Return to Happiness

It's been a year...

2006-07-26T13:20:00.000-05:00

The anniversary of my divorce being final passed without notice about a week ago. I remembered the day after and to mark the occasion I read what I posted back then. That probably wasn't the best thing to do but it offered perspective. The me of a year ago was pretty sad about the whole thing and now over twelve months later I'm not sure I feel all that differently about it; I just feel less.

It is hard to put to words all the thoughts and feelings that I have about reaching that year mark. Towards R I still harbor a lot of acute feelings; love, hate, anger, betrayal, confusion. I never wanted to trade in my wife when I was married, but I sure as hell want to trade in my ex-wife. She makes my life difficult and does things that are just wrong. I could go on about it but it's been a fucking year folks; I don't want to be going on about it anymore. I don't. I want it in the past; not cropping up all the time.

Bitterness isn't a feeling that you want in your life. It makes you pessimistic. It makes you think of the bleakest future and then try to avoid it by retreating from things. In the past month I have broken three dates with three different women; twice on the evening of the date. Why do I break the dates? Oh, I've got many reasons for doing so; mostly it is because I can't be bothered to offer myself to a relationship.

In some ways I would like a relationship again. I miss having someone who I can love being close to me (Buddy doesn't count on this one; he's six). When I watch movies and there's a married couple offering each other support in a time of crisis I get jealous. I miss having someone who I am that close with but at the same time I don't have the energy to go out and seek and seek and seek for that which I want. Why? Why can't it be easy and affordable?

Then there's the idea that I'll only be rejected again. I don't want to go out and meet someone only to have them tell me that I'm not worth their time. When it happens I find my enthusiasm dipping down lower. The rejection isn't sugar coated either. Women lack the ability to be polite in this regard I am finding. Their bluntness is something that I would never employ were the tables reversed. So now I've go no real desire for anything like dating, such is my lackluster view of the future. It seems expensive and pointless.

Instead I've been exploring other avenues and interests. I decided that if I've not got time or energy for dating then I should find something to actually get interested in. With Buddy being off at his mother's for the month of July I've had the free time to do comedy again. That's been a blast. I'm writing five minutes of new material for every Monday night and I've been getting laughs! I've also been going to other comedy clubs and open mics in Houston to see what they're like.

My weekly routine has provided me an avenue to escape the feelings that I should be doing something with my personal life. I think of topics and try to find what's funny about them. Then I try to figure out the funniest way to make that point. Over the weekend prior to the Monday night show I practice the jokes on friends to see how they do. Then on Monday I skip lunch and write out the jokes two or three times; this helps me to memorize them. Finally I go to the show and wait for my chance to get up on stage.

I've been having a blast. I'm going to miss it when the month is over and I don't have my Monday nights free. To be honest; doing stand-up has been an almost suitable replacement for getting laid. I do it twice as often as I used to get laid and I get a lot more appreciation for it. I'm not saying that it's better; just different.

I don't know what I'm going to do about you women. The only good thing that I can say at this point is that I will not have to hear the "I don't date guys who have been divorced less than a year." excuse again. That's going to be a nice change of pace when I get to the point that women will be telling me they're not interested again.

So yeah, a year after the divorce and I'm still kicking around. Not everything in my life is rosy but hey; that's to be expected. I feel jaded about a lot of things these days and I don't think that is too good for me. I want to fall in love again but this dating shit is insane. I don't like what it does to me.

Hell hath no Fury...

2006-06-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

A week from today my son will go to his mothers for the entire month of July minus one short weekend in the middle. As the day approaches I find myself having mixed feelings about him going. I know I am going to miss Buddy but I have to admit that I am more than ready for an opportunity to go out with friends again. I feel like his month with his mother will be good for him and for her, she hasn't seen him since the 25th of May, but I worry about the cost to my own life. Therhythm of my life is going to be interrupted again and that isn't something that I look forward to.

As time marches on towards the one year anniversary of the divorce I find that the relationship between Buddys parents, me and his mother, hasn't really improved at all. Time is not healing things and the resentment and anger expressed by R towards the resolution of our marriage is as hot and jagged as ever. I am not the kind of person who likes having anger and hatred directed at me. Generally when I encounter people mad at me I like to hash it out with them. With R though I don't find myself wanting to make theamends.

Wait, that isn't right. I don't want to make the effort to see the amends made. If love is never having to say your sorry then hate is never wanting to.

Hate is a strong word though. I don't feel that I hate R but there is a lot of negative feelings harbored in me about her. I still get flashes of 'revenge fantasies' about R and I can't say that they are welcome anymore. It used to be helpful to put the revenge fantasies in the perspective that I needed to feel anger and hatred against R to get through thedivorces . Now I just want to stop thinking these things; to halt the flashes of violence or intricately plotted revenges from bolting into myconscious.

Jennifer tells me these are natural feeling and they will go away with time. Well subconscious it has been twenty months since we got in the hand basket to hell together and I wish you'd find something else to focus on. Perhaps quitting smoking will give my subconscious something new to focus on. I've gone ten days now since I finished my last pack and aside from two cigarettes in California on the 17th I haven't smoked with any regularity. I hope that kicking this addiction will supplant the anger that still resides in me.

I fear that it is going to be an uphill battle. R has refused to allow Buddy to go to his aunt's wedding. She won't switch weekends and blames it on me. In a long email to my father R listed out the reasons she had for not switching weekends. Accusations flew all over about how I have been difficult to deal with and hesitant to compromise with R over the past year. It is funny how the facts can be the same between tow people but theinterpretation of those same facts be completely different depending on the perspective of the person. Maybe not funny, that isn't the right word. In the fifties someone would describe the situation as being queer but that word now has a different meaning.

Semantics aside, R's email to my father wasn't something to endear her to my family. After reading all her accusations and hearing my parent's reaction to them I am very glad that throughout the divorce I never spoke an unkind word to R's mother about her. I never presented her mother proof that her daughter was a cheating, lying, self-centered harlot. Judging from my parent's reaction to her accusations it would have only made her mother think less of me.

The end of the email was priceless though. After trying to portray herself as the victim of my evil plotting R changes tact and offers blackmail as a solution to the issue. She closed by telling my father that the only way she will consider allowing Buddy to go to the wedding will be if she gets an extra four-day weekend with him. Not an even exchange of weekends but instead she'd get an additional weekend on top of the one we'd trade.

Don't get me wrong about this part because I really would like Buddy to be at my sister's wedding but there is no way in hell that I am going to allow R to blackmail me out of a weekend. As things stand I get between eighteen and twenty-four weekends a year, less than half, and I cherish the time I get to spend with Buddy. R wants to use Buddy as a tool to re-write the divorce decree and that isn't fair to him. If she is going to be this way then it will only cause harm to her relationship with Buddy. He will eventually understand that she put her selfish interestsin front of what he wants.

I really want to leave this post at this point but I have to tell you that Buddy and I had a fantastic five night vacation to California last week. We visited with my sister and herfinance and made the most out of our trip. Buddy's highlight was visiting Legoland and mine was the two days my sister lent us the car and we explored LA and surrounding areas. Buddy came back darkly tanned and I came back with better lungs (cleaner air in LA than Houston) and sun-burned ears.

My Sister's Wedding Plans...

2006-06-12T13:16:00.000-05:00

I got to work early this morning; on a Monday. I got here nearly forty minutes early. I wanted to beat my boss in but she's an early riser and I'm beginning to suspect that this 'new house' that she and her husband are always talking about is in fact a coded reference to the fact that they may well live on the second floor of my office building. I can't understand how they could otherwise actually spend enough time in their home. I feel like I never have enough time at home and would like to have more of it.

The reason I got here early has more to do with the fact that I'm taking a vacation this week. After today I'm not working again until the 20th because after long last I am visiting my sister in California; with Buddy coming along for his first plane ride that he'll remember. He's excited and so am I. This is the sort of experience I've long wanted to give to Buddy and now; nearly a year since my divorce, I finally can. It is far easier to save up money when you don't have to keep the house as cold as R used to like it. I would, in fact, bet you that her monthly apartment electricity bills are higher than my homes.

So tomorrow we're off to sunny California where Buddy and I are going to spend a few lazy days wandering LA and then drive off to Legoland for a day. I'm planning on taking him to the beach and into Hollywood. We're going to see sights that he's going to remember and have loads of fun doing it. He's excited, I'm excited and my sister is excited. It is going to be so nice and relaxing to get away and relax for a while.

It will not all be relaxing though. There is baggage that we're bringing along in the specter of his mother and her issues. Nearly a year after the divorce and she is still being just as much a pain in the ass as ever. The most recent target of her feelings of retribution is my sister's wedding. After thirty-seven years my sister is finally getting married and we're all very excited about this (except R). After ten years in a relationship with a woman (which ended as badly as my marriage did) my sister decided to switch teams and date men. She met a great guy and we were all excited for her but tragedy struck and her boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident three years ago. Since then she's mourned, healed and now has a new guy who she loves. Again, we're all very happy for her and I can't wait to be back in California in October for the wedding.

The only problem is that she's picked a weekend when Buddy isn't with me; he's with his mother and my sister wants him to be in the ceremony. I asked to switch weekends with R back when I first heard about the wedding and R didn't want to give me an answer. She avoided giving me an answer again and again until yesterday the answer finally came. She said that she was unwilling to switch. No reason as to why, just a simple no. At least when she refused to switch weekends with me for my parent's fortieth anniversary she gave a reason.

Now my parents and my sister have both called and told me that my ex is a bitch. Yeah, well tell me something that I already didn't know. Of course she is a bitch and I'm more than positive that she tells everyone I am an asshole. Calling each other names isn't going to solve this issue. Instead I have to find a way to get R to understand that not letting Buddy go to my sister's wedding is going to totally destroy any remaining good faith between her and my family (and there isn't much of that left).

My parents took Buddy camping this weekend out in the hill country part of Texas (west of Austin) and had a great time. During their trip they took Buddy from the campground everyevening and drive to within cell phone range so he could keep up his nightly conversations with his mother. If they couldn't find a tower they used a pay phone. They did this because I asked them to respect R's wishes about the calls. I want her to treat me the same way so it is a bit of that 'do unto others' thing that my Parents are always going on about.

When my father heard of R's refusal I know he was annoyed about all the effort they made to keep up the nightly phone calls. My sister was heart broken. She and R developed a good friendship and my sister commented that it was nice that she had a sister-in-law because she never had a sister. When her girlfriend left her I sent R to stay with her for a week to help her cheer up. After that when they'd see each other they would have a great time talking and acting like sisters. R has decided to take out all the crap from the divorce and not getting custody on my family enmass.

Everyone in my family is handling this differently. My sister is going to talk to R sometime this week while I'm up there visiting so she can ask why R wants to ruin her wedding. My father
sent R and email telling her that she shouldn't be so selfish is she expects my parents to do things for her. My mother is probably at this moment copying down phone numbers from the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine and my brother is in Europe and away from all of this.

I am annoyed. I am annoyed that R hasn't got the decency to respect that Buddy is part of my family too. I am annoyed that dealing with her almost a year after the divorce is still as difficult as it was during the divorce. I am also annoyed because I now have to share Buddy with someone outside my family who can make decisions that affect him and otherpeople I care about. I wish I could call up R and tell her "Tough shit, he's going." but diplomacy has to be the name of the game.

Most of all, I don't want Buddy to miss my sister's wedding.

Sleeping in my Head

2006-05-31T16:13:00.000-05:00

Today is a dreary day here in Houston. The rain falls from gray clouds blanketing the sky making the view from my window remind me of visiting England; except it is close to 80 outside. Still, from inside my office I can pretend that in a few hours my Grandfather will call me down to clean the potatoes in preparation for dinner.

The week has been interesting to say the least. A long weekend visiting with friends and family alike and dealing with a lot of little issues (loose teeth, irrational fears, more dating advice from a six-year-old, late support payments again and a host of other blips on the radar). I have just started the long haul with Buddy; the summer vacation period where R doesn't have her weekday visits and weekends are limited by father's day and other court ordered rules and regulations. So for the entire month of June Buddy is in my care; he doesn't see his mother again until the evening of June 30th.

Part of me is excited about this and part of me feels a bit bad about it. I know that if someone were to take Buddy from me for thirty-six days I would be at a loss as to what to do; five nights without Buddy and I'm feeling rudderless. I feel sorry for R that she has to go this long stretch without seeing her son but at the same time I know that this is what she did to herself when she decided to pick moving in with NB over staying and being a wife and mother. I feel sorry for Buddy too; going that long without seeing his mother is too long in my opinion.

There is also the issue that in all honesty I have become quite comfortable with the schedule we've been on. I get Buddy most of the time and I get the occasional weekend to do my thing without having to worry about my responsibilities to my son. Those weekends allow me to do things like dating women or going out with friends to concerts or bars. I get to relax and unwind and do things at my own pace. I get to think about me for a change and spend time with people who don't constantly ask if I think Godzilla could beat up Superman (he can't).

So part of me is hesitant to embrace this long period of possession with Buddy because it means that my own comfortable schedule is inturrupted. I never have a problem making sacrifices for Buddy but this time; there is a lament that my newfound freedom is being curtailed for a month. I am going five weekends with Buddy and all of a sudden this part of my life that I enjoy is going to be put on hold for a month.

The timing of this sucks. For once in the past few months I'm actually in the mood to date but the opportunity to do so is now a month away. Heck, there's even someone who I want to ask out but I don't think that it's a good idea to go out once and then wait a month for a second date. Finding a balance between Buddy and my personal life is going to be another adjustment I have to make. You see, I've been hesitant to involve Buddy in any sort of activity involving my friends up until very recently.

Last Friday I took Buddy out to a BBQ for a friend who was going away to school. Jules and Bubbha were there and Jules couldn't pass up the opportunity to poke fun about my separation of social and parental activities. She jested that I finally thought my friends to be good enough to meet my son. It isn't like that at all, but I can see how my friends would see things that way. I've just been very protective of Buddy.

For the past eighteen months I have worked hard to provide stability for Buddy. He was going through enough changes in his life already and I didn't feel the need to introduce more to him. His mother moved out, we got a divorce and now his mother is marching full speed towards getting remarried. Everyone told me that what Buddy needed was stability; an absence of change; so that is what I tried to give him.

Now it's been nearly a year since the divorce and over 18 months since R moved out. Buddy will be going to First Grade in the fall and maybe it is time to introduce change into his life. He did fine meeting my friends. They all seemed to like him and I can't say I felt too irresponsible taking him along. He never fussed and never complained about staying out late. The only things that annoyed him about the BBQ was having to eat when he wanted to swim and being told that we had to leave.

Still, change isn't something that I introduce into Buddy's life lightly. I fret over decisions and discuss them with my therapist. I want to go out and meet people and make new friends but I hesitate to do it with Buddy. I don't want to give him a bad impression of me. At the same time I don't want to make Buddy feel like he is to blame for my lack of a social life; I have friends who went through that and I'm not going to do that to Buddy.

I never expected that raising Buddy alone was going to be easy. I expected that I would have to give things up for his best interest and I always told myself that his interests would be enough for me. When I think selfishly about Buddy and get called out on it I feel this burden of grief about thinking that way. The other day my parents gave me the dates they are taking Buddy camping and I was overjoyed that I'd have a weekend in June to go out and do my thing; to go out; to meet new people; to have fun with friends. Now I feel guilty for being happy to have time away from Buddy.

I don't think that makes me a bad parent; just human. I want what is best for my son first; but in close second I want what I want. I want to be happy as someone more than just a father and an employee; I want to be happy as a person. I want to share my life with someone and grow as a person. I need to learn how to deal with the conflicts that arise when I'm making these decisions.

I can't help thinking that it isn't in Buddy's best interest to go over a month without seeing his Mom. I can't help but think that it isn't in Buddy's best interest to never see his father among his father's friends. How can I have what is best for me develop if I feel the need to shut my wants on and off and to switch from being father to being newly-single me and not let the two meet?

Look at this, a second post in a month. Maybe the blog bug has bitten me again; maybe it hasn't. I don't know. Maybe I am using this post to explain something that couldn't be done in chat windows to someone I found out was reading this blog? Believe me gentle reader, that's probably closer to the truth than you'll ever know.

The Growing Never Stops...

2006-05-25T13:19:00.000-05:00

I guess this is becoming a monthly blog now. How sad that it has come to this. Me, the blogger you could count on for a thousand words a day now manages a thousand a month; who would have thought this possible?

I hate to say it, but I think I'm happier now that I'm not visiting a site used to vent my frustrations when times were worse and the future happiness seemed much bleaker. Still, the urge to update you manages to bubble up more times than I allow myself the time to satisfy it and that's why I am here today.

Last night Buddy graduated from Kindergarten. In a few short months he starts first grade and as a father who still marvels at the life I'm leading, I can't believe that he's growing up so fast. There are loads of times that I personally don't feel like an adult, even though I'm thirty-five and have in my time on this planet accomplished a great deal of things. Inside my head, which is where I live I guess, I often find myself thinking that I am still a sixteen year-old kid, or eighteen or twenty-one or whatever.

I don't know if you feel this way gentle reader but I have faith that if I feel some way about something then other people feel the same way. I'm sure many of you who are approaching forty wonder how you've gotten to that age without ever feeling like you've grown up. I know I'm an adult now, but there are times that I still feel like a kid, and now I've got a kid who is growing up too. My self-image was already confused enough and now Buddy is growing up too.

The ceremony was filled with none of the pomp and circumstance that you would expect of a graduation ceremony (with Buddy there in full force the terms pomp and circumstance didn't stand a chance). Instead it was a collection of doting parents watching their kids attempt to behave well enough to get through a dozen or so songs and a few feats of academic excellence. Buddy told time, the girl in his class played 'Ode to Joy' on a keyboard and the other boy did addition. Buddy also showed off his independence by not only leaving the stage to use the restroom in the middle of the ceremony but also taking off his cap and gown and then using the mortarboard hat to fan himself (it was warm in the building).

In the past few months Buddy has passed a lot of milestones in his development process. The other week he gave someone the finger for the first time. It was so adorable too as he started with the pinky and worked his way across the fingers until he got one that gave him the reaction. I told him he gets one free buy with me on things like that, but that giving people the finger was something you needed a drivers license for. Next time I see him doing it I need to devise a punishment that fits the crime.

Then just a few days ago Buddy uttered SOB. Well, not the letters, he actually said 'sons of bitches' in reference to the hoard of battle droids attacking the two of us in the Lego Star Wars game. Again I told him that those words were not appropriate for someone his age and that I'd better not hear it again. You can't say things like that until you have a job in my house (and then if you're under 18 I'll charge you $5 per infraction).

Fortunately the only hand sign Buddy threw up in the ceremony was the international sign to 'hang-loose'. I sat with my parents who wouldn't miss something like this. They drove down and met me for a quick dinner prior to the ceremony. R was there with NB and his family; no sign of her own mother or family. They say in the front row while me and my parents were further back.

The anger is still there in regards to R and NB. I don't like seeing them together and have to literally control the overactive revenge centers of my fertile imagination. During the lulls in Buddy's portion of the ceremony I imagined spitting on this clan of manipulative family stealers, and then beating the shit out of NB. I regretted not taking up Gunther's offer to give him brain damage all those months ago. I don't want this family to be part of Buddy's life because I find them to be back-stabbing, two-faced, self-centered, white-trash assholes. On my scale of sleazy distrustful people NB and his mother share a bench with Tom DeLay and Donald Rumsfeld.

I managed to hold my contempt in check once again; in some ways reminding myself that I am an adult even if I can't deal with everything in a mature way. It helped that Buddy was far more interested in me and my parents than in R and her posse of pernicious patrons. Let them have her and teach her the ways of their treachery. In the long run their values will lead her down the path of destruction; or at least that is what I tell myself over and over again.

Is someone still bitter? Yes, I am. I am bitter about R's upcoming marriage and bitter than I've been devoid of romantic companionship ever since crazy-Liz exited my life. I'd like to meet someone who I can get along with romantically again but there's no way in hell I'm going to keep to the online dating services again. I hate to say it but the large number of experience I've had in that area have been ultimately disappointing. Women I've dated have either been impossible to find a connection with or overly eager to develop one at the detriment to my own pace.

So the Internet dating thing is no longer on the radar. Ladies if you're hoping to find a catch like me (shimmies ass a bit) in the world of online dating you'd better talk to your sisters who are actively making the dating experience on such sites so depressing that men leave and only the boys an the playas are left. Now I'm going to go out with women I meet in person and eschew the use of the internet for such purposes. The internet is for porn, not dating, and thanks to puppets I know that now.

Meeting women, well that is the other trick isn't it. It is hard to meet women that I like and I think a lot of that has to do with my lack of practice in the area. Slowly I'm getting better but as I identify women that I'm interested in. Sometimes my initial first impression of someone is totally wrong and the longer I know them the more interested I become. There's a girl who hangs out in the social circle I'm in that I'm finding myself more and more interested in. At first I thought she was totally outside what I want but as I get to know her I find a number of attractive qualities. So, I'm going to pursue her and see what happens.

There are a few other options, but for the most part I'm really trying to take a break from the ladies. First off, I've got Buddy with me for the next thirty-six days straight and that's going to make dating difficult. Then there is the fact that dating is expensive for guys like me who feel the obligation to pay for meals and the like. So I'm taking it easy and seeing what happens with this girl I know.

Ok, it is time for me to refocus on work. Buddy is fine, I'm doing well and more often than not I feel happy these days. A remarkable turn of events, don't you think?

April Showers...

2006-04-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

Hello all. It's about time for a monthly update I think; time to let you know what's been going on in my life for the past month. If I posted more often again then you'd know all these things but these days posting isn't something that I can make a lot of time for, so you take what you can get I guess.

Today finds me feeling a bit melancholy; a feeling of sadness that you can't quite put your finger on. It is interrupting my return to happiness, and so I know that I must face this issue and figure out how to deal with it before I can move on. Why do I feel this way? You know, there's really not one single reason that I can sum up here. It is a lot of things put together.

Before I get to the issues I do want to let you know that not all is bad in my world. There are some bits of good news and overall things are nowhere near as they have been for me. Work is going great; I love my job and I am enjoying the increased responsibility and challenges that they're giving me. In June I'm taking Buddy to California for a week to visit my sister, who is getting married in October. Next month I'm traveling to Chicago. This past weekend I hung out with new, post-divorce friends and had a great time. So the world isn't all bad and I know that someday in the future I'll have more good things to look forward to.

Here's the thing. I feel out of place in my life right now. I'm in one of those moods where I am morning the fact that I am no longer married. This weekend I missed R being around in ways that I haven't felt in a long time. I missed the companionship and while it was great that my dog enjoys snuggling up to me in bed; he's not able to replace the void in many other areas.

I missed having someone special in my life to share the good times with. Heck, I even missed Liz, who I haven't thought about in a few months. I was envious of my friends who are in relationships. I feel that is where I belong and relationships are where happiness lives.

Then this morning I get the most hopelessly obscure 'Dear John' letter from this woman I've been seeing. She's nice and fun to hang out with; I was looking forward to hanging out more with her. But no, this is not to be. She tells me that she's not looking for a relationship and I replied that neither am I. Then she tells me this isn't something about me; she thinks I'm a nice guy and all but, she's not interested in seeing me. It took eight e-mails for her to make the point clear.

So what right? Another woman is missing out on the awesome package that is me. Tell us something we don't know Chris. Tell us something out of the ordinary! For goodness sake, I've been declined by a handful of women over the past year or so, so how is this one any different? Was she good looking; not really. Was she smart; occasionally but not overly so. She was un to spend time with and she made me laugh. Today she told me no more going out and for some reason I'm bummed about this.

Maybe the reason I am so bummed about this was another email I got this morning from another friend. He was at a store with his wife and saw R's name on the wedding registry computer they have. She's set a date for her wedding to NB and it is in less than six months. I think this is the source of my melancholy. Actually, it is pretty much the exclusive source for my melancholy.

Perspective is everything in matters like these. This weekend I felt an absence in my life that I want to fill again. I think I would be happy if I was married again and the future had a path that was a little more visible. Right now I'm moving forwards but I've no idea where I am heading. On the other hand R's path seems crystal clear from where I sit. She's effectively replaced me in her life and is now moving towards what I was missing this past weekend.

The methods of finding the right girl still elude me. I am petrified of introducing myself to women I don't know. I spend most of my time in bars ticking off the list of reasons a woman would not be interested in me (three-hundred and seventy-three reasons thus far) and on top of that, the women I have been seeing in the last few months have all, for some reason or another, turned out to be not interested in me. The one woman who seems to be interested in me is someone I need as a friend and the boundaries in that friendship are difficult to navigate.

I am thirty-five now and there are many times that I feel lost. R's upcoming marriage has sparked an emotional venting of the above feelings and they're flying around in my thoughts pushing things like work and even lunch to the side. Part of me wants nothing more than for R to experience misery and hopelessness like I did. Part of me wants to go back in time and relive the good life. Part of me is still having issues with all the accusations and blame that R put on me for the end of our marriage.

Life used to be good. I want it to be that way again. I want to meet someone and fall in love again yet at the same time I have fear of getting back into a relationship that is going to hurt me again. I wish things were different. I wish things were easy.

Spring Break...

2006-03-20T15:23:00.000-06:00

Tonight, after work an the drive home, I see Buddy for the first time since the morning of the 9th. I can't wait to see him when I get him from school. I can't wait for him to run at me then leap into my arms as he likes to do when I pick him up. He has been at his mother's this past week for spring break, even years are hers for this school break, and I've been left with a hole in my routine the size of a six year-old. I want that hole filled.

Ten nights may not seem like a long time to you. Compared with the month in the summer R will get with Buddy it isn't long, but it is the longest I've gone without seeing my son since he was born. This is the new life I lead, where my son spends a lot of time away from me. I wish I could figure out a way to make it not be this way but as long as R wants to see him I'm going to keep making sure that Buddy has time with his mother.

The past week and a bit have been filled with constant activity for me. I filled the nights with so much entertainment that I may well have overdone it. Heck, I know I over did it. You spend six nights in a row not sleeping until two in the morning and you're going to pay for it. My mind can't focus and my body is tired.

That's what I did the first weekend. On Thursday and Friday night I went out with friends from my writing group. We were out until one and then it took an hour for me to unwind and sleep. On Saturday I went out after work to see some movies with friends. We saw a collection of educational films from the fifties including "Color Harmony for you Home" and "Let's Visit a Shopping Center." I know these movies may not sound like the most gripping thing out there, but they were highly entertaining and our group really enjoyed them. Afterwards we moved along to a bowling alley and bowled and farkeled the evening away before heading to a friends house to chill out until past two.

Sunday night was reserved for a date with a girl I've been seeing. She's nice enough and a lot of fun to hang out with. I've been seeing both her and another girl on and off for a few weeks now, which is different. I'm trying hard not to develop a 'relationship' right now and instead just going out and having a good time with many different people. Somehow this strategy is working and I'm not only busy in the evenings but I'm getting a really wide circle of friends. She and I went to grab some beer and chat at a local pub and once again, I got home well after I should have been asleep.

Monday night I went and did stand-up again. I invited my writing group as well as a number of other friends. The stand-up went great again and I had a good time. My friend Lissa and Brandon from my writing group were both impressed and Saul came out and enjoyed it too. I didn't invite any of the women I'm seeing because I'm trying to keep things with that part of my life fairly non-intrusive. Both of the women I've seriously dated after R left became very attached to me and that caused a lot of problems. Right now I don't want someone who is really attached, I just want to date and have fun.

On Tuesday I thought I was going to get home early to sleep but no luck. This was the other girl I've been seeing who I like enough, but at the same time she can be stand-offish and sends loads of mixed signals to me. Sometimes we have a great time and sometimes I can't wait for the date to be over. On Tuesday we had a great time, which surprised me. Our previous date was empty of any spark and while I called and thanked her for a good time, I didn't expect her to call me back and certainly didn't expect her to call me and then ask to meet me after work for drinks.

On Wednesday I finally caught up on sleep, which by that point was a damn good thing. Thursday was once again drinking with the writing group preceded by a meeting with my therapist Jennifer. I felt like hell on Thursday and should have stayed home on Friday, but didn't. Friday evening was packed with friends and fun until the wee hours of the morning. On Saturday I went to Jules and Bubbha's place and decided to bring Lissa from my writing group along because I needed someone to help me stay awake for the drive home. I had a great time there with the growing circle of friends I'm cultivating.

On Sunday I went to the Rodeo with the girl I went out with on Tuesday night. The rodeo was great fun but I can't say much for the date. Again I got the feeling that this girl's mind was elsewhere and there seemed to be no spark between us. I'm not inclined to go out with her again at this point. While I do like her being up for anything attitude, I find that once she's involved in the 'anything' she's 'up for' she gets disinterested and the date has more in common with push-starting a car except push-starting seems to have a goal in mind and is usually more fun.

That brings me to today and Buddy is coming home. My evenings of excessive fun night after night after night are a thing of the past now, at least until the summer. With luck my cough will get better and my sleep schedule will return to full strength. Dating will return to a normal level and the opportunity for a relationship is still going to be held at bay.

I didn't just go out and party while Buddy was gone. I did clean the house and I tracked down a new lawn crew for my yard. I wrote some things for a new novel and worked through a lot of movies that I haven't seen in ages at the house. I cleaned the main room and did an ass-load of laundry. I played with the dogs. Mostly I tried to keep myself busy so Buddy's absence from my routine wasn't as noticeable. In some ways it worked and in some ways it didn't. I missed him most in the evenings when all I really wanted to do was talk about the goofy stuff that we talk about and color pictures on the floor.

I missed being a dad.

I missed my son.

tRouble with a capital R...

2006-03-08T12:44:00.000-06:00

Hello again folks. Not much has been happening with me as of late, aside from the rigors of a hefty workload. Life has been fairly free of complications on the grand scale of the past, and in part because of this I've been staying away from R2H and enjoying my time off blogging.

Still, events in life have a way of bringing me back with the need to write here, and so once again I post to this dusty old blog with an update on my life. Many threads of the past have come together in the past few weeks; Buddy's birthday brought the three of us, R, Buddy and I, together for a dinner, Barbie called me last night to catch up on things and my romantic life is n a shambles. So, enough of the introduction to the post, let me get on with things.

Buddy's birthday landed on one of those days when R and I split custody; she had him in the morning and I in the evening. Were either of us to be excluded from possession on his birthday by the schedule of the decree then we'd get two hours, from six to eight, with Buddy in the evening of his birthday. As we split custody, that rule didn't come into effect. Seeing as my son was turning six, I wanted to make the day special for him. I wanted to show him that he is the top priority in both R and my lives (even though she has a strange way of showing it) so I invited R to join us at dinner at Buddy's favorite place.

Yeah, really I did. Dee prompted me to think about it, but I did it. I sucked it up and told R that we should put aside our differences and enjoy a meal together for Buddy's sake on his birthday, and furthermore, make it an annual tradition.

Seriously, I did this. Pick up your jaw and keep reading gentle reader, this story has all sorts of twists and turns yet to come.

At first R tried to argue that she was entitled to the six to eight visitation, but seeing as the wording of the decree made it clear that this was not the case, she put aside this tactic. The next email I got from her was an invitation for me to join her, NB and his dishonorable mother and intellectually vacant step-father for Buddy's birthday dinner. I shot that down and told her that she alone was invited to Buddy's birthday dinner and party the next day. I told her I was not inclined to see NB or his family at all and they were not welcome at either place. Petty, perhaps, but I feel justified in removing this family of villains from my site.

The days kept ticking away on their march to Buddy's birthday and no solid word was forthcoming from R. I worried that the event that Buddy was looking forward to would not happen after all. It was stressful waiting moment to moment, so I made back-up plans. I arranged to take a half day on the big day at work, and when the day came I got Buddy from his school a little after one.

The agenda I'd planned included a trip to Galveston to tour the U.S.S. Trenton and then we wandered around the Strand area waiting for dinner time. After dinner I'd planned to let my son experience Mardi Gras for a short time before driving home.

Our day went as planned until three when R texted me to ask when we were meeting for dinner. A flurry of texts passed between us as I tried to get her to come to Galveston with no luck. She wanted to stay close to home and refused to drive down to us. I can't blame her, the original plan was to eat at the boardwalk, about five miles from her house, and Galveston was quite a bit further.

I wasn't about to let her late reply get in the way of Buddy's big dinner, so we left Galveston before Mardi Gras even began and drove homeward to meet R on the boardwalk. The ticket I bought to the parades went unused but again, this was something that I was willing to do for Buddy's sake.

Eventually, after a lot of stomach churning stress we got to the restaurant and Buddy and I took our seats. R arrived about fifteen minutes later and we got around to eating our meal. While we waited Buddy put together a Bionicle present from R, I hadn't thought to bring gifts. The conversation between R and I was chilled, but not cold. I refused to bring up any of the issues I have with her and instead focused on talking abut Buddy. As my sister reminded me on my drive to the place, I needed to be the bigger person.

In all honesty, I can't complain about the meal. The food was good and R and I talked without too much emotional involvement. I can not recall either hatred or friendliness entering the subtext of our conversation. Robotic, emotionless talking about our shared child was all we could muster. Buddy was excited to have us together, and having already been told that there was no chance that his mother and I would kiss, he seemed to just revel in the fact that we'd put aside our differences for him. He loved the fact that about thirty people sang happy birthday to him too. It was just what I'd hoped for, so believe it or not I was happy with what we got out of it.

I could list complaints about the number of times that NB called to 'check up' on R, but while they annoyed me they didn't ruin the evening. I could also raise issue with the speed in which R departed the place, before the change had even been returned, but her escape was thwarted by Buddy who entangled her with hugs. We all walked out together and then R sped off to be picked up in the parking lot by a waiting NB. Whatever...

Buddy's party at a bowling alley the next day was as much fun as it was exhausting. Remind me not to volunteer to direct seven five and six-year-olds in the art of bowling. The activity demands constant vigilance if you're to save toes from being crushed and equipment damaged. Buddy had a grand time and I felt pretty happy that the party went off well.

Since then the situation between R and I has deteriorated once again. R wants me to refinance the house so that she'll be able to get a home loan herself. I am under no obligation to do so because R never added this to the divorce decree, and I'm not inclined to refinance at this point; especially when R can't seem to keep on top of her child support payments. Still, she sent me emails accusing me of ruining her credit and not being able to manage money. In reply, I asked her to tell me the address of her employer and to be more prompt with the child support.

You should have seen her reply. What passes for logic in R's world bears no resemblance to the reality I am accustomed to living in. Her reasoning excusing being late on support you ask? It was because I'd fallen behind on the house note for four months, and because of this R is unable to 'make any large purchases.' Seriously, I kid you not, that is word for word how she reasoned being late. If I'm bad at managing my money then she is excused for paying support. I apparently cannot ask her to be on time with support because the house note is behind (which fell behind when she refused to pay for Buddy's daycare last August when she had him all month).

I took the bait, a regret that I now own, and replied telling R the reasons why the house note was behind. True to her old ways, any defense of an accusation on my part is met with ten more accusations from her. The complete crap from R's next email made me actually worry that she's not moving on from the divorce in a healthy way. The laundry list of accusations included these deceits:

My poor attention to bills is ruining her credit.
She believes that the power has been turned off at my house due to unpaid bills (it happened only once and was in fact due to her taking the house's account with the power company to her apartment).
Buddy's clothes don't fit properly and what am I doing putting him in a private school if his pants run a little high in the ankle (he's grown about six inches since last April)
She tells Buddy at the end of every visit with her that she sends me "money every month to buy whatever [Buddy's] heart desires."

So that's what I'm up against. She's bonkers and looks to make any accusation she can against me in the hopes that one sticks. I flat out didn't reply to her last email because there really wasn't any point. Defending myself against her only causes her to make more wild accusations. Instead I'm going to stick to reality and move on with my life as best I can, and no, I'm not about to refinance the house any time soon. When I found out about the house note and her credit it made my day. Here was the direct results of her irresponsibility coming back to bite her in the ass. I may just fall behind on my house note if only to deny her credit, but in the end that would only delay her eventual ruin and I'm actually more anxious to see that than to deny her credit.

Enough of my writing. My fingers are tired and I'm hungry. I'll tell you about Barbie's call last night later. Until then, please feel free to comment.

The March of One-Hundred Dinosaurs...

2006-02-02T13:11:00.000-06:00

It's been a busy week for me. Today is Thursday but it feels like it's Wednesday because I've been so busy I haven't noticed the days passing. Some weeks are like that. Some weeks move slowly from Monday to Friday and sometimes Friday comes too soon. This week, Friday is going to come too soon for work, but for me, not soon enough.

Thursday also means that Buddy is at his mother's tonight. Our visitation plan, the six-four-two-two plan, has Buddy with his mother every Thursday with the ones preceeding the first, third and fifth weekends being a four night stay. Last night was my sixth in a row with Buddy and usually after six nights of single parenting I'm feeling a little stressed out and needing a break. Not this time.

The past week's worth of nights with Buddy have been filled with great purpose. He had a project due at school to celebrate their one hundredth day of Kindergarten. all of the kids in the class had to make a poster with one hundred things on them. The teacher suggested buttons, stickers and other such nick-knacks for the posters; Buddy had other ideas. He wanted to do a poster with one-hundred dinosaurs.

At first I thought this was a good idea. We could get a dino book from the used book store and cut them out to glue to a poster, but Buddy was hesitant to take scissors to a book so that idea was nixed. Next we decided to get dino stickers, but they were impossible to find. I did get a sheet of blue poster board for eighty cents though.

Over the next two days I went to three stores looking for dino stickers before tossing the sticker idea in favor of stencils, which I found at a local art supply store while on my lunch break. Stencils, paint sponge brushes, paint (washable thanks to Jules' suggestion) and other supplies ran up another fifteen for the project.

Truth be told, stencils were not really the best idea. On our sheet of poster board we were barely able to get forty of the stenciled dinos to fit. At ten to eight on Tuesday night I knew we had to re-think our strategy. A friend of mine from my writing group (who did a terrific job editing my book, pointing out inconsistencies and grammar issues as well as pointing out plot elements to improve) suggested a teacher supply store by the mall as a source for dino stickers.

So, Tuesday night Buddy and I, for the second time this week, headed out to buy supplies for his poster. The teacher supply store will now be the first stop for projects like this. Inside I was able to find everything we needed including a bucket of counting dinosaurs; two hundred plus little plastic dino figures perfect for sticking on the poster. I bought them along with a glue gun, extra glue, dino stickers and a gift for my brother's birthday spending about thirty bucks on supplies for the poster.

Last night was the final night to work on the poster and my friend from the writing group agreed to meet me at a coffee shop to finish the poster. Between, my friend, her daughter and I we were able to help Buddy stick one hundred of the little dinos on the posterboard, having them wander in long trains of dinos around the stenciled in background. It took time to get it all done, but the end effect looked cool.

The hardest part was counting the dinos when we'd reached ninety. Buddy's dino trails were so loopy that it was almost impossible for one person to count them without messing up. I ended up taking folded napkins and dividing the motley crew of dinos into four regions to make an accurate count. Then I talked with my friend about my book, the other writers in our group and being single parents until it was time to get Buddy to bed.

our writer's group suffers from people who have more enthusiasm for wanting to be in a group than actually writing and trying to get published. Many of the folks are good people who I really like but there are a few strange ones who seem to want the meetings to only be about them and do not adhere to the goal of mutual support and encouragement.

Buddy seemed to be very happy with his dino poster and I'm sure it will be a big hit at his school. I enjoyed spending time with him making it and while the cost of the project was far above what I wanted to spend on it, I can't say that it wasn't worth it. We got three nights of TV free time together and Buddy showed me that he's got a good touch with his creative side.

Perhaps Basquait had some impact on him? Who knows? I'm looking forward to seeing his poster up on the wall and I am proud that he (we) did a good job on it.

This weekend I'm going to see a friend play in his band on Friday. Saturday is, as of yet, free from plans and Sunday I'm going to go watch commercials at someone's house during the Superbowl. My life is feeling less complicated these days. I'm having more time for myself and I like that. Buddy and I seem to be getting along much better and for a big change, R has gotten herself caught up on the child support.

Things could be better and things could be worse. What matters is that I feel pretty happy with myself. I don't feel like I need people like I used to (you know, girlfriend people). I'm listening to myself and I tend to like what I hear. Dating hasn't been going well, but I'm not feeling pressure to keep going out. Instead I've been focusing on making new friends and working on my book.

This doesn't mean that I don't want to get laid and have nights of wild sexual adventures. Those thoughts are still with me, but I'm not willing to go to long lengths to make them happen. I get to have sex with people I want to in my dreams and for now that seems to be good enough.

Jigga What, Jigga Who... Jigga Lo...

2006-01-30T13:07:00.000-06:00

Once again any intention of blogging on my part suffers from a confluence of circumstances designed to prevent it. Work has picked up and often I just don't have time to do any writing during the day. At night my efforts have been focused on the book and getting it to a publisher. On the weekends I'm either spending time with Buddy or enjoying my ever more demanding life as a gigolo. I tell you, it's not easy picking which of the f-buddies I'll be treating with the pleasure of my company on any particular night, but I make do. As they say, the only thing worse than a hard choice is no choice at all.

This weekend I had Buddy with me and we made the most of it. Friday night was pretty low key. After a week of both work, for me, and school, for Buddy, we decided to keep things on the mellow on Friday. Buddy focused his energies on the Leapster game that I ordered him for Christmas. It finally arrived after three or four calls to the place I ordered it asking why it still hadn't shipped. Finally, on Tuesday of last week, I got extra pissy with them and that seemed to work well enough to get the thing to our house. Buddy loved it and was happy until dinner playing the games and learning.

After dinner of Mac & Cheese with hot dogs and some oranges we sat down to watch the second Spiderman movie. I didn't make it very far into the film before I decided to get moving on cleaning the house. I tackled the bedroom until it was time for Buddy's bath cleaning things up and running the laundry through the washer and dryer. The biggest issue in my bedroom is the mountain of clothes for the dry cleaner. I'm not yet ready to take the budgetary hit that dry cleaning is going to entail, so the pile grows larger and larger in my room.

Buddy's room isn't too bad, but it needs to be cleaned too. I'll make that a priority this week and hopefully we can get it cleaned up in one evening. Then I need to focus on the main room, the bathroom, the kitchen and... what I need to do is live in a hotel where they have maids take care of all this. Still, I got him through the bath and into bed pretty quickly. Then after a few stories he went to bed.

An hour later I had the first of many lady friends over for an hour or two romping on my bed. This new gigolo job is pretty fun from my perspective. The ladies call or email me during the day to arrange a few hours, we settle on a rate and then two hours later I'm satisfied, they're satisfied and I've got spending money to make up for R's inconsistent child support payments. The only problem is that when Buddy is home I have to insist that the ladies bite a pillow if they're screamers. Most of them are. My pillows have more bite marks than a dog toy.

After my lady friend left I finished up "I am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe. I've been enjoying the book for the past few weeks and it was good to see all the plot lines find a satisfactory conclusions, with the exception of Charlotte's. I had hoped more for her, but like the cats in the prolog, her surroundings got the better of her. It was an interesting journey though, nearly seven hundred pages of it. Not as good as "A Man in Full" but just as keen in the observations of the human character.

Saturday morning not much happened. Buddy was once again enraptured with his Leapster and I spent the morning adding more songs to my video iPod. I'm working on rebuilding my collection of music that R took with her by purchasing the MP3s from allofmp3.com. At two cents a megabyte I can get the music from CDs I bought and had walk for pennies to the dollar. I also followed the latest from the campaign of Richard Martin a Republican from Ohio who has a refreshing take on politics. He's got some videos of a speech he gave in Seattle last year that show him to be both honest and confident. I highly recommend you watch if you want to know what the GOP is all about these days.

In the afternoon, after lunch, I took Buddy to see the Basquiat exhibit at the fine arts museum here in Houston. We loaded up our MP3 players and headed downtown to the art museum. Buddy didn't want to go initially, but I told him he could pick where we went for dinner, so he relented. We both ended up enjoying the show, even with the crowd. I've always liked Basquiat's use of iconography and strong bold colors to express things. The show had a lot of classic examples of his work and Buddy and I enjoyed talking about the paintings.

We also viewed an exhibit called Indelible Images which had a really cool set of portraits done in sugar cubes and coffee. Buddy and I were both a little disturbed by the animatronic piece which consisted of a pneumatically driven latex covered robot cutting its wrists with razor blades and laughing maniacally. Buddy said it was creepy, and I agreed. I wish the museum would have had a warning about that particular piece.

After the museum Buddy chose dinner at one of my favorite lunch time places near the office. I had, in fact, eaten there on Thursday. We enjoyed our meal and then wandered home for him to play with Legos and me to work on my book.

On Sunday Buddy and I got up early and decided to go to Church before heading off to lunch at a friend's house. This marks the second visit to church for Buddy and I this year. You might think this is strange considering my own confusing relationship with religion, but I don't think that my personal views clash with the idea that Buddy should be exposed to religion. Besides, the church we go to has an old friend as the priest and we like to visit with him.

Buddy behaved pretty well and I found myself enjoying singing the hymns. There were not a lot of people in attendance but we did run into two folks I knew. It was a couple who I had last seen at R and my tenth anniversary party. I had no idea if they knew what had happened to R and I but, as we were in a church, I decided not to say anything bad about R. Turns out I didn't have to worry. We talked briefly after the service and they commented on Buddy's growth wished me well.

Then Buddy and I went to a friend's house to have lunch and meet a bunch of folks involved in local politics and such. I had an interesting conversation about management of the Mississippi River and its impact on Galveston's beaches while Buddy played with the other little kids who were there. After that we played mini golf at the best course in the area, went grocery shopping and eventually went home.

The weekend ended with a viewing of 'A Hard Day's Night' on TV and getting Buddy to bed. I had a few requests for my side job, but the little soldier needed as much rest as I did, so we went to bed early in preparation for this week.

Oh, so now you're podcasting again...

2006-01-21T16:36:00.000-06:00

This morning I loaded up iLife'06 on my computer at home. I've been most anxious about the new suite of podcasting tools built into GarageBand. Way back in October I produced three podcasts and I've been aching to get back to doing them. Well folks, now I'm back.

Today I spent a few hours recording two stories from my other blog, Tuck in Tales, for the new podcast. These two stories, about a cardboard box and a tower of Legos, are my two favorites from the stories I wrote. I hope that you enjoy them, and as the weeks go on I'll probably be exploring more ideas for the podcast.

This episode is in MP4 format, it's a smaller file size than the mp3s and on top of that, I can put chapters and such onto the podcast allowing you to skip to the stories you want, when you want them. I hope you like the new format.

The links to the podcast are in the left-hand column, at the top of the page in the big white box.

Chris

To 'D' or not to 'D'...

2006-01-18T13:14:00.000-06:00

When I went to the doctor's office the other day I had to fill in a form listing all sorts of personal data. I used to wonder why there was a distinction between single, widowed and divorced on forms that you fill out. All three are essentially single, right? I guess the thing with widowed people is that when you read that there is a bit of sympathy involved. Divorced though, legally that is the same as single, right?

I guess the thing is, I think there is a stigma about divorced people. In my mind set I still hold this stereotype that I developed when I was married. I thought that divorced people were always, oh I don't know; unhealthy, desperate, unethical, cheaters, failures, horny. That was the married me's thinking. Now that I am divorced and not desperate (well, not anymore), not unethical, not unhealthy (greatly reduced my smoking this year), not a cheater and not overly horny, I don't want to put my mark next to the 'D' on the form and be grouped like that.

Do I feel like a failure though? Sometimes. Sometimes I feel like the end of my marriage was my fault. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want R back and sometimes I just want her to freaking do what she freaking agreed to in the divorce decree. I'm pretty happy with myself for the most part. I think I'm through the worst and turning out to be a much better me. Still though, you go through life thinking to yourself that you will not be in a failed marriage and then it happens to you. It's a difficult thing to live with.

What are the legal ramifications of me checking single instead of divorced? Will it land me in jail? Who cares if I say I'm single when I'm divorced, other than women I'm dating. Is it the business of my doctor or my bank or the folks at the gym? When is this an intrusive invasion into privacy and when is it necessary information?

Why does this matter to me?

###

For the past few months I've been focusing more on living a normal life. I'm trying to find routines and attempting to make friends. Progress comes along slowly, but that's OK, I am in no hurry to be anywhere. I guess I am just trying to find myself in my post-divorce life. I'm trying to find out what the ebb and flow of my life are like now that the rocky parts seem to be over.

I've found out that R isn't making for a very easy to deal with ex. She's late with child support more often than not, which is such a blessing let me tell you. Due to R's late support I've had $120 in late check fees this month. Those fees were all applied to electronic payments that automatically get taken out of my account. This isn't the first time that I've had late fees, but I have to tell you, I'm tired of going to the bank and begging some of them off. I'll let them have their blood money this time.

I have no idea where R is working now. I have been thinking about just asking her point blank to tell me. Once I know where she is working I can send off a wage with-holding order and then my support payments will at least be on time until she quits and finds another job. Asking her will help with the support, but allowing her not to tell me will make things easier if she tried for custody later.

That's the crux of my issues with R. I know that the courts are hesitant to overturn the initial custody decision unless there is an obvious issue. I know that I am doing a fine job looking out for Buddy's best interests and in some ways I'm probably sacrificing more of myself than I should for him (public school would be so much cheaper). Yet as a father with custody I wonder if the courts would me more likely to change the status quo because of my gender.

Is my legal insecurity turning me into a doormat for R?

This is one of the questions that I'm going to be asking Jennifer tomorrow when I see her. I need advice on what to do in this situation. Advice and facts, but looking for facts about the law online is an uphill battle. Lawyers are secretive bastards and they don't like making information that I think should be available, available for free.

I also have a date tomorrow. I'm not too sure about this girl though. She seems nice but there are also red flags present. This date is really more about seeing if we're compatible for dating; a date zero as it were. The last woman I went out with was dull and not much fun, I hope this one is better. I read this article this morning and thought that I'd be really depressed to see a woman I dated in an article like this.

One thing that I'm happy about is that I'm not talking to anyone about dating really. OK, so me and the Hobbit talk about my dating life, but other than that I'm keeping my cards close to my chest. This is a good thing. Too many people seemed to be offering me too many opinions and I needed to figure things out for myself.

The other day, on the way to church, Buddy and I got into a conversation about getting married again. He had some questions and for the most part I tried to be as honest as I could about my thoughts on marriage and what happened last time. He's five and his mother's son so I try to keep things simple and not bitter. Towards the end of the conversation we had this exchange:

"Who will you marry Daddy?"

"I don't know Buddy, What kind of a girl do you think I should marry?"

"A girl with black skin Daddy."

"Buddy, the color of the girl's skin is the least important reason to marry her. There is so much more about a girl than the color of her skin."

"Like what?"

"If she makes you happy, for one."

Looks are, to me, a bonus. I'm looking for someone smart and creative and fun to be around. I want to meet someone with a passion for life and who knows how to make me laugh. Someone who is intellectually stimulating and will recommend good books to me to read. I don't care what their skin color is or if they are short or tall, fat or skinny. As long as they make me feel alive with the wonders of the world when I'm around them then the rest is gravy. Oh, and they should love to give head. ;)

Buddy thought about my comments on being happy and asked "Did you and Mommy stop being married because you were unhappy?"

I thought about this and answered "Buddy, happiness is not something that you get all the time. When you are married you may have times when you are not happy, and when you are not in love. Sometimes though, you can't seem to find happiness and you decide that the best thing to do is to try to find happiness not being married."

Then we talked about the big boat docked at Galveston's port.

Comments are open on this one folks.

The unrealistic love of my life...

2006-01-16T13:56:00.000-06:00

I am in love.

I am hopelessly in love against my better judgement. I shouldn't allow myself to feel this way, but damn it, it feels good and even though every bit of logic in my head is screaming out "Stop!" and "No, don't!" and "This is way too soon!" I keep heading down the garden path, my arms out stretched ready to embrace the future without a concern for the potential harsh realities of life that are all perched ready to up and smack me in the face.

All I can see is a bright future involving years of happiness, travel and a better environment for both me and Buddy. I see myself not having to worry when the next child support check will arrive because the financial state I'm in will be different from where it is now. I see Buddy growing up in an environment totally different than what I can offer him now. I see myself living a life that until recently I could not even imagine.

I dream; ironic that today is the day I realize that this dream is something I want to be a reality. Today being Martin Luther King Day in the States. I don't dream altruistically though; I dream of nothing more than the best interests of myself and Buddy, and with that dream, in that dream, I am in love.

"Expectations are the seeds of disappointments."

I used to have a friend who lived by this mantra. His approach to life was to take nothing for granted and enjoy the present by being here for it. Living in the past or preparing the future took you out of the present, and the present was the place where happiness lived. He taught me to look at what I felt I wanted with a light touch; to see opportunities and take them but to understand that arriving at what I wanted can take a life time.

Right now, I am full steam ahead on stoking up the expectations of the future. it is impossible not to when you are in love. When love grips you all you hear is the positive; all you see if opportunity. I count my chickens before they hatch and spend money I don't have. It is exhilarating and intoxicating, this feeling. I haven't felt this way in a long time/ I denied myself hope for the future for so long that I've forgotten what it feels like to be in love like this.

I need a dose of reality to bring me to my senses. I need to get a grip on my rambunctious thoughts. I have to be here in the present and try not to hope about the future before I put all my eggs, the ones that haven't hatched, in one basket and head down the road to some sort of serious fuck up. The potential is there; I've inflated myself so high that the pin-prick of realty could cause me to lose everything.

I need to get back to reality, but it is so hard. I am so excited about the potential in the future that I can hardly think about work. All I want is to see that future realized. A future where things are better and Buddy and I get to live well. What was it that Frank Sinatra said?

"Living well is the best revenge."

R is going to kick herself when my dreams come true.

Folks, I can't stop being vague any longer. I have to tell you what's been going on. I've strung you along enough...

My book is getting fantastic reviews. You know the one I wrote for NaNoWriMo? Yeah, well it is done and I've been sending it off to a number of people I know who read a lot. I've been asking them to send the book on to friends of their's who don't know me and asking them to read it. The idea is that the criticism from friends of friends will be more honest and helpful than if I asked only friends to read it.

And besides, when I sent my book out to a number of friends a few weeks back only Bubbha told me that he's reading it. All the others seem to either not have time or don't want to invest a few days in reading a book that's only sixty-five thousand words long. So you know what? Screw 'em. I'm going to stick with strangers.

Anyhow, I've got emails from three people who have finished the book. I asked them to pass along what they thought of the writing, the characters, the themes and the plot. Here's a few excerpts from their emails.

The first email came by way fo a friend of the Hobbit's:

"I enjoyed the book very much. Thank you for sharing it.

I was sustained through most of the reading by a morbid fascination with the characters' suffering and despair. (I will say that the fascination was augmented by a personal identification with their situations. The emotions invoked in me while reading were doubtless amplified by my already existent feelings of desolation.) That said, I believe you portrayed the characters masterfully."

The Hobbit's friend went on to say that they were surprised how much the book gripped their thoughts. They read the book over the course of four days and on the second day they didn't have a chance to read it. I was told that they spent the next day plowing through as much of the book as they possibly could to see how it ended.

With that email, the first I got, I began to fall in love with the idea that maybe my book will be published.

The next comment came from a friend of another NaNoWriMo writer:

"Wow.

I just finished your first best seller. I couldn't put it down - this work is an amazing story. I really am very impressed. I laughed, cried, feared, and got chills at the description of XXXXX's death. Your characters are extremely well developed and believable and your plot, with all its twists, peaks and valleys, really captured me.

Very good job!"

Shorter and less on the criticism, but this letter put the idea of a best seller into my head. can you imagine; me a best selling author? Swoon!

The third letter came from a friend of my brother's:

"I finished your book and just wanted to let you know I was amazed at how real your characters were. They were utterly believable. The quiet desperation, the dissatisfaction with a moderate an mediocre life. I found it to be a hideously accurate decent into the psyche of a
typical suburban male.

I have a tickle in the back of my brain that's telling me somebody out there is going to read your book and decide to play Russian roulette, blow their brains out, and your book will shoot straight to school banned book lists, the NYT bestseller list, and cult classic status."

As you'll remember, the theme of my book is that a group of four men decide to play Russian roulette in the middle of their suburban cul-de-sac. When I got this email I was beginning to think that maybe the first two were just blowing smoke. I'd been editing the draft of my book in preparation of sending it to publishers and my own hyper critical eye makes me want to toss the book aside and try again on something more substantial. But then I thought about this; I haven't got a bad review yet.

Can you imagine the fall my ego is going to take when I start getting rejection letter after rejection letter? Can you imagine what will happen to me if I'm stuck doing what I do now for the rest of my life? I can imagine it, and you know, that really wouldn't be so bad, but let me tell you this; the thought of my name on the New York Time's bestseller list is intoxicating to say the least. Can you imagine the effect that would have on my life?

So, next time you're in the car listening to the brother's Gibb, maybe their refrain will have a little more meaning to you:

"Well now, I get low and I get high,
and if I can't get either, I really try.
Got the wings of heaven on my shoes.
I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose.
You know it's all right. It's OK.
I'll live to see another day.
We can try to understand
the New York Times' effect on man.

Annoyed...

2006-01-09T12:47:00.000-06:00

I am annoyed. Annoyed is better than paranoid, but only slightly. I am annoyed for reasons great in number and today's post is going to be about that which annoys me. I try to deal with annoying things as best I can, but they are mounting and were it not for a resolution to be less paranoid this year, I would think that the world is ganging up on me. But it isn't, and I keep telling myself that in the hopes that I will believe it.

I am annoyed because two items I ordered well before Christmas have yet to arrive. One of these items is a cartridge I ordered for Buddy's Leapster. The Leapster was one of two big Christmas gifts for Buddy from me. The first was an MP3 player so he can listen to his music at his leisure. That gift has already paid for itself many times over. First, I got a great deal on it and second, watching Buddy dance his way through the grocery store singing 'Play that Funky Music White Boy' followed by, appropriately enough, 'I'm Black and I'm Proud' by James Brown was more than worth the money I spent on it.

The Leapster was something I wanted to get for Buddy last year, but you know what happened back then. This year the teaching computer was thirty bucks cheaper and I scored a great deal by buying it along with the charging station and an extra 'Kindergarten' cartridge for just under a hundred bucks. When the unit and cartridge arrived though, the cartridge was nowhere to be found. The packing slip said it was included but the box was empty save a load of packing peanuts and the Leapster unit.

So, I called up the shipper and they told me that they would send out the cartridge and I should get it a little after Christmas. Here it is the ninth, and I haven't seen anything in the mail. I'll be calling them up this afternoon to see what the hell is up, but in the mean time, I'm annoyed that something I ordered for Christmas still isn't here and next Christmas is fast approaching.

This isn't the only thing that has gone missing. A friend told me that she was mailing a gift to me, and it never arrived. I have no idea what happened to it. Also, I ordered some iPod accessories before Christmas and they are still not here. Of course, I've paid for all these items so I'm felling a little annoyed that none of them has arrived just yet.

If I were paranoid I would suspect that the government is opening my mail. Three items have not arrived and it seems like the only mail I get these days is junk mail that I don't even open. I wonder if the government has intercepted my iPod case, or the gift from a friend or Buddy's cartridge. I suppose you can make a case for it, but if the government is snooping through my mail then they are wasting tax payer dollars because I'm not doing a damn thing to fix this country right now.

Today marks a month since I've received any child support from R. Last month's payment brought her up to day through the end of November, but I haven't received anything to make up for December and now January is about a third of the way through. What annoys me most about this is the reply I got from Dee, my lawyer, about this. When I detailed all of these child support issues to Dee she reminded me that she told me, on the day the divorce was final, that she expected that I would not receive child support from R. So, basically, I got an 'I told you so.'

I'm not annoyed that she called me out on the 'I told you so,' because she did tell me so. I am annoyed that when she told me so, back in July of last year, I defended R yet again. I said to Dee that she didn't know R and that R wouldn't let her responsibility to Buddy lapse. once again it turns out that other people know R better than I do. Once again I find that I defended a woman who I should have known better to defend. It took R less than six months to let her support for Buddy lapse and now I am annoyed that I ever defended her.

I want to see Jennifer again. I haven't seen her in months, but seeing Jennifer means spending money. With about fifteen percent of my monthly income gone missing I am having to tighten the belt even further. Just about all luxuries are being removed from my life in exchange for not bouncing checks. Things I need to do are shelved because I can't afford them right now.

This weekend I had to budget carefully just so that I could actually have any fun. For three of the six meals I ate this weekend I enjoyed (and I use that term improperly) a Totino's pizza, which I found for $1 each at the grocery store. One meal was eaten out, with Jules and Bubbha on Saturday night, and the final meal was nothing fancier than two hot dogs in buns. And yes, if you are observant, that means that I had Totino's frozen pizzas for breakfast; what of it?

The money troubles are related to the child support. If that were being paid, then the story would be different. With the child support money I could say, afford to go play poker, buy cigarettes, visit titty bars, indulge in illegal drugs, buy sex slaves from the far east and shop at Wal-mart. Without it I am left to tending to the growing ball of anger towards R. That anger is now manifesting in dreams that center on punching NB in the face and/or yelling at R until I'm blue in my face.

This weekend, R and NB took Buddy to look at houses. They want to get a house together, R and NB not R and Buddy. Here's a woman who can't pay child support; a woman who doesn't follow the rules of the divorce decree. A woman who ignores collection letters and calls, and she's thinking of buying a house? It makes me feel annoyed.

It isn't healthy to harbor such negativity. I need to find something positive to gravitate towards before I find myself turning towards the dark side. I've tried dating again, but it is difficult when you don't have any money. Every penny spent on a date is a penny not spent on a bill.

I want to have my fun too! I want to meet someone who I can look forward to being with again. There are potentials. There's a girl I talked on the phone this weekend who sounds too good to be true, and I also had a date with another girl who seems too reserved to be fun (a cheap, dutch date mind you). At the rate things are going it is going to be well over a year before my finances allow me to live the life that I work so hard to enjoy.

And that makes me feel annoyed.

Oh my God you didn't...

2006-01-06T16:48:00.000-06:00

This morning was a slow go for me. Due to coughing fits last night, still bronchitis related, I was up until three thirty and nothing I tried would get me to sleep. I tried everything I could think of too. I even counted sheep, but I'm not sure if the sheep I count need to be realistic or cartoon, fluffy or recently shorn. I mean, you always see sheep being counted as they leap over a fence, but that's not really a restful image is it?

Imagine yourself a sheep herder watching your flock at night when you spy a group of them lined up to leap over a fence. I'd imagine this would piss you off. I mean, generally speaking, fences are used to keep sheep *inside* a fixed region. If the sheep were capable of leaping over a fence then it is not the kind of image that would put you to sleep. You'd want to run over there and get the sheep back inside the area you want them to stay within. Then you would spend the rest of the night repairing the fence so the damn sheep could not leap over it.

So, counting sheep didn't help. Another technique I use to get to sleep is to imagine myself walking over to the grocery store down the street. For some reason, imagining myself walking somewhere puts me in a restful mood. Unfortunately, I kept having to stop my slumber inducing stroll to double over from coughing. I ended up never leaving the neighborhood.

My mind was awash with images and my lungs agitated with the smokey air I hung out in for two hours last night. Why was I in smokey air when I'm getting over bronchitis you ask? Well, gentle reader, I had a date last night. It was a first date with a young lady who I found charming and attractive. Conversation was good fun and she impressed me with tales of her travels and use of words like demure correctly and in the proper context.

I was as awkward as a man who's last date turned out to do more drugs that Keith Richards might be. Nervous at first, then happy and comfortable and then realizing that I needed to wrap things up and that I'd like to see her again. We arranged another date and in the parking lot, by her car, the briefest of kisses was exchanged and my mind *would* *not* stop thinking about it for the rest of the *fucking* night. Still, I looking forward to seeing her again.

So, this morning when the alarm rang I turned it off and slept until eight. Then I called the office and said I'd be in later and went back to sleep. I woke and showered a little later and got in the car to head to work. On the way in I ate some breakfast. My entire appetite has been derailed due to the bronchitis. For one, my stomach is filled with so much crap from my nose that I don't often feel hungry and second, eating generally only serves to produce more mucus. Mucus leads to not getting better, but there I was, eating breakfast and drinking some soda.

Big mistake.

No sooner had I finished when the coughing started. Another gut wrenching, spots-in-the-eyes coughing attach that usually leads to some stomach content finding their way tot he back of my throat. This time though, I didn't stop things in my mouth and I proceeded to cough this stuff into my hand and down my shirt. Remember that scene in Ghostbusters when Bill Murray gets covered with endoplasmic slime? Yeah, like that but there was no ghost.

I had covered myself in the recently produced mucus of my respiratory system. It was, for the most part, clear but the viscosity was thick and it was everywhere. I know you don't want to hear this. I know you're here to read about other things, but come on. This is the second time in just over a week that I've been covered in stomach contents. I feel the need to blog about these things. It is the exciting parts of my life that you want to hear about isn't it?

I turned the car around and went back home. I changed into a new shirt, new jeans and washed my hands twice. Then I went into work and I've been here since.

In other news, I did some sleuthing the other day about R. As I mentioned, she's behind on child support by about a month, and I've only been getting support for the past four months. Back in November I had my lawyer send off a wage withholding order to her employer, because she changed jobs after Hurricane Rita. Well, the wage withholding order never seemed to have any effect and payments, when they came, were still coming from personal checks. So, I got curious.

On Wednesday when I was home sick I called the number of the company she said she was working at and they told me that R hasn't worked there since before Thanksgiving. This explains why the order never did anything. They also told me that she'd gone back to her previous employer, which made no sense to me. So, I called her previous employer and they told me that R hasn't worked there since September.

Less than five months after the divorce is final and I have no idea where, or if for that matter, R is working. The last payment of child support was nearly a month ago and even then it was barely enough to get the previous months' support caught up. My lawyer tells me that she expected this all along but I didn't. I thought R would live up to her responsibilities but nope. The good news is, this is going to make it next to impossible for her to ever get custody of Buddy from me. The bad news is, I'm broke and I've been covered with vomit twice in the past ten days.

Too many words about my cough...

2006-01-03T23:09:00.000-06:00

Today I didn't go to work. I've been fighting a cough for the past few days and last night, after posting, I tried to go to bed but every time I laid down I found myself engulfed in coughing fits.

I coughed until I saw stars. I coughed until my ribs ached and I was desperate for breath. I coughed and coughed until I threw up a little bit in my mouth; and then I did it again. I coughed with enough force to power a small town.

It's no fun, coughing like that.

It is something that I am far too familiar with.

When I was a youngster I used to get asthmatic bronchitis so often that I don't even need to look up how the word 'bronchitis' is spelled. I had a cough that was so loud and rattling that friends would call me 'walrus.' Wheezing was a regular part of fall weather for me and my mother and I became such good friends with the allergist and his staff that we got them Christmas presents for years and years.

My cough sounds like a hundred paper bags bursting at once. Walls shake. Dogs look around and wonder what beast comes their way. The concussive force of my coughing could knock over an army (if, that is, the army was malnourished, few in number, and prone to falling own when loud barking noises are directed at them).

Are you getting the picture here?

I had the cough at Jules and Bubbha's house on NYE. The six or seven other folks there, depending on what time it was, were all concerned. I brushed aside their questions, "When did you have a lung removed?" or "How's the coal mine?" with the simple explanation that this cough, this preamble to a death rattle, is the kettle drum on the soundtrack to my life. I am used to it, and no, it doesn't really hurt.

Of course, on Saturday I had the cough under control, I thought.

Like a fool I smoked far too many cigarettes, lit too many smoke producing fireworks and BBQed some fucking fantastic chicken. All that smoke and heat and cool, humid air took what was just a cough and turned it into a wheezing festival of phlegm in my chest. Deep down in the bronchioles of my lungs the cells were bathing in everything that I should have kept them clear of. Was it no surprised that many of them decided to close up shop?

I imagine the molecules of oxygen trying to get deep in my lungs and commenting to each other, "Hey, what's all this sticky shit?"

Before I forget, when making the BBQ sauce for the party I mixed the usual ingredients and, for an extra added kick, I added a few drops of NyQuil. I think it helped the flavor immensely. Next time I'll add this codeine based cough syrup I've got now. I'll bet that will give the chicken even more kick.

So, where were we?

Oh yeah, I was grossing you out with a plethora of metaphors, similes and adjectives about my lungs. I'll stop that now, but before I do I have to tell you this...

I know why I was under the weather. I got it from Buddy. He arrived on Christmas Day to my parent's with a fever. By Tuesday the fever was back with a side order of sore throat so I took him to the doctor. While at the doctor's office Buddy had to have his throat swabbed for the strep test. His reaction to having a cotton-swab forced down his throat was to vomit the entire contents of his stomach all over me. I was covered in vomit from my neck to my knees. Strangely, all my concern was for Buddy and the doctor, who now had an exam room filled with partially digested scrambled eggs, cheese, bacon and tortilla.

I expect that exposed me to his bug, and low, on Saturday I wasn't on top of my game.

Ok, back to today, and no more grossing out unless hearing about a two hour wait at the doctor's makes you feel ill.

This morning I woke up after three hours of sleep and called in an appointment for the doctor. New insurance with a new job and I get a new doctor. I took the advice of the lady on the phone and got to my appointment thirty minutes early to fill out the paper work. Then I waited.

I listened to my iPod and watched the Price is Right. Then I played Su Doku on my palm and listened to my iPod. I listened to Prairie Wind, the new Neil Young CD. I'll tell you more about it later but for now, after three listens to it the CD doesn't make me feel like crying. It is beautiful, Neil Young's best in a long, long time.

After ninety minutes I got into an exam room. I've put on weight again, but my pulse is good. The nurse left telling me the doctor would be along shortly. She lied.

My iPod and Su Doku only lasted so long, and then I fell asleep. I woke up from back cramps and realized I'd been waiting for half and hour in the room. This is what healthcare is like now days. I never seem to remember it being so annoying when I was a kid.

The doctor came in, asked questions, poked, prodded, scolded and listened to my wheeze. X-rays he said, and that gave me another thirty minutes to wait. I hadn't even had breakfast. Fortunately I'd been living off the post nasal drip and that was keeping my tummy filled (at least I didn't have to taste it).

Two x-Rays and another twenty minute wait and the Doctor hands me a script with the instructions to lay off the smoking and drink lots of fluids.

So, that's what I've been doing, and that was my day.

Now, I'm off to pee for the umpteenth time.

Good night gentle reader, it's good to be back.

A Return to Return to Happiness...

2006-01-02T17:40:00.000-06:00

Hi folks.

It's been a while hasn't it. I needed a break to think things over. I know I didn't offer explanation, but for the past month explanations just haven't been coming to me. I don't know why, but I'll reserve the right to just take an unexplained absence if you don't mind. If you require an explanation then I'll write a detailed post about how I was kidnapped by aliens on the seventh of December and for the past few weeks I pitted my wits and my life against an alien race bent on destroying the planet.

Seriously, you know I will, so don't tempt me.

Actually, what set me off writing for a while was an email I received on the sixth. I got an email from a long time reader who figured out who I was. I always said to myself that if someone figured out who I was then I'd stop. The reader emailed me my name and home address and I kinda freaked out. After emailing him to assure that he wasn't going to tell anyone and getting a full explanation of how he figured it out, I felt a little more comfortable about it. Still though, I needed a break.

I've been blogging about my life for nearly two years now. You've seen me go through the worst time in my life and emerge out the other side a better person I hope. I've been on this quest to return to happiness and I decided that blogging, at least to the extent I was doing it, wasn't part of the agenda for happiness. Fortunately, blogging is part of the agenda too, but it's going to be in a different form than what you're used to.

First off, many of the details of my private life need to be more private. While I shared all the details about my life with R when we were married, I can't do that with women I date now. How would you feel if you found out that the person you were seeing was writing those types of things about you? I'll share a bit about the women I date, but not to the extent that I did with Ms. V or Liz. You're only going to hear anecdotes about dating and not blow by blows. I need to date without my readers watching, so I'm pulling that curtain closed.

Secondly, I'm going to seriously curtail the commenting on this blog. Only certain posts are going to be open for comments. I'm doing this because I feel that I need to listen to my own thoughts with out the input of so many others. There have been times that criticism has been overly harsh in comments and other times when someone's comments have served to make me feel worse and worse about a situation. I'm going to pull back this feature and hope for the best when I do open them up on occasion. This post has open comments.

Third, I have decided that I have to curtail the 'virtual' friendships that I've built over the past few years. there are people who I have met through GH and R2H in person and they have become great friends. Bubbha and Jules are a great example of two people I would not know without blogging and they are both dear friends to me. Other people I've built relationships with via email and chat but never in person. I can't do this anymore. I can't invest a lot of effort into people I'm never going to meet. It hurts to say this, but I need to make friends in the real world and if I'm spending all my time chatting with faceless voices, then I've got to wonder why?

I know this third decision is going to put some people off. It is something that I've thought about and I know it's best. The thing is, virtual friends seem great but over time the relationships can become too deep and then the absence of someone to look at or someone to go grab a drink with becomes too much. Plus, when you have conversation after conversation with someone and all that they can do is offer criticism of anything you do then you've got to wonder why the hell you put up with it.

Fourth, there is going to be a lot more fiction on this blog. I'll come up with a visual way to tell it apart from the real stuff so don't worry about getting confused. I enjoyed writing my book and I want to keep an outlet for the creative thoughts. I thought about a second blog for this but then decided that really, that's too much work. So, everything will be lumped into here.

Fifth, my life as a father to Buddy (who by the way is doing so fantastically well and *stole* his Kindergarten Christmas show - much to my delight) and as a divorced man dealing with a difficult ex will still be a primary topic on this blog. I am well past feeling bad about how the world perceived R. She is a month behind on child support now, and is close to gaining the new nickname 'Deadbeat-Mom' on this blog.

Finally, to all the folks who sent me emails wondering what was going on and wishing me the best; thank you. I cherished each email and wanted to reply so often but couldn't. I really needed to take the time to focus on my own thoughts and not feel pressured into returning before I was ready. I think I'm ready now.

Over the next few days I'll update you about the past month or so. Until then, Happy New Year and I hope your holidays were all excellent. If you feel like the decisions I've made above are going to ruin this blog or otherwise piss you off then please, keep those feelings to yourself and find another blog to read. I can't be responsible for your feelings if I'm going to find happiness for myself, I know that now.

I am still going to shoot for a thousand words a day. I promise.

Fifty-thousand words on...

2005-12-06T13:34:00.000-06:00

This past Friday night I went to Houston's NaNoWriMo TGIO party (Thank God It's Over) and my world is never going to be the same again. I've always thought of myself to be pretty open minded and accepting. I have also always thought that I had a good idea about the hobbies of different people; what they are interested in and so forth. I found out on Friday night that my knowledge of other writers, especially the ladies, contains gaps that you could drive the entire Duran Duran catalog through.

I found out about the party earlier in the week and looked forward to it for most of the week. The party promised the opportunity to meet loads of new people and, more importantly for your narcissisticly-inclined narrator, a chance to read an excerpt from my book to one and all. Yes gentle reader, I actually look forward to the chance to speak in front of people. I am one of those people.

I spent a few days thinking about which chapter to read. I wanted to make sure that the chapter would make people want to read more while at the same time not giving away any of the serious plot points in the book. Passing on the more obvious chapters dealing with character development or something closer to the climax, I finally settled on chapter 18, about half way through the book.

Chapter 18, titled 'Rules of the Game' deals with the initial reaction of the guys when one of them suggests to the group that they play Russian roulette. At that point in the book the raccoon hunt is over with and the guys are coming down off a shared joint or two. It's fun to read because I have the character Ronnie, your typical good ole' boy, wax philosophic about playing Russian roulette. Great for laughs, I tell you.

So I went to the party. A house full of strangers is one thing. A house full of strangers who have all spent the last month writing a fifty-thousand word novel is another. To say the group was eclectic would be too simple a word to describe the motley multifarious crowd assembled. Ranging from youngsters unable to enjoy the libations to hipster geezers the crowd had something for everyone, especially if you happened to enjoy gay erotica.

Yeah folks, I wrote that right. There seemed to be an overabundance of gay erotica represented at the party. Of the readings presented three of them were on the subject of homosexuals. The chapters selected were not overtly erotic for the most part, coming out at a wedding, the death of a lover and finally a slash fiction story about Duran Duran.

I wasn't offended by the subjects presented. Heck, even the story about the dragon having sex with the Asian consort didn't offend me (it was mighty good). I was surprised. I didn't know that so many women enjoyed writing romance/erotica about gay men. That particular fact had escaped me in my travels, until Friday night.

It is amazing when you think about it. My book has four main characters and maybe a dozen supporting characters and there is one sex scene in fifty-thousand words. Duran Duran has five members (seven if you count the two add-on members after Liberty) and yet someone was able to write fifty thousand words about their lives. While I hate to question anyone's passions I find it hard to believe that the world needs a fifty-thousand word novel on the members of Duran Duran being 'hungry like the wolf' for each other.

I digress, I shouldn't comment on the subject matter of other authors. The Duran Duran girl did have the courage to read her book too, so props to her. Certainly considering that topics went from that to dragons in Houston to extra-dimensional slavery to suburban games of Russian roulette, there is no room to comment. The highlight for me was the older guy who read a good excerpt about a jogger in Washington D.C. His was, I felt, the best writing I heard that evening.

Eventually I took my turn and read my chapter. I marked two spots in my chapter to finish incase it was going poorly, but it didn't. People laughed at the right spots and listened intently. I ended up finishing the chapter and only changing one word during the reading. I didn't feel comfortable reading the line 'Pussy got a hold on me and I can't stop it' so I changed it on the fly to 'Women got a hold on me...'

Trust me, it works in context better as the original.

When I finished reading I enjoyed the brief applause and then got up to fetch myself a drink. On returning to the room I found myself in conversation with some folks. I got a lot of props for my writing which I always like to hear. They all wanted to know what happened next. Who dies in the game, what is the rest of the book about, where did I get the ideas; you get the picture.

Being me, I loved the attention.

It was fun sharing writing stories and talking about who helped you get through the writing process. I thanked the folks who gave me feedback as I wrote because without their input I probably would have given up on the book in the thirty-thousands.

As the evening went on I talked to a few different ladies. One lives near me and she gave me her email and phone number incase we want to get together to talk about writing some time. I also talked to another lady there who manages a piano store. She seemed really cool and I wish for the life of me I could remember her name. I wanted to talk to her one on one but when we went out for a smoke we were joined by a somewhat annoying twenty-year-old.

OK, that was harsh. She wasn't too annoying. She did think that when I and the piano girl were discussing Beethoven's 9th that we were talking about a movie involving a dog. She also came out on the porch when I was hoping to talk to the other girl and then made herself the center of the conversation. My opportunity to talk to the piano girl was thwarted so let me shake a virtual fist at this girl's intrusion.

I left the party after one and drove home to find my bed waiting for my weary head. The reading went fantastic and the party gave me enough encouragement to write another three chapters in the book. I am supposed to meet these folks at a bookstore the Sunday to discuss forming some sort of writer's group in the area. As I need both friends and the opinions of others on my book, I'm looking forward to the group.

Lessons Learned from a Virgin...

2005-12-05T16:09:00.000-06:00

Today's post isn't going to be your typical post here on R2H. I'm not going to write about what I did this weekend just yet (but believe me, I've got some entertaining stories to share this week) instead I want to take a few minutes of your time to talk about a movie I went to this weekend, by myself, sans date, sans son, sans sanity (but we all know I'm constantly losing that).

On Sunday I wanted to get out of the house. I'd spent most of Saturday either getting caught up on sleep, working in the house or over at Jules and Bubbha's for another fantastic movie night. Sunday morning by noon, after I'd written another chapter in the book, I was tired of being home. I wanted to go out and see what the world held for me. I was not going to sit inside and be a slave to the computer nor the clutter.

So, I leashed up the mutt, loaded him in the back of the Vibe rental (nothing like making a rental car smell like dog just before returning it) and we went for a long walk along side creeks and through woods near the house. I've loads to tell you about that, but I need to wait until I can go back and take photos. You're not going to believe what I found.

After putting the mutt in the back yard along with the bitch (I've got two dogs, a female pure-bred who I like to call bitch and a male mutt who gets the name mutt, but only on the blog) I went for a drive.

I had two goals for my driving about. One was to spend enough time in the car to empty the tank. When I rented the car it came on empty and I felt obligated to return it the same way. The second reason was to kill time before going to the dollar theater (which due to inflation now costs a buck fifty) to see the movie "The 40 Year-Old Virgin".

During my driving around here, there and then over there, the ever-present voice on my phone was Paris La Quinta. She's currently working as a stewardess on extraordinary rendition flights for the US government. The job suits her as she gets to travel all over Eastern Europe and shop for designer knock-offs on the black market on lay-overs.

We talked about this and that, I got some lunch and finally, I pulled into the theater parking lot with thirty minutes to go before the movie started and hardly enough gas to return the car tomorrow. I'd wanted to see the film, which I'm going to call 40YOV in this post to spare my aching fingers the pain of typing all those words over and over again, when it came out but never got a chance to. My brother gave it good reviews, so it was high on my list.

The problem is, I don't like going to movies alone. I know it is odd, I mean once the lights go down and the movie starts who notices that you're alone right? It isn't like I'm Paul Reubens doing something I shouldn't in the theater anyway, so why the stigma? I wish I know. I haven't seen a movie in the movie theater alone since, well maybe Star Wars, Episode I, but even then I can't remember.

It has been a damn long time.

To ease my discomfort I listened to my iPod until the movie started. Once it began I forgot that I was all-alone in the theater watching a movie about a man who never seems to be able to make any headway with the ladies, for about the first twenty minutes. Then the similarities started.

The character Andy in 40YOV is pretty happy with his lot in life. He keeps busy with a load of hobbies that you would expect a 40YOV to have; collecting action figures, painting lead miniatures, playing video games and being completely anal about how clean his place is.

Now I am personally not too much like that. Yes I have my share of action figures, but for the most part they've been passed on to Buddy and only a few are still in their boxes, really. While I neither play video games much nor paint little lead figures, I do yo-yo almost daily and I know loads of card tricks. The flavors may not be the same as the 40YOV, but believe me I felt a connection to this man.

As the movie went on the audience gets wind of how desperately lacking in socializing skills Andy is. Woman after woman is presented to him and for the most part he doesn't seem to ever know what to say. He doesn't know how to meet women in clubs, he doesn't know when a woman is flirting and he doesn't know what to do about it.

That part I can understand all too well. I may not be a virgin, but I felt a kinship with Andy. His search for love coupled with his complete lack of experience in talking to women put him in a position where he basically gave up on the idea of getting laid all together.

I am not there yet. I've certainly had my share of wild times with women in my life. The kinds of wild times that would make most of the 'playas' I know green with envy (and I wouldn't even have to let the little soldier out). I am by no means a virgin, but there is something in Andy that I see in myself. I think it is a sense of idealism, and I am worried that as time goes on I will lose that.

R and I started dating in high school. She was my third girlfriend and the first that lasted over a year (four months and then eight with the second). When we went out for seven years and then got married. The last time I was in the world of dating I was sixteen. Eighteen years later I feel like I need training wheels when I go to bars and what not.

In the movie Andy has training wheels in the form of a trio of co-workers playing the stereotypical males. There is the suave playa, the broken-hearted bitter one and the 'I'll bang anything' type. The three of them try their best to instruct Andy on how to score.

Their advice doesn't work for Andy, of course. Well, sometimes it works, but usually poorly. The lesson from the movie is that we all need to find our own path I guess. That what works for one person may not work for another. Andy's eventual happiness, which pretty much nixes the possibility of a sequel, is sought out by following his own instincts.

It is that eventual happiness that I am looking for. The past year has taught me that I miss being married. I liked it. It was nice to have someone to spend your life with. Don't get me wrong, Buddy is a fantastic kid and I love spending time with him, but the company of an adult is missing. I wonder to myself how many Liz's I am going to go through before I find something that will fill that void in my life again.

Oh, and before you feel too sorry for me, on Friday night I got phone numbers. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

Follow the blue ball...

2005-12-03T15:42:00.000-06:00

I came across this today. Pick a blue ball and follow it around the screen.

Also, this has got to be the best comedian rivalry letter ever. David Cross dresses down Larry the Calbe Guy.

The thing I love about Paris Hilton is her facial expression.

Books your kids should not read.

Darth Vader on Wheel of Fortune.

And for Jules and Bubbha...

The mood I'm in...

2005-12-02T16:54:00.000-06:00

Gentle reader I have been in a bad mood this week. I've been snapping at co-workers and friends a bit too quickly. I have been feeling persecuted by others this week and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the lack of time with Buddy. Perhaps it is the stress of coming up on Christmas with no money for gifts. I don't know what it is but I have seen it affecting me and I'd like to shed the mood as soon as possible.

I don't like being in a bad mood. It doesn't suit my nature, but here it is. I have to learn to deal with it I suppose. I think I am doing a better job with that. Partially it is because I'm trying to recognize how I am feeling about things more often. When I notice my feelings, which I think I used to ignore too often, I am trying to act on them. Take for example last night...

Last night I got off work and headed for the house. I had a long day filled with frustration and angst at work. A project I am on became far more convoluted after a meeting today and that's no fun at all. The simple programming that I worked up to take care of the deliverables now needs to be totally re-written and additional technologies need to be brought in.

The people I work with generally fall into different specialities and they do not understand all the complexities of what I do. They don't need to of course and I don't expect them to really. The thing is that something of beauty that I made is now turning into something riddled with scar tissue as I try to bend it to meet the new requirements.

This project has also put me off another project which I am really enjoying working on. The other project is really testing my skills and it is getting a lot of props in the company. It is the type of project that I've been waiting for and I'm working hard to make it as eye-poppingly kick-ass as I can. So, frustration supplants bliss and my mood sours and when I left the office yesterday that is where I was.

When in a bad mood on the drive home I generally call up friends to talk. Last night I should have probably avoided talking to anyone. Instead I called a friend and as we talked over about twenty minutes I found myself getting more and more frustrated. Any criticism of my life was taken very personally, more personally than normal, and I felt myself getting more and more pissed off.

I tried to do what I normally do when conversation breeches that flexible membrane and becomes an argument. I tried to change topics, but no matter what topic we ended up on I felt like I was being attacked. Nothing I did was right and it had been that way all day. I wanted to go home and sleep until the day was finished and I didn't feel like talking to anyone.

So you know what I did? I listened to my feelings and took action. Good grief, I'm sounding like Yoda now.

I interrupted my child-less friend who was going on about suitable bed times for kids Buddy's age and told them that I was just going to let them go. It was abrupt and probably out of character for me to do so, but I just felt that if I didn't get off the phone then a long stream of anger was going to spew from my pent up frustration and stress. I know my friend was trying to help but to me it felt like another person in the week's long list of people, was being critical of me for the sake of being critical.

So I hung up. I said that's it, I'm letting you go and I hung up. Then for the rest of the drive I resisted the urge to let out my mood on traffic and drive home. When I finally arrived I went into the bedroom played one game of sudoku and fell asleep. Hours later I woke up and got some food, feeling woozy from all the sleep. I called Buddy to say goodnight and then went to bed myself. No writing, no emails, no music and no surfing the web.

Today has been slightly better. Work is frustrating still, but it is Friday so that is always a cause for hope. Tonight I'm going to the NaNoWriMo party and I'm looking forward to that. Maybe I'll make new friends. Maybe my mood will improve. I hope so. I don't think I can take being a Grinch all the way through until Christmas.

###

I feel out of place writing on my blog again after taking November easy. The words are not coming to me as they used to and I keep finding myself in the eight hundreds when I think I should be finished. Maybe I used to be more descriptive in my posts or something, because it sure feels like a thousand words have already been written. This paragraph is being added after I've said all that I wanted to.

So is this one, and I know that some of you are going to tell me that it is OK to not jot down a thousand words a day. That you would find a more reasonable count of say five hundred words acceptable. Well, I wouldn't. I like writing a thousand words a day and after last month's novel novel writing contest I can see that my daily writing really paid off.

I had this problem to a lesser extend when I wrote the book (which isn't finished yet). I wanted to keep each chapter at around fifteen hundred words at least. When I would have said all that I wanted to say in a chapter I would do a word count and if I was under fifteen hundred I'd write a little more. Usually I found my chapters to be well over fifteen hundred words; sometimes up to twenty-five hundred. Now that I'm blogging again more often I guess I'll have to tack on these extra paragraphs every once in a while until my internal dialog comes back.

Or until the drama returns...

Return to Posting...

2005-12-01T16:08:00.000-06:00

The month of November in the year two-thousand five is gone. It is now part of the past and never again will any of us live inside the confines of November 2005. Now it is December and as I look out my window on the beautiful warm ~~summer~~ winter day here in Houston Texas I can not help but feel a sense of melancholy for the previous month.

A year ago today I looked into the future at a possible life for me. I saw myself posting a new entry to the Good Husband blog after a hiatus of many, many years. Well, it has been a year since that post and a lot has changed. My life now is not what I thought it would be when R moved out, but I can't really find a reason to complain about it.

I can remember how sad I was over Thanksgiving break last year. The end of my marriage, missing Buddy when he visited his mother, trying to figure out how to restart my life anew after I'd reached a point that I was happy. Wait, that really isn't true. In all honesty I was miserable for most of two-thousand four. My marriage fell apart and I was surprised. What a good husband I was...

I shouldn't complain really. Things are better for me in so many ways these days. Dealing with Buddy is getting better all the time. The frustrations of the divorce are, for the most part, all things of the past. Dealing with R is becoming more and more infrequent and I'm considering throwing my hat into the dating arena again. Maybe it is too soon, but I don't know. Maybe I'm ready for something new.

Tomorrow night I'm going to one of the Nation Novel Writer's Month 'TGIO' parties (that's 'Thank God it's Over'). I'm going to a party by myself and there isn't a soul there who I have met before. I am very interested in meeting the other writers because I need more friends. Building friendships seems to be the prime weakness in my personality this past year. I can only think of one new friend I've made this year. I need to make more.

I still wish that there was a way to fast forward to happiness again, but that isn't fair is it? I shouldn't be able to jump over the pain and grieving just to get back to the fun. I need this pain and grieving to come to grips with the path my life has taken. It's a bumpy road sure, but the travel hasn't been all that bad in all honesty. Hindsight is not only twenty-twenty, but it is also a balm to sooth the pain of the past. What is the saying; time heals all wounds.

With enough time I'll have all new wounds to ponder and the old wounds will be a part of the past along with November. I have no doubt that R will be a thorn in my side for years to come though. For example, last night Buddy told me that R told him I feed him nothing but garbage and if he wants to grow up faster he's got to eat better. I know what you are thinking, typical non-custodial parent bullshit, and I would agree. Buddy gets a large variety of food with me, he's just not telling his mother about them I guess.

of course, when I asked Buddy what he told R we were eating he listed only McNuggets and french fries, which is far from the truth. On the rare occasion Buddy and I will hit a McDonalds but those visits are few and far between. Usually we're eating a variety of dishes with chicken as a central theme. There is nothing wrong with what I'm feeding Buddy and on top of that, he's the tallest kind in his school right now. He is growing fine.

Garbage, my ass!

You know, R never liked my cooking. She would pick at anything I cooked for her with an annoying frequency. In all the years we were married I can not think of a single meal I cooked that she didn't complain about. It is no wonder that she is telling Buddy that I don't do a good job cooking. Such a bitch, I tell you. I could tell you about the missing child support checks from R to further my assessment of her, but I'll skip that for now.

I told Buddy that he was eating fine at home and growing up more than fast enough. He seemed to be fine with this but I couldn't leave it well enough alone. I concluded our conversation about his mother by telling him that "Mommy never liked my cooking anyway."

Perhaps that was a bad thing to say but I don't care. We're talking about a woman who left Buddy's hamster to die when she evacuated for hurricane Rita. Yes folks, Buddy's hamster died after being alone in his cage for five days. R told Buddy that the hamster got out and went to live with someone else, but come on; only a five year old would believe that.

The thing is, Buddy is nearly six. The story told about the hamster is one of those topics that comes up at odd times with him, like last night as we fed the stingrays near the house. On nights before Buddy goes to his mother for the weekend I like to take him out to dinner. Last night after dinner Buddy wanted to go feed the stingrays and I thought, why not? So we went.

On the way there Buddy had a lot of questions about his hamster and how it might get out of a cage and why it wanted to stay with a new owner rather than with him. I tried to answer all his questions but at a certain point I told him he has to ask his mother about these things. I wonder if I should tell him that the hamster is dead? It's been six weeks now and I think that he should know the truth. Why do I have to be the one to tell him?

All these issues that I'm dealing with now. Different issues than last year but issues still. I think I'm handling things pretty well but I've made my share of mistakes this past year. Time heals all wounds; I'll remember that as I make it through to next year at this time.

In the Winner's Circle...

2005-11-29T09:18:00.000-06:00

Folks, take a look at this web page. You see my name on there? That's right. Last night while many of you were getting ready for bed I was crossing the fifty thousand word mark in my book, and becoming a winner of the 2005 National Novel Writer's Month.

I was elated. I had to call up Paris La Quinta as soon as I finished chapter 28 to tell her the news. Paris was just getting off a long day of work. She's currently helping people remove the Sony Rootkit Malware program from their PCs. She'd heard about Ray Digerati's post on Craigslist and decided that men shouldn't have all the fun. After a long day of many two-hour calls Paris was happy to hear about the latest news about my book.

This morning I officially posted my word count and printed out my certificate. Now I am an official winner and I get all the rights and privileges associated with being a winner. For example, I will now start introducing myself as a novelist when I meet new people. Why not right? I've actually had a book published (my author page on Amazon has two products) and when I finally wrap up this book, I'll have completed a novel.

Yeah yeah, I'm not finished yet. The book is now entering the climax but before I can fix everything in the main character's life he has to understand a few things from another's point of view. Probably another seven chapters I'd imagine. With luck I'll be done by next weekend. That's the plan at least.

In addition to calling myself a novelist in dinner party conversation I'm also going to be bringing up the tale of this month's effort any time someone talks about doing a 5K fun run or even a marathon. "Oh, you ran twenty miles? Yeah, well I wrote a fifty-thousand word novel in a month. Bet your legs can't help you do that!"

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha!

I should calm down. This novel is going right to my head. I'm nearly finished though, and writing it has been so much fun. I fully expect that I'll be starting on a second novel in a month or two. Eventually you'll all be able to drop my name when I'm big and famous. You will be able to tell people that you used to read my blog back before my first novel was published, and your friends will want to hang around you because of that.

My delusions of grandeur are asking for a morning coffee. I'll try to post again later.

Thanksgiving is Thankfully Over...

2005-11-28T15:17:00.000-06:00

It's been almost a week since I last posted here. I have been missing my daily posts to this blog and now that the month and my novel are nearing completion I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. It you are keeping track of my novel's progress you'll be happy to hear that I am short just under nineteen hundred words from the fifty thousand words in a month goal.

The book is going to be longer than that though. In my head I have at least eight more chapters to write. There's the chapter when the bomb goes off and the chapter with the twins in the sauna and the... wait that isn't my book. Sorry about that. All that I have left to do is provide the main character with a means of redemption. It takes me eight chapters to do that.

Once it is finished I'll edit the book and make a second draft. Then all I have to do is find a publisher, be it e-book or paper, and I'll announce it to the world. I know a lot of you are waiting for the book to be released. We are almost there, I promise!

###

This weekend wasn't the greatest for me. It has been a year since R moved out now and during the weekend I thought many times on that passage of time. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time for family but in the past year the family I knew has changed drastically. Instead of traveling between families and spending four lazy days off work I spent most of the break alone without Buddy, without family and without, for the most part, friends.

Put away your violins because I don't need any sad songs played for me. I saw my family on Thursday and had a good time with them. On Friday night I went to Jules and Bubbha's house for a movie marathon. On Saturday night I went to a karaoke club and had a few beers, but I did that alone. Mostly I missed having Buddy around. The last time I had him for a full day without work was on the thirtieth of October.

The thing that struck me this weekend was the absence of tradition. The old traditions were tossed aside last year when R announced that she would be moving out over the Thanksgiving holidays. This year though, the traditions were missing without a sudden change in things. This year the traditions were empty stockings on Christmas morning; disappointing.

Jules told me I need to announce things as being 'new traditions,' so I've got a few new traditions to share. First, the Thanksgiving Parade was again attended by yours truly. Once again I met my brother and his group of friends on the parade route. This time Buddy wasn't along but still we got the parade people cheering and doing the wave and generally being zany. It was a good time.

The second new tradition I've started is confronting situations instead of avoiding them. I need work on this, but I was happy to be able to confront a situation that could have gotten hairy for me this weekend. I get the impression that sometimes people ask you the same question over and over in order to get a response that they want to hear. Over the course of the last week I was asked a question a few times and eventually I decided that I didn't want to keep answering. When I said I wasn't going to answer the question anymore things changed remarkably and I'm feeling better about things now.

My goodness, that is vague. Sorry about that but I have to be about that topic. Now that the divorce is done I feel that I need to keep my personally and private life a bit closer to my chest. I've been neglecting to mention things in an effort to find out my own opinion without the input of all of you. This isn't anything to do with the advice I get from you though. It's about the advice I give myself, and listening to what I want instead of the consensus views of readers.

I used to feel a great sense of validation in this blog about how things were going in my life. I was dealing with all sorts of issues back then and your opinions were fantastic. Now that I'm out in the brave new world I find myself lacking in knowledge that I should have gained through experience. I get the feeling that what I need to do is try to get that experience in my own way.

Besides, you all saw what happened with Ms. V. I ignored every bit of advice that everyone gave me and just ended up deserving a lot of 'I told you so's. This time around I'm trying to keep my mistakes more to myself if you don't mind.

The third new tradition I started this weekend was, well nothing. I don't know, maybe writing a novel in November will be a new tradition. Maybe sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon feeling sorry for myself will be a new tradition. Maybe wondering if I'll ever get back what I had two years ago will be a new tradition. hopefully I'll find more uplifting ones than those though.

All told my weekend was mostly depressing. The mood made for good writing in the novel but other than that I felt mopey and blue. I'm back at work though, and Buddy returns tonight, so today isn't that bad. This weekend was too long though. Too long to be sitting at home thinking of nothing more than feeling sorry for myself.

I am not thankful for that.

Assorted dramatics...

2005-11-22T14:57:00.000-06:00

It's been ages since I last posted. It has been so long that I almost forgot that I had a blog. Can you imagine that? I used to be good for a thousand words a day but now that I'm knee deep in my book I haven't had the time I used to to update all of you about my life.

I would offer an apology but to be honest I am having so much fun writing the book that I just can't bring myself to feel like I'm neglecting anything. Until I'm done with it the regular updates to R2H will just have to be sporadic. Wake me up, when November ends. Still, there is drama to document and so I find myself back here posting a brief collection on the life of Chris for your reading pleasure.

Last Thursday night while I was at the poker room not playing cards (too tired) R was busy playing revisionist with the divorce decree. She sent me an email telling me that Buddy would be with her from the seventeenth through the morning of the 28th because the local school district has this entire week off school.

Her reading of the divorce decree would have been correct save for one critical flaw. Buddy isn't enrolled in the local school district. He is in a private school and their Thanksgiving holiday starts at the end of the day on Wednesday. The school which Buddy attends is the schedule that we go off of for holidays and not the school district that he lives in.

Of course, I have to hand it to R for once again showing her true side. She doesn't bring up the question she has about the schedule until she has possession of Buddy, and this isn't the first time she's done it like this. If there is a question about the visitation schedule she never argues this point without first taking possession of Buddy.

Still, I handled things properly. I first sent and email to Dee asking her if my reading of the decree was correct (I wanted to make sure that I was right in my understanding of the phrase 'the school the child attends'). Then seeing as I was worried about this tactic of R's I called up Liz to ask her dual legal and divorced mother opinion. Both of these ladies told me that I was in the right so I replied to R letting her know that she was mistaken and left things at that.

On Saturday R sent me another email telling me that I was wrong and that she would verify her story with her lawyer if need be. I told her not to bother because I had already verified my position with my lawyer before initially replying. I didn't hear anything back about the issue and yesterday Buddy was at his school waiting for me when I got there.

###

On Monday morning I took my car into the shop for repairs to commence. The front end damage totalled to a littler under thirty-five hundred dollars so I'll be claiming that on the new insurance policy. By my estimate the car has had more money poured into it in repairing the four accidents (front side, rear end, front end and roof (it was a tree branch)) than it cost me to buy the car. From now on I will refer to the car as Steve Austin in homage to the six-million dollar man.

The rental car that I have landed in is a far better choice than my last rental unit. Instead of a big huge truck I've been placed into a Pontiac Vibe. It is both a suitable car for my needs and a great basis for many funny puns. I plan on picking up women at bars by asking them if they want a ride in my vibe. Buddy loves the car because unlike my Honda, this one has four doors so he gets his own door.

###

Last Saturday night Buddy lost his tooth. I was sad to hear that it didn't hold out for a return home, but these things happen. The tooth fairy gave him five bucks which is more than I would have forked over to him, so I suppose his timing was to his best advantage. He returned from his mothers minus a tooth but with a vastly cuter smile. My little man is growing up!

###

The book count is now at thirty-seven thousand two hundred and seventy-one words. I am just barely ahead of schedule having slipped behind this weekend due to not writing. I have just over eight days to go and I can't see reaching the fifty-thousand word mark being a problem. The reviewers I've got reading the book all seem to be enjoying the first draft as it appears. In addition to writing a sex scene I've also written my first death and that was tough to put to words.

Things are about to get really interesting in the book as I round the corner and head for the climax. I am enjoying writing the book so much that I'll probably keep this up as a hobby. When it is all done and I've had a chance to tighten up the writing (lots of editing to do) I'll make it available for everyone.

So that's it. That is my update and you have now officially been caught up with my life. I'll try to post again tomorrow but if not, I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving.

A good thing can't last long...

2005-11-17T14:41:00.000-06:00

Howdy folks, guess what happened. No really, guess.

Got your guess yet? No? Need a hint?

OK, it's been eleven months since my last one.

Yeah, that's right, I got in a car wreck this morning on the way to work.

sigh...

Here's the obligatory disclaimer; I am fine, the car is a bit dented but it's driving fine and the guy I hit seemed to be no worse for wear. We exchanged info and were both on our way without need of the police or anything. It was a minor rear-end collision in rush hour traffic on the freeway. I looked down to get my drink and in that moment a truck three cars in front of me slammed on it's breaks, causing a chain reaction of break slamming that I, being otherwise occupied with said beverage, missed the break slamming memo until a fraction of a second too late.

Bah humbug. All I want for Christmas is a five hundred dollar deductible.

My second wreck of the year, my third in the past three. I'm a little miffed about the whole thing, but what can you do? I drive thirty miles each way five days a week in traffic in the fourth largest city in the nation, with the worst public transportation system. It is only through the divine hand of intelligent design that I haven't been in more wrecks.

On Monday I'll be in a rental. By Monday afternoon you can expect that I'll be complaining about it. I pray that the repairs take less time than the last accident. I'd also love it if my insurance rates would eventually go down again. I don't think they ever will.

###

Last night Buddy and I went out to buy new shoes for my fine, flipper-footed offspring. The Crocs are gone and now Buddy has a choice of two pairs of shoes for his feet. First up we bought a pair of dressy hiking books with Velcro closures. Fit for the trail or a church pew these shoes should get Buddy through the Christmas formal season just fine.

The second pair of shoes were a pair of Shaq branded basketball shoes. Predominantly white with a shiny blue insole and flashing 'stomp activated' lights this pair was far preferred by Buddy for wearing out the store. He wore them again this morning and I'm sure that he's going to love showing them off at school.

After shoe shopping we went to chilli's for dinner where Buddy insisted that I talk with a Transylvanian accent a la a vampire through the entire meal. I enjoyed pretending to be Mahir as I flirted with the hostess in my newly found broken English. Buddy made me to order for him using the voice too, is went something like "Achhh, yess. The boy have, cheeek'n sandwich, meal for kids. I have guiltless cheeek'n platter. We share chips, salsa before yes?"

During the mean Buddy showed me that one of his bottom teeth is loose in his mouth. He spent the rest of the meal playing with it and eating his food. I can't believe he's at the tooth losing age. I had to call a few friends to see if five and three-quarters is too soon for the teeth to be lose.

It seems that most kids start the process around six years of age. Some sooner, some later. Buddy will be six in three months, so I'm not too worried. Now I just hope that the tooth comes out while he's on my watch. I've been waiting for over twenty-five years to play tooth fairy and pit my stealth against a sleeping, anxious child.

###

The book is going great still. I'm close to thirty thousand words now. Last nights chapter was great fun to write. This weekend I'm looking forward to breaching the forty-thousand word mark. I've got to get these characters through a pretty big situation tonight, and I'm going to go to Saul's poker room for a little socializing.

Until tomorrow gentle reader, be thankful that you do not share the roads with me.

Halfway through the tulips...

2005-11-16T13:41:00.000-06:00

National Novel Writer's Month has been taking most of my daily writing attention recently as you well know. Thankfully there hasn't been a lot going on in my life for the past two days so while I feel guilty at the lack of posts here on R2H, you should know that the posts that I would be writing would be very dull.

Writing hasn't been dull though. Writing the book has been an awesome experience. Some nights chapters seem to be chomping at the bit to get out of my hands and onto the computer screen. Last night's second chapter was like that. I wrote it in half the time I wrote the first chapter and it was far longer. The dialog was coming so fast I could hardly keep up, and usually I hate doing dialog.

I'm well past the halfway point in the 50,000 word challenge. When I went to bed last night I'd clocked in over thirty thousand words and I've no doubt that I'll make it to fifty-thousand by the end of the month now. Hell, I'll probably make it over fifty thousand words. What started out as a monumental takes has turned out to require only a few hours of attention every night and that's it. Of course it also takes some thought during the day, but that's a nice break from reality.

You can track my progress here.

###

The issue I had with my friend that I mentioned the other day seems to have been resolved. I mentioned the other day that a good friend of mine and I had a falling out. On Friday I was driving to the airport and I realized that I was being stubborn. Friendship needs forgiveness and while what happened goes against everything I believe in, I decided to swallow my principals and try to repair things. I apologized and hoped for the best.

It didn't work. I called and left messages that were not returned. I tried texting too and finally got a reply when I landed in Vegas. "Please leave me alone," the message said. That hurt, but I figured I deserved it. So now we're equal in terms of hurting each other and I'm not in the mood to be hurt like that again. I'm going to honor the request and just try to move on.

After getting my cell phone bill from last month it hasn't been that difficult. I had a lot of calls to people in October for various reasons. Drama erupting in the lives of friends caused me to go way over my minutes, the first time since the divorce ended, and today I had to pay an extra $125 to make up for the overage. I hate going over my minutes but sometimes you make an exception when you've got friends in need.

###

Tonight I'm taking Buddy to buy new shoes. He's been wearing crocs that his mother bought him for the past few weeks, but now that cold weather has finally arrived in Houston I think it's time to get him some nice shoes. Despite the high cost of my cell phone bill I do have some extra funds this month so I'm thinking that I'll get him some proper shoes from the Sketcher's Outlet instead of Target or Pay-Less brand shoes.

###

My weekend in Las Vegas has got me thinking about my current respite from dating women. While my virginity is growing back nicely I miss the company of a woman who I feel close to. There is something to be said for spending time with someone you like and this weekend seemed to underscore the fact that companionship is missing from my life.

The thing is, I don't want to date really. The drama of the relationship is something that I want to do without. What I want though is someone to walk around the park holding hands with. I want someone to talk with and have fun with but not someone to ask questions about where "we" are going.

The last time I dated things were like this. I was sixteen and marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. R and I didn't talk about our relationship in terms of where we were going for four years. I doubt I'll have that luxury again but boy would I love to find someone interested in a carefree yet meaningful friendship.

###

I think it is time to see Jennifer, my therapist again.

Heaven or Las Vegas...

2005-11-14T13:24:00.000-06:00

Gentle reader, I have returned. After a two night trip to las Vegas for our company meeting I am back in Houston in my office, at my chair and nearly rested up. What a fantastic trip it was, I had a great time and didn't gamble too much nor drink too much (with the exception of Friday night but I was sober before going to bed I swear). I know I kept repeating the phrase 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' but I think that I should share some of the events of the weekend with you. Partially to warn you away from some things and partially to alert you to something you might enjoy.

My trip, as you know, was part of a company weekend retreat. We had our annual meeting there and a social event. Not a lot of work went on, but then the trip wasn't really about work other than the scheduled events that we had to attend. All employees were encouraged to bring their spouses along and as I am spouseless I thought I'd better bring someone along or I'd end up being a third wheel to someone.

I went through a list of potential friends to bring along. There was Donnie, my friend from high school who lives in LA, but he tends to be an obnoxious drunk so not the type of person you want to have around co-workers. Then there was my sister, who also lives in LA, but she was planning a trip to Vegas in October and wasn't likely to be ready to go back so soon. The friend I thought would be perfect for the trip lives clear the other side of the country but I hadn't seen her in years and really wanted to reconnect with her.

Before I go any further, I need to give my friend a blog name. She reads these pages so I should try to find something that will make her laugh. I could call her the accidental spinster, because at thirty-one she is afraid that she's going to be a spinster but that's not a nice name. I think I'll call her Padme after Natalie Portman's character in the Star Wars films. Like Padme my friend has a certain weakness for blonde boys younger than her.

Padme is as attractive as she is smart and good friend. She has dark sultry eyes that you can get lost in, a pretty smile and distracting curves in all the right places. For the trip her hair had a new red tint which I liked even better than her more traditional brown. When things started heading south with R she was one of the first people I found myself comfortable with in discussing my fears about my marriage. She lives miles away from me and it's rare that I get to see her. When she said that she would go I was very happy. In addition to being a great travel companion, laid back, up for anything, Padme was also about the most impressive friend I have in terms of the people I work with.

I know you all want to hear about romance and the like. While I've had a crush on Padme for years neither of us were in a place that was conductive to anything romantic. I think all women are crazy, relationship wise, and Padme thinks she is crazy, relationship wise. Seeing as I am older than Padme, it was a platonic trip, which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy flirting in a friendly way with her. I behaved myself though and acted like a gentleman as best I could (until she left and the three hookers showed up in my hotel room).

On the gambling front I didn't do too badly. I spent less than I planned on spending and I think that was the chief goal of the weekend. I lost seventy bucks in fifteen minutes at blackjack on the first night and that put me off anything serious for the weekend. Instead of gambling on Saturday Padme and I decided to experience the other forms of entertainment that Vegas offers.

After the company meeting we went up to our room for a brief rest before heading out to the half-price ticket place. We wanted to see some shows that night and were debating which ones to see. The big name shows were all both too expensive and sold-out so we had to look for decent but affordable shows. We chose La Cage, a female impersonator show at the Riveria (which I'd seen before and enjoyed) and Bite, a topless review about Vampires. Both shows were selected for their camp value more than anything else.

After getting the tickets and comments from the sales person that no one had ever ordered that pair of shows before, we went off to Circus Circus to play miniature golf on the single worst maintained miniature golf course I have ever played. Padme and I have a bit of a rivalry in miniature golf and she actually was playing well enough to beat me by one stroke on this messed up course. Perhaps it was the fact that a roller-coaster went screaming over our heads as we played or maybe it was the ripples in the astroturf on the course, whatever the case may be, my game wasn't there and Padme won.

After golf we crossed the street tot he Riveria and got dinner. On Friday we paid twenty-five bucks each for a buffet in the Mirage and there was no way we were going to spend that much again on a meal. Denny's for breakfast and food courts for dinner were the menu for the rest of the trip. I went to a gift shop to pick Buddy up an acrylic paperweight with a scorpion inside while Padme played the slots. When I returned we went for food and then on to see La Cage.

La Cage is the Riveria's long running female impersonator revue show staring Frank Marino as Joan Rivers. I saw the show years ago with My sister, her girlfriend and R and enjoyed it. Padme and I decided that if we were going to see topless vampires than we should see men in drag as well. The show was better than I remembered it being. the jokes had me laughing so hard I had tears and the impersonators were all pretty good.

The most disturbing impersonator did Britney Spears, in the school girl outfit. He looked just like her, except taller, right down to the coy smile. I had to keep reminding myself that Britney was a man. Other highlights were Madonna, Celine Dion, Reba and Judy Garland. The strangest impersonator was the Michael Jackson impersonator. He was dressed in a white t-shirt with an assortment of jackets and in the face looked just like Michael. What didn't work was the slight beer belly under the t-shirt. It just didn't look right at all.

After laughing our way through La Cage we had to high-tail it to the cab stand for our ride to the Stratosphere where Bite was starting in ninety minutes. The ride was quick and we ended up with over an hour of free time spent mainly in front of video poker terminals in the bar area drinking martinis. Padme was relieved to see that the line to Bite included a lot of women. I was disappointed that the line didn't include a lot of cute goth chicks dressed up for a night with naked vampires.

Bite was something else. I was unprepared for just how cheesy the show was. Sure there were boobs all over the place but it was hard to pay attention to them with all the cheese in the show. It was like watching the movie Showgirls without the plot. The story, if I remember it correctly, was that the king of the vampires (who took a liking to Padme when he walked through the audience, causing us both to laugh) was looking for his new bride. His coven of six dancers were there to help with his search.

At the start of the show the girls ran into the audience and picked out four folks to be brought up on stage; two men and two women. All four turned out to be plants as you soon found out. The show then went on with various dances straight out of hair metal videos from the eighties. One of the men was an aerialist and the other sang covers of all those rock ballads you wish you could forget.

When the bride of the vampire king was finally revealed I was instantly aware as to why the show was so bad. Turns out the vampire king has a thing for women with obviously fake boobs. this girl had what amounted to two oranges affixed to her chest. The man dressed as Britney Spears in La Cage had better boobs than the new vampire queen. Hell, all six of the coven dancers had a nicer rack that the 'star's manufactured boobs.

Still, the cheesy entertainment value was there. For less than twenty bucks we were entertained for over and hour and in Vegas that isn't bad. We made our way back to our hotel and up into our room at a little past midnight. The next morning Padme left at six thirty and I played the tables for an hour before catching up on sleep myself. On the flight home I wrote some more for my novel and managed to get up to just under twenty-five thousand words now.

All told, it was a great trip. I am very happy that Padme was able to join me. Even her leaving wasn't that bad as I was able to go back into the hotel room and fall asleep using her pillows, drifting into slumber with the smell of her hair in my nose. Platonic or not, there is nothing more erotic that laying naked on sheets just used by a sexy woman and imagining making sweet love to her.

OK, that last paragraph was a total lie. At this moment right now Padme is cleaning her laptop screen from the drink she just spat on it. Seriously, while what happened in Vegas is for the most part staying there, I will say that Padme and I are just friends contrary to what you might imagine or heard.

Like Harrison Ford I'm feeling Frantic...

2005-11-10T12:51:00.000-06:00

I'm weighed down with work today. A project that I was supposed to get last week didn't arrive until Monday and now I have to do battle with time to get the thing turned around and out the door before my trip to Vegas. Will I make it? I suspect I will but it would have been much nicer to have had the time to do things right from start to finish. I did not get enough time to get the work done at a pace that allowed for the best decisions to be made. Instead it's been 'whatever works.'

Not that I'm complaining about my job. I love it here. Even when things are stressful there's a sense of camaraderie here that I can't remember feeling a part of before. On top of that, tomorrow I'm going to Las Vegas with the company and you can't beat perks like that. The trip to Vegas is something I've been looking forward to ever since my friend agreed to come along. We're going to have a great time exploring the city, gambling and drinking.

Tonight I have to find a bag on my way home. I've got a great suitcase for week long trips but my two or three day bag went with R when she moved out. I need to find something in between a one night bag and a week long bag that isn't going to cost too much. I'll probably pick up a duffel bag on the way home tonight. I wish I had my old Eddie Bauer one, but like I said, it's gone and I doubt I'll ever see it again.

The trip is costing me a precious weekend with Buddy, but that's the price you pay as a single parent. Instead of spending the weekend with me in Vegas Buddy is going camping with my parents. He's looking forward to spending the weekend on the beach and if the weather we've been having holds through Sunday he'll probably go swimming in the Gulf while he is there. Swimming in the Gulf in November... And they say there is no such thing as global warming.

Earlier this week I got into a bit of a tiff with a good friend of mine and I'm feeling somewhat bad about it. The whole thing centered around this stupid amendment to the Texas constitution that defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. The wording of the amendment was broad and confusing but one thing it made sure of was that no other entity would have the legal rights of married people. Civil Unions, the legal status that many in the gay and lesbian community want instead of using the term 'marriage', are now banned from being recognized in Texas.

It is my opinion that this law is nothing short of bigotry. The rights of a minority group in Texas were trampled this week and of every person I know, only one voted in support of this amendment. I was shocked and appalled. I probably reacted harshly, but I have always felt that one should not tolerate bigotry in any form. I expressed myself to my friend using words that were not pleasant and while I feel strongly about what I feel, I do miss my friend.

I just cannot get over the fact that to me, voting to support the amendment is showing support for bigotry. It is making a minority group become second class citizens in the eyes of the law, and that is un-American. When I was in High School a good friend of mine told me I shouldn't date R because she wasn't White like me. It was the last time I talked to him. I don't need to surround myself with people so insensitive but now, I find myself wanting to compromise my feelings about this issue because I miss my friend.

###

The Book is moving along swimmingly. I've breached the twenty-thousand word mark and hope to be able to find some time to write while in Las Vegas. The plot seems to be moving along at a good clip and I'm hoping that the story is entertaining those of you reading it. The part that I'm really looking forward to writing is coming up in the next few days so I'm anxious to move the four heros through the required steps to get them from shooting at raccoons to the next step in the plot.

According to the stats on the NaNoWriMo site I'm currently tenth in Houston as far as word count goes. I will complete this book! Then we'll have to see if I can get it published.

I doubt I'll be posting from Las Vegas, but you never know. If I do don't expect to find out what I'm doing. You know the rules...

A Ghost from my past...

2005-11-08T12:40:00.000-06:00

I thought today I would update you as to what's been going on in my life outside my little writing project. I know that many of you are here to find out what sort of drama I've embroiled myself in and the accounts of my fictional mind are not bearing fruit for this blog. A ghost from the past has resurfaced and I need to figure out what I'm going to do about it.

On Saturday I ran into Barry, who I haven't seen in ages. Barry, as long time readers may remember, was the host of the naked hot tub party over a year ago (see early October posts on the Good ~~Husband~~) and a friend of Barbie and Ken's. Barry was at the gas station picking up beer and I was there filling up my car and grabbing a soda.

Barry seems to be doing well and asked how I was doing. I told him things were fine, because right now with no girlfriend and a great job things couldn't be better. He then asked if I'd talked to Barbie and Ken recently. I hadn't and told him that it had been months since I talked to her.

I haven't talked to Ken or Barbie since the divorce when I found out that Barbie had been feeding information to R about my life during our separation. In my opinion that crossed the line and my trust in Barbie evaporated right there in the mediation room.

Telling R about my life, dating Liz and a few other things, was one thing but what really got to me was the fact that Barbie lead me on to believe that she had no contact with R anymore. After all that I had done for her she sent me into the mediation having dealt R cards that I didn't know she held. When the mediator came in and said that R knew about Liz and knew about our hotel stay I was livid. There was only one person who could have told her and that person, Barbie, had told me over and over that she and R were not talking anymore.

As far as I am concerned Barbie's betrayal was more than I could forgive and after the mediation I decided never to talk to her again. Even after birth of her child I could not bring myself to go by to visit with her and Ken. I'd always tried to be on the level with Barbie. I was honest to her to a fault and that caused me to have a weaker hand than I wanted to. It could have cost me my son and that is not something that I can forgive.

Barry was perplexed by my reaction and wanted more details. I told him that Barbie had betrayed my trust and as far as I was concerned she wasn't a friend worth having anymore. I didn't elaborate and thought that the subject was closed with me. Then Barry told me that Ken and Barbie are moving to California and that Ken's already gone out there for a job.

"Moving to California," those words have been sticking with me for the past few days.

Barbie's been calling recently. She wants to know what happened. I haven't wanted to talk to her. I don't want the confrontation. I haven't answered when she calls.

Now I'm wondering if I should talk to her one more time before she takes off to the other side of the country. For a long time she was a great friend. Is the pain of the betrayal too much to close off any connection with her?

Part of me wants to never see or talk to her again. Another part of me wants to tell her good bye and thank her for a few good years of friendship.

I don't know what to do.

###

Buddy returned home last night with great excitement. He was super happy to see me and it was great to have him leap into my arms when I got him from school. We came home and watched Star Ward IV: A New Hope on the TV while I made Chicken Helper on the stove. The meal essentially boiled down to macaroni and cheese with chicken in it. As the noodles were not in the shape of Sponge-Bob or Scooby-Doo Buddy told me he didn't like them and ended up eating the chicken and a few of the noodles and leaving the rest.

I didn't force him to keep eating but I'm tired of him turning his nose up on everything I make. If the damn pasta doesn't include a twenty-cent licensing mark-up the boy doesn't want to eat it. I'm trying to make ends meet on a limited budget and Buddy wants me to spend extra money having cartoon shaped pasta. I am trying your suggestions about his eating, but letting him say when he's done and only eating half of the meal isn't a working solution. Any suggestions this time around?

###

Friday fast approaches and I'm going off to Las Vegas for the weekend. This is the first time I have ever taken a vacation by myself (well technically it is a company trip and a good friend of mine is meeting me there, but no R!). It makes me feel independent and excited at the opportunities. I've been giddy since last Friday and I can't wait to play some blackjack and craps. I'm also looking forward to seeing my friend, who I haven't seen in ages. Don't expect much of a report on my trip. There's a "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" clause on the airline tickets.

###

The writing is going really well still. Last night I killed a number of raccoons and I'm more than a third of the way to my goal of fifty-thousand words (I'm at 16,910). The fun part of the book is fast approaching and I'm looking forward to getting my characters through the rest of the night. I don't think they're all going to make it. I still need reviewers so send me an email if you're interested.

There is a good chance that directions were not followed...

2005-11-07T11:36:00.000-06:00

Thanks for all the people offering to read my book. You will be happy to hear that progress is going gang-busters at the novel writing sweatshop I've created at my house. When I left work on Friday I had about 4,300 words. Coming to work this morning I've added over ten thousand words to the total. My NaNoWriMo profile page now lists 14,789 words in my book, and that's not including chapter titles (Here is a Flash-based daily total so you can track my progress.)

I can remember the last time I tried to write a book. It was before I started my last blog and I got about ten thousand words into it and nothing had happened. The main character seemed to accomplish nothing and the dialog seemed stiff and fake. In between that attempt and this one I've taken to writing a thousand words a day and read a few books and articles about writing.

I have also read a lot more, especially in the last month, to prepare myself. I've found authors who have styles that I admire and read a lot of their novels with a critical eye towards pacing, dialog and narrative. I don't know if that helped, but with the progress I've made I think something must have. The characters I have created are almost dictating the book to me and the more I write the more real they become.

Other than writing this weekend I didn't do much. Next weekend's trip to Las Vegas has me watching my spending this week. I tried hard not to spend anything this weekend other than buying Star Wars III on DVD on Friday. Now that I have the entire saga on DVD I have also started watching all the movies in order from Episode one through Episode six. I'll tell you how it goes when I'm all finished.

Now I need to get back to work and today at lunch time I'm going to try to knock out another chapter, number ten in the book so far. The raccoon killing is coming up soon and I'm excited about how that is going to happen. Then after that the book will start to get really interesting. Hey, I almost forgot; I wrote the book's first sex scene (PG/PG-13 at the worst) and I think it came off OK.

I'll be sending out a link to the volunteers today and tomorrow to get your feedback. The problem is that many of you have just commented and in your comments I do not have an email address. This means that I haven't a way to contact you. So, let me ask again, if you're interested in reviewing my book as I write it then please, email me at mrduncan71 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

A call to readers...

2005-11-04T16:54:00.000-06:00

Get this; in two days I am already 4300 words into my novel. Things are moving along at a brisk pace and I'm going to attempt to knock out the entire first act of the book, about fifteen thousand words, by the end of the weekend.

Because of this I haven't found time to post here, and to be honest I probably will not be meeting my thousand words a day here for most of this month. I really want to be a winner in NaNoWriMo this year so you'll have to cut me some slack as I focus on that writing instead of this writing.

I'm publishing my novel on a super secret blog address as I go along. I'm actually writing the entire thing online using writley.com which includes a handy interface to my blogging software. I'd like to see if some of you would like to read along. Not all of you, maybe ten tops. When the book is all finished and I cross the 50,000 word finish line I'll put the book up in a format that you all can read it, but until then I want a small group to provide me feedback and help me to keep motivated.

Part of my goal of writing a thousand words a day is to become accustomed to writing every day so I can become a novelist. The NaNoWriMo thing is a way for me to set a goal and accomplish it. If you are interested in reviewing, make a comment or send me an email (mrduncan71 (at) yahoo (dot) com).

Hummer Overfloweth

2005-11-04T08:51:00.000-06:00

A Hummer dealer in California plays hide the Hummer in an effort to make it appear like Hummers are still selling. Three software engineers, one with a blog, play sleuth and find nearly two hundred Hummers hidden behind a hotel.

They took pictures.

Welcome to the suburbs...

2005-11-03T16:30:00.000-06:00

Today's entry my start on my novel. I've decided to go with the cul-de-sac story idea because of all the ideas I've had it seems to be the most fleshed out. I'll probably post more of these as the month goes on seeing as I've got about forty-nine thousand more words to write.

I hope you enjoy it.

"Hello. Is your mother home?"

The kid I'm talking to is seven years old, two years younger than my son Jason. His name is Niles or Neil or something, I don't know, to be honest I've never really bothered to know his name. He plays with Jason infrequently. The age difference of two years is vast when you're that young. The good thing is, he recognizes me but then, he lives on my street, so why wouldn't he?

It's Friday evening around six and Mandy is at home making dinner. I've got thirty minutes to wrap up things with my houses, six down and two to go. It is still light outside and the houses are all decorated for Halloween next week. Welcome to the suburbs.

The mother comes to the front hall of the house with the cordless against her neck and a pad of paper in her hands. She motions for me that she'll be right there. For the life of me I can't remember her name. Diane? Sharon? Jessica? He ex-husband's name was Mike. I know that. Mike was a great guy, always good for a beer on a Saturday afternoon when I wanted to get out of the house. Used to do a mean barbecue on the Fourth too. He moved out about a year or so ago and I think only the men on the street miss him.

The reason that I can't remember his ex's name is the same reason that none of the ladies liked him. Diane, Sharon and or Jessica were his girl friends on the side; one was his wife. I can't remember which was which and that's what I'm dealing with now as I wait for Diane-Sharon-Jessica to get off her cordless and talk to me.

"Sorry about that," She laughs as she sets the phone down. She's developed that overly laughy personality that recently divorced women in their thirties with kids get. Everything is funnier than it should be. Everything has to be bubbly.

"No problem," my goal is to make it through the conversation without mentioning her name and not let on that I've forgotten.

"What's up?" she asks.

"I don't know if you've heard yet but me and the guys are going to take care of the raccoon problem tonight."

The raccoon problem in the neighborhood referred to the morning garbage on the street ever since the wooded area south of us was cleared for more houses a few months ago. The raccoons have taken to our trashcans to replace their usual food sources. The end result is that someone's trashcan is over turned every night and trash gets strewn all over the street.

At first I admit that I snickered over my morning coffee watching my neighbors out in their yards picking up trash in their bathrobes. My house was spared for the first five weeks and Mandy and I felt a certain amount of smug satisfaction that our trashcans were impervious to the raccoons.
There is nothing more revealing to the secrets kept inside a home than the trash of said residence on display for all to see. The Tucker's trash

After it happened to me I didn't laugh anymore. As the cooler weather arrived the onslaught increased. In the past month I've been out in my robe three times picking up trash before work. The Flanagan's down the street just let their trash bow around and that prompted Mark, the street's yard-Nazi, to call a block meeting to discuss the situation.

We tried the city's animal control but their traps were useless. They told us that the raccoons would move on soon and we should just be patient. Some of us bought new trashcans with locking lids only to find them tipped over and dented within a week. Nothing we tried worked and finally the men of the street decided that there was only one way to solve the problem.

"What are you going to do?" Diane-Sharon-Jessica asked. Without a husband she was out of the loop on our proposed 'final-solution.'

"We're going to shoot the raccoons." I said calmly, adding "I just wanted to let you know that you may hear gunshots tonight, if we get lucky."

"Oh," she didn't like the idea, it was written on her face.

"Well, the city isn't doing anything and I think we're all tired of the damn raccoons making a mess every single night."

Why is it that I got this house? Why couldn't I have had the other side of the street? Older kids, couples still married, the black family; they would have all been easier to tell our plans to. Here, with what's her name I feel like I have to defend a plan that to be honest, wasn't even my idea. Hell, I wouldn't even be involved if Corbin hadn't talked me into it. Diane-Sharon-Jessica is one of these 'love all animals' types; I bet her bedroom has pictures of wide-eyed puppies looking pathetic in it.

"Will it be loud?"

"Huh?"

"The gunshots. Will they be loud?"

"Yeah. Well, I suppose. We're planning on doing this between me and Corbin's... The Russell's house on the cul-de-sac so you're pretty far away."

The wide-eyed puppies are turning into German Shepards.

"I'm just worried that the bangs will scare Nicholas."

Where the hell did I get Niles?

"Just let him know what's going on. He's a big boy so he should be OK."

Without Mike around his kids were being mommy-coddled. They're scared of everything now. Jason doesn't like to play with Nicholas anymore because of it. They run home crying to Mommy at the slightest thing. Were I to have had this conversation with Mike then he would have laughed and told me that his kids should be grateful that they don't live in the projects.

"OK," skeptical I think.

"Well, look I need to tell the rest of the neighbors," will I make it? Will I be able to slip out without having to guess at her name?

"Thanks Chris. Tell Mandy I said 'Hi' OK?"

Damn.

"Sure thing," I've got a one-in-three shot here, "Sharon."

"Diane." Score, rejection, sadness, the grip on emotions straining Diane looks like she's been slapped in the face.

"Right, sorry..." I turn away and go next door trying not to run.

A kick in the pants...

2005-11-02T13:15:00.000-06:00

National Novel Writers Month is upon us and I haven't been writing for it at all. Last year I had the excuse that my marriage was moving into a divorce to stave off questions about how the book was coming along. This year I could blame allofmp3.com for not writing, but that's really not too fair is it?

The real reason is that I haven't settled on an idea for my book, so today's post is going to be sharing some of the ideas that I had to get your thoughts on which direction I should take. I hope you don't mind being my editor of sorts gentle reader, but with Paris La Qunita off in the outback helping to film the sequel to 'March of the Penguins' (working title: Saunter of the Ratites) I've got no one to bounce ideas off of.

For the rest of this post I've written some back-cover blurbs or a synopsis of the book ideas that I've had. Some of them are more developed than others so your mileage may vary, but the basic ideas are there. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to provide me feedback on the ideas I'm gestating as to what I should write about. Are you ready?

Good...

Winning Ticket

Five individuals from totally different walks of life share a five million dollar jackpot in the Texas lottery. The story follows the five winners from the time they bought their copy of the ticket, through finding out that they won and then their lives after winning.

Left Behind, Alright : A Novel of the Earth's Better Days

In one cataclysmic moment millions of uptight holier-than-thou Christians around the globe disappear. Those left behind enjoy a second renaissance in human progress. The best-laid plans of Revelations are upended when humanity unites to rid the Earth of war, famine and greed.

Left Behind, Alright chronicles the progressive change around the world through the lives of a close-knit group of friends in Houston, Texas. Together they find out what happens when all the people on the planet who tell you what you shouldn't do disappear; a novel of possibilities, hope and freedom in a world without religion.

Son of a Bitch (working title)

"When will Mommy come back home?"

I cannot tell you how many times I asked my father this question when I was five. My parents were getting divorced and my whole world was turned upside down. When you are five no one wants to tell you what is really going on; you have to figure things out for yourself. Some things were obvious; like the man who moved in with my Mommy was more than just her friend, and other things were not apparent until years later.

This is the story of my parent's divorce told through the eyes of their five year-old son.

Cul-de-sac Roulette

"Well, now that the raccoon is dead, what are we going to do?"

One summer evening at the end of Misty Brook Lane four neighbors decide to take care of their raccoon problem once and for all. A guys-night out on the cul-de-sac turns tragic for more than just the raccoon as four men gamble with their lives for a shot at redemption. The death of the raccoon is only the start of a dark comedy that explores chance, redemption and fortune in the lives of four neighbors, a raccoon and a gun.

Wait... Let Me Try That Again

Time travel is possible but not like you think. I don't jump into a car and go back in time thirty years to see my parents in high school. I can't even jump back in time to meet myself, not that I would be that interesting. No, that type of time travel is outside of my capabilities.

When I go back in time I jump into myself. I 're-inhabit' myself to either experience something again or to try something different. Before you get excited and think about winning the lottery or something I've got to let you know the limitations of my time travel. I can only go back in time ten minutes.

I live to do things over. I instantly get a second chance at things, if I want to. The problem is you often don't realize the error of your ways until ten minutes has more than passed.

A Grand Don't Come For Free: The Novelization

in 2004 Mike Skinner, known as 'The Streets', released the critically acclaimed 'A Grand Don't Come For Free', a concept album telling the story of some missing money, a relationship, friends and trust. The album was quickly placed at the top of many top ten lists for 2004 and received rave reviews.

I think it needs a novelization.

###

So, there are my ideas. All of the ideas above have been kicking around my head for a few weeks. I'd like to hear what you think of any of them. Some of the books would be easier to write than others (obviously the last one will be easy as I'll have the album as a guide) and some stand a better chance of being published I suppose. What I need is for someone to help me make up my mind. That someone is you.

So?

###

In other news.... I spoke to the Child Support folks about the letter I received asking for me to send a payment back. According to the lady I spoke to my former spouse has had two support checks bounce. The state ends up sending along the money to me regardless but if R isn't going to step up to the plate and pay the support amount then I have to give back what the state gave me.

The lady on the phone assured me that I would eventually get all the money coming to me and that the state is keeping records of all these payment issues incase I ever need to go to court. She suggested that I contact R about the support issue and ask her to make sure that she's caught up with the state.

I'll get in touch with R about this over the weekend. Right now I need to post this so I can start on my book tonight. I am already three thousand words behind schedule so hurry up and comment my friends.

A Parent's Halloween Nightmares...

2005-11-01T14:27:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was Halloween, today is All Saint's Day and tomorrow is the Day of the Dead. It's a big week for dead folk both north and south of the border and most of all for my favorite five year-old; Buddy.

This year Buddy once again wanted to don a Scooby-Doo costume and trick-or-treat his way through the neighborhood for Halloween. Last year he was Spiderman; the year before that it was Scooby-Doo too. I wonder if he makes sure that he puts enough growing time between wanting the same costume to make sure that it will no longer fit, causing me to have to buy another.

When I was a kid my mother made all the costumes. of course, back then the store bought costumes consisted of a plastic material akin to a trash bag printed with a poorly imagined tapestry envisioning the character you were dressed to be and a plastic mask held on with a thin elastic string. I can remember telling my mother that I couldn't wear the Underdog outfit at the store because it didn't look like Underdog. Instead is was a plastic poncho with a picture of Underdog underneath the word "Underdog!" on it.

"Underdog doesn't look like that." I remember telling her.

Even then I was hesitant to allow my body to be used as a billboard for a product. I wanted to dress like Underdog and not advertise that his show was on weekdays at four on channel twenty-six.

The walking billboard costume has all but disappeared now. It has been replaced with a costume more like what my mother would make were she in a Chinese prison and limited to materials designed to only last twenty-four hours worth of wear. The cost of the old plastic, advertising subsidized costume was about a third of what a costume runs now; and I got Buddy's off the Internet saving twenty-five percent from the retail cost.

Paying close to thirty bucks for a costume for your child is nightmare number one gentle reader; and we've only just scratched the surface of last night's ordeal.

###

It rained for the first time in a week yesterday in Houston. A nasty gale blew in at five and dropped about an inch of water and the temperature five degrees in about two hours. The weather put a damper on the trick-or-treating plans that I'd made; it was time for a back-up plan. Most people I spoke to were taking their little ghosts and goblins to the mall so I decided Buddy and I would do the same.

On the way to the Mall I took Buddy by his Mother's to trick-or-treat at her door. I called first to let her know we were on our way. She balked because she didn't have any candy. I told her to think of something and that we'd be there shortly. I then threw on my green t-shirt, completing a costume that I'd been working on for two weeks (green shirt, brown slacks and two weeks worth of chin stubble to go with Buddy's Scooby-Doo costume) and off we went.

To be honest with you, I didn't want to stop by his mother's house but having a kid means that you do things for them even though you may not like them. This is the entire premise of Disney's touring ice skating shows and seeing as Buddy never shows interest in 'A Bug's Life on Ice' going to his mother's was the least I could do. In the end I'm glad I went because Buddy was so happy to show off his costume to his mother. I got points for being the better person too.

We left his mother's with Buddy clutching his Halloween basket containing coupons for McDonald's. That was all that his mother was able to gather together for him on such short notice.

We then high-tailed it to the mall for trick-or-treating. Years ago when I worked in a bookstore in the mall I remember doing Halloween at the mall. It was a lot of fun for the little kids and their parents. Sales wise, it wasn't much of an evening. The mall by our house was packed with families. All sorts of costumes were on parade and it was almost a really great experience.

Buddy didn't want to go to the mall, but with the rain still falling I felt it was best to trick-or-treat indoors; otherwise his costume might not survive the rain. He complained quite a bit while we walked into the mall and generally made himself to be a very stressful little boy for his Dad. I told him to trust me, "The mall is where you trick-or-treat when it is raining." I said.

The families at the mall were all making me stress too. There was one family with three kids all dressed as comic book heroes. The comic book reader inside me had to wonder what the parents were thinking dressing their kids up as Wonder Woman, Batman and Spider-man. Don't they know that it would take a team of lawyers weeks of negotiations to get Spider-man and Batman to appear together?

They come from different comic book companies! Don't these people know anything? It would be like Mickey Mouse being chased around the house by Tom, the cat, or Barney the dinosaur meeting Kermit the Frog. Licensed universes shall not co-exist, except on Halloween I suppose.

The one thing that I did have in common with the other parents at the mall was a sense of frustration. None of the stores in the mall had any candy. They were pretending that tonight was like any other night of the week and trying to pretend that all these crying costumed kids were not really despondent at their lack of candy.

I assessed the situation and Buddy and I turned around and went back to the car. Along the way Buddy told me, curtly I might add, that he wouldn't trust me anymore after the mall Halloween fiasco. This was Halloween nightmare number two gentle reader.

###

We left the mall and as we drove away Buddy kept on about the lack of candy in his basket. My watch beeped seven and my stress level kicked up another notch. I told Buddy to lay off the blaming and then he dug in to me, "I wish I could go trick-or-treating with Mommy instead."

That's Halloween nightmare number three.

I ended up assuring Buddy that even if I had to go into a store and buy enough candy to fill his basket he would trick-or-treat that night. Then, mercifully, the rain stopped.

From that point on Halloween was perfect.

###

Only when Buddy was two and a half did we trick-or-treat in the neighborhood. All other times we've gone to more kid-friendly parts of our town. Our neighborhood has a few families in it but for the most part the residents are retired and their kids are living off elsewhere. Candy giving is stingy and thus, Buddy's been trick-or-treating in the neighborhood behind ours for the past few years.

With all the driving last night I knew that by the time we got back to our regular Halloween haunt it would be too late to hit the homes. We needed a neighborhood designed for rapid trick-or-treating; small yards and houses close together. I went in the direction of just such an area and soon we'd parked and Buddy was at his first door.

For the next two ninety minutes Buddy went from house to house to house gathering enough candy to make me worry that the basket handle would give to the weight. He joined groups of kids on some street and went it alone on others. The rain had dampened the number of kids out and so the houses were giving a lot more candy per child. Buddy was raking it in.

Two things stood out in my mind about his trick-or-treating. First off, any kid he saw he told abut the mall not having any candy. He was concerned that other kids might run into the same hassle that we did. Second, my son is such a good, caring person. When the lady at one house told buddy that she didn't have any candy at all he held up his basket and told her she could have some of his.

The lady just about melted at Buddy's gesture and ended up dumping two large handfuls of M&Ms into his basket. She then told me that I had a really great kid on my hands. I know this already, but boy did it make me feel good to see him being so gracious.

We got home just before nine and Buddy went into his bath while I went through the candy looking for 'tainted' goods. Everything was fine with his candy, nothing looked tampered with and honestly I didn't expect it to. We went through a nice area and didn't see a single person we knew. Everyone knows it's only the people you know who tamper with candy.

Buddy was ecstatic with his trick-or-treating. He delivered this metaphor while I was tucking him in; "Daddy, I have enough candy for a candy swimming pool!."

The only remaining question I have after last night is this:

Who the hell gives Halls mentholated cough drops to kids on Halloween?

(Buddy had one in his basket)

Hey Pumpkin, do you feel lucky?

2005-10-31T13:09:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween! I hope everyone had a good weekend. I did. I had a great weekend that wore me out, but it was none the less, fun. If you've got a few minutes, I'll share with you what happened.

This weekend I finally finished ripping all my CDs into iTunes. What a huge task this was as my CD collection fills four shelves of a hundred and twenty CD cases each. I started this project ages ago, but since Rita I've really been plowing through it. Every since evening that I've had free I've been feeding CDs to my new computer for hours on end. Box after box of CDs was moved next to my desk and slowly I made progress.

The process hasn't been all that bad though; I've been reintroduced to some artists that I'd forgotten that I liked. Howard Jones, The Ocean Blue, the Cocteau Twins, Texas and others have now found residency on my iPod nano and in my aural cavities. The sheer volume of the music on my hard drive is staggering. I have just under 40 GB of music files comprised of just under ninety-two hundred songs. If I played everything back-to-back then it would be close to four weeks before I heard a repeated song file.

This doesn't even include the few hundred CDs that R took with her when she moved out. I'm contemplating what it would take to retrieve those CDs from her for ripping. I could offer her back-ups of all the music I've got I suppose, but I don't know if she'll go for that. I do know that ripping what she left with would take me about two weeks at the rate I was ripping these past few weeks.

My goal to no longer buy CDs was furthered along this weekend by joining AllOfMP3.com, a Russian music downloading site that, through the research I did, looks to be legit. I plunked twenty-five bucks into my account there and have bought six CDs including some British releases that you just can't find in America. Even after downloading six albums, I've still got about eighteen bucks left in my account. I'll still use iTunes to get some tunes, but to fill in the gaps in my collection, or to access imports, I'm going to be going to allofmp3.com.

Other than music, what did I do this weekend? Well, I made the most of time with Buddy. This is the last weekend I'll get to spend with him until December, and I'm going to miss that. R has him for three weeks this year in November and the only weekend that I was to have him I'll be in Vegas for work. My parent's are going to take Buddy camping that weekend but still, I'll miss seeing him.

Buddy and I went clothes shopping for winter wear for him. I spent about two hundred bucks on clothing for him this weekend. Seven pairs of pants, six shirts, a sweater and some underwear were all added to his wardrobe from Old Navy and Target. He wanted toys but I've instituted a no toy policy in the house starting at the beginning of October and running through Christmas. Buddy has far too many toys as things stand, and this way he has something to look forward to.

Instead of toys this weekend I did get him a how-to draw dinosaurs book, which he loved. He spent most of yesterday drawing dinosaurs and deemed the day 'Dinosaur Day' by hanging his art all over the house. We also went to the Houston Zoo for their big Zoo Boo festival. It was two years ago that we first did this and I thought that it was a good day to go again. Buddy and I had a great time walking around the zoo, we even got to see a baboon masturbating which caused the unusually large crowd to blanch almost at once and move away from the viewing platform.

I don't know what it was about animals and their privates this weekend; really I don't. In addition to the baboon's little show (which Budy didn't even notice) we also watched 'Pom Poko' (or 'Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko') the latest in Disney's releases from studio Ghibli. The movie is a great tale of preservation and conservation featuring magical racoons who are able to transform themselves, or part of themselves, into all kinds of things. The male racoons have an advantage over the women by using their 'pouches' (that's what the Disney translation called their scrotum) for transformation. Honestly, it was a great film and quite ballsey for Disney to release.

When we returned home on Sunday afte the zoo and dinner with my parents Buddy and I got to the pumpkins. I'd been meaning to carve them last Tuesday but with Buddy being sick it didn't happen. We bought them at the pumpkin patch on the way to the zoo and while Buddy was in the bath I gutted the orange globes. I don't know about you all, but I love carving pumpkins. Last year I got to carve three of them, one for my parents which was a scary one, and two at the house in a more traditional style (lights on).

This year's pumpkins were quick to carve as Buddy had to get to bed. My pumpkin was tall and thin and I went with a stylistic face design. Nothing fancy and not too difficult to carve. Buddy on the other hand, wanted a dragon face in profile on the pumpkin. He drew a sketch on a sheet of paper and presented it to me as a challenge for my pumpkin carving skills. This wasn't going to be easy.

I took out my pen and sketched out a loose design on the side of the pumpkin to get a feel for how to make the dragon's face. Then, starting with the eye I began cutting into the husk of the pumpkin and in a few minutes I was done with a dragon pumpkin that looks a bit like a cross between a lion and a dragon. Still, Buddy was impressed with it and that's all that matters.

After carving pumpkins I sent Buddy off to bed and shortly after I finished the last CD, I went to bed too. And that, gentle reader, is the end of this post. It's time to get back to work.

No reason to hate...

2005-10-28T14:52:00.000-05:00

My goodness it is cold in my office today. I'm about ready to don my jacket and bundle up but I fell a little silly about it. I mean, it's only fifty-five outside and really, that isn't that cold is it? I have a friend who lives in Boston and a warm day there is in the high fifties. of course, here in Houston a cold day is in the fifties and that's what we've got right now.

All I know is that my fingers are cold. Maybe tapping out a thousand words will thaw them against the cold today. I suppose I'll give that a try.

So... Gentle reader, um what to write about? I suppose you saw the news about George Takei, Mr. Sulu from Star Trek, joining the WNBA right? No? Don't get it?

Sigh...

It fell flat with me too. Still, I'm glad that he did this. It's good to not be ashamed about who you are, the sad thing is that both he and Swoopes had to hold a press conference to announce their sexual orientation. Like it made any difference to our culture during their ascent to the level of fame they've achieved. I know that the announcements make it easier for some people to come out, and we all need our role models.

I guess the thing that bothers me is that people feel the need to separate others because of who they are. I have a good friend who usually seems to be pretty level headed but then he goes and surprises me the other day. We were talking about civil unions, which I feel should be a civil right, and he tells me that he doesn't think that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights as other Americans in loving relationship who decide to spend their lives together.

I tried to explain that a civil union, in the way I see it, is a way for two people to give each other the rights that are now only associated with a married spouse. These rights can, and should be able to be granted separate from a marriage. All that a civil union would mean is that two people have decided to go it together instead of alone in this dreary world and they want the legal rights to declare themselves a team.

Her reason for not wanting to share he rights with others? Gay and lesbian relationships are immoral.

I do not know if this response comes from stupidity, which is usually not the stock and trade for this friend of mine, or from something worse. There are people who feel that they have the right to pass judgment on others for matters that do not affect them at all. Sometimes I see this feeling manifested as racism, other times it is plain bigotry like the above example and sometimes it is elitism.

The feeling that one person is better than another, or more deserving than another is not on the face of it a bad trait. It is when the reasons for that feeling are based on such superficial trivialities as the sexual persuasion or color of skin of the other. As I often tell people who introduce racism or bigotry into conversation; there are far better reasons to hate someone if you would just get to know them.

For me, racism and bigotry rank up there pretty highly in terms of things that make me think less of you. Denying people the rights you have because of a matter that has nothing to do with you ranks up there too. As Americans we are supposed to believe that everyone has the same rights and we're supposed to stand up to anyone who tries to take them away. Too often I see people in this country ready to shuck other people's rights because they are different from them.

The poor of New Orleans didn't have the right to federal help. Gays and lesbians don't have the right to spousal benefits. The working poor don't have the right to health care. Minorities don't have the right to well equipped and funded schools. You don't have the right to this and I don't have the right to that. Eventually, if we let people limit the rights of people they don't like then no one will have any rights at all.

Ugh. This isn't the post I had in mind for today. I think that it came out in part because of the amendment that Texan's are set to vote on a week from next Tuesday. There is an amendment on the ballot in Texas which will allow the government to decide, retroactively, what sorts of unions should be considered worthy of the rights associated to married spouses. To make sure that the amendment would not be struck down as being discriminatory, the wording of the amendment means that any marriage in Texas can be dissolved.

(why couldn't they have done this *before* my divorce and twenty-thousand in lawyer fees?)

Your employer could stop covering your spouse because you and she attend a different church. They could dissolve it because you and your spouse are a different race, as R and I were. They could stop coverage because they define a marriage as being between two healthy adults and your spouse just came down with cancer. It is a slippery slope and I see our society sliding down it.

We used to make decisions to pull everybody up at the same time. Now it seems to too many of us are willing to pull the rug out from others just so they have something more to stand on themselves. The precedent is disturbing.

My friend isn't a bad person. He's a good guy and wouldn't ever think of taking issue with either the George Takei's or Sheryl Swoopes' of the world in person, yet they carry this belief that they have the right to something that someone else should be denied. That sort of attitude isn't what liberty is about and this weekend I'm going to make a point of letting them know that.

You, gentle reader, have a good weekend. I don't know if I'll have a podcast up but I'll try.

Return to good health...

2005-10-27T16:17:00.000-05:00

After a full day of rest and relaxation I am back in the office tearing through my work with the speed and efficiency of a well-oiled machine. If any of you ladies out there find the thought of me and a well-oiled machine appealing; please email me with your contact information post-haste. Let's see if we can turn fantasy into reality for us both.

See, I told you I was feeling better. This morning I wasn't but after my pumpkin flavored bagel with jalapeno cream cheese on it my nose relented. If it were able to produce sounds other than honks and snorts then perhaps my nose would have protested the combination of pumpkin and jalapeno. Seeing that it can't talk, my nose that is, there will be no one here to disagree with me when I tell you that jalapeno and pumpkin are two great tastes that taste great together. In addition, the combination is lethal to collected mucous in the nasal passages.

But really, enough of that. There are so many other things to talk about. First off, a big shout out to the Houston Astros who didn't win the world series this time but did give us a chance in the national spotlight that last lit on Houston during the Rita traffic jam debacle. There's nothing like a major sporting event to make you forget about traffic problems in a city like Houston.

After watching most of the first game, some of the second and only an inning of the third I sat out the game last night; convinced that I was a curse to the Astros. The scientific evidence that I was cursing the Astros was more compelling than the case for intelligent design. Let me present the facts; I watched most of the first game, which they lost. I watched some of the second game, watching the Astros blow a lead before turning it off. I watched one inning of the third game again watching the Astros fall behind the ChiSox. I wasn't about to let my cursed eyes rest on the TV last night.

The only good thing to come out of last night's game is that I am now convinced that it was Paris La Quinta who cursed the Astros. She used her family connections to land seats at all four games. Last night she was sitting about three rows behind the former first lady, and evil-pretentious-racist-old-hag, Barbara Bush and was seen on TV by millions. After the game was over she called to tell me that she has a new idea for a business; she's going to cover people's homes with the same material in Barbara Bush's wigs - that stuff never seems to move and was completely resilient to the peanuts, popcorn and cracker-jacks that Paris was throwing at it.

Obviously I am not cursed. I see signs that the Lord is working in mysterious ways all the time. Take for example this tree in Rochester, New York, which hosts the likeness of Jesus according to some. Now I don't know about you but I think it is a clear sign of a miracle of divine intervention when people start mistaking Barry White for Jesus. Next thing you know people will be flocking to ZZ Top concerts convinced that they're seeing Jesus between the two guitar players.

The other big sporting news in Houston today is that WNBA superstar Sheryl Swoopes announced that she saw Jesus in a oil stain on her driveway. Wait, sorry, that was the wrong story. Swoopes, who is the only woman to have her own Nike shoe (what, the rest have to share?) came out of the closet and announced that she is in fact, a lesbian. I think it is pretty sad that this news is as big as it is in the media. "So what? Who cares? No big deal..." is what I say. The revelation has nothing to do with her ball playing abilities (ahem... keep your mind out of the gutter). I still expect her to be able to dribble (watch it!), make lay ups (hey!) and field a pick-n-roll with the best of them.

I wonder about people who do have a problem with this announcement though. Do they think that this announcement means that Swoopes is going to done a big rubber strap-on during the game? Do these people think that being a lesbian is synonymous with some sort of deviant behavior? You get people like this minister who's ideas about lesbians are so far from the truth that it is actually funny and it makes you think that America is filled with a bunch of ignorant, scared people ripe for manipulation.

And on that note we'll get to the tin-foil-hat portion of today's post. I take it by now that you've heard the 'good' news about Harriet "Bush's favorite sycophant" Miers withdrawing her nomination for the Supreme Court. I'm of two minds of this news; first off I didn't think that Bush knew anyone who knows what the word withdraw means. Second, the whole affair is now smelling like a long-wind-up to for a distraction. The news that the incredibly unqualified Miers had withdrawn came out this morning; the same day that the indictments in the Plame affair were supposed to be revealed.

Harriet Miers

Is your tin-foil-hat itching? Mine is and this stinks worse than the fake bail-jumpers on the bounty-hunter show. Rove, knowing that the media will have a field day when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announces the indictments from the grand jury, which were scheduled to come out either today or tomorrow, decided to float up the name of someone completely unqualified for the job to serve as a distraction. There was never any intention of having Miers on the supreme court; all Rove really wanted to do was to distract the media from the Plame scandal and show the worked that Amy Sedaris based her character from "Strangers with Candy" on a good friend of George Bush.

Ok, the hat's come off and I'm going back to work.

Pictures on my wall...

2005-10-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I felt like crap. I've been fighting a cold all week and yesterday I was all stuffed up. My nose has been in a funk since my day of sneezing and on top of that, the cold dry air has been playing havoc with my sinuses. I thought about not going to work but in the end I decided to go into the office anyway.

Not a lot of good it did me. Three hours into my work day I got a call from Buddy's school telling me he had a 101.2 fever and then needed me to come and fetch him. I shut down my computer and packed up my things for the hour drive to Buddy's school. In some ways I was glad to be getting out of the office. Sitting there was getting to be almost too much for me and my head felt like it was home to a small vacuum chamber.

The drive to Buddy's school took less time than I expected and soon I was there to pick him up. He was lying on a mattress in the library when I arrived and was pretty happy to see me. He did tell me that I took too long coming over to his school, but other than that he was happy to be going home. I spoke to his teacher briefly about his illness; mainly a fever, chapped lips and he complained of a tummy ache. She also told me that Buddy has been doing a really great job in school since our talk the other week.

I was glad to hear that Buddy's doing better. His reading is very impressive and he's a really smart kid. his teacher tells me that he's one of the brightest in the class. All reports that as a father you just feel this warm core inside you glowing with pride. Of course Buddy is doing well. His Kindergarten class has all of five kids in it now. That sort of attention from the teacher is worth far more than what I'm paying for the school, but don't tell them I said that. The class newsletter actually has enough room to talk about each child's accomplishments.

One thing that I have to do this weekend is help Buddy make a poster board about his family. I've gone through a lot of old photos and collected pictures of my family and his mother and grandmother on her side. All of these pictures are going to Walgreen's today to be developed and then on Saturday we're going to make the poster.

While looking through the photos on the computer yesterday, while Buddy was sleeping, I came across a lot of photos of my ex and I in better times. Mostly the photos were taken while we were out drinking, hardly a family shot at all. I think that we both relied on alcohol to diminish the pain of our marriage falling apart. Still, now I'm trying to find a recent photo of Buddy's mother where she isn't holding either a bottle, a cigarette, a joint or a woman.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind using a photo of his mother holding a beer and a cigarette, looking drunk in a bar. That's the type of image that I want the world to see of her. I have to hold my own desires in check for my son though. I don't want the other four kids in his class thinking bad things about Buddy's mother. I'll leave the bad thoughts to myself and you gentle reader.

Try as I might there are slim pickings of photos that wouldn't embarrass Buddy to have on the poster. There are ones that I could pick where R is without the accessories of vice, but in most of them you can really see that she's losing hair. It was so thin by the time that she moved out that it hurt me to look at it. I'd see her hair and think about ways to bring up wigs or what have you.

So, now my photo pickings are even slimmer. No photos with booze, smokes (legal or otherwise), women, nudity, bars or thinning hair. I also thought that with the current living situation I should try not to go for photos of R and I together. I wouldn't want Buddy to have to see us together in his classroom everyday. All told I've got maybe a dozen photos from the last two years to pick from. In most of them, she's not smiling.

Finally, I came across a photo that seemed to be OK. It was from the last family outing we took together. We all went to the zoo and met my brother there. We had a pretty good time except for R being a royal cunt to me. I remember having to have words with her that if she couldn't be pleasant to everyone on the trip then she should have stayed at home. Still, one productive thing happened during the zoo visit (November of 2004); I got a photo of R sitting in a mock bird's nest that will now grace Buddy's poster.

I do wonder what would have happened were R to see a photo of herself looking drunk with a cigarette in hand, arm around some friend's neck with a beer dangling out of the other hand on Buddy's poster. I imagine she'd send an email to me asking me what was I thinking. I can tell you what I am thinking; I am thinking that any way in which I can show the world what kind of person you are is A-Ok with me.

Instead I am going to make myself content with showing the world what kind of person I am. I'll let the comparison work in my favor and R can bust her ass to try to look like a decent person. She's got a long way to go.

Oh, one other thing that I thought strange. While looking through all the photos I've got in my iPhoto I noticed that in three out of four photos of either my brother or sister they are making faces. I've got some of the goofiest photos of my siblings and hardly a normal one. How strange we three are to make these faces.

Today I'm at home alone with my own fever. I'll be posting again this evening. I'm also going to try to record another podcast today. This time I think I'll make a podcast you can share with your kids.

Things like this never happen to me...

2005-10-24T16:32:00.000-05:00

You know, now that the divorce is over things have settled down to such a boring a normal level that my blog hardly warrants a comment anymore. From one week to the next it is all that I can do to cobble together something interesting about my life. It has been so dull recently that there is literally nothing that I can talk about today. When I left on Friday my weekend looked to be the typical dull weekend that I've been struck with. The only real excitement I'd planned was producing my latest podcast, which I personally think is a riot. There is nothing like wishful thinking to make a weekend better, and that is what you are getting today.

On Friday I went to lunch with my friend Boscho. We went to a local pizza place and had a good time talking about our respective lives and kids. He shared a funny story about his five year-old asking if they could refer to his penis as his 'log' because it looked a bit like a Lincoln Log. I told him about Buddy's attempt to get out of school by claiming a hurt 'log' and he laughed too. It's been ages since I hung out with Boscho and his wife and I mentioned that it had been too long. Boscho then invited me over for the evening as it was his youngests birthday party.

"There's going to be a few single mom's there." Boscho said.

"Count me in then," I told him.

Before heading out to Boscho's house I had to run home to feed the dogs. This side trip to my house, which is clear the other side of town from Boscho's, caused me to run late and arrive at the party as just about everyone was leaving. I was a little disappointed to see all these single moms leaving, but what can you do? The dogs had to eat.

Not all the single mothers left though. One of them, a mom named Charlotte, who was in her late twenties with short jet black hair worn like k.d. lang and a killer wit, stayed back with the rest of the folks invited to the after-party and did nothing but talk to me. Ok, fine so she talked to her kid, a little girl who looked to be about four too, but mostly it was my attention that she seemed fixated on. I don't know what happened to me but soon I found myself flirting with her on the patio as we smoked cigarettes and having a generally super time.

When eleven o'clock rolled around I felt it was time to leave. I asked Charlotte for her phone number and she entered it onto my phone. I said my goodbye's to Boscho and the last stragglers from the party as Charlotte got her kid up from bed. She asked me to walk her to her house, about three blocks away and I did, carrying her daughter's gift bag, shoes and a bowl full of dip that she'd brought to the party.

When we got to her place Charlotte asked me inside. I suddenly realized what was going on, I mean it literally sneaked up on me. She'd brought me back to her place with the intention of inviting me in. She got her daughter into bed while I looked at her CD collection. When I turned around she had a glass of wine for me and asked if I needed to head right back. Pretty soon we were both in a state of disrobing when I realized that my condoms were still back in my car in front of Boscho's house. I couldn't find my shoes and ended up running the three blocks back to my car in bare feet.

When I got back we ended up in her garden tub and then in her bed. For a first encounter it was more gentle than passionate. We both kept making each other laugh with little comments and jokes. Apparently Boscho's wife had talked me up to her before I'd arrived. I did worry that her daughter would find me inside the house but that never happened. I left early in the morning with the promise to call her for a date on the first week of November. Talk about things that never happen to me huh?

You'd think that after a night like that I'd be done for the weekend, but no such luck. Saturday night was another one for the "things that never happens to me" list. I spent most of the day working on my house and the podcast. In the evening I went to Saul's poker room to play in the tourney and watch the Astros eventually lose the game. My poker skills were back to my original luck and I got booted from the tourney before the end of the first round. I went all in on a full house, eights over fours and (and eight and a four in my hand) and the other guy had pocket tens to make his full house tens over eights. What can you do huh?

Anyway, I got to talking with a couple of girls who also got knocked out early. They were there with some guys who not only did well in the tourney, but also got the gambling fever and wanted to stay for the cash game. With the Astros losing the game against the ChiSox I found myself leaving to go bowling with these two girls and some friends of theirs.

We went to the same alley that Jules, Bubbha and I went to the other week and had a blast bowling. I ended up talking to one of these girl's friends, Candi, who was a twenty-nine year-old paralegal in a family law firm. We mostly talked about my divorce and after the night with Charlotte I really wasn't trying to be a flirt. All I was trying to do was make jokes, have a good time and not totally suck at bowling. After bowling I needed to figure out how to get back to the poker room where my car was.

Guess who offered?

Yeah.

So we're in the parking lot of the poker room and Candi's doing the 'running fingers down his chest' thing while we're talking. The problem is, Candi lives on the north side of town and I'm way down south. Also, both of us admitted that our places were not in a state we'd like to show off. However, we both wanted to continue the evening together. I went into the poker room and mentioned the situation to Saul. He gave me a card with a 30% discount for a local Red Roof Inn and next thing you know Candi and I are checking in; well actually Candi was in her car in the parking lot while I checked in.

The bed was really comfortable, but I didn't get a lick of sleep. I'm glad that on the way to the hotel I'd thought to get more condoms as I was down to just one in the car. Candi was far more adventurous than Charlotte however in terms of the two ladies, I liked Charlotte more as a person. She turned the TV onto an adult channel and we proceeded to try every position in my palm-a-sutra. My back still hurts.

In the morning Candi and I got out just before check-out time and went for breakfast at an iHop nearby. I can't say that there was a lack of interest, but I got the feeling that I was being dismissed at breakfast. She told me to give her a call sometime but I got the distinct impression that I was a fling for her. I doubt the phone number even works.

Isn't that cool? I was a fling! I was used for a hotel room, a couple of condoms and finally a Viva la French Toast breakfast. being recently divorced it was just what I had been looking forward to. Use me ladies of the world, use me for sex then leave before the sketchy relationship thing happens.

After all that you might expect me to be floating on cloud nine and you would be right. If any of the above details involving women were true then I might actually be in a killer state of bliss. Instead I'm making up an entire post because, well why not? The reality of the situation is that I spent most of the weekend working on my podcast, cleaning my house and watching TV. I just couldn't pass on the details of my boring life to you today.

I told you things like this never happen to me, and they don't. Still, a weekend like that would have really been cool.

Cooking with Beetles on This American Knife (podcast #3)...

2005-10-23T16:59:00.000-05:00

The third podcast is up! Folks, this time I take things a bit too far and do my level best to poke a little fun at Sunday morning radio. I've formatted the podcast as a cooking show would. Your host, me (again with an accent which is even further from my voice than before yet strangely appropriate for the part), interviews a famous celebrity while we prepare some of his favorite meals. We talk about his latest cookbook and discuss how he makes his food. As an added treat there is a recipe in the lyrics section of the MP3 file (but I think you'll need iTunes to see it, and please, don't eat the dish because it's a bit of a joke).

I think this one is even funnier than the Paris La Quinta story and I'd love to hear your feedback on the format or the writing. Oh, you can comment on the accent too.

What a beautiful world it will be...

2005-10-21T17:06:00.000-05:00

Gentle reader, yesterday I had a good friend get some bad news. Today's post is just going to have to be my letter to my friend, because I've not got the time to write just for you. This weekend, I'll put up the podcast and write some more.

=====

My friend,

I am worried about you. I know you've been dealt a shitty hand this week. I know that right now your outlook looks bleak and honestly, you've ever reason to feel down about the horrible situation. People have unfairly made your life hell right now, but I promise you that ti will get better. It will not last.

I wish I could remember all the things that you told me that lifted my spirits during my darkest moods only months ago. I can't remember all that you said to me, it was too much. A hundred self-help books came forth from you when we'd talk and each one of them helped me to fill my pit of despair until the pit wasn't there anymore and things actually improved. You were right; most of the time you are.

You were right that one day I would look back and know that I am doing better now. The unimaginable future that I have arrived at isn't that bad. R isn't here and you know what? I don't miss her all that much. Being by myself hasn't been that bad and taking care of Buddy hasn't yet been too much for me to handle. Everything you told me about the future was right. Even the time it took to get here.

This morning, when I spoke to you to see how you're handling the news, things didn't seem good at all. The future didn't seem to be somewhere you were interested in going and I didn't know what to say to help. I worry that I'll say the wrong thing and further depress you, or that you'll think that my cavalier attitude is somehow mocking your situation. It isn't; that is just how I respond to things like this.

I want you to know that the beautiful future is there for you too. It takes time to get to it, but pain and sadness are as impermanent as pleasure and happiness. The darkness of depression is only an illusion cast by the shadow of happiness. Things will get better, they always do. You promised me this and I believed you. You were right and now I'm telling you this because the same applies to you.

The news you got is insane. There is no logic to it, it isn't fair and in all honesty I can say that there is no person I know less deserving of bad news like this than you. You earned good fortune and instead got the shaft and that fucking sucks. You've every right to be depressed about it, but you have no reason to lay down and give up. You have reason to be angry, but not to give up. You have reason to feel lied to, taken advantage of and screwed by people who obviously don't care, but not to give up.

I don't know what to say when you tell me things like you did this morning. I have too few friends to let them get away from me as easy as you suggested, so don't even try it.

I am here to help you as much as I can, and as much as you'll let me. But you have to promise me that you're not going to give up on you. The future is a great place to be, what sucks is that you have to wait through the shitty spots to get to it. In six months I promise that this week's woes will be nothing to you. Just promise me that you'll take these self-help books I'm writing and put them into your pit of despair.

Your friend,

Chris

The financial report...

2005-10-20T13:48:00.000-05:00

Today I'm feeling pretty good about things. I've good reason to feel good too. Last night the Astros won their first pennant and now we're off to the world series. We being the Astros and their fans and no Buddy and I specifically, just in case you were confused. But that isn't the only reason that I'm spreading the warm glow of happiness out on the world. The other reason is because it's been a year since I took over paying the bills in my life, and let me tell you that I'm making progress in leaps and bounds.

A number of years ago R and I got a personal loan to consolidate a lot of our small credit cards into a single lump sum payment. The cost of the payment was only a bit smaller than the total we were paying on the cards, but it made organizing our payments a lot easier. Prior to the consolidation we'd be racing up almost 25% of what we were paying in assorted late fees.

Initially the load was a pretty good chunk of change; five figures, but they were all small numbers. We paid the loan down but not consistently, then again nothing was consistent where bills were concerned. When R moved out the loan payoff amount was around seventy-five percent of the initial amount. Twelve months of paying more than the minimum payment, and paying on time, and I've got the amount down to just about half what it started at.

Another line of credit was the frequently maxed out credit card we had through the credit union. Again I have been working hard to pay this sucker down and over the past twelve months the amount I've been paying has increased three times while the minimum payment has decreased. I'm now paying off almost twenty percent more on the balance than the last payment made by R before she moved out.

The Sears card is down by twenty-five percent and the best news of all is that the Discover card we'd run up a sizable balance on is no longer part of my financial portfolio. On top of all this, I also paid off the Honda in the past year; nearly thirty-seven hundred bucks there. My debt load to the bank has decreased in the past twelve months by a sum of close to nine thousand bucks. All told, I've cut an amount equal to one-fifth my yearly salary from my debt. At this rate I'll have paid off all my debts, except the huge one to my parents, in the next two years. I can not tell you how excited this makes me.

did you catch that exception? I thought you might. While I did a great job of removing debt from financial institutions I have built up a sizable chunk of debt with my parents. As you might remember, when R refused to pitch in her fair share of the bills after moving out my mother and father stepped in and covered the gap. Without their support I would not have been able to make the payments that reduced my debt to the banks.

My parents covered the more than twenty thousand my divorce cost. Shit, that's like a quarter the cost of my house. They also lent me another twenty thousand to cover my bill shortage and the amount I was under when I sold the VW. Maybe all I've done is shift the debt. I guess I should look at it that way. Now I've gone and depressed myself.

Crap, that was unintended.

Instead of focusing on how much I owe my parents, I'll just have to remind myself that there's been a lot of great news this week. Other than the obvious Astros news, there is an arrest warrant out for Tom DeLay (gosh, I hope they call in Homeland Security if he splits the state) and the Bush administration couldn't look any more pathetic than it has been. The staged interview with the troops was classic, Miers is looking more and more like a huge mistake and Rove and/or Cheney look to be the source of the Plame leak (which we knew about a year ago).

The DeLay news is really my favorite to see. This man sent me a letter telling me how he’s working hard for our district these days. He announced that he brought an unmanned jet fighter project to Ellington Field to 'assist with homeland security.' Thanks Tom, let me tell you how much that project has helped with the education of our children and transportation issues in the area.

DeLay then goes and announces that he's hired Dick DeGuerin, former lawyer for David 'Waco cult leader' Koresh (who shares a belief that he is above the law with DeLay) and a Democrat. DeGuerin's strategy is to attack Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle for making the charges in the first place. Folks, when you're attacking the person who brings the charges instead of working to prove the charges are false, then you're in trouble.

Nothing would make me happier than to see DeLay in jail. In his tenure in the congress he's done nothing but push an anti-American agenda forward and claim power for himself. I can not think of someone worse to represent me in congress and the sooner we get rid of this vermin the better. I hope that Earle can make his case stick against DeLay and I'm going to enjoy never having to not vote for that man again.

Now if only the Democrats would get their shit together. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing and hearing from Wes Clark a whole lot more these days. He looked to me to be the best presidential candidate in the last election and now he's almost getting no attention.

Tonight I'll record the podcast. I'm telling you, this one is going to just blow you away. I can't wait to have it finished and packaged up for you on my server.

Ok, back to work for me.

I'm so excited...

2005-10-20T10:59:00.000-05:00

The pressure of a weekly podcast is on. Honestly, I hadn't planned anything past the first two episodes, so I've been running around trying to figure out what to do this time around. Well folks, worry no further because this morning I got confirmation on the topic for podcast #3.

This time I'm going to be interviewing someone on the podcast, someone that I'm sure you've heard of. I'm can't divulge the name of the person as of yet, but I'm sure that when you hear the podcast, you're going to be floored. The interesting thing about the interview is that my guest stipulated the format; not the podcast format but instead the format for the interview.

I'd love to say more but you're going to have to wait. The podcast will be up soon.

Better late than never...

2005-10-19T21:32:00.000-05:00

The clock in my house is about to strike nine; well, not really. None of the clocks in my house strike anything they are all stoic in their timekeeping. The only sound to mark the passage of time is the beep of my watch; but with my earphones on, I'll not be able to hear it.

In the background, behind the sounds of The Joshua Tree, is the game. The Astros and the Cardinals are into the sixth inning and as I write this I dare not mention the score. There will be no celebrating in Houston until the fat lady sings this time. After that heart breaking three-run homer in the ninth on Monday, and that ball is still flying from what I hear, we have learned our lesson. No celebrating early. No patting each other on the back and no planning our Saturday night around any sporting activities.

All we are hoping for is that the fat lady shows her face after nine innings. There is really no reason to make this another eighteen inning marathon this time fat lady. I don't care what you've got planned, if you don't end this game after nine innings then you can't live in Houston any longer.

So while the Astros play out of earshot and eyesight I type away and continue my way through a mountain of CDs. The current count stands at just over seven thouand songs from six hundred and twenty-four albums and five hundred and eighty-three artists. Closing on thirty-two gigs of music files on my hard drive my iTunes application tells me I've enough music to never hear the same track for over nineteen days. In technical terms, that is an assload of music. And I'm not done yet.

Burning all these CDs has been a bit of fun for me. I'm reconnecting with music that I haven't heard in ages. The other night I went through all my Howard Jones CDs from years ago. I used to be a huge Howard Jones fan in high school. The first CD I bought was his Dream into Action album. The first concert I saw was on his One to One tour; at Astroworld too. I can safely say that were I not to have gone to that show I doubt I would have had a mohawk in high school.

Oh hush, it wasn't like it was liberty spikes. It was more like an explosion of hair from the top of my head. The best thing about that hair cut, other than dropping the fact that I had a mohawk to people who think I'm reserved, was that my father hated it. Buddy's going to have to really push the envelope to out do his old man in the hair department.

After I got married I saw him twice in a small club in Houston. The first time I met his mother and father, who were selling CDs and T-shirts at the show; it was their retirement present from him. After the second show, his acoustic tour, I got to meet him and spent a good half-hour chatting with Howard and a few other fans.

Along the years Howard's CDs started getting less and less rotation in my house. Eventually I didn't feel the need to pick up his new CDs and until the other night I hadn't listened to Howard in probably three years. Buring nine of his CDs into iTunes the other night changed that. I found myself singing along to songs I hadn't heard in years. Now his live acoustic CD is on my iPod and I ordered a double disc CD from his website including a load of rare songs that I used to love.

There have been some CDs that I look at and think "what the hell?" The Glen Frey - Live CD that remains in the plastic is interesting as I never remember buying it. The Wet Wet Wet CD is another one that I have to wonder why it is in my CD collection. I've never heard the band at all.

Then there's the Urban Dance Squad CDs that I bought ages ago. Actually, I bought the first one and the second one was a gift. There was a couple of tracks on the first one that I liked but to be honest, they were a bit outside my tastes when I was in my twenties. Now though, things are different. The Urban Dance Squad was at least a decade before their time. The fusion of hard rock with funk and rap sounds to contemporary now with bands like Limp Bizkit taking the same formula to massive success.

Both of the Urban Dance Squad CDs are now getting airplay on my iPod, right alongside Howard Jones. I'm looking for copies of their third and fourth CD now too.

While the CDs are burning I've also been playing with the new iTunes 'Just for you' recommendations. The new feature matches suggestions with your purchases. From what I can tell the suggestions are based on what other people have bought from the iTunes store. Genre and similar artists don't seem to matter as far as I can tell. There is no way that Eminem and Britney Spears could be tied together other than by the purchasing profiles of millions of teenagers. Still, the feature is fun and it helps to pass the time.

Then, I came across this suggestion:

I don't know what to say about that. Snoop Dogg and Barney? Perhaps if Barney has a bong in that great big purple suit; or a purple pimp mobile. I have to wonder about the other people shopping on iTunes at this point. I really have to wonder.

Really, this can only serve as a benefit to shopping online though. When you think about the above combination it makes you thankful that you are not actually in the same store as people buying the latest Snoop Dogg and Barney CD. I think it is great that these bipolar people don't have to walk into a brick and mortar shop to purchase to their, well eclectic tastes.

Seeing this combination makes me feel a little better about my CD collection. When you've got Kanye West next to Kenny Loggins in your iTunes library you're glad that the contents of said library are private.

Well, I'm going back to watching the game folks. this post was late due to traffic, and a massive amount of work at the office. Tomorrow I'll try to post during daylight hours. Night night.

The Jaws of Victory...

2005-10-18T16:10:00.000-05:00

Did you watch the game last night? The one between the Astro's and the Cardinal's? I did, not all of it mind you, I had clothes to fold and a son to raise, but I saw the all important part. The part that hit fans in Houston right in the gut. The part that makes you remember that sinking feeling that we Houston fans know all too well. The feeling that you had when the Oilers blew their lead against Buffalo; that feeling.

It's a feeling that makes you not want to watch any sports, and I don't watch much in terms of sports to begin with. Sure you'll find me tuned into the occasional "World's Strongest Man Competition" or a ballroom dancing competition, or cricket, curling or canoeing but for the most part sports are not on the TV.

This year with the Astro's things have been different. I went to a number of games and actually followed the team as we scraped our way into the wild card spot. Since then I've tuned in for the games when I've been at home and counted our victories up until the ninth inning of last night's game.

"Only three more outs," I told Paris as the Astro's took to bat at the bottom of the eight. All we needed was three outs in the top of the ninth and that was it, we were off to the World Series. I'd been excited about it since the afternoon. On the way home from school I told Buddy that if we won tonight we were going to the World Series!

"Just you and me Daddy?" he asked.

"You and me what?"

"Going to the World Series?"

"Oh, no Buddy. We're not going to the World Series, the Astro's are, and that's our team." I clarified.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Home."

Buddy has been watching the games too. He's not as interested as his Dad, but I think he likes the interactions that we have while the game is on. Mostly he reads books (and he's doing a great job there), colors, or plays with toys. I suppose it is quality time, but then I'm at a loss for how to explain quality time; I never know when we are having it.

The games have helped take up the space in my life left by not dating, or even looking for a date. After Liz made an explosive retreat from my life (which, by the way she's asked if I can forgive. I told her I wasn't interested in going out anymore and left it at that.) I haven't had the energy to date. Going to bars to meet women didn't really work out for me and the online thing seems hopeless.

A friend of mine tells me that I need to casually date, but it seems to be so difficult. The amount of effort put into dating far outweighs the benefits that I've been seeing. Sure things with Liz were fun for a while, but then there was that messy disentanglement and I can live without that. Right now I'm supplementing the fact that there isn't someone in my life in the role of partner with the national past time of baseball.

I have to wonder if this is pathetic, but then I think about R and NB, well on their way to being married if the rumors I hear (by way of friends who like to spread this kind of stuff) are correct. I wonder if that looks as bad as I think it does. I'd ask your opinion about the potential marriage gentle reader but for two reasons; first being my gentle reader you're a little biased about the matter and second, I know you're going to tell me what you think so why bother asking?

There are times that I wish that I had someone to feel close to going through the divorce. Liz was helpful, mostly from a legal and single-parenting standpoint, but honestly I never really felt more than the nascent attraction that can turn into a deep commitment. There wasn't enough between us to even make me shed a tear when things fell apart. With R I cried for months.

Soon the ninth inning started and before I knew it we had two outs and Lidge had the final out at the plate with two strikes. "One strike away from the series!" I said to Paris.

"I feel like I am going to pass out." Paris said to me. She was calling from her new job at a local salon. She's trying to become the best men-only-waxer in town. As Paris puts it, the job combines a big challenge, namely back and butt-crack hair, with the chance to make men feel a lot of pain. She loves the job and has taken to it with a lot of enthusiasm; much to her client's dismay.

"Hey," I joked, "there is still a chance to blow it you know. Don't forget Buffalo."

"Do not mention Buffa..."

Then it happened. A base hit for the Cardinal's followed by a walk and then a three-run homer to put them ahead and send the Astro's to hostile territory to finish the series. The curse of Buffalo has come to bear on the Astro's and like all Houston fans we knew that no matter how close you are, one strike away from the series in this case, fate is a nasty bitch and she'll turn the thumbscrews on you just when you think it is all wrapped up.

Both the Astro's and I need to focus on what is next. For the Astro's it is another chance to end this series on Wednesday in St. Louis. For me I suppose it is coming to grips with the fact that I celebrated having things wrapped up when I didn't. I fell into a complacent life of appreciating my wife and enjoying what I had achieved at too young an age. Now I have to get out there and try again because giving up and closing myself off isn't going to get me what I want.

I don't want to play again right now. The loss that I experience was not something that I want to relive. Dating Liz showed me that I'm going to have to go through many more ups and downs before I find someone again, and that doesn't sound like a ride I'm interested in at this time. Try as I might I just can't find a lot of reasons to outweigh the option of just sitting at home or hanging out with friends.

The Astro's have a full day before they play again but my timetable is far more vague. What I can't do is think that all my relationships are going to end in the same way. The options are going to need to improve before I see myself out there again. Right now I'm not ready; but I can't let that mean that I'll never be ready.

No camping this weekend...

2005-10-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

Howdy folks, it is Monday and I feel like crud. This weekend I came down with a bit of a cold, at least I think it is a cold, and today I'm still feeling it. yesterday alone I probably sneezed two hundred times. By the end of the day my nostrils were flared red from the constant application of handkerchiefs and tissues. My eyes were watery and my head felt like the pressure inside was constantly off with the external pressure. In summary; a bad day in the nasal region.

I attempted to make things better for my poor nose a number of times. My first attempt at making things better was to return to be after awaking at nine. I thought that if I wasn't sneezing while sleeping then perhaps my bed was a sanctuary from whatever it was that tickled my nasal explosions. This was not to be though, not only did the sneezing fits follow me into bed, but included with them was an insisted Buddy, wanting me to either turn on the Nintendo 64 or wrestle. There was no quarter given to my sorry condition.

I got up, grudgingly and went to the computer where I read your comments on my second podcast. I had a lot of fun making this one; especially with the accents. One thing that I found difficult was switching between the accents for Vinny, old man La Quinta and the narrator. I ended up having to record all three parts separately and splicing them together in production. I think the end result is pretty consistent between the three voices. You'll have to listen yourself to see how I did.

The next step was to go to the boxes of CDs that I've yet to reorganize after Rita and snag a large stack for ripping. On Saturday Buddy and I went to the computer store to buy a new hard disc for home after breakfast at IHOP. The old external drive I had was dying a slow death and with it I stood to loose loads of data including my 25GB music collection. After a long thought process in Fry's I settled on a new hard disk big enough for all my CDs to be ripped to, and headed home.

The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent backing up the dying disc and ripping CDs. Buddy was happy to play with his toys while I ripped CDs until seven that evening. At seven the mini-golf place down the road opened that 'haunted holes' event and Buddy and I were on our way. We had a great time on the course, which was even harder than normal due to the rubber spiders, rats, snakes, bats and limbs strewn about. Every few holes also had a costumed employee hosting the hole with some trick offered to frighten.

For the most part Buddy wasn't scared. A few of the tricks did scare him though; but he showed only enjoyment from the scares. The coffin with the corpse that lurched to a standing position give him a jump, as did the seated ghoul who shook as soon as you touched the table with the candy on it. The biggest surprise for him was the fortune teller's table. The table was on hydraulics and moves as the Gipsy waved her hands and told a fortune based on mini-golfing abilities; when she finished all the chairs shook and Buddy jumped off.

We enjoyed our way through eighteen holes and then came home a little after Buddy's bed time. I packed him off to bed and then stayed up late watching the first Godfather movie, ripping CDs and sharing discussing life with the Hobbit who stopped by for a quick chat and some wine. I stayed up until three on Sunday morning ripping CDs and watching the Godfather, which I started way too late, and that had a lot to do with my lethargic energy level on Sunday.

So, back to Sunday morning and the sneezing that wouldn't stop. If I could have sneezed my nose off my face, it would have happened on Sunday. I sneezed through breakfast, sneezed through my shower and sneezed so much that Buddy asked when it would be appropriate for him to stop blessing me. After as much of this as I could take I got my third hanky of the day and announced between violent, body-shaking sneezes, that we were going to the park.

We spent an hour at the park and while I was still sneezing, the sneezes took a back seat to the stunning day outside. For an hour I read "All Families Are Psychotic" by Douglas Coupland while Buddy ran about the playground with his Bioncles. Eventually he talked me into pushing him on the swings and for about thirty minutes I worked with him on how to swing.

You'd think that swinging would come easy to that kid. He's got an excellent sense of beat and he can snap his fingers, but for some reason this cat can't figure out the timing involved with swinging. He leans forward too late and back to early. Teaching him to swing also gave me a chance to work on his 'listening' skills. He tried and tried and he's just not getting it. More trips tot he park are going to be needed in the near future, but I don't mind.

It's been years since I regularly sat on a swing and they're a lot of fun. There is something really soothing about swinging and I think people would be happier if they took the time to swing for about thirty minutes a week. I can't tell you why it was relaxing, it certainly didn't stop my sneezing, but it was.

Oh, before I forget, after I posted on Friday about the note home I called his teacher to find out what she wanted us to work on. Turns out that Buddy's reading is just fine, actually one of the best in his class; it is his listening and paying attention that needs work. On Friday we talked about listening being half ears and half brains. Buddy wants to engage his brain far ahead of his ears, and that is where the trouble starts. Still, thank you for your suggestions on reading.

After time on the swings Buddy wanted to go to another park, and who was I to stop him? We hopped in the car and drove to another, more wooded park where once again Buddy played while I read. At the second park there were a number of mothers there with kids and I found myself checking for rings. For the most part they were all married, but all of them checked me out. Then again, I was sitting on a bench reading and sneezing for the entire time we were there. Sneezing is a great way to make yourself conspicuous.

After the parks Buddy and I went to the boardwalk for dinner, and more sneezing. I had a spicy Cajun shrimp plate that finally made a dent into my sneezing by turning my nose into a runny mess. Buddy had popcorn shrimp and we watched boats sail under the bridge for about ninety minutes. After dinner I took Buddy to the midway where he shot out the star with a machine gun and won a stuffed animal. He wanted to ride a ride but his father didn't want to stand in line for a half hour, sneezing the entire time, for a ticket.

We ended the evening shopping in Target where I bought Buddy a hooded sweatshirt with earphones in the hood. He thought this was the coolest thing since sliced bread and I saw it as an opportunity to keep him entertained. I've found that Buddy is quite happy to listen to music and keep to himself. With the hooded sweatshirt he can jam out to music while I take care of adult related business like standing in line at the bank.

We came home and he took a bath before having some ice cream and finally going to bed. Not long after he went to sleep I drank form NyQuil and found myself out cold before ten. While we never got to go camping I think the overall weekend was a lot of fun. The park on Sunday was a nice treat and I need to remember that going out on the weekends need not be a huge production. The park was as much fun for Buddy as Astroworld; and a lot cheaper.

All I need is for my nose to calm down and then I'll be in a much better mood. Until tomorrow then...

Podcast Number Two...

2005-10-15T00:36:00.001-05:00

Folks, after too many late hours hunched over my computer I have finished the second Return to Happiness podcast. I've updated the RSS feed so if you've subscribed, it should automatically download the second podcast to what ever tool you're using for podcast content. If this podcasting stuff is beyond you, and heck, it's beyond me half the time, then just click here and save the file to your computer.

This podcast concludes the story of Paris La Quinta, exposing the infamous meeting with her Grandfather in that La Quinta hotel on I-55 outside Springfield. In addition I've also included a music review of the group Plastilina Mosh, three new accents and probably a few laughs. This podcast is also shorter than the previous one, coming in at under thirteen and a half minutes. Please take some time to give the second podcast a listen and let me know what you think.

I've got a few ideas for the next podcast, but nothing solid. I'm going to focus the next one on me and not Paris, but other than that everything is in the air. If you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it.

Now, gentle reader, I'm going to bed.

Poker? I hardly know her...

2005-10-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

There is a lot to talk about today because it's noon and I've spent almost two grand today. Now I feel the need to share with you enough about my prior twenty-four hours to make up for the fiscal spending spree that makes George Bush look like a miser. Before I get into the wallet eruption let me share with you the good news.

I won money at poker last night!

Can you believe it? I placed third in the tournament and came out of there with nearly a hundred bucks. Initially I wasn't even going to play yesterday, but I'm glad I did.

I got to the poker room at seven in the evening, after grabbing a bite to eat at Jack in the Box (the cibatta chicken sandwich is great) and swinging by a half-price bookstore. It was Saul's birthday yesterday so I wanted to grab something for him. I ended up picking up one of Pema Chodron's books, which I think he will enjoy, and he was surprised to see that I'd remembered. I hadn't really, Donny in California told me that it was Saul's birthday, so I went with it.

I spoke with Saul about the idea of doing a podcast on poker, which he seemed interested in. He likes the idea of producing audio more than maintaining a web page, and with the cast of characters in the poker room, he's got the content for a great podcast. We also watched the pre-game show for the Astro's and talked about the typical things that guys in a poker room talk about.

When the tourney time rolled around there were not a lot of people there. I'm guessing that the day before payday isn't good timing for a poker game, but Saul held the game off for fifteen minutes and we went from seven to twelve players in an instant. The problem was that the table maxed out at ten players so two people wouldn't be able to play.

Saul asked one of his buddies to sit out and wait for the cash game. He agreed and I volunteered to sit out too. I'd picked the third seat and I didn't want to be the first up for the big blind, plus not playing would save me thirty bucks. Saul thanked me for my offer and we settled in to watch the game.

It didn't last long. on the second hand of the game one of the players busted out and decided not to re-buy. A seat was open and Saul asked the table if I could buy into it. They all agreed and so I pulled out my thirty bucks and joined in the action.

For the most part I won hands by betting strong. I didn't bluff though I was just lucky. My biggest early win was taking out the guy I'd given my seat up to earlier. I hobbled along calling bets with a suited king ten through to the river. The table showed a queen, eight and seven for the flop and a king for the turn, not a suit matching my suited cards. The guy in the three spot went all in after the river showed up an ace. I'd noticed that he was ready to go all in before the ace turned, so I figured he was bluffing and at best had a pair of kings. I called him and my king pair beat his pair of queens causing the second player to go down for the evening.

After that I held my own. I had a couple of good hands and I played myself to my pattern. I allowed others to raise and rarely did myself. I would limp in to flops if I felt my hand looked improvable and fold on anything less than a hopeful hand. After the river I'd bully all-in if I felt I had the nuts. Most of the guys would fold against me but on occasion I would get someone to go all the way with me.

When Saul runs a tourney he's got unlimited re-buys for the first hour. This means if you bust out you can re-buy your seat for another thirty bucks. Thirty gets you two grand in chips until the end of the second level when the final re-buy is offered. At that point you can get three grand in chips for thirty bucks. I never re-bought and just played close. Of the final five, I was the only player who didn't up my chips at the final re-buy.

Of the ten guys on the table when I joined I took out three of them. The rest I left to other players. Folding my way into the final three was a strategy that worked exceptionally well. My good hands were few, but I played them well enough to place for the money. I had two hands which I thought I played exceptionally well.

The best hand was when we were down to six players; right after the final re-buy. Everyone had all these new chips and my stack of three thousand was looking skint in comparison. My ten-nine suited wasn't too exciting but the dealer, Stan from last weekend, hadn't flopped a flush all night and I felt he was due. I didn't flop a flush but I did get a ten card and the game was on for me because the flop was a two, seven, ten.

The turn card saw four players in that hand, it was a nine and I thought that the nuts were mine on this one. being in the dealer position gave me the final bet each time around, so I made good use of this. The first player bet five hundred, the second raised that to a grand and the third player called. I went in two grand, leaving myself a grand in reserve. I wanted the guys to think I was half-committed to buying the pot. Two of them took the bait, the first player folded.

The river was a four and the second player went in fifteen hundred, out of my range but perfect for me to take. The second player pushed in fifteen hundred and I guess these guys expected me to fold. Instead I went all in and turned my cards showing two pair. Their jaws dropped and it took me a good two minutes to stack up the chips. I'd turned three large into nearly ten in one hand and that gave me enough to fold myself into the final three.

I drove home in a state of elation. I thought that with the hundred bucks in my pocket I'd be able to get my tire replaced without crimping my sagging bank account. This morning, I found out that was not to be. Three of the four tires on my car were legally bald. They looked like James Carville when they took them off. I needed a new set of tires in a bad way, also the alignment on my car was so bad that two of the tires were obviously damaged from it.

The folks at the tire shop took six hundred big ones from me in exchange for four new tires and a three year guarantee on my alignment. The alignment was so bad that the tire guys were impressed I could maintain control of the car and actually make a left turn. It took them ninety minutes this morning, so again I am late to work and eating week old pizza for lunch. Today being payday also means that I have to pay the phone, electricity, gas, water and parents. All told I spent nearly two grand before lunch today and unless the child support comes in soon, I will not make it through the end of the month.

Unless I take next week's poker game too!

Folks, I am not about to budget on the off chance that I win a poker game. There are many stupid things that I will consider as options, but gambling as a form of income is not one of them. While the weekly poker night is becoming a highlight of my social calendar, it is not pursued for monetary gain and will never be so. Trust me on this one.

The one bad thing about the tire expenditure is that I'm not sure if I'll be able to afford camping this weekend with Buddy. We may just end up camping in the park on the lake instead of going out of town. That's a little disappointing because I know he was looking forward to it, but I don't have the funds to spend. We'll go soon though, I do know that.

This weekend I think I'm going to work with Buddy on his reading. Apparently he had a bit of an outburst in class the other day. During reading time he was making dog and monkey noises (he's five) and this annoyed the teacher. She sent a note home saying that Buddy shouted that "reading is too hard" and threw a bit of a fit.

I'm going to call her shortly and talk with her about it. I'd also welcome any opinions on ways to get Buddy to take to reading. He loves books, but I can't seem to get his interest from the pictures to the words on the page. When I asked my mother she just said 'kids take to reading when they want to, it just happens' and while I think my mother is a great teacher (of college level math) her advice isn't what I wanted to hear. So gentle reader, any advice on getting Buddy interested in reading? Any tools of tips for a single dad trying to raise the literacy rate of his offspring?

Finally folks, the second podcast is going up this weekend. It's a good one and I think you'll enjoy it. Until Monday, have a good one.

Flat tires and public poop...

2005-10-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

Gosh the day is getting long in the tooth. I am tired of sitting here at my desk today. I want to get outside and do something, but there are a few reasons that I really should not leave my desk at this moment, the least of which is this post. Other reasons include the donut on my car, my lack of available funds and finally, my late arrival to the office this morning.

Before I tackle all the above, I just have to comment on something that I wrote about yesterday. You remember that New York Times article that I mentioned in yesterday's post? The one that had the collected exchanges between Bush and Miers? You do remember it, oh good. I'm glad that I don't have to repeat all that I wrote yesterday about it because today, well lets just say that the NYTs left off some shit from what their article reported. Thanks very much to The Smoking Gun we can now take a look at the actual documents between Bush and Miers and boy are they interesting.

Take for example this thank you note from Bush to Miers. In the NYT article they reported the content of the note reading "I appreciate your friendship and candor - never hold back your sage advice." but looking at the actual note you'll notice that the NYT left off the postscript from Bush, reading "No more public scatology."

Hold on a second.

Wait just one goal-darned moment.

Scatology?

Does Bush imply that Miers has "an obsession with excretion or excrement" or maybe she likes to read "indecent works that make particular reference to excretion or excrement" in public. In either case, is this the kind of honor and dignity that we have come to expect from the White House? I don't know about you, but either Bush has the level of humor most often associated with a kid in third-grade who secretly wets the bed, or he's trying to tell us something about Miers.

Personally, I am inclined to believe the former, even the bed wetting part. I have this sneaking suspicion that when we find out about Bush's secret life in a few decades he's going to make J. Edgar Hoover look like an uptight Mormon (apologies to the Mormons). I don't suspect him of cross dressing or being a closet homosexual but there's this nagging feeling that he's not always being honest about his personal life. I mean, Condi Rice has called Bush her "husband" and now Shelly, host of my new favorite progressive podcast, brings this photo of a single Miers wearing what looks to be a wedding band while handing Bush the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing warning him of the Bin Laden attack. Just what is going on in that Bush family? Will V.C. Andrews' family be writing his Presidential biography?

Talking about shit...

This morning on the drive in my right rear tire ceased doing its job of holing up the car and went flat. Can you believe that? I was in the middle of my drive to work, already running late. The tire had been making funny noises and I was worried that something was up with it for a while. At at least two lights I leaned out and looked at it, but it all looked fine from my vantage. Then, as I was tooling along on my way in the car suddenly tilted and I knew I'd had a flat.

I pulled the car over to the side of the road and looked for a good place to change the tire. There, across the street was a nice big parking lot and the gap in traffic was just enough to make it. I pulled into the lot and sure enough, I had a flat. Stupid tire, why couldn't you hold up until Saturday when I would actually have the money to repair you? My donut tire is going bald like Ron Howard and I really, really don't need this sort of shit.

But, what can you do? Life throws you a flat tire and you have to change it. It isn't like I can hoist up my skirt and appeal to the kindness of strangers, seeing as I don't wear a skirt. It was odd though that the kindness of strangers was exactly what came to the rescue (not that I honestly needed rescue as I can change my tire without much trouble). in the parking lot was a car repair shop and out strolls a guy with a jack and a high-end tire arm. I took the donut out of my car and within seconds he'd jacked it up and changed it.

If I were to have had any money I would have given him some in thanks for his help. All I have to my name is ten bucks and I need that for emergencies, because it is literally all I have. I'm not mismanaging my money mind you; R is now two weeks late with the child support. The child support that is supposed to be taken out of her check by her employer and sent automatically to me. I am beginning to suspect that she has either lost her job, or changed her jobs because there is no way that she can stop the child support payments after the company has seen the court order.

So, I didn't have any money, I will tomorrow don't fret, but I thanked the guy and made a mental note to bring some donuts over to their shop tomorrow morning. not having money today also complicates my plans for the evening. The last three Thursday's I've enjoyed playing cards in a $30 poker tourney at Saul's poker room. Thirty bucks isn't too much for me to spend for a night's entertainment and I save money instead of going to the karaoke bar or what have you. On top of all that, the social aspects of the night are worth looking forward to.

Look at me, I'm justifying my actions to the blogosphere. Do you see how gun shy you've got me? I go out of my way to justify what I do because otherwise you're all going to think I'm backsliding to the old me. Let me have my poker night! That is all I'm asking!

Ok, calming down now. Sorry about that outburst. I'm on edge and have been all day. Well, actually since I found out that the President wants his Supreme Court pick to keep the scat activity on the down-low. Honestly, don't you worry about the judgment of someone who has to be reminded not to bring out the scatology in public? I do.

Last night I got a call from my old high school buddy Donny in California. Donny has been keeping me posted with the details of the crazy woman he's dating and she's a real winner, in the crazy girl category. I told him about wanting to go to the poker room but not being able to because the child support was late and he love hearing that. "Dude, that is what I want to hear!" he said with enthusiasm, "Spending the child support on poker, you've reached a hole new level of crass my friend."

I swear it isn't like that, but deep down, I kinda like the edginess that his assumption give me. Please do wish me luck in poker tonight. I'm more than willing to lose $30 in a few hours, but I'd love to win $500.

Supreme crony and more reasons to hate Wal-Mart...

2005-10-12T15:43:00.000-05:00

With a post title like that you just know that this one is going to all be another load of lefty-claptrap from yours truly, the somewhat unhinged blogger you've come to know and love. Actually it isn't. Some of this post is going to be a follow-up to the feeding policy at the Casa de 'appiness and other parts are going to center around birthday wishes for a friend of mine who is a reader here. However, I'm going to sprinkle in the claptrap (which, when you think of it seems to be a word used to describe a whore and not the bombast coming from my fingers on an almost daily basis, but, I digress...) so you'll have to suffer through.

Let's start off with this article I read on the New York Times (if you are not registered, try bugmenot) this morning about Harriet 'Bush's Backside' Miers and her close, personal ties to Bush. Apparently Miers is a preternatural sycophant who's been using her skills to slobber up the posterior of the President for years and years. The NYT article shares quotes from Miers to Bush (in the form of letters, cards and other messages) that are so insane that she ends up making Liz look completely sane. Now, I'm going to list out six quotes and I want you to guess which ones came from Miers, are you ready? Here goes:

"You are the best governor ever – deserving of great respect."
"Texas has a very popular governor and first lady!"
"I was struck by the tremendous impact you have on the children whose lives you touch."
"Keep up all the great work. The state is in great hands. Thanks also for yours and you family's personal sacrifice."
"Hopefully Jenna and Barbara recognize that their parents are 'cool' – as do the rest of us."
"All I hear is how great you and Laura are doing. Texas is blessed."

Can you guess which of those quotes came from Miers? If you said all of them then you, my gentle reader, are correct. Every freaking one of the above quotes came from the Supreme Crony. If that's not enough to shake your faith in Santa Clause then think of it this way. You're the head of a company and one of your legal staffers starts sending you flowery greeting cards and personal notes with the above statements on them. What would you do? Would you distance yourself from them or possibly fire them or maybe look into a restraining order?

I'd hope so.

There's being complimentary and then there is flat-out psychotic ass kissing. Miers seems like she was trying to pull a SWF on Bush and replace Laura. Before I leave this topic, there's one more quote that I want to share about Miers. David Frum, a former speech writer for Bush said recently about Miers, "She once told me that President Bush was the most brilliant man she ever met."

There is no freaking way that this woman is qualified for the Supreme court based on that single statement alone. If she has never met anyone smarter than Bush, which I dare say is impossible unless you live in a closet on a ranch in Crawford, then you should not be the one trusted to interpret the constitution.

Next topic; eating in my house. I appreciate all the comments that you folks sent along on my post last week. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about the eating policy that I've been applying, and decided to change it. Buddy is now going to have a bit more autonomy in the house in terms of food. He'll get to decide how much he's going to eat and if it takes him an hour to finish, then so be it. We'll see how this goes because I have to tell you that the thought of it goes against my ingrained beliefs.

The thing is, gentle reader, that it isn't always easy being a single parent and the issues with food are one of those places where I can see a certain dysfunction in my own upbringing will be passed along to Buddy without the moderating influence of another parent to discuss things with. Were R to be at home then Buddy would have a second Justice in our family court to plead his case. As things stand, Buddy has but one ass to kiss and that ass, well lets just say I can be a bit of an ass. Stubborn like my father I guess; Buddy needs an voice to expose me to new ideas and I'd like to thank all of you who took the time to call, email or comment on that issue.

I'll keep you posted.

Topic number three for today is a big Happy Birthday wish to a good friend of mine who reads this here blog. I'd mention her name and link to her site, but I know how people are about letting the 'it's my birthday' secret out, so I'll just say that she deserves all your Birthday wishes and her blog is linked on this page somewhere. She is the first of my blog friends, which is someone I met through writing these blogs of mine, and I couldn't be happier with meeting someone like her. She's introduced me to loads of cool new people and her husband's become a great friend too. Anyway, I saw her today and had a good lunch with her. We ate lunch and then pretended to be high school drop-outs, hanging out in front of a convenience store smoking cigarettes.

Last and final topic; what in the flying fuck is up with Wal-Mart? If the thought of airport security now doing anal cavity searches at random and Homeland Security getting access to your web browsing habits isn't enough to make you ask why our army isn't *here* in America fighting to protect our rights, we have Wal-Mart to contend with. This article tells about Wal-Mart tipping the feds off to a high school student's 'Bill of Rights' project.

You all know how I dislike Wal-Mart but this time, they've gone too far. I've always hated their photo department ever since they destroyed the film from my honeymoon, but never would I suspect they would interpret something as innocuous as a thumbs down image as worthy of our federal government's investigation. According to this article the Secret Service came to a school near Kitty Hawk North Carolina and confiscated a student's Bill of Rights poster after a tip off from the local Wal-Mart.

What do we learn from this? Well, if you will excuse my jumping to conclusions, first off we learn that the Secret Service has too little to do if they are handling issues like this one in this manner. Let's give those folks something to do in New Orleans for a while since they seem to be looking for busy work. We also see that Wal-Mart employees are willing to not only sell things made in sweat shops, but they're also willing to give up the rights of Americans to free speech like it was nothing. Finally, we learn that Roger Ebert and What's-his-name Roper are looking into a new, homeland security approved, movie rating system.

On that note, I think I've covered enough today. I'm going to go download the new iTunes now.

Non-sycophantic tendencies...

2005-10-11T12:58:00.000-05:00

Most of you already know that I am what the political taxonomists would define as a liberal. My political compass puts me a little to the right of Gandhi and a bit to the left of Hillary Clinton (she soooo yummy for a conservative). You could say that my politics are this way due to upbringing as my parents are also progressive and raised my siblings and I to understand just what Jesus’ teaching are all about. After moving out from the house I began to explore the world and my beliefs only solidified. The idealism of my family and the clear understanding of what it means to be good (do unto others...) has made me not into a tree hugging hippy or a bleeding heart liberal but instead into someone who values community and looks for ways to improve the lot of the many over the greed of the few.

Having said all that, which is just background for the revelation that I am about to make, I hope you are still with me. I know some of you consider yourself to be conservatives and think that anything liberal is evil (with exception, of course, for Jesus who was the quintessential liberal), but bear with me here because I'm about to flip-flop on my political leanings and join your ranks. Are you ready? Excellent...

Yesterday I came across this new website, cronyjobs.com, which serves as a starting point for folks wanting to join the Republican revolution. The website on the face of it is poking fun of all the inept political appointments that Bush has made to the federal government. We're not talking about just Brownie in charge of FEMA either. From former Bush twin babysitter Israel 'Altoid Boy' Hernandez, now Assistant Secretary for Trade Promotion and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Department of Commerce to former small-town TV anchor Patrick Rhode, now Acting Deputy Director FEMA, to the former chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission Harriet Miers, now Nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Bush has a serious track record for promoting people friendly to his cause to positions of great responsibility. Personally, I want my share of this big windfall in Government jobs. Hell, all those folks got yesterday off while I had to work! All for kissing the right ass at the right time.

I've been such an idealistic fool. I could have a great job right now as ambassador to Temptation Island or The Netherlands right now if I would have dedicated my life to raising funds for Bush. Instead of working hard to become the best I could in my profession I should have been out convincing people that Clinton getting a blowjob was the greatest travesty in the history of our country and Bush needed their money to save us all from ridicule. And now, yes our country has a President free from international ridicule all right. Hoo boy do we ever.

Looking back you can see how I would have gotten the wrong impression. When I got out of college Clinton was in the White House and things were quite different back then. For the most part Clinton filled the same Federal government jobs with his Arkansas co-horts and Rhodes scholar buddies. The difference between these FOBs (Friends of Bill) and the SOBs (sycophants of Bush) we have now was that the FOBs were all insufferable wonks who never let you forget their dense resumes." I thought that you had to know what you were doing to hold a position of importance in America.

It seems that you just have to know how to kiss ass to get a cushy Government job. Damn all that effort I wasted. I can kiss ass with the best of them. I can raise money too, give me a bake sale, a car wash, a raffle and watch out! That stuff is easy to do, it doesn't take any brains at all. I wasted all these years under the assumption that hard work pays off. It doesn't. If you want to succeed in American politics it's all about the ass you can kiss these days. My idealistic self has died at the hands of a hefty does of reality.

All the things I used to believe as a progressive are now falling apart. Take affirmative action for example. With people like Condi Rice and Colin Powell reaching the top positions in the Bush government I can see that race isn't an issue in America. The problem is that African-Americans are less likely to kiss rich white people's ass than the likes of Michael Brown and David Wilkins. Wilkins, if you didn't know, is the American Ambassador to Canada (which you think would be an easy job for a former South Carolina legislator but he screwed it up by threatening an all-out trade war with Canada over the softwood lumber dispute). I can't blame these African-Americans for not wanting to kiss ass, as I used to believe that too when I thought that qualifications, integrity and skill were what it took to advance. The thing I wonder is why African-Americans don't take to ass kissing like us crackers do?

I have ordered my official "blinders to reality" from the RNC and soon I'll be changing the tone of this blog to reflect my new 'blame game' mentality. I've set my sites on becoming a justice on the supreme court (hey, I've *read* the constitution, which puts me above Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and Harriet Miers for that type of job) and I have no issue with kissing the ass of either Barbara or Jenna Bush (Barbara the *twin* not Barbara the insensitive old hag - woops, slipped out). I estimate that if I can raise about a quarter of a million for Jeb 'don't kill vegetables - kill your neighbors' Bush in 2008 then I'll be on the Supreme Court or toking it up with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands before I'm forty!

Out with the ideals and the belief in treating others as I want to be treated, and up with ass kissing! I can't wait! All hail Bush! Long live the Empire!

Seriously folks. I am joking. As tempting as it might seem to join the ranks of the fast movers in our government these days, I take one look at the people of new Orleans and I know that there is no way that I can accept a job with our Government that I am not qualified for. Unfortunately there are very few jobs that I would be qualified for in the government other than, apparently, the Presidency, but seeing as I was born outside the USA I cannot land that gig. Ah well, I will resign myself to working hard at what I do and hoping that we elect someone with intelligence and a weakness for blowjobs again instead of an ignorant frat boy with a weakness for ass-kissing yes-men again.

Seasons, like formats, change...

2005-10-10T15:32:00.000-05:00

The weather outside is looking like the fall for the first time all year. It's been overcast and cold all day - in the sixties. This is an amazing change of pace for Houston. The day before Rita hit with the force of an effeminate teatherball player we set a record high, over a hundred in parts of the city. I can remember sitting on the back porch of Jules and Bubbha's house wishing that weather like we've got outside today would arrive.

Well, it is here and I am finding my thoughts turn to things that happen in the cold. Christmas, Halloween, hard nipples under tight sweaters, and um... let's go back to that last one. Ok, so I find my thoughts turning away from thoughts of 'how am I going to cool off?' to 'how am I going to stay warm?' The cool front has been welcome on many different levels too. The air conditioning at my house hasn't been on since Friday morning and I'm looking forward to saving some on my electricity bill next month. As things stand I'm spending nearly seven bucks a day on electricity and cutting into that amount will be a welcome bit of relief.

I know you folks up north think that sixty outside isn't cool, but then us folks here in Houston don't think that the low nineties are hot. That's a cool summer day to us. We're used to months of temperatures over a hundred in the summer. Heck, I can take the heat. I love the feeling of walking into a wall of heat in the middle of the summer; that's a feeling that makes you know you're alive. It all depends on what you're acclimated to I guess.

Today I've been enjoying surfing the music libraries of two of my co-workers. We're growing the number of people in the company who put their iTunes libraries on the network through word of mouth. The cool thing about this is that you get to listen to what your co-workers are enjoying and you get exposed to new tunes. Today, for example, I'm listening to my nearest co-worker's mash-up collection. Mash-up is bastard pop, combining the music from one song with the lyrics of another. Think 'The Gray Album' from Jay-Z and the Beatles and you're on the right track.

This brings me to the next topic in a stream of topics that I guess I'm covering today; my iPod Nano. I hadn't really realized how the iPod has changed the regular course of my life until this weekend when I burned my first CD with my new computer at home. It wasn't even a music CD, but instead a 500mb archive of the first R2H podcast. Since getting the nano I've stopped burning music CDs like I used to and I don't know if this is a welcome change of habit for me.

Sure it's nice to have the iPod with it's ultra small form factor, loads of songs (currently over 700 songs and a dozen or so podcasts), and beautiful sound quality, but I liked having mix CDs that I made. I liked taking the time to put together a mix of tracks for 80 minutes of tunes and then being able to hand them off to people how liked what they heard. I can't tell you how many people have a copy of one of my Wilco CDs or Rap CDs because I'd just give them away. Any time my sister came to town she'd just snag any CD I'd made in my car so she would have something to listen to.

Maybe the reason I missed this was because it took me back to when I was a kid. When I was in Jr. High I started riding my bike to the local record store and buying 45s of what ever track I liked on the radio. I've got some real dogs on 45 now, but some gems too. I'd then take the 45s home and spend a few hours making a cassette of the latest additions to my growing collection. It was my own top 40's show with music that no one would ever listen to.

I remember walking into the record store and meeting some guy from England I'd never heard of signing copies of his band's 45 'E=MC²'. I bought a copy, stood in line and had it signed and ended up loving it, the song is still a favorite. Years later I was introduced to the guy's first band, The Clash. I'd met Mick Jones in Jr. High with absolutely no knowledge of the Clash and it was years before I knew him from anything other than Big Audio Dynamite.

The iPod has actually reduced my music sharing among friends. Instead of burning CDs left and right I am now just letting them borrow the earbuds or playing the nano through their RCA in jacks on their stereo; and the music industry believes that owning an iPod increases piracy. Feh. They are clueless and any group that tries to ensure their own existence through legal means is destined to disappear.

Making my own podcast has been a blast, and the second podcast is well on the way to being ready. In just a few days I've had nearly one hundred downloads (woot!) and the feedback I've received has mostly been positive. The second episode finishes the Paris story line and then after that I'm going to focus on mostly telling stories from my own life. I'm going to view the podcast as an outlet for more creativity in terms of how I tell the stories and with luck I'll produce something interesting.

So, the iPod nano has really had a pretty big impact on my life. It's far more wide reaching than I thought it would be. The only problem that I have with it now is that the 4GB never seems to be enough space. I want a 80GB one holding *all* my music. Maybe that's overkill; I don't know. Once I rip a lot of my CDs onto DVD archives I'm going to sell the CDs off for an massive storage iPod. That's down the road a bit, but now that I've got the taste for how cool it is to have one, I want the whole hog.

Hey, will you look at that. The sun is out for the first time today. I'm going to post this and get back to work.

Pathos and Greek Wine...

2005-10-09T17:39:00.000-05:00

What am I doing posting on a Sunday? Oh, well I don't know. It has been a low key day for me and I thought that spending some time at the keyboard might prove to be fruitful. We shall see how well this goes.

I woke up this morning and found myself in a pretty good mood. This is surprising as I've literally done nothing eventful since Friday night. Saturday was a waste of a day. Someone terminally ill would berate me something fierce for Saturday, but seeing as I don't know the date of my demise, I get to waste the occasional day hassle free.

I woke at six in the morning yesterday to the sounds of the history channel being played on one of the three TVs not six feet from my head. It took me a little while to get my bearings as I was not at home and I didn't remember getting to that couch. Slowly my memories returned and for the most part I was able to reconstruct the prior evening. My head felt like it was moving in slow motion. My brain telling me that if nothing else happened in the day other than just laying on that couch, it would be OK.

Blame the Greeks, that is my story and I am sticking to it. On Friday night I took Saul up on the invite to meet him and some friends of his at the Greek festival in Houston. I hadn't been to the festival in years and seeing as no one else I knew had put an offer to me for the evening, I took him up on this. At five thirty I left work and walked the six or eight blocks to the festival, stopping at my car to drop off my jacket and pick up some smokes. The evening was glorious - the weather perfect and clear. A great evening for an outdoor fest.

I called Saul to find out that he'd just arrived and arranged where to meet him. Soon we were making small talk while watching the traditional Greek dancing and drinking from a bottle of red wine. The dancing was interesting but smoking sounded like a better idea so Saul along with his friend Tony, an 18 year-old poker player from Saul's club named Stan and I went outside to light up some smokes. We were all in a good mood and the four of us found conversation to be easy and flowing. Stan I'd met before, he actually was the dealer at Thursday night's tourney, but Tony was a new acquaintance and I found him to be good company.

The four of us made a good group. Tony was already slightly drunk and Saul and I were planning on drinking up a good buzz too. Stan was along to be the designated driver so all bases were covered. My car was fine in the parking garage under the office and for once in many many weeks I was footloose and fancy free. We decided to get something to drink, Saul, Tony and I and seeing as the beer at the festival was expensive we decided that the bottled wine, at $13 a pop, was a much better idea.

At the time it seemed like a better idea. Now I wish that I would not have bought that bottle, or fir that matter the next one which the three of us split.

As the evening went on more and more friends of Saul's showed up. Most of these people I knew from parties at Saul's and it was nice to see them again. They'd all heard about the divorce and were all offering their pleasantries about it. Divorce is not something that is easy to comment on when you don't know the story behind it. Actually, from the perspective of being divorced it isn't easy to project what to say to me. There are days that I am filled with joy to be free of the bonds of marriage and other times that I would give anything for the past year of my life to be nothing but a dream.

I put on the brave face to these folks and gave them my traditional reply; "Well, I got the house and custody of my son, so I guess I won."

This always brings a look of surprise and I imagine the person wondering just what kind of woman R must be for the courts to give me custody. Ah, revenge, how sweet your subtle taste.

More wine was brought and soon we bundled up and went to a bar nearby, Stan driving. I remember having a drink and being fucked up something fierce. Saul was basically in charge of me and he seemed to understand that and didn't seem to have an issue with it. Stan thought it was funny that he was in charge of two drunk thirty year-olds. I behaved myself, other than pissing on the side of a tree in the bar's parking lot I think that is the worst I did.

When we got to the poker room I was sheets to the wind. I called up Paris to talk because I felt without some sort of conversation I'd just pass out from exhaustion. It was around eleven and I'd had a full bottle of wine at the minimum and a pint of Bass. Was I drunk? Yeah, sure and I was tired too. I worried, like I always do, that I was being a burden to Saul but he's assured me that of his friends I'm the least likely to turn obnoxious. I don't know how long we stayed there, all that I do know is that I feel asleep on the phone with Paris and I think someone carried me to Saul's car.

That is my guess as there are thumb looking bruises in the same spots on both arms.

I recall pulling into Saul's yard and that's about it. Next thing I know I'm listening to the history channel talking about the bombing of the Chinese embassy in the late nineties. At eight I realized that I had no idea where my phone was, or my ear piece or my sunglasses. I used the bluetooth on my palm to seek for my phone, but it wasn't at the house. I woke Saul up and we went back to his club to see if they were there. On the way there I vomited in a parking lot, it was the color of red wine.

Today I've been cleaning the house as a form of self punishment for letting the drinking get out of hand on Friday night. The Astro's are on the TV in the background and I sure hope they win. I've also written the second podcast and I'm hoping to get it recorded when the laundry is finished.

in the back of my head all day has been the nagging question as to the reason for my drinking on Friday. Sure it is nice to occasionally go on a bender, and it's been ages since I have. Still, I don't know why I didn't just meter myself and stop when I reached the point of a good buzz. There was a huge allure to getting shit-faced on Friday and I took to the task with enthusiasm. I knew I was safe with Stan driving and Saul there too but still, I am in my thirties and a single parent to boot; I shouldn't be doing things like that should I?

Enough of this reflection. I need to fold laundry.

Dinner bites...

2005-10-07T17:35:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you how happy I was to see Friday arrive this week. It's been a long one for me; work has been busy and there's been a lot of stress with R this week. I've been staying up way too late (working on the podcast of course) and that's been affecting my energy levels too. But still Friday arrives like it always does and here we are.

This past week hasn't been all that bad really. I had Buddy for a long time running due to recouping the weekend to Rita. We took a final trip to Astroworld and while it rained, we made the best of things. It was good fun. The evenings went pretty well. Buddy ate his first salad and did a decent job at it. I'm finding that introducing new foods to him works best the night after he gets in trouble for taking too long to eat.

Case in point, on Monday night it took him ninety minutes to eat half his dinner. I'd made something he usually likes, he just wasn't interested in eating and I wasn't about to let a good meal that I'd took the time to cook for him go totally to waste. He sat at the table with no TV on until it was his bath time. Then right after the bath he went to bed, no story and no playtime.

On Tuesday he didn't get a snack after school. We went to the grocery store and I bought Caesar salad and chicken, along with a bag of M&Ms that I think I mentioned before. I told Buddy he couldn't eat the M&Ms until he'd finished dinner and then went about making it.

Buddy has never eaten salad before. He likes his veggies to be served in orange and yellow and not greens. Corn, carrots and potatoes are his favorites. He sat down and questioned all the ingredients asking, "what is this butter stuff?" about the dressing and wondering why some leaves were greener than others. Never did he question actually eating the stuff, after being in trouble last night he knew better.

An hour later he'd eaten enough for me to be happy with his progress. I gave him ten or so M&Ms and told him that he took too long for the whole bag. He was happy and admitted that salad, even though it is mostly green, is actually pretty good.

Thinking back on my own childhood my son has things so easy. My mother felt that it was her responsibility to bring all the bad elements of British cooking with her to America. We grew up with boiled cabbage as a staple of our meals (and with enough salt, it is almost edible). My father was worse though. The only good thing I had to say about my mother's skills in the kitchen when growing up was "At least Dad's not cooking."

It's a wonder that I didn't die from their cooking.

I am totally serious. It is a serious miracle, the type that happens only when Jesus is around type miracle, that I live through my mother's cooking. I can remember times thinking that I would not survive the meal. It was that bad.

It wasn't that she was trying to poison us. There was never malicious intent to her meals, no poisons or anything like that (although she did like to recount the story about the man buried in Westminster Abby who ate carrots every single day until he came to eat at the palace and was found dead the next morning). I'd also like to point out that my sister and brother also feel this way; grateful that we all survived so don't go thinking that I am an ungrateful kid.

The reason that we had a hard time surviving my mother's food was totally because of how it tasted, or more accurately how it lacked taste. The lack of taste coupled with my father's ingrained desire to have all food prepared digested (he grew up during WWII) caused my sister and brother and I to live in a catch-22 at the dinner table. The food was awful, and we had to eat it.

My sister and I developed the uncanny ability to be able to swallow anything. To this day I can swallow any pill no matter how large without a drink of water. You get this way when at the age of seven you have a half-dozen brussel sprouts on your plate and a father hell-bent on seeing you send them to your stomach. I only chewed into one once, the first one. After that I swallowed each one whole.

Looking back it is a shame that my sister didn't take her gag reflex; beaten into submission by my mother cooking, out with guys until she was in her thirties.

Probably a full gross of brussle sprouts went unchewed and not eschewed into my stomach until my sister choked on one. At first my father thought she was pretending and just yelled at her, but when she turned a strange shade of purple and fell to her knees they knew that she wasn't kidding. After that, brussle sprouts and anything else that we hated that we could choke on were off our menu.

It was a damn shame that black pudding and haggis were not choke-worthy meals.

My mother's cooking had improved over the years but nothing has made eating at my parents better than doing the cooking myself. The new barbecue that my father got is a dream (if he'd learn to clean it, it would be all the better) and my mother has at least five meals that are regularly edible now.

Wow, now that, gentle reader, was a tangent. Here I was thinking about telling you about the poker game that I played last night and all this about swallowing food whole came out. That's how it goes sometimes. You take the rough with the smooth.

Oh, I lost the poker tourney. I got busted out with trip fours to another player’s full house, twos over fours. I wouldn't have even played my off suit six-four hand but I was the big blind and no one raised. The flop was two fours and a two. The turn was an eight and the river was an ace. What could I have done?

Sometimes the cards are against you.

Have a great weekend and remember my podcast (see the end of yesterday's post). I'm enjoying the comments you've left and after the Paris chronicles are done, I'll start telling stories about me.

Hear I am...

2005-10-06T16:23:00.000-05:00

Before I get to the exciting news of the day, namely the podcast is up, I have to tell you about the events of last night on the way home from work. Three months ago this news would have been the biggest thing on the blog, but I am trying to move on with my life, so I don't want to dwell on it too long. There are a couple of interesting things that crop up in my mind around this event, so bear with me as I use this blog to document a few of my thoughts, in case I need to retrieve them later.

So, what happened. Yesterday while I was toiling away at the office I got a call on my cell from R. It was a little after four, and I wasn't expecting a call from her that soon. I expected one later, but not at such an early time in the day. R was calling me to see if yesterday was her day for Buddy; it wasn't and I told her so. She said that she thought it was strange that when she picked him up from school he didn't have his weekend bag.

"You picked him up?" I asked this thinking to myself that a) R didn't read the divorce decree very well because tomorrow is the first Friday in October, therefore her weekend is this weekend and last night Buddy should have been with me and b) why was she getting him from school so early?

"Yeah, but his weekend bag wasn't there."

"I know, you were not supposed to pick him up." I told her.

"But it is my Wednesday." she replied.

"No, it is your weekend. Tonight is my night." I said this calmly, because I'd double checked this last month. I suspected that she would make this mistake and fully expected to have her call me from the school that evening to ask why I'd gotten Buddy. Instead, she beat me to his school, and that was strange. She works until five-thirty and shouldn't be at his school until six at the earliest.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, what do you want me to do."

"Leave him at school, I'm leaving soon and I'll come and get him."

"But, I already picked him up." R said.

I'd wanted to avoid this situation because Buddy would not like having me pick him up from his mother's. he doesn't handle the situation well when R and I are together. She plays to his emotions and this tends to freak him out.

"Well. Take him back." It was after all her fault that she'd made the mistake, she could explain this to Buddy and deal with the repercussions.

"Don't be silly. You can just pick him up from my place. Do you want me to make him dinner?"

"No. I'll be there at five-thirty."

"Ok."

And with that the call was ended. Seventy-five minutes later I called R to let her know that I'm about two minutes away from her apartment complex. I asked her to meet me out back in the parking lot so that there would not be a scene at her doorstep if Buddy decided to throw one. Then R starts to argue with me about who's weekend it is. She's convinced that this is the second weekend in October and not the first (according to the possession law in Texas, weekends start on Fridays). I stand my ground and tell her that she is wrong and that she needs to meet me out back in a minute. here is what the decree says:

On weekends, beginning at the time the child's school is regularly dismissed, on the first, third, and fifth Friday of each month and ending at the time the child's school resumes after the weekend.

R tells me that I will have to wait in the parking lot for her to read the seventy-three page decree to see if I am right. Five minutes later she comes out with Buddy and begins to tell me that I am wrong about the weekend schedule and that this weekend should be mine with Buddy. If you're wondering why I would argue over weekends like this, the weekend before Halloween is at stake and I'm planning a big weekend for my little Scooby Doo clad kid that weekend. The point is, I didn't argue with R in front of Buddy. I just told him to hop into the car so we could go home for dinner.

R didn't have these scruples. She made sure to tell me that I was wrong and that I would be hearing more about it. Whatever. Buddy didn't want to go until he saw my subtle bribe for him; a pack of Ritz cheese crackers on his car seat. He hopped in as happy as could be and we left.

We got home and had a good evening. For those of you wanting to chastise me for leaving Buddy unattended in the bath for a few minutes lay off. I wasn't gone for long and he's quite happy playing in the bath. Yeah, his position did freak me out and I will check on him more often for a while, but I'm not going to stand for the innuendo that I am somehow irresponsible, self-centered or a bad parent for what happened. I got a scare and nothing that you can say will be worse than that feeling. If you're the type of person who likes to pour salt into fresh wounds then please, comment elsewhere because your criticism is wasted here.

This morning I got an email from R nit-picking me about how the situation was handled last night. I think it was in response to my chastising her about being deceitful prior to Rita, but still, it was uncalled for. She wrote to me that I needed to handle situations where we have to exchange Buddy better. She told me that I should have hugged him when I picked him up and that would have helped the situation.

I don't buy that. Buddy was confused and in the situation, that she put him in, I felt it best not to make a big issue out of anything. With R telling me that I was making a mistake in one ear and Buddy close to tears, I thought to just not make anything emotional out of the situation.

All day I've been tempted to reply, but why? R made the mistake and she's trying to play it off like I did something bad to Buddy. It makes me angry, and I suppose that is what she wants. Curse this shit. I need more distance from the recent past. I need to be years away with the experience that only comes with getting through situations like this.

Feh. Enough about all that. Now it is time to let you know about the inaugural podcast I've put together to answer your questions about Paris La Quinta. For the past week or so I've been working on this project and the payoff is finally up. I have joined the world of podcasting.

A podcast is a mashup of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcast". It is a way to share audio files on the Internet allowing people to 'subscribe' to a RSS feed and receive files automatically and on Return to Happiness, it's free! So, how do you get the podcast? Well, here are instructions:

Download iTunes

iTunes 4.9 or above is recommended as it features the new Podcast functionality. There are other Podcast tools, but iTunes is one of the easier ones to use.

Use the steps given below to subscribe in iTunes manually.

1. Open iTunes.
2. Select Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast.
3. A new window appears with a textbox. Enter in http://returnhappy.com/podcasts/R2H_feed.xml and then press OK.
4. The latest episode will then start to automatically download into iTunes.

If you're not going to use iTunes and you just want to snag the MP3 file directly, click here and save it to your disk. Just know that doing it this way will not automatically subscribe yourself to the feed.

I'd love to hear what you think of the first episode. Was it too long? Too short? How was the sound quality? Did you think it was funny? What about too sexy? Did I sound like you expected? Did Paris sound like you expected her to? (And yes, Paris does provide a bit of the audio for the podcast.)Do you think the advertising was too much? Your comments and criticism are totally welcome because I want to improve where I can.

I really hope that you enjoy it. The next episode will finish up all you need to know about Paris La Quinta. After that, I don't know. I'm going to try to open the format up to make it a bit looser and more improvised. The only thing that I know will maintain is that it will me doing the podcasting.

I have a very polite kid...

2005-10-05T15:51:00.000-05:00

What news I have to share with you today gentle reader! It is exciting news, the likes of which you have never experience on this blog. Prepare yourselves; this is going to be a post that people will write songs about a hundred years from now. It is not just a simple post of a thousand words but instead a bombshell of critical importance to the readers of this blog.

Do you believe me?

You're a fool if you do.

Really, the fact is that there is nothing much to write about today. Last night I didn't do much. I took Buddy to the local grocer's to get some needed supplies. We bought bread and salad and chicken. Buddy watched the ceiling of the store for a family of wrens who live in the store and I tried to figure out what happened to the regular items that I pick up. The grocer's is getting an 'upgrade' to a more high street type of goods. The former 'pantry' products are being rebranded 'central market' with higher prices and to boot.

The inventor change doesn't bother me at all. The new items in the store included and expanded produce section with twice the organic foods and a far better wine stock. The rest of the changes fall into either the superficial or annoying categories. First off, all the shelving units in the store have gone from off-white to black. I don't know about you but I'll gladly pay an extra 10% for my food when it's stocked on black shelves.

What? You think I'm kidding? I read a study that showed that Americans would pay more for items if the store has black fixtures. I tend to think it has more to do with the overall design. To be honest, the black shelves are probably not a good thing because they're going to show dust easier, and that's not going to make the cans of Banana Slug Surprise sell any faster. Still, if the rest of you are willing to fork over 10% more shelf color I don't have much choice other than to follow suit. Damn you all and your herd mentality.

The second change has really put a turd in my truffle; they reorganized the damn store. Nothing is located where it used to be. It's like I am shopping in a whole new grocer's and this, above all else, pisses me off. Excuse me but I've invested seven years of my life shopping there, painstakingly building a mental map of the place so I know where everything is and then in the course of two weeks, it's all gone. Why couldn't that have just upgraded the shelves and left it at that? Why does the store need over 200 kinds of coffee? Bastards!

Now I'll have to start all over. If they change their music though, then that *will* be the final straw. If I don't get to hear one-hit wonders from the eighties while I shop then I might as well go to Wal-fucking-Mart.

Buddy and I have never seen as many people as we saw in the grocer's as we did last night. Usually we shop after seven-thirty when most people are watching TV. Last night we got there before six and the store was packed to the gills with people. Buddy and I wandered around talking about nothing like we always do and buying groceries. When we got into line he asked for some M&Ms and I agreed that he could have them.

At this point my mind wandered away from Buddy as I tried to swipe my increasingly non-magnetic debt card through the reader. Because the reader didn't like my card I needed to have the assistance of no less than three employees of the store. It was like one of those light bulb jokes, but instead it was my credit that they were trying to screw. When the cashier started reading the number aloud to the bagger, who was typing it into the computer I put a stop to this.

"Excuse me, stop!" I said this tersely as the cashier had already read half the number on my card. "Do not read my credit card number aloud."

It took a second to dawn on the cashier why I would have an issue with this. Then she said sorry and pushed the bagger aside. She then proceeded to enter the number herself and I turned my gaze to the computer screen where my number was being displayed at at least half-inch tall letters. You know, sometimes you can't win. You just cannot win for trying.

Because she entered my number manually she had to have her manager come over to verify this. She called for assistance and waited while my number was being copied down by lord only know who. Eventually this process was all over and I turned to find Buddy with a small plastic bag for his candy and a big grin on his face. The cashier, when taking the signed receipt from me, then said, "You have a very polite boy sir."

I have no idea what Buddy was doing to deserve this praise. I do know that he is polite though, more polite than other kids his age. After all that went wrong in the grocer's I ended up walking out feeling flushed with pride. Isn't that great?

Buddy received the karmic kickback from this compliment until after dinner, which he again took over an hour to eat. I was a little miffed that it took him so long to eat so, no candy for him after all. I drew his bath and put him in it.

While Buddy played in the bath I went out for a smoke and to talk to Paris La Quinta on the phone. She's still in Bavaria this week, and having a darn good time too. I'd asked her to send me a few sound files for the forthcoming Return to Happiness Podcast (by Friday, I promise!) and she called to see if they were all fine. They sounded much better than the cheap mike I bought, so I thanked her for them. The podcast is coming along. I just need to figure out how to make a clear recording for you. I've got a twenty-minute tale to share and I think it's going to be entertaining for you. Detail will be coming!

When I finished my smoke I went in to check on Buddy. He was lying motionless in the bath like he was trying out for 'Altered States II'. There was a hint of water creeping into his mouth and his eyes were closed. I freaked out and grabbed him by the shoulders lifting him to a sitting position. I expected coughing or something but instead I got this slow waking up try of reaction.

"Hi daddy."

"What were you doing?" I asked, panicked.

"Floating."

The kid was meditating in the bath and it freaked me out. I used to do the same thing, I can remember lying completely still with my ears in the water tuning everything out. It's strange to see him doing the same thing, becoming me in some ways. Still, for about a second there I thought I'd lost him and that feeling alone made it very hard to sleep last night.

So, that's it. You've read a thousand words about me going to the grocer's and Buddy faking me out in the bath. Nothing ground breaking at all here. Nothing shocking and in three days you'll have forgotten about this post entirely.

And that is the way it should be.

Last chance to see...

2005-10-04T14:28:00.000-05:00

Yet another Astroworld post? You betcha. With the park closing for good in less than a month I was very happy that the events of the past few weeks aligned to make one last trip to the park with Buddy possible. I suppose that is one way to look at the events of Hurricane Rita; without that storm the chances that Buddy and I would have gone to Astroworld were slim. As the storm caused me to switch weekends with R for Buddy I ended up getting to go to the park with Buddy for free, thanks to my brother and his girlfriend having season passes.

When Buddy went to sleep on Saturday night he didn't want to go to Astroworld. he was worried I would make him get on a water ride again and made me promise that we would not before agreeing to go. I don't understand that attitude of his at all. He's not going to ride the bamboo chute but he asked to go to Waterworld in the next breath. I know that at five, they're not supposed to make sense but I can't help but look for logic in him.

We woke early with the goal of getting to the park early. Since the announcement that the park was to close the parking lot has been packed every weekend. On Sunday though, the parking lot was not too full. I suppose it was the storm clouds that were rolling through Houston all morning that kept people away. The short hours of operation were also probably a factor; the park is only open for eight hours on Sundays in the fall. Needless to say, Buddy and I left the house at an ungodly hour for a Sunday morning.

As we made our way towards the park my brother called to say that he'd woken up late. I wasn't surprised; this is standard fare for brothers I have come to realize. My brother is always late, as were R's brothers when we would agree to meet them. Is this a universal thing about brothers and if so, am I guilty of this?

These days I pride myself on being punctual with friends and family; well for everything except work where I am habitually late. After R moved out I was spending a weekend with my parents and my mother commented that she'd noticed that I was much easier to plan with now that R wasn't involved. Apparently my parents had noticed that I would not plan anything more than a week in advance when I had to deal with R. Now days I can plan weeks into the future and my parents are happy to see this sense of scheduling is part of me and not R.

Seeing as my brother would be late, Buddy and I stopped at Whataburger for breakfast. I had planned on just driving through but as my brother was running late we went in. It took forever to get our food and even longer to eat. We ended up meeting my brother after he'd arrived AND still managed to get to the park pretty quickly. We got a good parking spot and were in the park fifteen minutes after the doors opened.

This trip is the third and final trip for Buddy and I to Astroworld and I had to work hard to keep my expectations in check. I wanted things to be perfect but the weather was not agreeing. By the time we got in the park we were already damp from the rain. We all agreed to ignore the persistent precipitation and tried to make the best of the day. Many of the rides that Buddy liked were open rain or shine. The kid's roller coaster, the gunslinger and the antique taxis were all up and going even in the heaviest of rain. other rides that we wanted to go on were closed though. It was sad that the Astroway skycars were never opened for the day.

Still, we made the best of things. We rode the regulars and let Buddy enjoy the kids section of the park while the adults got drenched. He had fun and that is what is important. I even got him onto the big in door roller coaster, the Mayan Mindbender, a coaster in pitch darkness. He'd been on it before but the second ride was under protest. It wasn't until we left the park that he told me how much he enjoyed it.

By noon we were soaked through and through. The rain was pouring and the rides that were working still were scattered around the park far and wide. We made the best of the time though, playing in puddles and splashing each other. Buddy walked around with his tongue out for a drink and soon we were all doing this. Then we each won vampire teeth and spent a good twenty minutes pretending to scare each other.

Around three we'd had enough. The skies cleared at one and the lines were getting far too long to be worth putting up with Buddy's protests. By this point Buddy only wanted to ride rides he'd been on before and the rest of us wanted to get on some of the more adult rides. Nothing out of his league, just out of his comfort zone. We decided to head out of the park by way of the train that runs from the station at the back around to the midway where I would once again attempt to win a prize for Buddy before calling it a day.

The train ride turned out to be the best part of the day. The narrator at the back of the train provided an unscripted, if not somewhat jaded, commentary about the park. We knew it would be a good ride when he initiated his cometary by telling us that he was not going to read the train's rules and instead asked us all to behave.

The narrator thanked us for making the train a part of our final visit to Astroworld and told us how sad he was to know that he would no longer be riding the General Electric deisel engine train daily after the park closed. He pointed out buildings and rides and shared his memories about the places. He described the Texas Cyclone, a wooden roller coaster that is a cornerstone of park history, as a big pile of future kindling because it is unable to be moved. Around the front of the park the train went through a tunnel and he announced, "While smoking is not allowed on the rides at Astroworld, I just don't care. Smoke 'em if you got 'em."

It was the perfect end to my memories of the place. Our final ride in the park was nothing exciting, just a train that circled the park that will soon be gone. We disembarked and went to the midway where I asked Buddy what he wanted. He picked a big stuffed dinosaur at the dart game. It cost me fifteen dollars and six throws to win the giant dino, but I'd done something that I was unable to in our previous trips. I'd won something for Buddy and while the cumulative total spent in trying to win that stuffed animal was something close to sixty bucks in three trips, it was money well spent.

Last night Buddy put a pillow on the floor for his dino. Then he pulled off his spare blanket and tucked him into bed for the night. The dino is nearly as long as my son is tall and in terms of my son's happiness, it is huge. No one is happier than me with it. I won it for my boy and damn did that make me feel good.

Thank you Astroworld for the final memories that I will cherish. Thank you for making this first year of my divorce a little more fun for my son and I. I will miss you.

Mood altering substance...

2005-10-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

Thursday's blues gave way to Friday's funk, which lead to Saturday's jazz and Sunday's rock and roller coaster. I believe that I am now halfway through this genre inspired mood swing and I can't wait to see how my mood deals with the reggae theme day (scheduled for Thursday this week). For all intents last Friday's post was a cathartic experience for me. I managed to get a lot of thoughts that had been festering in my head for days out on paper, or screens I suppose. This helped me to identify the source of my depression and late on Friday night I found it.

It wasn't as simple as I initially thought; seeing R, NB and Buddy in the car was jarring and certainly part of it, but that wasn't the entire thing. The depression was more centered on being forced to take back what I had given up on. When I evacuated my house I said goodbye to it, I thought it was going to be destroyed along with everything in it. I left with what I could carry and as I pulled out of my driveway I had the thought that rebuilding my life fresh was possibly just what I needed.

By Thursday afternoon I was actually happy about the prospects of rebuilding my life without all the crap that I'd gathered over the years. With all of it gone I could turn myself into the model of the 'I do not want what I have not got' set. Simplicity would be mine, and it was going to be delivered with the force of a hurricane.

That, obviously, didn't happen. Rita weakened, wobbled and wimped out on the promise she'd made to my future. I returned home to find my life in the exact same state it was in before the evacuation. I still had all the same crap I'd had before I left and the chores of dealing with it. It would be like spring cleaning your house only to come back a week later and have all that crap you'd thrown out returned to the exact same places it was before you started.

When R and NB and Buddy pulled into the drive I think I saw her new truck, new dog, new boyfriend and new things in the back as a taunting reminder that she had what I had come to grips with. She got to start over and I was left with all the crap that even a hurricane cannot rid me of. This was the depression that my clouds gathered around and once recognizing it I was able to start working back to happiness from it.

I will be honest with you my turn around had help. At work on Friday I was given a mind-altering substance that perked me up quicker than you imagine. Later in the afternoon I got a bonus check, nothing big mind you, but still. I've been here two months and I got my first bonus. At my last job I worked for nearly three years and got only one bonus, and it was smaller than the one I received on Friday. There is nothing quite like unexpected money to cheer a person up.

After the arrival of the check I found myself in a better mood. I didn't really think bleak thoughts until late on Friday night, and then I was a bit detached from the feelings I had earlier. Instead I went and picked up Buddy from school and we went for a haircut at Toys-r-us. We spent the evening having a good time with haircuts and toy shopping and dinner at Chilli's. I got him home around eight that evening after a run through Target where I found out that they no longer make affordable Halloween costumes.

Buddy wants to be Scooby Doo this year and Target's costume, designed for cold climates, runs forty bucks. That is about thirty bucks more than I feel one should spend on a Halloween costume. For goodness sakes, it's only going to be worn on one freaking night, and chances at it will be in the eighties here in Houston and Buddy will pass out inside the costume Target is selling. I swear the thing looks warmer than a sleeping bag.

On Saturday we met the Godparents, who we haven't seen in about six months. They moved north of Houston and turned a three-mile drive to their house to a seventy mile one. Their old house is finally being sold and they were in town for a final sweep of the place. It was good to see them after so long, even if they were still as judgmental as always. We've planned to get together again after Christmas but until then I'm not planning on seeing them.

Buddy and I also went to play putt-putt on Saturday at the course nearest our house. We played two games, sandwiching a trip to the electronics store and dinner, and Buddy did an amazing job. All told he got six holes-in-one, out of thirty-six total holes.

One shot was possibly the most amazing putt-putt shot I'd ever seen. Buddy gave the ball a good whack straight down the middle of the course. The ball rolled straight at the hole with far too much speed. It hit the hole and bounced up in the air, over the back of the green and onto the concrete. It hit the concrete then bounded onto a rock on the edge of the garden which sent it right back onto the green. Then it bounced right into the cup... Unbelievable!

Buddy threw up his hands and yelled "Hole-in-One!" I stood there with my mouth open, not sure just how Buddy happens to be so fortunate. All but one of his holes-in-one were totally amazing shots that you would never expect to end up in the hole, but he did it. The final score was Buddy with six holes-in-one and me with only four.

After we got home on Saturday I started working on my first podcast. I've decided to release answers to your questions about Paris as a podcast and it should be available in the next day or two. I can't believe Paris has agreed to this but she owes me a favor right now so I'm cashing it in. Besides, she's out of town this week. This morning Paris took off to Bavaria to visit some friends in a chocolate factory. She going to be taking he work with her as Paris has accepted a job with Penthouse letters adding the phrase "I never thought this would happen to me" into letters for publication.

Tomorrow I'll share with you the details of Buddy and my trip to Astroworld yesterday. For now though I'll leave you with the knowledge that everything may not be perfect for me, but it is a heck of a sight better.

Before I forget, I've changed the comment preferences again for my blogs. After getting over 200 spam comments this weekend on both R2H and GH I decided something had to be done.

Not your scheduled program...

2005-09-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

We're going to take a break from the Q&A session with Paris today, partially due to an overwhelmingly lack-luster response to my call for interrogatories but more importantly due to the fact that I have something to write about today. An issue has bubbled up above the banal topics that I've been writing about recently and today, instead of answering questions I'm going to address something a bit more important.

I'm feeling depressed. There, I said it and you know what? If this blog were written by the writers of TV programs then I'd heave a sigh and tell you that I fell better for saying it. I don't. I know depression well and it's not something that you feel better when you address. Actually, when you finally get around to addressing it (OK, maybe not you specifically, I'm really talking about me here) you've already found yourself sitting at a stop light trying to hold it together for just one more day.

Just one more drive to work this week where you're tasked with not only doing your job but also leaving enough of your personal baggage at home so as not to weigh co-workers down with the feeling that they should do something out of some sort of obligation to you. There's not much that they can do. The past is the past and it's gone. All it has left to do is sit there in comparison to a present that I'm not really enjoying right now.

I haven't forgotten the pain that the recent past put me through. My memories go back further to the salad days. Now I am faced with a future that is uncertain in so many ways that I'd thought I'd locked up ages ago. When you are happy you compare the present to the bad times of yore. When you're depressed everything that happens is compared to the happiest memories of what you had. You ache to be happy again and try to remember what it felt like.

How can the present compare to the past?

Last night I went to Saul's poker room to drop off a CD of music I said I'd burn for him; the new Kanye West, both of Talib Kweli's CDs and most of The Roots library. As he was having a tourney I decided to sit in and spend $30 on poker while enjoying free dinner and drinks. For what it's worth a night at home would have cost me the same as I would have gone out drinking my sorrows and that would have cost me more than $30.

At the game was a girl R and I met at one of Saul's parties years ago. She's nice enough and we got to talking. I asked about her boyfriend and she showed me her wedding band, they'd been married in May. She asked about R and I showed her that patch of soft white flesh on my ring finger and told her we divorced in July. Then the questions started. This girl and Kevin Spacey, who wasn't really Kevin Spacey but a friend of Saul's who busted out on the same hand as me and looked just like the actor, asked me all the familiar questions you ask someone recently divorced.

"How long were you married?"

"Eleven years."

"Oh wow," their faces showing that they didn't know what to do, "How long did you know her?"

"We were together for eighteen years."

"Shiiiit." Their own marriages are now in doubt. What would happen to their relationship if I couldn't make it?

"Yeah, but I got my son and the house, so I got what I wanted." Please don't feel bad for me, I don't need your pity, but God do I want your company, just not like this.

"What happened?"

"She moved out. She told me it was me. She moved in with a guy she worked with. I don't know."

I am now the unsightly beggar outside your grocery store. I make you feel bad for having happiness. You cannot look my pain in the face with your bags full of love and happiness.

See, I told you... Depressed.

The girl told me it wasn't my fault and that there was nothing I could do. It didn't help because I did everything I could think of and nothing helped. Now I'm just a beggar making people feel guilty for being so filled with love and happiness.

This new office I've got affords me little privacy. To be precise there is no privacy at all. The walls between areas are less than four feet tall. While I love my view, I miss the opportunity to sulk in my hollow shell, back in the corner where no one could see or hear me sobbing. Was I pathetic back then when my blog was written through my tears? No, I don't think so. I was scared about the future and now that I'm living the future I couldn't imagine I'm finding myself dealing with things that I feared.

It's not easy. Dealing with the loneliness is never easy. You smile all the time while inside you pray that the break down that is coming will happen when no one is around. Two and a half hours until I get to leave. Then a blissful hour by myself to deal with these feelings before I once again have to don the mask of happiness for Buddy.

What I want is... what I had. What I had before R became who she became and before I became who I became. I want to go back to when I was happy and everything was comfortable. I want what I cannot have again. Sure I may get married again, but I will never live with my son's mother again. My life is always going to be filled with stress that I never wanted. Stress like the conversation we had about Rita and what happened with Buddy.

R seems happy. She seems to have moved on from me effortlessly and I hate that. I hate her for her happiness and I can't stand that feeling. When she dropped off Buddy the other night NB was there, driving her truck on my driveway. The back of the truck was filled with the accoutrements of a relationship. One that she has and I don't. People see a car with R, NB and Buddy and they look like a family. I hate R and NB for that in ways that I cannot express. I wish bad things for them. I plot ways to destroy their relationship just so that R would have to feel what I felt.

When Buddy is with me, I constantly feel like we're missing something. Where is the wife? Where is the mother? A single mother with a kid is expected almost in today's society. A single father is not what you'd expect and I want to explain to the world that it isn't what they imagined. My life is not what you think. I was not the cheater. I never wanted to be single.

I am not happy.

Ugh. I can't go on about this anymore. I'm at work don't you know. I am at work and barely able to keep it together. My iPod is playing music to blot out the world that I cannot face.

But I will. I'll do it for Buddy and I suppose for me. Here is a brave face in the mirror for the world to see.

I'm going to put it on now. There is work to do. Paris will answer your questions on Monday.

What is written below is a post...

2005-09-29T16:50:00.000-05:00

It's been a long day. I've spent the day working on a project that is not the usual type of work for me. As a general rule of thumb I do programming but today my computer skills were needed in a decidedly non-programming way. Still involved in problem solving but without the pleasure of logic. Today's work has been the manual labor of my skill set and it has left me worn out and frustrated.

Due to the limitations of the environment I work in, which folks in the field call and IDE but for you non-programmer types think of it as the cyber environment if you will, certain things are still easier to do using brute force. I'm not one for brute force solutions; I like elegance and simplicity. The reason I program is because I like to do things with my mind and not with my hands. When I program it is like I've got telekinesis; I can move things with a line of code, make things dance and numbers change to mean new things. It is my escape and it helps that I enjoy doing it.

So today's brute force exercise has left me taxed mentally and it's kept me busy enough that I haven't even found time to write until now. There is so little to say today too. Nothing exciting happened yesterday. I went to work and worked. Then I went to get Buddy from school and we went home. We ate chicken sandwiches and he played games on the computer while I worked on bringing the dead one back to life. It's slow going and I think I've nailed the issue down to a faulty RAM chip. That's an easy enough problem to fix but what a time consuming task it's been.

I didn't have that talk with R last night. I did send her an email letting her know that the talk was coming. I'll probably ask her to call me either tonight or tomorrow to discuss it. I thought that by giving her a few days to know what was coming I'd have a better idea on how she's going to handle these things in the future. For the past year our conversations have all pretty much turned into arguments. This time I want to try something different to see if we can communicate like adults without resorting to name calling.

Of course, if name calling is what she wants I've got a pocket full of 'cheating whore' and 'lying bitch's ready to share with her.

OK, I'm kidding about that. I'll do my best to let her know how I felt during the run up to Rita. If she tells me I am accusing her of this or that I will calmly remind her that I am not telling her what happened. I am sharing my reaction to what happened. When I tell her that I felt like she was being deceptive with me though misleading me about her plans she can either tell me why she left her neighborhood packed for a visit to a lake or admit that she did in fact lie to me. I'll leave that up to her.

Another thing that has been on my mind for the past few days is the upcoming Novel Writers Month in November. If you'll remember last year I was thinking about taking the challenge but then all hell broke loose and there was no way I could concentrate on writing a book. This time around I not only plan on writing a book but also self-publishing it in December.

I haven't decided what the book is going to be about just yet. I have a title in mind and a theme but as for the plot, I just don't know. The book is going to focus on how difficult it is to change the character flaws in each of us. I'm not sure where it is going but it will probably be along to lines of learning to accept and live with your flaws instead of trying to fight them; making your life miserable. It's either that or a book about a young princess who is befriended by a unicorn and together they battle a dragon with magic to save the kingdom.

That second idea is what Paris La Quinta is writing about. She told me last night that she's already started on her book (titled "Henrietta's Magic Unicorn in the Land of the Morning Dew"). I pointed out that it wasn't November yet, the official month for the Novel Writer's Month. Paris laughed a quaint if not slightly condescending laugh and told me "Silly, I'm not *writing* it yet. I've been sketching illustrations on my Trapper Keeper at work in preparation."

Why Paris needs a Trapper Keeper at her animal husbandry job is beyond me. It doesn't seem to be the type of thing that you'd want to carry around if your job involved spending time with bulls doing the types of things best left to, well bulls. Still I'm glad that she has perked up though and I look forward to reading her novel.

I asked Paris the other day about the questions you've been asking about her in the comments. She is not a big fan of me sharing all the details of her life but your interest in her is tempting her with the trappings of fame and fortune. She's agreed to answer two questions posted from your comments tomorrow, so if there is anything you'd like to know about the enigmatic Paris La Quinta, please post them before tomorrow's update.

The only other news that I want to comment on is my insider's view on Washington politics. Yesterday my representative in congress, Tom DeLay, was indicted for breaking state law relating to whoring for corporate interests, or something like that. Now Tom and I have never really gotten along. Partially because he's always bogarting all the weed (puff, puff, *pass* Tom) and partially because he's an evil bastard who, and I have this on good word, is the anti-Christ.

Tom DeLay is basically charged with taking corporate money and using it to directly fund the election campaigns of Republicans in Texas through the PAC he started, TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority). In the great state of Texas using corporate funds in this way is against the law. You might think it to be just that bad but DeLay and his TRMPAC crew has faced a lot of trouble for their uncouth ways over the past year.

DeLay has used tax money to fund Republican campaigns and fund raisers, took lobbyist-paid vacations and was found guilty of three House ethics violations. In the GOP he is known as 'The Hammer' and he wields his power in Washington to further his political agenda. Still, it is good to see that the indictment has done nothing to quell Tom's hypocrisy. In dismissing the charges of the Texas DA DeLay said that Ronnie Earle is "an unabashed partisan zealot."

I guess it takes one to know one or something like that. DeLay is one of the most violently partisan representatives in the Congress. He forced a redistricting plan through Texas that essentially eliminates the Democratic districts in Austin, San Antonio and Houston. He breaks the rules and takes no prisoners and it is about damn time that this zealot got taken out of a position of power.

Ok, that's it. I'm going home. Remember to post your questions for Paris.

Middle of the week report...

2005-09-28T14:42:00.000-05:00

Did you notice that it is Wednesday? I did. I caught that fact this morning as I related to Paris La Quinta that she was less than forty hours from her precious Friday. She's excited about Friday's arrival because she doesn't like her latest job. All week, after last week's medical fashion show fiasco, Paris has been working for an animal husbandry company. Her job is to travel Texas going from farm to farm collecting bull semen through a technique that the field refers to as 'manual extraction' but Paris calls 'jerk work.' "If nothing else," I told her last night "the exercise should be good for you."

Paris swears that next time she sees a help wanted ad that sounds right up her alley she's going to explore with more interest just who she's getting paid to take up that alley. She's totally wiped out by not only the physical exertion of the job but she's running out of ideas for dirty talk to whisper in the Bull's ear. Please think positive thoughts for Paris as she struggles to make it through 'hump' day.

Speaking of hump day, and yes that is about as creative as I get in terms of a segue into the topic I want to touch on, it's been ages since I've had any type of carnal fun. Part of me is quite happy about this situation, as the lack of carnal companions is part and parcel to a lack of drama filled relationships. Still though, I'm beginning to wonder when I'll be able to return to sackiness (bad pun?). The bar scene hasn't worked in the way I'd like it to. Sure I've had offers but they've not been with the people I'd like them to be with.

Last night I spent some time looking through a couple of different dating sites on the web in order to remind myself that I don't really want to be doing this again. One the first site I went to everyone looked a bit too much like Liz. The second sight was hopeful until I came across Cankles photo. You remember Cankles right? The girl R and I had a threesome with way back before I started blogging. Any site with her on there is a site I'll avoid.

Next up was the biggest of the dating sites, Yahoo's personals, and being the most populated with personals is not always a good thing. I came across a profile of a woman dressed something like a lemon meringue with a hatchet face slathered so thick with base that underneath she could have been Manuel Noriega's twin sister and you'd have never known. Her profile screamed out, in all caps, her man hating agenda giving her a hypocritical attitude of condemning a gender for being insensitive to another gender. If nothing else, the profile served as a reminder why I am determined to make the next girlfriend I entertain you with not one I met online.

If the real world women turn out to be just as crazy though... I don't know what I'll do.

It isn't like I have a lot of time to date right now anyway. Due to R having Buddy last weekend thanks to her deception and Rita I've got the boy this weekend. This is good news as my brother and I are planning on taking him to Astroworld. I've got Thursday off but I don't think I'll be meeting people that evening as I still have to put away all the things that I evacuated. The next time I'll have time to myself after this will be a week on Thursday, that's a long time to go though. Still, it's time with Buddy and these days’ things seem to be really going well for us.

Monday was a great day for father/son bonding as Buddy's school was closed. I called my parents and asked if they wanted to spend the day with Buddy, which of course they wanted to. I asked them to meet me at the office and then Buddy and I left for work. The drive took me no time at all and Buddy and I arrived an hour before my parents were set to. To pass the hour I had Buddy help with the post-Rita clean up.

It wasn't that anything was a mess in the office. Rita didn't damage anything in terms of the area however the office prepared for the worst and on Monday we had to unpack computers and rugs and move furniture. He loved being at Daddy's office and quickly took charge of my interactions with co-workers. He would alternately smile and greet people nicely or growl his 'T-rex' growl at them depending on his mood. Buddy was also happy to explore the snack cabinet.

Buddy was great help rolling out the rugs until my parent's arrived. They took him swimming and to Target and described him as a bundle of happiness. He returned to my office at four and spent the last hour of my workday playing on the Transformers.com website. My parents told me later that they were impressed with my new office and enjoyed saying hello to some of my co-workers.

Last night Buddy and I had to eat dinner without power again. This time the bills were all paid up, and have been for nearly a year now. It was the Rita repairs that caused out blackout. On the street behind us a neighbor lost a tree to the winds. That tree damaged the power lines that supply about half the homes in the neighborhood with power. Repairing it required that they shut the rest of us down too so Buddy and I had dinner, turkey dogs, by the heat of the gas stove. Then we wandered forth to run errands while the power company worked on restoring power. We returned to a well-lit house and spent the rest of the evening before bed playing games and having fun.

I imagine I'll be able to make it through this hump day without too much difficulty. Hell, it is almost over now. I suspect that as time moves along I'll feel this twinge to meet someone grow. Until I meet someone please help me resist ex-girlfriends in my driveway or sending me text messages. My weakness cannot land me back into a situation I escaped! I must remain strong.

Become the Hurricane...

2005-09-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

After thirty-four years of walking this earth in search of what it is that we all search for I have discovered certain things about life and, more importantly, about myself. The recent preparation panic for Rita's arrival crystallized things that I kind of all ready knew. I have too much stuff, way too much stuff.

On Wednesday last week I spent a few hours packing things that I didn't want to lose. The choices I made were difficult as they were all based on the amount of time I had (not much) and the amount of crap I own (too much). I grabbed photos, because everyone tells you that you'll miss them. They were all still packed from the divorce, so that took no time at all. I also grabbed the important paper envelope, a waterproof zip lock envelope with the divorce decree, insurance papers, Buddy's birth certificate, my naturalization certificate, passports (one British, one American) and Buddy's shot records. All of this took up one box.

I grabbed clothes, again they were already packed as I'd done laundry the night before and hadn't put it away. I added to the basket some work shirts and swim suits for Buddy and I. I didn't bring winter clothes because there wasn't time. All of this packing had to be done in an hour as my father planned on arriving in the Tahoe much earlier than I was thinking he would. When he called and moved up the timetable by three hours I was just getting Buddy out of bed. I had to wash the dogs before he arrived too.

Once the dogs were spotless and smelling nice I got onto the packing. I packed up two laptops into bags and added a few other computer things I wanted to keep. What I was left with was six document boxes, everything else in my house and about thirty minutes before he arrived. I looked around. What to take?

I ended up packing my CDs and DVDs into the boxes. There is a sentimental value to the CD collection, I've been building it since I was fifteen and many of the CDs are irreplaceable. On top of that, were I to lose everything then what I had left would need to be liquidated for cash and CDs and DVDs are quick and easy to sell. The six hundred or so CDs left in the house went into four document boxes with ease. Buddy was enlisted to help me pack up the DVDs, which took the other two document boxes and a large computer box that was sitting in the study. When my father arrived I had all of these boxes stacked and ready to go.

Later, when I left the house myself I packed up the additional computers and external drives from my house (well, not *all* of them as I've got around ten computers in my house). I also grabbed the majority of my yo-yos and put them into boxes. Another large collection I didn't want to part with. I then scanned my bookshelves for books that were autographed, gifts from dead relatives, or worth a lot on ebay. I wanted to load up the rest of my car with things again that had value to me or value on eBay. Most of the things I looked at I realized that I'd be fine without this thing or that never being in my life again.

When I arrived at my parents there were two things that I regretted not taking with me - my childhood teddy bear and my wedding band. That's it, not a damn other thing could even muster the thought of returning home to make another grab. The teddy bear, that was the hardest thing to forget. We've been through a lot that bear and me.

(To be honest, I did wonder what the neighbors would think if they found my spindle of porn DVDs floating in their yard after the storm. That thought was more along the lines of amusement and not of regret though.)

Now Rita is gone and my house is filled with boxes of shit I took with me waiting to be put away. I see those boxes and I think to myself that I have too much crap in my house and that crap is a major factor in the state of my house. It is all clutter and unnecessary to my life. I need to unload some of it, actually a lot of it. I need to get rid of things and detach my emotional entanglement from them.

The approach of Rita allowed me to say goodbye to a lot of things in my house. I waved goodbye to the comics, the toys I still have from my childhood. Bookshelf after bookshelf of books was mentally cleared from my life with amazing ease. The things that mattered to me were simple. Buddy was at the top of the list, then the dogs and finally my computers, which along with this blog, store the things I've created for the past fifteen years or so. Music, yo-yos and movies ranked up there enough to be evacuated but if I didn't have them would I have grabbed more important things?

I thought about this last night as I drive home. I have too much crap... far too much crap. I need to run garage sales for months to unload the things I no longer want. I need to donate, give away and throw out things. Things are going to change for me; they have to. I cannot continue like this.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to start selling off my CDs, probably here on R2H and half.com or eBay. I'll rip the CD to MP3 or AAC format before selling them and then store backups of the MP3s at my parents. I'm going to use the money from selling the CDs to buy a hard drive to store the MP3s and then to repair the house. When I've got them all burned I'll give an archive to R and ask her to lend me the CDs she took so I can burn them too.

I can never say never, but I think I bought my last new CD a week ago today. From here forward I'll buy them off iTunes instead of the record store. I may still go to half price CD stores, but I'll buy, burn and sell instead of keeping all the CDs.

The books in my house are next. Selling them at half-price isn't going to make any sort of return on my investment so garage sales are in order. I'll find some community garage sale to involve myself in and go unload my books at $1 to $5 each. There's no reason to keep them anymore. As for the toys and other nick-nacks I've collected; they will be given to Buddy, sold or tossed.

The thought of a hurricane cleaning the slate for me was actually intoxicating. I could rebuild with less shit to get messy and what potential that had. I need to become that hurricane and get my life under control with effort and dedication and not wind and rain.

The Rita hangover...

2005-09-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

I'd say that everything is back to normal, but it isn't just yet. A great many people from Houston are still out there somewhere, evacuating from the hyped-up coverage from the local media. Rita has fizzled off to be little more than a collection of storm clouds. The power is back on in most parts of the city, but not all. Businesses are still closed all around the place and schools are shut down through Wednesday.

R arrived back in town with Buddy last night. It was late and he was tired, but I was happy to see him. She showed up on my driveway with NB driving her truck. It was loaded with supplies, more supplies than you'd expect someone who made a last minute decision to leave would have. I was taken for a chump, but in the future I will not be taken for the fool. Rita served as a reminder that I should never trust R again. She has no respect for the divorce decree and took to making decisions for Buddy without consulting me.

When she arrived I was surprised at how angry I felt about NB having the weekend with Buddy and R. I shouldn't blame NB for all that happened but still, it would have been nice for a tree to have fallen and crushed him. I think the basis of my anger towards him, and my wish that I never see him again, has to do with NB being part of R's new happiness. I want her miserable for a while, at least as miserable as she made me. Is that too much to ask?

R, Buddy, R's mother and brother and NB along with his mother and step-father all went to NB's grandparents for the storm. The drive there took them twenty-three hours and included a forced stop when R's truck ran out of gas. She told me on Thursday that I was crazy for wanting to keep Buddy in Houston. She said it was too dangerous. She told me that Buddy wanted to go and when I think back about the conversation that we had I get terrifically angry about it. All of her reasoning was based on unfair tactics; Buddy wants to go, Buddy likes it there, Buddy doesn't want to stay with your parents... It was all bullshit emotional blackmail and it was wrong.

I ended up relenting to her decision because when I woke on Thursday morning the news was saying that all hell was heading our way to break loose. I sent her a text message at eight in the morning telling her to pack up and go. I told her not to delay leaving any longer. She didn't get out of town until at least ten, probably later. By then the gridlock that I am sure you all saw photos of was already mounting up. Hell, the gridlock was on I-45 north the night before. R left it too late to go and because of that my son ended up sleeping on the side of the road because they ran out of gas.

I asked her to keep me posted as to her progress. She didn't do an adequate job of it. When I finally heard from her on Friday she'd been at NB's family's place for a few hours. She never even thought that I might be worried at home that my son was still stuck in traffic in the 100-degree heat. R was completely self-centered in her decision making, completely disingenuous too. I am going to have a long talk with her about this because her behavior and treatment of me during this storm was unacceptable.

I survived the storm without any issue at all. The most exciting thing that happened to me was fixing my parent's roof. The rain never amounted to much and the wind, while gusty, wasn't enough to do more than blow down a few small limbs from pines and oaks. Not a one of them was big enough to do any real damage. We spent the storm playing cards and ignoring things outside. My mother was put out by the lackluster performance of the storm but at the same time relieved that we didn't have a lot of clean up to do.

At one on Saturday, while the power was still out, I left my parent's to drive back to my house and assess the damage. With little traffic on the roads I made the trip again in record time. The area around my house wasn't too bad. There were a few oaks down in a park near my house but for the most part that was the extent of the damage. My neighborhood was a mess with leaves and limbs everywhere, but nothing serious. My driveway was impassable due to oak limbs but as with my parent's area, none of the limbs were big enough to cause harm.

The amazing thing was how my house did in the storm. It was untouched. Not a scratch, dent or mark on it. The electricity was even still on, and apparently it never went off. The worst fears of twenty-foot storm surges were delivered far to the east of my area. The water in the bay was lower than I'd ever seen it before, but aside from this the area was fine. I checked on R's apartment complex and the Hobbit's boat before returning to my parent's house. They were both fine too and on the way out of the Hobbit's area I found a gas station with gas!

The local news was reporting three and a half hour wait for gas in Houston; each station with a cop to stop any troubles from the lines. The gas station near the Hobbit's boat had no police presence and a seven-car wait for one of four working pumps. It took me forty minutes from getting in line to leaving with a filled tank on Saturday. The best thing about the lines had to be watching the people in German cars having to back through the lines because their tanks are on the other side of the car.

On the way back to my parents I saw monster lines at a number of stations and all of them has multiple cops stationed at the pumps. I felt just totally absorbed in my good fortune. Everything, with the exception of dealing with R, had gone right for me. My house was untouched, I had a full tank of gas and Bubbha and Jules had invited me over to a post-Rita party at their house. What else could a man ask for when two days prior he was facing down the third strongest hurricane ever recorded?

Looking outside my office window today the view hasn't changed at all. It is still the same sunny blue sky that painted the view on Tuesday last. The office is back to normal too, we spent the morning moving chairs and other than having Buddy with me this morning (his school is closed through Wednesday so he is spending the day with my parents) nothing seems out of place. Of course, the drive into work was lots faster.

I feel like a character from one of those Left Behind books. Except in this case all those who put their trust in God left town to San Antonio, Austin and other outreaching cities instead of being recalled in the Rapture. When the Rapture comes I expect more people will be left behind. Still, I look forward to less traffic on the freeways and less obnoxious hypocrites telling me how to live my life.

I hope your weekend was less eventful than mine.

Hey there, I'm fine (quick update)...

2005-09-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

Hi folks, the power is back on and I'm heading back to my house. I'll be brief about yesterday because I need to load up the car. The storm wasn't bad at all. Just windy - certainly nothing to flee. The power went out, of course, and we had a nice morning playing cards to pass the time. At no point was it unsafe to go outside, as long as you watched out for small branches coming down from trees.

At two I left to go back to my house and made it there in forty-five minutes. There was no traffic on the roads at all. My house was untouched. No trees down, no broken windows and even the power was on there. R's apartment complex was the same. Even the Hobbit's boat was fine. On my way back I filled up my tank, and it only took forty minutes! It was a day of good fortune and I loved it.

I've more to tell, but that's going to have to come later. Now I pack.

My goodness, this is dull...

2005-09-23T23:04:00.000-05:00

I can only think of one thing more boring than sitting through Rita and that would be driving at an average speed of five miles an hour for fifteen hours in hundred degree weather. Rita reminds me of a movie trailer that gives away all the jokes, special effects and plot twists before you actually watch the movie. It's just been all ho-hum.

The evening has been anti-climatic so far. We watched 'The Perfect Storm' which my father enjoyed and my mother, well she got confused. She kept thinking we were watching local news. Of course she had her nose in a Sudoku puzzle so who can blame her.

I waited for R to call but nothing. I could be without phone service tomorrow and my ex doesn't think that perhaps I would like to talk to my son before I go to bed. I can not wait to get the opportunity to fucking ream her out about this. Buddy would have been perfectly safe in the boredom here. Now he's off who fucking knows where and my ex isn't making enough effort for him to call me.

Her brother called me to let me know what was up. R was apparently out at the time. Buddy was asleep. She is so incredibly annoying I can not relate how she makes me feel without peppering my writing with words like 'fucking' and 'God damned' and 'bitch'. The next time there is anything like this going on I am going to take charge. I hope that her brother and mother totally hate NB's family and wonder what the hell R sees in them.

Ok, calm down Chris. Talk about something else.

There is a fire on Galveston Island. It's at 19th and Post Office which isn't too near to anything much I am familiar with. The fire engines from Galveston and Texas City are trying to put it out but the sixty mile an hour winds are not helping. The good thing is that the embers, which are being blown at sixty mph too, are not catching anything else on fire. Everything is damp but not wet there, and here too.

Some parts of town have instituted a curfew to stop people from driving around. Those of us who stayed are finding all this not worth the hype. I can understand the desire to go for a ride and I can't say I haven't considered it. The winds are not really too much worse than they were earlier. There is a bit of rain, just enough to make everything damp. Rita has just been a big softy so far.

A few days ago on the news they interviewed people who left town asking them why they were leaving. Some of them, like me, left their homes because of a mandatory evacuation. You get a cop showing up at your door asking you when you're planning on going and you take that as a sign that some serious shit is coming up. Other people leaving Houston gave reasons like "we're afraid our power is going to go out."

I am so totally not with these people. When I was a kid the power would go out for four or five days from a fall storm. We'd make do. It wasn't too hard to find things to do. These people are so worried about their electricity and what have you that they're willing to sit in traffic for fifteen to twenty hours to make sure that they will what? Be able to curl their hair? Play on their playstations? I do not understand this.

The power goes out and it is an adventure. You actually have someone to blame for all the shit you have to deal with until the power is returned. It's nice having that freedom to blame someone else, a faceless entity for all that ails you, even if only for a night or two. You get to live by candle light and walk around with flashlights all over the place. That my friends is camping, it is fun! I've been known to ride in a car for twenty hours to experience no electricity; not the other way around.

And now they all have to come back? I wonder if we can ask some of them to stay in San Antonio or Dallas or Austin. Those people so, well pussified as Paris La Quinta would say, can just stay out there. Houston will not shed its image as the nation's fattest city by having three million of us leave because we didn't want to suffer through, gasp, no electricity.

Ah well, after the movie was over we played some cards to pass the time. I won beating my parents in a quick game. As I have told you, my parents tend to get mad when they lose at cards (especially my dad) and the next thing I know they've taken the cookies and hidden them in their bedroom so I can't have any after they've gone to bed.

That lasted until they saw me loading all the beer I bought into a bag to take to my room. No cookies, no beer; those are the rules. The cookies are back now and I made my mother count them to see that their accusation that I'd been eating them all day was totally baseless. Out of fifty-four made there are forty-two left; the three of us had eaten four each.

No respect. And here I was fixing a whole in the roof for these people. I should have stayed with Jules and Bubbha.

I expect things to get worse tonight but I'll be honest. I do not expect them to get worse than Alicia now. Rita is wobbling and losing strength. It is night time and hurricanes like the day time temperatures; the heat feeds their energies. Rita will whimper ashore tonight and I expect we will get some high winds and rain tomorrow.

I'm going to bed. I wish Buddy was here with me. He'd have made this week more entertaining.

A brief update...

2005-09-23T20:01:00.000-05:00

The weather is picking up. The wind is now audible over the special effects of 'The Perfect Storm' on the DVD player. The rain started, just lightly, at 7:23. When I told my mother commented "Good, let's get it on with, I'm tired of waiting."

I hope the bravado lasts until the morning. Rita so far is just dealing us a glancing blow. The wind is amazing though, and this is just the start. We may have tornados or trees down. For now though we are just waiting just like we've been doing for the past few days. We are waiting to see if this Hurricane is going to prove my parents right about staying in town or my ex right about driving twenty-three hours to Austin.

Tomorrow at about noon, in sixteen hours, I'll have a better grasp of who picked the safe bet on the storm. R exposed my son to the exodus from Houston while I am here in town so far safe and feeling pretty good. Tomorrow the future will be found.

My only question now is, are you reading this gentle reader? Is anyone out there taking value in my posts? Let me know.

Power issues, emergency roofing...

2005-09-23T17:51:00.000-05:00

At 4:05 the power in the neighborhood went out. My parents had just returned from walking the dog, which gave me enough free time to take care of those exercises I mentioned. Thank goodness I got that off my mind. The power going off was a big surprise. Earlier my father predicted that we'd go through the storm with power.

My mother and I do not trust his predictions any more.

While I went around shutting down the laptop and grabbing my back up journaling devices (digital camera, palm and notebook) my mother called the power company. They knew about the outage, 1,023 customers were out. The best part about reporting the outage, at least to my mother, was that she actually got to speak to a person. What a change that made, it did a lot to make my mother feel that the power folks were ready for Rita.

After the power is out my parents turn into conservationists. Their zeal to preserve the coolness of the fridge and the A/C in the home would make Henry David Thoreau look wasteful. I got yelled at for leaving out the front door by my mother, as the back door can better protect the A/C. The fridge is supposed to be navigated only by your hand up to your elbow. Opening it too much would let the cold out. My sightless hand mistook a beer for as soda, but I wasn't complaining.

I went outside and watched as people came out of their houses to see if it was just their house that lost power. Then the sounds of gas generators could be heard starting up. The chorus of generators was like crickets greeting the moon as they came to life. My parents and I talked to neighbors; our street has at least half the houses with people staying. It was then that I noticed a corner of my parent's roof was falling apart.

The wood under hangings of the roof in one corner was hanging on by a nail. This would not be good for the winds we were expecting. My father got the ladder and I selected nails and a hammer. At first my mother insisted that my father mount the roof, he's sixty-three, because my weight was too much. I weigh two-forty these days. I directed his ascent and provided tips on fixing the roof. Unfortunately my father feared the roof more than he was letting on. While he handled the hornet's nest just fine his skills with the hammer left much to be desired.

As he hammered I noticed that the generators were all cutting off. The power was back on. I told my father, who wondered how I knew. My mother came out to conform and I told my dad that I could 'sense' the electricity. He's not sure how I knew, but we like pulling tricks like that with each other.

When my father's footing slipped I knew it was too much for him. I demanded that he descend and after getting him on the ground I went in to dress in jeans and my Vans. My shoes are designed to grip a skateboard's grip tape, which is identical in many ways to roofing shingles. I climbed the roof as quick as I could, partially to assure my worried parents that I'd be fine, and made short work of the damage. Within fifteen minutes of getting on the roof I'd put seven nails into key spots and the corner looks to hold for the storm.

My mother allowed me to select dinner and she's making it now. I'm enjoying another beer and waiting for the hurricane to arrive. I'll try to post again if I can later. We're holding up fairly well and having fun tackling the little things. Until later I'm waiting for Rita.

An ill wind blows...

2005-09-23T14:56:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Rita's effects are just starting to be hinted at here in northwest Harris County. The tops of the trees in my parent's neighborhood are all swaying back and forth in the breeze. The tallest pines, some seventy-plus feet tall are swaying back and forth with about a seven foot difference from side to side. Nothing serious, but outside you notice the wind. The streets are a little clearer as people start getting closer to home. We're not going to be getting rain for a few more hours I'd imagine so my family and I are just chilling out.

My father is restless and has taken to coming in and out the house every ten minutes. My mother is baking cookies in the kitchen. Something like four dozen at last count. I may survive this storm but my blue jeans will no longer fit. The dogs are just chilling out. The beagle is watching my mother's cooking in the hopes that a scrap will hit the ground. The mutt on the other hand is my shadow. He's been within feet of me all day. I wouldn't say he's nervous yet; his mood is more along the lines of the boredom we're all feeling.

Earlier I went out driving and have something to report about the state of Houston. I drove south on the near deserted I-45 about five miles towards Houston to see what I could see. For the most part the roads are eerie because of their lack of cars. On the northbound lanes there is an abandoned vehicle every hundred yards or so. In the five miles I went I noticed two hummers parked on the shoulder and I have to say I laughed. These folks couldn't even make it twenty miles from Downtown. Were they to have my car they could have gone nearly a hundred miles on the same amount of gas.

I spoke to a few more friends about the evacuation. One friend saw men pulling guns in line at a gas station. Another time she saw a guy leaning out of his car and bashing the windows of another car with a baseball bat. I asked what kind of people would do such a thing and without missing a beat she mentioned that in both cases the cars has the 'W 04' sticker on them. These folks are crazy I tell you.

I called R at noon to see where she was in her progress to the outskirts of Austin. She arrived at the place they are staying at nine that morning and even though I asked again and again for her to call me and let me know when they got there and to keep me posted she does not. I am frustrated about this and annoyed at her attitude. I will have words with her about this when she returns and you can bet your ass that next time there is some natural disaster threatening the area I am going to tell her that I will take Buddy and show her the right way to keep a parent informed about their child's well being.

The situation with R is frustrating me. I try not to think about it but she's continually showing herself to be a bitch who can't be trusted. Were the shoe on the other foot I would have been in contact with her constantly.

On top of all that has been going on I am finally noticing my libido has returned. After nearly a month with absolutely no interest in getting laid I'm finding it is constantly on my mind today. Perhaps it is because I am in my old house and that's making certain types of um, exercise difficult. Perhaps it is the waiting that is driving me nuts. This whole hurricane thing would have been much more fun were I able to lay in bed and get it on with someone.

Maybe tomorrow night after the worst of the storm is gone I'll be able to find a bar for some post hurricane company. I feel like I'm messed up for thinking about this now but like I said it's been on my mind. I wish I would have grabbed a porno DVD prior to leaving. Then I could have just taken care of things quickly. Without some mindless stimulation I find it takes far longer. I keep finding myself thinking of Liz or R and it ruins the whole buildup.

A little while ago my father and I took the cars to the parking garage but it was packed with people having the same idea. Now our cars are butted up to the garage door. With seventy-five bucks left to pay on my car it is really going to suck major ass if it gets damaged. The nice thing is I'll have access to my smokes as they are inside the car.

After this is all over and the hurricane is up north we're going to experience the reverse exodus as nearly three million people return to Houston. I hope that the city and state are planning better for the return. They need to be thinking about alternate routes and the logistics of having people return. One thing that I'd like to see them do is to ask the returning folks to stagger their set off time based on where in Houston they are returning. People from the south and east sides of the city where the evacuation was mandatory should be able to return before those who live miles outside the city are able to hit the roads.

Even so, Houston was able to move more than half its population away from the center of the city pretty easily. The critical failures were in gas distribution and supply and preparing the contraflow capabilities of the major exit arteries. The gas distribution problem will be easy to fix for the return and they're already working on making sure that stations along the return routs will have more gas. The contraflow is something that is mainly affected by construction. I don't know how they can better plan for that.

Again, I think about the issues the city is facing and I can not help but to think that were Rita to have come before Katrina then the situation here in town would have been completely different. The number of people evacuating to Austin, San Antonio, Huntsville, College Station, Lufkin and other cities would have been half what it is now, at least. Again I think this panic is something that the media bears some responsibility for. More than anything else the TV media's credo 'if it bleeds, it leads' is showing how damaging it can be to the society we live in.

I'm going to watch 'The Perfect Storm' on DVD with my dad now. I'll try to post again later as the rain's arrive.

Stuck in the traffic with you...

2005-09-23T10:53:00.000-05:00

I didn't make it home in time to post yesterday. My good intentions were thwarted by Seagrams Seven and good company at Jules and Bubbha's place. I was there until a little after two in the morning and then I made the drive home to the company of a friend of mine stuck on the side of the road outside Columbus Texas. Talking to her was probably not the best idea as she kept telling me that things along the road were 'scary' and 'ugly.' No elaboration was given as she didn't want to think about what she'd seen.

The reason I was worried about it was due to the fact that R and Buddy were in a truck on the side of the road waiting for gas near Columbus too. They were on the road to Austin, so I don't understand how they ended up on I-10, but along the way their gas supply got low and they were forced to pull over and sleep through the night. Everyone escaping Houston had to sleep on the side of the road last night from what I've been hearing.

Me? I had a nice bed in my sister's old room to nurse my hangover in this morning.

Houston is empty like I have never seen it before. There's more traffic on the roads at 3AM on a Tuesday than there is at nine this morning. Last night at three the only place I saw open was the Dunkin Donuts, god bless them. Anywhere left open is doing brisk business. It doesn't matter what they are selling because everyone is going stir crazy sitting around at home waiting for Rita to come in.

Yesterday Jules and I went out to stock up on beer and soda. The liquor store had a good sized line with folks buying the last remaining packs of smokes and any liquor that would serve well without ice. Jules and I talked to a couple who had made it four miles in two hours and decided they were better off hunkering down. Another couple was throwing a hurricane party and were stocking up on the needed supplies. Jules and I had a 12 pack of Miller light (cheap and in stock) and a sixer of green apple Bacardi drinks.

After the liquor store we stopped by a gas station, out of gas of course, for sodas. I haven't seen a gas station with gas since Wednesday now. The long lines on Wednesday evening have turned into swamped parking lots as people grab what ever supplies the stores have left. It took Jules fifteen minutes to get three two-liters of soda. People were walking out with everything from smokes to toilet paper to motor oil to snacks and beer. It was a mad house, forty cars in the parking lot that usually never has more than about twelve.

What strikes me about the entire situation down here is the over inflated sense of panic that people have. Since Tuesday Rita has been moving to the east yet people were still fleeing last night after Houston, especially the part I am in, had been degraded to tropical storm like winds instead of the full force of the cat 5 monster that was in the Gulf.

I completely blame the news media for the panic. The city of Houston made a clear statement of who needed to evacuate and where they needed to go but then the media starts interviewing people leaving Katy for a safer place, and folks Katy is west of Houston and miles from the coast, and everyone starts to panic. The media sought out stories of people panicked to share and that in turn made more people panic.

When the media featured people who were staying they always interviewed crazy-eyed yee-haws with bad teeth and sunburned skin. They never show you the story of a middle-class retired couple and their thirty-four year old son who are prepared for the storm and have everything planned out. They never feature a young married couple like Jules and Bubbha who are preparing with a fridge full of water to wait out the winds. Instead they show people prone to panic or the most untrustworthy yokels who are staying.

The big story about this storm is how yet again the governments failed to prepare for what the citizens did. While the mayor of Houston has been doing a fantastic job he's up against a media intent on selling advertising and fear. I would have loved Bill White to have had the balls to tell the media to start showing both sides of the story and not just focus on desperation and fear. The planning for the exodus would have been fine to handle the folks under a mandatory evacuation but they never considered that with the post-Katrina fervor the media stoked so many millions would leave.

Today George W. Bush is coming down to Texas for a photo opportunity. He'll be glad handing and you'll see him on the news talking about how this time around the Federal government was ready. Bullshit. The local governments are the star of this show. They took charge and made the State agencies pick up the slack. Bush is only coming here to bolster his ratings. If the man really cared and wanted to help then he could open his ranch in Crawford to people evacuating the storm. Instead he's flying in to take the time and attention of the law enforcement away from protecting the people of Texas.

Bush should go back to Washington and figure out how to get America out of Iraq. He needs to go think hard about how hot the Gulf of Mexico is and how that is related to global warming. He needs to think about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people could not get gas yesterday and slept on the side of I-10, I-45, I-59 and SH 290. Maybe our nation's dependence on oil is actually putting us in more risk than it is worth George? Will you think about that?

I'm going to go out driving for a bit and see what's out there. There is hardly a wind outside my house but it is coming. The clouds a more evident now too, going from yesterday's almost cloudless sky to a thin screen of clouds as far as I can see. Tonight is going to be interesting. I'll keep you posted.

A change in latitude, a change in attitude...

2005-09-22T15:35:00.000-05:00

Since I last wrote I've moved east to Jules and Bubbha's house. I'm now sitting at Jules computer as they hustle around the house getting things ready. Sheesh, I tell you these people who are going to have homes after the hurricane make for such inconsiderate hosts. Ha ha. Actually, they're handling things very well and I think that their neighborhood will fair the weather well. Jules and Bubbha have some friends from a more flood prone side of town coming over soon and we're going to play games and watch movies tonight.

The drive over here wasn't too bad considering I went about twenty-five miles. The hardest part of the trip was making a left turn across all the people wanting to get onto I-45 heading north. That freeway is still a long ass parking lot as far as my eyes could see. The city has yet to be able to open up the contraflow as they announced they would this morning in my parent's neck of the woods. They seem to be working on it as best they can but still, it's slow going for all the evacuees.

The impact of Katrina seems to have focused mainly on evacuation. After the Katrina debacle the local news stations all did fluff pieces on what Houston's evacuation would look like. They were way off. All of them seemed to think that road work would be done before an evacuation would be needed and as usual the best case scenario never plays out. The media is telling people to get onto the highways and in my opinion that is a mistake. The two-lane country and farm-to-market roads seem to be the best alternate to sitting in the long ass freeway traffic.

My drive here, which in the best cases takes about twenty minutes took me thirty-five today. Ten minutes of that was sitting at the intersection mentioned above. The only reason I got through that was the man in front of me getting out of his car and opening a one car gap in the fleeing backup to get on to 45. After that I sailed here without a hindrance at all. I expect the drive back to be far better as I'll be leaving after it's dark. Then the roads should be clearer.

Jules is freaked out. Bubbha is lying prone on the floor. The worst thing about the weather prior to a hurricane is that it is freaking hot. Outside it feels like it is over a hundred and Bubbha's been cleaning brush from his backyard. Another friend of mine is stuck on I-10 heading out of town. She's been making fifteen miles an hour, all in spurts.

My mother and I were talking today about the last hurricane that we sat through. Way back in the early eighties my family hunkered down for Alicia. The storm rolled into town in the early morning and for six or so hours we sat around without power and waited it out. Initially it was amazing to see the force of the winds as they bent trees and whipped things through the air. Eventually the fascination turned to boredom. It was like watching a special effects blockbuster that was all effects and no plot.

It is my opinion that the local media here in Houston is not doing a very good job in helping the situation. They are doing their level best to instill fear in the hearts of their viewers, and making sure that they cut to commercials. A prime example of this was my drive from my house to my parents last night. It took me all of seventy-five minutes to make a trip that usually takes fifty. Before I left my house I consulted the traffic maps and then plotted a course that would bypass the major freeways back ups.

When I arrived at my house the media had a family that was taking essentially the same point A to B trip and they were saying how it had taken them five hours and they were not even close. Why didn't the media tell people to take the loop or the beltway around the city? Why don't they point out alternate routes that could save people time? Then I also find myself asking if they are purposely looking for the worst cases to share with the viewers?

The media as usual is looking more to sell ads and keep people tuned in for the latest tale of desperation. I'm getting my news from NOAA almost exclusively and I honestly think that is why as this storm approaches I am finding myself calmer and more collected and ready for the show of nature's force. When NOAA tells me to build an ark, I'll freak out.

I will have to say that I am very happy with Mayor of Houston Bill White. He's been updating people through the day as to the situation and letting people know what the city is doing to help. Some have said that the exodus from Rita is a fiasco the size of the New Orleans crisis but I do not agree. The Mayor and the city of Houston are doing everything they can to help. The construction on the Highways is the biggest issue in terms of opening them up for contra-flow traffic. The fact is that many people are leaving because of Katrina that would have otherwise stayed.

I'm planning on doing some audio-blogging for a podcast when the storm hits. I'll post them up after everything is over. If I could just talk my parents into filming me on the back porch in a rain jacket during the storm...

I'll post again later tonight when I get home. At that point I'll have some photos from the drive to Jules and Bubbha's house and back. Mostly it's just pictures of traffic, but you'll get an idea of just how many people are leaving the city. This is a mass exodus that hasn't been seen since Kobe Bryant's sponsors got word of his rape charges.

Don't call it a snow day...

2005-09-22T12:07:00.000-05:00

Boy howdy is it strange here in Houston. I went out driving around the area I grew up in and things are just weird. A lot of the stores are closed up completely, some boarded up but no where near the number down near the bay. In my town just about every store was boarded when I left.

The grocery store near my house seems to be the best prepared for these types of events. They've got huge shutters that spend most of their lives hanging by hinges above the covered walkway in front of the store. When a hurricane or other bad storm comes along they drop these shutters to completely seal the large glass windows in front of the store. I imagine they've paid for themselves many times over through protecting the store.

On the north side of town it seems that most people are planning on staying for the long haul. One of the neighbors has been taking planks from his fence to cover his windows. My parent's are more concerned with getting me to police the yard for dog turds than boarding up the house. Still, they're busy getting things ready. They checked on the lady down the street who is handicapped and she may be moving here if her son doesn't arrive before the storm.

The most exciting thing that happens on a semi-regular basis now is my cell phone ringing. Since Tuesday night the cell phone networks in Houston have been overtaxed. People are calling left and right and back left again. I can't say I blame them. I've been in contact with friends in the city like Jules and Bubbha and Paris.

I've been getting calls from friends all over and I'm happy to hear that they are thinking of me. One good friend has offered me a place to stay, potentially permanently, and a job if I decide to vacate Houston permanently. At this point I don't think I will but I have to be honest, things are up in the air.

I spoke to R after my last post and things are better between the two of us. I told her to take Buddy with her to Austin and to look after him for me. I told her that I never had a problem with taking him to Austin; it was the deception that she employed to make that decision. She should have consulted me at every juncture about decisions made for Buddy. I told her that lying to me about her plans when they concern my son are not acceptable. When she comes back after this is all over I will have to have a long talk to her about how we handled this situation.

With each passing forecast things are looking better for where I am at, however my home is still in serious jeopardy. Will I have a home on Sunday? I don't know. We'll address that when it happens. I am not as worried about it now. Right now I'm focusing on the important things. The house now has enough beer for a fortnight at the rate my parents and I drink. That's just under two cases before you think we're drunks. I also brought the last three bottles of Two-buck Chuck to my parents and we're planning on tapping one of them shortly.

I hate to sound materialistic but thank goodness for my iPod. I've plugged it in to my mother's computer speakers in my old room and the familiar music is helping me to sooth my stress. Music has always been a touchpoint for me and it's helping now. When I went through the worst of my divorce there are certain songs that served as koans for me. However, some favorite cuts I've been skipping on the iPod nano for obvious reason. Here's a list of songs on my iPod that I'm not interested in listening to right now:

Hurricane - Echo & the Bunnymen
Stormy Weather - Echo & the Bunnymen
Nothing ever lasts forever - Echo & the Bunnymen
Ocean Rain - Echo & the Bunnymen
A Time for Fear - The Art of Noise
Burried at Sea - MC 900ft Jesus
Darkness on the Face of the Earth - Willie Nelson (hell, half of his Countryman CD is depressing right now)
No Quarter - Led Zepplin
Accident Waiting to Happen - Billy Bragg
Bringing Down the House - Tom Jones version from Reloaded
When the Levee breaks - Led Zepplin

I've taken them out for the time being.

Oh, and welcome to Metafilter readers who are visiting here for the first time. I'll try to keep this blog as up to date with what is happening in Houston as possible. I can say this if you're trying to get in touch with people in Houston; cell phones are next to useless right now. Text messages are the way to go communications wise. They're lightning quick and have been the primary way for my friends to get in touch with me.

I read the news today, oh boy...

2005-09-22T08:38:00.000-05:00

Gentle reader, it can not look any bleaker. Rita is taking aim at my house. The news here in Houston is saying that I should prepare for a massive storm surge. They're saying that twenty feet of water could be pushing into my little community. Twenty feet of water in my neighborhood is about twelve feet of water in my home.

My home is one story tall.

The city is opening up contraflow lanes on three major exit points from Houston now. I-45 is contra-flowed now, 290 will be in a few hours and they're trying to figure out how to get I-10 ready by the late afternoon. It is Thursday I have to keep reminding myself. The storm is not due until Saturday morning.

Tom Petty was fucking dead-on when he said the waiting is the hardest part. It gives you time to second guess all your decisions. Should I go back for this and that? Should I have planned to leave town? Can I still make it out of town? My car is $75 away from being paid for, it better not be damaged. Should I go to Bubbha and Jules' house to ride out the storm with them? What would my parents think of that?

I need to feel more secure that staying at my parent's house is the best thing to do. I'm not sold on that, but neither does the prospect of an eight to sixteen hour drive to Austin sound like fun. My father and I are making plans for final preparations. We're going to move the cars into the hospital parking garage near their house - a large cement structure that should be the safest place for them. We'll do that tomorrow, today we are going to be getting potential projectiles out of the yard. Things like bird baths, watering cans, wind chimes and jeeps can all be picked up and thrown through houses in the wind we're expecting.

There is so much that I wasn't able to take from my home that I wished I did. I left loads of books, a lifetime's worth and other things that I've collected over the past thirty-four years. I left furnishings, clothing, electronics, computers (I have my main three), food, toothpaste, just everything. What I have with me now seems silly. I know that when I have to rebuild my life they will come in handy, but now I wonder why I have them.

I left my wedding band. I left my teddy bear, the one I've had forever. Buddy is going to lose all his toys. The legos that my brother and I collected over the years, a foot locker full of legos that had been passed on to Buddy. That's gone too. I don't expect to have a home in 48 hours. That's how bleak things are. I will be homeless and at the mercy of a federal government that is far more interested in protecting the interests of big oil.

My anger at R has passed. If she's getting out of town with Buddy then she needs to get the fuck out of here. It took my brother seven hours to make the two and a half hour drive to San Antonio. R is going to Austin and I wish her the best traffic. I am annoyed that she was so underhanded in dealing with this storm but you know what? My son will be safer there than he will be here.

My parents don't yet seem to be too concerned. They can't leave anyway. Across the street is a neighbor who is in her seventies with no one to go to. Down the street is the mother of my brother's life-long best friend. She's handicapped and her husband is in California. My parents will not abandon their friends nor their neighborhood.

Today is a day for more preparations and waiting; hours of waiting. Tomorrow is a day for final preparations and again, waiting. By the afternoon we should be feeling the effects of the storm. We're all going to take showers and get into comfortable and durable clothes. If the house sustains damage we're going into the closet under the stairs. My parents, the dogs and I will ride out the worst there.

On Sunday it will all be over. Rita will be far to the north and we'll emerge from our homes to access damage. I'll tune into the news if I can to see what has happened to my home. I don't expect to have Internet access, but I'll keep notes and when I can get back online I'll post about living through Rita.

I wish I knew more what to say but I don't. I'll post here a few times today and tomorrow. Keep my son in your prayers. When all this is over, please make sure that helping Houston is a high priority for the government. Houston is a city four times the size of New Orleans. We're going to need help to recover from this. Rita is the third strongest hurricane in recorded history. The current minimum pressure readings, in inches are 26.48 (897 MB), that puts it at number three on this list, barely. Number two is only nine millibars stronger. Number one escapes Rita by fifteen millibars.

There is good news though. Good news for me I suppose. The storm forecast took a huge turn to the north yesterday thanks to a big high pressure system over the Carolinas. If that system can overcome a weak high over Northern Mexico today and tonight then Rita will continue to move to the east. As things stand right now we've moved from the 'dirty side' to the 'clean side' however with a storm this big both sides are going to be devastating.

I'm going to go out today and take some photos to upload of the traffic on the freeway and the like. I snapped a pic of the traffic last night that I'll upload later. I'll post later too. Your comments are always welcome and today more than ever I could use encouragement and your kind words.