Life is learning to traverse the difference between what we need and what we receive.
When I turned 35 I ran a mile faster than I had run it before. On my 36th birthday I ran farther than I had run prior to that. On my 37th birthday I tried to sleep late. I had more success with my plans at 35 and 36 because I woke up at just after five o’clock in the morning. Still I stayed in bed for a bit hoping that sleep would carry me back into the Fun House world of the subconscious, but there was no such luck. (more…)
The ball is about to drop on 2009 to draw this year to a close. For the past few years I’ve written an end-of-the-year wrap up about my life. Last year was a little difficult given the events that transpired so I tried to find the highlights amidst the darkness. While this year did not have anything so life altering it was still not a year without pitfalls. However it was also a year of some great things. So here we go, diving into the year that was 2009. (more…)
About a month ago, due to high volume and a surge of demands of our services, my department was told that we would have to move back to a mandatory 45-hour work week. It seems that margins are down and so the upper echelon of the company wanted cost analysis reports for the top twenty accounts for each terminal. Someone thought it would be a good idea to demand all of these at once and make them a rush. We were already busy because of various economic factors. In the bad economy a lot of shippers wanted to reduce rates so they have been out shopping for new carriers. Worse still is the fact that UPS and FedEx both decided to move beyond small packages and get into the freight business. They did this at virtually the same time. Yellow and Roadway also merged, creating a larger company. With so many large companies out there, it has created a freight system that exceeds demand. If there are ten companies that each make ten TV sets per year but there are only ninety people looking to buy one TV each, there’s a problem. Things are not going well for Yellow/Roadway and the freight world seems to be holding its breath that Yellow/Roadway collapses. It would potentially reverse the situation turning it from a shipper’s market into a carrier’s market. But the short version of this entire thing is that I’m working 45 hours per week and as I’m salaried, I get paid the same as when I was working 40. (more…)
Dear Xavier Michael,
Welcome to the world. It’s a weird and often confusing place, but you’re born with advantages in the form of your parents. They love your sister dearly as sure as they love you. You have not taken a share of the pool, instead you have made the pool deeper. They loved you before you let out your first cry. (more…)
The joke that appears in this blog is from Watchmen. I might not get the wording exactly correct and given it’s a three-hour movie I’m not going to re-watch it just for this bit of dialogue, so you can consider this a paraphrase. Fun fact, when most people are saying they are using a paraphrase, they are actually giving a précis. A paraphrase is to say the same thing a different way, but in roughly the same amount of words. A précis is a shortened summary of the original statement. Unfortunately it only has a noun form, so you can’t say you’re précising. Apparently spell-check recognizes it, so maybe you can. That’s your grammar lesson for the day. (more…)
Comedy is largely based on the unexpected. We laugh because we didn’t see the punch line coming either because it is clever or because it is shockingly outrageous. Either way, it’s the surprise that is sometimes responsible for the laugh. So when I tell you that later on in this blog there will be a joke with “sweet potatoes” in the punch line, I am violating one of the fundamental laws of comedy. But when trying to decide what to call this blog, sweet potatoes was the first thing that popped into my head, perhaps because the aforementioned joke was a herald of potentially good news. I don’t know where the joke is going to be coming in this blog because I’m not Casey McCall and this isn’t English class so I don’t have a perfect little outline of my thoughts. Though, I know the joke is coming later so perhaps I am a bit like Casey McCall. You might not have guessed it by now, but this is a blog about my father. And now, we move on to the flash back portion of the blog. We begin in 1985. (more…)
When I was a kid, I thought and did many strange things. I’m sure everyone did, but as I don’t know everyone’s thought patterns or childhood history, I’m just sharing mine. Everything you’re about to read is true, even the parts about my brother, who I swear is a real person. Some of this you may have heard before, some you might not have. Like my brain, this will be in no particular order. (more…)
A lot happened last week in my family. A good indication of this is that yesterday, on Father’s Day, I talked on the phone to all three members of my immediate family and it took three phone calls to do so because each one was in a separate place. (more…)
The movie Radio Flyer has one of my favorite segments in film. It’s about the myths we lose from childhood to adulthood. Blankets protect us from harm, monsters exist, and a towel when used as a cape lets us fly. Adulthood, it seems, is life’s slow dissolving of the myths we’ve always held dear. Fantasy slowly fades to reality. The tags on our presents read “From Santa” but are written in familiar handwriting. George Washington probably did tell a lie at some point. Dreams don’t always come true. (more…)
There’s a lot more to say about everything, but some of it isn’t my place to say or to put in a blog, some of it is too disjointed. I write the following just to put my thoughts somewhere. I’m too tired and too confused to wrap my thoughts up in flowery language or analogy. These are my stripped down, simple thoughts and they have been going through my head since this past week. (more…)