My Little Ponies

"The two best days in a person's life are the days he buys his (sports car, boat, cabin, Russian bride) and the day he sells (or are indicted for having)  it..." -Some Rotten Smart-Ass

That rotten smart-ass might be on to something because I am feeling a sense of relief akin to the first time I ever went to confession, (at which time I earnestly confessed I had sworn in a foreign language for no reason other than shock value and I hadn't been nice to my sister).

My Audi is gone.

I explained to my niece that it was like having a unicorn for a pet. You got it because you read all kinds of stories about how wonderful it is to have a unicorn as a pet. It was exotic. You would look successful... after all, they're so hard to find, they must be expensive...

But they're not expensive even if they are rare. You spend your top  dollar on the first unicorn that comes along, hoping that some of the distant grumblings you've been hearing about how difficult and expensive unicorn ownership is prove to be overstated. 

It turns out unicorns make terrible pet. They eats voraciously, makes noise ALL the time... there is no quiet moment. It never saunters or loiters, each move is purposeful like Solid Gold dancer. Wonderful, but exhausting. 

And dammit, even though you take great care of it, keep it clean, buy it the best straw for its bed, it still breaks a leg almost every month, meaning your bill with the vet is getting steadily more worrisome. 

Life has become a constant endless cycle of caring for and feeding the unicorn. Sure, sometimes she takes you for a wonderful ride, but you have to spend a lot of time mucking the stalls before you get there.

The unicorn won't even take you to work reliably and one time even just stopped flying halfway home from a long way away and refused to take off again, in spite of her doctor pronouncing her in fine fancy with no concerns nary a day before.

As a toy, a conversation starter, a mere bauble, unicorns are great, but as everyday pets, they fail to be practical, reliable or in the end even particularly enjoyable. Can't use too much magic because that flying horse with sparkles coming out of its ass breaks all too easily. 

I guess you get the point. 

On to the next person then, a young man beguiled by her looks and called in like sailors to the Sirens' songs of her sonorous exhaust. Few mortals can resist. Certainly I couldn't. But enough time on the rocks will make you really think about whether those Sirens are worth sticking around for.

In the endless hall that contains my memories of all the cars I've owned, she's up there near the top for shear presence, and for the shear joy I am feeling on the day of her departure. 

Onto smaller and more efficient things, then. A practical little runabout suited perfectly for today's reality of a short commute and a lot of city driving. Cheap and cheerful with a bright demeanor and a desire to please. Kinda like the cute girl who works for your dentist. You just look forward to seeing her.

The order is in... Thursday is the day. Care to guess what, (not you mom... you already know)?

My Three-and-a-Half Month Review/Pluto back in the News

I changed jobs in March and I'm finally getting good enough at the new one to be able to take a breath, look back and side to side in an attempt to figure out how it's going.

In an effort to be quantitative, I've compiled some statistics:

# of days I didn't want to get out of bed and go to work:    0

# of times someone has raised their voice at me in anger:  0

# of weekends worked:                                                        3

# of compliments received:                                   8.4 X 1023

# of people who have outright said they think I suck:        1

# of 12 hour or more days:                                                  3

# of formal performance reviews:                                       2

# of times phone has rung on weekends/evenings:             3

# of times the multi-layered support system has failed       0

As you can see, it's a pretty good gig. It's not that my last gig wasn't... I learned a lot, it kept a roof over my head, and when we had fun, we really had fun. I love those folks and miss them still.

But the numbers are what speaks here. And the numbers are good. Sure, people still say "irregardless" and for some reason, I think people are getting a commission every time they use an apostrophe, but I guess I can run but never hide from all that.

Emily commented about how it's nice that the "honey-do" list is being kept up on and someone else can clean up the dead animals Atticus brings in as prizes from the latest hunt.

I eat better, exercise more, get more and better sleep, drive less, and am generally finding this to be a really good fit.

Now, everything has it's downside. My boss' boss told me the other day if we all kept a list of things we didn't like about where we work, we'd do nothing but develop and edit the list... and if we change jobs, we may as well take the list with us, because in the end, a lot of those things are internal.

One major downside it that I am constantly throttling back because I spent so long being a scrapper. It was a requirement of the job and culture from where I came. And I am good at it, accustomed to it. But everyone here is so... nice.

They don't think they are, but they are. The corporate culture really is "people first" around here which is great until you realize that if people are first, what you want is at best second.

My mom on our recent vacation, turned to me the second day and said without a hint of irony: "You're used to getting your own way, aren't you?" When the shoe fits, pick it up and fling it across the room. Mama, I can't tell a lie. So... moving on.

Also, it's big. You get a sense of just how big when you go to a regional or national meeting and you see over 2,000 others with the same name tag as you. And that's just a small group of people performing certain functions... there's a whole lot more where that came from.

18,000 people in the U.S. and I'm used to knowing almost everyone's name. I've got a lot of memorizing to do!

Lastly, my office is a little small. Actually, maybe it's that my desk is a little big. But, I have overcome this by spending vast swaths of time on the phone, looking out the large picture windows to see the wildflowers, pond, geese, occasional snapping turtle and even a tree frog that comes to visit me by sticking to my window from time to time.

In sum (with apologies to John Lennon)  - I like it, Emily likes it, they like me, and are all together...

___________________________

It's nice to see plucky little Pluto back in the news. I made no secret that I felt like the littlest kid in our neighborhood got a bum rap when it was demoted to a "dwarf planet". 

Really, when we take the time to get to know it, we see 11,00' soaring mountains! and on its moon, six mile deep canyons! Take that, Earth! 

Far from some dumb rogue ice cube bumbling along in its own eccentric orbit as the IAU would have had us believe, Pluto is clearly geologically active and has an intriguing young history, with much of the activity having just recently, (in geological terms anyway), begun. And there's a lot still going on!

Emily and I were talking as the discoveries were unfolding. It takes an almost unfathomable 248 years for our little buddy to make it around the sun. You can almost hear it shouting, "C'mon guys, wait up!!!". It has a funny, eccentric orbit, spinning around with all the grace of a newborn fawn. Mercury by contrast orbits the sun each 88 earth days. It orbits the sun nearly 1,008 times for every once that Pluto flies by.

 Imagine your obituary, all things being equal, on Pluto:

Bill Uebbing, lived to the ripe old age of 3/8 of a year and accomplished much...

It's the perfect place for procrastinators. "Mom, I said I'd take out the trash tomorrow!"

Seriously, one Plutonian day is 6.4 Earth days. Imagine missing a deadline on Pluto. It's probably punishable by death... or at least a good, stern talking to. "I just wish there were more than 153.6 hours in a day! When am I going to get this laundry done?"

And so what if one of its moons is almost as big as itself? Some of Saturn and Jupiter's moons are the size of Mars and Earth or larger... Hell, Titan is 50% bigger than Earth, has atmosphere and liquid water (probably, maybe). Are we going to discount our own home because there are mere moons out there that are bigger than we are?

Pluto deserves to be in our consciousness. Pluto deserves to be the Pizza in the mnemonic that helped even the most dimwitted second grader pass that section of the general science test. Without Pluto, it's  like a David Lynch movie. There's no discernible ending...

My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine....
Nine what?
Somebody tell my, what did my very elegant mother just serve us nine of?
Why won't you tell me?
It's over?
What do you mean it's over?

It's no secret that Pluto would be picked last for every backyard sports team and maybe it isn't going to known for its fiery disposition, but what ever happened to sure and steady wins the race?
Pluto has proven it's not a laughing stock. It is a character all on its own worthy of our study and interest.

One day, our sun could explode, (not likely given its size and composition, but you probably don't know that for sure and this is my blog), and if so, we'd all be dead nearly instantaneously. By contrast, Plutonians would have 5 minutes to get their affairs in order, kiss their weird little children or knock over a liquor store for old times' sake and know they were all alone in the solar system before the cosmic shit hit the fan.

Then the last shall be first. Or something. I don't know. Lunchtime is over.

Suffering for Art, Shatner is Brilliant and my Awesome Aunt Dorothy

It is said that all good art comes from suffering. You can't write a good breakup song when you and your love are happy and inseparable. You can't paint a brooding canvas if all you see is sunshine and lollipops. The list of artists who died tortured, broke, drug addicted, addled, diseased or some other malady is virtually endless. Google "the 27 club" for some modern examples.

Maybe that's why I have so little to write about. There's not a lot of pain, suffering or angst lately.

I mean, I have to have my house replumbed which was not planned for and I suppose the fact that I am learning a new job in a  new company in a new industry could be construed as being somewhat stressful. I'm turning 40 in a few days... an event that has proven to be a huge speed bump to many a man who has chosen to drive his new Porsche down to the trophy wife store to buy himself a big, fat do-over.

Good for me in general. Not so good for blog fodder. One can only belly ache so much about his commute doubling to 20 minutes because of an accident, or the fact his office gets hot because all the windows allow the sunlight to radiate in. I suppose I'm a little annoyed that sometimes people come to my office and introduce themselves and genuinely provide me with interesting and informative anecdotes while I am trying to do some mindless paperwork.Someone took the bagel I had my eye on this morning and the only cream cheese left had nuts in it.

Oh, cruel fate, why do you toy with me?

As you can no doubt gather, things are humming right along. It's taken some work to get here, it won't be here forever and I will miss it when it's gone, but I sure am enjoying it now. If attitude is everything, then I've got the world on a string, the tiger by its tail, the brass ring is within my reach.

Saying all this, putting it out there for the Universe to see, will undoubtedly invite all sorts of calamity to my doorstop. I wrote a post once a few years back about waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did, of course, it does and it will do again.

This time, I'm not dreading the inevitable speed bumps that are surely somewhere on the horizon, nor am I waiting with glib acceptance that at any moment the fit will hit the shan, so why bother to duck...

_________________________________________

William Shatner has an album called Has Been. It has been out for some years now and it is for the most part delicious, if you're into William Shatner. I happen to think he is a genius. The list of singers who can't sing is almost as long as the tragic artist list from the previous rumination. Shatner doesn't pretend. Shatner is what he is, does what he does and the end product delves deeply into his psyche... from the whimsical to the tragic.

The eponymous track to Has Been is extremely well done. I recently heard Lorne Green "singing" a song called Rango that somehow won a Grammy in the late sixties. It was the first time I heard it and it made the song Has Been even more funny because I get the homage.

Go listen to the exploits of Shatner dressing down "Never Done Jack", "Don't Say Dick" and "Two Thumbs Don". It's worth your time, especially the final line, delivered in perfect Shatnerian style;

"Has been implies failure; not so. Has been implies history. "Has been," once was. "Has been" ...might again"

We should all be so lucky to look at life like that. It's helped Bill Shatner live long and prosper for a good long time.

__________________________________________

Finally, I'd like to thank my Aunt Dorothy Bucci, who is the only member of my extended family who, without fail, always sends a card and sentiment for things like Birthdays, Anniversaries, Christmas, etc. I don't call her... I'm a terrible Nephew. In my family, we don't "do" close. But I appreciate her and her cards more than she knows and I hope she takes the time to read this.

Thanks, Aunt Dorothy. You're the best!

Coming Down to Speed

The new job is going really well. I like the people I am working with directly and those that I only know by phone or e-mail are pretty great, too. I got a greeting card welcoming me aboard from the company's Chief Administrative Officer. In her own pen. The welcome has been overwhelming. It's a very nice place to work.

They keep telling me, only half facetiously, that this is one of those crazy jobs in a crazy place filled with crazy people and had I any hair, I'll soon be tearing it out by the fistful. Upon being told this by literally everyone, my eyes begin to gloss over and I fall into one of those stereotypical Hollywood flashbacks of days gone by. "Target should be clear if you go in low enough! You'll have to decide... decide...decide...." (Please watch the movie Airplane! if you don't understand the previous reference. You can then send me flowers and candy as a thank you for changing your life, forever.

See, my last company, a good one, is in a really tough industry. One could be forgiven if they described it as lose-lose. And keeping people happy, content and otherwise engaged under such difficult circumstances is difficult. At least it proved difficult for me to the extent that I consciously escaped.

There will always be bad days, tough customers, pissy coworkers. Right now, my office is so hot I think I'm going to wither where I sit. I see heat ripples across my monitor like one sees dancing over a hot desert road. The office supply truck, upon which is my brand new fan cannot come soon enough.

So, sure, I am not in the garden of Eden, but for right now, I am enjoying coming down to speed. Certainly I'm challenged. I'm prepared and ready to handle it. I think I'll keep those flashbacks handy for when things do go sideways. It will help me keep perspective!
_______________________________________

Emily's Grandmother passed, one day following her 94th birthday. She was a force of nature in a lot of respects. But she treated me like family from day one and never failed to make me feel welcome and involve me in the goings on of a large, dynamic family.

Grandmother Vera as I called her was smart and funny. She was good for a well placed bon mot and didn't miss much. One could sense her watching the goings on as she held court, trying to keep up with the drama, even after she stopped being able to hear much of it. This, I have long presumed may be why she liked me. My inability to moderate my voice was a positive for Grandmother Vera... She could hear most of what I was saying. And she laughed at my jokes. Anyone who knows me knows that's the real key to my heart.

I remember walking her (considerable) property with her, 15 years ago or so and I marveled at how well an 80 year old got around. Then at 90,. I marveled at her general alacrity. By 93, Vera began to slow. This more than anything made me sad. One of the first things she said to me way back when we first met was she wanted to live until the minute she couldn't be autonomous. She was ready to go and at peace with her accomplishments even then.

I've been to many funerals. Family, friends and oddly quite a few people I hardly knew at all. One of the most emotional was of a woman I had yet to meet. I remember being swept away by emotion as the Cantor in the temple sang prayers. I remember being overwhelmed at the turnout and the diversity of the people in attendance. This was clearly someone who touched lives in a positive way. I missed out  meeting her and I was as sad for myself as I was for all the rest of the attendees.

I was not emotional when Grandmother Vera died, nor was I emotional at her funeral. I simply said my standard send off, with a wink and a nod... "Well done, good and faithful servant. Rest now. Your journey is complete, your burden is laid down at the foot of your savior and you can finally be in peace everlasting."

 She will be missed, but more importantly, she will be remembered and revered by so many for many years to come. That alone transcends the loss. In the end, Vera got what she wanted, hoped for and prayed for so long. I couldn't find it in me to be sad about that.

Hitting 'Reset'

I've had a lot of time to think this week. Unfortunately, my week has consisted of an unplanned and forced sabbatical from routine. I have been ill. Not a little ill or inconveniently ill, but really ill. I have been knocked on my ass, frankly, with a couple days being spent mostly in bed alternating between reading and "resting restlessly" and the rest of the time shambling around the house and slouching in my easy chair swathed in blankets and cats.

This fact was not well received by those with and for whom I work, making it even more of a struggle. Sitting at home lamenting being sick while outside forces make being sick a crime is a double whammy.

As I stare at 40, much like I did when I stared at 30, I am taking stock of my life, my direction and the person/husband/son/brother/employee/mentor that I am. I'm not freaked by 40, but I do tend to set my life rhythm to time benchmarks. I understand time. My mind is prone to asking why start something on Thursday? That's not a day to start anything. Hell, by Thursday, I'm focusing on wrapping up the week... Let's do it Monday. Fresh start. New week.

Birthdays, New Years, Lent... these are common benchmarks people use to take stock, make resolutions, come to understandings and perhaps even get around to actions.

Upon looking, I discovered much. Much to like, and much that needed to change.

Interesting that in moments of need, answers come our way to help us untie the knot of conflict. In reading this week, it has come up in multiple books that as workers we spend fully 50% of our waking lives working. We spend untold more hours being on our way to or from work, thinking about work, being preoccupied with work and otherwise not fully engaged in our own lives, families, needs and journeys.

That's fine. Hard work and purpose go hand in hand for me. I don't have kids, so I strongly identify with work. But what's the payoff? What am I supposed to get in return?

Money?

Satisfaction?

Career growth?

A feeling of success or that I made a difference?

Have (at least a little) fun?

Populate your own list. Our expectations are all different. There is no one right answer to fit all people.

It has become clear to me recently my input didn't align with my expected and needed return. Moreover, I came to the conclusion by way of introspection, reading, and covenant conversations with mentors in positions uniquely qualified to offer quality insight, that they never would.

Just as with so many other times in my life, when I needed it most, an opportunity came to me from the clear blue sky.

So, I notified my company that I had made the difficult, but completely correct decision to part ways. It's a good company. Many, many great people are involved. I have been fed, clothed and housed for seven years in return for my investment of time and labor. I have learned,laughed, yelled, become enamored, disillusioned , achieve great clarity, been higher than high and lower than low... sometimes within the same week. As the song says, I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

And then, I got sick.

Timing as they say is everything. And for the last week, I sat on the sidelines, unable to play in my last big game and the coach just handed me my walking papers.

No chanting my name, no Gatorade baths, no being carried off the field on the shoulders of my teammates. Just an inglorious end to what in retrospect will be regarded as the most fascinating time of my life so far, with all the wide open vagueness and opportunity for ambivalence for which the term allows.

I just know I'm done.

So,I face an unexpected but welcome week to go before the new gig. I'll be hitting reset. I've already been catching up on reading and learning and I shall continue. As my strength returns, I shall endeavor to walk, and get fresh air. There is a honey-do list the length of the Dead Sea Scrolls that I can work on, too.

When I was younger, this sort of thing would have had me brooding, angry and indignant. Time has told me that I cannot control circumstances so much as I can control my response to them, and how they affect me and inform how I should cope.

Another central tenet of reading that has come up during this week of infirmity is the notion that everyone wants to change the world, but few start with themselves.

So, I'm hitting 'Reset'

Let's try this again.

Road Raging Eco Weenies Under the Influence of One Too Many Lattes

I am presently sitting in a vacant suite on the 3rd floor of a mid-rise building in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the first time in a considerably long 10 or so days of work in a row, I have a moment to relax and reflect.

I get around a lot, driving sometimes thousands of miles a week. You read that right, thousands. Last week was nearly 2,000 miles. Now, that hardly qualifies as thousands, but this is Grandiose Ruminations, not Exact Accountings, so let's just go with it.

I see a lot of boneheaded "maneuvers", if you can put such a lovely sobriquet on some of the idiot things I see. What spurred on this particular blog was the anger and tension I feel, 40 feet up from  the hustling throng of rush hour traffic below.

Ann Arbor, for those of you unaware, is condidered the quintessence of laid back cosmopolitan living in Michigan. Progressive, (and that's an understatement, for I have termed this town "The Peoples' Republic of Ann Arbor"), exuding a studied cool, you would think you were in Portland, Oregon, but for the fact you would worship Wolverines instead of Ducks.

But from the sounds of the car horns on the third floor of this building at the corner of Main and Huron, I hear tension. I hear anger, I hear... wussy ass car horns.

The problem with having road rage while driving a Prius or its ilk is that you don't get a good "EFFFFFFFFYOU" horn. You get a soft, sorta polite horn that sounds more like a kazoo that went to the gym sometimes a few years ago. They barely move enough air to warrant a doppler effect as they pass by.

One particularly angry person in a Hondota Fitrolla just melted the entire front end of his car by staying on the horn too long in his protest of some fair trade coffee drinking pedestrian who was not paying attention to the big red hand exhorting her to stop. This little horn started up sad, waned quickly toward the end and finally became piteously dead as if the song of white breasted swan, even as the amped up driver, no doubt wearing the latest fashions and listening to NPR at a reasonable and prudent volume, pressed with all his might at the center of the tiny steering wheel, not unlike the ones in the driving games he probably developed as a software coder down the street.

Chillax, bro... this is Ann Arbor. This is not the place to waste energy on anger. Anger causes heavy respiration, heavy respiration emits carbon dioxide... a greenhouse gas. You just became part of the problem! Now you have to donate nine months of your life on a Greenpeace vessel that runs on self importance and used french fry oil. Sure, whale oil would work in a pinch, but the mere suggestion of that seems to be onerous to some folks. Those that live in Ann Arbor, especially.

Now  Naples, Italy, that's a place that knows how to use a car horn. In fact, I think it's the accepted language of the city. It pervades the atmosphere. It is relentless. For all its ferocity, if one were to listen long enough, with enough sensitivity to the nuance, one would hear subtlety in the different patterns of honks.

There exists a "c'mon, I'm not going to give you this space forever" honk just as there is the ubiquitous "BUFANDO, EH!"  America seems to only focus on the latter.

There exists a great need for a couple things in this advanced world of ours. Those are a sarcasm font, which I am convinced will drop the murder rate to nearly zero in most major urban areas, and a dual or even tri-note horn so we can bring nuance to the inter-car and car to pedestrian communication home to America.

Forget the moon, Mars or interstellar travel. We as a race will look at every day that came before the invention of the multi-gesture horn as the dark times. Life as we know it now will cease to exist and a new age of radically advanced humanism will emerge, like some sort of, I don't know... renaissance. (Note to self, wiki "renaissance" and take credit for it if it has't been used.)

I drive a sporty little Audi that is the paragon of conspicuous consumption. It is the smallest car with the biggest motor sporting the loudest exhaust possible. It has a horn the size of Schwarzenegger in a body the size of Jenner. It's bodaciously loud coming and going. It is obnoxious and wholly inappropriate for a town like Ann Arbor. At least that's how I interpret the looks from the gaggle of "adjunct professors", (read underemployed academics  cum baristas), hanging out on the corner, hoping to attract the eye of some university dean, cruising silently in his hybrid electric car for the next young thing to "tutor".

It is clear I am not what they are looking for, which is fine. I will just turn up my obnoxiously loud stereo and thump down the street, ejecting whole epochs worth of dead organic things out of the quad tailpipes of my car in a gear that allows for that subtle little 'poppoppopopop' of timing overrun as I let off the gas to coast to the intersection.

That's how to chill, Ann Arbor. Take a lesson.


Bill Uebbing is the Author of Grandiose Ruminations Rooted in Minutiae and he thinks very highly of himself, thank you very much.