• Room

    The second in-flight post!!!

    It’s an hour or so into the flight, and time for a little airline commentary.

    “Spirit airlines: we stack ’em and rack ’em.”

    It’s the first airline I’ve been on where the seat backs don’t recline due to physical impossibility (assuming someone is behind you). As it is, in order for my legs to fit I have to spread ’em wider than Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.

    Thank God I’m not wearing my skirt!

  • High altitude

    This is my first in-flight post in a long time (as measured in senior Kauffman years).

    Pretty exciting stuff, eh? In fact, it’s the most exciting thing in my life since the Lost finale. Heavy stuff, I know.

    It’s my first venture outside the state of Florida in the post cancer era. But wait. I gets better. It’s my first real vacation since those hairy celled invaders started clogging the marrow. When I say “real” vacation, I mean multiple, consecutive work days. None of those long weekend pretenders. We’re off for a week to a beachfront rental house on the Jersey Shore with my sister and my brother-in-law’s family.

    It promises to be a week of relaxing in the cooler temperatures of the northeast, water’s edge hikes on the beach, and walks on the boardwalk.

    The forecast highs are nearly twenty degrees cooler than home – thirty if you count the heat index. It’ll be WAY to frigging cold to actually go in the water. A west-coast Floridian rarely sees beach water cooler than 80F. Walking the shore is what my soul craves.

    I might even throw in a bike rental to satisfy my two wheeled jones.

    I’m hoping to have plenty of time to meditate, JK style – camera in hand, thinking about the perfect picture.

    I rarely find it, but it’s the process I find relaxing not the results. That’s just icing.

    I hope all of you out there have great week. I may still be around – time and thumbs permitting.

  • The muse and me

    Lately I’ve been doing a bit of work on my web site. There was no reason. I just had to tinker with it. Have you ever had that feeling? Maybe you thought it was just right, or maybe you didn’t, but there was a little itch, right behind your starter switch, and you were driven to play around. Sometimes you played trial and error. Sometimes you played with a purpose, something new you wanted to try. But it was always something.

    I’ve never been satisfied with my site. It’s likely due to a terminal case of creativity deficiency. I wonder if there’s a supplement for it? If your cholesterol is too high you can start popping niacin tablets like M&Ms (though it doesn’t always work). So what do I take for creativity? Some use alcohol to lubricate the ‘ole neurons. I can’t drink, but it’s probably just as well. I look at some of the melancholy crap I wrote in college after a drink or six and I wince so hard I fear one day my face might get stuck like that. For others it’s drugs – but that’s out of the question, for reasons I shouldn’t have to explain.

    For me, on those occasions when I’ve really felt in a groove and the juices were flowing, sometimes I think it was mental illness. I’ve wondered if there was a touch of bi-polar to my depression, like my highs might be a touch too high. Medication has me on a more even keel lately… if not a little skewed towards the downward slope. The muse has been conspicuously absent. I can understand why some people don’t like taking their medication.

    Back when I was doing caffeine – before my doctor told me to stop – I noticed bursts of output… or I do now, in hindsight. It’s as close to an artificial high I’ve achieved, and my fingers could really move on them keys baby!

    Now I’m just tired. All the time. Sleep disorders will do that to you. Red blood cell counts on the downward slope will do it too, from what I hear (fucking leukemia).

    Still, my web site is something I can fool around with on the side, something that doesn’t require the “long term” commitment of writing. I can fire up my editor, tweak a stylesheet, sling some tags, and drop it at any time… changes saved or not, on a whim. Sometimes I like what I see. Trial and error has it’s moments. More than ever it’s like making something from nothing – not even inspiration – unless it can hide deep in the subconscious mind.

    This explains the somewhat ugly appearance of my genealogy pages these days. Although the software I use has very limited options for web output, it does allow changes to the convoluted stylesheets. (I’ve got virtually no control over the HTML.)

    Thus the ugly colors and the top border gradient I’m sure you’ve never seen on the web before.

    It kills me knowing I have to go to work tomorrow with ugly pages attributed to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

    Well that’s not exactly true. I could delete the whole thing.

    No, I suppose couldn’t kill all of it, but maybe I could just delete those damn stylesheets. I could leave the pages a styleless mess, but is chaos better than imperfect?

    This post is kind of like my web site. It’s trial and error. No particular inspiration, I just wasn’t satisfied with where the blog left off.

    Maybe I’ll delete it.

    Maybe I won’t.

    Maybe I’ll do it again.