This Week: 5/15/2002

You would think that Cheryl would know better.
I’m sitting in the dinning room after supper one evening. I can’t remember what we were talking about. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I mentioned the cost of some software that I would like to get some day. You may be thinking that this was some clandestine plot to plant seeds, but it really wasn’t. Cheryl responds: “why don’t you go ahead and get it?” At this moment, several reasons come to mind, most of which involve nonspecific memories of Cheryl saying “…we don’t have enough money for that right now….” So I reply, “Because I didn’t think it was a priority right now, with all of the things we want to get for the house.” Now, you have to admit that this was a world class response. I couldn’t have come up with a better reply if I had a night to think it over. Cheryl thinks it over and decides: “well, let’s see where we are after this month.” You bet I will!

What I did this weekend, in 20 words or less:
I played with a free, tryout version of the software I hope to buy next month.

When I wasn’t playing with my computer, we did a couple of responsible things this week. We finally made it down to Home Depot to buy Pergo, the laminate alternative to real wood that is a snap to install. We’ll see in a couple of weeks I guess (when it is delivered). We also go to see the famous Garrison-Jones Elementary School, where Beth will be starting kindergarten next fall. It’s funny how everyone refers to school starting in the fall. I can’t remember school ever starting sometime other than August, and nothing says summer to me more than August in Florida. You go running around in my back yard in August and tell me it’s fall. The occasion for our visit to Beth’s new school was parent orientation. We got to meet all of the kindergarten teachers, sit in little people chairs, and be spoken to like the little people that normally sit in them. I don’t mean to infer that they were speaking down to us, just that their classroom techniques were coming out in their presentation. The best example that I can think of was this: a teacher pointed to each of the items of a list posted on the wall, as she spoke about each item. The practice of pointing to visual aids as you discuss them is common. What made me feel like a kindergarten student was the teacher pointing to each of the individual words as she spoke them.

We spent mother’s day at our new, old standby: Jesse’s Seafood. Unlike our last experience there, I loved my food. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my in-laws. Cheryl’s mom sat across from me and said, “I ordered my steak cooked medium.” I then looked at a cross section of her steak. I could describe what I saw in many ways. However, none of them would include the word “pink.” Cheryl’s mother can be one of the most diplomatic people I know (when speaking to someone other than a blood relative). Despite her struggles dividing the meat into digestible portions, the worst thing she had to say about her meal was: “the meat seams a little tough.” This seemed a bit of an understatement, considering the color of her knuckles at the time. They had less pink in them than the meat.

On a somber note, we’ve been coping with the prospect of losing some friends to relocation. The best man at my wedding appears likely to be headed to Virginia. While we are happy for him and the opportunity that awaits him and his family, we are saddened and jealous by the prospect. I don’t make friends easily, and making matters worse I don’t pay enough attention to the ones I’ve got. We will see them off with no small amount of sadness and regret.

Finally, I’m finishing this up on the 8th anniversary of our wedding, and I love my bride more than ever.

This Week: 5/8/2002.

It is dark. There is something not quite right with the world. You are not quite sure what it is, but you know it is out there. A respite! Is it gone?

No.

It has come again. Suddenly you know what it is. The phone is ringing. It was ringing a moment ago and now it’s back. You look at the clock and notice the time: midnight. You get up and answer, because you know if someone is calling now it must be important.

“Hello?”

“John?, it’s your mother. Dad’s at the hospital.”

You’re fully awake now. You immediately think of a similar call six months ago when your father was in the hospital with a heart attack.

“He was having chest pains this evening and he decided to call 911. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital. Can you come and get me and take me there?”

This was how it started. Fortunately, that’s how it ended. We got to the hospital and it appeared that everything was O.K., a false alarm.

After you’ve stayed up all night and you want to get a little sleep, can you picture yourself with a hammer, a box of nails, and thick, black blankets to hang over the windows? After last night, I don’t have to use my imagination anymore.

After catching a couple of hours of shuteye, mom and I made our way back to the hospital, where Dad had been admitted for observation. We met Lisa and Eric there, and spent the afternoon chatting away in dad’s room. After Lisa and Eric left, and dad’s dinner was served, I suggested to mom that we get something to eat ourselves. This meant a trip to the hospital cafeteria. The hospital is designed to heal people. The hospital cafeteria is seemingly designed to create new customers. Mom and I warily looked over the selections tastefully displayed under heating lamps, all of which looked as if they were left over from lunch – yesterday. I selected an entree with an ironic name: chicken tenders. We ate in silence. The combined effects of little sleep, bad food, and sitting still all day in small hospital room started taking it’s toll, and we bid our farewell for the evening. On the encouraging side, dad seemed to be doing quite well. All of the tests were coming back negative and the doctor seemed confident that he would be going home the next day. This made it easier to leave, knowing that dad was doing well, so we did.

Compared to a trip to the hospital, everything else tends to fade into the background, so I don’t have much to say about anything else this week.

Well, on second thought, I haven’t been at a loss for words all week, so why should I stop now?

This week introduced me to hiring. I’ve plenty of experience being the interviewee, but this week I got to sit on the other side of the table. It was kind of fun. I know, interviewing for the first time is probably fun like mowing the lawn the first time is fun. It’s fun exactly once. The hardest part was not speaking about the experience with my office mates. I was almost desperate to share with others, but alas, I had to muzzle myself. It was like hearing some big news, and not being able to tell anyone else about it. Oh, the humanity!

I finish this entry sitting outside Beth’s ballet class, by myself for the first time this week. What a group we are, the parents of 6:30 ballet. We’re an even mix of loners and groupies. Not many of my friends would be surprised to see that I’m the only one typing away on a computer. There are plenty of books and newspapers to be had, but only one laptop PC. I’m sitting on a wobbly bench, the kind of surface with exactly three legs of equal length. At one end is a mother trying to read a good book (I’m assuming it’s a good book, I haven’t asked). Meanwhile, I’m hammering away at my keyboard, putting no small amount of follow through in my strokes. You can understand the mother picking another spot, can’t you?

Here endeth the writing week.

This week: 5/1/2002

For all of you who yearn for the good old days of the former Soviet Union, happy May Day!

I was about to leave my greeting at that, but I feared that in doing so I may be showing off the vastness of my ignorance. So, not wishing to appear quite as dumb as I really am, I went off in search of knowledge. First, I tried doing a search on the internet. This led to the discovery of a number of sites devoted to the holiday. Almost immediately my fears were realized, I am just as ignorant as I thought. While the old Soviet Union was notable for celebrating May Day as a kind of socialist Labor Day, May Day predates Labor Day as a worker’s holiday, and originally had little to do with organized labor. May Day originally was (and remains) a celebration of the blooming visible signs of spring. In the United States and Europe, it appears May Day was the original “Labor Day”, but with a more activist flavor. Several web sites claim that May Day had it’s activist origins in the struggle for more reasonable work hours and conditions in the late 19th century. Fearing that anonymous web sites may not be the most reliable research tool, I checked the Microsoft Encyclopedia (Encarta) web site. Sure enough, the article on May Day verified most of the claims by the other sites. So, it appears that you can observe May Day without being a “commie” after all.

Wednesday was notable for a conversation I had with a recently departed, former coworker. I’ve had many similar conversations with this person, and this may have been the last. Although, I hold out hope that it will not. The coworker in question filled an indispensable niche in our office, one that will be sorely missed. She was office confidant, gossip; and, for me – affirmant of worth. Her kind words always made me feel better about myself, even when I felt that I was not worthy. Anyway, Wednesday came and went, and it meant that there was one less day that she would be around.

What can I say about the weekend? It was a weekend, which is inherently good. I didn’t mow the lawn, also good (unless you are my wife). After a prolonged stay in the Apple store (Beth was having a wonderful time with the iMacs on display), we bought Beth a new game for her iMac at home, as a reward for filling another “treat sheet.” Then, after a nice long Saturday of doing nothing in particular, we enjoyed a “first birthday” party with some friends on Sunday. My wife and I both worried that it would be a typical April afternoon, relentlessly sunny and hot. We were pleasantly surprised that the afternoon was positively lovely. Cool breezes and lots of shade ruled the day.

This week was notable in that another milestone came and went. This was not a milestone like a 16th, 18th, or 21st birthday. No one asked me if I wanted anything to go with my milestone. I just felt…well…, I didn’t feel much of anything really. I was shaving one morning, looking intently at my refection in the mirror, and there it was, a gray hair. Some people react poorly to this phenomenon. They might look in the mirror and mutter some explicative. Me, I laughed. It’s not exactly cause for celebration; but then, it’s not cause to take some medication that you might see advertised on T.V. either (…if you suffer from clinical depression or severe anxiety disorder, ask your doctor if Lipiflex is right for you! – may cause dizziness, headache, bleeding gums, loss of appetite, hair loss, or severe intestinal cramping). It was just one more thing to prove to myself that I really am growing up.

We finish our tour of the last week with another day in court. Most notable was the return of the “greedy woman defense” in family court. It’s remarkable to me that anyone believes that this will be a successful defense to a petition for child support, particularly in the kinds of cases that we see, cases where the petitioner clearly does not have sufficient means to support herself (or himself) and a child comfortably. And yet, I’m somewhat surprised that it has been so long since our old friend has paid us a visit. It was about as regular as they get before disappearing for a while.

Ah well, Beth said that she wanted to play football tonight, so I guess that’s it for now.

This Week: 4/23/2002

This is my attempt to put creativity on a schedule. Odd you say, to force yourself to do something that you should enjoy? True, I enjoy my feeble attempts to create, but I find that I rarely have the time to do it. My thinking is that maybe if I make time for it then I will do it. O.K., maybe I’m not explaining myself well, but at this point I don’t care. No one is likely to read this anyway so what difference does it make if some nonexistent reader understands my rationale. I’m writing it. I’m the only one reading it. It works for me. Everyone else can just go on with their normal lives and continue not reading this.

I figure I’ll try to update the site with a new installment every Wednesday, reporting on the events that occurred the previous Wednesday through Tuesday. I figure this will work the best for a writing week. Most things happen in my life on the weekend. Since things are happening I have less time to write about them. However, I do work full time, Monday through Friday. Putting this thing off until Wednesday gives me some time to get it all in. Why not put it off even longer, say Thursday or Friday? Well, I’m glad you were not around to ask.

Wednesday of last week was an unusual opportunity to go to court in Clearwater. Let’s see, Clearwater court = get out early, last Thursday and Friday = days off, two days off = eureka! Thursday and Friday I did as little as possible, mostly hanging out with my sister and her husband who were in town for Lisa’s wedding. I’ve learned the value in doing nothing in particular with your free time. After all, if you make a lot of plans then your time is no longer free.

The wedding was great. It began with the preparations at my parents house. Lisa doing her thing and the rest of us mostly hanging out. The photographer took some posed pictures of the preparation and we were out the door, not to return until much later that day. Beth was supposed to be the flower girl, but her duties went largely unfulfilled. First, she was hesitant to walk down the isle solo, so I agreed to accompany her. Then, about half way down the isle she announces in a louder than conversational tone, “daddy, I don’t want to carry this any more.” She was talking about her basket of flowers which she was trying to hand to me. Feeling that this was not the place to argue, I took the basket and we continued to walk. Does a girl walking down the isle with her daddy sans flowers still count as a flower girl? In any case, Beth was a hit, and made the wedding memorable for me if no one else. The reception at Innisbrook was a refreshing change of pace from the other wedding receptions I’ve experienced. The most notable welcome change? No dancing. No Chicken dance. No conga line. If you wanted to fall asleep in your chair no one was going to stop you. Cheryl did not enjoy the reception quite as much as I did, largely because she felt Beth was being difficult. I didn’t notice so much, but then I was off taking pictures more often. Oh well.

Perhaps the best part of all was the trip to Epcot on Sunday. Me, Cheryl, Beth, my parents, Christy and Mike met Mike’s family in Orlando for an Epcot encounter. The trip was one of the best I’ve had to the park. Outwardly, I’m sure I projected not nearly so glowing a reception of the park. I had this persistent monster of a headache that I just couldn’t shake for much of the day, so I’m sure I didn’t look enthused. However, I still left the park with an overall feeling of joy. Any trip that can overcome that kind of pain must have been pretty good. Further, I think it was just about the most fun that I’ve had with Beth at an amusement park. It was the first time that we all could do the same things together. There was no waiving and waiting while Beth went on another kiddie ride. There were no fits of impatience while Beth waited for a grown up to get off a “big person’s ride.”

Tuesday was notable in that it was an interesting day in court. Most of the folks in court had been wading in the shallow end of the gene pool. As my coworker noted, the missing link has been found! It was just one of those forehead smacking kind of days.

Anyway, that’s about it. I know that this isn’t much. It’s probably boring as sin (assuming that anyone actually suffered through this), but I hope I’ll get better with practice. Why I would think this is anyone’s guess. It certainly isn’t based on real world experience.

It will get warmer and warmer until it gets cooler.

April. Florida. Hot already.

We are about to embark on my least favorite time of year in Florida: summer. In many places summer does not start until July. According to the calendar, summer officially does not start until the end of June. Here in the (brighter than average) sunshine state, summer starts around April fools day – as in: “summer doesn’t start until June 22…APRIL FOOLS!”.

I pull up the Weather Channel and what do I see? Highs in the upper 80’s with 90 degrees just around the corner, enough moisture in the air to to choke a marine mammal, and nary a rain cloud in sight to provide even the slightest repreve. What’s not to like? It’s the time of year when I go indoors, lock the door and throw away the key unitl November – late November. Making matters worse, January thru June is where good holidays go to die. What self respecting, day off producing holiday falls between New years and the Forth of July? Sure, in Florida we have MLK day and Memorial Day, but they just don’t have the tradition nor the celebration quotient that the majors have. Ask a golfer what he’d rather win: the Buick Invitational or the Masters at Augusta. That’s what I’m talking about.

So, to sum up: It’s hot and getting hotter, out door activity is not impossible but not pleasant, and there is nothing terribly exciting going on. Yes, the summer doldrums are here.

Our Stay at Bay.

We planned to take this trip months ago. Ever since our stay at Magnolia one year ago, Beth has been pleading with us to go back to the cabins. This year the drive up was not as pleasant. Last year I was sick, but the drive was great. This year Cheryl was sick and I was in pain. The drive was a chore instead of a relaxing break. Last year we arrived at the cabins after a mild cold front had passed thru, and the air was crisp and refreshing. This year we arrived with a nearly stationary upper level low, and the sky was cloudy, the air heavy with humidity. Everything was musty from the dampness and Cheryl immediately reached for her inhailer. It was an inauspiscious start.

After checking in and dropping off our gear at the cabin, we headed back into town to pick up some perishable provisions. Cheryl was amazed that a small town Food Lion would have a larger selection than a suburban Publix with twice the square footage. We found all of the prepackaged foods that we enjoy so much at home and headed back to the cabin. We eased into dinner. Afterwards I eased into a headache. Neither Tylenol nor Motrin would beat the monster back, so I just went to bed.

The next morning I awoke the sound of raindrops on the roof. I immediately had the urge to go outside to see. Is that strange, having the urge to see rain? I guess I don’t see it all that much in Florida. Besides, it’s strangely relaxing, watching the rain. A downpour gives you just the opposite of peace and quiet, but it can produce the same effect – tranquility. So at last I find what was missing from our last trip, but under much different cercumstances. I sat on the porch, Beth quietly playing inside, typing away on my iBook with the roar of the pouring rain just a few feet away.

One tooth, three teeth

Beth is holding three pencil erasers in the shape of teeth. She advises me (in her typically loud fashion, as if from half way across the house) she has three toothes. Recognizing the grammatical error, I explain to her she has three teeth, not three toothes. Beth, being a relatively stubborn child, insists she has three toothes. This goes on for about a minute or so before I convince her there is no such word as “toothes.”

Finally, she seems to be catching on, so I decide to quiz her.

“Beth, what do you have when you have three?”
“Three TEETH daddy!”
“Good! Very good Beth! Now, what do you have when you have just one Beth?”
“Two missing teeth daddy!”

Frustration, mommy and daddy style.

Tonight we reached another milestone.
We’ve crossed one more bridge for the first time.
We can look back, but we can’t go back.
We can only hope not to cross it again,
or at least not very often.

When her tower of legos unexpectedly tumbled, and consumed with the fire of extreme frustration, Beth exclaimed, “OH SHIT!!!”

She said it with emphasis.
She said it with gusto.
She said it with passion.
She said it with no shame.
She saved it for me.

It’s hard to be angry. I’ve said to Cheryl on several occasions that it’s tough not to swear in such situations. Nothing comes close to the necessary level of catharsis that a good dose of profanity provides. And yet. . .

I am going to have to be more careful.

And while it is nothing to be proud of, I must admit a dirty little secret. I laughed while typing this message. . .out of range (measured in time and distance) to an impressionable set of little ears.

When the little things are enough.

Today was not a great day.

My temperature has had more significant digits than I would like all day, and I’ve felt miserable. When my discomfort has allowed, I’ve slept. When it hasn’t, I’ve sat around in a daze. Poor Cheryl.

While dazing, I’ve watched two movies on my computer (while Beth was watching Free Willy for the 129th and 130th time since Christmas), and two more on the boob tube. About a half hour ago I finished watching my second movie on TV (the HBO premere of Cast Away), and I was T.Veed out. I thought to myself, what the heck, I’ll plug my laptop into my USB hub and see if anything works. Sadly, this kind of thing serves as entertainment around here even if I’m not sick. Anyway,I unplugged my iMac from the hub and connected the hub to my iBook. I grasped my spiffy mouse (the one that has a light instead of a ball underneath), and I moved it around my desk (the mouse, not the hub or my iBook). Sure enough, the cursor on my iBook moved with the mouse. Furthermore, all of the buttons (including the scroll wheel) actually worked as well. This mouse needed a special driver from Microsoft for all of the buttons to work with my iMac, but not so with the iBook running OSX! Whew, O.K. catch your breath. I know that was a lot of excitement, but there’s more. I turned on my new printer and I gave it a whirl. Wiz bang, it printed! I must admit that this wasn’t entirely a surprise, my computer automatically looks for software updates from Apple once a week, and one of the things it downloaded recently was a driver for my printer – but I didn’t have to do anything but let it do its thing.

O.K., I’ll admit that this is not the stuff of epic poems. No one will be casting Mel Gibson to star in the three hour movie. But this is kind of the point. It was kind of a rotten day, and all it took was a silly mouse and printer to work like they should to make my day.

Funny how things work, isn’t it?

A Florida Winter.

“Hey Beth, do you want to go outside and feel how cold it is this morning”, daddy asked at 8 a.m. this morning. “Yeah!!”, Beth replied enthusiastically. “O.K., I’ll pick you up and carry you since you don’t have any shoes on.”

They go just out side the door and rush back inside without hesitation.

“Daddy, what temperature is it in here?” asked Beth. Daddy replied, “well, its about 70 degrees in here.”
“And what temperature is it out there?” asked Beth. Daddy replied, “its 40 degrees out there now.”
“Ooo, that’s a lot of cold daddy.”