the kind with weird dreams. This morning was no exception.

I don't remember much at this point, but what I do recall was that my family all lived in a very old single floor house, no basement, and everything looked brown. Sorta like a black and white movie, but brown. Not sepia tone, because people were full color, and mirrors weren't brown tinged. It was as if everything was made of wood perhaps?

Anyway, I think I was cooking? Chopping veggies? Suddenly the lights went off, and I could see through a huge window that some really serious storm clouds were rolling in fast. They were dark but had accents of a weird electric blue. Like a plane went overhead and dropped some really sharp blue dye into a big body of swampy, oily dark water, and that water became a cloud with little swirlies in it.

I see the clouds and know something bad is about to happen, so I start shouting for my family. They're not in the house, they're all hanging out in and around some weird smaller building in the back yard. It's like a garage, but without cars. There's a deck on one side with a bunch of chairs and stools and so forth.

I run outside, and as I'm running to them, I see a HUGE funnel cloud come out of nowhere and churn slowly, almost softly. There was very little noise that I could remember, maybe a low hum? The churning cloud seems to be lazily mouthing the countryside and in its wake there's nothing. It's not even like it leaves behind destruction, the ground is just completely stripped, like how a very efficient vacuum cleaner leaves behind no crumbs.

I get closer to my family and I'm shouting and pointing at the cloud (like, how the fuck can you miss a big electric churning funnel cloud the size of Oklahoma coming at you?), and they're all laughing, drinking lemonade, chillin. I believe there were snacks on a table.

In a way, looking back now, this all sounds very Black Hole Sun-ey, but at the time that wasn't the feeling. It was more like the cloud was only visible to me, and no one else cared.

At any rate, I convince everyone to huddle down inside the house. We're in there for what seems like forever, then I kinda check it out to see if it's safe to come out. I look outside and there's hundreds of these tornadoes, just like the first one but with different color swirls in the cloud. A green one comes by and scoops up the house, and me, and I wake up screaming.

I get by with a little help from my friends...

2012-07-30T08:21:00.002-04:00

My friends are awesome.

Since we moved into the new place, the wife and I have been attempting to find a way to get some sitting furniture into our living room. Our last couch was just toast, it really had to go. So the new place didn't have crap to sit on, much less feel good on the butt.

We did get a great chair from her aunt (as payment for helping HER move a weekend after our big move), but that was really just a GREAT sitting spot for one person.

Enter our friends Mike and Meghan, who also moved recently. They found that they had a chaise that just didn't quite fit into their new house, as well as a very sturdy coffee table that fit great in front of the chaise, but again, not in the new place.

For about a week I was trying to coordinate the use of someone's truck to go pick up the stuff from Mike and Meghan, but every time I got close to getting transportation, something went wrong.

Lo and behold, I get a message Thursday of last week stating that Mike and another buddy Jason would be dropping by with the furniture on Saturday! They were doing some sort of epic city-wide furniture rearrangement with multiple houses, lots of big furniture, and a rental truck.

So now we have a respectable amount of sitting space in our living room. I've yet to grab a picture, but now we don't really have anything preventing a housewarming party. I'm thinking Aug 18. With the meatfest.

This is what it is to be a grown up.

2012-07-19T12:40:00.002-04:00

Everything is in place. The owls are on the shelf, the books are up in some sort of weird order, and the yard is mostly kept clear.

The car is functioning, even though borrowed time is not even close to a good adjective to describe how long it will last.

The kids are healthy and staying peaceful. They tend to get too lodged into things that must be provided electricity, but once school starts and they make friends, things may change a little.

But the thing that isn't set up correctly, at least the thing that bugs me the most, is the living room is still in shambles.

Our television died at our old place. I tried to fix it, but I guess I wasn't good enough with the soldering stuff to make it work again. We also pitched the couch, thinking it wouldn't be very long until we got a new one.

It really isn't a big deal to not have a living room, but I find myself more and more just going up to bed to find a comfortable place to sit. And then, once on the bed, I recline and just fall asleep.

This is stupid, I know, and it's starting to make me feel like such a lazy slob.

But I've found the furniture places close to me that have what we need, and I can get them soon, I just need to be patient. I'm thinking maybe a sofa and a loveseat, because there are times when we have lots of people that come over and want some comfy place to sit.

The TV may have to wait another month, just because of all the expenses in getting moved... But I know what I'm after, and I know when to get it, it's just a matter of waiting and being patient. :D

A Rare Occurrence (hopefully)

2012-07-17T14:52:00.000-04:00

I don't typically use this space to bitch about work, but I feel this is the most influencial thing going on in my life today, so I'll just jot down some thoughts.

It seems that there's some weird cycle of people trying to be excellent, then noticed, then appreciated, then they just don't care. At that point they become cynical, then jaded, then downright hostile, then poisonous. Then something happens where they go back to trying to be excellent...

I've tried my best to just keep an even keel. I get my stuff done when necessary, I don't try too hard and burn myself out. When an emergency comes up that I can handle/help with, I tuck my wings and divebomb all over it until the problem is resolved. Otherwise, I'm just another cook in the kitchen, and I may get in the way.

The problem is when these two ideas merge, and especially when they merge when everyone's in the poisonous part of the cycle.

When a VIP client asks for assistance, and the on-call guy doesn't drop everything and assist, it's a bad time. When the root cause of the issue is a certificate that expired days earlier but wasn't noticed, it's a badder time. And when everything gets dropped into my lap to correct, it's a really badder time.

But again, I don't try to over-extend, I just politely note the issue, find out that it was someone else's mistake that caused the cert to drop in the first place. I tell who needs to know what they need to do, and back out of it.

In years past, I would have flipped the fuck out, fixed all the things, then gone on a witch-hunt to fry those responsible. Now, it's not like I don't care, but I just don't care enough to get all finger-pointy. The cert is requested, other methods of hitting the servers are given out, and we're generally in an alright spot.

But this is just a sign of the times. Shit's about to get really bad if this is what it's gonna be like for the next few months.

Reboot

2012-07-11T14:34:00.002-04:00

So we've moved. All our things are out of the old place, and into the new place. Our shitty, two bedroom townhouse/apartment in the middle of the woods is no longer our "home". Maybe someone else will enjoy the garden we built, or the notes I left in various places with things like instructions on how to light the furnace (seriously, it was hard for me the first time), or the other small improvements we made on the abode.

But now, now we're in a huge three bedroom house. It is fully equipped with AC, an ice maker, a dishwasher, and all sorts of things we haven't had for what seems like forever. I think we're gonna like it in our new place. It's within ten minutes to work for me. It's closer to our friends. It has a host of awesome little shops and pizza places and butchers and niche-ey things.

We're nestled away in this little part of Covington called Peaselburg. Apparently that's slang German for goose-shit, because during the initial years of existence, Peaselburg was home to immigrants that kept geese. Like, lots of them. It was food, and geese have to eat and poop.

Anyway, now the little neighborhood is quite pleasant, no goose-shit anywhere. I have noticed something, though, whenever someone who knows anything about Northern Kentucky asks me where I moved to, and I reply Peaselburg, they sorta drop their expression a bit. They seem... I dunno, saddened by this. They mutter something like, "Oh, that's nice..." and then just move on to something else.

What the fuck? The place isn't bad, really. The neighborhood is full of blue-collar workers who work every day and come home to a nice home cooked meal and then sit on their porch and smoke and think about things. That's pretty much what I like to do, so I fit right in. My car is not the nicest nor is it the non-nicest car on the block, so I fit right in.

I imagine it would be different if I had moved to some meth-production neighborhood, or if murders were an all time high just up the street, but that's not the case here. I live in a nice place, damnit. My neighbors are friendly, but they keep their respectable distance. When moving in, our truck got stuck halfway in the driveway, and several of them hopped off their porches to come investigate and offer their opinions on how to un-stick the stuck truck.

And anyway, I like it, so I don't really care what anyone else thinks.

I've got two grills now, too. Very soon I will be hosting a large meat-fest full of grilled sizzling meats fresh-cut from our local butchers. There will also be local wines from the vineyards down the street. You are welcome to come attend.

Potential Capacitance

2012-05-23T09:30:00.002-04:00

A strange thing happened recently as we woke up and started our morning routine. Typically my alarm goes off at 6:30am, we roll out of bed and one of us starts the coffee. The other turns on the TV and gets something somewhat calm but upbeat going so that everyone wakes up and gets started on their day.

My wife had already started the coffee, so I hit the power button and thought about playing some music to get the troops at attention, but something looked... odd.

My stupid-because-I-just-woke-up-brain couldn't tell exactly what I was seeing, but the image was all wrong. After a few sips of joe and a smoke, I realized that the TV display was in negative colors. Everything was there, all the buttons responded correctly, but the colors were a weird metallic purple and green rather than normal.

Over the next few days I did some research, tried some reset options, but it sounded more and more like it was an issue I'd either need to repair, or just pitch the whole thing and buy a new one. This TV is five years old, and at the time I bought it, the price was $1k. (I had just gotten a bonus, and after paying some bills down, we decided to splurge)

So fast forward to today: my TV is on our dining table, back taken off, capacitors examined. I have a replacement kit in the mail, arriving Saturday, and I'm anxious to see if the $15 kit will bring back our sanity box.

If it fails, or if this isn't the root cause, an exact replacement for my TV is now at the low low price of $350, but it's the principle of the thing. Why buy a new set if the old one just needs some elbow grease and brow sweat?

In other news, we're trying to move. The school district we're in right now is so shitty, my kids come home depressed and angry every day. Both of them have teachers that cannot handle discipline problems in their classes, so they punish the entire class for the few issues that may come up.

I don't want my kids to lose any more of their spirit and drive. They're both good kids. They have compassion, alertness, curiosity, and drive. If they lose all that due to a shitty job (school), then I've failed as a parent.

So the area of town we're looking to move has great schools, is close to where I work (yay five minute drives!), and also has a ton of stuff nearby for the wife to find a job. It's the right move for us right now, but I'm having doubts that we can afford the houses that are available.

Maybe my fears are unfounded. Maybe the move will be like new capacitors for the TV. Maybe I just need to pop the case and look inside for a few minutes to see what the problem is, and all will be well after shifting some things around.

Don't Fear

2012-03-20T09:00:00.002-04:00

I'm seeing a trend lately, and I'm not sure if it's always been there, or if it's waxing and waning based on some weird criteria of the universe.

Death is an important thing. Some say it's the very thing that makes life so important; the conclusion and built-in timer creates value in the remaining seconds someone alive stays alive. Others see importance in the particulars surrounding the death experience, like the time or place or activity involved when death occurs.

I've met people who were denialists of death, thinking that they'd never have to deal with anyone close to them dying, like a pet or older friend. Usually there's just something else more important to deal with, or something more up front and center to occupy their thoughts. There's dinner plans to make, or school, or work, or kids, or entertainment, or whatever. These kinds of people are usually the ones most shocked when someone close to them does meet with destiny and dies.

The other extreme isn't any healthier, of course, those who brood on death and all the implications therein have similarly bad reactions to oblivion. I fit into this category, I fear, in that I tend to see things as being temporary. The building across the street will one day be torn down to allow another building to go up. The old hobo begging for change on the corner will soon expire, probably unseen and unknown. Technically one day our sun will explode into something none of us could ever escape, and therefore most of what we do is essentially without meaning since there is no permenance.

But the trend I was speaking of earlier: I have seen more and more people dip and stay into this latter group. We tend to be romantic (but not in the good way), shy (since we usually don't see a reason in making new friends if they're just gonna die anyway), and introspective (maybe there is life after death, right? well, maybe not...). I know rationally acting this way is silly, since I may as well make the most of my very short lifespan, but there are times when things just get so _heavy_, ya know?

The other day I was at a wedding, which should be a very uplifting and momentous occasion. During the reception and drinking time afterwards, a group of friends were standing around talking, and one mentioned to another how they were upset every time they catch themselves doing a physical action like their father, such as crossing their arms a certain way, or saying a phrase in the same voice. They were really mad about it, and it became the topic for a few minutes.

I couldn't help it, I got a little choked up and walked away.

I wanted to yell at them. I wanted to point out that their fathers' time is limited, that they should cherish every second they still have with them. Well, maybe not seconds, but you know, they shouldn't look crossly at the connection they have with their parents.

But then I remembered how morose I am at times, and I also remembered that some people just don't like their parents. I also remembered that my Dad passed only recently, and the wound is still fresh. I didn't want to be that guy.

But sometimes I am that guy.

It's hell getting old

2012-03-06T08:47:00.002-05:00

I decided recently that my car just isn't going to last me long enough to get to the farm. The front end is shaking badly, the tires are nearly bald, brakes need replaced, etc etc etc etc etc.

So I went to my friendly neighborhood car dealership, the kind that lets you borrow money if you're a poor bastard like me, you know, the buy here pay here kind... Anyway, we looked at my credit report, looked at some cars, and they were really willing to work with me. It was surprising, considering how really shitty my credit is and always has been. I don't know if it would have really gone all the way to a scene of me driving something off the lot, but it was something I needed to experience.

I needed to know if all hope was lost yet. I needed to know if they would have just laughed me out of the building. There was a time when I had no credit (which they say is worse than having bad credit, but we all know that's a load of bull), and I had to use a co-signer for a car. Technically, my dad was the initial loanee and I was his cosigner (made the interest rate on the loan better), but I made all the payments. That was my first real newer car, and I loved it. Then Dad filed bankruptcy and the car got repo'd as if I was just a side-show fool.

So now I'm working through all my debt, awakened by the idea that someone may one day actually let me buy a car that doesn't shimmy down the road. I might one day drive a car that has a radio that wasn't stolen, windshield wipers that actually move, and the car may also be eerily silent (the one I have now always sounds like a big bird fight is happening in the back seat). I've got repayment plans all happening at once, we're eating less expensive food (hence the lack of anything cool on my food blog), and we're trying to make it to July.

July will be the last payment to the company who now owns the loan on the Saab. The Saab was the car that decided to have a cracked head gasket after a long trip to Tennessee. It still ran, but smoked terribly. No one wanted to touch it or even look at it for less than $2k. So I let them take it back.

The car I'm driving now is a lot like me. It has parts that are loose and things that are broken and neglected. It makes weird noises, but still gets to work every day. It never fails to start, but it's hard to steer. It's getting older, and the frame is all but rusted away completely. One day (hopefully in August!) it'll be replaced by something smaller and faster and cleaner and consumes less fuel, but until then it dutifully clangs down the road.

Powder Keg

2011-11-15T11:21:00.001-05:00

All my life I've had weird fantasies. I'm not talking about sexual fantasies or fetishes, I'm just talking about daydreams in which situations are favorable to me.

One such fantasy was either dying or getting really really sick when I was younger. Like, cancer or multiple limb removal. The idea was that my situation would be so horrible that everyone I knew would HAVE to pay attention to me, blanket me with pity and presents, be nice to me.

Another has been to be involved with a real revolution, one that would terribly revoke the kinds of lives we all enjoy today. It would start with a basic fight against the tyranny and giant thumb holding us all down. From there it would quickly escalate to martial law, hyper-combative dystopia, hide-and-seek-or-die, and finally post-apocalypse.

It is the latter fantasy I hold very close to my heart as I read the reports coming in regarding occupy wall street in various cities. I see the videos, I read the tweets, the first hand accounts, and all I can wonder is if there is some way I could get involved. Or maybe help to increase the rate of change. Or something.

I'm a little stuck, however. Like many others, I think, I'm trapped. I have a family I have to protect and fend for. I have to keep providing shelter and food. I have to keep them safe. However, I have a deep-seeded urge to join in the protests, the fights. I don't wish harm upon anyone truly, but I do think that there are times when those in power need to realize where they receive their power from. It's like the French Revolution, or any other coup or struggle by the people against the ruling class.

I want to get involved, but I cannot. I don't use a bank, I'm a member of a local member-owned credit union. I don't use big companies for anything but the essentials like utilities (something that is required by law to remain in my house, btw). I do as much as I can without giving up everything, but I'm in fear that this is slowly becoming not good enough.

Were the dam to break, were there to be a serious revolution spark, I'm not sure I know what I would do. I don't own any weapons, I don't have a fortress out in the country somewhere.

I do have a really close network of friends, perhaps we could all huddle together somewhere to figure out a next step. You know, if something were to light the powder keg.

Or maybe everything will just blow over and nothing will change at all.

Reality Augmentation

2011-11-14T16:24:00.001-05:00

For the past two years, I was using an iPhone 3G. Not 3GS, but a 3G. I knew there were cool things going on with the newer phones, but was content with the fact that I was using a phone that I didn't have to pay for. Work got me the 3G just before the 3GS came out, and I just sorta sat back and waited.

Our contract with AT&T just ended, and now we're on some crazy fast network, with new 4S phones, and it's pretty cool.

I'm most impressed so far with all the augmented reality apps. Might seem like old news to some people, but I really want this to take off. I want to be able to wear sunglasses that tell me things like the weather, how fast I'm travelling, and do facial recognition to people I pass on the street and tell me things about them. "Oh, that person is a wanted criminal? Oh, that person over there is a famous author? Oh, this person does exactly what I do at work, and is hiring?"

You know it would be cool.

Laryngitis is all gone, but I think I need to get something to finish clearing out this phlegm. Still coughing and it hurts.

I'm also looking into buying a car. Nothing new or expensive, but the beast I've been driving needs new tires. I don't want to spend >$500 on tires when $1000 will buy a car. I'm thinking maybe I'll get a small loan from my credit union, use it to pay off the other loan, sell that car, pay back some people I owe big time, and drive something smaller with newer tires.

Or maybe I'll just buy a shit-ton of twinkies.

Update for elevenseses

2011-11-11T10:53:00.001-05:00

The trip was great. At some point I decided that we would be like a leaf in a stream. I didn't want any sort of harsh schedule of events, any requirements, any thing that we HAD to do.

When we landed, we made my brother-in-law take us to In-and-Out, since we don't have any of those back home. We drove through the ghetto of Portland, in the pitch black night, to secure greasy fast food. This is ironic but will become apparent later in the story.

Mom was tense and sad at first, but slowly started to feel better, I think.

We saw some sights over the ten days we were there, but the food was what was really great about Portland. Got to see the Pacific Ocean, something that was on my bucket list. And I got to see my neice and nephew!

The kids handled the flights and airport shit like pros. Maybe it was the coaching, the prep talks, I don't know. But they were great.

On the way to the airport, my father-in-law got a flat tire. We swapped it out in like ten minutes, but it was hectic.

This post is hectic, I'm jumping around way too much, but I keep remembering flashes instead of a solid, consistent timeline.

When we got back into town, I started feeling sick, then go laryngitis! I'm just now getting over it, something like ten days later.

Anyway, short update post today, next week should get back to normal with weird observations and so forth.

Big Trip

2011-10-21T09:35:00.002-04:00

Bags are (mostly) packed. Online check in completed. Coffee ingested. Cigarettes smoked.

I feel like everything is ready. I feel like I am ready.

I'm heading out to see my family out in Portland. See, when we first found out my mom was sick, Dad and I tried to figure out a way I could visit. You know, raise the spirits and give hugs and all that. But then he died so suddenly. He was arranging places we could sleep, things we could do.

Before he died, one of the greatest guys in the world offered to fly my family over there for free. He takes tons of business flights and has amassed more points than Kim Khardashian. I really don't think it's possible for me to repay this act of kindness and compassion, but I'm gonna try to find one (or more).

This past week has been really hectic at work, so I haven't been able to get into the travel groove at all. Haven't been a help to the wife, haven't been able to give advice to the kids, haven't been able to plan anything... Even now, I'm sitting here at work waiting for them to give me the go-ahead so I can race home and check bags and print out maps and all that.

I feel like I'm going to forget something.

I talked with my sister briefly last night, just to get a lay of the land and determine what I had to do immediately getting off the plane. She said I'll have to rent a car. Okay, no problem. But where am I driving?

I'll get off the plane, hopefully safe and secure, walk to the car rental place, get the keys, and then realize I have no idea where I am or where I should be. There is talk from the crazy guy about the world ending today, maybe I'm worrying over nothing, and in a deep slumber everything will be over as I'm hovering more than thirty thousand feet in the air.

I feel like I'm never going to be ready.

Attack the Darkness!

2011-10-19T15:39:00.000-04:00

It's hard to define and describe exactly what playing RPGs with friends while growing up was all about. It was partially building my own personality, learning coping mechanisms, trying out hero capes, being able to play the villain without the moral implications... It was a lot like being in an editor group of a Choose Your Own Adventure book with six or seven other people, all vying for attention and praise while still allowing everyone easy access to the spot reserved for doing the right thing.

Not to say it was all selfish, nor was it always non-selfish, either.

Like I said, it's hard to define, but the point here is that I did it. I was in the same gaming group for, geez, twelve years? Longer? Most of that time was in one campaign?

Anyway, at this point in our lives, we're all older, we have more responsibilities. A lot of us have kids, ya know? We can't just set aside all that every Friday night to go hang out at someone's house for eight hours and have a group hallucination of elves and swords and magic spells.

But I think back quite often to the times when the dice would roll favorably and everyone would cheer. Sometimes it was almost better when something catastrophic would happen: the dragon won the day, the evil wizard would escape, or the gate to the underworld could not be locked. Sometimes having bad stuff happen meant that there was some sort of equality, some scales of justice that would tip to both sides. Also, it gave us something to do the following week.

Anyway, what got me thinking, and what got me writing: a bunch of us that played together in that same epic group were all at a wedding this past week, and someone said I should take over the role of our GM (the guy that makes the world go round in the game). I was equal parts flattered, thrilled, and scared to death.

A good game makes memories. A good game keeps the players awake at night thinking about strategy or methods to success. A good game makes the time spent worth it.

A bad game is just horrible and awkward and should not be spoken of.

So I've been thinking about it all this past week, dreaming up a world where there is a need for a group of would be heroes. I've been taking ideas from the stories that I've watched, read, and listened to. I'm trying to decide if I could pull it off, but more than that, if I could make a good game of it.

Anal Selection

2011-10-18T13:28:00.002-04:00

People are like machines: we require fuel, we produce some sort of waste, we move around and do stuff; occasionally, we break and need maintenance.

I have a family history of cancer. Typically for the males of my lineage, colon cancer appears around age 30, and certain death occurs around 55. I don't know why, but there it is. It's odd, really, until about ten years ago, my own dad didn't know who his real father was. He found out about five years too late, his real dad died without really getting to hug his son as his son.

Anyway, the good thing that came out from learning the truth of his real blood line was the warning that came from all the women (who were still alive): get yer butt checked for cancer. Do it now.

So I did. I discussed the process with my doctor, he said I was too young. I insisted. He referred me to the local brilliant butt doctor who went in for the scope. Turns out, three polyps were removed, and all three were precancerous. Another few years, and I would have probably been doomed to repeat my genetic disposition.

The reason I'm sharing all this is that this morning, I got a call from that specialist's office. They informed me that my three year follow-up was due in January, but the brilliant butt doctor I saw before had retired. So I have to pick a new one. They rattled off like thirty names, all probably equally skilled doctors that can probe butts just the same as any other proctologist, but I don't know about picking one over the phone.

It's hell getting old.

Today and Forever

2011-10-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

I'm confused. You see, for a long time now, I've been trying to figure out what life is really all about.

I've thought at times that life was just a joke. Some random set of chemicals and atoms got together and just started a chain reaction. Many many many years later, here we are, and some people try to put a label on it-- try to put rules against it.

Other periods of life made me imagine some crazy huge formula, as if everything was preplanned, predestined. There may be free will, but in the long run it doesn't really matter. Everything that happened to me was supposed to happen, and if there was a string of really bad shit, well, I was just supposed to have bad things happen to me.

Now, well, I still don't really know. I don't think anybody really knows, either. But something I'm going to try to do is to be mindful about what is happening. Knowing the reality of a situation and approaching each moment as it happens seems like a good way of handling life. Similar to the concept of one day at a time, but instead, I want to try one moment at a time.

So for right now, I am trying to focus on what I am typing. The feel of the keys beneath my fingers, the noise of my coworkers on the phone, the traffic from the highway muffled by the windows and walls of this building. The thoughts roll through me (I don't even think about which key is the letter E anymore, it's like talking?), and they enter this blank white space. They take up virtual space, but they carry very very little physical mass. They may not matter in the long run, but for right now, they are the moment. They are the thing that is happening to me and through me right now.

Smoking Buddha

2011-10-03T11:05:00.002-04:00

I tried it this weekend, I really did. I was standing outside smoking late on Friday night, and I really tried my best.

I started by closing my eyes and reflecting on my own physical presence. I blocked out everything but my own breathing and heartbeat for sound. I concentrated on my pulse, the in and out of air, the weight of my body pushing down on my legs: knees, feet, and all. I tried to think of nothing, and what that nothing meant. I felt the slight pain in my lower back from some strain now forgotten. I felt the power in my muscles and tendons. I felt the way my jaw wanted to hang loose from the rest of my head. The way my fingertips tingled slightly as my arms fell heavily against my sides.

I stretched out my conscience slightly, realizing and reality-izing things within twelve inches from my body. The front door holding the cold outside air out of my house behind me. The old wooden chairs sitting to my left. The ceiling of the porch above me.

Further out, five feet away, I could sense the plants around me, and all manner of tiny bugs crawling around the branches and leaves, some making a bed for the night, others just awakening to hunt in the darkness. A slow irregular dripping from days-ago rain falling from the roof into the roots of the yew to my right.

Ten and twenty feet away, higher and lower and farther out, even more insects and spiders creeped and plotted. Wind currents taking spores and scents away and closer. The trees in the front yard completing another ring in their inner-trunks, marking another year and preparing for a harsh winter.

Further away now (perhaps a mile?) I can hear the traffic from the closest busy street. The crickets, my god, they sounded like billions and billions of legs screeching against each other. A plane rocketed across the sky above me, unknown distance but moving fast. Inside the metal tube sat at least fifty beings, each with their own goals and fears and dislikes and secrets. All the people in all the houses around me, all of them preparing for rest, or perhaps preparing for a hunt of their own?

Even farther out, past the reach of life-providing air and water, past the magnetic shielding of the Earth and into the rocks silently plodding along in space. Out past the gas giants and stars and ice and gas and all manner of things out there. Out where it is silent. Cold and lonely, surely, but quiet and peaceful.

Then I opened my eyes and realized I was still here. But for a brief moment, I felt everything.

Electric Sheep

2011-09-19T15:30:00.001-04:00

When I first learned how to read I had very little idea of how to write. I learned like many others in my generation: by having my parents read to me. They would read the same thing to me several times over. As I started to really pay attention, I would realize the correlation between what they were saying and the symbols and weird signs on the paper in front of us.

Later, I think, I would have supplemental experience in reading added to me by Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other awesome educational shows made available by the Public Broadcast System. I also started school at age 4, which helped immensely with learning how to communicate not only via text, but also to other human beings in a live setting.

Learning to write is a funny thing. Handwriting is something so personalized and unique that sometimes it can be used as identification. However, it is also something that has to be universal enough so that other people can actually read what is written, to glean the things you have passed along in written form. Early on, writing is typically just clerical copy work, and depending on who teaches the writer, what is written could pass as chicken scratch, or it may be circa 1870 perfect print.

But I don't really want to write about writing. What I want to write about is how we need to get away from writing.

I don't mean to get away from authoring, or from sharing our ideas; what I mean is that we need a better way of passing information on. We need something better suited to where we are going as a culture other than a keyboard or a pencil.

Tablets are the latest craze, apparently. They let us drag along a clipboard sized computer with us wherever we go. Problem is, they're a consumption device, not really a creation device. Older tablets included a keyboard under the screen, or perhaps on the screen itself. This is stupid. It adds weight, adds mechanical parts that could break down, and just perpetuates the insanity of requiring a physical input medium to pass information on.

We are a lazy race.

Some people have likened tablets to the handheld computers in Star Trek:The Next Generation. Indeed, I can see similarities in many of our personal computer and accessories that we consider daily use items with what was shown in the series. However, the striking difference for me is how they put information in.

You didn't see any of the characters typing away on a keyboard, or swiping a single finger around a keyboard on a screen. You saw them talking to the computer. You saw them directly connecting to the computer (in the case of Data, the android). Hell, you even saw them physically interacting with the computer in the Holodeck at times. No keyboards, no weird archaic gestures. It was intuitive, it was rugged, and it was lightweight.

This last point is key. Business people now, as always, are very concerned with weight. They need to get on airplanes, they need to carry stuff around. The last thing they need is an additional few ounces made up by peripherals. They don't need extra cords (or god forbid batteries for wireless peripherals) bogging them down. What they need is a lightweight, small sized, familiar shaped product that will let them gaze into the crystal ball that is the internet and get shit done.

They need to be able to speak to the computer, and have the computer speak back to them. They need to be able to gesture to a whole wall and have the information they're after come to life and show them what is important. They need to be able to pinpoint where and when and all that in very little time, and with very little weight added to their carry-on.

Gamers need this too. Why compress all our being into thumbs and index fingers? Why not give us the awesomeness of the Kinect in every game? And extend that to every application? When it doesn't make sense to have a whole body be the controller, just code the thing to watch for my facial expressions, or hand gestures (like ASL).

I may be an old grey-beard in the corner. I may remember what it was to set up message netting between BBSs that would send emails out at scheduled times really late in the night. I may even scoff at things that sales and marketing dream up (you mean you can't get this done in an hour? I'm just asking for the whole world's data to be cross indexed with the whole galaxy's data). But I think that in order for things to really move to the next level, we need to drop some of this old-timey crap and move forward.

Either that, or destroy civilization as we know it so I can farm and live out my post-apocalyptic dreams for real real.