Today will be the next installment of a particular drama at work that would be wonderful blog fodder... if it weren't at work. But I don't think it'll be appropriate to blog about it, depending on what happens today. Apparently there's a lawyer involved. We'll see. It may be rant fodder, if nothing else.
Tomorrow, on the other hand, will be a very long and full day. Tomorrow we're going to the big industry show in Louisville, KY. Apparently it's the second biggest trade show in the nation. I'm not sure by what standard that's measured. Physical size? Number of attendants? I'll post details about it when I get back, obviously.
Our flight out of Midway is at something like 7am. Which means getting to the airport at what, 5:30-6? Which means leaving the dealership (where we're meeting) at something like 4:30-5. Which for me, means leaving home at something like 3:30-4.
Our return flight gets back to Midway somewhere around 9:45pm. That gets us all back to the dealership around 11, and me home around midnight. Thankfully, I have Wednesday off (other than helping Amy get up at 6 or so for her jewelry class).
I'll also be posting something about a particular Christmas carol I've heard once too often already, but I'm saving that for a slower day.
So for today I'll leave you with a co-worker's favorite joke, shared last week:
A pirate walks into a bar with a ship's steering wheel attached to his privates.The bartender asks, "Um, excuse me. Do you know you have a steering wheel attached to your... um... stuff?"
The pirate replies, "Aye. It's drivin' me nuts."
Quoted on a Cauldron discussion, as something one of the poster's professors said:
The world is divided into two kinds of people, those that divide the world into two kinds of people and those that don't
Hopefully everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. We did. It was one of the smallest Thanksgiving dinners we've done, but it was still a good time. I have to work today, but the cleanup is done, so I'm not leaving Amy with a huge work load today. Mom helped out a bunch cleaning pots and pans. She usually helps out. Thanks, Mom.
I got a cool email from one cousin, which I need to reply to, probably tonight or tomorrow morning.
But there was also the predictable "Happy Turkey Day" email from someone in one of the groups I get mail from. Thanksgiving isn't a religious holiday. It isn't a minority cultural holiday. It's a part of the core American culture. While I know she was going out of her way not to offend, part of me is a little offended by the "turkey day" euphemism.
You see, Thanksgiving is a holiday about something. It's about sharing and being thankful. Nothing offensive there. But it's rapidly turning into Turkey Day, which isn't about sharing or about being thankful. It's about indulgence and turkey and... well, that's about it. It's going from being a holiday to being an excuse.
So I'm hoping you had a happy Thanksgiving. I did.
I was going to blog. I had a topic I wanted to blog about. I'd even titled the post and pasted in the link.
But I guess not today. Sometimes me being home just makes things harder. Jareth behaves worse differently when I'm home. I end up doing things that disrupt the morning routines. It all adds to Amy's frustrations.
This morning I had a hard time staying out of bed. I went in to get Amy up about on time, and then all but fell asleep myself. That happens on a too-often basis. And Jareth behaving less differently means more distractions for everyone and everything taking longer.
I did wrap Lindsay's birthday present. Of course, I suck at wrapping, but everyone's polite enough not to say so. But everyone can tell when Amy's done the wrapping.
I had a more elaborate post in mind when I started the 'Abort, Retry, Fail' post half an hour ago. Now I just don't feel like taking it farther. I don't know that I should afford the time, and probably nobody wants to read it anyway, so whatever.
Reviewing the traffic stats on a blog is always amusing. I just checked out mine on a whim:
I ranked 6th on a Yahoo search for "breastfeeding witch".
Other amusing search strings included:
"breastfeeding husband"
"John Malkovich his wife"
"encourage husband to work"
I'm never quite sure which to wonder about more--ranking high on something like "breastfeeding witch" or someone following the 30th or so link for "breastfeeding husband"...
...on Amy's part.
I now have a page for tracking the status on my various writing projects with commentary and everything.
Mind you, much of it is still very rough draft. There's a lot of information I need to add. I'll be working on that five and ten minutes at a time each morning.
So thanks to Amy for a bunch of trial and error making all the pages display properly. It was five hours of fixing one thing and somehow breaking something else in the process. Finally everything seems fixed.
...or as fixed as it's gonna be. There are a couple of aspects I think she's still not 100% happy with, but it looks like she can live with it. I know I can. :-)
Now, one of the projects I mention there is Killing-Time, that "other blog" I've mentioned a couple of times. It's another blog, so it's largely in that reverse-order format blogs are always in. It's all fiction (it just seems worth pointing that out clearly...). He's a hitman, and it's a journal about his view on life. Part of it was a writing exercise in character building. Some of it was a challenge I put to myself.
The original idea had been a book I'd started writing back in early college. At the time, I thought I'd try to get it published as a memoir, and see what kind of debate it stirred on whether it was real or not. But what got me hooked on the idea was trying to see if I could get people to believe it. It was especially about whether I could make the guy feel real enough. Not just real enough to believe he could be out there, but real enough that he could be just any guy on the street.
It was a process I for the most part enjoyed greatly. It was interesting having the guy living with us for a while. I considered all the day to day stuff as "what would KT's opinion be?" And some of the readers really seemed to get hooked, which encouraged me.
Six months later he was still getting more readers on average than I get. *Shrug*
But in the end I didn't have the time to commit to doing it as well as I thought the readers deserved. So rather than do it part way, I ended it. I talk more about all that on the project page for it. I'll probably add more commentary on it later, and there's probably more bloggage coming up about it. But that's enough for right now. There's a little boy that wants me to color with him. I can't refuse. :-)
Ah, Sunday...that one day off. It rained pretty good yesterday, which might mean no yard work. To be honest I wasn't looking forward to yardwork for today anyway. Of course, one thing off the to-do list still leaves quite a few.
I have some ideas to suggest to Amy once I wake her up in about ten minutes. We'll see what we end up doing.
In the mean time, my sister has a blog that she's started with her boyfriend Scott. There only a couple days in. Hey, maybe I can contribute my 2-3 readers... She'll have more than me in no time.
One of the potential projects for today might be the web page about writing projects that I've mentioned. It depends on what else gets listed for today.
But for now, water in the tea kettle is whistling, which means it's time to get Jareth for his "oapmeal". :-)
Sometimes I just sit back and quietly sigh in disappointment. Usually it stems from other people. There are a few examples I've got in mind. I've mentioned The Cauldron a few times. It's a discussion message site for (typically) spiritual topics. But it seems that every good and long discussion inevitable involves someone apologizing for the way someone else interprets things. They'll end up saying, "I wasn't trying to attack you." But someone always feels offended or attacked when their ideas are challenged.
Personally, I want my ideas challenged. As long as you aren't attacking me, you're welcome to challenge any idea I put forth. It's through debate and discussion that we learn from each other and confirm our own views.
But some people just seem to be running through life looking to be offended. There's always someone who'll take a joke the wrong way. There's always someone who reads something into a statement that just isn't there.
I've lost friends over pointless misunderstandings before. It may still be happening. The friends from college that I've lost... that was my fault. I was an asshole. There are still friendships that aren't working. It gets to the point where I ask myself if I'm still treating people badly, or if people are just trying so hard to be disappointed with life that they'll create it if it isn't there.
I don't know, just one of those stupid rambling posts that I'd delete if I was smarter. Not the mood I wanted to be in before work, or before writing Quick Shtick for today.
But that's where I'm at. Maybe what I need is an anonymous blog. A place I can rant without worrying about who's reading and whether they'll take it wrong and be mad about it for months at a time. But there are things I just don't get to say that I'd like to get out. Not "out there" per se, just out of me. But I won't. Oh well, life goes on.
Today's quote comes courtesy of Raleigh Roule as posted on the Cauldon:
Humility, like grace, is something you achieve while trying to do something else.So there's something to think about for today. Stuff about my writing projects should be coming shortly... I mean it, I think...
Dad forwarded this email to me.
A couple was invited to a swanky masked Halloween party. She got a terrible headache and told her husband to go to the party alone. He, being a devoted husband, protested, but she argued and said she was going to take some aspirin and go to bed and there was no need for his good time being spoiled by not going. So he took his costume and away he went.I guess I should have posted it a couple of days ago...The wife, after sleeping soundly for an hour, awakened without pain and, as it was still early, she decided to go to the party. Since her husband did not know what her costume was, she thought she would have some fun by watching to see how he acted when she was not with him.
She joined the party and soon spotted her husband cavorting around on the dance floor, dancing with everyone and copping a little feel here and a little kiss there. His wife sidled up to him and, being a rather seductive lady herself, he left his partner high and dry and devoted his time to the new stuff that had just arrived.
She let him go as far as he wished; naturally, since he was her husband. Finally, he whispered a little proposition in her ear and she agreed, so off they went to one of the cars and he had his way with her. Just before unmasking at midnight, she slipped away, went home, put the costume away and got into bed, wondering what kind of explanation he would make for his behavior.
She was sitting up reading when he came in asked him what kind of time he had.
He said, "Oh, the same old thing. You know I never have a good time when you're not there."
Then she asked, "Did you dance much?"
He replied, "l tell you, I never even danced one dance. When I got there, I met Pete, Bill Brown and some other guys, so we went into the den and played poker all evening. BUT, you're not going to believe what happened to the guy I loaned my costume to!"