PS The picture is the view out my window reflected on the glass covering a cross country picture hanging on my wall... complex, eh?
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09/01/99 - A computer crash stole today's journal entry from me right before I posted it... damn stinkin' stupid pieces O crap circuit monsters. It's amazes me people used to write with pen and paper. I take notes and scribble but pretty much all writing is done via a keyboard. Keyboard... they look more like buttons to me and it's not so much a board as it is a slender, angular box... A "Slender, Angular Button Box" or SABB. So now my CPU has a CRT, an SABB, speakers and a mouse. Speakers don't speak; they reproduce audio signals... "Audio Signal Reproducers" or ASR. And the mouse converts motion into commands... "Motion Command Converter" or MCC. So, now my CPU has a CRT, an SABB, an MCC and ASR. Computers are like the Army now... pretty soon we'll forget for what the acronyms stand... it really doesn't matter anyway. Aside from the fact that F Scott Fitzgerald actually wrote The Great Gatsby about 10 seperate times... all by hand, do you know what else amazes me? Amazement. When I was young I was amazed all the time... everything new was amazing... now amazing things seems few and far between and slightly less amazing than they used to seem. I wish I could be truly amazed more often... that could be a bad thing. I could be bopped in the head and loose the ability to remember anything for a more than a few seconds... that's not what I mean. I want to see the newness that I'm sure exists right in front of me but I've managed to ignore. I get glimpses. But how can I see it more often?
09/02/99 -
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Well, today I prepare to spend MORE money on the darn brick box in which we live. The place has electric baseboard heat. We have
long curtains and furniture up against the walls... basically, our heating and decorating don't mix therefore we spend more money.
Homeownership isn't the joy it's cracked up to be... renting doesn't seem that silly anymore. Ok, no. I'm glad I own a home.
I just wish I were a rich boy... The weeding should be done by someone else. The kitchen remodelling, too. Someone else will
be installing the climate system... but I wish I had money to pay for it. Art work. Well, I'm trying my Elvis impersonation...
very bad. Hey, Cheryl's phone is ringing... but no one is send me email! Cheryl's phone call seems to be work related as she's
typing and saying that "It should be in the reports". I have a feeling she seeks the report. Yep, it is in the report. That's
good. Let's see, I'm about to find out how applications are store when entered from the web. Soon UR will accept Admission
applications via the WWW... swanky, eh? "Swanky", what a weird word. According to Webster's it means "Ostentatious, stylish".
Those seem individual enough to be separate definitions, but they're not. The word stems from an Old English word meaning
"pliant"; there's a stretch. PS The picture is the view out my window reflected on the glass covering a cross country picture hanging on my wall... complex, eh? | |
09/03/99 - Well, the clouds, the sun, the river and the wind were perfect again this morning... traffic, however, was not. It's impossible to get a good look while avoiding on coming traffic. I chose to forgo the look. I should have parked and walked back for a better look. What's a few minutes late for work? Oh, I forgot... it's bad enough that work can be stressful without anyone trying to make it so, but I find a new stress in my life... A stress impossed on me for reasons I either a) don't know or b) don't think just: the "Get to work by 8:30am stress" that exists only because I have this nagging fear my knuckles will be rapped if I show up a second late. Why does a painful exercise of authority anger me? I've been reading about Woodrow Wilson. During the WW1 Peace discussions he preached the use of "right and reason". The British and the French wanted to act on precedent and, I guess, law. Wilson could never convince the Allies or even the US government that exercising the rules as they existed (ie imposing a brutal peace on Germany) wouldn't make things good. And 20 years later things got really bad. Here's my point: bend the rules if following the rules creates a bad situation. Robert E. Lee said it well: The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly--the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light.
09/07/99 - Fun weekend. Went sea kayaking in a rain break on saturday... not that we didn't get wet; when you pull the paddle across your body the water drips on you. Kara and I are not quite good enough to properly operate a dual kayak... it's 2 singles next time... which will hopefully be soon. The Chesapeake Bay is a neat place... very wet and the food was not as good as I'd hoped. No coffee this morning... Mountain Dew. Good, quick juicing... I'm afraid I'll crash hard, though... actually, I'm afraid of the humidity. The sun is out and we must have gotten 6 inches of rain yesterday which can mean only one thing and I just mentioned it so I will not repeat myself. Ok, I learned a valuable lesson yesterday and I will share it in hopes that the world will be a better place. This Husband's Method for Enjoying Clothes Shopping with the Wife: Take a book. I failed to actually bring a book to the mall so I did the next thing... I wandered down to B Dalton and purchased My Early Life by Winston Spencer Churchill (my newest hero... I think I've mentioned that before, too). Anyway, saleswomen are pretty nice to the patient husband... they offer a chair. And Kara was might appreciative... unless maybe she wished I was elsewhere so spending a billion dollars was easier. She got some nice stuff, though... and I got to spend time with her.
09/08/99 - Coffee is on the way. Traffic was a B.. B.. Bad Word this morning. As usual, the time I like to sit in traffic (ie on the bridge) I moved swiftly. Rumor has it that a car broke down on the bridge. I didn't see it. I was probably too busy trying to stay in my lane and absorb the beautiful surrounds. A woman in the office says everyone should move to the river's north side so no one would have to bother with the bridges. I wanted to say "What?! And miss the river every morning?" but I don't think she'd understand. Heck, most of the time I don't understand. What good is running around to accomplish things if you never have any fun? You can only stress so long before it take its toll. Breathe; relax. Enjoy whatever it is you find yourself doing. Heck, just enjoy... ENJOY... actually, let me put that in bold and italics:ENJOY. Life is like the perfect orange... you may want to save it for the ideal moment but eventually it's going to rot so don't wait too long. Plus, as much as I like citrus fruit, it doesn't always treat my system well. Grapes are good. Peaches are good too, but I may be slightly allergic to them. Maybe I should just stick to pizza... Kevin does and it hasn't bothered him yet... of course he suppliments his diet with hot dogs and spaghetti, but I digress. The coffee is ready. Today's beans are Maxwell House French Roast; I'm not expecting big things BUT it's got to be better than roasted acorns which is how many Southerners made coffee when the Union blockade squeezed the real thing from their stores. Hmmm, not bad; once again, low expectations carry the day. 09/09/99 - No 9999 problems, yet. Wednesday is team meeting day. I listen and sketch. What did we discuss yesterday? Pipeline... this product that really doesn't exist yet but will link differing information sources into a seamless desktop caserole... with commercials. We talked about testing for Year 2000 date problems... again. We talked about internet directory services. We talked about hotel reservations for a user conference 7 MONTHS FROM NOW. We talked about assembling faux data for the Year 2000 tests... we likely talked about other things, too... but, like I said, I drew. Want to see the artistic masterpieces? Like you have a choice.
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09/10/99 - No 9999 problems to my knowledge... let's hope 1/1/00 goes as smoothly. Ok, looking at baseball players I, at 29, fall pretty much smack in their midst... agewise... maybe girthwise, too. I passed some runners this morning and longed for my thinner, faster days. Actually, I long for those day's gruelling comradeship. The problem is: in college most people focus on one or 2 things. My friends and I focused on running, fun and school work... pretty much the same things. Ok, subject change. The sketches recently gracing this page have been assembled in a single place; It's mostly an exercise in ego, I guess... but I hope someone does find them interesting. Tick, tick, tick... My Dad sent his partial life philosophy boiled down to a few witty aphorisms. He's a clever guy. I have few "rules" I can say I always follow... there are many I think worthwhile but few guide me. I'm reading Churchill now; he explained the actions/interactions between 2 men by saying something like "Most people act in a way they either can justify as or truely believe is 'right'." My current philosophy is each person balances a multitude of relationships. Assuming they're not cracked (and many people are... so the assumption is weak) these people are going to try to choose actions based on their best ability to maximize good outcomes in as many relationships as possible... I'm starting to see why philosophers write books; this is hard. Perhaps I'll simplify. Give people slack. They're likely not trying to screw you but to do good and right to those around them (which is an issue of perspective, I know... if you get screwed do you really care that the screwer wasn't necessarily planning to do it?) Ok, I've lost all semblance of cohesion... Have a good weekend; I'm having Indian food tonight!
09/13/99 - My sister gets married next weekend. Roughly a week before the event Kara and I saw The Sixth Sense...a SURPRISINGLY good movie. Good movies make you think... not thoughts like "Wow, I wish I were as strong as Rocky" or "Man, I'd like to have a beer with Elizabeth Hurley". Ok, I dodn't want to give away the movies best part but there are bunches of questions. Plus there's the haunting... I'd admit to feeling freaked when I got up to pee saturday night... but only if I were asked. And after all those years don't you think the people in the school gym could have gotten down? But these are tiny questions. It's a good movie... and the boy acts like you wish the people in Star Wars could... actually, he's better. Riddle me this, Batman. If dead people don't realize their dead, don't they ever notice they're not changing clothes? Well, we're trying new coffee in the office today. Hannaford's gourmet brand is Sark's... which I'd hoped wouldn't suck... get it? SarK/SucK... S__K... ok... well, it doesn't! I don't recall which type I chose, though. Bummer. Well, how does my week look? I have Admission stuff galore... a web application; data for the scholars office; reports and baseball trivia... Well, off to work. Sorry this was so boring today.
09/14/99 - went to bed last night with the deluded illusion (is that redundant?) that yesterday was tuesday... I didn't learn until Law & Order came on TV that I was wrong. Yesterday was 2 days worth of crap in the space of a single, slim, tiny monday. Monday. At least it's tuesday now. Kara's class night. I might get some reading and some cleaning done... perhaps a beer or 2 will be consumed as the time passes slowly. I bet it's moving pretty quickly for my sister... actually, today is her last work day so the time is probably creeping... slowly... slowly... slowly... like my waist line. My fat pants are getting tight. I wonder if mail is here. I got a bunch of wasted paper yesterday... an invitation to a reception and a flier about retirement investment opportunities... with WHAT money?! We got our first heating/AC estimate yesterday... steep. The second I get at lunch time today. I think I may stop thinking about this. My sister's wedding will be a good distraction. Although Floyd may dampen things a bit... get it? Ok, I'm not very funny. Back to work.
09/15/99 - I need to write a book. But first I need some characters; any volunteers? "Mr. Parker, sir; how about me?" Who are you? "I'm H." H? "H." You mean the letter H? "Yeah, I'm a character, too; ASCII value 72." That's interesting... but I'd really wanted a person type character. Someone with depth and drive. Someone to carry the book. "I'm all those things. And I work really well in groups... you will have other characters, too, right? Even Robinson Crusoe had Friday." Yes. I'd hoped to have more than one character you're just the first I've interviewed... you heard me, I just asked a second ago. "Well, I didn't know if you'd asked before." I hadn't. "So let me ask you something... do you have any idea what this book will be about or do you plan for your characters to write it for you and you take all the credit?" You're pretty confrontational for someone who wants to be picked for a book. "You're not answering my question. And it seems to me if you are waiting for your characters to write for you you'd want someone who could think for themselves, wouldn't you?" Thinking for yourself and confrontational are two different things. "Your grammar is bad. 'Thinking for yourself and confrontationality are two different things.'" Strangely enough, I like you. "I thought you would. So can I be in your book?" Probably... don't you think that dialogue seems slightly hurried and unnatural? "Yeah; we'll work on it."
09/20/99 - Sometimes it's just better to list rather than annotate... this is one of those cases and the list is called happenings in the Parker family since I last wrote an entry. Hurricane Floyd dropped atree on my parents house. Hurricane Floyd took the power lines down in my neighborhood WHILE I WAS USING AN ELECTRIC RAZOR TO CUT MY HAIR. Hurrican Floyd dropped a tree on my house. My sister was married in a beautiful service on a beautiful day to a swell guy. A big crane removed a big tree from a big hole in my roof. The big crane left big holes in my yard. I went shopping with a guy who bought 41 CDs in a single shopping trip. I stepped in poop AT WORK! Did I mention my sister was married in a beautiful service on a beautiful day to a swell guy? I got to drive a rented Lincoln Towncar which could probably carried the each and every piece of wood now lying in big dents throughout my front yard. Once again I feel inclined to stress: My sister was married in a beautiful service on a beautiful day to a swell guy.
09/21/99 - I'm so distracted by work I can barely think about other things. The mist on the river really looked like spider webs this morning... like you could reach down and run your hand through it then spend the next few minutes trying to get the gaak off your hand. Canoeing through mist like that would be fun... much more fun than driving to work. I should start carrying a camera around with me. I should get a snappy digital camera... let's see a rol of film plus development costs, say, $12. A camera costs, say, $800 dollars. So for the cost of 70 rolls of film I could get a digital camera. If I took one roll a week plus did some extra processing it would pay for itself in a little more than a year... ok, that's pushing it, but you get the point, right? The problem with a digital camera is it cost bunches to get actual pictures to cart around and show friends and family... not that friends and family would want to see my pictures... which are good in an "only the photographer could love them" kind of way. I've always wanted to be a photographer so maybe I should just bite the bullet, find cheap film and carry the canera around with me. If only I could go back in time for that mist.
09/22/99 - I stopped this morning and took 2 pictures of the river. Somehow it gave me the hiccups. I figured maybe I was bitten by mosquito and caught the malady through my blood stream. I heard the only way to get it out of your blood stream was to flush your system with beer... ok, kidding. But I wish I could get a doctor's note: Please excuse Lee from work; he needs to go drink beer... which should be covered by his medical insurance. In a perfect world... I wouldn't be working anyway. Ok, I heard this morning that today marks the 23rd anniversary of "Charlie's Angels"... I'm listening to The HouseMartin's 1987 release... more time fell between 1987 and now than between 1976 and 1987. I find that frightening. I associate Charlie's Angels with Stevie Wonder and Forest Hill Avenue and Chippenham Parkway... Actually, a specific moment in time. My mom's green car, summer time, the radio and a pack of Charlie's Angels cards purchased at Ben Franklin. Steely Dan is closely related to the memory, too. It's weird how memory works. Thank God my hiccups are gone, eh?
09/23/99 - Ok, went to the river this morning. As I drove past the Pony Pasture Rapids the mist was there so I stopped at an area called The Huguenot Woods. A park service guy was there emptying the trash. For a moment I wanted his job but then I remembered he drives around all day putting bags of trash in his truck. Of course he does get to see an awful lot of the river. Anyway, we exchanged good mornings as I walked around his truck and ducked down to the river. The mist was swirly but it was thin. I got pictures of trees and rocks and the Huguenot Bridge but I'm not certain the mist was thick enough. There's a spot right off of Riverside Drive I'd like to visit but the place is littered with No Parking signs so I'm afraid to leave the car for more than 30 seconds. What I should do is awaken early on saturday but then sleep is some thing I enjoy more than good pictures plus I'm going to see Son Volt saturday night and need the rest. Until then, be good.
09/24/99 - Tony here in UR's Operations Center says I never write about him even though we talk almost daily. Well, not only will I write about T today but I'll do so from his desk. He's listening to Richmond's "pop" radio station... Ice Ice Baby is on now... I'd call it "Poop" radio, frankly. Ok, T wears grey almost all the time. T's plan for the downed tree is for Kara and I to burn it with pleasure... "Burn b*tch!" I'm supposed to say as I toss the axed up pieces into the flame... gruesome, eh? T has that kinda sense of humor. Well, I'm keeping his desk tied up as I write so I'd better tie this up so as his work can get done by the man himself... not that I know how to do any of it. Signing off from the basement of UR's windowless gymnasium (where else would you put computer operations?)... it's been my pleasure to compose from this environment... well except for the music; is this Barry Manilow? After Vanilla Ice... thank God I don't live over here.
09/27/99 - I've been married for 6 months now. I miss the single life and there's no use denying that but I wouldn't go back to my old life even if I had the opportunity. My wife is my favorite person and being married to her makes me happy... Happier than anything else. That's a weird realization. Equal parts scary and comforting. Well, enough of the love stuff. Work beckons... God knows I wish I could ignore the call... geez, most people know that, too. But the facts remain unchanged thus I must stop thinking about my marriage and my wife and start thinking about the stuff they have to give me money to get me to do. Off to my windowless room on the far side of campus wherein I'm reachable only by a communal phone and have no access to internet...sucks. Sux. Bites.
09/28/99 - It's after lunch. I got soaked running home and back... but the dog got to pee, and that's important... although they likely picked up more water than they expelled. I had fun driving through puddles although the lack of braking is scary... but when the rain is falling like it fell at lunch time what choice do you have other than to drive through puddles? Well, I could let the dogs pee inside but I'm not good at that. The dishes are clean and the attic was scanned for leaks of which I found none I'm happy to report. Now, it's back to my little space across campus... out of touch with the world, living off Mountain Dew, music and stale popcorn... ok, it's not so bad. I just wish my wife and dogs could hang there with me, you know?
09/29/99 - Ok, being stuck in my dungeon is starting to take its toll on my goof off time. The emails are pilling up, unanswered, in my inbox. The web is unbrowsed by me... I hear response time has improved nation wide because of my absence. My Zen Calendar reads "Sept 23". Things are slipping around here. I bet there's no doodle younger than a week on my desk. My plan is to bust through my TDY (military lingo: Temporary Duty Yonder) and get back to slackerland again. Well, as my mind is crowded with things work like (EGADS!) I choose to go work.
09/30/99 - Thirty days hath September and today is the 30th. I'm 29. And will be on Feb 29, 2000. Ok, Braves lost to the Mets but the Braves still have the division. I have a cup of cold, day old, burnt coffee... a swig is more like it. My head is once again filled with workish stuff. I think I'll just work.