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by M. J. Young

Eat, Sleep, Drive

March 18, 2008 in Blogs

…Not necessarily in that order.

As I mentioned on Sunday, yesterday’s plan involved driving north so that a son could spend his girlfriend’s birthday with her. This also would give me opportunity to visit my sick father, who although home from the hospital seems to have lost his voice (vocal chords not responding for some reason), and to connect with our drummer to give lend him the electronic drum gadget he’s been eager to use. It has also meant that the Monday workload got pushed into today atop the Tuesday workload, which is a lot of work.

The plan did not go entirely smoothly. I believe I got almost three hours of sleep by five in the morning, when the first to need to catch a bus was looking for his morning medicine, and then in somewhat disrupted and disjointed fashion pieced together my morning study and was on the road around quarter after seven. We grabbed breakfast at the gas station (which is not as bad as it sounds, since although Wawa has recently established a strong place in the retail gasoline market they are traditionally a deliconvenience store) and so reached the northern destination very shortly after ten.

Having fought for consciousness over the last leg of that journey, I locked the car and slept, fitfully with the CD player running, for about two hours. I then was unable to reach the drummer, who I think had not anticipated his wife and her Irish family monopolizing his time on St. Patrick’s Day–but my mother called, wondering why I was not already there, so I went there, ate lunch, and by around two was reading clippings cut for me.

Then, perhaps near three, I fell asleep again, and slept until my cell phone awoke me, my wife calling to see what arrangements I had made for several things she had expected me to address. Since it was by then almost six, my mother turned her attention to feeding me dinner and packing my car full of groceries. I still could not raise my drummer on the phone, I settled in to wait for someone to call.

The son called first–not the son for whose call I was waiting, but the son who hoped I would pick him up from his brother and bring him home for a few days. That was agreed, although the timeline was still uncertain. Then the anticipated son called, but to tell me that he was going to have dinner nearby before he was ready to go home. Then the drummer called, and the end of the stay up there was a somewhat awkward juggling of conflicting connections–but we made it.

The return trip put us in the driveway around two in the morning, if memory serves, and then there were some things that could not stay in the car overnight which had to be unpacked. My online work was limited to posting to the Corinthians list, and then I got to bed about an hour before I would be getting up again–but at least this time I correctly anticipated being able to return to bed after people were rousted and driven from the house. I think I’m reasonably rested at this point, but do not know whether I will be caught up by the end of the night or not.

To add to the confusion, my mother-in-law called. We just solved her banking problem so she can pay her bills, but now she has no stamps. Thus I have promised to bring her some tomorrow. Here’s hoping that’s not too disruptive.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

That Worked Like Not At All

March 16, 2008 in Blogs

Tomorrow is an anticipated disaster.  I’ve been tasked with dropping someone off three hours away by ten in the morning, which means I’ll be leaving here as soon after the boys are on their buses as I can manage, and then with bringing him home sometime after eight at night, which means I’ll be getting in around midnight.  This is not unreasonably because of a certain girlfriend’s birthday, and while I am in the neighborhood I am planning to visit my ailing faither (who is home now) and hoping to catch some time with my old and returning drummer.  I am not anticipating being able to do even the bare minimum of work here.

To compensate, I had planned to tear through a lot of tomorrow’s work today, tackling e-mail and getting everything in order so that I was on top of things, and then getting to bed early.  I did manage to take my mother-in-law shopping; but my wife had a meeting up that way, and so we went together, and one thing was added to another to another until it was very late, and I am very tired, and I will be lucky to manage today’s work today, unlikely to get to bed early, and probably not going to manage to get the things from the attic that I had promised to take with me when I went.  Well, maybe I can manage that part–but I’m pressing my luck as it is.

I’m constantly asked why I never plan to do the things that need to be done.  The reason is that my plans are irrelevant; whatever I plan, I can be pretty certain that that is not going to be done.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

A Post About Nothing

March 14, 2008 in Blogs

I am still feeling the combined effects of the changing of the clocks and the loss of so many hours to driving. Tonight’s setbacks were a delayed grocery trip followed by a phone call from a friend (more a friend of the boys, but a dear girl to many here) who missed the bus that would have put her five minutes away and so was at a bus station half an hour away instead. I’ll commend her timing–I had just finished attending to putting away the last of the groceries and was headed back here to do the rest of my work when she called, which saved me getting started and having to interrupt again.

I’m supposed to say next what I’ve accomplished, but I can’t think of anything that is relevant, so I’d better finish up and get some sleep so I’m good for tomorrow. Already Monday’s plans are disrupting my weekend.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Still On Standard Time

March 13, 2008 in Blogs

I realized this afternoon, as six o’clock bore down on me and I had not yet begun supper and knew I would soon have to get Baxter for our Collision rehearsal, that it did not feel so late as it was. It struck me almost immediately that we changed the clocks over the weekend–last week at this time it was an hour earlier, or was it an hour later, I can never get that straight in my mind. Thus I felt as if I should have more time before the rehearsal.

I have long thought that this idea of Daylight Savings Time was pretty stupid. Even the name makes little sense–if we are saving daylight, when will we use it? The government wanted everyone to get up and go to work an hour later during the winter, so that they would stay up later and use what little daylight we had to maximum advantage, so instead of asking everyone to change their schedules, they just changed the official clock. This meant that twice a year everyone was off schedule, because even if we remembered to fix our clocks we still had to adjust our biological clocks to match. Then gradually our technology caught up. Computers were the first devices to adjust for Daylight Savings Time automatically, followed by some wrist watches, video recorders, and now even clocks. Unfortunately, now that we have all this equipment that does this automatically, the government has changed the days on which the changes are to be made. This means the clocks are now wrong four times a year instead of two: in the Spring we have to adjust them ahead before the date they would adjust themselves, and then when they adjust themselves ahead automatically we must put them back, and then in the fall they will adjust them selves automatically and we will have to put them back, only to change them again when the new date comes. Tell me that this is not a stupid idea.

Rehearsal went well. Brittany was not here this week, because her mother is going in for surgery and life is a bit chaotic there at the moment. Baxter and Adam and I focused on the instrumentals, and made solid progress on some of the more difficult sections. I also gave Baxter a CD copy of the repertoire for himself and one for drummer Kevin, whom he expects to see on Sunday.

Otherwise, I am behind schedule, and looking ahead at a lot of delays. Let’s see what we can accomplish today with the time that remains. At least my body isn’t telling me to go to bed so early.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

When Should I Say No?

March 12, 2008 in Blogs

I lost a big chunk of yesterday to return a son’s girlfriend to her distant home. I was shorted on sleep for it, and am not certain I fully caught up today. I was also behind on the work, since I spent the bulk of this evening doing the major part of my Tuesday work, the Lutheran forum.

I seem to be losing a couple days a week this way, and my wife wants me to put time into some other projects that need my attention, but I don’t seem to have the time. At the moment, though, I am concerned about next Monday. In fairness, it is the girl’s birthday, and a girlfriend has the right to expect a doting boyfriend to pull out at least some of the stops for her birthday. However, I’m wondering if they expect too much from me. He is hoping that I will drive him up, which I understand; in fact, his notion that I visit my hospitalized father is excellent, and I am already entertaining the notion of killing part of the day chatting with drummer John. However, he wants to be there by ten in the morning–which means I’ll be leaving here pretty shortly after putting the last student on the bus, as it’s two and a half hours if there’s no traffic, and we’ll be hitting the Philadelphia and New York metro morning rushes (an oxymoronic name for the time when no one can get anywhere fast). He then plans to be there until rather late–late enough that I am going to have to drive back the ninety minutes and pay the three or four dollars in tolls to get back to take my mother-in-law shopping, because there is no way that he will be back in time for me to reach her in time to get her to the store if I wait for him. I would then have to drive back to him, another ninety minutes and several dollars in tolls (plus we are needing gas money) so that I can bring him home again.

By the time I would be home, I would have lost the entire day and shorted myself on sleep for it.

I guess I need to find out what he’s going to do to make this possible for me. Somehow, though, I’m not optimistic.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Not Another Tuesday

March 11, 2008 in Blogs

I was wrapping up last night, with only the Corinthians list still to do, when I was asked whether I would be willing to go for a short ride. The short ride wound up about an hour each direction, and the quick run inside also hit about an hour, so by the time I got home and finished that last bit of work it was about fifteen minutes before time to roust the boys.

This would not have been so bad, but that our oven died over the weekend, and a call to the gas company appliance service promised a technician this morning, so I had to stay up in case he showed early. He did not show that early, and did not stay long before pronouncing: the oven is dead. I thus lost part of my afternoon to finding a replacement, but other than that we drove quite a distance hunting for the used appliance shop only to realize when we got there that we’d been there before some years back (to get a part for a dryer) it went quite well, and tomorrow afternoon someone will be removing our worn device and replacing it with a rather nicely refurbished one. We did have to stop to pick up a few things that will make dinner possible, but by TV Guide standards it is not yet evening as I start my work.

This, too, would not be so bad, but that last week I committed to driving two people to the north country tonight. They must be there; I must drive them. I might get some driving help, but my new stand-in driver has been deathly ill the past couple days and I’m almost surprised that he is coming with me, but that it is his girlfriend who is going home, and another son going to work for the week.

All of this means there is little hope that I might complete my Tuesday workload. I’ll be pleased if I manage to get through today’s Gaming Outpost threads and am still able to post to the Corinthians list. We need to get on the road early this evening, and that does not give me much time.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Another Monday

March 10, 2008 in Blogs

It was like most other Mondays, really. I got through the e-mail, which is the bulk of the Monday workload, and I took my mother-in-law shopping. At the same time, it was not like other Mondays. One of my sons is sick, and no sooner did I have the others on their respective buses but I was out of the house and on my way to get medicine for him.

Even though I did get back to sleep, that put me back a bit on schedule. Further, our oven has decided to give us trouble, and the repairman will not be here to assess the situation until tomorrow morning, so since over the weekend we used the rest of the stove top foods and there’s nothing suitable for grilling, I had to bring food home for the masses. This put me back further–although I did get a bit of Romans editing done.

My breathing is rough, and I am tired and have an early day tomorrow (for the aforementioned repairman), but let me attend to the rest of today’s affairs before I crash for the night.

–M. J. Young

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What Day Did You Say It Was?

March 9, 2008 in Blogs

I awoke relatively early today, but while I was still awakening I was abruptly reminded of two things I knew two days ago and had completely forgotten.

I had an untouched cup of coffee next to me, and I had even decided in a rare move to get some breakfast, so I had an untouched bowl of cereal next to that. Then my cell phone rang.

I don’t carry my cell phone on me. There was a time when I never had it in the house. It does not get good reception in the house, and for some reason the chargers made for this model that run on house current do not work right with this particular phone. I use a car charger for it, and I use to leave it in the Caravan all the time–until the Caravan died. Since now I do not really have one vehicle that is “mine” in the sense that I have exclusive use of it, I keep my car things in a bag very kindly given me by the Ubercon people. Thus I was staring at my computer screen, my clock was striking twelve, and mixed with the music of the clock there was another sound which my mind sorted out as the ring of my cell phone, somewhere in the bag across the room.

I managed to find it before it stopped ringing. I disabled the voice mail some time ago, because it was just annoying and I did not want to pay for people to leave me messages I wouldn’t get for days. But it was director and artist Jim Denaxas asking me if I remembered two things, neither of which I had remembered.

The first of those was that this being the second Sunday of the month (and it not being May, the month in which the second Sunday is rather busy at restaurants) we had a directors meeting at one o’clock. I remembered that the moment I saw his name on the caller ID; I was not yet dressed, and had no notes, but it only takes half an hour to drive there so I could pull something together.

The other reminder was that last night we came off Daylight Savings Time, moving all the clocks ahead. Since the federal government decided to change the date on which this happens after decades of it being reliably at the same time, none of the clocks designed to do this automatically do it on the correct day, and although I had known it was coming I completely forgot and changed none of them. I still have a few clocks to track down and correct. However, that meant that when the clock struck noon it was already one, and we were late. We scrambled to get out of the house, and made the meeting, but we’re a bit behind for the day because of it.

The meeting constitutes some progress, and we talked about how to get some of these projects finished, so we’re moving forward.

–M. J. Young

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An Insignificant Number

March 7, 2008 in Blogs

I don’t usually recognize these things.

Actually, that’s not true. Usually I notice them, and then forget to mention them when I’m writing the blog, and remember afterward that I was going to say something about it. Dates, events, anniversaries, all of that stuff slips by unmentioned because I don’t keep them in my head long enough to put them on the screen. However, I’ve seen this one coming, and I noticed it as I was getting ready to type, so this time it gets mentioned.

This is the six hundred sixty-sixth Blogless Lepolt post. The first five hundred eleven are now on the archived site, and we have been on this new location since Blogless Lepolt Continues, Entry five hundred twelve, on August nineteenth of last year.

So for those for whom the number six six six has significance, this is that entry. For those for whom it remains just another number, well, it’s interesting nonetheless.

Collision did rehearse last night, sans Baxter. Brittany said she saw him, and he was getting glasses and did not know how long that was going to take. I think there’s something wrong with his cell phone, unless he’s just been too tired to awaken when it rings lately. Anyway, I’m going to try to get hold of him before the next rehearsal, to make sure there’s no other problem. It was an encouraging rehearsal, although we still have a long way to go. My wife heard her son playing bass, and was so impressed she came out and, perhaps, gawked at him for a few minutes. He did very well. We are not quite ready to add the drums, and because of previously mentioned problems with Brittany’s mother are anticipating some setbacks, but hopefully we’ll be good by April.

I’ve been tapped for another pick-up. The girl who returned home on Monday wishes to return here tonight for another weekend visit. Building ties with a future daughter-in-law is important, so I’ll be headed that direction. Her beau now drives, but not so long nor so confidently that he would undertake a journey of this distance alone, so we’ll share the wheel. Also, this week he will wait until I have returned from church, so at least I won’t miss that.

It appears, finally, that I am not, at least yet, sick. My druidic ancestors would of course knock on wood for that, but the table here has been dead and dried long enough that even if there were a tree spirit to appease, it would be a pretty angry spirit. I’m hoping that I’ve managed to miss it this time around. Besides, despite the amount of time the diseased persons spent abed, it did not seem to me that they were getting anything like rest.

–M. J. Young

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Fighting Forward

March 6, 2008 in Blogs

My thanks to those who have encouraged me to get some rest. I slept reasonably well last night and this morning, and although I am fighting occasional hints of queasiness I am not certain whether it is from the early stages of being sick, or merely from thinking about it.

I am considering cancelling tonight’s Collision rehearsal. I am loathe to do it, as Baxter missed last week, and Brittany’s mother will be going in the hospital mid-month which will put sufficient demands on Brittany that she will probably miss a few, and we are nowhere near as far along as drummer John would wish us to be. I think I will not cancel; but I will have a lot of work because of that. The man who loves to cook is fighting the illness, and last night was losing, so I have already started working on dinner in the expectation that he will not be able to manage it. I’ve already told Adam that I will want to practice with him even if no one else shows, as we are badly behind and he’s missed a few rehearsals himself.

I received an encouraging letter about the forthcoming book, Do You Trust Me? I had sent electronic copies to a few people in ministry I know (I had asked on a private list whether anyone was willing to give it a once-through and let me know if it was sound, and these people wrote to say yes, they would read it). One has responded, praising the work. I guess I should pressure my daughter-in-law to move forward on that cover art.

If I’m to accomplish everything, I must keep moving, so here I go.

–M. J. Young

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