Posts (page 2)

Sometimes, you can't help but see the mysterious workings of the Devine in everyday life.

Take this past weekend, for example.  Since Kristen has taken a job at the local Starbuck's Coffee, we've had a lot less time together, as a family.  Everybody except her has been getting "crispy" as of late, starting to get burned out from putting too much on her plate.

This weekend, she was supposed to go to a coffee trade show with one of her coworkers.  The trade show was about 2 hours away, in the heart of Chicago.  With travel to and from, plus about 5 hours at the event, that's Saturday all used up.

On Sunday, we had a youth-group bowling party 30 minutes away from home, starting around noon. That's about 2 hours gone.  We then had a Girl Scouts meeting at 1:30, and that's about another 2 hours.  There was a short break in the schedule of events, in which we were going to have to clean up and get things laid out before 6:00 that evening.  In the evening, we had scheduled a party with a bunch of our friends to watch the Oscar awards ceremony.

As you can see, this was definitely not a "free and easy" weekend.  Or so it would seem at first glance.  The reality that we ended up with was SIGNIFICANTLY different, however.

On Friday, a rather nasty snow storm blew into the area.  Blizzard conditions, 1/4 mile visibility, heaps of snow, ice, etc...  Not fit driving weather in a car in excellent repair.  The vehicle that Kristen was supposed to be traveling to Chicago in has bald tires.  In a blizzard?  Down the expressway?  Not if *I* have anything to say about it.  Fortunately, both of the ladies that were going to go to the trade show displayed a great deal of logic and foresight, canceling the trip as of Friday afternoon.  As it turns out, the snow storm lasted most of the night, turning to freezing rain about 2:00 in the morning.  I sure do like smart women!

(Note: Here's yer sign #1)

So, suddenly, Saturday is actually much more open!  Stress relieved, we spent a good portion of the day getting the house in order for Sunday.  Went out to dinner and a movie on Friday night.  (Saw "Bridge to Terabithia" and all cried like little school-girls at the end.  Excellent transition from novel to the silver screen)

Got home on Friday night, I went to work (I work overnight computer support).  Work got done early, so I skipped out and went to bed early ("early" being about 4:30 in the morning.  I usually don't get to done for the night until 6:00 at the earliest).  A "short" time later, Kristen comes in and wakes me up (it's about 8:30 so I'm not too terribly cranky) and says,

"The cable's out."

Great!  Fabulous!  @#$%*^%^&(^&*%$@#$!@#$#.  Can't have a party that centers around a TV show if you can't watch the show!

I stumbled out of bed, and tried to check online to see if my bill was behind.  No internet!  (TV and internet provided by the same company)  Great.  Paw through the pile o'crap on my desk looking for the last cable bill, so I can call the customer service number.

Whoops!  Cable bill didn't get sent back this month, so it's a couple of weeks past due.  (grumble grumble).  Call the customer service number to pay the back amount, thinking that it's simply a case of "Dude, pay your bill" service interruption.  While going through the call tree, I heard that there is an outage in a town a ways off.  Probably doesn't impact me, so I go on to pay the past-due bill.  The cable company computer system says "If your service is disrupted, wait an hour for it to be restored" which I do.  Time passes...

(Here's yer sign #2)

Turn the TV on, no cable TV.  Check the cable modem: No signal.  Aurgh.  Dial customer service. 

"Hi, I paid my bill through the phone system a couple of hours ago, still no service.  Can you help me?"  tappa tappa tappa goes the service rep keyboard. "Is your address such and so?" she asks, which I confirm.  "Yep, there's a hardware problem that's impacting your area.  The technician just got there about 10 minutes ago and is working on it.  Probably going to be a few hours. Sorry."

(Here's yer sign #3)

Ok, thanks.  At least I know that it's not my bill, at this point.  Kristen and I go out to get coffee (Well, actually, a couple of lattes) and some food for the pet birds.  Pet shop doesn't open until 10:00, so we linger over coffee for a little while.  As we head out to the car,  one of the tires seems to be pretty low, so we head over to the gas station to fill it.  I get out of the car by the air hose, grab it and squat down by the tire.  Ssssssssssssssssss.....

Guess who's not going to be driving down to the bowling party today!  Hole in tire, lotsa snow, generally not the best of ideas.  As it turns out, we're not the only one who wants to cancel due to the crappy roads, so that's one thing off the plate.

(Here's yer dign #4)

Get home, start cleaning up the house.  Kitchen counters: done Sweeping floor: done.  Vacuum carpets... POP!  Everything goes dark.  Must have blown a circuit breaker, I think, not connecting the fact that the kitchen, office, front room, laundry room, EVERYTHING has gone dark.

Flip breaker for front room.  Nothing happens.  Huh, strange. Flip light switch to better see the labels on the breakers.  No light?  That's odd.  Flip breaker for that part of the house... Doesn't feel like it tripped, neither does the one for the front room.  Notice that everything else is dead, too.  FLIP FLIP.  FLIP FLIP.  FLIP FLIP... FLIP.. You get the idea.  I flip all of the breakers, including the service disconnect.

Nothing happens.  What gives????

Kristen looks out back, sees a bunch of electric company trucks in the parking lot behind us.  Uh oh.  That's not a good sign.  Put my shoes and a sweatshirt on.  Down the driveway (3 inches thick with snow and ice) out to the street and around to the neighbor's drive and up to his front door.  Step up to the door, it opens.  "7:15 tonight.  That's when the electric company says they'll have the power back on."  I repeat what he just said, in a question, to make sure I heard right. "7:15 tonight?  That's when they're saying it'll be back on?"  Turns out his house is half electric baseboard heat. "I've got young kids!  It's real cold right now!  That's just not fast enough" says he.

"Crap.  That's not what I was hoping to hear, but at least I know it's not just me.  Thanks!  Try to stay warm!"

Trudge back down his drive, into the street, up my own.  "He just got off the phone with the electric company.  They say 7:15 tonight.  Guess we should start calling people to let 'em know we have to cancel."

(Here's yer sign #5)

Two cell phones and one and line (only one in the house that doesn't depend on wall power) start dialing. 

Cancel Girl Scout meeting: Three phone calls later, done
Cancel Oscar party: Eight phone calls later (some not at home, so call various cell phones, to make sure that direct contact is made with every party that was expected), done

30 seconds after I hang up from the last call to make sure that everyone knows we had to cancel the party, the electricity comes back on!  Yay!  It's just about 11:45 in the morning, so we still might have a decent day of it!  Cable and internet are still out, though, so we head to out to our "other livingroom" the local big box book store to bide some time and see if there's anything we are interested in picking up.

Youngest Daughter (aka "Spawn") doesn't behave well, so we leave the store and head home.  I'm cranky by now, since I've only had about  three hours of sleep, and I want to go back to bed, anyway.  After all, it's the middle of my night!

Get home, check to see if the cable's back on.  No joy.  So, I call the customer service number again, tell them I was in the outage area, ask if I should have service back.  Tappa tappa tappa... Yup, that was restored about an hour ago.   "Well, my service is still out.  Can you check into that for me?"  Customer service rep enters a trouble call into their system and takes my number "in case we need to get in touch with you for anything relating to this."

Number given, tell Kristen, I'm off to bed.

I lie down.

I close my eyes.

I start to relax into sleep...

Phone rings.  I ignore it and roll over, since Kristen knows what's happening...

"Geordon?  I need you to get up with me.  The cable guy is coming to take a look at our wiring, and I want you to talk to him."  There are times that I reflect upon my days as a single man.

I get out of bed, put some adequate clothes on (sweat shirt and pants... It's cold!) and lie my tired head down on the couch, so that I can doze while waiting for the cable tech to come to the door.  The TV is on, but has gone to the cable-box "screen saver" which is a time-clock under a floating company logo.  (This will be significant shortly)

About an hour and a half later, I hear something go "thump thump" somewhere towards the back of the house.  I sit up and look out the front window, and see a cable truck in the parked in street.  Ah hah!  I go look out the windows by where the cable drop is attached to the house.  Bingo!  There's a guy on a ladder out there, and... He's stringing a new cable line?  OK, whatever.  He's the expert as far as that goes, right?

I go back out to the front room, tell Kristen that he's back there replacing the cable drop and sit back down on the couch.  I pick up the novel I'm reading, and read a couple of pages.

Suddenly, the TV changes to the first channel in the line-up!  Check the lights on the cable modem.  Connected and in sync!  "Internet's back up!" I tell Kristen.  She's playing with her new copy of Sims 2.  Notice that the Big Bad Cable Guy hasn't come tromping in the house yet. Grumble, grumble.

A moment or two later, here he comes, up to the front door.  We open it, and he asks if everything is back in a working status.  "Everything came back up about half a minute ago!"

As it turns out, the original cable-drop that was attached to the house was melted in several places, both up at the pole and along the way to the house.  "I see a couple of electric company trucks back in the direction that the cable came from, I think maybe their line might have touched ours," he says.  Then, we tell him about our sudden power outage.  As it turns out, he saw another drop from the pole that was melted, too.  How odd that it went to the neighbor's house!  Yeah, odd.  Right.

I guess there are only so many ways that one family need be told, before they get the hint that they need to take the weekend off.  I'm just glad we figured it out before something DRASTIC happened!

Oh, and congratulations to VP Al Gore and coterie on the Oscar awards for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth"

Just installed Vox mobile client onto my Palm handheld to play with.

It seems to work OK. Time and use will tell

The Dixie Chicks just won "song of the year" on the Grammy Awards.  I don't care what you think of them, personally, but you have to respect them for standing by their principles

First, something amusing from the blog of a Emergency Department nurse in Canaberra, Australia...

His post is titled Urethra Quest (that's a link to the post, too).  All that I have to say about it is that there are just some places that will always remain something of a mystery to man.

Niggling, silent, insidious voices in the back of my mind, please SHUT UP.

I have enough on my plate to worry about without your insinuations, your words of self-doubt.  The goals I have set for myself are tough enough as it is, transitioning out of computer support services into the medical field, with no standing college credit. 

The goal ("A goal is a dream with a deadline") is to complete AA work at the local community college while working full-time in my current job.  If things go the way I've planned, it should take about 4 years.  Add in the two years for a BS in "Health Science EMS Management" from George Washington University and I've already killed 6 years... Not to mention, but from my research, in order to be a viable candidate for medical school, I've got to carry at least a 3.75 GPA, which is going to be a "challenge" for me:  After all, I've got to support my family, first and foremost.  I don't need any "help" in remembering how much of a high bar that I've already set for myself.

Medical school isn't any walk in the park, either, from what I've learned, particularly in the first academic year.

But, dammit, I can do it.

What are you thankful for?

This year, i am thankful for a number of things.

• I am thankful (very, VERY thankful) for a loving and supportive wife.  Without her, I would be much less than I am
• I am thankful for our children, no matter how exasperating any of them can be.
  
• I am thankful for modern psychotropic medications. Depression is a horrible condition to live with, much worse without treatment.
• I'm thankful for my job, even though I don't like it.  It provides me the income needed to allow my wife to work outside the home or not, as she chooses.  It provides me the income to take classes in order to change careers.  It provides me the opportunity to be around my kids on a daily basis, as they grow up.  I know who they are and they know who I am.  These days, that's one HELL of a luxury
• I'm thankful for our family friends.  They don't expect any more of me than I can give.  Some days, I can't give anything, other's I can give lots.  They're truly good people.
  

This evening, we were on the other side of town to go to the Big Box Bookstore and get a bite for dinner.  After we had finished what we went planning on, we decided to stop in at the Caribou Coffee for a cuppa. 

Kristen had her usual drink: cafe au lait in thirds (1/3 coffee, 1/3 steamed milk. 1/3 foam) with their Discovery Blend, which is her favorite of their coffees.

Me, I had a cup of Obsidian, black.  I hadn't had it before, and I'm always up to try something new, at least once.  Of course, that got me into trouble one night, when I had a chef's selection ("omakase") sushi plate.  Found out the hard way that I do not like uni (sea urchin) at all.  That's beside the point here, however.  Back to the coffee.

I found the Obsidian to be some-what on the insipid side.  The mouth-feel of the brew was watery and thin, which is also how I would generally describe the body of the coffee.  The flavor profile gave a "round" sensation.  The flavor characteristics that I picked up were, again, not very bold, but included hints of cocoa, a bit of spice (more "sweet" spice like clove, nutmeg and cinnamon than "hot" or peppery spice), slightly smoky and just a touch earthy.

There was nothing that I found particularly memorable in the brew, which was a shame.  This blend was advertised as having fruit notes (which I found to be distinctly absent) and "a decadent bittersweet chocolate finish" which I was not able to suss out in the cup.  Even the aroma was very light, which surprised me from a dark roast.  Additionally, the flavor didn't linger in the mouth, but rather was "there and gone" as soon as swallowed.

All this being said, it wasn't a bad cup of coffee.  It was just unimpressive and not memorable.

Got my results back from CLEP on Saturday, about the English Comp test that I took a couple of weeks back.  Passed the test with a score of 65 (recommended passing score is 50), so I don't have to take English 101.

Now, I just need to try my hand at Sociology and Psychology, to see if I can pass those, too.  That would put me a good deal closer to my goal than I am at the moment.

Made a trip into my family doctor this week, to see if he could do anything to help me with my knee.  It's been unusually painful for about 3 months now, but been causing me problems for about 10 years or so.

So, I tell him what's going on, what has changed lately (i.e. nothing) to cause the exacerbation in pain, and give him anatomical reference points for where the pain is located (i.e. medial meniscus).  He has me lie back and manually flexes my leg into several positions and tries to waggle it side-to-side, which the knee does easily (not what it *should* do).

"Yup, it's the meniscus," says he.  "Do some leg-lifts to strengthen the quadracep" he recommends.  Can I get a referral to an Ortho specialist? (My insurance requires referrals to see specialists)  I've been living with it for a bunch of years and it just recently got worse.  I have fantasies about knee surgery, in the hope that it'll stop hurting and I can walk normally.

Nope.  Do some exercises.  Loose weight.  Best thing for it.

Gee, thanks for nothing.  I could have saved myself the co-pay and figured that out on my own.