September 2007
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Wednesday, 9-26-7
Do you want to know how my day went? Really? No, you probably don't. But if you keep reading, you'll find out so, look away.
Last night was a lot of fun. I got to spend time with a distant friend that I haven't seen in seventeen years. Jose and I fell back in like we had seen each other last week. Talking a little about old times but mostly filling in the details of the last two decades. It looks like I will be here over the weekend so we plan on hanging out a lot this week.
Tonight I just crashed here at the hotel and now you'll get the review of the day and hear for yourself why I just needed a drink and a bed.
I got up this morning optimistic about the job. I have been waiting in a hot parking lot waiting for my equipment to arrive for the last two days. It finally cleared the tax office yesterday afternoon but the delivery driver couldn't be there until 5:30 and the local FAA tech wouldn't be here. So, we set it up for 8am this morning. I woke up feeling real good about today and ready to get some work done.
I get the call on the way to the site that it is pouring down rain but the driver is on the way but he might be a little late. Cool, I'm ready for that, no problem, at least the equipment is on the road. Let me fill you in real quick about how we are getting this equipment delivered. When I tell you, don't laugh at me, just remember that this is the FAA, your federal tax dollars at work.
I am sitting at airport A. We will be installing the equipment at airport B, ten miles away through the heart of San Juan. When the equipment arrives at airport A, the FAA will pick it up and transport it to airport B.
I get the call at 8:30. The delivery driver is sitting at airport B. I figure, "Right on, saves us a step, we'll be right over!" Nope. I call it in and they tell me that the FAA INSISTS on making the delivery themselves. I tell the delivery company to bring the equipment over to airport A. As I am trying to describe where I am on the airport property to the dispatcher and her driver, I hear words pass between them that I am pretty sure are "el stupido". When I finally tell her where I am, she tells me that I am roughly 150 feet from her office. That is where they started out this morning. Ugh! Oh well, we have to follow orders.
So I call the local FAA tech to tell him that the delivery will be here in 20 to 30 minutes. He says that he will dispatch his tech with the truck, they are over at airport B!
The equipment arrives, the FAA tech is nowhere to be found and it is raining. Not a nice pleasant rain. A hard Puerto Rican rain that will drown you in seconds and humidity that will ruin a digital camera just from being brought out from a cold hotel room into the muggy humidity after this rain. Yeah, my camera is totally screwed. So we commandeer a maintenance bay to keep the equipment out of the rain. An hour later the FAA tech shows up with an F150 and no straps. The equipment is as big as a refrigerator and we can not lie it down on its side. No straps and the roads are constructed entirely of pot-holes.
We finally get the equipment tied down and somehow transported over to airport B. We unload it and the tech says that he has to leave and the other tech that will provide our access will be in tomorrow. So we are done for the day.
I call my guys and let them know what is going on and they say we just have to roll with it and that we are done for the day.
Tony and I decide that since it is only noon, it would be a great time to drive out to see the Arecibo observatory because we can be there by 1:30, maybe 2pm. We get on the road and right at 1:30, less than a mile from the damn observatory, we get a call from the boss of bosses. There is a problem at airport A and we need to go over there. I explain to him that we are on the other side of the island and he says we just need to get there as soon as we can.
We drive all the way back and fix the problem. It was a frogged cable (Transmit and Receive were reversed). That's right, for those of you following along on the home game, it was a physical cable issue, which MEANS; this was not a live service "priority" outage. There was no reason to call us back out for this case. I was less than a mile from the goddamn place and now I'll probably never get back over there!!! I guess it's all for the best, my camera is all screwed up and I wouldn't have gotten that picture I wanted anyway.
We got back to the hotel just in time to sit in on a hour and a half conference call about the proper time entry system and numbers. I listened for ninety minutes as a lot of the techs in the field were whining about having to do their jobs. I mostly bitch when I CAN'T do my job. These guys are complaining because someone asked them to name their files a certain way.
After the call I got Tony and we went over to the hotel bar/restaurant. I ate the fist thing closely resembling "American" food since I got here and it was a Cuban sandwich. It wasn't toasted, it wasn't spicy. It was a damn Subway sub. Not bad, it just wasn't what I was looking for. After six drinks, it tasted alright though. It was "ladies night" in the bar and we concluded that the place went 1 for 8 tonight. 7 of them were the creepiest things I had ever seen passing as human. The only one who looked "decent" was close to the borderline. I guess the presence of seven other hose-beasts would make number eight look just fine.
So we went down to the casino and I put thirty bucks down on the Black Jack table. It was a $5 minimum and I kept it at $10 bets. We kept even and after about twenty minutes I noticed that Tony had busted out and I was up $20. Rather than cash out, I bet $50 on the next hand. I drew a 19 with the dealer showing an ace. Sure enough, she got the blackjack. What a way to end a table. I came up to the room and "drunkdialed" Teresa, boring her for half an hour with my stupid drunk-ass. I impressed her with all the Spanish I know. "Por favor, manten gal sejado a las puertas" It may not be the way to spell it but I learned it from the Disney World Monorail. "Please stand clear of the doors". The rest I remember from my high school classes or from various people I have known. "Caillete la voca" I got from listening to the women where Teresa worked. "Llavarse sus manos" I got from the back of the public bathroom door. Any more Spanish and I just might get myself killed. I did attempt to try it a little tonight. I asked Jose if a gringo like me saying "gracias" instead of "Thank you" would come off as me being a smart-ass or if it was alright. He said it was cool as long as you don't throw in an "Arriba, andaley, andaley" it would look like you were trying to be nice. So I tried it tonight. The guy at the bar handed me my drink and I spilled out a "Danke". What a freaking idiot I am.
That's where my day ends folks. Not a lot of excitement but wow, what a really screwed up day. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm in the middle of a book and I have six more pages to read before I pass out.
Monday, 9-24-7
Hola, recepcion a mi blog.
It's a special edition coming straight to you from San Juan, Puerto Rico. I'll be here until the work is done. It may be a few days, it may be a couple of weeks.
I tried hard to stay awake on the plane. The movie they showed on the flight didn't help. "Georgia Rule" isn't exactly my type of movie. I endured it without audio. My iPod played in my ears while my eyes kept getting drawn back to the screen where I saw Lindsay Lohan being a bitch to just about everyone on the screen. No thanks.
I didn't want to sleep because I know how badly I snore and I didn't want to drive the guy next to me nuts. He already has to sit next to the fat kid, now the fat kid is going to snore in his ear? Luckily we were able to move around and we had an empty seat between us. We were in the exit row and I had four feet of legroom. Nice!
The night before Teresa and I stayed up all night (4am) with Freddy and KC playing Nintendo Wii. I couldn't wait to make fun of him for having one but I said I'd give it a try. It was a lot of fun. In a setting like that, I would like to have one. I could never imagine playing it by myself but with four or five friends it would be entertaining. I was going to leave it at just that and never give it another thought but he kept telling me I should get one so we could link up and play online all the time. My answer was going to be "Absolutely not. If I wanted to play online I'd play with a real game system and upgrade to an X-Box 360". That was what I WAS going to say, until Teresa looked up and said she'd like it and that she'd play it often. Ok, so now I might have to buy the damn thing...
The games look like shit when compared to X-Box. You can get the classic NES games like Zelda and Mario Brothers but they don't have Super Mario 3 available yet. The Wii is lame and generic. The games are like a 3-D Atari 2600. Baseball. You hit the ball, a Fisher-Price person waddles out to field the ball, you don't; control him and the game assigns outs according to where the ball lands like when you played WiffleBall in your back yard. Sounds boring and lame so it should be real easy right? Nope. Well, for some people it was. Teresa repeatedly kicked my ass in baseball all night. The games are geared toward small children. Why the hell would I want to play the Wii baseball when my X-Box is clean, sharp and detailed? You field the ball, you take leads and steal bases, you dive for a catch, you can slide into base. When your guy slides, his uniform is dirty the rest of the game... Give all that up for the novelty of simulating swinging a bat? No thanks. My arm hurts from all the swinging and bowling and I never got the satisfaction of feeling the ball hit the bat or throwing the bowling ball halfway down the lane. But now I can say that "I hurt my wrist playing with my Wii" and no one can call me dirty...
So we land and the culture shock is subtle but it's there. The subtlety is what makes it so wrong. You know something is different but you barely notice it. When I took off, a large sign said "Baggage Claim" with a small print Spanish translation below it. When I landed it was in Spanish with small print English now. Just enough to let me know that I'm the outsider here and that I had better appreciate everyone I come across that speaks English because my Spanish rusted shut years ago. I took three years of Spanish in school. The third year was conducted entirely in Spanish. The next year I took one year of German. Years ago I dabbled with a "learn at home" Japanese course. All the Spanish has gone out of my head. On top of that, I haven't used anything but English in 15 years. I can't understand a word when it is spoken and I can barely decipher written words in time for them to be of any use. Immediately after leaving the car rental place I hit the main road. 26 Oeste or 26 Este? Quick! Little things like that. That's not entirely true, I was listening to the radio and they kept singing "no se porque" and I knew that was "I don't know why". I know just enough to get myself killed...
I'm boning up on my classical music. I love classical but I don't listen to it nearly as much as I used to. Here I have little choice. You know how in the States we have the entire radio dial and the Spanish speaking stations are relegated to the lower end of the dial and mostly on AM stations? Reverse that here. I love the latin music I hear but it gets repetitive real quickly. So I've been scanning the channels and the only English-speaking voice I found on the FM dial was that guy with the smooth voice between movements telling you "that was Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Philharmonic Orchestra with the second act of Wagner's Tannhauser". Opera and Classical, those are the only choices I have that aren't punctuated by a guy streaming Spanish at 100kph.
That's another thing, gas is only 67 cents here. They sell it by the liter. The "Velocidad Maxima" signs are in kilometers per hour. I thought we decided to ignore the metric system? Yeah, WE did, they didn't. Every time I get into the car I flag myself as a tourist; I use my turn signals. I was warned about the traffic down here by a bunch of people. I didn't expect all of this. Lanes merging with no notice, barely any lanes at all, if you can FIT three cars on the road then it is a three lane road. And "fit" is a relative term. I would guess we could fit two cars across, the locals prefer four. Pot holes that we call sink holes back home. I just know that I'm going to get hit before I leave.
So I may be here a couple of weeks and my plans only conform that I am such a NERD! Everyone kept telling me about the cool spots to hit while I was down here. The casinos, the beaches, the clubs, the cigar factories. I may hit them but none of them make the top of my list. While in PR, I have a list of two things I plan on doing. Top of the list; The Arecibo Observatory. Why look at hot Puerto Rican babes on gorgeous beaches while drinking a local specialty drink and a smoking a fine hand-rolled cigar? Why hit the casino and party it up like a rich American tourist? I want to visit the largest radio-telescope on the planet. Yeah, I'm a geek. I'm that kid who actually paid attention on the class field trips. 1000 feet across, discovery of Mercury's true rotational phases, SETI@home, it's just the coolest thing to get my picture taken with it in the background. I can't wait to see it.
The other thing on the list is to visit my old friend Jose. I haven't seen him since he moved back here after high school. Six months or so will go by and we'll get back in touch again. Most of you who see me regularly know that I'm not the best at staying in contact with people. I don't do the correspondence thing very well and I end up losing touch with most people. Jose is one of the few that I made sure to stay in contact with, even if it's just a few times a year. He's the only reason I finally gave in and joined MySpace. It will be good to see him again, even if I was Robin to his Batman.
Well, the FAA is no different in the states or here in PR. I just spent the entire day waiting on a shipment that won't be here until tomorrow. What that really means is; I didn't have to waste a Sunday flying in, I could have come in today and have been ready for tomorrow. SSDD...
For those of you not keeping up with the forums, I have posted a date for our little attempt at dressing up the house. The weekend of October 12 and 13th we are going to paint, trim and stuff. Thank you everyone for your offers of assistance. I think this is going to be a very easy weekend. Good people, good music and good drink. I'm actually looking forward to this now.
More to come from Puerto Rico when I have more to report. Stay tuned...
Monday, 9-17-7
Today is Teresa's birthday. On three, everyone say "Happy Birthday!" Ready? 1... 2... 3 HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! Yeah, that sounded cool. I can feel the love, can you?
So yet another significant day goes by with me out of town.
I am sick today. I started to feel sick Saturday night and it hit me full in the face on Sunday. I had to be up and out the door by 4am this morning. I sounded so awful that Teresa begged me to call in sick and stay in bed. I really do feel like crap but you just don't call in sick in my job. I'm alone and scheduled for circuit testing (sitting on my ass) this week. It's not like I have to be coherent to drive or to run these automated tests. If I can pull it off sick, why not?
I have a huge bubble of pain next to my thumb nail. I was working on the house projects this weekend and actually hit my thumb with the hammer just like in all the cartoons. Dumbass. It hurt like hell and swelled up but the worst part was that Teresa was standing next to me and watched it happen. Right down to the part where I yelled. Now you would expect profanities and colorful remarks from me, no? It would be more in character if I did but I didn't. I let out a high pitched yelp and danced around singing "aieeeaieeeeaiee" like I was doing some strange Mexican hat dance. Teresa laughed at me for twenty minutes.
I trimmed up the door frame around the air conditioner. It needed that for the last ten years. We had some work done on it ten years ago and the door frame was too small. So they tore out the frame and I left it like that. Saturday I bought some 2x4s and some trim and dressed it in nicely. Well, it will look nice after I caulk the small gaps...
I also had to move the big desk out of Becca's computer room into the dining room so we can store it there until we get the POD storage. It was too wide to put in the room so I had to remove the door and the trim. I also had to remove one side of the door frame. When I finally got it in there we decided that if we ever moved we'd leave it behind but the guy said that it is too large for such a small room and will make the room look small. So I tore the door apart again and moved the behemoth desk. I put the door back together and bought a large can of wood putty to fill the cracks. We really aren't attached to this thing if anyone wants a large reception style desk. Otherwise I'll just use it for a workbench in my new garage.
Moving that desk and building a door frame at the air conditioner unit was all Teresa wanted me to get done this weekend. She also wanted a drawing of the house with the room sizes on them but I already had that on file from my college coursework in AutoCAD. I just made the changes to the laundry room and printed it out for her within minutes. I like doing CAD work. I'm good at it and I'm fast. I just wish there was money in it. The little bit of side work I did was nice but that outlet dried up. The market is split between visual and detail. Visual pays crap because there are a dozen decent programs out there that almost any monkey can run and make things look good as long as you don't need accurate details. The high detail work pays well (after a couple of years) but you have to have an engineering degree. An actual engineering degree, science, math, tolerances, specifications... Not a fake title like "Sanitation Engineer". It seems anyone can just put "engineer" as their title now a days and almost nobody questions it.
After I dressed up the drawing, I started on packing up the den to get ahead of schedule. I broke down my drums and loosened all the heads. I won't be able to play them for a few months. I'm a sad, sad monkey... I started tearing up the riser they were sitting on and had to dispose of a couple of critters that had died under there. I remember putting down the poison and I remember the smell when they died. I just never thought about having to clean it up. The milk-crate/plywood/carpet-scrap riser went up as soon as we moved into the house back in 94. I've got thirteen years of who-knows-what under the rest of that thing. I only pulled up about a third of it so far. The rest will have to wait until I can move the bookcase that is sitting on it. The milk crates will make handy carrying cases for my books. There are hundreds of them and cardboard boxes just won't carry the weight. So last night I was sick as hell, almost in tears from breaking down the drum set, dealing with rodent carcasses, and vacuuming up rat poison and rat turds. I start coughing and that's when I notice that the entire room is clouded with dust. The filter slipped off the vacuum and now I am breathing rat poison, rat turds and mummified rat parts. Good thing the Hanta virus hasn't migrated to Florida yet (that I know of) or I'd be dead.
Teresa finally talked me into going to bed. Being sick and having to get up early I really had no problem giving in. I just wanted to get ahead of schedule with the packing up and working on the house. I still don't know when the Puerto Rico job will happen but when it does there may be little to no notice and I'll be gone two weeks. With all we are trying to get done around the house, I really need to be at home as much as possible. This will ensure that I have to work as far from home as possible and work every Friday/Sunday from here till the end of time. When I didn't need to be home I was in Jacksonville pretty regular. Now that I need to be around I'm having to travel to Oz and back.
I'd be depressed about it (and a thousand other things that are trying to pull me down) but I don't have that luxury. I can't afford the down time of being depressed and sad. I have a million things to get done and the overall picture of how life is going is all but straight up. So all the drag and depression will have to wait until it is more warranted. I don't know what happened to me with those pills the doctor had me on. I haven't been on them in a year now and I'm still feeling good. I have those down moments like everyone else and even when I go deep, I handle it differently. I am no longer dangerous to myself or to society... At least not a direct threat... At least not yet...
Thursday, 9-13-7
THANK YOU!! for all the volunteers that have contacted me in the last few days. I have been contacted by a few of you who have demanded (and even chastised) that I ask you for assistance in the house clean/move. I can't tell you how much I really appreciate it. I usually try to get my projects completed by myself (although I may vent about them afterward) and I may have been foolhardy enough to try to do all this myself. But I admit that this is a bigger project than I should handle on my own and I will need help to get it done on time (not to mention getting it done right).
Thank you so much for your offers, Teresa is forcing me to face reality and is making sure that we will take you up on them. Especially considering that I have broken my own cardinal rule: never move in/out of a place that you have to go up and down stairs. We decided to buy a new washer/dryer set from the home studio (very decent prices actually) because although ours may be old and ready to fail, the main reason was that we won't have to move them up those damn steps! Another thing I came to realize; you never notice how much you use a (open bed) pickup until you don't have one. The H8mobile may have been ugly and even small, but I would have been able to handle a lot of upcoming "ugly furniture goes to storage" trips by myself.
I am still out here in Pensacola this week but I am hoping to get home this weekend and start a plan about how to kick this house's ass. I still feel weird accepting help because something down in me tells me I should be able to do this without inconveniencing my friends. But as you have pointed out, I'd be a worse friend if I didn't...
Thanks again.
Monday, 9-10-7
Why do the strange things always happen to me? It's funny, Teresa and I were just talking about how I had a run of weird shit happen all in a row and that it seems to have passed. This one's not exactly bizarre but it is definitely strange.
I went in to renew my
driver's license and the guy kept looking at me funny. He had the guy at the
next window look at his screen and then he started looking at me funny. I
started to get worried because the last time I renewed there was an outstanding
warrant on me and they tried to arrest me. It turned out to be an error but now
I was wondering if it was back. The guy says, "I know you've got all that long
pretty hair and all but this ain't you is it?" My license number, my name, my
address, not my face on the computer. I'm in contact with my feminine side,
I've got longish hair and I've even got the tits but I'm no woman.
They did ten
minutes of research (which is an eternity standing at that window) and finally
pulled up my previous pictures on the screen. They determined that I am really
a guy and that there was some error in the system. Someone filed this woman's
picture under my DL number. Because of all that I can't renew at this office, I
have to go over to the state office and have them do it. It's not like I'm
trying to be this chick, it's not like I had her stand in line for me and got
her picture taken. Even if it is, I'm standing right in front of the guy and he
has my previous pictures, I am obviously me! Why can't he take my picture, give
me my license and file the paperwork to have this erroneous picture removed from
my file which I never put in there in the first place? I didn't go over to the
state office and beg them "please fuck up and put the wrong picture in the wrong
file", why do I have to go over there and beg to have it taken off?
It's okay, I really don't need a new license; the world is coming to an end. I have eight more days before it expires on my birthday and I fully expect the Rapture, Ragnarok, Qiyamah, End of Days, the day of the White Buffalo Woman, whatever you wish to call it, the end is coming and I have proof. I just saw a commercial on television. No, me watching TV is not one of the seven seals... It was an older couple at a dance (?) and they were sneaking off to go bang one out in the hallway. The music was Elvis's "Viva Las Vegas" but the lyrics were, "Viva Viagra". UGH! The Beatles "Revolution" being used to sell Nikes wasn't bad enough, now Elvis is hawking Viagra. Say goodbye to your loved ones, the world is coming to an end.
On a slightly less scary
note, Teresa and I just got back from the home studio where we finalized the
details for our new house. Color of the paint, add an electrical outlet here,
pre-wire for surround sound, thickness of the carpet pad, style of cabinets...
stuff like that. We picked it all out a few weeks ago and today we made all our
choices final. I had a few items dropped from the list and added in a few
others. I was going to drop the garage door opener figuring I could put that in
later by myself. That was until I heard Heffner telling me how much trouble he
was having putting his up last week. I decided it was worth the money to have
it done when we move in. It is incredible how much money goes into this kind of
stuff. There were a few "priority" items that we were willing to scrap the rest
of the stuff in favor of. The kitchen details, the screened in patio and the
hardwood floors. Without these, it wasn't her dream house.
Well we were slightly over
our already tight budget before they dropped the $8k on us for the wood floors.
We went home and thought hard about what we needed vs. what we wanted. Then we
got a call from the builders and they told us that the base price of the house
is being dropped $10k because of the housing market. Now we've got our wood
flooring with room to spare for a couple of the other things that were on the
borderline of being cut. Yay for us!
We still went with all the
standard/plain light fixtures and faucets and stuff (things that I can change
out myself) and spent almost $30k in changes to the house and we haven't even
started building it yet! It may be my job to worry and doubt but I'm starting
to come around to Teresa's point of view. We CAN do this and the numbers are
lining up in the right order showing me the same thing. This is all falling
into place just right. I'm actually starting to get excited about this now.
Excited but still worried. My worry is now on a new target. The house we live in now. The guy came by this morning to advise us on selling and what we should/should not do. We had already anticipated most of his comments (except for painting the crown molding white!) and we're already planning on getting everything straightened up for putting the house on the market. This means I lose the comfort of my den! The windows need to be unblocked, the fake cobwebs need to come down, the ram head needs to be removed, the clutter needs to go. Oh man, I knew this was coming but I'm not ready to say goodbye to my den already. I thought I had a few more months in my wonderful inner sanctum. The guy wants to have this place ready to put on the market in 30 days. I have no doubt I can clear the space in that time but where do I put all the stuff!? I can't (won't) get rid of it all and the books STAY! I'll compromise and get rid of a lot of it if we sell it in a garage sale or even donate it. I won't throw it all away. Someone out there wants this old crap... So maybe I can clean out the den but who wants to help me with painting the house and clearing the ground clutter of weeds?
Saturday, 9-8-7
Last week we went to Becca's open house. She's in a college prep magnet school and from all the paperwork we read and the research we did, I expected this school to be different. It wasn't. It disappointed me and I am worried about her education again.
The school is alright and she really is going to learn a lot there but there were a few teachers that left me with more questions than answers. I wonder what happened to the really strict teachers in the world? I had a few, our parent's generation had more but it seems they all died and went away. No one does it the way it should be done or the best way, they have all gotten lazy, tied up by the PC-police or even in the rare case you find one that does the right thing, they do it for the wrong reasons.
She has one teacher that she thinks is strict. I met her. She's not strict, she's a bitch. There is a difference.
One teacher openly bitched about the school board and how their class is working out of seven year-old textbooks. I could understand her complaint if this were Current Events or even American or World History but what sweeping changes have occurred in the world of Algebra in the last decade or so? Math is math, two plus two is still four (until you get to the theoretical stuff).
When her Health teacher said, "I do not accept late work" I nearly started clapping I was so happy. Then she kept talking and explained that it was because she "didn't have the time to grade it and let's face it, Health class isn't exactly critical is it?" I wanted to cry.
The next teacher was interesting and I was impressed. When she was done with her spiel she asked for questions and one of the parents kind of gave her shit for not putting her class assignments and homework on a webpage every day. Most teachers have begun to do this but she very confidently said, "I don't put my assignments online, I write it on the board and the student copies it down every morning." I think this time I actually did start to clap. A teacher that isn't bowing to the easy way out? A teacher that is making her students become organized and responsible for their own work? Yeah! I was very impressed. But then, she kept talking. She explained that her website is giving her troubles and when she figures out how to make it work the way she wants, she'll start putting the work on line.
When did middle school start working like a Sally Struthers correspondence degree in dental hygiene, taxidermy or gun repair? You copy your assignment down off of the board, if you lose it or you copied it wrong, you got a zero. End of story. Late work isn't accepted because it's not fair to the rest of the class that got their shit together and got it done on time. Who the hell are you to think that you can get an extra 24hours on an assignment when we all had to get it in on time? These are not new complaints. This is how it has always been. It's no wonder we're being left behind in education. For years now the kids haven't been learning anything and NOW they aren't even learning HOW to learn anymore. All in the name of lowering our standards to make the dumbest kid in the class "normal". Fuck! I think I might start looking into home schooling. Teresa would make a wonderful teacher, the only obstacle to this would be organization and structure. Becca would never adapt to a structured "school time" at home. She'd find every way possible to screw around. I know I would.
All of this could be passed off by the casual "oh you're getting old. You're already starting in with the 'back in my day...' speeches". No, that's not it although I am getting old. I just listened to an interview with a pagan musician and when asked how he got started he said, "When I was in fourth grade I saw Axl Rose screaming away on stage wearing a kilt..." GNR didn't really hit the scene until 1987/88ish and he was all leather, denim and spandex. Axl's kilt wearing stage wasn't until "Use You illusion" in 1991. I was already out of school, this guy was in fourth grade... As young as I am, I am getting old.
Thursday, 9-6-7
I haven't posted since that last post about Pop-pop dying and I've got a lot to catch up on.
It is expensive to die. Even with the bare-bones minimum they will get you for at least $1200. That's just spare change compared to the more elaborate plans they want to sell you. Wednesday we all went in to the funeral home and made our plans. He was being cremated and shortly after, inurned at the cemetery that already has his marker stone with my Nana. We talked at length with the guy and he turned out to be as inept as he appeared. Pop-pop and Esther never filed a marriage certificate with the state so while they were married in the church and in the eyes of their god, the State of Florida does not see them as married. This means that there are a few forms on which she can not be listed as "wife". Ok, this makes sense but we're talking about a grieving 92-year old woman. Did he need to take every opportunity to make the remark? She even said, "Boy I feel like such a slut!" When he explained it we all understood, that should have been the end of it. We already talked about making the arrangements to have the State forms signed by the three sons, why did he have to keep reiterating it and making her feel so bad?
So he's going on about the costs and what the services are. He gets into a lot of detail and she made it clear right away that she understood what "care for the deceased" entailed and that she wanted to move on to the next line. Nope, he decides to go right through with every step in rich color detail. By the time he got to "refrigeration of the corpse" she was shaking and I had to stop the guy and tell him to move on and that if he had to go through the details, do it with us later in private. (I kind of like those morbid details but, I'm not most people)
When I had arrived that morning, everyone else had already been working on dressing up his obituary. We refined it, went into reasons why/why not to list this or that and how to make it just right. We printed it out and even gave a copy to the guy. He wrote everything down on his forms and we repeatedly corrected what he wrote because we wanted to get it right. He didn't. The obit listed Esther's name wrong and a few other typos. With this guy's shitty bedside manner and lousy eye for detail, he should not be working with the old and grieving. He's more suited to government work. Maybe I can get him a job with me in the FAA...
We got the $75 urn because it was under a sheet at the funeral and in a few weeks (few days if not for waiting on a second service for family that couldn't make it there in time) it would be going in the ground. $75 for something we barely saw and are disposing of shortly. Why couldn't we bring in a coffee can or even better, an old birdhouse that he made? That would be sweet wouldn't it? Sweet and free. $250 for the guest book. The Dollar Store has spiral notebooks on sale 3 for $1. I never even got to sign the thing because I was in the family processional. It is a nice keepsake for Esther but $250? Maybe the spiral notebook was a little crass but you can get a beautiful blank book, bound with an appropriate cover (flowers or birds or a sunset or whatever) down at Barnes and Noble for $25.
I had returned home for Becca's birthday and Tammy stayed down there to take care of any arrangements that we hadn't thought of. The local obit was $25. The funeral guy said that any obit to a second newspaper was $50 plus whatever the newspaper charged. We told him to screw off and that we'd put in the second notice ourselves. He owned a store in Connecticut and there is still a lot of family and friends up there so the family wanted to run the obit in one of the local papers back home. Somehow this fell to me. I expected a $20 or $30 charge and that wasn't a problem. I almost fell over when she said it was $250! We weren't putting in a picture or running any elaborate text. His obit was just about the same length of all the ones that ran in the paper, some shorter, some longer. I asked around and Teresa said that was about what they paid for Lada's obit a few years ago. $250? For a few lines in a newspaper? I didn't have it on me. With all of our activities over the summer and Becca's back-to-school shopping, we had depleted our stash. Luckily, we did have another stash but we were trying not to tap into it. Back when we were planning on moving to Pennsylvania we dropped $5000 into Jerry's account for prepping the land and digging the basement. We just pulled $3000 out of it for the new house and we were trying to leave the last $2000 untouched. So Mr. Provin comes to the rescue again. If he hadn't held onto that money for us we would have spent it by now. Even though it was our money it still feels like Teresa went to daddy for help. We've put the last little bit left into a separate account that we won't draw on but now that we have it here it is just a matter of time before we rationalize using it and then we truly are running paycheck to paycheck.
This new house has eaten up our money and we haven't even broken ground on it yet. Ten grand for this, four grand for that, every additional outlet or phone jack is another fifty bucks... We're throwing everything we have into this house. I hope it is worth it. I don't know if we live the lifestyle appropriate to keep this place up. I know we CAN do it but WILL we? I have doubts all the time. Worries and doubts. But then I look at Teresa and how excited she is about having a "two-story in suburbia" and I know everything is going to be alright. I know we can't make everything high end but the kitchen is going to be perfect. She wants hardwood floors, a covered/screened patio and a beautiful kitchen. Everything else is optional. We agreed to get the standard light fixtures and faucets, things that could be easily changed after we move in. I can install a garage door opener but I can't move the sink to the kitchen island as easily. Things like that. My job is to worry and doubt, Teresa's job is to dream and be positive. I'm afraid that I have overwhelmed her on occasion with the level of my doubts but hey, this is a HUGE deal we're doing here and I need to exert some big-time worry here. It's my job.
My iPod FM transmitter is now useless for me. It barely transmits and all I hear is overriding static. I dug out my CD player with the Aux inputs and tore open the dash. I went down to Sound Advice and the guy was a dick. Unhelpful and rude. I don't know why I went there in the first place other than that's where we used to get a lot of work done years ago. I didn't like them back then and I don't like them still. They didn't carry what I needed SO I went over to Best Buy. I couldn't find the right adapter plug or the tabs so I asked the guy. When he heard what year/make I had (2005 Chevy) he grimaced and asked if anyone had broken the news to me yet. Why does "break the news" sound like it's going to cost me another couple of hundred dollars?
Sure enough, it would have. GM runs the diagnostic through the stereo since 2003 (2000 on some models) You have to buy the stereo through the factory or buy the $140 bypass module. This is a work truck, I only want to listen to my tunes... The guy sold me a new FM modulator that runs directly through the antenna cable. It overpowers any signal coming in from the antenna and it's only $60. So I picked it up and after returning to the store to buy the $26 antenna cable adaptors (because GM uses smaller than standard plugs) I finally have my tunes again. I wanted to keep the old transmitter for the charging circuit and the sled/holder but I got a lot of static when I played it like that. As soon as I took it off the charger the sound was crystal clear. I tried Teresa's regular charger and the same thing happens. Apparently my iPod is just old and dying, you can't listen and charge at the same time. But that works out just fine. I just need to buy (or build) an iPod holder so I can free up the cup holder it is currently sitting in and we have solved my travel tunes problem. Teresa inherited the old sled style charger and it works great with her in-line FM transmitter. We both have a better set up and both of our iPods finally work beautifully. I drove up into Georgia and over into Pensacola this week. I only got the hard "S" for a few miles and it must have been from a strong signal coming in. Other than that, I never had to change the station and I never got any static. My volume level isn't artificially low and my podcasts sound great. Almost as if I wired it directly into an Aux port but for significantly less cost.
I went out last night and bought a bottle of scotch and sat here and typed away for hours. I took a break when Teresa called and I leaned back in the chair and heard a "snap". Before I could think, there was a second snap. I went backward and hit my head on the AC but never hit the floor because my legs went instinctual and spread out to grip the arms of the chair to keep me from falling. I've got small bruises this morning where I jammed them into the hard plastic. The entire right side arm broke loose and that was what held the back in place. I cut myself on the sharp break but not too badly. Other than the bruises on my legs, the cut on my arm and the bump on my head I am just fine. The housekeeper was polite but gave me a dirty look. I guess she saw an exceedingly fat guy and a half empty liquor bottle and assumed I was in here tearing up the place. The whole damn world is against me.
Soon I'll be headed home. I should be going that way right now but it looks like they'll hold me over here in Pensacola for no damn reason. They'll give me some busy work to do on Friday "on the way home" and it will be in freaking Miami or Alabama. I went out this morning to install a rack of equipment. The only space to mount it was just above the high voltage transformers. The local guy said OSHA has been riding their ass about this location so he'd have to make room on the other wall by moving some gear next week. So I'm done, there's nothing I can do until we get that spot clear. I'm back in the hotel and ready to drive home but I haven't got the release yet. They'll keep me here until tomorrow. If they haven't cleared me by now (2pm) I know I won't get it today. Ugh. The senselessness of it all. I can't even start drinking yet in the rare chance that I get the call at 5pm. That's alright, I should cut down on my indulgences anyway. I've been smoking my cigars more often and just recognized the correlation between them and my ears getting all clogged up. I didn't put 2 and 2 together until Teresa told me about it. She knows all about that with these little kids in homes with smoking parents. It really screws up their ears. I don't need to be smoking so many cigars anyway. It used to be a rare occasion but now it has become a regular thing. But they occupy my on those long trips a lot better than a bag of chips do. And when you get a really good cigar... oh that smell is incredible. I just had one last week that was a gift to me from a friend (on HER birthday of all things) and there was barely any scent when it was out of the wrapper. I thought it must be old or something and set out to enjoy it anyway. When it was lit up it came alive! This was an incredible cigar. I had plenty of time to enjoy it while on the road without having to pull over to get gas or anything like that. I saved the last bit of it to bring home and share with my drum. I carry a drum with me on the road but not MY drum. I'd be too afraid to have her on the road with me. The extreme temperatures, someone breaking into the truck. Too many possibilities of something going wrong. I have taken her on the road on a few occasions and you should see the looks I get in the lobby and elevator when I carry her up to the hotel room. "He's not going to play that in his room is he?" A while back one couple asked me about it and we sat and talked for twenty minutes about drums and stuff. They asked me about all of the different adornments I have given her and what each one meant. I knew I'd never see them again so it was kind of liberating to be completely free and not have to worry about if they'd understand or what they thought. I'm really only that free with one other person in the world and that's from effort. I'm normally a closed up person. It was kind of surreal sitting in the lounge of a really nice hotel with the drum between us talking with strangers about very personal items but it was nice. Mostly I just get horrified looks from people that think I am going to keep them awake all night.
Okay so maybe I'm not "closed up" meaning that I don't give information about myself but closed up meaning that I am guarded in my feelings, thoughts and words in most things. If you just look at me you already know a lot from my appearance and body language. I'll never be so ignorant as to claim that I am not readable, just hard to interpret about some things. And this confuses a lot of people that don't know me very well. I am easy and free about a lot of things and in others I hide it away. In the things that I do not worry about I hold little back but in other cases I'll consciously project the wrong body language just to confuse those who would read me. I am far from an enigma and I would even go so far as to say that I am predictable in most things. It's just those few things that I am not predictable in that causes the watchers so much consternation. I'd like to believe that I am special, that I am unusual, that I am different. I don't like to lie to myself when I can help it. I am unique, just like everybody else.
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Last Updated: 10/03/07 08:05 PM