Powder Keg

All my life I've had weird fantasies. I'm not talking about sexual fantasies or fetishes, I'm just talking about daydreams in which situations are favorable to me.

One such fantasy was either dying or getting really really sick when I was younger. Like, cancer or multiple limb removal. The idea was that my situation would be so horrible that everyone I knew would HAVE to pay attention to me, blanket me with pity and presents, be nice to me.

Another has been to be involved with a real revolution, one that would terribly revoke the kinds of lives we all enjoy today. It would start with a basic fight against the tyranny and giant thumb holding us all down. From there it would quickly escalate to martial law, hyper-combative dystopia, hide-and-seek-or-die, and finally post-apocalypse.

It is the latter fantasy I hold very close to my heart as I read the reports coming in regarding occupy wall street in various cities. I see the videos, I read the tweets, the first hand accounts, and all I can wonder is if there is some way I could get involved. Or maybe help to increase the rate of change. Or something.

I'm a little stuck, however. Like many others, I think, I'm trapped. I have a family I have to protect and fend for. I have to keep providing shelter and food. I have to keep them safe. However, I have a deep-seeded urge to join in the protests, the fights. I don't wish harm upon anyone truly, but I do think that there are times when those in power need to realize where they receive their power from. It's like the French Revolution, or any other coup or struggle by the people against the ruling class.

I want to get involved, but I cannot. I don't use a bank, I'm a member of a local member-owned credit union. I don't use big companies for anything but the essentials like utilities (something that is required by law to remain in my house, btw). I do as much as I can without giving up everything, but I'm in fear that this is slowly becoming not good enough.

Were the dam to break, were there to be a serious revolution spark, I'm not sure I know what I would do. I don't own any weapons, I don't have a fortress out in the country somewhere.

I do have a really close network of friends, perhaps we could all huddle together somewhere to figure out a next step. You know, if something were to light the powder keg.

Or maybe everything will just blow over and nothing will change at all.

Reality Augmentation

For the past two years, I was using an iPhone 3G. Not 3GS, but a 3G. I knew there were cool things going on with the newer phones, but was content with the fact that I was using a phone that I didn't have to pay for. Work got me the 3G just before the 3GS came out, and I just sorta sat back and waited.

Our contract with AT&T just ended, and now we're on some crazy fast network, with new 4S phones, and it's pretty cool.

I'm most impressed so far with all the augmented reality apps. Might seem like old news to some people, but I really want this to take off. I want to be able to wear sunglasses that tell me things like the weather, how fast I'm travelling, and do facial recognition to people I pass on the street and tell me things about them. "Oh, that person is a wanted criminal? Oh, that person over there is a famous author? Oh, this person does exactly what I do at work, and is hiring?"

You know it would be cool.

Laryngitis is all gone, but I think I need to get something to finish clearing out this phlegm. Still coughing and it hurts.

I'm also looking into buying a car. Nothing new or expensive, but the beast I've been driving needs new tires. I don't want to spend >$500 on tires when $1000 will buy a car. I'm thinking maybe I'll get a small loan from my credit union, use it to pay off the other loan, sell that car, pay back some people I owe big time, and drive something smaller with newer tires.

Or maybe I'll just buy a shit-ton of twinkies.

Update for elevenseses

The trip was great. At some point I decided that we would be like a leaf in a stream. I didn't want any sort of harsh schedule of events, any requirements, any thing that we HAD to do.

When we landed, we made my brother-in-law take us to In-and-Out, since we don't have any of those back home. We drove through the ghetto of Portland, in the pitch black night, to secure greasy fast food. This is ironic but will become apparent later in the story.

Mom was tense and sad at first, but slowly started to feel better, I think.

We saw some sights over the ten days we were there, but the food was what was really great about Portland. Got to see the Pacific Ocean, something that was on my bucket list. And I got to see my neice and nephew!

The kids handled the flights and airport shit like pros. Maybe it was the coaching, the prep talks, I don't know. But they were great.

On the way to the airport, my father-in-law got a flat tire. We swapped it out in like ten minutes, but it was hectic.

This post is hectic, I'm jumping around way too much, but I keep remembering flashes instead of a solid, consistent timeline.

When we got back into town, I started feeling sick, then go laryngitis! I'm just now getting over it, something like ten days later.

Anyway, short update post today, next week should get back to normal with weird observations and so forth.

Big Trip

Bags are (mostly) packed. Online check in completed. Coffee ingested. Cigarettes smoked.

I feel like everything is ready. I feel like I am ready.

I'm heading out to see my family out in Portland. See, when we first found out my mom was sick, Dad and I tried to figure out a way I could visit. You know, raise the spirits and give hugs and all that. But then he died so suddenly. He was arranging places we could sleep, things we could do.

Before he died, one of the greatest guys in the world offered to fly my family over there for free. He takes tons of business flights and has amassed more points than Kim Khardashian. I really don't think it's possible for me to repay this act of kindness and compassion, but I'm gonna try to find one (or more).

This past week has been really hectic at work, so I haven't been able to get into the travel groove at all. Haven't been a help to the wife, haven't been able to give advice to the kids, haven't been able to plan anything... Even now, I'm sitting here at work waiting for them to give me the go-ahead so I can race home and check bags and print out maps and all that.

I feel like I'm going to forget something.

I talked with my sister briefly last night, just to get a lay of the land and determine what I had to do immediately getting off the plane. She said I'll have to rent a car. Okay, no problem. But where am I driving?

I'll get off the plane, hopefully safe and secure, walk to the car rental place, get the keys, and then realize I have no idea where I am or where I should be. There is talk from the crazy guy about the world ending today, maybe I'm worrying over nothing, and in a deep slumber everything will be over as I'm hovering more than thirty thousand feet in the air.

I feel like I'm never going to be ready.

Attack the Darkness!

It's hard to define and describe exactly what playing RPGs with friends while growing up was all about. It was partially building my own personality, learning coping mechanisms, trying out hero capes, being able to play the villain without the moral implications... It was a lot like being in an editor group of a Choose Your Own Adventure book with six or seven other people, all vying for attention and praise while still allowing everyone easy access to the spot reserved for doing the right thing.

Not to say it was all selfish, nor was it always non-selfish, either.

Like I said, it's hard to define, but the point here is that I did it. I was in the same gaming group for, geez, twelve years? Longer? Most of that time was in one campaign?

Anyway, at this point in our lives, we're all older, we have more responsibilities. A lot of us have kids, ya know? We can't just set aside all that every Friday night to go hang out at someone's house for eight hours and have a group hallucination of elves and swords and magic spells.

But I think back quite often to the times when the dice would roll favorably and everyone would cheer. Sometimes it was almost better when something catastrophic would happen: the dragon won the day, the evil wizard would escape, or the gate to the underworld could not be locked. Sometimes having bad stuff happen meant that there was some sort of equality, some scales of justice that would tip to both sides. Also, it gave us something to do the following week.

Anyway, what got me thinking, and what got me writing: a bunch of us that played together in that same epic group were all at a wedding this past week, and someone said I should take over the role of our GM (the guy that makes the world go round in the game). I was equal parts flattered, thrilled, and scared to death.

A good game makes memories. A good game keeps the players awake at night thinking about strategy or methods to success. A good game makes the time spent worth it.

A bad game is just horrible and awkward and should not be spoken of.

So I've been thinking about it all this past week, dreaming up a world where there is a need for a group of would be heroes. I've been taking ideas from the stories that I've watched, read, and listened to. I'm trying to decide if I could pull it off, but more than that, if I could make a good game of it.

Anal Selection

People are like machines: we require fuel, we produce some sort of waste, we move around and do stuff; occasionally, we break and need maintenance.

I have a family history of cancer. Typically for the males of my lineage, colon cancer appears around age 30, and certain death occurs around 55. I don't know why, but there it is. It's odd, really, until about ten years ago, my own dad didn't know who his real father was. He found out about five years too late, his real dad died without really getting to hug his son as his son.

Anyway, the good thing that came out from learning the truth of his real blood line was the warning that came from all the women (who were still alive): get yer butt checked for cancer. Do it now.

So I did. I discussed the process with my doctor, he said I was too young. I insisted. He referred me to the local brilliant butt doctor who went in for the scope. Turns out, three polyps were removed, and all three were precancerous. Another few years, and I would have probably been doomed to repeat my genetic disposition.

The reason I'm sharing all this is that this morning, I got a call from that specialist's office. They informed me that my three year follow-up was due in January, but the brilliant butt doctor I saw before had retired. So I have to pick a new one. They rattled off like thirty names, all probably equally skilled doctors that can probe butts just the same as any other proctologist, but I don't know about picking one over the phone.

It's hell getting old.

Today and Forever

I'm confused. You see, for a long time now, I've been trying to figure out what life is really all about.

I've thought at times that life was just a joke. Some random set of chemicals and atoms got together and just started a chain reaction. Many many many years later, here we are, and some people try to put a label on it-- try to put rules against it.

Other periods of life made me imagine some crazy huge formula, as if everything was preplanned, predestined. There may be free will, but in the long run it doesn't really matter. Everything that happened to me was supposed to happen, and if there was a string of really bad shit, well, I was just supposed to have bad things happen to me.

Now, well, I still don't really know. I don't think anybody really knows, either. But something I'm going to try to do is to be mindful about what is happening. Knowing the reality of a situation and approaching each moment as it happens seems like a good way of handling life. Similar to the concept of one day at a time, but instead, I want to try one moment at a time.

So for right now, I am trying to focus on what I am typing. The feel of the keys beneath my fingers, the noise of my coworkers on the phone, the traffic from the highway muffled by the windows and walls of this building. The  thoughts roll through me (I don't even think about which key is the letter E anymore, it's like talking?), and they enter this blank white space. They take up virtual space, but they carry very very little physical mass. They may not matter in the long run, but for right now, they are the moment. They are the thing that is happening to me and through me right now.

Smoking Buddha

I tried it this weekend, I really did. I was standing outside smoking late on Friday night, and I really tried my best.

I started by closing my eyes and reflecting on my own physical presence. I blocked out everything but my own breathing and heartbeat for sound. I concentrated on my pulse, the in and out of air, the weight of my body pushing down on my legs: knees, feet, and all. I tried to think of nothing, and what that nothing meant. I felt the slight pain in my lower back from some strain now forgotten. I felt the power in my muscles and tendons. I felt the way my jaw wanted to hang loose from the rest of my head. The way my fingertips tingled slightly as my arms fell heavily against my sides.

I stretched out my conscience slightly, realizing and reality-izing things within twelve inches from my body. The front door holding the cold outside air out of my house behind me. The old wooden chairs sitting to my left. The ceiling of the porch above me.

Further out, five feet away, I could sense the plants around me, and all manner of tiny bugs crawling around the branches and leaves, some making a bed for the night, others just awakening to hunt in the darkness. A slow irregular dripping from days-ago rain falling from the roof into the roots of the yew to my right.

Ten and twenty feet away, higher and lower and farther out, even more insects and spiders creeped and plotted. Wind currents taking spores and scents away and closer. The trees in the front yard completing another ring in their inner-trunks, marking another year and preparing for a harsh winter.

Further away now (perhaps a mile?) I can hear the traffic from the closest busy street. The crickets, my god, they sounded like billions and billions of legs screeching against each other. A plane rocketed across the sky above me, unknown distance but moving fast. Inside the metal tube sat at least fifty beings, each with their own goals and fears and dislikes and secrets. All the people in all the houses around me, all of them preparing for rest, or perhaps preparing for a hunt of their own?

Even farther out, past the reach of life-providing air and water, past the magnetic shielding of the Earth and into the rocks silently plodding along in space. Out past the gas giants and stars and ice and gas and all manner of things out there. Out where it is silent. Cold and lonely, surely, but quiet and peaceful.

Then I opened my eyes and realized I was still here. But for a brief moment, I felt everything.

Electric Sheep

When I first learned how to read I had very little idea of how to write. I learned like many others in my generation: by having my parents read to me. They would read the same thing to me several times over. As I started to really pay attention, I would realize the correlation between what they were saying and the symbols and weird signs on the paper in front of us.

Later, I think, I would have supplemental experience in reading added to me by Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other awesome educational shows made available by the Public Broadcast System. I also started school at age 4, which helped immensely with learning how to communicate not only via text, but also to other human beings in a live setting.

Learning to write is a funny thing. Handwriting is something so personalized and unique that sometimes it can be used as identification. However, it is also something that has to be universal enough so that other people can actually read what is written, to glean the things you have passed along in written form. Early on, writing is typically just clerical copy work, and depending on who teaches the writer, what is written could pass as chicken scratch, or it may be circa 1870 perfect print.

But I don't really want to write about writing. What I want to write about is how we need to get away from writing.

I don't mean to get away from authoring, or from sharing our ideas; what I mean is that we need a better way of passing information on. We need something better suited to where we are going as a culture other than a keyboard or a pencil.

Tablets are the latest craze, apparently. They let us drag along a clipboard sized computer with us wherever we go. Problem is, they're a consumption device, not really a creation device. Older tablets included a keyboard under the screen, or perhaps on the screen itself. This is stupid. It adds weight, adds mechanical parts that could break down, and just perpetuates the insanity of requiring a physical input medium to pass information on.

We are a lazy race.

Some people have likened tablets to the handheld computers in Star Trek:The Next Generation. Indeed, I can see similarities in many of our personal computer and accessories that we consider daily use items with what was shown in the series. However, the striking difference for me is how they put information in.

You didn't see any of the characters typing away on a keyboard, or swiping a single finger around a keyboard on a screen. You saw them talking to the computer. You saw them directly connecting to the computer (in the case of Data, the android). Hell, you even saw them physically interacting with the computer in the Holodeck at times. No keyboards, no weird archaic gestures. It was intuitive, it was rugged, and it was lightweight.

This last point is key. Business people now, as always, are very concerned with weight. They need to get on airplanes, they need to carry stuff around. The last thing they need is an additional few ounces made up by peripherals. They don't need extra cords (or god forbid batteries for wireless peripherals) bogging them down. What they need is a lightweight, small sized, familiar shaped product that will let them gaze into the crystal ball that is the internet and get shit done.

They need to be able to speak to the computer, and have the computer speak back to them. They need to be able to gesture to a whole wall and have the information they're after come to life and show them what is important. They need to be able to pinpoint where and when and all that in very little time, and with very little weight added to their carry-on.

Gamers need this too. Why compress all our being into thumbs and index fingers? Why not give us the awesomeness of the Kinect in every game? And extend that to every application? When it doesn't make sense to have a whole body be the controller, just code the thing to watch for my facial expressions, or hand gestures (like ASL).

I may be an old grey-beard in the corner. I may remember what it was to set up message netting between BBSs that would send emails out at scheduled times really late in the night. I may even scoff at things that sales and marketing dream up (you mean you can't get this done in an hour? I'm just asking for the whole world's data to be cross indexed with the whole galaxy's data). But I think that in order for things to really move to the next level, we need to drop some of this old-timey crap and move forward.

Either that, or destroy civilization as we know it so I can farm and live out my post-apocalyptic dreams for real real.

These Look Like Big, Strong Hands, Don't They?

I had a very hard decision to make. The car was not moving. The car was old, rusted, rotted, and just generally falling apart at the seams. More than 200k miles, the tires were falling apart, the sunroof leaked rain, the seats were uncomfy, and the whole thing just screamed shoot me.

But I still owe some money against it on a loan.

So I could let it sit out on the street until it was paid off. I could ride the bus a little longer. I could even buy another cheap car that would probably break down in a year or two but get me through.

But I decided to let the local shop take a look-see just to see, you know, if it could be brought back out of retirement for a little while longer.

So I had the beast towed to the shop. I waited patiently for a day to let them have at it. Open her up, figure out what was broken and how much it would cost me to fix.

But after day one, they hadn't gotten to it. "No problem," I stated, "I've been taking the bus this long, I can wait another day or so."

Day two, today, I waited until the tail end of the day to call for some sort of status.

It still hasn't gone up on the lift.

I'm not terribly pressed, you know, it's not like I have anywhere to go or anything. It isn't like my job pretty much demands me to drive all over the city when stuff breaks.

But it would be nice to have someone extend the same amount of controlled urgency surrounding something I have entrusted them with.

It would also be different if they worked on the weekends.

Plague

The plague has infected the whole office. It started with our dispatch lady, she was out for two days this week. She tried to warn us that she felt like shit, but she still came in anyway. Probably out of fear that she'd get reprimanded for missing too much time. Or maybe she didn't want to waste all her PTO time on just being sick.

So now everyone's sick. It's a horrible little flu/cold thing. Muscle aches, lymph nodes all tight, and the drips. My god, the drips. Feels like my nose is a leaky faucet with no actual method of valving the flow off at all.

I've decided that sometimes it's alright to have a short blog entry. Not everyday can feature a best-seller, right?

Stand Deftly

After having made the call to the bank and getting the automatic lock off of my bank account removed (long story, but as it was negative $1.80USD at the end of last month, I didn't have access to any of my recently deposited money), I took out enough money to eat on and to ride the bus for a few more days. This had to happen at our local market, which is just two miles from the house, as I don't have an ATM on my front porch.

So armed with a fresh pack of smokes and twenty minutes to spare, I walked to the closest bus stop, which is at the rear of the shopping center that contains said ATM. Not wanting to stand in the wet grass for long, I instead took up residence standing on the firm cool concrete that makes up the parking lot.

This lot has cars in it constantly; I think some of them have been there longer than both my children have been alive. There are age-old black gunks splattered in various assymetrical patterns, broken glass, and varicose cracks splintering the entire concourse. It sits in a nice neighborhood, but unfortunately neglect has worked its magic over the past fifty years.

Anyway, I'm standing there smoking almost religiously. I'm trying to wake up, trying to ignore the fact that I'm utterly dependent upon public transit to get me to the place that gives me the stuff to pay for the things to survive. I'm standing there, smoking, and suddenly I realize I'm being illuminated. I can clearly see my nose in my periphery, very bright, shiny with sweat and nose oils, in the otherwise dark September morning. I'm standing there smoking because I didn't want to stand in the wet dewy morning grass and because my car is, once again, not moving of its own accord. I'm standing in the parking lot, the nasty, grimy parking lot smoking because I clearly have nowhere else I can go.

I look for the source of this new light, not sure if I'm about to cease breathing, or if aliens decided right then and there was the best time to make contact, or if some kid was playing with a flashlight two hours before he had to be at school. I look to my left, and realize a car is sitting in the parking lot. The lights are on. The engine is on. The car is sitting in the nasty parking lot, everything on, and it is sitting at an angle blocking a car that has been there for centuries. This new car is aimed right at me, but it isn't moving.

I turn away, thinking that someone is just dropping someone off for the bus. Some people have a hard time walking, you know, and they have someone who loves them enough to drive them to the local bus stop. Not to drive them to their place of employment downtown, or wherever they may be going, but enough to at least get them to where they may procure easy transit.

I stand there for a good thirty seconds, waiting for the familiar whine and gust of whatever it is that city buses shoot out into the air as they drive, all the while the light is still on my nose, brightening each exhale of smoke from my lips.

Then something changes.

The lights dim very briefly, then get brighter: the car must have started moving. Maybe the driver saw the bus? Maybe they're going to extend the love for their passenger and take them closer to the hell they must endure for eight future hours today?

Then somehow the car is beside me, it's sitting there next to me and I can't tell if all the doors are going to open and a team of mobsters are going to convince me to get in the trunk, or if the dark tinted window is going to roll down and some nun is going to, in full nun regalia and habit, ask me for directions, or if the car is just waiting for the bus and felt lonely and wanted to be closer to a human.

The reverse lights flash on and the car begins a slow parking maneuver. I continue smoking.

The car is almost dangerously close to me at this point, and I move away to the curb of the nasty parking lot.

Suddenly, and without warning, the car lurches ahead at an angle, then pops back into reverse and slides back into the area which I was just standing.

Aha! Clearly I was standing in this person's spot. I should have realized that the nasty black gunk stains and broken glass fragments spelled out b-i-t-c-h, and the spot was called.

Of course, I'm being facetious. There was no sign, no name scrawled anywhere. This parking lot contains enough spaces for probably six hundred cars, all told, and more could fit if you double parked them in emergency, you know, like a festival or swim meet or something.

I had been standing there, smoking, waiting for a bus I didn't want to ride at a time of day I did not want to be standing in a nasty gunky parking lot, smoking cigarettes purchased with money that a financial institution did not want me to have access to, and I had the nerve to be standing in someone's spot.

How dare I.

Singularity

Sometimes I stop what I'm doing long enough to examine exactly where I am. Who I'm with. What we're doing. Sometimes I try to do a reverse of the age-old interview question in my head: "Where did you think you would be now five years ago? Fifteen? Thirty?"

Sometimes I think about why people tolerate me in their general vicinity. Why I'm invited to things, why I'm sometimes included with others that have no apparent connection to me other than that we may both know the same person.

The idea of "Cool" is very strange to me. I've been labelled before, third person of course, as being both pro and con "Cool"; as if the beholder had some sort of power over whether I could be allowed or denied access to whatever the topic of conversation reveals. My completely bat-shit crazy taste in music has been considered cool for a short time period, then shifted to meh, then to uncool without any variance or addition of new terms. My kids think of me uncool when they don't side with a decision I've made, but cool when I let them get away with something other parents ban from their own children.

I've sat with famous people before. Well, famous meaning that they can claim that more people know them than they know themselves, I suppose. Or maybe it's that they have some sort of physical proof that they were there, they did that thing, you know? that _thing_ whether it's a song or an album or a canvas with ink and mud scraped all over it, or a set of words imprinted semi-permenantly in a book of papers. They're famous because in a hundred or a thousand years someone will be able to find their book or their song and know without a doubt that someone with that name did that thing. Anyway, I've sat with famous people, not knowing the thing they did, and didn't really bat an eye when the thing was presented, either in the present or at some future time, hushed in whispers or proudly shouted and proclaimed. I guess some famous people like that sort of apathy, as I have sat with them since, and was considered cool.

Some people, though, some people don't need cool. Some people just are, and I secretly love these people. They do their own thing, they write things without needing a book with paper, they sing songs without needing a wax with grooves to be pressed. Even if they don't do anything at all, sometimes, they get my adoration without having to do anything at all. Sometimes those people are better than all the others, truly, and I don't know if I would be the same person I am today without those silent towers of awesomesauce.

Maybe that's why people sometimes let me hang out with people they consider cool?

Loss

Last week my dad died.

I heard the news from a cell phone call in the night. Around 9pm. My phone buzzed, I looked down from my cigarette and noticed that the call was coming from "Dad". I answered in a cheerful manner, thinking on the other side a voice would say what he always said, "Hel-lo John Mar-tin!" but instead, my sister said something like, "Hi, what are you doing?"

She called me just a week or so earlier. Actually, she texted my wife saying that something was wrong and that she had gotten a new phone and wanted to talk to me. She had forgotten to export her contacts, so she lost all the numbers. I had rage-quit all social networking sites, so it wasn't like she could look at my Facebook profile to get my digits.

That call was to relay the horrible news that our mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. They think it started as breast cancer, but they found a bunch that had migrated to some bones.

I was devastated. My mom was too young.

My mom had surely gotten more and more frail over the years. At one point, she was lean and mean; she was able to put up with two fighting teenage kids. But my parents moved pretty far away, and the visits became fewer and far between. Each time I noticed her skin was thinner, her hugs were not as bone-crushing, her eyes seemed less alive.

And yet, still my mom was too young to die.

The doctor assigned to her case was on a week long vacation in Europe somewhere. Being a head-surgeon must have advantages. The second in command was running some tests and had a few ideas, but there wouldn't be much real progress until the vacation was over.

All the little petty bullshit issues of my life suddenly went away. That I didn't have much food in the fridge or that I had taken a verbal beating from a particularly nasty customer that day didn't really matter any more. I got cold. I drained a two week old beer in three gulps. I relayed the message around to a few close friends--partially because they also knew my mom as "Mom", but also looking for some sort of comfort. I cried. I talked with my wife. We cried.

But there was hope, ya know? My mom was still alive, she was even pretty cheerful. Apparently she thanked all her doctors for their hard work, and was pretty sure she was gonna get through this with barely a scratch.

A few days passed before I was able to talk to my dad. I kept trying to think of ways I could call him and talk to him about everything.

Three days after my sister called he called me. We had just driven over to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner. I stayed outside and smoked a half pack while my wife and kids went shopping.

Dad said that Mom was doing well, but he was a wreck. He was going to take twelve weeks of FMLA time to stay with her. My sister was in late pregnancy and would probably be staying home full time, but then she would have two kids and wouldn't be able to stay with Mom full time, too. So, he would take a slight hit to his monthly income to essentially stay at home and take care of everybody.

His tone was pretty grave, but my dad was always positive, ever hopeful even when the shit had hit the fan and then kept coming. He talked about how much he wanted me to move out to where everyone else was, that I would love it out there. He always did this, even though he knew my eventual plan was to go south and start a farm. He asked about the kids, knowing that I would tell him they were fine. For some reason we talked at length about the school system here and how everything seems to be in a constant rebuilding phase, how the schools are so horrible and yet instead of calling them bad, they're "In Development" or some such bullshit.

My good friend had called me the day before, saying that he flew for work pretty much constantly, and that he wanted to help out and could not think of a better way to spend his frequent flyer miles than to buy tickets for me and my bunch to go visit my parents. I thought this would lift my dad's spirits so I told him and tried to schedule a time to come out.

He said that my sister's baby would be born in the beginning of October, so to make everything cool and whatnot that I should plan around the end of October. That would give time for the mother-baby bond to all happen, for sleep to become a real thing, and for my mom to have a few treatments of whatever it was they wanted to give her.

We got off the phone in decent spirits, considering the events surrounding the talk, and I went home and made dinner. I think. Maybe we just ordered delivery or something.

A few more days passed and everything was set. Four round trip tickets were secured, and all that was left was to figure out where we were to sleep. My car died, as it was, after helping a friend move. The clutch, the six month old or younger clutch, had given up, and now the car just sits idly no matter how hard the gas is pressed.

So I went back to the thing I hate most: the bus.

My dad shared this hatred with me. He had a car break down at the same time I had one break down a year or so ago. We'd share stories about the stupid drivers, the weird politics, and all the other things that go along with inside jokes.

So I'm juggling a few things a this point, trying to make sure everything is cool. I talk with my dad again just to make sure everything is still a go when he finally realizes that all of us are coming to visit, not just me.

He got really excited knowing that he would get to see his grandkids. I think he even started to cry a little.

So when my phone rang on Thursday night, September 1, 2011... I thought it was going to be my dad with more news on our visit. Maybe his friend came through with some free nights in a hotel? Maybe his other friend is willing to let us all use his beach house that week for some much needed R&R? Maybe Mom's cancer is in remission and she's gonna live another fifty years?

No, it was my sister.

She said she was sad. She started saying weird things and I didn't understand. She asked me when the doctors called me? I told her I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought something happened with Mom.

In hindsight, I don't think it could have been delivered any better or kinder. She told me that Dad was found on a golf course, that he was rushed to an emergency room and that there was nothing they could do.

She knows me. Even though we haven't really talked in years, she knows me. She knows how I may be patient and calm on the surface, but I hate how some people drag out painful or unnecessary disclosures.

She gave me the news, told me all the right things about how much Dad loved me, and how he always talked about me. How proud he was of me.

I lost it. I couldn't talk on the phone anymore. I handed the phone to my wife and just cried.

Before the shock totally set in, I called my boss and left a voicemail telling him I wasn't coming to work the next day. Then the weekend went by in a blur.

And now, here I sit at work, typing out the events of the past few weeks. I don't really know what to do. I feel very helpless. I feel like I should be doing more to help my sister and mother. That I should be clearing up all the loose ends, getting death certificates and closing down accounts and being a shoulder to cry on...

But instead I'm just sitting here at work. I'm helping people get into their email. I'm repairing backup jobs for servers. I'm teaching people new ways to do mail merge documents. I'm sitting here.

Last week my dad died, and I don't know who will give me advice, who will tell me everything will be okay, who will joke about how terrible the world is while still saying there's still hope.

My first memory of my dad is his hands. I remember holding his hands and marveling at how big they were. How large his fingers seemed. How his left ring finger was cut short by a stupid lawnmower accident when he was a stupid teenager. His hands were big, firm, weathered, and yet so soft.

My dad was ever the hopeful, ever the guy who loved the Beatles' song "Here Comes The Sun." My dad was never really the smartest guy around, but he tried to learn from his mistakes.

I miss you, Dad.

Garden Update

We've been busy with the Garden and life in general, but here's a quick update with pics:

This is the first section of plants we started immediately after the rains of 2011. It's essentially tomatoes, flowers, peppers, and herbs. Everything seems to be growing rather well. We've since added more good soil and some fertilizer/plant food to this soil since this picture, but this is a good size estimate.

This is the left garden, started about two or three weeks after the right garden. Squash, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, more herbs, and other weird things are in the dirt. Our cucumber wasn't liking this spot, so we converted one of the big white buckets to a pot, now it seems to be happier.

I've decided to try my hand at some hops this year. First little guy is a Nugget. It seems to be the best growing so far. Has three reaching vines which I'll need to build a rope system for. I'm not really counting on a big harvest for any of my hops this year; it's a development year to get the roots in place and activated for next year.

Second is my Fuggle. So far, it hasn't really done much but send up leaves. No reaching vines, no real sturdy stem structure yet, but I have hope.

And finally, the Mt Hood. I'm guessing that since this rhizome was a hollow tube, it will just take a little longer to develop and grow? Since this picture, I've already seen about an inch and a half more growth.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with a weekly update on the Garden front.

Climbing That Great Big Hill

So my wife and I like to garden. Making our own stuff out of nothing but seed, dirt, sunshine, and water is cool. In most cases you get near-immediate results, and if you're lucky, you get to have more stuff to eat for free, which is always nice.

We just moved to our new place in October, which is actually kind of perfect for starting a new garden, since during the entire winter, we've been doing all the things that needed to be done in the house (putting stuff where we want it, hanging art, figuring out the heater, etc) and thinking about the garden.

Our backyard is a little kitschy, with a moderate hill and a small copse of trees in the very back. I tried to take a few pictures to illustrate the blank canvas, as it were; a starting point to all later garden updates.

Here we have the view from our back porch/patio. This really is the width of the backyard, as we share a wall with our next-door neighbor (to the left), and there's a fence on the right side that goes all the way to the back. In the middle third of the photo above is the hill. It's about a 45 degree incline.

I tried to get better shots of what the hill was like, but I think I effectively just shot a lot of pictures of dirt and weird little sprouting things that we think are onions.

This is probably the best picture to see the hill in action. My plan is to cut away three foot terraces and then block those sections with brick or paving stones. I think I'll get three vertical sections, and maybe four total horizontal sections.

This shot is looking back at the back patio from atop the hill. You can almost make out the line of bricks in the center of the shot.

The copse of trees. Just behind the big tree on the left I want to build out a six foot diameter compost bin/leaf holder. I built one at our last house, and the dirt was just really getting good after three years of feeding it.

This is the corner of the weird line of bricks mentioned before. I think someone had the same idea that we have, but they wussed out and didn't really follow through.

The first year is always a learning period for new gardeners or old gardeners at new locations. It's a time to try out different methods, different plants, and find out all the conditions that your yard and plants have and need.

I'm excited.

When will February End?

Son got two shots yesterday, he's complaining a lot of soreness today. They say while he was getting the shots he was such a trooper and was telling them to give him more. And now, he's just bitching up a storm about the pain.

It's weird, this completely diametric approach to life, and I've seen it in him before. One minute everything's cool, and he's chilling with us watching tv or something, and the next he's a whirlwind of terror, fighting with his sister and chasing the cats.

Boys will be boys, I suppose, and he's all boy at this point.

Nana is taking the kids to go see the Bieber movie today; they're super-excited. I think us parents will take a trip up to the local clothing outlet mall to see if we can replace some clothes that we lost in a recent basement drainage issue.

In other news, this keyboard is acting up, might be time to look for a replacement.

I narrowly avoided doing six months in county yesterday. Got pulled over a few weeks ago for speeding (like, 6 above), and a broken license plate light (didn't even know I had one). Cop said he'd give me a warning, but had to hold me for tax evasion.

Long story short, I didn't file my local taxes for two years. I did state and federal, but the local peeps want their money. After appearing in court, and talking things over with the local tax official, I'm set up with a payment plan that will stretch about six months, but at least I can spend that time free rather than sitting in a cell with bubba.

Although I doubt there's enough room in county for a small-time "crook" like me...

Jagged Pills

I like to think I'm a pretty patient person. Patient and compassionate, you know, I don't really hate people, I don't invoke huge amounts of unnecessary chaos, and I want to make sure my kids grow up into being good people.

But there are seriously some things in this world that I hate.

I understand when there is a need for something, sometimes R&D gets thrown to the side while production is ramped up. If you just need some form of capturing data, but all the power is out, you grab a pen and paper and start writing shit down. It's cool, if the need is that great, MacGuyver a solution, and keep moving. But when the power comes back on, revert that paper information back into the system.

When you need a communications device to send images of paper to other people in other places, I get it, you needed to do it RIGHT THEN, and a fax machine was all that was available. It's alright, it was 1985, fax machines were hot shit.

But you know, it's 2011. We have better stuff now. Hell, whole companies are running paperless. Get rid of fax machines. The options available to you only start at email, ftp, and something like dropbox. There are countless options for conveying data from one machine to another. You're using one option now.

Get rid of fax machines. They're dirty, use paper, use electricity, are loud, take up a phone line, take too long to communicate, and are from a time when some guy just needed to send this paper to someone across the country without using the pony express.

I hate fax machines.

Continuing in this direction, I hate printers, too. We have lots of ways of looking at information. You can view it on a monitor. You can dredge it through a front-end to make it all pretty and then display it on a scoreboard for a sports team. You can throw it up on a wall using a projector. You can even use your phone to look at it.

Printers are loud, dirty, wasteful little inventions. I get it, you needed to get information out of the computer that you typed everything into. You couldn't read punch-tape, so you needed the computer to convert information into letters and numbers that were recognizable. It's cool. It was 1985, printers were necessary for business.

But... it's 2011. Paperless companies... Think green...

I hate Blackberries. More specifically, I hate the Blackberry Enterprise Server software package.

Smartphones are a great thing; I can do a significant portion of the things I can do on a desktop workstation computer on my phone. It isn't easy, but I can struggle along. I can view email, I can watch video, I can even open files and edit them, then send them off somewhere.

But the evil beast that created BES decided that they really hated anyone that administered a company full of BBs. There are a ton of restrictions, extra components that have to be installed to a server, and all these weird licensing regulations. If Google had the same requirements to use their services, to access the stuff you need... they'd be out of business.

There are other things I hate, or at least dislike, but these take the top of the list.

Break the Crust

So many plans, so many things to try. We moved to a new place in October of last year, so this will be the first spring in the new place. First steps in getting a garden together, in getting the patio just right for grilling. First shovels of dirt flip-flopped around to mix in better dirt, to prepare beds for flowers and fruits and whatnot.

I'm getting older, and I can feel it. I once relished the thought of days and afternoons sweating over a 10'^2 plot of earth to get a few more tomato plants in the ground. I used to really enjoy walking behind the too-loud lawn mower, lost in thought and totally segmented from reality for an hour while the engine I trailed filled the air and blocked all everything else.

But I'm getting old. My bones hurt. My joints would rather sit in a hot tub or lay on a soft bed. I like the after-effects of gardening, but do not want to pain myself more in the process of getting there.

Alas, it is my duty (and more than a little my pride) to wait for the ground to fully warm up and dig out the grass and replace everything with what is needed to eat, if not for just a meal or two.

When I was much much younger, I would sit on the couch and watch gardening shows with my mother and sister. Shows like The Victory Garden, or The Square-Foot Garden were often on in the early afternoons. We'd watch the hosts walk around these... these simply awesome back yards where anything and everything grew. It appeared almost like they could exist completely on the harvests of their crops.

But I grew up, and now I understand that man cannot live on peppers and tomatoes alone.

At the last place, we tried okra, radishes, sunflowers, and other small fruits and veggies, but never really got anything close to enough food to sustain us. It was really nice to be able to cut something and toss it in a pot, or to slice up a tomato for a burger, or to rip a few basil leaves to add to a marinara. But there isn't enough land nor time to grow enough food for everybody.

Maybe if I had a big farm, and I didn't have to work in an office all day... maybe then I could grow food and have some animals and do something worth-while... But then I recall that I'm getting older. My body doesn't like moving all that much.

Really, I'm not that old. I'm barely old enough to be losing my hair...

And in a way I'm excited about getting out and getting dirty, even if it's only for five minutes at a time.