Mirror Mirror

How would I define my perfect blog entry? Well, as I've stated before, it would not be some recounting of external events. Even if I could avoid the tendency to make such laundry lists less droll I would hope that, upon reflection on these musings many years hence, I could take something from them beyond a chuckle. So, as funny as haircuts and horseradish and mailboxes can be (or not be?) they do not rank among what I feel are my best posts.

Go back and re-read why I have a blog. It's over there somewhere on the top right of the screen. This is my personal reflection space, a space where I can explore, evolve, emote and describe. My favorite posts are the ones where I learn how to do something better, or where I learn that something I do all the time has a benefit.

What I find so shocking is that others can, at times, relate to what it is I am saying. It means, of course, that I've made some kind of progress in the art of generalizing my experience. If you relate to it, then it is no longer mine alone.

The ability to extract general "universal" observations from personalized daily events is, to me, the work of self reflection and the main reason I have my blog. It is my emotional sandbox. The comments section of this blog is pretty sparse, and that's OK. But every once in a while I post something and get some e-mails in return. Lots of them are positive, and a few of them are actually negative. All of them, I promise, are anonymous here.

So how do I take the tangible events of e-mail feedback and apply then to a more generalized principle, thus salvaging this blog entry? Quite simple: The posts on here are sanitized, generalized, and striving for illumination of some greater truth. If you see in it some commentary on your personal life it is you who has made that connection.

I am sure most people have heard the story of the college professor who wished to debunk newspaper horoscopes. He gave each student a "personalized" reading and asked them to rate it in various areas to measure how accurate the reading was. Almost all of the students in the class agreed that the personalized horoscopes did a very good job of describing them. Some even felt it eerily so.

Of course, all of them were a bit ashamed when it was discovered that they had all been given the same reading.

We map ourselves onto everything we come into contact with and it is only with great effort that we also see how the things which happen around us map onto ourselves.

What's odd, perhaps, is that the made-up reading probably really did teach those students more about themselves than a "serious" individual reading. And it makes you wonder... how many times in our daily lives does that same pattern repeat itself?

And that is why I hope that of the dozens of ramblings on here I can, years hence, extract a few that are truly generalized, sanitized, and altruistically seeking truth. So that I can relate to them when I am far removed from the drama of the now.
They are, for lack of a better term, my time capsules, or the trail of breadcrumbs to help me understand how I will have gotten to wherever it is that I am going.

For those of you along for the ride, if we share a moment of sympatico along the way then that is, perhaps, the real benefit of this blog.

To Post, or Not to Post

That is the question. I find it hard, lately, to try and organize my thoughts in any type of literary fashion. Since I am not a big fan of people who use blogs as nothing more than a day's itinerary, that leaves me at a big of a loss as to what to write here.

I guess Icould easily just recount what I ate for breakfast, and what magazine I read today, but even I am not interested in that. I try to make this place an ethereal sandbox where I struggle with insights or make progress towards some goal. It takes some emotional energy to identify and communciate those struggles on a semi-weekly basis and, right now, I'm just fresh out of emotional energy.

So, let me be boring and just recount something that happened today:

I was in my garage building a workshop table for my new garage workshop when I heard an unpleasant crunch sound coming from the street. Some teenage kid had, inadvertently, backed up into my mailbox. Damage to the mailbox was light, damage to the kid's car (more likely his parents' car) was much heavier: a busted taillight and some denting.

Walking down to the street, I couldn't help but remember when I had done the same thing learning to drive....

...Cue wavy lines signalling a flashback...

I was about 15 years old and wanted to take a drive around my neighborhood to "practice" my driving skills. My immediate family tired of this pretty quickly, but my Uncle Billy agreed one day to let me "take him for a spin". I backed out of the driveway, went around the block, and then pulled back into the driveway.

Upon pulling back into the driveway, I noticed that someone had knocked down the mailbox. Questioning my neighbor who was riding his lawnmower at the time I discovered that the vandal in question was... myself. In my zeal to drive around the nieghboerhood I had backed up over my mailbox. In his zeal to block out the outside world while I was driving, my uncle hadn't noticed.

This realization preceeded (by about 5 minutes) a very awkward talk with my dad.

Me: Hey dad. Do you know how much of a pain it is to have to walk up the driveway and get the mail?
Dad: Not really.
Me: Well, I've got good news for you!
Dad: What's that, son?
Me: You don't have to go to the mailbox anymore to pick up your mail!
Dad: Why is that?
Me: You don't have a mailbox anymore. I ran it over.

The whole mailbox incident taught me two very important life lessons:

1. Always look behind you when backing up in a car.
2. Never introduce tragedy with humor.

These thoughts,then, passing through my mind, I reach the mailbox. I reach the teenageboy and teeneage girl that were in the car. She is inspecting the damage to the backend of the car. He is looking at the mailboxes.

As I said before, the damage to the mailbox is minor. It's a cheap, plastic thing on a pressure-treated 4x4. It probably welcomed the car as ender to its misery. I assured the kid that everything was fine and he was not in trouble (from me... the car's owners might think differently). Apologizing, he got back in the car and left.

A hammer, some nails, and 4 decking screws later andthemailbox was as good as new, which is to say it is still an ugly plastic thing on a pressure-treated 4x4. But it will hold mail without complaint, and its plastic face has a few new battlescars.

I'm going to think twice before parking my car on the street...

Fighting the Good Fight

Monday evening:

Ed: Your cat scan test tomorrow will be just fine, mom. Lighten up!

Tuesday afternoon:

Lisa: The cat scan shows some small nodes on mom's lung which is probably a recurrence. We'll schedule a PET scan and some IV chemo.

---

When I was in elementary school I used to do the optimist club speech contests. The one year I was successful at it, I got a free weekend in OC for the state finals on the topic Optimism: a Way of Life. I don't remember much about the speech (but many thanks to my aunt and uncle who helped me write it), but I remember the gist:

Life sucks without hope.

No one ever says "life sucks without cynicism" or "life sucks without brutal, punishing reality". No. They say "life sucks without hope".

It's easy to mislabel optimism as foolishness, fancy, simplistic, or incompetent. It is an especially easy target for those who, themselves, are afraid to hope because they are afraid of disappointment. Because, ultimately, that is the nature of hope: some thing you hope for happen, and some things you hope for do not.

Non-optimists see the hoping as the means to an end. The optimist will tell you that hope is the means and the end. Let's say you hope, and you get what you hoped for, so you don't hope anymore. Life sucks without hope. Pick up something else and hope for that.

That quest for hope, that optimism, can be a way of life. It is not a simplistic way of life. Far from it! The process is often fiercly creative. It takes some bravery because, all too often, voicing hope makes you a target of condescention or pity (or worse). It takes a great deal of internal strength to pick yourself up when a hope has been dashed and commit yourself to building a new one.

Over time, a budding optimist learns to get pretty good at hoping. Moving from the generally supernatural (gee, I hope I win the lottery) to something more practical and applicable to daily living (gee, I hope I'm able to save some money this month). The alignment of hope to the practical is, perhaps, the first and most critical step in living a goal-oriented life. Once you get good at it, you wind up dropping the "I hope" prefix altogether:

We'll be fine for money this month.

The plane flight will be fine. Don't worry about it.

Your cat scan test tomorrow will be just fine, mom. Lighten up!

But, ultimately, the thing that differentiates hope from goal is that a goal is something we accomplish through our own actions and planning. A HOPE often involves at least some elements beyond our control.

So, by all means, prepare for the worst (which translates into "you hope that when something bad happens, you will be prepared"). Lots of people are good at that. But, also, be one of those people who has an ability to prepare for the best. One day, some major hope will come through and, were one not prepared, any ensuing prosperity could be ignored in the worry of when it will end.

But, let's hope that doesn't happen.

Back to college?

I partied this weekend like I was back in college. Saturday we were up at 7am (yeah, I know.. yay...) to see Jakob off on his trip back to North Carolina. Our 7-week parenting stint is finished and the subsequent reality tv show is all ready to air on FOX.

Linda and I played video games and watched movies all day. That evening, we went out with some of Linda's siblings. We ate crabs, came back to the house, and had mixed drinks until 2am.

Sunday morning, we rolled out of bed at 2pm.

The weekend was the most unproductive and, frankly, glorious weekend I've had in quite some time!

-Ed

Jakob's Going Home (backlog 4/10)

Saturday morning Jakob will begin his trip home, back to North Carolina, just in time for his school to start on the 24th. We think that ol' Uncle Ed and Aunt Linda have provided the lil' guy with a fun summer, including:

-Trips to Kings Dominion, Hershey Park, and the Science Center
-Trips to the movies to see all the latest summer kids movies.
-Trips to the pool with "Aunt Linda" (who got a "single parent" membership at the local YMCA for the summer. $170. Good deal. Go linda!)
-A few trips to stay with his Grandma and Grandpa.
-And countless hours of cartoons in the morning and playing video games with Uncle Ed in the evenings.

So, I think he'll be able to look back on his 7 week stay with us as a positive experience.

Linda just wrote me an e-mail from home saying that he had just realized that he only had 2 more days left up here, and it has thus been a pretty sad morning. It's no wonder he doesn't want to leave -- we let him stay up late, play video games, take him to cool places. Not exactly the most disciplined or structured of environments, but Linda and I have a feeling he gets structure in spades during the school year. A little summer of chaos never hurt anyone.

Truthfully, it's those summers of chaos that we remember (and reminisce about) the most.

Poker Face (backlog 3/10)

The last company I worked for was not well known for their attention to employee needs, or their guardianship of employee morale. Walking through the hall at my last place of employment, shortly before I quit, I overheard the following conversation:

Person 1: We're still running behind schedule.
Person 2: We just haven't been able to get people to put in the time over the weekends.
Person 1: Yeah, we only have about half the team working weekends now.
Person 2: What can we tell them to get them all in here?
Person 1: We'll figure something out to get them in here. Maybe some incentive.
Person 2: Or just make it mandatory.

I didn't hear much past that. I didn't need to. I was out the door within the next 2 months.

I've gotta admit, my new workplace is much different. It was quite an adjustment to work at a place where personal satisfaction was as important as meeting deadlines. A recent exchange I had reminded me of that.

Let me preface this by saying, I know I'm under alot of stress right now. Not "Ed's gonna crack and go mop floors in a high school" type stress, but stress nonetheless. I could get into the stress on this blog and, frankly, as my on-line diary, that's what I should be doing here. Unfortunately, most of my stress involves non-work-related interactions with other people which makes this blog a pretty lousy place to vent. Suffice it to say, I'm trying to dissipate this stress in non-hurtful ways.

One way to dissipate such stress? Apparently it is to walk around work scowling alot!

The other day, my boss's boss's boss walked into my office and sat down. She wanted to know what was the matter. The past few times she had passed me in the hallway I had looked "very stressed out". Was I angry at her? Did I not like something about my latest job assignment? Was I not happy at work? Was there something she could do?

And I found myself in a state of shock. Indeed, I'd had a frown on my face at work for the past few weeks. But, I don't talk or meet with anyone on a regular basis and it had never occured to me that others would notice, much less my boss's boss's boss. And it had certainly never occured to me that this person would feel that I was angry at them, angry at my job, or (horror of horrors) would be entertaining thoughts of looking for greener work pastures.

I had to laugh for a moment and relate that the attempt to build a robot and throw it at the planet Pluto was infinitely less stressful that any other job I've had and that whatever grumpiness I had at work was spillage of stress from outside work. She did not need to bother, I was neither angry at her nor at my work assignments. I was not entertaining a departure from this Space Department. She seemed quite relieved.

It's a rare thing to have your office be the least stressful thing in your life. It's rarer still to find a workplace that is so "in tune" with the satisfaction of its individual employees.

That night, I asked Linda to screen all phone calls and not let anyone through. I went upstairs and laid in bed to watch television around 7pm. Apparently, I fell asleep around 7:30pm and woke up the next morning at 9:30am, late for work.

It's amazing how relaxing catching up on sleep can be. I look forward to doing it again on Saturday. If anyone reads this blog and calls me before 1pm on Saturday, I will shoot you. 8)

-Ed

FORE! (Backlog item 2/10)

My uncle Ralph is a good golfer. He's good at alot of things, but he is especially good at golfing. He's won cars, turkeys, esteem (not so sure about money...) through his golfing prowess. Looking over his golfing career there was really only one thing marring his good record:

He was never quite able to teach his nephew how to golf. He personally tutored him, got him lessons with other golf pros, invested untold hours recounting chipping and pitching and putting tips. And yet, it never fully took.



Computer Simulation of Ralph Teaching His Nephew

But, with a little persistence and patience, his tutelage stuck. Linda and I went out golfing at a local "executive" course and I shot a 76. Now, I'm sure it isn't the most "in regulation" 76 in the world. We took a front and back mulligan, and one or two putts left on the lip were "counted". I certainly had more than my share of humiliating "three-putts"

But, the score wasn't the point. The point was, I went to a short course (which emphasises putting and chipping) and didn't make a complete fool of myself. For that, I am very, very happy.





Linda, also, did terrific. I still remember the last hole of the day: a 330 yard par 4. She hit her driver. Followed up with a fairway wood to the green, and got it in the hole with 3 putts. She had her share of pars that day, but this was a long hole for her, and she did a terrific job of getting the ball to go the distance.

We can't wait to get back out there.

Car Wars, Episode II (backlog item 1/10)

The BMW Strikes Back

Friday evening I was driving home from work, having stopped by my sister's house to feed her cat. Wait, did I say feed her cat? hahah no, you see, I left her cat a mound of food on Thursday night, and it couldn't have possibly eaten all of it by Friday.

So, why was I stopping by her house on Friday? My sister who, for 29.997 (a little NTSC nerd humor there) years of her life despised cats is now a cat fanatic. She was concerned that her darling might have accidentally knocked over its gargantuan water dish, thus spilling across the floor life-giving water. Deprived of this water and possessing a singular inability to lick it off the floor, the cat would wander around the house on Friday slowly, fatally, dehydrating. This is compounded by the fact that the cat's food supply was "dry food", virtual poison in this envisioned arid sahara that could potentially become her house.



My Sister's Kitchen

So, to prevent such a catastrophe, I agreed to stop by her house on Friday after work and make sure that the cat still had food and water. Miracle of miracles, the cat did have food and water, in much the same quantity that it had when I left her house on Thursday evening.

Disaster was, thus, narrowly averted.

Coming up to a stop light near my house I realized that I had not yet called Linda to tell her that I needed to stop at my sister's house and feed the cats (and thus was going to be about an hour later than normal). I was at a red light, so I plugged my )otherwise battery dead) cell phone into the cigarette lighter and called Linda, to ask if she wanted me to bring anything home. As she answered, the light turned green and I happily accelerated into the intersection.

I did not happily accelerate out of the intersection. About mid-way through this intersection my car decided that just then would be the perfect time to turn itself off. It happened so quickly, that I had no indication that my car was off until I tried to accelerate and nothing happened. My instrument panel was lit up with yellow warning lights, and I was coasting.

Fortunately, there is an enterprise rant-a-car at the corner, which I drift into and park in the parking lot. I take a few deep breathes and try to start the car. It starts up fine. No warnings. No errors. No outward indication that anything at all had gone wrong. I drive home on eggshells.

The next day I called the BMW service station and had the following conversation:

Ed: Hi. I just had my car in for service, I was driving it and it turned itself off.
Service Toddler: That could be caused by anything. Why don't you see if it happens again and if it keeps happening, bring it in.
Ed: What causes this?
Service Toddler:It could be an air bubble in the fuel line. Alot of times it is caused by your key.
Ed: My key??
Service Toddler: Yeah, there is an anti-theft device in the key. If, at any point, your key loses "communications" with the car, it shuts off the fuel pump. As keys get older they can go bad and you need to get a new one. Make sure to carry your spare key with you in case this is the problem.
Ed: Can you test my key to see if it is going bad?
Service Toddler:No. There is no way to tell if the key is bad.



Bad Key?

Oddly, this conversation did not impress me. My brother-in-law who works as a luxury car dealer was quick to say that such events are not unheard of and a single incident is no cause for panic, especially if the car shows no warning or error lights on start-up -- thus indicating the success of several dozen start-up self-diagnostics.

Until then, you can find me driving to work on the shoulder goind 30mph. 8)

Whew

It's been difficult getting time to breath! I've got a small post-it note that I carry around to write down blog ideas as they come to me. So far there are 10 of them that I haven't had time to write about.

Maybe today... I'll label them by backlog, so you know how many I haven't posted yet! 8)

A Rolling Tire

Getting into the car to go hit some balls at a nearby driving range, my brother-in-law points to my car and says: "Did you know that you are ready to have a blow-out?" I responded that, indeed, I did not know that I was ready to have a blow-out.

Wise in the ways of car repair as he is, he had noticed that my passenger-front tire wad a huge bubble in it, and a hole big enough to fit your pinky in. (Yes, I stuck my pinky in it and, yes, it was a stupid thing to do). After 50k, the tires were also mildly bald (although I probably could have gotten another 10k or so off of them...)

Time to get new tires (if you are shopping for tires, be sure to give The Tire Rack a try, they have good prices, selection, and ratings).

My "old" tires stayed about the same price: $177 per tire.





Now, several years ago, for reasons unknown, $177 per tire seemed like a good deal to me. Surely these are some kick-butt tires, but at this point in my life, I'm not going to spend $700 on tires for my car.

Enter the Kumho Excsta ASX , priced at $94 each. Much better, and they are rated for longer tread life as well.



They score a tenths of a point behind my old tires in most categories (8.2 instead of 9.0 for dry traction, for example) but hard to beat at half the price.

So I had the tires delivered and put on my car and that's when I came across a startling realization: new tires greatly affect how you feel when riding in your car. These tires are much quieter and much smoother than my old tires. it is a sensation which drives me crazy (I hate "floating" on the road), but which Linda loves (she hates feeling every crack in the asphalt. My car truly rides like a different vehicle.

So startling was the difference that I got caught up in thinking how such (relatively) small changes can completely alter our experiences. Trust me, it is plenty easy to drop $400 into your car and notice no change whatsoever (sometimes that money is spent to prevent a change!)

But it does make one wonder how other seemingly inconsequential changes made in other areas can bring a breath of new experience into a familiar place. A coat of paint, some planted flowers, re-arranging pictures, a scented candle, even just running the vacuum, all small things which have "larger" effects on how people experience the things around them.

Cheaper still, and of far greater value, are the mental tweaks we go through to "tune up" our attitude.

Just Say No

Do you remember Nancy Reagan's attempt to stem the use of drugs in this country?





I'm not sure it won the drug war, even though it was aimed at those who weren't yet grippd by chemical addiction. Personal responsibility, as a rule, isn't a popular rallying cry -- even when it is the correct rallying cry. But that's a different post for a different day.

I was having a telephone conversation with someone this weekend, and it went something like this:

Ed: Hey, Linda and I were thinking of taking you to XXXXXX and wanted to know if you'd like to go.
Person: No! No. I can't do that. Are you crazy? (exasperated...) Ed, I haven't finished packing yet and need to carry the suitcase downstairs. My knee is bothering me, every once in a while when I walk on it it feels a little funny and I'm not sure how I am going to be able to get around while on vacation. I think if I just sit most of the time it will be fine, because I don't want to go anywhere anyway, except maybe getting a little sun. I've been walking around. I'm tired. I've been going all day long. I haven't eaten much today, and sometimes when I feel bad I think that it's because I don't eat or drink enough. There is so much going on today we can't possibly do that too.

More than words, which pretty accurately recollect that portion of the conversation, was the sense of absolute incredulity with which they were spoken. It was as if I had walked into the ICU at John's Hopkins, grabbed hold of the nearest arm-leg-face-ectomy patient I could find, 4 minutes post-op, and asked them if they wanted to go out for a night of dancing. Are you crazy?

For this person, and all such people (including myself, because I do it too), I have a lasting piece of advice:



Of course, then they have to deal with the inevitable...

"Why Not?"!

I'm a CGI Expert!

CGI, you might ask? Doesn't that mean "Computer Generated Imagery"? Does this mean that Ed is now the newest, latest Pixar talent?

No.

For me, CGI means "Clean the Garage Immediately" and I have severely sharpened those skills, breaking out no less than seven great heaping green trash bags from our personal "dump". Linda and I are not done yet, but we are significantly closer to being done than we were before.

Atlas No More

That's right, the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. I have received some vert good news...

My deck has passed its final inspection. Pictures will be coming up shortly over the weekend.

Building a deck is an involved process... ask anyone who has ever built one, or helped others build one. My deck is special in several ways...

-It's a fair size, many hundreds of square feet.
-one side is irregularly shaped (read hexoganol)
-It needed cutouts for a hot tub, with 2' access panels on 2 sides
-It needed to go over (but allow access to) a set of concrete steps leading to the basement.
-It needed to be of the same height as the screened-in porch to allow for a door leading from porch to deck to be added next year.

That's alot of extras for someone who has never designed a deck before. But, it is now inspected, so, obviously, I am an expert and, as such, can freely grant advice.

Ed's Guide To Obsessive Compulsively Building A Deck

...Note, this is a 10 month course...

Step 1 : Research

Research starts with purchasing no less than 2 different books on deck construction and 3 books on deck design ideas. The books should be from different stores (at least one of which is a home improvement store). Extra points are given if several other friends also had purchased similar books.

Remember to read everything about decking from these books, including decking ideas that you would never, ever entertain in your own backyard. Understand that, as published media, books are out-of-date the nanosecond they are printed.

As such, all of this reading will just give you the terminology needed to do real research. Real research involves taking your book wisdom to the internet and reading every state's deck construction codes. Talk to homebuilders and other homeowner on internet forums. Look at pictures of decking from deck-builder websites. Get into arguments with people who do this for a living. When you actually win one such argument, you know you are ready to start construction.

Step 2 : Permits

There is just no question about it... If you are obsessive compulsive a permit is not an option. In the event that your deck explodes and takes your house, your neighborhood, and your car with it you need to say "but, this was inspected". To not have a permit is to live in constant fear that your neighbors will report you to the permit police. Or that Aunt Betsy will accidentally plummet to her death through inadequately supported decking slats. Perhaps, during a heavy rain the ledger board will tear away from the house with consequences too horrible to consider. Bonus points are given if you seek a permit and 80% of your deck is less than a foot off the ground.

Getting a permit involves writing a long letter to your deck inspector, outlinging your designs, saying how you want to build this safely, and asking if they would pass the deck as designed. Upon not hearing back from said faxed letter, call your building inspector and arrange to meet them in their office at 6am before they go out on rounds for the day. Go to their 3-foot-wide-desk-segment at 6am, show them the designs. They will look amazed, disgusted, and in a hurry. They will say "follow Baltimore County's Deck Guidelines and you will be fine. I gotta go". What they will mean is "you really care. I like you and will pass your deck when the time comes."

Get the permit and notice it requires two inspections: footers and the final deck.

Step 3 : Footers

Dig the footers out with a rented 2 man auger. Try and dig the first hole with just you and your wife. Get seriously hurt in the process. Try again the next day with your brother-in-law and a friend... get all the holes done in a day.

Spend the next 2 days manually tamping the bottoms of the footers flat, and smoothing the hole walls. Each footer must be 12" wide and 36" deep. Measure thrice. Get the footers to pass inspection.

Step 4 : Build the deck

Could get by with 4"x4" posts? Use 6"x6" posts. Bonus points for using them when the deck is less than a foot off the ground. Ledger board needs lag bolts every 18"? Put them in every 12". Why have 1 beam when you can use 3? Maximum joist spans for 2x8 listed as 16'? max them out at 10'. Joist spacing up to 18"? Put them 12" on center. Have your decking be 2x6 instead of 1x6 boards. Use screws not nails. Carriage bolt, then steel-plate your railings in place. Build steps where the deck is 20" off the ground.

Step 5 : The day before final inspection

Water the deck so the boards swell and go closer together. Touch up all stain. Clean everything around the deck. Position decking furniture decoratively. If the deck looks clean it has a greater chance of passing inspection. Post the permit outside for all to see.

Leave a small plate of cookies and a glass of milk for the inspector.

Step 6 : Pass the inspection

Get a call from the wife at 10am saying the deck has passed inspection. Celebrate. Write a blog entry. Take a sigh of relief that the inspector didn't see that one board that had a knot slightly larger than a half-inch in it, or that one board was missing a screw.

Step 7 : If you did things right, there is no step 7.

Broke Into The Old Apartment

I lived at home during college (a commuter student) to save money and keep a car. After graduating, instead of getting an apartment with a college buddy, he also moved into my mom's house, paid a minimal rent, and we stayed there for a little while. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a pretty big house so we all had some privacy.

One day, I got a call from a friend who told me he needed to break the lease on his apartment, which would be very expensive, and had heard that if someone moved in and took over the lease, he wouldn't have to pay the penalty. I'd been thinking of getting my own place, so I said "sure, why not?" I'd get my own place and help a friend out at the same time.

Living in that apartment (I was there a little over 2 years) was one of the most fun times of my life. Now, make no mistake about it, I have no desire to return there as my present self, but I very much enjoy the recollection.

You see, my apartment had magical properties: If I dropped clothes on the floor by the next day they would magically still be there. This was something unheard of while living in my parents' house! I still remember the rush of waking up in the morning and seeing my jeans laying on the hallway floor. I remember creeping up on them. Gently poking them with a stick. Convinced of their reality, I picking them up, hugging them, and boldly threw them onto the kitchen floor where they remainded, joyously, until at least a week later.

Uncooked food stayed uncooked. Trash was not automatically taken out. The dishwasher neither populated nor vacated itself. The laundering process required manual intervention. The place was an adventureland. Far from the chides of my siblings on how I was in for a "reality" check, I absolutely loved it.

Why? Because it was done my way. I would rather live in my own mess than in someone else's clean.

Of course apartment gave way to townhouse, which gave way to single family home and cleaning is a larger task and one both my wife and I struggle with. But I often and fondly remember my managable apartment -- my first "domain".

I remember being impressed with a crappy sofa cover. I remember thinking I had fix-it skills because I could change the dirt-bag out of my vacuum cleaner. I remember thinking I was a cook because I could heat up pasta sauce (which I bought by the case-load) and Ramen noodles (and no, the two were not used together).

Company coming? Vacuum a single carpet, fix the sofa cover, light 2 candles and wah-lah...instant clean. Life was simpler during that time, on many levels. The more space we collect as we age, the more we have a desire to fill it. I got a new house, so I wanted to put more in it. I grew stronger, so I wanted to do more. I evolved emotionally, so I injected myself into many other lives and projects.

And one day, while juggling many items, I caught myself thinking back to my first, lone apartment where I could prepare for company by vacuuming once carpet, fixing one sofa cover, and lighting two candles.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau

I had trouble sleeping last night and drove past my old apartment today on the way to meet friends for lunch. One thing this blog has taught me (both in the chronicaling of projects and in the inability to blog because of projects) is that my life is utterly and unnecessarily complex. I know too many people (friends, family, coworkers and, most notably, myself) who replace real internal peace with avalanches of self-affirmation-seeking activity.

In the upcoming months I'm preparing for an emotional/spiritual/physical yard sale. 8)

My Car Is Revolting

If you peruse this site on any type of regular basis you will recall my attempts to fix my car's window regulator. I'm waiting for my car's service manual to ship this week before I finish off that repair. But, in the meantime, my car has decided that me fixing it is not acceptable.

My car has begun to revolt.

My driver's side window has now stopped rolling up. It looks, and sounds, quite a bit like a window regulator problem. Once I fix my rear passenger window, I have the great fun of taking off my driver's side door and trying to fix that problem.

Yesterday, while heading to the driving range, my brother-in-law noticed that there was a golf-ball sized bubble on one tire around a hole the width of my pinky. Closer inspection showed I was an 8th of an inch away from a blowout and all four tires needed to be replaced.

If you ever need tires, give www.tirerack.com a try, they have pretty decent tire prices.

I'm a little bit afraid of how long this mechanical temper tantrum is going to last, but we'll get past it with a little patience, some elbow-grease, and lots of cussing.