Ponderings and Musings

Driving into work this morning I caught up on the world news via the local NPR station program, “Morning Edition”. The timing of my commute allowed me to bypass the headlines filled with bombs and war and instead afforded me the opportunity to hear what I found to be an amazing story of a woman with autism.

You can take a peek at her story or hear it here.

Here it is early in the morning (at least for me) and for once my blog entry isn’t about how I’m not a morning person or any of that. In truth, I feel absolutely wonderful this morning. It’s not because it’s Friday, though that certainly does contribute to the mood, but rather it’s because of my fashion choice today.

I get to wear jeans to work.

Once a year, our company has a “Jeans Day” to help raise money for the United Way. You pay $5.00 to the receptionist, she gives you a permission slip and I get to feel like myself at work for the day. It’s a wonderful feeling.

There are many places and situations where I believe a person should dress “nice” for the part. The work environment is one of them. Another is a Broadway show, but it seems people don’t do that anymore, opting for shiny velour instead, but that’s another story. While I don’t mind wearing my “professional” clothes at work, I admit that I feel most comfortable in a button down shirt complimented by a comfortable pair of 501s and my work boots.

The work boots are another story. I wear them just about all the time outside of work. Even with shorts. I’ve worn my work boots with my shorts since 1990 and I don’t care what the fashion industry says, I’m never going to stop doing it. Unless I’m at the beach, then it’s a nice pair of flip flops or sandals.

So today is going to be a comfortable Friday. Viva la casual clothes!

The news is flooded today with word of a foiled terrorist plot to blow up several airliners en route from the United Kingdom to the United States. The security threat level has been raised to “Red” for flights from the U.K. and “Orange” for all other flights. New security measures are in place at airports prohibiting any sort of liquid being carried onto the plane, since the terrorists were planning on using liquid explosives.

Sigh.

The world has become such a complicated place. As time marches on, we expect things faster. We expect things now. “I need to be in San Francisco for dinner.” “I want to go to Dallas to go shopping.” “Meet me in Miami for the rave.” Sometimes it feels like things are going to get so extraordinarily crazy that somehow the world is going to do a massive reboot and we’ll all start from square one again. I wonder what that “reboot” is going to be.

I know that when Earl gets home from being out of town, we are going to discuss our travel plans for February. We are going to Florida for week to play with The Mouse.

And we’ll be driving.

It’s not that I’m afraid to fly, because if I could fly us down there myself I would do it in a heartbeat. I’m most certainly not afraid of flying, as I’ll jump into my dad’s open cockpit airplane and fly upside down over Lake Ontario. No, it’s about the inconvenience. I don’t want to deal with the high airfares, the screaming passengers and the general b.s. that comes with air travel these days. I’m just not in the mood to deal with it. Put me on the road, give me a day or two and let me drive there.

It’ll keep me from being a little less crazy.

Earl surprised me this afternoon by inviting me out to lunch. Our usual haunt, a little cafeteria style place on the main street, was closed for the owner’s vacation. So we decided we’d go to that little trendy restaurant across from my office building. Earl had never been there before and he was rather curious to see how it had been doing since opening in the spring, so in we went.

It wasn’t very good. The service was very slow, cold and nonchalant. The panini bread was so hard that I would have been able to smooth out any callouses on the bottom of me feet with it. So we chalked the experience up to “experience” and decided we wouldn’t go there in the future.

However, there was one feature that I did enjoy very much about the little bistro. The bathroom had jazz music pumped into it over an acoustically pleasing Bose speaker.

I find music in the bathroom to be very important. As avid travelers, Earl and I have had our share of public bathroom experiences. I’m not shy about doing what I need to do in a public bathroom by any stretch of the imagination, I just don’t want it to be dead silent in there while I’m going about my business. I need music. Some of the older interstate rest areas are so hollow sounding that any noise you may make in the privacy of your own stall sounds like an announcement of an incoming train in the center of Grand Central Station.

It ain’t pretty.

I hate it when I get settled in any public bathroom after a round of Burger King or whatever and here someone come schlepping in to do their thing. Aside from the “oh my god I hope I don’t make some obscure gay code noise that makes the guy next to me think I’m interested” stress that I briefly experience, there’s that whole “god this is making a lot of noise” stress that could easily be muffled by Muzak.

After all, nothing soothes the soul in the john like a never ending loop of “You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone.

I was messing around with PhotoBooth on my PowerBook and snapped a picture of myself. When I saw the results I decided that I really need to get some serious sleep.

Earl and I are going to a baseball game in Syracuse tonight. I’m taking a nap beforehand. I’ll be witty and insightful later this evening.

Here it is, the first blog entry after on-call. You know I’m going to be talking about how it wasn’t so bad after all and how I’m happy to be free of my electronic dog leash again. I have three weeks off from on-call on this run! Yay! So how am I celebrating? By agreeing to do “just a couple of hours” Thursday for a co-worker.

I’m a wainker.

Oh well, Earl will be out of town, it’ll get me a little bit of overtime and it’s only for three hours so I guess it won’t be that bad.

Now Earl and I will engage in what I call “social cramming”. We’ll go out to dinner a lot, visit with friends and family in a whirlwind tour and do lots of things we’d prefer not to discuss on this PG rated blog. (If you must know, drop me a line.)

As an added bonus, there’s a severe thunderstorm watch in effect through tonight with the possibility of “tornadic activity”! I think we’ll go storm chasing tonight and see what we can see. Why? Because we can.

Happy Monday!

I had totally forgotten about this song and this video. It’s a shame the message still hasn’t hit home.

Go see Culture Club, “The War Song” on YouTube.

I did something for the first time today. I ventured a little bit out of the area while I was on-call. Usually I stick within a few minutes of home the entire week for fear of some technological catastrophe happening, but today the weather was good and we had a family reunion going on in Syracuse, so I decided to venture out of the little realm of safety and go to the shindig.

It wasn’t a bad experience at all. Thank goodness the weather cooperated and I was able to handle my work responsibilities with my cell phone, two notebooks of data and a pad of paper out in the Jeep. Earl and I were able to enjoy the picnic relatively stress free.

This might make my work experience more enjoyable. It’s like a whole new realm of possibilities.

Tonight is my 20 year high school reunion. Instead of having it around graduation day in tandem with the annual high school Alumni Banquet, my graduating class decided to have the reunion around the town field days (village fair). At least we’re doing something for 20 years I suppose, because to my knowledge there hasn’t been a reunion since our fifth year, unless of course I wasn’t invited or something.

I’ve only seen a very few members of my class since graduating high school. I haven’t seen my best friend from high school, Jeff, in about six years. I ran into a good friend who is a really talented piano player a couple of years ago and we’ve kept in touch on and off over e-mail since. Other than a passing glance here and there when I’ve been in town, I’ve had little contact with my classmates.

I must admit that I’m intrigued about the whole shindig tonight. I’m a little curious as to see how my other classmates did in this quest called life. I’m also a little bit nervous in a junior high sort of way because of the whole gay thing. It was pretty much a given that I was gay (hell, I knew since second grade), especially the last half of my senior year of high school, but it wasn’t something that was talked about outside of a joking or taunting way. Looking back, I don’t think I was really picked on that much for being who I am aside from a few remarks here and there and a scathing “character analysis” study we did in an Ethics class in which we all discussed what was wrong with each other. An undoubtedly now rabid republican went to town on my homosexuality basically insinuating that I would have to sell myself on the street to survive since that’s what “they” did because they couldn’t be employed in “normal society”. Looking back on that experience I smile a little bit, because I learned a lot about myself and about people in general that day. And to think I’ve only had to sell myself once or twice to make ends meet.

Calm down, I’m kidding. (Mom, you can pick yourself up off the floor).

So tonight Earl and I will make the trek up north to take a trip down memory lane with a few pictures taken along the way. I think it’ll be a good evening.

Last night was one of my busiest on-call nights ever. I was able to only clock in 1 1/2 hours of sleep before having to get up and get my day started. It hasn’t slowed down at work today but at least it feels like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, so I’m managing.

I had hoped to sneak a catnap during my lunch break. I thought if I caught 20 minutes of sleep I would be able to chase away this headache that’s lurking about and I would just be able to deal with the rest of the day.

The nap didn’t happen.

When I drove into the driveway, I noticed that the lawn service was here doing their weekly thing. There’s three of them this week, all younger than 25, all quite buff, all quite tan and well, all very hot.

Three men doing lawn work shirtless will perk me up more than any nap, so I guess I’ll just go with Plan B and watch the guys work.