Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. A thunderstorm came booming through town around 2:30 a.m. and someone (mainly, the bachelor of the week) left all the windows open so all of the windows needed to be shut before the rains accompanied the lights and noise.

It was kind of awesome. I shouldn’t speak in subtleties, it was friggin’ awesome. Despite paying the price through fatigue today, I loved every moment of it. I’m kind of excited to see that more storms are predicted through tomorrow. I’m crazy like that.

I love opening up the window shades to their fullest potential and watching Mother Nature’s awesome beauty in her thunderstorms. I find it so thrilling. Watching lightning bolts zig zag across the sky and seeing the big maple tree by the road sway back and forth (but still stand tall) from the wind is absolutely marvelous to me. I don’t know why it is, but I can never get enough of a thunderstorm. I always feel a little sad when they make their way through town and head somewhere else. I’m hoping that someday we’ll have a bedroom that has skylights so I can watch storms that way too. If I had the opportunity, I’d live in a place that required a storm cellar in a second. Like I said, I’m crazy like that.

I mentioned on Facebook last night that I wish I had paid more attention to Earth Science back in high school. I’m not comfortable with the amount of knowledge I have about the weather and how it works. I need to learn more. I wish there was some way that I could take my love of wild weather, namely thunderstorms and tornadoes and the like and turn that love into knowledge that could help others that don’t love a storm the way I do. I want to give back to the world by harnessing that information and helping build some sort of warning system, much like they attempted to do in the movie “Twister”, so that folks like those recovering in Oklahoma today weren’t mourning the loss of loved ones because of Mother Nature’s power.

I occasionally find the devastation left behind by Mother Nature’s power to be breathtaking, and not in a good way. The aftermath left by storms that I love so much can be so heartbreaking.

I’ll be thinking about the folks in Oklahoma tonight when the storms come rumbling through again.

I have mentioned before that I have a master clock system wired throughout our house. Typically found in schools, there is a computer sitting in the basement acting as the “master” clock and once a minute the clocks in each room click-click ahead to the next minute. All of the clocks are made by The Standard Electric Time Company of Springfield, Mass. and even though they’re all from different eras and schools (as my collection has grown over the years), they’re all compatible with one another and theoretically could have existed in the same building, much like they’re wired in our house.

I know, this clock collection makes me even more of a geek, but I have had an interest in the clocks since my first day of kindergarten, sitting on the floor in Room 5, Mrs. Mosher’s room. The clock clicked to 9:00 and a buzzer sounded, signaling the beginning of the day. It was neat.

As I have collected clocks over the years (including three clocks from my elementary school), I have built quite a collection and have connected with others throughout the country that share this interest. There’s some comfort to know that others live in that lunatic fringe of geekdom with me.

I have recently discovered all of the yearbooks available on classmates.com. This has helped me see some of the clocks I have collected in their natural habitat. It has also given me the opportunity to see what kind of clocks are in an abandoned building or some art deco wonder of a school that I may have spotted during our travels. For example, on my bike ride yesterday, I rode by an impressive looking school building in Oxford. A quick look at one of their yearbooks confirmed that they indeed had a Standard Electric system, as seen in this shot from their office.

Going through these old yearbooks I can’t help but notice how much nicer the students and teachers were dressed back in the day. Folks looked well groomed. We might not always agree with the beliefs of the time, but superficially speaking, at least folks looked good. It’s amazing how much times have changed. I don’t know if there’s a lot of schools that have “Future Homemakers of America” or Rifle Clubs these days.

By the way, I’m always curious as to who remembers their clocks from elementary or high school. Here’s a picture of one of the clocks from my collection. Purely designed for functional purposes only, I still find these to be wicked cool.

I have a bit of a pet peeve that I’m going to rant a little bit about. This is something that really rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel judgmental about a person. While it isn’t right to be judgmental about a person based on a superficial aspect of a conversation, I think I have some sort of point here buried in this muddy blog post.

The scenario goes like this: “Picture it, a restaurant, anywhere in the present day.”

Server, noticing you have finished up your meal: “Would you like any dessert?”

Customer: “Sure, I’m in the mood for a little something. What do you have?”

Server: “I have a delicious blueberry pie and a chocolate thunder thighs godiva high cake. I also have some scones leftover from yesterday.”

I. The server said “I”. The server personally has blueberry pie, chocolate thunder things godiva high cake and leftover scones. It makes one wonder what the other servers are serving for dessert. Are there desserts better than the desserts being offered by our server, since it seems like every server has their own desserts to offer? Perhaps the server over yonder has something in vanilla. I was in the mood for something vanilla, too.

My point is the “I”. This was something that was hammered into my head as a young lad when I worked at the family business. “Can I help you?” was a no-no. “What can we do for you?” It’s the team you’re dealing with, all of us that work here have banded together to bring you the best experience possible. To say “I” implies that you bring something that others can’t, which doesn’t really foster teamwork.

“I have Guinness and Coors Lite on tap.”

I want to watch when you push the bartender out of the way to get my Guinness from YOUR tap.

“We have Guinness and Coors Lite on tap.”

Much better.

While I am a loner and a bit of an introvert and one that would rather do things in solitude instead of in the middle of a crowd, I still all I can do to make our team look its best. Teamwork: that is what it’s about in most workplaces today and by using the singular, “my team” or “I fixed it”, you’re basically telling me that you can handle it on your own and/or you’re just out for your own good.

I’m not that insecure. I will always use the “we”. Though I may approach it alone, I’m always part of the team.