Reality Me

Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

  • Lost – no, not that one

    So I had an interesting experience this past Saturday. I am driving Cathy and crew over to her mother’s house so that Noah and I can steal the Dodge Neon since the Jeep was still in pieces on the driveway. Cathy, Sarah, Amy, Evan and Tommy had to go to the ice skating rink after dropping Noah and I off. I had forgotten my cell phone and would not be able to walk her through the back roads if she needed help.

    I was verbally giving her a rundown of directions that I thought would get her there most directly with the least amount of chance for getting lost. See, her parents live in this neat little spot of town that is centrally located but somehow not directly connected to anything. Getting anywhere, except the interstate, involves a back road. Well, suddenly I did not know where I was. I could not remember how I got there and I had turned the car around but I only vaguely remember making the turn. It seems liked I was driving in a bright light and the conversation I was having with Cathy didn’t even make much sense at that point. As I re-oriented I almost turned back toward our house instead of the inlaws. It was very bizarre and surreal.

    I think what happened was that I started to visualize the directions I was giving Cathy a little too much and started following my own directions. Good puppy.

  • Hard Lessons

    Sarah is the student council historian this year. So for her birthday, we got her a Kodak EasyShare Z730 camera. I am very impressed with the camera.

    One of my mantras to the children that they hear moaned out several times a day is "Don’t put it down; put it away." Sarah does not follow this at all. Her world does not operate by our laws, our physics, nor our logic. And, she leaves droppings wherever she goes. If she visits a friend, socks, trinkets, school notes, or something will have to be picked up several days later.

    She took pictures in art club after school yesterday. Art club is supposed to end at 4:45 and we picked her up at 5 (the time she always comes out of the building anyway). She had set her camera beside her stuff then picked up her stuff to rush out leaving the camera behind. She realized this 15 minutes later at Target. Since the school would have been locked up it made no sense to go back but I got her there early this morning.

    Apparently she was the first into the classroom but no sign of the camera. The teacher doesn’t recall seeing it and it hasn’t appeared in lost and found. It may still turn up but, sadly, the odds are against it. What is worse, the list of suspects is small: custodial staff, the few remaining art club students, and teacher. It should be easily recovered.

    I feel bad for Sarah. I grew up with a belief system of trust. I believe people should be trustable and honest. If I find money or something like a camera, I seek out the person that may have lost it. I try to do my part as a citizen. Yesterday as I parked at Target the lady with a child in the car beside me was unloading the last few items from her cart. I waited then asked if I could take her cart for her. It was the right thing to do. If a person took Sarah’s camera with no intent to return it, that would be the wrong thing to do. I only hope that this does not scar Sarah’s trust in people or influence to not do the right thing because she has been burned. I want her to care enough to take the person cart rather than declare it SEP.

    Now, the angry dad in me wants to jump to conclusions, secure the school security tapes, and go after somebody.

  • Off the wagon – Gimme the juice!

    My first cup of coffee was at age 10 or 11 in Café Du Monde (wikipedia entry) eating beignets.

    The cafe is open (has been since Oct 19, 2005) and trying to contact its employees. If you took in some Katrina victoms that are related to or know of people who worked for Cafe Du Monde, please let them know.

    We are still trying to make contact with many members of the Cafe Du Monde team. If you are an employee of Cafe Du Monde please E-Mail us to let us know that you are O.K. and fill us in on your future plans. [Source]

    That cup of coffee was horrible. I switched to hot chocolate and stayed away from coffee for nearly a decade.

    In college I was very involved in dorm life. I became the treasurer of the Clement Hall Resident Association. I ran movie night introducing double features with animated cartoons during intermission. I would start of with a series of cartoons then we would show a popular movie, do a cartoon intermission, and finish the evening with an esoteric cult flick (wish I had written the names down). I also had a bootleg of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (before it was released to video) and we would periodically watch the show on Friday’s at midnight complete with a virgin call but not with the full regalia. Eventually I took a job as a desk worker with shifts of midnight to 4am and 4am to 8am. Later I would become a Resident Assistant for the 8th floor.

    As a desk worker, sleep would call. Change would tinkle into the vending machine and coca-cola would keep me awake. Soon it felt like all the money I was making was going into that machine. One night the coffee pot caught my eye. It was ever present and best of all free. I tried it. Didn’t really like it but it worked! And better than the Coke. I was renewed! And hooked.

    At my peak, I was drinking 2 pots of coffee a day. I would brew one in the morning and another about 8 in the evening. I thought all that shaking was due to unstable ground (Knoxville is on a fault line discovered in 1993). When I started having serious dizzy spells, I cut way back on the coffee. 4 or 5 weeks ago I stopped drinking coffee altogether. Since then I have had 3 cups. I also had a very minimal number of soft drinks. In recent years, I have had very little alcohol to drink.

    A full pot of coffee sits on the counter now. Thanks Target! Stopped in Target last night to get dinner supplies and they had my coffee marked way down. I grew weak. I bought it. Today I shall be perky!

    See also RHPS fan club.

  • Knee Replacement Surgery – No Big Deal

    So this morning I pull in to pickup my mother-in-law to take her to physical therapy. See, a few weeks ago she had a mad scientist take a Dewalt 5 inch saw and cut her knees off. To his manic cackling he scraped out the stuff that holds the bottom part of the leg to the top part. To lightning, the humpbacked nurse helps insert the plastic and titanium, guaranteed-fun-at-the-airport new knees! He laughts and raises his hands skyward shouting, "she lives! She lives!" She stands up! And immediately falls on her face.

    Getting back to this morning. As I approach her house I see hop-a-long with brace on the deadleg left knee toward the end of the driveway with walker in both hands and making the final adjustment on the second trash can that she just pulled down the driveway–somehow. I only wish I had shown up a few minutes earlier to watch. Fortunately, she had only pulled the recycle container out the back door and not worked it down to the street. Apparently, my inlaws recycle lead, ore, rock, and concrete disguised as aluminum cans and newspaper. After lugging it to the street I begged to take her place in physical therapy or at least sneak me one pain pill. I also noted that had she taken the recycle bin herself that she wouldn’t need the PT today because she’d be in the hospital!

    Yes, I said "inlaws." Note the s. It makes the word plural. She has an ambulatory husband who, like my son, was asked to do the garbage the night before and, like my son, 7:30 came and he went. Also like my son, he doesn’t clean up animal poop. These two should live together for a year with cats and dogs! But that really wouldn’t be fair to the cats and dogs.

  • My morning thus far

    3:30 – beg myself to get up
    5am – actually rise, bathe and dress
    6am – wake the doughnuts
    6-7am – some blogging, mostly help Noah cook muffins
    7:30-8 – drive Sarah to school
    8-8:30 – pickup mother-in-law
    8:30 – pickup Amy
    9 – Drop Amy at pre-school
    9:20 – Drop mother-in-law at sadist’s (PT)
    9:20-10am – Starbucks theraphy then home

    Later:
    10:50-11:30 – pickup mother-in-law, take her to bank then home
    1:30 – pickup Amy
    4:15 – Noah to karate
    4:45 – Pickup Sarah from school
    5:00 – Pickup Noah from karate
    5:30-6 – drive to Lenior City
    6 – Drop Tommy in Lenior City
    8:30 – Pick Tommy up from Lenior City
    9-10pm – Lost!

    To squeeze in: work, programming, marketing, resume writing, returning calls/emails, budgetting, banking, and food

  • Don’t ignore email

    I have not checked email for several days which means I will have angry emails and a back log that could have me doing nothing but email all day.

    "Do the dumb things you gotta do. Touch the puppet head!"

  • They are more important

    I am so stressed over my work that my head feels like it is going to crack. Noah wants to make blueberry muffins. I can’t argue with that. I love blueberry muffins. However, poor Noah needs guidance. Lots of guidance. He gets priority.

    If you haven’t had a 10 year old boy yet, their brains don’t work.

    The cooking lessons are fun. I enjoy watching him go through discovery. This morning I have had questions like:

    "What’s a muffin pan?"
    "Where’s our can opener? How do I use it?"
    After getting the mixing bowl, "Where can I get a bowl to put in the ingredients?"

    I had no doubt that one or two of the eggs would splat on the floor. One did. Learning to crack and egg is scary. I feel bad for him. He will have to go to school before these are done. This child moves in slow motion!

  • Fading Light

    My Joy cannot beat Misery
    Our Stress weighs too heavy
    Stealing away the Happy.
    Our Days are filled with constant pleasures
    Like firecrackers, numerous, small, quick.
    The Suck is like a Nuke
    And evaporates all positive energy.
    It is all Wrong.
    Losing my Fight.

  • Bionic Mother-in-Law moved

    Cathy and I helped move her mother from rehab to home. One mocha later she was very happy to be back in the real world but wishes the laundry lady would have come with her. New knees, less pain. We returned home heavy one skeleton and one dracula both of which remain buckled into our backseat.

  • Lower the bar!

    I have to quit taking on the impossible projects.

    What am I doing now? My current contract is to allow a user to enter a single product id or a list of product ids then go out to a government website and download the 17 or so pages of pdfs for each product. Then I combine the multiple pages of pdf documents into a single pdf document and present it to the user for download to their local machine. I may end up inserting footer information into each page of the pdf. I have to do this for 4 different countries. Then I have to convert the code from php 4.4.4 to php 4.0.0.

  • Hypothetical Question

    If you got called into jury duty selection on a Monday, and you knew your wife was getting out of rehabilitation from double knee replacement surgery on Tuesday, what would you say to the judge? Apparently, nothing is the correct answer.

  • Pressure

    The walls are closing in.

  • The Flaming Cat Is Out To Get Me

    If your cat looks like this, you might be schizophrenic.

  • MMMMmmmmm Java!

    I haven’t had coffee in several weeks. I bought Cathy a Caramel Hot Cider at Starbucks today and did not have the will power to withstand ordering a house coffee. Life is good.

  • Driving Topless!

    I love the Internet! The Jeep has been sitting in the driveway with a bad water pump. Relatively speaking, a water pump is a pretty straightforward repair. Unfortunately, my Haynes manual was a little vague on the details of the repair. Fortunately, a simple search gives wonderful details that I would have missed. (like 3 additional bolts that needed loosening) Good thing I couldn’t find that crow bar!

    The Jeep went back together with relative ease and no apparent leaks. Next task is a radiator flush but I’ll leave that to the shop. Before it gets too much colder I need to reattach the metal bar to the top of the windshield that holds the roof. Then go to ebay and buy a top.