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07/01/99 - Here is not the place for crap. Does anyone know the proper spelling for "di-JURY-du"? And what makes the cool sounds in the music I associate with Buddhist Temples? I found an ad for a Siberian Throat singing band but their music isn't what I seek. Ug, I didn't sleep well last night because I kept hearing the window AC make sounds that my sleepy mind thought was someone in the house. Once a sleepy mind wraps itself around an idea... no matter if the sleepy body walked the whole house and stood beside the darned AC while it made the sound... the mind believes. Thus I didn't sleep well. Tonight I'll be tired enough to push through the creeps and sleep, I hope. Ok, the clothes are mostly organized. And boxes are mostly in the attic. It's almost a home.
07/03/99 - I don't know how much candy has jumped down my throat this morning but when the stress level climbs candy consumption goes through the roof. I guess it doesn't hurt that a big ol (plastic) jar of Now and Laters sits on Kelley's desk. Why do stressful times impact candy consumption? Here's the current theory: Candy was eaten during childhood. Childhood was free from major stress thus candy is a gateway back to the easy life... before extra calories made the belt tight. So here sit an office full of fattening adults, stressed to the teeth and unable to do much more than consume candy like they were 9. Fruit Punch and Grape kick butt. Sour Apple and Banana aren't fit for worm food. I think I'll grab 4 more and play with Legos for a while.
07/06/99 - Ok, I've given up both candy and beer for a while. The Alumni Conversion is over. All Alumni have been converted from something into something else... alchemy... lead to gold. I was thinking this morning about Kara's work... they have no AC today and the plumbing sucks so she has to drink bottled water... lots of it today. Ok, the word "plumbing" is Latin for stuff made of lead. That's like calling fertilizer "pooping" (the gerund not the verb). Yeah! Good news! Kara called... they closed her building so she has to go home and work. Now I wish I was home. Actually, I just looked over at my wall and wish I were in Colorado climbing mountains. Oh, congrats to Leanne and Will. Anyway, Colorado is nice this time of year.
07/07/99 - Ok, the driveway might be torn up this weekend. My driveway reminds me of Shel Silverstein's title "Where the Sidewalk Ends"; Lost necessity, maybe. The sidewalk ends where it's no longer needed (at least that's how I thought as a kid... I find out as an adult it ends where it arrived the second before funding evaporated). So anyway the driveway at our house is two strips of concrete running from the street to the living room. Plants have been placed between the strips... why? The only possible answer can be someone thought it looked good... it looks silly. The whole thing looks silly: driveway, plants and front yard. Thus the unnecessary driveway will be ripped from the ground and replaced, initially by dirt... come better growing weather we'll have grass and a brick patio, but, until then: dirt. You must break to build, right? I sure as shooting hope so.
07/08/99 - Change is that crap in car cup holders. If not for change I couldn't cross the Boulevard Bridge legally. If not for change... well, nothing would happen. Just for a change Kara and I tried Tom Yum soup paste... yuk. Next time we make the real thing... minus fish sauce. Fish sauce sucks. Fish sauce tastes bad and smells worse. I fear putting the bottle in my garbage can else no one can approach including those tasked with removing the sauce... Perhaps public facilities would be best. That's a change... public better than private. Change is an engine. Change is usually round. Sometimes change smells bad... and then your hands smell bad or your pockets turn black but without change you can't buy sodas from many soda machines. But everything changes. Take change for instance. How often have you seen Caesar's head on a coin.
07/12/99 - I decree today Lyle Lovett day. His complete collection will cycle through my CD player (minus Live in Texas which I do not yet own). Album one is almost done... only a glimpse of Lyle's greatness appears here...ok, there's more than a glimpse but the album has some pretty cheesy keyboards here and there and what's up with the 80's crunch guitar on "You Can't Resist It"? Much of the weekend was spent lying in bed watching movies. I saw "Godzilla", "The Nutty Professor", "Fantasia", "Hope Floats" and "Gods and Monsters". "Godzilla", of course, left the door open for a sequel... I, of course, couldn't care less. "The Nutty Professor" was mildly entertaining at best. "Fantasia" was as beautiful as I remember it being. "Hope Floats" made me want a cowboy hat and a big, old house in Texas. "Gods and Monsters" was a lot like an onion... lots of layers but peeling it blurs the vision... may be I need to see it again. Blockbuster gave me a bag of microwave pop corn for returning my movie before 8pm... lots of good that does as the microwave is in the attic.
07/13/99 - Where am I?
07/14/99 - Last night's baseball game planted a devious thought in my head. If batters can hit out of the park why can't evil folks sling shot water balloons full of Round Up into ballparks? Baseball terrorism. Never would I do this because A) Baseball rocks and B) It's not nice to ruin a baseball field simply because you can. Football, on the other had... ok, just kidding. The rain falls hard for a third day. The grass grows grandly in our front yard. Big, green and heavy with weeds... in fact it could be ALL WEEDS. An eye for these things is not something I have. I'm noticing the "landscaping" is just weed in mulch. It really is too bad weeds aren't more accepted... a great yard we'd have... and no work, too. Kara moved the stuff from the back porch into the shed... so the back porch is clutter free and I feel much more visible when I go out there in my underwear to call Emelie... like she needs calling. Basically my task is clean the grime off her feet... I could let the carpet do this but...
07/15/99 - Sometimes life feels like a trap. When I was in NoVa in a deadend job I thought there w3as no way to get from there to here. Now that I'm here I barely feel the that time's despair. On the drive to work I was stuck in traffic on a bridge thinking... what a great metaphor. It's not like I can leave the car but the car sure as heck isn't going anywhere. To make it that much more... my coolant is low and the lock came OUT of the driver's side door. Ok, so my car is falling apart and I stuck on a bridge. But my wife is cool, my house is mine, my family is fine and Lyle Lovett is on Spinner.com. Egads! I just realized we're over 50% of the way through this year. And I keep forgetting to play the harmonica while driving... that would have been a nice show of confidence in myself while stuck on a bridge in a breaking car. Ok, Life is good because I say so.
07/16/99 - Egads, I'm bored. Bored, Bored, Bored. Fix this report. Grant so&so such&such. Where's the fun in that? Yeah, the responsible thing to do is find the bright side but... in waltzs Kevin who says "You must help me, Obi Wan; you're my only hope." We go watch stuff acting weirdly and now I get to fix it. Hey, things look even further up when out of nowhere pops my friend Big Hair Sam. Sam is the coolest, easiest going person on the planet. In the 4 years I've known him I've seen him stressed once and I can't remember why or for how long. Sam's methodology is very Zen. Ok, Sam is gone and I feel better having seen him... off to face work with a better attitude.
07/19/99 - JFK2 is lost at sea... likely dead but other lives continue. Funny thing about death is it makes a bigger splash on the living. Nothing new about that observation. Well, I'm sore from either swatting at golf balls and baseballs or from weeding half of our front walk landscaping. The true irony is I dislike the landscaping I "bettered" through my efforts. Ok, I developed a methodology while weeding. If a plant is easily removed from the ground it's likely not a weed so put it back... but if it fights like hell and comes up with a pound of soil in its root ball it's a weed. So now I have half a weeded walk. Nothing terribly exciting about that.
07/21/99 - Kara and I adopted a new puppy... new means 6-8 weeks old in this case. Marta is mostly beagle but contains some sort of blue hound something-or-another. At this point she's in a crate in the kitchen. She spent the night in her crate by our bed where she woke me twice for trips to the backyard. This weekend we'll pack her crate and ship her (in the backseat of our car) to WVa for a weekend of farm life. She must weigh about 5 pounds and eat about a cup of food per meal... she actually smells nice for a dog, too. Soon she'll be allowed to roam the house freely but not until we're convinced the surprises will be minimal. Soon I must go home to walk her. Did I mention she's really cute?
07/22/99 - Wow. I just realized I've been writing here for over 4 years. Ok, that's noted now for the half million important things that just aren't forthcoming. Like that thing I can't recall. Well, at my house right now is a little puppy in a crate. Apparently this is good for the puppy but it makes me cry inside. Poor Marta whines when I leave her. Pathetic. She'll grow into a great dog, no doubt but it stinks to see her want attention and get none. She did get about 2 hours of straight attention from Kara, Emelie and I before her day in the crate began. I'll go home around noon and let her romp for 30 minutes or so. Then Kara get's home a few hours later. Still a puppy whine sticks with you like garlic and they don't make mint gum for the mind.
07/26/99 - Horticulture is today's subject. Kara gave me a cactus about a year ago... it sits in the office window and looks wilted. I give it water every so often and it limps through the existance. Scott down the hall likes coffee. Good coffee is brewed in my office and crappy coffee is brewed in the breakroom. When I get the jitters I take the pot from my office and seek people to finish it. There is a theme which may not yet be visible. Scott sometimes has a full cup of breakroom coffee when I enter his room to offer him better coffee "Hmmm" he says, "the plant looks dry" which it did the first few times he said that. It looked pale and limp and sick. I had no problem with Scott dumping coffee into the plant. But after a few days the plant started looking amazingly good. It perked up and may actually be said to thrive. Is there a connection between water a plant with coffee plant's remarkable return from the dead? Scott points out people throw coffee grinds on their plants. Anyway, I dumped half a cup of cool coffee on the cactus thursday... it may be described today as thriving... Hmmm.
07/27/99 - Puppy picture time. These pictures were taken when Marta was 6 to 8 weeks and Emelie was 7 years... Kara and I are substantially older. These may be the first pictures from our house to make the net, too. Hope you enjoy.
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07/28/99 - Well, the test machine is down for Y2K patches... I didn't get my code off before it went down so it's time for alternative tasks... like clean the desk, organize for tomorrow's meeting with the Admission Office (which sounds funny UNplural but that's the way they like it) and learn more Java. Speaking of java it's cold coffee this morning. I may prepare a pot of hot in a few minutes but the cold is hitting the spot this A.M.. Speaking of spots I've been more than slightly annoyed with fancy-shmancy cars parking in "unmarked" parking spots. These spots are unsually much closer to the blue-blood driver's destination than marked spots and these spots are also usually BLOCKING TRAFFIC FLOW! I wish I were a more extreme person and could bring myself to egg the cars but I'm nice and just grumble and leave (as quickly as the poorly flowing traffic will allow. Well, how's that for a rant? Back to the bizz of what-ever-it-is I do... 5 years and I still don't really know.
07/29/99 - Here I am...depressed that Help Wanted is breaking up... tired from practice... overworked... underpaid... fattening... wondering if Mom will ever stop leaving me scary voice mails when all she wants to know is why I haven't posted my journal page... but actually kind of happy. Why shouldn't I be? I will play Music. Tired is ok. Overworked and underpaid can be fixed if I decide to fix them. And my Mom loves me. Happy seems justifiable... except for the fattening part... and I could just go running. Maybe Marta could run with me... when she gets bigger. Darth, a big black lab from the old neighborhood (like childhood old) used to run with Marc W and I. I wonder what happened to Marc? Poor Drath is likely no longer... he was old when I was in high school and that's been a while. So, things are good, right?
07/30/99 - Traffic makes me itch my head. Sometimes, at 8:20am, the bridge I use supports free flowing traffic; other days I get to play the harmonica with both hands and watch the water level drop or see what the heck is happening at the house that floods every decade or so. So, what about this thing in Atlanta? I hope my friends are ok. Actually, I hope everyone who's not dead already is ok and the families of the unfortunate few are well supported. Well, I've found the ability to comprehend other people's craziness is not something I have. I bet in his mind what the guy did made bunches of sense but it puzzles me. I hope it puzzles everyone for a long time... because if you understand you may do something just as incomprehensible for the rest of us... but I ramble. Long story short: Traffic and postal gunman (although this guy, technically doesn't work for the postal service) confuse me.