No Time To React

I try to go into work 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday).  There is something about going into the office, dressing up like a real professional and sitting in a cubicle that appeals to the kid in me that wants to pretend he is an adult and has it all together.  My commute to the office is 12 miles and usually takes me 25 minutes.  Over time I have noticed something about my commute time.  As a rule of thumb, for every 5 minutes AFTER 7:15 that I leave my house it takes an additional 5 minutes to get to work.  So, if I leave at 7:10 then I can get to work by 7:35 but if I leave at 7:20 then I arrive at 7:50.  Leaving at 7:25 puts me in the office around 8:00.  The extra time takes place in my neighborhood (more foot traffic as kids head to school thereby causing me to catch the school guard’s large stop sign more often) and also takes place on the frontage roads before I get onto the 121 toll road (more people heading to work and clogging up the free, frontage roads).  So, I try very hard to leave by 7:15 if at all possible.  Due to this early departure time, some times I have to choose between breakfast or leaving after 7:15.

If I opt out of breakfast at home, I get breakfast from the cafeteria at work.  My favorite breakfast is a bowl of cream of wheat and a large coffee (the cafeteria brews Starbucks coffee so I pay for it rather than getting the free, substandard coffee near my cubicle).  I can get a 12 ounce bowl of cream of wheat for $0.62 or a 16 ounce bowl for just over $1.  Because of the price per ounce is better for the smaller size, I usually opt for (2) 12 ounce bowls.  They provide brown sugar, raisons, dried cranberries and granola to put on your breakfast (they also offer oatmeal for the same price).  Over the months I have found the perfect combination of brown sugar, cranberries and granola.  I have also discovered that the later you get breakfast, the thicker the cream of wheat is.  There are days that I did not get to the cafeteria until near 10 and the stuff would almost not come out of the ladle (still good though).  Recently they made a change though that cause the circumstance that is the subject of this blog.

About a month ago the cafeteria switched from styrofoam bowls (with form fitting lids) to cardboard bowls that had lids that more or less just rested on top of the bowl.  Due to the lids not snapping to the bowls I had to take extra care when trying to balance the 2 bowls and the cup of coffee.  Last week I could have used the old bowls and lids.

I have to take the down escalator to get to the cafeteria as it is located in the basement of where I work and I sit on the 1st floor.  Consequently I have to take the up escalator to get back to my cube.  I have blogged before about the escalators at work and I tend to walk while on them rather than ride.  The only time I stand still and just ride up or down is if someone is in front of me and they are not walking.  Last week, with 2 bowls of cream of wheat in one hand (balanced on top of each other) and a large, hot cup of coffee in the other hand, my foot caught one of the steps right after I got onto the escalator and I fell forward.  I had enough sense to keep the coffee upright and I guess my other hand was thinking back to a time when the bowl lids fit better as I used the cream of wheat hand to stop myself from falling.  Due to this, the granola and cranberries toppled onto the escalator stairs.  Now I had an issue and I had to act fast.  I only had 15 seconds or so to get my toppings  (that had spilled due to the lose lids) cleaned up since the top of the escalator was coming soon.   I also had no way to clean then up.   I froze for a second or two and then sprang into action by sweeping the toppings back into the bowls as best as I could (some of the toppings were too close to the wall of the next step and given that the steps would soon collapse I did not want my fingers to be caught.  This was the only option I could think of and even now I do not think that I had another option other than just leaving them there.  In the end I did not get it all cleaned up so the smaller pieces of granola went to wherever the stairs go when they disappear and the larger pieces kind of rolled and toppled at the top of the stairs (still too close to the finger crushing section of the top of the escalator to be rescued) and I had to leave them there.

I will leave it up to you to guess if I ate the cream of wheat or not (hint, I am a guy and I was hungry).  I still think about what I could have done differently other than not trip.  There was just so little time to react and I am not a person to react well under pressure.  I have been extra careful this week with my balancing of the bowls though I have not taken to riding the escalators like a normal person would.

Jon

Sore Fingers Alleviate Shame

Greetings,

I know it has been a long time since a regular blog entry, perhaps my longest hiatus since I started.  Random thoughts have come to my head from time to time but nothing truly blogworthy.  However, I wanted to let you know about my Christmas present given to me by my wife.  First, a little background…

Every year the wife and I have a little contest on who can give the best Christmas gift.  We have been together for 15 Christmases prior to the most recent one and so far (though I would have to check the official record books) I am 14 wins and 1 loss.  The wife’s sole victory came when several years ago when she had a cable outlet installed in our bedroom.  Bonus points in that she kept that hidden from me and gave me a small TV (which I thought was useless since I did not know about the new cable outlet).  Other than that one year, she has come out on the losing side every other time.  This year though, she improved her overall record to 2 and 14 when she bought me an acoustic guitar.  In my defense, she told me NOT to buy her anything since she had already spent our combined budget for each other’s gifts (though I doubt if I could have won anyway).

I have wanted to learn how to play guitar for years now.  My mother bought me a guitar a long, long time ago and the only thing I recall about it is that we sold it in garage sell to a Mexican man who picked it up and played it with ease.  Since that time (probably 25 years ago), I have not played any guitar (though I did pick up my son’s small guitar when he was taking lessons, but other than inspecting it I did nothing else).  I think part of the reason I have avoided guitars is my fear that I would not be able to play it well or I would be a slow learner and would get frustrated and quit.  For this reason, I limited my looking for a guitar to my favorite pawn shop in Kokomo (there were a dozen or so guitars there at any given time).  I almost pulled the trigger when I was in Kokomo early December but I did not have a way to get it back home without carrying it on the plane with me.

In the end it was a good thing that I did not buy one then as the wife had already purchased my gift and was hiding it at a friend’s house.  Not only did she get me a guitar but also a guitar case along with a variety pack of picks, an electronic tuner and a book showing some chords.  She took her time and did her research and got a great gift so my hats off to her (though I still have a commanding lead in the gift contest).  I half joked that the guitar case had a nice little compartment for me to hold all my guilt and shame for when June rolls around and I still don’t know how to play anything.  This is where the blog title comes in.

The guitar laid by my bedside for all of December and most of January before I picked it up and (with pick in hand) turned to YouTube for some beginning instructions.  There are quite a few out there but after a few videos I decided that I would just learn on my own.  I contorted my fingers and tried to make the chords that were in the chord book and a few even sounded decent.  I found a site that listed some easy songs to learn and once I had figured out the D-G-Dsus-D-Asus pattern I was playing (albeit like a 45 played on 33 speed) Free Falling by Tom Petty.  For the past few weeks I have alleviated any shame I thought I would have with consistent practicing and very sore left fingertips.  I was even playing Puff the Magic Dragon (again, think 45 played at 33 speed) this morning as I was teaching the daughter the tune.  Who knows, in a few weeks we might be a duo!  At any rate, I have a little momentum now and even a fresh excuse or two for not blogging (too little time due to guitar practice and mighty sore fingertips!).

Jon

The Listening Project–Supplemental Blog 6

It has been almost 4 months since my last blog about my CDs.  Believe it or not, I simply have not bought any new music on CD other than a single purchase around New Year’s Day.  I did visit the Half Priced Book Store last weekend however and thus I have enough for a new blog entry. 

#	Artist	Album	Date Listened	Again?
1130	Relient K	Five Score and Seven Years Ago	1/2/2013	Yes
1131	Bing Crosby	Bing's Gold Records: The Original Decca Recordings	2/9/2013	Yes
1132	Jaci Velasquez	Crystal Clear	2/10/2013	Yes
1133	Barry Manilow	Barry Manilow	2/10/2013	Yes
1134	Vangelis	The Best of Vangelis	2/10/2013	Yes
1135	Chris Tomlin	Glory In The Highest	2/10/2013	Yes
1136	Abba	Gold	2/11/2013	Yes
1137	Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers	Greatest Hits	2/11/2013	Yes
1138	Barry Manilow	Greatest Hits, Vol. 1	2/12/2013	Yes
1139	Barry Manilow	The Greatest Songs of the Sixties	2/13/2013	Yes
1140	Harry Connick Jr	She	2/13/2013	Yes
1141	Soundgarden	Superunknown	2/14/2013	Yes

• Relient K “Five Score and Seven Years Ago”: I have been looking for this CD for quite some time so I was happily surprised to see it on the 90% off rack at Mardel’s.  This is very similar in sound to their current stuff (which I much prefer to their earlier CDs).
• Jaci Valasquez “Crystal Clear”: I have Jaci’s first CD and loved it.  I think she was all of 16 when it was released.  A very pure voice with just enough Latin influence mixed in with normal pop songs.
• Barry Manilow “Barry Manilow” & “Greatest Hits Vol 1” & The Greatest Songs of the Sixties”: So much Barry, so little time.  Apologies to the son and his friend as I mad them listen to the Best Of CD (from 1974) on the way to dropping them off at school the other day (and sang / hummed along all the way).  I have a few other Manilow CDs including the Greatest Songs of the Fifties.  Don’t judge me.
• Abba “Gold”: How can anyone put this on the clearance rack for $1?
• Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers “Greatest Hits”: How can anyone put this on the clearance rack for $1?
• Soundgarden “Superunknown”: These guys had the advantage of sounding like Nirvana at just the right time.  I have had this CD before (or maybe cassette) but this listening left me wanting a little more complexity.

Well there you have it.  I might have outgrown my need for so much new music.

Jon

Insufficient Affection Funds and the Social Contract

I have been thinking a lot about my unwritten contract with society.  I read about this concept in a book once and as I recall it had to do with acceptable and unacceptable behavior and the agreement that we all have with each other to do the former and not the latter (in public anyway).  Every time that I am asked to do something (socially), I think back to what is expected of me from society and if the thing that I am asked to do is required from this social contract.  Let me give you an example.

I just returned from a short trip back to Kokomo, Indiana, where I spent most of my time visiting with my mother and grandmother.  I did meet friends for lunch or dinner but most of the time was spent at my mother’s house.  I did visit my old church and spent a few minutes each with the people that I know that still attend there and greeted them with the socially acceptable hand shake.  I think a few minutes each is the socially acceptable amount of time and if you divide the number of minutes that I had by the number of friends to greet then the math works out.  Before I left however my wife asked me to say “Hi” to several, specific people.  I thought this a little overkill as she and the kids were up in Kokomo recently (about 2 months previous) and she does keep in touch with most of the people that she asked me to greet via Facebook, E-mail, etc.  Also, the people that she asked me to greet were not folks that were necessarily on my short list of folks that I wanted to chat with.  Given my short time there and her recent trip, I basically told her that I did not feel it necessary to greet them for her.  I do not think that part of the social contract requires me to be the conduit for greetings in this manner.  I actually think she bought my reasoning / excuses however this was not the end of her requests for me.

She also wanted me to visit a pet store where she worked off and on for the dozen or so years we lived in Kokomo.  Now I did spend a lot of time at this store but mostly it was either dropping her off for work or picking her up or the occasional time we had to run in for pet supplies.  I got to know some of the workers there and know all about them and their families but only because the wife talked about them quite a bit and kept me up to date (note: I think this is part of the marriage contract, namely to listen whether you are interested or not).  I am sure they know way more about me than I am confortable with as well as I imagine that the wife also talked about me when she was at work.  I probably would have stopped by to see the employees there even if my wife did not ask me to but I would not have hugged them.

That is right, my wife asked me to give one of the folks there a hug for her.  Now, as you can imagine, if I didn’t feel that I should be a conduit for a greeting to our friends at church then I certainly do not feel that I should be the middle man in this hug scheme.  I am not a hugger.  My mother only got 2 the entire time I was there (a hello hug and a goodbye hug).  So, to give out a hug to someone that I would not otherwise hug simply based on a request from the wife seems a bit of a stretch of the terms of the social contract.  Also, I only have so many hugs in my reservoir so there is the possibility of running out of hugs and not having enough for friends and family that I might otherwise hug.

I typically only give one armed hugs anyway (I think they require less transfer of affection funds) but if the huggee is a two arm hug person then I have a decision to make.  Unfortunately, the person that the wife asked me to hug preferred the two armed variety so my affection funds went down double the normal amount.  This act might even have put me in the red as the wife did not excessively hug me to make up for the upcoming deficit.

The wife has asked me to hug someone for her before but I have noticed a pattern (or an omission rather).  She never asks me to hug any female younger than me (other than relatives).  She has never asked me to hug a very pretty, 21 year old girl (and I am not holding my breath).  At any rate, I made it home and had enough in the hug tank for goodbye hugs for both my grandmother and mother.  And, I can say here in truthfulness that the wife did more than make up in the affection department once I got to the DFW airport and back home.  I do not think it is socially acceptable to go into much more detail here in this blog.

Jon

Inappropriate Excitement

Each of us get excited from time to time for various, oftentimes personal, reasons.  Even I succumb to the emotion from time to time.  But, like all things, there is a time and a place for excitement and there are times and places where excitement is not a healthy, normal reaction.  Let me give you an example.

Several months back, the son and I went to an all day seminar / conference for the local storm spotters group.  The son was going as he really likes weather and weather related things.  I was going as I either lost a bet with the wife or some similar reason (rock, paper scissors didn’t go my way, etc.).  The son was really looking forward to this, he was excited.  I was looking forward to this about as much as I look forward to a dentist visit.  We arrived a little early and I was very surprised at the large turnout.  We found some good seats and settled in for the first session.  The room was almost entirely filled with folks as excited about weather things as my son and this suited him just fine.  We ended up not staying all day (the afternoon sessions were a bit over our heads really) but I noticed a theme for the parts that we did attend.  The worse a storm was (they talked about recent storms and showed several videos), the more excited and animated these people became.  I have chided my son for this way of behaving as with bad weather comes damage, injuries and overall human suffering.  To be happy or (worse yet) wish / root for severe weather without considering the human suffering side of things is something I am working with him on.  I have asked him several times to tone down his excitement when our weather radio goes off announcing when we are under some weather alert or warning.  But here we were, in a room full of people that acted just like him.  Now I was the odd one out.  His behavior and reaction was justified it seemed (to him anyway).

The wife and I talk about this feature of our son on occasion (usually right after bad weather).  She is on the “he’ll grow out of it” side of things and I am on the “he will end up on TV doing some report outside when a hurricane hits McKinney” side of things.  I think we both agree that his excitement is inappropriate.  During our talks, we often end up on the “who does he get this from?” subject and of course we both deny being the origin of this behavior.  However, in this case, my wife is wrong.

My wife also exhibits inappropriate excitement from time to time and it also involves human suffering, namely mine.  You see, she likes to fancy herself an expert on homeopathic remedies for various illnesses.  A person in this line of work needs to experiment and one can only experiment on live subjects and no one usually volunteers for this sort of thing so you can understand that she gets quite excited whenever I am sick.  There is a special sparkle in her eye when she hears me cough or sneeze that I only remember from early in our courtship and on special occasions like our wedding day.  Oh, she tries to feign sympathy and compassion, but her excitement over a live (captive) test subject trumps all other shown emotions.

I woke up this morning around 4:30 with a headache and a slightly stuffy nose.  My stomach felt a bit off as well.  I cannot tell you what I dreaded more, being sick or being an unwilling patient.  I thought about trying to hide my feeling bad but it is hard to do.  Also, once she discovers my illness, I do not know what to root for, to feel better (due to her treatment and thus encourage her) or to continue being sick (to perhaps make her give up her profession).  It is a tough call.  Though I deny it to her face, her treatments do seem to work.  I am sick for a shorter period of time than anyone I know.  I chalk this up to clean living but the wife tends to take all the credit.

At any rate, I am pretty sure that this is where the son get’s his habit of inappropriate excitement from.  And one more thing, I am feeling much better as of the time of this blog posting.

Jon

Random Photos–2012-11-10

It is once again time to clear out the micro SD card from ye olde cellular phone and see what pictures I have snapped over the past few months.

This is the layout of the dog’s dishes.  I am not sure why I thought this was photo worthy.  From left to right: Nina’s food bowl, the shared water bowl, McKinney’s food bowl and Louie’s food bowl (notice that it is empty as he never misses a meal nor a chance to steal from the other dog’s bowls).

This is my daughter using my 47” television as a computer monitor.  I was running a test copy of Windows 8 for part of the summer and had that computer using my big TV as its monitor.  For some reason she preferred this screen to the 10” screen of her netbook.

This is from the local Whole Foods.  Don’t worry, we didn’t buy all the seaweed rice crackers.

This was my plate when I had lunch with my mother over the summer during her trip down here.  There was a lunch special where you got 4 courses for a certain price, all delivered at the same time (since no one has time for a 4 course lunch during their lunch hour).  Everything was delicious.

Louie “fits” right into our family don’t you think?

For reasons I will not go into here, the wife bought a juicer.  The smile on her face is BEFORE she drank the contents of the glass.

Another food photo.  This was a free lunch that I had at work.  My cubicle is very near a meeting room that is used quite often for all day meetings.  Sometimes these meetings have a cart delivered just outside the meeting room door that has a lunch spread.  It is an unwritten rule that anything left on the cart at 1:30 is fair game.  If you wait too much past that time, the cafeteria staff come and take away the cart.  This was my haul from the cart.  Sadly, all the cookies were gone.

Another photo taken at work.  This was taped to the refrigerator for a few days.  The thief is still at large.

Finally, one last photo from work.  I was invited into the meeting room (where the lunch cart is sometimes delivered) for a few hours during a 3 day conference.  Several of the attendees were from outside of the US and brought some local treats for us to try.  This was some sort of pineapple pastry thing.  Interesting but not something I think I would try again.

Well there you have it.  My phone photos folder is emptied again and ready to be filled with random photos again.

Jon

Getting Back On The Horse

Hello!  Long time, no blog.  Sorry ‘bout that!  There are lapses of time in my life when nothing truly blogworthy happens.  What can I say?  But, I did ride my bike yesterday so I would like to blog about that.

“Wow, Jon” you might say, “how boring must your life have become to make a bike ride blogworthy?”  I am glad you asked.

It has been 2 weeks since my last bike ride but I must first set the scene and give you a little background.

My last real blog (2 months ago) was about the wife and I trying to decide about moving back to Indiana or not.  One thing that determines this is the budget.  One thing that I would like to cut out of our monthly budget is cell phones for the kids and I (the wife will keep hers).  The only upside to the kids having cell phones is that we can call or text them when it is time to come home for dinner otherwise we (and by we, I mean me) have to hunt them down somewhere in the neighborhood.  This is where the bike ride 2 weeks ago comes into this story.  The wife had asked me to call (not text) the daughter to tell her to come home for dinner.  Given that I am very close to deciding to ditch the cell phones, I thought I would ride my bike to hunt her down.  This would help me to determine if I really wanted to discontinue our cell phone plan or not.

The wife and I got new bikes for Christmas last year and they are the best bikes that either of us have ever had.  It is very fun to ride them, especially on a beautiful Texas, windless evening when the temperatures are going down.  Many an evening I will put on my headphones and hop on the bike for a 45 minute ride down the bike trail that is near our neighborhood.  People are out riding their bikes, walking their dogs or just walking with their families.  The bike trail meanders through a school playground, around a small pond (where some people fish) and under several bridges.  It is probably 3 miles before it ends and normally I just turn around and come back.

My bike ride 2 weeks ago lasted about 8 feet and I never made it out of the driveway.  I hopped on my bike in the garage, positioned it so I could head down the driveway on the right side of the van that was parked in the driveway and then pedaled exactly once.  It was about 2 foot down the driveway that my front tire went off of the driveway and into the yard.  The driveway is about 2 inches above the yard (give or take) and instinctively I tried to steer back onto the driveway.  It was at this point in time that physics took over and gravity (who was to be my friend in gaining speed down the driveway) became a near mortal enemy.  I realized immediately that I was not going to make a miraculous save and stave off the imminent crash so I began to position my body to minimize the damage.  I landed on my left shoulder and left knee and have the still healing scabs to prove this.  I also landed on my left upper arm and drove my left elbow into my ribs.  This is the section of my body that has been constantly reminding me of my crash for the past 2 weeks.  it was just last night that I could take a deep breath without cringing in pain.  Even as I was writing that last sentence, a sneeze occurred and, well, OW!

Once I had stopped bouncing down the driveway, I immediately jumped up.  I wanted to see if I was really hurt or just scraped up.  I tried to “walk it off” as they say.  I hobbled around for a few seconds, picked up the bike (which seemed none the worse for wear) and walked the bike back into the garage.  What happened next falls into the category of “he said, she said”.

The wife, upon seeing that I had returned so quickly and that I was not walking in a manner that a healthy, uninjured person would walk, asked what happened.  I explained as best I could and then she said the following statement…

“Did anyone see you?”

How I interpreted that statement.

I interpreted this like any person would, namely that she was concerned that I had embarrassed myself (and her) by crashing my bike before I even got out of the driveway.  Now, I do not blame her much for this statement as it may have been part of the reason that I got up from the crash site so quickly but she is my wife and she only spent about 5 seconds making sure I was OK before she said this statement.

What she said that she meant by that statement.

She CLAIMS that she asked this question to see if any of our neighbors had come to my rescue or at least asked if I was OK.  She still defends this excuse to this day.  If she had not have bust out laughing RIGHT AFTER she said this statement, I might be inclined to actually believe her.

Anyway, my ribs are feeling better every day and I really did go on a bike ride yesterday for about 20 minutes.  I did pay more attention to the edge of the driveway and the edges of the sidewalks throughout the entire ride and overall was more careful during turns and intersections.  That is probably a good thing.  As for ditching the cell phones, I am still undecided.

Jon