Milestone, Part II

Phish broke up this week, or at least announced that they would following this summer's tour. I've been to twenty-two (I think) Phish shows. Probably fourteen of them were amazing experiences, nights when the music kept me dancing, sober, in my dirty Birks, long after the last note sounded. I'm going to be in Alaska for the whole summer tour, and I'm sad I'm going to miss the boys this time around.

Milestone

I quit my job today. I had been a project manager for an IT consulting company. It was a good job: high pay, a good company that tried to minimize your normal working nonsense, and I was good at it. I was young for what I did, and I had no real training, but I found a niche in middle management that the smartest of the smart either had been promoted through or had been smart enough not to get involved in the first place. As a result, I stood out, at least at my little company in my little corner of the world.

Why did I quit? Everyone needs a job, and this was pretty good as far as jobs go, certainly much better than the jobs of the poor suckers at the clients I worked with, people who slaved away for Major UK Retailers or Large Insurers. I don't need a job, though. I've got enough lucre stashed away to keep me in food and and shelter and the occasional new bauble, at least for a while. So why give all my energy to something which, at least for me, is really a gimmick to keep me occupied and challenged? It's an easy choice, right? But what if there's nothing else planned after that? Is it still easy?

I fixed the no plans problem with an event, a moment, an epiphany one day a couple of months ago. It was at brunch with Eisa. She was in the restroom. Sitting at the booth waiting for her to come back or our yuppie Japanese eggs to come, sipping what was, in retrospect, one coffee over my limit, I decided that this, what you're reading, was enough. No, not that I would quit my job to work on an unread blog, but that I would quit work to write. Three hours a day. Legitimate attempts to get published writing about sports or rock, and illegitimate attempts to generate ideas for fiction by blogging or journaling.

The life change got a lot easier to explain a day or so after the decision. I got a call from my oldest friend offering a road trip to Alaska for the summer and soon after Eisa and I decided to try (or retry, in her case) life in Hilo. It's much easier to tell Bill Programmer from the office that you're leaving your job to move to Hawaii than it is to tell him that you're leaving to write, but no you really haven't ever done that before, and no you don't really have any ideas. And in my mind, retirement has sort of become about moving to Hawaii, but that's not what it is. That's a place to be, a way to have adventures and to keep myself and my girl excited and exciting, but leaving my job wasn't for that. It was for, or more exactly because of, the fact that at brunch in early April, hopped up on expensive coffee, I decided that three hours of writing per day, even without any discernable ideas to follow, was enough.

Was I right? I think so. Am I worried that I'm going to waste a singular opportunity? Yes. I haven't written much in those two months. Excuses that I was still fully employed did apply, but I've had time. I spent this Sunday flipping between Die Hard II and Exiled: A Law and Order Movie, didn't write a word, and couldn't even summon the will to sit up straight on the couch, though my fingers did feverishly work the clicker. Will I do that in Hawaii? Will I spend the rainy days with digital cable? Will I get discouraged when heavenly prose doesn't flow from my fingers in the first week? There's a chance, but that's my challenge.

Cosby Kid Found, Different than You Remembered

I was flipping channels at home, waiting for dinnertime to roll around, and I came across the Motown 45 special. This lady was singing Stevie Wonder, and it turns out she used to be little Olivia on the Cosby Show. My goodness. It brings up the point, though: if we can have Motown 45, why can't we have Cosby 20? They could do one of their songs that they all lip synched together, we could reminisce about when Denise made Theo that yellow shirt, and we could learn about the cast members 20 years down the road. I wonder what Vanessa and Rudy are doing? Was anyone less likely to have a post-Cosby career than Vanessa, or more likely than Theo? How come he isn't a star?

We've Got Visuals

Jeff looking cool in Hampi. Also, even though you can't see this, it's Jeff testing a Blogger photo utility.

Also note new permalinks, and a new way to store comments. Sadly, the old comments seem to be gone. You two (or maybe even four) readers should repost those post haste.

Office Errata

I like how work e-mails tagged with "!", indicating a high level of importance, are almost never the important ones.

Friday at the Ritz

Buzzing with the hip-hop stylings of Prefuse 73 (courtesy of my co-worker Wadsbone), a chicken panini, and a large coffee, here’s what’s on my mind as I let a Friday afternoon pass by with the free wireless at the Ritz Coffeehouse on a particularly bleak stretch of Ashland Ave., Chicago:

How is it that I can become a fan of a band after one song? See “Fight Test”, Flaming Lips, which I adore but for which I have yet to find a worthy successor for the Flaming Lips playlist in my mind. See “Bubblehouse”, MMW, which is hooky and funks the house down and your mom will like it the first time she hears it, yet is nowhere near as avant garde or abstract or challenging as anything else I’ve ever heard from them. Funny then, that I avowedly “like” these bands, not just these songs. I’d love to see the Lips, even though I have little patience for Pilot Can or any of their other old stuff, and I’ve seen MMW a couple of times and thrilled to an excited listen of “Bubblehouse” and a lukewarm listen to the rest of Shack-Man just last night (though track 6 has some pretty fine moments). I suppose I can look at this with either the half-empty or the half-full glasses on. Empty: I’m always looking for something new to like, but I do that because I want to get the zing that comes with being enthusiastic about some carefully-selected thing to my own stash of zing so I can take it out and impress those closest to me with how much zing I have. Full: I’m always looking for something new to like, because being enthusiastic about something is the funnest way to be.

I don’t understand how people in the city give their dogs a decent life, and I tend to try to impress this on my canine-coveting city friends quite zealously, perhaps overzealously. You’re never home, I say. It’s a lot of work, I say. You’ll have to walk it all the time, every day, even when it’s cold out, and that’s really a lot of responsibility. Are you sure you’re ready?, I say. Eisa thinks my attitude is silly, and she’s likely right. I’m not sure why I react so strongly, why I try to impart upon my friends how binding the contract they’re entering is into when they let themselves dream about adopting that cute little schnauzer-terrier mix at the local puppy pound. We had dogs when I was a kid, and I have nothing but fond memories of them, but don’t think that I’m speaking from experience when I warn of stern doggie responsibilities. I observed my parents walking and shoveling up after Rollie and cute little George and big ol’ Spencer, but I was never responsible and almost never even had to help. I suppose I just don’t like the idea of Rollie II sitting in an apartment in the city from 9:00 to 5:30 every day, sleeping and trying not to chew the carpet or to pee, supposedly happy because s/he has a bladder trained to go into sleep mode during daylight hours. Of course, I’ve never stirred worrying about children left alone after school, or even dogs facing sure extinction if left unadopted at the Humane Society for another week. But, goshnabbit, none of my friends and neighbors should be party to making a dog’s life lonely. I won’t stand idly by and let that happen.

The police officer across the street frisking the kid in the baggy jeans and the hoody is short. She’s old. She’s very fat. I can see her large (really large) and droopy bosoms heaving with exertion after a slow, slow walk across the street. They look like huge balloons anchored to her belly. Not only can’t she see her feet, she can’t see her gun or her pepper spray at her belt, and I’m pretty sure when she gets into the squad car, she won’t be able to see over the dashboard. I wonder if she can see anything; her gray hair is coming loose from under her policeman’s cap and blowing all over her face. The cap looks too big for her head regardless. It’s off-kilter and must be covering part of the field of view her left eye should be providing her. This woman does not deter putative criminals with her physical presence. I wonder what her strengths as an officer are? Can she, using English, Spanish, or Polish, talk a lunatic with a gun into peacefully turning himself in? Does her obese and waddling exterior make the kids outside the high school she keeps talking to feel at ease and more likely to collaborate with the police in some sort of community watch scheme? Maybe she’s an amazing shot with that pistol, some kind of police sniper: she can’t move quickly, but crane her up into the right spot and she can live off her own body mass for days and won’t ever miss the gangsters coming out of their hideout. Maybe it’s Bring-Your-Elderly-Relative-To-Work-Day at the local precinct, but why would they give her such a real looking fake gun? Mysteries never cease. Our paths will cross again someday, Officer Old 'n' Pudgy. I’ll learn your story yet.

Posturing

Playing hooky from work today, Readers, folding laundry in front of Donald Rumsfeld's hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

I've never been ablae to stand Senator Joe Lieberman. I don't have any particularly good reason; I couldn't say a lot about his platform. Maybe it's the fact that he's a Jew who talks about his religion often and obvious enough to make someone in Jerry Falwell's choir pleased. More likely, it's something about the way he speaks. His haltering deep voice, every word connected by an "uh" just seems to make my skin crawl. But no matter. Each senator gets 10 minutes on Rumsfeld and the generals in front of the cameras. Lieberman spent the first 8 minutes of his speaking about about American morality and duty and the honor of our soldiers. Of course he brought up September 11, even taking the time to cite the death toll. He had time for a couple minutes of questions. The next senator, Sessions (R) from Alabama, took a good portion of his ime to talk about the bounty purportedly offered by Al Qaeda for Rumsfeld's murder. Is this standard procedure? Senators, this is not a campaign moment, or even a partisan moment. You have a limited amount of time,a nd you need to use it to make information public. Your opinions, your take on our wars with brown people all around the world, are not germane. You're embarassing me. Shut up and ask your questions.

Alaska Did You Know

Readers, I suppose I should have known this, but my intrepid travel companion informed me that there really aren't any roads or trails in the National Parks in Alaska. I did a little looking myself. Take Denali, home of famous Mt. McKinley, and approximately the size of West Virginia. There's a road, called Parks Road, cuts through about three miles of the park, and then there's another road that goes 15 miles in. After that, you can take a shuttle another 50 miles in. That's it. No roads, no trails, just mountains and caribou. Wild. We have no idea what we're getting ourselves into, no idea at all. That's what's so exciting aobut it. Now if I only had more confidence in my '97 Subaru.

At Least My Business Casual Attire Remained Jelly-Free

It took me 20 seconds to eat that Krispy Kreme jelly doughnut. How did I decide to do that to my health for 20 seconds of enjoyment? Of course I'd do it again.

Site Problems

For some reason, this site no longer works from Netscape/Mozilla. The index page can't be viewed from just http://jdg.blogspot.com, but http://jdg.blogspot.com/index.html will load. Still seems to work with IE or Safari, though. It's not the template -- I swapped out all my changes for a vanilla template and I got the same behavior. This is beyond me to fix.

Dirty Quarter

I have a dirty quarter in my pocket. It's coated with some sort of black schmutz. I'll take 23 clean cents for it. Let me know.

The Great Northwest

I'm going to embark on a drive to Alaska, and back, in a couple of weeks with my old friend Abe in my '97 Subaru. 6 weeks, 8,000 miles, a 4-day ferry ride through the glaciers and fjords on Canada's west coast, impossible numbers of mosquitos, impossible numbers of black flies, enough caribou sightings to make caribou herds seem boring, enough bear sightings to make ravenous man-eating bears seem boring, 21 hours of consecutive daylight, traversal of every road in the Yukon Territory, lots of retirees in motor homes along the way who help us with camping and auto maintenance stuff we don't know how to do. Maybe they'll let us use the flush toilets in their RVs, and cook us pancake breakfasts. I don't think we're going to be able to sleep normal hours since it will never be dark. We're going to be 1500 miles north of where Insomnia was filmed, and we're going to be there close to the summer solstice.

It beats writing life insurance call center software, or more exactly getting brought in to do so slightly better than someone else could do it.