Entries Tagged 'me & mine' ↓

I’m happy to say goodbye to 2002, although I hold out no great hope for 2003.

2002 was a year of low-level anxiety about an uncertain economy, an uncertain war on and by any number of unspecified enemies, an un-debated attack on our liberties and freedoms. As the presidency became more imperial in nature, the judicial continued its encroachment on the legislative branch powers. The increasingly-consolidated media along with the “content” industries continued their crusade to property-ize all aspects of our common culture. The skies weren’t safe, the mailbox wasn’t safe, and if you lived or worked in the neighborhood of the national capital, neither were the gas stations, schools, shopping centers nor highways.

My parents, both of whom retired in 2001, found it necessary to return to work in 2002 after watching their retirement investments begin to shrink. And they were the lucky ones, since, as civil servants, they were among the few people left who actually have a guaranteed pension to which the investments are supplements.

My wife was fired from her job this year, we had to euthanize one of my favorite cats, co-workers were laid off, my roof leaked, my under-warranty cars misbehaved in ways not covered by warranties, my family became more scattered with my parents selling my childhood home and moving into two part-time houses — one in New York and one in Florida. My wife’s family continued their meaningless feuding which makes it so much more difficult to us to maintain neutrality.

About the only bright spots were my new twin niece and nephew, born to my brother and my sister-in-law, my new niece, born to one of Jenn’s brothers and his wife, my new nephew born to another of her brothers and his wife, and all those beautiful babies born to my close friends and co-workers.

No kids of my own, so I’ve gotta keep a little hope going for all of them.

November disappeared in a blur. Jenn and I spent Halloween night — her favorite holiday — stranded in a traffic lane on a dark road when her Saturn just up and died. We didn’t even have enough juice to power our hazard flashers, so each car going by made us cringe as we braced for impact. Turned out to be a bad battery, which Saturn — “A different kind of car company” — typically denied all responsibility for.

Jenn was out of town the next week, training for her new job, while I worked tons of overtime on an out-of-control project which kept me in the office til the wee hours several nights.

When she came back, we attended a family reunion of my mother’s distant relatives. I was supposed to invite the immediate fam back to my house to see our place, but — not having had a chance to make the place look like anything other than a pigsty bachelor pad — I disappointed them all by un-inviting them. My mother is still pissed at me about that.

The next week, amidst the despair engendered by the horrible election results, my neglected teeth decided to call for attention. The low-level throbbing pain grew into a major seismic event which sent me rushing to an unknown dentist who wrestled the tooth out of my head, his foot propped on my chest for leverage. The next couple of days went by in a codeine haze.

Jenn went away again for some more training and I realized what a pathetic loser I am without her as I moped around, unable to motivate myself to do anything other than crossword puzzles and mah jongg games.

When she came back, we noticed Claudio, Jenn’s favorite orange male tiger cat, was acting a little strange, hiding instead of being his usual social self. On Monday morning, I witnessed him making a spastic attempt at walking, limbs stiff and uncoordinated, until he fell over and was unable to stand for a couple of moments. I took him to the local vet, who determined that he had some calcification in his left kidney as well as an enormously elevated white-cell count and might benefit from having the kidney removed. Jenn took him for an ultrasound to determine if the other kidney was okay, but that doctor found that not only was the other kidney bad, too, but there was evidence of several massive lymphomas in his intestinal tract. We took Claudio home, held him, cuddled him, then brought him to the vet for euthanasia. He didn’t go gently, taking a double dose of sedative to put him under, before the final shot which stopped his heart. While Jenn cried uncontrollably, I buried him in the backyard near our our other dead cat, Cordelia.

Thanksgiving was a little hollow. My relatives — no cat owners among them — tried to sympathize, but you could tell many of them were thinking, “Get over it!” We drove up to New Jersey to my cousin’s house for dinner, since my parents were closing up their New York home for the trip to Florida to their winter home. It was a nice holiday meal — they made a Tofurkey for me and Jenn — but it was the first we’ve had in the house of one of my generation. A torch-passing kind of thing, with all its attendant melancholy.

So, I’m glad that month is over… Here’s hoping this one’s better.

I’ve been away from this for a couple of weeks — not intentionally, though. There was one week where I was working double shifts at my job, followed by single shifts on all three days of the Labor Day weekend. (All together now: “Awww… you poor baby!”)

That was followed by a week at my parents’ house for Rosh Hashana — the Jewish New Year — and my birthday (Don’t ask!) and my parents’ anniversary (I was born on their first — can you think of a more wonderful wedding present?)

My folks have an old Compaq Presario one-piece, with a 100MHz Pentium I, 48Mb of RAM, a 14.4K modem and a 1Gb hard drive. which is filled up with Windows95, AOL 4.0, and all the bundled crap programs which were pre-installed. But — most important — the computer holds a copy of the DOS-based Hoyle Card Games. Mom plays every variety of Solitaire whenever she can convince my father to get away from his game of Gin Rummy for a few minutes. His favorite opponent is a blonde female character named Lisa, whom he accuses of cheating. (This is retirement!)

Unfortunately, their AOL was incapable of maintaining a connection long enough for me to blog, and hooking up my own laptop meant that I had to go through all the rigamarole of unhooking their phone for as long as I needed to be online. My father is an attorney, so he’s always had a second line in the house for business. As soon as any of their relatives or friends get a busy signal on the main line, they dial the business line, which we usually don’t answer because that’s what the answering machine is for. I thought to plug my computer into that line, but he’s got splitters on top of splitters, connecting his computer, fax machine, answering machine, and phone. Just figuring out which of the jumble of wires would give me an outside line gave me a headache instead.

Being disconnected felt strange. I haven’t been without a fast computer connection for so long that I found I was nearly incapable of functioning normally. Reading the newspaper offline or watching TV news seemed so… un-enriched. No links to click for related items, no background info, no follow-up, no commentary. My yelling at the TV or the Times served only to annoy my folks, my wife and the dog.

I did spend some time, though, thinking about blogging and how to incorporate it into my life. Some bloggers tend towards the Robot Wisdom single-line-and-a-link model, while others — like me — tend to longer pieces with more links, and therefore require a lot more time to compose. (I wish I could be like Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, who manages to produce long, well thought-out and composed pieces with great frequency.) Besides this blog, I’m also committed to contributing to The Knowledge Pool, a community blog on the (related) topics of eLearning and Knowledge Management.

I’m looking for the perfect time of day to do my writing, and as soon as I can carve out a suitable chunk of time, I plan on writing consistently. My writing professor at SUNY Binghamton, Larry Woiwode, told us that writing wasn’t a romantic craft; it is as dirty and backbreaking and unrewarding as the farming life which took the first joint of one of his fingers. And yet, farmers and writers do their jobs because it is all they know how to do, and if they are going to do it, they may as well try to do it with conviction.

A long time ago — 1990 –, in a galaxy far, far away– Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn to be exact — I was a high school teacher. One day, after arriving early, I slipped on some spilled coffee in a stairwell and went down a flight of stairs on my back. I was out of commission for a couple of months with herniated and dessicated disks, unable to make the hour-long trainride from Huntington, Long Island into school. Eventually, I was able to get past the pain. I used the time I spent at home well, learning the computer and teaching myself to be an expert in graphic design and desktop publishing software. When I was able to, I set up my own business doing newsletters, brochures, posters and the like for all the small businesses in our town. Things led to things, and after a couple of stops, I wound up here in Maryland as a multimedia developer with an e-learning company.

Friday night, we had family staying over, and realizing I had left the caged cat’s food downstairs, I headed down the two flights to the kitchen, leaving the lights off so as not to disturb anyone. (You can see it coming, can’t you?) Portia, the little female cat was sleeping on a step as she often does, and I, in the darkness, realized that I was just about to step on her. Yanking my foot back, I lost balance, slipped on the carpet, and flailed my way down the remaining 14 steps, landing in a crumpled heap on the kitchen linoleum.

I waited a moment, replaying the events of the last couple of seconds. It seemed, even though I was in total darkness, that I had watched myself falling, viewing a montage of quick-cuts from several cameras, seeing my arms wind-milling, my legs scrambling, blurred into cyclonic fury like some cartoon character. It was my own “Odessa Steps” sequence.

I didn’t move for a couple of minutes, afraid to find out that maybe I couldn’t move. I heard Jenn come downstairs, asking, “Are you okay? What happened?” “I’m okay,” I said. “I just tripped. I’ll be up in a minute.” I pulled myself up, feeling it in my back, right where I’d felt it the last time. Grabbing the cat food, I headed back up the two flights of stairs, grimacing with each step. It wasn’t until I bent down to take off my shoes that I realized how serious it was. My vision narrowed down to a tunnel as the pain radiated up my neck and down my legs. I don’t know if I made any noise, because Jenn had fallen mostly back to sleep by then. When I finally managed to get my clothes off, I slowly lowered myself into the bed and passed out, flat on my back.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of icepacks and frequent naps. I tried to be a good uncle, but there was no way I was going to be able to handle going to the National Aquarium with my nieces. They went, and I spent the time sleeping. They left early Monday, after I went to work.

Getting into my car on Monday morning was the first time I’d sat down since the injury. It didn’t feel good. Nor did it feel good sitting in my crappy chair in my cubicle. I kept thinking of the two dozen Aeron chairs sitting unused in one of the conference rooms upstairs, and wondering whether anyone would say anything if I was to go steal one.

First thing I did after 9 a.m. came around was call the chiropractor in the shopping center near my house. He was able to fit me in at 3:30, so I endured until then. He took some x-rays, gave me he ultrasound and electro-stim treatments, then some point manipulation (which hurt!), and he scheduled me for another appointment this morning.

Looking at the x-rays this morning, I found out that the disc between my L5 vertebra and my sacrum is compressed and somewhat deteriorated, probably as a result of my earlier injury. But no nerve damage, nothing broken, no need for surgery! Just a few weeks of chiro visits. Still, it’s pretty scary…

My brother, Hal, and his wife, Susanna, gave birth this morning at 1:45 am. The twins, Benjamin and Rachel are healthy and happy, as are the new Mom & Dad. The babies were huge for twins: Rachel was 7lbs, 11 oz (3.5 kg) and Benjamin was 6lbs, 14 oz (3.12 kg). And Susanna is only 5′ (1.52 m) tall on her tippytoes. She must’ve been huge! My parents are thrilled, too, since these are their first grandchildren with less than 4 legs. They’re on their way to the babies’ Florida home first thing tomorrow morning.

So, now my niece & nephew count is up to 13: Brendan, Caitlin, Timothy, Emily, Courtney, Lauren, Erin, Kristen, Kelly, Connor, Kevan, Benjamin and Rachel. Plus, there’s one more due in September. Christmas keeps getting more and more expensive!

rogue: n. 1. a person who is unscrupulous…
especially someone who is nonetheless likable

My cousin Brian, a second-cousin on my father’s side, died yesterday of heart-failure at 39 years old. We were close at one time, in that strange way cousins have of being close, even though they might see each other only once a year. My sister was in love with him, I think.

He was a great guy, trim and wiry, with reddish hair, freckles, and a smart-aleck grin; there was always a cigarette in his hand, and one eye squinting to keep out the smoke. He was a Wild One, a Rebel. He always greeted me with one hand in a handshake and one hand clapping my back.

He was married once, to a beautiful girl from Colombia; I never really got a clear story of how he met her. She was an Indian, from a small village, and he brought her up here, married her, had a child by her, and was divorced by her. She’d bought into the American thing quickly and wanted it all: the house, the yard, the money, the steady stability which wasn’t in Brian’s nature.

His mother, unwilling to be divorced from her grandson, gave the ex-wife everything she wanted after the split-up — new teeth, a boob-job, a home, a car — under constant threat of the adored child disappearing with his mother back into the jungles of South America. Or, that was the fear anyway; we all knew that this new American had spent too much time in the big city to ever settle for the farm again.

Brian lived on the margins before the marriage and after the divorce, with a feral gift for survival, and the ability to charm you out of your possessions as you thanked him for it. He squatted in houses and buildings, abandoned, but not yet torn down. He fixed cars which he found or bought, then sold them, somehow coming up with titles and papers which must’ve been false, but passed for legit. I don’t think he owned anything but his clothes.

There were drugs, too. And though, between he and me there was never anything more than a joint or two at family occasions, an offer of coke once or twice — when I heard he’d died, that was the first thing Jenn and I thought of. I knew, without any evidence, that there were more drugs there than just for personal comsumption. My sister and my father both said, “I can only guess what caused the heart attack…” I doubt we’ll ever know.

Still, his mother said, “He was cleaning up his act. He’d just gotten a new job. He was looking for an apartment.” You hear that so often.

He finished high school, then went for a while to a car mechanic school. He worked with his hands, like his grandfather who worked as a sanitation man for New York City all his life. They both gambled and cursed and bent the rules and loved their families and made their own way and never asked anyone for anything. Only, his grandfather — my great-uncle — died in his sleep, late in his 80s.

Brian was street-smart and worldly-wise, a maverick in a family of college degrees and professional certificates. A poor romantic figure, a starving artist of existence.

So long, Brian.

Randall gave me a bird cage. I think I’m gonna get me some ‘keets. That should cause the cats some torture and frustration, huh? (Did I mention my lizard in my previous rant about my animals and my morning routine?)

Guy wonders why I need to get up at 4am and why I need that stay-awake drug. So, let me take you thru my morning…

At approximately 4am, the cats (all 4 of them) begin to stir. This wakes the dog, who feels it is incumbent upon him to protect us from the intrusion of the cats. He jumps out of the bed, chases a cat down the stairs, then returns to pounce on the bed and alert us in celebration of his victory. He repeats this for each cat.

By this time it is 4:30am and my alarm starts its insistent bleating at a frequency carefully calibrated to make my abdominal muscles contract, lifting me into a fully sitting position. When I finally find the snooze button (which seems to migrate around the top of the clock radio so it is never where I expect it to be) so to silence my alarm, Jenn’s alarm sounds, blasting bad nu-metal at 130dB just in case Pete Townsend needed to hear Puddle of Mudd through his tinnitus while standing next to the nacelle of a 767. She doesn’t hear it.

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Hello, world!

Hellooooo, world! Why, HELLO, world!
No, really: why “Hello, World“?
Is it supposed to be the program saying “Hello, world” like a child newly born, covered in the vernix caseosa, taking a slap on the butt, spitting out pieces of placenta, announcing his own arrival with much more originality than those silly web cards?
Or is it the programmer, shouting out to the world to take notice of his cliched contraption?
Maybe it’s just the programmer’s version of “lorem ipsum“: something to say when something must be said.
Perhaps it’s just your barely-spoken acknowledgement of the existence of a stranger passing unavoidably close as you walk, covered in sweat, down a flight of concrete stairs after a morning workout on the elliptical trainer, reassuring said stranger that despite the maniacal look in your eye, the flushed face, the dishevelled clothes and the serial-killer hairdo — despite your questionable appearance on this sultry deserted morning — you mean them no harm?

Anyway…
Hello, world!