Ponderings and Musings

When I’m writing in my blog or doing school work I usually need to have relative silence. Many will listen to their iPods or watch television but lately I’m not able to handle the distraction of noise, be it music, television, airplanes, thunderstorms, whatever, while I’m concentrating on a task.

I find this relatively new development to be surprising. Before working for the telephone company, I worked for a radio station where there is constantly fifty things going on at once. People are walking in and out of the studio as you’re talking on the air, phones need to be answered while you’re loading up the next CD and thinking about what happens next and the radio is obviously constantly on while you’re doing your work. When I went to the telephone company, there was an unspoken rule that “music shall not be heard within these walls” in the tech support center I worked in, so the only sounds one heard was the ringing of telephones, little murmurs of conversation, a network trouble signal that sounded like an air-raid siren and the occasional f-bombs from nearby co-workers. Compared to the radio station, the telephone company was pretty quiet.

Now I find myself easily distracted by noise.

I can’t write in my blog if Earl has music going on his computer. The cat is constantly trying to jockey a spot on my lap to the point where I have begun locking him out of the room when I’m trying to work and I’m falling behind on my podcast listening because I’m spending more time on the computer doing actual work so I can’t concentrate and listen at the same time.

So with it being springtime and the ensuing changes (“My you look much younger without your mustache!” was a common theme at school today), I have begun “distraction training”, where I listen to music and do a given task at the same time.

If my blog entries are a little more incoherent than usual you’ll know why.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but when I was a wee lad I was a tuba player. From fifth grade through my senior year, I proudly played the tuba with the concert and marching bands. In fact, I went to SUNY Fredonia for music education as a tuba player, probably because we tuba players are rare and the college was desperate.

When Earl and I were on vacation last week, we had occasion to watch several marching bands and I found myself eager to start playing the tuba again. I haven’t played the tuba since 1988 or so but I still remember all the fingerings and how to do it.

I wonder if I can find a tuba on ebay. Then I’ll just be a tuba player in search of a marching band. 

Because we all know what happens at band camp.

Here’s a picture of me (on the left) as a freshman in high school at band practice. Band was the last period of the day (the geek remembers: 8th period, 1:49 to 2:30), that’s why I had my coat on because I had an irrational fear of missing the bus.

Here, enjoy one of the songs we used to play (though this is the demo version). It’s called “Aztec Fire”.

Have I got a tip for you. If you’re in the market for a vasectomy and are anywhere in Florida, Dr. Doody-doody has 20 offices between Gainesville and Miami that can do that deed, without a scalpel or needles and for only $290! Installment payments available! Don’t believe me? Drive down Interstate 75 from Georgia southward and you’ll see huge billboards proclaiming said “deal”, complete with a full color picture of the doctor, who looks so creepy it’s not hard to believe that he likes to play “snip snip” around men’s balls.

God Bring Back South Of The Border!

When will the medical related advertisements go too far? It’s bad enough that we have to see someone’s nasty leg plastered on a movie screen to entice us to have varicose vein surgery. For crying out loud we just want to see the Fantastic Four trailer. I don’t need to see someone’s spindly, hairy leg with magic marker marks all over it while I’m trying to eat my Raisinettes.

And of course now we’ve become such an exceedingly lazy society that we need medication to help us take a dump. Just watch Lifetime or TV Land during the day sometime. Hour after hour you’ll see a medication that “doesn’t make you go, but it does make it more comfortable when you do.” Are you fscking kidding me? Human beings have been dumping for eons but now it’s uncomfortable for us to do it so we we’re urged to take medicine to make it just fall out.

The world has lost it’s mind.

Earl is out of town this evening. I’m looking forward to his arriving home tomorrow night. As usual, I’m not finding it easy to fall asleep with him away. Leaving me to wonder, “Is it bad to eat my weight in cheese before going to bed?”

I would KILL for a McDonalds Cheddar Melt right now but they haven’t served those up since 1997 or so. Fscking bastards.

I guess I’ll try going to bed.

The company that hosts jpnearl.com must love me. I have been installing new features to the website that I’d like to start using soon (a new photo gallery system) but I keep crashing the server. I’m in Upstate New York, the server is in Pittsburgh. I keep sending them trouble tickets and they keep responding. They’re friendly enough though.

Hopefully tonight the dust will have settled enough that I can do a proper blog entry.

Earl and I made the trek to Albany yesterday to visit with our friends Sean and Jeffrey. Sean is the one I share a common ex with (from over 18 years ago, not that we are old or anything). He and his partner Jeffrey have been together for about as long as Earl and I have been. We ran into each other online a while back and decided that we needed to get together and just hang out.

Simply put, we had a smashingly great time. We arrived at their apartment a little after two, chatted, snacked and ate dinner, chatted some more and then all of a sudden it was after midnight. It was like we had known these guys forever. I’m looking forward to getting together with them again soon.

Living in a smaller city, I occasionally feel that Earl and I are out on some sort of gay fringe, because of the longetivity and honesty we have with our relationship. It frequently feels like others just don’t get us. Few believe that Earl and I have no secrets from one another. Many shake their heads when they see that we enjoy each other’s company all the time. I often feel like we’re too whacky for words for most. We’ve been together over 10 years yet it still feels like we’re on a honeymoon. It has never gotten old between us, the adventure has just begun. I sense the same with Sean and Jeffrey.

It’s fun to have others ride the rollercoaster with you from time to time.

After a night of rain, ice, sleet, wind, falling tree limbs and power brownouts, I stepped out onto the porch to get the mail and was welcomed with a glorious blue sky, bright sunshine and temperatures in the mid 40s.

I can see the pavement in the driveway!

More importantly, the birds are singing.

And so is my heart.

I’m ready for spring.

Before I get rolling on this blog entry, I’m going to say it right away so that I can continue with a clear conscience. I am using my Windows XP based HP notebook to write this blog entry.

Now I have a fully acceptable reason for jumping over to the Microsoft world. It’s really quite simple. I’ve run out of Apple Kool-Aid. Actually, I use this laptop for my school projects because in the engineering world it’s all about the Windows programs. I’ve tried to create some CAD drawings on Mac based software but quite frankly it was a pain in the butt. So when I was ready to start out on my school experience, we purchased this laptop and I’ve been using it as school has been chugging along. Today I did a bunch of web site editing on it and I must say it’s not half bad once you get back in the dark side frame of mind. I received an e-mail telling me that my complimentary upgrade to Windows Vista has been shipped so I’m actually looking forward to playing around with that.

Maybe it’s the weather that’s making me crazy.

The National Weather Service has issued another Winter Storm Warning for our area, this time with the promise of two or more inches of ice overnight.

Gee Beav, that’s swell.

To ready myself for the impending storm I went to the local dairy store to pick up some milk and bread because that’s what you do in times like these. I took the glass milk bottles along to return (no, there isn’t a cow in the store filling the bottles as they bring them in) and saw that there was one bottle of milk left on the shelf when I got to the store. There were two people headed for the dairy case, so I slugged the old man and tripped up the woman with the walker and got the last half gallon no-fat.

Calories always count, even during the impending second Ice Age.

Always looking to stay healthy I gulped down some leftover nachos for lunch today. Last night our friend Eric and I went to dinner. The appetizer (said nachos) was HUGE, so when the server offered to wrap them so we could bring them home I said sure. It’s a good thing Sean wasn’t along, I probably would have dumped them into the closest manpurse I could find if she hadn’t offered the doggy bag.

Today the instructors at school warned us that we’d probably lose power tonight so we should get our assignments done early. One of them then told us about the “Pandemic Flu Task Force” that has been active all week. They’ve come up with a contingency plan for when the students start dropping like flies from some variation of the Bird Flu. I guess I didn’t know that a Pandemic was coming, but then I refuse to be sick so there you are.

And if you’re wondering if I’m bat shit crazy because Earl has been out of town all week, let me answer that with an uninterruped “absolutely”.

Today’s kids have everything they can imagine and more. They come home from school, still dazzled by the PowerPoint presentations that have replaced the overhead slide projector and sit in front of their gaming console and play video games while chatting with their friends on their very own cell phone.

Back in my day (he says like a wise old sage after having a few beers), we kids had this after school:

I have spent the entire day sitting at the kitchen table studying. I’m starting to feel like I’m ahead of the college game again as last week it seems like all my instructors jolted awake and said “let them have homework”. I usually save Sunday nights for my Drafting class homework, but Earl and I got wrapped up in the Academy Awards so I ended up pushing it off until today.

By the way, did anyone else find the Academy Awards as boring as I did? I mean I loved sitting on the couch with Earl to my left and Tom on my lap and it was nice to see Jennifer Hudson win her award and I surely enjoyed seeing Melissa Etheridge win her award for her song in Vice President Al Gore’s documentary (which is recording on the TiVo as I type this), but on the whole I found the award ceremony relatively boring. The naked people behind the white screen making bird shadows and whatnot were sort of like fireworks, you “ooh” and “aah” the first time or two you see them then you start showing more interest in swatting bugs and such. While I was rather excited to have Ellen DeGeneres as the host I found her to be somewhat subdued and rather absent from large chunks of the show. I mean she didn’t do a poor job but I wasn’t dazzled like I thought I would be.

Earl is out of town until Friday night save for a cameo appearance tomorrow night before leaving again Wednesday morning. We’re having guests over this weekend so I’ll be busy sprucing up, plus I’m having dinner with our friend Eric on Wednesday so I won’t be a surly hermit or anything but gosh I think it’s going to be a long week.