They Say I’m Going Crazy; They Say I Got a Lot of Water in my Brain

Ok, everyone, sorry for the long hiatus between posts. I actually tried to post several times last week, but Blogger seemed to be indefinitely down for maintenance every time I tried to post. I was going to put them out there after the fact, but not only did I not want to overwhelm you faithful readers with multiple posts coming all at once, but I also felt that they lost their relevance once several days passed the time the original thought was conceived. So, to make up for it, I am just going to briefly (yeah, right. Is anything I ever say on this blog "brief"?) summarize what has been going on over the past week:

My car is still in the shop. I will hopefully get it back sometime this week. In the meantime I am renting a car to get to and from work. Since I am paying for this replacement vehicle out-of-pocket, I went for the absolute cheapest model they had available. Hey, it's just to get to and from work. Plus, I drive a Kia Rio. It couldn't be any worse than that, right? Well... they gave me a while Chevy Aveo. Have you seen one of these things??? My wife thinks it's "cute." I think it is like driving a giant egg.

Last week the weather prognosticators were forecasting a big snowstorm on Thursday. As I was looking out at the beautiful, cloudless sunset on a 60-degree F Wednesday night, I thought there would be no way that we were getting up to a foot of snow. Well, guess what? I woke up at 4:30 am to at least 4 inches on my car. It was wet, heavy and it was coming down like crazy. It took me almost 2 hours to complete a typically 1-hour drive. All morning long the snow fell like you wouldn't believe. Schools and government offices closed. We shut down our Colorado Springs branch. People here were itching to get home. Then, it stopped. The sun came out. The snow melted. By Thursday evening, the temperature was back up into the 50's and all the snow (at least in Fort Collins) was completely gone. Just another one of the wonderful quirks of living in Colorado.

Salve a mio lettrice da Italia. Grazie per tua visitas. Scrivere uno commento scritto, per favore. Io sono interessato sentire da ve. Ecco, se tu no sei offeso da mio Italiano. ;-)

I know that you guys don't like when I talk about work stuff, but I am on the verge of collecting about $70,000 worth of invoices dating back to 2002. Yes, 2002. The big kicker is that I am collecting this money from a payables guy that I've heard mean and nasty things about since I first started working in this division. Apparently he has a deep animosity towards the Big Boss Lady and the other financial managers who handled that particular group of accounts before. But for some reason he has taken a liking to me. He not only agreed to pay what I asked him for, but he wants to work with me to clean up a bunch of other super old outstanding receivables as well. So, here was this big bad guy that everyone called "belligerent" at best, and he was not only cordial but also complimentary to me. The Big Boss Lady is thrilled that we finally have movement on this stuff because we are about to write off $300k worth of these old orders to bad debt if we can't collect them. Guess who the new point of contact is for these orders? All I'm saying is that this better come up in my next review...

I also know that you all hate when I discuss American Football on this blog, but I can't help but to express my overwhelming sense of joy that the University of Tennessee defeated South Carolina over the weekend. It isn't so much that I dislike SC, it is that I completely despise their coach Steve Spurrier. After having to listen to his obnoxious comments all week, I was more than happy to see him have to eat his words. How does the leather taste on those size 11's, coach?

Going back to a discussion that SLG and I had a few posts ago, I am still taking a few continuing education courses at the local community college to learn Microsoft Access. These are once a week, all day seminars. We stopped for an hour lunch, so I decided that I would slip on over to the student center to grab a quick bite to eat instead of leaving campus to eat out. It was super busy in the cafeteria, so I grabbed a newspaper and my soft pretzel and tried to find a seat wherever I could. Upon sitting down, a guy across from me inquired if I was an instructor. Um, no. Am I a student? "No," I replied. "I'm neither. I'm just here for the day taking a continuing ed class." His response: Oh, I was wondering because we don't see to many old guys hanging out around here. Old guys????? I'm freaking 31!!! I realize that in the relative scheme of things 31 is ancient on a college campus, but jeez man, I wouldn't consider myself elderly by any means. At least not enough for a complete stranger to point it out. Needless to say, I won't be eating in the cafeteria this Friday. It's a good thing, anyway since I just spent all of my money on a crate of Oil of Olay.

That's about it for now. Sure I could go on, but I was talking about my work shift. It's about over so I am going to post this and go home.

Just Like that River Twists Across a Dusty Land

So, I drive a Kia Rio. I know. It is the epitome of manliness. The reason why I drive an automobile of such pretentiously high stature is because I drive 54 miles to work each way (that's just under 87 kilometers for you Canadian readers), totaling around 108 miles each day, or approximately 540 each week. That's right, I am putting 30,000 miles a year on my car, about double than the average user. When my old Honda broke down for the zillionth time (don't even get me started, that's a separate post - no, a separate blog - all together) we needed to find a car that was cheap, got good gas mileage (do you Canadians call it kilometerage?) and one that I wouldn't feel guilty racking up that many miles on. You know, the exact polar opposite of a Humvee. Well, due to a little financial finagling on the wife and I's part, we were able to purchase a brand new Rio for under $7,000. So, for the past two years I've been zooming that tin can back and forth to Denver each day with no major problems beyond the dent in my wallet due to shelling out for the gasoline to make that commute. Other than that, I have no complaints about our cheap, dependable car.

That was until last Wednesday evening. As I was on my way home from picking up the girls from school, the car completely cut out on me. It is a manual shift, so at first it just seemed like the engine stalled like when you don't have the clutch in or something like that. My electrical system was still a go, but I had no response from the motor at all. I coasted on to a neighborhood side street and tried to give her another start. Nothing. No clicks, no turnover, no buzz. Zero. Since my radio was on and my clock still had the correct time, I figured it couldn't be a battery problem. A failed jumpstart confirmed this notion. Something was very wrong.

The Mrs. came and rescued us in her vehicle and I went home to promptly research what may be going on. There were many scenarios, but it appeared that in most likelihood it was the timing belt. Ok, no problem. I'm not a mechanic by any means, but I'm not afraid of doing it myself, either, when things need fixed on one of our cars. Unless it involves overhauling a transmission or milling heads I am usually up for the challenge. Changing a belt? Easy. My pops and I did it on the old Chevette I drove after high school. However, this time was different. Due to this marvelous experience, I have had the opportunity to learn something new about automobile engines. You see, there are two types of engines: "freewheeling" and "interference." Almost all cars nowadays are built with freewheeling engines. When the timing belt slips or breaks, the wheels spin free. Like my '86 Chevette, all you have to do is replace the belt and voila! your car is up and running again. The remaining engines out there on the road have "interference" engines. When the belt slips on an interference engine, the wheels keep turning and firing the pistons. This can cause substantial damage to your engine, often resulting in bent valves, broken pistons and busted head gaskets. Translation for the non-motorheads out there: Lots of $$$ to fix.

So, I went out to visit the stranded vehicle the next day. Whew! They didn't tow it away. I popped the hood, took off the engine cover and sure enough, the timing belt was missing at least 9 teeth. That had to have been the reason behind the engine failure. Did I worry? Of course not. One of the appeals of buying a Kia is that they are covered by a 100,000-mile/10 year warranty. Surely something this serious is covered, right? Um, wrong. In the back of the owner's manual is a maintenance schedule that recommends that the timing belt be changed at 60,000 miles. It fails to mention that if you don't and your belt slips that not only will it seriously wreck your engine but they won't cover it under the warranty, either. In fact that one little line squeezed in between many other "recommended" maintenance procedures is the only mention of the timing belt in the whole manual. How is one to know, especially since the majority of timing belts last well over 100,000 miles and go on the majority of engines where a slipped belt doesn't matter? Well, you can find out all about it online after-the-fact. Apparently I'm not the only one, either. This is a known issue with Kia motors and belts. Don't believe me? Do a search for Kia+interference+timing+belt. See how many testimonials and horror stories come up. Interestingly, almost each one of these cases happened in the 60-75,000 mile range (I was at 65k). Kia can get away with selling inferior belts that break 40,000 miles earlier than their competition because they "recommend" that it be changed. Hey, it's my negligence, not theirs, if I chose not to take that recommendation. Ok, I'll concede that. However, a little more head's up on the importance of having it changed out would have been nice. Seriously, how many of you out there have dropped $200-300 bucks to change out your timing belt as part of your routine vehicle maintenance? Would you if you knew it could save you from having to replace your engine down the line? I'm guessing so.

Luckily for me, I had already taken off Thursday and Friday last week anyway since the girls were out of school. So, that conveniently spared me the embarrassment of asking the Big Boss Lady for that time off. I did have to come in late today, though, because I had to pick up a rental car to cover the time that the Kia is in the shop. That's right, to add salt on top of it all, I am paying for a rental out-of-pocket for the next few weeks until my car is done. I won't know how long that will take until today. It all depends on how many valves and pistons were damaged. The lower the number, the lower the expense and repair time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed until I hear back...

Well, thanks for letting me rant, fellow readers. I know you all probably skimmed most of this, so please keep in mind the main points of this post: the importance of adhering to your vehicle maintenance schedule, knowing what type of engine you have, and that it is extremely masculine to drive a Kia Rio.

Finally There is Clarity… This Tiny Life is Making Sense. And Every Drop Numbs the Both of Us, But I Alone am Staggering

I mentioned this in a previous post, but I am taking some continuing education classes right now to learn MS Access. The Access database that I work in for our receivables website was built by a person no longer with the company. The individual who managed the database before me now works in Treasury and hasn't run the upload in two years. So, you can imagine her surprise when we had to call her a few months ago when the database needed to be adjusted due to our customer changing one of its websites. No one else knew how to do it, and she had been more than happy to forget (it is a very meticulous, drawn-out process). So, the Big Boss Lady and I decided that it would probably be wise if I went and took a few of these classes since I work in Access weekly and someone needs to know how to fix it if and when it goes down again.

So, starting last Friday I began taking one-day seminars on the ins and outs of MS Access. I completed the "basic" course, and I am signed up through "advanced." After that I am moving on to Visual Basic. I am pretty excited about these classes, or at least for the information I am/will be learning from them. Even during the basic class my head was spinning with all kinds of ways I could apply this tool. The potential is wide open. Plus, since few people really know how to work Access, it is a skill in high demand, especially for "experts." This is for sure a talent that I am interested in developing. On top of it all (nerdily enough) I also think it's fun. Yes, I am a geek.

I'm taking these courses at the local community college, conveniently selected in Fort Collins so I can avoid the commute to Denver for at least a handful of Fridays. Once I stepped on campus, I realized how far removed I am from the current college-aged crowd. Some how it all crept up on me, no matter how hard my efforts have been to stay "hip." During my last few years of school I was what they call a "non-traditional" student, so I know what it is like to different, but this time I really felt like I was out of place. I seriously lost count of how many times I heard "I was sooooo wasted" in the hallway. The first few times were funny, then nostalgic, and then sort of pathetic. I mean, I could have shared with them how my wife and I had plans that weekend to finish re-modeling our master bedroom and bath, but I would have just came across like Frank the Tank in Old School. The difference, however, is that I am happy to have moved on. Don't get me wrong, I had a whole lot of fun those three years of my first attempt at college, but I am more than happy to have moved on. Those were not just years of me being wasted, but years I simply wasted. I don't regret the indulgences that I pursued, only that I pursued very little else during that time. Once I removed myself from that situation and gained some perspective on my life, I realized that I am someone who needs continual growth. I cannot tolerate stagnation, whether it is in my personal or professional life. I needed that change.

Sure, I miss the freedom of those years and the idealistic notion that the world was wide open to me and my desires, but I wouldn't go back. I am happy with who I've become and the progress I've made since that time. I still like to have fun, but I make sure to temper it with positive growth as a husband, father, professional, human being, and most recently as a home do-it-yourselfer. The master suite is coming along well. Once we are finally finished I am going to get soooooo wasted...

When You Were the Brightest Star Who Were the Shadows?

This started out as a response to Sweet Li'l Gal's comment to yesterday's post, but I rambled on so long I decided to just post it as a entry of its own. Thanks, SLG.

I finally broke down and read The DaVinci Code last spring right around the time the movie came out. I had successfully avoided it for three years or so, but my curiosity over what all they hype was about got the best of me. While I certainly wouldn't consider it great literature, nor would I give much credence to its historical assertions, I do have to admit I was entertained. But I think you (and Ducasse) make a good point about it. It amused me for a weekend, but then I moved on. However, some books like Kerouac's On the Road or Camus' The Stranger have struck me deeply, and I have read them both at least 4 or 5 times over (and probably will read them many more times in the course of my lifetime). I can think of many other books that have had similar lingering effects on me, even though I may have only read through them only once. Those are the ones that I consider "greats" and pass on as recommendations to other people. Sometimes people come back and thank me, other times people tell me that they couldn't get past the first few chapters. I guess everyone is different in that way. It drives my English teacher mother absolutely crazy when I trash Jane Austen (every plot's the same, a bunch of sisters all get married to landed gentry) yet I can safely bet that she's never read any works by my faves Kerouac or Bret Easton Ellis (I do think she's had to teach Dostoevsky, though). In fact, I'm sure many "high-brow" readers would dismiss Ellis as sensationalistic garbage, but I personally consider Less Than Zero to be a masterpiece of style and modern existentialism (the 80's movie sucked, though, IMO). But this goes back to the question I posed yesterday: is "art" just in the eye of the beholder? Doing a quick internet search on The DaVinci Code would demonstrate that the book has had a long, lingering effect on innumerable conspiracy theorists. Does that make it art? I'm afraid that the controversy kicked up by this book will keep it in the minds of the populace for quite some time. Does this count as a lingering effect? I wouldn't consider The DVC as art, but then again, Truman Capote once said that Kerouac wasn't writing, he was typing. Whose opinion counts? As Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (another book I loved but a fellow blogger recently disclosed she hated) asks, how do we define quality?

I personally am a fan of technique. Those who can master a technique deserve to be acclaimed. Those who invent a technique deserve to be celebrated. However, strong technique can only get you so far. For example, I was raised in a household where proper writing skills were highly valued (back to the English teacher mother). However, even though I feel that I can write well, that doesn't mean I can write well. Just because I can create grammatically correct, non-passive sentences with correctly used adverbs doesn't mean that these statements will actually convey anything of value to the reader. In fact, that is where a majority of my frustration with writing comes from. I know how, I just don't know what. In the reverse, there are many people who are quite profuse with expressing their ideas, but do so in a very poor manner. Consider the poor teacher who each year hears the same argument from students: why do you count off for grammar mistakes in a (non-language arts) class? Shouldn't you be grading me on knowing the information? Or how about the junior high misfit who has notebook after notebook of bad amateur poetry? Sure, there may be a great emotional outpouring of creativity involved with composing these poems, but they would pale in comparison to the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare or even the juxtapositions of Alan Ginsberg (I won't even bring T.S. Eliot into the mix...).

But there does come the point where even the best of techniques simply becomes imitation if new ground is never broken or no new ideas come to light. So, I'm inclined to say that quality art is the middle ground between technique and creativity. But is compromise, or middle ground, what we want to use to measure appreciation? Can we even measure qualitative with quantitative? I don't know. I'm starting to ramble. In the end, I like your definition. The best way to know if a work of art (inclusive of music, literature, film, etc) is of quality is to know if you felt an emotional response from experiencing it. Whether it is attraction or repulsion, I think the ends have been achieved. Art should be provocative; otherwise it is just superficial amusement that will quickly fade away from memory.

If I Could Play Guitar I’d be Jimmy Page…

So, as some of you may have noticed from the sidebar, I am currently reading Lolita. I put off reading this book for a long time because of the socially taboo nature of its theme. However, some time ago I compiled a list of "must-read" books from several other various lists of "must-read" books that I found on the internet and this one is near the top of almost all of them. Critics and readers alike proclaim this book to be one of the greatest written novels around for its use of language and allegorical references (among other things). However, the controversial reputation of this book has greatly overshadowed the literary praise it has received. I admit I was a bit nervous when I began to openly read it in the break room here at work, since I am often asked the typical questions of what I am reading, what it's about, etc, and I really didn't want to share with my co-workers that I was currently perusing a novel about a grown man who falls in love and runs off with a young, adolescent girl. I am honestly concerned that people will think I condone this type of behavior by being seen reading such material. But I couldn't hold off this selection on my reading list much longer so I finally broke down and got it from the library (humorously, I wanted to be discreet and go through the self-checkout but I forgot my library card that day. So, not only did I have to disclose my reading selection to the librarian, I also had the added embarrassment of having to go to the "special" checkout desk so they could look up my personal information...).

Well, the level of odd stares and comments that I expected from my co-workers was not as intense as I expected. Perhaps most of them are just unaware of this book's disputatious history. However, I was asked by one fellow the questions mentioned above, and once I gave him the answers he asked why in the world anyone would ever want to read that kind of stuff. I tried to defend the novel by relating its literary redeeming qualities, but he responded that it was just like the movie Brokeback Mountain and that everyone said it was so good but he wasn't going to watch it because it was about (well, you all know what it was about without me having to paraphrase his sentiments). I continued to try to explain that sometimes we must look beyond what is written and consider how it is written, but I think that argument went over his head. That did get me thinking, though, of all of the other books that have a far greater value due to their respective techniques and themes than the actual stories themselves. For instance, what would On the Road be without Kerouac's distinct spontaneous prose and bebop style? Would it just be a disconnected collection of hitchhiking vignettes? Or how about Naked Lunch (which actually went before the Supreme Court to defend its redeeming value)? All that book consists of is technique and style. There is no central story line. Would The Stranger just be another pulp murder paperback without Camus' existentialist themes? What about Catcher in the Rye? Ulysses? Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Tropic of Cancer? The list goes on...

The same argument can be made for music, film, art and pretty much any other creative endeavor out there. But where do we draw the line? How long can we overlook a weak story line or endure a socially taboo one if it is presented in a technical or stylish masterpiece form? Is there a breaking point? I'm certainly not advocating censorship by any means, but is there a point where we begin to fool ourselves and start celebrating obscenity as art? Or is it all just subjective and in the eye of the beholder anyway? How do we define “art?”

When I Think Back on All the Crap I Learned in High School, It's a Wonder I Can Think at All

So, the other day I briefly mentioned a teacher that I had in high school and that kind of got me thinking about whatever happened to some of those people in my graduating class. I mean, for a handful of years I spent almost everyday with those people and now I have no clue what paths their lives took. I still keep in contact with a few individuals from that period in my life, but for the most part even close friends of mine have disappeared into the unknown. So, that had me musing about what could have happened. Some people I know about and really, there's no surprise. Like the son of the ex-marine wrestling coach who is now flying helicopters in Iraq. No shock there. However, the blond girl that people tended to kid for her, um, "less than profound" observations is now an oceanography professor at a major university. I honestly didn't see that one coming.

But what about everyone else? Did the couple voted most likely to succeed actually defy the odds and fail? And if they did both fail and they were the most likely to succeed in our class, what does that say about the rest of us graduates? How about the artsy theater girl? Did she end up becoming a corporate lawyer? How about the young conservative guy? Is he now running a hippy commune? Is the three-sport star athlete now fat and out of shape? How about the overweight awkward girl? Is she now a model?

I guess if I ever bothered to show up at one of the reunions I could probably find out. But the people that I would actually care to catch up with don't go to those things, either. I do know one thing, though. The guy voted class clown ended up being a financial manager for a wholesale supplier. How's that for irony?

Misunderstanding All You See

I am dedicating this post to my high school English teacher, Ms. Anderson. Ms. A, even though you made me sit in the front center desk in your classroom, even though you warned the class "this is what happens when you do drugs" after you read my creative writing journal out loud to the class (hey, I was experimenting with spontaneous prose...), and even though you often dismissed my insights into literature with laughter, I want to thank you. Yes, contrary to what you probably believe, I did actually take away a lot from both of the American Lit classes you taught. I thank you for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thank you for The Learning Tree. Most of all, I thank you for Self Reliance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance is no joke probably one of my favorite essays of all time, right up there with Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and Sarte's Existentialism is a Humanism. In great irony, I am going to do the exact opposite of what Emerson advises in his writings by exulting the genius of others, namely Emerson himself. Emerson implores us to strike our own genius and to become our own selves independent of the thoughts of others. We must embrace our true selves and follow this path regardless of the paths that others have set out for us. We should not base our lives on past events when we know that continuing to follow these past actions will keep us from being true to our inherent selves. This, according to Emerson, is a "foolish consistency" and the "hobgoblin of little minds." Instead of walking down the same beaten paths, we should strike a new path, seek new ideas, and break out past the paradigms of accepted thought. We fear treading this unknown, but we must trust in ourselves that we alone know the way to our enlightenment. We must cast off the ridicule that we will face, because we shall surely be misunderstood. Emerson states that "misunderstood" is a "right fool's word." We must rely on our own self-opinion, not others'. "If we live truly, we shall see truly." To rely on anything else is cowardly.

Emerson's words and wisdom ring just as true today as when they were first written in 1841. How can we as individuals move forward when we refuse to look anywhere but behind us towards the past? We have become such a social creature that we have all but surrendered individual thought. Who cares what the crowd thinks or demands? Those who have been truly great, those individuals who have contributed the most radical of ideas have done so without regard to public opinion and have many times been persecuted for it. We hold ourselves back because we fear. We fear our own ideas because we fear isolation from society. However, we should not fear isolation but embrace it. For it is the individual nature that allows the great thinker to overcome conformity and consistency.

But here I am doing exactly what I predicted; I am simply regurgitating Emerson's words (and doing a poor job at that). Instead, I am going to link Self Reliance here. I strongly encourage you to read it. At the very least, skim it for the highlights. You will thank me for it.

In the meantime I am going to share some of my favorite quotes:

To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loathe to disappoint them.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.


If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

And finally, my favorite quote from Self Reliance, one that I still have on a laminated bookmark that Ms. Anderson gave me on the final day of class:

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Maybe Ms. Anderson understood after all. Thanks, Ms. A.