The Randomness of Being...dB

Exercise Journal # 1

2009-08-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

Just decided for my own amusement I'd start writing down what I actually do for exercise, probably expanding into free time activities so I can see how much time I'm freakin wasting and hopefully solve the accompanying insomnia problem. Anyway, yesterday I took a day's rest to recuperate from Sunday night's run (3.2 miles, 28 minutes) when I thought I might have strained a hamstring (I didn't). So today I did this circuit training routine I call "The Exhaustion Workout", which takes about an hour to finish. It's made up of 4 circuits and goes like this :

Warmup
- 5 min walk @ 3.5 mph on the treadmill
- 10 min stretching (I'm old, cut me a break)

Circuit 1 - 5 rounds, no stopping in between, then rest for 2 minutes

Round 1 :
- run on treadmill at 8 mph @ 10% gradient for 40 seconds
- 10 dumbbell squats with 25 lb weights
- Front bridge for 40 seconds

Round 2 :
- repeat run from round 1
- 20 bodyweight squats
- Side bridge on left arm for 40 seconds

Round 3 :
- repeat run from round 1
- 10 dumbbell squats
- Side bridge on right arm for 40 seconds

Round 4 :
- repeat run from round 1
- 20 bodyweight squats
- Front bridge for 40 seconds

Round 5 :
- repeat run from round 1
- 10 dumbbell squats
- Hold bottom of pushup for 40 seconds

Circuit 2 - do 3 rounds, then rest for 2 minutes

Rounds 1-3 :
- run on treadmill at 8 mph @ 1% gradient for 80 seconds
- rest for 20 seconds
- Do pushups for 30 seconds (I can usually fit in 15-20)
- Dumbbell bent-over row w/25 lb weights - 10 reps

Circuit 3 - do 4 rounds, then rest for 2 minutes

Round 1 :
- run on treadmill at 9 mph @ 1% gradient for 60 seconds
- Single-leg rotation squat - 5 reps/leg (I use the treadmill for balance)
- 20 crunches

Round 2 :
- repeat run from round 1
- repeat squats from round 1
- 20 elbow-to-knee crunches, left side

Round 3 :
- repeat run from round 1
- repeat squats from round 1
- 20 elbow-to-knee crunches, right side

Round 4 :
- repeat run from round 1
- repeat squats from round 1
- 20 back extensions (lie on your stomach and raise head/feet)

Circuit 4 - do 3 rounds, then collapse, puke, cry and/or pass out

Round 1 :
- run on treadmill at 10 mph @ 1% gradient for 40 seconds
- rest for 40 seconds
- Hold bottom of a pushup - 40 seconds

Round 2 :
- run on treadmill at 9 mph @ 1% gradient for 40 seconds
- rest for 40 seconds
- Hold bottom of a pushup - 40 seconds

Round 3 :
- run on treadmill at 8 mph @ 1% gradient for 40 seconds
- rest for 40 seconds
- Hold bottom of a pushup - 40 seconds

It took me 2-3 tries over a couple weeks just to be able to make it all the way through this workout, but now I'm to the point where I'm making the runs harder to push myself. But seriously the first time I didn't even make it past circuit 2 before I felt like I was gonna hurl so if you're trying this at home, be sure to build up to it.

A Tale of Two Father's Days

2009-06-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to drop in on this subject, hoping it makes people think.

I had a pretty great Father's Day weekend - even though my girls were in Oregon with their mother, they called me twice, told me they loved me, and talked at some length about what they were doing there. The first was on Saturday while I was en route to Marin to go hiking with Vanessa, and the second was Sunday morning to say Happy Father's Day. I love them more than my own life itself. I also got to spend some quality time with Ness, going on a 11.5 mile hike in the Marin wilderness (Sky/Bear Valley loop near Point Reyes - see here for details). Granted that was no easy hike, it took over 3 hours and the first 2 miles are almost directly uphill to an elevation of 1300 ft, but it felt good to test out this new body I've been working on for the past three months and come out (mostly) unscathed (I say mostly cause my hips and feet were totally sore afterward, largely due to what became the Hungry Girlfriend Run over the last 4 miles). On Sunday we went to visit Ness' dad in Stockton with her sister Nicole. We all went out to lunch and then bowling, and then despite the fact that I totally suck at bowling (I cannot even break 100), and that I aggravated a left glute strain from the hike the day before, I had a great time. And yeah "left glute" means "left butt cheek". After you're done laughing about that, picture trying to stand and/or walk around on that and it's not quite as funny. I just got done sitting on an ice pack for 20 minutes if that gives you an idea. Shut up.

I said this was a tale of TWO father's days, this is what I meant. First read this. There is a video circulating on the internet of this young Iranian woman Neda, who is extraordinarily beautiful, or should I say was because the video shows her dying in her father's arms after having been shot through the heart. She and her father were attending a protest of the recent (and likely farcical) election results in Iran. According to the account of a doctor who shot the video and attempted to save her, she and her father were on a corner merely observing the protest when she was needlessly targeted and killed - most likely because she was a symbol of everything the Iran government fears : young, active, concerned, beautiful women who do not hide themselves under shrouds. It is not clear who fired the shot or why, these are my assessments having seen the video and where she stood - holding no signs, carrying no weapons, posing no threat other than the symbolic measure of who she was.

As I mentioned there is a video, and I have seen it. I will advise you not to go looking for it although I know some of you will, because as I have cautioned my girls in the past, there are things in this world you cannot UN-see or UN-hear once you have witnessed them. And the sight of this woman collapsing and dying in an awful bleeding mess while her father screams at her in Farsi to STAY...is not something you can undo. I lost my father exactly a year ago tomorrow to congestive heart failure, just over a week after I'd said Happy Father's Day for the last time. It's still difficult when I see the reminders on your computer to remember father's day for your dad. I cannot, because I don't have one. I have only myself and my family and friends, and with their help I have managed to soldier through it. But I cannot fathom this father's pain. To borrow the words of a friend's father speaking at his son's funeral, "...to bury your child is not the natural order of things.....it is backwards and wrong...." I can only hang my head in empathetic pain and imagine.

A side note here, to my father : one of the last few things I remember him saying other than "I love you too" in our annual Father's Day call was him looking at my advanced size during a visit a couple months prior and saying to me "you ARE going to lose the weight...aren't you?" Well from the beginning of March 2009 through today, I'm down 35 pounds, I'm 7 pounds away from my initial goal weight, and looking to blast through that to see just how in-shape I can get. I'm actually thinking about running a 5K race to see how competitive I can be, a half-marathon as a way station, and a marathon just to say I could. So yeah, dad....I am.

At any rate, I just felt like getting that out. I'm not the religious sort so I'm not going to say count your blessings or do this with your prayers or whatever the hell it is the church people say to each other in these situations. If that makes you feel better, then all power to you, but my views are much more earthly and simple. I'm just going to say be thankful for what you have, and be present enough in this moment to truly see it. And I mean now. Wake up. Life is short and precious and if you're stuck in some bullshit personal despair saying "I can't" then you are wasting that gift. Take inventory of the people and things you already have, and allow that to truly guide your heart for the future. I'm happy I still have a home and a job, that I live in a country that's affluent enough to outlast even outright fascism, that I still have the remainder of my family, my friends and a wonderful girlfriend around me when I truly need them. But mostly at this moment I'm thankful that I am able to push my girls on swings or toss them into the air while they scream with delight rather than watching them die needlessly on the ground. I'm thankful even though they drive me crazy fighting in the background or interrupting for snacks and attention while I'm trying to work from home.

It's a short drive anyway, girls...let's go.

P.S. - Happy Father's Day anyway, dad

2009-04-27T11:28:00.001-07:00

is now officially over 20 pounds lighter.

2009-04-25T14:09:00.001-07:00

is completely disgusted with the Raiders top pick. OOH let's get a bunch of track stars that can't tackle or catch so we can underpay em...

2009-04-23T19:04:00.001-07:00

is tired of cleaning up after puking cats, in addition to the ones I don't own that poop outside.

2009-04-17T16:16:00.001-07:00

just let Comcast in the backyard to do a "system upgrade" and my internet speed went from 3.5 MB/s to about 10. HOO-rahhhh

2009-04-13T16:16:00.001-07:00

is LIKE-A BAWWSSS...

2009-04-12T18:20:00.001-07:00

is recovering from a hangover with chips and homemade salsa.

2009-04-09T12:36:00.001-07:00

is trying to work while the kids' Spring Break is happening in the background, two mutually exclusive activities.

2009-04-07T11:50:00.001-07:00

is hopefully having major car repairs done for the last time (on this car, at least).

2009-04-05T15:54:00.001-07:00

just saw "Monsters vs. Aliens" in IMAX 3-D. Good movie, and the 3-D is incredible.

2009-04-04T12:55:00.001-07:00

just got his b-day present to himself : custom in-ear monitors from Ultimate Ears. And they fit!!

2009-04-03T10:14:00.001-07:00

is the ridiculously happy owner of 4 lower level seats to Metallica @ ARCO (Section 107) - http://ping.fm/Z2T0x

Stuck in my head

2009-03-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

This is not a chain note, so please don't reproduce it - unless of course you suffer from the same syndrome that I do, in which case I am so sorry. By "syndrome" I mean that regardless of what I'm doing, watching, listening to, reading, etc. - there is music playing in my head that I just can't turn off, ever. When I had to study for tests in high school and college people wondered why I used to play music on the radio or tape/CD or turn the TV on to something I wasn't watching - it was to drown out the music playing in my head so I could concentrate on what I was reading, otherwise it would drive me completely insane with distraction. Sometimes the music is something I'm writing, which is good; sometimes it's music I like, which is okay; sometimes it's just plain awful and inexplicable. But it's always there.

I have heard theories that the song you hear in your mind at times is your subconscious' way of commenting on your surroundings or the situation in which you find yourself. Like you're boiling water and suddenly realize that "Too Hot" by Kool and the Gang has been bubbling in the back of your mind. These theories are, pun fully intended, full of hot water. I can most times find absolutely no connection between what I hear in my head and what's going on with me or around me, so fooey on that concept. This is just my brain....on infinite shuffle.

To give you an idea of what it's like, here's what I did today :

- got up
- ate breakfast
- took a shower
- got dressed
- said goodbye to Ness and left the house
- drove to the train station listening to Howard Stern
- waited for the train which was late
- got on the train and watched the rest of "Joe Dirt" that was left over from the last time and the beginning of "Mystery, Alaska"
- chatted over IM with Ness about how crappy it was that the train was 30-40 minutes late
- turned off the laptop, fired up the iPod which had its own random ideas on what to play (including a Phrenik song)
- walked up Broadway in Oakland, got a bagel, went to my desk in the office and started to work

So that's been the past 7 hours of my day so far, an ordinary Tuesday. Here's what randomly came up in my head and would not go away :

- "Photograph" - Def Leppard
- "Pour some sugar on me" - Def Leppard (apparently it's a Two-for-Tuesday)
- the middle section of a song called "Earthquakes" that I'm writing
- a song called "Step by Step" I wrote a hundred years ago which never saw the light of day and from which "Earthquakes" was partially cannibalized
- the chorus for "What You Wanted" which I'm also writing
- "Push" - The Cure
- "New Low" - MC Rut
- "Rumors of my Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated" - Rise Against
- "When I'm with You" - Sheriff (see I told you some of it was awful)
- "Anyway you Want It" - Journey
- "Think I'm in Love" - Eddie Money (ok that one I heard in the Joe Dirt soundtrack)
- "A Milli" - Lil Wayne (I hate this song)
- "I'm on a Boat" - Lonely Island

Anyway, that's what I can remember off the top of my head. And these are not just snippets of songs, they're ENTIRE SONGS that play over and over until something else knocks them out.

I have come to the conclusion that I would make a terrible transcendental meditationist.

The Gradual Process of Letting Go

2008-08-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

This is the first post in a long time and there's a multitude of reasons for that, but I really don't care to talk about it. So read this and forget about that for the time being. And it's long, ok?

I never expected it to be easy. As I've grown older and sidled closer to the outward bounds of middle age, I've been training myself in small bits for my life to come. I mean, programming or music is one thing - all it takes is a bit of study or research and a whole lot of practice and onward ye march. The more people you do it for, the less it really affects you. But how was I really going to feel when my daughters graduate high school (proud?), or I hit retirement age (relieved?), or as I've long suspected some pro sports team finally gives me that long-deserved call-up and I score the winning touchdown/goal (YEEEEEEA.... that's what I'm TALKIN about...) This is just how my mind works with these things, it's a technique I learned in Communication classes at Rutgers a long time ago, to practice things in your mind before they happen. At long last I am forced to admit: A Scout Is Always Prepared. Still, no matter how many times I've dealt with other relatives passing away, or how many times I turned it over in my mind, the one question I really dreaded even pondering was how will I feel when my parents die.

Unfortunately, I now know. I was fast asleep on 6/23/2008 at 4:30 AM PDT when the call came in from my sister. It's well over a month gone by but I can still relive every moment in my head. Your home phone rings, then stops, no message. Your cell phone rings, then stops. Your home phone rings again. Caller ID says it's Michelle. Shit. You know this is bad news. You prepared for this. You knew this would happen. You're not ready. She tells you as gently as possible that dad went into cardiac arrest and died. Remember, you even told yourself it would probably be him first. You're not ready. You fix things, dad was good at that and so are you, you even do it for a living. Every pore in you screams out to fix this. You're not ready. Michelle fights off tears and apologizes for waking you up but she figured you'd want to know immediately unlike your mom, decent to the end, who didn't want to bother you with it until she was sure you'd be awake. You're grateful to your sister. You envy her too. You want to be in the car with her and Max and Bella right now, driving to where you can fix this. But you can't fix this. This is not a machine. There is no undo, no screws to tighten, none of your magic applies. You're not ready. Hang up with Shell. Oh man, my poor mom. Ness is awake now too and wants to know what's wrong. You can't even speak because you're not ready. Saying the words out loud makes it real. After waiting a few seconds that feel like an eternity, you say it anyway. Why are you not crying like Shell? You call mom. She is in nurse mode, trying like you in her mind to fix it. She is not crying either. Then you realize something as shocking as the news you were just handed, and that's that you were never going to be ready for this at all.

My dad was 68, and from all outward appearances the picture of health for someone his age. He had lost a significant amount of weight recently and he was biking 10-15 miles a day. But dad had a horrible history of mistreating himself - he smoked for 30+ years, took prescription/non-prescription drugs he didn't need, and was very inconsistent with diet and exercise. There were times he was normal, times he'd obviously gotten off the wagon and onto the buffet line, and times he was so thin I barely recognized him. The autopsy was officially labeled as inconclusive, but there was evidence of some atherosclerosis that, coupled with the balance of stuff in his blood from all the fasting and binging, probably caused the heart attack he suffered to be fatal. So great, from my mother's side I'm gonna be diabetic, and from my dad's side I'm gonna explode like a whale in Oregon. One more bar I have to jump over from his life...

...which deserves an explanation. It was no secret that dad was not an easy guy to like. We fought constantly while living together....actually more like he yelled at a constant pace and I constantly huffed off after he blew out of steam. But in retrospect I can't really say I blamed him all that much. Dad had a really crappy life by some respects. He was given up to a foster home as an infant, his parents supposedly on the way to getting divorced and unable to care for him. They got back together and had a couple more kids before getting divorced for real, but did not take him back (or his brother). They even kept in contact with him all the way until he went into the Army at age 18, telling him all along that they were coming back for him....and they never did. His foster parents, Ella and Maurice Lewis, tried repeatedly to adopt him officially as their own but the Bodines would not let them. Granted, he had a great life with the Lewises, they were wonderful people and I didn't even know this full story until very recently. But I have two kids now, I am divorced with shared custody, and I see the hurt in their eyes when they can't be with one of their parents for even a few days. I cannot for the life of me imagine the crushing blow of abandonment a kid would feel, being told over and over again that "rescue" was on the way only to never have it show. What level of anger, what sense of loss would that fuel? My heart shatters into pieces just thinking about it because I love my daughters so much...

I think dad suffered from depression of some form, for which he never did get treated. People with depression display it in a myriad of ways - some can't get out of bed in the morning, some can't sleep at night, some can't keep a job, some lash out in anger at everything and everyone because it seems like the world around them just can't fathom their pain. Depending on the degree of their everyday functionality, some people aren't even aware they have this weight on their shoulders. I'm occasionally irritable because I want the world to operate at my speed, or if I get continuously derailed from my current fixated task, or sad if I get dealt a bad hand here and there, but I have no clue what it's like to feel truly depressed, I've only seen it from the outside.

And I now realize why. It's because dad was made out of something different. I have known plenty of people in my life that struggled with depression based in childhood trauma, and the reaction goes a variety of ways. I've known people who put a bullet in their own mouth for less than he went through. I've known some that have turned to drugs, or hurting themselves to numb out the pain. Or seen those that take it out physically, emotionally, sometimes even sexually on other people, more often than not the ones they love. Whatever dad did to himself, he did his damndest to make sure it didn't touch us. Even through all the shouting or the times I absolutely feared his anger, or the times when I saw the other dads at scout camp or sports games or concerts and felt that twinge of jealousy and hurt that MY dad wasn't there, I remember a dad who played catch with me, who dribbled a soccer ball around the backyard until I was big enough to knock him off it with ease, who tried valiantly to help me figure out the mysteries of hitting a golf ball straight even though he'd never swung a club in his life. Someone who struggled through an invisible illness that was killing him from the inside out and still managed to leave some positive memories. Someone who sat me down on more than one occasion and explained that my education was paramount, that I would thank him one day even it bored me to tears, and that above all else "don't you dare be like me" - a highly intelligent mind trapped in a shell that hated itself, underemployed and barely motivated. A lot of people know my mom is a hero for the great way she raised us, but for fighting off the demons and still being a dad...my dad deserves a hero's thank you as well. I know dad was proud of me and the things I achieved in my life - college degree, good-paying job, great kids - it was in his voice every time we went to CompUSA and he told the pimple-faced know-nothing clerk behind the counter "ask him, he should know, my son is in the INDUSTRY". Sadly, though, the thank you here is coming a bit late.

So I don't ordinarily do this, but this song called "The Gradual Process of Letting Go" I wrote is important enough to me that I want to talk about it a little bit. I usually like to let people read my lyrics and decide how it makes them feel, a lot like poets who fiercely guard their real secrets; sometimes you smile when someone nails it, and sometimes you smile when someone's reading of your work makes you a whole lot more brilliant than you intended :) But I figured this one is owed an explanation, and for that I've got to go back to the narrative.

I started writing this song around noon on 6/23, and continued off and on all day in between bouts of fierce house cleaning, calling my boss to tell them I'd be out that week, calling my ex to let her know I couldn't watch the kids, making travel arrangements, etc. When I finally finished all the cleaning and errands around 8 PM that night, the floodgates opened and I don't think I stopped crying for nearly an hour ("I guess I ran out of things to clean"). I went to NJ the next day and jumped into helping with funeral stuff, because keeping busy was the only way I was going to keep my sanity. We viewed the body privately the day after I got there. Mom didn't really think we should at first, but Shell was right - I needed that to really make it real before he was cremated and it was like it never happened. I needed to know he wasn't coming right back in the door at any moment, although part of me still feels that way. Christ, my poor mom. How must she feel, this was someone she'd been with every day pretty much since they were 13 or so. High school sweethearts. Married after his stint in the Army. Moved to the suburbs, had 2.0 children, yada yada yada. Sucks. So we all stuck together and kept busy together. And I gotta say this - my old neighborhood rocks. I really can't see that level of support happening in my hood here in Citrus Heights, even for people I know have lived here for 40+ years like my parents did. Being together with my family and friends for that week made the feelings of helplessness I felt out here in CA completely vanish. Gesellschaft be damned.

So the funeral happens on Saturday, and I'm due to fly out early Sunday morning like 6 AM. I get to see a ton of people there I haven't seen in 15-20 years. I don't see some I'm somewhat surprised by. I help the way I know how - setting up the audio for the music to play after the service is done. I wear his old Harley suspenders in tribute under my suit jacket. Michelle gets up and reads this great blog entry she'd written the night before - you can read it here, I think it's wonderful. A couple others get up and say things as well, including my godfather Jack Hill (as in who the hell knew Jack was that f-in cool??!!!) As I sit there listening, my mind is racing with things I could be saying if I stood up there. But pretty much everything I came up with was either too jokey or too much of me trying to get attention for myself like I always do in front of a crowd of people. Plus Michelle really nailed it and quite honestly I didn't want to burnish that moment for her or my parents in the least. Some examples :

- the "hero" bit from before, with some added details

- "After dad got through the stream of obscenities about this thing since he didn't want a funeral, I think he would have liked it....except he'd say these mains need to be just above ear level, we need a center speaker up here on the cross, stick two side fills and two surrounds in the back, hollow out this altar and jam in a subwoofer, BAM....we're good to go...."

- turning around to the Reverend mid-sentence and saying something like "damn, it's hard to keep this clean up here, isn't it..."

- knowing that dad loved comedy, I could tell everyone that they were taking this thing "far too seriously, and something must be done about it", at which point I would put on my shades, slide off the jacket in one shot, snap the Harley suspenders, snarl and do the Elvis finger-waggle while saying "a-thankyouvurymuch...."

Ok, you get the idea, not really appropriate. Being a front man for a popular band in Sac may have brought me out of my shell, but it really didn't teach me much useful verbage when it came to more sensitive public speaking. I highly doubt that "OKAY YOU MOTHER-F'ERS ARE YOU READY TO ROCK" is gonna go over too well in a church full of grieving people. I'm just sayin. The bottom line is I ended up sitting on my hands and not saying a damn word, just holding my mom's hand and being quiet. Afterward, I initially felt like I'd missed some opportunity with this, I even remember remarking to Shell at one point - "should I feel bad because I didn't say anything?" She said no, and she was right again that week (and soak it up cause it won't ever happen again you Old Shoo). In fact, it was very fitting. 15-20 years is a long time, and I'd undergone so many transformations in that period that I totally forgot what I used to be like - a nerdy room-rat Napolean Dynamite look-alike who never spoke a single word. Now once I get going you can't shut me up. Those people don't know me now, they know me from then, and by being quiet I actually did as expected. You guys know me now, so you're getting both barrels.

So you can apply a great deal of what I've told you to the song, with one big addition I'll make right now - this is not just a tribute to my dad, but a way to say thank you to both of my parents. I didn't get to say thank you this way to my dad before he died, but my mom is still here, she's heard the song and seen the video I made for it (below), and now it's your turn to hear that I am fully grateful for the life I was given and that my only regret in the least is that I can't be as close geographically to my old family as I am to my new one. I hope you enjoy this, and this is me signing off until the next time I damn well feel like posting. Love you all, good night.

THE GRADUAL PROCESS OF LETTING GO

I sat silently
Letting others speak for me
As hours pass me by
I still feel inside
Like I just owe you one last thing

You gave me all I ever wanted

Sip comfort from a screen
Just like you always did for me
To break the will
Of this cycle
Of never having anything

And getting all you never wanted

And for having been someone that I love
Here's what it takes to let you go
This is the only thing that I know
Here's what it takes to let you go

You gave me all I ever wanted

And for having been someone that I love
Here's what it takes to let you go
This is the only thing that I know
Here's what it takes to let you go

And getting all you never wanted
You gave me all I ever wanted
And getting all you never wanted
Thanks for giving all for me

Travel Stories Vol. 2 - Trains

2005-09-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

After that last post, this is gonna be kind of a let-down, but I figured since I actually took notes on some stuff while I had this blog, I may as well record it here too.

In April of this year, my office moved from Alameda to downtown Oakland. This didn't affect me too much, since I only drove in two days a week, but parking a Jeep Wrangler in Oakland? The hell with that. So I started researching other ways to get to work.

Initially, I was going to drive to Becky's parents' place in Berkeley and park there. Then I'd take BART the rest of the way to work and back, and either drive home that night and repeat the whole process the next day or stay overnight. But as it so happened, my work got a deal to write transportation expenses off on their taxes, so they gave us all the chance to get free travel vouchers through this program called CommuterCheck, and I decided to take Amtrak from Sacramento to Oakland instead.

My schedule goes like this now - get on the train in Old Sacramento around 7:40 AM Tuesday morning, get to Jack London Square in Oakland about 9:40-10:00. Sounds like a long haul, yeah, but considering it takes 1.75 hours by car it's not that much different time-wise....plus, I'm not stressed out by driving, I can sleep if I want, and oh yeah did I mention since work is paying for it it's FREE. Contrast that with the $80+ per week in gas and tolls I'd be paying now and it's definitely the smart choice. Even if I had to suddenly pay for my train tickets, it'd only work out to about $25 a week.

At any rate, once I get to JL Square, I walk the one mile to my office downtown. I've clocked myself, I do it in about 12-15 minutes, not bad for a chubster like myself. I can actually walk several miles now at a decent pace without my back or feet hurting, so this schedule is having added benefits. When I'm done with work, the BART train is right there outside the building underground (also funded by CommuterCheck). I grab that and go about 3 stops to Rockridge station in Berkeley. From there I can walk 15-20 minutes or so to Becky's parents' house and stay there overnight. The next day (Wednesday) I just take BART back to the office, leave around 5:00 PM to walk back to JL Square and hit the 5:30 PM train, which (if it runs on time) puts me back in Old Sacramento around 7:30 PM.

So...why tell you all that. Well, as it stands, two hours on Amtrak when you're not distracted by the job of driving somewhere is actually a pretty long stretch of time in which to occupy yourself. As I mentioned before I could sleep, but I've actually found that pretty impractical; although the seats on the train are vaguely comfortable and definitely more roomy than any coach airline seat, the train jostles around quite a bit and unless you've got a big-ass pillow it's pretty difficult to maneuver yourself into any position of comfort where you could actually fall asleep. Once I get my new laptop from work, I plan to plug in and work on the train (they do have 120-volt outlets at most seats, and either tables or tray-tables to work on as well). But for right now, mainly I just read, play around on my Sidekick or just stare out the window.

Having grown up in the Northeast U.S. and traveled the NJ Transit line between Trenton, New Brunswick and New York fairly frequently, I can honestly say that the scenery out the train window in northern California has the NY/NJ scene beat hands down. Between Sacramento and Fairfield, you see lush farms and marshland, and if you're sitting on the right side of the train between Fairfield and Richmond you have these incredible views of the SF Bay. Contrast that with the NJ Transit Atlantic corridor line which runs up through the armpit of NJ civilization parallel to the Turnpike, and it's no wonder why I actually like riding the train to work here.

So again...why all this. Well, when the usual distractions of reading, playing and staring get too much, I have no choice but to focus my attention on my fellow passengers. Most of them are fairly uninteresting types, but occasionally something pokes through that will pique my interest enough to eavesdrop or observe. Generally speaking I keep to myself on the train, preferring to converse with my wife over text messaging or IM if I get too lonely. I don't sit at the tables because those are pretty popular seating choices and I really don't want to sit face-to-face with someone else, it almost forces you to have to interact and well, dammit, I'm just anti-social enough that I really don't want to talk to anyone. And?

All that said, my train travel micro-impressions so far (I'm working off my notes here - displayed in italics - I'll have to explain as I go along) :

- The smell of coffee mixed with the smell of Amtrak is pretty harsh. - yeah, it is. Trains have a certain funky smell of their own, it's more or less a combination of diesel fumes, carbon monoxide, aluminum tin can train car, dusty fabric seats and cleaning solution. All in all, not a bad smell - it's actually kind of welcoming after a while, like ahhh yes I made the train on time and here's that old familiar smell - but it doesn't play well with others. So when someone in the next seat is drinking an espresso drink from the cafe car or eating some rather fragrant bacon-breakfast-extravaganza, it gets a little overwhelming. Especially at 7:30 - 8 in the morning when I'm barely awake.

- A man stands in front of me, talking to two old ladies about his prostate cancer. I'm actually ok with this, it's somewhat entertaining. I really feel sorry for the girl in the seat opposite the ladies who has his butt pointed directly at her face. He yips cheerfully along for 30 minutes, proving it IS possible to talk about nothing but your own ass for an entire half hour. - Can't really say it much better than that, other than to wonder what the girl was thinking. "Is that thing contagious? Is it loaded? It better not go off in my face..."

- Martinez stinks just as bad as it does in a car. - that's actually only somewhat true. The path the train takes through Martinez manages to spare the passengers the more fragrant oil refineries that line the bay there, but on occasion one of them is in full-on ASS mode and there's no escaping it no matter how you're traveling through the area. I often wonder what the cancer rate is in Martinez and Benicia, it can't be that good what with 3-4 major oil processors stationed right there.

- If this train derails between Martinez and Richmond, we're screwed. - as I mentioned before, there are some really gorgeous views of the bay from Fairfield on through (save for Martinez). But from Martinez to Richmond/Point Isobel (incidentally where Laci & Connor Peterson washed up), the train is no more than 20-30 yards from the shores of the bay itself. And if it derails there, kersplash, hope this tin can floats long enough for me to swim out. Ironically, one of those mornings I was taking BART from Berkeley to Oakland, I saw there was a system delay and later read in the news that some dude was ranting around Amtrak, leaving several suspicious-looking packages in varying cars and making a lot of noise about how he was going to blow the train into the sea. He got arrested off the train in Richmond and the bomb squad found that the packages contained nothing more than parts from Radio Shack, but....I don't really wanna think about it.

- The train is late getting home by 2 hours due to a derailment near Santa Clara. Apparently Amtrak has something against me getting home at a reasonable hour - I said that because it was the second week in a row that the train was delayed getting home. The first week was because a train walloped some homeless dude between Berkeley and Richmond, killing him. The trains were delayed for at least an hour while the coroner made his way there. This time around, it was a two hour delay because one of the freight trains that runs on the same lines as the passenger trains derailed somewhere near Santa Clara (that's about an hour south of Oakland for the non-CA people). Incidentally, that left me with 2 hours to kill, so I searched out a place for dinner and came up with "The House of Chicken and Waffles" on Broadway and Jefferson. No lie on the name. It turned out to be some sort of soul-food diner, I was the only white dude in the place and the menu was as advertised - all chicken or waffles on the main dishes, plus side dishes like grits, black-eyed peas, collared greens, all that. I had a damn good chicken sandwich though, and the people were really really nice - I sat at the counter and my waitress was one of those really big heavy-set black ladies with an apron that calls everyone "honey" and "suga". She had a vaguely Caribbean accent and I could have sworn she was trying to flirt with me, but I was probably just hungry and distracted cause my train was late so I can't trust my judgement. I tend to be mostly oblivious as to when women are hitting on me anyway, I'm just a weird guy like that. I don't really realize it until after they walk away most times, or someone else points it out. Good for Becky, I suppose :)

- The man behind me will not stop clearing his throat. Eh-eh-um. - I wrote that out of sheer irritation. Eh-eh-um.......Eh-eh-um.....in an otherwise dead silent train car.....Eh-eh-um.....I felt like saying "are you gonna say something or not?" I mean keerist, he keeps clearing his throat like he's gonna ask the professor a question in front of the whole lecture hall, and he hasn't said a damn thing in 30 minutes. He manages to escape off the train before I kill him.

- Some people are old at 22....there is a girl in front of me who has a turtle, excuse me, tortoise named Bill....yes I know not the most creative name but he is actually a gift for a friend in Davis that has a large terrarium and will most likely rename the tortoise Sahara. I know this not because I have spoken to this woman directly but because she is loudly discussing thw tur....dammit, tortoise with anyone within view. She claims the tortoise needs to be out since he has been on an 11-hour bus ride and now 2 or 3 hour train ordeal...yet her desperation glances in fishing for coversation opponents make her look like one of those old people who chat up the clerk in front of you at 7-11 - yeah, you know? La-hooo.....za-herrrr. Like I mentioned previously, I tend to keep to myself on the train (or the bus, etc). Same goes for standing in line. It's rare that I partake in the sort of small talk that causes Bil Engvall to load people up on signs. Unfortunately for me, over my long career of riding public transit alone or waiting on lines alone, my silence has somehow made me an unwitting target for missionaries, misfits, miscreants and general loner boneheads who just can NOT keep their damn mouths shut. "boy, hot out there isn't it?" "you like that kinda soda? me too" "man I hate riding on this damn train" SHUT... UP... AND... LEAVE.... ME... ALONE!!!! I especially reserve a special place on my pile of things to ball up and nuke for the ones who don't actually say anything, they just pull one of several stunts in order to draw attention to themselves and/or appear happening : (1) fake a cough, manly style; (2) look from side-to-side as if scoping the place out for their next move, or (the worst - 3) if they are directly in front of you in line, they turn completely around and pretend to look behind you, as if scanning the crowd for their (non-existant) gang of friends who are all coming to regale in their purchasing brilliance. Dammit, I hate that. Y'know, I've been told on occasion that I appear to have a scowl on my face even when I don't feel particularly scowly, so I wonder if the reason people are drawn to stare at me has anything to do with that. But really, what am I gonna do, smile like some fruity figure skater every time someone looks at me? This is the face, people. Sorry. I've just learned to blow it off but occasionally it gets a bit uncomfortable and annoying.

That's all I had for right now.

Travel Stories Vol. 1 - Planes

2005-09-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

News update first - the floor went in fine, it looks great. Bootsy went down peacefully, and Kiley has adjusted. Macy can swim. Madeleine can walk. Everyone is moving on....

Now to a lighter subject...one of the original reasons I started this whole mess was to document stuff that happens to me as I'm either walking around in public, or when strange stuff happens. And the need for something like this pretty much started back in December...1998, if I'm piecing this together right (would have been nice to have this written down).

I was living in San Francisco at the time with Becky, Anna and Fu. Anna and Fu were in the midst of moving out, and Becky & I had been living together for a few months. Becky & I both went back to NJ together where I proposed to her in my old bedroom at my mom's house, and she accepted. She then flew back to SF and I stayed behind to spend a couple more days with my folks.

I was on the United Airlines night flight back from Newark to SFO when around 11:00 PM, about 45 minutes from touchdown, the pilot announced that due to foggy conditions in Oakland, SF and San Jose (and "stacked" conditions in Sacramento) that we were being turned back to Denver airport. On a Sunday, something like December 27th. Holiday season. Overbooking Central. Getting out of here was going to be near impossible. I was only half awake and swore I was dreaming it, it was just too surreal. Just to put it in full perspective, the flight had already been delayed taking off from Newark by about 2 hours, this was just insult to injury already.

After the plane drops us in Denver, pissed off and grumbling, there's really not much communication on the other end as to what happens next. I started off for the rental car counter, hoping to get a car to drive from Denver to SF. They pretty much laughed at that, so that was out. Had to take a 30-minute round trip shuttle ride just to figure that out too.

As it turns out, ours was not the only plane to get re-routed, apparently several others did as well, dumping what was said to be an extra 1000-2000 people inside Denver Int'l Airport. With all those extra bodies, I really had to wait to stake out a phone booth for use as a base of operations...got on the line with United, was on hold for literally 30-40 minutes, and finally got through to an agent who put me on a flight for SF leaving at 1 PM the next day.

Now I had about 12 hours to kill. After some searching I finally found a bench to pass out on and managed to go to sleep for a couple hours. Keep in mind my baggage is still on the plane (which they inexplicably allowed to continue on through to SFO....?!!!), and I am left with nothing but my carry-on in which I only had a few books and papers. Nothing for my contact lenses, no deodorant, no toothbrush, nada. I get some breakfast at Burger King or something like that and then head to the gate where my flight is going to be.

Here's the next wrinkle....around 12:45 PM I notice that no mention of the flight I'm supposed to be on has been made on or around the gate. The sign above the gate still reads for a flight that has already left, and looking at the screens I can't find the flight in the listings. So I walk up to the flight attendant at the gate desk, just about the same time as someone else apparently with the same set of problems, just in time to hear her say that flight has been cancelled due to mechanical problems. The other guy and I look at each other, speechless. He lights into her with "well, wouldn't that just be kinda IMPORTANT TO LET US KNOW...???" and I walk off to think it over on my own.

As I was walking, I saw the information booth for the airport and asked the dude behind the counter about buses. He said I was in luck, there was a Greyhound Bus terminal right there at the airport and told me where to find it. I decided to give United one last chance and waited 30 minutes on hold again, only to find that the next flight out of there was going to be on Wednesday to Oakland. This was Monday. I didn't have enough cash to stay in a hotel for two nights, and I didn't have a credit card so....Go Greyhound.

As it turns out, there is a bus to SF, and the next one leaves at 4:30 PM. Problem is, it goes to downtown Denver first (the airport is actually 45 minutes outside of town), then Las Vegas, then Fresno, THEN downtown San Francisco. Total travel time : 31 hours, which means I won't get home till Tuesday around midnight. But you know what? At least I'll be moving out of this hell-hole.

Let me take a second out of the narrative here to tell you something. Traveling long distance by bus is not for the faint of heart. Generally the people who are on the bus with you are either poorer, drunker or just plain too afraid to fly. In other words, you are entering a coach full of head cases. People who are on the bus for the long haul even go so far as to get defensive about where they are sitting (even though Greyhound does not assign seats), and should you get out of your seat you'd better leave something in it else it would be taken from you. Not to mention you are going to stop at every outhouse, henhouse and cowtown that has a bus stop to pick up the next set of head cases, and occasionally you're going to get forced off the bus so they can clean it. Damn good thing too cause it STINKS in there after a while...

Anyway, I didn't know the deal with the seats and my seat got hijacked twice - the first time in Grand Junction, CO by some old dude and his kids. I was forced to take someone else's seat, and this set off a chain reaction of seat-taking and pissed off a whole bunch people who all looked at the old dude in the worst way for f**king up the seating arrangement. Odd story here - the kid who was angry that I was in his seat got off somewhere in southern Utah to go smoke pot with these two skanky-lookin chicks and ended up missing the bus, his stuff still sitting in his new location. Karma, baby.

You would have figured that would teach me a lesson, but my seat got stolen again during one of the cleaning breaks somewhere between Las Vegas and Fresno, forcing me to sit in the very rear of the bus with the Mexican contingent. Not that I minded, they were hella funny and with my rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, I managed to amaze a couple of them by laughing at a joke they cracked. They spoke English after that, I guess they figured the jig was up.

One funny story here - the bathrooms in GH buses are very small, smaller than an airport bathroom even, and on this particular bus the door handle assembly was pretty flaky. Along comes this really enormous Mexican man - we're talking so big he could only walk down the aisle sideways - who gets up to use the can and locks the door behind him. My compadres in the rear are already snickering to themselves about "la vaca mejor esta alli" ("the biggest cow is in there") ; but resort to full-on guffaws when this man spends 20 minutes in there and then becomes stuck in the bathroom, a victim of the capricious lock which leaves him powerless, able only to jiggle the handle continuously in a vain attempt to free himself. After about 10-15 minutes of this guy desperately trying to get out and several attempts by passengers near the door to open it from the outside, the question starts to float around - should we tell the driver, get him to stop and get the guy out? For whatever reason, that idea goes over like a lead pinata, so the guy is in there until the lock decides to let him out. I'll never forget there was this one Mexican girl, about 19 or so, who was sitting near the door trying to give the outside handle one last shot by jiggling it while the man inside (no doubt choking on his own fumes) worked it from the other side. Her brother, who was sitting on the other side of the door, said "Stop eet...yor gee-ving heem hope....", and the back three rows (myself included) didn't stop laughing until the man managed to finally burst out of the door, the lock apparently having grown tired of imprisoning him.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, I didn't really sleep much except for one stretch between Denver and Las Vegas. But I got to see what central California around Fresno and Bakersfield looks like, and....man. Lemme tell ya. I can't believe it's the same state. I've seen northern CA all the way up to Mendocino, southern CA around LA/Beverly Hills/Santa Monica, and some of central CA from SF down to Carmel (where Becky & I got married). If you never saw anything but those three spots, you'd assume that CA was a fairly hegemonous collection of affluent suburban areas interspersed with some semi-rural sprawl and one or two major cities where the poorer contingents lived. But even if you managed to traverse the entire Pacific Coast Highway, you just don't understand that from San Jose on south used to belong to Mexico not more than 100 years or more ago...and some of it looks like it still does. We're talking towns after towns of migrant farm workers that look like they were built solely out of MDF and spray paint...often the only distinguishing feature about these places was the GH bus stop that got people the hell out of town.

31 hours later, I was happy to finally make it to SF, tired as hell and smelling like a landfill. When I got home, the airlines had called to say my bags were at SFO. I got Becky to drive me there so I could get my glasses and stuff, and finally get a change of clothes and a shower in peace.

There. I finally got to write that all down. I guess this thing is useful after all.

The Saga of the New Floor and the Period of Misery

2005-06-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

I would say on the whole, that life is never totally great. It can go good sometimes, it can go bad sometimes, but most of the time it's just somewhere in between...where your fortune is neither good nor bad, or it's only leaning teasingly toward one or the other. That and a couple other sentences would get me a writing job on the X-Files or a perfume commercial. This post is about a period that's leaning towards the not-so-good...

Ok, let's not mince any more words. The past two weeks were not good at all. I mean, some good things still happened, like I tested my own carpentry skills and came out ahead, and Madeleine finally learned to crawl in forward gear, but on the whole the past two weeks just sucked. And I mean HELLA sucked.

First, let me just backdrop this - Becky & I have been wanting new flooring in this house for quite some time - the "new" carpet that was installed before we moved in 2 years ago is really only carpet in the figurative sense, in that it's made of carpet-like material, it's flat and you can walk on it. However, it's already started unraveling in several places and where it meets other flooring materials the join already has bare nails sticking through it. The kitchen was done up with this white tile, which I suppose trumps the original pukey-green lineoleum I found still under the stove, but....was installed by the previous owner (heretofore known as "F-in Carl" or sometimes even just plain "Carl"). And it's become quite obvious over time that Carl never met a level or a ruler he liked, because if he used one putting together any part of the house I know he worked on, I can't tell. The tile, for instance, looks like it was laid at random in some places. The newer concrete-based siding outside looks great from the street, but buyer be damned if you were to study it up close, it's frighteningly crooked. I don't want to talk about the fence or the utility sheds in the back.

So we took the plunge and decided to replace the carpet and the tile everywhere but the bedrooms and the bathrooms. We had the estimate and measuring done by the folks at Home Depot, and they sent us an estimate for about $5200 of labor and materials, which we got down to $5000 on a discount for using the Home Depot credit card. Several days later, our materials got delivered and we were ready to schedule the install.

Enter the flooring company, which only does one thing - install laminate and hardwood flooring. After a couple false starts, they showed up to examine the tile floor to see what was underneath it, and found both the green linoleum I mentioned above, and some black mastic (floor glue) underneath that. They immediately pulled off the job, saying we had to have that tested for asbestos, because they didn't have a license to deal with it....so we had it tested, and sure enough, the linoleum was clean but the mastic contained 10-15% asbestos. The flooring company, lacking a license to deal with such materials, was now stuck waiting for us to find another contractor to clean up our kitchen.

So I called up an asbestos remediation company from which I'd asked for a price quote, and set up a time for them to come out and give us an estimate.....now, I could have just yanked the whole project and returned the floor to Home Depot, but with two young children and a house I wanted to sell a couple years later (plus the imminent threat of asbestos-related litigation), I decided to get it removed. The estimate came back at $2100, putting the total price tag then at $6618.75 (got back the money for tile removal since the original contractor wasn't doing it). During the estimate, the kid (and I mean kid - he was 19) said we'd need to not only yank the tile, lineoleum and mastic, but they'd have to take out the kitchen cabinets too since the mastic ran halfway up underneath them. So now we're not only looking at re-doing the floors, but also practically rebuilding the kitchen as well.

Oh yeah - forgot to mention....I previously thought that the tile was sitting on a wood backing, and that the lineoleum and mastic was directly underneath. Wrong!! Apparently, F-in Carl declined to get the material underneath tested (or maybe he just decided to ignore the testing process)....and so it appears he removed just enough of the linoleum and mastic in the center of the floor to be able to glue his tile down - and never bothered to have the rest of it removed professionally. This, in California, is very illegal, and part of me really wants to go after F-in Carl, because by doing this he exposed us to asbestos - and to mold, since it was obvious the rot under the sink was there long before we moved in (it was covered up with a 1/4" thick masonite panel that fit into the bottom of the sink cabinet). If I didn't think the case would be impossible to fight (we'd have to prove he KNEW about the threats and ignored them) or that F-in Carl probably doesn't have any F-in money to help pay for the repairs, I probably would sue him.

Anyway, back to reality - the remediation company comes out, seals off the kitchen, makes a hell of a lot of noise, and begins work. About halfway through, the foreman calls me out to look at the wall behind the sink, which I notice right away is completely black. He tells me it's mold, and that the drywall will have to come off there as well - not to mention that the cabinet under the sink has been almost completely rotted away with the stuff. I can't believe I've been living with this crap, so I authorize them to rip the wall off and make sure the stuff is gone. Fortunately, it only went up half the wall and they were able to remove it for no additional cost...about the only thing on this project that didn't wind up doing that :)

The asbestos/mold guys finished in about 5 hours, and then I began the struggle to get a tester in there the next day to try and free up my kitchen before the Memorial Day weekend. I did manage to get a tester in there on that Friday, but he said the air sample results wouldn't be back until Tuesday because of the holiday. That whole weekend, Becky & the kids went to Berkeley so they wouldn't be exposed at all, and I held off doing any work in there until Monday when the lab called to say we were clear a day early (who knows what they were waiting for, the test got done Friday afternoon).

In the meantime, I went back to Home Depot and got a bunch of drywall stuff to redo the kitchen wall, since due to a lack of funds I was going to have to rebuild my kitchen by myself. This is where the fun really started - I have become a fairly gifted sculptor with putty, having done a bunch of decorative wood railings in most of the rooms in our house, but I never worked with drywall before. It took some negotiating, but I got most of the wall done except for the area around the pipes where the sink went.

I had one or two more pieces to fit into place around the pipes, and was driving a screw into one of the studs when I saw some water dripping down at the bottom of the wall....I thought "that's not good" and undid the screw I was working....and PSSSSH hot water sprays out of my wall like a jet. I go sprinting for the hot water heater around the corner and turn it off, then after several minutes spent cursing my own stupidity, I called a plumber to come fix the length of copper pipe in my wall I just put a screw into. Even though it's a holiday, the plumber happens to live in the neighborhood and comes out anyway, fixes the pipe for $75, and offers to help me reinstall the sink and dishwasher and stuff when I'm ready for it. I decide right there that that's probably a good idea and make a mental note to call him when I'm ready - especially since he helped me out by putting nail covers over the studs where there were pipes or wires running through them. Running total now, including materials purchased from Home Depot : $6982.67.

So later that day I got all the drywall in, patched, and sanded. By this time, Becky & the kids were back home and I got her to put a coat of paint on the wall so that we didn't have this dingy gray and white crap behind our cabinets. The next day I spent rebuilding the sink cabinet with new particle board, and managed to do a pretty good job of making something that fit in exactly and was level with the rest of the cabs on that side. That took pretty much all day, and was a real bitch to fit in with having to do my real job as well.

That evening, I was ready to install the cabs on the sink side. I lined everything up, got the first screw ready, started to drive it in...and BZZZT. I put the screw right through the electrical cable leading to the outlet right above the screw. Couldn't believe it. I'm telling you, if you've got something in your wall and you need a drywall screw put through it, give me a call - cause apparently I can't freakin miss. At any rate, Becky remembered there was a kindly elderly electrician who lived two doors down and sweet-talked him into fixing the outlet...which he did for the very neighborly cost of $50. New total : $7032.67.

That night I finished attaching the cabs without incident and glued the hell out of the counter top...managing to make it level in both directions, which it previously wasn't. The next day the plumber came back and installed the sink, dishwasher and the new water filtration system I got from Home Depot. Nice guy, does good work, but brings his damn wife with him and charges me $65 extra for an hour of HER time. I trust the guy's work, but I'm not having him back unless he comes alone. Oh well, at least we have a working sink now. New Total : $7240.00

Next up, the stove has to get hooked up and the cabs reattached. I hooked a new gas hose up to the back of the stove and got ready to do the cabs....but both Becky & I smelled gas. So I called PG&E and talked them into coming out that day to take a look at it. They did, and it was leaking, so they fixed it for free (yay!! free!!), and I was free to reattach the two cabs on that side and put the stove in place - all of which went down without drilling through the gas line (which given my previous record I was sweating bullets over).

So where we are now - the doors and drawers still need to be put back on, Becky is in the process of painting everything. Once it's done, it's going to look great, and the floor is scheduled to go in on June 14th, which is exactly one week from today. Hopefully nothing else happens because, being a homeowner now, I actually do have an axe in the back shed to take with me while running mad down the street.

Now as if that all wasn't enough, let me tell you what else is going on right now...lives, ending. Around the same time we got told there was asbestos in the floor, Becky found out her mom is doing a whole lot worse health-wise than anyone expected....she now has at least 4 majorly bad diagnoses - some sort of lung fibrosis, recurrent diverticulitis (blockage of the lower intestine), acute scoliosis, and degenerative arthritis of the discs in her lower back. Basically, she's stopped eating (already a very small person at 4'11", she's down to 98 pounds), she can only manage to get out of bed for an hour a day, and she's in constant pain....not to mention she has started to show signs of senile dementia. The doctor has said privately that she's living on "borrowed time", and between all the stress of the stuff going on at our house, and her mother wasting away...not to mention having to deal with a rampant 3-year-old and a teething baby....it's a ball of stress here...

...so it should come as no shock that, given the old adage that bad things tend to happen in threes, that my dog Bootsy should be diagnosed with some sort of unknown tumor. I can't even afford the exploratory surgery, and she is 11 years old, so she will have to be put down later this week - she has trouble standing, she can no longer play, she basically just sleeps and eats and poops. It's funny, I've felt something like this coming with her for the past couple years...but then again, this dog has always skirted death - she's eaten mounds of chocolate, lighter fluid, hair clipper oil....even an entire package of rat poison, and LIVED. But then again, maybe all of that stuff mixed together is what did it to her. I imagine if this were 5 years ago and my dogs were still my children that I'd be more upset about this, but I guess it's not terribly suprising with two kids of my own that I just....don't feel much about it. Nothing but a twang of guilt that I can't do much for her. I just don't have any more room left for the hurt right now, I only hope that I've given her a good life and she can go happy and not in that much pain.

Somewhere in all of that, the cable box died and DirecTV had to replace it with another one, but I think we hardly noticed....

The problem with having a blog...

2005-03-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

...is that you go into it with the greatest on intentions - yeah, I have something - no, LOADS of things to say, yeah, I'm going to pour out my thoughts and emotions into pixellated prose and record my slice of history....this is my JOURNAL, this is my DIARY, my LETTERS, my stamp on the world to be extracted by alien archaeologist drones from half-burnt discarded disk drives discovered in the rubble of Western civilization on a strange bluish planet 3 rocks away from a star....or maybe the sun has ballooned in size by then and it's only two (bye Mercury)...or [insert fantastic and overly optimistic statement here].

And the problem with that? Steam. Chutzpah. Adrenaline. Whatever. You blow your wad fast and run out of it. Which is all just my way of explaining why 9 or 10 months would go by without posting :)

[drop into Seinfeld voice] I mean - c'mon, people....[okay enough of Jerry] Who are you people that have time to go back and dissect your entire day, record it online and furthermore, what makes you so goddamn important.

SO, my alien friends. What happened to me and mine between May 22, 2004 and now. Hm. How bout bullet format for simplicity's sake -

- my second (and last) daughter Madeleine Judson Bodine was born on 10/16/2004, she spent some time in the NICU at UC Davis Sacramento because they thought she might have been ill, turns out they were wrong but still got to collect several thousand dollars in insurance money. Ambulance ride from Sutter Roseville (birthplace) to UC Davis? $900. Shiiiitt.....if I'd known it was gonna be that much I'd-a driven her there my damn self. Anyway, she's fine. Super mellow baby. Rarely cries except for when she gets sick, like right now, which is why I'm up at 4 AM typing.

- my first holiday season went by without going back to the East Coast. A little depressing, because I miss my family at that time of year. But we got through it and I can already tell Xmas is going to be a blast with two kids.

- a whole bunch of mundane stuff went down. Bills got paid, taxes got filed, blah blah blah. That's about as close as I get to day-to-day type stuff.

- made the decision in November and made appointments to get a vasectomy, which was finally performed on 2/25/2005. And f*** yeah, it hurts. Not to the point of being doubled over, but...imagine you were used to walking around with a squashed tennis ball between your legs, you have the surgery, and a day later you're walking around with a softball....just uncomfortable as all hell. That's short-term, though, and the fact that I will have no more children is a bigger sigh of relief, cause let's face it I love my kids but damn. Maybe I'll get into describing it in more glorious detail at some other point.

- when I heal from the vasectomy, I have promised myself to begin a more rigorous program of diet and exercise. I'm just tired of getting winded taking a shower. Kidding about the shower thing.

That's enough out of me for now. See ya next time.

Forgot to mention

2004-05-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

I neglected to update on Thursday, the ultrasound was able to positively identify that the baby is a girl, so I lost the bet. I admit I was a little bummed because we're only having two kids and I wanted one of each, but she looks completely healthy so I guess that's all that matters. If she's as cute as Macy, I'm gonna have to stock up on shotguns and rock salt to keep the teenage boys off her as she gets older...

I'm surrounded

2004-05-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

It's weird how sychronous the news ends up being sometimes...I'll get to that in a minute.

Everyone that knows me knows I am a declared agnostic, meaning that in my opinion I cannot either rationally or emotionally support the idea that a God does or does not exist. I mean, to me it's folly to declare that argument won one way or the other - if God is infinite, and our understanding of life, the universe and everything is finite, then we cannot by definition ever completely know for sure whether a God exists or not. That is the basis of faith, which is a concept I at least understand - faith means that in the absence of any sort of definitive evidence, you make a decision to believe in something anyway. Believing in God or being atheist are alike in that way, in that it requires a leap of faith to really be honest that you go one way or the other. And if you have made that leap yourself, in a way I envy you, because for the life I me I just can't do it. Despite all logic that God does not exist, I can't discount the fact that an existence like that might be beyond my understanding, which means the possibility always remains that it just might be true. At the same time, I see guys like Evander Holyfield walking down to the ring singing their hearts out to a gospel tune because they're just so...SURE...and that level of conviction that I feel would be necessary to have faith is something I may never be able to grasp. But at least I'm honest about it.

Anyway, that said, you can understand why I cringe when confronted with someone else's faith (either for or against). This has reduced the Bible to a text, and organized religions to social services that were once huge political forces...and are trying to be once again. That scares me, because faith is not rational, and this day and age I don't want someone at the helm making decisions who just makes decisions based on gut instinct and damn the cost.

Unfortunately, we have a president in the office who is the most uber-conservative, religious zealot in modern times. Bush makes Reagan look like a hippie by comparison. And he IS making his decisions based on faith, and that's scary - because this is not your average church-going guy, this is an evangelical Christian who believes that the Rapture is actually coming very soon, and seems to be going out of his own personal way to bring it about (not to mention line the pockets of his buddies in big business).

Don't believe me? Then I invite you to watch the program I watched last night on PBS Frontline called "The Jesus Factor" (available online in its entirety at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/). And when you're done with that, read the following article from the Village Voice - "The Jesus Landing Pad" at http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php. That's what I meant about the news being synchronous. If either of those stories doesn't scare you, then you really ought to take a deep look at yourself, and understand that Bush is creating an American version of the Taliban - a govenrment based solely on religious values and ancient laws. We laugh at the Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran that have such governements in place, but the truth is it's happening right here, and that is just the tip of the iceberg as to the depth of my dislike for George W. Bush.

One more thing...

2004-05-20T02:20:00.000-07:00

Just updated the picture on this blog, that is an old-ass photo but it'll have to do for now since I want nothing to do with a camera at the moment. For reference, I no longer have the dyed black hair or the goatee, to my wife's utter glee. But I have unfortunately also gained about 20 or so pounds since leaving Phrenik, so you'll probably get to hear quite a bit about that in the future. Also, my website is going up in rudimentary form at http://dbodine.netdojo.com

Ahhhhh....

2004-05-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

You know, this blog thing might be alright after all. That actually felt good to write all that out. And I didn't mention the aftermath of leaving Phrenik - there are apparently quite a few people who were really bummed by it, musicians and fans alike, and they don't mind telling me...but once they hear the reason just about every single person has said the same thing - that they respect me for stepping up and being a dad, which was a really cool feeling. Fielding quite a few offers for musical collaboration of a non-intrusive sort as well, I might add. I'm not talking about "come join my band", shit I wouldn't ask me that either after I left a band as high up locally as Phrenik. But I've had one guy ask me to throw down some vox on some electronic stuff, another one ask me to help punch up some songs, and another I offered a month or so ago to write a song for him asking when he can hear it. Not to mention that I would love to write music for Phrenik still. I have to get on rebuilding this computer so I can start my home demo studio and feel productive musically.

But anyway, back to life - as I might have mentioned, my wife Becky is pregnant with our second kid, due in mid-October. We have an ultrasound appointment tomorrow morning where we will most likely find out what sex baby we're having. Originally, Becky was all against finding out, she wanted to be surprised, yet the only names she's been coming up with are all girl names. I said what about the boy names, you know, it'd be nice to have one of each although I'll accept 10 fingers and 10 toes. With a baby attached, of course. She said she's convinced it's a girl. I said, yeah, but Michelle (my sister) has these like incredible predictive powers and she says it's a boy. So there's a small bet riding on the results tomorrow morning, and we'll see what direction the names go after that.

Kinda bummed that the Kings lost yet another game seven, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with Peja that he disappears the latter part of the season (wha- wha- what...? You like sports? Yeah I do, AND I write...get over it). And I hope Vlade doesn't retire, it'd be nice to see this team stay intact for one more try...sigh. Oh well. I have to say, after the Raiders losing the Super Bowl in the way they did, this is absolutely no match in terms of disappointment. But all the same I'm in no mood to watch the highlights on ESPN News. At least football is only a summer away, and I have the Olympics to distract me in the meantime.

Opening salvo

2004-05-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

I am momentarily riding a plateau in my life, having just traded the chase of one particular brand of future for another, and basking in the level of difficulty it took to make that change. Lemme splain. I'm 34, which is neither here nor there as far as the categorical value of age goes - you hear "34" and unless you're a Lakers fan (I'm not) you don't instantly think of youth or middle age. More or less you're just thinking, well I guess that's still young, but...uh, lemme see a picture or something. Not having yet given in to the elder times, I look and dress (and, when I feel like it, act) younger than I really am. Most people would think I'm in my late 20's before I drop the truth on them.

So it should come as no surprise that also for nearly 20 years continuously I was in one form of rock band or another, culminating with this last project (Phrenik - http://www.phrenik.com) where I was the lead singer and a main songwriter for one of the most popular Sacramento-area bands of the past couple years with aspirations of much larger things...and quite a few people ready to either give us those things or simply deem us ready for them. Really, that's a musician's dream - to be part of something people want to see so badly they will fork over their time and their hard-earned money to follow you around town to scream along with the lyrics, thrash about wildly, disrobe, go nuts in another world you create for them 30-45 minutes at a time...a regular crowd of anywhere from 50-300 fans ready to rock out at a moment's notice...with all eyes on the prize of the band securing a big-label contract, MTV, touring, the works...

And I quit.

(pause for reaction)

Okay, now that you've thrown yourself about the room in a tizzy going why...why..WHY...how could he DO this? Doesn't everyone want to be a rockstar, and you fuckin walked away what sounds like a golden chance at a future shot on Cribs? Yes I suppose they do, and yes I suppose I did. But you didn't hear...the REST...of the story...in addition to being this mythic-sounding performer endowed with magical powers of audience persuasion, I am also a husband (married 5 years), a father (one daughter on planet and another tot-of-unknown-sex due in October), a homeowner (bought my first house in Feb. 2003) and a computer programmer who quite frankly already makes a decent living. So really, adding "rockstar" to the list is spreading it so thin that my figurative self would make Calista Flockheart look tubby. And that's nasty cause I don't go for the scrawny thing.

I am originally from New Jersey (more on that story to come, I'm sure, I don't mind lording it about), but when I first moved to San Francisco in late 1995, I made the decision that I would work to become a pro musician, but at the same time I would also find a career that suited me and begin working on it...not so much as a backup plan, but more as a matter of preventing myself from continuing to flounder around in poverty while I waited for that call from Tommy Mottola. I promised myself that if I ever reached the point where either career was wholly interfering with the other, I would have to make a choice.

Well, needless to say, that choice was the root canal of all choices - it took nearly six months of over-exertion, marital stress, work lapses, lectures from the band (and band manager) and just general exhaustion to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer do everything I wanted to do, and something had to go. I was on the precipice of a VERY hard decision, but fortunately my love for my wife and my daughter made it easy for me - as I said to someone last night out at the Boardwalk in Orangevale, "it's like...imagine there is someone in this world who loves you SO much that every time you leave the house they cry their eyes out and call for you to come back...and you're always leaving..." I found that a part of me had grown up enough to want to reciprocate the love my 2-year-old daughter was trying to show me by acting like that. My wife had always tried to understand the lack of time I had being in bands, but eventually that wore on her too. So to them the decision was a relief, but to me it hurt like a bitch and so making it I went kicking and screaming full-on into parenthood.

I guess the natural reaction of most people would be to resent their wife or their daughter for "making them quit"...but in truth, I really don't. If I really and truly 110% didn't want to quit, I would have stayed in the band. But in so doing, I would have had to leave my family, sell my house, quit my job and really go for it. No, I made the choice based on a love for the life I'd built outside of music, and the desire above all to see that other life succeed and flourish....and in order to really make that happen, I'd have to be in that other life rather than away touring all the time.

So to sum up, you're getting in on the ground floor of the new life (minus the period of depression that followed The Decision) - you've seen the crossroads, you may get some of the back story, you may get some of the continuation, hell...you may not get any story at all, I have the attentive ability of a fruit fly. But at least you know a little about the storyteller, eh?