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First I took all of Catie’s holiday break off and we took a mega vacation.

And then when we got back we had a belated birthday party for Olivia. We had a party planned on her birthday but the infectious stomach flu put a stop to that.

We’ve actually posted a ton of pictures since the days that I used to regularly note them on the blog so go explore.

I walked outside to pull our trash bins off the curb and for a split second I got the feeling of my brother’s house, City of Virginia Beach, circa 1998.

Something about wearing a t-shirt on a cool humid summer evening, the air moving gently and carrying the smell of the ocean at low tide under orange floodlight skies.

I could almost imagine the car on the curb was a 91 Prism.

I think I’ll go on a bender tomorrow.

After posting about shoveling snow I had some lunch. Then I went out to shovel again and just when I was finishing up, maybe quarter past four, the sun decided to make an appearance.

“Augh!, it burns!”, I screamed into the white silence. “My eyes!”

Anyone want to make a bet on whether I’m getting out of here tomorrow?

I shoveled my parents driveway twice last night. In total I scooped up something like 7 inches.

I rolled out of bed this morning, took a shower, had breakfast and opened the garage door to encounter another 12-14 inches or something like that (no, I am not a meteorologist).

(more…)

Tonight is a good night to be outside
And to feel a cold lively new front
Blowing in across dark
Quiet bedded-down Seattle
And to hear dry leaves skitter
Down empty orange lit sidewalks
Under bare limbed trees.

It took me a good long while to stop thinking about work and get to sleep last night and at one point I got up and put the battery back in my pager when I remembered that I had gone oncall. But eventually I put work out of my mind and slipped off to greener pastures. And I got a whole hour of sleep before I got paged.

And then it took me forever to stop thinking about work again.

I went in to work for a little while today. I felt anxious and guilty about not being there working and anxious and guilty about feeling that way. In my defense: I know I’m going to have to take a week off sometime this month to take care of some family business that’s come up, so the fact that I was still on vacation while I knew I was going to have to take more time off early in the new year added to my guilt. Also, I was under the impression that New Years day was Saturday, so I was all screwed up calendarwise.

I rode the bus in intending on some very high level design work and revising my yearly performance goals, the kind of work you’re supposed to do when it’s quiet in the office and the kind of output that I consider myself best at, what I do to distinguish myself. When I got there and sat down and tried to work my body was in its usual position but I was somewhere else entirely. Coffee didn’t help.

I very slowly ground my way through 4 and a half hours and then took the bus home and when I got home I was achy-bone, head-nodding exhausted.

I am just limping my way to the end of this decade people; Lurching like I’m sunblind, drunk and sleep deprived.

You told me you would bring presents and treats
Cheering my spirits with homemade sweet meats
Here I sit waiting beside the tree all by myself
Here I sit waiting beside the tree all by myself
– weezer

I just spent half an hour trying to find a download of the weezer christmas song. It was absolutely infuriating. Over and over I kept on ending up on these sites that would let me listen to the song via embedded quicktime but wouldn’t let me download it, or the alternative, a site that would supposedly let me download it if I setup an account.

This is for a song that was freely available on their website for years! And it doesn’t appear on any album, wasn’t for sale on Amazon or iTunes. I don’t even know where I finally ended up getting it. I couldn’t believe I’d finally gotten my hands on it. I’m not sure if it’s fully legit. Our copyright laws suck.

Anger fading… fading… fading… Rising… fading… gone.

I found some old journals dating back to 2001 (can you believe it’s been almost a decade?). A couple things jumped out at me from the very oldest entries.

I got a flyer today for this job fair I’m going to on wednesday. I’m going to be able to meet and talk to recruiters from such fine companies as:

7-11 inc.
AFLAC (AFLAC!)
Dominion Virginia Power (Evil)
IRS – Criminal Investigation (Really think I can get a security clearance?)
Kroger Mid-Atlantic
NAPA Auto Parts
Naval Surface Warfare Center (Military industrial complex here I come)
Philip Morris U.S.A. (Sadly enough I really wouldn’t mind working for them)
Walgreens
YMCA of Greater Richmond
Rainbow Station, Inc. (rainbow station?)
Northrop Grumman Newport News.
Navy Civilian Jobs
Target Stores
Verizon Wireless (Fucking cell phones…)
Toys “R” Us (for once I actually want to grow up though)
and a whole lot of different public school systems.

Wow, it’s so crazy ironic that the first time I heard the name of the place I ended up working for for three and a half years, I found it distasteful for the same reason that haunted me endlessly for all that time. The money made me into a hypocrite. Whatever though, I can’t even summon proper anger about it anymore. Notes I took for a gigantic screed I was going to write about it just ended up languishing (it would have been good — maybe).

I dreamt that I was back in high school. Not my high school, one of the ones around here. And I was older than everyone else. Turns out that my university requires that you take certain classes in high school before you can get your college degree. So there I was, twenty three and going to class at a high school and bitching about how stupid it was to anyone who would listen…

Here it is, I’ve been out of school for 7 years now and I still have this dream every now and again. And usually I’m coming up on the final in the class and I have no idea what’s going on. I haven’t been there in months. It’s a miracle I knew it was final time. Sometimes I don’t even know where the class is meeting. Not that they moved, I don’t know where they were in the first place. I don’t know where my schedule is, I don’t know how to look it up. And because of my utter degeneracy, it’s going to be yet another endless, boring, unemployed, ridiculous semester before I can finally have my degree. And even now, after all this time, when I wake it it’s at least a few seconds before the relief of knowing that I’m done with school comes flooding like hot bathwater into my chilled heart.