geekandfather.com

I’ve tried to shy away from all the religious talk. All it manages to do is alienate anyone who believes anything other than what I believe. Considering that’s 99% of the world, it’s just counter-productive.

But I put a lot of thought into God and religion and right vs wrong and morality and perspective and social dynamics. Probably far more than your average church-goer. I don’t go to church. So I don’t have that one hour per week that I can claim as some weekly minimum to pay to get me into heaven. I’m pretty sure that’s the usual thought.

As I’ve said before, I personally make a large distinction between faith and religion. I do not think they are one and the same. And I have found myself feeling much closer to God or the divine or ka or karma or the Holy Spirit or the Force or whatever the hell you want to call it since removing the bureacracy of organized religion from between me and Him/Her/It.

I have, though, thought of a “religion” that could get me of my ass and to “church” every week.

I call it “The Church of Action”.

I’m pretty sure no one but me will be interested in this one.

It doesn’t waste time with talking and praying and apologizing for being a sinner and preaching and lecturing as a form of worship. It doesn’t say you can’t be this person or that person. It doesn’t say you should dress this way, shun this person, attack that person, convert these people, obey those people.

Words are cheap. Spoken words are the cheapest of all.

Action. Action speaks more than words.

The Church of Action helps others. Period. That’s all. It does not include or exclude. It does not ask for cash, or “gifts”, or “tithes”, or “financial sacrifices” to the church.

It asks for sweat. Labor. Time. And, when necessary, supplies.

It does not have a building, a sacristy, a temple, worship-center, parish hall, or a shelter.

It does not need a preacher or a shaman or a priest or a monk or a prophet.

It needs an organizer.

Someone finds people that need help, and gather the people to help them. People, communities, neighborhoods. Like Habitats for Humanity, but on steroids. Helping build homes is a good one. Help feed the old and disabled like Meals on Wheels. Guerrilla gardening. Planting flowers where it’s just an ugly dump. Cut someone’s grass. Pull weeds. Work a soup kitchen. Build a bunch of cots for groups of homeless people. Build ramps at an elderly person’s house.

Whatever. Anything. Anywhere. For anyone.

It wouldn’t require a base of operations. Just someone good at organizing. Send out instructions via phone calls or newsletters or websites or texts. People would meet, depending on their size, in a field or a parking lot or just someone’s house as a rally point. They would be assigned a task and they go do it. This isn’t a new concept. People all over the world organize all sorts of impromptu gatherings, whether they are parties or concerts or weird moments where everyone breaks into dance in a train station, or all different sorts of useless nonsense.

But, call it a form of religion, and people will do it week after week. Helping others. All the time.

Some undeserving people will try to take advantage. And that will be fine. It doesn’t detract from the act. People help people. Even better - large groups of people helping people. They don’t ask for anything in return. They don’t want prayers. They don’t want food or drink. They don’t want recognition. They don’t even want thanks.

Do a good deed, for the sake of doing a good deed. Accomplish something selfless. Every week. Worship with sweat. Help anyone that may need help. Just because they might. Maybe they will help someone else, too. Maybe they won’t.

It doesn’t matter. Who are we to really decide who is deserving? When in doubt, help.

Don’t debate about it. Don’t pray for guidance. Don’t try to convert. Don’t leave advertisements who helped. Say who you are only if you are asked.

Selfless action. Sweat without compensation. Everyone is deserving.

THAT is what Jesus would do, dammit. Can you picture him in his Sunday best? Driving a shiny car past a fountain and a manicured lawn, into a fancy wooden-carved structure, collecting some tithes, preaching about who’s not worthy, and how God wants you to make a bunch of money and give big chunks of it to the religious leaders?

No. No. No, no, NO!

Sandals. Long hair. Sweat. Hands callused from manual labor. Building things from nothing. Hard work.

Giving. Not begging.

Not asking for anything, except to be good to each other.

That’s the church I’ll dedicate myself to.

Too bad it doesn’t exist.

OK, OK, I know. I was supposed to do this every Saturday. Last weekend I was busy.

We went to Scarborough Fair. It’s one of those Renaissance Festivals here in Texas. My wife had mentioned going to it for quite a few years, and to be honest, I always just blew it off. Last year, though, I could tell she actually meant that she really wanted to go. So off we went. I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. There were lots of little art & crafts shops around. Some I liked more than others. As a parent of children who may very well make their living in the arts in some form or fashion, I don’t mind spending a buck or two (or twenty) there. What comes around goes around, and all that.

But, to be honest, at the end of the day, I’m just a pig. And I had seriously underestimated the eye-candy factor. These people dress silly. There’s no denying that. But it’s a good kind of silly. Period costumes. Leather warrior outfits. Belly dancers. Elves, faeries, gnomes, knights, peasants, royalty, and whatever else you can think of. Yeah - it’s silly. But there people just don’t care. It’s awesome. After spending so long in stuck-up suburbia hell, where everyone is so concerned about what the next person thinks, how things are gonna look, how appearances are going to portray blah, blah, and blah, it was just damn wonderful to see so many people doing things that were just darn dopey. Many times that non-caring attitude is portrayed as an undo about of bare flesh. Like I said - I’m a pig. You want me to be a repeat customer - keep my eyes happy. Then, as a nice punchline, when I was buying a beer, I handed the girl a buck for a tip, and she jammed the dollar down her top. While my hand was still attached.

Yeah - I was sold.

So, like I said, we went back this year.

I had a new oddity to deal with this time, though. Our little girl. She’s not as little as she used to be. Our son didn’t come, he didn’t want to spend the day walking around, and his brain doesn’t quite know what to do with the ample cleavage flying about, I think. Which is good. He’s nine. So that fits. Our daughter, though, is twelve.

Twelve.

It sounds so young when you say it like that.

Twelve.

And she looking more and more like her mom every day.

For the first time, most people were treating her more like a young woman than just a little girl. Nothing really bad. Nothing painfully obvious. But it was there. At the front gate, the ticket-taker was asking her if she was the princess of the group. A normal question - but he gave her around five or six seconds more attention than your average hello. When we went by food stands, the young men giving out samples would aim themselves at either her or my wife instead of me or my wife. When a little parade of the characters was walking by, one woman stepped out of the parade just to smack my daughter on the butt with a padded sword.

None of it was bad. Or even cause for discomfort. But it was an obvious change. She carries her self differently. She looks different. So she is treated different.

I guess this is the time when most dads start to flip out.

“What are you looking at! That’s my daugher!”

“Oh God! She’s not my little baby any more.”

“I’m gonna kick somebody’s ass!”

But I’m just not there.

To be honest. I feel something I would have never anticipated: Relief.

Yup - I’m relieved.

Don’t get me wrong - the actual dating process thing is going to mess me up greatly. And when the occasional idiot goes from the extra bit of attention to outright leering, I might go ballistic.

But, for now, I’m happy. She’s not a little girl any more. She’s a young lady. She’s a legitimate person. She’s a difficult, argumentative pain in the ass, but she’s her own person. We’ve been working for more than a decade to help her grow up into a strong, independant person in her own right. I see no point in feeling bad that all our work is slowly coming to fruition.

And hell - we still have a long way to go.

So, for the moment, I feel good about it.

I’m not superstitious.

I could give a crap about black cats, walking under ladders, breaking mirrors, spilling salt, or any of that other silly nonsense. People take silly coincidences and try to blame unfortunate circumstances on unrelated events instead of accepting the fact that sometimes shit just happens.

On the other hand, I’m not completely unopposed to the idea that sometimes something or someone is trying to throw out a hint.

Call it God or Karma or The Universe or Fate or Ka or The Force or whatever the hell you want. I’m not much for specifics in that kind of thing. I believe that specific answers to general questions are necessarily wrong. So I don’t care if it’s a hint or guidance or coincidence or just me seeing things that are not there.

I took the day off today. From…everything.

I slept in. I didn’t do chores around the house. I didn’t look at the honeydo list. I didn’t clean up anything. (Well, I did empty the dishwasher, but, hey, I needed dishes. A dude’s gotta eat.) I didn’t fix computers. I didn’t check work email. I didn’t fuck around with my Blackberry. I didn’t pay bills.Even the kids were quiet and doing their own thing and I didn’t have to worry about parenting.

None of this was planned. It just worked out that way.

I took an indulgently long hot shower late in the afternoon. I might not have been productive today, but it’s hard to relax with man-funk. I’m weird like that I guess. While standing there boiling myself alive and wasting as much water as possible, my brain attempted to turn towards more productive matters. For once, it wasn’t technical problem solving or money. Hell - it wasn’t even sex. I started thinking about the last book I started to write.

I had it in all my head once before. I had the whole arc set, the characters drawn, the opening sequence, even the specifics of the ending. I had opened a new document, put in the title and the first chapter name.

And then I closed the document and never thought about it again. I had work to do, of course.

Until today.

My brain found an empty spot. No clutter, no stress, no deadlines, no responsibilities. And what decided to fill the gap?

This.

Sitting in front of the computer - typing away.

As always.

Except, doing this, I’m messing with the things I want to mess with instead of solving everyone else’s problems. Instead of pouring myself into every else’s disasters, I’m diving into my own little world.

Ok - writing about writing is probably pathetic bullshit. No one is going to find this interesting except for me. You are just wondering what the hell I’m rambling about, and trying to figure out how any of this has something to do with my not being superstitious.

Fuck off - it’s my blog, and sometimes the most sensible route between two places in my head is a long and winding path.

Like I said last week, I’ve had a good bit of stress lately. Just about all of it self-inflicted. Most of it is honestly pretty pussyish stuff, but stress is stress I guess, and it’s starting to adversly affect me.

The anger, all that old madness, is lurking too close to the surface to make me comfortable. I thought I left it all behind in my teenage years. but it’s there. And I have to concentrate to keep it there as opposed to here. It’s a good thing I don’t commute to work as much any more. The car is too easy of a release. A person’s selfishness  and carelessness is manifested very obviously in their driving, and my deep desire for retribution against those people comes out behind the wheel.

And then there’s those extended periods of indecision. I sit there, staring at the screen or the wall or the window, not knowing what I want to do. I know what I should do. I know what I need to do. But not what I want to do. That’s kinda retarded, isn’t it? How does a person not know what they want to do? I’ve spent so damn long doing what I know I need to do, and what I should do, what I want to do has just left me altogether. I have no hobbies, really. I had a hobby. I messed with computers. But now it’s my job. It’s been my job for a long damn time now. This damn house sucks up innumerable hours of my time. Some of the projects can be fun and challenging. but projects cost money. And money is always a source of stress. Especially lately. And the kids. Of course the kids. I’ll do anything for those little midgets. And they sucks hours and hours out of our days.

Should do. Need to do. Got to do. Have to do. Gotta be done. No one else is gonna do it. Someone’s gotta do it.

That’s the land where I live. 80/20. 20% of the people to 80% of the work. A few of us live so that everyone else can fuck off.

Hell, if you’re not related to me or a friend of mine, and can still spare the time to read this mindless drivel, you’re probably part of that 80%.

Fuck you. You make my life hell.

A couple of months ago, on one of those house projects, I managed to split my head open. Long story. In the ER, when taking my blood pressure, the nurse asked me if I was under a lot of stress. I pointed out the blood pouring out of my head and the splatters of blood all down my shirt and pants and shoes and asked if she was kidding. She changed the subject.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I went to go give blood at my son’s school. My last dealing with Carter Blood Center was less than pleasant - it’s a long story, but let’s just accept the fact that the chick working the bus that day was a completely incompetent retard. I gave blood regularly before that, but she left a bad taste in my mouth, and this was my first venture back in several years. I was mildly stressed I think, but not overwhelmingly so. Long story short - I got rejected because my blood pressure was too high. The nurse said the coffee I had been drinking was enough to do it to me.

That’s two incidents that could be explained by something else. I’m not sure that’s a coincidence. I think that’s stress. I’m letting it build, and something needs to change.

But today - today I let it all go. And I ended up back here again.

I can only surmise that, everything else being equal, this is where my brain wanted to go.

Last week I said I had a decision to make about this site. And, in my head, it was really about writing in general.

And like all good decisions, I made it in the shower.

So I sat down and got ready to see how to re-up my subscription.

But I had an email.

Just one.

That’s weird in itself. Since when do I only have one single email waiting for me? Like friggin’ never.

And who’s it from?

My host. (I don’t use my regular work-servers for this.)

They were thanking me for re-upping my hosting agreement with them.

Ain’t that a bitch? Apparently it was set to auto-subscribe.

Maybe part of me, deep down, knew that. I’m not sure.

And when did they send the email?

While I was in the shower.

The title refers to me, of course.

I think lately I’ve been going through a little bit of that mid-life crisis thing. Not in a big way. I don’t wish I had done things differently. I don’t want to go running off with some young blond and buy an overpriced sports car or any of that silly crap.

I’m just content. Too content.

I have the perfect wife. The perfect kids. The perfect house. I work from home, like I always wanted. I make a good buck (even though we still manage to spend more than I make) - enough that my wife doesn’t need to work if she doesn’t want to.

So…what now?

What do you do when you’ve got everything you want?

They say idle hands are the devil’s playground. But I think the one thing that’s worse than idle hands is an idle brain. I’ve been in 5th gear lately. We’re all hauling ass down the highway of life, but I don’t have to push myself to do it. It makes me messed-up in the head.

I’ve started to dislike my job. I’ve started to dislike my house. My neighborhood. My stuff. I spend far too much time being annoyed with the bible-thumping retards that surround me wherever I go. I get pissed off at my manager for trying to manage me. I get pissed off at other parents for not parenting worth a crap. I guessed pissed off at my bills for getting bigger and bigger.

Like I said, I don’t want to leave my wife or my family. Hell - I don’t even want to leave my dogs. But there are times I just want to walk away from the house, the neighborhood, the cars, the money, the computer. Dump all this crap and move to the mountains. Or an island. Just somewhere that isn’t here.

But I know what this is. People go through this. They want to leave and “go find themselves.” I’m sure that’s what this crap translates to. But my advice to myself is the same advice I give to them:

No matter where you go - there you are.

The problem isn’t where I am or what I’m doing. It’s all in my head. I need to push myself. Harder.

It’s time to downshift out of 5th gear. Start revving my engine a bit. Redline my brain until I collapse on the keyboard. That used to be a regular event. Not so much lately.

This website is set to expire in 60 days. I told my wife I might let it go.

She disagreed.

She said I need to get back into this habit. Start once a week  - maybe Saturday night - shut my door, turn off my phone, grab a ginormous glass of wine, put those pretty girls up in the background of my screen and start writing again.

I do love her so. She knows how I tick better than I do. I don’t need servers to crash to get moving again. I don’t need to be rescuing small businesses from the brink of data-loss disaster to get the juices flowing.

I just need to sit here and let my fingers try to keep up with my brain. It always feels better to do this.

I have two months to get back in the groove. Or I might just lose this forever.

Because if you don’t use it, you lose it.

My fingers are crossed.

I was at my daughter’s Whiz Quiz competition today. It’s like jeopardy for junior-high kids. It was our turn to provide refreshments, so I had to get there early. I figured I’d just bring a book and hang out until the competition started. Little did I know the other team was coming from 4 cities over, so it was around an hour wait.

My daughter is 12, but she’s young for her grade. Most are 13 or 14. And the conversations that go on amongst the kids are getting interesting. And odd.

They got bored, and were making up silly questions and playing with the buzzers. This was my favorite exchange of the day, from 2 kids who aren’t mine:

Zane: What is fastest animal on Earth?

BUZZZZZZZZ

Brittany: A cheetah?

Zane: Wrong! An elephant dropped from a plane.

Brittany: Ummm…don’t you mean a whale dropped from a plane?

Zane: Duh! No! The whale would die.

Teacher: Zane, wouldn’t the elephant die?

Zane: I dunno. But the whale would be like “Whoa where’s all the water?” And just die right then.

Brittany: Oh. Yeah. Good point.

Kids are weird.

But I’m still giggling.

November 3rd was the last time I wrote anything here.

How long does it take a person to get their priorities straight? Probably a lifetime.

Anyway…

I had another run-in with the English language today. My next-door-neighbor got fired. Actually, these days, they don’t call it fired. Even “laid-off” is too strong of a term. She was resourced.

That is IBM’s take on firing 16,000 people. It was a “resource action”.

The result of “an acceleration in workforce rebalancing”.

Do they still have children read the book 1984 anymore? Remember Newspeak? Speech patterns limited by the government to limit thought patterns in the governed. But the government isn’t doing it. We are. We are so afraid of the sting of a harsh word, so afraid of the backlash of offending someone else, so enamored with the idea of making the truth sound better than it actually is, that we are willing to desecrate our own language to hide the truth.

“We want to make more money, so we fired 16,000 people that we can honestly just do without.”

That’s the truth. That’s how they feel.

It’s not new. Corporations do it all the time. Especially lately.

Cost-cutting.

Financial re-evaluations.

Administrative reorganizations.

You are FIRING people. You silly little cowards.

I would plea for these people to have the guts to admit it, but they won’t. It’s a pointless argument. It’s how they sleep at night.

But they shouldn’t. They should lose sleep. Not too much. Just one night for each person they let go.

16,000 nights.

I’ll be OK if they can sleep well 44 years from now. That fits.

My mind is a mess. It’s nothing new.

But my son is practicing the piano.

The election is tomorrow. I can’t wait until it’s over. All this anger from so many sides. Anger that so often leads to blatant stupidity. I hear the bleating of millions of idiot sheep in my head, and it wants to drown out my own thoughts. So many people just want to fight, to hate, to be better than the other side, they will take any little crumb of an idea and just run down the street screaming this undeveloped hint of a half-truth like God stuck his head out of the clouds, carved it onto a stone tablet, and handed it to them.

He is taking the songs that he learned from the teacher and changing them.

I wish, I solemnly wish, people would think. Just think. But it’s more fun to just vomit forth the idiotic vitriol they just finished inhaling.

My daughter yells down from her bedroom room about wrong chords and wrong rhythms. He ignores her and keeps changing the songs.

What makes me feel better about it all, though, is being able to glimpse at the purpose for it all.

She is in 7th grade, by age supposed to be in 6th grade, and in her first all-district band tryout, won first chair above all the other 7th and 8th flutes in the school district. So, she of course thinks she knows better than him. But he keeps on playing it his way.

In geek-land, when we bother the suits with too much detail and facts, they eventually ask us to stop and give them the “high-level view.” In your IT department, asking for specifics and bowing-out with the high-level escape is an insult to the technical people.

She is older than him, and has been playing piano since she was 6. He didn’t start until a couple years later in life. She is far more experienced and advanced then him, and can play written music with an uncanny robotic accuracy. He knows she knows the technicality, but he knows that he is better and changing the music on-the-fly. So he continues to ignore her.

In such broad concepts as Humanity and Life, the details become irrelevant, and there is only the high-level.

They both have songs on a CD that their teacher produced and released over the summer. His, a variation on Malaguena, hers an original duet composition for which she played both the flute and piano accompaniment. They have both earned the right to argue over music.

We all want to be free. We all deserve to be free. Free to do what?

Freedom of speech comes to mind. But that really implies freedom to speak against the government. But what if the government isn’t doing anything wrong? Granted - it’s never happened before. But what if we eventually get there? Other than criticising those with power over us, what do we need to say?

Freedom of the press comes is another popular amendment. But, again, if we reach a point where government actually works, what does it need its freedom for?

Freedom of religion. What happens if we all decide that everyone else’s religion is OK? Granted, I’m not sure religion could be considered religion without an opposing point of view, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Let’s step away from the amendments, since that pattern is set:

Free to get rich. What if we all got rich? What if our technology caught up with our demands, and we rid the world of the scarcity of food and shelter and power and medicine?

What would we want?

What would we want if we achieved all the stupid things that we are fighting so hard for?

What would we do with the freedom?

Are not all these fights stupid? There is enough food to feed the world. Maybe not with gourmet steak, but if we gave a trillion dollars to McDonalds instead of the bankers, I’m sure we could make the whole world fat on Big Macs and extra fries.

But we fight about borders. We fight about dollars. We fight about policies. We fight about gods and kings and whales and cows and oil. We fight because we think we should. We fight because it’s all we know.

But someday, if we don’t blow ourselves up, we will fight about what matters.

1000 years from now, no one will care about today’s cost of oil.

No one will care about this dictator or that president.

What those people will remember about this part of history is what we remember about any other part of history.

The books.

The architecture.

The music.

The art.

Isn’t that what we are trying to be free to do? To find the beauty is all this crass ugliness?

People won’t remember the result of nations fighting each other over oil wells and religion.

People won’t remember the result of corporate titans eating each other.

People will remember the result of children arguing over the next note in the song.

I am easily entertained. It helps make my life happy. I had a moment the other day that qualified above mere entertainment…

I had to go to into the office this week. It’s the monthly meeting where I actually have to make myself look like I belong in a professional work environment and make the 100-mile round trip to our corporate office. Dress clothes and commutes - two of my favorite things.

Yeah, ummmm, not so much.

My wife likes that day, because she likes seeing me in a suit. She says I “clean up well”. I don’t normally dress up unless someone is making me do it. I keep saying I should set aside one day each week to dress like that. It’ll remind me that I do actually do this work for a paycheck. And remind everybody that my home office is really a work office, and we should all be grateful that I’m able to stay home to do my job, for as long as it may last. And my wife just likes it when I look nice. That alone should be enough.

Anyway, the meeting was a meeting. Well, it was actually two meetings. There is never escaping the “while I’ve got you here” routine. Some people just can’t accept the fact that I can actually look at a picture and talk about it without them standing in front of me and pointing with their finger at things.

So, my scheduled forty five minute meeting turns into almost three hours. Typical.

On the way home I stopped at a SuperTarget. We needed bread and milk and coffee and such. I try to do my part with the domestic chores. Yeah - I’ll even buy the tampons and pantyliners. I’m no wussy.

I grab my cart of stuff and go hop in line. Why these ginormous stores have thirty cash registers and only three of them open never ceases to boggle me. I also don’t know why Target doesn’t do the self-check lanes. Then I don’t have to wait on anybody.

As I wait, my spoiled ass is getting really annoyed that I’m <gasp> fifth in line. A glimpse of tan flesh and brown hair catches my eye. At the next open register (which is probably 100 feet away), another shopper is standing in line looking equally annoyed. However this one is a fairly tall, nicely tanned brunette, wearing a halter top and a fairly short skirt. Her arms are crossed and she’s tapping her foot. I couldn’t help but smile to myself at another person mirroring my annoyance over something as trivial as having to wait in line for more than 5 minutes.

Of course, as I’m standing there with nothing better to do than enjoy the view, I guess she feels some laser beams burning into her legs. She looks over to see me staring at her. I, being the considerate married geek I am, don’t make any weird attempt at holding her eyes or any of that other macho silliness. I just kinda half-smile and start counting ceiling tiles while whistling to myself.

Eventually the horrible 300+ second wait comes to and end, they ring up my stuff and I head on out to the car. I always find this particular Target kinda fun, because the store itself is on the top of a hill, and the parking lot tilts down away from it. So, what is there to do but hop on the cart and ride it down the aisle to my car. I usually purposefully park further than I need to, just so I can get some good speed going before the ride is over. I always get weird looks from the snobs. God forbid a grown man is riding a shopping cart like a skateboard. The dress clothes make it that much weirder, I guess.

But it’s fun, so screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

I made it, once again, all the way to the car without breaking any of my old-fart bones or mauling any innocent pedestrians. Didn’t even cut off any cars or anything. Still got some people looking down there noses at me anyway. Dorks.

I’m trying to load the bags into the trunk of the car, but of course the equipment I had to take home from the office is in the way, so I’m half buried in the trunk, my shirt half-untucked from my cart ride, and my ass sticking up into the air, and I hear a woman’s voice behind me.

“Still young at heart, huh?”

Being the smooth guy I am, I attempt to stand up while still half in the trunk and bash the back of my head.

I’m cool like that.

Eventually I stand up correctly and turn around. And who do I see? Lo and behold, it’s the hot brunette from inside. She prettier up close. Legs are long and toned. Sandals with heels and a strap that wraps around her ankles. Nice shoulders and arms with just a little bit of muscle. Tall, with thick, shoulder-length brown hair, loosely flowing in the breeze. Real tan, not the fake orangey thing. And a nice pair of…eyes.

She standing there, her legs almost shoulder length apart, pulling the skirt taught across her thighs. One arm across her belly, the Target bag hanging off her fingers and swinging like a pendulum in the wind. The other elbow is resting on that arm, but her hand is up by her mouth, her thumb under her chin and her finger on her bottom lip, like she’s thinking about something.

I realize that I’m staring for what is probably longer than appropriate, taking a little too much of her in.

So I start with my one-liner.

“Ummm…huh?”

Yeah - that one never fails.

She smiles. It’s a warm, genuine smile. Her eyes are dark and pretty.

“You still like having fun.”

I stare for a second or two. Trying to think. Is that a statement or a question? What is this hot chick saying to me?

OH! The cart! Jackass.

“Oh! The cart! Yeah. Well…I try to take my entertainment whereever I can find it.”

That’s as close to really smooth as I get.

“Well you look like you were enjoying yourself,” she says. She’s smiling. Playing with her lip again. And she just took a half-step forward. OK - I ain’t stupid.

“It’s good to see a man who’s not afraid to show that he likes to play. It’s refreshing.” And another half-step forward. Her eyes go down, and then back up to my eyes again.

“It’s something I wish I saw more of.”

Oh, hell.

Ya know, when I was single (a million years ago) these moments did NOT happen. EVER. This gorgeous woman is standing there, smiling, staring me dead in the eyes, and playing with her lips. And closing in.

Hell.

There is, of course, only one way to respond.

“Well, keep your eye out. We are a rare breed.”

Bloody. Friggin’. Hell.

Her head tilted to the side. Her hand left her mouth, and both hands went to her hips, which tilt a bit to one side. Her smile changed a bit. She stood there, staring at me again, long enough to make me wonder if I should say something else. Her hair hung from her tilted head, waving away from her neck in the wind. Her eyes still looked pretty, but a little sad.

“I guess I’ll see you around then,” she said, turning back towards the store. She was parked a few spots closer in.

For the men reading this and wondering - yes she looked just as good walking away.

Apparently she knew I was watching her leave, because she waved backwards at me, without even turning her head.

When my wife and I go out to eat, we still try to eat sensibly. We almost always split a plate, because restaurant portions are simply way more than what one person should try to handle. They accomplish little more than making your wallet thin and your belly fat. Even after doing this for a few years, it still hurts like hell to say “we will be splitting the cobb salad.” It feels wrong. It feels unmanly. But then they bring out the two bowls they were nice enough to split in the kitchen, and the one salad that apparently started out as big as Joseph Merrick’s head is now down to being only as big as my face, still four or five inches deep. Then I thank myself - and especially my wife who suggested it again - for spending only half as much to get what is still way more than I need.

That’s pretty much what that parking lot moment felt like.

It stung like like a red-hot poker to act against what every drop of testosterone in my body was screaming. Yeah - I’m not saying it wasn’t tempting to see where that might go. I mean, I’m not DEAD.

But I’m not an idiot, either. And I am happily in love. So, afterwards, I’m thankful that I stuck with my previously-allotted portion, which is still much more than what I deserve, and already never fails to fulfill whatever appetite I may bring to the table.

It was a moment. A brief one. I didn’t instigate it. And it is nice to know that some random hot chick who doesn’t even know me would see something in me that made it worth approaching a strange man in a parking lot.

I’ll accept the occasional ego boost.

And you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for quite some time after that one.

Like I said, I’m easily entertained.

Keeping it short again tonight.

We went out Saturday night with our friends/neighbors. It was fun. Grown-up night. No kids. Went to a Hibachi, then a bar, then a comedy club. Had my first “sake-bomb”. But just one. I was the driver for the evening, so I was limited to one hard drink after a very large meal.

Parts of the evening reminded me of college days. The girls got a little tipsy. The other guys got shitfaced. One was poking at me, grabbing at me, screaming like a banshee at every intersection while I drove. It was his Tahoe, and he was yelling at me for slamming on the brakes and swerving out of the way when some other drunken retard almost slammed into me on the highway. At first I thought he was kidding, but he was still repeating that sentiment the next day when he was sober, so now I’m not sure. So yeah - typical immature college-age antics, but by a group of parents pushing 40. I don’t know if that speaks well or ill of us.

It is was it is, I guess.

Either way, I had fun.

Probably the best part of the evening was the couple who got seated next to us at the hibachi. He was a fellow geek, she was a pretty jock. Not just any geek - a guy who earned a CNE4 when he was 14, and is now a generalistand a senior engineer at his small business. Such people as us are a rare and dying breed, and to get seated next to one in a restaurant is just a bizarre twist-of-fate. And then, to top it off, his wife was not just a jock, but an ex-volleyball player. And extremely pretty. So she and my wife immediately have stuff in common.

They live a bit of a drive away, of course. Nothing is easy. But, who knows.

The other drunkards of the evening were teasing me about finding a new boyfriend that night. They don’t quite understand the joy of finding someone who can understand more than four of my sentences strung together in a row. I usually make people glaze over out of boredom by the second sentence. So, to have an in-depth talk with someone for an hour or so was an extreme treat. So, yeah, I kinda ignored them a bit and enjoyed the company of my new friends. Sue me.

Oh well - fate will do what fate will do.

We shall see, I guess.

Holy crap.

I’m way out of practice here.

Last night I thought I’d throw a blog up over on the geek side. That was friggin painful. I haven’t written a damn thing in a while, and it shows.

Sometimes things are more important than this kinda thing, though. And this summer was craaazzzeee.

The kids went from being practically waterphobic when school ended to little fish in one month worth of lessons. Shortly after that, we took our first decently-long road trip/vacation as a whole family. We went to the coast, and the girl who had a complete panic attack beside a backyard pool a few weeks earlier was fighting us because we weren’t letting her swim out into the open ocean.

Nuts.

I’ll delve more later.

The kids’ piano teacher had them compose their own music this summer. First on paper, then into a computer, then using his recording studio. The results were beyond what I would have imagined. More details later on that, too.

The kids also started taking trombone lessons over the summer. The piano teacher teaches that also, and the kids apparently wanted more input.

I started building a rather large pergola on the back of my house. I say started, because the Home Owner’s Association is annoying and made me deal with the City to get a permit for the damn thing. It’s in my back yard. You can’t see it from the front. It doesn’t even have a roof - and I need a damn permit. Nosy bastards. So that ain’t done yet. I’ll give more details later. But it is looking pretty sweet.

I was having all sorts of problems with headaches and exhaustion the first half of the summer. I haven’t had that much trouble with my eyes since I was a little kid. Well now I’m an old bastard. I needed friggin’ bifocals.

That’s the first time in my life I really felt OLD. Like mortal old.

Depressing.

There was more. But it’s getting late. I’ll hash out more gory details later. For now I’m easing back into this.

And trying to get a decent amount of sleep.