Ponderings and Musings

Earl is out of town on work. He’s expected home tonight, so that has put a little spring in my step, but gosh I miss him when he’s not home. You’d think after 10 years of this I’d be used to it, but I’m not. That’s a good thing, I suppose.

When he is out of town I get to embrace the loner side of me. I go into full geek mode and play on the computer night and day. Daily chores get tossed aside as there are too many things waiting for me in the realm of bits and bytes; web sites need to be updated, e-mail needs to be responded to and there’s a Sim City awaiting my run as a mayor without cheat codes.

As I delve into the controlled chaos of my own little world, that little sense of loneliness follows me around. It’ll be good to see Earl’s smiling face tonight.

Driving home from work just now I followed a motorcycle up the street before jumping on the expressway. There’s a few lights between work and the on-ramp and this motorcycle didn’t try running the lights at all, the rider followed all the rules of the road to the letter.

He looked to be in his late 20s, muscular arms, wearing a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and an open faced helmet. He had a passenger, a young boy, presumably between eight and 10 years old. The boy had his arms wrapped around his dad, and hung on to him tightly as he displayed the utmost confidence in being a passenger on that motorcycle.

I was reminded of me being that boy thirty years ago, with my arms wrapped around my dad and with all the confidence in the world as we rode through the tiny village on his ’69 BSA.

It’s good to be reminded of those little things.

Every day I have another reason to believe that the world has completely lost its mind. Today is no exception. This is really old news that I was just made aware of, but the fine folks at Ford now recommend a particular brand of gas for their vehicles. This recommendation is made by emblazoning the gas cap with the said oil company’s brand colors and a recommendation statement from Ford emprinted on the gas cap.

Detroit, we have a problem.

If I were to own a 2006 Ford Focus, I would be going against the manufacturer’s recommendation for my fuel needs because it would be at least 150 miles in any given direction to get this brand of fuel.

Now that puts the “convenience” in convenience store.

Why does Ford feel that they have to recommend a particular brand of gasoline to their customers? Do they really recommend this brand or are they getting paid lots of money to recommend this brand? What makes it better? Are they encouraging their customers to shun the local Mom and Pop store down the street in favor of this huge oil corporation simply for the sake of sponsorship money? Gag me a dipstick.

Marketing and commercials have become entirely out of control. I can’t get onto ebay now without a popup asking me if I want an ebay credit card. Dude, I just want to browse and waste some money on some junk. You can’t watch a movie in a theatre without being bombarded with commercials for up to 45 minutes before the previews even start. Attractions at the State Fair are all sponsored: “Welcome to the Verizon Center of Progress Building.” Like Verizon and “progress” have ever gone hand in hand. What’s next? Hospitals slapping a sticker on the forehead of a newborn, “This hospital recommends Pearly White Toothpaste for all children”?

When does this insanity stop?

I just realized I had just emptied the dishwasher during my lunch hour. I find this most shocking. I always avoid the dishwasher during lunch hour.

What’s kind of freaking me out even further is that I considered starting a load of laundry before heading back to work, but luckily I remembered that the washer (2 1/2 years old) is making some really odd grinding noise that sounds like the bearings are shot. Anyone want to bet when the damn thing starts spitting grease on our clothes? I can’t even shout out grease. When the washer started making the beginnings of it’s odd rumbling noise a couple of weeks ago, I did some research to see how much it would cost to fix it. Apparently, you buy a whole bunch of preassembled parts from Frigidaire, gut the washing machine except for the door and the cycle selector knob and then put it all back together with the aforementioned new parts.

Said parts and labor would be $100 more than a new washing machine.

But I don’t want to buy a new washer. This one is only 2 1/2 years old and they don’t make this model anymore, so the dryer that’s stacked on top would become an orphan. I wonder if I can bolt that to the wall somehow.

So it’s a crapshoot as to when it’ll finally give out. In the meantime, I only run it while we’re home in fear of it otherwise breaking down, scaring the crap out of the cat and flooding the downstairs of the house.

Such adventure.

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!