I think today was Tuesday

Officially been home... 2 weeks and started my 3rd, I think.

I'm completely done doing the bathroom. I put the sink and mirror back today.

It's tiny, but it's very nice.

I wasn't thrilled about screwing the sink into the wall, but given I had one inch tiles I screwed through the grout lines easily.

Started to clean up my garage. It's been my work space for sawing and such. I think I used every tool set I own during this project, so I had everything thrown about the carhole.

I really don't throw out anything I could use someday, so I hauled bunch of odd things into my barn/shed in addition to my saws. I still have to put my tool boxes/cases away, but I have random pieces misplaced that I am trying to sort back into the proper set.

My garage has been a mess for a while. I need to organize it.  The barn needs to be cleaned up as well.

Regardless, I still need to make room for a car to fit inside the garage. Especially, since we had breaks and shocks done for the Passat today.

Friday, a day of general mourning thoughts.

Laziness is a sleep deprived means of starting my day. It's nearly ten, and I'm just brewing my first pot of the day. Hopefully, I don't burn myself eating a poptart.
Anyway, my grandpa J would have been 96 today if he hadn't passed back when he was 75. 21 years ago, today was a Sunday and I had the title of elder bestowed upon my being.
Church leaders needed me to fill a seat that was problematic to do so without me due to bylaws. I was to serve a year on the active session, but deaths made my election to another such term necessary.
It was a chaotic time, which impacted my current lack of church attendance.
Certain things I miss, but I know that things end for a reason; each day is a fresh start.

pressing reset and mental lapses of time

Most days I lose a few hours in the sense they are wasted idly, as far as I can gather. I'm not dazing or anything, or at least I don't think I'm thinking about anything.
Obviously, I'm an internet junky on various levels, but the internet makes life simpler, right?
I guess I could blame my mind being fragmented by having a five month old whose cries and cues are tripwires to my forward thinking kill switch. Nah. A third child does makes my mind think differently, but I was flawed before D. Actually, my mental lapses started before K was even on the way.
Speaking recently with a friend from the time before J, LSD, I got the notion I need to be challenged more to get de-lulled.
Just wish there were a reset button or something to simplify my being so I could be more efficient. I guess I have lot on my mind that I don't say aloud.
Had a texting spat with J yesterday. She's been mad that I didn't hang in the driveway while she washed our car when I got back from visiting my folks. B ran into my arms, while J didn't move. She ceased spraying the hose long enough to say she didn't know when I'd be home. I got home exactly when I said I would when I last spoke with her, so I figure she doesn't care enough to listen to anything I say. No idea why she thinks washing the car in the driveway is worthwhile considering I WORK AT A CARWASH AND GET THEM FREE, but that would imply that I could take the car to work. J thinks the blue cars will die on the road and leave her stranded, which means she hopes i get stranded, I guess.
AW I went inside the house and sat in the cold a/c of K's room and chilled at his laptop for a few moments. Driving three and a half hours alone on a humid day is not hard, but I had other things on my mind and just wasn't in the mood to stand in the driveway as J hosed down the car. She had D out there. I'd have hugged D, but I would have just put her back down to go inside and do the things one does after a significant drive. D was content in her bouncer. I missed my girls while I was gone. Sure D has a hole in her heart, but she's fine according to the cardiologist as long as she's comfortably eating and gaining weight.
My dad is probably dying. He's not been well for as long as J has known me, so she only knows my dad as the complete jerk he's been as he fights his illness. I sound dreadful, but his brain has warped because he's afraid of dying and is in constant pain. He's like a junky, I guess. He could be an extra in Schindler's List, he's so frail these days.

no heaven for Doom

Went rond trip to Wheeling today.  Left arond 9:30am. Got home at 8:40pm. Saw Dad and he was not normal. If I didn't know he was in withdraw from meds I wold think he had had a stroke. Very ot of his mind at times and nable to form thoghts.
He's not well, bt Death will probably wait not too mch longer.
Had nice time considering occasion, bt I only stayed a few hors and blk was waiting on food at restarant.
Not sre when it came p bt I'm not going to heaven according to dad. He told mom he was looking forward to seeing all these varios people, bt was pset I'd  not be there becase of something I did that pset him.
I cold have stayed the night, bt why do so if he thinks I'm going to hell? Sleepy now. 420 miles isn't hateful.

eastward

Moms cry, right? Mine rarely shows emotion, bt she called at ten am as sch.  AW I am heading to West Virginia whenever I awake to do so. D-on is arriving via plane to PIT @ eleven am. I'm not going to be there ntil noon(earliest estimate).
Enjoy yor Snday, I won't. I made sre to paq( I don't like doble sonds together, seems silly in a redndant srt of way q is stpid w/o inverted n except as replacement of ck ending, bt ks is dmb too since x is better served there) a towel.

thoughts and such

There was a time I'd watch Taxi Driver daily. I had it on VHS and watch when I was between stuff and meh-ish. When I felt like doing stuff I would stop and pick up the next day. I have it on DVD and I don't know when I watched last, and I can't say for sure I watched the DVD I own. I got a hoard mentality about things like shoes and jeans. I have learned to let go of old socks. Anyways, violence on screen doesn't make me feel the need to reenact, so I have a hard time getting the notion violent films are to blame for mass shootings. If everyone who ever felt rejected went on a killing spree, then who'd be left to bury everyone? It's easy to blame, but yet difficult to understand... biases blur the underlying elements. Supposedly mental illness is a sane response to an insane society, but I've not read that for myself.

children of suicides

Anyone who has known me within the past century could probably name a couple of the 4 public figures that make me believe free will is possible. All four have written books. One killed his wife playing William Tell 27 years before I was born. One was nearly shot to death by a lesbian who wrote an obscene play. One survived the bombing of Dresden. The only one still living has been fired 7 times, but now is his own boss and can't be fired.
Anyways, one of them had his mother commit suicide while he was an adult but before he had a family. He also lost his sister prematurely and raised several of her children as his own. Sad, I guess. He didn't have any villians in his books. My "friend from Chicago," who also is a child of a suicide,  thinks or at least thought I based my initial career path on one of this fellow's novels. Hmmm... I never read any of his books until I had already switched majors, so the coindence is more intriguing, don't you think?
I am deliberately being vague, my dear gentle reader, but only because I am hurt at the thought that I lack empathy as though I'm retarded and shoot guns randomly out my bedroom window indifferent as to whether I kill a pregnant woman or not because my gun nut dad used to pal about with a slacker artist who thought he could rule the world...
Sorry, that book was nothing to do with me, but I can internalize sadness for I have felt the pain of losing loved ones though not my parents or sibling, but those who meant more to me nonetheless.

Power of Spite

So I just completed Chapter 3 of Think Like a Freak(TLAF), and I feel like I did when I saw Mr. Vonnegut on the evening of November 6, 1998. Meh.

Nothing really new to enlighten my thinking, thus far.

HoJo

Missing someone, who is gone, is hard. My father will be gone one day and a fear I'll feel nothing when he's gone. Sure he's been ill so long, but I have no quick memories to connect happiness with him. Amazing he was my Uncle Howard's brother and they were so close.

My uncle was smart and caring, two things I cannot say about my dad. Though the latter is not brain dead nor outwardly cruel, but compared HoJo he's Homer Simpson to Ned Flanders.

I could write a lot about my uncle, but he's gone and no one reading this would have known him. I just miss him. I could have seen him more.

While I was in school, he would have picked me up for church any given Sunday. I could have gone to more of my cousin's games while I was in grad school, he was always there with his camera and bag of lenses. I could have driven to see him more when he retired to fight his colon cancer that had reached his liver and eventually killed him.

I was in Columbus a month before he passed for a conference. I wanted to see him, so I called. He wasn't having a good day and it wouldn't be a good time for a visit.

That may have been the last time I ever spoke with him.

If Heaven exists, my uncle is there.

I have my memories of him and most of them are of good times. I just have to be the person he'd want me to be and to pass the love he had for me forward in all I do.

Lou Reed

I grew up in a home which had blaring music every weekend. Lou Reed's Transformer was a regular staple among albums by the Beatles, Lennon, Dylan, Bowie...
I didn't know about the Velvet Underground until I visited the Andy Warhol Museum in 1994.
I have never bought for myself a Beatle, Lennon, Dylan, nor Bowie cd, but I own Transformer and Rock N Roll Animal.
I called my dad on Sunday when I learned of Reed's death. He sent me a link from Rollingstone with 20 songs. I was surprise by this "divisive" Honda scooter ad from 1984:

Day of dread

I wonder if it will matter that I'm weary of today... I will avoid roller coasters. I will avoid shelving units. I will look both ways when crossing streets. I will refrain from backing my car up by parking where I can pull-through. I will park away from cars. I will drink plenty of fluids. I will tie my shoes securely. I will hug my children regularly throughout the day.
Actually, I'm being silly for the sake of it. I don't do risky things and I learn from my mistakes. As long as I remember that gravity can crush bones, I should be able to avoid some self-inflicted accidents.

I'm hungry for Deep Dish pizza from Little Caesar's.  I ate a tasty double-decker hamburger tonight. The patties we leftover from Father's Day. My inlaws don't eat left-overs so I take things home to see that they aren't wasted.

The burgers were rather dry out of the fridge. They use lean meat, and lean meat isn't the best to grill. Hamburgers off the grill should be juicy. Whenever I grill on my Char-Broil TRU  Infrared, I use fatty ground chuck from Dot's, so the best thing to do when re-heating burger without juice is to grab A1 Steak Sauce and coat the patty before nuking it for 20-30 seconds then flipping and re-heating another 20-30 seconds.

I got some Aunt Millie's buns from Meijer's when they had a BOGO sale in mid-May. J put one of them in the freezer and pulled it out last week. Frozen bread tends to be hard and any bread of a certain age can get moldy. I made sure it didn't have any moldy spots, and decided to toast the buns in my Black and Decker Toast R Oven. Toasting stale bread makes it better, since TOAST IS MEANT NOT TO BE SOFT except for French Toast which is meant to be soggy with butter and maple syrup! I set the T-R-O for low, then I buttered both inner parts of the bun to give moisture.

I like cheese on my burgers, so I got out a slice of American Cheese. The cheese was cold, so I assembled the sandwich and placed into the Toast R Oven. The burger was looking good and melty, but I knew the center of the patties would be dry so I got out some Heinz, shook the bottle to give the ketchup a more thorough consistency, for ketchup always separates, and that made a tasty left-over meal.

 (I shared a dorm room with a guy that didn't refrigerate ketchup for he argued that restaurants didn't and that vinegar based products don't need it.)

 .

Another conversation on the drive home

My brother called as I was getting up from pre-work nap. I was no ruder than usual when I told him I couldn't talk and rung off, but he took his normal offense and kept calling. I texted him to call after 10pm PST.

He lives in La La Land and feels guilty about not being nearer to our ill father. He tries to force his guilt upon me since I don't visit the land before J, K, and B though I'm within state's boundaries. He understands my primary  reason:"home" sucks.

Regardless, J, K, and B all hate going there and I rather be with them. My brother keeps trying to bribe me to visit the old homestead, and I can't convey the fact that I'd rather be with my kids without punishing them by taking along for the visit.

Cybertrash

Remember Myspace? Did you leave it formally, or did you just forget to logon indefinitely?
I read the headline about Lady Gaga having 71% of her Twitter followers being "fake accounts." When you are talking about millions of unattended accounts, it makes you wonder about cybertrash. It's in Twitter's best interest to have as many unique users as possible for valuation of the company and its marketing reach, but a deluge of redundant content makes searching the internet feel like the pre-Google days where everything  seems to be garbage when you use Google to look up a roommate you have lost track of 10 years ago.

I tell people if I can't find you on twitter or Facebook, then you may as well be dead. Google seems to index those two locales more than anything else.

Trivial thoughts. When I die, I will be abandoning at least 10 email accounts. Spam finds me, so I suppose that I  must exist in some plane of reality, regardless if I'm alive or not.


Is it possible to destroy the internet? What if an EMP  somehow wipes out all digital knowledge, would that throw the world back into the dark ages? 

Sad to think that "57 channels and nothing on" meant something when 57 channels was a lot of channels. Imagine if there was no television from all the satellites becoming somehow fried. Scary, huh?

Never read Bradbury

So it goes that I read everything Kurt Vonnegut published but not a sentence by Ray Bradbury. I feel no mourning at his passing, but I felt little when KV died. Old age is nothing of which to be ashamed, but Vonnegut got nuttier day by day and was consumed by a poor information diet. He loathed war due to his being captured and held at Dresden during its firebombing, so he sought anti-war movements.

Kurt Vonnegut mocked Ray Bradbury by stating that Ray Bradbury was afraid of driving thus the irony of his sci-fi career.

Loopholes

The two constants in life are supposedly Death and Taxes.
People are willing to spend a lot of money to stay alive as long as possible, for they can't take their money with them. It's the insurance and pharmaceutical companies' fault that the medical bills are to high.
People pay people to find loopholes to avoid paying taxes. It's the fault of the rich that they don't pay more.
 
It is human nature to not want to over pay for goods, services, and taxes.

Unfortunately more times than not, a certain adages like, "You get what you pay for" and "there's no such thing as a free lunch," hold true.

I don't understand what people expect when they want free healthcare and free education.

Do they expect teachers, doctors, and nurses to be their slaves and to work for nothing? No, but they want someone else to pay without having skin in the game.

I'm still annoyed that MCA died. I never bought a Beasties album, but I didn't hate hearing them when my brother played them. I didn't care for a lot of my brother's collection, while some of it I liked a lot.

Cancer sucks. There was a time it was a seemingly instant death sentence, but modern science has come a long way in terms of giving hope. Curing cancer for good is still a long ways away. Drug companies have to do research and development to invent new means of treating diseases. R&D makes it take years to get a new medication on the market. Manufacturing the end product is relatively cheap, but the costs of the R&D need to be recouped for the company to break even. Only a short window of opportunity exists for BIG PHARMA to reap profits and Joe and Jane America are the lucky ones to patriotically pay the tab(Lott, 2007).

Yes, I finally finished Freedomnomics, and I would like to wish its author, John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D., a happy birthday. His book gave a good counter-balance to Freakonomics which works well with my philosophy of conflict indifference. I see that he has a newer book out that I feel needs a cursory perusal.

RIP MCA

Just heard on the breaking news  that  Adam Yauch has died. Loved him and the Beasties on Futurama.