Just for the Record

I haven't known what to write lately, so I haven't written. At least not here, where I tend to write what I really think...sometimes. My mind has been on other things. Writing what I think has not been among them.

As I sit here wondering what to write, I realize I'm not ready, still. My mind remains on other things. It is on other things entirely.

These last few weeks I've been ill-at-ease over issues that are hard to articulate in my own mind, much less write about. I'm trying to make, and stick with, decisions, but none of them seem right or, I should say, prudent. But I am beginning to get a sense that there's an inevitability to it that suggests decisions are not mine to make. So I worry and I fret and I wonder what to do or what to do differently.

I'm being obtuse. It's only because I don't know quite what I mean. That notwithstanding, and just for the record, I am here. I really am. Right here. Right now.

Smile when you can

Smile when you can because, one day, there will be nothing to smile about and all you'll have are memories of those smiles. They will be treasures, those memories. And those smiles, too.

Largess

Once, when I was a young man, I knew the path to fulfilment would parallel the road less traveled. But fulfillment wasn't what I was after. At least I did not think that was what I was seeking. Nevertheless, those who had traveled that road called to me to follow. They knew me better than I knew myself. Or maybe that's just my wish now, my hope that I might have been better than ever I was.

That road, though, was littered with the corpses of unfunded travel, unbuilt houses, ungaraged cars, and unspoken compliments at all of those unattained things.

So I took a different route.

I took the road that would lead to largess. But I never felt entirely comfortable on that road, so I stayed safely on the shoulder, where my unease would be shielded from the stares of those who sped along the highway and where my conscience would not be so thoroughly out of place. As I was busy hiding from the prying eyes of those who were disappointed at my failure to fully embrace the philosophies that powered the race, I failed to see the disappointment in the eyes of those I'd left to make the lonely trek along that other, less traveled road. It wasn't just disappointment in their eyes, I now realize. It was contempt.

Somewhere along the way, I ran into roadblocks. I tried to run through them or over them, but I hadn't developed sufficient speed. All I did was ruin the undercarriage of the vehicle and slow my progress toward the destination. But I kept trying. I got out and pushed, from time to time, and I made some progress. The closer I got to the destination, though, the harder it was to see. A haze thickened around it. The light was blocked and I could barely make out what once had been, if not brilliant, at least bright. I thought it was bright. Wasn't it bright, before?

As the long journey along the shoulder of that well-traveled road neared the end, I found that the largess I'd been seeking had been damaged in transit. The haze had been caused by the smoldering oil-soaked rags that had been used to tie its broken pieces together. Others around me still clung to the shiny pieces that had been thrown off before the smoldering began. And they seemed to worship them. But I didn't like the looks of largess anymore. Yet when I turned around, hoping to trudge back down that road to the one less traveled, I found that those who would have been my traveling companions had long since completed their journeys. They had attained what I did not even realize we were seeking. And they were no longer willing to share the spoils of the trip. Their contempt at my abandonment of the path was complete.

You forgive a friend, but I was no longer a friend.

And so here I am, a lifetime and a universe and an experience away from the destinations that were so attractive those many years ago. The destination, as it turned out, did not really matter, for it is illusory. But somehow the journey has gone missing and I'm afraid it may be lost.

Moods

Mood. Mood controls us. Or me, at least. That's a shame, sometimes. But most of the time it's just a fact. I think we'd all be surprised to look back at our lives in the context of the moods we were in as we experienced each moment. We'd be shocked. And, I'll venture to say, we'd be disappointed.

Gone

If I believed in magic and religion and goblins and fate, I'd believe the world is talking to me tonight. The wind is fierce, ripping and tearing limbs of huge trees as if they were scraps of paper. It's coming out of the south, adding the blast of a southern wind to the awfully heated air. I don't like this; I never have and never will.

It's as if the supreme booggity shepherd were saying, "You're going to pay, motherfucker, for what you'd done to this earth." And I can't help but believe the supreme booggity shepherd is right. We're going to pay.

Maybe not yet. Maybe not my generation, at least any more than we already have. And we have. We've paid by living in crowds while staying in family farms that, half a generation ago, would have been utterly private.

I could go on. I won't. I miss the real world of my childhood. It's gone. Oh, shit, it's gone.

Suppress

Unlike me, my father was not a man who wore his emotions on his sleeve. But he had emotions and he appreciated the poetic expression thereof. It's interesting to me that one of his favorite poems was this one by Rudyard Kipling, which in my estimation offers accolades to the suppression of emotion:


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

The Pointless World Around Me

It's Good Friday. As if that mattered to me. It's just another Friday to me. Another workday. Another day spent in pursuit of something I'm not sure of. Is this sense that it's all utterly and completely pointless unique to me?

Humankind desperately tries to find meaning, something to justify its existence. Not just its existence. Existence. Period. And so we grasp onto events. Simple incidents. And we aggrandize them. We make them bigger than they are. Over time, they grow into massive collections of fables and lies and stories that ostensibly give meaning to what is meaningless. In this context, meaningless is not intended to have a negative connotation; it is no more judgmental than saying the weather is warm.

That having been said, I sometimes wish I could believe in fairy stories and that I believed there were some reason for all this (motioning to the world around me).

A Plan

Lacking a coherent plan, I've begun to take action. That has its drawbacks.

Let me explain by example. Let's assume your objective is to secure a top-level job in biochemistry. But your educational background is in archeology. Nevertheless, you want that senior job as a biochemist. You've even identified the specific job you want and that job is in another town. You move to that town, buy a house, and show up for work at the job you want. But it's already filled by someone else. They question why you've shown up for work at a job that is not yours...especially since you haven't pursued the education needed to be a biochemist.

You failed to plan the intermediate steps required to achieve that dream job.

Now, let's assume your objective isn't the dream job but is, instead, early retirement. But you haven't saved enough money to fund it. And you don't know how you're going to cover necessities like health insurance, let alone living expenses, before Social Security and Medicare kick in. Nevertheless, you make the decision to retire early. You decide to shut down your business and move on to "the next phase" of your life. Whoops. You forgot to plan this out. How's this all going to work? Is it going to work?

Not having the answer, and lacking the ability to even ask the right questions, you blunder blithely ahead.

Plans are so "corporate." So mundane. So necessary.

Repetitive Reptition, Over and Over Again

Manic depression. Depressive mania. Depressive depression. Manic mania.

Repeat.

What a difference a TV makes

I'll be driving 300 miles south in the morning. Into a different culture. Sort of. Fifty years ago, that would be true; a totally different culture. I hate television again for yet a new reason

Prelude to Summer

It's April 10. Today's high temperature in Dallas is forecast to reach 88 degrees. Why? Was it something I said?

Just Coffee

I have plans for later. You know, when I have more free time. Lots of plans. Objectives to meet. Projects to start. Projects to finish. Things to do.

In the meantime, I suppose I will simply do the regular, routine stuff. The drudgery. Things that MUST be done.

Hey, I can mix them up! Yeah, that's the ticket! I'll execute some of the plans while I move through the mundane. Making the mundane more manageable. My, my, it's magical to make such memories in the moment!

No, just coffee. Why do you ask?

The Jury's Out

Here I sit, waiting for the justice building to open so I can go do my civic duty as a juror. They should open the building earlier so hungry jurors could eat at the "justice" cafeteria.

Epiphany: I Don't Control the Weather

Yesterday's comfortable warmth was almost uncomfortable, but not quite. It reached the upper 80s which, in my mind, is a frightening precursor to a summer of hellishly miserable temperatures that soar into triple digits. I shouldn't be so pessimistic, perhaps, but I consider realism and not pessimism. If you lived here you'd know.

But for now, the heat is welcome, at least for awhile. I like going outdoors and feeling myself bake slowly as I putter about in the yard or clean up the garage or do one of the million other chores that need doing.

I would not mind the temperatures spiking during the day if only they would sink again to a chill in the evenings, as they have been doing. The recent oscillations have been to my liking; temperatures in the evening dropping into the 40s or 50s or even the 50s. It's when the temperatures never drop below the upper 70s or the 80s (or, in particularly ugly periods, the 90s) that I feel the urge to relocate for climatic reasons.

If I'm going to live a more peaceful life, though, I have to accept the whims of nature where I live or adapt. And by adapt, I mean move. That's not going to happen immediately. So I should accept nature as "she" comes. I can shed clothes, wear cooler garb, make more liberal use of ceiling (and other) fans, drink more water, get absorbed in things that take precedence over temperature, etc.

I've decided not to fight nature. Weather is not under my control. Nature will always win. Always.

Scary

The end of October. That's the target. Scary as hell, but exciting, too.

e-Friend Overload?

An online friend (Blogger #1) contacted me today, inquiring about another online friend (Blogger #2), the latter of whom had deactivated her Facebook account and whose new blog was not longer viewable. Having connected with email once or twice before, I sent a message to Blogger #2, explaining that B1 and I both were wondering what was up.

B2 responded that she was just checking out for a bit and was sure she'd be back, eventually. I relayed this message back to B1, who responded with something that struck a chord with me. She said, and I'll paraphrase: Many of my friends are people I've never met in person. We share intellectual commonalities of some kind. I'm always looking for my tribe.

That is so true for me, I'm always in search of people with whom I have something in common deeper than an appreciation for the same types of cars or the same television dramas. I don't find many people who reveal themselves to me as having any depth they care to share with me.

Perhaps it's because of where I live; the fact that open-mindedness here is viewed with suspicion and contempt. Or perhaps it's because I'm not easy to share with, in person. I suspect I'm a much more pleasant person in the ether than I am in the real world. I react to the world. Sometimes...often(?)...I react badly to it.

More likely than not, the truth sits squarely in the middle, borrowing heavily from both ends of the spectrum.

But, back to B1's reference to looking for her tribe. It really struck me. I felt like it described a quest I've rarely articulated. I have been looking for friends my entire life, people with whom I can feel comfortable, and vice versa, and people whose attitudes and sense of morality are in sync with my own, at least on a fundamental level.

Often, I've felt a sense of kinship to people for awhile because of the ideas they express, only to allow that sense to diminish. It degrades when I find that the ideas they express are based on religious imperatives that they think they should embrace. I have no quarrel with the ideas. But then I learn, or come to believe, that they do not embrace the ideas on their own but simply pay lip service to them out of an half-hearted commitment to the church. And it's not even a commitment to the church, but to a belief that something truly ugly awaits them in "the next life" if they don't adopt the concepts. That's where I smell hypocrisy. That's when my sense of kinship leaves.

Interestingly, that sense of kinship does not flee when I deal with people whose concepts of morality are based on religion but who do not rely on religion to justify those concepts. While I would argue passionately with them (and have done) against the legitimacy of their religious doctrines, I don't...always...find them to be offensive. I don't loathe people who are religous; but I do not respect people who are unwilling to question their own faith.

This rant is going all over, isn't it?

Back to my point. I miss my friend who has chosen to distance herself from those of us who value her "presence" on the internet. But I realize that we're not close; none of us are truly close. I don't know that I think closeness is possible without much more interaction than I have with my online friends. I don't doubt that we could become quite close, but I probably won't know it.

Maybe she is experiencing something like the feelings that have come over me from time to time. There have been times in which I have had occasion to interact quite frequently with someone via email, online, or some other form of non-proximal contact and that interaction has become suffocating. I don't know why and I can't seem to find any similarities between the people involved or even the types of interchanges...but I have found myself desperate for a break from the. Maybe that's what B2 is experiencing...e-friend overload.

The e-people with whom I regularly, or at least relatively frequently, interact now are people I find quite engaging. I consider them my friends. So I'm dredging up experiences and emotions, rather than feeling them first-hand, today. But maybe I'm on to something.

Or maybe I'm not. I've driven down blind alleys before, only to be attacked by herds of alley cats.

Notes

I came across a private notebook in a pile of paper as I was organizing my office last weekend. I did not recognize the handwriting in the steno pad, so I assumed it might have been picked up in the last-minute clean-up frenzy at one of the meetings we manage. Later, I decided it must have been given to me in a pile of detritus from a desk-cleaning by someone else.

I read through the notes, trying to find an indication of to whom the notebook might belong. Finally, after I'd read through to almost the last page...there must have been fifteen or twenty pages of notes...I found evidence that it belonged to a former employee, someone I'd fired.

The notes told the story of someone who was trying very, very hard to perform well in her job, but who was experiencing some very tough relationship challenges in her personal life. Many of the notes were short self-affirmation statements, telling the writer that she was a good person and that she could successfully get through the trouble she was going through. But it was clear from reading the notes, and now on reflection, that she her relationship problems were having an enormous impact on her ability to cope, both at home and at work.

I fired her for performance issues that were exacerbated by attitude. When I expressed concern about her performance, again, she reacted by saying she didn't like working for me and that she was looking for a job and would tell me when she found one. That was not the right response to have with me, especially after the considerable performance issues; so I fired her.

In retrospect, having now read the notes, I think I might have encouraged her to open up about what might be causing her performance issues. Many of them really were related to attitude; she didn't like following the processes I'd established, didn't think the rules applied to her, complained that no one appreciated the hours she spent on the job, and did not get along with other employees. But maybe all those issues were related to those personal relationship challenges. She's not a bad person and she was very bright. She had a lot of potential.

Maybe if I'd invested more time in her, and had overlooked the fact that I found her personally not very likable, she could have turned things around on the job. I guess I will never know. But it makes me remember that, sometimes, people can be privately dealing with pretty ugly stuff that can affect the way they behave. I, of all people, should know this.

Not that it matters...

In the final analysis, if there is a final analysis, the conclusion will be that we all took ourselves too seriously.

Even our talk about taking ourselves less seriously is tinged with concern that this very serious societal flaw is wrecking the social order. As if it mattered.

In the final analysis, it doesn't. "It." Code for "everything."

The common concerns about decorum? Way too serious. The strident insistence that our society needs a better social safety net? If our collective will could change it all, maybe...but in the overal scheme of things that are, by and large, outside our realm of control? Overly serious.

What about tsunamis and earthquakes and nuclear holocaust? Surely those deserve to be taken seriously? If we (the collective we...humankind and all) actually mattered, sure. And in the context of our own individual lives as of this evening on this planet, yeah, they deserve to be taken seriously. But in terms of humankind's actual value in the universe as we know it? Probably not.

So, it shouldn't matter, in the overall scheme of things, if I were to decide tomorrow morning to invite an attractive woman I happen to encounter on the street to engage in a hedonistic sex orgy in the middle of the esplanade on Midway Road during rush hour, right? Well, yes. But there is that part about "in the context of our own individual lives." That's where the argument that we take ourselves too seriously gets in trouble.

I still believe we take ourselves too seriously. I just don't know exactly where to find the bright line that divides what is too serious and what is not serious enough. Not that it matters.

8.75

I intended to go to my office yesterday to try to finish some of what I started Saturday. Fortunately, I did not follow through on my intent. Instead, I had a truly good day on Sunday, instead.

My day started later than normal. I woke up well after 6:00 am, more than an hour later than I normally get up, thanks to getting to bed much later than usual last night. Usually, if I get up late I tend to have a less-than-stellar day; I feel like I've missed a part of the day, and my life, I can't get back. Not so yesterday, for reasons I do not understand. Yesterday, I just got up, made coffee, and went about my life.

My wife got up before 7:30 and reminded me that we'd talked about going to Hypnotic Donuts, a business that operates only on weekends and then only for a few hours in the morning...in a pizza shop that doesn't open until much later. So we went. And it was interesting.

My wife got a Canadian Healthcare donut, which comprises a glazed donut topped with a whipped sugary goo made from maple syrup that was further topped with crispy bacon. I had what they called the Kaye's Killer Queso; fried chicken, cream cheese, pickles, etc. on a biscuit. We weren't as overwhelmed as we'd hoped, but they were good.

Then, we headed toward the Dallas Arboretum, where a friend and former employee had taken a booth to sell her hand-made jewelry in an art show. Before visiting the art show and our friend, we wandered all over the Arboretum, taking in the spectacular display of flowers, flowering trees, bulbs, etc., etc. It was truly magnificent. Then we visited Julie's booth and then took in the other 100 exhibitors at the show.

Yesterday being the first day of Spring, the Arboretum was packed, as was the parking lot. The Arboretum had arranged for parking at a lot several blocks (maybe a mile) away, with shuttles getting the inhabitants of the newly-parked cars back to the Arboretum. As we pulled in to the parking lot from which we soon would be whisked away in a bus, we noticed an old, beat-up-looking bar across the street, a place called The Goat. I suggested we try the place out after visiting the Arboretum...something about its uttlerly unpretentious face made it attractive to me.

After the Arboretum, my wife needed food and, from what we could tell, The Goat did not serve food, so we drove off to the Lakewood area, where we had a late lunch at Matt Martinez' Rancho. After lunch, we were stuffed and decided to take a walk. The short walk enlivened us and convinced us to really go back and try The Goat. Which we did.

The Goat is a neighborhood bar. Really. Everyone in there (it wasn't crowded) knew everyone else. The bartender was super friendly and jovial. She invited us to have Nathan's hot dogs and cucumbers...she said they wanted to keep their patrons sober and coming back. But we'd already eaten, to no hot dogs for us. Yet. We drank a beer and observed. We liked what we saw...or at least I did. It's a very friendly, very casual tavern. The owner's (?) dog wandered around, nuzzling up to whoever was in the mood to pet it.

After an hour or so there, we jumped back in the car and headed toward home. As we wandered in that direction, we made up a list of "to-do" items, including getting my wife's car washed, going to the greengrocer and the grocery store, washing sheets and towels, etc., etc. And so we did those things.

Now, my wife's car is clean as a whistle. We are stocked up on tomatoes, onions, celery, cucumbers, tangerines (or some relatives thereof), etc. We have clean sheets and towels. And I grilled a long-frozen New York strip steak that should have been grilled many months ago but turned out OK, anyway.

My wife likes her steak very basic. I like mine jazzed up. So I ground some coffee beans and mixed them with lemon pepper and some hot chile power to serve as a rub for my half of the steak (after I drizzled lemon juice on it). I let it sit for an hour before I grilled the steak. At the same time, I grilled calabacitas (Mexican squash) that I'd sprinkled liberally with Vegetable Magic, a seasoning blend associated with Chef Paul Prudhomme. It was very, very good.

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being spectacularly wonderful beyond words, I'd give yesterday an 8.75. It was a damn good day!

Aristotelianism is the Devils's Philosophy

This has been a productive, if strange, day. I spent just over six hours in my office. My time was spent cleaning out files, going through piles of paper on my desk, and "filing" reports and such by scanning paper documents into PDF files, which I then put in the proper folders on the server.

As we (my wife worked, too) emerged into the warm air (it hit 84 here today!), I got the urge to have some ice cream. But first, I wanted a hit of architectural energy, so we wandered through some neighborhoods that have begun to be "upgraded" after 20-40 years of getting stodgy. Fortunately, we saw few new behemoth mansions constructed after "tear-downs" and, instead, saw some very nice updates to bad old design.

But then we found a frozen yogurt place, not an ice cream spot. (Dallas is horrifically unsophisticated when it comes to ice cream appreciation; Boston has it all over us here.) The stuff (and various toppings) are charged out at $0.40 per ounce; apparently, between the two of us, we got a lot of ounces. Our two modest-looking paper bowls came to over $9.00. But it was good...espresso, orange, pomegranate, and vanilla flavors in my bowl.

Then, we went into Borders Books, which is shutting all their stores and, therefore, is having a sale. So I bought a book, of course. It was cheap and seemed to be entertaining. It's called 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know. It has 3-4 page "treatments" on a laundry list of "must know" topics, ranging from Aristotelianism and Relativism to Secularism and Liberalism to The Social Contract and Quantum Mechanics. I read about four topics tonight and decided this is not, despite its looks and implicit promise, "easy reading." You have to be deeply interested to follow each summary clearly. Comparative altruism and the Golden Rule are not easy topics to digest, even in bullet form.

But I have to admit I'm very interested in reading Plato's The Republic and learning more about the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas now that I've read a few chapters of this book. And, scanning the book, I have decided I really do have an interest in learning about the divergent views of Keynesians and monetarists and the reasons for their adoption of their divergent approaches to economics.

Enough for tonight. I promise not to do any nude pole-vaulting tonight.

Embarrassment

This is not a new thought, but it's one I probably haven't shared, at least not here and not in quite this way.

I wonder if my professed desire to record my thoughts and ideas and concerns here on Blogspot is less a desire for privately recording my thoughts than publicly seeking connections. The same questions arise over my use of Facebook and my less frequent use of Twitter.

Am I doing this for myself, as I think (or say) I am, or am I writing here and there in the hope I will make a significant connection without someone who will become an intimate friend? (No, not intimate in that way.)

It is embarrassing even to ask these questions of myself in private, much less in a public (though not very) forum like this. (I don't get much traffic.) But, at least for now, I'm of the opinion that, embarrassment aside, I need to know the answers more than I need to know my privacy is my own.

Am I a disconnected guy who's looking for some kind of connection with someone else, someone with whom I can share my thoughts and feelings and beliefs and from whom I can expect honesty but not in a brutal way? Or am I just stumbling about, looking for a one-off communication with someone I can call a "friend," if only for awhile and only through a lens of impersonality?

And why the hell does an old guy nearing 60 have such questions? Weren't they supposed to be resolved during my teenage years? Have I reached adulthood temporally only, leaving emotional maturity to come (or not) much later?

Here's a poem by James Kavanaugh, who died in 2009, that I find exceptionally compelling and powerful. Are we all looking for friends?

Will you be my friend?
There are so many reasons why you never should:
I’m sometimes sullen, often shy, acutely sensitive,
My fear erupts as anger, I find it hard to give,
I talk about myself when I’m afraid
And often spend a day without anything to say.

But I will make you laugh
And love you quite a bit
And hold you when you’re sad.
I cry a little almost every day
Because I’m more caring than the strangers ever know,
And, if at times, I show my tender side
(The soft and warmer part I hide)
I wonder, will you be my friend?

A friend who far beyond the feebleness of any vow or tie
Will touch the secret place where I am really I,
To know the pain of lips that plead and eyes that weep,
Who will not run away when you find me in the street
Alone and lying mangled by my quota of defeats
But will stop and stay-to tell me of another day
When I was beautiful.
Will you be my friend?

There are so many reasons why you never should:
Often I’m too serious, seldom predictably the same,
Sometimes cold and distant, probably I’ll always change.
I bluster and brag, seek attention like a child,
I brood and pout, my anger can be wild,
But I will make you laugh and love you quite a bit
And be near you when you’re afraid.

I shake a little almost every day
Because I’m more frightened than the strangers ever know
And if at times I show my trembling side
(The anxious, fearful part I hide)
I wonder, will you be my friend?

A friend who, when I feel your closeness, feels me push away
And stubbornly will stay to share what’s left on such a day,
Who, when no one knows my name or calls me on the phone,
When there’s no concern for me – what I have or haven’t done-
And those I’ve helped and counted on have oh, so deftly, run,
Who, when there’s nothing left but me, stripped of charm and
Subtlety, will nonetheless remain.

Will you be my friend?
For no reason that I know, Except I want you so.

Nothings Makes Sense

There are days I question whether my appreciation for intelligent people makes any sense. Is it their intelligence I appreciate? Or it is what I perceive as intelligence...as evidenced by a person's alignment with my beliefs or opinions?

I am more likely to like/appreciate/value/respect a person whose opinions and values and philosophies of life parallel mine. But I find, so often, that someone who shares my political perspectives, for example, doesn't share certain particularly important, fundamental, values I hold to be vital to a person's humanity.

That just goes to show that we're multi-dimensional beasts. I can overlook disagreements in some areas. I can't overlook them in others. But the measures of whether I can or can't overlook disagreements are moving targets. I think those measures depend, in part, on a complex mix of philosophies and their interactions with one another.

Forgive me. I'm on my third shot of high-end tequila. Nothing makes sense right about now.

Priorities

It's not doomsday thinking to consider how we might react if we were faced with a catastrophe of the proportions faced by Japan as a result of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunamis. No, it's a natural reaction to horrific events that are happening half a world away.

In my mind, it is prudent for us to consider how this nation might respond to a major catastrophe. We ought to do it, I think, as much to make us wonder whether we're on the right path as to help us prepare for a horrible event. We ought to wonder whether we need the power that nuclear plants provide. We ought to wonder whether the infrastructure we've been building is as fragile as our own lives. And then, when we inevitably conclude that our infrastructure is weak and fragile and subject to collapse, we should ask ourselves why we are building and building and building.

The answers, whatever they are, will tell us a lot about what's important to us, as individuals and as a society.

Weather

Today is starting out at 44 degrees, with clear skies. The high today is forecast to reach 67 and they're saying clear skies all day.

This weather typifies my ideal climate. It's the sort of weather that makes starting the day by sitting outdoors with a cup of coffee and a warm sweater so very inviting. The high, just under 70, is perfect for feeling fresh and alive and energetic.

Where can I expect such weather virtually year-round? That is the place I want to investigate as a permanent "get away" place. There are other factors about "place," as well, but weather is a good place to start.

Inebria

I wonder if anyone has ever named a child Inebria? I'll have to look it up.

Sheen-Worship

I am not star-struck by Hollywood types. I don't find their lives riveting. But occasionally I will find myself intrigued by some actor or actress or other high-profile media-type. But Charlie Sheen? Not bloody likely. He impresses me only as a self-absorbed, arrogant asshole. That's always been my assessment of the guy. Even though I have no interest whatsoever in his addictions or whatever, I'm really not thrilled that he got fired. It just doesn't matter one way or the other to me.

So, on to something else, OK?

Recovering Alcatholics

Something I read this evening made me think about all the recovering alcatholics out there. Not sure why that neologism appeals to me, but it does.

Drivel, drivel, peri-peri

So, here it is; another week in the office. I spent quite alot of time this weekend physically in the office; six hours on Saturday, and then, yesterday I got up at my usual time and spent about four hours working from home. I needed to do it, but it does tend to color my perception of my life, and that color is dirty grey at the moment.

Yesterday, I spent quite awhile out and about, having lunch with my wife and a friend and then wandering around being utterly unproductive. First, we went to an open house to view a house that's for sale in an old, attractive neighborhood. Then, we drove quite a distance to a little British store that sells After Eight mints. I bought some African peri-peri hot sauce there; it is manufactured in Atlanta, Georgia so I am not sure whether it is what I would get in Africa.

I'm not sure I'm writing this drivel. Nothing else to write, I suppose.

Chip Butty

I have a habit of writing notes to myself about things I find interesting. This is, I suppose, in the hope that at some point in the future, I will revisit the item of interest and will be able to refer back to my notes.

Unfortunately, my notes are not well-organized and I haven't the foggiest idea where to look for a note on a particular topic. But, occasionally, I stumble upon an old note and I follow up.

Such was the case last night, when I came across a small spiral bound note-pad that I had used to record and end-of-year trip in 2008. There, on the same page I recorded my appreciation for Joe's Seafood in Galveston was a brief note about the Bayview Duck Restaurant and Pub in Bacliff, Texas. I had written about the Bayview Duck in my post of December 31, 2008.

But I had not written about a menu item there called the Chip Butty. And I had never followed up on my note to myself that said, "Chip Butty was on the menu; what is it?" Well, tonight I found out. A Chip Butty is a French fry sandwich, usually on white bread and usually accompanied by a tomato-based dipping sauce. It sounds horrible to me, but I just read a review of Chip Butty on an upscale website geared toward good food. The review was positive.

The Chip Butty was not the thing about my notes that gave me pause this time. Rather, it was my cryptic note to myself on the next page: "Better enjoy life while there's time, laddie."

Bayview Duck website.

Occupation of the Throne

Confusion reigns. Right here, right now. I used to predict the future, but that's all in the past, now. Reigns. Rains. Whatever.