I didn’t skip a day yesterday. I wrote a very enlightened entry and posted it.
For about three hours. Then I deleted it.
I thought I had another one saved and ready to go, but it turns out that I didn’t. Imagine my chagrin. The point is, I did indeed write something yesterday. So there.
The weather in Duluth yesterday, by the way, was sort of incredible. At about 3 o’clock, when I took my only break at work (work was sort of incredible, too – I love days like that), I walked around the building and couldn’t believe it. It was about 60 degrees and beautiful.
A few days ago, there were warnings about deep freezes and blizzards and armageddon and other random acts of weather violence. Oops.
It is currently a little before 6AM on Tuesday, and I’ve got a band rehearsal tonight. In order to make sure that I don’t have two open dates in a row, I’m writing this now and scheduling it to be published later tonight. The ability to do this is a good thing. Unfortunately, it sort of hinders my ability to write about what I’ve done all day when I haven’t yet done it.
That being the case, I shall now write about what I haven’t done.
1. I have never skydived, bungee-jumped or rock-climbed. This is primarily because I am terrified of heights. Why that is the case is not clear to me, as I didn’t used to be. When I was young, I loved being up in the air. I have dim memories of hanging out in the top of extremely tall trees at Acadia National Park in the mid-70s, when my family took a vacation there while taking Cy to start her studies at, interestingly enough, Acadia University (Halifax, NS). I was climbing trees constantly when I was young. I fell out of one once. It was behind the apple stand by the Red Apple Motel on Route 22a in Vermont. Cy and I were working there one weekend (actually, apparently Cy was working there and I was climbing a tree in back) and a branch broke and I plummeted about 10 feet to the ground, where I landed flat on my back, got the wind knocked out of me, and thought I was going to die. Cy heard a thump, came to see what it was, saw me lying on the ground going “huh, huh, huh,” and, to my great dismay, walked away. She later explained that she thought I was laughing at her. No, Cy. I couldn’t breathe. So maybe that’s why I’m now afraid of heights. I honestly don’t know.
2. I’ve never been a good passenger. If I’m in a car (or bus or airplane or train or golf cart or any other conveyance) and I’m not driving it, I tend to get extremely nervous. I’m the guy who has the imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side, and I’m constantly stepping on it and annoying whoever is doing the actual driving. People tend to take this personally. They shouldn’t. I just don’t like being the passenger. Because I’m a completely selfish bastard, it never occurs to me that they might not like being along for the ride when I’m driving, either; but that’s really not my problem. Better for them to be nervous than me, say I.
3. I’ve never been fired. No, really. In my entire life, I’ve never gotten the axe. I suppose I should be furiously knocking on wood at this point, because losing my job at this point in my life would be a catastrophe (I’d be looking for a bankruptcy lawyer within 10 minutes), but I’ve often pondered just why it is that I’ve been so lucky. Oh, wait. I think I might have been let go from one job that I had when I was helping a guy build his house. I must have been in 10th grade and it was a summer job. This guy was building an underground house, powered by a series of ponds that drained into each other and produced enough energy to power the house, pump the water back to the top pond, and have enough leftover electricity to sell back to the power company. I hated that job and was terrible at it. Frankly, I don’t remember if he asked me not to come back or if I told him I wasn’t going to. At any rate, both of us were quite content with a situation wherein he finished the project without my assistance.
4. I’ve never understood this whole “reverence for the flag” thing. This is coming from someone who’s been flying an American flag at his house since he first moved in (the ability to put up a flag was, in fact, one of the reasons that I wanted to own a house), who was in the Boy Scouts (made it to Life Scout, which is one below Eagle, I think), and who is genuinely happy to live in America – though I was a lot happier with that fact before Newt Gingrich and his cronies got power in 1994 and pretty much destroyed the concept of civility. The flag is a piece of cloth. I pretty much tune out whenever anybody talks about “fighting and dying for our flag,” and it honestly doesn’t affect me to see pictures of irate Iranians burning the American flag or anything else. Here’s a tip, flag burners: we’ve got more.
5. Going along with point 4, I’ve never “gotten” the concept of military fraternity – or fraternity fraternity for that matter. People who get all misty-eyed about their time in the service (or in a frat) and wax philosophical about brotherhood and teamwork and the honor of serving together and yada yada yada – particularly those people who’ve never actually been in the military – tend to annoy me. It’s a job. If you enjoy doing it, good for you. I have a job, too; and I used to – and occasionally still do – hang out with coworkers at non-work functions. You don’t hear me babbling about the “brotherhood” of my office, though. The same goes for organized labor. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I do have a problem with huge companies, and I want to vomit every time I hear the CEO of, say, AT&T pop off with the “our greatest asset is our employees” nonsense. At the same time, however, I have to wonder about the people in the unions. Where do their loyalties lie? With the company that pays them or with the union that they pay to belong to? What is all this psycho-babble about “I’m a union man, and I stand with my union brothers?” The only “union brothers” (and sisters) that they know are the ones who work in the same office with them, and – more than likely – they’re not going to open up their spare bedroom when one of those union brothers gets fired.
6. I’ve never – and I mean never – been a morning person. Getting out of bed, particularly when it’s dark, is the hardest thing I have to do every day. When I was in elementary school, my father would have to wake me up about 6 times every morning. I’m sure it aggravated him that I’d fall asleep two seconds after he’d woken me and he’d have to keep coming back to do it again, but that’s just me. Once I’m awake, I can stay awake for a long time and light revives me when I’m tired. When I want to drive to Canada non-stop, for example, I like to leave at about 4 in the morning. That way, I get to be on the road when the sun comes up and I can thrive off of it and drive, without feeling at all tired, for 18 hours. That initial awakening, however, is a bitch.
7. I’ve never bought the whole “for the children” thing. Granted, I’ve never had children, and that could possibly be clouding my thoughts; but whenever a politician trots out that whole “we’re passing our debt along to our children and grandchildren” argument, I tune out. So what if we are? Are they any more likely to pay it off than we are? Should they get a free pass when we didn’t? If it weren’t for them, maybe we wouldn’t have all the debt to begin with. Same goes for other child-related arguments. Taking hostages is a bad thing, but taking a child hostage is a really really horrible nasty terrible awful thing. Why is that? If anything, young children have a better chance of bouncing back from it. And that’s another thing: when does a child cease to be a child? If a 9-year-old kills his sister, he didn’t know any better. If he does it when he’s 13, he’s a “disturbed youth.” If he’s 17, we have hearing to determine whether or not to try him as an adult. If he’s 18, he’s locked up for 50 years. The message is that if you’re 18, you’re a responsible adult, right? But you can’t have a beer until you’re 21. When did you stop becoming a child? And what is our whole hang-up with age anyway? Is 18 really any different than 17 or 21? I don’t get it.
8. I’ve never eaten a live prawn. I’ve never eaten a live anything, I don’t think. Oh, wait. One time when I was 8 or 9, I ate an apple (the hole where the core had been removed was full of peanut butter, by the way), and I’m pretty sure that there was an ant in it and it bit my throat on its way down. It hurt and I was horrified and thought I was going to die. I haven’t liked peanut butter much since then.
9. I’ve never poured concrete. Don’t know how to do it. Wouldn’t have a clue what’s in it. This is too bad, because I’d sort of like to build a new shed in my back yard; and I’d like to put it on a slab. As I’ve noted, however, I don’t know how. Like, how deep do you dig the hole that you’re putting the concrete in? Is two inches enough or does it have to be three feet? And what keeps it from seeping into the dirt around the hole (is that what those 2x4s are for)? So, nope. Totally helpless when it comes to pouring concrete. Or is it cement? Are they the same thing? See what I’m saying here? I just don’t understand.
10. I’ve never done anything and then said to myself, “That was awesome. You just can’t do it any better than that.” I am the ultimate perfectionist. If I bowl a strike, I want to bowl another one. If I write something, I want to edit it…and then edit it again…and then again (I should point out that, except in extreme situations, I do not edit this blog. This garbage flows out of my head just the way you get it). If I play something very well on my horn, I’ll always find something about my playing that bothers me anyway. If I’ve rearranged my room once, I’ve done it a hundred times. I’ve just never been been satisfied with anything, to be honest.
11. I’ve never known how to end a blog entry.
TWD