usual ponderings

Ever year I try to self assess and hope to change things for the better. I'm lousy at following through on anything since everything boils down to vague ideals. Tonight I was doing my night job and thinking about a five year outlook with regards of getting set for when D will be school age.
Not sure how long my hands and such can keep at said job, but five more years of boredom there seems regressive, rather than status quo.
I've plenty of options, but I don't care for them, given I'm disorganized at the moment and more commitments won't tame my chaos. I need to master my current state before I add to it. Being proactive is not easy, but first thing will be to focus upon creating energy. Eating better and getting proper rest will get priority over doing slacker fun stuff... if I can get some

weekend recap redux

Drive to WV was uneventful. Pee break was nearly three hours into drive, less than half hour from destination. We sidetracked to my mom's before checking into our room. We were gonna eat with her if we didn't need to stop on way eastward. Bob Evans is across the street, basically, from my childhood home. If the gas stations and Arbys were razed, the view would be unobstructed. We had BE carryout later, as well. Trip to my dad's was ok until we got there. He's crazy or delusional from wanting to be able to control things he can't. At least he's out of hospital, though nursing home is depressing beyond words. My daughters had never been to my childhood home. The baby freaked out when she saw a cat. Never knew her to scream, but cats scare her, I guess.
Night at hotel was nice and spaceous. Dion and his wife were at my mom's when we were heading down for "free" breakfast. Regardless of the questionable whirlpool and lack of breakfast bacon, we'd definitely stay at the Springhill Suites again.
Swung over and saw my brother, then we met up the nursing home briefly before meandering at Eat'n Park as we waited an hour for food. Got seated quickly, but ordering and such took...
a while.
Drive home was a different experience than drive day before. Lots of screaming occurred.
We survived.
Had a mouse or two before we left, so I set traps. Three were empty but sprung when we returned home. Not a good thing... and no, we aren't getting a cat.
Was thinking of giving up blog as a resolution, but I'll keep at it. Hope to be more involved with outside world, though.

Death of a blog?

April 8th is coming.
APRIL EIGHTH IS COMING!

Well, Windows XP will cease to have support from Microsoft in THREE WEEKS, which means that my PC, HAL II, will either need to be tossed, upgraded, converted, or taken offline.

I'm leaning towards the last option. I am an internet junky and could use the break from the distractions of being online 24/7 due to broadband.

Since I have other options to get my online fix via my son's laptop and the family tablet, I am not about to conform to what ever is the MS CEO's expectations with regard to my XP PC.

HAL Sr. was Windows 98 and died sometime after HAL II's arrival. In the end, I only loved HAL for his Rat Poker that I never found elsewhere. I just realized that my pinky healed!

HAL II is getting to be rather slow. I get plugin fails all the time I have multiple tabs open. I moved everything file-wise off of the hard drive on to an external drive just in case HAL II decided to die like he almost did when I was doing the Search Engine Evaluating for Leapforce. He hasn't been the same since January 2012.

I'd been thinking about building a a new PC back when I came across a book at Half Price Books, but the process wasn't free, so I put the matter on hold.

I don't want a new 'puter, for I really only use it for Internet and budget analysis. So I shall probably just take out my wi-fi adapter and use HAL II as a wordprocessor that can do spreadsheets. I have a few programs on HAL II that could be utilized since I'll have all the free time.

One day I imagine J and I will get smart phones, so I'll be able to Tweet and such then, but until then I'll probably go cold turkey.

Meanwhile, I won't be following sports or hunting for non-existent jobs as much.

I may become a better father in the process.

I definitely will be less confused by how asinine one of my senator's endeavors are. Dude tweets stuff he's supporting in the senate, and I find he must think he's pandering to idiots when I read the details. First he was about raising minimum wage while ignoring his own state's minimum wage is higher than that he was slamming, thus making a dubious argument that doesn't represent his actual constitutes. Now he wants to expand EITC to include more adults without children, saying it helps children.

Being trained to be a librarian is a mixed bag. Jobs are few and far between (and don't pay great considering the master's degree needed), while I have research and critical thinking skills that allow me to pursue details of stories beyond the candy coating fluff and get to the poison core to avoid the pitfall of utter surprise when the excrement hits the air conditioning.

day off until key dropoff

The end of the year has a number of meaning to me. I mainly review the year and think of its pluses and minuses in my development towards finality. 2013 was a fair year. Economically it seems square with 2012, so no regression is good. My family has been healthy, though we have burned through over $5K in HSA funds.

Nothing sticks out. I have a job, which is much better than being on unemployment. I would never consider bringing another child into this world if I was not working. I could work more, but childcare is so expensive that avoiding it is like free money in a strange way.  If you spend $20 a day for a kid to be watched, then I saved easily $10K ($20 X 2 kids X 5 days X 52 weeks= $10,400, plus not having to pay taxes on money saved means an additional chunk saved considering Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes are still owed on the money paid towards childcare).

HSA will be beneficial when tax time comes, for the medical expenses would have been made regardless of HSA, but HSA saves us whatever % of income tax we'd have paid on the money that we were spending. Lowest tax bracket is 10%, so that's a minimum of $500 less in taxes owed.

Dull stuff, taxes, but I think of them a lot after reading Rex Stout's reasoning via Nero Wolfe.

I'm reading Richard Zacks's Island of Vice, which has given me a new perspective on William McKinley's successor in the White House. I once wrote a paper on President McKinley's untimely assassination. I didn't have anything nice to say about McKinley's term in office given my impression of Mark Hanna as his puppet master.

Though I am not done, I am glad that Richard Zacks told me about his research when I emailed him that I enjoyed one of his previous books regarding pirates. I still have the email dated November 7, 2007, which seems a lifetime ago.

--- Richard Zacks <rzacks@echonyc.com> wrote:

> always glad to cement a marriage...
>
> Thanks for your note... it gives me a boost as I try
> to make sense of Teddy
> Roosevelt, prudish police commissioner of NYC,
> 1895-1897. I'm a tad behind
> schedule but hope to have a book out late next year.
>
> Sorry for the delays... I toyed with writing fiction
> but it doesn't suit me
> to make stuff up. I prefer the strange but true to
> the merely strange.
>
> If you have a friend or neighbor to tell about the
> books, pls. go right
> ahead. I have delusions of... being surrounded by
> adoring eyes, followed by
> applause. I would probably run off the stage or trip
> down the stairs but
> it's a nice delusion.
>
> Richard Zacks

 TR had his fair share of haters. Wonder how he would have reacted to today's blogsphere.

Quiet day. Kids are home another week and I had the day off until I got a call needing my key. Someone from corporate had inadvertently pocketed a manager's key during an inspection and is now out of state. I live 20 miles away from my job so the venture takes an hour roundtrip, which is much shorter than anyone else who was available with a key to spare.There's worse things.

My New Year's resolution is to embrace the happiness I have achieved. Sure I'll look for opportunities and be forward thinking regarding taxes and the like, but I have to remember to be thankful for the family with which I have been blessed despite my personal failings.

Sunday, June 16 is Father's Day

Looking around the house, I'm disappointed in my lack of progress towards "resolutions."
I spend more time online than I should, so I'm thinking of taking a hiatus until Father's Day with regards interests beyond things related to email.
Tomorrow is the last day of school for K and B, so I plan to be busy with them throughout the summer.

O-H-I-O

"Only handle it once" was a saying that some guru used to clear up a mess when I was flipping stations once. It stuck with my memory, but the principle never did. I tend to keep things much longer than I should. I have the best intentions to do something but I get distracted and a neglected mess is born.
It's not procrastination so much as a lack of will power to see things through to the end. Perhaps if I read this book, The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success, I'll subconsciously start completing the things I start? Couldn't hurt, but I must finish a few things first... I should probably do them before I type another word.

Boston

I was in my car driving to pick up B when I realized something was amiss in the world. The radio was cut to Fox News and that is rare. Only other time I remember such occurrence was when the "Balloon Boy" was supposedly missing. Hindsight, I'm still wondering about the coverage for that hoax when compared to actual events like people being blown up. I think that the Chris Dorner siege also happened while I was in the car driving to get B, now that I thin about it.
Regardless, I was confused by being stuck listening to something without visuals and context. I texted the only person I knew that may be near a TV, but he was working and knew little.
Of course this was a couple days ago, but I'm feeling about the same: confused.
Maybe I'm desensitized or the fact that a motive hasn't been made clear has made the explosions seem like any random bombing in Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, or Afghanistan.
Why Boston? Why a marathon?
I guess I could look and see what the "profilers" make of the motive for the target, but my gut says that the person behind the bombing wanted attention on a big scale and was familiar with the Boston Marathon.
To me, I think a place where people would be drunk and packed together like a college football game would be more ideal for mayhem, but a marathon has a lot of moving parts that make discarded duffel bags and backpacks seem less suspicious...
I'm just not going to think about it. I'll just focus on my little world and not give idle thoughts to things that seem senseless as part of my goal to manage time better..

364 days later

Today marks the last day of the year that has been ramblings and meanderings here. I remember 4/18/12 like yesterday. I was unhappy. Not as annoyed as I most recently was with Menards.
A number of uneventful things have occurred, but yet I can vividly recall such inane moments in time. Perhaps I shall revisit those stale posts and fix them into a certain standardization, if I feel inclined to do such things. The first 50 or so things were written in a manner to add original contact to get approval for an Adsense account. Probably won't since my spacial sense of time has gotten out of whack.

I woke up yesterday morning thinking it was Saturday.

I need to focus on the things that are important and to make them my priority. TV isn't going anywhere as I tell K with regards to DVDs and Netflix, same can be said for the clutternet.

New Year's resolutions should be season dependent and flexible throughout the year, even though they boil down to being the same vague notions that seem unobtainable to the likes of me. I just have to raise the bar and focus on the tasks and forget about the big picture like Mathew Scudder's AA meetings have taught me.

• read more
• manage time better with regards to priorities
• engage with the family better
• eat better
• be more active
• appreciate the little things and become at peace with the things beyond my control

Reflecting upon the final day of January

Where is time going? I must be doing something right for I'm feeling more accomplished than I did at the start of the year.
Resolutions aren't set in stone, but they are being met.
"Seize the day" has yet to become a daily thing, but I've moments that are better than others.
Today started blah, but ended well. As soon as I string some days together, then I feel the chance to be more capable of being happy without reason.beyond the knowledge that my family is well.
My dad may never be well, but I suppose some of that is mental. Sure he's in pain, but once pain becomes the norm, then don't you get used to it? Maybe I'm reading Dale Carnegie too closely? I'm currently in pain from having "worked" for the first time in a long time doing a motion that's tightened my shoulders and back, but it's a good pain of a day well done. To a certain extent I think my dad wants pity, and to another extent, I think he's stuck in his thinking that he can get better. He needs to appreciate the things he has, but he's got jacked up priorities.
As I was saying earlier, I started the day a little blah. I got up and got K ready for school and took out the trash, but once he left B awoke and was upset that J and K were gone. I felt tired and I got her to go back to sleep. Definitely not a "seize the day" sort of thing, but I was in a funk until I drove B to preschool.
After dropping her off, I went to K-Mart to buy some shirts to wear to work. I'll be working with chemicals, so I wanted some long sleeves to protect my arms. Buying long sleeved shirts in January isn't easy, but I found a few on clearance.
I also looked around for a floor lamp to replace one we got as a wedding gift that died recently. Floor lamps aren't easy to find, and K-Mart doesn't seem to carry them. If they do, then they aren't anywhere near table lamps or light bulbs.
With my mission only half complete, I suffered through the longest three person deep check-out line.
K-Mart has WAY TOO MANY FREAKING PROMPTS when you buy stuff.
When I got home, I washed my new shirts and did things around the house until I had to pick up B.
We were meeting J in an hour so I could drop off a car to have its odd ball problems fixed. I told B to keep her shoes on when we got home, but she didn't. She decided to barricade the front door to lock out K when he got off his bus. After a few moments of failure, K came in through the carhole. He listened to me about getting ready, and even helped B get her socks and shoes on. 
I didn't want to get at the mechanic too early. It was way too cold to be waiting with kids, so I timed myself to get there at 5. People were driving SLOW, and J called me that she arrived when I was a BLOCK away.
So, the plan was met, and we proceeded to the next agreed upon step of going to Steak'n Shake. We got free teas and sodas, as our normal waitress was serving us and it wasn't happy hour, nor kids eat free weekend. It's a nice perk of being a regular.
We got shakes before leaving for home. Once home, I got ready for work/training. I left early because it started to snow and people don't know how to drive in snow (even Ohio, mind you!). Sure enough, I was forced to drive well below the speed limit.I got there about ten minutes early.
Work was slow, so I had a chance to get training without chaos going on. I did a lot of watching, but I did a lot doing. I should be able to do my job in an hour and a half alone, but tonight I did half the work in 2 hour plus hours as I learned the process.
As I said, the day was a mixed bag in terms of productive seizing of the day, but it's a step in the right direction.

Two O'clock Bonk

Woke up 20 minutes later than normal this morning, and I seriously considered going back to sleep once I got K on the bus. I rationalized that I did go to Meijer last night rather late. Then again, I did get up and felt a cup of Joe could give me a kick start to a seemingly blah beginning. It did its job in that I didn't slack on K's breakfast or lunch and was showered before his bus came. If I shower, then I'm 98% likely staying up.

B was still asleep while K drove away, so I had "free time." As part of my goal to "seize the day," I ate breakfast,  washed a load of laundry,  and dusted the living room before B awoke.

I sorted the mail and I shredded a lot of things that were in the hopper before dropping B off at school.

After dropping her off, I went and got some pizzas and napkins before arriving home.

So, here I am at 2pm feeling a bit bonked. Yesterday, I did yoga, but I'm too hungry for yoga at the moment. Since when did I start feeling hunger in the middle of the day?

Been too busy to start chapter 2 of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, but I'll find time.

Yoga

Though I once was a regular at the YMCA and ran several times a week during high school, I can only recall ever touching my toes once while standing and bending forward. I never was much for stretching as a whole, so once I touch that time I was content.

The older I've gotten, the stiffer I've gotten. I'm roughly ten years removed from the last time I was regularly hitting the gym, but I'm not obese or flabby even. I just am less tone, and get sore easier.

Anyways, I've tried in the past to get regular with yoga, and here it's the ides of January that I've done my first attempt at it for '13. I want to rid myself of back pain, so I'm going to try to stick with it.

Reflecting upon the completion of Tom Jones

There are multiple editions of literary classics, thus completing one and boasting of achieving such a feat is a red-herring when throwing out page numbers read.

I completed Tom Jones this morning. I started reading it two weeks ago, but it hardly feels like so many days have passed. I don't know what some of the book means, but the main plot is straight forward enough in the conclusion that the 18th century double talk is not a complete barrier to unassisted understanding of the author's meaning and/or intent.

Regardless, I am at liberty to start another item that I have yet to complete form my days in college, but I'm not sure I will at the moment. I need to read something different and that wasn't forced on me like Willa Cather.

I bought How to Win Friends and to Influence Others from Half Price Books because a former boss had once attempted to read it. The edition I bought also had How to Stop Worrying & Start Living, and I never felt compelled to read it until now.