Ponderings and Musings

Over the past year or so I have maintained a file on the home server called “curious.txt”. It contains questions that I copied and pasted from a smattering of e-mails I have received in response to blog entries or my various internet profiles I have going. I took the time to take a look at these while I was working out and thought I would answer a few of them. Some of them are definitely PG-13; don’t say that you haven’t been warned.

They are in no specific order.

Are you gay? (this appeared below a picture on Flickr of Earl and I making out in the Jeep)
As a matter of fact, I am. So is Earl. It’s fortunate that we are compatible in that way otherwise we’d be wicked bored.

Have you ever done it with a woman? (in response to a mention of my high school girlfriend)
Not all the way, so technically in the “let’s get biblical” sense I suppose I am a 40-year old virgin. I have tried to “go all the way” with a woman twice in my life. The first time was in high school, the night of my senior prom and it did not go the way she intended (I chose to engage myself afterwards whilst thinking of her brother). We broke up a few days later. The second time was in college. Her name was Kristi, she was fairly hot but she was missing the duplication of parts that I imagined would be involved in that sort of thing.

How many boyfriends have you had?
I’m assuming the interrogator is referring to long-term relationships so I’ll go by that. I have lived with three different guys in a long-term romantic situation. The first one’s name was Tom. I think he’s still named Tom but I’ve called him other things. When he was with me he was bisexual, but by the time we broke up he was all the way gay. The guy after me with him had it easy as I broke him in. By the way, I consider the guy that followed me to be a good friend. The second one is “first Earl”. A truly great guy, Earl and I had some really good times together but I didn’t think that we were completely compatible in the long-term department. Earl and I are still good friends with “first Earl”. We’ll probably have dinner with him again soon. We like to do that. “My Earl” is my life and my last. As of this writing we have been together, happily I may add, for just shy of 13 years.

Do you still ride your bike? (originally asked last summer)
Finally, a non-sexual question! I didn’t ride my bike that much in the summer of 2007 but did a bit more riding in summer ’08. I have around 3,000 miles on the same bike since the summer of 2002. I am planning a multi-day trip for this summer. I was mentioning it to my friend David today, I haven’t told Earl my plan so I’ll save that for a future blog entry, but I have been training to ride about 400 miles on a ride this summer.

Why do you spell words with an “s”? (from December 2007)
Apparently the person asking this question was cranky or something because they missed the fact that not only do I use an “s” but I also throw a “u” in some words just like the user’s manual of my Commodore VIC-20 Colour Computer from 1982. Actually, I choose to spell things in the non-American English way for a couple of reasons: it sets me apart from the crowd, I have a desire to live in either Ireland or Canada and I think that saying “car park” sounds much more civilised than “parking lot”.

What do you want to do when you grow up? (from an entry regarding my return to college in 2007)
I have no freakin’ idea and I like it that way. This experience we called life is entirely too short to pigeonhole yourself into 50 years of monotony.

Have you ever ridden a motorcycle? (this was referring to a picture of me in my black leather jacket)
I am assuming that the questioner was referring to being in control of the bike and not just a passenger, because I used to ride on the back of my Dad’s bike (while he was on it too) since I was around eight years old or so. I’ve only ridden a motorcycle alone a couple of times; once was when I was in high school with my friend Jeff. It was around midnight on a June night and I rode from the Springbrook Road to the Peck Road and back on a Yamaha that had no headlight. I didn’t tell my folks (hi there!). In my early 20s I rode this little Honda my ex-boyfriend had on a couple of occasions and I loved it. I have mentioned to Earl a couple of times that I want a motorcycle. He recently mentioned that perhaps I should get one someday.

We’ll get into the wilder questions the next time I open up the file.

There is something satisfying about a Thursday night to me. I don’t know if it’s the knowledge that tomorrow is the last day of the work week or if I’m cosmically tuned to the concept of Thursday or what, but I always feel most at peace (outside of the weekend) on Thursday evenings after work.

The schedule has been hectic this week; last night Earl and I worked on a “secret project”¹, Tuesday night we went shopping for kitchens (as we are redoing the entire kitchen this spring) and tonight I’m going to work on some things in the cellar.

Earl has just started cooking supper. Tonight he is making homemade vegetable soup because rumour has it that there’s a member of the family that is trying to avoid eating meat. To help out with the project, I did as my mother trained me as a child and made the appropriate hor d’oeurve to go with soup: I made a really big bowl of popcorn. Microwave popcorn is not allowed in the house, I always make it with a popcorn popper, copious amounts of oil and too much corn. It came up pretty well, if I do say so myself. Making the popcorn keeps me out of the way and let’s Earl concentrate on his cooking.

It’s going to be a good Thursday night. It always is.

¹ The fruits of my “secret project” will be shared soon enough.

It is 5:18 a.m. I am getting ready to head back to work after a week’s holiday. I guess I must be a little anxious about heading back to work because I could barely sleep all night. I kept waking up to see how much longer I had to sleep.

How I dislike alarm clocks.

My body naturally wakes up around 8:00 a.m. It used to be closer to 9, but now I seem to do well with waking up an hour earlier.

I think I’m going to take a nap. I don’t have to be work until 7.

So I am sitting on JetBlue 668 headed back home after five days and nights at the House of the Mouse. I hear it’s snowing like crazy at home. I am ready for the end of winter. We are almost there. Thank goodness for the trip to Oklahoma next month, it’ll give me another much needed boost to my psyche.

I need a gig where I travel a lot. I would be a happier person.

I found myself in a pondering state of mind between attractions at Disney. I won’t write about everything I thought about here; my thought processes are my own and are probably long and boring to read. Suffice it to say that I have a few adventures up my sleeve that I’m making plans for.

Quick aside – I must have a thing for flight attendants and Christian apparently enjoys redheads with big moustaches. Just sayin’.

I have begun meditating again. It’s about time that I practiced what I learned all those years ago. I have added the exercise to my daily quiet time. I am also using the MindWave program on my iPhone. I think meditating quiets my mind much more than the MindWave does. I sort of think of the MindWave as the saccharin way of getting to a meditative state. It’s artificially induced and not quite the same. I’ll probably discontinue that for a while in a week or two so I can compare and contrast.

I have given up alcohol completely as of last Monday night. My last drink was a Mojito at Bongos at Downtown Disney. There are a couple of reasons that I stopped – one of them being that with the way I play I should be sober at all times; the other reason has to do with my health. My forever existent beer gut does not need encouragement. I have no issues with those that enjoy a drink, it’s just not for me right now.

I also gave up pop and eating meat. Well, at least I am trying on both accounts. This will be my third serious attempt at giving up meat. I’m planning on the third time being a charm.

When I sit down to write a blog entry there are a lot of variables to be taken into account. Well, before we jump into that I have to clarify. In my head there are two types of blog entries that I write; I think of one as a “blog entry” and I think of the other as a “real blog entry”. I haven’t written what I consider to be a real blog entry in a while; the last was probably the entry about my childhood memory of riding on Bus 49. “Blog entries” contain the snippets of music videos and are like my journal entries. They talk about day-to-day stuff and come skimming off the top of my head. “Real blog entries” come from the bottom of the pot: they cook like a fine stew in my head for a little bit before I sit down and write them and then I occasionally wait a while before I hit the “Send to Weblog” button on my software.

One of my friends was attending grad school (through online courses) while she was working in the same job that I currently have. Our jobs were basically identical. She could write a twenty-page thesis on the socialisation of the Pussycat Swallowtail Butterfly in between incoming tech support calls that would drive a mortal insane: one involved a woman that wanted us to let more wire through her wall so she could move her phone, the other, a man that wanted to know why his computer screen was blank (the power was out). Yet, in between diagnosing issues, fighting with various telecommunication agencies and listening to the inane chatter that she was often subjected to, she was able to bang out a paper in no time. How she accomplished this I’ll never know, but she always cracked an “A”. It’s probably because she’s just wicked smart. I once tried to write a paper for English 101 on the novel “My Antonia” in the same fashion and I just couldn’t do it. I attribute my failure at the task to lack of focus. Or perhaps it was just ADD. Is that the same thing?

When I write a “real blog entry”, many conditions have to be met. The moon has to be full, I have to be in a special garb and incense must be burning. Actually, I’m wrong on those three conditions, that’s for something else that I do from time to time. In reality, when I write the space I’m writing in has to be relatively silent. I can deal with the hum of fluorescent lighting (and electronic goodies) or the ticking of a clock but I can’t have any sort of music playing on iTunes, a television blaring or a conversation taking place within a pre-determined radius (usually 1 to 2 miles). If I can hear it and it sounds intelligible (or bright and shiny in an aural sort of way), it’s going to distract me and then we have that whole ADD thing kicking in again. Earl occasionally gets offended when I sit down to write whilst are computers are back to back and I then choose to move into the bowels of the basement where it’s quite and all I can hear it the drip of the toilet leaking. Ironically, I can write a real blog entry in the middle of an internet cafe when I’m loaded up on sugar and there’s a whole lot of nonsense going on around me. Maybe the sugar helps make the nonsense turn into white noise or something.

Another condition that has to be met is that this all has to take place on the right computer. I have mentioned many times that I have MacBook Pro that’s not even a year old. It replaced my PowerBook G4 that I purchased in 2005. I loved my PowerBook and still use it for my music and sound editing work. I have considered parting with it but then I type on it for a few moments and it feels like an old friend. I feel very, very comfortable when I have my PowerBook on my lap. My MacBook Pro basically looks identical to the PowerBook but it just doesn’t ‘feel’ the same. The keyboards are nearly identical (despite the missing  [apple logo] on the command key) but they certainly don’t feel identical. The PowerBook’s keys are robust and feel confident, the keys on my MacBook Pro feel just a bit mushier. I make a lot of mistakes typing on the MacBook Pro, I think I’m going to wear out the delete key much faster. Nevertheless, I trudge along with the MacBook Pro because Apple is slowly killing off support for the older machines. So I guess I’ll have just to keep using this computer to make myself more comfortable with it. I know, it’s a nearly state of the art unit and I’m bitching about it. There are times when people think I’m never happy.

That’s not true at all.

I have read that some writers prefer a typewriter to a computer while others prefer their own penmanship to a typewriter, so I guess I don’t feel alone in seeking out the right conditions for writing a real blog entry.

Just as long as the toilet isn’t dripping on me.

With the weather warming up just a little bit for a few days I am really getting in the mood to do some sort of activities outdoors. I really want to get on my bike, but it’s going to be at least a month before I can even think about getting out there and hitting the road. Perhaps I’ll start taking walks.

One of the good things going on though is that Earl and I are going on a week-long vacation beginning on Sunday. We are going to Walt Disney World. It’ll be good to get some sun; there hasn’t been a lot of that up here lately. I’m hoping to stick to my weight loss goals during the vacation though; past experience with trips to Disney say that I’ll gain some weight, let’s hope I can reverse the trend with this trip.

I just confirmed yesterday that I have another trip on the horizon. In March I am going to Oklahoma City for training for work. The classes are on a Thursday and Friday; I am going to take the opportunity to stay out there for the weekend and fly back on Sunday. I am looking forward to the adventure.

Last night Earl and I celebrated my being off-call by going to one of our favorite haunts, Zebb’s, for a casual supper. To celebrate the dry roads we took the Acura out for the first time in two months. It felt good to speed along in my prized rice burner.

So Bill Gates was at a technology conference of some sort, which was populated with a lot of important technology related people, and when he went on stage he talked about malaria and mosquitos. He then opened a jar he had brought with him and let the mosquitos mingle amongst the others in attendance at the conference.

‘Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,’ Gates said while opening a jar on stage at a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars. ‘I brought some. Here I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.'”

This is a brilliant thing. I like his “in your face” attitude when it comes to his philanthropic work. He is one of the richest men in the world and it seems that he is using the power that title garners and doing good things with it.

I like that.

I like it so much that I have to admit that there are times when I think of jumping back into the world of Windows in an effort of supporting his efforts. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does some amazing things. I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was considering supporting their efforts by considering buying a Dell (PRODUCT) Red laptop to replace my MacBook Pro. I think it’s more important to give back to the world instead of just making a statement with a pretty piece of computer hardware. Not that I don’t love my Macs, because I do, but there are times that I really don’t like the smugness often found in the vicinity of a Mac. It’s usually the users that’s acting smug. I can be one of them at times.

If you’re going to be smug, you should do it in the name of a greater good, like when you open the jar of mosquitos on stage in front of some really important people.

Here’s a link to Yahoo!’s take on the story.

So in between Superbowl commercials I’ve been watching the game a little bit (usually when Earl yells at the television) but I’ve also been spending the evening playing with Facebook. I swore I would never get addicted to Facebook but I’m finding myself looking up people I haven’t talked to in a couple of decades.

For example, I just sent a message to my first grade teacher. Sure, I haven’t seen her in 35 years or so but there she was on Facebook, over a thousand miles from my hometown but with the same maiden and married name. She was easy to find.

My first grade teacher was the prettiest of my elementary school teachers and had picture perfect handwriting. I remember her being very kind and very patient. She also let us do fun things, such as crank up “Rubberneckin'” by Elvis Presley on the record player usually reserved for “Free To Be You and Me”. I liked her a lot. I told her so in my message today. She probably thinks I’m a freak. I even liked her when she put my name on the “No Play” list on the blackboard for talking too much in class. I didn’t mention that in the message today but I remember the event like it was yesterday.

The other teacher I decided to look up was my second grade teacher, but she isn’t on Facebook. Though my first grade teacher was the prettiest, my second grade teacher was my favorite, probably for my entire school career, for she was the one teacher that “got me”. She didn’t force me to play football with the other boys (I was content to watch), she let me have a disorganised desk and she allowed me to indulge myself in my curious ways about technology; I was the only one in my class that was allowed to run both the Bell and Howell AND the Singer movie projectors and she let me sit in the principal’s office when the repairman from Johnson Controls came to fix the broken master clock which was preventing the classroom clocks and bells from working. Mrs. Hayden was neat.

Yes, I have spent the evening searching and reading throughout Facebook. Of course, there’s this whole big football game going on too, but I’m content to just watch it without screaming.