I was livin' it up last week.
I took the entire week of Thanksgiving off (3 work days) and went with my bride to D.C. We had a blast. Nerds that we are, we spent 2 days in the American History Museum, a day at the Natural Science Museum, a long afternoon at the Air & Space Museum, and a day viewing the monuments on the National Mall. In between, we made a trip out to the country to her godmother's country estate for Thanksgiving.
It wasn't quite the sprawling estate we'd envisioned. It was on a plot of only a few acres, but the land was attractively kept in a mostly natural state with some landscaping. A large fountain sat out front in a pond near a gazebo. The back yard had a large swimming pool (covered up for the season) lined with small statues; nearby a luxurious hot tub awaited us, with a man-made waterfall as a backdrop. The house itself was very elegantly appointed inside with fine antiques and artworks. My favorite room was the beautiful library, with its rich green walls, towering cases full of books about history, architecture, and art, plush sofas perfect for long reading sessions, and charming antique writing desk. The dining room, where Thanksgiving dinner was served, boasted a long (18 feet maybe?) table and sideboard littered with antique silver. The hostess decorated the table herself with flowers and foliage in harvest colors, with glass gourds. The table was set with fine china, antique silverware, and Waterford crystal drinking vessels. Such is the only way a gentle-man would dine on this holiday.
Our bedroom was in a large finished part of the basement, expertly decorated like a Western huntsman's lodge, complete with bearskin rug, big sectional sofa upholstered in a geometric Native American pattern, stone fireplace topped off with a trophy deer's head, and a stuffed & mounted black bear. There were times when I didn't want to leave the cozy comfort of our little suite.
Of course, I couldn't resist dressing for the part in D.C. I donned dress trousers, conservative necktie, and my tan trench coat, to evoke the archetypal government agent, and walked with a confident stride and a serious demeanor. My shaggy mane, however, probably diminished the effect. I opted to leave the coiled earphone at home. A great little touch was a blue & gold American eagle lapel pin I found at a museum gift shop. The tan trench coat is by no means a cliché or passé in that town; it was a fairly common sight on the metro on weekday mornings & evenings. Part of the excitement of the District is the concentration of shadowy G-men. I may have passed by Secret Service agents, FBI agents, or NSA spooks without knowing it. If I won the lottery, I could see myself having a place in Arlington and riding the metro to town and back during rush hour dressed in my government goon gear, just for the hell of it. I'd have to get a haircut, though.
My enjoyment of our vacation was enhanced by not having to do anything we didn't want to do. No getting up with the alarm at 7:15 and trudging to a boring office, no worrying about what to eat for supper. For a week I got to live the life I've always wanted. Now I'm back in my gray little cubicle, doing shit I don't want to do, dreaming of a better life lived on my own terms.
On an unrelated topic, I think if I win the lottery, I would assemble a private motorcade. It would be awesome to ride around town in a black limo, escorted by big black SUVs and perhaps a few motorcycles. If I had enough winnings, I'd have a few different styles of motorcades: Presidential (Cadillac limo with little flags on the fenders and a personal seal on the doors, GMC Suburbans, Crown Victorias), European (Rolls Royce limo and Range Rovers, BMW motorcycles with drivers wearing yellow hi-vis jackets), and generic American VIP (Lincoln Town Cars, Lincoln Navigators, and Lincoln limo). I'd say that would be a hell of a lot better than what most of the dumb hicks who usually win the lotto do with their winnings, like buy ATVs and invest in relatives' cockamamie business schemes. God, how much longer must I languish in this cubicle before I have the means to do what I know I'm meant to do, which is live fabulously?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Rain, Rain, Go the Fuck Away
I know rain is good for the earth. I learned about the water cycle in grade school. I know we're finally getting back in stride with our average yearly rainfall after a shortfall earlier in the year. I'm still about damned tired of all this foul-ass weather. Rain has been pounding the area nonstop for 3 or 4 days, combined with high winds and chilly temperatures. The worst thing about weather like this is that I have to go out in it. I have to get my ass up at 7:30am, put on my rain gear, and schlep to my cubicle in the rain and cold, then back again in the 5:30 blackness. Let me tell you how much fun it is to drive home in the rain, in the dark, on well-worn roads. The painted lines may as well be imaginary. On days like this I just want to go back to sleep until 10 and stay in my bedclothes all day, eating soup and popcorn and slurping hot chocolate while snuggled up on the couch watching the idiot box.
These blustery days have also coincided with an effort to rearrange my car's entertainment-related gadgetry in time for the drive to the RenFest this weekend. Ever try doing stuff to your car when it's raining and you don't have a garage? It sucks, dear reader, it powerful sucks. Especially when you're dashing back & forth between the car and your toolbox upstairs because you keep needing shit. Fuck, I forgot the electrical tape! Where the fuck did I put the Velcro? Anyway, I purchased a cheap but decent LCD screen on ebay, plus an AV cable for my iPod. I'm putting the screen where the stereo was (right below the windshield), and removed the ashtray down below, where I'm putting the stereo. I couldn't get hold of a universal mounting bracket right away, so for now the stereo is resting on my old mobile laptop mount. Still, I'll be able to play movies on long trips. I opted not to install a DVD player because messing with DVDs would be too much of a hassle. My iPod has scores of TV shows and movies already on it. Under the stereo I'll mount my little CB radio, mostly to have an extra gadget that looks cool. The final result should look very neat and tidy, with very little visible wiring. As much as I love the '90s, I can't help but love today's technology. Ten years ago, who would have dreamed that we'd be able to carry around a full library of music, TV, and movies in a device no bigger than a deck of cards, and play them on a screen in the dashboard?
I wish I had tonight to finish up, but I'm going to a concert. I foolishly entered an office raffle for free tickets and won. It's a performer that my wife and I don't dislike but neither of us is fanatical about. The weather is not an encouraging factor either. I would have given them up but I've done that twice before due to scheduling conflicts and it would annoy the person who doles out the tickets, so I'm stuck. I can't blow it off or pass along the tickets to a friend because there's a possibility that word will get back to the office and piss off the other people who entered the raffle. At least we get access to the VIP lounge where there will be free food of a very unhealthy variety (I believe slider burgers are among the offerings). At this point I'd really rather go home, finish up the stuff in my car, and get in my PJs and watch TV while the rain hammers down outside.
These blustery days have also coincided with an effort to rearrange my car's entertainment-related gadgetry in time for the drive to the RenFest this weekend. Ever try doing stuff to your car when it's raining and you don't have a garage? It sucks, dear reader, it powerful sucks. Especially when you're dashing back & forth between the car and your toolbox upstairs because you keep needing shit. Fuck, I forgot the electrical tape! Where the fuck did I put the Velcro? Anyway, I purchased a cheap but decent LCD screen on ebay, plus an AV cable for my iPod. I'm putting the screen where the stereo was (right below the windshield), and removed the ashtray down below, where I'm putting the stereo. I couldn't get hold of a universal mounting bracket right away, so for now the stereo is resting on my old mobile laptop mount. Still, I'll be able to play movies on long trips. I opted not to install a DVD player because messing with DVDs would be too much of a hassle. My iPod has scores of TV shows and movies already on it. Under the stereo I'll mount my little CB radio, mostly to have an extra gadget that looks cool. The final result should look very neat and tidy, with very little visible wiring. As much as I love the '90s, I can't help but love today's technology. Ten years ago, who would have dreamed that we'd be able to carry around a full library of music, TV, and movies in a device no bigger than a deck of cards, and play them on a screen in the dashboard?
I wish I had tonight to finish up, but I'm going to a concert. I foolishly entered an office raffle for free tickets and won. It's a performer that my wife and I don't dislike but neither of us is fanatical about. The weather is not an encouraging factor either. I would have given them up but I've done that twice before due to scheduling conflicts and it would annoy the person who doles out the tickets, so I'm stuck. I can't blow it off or pass along the tickets to a friend because there's a possibility that word will get back to the office and piss off the other people who entered the raffle. At least we get access to the VIP lounge where there will be free food of a very unhealthy variety (I believe slider burgers are among the offerings). At this point I'd really rather go home, finish up the stuff in my car, and get in my PJs and watch TV while the rain hammers down outside.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Additional ramblings that didn't fit in with the post about the internet
I long for an enclosed, attached, heated & air-conditioned garage. I haven't lived in a house with a garage since 1987, and that one was not attached to the house. Before that, the most we had was an open-air carport. Most of the time my parents parked their cars in the driveway anyway, and used the garage for storage.
Reader, if you have an attached, enclosed garage (that you actually use for parking your daily driver), be grateful. When I come home with a carload of groceries or other items, I must park outside my front door, no matter how foul the weather, and brave the elements as I transport the bounty into the house, my delicate gentle-manly body abused by the repeated transitions from cold to warm, hot to cool, or wet to dry and back again. A gentle-man such as myself should be exposed to unfavorable conditions as little as possible. In my previous post I mentioned the convenience of online grocery shopping, preventing me from having to exit my vehicle and be affronted by commoners. The unavoidable unpleasantness of exiting the vehicle outside my house, however, is most unsatisfactory. Many times my eyes and ears are offended by the presence of neighbors' children out of doors. Why are they not toiling in coal mines or tennis-shoe factories, or scrubbing their parents' floors?
How grand it would be to go about procuring provisions in the following manner: Enter my garage, which is kept at a comfortable temperature year-round, without exiting my house, enter my vehicle, open the garage door by remote control, set out into whatever foulness Mother Nature is shitting out, have the groceries set in my trunk as usual, and upon my return, park in the garage, which has returned to its desired temperature, and move the groceries directly into the kitchen, all while completely warm and dry.
I despise the transition to Standard Time. I absolutely loathe the onset of darkness at 5:45 in the afternoon. It's nearly dark by the time I get to my gym after work. If I can, I do my grocerying on weekend afternoons, going without necessities if I must. Clocks should be set an hour forward in October, keeping sunset at bay until 7:30, then back again in the spring. The time shift and seasonal change makes me desire the enclosed garage that much more. Those who start their days early may bitch and whine about getting out of bed in darkness, but I would prefer to get my starlit commute out of the way at the beginning of the day after a refreshing night's sleep and an energizing breakfast, rather than have to endure it after a day of labor with a tired brain and a grumbling stomach. I don't mind driving in the dark if I know daylight is just over the horizon, but knowing that it's just going to get darker as I journey home is a disconcerting thought. I feel that maintaining DST year-round, or even my proposed resetting an hour forward in the fall, would be a boon to all citizens. The economy would get a boost from consumers willing to shop in the evening hours when daylight still lingers. Fewer cases of seasonal affective disorder would arise. Fewer automobile accidents would occur in the evening rush hour with daylight still present. And we'd all be just plain happier with a little extra sunshine in our lives.
Reader, if you have an attached, enclosed garage (that you actually use for parking your daily driver), be grateful. When I come home with a carload of groceries or other items, I must park outside my front door, no matter how foul the weather, and brave the elements as I transport the bounty into the house, my delicate gentle-manly body abused by the repeated transitions from cold to warm, hot to cool, or wet to dry and back again. A gentle-man such as myself should be exposed to unfavorable conditions as little as possible. In my previous post I mentioned the convenience of online grocery shopping, preventing me from having to exit my vehicle and be affronted by commoners. The unavoidable unpleasantness of exiting the vehicle outside my house, however, is most unsatisfactory. Many times my eyes and ears are offended by the presence of neighbors' children out of doors. Why are they not toiling in coal mines or tennis-shoe factories, or scrubbing their parents' floors?
How grand it would be to go about procuring provisions in the following manner: Enter my garage, which is kept at a comfortable temperature year-round, without exiting my house, enter my vehicle, open the garage door by remote control, set out into whatever foulness Mother Nature is shitting out, have the groceries set in my trunk as usual, and upon my return, park in the garage, which has returned to its desired temperature, and move the groceries directly into the kitchen, all while completely warm and dry.
I despise the transition to Standard Time. I absolutely loathe the onset of darkness at 5:45 in the afternoon. It's nearly dark by the time I get to my gym after work. If I can, I do my grocerying on weekend afternoons, going without necessities if I must. Clocks should be set an hour forward in October, keeping sunset at bay until 7:30, then back again in the spring. The time shift and seasonal change makes me desire the enclosed garage that much more. Those who start their days early may bitch and whine about getting out of bed in darkness, but I would prefer to get my starlit commute out of the way at the beginning of the day after a refreshing night's sleep and an energizing breakfast, rather than have to endure it after a day of labor with a tired brain and a grumbling stomach. I don't mind driving in the dark if I know daylight is just over the horizon, but knowing that it's just going to get darker as I journey home is a disconcerting thought. I feel that maintaining DST year-round, or even my proposed resetting an hour forward in the fall, would be a boon to all citizens. The economy would get a boost from consumers willing to shop in the evening hours when daylight still lingers. Fewer cases of seasonal affective disorder would arise. Fewer automobile accidents would occur in the evening rush hour with daylight still present. And we'd all be just plain happier with a little extra sunshine in our lives.
Life before the internet really sucked ass when you think about it
I thought about something profound today: Children born within the last 15 years or so have no concept of life without the internet or mobile phones. I am among the last generation of people who remember a time before these miracles.
I did school projects entirely based on books and printed articles, schlepping to the library in the cold and rain instead of holing up in my cozy house.
If I wanted to know something about a local business, I looked them up in a heavy phone book and called them to ask directly.
Single songs could only be purchased if they were popular at the moment, and required a trip to the music store (Record Bar!), where $3 (in early '90s dollars) had to be plunked down for a cassette with a track on the other side that may or may not suck. CD singles were a shocking $6. If I may digress a bit, remember how CD changers were the ultimate automobile add-on in the late '90s? Wow, 6 CDs! That's like 70 songs in your car! Fuck that shit, man, I got nearly 1800 songs and hundreds of TV shows on my ipod.
My dad was the last guy who would ever have skin mags, so decent beatoff material had to be gleaned from R-rated movies from the independent video store, or mature audience comics. How many times did I spank it to Danger Girl?
Ordering things by mail required either a phone call to a live operator, or sending a check through the mail and waiting 2 or 3 weeks to get your order. Finding some hard-to-find item required numerous phone calls to area shops and dealing with clueless clerks.
Burning questions couldn't be answered instantly, like what actor played the guy in that movie, or who sang that one hit wonder.
Getting a photo or document to someone required time and postage.
If I missed a TV show, I'd have to wait until summer reruns and hope it wasn't being rebroadcast on a week that I was at the beach (where we had no TV).
If I wanted a weather forecast, I had to wait through 15 minutes of local news first.
If I wanted to know what friends were up to, I had to call them on the landline phone and hope they were home to answer.
If I had been dropped off somewhere and needed a ride, I had to use a dirty pay phone, sometimes outdoors. At least those were in greater abundance back then.
If I were meeting someone somewhere, and he was running late, I was left in the dark about it. Or he'd have to call where I was and ask for me, making me move my ass to the phone.
Shopping for stuff used to require a trip to a store, where I had to park, deal with pushy clerks and annoying shoppers, all with the possibility that I wouldn't find exactly what I wanted. Now I can peruse dozens of merchants' wares and compare prices without leaving my house. It's gotten to where I can get some things I want cheaper online, including shipping, than in a store. Anything that keeps me from having to navigate the endless aisles of Wal-Mart and stand in line behind some morbidly obese trailer rat and her four mulattoes is OK by me. Though I would miss the entertainment of watching her slap them around. I've even taken advantage of online grocery shopping, where I just pull up to a pickup lane and they bring out the groceries to my lazy ass. Such does require a trip outside the house, though, and they sometimes make substitutions that I don't want.
As the winter gloom, with its short, cold days and long, dark nights, approaches, I feel increasingly appreciative of all the internet does that allows me not to have to stray from my warm house out into the unforgiving elements.
I did school projects entirely based on books and printed articles, schlepping to the library in the cold and rain instead of holing up in my cozy house.
If I wanted to know something about a local business, I looked them up in a heavy phone book and called them to ask directly.
Single songs could only be purchased if they were popular at the moment, and required a trip to the music store (Record Bar!), where $3 (in early '90s dollars) had to be plunked down for a cassette with a track on the other side that may or may not suck. CD singles were a shocking $6. If I may digress a bit, remember how CD changers were the ultimate automobile add-on in the late '90s? Wow, 6 CDs! That's like 70 songs in your car! Fuck that shit, man, I got nearly 1800 songs and hundreds of TV shows on my ipod.
My dad was the last guy who would ever have skin mags, so decent beatoff material had to be gleaned from R-rated movies from the independent video store, or mature audience comics. How many times did I spank it to Danger Girl?
Ordering things by mail required either a phone call to a live operator, or sending a check through the mail and waiting 2 or 3 weeks to get your order. Finding some hard-to-find item required numerous phone calls to area shops and dealing with clueless clerks.
Burning questions couldn't be answered instantly, like what actor played the guy in that movie, or who sang that one hit wonder.
Getting a photo or document to someone required time and postage.
If I missed a TV show, I'd have to wait until summer reruns and hope it wasn't being rebroadcast on a week that I was at the beach (where we had no TV).
If I wanted a weather forecast, I had to wait through 15 minutes of local news first.
If I wanted to know what friends were up to, I had to call them on the landline phone and hope they were home to answer.
If I had been dropped off somewhere and needed a ride, I had to use a dirty pay phone, sometimes outdoors. At least those were in greater abundance back then.
If I were meeting someone somewhere, and he was running late, I was left in the dark about it. Or he'd have to call where I was and ask for me, making me move my ass to the phone.
Shopping for stuff used to require a trip to a store, where I had to park, deal with pushy clerks and annoying shoppers, all with the possibility that I wouldn't find exactly what I wanted. Now I can peruse dozens of merchants' wares and compare prices without leaving my house. It's gotten to where I can get some things I want cheaper online, including shipping, than in a store. Anything that keeps me from having to navigate the endless aisles of Wal-Mart and stand in line behind some morbidly obese trailer rat and her four mulattoes is OK by me. Though I would miss the entertainment of watching her slap them around. I've even taken advantage of online grocery shopping, where I just pull up to a pickup lane and they bring out the groceries to my lazy ass. Such does require a trip outside the house, though, and they sometimes make substitutions that I don't want.
As the winter gloom, with its short, cold days and long, dark nights, approaches, I feel increasingly appreciative of all the internet does that allows me not to have to stray from my warm house out into the unforgiving elements.
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