Ponderings and Musings

So I do a silent little happy dance when it turns 12:30 on Wednesday afternoons. This happy dance is in honor of the fact that at 12:30 we are exactly half way through the work week. Half way! That’s right, we are on THIS side of the work week now and the duration between now and the coming weekend is shorter than the duration between now and last weekend. That’s what being over half way means!

This is how my brain operates.

I probably should speak aloud as to what all this means, this tendency to measure my work intervals by how close they are to the the weekend. I mean some things should remain unspoken and this is probably one of those things. I have learned the important politics of being unspoken and I’m finding that sometimes it’s a good way to go.

However, because we are over halfway through the work week, I will share a little “yee haw!” out loud.

Yee haw!

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

When I ride my bike in the morning before work it’s still rather dark out. I take the usual safety precautions; I have a headlight and a taillight on the bike and I deck my halls with boughs of holly. Add a star and I’d really be lit up like a Christmas tree. People can see me.

Unfortunately, folks appear to not be in the habit of turning on their lights while they’re driving anymore. In a ten minute span during my ride I saw at least four cars driving in the relative darkness without their headlights on. I find this perplexing. Are they confused by the operation of the light switch that’s (usually) integrated with their turn signal? Do they think that the car will perform it’s automatic magic and turn the lights on for them and quite frankly they have no idea how to turn their lights on anymore? Do they just not care? Do they not notice the darkened dash in front of them because they’re too busy texting?

I’m finding this trend alarming. Not only is it dangerous that the driver can’t really see where they’re going, but it’s also dangerous to the rest of us on the road. Personally, I think that cars are becoming too automatic (many turn the lights on for you if you want it to) and therefore people are getting way too lazy. And then the plague of apathy that is gripping this nation is really no help, either.

If it’s dark out, please turn on your headlights. You’d be amazed at what you see when you can see where you’re going.

Back in 1996, when Earl and I were dating and hadn’t moved in together yet, I drove him down this road and showed him a house that I really liked. It was a fairly simple house that had been built in the 20th century. It was set back from the road about 100 feet. The house, though simple in design, still had a fairly sprawling feel to it as it had been added on to each end over the years. Tennis courts were on the lot adjacent to the house and landscaping and the like indicated that it was all one property.

The property was settled on a road across from large, open cornfields, which were protected from the road by a row of large maple trees. It was such a beautiful, peaceful setting for me, and I could imagine looking out the picture window on the front of the house, through the maples, across the field and onto the hill that was off in the distance; the last hill between the Adirondacks and the Mohawk Valley.

The house in question was for sale but was way out of our price range at the time. Earl and I were just talking about living together in the apartment he was living in at the time, a house would be further down our timeline together. But there was something about that house and that road. I just loved it. So peaceful.

The road in question, at least the portion between two parallel, fairly-main roads, is home to a couple of stone farmhouses, an Amish family in a very simple, white house and a few newer houses. Each lot is at least a couple of acres. The southern side of the road, aside from one of the farms with a stone farmhouse, is all working farmland. It looks like corn was the crop of choice this year. The entire portion of this road is flanked by maple trees.

During my bike ride today I found my way over to this road simply because I still have a certain fondness for it. It is paralleled to its north by a river, which runs behind the house I loved back in 1996. I stopped for a moment to take the photo at the beginning of this entry and after hearing the fake shutter sound from my iPhone, I just paused and listened to the stillness. I could hear birds doing their thing in the field. The hum of farm machinery was faint but still indicative of work being done on a Saturday morning. And I could hear the river doing its thing behind the houses it passed by. Here and there I could hear leaves dropping as they’re apt to do this time of year. The maples aren’t in their fiery glory yet; the peak leaf-peeping weekend is still a couple of weeks away in these parts, but I still felt that that road was still an ideal for me.

The house in question has long been sold and its owners do a fantastic job of taking care of it. I smiled as I rode by and continued along my bike ride.

Perhaps someday.

I can’t help but be excited about the upcoming weekend. I mean, it’s the weekend after all, and lately it seems like the work week is just an annoying obstacle to the weekend, where I want to be. I suppose that could be interpreted as a crappy work attitude, but it’s not, it’s just being real. I do what I do because I get paid and I reasonably enjoy what I do. But to weigh the work experience against a time period where I’m calling the shots and doing my thing on my terms without stock holders getting all cranky about things? I’ll take the weekend every time, thank you very much.

Earl comes home tonight after being gone since Monday and this contributes to my mood of frivolity. I made one small change to the kitchen to spruce it up a bit while he was gone and I’m hoping that he’ll enjoy this one little thing. I know I enjoyed it when I got up this morning and made way to eat my breakfast.

Tomorrow night we are venturing to Rochester for the evening to have dinner with friends. Two hour drives in each direction to have dinner with friends is well worth it. Most find us crazy for doing such things, but I don’t mind being thought of as crazy. Crazy people do their own thing on their own terms. And that’s what I do.

So as I was making my way out of the office for lunch a co-worker asked if I was leaving the building for the hour. He indicated that he was finding his way to cafeteria so he could read. I told him that I need to leave the building at lunch time so I feel more grounded for the afternoon. It’s a good way to clear my head.

As corporations continue to squeeze every possible ounce of work out of their employees, many feel the crunch of working in a situation that I’m currently in: we work in a group of three that should be a group of 10-12. This type of situation can create unreasonable amounts of stress and we all know that stress isn’t good for the body, mind or soul. Stepping out of the office for an hour and having a change of view helps me keep that stress under control. Stress that is under control is good.

I’m enjoying lunch in the autumn sun. I’m watching a small calico cat make her away along the perimeter of the parking lot. She looks to be in hunting mode. She’s a small cat but when I made a friendly cat sound to her, she stopped, perked her ears and up looked at me and then continued on her trek. Occasionally she stops in a grassy area and watches for field mice, ears perked in the direction of possible mouse movement. She’s a short-haired calico cat with white paws. She seems content and she appears to be very car smart. Car smarts is a good skill for a cat.

There have been a couple of times in the past two weeks where co-workers have tried to schedule meetings during my lunch time. I refuse to play that game and I decline invitation for this type of meeting. Some may say that I’m being selfish; I like to think that I’m being responsible and doing what I need to do to stay on top of my game. A homemade lunch and a few moments away from a computer (other than my iPad-derived blog entries) and I’m good to go.

Now it’s time to take a short nap.

So I know that I’m nearly two years behind the curve on this but I am suffering from withdrawal symptoms after successfully completing the only season of “The Event.” The fact that this show was canceled tells me that the American television viewing public is basically becoming stupid. The show was well written, the acting was decent to great, the action was believable and while they’re are always gaps here and there in a storyline, they kept the plot believable within the universe that was built for this show.

The last scene of the show was a mighty cliffhanger that will now most likely never be resolved. And yes, I know that people were talking about this a year or so ago when the show was canceled but it’s my blog and I can talk about anything I want to talk about.

Flipping through Sirius/XM yesterday I heard some sort of entertainment drivel about all the new shows that are coming out this season and every. single. show. they. mentioned. was some sort of “reality” show. “The Voice”. “American Idol”. “Dancing With The Stars”. If I want to watch Charo do the cha cha I’ll fire up an old episode of “The Love Boat” and watch her contort and growl out the theme song in a lounge that looks like the Holiday Inn under her guise of “April Lopez.”

I am going to state right here and now that if we win the lottery within the next year, I will make a serious investment wherever we need to invest so that we can at least have a miniseries conclusion to “The Event”. I don’t know why someone in Hollywood doesn’t already have the intelligence to do this. Actually I do know why; Hollywood is dumb and it’s trying to entertain the lowest common denominator, the folks that win a “participation award” at a soccer game because they just showed up.

I think I’m bordering on a rant now, so I’m going to keep it real and tell you, probably not for the last time, if you’re into SciFi and you want to see something good with a heaping helping of action, watch “The Event” on Netflix.

So I am sitting in a different parking lot today. Even though I am working from home, I decided to go out for lunch to give the cleaning crew the room they needed to do their thing without me being in the way. To celebrate this change in my routine, I had a six-inch turkey breast sub from Subway. Now, most would find that this sort of thing doesn’t warrant the word “celebrate”, however, when I get into a routine, I really get into a routine, and doing something out of my routine is kind of nifty for me.

So I’m sitting in this parking lot, still without my iPad (which is scheduled to arrive tomorrow). My iPhone showed that it could be used as a Personal Hot Spot. I fired that up with the intent on using my MacBook Pro with that when the menu option just vanished from the screen. My laptop still sees the hotspot as available but it’s not really. So instead I hacked into the wifi of a nearby house. They really shouldn’t make the hotspot name and key the same thing. I suppose that’s one way to remember it.

As I mentioned in my previous entry today, I went for a bike ride for the first time in a while. I need to pick up a tire pump in my travels today so that I’m ready to go again tomorrow morning. I started out walking but got to the end of the driveway and made a U-turn after deciding that a walk would be boring. I wanted to do something a little more exciting, even though it was 6:15 in the morning.

My fitness goals are coming along nicely. I jumped on the scale this morning and was pleasantly, yet cautiously, surprised. It’s good to see progress on something and now I feel more energized. I’ll have to keep it all in check this weekend. Being sensible and not trying to follow a whacked out diet is what is working for me this time around. It’s all about moving. I might need to get some snowshoes for the winter so I can keep up the effort.

So I’m kicking it old school today. I’m working from the office on a Wednesday, which I haven’t done in months, I’m using my MacBook Pro instead of my iPad to type this entry and I’m using the city wifi instead of the LTE connection I usually try to enjoy from Verizon?

Why all this frivolity, you ask? Well, folks at the office asked me to come in and work on the big project in person today since it worked best with schedules. I’ll be working from home the rest of the week. I’m a flexible kind of guy these days, especially when the future of the group may be up for grabs. In addition, I inadvertently left my iPad in North Carolina when I flew back on Monday. It’s expected to arrive tomorrow. Without my iPad, I don’t have a network hotspot to use, so that’s why I’m using the city wifi.

It’s an acceptable solution.

Being without my iPad for a few days has not been as traumatic as one would expect it to be for me. I haven’t really missed it. Anything that I can do on my iPad I can do on my iPhone and I can still do more on my laptop than on either my iPhone or iPad. So perhaps this has been a learning experience for me.

I’m in one of those moods where I feel the need to simplify my life again. Things build up and get complicated and then I do some sort of reboot and things get back down to normal. Last night I startled Jamie by thoroughly cleaning the stove and Radarange (microwave) simply because it was good to do something that wasn’t complicated nor technology based. Doing this felt good.

Earl is out of town on business until Friday. I think tonight after supper I’m just going to sit down and read a good book. I’m going to keep it simple.