Hi. Lots to report but not much time. We brought all four baby kitties in last night. They were all in the kitty condo on the front porch. We have them in the bathroom for now. Geoff is going to pick one to keep and Bossler's next door want one too. The others I will take to the Humane Society this Saturday.
And Murry showed up last night! I had not seen her for several weeks. I was tempted to bring her in the house and keep her here but, once again, decided that was not the right thing to do. I am reminded of that old hack that begins, "If you love something, set it free.....".
Work remains busy. There are only two weeks of classes left and soon all the students will be gone again for the summer. Hope I get all the "gotta do's" done in time.....
It's Wednesday today. That means donuts at the staff meeting. Yummie! Gotta pinch this off and get to work.
I plugged the old chiming clock in and wound it up too. We have remodeled three rooms in this house in the last three years and have not put one picture or anything else on the walls yet. Since I didn't do any of the work, I haven't been willing to risk the wrath of those who did.
Liz finished her movie project for her last regular graduate school class and turned it in last night. I know she has done all the work but it has changed my life too. She did most of her work on this movie thing on my new PC. It felt good to be able to offer her my machine (3ghz processor, 1 gig of ram, 160 gig HD, DVD burner) to do her project. She still has to complete her "culminating experience" and take her "comps" this summer and then she'll be done with that. She's made it clear that there are many planes circling in the sky and waiting to land as soon as she is done with this Master's degree. Of course, and I'm letting you behind the curtain here, what I have been wishing for for years is a wife who has time to take care of me, cook, clean, and still have time for her hobbies. She would love to spend more time gardening and doing lots of other things for herself. While I want selfish things, I am so grateful for the way she has devoted herself to her career and for the way that her income allows us to live a life where financial concerns are of no concern. I am so very very blessed to have her.
Well, before this gets way into stuff, I better get to work.
Ciao, Babies!
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Good Morning, voracious readers! I am into my second cup of hazelnut coffee, heading for three. The sun is shining gloriously here in Hingham, Wisconsin, USA, and the outside temp is about 36.
I'm not sure where my thoughts will ramble this morning but, lets find out.
Once again, I must cite my frustration (minor) with the "profound" thoughts that occur to me while I'm driving TO work. On the way home, I don't think as much.
I am listening currently to The Human Stain by Phillip Roth. The guy is not much about action and a whole lot about character development. I'm really loving the iPod that I have had for the past three years but only recently began to use a lot. While I am typing this on my 450mhz PC, I'd be lost without my iPod and my PowerBook G4 laptop.
I bought a cassette thingie to play my iPod in the car and it squeaks and clatters and makes a lot of noise. It, by the way, is white and made by Belkin. I have tried several black units of the same function but older and my cassette player spits them back out. I cannot figure out why. The black ones are all silent and they do transmit the sound, but my cassette player won't tolerate them for more than a minute or so. Strange.
News! I pulled the trigger on a new PC. I had my student PC guru, Adam Bauer, put it together for me off http://www.newegg.com, the only place to buy computer stuff. It is packed in boxes and on its way here right now. FedEx will be delivering it work at SNC probably next Wednesday. I'm getting a 19" LCD monitor, a 3ghz Intel processor, a cool blue RaidMax case, an ASUS motherboard, a 160gig hard drive (Western Digital), and a Samsung dual layer DVD burner. We'll throw it together shortly after the boxes arrive and then I'll bring it home to begin transfering things off my current box and installing software. I'm excited to build my first computer. I've though about doing this before but opted to take the easy way out and buy my last PC. But I got quite a powerful computer this time for less than a thousand bucks and it's so sweet to buy it online and not have to pay any tax. Whooda thought? Won't be long and the politicians will put a stop to that.
I've been thinking about guitars too....My Gibson is part of me and I'll never let it go, but the neck is a little too wide and it's hard to play clean barre chords even if I'm not too good at them as of now. I long for something with a smooth, narrower neck that also has a richer and deeper tone. Been thinking Martin but every time I do and look at the prices, I recoil. I just can't justify spending over a grand on another guitar....right now.
Been thinking about a new phone too, but the current plan is to target this for my birthday, on July 4. I want the PalmOne Treo 650. My current Samsung i300 does what I want it to do in that it marries a Palm-based PDA with a phone but the battery life is miserable at this stage and the Treo does so much more. The Treo has a complete querty keyboard, eliminating a lot of the need to use the stylus, which is hard to maneuver while driving. It has a built in camera, handy for snapping those shots that you just happen upon. It has a miniSD slot that will accept Secure Digital memory sticks for storing, oh.....mp3's maybe? Might be cool to devote the iPod totally to audio books and play my music on my phone..... The Treo has a true color screen and would work much better for wireless web access which I haven't really played with but might want to consider at some point.
It is so wonderful to have Geoff at home with us. I felt so empty when the kids were gone and looked forward so much to seeing either of them. Theresa is so far away (2.5 hours) that we only see her once a month if even that often. But Geoff has come home to live with us since his job in Fond du Lac is closer to us than to Milwaukee. I realize that I must be grateful for each day that he is with us because he will leave again and that is the way it must be. I cannot hold on to this wonderful thing. I cannot control it. I can only be grateful for each day, one day at a time.
Geoff helped me set up my new turntable that arrived last week. (Seems I'm in a "buying things" frenzy, doesn't it?) I intend to begin tranfering my old LP's to mp3 format once I get my new computer built. We set up a system in the upstairs bedroom so that I can go up there and listen to my old records without bothering anybody else in the house. I'm using my old Rectilinear speakers which Matt Orlowski, my former student worker, rebuilt for me several years ago. He added replacement tweeters. I had not even played those speakers at all since he re-did them. They sound as good as ever. It's really a "trip" to sit up there and listen to records that I haven't heard in years. Why does it feel so good to look back? It just does. Sometimes, when I listened to those records years ago, my life wasn't so good. Maybe I was drunk or sick or unhappy in love. But I just remember the good times. That music just FEELS good to me now. It's another of those mysteries that I will never understand but will always wonder about.
I even started listening to some of my old cassette tapes in the car this past week. The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Frank Zappa's Apostrophe and Barry Manilow. Yeah, I'm an old fart and I like to think that my tastes are RICH rather than OLD. (Note to Ross, one of my world-wide readers.....giggle......, you WILL get old, but you don't ever have to stop ROCKING! Inside, I have the heart of a 19 year old and the sense of humor of a 12 year old.) My parents listened to "big band" music. My mom like Jim Reeves, a country singer. But the rock era, which started when I was a teen, has not shown any signs of letting up. I've survived Disco and Rap. Well, I've ignored Rap for the most part. I must confess to a total lack of understanding of the whole rap, hip-hop genre. I understand The Blues. I mean, African-American musicians used to be about the Blues. Now, it's this whole Urban, angry, male-dominated, unholy, women-denigrating culture. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I want to understand it though. I want to appreciate it. Maybe some day, they'll have classes in college for music appreciation that study hip-hop artists like the one I took in college where we studied classical composers. I hope to see that in my lifetime.
Oh, you may be wondering about that whole pension drama that I went through in these pages recently. I finally got some GOOD advice from an old, trusted friend. It turns out that there are actuarial penalties for taking my pension any time before I'm 65. Had I taken it at 55, I'd have taken it "up the butt" bigtime. The penalties decrease tremendously between 55 and 57 but are present to some extent until 65. If I had made 30 years of service (I only had 27) I could have had a full pension at 57. My friend indicates that the WRS can probably invest my money better in the meantime than I can if I begin taking it out. Of course, I don't want to go dying before I start my pension as my survivors would only get half of what was put in, but I can't really control that, now, can I? So, I'll keep working at St. Norbert for now, knowing that I CAN quit at any time.
I found, incidentally, that my pension HAS A VOICE. It spoke in my bosses office recently. He reemed me for sending a bcc email to a division chair suggesting that a request be made to my boss about a computer upgrade for a teacher. The division chair, unknowingly, copied my boss with my email when he made the request. My boss felt I had tried to make an "end run" and was outraged that I had not gone to him first. Well, I actually HAD gone to him and he BLEW ME OFF. He also attacked my professional competence when he suggested that I should not complain about a computer that had 64 megs of ram and was running Windows 95. "It has worked fine for years, why shouldn't it do the job now?" I told him in no uncertain terms that if he were on the other side of the desk, he wouldn't think like that. I also told him I wasn't too keen on the way he rubs it in my face as to who the boss is. I understand that I have an ego problem at times but I also have a perfectly good brain. I'm sick and tired of being expected to think with somebody elses brain. I FUCKIN' THINK WITH MINE!! I was much more forceful and told him things that I never would have said if I were not secure in knowing that I can take my pension at any time and start payments as much as three months into the past. In other words, if I wanted to start my pension, I could begin getting payments back to February 1, 2005. My job requires 2 weeks notice and I usually have that much vacation built up. I could turn on a dime and walk away at any time. WHAT A POWERFUL FEELING!! Of course, I must be careful about that. I dearly love what I do and who I do it with. This computer support job on a college campus IS my dream job and I am so grateful to God for allowing me to have it. I don't want a foolish moment of passion, or my huge ego, to screw that up. Liz and I are in good health right now and I look forward to many more years of life with her.
My plans and dreams? When I quit working, I want to go to Arizona for as long as I can afford each winter starting in January or February at the latest. Of course, our kids' birthdays are both in February so we'd miss those but that's also the month that Greg died and it's so hard to deal with winter during that month. I wanna play golf in Arizona and generally lay around.
When I'm no longer working, I want to continue to be active in AA. I want to visit more jails and prisons. I want to do more service work. I want to help out by working for St. Vincent dePaul or some charity like that. I know that I can get meaning and fulfillment in life by serving people once I stop working for a living. Heck, maybe I could even volunteer to teach......well, no, I'm not ready to even say that. Teaching = Stress. I don't need that ever again.
I think it's time to get moving. My finger tips are a little sore and my mind has spewed enough for a while. I gotta go turn the furnace up too....that 62 degree thing in the program at 8 a.m. is felt surprisingly quickly. The temp has risen to 40 outside. I need to get salt for the water softner and pick up the mail.....Saturday happens!
Ciao, Babies, and.......Eternal rest grant unto Pope John Paul and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful, including Greg, rest in peace. Amen.
I'm not sure where my thoughts will ramble this morning but, lets find out.
Once again, I must cite my frustration (minor) with the "profound" thoughts that occur to me while I'm driving TO work. On the way home, I don't think as much.
I am listening currently to The Human Stain by Phillip Roth. The guy is not much about action and a whole lot about character development. I'm really loving the iPod that I have had for the past three years but only recently began to use a lot. While I am typing this on my 450mhz PC, I'd be lost without my iPod and my PowerBook G4 laptop.
I bought a cassette thingie to play my iPod in the car and it squeaks and clatters and makes a lot of noise. It, by the way, is white and made by Belkin. I have tried several black units of the same function but older and my cassette player spits them back out. I cannot figure out why. The black ones are all silent and they do transmit the sound, but my cassette player won't tolerate them for more than a minute or so. Strange.
News! I pulled the trigger on a new PC. I had my student PC guru, Adam Bauer, put it together for me off http://www.newegg.com, the only place to buy computer stuff. It is packed in boxes and on its way here right now. FedEx will be delivering it work at SNC probably next Wednesday. I'm getting a 19" LCD monitor, a 3ghz Intel processor, a cool blue RaidMax case, an ASUS motherboard, a 160gig hard drive (Western Digital), and a Samsung dual layer DVD burner. We'll throw it together shortly after the boxes arrive and then I'll bring it home to begin transfering things off my current box and installing software. I'm excited to build my first computer. I've though about doing this before but opted to take the easy way out and buy my last PC. But I got quite a powerful computer this time for less than a thousand bucks and it's so sweet to buy it online and not have to pay any tax. Whooda thought? Won't be long and the politicians will put a stop to that.
I've been thinking about guitars too....My Gibson is part of me and I'll never let it go, but the neck is a little too wide and it's hard to play clean barre chords even if I'm not too good at them as of now. I long for something with a smooth, narrower neck that also has a richer and deeper tone. Been thinking Martin but every time I do and look at the prices, I recoil. I just can't justify spending over a grand on another guitar....right now.
Been thinking about a new phone too, but the current plan is to target this for my birthday, on July 4. I want the PalmOne Treo 650. My current Samsung i300 does what I want it to do in that it marries a Palm-based PDA with a phone but the battery life is miserable at this stage and the Treo does so much more. The Treo has a complete querty keyboard, eliminating a lot of the need to use the stylus, which is hard to maneuver while driving. It has a built in camera, handy for snapping those shots that you just happen upon. It has a miniSD slot that will accept Secure Digital memory sticks for storing, oh.....mp3's maybe? Might be cool to devote the iPod totally to audio books and play my music on my phone..... The Treo has a true color screen and would work much better for wireless web access which I haven't really played with but might want to consider at some point.
It is so wonderful to have Geoff at home with us. I felt so empty when the kids were gone and looked forward so much to seeing either of them. Theresa is so far away (2.5 hours) that we only see her once a month if even that often. But Geoff has come home to live with us since his job in Fond du Lac is closer to us than to Milwaukee. I realize that I must be grateful for each day that he is with us because he will leave again and that is the way it must be. I cannot hold on to this wonderful thing. I cannot control it. I can only be grateful for each day, one day at a time.
Geoff helped me set up my new turntable that arrived last week. (Seems I'm in a "buying things" frenzy, doesn't it?) I intend to begin tranfering my old LP's to mp3 format once I get my new computer built. We set up a system in the upstairs bedroom so that I can go up there and listen to my old records without bothering anybody else in the house. I'm using my old Rectilinear speakers which Matt Orlowski, my former student worker, rebuilt for me several years ago. He added replacement tweeters. I had not even played those speakers at all since he re-did them. They sound as good as ever. It's really a "trip" to sit up there and listen to records that I haven't heard in years. Why does it feel so good to look back? It just does. Sometimes, when I listened to those records years ago, my life wasn't so good. Maybe I was drunk or sick or unhappy in love. But I just remember the good times. That music just FEELS good to me now. It's another of those mysteries that I will never understand but will always wonder about.
I even started listening to some of my old cassette tapes in the car this past week. The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Frank Zappa's Apostrophe and Barry Manilow. Yeah, I'm an old fart and I like to think that my tastes are RICH rather than OLD. (Note to Ross, one of my world-wide readers.....giggle......, you WILL get old, but you don't ever have to stop ROCKING! Inside, I have the heart of a 19 year old and the sense of humor of a 12 year old.) My parents listened to "big band" music. My mom like Jim Reeves, a country singer. But the rock era, which started when I was a teen, has not shown any signs of letting up. I've survived Disco and Rap. Well, I've ignored Rap for the most part. I must confess to a total lack of understanding of the whole rap, hip-hop genre. I understand The Blues. I mean, African-American musicians used to be about the Blues. Now, it's this whole Urban, angry, male-dominated, unholy, women-denigrating culture. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I want to understand it though. I want to appreciate it. Maybe some day, they'll have classes in college for music appreciation that study hip-hop artists like the one I took in college where we studied classical composers. I hope to see that in my lifetime.
Oh, you may be wondering about that whole pension drama that I went through in these pages recently. I finally got some GOOD advice from an old, trusted friend. It turns out that there are actuarial penalties for taking my pension any time before I'm 65. Had I taken it at 55, I'd have taken it "up the butt" bigtime. The penalties decrease tremendously between 55 and 57 but are present to some extent until 65. If I had made 30 years of service (I only had 27) I could have had a full pension at 57. My friend indicates that the WRS can probably invest my money better in the meantime than I can if I begin taking it out. Of course, I don't want to go dying before I start my pension as my survivors would only get half of what was put in, but I can't really control that, now, can I? So, I'll keep working at St. Norbert for now, knowing that I CAN quit at any time.
I found, incidentally, that my pension HAS A VOICE. It spoke in my bosses office recently. He reemed me for sending a bcc email to a division chair suggesting that a request be made to my boss about a computer upgrade for a teacher. The division chair, unknowingly, copied my boss with my email when he made the request. My boss felt I had tried to make an "end run" and was outraged that I had not gone to him first. Well, I actually HAD gone to him and he BLEW ME OFF. He also attacked my professional competence when he suggested that I should not complain about a computer that had 64 megs of ram and was running Windows 95. "It has worked fine for years, why shouldn't it do the job now?" I told him in no uncertain terms that if he were on the other side of the desk, he wouldn't think like that. I also told him I wasn't too keen on the way he rubs it in my face as to who the boss is. I understand that I have an ego problem at times but I also have a perfectly good brain. I'm sick and tired of being expected to think with somebody elses brain. I FUCKIN' THINK WITH MINE!! I was much more forceful and told him things that I never would have said if I were not secure in knowing that I can take my pension at any time and start payments as much as three months into the past. In other words, if I wanted to start my pension, I could begin getting payments back to February 1, 2005. My job requires 2 weeks notice and I usually have that much vacation built up. I could turn on a dime and walk away at any time. WHAT A POWERFUL FEELING!! Of course, I must be careful about that. I dearly love what I do and who I do it with. This computer support job on a college campus IS my dream job and I am so grateful to God for allowing me to have it. I don't want a foolish moment of passion, or my huge ego, to screw that up. Liz and I are in good health right now and I look forward to many more years of life with her.
My plans and dreams? When I quit working, I want to go to Arizona for as long as I can afford each winter starting in January or February at the latest. Of course, our kids' birthdays are both in February so we'd miss those but that's also the month that Greg died and it's so hard to deal with winter during that month. I wanna play golf in Arizona and generally lay around.
When I'm no longer working, I want to continue to be active in AA. I want to visit more jails and prisons. I want to do more service work. I want to help out by working for St. Vincent dePaul or some charity like that. I know that I can get meaning and fulfillment in life by serving people once I stop working for a living. Heck, maybe I could even volunteer to teach......well, no, I'm not ready to even say that. Teaching = Stress. I don't need that ever again.
I think it's time to get moving. My finger tips are a little sore and my mind has spewed enough for a while. I gotta go turn the furnace up too....that 62 degree thing in the program at 8 a.m. is felt surprisingly quickly. The temp has risen to 40 outside. I need to get salt for the water softner and pick up the mail.....Saturday happens!
Ciao, Babies, and.......Eternal rest grant unto Pope John Paul and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful, including Greg, rest in peace. Amen.
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