Quo Vado?

Last week, when I couldn’t bring myself to leave the bookstore without buying a couple of books, one of them was a guided journaling book called, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Taking Time Out for Self-Discovery. I’m writing this here, and plan to do all of the journal entries here to have some accountability outside of myself alone. I know most of the QV? readers won’t take me out back and shoot me if I fail to live up to this agreement - in fact the time might come when they’d appreciate a little less navel gazing. I’m going to try.

The book recommends you start this endeavor with an intention - some question you want to answer or something about yourself you’d want to explore in the next forty days. Then, you’re supposed put it aside an just let the next forty days happen as they will. Kind of a weird idea, but I’m trying all kinds of weird ideas lately so we’ll see where this one goes.

As far as the intention goes, I’m going to try and address the thing that’s been haunting me for months now. I haven’t been to church since Christmas. I’ve been fighting a battle with myself over just what place or how or something about how I acknowledge and accept God as a part of my life that doesn’t stem from a set of rules, or because I of some inborn sense of guilt, or some reason that doesn’t involve some other form of ‘have to.’

Much like this entry, I expect the blogging about this subject to be more than a bit rambly and nonsensical. So, please feel free to skip these entries.

BTW, the other book was a diet book which I feel a bit stupid for buying and even more stupid for trying. I’ll blog it if it turns out well. If it doesn’t the book makes a handy bed-based writing surface.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. - Niels Bohr

You can tell it’s air show weekend. The noise overhead reminds you every couple of minutes. I wonder how shell-shocked the local animals will be at the end of the weekend.

Contents of my pantry:

• mac and cheese - 3 boxes
• peaches - 1 jar
• mandarin oranges - 1 jar
• red raspberry jam - 1 jar
• tea - 2.5 boxes rubios, 0.5 box chamomile, 1 box black
• cherry jell-o - 2 boxes
• taco mix - 1 box
• dijonaise - 1 bottle
• popcorn - 6 mini bags
• brown sugar - 2 boxes
• couscous - 1 box
• honey - 1 bottle
• canola oil - 1 bottle
• season salt - 1 bottle

Not bad for a thirty year old who doesn’t cook at home.

Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework - an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life. - Betty Friedan

My signature’s become something of a joke. It began, many moons ago, as a great example of penmanship. You could read all of the letters and boldness reeked from each stroke. Over the years it’s discinigrated markedly. The dot on the “i” was the first to go. It ends my first name, and as such wasn’t so important. Slowly the last four letters of my last name became mere bumps with a stick near the end. Then, the “ur” combination toward the beginning started randomly growing or losing vertical slashes.

Today, however, the whole name concept was finally thrown out the window for everything but the most formal of letters. My name has become first initial, last name (kindof) all scrunched together as one word in all lowercase letters.

Yesterday’s well performing Outlook gave way to a temperamental pissy piece of software this morning. I lost an hour trying to get it to finish loading this morning, and it just didn’t want to load. At about ten I left the building and left it to think. I guess I’m going to have to get in the practice of letting my computer and Outlook finish loading before trying to do anything more than logging into my work computer. This is going to suck.

There was an article in today’s AJC about GM’s struggle to revitalize the Saturn line of cars. Before MPC was saddled with me as an owner, I drove a small Saturn sedan. I appreciated the friendliness and service I rec’d from all [1] of the dealerships I dealt with during the time I owned the Saturn, but found myself reluctant to put in $4,000 into it after just 85,000 miles. So, I switched to a car that I believed would have better longevity. In good Atlanta fashion, MPC has received her fair share of licks, but at 58,800 miles keeps running happily.

It just struck me that both of the rooms I live in have Diet Coke guarding the door. The stuff at home doesn’t have caffeine. The work door has the high octane protection. [1] Purchased in Ft. Wayne. Replaced the horn in Salt Lake City, Utah. Replaced the horn again in Orlando, Florida. Reconstructed the front end twice in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s morning and it’s Friday. I think I’m supposed to be happy about this in some way. I can’t tell if I am. Bossman’s only working half a day today. His boss is likely dragging him up to Virginia to see one of the grand-kids. That, or he’s running away to Vegas.

Some days running off to Vegas sounds like heaven. Then I remember that there are way too many people living in the desert for me to really want to run away there. Maybe, I’ll run away to Main. No, really, it moves much slower, and while the weather isn’t exactly warm, so long as I stay off the ocean on bad days and stock the pantry, I should be OK. Though, I do hope they’ve taken to burying the telephone, power and cable lines. Living without heat and the net would be difficult.

But, somewhat seriously, it’s Friday. Enjoy your work. Avoid working too hard. Do something this weekend.

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” - Nikola Tesla

Someone just called and tried to schedule a hair appointment. While the mischievous part of me wanted to say something really off, I just let the caller know that while I am a Kelli, this Kelli doesn’t cut hair.

It’s probably a very lucky thing for her.

PS. Outlook is behaving much better today.

I hope Outlook decides it wants to work for me this morning. I’ve spent the last two days wanting to toss my work computer out the back door. On Tuesday, I couldn’t really send or receive mail. The internal router defined slower than snot and our connection to SMTP server just kept hanging up. The aggravation didn’t begin until about three. I worked around it as much as I could, but still ended up going home early (for me lately) and deciding to start again on Wednesday. Wednesday, I could receive email, and send plain text email. Which sounds all well and good, until I try to attach something. About three quarters of everything I mail has something attached to it - a PDF of a sketch, a CAD file, a site visit memo - you name it, and I probably send at least one on a given day. It wouldn’t be too bad if it just wouldn’t go, but every time I tried to send something it would completely hang up Outlook to the point where I had to restart the machine.

Luckily, Google will ghost from addresses and I was able to send out my mail yesterday. If I have to go through this all again today, that pretty box just may end up in pieces after all.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.” - George Carlin

I recently finished an art project for Philip, and while he’s doing whatever it is he’s planning to do with it, my mind discovered something interesting about it. The piece itself is a representation of a journey to find something. The thing is, the journey’s an isolated one of discovery. It wasn’t until I really thought about it that I realized something basic about discovery. It doesn’t help you to journey to find something if you’re not willing to brave retracing your steps back to everyday life while keeping it safe. The return path holds the same pitfalls in both directions.

I almost made it out of the bookstore without a book tonight. Unfortunately, for that miracle anyway, I couldn’t resist the urge to browse over to the journal section. I left with two books, one a new guided journal and the other on diet/nutrition. I’m not sure what will become of either one, but intentions are good.

I had something else to say before I sat down, but I’ve sense forgotten. Oh, well, maybe the wisp will be recorded another time.