spacon

"Herbal Dispensaries"

2011-03-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

As another medical marijuana dispensary sets to open in my neighborhood I am suddenly struck with curiosity about where we are with all of this stuff. Apparently you all passed a law 12 years ago (while I lived out in Oregon) allowing people with certain conditions to grow and smoke their own weed, but didn't think about how people who can't grow it themselves would get it (at this time it seems my own chronic condition is not listed as one of them, darn).

So fast forward and apparently we have roughly 120 dispensaries in Washington state which are not exactly legal, yet. Some were raided as recently as last year and the press around trying to shut down these dispensaries (and the harsh tactics employed by police, including overdoing it a bit and busting people who weren't even involved in them to begin with) has pushed that issue back to the state legislature hoping for clarification. SB 5073 looks to be well on it's way to becoming law with the latest version is now before the house committe on health care and wellness for more revisions probably.

With that being the context, my question is this: if the goal of THIS law is to fix the original 1998 initiative which didn't address certain issues that apparently need to be clarified to provide a safe and secure manner for legitimate medical users to get access to a safe, quality product, does this bill really do that?

The bill goes a LONG way to fix the problems with the original law, but it does not address one major current problem at all: non-medical users are attempting to obtain the stuff grown and processed for sale solely to medical users by fraud and in some cases violent acts (I wouldn't think theft would necessitate violence, but perhaps once you cross the line of breakin the law, the fear of consequense raises the stakes a lot more). Pot farms and dispensaries have been burglarized presumably by potheads too lazy to just grow and process their own illegally like they used to.

So fast-foreward ten years into the future if SB 5073 becomes law and you will have police still busy chasing and prosecuting people for vandalizing, burglarizing and potentially harming those who are trying to stay within the limits of the law by excluding these people from obtaining their product. I don't think anyone will like this, though perhaps some of society will dismiss it by looking down on those who engage in the business of growing and manufacturing "useable cannibas" and "cannibas products" for medicinal use as greedy opportunitists who are just getting what they deserve.

Still, the concern that needs to be addressed is that if cannibas is safe (or can be made in a safe, trusted way) for medical use, it is certainly also safe for recreational use and the problem of recreational use remaining outside the law needs to be considered carefully before we embark on a costly experiment that may indrectly cause harm to those involved (I mention costly because the state is proposing using the department of agriculture to license growers and producers and requiring them to be tested regularly for the quality/grade of product, though presumably the state will also tax the sale and recover some, all or more than the regulation of the pot industry will cost).

Please comment, complain, or just make a lot of noise if you feel that you need some attention :)

Read the latest version of SB 5073 yourself
Last months Seattle Times article
Augusts Weekly Volcano feature article
Octobers Volcano article

any given tuesday...

2010-09-14T16:14:00.001-07:00

I have been making a weekly pilgrimage to Portland for six weeks now. I won't get into all the reasons why here as I have another purpose for this post. Suffice to say on one of these occasions I ran into a man in the library I knew I recognized but given the years I needed a moment to recall his name. Finally it came to me and I went to say a proper hello and ask him what was really burning in my mind to know; "have you heard from Ysu?"

Imagine my surprise when he said he had received an email from the long-scarce Dr Umbalo not three weeks ago and that he believed our old friend to be in town as we spoke. I was early for my engagement so I asked for the number where he might be reached and made the call. After a moment he came on the phone and the shock of seeing my old roommate who has not been on the North American continent for over six years set in.

I drove out to his sisters house and we grabbed a cup of ice cream, then dropped him off at a meeting he had previously scheduled and went to mine. Of course he was in the northwest for more than just a whirlwind tour--there was an agenda afoot in fact--so I was able to see him a few more times before he flew back to the DRC (in Southern Africa). Still, greater than the joy of seeing an old friend I thought I might never see again there is the renewed purpose we had spoke about several years ago which he has been already undertaking in the years since.

Dr Yumba Umbalo is a family practitioner in the Lubumbashi, Dem Rep of the Congo. He established the M Soma Clinic there in a city of approximately two million people. Think of Lubumbashi as the San Antonio of the DRC. It sits about an hour from the southern borders and is about as densely populated. However, the city (last I heard) had only three hospitals and limited medical infrastructure supporting the practice of doctors like Ysu.

There are many dreams Dr Umbalo and I share for his work there. I have had tentative plans to go help him expand sustainable diagnostic testing in his clinic (and perhaps for other practitioners nearby as well) as well as training personnel to see that through. He would also like to see his clinic grow from a small practice (two physicians and a few nurses) that already operates 24-7 to a more fully equipped urgent care center to providing trauma care and perhaps eventually becoming a multi-service medical center.

Many of these dreams are a long way off, but the need exists now to expand access to treatment for HIV, TB, Malaria, and enteric diseases to name a few. Prenatal care is also often neglected by the poor and remotely located populations.

I will be helping Ysu write as many grant proposals as we can in the next year and beyond to target as many of these needs as possible, but I also hope to spread the word now that the M Soma Clinic is open and in need of your support. While in the US, Ysu shipped a 20 foot container with donated equipment and supplies from Portland to Lubumbashi and that need will continue. We hope to raise another $10,000 specifically to send a completely full 40' container around the end of the year. The network already exists and the supplies are waiting stateside for a new home, all that is needed is the ability to transport them to the other side of the world.

I also want to send you to the Mercy and Care International blog where you can follow their work directly and make donations anytime you are able. Stay tuned for much more to come...

b

with regards to candidate David Hedrick's...

2010-07-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I digress from the mundane doings of my own life to share my thoughts on politics here. I have done so for big elections, why not the smaller but still significant races here at home? Some friends from my hometown are rallying behind the young conservative David William Hedrick from Southwest Washington and I feel it appropriate to share my assessment of what he has said in the press here, rather than in short Facebook comments that could easily be misunderstood. For background, please read the article from the Columbian where Hedrick was posed presumably the same six questions asked of his opponents in the race for the 3rd Congressional District of the state of Washington (includes Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Skamania, Thurston, and Wahkiakum Counties).

In regards to the first question concerning economic recovery, I believe him correct in his assessment that government does not create private sector jobs but believe he dodged the spirit of the question. Politicians of both parties including George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton (and the congressional houses that straddled those years) are responsible for NAFTA and later CAFTA, which is also indirectly responsible for the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs south of our border. He later rhapsodizes about border security, but I wonder if he understands how we dropped the ball in opening up our borders to allow our own corporations to operate their front offices on Wall Street, production in Mexico or Panama, and supply chains from China and abroad without facing any financial penalties for such business practices. We used to tax imports heavily which encouraged companies to produce at home as much as was reasonable and provide us with private sector stability, but now we financially encourage most of what you and I consume to be made anywhere but here.

Sure the government itself does not create jobs, but policies have the power to stimulate new markets, manage supply chains and production, reign in unethical business practices and schemes designed to defraud consumers, and set product safety standards to keep our families safe. Let's not forget that our economic floundering is a direct result of government inaction while our manufacturing sector exported jobs and our financial services sector built a house of cards (read derivatives) full of ill-conceived mortgage backed securities that in reality had little or no value except the value they claimed and then attempted to guarantee with AAA ratings. Then when it all fell down they asked our government to bail them out while insisting their bonuses were guaranteed--not tied to performance or competence!

The second question is about the Columbia River Crossing. The background here is that I attended a meeting next to the Hayden Island Zupans (now out of business incidentally) in a Yacht Club where a Portland City Council member and a Washington DOT representative hosted a Q&A about multiple proposals that would go forward to citizen groups on both sides of the border for feedback. This meeting was in September 2006, four years ago. At the meeting I learned to my surprise that the Crossing project was fairly far along already. There were 3 major plans on the table: another larger bridge with light-rail service to downtown Vancouver from Portland, a tunnel (also featuring light-rail), a bridge that bypassed Hayden Island which would then be accessed from smaller bridges to Portland (decreasing congestion caused by Washingtonians getting on and off the freeway to take advantage of tax-free shopping at the first exit they saw on the Oregon side).

Virtually all proposals raised the height of the bridge deck to that of the 205 bridge and moved access points on either side further from the Columbia itself by necessity to accommodate the height. The question being raised to the citizens of Hayden Island was whether or not they wanted to keep their direct link to the interstate artery or opt for a smaller connection via the Oregon side and try to discourage the island from becoming a truck-stop/shopping district as it had recently become. Most of the attendees liked the idea of less island traffic, but didn't really want to have to drive further to find their way north or south. Everybody wants to have it both ways apparently. The other item on the table was Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart wanted to move onto the island that had already seen it's charm diminished by easy-to-access tax-free shopping right across the bridge from downtown Vancouver. Basically most of the attendees of the meeting wanted to protest Wal-Mart (as well as myself and my financial services industry colleagues who brought me there). Our interest was to keep a tax-free Wal-Mart just a little further down the road and a little further out of reach for our neighbors on the Washington side.

I think we were trying to keep Vancouver from suffering from more retail exodus which was already holding property values back in the first place. Basically the representative also on the Portland Development Commission informed us that while the PDC was not a fan of big-box retail, they had no specific authority to tell property owners they could not build or sell to Wal-Mart or others like them, but that they could zone the island in a manner that would limit the size of any potential retailers like Wal-Mart by the traffic capacity limits the island already was suffering from exceeding. That was the connection to the Columbia Crossing project. Limit the access to the island and discourage big-box retailers from making the island their home too by making the next exit or two more desirable than theirs.

Hedrick's assessment of the Crossing project is an oversimplified one concerned more with who pays exactly how much than what the people of his district in Clark County need and want. I lived in Vancouver in 2005-2006 and tried to make a go of it in the mortgage brokerage business and from my experience Clark County is a simple sleepy bedroom community of bridge commuters who mostly work in Portland and very nearly truly live in Clark County. Vancouver does have a port and it's downtown is almost a shadow of what Bellevue, Tacoma or even Everett are to Seattle, but the dissonance between the tax structures on either side of the bridges limits what Vancouver is and what it can become.

Vancouver has no income tax, but it does have a sales tax. Some businesses that do not produce anything cleverly set up shop on the Washington side where their employees can earn slightly more than if they crossed the bridge for a paycheck, but production stays on the Portland side where their wares are not taxed if sold in state. Look for a vibrant retail sector in Vancouver and you will find only struggling businesses that are at the mercy of their neighbors willingness to opt for convenience rather than tax savings across the bridge. The general rule of thumb is for small purchases it is acceptable to stay close to home, but for major ones cross the bridge and buy in Portland instead because the tax savings is real and significant. Car dealerships get a break because Washington requires the tax be paid on any car purchase to license the car in Washington and because neighbors WILL rat out each other if they catch you with Oregon plates. The fines are heavy.

Basically Hedrick seems to focus on something I find odd, light-rail. He presupposes that Vancouver does not want it. I can tell you they very much DO want light rail if it connects to the system Portland has already built, but without the crossing it cannot connect. Portland has already built the system up to Hayden Island and paid for it completely without Clark County taxes (unless you count the payroll tax of employees who chose to live in Washington even though their jobs remain in Oregon). Once the minor detail of a new Columbia Crossing is dealt with, Vancouver can set up it's own light-rail system which they have already planned for incidentally and run it North and East of downtown Vancouver, even likely reconnecting across the 205 bridge which could easily manage a lane reserved for light-rail which would connect near the airport.

The details of whether to merge the Clark County light-rail system with Tri-Met's system has not been agreed on and currently Clark County has it's own bus system which runs across the river to interconnect with Tri-Met bus routes, but the two systems could merge if the governments would only agree on how much each would contribute to the collective kiddy since the system would inevitably receive some tax-payer funded subsidy (realizing that conservatives hate this of course, but I believe governments must divert taxes to help fund things that are good for us even if we wouldn't take the pill otherwise).

In a nutshell, build it now and pay a reasonable amount from Washington state taxes, though that won't be his role if elected to Congress anyway.

Regarding energy policy he seems to favor fossil fuels like any other conservative over innovation and renewable energy sources. I don't think progressives who want our government to push us (yes using tax money to motivate private-sector willingness to invest in new energy technologies) towards responsible and sustainable energy truly believe this conversion will happen overnight, but we simply believe it must be done because we cannot afford to delay any longer. Our needs will continue to expand and the availability of dirty-fuel will naturally diminish over time. We may never completely cut the cord with oil and gas, but we have to shift towards wind and solar as much as possible, even if it never sustains all our energy needs.

I am currently reading Pugetopolis, written by another Northwest native who calls himself a "mossback" which might as well read "conservative" (though his ideology likely differs from Hedrick in many ways) at least in the sense that he wants to limit population growth in this beautiful land we call Puget Sound to preserve its beauty and protect our ability to continue thriving here unharmed by the consequences of our love for the land. I have yet to see how the mossback proposes we achieve limits on population growth without implementing things progressives and conversation alike distaste such as government mandates, regulations, growth boundaries, density limits, environmental regulations that effectively shut down most industry and drive jobs completely away, or perhaps forced sterilization or secretly engineered periodic plagues.

I think growth is inevitable and we will have to manage both density in our urban centers and outward expansion. We will have to say "this is as far as we will go" and "this is as dense as we will allow certain cities to become" and once we reach those limits we will have to consider telling people "please stop moving to Puget Sound, have you considered Montana or British Columbia? I hear the Canadians are very nice."

To the next question, I agree that the bailouts were wrong and I said so when Bush was still in office and both he and Congress tried to tell us we had to do it even if it was a bitter pill to swallow because our entire financial system would fall apart if we didn't. I disagree with Hedricks assertion that government created the crisis in the first place through excessive regulation. Unless you believe Bush was a regulator, government was not excessively monitoring or regulating our financial markets. Again, I tried to work in the mortgage business in 2006 and the only regulation we operated under was driven by the banks themselves which haven't seen major new regulations since the FDIC was established in the wake of the last depression. Basically all I needed to work as a loan officer in the state of Washington was a $200 course given by any of a dozen online companies sponsored by the banking industry to learn how the mortgages themselves worked, how to evaluated credit worthiness and how to sell the products.

The state of Washington got into the game by requiring loan officers be licensed later that year and discovered that half of those at work in the mortgage business now applying for licensing were formerly convicted felons. Well I don't have a statistic source for this, just heresy in the business as I was leaving to find something I could really make money at (2006 was the height of the bubble here in our state if you remember, it all came crashing down in 2007-2008 when the defaults were pouring in thanks in part to increased private sector job losses). Basically what I witnessed was that there was no system requiring loan documentation. No-doc loans were given out to those with high credit scores while the systems used to generate those credit scores were kept secret by the private companies who collected that information (for profit) and sold it to the private financial services companies needing some way to evaluate consumers ability and likeliness to repay. I watched while those with high scores took advantage of the system to get multiple loans simultaneously, shuffling assets around and hedging their bets that the loans would fund before any knowledge of the other loans being taken out could circulate back to the other banks considering funding loans for the individual.

For example, someone working in real estate without stable income (but with a few years--or even months--of good sales) could dupe a bank into believing he was good for a $500K loan. A shrewd person could convince 3 banks at once for three different properties. It was all about timing. These people were betting on one thing, property values will continue to rise. They knew the properties could not rent for the actual amount due each month, they would just take a modest loss each month and when the properties were a couple years old, claim they lived in them and avoid capitol gains taxes when they sold them for 20% markup. The more valuable the property the more potential for profits.

The problem is that while they were doing this others were being told to falsely claim they made $6k/mo while they really only made $3k/mo. Why? There was nothing on the market for the person making $3k/mo unless they had a huge down payment and the real estate agent and loan officer couldn't make money if the property can't sell. Everyone at the time knew the market was inflated above what average middle-class borrowers could afford and everyone was looking for an angle. I simply refused to participate in fraud, so I didn't make any money during this time and had to go back to work in healthcare instead.

Of course if you were clearly committing fraud you could go to jail for doing so. The problem was the only way the bad loan comes up on anyone's radar is if the person defaults. If a particular loan defaults the file could be requested by the bank servicing the loan. If the bank found discrepancies between what the borrower reported to them and what was in the file, they could investigate the loan officer and/or broker, but all they could really do is file a suit against the brokerage to recover losses or transfer the loan to the brokerage. If this happened to a particular financial company it could drive them out of business, but they could simply wiggle their LLC into bankruptcy and start over in another town or down the road with a new mortgage company name.

The banks masked the problem by bundling up loans and selling them to wall street. Wall street broke them up and bundled good loans with bad ones to make the whole lot of products more appealing to investors. Then came the derivatives; securities backed by securities backed by securities backed by actual real property that had actual (inflated) value on the market. I sat in once while a salesman pitched us the idea of paper notes that claimed a person had equity in a property (based on an appraisal that would no-doubt seek out the highest "comparibles" to establish the greatest amount of equity) in excess of other liens on said property which would then be held in trust in the persons name as an investment which a bank would then loan money against to other banks in the overnight market of banks borrowing from banks to remain solvent during business hours. Basically fake money used to create funds which would be loaned at a high rate of interest overnight and repaid in the morning so everyone's books balanced the next day. The interest (minus a "small administrative fee") would be paid to your trust account which would in turn increase the amount the trustee could lend the following night on your behalf turning your $50K worth of equity in your home into another $50K in cash assets in a matter of a few months presumably.

The point here is that the market creates all kinds of wild schemes. The government in this scenario is not the problem unless it is overtly allowing such behavior to consume everyone with visions of easy money without sweat, blood or toil. The proper role of government in these matters is to monitor the financial markets for actions that place citizens' investments at risk. We blindly trust Wall Street to work FOR us when in reality they use our money to work for themselves. I saw this first hand in the mortgage business as real estate and financial services professionals used clients to line their pockets as fast as they could so they could build their own portfolio of property holdings. They circulate lists of "notice of defaults" and foreclosures among their guilded community of back-scratchers so they can collectively pounce on the supposedly undervalued properties before the average person has a chance to stumble on a good deal--in part because stories of below-market-value homes on-the-market would deflate values which is the one thing nobody in the business wants to see happen--that is until it happens anyway and they realize they can even make money off that!

Regarding the question about immigration. Well I could go on about that as easily as I have everything else. Basically I understand where he and the rest of the Border-Security advocate's are coming from. I can see everything they can see just as easily. The litmus test I have for him and others like him is how far would you go? Which border are we talking about securing here anyway? Which peoples are we trying to prevent from entering this country illegally? Would he be surprised to know the only person I know for a fact is an illegal immigrant (because he told me as much) is actually from Europe? He isn't taking any job you or I would otherwise have either, unless you are someone who is willing to do day labor for friends at half whatever the market supports for similar work when performed on-the-level. Basically the only work my friend can find is construction work from people who are essentially do-it-yourself remodelers needing an extra hand but unwilling to hire unknown day-laborers from the temp-worker companies that do actual background checks and handle paying taxes, etc on behalf of the client and the worker.

My friend reports that while the community of his nation of origin here in the Northwest seems friendly toward people in his situation, they are in fact quick to take advantage of their native countrymen and offer them no real help establishing themselves here. His story? Well, he came here chasing a girl who strung him along and eventually cut him loose without enough money to get himself back home and no legal status here to find legitimate work for which he is qualified for and skilled at.

My question here is whether or not he is even sincere in his convictions about illegal immigrants. Our entire economy feeds on the existence of a cheap labor source that doesn't ask for more than a small amount of cash money--no benefits, no social security, no taxes paid on their behalf. I ask if Hedrick is willing to use our federal government to go after the people who are willing to exploit illegal immigrants and create the demand that keeps them crossing all our borders in high numbers throughout our countries history. He seems quick to call the immigrants themselves criminals simply in the act of crossing an imaginary line, but does he also consider those who exploit them criminal in seeking to evade our tax laws in pursuit of cheap labor? People so easily tainted by their desire to earn an advantage afforded them by having the means to participate in a post-slavery form of enslavement?

On the last question regarding the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, I essentially agree. President Obama did not create either war, but inherited a problem he seems uncomfortable administering with conviction and conscience. I am in favor of complete withdrawal but we must realize each circumstance is unique and requires a nuanced approach. In Iraq, I believe the people are ready to take leadership and our withdrawal might create temporary instability, but the situation that created the conflict in the beginning is long over. We can and should leave the peace-keeping efforts there to a combination of coalition forces and their own citizen based police and armed forces. We must limit our involvement in Iraq as soon as possible.

With Afghanistan I believe our involvement there must continue longer, potentially indefinitely. We essentially created a problem a long time ago there by half-heartedly supporting their fight against the Russians, destroying their infrastructure and economy in a far more serious way than we have in Iraq. They were never able to completely recover and the rise of the Taliban there is testament to that. Immediate withdrawal there will only result in the Taliban's return. The people there need a chance to rebuild their own government and wean themselves from the fear they have suffered under so long. This might even require a troop surge there. We also must eventually find Al Queda there and put the men who really did plan those attacks on us 9 years ago on trial for their crimes. Removing the head of that organization will go a long way in easing the fears of the the peoples of Afghanistan allowing them to once again resist fundamentalist religious control of their population. Without Bin Laden incarcerated and the Taliban's supply chain permanently dismantled they will always fear the Taliban too much to lead in their stead.

While there is no political gain for any candidate to say so, I believe we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to rebuild their country after 30 years of war which we have essentially always been partially responsible for.

I have not familiarized myself with anyone else running in the 3rd district. I feel it is time to find out about my own next, but I will certainly post on anyone else in the 3rd district to offer some contrast if and when I learn of them.

so this is the new year...

2010-01-07T00:41:00.000-08:00

This year is starting off slowly so far, but with promise. I know so many people who are down on O Nine that it has caused me to stop and think about the past year in a slightly new way. I am not sure I would ever wish it away so callously myself though.

First off, I found myself single again this last year. I am not new to being a bachelor, but I wasn't really expecting it or prepared to know how to rejoin the ranks of the thousands of lonely people in the city of destiny once more. So it took some adjusting, but at year end I think I can finally say that I am happy being single and maybe for the first time ever. Maybe I didn't fully appreciate my freedom when I didn't know anything else--maybe I always took for granted that I could do whatever I wanted and failed to ever want anything right and proper.

So I'm not really angry about being left behind. I suspect we would have grown apart eventually any way so I can't blame her if she was able to figure this out ahead of me. I've been there before myself, knowing I couldn't continue with someone long before they were able to reach that place themselves and it stifles you. You start to feel trapped between your desire to be free to go after whatever you please and not wanting to fail or disappoint, but eventually you must accept that you cannot avoid it.

I made a new friend in O Nine, and then he shot himself a few months later. The Deets as I call them are not completely known to me, but we were out drinking with friends and I couldn't get him to use me as a safety net that night. Then I got the shocking phone call from another friend late the next afternoon that he had died. I still think it was an accident where the alcohol was a factor. I just don't see him as having been suicidal, even that particular night. Still, I hope it is a reminder to us all that life is a gift and we must cherish all of it, even the times that challenge us to hold onto ourselves. I suppose a tragedy like this might make me wonder if it was worth it to get close to someone just before they died, but what I take away from this is that if becoming his friend was always meant to be a risky thing, I should take more such risks! I don't think friends are ever in surplus and really getting to know people is always worth it, even when it costs you something.

Since Ian's passing several of his long time friends have been gracious enough to keep in touch with me. I am really grateful that they continue to think of me. I never think of myself as the easiest person to get along with, so the fact that they genuinely care about me is another gift of O Nine I wouldn't want to easily dismiss. I will admit it is hard to be around them because it just reinforces the notion that he should be there too. It feels that way to me at least, so I know it must feel that way to them. Still, without them I would be driving myself up the wall so I think I can deal with the occasional awkwardness that comes with it all just fine.

The revelation of being with them is learning more about the person I barely knew, the person I thought was so different from myself and through them, finding out that maybe we had a lot more in common than I ever thought before, whether it be the dark, dry sense of humor or an appreciation for good blues music. Maybe the thing we had most in common was that we just liked lots of different kinds of people, whether they be obviously amiable or more subtly so. There are just so many different kinds of people out there with something to offer that might take you by surprise. Take a minute out of your day to talk to someone new and wait to be knocked over by something you couldn't possibly expect.

One of the challenges of O Nine was being continuously asked by my employer to bend more and more all year long. I started the year finally being given the opportunity to leave night shift by taking a split shift, half day/half swing if you will. It didn't sound perfect, getting off work at nearly 8 pm isn't my notion of ideal long term, but as much as I don't have kids yet, it is at least a move toward normalcy. Then someone suddenly we were short somewhere else and I was shifted over to cover which meant I worked later than I was supposed to almost all year as well as getting fewer hours and gradually losing the vacation time I had just started building up.

Still, while taking half of my days (and by days I really mean evenings) more away from me than I would like, it did leave me entirely free the rest of them. So I started getting out more. I caught some ball games, some live music, and a few other things I find interesting or amusing. In this sense O Nine finally brought me a little free time and fun. I've had free time before--it was called unemployment though and it stunk because I was always broke! It's nice to have free time when you are still getting paid!

So I got out. I did it. At various times this year I have felt more myself than I have ever felt in my life. I suppose you could say I felt closer to my purpose, but I'm not one of those weirdo's that goes around speaking of a purpose for life aside from the one you make for yourself. Still, you know when you are living your life as you believe you should and when you are faking it. Looking back on the last ten years I can say that there were always moments when I've felt connected to my passions, but still in the larger sense still disconnected--sort of like seeing, feeling, but not fully immersed.

It gets really complicated to explain it more than that. I wouldn't say I'm fully immersed in self even now. I know I could do so much more, but I feel like I'm heading in the right direction. I'm making the kinds of connections I want to make with the right people. It's more organic than before. The most amusing part for me though is that these things seem to be coming together for me at a time where I felt so helpless and lost, almost as if I couldn't control anything about my life at all.

I think what it comes down to is that I've completely surrendered any notion of trying to do life by anyone else's expectations or standards of measure. I no longer feel that I need the structure of organized religion or even the randomness of disorganized religion in my life. Maybe I'm just talking gibberish here, so I'll move on...

I found myself miserably ill at year end, but I did force myself to attend a party, where in the middle of my cough-syrup-and-vodka induced haze I came to the realization that everyone I knew at this party I had met in O Nine. The point is I feel pretty good about O Nine and that makes me feel even better about One O. Sure a friend and I were discussing the finer aspects of being a LG in the C; my observation being that it might be hard to let myself get caught up in a new relationship given it sometimes feels like my instruments are all needing recalibration, but I'm foolishly optimistic nevertheless. Who needs to know how everything ends before they enjoy the beginning anyway?

So this one took a little longer to write than I thought. So much else to do before I visit the sandman!

Peace,

b

oh how i've neglected you far too long...

2009-12-16T01:10:00.000-08:00

Tonight was my Friday, my last, except that I volunteered to work a couple day shifts Thursday and Friday so I really only have one day off and slightly less than that considering I work all the earlier the following day. So I lay here playing my game in the dark after running into some friendlies briefly after work. I have wanted to say something but sometimes it isn't easy to know what to say.
Hey world! I know you're there. Maybe you're not listening right now, but I'm still here. My pulse is strong and my voice still breaks when I can't find the words...

Well so much has happened since my last post. A lot of morning and finding new routines which I am happy to report I will soon have to change! All signs point to my being able to finally move back into my regular shift by the end of January! I guess they are even tossing around the idea of letting me start work an hour earlier. That part isn't settled yet, but I think they also want me to only work every 4th weekend. That might just be enough to get me to stop applying for day shift jobs elsewhere! That is enough of that for now though...

So conversating with friends we got back to this topic that pops up every so often; which is loosely based on the question of who would be on your top 5 list of celebrities you would want to sleep with if you had such an opportunity, guilt free, even in the context of a relationship or marriage--a free pass if you will. The assumption is always that your partner has their own list and you've agreed to them. Typically this conversation takes place lightheartedly because there is just no context where you would get to meet the 5 people on your list and if you did, you're already making a major assumption that they would even be willing to play along.

So apparently my top five list tends to confuse people a bit. I'm not sure I have settled on my five, but Tina Fey would definitely be in the top 3 and has been ever since her Weekend Update days. It was a really big deal at the time that she co-hosted with Jimmy Fallon and then Seth Meyers. They hadn't had a female do Weekend Update since Jane Curtin if I'm not mistaken. So she's funny and smart, possibly not in that order. Oh and it doesn't hurt that she's very attractive either. So she has the trifecta and we'll forgive the fact that she's someone's mom for now because that's not my particular fetish just yet.

In coming up with a number two I'd stick with the funny fem theme and that leads me back to Janeane Garofalo originally but she fell out of the spotlight long enough that when she came back she just didn't do it for me anymore. I guess she's always been a bit older than me, but I didn't realize just how much older until she had a chance to age another 10 or so years. That really only leaves Sarah Silverman as a potential candidate but her wit and humor are clouded ever so slightly by her tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator a little too quickly in pursuit of the laugh. I would prefer to be the dirty mind even in my one-night-stand fantasies thank you. I guess I'm not totally given into pure feminist ideology enough for her. But that voice she does for Crank Yankers gives her honorable mention.

I think for my 2nd person for the top 5 I am going to go with Sarah Vowell. She's not really much of a celebrity, except when she is promoting her books. I don't know too many authors who make the impression she does when interviewed by Letterman or O'Brien. I don't really know exactly what it is. She's always a bit nerdy, but in a very ballsy sort of way which I find really hot! Go on, be smart and let your freak flag fly Sarah, and if we ever meet at an airport bookstore, I might still have a key to sneak out onto the apron and find that one place where the camera's don't find you!!!

For my third, it's really very easy. I've always had a thing for Natalie Portman ever since Beautiful Girls. I don't know how old she is there, but she PLAYS thirteen going on thirty-five. I know she's a little too obvious and I should be spanked for picking a Star Wars alumnus for my top five, but as long as she gives the spankings I don't even mind.

From there it gets a lot more difficult. There isn't a lot of room left. I have two choices left and they better be good. I haven't picked a redhead yet. What if the condom breaks? I would hate to waste my seed on someone without a single freckle at least! I always thought the band-geek from American Pie was hot but Alyson Hannigan kind of doesn't do it for me anymore. Maybe it's because they made her a brunette for "How I Met Your Mother." In that event the only thing she really had going for her was the ginger. So in an attempt to find a better redhead I came to Patty Griffin. I'm not sure exactly how old she is but I saw her once on Austin City Limits and for an older woman she's really quite striking and I really should have someone with strong pipes on my list. Hopefully she's a screamer!

Finally I feel the need to include an older woman, significantly older. I'd like to think even after all this there is still something left to learn from someone with the kind of experience necessary to pass this wisdom on to my generation! Who would that be? What about someone who also has red hair and that tell-tale streak of silver that marks her as an oracle of sorts. Yes I am talking about that Queen Diva, Bonnie Raitt. I've always loved her secretly, so why not enshrine her on my list? The truth is, she could be my blender at any age!

So the list is done. If any of you so-called sexy celebrities think you should have bumped these ones take notice, I DON'T CARE HOW MANY COVERS OF PEOPLE MAGAZINE YOU SCORE, YOU SELF-CENTERED NARCISSISTIC TALENTLESS HACKS CAN BUY AN EFFIN VIBRATOR AND CONSOLE YOURSELVES WITH THAT! THE LIST IS FINAL!

Sorry, I got a little excited. That is so unlike me. Well, I really only shared the list because I might try to write a script for a nice dark romantic comedy where such a list lingers as a minor arc in the narrative of love acquired, neglected, nearly lost to foolish deeds, and finally realized all the more through the trouble. Of course that's what would sell. I'd also love to leave my protagonists dangling from their own ropes and audiences a little queasy from being manipulated so much.

Time for some tunes...

Peace, love and happy birthday Jesus (hey soos),

b

this is a tribute...

2009-11-02T01:22:00.000-08:00

I was inspired to go through my own music collection in alphabetical order recently, a to z, with the hope to catch up on some things I haven't been listening to much lately. It is a great way to get reacquainted with old favorites or things you've downloaded but never really absorbed. So please scroll down and download/listen to a truly great song by Jeff Buckley while I honor a friend.

For much of this year I have been a frequent visitor to our friendly downtown neighborhood pub and while I became casually acquainted with many of the regulars and staff at Pat's, I hadn't really ever gotten out of my own head enough to make any lasting friendships.

Then I finally chatted with a fella named Ian who I occasionally noticed coming in briefly after closing down the restaurant next door. After finding out it was his restaurant I mentioned I had been meaning to give it a taste, but with my hours I kept missing out before they closed most nights. So eventually coming back from a trip to Portland I came into downtown on a Sunday afternoon with some time to spare and tasted the fare. A few weeks later I moved into the same building upstairs, putting me in the thick of a neighborhood I had become fond of as the nearest replication of the best parts of Vancouver and Portland in Tacoma.

That's when I made a stop into the restaurant after work one evening hoping to catch a bite before the kitchen closed, so I didn't even stop upstairs to change clothes. I had no intention of going anywhere else that night. I just wanted a good bite to eat before turning in for the night. Ian had other plans. I don't even know what possessed him to do so, but he turned and insisted that I was to come out with he and his friends. I settled my tab and considered just walking around the block and going home. I am sure that would have been fine, but I thought why not?

The rest of that evening was fairly interesting. I am not sure it was really a normal night for this group of guys because Ian dropped me off and apologized for everything, insisting they usually have more fun than that and making a point to insist I give them another chance. What he probably didn't realize was that it was more entertaining than anything else I'd done all year with my free time.

So over the next few months we hung out numerous times and Ian tried his best to get me into better spirits. He seemed to take it as a personal insult that I didn't have women tripping over themselves to talk to me. He said that he was the one who was awkward with women, but I should have my pick of the litter. Maybe it's what men say when they're drunk and projecting things. I wasn't really that concerned with "hooking up" as much as having fun, making friends and developing relationships that might help me meet the one I'm really looking for. I guess you could say I prefer the indirect approach? And I suppose you can say I got my wish. Not only was Ian a great friend; loyal and generous, but he led me into some great friendships with so many really great people. I can honestly say that I never would have gotten out of my own head long enough to actually talk to all these people I kept seeing down here all along. It isn't that I didn't think they were worth it, but that I didn't want to assume I was free to invade their space (to borrow an apology from one of them).

Now Ian has left us. A lot of close friends are suffering a terrible loss. Ian meant something slightly different to each of us, but the common thread is that he meant a LOT to everyone. Ian lived out loud. He didn't worry about invading your space. It isn't that he didn't care, just that he knew better than to doubt himself. He understood the power of collisions--that our lives were richer the more interconnected we were and there was never a need to apologize for being a friend.

I will miss Ian a lot, but more than that I worry that I only knew him a brief time and that whatever of him that rubbed off on me might fade away too quickly. I worry that the things he taught me about life (without effort) could pass as easily as a fog settles in on a cold night. Perhaps he was the only glue holding some of us together and without him we will scatter like atoms in an ever-expanding universe.

I know for certain that I will come away with a sense that life is too short to live it all wrong. I know all the things I thought were holding me back from making changes to live my life more true to course don't really mean anything. When the tears are dry there is really nothing of value that can hold me from becoming what I am. The trap I felt holding me in a job that never felt like a good fit for me, on shifts I never desired--that intruded on my life more than I wanted to allow--was only one I constructed for my own mind and now I can see the way out.

So to the best friend I have made in so many years (though I take none of the credit whatsoever), here's to your early departure... rest easy and be at peace while we take the long road to where you are!

Jeff Buckley
Last Goodbye
Grace

two more days (and nights)...

2009-09-02T23:17:00.001-07:00

I have been telling people I haven't been on vacation in several years, but I suppose that isn't quite true. Still, I can't remember the last time I took more than a week off and did something that was pure relaxation (at least the way I define it). So that is exactly what I will do starting Saturday.

I don't have a plan quite yet. I suppose that means the whole experiment could be a total bust, but there are some thoughts in the back of my mind. A friend and I have loose plans to pay a visit to Spokane and tour the state's only distillery (originally to take a quickie course they offer in distilling, but it was booked through January). I might spend at least one day at Bumbershoot or find a last-minute ticket to DMB in the gorge, either of which would satisfy my concert quota for the summer. I might do Portland up right. I miss the humus plate at McMenamin's (no offense to Merende, which makes a fine humus plate... even extra toasty like I prefer) and of course their fresh-squeezed greyhounds (looking forward to them moving in just up the street soon too). I was also thinking of a last-minute web-special to wherever Alaska Airlines thinks I should go. I have never been to Vegas or Hawaii or Mexico. I'm easy I guess, just feel like getting out of dodge... by myself if necessary.

So there would be no shortage of things to do to take chillaxin to a new level, if only for 14 days. In other news, I have been often asked how I like my new residence. Well, I love it of course, but I have to confess I am not quite settled. I think after 2 solid years, I only finally was getting settled in the old place, so I shouldn't expect to be fully unpacked after only 2 months here. Still, I did clean the apartment for the first time last weekend. I may have a moth problem. I'll keep everyone posted. I'd hate to have to buy new clothes, but it might be otherwise necessary anyway.

Back to the thought I was having though; It got me to thinking about what I've been doing with my free time since moving. I am definitely spending less time at home now, but initially I was happy to report that it was time spent doing more of the things I really enjoy. I was getting outdoors, introducing myself to my neighborhood, visiting the park, the birds, the waterfront. I had even been lucky enough to catch a lot of live music from local bands without really making a huge effort to do so (something I was missing ever since coming up here from Vancouver).

Lately though, it would seem my dance card is getting full hanging out with some new friends who I have to admit I don't think I have a lot in common with. I'm not that white guy listening to rap music at full-crunk with my 1200 watt amps and spinners on the rims, nor the preppy duchebag that can't sit still if there aren't enough hot (ie slutty appearing) chicks in a joint. I dare say the primary motivation for going out is just to have a good time, which is clearly an absurd concept to many of these people, who sometimes appear to be miserable as they try to figure out where they SHOULD be instead of where they are.

Perhaps it is a social experiment. I've had friends who exhibited some of these patterns before, but I was usually wearing the pants in those relationships. For some strange reason, I feel flattered when these people ask me to hang out with them. They rarely ask me what I want to do though. In fact, last night one of them did and it caught me totally off guard. I later thought that I should always know exactly what I would want to do in the event someone were to ask. Live music maybe? A decent pool hall? Even air hockey or ping pong would be fun while conversation ensues. As it were, we called it a night early because neither of us had any ideas. Well, perhaps that was just one of those people who was more dependent on me to have a notion and here I'd been spending too much time with the ones that could care less and I suppose I've forgotten how to exercise that part of my will.

So there is this strange paradox of friendship playing out at the moment. I enjoy hanging out with some of these people and I feel more at home here when I am around them, but for some reason it requires a small sacrifice of my own interests in the process. The irony might be that it was at a time when I thought I was being perhaps the most myself I have ever been that I formed these ties, only to find it drawing me away from myself bit by bit again.

Maybe it is more that while I choose my setting carefully, many of the casual acquaintances I have made have found themselves there more accidentally or have not made themselves entirely comfortable there, so they will always want to leave sooner or later and regather someplace more familiar for them. Well, in that sense, they won't all have the same effect of drawing me away from myself. I don't really think they all do actually. I wonder if it isn't that my perception of the dynamic is reversed. Perhaps the person who seems to be asserting their will over mine is really the person who needs my company more than I do theirs, and given a simple alternative, would gladly try something new or different from whatever rut they were in.

Hmm. Life goes on folks. More to come.

Peace,

b

searching for a new theme...

2009-07-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

Well, what else would I do on a major holiday with a full week off but move across town? Not only that, but if I'm going down, I take everyone else with me (seriously, a huge thanks to everyone who helped!). I'm cannot be entirely certain, but I could have easily worked off 15 pounds in the process. Still, I'm all tucked in and the old place is no more. Poof! It is almost as if I were never there. I was driving one a final load home last night and a certain song came on that almost made me nostalgic about leaving the cream-box-with-a-view behind, but I'm sure it wasn't the apartment I was thinking about anyway.

So many things happen all at once when you move. Of course you have to deal with boxes you never unpacked from the last move. Some of those went to the goodwill, or dumpster as the case may be, but some contained items I still find I can't yet get rid of. I mean, maybe someday I'll have a son I can give those silly old baseball cards to. I at least know otherwise I won't have any use for them personally. "Brian" went to Value Village, along with a rug I almost considered putting to use in my new, larger bathroom and both my own and my former roommates old military clothing. I wonder what the folks cleaning the windows outside Goodwill thought about me throwing away Army AND Navy uniforms. I'm sure it was at least a little odd.

One of the nicer things about moving was being forced to make tough, life changing decisions. I'm talking about the couches people! I had to give up the purple monster. There was just no way to get it through the front door, much less up the 45 stairs. Hopefully my brother has found a home for it by now. Of course that meant I needed to deal with the other couch in storage that I thought was broken. It turns out it wasn't in as bad shape as I thought. The front kick-panel is lose, but hanging on for dear life. I'm not sure anyone will even notice that. Once we completely dismantled it, we were able to move the beast to my new 3rd floor studio. I not only sweated the move itself, but whether or not I'd even get it put back together. So sometime before midnight, I managed to get all the nuts tight and the motor plugged in and I officially have a spare bed (a mildly comfortable one at that) for guests to stay in again! Sure, only a few people have ever used it, but there is always a chance it will get busier around here.

After I finished up Sunday night's unpacking and reorganizing activities, I went downstairs and caught one of the bartender's band play a small show in the back of Paddy's. It wasn't very busy. I could tell they are used to playing for a slightly larger audience, but it was nice. I sat there with a mixture of strangers and casual acquaintances thinking that I am finally starting to make this city home. I also couldn't help wondering if the guy singing most of the songs wasn't the guy who used to play indoor soccer with us in college. I was able to get his first name by memory, but after 2 1/2 hours I couldn't even get a hint of what his last name was. Anyway, It wasn't even close--definitely a different person regardless.

So, here's to the place that already feels more like home than anywhere I've been in years!

Peace,

b

Soft Shoulder
Ani DiFranco
To The Teeth

Cheers Darling...

2009-05-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

I used to blog fairly regularly about some pretty personal stuff. I stopped when the personal stuff started to infringe on the privacy of others close to me. Of course, that begs the question, I imagine, why I would bother now.

Tonight I find sleep an impossibly elusive mistress in spite of working 10 hour shifts all week and most of last week. Maybe I should have gone to the pub again last night and closed the place down yet again. I am finding some new friends there who are quite entertaining at the least and incredibly insightful on occasion. So was it the caffeine from lunch, the lack of proper sedative as a nightcap or the impending dental appointment early this morning (which will make today a very long day indeed)?

The answer is of course, D, none of the above. Tonight happens to mark the intersection of several events that conspire to keep my thoughts wandering endlessly. Primarily that today's dental appointment is a sort-of-anniversary of the day the cause of my long silence from blogging about most personal things decided to end our relationship in an extra innings nail-biter of a day. So I realized among other things that this is the first time I'll see my friends at the dentist office since the break-up, which makes them kind of unique among the various people in my life who all know by now (whether by direct or word-of-mouth marketing).

Today also marks the day the aforementioned former entanglement was due to return to the city of destiny (well, originally). So there was also that, but that is not all. Sunday, aside from being mothers day, also marks my thirty-second birthday. Yes I get to share my birthday with my mom (whose birthday is a week later and it seems blatantly unfair that she doesn't also sometimes have to share that with a "son's day" or something of the sort) about once every 5 years.

There isn't much of a connection between all of these things on the surface, except that I had been anticipating my birthday a long time ago. My ex had missed my only other birthday during our year and a half long relationship, and I had made the request that we go away and do something together, being that she was due back in town just in time. I didn't want to know a lot about the details, but it was very important to me that we do something together and alone. Not to offend any of my family who might also read this, but I'd had enough of spending my birthdays alone or as a third(ish) wheel to whatever was already going on with them.

Yeah I suppose it all seems very silly to focus so much energy at a date on the calendar but as I recall, it was between my 8th birthday and my mom's 35th that my parents split up, making it the last time we were all together. From then on I tended to always spend birthdays with family, never having much of a "party" with friends. My great-grandfather's birthday was the next day, so a few of were spent with them also. My dad decided to make his re-appearance on my 13th birthday. I remember being shocked and a little disoriented by the man standing at the back door who looked both strange and familiar. He had wanted to surprise me and he certainly accomplished that much at least. Finally I did get to have a party with friends (after a little protesting on my part) sometime around my 16th or 17th. It was kind of awkward though since it was a Wednesday and that was youth group night. So I went to McDonald's afterwards as I had started doing occasionally with some of my friends and my mom and grandmother decided to show up with a big cake and embarrass me enough that I never bothered asking for a big birthday party again.

So this year my invitation is to spend mothers day with my family and help my brother with the food (so his wife and the mother of their children doesn't have to) on the BBQ. Seeing as there isn't anything better to do anymore, I'll oblige and bring some ribs I've seasoned to my own special flavor resigned to spend at least one more birthday surrounded by all the reminders that at the end of the day I will still be alone.

Still, if anyone wishes to buy me a drink, I'll be at Paddy's in time for "happy hour."

peace,

brian

doll parts
hole

opening week nearly over...

2009-04-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

and the Mariners are 3-2. It is too early to tell if this .600 record is what they will end the season with (which would be very respectable), but for now the fact that they have earned all 3 of these wins on the road, does mean they have the winningest road record in baseball. That is something to celebrate... for now.

[update: the hometown boys of summer are now 5-2 after sweeping the A's in Oakland. That is a 4 way tie for the 3rd best record in baseball right now. Only Florida and Atlanta are better, each at 5-1 and neither having a significant road-trip yet this season. In fact, only Atlanta has picked up just 2 road wins and Florida hasn't left the grove yet at all. This means the Mariners are arguably the best team in baseball so far this year as the next best road record is the Chicago Cubs at 4-2.

Looking forward to Tuesday's home opener. Time to set the DVR!]

On heavy rotation...

2009-03-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

I noticed yesterday as I was wondering where an old album went that my handy take-your-favorite-120 CD's-on-the-go tote had accumulated quite a bit of dust. I remembered that the one I was looking for was not in it, and squinted to find the case on the bookshelf. It was definitely a needle in the hay! Even though I knew it would not be in the carrying case, I was not entirely convinced I would find it in its jacket either. Imagine my surprise when it slipped out of its minimalist imported recycled paper products packaging a little scratched but none the worse for wear.

I don't know if I would ordinarily blog about an old disc that everyone should certainly have by now, but this is more about the what and when and why.

I found this disc at Borders when I was living in a drab brick & mortar dorm-style dwelling which sweated strangely along the exterior wall. Dust bunnies were the only pets I kept as I made sure not to leave any food in my fridge for fear of the army of ants that were perched to invade whether the window was left open or not.

The Special Forces compound was a strange place where a group of us medical personnel hid out on the third floor of one of the buildings. I had just traded in my nimble Cavalier for a more stout SUV and loaded all the necessary sound equipment that really never belonged in such an odd duck as my tan 2-door anyway. The litmus test for such an installation was of course the 03:22 mark of track 3 of Damien Rice's O. I think that I realized I never really belonged on the special forces compound when I pushed moody Irish folk-rock through my 450 watt sub amp instead of 50 cent or Bloodhound Gang. But those first 3 seconds after the key change sent chills down my spine as I parked outside the barracks in the rain not really in any kind of hurry to go "home" all alone again.

In those weeks I had worked up the nerve to actually call up the principle of my then current infatuation and to my surprise was not instantly greeted with instantaneous rejection or at least passive disinterest. OK so the "date" turned out to not really be a date after all and it became awkward rather quick but I was learning to get over myself. I guess sometimes you just have to revel in any victory no matter how insignificant it might seem at the time.

So I blew the dust off and put it in my new car. While my present wheels might seem pretty ostentatious to some, the sound system is kind of wimpy.... shudder... it's the factory stuff. So how does track 3 sound at the 03:22 key change in my new(ish) car? Well, admittedly it sounds decent when it's raining, and even better when the sun is long down in the west. Then again I have to turn it up quite a bit more than the radio because DR seems to enjoy plenty of contrast and pushing your dynamic range, but when it comes, it does not disappoint... even in my silly stock ampless speakers.

I had the pleasure of catching Rice in concert 2 years ago next month. I took a friend who was not really familiarized with his music, but it was memorable nonetheless. I guess I hadn't really listened to this one all the way through in at least as long, because I had nearly forgotten the crescendo of the concert, a totally amped up extended version of I Remember.

I won't go into exactly what prompted me to go dig for this one, but I needed to put it on heavy rotation again... if only for a short while.

The Blower's Daughter (aka track 3)
I Remember
Damien Rice
O

PS... I could only find a live version of I Remember. It is either a poor recording or a better-than-average bootleg, but thankfully it is from the early leg of the same tour that brought Rice to Seattle for Earth Day 2007. So this is pre-splitting-up-with-Lisa over "creative differences" and arguably a slightly better version than the one I heard live which was absent the sultry fem vocals in the prelude ballad... so it is closer to the album version in that regard, but the transition matches the intensity I recall from Benaroya Hall, though the crowd sounds much smaller. Oh, don't listen to these on a laptop or work speakers. These songs need the full treatment. Find a pimped out car or at least a good set of headphones :D That is all!

the end of an era...

2009-03-01T20:17:00.000-08:00

So I am sitting at home grubbing on ice cream and enjoying a quiet Sunday evening before starting my first week of not-night-shift in a very long time (well, starting Tuesday). How do I feel about this? Well, it's been the focus of my attention for as long as I can remember to get off night shift, but now that it's here it seems very weird. I don't know what it will be like to work right along-side some of the day and swing shifters and have so many people underfoot all the time, but chances are it will be just fine. Yet change is still change and I'm not entirely certain what my job will look like until i settle into it for a few weeks.

So in the spirit of being thankful for having a job in uncertain times, here's a happy tune for you all to enjoy as much as I do.

b

100 Yard Dash
Raphael Saadiq
The Way I See It

hook...

2009-02-08T00:44:00.000-08:00

hook on my wall
all the evidence of what here belonged
emptiness defined by absence more than lacking
space [un]filled
subtle remind of beauty graced
warmed
inspired
loved...
removed.
"you should fill this space with another--more beautiful"
said by those who never really looked
never gazed
appreciated
understood.
there are other walls to fill
but this... hook
will always remain
empty.

- b.g.h.

When I Dream of Michelangelo
Counting Crows
Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings (2008)

merry christmas to all...

2008-12-25T08:57:00.000-08:00

and (because the sun is glaring at me through the middle of the window at 9am) to all a good night!

I just thought I'd wish anyone stumbling upon this little blog of mine a festive holiday season and share a few of my favorite holiday tunes, hopefully unique ones that you would otherwise have a hard time finding in the vastness of the world-wide web, except that I will steer you in the right direction (links are not mine, give them a listen before they are pulled).

Stop the Cavalry
Cory Band

Christmas in the Trenches
John McCucheon

The First Noel
David Benoit

The Holidays are Here (... and We're Still at War)
Brett Dennen

Merry Christmas and peace to all,

b

winter storm warning...

2008-12-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

They are saying that this storm is the biggest since 1996. Of course that means you have to count all the snow we've gotten in the past two weeks combined, but still. The odd thing is this storm is really a series of storms connected by consistently low temperatures. Typically Puget Sound area winter storms are seperated by periods of warming and rainfall. This month has been unique because the temperature never rose above freezing.

This was Saturday night looking at downtown from our courtyard. It was a very dry powdery snow, hard to make snowballs, except with your bare hands. The courtyard has that festive holiday feel right now thanks to the one family that decorated their window for the season.

This is a strange view toward the dome area from late Sunday night. The snow fell slowly on and off all day, getting so thick you could barely make out the large tree in the center and then clearing up briefly so you could see all the way to Stanley & Seaforts Restaurant up on the opposite hill.

I am getting cabin fever. Oddly I only get cabin fever when I know I can't go anywhere, more so than when I am free to leave whenever I want, but don't. The plan is to wait a few hours, don thick socks, hiking boots (I am still breaking in), snow pants, gloves, and a stocking hat and head down to the park on foot to take some pictures. Then the tour will swing northeast to the bookstore I hope will be open so I can get the third book in the twilight series (it's been two whole days since I finished new moon after all) and then swing southeast to Paddy's to warm up with some grub from the pub.

Hopefully the pictures all turn out well. My camera has been acting up and I'm not sure if it is due to the firmware update or some other calamity. Somehow it doesn't always want to release the shutter, even if I'm in full manual mode. Go figure! I'll figure something out.

Stay home, drink cocoa and put a yule log on the fire folks!

Peace,

bgh

new toy for a grownup boy...

2008-12-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

Realizing it has been a long time since I've posted here, I'll skip the apologies and move straight on to why I shattered my silence. I have had my eye on upgrading lenses ever since I upgraded from the D50 to D80 about this time two years ago. I realized right away the extra technical capabilities were over matched for the stock lens and the 55-200mm lens I originally purchased with the D50. Still, I knew I was looking at anywhere from 400-1000 or more for each type of lens and that would take a while to save up for!

I'll admit that lately I've been less than excited about taking pictures, partly because I don't go anywhere new very often but mostly because the camera just doesn't get enough light in a variety of situations where I would prefer to NOT have to use a flash (the sales lady is trying to change my mind on that by the way, but I'll cave in on an external flash some other day). So I finally made it down to Robi's in Lakewood and after staying a couple hours past my bedtime, I made up my mind between an ultra-wide angle and a telephoto (or both... hey, I considered it!) and picked up a Tamron AF 28-300mm f1.3-6.3 with vibration control. Neither of my old lenses were VR, so this will take some getting used to, but I already think I like it since I rarely use a tripod (the cheap one I bought a few years ago wobbles too much, hey maybe the VC will fix that too).

What sealed the deal? Well, I originally thought the ultra-wide angle lens would be the best addition to my camera bag without making either of my others feel neglected, but this lens covers such a large range that it seemed best suited to solve one of my other dilemmas--switching lenses every time I cross the magical 55mm threshold. Also, these shots taken with my 55-200 and the 28-300 made the increased capabilities of the Tamron glaringly obvious. Bear in mind this is inside the store, but it isn't exactly poorly lit either. The 300 is almost at maximum zoom, still so much more light gets through.

So I'll have to wait a little longer before I get that ultra-wide angle lens. Of course, I know exactly which one that will be. The Tamron SP AF 10-24mm f3.5-4.5 Di II is a pretty stellar compliment to the one I just purchased. Of course it leaves a gap from 24-28 but the stock lens will be quite happy to still have a reason to stay out of retirement!

I'm pretty excited about winter low-light situations--indoors and out--and I'm hoping this might finally motivate me to go take a class so I can pretend to know what I'm doing with this gizmo. Oh boy.

Peace,

b

even more politics: initiative 1000...

2008-10-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

Lately Martin Sheen has been on the local airwaves telling us that if we do not vote against this initiative (which they do not name other than I-1000 in the spot), soon insurance companies will seize control of our healthcare system and force us to take life ending drugs by denying coverage.

Well, since I lived in Oregon which was the first state to adopt a death with dignity law, I put three and six together and came up with twenty-five--that they were referring to a similar initiative here in Washington.

Admittedly I didn't do that much research on this one. The ad is blatantly alarmist and its credibility is immediately suspect. Still, I wanted to know, so I did a search and found the other sides website, confirmed that this is a death with dignity initiative and that it does not give insurance companies any additive powers. In fact, the same safeguards the original Oregon law had are all there: the patient needs to be terminally ill with an estimated 6 months or less to live, otherwise mentally competent and informed consent is required to receive the prescription. Physicians are not required to administer the lethal doses personally, the patient usually does this themselves at a time of their own choosing.

I would encourage you to visit the debunker page as well as the list of endorsements from past and present local political leaders, religious leaders and faith groups, as well as other non-governmental organizations and action groups.

I am not 100% certain where I fall on whether or not I would ever ask for a lethal dose in order to end my own life should I become terminally ill, but I do think that no government should criminalize this practice or demonize the physicians who are willing to offer their patients this option. Dr Kevorkian anyone?

Peace,

b

more politics: state race...

2008-10-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

There is an ad running up here in the Seattle area that has been bugging me, one of those typical attack ads where they play a sound byte from the opponent and then quote some headline that appears to contradict their statement or expose it as untrue. Know which ad I am referring to yet?

Anyway, as I understand it our state has a law that prevents our legislature from passing (and the governor from signing) an unbalanced budget, which is why we have a surplus every year. Oregon similarly runs a surplus, but their laws require them to give it back to the taxpayers after the books are closed for that fiscal year. In Washington it rolls over and helps us when we go through dry spells.

Anyway, this ad was running again today on something I recorded, so I paused it and looked up some of the articles that are quoted. I offer you a chance to go read them for yourself, but the budget shortfall mentioned in these articles is a projected shortfall for 2009-2011 budget years and not 2008. Read a summary of the Spokesman Review article referenced here, I do not subscribe to the Spokane paper myself so I can't quote the article directly, still the summary does clearly state that it is a projected future shortfall, not a present one.

This article from the Seattle PI explains the nuances of Rossi's charge that the Gregoire administration isn't acknowledging the projected deficit exists, which isn't clear from the ad that seems to charge the deficit exists in the current budget. According to the article the state will see 273 million less in revenues in the last months of the current budget which was written 2 years ago, but Gregoire and her staff have already made cuts and frozen hiring for some state positions to save a projected 290 million.

The 2009-2011 budget hasn't been written or voted on by the legislature yet, so arguing over it the way this political ad does seems deceptive and partisan. I would encourage you to read the article, because in it, Gregoire charges our states financial troubles are linked directly to the national economy and the harm it has suffered under Bushes economic policies, but cites examples of how our state has attempted to regulate the banking industry here in Washington. I happen to know that beginning in Jan 2007 we now require loan officers to pass criminal background checks and register with the state for licenses to operate here as they had previously in other states such as Oregon. I heard from contacts in that industry that a surprising number of people already active in the mortgage industry were found to have criminal records and denied their licenses.

Still, Rossi charges that it is wrong to accuse our states own recession on the national economy or the Bush administration economic policies. I don't see how it cannot be linked myself. Boeing, Microsoft, Nordstroms, Washington Mutual are some of our largest home-grown corporations and they all rely on the global and national economy for strength. Our ports in Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Vancouver and elsewhere in the state are another major financial engine for the state, are the timber and energy industries. None of these operate in a bubble that magically fastens at our borders.

So what is this forcasted defecit? Well they are now projecting 256 million less for 2009-2011 than previously forcasted (I imagine when the previous budget was drafted), but interestingly not less than this budget cycle. They are expecting revenues to increase, just not at the same pace.

So how much is the shortfall? Only a mere 0.817%. Take into consideration that the budget process involves the governor's staff producing a draft proposal and submiting it to the legislature for approval. Since state law requires that it balance, there will be much haggling over exact numbers, if the forcasted decrease in revenues is too pessimistic or not pessimistic enough, whether the pay raises given to state employees during labor negotiations were too much, appropriate, or not enough, not to mention whether or not we should continue to fund a myriad of programs and social services that always generate a lot of bickering. So will the budget ultimately be the responsibility of the state's cheif executive? Not exactly.

So why paint this picture except to detract from the similarities between the republican gubenatorial candidate and the current federal administration. A quick peek at the video's the Dino Rossi campaign submitted to YouTube revealed that he spent most of his time working in the real estate industry and he proudly points out that he has spent a fraction of the time in Olympia that Gregiore has.

I guess for me it comes down to this: While Rossi was attempting to strike it rich in the real estate industry (and getting hands dirty?), Gregoire was working her way up the ranks of public service. It is the same coin no matter which party or candidate is using it. On one side is the career public servant, the incumbent perhaps, who can be portrayed by the other side as entrenched in whatever it is about government that disenfranchises their side or as a self-sacrificing individual who works hard throughout their carreer in order to serve the public good by those like-minded as them. Then there is the challenger, the outsider who believes government is perpetually broken and needs their take-charge can-do-it-ness or their honest, unencumbered, untainted hands to restore government to its true self who could also be portrayed as inexperienced, unseasoned and illprepared to tackle the challenges of the office which require someone who knows the system, the players, and the rules in order to navigate the murky waters to bring the boat ashore.

Well, make up your own mind.

Peace,

b

nuclear vs nucular

2008-10-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

I am watching the VP debate from last night on my DVR right now. I had people asking me about the first presidential debate as well as last nights debate and since I missed the first presidential debate, I figured I better catch this one right away.

I think for my part this was a more important one to watch because I know who Obama and McCain are, but I really don't know enough about either of the VP picks. So who are these people? Well, I understand Biden drives a midlife-crisis convertible old-school roadster and Palin drives an Expedition (or was it Excursion?). I guess in their own ways, they're both a little folksy compared to their ticket partners, carefully chosen to appeal to the elements of their respective parties that cannot relate to the polished looks and polished speech of Obama or the financial and political success of the McCain family.

Interestingly both candidates agreed in their words to support the civil rights of same-sex couples in virtually every way but that neither would support redefining marraige from the perspective of the state, but leaving it to faith-groups to define it for themselves. I think that is the only thing they admitted to agreeing on though.

Still I am troubled that in a few key moments Palin seemed to deliberately pass on the opportunity to answer a challenge by Biden and explain her position on something important and chose to change the subject instead. Twelve minutes in, Biden made some comments about McCain's insistence on deregulating healthcare the way republicans have ignored or weakened regulations in the banking industry and the Ifill asked if Palin would like to respond to that comment and she balked and shifted focus back onto taxes.

Then Ifill asked both candidates to discuss their different tax philosophies and whether it amounted to class warfare. Biden stated that increasing taxes on the wealthy while holding them steady on the middle class and even reducing them for the working poor is just fairness in his eyes. Palin then charged that this philosophy did amount to an attack on the middle class because it would impact small business owners.

Now this part I don't get, how does a business owner who manages to keep a family salary over 250K each year qualify as small? I know a lot small business owners who are doing quite well but who don't manage to take home more than 100K from their businesses to use in supporting their families. I think she is either ignorant to the nuanced difference between a businesses revenues and its profits, or she is deliberately playing a partisan game to deceive people into believing that a focused tax increase on the wealthy will impact those small business owners that Republicans historically claim to support but who seem to be left disadvantaged by their parties history of favoring large corporations through tax loopholes and refusing to regulate business and trade.

If Republicans had a track record of favoring small business and leveling the playing field in rural and suburban America between independent main street retail and the big box retail industry for example, then I would be the proudest Republican! The fact of the matter is that they don't make policies that keep our homegrown small-town businesses viable in today's global corporate economic system. What upsets me the most about what has been happening these past few weeks with the bank failures is that these already monolithic regional and national banks are being bought out for pennies on the dollar by even larger ones and what we will see when the dust settles is even fewer multinationals with even more power to exercise not only a choke-hold on our economy but far more influence over our political process than they should be allowed to have.

Instead of letting these banks be seized by bigger ones, the government should exercise its power to regulate and in some cases break these banks up into smaller pieces to be sold off to smaller regional banks with strong track records for fiscal integrity. Instead of letting CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase expand their empires, why not do the harder work of auditing these seized banks, clean up their books, renegotiate mortgages to strengthen the assets that are left and perhaps not even have to sell them of at auction in the first place. Couldn't the government assign a team of federal auditors to temporarily control a bank, clean house, meet with stockholders and reassure them that they will find the cancer and treat it and they will be free to bring in a new executive team within six months when the bank is once again thriving?

All this talk of bailing out wall street is upsetting to a lot of people who feel like it won't fix the real problem, which is a capitalistic environment that rewards greed and protects individuals who engage in unethical practices at nearly every level within the system from being held accountable for their actions.

Anyway, back to the debate... 29 minutes in Biden was talking about the subprime mortgage crisis and saying that he and Obama favor the Fed being able to go in and renegotiate these mortgages not just for the rate of interest but the principle as well. He said he did not believe McCain or Palin supported that plan. Ifill asked Palin if that was so and all she said was "that is not so" and quickly changed the subject. What I want to know is which part of that plan do they support or do they agree completely? She did not clarify but dramatically changed the subject to energy policy and her and McCain's plan to drill for more oil and natural gas in places like Alaska and offshore.

Again and again it seemed that she was not interested in debating topics and answering charges, but using her time to talk about topics she had likely been coached on and only as deep as her knowledge of the subject would allow. She didn't seem to be able to really dig in and explain her positions when challenged about the details. That really bothers me. Given the trouble she has had in interviews in recent weeks answering specific questions that do not seem to be overly difficult questions to answer, I have serious doubts about her ability to wrestle with real problems. Sure the executive is a figurehead that needs to be surrounded by a lot of advisers, but ultimately this person needs to be able to really study a problem and make a decision and own it, not pass the buck so they can claim plausible deniability. Ignorance is not an excuse!

Well, I would write more but I need to get ready for work. I'd love to know what you thought about the debate.

Peace,

b

summer ends...

2008-09-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

As evidenced by the fact that there are no more Mariners games--not that I was paying any attention at all for the past four months, that the Seahawks are now off and rolling to what looks like another disappointing season, the fall television lineup is here and not surprisingly the most talked about programs are the least worth talking about, and then of course there are the colors in change.

A couple weeks ago I went up to see Rachel and we went on a hike which was an excellent chance to enjoy the last remnants of summer o-eight. Given my present level of fitness there was really only time for one serious hike and we picked a pretty serious one at that, up to Copper Basin which is a short hike but with a pretty substantial elevation gain.

There was the possibility we would not make it all the way into the basin before we needed to start heading back, but we did make it there just in time to have lunch on the creek. The fall colors had only started to come in and most of my pictures looked a lot more monochromatic than I had hoped. Still, many of the pictures from the basin itself turned out quite well and you can catch them on my photoblog. They are larger files and take a bit longer to load for those of you on slower connections. Still, if you can tolerate the download times they might be worth peeking at.
This weekend I went up to see my dad. I realized while I was up there that I hadn't been up there in over a year. We played 9 holes of golf Saturday morning, which was nice. I believe it had been even longer since I'd played golf. Of course I didn't play very well, but I did surprisingly well from the tees and down the fairways. My score resembled my usual largely because I couldn't pitch worth beans and other than a couple good putts, my green-game was pretty lousy. I made it on or near the green a stroke under par at pretty much every hole, and then averaged 4-5 more strokes to actually get the dimpled sphere in the cup.

Sunday we went out on the sound hoping to find some fish. I bought a one-day license figuring I am not sure I'd go out five more times before next year's season starts. We had to improvise for seats in the boat because my brother is in the process of having them rebuilt and reupholstered. We circled Marrowstone and Indian Islands and with the fish finder not showing us anything interesting we finally decided to drop our lines in the water near a creek just north of Port Hadlock. About an hour later we had drifted past a kayak, a paddle boat, and a couple anchored sailboats and we decided to pull our lines in and head back to the boat launch to call it a day.

No fish and a mediocre round of golf, but it was still an enjoyable weekend. We had plenty of sunshine and possibly the last warm temperatures of the year. So I'm comfortable that I got out and enjoyed the summer just enough to be ready for autumn to come and give me some rainy days so I can have better sleep during my working weeks.

Peace, b

Say Hey (I Love You)
Michael Franti & Spearhead
All Rebel Rockers

2008-07-03T05:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, I completely missed the month of June. I don't really mind taking a break from blogging, but missing an entire month means there will be a gap on the archive! Maybe I can back-date this one?

So I'm staying up all night which is not highly unusual except for the fact that I'm not working. I'm sitting on the couch playing a game online, watching last Wednesday's Late Show from the DVR and the thunder storm outside. It's been going on like this all night. I went out hunting for food around 11 PM and it was one of those dry heat storms and I noticed around 330 AM that we were still having a lightening storm, only now it is raining and the flashes sometimes seem to be right outside my window.

All of this hasn't distracted me from my true purpose, kicking ass in my game! Peace, yo!

2008-05-31T09:58:00.000-07:00

Rachel came to visit during my last week off, over memorial day weekend. We had good weather for the most part during her visit which made enjoying the Folklife Festival much easier. We took in three out of four days of contra dancing and a baseball game.

First the contra dancing. There certainly were plenty of people to sweat and work up a thirst with. When I wasn't dancing with Rachel I ran into ladies from Seattle, Olympia, Portland, San Diego, and Colorado just to name a few. It was fun. There was quite a variety of skill levels which makes it easier for folks like me.

While they didn't have formal instructions beforehand, if only due to the logistics of getting 5 lines of 25-40 couples each to get "hands four" and so on, the folklife version of contra dancing lent itself to novices being able to jump in and give it a try. I really didn't mind so much, it was less stuffy that way. Still, somehow when you watched from the sides everything seemed quite synchronous--even if it didn't always feel that way in the more crowded parts in the middle.

There was also lots of music. It wasn't Sasquatch, but it was closer and I slept in my own bed every night :) Then there were crazy folksy types singing about not having kids to save the planet or about relationships ruining your political convictions and good stuff like that.

As for the baseball game, well, we lost. I will say that we put up an excellent fight against the reigning champs. I should have mentioned to Rachel that the Mariners always do well against the Red Sox. They went on to win that series, only losing the game we went to by two runs. It had been tied up until the 8th inning and Felix had been pitching very well, but he started getting banged around and the managers kept him in the game too long and things got out of hand. The team tried to rally in the 9th, but it was too little too late. Oh well. It isn't as if we're in the Pennant chase anymore!

There were other activities, but the week was finally over and we said our goodbyes and I went back to work, yet another crazy week of work! So now our thoughts are shifting further out into the summer and planning a trip to Wisconsin. Speaking of which, can you believe the Brewers this year? Who knew?

More to follow. See also my photoblog. I'll be adding a picture of the eagles nest on my way to work. I might go back on a nicer day, the pictures turned out really well, but it was overcast and the color is less than desirable. I'd like to catch it when the sun is higher in the sky too, maybe the baby eagle will be easier to spot in the nest that way.

Peace,

b

Hello
Hello
Tristan Prettyman

new photoblog for you visual junkies...

2008-05-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that I have found a great place to post my photography. I've had my frustrations with how blogger, myspace, google images, and msn live handle uploaded pictures and at last Wordpress has a great photoblogging tool. Sure enough it lets you upload the whole picture, does not compress it, and the Monocrome layout tool chooses a color theme for each picture based on it's analysis of the content of that picture. Pretty snazzy.

The Monocrome layout also turns each picture into a link so it makes it difficult for people to download the full picture. One drawback so far is that it squeezes the picture into a fixed frame. I loaded the URL for one of my uploaded pictures and if viewed 100% they spill off the page just like they should, but when you view my blog, the pictures will have a fixed size thanks to the layout tool. I will work on finding out how to at least bump that up a bit for those of us with larger desktops. Otherwise we shall all just suffer a little in the mean time (of course other browsers may have a way of getting around the link--which is to the next picture in the blog's archive--to load the full picture in a new window or something).

Well, it's very late for me. I'm off to the land of candy, fairies and bazaar plot twists.

Peace,

b

Another great one from the Oscar winner:

Say it to Me Now
Glen Hansard
Once Soundtrack

another entry into the dreamlog...

2008-05-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I have this recurring dream that I'm about a month into a new semester and I have a class that I forgot all about and so far have not ever gone to, and panic sets in. Last night (or this morning really), I dreamed that I had managed to only attend one of my classes this time around and was suddenly trying to figure out if it wasn't too late to make it. I don't really know why I keep having these dreams. Of course all the usual suspects were there, and the odd part is that I don't even know which classes I'm missing, when they take place, or where they are.

It is such a relief to wake up and realize that college is over. Now I get to go to work early and pull a twelve hour shift. Oh to be me!

Peace,

b

Sweet and Low
Augustana - Can't Love, Can't Hurt

another tragic ending to a promising season...

2008-05-09T00:48:00.000-07:00

Baseball has barely begun, so why am I already toasting the end of a disappointing season? Well, if you do the math, the Mariners are already so far behind that it would take such a performance for the rest of the season to pull off a comeback--and that would require a team capable of such a comeback and clearly this team is not!

Still, there are fun moments. I'll get to those. First, the reason I made the trip up to see Seattle take on the Texas Rangers? Well, Felix Hernandez. I've been to some games, seen some pitchers, watched the M's lose. I guess I wanted to go to a game that for all intents and purposes should have been a sure thing. So with Felix on the mound facing the team that is supposed to be the worst in the American League (which now the Mariners are). So much to my dismay, Felix gives up two runs in the first inning. He can't seem to locate his pitches and even hits Finally he hit Laird in the second inning setting up a two run homer by Kinsler. His pitch count would haunt him for the rest of the game even though he wouldn't leave until after the 5th inning with 112 pitches. Gabbard would leave in the fourth with only 63 for reasons I'll get to later. Still while Felix struggled, he was throwing strikes. The rest of the team, however, wasn't hitting.

So (probably) in response to Hernandez hitting Laird in the first, Gabbard brushes Ibanez back in the fourth (seen here).

Richie Sexon comes up and the very first pitch to him is up at eye level (he is very tall) and Sexon must have beleived Gabbard was head-hunting and immediately charges the mound.

I don't know about Sexon though. He isn't hitting very well and if I'm a Texas pitcher and I think Hernandez was going after hitters I wouldn't go after someone who is barely keeping his job. I'd go after Ichiro, Beltre, Lopez, or Betancourt, not Sexon or even Ibanez. Still, as well as Gabbard was pitching, it would seem that he was at least trying to send a message, which is tacky considering how much Hernandez seemed to have been struggling. Perhaps he just didn't see it that way (Felix was still managed to throw 70 strikes in 112 pitches).

So that aside, you have to give Sexon credit for having some balls. I mean if someone is going to charge the mound, it might as well be the player who could've just as easily have been benched in the first place. Besides, as you see here, the first five players to reach the mound besides Sexon, are all wearing grey and blue and Laird (the catcher) was hot on his heels (he was the one hit by Hernandez, remember?). It looks like Yuni and Adrien are the first Mariners to arrive on the scene while the umpires seem to be rather casual about jumping in. Notice here that Sexon has already taken his shots on Gabbard (throwing his helmet at him and then jumping him and throwing a few punches) and is immediately tackled by Laird.

What is interesting is how quickly Gabbard manages to wiggle out of the fight, while it clearly seems to continue, without him. Yes, that is Hernandez in the top right of this picture, it seems he had a few things to say. I guess that is Guardado (former mariner pitcher) along with Johjima keeping Hernandez at bay. There's only one umpire in the crowd, the other three are off discussing who to eject I suppose.

Next up, Cairo pinches for Sexon and walks. Then Betancourt singles and a throwing error gets the runners on second and third. This is where they decided to remove Gabbard who was clearly rattled, though they would say he bruised his leg in the fray. Likely an excuse though. So they let their bullpen take up the cause and the Mariners would strand more runners, continuing their scoreless streak.

After the game I needed a drink, so I went and got one. The conversation was obviously about the game when I landed at Paddy's but it quikcly turned to other sports I care less about and players and teams I care even less about. So I went home so I could catch the interviews on the news, which I feared I'd already missed.

Speaking of drinks, these young ladies were visibly over served, cheering wildly for a small ninth inning attempt at offense and talking smack to any Ranger fan who came down to sit in our area. The thing about talking smack is you should have the scoreboard on your side first. I took it from them and some punks sitting up above slightly that it doesn't matter what the score is at all, the other teams pitcher is always fat and lazy and our team rocks. I feel ashamed to think I was ever so ignorant as to have believed it mattered who was winning.

Sadly the night's recaps seemed to focus on the fight and reactions to it, but less on the game and the lack of an offensive performance in Seattle. The only fight in this dog seems to be in between pitches. Maybe they should scrap all the big money players for the rest of the season and bring up some brawlers. That would make for an interesting season, sell more tickets, and perhaps give us more late night coverage on the tube.

Peace,

b

Violet Hill
Coldplay
Viva la Vida

i really should cut down...

2008-05-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

I recently grouped the blogs I occasionally read into categories such as music, sports, news, and blogging (for the ones that like mine, don't really conform to a category I would want to have to make just for them). What I noticed, oh after only about my second night back at work, is that I seem to have either subscribed to too many music blogs OR one too many. There are something like seventy five posts to read in that category today. This is insane. I should just pick one and count on that person to keep me totally up-to-date on all the music I should be liking right now.

I was also going to rant about how the Tacoma News Tribune's general news thread is a lot less bloggish and a lot more... uh... well a collection of published articles from their website that are often not even written locally. I find many of them come from the Washington Post or other national sources. It's very annoying. I may as well read the Post instead of the local rag.

Otherwise I'll just remind you to check out some of the other interesting things people are writing on the right side of the page.

Peace,

b

primary fuel source...

2008-05-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged much about politics this year, but now that nearly every state has had a chance to vote, I thought I'd make some observations about how thing's have gone so far in this CRAZY election year. Well maybe it isn't so crazy, just intense and educational.

I don't pretend to know a lot about the inner workings but I was perusing MSNBC.com's coverage page that has been tallying the results party-by-party and state-by-state since the beginning. Now that we're down to just a few states, the information has a lot to inform us about the way the process works for each party and gives us the chance to speak up with our dissatisfaction or praise, whichever the case may be.

I'll start with Iowa since that is where it all started. It went like this for the Dems: Obama 25, Clinton 14, Edwards 6, and big goose-eggs the rest of the way down. The breakdown for the GOP were: Huckabee 30, Romney 7, and zero's for everyone else. I know it's been a long season and so much has happened since, but I call attention to this because it might surprise some of us to see the way all of this started knowing how it is about to end. How did we get from Obama and Huckabee being the early frontrunner's to having such a tight race on one side and a near landslide on the other, even though McCain didn't earn any delegates in Iowa at all?

A look at the numbers might indicate why. Iowa is strictly a caucus state. There is no popular vote that counts for anything in their primaries. It is also not a very big state for Democrats, but it still awards a lot of delegates. Go figure. So how many votes separated the top three blue candidates? 207 out of a total 2501, Obama had 940, Edwards was second in fact with 744 while Clinton was a respectable third with 737. Still, she won twice as many delegates because she won more caucuses than Edwards.

How few votes exactly is 2500? Well the reds had 118,691 votes cast in that same state on the same day. Clearly more people in this heartland state identify, for the most part, with the GOP platform and showed up at their caucuses instead. Huckabee didn't get that much more of the popular vote than Romney or the next three candidates (Thompson, McCain, Paul respectively), but he only needs to win by a small margin in each caucus to walk away with all the votes.

I don't want to go into each state but I wanted to mention Michigan because it is a peculiar story. Clinton turned on the gas and won a whopping 55% of that state, but someone named Uncommitted cleaned house with another 40% of the vote (possibly Obama supporters since he wasn't even on their ballot). There are always uncommitted votes but it generally represents a mere 1-3% of the overall--people who just want to express their dissatisfaction with the lack of options.

On the other side in the same state you see Romney and McCain identifying better with northern conservatives, telling us that folks in that state cared more about a candidates resume as someone who can bring our economy back on track. Huckabee is a great guy and I wish he would've made it further through campaign season, but he doesn't make you think about the economy as much as a certain social agenda and this time around I don't think enough conservatives care primarily about those issues to take a chance on someone whose economic policy is less certain.

The rest of the story more or less writes itself. McCain wins a few big states and starts taking an early lead. Romney drops out having Michigan as one of his only major prizes (though he made a respectable run at it as far as he went) and Huckabee holds on longer hoping to pick up the scraps left behind from all the early drop-outs, but largely fails to establish a clear voice for what his administration will represent that voters can identify with.

Back to the Democrats, the story is probably over-told! I mean, what could I say here that you haven't read somewhere already? What I would like to do instead is make an observation, that for better or worse, we've had the chance to look more carefully at more than just one candidate who may best represent our ideas about domestic, foreign, economic and social policy. Way back at the beginning I was actually hoping maybe three strong candidates would emerge and go deep into the primary season, allowing all states to have the same chance to choose between all of the candidates in a given party.

Say what you will about how it has gone, but as a liberal minded person, I'm glad we haven't made our minds up completely yet. I would almost feel cheated if I were a Republican in a state like Illinois. What choice do they have at this point with virtually all the candidates who had a reasonable shot at winning their parties favor going into the general election having already bowed out? At this point, like it or not, their guy is going to be McCain and there isn't anything they can really do about it, except vote undecided.

There are differences in the way the two parties award delegates. Much has been said for that so far. It isn't that conservatives just agreed more on who to vote for. Far from it. Still, Republican rules for the primaries and how they earn delegates are more flexible, giving more freedom to state delegations to choose how to award delegates. Some states opt for a winner-take-all approach for the whole state based either on the primaries, the caucuses, or a combination of both using whatever formula they agreed on the last time it was revised. Other states may award delegates only to the top two or three candidates while in theory some could break up their delegates as closely as possible with the popular vote, though this is an unpopular choice as it makes that states delegates less important to a candidate when choosing where to spend their dollars and time trying to appeal to voters.

I don't know if it is possible to get the two parties to agree to use the same system, but I am going to come right out and say that I don't like winner-take-all being on the table for either party as it disenfranchises elements of either party in those states. It also makes them a sort of bully depending on how early they hold their primaries or caucuses.

So what about a simple vote with delegates awarded based on census data and the actual voting results? Well, I think this would take a lot of the fun out of the process. First it would almost require us to have a national primary all on the same day because spreading them out the way we do now would discourage people from voting for some candidates who were trailing if they could support a second favorite candidate who was having a stronger run. Having a national primary would also force candidates to campaign nationwide which would discourage them from pounding the pavement and holding town-hall style meetings in individual communities across the whole country and would compress the season (which could be a good thing). They would spend more time and money on national advertising and only nationally televised debates would be favored by candidates from either party.

I think the best compromise from the system we have to a complete overhaul such as a national primary is to have the parties agree to use a top-two or top-three format in every state. Give the voters in the last state to have an election as many choices as possible. Award delegates by the percentage of the votes they won plus a small bonus to the top candidate which would not amount to more than 5% of the states total delegates. The bonus theory to me represents that candidates likely ability to garnish even wider appeal in the general election from that state. If every state has a similar (proportionately) sized bonus then a candidate can distinguish him or herself as the stronger candidate by winning more states as well as more votes, a balance between simple popularity and ability to close the deal in enough states to actually win in November.

I think that is more than enough for now... I'll chime in again closer to November and again after the dust settles and see if my thoughts change any along the way.

Peace,

b

full circle...

2008-04-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is where it all started. Yes sir, I started blogging here in 2005 during my final semester of college. I didn't have a lot to say, so I just posted a bunch of pictures. I quickly decided the process of posting pictures to blogger was time consuming and searched for another way. That led me over to MSN spaces, which became MSN Live. They introduced a Java tool for accessing your folders easily and being able to see thumbnails of your photos, select a bunch of them, create a folder in your blog for them and walk away while the transfer takes place automatically.

Finally, at some point in the coming year or two I found it necessary (largely through peer pressure) to finally establish a Myspace account so I could check out pictures of young women who would respond to posts on Craigslist in my evernending quest for love. This proved to largely be a waste of time, which is how I would come to feel about Myspace in general, but not for a while. Still, maintaining multiple blogs seemed too time consuming so I transfered my ramblings to Myspace and stuck with it for quite a while.

Nevertheless, eventually someone would respond to one of my periodic Craigslist posts that would catch my eye enough to ring up on the phone; enough to meet for Thai food; enough to get a few drinks at Paddy's; enough to call up again to see a movie at the Grand; enough to check out the art museum with; enough to endure a long-distance relationship for a whole freaking year! Oh, this is about blogging, sorry about that.

Anyway, it was pointed out to me that Myspace blogs are an after-thought for the folks at Myspace and serious blogging happens at places like Google's Blogspot and Wordpress to drop a couple names. Myspace blogs don't "feed" properly into readers, so I remembered I had a blogger account and resurrected this page.

Having been away a long time, I've also noticed several things have changed while I was away. The biggest change is that it is now owned by Google, which wasn't the case when I started it. The Google acquisition has led to more than a few innovations that makes this process all the easier, the one I like the most being live spell-checking. Over at Myspace I had to cut-n-paste my posts into Word so I could check the spelling, then paste them back into the webpage for final editing and publishing (slightly annoying). Blogger is a little easier to customize than Myspace, but that isn't a very big deal. I was able to figure both out fairly easily thanks to the wealth of information you can get from the internet with a simple engine search. Finally, Google offers a free analytics tool that you can use to track your traffic patterns. So far I have no idea who is reading and how often, but I should get a better sense of that soon. Myspace did track hits, but you didn't necessarily know who they were from.

So that was the river, this is the sea...

Peace,

b

ps... I have no intention of making this a Music Blog, I have so much more interesting things to say than just ramble about music. Still, I'm going to try to post a song for your aural pleasure while reading (right-click and open in a new tab to listen while you read).

This is the Sea
The Waterboys

this is only a test...

2008-04-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

I have yet again tweaked the layout a little bit for my blog. I need to get feedback how it shows up on different computers and different browsers.

You should see a background photo (which might look like two different photos) framing the text in the center, if not please let me know! I don't mind if it spills off the edge of the page a little on smaller desktops as long as it doesn't obscure the text at all (assuming the text doesn't spill over as well).

Also, what do you think of the image itself? Did it load properly? I might have to host it somewhere else but it needs to be a site that wont compress or resize it at all. It loaded for me but I'm also signed into the website that I posted it on.

As always, feel free to post comments here or email me.

Peace,

b

...keew lla daer ev'i gniht tsegnarts eht

2008-04-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

This is a best of, sort of. It's the most interesting things I've read in some of the blog's I'm tracking, only instead of simply sharing them in the column on the right, I'm going to sum it all up in a posting of my own.

First, the new Gnarls Barkley album is great but I just found out Danger Mouse has posted the entire thing backwards as a single download on their own site. I'm sure there is software out there that can reverse it back, so obviously I'm going to download it for my personal collection, check out the sdrawkcab version to enjoy on it's merits until I hear about a way to screw with it.

Generally speaking, listening to an album backwards is undesirable because the instrumentally generated sounds usually start strong and fade fast. So when you listen backward the sounds sneak up on you and then just at their most intense moment, they suddenly disappear. elpuoC ddO ehT holds up surprisingly well in reverse--perhaps a testimony to the production talent at play. Of course I don't have any drugs to take, so I'm not sure I can go a full 38 minutes before I hear some vocals in a language I can understand or at least pretend to understand!

Also new to the internet is a brand new board game you can download, print and create yourself. It is called Colbopoly and you can learn more about it at the creator's website.

Essentially, Stephen Colbert made a crack about Hasbro's custom monopoly versions and asked why they haven't made one for him yet--so a fan of the show did just that. It looks interesting, anyone want to come over and test it out?

I'm impressed, but obviously there are a lot of episodes I have missed. I don't "get" all of the squares. Maybe that's part of the fun.

I'm off for another week but this time I have a few things scattered throughout. I might not get much time to vegetate. Oh well, I'm sure Rachel prefers vegetate take on a new meaning in my case.

,ecaeP

d

not-for-profit customer-service...

2008-04-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yes I work for a non-profit and generally that is said to be a "thing" with white people (and I'm about as white as we come, freakishly pale in fact). Still, my employer which I will spare naming here, has recently begun a campaign to refocus our customer service effort into creating the ideal experience, hoping to win kudos and elevate our organizations status among it's peers (most of which are also non-profits). OK, it might be unfair to assume they don't also want to provide the ideal experience simply in order to improve outcomes and generally live up to the expectations the community has of us, but the way the program is oriented, improving outcomes is a part of the ideal experience rather than the other way around. If I were part of those who built this program I might have made improving outcomes the umbrella under which all the other tools hide away from rust.

I really don't want to pick on my employer too much here so I'm going to start off by pointing out that I've worked for other organizations that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their client's money buying into really stupid programs to try to improve their image all the while continuing to neglect the harder work of establishing meaningful benchmarks that can be objectively and fairly measured internally to ensure a consistent emphasis on quality is the highest priority within the organization. I've also seen other such organizations essentially buy a ranking from what is really just a marketing company so they can flaunt it in their own marketing efforts that they are a top performer in their field of service. Of course news gathering organizations, government agencies and non-profit watch-dog groups already provide such rankings in most of our important fields of service using truly objective criteria which is continually audited and for which the organizations ranked do not have to reimburse them for.

So I am refreshed that this time, I find myself a part of an organization that is at least making the effort to go through this process of quality improvement and customer service without outsourcing the job to someone else! What's more, they are actually taking (and spending the money) to bring all of us into interactive training sessions focused on this goal. I give them kudos for that, it at least demonstrates that this is not simply something we are paying lip-service to, but at least from an organization level perspective they are taking this seriously.

It kind of reminds me of the story recently about Starbucks closing down for a day to retrain their barista's how to make the ideal cup-o-joe. I'm not sure I really care how good the coffee is at these places, but for those willing to pay several dollars for what used to cost less than 50 cents in most diners, I'm sure the extra effort on quality improvement and improving the overall customer experience is greatly appreciated (unless you really needed a cup of coffee during the 2 hour window they closed all the stores)!

So I work in healthcare (for those of you just passing through) and in our little seminars various stories were told of patients who had both good and bad experiences in hospitals and we looked at what made the experiences good and what made the others unfortunate. One thing that really struck me as common in all of the bad experiences was that the patient (or relative; in some cases the actual patient had died) felt ignored and unimportant to their caregivers. Generally it seemed to be a culture rather than the actions of just one employee with a bad attitude. Even when things go wrong, the patients that felt their caregivers cared and were willing to spend the extra time to keep the patient informed and instill a little confidence that their needs are important will always rave about the way they were taken care of. The patients that do not feel the staff is interested in their wellbeing will generally complain about even minor inconveniences which might even be a necessary part of their care.

As someone not directly involved in patient care I find it easy to come to such conclusions, easy to point them out to those around the table who do have direct patient contact consistently, but also realize that I don't know the whole story about staffing concerns in individual patient care environments in our organization and the specifics of how best to address them.

Still, I was able to identify what efforts we bring to the table from the ancillary arts that do contribute to creating ideal outcomes. Overall they are not new concepts to us. We look out for mislabeled specimens, changes in lab values that could be erroneous, orders that are strange or confusing and communicate those problems to those directly responsible for the patient's care for clarification or simply to inform.

What I came away with was a sense of hope that there will be more focus in our organization on quality improvement and hope that this emphasis will trickle into my department hopefully so I feel less frustrated by the current stresses that hinder my ability to focus on the quality of my own work.

On that note, it is official, I have a new boss. Look forward to meeting the guy and hopefully eventually having a chat about what I see and what I would like to see in our part of our wonderful not-for-profit organization :)

peace,

b

much anticipated...

2008-04-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you picked up an album a little late into it's dropping onto the scene, then within the next six months you find suddenly you've collected that artists entire back catalog? Well I haven't posted a true "music blog" in a long time, so it is fitting that I dedicate this one to the long awaited next release from one of my new favorite artists (not favorite new artists since I discovered they've been at it for about a decade already).

Death Cab for Cutie is fronted by one Ben Gibbard who is from the northwest (I heard his mom call the radio station for some reason several months back) and also is the impetus behind Postal Service as well as various collaborations and solo projects. Busy guy from everything I hear, and certainly an indie-alt-rock icon if being one enables you to still consider yourself really independent? My greatest regret of the past couple years is not having a chance to catch these guys live yet. We can hold out hope, the summer is long and they will be supporting this album, but so far, no dates in Seattle itself. Maybe we can persuade them to hold court with us in Tacoma?

I haven't checked out the whole album yet as I am temporarily poor, so I'm just going on this and another track I've found on the bloggosphere. This is the long version which is the original way the video was meant to be seen, but I read elsewhere that MTV is only showing the short version (Did I read that right? Does MTV actually show music videos on television?). You can find the video on YouTube to be sure or Google The Music Slut and it should be in a recent post there also. Good video.

I Will Possess Your Heart
Death Cab for Cutie
Narrow Stairs
Barsuk Records

into whose sphere i am venturing...

2008-04-16T03:49:00.000-07:00

There is no other relation between human beings which makes such demands on one's ideality as does love, and yet love is never seen to have it. For this reason alone I would be afraid of love; for I fear that it might have the power to make me too talk vaguely about a bliss which I did not feel and a sorrow I did not have. I say this here since I am bidden to speak on love, though unacquainted with it I say this in surroundings which appeal to me like a Greek symposion; for I should otherwise not care to speak on this subject as I do not wish to disturb any one's happiness but, rather, am content with my own thoughts. Who knows but these thoughts are sheer imbecilities and vain imaginings perhaps my ignorance is explicable from the fact that I never have learned, nor have wished to learn, from any one, how one comes to love; or from the fact that I have never yet challenged a woman with a glance which is supposed to be smart but have always lowered my eyes, unwilling to yield to an impression before having fully made sure about the nature of the power into whose sphere I am venturing.
--Kierkegaard, In Vino Veritas (The Banquet) an excerpt from "The Young Person's Speech"

So much of the past thirty years seem to be in one way or another about becoming, and occasionally being, my self. "A self is always becoming. Being does mean becoming, but we run so fast that it is only when we seem to stop... that we are aware of our isness, of being" (L'Engle more from her later). Nothing earth-shattering in there, it just seemed appropriate for where I am going with this. Where am I going with this, anyway?

At some point in the not-to-distant past, I came to see I had become caught up in a kind of culture shock, realizing I am now another's other. Yet not knowing exactly what that ought to mean I occasionally find myself forced to pause on this notion of being an other while allowing another to be my other.

Tonight a thought came to me about clay. I imagined a lump of wet clay, certainly capable of being molded, shaped, changed from one form into another. Yet in itself, the clay has no animation at all. This makes clay an excellent way to contrast two forms of ontology: one which takes it's shape, form, isness entirely from it's creator, but implies another type of ontology which is much more animated, much richer because the form begins to take a life of it's own. L'Engle insists that "a bush certainly doesn't have the opportunity for prideful and selfish choices, for self-destruction, that we human beings do. It is." She calls this pure ontology, but in relating it to the human experience she insists "if I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one."

The people I know who are most concerned about their individuality, who probe constantly into motives, who are always turned inward toward their own reactions, usually become less and less individual, less and less spontaneous, more and more afraid of the consequences of giving themselves away.
--L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

I think this is the most damning statement for me. I think I am constantly guilty of spending too much time examining myself, which she seems to insist is a form of hubris. I am reassured that she is also guilty, reminding herself that her intellect "is a stumbling block to much that makes life worth living: laughter; love; a willing acceptance of being created."

So if I transfer this self-examination to the notion of being an other (and of accepting the other as well), the paradox becomes all the more paralyzing. Should I be more as a lump of clay entirely at the whim of the artist or perhaps L'Engle's bush, only slightly more animated, but otherwise following a script of sorts and merely reacting to environmental stimulus, or am I to be more animated, more my own--and what effect does this have on the other? L'Engle offers this suggestion:

When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves.

I like the first image most (perhaps because I relate to it much easier) in that we often forget how liberating it was to be a child. The other day I helped a small child dig ditches in the muddy road and enjoyed being silly for a change. I lament that I could not be entirely as he was, fully immersed in this project of sorts and the wonders that accompanied it. I was never completely unaware of how silly I looked playing in the mud as he must have been.

I think in childhood and through adolescence we are constantly becoming aware of the foolishness of yesterdays. We are hard on our not-far-removed selves and often it takes years--if not decades--to really have a sense of humor about the foolish things we did in our formative years (which of course never end... until perhaps death rescues us). Still, it is easy to make light of the foolish or silly acts or sayings of a child because we can forgive their ignorance--but is it really their ignorance we must forgive, or our own hubris? Our insistence on knowing all we can and analyzing everything to death! (literally)

Where was I going? Oh, full circle (which by the way, none of the L'Engle quotes are in the same order they would appear in her book, odd the way that worked!). I wanted to leave you with this (in other words, form your own conclusions!):

The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction.

Why do you let me stay here? She & Him

feels like it's going to be a long season...

2008-04-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight marks yet another loss for the Mariners. I tuned out early so I'm not going to recap it. I think in general I am frustrated that while most of the core players from 2007 remain, several of my favorites from last year have moved on and some of the new Mariners in 08 have yet to gain my confidence that they have the talent, experience and drive to make this team stand out among the rest of the league.

Maybe the bright spot is that very few teams seem to be dominating in either league. Surprisingly Oakland (9-5) has the best record in the the American League currently and guess who the Mariners will see tomorrow? It's a short series, but Seattle shows Oakland their best and beats them on their own turf, perhaps doubts about this years staff would be put to rest? Nah, it's still very early!

Cautiously optimistic,

b

a ghost is born...

2008-04-12T18:03:00.001-07:00

Yet another dream post. I was fading in and out of sleep this morning not really needing to get up or anything and had some very vivid dreams. One of which I was a ghost that could choose when I am visible or not sort of the way Peter Petrelli can now that he's spent a little time with HRG's old partner.

Somehow I am moving around inside some old cathedral that was empty when I got there but where some people were starting to gather. I needed to move around without being noticed, so I became invisible and then as I am exploring ways to get around I find two new ghosts who don't quite know how to be ghosts just yet. I need to get them out of the building so I have to show them how to hide themselves and then I see that I can move through walls as well. So now I'm on the outside of the building looking in through a small crack.

Other than trying to help these ghosts get out without being seen, I'm not sure why I am a ghost or can be invisible or pass through walls, but I can. Pretty cool huh?

Peace,

b

mariners are alive at last....

2008-04-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

One look at tonight's box score and you know it was a good game, but just how good it was is only something those who watched it happen could tell you. First you need to know the back story. The Angels are last year's division leaders and even though the 2007 Seattle Mariners were an excellent team in their own rite, the Angels ran away with the division early and never let up all year long. Every winning streak the Mariners put up, the Angels held on with one of their own. What's more, they always seemed to have Seattle's number when it came to direct match-ups, generally winning 2 out of 3 or sweeping.

Then there is the pitching match-up. The Mariners ace, Felix Hernandez always seemed to get put up against Jared Weaver and no matter how well he pitched, Weaver pitched better. You just can't be too hard on a guy for allowing one run when the other pitcher shuts down your entire all-star packed offense for 7 or 8 innings.

So who did we see facing off for tonight's game? Weaver and Hernandez of course! Would the two teams repeat last season's story tonight? Not if Raul Ibanez has anything to say about it. As of right now he is 3 for 3 with 2 solo home runs and a timely RBI accounting for 3 runs all by himself. Then there is Hernandez's pitching performance. There were a couple solo home runs to answer for both of Ibanez's early runs. Then Hernandez allowed a single run to come in on a shattered bat infield fly that he nearly caught. From what I saw, he did catch it but lost it in the grass while sliding past the white line. Would have been a beautiful play if it held, but the effort showed a lot of heart and he shut down the Angels offense quickly soon after.

There was some more give-and-take with the starters eventually leaving the game. In the eighth inning the Mariners bats came alive in a big way, putting an insurance run in early on with a double by Johjima followed by a triple by Betancourt. The Mariners went into the 9th inning with an 8-5 lead and Mark Lowe earned his first career save.

What makes the story even sweeter is the Mariners pulled this win off against the Angels ace without their own closing ace (JJ Putz) who is still nursing his injury. I didn't even mention some of the fantastic defensive plays by both teams. Beltre managed to put a tag on a runner between second and third and still found time to get the ball to first base in time to force the hitter out. The Angels' short stop ran down a ball that nearly made it straight into the outfield and backhanded it to second base almost without looking to force out the base runner in the nick of time. You just can't complain about an out they had to work that hard to get! I hope the rest of this series is as entertaining and certainly hope the home team can keep the edge on their division rivals all season long!

Peace,

b

seven nights off... night two...

2008-04-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight marks the second night off of my first seven day stretch. What did I do with my first night off? Well, I chatted with Rachel for a little while, which made me realize I was getting really hungry. So I went out to El Gaucho's and ordered from the happy hour menu. Well, I was really craving a steak and thought I was going to have to order from the regular menu which seemed pricey for dining out alone, then I scoped out a steak sandwich on the happy hour menu and the day was saved.

Sometime around midnight I decided an empty fancy restaurant minus the piano guy who had already called it quits wasn't the scene for me, so I ordered a cheesecake to go and headed home but first I tried to go rent a few movies but the video store was closed, as was the Thriftway and the nearer Safeway. Upon returning home I realized I hadn't mailed the letter I wrote Rachel from the restaurant, so I decided I had to venture out and go ahead and find a 24 hour grocer as well. Around a quarter till 2 am I realized I still hadn't mailed the letter (and I really liked the song that was playing on the radio) so I drove back out a third time and made sure the letter would go out early the next morning.

Day two began by getting up way earlier than I wanted to, sometime around 130 pm, doing a "quickie" cleaning job on my apartment just in case the landlord wanted to see for himself why the heat isn't working in the bedroom, then going down to re-sign my lease. I decided I need some more sleep though, so I took another nap but was disappointed to wake up a little later than I wanted to. Now that I'm up, it's great. I have a house full of food, new comedies on television, some new wines chilling out above the fridge and some triple chocolate Klondike bars cozying up in the fridge just in case I don't feel like watching my figure anymore. Life is good and I think I might come to love this seven days off business. Whatever am I going to do with my first real weekend off? I mean my mom will be out of town, so I don't even have to go down and do any tinkering around on her computer! I can actually go out on the weekend and I'm pretty sure I even have my girlfriend's blessing (as long as the only strip club's I go to are gay ones).

Life is good and David Letterman is on finally (some kind of PGA update preempted it I guess). DOH! It's a rerun, the top 10 is about Spitz'. They can't all be brand new I guess.

Well, no pictures to relate to this blog unless you just have to see me lounging around my apartment ala Al Bundy. Kidding, I wouldn't bother wearing pants people! Get your mind's out of the gutter.

So I'll be sure to keep you all up-to-date about how the weekend goes.

Peace,

b

[at last], brian visits rachel at holden...

2008-04-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

For a change I took a real vacation. Given my girlfriend lives and works in a remote mountain village which was once a mining community and now exists as a community oriented around spiritual retreats of all kinds, I had the opportunity to make my first vacation in a long time a very special one in the same breath.

We met in Chelan initially for a couple of days to give her a chance to get out of the village for the first time since arriving a couple months ago.

Chelan was lovely, the sun was out and it was just good to be together for once but the town was quiet, peaceful and we had just enough time to soak it all in before waking up Friday morning to pack up and go catch the ferry. Finding a couple inches of snow on the ground was quite the surprise though.

Thus the ferry up to Holden was uneventful. You really couldn't see either shore most of the way up there. It continued to snow part of each of the first several days. Generally it was sunny first thing in the morning, then some clouds would cross the peaks and it would snow most of the afternoon. Quite lovely to see the village completely covered in snow, just what I had hoped for!

Rachel took me on snowshoe hikes both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday we found the labyrinth which had been covered with several inches of snow and the wind had also conspired to make it nearly imperceivable where it went at any point. Others had tried to walk it after the big snowstorm initially covered it up just after Easter, but it ended up being nearly impossible until Rachel and I worked out that there were gentle shadows in the snow where the paths had been buried underneath.

The trick was that you couldn't see these shadows when you were right on top of them, so you needed a navigator to stand at a distance and tell you how far to go, when to turn, etc. So Rachel strapped on her snowshoes and I stood on the outside and navigated. Together we did it! A friend observed that it was a beautiful image that this labyrinth exists through constant effort by those who know labyrinths by heart and can create them from nothing, from those who walk in well worn paths, from those who find the paths almost extinct but through special sensitivity can recover them, and also through working with a partner who can help you see when you cannot see for yourself.

Personally, it was just fun to play in the snow, take some pictures and enjoy the sunshine while we trampled the snow down so others could return and enjoy the snow labyrinth they had come to love this winter. We snapped this picture from the side of a steep hill overlooking the ball-field where the labyrinth resides.

The rest of the week was a combination of puzzles, card games, weaving a mat for my kitchen counter, enjoying good food (a solid week without junk or fast food), spending evenings with Rachel and meeting her friends as well as other guests coming and going during my weeks stay.

From Tuesday on it was mostly sunny. The mountains were gorgeous and it was hard to stay inside. I saw some children playing in the mud along the main road through the village, apparently trying to divert water running down the street from melting snow all around. It might have been a futile effort, but after sitting out and attempting to finish my book I couldn't resist joining in. I came along the next day to find the youngest yearlong resident of the village, also known as the mayor, working hard again to keep the canal running and the rest of the road from flooding. I pitched in again and once it appeared the canal was doing fine on it's own I turned my shovel toward the snowbank in front of me and tried to dig a tunnel. Eventually other activities would capture the mayors attention and my empty belly and the prospect of another good dinner would conspire to keep me from getting to China, or Afghanistan as it were.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to Rachel and new friends and make the journey back to civilization. I had a blast and it was quite refreshing. I'm glad to be home, doing laundry, feeding the fish and the plant, unpacking and cleaning up the apartment. I don't even mind going back to work tomorrow night, but I'll certainly look forward to going back sometime soon.

Peace,

b

a little rant about FSA's...

2008-04-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

This might be considered off topic from the kinds of things I usually rant about, but today I got a letter from the administrator of my FSA account that irritated me a little bit.

To start off, let me explain what an FSA is for those that are living under a rock and don’t pay attention when their employer talks about benefits each year. Flexible Spending Accounts are pre-tax allotments you set up from your own portion of your pay. It is your money, just not taxed. You decide how much to set aside each payday and can use it for anything that would otherwise be a tax-deductable medical expense (and childcare I believe). The only difference is that you don’t need to spend more than an arbitrary minimum in order for it to be deductable. Even if you only set aside $500 that will be deducted from your taxable income regardless. I think otherwise it is 2500 or 3500. I’m not sure exactly and it is likely to change from year to year.

That aside, I decided to do it this year mostly because I have an ongoing condition that requires frequent doctors visits and expensive medications. I thought this would be a good way to spread the expense of the intial deductibles out over the whole year. If my insurance offered a copay-only option I probably wouldn’t even have bothered with this.

So I started getting letters a few weeks ago called "substantiation requests." These letters from my insurance companies’ designee asked for information about each transaction, the physician/practitioner, date of service, type of expense, etc. So I wrote a letter and broke it down for them. Obviously not all eligible items are necessarily going to require you to go see your doctor. Some of them are self-explanatory. For example a Lens Crafters purchase for over $500 is probably for glasses! Otherwise stores that sell both eligible items and non-eligible items are required to be able to separate the purchases at check out or else the card won’t work there. At least that is what their literature said when I thoroughly read through everything before signing up for this. In other words, if Safeway cannot show you your grocery and pharmacy bill separately at check out, the card will not work at Safeway at all. That should make it easy to distinguish a tax-exempt purchase from a non-tax exempt purchase, so why do we have to "substantiate" these expenses every time we use the card?

Anyway, they responded to my letter just now by saying everything was declared non-eligible and I now owe the entire balance within 30 days. Needless to say I am pissed. I gave them all the information. Now they want to see the receipts. They didn’t ask for the receipts in the first place and my guess is this is what they do to further audit certain accounts. All I can say is if they don’t expect us to use the money in these accounts they shouldn’t encourage us to create them in the first place. I’ve looked at the list of eligible expenses on the IRS website (it is the same for these FSA’s as it is for ordinary tax deductions with one or two minor exceptions, such as FSA expenses must occur this year, but you can deduct bills paid this year for services performed last year the old fashioned way). So I don’t see why I should have to substantiate to this company things I would otherwise deduct on my taxes without scrutiny. I’ve never been audited by the IRS and if I were, I would expect the experience to be much more tolerable. "Hello Mr Taxman, nice to meet you, come sit, coffee?" "Ok, here are all of my receipts, would you like a scone?" "The bathroom is down the hall." "Let me know when you are finished."

I have the receipts so it’s all good. I was at least smart enough to pay attention to the information I was signing and know that I need to keep them but it’s the principle notion of having to justify all of your medical expenses to this bank that clearly just wants to make it less convenient for you to actually use your own money that they solicited for you to set aside in their program as a convenience service. Does anyone else see the irony?

soon baby soon...

2008-03-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been having trouble adjusting between working days and non-working days. Interestingly this time around it isn't trouble being up during the daytime on my days off, it's trouble getting to sleep early enough in the morning or waking myself up early enough in the evening to actually use it for something interesting. This is something that is causing me to feel guilty because I am supposed to be doing something in a play (sort of) for church. I haven't heard a peep from anyone so perhaps they've given up on me and found someone else. I hope so, it is just as well. I can't seem to get myself out of bed at 5 pm (on my last day of work) to make it to the practices. I think I'll be on 10 hr shifts the weekend of the thing anyway.

Speaking of which, I do start 10 hour shifts next week. Exciting eh? Well, first I work another near-full week during my alternates first week, then one or two days off and I start my rotation and then have my two weeks off. Finally here!

I am definitely looking forward to the new schedule. I've been doing every weekend (either Wed-Sun or Th-Mon) since the end of September!!! I'm so glad to have time off coming up but also to know that I will soon have a routine I can count on and plan around that includes having every other weekend off. Phew!

Otherwise all is well in the land of oz. I'm still looking for a hobby. Anyone have any ideas? I asked around about what it would take to start my own home distillery. I might someday like to try making my own wine but I think first it would be fun to make my own Vodka. Need to start researching the process though. I think if I draw a little from my lab background I could actually be really good at it! Hopefully it isn't too expensive of a hobby though--or dangerous!

Well, not much else going on.

Peace,

braving mountain passes...

2008-02-01T00:20:00.000-08:00

reposted from myspace...

Well, this was the week I bid farewell to the lady in my life (for the time being). The trip over the mountains was quite treacherous as it happened. I tested the limits of my sanity in more ways than one and mostly came home unscathed.

The first omen was when the clerk at Shucks told me that they don't make chains for my tires. I know it is hard to imagine, but apparently they fall into some bizzaro land category where they are too unique and nobody cares to make chains that are even adjustable to that size.

They are traction tires and rated for snow specifically so I decided to brave it anyway. The pass was requiring traction tires Tuesday and no mention that we were required to carry chains or anything. Everything was going fine as it were until I got about a half mile from the summit. I knew I was close too because this pass is quite familiar to me. This is where I suddenly felt the tires slipping and I tried a lower gear to regain traction but no luck.I was stuck in the middle of the right lanes and people were looking at me like I was the devil or something even though they all managed to get around me just fine. Then when I thought all was hopeless the sheriff's Deputy came and offered a push to get me going again. Turns out that was all that I needed. However, he insisted Rachel get back in her car and press on so her car wouldn't get hit so we were to meet at the summit. The problem was that when she got to the top the parking lots were not plowed very well and she worried about getting stuck in them so she kept going. When I got to the top I tried to call her because I noticed the same thing, but I couldn't get through and I had no messages from her so I pulled into a parking lot so I could get out and look around for her and let her know I made it.

It proved to be a bad idea though because I got stuck in the entrance to the parking lot. The sheriff gave me one more push but insisted I get turned around and go down the mountain before I got stuck again because he had other people to go help. So I did, but I got stuck just before getting out of the parking lot. This was where the snow was piled up from plowing the highway and the ski area personnel had not plowed any exits from their parking lot on this side.

I was stranded there for quite a while, gradually digging my tires out and trying to make it move, all the while knowing that I only need to get a few feet before I was out onto the highway. Finally a staffer from the ski area drove by to see what was wrong and brought shovels to dig me out.

Meanwhile I had gotten a call from Rachel that she had decided not to stop at the pass and wanted to let me know now that she was back in range of a phone signal. I laughed and told her that I had stopped and gotten stuck and would now be quite a bit behind her.

So I got going again and took it easy on the way down assuming the worst of it was over. I was doing just fine using my lower gears to keep the car from getting too fast for the corners but at some point well down the other side of the pass the car lost traction and started sliding. I corrected but it kept sliding and now I was moving toward oncoming traffic, tractor trailer included. So I corrected again the opposite way and began to panic until I felt the car heading toward the snow banks on the side of the road.

I felt a sense of relief when I saw the snow fly over the window and the sunroof knowing this was perhaps the safest place to be, for the moment! I also felt quite embarrassed but got out of the car and told the folks in the SUV behind me that I was perfectly ok and once I had dug my car out I would be able to get going again, so they pressed on.
I didn't realize how difficult it can be to dig your car out of that much snow though. All I had was an ice scraper, albeit a large one, and the kind of gloves that cease functioning proper once they get a little wet (though still better than nothing). A little later a nice skier in a mini-bus stopped and offered me his shovel for a minute. I managed to dig out most of the snow around my right front tire and some of the snow under the front of the car, but it still wouldn't budge in either direction.

Then a DOT worker happened by and shook his head, noting that he saw me stuck both of the previous times at the top of the mountain. He still managed to help, but only after a lecture (I finally stood up for myself and told him to be glad I didn't hit the truck and all we were doing was getting me unstuck from the snow) about keeping it in the road and getting off the mountain before I caused anymore problems.

The problem this time was the only way to get me unstuck was to pull me out with a tow rope which is only a problem because my car is apparently not designed with any visible places to hook such a device onto. I was desperate though so I popped my hood and pointed to the first solid piece of metal I found and asked him to just hook it on that, which he did and pretty soon we were slowly pulling my car free of the snow.

Well, sort of--the right front tire was stubborn and all it really did was pull me around and my front end was still hugging the snowbank. He pointed out that the tow had dented the metal bar we hooked it onto and I should just see if I could back out of it now. Sure enough, I was finally free and I started back down the mountain, again.

Some hour or so later I finally made it to Leavenworth (going obnoxiously slow and probably angering many people behind me). I was able to meet up with Rachel around the time we should have been eating dinner but it was snowing hard in Leavenworth and we didn't know how far down it would still be that way and she wanted to get going so we wouldn't have to do as much night driving as it already appeared we would be doing.

So we pressed through to Chelan and most of that leg of the trip was quite normal, well until we got into Chelan again and I went back to going about 25 miles an hour. Then after dinner in Chelan we went up to Fields Point where we would stay until the ferry comes in the morning. A drive that probably should have only taken 45 minutes took about an hour and a half for us though as the road was almost completely covered with a thin-but-stubborn layer of snow and ice. I also remembered in the back of my mind a story of how a school bus went off this road and into the lake back in the 40's killing a dozen or so children and the bus driver in similar weather.

We finally arrived and found the place where we were to stay (though not without having to call for better directions) and I transferred all my worrying to what I would have to do the next day in order to get home.

Ultimately I decided to go stop in Wenatchee and see if they could check my alignment since my car was vibrating at higher speeds (approximately 60) and check one more time to see if they made ANY chains that would fit my tires, even if it wasn't a perfect fit. They couldn't squeeze me in until late afternoon for the alignment and the said that there were several issues why they couldn't sell chains for my tires, including a clearance concern since the tires were very close to the walls inside the wells and the issue of them having a low profile (if they could find a chain that otherwise fit it would chew up the rims pretty bad).

I finally resigned that I would just try to get back over the mountain as long as the restrictions were the same (or less than) as the day before, which they were. So I started on my way and kept checking the radio for updates. When I got to Leavenworth it was still snowing hard but the roads were much clearer than they had been the night before and that was the case much of the way toward the summit. It wasn't until you started the final climb up the summit in fact that the road became completely covered with snow and ice.

I also discovered something on my way up that gave me a clue into why I might have lost control the night before on the way down. I had been using my gears to keep the car under control without using my brakes. It hadn't occurred to me that if I downshifted at the wrong speed I would cause my rear tires to want to turn far slower than the car's actual speed, effectively acting like a rear-tires-only brake. Since I have the same kind of brakes on all four wheels this is totally unnecessary. Both times the cars in front of me braked hard enough to cause me to need to, I tried shifting from 2nd to 1st and lost traction and the car tried to spin out (though both times I was going slow enough to recover easily).

I put the pieces of the puzzle together in my mind and resolved both to keep my distance from the cars in front of me and to use my brakes and only shift when the car was at the right speed to do so safely. Amazing what you don't even think about when you ordinarily never have to drive a certain way (having always had automatic transmissions).
So I managed to get all the way to the top without losing traction, even though lots of people passed me and a couple times I worried that having to drive on the right (in the deeper snow that had not been freshly plowed) that I might be losing too much speed to be able to recover without losing traction again. It was the same on the way down. Every time someone wanted to pass it forced me to move over into the deeper snow/slush that would cause my car to want to slide around quite a bit. Still somehow I managed to get down to where it turned to rain and we all could do a normal pace again.

Finally I stopped off at the bottom of the mountain in my parents hometown where I still have many relatives. I visited my uncle who is a DOT man in charge of a significant portion of that pass and checked to see if he heard about the idiot in the black sedan who got stuck three times going over the day before. He hadn't and he said he was glad I didn't tell the last guy we were related or he never would've heard the end of it.

So that is my story about learning how to negotiate passes without the aid of four-wheel-drive or the piece of mind of having chains in the back of the car just-in-case. I suppose I'll have to blog about being home alone again, but I think I will do that later.Suffice it to say it was difficult to say goodbye (for now) and I am still processing her absence. The apartment is very much a mess and I might just leave it that way for a while. I still have a lot of rearranging to do. Well, I am going to start looking for a new car. Seems wise to get something that gets better mileage and can negotiate passes with ease now that these are the circumstances? Oh and a lower payment would be nice too! HA!

Peace,

bgh

how frustrating is it to run errands when you work shifts?

2008-01-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

reposted from myspace...

For those of you who have no idea what it is like to work night shift and then try to do the normal, every-day, run-of-the-mill, simple, routine, ho-hum, blah blah blah tasks that we all sometimes get on our "lists" well by all means read on and I will give you a little idea what my week has been like so far (by the way, I'm on my Tuesday even as most of you are on your Friday).

OK, my car has been "popeyed" for over a month and I was sweating where and when I would be able to take care of it. I changed my oil a few weeks ago and the guy said it was a special bulb and I could only get it from the dealer so far, and oh by the way "it's like a hundred eighty bucks!" So given my average daily financial flushuity I put it off a while and then finally decided to bump it up on the list this week. First stop, the nearest dealership which the navigation system said was on South Tacoma Way.

So I zipped over there on my day off a few days ago and they said the car was so new the part wasn't in their inventory yet, but they needed to order some (as I wouldn't be the only one needing one this winter) in and they would be there Thursday. So I dropped by after work on Thursday but apparently too early, they said come back in an hour. Given my sleepituidedness I chose to go home and come back today.

After several constipated looks and a few odd noises and impulsive exhales the younger guy at the counter finally asked for help and the guy took one look at me and said "oh" and picked it up from his desk and brought it up, then showed the kid where it was in the computer (apparently next on the list, but they never let us see what's on their computer screens so we can help!).

I asked if the lamp was definitely the kind I needed as I had already run around how it is a special kind that I've already been told is only available from the dealer and was surprised they only had ONE type for me to choose from, not to mention this one is only ten dollars. He assured me it was, as far as he knew, and then said I could take it back if it was not. He also said the install should be a piece of cake.

I got home and consulted my owners manual and flipped to the page that explained the steps involved in changing lamps. Sure enough, HID lamps are only to be serviced by the dealership.

UGH.

So I am waiting for a call back from the service department because they are busy and from what he was saying it could be a 2 1/2 hour procedure! I'm shocked. I understand from the manual that the reason for my not doing it myself has something to do with the wires being live regardless of my switching off the engine or turning off the light. Still, you would think all that is involved is a simple disconnecting or grounding of the harness prior to removing the bulb. Certainly that isn't a 2 1/2 hour process!

Now I am beginning to see how it might end up costing me close to two hundred dollars. Oh well, it needs to be done. I work nights and these days it is dark when I go to and from work!

Number two on my list is getting my eyes checked. I had wanted to wait until the first of the year because I understand our insurance coverage was going to improve for vision slightly, but certainly noticeably enough to justify waiting another month.

Of course the optometrist I found nearest to me was closed a few days ago when I was off. According to the sign on the door they are open 3 days a week, yesterday being one of them (but also being the day I needed to sleep pretty much all of, and believe me, my eyes wouldn't have been right if i'd have gone that morning, even if he could have squeezed me in). So I am about to give up on going to the local optometrist and head over to the mall and go to one of the ones that works in the chain stores. I suppose I should just make an appointment and wait to see the smaller independent one but the main issue when you work nights is convenience. It works best to schedule all appointments first thing in the morning and when someone is only in three times a week that makes it harder to work around.
I have other things I am working on, such as putting up a curtain rod. I was able to pick that up on my day off though so no big deal. Of course I had to go dig through the storage unit twice to find my drill and then the charger for my drill's batteries. I still haven't put it up, but at least the batteries are charging. Next on the list is measuring the window and picking out the right curtains.

Why do I need curtains when I have blinds? Great question. Come over someday when I'm trying to sleep between shifts and it is bright and sunny outside (regardless of the actual temperature). It'll come to you.

I could go on about some of the other things on the list. Generally anything you might find ordinary becomes complicated when the business hours are more restrictive. Grocery stores are open very early and late even when they are not 24-7, but pharmacies are not. So waiting for the pharmacy to open so you can drop off might involve waiting an hour and a half with nothing else to do in the mean time. If you have to drop off the prescription it might mean coming back another day so you don't have to wait for them to try to verify it, but that just means waiting the next day also.

Barber shops and Salons also generally open later and the earliest you can make appointments at many medical and dental clinics is about 9 as well.

Basically life isn't meant for those of us working nights, it's for the rest of you. So why do we do it? Well, someone has to do the work because you expect to be able to be taken care of if you call 9-1-1 at 3 AM with chest pains and shortness of breath or find yourself in an automobile accident on the way home from the casino. It just wouldn't do to sit in the triage room and wait for the doctors, nurses, and other specialists to show up at 9 am to actually begin taking care of you.

In other news, I am happy that after a shift meeting with our interim boss I was able to get about 15 minutes alone with him to discuss some of my thoughts and feelings about work and the shift. He was quite receptive and it seems that we think more alike than I do with some of the others I work with. I didn't feel like bring up those ideas in the general meeting with them because I knew at least a couple would just argue with me and it wouldn't be productive at all.

However, I do feel that I was heard and he seems to agree with me. I actually feel that many of the people I work with would go along with the things I think we should do to fix things, but they lack the ability to go "big picture" long enough to see how all the pieces of the puzzle would fit. Then they are quite vocal about their objections often before you have a chance to explain what else the change would entail.

It isn't just, do this thing and that's it. Generally in order to restructure one thing, you have to realign several others and each of them would require quite a bit of change themselves. I think this person has the ability to see the big picture though and he might just be able to convince everyone to play along long enough to get enough of the puzzle together for them to be able to see it too.

Well, we can hope. Of course I let the cat out of the bag somewhat regarding my never-ending pursuit of a better shift and he seemed concerned that I may be a short-timer. I said that if we get things moving I can survive the night shift for a bit longer doing 7-10's and when Rachel comes back from Holden I could commute from Seattle (if that's where she ends up) or seek employment up there at that time.

Then again, I think if an ideal day shift position came up in Seattle with UWMC or Harborview I would have to take it now regardless of what kind of mess it might leave behind here. UW offers tuition exemption because you work for the state and nobody can beat that! The best offers I've seen are generally 3-5K/yr which could be full if you don't mind stretching it out for several years, but you have to study something relating to healthcare and I'm not convinced that any other healthcare careers are right for me.

So night shift still and no word on when I can start working ten hour shifts just yet. UGH. Well, I did put in for 2 weeks off at the end of March. LONG OVERDUE!

Peace,

b

new years eve... nings...

2007-12-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

i know it's been a very long time since my last report on living in the edge of insanity, but with the year nearing a close it seems as good a time as any to reflect. ben gibbard is doing a fine job facilitating that, though i sometimes think maybe he's the cause of my wavering sanity, though he is almost certainly entirely unaware of that fact.

so as i back up the title track of "transatlanticism" (an album i am coming to appreciate even more in light of current events) i will mull over 2007 while my cookies cool and my toes whine about not being under the sheets even as the sheets are very near!

i don't suppose 2007 started with any surprises. i had a new job and was living in a trailer. quite literally, i was at an old friend's house watching scary movies (none of which were on my netflix list) and wondering what the future might bring, if the movie back to tacoma was really the right thing or not, and if the vodka i had brought to the party had sufficiently chilled out in the host's freezer.

i do suppose like any year i avoided making any measurable resolutions as i tend to refuse that there is much of anything in my life that i really want to change (regardless if that is true or not), but inevitably wondering if this might be the year i meet ms right or even ms right now. if i remember correctly, i hoped, but anticipated not. i am certain i expected not!

how things turned out then would be impossible to predict at that point. needless to say i didn't meet ms right now, not even close. in fact, the ms i met is anything but right now, more like someday soon if i play my cards right and avoid sabotoging things in the mean time. she may in fact be ms right though, but isn't that just the damning misery of it all? thank you ben, i knew you would understand. ok maybe you don't, but ben does.

see the problem (if it qualifies as such) is that i might have just gotten what i want and now i should be kicking myself for asking for it. i always wanted a woman with strong opinions, intelligence, wit, humor, and a bit of graciousness. sure she's all of those things but could she be too much so? eh, well hopefully the answer is there cannot be too much of those things where i'm concerned, but i'm afraid there may be. please don't misunderstand, i'm glad she's not a bimbo or clingy or manipulative. however, i could be alone on this, but i'm almost certain that most men are just insecure enough to need to feel a little more important than we really are, and sometimes i wonder just how needed i am.

the thing about the strong independent type is just that, they don't really need us. they may occasionally carry on about how much they like us, how much they want us, but never need. the thing about liking and wanting is that they are intermittent where needs are constant.

so i believe i have gotten what i wanted this year but it has meant sacrificing the same for the next year--at least in the form i would have liked it to take. the woman i love is going to spend a year in quite possibly the most remote part of the state and once again distance rears its ugly head. i suppose the benefits of age are that time and distance are much more relative than they are in the freshness of youth. still, while this is all new and exciting for her, for me it's far less than that. i get to go back to having the highlight of each day being whether or not work is less stressful than usual. i go back to monotony and possibly more intense depression only occasionally alleviated by the rationalization that somewhere my love waits for me (though i'm sure she'll have plenty of distractions from the waiting).

so this is me hoping for a faster than usual new year. this is me hoping 2008 breezes by and i suddenly wake up and realize it's 2009. of course she's hoping for more than that; that i'll accomplish things while she's gone, grow, perhaps finally figure out what the heck i'm doing with my life! i'm not sure i can handle all of that in a year i hope goes faster than any i've experienced so far (crap, is this a leap year too).

ben says "information travels faster in the modern age as our days are crawling by so slowly." the irony of this is while we may share emails she will prefer old fashioned letters and i will have to polish up my handwriting skills.

so sorry if i end up blogging you all to death to cure the boredom. also very sorry if this all turns to mush, gush, and pouting for a year straight. i'll certainly try to come up with interesting things to say if for no other reason, to keep my mind fresh and off the subjects of space and time.

i might need a drink. no time though, i am due to pseudo-dance in half an hour!

the cookies smell good, too bad you can't get a whiff!

peace,

kitty's back in town...

2007-11-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

If anyone knows where to get "the Wild the Innocent and the E" on vinyl, then you know what to get me for Christmas. Clearly the boss still has it, but there is nothing like the vintage Jersey boys just having fun.

Oh, and if anyone knows where to pick up a good turntable, then you know what to get me for my birthday, but it is a little soon to think of that.

So I've been quiet for a few days or a couple weeks, depending on which planet you live on and how many RPM's it spins at. Mine spins at 1/1440 RPM's which produces a Relative Centrifugal Force of 2.129 x 10^-3 g's. Should we find ourselves spinning at 1/68.27 RPM's we would begin floating off the surface of this silly rock. Not to mention feeling a little bit light-headed!

Sorry for the tangent. I just needed to get that out of my system. Oh, and if anyone who reads this feels the need to check my math, get a life. I apologize if that hits a little close to home, but I do say it out of love.

Speaking of which, I think I'll do the same and cut this one short. Oh, and just in case you were curious. If the Earth were a giant human centrifuge like the ones that drive me nuts every day at work spinning your blood down, we would be taking just over 100 g's ourselves. I doubt you could hang on--not that there would be anything to hang onto!

Peace,

hungry for sustinance...

2007-11-10T18:22:00.000-08:00

It seems to have been a while, once again, since I've put ink to paper. That reminds me of the lyric "'there's no poetry between us,' said the paper to the pen" but at least in the literal sense, there is none between me and the pen either. I can't stand sitting down and writing with a pen in my hand. It seems far too clumsy. I can't focus and when I find something to say I cannot get it out fast enough. It is better this way, trust me on this.

So things are good. I am busy it seems and yet the few remaining moments of free time tend to weigh on me more than their former colleagues. I suppose my mind is heaviest when there is more to wrestle with. It occurs to me I might need a new hobby now more than ever.

Well maybe not. I am noticing that my netflix movies are just sitting on top of the television collecting dust. I may need to cancel. I think that is how they make money, that while a few may make a game out of seeing how fast they can get them back in, perhaps the vast majority of people don't have enough time to devote themselves to seeing how much they can maximize the savings of paying a monthly fee over a per-use charge. Nevertheless I guess it is good to know you have them there when you finally are ready to kill some time.

By the way, Music and Lyrics wasn't that good. Boo Hugh Grant and boo Drew Barrymore. You aspired too much and all you achieved was trite at best. A film that invokes the likes of Smokey Robinson and Bob Dylan should at least feature some clever and witty songwriting even if the plot must suffer. I don't know if the script was an amateur attempt by a lyricist to write a film or if the lyrics were the amateur attempt of a screenwriter. Perhaps both!

Well, I might be too late to save you the two hours and popcorn but for the record, I said it. If I did get to you in time, you can thank me later. Let's hear it for b-sides.

So if you thought this was going nowhere, you are right. I have no fluid sense of direction, no line of reasoning, nothing itching to get off my chest, no revelation of thought, no witty observation of life to reveal. I am jack's completely absent-minded rambling hypothalamus. I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch nothing, but I revel in it all anyway.

I am apparently struck by the shock and awe that I am developing a reputation for thinking too much. At work. At home. I think I am driving the people around me completely insane. Does anyone know of any narcotics to turn this off? I am open to anything at this point.

As for the temperature in my apartment, it seems to fluctuate too much these days. I almost broke a sweat last night sleeping on my couch but when I went to bed I didn't ever get my toes to warm up. If that doesn't sound odd to you consider that my bed has 5 or so inches of heat-trapping memory foam on top of it. I only use a sheet and a thin quilted comforter or else I would roast. I think the problem is that the thermostat is in the living room. I swear it needs recalibrating but maybe that is just the difference between one room and the next.

Well I think I am done now. I am sure to have more to say soon. I'll keep you all posted.

Peace,

sights and smells...

2007-11-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

I'd like to start off by saying, whoopee, I'm more or less back to normal. I've taken my fourth dose of the uber-expensive meds and I'm feeling just peachy. I've skipped doses of my anti-inflammatory (usually by accident) and suffered no ill consequences. I even notice my skin is starting to clear up in some of the more minor places. It might take longer for the worse spots but any improvement is welcome!

The only weird thing that may or may not be related is that I am noticing my arm has tightened up. It isn't a big deal except when I attempt to reach for something and fully extend it. I am noticing either the muscle or perhaps a tendon seems really tight and there is sharp pain running up and down my arm whenever I do this. Usually I can massage it out and try again and nothing, but this has been going on for a few weeks, very coincidental perhaps? Maybe the real deal is that I haven't been able to extend this arm fully before because the elbow was out of whack with the arthritis and now that I can, the muscles have atrophied? Either way I suppose it is time to hit the gym downstairs and start getting back into shape.

In other news Rachel and I went for a hike the other day. It was fun, there are pictures. Oh just one, but I'll put up a few more soon (probably by the time you are reading this anyway). We went to Hurricane Ridge which was new for me, though not for her. Not a terribly intense hike but enough to poop me out and make me want to curl up in bed early! I suppose it didn't kick my butt as much as I thought because I wasn't all that sore the next day. It just wore me out as I was doing it I guess. More evidence I need to get in shape.

Did my labs. Everything is normal. Well, I didn't do all the labs, just the ones of concern with this problem. All of those were normal. I'm afraid to look at my lipids right now because I don't think they've had enough time to change just yet. Need to raise the ol HDL. I got my cholesterol down but the HDL was too low and the net effect was negligible. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do about raising the good stuff, but for now I'm just avoiding the issue.

Avoiding issues is one of the few things I am good at. Tonight I couldn't avoid issues though; we had tons of mislabeled specimens. Days go by when we do not get any, but tonight we had three or four. It reflects poorly on our whole system when just a few of theses incidents occur, but catching it is the important part and we did that. Of course, the patients only notice that a mistake happened, not that we caught the mistake before it resulted in an error in patient care. Well one of them was partly the patients own parents fault, but I won't get into the details.

The lesson to take away from this: in any area of life, when someone comes to you and tells you they made a mistake in providing you a service, try to be understanding of the myriad of complexities in their line of work that you are not aware of and give them credit for admitting the mistake in the first place instead of trying to cover it up. Generally that is where things really go wrong!

Overall work is going well, though it is getting busier and our staffing is still at crisis mode. I was informed of a good job opportunity at Madigan, so I updated my online resume with them and "self-nominated" for the position. I hope they take a good look at me and at least give me a shot at consideration. I worked closely with some people who work in that department, so I am sure they will give me an interview if my application makes it past the DOD bureaucrats in Virginia. I have had mixed results in the past with them, being simultaneously turned down for one job and forwarded for another for which there was at least one discriminating factor in the posting that should have resulted in my resume being kicked out. Go figure?

I was simultaneously anxious to apply for the job and apprehensive about it. I still feel (sometimes) that I should stick things out where I am and see if they don't get better. The military job might pay less and the benefits which used to be stellar when working for the government are somewhat less than these days. I might just play it out, go to the interview and see what kind of offer I can get. The position would certainly allow me to specialize in an area I have always preferred to work in and should get me on day shift with little or no weekend/holiday coverage. This is what I have been looking for at least in the long run.

Well, nothing to do but wait and see.

Sorry I can't say 'not much else going on this time.' There is so much going on, just little desire to go on and on and on. This should keep you somewhat up-to-date. Otherwise you'll have to wait for the memoir!

Peace,

bobcaygeon...

2007-10-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Let's hear it for the mix tape. Of course given that I don't have a tape player, at least not one that is capable of recording anything, I merely borrow the expression for any compilation regardless of technology. This time it is mp3's in the form of an itunes playlist. The issue at hand is that I want to burn it onto cd but it is too long. MUCH too long. Well, I can burn it as data but it is still just a few songs too heavy for even that.

So how on earth do I weed out the superfluous? I'm glad you asked; by listening to the playlist over and over. The problem with that is that at approximately eleven hours worth of music, it will take a while to get through it enough times to narrow it down to a mere 720 MB. I suppose it will be great when we all have DVD players in our cars--what a soundtrack that will be!

Oh well, in the mean time I am working on the perfect mix tape and it isn't nearly finished. A definite standout will always be this one by the Tragically Hip. Go google them or whatever you do and give it a listen. You won't be disappointed.

Peace,

common disaster...

2007-10-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this post by finally stating that for a few weeks now I've been seeing a young lady here in town. I'm sure you could've figured that out with your keen intellect, but I might as well spell it out because it is an important detail for this entry. Oh and things are going very well, thank you for asking. Tomorrow is her birthday and I had a heck of a time thinking of something to get her, which of course is not what she wants but everyone says not to pay attention to that.

Ok so I woke up pretty early today, all things considered, and I'm enjoying some of my typical fare, Duncan Sheik, Cousteau and now Cowboy Junkies. I suppose it begs the question why I like music that borders on the depressed and lovelorn when my current situation is anything but. What can I say; I'm just a sensitive guy I guess. Whatever I may feel with my tactile senses my internal senses are focused on the pain just beneath the surface of the casual affairs of the world we live in.

So I am laying here thinking (too much perhaps) and I wandered into a rabbit trail. I suppose it is inspired by one of the songs I listened to almost an hour ago. The lyric goes "How will I know that its you; how will I know that it's right?" The song is written to a fictional lover outside of time and space in the realm of the metaphysical, presupposing that his lover is out there but not known to him. Such a song can't help stir your thoughts just a little. How indeed?

Well, you can weigh your own feelings and you can speculate as to the others. You may even discuss these things at great length, but language always falls short in communicating them absolutely anyway. I had to do some quick research to write this entry for you. I apologize if it borders on academic, but I was stuck on something I read a few years ago and I wanted to get it right.

This comes from a book on ethics by a guy named Ramsey who I believe is either very old now, or very dead. He first makes a case for "disinterested-love" which is a phrase he coins because he believes for love to be pure it must not be interested in any form of gain stemming from selfishness. I'll skip that part and go right to where he is quoting and analyzing Kierkegaard;

if you wish to assure yourself that love is disinterested, you must remove every possibility of requital... If love persists notwithstanding hostility, then it is in truth disinterested... in a love relationship between persons who have a personal or natural affinity for one another, there is always a hope and a prospect of requital, at least of a reciprocated love; and generally speaking, this is what happens in due time. But precisely this hope, this prospect of requital in the not far distant future produces such an effect that one cannot definitely see what is love and what is enlightened selfishness." - Paul Ramsey regurgitating Kierkegaard

Then I got to thinking. Have I ever had a natural affinity toward someone with the hope of requital that was not returned--at least not returned in the way I had hoped? Well, the short answer is yes. Many times, but one in particular though I will not name her here except as Ammonia (a name I joke to my coworkers I will name my first daughter if I have one).

So the test I came up with in my mind, to determine if a love that does seek requital really lives up to the standard of disinterested love (assuming I disagree with Ramsey and the genius of Kierkegaard) is what would I do if this person were to reemerge and confess a secret longing for me, either in the past or continuing into the present. Would I say thank you, that is flattering but no thanks? Would I go further and admit my own feelings but insist that I no longer feel that way and I wish her the best? Or would I recklessly extinguish this new flame and hope to light an old one that never really burned to begin with?

All great questions and I won't answer them now, just something to mull over I suppose. I mean at some point you have to take your head back out of the clouds, dust out the cobwebs, return to reality and just be glad you don't have to make that choice!

OK I lied. I am pretty sure I'd admit I had a crush but that it is over and it was based on a fantasy that doesn't exist. The person I knew isn't the person she would now be, nor am I the person I was then. Even the friendship I had with this person wouldn't stand much of a chance of lasting given the time and distance that have helped shape who we are now. Sorry to make it sound so simple, I really wanted it to sound more like the plot for a film that would just grip you until the bitter end but for some reason it fell apart in act two, didn't it? Well, that's life folks!

Peace,

swallowing...

2007-10-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

Today I wake with heaviness. I don't know if it is the lack of sleep, the lack of food (in my belly, not in general), or just a general lack of direction but I feel heavy, almost sick today. I made a big breakfast, nearly enough to feed another but all for myself this time. I nearly ate it all too and that makes me feel better physically, but nothing more.

I picked up Prozac Nation again today and started where I left off. I found it in my small suitcase yesterday so I know it's been since late August since I last read it because that is when I went camping with the family and thought there might be some downtime. Of course there was plenty of that but I occupied it superficially chatting it up with people I barely relate to anymore.

Yes I wanted to tell her... I am crying because whatever my gifts, the pieces of good buried inside and under so much that I feel is bad, is wrong, is twisted, are less clear than the ability to hit a ball with a bat and break the scoreboard or do a triple pirouette in the air on the ice. My gifts are for life itself, for an unfortunately astute understanding of all the cruelty and pain in the world. My gifts are unspecific, I am an artist manqué, someone full of crazy ideas and grandiloquent needs and even a little happiness, but with no particular way to express it. (Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation)

I think that sums up why I am drawn to into this sad little tale. I think it is in part a journey of self-discovery for me. I never thought of myself as depressed and from what I can tell I probably am not, but I've been around it so much on all sides that I feel a strange kinship with it. I think it is probably that I am sensitive to the things most people pass over without noticing. It isn't about rich or poor, black of white, masculine or feminine. I see pain in all shapes and sizes. I suppose my familiarity with the subject has caused me to become too numb though. I realized the other day that I haven't had a good cry in nearly 20 years. Unlike Wurtzel who cries sometimes for seemingly no reason, I have buried the pain deep and no loss, no grief, no failure, no rejection has ever hurt enough to bring it to the surface.

I suppose I am to blame for this handicap. I could allow myself to feel things more deeply but I am afraid to. I am comfortable with melancholy. I am comfortable witnessing pain. I am at ease being empathetic for others, but it all barely scratches the surface. I wonder if it shows and I suppose it does. How could it not?

Yet today I am heavy. I am weighed down with a loss unknown. I think it is that I have discovered the loss is a part of myself I haven't allowed to exist in a long time. I have felt this before. It is like a gnawing ache that wants you to realize you are missing your self. You've been eating and breathing, sleeping and working but not really living--Busy with the nonsense of life but not experiencing it.

To be continued...

Peace,

inspiring generations of wanderers...

2007-10-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

Here's your weekend update folks. I am almost finished with the marathon stretch of overtime and, well, regular time. Everyone at work has been bugging me about whether or not I am going to stay. Another one asked me to stay. I figure the score is now 30-2. Maybe even more of a blowout. It seems that even the people I thought didn't get along with me are coming around and hoping I don't leave.

Of course if I do stay I need to get them to promise me my schedule will change. This working two or three nights and then having one or two nights off and doing it again and again and again never having the same nights off is getting lame. I also don't even get full time hours, so something has to give. I have a solution though. My supervisor seems interested in cutting back hours and said I could have her schedule but she might want it back someday. Sounds good to me. I don't want it forever. I'm not sure I really want HER schedule anyway. She works M-F after all and I'm more interested in W-Su probably.

So I have come to a decision to see if I can recant my resignation, get W-Su as my new set schedule, and stay--for now. Why, you might be thinking, would I want to do that? Well I met someone the day after I handed my boss my resignation and so far so good. At some point she'll find this little blog (if she hasn't already) and introduce herself, but for now she's the brunette with naturally curly hair. I'm still the one holding a blue blanket and sucking my thumb, but that is an entirely different issue!

So today I get to find time to squeeze in a cat-nap and start another four night stretch (after just doing five). At some point I think I have to give up this shift-work business but for now I have come to realize that I cannot afford to (especially if I'm not going to be a traveling tech).

Anyone seen any good movies? Fall is here but certainly not to stay. I need to get out and get some fall foliage pictures. Any suggestions? Happy Oktoberfest and as always,

Peace,

the penguins march...

2007-09-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

Time is on my side. Time is on your side. Sure it seems that way some of the time but what about when it's not. I heard about a cool job today but they want someone who can start mid-October. I am stuck where I am through November. How is that for having time on your side?

It might turn out to be a dream job. I haven't heard anything about what shift yet but it is on the coast in Southwestern Washington. Not sure which town exactly, but there are only a handful of towns that would be big enough to have hospitals anyway. I'm sure it would be an ideal place to live. It is a short-term contract position but potentially could turn into a permanent placement. Perfect, right?

Well, there may be extenuating circumstances that might force me to pass on it. All that remains to be seen, but I am leaning more and more each day toward staying in town.

Still Portland would be the closer big city down there and Portland is a city I can navigate more than any other. If I had to live on the coast it would be the Southern part of Washington or Oregon just for that reason.

Much more to think about, much much more. I think tonight is a good night for "waffling" so I'll break out the ol' iron and whip up some killer waffle batter before heading to work.

Peace,

you got served...

2007-09-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

So you've been keeping tabs on me eh. So what happens next? Well I served my notice at work. It is official, I am quitting. They seem disappointed but understanding. I had a conversation with my boss (who I rarely see) and we agreed that I would stay through the end of November. They are finally getting someone hired and starting the first of next month to fill the spot left by the last person who quit but someone is taking convalescent leave and that is why I need to stay until the end of November.

Given all that the agency I am working with says they don't know for sure where they will try to place me until we get closer to December. Their placements are usually urgent and it doesn't always work to try to solicit them someone who isn't going to be available for 2 1/2 months.

OK, so none of that is really all that shocking, so what makes that newsworthy? Well, I won't get into any details, but let's just say that maybe now I don't want to leave. Maybe I like it here and I want to stay. Maybe the prospect of traveling and making extra money no longer appeals to me. Maybe I am suddenly optimistic about my future here, personally and professionally. Well, maybe not professionally, but you never know.

Anyway, I am going to leave it with that for now. I'm going to get cleaned up and run some errands. I want to see some of the other condo's in the city that are available or about to be completed. No point in staying if I don't have rad digs to put my feet up in. I am thinking of a water view instead of a mountain view. Things happen on the water, the mountain never does anything and half the time you can't see it when the city or nearby valley is socked-in.

Well, this is me leaving you guessing.

Peace,

[editors note: this was posted the same day I made contact with my girlfriend for the first time. we went out the next night, the rest is history, as is my having quit my job and then having had to beg to keep it instead. oh sweet irony!]

sort of official...

2007-09-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

I put in notice today. My boss wasn't there though so I just left the paperwork in the box and went home. Will have to wait and see how they react to it, but I should be able to find out where my next job will be any day now.

Till then, peace,

ending the season with a no-decision...

2007-09-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Well I sat on it for a week and I am no closer to making up my mind about quitting my job and becoming a traveling tech. The agency seems confident that they can place me very quickly and I am sure that is the case, but things are about to get crazy where I work and I feel like I will be putting my coworkers through the wringer by leaving.

Maybe I shouldn't care that much, but in spite of all the crap I put up with and the lack of affection I feel from them, I would feel bad leaving them high and dry. I had a sit down with one of our technical leads the other day and we speculated about various things. I now feel confident that it would take not less than 3 years (and probably more like 5 years) before I could expect to be on day shift full time. With that said it is only a matter of time before I move on. If it is only a matter of when, then no time like the present right?

Still, knowing that this is ultimately the area I want to end up working and knowing that I wouldn't just be burning a bridge here but also with our partners who operate other hospitals and clinics in the area I would be narrowing my options by leaving them feeling that I ended things at an inopportune time. However, they require a 30 day notice in order to cash in your unpaid time off and consider you eligible for rehire. If I do my 30 days I would technically be eligible for rehire. That would put my exit as just before the storm will hit land and that might leave them feeling that I somehow shafted them.

Well, I am going to stall another day or two while this guy checks my other references and if he still feels really good about how strong a candidate for this type of work I am (ultimately it is the client's choice which tech they pick from the ones the agency presents) then I will go ahead and put in my notice.

Ultimately I feel that while it will be unfortunate how this departure leaves them they should have the resources to draw upon in order to make it through until they find another. If it comes down to it, they could always contact a staffing agency to fill it! I don't think the agency could ever represent me back to them, but that would be a trip.

The good news is he mentioned he had a few positions in the state that might be a good fit for what I want. They would still require travel, but at least on my days off I could go home. That is exciting. One sounds like it is on the coast and it would be fun to spend a winter along the coast. I've always imagined spending the night at the beach during a major fall or winter storm, watching the wind, waves and lightning from a cozy hotel room or lounge hoping for a power outage.

Ah sweet bliss.

Peace,

radio free tacoma...

2007-09-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

For some time now I haven't been able to listen to the radio in my own apartment. I'm not sure if I shorted out that part of my receiver but every time I turn it to the FM dial I get major interference and/or static coming through the system. Maybe something is just not grounded properly. It wasn't like this when I first moved in here but it has been for quite a while. Maybe it has something to do with hooking up my sub.

Anyhow, this isn't about the WHY but the WHAT now? Obviously I forgot that I can listen to both of my favorite stations online. Oh goodie. So I'm all tuned in listening to John who is now the afternoon guy but used to be the morning guy. I don't really know the whole story but I generally only got to listen to the radio in the mornings and late at night (which is still my favorite time to tune in anyway) on my way to work. Now I can listen all day!

Which is exactly what I did today. I've already taken my nap and I'm ready to see what the evening has in store. I'm thinking of "do[ing] the Puyallup" but I haven't made up my mind yet. The only person I can get to go was going to go anyway tomorrow with another friend. I'm not sure I want to be their third wheel though. There is always the pub though.

I see a few hits already from my earlier post about temping but no comments. Oh well, nobody has an opinion about it so that is fine. I wonder if they could get me a day job in this area. Maybe employers are more willing to take chances on temps they can easily dispose of which could get me in the door in places that have tended to pass over me in the past.

I keep wishing I could get a doctors office job but it never seems to work out when I interview with dr's offices.

Well, not much else to say other than ENOUGH commercials, let's rock!

Peace,

weekend update...

2007-09-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

While it isn't a full weekend, it is a Friday and Saturday night off. At this point I'll take whatever I can get. The biggest news I have to give isn't really news, not yet anyway.

I am thinking about serving notice at work and leaving to become a traveling temp. I am told the base pay is equivalent to what I am making now and they offer a substantial per diem that is intended to cover food and gas expenses incurred while away from home. Then they also cover/reimburse your lodging and transportation costs. Bottom line: if you figure food and gas were expenses you would've had anyway then the entire per diem is extra income. Toss in that I'm not consistently full time at my present job and I can only imagine how much more I can make. Oh, and I might get to travel to some cool places. We'll see.

For now I am just kicking around the idea. If anyone has any thoughts, do chime in. I'm still on the fence a little bit. There are days when I seriously consider quitting on the spot and then things just seem to go so much smoother for a while, as if I were actually working two completely different jobs.

I might not get to be very picky but I hear they have a hard time filling requests for traveling techs in Alaska and that is actually near the top of my list for places I might like to go for 3-6 months. It would be cool to be there in the winter time and in spring. I could even drive up there and have my car with me instead of taking a rental. They said if it is within a certain distance they will reimburse instead of flying you out and paying for the rental, it depends on whether their rate beats the cost of rentals or not.

The Puyallup Fair starts today. I am kind of zonked but today would be the good day to go as it is likely to be more crowded tomorrow. I've only been once and that was a field trip in the first grade. All we did was see the animals and certain other exhibits--no rides. I want to do the rides!

I suppose if I can find someone who feels like getting out there. We'll see.

Peace,

momentum...

2007-08-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am not sure why I blog so much about nothing at all, I don't even know who is reading this darn thing, but they assure me people do so I keep tap-tapping away.

I am finally finishing this book I started months ago. I am not really that slow a reader but I hadn't really gotten hooked by it yet. I guess as fish go I am one of those massive, graceful, legendary types that swim deep where it stays cool, steady and dark all year round. When I do chase tail I take a good hard look before I bite in the first place and make sure I'm not being suckered into something else entirely!

Well, as far as books go at least!

So I am reading Prozac Nation. I know you probably know all about it, saw the movie and read the tee shirt but I didn't know anything about it until recently. I was reading another book I borrowed from the bartender at my former watering trough and he is mentioning this bright young author who everyone thinks is the greatest thing of our generation, but who he realizes rather quickly is just a terrible person. I must know more I say to myself but do not do anything about it right away.

Then one day I just see her famed book laying around belonging to no one and start reading. Since no one bothers saying, hey, that's my book, give it back" I decide to adopt the orphan and vow to bring it back and leave it where I found it as soon as I'm done. I end up finding it again months later and I still haven't finished the prologue.

Guilty as charged.

So I am bored and in need of something to pass the time at work. Apparently my coworkers do not like it when I talk their ears off about nothing in particular. It has been "mentioned." No worries, I am not hurt. I am Jack's F**king Ambivalence. I don't require my colleagues to adore me. Not at all.

Anyway, I am somewhere nearing the end of the second third and it occurs to me that I really hate this girl. She purports to represent all the screwed up youth of our generation whose parents divorced and abandoned us all the while carrying on like she is the only one this has happened to and she carries the enormity of an entire western culture's wasted life and yet somehow it isn't so bad that she can actually take matters into her own hands and end it all like any pen or poet worth their salt would have done long before.

I totally understand why this other author despised her because I can see it clearly in her overindulged premature memoir. Come on she isn't even 10 years older than me. Is it time for me to find a publisher for mine?

Of course the sick part is I identify with nearly all of it. Not the drugs part. Not even the alcohol part. Not the being pregnant and not knowing it part. Not the psychologists and psychiatrists. Not the institutions. Just about everything else though.

I mean, I feel exactly the same kinds of things she is describing, yet somehow I don't completely fall apart. Somehow I don't self-destruct in any sort of way that might be noticeable to others. Maybe that is why I don't come out of it. She describes her depression as spells that come and go and seem to me at least to be circumstantial even though she doesn't identify them as such. Early it is her father leaving (which is drug out gradually over years in her case, in mine the bandage was ripped away before I realized there was anything to cry about in the first place). Then it is her mother not mothering her enough or mothering her too much, depending on how she looked at it at any given moment. Then it is a variety of men she thinks exist to rescue her (and somehow she thinks of herself as a feminist in spite of her buy-in on the Disney semi-annual bull sale). The drugs and alcohol feed into it later on but I agree with her that they are just excuses, side effects.

I feel as though she is gradually building a case for why I should feel sorry for her as though somehow she holds the world record for suffering unfairly or something. What I really think it comes down to is a simple lack of fortitude. I don't necessarily blame her for this of course, it is circumstantial and a product of her nurturing but the simple fact that she is as intelligent as she is forces you to believe that at least she has the faculty to come to grips with what is happening and therefore holds the power to change how she sees herself. Instead she perpetuates it. To that end how can I continue to empathize with her if I believe that she already knows that she is now the source of her own depression and she ought to know how to come out of it. Without pills. Without codependent entanglements with random men. Without dragging those around her down in the process.

Of course all of this might as well be an indictment on myself. I may not explode into the self-destructiveness or even show the signs enough for anyone to see. Honestly until I read this book I wasn't even sure I dealt with depression at all. Of course I had my suspicions but easily rationalized everything away. All the signs were explained. I work nights so I have to sleep during the day. That makes it hard to sleep well so I sleep more.

My schedule and other life circumstances have conspired to leave me with a rather unfulfillng social life. I figure that more than explains why I am bored all the time and why I get down. Loneliness is a perfectly normal response to being alone all the time, right?

What I couldn't explain is why I haven't done anything about it. I am perfectly aware of myself and yet apparently not willing to change anything dramatically enough to have much of a shot at living a more meaningful life.

Well don't ruin the end of the book. I'm rooting for a classic suicide. The kind my tall, redheaded acting teacher always romanticized about. I get the feeling she'll eventually figure it out though. Bummer.

Oh FYI. This is also going to be my experiment at reading a book and then watching the movie. I think those people who are always talking about the book during or after a movie are pretentious assholes but that's just my opinion. So you can read, good for you. I can too I just chose to let others do the hard work for me.For now it looks like I have enough momentum to finish this one at least.

Peace,

amnesia for the event...

2007-08-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

If this one seems pointless, do excuse me as boredom is my only excuse.

I seem struck with a rare urge to clean up. I think it is easy to avoid picking up after myself when coming home from a rough day of work but gradually the place starts to look less appealing when you come home to it. So on the way up the elevator I ran into one of my neighbors who lives just down the hall. We haven't met or anything but I recognize her dogs so I am sure I've seen her before. Anyway, it just makes me think, what if a neighbor were to knock on my door. The thing about small apartments is that there is nowhere to hide messes when someone comes to your door, it's all right there behind you!

So out of fear of self-loathing that I decided to clean up. I haven't started of course, but I did change out of work clothes into something more suitable for the task and obviously I am writing about it so I am definitely doing this! Now that Judge Mathis is on I might need to regroup my efforts. These chicks are kind of cute in spite of their stupidity for going on television to fight in public over some unpaid utilities. Chick fights are generally entertaining regardless of the reasons, but it might be better over some cocktails. Wow, this is just over 2 mo's utilities for the total sum of $247. If I went on television every time a friend or former roommate owed me that much (or little) I'd be a daytime television regular!

I might even get really motivated and rearrange the living room. The Feng Sui in here seems off slightly. Maybe I just need to get some frames for my photographs and put some artwork on the walls.

I'm thinking about trying to get into newspaper and/or magazine writing. I am not sure it pays very well but I am sure I would enjoy the opportunity to vent publicly. Of course they probably only let the veteran journalists do editorial types of things. Oh well, I suppose I could still be happy writing articles on interesting topics that would allow me to do research and all that fun stuff.

Sidebar: verdict, $247 to the plaintiff and $240 to the defendant. Plaintiff wins with a net $7.00. What a waste of time. I'm sure she bought that outfit just because she knew she was going to be on television.

Where is the remote? This couple is hurting my ears. I just don't care about their grievances. What is this? CBN? Do your eyes deceive you? Yes I am watching Pat Robertson at the moment because they did an interesting looking story about a recovering family in the New Orleans area somehow in the context of examining insurance coverage. I doubt I'd otherwise find anything on this program worth paying any attention to. Time to divert the eyes, they're getting deeper and it's starting to look like one of those doomsday kinds of stories... planning for the worst. How depressing.

On a completely different subject. Check out your political candidates early. I know it seems ridiculously early to pay any attention to the dozen or so candidates on each side of the isle but now really is the best time to make an impact on who our choices will be when the election finally rolls around. These early months are where they see which horse has enough momentum to finish strong. Neither party wants to send up a candidate that doesn't have the potential to beat the other parties best. Obviously the tendency over the past couple election cycles has been to send candidates that are fairly moderate. Really when you compare Bush and Kerry and Bush and Gore the differences in terms of responses to media-dictated issues questions were often only nuances, not true contrasts. This election cycle we might end up with the same problem or we can pick candidates that represent something of substance that can be measured against their opponents policies.

My impressions of the candidates so far? Glad you asked. Let's start with the Blue in order of notoriety:

Clinton (madam) used to be thought of as very liberal, probably more so than her husband. However she has drifted so close to center over her time in the senate one can only conclude that she wants to be our next president very badly and believes the pulse of America is less interested in substantial innovative leadership than they are in poll-based politicking. The question you have you ask yourself is whether or not you believe she is a moderate now or just trying to blend in so she can say she represents everyman/everywoman USA. Maybe she doesn't feel the need to drive the issues debate because her being the only female candidate will give her enough of a leg-up on the competition (in her own party at least). I'm not sure that is enough to convince a majority of American's that she is the best one for the job. I might be old fashioned, but I think our next president should stand out in the crowd for the right reasons, not just highlights, botox and bigger boobs.

Obama was initially my pick to win but lately I am not sure. He came out strong against the Iraq war and seems to be the only one promising he will begin getting us out as soon as he takes office. However, this isn't true. There are others, but more on that when I get to them. Lately I give him points for standing up and speaking out on nuclear weapons. Nobody ever says anything about this but who are we kidding, we haven't believed that nuclear weapons make for good foreign policy in a long time. Maybe GWB does but who are we kidding! Clinton was quick to bash him for saying so as it was "unpresidential" but I disagree. We cannot take a hard line against North Korea and Iraq while carrying more nuclear weapons than all other nations combined in our own arsenal. Simply saying we won't use them isn't enough, Obama should come out and state that he would organize other nations to ban nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and certain types of landmines that cannot be remotely detonated (when conflicts have ended). The USA is the major source of most of these weapons and we have learned that their strategic benefit does not outweigh the harm they cause. Having a strong military does not necessitate the use of any of these weapons. I only complain that he doesn't go far enough. Obama didn't vote for the war in Iraq because he conveniently didn't have to. He wasn't there! It is easy to campaign on being against the war from the beginning when you didn't have to go on the record. I think its a cheap shot against the others and it ignores the fact that there are candidates in the race who actually voted against the war! I'll point them out later on.

Edwards looks interesting. I know he got a lot of crap in the last election for being young and way too pretty. I think we like our heads of state to look overstressed and about as healthy as our median population (slightly overweight with high cholesterol). Aside from his looks I didn't get much on him last-go-round but so far this time around he seems to be leading the charge in some important issues like universal healthcare. Nobody else is talking about it right now. He seems to have a sense of humor and has done work in the area of poverty and raising the minimum wage back home (though he works in the Senate and that would have been a state legislation thing). His book proceeds went to charity rather than his campaign. Habitat for Humanity and a relief organization that did work in Africa.

Kucinich is hard to get to know because the media largely ignores him. I think this is why I like him so much. I've read that in the last election cycle he was the one candidate breaking the mold and offering real ideas he came up with all on his own. While most of America is flirting with the idea of electing our first female or our first black I am pulling for our first geek! Unfortunately there isn't a lot I can tell you about what Kucinich is all about this time around but I can speculate that it isn't entirely inconsistent with what he was about the last time around. He is very concerned about the environment and has the intelligence to guide us through necessary technological changes to get us off fossil fuels for example while Bush in contrast cannot even pronounce "nuclear" properly. He's smart enough to know how important education is in keeping us competitive in the global economy and has great ideas for keeping American's employed and ensure that we still "make" things here to contribute to our gross domestic product. Certainly we cannot become a society of consumers and produce nothing of substance without heading toward an economic crisis. For Pete's sake we're getting incredibly stupid and I fear someday we'll be begging for the scraps left over in China, India and parts of Europe.

Richardson is hard to get a read on but he worked for Clinton 1 and has been governing in New Mexico during the Bush years. I suppose he has the credentials to handle foreign policy because of his role under Clinton. He seems to think he can get the entrenched partisans of Washington to finally work together. He is kind of dodgy about exactly what his plans are to do what he hopes to do (ie get us energy independent, stop global warming, help the middle class just to name a few). I just don't know enough to see how he plans to get it all done.

Vilsack wants us to pull out of Iraq and leave the outcome of their civil war up to them. He is against the recent troop surge that both parties reluctantly came together to approve/fund (and was so before it happened). Don't know anything else about him except he is the Governor of Iowa and might not even be running anymore. Hard to say anything but it is a damn shame the media doesn't pay much attention to these guys.

Biden has an interesting idea for getting out of Iraq without destabilizing the country (namely by establishing local governments that have some measure of power, not sure if they would be states or separate countries though). I am not sure if this idea is brilliant or incredibly stupid. It could create stability or further isolate neighbors and families in an already fragmented part of the globe. Instead of civil war we might be looking at regional wars instead. What's the difference? Not to mention how do you arbitrarily draw lines based on ethnic concentrations without creating envy? One of them will end up with more resources and an economic advantage. Combine this with the perception that your neighboring state is full of "them" rather than "us" and it seems to be a recipe for strife. It might work in the short term though and that would get us off the hook so we can bring our peeps home!

There are a few more Dems but I'll admit that I don't know much about them so on to the Reds:

Gulliani is reported to be the clear frontrunner among conservatives. I wonder if he isn't about as moderate as Clinton though. All he really has going for him is his popularity following 9/11/01. He pretty much retired a couple years later and hasn't done much since. His social politics are pretty liberal for the faith-based conservatives. He favors choice and short-term monogamy. I really don't see these people pulling for the guy. On the other hand he deserves most of the credit for bringing NYC around over the past decade or so. Time Square might still have prostitutes (I can't be sure, it was pretty crowded last time I was there and how can you really get a sense of a place when you are dancing asscheek-to-asscheek with strangers) but they would no doubt be a classier kind of working girl and working transvestite. I mean we're talking Queer Eye quality now and that has to be progress the whole of America is ready to embrace!

McCain of course has thrown another of his many hats in the ring... again. I lost count as to how many times he has run for president but it's up there. He is probably the most moderate of the republicans and the most likely to get us out of Iraq among them. I think overall McCain is growing on me. I don't think he has the strong charisma we expect from our heads of state but after Bush I think most American's will be looking for candidates with substance and intelligence who are not quick to bark soundbytes. I could be wrong, certainly the writers of Family Guy think so! Overall I worry that McCain is being too careful these days. He is slow and careful to criticize the current administration. He apparently does not feel at liberty to speak out against them the way the other party does. He does speak up for issues and policy changes he believes we should make and remains a very influential senator that works with members of both parties. Perhaps that is his greatest strength but I wonder if he is afraid to be true to himself and hold faith to his principles in order to be well liked. Maybe that is a side-effect from losing so many bids for the white house. I hope not.

Huckabee is a sharp relatively obscure republican candidate interestingly also a former governor of Arkansas. He seems optimistic about being able to get partisans to work together in spite of being a conservative evangelical. He promotes many issues on the liberal agenda pointing out that conservatives don't need to alienate themselves from friendlier social politics. He is pro-life but I don't gather that he is looking to use that as a platform for setting himself apart from other candidates. It looks like he wants to focus on policies that improve the quality of life for all Americans instead. This is the kind of conservative we need to hear more from in this horse race. Certainly the kind that can reach across the isle and find common ground. So he is running as the beltway outsider looking to build bridges and all we can hope is that he is telling the truth.

I would blog on about more reds but I can't think of anymore. Feel free to comment if you want to mention someone you think I neglected. I apologize in advance.

Oh by the way. None of the opinions and conjecture above is sourced or seasoned so do take it upon yourself to GET THE FACTS and stop letting the media dictate your choices. The bottom line is they pay attention to the candidates that can rally support in different parts of the country. Those are the candidates they will pay more attention to. If you find someone you like, tell a friend. Donate to their campaign. Volunteer. Get the word out in your neck of the woods. Your vote doesn't count. Not really. It only counts as much as the moron's who cannot read and spend their free time watching tractor pulls or American Idol and even then, it doesn't really count at all. It is called the Electoral College.

So find out who you think our next president should be and post your comment here. Be sure to say why. I promise not to ridicule you unless of course you are wrong. Oh and start thinking about a back-up since like all things in life, we rarely get our first choice!

Peace,

par y noya...

2007-08-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else get these neurotic inklings that you have said something you shouldn't have and the next time you go to work or hang out with your circle of friends (or whatever), you'll have to face the music so-to-speak?

I get this feeling all the time, generally just after finishing a shift of course. Email makes it worse. While I wouldn't say all of my work email is bad news, generally it is used to "document" your misdeeds. I think that is some crap myself, but not much I can do about it.

So I come home and instead of enjoying my freedom, I suffer my own insanity. I wouldn't say this is a new feeling, but it is more intense after having been fired from a job. I mean I think I used to get this way at my last job but I would shrug it off easier. Then when I lost my job I had to look back and think, man I saw this coming a mile away!

So I am either loony or perhaps I should be more aggressive in planning a career move.

Peace,

personification...

2007-07-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

Let's begin with an apology. I see my faithful have been reading in spite of my absence. Life is busy with a whole lot of nothings. I'll get to that later though.

Right now I'm contemplating an afternoon cocktail alone in my apartment with the blinds closed. Why? A girl called Eddy is serenading me meloncholy with her subtle retrospect. Really it is the opposite of personification though, perhaps depersonification--redux of personality into a mere effect-laden adjective. If you are unfamiliar, give her a listen. I guarantee nothing, but I like her so if you don't you can lodge it in a painful place and see if it does not help you relate!

Well, like I said, busy with the business of nonsense. Just working and sleeping and toxifying the body with malnourishment. I haven't been back for a second interview yet with the insurance thing. I think I blogged about that a while ago but I haven't made up my mind yet if I want to pursue it.

Meanwhile someone at work has put in notice. I may have the opportunity to pick up hours (which I am hesitant to do) and possibly fix my schedule so I can have the same nights off every week. It is doubtful that I could have the whole weekend off, but I am trying for Thursday and Friday's off. I can sacrifice the rest.

Of course my boss is talking about changing things as a result of this. We need to hire two additional people and recruiting people for night shift is a chore so she is talking about 10 hour shifts again (something I was told when I was hired but has not bore fruit yet). I already know 3 out of 5 of us are definitely against that. I think two of them more stubborn than the third. The bottom line is longer shifts means more nights off and I can't see why anyone working 5 nights a week would see that as evil incarnate!

Anyway I am on record as being in favor of it and if it does not happen soon I will keep looking for better opportunities elsewhere. Of course I've heard about 3 chances to go 7on/7off and passed because I would rather not switch employers only to stay on night shift. I would leave in a heartbeat if a M-F came along though!

Well aside from that I have a new car. So far been pretty busy though and just racked up about 450 miles going to and from work. It does have me considering a week or so of vacation time so I can "break 'er in" right! 350 horses and I'm just fluffing around in cruise control on a 55 mph highway most of the time. What a shame.

I am off tonight and as of now have no plans. This is the consequence of the lifestyle I have--first Friday night off in a month and I'm not even sure I'll go anywhere. The pattern is this: ordinarily I take my days off in the middle of the week, sometimes one at a time and think about all the possibilities if I ever get a weekend night off. Then one sneaks up on me and I'm stuck vacillating in the wonder and awe of all I could do so much so that I will likely do nothing at all.

We can certainly hope that isn't the case. Meanwhile I can grove to Ray Charles on the couch (which has become my other bed more often than I care to admit) while logging all this nonsense for my unauthorized autobiographical movie to be released in the spring of 2047 (on my 70th birthday--I don't expect to live much longer than that).

So I have been thinking of putting in for a week or two in late September or October. Hawaii sounds fun and I see some good deals on all-inclusive packages but I am not convinced about vacationing that far from home alone. I don't tan well and I suppose the most I could hope for is to meet someone interesting that I will never see again. What fun is that?

I could head north and sup with my Canadian brothers, eh? Passport is ready. Car tuned up. Just don't know much about the rest of BC as I've only ever been to Victoria and I don't think going there would be that interesting. An Alaskan cruise sounds interesting but I don't think fall is a very good time to go there.

Of course I've always wanted to stay in a coastal hotel room and watch an autumn storm right out my window. Maybe I could start writing my great American novel. Oh, I already have by the way--I just didn't like the way it is coming together just yet. I think I may just as well start over and lean more into pure fiction. I don't think anyone would authorize consent to be in my book, either out of a lack of trust or fear of letting their laundry air-dry.

You know, I saw something interesting on Jerry Springer yesterday. Yes on occasion I have caught myself watching JS feigning righteous indignation. What struck me is this long haired drunken bum-like reverend he has come on and do weddings. I was reminded of my dream of moving to the coast and opening a wedding chapel. Of course I haven't decided if I believe in life-long monogamy yet, but I could play the flask-toting Irish-American disillusioned reverend resigned to marrying off horny young couples rather than preaching from the top of the hill. Somehow it suits me better. Let us all put our faith in simple, hormonal love and leave the mysteries of life unanswered for the time being. Amen

Peace,

on why those in the dental profession are so...

2007-05-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

Happy?

So I went to see my new dental hygienist today. I probably should preface that by saying that I've known her for years, but since I am new to town, our relationship is taking a new form. Both my dentist and her are members of my old reserve unit that I've known for quite some time. Of course we've only known one another professionally, not, uh, professionally.

For those of you who don't know, and I don't imagine any of you could, I am basically the worlds biggest chicken when it comes to the dentist. I'd much rather ignore my oral health entirely until it kills me. Maybe I don't really mean that, but let's at least say that I am conflicted about it.

So a few months ago I was referred to their office and promised it would be a pleasant experience. Compared to what you say (and don't you love the McCann/Claypool reference)? Well, not just the military dentists and hygienists, even the lady I saw when I was a teenager was mean to me. I always leave feeling like I've just been scolded by the headmistress at some parochial school for smoking weed and starting a fire in the rectory or something (I just like working the word rectory in wherever I can)!

So none of that, in fact it really wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, but there is some psychological trauma involved with having someone poke and prod at my tender gums with that high pitched power tool and feeling entirely helpless about it. Perhaps if I had the tool in my own hands and were doing the work myself it would be more tolerable, but you have to give up, give in and let go!

I'm definitely still learning how to do that!

Apparently I will be learning to do other new things. Rather than scolding me, this time she gave me some tips. Apparently I have a lot of work to do in between visits (there will be two more before this round is over).

Of course, I celebrated the end of this round by stopping off at Krispy Kremes and getting some Teriyaki for lunch.

I'm so bad.

Peace and happy dental hygiene,

so it turns out i have...

2007-05-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

I had an unexpected knock at the door today. Given that I live in a secured entry building it is strange to get a knock rather than a buzz or a ring (I still don't know which it is since nobody has come over unescorted by yours truly) but it could be a neighbor or the maintenance/construction guys who are still in the building tying up loose ends. So I pause last week's Grey's Anatomy on my computer (yeah I watch it online, what of it?), throw on some pants I keep handy on a chair in my living room and a sweater and answer the door.

Sure enough it is a couple of guys who work for the building crew. They asked to take a look at my AC unit. I told them I don't think I have one and did they mean my heater or whatever. They said, no, you have AC and proceeded to open up the door to what I thought was my heater. Since there is no unit in my window I was under the impression I didn't have AC at all. They said that all the units on the 5th and 6th floor have air conditioners on the roof that pump through the walls to a forced air pump. It turns out my heater isn't a heater at all, not even in the dead of winter.

So how do I heat my apartment I wondered, then they showed me the pipes near my hot water heater in the laundry closet and explained that I have radiant heat. No wonder the heater didn't seem to be coming on when I was playing with the thermostat. You wouldn't hear it since it is just pumping warm water under your feet, right?

I am so excited. Even though we've had a late start to spring and summer-like weather, my flat faces south and I get sun through my windows all day long. Given that I work nights and only have two small windows that open to the outside, I didn't figure there was much of a chance of me getting any sleep all summer long.

I HAVE AIR CONDITIONING THOUGH!

Living the dream,

according to myspace...

2007-05-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm 30.

Ouch.

to volvo or not to volvo...

2007-05-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Since my blogs are getting fewer and further between I must rewind a little more each time in order to explain the sequence of events which bring me to the random nonsense I feel so compelled to ramble on over.

So now that someone has quit they felt more urgency to make certain that I receive my training in the blood bank at my new job (hard to believe it's been nearly 5 months already). I was astonished they chose to do it so soon since that was the only thing my last employer never got around to training me in. It seems I had good reason to believe things might be the same here, but more on that later.

For now let it suffice to say that they quickly altered the already posted schedule to slide me in this week and next for a grand total of seven days of training on day shift. Pardon me while I contain my excitement over working during the lovely daylight hours because there is so much to tell besides how nicely the sun appears reflecting off the brick, glass, lawn and trees.

Anyway, today was merely my fourth day of training and I must say getting up at 5 am is no simple task on my part, yet amazingly I managed to clock in on time every day this week--partly due to my Richard Petty skills and my superfluous SUV.

However, twice this week I nearly got into an accident--well two consecutive days in fact!

So the first one was Thursday morning as I zipped over the Narrows Bridge and merged onto I5 north for the 2 miles before catching River Road. I obviously found it urgent to use the far left lane for my long stretch down I5 and then as my exit was coming near I planned my merging carefully. I followed the car in front of me until passing the large truck (I'm not talking Ford people) in the nearest lane. There wasn't a whole lot of room between this truck and the car in front of him and we're going downhill mind-you.

So I check and as the gap is starting to widen I decide to make my move. Just as I'm merging this OTHER car from the lane opposite the one we both want is heading right for me. We came within inches of kissing and I guarantee my kiss has bite to it and the truck behind us would've laid a big wet one on both of us!

So I jerked back into my lane and whoever was in the tan sedan just kept coming! Now what is important about noting here is that some impatient moron was tailgating me during all of this. Seeing my signal and the gap he decided it was now time for him to take opportunity to pass me even before I had finished merging away. Now I not only have a car cutting off my merge but another one cutting off my evasive maneuver!

Well needless to say I didn't get hit by either. Then I decided to take a detour last night instead of heading straight home. I landed in Fifedom to browse the car dealers we don't have in Puyallup, Spanaway or South Tacoma. I was looking for VOLVO after all, not the best deal on a Kia or Susuki.

After going to the wrong location and then getting lost I finally stumbled upon the new Volvo dealership location nestled among Land Rovers, Jaguars and other snobbery. I chatted it up with a sales manager while looking at a few models and drove off with some brochures in my front seat so I could decide just how Volvo to go; S40, S60, S80 or suv style (already having one I am definitely leaning away from it this time around, I'll settle for AWD, four doors and a trunk only Superman can spy on).

So twice today I had to slam on my breaks for yellow lights (when driving to work at night the lights rarely change and when they do it's much less urgent to respond to their interference) knocking my brochures onto the floorboards. Then after getting off HWY 16 and heading toward the Purdy bridge I hear my "celly blowing up" and reach over to check it out. The light is still green and I am making a left turn behind the car I let in a couple blocks earlier (this time of day you can wait for hours before the traffic stops coming off of 16-no need to pat me on the back, I already did it, twice) is also making the left turn.

Suddenly I notice he has stopped just past the intersection as I am coming around the corner. This isn't the first time I've seen someone try to turn into the gas station on this corner during the worst possible time of day to attempt such a maneuver, but this is the first time in a long time and given my momentary distraction I found myself unable to go around him. So I slammed on my breaks for a third time today and fortunately the car behind me who ran a yellow to make the turn toward the bridge didn't hit me either.

So this might not seem that unusual to you so I will paint another picture. This gas station shares a gravel parking lot with several businesses next door which collectively have at least three entrances the LAST of which was the spot where this guy decided to make his stand and attempt a left turn across traffic which backs up from the light over the bridge and half a mile across the spit.

Anyway, with the light green for us to make that left turn he easily could've crossed traffic before the intersection to get into the gas station there so you might now see why I felt he was such an idiot for doing what he ultimately chose to do.

So to Volvo or not to Volvo. That is the question now.

I've all but decided not to buy a house right now after all. I keep reading that prices continue to rise in spite of longer overall time on market and higher inventory than anytime in recent years. Not to mention while interest rates remain low, many sub-prime banks are announcing that they are out of the business for good. Apparently this means that tension in the subprime market (which some are saying essentially no longer exists, but is a slight exaggeration) tends to tighten the slack through the other categories and even affects prime lending.

The short and dirty of it? While my credit isn't stellar it isn't bad either, but my expectation that I would be able to buy a home with zero down may no longer be the case, even if merely temporarily.

So I am amidst double-checking the facts with my friends at the Vancouver brokerage I still work with and when I find out exactly what is going on you all will be the first to know!

The only reason I mention that though is that it seems now that I don't need to worry about buying a new car since I will probably have to hold off on buying a house for another year anyway and that is the only real reason I was going to put off buying a car to replace my rapidly-growing-wary, gas-guzzling SUV.

If any of you feel like you have special insight into the latest generation of automobiles, perhaps you will impart this knowledge on me so I might be less clueless when I visit the next dealership. This guy started steering me toward the S60 without listening to much of what I had to say at all. Come to find out many of the coolest safety features Volvo has to offer are only available on the S80 (until the other two models undergo redesign in the next few years).

One final update. It is raining so I am thinking of staying in and catching up on sleep.

Peace and carbon neutrality!

finally got a haircut...

2007-05-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

As some of you know I have been growing my hair out for several months. Ever since January in fact. I also decided not to shave anymore. If I had it my way I wouldn't even trim! I guess it just doesn't look very good if I don't though.

Well, I broke down this weekend and went driving around my neighborhood Friday morning to find a place to get it cut down. I guess I was also out of "product" so it was time to do something about it.

So nothing is open when I get off work and that is frustrating. They were doing a radiothon or something from Tulley's here in Downtown Tac and I thought about dropping in on that, but why would I do something like that? I'm not the starstruck type and over a freaking radio show? Eh, no thanks. So I kept looking for a salon and sure enough, right in the bottom of the Sheraton tower was SalonMiro. I guess its all run together like that. I don't know what it means either. So I went in but the door was locked. I looked at the door and windows to see what time it opened and this little Asian woman came and unlocked it for me. I felt bad because I'm sure they weren't opening for a while. She said they were open though and to come in. I asked if they had any openings that morning since I didn't want to wait anymore. She said she could squeeze me in right then after noting that they normally don't open until 9 am. Once again the world revolves around banker types.

Anyway, I said she could do whatever she wanted with it as long as it looked good, but that I was tired of feeling scruffy around the ears, etc. Too bad and I really was hoping to see what it looks like for me to have a full head of hair, but it wasn't pretty as it was!

So to make a short story long, I like what she did with the place. Looks good now and I even got a quickie scalp massage out of it. I definitely think I'll go back!

Well, in other news I went to a wedding this weekend--for a family friend. Lots of people I haven't seen in ages. Good times. Of course I brought my camera but so did my mom so I decided to let her be the dork lugging around the big camera instead of me for a change. So I will have some pictures for you to gawk at later... much later!

First I have to verify they turned out well. I wore my black button down shirt but seriously, I should find someone to dress me. I wore black pants and the two kinds of black weren't quite right together. At least I have sense enough to know something is wrong, but not enough sense to do anything about it first. I was in a hurry to get on the road so I wouldn't be late and didn't change shirts (or pants) and the outcome might have been less becoming of me.

So the next time I crash a wedding I have some ideas. I'll definitely not work the night before. People who didn't know probably thought I was rude or else hung over. I was just tired! Of course I'll have to take some dancing lessons. This was the first wedding that town put on with dancing. I always used to laugh because movies make that such a traditional part of the ceremony and yet in my hometown all these people are so against it for some reason. I'd never been to a wedding growing up with live music, much less dancing. So I give them props for that. Mad props homies. So there was dancing, just not much of it. All that was missing was the weird ass that most people don't really know who gets in there and makes everyone cut loose a little more. I could be that guy! Certainly there are enough people who think I am a big enough ass and I have no dance skills, so all I need is to get over myself and just do it!

Oh who am I kidding? I'm the dork who takes pictures of other people acting foolish so I can blackmail them later.

Anyway, I'm back home. New haircut. Good times. Looking forward to version 30.0.

Peace,

Brian

i think myspace is smoking something...

2007-05-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is, but in the spirit of experimentation I'll take two!

What am I talking about, you ask? Well, it certainly is not anything worth making a blog entry over, but if you must know; it says i have had 65 views this week which had me quite excited over my new-found popularity until I also noticed that it says there were 2 posts this week and I know that isn't true!

Sorry to say my little ones, our neglectful host has not posted in over 2 weeks! That ends now though.

I do not really have much to blog about but I did go see a show last weekend. Somehow the planet's aligned or something and I happened to be heading to Portland for my only weekend off in the middle of a 5 week stretch and one of my favorite emerging artists was playing at the Doug Fir Lounge that Sunday night. No worries, not a school night for ME! I said. So the tickets were cheap too and that was it, I didn't hesitate.

So I have never been to the Doug Fir but from what I read online it sounded interesting, state of the art sound and a very contemporary environment for enjoying an intimate musical performance. I thought it would be easy to find but alas, it is a hole in the ground, very easy to miss. It is underneath the Jupiter Hotel, so if you are ever looking for it, don't! Just look for the hotel and then go to the restaurant and head underground.

Anyway, the show got started pretty late, two opening acts each with their own take on blending psychedelic influences of various forms with the overall freeform of the jam band phenomena. Quite a contrast with Alexi Murdoch really. Oh, did I neglect to mention him earlier? Well for those of you who do not know, he is the critically acclaimed artist whose much-anticipated debut album finally came out this winter. I don't know what the hold-up was, nor do I care, but it has been 3 years since his 4 song EP came out and won him limited attention from American radio, particularly here in the NW and of course in California where I understand he's been hold-up trying to finish the album for some time.

I say this only to say that I guess I knew this show would just be a random run-through a small setlist of songs off the new album. I mean when it takes that long to make an album you have no right to expect to be surprised with oodles of older material. Of course during the encore he did treat us to something interesting which I suppose he feared would tag him as a religious zealot of sorts (since he chose to inform us that he is not).

So what did I think overall? Definitely keep your ears open for this one if you haven't already discovered him. The album is great and he will not disappoint you if you have the chance to see him live.

On another note, if you have a chance to see a show at the Doug Fir go ahead and get there early and secure one of the coveted outer tables. We sat on the steps which were the next best thing until the chick from the 2nd opening act decided to tell everyone sitting Indian-style on the concrete floor to stand up. I really wish she'd let them just stay put, cuddle up if necessary, and join in a good ol group sing like we had in kindergarten. Ah good times!

So I have no idea who opened the show. They only played one song and there were no words--plus they all wore masks. The next band was called Midnight Movies I do believe. They're on myspace and appear to be quite popular among the disenfranchised young female set. Definitely a contrast to Murdoch's flavor, but not in a bad way. Someone has to draw in the kids with the fake ID on Sunday nights!

Well, that's about all there is to say about it. Looking forward to Damien Rice at Benaroya hall in April and hopefully Sasquatch in May. Stay tuned for all of that!

Peace,

damien rice, earth day, random stuff...

2007-04-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

I am posting this kind of late given the concert was Wednesday, but if you have been reading along with the rest of us you might have been wondering how it went. I will tell you now.

First off, Brett Dennon is great. I figured he would be but I guess I didn't realize how new he is. I mean in spite of his physical stature he looked incredibly intimidated by the mass of the spectators gathered to celebrate Earth Day (yeah right). Anyway, had I any doubts, he would have relieved them with the first song. He played four. All very good and a great way to open the show. I'm sure very soon he'll be able to beef up his touring band from 1 other member to at least 3 and begin establishing himself as a prick (more on that later).

I'm not going to give the rundown on the setlists folks and I didn't bring my camera or digital recording device for any bootlegging. I'm just there to enjoy myself and go home. If I cannot remember what was played and what wasn't, so be it!

Anyway, Damien Rice got up and to my chagrin was missing his former partner in crime. However, he has beefed up his band since 2003 and while the music is still moody and sentimental on the albums, it takes on another dimension live that I insist makes him a must-see-in-person artist. Trust me, I have scoured the internet and there are no versions of his music that measure up to what he did with songs like "Grey Room" at Bennaroya Hall. Also notable was a very edgy and extended version of "Woman Like a Man."

I was also pleased that he did keep several songs stripped down to the bare essentials, yet nearly every song had been given some attention beyond what was on the albums. The staging was subtle, yet impressive and the lighting was spectacular and somehow not overdone. Ok on one song I asked myself why I didn't bring my sunglasses and flashed back a smirk of disapproval, but that was all.

So if you don't know who Damien Rice is, shame on you. If you have some misconception that his music is depressing still, shame on you. Go google him and find out why women worship him and men would give an eye or even a testicle to be him, or just have his way with words I suppose. And yet he's still humble enough to beg women not to sing his praises between songs or he'll be even more a prick than he already is.

Well, in other news, on Saturday I finally got all my furniture moved in. If you have been keeping tabs, that was 3 months in the trailer and 5 more weeks of watching television from the floor of my new living room. Alas I am chilling on my good couch (more on the bad one later), blogging and ignoring the tube for now. Looking forward to Heroes tonight though, aren't you? Kind of irritated S60 isn't going to be back until late May and who knows when TBD will be back on television (though it is on nbc.com for those who miss it but didn't know where it went). If you don't know what those acronyms are for then you weren't fans enough to care!

So there is still a lot to do to get my house ready for guests, but sooner or later I'll get a day off and start plugging away at it. For now my bookshelf is in the middle of the living room, the dresser is next to the windows, the other bookshelf is upside down (but standing) next to a stack of boxes that is nearly blocking access to my bedroom and several other boxes are piled up near the bar in front of the kitchen just to give you a quick visual. Yet somehow everything I need for live is in its place already, go figure!

I estimate many boxes will not be unpacked, instead I'll stack them in my storage unit downstairs. I know that's where my golf clubs, camping and rock climbing gear will go, but I'm also sure there are boxes that have things I should've gotten rid of a long time ago that I suppose I'll just tuck away and see if I start wondering where something is for a few months before I let them go permanently.

Well, my boss is sending me to Seattle on Wednesday for some kind of seminar/training opportunity that a few of us were selected for. Maybe this is a good sign. I've been getting a lot of extra hours which is nearly turning this into a full time job, however so many of those hours have been on my weekends off that it's about to be 7 in a row for me that I'm working some part of the weekend. I said no more! I want early June weekend off to be turned into a mini vacation. I would only have to take 2 days off to make it nearly a full week so I'm going to see about that.

Not much else to say. I suppose I could do some laundry, watch the end of Regis and Kelly and the View and if I get really ambitious, I could get my books out of boxes and onto the shelves. I doubt I'll get that energetic today, but then again I have a bottle of Yerba Mate in the car still (from the concert). I'm afraid to drink it though because one of its major ingredients is a drug we routinely test for in the lab when it is being given to a patient (because it's dangerous... why else?). Why would they put that kind of drug in an energy drink and how much does it amount to? These answers and MORE on my next edition of random crap!

Peace,

Brian

"we don't have a button for that..."

2007-04-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm going Spurlock today!

I haven't been to the worlds most notorious fast food joint in months, but after running a few errands (including picking up some medication I desperately needed to take... with food) after work I decided to pull in hoping to get some breakfast (no luck--I was three minutes too late after all).

Instead I ordered a couple burgers, a small fry and a large ice water. I never get any argument anymore when I order a large ice water. They used to try to sell me bottled water but I kept protesting that Dasani is far from what I desire to quench my thirst. However, when I pulled around to my disappointment I was handed a weird looking child size cup that didn't have the McDonalds logo or any of their contracted beverage suppliers (most likely a 12 oz cup).

Does anyone have any clue where I am going with this so far?

Anyway, I hardly enjoy discussing my tendency toward the fast-food establishments, especially this one. However, admittedly I do go more often than I should. Perhaps the only reason it hasn't killed me yet is that a few years ago I had an epiphany that just because I don't have the time to cook for myself 3 times a day doesn't mean that I have to conform to their system of caloric intake. I decided that I wouldn't drink anymore soda and while I have backed off slightly from making a religion out if it I still usually ask for water instead of soda for the sake of better health. For the sake of making the world a simpler place, and cleaner, I steer away from the bottled variety. Bottled water is shipped all the way across the country in most cases at great expense, not to mention the bottles will eventually end up in a landfill no matter how many times they are recycled.

So what, you ask?

I'm a big boy and when I am thirsty I am, for the lack of a better word, thirsty! Should I get served a 32 oz cup when I ask for a large cola, but a 12 oz cup when I ask for a large water? If you are ahead of me as I am sure you are you might be asking yourself why doesn't he just protest and ask for a bigger cup? Surely they'll cave in if you just hint at making an ass of yourself.

Way ahead of you. I always do. I always insist that I asked for a large water and whatever they are handing me is definitely not large. They usually say try to make some excuse but eventually cave in. Sometimes they will insist that they cannot give me a large but will give me a medium. I always consider this a small victory anyway.

However, at McDonnalds I was told I could have 2 water cups, but they would not give me a large cup of water. I laughed at the woman and asked why not and she said "because we don't have a button for that."

Can you believe it? I almost lost it, but realizing that McDonalds does not hold the highest standards even in the fast food industry for employee intelligence and/or competency (which is generally admirable because someone needs to offer theses people the opportunity to contribute to society) I did not want to point out how stupid she was.

At this point though I will point out how stupid you are if you haven't already figured out the solution to her little conundrum yourself (since I don't necessarily know you or if you fall into this category in the first place): she could have just pushed the button a few times until the cup was full!

So while I have now heard dozens of excuses for why they cannot give me a large ice water at this and other fast food restaurants, this one was perhaps the most ludicrous. I already know the real reason. Certain types of penny pinching managers feel that giving away free cups of water is contrary to their mission of profit seeking, so they push the sodas which have the highest profit margin of all the food served in fast-food restaurants. While you most certainly have the right to ask for a water in any restaurant, fast or not, it is never encouraged because short sighted individuals tend to assume it reduces their bottom line.

On the other hand, when I am out at a restaurant or bar and I ask for water, if the person serving it keeps on top of things and keeps the glass full (as I can put it away faster than anyone I know and I hate having to wait for them to come fill an empty glass), I will generally add 5-10% to what I normally tip. While the restaurant doesn't directly make any money in that situation, it still benefits them if their employees are making better money in tips they stick around longer and the overall staff turnover and customer satisfaction statistics are better which does help their bottom line.

I don't know if the fast food industry will ever get a clue, but the places I frequent the most know I usually order water and they never protest giving me a large cup. They know I'll be back and I'll order food again. Keeping the customer happy is still the best key to success and the difference in cost between a small cup and a large cup is never worth losing potential repeat business.

Peace,

Brian

any damien rice fans?

2007-04-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

So with Earth Day approaching I have these tickets to see Damien Rice and Brett Dennon but true to form, I cannot think of anyone to bring along. Unless I'm missing something I don't have any friends who are fans--well locally at least.

So obviously if you think I should've thought of you, then speak up, otherwise I'll either put up an ad on Craigslist or have someone who would rather be at a tractor pull come along.

In other news (as I see it has been a month since my last post) I am nearly finally moved into my new place. I am missing some bits of furniture but it gives me time to think of what I'll do with them when I can finally get them here. I've even considered selling them and getting something more appropriate for the condo lifestyle (my couches are really big).

I do like this place and the view is incredible, but the weather has not cooperated much lately. Today is yet another rainy, overcast day that obscures Mt Rainier, but there is a rainbow over the Tacoma Dome. By the way, does anyone else think that is the ugliest building ever? I think they should tear it down and consider inviting the Sonics' to move down here and build something worth looking at.

So that's all I wrote. Tough, deal with it. More to come later.

Peace,

Brian

here's to finally knowing who...

2007-02-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard a song on the radio that you know you have heard before but have no idea who it is from? Any suggestions for how you overcame this handicap?

Oh usually if it is a new song or something you just wait for it to be played again (assuming like me you tend to miss the moments where the information is generously provided) and hope eventually it sticks somewhere in your consciousness long enough to resurface the next time you are browsing the isles at your local big box music, books and coffee house. But what are you to do when it is a slightly older song that any radio station worth their salt would be embarrassed to suddenly throw into heavy rotation (in spite of only recently discovering it)??? WhAT Do yOU dO THeN???

Well, thanks to the age of information we are supposed to be in many radio outlets around this modest country (and others like it) have set up various tools to help you find your way back to musical nirvana (wait, maybe that isn't quite right but once it slips out, there is no going back).

So you have a song you want to "discover" and your radio station of choice has a web page with a search function. What next? Well you need to know WHEN you heard it too! Lucky for me I knew it was sometime during my shift and then I remembered turning up the radio so I could hear the bass which means that it had to be while I was in my car on my lunch break! That narrowed it down to sometime before 410 am. Point. Click. Wait. Eureka!

So my song, much to my surprise, is by an artist known as St Germain. A quick click on www.elbo.ws reveals that only one person has ever blogged it anywhere and that was almost a year ago. Not currently hosted on their server. My hopes are dashed once again.

I suppose I could go out and buy the album. I could also go rejoin one of those file sharing portals and buck the law a little more. All I know is I have downloaded some of St Germain's works in the past and came up disappointed in most of them. My chief complaint lies in their tendency to stray from true artistry toward the rather formulaic dance club format of faster beats and ubber repetitiveness that ruins many a good electronica musician.

Perhaps this is why some have given way to producing music under multiple aliases simultaneously. I mean, when was the last time you thought Moby was cool? I haven't since I saw him trying to perform "live" on television once and it just wasn't working for me. He looked like an idiot running around on an oversized stage trying to show off his versatility by playing various instruments and synthesizers set up in different parts of the stage... all during the same song! He had a few musicians backing him up looking much more relaxed about the whole thing. It was almost as painful as watching Jamie Cullum try to make playing the piano look cool on Austin City Limits. Look, the piano is a sit-down instrument. It will never be as sultry as the sax or as macho as a bass guitar and it will certainly never have the sex-appeal of a fender strat. Do what all the great pianists do and sing better songs!

On that note, I leave you with Tom Waits. Enjoy!

Brian

on my soapbox...

2007-02-07T18:12:00.000-08:00

I was on my soapbox earlier this week but I neglected to blog any of it. To tell the truth I don't even remember what it was about so you are all tough-out-of-luck if you thought I was going to share it here.

However, I did want to change the song in here. I had wanted to share an old Colin Hay tune that always seems to capture my sentiments but could never find it online anywhere. Now that I have my own place to host files though I have uploaded it for your enjoyment as well.

So what am I going to say in this entry?

It is tough sometimes to come up with something useful to say. I guess it has been a while since something has really bothered me enough to rant but similarly as long since anything truly amazed me.

Enjoy the song though!

Peace,

brian

just a thought...

2007-01-24T15:34:00.000-08:00

I took a trip down to the university campus today to see if I could chat with someone about my future in their program. I guess that isn't how things are done, but I am used to having total access. I don't think I ever had to make an appointment to see a professor or drop in on someone in all my years of college. Why start now?

Anyway, I picked up more information about my top two choices for graduate programs and then I went home somewhat discouraged.

One reason for my disappointment is that even if there are no hiccups in the admissions process I wouldn't be able to start either program until fall. See I had hoped to jump in at any point and start plucking away at it as early as late March when the spring quarter usually begins. Then of course there is summer. Fall seems SOOOOOOOOOO far away to me right now. I mean, there are a thousand things that could come up between now and then that might make me change my mind, why would I want to plan something that far out.

Then there is the issue that when I was in this faculty advisors office talking about her program it hit me that I really have no idea WHY I would want to study her program. Then all the way home and since getting home I've been racking my brain trying to think of why I would want a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies. It sounds appealing for some reason but what do you do with it? I made a decision a long time ago to spend no more money on education that does not have a very clear and logical link toward my progressing professionally and financially. I already pay a lot every month for the previous ten years of enlightenment, why punish my future self even more unless it is clearly justifiable.

So what does a person do with this kind of degree? Their literature shows pictures of ordinary folk who are know deans or heads of departments in government agencies large and small or perhaps even non-governmental social service organizations of some kind. They say it is for those seeking a future of public service, political service or even political action groups. While they claim no focus it seems to somewhat revolve around managing social change or otherwise making the world a better place. In other words its anything but an MBA which is often seen as the get-rich-quick infomercial to the MAIS' informational and educational programming.

Does that make any sense to you? Me either! Maybe if I sit in on a course I'll know better, but what troubles me is that I cannot answer a question as simple as "what do you want to do with your life." I honestly have no idea. I only work in the lab because I cannot think of another thing I am good enough at to make as much money as I can at this. I would just assume wash cars if I thought it paid as well. I've never been good at sales or anything that involves selling (which is why I stay clear of evangelism and evangelists) and that explains why I couldn't do much with the wild world of finance. Sure I am perfectly capable of grasping the math as well as the process but even loans have to be sold to the customer as well as to the banks (although they like to think you are are their customer, once you get into an individual case you are pitching a client to them which means you are trying to warm them up to the idea of doing the deal in spite of its complications).

The only glimmer of hope in this comes from my faint remembrances of some of the things I worked on the last time I was in school. I always got fired up whenever we would discuss social issues. Often I chose to take a contrary view to my peers and I always favor speaking on behalf of those who seem disadvantaged or otherwise unable to act (or speak) on their own behalf. Whether it is homelessness in urban America, third-world poverty, HIV (or other global health issues) and the orphans it is causing in Africa, or simply the overwhelming imbalance in today's economy that makes it so challenging for ordinary hard-working people to afford typical housing right here in our own country. I'm always thinking about the problems without the ability to arrive at conclusions about solutions. Sure I feel more and more capable of grasping the complexities involved, but the more I understand of a given problem the more complex the problem seems to become. For every step toward understanding the end seems two steps further away!

I feel the same way about my own life. The more I understand of myself the more questions I have about what ultimately could make me happy. I don't want to make it sound like I'm an unhappy person, though I do clearly see that I cannot be satisfied by the same simpler pleasures of my youth. I feel a more compelling pull to matter, not just to others but also to my self.

It is with this thought I will leave you in the capable hands of this song written by Brian Burton.

Peace!

the ducks won't row...

2007-01-24T01:20:00.000-08:00

Do you ever think maybe your job is too much of a distraction from living well? I like to think that what I do has little-to-nothing to do with who I am, but unfortunately when you find yourself working nights in a hospital what you do dominates your life, even if it is less than "full time."

What do I mean? Well today was my day off and what did I do? I watched a weird movie on Showtime where Noah Wiley was a developer who falls for a chick in a band that protests developers. Yes there is a reason you have not seen or heard of this movie even though it came out less than two years ago, it is a very cheesy premise for a story.

Then I went to sleep. Then I overslept. Then I woke up in the middle of the night (when I would otherwise be working) and there is absolutely nothing to do, so I'm on the internet and everyone I could talk to is asleep so I'm blathering nonsense into the blogosphere. I would otherwise look forward to what I can do tomorrow but I probably will do nothing since I have to work again tomorrow night.

It isn't just the schedule though. My job is highly stressful. I like to think of myself as a stress-free guy who can handle much more than the average person without becoming overwhelmed but this past weekend proved me wrong. Almost every night at work things seemed out of control. Friday night it was just busy as usual but Saturday night when I arrived at work there were a couple dozen specimens that needed to be set up for cultures from the previous shift. Then there was the usual workload in the other department I cover and for some reason they feel that weekends require less staffing so we do it all with one less tech than usual. Sunday night we didn't walk into the same mess as Saturday but it was busier and I found myself getting overwhelmed in the morning and I think the lady who replaced me in the morning was upset because there were so many patients left untested for her to catch up on (though it would've been nothing like what I dealt with the night before).

Then there was Monday night. Monday night I was back in Chemistry and the usual crap where the machines fail their blank absorbance tests was going on only it was backwards from the last time. I guess we'd cleaned the heck out of the one it was happening to and it's fine now but the other one is starting to do it. Also we had some of the sickest patients I have ever seen in six years of doing this. Not just one of them but three or four whose chemistries were so out of whack you had to second guess and reconfirm everything! Now for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about I'll just say that when this happens you tend to get to deal with said patient more than twice on your shift. Often they are on an every 2 or 3 hour protocol and you get to know them very well!

So while the workload never ceased to lighten, all the while one of my machines is being stubborn and I only finished all of its quality control just in time to run the 100 or so patients we get starting around 4 AM. However, I was still dealing with the STAT problem childs who needed dilutions, repeats, reflexes and whatnots so I was being slower than usual about putting the "routine" morning rounds samples on the analyzers and found when it was time to leave that I still had like 30 samples running when I would normally be doing a quick final check to make sure nothing was left behind, misplaced or otherwise neglected. Obviously this process cannot go smoothly or quickly when there are so many to track down and make sure were not forgotten so I was late getting out.

Now ordinarily I don't care that much about my job. I mean while I am at work I try to do the best I can but I don't get worked up and let it affect me after I am off the clock if you can relate to that. However, I find that this job, with this hospital, is so stressful that I never fully decompress before it is time to go back and do it all over again--and would you believe that I only work 7 days every two weeks? Not exactly full time folks!

So last night I had an epiphany while I was eating what I call lunch. My work schedule is such that now just might be the perfect time for me to go back to school. I've always thought I might like to get a masters degree someday but I never settled on what I would want to get it in. I also remembered that I have the option of buying intopay to go to school! Also the fact that I'm only a .7 at work would mean that I could use my nights off to work on all my papers and things. Seems perfect right? the full GI Bill now and it would actually

Well, it might be somewhat less than perfect since I still have to decide what I want to study and jump through the hoops to get accepted. I'm leaning towards the University of Washington Tacoma since it is cheaper than the private schools in the area. They offer an MBA which has night courses that would be perfect for my schedule. I'm just not sure I want to study business since I've always found the topic a little boring in comparison to other areas of interest. They offer the MEd which is intriguing. I've always considered teaching but I'm not sure I want to struggle through life on a teacher's salary either. Of course if my choice was to struggle through life doing what I'm doing now or teaching, it wouldn't be much of a choice!

They also have something called Interdisciplinary Studies. I don't know if they offer it just at night or not but essentially it is the closest thing to the kind of Bachelors degree I have. It is very broad in scope and the emphasis is on critical thinking, research and analysis of sociological trends, public policy formulation, social concern and welfare. I'm not sure what these MA students ultimately go on to do after they finish but it does sound very appealing to me.

So I have a choice between what is practical and what is potentially frivolous. Do I study business and move on toward some of my ever-present ambitions with the leg up I've never had or do I attempt to make myself even more rounded without any notion of what it might do for me vocationally?

I've always felt that what I do has no bearing on who I am, but can I afford to have two degrees that add up to a job at Taco Bell?

Hmmm any thoughts? As always I welcome your comments here, though I've only ever gotten a few!

Peace,

Brian

north is still north...

2007-01-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

Well bloggaholics, I always feel guilty with how infrequently I post these days but it is amazing how nothing much can keep you so flippin busy!

I am still looking for a place to live, nothing new there. I am still working nights, nothing new there. I am still single, nothing new there.

What has transpired in the past 24 hours that might be worth noting is that the last of my grandparents has died; my father's mother to be specific. She was the last holdout which shocked a lot of us since her health was probably the least of them. Well, not quite, but close. Cause of death? Nursing home depression I presume.

I actually have no idea exactly what caused her to die but her health had been deteriorating more rapidly this past year and it was finally too much for my aunt who had been taking care of her to continue to do so. So she opted to put her into a nursing home a week ago. I saw her twice since (which is nearly more than I had in the previous year) and yet she was seriously depressed about being there.

Walking the halls I could tell that there was a wide disparity in attitudes and outlooks of the people there. Some seemed sad, others vacant, and some actually seemed to have had accepted and begun to make the best of being there. In fact I might say this was the case with my grandmother's roommate. She always seemed chipper and when a visitor was with her while we were with my grandma she seemed very cheerful. Maybe she won something at bingo just before!

I guess nursing homes are a tough subject but the inevitable consequence of modern medicine. We cure almost everything except age. I wonder sometimes if we were meant to live as long as we often do now. On the other hand who ever really wants to die and who of us is really ever ready to say goodbye to a loved one?

Me on the other hand. I'm going to get a living will that says who has to shoot me if I get too old and/or senile. My feeling is that if I cannot be of some use or I can no longer have the presence of mind to know who I am and what is going on around me then I'd like to skip "go," not collect another 200 dollars and go straight to heaven... or nirvana... or the parallel universe where I am the infamous taco king of South Detroit.

Well, with that thought I'll end this one. I had no where else to take it. Might as well land abruptly if there is no flight plan filed with the FAA.

Peace,

Brian

happy 07 anyone?

2007-01-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

First off, sorry I haven't blogged in a while. Been a busy couple of weeks for those of you who know, for those who just sneak in here to read random stuff from strangers, good luck!

So I moved out of my apartment in Vancouver. The only hitch is that I have been too busy to go apartment hunting so I just put it all in storage for now. For those of you who know me, you maybe can imagine how much it killed me to do that. Also because I was moving over New Years weekend the only storage place I could find that would be open that Sunday was not heated.

I will lay this out for you so you see why this is potentially a problem for me. Having my stuff in non-heated storage during the winter months means potentially losing some of my furniture if it draws any moisture and mold/mildew grow on it. I wrapped my mattress in plastic and laid some plastic over my couches but that won't guarantee anything.

All this really means is I will want to hurry up and find a place fast, hopefully by the end of this month. However, I am interested in buying a house sooner or later and moving into an apartment might be the best thing to get my stuff back out of storage but it would mean moving a third time before this is all over. I hate moving and with apartments you tend to have to deal with stairs or tight corners and some of my furniture is big and heavy!!! Not looking forward to moving into an apartment.

So I have an appointment to meet with my real estate agent today. I don't know if now is the best timing for me to try to buy a house here but it seems that I am going to try anyway because it is worth at least trying right?

The thing is that housing prices are kind of high right now and getting the home I'll want to live in for the next 5 years or so might require taking on a roommate for the short term. That isn't a problem except I don't really know anyone who would be interested so I might have use Craigslist to fill the space and we all know what a question mark that can be.

Well, aside from all this mental noise my year is going well so far. I am settling into my "regular" schedule which is highly irregular. Essentially I work every other pair of nights with minor adjustments to make sure I work every other weekend. I have mixed feelings about the schedule though. I guess you can say I inherited it from whoever held it before and they didn't want to work more than 2 in a row, where I would just assume work 7 in a row and have 7 days off in a row. Also I would prefer 10 hour shifts (and they are seriously talking about it) but for now it is what it is.

So tonight is my other night off and I get to do it all over again tomorrow night. I guess I'll have to take my vacation time if I want to go anywhere on my time off. Lucky me I don't really want to go anywhere yet.

Christmas was ok, but I was just trying to sleep all day and suffering the insensitivity of my family who were making lots of racket and trying to bake something in the oven out here. NYE was different. I could have spent it with my brother but I got word that my dad was coming down too so I decided to hang with some friends. I might just as well have gone to a random pub or something since we were just sitting around watching b-movies of the horror subset. Maybe next year I'll have a house and host my own NYE party complete with loud music, crazy food, board games and probably a drinking game or two. Sounds like a hoot, you come?

So otherwise it is another year, nuff said?

Happy o seven folks! As always, Peace,

Brian

merry christmas from far away...

2006-12-21T16:11:00.000-08:00

I apologize that it has been as long as it has. I know some of you hang on every word that streams on this page. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. More on that later.

First off; this is my first post with the background music coming from my own secret stash thanks to the good folks at fileden.com. So check them out and set up your own free secret stash. This is going to help me post pictures here too. Otherwise I had to post them on my other blog and it was generally a hassle because msn compresses the hell out of them. So this way I can share the unadulterated raw talent--well really it's all about the camera I guess.

Anyway, I am in Vancouver again. Spending most of my free time here which I assure you is not the long term plan. I am supposed to be packing because I have set a date to move (my stuff at least) of Dec 30th and I need to be ready. I only have two more days off besides today (tonight really). One is a solo shot so I am not sure it will do me much good. The other is the day before I want to move. I can't really put it off until then or I'll be screwed when everyone shows up and I am only partially packed.

So spending time in Vancouver, in my own place, sleeping in my own bed (oversleeping really), even eating some food I found in my freezer, I am getting all nostalgic. Who would want to leave this place? Oh tonight is open mic night, maybe I'll hit that up and reminisce over a greyhound or three. Anyway, it is in this vane that I offer you "Far Away" from Dishwalla's 2005 self-titled LP.

I occasionally have these moments of navel-gazing that I cannot quite describe and then a song I've been looking for randomly appears (what would the equivalent word be for audibles?) and perfectly captures the place I am at, metaphysically that is.

Moments of self reflection, people offering unsolicited advice, a fancy free imagination let loose contemplating the absurd and the mundane in a twist of sobriety, its all there. I hope you enjoy.

Peace and happy holidays,

Brian

another mulligan for the sandman...

2006-12-04T00:14:00.000-08:00

I found myself swimming in a pool fully clothed. It wasn't deep, I could easily stand and there was a large platform rising out of the pool in the center. I was accompanied by someone I perceived to be my partner in crime and another who was curious about our activities but we remained vague because we had to make sure we did not give too much away.

It seems there was something ado about something on a computer screen protruding from the side of the platform that I was paying attention to. I was becoming alarmed because it wasn't telling me what I needed to know and after much frustration I finally discovered what I needed to know.

It seemed my partner and I were in charge of some prisoners of some kind and in the morning when the next shift came we would have to fudge some documents to make it appear as though everyone was accounted for so we could leave the building and begin our search for the missing prisoner.

I climbed out of the water and laid on the platform, perhaps to dry off. Then a little while later our relief arrived and we quickly went through the logbook with them as if something was awry although they were too stupid to catch on.

Then we left to go find our missing hooligan. I don't know what we thought we were going to do when we found him. I mean, we had made it appear as though he was never there so I guess we would have to kill him. Either that or we could chain him up out back and wait until we had relieved the evening shift and then go back there and bring him in. Then we would have all night to fix the logs and make sure nobody was aware of our little goof-up.

Then I awoke to realize I hadn't slept nearly late enough!

Peace,

Brian

readership increases...

2006-12-04T00:04:00.000-08:00

I am not normally one to spend a whole lot of time navel-gazing but I have noticed this past week that my readership is on the rise. I also know it cannot be due to the relatively few "friends" I have spending their every waking hour online so they can read the latest post while it is hot-off-the-presses.

So a lot of strangers must be passing through. That got me thinking about who some of you are. Since only a few have ever bother to drop a note I have to wonder if what I have to say really ever peaks your interest or not. Perhaps I should focus a little less on myself and more on putting forth something creative.

If you stay long enough to read through my archives you'll see that it's about 80% me and 20% my creative musings with the occasional remark about politics (both local and national).

So I would hate to become a whore but perhaps some of you would like to chime in and let me know what type of stuff you like to read. I could see what I can do to oblige. Oh and my next post will be another one of my weird dreams.

Peace,

Brian

home is where your ass is...

2006-12-02T14:23:00.000-08:00

You know I have moved many times in my life. Generally it has been quick and painless though there have been times where I was far from home and a quick bout of depression set in while I was still trying to get settled.

This move is going quite different. I have been pretty busy, so no time to get down in the mouth. Also not being able to move out of my apartment (without paying too much to break my lease which would prevent me from getting a new place anyway) is making this move pretty weird, even for me!

So I go "home" for a weekend here and there and it got me to thinking about what my home is right now. Driving here last night got me to thinking about how I don't really want to move away. Yet when I am in Tacoma it is familiar from living there for two years. I didn't really want to leave there if memory serves me correctly. I had to, of course, in order to go finish my last semester of college in Portland.

Even driving over to my brother's house (where I am staying temporarily) is oddly familiar, though not quite "homey" for me personally.

So while I am wishing I could hurry up and move I am also not looking forward to leaving Vancouver for good. The funny thing is the reason I decided to go ahead and move up to the Tacoma area in the first place (if someone offered me a job there of course) was because Portland was getting to be a place where I had fewer and fewer friends. Most of my college friends have all graduated and moved away. I really only see a handful of people on a semi-regular basis and all but one are married and unavailable to just "hang out" all too much (and the single one is always broke anyway so I don't like to hang out with him that much anyway).

Don't ask me what makes me think Tacoma will be different, except that my reserve unit is there and my brother lives about 30 minutes away and all his friends live in that general area too. Of course as busy as I've been this past month I haven't seen any of the guys in my unit outside of drill and I doubt I will after I go on shift either.

So am I going back to square one? Maybe, but I'll be in square one in Tacoma and hopefully for good.

I'd like to live downtown but my real estate agent is steering me away from downtown condos and toward regular homes in North Tacoma, in the University of Puget Sound area. He lives there and says that it's a good idea since the homes there always appreciate well and if I want I can rent rooms to college students if I need or want to.

I might like that idea but the main reason I don't think about regular homes is that I don't want to have to take care of yards. I also don't consider myself the handiest man around and wouldn't want a home that is highly likely to need electrical and/or plumbing repairs frequently.

So I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but I'm doing it anyway! How is that for a life's motto? Just do it, even if you don't know exactly what it is you are doing.

Peace,

Brian