Edge

Slowly making my way away from the edge. It's a long way down.

Temporary Suspension of Cynical Disbelief

I'm a pessimist and a cynic, courtesy of a lifetime of witnessing how base and low and disingenuous people can be.

But occasionally I am moved by what I believe is a person's honesty and integrity and sheer sense of goodness. I hope my assessment of Governor (Massachusetts) Duval Patrick's speech during last night's Democratic National Convention was right. I hope I'm not suspending my cynicism and pessimism to a highly skilled actor. I hope I'm suspending those perspectives to a man who deserves my respect and regard.

I'd like to see more people like Duval Patrick in public office. If Obama is elected to the Presidency, I'm confident Duval Patrick will be offered a very important position. I hope I'm right, both about him and about his future in public service.

I don't trust most of the other people who spoke, though Lilly Ledbetter's comments were hard and from the heart. I hope Goodyear's senior executives were watching and could feel their sales plummet with each word she spoke.

Gelatin, Gelatin, Where Do You Roam?

It's later than I'd like it to be. But, I don't control time. I've often wanted to, but it's never been within my grasp. I'm sitting here in the semi-dark, wondering where all my "people" are. You know, the people who are willing to talk to me in this semi-dark, gelatinous universe. Well, apparently they're not here.

I can have my own conversations, I suppose. And I won't be so judgmental about the insanity that pours forth from my lips.

Help for Someone in Houston

This information was passed on by a fellow blogger, who knows someone who knows someone who needs blood platelet donations in Houston, Texas. If you're able to donate or pass the word, please direct people to this site. The person needing help has an aggressive form of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Time is of the essence.

Ranchman's Chicken-Fried Steak and Fried Green Tomatoes

(I took the photo with my cell phone, hence the fuzziness--but click, anyway, to embiggen for a closer view.)

We decided to be lazy today...at least a little. We drove to Ponder, a tiny town just north of Fort Worth and just a hop, skip, and a jump from Denton. There, we had chicken-fried steak at Ranchman's Cafe. It's a fantastic little place; it has the best chicken-fried steak I've ever eaten. And one of today's specials was fried green tomatoes, which we couldn't pass up, so we savored the wonderful, artery-clogging goodness of fried food...including the steak, the tomatoes, and french fries (though my wife ordered a baked potato...they usually require you to call ahead to reserve one, but they had an extra so they served it to her).

I discovered during our visit that Bobby Flay did a show on chicken-fried steak there in 2002 and another Food Network show on grilled steak was filmed there in 2003. I haven't see either one. Doesn't matter. We've been visiting Ranchman's since 1998 or 1999 (and it's been around since 1948). It doesn't need PR to stay afloat.

Empty Office

This is my new office, before any furniture had been brought in. Later, probably much later, I'll post an "after" photo.

Off, or Out Of, My Mind

The worst of our physical office move is complete, if you don't count unpacking massive numbers of boxes whose contents are unknown and the space for which simply no longer exists. At least we all have desks, but we don't have internet connectivity and we don't have phone service. I hope those come early tomorrow.

I'm physically and mentally tired and all I want to do this morning is drink my coffee, avoid mental challenges, and get the challenges of tomorrow off my mind.

They Want to See Your Bag

Two days in a row. There's nothing in my head that's aching to make it down to the keyboard. Like yesterday, I'm more inclined to want to be a storm-chaser today than a paper-chaser. Today. Right. That means "in this lifetime."

Oh, maybe you'd be interested in my dream. I had just arrived in a U.S. airport, very, very, very late one night, from an overseas flight from I-don't-know-where. Three people were waiting for me at baggage claim, inside customs. Hundreds of bags came out, but not mine. When I reported it missing, I was asked to describe it but couldn't remember what it looked like. They asked me to draw a picture. I did, but I couldn't get the handles drawn right; they looked like whisps of paper. The attendant got angry with me and asked whether I had checked the other airlines. "No, I said, I flew in on American." Her face twisted into a scowl and she said, "It doesn't matter! It could have come in on any airline!" I wanted to get my bag, but the people who had come to get me insisted on leaving to attend a party that should have been over hours earlier. "They'll keep it open," my greeters insisted. "They want to see your bag!"

Storms

There's nothing here today. Everything I've tried to write has finally been put away into my private folder. It's not fit to share, nor do I feel a need to share it.

I'm thinking of violent storms, with thunderous explosions of sound and flashes of light bursting from low, dark, sinister, murderous clouds that twist and turn and erupt into fiendish, shrieking winds.

I want to see such a storm tonight. I want to feel its fury as its cracks of thunder shake the earth.

Fingers in Their Cases

Today, my staff got serious about packing for our impending office move. They were in overdrive, packing boxes, gathering old magazines and other innocuous paper for the recyclng center, questioning "why do we have to keep this?" at every turn. They worked hard for their pay today, a physical effort that we rarely have to exert.

As for me, I had a completely unexpected and utterly unwelcome flare-up of the long-since-gone pain of my Crohn's disease. Fortunately, it wasn't serious and the most serious pain only lasted a few hours, but it was an unhappy reminder that the damn disease is still there. I had a minor flare earlier this year. I hope this isn't a signal that it's getting its sea-legs again.

Tomorrow, I'm to be interviewed for a national television news show that virtually everyone would know if I mentioned it, but I won't because I don't want my clients nosing around on this blog. It's going to be a phone interview, which is a good thing because I don't like television interviews in the least (and I've been told I have a face for radio, anyway). The topic has gotten so old that I wish it would just disappear, but at least it keeps my client in the spotlights of the media, which for them is a good thing.

All the prospective new business that is descending on me is still not close to becoming a paying client, but I can't help but think some of them will take the plunge before long. Our new office space probably won't accommodate any more clients, nor any more staff, but I'd like to have to deal with those impossibilities before I decide I wouldn't appreciate them.

I'm putting my fingers back in their cases tonight. Enough bloggery.

L. Cohen: Joan of Arc

How could someone NOT find this exceptionally compelling poetry and music? OK, maybe you don't find it as compelling as I do, but I just don't understand why not.

Time to See Leonard Cohen in Concert

I've never seen/heard Leonard Cohen in concert. I've wanted to for at least 30 years, but have never had the chance (he doesn't get to Texas...can't imagine why, as I'm sure both his fans here would go to see him).

I just came across what is said is his current tour schedule. I can't do Bucharest in September, though I have a friend who's invited me to come with her (and her husband) to Romania to help her create a theatre school for high-school age kids. That wold be good, if it could work, because I'd have a place to stay and people I know. But the date won't work. Ditto Vienna and Prague (dates not working...I know no one I could count on for a place to stay in either place). I'd LOVE to go back to Helsinki, though, even without a place to stay, other than a swank hotel. That would be fantastic! And I'd happily follow him to Stockholm, taking the same cruise ship I took last trip from Stockholm to Helsinki and back. I wonder if I could get tickets?

09/21 Bucharest, Romania - Arcul de Trumpf
09/24 Vienna, Austria - Koncerthaus
09/27 Prague, Czech Republic - HC Sparta
09/29 Wroclaw, Poland - Hala Orbita
10/01 Warsaw, Poland - Torwar
10/04 Berlin, Germany - O2
10/07 Munich, Germany - Olympiahalle
10/10 Helsinki, Finland - Ice Hall
10/12 Gothenburg, Sweden - Falconer
10/15 Stockholm, Sweden - Golben
10/17 Copenhagen, Denmark - Forum
10/20 Brussels, Belgium - Forest National
10/23 Milan, Italy - Teatro Degli Arcimboldi
10/25 Zurich, Switzerland - Hallenstadion
10/27 Geneva, Switzerland - TBA
10/29 Frankfurt, Germany - Festhalle
10/31 Hamburg, Germany - Colorline Arena
11/02 Oberhausen, Germany - Oberhausen Arena
11/03 Rottendam, Netherlands - Ahoy
11/05 Glasgow, Scotland - Clyde
11/08 Cardiff, Wales - International Arena
11/11 Bournemouth, England - International Centre
11/13 London, England - O2 Arena
11/22 Birmingham, England - NEC
11/24 Paris, France - Olympia
11/25 Paris, France - Olympia
11/28 Brighton, England - Brighton Centre
12/01 Dublin, Ireland - The Point

A Glimpse of Humanity

I'm in one of those moods tonight in which I realize that even Republicans can be decent human beings. I know. It's hard for, me, too, but I really believe it.

If you try to put yourself in the position of someone with whom you vehemently disagree about virtually everything, you can get a different perspective on their positions. It's especially useful to force yourself to argue his or her position forcefully and rationally.

Nothing in particular brought me to this "insight" (which I experience fairly frequently, just not often enough to let it change my inate skepticism about the value of humankind); it just happens sometimes.

Approximately Now

Monday, I interview with the selection committee of an organization that is considering using a company like mine for management. I'm not counting any chickens, inasmuch as I'm one of five or six they're interviewing, including some individuals who are under consideration as staff members (versus contractor, like my company would be). But it would be a huge win for us, since we've just lost 25% of the fees from our largest client; it would make that back and then some. But it would be a huge undertaking and much work for all of us...if we get it, I hope it's worth it. I doubt that it, or any of the other "pieces of business" we're going after are "worth it." But they might help pay the bills until the obligations of the new lease have been fulfilled.

It's tiring dealing with the office move, the declining revenue, the obligatory treatment of nasty, stupid people with more respect than they deserve. And going through the motions of really caring about the business, the profession, the industry, everything that's connected to any of it. Bitter? No. Not bitter at all. Ungrateful? More so than I should be.

In my other life, the life where things that matter actually matter, I had just a few snippets of activity today. A few interactions with people who think, a few successes in getting words recorded on the keyboard, an idea or two for books or short stories or poems. And a few chances to read, again, about life in another place, another climate, in a place where people cluster to share their worship of nature.

I miss the freedoms I never recognized as freedom before they were gone. It wasn't long ago that I could have simply packed my "stuff" and moved on. Even though it seemed impossible, it was possible. Now, it's not. Not when there are leases for which I've signed my name and pledged to pay (or give everything I own if I can't). Poor me. Bite me! Poor me, indeed! Smart people know that, if you make your bed, you lay in it. I made my bed. I wasn't thinking about that when I could have changed the course of the future.

What I don't miss is a nice mixed drink...and least I won't when I go make one, which will happen approximately now.

Cantaloupe the Way I Like It

Today's breakfast started with half of a cantaloupe from which I removed the seeds.









Then, I carefully removed the "meat" from the rind and cut it into bite-sized pieces.









Then, I put a dash of salt and pepper on my bowl of cantaloupe. It brings out the taste of the cantaloupe to an unexpected crescendo.

Music I Need Tonight

From time to time, I read past blog posts and share them again. Not that anyone asks for them again (or even read them the first time), but I just want to get the message across again, from time to time:

http://musingsfrommyopia.blogspot.com/2007/02/meme-time.html

Richard Thompson and his wife wrote the song, but my favorite versions were song by Mary Elizabeth Mastroantonio and the team of Danko, Fjelds, and Andersen, none of which are availble on YouTube.com.

I may come back to revise this later if I figure out how to load music.

Here is Dimming of the Day by Mary Elizabeth Mastroantonio.

Time to Move On

I woke up early this morning, left my wife slumbering, and went to this place for a solo breakfast. I love Pete's Cafe. It's my kind of diner. The food is just OK, but the waitresses are all in their fifties or better and they're all crusty but friendly.

After breakfast, and after spending some time wading through boxes upon boxes of crap, I rented this pickup truck so I could take things over to our office's storage facility nearby. The truck is huge. Four doors. Actually very roomy and comfortable. If it weren't for the fact that it probably drinks enormous amounts of fuel, I'd consider it an option to replace The Bastard when the time comes. But no, it's too big and gas-thirsty.

This is just a piece of what's left to give to the shredding company when they visit on Wednesday. They'll shred all of our documents that need shredding (we've already taken a huge volume of paper to the recycling center...used the big black truck for that duty today). When it's all done, it will be like we just opened up our company and have very little paper to weigh us down.

Friday Convergence

I was in my car, witnessing an actual rain event. This has become exceedingly rare. People have been known to pay for this sort of experience. The photo captures the confusion I experienced as I contemplated the convergence of car, rain, roads, traffic, and reflections.




Soon after my experience with rain, I met a former employee for lunch at this place. I was 15 minutes early. He was 15 minutes late. This combination caused a tear in the fabric of the serene movements of waitstaff. I was labeled a victim of being stood up. It wasn't the case, but the waitstaff wanted to believe it, deep in their bones. They wanted to know I was a poor, lonely man in a restaurant filled with Friday-lunch gatherings of 6-8-10-12 people each. I think it made them feel like they could take a little of the burden off of me; they offered me tea and a phone in case I wanted to call somebody.

See

I got a nice surprise email today from a blogger friend who sent me a link to one of her playlists with some wonderful music. We share good taste in music, despite what the rest of you might think.

The remainder of the day was basically uneventful, save for a luncheon meeting with an old acquaintance with whom I can comfortably spend an hour annually. At least he bought the lunch.

Then, tonight, I made a very nice, relatively light sauce for spaghetti (again): olive oil, butter, lots of garlic, dried basil, dried oregano, dried red pepper flakes, and a can of chopped clams (there's no buying fresh clams in Dallas, especially not now). When combined with a nice butter and garlic sauce with bread, the meal was fabulous (and much more caloric than would have been ideal). Tasty stuff!

Tonight, another unexpected interest in watching a bit of the Olympics, followed by a yearning to type drivel into this blog, which is underway, but soon to end. See, I told you so.

Mellow

I had almost finished writing a vitriolic diatribe about a driver I encountered this morning when Blogger decided I should just abandon it. Shit!

I had explained why I would like to find the bastard and beat him to death, slowly, with an axe handle. I had explained what I would say to the bastard about why I was killing him and why his death would be greeted by humanity as a step forward in evolution.

But Blogger decided against me posting it. Now, I feel like taking an axe handle deep into the bowels of the Internet, swinging it wildly and killing people who "need killing."

No, I don't believe there are people who would be viewed by society, collectively, as "needing killing." But there are people who could be described that way by me, if they match my mood. I'm not a monster. I just think I should be given the duty, on behalf of mankind, of deciding who should die for the greater good. There would be fewer executions in our prisons if that were to happen, I assure you. But there might be surges of axe-handle murders where I spend time.

I try not to get so damn mad. But it's never worked before, and its not working now.

Phrenologist...it's what's for dinner

You didn't have to say it. You didn't have to write it. I knew what you were thinking when you read my last post.

"He's lost his fucking mind. He's either on drugs, alcohol, or has experienced a massive medical meltdown that has affected his brain."

No, it ws just me trying to let my mind get a workout.

I'm not crazy. I promise.

Oh, I had a voicemail waiting when I got home today. It was the phrenologist's office. "This is Cindy at Dr. Cannotpossiblypronouncehisname's office. I finally got the doctor to tell me when he wants you to come back for a follow-up. He said three months. That will be in November. Please call me to set up an appointment."

Three months? WTF? I dropped off a huge orange bottle of piss yesterday, and they took my blood, and they want to talk again in three months? Not fucking likely. I want the results of the jug'apissathon. I want to know what the blood said. I want to know what week before last's renal sonogram revealed. Come back in three months? Are they fucking crazy?

I'll report back, one of these days, on the phrenologist's reactions to my response to his office's voicemail. "A promising young phrenologist was killed today by a blast of wind from an angry patient's lungs and throat...."

Linguicide and Pescacide: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Linguicide. It sounds sinister, and it is. I suppose. Who would purposely engage in the attempted murder of a language? The very same people who would engage in infanticide or pescacide.

If a person's character permits him (or her) to intentionally murder a living language, then his (or her) character will most certainly permit him to intentionally take the life of an innocent fish, a speckled trout commonly found in the salt waters off the coast of Texas. It's that sort of duality that frightens me and makes me cringe when forced to engage in chit-chat with people I believe to be, or who I believe have the capacity to be, serial killers.

It takes a certain kind of psychologist to understand and attempt to treat linguicidites and pescacidites. And that special kind of psychologist is known as either a linguipsychologist or a pescapsychologist. Look it up in any dictionary of my choice!

I learned these things, and many more numbingly fascinating facts, by having a lengthy internal conversation in Latin with a paracatholic nun named Deliciosa Drinkwater. Deliciosa is James Kneeblood's most recent double delicious illicit paramour. You may remember James, with whom I conversed here on this blog long, long ago.

Let me go give that some thought.

Unwind

Today was a long one. A client's annual highight event is tomorrow and, so, several of us were involved in preparations today. That was after handling a multitude of other errands. We finally left the office after 8:00 pm and had a bite to eat at a Mexican restaurant near the office. Finally, we're home and can unwind.

Limeys Make the World Go 'Round...No, That's Not It...

This could only mean one thing, right? I've used up almost all the limes!
(Click on the photo to embiggen...)

Just What They're Looking For

I've grown so accustomed to using this blog to release pent-up (and not-so-pent-up) emotions. It's hard not to let it be an easy outlet for my anger, fear, joy, loneliness, happiness, sullenness, emptiness, or angst. But there are some things one just shouldn't share with a blog or, rather, with the rest of the world. Some pieces of our personal lives should remain private, hidden, and shielded from public view. But that's increasingly hard to execute.

This is not news to most readers, I know. It's probably not news to me. But today I am thinking about the value of anonymity or, at least, the desirability of anonymity. Try as we might, we cannot maintain anonymity the way we once could. Online searches of Google or Intellius or dozens of other sites can give us details about people that we probably shouldn't know and certainly shouldn't want to know.

The identity of people posting messages on blogs or in chat rooms or simply responding to email messages is not private. With certain modest skills and basic tools at hand, one's most private electronic communications to one's innermost circle can be fodder for YouTube or FaceBook or god knows what else.

By the time it occurs to you that your identity, your entire life, is available for public view, it's probably too late. Your secrets are out.

A would-be employer is reading your personal medical history with interest and horror and is busy deleting the job offer she had just written. Details of your visit to an abortion clinic as a teenager are being reviewed by investigative reporters, their neighbors, and your minister's mistress. Your long-ago-expunged arrest record for DUI in the idiocy of your youth finds its way onto your employer's desk at M.A.D.D. headquarters. Your sordid affair with a married biological weapons specialist in Second Life is thrown in your face by your spouse and your fellow members of the board of Amnesty International.

The hardest part of facing the fact that there is no anonymity anymore is that people you trust may be feeding details of your life to recipients who are hungry for the slightest shred of damning dirt. Either that, or you're growing paranoid. But you better not let that cat out of the bag; it could be just the tidbit they've been looking for.

More Kidney Tales

My sister called me earlier this evening and left me a voice message expressing concern about my 'kidney disease' post of last night. I haven't called her back because I was out having dinner and buying vegetables and then came home and, to my surprise, decided to watch the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. And now it's late.

Well, sister, I wouldn't worry. The phrenologist didn't seem overly concerned and neither will I be. It's still not even certain that he's right. More tests will determine that. He says, if he's right, I am at stage 3 of the disease, "moderate decrease in kidney function." He says the goal, if he's right, is to limit the severity of decline in function, so that I can plan on dying of old age before I have to have dialysis or a transplant. I told him my plan, at present, is to die relatively healthy at age 96 after being hit and killed instantly by a speeding bus. "So," I told him, "your job is to make sure that happens."

I'd be lying, of course, if I said this unexpected pre-diagnosis did not bother me. It's particularly annoying since the doctor who sent me to the phrenologist said it appeared that the over-the-counter arthritis pain remedy I have been taking was responsible for the unhappy blood test results and that my kidneys seemed to be functioning normally. But such is life.

Anyway, I'll find out more next week, after I deliver large orange vats of refrigerated urine to the phrenologist's office.

Ellie, if you read this: you must know something of this, right? Tell me what you know, OK?

My Advice

Lots of things have taken my time, both personally and professionally, during the last several days. There have been too many issues requiring too much energy and too much concentration...I've just not been able to concentrate the way I should.

I'll post more information within the next several days. After the issue of the hotel failing to open in time for our upcoming client event has been resolved. After the phrenologist's surprise announcement that I have kidney disease has been tested (more orange pee jugs). After the too-soon box-packing sessions for our upcoming office move have begun.

I want to retire and kick around the country. I want it so badly I can taste it.

My advice to you: work for someone else...someone who can provide insurance, retirement, and a good salary. Working for yourself is worthwhile only if you make a shitload of money. And I don't.

California Bag Check

We tried to pack light for our California trip, but we got carried away. The checked bag fees were just outrageous.

Sharing California

OK. I will post some pictures. But they're not the full story. That would be too...something. We spent most of the weekend in Santa Rosa, CA. But my photos from SR were mostly bad shots of a badly decrepit, badly ignore house. Not happy stuff. So, I'll share some other ones.

• Starting from the most recent photos, backing up to before we left Dallas:
  
• Sacramento Airport Inside Shot
  
• Exterior shot of State Capital in Sacramento
  
• Inside our room at the Hawthorne Suites, Sacramento
  
• On the road from Santa Rosa to Sacramento
  
• Another on the road
  
• "Grape Trees," as I like to call them
  
• Our very first computer, a 1985 or 11986 version of a Compaq, with floppy disk and 10 meg hard drive
  
• Russian River Pub
  
• Another Russian River Pub shot
  
• Back in Dallas...my way of cooking spaghetti and sauce

California

We spent Thursday afternoon waiting on the court-appointed conservator, a sloppy woman dressed in an unattractive sleeveless knit shirt and shorts, to meet us at the house and deliver a set of keys. If I'd had to guess her profession, I'd have said she had retired as a dishwasher for a diner. She was to meet us in "half an hour" but she did not arrive until an hour and a half after our call. She is a loser from all perspectives.

Yesterday, we went through boxes and boxes and boxes, finding mostly old papers that should have been shredded and discarded years, even decades, ago. But there were some very interesting photos here and there and some information that revealed a family history of good fortune and pressed luck.

We did get out for lunch at The Russian River Pub, which was a delight, despite the traffic. We needed the break.

Dinner last night was at a Mexican fast-food joint down the street. Then we went to Trader Joe's to pick up a few odds and ends. We'll go back this morning to buy sushi, which we'll take over to the badly neglected house and put in the refrigerator until lunchtime.

I'm astonished as how badly the house has been treated. After, and perhaps long before, my mother in law died, her son who lived with her just let the place go to hell. It's a shame. It was a decent little house. Now, it will cost a fortune, that no one in this family has, to rehab it. So, the old place will probably be put on the market "as is," and it will fetch a fraction of the price it should.

I wish I could spend six weeks here, just cleaning up the house and yard. At least some cleaning and a coat of paint would help bring it back to its glory days.