Random Access

Another (fairly) early to bed, early to rise morning. I think that I am liking this.

A few weeks (?) ago, I was talking about the Schoolhouse Rock! series of edu-toons. I mentioned how neatly packaged the educational information was with catchy tunes; I’m willing to bet that most of you can recite (parts of) “Conjunction Junction” or “The Preamble” or “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly (Get Your Adverbs Here).”

I’ve mentioned before, I like cartoons. No big surprise there. One that I used to watch regularly was Animaniacs. I was listening to my Animaniacs CDs the other day and I realized that the music writing staff at Warner Brothers is (was) equally talented. And they had a much more twisted sense of humor… but, they had a little more “free reign” when it came to irreverence than their SHR! counterparts. Some of the more interesting selections are:

• Yakko’s World, which lists all of the countries of the world (imagine that), with the notable exception of South Africa;
• Wakko’s America, which names the states and their capitals;
• Dot’s Song, a parody of the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme;
• I Am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual, a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General;”
• And three of my personal favorites:
  • The Monkey Song
  • Yakko’s Universe: “It’s a great big universe, and we’re all really puny, we’re just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney…”
  • I’m Mad – You have to appreciate a song that has the lines: Are we there yet? I’m tired. I’m hungry. How far? My nose is snotty, need to move my body, gotta use the potty, better stop the car.

If you get a chance to find these songs (or CDs), get ’em! They’re entertaining… and even educational, in a couple of cases.

Well, that’s it for now. I think that I’ll go read for a bit before work.

Peace.

Wednesday. Three down, two to go. And, it’s a three-day weekend.

• Work was relatively uneventful.
• Working out was relatively uneventful, too. As a personal test, I decided to try pressing higher-than-normal-for-me weights. I did a few reps of 175 lbs and it wasn’t too bad. Then, I took my sanity and common sense, put them neatly in the locker room and did a couple of reps of 195 lbs. This wasn’t too bad, either. And I have the personal satisfaction of knowing that I can do it. Now all I have to do is work up to doing full sets at those weights…

Quote of the Day: I came across tonight’s quote completely by accident. I was watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien, which I almost never do, and they were doing the “In the Year 2000” sketch. Apparently, Mr. T (yes, Mr. “I was on The A-Team” T) has a recurring role/part/whatever on the show for certain sketches; “In the Year 2000” is one of them. They made various “predictions” about 2000 and then…

Mr. T: “50,000,000 people will watch the series finale of Friends, where it will finally be revealed that New York City does in fact have black people.”

As funny as the quote itself was, it was even more funny to watch Mr. T try – with only nominal success – not to crack up.

Peace.

Life, on the other side of the workday:

• As I said earlier, it snowed. What I didn’t know then was that it was going to snow, off and on, all day. And, according to Ye Olde Channel of Weather Prognostication, we are still looking at three more days of snow in the next week.
• Work wasn’t bad: There was a steady flow of mail and, miracle of miracles, they only moved us once.
• Had lunch, with Rick and Julia, from the home of the Colonel’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices.
• Worked out.
• Came home and apparently konked-out for over an hour on the living room. And while I am a proponent of naps, I typically prefer taking them in fairly traditional places: chair/sofa, bed, car. The floor is typically reserved for those “when nowhere else is available” times. Oh, well.

And now, sleep. Again. This time: In the bed.

Peace.

I actually got to bed at a decent hour last night and woke up a little after 08:00 this morning… and I feel good. Of course, this is only the first day of attempting to modify/normalize my schedule; we’ll see how it goes.

It is snowing. Not much, but it is snow. According to The Weather Channel, it’s supposed to snow two more times this week. This forecast has changed three times in the past couple of days: one day of snow, six days, and now three. *shrug*

Off to finish getting ready for work.

Peace.

Today wasn’t a bad day, even if it was a Monday.

• Work wasn’t bad… even though Dee wasn’t there, and Rick and Julia left early.
• I even stayed the entire day, although I toyed with the idea of leaving early.
• Dad called: They talked to Rana tonight. She’s in her new village/town now; she seems to like it and she’s doing well.

That covers the highlights of the day.

Peace.

The Ravens looked more like an NFL team this week than the high school JV team of last weekend. With a 20 – 3 win over the Dolphins, they are no longer wild cards. Next Sunday, they face the Pittsburgh Steelers; the teams met twice during the regular season – each team won a game.

As for the rest of the day, it has been rather uneventful. I think that the only other highlights of the day are:

• Talking to Dad and family in Baltimore;
• taking a nap.

But on the whole, I can’t complain.

Peace.

UGH.

That’s about the ONLY way to describe it. I have been up since 05:00 Saturday morning. And I only had roughly three (3) hours of sleep before that. Yay insomnia!!! Of course, being up that early allowed me to get these (1, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8) pictures.

The rest of the day:

• Watched some cartoons. Saturday mornings were made for kids… even big kids. And, I discovered that Kids’ WB is going to scale back their Pokèmon episodes to only ONE per Saturday! This means that soon it won’t be Pokèmon-A-Gogo on Saturday mornings!
• Went to Adrian’s and hung out with him for a bit today. He had a couple of things that he wanted to bounce off of me – fortunately, they were just ideas and concepts and not bullets.
• Came home, picked up Jess, went to dinner at Guru’s and took her to work.
• Came home, started some graphics work, went bowling… and no one else showed up. So, I bowled alone. Seven games (167,118,102,176,133,145,161). Bill showed up in the middle of the seventh game. After that game, we went to the nearby Village Inn.
• Came home.

Here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) are the rest of the day’s pictures.

And finally: Happy Birthday to !

Peace.

I could not find my garden yesterday.

This is not as odd as it sounds. My garden is not a physical place. Yet. In its current form, it is a mental construct: A sand and rock Zen garden. It is not massive, roughly 15′ x 30′ (approx. 5m x 10m), but it is mine. It is my retreat. I go there to find my center and balance; it is usually a peaceful place. Friday, I could not find it. This realization led to an epiphany:

I need to find my garden again. I shall rebuild it. It is also time to find myself. In rebuilding my garden, I shall also deconstruct and reconstruct myself.

This is not a one-time metamorphosis. It will be a continual evolution. It will encompass almost all aspects of my life. “He’s not concerned with yesterday, he knows constant change is here today.” – New World Man

I read somewhere that most of our habits are firmly entrenched by the time we reach age 30. That same article said that while habits can be changed and modified after this age, it becomes more difficult to do so. I don’t view that as an obstacle. It’s a challenge. And it has been far too long since I have presented myself with an adequate challenge. I am looking forward to this.

…and mighty shall I be.

Peace.

Friday – a pretty average day.

I wound up taking a nap around 1:30 am, but don’t feel like doing a lot of writing now, so the rest of the Friday post will wait until sometime after the sun has made an appearance.

Peace.

Donnerstag. Welche bedeudet daß Morgen ist Freitag. Welche bedeudet das Die Wochenende beginnt Morgen!

And for those of you who don’t spreche Deutsche: “Thursday. Which means that tomorrow is Friday. Which means that the weekend begins tomorrow!“

• Worked until 18:00.
• Went with Julia to Jonni’s CD release. The name of the CD is Pendulum and it is available from DreamAttik. Land, who stayed for the full shift, joined us after he got off work. As usual, Jonni put on a good show. Afterwards, we hung out and talked to Jonni for a bit.
• Went to Macaroni Grill for dinner.
• Came home.

And, it seems that somewhere along the line, I missed a call from my father; he left a voicemail, though: My globetrotting sister sent a card and some pictures from the Ukraine. Now all I have to remember to do is to call Dad back and relay the contents of the list o’ stuff that she wants sent to her.

Dave called again this morning. This time, however, he called while I was still at home and in all of my pre-work glory. We talked for a half-hour.

Pictures of the Day are here.

That’s about it, so off to find a quick snack and then… off to The Dreaming and the care of Lord Morpheus!

*sigh*

This morning, Xena (Warrior Kitty) decided to outdo Sissy by waking me up a little after 07:00. She apparently decided that she had gone all night/early morning without being petted and that she was due for some overt signs of affection: She jumped on the bed, stuck her head under my hand and nudged it until I woke up. If nothing else, I have to give her credit and style points for creative thinking.

Today’s events include:

• Working an abbreviated day.
• Going to my friend Jonni’s CD release show/party; this is his second solo CD. He’s a local musician who’s been trying to get this out for a while; it would have been out last fall, but he got an opportunity to go on tour with a pretty well-known group, so he’s been gone for about four months. You can find out more about him here.

Time to get a cup or two of caffeinated goodness and face the day.

Peace.

Average Wednesday. Nothing too much out of the ordinary to report.

I have a good group of friends, here and back home. The kind of friends that I can go for days (or weeks or months) without talking to and when we do speak/meet, aside from a quick “What’s happened since…” recap, it’s like no time has elapsed. I realize that I have good friends, but every once in a while, I get a karmic kick-in-the-pants reminder:

My friend Dave called me this afternoon. I haven’t talked to him in AT LEAST three (3) months. I tried calling him over the holidays, but I missed speaking to him. Thanks to this new-fangled technology, I was able to leave him a message! And that was that. He called while I was at work, and unable to take the call; when I called him back, he wasn’t at home. *sigh* Once again, we’re playing phone-tag. Shortly after I moved to Utah, we had a running series of “Hey, sorry I missed you…” messages. He left one that I kept on the voicemail for months after I received it: It was a stream of consciousness story-thing (at least a minute-and-a-half long). There is no way to accurately, nor adequately, try to explain it other than that. Today’s message was nothing like that, but it was definitely a Dave message. Hopefully, it won’t take long for us to synch our schedules and get in touch with each other.

Things that make you go “What the Hell?!”: I woke up around 08:15 am, this morning and I have yet to determine the exact reason for that. Upon realizing that I was indeed awake, I became aware of a scratching sound coming from… somewhere. A few seconds later, I had figured out what it was: Sissy the Wonder Kitten was in the litter box covering her offering. This was normal. That she did it for about two minutes… *shrug* It’s normal for her, sometimes. I’d call her “anal retentive,” but given the circumstances, that might be a bit oxymoronic. She weighs about 8.5 lbs (just short of 4 kilos, for you metric types); short of turning herself inside out, there should be NO way for her to need two minutes of scratching in the litter to cover it. While I appreciate the fact that she was trying to be neat and tidy – and I do appreciate it, I just don’t understand her sometimes. But she’s my cat. And she’s cute. So, I take it all in stride.

Okay, that’s all the news for now.

Peace.

Today was a rather typical Tuesday.

• Work.
• Gym.
• Home.

That’s covers most of the highlights.

I forgot to mention something last night: The phone rang last night around 10:00 pm. I figured that it was Jess calling about something going on at work. Wrong. It was Dad. He’s not usually a big watch-sports-on-TV person, but he was watching the Ravens game last night. After the Ravens’ defense scored the game’s only touchdown, he called to:

• confirm that the game was all over but the shouting, and
• that he was going to pick up a copy or two of the Baltimore newspaper for me – I’d asked him to get them for me IF Baltimore managed to win.

Definitely one of the coolest parents in the world.

Quote of the Day: I was watching Simon & Simon tonight. Yeah, yeah… I know, it’s old and a little cheesy at times, but it was up there with Magnum, P.I. for me way back when. In tonight’s episode: Rick and A.J.’s uncle (played by John Astin), sends Rick a doll, in tropical skirt and top and a lei…. with a digital clock in its navel.

A.J.: “WHY does he always have to send you one of these things just before he breezes into town?”
Rick:“It’s a tradition!”
A.J.: “Thanksgiving is a tradition; this is a fetish!”

Peace.

Rainy Days and Mondays may have always gotten Karen Carpenter down, but today was a good Monday for me.

• Neither my dad nor I had to turn our respective Circuit Cities into smoking craters. They FINALLY got the whole return issue correct.
• I only worked a half-day.
• The Ravens beat the Vikings and clinched a spot in the Wild Card Race.

Indeed, it was a good day.

More later…. maybe.

Peace.

It all comes down to this.

The Ravens play the Vikings tonight for the final AFC Wild Card slot. Win or lose, they have done pretty well this season; of course any season that you come away with a winning record is a good one. And while they may not have had as impressive a showing as they did during the last half of last season, not to mention the fact that they are last season’s Super Bowl champions, they have done a great job of bringing professional football back to Maryland (even though the ‘Skins play in Maryland, that doesn’t count).

Peace. And, Go Ravens!