Time slows when there is more going on. This is the basis for "Internet time," wherein if someone doesn't answer your email within three days, you suspect that they may be dead. I think something like this happens while driving, because we all know how long those 15 second red lights last. Also, try this while driving (have someone hold your beer): glance at your watch and note where the second hand is, then watch it until it moves. It should only take one second, right? It's amazing how long that seems to take--not if you're waiting for a red light, but if you're driving along. (If you own a Rolex, this won't work. It has to be a quartz-timed watch.) Perhaps it has to do with hyperfocusing. So, same with the Internet. Apparently. This is also my basis for explaining the eternal summer vacations when you were in grade school. OK. I guess, also the watched pot. (Millennials: this is a reference to the old adage, a watched pot never boils, from back when phones had round dials and what you are calling "life hacks" were simply known as "life.")
Note to self: write a blog post ranting about the use of the term "life hack."
So, my point is, damn, I arrived back in Kansas City less than two weeks ago? I moved into my apartment four days ago? A lot has happened. Same with the last year--it's been now.
One of the things that happened to me was that since I had to finally reduce all of my belongings to a pile of stuff that would fit in my admittedly small SUV, I got rid of a few too many things. I did the best I could--when I drove to KC I had so much stuff in the back of my Ford that if I opened the tailgate, something would fall out. So at one point during packing, I decided my desk top computer "tower" was too damn big, and I've been wanting to get rid of it anyway, so I took the hard drive and an expensive video card out of it and threw the tower part away. I hope I can figure out how to get all the pictures off the hard drive . . . Bottom line, I am using the Macbook Air.
Note to self: you could write a long blog post about trying to switch from Windows to OS--what is it now?--High Sierra, you could write that, but don't bother.
Also I have no furniture again, so I watch TV while sitting on the floor. Seriously, I really am too old for this. It is not just an adage, it is the awful truth. Getting furniture is on my list. Also--the age thing--getting someone to deliver said furniture right to my living room. That would be a plus.
OK. I am down to two guitars, having shipped my son's Fender Stratocaster to him in Seattle, so that helped, but again I note that while you may think a guitar is not a particularly large instrument, you would stop thinking that if you had to put two of them, in their cases, in a car. Special care was taken so that when I opened the tailgate, neither guitar was what fell out onto the pavement. Usually it was a box of computer cables and small accessories that would roll far away if given half a chance.
Well, time's a wastin' and I have another list of things to do. Anyway, all is well.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Friday, August 9, 2019
Moving In Day
It's Friday morning, moving day, in Kansas City. The sun is just coming up--I just pulled up the shade of the motel window so the sun is pouring into the room now. It is moving day. It will not hurt my feelings to move out of this "extended stay" motel, but it wasn't so bad. Could've been worse, like the Econo-Lodge I looked at first, the one with the room that looked like the last occupant might have committed suicide in it. You couldn't blame him.
There's not much to say. I bought a futon mattress and a wooden bed frame, which I will pick up this afternoon after unloading the contents of my little SUV. I got my renter's insurance, got my checkbook right here. I set up the Google Fiber, got my little self-install kit on the floor of the back seat. When I move into the apartment I will furnish it, initially, with the bed I just mentioned, and a small table and two chairs that I managed to fit inside my car when I left Tucson, and that's about it. I have a TV with no stand.
When I moved from Chico I donated all my kitchen stuff to Paradise fire victims, as well as some of my furniture. The last few times I moved, I got rid of stuff each time. I am now down to one well-packed carload. Once the owner of a mountain of shit, I am down to this, a small pile of stuff, a whittled down spear point of . . . ego? It's sort of an improvement.
But now I have to get going. Really. And I'm getting hungry.
There's not much to say. I bought a futon mattress and a wooden bed frame, which I will pick up this afternoon after unloading the contents of my little SUV. I got my renter's insurance, got my checkbook right here. I set up the Google Fiber, got my little self-install kit on the floor of the back seat. When I move into the apartment I will furnish it, initially, with the bed I just mentioned, and a small table and two chairs that I managed to fit inside my car when I left Tucson, and that's about it. I have a TV with no stand.
When I moved from Chico I donated all my kitchen stuff to Paradise fire victims, as well as some of my furniture. The last few times I moved, I got rid of stuff each time. I am now down to one well-packed carload. Once the owner of a mountain of shit, I am down to this, a small pile of stuff, a whittled down spear point of . . . ego? It's sort of an improvement.
But now I have to get going. Really. And I'm getting hungry.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
How I Spent (am spending) My Summer
Just about a year after I left Kansas City to live in Chico, California, I am now back in Kansas City, Missouri. It was like an adventure--a very disorganized adventure, one fraught with errors and lapses in good judgement, but here I am. I suppose without errors and lapses in judgement, adventures, by one definition, would never happen.
Once in Chico and getting settled in nicely, the neighboring town of Paradise experienced what turned out to be one of the most devastating wild fires in recent California history. Nearly a hundred people died, and an entire town was wiped out, displacing something like 50,000 people. On the second day of the fire, the smoke, at first high above Chico, began to settle toward the ground and of course proved irritating and smelly to everyone. I had friends in Tucson, Arizona, with whom I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and though it was still three weeks out, they invited me to come down early to avoid the risk and the smoke. I did so.
While there I made the decision to move from Chico to Tucson. California was once my home, way back in the Sixties and early Seventies, but it had changed and was, is, not the pleasant place it was then. Too expensive, too crowded, bad tax laws, congestion, and so on. The weather was nice, though Chico might give Tucson a run for its money regarding heat, at least during the peak of summer. And I met a nice lady in Tucson with whom I got along very well. It seemed like a good decision.
Tucson and the Sonoran Desert were interesting places--great places to visit, but I have to say, not to live in. At least in my opinion--and one's own opinion, when deciding where to settle, is arguably the most important gauge.
At the same time, as relationships move along their sometimes seemingly predestined courses, as this one did, we all know they either smooth along fairly and mostly nicely for long periods of time, or veer off a cliff. And you can't dial them back, as we also all know. When it was over, and I found I had no compelling reason to live in Tucson, I left. With nowhere else to go, I came home. I guess I have to say it.
The first interesting thing was Guthrie, Oklahoma. I stopped there for the night while traveling back to Kansas City. I never knew Guthrie existed. It is a very pleasant small town north of Oklahoma City (far enough north to . . . uhm . . . allow it to be pleasant) once the state capitol, now a well preserved little town with great architecture and a kind of Americana feel to it. Huh. Funny I lived in Oklahoma City for two years, in the Eighties, mostly disliked it, and never knew about this place.
Second thing: dreading the return of humidity after leaving Arizona and returning to the Midwest, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it felt OK. Arizona is dry, when not in the "monsoon season," but in the summer, temperatures routinely pass the 100 degree mark, the 110 degree mark, and even higher, and the dryness, while purportedly making the heat more bearable, comes with its own unpleasantries, like making your skin turn to leather, or parchment, let's say. UV indices are scary as well. When told I was moving to Arizona, people would say,"Oh, great! Do you have a dermatologist yet?" Huhng? No, do I need one? Yes. Anyway . . . Midwest humidity, while not ideal, is OK since maybe the temperature is 90. Big deal.
So here I am. I found an apartment downtown, but I haven't moved in yet. I'm still at an extended-stay motel in Independence, which is the town east of Kansas City. But my apartment, once I move in, will be convenient--close to the heart of downtown, but not directly in it, and close to the River Market area, where I once lived and have friends, and, once again, close to a streetcar stop--a plus, here, because it is still free and its route pretty much makes everything downtown within walking distance.
So here I am. As lost and aimless as ever. Stay tuned.
Once in Chico and getting settled in nicely, the neighboring town of Paradise experienced what turned out to be one of the most devastating wild fires in recent California history. Nearly a hundred people died, and an entire town was wiped out, displacing something like 50,000 people. On the second day of the fire, the smoke, at first high above Chico, began to settle toward the ground and of course proved irritating and smelly to everyone. I had friends in Tucson, Arizona, with whom I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and though it was still three weeks out, they invited me to come down early to avoid the risk and the smoke. I did so.
While there I made the decision to move from Chico to Tucson. California was once my home, way back in the Sixties and early Seventies, but it had changed and was, is, not the pleasant place it was then. Too expensive, too crowded, bad tax laws, congestion, and so on. The weather was nice, though Chico might give Tucson a run for its money regarding heat, at least during the peak of summer. And I met a nice lady in Tucson with whom I got along very well. It seemed like a good decision.
Tucson and the Sonoran Desert were interesting places--great places to visit, but I have to say, not to live in. At least in my opinion--and one's own opinion, when deciding where to settle, is arguably the most important gauge.
At the same time, as relationships move along their sometimes seemingly predestined courses, as this one did, we all know they either smooth along fairly and mostly nicely for long periods of time, or veer off a cliff. And you can't dial them back, as we also all know. When it was over, and I found I had no compelling reason to live in Tucson, I left. With nowhere else to go, I came home. I guess I have to say it.
The first interesting thing was Guthrie, Oklahoma. I stopped there for the night while traveling back to Kansas City. I never knew Guthrie existed. It is a very pleasant small town north of Oklahoma City (far enough north to . . . uhm . . . allow it to be pleasant) once the state capitol, now a well preserved little town with great architecture and a kind of Americana feel to it. Huh. Funny I lived in Oklahoma City for two years, in the Eighties, mostly disliked it, and never knew about this place.
Second thing: dreading the return of humidity after leaving Arizona and returning to the Midwest, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it felt OK. Arizona is dry, when not in the "monsoon season," but in the summer, temperatures routinely pass the 100 degree mark, the 110 degree mark, and even higher, and the dryness, while purportedly making the heat more bearable, comes with its own unpleasantries, like making your skin turn to leather, or parchment, let's say. UV indices are scary as well. When told I was moving to Arizona, people would say,"Oh, great! Do you have a dermatologist yet?" Huhng? No, do I need one? Yes. Anyway . . . Midwest humidity, while not ideal, is OK since maybe the temperature is 90. Big deal.
So here I am. I found an apartment downtown, but I haven't moved in yet. I'm still at an extended-stay motel in Independence, which is the town east of Kansas City. But my apartment, once I move in, will be convenient--close to the heart of downtown, but not directly in it, and close to the River Market area, where I once lived and have friends, and, once again, close to a streetcar stop--a plus, here, because it is still free and its route pretty much makes everything downtown within walking distance.
So here I am. As lost and aimless as ever. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
WIP
This morning I re-wrote the preface to ONE of my projects for the third time. In my mind, the preface needs to be right since it is going to point to the rest of the book, set the tone, define the parameters, and so on. The other prefaces failed to do these things. I think.
The thing is, I found and purchased another book also written by an ex-employee of the phone company. I won't judge it, but say that it is a smallish volume consisting of about 40 chapters, each of which is a vignette, a funny or poignant story involving a phone company worker and a customer. Except they are not really funny, nor particularly poignant. I always knew that I wanted the subject matter in my phone company book to appeal to non-phone-company people, and not to other employees, ex, or otherwise. So, it's a little hard to gain the right perspective. I think that the authors of this book were stretching just a little bit--so, when people say, man, you ought to write a book, it's not necessarily always good advice.
Anyway.
The thing is, I found and purchased another book also written by an ex-employee of the phone company. I won't judge it, but say that it is a smallish volume consisting of about 40 chapters, each of which is a vignette, a funny or poignant story involving a phone company worker and a customer. Except they are not really funny, nor particularly poignant. I always knew that I wanted the subject matter in my phone company book to appeal to non-phone-company people, and not to other employees, ex, or otherwise. So, it's a little hard to gain the right perspective. I think that the authors of this book were stretching just a little bit--so, when people say, man, you ought to write a book, it's not necessarily always good advice.
Anyway.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Progress of a Sort is Made
Having recently begun writing my book about the . . . er . . . good times at the phone company, I find I have already run into a problem. (Besides discovering a proclivity for writing in the passive voice too much.) I remember when I left the company on my last day, carrying my little cardboard box with its meager contents to the elevator for the parking garage; I was happy. Glad to get the fuck out of there. Now, a little over ten years later, after nurturing all those happy thoughts--not unlike the ones you carry concerning "happy days" at high school, when the truth was it was years of tedium combined with injustices and petty annoyances (P.E. is so-ooo stupid) --I find, upon a little digging, that most of my time at the phone company was unpleasant.
I suppose, like life, when you're at work the happiness is in the fleeting moments. Otherwise, nobody really likes having to sell half of their waking hours to a soul-less corporation and then take orders from someone whose authority seemed to have come from some inscrutable, random process having more to do with politics and ass-licking than any real qualifications for "managing" subordinates. Yeah, the phone company likes the word subordinates. Don't get me started. They also, when referring to a mistake during a safety review, call that a deviation. When the union once tried to refer to dangerous neighborhoods as "red zones," the company started calling them "awareness zones." See what I mean? Drives you nuts.
Without any other clues, I decided to begin the book by dredging up stories in a more or less chronological order. That has its pitfalls, I'm discovering. In a random universe (such as ours) chronological order is actually chaos, and some other kind of imposed order might make more sense.
But it's a place to start. The problem is that in re-remembering the succession of events of my career, I find myself remembering a lot of unpleasant things--things about which one might reasonably say they would "never want to through that again." Yet, here I am.
But it's not so bad, I guess. Yet still bad enough so that if I am to continue, I may have to come up with a good reason to write this book--a purpose, you might say, to help me maintain my momentum. I don't want readers to cringe, but truth is a worthy pursuit in writing, if it's not boring.
I suppose, like life, when you're at work the happiness is in the fleeting moments. Otherwise, nobody really likes having to sell half of their waking hours to a soul-less corporation and then take orders from someone whose authority seemed to have come from some inscrutable, random process having more to do with politics and ass-licking than any real qualifications for "managing" subordinates. Yeah, the phone company likes the word subordinates. Don't get me started. They also, when referring to a mistake during a safety review, call that a deviation. When the union once tried to refer to dangerous neighborhoods as "red zones," the company started calling them "awareness zones." See what I mean? Drives you nuts.
Without any other clues, I decided to begin the book by dredging up stories in a more or less chronological order. That has its pitfalls, I'm discovering. In a random universe (such as ours) chronological order is actually chaos, and some other kind of imposed order might make more sense.
But it's a place to start. The problem is that in re-remembering the succession of events of my career, I find myself remembering a lot of unpleasant things--things about which one might reasonably say they would "never want to through that again." Yet, here I am.
But it's not so bad, I guess. Yet still bad enough so that if I am to continue, I may have to come up with a good reason to write this book--a purpose, you might say, to help me maintain my momentum. I don't want readers to cringe, but truth is a worthy pursuit in writing, if it's not boring.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
It's November Somewhere
At last I can say I am working on a book. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is not the one about Laslo and the strange goings-on at the Busy Bee Cafe. Maybe later. This is about the phone company. What happened is I stumbled across two books written by ex-employees, and in the way this sometimes happens, I thought to myself, shit I can do that.
Turns out it's not quite that easy, but it seems to be going along OK. At least I can say I'm writing at a rate that would have me winning NaNoWriMo, so there's that. I know it's only May . . .
At the moment, even though I am throwing down words, I still am not quite sure what I want to do with this. One thing I don't want the book to do is to devolve into a rambling mess of "funny" phone company stories--you know, the ones with cockroaches in the phones, or with crazy drunk employees violating safety practices, stuff like that. The problem is sometimes it requires too much setup to tell these stories, as I have found--strange as it may seem--the general public does not know how the phone company works and therefore why some of my stories are so brilliantly pithy and ironic or whatever.
OK, well, what I am really trying to say is, I don't want the book to appeal only to other people who have worked at the phone company, full of the types of stories that we used to tell each other in the morning while we prepared to get in our trucks and go to work. Those were mostly lies anyway. So we're left with stories that might be meaningful to what the military would call the non-cognizant agent. Stories like cockroaches in phones, and crazy drunk employees violating safety practices.
Seriously, what I am trying to understand since I retired is how during my entire career the technology and methods evolved and changed faster and faster until it almost overtook me. Which is also called, getting old, I guess, but I can't help but think it didn't used to be like this. At least, so much. When I was pretty new to the company, I saw old guys retiring and it seemed like they pretty much did the same work their entire careers. With me, things kept changing--of course I changed along with them, but in the end, it quit being fun.
And, as always, there is the thing about writing that I always encounter. It is that my "writer's voice" is much better when I'm blogging than when I'm sitting down seriously trying to write. I really need to get past this. Perhaps I should stop being so serious. I mean, my entire life, being serious has never really served me that well. I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the world.
Turns out it's not quite that easy, but it seems to be going along OK. At least I can say I'm writing at a rate that would have me winning NaNoWriMo, so there's that. I know it's only May . . .
At the moment, even though I am throwing down words, I still am not quite sure what I want to do with this. One thing I don't want the book to do is to devolve into a rambling mess of "funny" phone company stories--you know, the ones with cockroaches in the phones, or with crazy drunk employees violating safety practices, stuff like that. The problem is sometimes it requires too much setup to tell these stories, as I have found--strange as it may seem--the general public does not know how the phone company works and therefore why some of my stories are so brilliantly pithy and ironic or whatever.
OK, well, what I am really trying to say is, I don't want the book to appeal only to other people who have worked at the phone company, full of the types of stories that we used to tell each other in the morning while we prepared to get in our trucks and go to work. Those were mostly lies anyway. So we're left with stories that might be meaningful to what the military would call the non-cognizant agent. Stories like cockroaches in phones, and crazy drunk employees violating safety practices.
Seriously, what I am trying to understand since I retired is how during my entire career the technology and methods evolved and changed faster and faster until it almost overtook me. Which is also called, getting old, I guess, but I can't help but think it didn't used to be like this. At least, so much. When I was pretty new to the company, I saw old guys retiring and it seemed like they pretty much did the same work their entire careers. With me, things kept changing--of course I changed along with them, but in the end, it quit being fun.
And, as always, there is the thing about writing that I always encounter. It is that my "writer's voice" is much better when I'm blogging than when I'm sitting down seriously trying to write. I really need to get past this. Perhaps I should stop being so serious. I mean, my entire life, being serious has never really served me that well. I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the world.
Monday, April 1, 2019
The Last Open Road
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| Middle of nowhere, somewhere north-east of LA |
It was an unplanned trip. I got a call from the property management company in Chico to tell me they found a renter and I could get out of my lease, so I moved a May trip up to March to expedite the process. Then I got an email as we were driving out of Arizona: the guy backed out. Don't repeat don't drive to Chico. I did anyway, so now I'm out and if they find a new tenant to take the lease over, the place is ready and they can just let me know what they did. Apartment leases suck. I signed this 25 page document and only now am I finding out what all is in it. It's all bad . . .
Now that I'm really in Arizona, and have my drivers license and car tag and everything, it is my fervent hope that I can start working on my book. I have two ideas now. All is well. Except I'm not feeling all that ambitious. In my defense, the last few months have been insane and I'm tired.
Still plugging away, though.
Note: Arizona does not require a front license plate, so now my white Ford has a big, basically useless, black plastic rectangle screwed down smack in the middle of the body work in the front of it. (No, I wouldn't call it a bumper. It's just sort of a front area that you can fix if it gets crushed by a bird or a Fiat 500 or something.) I took the plate mount off to reveal three ragged holes where the screws had been attached, so I just shook my head and put the mount back on. Googled it. It's a thing, apparently. There are solutions, all of them either expensive or time consuming, laid out in excruciating detail by the Internet's obsessive/compulsive car community. I looked on Amazon for white duct tape and I'm really kind of amazed that there is no such thing. Home Depot has little white plastic snap on buttons I could use to cover the holes if I am willing to drill them out to a larger size and render them (the holes) useless for anything else. Surewhynot.
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| Rush hour somewhere to the south of Edwards Air Force Base |
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