The Aerie

No Rest for the Wicked

Oy gevalt, it's finally Friday! Maybe it was due to last week's holiday, but this week was EXHAUSTING. The TIME didn't feel like ia week, mind you, it felt like about two days, but two very tiring days. This is probably because I was working my butt off every day, but I'm so TIRED.

Of course, the cold my daughter brought home probably hasn't helped! I am gettin' tired of waking up every morning with a nose full of bloody cornflakes!

Okay, sorry, that was a visual you probably didn't need or want.

One of the accomplishments this week is that I finally got the giant Shower Curtain Project completed. I thought I was going to do it myself, but it turns out our contractor (who originally finished the bathroom last year) felt obligated to do it since it was part of her original contract. She had mounted a curtain track, but it was impractical - our roof slopes down above the shower, and we would have been hitting our head on the track climbing in.

Instead I ordered a curtain track off the Internet especially for small spaces - boat cabins as it happens. Then I never quite got around to putting it up, although I was underemployed for five months. Finally over Thanksgiving I decided to use the four-day weekend to get this job done. I set up a table in the basement made of scrapwood from our kitchen floor installation seven years ago. Have I mentioned I'm a packrat? I mounted the installation brackets on this surface, and bent the track into shape. Then the contractor came over and installed it above the tub. It works really nicely, and heads get injured. So having THAT done is a feeling of accomplishment!

This weekend isn't shaping up to be a restful one. Tomorrow the Boy is slated to win the State debate tournament (the rule in our house is, win or sleep in the garage and it's cold out there). Meanwhile my wife and daughter are wrapping up Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month - with a party at The Loft ("A Place for Writers" /snoot). I have to pick up the Boy from debate, transport all him and his brother and friends to a game store, pick up the wife and daughter from the Loft, drop off the girl at her friend's house for a movie, and drive my wife and I up to a family birthday party.

After the party we will meet another friend for a housewarming party at her new home, and get home around 11.

Of course, the news is breathlessly announcing that a blizzard is on its way, so these plans may be subject to change...

Sunday I am the Guest Atheist at my younger son's church class, where I explain to them that not believing in God does not automatically allow someone to commit indiscriminate murder. After I corrupt the youth a friend is coming over to run a D&D game for our kids. The kids will probably beg me to play.

And that's the whole weekend, up front.

Oh, the other big accomplishment - I have a paycheck! Yay! My contracting firm hired me on September 15th to start October 1st. I've been working for two months, and they weren't going to pay me til December 17th - or 'a week before Christmas' as we call it here in How-The-Hell-Are-We-Going-To-Pay-For-Anything Land.

I'm annoyed now because I haven't yet been paid by the company that sent me to teach in Rotterdam in October. They usually paid pretty promptly. Of course they always had another class for me to teach, too - so I guess now that I'm not committed to further classes, they're not committed to paying me. If something isn't in my PO Box by Monday morning, the testy phone calls begin.

And yet another Letter to the Editor in today's paper (last one). Really, I need to ease up. Either that or get a paid column...

Thanksgiving

Survived Thanksgiving intact. Well, mostly intact. I was getting ready to leave and bent over to give my smallest niece a hug, and when I straightened up my lower back twinged. It was sore for the rest of the night, but today it's a lot better although still sore. Highlight of Thanksgiving was playing four-person cribbage and beating two of my brothers-in-law, six games to zip. I couldn't make a wrong play - I'd draw 7789 and then cut an 8. It was sweet.

Today I've been working on the shower curtains that I'm going to be mounting in the upstairs bathroom. The curtain rod is an aluminum track that mounts directly on the ceiling. The upstairs bathroom has a low, angled ceiling under the roof, so I have had to find and custom bend the the track, a long U shape, with a bend at the top where the ceiling goes horizontal.

I'm also working on updating my server. It's very frustrating. Since I started using this, the server has stopped serving the printers correctly, and also my mailing lists have started failing, one by one. Not sure what the hell is going on. I've tried debugging the printer issues, but I can't find any informative log messages - but when I send a file to the printer, the file never prints, nor does it deliver an error. Sigh.

So I'm considering building a whole new server, but first I thought I'd make sure the operating system is fully up to date, and that there isn't some new fix that would make everything work properly. So I'm trying to update the system, and of course things fail to work. I get error messages that aren't found in Google searches, meaning I'm fairly unique. I tried installing from painstakingly downloaded DVD, no luck. Hung during the dependencies check - no error, just hung. Now I'm trying to do a network update, but I've had to uninstall seven packages that were having version problems, so I have to remember to add those back in later on.

It's all part of the Mummy's Curse that I've been laboring under since the 1970's...

Tonight my spouse wants to have Family Game Night, so that will be pleasant. Anything to extricate our kids from the video games. The other day she put up a ping-pong net on our dining room table, and managed to cajole the boys into playing. Once their competitive instincts kicked in they had a good time.

Now I'm sitting in my basement office, and outside the window it's pitch black at 5;30 p.m. And it's going to be like this for at least two more months. Makes me want to cry!

Well, the system needs a reboot, and my shower-curtain track needs attention, so back to it...

Highlights Magazine

Hi, me again. It's been a long couple of weeks. Last week I was putting in pretty regular 12 hour days, which I resented a bit until I realized that I'll be taking not one but two days off this week. Now a five day weekend is all well-and-good, but I'm paid by the hour, so actually the long days are useful to restore what will otherwise be a large hole in the budget.

My big accomplishment for the day was getting on the Stephanie Miller radio show twice in half an hour. It wasn't deliberate. Well, once was.

A Shar-Pei

Brit Hume

I disconnected, got out of my car, went up to my desk, and plugged into the program's live audio stream (8-11 a.m. M-F), only to hear my own e-mail from yesterday being read on the air. I'd forgotten I sent it in! I was objecting to the show's host describing that after long illness her "Little Friend" had returned on Saturday afternoon. Too much information!! Unfortunately, my own complaint featured too much information...

So that was the highlight of my day, two appearances on an obscure radio program in twenty minutes.

Okay, no, it wasn't quite - the ACTUAL highlight of my day was that I badgered the consulting firm with whom I am working into paying me two weeks sooner than they wanted to. I started working on October 1st of this year, and haven't yet seen a paycheck. When I called to ask, they told me I wasn't going to be paid until December 17th! That's eleven weeks after I started earning them money.

Well if I'd settled for that, we would have been about $5000 in the whole by the time the paycheck came in, one week before Christmas. Now, my financial situation on December 18th will be the same as it would have otherwise, but at least I the first two weeks of the month won't be spent fielding phone calls from the mortgage company.

Fortunately a stern letter yielded a promise to pay on December 3rd. A promise isn't worth much til it's fulfilled, but I'll be staying home playing Xbox on December 4th if I this promise isn't fulfilled.

Okay, no, THAT wasn't the actual highlight, either. The ACTUAL highlight was when someone described one of my posts on Salon as "beautifully written, thoroughly intelligent and deeply humane." Whoa!! I'm gonna need a fork-lift for my ego! Okay, ANOTHER fork-lift.

Unfortunately my post was a response to some knucklehead who published a three-part treatise on why Asian people are smarter than everybody. How people get jobs like these I don't know, but it's regrettable that it took something so ugly to produce a response so, so very lovely *sniff* that I want to cry *sob* ... even though I wrote it! Oh I'm just so wonderful... *sniffle*

So I can't complain, it's been a day full of highlights!

Oh who am I kidding, I can always complain...

Pointless!

So I've been getting to work at 6:00 a.m. for the past couple of days, and I have to say, it's pretty pointless.

I started doing so at the behest of my manager, who repeatedly bragged about arriving at 5:30 a.m. and "getting some real work done" before meetings begin to occur at 9:00 a.m. While I've gotten to see a couple of pretty sweet sunrises, I haven't seen my manager before 9:00 a.m.

Meanwhile, leaving the house before 6:00 a.m. is pointless. Pointless!

I left the house at about 5:45 and drove over to the SuperAmerica to fill the tank on my car, only to discover that the gas station doesn't open until 6:00 a.m. So I drove carefully to work on side roads, just in case I ran out of gas. For the second day in a row I parked in the closest spot to the doors, then I learned that the cafeteria doesn't open until 7:00.

What's the point of getting to work early? No breakfast? No gasoline? No coworkers? Pointless!

We'll see if I bother tomorrow.

Meanwhile I visited the doctor yesterday to find out why the outside of my left foot feels as if it's about to crack apart. Three x-rays later he had no idea, except to say it must be "a tendon thing." Apparently the cure is to ice it and stay off my feet. Well now that I'm anchored to a desk it won't be hard to stay off my feet, but I'm not sure how popular I would be were I to sit here and ice my feet at my desk.

Tonight is an equally-pointless writing group, since I haven't been writing. It's at my house so I can't avoid attending, but I feel so miserable about it since I haven't written a thing for ages. My friend Terry is planning a separate group for working on plot outlines, which I will have to consider joining because heaven knows I need help with plotting.

Anyway, I guess I'd better get to work... otherwise coming in early would be pointless...

Bits and Pieces

I received an amazing comment on one of my first blog entries by someone who was searching for information on our mutual mentor, the late Dr. Noel Johnson. his kind comment served to point out that I'm about seven years late writing up an entry on the man who set me on the road to my career. Thanks for moving that back to the top of my queue!

Part of the reason I don't blog as much as I'd like is that I write too much - I'm not great at the short entry style of blogging. The result of this is a bunch of half-written blog entries. Since I am pressed for time today (this whole week really) and yet want to blog, here is a collection of my abandoned blog entries over the past few months. Most of these are taken off my cell phone. Enjoy the ADD-ramblings of your host...

June 24th
Indigo Girls Minnesota Zoo Concert Setlist

August 11th
Well this is certainly interesting. I'm sitting here in Yuma, California in a dive called 'The Branding Iron,' waiting for Lick to perform.

Lick is my friend Paul's rock band, which he has been building since leaving Lifehouse several years ago. Yeah, that Lifehouse - the one that went big right after he left. What can I say, he hasn't got the best timing.

While we'red waiting for Lick we are suffering through a college band called After Shock. This six man group includes on fellow who plays keyboard, sax, and accordion and harmonica; a musclebound bass guitarist, a lead guitarist with improbably pretty hair, and a vocalist who can't sing. They have their moves down, they can head-bob while soloing, play with their feet planted wide apart, and stroll out in front of the stage during songs treating their guitars in a phallic fashion. They perform covers badly, and some original works as well as they've ever been performed.

When they're finished Lick will perform. While Paul is a magnificent guy, I have to confess that I suffer from curmudgeonism to the extent that I don't quite get his music. Hopefully I'll do better tonight. The music hard to describe, a cross between punk and techno maybe? Or metal and jazz? I suspect if I could suss it better i could decribe it better.

But that's past experience, Lick is bout to play so I'll put this away...

October 14th
Notes from a Rotterdam cafe:

A trio: an older, a silver-haired man, a tall skinny woman in miniskirt and hose, and an elegant-looking black woman with gold-trimmed hair and nose stud, walking arm-in-arm.

A black man in a dark suit, with a short mohawk, wearing an enormous set of silver headphones.

Sisters, older, one whose face seems twisted by bad cosmetic surgery, who consider sitting down then leave.

My waiters wear T-shirts that read, “Masturbating is not a crime” and “I am not God”

October 18th
Well I managed to get out, but not as far as Amsterdam, unfortunately. Ignoring the withdrawal symptoms already afflicting me, I locked my laptop into my classroom and made myself climb aboard the first train to Rotterdam.

When I got to the central station, I considered buying a ticket into Amsterdam, despite the nearly 30 dollar fee. Unfortunately none of the ticket machines would accept my credit card, and after I broke down and asked at the information kiosk I learned I would have to leave the station, find a cash machine somewhere, and buy the ticket with cash.

Well I hadn't counted on this kind of delay, the sun was already setting, and it looks like we'll be done early tomorrow, so I decided to see more of Rotterdam. It's not like one Sunday excursion is sufficient to see any city.

So I wandered away from the station following the setting sun and getting several good photos. The street I followed seemed to lead through ethnic ghettos, first Asian, the Arab. Dozens of Asian groceries crowded together with restaurants two or three to a block. Shortly thereafter were halal shops and restaurants, with many women in hajab in the street.

When i spotted a 'tweeweiler,' bicycle, shop I scurried across the street, but no, they neither rented bikes nor sold cheap used ones, only new.

I continued on foot' catching photos of attractive parks and homes, wandering at random. Now i was starting to get hungry, so when i passed a cash machine I withdrew 20 Euro (less than the cost of the Amsterdam ticket,) and started looking for dinner.

I spotted a Cafe Blue Moon but they didn't serve food. I spotted a number of street stands, but i wanted to sit down to eat. Finally i came across www.cafeari.com

November 9th
Last Friday's unfinished entry...

Okay, it's Friday and I am exhausted... It's 3:00 p.m. and I've got two hours to go and I'm about ready to pass out at my desk. Part of that is that I had the Big Interview this morning, and I think I let myself stress out about that rather more than I ought to. Particularly since I'm not sure I want it. Mostly because I'm intimidated by it. Which is probably unnecessary. But there you go.

The interview(s) went okay. The first one got off to an odd start, because the person to whom I was speaking delayed me by about 20 minutes. Then while I was waiting I was recognized by a fellow with whom I used to work. I was happy to speak with him, but it put my head in a completely different place.

November 8, 2007

November 5, 2007