Ponderings and Musings

Connection.

I had grand plans of driving Earl and me to Saratoga Springs for the evening. Rest and relaxation has been the name of the game today and quite frankly, when it came time for us to head east we decided that we weren’t up to driving quite that far. So instead we headed west and ended up in Syracuse.

Along the way we did some exploring around the shores of Oneida Lake. Oneida Lake is home to Sylvan Beach, which we visited back on the 4th of July. This time we snooped around the southern shore and gawked at the various camps that are twice the size of our current home. It’s amazing to see what some people consider “roughing it”. There’s only one butler instead of a whole team of them, I guess.

After Oneida Lake we wandered around the northern suburbs of Syracuse before heading towards the city and stopping at Onondaga Lake Park along the way. This park is beautiful and a haven for anyone interested in outdoor exercise. The recreational trails are top-notch. There are also various activities held at Long Branch Park; today it was some sort of Scottish Festival.

Unfortunately, Onondaga Lake is one of the most polluted lakes in the world. Many efforts are underway to clean it up, but it is not safe to swim in it or eat fish from it. However, wildlife seems to be able to do their thing alright so perhaps the efforts to clean the lake are starting to be successful.

Earl and I walked nearly three miles along the walking trails. I stopped to take a number of photos along the way.

This guy (or girl, I can’t really tell) was kind enough to stop and pose. Notice the smile.

Flickr Link.

Earl and I also took our customary self-portrait as we walked. I think this is one of our better ones.

Flickr Link.

I also took a picture of these powerlines, which crossed the lot we parked in, which is also adjacent to the New York State Thruway. I have been fascinated by powerlines since I was a small child and courtesy of our travels over the years have noticed this particular style of pylon/tower to be only in Upstate New York. These lines were relocated in the mid 1950s with the building of the New York State Thruway, and these pylons/towers are newer than the ones further down the line. I am such a geek.

Flickr Link.

Earl and I felt very connected to everything around us today. We both needed the relative downtime and the opportunity to just relax. After our walk, we headed over to the new Quaker Steak and Lube, where we ate lots of food but I remained beer-free for the evening.

All in all, a great day.

Flickr Link.

There are more pictures from our little excursion available on Flickr.

Relaxation.

Photo 68.jpg

It’s a picture perfect day here at our merry little household. I had a grand plan of taking Earl on one of our adventures in the Jeep but the weather is just so breathtakingly gorgeous that we are enjoying some down time. I’ve spent much of the afternoon being a geek on the back patio, drinking in the sunshine and sipping iced tea.

The weather today is picture perfect at 72 degrees with mostly sunny skies. There has been a slight breeze which is gently announcing the anticipated arrival of severe thunderstorms starting tonight and lasting for the next 36 hours or so. How I do love my thunderstorms and wild weather. I start my first round of on-call on Monday, I might as well start it off with a bang. I’m filling in for another tech (he wants to get married without his pager going off, the crazy guy) so it’s only for a couple of days. It’ll be good to get back in the swing of things.

I’ve been keeping busy catching up on tech news and chatting with friends on IM. I’ve been messing with Windows Vista a little bit. I really like the way it looks. I wish it came with a better AIM chat client that can handle video, much like the way iChatAV does on Mac OS X. I don’t like the AIM program at all. I guess that’s why Microsoft wants Windows users to use the Windows Live Messenger program. I enjoy that except that I wish I could pay a small fee to get rid of the ads. I really dislike ad supported software.

My basking-in-the-sun routine has been kept interesting with progress on the mound of laundry sitting in front of the washing machine. This morning the mound was higher than the washer itself. We have now made it down to the towels.

I feel some satisfaction in conquering that task today.

Earl and I have been making our travel plans for vacation next year. We want to get a jump on the process so we can get the best airfares. It looks like we are going to do a little “pond jumping” again. I’ll know more once we make the plans.

As I snapped a photo on my computer for the beginning of this blog entry, a certain person of the feline persuasion heard the sound of the software snapping my photo. He had to get in on the action too.

Photo 69.jpg

9 August 2008 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept Geek Ponderings and Musings 0

Observation.

I am sitting on the back patio. I’ve been out here a lot lately, usually during my lunch hour when weather permits it. Tonight I mowed the lawn. I don’t particularly enjoy the activity but it has to be done and it takes less than an hour. It’s odd, I enjoy mowing the lawn in May. By August the chore becomes tedious. Nevertheless it gives my mind the opportunity to wander a little bit and explore creative things. As I get older I find that I rarely remember what I daydreamed about by the time the lawn is mowed. Maybe early senility is etting in.

As I sit on the back porch I’m watching the new Air Force folks that moved into the local base do some nighttime training missions. They are chasing each other across the sky, back and forth multiple times, in what appear to be very high-tech jets. They are rather loud but I find them entertaining.

Off in the distance I’m seeing “heat lightning”. I don’t know why we call it heat lightning in these parts but we do. It’s actually just flashes of lightning from a storm near the horizon. I guess that means we may get some thunderstorms tonight.

I wish I could say that sitting on the patio at night is a peaceful, quiet experience, but with the sound of the nearby freeway, the train tracks the run from Albany to Buffalo and the jets doing practice runs across the sky overhead, it’s anything but peaceful and quiet.

Oh well, at least I find it entertaining.

6 August 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 1

Debate.

I have mentioned before that I worked at the family business, a hardware store and lumber yard, during the middle of my teenage years. It wasn’t an expectation but something I chose to do. At lunch time we’d gather in the office for lunch; my grandparents, my father and uncle and me and a smattering of cousins. Lunchtime conversations were usually pretty tame; we’d talk about various customer projects or what was happening in the area. Occasionally there’d be a discussion about local politics or the two men that owned a women’s dress shop down the street from our store. Every once in a while a hot topic would come up for debate, the one that sticks out in my mind was the nuclear plant that we lived downwind from. The “atomic plant” was always a hot topic at lunch. My father and uncle would end up yelling at each other. Tuna fish would fly out of mouths. Coffee would be spilled. There would be threats of a two-by-four being flung against someone’s head. This was a rare occurrence but it did rattle everyone in attendance when it occurred. If my grandfather was in attendance, it’d be like an earthquake in Los Angeles to add some shake to the hollaring. My cousin Mike and I would finish up lunch and go out in the shop to get back to work. One of us would mutter, “the fucking atomic plant fight”. Then we’d go back to hauling bags of concrete mix or whatever. Everyone was fine an hour later and we went on being a dysfunctionally delightful family that owned a business together.

I learned a lot from those lunches. I learned to be passionate about what I believed in. I learned to listen to other points of view. I learned to stand my ground. I learned to be far away from two-by-fours.

There are a few topics I get passionate about. One of them is technology. Contrary to popular belief I don’t always believe in the latest and greatest technology. While I like to tinker, I don’t think that upgrading just for the sake of upgrading is always the answer. I do believe that technology, when used properly, say in the workplace, can make us more productive and make the company we work thrive. I firmly believe that many offices can go “paperless” but that the concept frightens people. They’re too used to having paper to shuffle around. They like trails. I believe some just don’t understand “electronic trails”.

Earl and I had a lively discussion about the paperless office today on the way home from Albany (where we had delivered boxes to the Capital District plant that he manages). As General Manager, Earl has grown his company to unprecedented levels in the 13 years that he’s been there. He’s pushed a lot of paper in the process of doing it. On the other hand, I’ve observed a list of ways that the company I work for could go in a more paperless direction. I was pointing out the advantages of a paperless office where I work by using Earl’s offices as an example.

At milemarker 185 we were having a calm discussion.

At milemarker 195 I was thinking of a certain atomic plant.

At milemarker 200 I was gripping the steering wheel and his hand was out in a “debate stance”. I couldn’t see if anyone’s veins were sticking out in our heads.

At milemarker 215 I was not thinking of two-by-fours or reasonable facsimiles, paperless or otherwise.

At milemarker 233 I had gone into silent mode and he was staring straight ahead.

At home all was well and we continued on with our evening.

I won’t bore you with the details of my grand scheme of tree hugging and saving trees here (at least not yet), but let’s just say that I learned a few things about Earl’s business tonight and he learned a few things about the company I work for, as well as my vision of a paperless office for everyone on the planet.

And no two-by-fours were harmed in the process.

5 August 2008 by J.P. Geek Ponderings and Musings 2

Perfection.

I took another trip up north to do some computer work. The drive home was about 90 minutes of summer breezes and sunshine. I opted for the less traveled county routes and reveled in the corn fields flying by, the wind blowing through the car and the sunny mood I was feeling.

Life is good.

4 August 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 1

Inhibition, or lack there of.

There are two traits that I admire in people. Actually, that’s not quite accurate; I admire many things in people but there are two primary traits that I truly enjoy. One of them is charisma, which I consider to be a natural extension of self confidence. Not all self confident people are charismatic but most charismatic people are self confident. Let’s face it, some people are over confident. I don’t mind a touch of cocky (and we all know that I don’t mind a dash of arrogance) but I don’t care for self absorption or assholishness. Charisma though, that makes me swoon.

The other trait that I admire in a person is a lack of inhibition. I enjoy people that feel the freedom to do their own thing without reservation. It’s a trait I wish I had but in the back of my mind there’s something, though I can’t identify what it is, always holding me back even if it’s just a little bit. My throttle is usually at 3/4 power, sometimes I ramp up to 7/8 but I rarely cruise at full speed.

I don’t know why I have this touch of inhibition residing in my makeup. I’ve analysed it six ways from Sunday for the past 40 years but have never figured out where it comes from. I guess that’s not entirely accurate either, there are certain events in my past that hit home: in grade six I was described as “weird” by a couple of classmates. They said that after I performed in a school production of Battlestar Galactica. I guess I took “alien” too close to heart or something. I don’t know why that bothers me, I am odd. Today I celebrate that. But once in a while I have that little barrier I put up to keep my psyche safe.

I have a friend who used to perform in various talent shows in the area. Her singing voice is good; she can carry a note, she can stay within the key of the song and she has a good sense of rhythm. Would she make it on a Broadway stage? No. But when she gets up there and does her thing she puts every single drop of effort she has into her performance. I admire that. I always hold off just a bit. “What if they don’t like me?” Perhaps I’m afraid of failing and reliving that moment when I sang my heart out for a recital in college and I was told that I would never make it as a singer. I think my performance inhibition comes from that battle scar. I should strive to move beyond that.

Tonight I found myself singing Abba tunes as we left the theatre at the end of “Mamma Mia”. I started singing softly and slowly but surely I sang loud enough for the large group of elderly women to hear me. I didn’t want to intrude in anyway, I wanted to express my joy from the movie through song. And so I sang. No one said a word, good or bad.

I took that as a compliment.

28 July 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings Quirky. 1

Linens. Things.

The local Linens and Things store is closing. This is a bad thing because it’s the closest store to our house in the event of a linens or things emergency. Being gay men we must keep our house well decorated at all times. Linens and Things helps out with this.

Earl and I browsed through the store closing sale items, where the junk from other stores has been shipped here for quick sale. I’m sure the good stuff has been shipped to stores that aren’t closing. Nevertheless, we spent $250 on various items.

Because of our visit to Linens and Things I must admit that I’m overly excited about going to bed tonight. We bought a “pillow top” mattress cover for our bed. I’m hoping this improves conditions in our bed to the point that I can easily drift off to peaceful sleep. Our mattress gets flipped quarterly as we were instructed when we purchased it five years ago. Earl is the bigger of the two of us. Ironically, I have the deeper trench on my side of the bed. I don’t know why this is. We can flip the mattress up, down, left, right, north, south and no matter which way it ends up there I am sleeping in a ditch while Earl relaxes up on the mountain. I don’t know why this is. I’m hoping the new pillow top mattress cover remedies this. It has memory foam embedded into the pad. I don’t plan on drinking any red wine in bed though¹.

We also purchased a new pillow for me. I think my current pillow was from 1986. Perhaps it was a graduation present from a relative or something. It was flat like a newspaper but it didn’t leave stains on my skin or anything like that. Now that I have a fluffy pillow again, I can wrap my arms around my old pillow. I have an odd way of sleeping: one leg must be outside the covers, the covers must be up to my shoulders and I bury myself into a little fort like area where I feel protected. Maybe I had an encounter with the boogieman some time in my past.

27 July 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 2

The Next Day.

I go through this every year when I start cycling again. The second day is the hardest day to get back on the bike, especially if it’s been a while since I’ve ridden. My muscles are complaining a little bit but my body is adjusting to my return to exercise.

When I ride familiar routes I go into autopilot and my mind goes into daydream mode. I think of so many different things. I’m instinctively aware of what’s going on around me but my mind is elsewhere, occasionally searching mundane subjects; I’m thinking of ways to improve the road I’m on or I’m thinking of ways to increase productivity at work. Sometimes I get creative and think of a topic for a blog entry or an idea for a series of video podcasts pops into my head. Before I know it I’m trudging up the hill to the house. The last mile is the hardest, it’s always uphill. Both ways. In the snow.

23 July 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 1

It’s Never Too Late.

He had been patiently waiting in the corner. There he sat, watching, knowing that his turn was coming. We were well acquainted. We’d spent many years together. This year would be no different, no matter how much I tried.

I finally came to his corner and extended my hand. I literally carried him up the stairs, where we would get reacquainted this year. We reminisced a little bit as I dressed to do the deed: “Remember when we helped those kids?” “How about the time they stared at us at Northern Lights Circle?” I spruced him up and he stood tall. I sat on his saddle and clamped myself in.

It was time to go for a ride.

As we danced on the pavement together, he softly reminded me that as Agnes Moorehead said several times during the series she’s most remembered for, “We are quicksilver, a flash of color, a fleeting sound. Our home has no boundaries beyond which we can not pass.” My body reveled and I could feel his smile beneath me. Tears streamed down my face.

In May 2000, at 221 pounds I rode six miles. I thought I would die.

In July 2008, at 189 pounds I rode sixteen miles. And I reveled in life.

It’s good to be a cyclist once again.

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22 July 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Jingle Jangle.

Here’s a random thought that popped into my head during “I Love Lucy” (which was another rerun!) Imagine being an aspiring singer. You want to hit the big time and have adoring fans as you grace the world with your melodious voice. American Idol isn’t good enough for you, you’re going to make it big, big, big like Jessica Simpson or Debbie Boone. Maybe Wayne Newton.

Wouldn’t it be quite the detour to be known as the guy that sings the rockin’ tune “1-2-3 LUMP SUM”. Oh sure, you can disguise it as a trendy pop tune, but in reality, it’s just “1-2-3 LUMP SUM! 1-2-3 LUMP SUM.”

Big time.

17 July 2008 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Ponderings and Musings

Connection.

Relaxation.

Observation.

Debate.

Perfection.

Inhibition, or lack there of.

Linens. Things.

The Next Day.

It’s Never Too Late.

Jingle Jangle.

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