No More Frozen Pizzas

Note to self. Don’t eat an entire frozen pizza before bed – you’ll just be up 18 times in the night drinking water after all the salt.

Short entry today – I’m going to finally catch up on work today so I can take tomorrow completely off – and Sage is doing the same. We’re hoping to spend the entire day with Paul. We just realized something sort of obvious. Perhaps he doesn’t like to have even one of us working while the other isn’t – he wants the attention of both of us. And hey – this new arrangement could really facilitate that. Sage and I could switch now from working all day (catch-up mode) to working half days again. Then we could work the same part of the day and have the remainder of the day to hang out with Paul. I can’t believe this didn’t occur to us before.

I was a good little drone

Wow – maybe I need to write up my plans in the journal more often. We seem to have actually followed through with them. Yesterday went almost entirely as planned.

Sage, Paul and I woke up all at about the same time and we hung out together a bit before breakfast. Just before lunch Kite arrived and Sage dropped her and Paul off at the laundromat where they did Kite’s laundry. Then they called Sage when it was done and Sage drove them over to Kite’s house where they spent some time together. Meanwhile, I was a good little drone, working hard at some documents I really need to get out the door soon. I’ll be working again today too. These computer crashes have impacted my backlog quite a lot as I spent more time than I wanted to troubleshooting and “fixing” the thing.

At about 4:00 Sage and I walked over to the American Legion where the dinner was held. Wait. That’s not exactly true. We actually walked over to the VFW where, as it turns out, bingo was held. We walked in and it wasn’t until I went inside, smelled no cooking smells and saw the bingo game being set up. Then I realized that they had told us American Legion and though we knew where it was we walked to the VFW anyway. It gets funnier, too, Sage and I walked out and Sage remarked how far out of the way we walked from our destination, which from what she talked about she thought was the Lions club. So apparently we knew the dinner was at somewhere where old folks hang out.

Anwyay – we walked over and met Kite and Paul at the Legion hall and had a very standard southern dinner of barbeque, baked beans, potato salad, roll and potluck desserts. Central casting also contributed to the potluck by giving us not only the other folks there, but the bluegrass/gospel singing group. And I have to say – they were good. Kite remarked that they were better than the music at Poke Salat Days and I’d have to agree. We all came, then, back home and had a fire in our backyard while we watched people unload the U-Haul across the street from us. Sage and I had a debate over the past few weeks. I’ve been seeing lots of activity there – carpet cleaners, lawn people, etc. I thought that the guy was moving out, while Sage thought he was just a neat freak. Score one for me. They had baby stuff too – I hope they’re cool.

Speaking of houses, someone should be moving into the house Sage and I thought of buying two doors down from here. It looks like they might have three kids from Paul’s age up to early teens.

Then we went to see Mimi play. Paul waffled about the idea at first, and by the time we got settled in the studio where she was playing he had decided that he wanted to go home with me. I started walking him down the stairs and just then, walking in the door, was a friend of his. He instantly turned around and went back up the stairs. He managed to stay for all the pre-show socializing and a couple songs (even asking Sage and I to dance with him!). But after a couple songs it was just too much for him, and it was pretty late (I think about 8:00 or so – the show was supposed to start at 7:00 PM, but everything here runs on Ozark Standard Time so those of us from back east just need to plan on relaxing our punctuality detectors a little). As Paul and I were getting our coats on, Kite said to me that she promised Paul he could go home with her and so they left.

It was a fun show. Mimi is an excellent performer and lives up totally to all the hype Sage has been giving me basically for the past ten years. And it was additionally fun because everyone we knew, practically, was there. I’m guessing there were between twenty and forty people there and we knew most of them. Oh, and liked them too. Sage and I have often known a bunch of people in places we’ve been, but to actually be glad to see them is another thing.

After the concert was a little jam session with drumming that would’ve been fun to join in had I remembered to bring our drum. Right, and had I been awake. I was pretty exhausted. So after a few minutes of the drumming Sage and I left for the night. It was really cool to hear the drumming and music on the square of so seemingly conservative a town. It was great, too. I think this is probably the first time Sage and I actually went out to something like that since we saw Steven Cravis in Boston in 1992.

The night wound down for us after that. We had a sort of racous walk home in which we had to remind ourselves a couple times we were on a residential street, then we got home, watched a Buffy episode and went to bed.

Today (I like this planning in my journal thing. Seems like it actually works out as I plan), Sage is going to eat, we’ll do the dishes and then we’re going to work all day to catch up on work so that we can go visit Paul or hang out with him here if he wants to come over and not have to worry about even one of us working.

We finally had enough of the computer problems…

Looks like Paul is staying the night with us.

The timing, of course is interesting given all that has happened to date. Paul had a bad dream the night before the computer died and woke up crying, saying that Sage told him he couldn’t use the computer. The next day the computer died (last Friday). That night, and the rest of the week, he stayed at his granny’s. Today we’d finally had enough of the computer problems. The computer died again this morning. All that it had from the old computer was the new HDD we bought a few days ago, and the new RAM we also bought for it in December. We’re at a loss. So anyway, having lost a week of Sage’s work time and with my schedule’s being swamped I couldn’t help her much, she was needing to resolve it quick. So we went to Circuit City and bit the bullet and bought a brand new computer with four year warranty. So far it’s run very well. And wouldn’t you know it? Paul is here tonight. I think Sage and I were pretty stressed about the old computer’s being down and he definitely picks up on that sort of thing. So maybe when he heard that our computer problems had been solved and saw how much less stressed we were he decided it was safe to be around us. Of course I’m still paranoid that the new computer’s going to quit on us.

Tomorrow we’ve not too many plans. I have work to catch up on from today, and Sage probably wants to work too. Then in the evening we’re going to a benefit dinner for a family whose house burned down, and after that our plan is going to be to head over to see another friend perform. I haven’t seen her perform before but Sage has and she assures me it’s going to be a great show.

Flexible lifestyle

So I tried this an hour ago and mercifully for you I was typing it directly into blogger and I took so long in writing what I wrote that it timed out and I lost the entire entry. I say merciful becase I was writing it before 7:00 AM and as such it was beyond scatterbrained. Everything I wanted to say was there, of course, but it was far from linear.

So what have we been up to for the past month? Well, Paul, Kite and I returned from New York almost a month ago today (give or take a few days) and since then life has been rather crazy and certainly quite a lot different than it was before I left.

First off, I’ve been steadily busy. I’ve got a couple clients now and both of them are in fairly critical points in their projects so this week in particular I’m exceedingly busy. Today in particular of this week in fact. I’m still keeping down to about 20 hours/week, but those are very full hours.

Second, Sage has been hugely busy too. Her workload is now filling up the better part of six hours a day now. I know poor Sage has to work 3/4 the time that most people in this country have to work and all, but between our workloads, we are having to be rather creative with our scheduling. Why has Sage become so busy all of a sudden? Have a look here. But it isn’t just that, people seem to be coming out of the woodwork looking for a redesigned website or a new website.

A long vaction is looking like something of a possibility for me, then, since Sage is steadily working. Though, I hate to admit it, but I’m liking having the extra cash flow. It’s nice to not really have any money worries at the moment. (knocks on wood) We even have enough to help out friends, too.

Meanwhile, Paul has joined in our spirit of social experimentation and has started spending a great deal of time at his granny’s house. Since last Friday he’s spent most nights and the better part of the day there. So we go there to visit him or he comes to see us, but it seems like for this week, anyway, he’s living at Kite’s place. That’s our son, creating a new culture as we speak. Actually, from what I hear, that’s not necessarily a new culture. That in lots of other cultures the grandparents play an enormous role in the raising of children. And of course in this culture as of late, grandparents are often raising their teenage childrens’ children. But in this sense, it’s different. Paul is at a point in his life where he wants to be with his granny, and we’re lucky enough to all be in the same town, and all up for letting him choose where he wants to spend the night.

I also think it might have something to do with a friend of ours (and her daughter who is a friend of Paul’s) having broken up with her long term boyfriend and father of her daughter. They’re now sharing custody with the daughter staying at dad’s or mom’s house at different times. Paul seems to have seen that having two houses is a possibility in life, and now seems to voluntarily maintain two households. It’s kind of a trip and to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me to see his children doing the same thing when they grow up if we’re still in this flexible a lifestyle.

Yesterday seems to be a typical day for us these days. Sage and I woke up (Paul was at his granny’s) and so we started the day we always seem to be starting it these days. We shared coffee (yes, she’s started again – not nearly as bad as before, though) and played gin. Our new way of playing is for chores. We agree on the chore at stake (cleaning the litter box, washing the windows, doing the dishes, taking out the trash) before starting a game and then we play. The loser is obligated to do that chore that day (in the case of litter, before noon or automatically have to do it the next day, too). Then after a quick breakfast of whatever’s handy we start working. Oh wait – yesterday we had chores to do too – we drove to Wal Mart to pick up a few things, then stopped by the real estate office to see if the house two doors down from us had sold (it had – it listed at $26,500 and we were quite interested in it – more so after we knew it sold ironically). Then we both worked for several hours before Paul and Kite came over. I made lunch for Paul and we played outside a little before he and I drove to Vera Cruz – the place where we often go swimming in the summer. He and I had been interested in going for a while since it has a fairly nice beach to play on and a good sized creek to explore.

So we got there and he ran to the beach. He was so excited to be there he just didn’t seem to know what to do first. Finally he settled upon digging in the sand. After that we wandered up and down the creek, often “being cats” which is his current favorite thing to do. He also wanted to try to make a sandcastle but without many tools we didn’t make a particularly impressive one. We did manage a small one, though, that was enough that he felt he could walk near it saying “I’m in my castle!” before laying siege to it from within. It was particularly lovely there for a couple reasons. First off, in the summer it usually has at least 1-2 other families, sometimes more there. We only saw one other older man there who stayed for about ten minutes looking for minnows. The rest of the time we had the whole park to ourselves. It was also nice, too, to see the place without leaves on the trees. It wasn’t more beautiful, just different. In the summer it often has a sort of tropical feel with lush greenery and numerous shade trees. For a place to swim, it’s perfect. For much of the day the water is in the sun while the shore is in the shade. The only time it’s not like that is in the late afternoon when the water is shaded. Then, unless it’s a particularly hot day, you don’t really want to swim there. Finally, though, being there without being in the water got to be too much. He had to jump in. First he was just jumping to small islands near the shore. He had his rubber boots on so it wasn’t a big deal. But before long, he got too excited. He jumped full in the water up to his knees. But it was cool, he really got it when I said that we had to go and get some warm clothes. He just got out of the water and headed for the van. Not, however, without a side trip to check out the prickly pears that he stepped on when he was about 18 months old. He still tells this story. He was almost as impressed by that experience as he was by later that summer watching me be stung by a jellyfish.

On a totally different note, I eventually did get my SGI workstation. It was a used Indigo2 – sort of middle of the product line but I splurged on a 20″ monitor to go with it. It’s been fun to learn on to say the least. And for what we paid for it (a little over $300 for everything) I see myself getting lots of use out of it – and actually have to date. It’s a bit more complicated getting the programs I need on it, though, with the slightly different operating system (Irix, not Linux) and the different libraries and compilers. But I at least managed to get my email over here which effectively separates my working computer from my leisure computer.

I also managed to get our server to do a bunch more for us. Now, not only does it act as a router/firewall for our home net, I’ve set it up to filter out banner ads as desired, and also mark spam with spamassassin. If you are savvy, this is a great program to get running for yourself – it’s written in perl so you could concievably use it on your PC but it probably would be easier in linux. It “reads” all our messages, looking for telltale signs of spam in the headers, language used and other similar standard spam attributes. Then it marks what it thinks is spam with *** SPAM *** in the subject. You can then filter that out using your email program. I just file it away since every once in a while it does get a false positive.

Now it’s time to work – I’ve
tons of work to do and a whole host of deadlines to meet.

Free replacement computer

Well, everyone – it’s official – I’ve made my life (and Sage’s) easier by using Blogger to automate the posting of journal entries. With any luck I’ll be a bit more able to keep up with it. It’s been insanely busy these days and I hardly have time to cook a meal let alone keep up with a journal. Anyway – Sage and I are leaving for Springfield in maybe 1/2 hour so I’ll cut this short and perhaps write more later… Oh – and don’t worry – the archives of Just of the Square aren’t gone. I was just in a rush to get this up and still need to get a links page to it made up. And with Sage’s computer having crashed (new (free!) replacement computer arrives tomorrow) it’s a bit hectic here.

Disclaimer, Disclaimer, blah blah blah

Finally! It takes me fooling around for several hours automating this thing to get this entry up.

Only a little over a month late…

I know, I know – it’s been almost a month since the last entry but I assure you I’ve been on the train of being inspired when I’m busy and uninspired or too tired when I’m not busy to write an entry. Go figure. Anyway, since I last wrote which to my knowlege Sage has yet to post anyway, things have been quite different. Anyway, forgive me if I repeat some of the last entry – I don’t have it handy to look at what I wrote. First off, I’ve seen lots of familiar people. It started early – on the trip out here. On the way through the Lehigh Valley, I stopped at The Morning Call which was the last place I worked before living in the yurt. I had a great time seeing and talking to my former co- workers. I was quite surprised to see that so few had actually left the company (the company I consult for now whom I also worked for full time from it’s creation in 1995 through spring of 1998) has only one or two people out of over 70 that actually was working there in 1998.

The place hardly has changed, either. I expected with renovations actually in progress as I left and with yet another buyout there would be more obvious changes. Of course how many changes can one note in an hour or so on a Friday evening when most of the staff has left. From there I drove over to Bethlehem, intending to look at our old house (for Sage & Todd Trivia buffs it was between Moravian College’s Steel Field and Liberty High School’s football stadium).

Anyway, I only meant to look at the house and see what it was like from outside but then thought “what the hell” and rang the doorbell of our neighbors two doors down. While we never really knew any of our neighbors there and didn’t really get along with those directly on either side of us for various reasons, we liked these folks and their two children quite a great deal. So I was quite pleased to find that they were, in fact, at home. And while in our four years living there we may have only spoken to them for five to ten minutes at a time on our way to/from the car, I had a lovely conversation that lasted almost four hours. It was funny to see just how much our philosophies of life (save some religious differences) were alike. I was when I left to have not talked more to them when we lived in the area. Of course, I have to remind myself that when we were living there even before Paul was born we were busy – and I was hardly even around much of the time. So how could I have found the time. I was so exhausted when I left the house that I drove up to the first hotel I could find and checked in. Is it me, or are all the new hotel rooms getting absolutely gigantic? It seems like growing up we’d go to a hojos or something and get a room that barely fit a couple of beds, a tv and a small bathroom. Now they’re just cavernous. Of course the rates, at least back east, are outrageous?

While I was paying $30-40 (with coupons) for a room in Illinois in western PA (Sorry I missed you, Emily – I didn’t get in until late and didn’t realize how far the turnpike was from Pittsburgh!) I paid a little over $50 with coupons. In Bethlehem I paid nearly twice that. The next day I (I keep wanting to write and say “we” in my writing – I’m so unaccustomed to being on my own) called a former boss and after a quick lunch at The Green Cafe on the south side (black beans, brown rice and collard greens) I went to visit him at his home. It was good to hang out again but I have to say one thing. In many ways I look upon his life as sort of the road not taken for me. He’s worked his way up quite high in the field we both work in. I was working on following in his footsteps before Paul was born and for much of that time aspired to follow further in his footsteps.

This time, though, seeing how busy his life was I was so grateful for having taken the path I did. We had a great time for sure – but even as we were hanging out he was doing work on the house and various errands because there was no other time to do them in. I really appreciate the what I now realize is a luxury of not having any task I can’t put off with minimal guilt. If someone surprises us and drops by and I am in the middle of just about anything it’s easy enough to just put it aside and enjoy the fact that someone has just dropped in. If that person is reading (and I doubt he is), I hope he realizes that I don’t mean that as a criticism or that I felt affronted. More that I feel grateful that my life is so simple that I have the freedom that most people in this country, particularly here in the northeast, don’t have. I stayed the night there and the next afternoon headed up to the hotel I’m in now. Nothing particularly interesting to say about it – it’s convenient to work, it’s convenient to food, it’s on a horrible road for pedestrians. Nothing much else. Work has been interesting. I have to say that I like this job a great deal more than my last one in Michigan. The biggest difference, of course, and probably the source of most of the reason I like it better is that the company is way smaller. The one in Michigan was a huge international pharmaceutical company, Pharmacia, on an enormous site with a great number of people. The building I worked in had a hall in it over 1/4 mile long. It felt like a big company with lots of rigidity right down to the fact that I couldn’t have any food or beverages other than water at my desk, or anywhere in the building save the snack bars (three – located about every tenth of a mile down the big hall) or the cafeteria. This company, meanwhile, which shall remain nameless for now if only to ensure that nobody calls me or shows up unexpectedly, is the total opposite. I’d estimate there are about 30 people in the entire building. People are way more friendly, fairly informal for the most part, too. Most employees aren’t expected to arrive until 9:00 in the morning – which in this industry is pretty late.

This doesn’t prevent people from showing up at insanely early hours, but does make me feel comfortable arriving at 9:00 with the rest of them as long as I am on top of my work. So that means I don’t have to leave the hotel until as late as 8:40. So yes, indeed, I sleep in, most times not even needing the alarm. This is a nice change from most jobs I’ve held. Of course there is a drawback to working here. It’s completely blown my caffeine avoidance away. There’s a little machine that, like magic, brews a fresh cup of one of eight different varieties of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters coffee at the push of a button. I started out with only two cups a day, worked up to a horrible six cups but then after I found myself on edge for most of the time, toned back down to 3 or so with any remaining cups I have being decaf (three of the eight varieties are decaffeinated dontcha know) Okay, I have a survey question. Not a real survey, mind you, but just a curiousity. Do people in the midwest realize their food is bland, boring and mediocre at best? I ask because not only was the food east of Ohio not only as good as I remembered it, but it was better than I remembered. The pizza alone is absolutely worth writing home for. The italian bread they use for subs (sorry, wedges – what’s up with that name here?) is exquisite, the Indian food is out of this world, and the Chinese food is a whole different variety than what is served in Springfield. But then, I think Springfield Chinese (home of Cashew Chicken which isn’t even like Cashew Chicken anywhere else) is a whole different variety of food having very little to do with China and more to do with the fact that it is served with rice in a place that also serves tropical cocktails. But what do I know. I feel like I should pack the car with several dozen bagels, boxes of Entenmanns (they don’t have it in Missouri – can you believe it!), and a pizza or two. Seriously I probably won’t do much more than bring home a few things from the Indian grocery here in town since there isn’t one for hundreds of miles a
round back home. Incidentally, I’m not allowed to talk about any of the above paragraph with Sage. She is still eating midwest food, and at that she’s eating what she is up for cooking which usually amounts to the sorts of thing made by just adding water. I got to do some visiting in the past few weeks, though. Two weekends ago I left for Massachusetts where I saw a friend of mine whom I haven’t seen in twelve years. Since the last time I saw her she got married and now is the mom of two really cool kids. Interestingly enough, despite our not having really kept in touch for most of that time we’ve seemed to have come to many of the same conclusions about parenting (and general life) philosophies. It was fun to see her and meet her family and very grounding after having spent the previous couple of weeks around nobody familiar at all. Even the weekend before that wasn’t particularly grounding – after all, I was in Vermont, but I only saw people I knew for maybe a few hours. I also got to meet a longtime reader of this journal and Coffee shakes too while I was in the area. I had a blast hanging out with her and her partner. My only regret was that Sage wasn’t there to join us. It was so helpful to have talked with people that weekend who actually get it and are familiar with us and our lives and understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. Before that I was getting tired of the blank stares and insincerity I got for most of the time here when I would tell about what I’m doing and why. I know what I mean now (yes, I am getting sleepy, why do you ask?) – it was nice to not have to justify, defend, explain, spin or otherwise tell about the basics of my life and just have a real conversation. Then last weekend it got quite a bit better. Last weekend (not this past Friday but the one before) I drove to Bethlehem again and picked up Kite and Paul. They took a bus up and met me in Bethlehem, which we all liked and felt would be an easier landing place than Port Authority in NYC or anywhere else around here for that matter. They arrived at about 7:00 PM and we stayed the night there. When checking in at the hotel, I was sad to meet the first dad I saw so far on the trip (save those dads I visited) who talked about his kids with any enthusiasm. Sad because it was almost an entire month without hearing hardly any talk at all from interested dads, let alone enthusiastic talk. This man had an 18 month old son and obviously thought the world of him. Not only did he talk about him when he checked me in, we talked to him several more times throughout our stay. It was quite refreshing. It reminds me of a story, actually. I was at work a few days ago telling a woman about why I live in Missouri. The simple answer I give is that it’s cheap. It allows me to pay $190/month rent, for example, and therefore makes it unnecessary for me to work all the time. I told her that I felt that right now my job is to be a dad to Paul and that I’m only 31 years old. If, in another fifteen years I decide I want a career I can jolly well have one. She said then, sort of apologetically, that that was an unusual priority for a dad to have. And at first I mentally patted myself on the back but then as I thought of it more, I realized. Of course she hasn’t seen interested dads. She’s at work most of the time. Nearly all the dads I run into at home are interested and have the same priority as I do. So I realize that the same thing is probably true for me too. I haven’t seen many enthusiastic dads because the ones who are aren’t working their brains out in the office for the most part. I know there are some exceptions so please don’t be offended if you are one of those exceptions yourself (or know one). Disclaimer, disclaimer, blah blah blah. Anyway, Paul’s doing so much better here this time around as compared to Michigan. First off, he’s older – only six months but that’s almost fifteen percent. To me, fifteen percent would mean almost five years older. That’s a long time in my life and I can say I’ve changed a great deal since five years ago.

Those of you who have read Sage’s journal can vouch for that, I’m sure. Anyway, he’s older, has a better understanding of how long he’s going to be here (less than a week longer or a total of two weeks) and has a concept of when I go to work and when I get home. He knows it well enough to have noticed when I was late a couple of days ago by only about 20 minutes. He knows it well enough to understand how long it will be until the weekend. He didn’t have a perfectly easy time, though to start. He is still really overwhelmed by the noise, traffic and crowds even though we’re over 20 miles from the northern border of NYC (locals might know what I mean when I say that I can be at the Tappan Zee bridge in about 5 minutes). It’s helped a lot, though, when he’s found familiar things to do. The library, for instance, is a great joy in his life. The laws are stricter here about getting a card so we can’t bring books home but that doesn’t stop us from visiting. We still can read books there. The first night we spent an hour and a half there. He and his granny went there a few days ago for a while, too though at a mile and a quarter down a busy street it’s not an easy destination. Today we were there from 11-5 with a break for lunch. I’ve never seen anyone of any age that happy to spend that much time just choosing books and reading them one after another. We read dozens of books today, some familiar, most not. The majority were about halloween – still his favorite holiday I think.

I’m looking forward to leaving, though. I’ve enjoyed being out here somewhat. It is a nice change of pace, a nice reminder, on so many levels, of why I left the full time working world. The food has been good, I’ve met a few interesting people. I got paid to visit friends and family. Oh yeah, and I paid the IRS their money already. Sage’s dentures could be paid out of this next check and there’s still another one yet to come and even more work after I get home. So there were lots of benefits. Oh and I have a true confession. I know, I talk quite often about consumerism, particularly blind consumerism of just wanting things for the sake of having them but yesterday I had that impulse come over me. After work someone was showing me a workstation that the company had – an older Silicon Graphics Impact system. Quite nice with a large monitor. It was so well designed, not just from a manufacturing sort of way (drives slide in and out easily on “sleds”), but from an aesthetic viewpoint. It was a beautiful system to look at and even the Irix desktop was lovely to look at. And while it had only a 195mHz processor, it had a really excellent video card and it made such an obvious difference. The graphics were quick and stunningly beautiful. And now I want one. I don’t know what I’d do with it besides tinker and while I could get an older one for $300-500 it still seems excessive. I even dreamed I had one last night. How weird is that? That alone should tell me I’ve been out here too long. But a week from today I’ll be heading back to St. Louis to turn in the rental car and pick up my old life again. Sage, meanwhile has been having an interesting life on her “vacation”. Everyone leaves her alone for a couple of weeks and she’s working like crazy. And good thing we left, too, as it got really busy for her with some interesting developments as of late that I’ll let her tell you, or not, as the case may be in her part.