Preoccupado

"Bill dropped his keys on the counter and sat there staring at them... suddenly thinking about all the times he'd thrown his keys there before- and how many days of his life were wasted repeating the same tasks and rituals in his apartment over and over again. Then he wondered if; realistically... this WAS his life and the unusal part was his time spent doing other things."

the full 17 minutes is available at this link:

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/NYQoLzDeMV8/

Funny how this resonated with me… I've gotten caught in that vortex of thoughts in one form or another many times a day. Maybe people are adding up the time we spend in line, at a red light or on hold and our growing awareness of such things are causing us to become so impatient as a society. I believe we're evolving towards convenience and instant gratification and at such an exponential pace since the invention of the microchip that we can very well become teleporting blobs with skinny 80 fingered hands and the ability to nuke a hot pocket will become as rare and even valued as the ability to hunt, skin, butcher, prepare and preserve wild game...
 Yeah, my teachers always admonished me for using run on sentences but what do they know? (Funny, they've been saying the same thing about me) I haven't written in cursive since the 7th grade... hmm go figure- another dying skill. Sucked at algebra too, guess I can put away any hopes of being a rocket scientist. I am fortunate enough to know how to hunt, skin etc... wild game. A great skill set to have in the event of societal collapse, maybe a mixed blessing in the event of zombie outbreak.
Who knows, maybe that's how it goes down on 12/21/12... Yeah! Zombies! Nah, it'll probably be the same as Y2K and Oral Roberts being "taken home by god" if he didn't have $8mil raised by 3/1/87. We all wake up or maybe... sleep off that night and go back to work with the realization that the giant stone calendar maker at the time simply said "Meh... I'm done making calendars." and closed up shop...

Easter fiasco 2006

Here's a little story from 2006:

On Easter Sunday Holly and I hosted a little get together at our house for my family and a couple of friends. After doing a peak to floor cleaning the night before, the house looked beautiful and ready for festivities. We started the holiday off by going to a choral service at the Holy Ghost Catholic Church in the morning, then got home and began cooking and drinking wine (as is standard operating procedure at our house). We all enjoyed a wonderful meal and decided to continue with our earlier wine endeavor but this time on the front porch.

   About 3 bottles of wine later (It was just before sunset) we notice a smokey smell and for about a minute thought that someone down the street was barbecuing some paint. A few minutes later, when greasy black smoke was billowing out of the front door, we realized that it was us! I ran into the bathroom to see the wicker shelf eyesore above the toilet was engulfed in flames and that we were in fact barbecuing makeup and toiletries along with an acrylic toilet seat and yes... paint! This all compliments of an unattended candle which the door must have knocked over since it opens up into, yes... the wicker shelf. My buddy Trent, being the prepared one that he is, ran to the kitchen, wet two dish towels and handed me one to wear as a kerchief over my nose and mouth. Then the rescue/ firefighting evolution began. Holly handed me a fire extinguisher which I aimed at the fire, squeezed the trigger and emitted about a 3 second burst, then it was empty. Trent went with her to rig up th e garden hose while I went to look for the cat who was relaxing on the bed. Well, she was drooling with little watery green eyes but she seemed nonetheless relaxed showing no urge to flee. I scooped her up and ran to the front yard and handed her to someone so I could go back in and continue to rescue the tarantula and continue putting out the fire. At some point, Holly phoned the fire department while Trent and I put out the fire. The smoke in the house was so thick at this point that you could not see 3 feet in front of you. Somehow, the cat decided she was safer under our bed than outside around all the looky loos and decided to bolt for cover. We had to re-rescue her and put her in Holly's car.

The fire department arrived about 10 minutes after the call, then admonished Trent and I for taking matters into our own hands but we both decided not to tell them that we each have firefighting experience.

After a little Q and A session with the neighbors and gathering up a few things that we could get by on, my brother who works at the Marriott in Cherry Creek, very generously went half with us on the cost of our hotel room.

Now almost 2 weeks later, Holly and I will be out of the house until the beginning of August while repairs are being made to our 1 bathroom house due to smoke damage and a charred but structurally sound and in tact bathroom. The upshot is that we were in the process of remodeling the bathroom and now the brunt of the cost will be picked up by insurance. Big bonus! The downside is that we just finished repainting the kitchen and will have to repaint the entire main floor as well as refinsish the wood flooring throughout the entire house due to some soot being tracked into it.

We are adjusting quite nicely to our 2 bedroom 2 bath flat in Stapleton though and insurance is paying our expenses there as well!

After moving back in in late August we were pleased to find that the movers which our insurance company hired (meth heads for hire?) had either broken or stolen half of our more expensive items.

If all else fails, skip work!

Sleep

After my first week of decent sleep in years it's back... I've been having problems with my sleep patterns since about 2006 but they've been getting ridiculously worse lately. Go to sleep at 11pm, wake up at 2 or 3 am. Go to bed at a decent hour (10ish) and be unable to close my eyes until 6am.

There are hundreds of reasons ranging from stress, anxiety, lack of exercise... well, I get decent exercise from work but not a proper work out; that's got to happen soon. Hopefully that will help with the insomnia, I really don't want to take a sleeping aid, I feel like my brain chemistry is jacked up enough as it is. We do have a neighbor one block over that works for a sleep clinic, I've been contemplating setting up an appointment although for one to study your sleeping habits one would actually have to observe you sleeping! I might as well take advantage of this health insurance which I'm paying for out my nose... maybe they'll cover it. Aside from getting wood or farting and snoring and drooling, what dignity could I possibly lose by having a stranger watch me sleep?

Work

So aside from being an insomniac I suppose I can go a little more into who I am; those of you with better things to do-feel free to navigate back into the ether from whence you came.

I'm the proverbial "jack of all trades- master of none"- I've worked in every trade from metal fabricator- I.T. network support and even sou chef. Sales seems to find its way on my resume frequently for some reason since about 2005 (hmmm... about the time my sleeping patterns started screwing with me?).

I started working for a wheelchair company back in March and it's a job that I really truly enjoy for several reasons. For starters there's the obvious sense of fulfillment as these aren't typical wheelchairs; they're "positioning" chairs that are primarily used in long term care and skilled nursing facilities. If someone is completely immobile along the Rocky Mountain region, chances are they're in or need one of my chairs. A lot of these people are simply waiting for God so it's nice to make them as comfortable as possible while they're here. Plus they're a hell of a lot more grateful than the overpaid blow-hards that we build a network infrastructure for... you're welcome very much.

Another reason I'm so fond of this work is that I am the only distributor in over a thousand square miles; Colorado and New Mexico are my primary area of focus. I have a spectacularly scenic drive to nearly everywhere I go, I'd take tons of pictures where I not so intent on getting there first… yet another thing I need to work on. With winter rolling in I do have plans of stopping at as many ski areas as possible as I'm quite an avid snowboarder. Not great mind you, just avid.

So you couple the above reasons and then add that the company is based out of Ontario and I see my bosses probably once a year and you have a win/win/win situation! I guess the only drawbacks to the job are having to clean wheelchairs that come back (trust me... ugh...), and the driving which can get me to my destination or home at wee hours in the morning. But hey, I guess there are advantages to getting by with an hour or two of sleep per night.

Play

Hmmm... I seem to have forgotten how to do that… more like vegging on my ass when I'm done with an 18 hour day. I remember enjoying it, I just need to do it more. I do play in a band called the Skivies, they've been around for a while I'm just the latest addition. I hope they don't wind up with a bass player's morgue like these guys http://www.themelvins.net/pics/morgue/bassistmorgue.html. Nah, just kidding... actually we're wrapping up recording 9 new songs… well, 8 and then a 30 minute noise piece. It's exciting because although I've recorded before, even in the studio with bands, this will be the first published work for me.

We were contacted by our friends in the band Action Friend who we've played numerous shows with, they told us that Toshi Kasai was coming to Denver to record them and he would like to record some other local bands as well. We had been working on lots of new material but we felt it was far from ready; this was debated heavily for a few days, then our singer put his foot down and said "fuck it, if we wait until we're ready we'll never release a recording!" I agreed although if there was anyone in the group that felt their (meaning my) material was sub par and needed work it was me.

Long story short, Toshi was amazing to work with, very patient and a wizard with his knowledge and equipment. We got the rough mixes back and were all floored! Hopefully we'll have the time to support the songs with some shows! Go to http://www.theskivies.com/, hopefully we'll have some new stuff up there soon!

That's it for now, I'll throw something else against the wall when I feel inspired to do so. Thanks!