Crashing On My Feet

Last month, I lost my job very unexpectedly, under circumstances beyond my control. Sounds terrible, right? It was, of course. It was shocking and disorienting and generally uncomfortable. Even though my performance was not at issue, my results were clear and acceptable and I was growing into the role, a decision was made and executed.

It's not personal. It's business.

I took it in stride figuring the executioner didn't want to be doing it anymore than I wanted to have it done to me. I comforted him during the process... even complimented his shirt. He made a comment that he couldn't believe I could still be bright and tell jokes and even compliment his shirt and support him during such a stressful event. 

I told him, "Humor and positivity have served me well in life. As such, there are few moments I look back on that were disastrous. those that were are marked by my failure to maintain a positive outlook". And it really was a nice shirt.

I think the way I handled the circumstance left an impact, as a couple days later, my boss called me back and offered me a lifeboat in the form of a job that used to report to me. Now, I'm with the same old crew, trying to feel my way through the situation and exercise an entirely different skill set, all the while trying to maintain that positive attitude and disposition. It's only my pride that hurts. I'll get over it.

Of course I've been looking for other jobs. While I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to stay gainfully employed, and I believe the promise of "better things to come" within my organization is a real possibility, I have always been the kind of guy who makes his own luck. Patience was not a gift practiced in my house and I never bothered to pick it up along the way.

I've had a couple interviews this week. The first since this business all began. These are good companies and good jobs within my abilities. But the prospect of being offered any of them leaves me oddly ambivalent. What I have done up to now, what I know how to do best, doesn't really make my crystals vibrate. Sure, there are aspects I truly enjoy, but the bulk of the jobs would be just... bulk.

One of my favorite lines is to say "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up", funny because in a lot of ways I am childlike, but I am also middle aged and should be well and truly on a path by now. Or at least that's how I feel and how I think most people feel.

I have engaged myself in some thought exercises and today I had an epiphany. I really want to help companies go through the process of creating and following a strategic plan. I would spend a few months at each company learning about their business, their model, their people, their customers, culture and processes. Armed with those insights, I would facilitate a two or three day strategic planning session that addresses the way to get a company from where they are to where they want to be. I would go back for follow-ups on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to make sure everyone is doing their part and be a third party voice that would help dismantle croneyism and groupthink, and keep organizations on the shining path they agreed to follow. Or to adjust the plan for reality. Even the best laid plans have to cede to reality.

Who knew at 41, I would finally find a clarity of purpose that also fulfills what I love best and am naturally good at doing? In short, I grew up. But I feel more childlike than ever before because I don't have the first clue on how to break in.

My ideal life is not best explained as long stretches of monotony punctuated by moments of sheer terror. But that is the best way I can describe how I feel about my professional life right now. Being a person bound to faith and positivity, I cling to the concept of "crashing on my feet". In my past, and I have to believe going forward, every slip and misstep has been met, eventually, by opportunities to grow and learn and excel.

Right now, my question is, should I prepare for landing, or try to soar?

I'd love to hear from you if you've been where I am.

Wanna do a Podcast?

Yes. A thousand times, yes! I want to do a podcast, but have not the wherewithal, equipment or time to put it all together. Also, there's the issue of the fact that I have been bereft of any clever or even partially clever ideas for the last 18 months.

Hence no blentries. No ideas. No mojo.

According to my wife, I know everything. You'd think this is a desirable quality, and that when she says, "Ask my husband, he knows everything," she was saying so in a complementary fashion. I have come to learn this is not the case, but let's focus on the crux of the issue and not its predicates. I know everything.

When Tom and Ray Magliozzi retired from public radio as "Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers" on their nationally syndicated radio show Car Talk, I said to my wife, "That's my dream job!" When Tom died in 2014, I took it hard. Not because a disembodied voice of a person I never met was gone, but that one fewer person in this world was living out my dream. After all, the next best thing to achieving something for yourself is to bask in the reflected glory of another.

I loved playing along with "Stump the Chumps", where Tom and Ray bravely had on previous guests to ascertain whether the answers they got from the hosts were accurate. I can tell you, I had a pretty good record against the gurus. And I'm at least as funny as they are, and mom always told my I had a face for radio.

Todays radio for amateurs is a podcast. The great democratizer. Nobody blogs anymore! How antediluvian, antebellum and anachronistic! With a podcast, any nut with an opinion can find there audience. People don't even need to discipline themselves enough to sit and read. You can absorb a podcast while you are supposed to be focused on texting and driving so that you don't get caught.

Hello, caller...

Firstly, my podcast is not open for just anyone to come in an blather their opinions on whatever matter is on the table. Have you listened to a call-in show lately? The callers absolutely stop the program. There is nothing worse than a caller who is either too star-struck or so verbally impacted they can't manage to stutter out the point they were going to make when they dialed the phone. I sometimes wonder if people are getting on the air after waiting so long, they have forgotten what they wanted to say.

I nearly always avoid call-in shows because they let me down. I'll be so in to a topic, eating up what a panelist, novelist, futurist, whatever-ist is on the show and then the callers come on and ruin it all.

Firstly, one question in 12 parts is not one question, just like 20 cans of cat food is not one item, no matter how much you protest, crazy lady who smells like pee and Paul Mason.

Also, why are you calling if you don't have a question? If we wanted your opinion, you'd be a guest on the show. What can Martin from Schenectady offer to the discourse that the 13 year-old triple PHD astrophysist from Betterthan U hasn't already said herself? Martin, are you trying to swim in the same pool as the panelist? Be honest, you called just to prove you were smart. Dumbass.

The single exception to this general rule of thumb was Car Talk, because they made the callers the joke and the callers were in on it. I guess the other single exception would be Wait... Wait, Don't Tell Me, another NPR production, where the callers are ostensibly contestants on a trivia show.

Yes, you can have two single exceptions. Remember rule #1... this is my blog.

Topical? Don't Rub it in!

If we delve into today, we do it only to offer waypoints relative to our topic. I want to have a podcast that is an escape into something that isn't an election or overly "newsy". My audience is someone who just ran out of weed and their 16 year-old dealer is at Disney with his parents until the end of the week, is freaked out that Trump will be the next president, and is "too broke" right now to renew their Amazon Prime membership, thereby necessitating the consumption of poorly produced, free media in the form of a midwesterner blathering on about...

Scripts are for Doctors.

Let's have a general outline. I envision something like this. "Today's Topic _________." Simple, effective, easy to crank out 3 minutes before the bell rings. Just like school. All that aside, I work better under the concentrated heat of the spotlight, as the aforementioned Tom Magliozzi of Car Talk fame would say, "unencumbered by the thought process". Thinking about things before you say them is for pastors and multi-level marketers. My mouth resides solidly on my cuff.

So, what do you want to talk about? 

Things that go, places to go, music, why people shop at Wal*Mart without being forced to, my cats... these are just some of the topics on which I consider myself an expert. I can also fake my way through nearly any topic not requiring the understanding of mathematical concepts I needn't employ whilst balancing my checkbook. On second thought, my wife does that, so let's just avoid math, shall we?

I like old movies and actors and imagining scenarios in which improbable things happened to famous people. My friend Mike and I used to do a "celebrity hot tub" bit where we would be people who kept namedropping stars from the 70s we were somehow inevitably with in the hot tub. It was really schticky.

"I was once smoking a cigar with Norman Fell in the hot tub, you know, like I did in those days... and out of nowhere, Lindsay Waggoner came over to borrow a cup of sugar! Turns out, she had just moved in next door, where Vic Tayback used to live. Now there was a neighbor. We used to sit in the hot tub for hours until our skin was about to come off.
Old Vic, what a funny guy. One night, the three of us, me, Vic and Fyvush Finkel..."

And so it went. Probably for too long, but goddam did we laugh.

Blahggging

Since the blog thing is played out and the podcast thing is about to be supplanted by whatever is popular now that I don't know about because I am not popular, (young, cool, well-connected), I figure it's time for me to jump into the mix. That will signal to the rest of the world that it's time to move on.

So, who's in?

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.

For Me, on My Thirty-Nine-and-a-Halfth Birthday

October 20th was my "half birthday", which was a thing I never knew existed until I met my wife. Her lust for life and love of all things party mean that she seldom misses a reason to celebrate… something. Anything! Even a concept as cockamamy as a half birthday.

This is clearly a milestone that never meant much to me. Until this past Sunday, I realized that Monday, I would be halfway to 40.

Really, I was halfway to 40 nearly 20 years ago, but the beauty, (and great frustration), of youth prevents us from thinking that way. Even if it has been a long time coming, from a psychological perspective, Monday started the final countdown to the big four-oh.

I know 40 isn't old and I don't fear 40. I struggle to put 40 in a context as I still regard myself as 19. I get jostled each and every morning when I splash some water in my face and see...

I haven't aged. But my reflection sure has been through the wringer. I feel badly for my reflection. It looks weathered. It looks tired. Sometimes, if I dare to look long enough, it looks a little sad. What has my reflection been doing wrong? I've been having a great time!

So, here we are at (nearly) 40, my reflection and me. One of us, young and spritely, spirited and immutable, the other bedraggled, frayed and worn. Both part of the same whole, fighting for supremacy. I think I have the upper hand for now, but my ever-aging reflection will inevitably win. I already prefer to eat dinner by five-thirty and be in bed by ten-o'clock. Can curmudgionism be far behind?

I do feel a twinge  of rage from deep within me each time my George Carlin looking, pith helmet wearing mailman treads through my lawn to deliver bills, coupons for erectile medications and AARP applications. Can screaming "Get off my lawn, hippie!", be far behind?

My mother is fond of saying, "Bill, people don't get any nicer as they get older." I suppose she's right, as proven by the 90-ish year old man weaving about traffic completely oblivious to the chaos he was causing to those behind and abeam of him, who responded with an angry fist out the window to the several toots of the horn he received in return.

He may have been shouting "Get off my road, hippies!"

If I had the mentality of a 20 something, these inexorable eventualities would seem to be a long way off. But, based on my experience, it will be here before I know it, assuming I survive that long.

Isn't that the difference between time in your 20s and time as you age? Time accelerates exponentially with the acquisition of wisdom and experience. Perhaps someone who actually knows something about math could express this as an equation, like;

Velocity of time x function of acceleration (and them some superscript number) = Body aches *
                          Widsom + (Skinned knees + car accidents + Divorces)

 Depth of wrinkles * # of times quitting smoking/Broken hearts
                                   # of kids/ #of pets                                               =Perception of Passage of Time

The answer is, I failed algebra. There are a whole host of teachers who tried so hard with me who just read that mess and laid their iPods down and closed their eyes, hoping to never open them again. For you, I am truly sorry. It's me, not you. I know you tried.

Humanity has achieved so much of what it has because it has learned to control its environment. We were hungry, so we hunted. We were cold, so we used the pelts of our kills to cloth and shelter us. We were bored so we had sex and made more people. We got tired of moving these big families all the time, ("No, Og, we are not there yet!"), and living under mammoth skins, so we built the first subdivisions, planted crops and started even bigger families, ("Thag, quit touching your brother!"). Then we decided to branch out and we built careers. Some became blacksmiths, winemakers, teachers and entertainers. Others became politicians, prostitutes and preachers.  After awhile, we got tired of walking, so we made wheeled conveyances culminating in the car. And we loved the car, so we made drive through windows. We got fat, and we could no longer move. So we made TV to entertain us in our ever bigger and more complex homes, very few of which include anything like a mammoth pelt roof!

All this grooming and control of our world. We have tamed the unruly. Clothed the naked. Sheltered the weak. Made convenient the toil of daily existence.

Yet, we cannot stop time. We cannot stop getting older.

That reflection in the mirror is me, like it or not. And I'm not the 19 year-old that has squatters' rights in my head. I ache. I am tired. I get disillusioned and wish I had taken the time to accomplish more…

Looked at another way, my reflection is more than the aged reality of the ideal me. It shows me what I have accomplished. A successful marriage, a home, more friends than I can count. I have learned, loved and lost. I have shared great joy. I have been the cause of and the cure for great pain in myself and others. Occasionally, I write and plink a little song on the ukulele.

I have come to a peace and understanding with the universe in which I occupy centered around the fact that I don't have to understand how or why something is, but I have the ability to adapt and float along. I don't always have to know the answer or be right, but I can teach and develop others as they do the same for me.

Time speeds up just as I am slowing down. Not in a physical sense, though that is happening, too, but in a metaphysical sense. I'm not ready to adopt the "Be Calm, And Carry On" mantra just yet, but I'm dealing. Sometimes, that's the most you can hope for and the best you can do.

Somewhere, I think my reflection just smiled at me.




                                               

The Falling Leaves

Another fall is upon us. I hate it. It's that simple. No flowery phrases needed. I hate fall.

"But, Bill," you ask, "what about all the pretty colors?"

That's death! You sadistic, twisted monster! Stuff is dying. You should be sitting shiva, and instead you weirdos are out there taking special drives in the country to ogle at death!

"Oh, Louis, look at the colors!" you say.

But if you spoke tree, you'd here them screaming and crying, "We're dying and all you do is stare at us! Help us!"

"But the air is so crisp!"

Yes, the Arctic Express and Alberta Clipper have a tendency to make what was a perfectly wonderful period of temperate weather seem particularly brisk. Give it a month. You'll be cashing in frequent flyer miles for as far south as you can go. Lexington, perhaps. Or, if you don't have a good program, Toledo.

I don't like fall. Not for what it is, but for what it portends. The whole season is an omen for the disastrous period coming on its heels. Fall is screaming at us, "When all that is living, and the very earth itself are preparing to go into stasis, It's a good time to get out!"

But, like every stupid family at the beginning of every horror movie, we stay. "Let's just splash some paint on the walls and smudge some sage, the place will be like new!"

Nomadic tribes never put a person on the moon, didn't have HBO, and literally kicked people out of the tribe by lighting their house on fire, (hence being 'fired'). Yet they were savvy enough that they would head back down the hill when things started going downhill.

Maybe that's why we call it fall after all. It isn't because the leaves are falling, it's because the whole thing is about to collapse. Falling is bad. Always. Never once in the history of mankind has falling been a good thing.

Rome fell. That poor lady on the TV fell 25 years ago and still can't get up. Stars, athletes  and religious wonks fall from grace. A person's smile falls into a frown. When the bough broke, the cradle fell - with baby and all!

For you intellectuals who might counter that the Berlin Wall fell and the Third Reich fell, and those were good things, I would say to you that the Berlin Wall falling and putting Germany back together may not prove to be so good. Germans, are the same people that brought you the "war to end all wars", lost it, and then brought you it's sequel! You think we've heard the last of them? When they're the quietest… that's when you need to pay most attention.

"But love, Bill. People fall in love!"

Sure they do. Like Syd and Nancy- with great toxicity and eventually, death. Paul and Heather, too. Ask Paul if sleeping with a cute-ish blonde amputee was worth the $275M it cost him. Britney and Kevin were in love long enough to make a baby. Two babies, even. By my math, they were in love for as long as 30 seconds!  There are any number of other tragic couplings. Ask the minions of divorcees how they feel about that!

I might add, people fall out of love just the same. The saddest song there ever was is "When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall." Oh. My. God! That proves it…your argument is invalid.

Fall is bad. We should run, people. Not walk. Burlington can't make enough coats. Bridgestone can't produce enough snow tires. My deep freezer is cannot hold enough Girl Scout cookies, bourbon and fatty meats to get me through the winter.

Those same trees you all ooh and ahh about will be chopped to smithereens and sacrificed to the use of my chilled bones as I huddle afore the hearth, staring intently at the warm, dancing flames, wondering, "should I jump in?"

I'm not monied, so I can't 'winter' anywhere. I'm stuck. Que lastima! I will have to hunker in, bear down, grit my teeth, gird my loins and stiffen my upper lip. All of which will be hard to do while I'm in the fetal position, facing the corner, rocking and crying softly to myself. Weeping salty tears, which before too long, will freeze to my face holding its contorted look of anguish in suspension until that day comes on the other side when the sun shines warmly again upon my face and the rain falls softly upon my field.

Until we meet again… wish me luck. I'm gonna need it.

Death by Meeting

I spend a lot of time in meetings. A lot. There are several general behaviors that are predictable and occasionally even hilarious.

Repetition of favorite phrases:
I can't tell you how often I use the term "manage by exception." Basically, this is a more professional and self-important way to say, "I don't have the first clue of what the consequence of this decision is going to be, so let's just do it and see what happens." Or, even more succinctly, "Let's wing it."

I'm not the only one. There are myriad examples. I have a colleague who likes to say, in his drawl, "I'll sit here and say…" He sits and says all the time. In fact, he seldom speaks without sitting here, apparently. I for one am glad to hear he is sitting there and saying, because if he was suddenly standing behind me and saying, I'd be alarmed. Sometimes it's good to know the whereabouts of your coworkers.

The same co-worker likes to use the word "spot" like the Smurfs use the word "surf." Its an omni-word. He might be heard to say, "I'm gonna sit here and say that we need to put that spot into that spot right there…" Well said.

There is one guy who likes to say "pursuant to." Everything is pursuant to something else. "Pursuant to the last statement, I'd like to indicate my agreement to that statement." Brilliant.

Yet one more doesn't know the difference between 'agreement' and 'aggreance'. If you're racing to look up the word aggreance, I'll save you the hassle… it doesn't exist. Except to this person, who also likes to use it in its totally made-up plural form. "Bill, I'm in a hundred-percent aggreances with you…"

I am so glad. I was worried that you weren't.

Varying levels of involvement:
I often put conference calls on hold and leave for minutes at a time. On occasion, I come back and throw in a "harumph" a "huzzah" or some such thing. This makes it seem like I've been there the whole time.

Even if I'm not leaving, I seldom don't multitask. I'm on a video conference right now. Writing this. While others can see my video feed. So I have to look and act interested while really doing my own thing. This is quite a feat. It takes a lot of energy to do all that. And I'm typing in "super-quiet mode" so that they can't hear the clacking of the keys.

Oops, here's a part I need to do. I'll be right back.

Ok, false alarm. The guy running the meeting apparently knows my part better than I do. No sweat. This is another example of a trend I notice.

There's always one guy who knows everything - as long as you knew it first:
I may be the one that's supposed to present on something, but there's some guy who always knows more than I do… even if he only is presenting "facts" after I have presented them. That happens a lot with a couple of my coworkers that like to take what I just said and make it their own, often to much ballyhoo and backslapping. I've actually said great things that were then repeated by a coworker and the coworker was told, "great job!"

Indeed.

The dipsy-doodle:
Just yesterday, another senior manager called a conference call, including people in three offices on both sides of our operating footprint. No agenda, just a meeting request. So we call in and the manager says, "Ok, Bill, why don't you get started…"

I knew the general topic of the meeting, but did not know why the meeting was called, what the meeting was to accomplish and by what means those enigmas were supposed to be communicated.

I fumbled through, though the people on my end knew precisely that "we" had no idea why "we" called a meeting. Nothing worse than a group of busy people shooting eye daggers at you because they know you are wasting their time.

I called said co-worker after the fact and said in no uncertain terms, "Don't ever, ever do that again. You call the meeting, you run the meeting. Do it again and I will throw you under the bus so fast you won't know your mama's name."

Hang on… I might need to go for real this time.

I said, "Ok." That's my biggest contribution to the meeting so far. Which brings me to my final point.

The unnecessarily large meeting:
In my world, meetings are attended by approximately 300% more people than need to be there. It is almost like every meeting is treated as though a dying tribal elder is assembling the village to tell his last epic story for the last time. There are scribes, there are people I didn't even know worked for us, there are managers nodding reverently and others looking at the rest of us wondering just what the hell to do.

This makes what could be a 10 minute phone confab between two or three people an hour-long ordeal at the end of which everyone in the room is made to state their unconditional commitment to the cause and their specific take-away.

Incidentally, this is the act of repeating in different words what the first person said, since there was only one thing you could possibly take away from the meeting that is proper to share in a corporate meeting setting.

So, for thirty minutes, twenty-two people in three states are playing the, "I can make what you just said sound better and more important" game. Priceless.

One hour, 10 minutes into this meeting, I have now said, "OK" and "Yes". I wrote a blog post, laughed when appropriate, did my harrumphs and huzzahs, caught up on Twitter, peed, and texted one of my managers, which incidentally, actually accomplished something.

Overall, an above average meeting.

Strumming

It's been a long, long time since I have seated myself in front of the computer with the express intention of writing a blog post. Even now, I'm doing it only because my meeting, supposed to be going at 8:00 this morning, is still not going at 8:39.

I hate waiting. Why do they make me wait?

Rather than blogging, my creative outlet over the last several months has been music. Not just the listening to, as that is always a favorite pastime of my, but the making of. The making of is new. Well, not new, latent. Not latent, reborn. Yes, reborn.

And while one of my esteemed high school youth said it best when she said of the ukulele, "It's not that big a deal… it's like the recorder of stringed instruments…", I have been teaching myself to play. I've never played a stringed instrument before, unless you count my fifth grade foray into the cello. I assure you, you should not count my fifth grade foray into the cello. As soon as we started using that pesky bow, I was out. I loved plucking the thing, though.

Perhaps Mrs. Legree failed to notice my potential as a stand-up bassist. I could be hooked on drugs playing for tips in a jazz band today, if only she had nurtured me.

Oh, lost opportunity!

I think part of my desire to learn the ukulele is that it is simple. But really it's because of my cracked sense of humor and incessant self-deprication. There is something weird and creepy and funny about a big fat guy that looks like a biker, (the words of another of my blatantly honest high school students), playing a little stringed instrument.

Like a caricature, it is funny because it is obtuse. A little off. Just like me.

Of course, I don't play Hawaiian happy-go-lucky music on it either. The first song I learned was "Mother", by Pink Floyd; A treatise on an overbearing, overprotective mother who stifles her young boy into insanity.

Such serious pretense played on such a "happy" instrument. That, my friends is a funny juxtaposition.

Surprisingly, I have really taken to playing. I enjoy it immensely and play as often as possible. It is the only activity that can take me out of my day and put me into a place of relaxation. I will, given the chance, play for a couple hours in a sit.

I don't like playing in front of other people. I'm frequently frustrated by my inability to play and sing some more complex songs at the same time. It seems to be one or the other right now.

But I am getting better and I am still enjoying myself and I am glad that Emily bought me the instrument as a birthday present. Since I am on the mailing list for guitar center now, I see they have a sale on a mandolin. That would be fun. I figure the uke is a gateway drug to the guitar, at least. Or perhaps even the stand-up bass.

Now that's growth.

The Perfect Roast Beef Sandwich That Wasn't

I was hungry yesterday. I had skipped breakfast because… well, I skipped breakfast. By 11:00 I was properly hungry. My co-worker kindly let me know he had sandwich fixins, and that I was free to leech off of him.

Super.

I made  a roast beef sandwich. A simple sandwich with regular bread and roast beef from "Farms" that probably don't look anything like the idyllic picture on the pink plastic lid. Add a little mayo and some mustard and, bam! Hunger gone.

But it made me pine for a real roast beef sandwich.

Off to the store after work to pick out the perfect, medium rare roast beef, French bread, artisan cheese, tomato, lettuce, spicy mustard and mayo.

A word about mayo. Mayo is mayo and nothing else is mayo. Why merchants continue to perpetrate the fraud of putting "Miracle Whip" and other "spreads" with actual mayo is beyond me, but they do. Since I'm not into the hackneyed premise of creating mystery, I'll come out with it. I bought Hellmann's, (my preferred brand) Real Whipped Tangy, which I thought was mayonnaise, but was really just Hellmann's sell-out version of Miracle Whip.

To be fair, nothing on the label says "mayonnaise", but the word "real" does appear. Unfortunately, the  word "bad" isn't on the label, either, because it's real bad.

Home now, I cut my bread, slice my tomato, spread my mustard and Hellmann's on the bread, warm up the oven, etc., etc.

The perfect roast beef sandwich is only 10 minutes away. I licked my fingers a little and realized the mayo didn't taste right, which is when I realized my mistake.

I knew my sandwich, and probably my life, were ruined.

I added dill and garlic powder. I added salt and pepper. I added paprika and hot sauce.

Nothing I added could disguise the fact that this stuff was nasty-ass off-brand Miracle Whip.

I only ate half the sandwich. The rest is sitting in the fridge. Now the perfect roast beef sandwich, the very thing that was supposed to deliver me from hunger and usher in the baseball game, sits unloved, unwanted; taunting me every time I open the fridge.

Mr. grocer! Please, create a separate section for non-mayonaisse spreads. Somewhere out in the parking lot or in the receiving room or something. Deliver the rest of us from this pretender to the throne of food lubrication perfection. I have suffered much, but if I can save just one more person from being disappointed, maybe I can take solace in that.

_______________________________________

I got an ukulele (editor's note, it sounds wrong, but is, by rule correct to say "an ukelele") for my birthday, a gift from Emily. It's a good stringed instrument to start with. Small, unintimidating, (four strings instead of 6 or 12), and relatively cheap.

I got it Saturday night and it's now Wednesday morning. I haven't been able to put it down.

I suck, but I have never enjoyed something that I am so bad at. I am spurred on by friends younger than I as well as contemporaries of mine who are self-taught instrumentalists. I typically eschew anything I'm not immediately good at.

I bear no specific aptitude for playing music, but...

I can't put it down. I have spent hours and hours and hours practicing. I have gone from knowing nothing, (literally zero chord fingerings or how to strum), to memorizing several (maybe a dozen) chords. I even can grind through some songs and came up with the beginnings of a little ditty of my own.

Funny thing - I can't sing and play at the same time. I've been singing my entire life. Ask anyone I know. They'll tell you I sing even at the most inappropriate times. But I can't sing and strum.

I followed along to a recording of the song I was working out last night, (Mother by Pink Floyd), and while I know every word, inflection and phoneme of that recording, I just can't get the words to come out while I am playing.

I guess I'll learn eventually. The point is I am having a good time trying.

Why I Don't Write Recipes

Emily is a great cook. She studies cooking and collects recipes like some people collect tchotchkes. I cook, too, but I don't use recipes. Mostly, I don't use recipes because, I reckon, I am a little Dyslexic. I have a hard time following directions from a written form. Always have.

But still, I cook. Usually from taste. I deconstruct what must be in a given dish and then reconstruct it my way. Some food doesn't need a recipe. It is what it is.

Like chili.

I love to make chili. I have made chili since I can remember, always refining and changing things until I get what I want. Well, that's one story anyway, but it's apocryphal. The real reason is it changes from time to time is that I forget what I did in the past.

That ends now, because I just made my second batch of a chili I really like. I want to be able to repeat it in the future. So, I'm going to write a recipe. Why not share it with you, the masses. I mean, it's not like it's the some super secret… it's chili.

Chill Billy's Willy Chili

Ingredients:
2 lbs. ground beef (the cheaper the better)
1 lb.  ground pork (I like mild, because there is plenty of flavor here, but go with hot if you can deal      
                               with the burning ring of fire… you know what I'm talking about)

(Note: If you're the type of person who would have gone to Woodstock wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, you can substitute ground turkey or chicken, but I want you to know that this is a sin against humanity and if you want to each chili without the hearty meats, I suggest having some bullion, instead.)

3 28 oz. cans of petite diced tomatoes
1 12 oz. can of tomato paste
1 15.5 oz. can of light red kidney beans
1 15.5 oz. can of dark red kidney beans
1 15.5 oz. can of cannellini beans
(You can use black beans if you like the scatology that comes along with them) 
7-8 cerano peppers
2-3 banana peppers
7-8 large cloves of garlic
1 medium yellow onion (substitute white onion for a more acidity if you are divorced or recently 
                                        spurned)
1 medium red onion

(You know what? Use any kind of onion you want, see if I care. I mean, it's MY recipe, but if you want to screw it all up and muddle your onions because you think you know better than me, what do I care?)

1 12 oz. bottle of dark ale (or preferred) beer
1 bottle dry red wine (cabernet or dry red table wine with minimal residual sugar - Merlot and Shiraz    
                                   are unacceptable)
2 cups brewed coffee (substitute 1 tsp. prepared coffee to 2 cups water, or don't put coffee in at all if 
                                    you are some sort of Juan Valdez hating jerk)
1 Tsp. red pepper flake
2 Tsp. chili powder
2 Tsp. Paprika
4 Tsp. garlic powder
2 Tsp. onion powder
2 Tsp. cumin
2 Tsp. dill weed
2 Tsp. ground mustard
2 Tsp. salt
4 Tsp. black pepper
2 Tsp. chicken soup base
1 dash of ground cinnamon
Got any other dry spices around? Throw some in.

Method:

Open the bottle of wine. You don't need it for the dish for awhile, but it's nice to have a glass of wine at the beginning of a journey… so long as it's not a driving journey. Sip the wine while you pull out all the assorted accoutrement necessary, like a Dutch oven, cutting boards, knives, a vegetable chopper a small frying pan, etc. It's best to plan your work spaces, move the trash can if you need to… get everything just so. This process will take as long as it takes to drink a glass of wine.

Set oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit, d'uh)

Once you have everything just so, refresh your glass of wine. Place it near you where it can comfort you and be available to your service, but not in your way.

Mix dry spices in an oven safe sauté pan and place in oven to toast a bit. How long? Until you remove it will suffice… this isn't baking. It's cooking. Cooking is an art. I think you need a sip of wine. You worry too much.

Cut peppers in half down the length and place skin side up on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

Peel garlic cloves and place them on the baking sheet with the peppers.

Drizzle the whole lot with a little olive oil and place into the hot oven to roast a bit. I don't know how long… a bit.

Place the meats into the Dutch oven and chop and stir while they brown completely.

Keep working at the meat with a wooden spoon or paddle. This is hard work and requires you to stop every here and there to tipple some wine.

Drain the excess grease from the meat. I didn't used to do this, but since my fortieth birthday is around the corner, I'd like to be there to celebrate it.

Place the drained, browned meat back in the Dutch oven. Remove the sauté pan of dry seasoning and sprinkle it over the meat while stirring. try to get an even coating. This will form the base of your chili. If you do this wrong, you just wasted about $15.00 worth of food and a half or more bottle of wine.

Finely chop the onion. I use a veggie chopper like a Slap Chop, but not a Slap Chop, because I don't live in a trailer. If you live in a trailer, and/or have a Slap Chop, use it. Mine is by a company that doesn't pay me, but I will say they rhyme with Campered Phef.

Put the raw onion in with the cooked meat. Stir.

Whew… there's a lot going on here. Take a sip of wine. Wait! is there at least 2 cups left? No? Ok, grab the beer you opened earlier. Yeh, that's nice.

Dump a cup or so of the beer into the mix. Go ahead and dump in the 2 cups of wine in, too. The rest is for you and if you're doing it right, it will all be gone by the time you're done.

Oh, crap! the peppers! Pull those out. Set them aside and let them cool.

Open all the beans and drain them and rinse them. Place them into the Dutch oven.

Open the tomatoes and throw them in.

Are you stirring? No? Why? Because I didn't tell you to? Well, do you need to be told to wear pants before you leave for work? Wait, you are wearing pants, aren't you?

OK, stir.

Use your Slap Chop to chop up the roasted peppers and garlic. They won't chop so much as they will mush into a tapenade. That's good… I'm too old for chili that has full bites of peppers.

Mix it all in and stir it up.

Add a little of the liquid coffee. Trust me. It's good. And it's better than adding water… water has no flavor and every time you add water into a recipe, Jesus cries.

Add the soup base now, too. Mostly because I forgot to tell you to do it earlier and you've shown a propensity to be a bit of a lamb. I mean you could have added it any time you wanted to, but since you waited until now, that's fine.

Stir the chili and make sure it's the consistency you like. Chili is supposed to be pretty hefty, so don't over thin it. You could always add a little tomato juice to get it the way you want it. But if you need to, add a little water. It's OK now. It wasn't OK then. Don't ask, just follow the recipe!

Let the chili steep for an hour at low simmer before you even try it. Chili needs to sit and mature. The flavors need to marry and divorce and go through a mid-life crisis and find Jesus and settle down with a nice flavor that respects it for what it is and doesn't expect it to be something it's not. This takes time.

After a minimum of an hour, taste it and add more spices as required to bring it to where you want it. You could splash some Tobasco Sauce, or if you live in that trailer and use a Slap Chop, you could use Frank's Red Hot.

Wait another hour or even two. Like I said, chili doesn't come into it's own right away. It needs to be nurtured. You should stir it every once in awhile. It's not necessary, but food that has been doted upon always tastes better.

Notes:

• If you don't drink, or don't want to put alcohol in your dish, replace with like volume of tomato juice. It's not as fun, but, whatever.
• If you don't like your chili to have a bite, I suggest making another dish. Like milquetoast, or something tofu based. You can buy those things at the store that has special parking for electric cars and women who gave birth by midwife.

And that's my chili recipe. Enjoy in good health!

The Thousand Dollar Club Soda

I am not to to the point of being able to laugh about it, yet. But I also know it's not the end of the world… or even the end of the day. I recently flew to see me parents out west after my Mother had some surgery.

Mom is doing well, and whatever else is happening in my life right now, that is the most important and wonderful thing. The rest, as they say, is pops and buzzes. I would like to say what happened is of no consequence, except just because something is benign in the grand scheme, the immediacy of consequence makes them a bit harder to swallow.

The average seat on a commercial airliner is approximately 3 scintilla larger than my ass. By the time you get to my shoulders, I am spilling into my neighbor's territory. Thusly crammed into the plane on the return flight, I was unable to work, as I literally could not type. It was futile. I tried all sorts of positions and exotic movements to work within the confines of my circumstance.

I probably looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to roll sushi… if the Tyrannosaur was sticking his tongue out in an attempt to tap into that last nth of whatever effort it is I think I can extract from doing so. If my Dad had a dollar for every time he told me to "put your tongue in your mouth", he'd have exactly half the number of dollars he would if he got paid for each time he said "get your hands out of your pants".

Either way, he would be wealthy.

Next to me was a rather sick looking man in his late twenties. Though from the looks of him, he fancied himself a younger person… a warrior, perhaps. He was smashed when he got on the plane. I didn't catch his name, but he repeated "double scotch on the rocks and a Coke Zero," enough times that I took to calling him Johnny Walker in my head.

Johnny walker was watching an episode of Law and Order over my shoulder. That's a nice way of saying that I was watching the episode on my computer with my headphones on. Since I had only enough room to sit and stare, I selected the only hour-long show available to me in an effort to pass the time. It was free.

I ordered a club soda as Johnny Walker ordered another of his concoctions.

I stress, this was only club soda. No booze. No flavor. It could have come from a can called "Puritans' Choice" for all I know, though the merry, dancing bubbles of club soda may have overwhelmed our Puritan forefathers… to say nothing of our Puritan foremothers!

The only thing hard about this club soda was the lime they put in it… which I hadn't asked for. In today's flying environment, that's tantamount to first class customer service. \

I was enjoying my free Law and Order and free club soda with lime. I wasn't enjoying Johnny Walker's breath, but that sort of thing is de rigeur flying back from Vegas. The party never ends, right up to the time you land back in Poughkeepsie or Menneola, or whatever plebeian jerkwater you come from.

The air was smooth.

No one coming down the aisle bumped me.

I was in no way interfered with.

So how did the cup of free club soda and lime, just do a bank shot on the screen of my open computer and land a seat away on the ogling Mr. Walker?

I looked at my hand, once holding a cup, now empty.

It was there just a second ago. Now, it was gone.

I sat, sort of blankly contemplating this as the insidious bubbly beverage was seeping its way into my computer.

A brief moment passed before I sprang into action. The first thing I did was the first thing any reasonable person would do.

I said, "shit!"

Not just shit - but a lurid, long, lascivious "sssshhhhiiiiit". The kind of shit where before the ssssshhhhh part is done, everyone in the vicinity already knows the end.

As quickly as I could, I turned to computer upside down and leaned on the power button to do an emergency shut-off. In keeping with the theme, I politely asked the flight attendant for "a shit load" of napkins, "please". People all around were handing me their tiny cocktail napkins that are useful for exactly what, I am not sure. But the thought was nice and I tried to be gracious in my thanks.

To her credit the attendant came back swiftly with what I would call a metric shit load of c-fold towels. Good ones. Collectively, everyone in aisles 30-32 was helping us mop up.

I did the best I could to remove as much water as I could from my computer.

Johnny Walker lamented, "I guess we're done watching Law and Order," which was odd, because he couldn't hear any of it. "That show is addictive," he finished.

He pointed to the computer and said knowingly, "That sucks."

I shrugged nonchalantly. However, I think I was sweating on the inside of my skin. What was done was done, but that didn't stop me from obsessing about it internally.

Deep in thought, and out of nerves I suppose, I began to pick at a stray hair on my forehead… well, what's now my forehead, but what used to be my hairline. This hair is tenacious, a fighter. A stubborn gladiator. The lone survivor of a battlefield once populated by seemingly infinite number of soldiers, all of which turned out to be weak recalcitrants excelling in retreat.

I did this until it hurt. Actually, I am quite sure it hurt for awhile and I didn't stop until it really hurt.

The flight attendant came by and Johnny Walker ordered another double scotch. I pulled out my credit card and said I would like to buy it for him. It wasn't necessary, he indicated, but I insisted. The flight attendant brought it, and one for me, too… "If you want it." There was a certain twinge of pity in her voice as she looked thoughtfully at the man who just spilled water all over his computer, his row of people, and who now had a fissure in his forehead.

I gladly accepted it and she never charged me for either drink, which considering the free club soda with lime, Law and Order and shit-load of towels was a veritable embarrassment of free customer service. All for no charge to me.

My parents bought a new car in 1986 that came with a matched set of leather luggage. Later that year, at the Eddie Bauer store, Mom saw the same luggage and remarked about the fact it cost a few hundred dollars and she got hers for free. My 11 year-old self responded, "actually, you paid $16,000 for yours."

As we descended into the complex southwest to northeast landing pattern over Detroit, Johnny Walker looked at me and said, a little breathlessly, "we made it."Suddenly, the six scotches started to make sense. He didn't like flying.

Right now, I didn't either.

My free club soda with lime, episode of Law and Order, shit-load of towels and double scotch cost me $1,000. Actually more, but for some reason, titling this post The Twelve Hundred Dollar Club Soda was less impactful to my finely honed literary sensibility.

My computer works, but it won't charge. It will only run off both the battery and A/C, but with no means to charge the battery, I am tethered. I have an exceptionally light, compact, expensive computer can't go more than six feet in any direction of a power outlet. A paradox unknown prior to our 21st century.

Also, I think the way its circuitry is, it starts off battery power, which is winding down. 85% at the time of the dousing… 77% now and going nowhere but down. I figure I have a month before I can't use the computer at all.

I don't have a grand to spend on a computer. I don't want to spend a grand on a computer. In the short-term, it's a little bit of a pain.

But, my Mom is healthy. I got to spend time with my family. And, while my clairvoyance is a little rusty, I think I will be blessed with being able to spend time with them into the future, which a couple weeks ago was not at all certain.

Long story short, I would steamroll a whole Apple Store worth of slender, lightweight, expensive laptops and toss my credit card on the pile while walking away nonchalantly for the ability to see my family, happy, healthy for years to come.

Here is to successful surgery, packed discount airlines, club soda and unsecured, revolving consumer debt. Life. Goes. On.

Retrospecticus

I guess it's appropriate to give a little fond adieu to 2013. It wasn't a bad year for us, and in fact, seems like a generally good year for most of the people I know. Which is good, because 2008 through 2012 really sucked eggs. I ain't talkin' chicken eggs, either.

Lots of political people did stupid things in 2013. And I don't mean just in their inane actions and stupid speeches. I mean the new color of orange that John Boehner chose is a mess. Who is his wardrobe consultant? He looks like a 1969 Dodge swathed in "Mango Madness". The man is so irrevocably tinted, it's no wonder he is prone to breaking out in tears for little or no reason. Most of his organs are leaking out of his tear ducts.

President Obama acted like a typical second term president and essentially delivered every speech, pressed every policy and attended every event with middle finger boldly extended. Who can blame him. Ever quit a job? What was your last two weeks like? Fun, right? I mean, who offing cares? Not this guy. Why else would you take a selfie at the funeral of Nelson Mandella? Stay classy, Mr. President.

Not like it matters. Presidents' legacies, at least in immediacy,aren't within their control anyway as our broken media machine will just crank and crank and crank their own agenda through the medium of punditry. I think I would have a pretty relaxed attitude toward constituent service under the same circumstances.

So, congrats, Mr. Obama for properly defining "change". Turns out, the more things change, the more politicians stay the same.

U.S. Air and American Airways merged to form the worlds largest airline. Finally, an airline big enough to care about me, the passenger. I hear that their new unified pricing structure will include new seat stratifications to attract a larger pool of potential fliers.

In addition to the standard First Class, Business Select, Business, Coach and Economy classes, they will add "Al Fresco" class, whereby seats on the wings will provide additional capacity and much needed revenue. You are urged to wear a coat.

Finally "Feelin' Lucky" class, which uses aircraft in various states of repair that would otherwise just be empty as they are ferried to a repair hub.

This option cannot be purchased from the ticket counter or website. Instead you have to tell a skycap that "Jose" sent you, at which point you will be given a pair of maintenance overalls and spirited into the hangar area where you hand your money, (or weed, or promise of sexual favors), to the guy at the door. Travel insurance is not available for this option.

In the boardroom, U.S. Air/American Airways are kicking around new slogans:
"Now falling out of the sky in twice as many cities"
"We can delay your travel to every major U.S. Hub"
"You may be going to Poughkeepsie, but your bags are chillin' in the Bahamas!"

The new airline did confirm that peanuts will cost extra, but since there will invariably be some allergic douchebag on every flight, that won't be an issue for most passengers. Also, there will be a $1.25 surcharge on pretzels. There will be a $2.50 surcharge on "no thanks" and a $5.00 surcharge on ice water, with a  two ice water limit.

Heads will be replaced with pay heads. 2 quarters will be required for entry. Two required to lift the seat. 4 quarters to make the faucet work and an additional 2 quarters to leave. Of course, for convenience, passengers can still swipe their credit card for convenience. There will be a $52.00 surcharge for this.

There is a $51.95 surcharge for not using the restroom at all.

Apple Inc. of Cupertino, California continued its slide into mediocrity by selling more and more products that only sometimes work and don't work well when they do work, all in the name of pushing more volume. Somewhere in the distance, Steve Jobs is very, very angry.

In related news, Samsung and Microsoft sued Apple for stealing their business model.

On the international front, Syrians are still getting killed. Iranians still hate Israelis. Iraqis still want the U.S. out of the country. Afghans don't know what to believe and Palestine can't believe it's the most normal and well-adjusted nation out of the whole region. Who knew?

French people took time off their busy 35 hour work week to protest the new law requiring 37.5 hours of work per week. Jean-Louise Ste. Delange de Philemon, a labor expert in France exhorted, "Now I have to come up with creative ways to justify doing nothing for an additional two-and-a-half hours per week? Sacre bleu!" Like most French protests, the uprising was short-lived and ineffective, ending at lunchtime.

Music was a mixed bag in 2013. Groups like The Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, Needtobreathe and others kept it real by using a lot of banjo. So much banjo that I thought I was listening to the bluegrass channel on the radio when in reality it was the adult contemporary hits channel.

But for every contra cello that sneaked its way onto an album in 2013, there were countless Mileys, Biebers, Ke$has, Maroon 5s and other talentless hacks destroying any hope that the aliens monitoring our radio waves will land and teach us the secrets of the vast universe. Every time the cast of Glee opens its mouth, we are doomed to another 20 years of waiting.

Public radio held two full weekends without a pledge drive in 2013. A record.

Among the celebrities who died in 2013 were notable actors, musicians and political figures. Lucky bastards.

There was a future King born in the U.K., which is kind of like saying some day I'll get Social Security. If I do it will be far too late and far too little to mean anything.

The Government sold the last of its shares in GM. The net loss to taxpayers was $50 Billion dollars. The Government could have held on the shares until the gap had closed a bit, but thought better of reversing decades of bad decision making. "Hey, we can always just print more money," one Treasury official said. "No one has tried that before, right?"

Unemployment sunk to a five year low. And so did the hundreds of thousands of people whose unemployment insurance ran out. "This isn't over," former Leahman Brothers financial analyst Bryce McMann muttered in his sleep as he synched up his sleeping bag under the overpass where he sleeps.

The so-called assault on the middle class continued unabated in 2013. One politician was heard to remark that America was never based on a class system anyway, "So the middle class is just a myth." He went on to dump hot lava on the protestors out front of his office while an aide pounded an ominous beat on the kettle drums.

On the home front, we made out a will and trust in 2013. Just like before the will and trust was executed, no one gets anything. Unless your name is Visa. Then you get about 50% of what you want. You'll have to harvest our organs if you want anymore. Mine are worthless. You'll be wanting to speak with my wife who actually takes care of herself.

I'm sure there are other notable things to remember about 2013. But why hang on? Time keeps flowing, like a river to the sea. Hey, is Alan Parsons still alive? He is? Does he read this blog? No. Okay, good.

That's all for 2013. Here's hoping 2014 is less tragic, more funny, less impoverished, more wealthy and all that. As we pass the torch of supremacy to the Chinese in the form of our increasingly worthless dollars buying increasingly worthless crap from increasingly greedy merchants, let us pause and remember that fewer and fewer people in America can remember a time when we were the envy of the world; and to whom the American dream was something real and wonderful, not something ironic and nebulous.

America 2014 FTW!










 

Seven Words That Aren't But Should Be

I like words. I really like words. No, I like, like words. But my favorite words aren’t even words at all, they’re illegitimate love children of other words that rubbed together a few too many times and, poof! New word!

To English scholars and semi-intelligent people, these are known as portmanteaux words. You might think of them as mash-ups of multiple words that together provide a whole new and useful level of description.

Of course, it can all go wrong.  “Irregardless” is a great example. If you are wondering why irregardless is being mentioned among a list of words that aren’t and you’ve been using it in e-mails, memos, at work in conversation, it’s time for you to know that everyone is laughing at you.

Irregardless is a bad portmanteaux because it is completely unnecessary – a mere bastardization of two perfectly good words; “irrespective” and “regardless”, neither one of which is in need of modification for the sake of improvement.

That example aside, not all portmanteaux words are the devil’s work. Some are actually quite ideal and should be added to the lexicon posthaste. Call the OED! Picket outside of Miriam Webster’s offices. Ah, hell, just add them to Wikipedia, that’s as far as most people go these days anyway.

#7 “Blentry” Let’s start slow. Since you’re getting an English lesson from this blog, we’ll assume this is the best way to start. Blentry is quite simply a blog entry.

See? It’s perfect. That’s why these words that aren’t words should be words. Because blentry. What else could a blentry be? It is perhaps the perfect and most useful of the modern portmanteaux words because, by definition it could not be anything other than what it is.

“I really liked your blentry today. It was very funny”, is what I imagine people would say to me if they ran across me on the street rather than trying to run over me.

Blentry advances the lexicon because it describes in a keenly effective way a modern thing that didn’t exist until recently. But because it pulls from simple words that everyone knows, it is immediately recognizable. It also makes something that used to require two words, blog entry, into only one, thus doubling our productivity and helping us win the war against liberty.

Thanks to David W. Towne Esq. for contributing “Blentry”

#6 “Fauxnitiative” takes the words faux (a real French word that means “fake”) and initiative to create something that every working person is familiar with; either because you’ve seen it or done it.

You know that person at work that is always talking about how busy they are but always seems to be playing free cell when you walk by their cube? They are the same ones who at every status meeting talk about all they have done to move the ball on their project when no one else has heard of the project. They are expressing fauxnitiative.

Fauxnitiative is a well-known and oft-used gambit to avoid doing any real work. It can be used in almost any environment. Like the littlest guy in a group of big guys talking smack about “beating ass” and such, when he has no intention of doing any of the hard work himself.

You can choose to call out a person’s fauxnitiative, but it may backfire because everyone already knows they are full of shit. It just makes you look petty by calling attention to it. Also, if you call someone else out for overplaying their fauxnitiative, someone could be right behind you ready to do the same to you. This is why fauxnitiative continues. It’s the proverbial Mexican standoff.

#5 “Expectable” is the result of a torrid affair between expect and acceptable. Something expectable is something that met your low expectations and not one little bit more. Expectable is like every meal ever served at Applebee’s. Expectable is every Michael Bay film or first dates with people who responded to your personal ad on Craigslist. You aren’t looking for much, but at least you get it.

“Hey, how are those Buffalo ranch boneless broasted chicken tips?”

“I don’t know. Fine I guess…  they’re expectable.”

Thanks to Gregory B. Gruley for contributing Expectable

#4 “Poordom” is the sublime partnership of poor and boredom. Poordom is the never-ending drudgery of being poor.

“He sat under the leak in his roof, contemplating his poordom.”

“While she wanted to join her friends at the bar, she couldn’t afford the cover charge on account of her poordom.”

You get it.

The Grapes of Wrath may have been worth reading if Steinbeck had words like poordom in his quiver to describe the zeitgeist of dustbowl America during the depression. Like all good portmanteaux words, it conveys precision and depth of meaning.

#3 “Snuzzle” might trip up some people. It’s the confluence of snot and muzzle. It is basically the stuff pet owners have to chisel off their windows at home and in the car; or instead learn to live with it and just pretend that solidified dog snot isn’t as gross as kissing your sister.

Snuzzle is mostly impervious to cleaning products as it sort of reconstitutes into a gelatinous ooze when liquid is applied. It’s best to just replace your window.

No one knows how snuzzle becomes so impossible to clean. It must be that magic combination of saliva, Beggin’ Strips and ass matter that creates some impervious ionic bond at the molecular level.

Though snuzzle is gross, it’s common. And being common makes it somewhat less disturbing, unlike the next example, which while common is creepy by definition.

#2 “Cryptcreeper” is a play on the famous “Crypt Keeper”, the animatronic host of Tales from the Crypt, an old Friday night spook show on HBO before HBO showed only boob related material after the dinner hour.

A cryptcreeper is a person way too old to be in a particular bar, trying to pick up a person from a younger demographic.

Maybe it’s the Members Only jacket, or the just past its prime toupee. Perhaps the 10 year old Bimmer that looks sorta nice in the dark of the bar parking lot, until you see the wire coat hanger holding up the muffler and the bald, mismatched tires.  Or maybe it’s the carefully studied application of popular slangs that jumped the shark a couple months ago.

A Cryptcreeper is flashing the cash to make up for the fact that he looks like an undercover operative sent by your parents to make sure you were acting like a young lady or young gentleman.

Cryptcreepers are always men, because a female cryptcreeper would be known as a cougar. And that’s almost always hot, because men are pigs and last call is coming faster than a junior on prom night.

#1 “Apostraphal” should be a word because it not only conforms to the general guidelines of being made of real words, descriptive of what it is and easy to understand, it also contributes to the defeat of one of modern man’s greatest scourges; inappropriate use of apostrophes.

It is the happy marriage of apostrophe, that little tick that is used to denote possession, contractions and all sorts of things, and apocryphal, something generally passed along as a part of the story but not considered true or verifiable.

If you are wondering why apostrophes isn’t spelled apostrophe’s, you are part of the problem. Actually, you are the problem.

These days, printed signs hanging outside of commercial buildings, presumably produced by professional corporate infographic firms, are flipping English teachers and moderately intelligent society alike the big effyou by wantonly misusing this misunderstood but well-meaning and useful punctuation mark.

Look for demonstration’s of apostraphal writing everywhere on social media site’s, blog’s and tweet’s. They’re everywhere.