Ponderings and Musings

I am desperately trying to be excited about the impending holiday season but I’m not really having any success at the exercise. It’s not that I don’t like the holidays; I enjoy getting together with relatives and doing that sort of thing. I guess I’m just not feeling any joyous feelings or something, probably because it has become way too commercialised.

One of the local radio stations switched to non-stop Christmas music the moment they turned the porch light off to discourage any further trick or treating activity. Since then they have been “ChristMix”. Personally I find the first of November to be entirely too early for a non-stop litany of Christmas music. I’ve never enjoyed non-stop Christmas music on a station, let alone starting so early in the season. It irks me to the point that I won’t even scan the radio dial anymore, I just play it safe and avoid the radio all together. Perhaps I could consider that a Christmas gift – traditional radio proving that it has truly turned into a steaming pile of crap and we should listen to the music of our choice via iPod or some reasonable derivative. And while I’m on the subject of holiday music, and I know I have mentioned this before, but when did “My Favorite Things” from the Sound of Music as sung by Babs become a Christmas song? Is it because she sings “bright coloured packages tied up in string?” It is not a holiday song, so please just knock it off.

I think another reason that I’ve become rather soured on the holidays is because of the crap of “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas” versus whatever that started a few years ago. When I saw a mimeographed 8×11 sheet of paper that simply said “MERRY CHRISTMAS” in bolded helvetica taped to the windows at Sears a few years ago, in an effort of the retailer to try to save themselves from sort of weird boycott, I figured society had completely lost it’s mind and everyone had lost sight of what the season is suppose to be about.

Then I decided that I had no idea of what the holiday is suppose to be about. After all, Christmas is where it is on the calendar because the Christians decided to compete with the Pagan celebration of Winter Solstice. Going to church creeps me out for a number of reasons and quite frankly why should I celebrate the prime holiday of a religion that is trying harder and harder to impose it’s values on me and make me believe that I am a mistake or damned to eternal hell because I am honest about who I am? (Admittedly, it’s the more extreme members of society that are the cranky ones.) No thank you.

So here’s the deal. I’m not listening to holiday music. I’m not drinking egg nog. I will be relatively festive and I’ll buy presents for those that I truly want to buy presents for and on December 21 Earl and I will have a beautiful Winter Solstice Feast to celebrate the shortest day of the year and the rebirth of Mother Earth.

The big guy is out of town on business tonight. The house feels lonely.

I am off to help a friend with his computer. Full on geek mode with a beer or two on the side. To fully prepare I’m not like other geeks, I don’t watch episodes of Xena, I crank up “Remember” by BT. Every available mix, loaded to an iPhone. Brian Transeau, he has initials too, a classically trained musician that took his art and gift to the electronic world. I know a boy that could have done that but Fredonia State crushed his dreams and threw them away.

“Can you do me a favor?” There is a sucker born every minute. I agreed to three hours of on-call to help a friend out on Saturday. It’s o.k., I like my co-workers and know that they have my back. I have their back too, and many other backs.

I love my world. I love my existence. Sometimes it’s hectic and other times it’s not. Typing incoherently seems to relieving some stress that I’m feeling. Electronic communication is a beautiful thing. Just don’t abuse it. I am able to keep in touch with the ones I love, even though they are miles away.

I was told late last night that I looked tired. Personally I thought I was holding up pretty well but since I’ve been told this by a couple of people over the past week I guess there must be some truth to the observation. I must be tired.

Why is it that I’m awake at 3:21 a.m.?

This week of on-call has been relatively tame. I haven’t had a lot of middle of the night crises; the work has been steady but not crazy. Sleeping with the pager on never really allows me to let my guard down enough to sleep through the night soundly, though. I end up sleeping in this quasi-alert sleep that creates completely incoherent dreams. I just woke up from dreaming that it was the 1940s and I was coordinating the renovation of a very old office building. The doors were too big for the rooms they were in and would swing too far into the room. From there it gets weird, I was looking for wall tile that sung when touched. Musical walls for the bathroom. Bizarre.

I think part of the reason for my insomnia is frustration. I’m not one for the eat-sleep-work-repeat way of life, I need to get out and experience whatever I can. This week has been more about the regimented order of things. I suppose I’ll be ready for some adventure come Monday morning when on-call is over for a month. It’s a shame that I’ll be too tired to do anything about it.

I had been in my cubicle for approximately 23 seconds when I was informed that the telecommunications service for an entire section of the city was down and more importantly, I needed to print out my time sheet immediately so that it could be sent to payroll by noon.

It was 9 a.m.

Still charged from the weekend and not really feeling the moment, I let out a low, rumbly growl that came from somewhere deep inside this bear. Everyone that was talking to me scattered and went back to their desks.

I am not a morning person. I am not a Monday person. When I was in a managerial role at a previous job, everyone that reported to me knew the golden rule: give me five minutes to get my bearings before bombarding me with the business of the day. I can handle the stress, I can handle fires, I can handle the crisis; just let me make sure my caboose is on the track so I can head in the right direction.

Now they know.

Work is an interesting environment today. Early in the morning it seemed like the theme was “Talk very loudly in your cubicle and make sure your cell phone rings ridiculous ringtones.” That all simmered down when…

… the Human Resources Manager was seen in black. This is never a good sign. We are now down one person. Unfortunately, that person was never one to talk loudly in his cubicle. He never really talked at all. Not even on the phone, which is odd, working in a call center and all.

Today kicks off my first full week of on-call since returning to my job almost six months ago. I’m not feeling overly pressured by the thought but some of my co-workers are giving me the “psych out” about how I’m going to get no sleep and be very busy all week. Talk of blizzards, rain, violent winds and such are being shared with me to keep me on my toes. I take it all in stride. They don’t realise how good I am at psyching people out in my personal life. And besides, if it’s a busy week, I can roll around in the overtime loot. Naked.

One thing that I’ve never understood is the use of pictures of people sprinkled through software applications. I’ve mentioned before that one application we use has images of Asian woman sprinkled here and there. We now have this image on a sign-in page:

I don’t believe the woman looks very happy. Dignified, yes. Excited about being in a software application? No. And quite frankly I’ve never understood why the guy is sitting out in the middle of a really shiny floor in his office chair. Where did his desk go? Is he playing office chair NASCAR? Does this make the woman angry that he’s not at his desk and sliding across the shiny floor in his office chair?

Many questions on a Monday.

This is my favorite time of the year. I enjoy the cool, crisp autumn breezes, the crunching sound of the leaves when they’re walked on and the lack of oppressive humidity and heat that summer usually brings to these parts. What I don’t enjoy is trying to get up in the morning when it’s still dark. This task fights against the natural programming of my body.

This coming weekend would normally marked the end of Daylight Saving Time but because of Bush Lite and his wacky cast of characters, we have to wait a few more weeks before getting the clocks relatively aligned with what is really occurring outside. I don’t know why this frustrates me but nevertheless it does. I mean, last year we had to endure the same extension of Daylight Saving Time as we do this year. Maybe I should go back and read the blog from a year ago to see if I complained about it then. I probably did.

Meanwhile, I’ll stumble around in the dark getting ready for work. I think I need to buy one of those light therapy boxes to give myself a boost.

I’m sitting at the local medical center waiting for my turn to have a chest xray. Nothing peps up tired blood and kicks off a work week like a healthy blast of radiation.

I’m wondering if our fine citizens are going deaf or if medical facilities are trying to distract patrons from horrific screams because the music in this waiting room is loud. This is not the first waiting room that I have encountered this. When I was a kid there was a small speaker at the family doctor’s office. Said speaker played music from the 40s from an AM radio station. It wasn’t loud.

After my chest xray I head over to another lab for the last of my blood work. I haven’t eaten since 7 p.m. last night. I am hungry.

Earl and I are in Bucks County, Pa. for his niece’s wedding tomorrow. The weather is beautiful, the drive was wonderful though I had to take a power nap in a rest area for 20 minutes or so. I fell asleep really fast and had some really weird dreams, all in a 20 minute span in the front seat of the car. It was a little odd. I blame my new medicine.

Anyways, tonight was the obligatory rehearsal and dinner afterward. It was a nice gathering. We then caught up with my in laws for the weekly poker game. Earl threw some chips around and kept it respectable; I socialised. It’s what I do.

I think it’s time to go to bed. One of the cool things of staying here with my brother and sister in law is that it’s our old bed from the old house. My ass still fits in the same spot from years ago, even though they bought a new mattress.

So today I went for my annual physical for the first time in two years. Dr. Lance, as we like to call him, is looking as good as ever. He was cordial and friendly and more importantly, very prompt as he entered the examination room. I had only been waiting one or two minutes. It’s a nice change of a pace from today’s lazy state of affairs.

Basically I’m holding up pretty well. My pulse is good in all my extremities. (He checks my pulse in my ankle like Dr. Bombay!) My reflexes kick well (I hate getting my reflexes tested for some reason) and my tongue still allows me the ability to say “ah”. He took my blood pressure twice, it’s a little high this time around. He wants me on blood pressure medicine for a little while. I was on blood pressure medicine back in the early oughts and it did fairly well. Earl kind of treats it like some sort of distemper shot as he says I’m calmer when I’m on it. My numbers were 134/94. Not overly high but a little high. It runs in the family so I guess that’s to be expected. On the other hand, Dr. Lance is rather hot so that could be a reason for having high blood pressure.

I have to do the usual fasting and ensuing blood work on Monday. I have to have a chest xray just to be sure of something, but I don’t know what it is. He said everything sounds good. I opted to do the non-fasting required blood work today. I’ll have those results in a week. I hope the black and blue mark from the lab tech is gone by then. The rest of the blood work involves cholesterol and sugar levels. He says that runs in the family and he expects my numbers to be high. Such the optimist.

The bionics upgrade from 2005 is holding well and he is pleased by that. Well he seemed pleased. I certainly am. That problem that hung around for 30+ years is well behind me now. Now things just hang nicely.

When I first moved to the area in 1991 I wore a flattop. I know that is hard for some to believe, what with me being bald for the past 12 years or so but once upon a time I had enough hair on top to wear a respectable auburn flattop. I complimented the look with a moustache.

Maintaining a flattop is a bit of a chore. If you go too long without getting it cut it starts to look all out of proportion and then you’re just a few short steps from parachute pants and exclaiming “Yo Hammer don’t hurt ’em”, so when I got settled in these parts I had to find a barber that could execute the precision my flattop required.

After a couple of missteps and bad haircuts, I finally found a barber that could do the job well. The barbershop is a standalone unit located on a side street downtown; it’s flanked by two empty buildings. There are two chairs but only one barber. The other chair was Sam’s station but he had passed away a couple of years before I discovered the shop. The front chair belongs to Carm, a jovial older Italian man. He’s tall and thin, his name has many vowels. I thought of him as “older” back in 1991, I still think of him as “older” today, 17 years later.

Carm is a pleasant man. I’ve never heard him speak ill of anyone. His shop is populated by all sorts of men; workers from the state and county office building, lawyers and police officers and construction crews getting cleaned up for the weekend. While not overly busy, I suppose he does a respectable business. I sometimes wonder when he’ll retire.

Though my visits to Carm became more sporadic as time marched on and my hair vacated my head, he has always remembered various stops along my career path: radio DJ, restaurant co-owner, computer man. I was last in his shop in August 2006 where he carved out my first incarnation of the “wide” moustache that I wear from time to time. He is located close my work and occasionally I’ll pass by on a wild attempt to get some exercise during my lunch hour. He always waves and smiles.

During my last visit to the shop I noticed that he had slowed down a little bit. I mean, he’s getting on in his years and that’s to be expected. I noticed two winters ago there was a sign in the window saying that he’d be closed for a few weeks due to illness. He came back and resumed his schedule a short while later, I’d still pass by and wave. He’d wave back.

Carm’s shop is still open today. Since that bout with illness I decided to drive by on my way home from work once in a while to see if the shop is still open. I have little reason to go into the shop: I don’t have much hair on my head and I wear a beard most of the time. I’d glance in the big window as I passed by and occasionally see him sleeping in the barber chair closest to the window; the task of reading the newspaper apparently turned into an afternoon nap that probably went a little longer than expected. So I developed the habit of giving a quick little beep on the car horn in an effort to remind him that it was quitting time. I’d then go around the block again to see if he woke up. By the time I went by the shop again, I’d see him stirring and making motions to close up for the day.

I don’t know if Carm knows what wakes him up on the days he falls asleep reading the newspaper near quittin’ time but I don’t think I’m doing any harm. His shop is one little piece of Americana in this fast paced world that I cherish.

Here’s a picture I snapped the last time I was in his chair. It was August 2006.