Radiator Key

Half a day on Tuesday and the whole day on Wednesday were about all I could stand being in my house so on Thursday I got into the truck and drove.

The story gets a lot more boring after that so it will remain untold.

Flatbread

Cheese

Pepper and onion

Pepperoni

Tomato and fresh mozzarella 

"Eh, I'll see tomorrow."

"Are you going to be around?"

"No. I'm on vacation."

I say that too often. I will be sitting at my desk when I get asked something and my answer will be, "I'm on vacation," or "I am not officially here today."

There was a meeting that needed to be attended and there was an official request for a protest to handle so I went in. 

But I went in a half hour late.

But no one noticed.

Work is easier when I am on vacation mostly because I can say "no". If I do not like I thing, I am free to walk out. It's my own personal 'fuck you card' that I carry in my back pocket.

"Dude, I came in on my day off just to get my own shit done," works quite well in sending people on their way.

The truth is that I have too many days off and not enough life. I actually have plenty of life it is just that I choose not to live it but I probably do get too many days off.

I went in to do the meeting and the paperwork for the protest but I ended up doing about ten other things; things that would have clawed at any quiet that I might have encountered, so I thought it was worth the investment. 

I am pretty much good until the second week in December.

...

We got snow today.

I will sleep in tomorrow.

...

Brian Regan is a comedian. He has this bit about going to the optometrist. He wonders out loud why people do not visit the eye doctor more often when they are having trouble seeing. He explains that  you can go into the doctors office and in about an hour see things that you couldn't see before. He wants to know what's so important that would have people put off seeing.

Then he says, "Eh, I'll see tomorrow."

That

I was asked were I wanted to be. 

We were talking about life.

I don't know what the place looks like or how far away it is. It is somewhere over the horizon.

I believe my answer was: Ahead, which I followed with "someplace forward."

I have to keep reminding myself to keep going forward.

Watch your step

4:45

5:00

6:15

I used my iPod as my alarm clock and so far it has sounded an alarm at those three times above. I have had to work the last two Saturdays and I never deleted the alarms. 

I was awake for all three, although for the first one I had to search for where I had left it.

...

I found fifty bucks in the street.

It wasn't actually in the street, it was in Sam Adams Park right where the street performers perform. It was among the Fall leaves.

Of course, me being me, I worried whether or not it was real because why would someone drop a fifty dollar bill where the street performers hang out? And how was I the first person to notice it?

I was scheduled to meet some friends at the bar and when I got there I asked the manager to check it out for me. 

She gave me the thumbs up and said "Today is your lucky day."

It was indeed a lucky day that contained great fortune and fifty bucks.

For one hour you get a re-do

Fall back.

I will wait for the spring ahead.

...

I am glad it's over but it isn't back to normal yet. It's just back to normaler.

I am pretty sure that beards will become more commonplace.

...

Vote on Tuesday.

Nobody cares.

...

Hey is for horses

I was on the phone when my first cube visitor arrived and I was still on the phone when that first visitor was joined by a second visitor.

The cube across from mine is unoccupied so they were hanging out there.

I was explaining to the guy on the other end of the phone that we still have to plan for all scenarios and we have to do it three days in advance so there will be times when we will do things and then have to undo those things and sometimes twice over. "It's all in the memo," I kept saying; and it was, it was a very fine memo and it took me awhile to compose it. It was not dissimilar to writing computer code with a lot of "if-then" loops, planning for Game 5 when it was only Game 2.

When I hung up my phone, I said, "Listen just because you want a parade and you want a tree lighting doesn't mean the world stops."

The world was actually going like gangbusters.

Today was more of the same, only I was shorted a few hours because I had to do someone else's job while still doing my own.

Sometimes, the newbie (who has been around for two years) will tell me to take a deep breathe and I say, "Fuck you newbie! Breathing is for the weak."

I got five minutes to work on the latest problem that was going to needs signs. I had arranged it so someone would come and get the signs, all I had to do was make them up. Easy Peasy. I printed the stickers and peeled them from their backing and carefully placed them over the cardboard sign and I read what I had typed. At the bottom was:

"Hey Ride Event"

It was too funny not to show to my coworkers and one acted out a scene were folks are riding around saying, "Hey."

He didn't say broom tree. He said prune tree.

Sometimes, I will do things to prove that I have no fear, that I am truly brave; but mostly I am just end up proving that I am reckless.

I am probably never without fear, it's just that sometimes I am able to stomp that fear into a mud hole but it always shows back up because it never really goes away.

"Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean people are not trying to get you" comes to mind when I think about my anxiety. A part of my mind says that my anxiety is all in my head and another part recites all of the oral tradition of what can go wrong.

...

"You look worried."

"I look worried because doom chases me."

I should get HOLD FAST knuckle tattoos.

I wrote three days in a row and then skipped a day and then stopped.

I been trying to read a chapter or two a day and I am almost not failing at that.

The yard needs to be mowed.

I did get a hair cut. The person cutting my hair asked where I was last week and I told here and then she asked about the week before that; I was at least three weeks over do.

I need to remind myself to keep rowing when I have the sails down because they were working against me. I have a point fixed on the horizon of where I want to go but the tides and the winds seem to be against me. I fight to readjust my course and say "Fuck you winds," but I do not know if I fight the winds because I have a true desire to reach my point or whether I do it just to spite what blows.

Having a fixed point is an improvement because I usually just let the waves and wind take me.

At times my eyes fall from the horizon and I just watch the ocean splashing over the gunwale.

One lawn to go

This is me avoiding mowing the lawn.

The back yard lawn is done and the side yard lawn is done. The front lawn is stilling waiting its turn.

It might wait until tomorrow.

...

My sister was complaining about how someone asked her to meet at an inconvenient time to her. My sister was doing a favor for the other person and this was not the first time that I have heard this complaint from her.

I said, "You know, sometimes you get to drive the boat."

I said it like it was a popular saying. I do not know where it even came from. If you google it, it does not show up as a popular saying.

Sometimes, I make up my own sayings.

I was complaining to myself about my work situation while I was mowing the lawn. Some of the situation I have let be created and some of it I have chosen not to handle in the best way possible. My rational is that I didn't make the situation so I don't have to solve it but it is starting to have a negative impact on me.

I heard, "Sometimes, you get to drive the boat."

too

Too many people ask me for too many things.

"It was one problem after another" would have been more welcomed than several problems all at once.

I was waist deep in problems when a pretty coworker came by my cube and started telling me her problem. In part, it was that she saw a problem on the street and tried to address it and the guy told her to go pound sand because I had told him that he could do it.

I told her I would fix it but that she was fourth on the list.

I did actually give permission to the guy to do what he was doing but I thought he was going to do it in a slightly different place. 

I walked outside and told the guy that he had to move, at least a little. 

The guy moved.

...

My patience is mostly gone and I am challenging folks when folks really shouldn't be challenged. 

Sometimes I am rude.

"How are things today?" I was asked as someone sat at the desk I was at.

"Not good. How can I help you?"

Shots rang out

"Shots rang out in the night"

It was about 2:30am Monday but it still felt like Sunday because I was sleeping.

I heard the distinctive pop/crack of a gun being fired. Three or four shots at first and then a couple more a moment later. What I didn't hear were police sirens. I remember thinking that the newspapers would probably say the shots rang out even though most gunfire doesn't ring.

I was wrong though because I didn't see any mention of any shooting in that part of town.

I am across the tracks from a neighborhood that seems to like to settle things with firearms.

It is five sets of tracks and an eight lane interstate highway and a different neighborhood trying to survive in peace between them and me.

I could hear the cars on the interstate that night.

The sirens were heard about a minute later so I opened an app on my iPad to listen to the police scanner.

Three crime scenes. Two found victims. One shot in the neck. One shot in the abdomen. The neck wound was non-life threatening on the male victim. The female victim was quickly taken to the hospital.

Someone said something at a party that a certain other someone didn't like was the motive.

I feel asleep not long after that.

Things are different. Things are the same.

I was supposed to have been there, sort of.

In danger's way, and if unscathed, then I was supposed to help.

But I had went to lunch, and then home because it was just another do nothing event.


I still have trouble going into that place where I had lunch because coincidentally the same folks that own the place where I had lunch also are the same folks that own the place that was known as location number two.

Survivor's guilt, I guess.

...

The drinking has returned but it is no longer an assortment of hard liquors after a few beers, it is mostly just beers.

Beers and Margarita's because if you win a round of trivia, you win a round of Margarita's and playing trivia is a good way to convince yourself you are not an alcoholic but a games man.

Which two Presidents were born in 1924?

2013-1924=89

89 years old. George H.W. Bush. Jimmy Carter.


In which decade was Goldie Hawn born?

Goldie was on Laugh-In in the 60's and she was in her twenties.

I think I actually wrote down 1960 minus 20 instead of just doing it in my head.

You do not get extra points for showing your work.

I asked.

...

Lately, I just want to shout at people but all of the people that are within shouting distance are not the actual problem, which leaves me no one to shout at, except myself and then I am that crazy guy on the subway.

Finish Line

That is my pass for the 117th Boston Marathon. The black letter F on the yellow dot means that I was allowed access to the finish line area.

It is the same type of pass that I have been giving for the past four years.

Prior to the race, I walked right down Boylston Street stopping here and there to say that things look good to the people that I knew putting the finishing touches on the area. I also walked down either side of the sidewalk and stopped in the Starbucks along the way.

Everything did look good so I drove to the other side of town to check on what was going on with the Patriots Day Parade and then drove by Tufts Medical Center to check on something else and then headed back to the finish line area.

Things still looked good.

The people that run the marathon have been doing it for quite some time. It is a huge event but most everything happens the same as last year. The set-up sometimes get tweaked but no big changes.

I walked the sidewalks one last time and then I left.  The things that I was there to address would have already made themselves evident if they were a problem. There were no problems so I went to lunch.

I watched the end of the Red Sox game and would peek at the other tv with the Marathon on it occasionally, as I ate something called Cajun chicken Alfredo and sipped a cheap draft beer  My friends asked if I was working. "I was but I'm not now. I don't like to milk the overtime so when there is nothing to do: I leave." was my answer. After lunch and a couple more beers I went home.

The first couple of times I was asked to worked the marathon I would stick around longer, trying to find stuff to do.  I would walk up one side of the sidewalk and down the other. I would do it seven or eight times. I would never see anything.

This year, I would have seen something.

Some people reached out to make sure I was okay.  I told them that I was but I could not help reflect on what might have happened if I didn't leave when I did.

Halloween