Entries from August 2008 ↓

• @joefromkenyon That’s a relief but I can’t help but think you’re bad parents for leaving the cute baby skunk to fend for itself. Seriously. #
• Wait a minute. I’m on vacation. It’s 9:30p. The kid is taken care of. The wife is out. Why in the Sam Hell am I still awake???? Good night! #
• Eating pizza with @popejephei. Tweeting this at his request. #
• It’s labor day. And if you’re like me the one thing you can’t stand is a labor day free of Halloween decorations. This grocery store doe … #

• Preparing for a Maine lobster roll. A little worried about the quantity of mayo. Hopefully the lobster isn’t back to swimming. #
• The Maine lobster roll issue would have made more sense If I’d hit send last night. It was decent-not swimming. #
• At car show on an old air force base hoping to be reunited with my old Jetta. They show those right? #
• @popejephei no making fun of Idaho. Unless you spent 12 to 15 years there you have no idea how pathetic it really is. #

My brother and I talked this AM about politics.  He mentioned a friend of his who leans conservative.  This friend, he’s a pilot for an air cargo company.

So I asked:

Does he make $1 million a year? No.

Does he have some other monetary wealth, a few million dollars worth?  No.

Does he have land, some tangible assets, etc., that amount to a few million dollars in value?  No.

So I asked:

What does he have to conserve?

My brother’s answer: well, not much.

(BTW, this is totally stolen from Peter Harris who expressed it far more eloquently than me.)  (Maybe he also stole it from someone — I don’t know.  Or, really, care.)

• Visiting 87 yo grandmother. Lunch? Takeout from local hospital cafeteria. Yes – really. #

• On way home from drinking with he work crew. Fun. Hopefully I can sober up enough to avoid the bed spins. Mmmm. Bed spins. So not fun. #
• @lingo1126 oh man now complete strangers have it out for me! This makes the 3rd time this week someone’s lunch leftovers landed in my bag. #
• @ScooterGirl I know: awkward right? And yet there it is, unfolding like an Arthur Miller play, characters coming to life in front of me. #
• @popejephei plus one of that. I saw him introduce elton john. He was charismatic and engaging. He’s better tonight even w/ the 5 sec delay. #
• Up? Early. The kid? Awake for about 45 minutes. Song going through my head? The Ramones, Garden of Serenity. I am definitely on vacation. #
• Oh and for the record definitely not hung over. #
• OK now I have to do that thing I’ve been putting off. You know what maybe I’ll just take a second to check/update twitter ….. #
• First flight with the critter just about to get under way. #
• Braving sushi in Manchester nh. The miso soup is pretty good. All this to offset the baby car seat drama. National’s seats suck. Bought one. #

• @shobyabdi dude that’s nice work! Congrats! #
• The Critter awake and fed at 4:45a. This almost certainly means I need to take the early train in to work. And that I will run late for it. #
• ….and irrirtatingly my blog appears to be myteriously 500 ing. hmmmmmm…. #
• i hate troubleshooting websites. I know it was working last night. what happened between then and now? #
• broke down and submitted a support ticket-I hate doing that. But I hate it just a little bit less than trying to fix it myself. Go Dreamhost #
• OK i submitted that ticket almost 3 minutes ago and have yet to hear anything. C’mon people. This is my BLOG. My 3 readers will abandon me! #
• At a very salesy presentation at a user group. Unfortunately they also have rice krispy treats which means I’m not going anywhere. #
• @scootergirl beware — paybacks can be …. unpleasant. #
• @popejephei how about “omfg”? #

• @popejephei and I’m not even watching the convention! WAID-Posting videos! http://tinyurl.com/59atur #
• @popejephei this might be a case of if you can’t say anything nice……. #
• @joefromkenyon the real downside of the cute baby skunk siuation is that all of your Twitter followers will ping you for updates. “ping” #
• @popejephei Just a heads up–she lost. There’s nothing useful to be gained from fanning any waning flames. Maybe we could just let her rest? #
• @popejephei and I’m with you on Missouri. #

So I’ve had a few more successes after my Metra Lotto post the other day.  But earlier this week, on a later train that I’ve generally managed to be skipped over on, I had a bit of an adventure.

The conductor walked right by.  It was perfect.  I was convinced.

And then, just after the last stop before Union Station, he came around again.  I’m playing Texas Hold ‘Em on my iPhone.  And he stops right by me. In fact, just over my left shoulder.  I can see him out of the corner of my eye, try as I might to win a hand.

And he says, “Oh, I don’t think I got you yet, did I?”

He was clearly within the rules.  Almost like he knows about them and wanted to flaunt that knowledge.

I handed my over my 10 ride.  Damn.

So close.

He’s a clever one he is.

Or, and I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!

I bumped into my ex-wife on the way home from work yesterday.

No one was more surprised than the two of us. It had to be 7 maybe 8 years since the last time we actually saw each other or spoke in real time. So we grabbed a drink and caught up as much as we could before our 6p trains.*

Short version (which is all we had time for): we’re both fine; her kids are cute, my kid is cute; our extended families are fine.

So: “Angry”? Yeah. We married young, and for the wrong reasons.** It wasn’t exactly a train wreck but close enough. When it ended, I was angry. I had a lifetime of anger stored up and it came out. And it stayed out. I wasn’t just angry at her, but she caught most of it.

To put things in some temporal perspective, my masters degree took longer than the marriage. The marriage has now been over for more than three times longer than it lasted. I practiced karate (and have now not practiced it) longer than we were married.*** I have several shirts in daily rotation that I’ve owned for longer than we were together.****

At 24, no one in the world could have talked me out marrying her–not even a ghost of divorce future. It was a mistake, but one that I needed to make.

It’s nice to be far enough away from all that — one of my personal growing pains — to have been glad to run into her, to have enjoyed a few minutes catching up.

It’s nice to be not angry.

–

* No, gentle readers, I did not attempt to induct her into The Cult of The Metra Lotto.

** Other people who marry young do it for the right reasons and are fine — that just wasn’t us. What was mine? Other people were doing it. It seemed like “the next thing”. There were probably more but they don’t really matter at this distance.

*** Which, coincidentally, means that the time since my last bench press and now is not quite twice as long as we were married.

**** Upcoming post: Reid Carlberg, fashion icon.

• Taking a later train in today. To shake off last night’s strange dreams. The last had a large cast of characters from work. Behaving badly. #
• Forgot to icharge my iPhone. Which imeans I’m ilow on ijuice. itragedy! #
• @ScooterGirl A large cast heading to a client. The plot: Stopped at Starbucks for farfalle. They gave me $29 tortellini (6#s). Made me late. #