I have a Couple Rhetorical Questions.

The first being, Is it wrong that I find women’s curling mildly erotic? Strange I know, maybe it’s just pornography escalation coming full circle back to the mundane.

This has by far been the worst month leading up to my birthday ever. It hasn’t been all bad I admit, but the highlights have just been muted, like my promotion. I’ve only had it dangled in front of me for like 6 months, so getting it wasn’t full of elation, it was just a well yeah, I’ve deserved that for way longer than this.

Just people dying, relationships fracturing, frustration escalating, and fear rising.

The only thing I can think of to make things better is to make detailed plans to make things better, which in some cases I have.

As a birthday/promotion/make me feel better present to myself I think I’m going to buy some new hockey pants, Warrior brand of course. With gift money from my parents, remaining fun tax money left over after buying my new shin guards, and money from selling my old shin guards, they’ll only cost $29 of real money. I think I deserve that. I’m such a whore for Warrior gear. I think that’s about all the Warrior stuff I could buy other than shoulder pads, but they would be so overkill for a no check league it would be ridiculous. (Some dudes don’t even wear them, and I cut off the hard plastic pads on mine anyway.)

Looks like I’m going to make it. One more post tomorrow on my birthday and I’ll have done it. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, maybe I’ll be able to keep it up, maybe not once a day, but I’ve been able to see the anecdotes in daily life now again.

Second question: Am I less of a man for really, really liking show tunes?



Substitute Peoria for skid-row and downtown, too many syllables I know.

Waves of Emotion

So that tingling feeling of something going to happen, happened, as it were.

My boss instant messages me and tells me he set up a one on one with me the next day early in the morning and wants to make sure I can make it.

My brain immediately recoils in horror thinking that I’ve been caught using the interweb too much, or that fact that I’m at work for exactly 8 hours a day now, not a minute more.

I try to feel out the situation so I don’t spend the evening throwing up in anticipation.

I message back, sure no problem. Do I need to have some yearly goals put together to discuss or something like that?

He messages back, Well, I wanted to tell you in person… Oh shit … that your promotion went through.

Cooling calm and joy fill my heart. All my finishing reports on time has paid off. I tell him that’s awesome and thank him for working it on his end.

So I get 5%, and now I’m a Senior Gonzo Engineer. Maybe the Gonzo won’t be listed, but we all know the truth. I guess the grays in my beard are deserved now. It will look nice on a resume too, puts me in a different category and bargaining position.

This morning the kids don’t wake up at some point from 5-7. Seriously, the day I need to get in by 7:30 and they don’t make a sound. On top of that we find out my wife’s friend’s mom died this morning. I’m full of panic, self worth, and sadness. I need to get to this meeting so I get out the door buy 7:08. Luckily Peoria did a halfway decent job clearing the streets after 3 inches of snow.

I tear up a bit as I climb the hill to work. It’s a combination of relief of getting this promotion they’ve dangled in front of me for so long, and the loss my wife’s friend has to deal with. I remember her wedding and talking to her mom, this kind, lovely, gracious woman, nevermore. I try to pull my shit together and navigate the country road without killing myself.

I make it to work 5 minutes late, no big deal, everyone is 5 minutes late to every meeting they go to.

I sit down after the meeting, which is really nothing groundbreaking after finding out the high point the day before, and I am able to breath and let my head stop swimming.

Just like Old Yeller and Of Mice and Men

We had to put Skitch down today. Over the past couple days he stopped eating, became lethargic, and lost that spunk and life in his eyes.

He then suffered the indignity of not being able to make it outside before he had to crap.

They always say that you know when it’s time to put your dog down, but you don’t really understand that statement until the moment arrives.

When we took him to the vet, he explained that he was in congestive heart failure. (He’d been diagnosed with heart problems a few years earlier and had outlived the vet’s estimates of how much longer he had.) Fluid was building in his lungs and stomach, and he was using all his energy just to breathe. That’s why he wasn’t eating, and that’s why he was so lethargic.

We knew he was beyond repair so the vet got him set up with an IV and let us say goodbye to him.

We wanted to be there when he was given the overdose of meds. I didn’t realize how hard that would be. I held him and pet him as the vet put the needle in. It was surreal as the tears welled up in my eyes. For a second I wanted to tell him to stop, but I knew this was the right thing to do.

I’ve seen dead family members, witnessed a tissue harvest at a hospital, killed wild animals and bugs, but nothing was quite like holding onto Skitch as he died. Feeling his heart stop and his lungs stop as his body slumped down like he was taking a nap was tragic.

The vet gave us some time, and I just broke down over his little body.

He was a good dog. He lived a long life, 15 or 16 years by the estimates of how old he was when we adopted him.

I’m going to miss him.

No more coughing buddy, No more pain.

The band Coldplay is so fucking pretentious…

That being said, they do have some very heart wrenching infectious songs.

I learned today why my comrade at work was gone for the past two days. His brother’s baby died due to a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (a hole in the diaphragm). Call me a big pussy, but I wanted give him a hug.

I didn’t.

It would have been uncouth.

Having gone through a miscarriage with my wife, the news that his brother’s full term baby had died just cut right to the heart of me. It made me want to cry, as I thought about my Carter.

I had been listening to Fix You by Coldplay because it was in my head since it’s on the preview for that 9/11 movie.

It fits so well. So fucking tragic though…

“and it's closed on Sunday." “Of course,” I snapped. “These goddamn Jesus freaks! They're multiplying like rats!”

I’ve got a couple things on my mind as I sit here in our abandoned section filled with only those who didn’t have enough vacation days left to take off. I stand on the brink of becoming a father and I have such clarity in my mind. Maybe that’s just the drugs, but it feels good.

This whole thing about intelligent design is really bothering me. I think it’s because I love science so much, and I don’t want to see it perverted into something it’s not.

Those who are for intelligent design throw up all these smoke screen arguments about how we should be fair and let children decide which is correct, Darwin's Theory of Eveolution or ID. They actually act as if ID is a competing scientific theory with evolution. It’s not. No one followed the Scientific Method to come up with it. There is no real proof. ID is Philosophy. It is Religion and Theology. It is NOT science, and to say it is and to have a desire to have it taught in PUBLIC schools is simply Theocracy.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Deist. I come to the same conclusion when I look at how vast and amazing the world around me is, and how complex the systems of the world are. I come to that conclusion though not with my analytical brain, but with something deeper in me. Again, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t gone to church in I don’t know how long, and I’m horribly afraid of my own death because I’m not sure what’s going to happen.

In an interesting side note, my Aunt talks a lot to me about my religious beliefs and hers. She’s a devout Baptist, and I think it’s cool. She and her husband have an amazing faith that I don’t think I could ever have, and they really don’t push it onto people like so many other Christians do. I lived with them for a summer while I was interning at Miller Electric, and they would ask me if I wanted to go to church with them on occasion. I would always respectfully decline, but they didn’t force the issue on me. I was talking to my Aunt a month or so ago about life and death. She’s recovering from breast cancer, and I asked her what if she was wrong about there being a God and about Heaven, and when we die we just die. She said she didn’t care because she likes the way she lives and the community, faith, and strength her religion gives her. I thought that was a really good answer. It didn’t make me feel any better about dying, but it did make me respect her beliefs even more.

Anyway, if anyone who supports ID can give me a valid argument as to why it is SCIENCE then I’d like to hear it. Otherwise it should be kept in philosophy and religion classes.

So the birth of my son is supposed to be this amazing life-changing event. I’m really excited for it to happen. I don’t recall all that many other life-changing events in my life. The most emotionally rich moments of my life I think are the following:

The moment I walked into the room where my grandmother’s body was at the funeral home. It was the first person that I was actually close to who died. When I saw her it was like a baseball bat hit me in the head.

The time after I broke up with my very first girlfriend. I remember crying in my mom’s arms like a little kid even though I was like 17. It just sticks out in my mind

The first time I had sex: Self-explanatory

The moment I saw my wife right before we were going to be married. Also self-explanatory

The week after my wife’s miscarriage. Previous blog post’s reflect how I felt after this.

And finally, the moments after I thought I wasn’t going to be promoted to “Engineer” See this post for that one.

So we’ve got 4 bad things and 2 good things that really stick out in my mind as deeply emotional experiences. Hopefully the birth of my son will be so vastly amazing that it will count as like 3 or 4 good things. We’ll see.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ears

My wife and I were talking last night about how we don’t really have any close friends here. We both have friends in Peoria, but none that we would classify as best friends, or close friends like we’ve had in the past. The kinds of people you can just go over and watch TV with. You don’t have to have a set plan of things to do. You just enjoy each other’s company and insight into the normal things in life.

For my wife, it’s difficult to make friends because she works with people who have lived in the area their whole lives and already have very close circles of friends. My only excuse is that I’m weird and have distinguishing taste when it comes to the people I hang out with. Most engineers aren’t any fun to hang out with (usually way to conservative for me)… so I don’t.

My best friend ever in the history of me was Jay. He and I were good friends all through school, starting in second grade. We were thick as thieves, especially when we were stealing things. He was an only child, and I was the only boy in my family, so we had almost a brotherly relationship. We had a lot of fun times, but when we went to different schools, we lost touch. We still talk once in a while, but it’s infrequent.

When I went to college, I had two good friends, JJ and Ehron. JJ was a fellow student (Liberal Arts though, not a boring engineer), and I met Ehron when I was doing janitor work at Meriter Hospital. Now that I’m in Peoria, I’ve begun to drift apart from them as well. It’s a fucking Greek tragedy.

I’ve always said that tragedy shows you exactly the kind of person you are, it also shows you how strong/weak your friendship is, whether it be a car accident, psychotic roommate, or an attempted suicide, that shit either makes you better or it breaks you.
Anyway, this place feels more and more like a prison every day, with walls that keep on getting higher. I seriously need to get back into therapy. HA! That won’t make me any friends. Eh (shrugs) I play someone normal on TV.

In the end we're all dead men.

Damn, Peter Jennings is dead. He was by far my favorite news personality. He’s one of the few I actually trusted to be honest and accurate in his delivery and analysis. Not like those crazy assholes at Foxnews. He didn’t have an agenda, and he was super cool. Fuck… it’s depressing he’s gone.

Good news is that it’s Friday for me. Tomorrow I’m on vacation for a week. I’m heading out to CT to see my sister and her husband and new child. My wife’s friend and husband also live in CT. We also plan to go to NYC and see the sights. I’ve never been there; my wife has though. Should be fun.

"Dad, do you know what Schadenfreude is?"

Ah, March Madness is over. Today all the illini fans at work are sobbing in their coffee mugs. It makes me feel good. It may be another 100 years before they have another shot at a championship.

Anyway, they are tearing apart the main interstate that runs through peoria, and have closed the main bridge from Peoria to East Peoria. This is the bridge that I, and 60,000 other people cross every day. Now we are forced to take one of the three other bridges, which are not very close to the I-74 bridge. To avoid many headaches, I have started to go in to work at 6:30 am. I'm really tired now because of having to get up so early. I need more time to adjust.

My wife an I are also in the beginning stages of home buying. We were approved for a loan through our evil credit union. I have since applied at Lending Tree to find an 80/20 loan to avoid paying PMI. What is PMI you ask? It's a bank way of getting more of your money for no reason. If you don't have 20% down, you have to pay the bank insurance every month just in case you default on your loan. What? So you take more of my money making it harder for me to pay my loan every month, just in case I default on it? Brilliant. Dirty bankers and their dirty tricks.

And finally I'm ready. I've hit step one. I've been depressed because my wife and I had a miscarriage in February. I can hardly believe it's already been a month and a half. Like I said before, you think you've achieved a little piece of immortality and it gets taken away from you. Tragedy shows you exactly what kind of person you are, and exactly how your relationship is. Its like this big moment of clarity in a giant storm. I'm beyond wanting sympathy, or empathy, and any -athy at all. I'm not exactly clear on what I want right now. Right now I'm just living, trying to satisfy my other needs in Maslow's hierarchy.

In case you were wondering:

Homer: (sarcastically) No, I do not know what Schadenfreude is. Please tell me, because I'm dying to know!

Lisa: It's a German term for 'shameful joy', taking pleasure in the suffering of others.

Homer: Oh, come on Lisa. I'm just glad to see him fall flat on his butt!

Bad Noise

I got to drive the truck today... I feel like a man at 17 cents/mile. I normally don't drive it because we live farther from my work than my wife's. Opposite of Dog doesn't actually pay me $315,000 so I still need to be tight sometimes.

I've had a fuck-it attitude as of late though. If you don't know why then you're not "IN". Needless to say I still don't feel like telling the world. You feel like you've achieved immortality and then it gets struck down by fate. There's always next month...