Rain, Coffee, and the Price of OJ in OK

It is just after 9:30am on Monday. I have been awake since around 7:30am. That is when I heard the rain. Well I heard the dog whining because of the rain and then I heard the rain. I got up to let Choco inside because he really does not like the rain. I then started the dryer, filled the Brita reservoir, took a shower, and got dressed in that order. I put the dishes from the dish drainer away, washed the dishes in the sink, and started the kettle to boil the water for coffee in roughly that order. I brewed about 32 ounces of Yeman Harazi coffee in a pour-over filter carafe I have been using lately and I had a cup of coffee while listening to the rain fall and prepared to start breakfast. I realized we were out of milk and orange juice both. Well we had a little milk that expired two days ago. I do not chance such things. Drinking soured milk would ruin my morning and my morning was going well.

I do really like coffee, if you know anything about me, you know that I like coffee; I want something else when eating breakfast or other meals. Occasionally I can drink super hot and fresh coffee and eat a toasted turkey sandwich with provolone and mayo. Usually I want iced tea or a ginger ale with my sandwich though. I like to save coffee for after meals including breakfast. If I have good coffee, say a washed yirgacheffe or a Yemeni bean roasted within the last couple of days, it is detrimental to have food with it. The taste is so good on its own that few other flavors or textures would do anything other than diminish it. Sometimes I will have something chocolate with my coffee. This is when I am feeling particularly decadent and indulgent. Chocolate and coffee are two things I would saw off heads to protect. They are my precious. Yes I sound pretentious about coffee. I am pretentious about coffee. I will not apologize. I really like coffee. If you know me, you know that.

So I put away the eggs and bacon, did a quick check to make sure the bread was still good and went to the grocery store. What in the crap hell happened to the price of OJ in the Midwest? Apparently Al Gore was right and we are all doomed. There was a late freeze in Florida which means Tropicana can find out what the market will bear on a half gallon of squished oranges. At least the milk was on sale. $1.47 for a half gallon is a good price. It makes me wish I used more milk so I could save even more money. Yep. That's what consumerism has drilled into my head. Buy more to save more. Freaking brilliant.

I arrive back at the house and have coffee while preparing my breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. I enjoy a classic simple breakfast if I am the one cooking it. I have no problems digging on some swine as long as I do not see any horrible BK commercials with that flying damned pig while I am doing it. I drink a glass of liquid gold OJ with my breakfast and sit down to write this. What a nice rainy Monday morning. I still have the rest of the day ahead of me and I already feel like I have accomplished something. Now what to do with the rest of the day? There is literally nothing that I want to see in the theaters this week. There is a Cubs Pirates game on this morning at 11:30, but that is closer to watching old people have sex than it is to watch two good baseball teams play. I think I will clean house, listen to my Wilco Pandora station, and later read more of Nicholson Baker's A Box of Matches. The minutia can be stunning. If you read all of this, thank you. I am experimenting with some new approaches to getting the thoughts out of my head. Have a good day.

Memorial Day

I do not have many plans other than having lunch with Christina, doing an hour or two of work at work, and watching Tim Lincecum and Ubaldo Jimenez face each other this afternoon. It is shaping up to be a tremendous weekend for pitching . Roy Halladay threw a perfect game on Saturday and now the other two best pitchers in baseball are facing off today. Jimenez threw the first no hitter this year and Lincecum is just a freak of nature. If you have even a remote interest in baseball you really need to see this dude pitch.

Christina has to work today because the customer service industry never closes. Yep, we are always here to listen and to resolve our customers' service issues courteously and efficiently. You're welcome. She has also been asked to work at a classical music festival in Hot Springs on her off days. I am happy she has this opportunity and Arts Administration is her preferred field, but it blows that for the first 7 weeks this summer our days off will be different, and for the first 3 weeks of those she will not even be in the same state on her off days. That sounds a whole lot like whining. I will stop immediately.

I am planning some time off for next week, my birthweek. Yes, birthweek. I was born three weeks late so I think I should at least be able to celebrate my birth for one week a year. My delayed birth also set a precedent for the procrastination that has plagued my life. I will write more about that later. I am not sure what I am planning to do with all the time I will be off. I think I will mostly just hang out and decompress. Maybe sleep in, make breakfast, ride the bike, catch a matinee, watch baseball, cook something on the grill, and approach a sublime state. I wish I were independently wealthy and could take months off at a time. I think it would be hugely beneficial to my quality of life. I need to start playing the lottery.

A note for the holiday: For those who lost loved ones in the defense of our country, I cannot fathom your sacrifice and I pray that you will know peace.

Monday is Alright

I am off today. Unlike the majority of the working world, I have Mondays off. I take great care to keep my Mondays free. As a result of my days in the foodservice industry I have learned the value of not working on Mondays. It is like Sunday but the stores are open and are usually almost empty. Same with restaurants, movie theaters, and you name it. The nine to five Monday through Friday crowd does not go out on Monday.

I can catch up on any TV I missed from the previous week on Mondays. Or I can open up all of the windows and the doors and spin my vinyl record albums as loudly as comfortable as I drink iced tea on my porch. I do not have to worry about bothering people because all the people are at work.

I can act indignant if some functionary interrupts my day with piddly ass things that should not intrude upon my weekend, or I can take care of business and get a jump on the week. It's just like eating cake and having it too. It would be impossible to eat cake without having it. Mmmm cake. I want some. Back on track. I try hard not to abuse this Monday is my day off power I hold, but it goes to my head sometimes.

This is a couple of paragraphs about having Monday off. There is a lot more to it but I am going to cut it short. There is no baseball on until later today and I am trying not to be so obsessive about the game for a while so I have plans to catch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at a local not for profit theater then come home and listen to the games instead of watching them as I sip iced tea on the porch until the street lights come on. Sounds like summer.

Days like These

The good news is that at no time in the last 38 days have a found it necessary to use tobacco or nicotine in any form.

It's another Sunday morning and I will have the day to myself. Christina took an upgrade Team Leader position that was supposed to end on May 8^th but was extended. For the next 7 weeks she will be working a shift only a sadist could have created. She is working 1015 – 2100 with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as her weekend. Yes that means that every day is completely filled with work and that her off days happen in the middle of my work week. I don't mind having one day off that is different; I am pretty good at keeping myself out of trouble for one day each week. I can do things that make me feel like not only a self sufficient but also a productive member of society. For instance I can pay bills, clean house, take old clothes to Goodwill, wash my truck, and other busy work.

But if you give me too much free time I will do things that would probably be considered obsessive and/or compulsive like going to the movies each day after work, watching baseball nonstop including watching the previous day's games until the current day's games start, searching the internet for random quotes, song lyrics, esoteric trivia or whatever else pops into my head, checking Amazon half a dozen times to see if there are any good deals, and obsessing over my fantasy baseball team. I should do something productive with my time such as ride my bike or jog or finally let Christina put up her Bowflex so I can work out. I could read more. I could always read more. I am at least two lifetimes behind on my reading list. I could devote that two hours a day to writing that I have always promised myself I would. Instead, I stay conflicted between all the things I would like to do and the few things I actually do as the days pass faster than the hours, or so it seems. I am not quite this unfocused, manic or morose when Christina is here. She helps me keep on an even keel most of the time.

I hope I haven't harshed anyone's mellow. I am trying some self motivation here. I need more coffee right now. Then I will get this show rolling. I am not sure where though.

Under the Knife

I have avoided dentists with all of my might for a long time. I finally decided if that if I am going to be adding years to my life by cutting out the bad stuff, I am going to need my teeth too. So much for my original plan of living fast, dying young and leaving a good looking corpse. It worked about as well as using Y2K to get out of debt. Secretly I also wanted to be told I should give up coffee to keep my teeth white so I would have another reason to not trust dentists. Anyone who recommends that I stop drinking coffee will immediately go on the watch list and will not be trusted. My precious and I do not need them and will not frequent their establishments.

After some poking and prodding, and being hooked up to some contraptions that I saw in photos of the Spanish Inquisition, NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition, I get the verdict. The dentists points to an X-ray and tells me I should be in pain. I tell him that aside for some sensitivity to extreme cold I haven't noticed anything and I can power through a little tingling when I am eating ice cream. He doesn't even crack a smile. I have a dentist with no appreciation for self deprecating humor. He explains that I will be having a root canal on my next visit and directs me toward the person who will make payment arrangements.

This is not a practice with which I am familiar. Every other doctor I see just bills me what the insurance does not cover. These dentists act like loan sharks dealing with dead beats from the get go and will not even schedule the procedure without also making payment arrangements. While I understand and almost admire this trust no one policy of theirs, it also makes me want to delay payment for as long as possible. Let's stretch this thing out so I can pay it off with my pension. I am in no hurry.

That was a little more than a week ago. This past Monday I went in for the root canal. The last dental procedure I had was when I was 19 and had my wisdom teeth pulled by a Navy dentist. I do not remember that being so bad. I was awake through the whole thing, but my mouth was as numb as a stone. This was pretty much the same thing. The dentist was doing his thing with drills and whatnot while I had a wedge holding my mouth open and a dental dam keeping stuff from falling down my throat. The assistant and the dentist carried on a conversation for most of the procedure. I wouldn't say they pretended I wasn't there. It was more like I was there but I was only a mouth and completely detached so that the rest of me was not there. They even wiped stuff on the towel they had placed on my chest. I found this to be oddly intrusive and somehow borderline dehumanizing. Sure I am okay with them sawing up my teeth and pushing and pulling around in my mouth with sharp instruments, but wiping the debris on the towel they placed on my chest bothered me. Yeah. I'm a freak. I am considering waiting a month or so and seeing if I can refinance my payment plan. Maybe I can get a better rate somewhere else.

Computer Repairs

It has been a minute since I last posted, but I am BACK. I am still tobacco free and tomorrow it will be 26 days. I am really excited about that. Some days are better than others, but I still do not find it necessary to smoke about it.

What have I been up to since I last posted? Glad you asked. Among other things I have been watching baseball, reading Nicholson Baker, waiting for the new episodes of Lost, and catching the odd movie here and there. I have been unable to use my laptop to listen to music lately and I really miss that. Over the 3 + years I have had the laptop I have used it as a laptop which to me means I can put it on top of my lap; It seems that might not be the best thing for laptops because I have caused the power cord jack thing to become damaged to the point that it will no longer hold the power cord.

Well great I said to myself. I paid big bucks to get the warranty thing when I bought the laptop. It is about time I get to use it. Not so fast. I bought the 3 year warranty for some insane amount of money that if properly invested would pay for two laptops today. Maybe I am exaggerating there. Anyway a 3 year warranty, no matter how much you pay for it, does not work on a 3+ year old laptop.

From researching my predicament I discover that the power jack for this model is not soldered onto the motherboard and can be purchased new for around 30 bones. Lucky break I think. The only repair places I could find involved me paying closer to $150 to mail the laptop off with the promise of a speedy return. I was not thrilled with the idea of shipping it anywhere so I elected to perform the surgery myself. I had cracked the case on the thing before to clean the fan so I thought I could do this as well.

Meanwhile I was using a nettop computer which I got because my old desktops are far too old to not make me scream at them when I am trying to get stuff done. The nettop is super cool and super cheap. $199 bucks for a computer that will output 1080p, run Boxee, Hulu desktop, and Windows Media Center is awesome but the computer is not as portable as my laptop. The nettop came in handy to order the part to fix my laptop and to view the instructions on how to perform the surgery. But I am spoiled by the mobility a laptop allows.

The operation went mostly okay. The dining room has the best lighting in the house so that is where I chose to do the dissection, but my nettop with the instructions for taking the thing apart is in my office. The instructions were not in a printer friendly format and I did not feel like making them printer friendly or killing 3 trees printing them out so I just went back and forth between the rooms. After getting the thing into about 127 pieces, I was finally able to take off the old power jack and put on the new one. I put every last little piece carefully back together, turned it on and discovered the touch pad and the keyboard did not work. So I take it apart again, find my mistake, fix my mistake, and put it back together. Hallelujah. We have success. Apparently.

Later that day when trying to listen to some music, I discover that the laptop speakers do not work. They do not work even a little bit. Total silence no matter what I try. After some soul searching introspection I realize that I must not have reconnected the speakers the second time I took the thing apart. Damnit, damnit to hell. I do not want to take the thing apart for speakers if everything else is working perfectly and everything else is working perfectly. I have some cheap USB powered speakers on the way. The next time the computer is heating up and needs to be cleaned, I will reconnect the internal speakers. For now it is in stealth mode.

I really wanted to be able to boast of my prowess with computers and tools and fixing computers with tools and determination, but my mute computer mocks me every day. I realize this is an epic post and the story is not over yet. The laptop's internal speakers will work once more. If you are still reading, thanks for sticking with it to this point and don't ask me to work on your computer. I will mess it up. Until next time take care.

10 Days

I am on my tenth smoke free day. The cravings have decreased in intensity but not in frequency. I have more triggers than I realized, but that is to be expected I suppose. I have been a smoker for more time than I have not been a smoker and there are many things that remind me of smoking and give me the urge to smoke. Success has provided great positive reinforcement and motivation though. Each day does get easier. I feel my success at this point relies on me remembering to take Zyban. If I forget to take the medicine in the morning, my urges to smoke are more difficult to control. I only have two more months on the Zyban and then I am on my own. I think by that time I will be okay.

For those who are trying to quit smoking too, I really appreciate your encouragement and wish you success as well. Having a plan this time around has really helped me. A plan, coffee and some mild anti-depressants are all you really need to succeed in any endeavor right?

On an unrelated note I am reading Nicholas Baker's The Anthologist. So far I dig the way this dude writes. His style reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk if Chuck had manners and wrote about poetry and heartbreak instead of bodily fluids and sexual depravity. Finding a good new book reminds me of why I decided an English degree was worth 4 years of my life and a monthly student loan payment.

My cup is almost empty and a little too cold for my taste which means it's time for a refill. With that, I will go until next time.