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Take a walk on the mild side.
March 2008 - Posts
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I was a programming consultant for about five years, mostly positioned at state government agencies. As the years passed, my office space got progressively worse. When I started, I had an office to myself. I didn’t have a window, but if I leaned really far to the left, I could see out the window in the office across the hall. Then I was told that I was put in the wrong area and I was moved to an office in the interior of the building with no window in sight. The next move was to a completely different building and this time I was put into a cubicle. As far as cubicles go, it was a pretty nice one. I had desk space on three sides and a tall four-drawer filing cabinet. I was positioned next to the printer, though, and I listened to it running all day long and people were constantly walking by to get their documents. Then I was moved to a different section. The cubicle was smaller, had desk space on only two sides, and a smaller two-drawer filing cabinet. Plus I was one cubicle in a set of eight cubicles. It gets even worse from here. Someone genius came up with the idea to rip out those eight cubicles and put in sixteen much smaller ones. While this construction was going on, I was moved to an area far away from the people I was working with into a very large room completely filled with cubicles. The only reason this was bearable was because only the people that were relocated during the construction were there so it was still fairly quiet. After construction was over, I moved back to the much smaller cubicle with absolutely no file drawers AND I had to walk through someone else’s cubicle to get to my own. There were people all around me, phones ringing, people talking on the phones, yelling across the cubicles to other people, people crunching on ice, whistlers, hummers, coughers, and sneezers. I spent three months listening to one guy talk with doctors and lawyers trying to get his soon-to-be ex-wife declared incompetent so that he could get custody of their kids. I bought big head phones that completely covered my ears so I could simulate some semblance of privacy and concentrate on my work.
I have a different job now and I don’t miss the old one a bit.
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My brother is about ten years older than I am and my sister is about eight-and-a-half years older. When I was little (under 10 years of age), I think they mostly thought of me as a pest. The most my brother would say to me was "Go away, punk." That, of course, is not the fond memory. My brother and sister had very nice friends, though. Their friends would take the time to talk with me or play games with me.
My brother's friend, Don, taught me how to figure out the square root of a number long before it was taught in my school. My brother had another friend, Herb, who would play a multiplication game with me. We started with 2, and I would have to multiply that number by 2 in my head, say the answer out loud, and he would write it down. Next while looking at the new answer, I would again multiply by 2 in my head, and say the next answer, which he wrote down. It doesn't take very long to get into the 100,000 range. That may not sound like fun, but I loved it. I was a math geek at a very young age and I grew up into a computer geek. No surprise there.
My sister's friends were also very nice to me. For instance, her friend, Tim, would let me ride in the back of his pickup truck and go with them to get a snow-cone or a frozen custard. Her friend, Mike, took me to the park with them one time to fly a kite. I accidently let go of the kite string and it started to fly off. Mike took off running down the hill after the string, he caught it, then brought it back and he let me it try again. The event that stands out the most in my mind is when my sister and her friend, Chris, took me sledding at the local golf course. These were BIG hills. I remember standing on the hill about half-way down with my sister and Chris. I think we had fallen off and we were gathering up our stuff to continue down the hill. I was just standing around looking at the snow and the other kids when suddenly Chris leaned down, lifted me up and set me down about two feet away from where I had been standing. Seconds after he moved me, two kids on sleds with those metal rails, whizzed by just where I had been standing. I think he saved my life.
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Ever feel like a tard? Well, here's a game that will separate the real players from the tards, guaranteed. It's really easy. All you need is a small rubber ball, a smooth, hard surface (like a sidewalk or a parking lot), and a couple of normal(?) players. You can play in any kind of weather, but I like clear, dry, and windless days myself. If there's any wind it blows the ball around too much. On the playing surface there should be a line or crack to separate each player's area.
The game is actually boxball. For those of you who don't know what this is, it is like the game of tennis, only miniature. There are no rackets, you use your hand to hit the ball. There's no net, either. You simply hit the ball with your hand so it bounces into the opponent's area where the opponent hits it back with his/her hand to your area. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is until you add the "tard factor". Most everyone has a dominant side, right or left. You normally play with your dominant hand. In Tardball you use your other hand. Now it's not so easy, is it? It's like a measure of your "tardness" (your "tardnicity") when your level of ineptness blossoms into its full flower. You can't really control the ball, it goes everywhere except where you want it to go. Most of the time you end of chasing the ball because your tard opponent can't hit the ball accurately either.
Scoring is the same as ping-pong or tennis. You lose the serve when you hit the ball out of bounds or when you don't return it to your opponent's area. You can only gain points when it's your serve. There's variations in tardball, too. You could, for example, switch hands on every other volley. Left, right, left, right. Also, you could gather two more tards and play Fourtardball. Actually, you can make up any rules you like because, well, it's what tards do...
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Everyone gets hungry, but when I haven't had my normal meal at my normal time, my sweet, innocent disposition is in danger of shrinking to something less than human. Elizabeth becomes Elizabeast. Just clear a path to the refrigerator and get out of my way, or woe to any waitress that screws up my order. At least I am aware now that I am like that. When I feel like ripping someone's head off, I stop to considering whether I might be hungry. If so, I try to temper my response to whatever offense set me off. In an effort to keep the beast at bay, I try to eat small meals every 2 - 3 hours. I also keep crackers in my car for emergencies to tide me over until I get something more substantial in my body. Having a small influx of calories at regular intervals seems to keep me on an even keel. If I partake of a large meal, however, something else happens entirely. In fact, there are four distinct levels involved as the food makes it way into me. Part way through the large meal, I can feel the beast retreating. "Oh, I'm feeling SO much better." This is the satisfaction stage. If I keep eating, then euphoria sets in. Now I am feeling no pain -- life is beautiful again. My body feels flushed with the calories coursing through my system. I feel a ball of energy building up inside of me as if I could throw out my arms and have lightning bolts fly from my fingertips. The beast is back in her cage and the world is safe. (This is my favorite stage.) If I still keep eating, then my food euphoria transforms into a food stupor. I'm still feeling good and the everything around me looks rosy, but I don't feel like doing anything. After that comes the food coma. At that point, the only thing I can do is take a nap and wait for the food to digest.
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It seems fairly innocuous just sitting there on the end table. It's small, brown, and wooden. But encased in that inanimate little object, if only for me, is the most powerful emotion of all: love. Everybody has symbols and artifacts that mean something to them; toys that carry memories of good times, books that remind us of favorite teachers, clothes that we wore during emotional times. This little wooden duck holds the essence of warmth for me. It is the core upon which I know I am loved.
I was moving out from my parents' home and into my first independent abode. My parents were against it; I don't even remember why now. They refused to help me in any way. I spent most of the morning packing things up. Then I rented a moving truck and called a friend over to help me move the bigger items. As we were carrying items out to the van, I saw my mother take a big cardboard box, go into the kitchen and start putting assorted kitchen items in it. After many trips back and forth to the van, it was finally time for me to head out. My mom walked up to me and silently handed me the closed up cardboard box. I thanked her and then left.
I arrived at my new place and started unpacking. I opened the box from my mom and started going through it. I was surprised to find that in amongst the pots and pans, was this carved, wooden duck. I thought it was a really strange item to put with the kitchenware. Then it dawned on me that my parents still loved me. Embodied in this little duck are the feelings of my family towards me. I left home, but I had a piece of them with me so I would never have to feel lonely or unloved; the warmth of their love is with me always.
As a rule, I don't like clutter and I rarely keep anything for very long. This duck, however, this carved, wooden possession, will never become clutter. I have carried it with me to every place I've lived in for the past 17 years. What's in a wooden duck? Just wood for most, much more for me.
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