• 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.