Thursday, 3-27-8

This write up originally had a "Monday, 3-10-8" and a "Thursday, 3-20-8" tagline but I got busy again and never finished writing this all out.  I have been home and "available" to write since Tuesday this week but I have wasted all of my waking (and some sleeping) hours on a silly new game.  I have been playing "PackRat" on my FaceBook account and it is addictive.  Some people have called it "on-line crack" but I think that is giving it a little too much credit.  At least with crack you get high, ruin your life, go into rehab, write a book...  PackRat is just eating up my time and wearing me down.  Teresa is hooked on it and we play with Jose too.  I was up until 3am this morning and got back on line again at 8am.  I am fighting the addiction and I have been PackRat free for over an hour now (it is 1pm) but Teresa is still in the other room trying to match a set.  So, I have set up the laptop in the bedroom, disabled the wireless connection and I WILL finish writing this out and I WILL get it posted today.  So with no further interruptions, here comes a mash of stuff that has been written over the last month or at least my remembrances of them from a month ago.

Hey guys, remember me?  It's been a while.  Things have been more chaotic than usual around here.  Work had some interesting developments, the current house has required a lot of our attention and the new house has taken all of our energy.  On top of all of that I have been sick for the last three weeks.  This is a second, new illness that has come in on the heels of the last one that lasted a whole month and kicked my ass.  Between these last two colds I have been sick for the better part of two months.  How pathetic is that?  I have been cranky and depressed, overworked and highly stressed.  I have not been fun to be around...

Let's start back with my trip to Charleston.  We got the notice that there would be sixteen of us in a training class.  To keep the costs down on our new project division, they would be booking 2-room suites for us and we should pair off amongst ourselves.  I looked over the list and I only knew two of the techs personally.

Carl is a good guy but very opinionated and brash.  He has a very narrow view on religion but insists on talking about it all the time.  You can imagine how much fun THAT is...  This is the guy from Miami I talked about a few years ago and while I still maintain that he is a nice person, he alienates just about everyone he meets.  The only other tech I knew was Penny.  She and I get along exceptionally well and I like hanging out with her.  So I called her and found out that no one has talked to her about getting her own private room.  So she asked that if she had to share a room, would I room with her because she's comfortable with me and doesn't know any of the other guys.  So we sent the e-mail saying we'd room together and about a week later, someone realized that Penny is a female so they booked her into a single room.  So now I had to find someone to room with.  The only person available?  Carl.  But wait, the story gets better, he's driving up from Miami.  Rather than have me fly up, Carl will pick me up and we'll ride together.  Oh man is this going to be fun...

Well whatever gods there are smiled upon me and Carl had an obligation to take care of and would be a day late to the training class.  I got to drive up by myself and get settled in without any hassle and that was nice.  I got to meet all the other techs that I've talked with on the phone and meet them face to face.  A bunch of us went out for a few drinks and had a great time.  Penny and I went to a Sam's Club and bought two huge bottles of liquor and spent just about every night drinking down in the hotel lobby.  She got "Gentleman Jack" and I got a bottle of Crown that was so big that the purple bag it cam in was big enough to be a sleeping bag!  Carl showed up but didn't want to spend any time with the party crew of techs and ended up spending most of his time in the room.  It was kind of a shame, maybe if he had hung out a little he would have loosened up and become less of an outcast.

One evening I was feeling a little slow and it looked like the party was going to take a night off.  So I went up to the room early and got on the computer.  About half and hour later in comes Carl and immediately starts talking religion to me.  He knows my point of view from earlier conversations and I guess he feels an obligation or a morbid fascination with "converting" me or something.  He uses all of the programmed responses and I have heard them all.  I recognize Christian rhetoric when I hear it and it immediately tells me that the person talking to me stopped thinking for themselves and are now spouting their church's party line at me.  There are certain phrases and passages that just wave a huge red flag at me and tell me that I am no longer in a conversation and have now crossed over into the "rhetoric zone".  I imagine that this happens when the person I am talking with knows very little about what they are talking about but refuse to admit that I know more than them.  Or at least admit that I am better prepared for this conversation than they are.

Sometimes inspiration comes from the strangest of places.  Christians get their inspiration from God, I however, get a lot of my inspiration from Christians.  Right now...  Well, not as you read this but as I am typing this, just this very second and for the last twenty minutes, I have been sitting across our hotel table from Carl and he has been going on and on about religion and trying to let me know things and making himself sound so great he is (all the while saying how humble he is)  Carl spits out these ridiculous claims and when I throw the "Bullshit" flag, he has nowhere to go but into the rhetoric zone.  Many of the crazy, whacked out claims he makes are pretty standard fare.  The planet is only 6000 years old, the Bible if absolute fact and everything in it really happened, the Muslims extremists are full of a desire to kill but Christians extremists are full of love.  Shit like that.  I've heard all of that before and I just smile and laugh at how some people can believe anything.  But when he starts in on how there are people in the United States that have never heard the name Jesus Christ before I have to throw the flag again.  He insists that not only do these people exist but that he has met and ministered to many of these people.  I clarify the situation and allow that MAYBE there are small children that have never heard the name but no, he insists that there are fully grown adults living normal lives that have never heard the name Jesus Christ at any point.  I don't have a bullshit flag big enough to throw at this one.  I sincerely doubt that there are fully grown adults anywhere in the WORLD that have never heard the name, but I'll concede that point saying that it is probable that some small tribe somewhere in the middle of nowhere has yet to be discovered.  But to say that a normal functioning (non retarded) fully grown adult living anywhere in America has never been exposed...  I want to know where these people are.  Where can you go in the world (much less America) that hasn't been infested with Christians trying to convert everyone they see?  Where is this magical place?  I want to know because I want to find out how they kept the missionaries out, I want to discover the secret that has kept them Christian-free.  There is nowhere in the world that these people haven't tried to spread their "good news".  I'll politely smile and nod when you tell me the planet and everything on it was created in 144 modern hours or that a virgin gave birth to a man who will save the world.  These are old stories and I'll allow you to have your delusions, I have no intention of taking them away from you.  But when you intentionally insult me by trying to get me to believe that there are people in this country that never heard of Jesus Christ, I've got to yell bullshit.

Luckily, Penny and Tracy called and said the party got started so I excused myself, grabbed what was left of the dunking booth sized bottle of Crown and got up to leave.  I told Carl we were all meeting downstairs to enjoy a little sin, would he like to join us?  He said he wasn't up to it and wanted to go to sleep.  Oh well, more for us.  I was at that training class five nights and I think the earliest I went to bed was 1am.  How often would I get to hang out with these people?  This new project I am on is 30 people nationwide and I was hanging out with people from Massachusetts, Montana, Seattle and San Diego.  I'll work with them on the phone but I'll probably never see them again.  Why go to sleep, why not hang out and party a little?  I was always ready to go first thing in the morning and passed all the tests with flying colors.  A little drinking never got in the way of getting my work done...  Not yet anyway.

Some of the guys aren't taking the class serious at all.  It's not their drinking that is getting in their way, it is their lack of respect and their total disregard for promptness.  I have always tried to be early for appointments.  I figure that being "on time" is late.  If you show up a little early you can get your things together and be ready to go when the class starts.  And showing up late from a lunch break has ALWAYS been one of my pet peeves.  Well there is a clique of guys that showed up late every afternoon.  I was out of my mind with frustration and rage that week.  I wrote the following in class one day.  I wrote it in white font on white background so the techs behind me couldn't see what I was typing.  I have edited it but if I missed any typo's, you'll understand how they got there.

I'm sick and tired of being one of the "good guys".  When will it be my turn to be the asshole that gets to hang out as long as I want and make the rest of the crew wait for me?  Why can't I just ONCE be the one who has ZERO sense of personal responsibility and just come waltzing in 45 minutes late!?

I'm  sitting here in a training class in Charleston, SC and it is a group of fifteen adult men (and one woman).  I was told to be on site at 7am Monday morning so I traveled (off the clock because it is a new project with minimal budget) and I was awake and ready to go first thing on Monday.  One of the other techs didn't come in until Monday night.  Monday night we went out drinking (heavily) and I didn't go to bed (pass out) until close to 3am.  I was awake and fresh, ready to work at 7am Tuesday morning, on time.  We have a few crew members that were 45 minutes late coming back from lunch (one hour for lunch so these guys were gone 1:45) and they all said that it was a train blocking the road.  The instructor got upset and said that he's a stickler for time and there is NO "ish" on the end of the times he gives.  "Be here at 8am on Wednesday morning."  Wednesday morning rolls around and some of the guys come rolling in around 8:20.  They got held up coming through the contractor gate.  So Wednesday afternoon rolls around and we have to be back at 1:15.  As we are getting out the door, the instructor says, "Hey, I'm serious, 1:15, not 1:15ish!".  The four responsible techs are back at 1pm or even 1:10.   

At 1:30 we call them and the comment we get is, "Hey, I'm with the boss, that means I'm not late."  We are so fracking livid!  We all go out back for a smoke break.  We take our time because it will be good for them to wait on us.  We take a good long break and we return to an empty classroom again.  2:05 they finally come strolling in and can't figure out why the hell we're angry. 

When they finally make one too many comments we finally stop biting our tongues.  When we call them on their bullshit the ringleader starts spouting out, the self-righteous offence attack of, "Hey, if you're not enough of a self-starter to get going without me then it's your problem.  If you need me to hold your hand and get you going then you need to re-evaluate your skills."  I blew up and among some of the comments were things like "Fuck you" "Personal responsibility" and "Chair across the teeth".  I haven't heard anything since 2:15 because I'm just sitting here ready to kill 2/3rds of the class.  Fucking prima-donna asshats.  I want to just get through the day and get back to the hotel or even take a drive out to visit Heffner (he's working about an hour away).  But every time they smile or continue on with their presentations like they did nothing wrong and that it's MY fault for being on time...  I want to do many many many graphic things to them.  I can't possibly be expected to learn anything in an environment that makes me fantasize about killing my fellow students. 

When they were 15 minutes late I tried to get the class to continue without them but I was told that I have no compassion for my fellow students.  "No man left behind."  Maybe I fall for that the first time but not on the second and never on the third.  Fuck these guys, I hope they never get back here.  If they died in a car wreck, I'd learn more in this class rather than the constant distractions of seeing their smug little faces.  I want to pull their teeth out one at a time with a paperclip.  I want it to be slow and I want it to hurt.  I want to drop a heavy table on their faces and drag them around the floor until the carpet burns through their flesh and muscle and I polish their skulls.  I want them to go away and I never want to deal with them again.

This CSMP project was supposed to be the best of the best, the cream of the crop.  There were about half of the entire crew in this class and it looks like about 1/3^rd of us actually give a shit. 

Why can't I be that guy that floats through life, not giving a shit and come out smelling like roses?  Why can't I be "Josh"?  Why do I have to be the guy that has a coronary every time I see this type of person?  Why do I let them get to me?  I find that I generally surround myself with the same type of people (VERY generally) and  it was funny, the four people that were back on time and waiting on the rest of the crew were me, Penny and two other techs that Penny and I immediately gravitated toward and have become well acquainted with. 

On top of it all, these dicks are all the know-it-alls and the intellectual bully types.  Well, the room is full of people that are driven and professional.  Is it possible to be Type B personality and an Alpha male at the same time?  Weird.  But good for them, we need leaders like them out here in the real world but, if that means that I have to listen to them justify every wrong they do, fuck that, I'm gunnng one of them down!

So that crisis passed.  After class we all hung out and I didn't hold a grudge.  I just let it go and we all got along fine.  We (techs) always do.  Even when there is a problem, we settle it and move on.  When one of us decides to be a permanent asshole, we just deal around him.  Life is too short to make a big deal out of it.  Even if it seems like a huge deal at the moment, it will probably be unimportant hours later.  You've got to pick and choose your battles.

I spent a lot of the time worrying about what to do with the job.  The new project looks promising but the lack of work is always scary.  On the Saturday before I came to class I got the phone call I was waiting for five months ago.  The primary contractor on the old project wanted to take me on and pay me to work out of Jacksonville.  It would still be travel but only a three hour radius from Jax.  Kind of the same thing I have going on with the new project.  After agonizing over it for a long time I decided that it all comes down to a coin flip for me and all things being equal I might as well stay with the job I'm in now.  I've been here four years, why start over with a new company?  The pay would be the same and so would the work.  I turned them down and recommended they talk to Heffner.  He'd be perfect for the job and I think he's looking for something different.  They either didn't want him or they closed the position because after I turned them down they said they "weren't back-filling any positions".  Sounds to me like Heff just got the brush-off.  That sucks because he's one of the best techs I've worked with and he's wasting away in that assembly line.

Pardon the interruption, remember I told you that Teresa was still in the other room feeding her addiction?  She came running in here telling me that she needed a monkey.  So I turned on the wireless, went online, bought her a monkey and traded it to her for a penguin.  I was going to turn it off right away but why do I want a penguin?  So I traded it up to a Ninja, then to a pair of Hightop shoes, then to a Dentist Drill.  If I can find the toothbrush and the toothpaste I can turn the three of them into a dentist and vault the group.  All I need then is an Apple Pie to complete the set.  But then I got caught up on my other quest to find designer handbags and sunglasses.  I came across a Bee Keeper and that's a new item.  I knew Jose was collecting the bee set so I dropped it in his pack and took a pineapple.  Teresa said that she needed a diet soda and both types of candy to create the Mentos fountain.  I traded my dentist drill, the new pineapple and a few other items for the components and made the fountain for her.  Teresa can trade me for it as soon as the time expires.  This would have been a good time to quit but I just noticed that Jose stole my fortune cookie and dropped an Ice Queen.  Now I need to find more of the snow set so I can vault it...  This all began an hour ago.  I have been PackRat free for twenty minutes now.  On with the show...

So I managed to avoid discussion with Carl for most of the week.  On day in class (during a break) he came back and started talking to me and everything was fine until he started refuting some of my points about Biblical authenticity (made the night before in the hotel room) right in the middle of everyone.  He had a list in his hand.  Apparently he stayed up the whole night finding the answers.  I told him that his entire list was invalid because every one of the references was found in the Bible and therefore a circular reference.  He tried to tell me that they are 66 individual books and that they each count as an independent historical reference.  I just threw up my hands and walked out of the room.  Isn't it a bit convenient that all at the same time it is ONE book, or TWO books or 66 books, it all depends on what point you need to make at the time.  Kind of like trying to explain their trinity to me while insisting it is still monotheism...  I told him that I don't think it is possible to have a dry, factual discussion about religion and that I was unwilling to unleash on him in the middle of a professional classroom setting.  I went outside to get some air and when I came back Carl was in discussion with another tech that had many of the same views as I do.  How was I supposed to know?  That guy could have had any point of view at all and I didn't want to get ganged up on or even as it turned out, I wouldn't want to gang up on Carl.  Because I got dragged back into the conversation I tried to walk out on I just said, "This isn't about right and wrong, this is about faith and you can not convince either side that the opposing side has any merit to it whatsoever."  There again he tried to use the same structured arguments against me and I just told him to save it for later.  I refuse to get into a pointless religious debate in front of fifteen peers that I am going to have to work with.  I don't want to know what side of the fence they fall on, I work with facts and figures at work, I don't want to know that the guy next to me is getting his information from an imaginary friend.

So the ride home was fun.  One hour of trying to avoid the subject and pretending I'm asleep, listening to my iPod and five hours of two very hard-headed people representing diametrically opposed views trying not to insult each other.  You can't sit in a confined space with Carl and NOT discuss religion.  He just brings it up all the time and there is only so much smiling and ignoring I can do before I have to speak.  Modern, intelligent people choosing to believe the improbable...  I don't get it.  But I don't have to, only they do.  The ride home was not without incident.  Teresa had called me the night before and filled me in on some more of the famous one-liners of her journalism teacher.  If I haven't mentioned this before, here's the brief version.  He's using the classroom as a pulpit.  He is constant in his efforts until there is another teacher in the room, then he is completely normal.  He has been spoken to by the administrators on behalf of one girl's parents but he has not stopped his constant "God barrage".  Teresa and I decided to let it ride out because Becca will run into these types of people in the real world and she has to learn how to deal with them.  But his discussions in the classroom have become more and more fervent and it is time to make the phone call to the school.

One of the reasons I was content to let it ride out was because I didn't want to be "that guy".  I was afraid that if this became a really big issue, I'd be identified as the complainant.  Of course, there are Christian children in the class and their parents have supposedly complained as well but leave it to the luck of the draw that I would get picked as the one to identify.  The Atheist with something to prove.  The guy that sues the school system over the Pledge of Allegiance because it says "Under God".  I do not want to be that guy, I just want this guy to teach journalism and not Sunday school.

I don't even like that name, Atheist.  I hate being cast into a category because my ideas are constantly in flux.  Yesterday I was Anti-theist, today I am non-theist, tomorrow may find me as a devout Catholic.  I severely doubt it but I want that freedom to change my mind.  I know that (at least for me) there is very little constant but for change.  I guess what you could currently identify me as would be a "Non-theist with a penchant for ancestor/culture worship."  It doesn't work as a label because it won't fit on the side of a building.  A building that the flying spaghetti monster wants you to pay for.  Never mind, I'm off topic.

So I'm trapped in a truck for six hours and I have to make this phone call.  I ask Carl if he wants to pull over at a rest stop or something and when I tell him why he says that he can keep his mouth shut.  I get the runaround from the school but I finally get to tell the administration what is happening and I get the distinct feeling that I am not the first parent to cal in about this particular teacher.  The guy says that they'll have a talk with the teacher and to call him back if there is not a noticeable difference.  By the end of the week Becca's two-page list of "God quotes" has narrowed down to a minor few lines on a single page.  Nobody wants to shut you down for your belief but if you are teaching a journalism class I would imagine facts should play a large part of the journalist's philosophy.  Telling an eleven-year-old that she will burn in Hell for doubting God's infinite wisdom is wrong.  I'll leave out any personal feelings here.  As a journalist you can't verify any of the facts in the story.  You can't prove Hell, you can't prove God and all the evidence goes against any wisdom if he were to exist.

Finally home from the training class but I've got a LOT to do.  Some of the techs have been on the new project since the end of September.  Sitting around with nothing to do.  I have been working right up until Friday, drove out to the class on Sunday, came home on Friday and they already have work for me on Monday.  Between Friday and Monday though, they want me to empty the truck, clean it out and return it to the fleet vehicle place.  The truck was part of the old project, the new trucks will be coming in over the next few months.  I'll miss this truck a little bit, I've put just over 100,000 miles on it in almost exactly two years.  You think I wasn't moving around?  There are truckers that don't do that kind of mileage!  So I bust my ass to get the truck empty and finally drop it off around noon, just in time to go fishing.

I don't fish.  I can't fish.  Aside from one afternoon helping Becca pull in her fish while Uncle Johnny took the kids fishing, I haven't been fishing since I was about nine years old.  But back around Christmas, Tammy asked if I would take Nicholas fishing.  I said I would take him anywhere, just set up a date.  He's a good kid and I don't get to see family very often, much less the kids so I was looking forward to going fishing.  Until they set a date.  Then I realized that I don't have any equipment or even a license.  Once again Thom comes to my rescue.  He goes fishing all the time and offers to go with me so we'll have fun instead of me fumbling around and looking stupid.  Saturday arrives and the wind is blowing like a hurricane and it is cold.  I can't cancel because Nick is looking forward to this and I honestly don't see a free weekend in the near future.  So off we go.  Into the cold wind, me coughing the whole time (more on that in a few minutes).  Thom caught a tiny fish and let it go.  Nick spent the whole time wanting to cast and reel it back in, cast and reel it back in.  He insisted that he felt a fish but to be honest, in that wind you wouldn't feel a truck pulling on the pole.  One time we realized that after he cast it, the wind caught his bait and he never hit the water.  He was flying his shrimp like flying a kite.  He never noticed, he was having fun.  I was just happy to be out there and enjoyed the time with Nick.  He's a swift kid and I hope we get to do stuff like this more often.  It would be nice if we could get Gavin to come with us too.  Why not?  Neither of them will realize that Uncle Chris doesn't know what the hell he's doing...

Sunday came and I am bedridden.  Thursday in class Anthony started looking real bad.  Sweating and going pale.  Looking pale isn't very easy for a black man to do...  He had been coughing all week but Thursday and Friday he looked like death.  The classroom was unbearably warm and with all his coughing I guess it was inevitable that some of us got sick.  After conferring with the rest of the crew it turned out ten of the fifteen of us got really sick, three others just felt "off" and the other two say they felt fine.  So now I am referring to Anthony as "Patient Zero".  But for all the sickness (I'm still getting over it three weeks later) it gave me a nugget to run with in an idea about spreading infectious diseases.  I haven't decided how I'm wiping out humanity yet but everyone has one story in them that has to take place in some kind of post-apocalyptic world.  Hell, Kevin Costner has made a living out of them...

Monday I reported for work here at Craig Field.  The coughing was harsh and constant.  I was feeling absolutely dreadful but hey, the show must go on.  We had four airports to hit in two days.  We finished Craig Field and headed to Gainesville.  I got there at noon and had to wait for the customer to show up at 1pm.  While waiting I sipped on some water, nibbled on some trail mix and slept a little bit.  About 12:30 I got up and went to the rear of the van.  I lifted the tailgate and sat there for a minute.  I felt like I was going to throw up.  I started coughing and dry heaving.  I fell to my knees and realized I couldn't hear anything but a faint ringing.  My vision washed out to a bright white.  I could still see vague shapes in the parking lot and I recognized them as cars but only because I knew where I was.  I realized I was going to pass out or die. I couldn't drive to the hospital so I reached for my cell phone to call 911.  Just about the time I flipped the cover I couldn't remember how to work the phone.  My body just gave up on me and wanted to go to sleep.

I got through it and started to feel better.  I was very lucky that I had my suitcase in the van with me because in my body was spouting illness from all ports.  I made it to the private hanger, got washed up and tucked in just in time to start work.  We worked at Gainesville until 7pm.  I got a hotel room, crashed for the night and drove to Hernando County airport at 6am.  We finished there and headed over to Crystal River and finished up around 5pm.  I was feeling like death herself.  But like they say, when you play at this level, you play through the pain.  I drove through Inverness to get home and I stopped to have dinner with my parents.  I was worried about being contagious but they insisted that I stop by.  We had a good time and when I got back on the road I ended up pulling over at a rest stop and when I looked in the mirror I barely recognized myself.  I looked like a mass-murderer.  Something that I normally don't mind but really, I looked scary.  My hair was a mess, my skin was white, my eyes were bright red and I was breathing through my open mouth.  I must have scared those poor old people at the restaurant.  I looked like shit.  (more so than usual...)

Upon returning home I had to sort through all the tools and material that I dumped out of the truck.  The company wanted tools and test gear shipped back but nothing else.  They told us to "dispose of the material as we see fit".  Trouble is, most of it is crap I can't use.  Anyone out there need a box of 1000 cotter pins?  Shit like that.  I gave my mother the ladder because every time I go down there I see her standing on that decrepit aluminum ladder and I keep waiting for the phone call that said she's fallen and broken a hip or something.  Now she has a new (barely used) industrial fiberglass ladder.  I bet she still uses the aluminum one...

Last week we all decided to have an "adults night out".  Jeff, Trisha, Me, Teresa, Tammy and Chris all got together without the kids for a night out.  At the last minute Tammy's babysitter was sick so Chris stayed home with the kids.  So the five of us went out and had fun.  We went out to TGI Fridays.  It was early on a Saturday night and the place is a bar, so when Trisha ordered a drink and specified "Absolut" vodka and the guy said they ran out, I thought he was joking.  Nope.  Dead serious, they were out.  So we finished our drinks and headed to another place.  Jeff and Trisha picked up the round and off we went.

We ended up at Ruby Tuesdays and had a blast.  We had a waitress that played along with us and joined in on our fun.  I was going to drink water because I was driving but when she described the special; A grape martini made with a vodka that is distilled from grapes but triple filtered so the grape flavor is taken out of it, added to white grape juice and three frozen grapes are served in it."  I just HAD to try that one.  Vodka made from grapes that doesn't taste like grapes added with grape juice?  My head was spinning and I hadn't even had a drink yet.  So everyone else had four of five rounds and in between I ordered shots of Petron for everyone.  When it came time to split up the bills I said that the ten Petron rounds were on my tab, Teresa said, "No, we'll pick up all the drinks."  The waitress did a double take, I looked at her like she was crazy and everyone at the table asked if she was sure?  You can tell Teresa doesn't go out drinking very often because none of these clues told her what she was in for.  The waitress brought the bill to us like she was sorry or something.  I estimated the amount and it actually came in a bit under what I thought it would be.  A $200 bar tab is normal when Heffner and I go out and get absolutely shitfaced.  This was a polite, happy dinner but it was five people.  Teresa had never seen a bill that big before.  She almost shit when I threw $60 at the waitress for a tip.  Tipping a waitress well is one thing but you always tip out your bar tab higher than normal and this girl was a lot of fun.  She deserved every penny.  Teresa said we had to be on bologna sandwiches and KraftDinner for the rest of the month to make up for it.  I told her she got off easy, there were no strippers this time...

I'm late posting this and to be honest I've got a lot left to fill in so I'm not sure if I'll get this up tonight.  It is the equinox and as is recent custom I shaved off my winter beard.  I look like crap.  I look like crap all the time but when I make dramatic changes like this it just reminds me of how ugly I really am...

Nope, I didn't get that posted last week.  But I'm in the home stretch now (and I haven't been on PackRat in over an hour again...)

We went down to Mom and Dad's again for Easter weekend.  Becca took Julia with her and the girls had a great time.  The pool was still down from the winter so I figured that the girls would be bored but they seemed to have had a blast.  I put up a rope swing in the front tree where Becca's old swing used to be.  It rusted and died a long time ago so when I was down there last week I decided to fix it the next time I came down.  I brought a roll of nylon rope with me (dispose of the materials as we see fit) and created a run line for Luna.  The dogs will be staying with them for a month or so while we go back and forth to DC and festival and move in to the new house...  Pagan obeys commands most of the time and generally stays put but Luna is a bird dog and if you give her five minutes alone she'll wander.  Alone with Pagan she's never escaped but Kittie is down there and she's a Beagle as well as a Houdini hound.  Put her in a box and figure out how she got out...  So Luna gets a stringer for the times that she's unattended.

On Sunday one of the nylon ropes I just put up for the swing broke.  It got a lot of wear this weekend.  I put it up Saturday morning and the girls were constantly on it right up until we got in the car to come home.  No computer, no television just a rope swing and some arts and crafts.  Like an old fashioned trip to the grandparents house should be.  The next time I'm down there I'll have to rig up a chain or something and hook the ropes to that so they don't rub on the tree so much.  I don't want anyone falling down, not without a video camera running.

Another thing that came to my attention is my immersion in my cocoon.  When I'm home, I nest and sit here and very little gets done.  I do all my best writing while I'm on the road, I've had expense reports to get to but I haven't even started them.  I haven't even posted anything to this website.  I don't answer phones, I don't chat online.  I have watched a total of three movies since February and haven't written any of them up yet.  (I will get to them soon!)  I have been sick as hell and busier than ever but I wish I had a few hours to go out and see a few choice people.  In particular I would love to get over and help Wade with his trailer restoration but by the time I realize I have an hour to spare, it's over and I have something new to do around the house.  I have been busy during the days for sure, but there is a lot of time at night that I could devote to getting all of this work done.  Instead I play with iTunes or read a book.  The slack work schedule couldn't have come at a better time.  We've had a bunch of showings on the house and we have to disappear for a couple of hours.  We'd use that time to go visit with people but we've had the dogs with us so we always ended up at the park where Becca and I shoot basketball and run with the dogs.  We also had our initial walkthrough on the new house.  I was allowed to get picky but there were a lot of little "flaws" that were just part of life, you let them go.  One flaw that I won't rest on is level.  The intercom master unit is off level and is noticeable from across the room.  This one MUST be fixed!  I can handle a tiny bubble in the textured ceiling paint but level is one thing I will not ignore.

We almost made last minute plans to drive to Pennsylvania tonight to visit Jerry/Liz and then drop off Becca in DC on Monday but Teresa decided to stay put in town and go with out initial plans.  So we'll drive up to DC on Sunday night, drop Becca off and drive home Monday.  Tuesday we'll rent the U-Haul and load up the house.  We close on Wednesday morning and by Wednesday afternoon we'll be moving in.  Friday we drive to DC, sightsee and pick Becca up on Sunday.  We'll drive home Sunday night/Monday morning and then get ready for festival.  Tuesday I'll get out to set up at festival and spend the week running on the CON 3-2-1 rule.  Convention rules suggest 3 hours sleep, 2 meals and 1 shower per day.  That sounds about right.  Sunday we'll pack up and FINALLY return to fully move in to our new house.

It does look like we will be getting the new house.  We had to accept an offer that was a considerable amount below our "bare minimum" but he's taking the house "as is".  He won't ask for a new roof, he won't ask for new windows and he won't ask about any plumbing issues.  All things that we knew we'd have to address if we were ever going to get a serious offer on the house.  If the realtors drop their points to the minimum we'll get out of this house and into the new house with $270 to spare.  (Just enough for a night out drinking at Ruby Tuesdays)  Not enough for Teresa's furniture dreams and not enough for my garage build-out dreams but we'll be in the new house and out from under this one.  This only means that we'll have to hang on to our old furniture for a while longer and the new house will look hauntingly empty.  So any housewarming party is postponed until we at least get a couch.  Money will be tight until we see what surprises the new house throws at us.  Taxes, insurance, neighborhood association fees, etc...  It will be the better part of the year before I feel comfortable spending ANY money at all.  But Teresa is really cruising along on her plans to open her own day-care so money should loosen up here soon.  In fact, she finally broke her PackRat addiction so she could study.  She has her final licensing test in the morning.  By tomorrow night she'll be licensed to run her own daycare.  She's worked so hard at it and I am so proud of her.

I guess I had better bring this behemoth to a close.  If I could keep up this kind of word count I could finish NaNoWriMo by the second week.  If you read this far then you get the good stuff.  I am humbly sorry that I have not updated in a month.  It has been tough and I have been several versions of myself.  The following descriptions have fit me at some point in the last 30 days: Angry, depressed, lazy, busy, tired, sick, cranky, despondent, neurotic, psychotic and did I say lazy already?  Oh who am I kidding?  Most of you know me well enough to know that all of those descriptions fit me in any 30 MINUTE period!  But really, it has been a tough month and I have been out of my head.  I will try to maintain communications with you at a regular pace from here on out.  The software changes Wade told me about sound like it will make things SO MUCH easier but it just takes the time and effort to get those changes built.  It will come.  Thanks for sticking around.  New pictures of the house are up (we're nearly finished!!!) and late movie reviews will follow for "Marjoe", "The Kingdom" and "Waiting".  See you real soon.

Now back to PackRat...  (Just kidding!)