StandingWater Creations

I made a coworker mad today. And when I say mad, I mean, had she the opportunity and proper motivation I am pretty certain she would've reached over and slapped me even though she was the one pushing what was going on. All I did was look at her, listen (can't say I heard a whole lot), and then agree - emphatically - with the very point she was trying to make. Once again, it appears that my nature has won out over any semblance of propriety that was bred into me. This certainly isn't because my parents raised me to act the way I do... or did they?

Continue reading "Figting Ambiguity" »

Posted by smokingpen at 3:57 PM | Permalink

I finally received all of the textbooks that I've ordered and I got to tell you, when it comes down to ordering things online, I am not really seeing a big difference between Amazon.com's used book site and Half.com's site. There are some comparison differences between prices, Amazon.com seems to be a little less expensive when it comes to textbooks, but all in all, service, etc., seems to be about the same when it comes to getting merchandise.

Granted, I purchased Band of Brothers through Amazon.com after Half.com took almost four months to refund the purchase price when the seller didn't send me what I paid for. I'm still waiting to hear whether or not I received my copy of "Dancing in Red Shoes will Kill You," that is supposed to go to my parents house, but when I was down there last, it hadn't arrived yet. Not a serious priority, I read the book several months ago and ordered a copy for myself to have on my bookshelf (when I finally breakdown and purchase one).

I did go to Prince Perelson today and update them on my work history, which reminds me I need to go and update my resume, fix it, make it more inline with that my contact at that company wants.

Number two is still in the hospital. I went and saw her and her clones were running around. After living with that family none of the kids said anything to me. They all just looked at me as though I were some form of interlocutor. When they left I talked to number two but she kept growing distant and the drugs (and nurses) kept getting in the way.

What I did notice, today, was an accident on Parleys that blocked all of the lanes of traffic except one. It took me a very long time to go about a ¼ mile. In other places in the country, this is a hint to the men and women on the Salt Lake Police force; they move the damaged vehicles off the road. Here, as I recall, they don't. That seems important to me (other than the really bad drivers about this place).

Posted by smokingpen at 11:44 PM | Permalink

Have you ever just had one of those experiences that, no matter how hard you try, you just can't get to sleep? Or, if you do get to sleep after an hour you wake up and can't get back to sleep and so you lay about, or read, or do something else until you are so tired that you sleep, again only to sleep for an hour and start all over again. Yeah, I don't sleep a lot at night. This is not something that is comfortable to me since I work, I go to school, I have my own projects I am working on and want to move forward with, and in the end I am frustratingly inactive during the vital parts of the day and asleep when I need to be awake - and forcing myself to be awake to try to get sleep regularly isn't working either.

Now comes the part where people offer advice. And I think that's great. A co-worker suggested yesterday that I take some pills to help me sleep, and barring that, I use some weird root that will help make my sleeping patterns more normal. That's great. If not drugs something that will alter my metabolism in such a way that it will allow me to sleep.

There have been other suggestions. People like to offer opinions and I like to listen and then think about and eventually ignore what is going on. What gets me is that before I moved east the advice I was offered was that I needed to concentrate on sleeping during the night and being awake during the day. That seemed like odd advice, at the time, and now seems rather sagacious as I look at how I am reacting to the changes that have taken place. Moreover, the days are different here. I realize that may seem weird of me to say, but they are. I am farther (to distance) north now than I have ever lived in my life and I think that is playing games with my circadian rhythm. I am off now and I don't know what to do to get it back on track.

I share all of that because I finally got frustrated at several things this evening. For instance, in a period of a week I have finally started beating my sinus infection (a plague of months) and have also gotten a cold. The sniffles, runny nose, that were signs of positive change in me - meaning that my sinuses are finally draining - have turned into a curse of coughs and sore throats and my lymph nodes are also a little swollen. In other words, I have a head cold and I am working backward on a sinus infection, I don't sleep at night because my circadian rhythm is totally off, and I work way to freaking much… oh and did I mention that I have about four writing projects and a letter (long one) to my mother all in the works on top of school assignments…. Maybe I should just shut-up now.

Anyway, things are good. Books are great. Hundreds of titles pass through my hands daily and I seem to ignore every single one of them. I could not tell you, from one customer to the next, what titles people are buying other than to say that a certain look of a certain book has passed by me multiple times. Beyond that, I don't see the books. Of course, that is going to change next week when I start to assist customers in finding books and magazines and music; but hopefully my resolve not to spend thousands of dollars on books will be enough to get me through the temptation (now if only I'd remember that on the employee appreciation weekend coming up as we get 40% off books and music for three days and I have a box).

School is also proving to be interesting. I signed up for a World Lit. course next term, financial aid should be progressing as of today, and I also take a philosophy class. All of this so that by January I can transfer to days and overload my schedule with as many credit hours as they will let me take. Oh, and I need to buy a car so when financial aid really does kick in I will be paying for a used car (maybe a Honda) very soon. Which reminds me that one of the girls at work had to replace a tire on her car because it was tracking wrong only to have the right front axle go out on her because the CV (constant velocity) joint had gone bad and then had warn all the way through the axle. I'd asked, when she was talking about the tire, whether or not she had other problems with that wheel and she'd forgotten to mention that one issue. And now I've offered to help her save money and change her oil for her (and she's not even my type).

Church should prove to be interesting. Andy accepted a new calling and now has gone to great pains not to speak to me about the what's and where-with-alls about it. He met with the High Councilor, Branch President, and possibly the past person with that calling last night (while I was at school) and is very mum about the outcome. I don't need to know details, but at the same time, I have told him that whatever he needs me to do I am there to do it. Period.

On top of all that I think I am doing pretty snazzy. Apparently in the couple of weeks I've been at work I have become the life of the registers. People are trying to keep up with me and to banter like me and I think that is about as funny as it gets. On the other side of that we have a girl (Angel) who was hired and trained about a month before me who is an exceptional employee (and a looker) and who just does what she is supposed to do as a part of her job breaking ground for me. Instead of be the wunderkind that I normally am (because I go to work to work) I am merely another good employee and I am grateful for that.

Finally, mostly because I am tired, I want to do a shout-out to Rebecca (little sis) and say, just because I don't answer a comment for a few days or weeks doesn't mean I cannot or do not know what to say. Some comments are best left for when it is appropriate, or more accurately, when the speaker (me) is prepared to deal with that. For instance, this evening we were talking about conundrums. Which came first the chicken or the egg. Catch-22's. And as a result of that one of the guys standing around said, "The chicken had to come first otherwise there was no egg." When I said, "I believe both have always existed simultaneously," the group became uneasy at the idea until I added, "a woman is born with eggs already within her, as is a chicken, the eggs already exist when the woman, or chicken, exists, though they are not fertile, therefore both the chicken and the egg have always existed together and not separately." There is no other answer to that conundrum.

I also came up with the dating conundrum. Or, I don't date because I can't date the girls I am meeting and I am only meeting girls I can't date, so I don't date. Which isn't entirely true. I am picky, selective, I won't always just go out with anyone, and the person, or persons, I am willing to go out with have reasons why I cannot ask them out at present.

Oh, the Catch-22 conundrum is Yosarian stating, (paraphrasing) "You have to be crazy to fly these bombing missions, but if you are crazy you cannot fly the missions, but if you know you are crazy then you aren't crazy; but to fly the missions is crazy and if you're crazy you cannot fly the bombing missions." To do one thing another has to already exist. But that one thing can't exist unless the previous item also already exists.

My next imponderable is: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a noise?

I have a personal answer for this one, but I am curious to know what Rebecca thinks first.

Posted by smokingpen at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I woke up the other morning, it was uncomfortable and a part of me was completely set to go straight to the store, purchase whatever it was that I needed at whatever cost, come back to the house I am staying in and install it. That's what I was going to do. It didn't occur to me, until later in the day when I'd ignored what I was going to do, that I had lived like 'this' once before in my life.

What occurred to me, and this may not come as a surprise to anyone, is that the difference between Utah and the East Coast is really the difference between arid weather and humid weather. Dry and wet. That's what got me. Since leaving Texas for, uhm, different pastures, I have lived in an arid environment where when people talk about intolerable humidity they are talking about the evaporation of water for an hour or so right after it rains. They are not talking about the pervasive, and constant, amount of water in the air. And to make matters slightly worse, since there's a hurricane and a tropical storm moving up the east coast out of Florida, pushing all sorts of mostly awkward weather patterns into the northeast, it meant that I had to actually live through an increase in the natural humidity for the area.

Not since Texas, and I believe before my mission, have I had to live through humidity like that. It was before my mission when I was working swing shift at a plastics plant, and every third week-ish had to work graveyard which meant sleeping days, did I have to try and get a goodnights rest while somehow expecting the temperature to cool off and the moisture in the air (which makes everything permanently wet) to disappear, have I had the problem I had the other night.

Most nights, the temperature drops, the humidity lessens, you get some sleep, the next morning (or afternoon… you know, whatever) you wake up and the humidity is back, but it's not that bad. Yeah, uhm. Not the other day. It was bad and I wondered how I'd fallen so far as to lose my sense of ability to sleep anywhere under almost any condition? What happened to me? How can I have fallen so far?

What I mean is, I have had to adapt to all sorts of different conditions and situations already (for example people here like to wear their LDS conversion stories on their sleeves and share those stories at the drop of a BoM whereas in Utah you share mission stories at the drop of spittle from the baby in your lap), but on top of adapting to new conditions and situations here I am having to come to terms with humidity, in an extreme, yet again. It's not all bad. I mean, given that I can locate a job where I want to be working and other things come to fruition then purchasing an air-conditioning unit with humidity control won't be bad, regardless of where I choose to work, but at the same time, getting to that point, making that distinction - or whatever, is proving to be a chore in and of itself.

I can deal with humidity just like I can deal with the extremes of heat. There isn't a lot to be said, or implied, in either area. What is interesting to me is that I chose to come and do this. I chose to drive for four days straight to sit in a sweat box and actually enjoy sitting in the sweat box. It's proved to be an interesting adventure and experience.

More later.

Posted by smokingpen at 2:26 PM | Permalink

I have begun to notice that many of my thoughts are beginning to rotate around the date of my move from Utah to Boston. There are the events that took place before the move and those that take place since the move. Nothing that crosses over between the two seems to matter, much, to me. It either happened before or after. Not during.

During that period of time when I was moving it was all about those four days on the road. I was in the truck with Andy. We drove. Occasionally we stopped because Debbie and the girls needed to stop. But in the long run, it was about being on the road for twelve hours a day for four days. They were long, not necessarily comfortable, and in the end I was happy to see the 2500 miles of road behind us. That was during the move.

Before the move I planned, prepared, scoped, looked, thought, prayed, and did whatever else was appropriate or necessary, within my purview of this change, to prepare for life on the Right coast - this is the East coast for those who look at a map and can't adjust to left and right. The Left coast is the Pacific, the Right is the Atlantic. My thoughts were centered on how this would affect those around me, the reasons I was moving, the reasons I'd gotten to this point, constantly asking "why" in relation to the move, and several other variations related to family and friends. It never really occurred to me that the move itself might prove to be difficult.

But moving is difficult. I am beginning to believe that it doesn't really matter whether you move with a caravan of people, family included, or you move alone. There are changes that have to take place. You have to gather around you new people, make new contacts, struggle for new opportunities, and in the end make decisions based off of notions that may, or may not, be acceptable within the new purview that you find yourself in. In my case, I'd never been to Boston before and making the decision to move here, to accept that this was the right change for me, to do that as a part of my 'new' life was a little overwhelming. In essence, I'd decided to change everything about who I was for some notion of what I might become. So I packed up my things, gave a lot of my stuff away, stored my books (which proved to be very hard for me) and relocated to a new part of the world. It is, I'd imagine, like the pioneers or Saints as they left what was familiar for what was completely unfathomable in the west. Except, in my case, I was leaving what was comfortable for what I thought was going to be a cake walk.

This is not to say that I am naive enough to believe that this whole affair wasn't going to require changes and adaptations. Both have been taking place; both have been occurring; both will continue to occur. I meet people all of the time and one observer (thanks Larry) suggested that I have a tendency to have interesting people around me all of the time. I don't know how true that is, though I guess I can see the interesting persons that have been in my life - or some of them, but I do know that sometimes relying upon the observations of friends and relatives to get a better handle of a situation has some wisdom in it.

One of things that have happened to me is that I have become a little melancholy toward the loss of so many good friends. I left them all behind because I knew that it was time for me to move. That knowledge hasn't change, though my internal timeframe isn't the same as a realistic timeframe I guess, but I miss my family and I miss my friends. I can call them. That's true. But what I want is to be able to jump in a car and drive to a house and just hang out. That's not been a reality since getting here. I don't own a car and just the other day it occurred to me that one of the best solutions to malaise was to put on clothes, grab my backpack, and walk to the store. The store, just so you know, is about four or five miles away. So, I walked to the store. It felt great until I was about halfway back to the house I am living in with Andy and Debbie and their two girls, then my legs started to rebel and the sickness that had kept me at home the day before started to flair up and the result was that I started to feel the change all around me.

Not feeling well is definitely not one of those things you want to have happen when everything else around you is in a rapid state of flux. And I have not been feeling all that well. Different parts of my life feel as though they have been ripped from my hands and that is never a positive feeling. It's a rather negative one. Yet, as I contemplate and fight the temptation to give into impulse and the ease of returning to what is comfortable, I find there is an amount of comfort in knowing that I made this decision for the right reasons. The changes that take place, they take place after the move. I grow, after the move. I meet new people, after the move. Everything that is happening to me, right now, is happening after the move. And it will continue to do so.

Posted by smokingpen at 11:07 PM | Permalink