This is what I thought about while the goose was getting fat.

12/01/99 - Rabbit. Rabbit. The thought is if those are the first words out of your mouth in a given month the month will be good. It's a superstition I aquired in college. I rarely remember to say it but I'm hoping if they're the first words I put on the web I'll get some credit. Superstition is a funny thing. Driving back from Kara's grandmother's house on the sunday after Thanksgiving I found myself unwilling to say "Gee, these roads aren't nearly as crowded as the news folks said they'd be" for fear of jinxing us. The words that leave my mouth have absolutely no bearing on traffic density but at some level I must believe they do or else I'd not fear commenting. I carry a magic rock when I fly. When I jumped out of the plane last summer Magic Rock was in my pocket (under the flight suit and gear). I've flown without it (before I acquired it) but it makes me comfortable. Therein must lie superstition's key. In many things attempted comfort means plenty. To follow a superstition may just relax you enough to perform better or enjoy something more. Bingo. Not an original thought but powerful nonetheless. Well, here we are on the year's backstretch; you guys ready to write "2000" on your checks?

12/02/99 - I played with insulation this morning. Not the pink itchy stuff in the attic but my coat and scarf. Everyone knows a coat and scarf keep you warm in the cold. But did you also know they'll keep you cool in the hot? I put the car heater on "scorch" this morning. Usually it's unbearably hot after about 2 miles. But with my coat and scarf affixed tightly to me I was able to bear the heat almost all the way to work. I finally switched it back to "lukewarm" when my cheeks started to crackle as I giggled about how stupid I am to do something so silly. Well, my cheeks haven't stopped crackling. It's funny how imbalanced moisture can be... 10 minutes of drying takes hours of aloe applications to reverse. Have I mentioned the lotion surplus in my house? Kara has taken to lotioning her hands in the morning thus all door knob, water faucets and milk cartons bear a fine layer of lotion. I'm sure it's good for my hands but it dirties the towels at an astounding rate. Thankfully the stuff smells good. It's also made of hemp seeds which may explain why I've felt so strange as of late :)

12/03/99 -

Today is a tie wearing day for me. I normally resist wearing a tie because it seems pointless 9 out of 10 "opportunities". Up until the very recent tie wearing past I'd been a bow tie guy. At heart I still am but my outfit today called for the standard tie. The suit I have looks darn good with the red butterfly tie given to me the day before my wedding by my father-in-law. It's a really cool tie which is no surprise because Walter is a stylish guy and the tie was initially just borrowed from his personal collection because I'd neglected to pack a tie that matched whatever it was I wore to the rehearsal dinner. Anyway, I wore this tie in March for my wedding... then in June for my friend Laura's wedding... then in September for my sister's wedding. Well, when I went looking for ties last night I found some bow ties and my suit which, thankfully, had Mr Butterfly Tie for company in the suit bag. My choice was simple: Mr. Butterfly Tie rides around my neck today. Goog God that's a disconnected narrative. As such a disconnected narrative can be dissapointing I'll include a picture of the tie that received the non-existant "RLP3 Tie of 1999" award. Congratulations, Mr. Butterfly Tie. The check from the foundation is in the mail.

12/06/99 - Yesterday was leaf day. Amazingly leaves stick to grass and not to streets, sidewalks and other pieces of public property from which I'm not expected to remove them. Of course our font yard is two thirds dirt... the leaves don't stick there either. They blow over to one third that is grassy then entrench in the grass. Last time I raked the entire yard. My hands were blisterd and my brain screamed to be doing almost anything other than dragging a metal brush across the grass. Since much of the yard is bare dirt covered in delicate seed that probably won't sprout no matter how much I baby it but I can't squash all hope by raking it I borrowed a leaf blowing from my Dad. Leaf blowers are an amazing advance in leaf gather technology. I'm not convinced they are any better at gather leaves but they make the job more expensive and more fun... pretty much just like computers. Leaf blowers do rock as a gutter cleaning device... just remember to clean the gutters BEFORE clearing the yard. Knowing how good life is with a leaf blower I found myself wondering what leaf gathering was like before the rake. Did people gather leaves by hand or did they suck them up in their lawn mower bag?

12/07/99 - I have a training class today. This is the class that will teach me the stuff necessary to do what I did back in September... program a web interface. Thankfully I'm a genius and was able to pick up the necessary skills on my own... sure it took me a little while longer than it would have had I taken a class. And I did have to go back and redo a few things after discovering better methods but all in all I did fine on my own. I fear being bored stupid. Ok, I went running last night. A neighbor caught me sunday afternoon and asked if I'd like to start jogging. We went 2 or so miles which isn't... I guess I should say wasn't much for me years ago. I feel fine today. I can tell I did something but I'm not sore. Yee Ha... a few more weeks of this and I may be able to fit into more than just 3 pairs of pants. I guess I could buy more but that would be silly; I have all I need to slim down my mid section (or unshrink my pants as I've been telling people). Well, it's about class time.

12/08/99 - Ok, I'm sitting in class right now. I should be monkeying with PL/SQL but I'm just screwing around with HTML... text actually. My instructor is a guy named H.D. whose picture I just grabbed off the web this morning. I can't place it here as I'm not on my PC. I'm in the "Training Room" which is within walking sidtance of my office, Thank God, because my office is where the coffee is; Can't be without coffee. Ok, it's closing in on 11:00 and I have been unproductive today. I had to scrape my car windows which means Kara had to scrape hers which makes me feel bad because I don't mind the cold and she does. That's how the day started... at work I've done little... actually I was going to write more but the shorter sentence says it all. My boss is telling me to reboot so here ends today's entry. No, one more quick story. Yesterday I had to write a check at the Post Office (stamps for Christmas Cards); I almost wrote the date as "Dec 7, 1941"... some phrases just stick in the brain, you know?

12/10/99 - A painter I'll never be. My parents gave Kara and I a storm door for Christmas. It was delivered yesterday so I had to seal it before today's rain falls. I bought primer and paint and paint thinner and brushes and a handy blue hat that Kara tells me is actually a bucket which might explain why it's so uncomfortable and why the chin strap can't be used if want your eyes available to see your surroundings... I just figured they made it out of tough plastic to protect your head when you bump into things. Anyway, A-painting I a-went. Kara helped me by taping the glass. I tried but ripping the pieces to exact length was too hard for me; Kara, of course, knew you overlapped smaller pieces instead of fitting them exactly. I think if there is an ideal way to paint a wooden storm door that way would be to exactly reverse of my method. The only way to paint worse that I do is by grabbing paint in your bear hand and throwing it at the object from 5 paces away. After 2 hours of priming I started to wonder about the paint business. Why is there primer and paint? Can't they make a paint/primer combination? Or couldn't the storm door people pre prime their wood? I wouldn't mind spot priming but coating the whole door was a major pain... heck, it was a general pain and now I have the joy of painting to gleefully anticipate... that was sarcasm if you couldn't tell.

12/14/99 - Chronicles of the unhandy man... episode 2 in which the door bears Lee's finger prints for a long time. I primed the door while the door sat on its hinges then, before the skies opened a fierce rain on the world I moved the door from its peaceful resting spot to the sheltered, yet cold back porch. In doing so I got huge smears of primer on my hands and left mounds of primer on the door's surface... mounds shaped like and bear the markings of different parts of a hand... my hand. Their are finger prints here and palm prints there... here a print, there a print, everywhere a print print. Anyway the prints dried and now exist as markings uncoverable by conventional paints. Thankfully only the Kara and I, the postman, friends and door to door salesfolks or missonaries will see the markings. Joe and Jane Normalfolk, driving by in their Honda Accord, just see a black door still covered with masking tape until good weather and I converge on it with that second coat of paint which I'll heap thickly enough to cover all but the ghastliest smudges. Geez, I suck at home repair... I guess it's home beautification in this case. But I can write a run on sentence to rival Faulkner who I think is the author known for long meandering run on sentences, right?

12/16/99 - 16 Days including today left in the year. Contrary to popular opinion there are... 366 + 16 = 382 days left in the millenium. The reason being we had no year 0 therefore 2000 years will have passed when 2000 ends, not begins. Still, we flip the thousands digit and that means something. You know what I learned from National Geographic magazine? Sidhartha founded Buddism in 528 BC. I was born on 5/28... of course it's easy to forget how arbitrary dates are. There was a two week chunk of time removed from the calendar by some Pope several hundred years ago... if not for that we'd be a almost twice as far from 2000 as we are now. And what about the Jewish calendar or the Chinese calendar? Today is today. Heck, I loos track of the date and have to consult my watch more often than I can tell you without looking. Not only are dates arbitray but they're not particularly meaningful. My watch is 7 minutes fast... so I'll be in the New Year before you will, right? Why isn't my time the standard and that piece of decaying radioactive stuff under official scrutiny just tossed? I know the answer; enough people believe it's the definitive source... that and no other reason. Winston Churchill died 100 years after the Civil War ended. p> 12/17/99 - One week from Christmas Eve and my shopping is still incomplete. Mostly it's done but the stuff that undone has already consumed more energy than the things that are done and I'm no closer to finding the right stuff. I suppose it's no secret that the stuff remaining is for Kara. We decided to limit the $$ spent on each other so I need to put though into the gifts... I am. Of course now it sounds like the other stuff is thoughtless... it's not. The thing that really stinks is I can't discuss it just yet... and when I can discuss it I won't want to. Well, in the world today... you know I have no idea what's going on today. Emelie has an ear infection so I'm getting up frequently during the night and am therefore exhausted. I'm supposed to go hear a band play tonight. I think I'll do that regardless of my exhaustion. Bands are good. Bands are great. Hopefully I'll play in one sometime soon. For some reason I feel like sharing a poem I really like. Wilfred Owen was killed in the closing days of WWI. He wrote this :