Where’s my torch? Has anyone seen my torch?

Posted on by July 4, 2014

It’s dark again.

I wake up early in the morning and it is dark still. Even though I slept in….and it’s 6:00 in the morning now….it’s dark.

If I needed to go outside and wanted to see what I was doing, I might look for my flashlight.

I’d need a flashlight to see.

Did you know that in England, they have a bunch of different words for things that we use all the time?

Like….an elevator is a “lift”….or, if you needed to look under the hood of your car, you might be lifting the “bonnet” instead of the hood to do it.

They’ve got a million of them.

There’s lots of different words that British people use.

If I was going to look for a flashlight in the morning, I might have been looking for a “torch”.

Isn’t that wacky?

Instead of only having the “problem” of figuring out where to go to look at fireworks, I might be trying to learn all these weird British words.

That would be crazy hard.

It would be a pretty different world if the British had kicked our butts in that war we fought with them.

The 4th of July just wouldn’t be the same if that had happened.

I guess that we would have gotten used to it.

I don’t know if we would have ended up being really heavily taxed slaves or something like that.

Who knows what would have happened if the British had won…and were a little PO’d at us for trying to break free.

They might have been kind of vindictive if they’d won that war.

I’m glad that we call a flashlight….a flashlight.

It’s a big day.

I get to stay home from work.

We will do something entertaining….and will probably go somewhere to watch “the rocket’s red glare” later in the evening.

That should be a whole lot more fun than trying to remember that our embarrassing fanny pack is supposed to be called a “bum bag”….or that the pacifier that our baby isn’t ever satisfied with and won’t use should be called a “dummy”…or even that it’s not “football” anymore….it’s “soccer”.

If only for the sanctity of my vocabulary….I’m glad that we’re Americans.

I like being free.

“God Bless the USA” Lee Greenwood

 

(In the morning, when I’m writing this blog…and, often, most of the rest of the day….I’m in “smarty pants” mode….screwing around, kidding around. So when I decided to include this song, I thought it might be kind of funny in an ironic and completely hip way. I’ve heard this a million times on the radio. It’s probably not anything close to “art”. It’s bombastic and overstated…it’s not anything close to subtle…but…it’s pretty great. There’s nothing….nothing…. wrong with loving your country and the people who live in it. Of course…it’s a good thing to love the people who live in other countries, too. After all, this ball we all live on is pretty small….right?  Enough about them, though…this is our day. Happy 4th….)

 

Just another quick thought….and then I’ll go. Didn’t it used to bother people if you wore a really tight flag and jumped around in it? I can’t remember if people didn’t like that…in the “olden days”.

 

rainbow box

Posted on by July 3, 2014

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There’s a feature in WordPress where you can type something and then save it as a “draft”….to be pulled up and finished later when you understand more about what you were thinking at the time.

I really don’t usually know what I’m thinking in the moment I’m thinking it….much less what I was thinking two months ago when I typed “rainbow box” and then didn’t know what to do with it.

So….I guess that what I’m saying is that I really don’t know what that means.

I think that Jenny got a box of thread that was multi-colored….and I thought that “rainbow box” was kind of funny…or beautiful….or poetic…or something.

It might have been about thread…or crayons or something….

There must have been a reason that I hit “save draft”.

(Ah….I remember now! It was a new box of cloth diapers… multi-hued and beautiful….a fantastic box of colors.)

You don’t hold a real rainbow in a box…and the box was never the important part, anyway….

You can’t even take a picture that shows what a real rainbow means and put it in a box for later.

You can’t do that.

When the good stuff is gone…it’s really gone….except for the memory of what we think that we saw.

Nate woke up at 3:00 this morning after having a bad dream.

I woke up when Jenny asked him if he was OK…. silhouetted in the door frame.

“I had a bad dream.”

She started to get up and then realized that Sparrow was more awake than she thought she was….so then I was encouraged to get up and take Nate back to bed.

(We have a chance of sleeping if Nate doesn’t sleep with us. If we can head him off at the pass and go back to his room with him before he has a chance to crawl up into our bed, the evening rolls more smoothly.)

I realized this morning that you really shouldn’t try to analyze a 4-year-old’s bad dream situation at 3 in the morning.

This morning, I was too comatose to try that.

The best that I could do was stumble and direct while we made our way back to his bed….where, miraculously, he quickly fell back asleep.

If I had been even a little more lucid, I might have said something stupid like “what was your bad dream about?! What were you thinking… dreaming like that? What happened in your head that you woke up scared?”

I don’t ask crazy questions like that….but I have been known to open a can of worms before….and I realized this morning that it’s not something I should ever do.

Nobody wants to think about the things that scared them.

A four-year-old doesn’t want to think about scary things once….when they were dreaming….and they sure don’t want to talk about them when they’re awake and can really give it some deep fostered introspection.

So I took Nate back to his bed, he fell asleep easily while I was there with him, and then I decided to just stay up when I crept out of his room and quietly closed his door.

And….here I am…awake and moving my fingers on plastic keys.

I don’t know still what “rainbow box” means….I guess that I just liked the way it sounded.

Some of this stuff you just have to take at face value.

All the good stuff and all the bad stuff….we carry it somewhere inside of us.

Maybe that’s what the rainbow box is for?

this ain’t no funky video….this ain’t such as that

Posted on by July 2, 2014

One thing about a library or the internet, it’s a sure reminder that you just don’t know everything there is to know yet.

I was looking for a video about funk music this morning and ran across this.

The description for the video is in a language that is not mine….so I don’t know much about the artist or the country of origin.

I could figure it out if I wasn’t too lazy….but I’m too lazy this morning.

This guy is so relaxed.

I appreciated that.

Maybe that’s a new category for the record bins….”morning funk”.

Any funk is good funk, in my book.

I’ve complained about how things are too easy….that it’s too easy to discover new music….and that making it easy has taken away some of the joy.

Finding new music was a community effort…digging in record bins was physical….it was something you earned when you found somebody new to listen to.

But….this random easiness that YouTube provides….that’s kind of fun, too.

So….I’ll give the curmudgeon routine a rest and stop complaining about the differences in how we discover new music for a while.

“Why, back in my day, we had to dig our records out of two feet of snow….AFTER running to the store through a hurricane and dodging 27 lightning bolts!!! Now, that was how you discover new music!!! That’s when it meant something to find something new to listen to….when you earned it!!!”

Here’s another video by this guy Paolo Nutini…..

Thanks, YouTube!

Here’s some info about Paolo Nutini…..

Awwwwwww…..what they heck….one more video and I’ll go.

Good morning…..

the gift that keeps on….

Posted on by July 1, 2014

I slept in this morning.

It was 5:24 when I got up….so I knew that I’d have to get on it if I was going to get all my morning rituals done before I made my lunch and jumped in the car for work.

I was late….and I was a directed bullet of a man….in a hurry and highly motivated.

When I turned on the computer, I got another message screen…like the one I got yesterday…. that said that Windows was applying the updates that must have downloaded….. yesterday.

OK…I can wait. I have to wait. I have no other option but to wait. I can be patient when I’m forced to.

I can’t wind the computer up any tighter to make it go faster….I can’t spank the squirrels to make the revolutions increase in speed….there’s nothing that I can do….

I wait.

And then, it finishes….and a new screen comes on and says that the updates were being configured.

So….I wait…..again.

Then the computer restarts.

I’m ready.

And then it starts all over again…..more updating and configuring and applying.

Urghhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnn.

But….good things come to those who wait and soon all the monkey shines are done and I’m staring at the place where I can put my password in and make the festivities begin.

Finally….THE FESTIVAL OF MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I don’t know what the hurry was….I tend to follow me around most of the time.

I’m with myself alot.

We spend all our time together.

I wonder how much of our lives we give over to waiting for something….some machine or gizmo….to warm up so that we can use it?

I guess that if you’re a real luddite and aren’t into machinery or technology that you’d still spend some time sharpening the knife.

I guess that you can’t get away from the waiting.

Maybe it’s like that old saying about complaining that you had no shoes….until you met a man who had no feet.

I shouldn’t complain about waiting for my old computer to warm up.

I should celebrate that I knew how to replace the hard drive.

All of this “updating” stuff is just a sign that it’s continuing to get better.

“Windows” is helping to heal my computer!

That’s what’s going on!

Windows is helping me!!

Windows is my friend.

I don’t know about that, actually.  I think that when you get down to it, Windows is really kind of a TOOL.

But it makes the plastic box whir….I don’t know how it does that, really….and when it “whirs”, it means that it’s “go time” and I’m back in the saddle.

I do think it’s funny how willing I become to sit and wait for something to complete a process….or to stand in line with all the other people waiting for something ahead of them to complete.

That’s civilization, I suppose.

An uncivilized man would bust a move and go kill something and eat it.

An uncivilized man wouldn’t stand in line to buy a doughnut.

I’m a civilized man….and I wait.

Anyway, all I know is what I’ve learned….and that’s malleable as heck.

“Learned” is open to interpretation, too.

Just because somebody tried to teach me doesn’t mean that it was all learned.

 

“That was funny. Now….let’s laugh.”

Posted on by June 30, 2014

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I get a kick out of our children.

Now, the big kids can be hilarious….but their humor is a little more mature than the younger ones, so what they say is less random and not quite as surprising as the weird things the little guys say.

Of course, at this point, Sparrow is practicing non-verbal humor for the most part.

At about 7 months, her vocabulary is kind of limited.

So I guess that leaves our 4-year-old to fill the weirdness gap.

I think that he handles that pretty well.

He says some funny things.

A build up like that is kind of like someone at a party announcing the punch line with a disclaimer that it’s going to be the most hilarious thing that anyone has ever heard.

It’s not usually very funny after the disclaimer is released.

You just don’t do that.

You can’t give the element of surprise away.

You can’t say, “Wait for it….here it comes…..it’s going to be hilarious….wait for it….the funny part….it’s going to be great…..OK….NOW!!” and have anyone laugh.

It doesn’t work like that.

Nate was sitting on Jenny’s lap the other day and made the announcement that “That was funny. Now….let’s laugh!”

Some of the humor of that was in the delivery, of course.

Maybe you had to be there.

See what I mean about announcing that something funny is about to happen?

It’s not always so funny when you forecast it.

But it was funny when a little guy said it.

I love the confidence behind a statement like that, too.

You have to be fairly sure of your place in the world to announce that it’s time for everybody to laugh.

Maybe it’s something that only hits you hard if you’re sitting on the porch of a little mountain house, in a green mountain valley, on a humid but cool end of June Sunday afternoon?

Maybe the humor is conditional?

Maybe it only works in the right setting?

Nah….Nate would be hilarious if we were sitting in a McDonalds in the middle of Detroit.

Nate would be hilarious….and if he gave me the instruction that it was time to laugh, I’d probably find myself obeying it.

I think that the thing that makes the little moments within your family so hilarious is probably the same thing that let’s you sit through a slide show or a home movie and find it really pleasant…while someone else outside of the family might find it kind of excruciating.

You love your family….and the things that they do, for the most part, bring you pleasure.

That’s a deep realization.

Deep.

I try not to let a 4-year-old boss me around too much.

That’s not really good parenting.

It happens from time to time….but I try to maintain the “upper hand”.

I’m the boss, after all….

But if Nate gave me the instruction that it was “time to laugh”, I’d probably pay attention to him.

Nate knows funny.

It’s not always subtle….but it’s true…so when he says, “Now….let’s laugh” I say….

“Sir, yes. sir….HOW LOUD?”

 

 

 

It takes more than Jack to build a house…..

Posted on by June 29, 2014

I was looking up “time-lapse” videos of house building to use in this morning’s blog when I came across this….

There’s hundreds…or at least 30 videos…. on YouTube about insanely wealthy people in the world…or places where a bunch of rich people tend to live.

Holy smokes.

That’s crazy how much money these people have.

It’s crazy that anyone is willing to sit through a video of a bunch of rich people spending their money.

I wonder if I’d watched a bunch of these videos before I started trying to borrow to buy the property down the road if I would have had an easier time of it?

If I could have sashayed into the bank and told the loan officer that I’d watched all the videos that I could about rich people if they would have gone easier on me?

I wonder if it would have shown them that I really had a handle on “money”….and that my time management skills were exemplary?

“How did he find the time in his busy day to watch all the videos of other people who have money?! How did he do that?”

It’s insane how much money some of these people have.

THESE PEOPLE HAVE A LOT OF MONEY!

I’d rather build a cabin in the woods…learn to raise and race sled dogs….grow most of my own food….live on the edge of the places where people stop finding it easy to get to….than wear a big gold watch and ride around on a giant boat.

I don’t need some servant to …subserviently….tell me that I’m the greatest.

But….how does this happen to people?

How do they get so darn rich?

Is it something that their “Daddy” does for them?

Do they have some guy digging in a diamond mine do it for them?

How does this happen that somebody gets to ride around on a really big boat?

I’m just curious.

Of course, I’m rich in ways that these people will never understand.

We laugh if we find something really cool at the thrift store….and then put it back on the shelf because we really don’t need it.

We go to get some falafel and hummus at the Pita House in Greenville…and feel like KINGS and QUEENS because the food is THAT GOOD.

We live a rich life…but don’t have the income yet to call ourselves “wealthy”.

I don’t think that I’m jealous of these people.

Now…I am kind of jealous of the folks traveling the world in their converted school buses.

Some beautiful little “tiny home”….freedom from stuff like most of what I see in this video….that’s what I’m jealous of.

That’s what I aspire to….something a little different….or a lot different than what these people in this video seem to have.

You know, though…it would be a blast to be a stealth millionaire….living low on the hog and not worrying about the money that I have but don’t feel the need to spend.

That would be pretty cool to be in a situation like that.

I could live with having some money….but not flaunting it.

Money could be a problem that would be worth figuring out how to handle……

And, if I had some money, look how easy and fast it is to build a house!

Who would have thought it was that easy?

 

 

I can’t remember all the stuff I have to know.

Posted on by June 28, 2014

blue screen of death

Oh, man….I thought that I was such a royal smartypants.

Our computer went down a week ago….and I fixed it.

Opposable thumbs and a rapidly firing, caffeine fueled neocortex helped me resurrect the dying hard drive….and I was back in business.

I didn’t have to spend money on a new computer when the old one worked just fine.

And then….a week or so later…it went down for the count.

It went down for some sort of count….I don’t know what kind.

“MBR”….corruption….locked out of all my fine information.

Yesterday, I got the replacement hard drive and installed it and put Windows back on it and everything is starting to work like it used to.

Actually, right now it works a lot better than it used to.

There isn’t anything clogging it up to slow it down.

It’s all fresh.

It’s like a closet with a single pair of shoes that I wear everyday.

I know where everything is and it makes me happy to see all the space and potential.

(I mention the shoes because I bought a pair of Keen boots at the thrift store yesterday that were too good a bargain to pass up. I didn’t need another pair of boots…but I bought them anyway. My closet is full because I don’t have a handle on my impulse control….)

One of the things that I worked on for about 5 minutes this morning was trying to reconstruct my bookmarks.

I could remember some of the important ones….like the financial sites I need to visit….the shopping….Lloydsblog….cooltools…..but for the life of me…..(THE LIFE OF ME!!!)….I couldn’t remember many of the rest of them.

All of my really important references were gone.

Years of collecting the links to the things that I had to know were somewhere else…locked in a dying hard drive that I couldn’t access right now.

I couldn’t remember what I had to know at some point.

That’s disturbing to realize that I can’t remember all of this really important stuff.

Except for the memory of the loss, I really don’t think that I’ll miss it all that much.

And it could be that some of it will float through as I go through my day and I’ll have a flash of recognition and I can bookmark (again) that bass guitar site that I never used….or the site about cob building….or any of the other clicks that I made and never went back to.

I feel so light! I feel so unburdened! I feel like a baby….just starting out…..

When it’s all gone suddenly…like the wind just swooped in and carried it all away….it’s pretty obvious that most of the stuff that I “clutter with” is not going to be missed.

It’s not going to be missed….and it’s not going to be remembered.

The fun was in the discovery, anyway….not the clicking and holding on forever part.

This is all about bits and bytes….jotted notes in a hurricane… ripped out of my hand by a blowing wind.

It’s nothing serious like a life or a love.

Silly computers.

That’s all…just silly computers.

“Money Can’t Save Your Soul” Savoy Brown

NAKED

Posted on by June 27, 2014

Do you think that my children and the people that I work with would take me even more seriously if I stared at them the way this guy looks out at the video audience?

I’m not making fun of this guy….I have one of his books, and he’s pretty good.

He knows his stuff.

He walks his talk.

I like his thought that “life becomes boring” after the survival issues are taken care of.

When you get your stuff together….and all your ducks are in a row….life becomes kind of boring.

Maybe we like to throw a monkey wrench into the works just to keep things a little more exciting?

Adrenaline junkies looking for a rock to trip over so that the hike down the trail is more interesting.

Nah….I like smooth.  It’s hard enough to make it through life trying to avoid the stumbling blocks…why mix it up to keep things amusing?

That’s crazy.

I’m taking a day off of work today.

That’s my version of “mixing it up”.

Sitting in front of a computer screen, drinking some coffee, listening to Sparrow “talking to Mommy” in the next room, waiting for everyone to wake up.

High adventure.

We saw a rainbow the other day that looked like it ended at our neighbor’s rental trailer up behind their house.

That was funny….

Maybe the pot of gold was just a little ways up the road?

How many “sure thing” adventures are started because we’re convinced that the “pot of gold” is just over the next hill….or behind an old trailer?

How many journeys have I taken because I convinced myself that there was something better just a little bit on down the road?

How dissatisfied have I made myself because I was immobile…but convinced that there was someplace else that I needed to be?

Where I am is pretty great….and I can make it greater.

I don’t need a high mountain desert to be happy.

I can love that….think about it…ponder living there….but I don’t have to color my worldview with thoughts of the greener grass (or rolling tumbleweeds and harsh winter winds) on some other side of the fence somewhere else in the world.

A shower…finish my coffee…pet the cat….do any of those things….and I’m back in the groove and happy where I am.

My family will be up soon and I’ll be happy again.

But, you know….we never discover anything “better” when we won’t imagine that there might be something pretty interesting over the next hill.

The seed of dissatisfaction must be there for a reason…..

I guess that it’s all how we channel the dissatisfaction that makes or breaks us.

A springboard or a gangplank….it all depends on how we use it.

Chris Rice is a recording artist who does some beautiful and deep Christian music. In one of his songs, he sings that imagining the the greatest gift of Heaven might be the chance to get beyond “himself”.

That’s pretty profound….leave yourself behind.

That sounds good.

This is a self-absorbed blog….one of millions out there.

I’m not dissatisfied, really….just anxious to see what I can make happen….just anxious to see if I can pull something good together….and make sure that I notice and appreciate it when it does happen…..

I need to make sure that I stop whining at some point and wake up and notice that IT’S HERE ALREADY.

What the heck am I looking for?

 

funny monkey videos

Posted on by June 26, 2014

What is it about flatulent monkeys that’s always sure to get a laugh?

Sparrow was on my lap last night and was getting sort of cranky…..so I took her over to the computer and showed her these videos.

I don’t know what she thought of them.

I think that it hit a little too close to home…..she’s kind of like a monkey in some ways.

I think that it kind of caught her attention for a second….watching a baby covered in fur….but then I think she figured out pretty quickly that these things weren’t babies….they were doing things like stealing hats that no baby can easily do….so she lost interest.

I woke up late….so this post will be a fast and quick one.

This blog ain’t the boss of me, anyways.

better living through chemistry

Posted on by June 25, 2014

I have had so many weird, résumé killing jobs in my lifetime.

When you’re opportunistic and a bad planner, you can do that.

Take weird jobs, I mean.

Someone says, “Hey…I know who is hiring” and if I needed a job, off I went.

That’s how I ended up working at camps for 8 of my summers….a friend at college pulled me to an interview with the (then) director, and BAM….I WAS HIRED!!!

Good fun summers….but not a résumé builder….just another questionable blip in a sea of questionable blips.

One of the jobs that I took was to be the produce manager at a small health food store in Hendersonville.

The main business and money-maker for the owners was selling vitamins.

Of course, the owner liked to tout the benefits of taking a lot of the right vitamins.

His phrase was, “Better living through chemistry.”

I guess that he would have been a lot more UNHEALTHY if he hadn’t been taking all those vitamins.

It wasn’t just a matter of taking the right combination of vitamins, either.

There was something important in the equation about taking the right combination of EXPENSIVE vitamins.

He hated the people who came in and asked if we carried the kind of vitamins that Walmart sold.

I think that he thought they were low class….and deluded.

They weren’t going to buy his expensive vitamins.

I always thought that the “better living through chemistry” stuff was kind of weird.

He wasn’t really healthy…..just full of vitamins.

Of course, I am making fun of his “chemistry phrase” while I sit and type and try to get jacked on a french press of cheap Costco coffee.

I’ll do this after I take my cheap vitamins with half a coffee cup of orange juice.

So it would be hypocritical of me to come down too hard on an overweight guy with a funny catch phrase.

I must believe in some of the benefits of chemistry….or I wouldn’t stick to this routine so faithfully.

I’m not that lazy a creature of habit to do it otherwise.

Now, they do talk….all “them folks”…about people having chemistry together.

I think that I believe in that kind of chemistry more than the vitamins.

I know that it can make your life better to have good chemistry together.

Jenny and I spend all our time together.

I think that we have good chemistry.

I hope that she would agree.

Sometimes, I think that she’d say that I was sort of a goob….and she’d be right.

She’s younger than me….but sometimes she’s the mature one….

(“Sometimes?” she’d say….)

Did you ever see one of those old Westerns where the cowboys are working with some really old dynamite that they found somewhere….and they’re talking about how they better be careful because the dynamite is old and really unstable and one false move and it could all blow up and they’d blow up with it….if they weren’t really careful.

I think that Jenny puts up with my “old dynamite” moves pretty well.

I’m only kidding….I’m NICE….

I’m nice….and really stable.