Sunday, January 29, 2006

Garden Update - 01/29/06

Planted Brussels Sprouts (Burpee 53967A, "Tasty Nuggets Hybrid," purchased in 2006 direct from Burpee) in seed cups #01-#03, two seeds per cup. Watered by filling tray up above holes in cups; left water for four hours, then drained. Packet says seedlings emerge in 10-21 days.

Note: this comment actually added on 2/11; decided to keep a Garden log here as well as on my computer, but will be putting the dates as to when it actually occurred.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

I Crack Me Up

Over the holidays, during a family get together for SWMBO's side of our family, Cousin Jim was talking about something he does to amuse himself while traveling alone. He'll go into a restaurant and pretend he doesn't speak English. He'll hold the joke throughout the entire visit, pointing at pictures on the menu and using very broken English to communicate what he wants for dinner. Granted, it might not bring the house down at a stand-up comedy convention or make for a regular sit-com series, but what I found amusing is that he amused himself.

Thing is, I travel a fair amount by myself, though not overnight as much as in the past. However, I do spend hours in the car alone; for example, since the new year began I've probably clocked around forty hours or so of solitary drive time. During these drives I often do things to entertain myself: tell myself stories, get into running discussions with (not on) the radio, hold bottle-flipping world championships (extra points when meeting an eighteen wheeler on a bridge) with commentary from Michaels and Madden, and Swaney (not the girl) on the sidelines, and many, many others. Any of these can go on for a half-hour at a time.

I often end up laughing out loud--sometimes to tears--from this silly stuff. Doing so, I've often wondered how many other folks amuse themselves in such a manner. It's nice to see, from Cousin Jim's description, that I'm not alone with such imbecilic behavior. And I will be trying out the "no English" routine soon, though probably with an inadvertent deep-south accent. I expect it'll crack me up - and, after all, that's the point; it's for my own amusement.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Weekly Dashboard




Week One




Week Two



Yo, World ("yo" being what the kid's say these days - I think):

Above you'll see two weekly dashboards, the first for week one of 2006, the second for week two. I intend to post these weekly, though of course I've intended to do things in the past that didn't occur. But, generally speaking, the meters on the board represent measurement of different aspects of my life over the past week. They're primarily a measurement for me to look back at, and a method of accountability as well. As to what each means, while fairly self-explanatory, I'll briefly list. Spiritual has to do with reading the Bible, prayer, study, etc. Family is how well I did in working on maintaining and strengthening my family ties with SWMBO, Number One Daughter, and Number One Son. Things are pretty good, and hopefully they'll stay that way. Health is how well I have done with my diet (as in food you eat, not so much a specific methodology for losing weight) and exercise. Mental is a measure of how well I stretched my brain the previous week, sort of Covey's Sharpen the Saw bit. It'll include reading fiction, non-fiction, and any other mind-stretching activities. Writing is a measurement for my efforts in fictional prose I have attempted from time to time, and lastly Work, which gives measure of how well the week went in the efforts of my gainful employment.

So, recapping the two weeks, Spiritual hasn't done so well. In fact, due to a few circumstances, we've missed church the past couple of weeks so I can't even count that as a plus for these two weeks. It needs addressed.

The Family measurement was biased a bit as I was out of town for two days of week one and five days of week two. Given that, I can't say it was all that bad. Health, or the lack of effort there, I'm blaming on my bad knee that still hasn't healed up properly along with the out of town including business meals - meals of steak and lobster, prime rib, various seafoods, and tons of other choices at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But it has to be improved.

Mental measurement is not as high as I'd like; one thing I want to accomplish is at least one non-fiction book per month along with various other magazines - basically anything that sharpens the mental processes. I'll be taking up Jack Welch's Winning that was given to we employee's from our boss week one, so that'll move the notch up a bit. But I did finish up Forever Odd by Koontz, along with reading several stories from P. G. Wodehouse's Ukridge collection (an Overlook Press printing). If you've not discovered P. G. Wodehouse, do yourself a favor and find a book or two. He's the reason you associate "Jeeves" with knowledgeable butlers.

Lastly, Work was partially stymied because week one was mostly planning at the office and week two was spent, all week, at a conference. But some business was accomplished as well as, hopefully, groundwork laid for the future.

Again, this stuff is mostly for me, not that much interest to passers-by, so I'll apologize, World, for boring you with it. Expect to be bored once per week - well, once for this particular message type. I'll bore you with other stuff at other times.

Your friend,

Rick

Friday, January 06, 2006

A Little Respect

While I don't travel as much as I have in the past, where some years better than a third of my nights were spent in hotel rooms, I still travel a bit on business. I'm not particularly naive so I do recognize there are certain activities that occur in hotel rooms that, as the person sliding between the sheets on any particular night, you'd as soon not think about. Heck, with nearly twenty-eight years of marriage behind me, I've even crawled into the sheets of a hotel with a member of the opposite sex (this being SWMBO) a number of times. Of course, since most of our trips over those years were with the kids along, nothing much but sleeping took place -- but I can dimly recall a few events from distant, pre-children trips (including my honeymoon, though one of those nights involved a couch in a hotel meeting room -- but that's another story). So not only do I recognize certain activities happen, I've even been involved in the activities that can, um, arise in the bed you are nestling into at some out-of-town hostelry.

But you keep those thoughts distant when snuggling into that lonely pillow after a day (and usually a dinner) of meetings so that you can snooze to recharge for the next day. At least I put them out of my mind. At least I normally do. But not Wednesday night, not in Monroe, Louisiana, not in room two-hundred & thirty-three of the Courtyard by Marriott. No, on that night the activities that you know (but try to forget) have taken place in the bed you're crawling into sort of got thrown into the forefront of my brain.

Wednesday was a relatively short day, all things considered. We did go out for a start-of-the-year kick-off celebration, a Japanese place with the whole whopper/chopper thing, the chef doing the cooking at your table. Steak, lobster, shrimp, chicken, the trimmings, and all this after three huge platters of various sushi rolls. Then, interestingly enough, we finished up at a Maggie Moo's and did most of our business talk there. But since several of us (including my boss, which helped) wanted to watch the USC/Texas game, I was back at the hotel by 8:30. I'll leave the game alone, other than to say the pre-game hype of a particular player was by far overshadowed by the opposing team's quarterback, and just say the game didn't end until midnight local time. I had pretty much finished up some charts for the next day by then, so was ready for bed.

There was a gap of about 18" between the bed and wall, with a night stand that held a lamp and an alarm clock, so I went over to set the alarm. This particular Courtyard is currently under room renovation, and I wasn't particularly surprised to see what looked like a small mass of wadded up black electrical tape in the floor. I wasn't sure how the vacuum missed it, but nevertheless I wasn't surprised. It was kind of dim in the floor between the wall and bed, though, and I decided it might be one of my socks. Keep in mind all of this occurred in a flash, but I bent down to check to be sure it wasn't a sock. Just as my fingers touched it, the thing came into focus: a jet black and obviously previously-used condom.

Like I said, there have probably been many such items used many times in every hotel room I've ever stayed in. But you'd like to forget that while sleeping there. At least I would. Amorous thoughts, to me, do not include the leftovers from previous activity and in any event I was alone. But the question that occurred at this point was what to do about it. Well, what to do about it after scrubbing my hands in hot, soapy water for about five minutes. Should I call the desk? I almost did, but figured what was the use. It was now around twelve-thirty in the morning, I had to be up at six, and any complaints would at best put me in another room where the same sort of activity might well have happened the night before anyway. Most likely, the staff would have just removed the thing. In either case, I'd be another hour getting to bed and it usually takes me at least half an hour to get to sleep after I go to bed.

So I just went to sleep. I'm not sure exactly what that says about me, but it did seem logical at the time. I didn't think it was an attack condom that would crawl up into bed after I dozed off, and as I said, any sex-cooties floating around would be floating around in any room I picked. At least these unknown folk used a condom, so certain aspects of their activities were contained and not spread around the bed. And while just going to sleep seemed inappropriate enough in the light of day that I fibbed about it to my coworkers and said I didn't find the black prophylactic until the morning, that's all I did. Went to sleep. And, in truth, slept pretty well.

I did, of course, alert the staff the next day. However, as part of my New Year's resolutions (after the incident with the motorist who cut me off in December that had me following them to their destination and Number One Son in the floorboard hiding), I chose to handle it in a very polite fashion and at the desk the next morning I only pointed out their system of cleaning and room check was apparently flawed. To her credit, "one of the managers" (as she said she was when I asked for the manager) looked suitably disgusted when I told her what I'd found. But I did want to make a quick note to end this rambling tale:

Dear World:

For the sake of your fellow travelers--if not the cleaning crew--please dispose of your used condoms properly. Show a little respect when you get, er . . . well just show a little respect.

Thanks, World.

Your friend,

Rick