Blog : August 2007

Sad

It's such a strong emotion, sadness. It's heavy. It can suffocate. It's different than pain. It's more like a dull ache, but still strong and distracting.

I'm sad.

Don't ask me why I'm sad, I won't tell you.

Hours of the Night Not Usually Seen

So here it is, middle of the night in a foreign house in a foreign land. 4am, or 5, depending on whichever time zone my body has decided to accustom itself to. I'm sure the two hour nap earlier this afternoon is helping my current condition of awakeness.

In four hours we're going to Busch Gardens. I hope I'm awake for it.

Someone else is up, I heard a door close. That and I hear snoring. I think I know who it is, which makes it even more humorous.

A million thoughts run through my head at once. Twisted dreams streaked through my mind, wrenching my body in tension and ripping me from my slumber.

I have tapped into a power that I have not known well, if at all, and I am learning to bring it under my control and maximize its benefits. I am impatient, wanting to act quickly and to try everything all at once, but I must pace myself so as not to harm myself or others. As with many things I do lately, it is a learning process.

Over the past week I have been bitten by some kind of bug. It hasn't happened since I started traveling, which tells me it's either something in our house or something in the environment around where we live. Perhaps it is from riding my bike in the forest preserves, or perhaps a spider has nested near my place of rest and considers me a tasty treat. I'm left with a sizeable hole where the bite entry occurred, and over the course of the following days a red swelling spreads out from the hole. And it itches, they all do. I can only hope these heal quickly and I am not longer edible upon return.

And now, I try to return to an unconscious state.

Fast Commenting, Perhaps?

Oh, and remember this little problem I was having with comments being slow on my site? I think I fixed that as well.

There were a couple of things I tried, one of which was removing a dead spam-blocking server from my blogging software configuration. The other was changing some directive that some website I found on the Internet recommended I change if I were having a problem similar to this. So I did, and it seemed to help.

Now you don't have a good excuse for not commenting. Unless of course you're stalking me and don't want me to know that you're stalking me, which kind of takes the fun out of stalking someone, but what do I know? Perhaps you should talk to my ex-girlfriend from college about how to stalk someone. She seemed to have it down pat.

But I digress.

Bad Memory

Remember this little problem? I finally determined the cause as being a bad memory module. Once I removed the memory upgrade (all 1GB of it), I never had the problem again.

Of course, 1GB is quite a significant impact on my processing power, so I was rather bummed about the loss in productivity. Just this week it dawned on me that there is likely a warranty covering said bad module! Very exciting. I looked it up and sure enough, a few e-mails with support later, it looks like I'll be getting a replacement module. It's like Christmas in August!

Pop Quiz, Part Two

Haven't seen Part One? Start here and come back to this one.

You are near some train tracks and there are five workers repairing the tracks. Unbeknownst to the workers, there is a train coming and you are the only one to see the train.

You are standing on a footbridge that passes over the tracks where the men are working. There is a man standing next to you on the bridge looking down with you and you realize that you could save the five workers if you push the man standing with you onto the tracks below. His body would stop the train and the five workers would be safe.

What do you do? Do you do nothing and allow five men to perish and allow one to live? Or do you push the man, thereby saving five men and causing only one to persih?

Angry White Male

A few weeks ago, during a torential downpour and spectacular display of lightning and accompanying thunder, I drove into the heart of the city of Chicago to deliver some photographs to a client. When I left the house there was nary a sprinkle in the air. By the time I arrived at my destination there were dump trucks of rain being emptied onto the streets. And by that I mean there were huge dump trucks in the sky full of rain that were simply dumping their loads onto the little people below.

No, there weren't really any dumptrucks. It was just raining really fucking hard.

Anywho, my client was eating dinner at what sounded like a fabulous French restaurant and, as we had planned, would hear my phone call and run out front to snag the photos. I pulled up in front of the restaurant, not realizing that they provided valet service, and started to dial the number. I then noticed a valet person waiting for me to exit my vehicle, which I had no intention of doing. I waved him off, and was promptly honked at by another valet coming up from behind with a diner's vehicle. Being in the way, I pulled around the corner, turned around and pull up to the stop sign across from the restaurant.

The restaurant was on the corner of a T intersection that had stop signs in all directions. The cross street ran East/West, and I was sitting on a street connecting from the North while preparing to make a left hand turn. In order to get back in front of the restaurant, I would need to make a u-turn after making my left turn.

I waited for all visible traffic to go through the intersection so that I would be able to turn around without hindering anyone. I made my left turn, drove just past the restaurant and started to swing around. Last I checked, there was noone around. Next thing I heard was the sliding tires of a minivan that, upon inspection of my rearview mirror, was somehow right up my ass. He honked (you'll know how I know it was a "he" in a moment) and managed to stay off of me, but I was rather surprised that there was even anybody there. He must have run the stop sign or was driving entirely too fast for conditions.

I pulled back up in front of the restaurant, and as I rolled down the window to hand the package to my client I heard a horn honk and caught a glimpse in my rearview mirror of the aforementioned minivan pulling a three-point turn in middle of the street...and being narrowly missed by a car right behind it. For a brief moment I wondered if said minivan was turning around to come after me for pulling a u-turn in front of him.

It didn't take long for my wonderment to be answered. Minivan man pulled up in front of me, at an angle, attempting to block me in with nowhere to go. What he failed to consider was that there were no cars behind me. A moment later an angry white male, in shorts and a t-shirt, came walking around the back of the minivan with fist in the air and shouting.

Have you forgotten the part of this story where I mentioned that this was in the midst of a torrential downpour? That's right, angry white male found it necessary to get drenched for the sake of yelling at me for something he managed to do himself while trying to come after me!

Noting that I was not blocked in, I quickly threw my car into reverse, gunned it, and whipped the front end around. Yes, I pulled a stuntman's 180 and dropped the car into gear at the end of the turn, thus using the momentum from the turn to propel myself forward. As a result, I was at the intersection at the end of the block turning onto a side street before angry white male was back in his minivan.

Having been chased in the past I monitored my rearview mirror to ensure that I was not being followed by a minivan. I took a couple of extra turns on my way back to the highway just to make sure I was in the clear and enjoyed the lightning show on the drive home.

Close Call

I almost bit it on my bike tonight...hard. Took a corner too fast, then used too much brake which caused my momentum to take me off the path instead of stick to the curve. Add to that the presence of trees and a rather steep decline of the surface of the earth and I saw the first part of an interesting biography/documentary on my life.

Balance was maintained and all flesh was intact by the time I stopped. Kind of disappointing, actually, I wanted to see how my biography ended.

Busy as a Bumble Bee

Speaking of bumble bees, I experienced one of the joys of home ownership this week: spending money.

Had to drop some cash on having a couple of yellow jacket hives evicted from the front of my house. Our trusty realtor was kind enough to point out that we had a hive underneath our front steps. I put forth what I believe to be a valiant effort to eliminate the hive myself, but after three cans of spray, one night each (that's three days of trying) I decided to call in the pros.

While I was on the phone with the exterminator I noticed yet another hustle & bustle at the top of my house just above the gutter. Great, another hive.

The exterminator started with the top hive, which was located just over the gutter and under the shingles (to grandma's house). After a few tries he managed to successfully piss off the core of the hive and yellow jackets shot out of there like, well, like their hive had just been poisoned or something.

Apparently yellow jackets colonies die with the first freeze of winter. Unfortunately, I couldn't wait that long to let people through my front door without fear of being stung by yellow jackets. Oh, the cost of saving others from pain!