Fun and Games Dept

As I rode the back roads and through a couple of villages on my bike this morning, I noticed that the world seemed quieter than usual. I wasn’t being hounded by vehicles trying to pass me, I didn’t hear the thump thump thump of unrecognizable tracks rattling license plates on cars and I didn’t see any school-aged children outside waiting for the bus. As I drove by an elementary school my suspicions were confirmed as the message board in front of the school proclaimed, “No school May 3”.

Apparently the local schools are closed today.

I am curious as to what has spurred this seemingly random date for a school closure. Are there extra snow days to be used up? Is Cinco de Mayo weekend a long weekend now?

It then dawned on me. School is closed today because the annual Town-Wide Garage Sale Event Weekend! starts today.

The exclamation point is mandatory.

During a break from working at home today I took a walk up the street and was nearly accosted by more vehicles than usual. And these vehicles were moving slowly, very slowly. An eyeball stared out from under the steering wheel.

Elderly drivers were in search of a garage sale. Apparently the sport is actually called “Garage Sailing”, but that doesn’t make sense because I haven’t seen one garage that looked like a yacht.

I digress.

The crazy cat lady woman up the street has put out her wares for the Town-Wide Garage Sale Event Weekend! and this has drawn the garage-sailors like, as they say, “white on rice”. Vehicles are parked haphazardly up and down the road and people are walking near the center line, apparently breathless from all the deals they are about to find at each of these garage sales.

Tomorrow is going to be garage sale hell in these parts.

It’s time to get out of town.

So it’s lunch time and I’m sitting in the Jeep on probably the most gorgeous day thus far of 2013. Today simply rocks. The sky is clear, the humidity is low and the sunshine is abundant.

I’m hiding in the shade of the big sign that pronounces the existence of the shopping center I’m relaxing in. I went to the “alternate” Dunkin’ Donuts today for a little change of pace. A change of scenery is good.

As I look out I see the beginning of the Adirondack Mountains less than a mile away. The trees are starting to show a more cheery color; the combination of rain earlier this week and sun for the past two days have started the whole spring thing around here. The days are getting longer, the birds are singing more, there’s little to complain about.

My iced tea even tastes a little better. I even had a friend stop by that wanted to share a PopChip.

I’m not really that cohesive in my thoughts today so this is going to be one of the blog entries where I just kind of write down what’s floating around in this head of mine. Bear with me or find a picture of a pretty pony if you’re bored.

1. Google Now is on iOS! Being the tech geek that I am I’m always dazzled by sparkly things so I was delighted to see that Google Now is now part of the Google Search app on the iPhone and iPad. w00t w00t! Google Now is an awesome little tool that uses all the data that Google has gathered about you to basically try to make your life better. For example, at the end of the day yesterday, Google Now told me that it would take 1 hr 6 min to get home from work and to avoid the Thruway due to a traffic back in a construction zone. When I got in the relative area of home, Google Now suggested a couple of restaurants for dinner. It has also reminded me of some birthdays. Google Now can do a whole bunch of other stuff and if you’re not creeped out about Google knowing things about you, go give it a try. I’m hot and cold on Google and apparently this week I’m hot. Especially since I can do Google-y things on my iDevices.

2. Mail. Before sitting down to write this blog entry I walked out to the mailbox to see if we had anything exciting waiting for pickup. We had one piece of junk mail suggesting that we buy the contents of William Sonoma for Mom’s enjoyment on Mother’s Day. Remember the excitement of the daily mail delivery? Is there a card? An invitation to a party? A chain letter? I used to always look forward to getting the mail but that seems so 20th century now. I kind of miss it, which of course, runs completely contrary to my aforementioned excitement of Google Now.

I’m complicated like that.

3. Oh Shut Up. Eastchester, New York has apparently banned any casual fast-food restaurants from calling Eastchester home. No Panera. No Chipotle. Something about “they’re Eastchester and they’re proud of that”. Sounds like an uppity place to me. They’re lucky I haven’t heard anyone call Eastchester “Upstate” because then I would lose my mind for a few moments.

4. Music. I was recently passed over on the chance to DJ a party in Chicago next month and quite frankly I’m not that shook up about it. Twenty years ago I would have been in tears and motivated to be more “gay” with my music selection so the crowd would have been bouncing up and down to the mad beatz. But these days the sights and sounds of GaGa and her ilk rather nauseate me so I’m not that worked up about it. If enjoying music that isn’t auto-tuned makes me obsolete then I wear my obsolescence with pride.

5. Money. I’m trying to decide if money makes people evil or if money just reveals the evil tendencies within a person. Either way, money does some pretty screwed up things to assumedly screwed up people, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

It’s no secret that I’m an avid cyclist. This past weekend I rode over 90 miles on my 2002 Fuji bike and because of this I feel marvelous today. Cycling is great exercise and I find that it’s a wonderful mental exercise as well. I lose myself on the back roads and find that I can resolve issues that are causing me stress. It’s a good feeling. I’m very happy that it’s cycling season in these parts.

As an avid cyclist, I tend to think that I know how to navigate the roads of Upstate New York (and occasionally other places around the country) on my bike. I learned many of these skills as a youngster; I remember my first bike ride to school, which was five miles away, on a three-speed with a banana seat. I was in grade six at the time. I had no close calls then and for the most part, my rides have been accident free. I’d like to take a moment to remind cyclists and motorists on how riders should be behaving themselves on the road.

Cyclists should be following the rules of the road. Some people get confused about this, but bicycles are just another vehicle and they should be moving in the same direction as all the other vehicular traffic. Cyclists should not be doing the pedestrian thing and riding against the flow of traffic. That’s a no no and dangerous. Should you encounter a pedestrian on the road, the pedestrian should be walking towards you and they would be the farthest away from the center line of the road. Remember, you’re a vehicle, you’re not a pedestrian.

Because you’re riding a human-powered vehicle, you should be following the rules of the road. This includes stopping for stop signs and appropriate traffic signals, riding only where you’re allowed to ride and keeping off the sidewalks. Unless specified by local ordinances, don’t ride on the sidewalk unless you would drive your car on the sidewalk.

Wear a helmet and brightly colored clothing. In the chillier months in Upstate New York I have a heavy rain jacket that I wear that is a dark green. Because this isn’t the most visible piece of clothing I could be wearing, I also wear a fluorescent yellow safety vest that Earl brought home from one of his manufacturing plants. You can’t miss it. If you’re riding when it’s dark out, put some lights on your bike and use them. The discount department stores have them for as little as $20 and they don’t even require tools to mount them on your bike. Make yourself REALLY visible. Folks barely pay attention to their driving these days as it is, be flashy so you don’t get hit by someone that’s more preoccupied with their hands free unit.

Now here’s where you have to be a little aggressive. If you ride in areas where there are multiple lanes at an intersection, for example, a left turn only lane, use that lane just like a car would. There’s an intersection close to the house where there are three lanes moving in my direction: left turn only, straight ahead and right turn only. When I want to go straight ahead, I get on the right edge of the center lane. This way, the cars that want to turn right can still use their lane without worrying about me cutting across to go straight, the cars going straight through can pass by me as if we were anywhere on the road and the folks turning left can do their business without a care in the world. Use the lanes as if you were driving your car or truck. Act like another vehicle and people won’t have to guess what you’re going to do due to unpredictable or erratic lane movements.

Be kind to pedestrians. Don’t terrorize the woman at the gas pump who is struggle with self-serve by cutting across the parking lot at a wild speed. Don’t cut in between cars and bushes and buildings just to save time. Be respectful of those around you so they’ll respect you.

As the opportunity arises, stick to the marked bike lanes and the myriad of bike paths that are cropping up all over the Empire State. I’m quite critical of NYSDOT but they are doing exceptional things when it comes to accommodating those of us moving about by human cycle power.

Follow the signs. Obey the one ways and the do not enters and the “No Bicycles Allowed” signs on the freeway entrances. In New York State if the speed limit is 65 you’re not allowed on that stretch of road with your bicycle. Other states vary with this, but that’s the way it works around here.

Most importantly, have fun and enjoy your bike ride. If you find riding around the city to be too stressful, find a nice country ride and enjoy the view, say hello to a cow and breathe in some fresh country air.

Share some zen with me.

So I’m sitting on the back patio with my laptop for the first time in 2013. The air is very still. Clouds have moved in. I think we are going to get a storm. This is awesome.

Tom is 18 years old this year but he’s bounding around like a kitten. He’s liking the warmer weather. He likes to lay in the sun.

There are very few sounds from the natives in the woods behind the house. The only thing I can hear is an occasional chirp and traffic on the expressway down the road. Otherwise it’s very calm, very quiet.

I love it.

When my alarm buzzed at 0525 this morning I felt like I hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep. I didn’t have to start work until 8 a.m., so my head was screaming at me to go back to sleep until a more reasonable hour. After all, it was 39ºF and after all, you’re not really getting any younger, so you should sleep in, all tucked into bed and as snug as a bug in a rug.

I couldn’t do it. Yesterday it was 37ºF when I went for a bike ride so logic dictated that I should be happy that it was 39ºF. I heaved the covers off my rapidly cooling body and groped around in the dark, looking for my cycling gear. I then remembered that the husbear was out of town for the night, so I turned on a light so I wouldn’t fall into the dresser drawer or something.

Geared up in the same clothes I had worn yesterday because after all, nothing says “fierce” like the ripe smell of a sweaty cyclist, I made my way downstairs and got on the bike. At the end of the driveway I turned left, which in our case, means “up”.

I’m pushing myself pretty hard with the cycling this season. I’ve already ridden down the long hill to the house twice in the past two weeks and that fun is usually reserved for at least six weeks into my routine (because climbing that hill takes a lot of work), but I’ve managed to do this twice already and my body, while complaining, does feel better for it.

I ended up riding between 15-16 miles this morning in 70 minutes. That’s not too bad. I rode out by our old homestead, where I noticed that someone is building a house nearby on the land we used to own. I went on some back roads that I haven’t been on in years; I enjoyed some countryside I haven’t seen in a while. I noticed that there’s quite a few people that get up at the crack of dawn so they can work in their yards. I didn’t expect that.

This was the first morning that I’ve broken the 15 mile barrier for my pre-work ride and it was a good accomplishment. I need to keep pushing forward with my cycling; it truly makes me happy to ride the bike. I do get a little concerned with the repetition of routes; I’m only two weeks into riding this season and I’m already seeking out the back roads. I don’t dare ride the canal trail yet because in the early morning hours there are still skunks doing their thing and while I like to smell ripe, I don’t want to smell skunky.

I need to just keep pushing forward.

So I just put a letter in the mailbox at the post office. Not a big deal, right? After all, people have been doing this sort of thing for a very long time, and though people don’t do this as much as they used to, people still put thousands of letters in thousands of mailboxes on a daily basis.

To accomplish this small feat, I walked to the local post office. Again, it’s not a big deal. The post office is 1 1/4 miles from the house. I was able to walk to the post office and back in 35 minutes. This added to my daily exercise tallies.

I don’t know if I was inspired by the fact that the couple across the street are rebuilding their house that was gutted by fire a couple of years ago, and have enlisted the Amish to build the house for them, or what, but it was kind of refreshing to walk to the post office and back this evening. It slowed me down for just a bit and gave me the opportunity to look around the neighborhood a little bit. I noticed things that I don’t really see when I’m on my bike or whizzing along in the Jeep.

Sometimes it’s good to look around at a slower pace.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written about being on-call for work. Working in a technology-related field, especially in the telecommunications part of it, on-call is somewhat of a given. I can handle that. It’s something that I have learned to live with, though it has occasionally given me nightmares, cold sweats and twitchy-like responses to anything that resembles the beeping sounds of a pager.

I am in my third employment scenario that included officially sanctioned on-call duties. The first scenario, and the one I used to blog about the most, is the one that set the stage for me and there are several things from that experience that became Pavlovian-like responses. For example, my instinct for an on-call weekend is to complete wipe my schedule clean of any sort of activity outside of staring at the closest cell phone or pager, waiting for it to shriek out some sort of distress so I can shriek out in some sort of distress and them become hostile and throw the closest lamp at hand.

You think I’m kidding.

The thing is, my current on-call scenario is nowhere as hellish as the scenario that I cut my teeth on and quite frankly, this is something that I need to be reminded about from time to time. This is where my husband comes into the picture.

My husband is a smart man. Not only is he a smart man, he is a reasonable man. And not only is he a reasonable man, he is left-brained, so he can easily remove emotional response from a situation and think about things rationally. This is something that I am in awe of, though quite frankly, I like to think that I am slowly moving in that same direction. I don’t know what side of my brain I use. Probably the back half.

Earl reminds me that I’m not on-call nearly as much as I used to be. He follows up that reminder with the fact that there are always people at the various locations at work, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I don’t get called to fix things for everyone, I get called to fix things for the people using the tools I have created and/or support. He also reminds me that I only have to deal with the folks that I work with now, whereas in the original on-call experience, I had to deal with customers and vendors and telecommunication monopolies that really didn’t care about much of anything. Old on-call scenario, I was “first defense”. This on-call scenario, I’m “last resort.”

As I said before, old habits die hard.

Earl suggested that we spend the night at the casino on Friday night to celebrate Jamie’s birthday. We’d have a nice dinner, maybe gamble a little and then get a decent night’s sleep. On Saturday we’d head to Syracuse for some lunch, some go-kart racing at Destiny USA, perhaps some shopping and then a nice dinner before heading home.

Knowing that I was on-call, I panicked. I didn’t want to show that I was panicking, but in reality, I was like “ohmygodwhatamigoingtodoifsomeonecalls”, complete with irrational thoughts dancing around in my head. Earl reminded me that I could bring my laptop, I’m always connected to the world with the cell connection on my iPad and iPhone and really, what was the worst thing that could happen?

Rational thinking slays irrationality for the win.

I had one call yesterday, and that call was just a question because *I* had not changed one link on one list of resources due to a change in maintenance schedules. Nothing was broken, no one was hysterical and quite frankly, it was handled with two phone calls and a quick log in with my iPad to fix my mistake. Other than that, it has been quiet. I have no reason to think that it won’t continue to be quiet. I work with good people. We support each other. I sometimes forget that.

So after over three years of experiencing the “new” on-call scenario, I’m finally getting the picture. Calm down, relax, deal with it and enjoy your life.

This may set a real tempo for me.

I did not recognize the young lady behind the counter at Dunkin’ Donuts today. She appeared to be on her first or second day on the job; she seemed a little disoriented as to where important things like donuts and coffee were located. Because of this, I decided not harass her with a “why isn’t my tea waiting for me?” type of attitude. The prince can be reasonable.

The woman at the customer side of the counter, who was two people ahead of me in line, ordered nearly a dozen cups of coffee, all with differing sidearms. She seemed impatient and conversely very relaxed at the same time as she counted out pennies and nickels on the counter. After the cash portion of the transaction was completed she stood there at the counter. She didn’t head to the “pick up” area that is common in places like Dunkin’ Donuts, Tim Hortons and Starbucks. She planted herself right there in front of the register. Her roots went deep. She was shaped like a potato.

After all the differing cups of coffee were inefficiently assembled and distributed, the potato woman left and the balding woman in front of me (I notice things, what can I say) ordered her coffee and donut. She paid and then planted herself in front of the register. This slows down efficiencies by half, because the person that could be assembling the drinks is constantly reaching around the person that is taking the orders instead of working in her work area over near the pick-up window. The balding woman likes change as well. And since the customer is planted in front of the register, there’s that awkward moment where the cashier asks for the order of the next customer in line whilst screaming around the customer that is planted in front of the register, forcing the very dignified gentleman (that would be me) to yell his order and have his view obscured by a prominent bald spot on the back of the woman’s head.

I don’t mind bald people. I am proudly a bald person. But I do find it disconcerting to see a bald spot surrounded by the remnants of three different dye jobs in a woman’s hair and quite frankly, this type of balding is entirely too prominent in this part of the state. Someone needs a license revoked somewhere.

Now, I knew that when I got to the counter there would be mayhem because I am all wild and crazy and tend to pay for my order with the Dunkin’ Donuts app on my iPhone. When the overpriced iced tea came to $2.86, I showed the screen of my iPhone with the barcode prominently displayed.

The new cashier asked, “do I scan that?”.

Ok, I had a brief moment of “and then there’s Maude” and I was going to say something like, “Why don’t you call President Obama and ask him for the money?”, but that would have been extremely rude, especially to an employee on her first or second day. So instead, I simply said, “Yes, you scan it but after you press the MPAY button in the lower right hand corner of the screen.”

In another life I write cash register programs. In an alternate universe I am a secret spy that can easily memorize computer screens without even thinking twice about it.

She did as ordered and all was well.

“Thank you for your help”, she said sheepishly as I shuffled over to pick-up area, determined to get the precedent back to where it should be.

I like the newbie behind the counter. I hope to get her trained to have my unsweet tea ready and waiting.

So the blog has been silent for a few days and it is with good reason. Earl and I made the trek to Earl’s hometown to attend the memorial service of our brother-in-law. It was good to see the family as it has been way too long since we last saw them, however, we really need to get down there on happier occasions. It really pained me to see my in-laws grieving; I don’t do well with seeing others feel pain.

I wasn’t particularly close to my brother-in-law; we always had pleasant conversations but we didn’t have a lot in common. I could tell that he loved his family very much and that he seemed happy in the little niche of the world he had carved out for himself. As long as a person is happy that’s all that matters.

During the service, some thoughts that had been written by his wife were shared with the congregation. The words and the feelings that they conveyed were very moving as there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. That, and the military presentation, were the hardest things emotionally. However, there was one passage shared during the reading/eulogy that really, really affected me.

“No matter how upset or angry he was, he never yelled at me”. These were the words of my sister-in-law. I never knew that. I admire that. And I learned something from that.

My father always said my mother had a tendency to “bark back” due to the fact that she has red hair. I think I might have inherited that trait a little bit; I am often asked to stop hollering when I get passionate about something. There’s a chance that I might have a bit of a temper and to tell you the truth, that’s not something that I’m really proud of. I don’t know that I have ever accomplished anything by yelling a lot, but to be fair, years ago I worked in an environment where yelling was the only way you could get your point across. It’s still not something I’m proud of and it’s something that I really need to get a handle on. Yelling and cussing are two things that I find to be unnecessary and they’re two things that I need to stop doing.

So while the tears formed in my eyes during the memorial service on Friday night, I have to thank my brother-in-law for teaching me a little something through his actions as conveyed by his family. If I stop in mid-sentence during a passionate conversation, know that I’m taking a few deep breaths and trying to keep everything in check.

I guess we’re never too old to learn.