The Opposite of Tornado

The skies are grey this morning. I can tell by looking at the dew-crusted leaves and blades of grass that the humidity is very high and the temperature is rather high for an early morning. A quick look at WeatherUnderground.com confirms it; it's 75 degrees and the humidity stands at 89%. I'm still on my first cup of coffee and I know I'll have no interest in what's beyond the windows for a while. There's plenty to do inside and, as always, there are ideas to commit to paper. Whether I even get to jotting notes after this post remains to be seen.

I've taken a look at my 'things to do in 2007' list and I'm not feeling very confident:

• Begin building a family compound
  
• Encourage conversations about ways we can make significant differences in our communities
  
• Become at least modestly proficient in conversational Spanish
  
• Help create a sense of community in my neighborhood
  
• Submit at least one piece of fiction for consideration for publication

The only things from the list I've spent any time doing are encouraging conversations about making a difference (not very successfully, I might add) and trying to create a sense of community in my neighborhood (also rather unsuccessful so far). Nothing yet on the family compound. I think my Spanish vocabularly has actually declined. And I've vacilated about whether I really want to try to publish anything...in my experience, I go back to what I've written (which I have liked) later and find myself viewing it as an amateurish piece of writing.

My mood today is not conducive to propelling myself toward accomplishing goals. I'll have to find another outlet for my minimal energy today. What's the opposite of tornado? That's my energy level.

When Right and Wrong Collide

Today was a sad day for me. It was the last day on my staff for a woman whose employment I terminated. Her termination was unusual, in that I did not have her leave the building the moment I fired her. Instead, I gave her a month between her notice and her departure, I agreed to pay her for another month beyond that, and I told most people her departure was her choice. The story was that she needed time to deal with her illness. The fact was that her performance was simply inadequate and very nearly cost me a client...and would have cost the client had she stayed. And the results, for her, would have been the same. But the result of losing the client likely would have been that additional jobs would have been lost, and my own income would have been reduced, and my business would have been in jeopardy.

I have gotten used to the fact that I had to fire her. I have not gotten used to the fact that my action could very well lead to her filing for bankruptcy. I have not gotten used to the fact that she is still battling cancer and that her disease seems to be insufficiently responsive to radiation and mild chemotherapy and that she has just begun a more aggressive, and more debilitating, form of intravenous chemotherapy.

The fact that I had to make my decision to fire her, when coupled with what I know she is going through, makes me wonder whether I've ever been suited to be a hard-nosed business owner. This truly sucks. I hate being responsible for making a decision that weighs my company's continuation against an individual's life. Even in my bravado, I am not strong enough for this.

When I'm in my 'business' mode, my metrics are all about performance. In that mode, I'm a demanding son-of-a-bitch; I don't tolerate anything less than 110% effort and I don't accept anything less than devotion to getting the job done.

When I'm in my human mode, my metrics are all about humanity. In that mode, people matter. In that mode, I feel shame about the way I think and behave when I'm in business mode.

Sometimes, I don't see an intersection between the two. They are parallel paths and one must choose between them. We humans get in trouble when we try to put our wheels on both tracks. We're pulled apart when the tracks diverge.

I'm glad I did not lose the client. I'm devastated that I may have ruined a former employee's life.

And it becomes clear that there are, indeed, circumstances in which the "right" thing depends on one's perspective. Situational ethics may be legitimate, though they are most certainly painful to someone, sometime. The right thing really isn't black or white; it's a mottled quilt of grey, black, white, and chaos. It's a formal statement that the right thing is always wrong from someone's perspective, and the wrong thing to do can be right, in certain circumstances.

It doesn't matter, though, does it? When right and wrong collide, it's just godawful painful.

Ped Time

June 28. My wife's birthday. Umpteenth day of rain and grey skies and humidity reaching toward triple digits. We needed the rain. Despite the flooding, I'm glad it has been raining. For her birthday, my wife wanted his and hers pedometers, first quality. Her wish is my command.

Tonight, it's off to a Mediterranean spot for dinner, Cafe Izmir, a place my wife has wanted to go for some time. I'm guessing we'll be sated with plates full of hummus, tabouli, babaganoush, falafel, ziziki, and other such delectable delights. Now, if I can just stick to those kinds of foods and put the pedometer to heavy use, I might eventually fit back into some rather nice clothes that, today, hang in my closet, looking forlorn.

A Really Happy Birthday

Rains continue to plague north Texas, swelling creeks, overflowing banks, and causing grief for people who don't understand the power and potential of massive flows of water. In Central Texas, in Austin, three teachers were killed a couple of nights ago after their SUV hydroplaned on a highway, smashing into a parked truck.

The storms moved north and caught the Dallas area and beyond in the clutches of wild and unpredictable weather. A teenager in Garland lost his life yesterday when he was swept into a torrent of water he could not fight. I've heard reports of cars being swept into creeks, homes being dislodged from their foundations, and roads turned into rivers. The weather is flexing nature's muscles, showing us what little power we truly have over our environment.

I love watching powerful storms, but I have a profound respect for their almost unimaginable capacity to restructure the earth and sky and the futures we all count on.

There's melancholy in the air around me tonight. Not sure why.

Tomorrow is my wonderful wife's birthday. I've never surprised her with a gift of staggering meaning, and I don't have one on hand for tomorrow. I must do that one day. I want to do that. I want to give her a surprise that will bowl her over, but in a good way.

Tomorrow, I celebrate the birth of the love of my life. My gifts may be pale, my expressions may be underwhelming, but beneath it all I celebrate. She doesn't read this blog much, so she'll probably miss this post. But the rest of you, small group though you are, now know that I'm in love with my wife. Still. After 27+ years. And I like that.

Interesting Day--Unintended Road Trip

Interesting day, today.

My bastard of a car got me safely to the airport this morning, without even a hint of the odor of burnt rubber. Maybe yesterday's overwhelming odor did not come from the bastard, after all?

Because I misjudged how long the TSA gestapo-in-training lines would be, I arrived at the gate with only moments to spare. I got comfortably seated on the plane, had an uneventful flight to Austin, and caught a cab to my meeting, paying only $30 for the ride, not the $50 I had feared. Three hours after the meeting began, it was over. A fellow board member was good enough to give me a ride to the airport in her rented Toyota Highlander.

My flight was set to leave at 3:15 pm, so I tried to get an earlier one, beginning with the 1:00 pm flight. I was advised to go standby at the gate, which I did. I did not make the 1:00 pm flight. I tried for the 2:40 flight.

Periodically the gate staff informed us of flight delays on the 2:40 flight and the 3:15 flight, caused by weather in the Dallas area. By 4:30, they called all passengers who had flight connections in Dallas to the podium where they said they would attempt to get them re-routed on other flights. At about 5:00 pm, they announced that the 2:40 and the 3:15 flights were cancelled. They advised that all remaining passengers would be put on a "priority standby" list for the two remaining flights to Dallas.

I announced to a group of people near me that I doubted we'd get out today, thanks to the ongoing Dallas weather, and suggested we could rent a car and get there faster. After some conversation, two other guys latched onto the idea and said they wanted to drive. And so we agreed that the three of us would rent a vehicle and drive to Dallas. We introduced ourselves to one another, went to the main ticket counters to have our return tickets refunded, and went looking for rental cars. After being rebuffed by several rental car agencies, Avis finally came through with a mini-van that could be rented one-way to Dallas. One of the other guys offered to rent the van; he also drove it all the way to Dallas. By the time we got half way, around Waco, the full force of the storms that had delayed and then cancelled our flights hit us. Torrential rain, water rushing across the roadway, and blinding flashes of lightening followed by the explosive percussive booms of thunder accompanied us for most of the rest of the trip to Dallas.

When we finally arrived at Love Field, the other non-driver insisted on paying for the full rental. I tried to give him money, I even insisted he take some, but he refused. He said he was simply grateful to have had our company on the trip. So, I thanked both of them and we all went our separate ways. I got a ride to my car, which was parked off-site in a parking facility nearby, jumped in, and drove home on the waterlogged, slick, light-absorbing streets. And here I am. Just 18 hours since I woke up this morning, I am ready to go to bed again.

The Odor of Ancient Automobiles

If you read my only partially tongue-in-cheek post yesterday, you know that I'm still wrestling with transportation issues. By the end of yesterday's post, I had about decided to spend the money on repairing the old bastard and keeping it around. Hah! It must have been reading my blog...and it must not have liked the idea. It must have recoiled at the idea of being hard-driven by an angry geezer, a man who hurls insults on an aging car and threatens to thrust it into the jaws of an automotive shredder.

Today, as I was driving home from the office, an increasingly acrid odor of burning rubber filled my nostrils. I saw no smoke rising from my car, but I was caught behind some ancient old vehicles whose mufflers spewed nasty black soot, so, I assumed the odor was coming from my old bastard's nasty elders, themselves the progeny of a dangerous and fundamentally evil family of American cars.

My wife, upon entering the garage after I got home, immediately yelped at the odor. It was my car, it seems. I have yet to know what the problem is, but it's not a good sign. I have committed to being in Austin for a meeting tomorrow morning, so was planning on driving down, leaving the house at 5:00 am and returning just after lunch. The unknown cause of the burnt rubber odor has changed my mind. So, after spending $212 on an airline ticket, I am now committed to flying, then taking a $50 taxi ride or renting a car.

Wednesday, if I can, I will have the odor assessed if, that is, I can get the bastard to stay functional for tomorrow's trip to the airport and home again. I am not feeling much loyalty and love for the nameless bastard today. The shit!

Simple Transportation...Is Not Enough

I did it. I test drove a Honda CRV yesterday morning. It was a 2005 version with 41,000+ miles on it. I tried Carmax, but they were fresh out of Honda CRVs, so I visited the Honda dealer. Nice little vehicle, but after having driven my Toyota Avalon for ten years, the CRV seemed very cramped inside, especially the area for the driver's feet. So, that particular CRV was not for me because of the way in made my feet feel claustrophic...not to mention the fact that the Honda dealership wanted $22,000 for it. No thanks, I said. The young salesman then tried to convince me that the 2007 version with leather seats and all the bells and whistles I could ever want for $32,000+ was what I needed and would probably be better to my feet. No. But I poked my head into a Honda Element and liked what I saw, but probably not enough to buy one. Certainly not from the dealer. And I liked the Pilot, but I'm really wanting something that is roomy and gets good mileage and is stone-cold reliable. I may be dreaming.

OK, so I'm back to deciding whether I should spend $1,100 on my 10-year-old Avalon to get rid of the increasingly annoying, bone-jarring shudder caused by the broken motor mount and to repair the bad valves that are producing the rough idle and decreasing gas mileage. The other options are to keep the car as is, which is becoming increasingly less likely (I tend to scream loudly at the car's shuddering tremors every time I come to a stop at stoplights and stop signs, which is doing my psyche no good and is downright terrifying to the people who pull up next to me), or to replace the beast with another car.

I've tried to adopt my father's attitude about cars: "It's just transportation, son." My dad regularly made that comment when one of my brothers, the one five years older than I, tried to convince him that my dad's next car should have a spoiler on the trunk or should have special paint or should have a souped-up engine. Dad looked at cars a basic transportation. He definitely wanted some creature comforts, like air conditioning in the Texas heat, but the bells and whistles did not seem to matter to him. I've tried to embrace that. On occasion, I must admit I have failed miserably.

OK. I admit it. I'm not like my dad with respect to transportation. In fact, I may be the antithesis of my dad in some respects, when it comes to cars. Let me explain.

I like leather upholstery in a car, preferably self-cleaning seats that automatically self-treat the leather at regular intervals. I like high-end stereo systems and would like them even more if they came with a mechanism to automatically retrieve and store music that I might possibly enjoy from all new music from all parts of the earth. I believe I would love dual-climate controls because they would make my wife happier. In fact, I'd like a climate control system that would enable me to select, on a sliding scale, everything from howling, sub-zero temperature blizzard on one end of the spectrum to baking, steel-melting heat at the other...and I want to be able to precisely put these microclimates anywhere I wish in the car, at the same time.

Sitting higher than people arouned me appeals to me. I also like the idea of having an eardrum-breaking-capable horn that can be aimed at undesirable drivers with whom I come in to proximity. The availability of raw power that enables me to roar away from a stop at breakneck speed has its appeal. A top speed of 275 would be reasonable.

Ideally, my car will be absolutely dead quite inside, will have phenomenal road-feel in the steering, and will have a moon roof, sun roof, 1000 cup holders, heated and cooled seats, power windows, power door locks, power trunk lock, automatic self-parking and a self-cleaning exterior, an an auto-shampooing carpet inside. I want to be able to transport 4x8 sheets of plywood, 14-foot pieces of lumber, and 7 passengers comfortably, but I require a vehicle small enough that I can easily park it in a very small garage and that is highly maneuverable in heavy traffic. Something the size of a Toyota Echo on the outside and a Hummer limousine on the inside would just about fit the bill.

My expectation is that my vehicle will get at least 170 miles per gallon of gas...when it requires gas, which should be seldom. My vehicle should be able to use greenhouse gases for power, turning them into...nothing. The ideal car, for me, will be made entirely of recycled materials and half of the less-than-twenty-thousand-dollar pricetag will be used to feed, clothe, shelter, and teach the poor and downtrodden of the world. Naturally, I will expect the price of gas to quadruple, which I support, but demand will plummet, which I also support.

OK, now that I have decided what kind of car I want, I guess it's just a matter of going out and negotiating the best price. If I can't find a price I can live with, in a car that possesses all my non-negotiable characteristics, I may be forced to repair the Avalon.