biding my time

November 25, 2006 on 9:15 pm | In ramblings | No Comments

i’m writing this from my parents’ house in oxford, listening to two barking dogs that will NOT shut up.  i had planned to go back to cary once we left my sister’s house today, but something told me to keep going on to oxford instead.  i’m glad i did.  the house needed a little TLC, including phone service (more on this in a second), power issues, a screen that had fallen from one of the front windows, the little crawlspace vents around the house needed closing, i drained and put away their water hoses, shut the vents in the attic for the winter, and got all the christmas stuff down from the attic.  all of this on plenty of energy, due in part to dealing with the various maniacs and idiots on I-40 coming home from boone, the fact that i was voluntarily giving up the one night of the week i might have had to myself to come home and go to bed early, and i was especially pissed because i had been on the phone with these clowns.

i don’t watch that much television so for me it isn’t an issue, but having seen everything my parents have gone through in a little over a year of subscribing to dish network (and having had to deal with several of these problems on their behalf, with varying levels of success), i make a strong recommendation to burn your television, get direct tv or simply go with cable.  i haven’t dealt with less helpful and less caring customer service reps since dell closed their hardware support sites in india.  or maybe since talking to that one guy at apple.  their service is fine for what it is, but if you ever have problems, billing questions, or the like, prepare to be treated like a red-headed troublemaker. consider yourselves warned.

oh, and another warning.  next weekend i am not obligated to do anything for my family, and i shall be off call next month for work.  it shall be ON.  next weekend will be a practice run for the following weekend in richmond for samira’s birthday.  i’m looking forward to it already.

gobble, gobble

November 23, 2006 on 9:55 pm | In ramblings | No Comments

i’m recovering nicely from a day of sloth and gluttony. my parents and i are spending the weekend at my sister’s house in boone, and we had 27 people over for a thanksgiving pot luck lunch/dinner. so much for my losing weight :)

my nephew is enthralled with little people, big world. the content ran something like this:

  • setting: reality show about a “little” couple, two “little” kids and two “big” kids who live in a house, and we see what happens when they stop being polite and… wait, wrong show. this family is clearly loaded, but they either don’t want or can’t keep a maid. the house looks like they’re getting ready for an indoor yard sale.
  • plot 1: dad has contractors build a deck. the contractors play soccer with the kids, then bitch about how they’re not going to be finished on time. deck finished and looks great. despite the fact that the county could care less, dad picks a fight by calling to have the deck inspected. as expected, the “little people” rails are too short. this is good for a five minute rant from dad about how the federal government hates dwarves. the inspector clearly could care less, and would have been just as happy for his phone not to have rung in the first place. solution: have another contractor dump dirt so the deck isn’t as far above the ground and so doesn’t require as tall of a railing. dad brags about how smart he is, and how glad he’s able to “fool the system.” i guess he showed them. favorite quote: “you know what i need, amigo? (he says, to the latino contractor): a hammock, it would be much more comfortable to watch you work from a hammock.”
  • plot 2: cut to shot of dog yawning and licking his/her chops. he/she seems to be the only likeable character.
  • plot 3: brothers are building a fort in the woods. one bosses his helpful sister around for a few minutes, then bellows and moans when he scrapes his hip. then he steps on a nail and the world really comes to an end. they rush home so mom can pour hydrogen peroxide on it. cut to dog sleeping in filth – the vacuum cleaner has clearly become overwhelmed with its sisyphian task and has hurled itself down the cellar stairs in anguish
  • plot 4: kids are going to start school. private christian school. with rules like “must cut hair.” brother doesn’t want to cut his hair. he gets detention. brother and dad make some poor hairdresser stay late because they can’t show up for a haircut until ten minutes before closing. dad sits in chair and blathers on about the boy not getting in trouble any more. i shit you not, this was worth a good ten minutes.
  • plot 5: everybody fawns and titters over the new haircut. mom takes pictures and calls all her friends.
  • plot 6: the dog is now asleep on the front porch. i’d rather the show focus on the dog. my nephew won’t let us change the channel.
  • plot 7: dad ordered a barbecue grill. from a catalog. despite the fact that all catalogs print the dimensions of their products, this grill arrives too tall and clearly will not do. this must be due to discrimination, says dad. dad and mom have a slight argument over the grill. older brother makes a small attempt to pick up some of the more unsightly detritus lying around the house.
  • plot 8: new deck furniture delivered. the driver, probably aware he’s going to be on national television, agrees to unpack and assemble the furniture for the family. it’s been a long day, says dad. i think i’m going to sit here and relax a little bit. he must be tired – concocting tense situations with the county inspector out of thin air, throwing asinine insults to mexican laborers and taking a trip to look at deck furniture can really take it out of you. family cookout. someone pets the dog – seriously, that’s all i can remember from the entire scene.

the moral of the show?  the world needs to be more sensitive to little people.  that’s if you listen to the mom and dad.  the real moral is:  be melodramatic, self-absorbed, and rich, and you’ll get your own show on national television.   be enough of an output-only device, and your kids will call you a “dick” under their breath on said national television, and the FCC sensors won’t even bother to bleep it out.  i’m not sure what amazes me more – my nephew’s saying that he’ll tell his friends he’s busy on a saturday night so that he can catch new episodes, or the fact that the show is apparently now in it’s second season.
when i excused myself for bed and shut myself up in my nephew’s room, i noticed a burnt smell – coming from my laptop. all those people winging about their macbook pros overheating may not have simply received lemons after all. today marks the first day that my laptop has been on for any real length of time – going on 15 hours now. it’s been plugged in and sitting on a flat wooden surface all day. the case near the power supply smells like a hot light bulb. we’ll see if it melts and sprays me with toxic goo.

blessings in disguise

November 22, 2006 on 1:24 pm | In peeps, ramblings | No Comments
  • i was kind of freaking out because my roommate moved out, but i’m now able to relax in peace and quiet at home.
  • my dad had a CT for prostate surgery, and it uncovered a potentially fatal aortic aneuryism – which has now been operated on and sewn back up
  • my pastor’s position is being cut, but hopefully having to leave will steer him and his family towards a more nurturing environment, though the transition will be tough on such short notice.
  • i was grumbling about losing last weekend to having 5 house guests while being on call, but i had a blast and made some new friends in the process. i can’t wait to see them in richmond in a couple weeks for samira’s birthday.

breathe deep, fill up with relief…

November 11, 2006 on 8:37 pm | In ramblings | No Comments

i’m concluding an absolutely beautiful, record-setting temperatured 79 of a saturday by heading over to peter’s to watch a movie with him and debby. steve moved out yesterday, so i spent the better part of today vacuuming the entire place, venetian blinds, baseboards, crown molding, and whatever else i could get the upholstery brush near. i deposited the remains of his moving (he still has a small car-load of stoof to come get) in his room, arranged the rest of my place as i had it before he moved in, and washed most of the windows, inside and out. i dare say that my place smells cleaner, looks much cleaner, and feel much bigger with everything having been cleaned and so much stuff removed.

i’m no expert on feng shui, but i can tell already that my place feels less clogged, less crowded, and less bogged down. hopefully i can enact the same sort of spring cleaning on a spring-like fall day in my emotional space as well. that would be wonderful. okay, movie time.

broken

November 7, 2006 on 4:37 pm | In ramblings | No Comments

you’d think growing up on the campus of on orphanage would have made me quite accustomed to people coming and going in my life. the Home’s population is transient now more than ever, but growing up there i learned to say good-bye to my friends as they “went home for good,” as we said, but that was fine because there were always new people arriving in their place. now i’m pushing 30 and have said good-bye to many people from my hometown, college and beyond, most of them amicably, some of them not from one direction or another. i’m sort of freaking out because as an adult i no longer enjoy the aforementioned influx. “they” say that when you’re grown up you can count your close friends on one hand. i can still count many (and even manage to fill up two hands) but only one still lives in the triangle area.

in theory this should free me to make new friends and restructure my life, but things don’t seem to work that way. i’ve met a ton of people since i graduated from chapel hill, but haven’t connected closely with any of them. i make new friends, we hit it off for a while, then we either lose touch, or so-and-so stops returning my calls, and i just end up feeling like a loser. i’m finding that i can’t simply “let things flow” – i over-analyze anything that is said or done, i start to feel like i’m putting more energy into the friendship than so-and-so until i resent him or her, and things just sort of fall apart.

am i crazy, or am i just broken? one of my former pastors told me years ago that this would be my plight until i underwent therapy for things that happened to me as a child at the aforementioned orphanage. has she been right all along? when i’m not around people, i fit many of the “warning signs” for adults who never sought therapy for what they had been through – i grew up somewhat withdrawn and in a fantasy world, and now at nearly age 30, i still have constant feelings of worthlessness, isolation, and contemplate suicide, even though i’d never go through with it.

i know several people who see a therapist regularly for a lot less, though i can’t help thinking “i can deal with this.” part of the reason i’ve kept the job at the orphanage for so long is that i feel like my simply being there and around the children might give me some way to protect them. counselors who don’t always have the best interests of the children at heart, some of the teen-agers who didn’t feel like they could confide in the adults would come to me for advice, etc. perhaps at 30 i should be done dancing around my emotional problems and face them head on, and i just may get off my butt and find a good local therapist. but i can’t decide if this is what i really need, or if i’m just blaming immature behavior on something that has remained buried, deep down in my past.

alone.

November 4, 2006 on 3:15 pm | In peeps, rants | No Comments

listening to thomas datt’s “alone” whilst lifting weights is paying off. after a slightly harried week at work i’m spending a wonderful sunny saturday afternoon on my couch, watching the world through the patio door. my place is a little junked up as my roommate is packing to move out, but in the long run i think i’m going to be much happier.

his empty, to-be-packed boxes are piled up beneath the painting that my grandmother gave me, the painting he told me looked “tacky.” beneath the boxes is the area rug my mom picked out, the one he told me was “heinous.” by my front door, his stinky golf shoes sit in my getabako next to the pair of adidas i just bought, the ones he told me made him “so glad that i finally bought a pair of shoes that are fashionable.” he’s more than doubling his living expenses to move into an apartment complex built in the 30s that has baseboard heat and no A/C, but i hope he’ll be happier there than he has been here in my “crappy little place” (again, his words). it will be nice to be able to come home and relax, rather than walking on eggshells lest any side comment i make give him more ammunition to criticize me or my clothes or my place or the way i’ve decorated it.

i’ll miss the friend i had up to, maybe, three months ago, but i won’t miss the person i know today. so the trick is to try to remember what our friendship used to be, and forget the rest. never a simple trick for me.

oh, to be in richardson, texas.

November 1, 2006 on 8:28 pm | In organ | No Comments

this sunday at 7pm, douglas bush of brigham young will be performing the dedicatory recital on the new klais organ in the first united methodist church of richardson. the instrument’s specifications have set off an argument about the utility and aesthetics of super- and sub-couplers (personally, i side with sebastian and the organ builders, who think they’re works of the devil), but i would still be honored to have such an instrument installed in my church.

of course, the klais organ isn’t the only wonderful thing from richardson, texas that i’d love to have at my daily disposal. and no, i don’t mean her.

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