Quo Vado?

After ten and a half hours spent rolling down the road, I’ve stopped to grab some breakfast food, dump my brain and kill some time before I retrieve Alm from the Newport News Airport. Traffic at the start of this holiday weekend was less than I expected, it moved smoothly with everyone sharing the road. When driving through South Carolina keeping yourself from seriously exceeding the speed limit is a good idea. I saw almost all of today’s cops in that state, one of them was even a dark blue unmarked Mustang.

The greenness of the area astounds me. I drive through the money neighborhoods in Atlanta to get too and from work, but here feels less naked. Likely, it’s just the part of the countryside that I’m driving through. The green makes the area feel much more inviting, as if it calls me home. While it could be a case excellent planing, I sense a genuine care has been given to mar the natural beauty as much as possible. I’m still looking forward to the refreshment of the ocean, but am surprised by the encouragement the trees bring.

Virginia has the most amusing road/exit names.

I hate driving on bridges. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate bridges, I think they’re cool. The forms of so many of the structures in the world are cool. I live in fear that one day I’m going to drive off the edge of the bridge and fall to my fiery and tragic death to the river below.Yes, a river would be worse than pavement - I hate deep water.

In the many stops along the way to Virginia Beach I realized something else odd. Even though I routinely suffer from claustrophobia, I rarely choose the big stall when using public bathrooms. If you really wanted to know, I usually select a middle stall on the left.

Shortly after arriving at the weekend destination, I realized a sad thing. I wanted to be away from home alone more than I wanted to be at the retreat with all the people around. I pushed through, and had a great weekend. Enjoying the fellowship and the sun.

I had a great drive yesterday, even wrote most of a blog post about it, only I cannot get the wireless to work. I’ll catch y’all up when the weekend is over.

Unlike Profgrrrrl I don’t travel all the time, but it seems that as of late, I end up packing in the wee hours of the morning before I’m to depart. The dryer just finished so I should begin packing. Now, what am I going to wear?

An article appeared in the AJC earlier this week about a Senior who attended school on “Senior Skip Day” to have a perfect attendance record. When I was in high school I spent my senior skip day hugging the toilet because I had food poisoning. What does that say about my life?

In the last thirty hours I’ve agreed to have a traveling partner on the during the first part of the weekends trip which I’d planed to complete solo, found a good mood about the company, and had my rider decide she wasn’t going.

I spent much of the day at work way too happy to be there, maybe because I’m going to be out of the office for five whole days - and I don’t even have any work to avoid while not being there. It is quite possible that I might not survive.

I’m going to the beach this weekend. If you don’t see me, I’ll talk at you all laters - enjoy the holiday!

Look, if you’re going to be in the remodeling industry please learn and use the correct verbage.

Columns and Posts are VERTICAL - they span down to up.

Beams and Girders are HORIZONTAL - they span side to side.

There are differences between a column and post and between a beam and girder, but the vertical/horizontal drives me crazy.

Learn the language if you’re going try and talk about it on television.

Tonight, as a treat for not committing homicide at work, I saw Kingdom of Heaven in the theatre. Synthesizing a comment on the movie is proving to be difficult. I left the theatre feeling empty and detached. While the story was interesting, it lacked moments of humor, which allow the audience to breathe and prepare for the next piece of grim reality - even stomach turning gallows humor provides some relief. Timing was another issue I had with this movie. Somehow I missed the time cues and the whole thing felt as if it had taken just days.

Movie Title: Kingdom of Heaven

• Matinee or Evening Movie: Matinee
• Add to Collection: No
• Grade: C

On the way into work most mornings I typically try to listen to Q100. Some days I end up flipping to one of the local country station because their expression of their first amendment rights strays into a topic about which I don’t care to listen. Today wasn’t one of those mornings. Last weekend was the start of graduation season for the metro area and the four hosts of the program gave their annual ‘commencement addresses.’ Apparently Jeff Dollar’s address raised some flags with a reader of Maddox’s blog because elements of Jeff’s speech reflected ideas he gleaned from reading the blog before going to bed the night before. I’m not linking to Jeff’s speech or Maddox’s blog entry because they aren’t both available at this time, nor do I want to talk about this particular instance.

My question is this, when do I own the thought? I spend part of my life listening to others ideas about how they think the world works, some of those ideas I absorb, assimilate and begin to express in my own way. Often, ideas I have about the world flow directly from bits and pieces of various lectures and conversations that get amalgamated together into the kmsqrd version. Other times things I believe and say are more direct lifts of stuff I’ve heard. When do I own it? When does my expression of an idea, which can often be said in only so many ways, become mine and not plagiaristic?

I have my nails done by a professional because I don’t have the time, patience or dexterity to do it myself. The sitting position for a proper manicure is painful for me, my naturally occurring American manicure was something of a fascination and I’m pretty sure the nail women made fun of me in a non-English language when I had my toes painted different colors. I don’t know how I feel about the last bit.The nail woman did a good job, I’ve got tiny nails so it takes a deft hand, she even left enough callus that I’ll be going to the beach this weekend with my feet in good shape, no tender spots to trip me up.

The cyclical squee I kept hearing from my car turned out to be nearly dead breaks, so they replaced the pads and remachined the rotors and all sounds good as new - if only I can remember to not decelerate too quickly for the next two hundred miles. The sad news is I have to head back to the shop sometime this week. If the weather is nice I sit outside the waiting room, enjoying the sunshine and the warmth. Sunday, knowing the breaks would screw up the timing, I grabbed my Dad’s blanket out of the trunk and used it as a cushion on the concrete. I left it behind. Normally I’m too lazy to pick up such items, but this one is special. Before Mom sent me the contents of his wallet last year, it was the only tangible thing I had, beyond my face, linking him to me. I claimed the blanket shortly after his death and Mom saw to it that it stayed in my possession. The blanket found it’s home in the cars I own, as if by using it for the same purpose he did we’ll be as close as possible.

I’m starting to figure out that del.icio.us thing, it’s pretty cool. Though I haven’t quite figured out what I’ll use it for..

Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening to the presentations from Pop!Tech and have been amazed by the passion with which the presenters talk about their subjects. During my automatic questioning of if I’d ever felt that much passion about a subject I stumbled across my completely irrational reactions to people threatening those I consider part of my family. I have that kind of passion, I’m capable of the level, I just don’t feel like I live there. I don’t know if I could live there. I don’t know if I need to live there. I know there is something beyond the survival mode in which I’ve spent much of the last two decades, but part of me backs up in horror wondering if I have to be that far out there. Is hell bent for leather the only other option to survival?

• Driving home through the park tonight was a treat an a half. On the east side, firefighters blocked the narrowest portion of the road collecting money for burn victims. After narrowly missing oncoming traffic and surviving the rolling riders there was a sign taped to a post that read simply “Great Stuff Sale Go Right”.
• On Wednesday night I watched The Last Samurai. I enjoyed the movie, but regretted that I hadn’t gone to see it in the theatre. The movie left me craving a place that encouraged and honored silence and stillness. So much of what my life is about in the here and now isn’t silent or still. Even the time I have which could be dedicated to such introspection doesn’t get allocated for that. I continue to seek out the noise of life - the television, the activities, the shallow conversations - as if the silence scares me.
  
  The Last Samurai
  • Matinee or Evening Movie: Evening
  • Add to Collection: Yes
  • Grade: B+
• I’m fighting the urge to name my car. I’ll name stuffed animals. I’ll name electronic equipment. I’ll even re-name people I know but something in me resists naming my car.
• While waiting to get my nails done today I started the tracking list in my black book. Part of me wonders if I shouldn’t be cataloging the contents of my ‘brain’ in a different manner.

The eyes have it … but it sits behind the glass.


the new coat of paint

The folks over at Begging the Question ask…

1. Live alone on a deserted island for 10 years or be paid to live at Neverland Ranch with the King of Pop for one year? The ranch is a big place, right? I’m not a boy. I’ll live with the King of Pop - though he might kick me out.

2. Be deaf or blind? Blind, you wouldn’t want to see me if I had to go more than three days without music.

3. Have skin which changed color depending on your mood or visible sight lines? No, it would eventually conflict with the black tee shirt and jeans I’m going to make famous one day.

4. Spend a year in prison or a year on tour with Celine Dion and John Tesh?I’ll go on tour, at least I’d get to see the world.

5. Have threesome with your close friends or with total strangers? Um, no.

Please note, if you’re sharing the freeway with me, I try to follow these guidelines:

1. I assume you don’t all of your faculties when you drive.
2. Provide a good following distance to the cars in front of you. I typically use car lengths, one for the first forty and add one for each ten miles over. When traffic prohibits theses distances, work for a much space as possible.
3. Travel at the speed of traffic. This means if your on the Perimeter, this means going at least sixty.
4. If I have to use my breaks, I consider it a failed drive. Good highway driving doesn’t involve breaks.
5. Signals are good. So is paying attention to them.
6. Pass 18-Wheelers one lane removed.
7. If you cant follow Rule #6, accelerate through the pass.
8. Assume stupidity.

I keep having days of the week problem. Every Thursday I venture to the northeast side of town to attend midweek service. Tonight I cut the ties to work with barely enough time to make it to church. I carefully collected half the blue irises, found the ‘elegant’ carrying vessel and balanced all the stuff as I headed out the car. Heading out the east entry, I drove on my merry way, getting twelve minutes into the path before I realized that today - isn’t Thursday.

On the back of a cherry red Toyota Spyder I spied a licence plate that said, “LOW UFO.” Now that’s just what I’d want to advertise to the local authorities.

For the last week or so I’ve been attempting to eat better. (It’s about time, I know.) My attempts have ruined my stomaches ability to like food that’s inherently bad for me. Is this part of getting old or is it just maturing? Either way, do I have too?

I’m feeling better today. My back isn’t completely up to snuff, but it doesn’t distract as much as it did yesterday.

Bossman lost his mind this morning. He went back to look at something that he’d supposedly finished months ago, only to find that the calculations he had didn’t match the plans in a drastic and costly way. I spent a good chunk of the morning redoing work I’d previously completed for him that he’d had someone else ‘fix’ and working excessively hard at keeping my big mouth shut.

I’ve mentally begun to count down this year, trying to psych myself up to complete the application for TfA despite the long odds. As I work I remind myself that the extra money I make is applied to the most excellent cause of getting me out of stupid debt. For the record, stupid debt is debt incurred for anything other than medical expenses, automobiles, homes or education. Though, in my opinion the excessive sizes/price tags of some automobiles and homes would qualify as not the brightest move.