The Blog of moonshadoe

(11:53AM) This thing of getting in here later in the morning is putting a hurt on my tossing of verbage, not that there's really all that much to toss, but it's hard to scratch the itch when the time won't allow for it. The dog is still at the house and I'm wondering if my wife will ever warm up to the idea of having her around. I can't see her letting the dog starve, and I can't see just taking the dog to a shelter where she's probably going to get euthanized if someone doesn't adopt her within two or three weeks. That would actually be a worse scene than when we had to put our two golden retrievers down earlier this year. I know that's where a lot of this resistance is coming from, the idea that we would have to do it all over again, and she doesn't want to go through that again. I don't want to go through that again either, but I also don't want to put the dog in a position to suffer just because of what happened in the past. What happened was unfortunate and painful, but there was something to be learned from it, so if we give this dog a permanent place to stay we can approach things from a different perspective and a new attitude.

Today was day two without the truck, and I'm still mulling over in my mind what is to become of the beast that is now parked in my driveway. In time we'll figure something out even if it means selling it out for parts. I'm sure there's a junkyard somewhere just waiting for something like this to come along. My wife called the insurance company yesterday to start the insurance on my son's car that he left parked in our driveway three years ago. I guess I will resort to driving it now, and it is not without its issues, but it sure beats walking. We will have to go through the same exercise that I just went through with the truck, spending another sixty bucks to get it inspected and licensed, and that's something the little woman probably cringes about, but again, it was not my intention to play chicken with a deer yesterday morning while the sun was still snoozing on the other side of the horizon. Got's to get back to work now before I get pinged for abusing the internet, and I'm gone now.

(2:05PM) My wife is at her mom and dad's place today making candy, and I'm glad it's not me. They have a thing they do this time of year almost like clock work where all of the womenfolk in the family will gather together to make candy for Thanksgiving. Most of the time it's something along the line of fudge, but I'm not much of a fudge man. My wife had bought some of the usual condiments, chocolate chips, marshmellow, and pecan halves. She told me she was going to hold onto the pecan halves because she likes to make turtles, but she told me if she takes them down to her mom's place a certain niece will grab up on a bunch of them to take back to her place, and like my wife, I don't have a lot of use for that. I have nieces who pretty much make themselves at home once they come through your door. No place is off limits to them. They'll raid the fridge or they'll rummage through the cabinets looking for something to shove in their pieholes, and to me that is just way uncool. Even with all the times I've been to my in-laws, and that's more times than I care for, I never take liberties with their fridge or anything else. There are certain boundaries I don't cross even if someone is hinging on giving me the green light. The only exceptions I will make is if it comes to getting a cup of coffee or something like that, then I might go into a cabinet to get a coffee cup, but that's about it. Making myself at home outside of my home is something I just don't make a practice of doing.

Considering where my wife is I have the feeling that she won't be back until late, and since tomorrow is not a work day for her, it may be well into the nightime hours before she gets home. I'm used to it though because when it comes to my wife she never knows when to say when in leaving her mom and dad's place. Many are the times when I would find myself making that long two hour drive back home and almost falling asleep at the wheel in the process. I hate it when I'm trying to keep my eyes open by any means I can think of. Sometimes I'll roll down a window and let the chill of the night take a stab at it, then there are other times when I will slap myself in the chops a few times. As a last resort I'll turn on the radio and turn it to a country station because I can't stand country music, and there sounds the bell so I have to get back to doing my thing, and the weekend draws ever nearer, and I'm gone now.

(6:27AM) My words will be few this time around because the time just won't allow. I had a close encounter with a suicidal deer this morning on my way into work. I guess you could call it a hit and run as I hit the deer and it ran, and it would have been real nice if it had given me some kind of advance warning before running in front of me. I was about five miles from home when the incident occurred, and for a moment I thought I might try to drive on into work, but wisdom prevailed and I stopped in the next small town to assess the damage. Upon taking my first look I knew I was hosed, and the best I could hope for was to try and make it back home, and as luck would have it I did, but I was wondering the whole time. Got's to do the work thing now, but I shall return, and I'm gone now.

(8:55AM) The moral of the story here is make sure to have your deer spayed or neutered. The one I hit this morning has definitely been neutered, and when I get home I may be as well. I take that back. I had a vasectomy way back in another day. Does that count? I called the little woman a little while ago to inform her of the joyous news, and as I expected she was underjoyed. There were pauses of silence as we both thought about the course of action yet to be taken. The insurance isn't going to do anything because I didn't have full coverage on the vehicle, and with it having all kinds of miles on it it probably wouldn't be worth fixing, so now I have an oversized pile of scrap metal in my driveway just like a lot of my redneck neighbors. Oh, did I happen to mention that I live in Missouri where vehicles in various forms of decay in one's front yard is an en vogue kind of thing? But I had to call the little woman in order to reduce the shock level, plus she can't throw anything at me over the phone. Surprisingly, the grief level wasn't quite what I had expected. She's been in the same place before as I, and in such cases I have always been the understanding considerate kind of guy. I was in need of that now, and the bell just rang so I guess I need to make an exit and I'm gone.

(11:49AM) It was a morning not unlike any other. I got myself together for another unfun day at work, grabbing my lunch and heading for door. I had just gotten the truck inspected a couple of days ago and renewed my truck license yesterday. The stress of staying ahead of Big Brother was over, and all looked like smooth sailing for the rest of the week, and it's interesting how things can change in the blink of an eye, or less. Just when you think you've got everything under control you realize that you didn't have all of the bases covered because fate had a different plan. Because of where I live there is always the possibility of an encounter with deer or some other woodland creature, but while I was cruising on down the road at 4:15 in the morning the thought of my engaging a deer in a game of chicken was the furthest thing from my mind. I'm not sure where my mind was at the time, but at some point I just remember it as being one of those scenes where it's first you don't see it, and now you do. It wasn't like the buck I struck gave me any advance warning. it would have been nice if I would have had a cushion of twenty or thirty feet, but this time around it was probably more like five, and all I had was time to watch one moving object strike another. For a moment I saw the deer, then I felt the sickening thud and heard the clatter of parts that were not where they were supposed to be. As I probably stated earlier, it was then that I knew I was hosed.

When I got to a point where I could pull off the road, I got out to assess the damage, and it was then that I determined that my driving the rest of the way to work was out of the question. My only hope was to turn the Chevy around and go back in the direction I had just come from. My power steering was the first thing I noticed as having taken a dumb, but I also noticed that my battery light had come on and my headlights were getting dimmer. Life was not looking good at that point. Considering that my grill had been pushed in on the front I had thoughts of issues with my radiator, so I was watching that indicator to see if I was going to overheat or not, actually the truck because I was already overheated, but there was little I could do other than to keep my fingers, toes, and gonads crossed that I would be able to make it back home. As my good fortune would have it I was able to accomplish that much, but the pain won't stop there. The bell just rang again, and I have to do the usual thing of making an exit, and I'm gone now.

(2:08PM) I guess I am going to now have to face the fact that I will have to part ways with the Chevy that's built Ford tough. Let me rephrase that, was built Ford tough. I've tried not to think about it too much today, but it's hard not to replay the scene over and over again in my mind, and the reader probably knows how that is. You find yourself involved in a situation where there's a little bit of trauma involved in one form or another and you run the scene over and over in your mind wondering if there was something you could have done to change the outcome, and even if there was there's no going back to a previous moment in time to take the other fork in the road. You did what you did, and the story has been written with something that you can't erase. After this morning's event I was able to give a call to a guy who doesn't live very far from me and he was good enough to give me a ride in to work. This hasn't been the first time I've had to ask for his help, and it probably won't be the last, and contrary to the beliefs of some, friends do come in handy once in a while, and for those who don't have any I make the suggestion that a need to improve one's people skills is in order.

The bell is going to sound once more in a few seconds, so I may as well get proactive with making an exit, but as my luck would have it the bell sounded on me anyway, and it's back to working for the mediocre bucks, and I'm gone now.

(3:40PM) Since I had to catch a ride with a friend of mine who happens to work here I am at the mercy of his work schedule, and that means that I may be in this place surfing the net until five o'clock or beyond. At one point this afternoon I had an apostrophe with respect to the new pooch. My wife had been telling me on a daily basis that we were not going to keep the dog, and of course I was letting that go from one ear to the next without stopping long enough to register in my gray matter. If my truck is totaled beyond repair, and it currently looks to be that way, I will not be able to take the pooch in question to the humane society, i.e. the dog pound, therefore it looks like the dog may be staying whether she likes it or else, and that wouldn't hurt my feelings all that much, and I'm sure the dog wouldn't mind either, and we will see what transpires as time marches on, and now I'm going to march on until the next time around comes around.

(5:37AM) If there is a pet peeve that I have in the way of blogging it has to be this thing of coming up with a title in order to make an entry. If my bad memory serves me correctly, Blogger does make it a requirement, and Yahoo just automatically puts a generic statement in the title space. In this particular case it would probably be something like "Entry for 11 November, 2008". Contrary to what anybody thinks about my style, I couldn't follow a topical theme if my life depended on it, or so I am inclined to believe. My thoughts are too much in a state of random motion to stay on the path, but because blogging is what it is, just a bunch of whatever floats your boat, I don't really get too hung up about it. I suppose if a person reads between the lines long enough the general thought processes of what was behind the words will eventually manifest.

It's going to be another unfun day in this place, but today I am going to deviate from the usual regimen. I'm going to take the afternoon off to get the Chevy that's built Ford tough relicensed. I had stopped by a local garage last night to get the beast inspected. Actually, I was planning on finding out when a good time would be for me to stop by and have it done, but the guy who runs the place, who also happens to live within a couple hundred yards of my place, told me that if I had ten or fifteen minutes to spare he would go ahead and do the inspection right there. That was very kosher with me, so I pulled into one of the bays and let him do his thing which took all of about five minutes. Safety inspections are not really all that their cracked up to be unless they're actually done right. He checked my headlights and my turn signals, then he jacked the front of the truck up and checked the left front wheel, and that was it. He didn't check anything underneath, and he didn't check the back lights, but then again, maybe he did by looking at their reflection off of the garage door. It had to be one of the easiest ways to make twelve bucks that I can think of.

Having gotten that taken care of I will finish the process of getting my license renewed today so I can run the Chevy that much further into the ground. The beast has 262,000 miles on it, and by my reckoning, that means that I've driven to the moon and I'm now on my way back home.

With respect to the dog, she's still hanging around, and I'm probably more to blame for that than anyone else. When I got home yesterday she was nowhere in sight. My daughter, who has a real disdain for the dog, told me that my wife had gone ballistic on the dog earlier in the day. I guess when she was putting out some food for the cats the dog showed up and my wife went into a tirade shouting and kicking at her. She left, and who could blame her for that? While I had gone to get the truck inspected, my daughter told me that the dog showed back up again having come across the road from one of the neighbor's house. In some ways I was glad to hear this because that suggested to me that the dog actually did belong to one of the neighbors, but something hints to me that that still may not be the case. There is still the possibility that someone dumped her out thinking that one of the residents in the general area would take her in.

Before coming home from work I had stopped by Wally World to pick up three cans of dog food for her knowing that my wife certainly wasn't going to feed her anything. When I had first gotten home and not seen her around I figured that I had bought three cans of dog food for nothing. I also had to wonder what I was going to do with the dog food, because if I took it in the house the wife would see it and probably jump my case about buying food for the four footed freeloader. If I left it outside it would freeze at some point and the cans would pop open, and that would be uncool, and I guess that sounds like some sort of oxymoron, but it's all in the context. I was going to play it cool as the evening wore on where the dog was concerned because I knew that if I went outside and had anything to do with the dog, and my daughter was aware of it, my wife would soon be in the know, and again, I would probably be hearing about it. At one point upon going outside I did see her, so I went back inside the house to get the dog food, and it just so happened that my daughter was in her room with the door closed doing battle with some imaginary characters on her computer. It was an opportune moment for me.

I led the dog to the garage where I fed her what I had, and I didn't sense any complaints from her about it. What can I say? She seems to be a very good dog. She'd make a great pet for anyone, and she's actually a very beautiful animal. I question that my wife will change her tune about keeping the dog if no one shows up to claim her. I may give the neighbor a call to see if she belongs to him, but it seems like she's spent more time at my place than his. The fact that she still doesn't have a collar suggests that she may just be wandering from one house to another hoping that someone will show her a little compassion. Count me in as being the sucker for that, but I know what it's like to want to be loved and shown some affection. I deal with it all the time. Maybe that's one reason I like the dog as much as I do. She actually shows me more love and affection than my wife does, and maybe that's the problem. My wife might be jealouse.

On the homefront today will probably be a repeat of yesterday because the dog was there to meet me at the door as I walked out, and I'm sure she'll be there to meet somebody else when they walk out, but she won't get the same reception from them as she does from me. My daughter won't acknowledge her, and my wife will probably throw something at her, and there's something to be said for leading a dog's life, and sometimes I can relate more than I want to.

I think that does me for this time around. The gray matter is tapped out, and it's time to cruise around the realm of EP and see what I can see, but I'll be sure to drop back by and drop some more mind fodder when the itch comes upon me. After all, what else is there? And I'm gone now.

(8:53AM) The day, it goes, and a thought came to the surface of my gray matter. I did not take orgasmic chemistry in high school, so when people start talking about multiple orgasms I'm a little bit out of the loop, but it occurred to me that since I have three kids I qualify. Nobody said that they all had to be within five minutes of each other, so what's a couple years here and there among friends? As far as my wife goes, I don't know what to pass along there. I'm thinking the possibility might exist that she has, but she never really made it a point to tell me. It's just that when she got to the point where she couldn't take it any more I was forced to stop whatever it was I was doing, and thanks to my short memory I don't remember what that was. Considering where I am now, it's all ancient history, and becoming more ancient all the time, and I'm the fossil to prove it.

Break times don't last as long as I wish they did, but it's not necessarily about the quantity, but the quality, and I had a so-so time with this, so I guess it was worth it, and I have to make another exit now. Three more hours and I'm out of this place, but for now I'm gone.

(4:26PM) I've been home for a few hours after having renewed my truck license and the dog of which I have alluded to numerous times is nowhere to be seen. I wonder if my wife has gotten what she wished for in seeing the dog move on to happier places to take up residence. If the dog doesn't reappear I guess I shouldn't get too bent out of shape with it. The dog wasn't mine to begin with, so I had no claims on it. Still, it was a nice addition to an otherwise dismal state of being, and we all need something to come into our lives from time to time to give us a reason to smile and be appreciative of something. Life can be a real pain in the keester otherwise, and I can honestly make that statement from experience with more experience to come. I was even prepared to feed the pooch for another night, but now I guess I'll just have to ration it out to the cats, and I'm sure they'll appreciate the change in diet. The chihuahua won't indulge as he has got to be the most finicky dog I've ever seen, and I've seen a few. But now it is on to tomorrow, just another repeat of today. Only the faces and circumstances will have changed to give the impression that I haven't gotten locked in time, and having tossed that drivel I guess I'll make an exit on another ho-hum expression of a blog, and I'm gone now. 

(6:03AM) I was going to start this entry with something on the humorous side, but I just wasn't in the mood for it. Maybe I'll try again later after the day and I have both kicked in. Yesterday while doing the work thing I made a mental note to make up a couple of notices to post on bulletin boards with respect to my new found four footed friend. I had asked someone at work yesterday who lived in the general area as me if she knew of anyone who had a white German shepherd dog, but she didn't know of anyone. It would have been a good thing if the dog would have had a collar of some kind on, but she had nothing to suggest who her owner is. I guess there is also the possibility that someone just decided to dump her out in front of my house thinking that someone in the area would give her a good home, and I guess I had SUCKER written across my forehead that day. I had just adopted a cat not more than about two months ago that was meowing at the top of its lungs out in some tall weeds not far from the house, and when I called to it it didn't take very long to make its appearance. It also didn't take very long to indicate that it was half starved when I placed some food in front of it, some of the most generic cat foot imaginable, but when you're starving you don't really care about what you're shoving down your cakehole. Just ask anyone who's currently on the Somali slimfast weight reduction plan.

After leaving this place I made a run to Wally World to see if I could get a couple of cans of dog food for the guest pooch. My wife would probably want to wring my neck for buying dog food for a dog that she has no desire to keep around, but I figured what she didn't know wouldn't hurt me. Besides, I wasn't going to sit by and let the dog go hungry. Fortunately I had enough on me for a couple of cans of something that I probably wouldn't have minded trying myself if the circumstances were just right. At fifty cents a can I didn't think I did too bad.

On my way home I stopped at the usual spot where I fill up my gas tank and while there I posted a notice on their bulletin board. I also asked the gal who works at the counter if she knew of anyone who was missing an all white German shepherd, and she told me she didn't. Then she asked me if the dog might actually be a wolf. I don't think she is, but if I thought she was I would probably want to keep her regardless of what the wife thought. You don't see a white wolf as an everyday kind of thing. I questioned that she was a wolf simply because her demeanor was just too docile. The dog was just too tame for me to think that she was other than what I thought she was. I also stopped by the post office and left a notice there as well, then proceeded on to the ranchero.

As luck would have it, and I had a feeling it would be as it was, my daughter had not arrived home yet, and my wife was still at work as well. The dog was nowhere in sight. I walked in the garage, but she wasn't there. I walked around the house and I saw no traces of her. I looked all over the place, but didn't see her anywhere. It was then that I thought her owners might have come at some point during the day and picked her up, and I was beginning to have thoughts about going back to where I had just come from to take the notices down. I had the itch to walk to double doors that faced the deck, and while looking out over my not so vast estate, I opened the doors and began whistling, and I'm not a very good whistler. To my surprise it couldn't have been more than about ten or fifteen seconds and around the corner of the house came the dog. Needless to say, I was a little bit stunned, but I'll say it anyway. I had absolutely no clue where she could have been, but there she was now.

I went back in the house and opened up the cans of food for her on a paper place, then brought it out to the garage. She made very short work of it, and I was wondering if two cans was going to be enough. There was still some dry dogfood on the floor of the garage, but dogs are somewhat like people in that they'll eat something if they get hungry enough, but they'd prefer something a lot better if it's there to be had. I petted her for awhile, something my wife won't let me do, then walked back in the house to think about whether I was going to be able to keep the dog or not. My daughter didn't want the dog at all, and she restated that after she got home later in the evening. It didn't matter how loveable she was, the dog that I'm referring to, or good natured. My daughter is starting to show the tendencies of her mother, and one day she will probably make someone just as happy as her mother tends to make me now, and won't that be a treat for someone?

I see my time has reached it's end, and doesn't time fly when you're having fun? Gee, I wish I was, and now it's back to the usual grind, but first the wake up juice, and I'm gone now.

(8:51AM) I've been rolling right along with my endeavors of trying to get two transmitters out today. I've got to take at least one afternoon off this week to get my truck license renewed, and as I probably stated in yesterday's spewage, I'm always ecstatic when it comes to giving money away in form of taxation or another. I think it's time for another tea party. Last week we got our property tax statement, and my demeanor went south in a hurry. One of the main reasons I moved to Missouri was because of the lower taxes, but I think they're trying to catch up with Illinois, and when it comes to taxes, enough is never enough. I'm going to have to tap into my IRA in order to pay my taxes, and that does sucketh in a big way. I told the little woman, who is only slightly littler than me, that we were going to have to start a savings account of some sort for the sole purpose of being able to pay taxes and homeowner's insurance when the time came. She didn't give me a yay or nay on that, but it sounded like a logical stategy to go with.

Not to change the subject, but I'm changing the subject. Aside from the usual way of things, the day goes and if it weren't so cold outside it would be a good day to be somewhere else. I regret the fact that I didn't make more of an effort to get away for a few days over the summer where it was just me, myself, and I. A fishing rod in one hand and a beer in the other would have worked just fine for me, but for some reason or another I was never able to make the scene and now that the cold weather has arrived I'm not going to be able to until warm weather comes around again. Perhaps it was the summertime getaway that had me somewhere with a couple of the in-laws that frosted me from wanting to take any more time off. My brother-in-law had come up with the idea of a group of us going on a float trip for a couple of days. I would have had more fun with a paper cut and lemon juice that what I had with the float trip, but a married guy has to do what a married guy has to do, and if you're single I envy you, sort of, and I'm gone now.

(2:08PM) The day winds on to a place called nowhere, and I'm almost there, for when the bell tolls I'll be heading for the door. I've almost had enough fun for one day. Earlier I had the prestigious honor, the dubious privilege, and all the other assorted bs that accompanies such terms, to put on a mini dog and pony show of sorts for some customers from Puerto Rico, but it was one of those deals where they were covering all the exits, so I didn't really have much of a choice. There were probably about seven of them by my closest guestimate, and while one of the main men was giving them a brief runover on one of the transmitters I was testing one of the group came over to see what I was doing, and the fun snowballed from there. Before I knew it I had the whole crew checking out what I was doing and asking me questions about all the ins and outs of what it is I do with these particular transmitters. My hope was that I didn't have them totally confused by the time I was finished showing them all of the little quirks of the beast, and for a moment I found myself feeling somewhat on the order of a used car salesman, convincing them that it was a real jewel that they were looking at when I myself probably wouldn't use if for anything more than a high-tech door stop, but it would also do nicely as an oversized paper weight.

After the dog and pony was over and they had gone their merry way I felt for a time like I had actually done something that I could feel good about, then I blew it all off and decided I was just floating in a cloud of momentary delusion. When it all comes down to being what's real it wasnothing more than a thing, and I think I'm done now because there goes the bell. Just one more to go and I'm out of here.

(5:39AM) The lights are on and there are a few people here, but aside from a few fans running and the canned music overhead it's as still as I like it. I haven't had my morning wake up juice yet, but that usually happens when I'm through with draining the gray matter, not that there's really all that much to drain. I call it drivel, but you can call it what you want. The last time I checked it was still a free country, but don't use the n-word, and my wife hates it if I call her a nagger.

Yesterday didn't go anywhere, but I didn't expect it to. I find that Sundays are easier to deal with than Saturdays because I don't feel that I'm under someone's scrutiny. If my wife had been off yesterday she would have had me doing any number of things, and I'm not saying that they wouldn't have needed to be done, but things that I would liked to have done would have been out of the question. I probably wouldn't have been able to watch any football, and I definitely wouldn't have been able to come over here and drop any lines. I know that isn't really much of a big deal in and of itself, but I do find that there is a peace about this, and we could all use a peace now and then, and a piece now and then wouldn't be bad either, but I jest. I have to. It's what keeps me sane.

The wife is adamant that the dog is not going to stay, and I knew it would go that way. I can't imagine that someone isn't seriously wondering where their dog is right now. My guess is she can't be more than two years old. She's very playful and like a lot of dogs she likes to stay close. She was rolled up in front of our front door for most of yesterday afternoon. If she wasn't there she was laying on our back deck in front of the sliding glass door. If it were up to me she would be staying for as long as she wanted, or her rightful owners wanted, but my wife has already made it clear to me that if we can't find the rightful owners she's going to the local humane society, and don't you wish it were that easy to get certain people out of your life too? I'm sure my wife does, and even though I'm not looking in the mirror I see a face before me. Again, I jest in making that statement. If she was that tired of me she would have walked away five years when certain things came to the surface of my awareness. In retrospect she's probably wishing she had walked away then, and in retrospect I find that there are times when I wish I had been thinking more clearly at the time for I would have let her. Sure it would have been painful as hell at the time, not that it wasn't anyway, but five years down the road I wouldn't be where I am right now, and neither would she, but such is life.

I didn't want to spend my entire day yesterday sitting in front of the tube watching a bunch of millionaires run up and down a field beating the crap out of each other, so at some point during the afternoon I set about attempting to burn a stump where I had cut a tree down several months ago. I had tried burning the stump a week or so ago, and while I had made some progress, the stump was not ready to give up the ghost entirely. I had some wood in a treeline not far from the house that I couldn't split, and I had tried several times just to be sure. Grabbing my rickety wheel barrow I engaged in the exercise of loading two or three of the sizeable chunks of wood and wheeling them over to where the stump was situated. After about five or six of those trips I was ready to take some other wood that was of a more recent cutting and place them on top of the more seasoned wood. I was intent upon getting the ensuing fire as hot as possible to put a quick end to the stump in question.

I went to the garage and got a small container of kerosene to act as a starter and once getting back to the woodpile I had created I lit the match and the everything else did what it was supposed to, I hoped. When I went to bed last night the fire was still burning and the stump was still standing. The stump happens to stand about five or six feet high. It was a fairly good sized elm tree, and when I first began the task of cutting it down I was having second thoughts thinking that I might just bring it down on myself, and that wouldn't have been good, but my life insurance is paid up so it wouldn't have all been bad. At the time, when I realized that I might just put a hurt on myself, I shifted plans and decided to cut each of the main branches that forked out from the stump, thus having a stump that was roughly six feet tall when my folly was over. Because I had the feeling that that the stump might grow back out, plus the fact that it was something of an eyesore to my eye, burning it into oblivion seemed like that only logical thing to do. I know, as far as yesterday it wasn't really a needful thing to do, but it got me out of the house, and that was my objective so that when my wife got home I would have something to tell her other than that I had sat in front of the television all day drinking beer and watching football, good old manly stuff, but it doesn't do much to keep peace in a fragile house.

The little woman was going to be working until five o'clock, but she was going to stop off at a store and bring home some fixing's for tacos. I'm not really much of a taco guy myself as I find that a lot of the time when I bite into one end of the taco everything inside usually falls out of the opposite end. What we usually do is make something on the order of a taco salad, so while my daughter and I were waiting for the arrival of my wife, my daughter started the hamburger. It was a wonder that it didn't burn up because she would go from stirring the hamburger to going to her room to engage in mortal combat with some ghouls and trolls on her computer. I, on the other hand, decided that it might not be a bad idea to take a shower to get the smell of the smoke from the fire off of me. I tried to make it quick because I didn't want to go back in the kitchen and see another fire blazing. After removing the funk from my body I went back into the kitchen to find that things were still under control. The hamburger was still doing its thing, and my wife had yet to arrive. I turned the burner down on the low side to keep things warm without burning anything, and the wait continued.

When she did arrive she looked like five miles of bad road. I guess it hadn't been the best of days, but they never seem to be. I know how that can be as well. I don't have what I would call a lot of great days. Some are better than others, but nothing to get overly thrilled about. She had bought some tomatoes and a few other things, and after removing her coat went about cutting things up for what was to come, and after it did it wasn't too bad, but I'd have been just as happy with a good old baloney sandwich. It's quick and simple with little to no stress associated with it at all. After eating the little woman and I assumed our positions on the loveless love seat of another round of an evening that wouldn't go anywhere different from where the last evening went. Oh sure, I tried to push the bubble on several occasions with the expected results, and I don't know why I bothered. The chances are I wouldn't have been up for any occasion anyway, but it's the thought that would have counted and zero would have been the operative number.

I see my time has come around faster than I had envisioned, and time flies when the words fall out. I don't expect today to be anything to brag about, but I'll drop a few lines about it when I get a space in time or an itch, but for now wake up juice sounds good, so I'm gone until the next time around comes around.

(11:50AM) So far it's just another fine day at the orifice. My accomplishments are few in number, but Mondays are meant to be that way, or so I tell myself from time to time. I find that it's only right to start out slowly and work my up to quitting time on Friday. I've got three transmitters that I have to get ready to ship to China by Friday, and I hope when they get them they like them as much as I do. Personally, I think they suck, but the name of the industrial game these days is to make stuff as cheap as possible then charge out the nose for it. The only thing is with these particular transmitters the business is giving whoever the customer is a $78,000 discount, and that's like giving them three of these transmitters for nothing. I know. I checked the math. Gee, I wish somebody would give me seventy-eight grand. I'm sure I could find something useful to do with it.

I'm looking forward to next week with about as much fervor as a prostate exam, and I've never had one of those. I know, I'm fifty-one and it's that time in life when I should get my plumbing checked out, but as long as what goes in comes out pain free I'm not really too concerned. As far as next week goes it's Thanksgiving week, a time for families to get together and express their thankfulness for the good times and some of the bad ones. Personally, I look forward more to Friday, the day after, not because it's supposed to be the busiest shopping day of the year, but because Thanksgiving will be over with and I won't have to tolerate being in close quarters with my in-laws. There were times when I actually looked forward to such times as Thanksgiving, but it's interesting how time and people can change a person's perspective on things, and mine has definitely been changed. The bell just sounded on me, so I guess I'd better make an exit. I wouldn't want the IT boys to send me a nastygram, and I'm gone now.

(3:18PM) It's been another go nowhere kind of Monday, and I can honestly say that, not to say that I've been dishonest, since I haven't gone anywhere. I've spent most of my time parked right here trying to get two transmitters to a place where I can run them overnight in the hopes that I can send them to shipping tomorrow. Don't get the wrong impression that I've suddenly gone gung ho from a company point of view. I just want to give myself some space for later in the week so I can take care of a few extra-curricular things like getting my Chevy that's built Ford tough inspected. After doing that I'm going to have to get the license renewed on it, and I always like shelling out money for stuff like that, and the operative response is, NOT!!! There is a substantial loss in funds for such necessities as brain sedatives. Most people call it beer, but I find that much of the time is more than that if taken in the right quantities. In all fairness I'm contemplating putting the beer on the back burner for awhile. I look at my table muscle in the mirror and think back on a time when I was a skinny nerdacious individual who couldn't gain a pound if he wanted to. Now I find that I have little trouble in broadening my horizons, both of 'em. While I am not big into physical fitness because I have always seemingly approached it with the wrong motive in mind, that is to say having the hopes that the other side of my marital equation might like me more for it, I am instead thinking in terms of doing just for me, myself, and I. Besides, I understand that it also happens to have some therapeutic value. I suppose it can't hurt, and I'll find out after I start hitting the weights. As I seem to recall, there was some pain associated with doing the weightlifting thing the last time around.

Long paragraphs wear me out, so I'm going to make this last one short and semi-sweet. Having gone as far as I care to on the day, I'm going to now make like horse pooh and hit the dusty trail, and I wonder if the dog is still chilling back on the homefront. I guess I will soon find out, and I'm gone now.

(8:00AM) There won't be much tossed into this entry because my daughter will probably be up soon and I will consequently make a speedy exit. I have to watch my p's and q's on a weekend when it comes to doing the blog thing, or anything for that matter. My daughter is an extension of my wife's extrasensory perception. If my daughter knows about something my wife will also know about it without question. I took an afternoon last Friday just to burn some vacation time, and without saying a word about it to my wife she asked me why I took the afternoon off. I can't turn my head and cough without my wife's knowledge of it, but five years ago when my daughter was in the loop about something that was going on I didn't hear a word from her, my daughter that is, and such is life when life takes a turn in a different direction.

Yesterday was what yesterday's are a lot of times, especially when they're on weekends. It had a couple of ideas to make the day worth breathing in, but my wife wasn't really up for it, and I'm not talking about bedroom gymnastics either. I was just trying to think of something we could do to get away from the four walls of this place for awhile. The first thought I had was to go out for a nice dinner later on in the evening. That idea crashed and burned before it even got off the ground. I then suggested the idea of going bowling in the afternoon. We've done that a few times in times way past, but again, that did not come about even remotely. She opted instead for spending the afternoon making cookies, and opted for doing laundry, and what guy does stuff like that on a Saturday? I know, I could have gone outside and done something on the manly side, but I wasn't in the mood to freeze. It was already cold enough in the house even with the furnace running.

At some point during the day the strangest thing took place, or at least I consider it strange. I walked outside to get some firewood for the possibility of a late afternoon blaze, and lo to my surprise a white German Shepard dog runs up to me. I had never seen her before, but I could tell she was probably no more than a couple of years old. She had no collar, but she wasn't in the least bit bashful. My first reaction was to pet her, which is more than my wife will let me do, and that was probably a mistake. Even the slightest amount of affection to a dog can be like sticking your finger on super glue, because after you've made that initial contact they never want to leave. I knew better than to feed her, but when my wife saw her the first thing she asked me was, "Did you pet it?" She then asked me if I fed it, and saying no to one out of two isn't bad, or is it? My initial thoughts were that the dog was frightened by gunshots because yesterday was the first day of deer season, and if she was out in the woods she would probably become disoriented with fright and run to the first house she came to. It sounded like a good theory, but I was probably wrong. There is also the possibility that she could be a stray, since there was no collar, or that someone had just dumped her out, but I couldn't imagine abandoning such a beautiful dog, and she was. I had never seen a white German Shepard before, but she is totally white, and as gentle and loving as you could ask for in a dog.

My significant other was in the know as to what I was thinking. I'm a sucker for animals that happen to show up on my front steps, especially if they're dogs, but cats and possums are no different. The possums don't usually stay around, but the cats usually take up residence once they're given a handout. We still had some dogfood in the garage from our two previous dogs. Earlier in the years we had had to put them down due to health issues, and it was then that my wife said we would never have another dog. We probably still won't if she has her way about it, but as for yesterday the dog never really left. As the day wore on she decided to take up residence in front of our garage, and me being the guy that I am, felt sorry for her and went out and gave her the remaining dog food that we had. It had been in the bag for quite a while, but when something is hungry, food is food and beggars can't be choosers. I put the food on the floor of the garage and brought her inside out of the wind. She parked herself in front of it and commenced to start munching. At that point I went back in the house, and the first thing my wife said was, "Did you feed that dog?" I confessed my guilt and let the day go on from there, but what was I supposed to do? Yes, I could have been as cold hearted as somebody else I know, but since dogs are supposed to be a man's best friend I had a reputation to think about. I guess since diamonds are a girl's best friend that explains why my wife wasn't really too keen on the dog, but as far as the dog is concerned she does display more love than my wife when it comes to me. I would let her lick me, but I don't know where that tongue's been, and no, I'm not talking about my wife.

As the evening folded and the sun went down, the dog still stayed around. My wife told me that if the dog stayed around I would have to take it on a trip, something I conveniently passed in my mind from one ear to the other. I'm actually hoping that the rightful owner will start looking for their dog at which time I will be more than glad to hand her over. I'm a little hesitant to start ringing phones, but that is something I may do if my wife keeps putting the heat on me. But I will not be taking her, the dog, to the nearest animal shelter. I have too much compassion for her for that. She's a very loveable dog, and right now I could use all the love I can get, but nothing on that bestial order. Let's be realistic about this. Methinks now I will make my exit from here because I'm thinking my daughter will rise from her slumber soon, and I don't want her to hear me smacking on the keys. She'll think that I'm chatting with someone and I'll hear it from the wife when she gets home, and I'm gone now more than likely until tomorrow morning rolls around.

(5:41AM) When I dropped the title my mind starting sifting through the files upstairs to see what would be good blog fodder for a Friday. Yesterday the thought crossed my mind that I have never seen a baby picture of myself. I have no idea what I looked like as a rug rat, and maybe that's a good thing. I do have some pictures lying elsewhere under piles of forgotten stuff of me when I was probably in the first grade. Gee, I was an ugly kid, but that was a time when it didn't bother me to smile when taking a picture, and I wonder what the photographer might have said to make me do that. My wife gave me grief last week about my son's wedding pictures because I looked the same in all of them, but I told her I wasn't given a chance to change in between shots. Of course, she was referring to my smile, or the lack thereof. Perhaps I touched on this somewhere before, so I'll just touch on it again to refresh my own memory. At the time I just wanted to get the event over, so even though everyone else was willing to go along for the ride I just wanted to get to the place where I could jump off. What can I say? With me smiles are in short supply these days so I try to use them sparingly.

In looking back on my childhood I can say that we didn't have much. I was too young to know what poverty was way back then, but we were there. Thinking about that I guess you're only as poor as you think you are, because even though we didn't have hot running water, and even though we didn't have indoor plumbing for a bathroom, and even though there were times when the snow would come through the cracks in the windows, we didn't see ourselves as being any different than a lot of other people. I had, and still do have, two brothers and two sisters, one sister is twisted, the other not so much, but sometimes she makes me wonder. My two brothers are both younger than I. One has more problems that a run over dog in one way and the other has more problems than a run over dog in another, but life is not a respector of persons and when it comes to problems we each have our fair share. I guess you could say in looking back that we each have risen somewhat to a better standard of living since those days, but during those days my mom and dad didn't seem to mind, and I think will take you to a place like that. The rest of the world can go tumbling down all around you, but if you with the one you love and vice versa,  then you don't seem to notice it as much. I notice a lot of things these days, and that makes me wonder.

My own kids could never get a clue about how fortunate they were to have what they had growing up, but I think kids are just that way. My own dad used to tell me about how he had to live growing up and how lucky I was. I didn't see it that way. In many respects I think he was trying to hold on to the way he grew up so that my siblings and I could share in whatever it was he had to deal with in his younger years. He was the baby of his family, so while his brothers were out working in the field with their father my dad would be doing whatever he felt like doing, and most of the time that was either going fishing or running around with his buds. I didn't find out about this until later in my own life. Being the baby of the family he got preferential treatment. It was just the opposite in my family when it came to me. I was the oldest son, so preferential treatment didn't really come my way. It was thought that I would be the Mini Me of my dad, but I didn't fill that bill. I had no interest in doing the farming thing, and when it came to sports I didn't really take an interest in that either, and when it came to things that I was interested in my dad had no time for. His condescensions live with me to this day, but I'm a big boy I tell myself, and he's taking a dirt nap, and that's life.

Fast forwarding to my days in Panama I still remember when Uncle Sam was trying to get me to re-enlist and my mom was trying to get me to come home, and she would have succeeded if it hadn't been for a letter that she wrote me. In it she said, "dad can't wait for you to come home so you can help him get out the corn". I re-enlisted the next day. I also sold fifty-nine days of my leave time leaving me with only about two days left. There was a stretch of time where I didn't come home on leave from Panama for about two and a half years. It had nothing to do with my mom, but I had no desire whatsoever to cut ties with Uncle Sam just so I could go back to where it all began and rediscover all over again why I left in the first place. It's an interesting thing, but when you start thinking back on fifty-one years of your life you tend to leave out a lot of things. Let's just say that my dad and I got along like oil and water on a lot of different occasions. Let's also say that when it came to spending time in Panama versus spending time at home, I was much more inclined to want to stay in Panama. If I could do it all over again I think I would still be there if I could have made it happen. Granted there are a lot of things I would have never known, but sometimes you kick back in contemplation wondering if having never known them would really have been all that bad.

It was after I had re-enlisted that I got a letter one day written on an 11 x 17 sheet of yellow paper from my dad, the only letter that he ever wrote me while I was in the military. I don't remember all that he had to say. I don't recall any apologies on his part for having any adverse influences on me that led me to join the army in the first place, but I do remember him saying something of how much it hurt my mom that I re-enlisted. I have thought about that on numerous times over the years, and it does bother me some even now. It was not my intention to hurt my mom at the time, but I wasn't going to go back to what I had had before I went in. Had I done so I think I would probably be in a similar spot as a younger brother of mine. While I may be situated in what some would consider a go-nowhere, his is even closer to nowhere than mine is. He's single and absolutely no social life at all. That is probably in large part because of his mental illness, and that mental illness is probably in large part due to what he dealt with because he didn't get out from under my dad's thumb way back when. While I cannot say that my plight would have been the same, I can't say that I would be in a better place than I am right now. In thinking back, the letter from my dad would have been an appropriate thing in that since he couldn't be there to give me the riot act that he would surely have liked to give me, he would instead drop a few lines to last throughout a lifetime in an attempt to grant me a ticket to a one way guilt trip. Okay, so there is some guilt there, but algebraically speaking it all comes back to him, and that's just another one of life's funny ways.

I see it's almost that time again, and it isn't any different than the last time it was this time. I guess I'm glad that it's a Friday, and it's a payday, but beyond that I don't know what else can be said. I did drop by Wally World last night to grab up on that twelve pack to add to my six pack, abdominally speaking, and true to my suspicions the wife did tag me on buying it when she got home. Oh well, sometimes a guy has to do what a guy has to do, and then sometimes he has to do something else, and I did it, and I'm not sorry. Methinks now the time is ripe for some wake up juice, so I'm out of here until the next time around comes around, and I'm gone.

(11:46AM) As this day winds down to nowhere the weekend will follow in like fashion soon enough. I don't usually make plans for anything on the weekends because one of two things will invariably happen. She either won't want to do it or she's already set something else up that I don't really get the warm fuzzies to do, but I do it anyway just because, and aren't I a nice guy? That stuff they say about nice guys finishing last? Believe it. The thought passed through my mind this morning like a goose on laxatives that it might not be a bad idea to buy the little woman some flowers. After all, it is a Friday, a payday, and it's an out-of-the-blue kind of thing. I've heard that women like it when a guy does things like that for no reason at all, and considering my lot in life no reason is as good a reason as any. Sure, she'll think there's ulterior motive, and if I was taking one of the big three of ED, there might be, but such is not the case. I'm not actually at that place where ED is the regular part of me, but I think I'm starting to get there, not that it really matters all that much. After a year and a half of "don't even think about it" I tend not to anymore. She tells me that I need to exercise more often, and I'll agree that everyone needs to engage in at least one hour a day of cardio-sexual exercise, but the motivation just isn't there if there's nobody to coach you on.

The morning has been going by at a windbreaking pace. There were several times when some of the guys decided to have a pow-wow of sorts by where my test station is and that proved to be a distraction. The topic of conversation was what has become the usual, the state of the work place, the economy, wondering if we'll all have jobs six months from now, that sort of stuff. The time just sort of slipped away and before I knew it it was time for me to leave to feed my face. The wife had slipped in a can of lentil soup. I'm not sure why she buys it since nobody else in the family will eat it. I guess she thinks it's good for me because it's loaded with fiber, and at my age fiber is a valued friend. Yes, I know, I'm not really that old when compared to some trees I've seen, but I'm in a mind altering transition of sorts where I figure if I'm going to become a fossil at an earlier than desired age I might as well think in those terms. Pretty soon I'll start doing my Rip Van Winkle impersonations, and wouldn't that be a kick? How many ways to fall asleep on the job are there? And the bell just went off again. Somebody needs to shoot that thing, and I'm gone now.

(2:08PM) The time draws nearer when I can call this place quits for another week. I guess I'm looking forward to it, but do I really have a choice since that's the direction I'm going? I found myself bogged down in a technical problem this afternoon, and I love it when that happens. No, not really. It's probably something so simple even my dog could find it, but it's always the simple things that seem to end up being the hardest things to find. I'd like to get it resolved before I leave this place today, but it it doesn't happen I won't go spastic over it. It's not like it won't be here when I come in on Monday morning to do what I do all over again.

The boys on the weather channel were talking like it was going to rain today, and while the skies look like they could drop some juice, they haven't done it yet. It's just another one of those cool dreary kind of days, a day when it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab a blanket and cuddle up in front of a fireplace with a preferred vintage of choice. Maybe I'll do that tonight when I get home. I've still got a bottle of white zinfandel sitting in the bottom of the fridge. The wife won't drink it, so I may as well. Then after I polish that off I can go back to my old reliable cheap suds. I know that by the sound of things I probably come across as a borderline alcoholic, but that isn't the case at all, and they say that admission is the first step to recovery. Actually, I make it a practice to not get inebriated. My limit is usually two beers, three tops, and when it comes to wine that's usually two glasses, notice I didn't mention the size of the glasses nor the size of the beers, but it's the number that counts. Got's to go now. It's that bell again, and I'm gone.

(3:11PM) It's time for me to place some closure on the day. I'm going to head over to Wally World to scope things out, then I'll head in a homeward direction where it'll just be me and the pooch. Methinks I'll throw some wood in the fireplace, and that has some strange connotations if you think about it too much, and I did. Literally speaking, that's what I intend to do. Start a fire, get comfortable, and kick back for the evening to do some reading and reflecting. I reflect a lot on things these days, and I probably shouldn't. I should immerse myself in a hobby of some kind and forget about the other stuff that tends to weigh on me. In time the weights will be lifted and the past won't really matter all that much anymore. There is a starting point in life and there is a finish line for a lot of things in that life as well. Sometimes the line gets here a lot sooner than anticipated, but it gets here nonetheless, and I wonder sometimes if my wife has similar thoughts. If she did I question that she would express them as I tend to express mine. I knew how things began and I had suspicions of where they would go, but denial tends to block out where reality is going. I'm feeling the urge for a cold one now, and this place is starting to get to me, so I'm going to hit the bricks, call it a day, and make like a bunch of ducks and get the flock out of here, and the weekend draweth nigh, and I'm gone.

(5:31AM) It's me all over again, sort of like deja vu, but me instead. I had made my exit yesterday anticipating that the little woman would be home looking at her watch wondering where I was if I didn't show up when she thought I should. I don't know what the big deal would have been. It wasn't like she had plans to rape me although the thought could cross her mind if she were so inclined, and good luck on that one. It was two or three weeks ago that she gave me some static for staying after work a little bit later than I was supposed to, in her eyes, and when I had mentioned that I was having a conversation with a fellow worker she interjects that it was the only time I could get on the computer, and I wondered where that came from and why. Considering that I am seeing myself beginning to go off on a tangent I will bring myself back to the original path of thought and go with the other direction later.

When I got home I noticed that the only car in the driveway was my youngest son's, the one in the military stationed in Alaska, the one who just tied the noose, I mean knot, with someone he had only actually gone out with for six weeks face to face. I had a feeling that my daughter wouldn't be home because she has classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On those days she also stays and hangs around with her boyfriend, and that affords me some time to get on her computer and drop a few more lines or add a video or two to this place. Considering the grief my wife had given me before, as I had previously mentoned, I expected her to be home shortly after I got there. After all, it just wouldn't be kosher to think that she would function on a different set of standards than I was being held to, but who am I kidding? It's got to be a hormonal thing.

The time passed from daylight to dark and she still hadn't gotten home yet. It takes me about thirty-five to get home if I have a good reason to get there, about an hour if I don't. Considering that I didn't get out of work until about fifteen minutes after the bell sounded, it took a little longer. Two and a half hours after she was supposed to have gotten off work the phone rings, and it's hers truly. She had gone to one store to look for jeans saying that she wanted to get a pair of dress jeans because she didn't have any good ones. Okay, I can live with that. She then said that she went to the store to get a few things which turned into seventy-five bucks worth, and I could also understand that given the current economic climate. She then told me that at the time of her calling she was parked in the KMart parking lot waiting for my son to show up with our granddaughter. She has dance lessons on Wednesdays, and the wife wanted to see her while she was in town. To all of these justifications I had no problem, but I still thought of the grief she gave me a few weeks before. How cold it could have been of me to throw in a few daggers of suspicion on my own due to circumstances that still sit fresh in my memory, but I make it a point not to do unto her as she tends to do unto me. It just wouldn't be civilized.

I guess it was an hour or so later that she finally pulled into the driveway. I went out to unload the groceries from the car and was reminded of how little seventy-five dollars will buy even when the stuff is supposed to be cheaper than name brand stuff. After getting everything in the house I helped put it all away, and she asked me if I had eaten anything. I told her that I had in the way of some lunch meat I had pulled from the fridge and some cheese. I passed on the bread as I wasn't really into doing the sandwich thing. Don't get the wrong impression about my eating habits. Like a lot of people I do happen to believe in eating balanced meals. I just wasn't thinking of having a beer at the time. I guess she thought I would still be hungry so she prepared some grilled cheese sandwiches and some mystery meat and rice soup. I say mystery meat because you just never know what those little chunks really are that's floating around with the other stuff. One day I'm expecting to see something that has Goodyear written all over it. I understand that roadkill has Goodyear written all over it too, and I wonder if there could be a connection.

The topic of my oldest son came up before the evening waned into nothing. He had been given a job offer to one company on Monday, but he was going to wait to give them an answer until after having an interview with another company. The little woman told me last night that he had accepted the offer from the first company, which wasn't really a bad offer in my way of thinking at all considering that he's going to be starting out at what I currently make, and it took me five years to get here. According to what she had heard from my son, he didn't really feel to hip about the place because in his words it would be a go nowhere job. I know all about go nowhere jobs from past experience myself, but it has also been my experience that those jobs still pay the bills. My son hasn't given any job he's had to go someplace, so I don't know what his problem is. I think it has to do with his inability to recognize that in a lot of jobs there's this thing of paying one's dues, and considering that he hasn't actually held a job for more than about two years, he's never actually gotten out of that due paying part of the job, but he thinks he should be elevated right to where it is he wants to be. I'm thinking that one day wisdom will teach him that he's just going to have to wait in line like everybody else until his number gets called, and if that's not good enough then there's always another go nowhere job waiting for someone like him to occupy its space.

I shared my thoughts with the little woman along those lines, but I tried to temper it just a little. She thinks I am very negative when it comes to my kids, but I just tell it the way I see it, and since I do have corrective lenses I don't always see things for what they might really be, but I'm not blind quite yet. Surprisingly she seemed to be in agreement with what I was saying. Let's face it, for a kid who hasn't got one day of college to his name to be able to start at a company working in the IT department making eighteen bucks an hour to start, I'd say he isn't really doing all that bad. I can think of a lot of other things he could be doing making a whole lot less than that. He doesn't start the job until the first of December so he'll be doing the unemployment thing until that day rolls around, but now he can ease up a little bit with stressing out and just wait for things to unfold. I'd like to believe that he will have learned some valuable life lessons in the course of all that he's been dealing with for the past month or so, but something tells me that it will probably all soon be forgotten. Oh well, experience does offer refresher courses for those who forget the mistakes they made the first time around. I am a firm believer that experience is the best teacher, but it is also the most painful, and I've got the pain to prove it.

As far as the rest of my night went, well, let's just say it went where it usually does. At some point where my eyelids started to get heavy I decided I'd call it a night. I was sitting in a rocking chair that isn't too many rocks away from the local landfill, and the wife was sitting over on the loveless love seat. Without going over to drop a goodnight kiss I went the usual way to the bedroom to get my stuff ready for the morning then hit the sheets, and the rest is up to my imagination because after that it was just a dream. It has been my observation with time that a lot of things that used to be so commonplace have become so foreign to me. I would probably feel strange giving the wife a goodnight kiss mostly because I wouldn't know if she would really appreciate that or not, and of course there would be no tongue. The 'I love yous' haven't been around for a while although I used to say that to her all the time, but I got tired of not hearing the echo come back to me. One sided love just doesn't do it for me. I equate it to drawing water from a well without ever putting any water back in the well to replace the water drawn out. Eventually things run dry, and what more can I say about that? In time I'll think of something, but for now I think I'll grab my coffee mug and take my usual stroll back to where we brew up the grog. Got's to get motivated, and I think I'm gone now.

(8:55AM) I had touched on my love for the holidays yesterday, and I think I'll touch on them a little bit more just for giggles and grins, and maybe a few woeful laments. There was a time when I was young and dumb where holidays were something I actually looked forward to, times spent with family, and most of them that I remember were good times. As I got older, and dumber, I discovered such things as in-laws, and the times spent in their vicinity were not so great. The barometer of my demeanor would steadily go south, and all I could hope for was to see the end of the day come to pass. I discovered that for me Thanksgiving was always the day after, and I gave thanks that it was over. I know, I'm probably exaggerating on my assessment of those days. I can pretty much get along with anybody, but even when I was a kid if I found myself in a situation that was less than to my liking I would crawl inside myself until it was safe to come out. My in-laws tend to bring about that tendency as well even after all these years. I'm actually trying to work on it, and maybe it's one of those things where I should have sought some serious psychiatric help at one time, but I figured the home correspondence courses would work just as well for that, and here I am. The bell just rang, and I know what that means. Got's to go back to doing what I do for the mediocre bucks, and I'm gone now.

(11:53AM) The day is almost half spent, and time does tend to fly by when you're having fun, but in my case, when I'm not. It's the usual thing for me, doing what I do, but it beats digging ditches, or so I am inclined to believe. Not having dug ditches for a living before I am not sure that it wouldn't be a more enjoyable pasttime, and is there a union for ditch diggers? One needs to find out about that before grabbing a shovel. I recall my days in the military where some days were on the order of ditch digging days. When I first arrived in Panama I found out that the job I had trained for did not exist there, and I also found out that getting sent where you didn't fit in wasn't anything new when it came to working for Uncle Sam. In spite of that I didn't really have too many complaints. I was young with nothing to tie me down, so finding myself in Central America cleaning antenna kits and scrubbing commodes was not really that big of a deal. At least it was warm all year round, and being near the rain forest was more than kosher for me. There was also the side benefit of discovering what marijuana actually was. I had heard about the herbal substance of ill repute when I was in high school, but never actually saw it, or tasted it, until I reached Panama. Contrary to the popular belief of the day, it did not lead this guy to harder drugs. I had roommates that could do that for me, and the bell just sounded so I have to make another exit from this place, and just when I was starting to get on another roll, too, and I'm gone now.

(2:12PM) It's winding down on another Thursday that feels vaguely like a Monday. I guess the spelling was changed to protect the apathetic. They tell me that it's supposed to rain, and by the way the sky looks I think it could happen. I'm one of those strange characters who happens to like it when it rains. That's another reason why I liked Panama so much. Aside from the fact that it never got below seventy, there were nine months of rainy season and three months of dry season, and at the moment rainy season is starting to come to a conclusion. Speaking of conclusions, the bell just rang again, so I guess I'd better make another exit, and this exiting stuff is starting to get old, and I'm gone now.

(3:04PM) So, how much spewage can one person spew over the course of the day and have it mean anything at all? And I am left to wonder. The day has finally reached its conclusion, and I guess I've waited for this moment all day, then before I knew it the moment was gone, which pretty much describes a lot of life's moments. Whilst meandering in thought earlier it occurred to me that I hadn't had any Bud Light Lime in a couple of weeks, at least, therefore considering that tomorrow is a payday I should be allowed to indulge just a little. Granted, I do have some cheap suds waiting for me at home, but a change in one's diet on the booze level is sometimes a needful thing, and I think I'm there. If my bad memory serves me correctly, the last time I bought the above mentioned brew, the wife didn't give me too rough of a time with it, so perhaps I will tempt fate once more and see how it goes. I recall very early in my marriage if I drank more than two beers in the course of a week she was telling me that I would become an alcoholic. That has yet to happen although there are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be justifiable at this point in my life. A numbing of the mind so as to put it on hold while the rest of the world does its thing might not be such a bad idea, and I'm glad I wasn't the first one to think of it. Having cast those thoughts to the cyberwinds I will make another exit. Tonight would be a good night for a kickback night, and with a cold brew in one hand and a remote in the other, I think I can make it happen, and I'm gone now.

(8:51AM) The entry is supposed to signify eyes and a mustache. I suppose there might be a frown in there somewhere, but you can't see it for all the facial foliage. I've been contemplating growing my beard back, and after about three days worth of growth I almost did, but something made me shave it all off last night, so now I'm back to square one. If my bad memory serves me right, I grew it for a while last year, just long enough to give people an idea of what I would look like with a forest covering my face. I remember when I first tried growing a beard, back before gray became a part of my day to day existence. It was on the rough side, but it was an experimental kind of thing at the time. Eventually, after about six months, I shaved it off. My wife then told me that my mother-in-law was glad I shaved it off because she didn't like it. Shortly thereafter I grew it back, and there's something to be said about leaving some things unsaid.

My other half will tell me when I do such things that she doesn't like the way it makes me look, but given the circumstances that are I don't see what the big deal is. Let's face it, if the bedroom gymnastics have come to a complete standstill, and she could care less if she ever shows me any affection at all, does it really matter what I look like? If I decided to go with my best ZZ Top beard impersonation, would it really matter? That thought has gone through my mind a few times, and I was sober when it did. I could envision myself riding down the highway on a Harley with my beard parted in the middle flapping in the breeze to the left and right side of me, but then the vision stopped right there. That's not really me at all, not to mention that I'd probably wreck the Harley. And the bell just sounded on me again. Break times come and go so fast around this place, and I'm gone now.

(2:03PM) It's been that kind of a day, and it'll probably be that kind of a night. Earlier today my network connection went south on me and I found myself hosed, thus I was unable to get back to this place at noon to toss verbage. Granted, it wouldn't have been much to speak of, but that's what blogs are about most of the time anyway, stuff that isn't much to speak of, but somebody has to. I called the IT boys, the ones who probably monitor everything I do, and the guy I spoke with tried to walk me through what I needed to do to get myself back in the saddle again. He had to repeat things three or four times before I could understand what he was saying, and I'm sure it was English, but it wasn't the queen's. Eventually, I was able to translate what he was trying to tell me, and in time all was right with my world once more, and who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks, or an old guy for that matter?

The day started out to be more on the sunny side, but as I look out the windows now I see the gray I had grown accustomed to over the last three days. I haven't checked to see what the weather is supposed to do, but considering the time of year it is, I have this feeling that there will be sky juice happening in the near future. If you combine that with forty degree weather the ducks like it a bunch, but it doesn't do a whole lot for me.

In one of my experiences, which isn't really an experience if you stop and think about it, I had mentioned that I'm not too hip with the holidays. For one thing I don't know what's so holy about them since that's where the term is derived from anyway. On top of that the majority of my holidays are spent with the in-laws, and that is always hemorrhoidal in nature, as in being a real pain in the butt. I just discovered through spell check that hemorrhoidal isn't really listed as an appropriate adjective, but it works for me. It was two years ago at a Thanksgiving dinner that it turned more into a Thanksgiving bash. Two of my wife's nieces, because I won't claim them as mine, got into a knock down drag out in the kitchen with all eyes upon them, and if they had been teenagers it might have been more understandable I suppose, but these gals were in their late thirties. Everybody else was quite shaken up by the whole ordeal, but I was actually q