Ponderings and Musings

When we made the decision that I could go back to school full-time, one of the considerations was that the on-line spending had to come to a stop. I could no longer go wild on ebay and would no longer be able to enjoy the high one gets from a daily UPS visit.

Apparently the new rule applies to only one of us because Earl had two packages arrive today.

The first package was from KitchenAid. It’s a cozy cover for a our “classic mixer”. It does wonders at keeping our mixer free from schmutz and complimenting our kitchen décor. It gives one a warm, domestic feeling.

The other package contained a labeling system for the clothes closet. Earl cleaned his closet out a couple of days ago and organized everything into sections. The long sleeved dress shirts go in one part, the jeans go in another, etc. In an effort to keep things neat and tidy after the houseboy (me) does the laundry, he now has labels that instruct me where to hang what. He even has a label for “empty hangers”.

He has dashed one of my two favorite household pasttimes as I now will no longer have to play the “find the hangers” game in his closet. By the way, the other favorite pasttime is called “bang my head on the top of the oven while I clean it.”

Keeping time with the latest trends, the labels come in both an English and Spanish version. Since we are on a budget due to my struggling student status, I’ve been informed that my closet will be organized in Spanish.

Olé.

Our cat Tom is freaked out because there’s a stranger in our house this week. He keeps running up to me and looking at me with the “are you going to do something about this?” look in his eyes. Tomorrow he’ll probably start clawing me.

The reason we have a stranger in our house is because we’re having the walls in our basement built, along with a few other odds and ends that needed to be done. When the project is completed, Earl and I will be moving our offices into the basement so that the spare bedrooms can be spare bedrooms again. The recording studio is also being moved into the basement. I’m looking forward to the new “play space”.

The nice thing about this project is that my family’s contracting business is doing the work. It’s a bit of a drive for them but Earl and I both felt it was best to have someone that we know will do a good job doing the work.

The few odds and ends that needed to be completed included the hot tub leaking into the garage and spackling the walls in the downstairs bathroom and laundry room where the owner discovered he didn’t put any joint compound on the plumbing before he sealed the walls up. There’s a trap door under the guest room toilet that was never made to “look pretty”, but that’s been taken care of now.

I swear that if Earl and I ever move again we’re going to build a house from the ground up so that we know what is going where and how it’s getting put there. George (the contractor) and I discovered today that for some unexplicable reason our hot tub drains away from the main plumbing of the house, where it does a loop over the garage, dumps through a trap that can only be accessed by removing the floor under the walk-in closet in the master bath (I don’t know why we have a walk-in closet in the master bath, so don’t ask), and then goes back to where it was suppose to go in the first place. This little loopity-loop was leaking because there was apparently no joint compound on the pipe fittings.

Oy.

George fixed the problem and we made sure everything was nice and dry before he put the new trap door in the garage ceiling. It’s next to the other trap door that the previous owner’s put in when the toilet leaked into the garage a number of years ago.

Tomorrow he starts with the basement walls. Home improvement can be exciting.

Earl and I have a bucket that we throw all our spare change in. We’ve used the same bucket (an old dishwasher detergent bucket) since our first apartment and have only sat down to wrap change three or four times in the past decade. Since we don’t like fishing through change when we’re at a store or restaurant, the bucket was about three quarters full this morning. So we lugged it to one of those coin counting machines at the grocery store. When all was said and done, we had about $175 in change and after we turned in our credit slip and paid the coin counting machine fee, we left with about $166 in cash.

Since we had more money than we anticipated, we went to the mall and bought one of those Ab-Lounge machines that are constantly being advertised on television. Now the ads promise all these wonderous things will happen to those that use this mechanical marvel of exercise. Despite their claims, I don’t anticipate having six-packs abs in a week’s time, but I must admit that the machine does make it a little easier on my back to do the traditional crunches. I’ve just completed my first ride on the thing and I was able to clock in 100 sit-ups. My mid-section is killing me as I type this, but my back doesn’t feel as sore as it usually does after 20 traditional crunches.

Perhaps I’ll be able to bounce a quarter off my stomach at the end of the month.

One of the requirements of going to college in the lovely state of New York is that you have to have record of two doses of an “MMR” vaccine, to immunize yourself against measles, mumps and ruebella. These doses can be in the form of vaccines or by actually having said diseases, you just need to provide documentation to your college health center so that they can tell the state that you’re a healthy student.

I think I mentioned a while back that coming up with documentation to prove that I have already had the vaccine has been difficult. My elementary and high school health records are sketchy as Nurse Needles apparently didn’t believe in thorough documentation. My health records for when I was a child and when I was at college have both been shredded. However, the college was willing to accept what little proof I did have as one dose of the vaccines. All I needed to do was get a second dose or blood work to prove that I’m already immune.

Now let’s all keep in mind that if I was a part-time student, a member of the faculty or other college staff member, I would have no need to show this documentation. Apparently in New York State only full-time students are capable of spreading the plague; teachers, part-time students and other staff are already immune by virtue of not being full-time. Oh yes, in addition it’s impossible for me to spread the aforementioned diseases before February 15 because I have until then to prove that I’m immune.

I had a physical with my doctor a couple of weeks ago and he said that this would be no problem, we’d simply include the screening to make sure I was immune with the routine blood work. I’d then turn in the documentation to the college and I’d be free and clear.

Wrong.

My blood tests came back today indicating that I was *probably* immune from measles, mumps and ruebella, but it is not an absolute certainty. Therefore, any of Nurse Needles documentation that I had provided was null and void and I need to get two doses of the MMR vaccine, 30 days apart, before Feburary 15 or they will come into the classroom and force me off the college campus.

I think this is stupid.

First of all, the documentation I have says that I received my first MMR in April 1969. Bzzzzz. New York State says you have to have it within four days of your first birthday or it doesn’t count. So back in the day Dr. Hoedown jumped the gun and gave me my vaccination too early. Apparently I have infected everyone around me since then because it wasn’t within four days of my first birthday. I have survived spinal meningitis, I have seen the white light, I have lived through what should have been a fatal car crash, but by god I need to get my measles, mumps and ruebella vaccine right away before I bring the plague upon Mohawk Valley Community College.

Secondly, I’ve already gone to college. I’ve already proved all this, but that’s right, they shredded all my documents. So tomorrow I get to go to the county health clinic where I’ll get me my first of two vaccines. If they make me sick, I’m suing everyone within eyeshot and in Albany.

Where do I get the vaccine against ridiculous government bureaucracy?

It’s another beautiful day in Upstate New York and today is the first “real” day of 2007. I just got off the phone with my sister and she asked “How is the first day as houseboy?”. Isn’t she humorous. The house is still standing, there hasn’t been any cleaning catastrophes and I haven’t killed any of the smattering of seniors at the grocery store, so all in all I would say it’s been a success. The true test will be to see if Earl survives my homemade spaghetti sauce tonight.

I had forgotten that shopping at the grocery store in the middle of the day is a completely diffferent experience from shopping at night or on the weekend. The pace is a slower, a lot, lot slower. Daytime shoppers are afraid of the new-fangled self-serve checkouts. Those that venture to the self-serve lane are afraid to touch here to start. They need guidance. Cars and carts move in completely random directions. People block aisles to gossip. All that can be seen behind the steering wheel of the randomly moving cars is a pile of hair. The speed limits on the road change by a prescribed formula: take the posted limit, divide it by two and then subtract your age, remove the negative sign and then ignore the result and anyone around you.

Yet, everyone I encountered can live to read my tale. I must be mellowing out or something.

So here it is, a brand new year. Everyone gets a chance to start fresh as a whole new year lies before us. What occurred in 2006 happened last year so we needn’t worry about it any longer, because this is a new year. The world is new!

It was at approximately 8:00 p.m. this evening that I said to myself, “OH MY GOD”.

Tomorrow marks my first day of this new life I’ve chosen as a struggling student. Since I am now unemployed and eager to impress my lover tomorrow (as the new cook of the house), I was installed in the kitchen cutting up vegetables to be packed with his lunch this week. After breezing through that task with all my fingers and toes still intact, I decided I would make us tuna salad sandwiches. It was then that I realized that at 38 years old while I had traveled in three countries, 42 states and had heard several different words for the carbonated beverage we call soda, I had never made tuna salad before in my life. Ever. Armed with several cookbooks from Williams-Sonoma, I can confidently say that while I can find ways to make things like Coq Au Vin, Lobster Thermador and Filet Mignon Almondine, there are no recipes for tuna salad to be found. Not even next to the picture of the smiling fish on the Chicken of the Sea can. I did find a guide to stuffing a tomato with tuna, but that looked rather risky for my first adventure as lunch line lady.

Now I know why my mother had her nose in that red and white checked cookbook back when we were kids. That’s where all the secrets are! All I can say is thank goodness for the internet. I found a lovely little recipe for tuna salad. I blended the recommended ingredients together and it came out looking like something edible. I didn’t have pickle relish as recommended so I chopped up some sweet pickles and threw in some of the juice. I was proud of myself for improvising.

I’m hoping that Earl is a good sport about my first attempt at making tuna salad, because there’s one other thing I learned from my mother: how to swipe a plate of food away from someone that’s complaining about it and then stuff it down the disposer.

Let’s hope we both survive tomorrow’s lunch to tell another tale.

Earl and I just got back from seeing the movie “Dreamgirls”. I am just blown away by Jennifer Hudson’s performance, heck I was blown away by the entire performance. Jennifer rendition of “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” is nothing short of amazing. I have never been in a movie theatre where the audience got on their feet, applauded and cheered for a character in the middle of the movie, but that’s what happened tonight. I had tears streaming down my cheeks after hearing her incredible performance. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

Beyoné, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and the rest of the cast are wonderful. The movie is beyond spectacular. You must see it.

It’s the last day of 2006. Today is the day to reflect on the events of the past year, ponder why we humans do what we do and wonder why we’ve eaten so much for the past month and a half. It’s also a time to thank whomever is responsible that our pants haven’t burst at the seam while standing in line at the mall for another barrel of popcorn coated in chocolate, caramel, candy or all of the above.

I like to think of myself as a constant, fluid effort in refinement. In truth I occasionally feel like I’ve taken a wrong turn on the path of life, so I wipe the slate clean and start all over again. Oddly enough, I’m not feeling this way with the arrival of the New Year; I already have so many changes that lie ahead that it seems kind of silly to be making a list of resolutions. Nevertheless, like everyone else I hope to live a healthier lifestyle in 2007. The advertising folks have already started blasting us with an infinite number of ways to remind us why we’re ugly, fat and shunned by our peers. For just $19.95 a month for the rest of your life you can enjoying better living through chemistry by unnaturally surpressing your appetite completely, gnawing at foods that even the astronauts wouldn’t touch in the deep reaches of orbit and then accompany the effort with the promise of explosive bowels at any random moment.

I’ve never believed in the quick fix to your health and I’m not going bite this time around either.

I have what I believe is a realistic, obtainable goal outside of school and career that I’d like to accomplish by the end of August. I’m going to ride the entire length of New York State from the Newburgh bridge at the Hudson River to the shores of Lake Erie in Barcelona, N.Y. by bicycle. That my goal and I’m hoping that a healthier lifestyle will fall naturally into place. I’ve remarked several times over the past couple of years that I’d like to do that; by going back to school I believe I’ll have the opportunity to attain that task. It’s going to happen this year. No compromise.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Years’ Eve celebration. I also wish that everyone has the same sense of awe and excitement that I have about 2007. No matter how dark and cloudy the day may be, look up and seek out that stray ray of sunshine.

Life is good.

Like most people, every once in a while I’ll get a song stuck in my head. Unfortunately, when this happens, my moderately OCD tendencies kick in and I start obsessing about the aforementioned song. I’ll hum it, I’ll think about it, I’ll obsess about it until it comes to a sweet resolution where the Universe finally presents me with this tune in it’s natural setting. The trouble is, there’s no way for this song to get to me in it’s natural setting at the moment. That’s because for the past two days I’ve had the theme song to the sitcom Alice stuck in my head.

As of late I’ve come to know this process as “Lavinization”.

Alice was on CBS for nine seasons. I remember watching first run episodes on Sunday nights and reruns weekdays at 10:30 before The Price Is Right. A multi-talented individual, Linda Lavin not only starred as “Alice” but she also sang the theme song, back when television shows had theme songs that lasted more than five seconds (the good ‘ol days). Always the performer, Ms. Lavin recorded at least one different version of the theme song per season.

To make a long story short, I currently have the second season, first variation of this song stuck in my head. Funniest thing, the saddest part is I never knew why. It’s just stuck in my head, playing over and over.

I have to admit it’s kind of groovy. The wurlitzer organ in this particular version that’s playing in my head is a bit trippy. The accompanying images are a little hazy but after all, things are great when you stand on your own two feet.

Today I’m Lavinized. If you’d like to join me, check out this site. Unfortunately, the particular version I’m hearing is not on the linked page!

Lavinized.

I just completed the exit interview with Human Resources, so I guess it’s official. I am now a struggling student by trade as today is my last day in the rat race for a while.

I’m very excited about going back to school. I’m finally following my dream to be a traffic engineer and I’m thanking the Universe, as few have the opportunity to pursue an education and a new career at this point in their life. I must admit that I’m sad about turning the page on this chapter of my life though, because I have enjoyed this job very much. I’ve often complained in here about the “on-call” aspects of my position and the crazy customers that I’ve talked to, but for the most part, it hasn’t been a bad gig and I’d do it again. I was a little surprised to get a phone call with well wishes from the senior vice-president of the company this morning and I appreciated the gesture. If for some reason my school plans don’t work out, I can always go back to this job and I feel good about that. I don’t believe in burning bridges. I look forward to maintaining friendships with my co-workers. They are good people.

2007 harkens in a completely new chapter in our life. The feeling is not unpleasant.