ptooey, he said...

Friday, September 28, 2007

It's Somehow Not Right...

...that I woke up this fine Friday morning with the song 'Mairzy Doats' stuck in my head.

I wonder what that means for the rest of the day.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Delayed Weaner

hiccup and I share a common disdain for formality. When we were married 12 years ago, we decided that we wanted no part of a traditional church ceremony. As luck would have it, her uncle is a baptist minister and my parents have a large yard. Perfect!

People generally have set expectations for weddings, so we went through a bit of the usual ceremony. But it was a short affair, outdoors, and the guests were seated mostly in plastic lawn chairs on the grass. Most came dressed for a typical wedding ceremony, in suits and dresses. A few of our close friends came in jeans (not a problem by us, but some of our older relatives gave funny looks). Mostly, we wanted to have a party. The wedding was an aside to the pigroast/beerdrink that we had planned for directly after.

At the time, my parents owned a couple of very eccentric outdoor cats. They were brothers, both neutered males. They were also extremely friendly, and a bit goofy. One was a grey tabby named Snake, who was so docile that we had seen him literally get beaten up by a mouse he caught. Snake surrendered that fight after the mouse had bitten and held onto his upper lip. Pathetic. The other kitty was a HUGE, overweight cream-colored weirdo named Mister. Mister was not often seen far from the front porch, where he liked to sit in hopes that someone would offer him a lap. He was, apparently, taken from his mother a bit too early for his liking as he tended to try to nurse on anything and everything. He also drooled more than any dog I've ever seen. Equally pathetic. The two cats were given free run of the property during the wedding because, why not? One of my most enduring and favorite memories was watching those two idiot felines go from lap to lap during the wedding ceremony. Reactions to Snake were usually either a brush-off or a quick pet and ear scratch. No one knew how to react to Mister jumping onto their lap, sucking their clothes and leaving behind puddles of cat drool.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Presenting Captain Bringdown

ACK!!

Stop this week, I want to get off! I've had cancellations and postponements and moved meetings and employee shortage and insufferable stupidity and frantic child-shuttling and insomnia and uncertainty and a friend is in the hospital and they don't know what to do and...it's only Tuesday.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Time and Its Effects

Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of my brother's wreck. I marked the occasion by forgetting about it completely until I was lacing my running shoes this morning. I don't know what to think of that, really. Perhaps I'm just tired.
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It's been quite a while since I've provided a neighbor update, and it has been interesting, so here goes:


The house to the south of ours was sold to a couple of guys who have been fixing it up with the hopes of selling it by next month. They've put in new carpets, painted the exterior and interior, re-roofed, repaired fence, etc., etc. It looks a lot better, but they're doing a half-assed job at best. Given the price that they're hoping to get, I sincerely doubt it will be occupied anytime soon.

Just to the north, we have vacancy. Blissful, quiet vacancy. Weightlifterguy had moved out a couple of months ago, yes. But he rented his house to his 19 year old loser of a nephew and 4 or 5 of the nephew's drinking buddies. It has been a bad scene, folks. The police have been to that house many times since then. There have been fistfights and 3 AM profanity-laced tirades. The idiots had taken to harassing the sweet 70 year old widow across the street from them. We know for a fact that they had been in our backyard at least once, trampling a tomato plant and leaving behind a flip-flop. I was constantly throwing beer cans and cigarette butts back into their yard. I am not a person who is generally predisposed to the emotion, but I found that I hate those people.

hiccup spoke with Weightlifterguy this morning, and apparently he had to evict all of his tenants a couple of weeks ago - with a baseball bat. They had trashed the house, completely and devastatingly. The carpets are ruined (they had at least 2 separate litters of puppies living there), sheetrock beaten, and windows broken. He told them to get out, and expects it to be at least a couple of months' restoration before he will be able to put the house on the market. I don't know what he was thinking by renting the place to those idiots. There was really only one possible outcome. It's a shame, too, because the house is (was?) really nice. I'm really glad we weren't around for the big confrontation there, because the idea of Weightlifterguy angry and wielding a baseball bat is not a pleasant one by any stretch.

Looks like we'll be playing neighbor roulette soon. Given the events of the last year or two in those houses, I'm game.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Evocative Addiction

When I was 14 years old, I suffered from some really annoying environmental allergies. My hometown is heavily agricultural, and there was no end to the allergens floating about in the summer. I tried the various over the counter concoctions, but they either made me drowsy or made my heart pound like a jackhammer. I got a steroidal allergy shot, which helped but was pricey. My parents weren't able to afford too many of those, so the family doc recommended that I try having a cup of coffee in the mornings, as caffeine works as an antihistamine.

Coffee did seem to help a bit, and I found that I REALLY enjoyed it. Not just the buzz, mind you, but the smell and the flavor and the...well, everything.

This was well before the "coffee revolution", and my dad was strictly a Folger's man. It was all I knew.

When I left for college, I had a friend who was a bit more worldly. He introduced me to good, whole bean coffees and I was hooked immediately. I found that I preferred a nice, dark French roast to any other, and that has been my bean of choice since then.

I once read somewhere that smells can evoke more memories than any of the other senses. True or no, every time I open the canister to put more beans in the burr grinder, I remember what that first bag of French roast beans smelled like when I opened it in my dorm room. I remember cold mornings in the little trailer house. I remember leaving for the hospital from the little house on Beech street as well as the the house on Hayes street and the house on Raton well before the sun came up. I remember nine years of mornings staring out that window into the backyard, waiting for the grinder to finish so I can brew that first pot. Powerful little things, those beans.
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So, yeah, I haven't posted much lately. For one, I've been monumentally busy for the last couple of months, both at work and shuttling kids to and from various events. This morning, I felt like typing, so I'll just throw out a couple of posts. Two-fer Wednesday, or something.

I'll Remember What I Want to Remember, So Cram It!

I dropped by one of my former favorite web hangouts again last evening to see what was shaking. I noticed that there had been recent posts in a thread dedicated to remembering the events of 9/11/01, so I gave it a quick read.

Among the expected heartfelt posts were a few others urging us as Americans to quit attributing so much significance to the events of that day, and to remember that on a global scale, the number of deaths experienced here on 9/11/01 can be matched in number on any given day. The latter is certainly a valid point. We should remember how good we've got it every single day of our lives.

But, what I think these folks are losing sight of is how many people were affected by those attacks, both directly and indirectly. Granted, I don't know if there's any tangible benefit to reliving the event year after year, but speaking strictly for myself I find it extremely difficult not to.

Because of those people and those planes, I lost 2 people who were close to me. It changed my life forever. I cannot forget that, and I most certainly don't want to.

I don't think that there are many folks left who still feel that the war in Iraq was the right course to take, or more to the point that it wasn't a horrific, misguided mistake at the very least. Most people are at least bright enough to grasp that, even if their backgrounds and ideals differ.

I find that my lack of global perspective is not due solely to ignorance, nor is it due to bigotry or a sense of superiority coupled with warmongering nationalism. More likely, it's due to the fact that I am a relatively simple man, and I lead a relatively simple life. My obligations to my family eclipse most other pursuits. My contribution to the planet will likely be no more than to do my best to raise my children well and teach them to respect others and do what is right. And I'm perfectly okay with that. I also don't think that I'm the only person around working toward the same goals.

So, I think I'll continue to mentally mark the day each year. If not for attacks, I might still be able to hoist a couple of mugs with Robert, comparing our brews. I might still be able to joke and trade music with Kyle. I don't want to forget that fact.