I Wonder Why I Can't Get Hired!

Below is verbatim the cover letter I just sent in response of a job ad. I have to believe somewhere there is a company that will want me for my real silly self and not just the professional hard-ass side.
Will this be the one? Who knows, but the phrase "to thine own self be true" continues to ring as a mantra in my ears.
I can only be who I am. I just wish someone would pay me handsomely for it.

Dear Sirs,
I am responding to the career posting on Monster.com for the General Manager-Sales position. Many of my skills and strengths match the information on the job posting. Please read on to see why I am the best candidate applying for this position. O.k, I haven't met the rest of the candidates, so that is an unqualified and specious statement. But I am pretty good and I bring a lot to the table.
You will undoubtedly receive an overwhelming number of resumes and cover letters from a number of fine people who are excellent at what they do. Surely, any number of candidates will have the tangibles you are looking for. It is the intangibles that make me the candidate you want to hire.
I am absolutely reliable, engaging and speak well extemporaneously. I use humor and wit when engaging others and usually people find me charming (my dear wife excepted). I suit large audiences or small with an instantly likable demeanor and establish rapport well with others. I enjoy demonstrating product. I have a working knowledge of standard first aid, but would need to refresh my training and certifications.
My greatest strength is leading and inspiring people to be successful. I am a hands-on manager who is more like a coach than a professor, though I can profess as well as the next person. I genuinely like most people I meet. I like to inject levity in all circumstances. No one should want to cry at work and stress can often be avoided... or at least made enjoyable.
I am not afraid to develop an implement policies, train and coach, discipline and terminate when needed.
At one time I was a trained lifeguard which included standard first aid and CPR. I'll even throw in the fact that my mother was a nurse, which doesn't mean I know anything, but sometimes people say things like that to justify their qualifications.
I like working for smaller companies I find work is better when there is a personal touch. I treat the people around me with high regard, because that is how I like to be treated.
I volunteer for my church and community. I love Grand Rapids and work to make it a better place to live and learn and worship.
If you are still reading, that's a good sign for me and clearly means you are intelligent, enjoy lightheartedness and are probably better than average in every way. I am honored a person of your great caliber finds me worthy of consideration and I hope to meet you soon.
If you gave up after the first bit of cheekiness, assuming I was some sort of simpleton who was wasting your time, I hope you someday find the happiness you so richly deserve in life. I shall continue undaunted to find the perfect fit. Happiness is wealth and I want to be rich!

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Forgive the ramble. This was written over a three day period. In addition to not grading on spelling, punctuation and grammar, please don't grade on voice, tense, or thematic consistency.

For the second leg of our anniversary extravaganza, we left the pastoral hills of central Pennsylvania and our friends there and after a brief respite and refitting back home in Grand Rapids. we headed for Chicago.
While home briefly, we went to see Brandi Carlile, a spunky ingenue known for her full voice and semi-yodel, not to mention her song writing, which is excellent. The weather was perfect, (so long as you ignored that slightly ominous chill that descended upon the outdoor venue along with the setting sun that served as a subtle reminder of the cold season ahead), the air was sweet and for once not smoke filled and the show was brilliant.
Chicago is definitely the Yang to the early part of our vacation's Ying. We began Thursday. Our tenth anniversary. We steered through the south side of Chicago until we reached the campus its eponymous university and specifically the Frederik G. Robie house. The campus of the University of Chicago splits the curtain of squalor that is the south side of Chicago and allows a beam of light and calm to this otherwise regrettable area. Jim Croce was right, it is the baddest part of town.... I am sure if Leroy Brown were alive today, even he would relocate to somewhere less seamy. But I digress.
Designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908 it is the last of the great "Chicago" portion of Wright's long career. It is easy to see why this edifice consistently lands on the list of the top 10 most important structures of the 20th century.
Taking the tour, I was reminded how hard the keepers of Grand Rapid's only Wright structure the Meyer May house had to work to get it where it is today. It also reminds me how spoiled we were a few years ago when we scored a "special tour" on a Sunday in March.
It is sort of complicated, so let's just say we knew people who knew people who were part of the conservancy of that house. We were able to meet them for a private Sunday morning tour which lasted hours. We got to see the basement, we got to sit in the furniture. I could pick books up off the shelves and lift the bottom of the inglenook bench revealing the storage inside.
Emily even sat in the tub for goodness sake. No extravagance was spared.
And it was free.
The Robie tour was none of these. The house is essentially bear. Many walls are even open to the studs revealing mechanicals in the midst of being restored. Many of the small details such as the art glass light diffusers in the ceilings and the Wright designed light fixtures are being restored. In there place were two-dollar contractor fixtures like the one in your closet with bear bulbs exposed, casting ugly shadows on the walls. The house was like a former starlet, much faded, paste her prime and badly lit on a Branson dinner theater stage.
We were part of a small group being moved through the home efficiently by Arthur, our earnest but elderly docent. Arthur did a credible job of presenting the material and was engaging enough, but we had a deuchebag on the the tour who kept asking questions and it wrangled poor old Arthur's mojo a bit.
I don't want to say I was disappointed, just that when you get treated specially even once, your frame of reference is forever changed and your expectations with it.
On to the hotel- The Allerton in the heart of downtown.
I was really worried at first as we walked to the modern glass and marble reception lobby. The overwhelming feeling was shopping mall. An upscale mall, but a mall none-the-less.
However, all fears were allayed when we walked into our room and were surprised that we had gotten the upgrade to the two-room suite. It was one of those deals I signed up for when we first made the reservation. Best money we spent all trip.
Chicago is like many big cities in that they don't speak English, they speak car horn. We were assaulted by almost constant car horns and sirens most of the time, but it reminded us we were in the city and was occasionally amusing in its length and frequency. The street drummers were the most annoying. I mean, seriously, if you want to sit on the street banging on a five gallon pail all day, please make it sound like something other than you banging on a five gallon pail all day! I have heard some of these guys when we lived in Savannah and they were amazing... be more amazing or be quiet, please.
A modest request.
We walked to Nay Pier which seemed like a long walk after a day of walking. If I knew then what I know now, it would have seemed the leisurely stroll it was.
Anniversary dinner was at Riva at a table for two right by the windows overlooking the pier and the lake. I love aquariums and terrariums and this was just like watching a big human one replete with wonderful boats and lights and a water feature. Only while enjoying the view we also enjoyed the attentive staff and the amazing food of Riva. I had swordfish steak over a bed of shrimp risotto and I was sure I might die it was so good. Emily's pork chop was the size of a human skull and perfectly medium with a pungent but very good dark braising sauce rendered of wine and currants. Dessert was tiramisu and some sort of chocolate explosion that looked pretty. Judging from Em's face she either liked it or was having a stroke. I assume the latter since the only incapacitation after dinner was due to the amount of food we ate.
We strolled gingerly down Navy Pier on the way back and were surprised at how good the fireworks were.
Friday came. We originally planned on the museums this day, but determined to walk as much as possible we pushed that to Sunday. We enjoyed the glorious morning weather by walking to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, then walking to the shops and browsing, then we walked to Grant Park Zoo along the lake through the wonderful Chicago Parks system. We walked through the zoo. We walked, we walked we walked.
It was a gorgeous day, the zoo is free and we had a good time.
We decided dinner should be in old town, since we had taken the trouble to walk all the way there from downtown. We stumbled across Topo Gigio, a little Italian place. It looked good.
This time it was black fettuccine with an orange (vodka?) cream sauce with scallops, some sort of giant shrimp the likes of which I have never seen before and salmon. I can't describe how much I lived this dish. If I could replicate the sauce, I would make it daily, hang out a shingle and quit my day job.
We ate outside because we had been outside all day. We loved the little neighborhood we were in, but so did the flies and the no-see-ums and the hornet and the loud motorcycles. Oh well, it is all part of it I guess.
Dinner included being a fly on the wall to some very interesting conversations at the table over my shoulder with a man of some European accent putting the schmooze on a young blonde who was drinking it up like the wine that repeatedly refilled her glass. Em disagrees with me, but I have seen the schmooze, hell in my younger days I have schmoozed and if the likes of me can go home a happy man, than this handsomely weathered European man with the wonderful accent had a dessert that was not on the menu that night.
Walking home tired and in food comas was a slow meandering process. We didn't have a lot of spunk left in us so we just came back to the room (it was lovely after all) and read and drank wine.
We did a lot of reading and sipping wine. After ten years there are some stretches of silence. I think I like it better than Em. I like my quiet times. My professional life so often requires me to be on the razor's edge and magnanimous that when I can turn off, I need to turn off. Don't get me wrong, I am not good at relaxing, I just sometimes like to be quiet while I am doing things.
Em is an extrovert and her job is polar opposite of mine. She has a sit still and be quiet type of job and so when it's time to play it is time to play.
We have to dance around these differences sometimes when we spend a lot of time together, because each of us needs our own time like we need air and water. I like having Em around for my quiet times. It is not lonely if you are being quiet with someone else. Em relies on me for the energy and the gregariousness I am more known for to balance out her energy and passion.
Saturday, we went back to the Pier and took a Chicago River architecture tour. That was really cool, relaxing and interesting. We ate at a pub on the pier, again outside, this time contending with birds, not bugs.
Then we walked 2,000 miles or so to accomplish nothing for for the walking. We had eaten our way through Chicago and decided we needed all the help we could get.
Later we went to a wine and cheese place where they check your credit at the door to make sure you have what it takes to eat there and had a flight of wine and cheese and olives and chocolate.
It was great. I have never spent so much money for a continental snack, but oh well, it's all about the experience. And it really was good.
If I lived in the city, I am not sure I would go to place like that very often unless guests were in town. The wine bar was the perfect place to go if your wife's ex-boyfriend from college was in town and you wanted to show your most pretentious side... it's the kind of place where you put on your blazer with the patches on the elbows, your best button flies and loafers just to prove how relaxed you are in this this environment. It's the kind of place where you laugh softly, you hold your pinky away from your glass and say "mmmmmmmm" a lot while nodding appreciatively at what you are not sure.
Actual dinner was more my speed... A fast food place called Burrito Beach. Yeah, baby... you can dispense sour cream from a pump and under $20.00. Four Stars!
Slinking back to our king sized bed in our king sized room for the last night thinking of the Museum of Science and Industry on the docket for tomorrow, thinking of the fun we've had, thinking of the bill.
Thinking of 10 years of ups and downs (sometimes even in the same hour) and how it still feels right. We get mad at each other. We don't see eye to eye on a lit of things. Neither one of us likes it when the other is passive and neither one of us likes it when the other is aggressive and we never seem to be on the same page at the same time.
But these are minor items in a life filled with major items and the major items we have pretty down pat.
I don't know what cities will be host to our 15th our 20th or any other milestone anniversaries. I don't know what we will do when we get there or how much it will cost. We could be alone or with friends, we could be near or far. One thing is for certain, I am sure I will look back at those mileposts with awe and wonder where the time went, just like with this 10th anniversary.
There are many many more things to see and cities to visit. I hope there are many more years ahead in which to visit them.

For Emily on Our Tenth Anniversary

When we met in November '98,
by dumb luck, chance, or maybe fate
I did not know what lay ahead.

It was just a chat on a gaming page,
a fluke, a flash in an online age.
Until we met and you spun my head.

But I am over the shock of it all,
no more afraid to trip and fall.
I know we are together to the end!

From I do, do you?
To, I do, too!
You're my wife and my lover and my friend.

Now to our health, since our wealth eluded;
adventures we've had, good friends included.
This rhyme is only the start!

We'll keep going on as we grow older,
we'll stay fond, let's never grow colder!
I'll always love you from my heart.

As my body decays,
I'll remember these days...
though push has come to shove

And when I go away,
I'll still think of you "that way"
You are my one and only love.

Sorry for the corny... Love you sweets! Happy anniversary!

On Friends and Music and Books and Muppets

Forgive me, I didn't have a lot of time to put any thoughts down. You see, we're on vacation and are either playing or relaxing.
Em and I were in Pennsylvania visiting friends we met during our tour of duty in New Jersey. A lot of good things happened to us during that time in Jersey and the people we met were at the top of that list. It is wonderful that after 4 years of not seeing these fine folks that we can just pick up the slack in the line and move on like there was no time at all.
Greg Milinovich is a pastor at Catawissa Ave UMC in Sunbbury Pennsylvania. This is Greg's first "charge" as it is called. He has been an associate for 10 years. I have heard him speak a number of times. It is always sort of bazaar to hear a pastor preach when you know them off-duty because their pastor persona is a little different from who they are in the comfort of your relationship. Sometimes I have found this makes the message a little harder to take due to this disconnect between how we know this person and how they are on the pulpit.
This is not so with Greg. He does not have a pulpit persona. He is easy and breezy both in public and in his living room. His sermons are refined and personal and engaging just like he is. His sermons don't come across as being read or given, instead he shares and imparts his thoughts. His congregation is allowed to listen and appreciate and think critically about the scripture on which he is preaching. I have heard a lot of good speakers in my life. I count Greg among them. I envy that his chosen path allows him to use so many of his strengths and challenges him in a way he loves.
His wife Shannon is the picture of grace under pressure. She runs the tidy house with love and expediency. She never appears flustered when being a mom to their two wonderful and active boys.
My wife asked at one point "Shannon, how do you stay so thin?"
To which I replied, "Have you SEEN her running around here after the kids?!"
It was better than nice, or wonderful to sit and talk with Shannon and Greg. They are both smart and incite-full, open-minded and entertaining of a wide variety of points of view.
In my world, I spend a great deal of time turning simple phrases and trying to get a simple direction across to people and it requires a basic level of communication. But we sure let it fly over this too-short trip.
Thank you, Greg and Shannon for this wonderful trip. I know it is never as relaxing having guests as being one. Emily and I relish the opportunity to return the favor soon. No excuse needed to come visit us... we didn't have one to visit you!

On Books

I just finished reading "The Silence of the Lambs". While I have seen the move a dozen or more times, I never read the book. I thought I would be disappointed as the first quarter is lock step more-or-less with the movie, dialogue and all.
But as with most books, the author can impart so much more emotion and (forgive me), flesh to a character. I find myself being fascinated by the small back stories and subplots that inevitably get cut from the movie to keep it going.
For instance, near the end of the movie at the big climax showdown between hero and villain, I never really understood how Clarice Starling stumbles on Buffalo Bill's workshop. It either was not well explained in the very brief dialogue in the wrap-up scene, or theatrical audiences simply don't bother themselves with minutia. Likely, it is a little (or a lot) of both.
Anyway, the film is excellent, the book is excellent. There is more and different tension in the book because we know the characters better and therefore feel more for them. The ending is not so perfectly delicious (sorry again), leaving the reader in awe and terror of Dr. Hannibal Lector.
My one issue to Mr. Harris, the author... It is a Stryker Saw, not a Strycker Saw. I know this because they are my biggest client and I spend a lot of time there while they are being made.

On Music

I write this listening to Tapestry by Carole King on LP. I picked up this gem, widely considered to be among the top 100 albums of all time, for two bucks at a flee market in Lewisburg, Pa. Lewisburg is the home of Bucknel University and a cute little town.
This album, like Paul Simon's Graceland must be listened to on Vinyl. There is just something that lends itself to the color and depth of the format.
Much has been written about this tour de force over the years by people far more qualified than I, so I will resist the temptation to pile on as it were.
Suffice it to say, it was the best two bucks I have spent in a long while. I almost can't wait for the next rainy fall day... This will be the on the turntable for sure, to ease my mind as we head into the dark, cold months of the year.

On Movies

In PA, we also saw "The Muppet Movie" on the big screen at one of those classic revival theaters just off the campus of Bucknel.
We own these movies and watch them at home far more often than a couple in their 30's with no children should. I could lie and say we drag them out reluctantly when Skylar comes to visit, but then you may ask why we own all the movies on VHS and DVD.
Greg and I at each end of our row singing all the songs and laughing in anticipation of the jokes we remember and laughing even bigger at the jokes we never saw or had long forgotten. The kids even liked it which is promising in this era of 3D everything and special effects and digital rendering, etc.
Come to think of it, the Muppets were the first 3D animation. They were real to us because the environment in which they interacted WAS our world. There was a certain realism to them because they spoke with real people and rode bikes and drove cars, just like us.
Perhaps that is a reason for the tremendous staying power of these little puppets... We relate to them because they don't exist in some foreign world. We don't just suspend our disbelief when we see a frog and a pig having a romance... we hope, we wish, one day we could see that.

The Great American Road Trip

Em and I turn 10 next week. I mean to say we are celebrating out 10th anniversary. We are marking this milestone by taking a road trip. We used to take road trips all the time and we enjoyed it. For whatever reason, we have tailed off in the last couple of years. Time to get back in the swing of things.
The checklist for going on vacation is long and the price, in terms of money and time is high. What it costs just to get out of town to relax for awhile is astounding. In some cases, it is very nearly enough to poo-poo the whole thing and throw your hands up, open up your laptop and watch a You Tube video instead of working like any other day.
Take the car to the shop for a checkup, oil change and a tire rotation, agonize over each packing decision, eat out because you can't leave food in the fridge, call your one remaining friend still willing to take care of the cats (because she owes you and she knows it), let the neighbors know to keep an eye on the house, and on and on and on.
My parents employed a well reasoned, supremely organized checklist that was conceived slowly over time and revised to absolute perfection. It hung on the fridge door, taunting us six months before vacation even started. Why they needed this checklist is a mystery to me in the first place as since time immemorial we went to the same hotel in the same beach town with the same group of people to sit on the same sand and have the same conversations year after year after year after year.
You would think, repetition being such a good teacher that after 25 years of making the same trip with the same people to the same place they would have the planning portion of the trip pretty much down pat.
But from the "One Month out Checklist" to the "Final Last Second Checklist" each item was systematically dispatched in the proper order thus assuring the planet would continue to spin on its axis and God of the Heavens would continue to smile down fondly upon the Uebbings' yellow station wagon. And the last line of the last checklist was always "check toilets."
This was a curious and seemly random tradition in our house growing up. I never quite got it. The toilets never ran amok in my Father's world - that would not do. I guess he was consumed by the thought there was some vast plumbing conspiracy that would kick in the minute he left the house, assured of some imminent catastrophic failure that could only be averted by a direct inspection of each commode by multiple people. I mean, it wasn't just the fact that we were made to traipse around the house to check all three bathrooms, it was the Jack Bauer method in which we were made to do it.
"It's ok down here, Dad!"
"Are you sure? It's not running is it?"
"Um, no."
"Why did you hesitate? This is a zero fail mission! Do you know how much it would cost to let that toilet run the whole time we are gone? Do YOU have money to flush away? Maybe you don't WANT to go to college... Stare at that bowl boy, that is your future going down the drain..."
And so on.
Then there was the inevitable discussion on which route would be the best to take. Really? We have been there 25 times in 25 years. It hasn't moved. WE, haven't moved! But in spite of this there was the feverish (and totally one sided) conversation about this one simple decision. You see, only my Dad cared. I wouldn't have known one way from the other. My Mother NEVER drove (except in one failed experiment that is an entirely different blog post) and I am sure she didn't give a wit, either.
I am so different from this well ordered operation. I pack at the last second with inadequate planning or forethought. I once brought a swimsuit for a trip to the aquarium, but not to the beach. I don't agonize over the route to take, or try to time everything to the last nth. I just want to go. I just want to have fun.
I guess it is easier without kids. Em and I calmly change our plans with little pain and we can remain flexible knowing we can provide for our own means... if it's a little cold when we get there, we'll buy the obligatory "I'm a Tourist" sweatshirt. A memoir of our laissez-faire method of relaxation. Simple when you are not charged with the health and well-being of minors.
We are too cool to care that on day three we are out of clothes, the car is on fire because the check engine light really meant it this time, the money is gone, the travelers checks we bought has a misprint rendering them utterly useless and as a result we will never see the world's tallest midget two towns over.
It's all part of the fun.
Still, I have spent hundreds of dollars and a great deal of what could have been otherwise productive time just in the preparation of leaving town for this humble road trip.
I wonder how much worse it would have been if I wasted all that time planning.

For Dave, on His 35th Birthday

My friend Dave and I are political close cognates. We agree on many things and lament about much of the current political situation. I refuse to use this blog to espouse a strong political view as I am certain you, dear reader don't care that much.
A funny thing happened the other day when sitting in Dave's living room, visiting with him. The conversation as it often does drifted to the political. I was busy spouting out my Libertarian bend. To give you the bullet points, I would like to see the smallest vestige of central government left after a major house cleaning. Dave's novel concept was for the yearly budget to start at zero, with each department having to justify its needs to the people directly for a vote.
He called it "Budget Thunderdome", to which I shouted in my best Tina Turner... "We don't need another bureau!"
For those of you too young or too old to know what the hell I am talking about, "Beyond Thunderdome" was the (so far) movie in Mel Gibson's "Mad Max" series starring a bedecked and bedazzled Tina Turner as Aunty Entity wearing chain mail as though she were diving for sharks as soon as the director yelled cut; and sporting the best mullet ever seen this side of a monster truck rally on Redneck Sunday at the Podunk City Fair. Don't even get me started on those earrings!
Anyway, Tina as the uncontested lord and master of a lost post-apocalyptic society featuring a huge fighting sphere for the gladiators of the time called, "Thunderdome."
"We don't need another hero. We don't need to know the way home. All we want is life beyond the Thunderdome." This was the lyric of the main song from the soundtrack, also heavily penned by Ms. Turner.
(See the video)

..Ok, so are you with me so far? Dave did not need the long explanation. We laughed together for awhile. He said "... By the end of the night, I want a verse a bridge and the full chorus."
This is for you, Dave. Happy Birthday!

"We Don't Need Another Bureau (The Libertarian Nation Anthem)"

Out from the ruins, of our constitution, there lies the way they thought was best
Inflated budgets, runaway debt load, who pays the bill - who pays the price
It's a wonder to me why no one cries for change
Living under their thumbs, society deranged

(Chorus)
We don't need another bureau, we don't want more laws and guidelines
We can make our own decisions and live just fine

Taking our money, for programs that fail now, collect from the people who fall behind
Spending our money, on a lost hopeless drug war - my body is mine what is your right?
It's a wonder to me why no one forces change
Take it out to the streets one voice raised up in rage

All the people say!

(Chorus)

(Bridge)
Why won't they let us live our own lives?
Are we only their pawns?
Do they know we have our own minds?
It's time to revolt!

(Chorus Repeats 2X)

I Once Was Lost, I Now Am Hopeless

Happy anniversary to me! I got a new GPS today a little ahead of our forthcoming tenth anniversary road trip so that Emily and I can have an impartial tie-breaker for the many and often colorful arguments about which direction we are or should be going which are an absolute inevitability.
This GPS replaces my former GPS which was a wonderful item and I loved it. Someone else, loved it better than me, however and was beguiled enough by it enough to attempt to smash my window and get it. They were partially successful. they got my GPS. The window was laminated safety glass and had to literally be rolled in small sections until enough space was gained for the perp (or perps) could get into my car.
They left a legacy of broken glass in nooks and crannies of my car, a now seldom operational window switch and a forever marred trim piece around the glass that Ford Motor Company is clearly very proud of considering they want $400 to replace it.
Yes, I am that person in the drive through half leaning out his car through the open door looking like an idiot and getting rained on and snowed on with the car rolling forward because the extra step of putting it in park would be just too much.
It is a lush life.

The thief (or thieves) allowed a more enduring legacy continue... that of me being perpetually lost.
Never have I had a sense of direction. I still have to close my eyes a bit and envision a compass rose in my head to delineate East from West relative to my North or South. I don't even get this right much of the time. My dead reckoning skills are therefore poor at best.
I always go right. And where I want to go is left. So knowing this, sometimes sneak up to an intersection (because it is against me), turn on my right signal and floor it to the left. This of course to the chagrin of my passengers and those fellow drivers unlucky enough to be sharing any real-estate within my proximity.
Aha! Fooled it!
Wrong. If I went left, it was supposed to be right.
I get reminded of Kermit The Frog and Fozzy Bear singing Movin' right along from "The Muppet Movie"-
"Movin' right along- You take it you know best"
"Hey, I've never seen the sun come up in the west"
I didn't get that joke until I was 28 years old! I am utterly hopeless.
Strangely, the GPS helped, and hindered my quest for direction. It's sort of like a calculator. I am shocked at the number of people who will consult a calculator to add two simple numbers together. For me, it happens in my head without trying. In fact, even with decimals and numbers to the triple digits I can add subtract multiply and divide accurately in my head in about the same time as a calculator user can come up with the same answer. And I failed miserably in math in school and on all forms of standardized testing.
In fact, for a guy who reads and writes as much as I do and who worked at a major bookstore for five years like I did, you would be surprised to know I have to mentally run through the alphabet to know where a letter is in relation to another. But back to my sense of direction.
I still get lost using the GPS because I don't pay close enough attention to it. Or worse, I am paying my undivided attention to it and continuing to defy it because I know it is wrong!
It sounds so irritated with me as it repeats "recalculating" in that judgmental stern voice. It is even worse with a female voice. It sounds so much like nagging. "recalculating " it seems to say.
So, the miracle of GPS has not provided me a better sense of direction, nor has it cured my propensity to get lost. It, like every other gadget and distraction in life is not the ultimate answer to the problem.
I think my life lacks direction in general. Maybe when I grow up to be a big boy, my sense of direction will click and I will know where I am and where I am going and I will go boldly and confidently.
For now, the good news is that whatever direction I am going, I am more or less happy to be there. Life isn't a bowl of cherries, but I ate a bowl of cherries once and I am here to tell you the outcome was not pleasant and certainly not cherry scented.
Somebody should have warned me. Then again, maybe somebody did and I didn't listen. Just like I do with my GPS.
My wife says I can't put the home address in the thing, because the next thief will like my taste in GPS so much he or she or they, or whatever, will come to my house looking for more swag he or they may want. So, screw the people 3 houses to the south of me... because I used their address. I couldn't pick somewhere too far away or I'd never find my way home.

If a Tree Falls in a Garage...

On Sunday morning, I was greeted by Facebook pictures of a tree that had bifurcated a wall of my best friends' garage. Ironically they, like myself, hate their garage. For various reasons, it is inadequate to suit their needs. It is not a bad structure to be sure, but it is not quite what they have in mind when they envision a functional garage.
My garage is wholly inadequate by all measures. when it rains outside, it rains inside... harder. There is a cornucopia of the living and the dead in my garage. It is a microcosm of all nature. A vignette speaking to the struggle, and yes the failure, to survive.
I have given up cleaning my garage. When it is clean, it is no more suitable to my needs. It looks no better, is no more inviting nor less frightening. The various boards designed to buttress the structure and make the space weather tight are failing. The lolly column supposedly holding up the gracefully sagging main beam is forlornly leaning, its base barely clinging to the improvised footing made of what appears to be discarded graham crackers laminated together by cheese whiz.
When I sweep and vacuum my garage, it only serves to make the wild kingdom living within try harder. They reassert themselves vehemently to reclaim the space for their own.
I have an old Corvette in the garage, which looks sullen when I park it in its damp little hole like if it had its way it would be anywhere else. The car, with its 30-plus year-old engine puts out quite an exhaust. It is amazing how far we have come in a short time with automotive technology, but I digress. A few times a year, I confess, I start the car, close the door and wait.
When I can see the exhaust leaking from the various and sundry holes, splits, cracks and windows of the garage, I open it back up, fight through the fumes and shut down the car.
this seems to stop nature in its tracks for a few days.
Even then, it is only stunned.
Nature is turning the rear of my property back into its soil. Slowly. Surely.
We as a species are very egocentric. We believe we can kill our planet by simply living, consuming and producing the itinerant waste associated with same.
While I agree we need to be good stewards of our planet, I think we needn't worry too greatly. All she has to do is shiver a couple times like a dog that just ran through a sprinkler and we are toast. Every last one of us.
Our planet, about which so much has been done to save will be fine.
We humans? Ahem... exit stage left please. Thank you for visiting.
Each stiff wind that blows I hope to see the garage go down in a slow ballet accompanied by the type of slow motion sound effect like that at the end of a monster movie when the monster inevitably dies.
Only then could I afford to build a new garage on a new slab in the right part of my lot thus kicking nature back a bit. This of course assumes an insurance payment of a certain size.
My friends' garage? Well, as inadequate to their needs as it is, it will unfortunately survive. It is a strong structure well built and well maintained. It will be repaired and it will continue to quietly taunt its owners... "I'm not good enough, but I am too good to get rid of..."
Nature gave that structure one solid kick to the groin as opposed to the everlasting swirly it is giving to my garage.
I wonder which it will choose for us humans?

The Fruit of the Vine, The Fruits of Labor and the Love of Felines

Forgive me for this post. I am a glass or two of red wine into the evening.
I have been very busy the last couple weeks, plugging away at doing what I have to while trying to scrape enough time together to do what I want to.
Whoa... there's something in that statement. Why do we put ourselves through doing something we hate? Surely there are enough people in this world to sufficiently cover each and every interest and field sufficiently. Accountants for instance come to the fore of my mind when I make this statement. I would loath being an accountant. I could do it, I have the acuity and the acumen. Why would I want to do it? I hate the thought. It is not natural to me. It's not a fit.
I love the idea of what I do now. I snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. I develop critical minds out of little but primordial ooze. I make a working system out of chaos
But I don't get the satisfaction of standing back and watching a universe of my own creation.
If you have ever played Sim City you can identify. You reach a point where all you want to do, at least for a little while, is sit back and watch your beautiful and unique creation. A creation you grew from nothing but potential and made distinct and singular. There will never be one like it.
It doesn't matter that it isn't real.
What I do is real. Real awful.
Tomorrow, I have to make a scapegoat out of someone who legitimately tries his best. He is a good man. He plugs away with verve and puts one foot in front of the other with practiced patience and even-handedness.
Someone possessing fewer positive attributes (and much less motivation for betterment of self and others) came along and created a moment in time that will force me to decommission my good man.
And so it goes. Another day another chip off my humanity. Another odious errand to be run at the behest of a bigger god than myself. A god more ignorant than malevolent but somehow the malevolence manages to shine through.
Just because you can do something does not mean you should. This is a lesson I have learned slowly over time. I am very good at what I do. I can do it. But should I?
Going back to the point, (there is one, dear reader), isn't there some person out there pining for my job? Isn't there someone within the general proximity who is sitting at home right now blogging how he wishes he could knock some nice guy down a peg or two just to see his face? Isn't there some lackey who gets turned on by the thought of sycophantically following an evil overlord in a hellish maelstrom of constantly recycling terror and looking that devil in the eye and saying "I will, master... gladly"?
And isn't there a job out there where I can say "good job, you can do it!", or "I am proud of what you did today and you should be, too"?
I submit, dear reader (note the fact I am referring to you in the singular and I assume I am overestimating your number) that there is something out there for each of us. Something that will make us happy and wealthy if only in spirit. Don't stop fighting. Don't stop hoping. Just don't stop.
I would rather have lived for my purpose in the last minute of my life than to never have lived for my purpose at all.
Wow This is good wine.

On the lighter side:

We adopted a stray cat a couple weeks ago. Named KiKi by our niece, Skylar because we assumed she was, well, a she.
Surprise! It's a man, baby!
The name KiKi never sat well with me. All my cats (they're stacking up like cord wood) have been named at least loosely after literary characters. I admit, this happened as an accident. Why stop now?
It started with Ophelia. She was not so much my cat as she was my ward. I was a long-term surrogate patent for a friend of mine who was in a traveling mistral show. I took her because we had an instant connection. She was a gorgeous orange long hair tiger with wonderful markings. She was terribly possessive of me. One day, studying on my bed with my girlfriend in college, the cat walked in and looked us over. My girlfriend reached over, grabbed my arm and said "mine", to which the cat replied with a great hiss, a flourish and an about-face out of the room.
She liked to ride in the flat sculpted out area of my car's dashboard. She was content to some with me everywhere. She never left my side.
My friend reclaimed her at the end of his stint. I found out he ended up giving her away to another family. It's too bad I didn't say so, but I would gladly have kept her. She was wonderful. It turns out a lot better than the girlfriend.
Then Juliette, a shelter kitty who had me at hello 8 years ago and still has me today. I love that cat to an embarrassing extent. She is a joy. I can say no more. I could write pages about her, but it would fail utterly to examine the true love I have for that cat.
Montague stayed with us a short time but did not want to become a productive member of the family. He was another orange long-hair and a good bloke. He sat on my chest and begged for (and nearly always received) the dregs of my beer bottles. He lapped at them like a hamster laps at his water bottle.
Alas, he was a snappish, brooding bully who could not get along with Juliette and Felix.
One day, running late for work I heard a sound unlike any I ever heard. I went to it, whereupon I came across "Monty" jetting a column of shit behind him and looking at me like he had been planning this maneuver for the perfect time... and that time was now.
He needed to be vanquished. He was. And in so doing, I gained the eternal affection of his shelter mate Felix who we had also adopted.
Felix was a skinny little gutter cat. Named by the shelter after "Felix the Cat" of cartoon fame, he was a beautiful tuxedo. A feral cat, Felix moved in and settled down to a life of leisure. Felix gained two thousand pounds in the first six months he was with us.
He did the full Brando. We called him "Boom Boom" because of the sound he made when he walked. Floorboards lived in fear of this cat. He was a grumpy irascible git who loved me above all else. He was more like me than any animal I have known. apologetically himself. If you didn't like it, tough.
He was wonderful with children, and patient, too. I couldn't touch his back half without fear of great reprisal in the form of teeth and claws... not so kids. He withstood the love (abuse) of many with gentle good humor.
He passed away suddenly for no good reason 9/9/09. He left a hole the size of his prodigious body in our home.
And then this July comes KiKi out of the greenery at the edge of the lawn where Felix rests. This lovable scamp who just made himself at home.
But, as you can see, KiKi is not a royal name for a cat who will be revered and treated better than most humans who come to my home.
No, this regal cat of great kindness and gentility tempered with an air of strength and wit is an Atticus. Like Atticus Finch himself, he is relaxed and confident and looks at you as if to say, "It's not time to worry yet", just like his literary namesake.
Whatever kismet brought us this animal, thank you. We will not look upon this gift lightly.