Waiting Around: Terminal
10:14 PM
I’ve had a fair amount of run-ins with the law. Most people don’t consider a simple traffic violation a “run-in” exactly, and why is that? Probably because police officers should be out catching actual criminals instead of harassing simple motorists. But enough about that; onto the list (which is in somewhat chronological order).
It started out as a memory recall exercise but quickly developed into a minor obsession. And yes, I’m proud of my somewhat checkered driving record. After twelve years of driving, during which I’ve been pulled over 20 times, received almost as many tickets, and technically lost my driving privileges twice, I’m happy to say that I currently have no points on my license.
It looks a lot worse than it actually is. While I definitely have a lead foot, I’ve had only one minor fender bender in which the other motorist saw fit to flee the scene of the accident. That’s a record that speaks for itself.
As I approach the end of two months of dieting for our weight-loss competition I’m increasingly excited about the celebration dinner, moreso that I thought I’d be a month ago. It has no effect on my workout routine — only extracurricular activities like coding my site, quizo, and visiting my grandmother can do that — but I do indeed have a problematic appetite. How it comes into play down the road remains to be seen. But for one night at least I’m going to stuff my face with as many people as I can cajole into joining me.
Consider this the official invitation:
What: A celebratory buffet dinner on Friday, March 3rd
Who: Everyone who wants to celebrate over 35 pounds lost
Where: The Borgatta Hotel in Atlantic City
When: Hopefully starting between 8:30-9:00 p.m.
The actual details are still somewhat fuzzy, but since Al’s not riding up to the final weigh-in, I’m reluctant to make a day out of trekking up to Cranbury, N.J. like I’d planned. Instead I’ll probably drive up and back in the morning, leaving myself open to drive a few people down to A.C. with me after they get off from work. There’s been mention of getting a hotel room so we can party a little longer instead of driving right home but I still have to call around to see who’s interested in the idea. Whatever the decision, my stomach’s grumbling in anticipation.
I’ve decided to use the Photographer category to feature some photos that I really like but which don’t really fit anywhere else. Well, not yet anyway: I figure that if I post them one at a time but attempt to sort them into mini-themes then they might develop into albums on their own. When they do, I’ll bump them over to the photo section of the site.
At this point I feel like mentioning that right now I can’t decide between starting on my About page, tweaking (albeit heavily) the Photo page to be more accessible and include a more blue, and relaxing a little while longer before I have to start on some stuff for other people. The problem with the last one is that I could find myself out of practice, so it’s really a toss-up between the first two.
For now, I’ll content myself with posting photos one by one as I edit them. It will help keep the daily content on the blog fresh and turn the photo galleries into more of a storage area so I don’t feel badly about updating as infrequently.
One final note: these photos are a lot bigger than their photo gallery counterparts. They’re still sized down in the HTML, but once I figure out a fancy way to display the full size images that will change.
While in the company bathroom I witnessed a coworker brushing his teeth, presumably after he finished lunch. I took the opportunity to point out that the whole brushing after every meal, three-times-a-day thing is a bit excessive. The three-gallon jar of Listerine isn’t enough? People have to actually keep a toothbrush at work too? I could have stopped there, but instead added that it’s lucky if I brush mine once a day, let alone three. I’ll file that one under Things I Wish I Never Said.
Attractive, aren’t they? According to my doctor they’re completely benign, these little fleshy bumps under my skin. However harmless, though, they’re a tremendous annoyance. I’ve had one taken out from my forearm already — it was about an inch in diameter — and I’m about to schedule another appointment to have the one in my leg removed. They’re not particularly painful but sometimes they bruise if I bump them, which is enough for me to have them excised and endure a few stitches for a week.
Photo property of Melinda Sanders, M.D.
University of Connecticut Health Center
I looked on the Wikipedia and elsewhere, and the articles agree with my doctor’s claim that no-one knows what exactly causes them. I tried to explain my theory, but I could tell he brushed it off as just another crackpot patient rambling on about unsubstantiated theories even though he said, “Hmm, perhaps.”
I can trace each of my lipomas to a specific instance that might have caused its growth. The one I had removed from my left forearm was located exactly where it rested on the edge of the desk while playing Marathon the first three years in college. The one on my left leg is located where it pressed against the vertical support of those left-handed desks in high school. The two on the front of each thigh are where coins and car keys bump around while in my pockets. The list goes on.
Maybe someone with medical training will stumble upon what I’ve written and start to put the pieces together for the good of mankind. Probably not.
In my work as a designer for a company providing “stored value payment programs”, I often forget that I’m at work. It’s a relaxed environment, the people are nice and seem to like me well enough, and playing around in art programs all day is hard to beat as a form of employment. In addition, it affords me the opportunity to constantly refine my skills and add to my portfolio. The year and three months since I’ve been here has been extremely rewarding; I finally have some professional design work for my portfolio and I’ve learned more about HTML and web standards than I did in college. A lot of it has to do with my boss, who finds the subject as compelling as I do.
Every now and then I get a painful reminder that I work in a typical office with its share of idiots. One such instance came a few weeks ago, when a coworker who works in a remote office (he works there by himself, incidentally) came to our main office for a week of meetings. While here, he stopped by my desk with another coworker and learned that I was the Bob with he had been working for the past year. He was genuinely surprised to put a face to one of two people in the Creative Services department — especially since he’d been stopping by the office once a month and talking to someone else he thought was me.
This guy gestured towards the accounting area and said he’d been discussing a year’s worth of creative requests with someone else. Now, we have a system in place for submitting requests and delivering mock-ups, and since this person works at another location the majority of our communication is via email. Nevertheless, I find it humorous (and a little disturbing) that there were conversations about my work that took place without me; these talks were so inconsequential that they might as well have never happened. The thought of this person yammering on about designs and requirements — only to never have him bring back up in conversation something along the lines off Hey, where was this change I asked you for? — makes me a little afraid. Now that he knows who I am I’m doomed to deal with everything I was fortunate enough to miss out on until now.
I don’t know which of the two people who took part in these conversations was worse. On the one hand, someone might have been wasting my time over the past year with conversations that evidently didn’t even matter. On the other hand, who is this second moron? Why on earth did he allow these conversations to take place? I can understand the inclination to nod and feign interest once, maybe twice, but to endure entire discussions about website demos and debit card designs once a month seems a little extreme.
Fortunately, this anecdote is the exception to the rule. I’m mostly left alone long enough to deliver what the salespeople need without being subjected to their boring explanations and overreaching requests. But when those infrequent occasions rear their ugly heads they make for great stories around the office.
After I finished the blog’s archive template I downloaded the pictures from the past few weeks onto my computer — photos going all the way back to New Year’s Eve. It’s a shame that there aren’t enough to comprise an entire album online. For that I have to go back to the summer, and those are a little too out of date to bother posting now.
I could possibly upload the holiday party as an album, but besides being sick of sitting in front of my computer I’d better get rolling down to Baltimore for Alex’s belated birthday party. If only I could remember to take the camera out of my pocket at events like these, it might increase my chances of getting some interesting shots. Having an 8.0 megapixel camera with a 2-gig flash card does me little good if I rarely use it.
Until I put some time into editing my photos, here’s a picture of Alex before the aforementioned holiday party. Not particularly artistic, but not a bad shot either.
Welcome to my newly-redesigned blog. It’s coded in valid XHTML and the CSS, while in need of a little cleaning up, is compliant as well.
As of this writing, my new blog looks as I intended in standards-compliant browsers such as Firefox, and with the exception of an error on my sister’s laptop that I can’t replicate, the site views cleanly (as far as I can tell) in Safari and Opera as well. I still have not debugged for Internet Explorer, so if you’re currently viewing websites in any version of IE I suggest you do yourself a favor and head to mozilla.com to download a real browser.
I still haven’t gotten to everything on my list, however at this point it’ll make my life easier if I don’t have to continuously worry whether I’m viewing the right page when I refresh to see the latest tweak or edit. The remaining minor changes indude the RSS feeds, HR tag replacement image, and that pesky yet necessary IE-debugging. The final major piece to the puzzle — the archive template — has already been designed and requires only one or two more hours to implement. I think I’ll take a break until Sunday before finishing that off.
While I’m ashamed of how long it took, I’m pleased with the result. And while I won’t be going out of my way to present employers with my latest ramblings, I can once again use my email address without being ashamed of my ugly, clunky, blog built from an old table-based Blogger template. Next stop: The About Page.
I’m nearing the end of my to-do item list:
The list of items might clearer in the next few days — then again it might not — as I finally have a game plan for the final, most difficult piece to this puzzle: the sort by category functionality. It’s not terribly hard from an initial coding standpoint but if I don’t want to make future edits to seven separate templates I’d better get all my ducks in a row now; and even though my style sheets will handle most of the tweaks, there are bound to be some changes to the HTML itself.
Once the list is done I’ll be able to sleep better, get on with the third — and easier — section of the site, and streamline my process for posting. This last one includes getting a better application for the job (even though I’ll still use the web interface from my new cell phone) and familiarizing myself with the Markdown plugin from DaringFireball.net.
Until then, I’m going to dream of a finished site. Here’s a shot of how it looks now:
Even though I was momentarily sidetracked by depressing thoughts I trudged on and was able to add some functionality to my blog redesign. And while it still requires that I install an extra plugin for the drop caps, design styles a few important elements like images, lists, and block quotes, and finally tackle the sorting nightmare, I’ve got momentum. It’s not only enough to make the final push to completion, but to allow me to spend the weekend first focusing on a funeral in which I’m a pallbearer and then relaxing at a hockey game while I put everything behind me. Even if the predicted Nor’easter strands me in Maryland for a day or two it won’t matter. I’m so close I can taste it.
No screwing around here: my previous post was number 666. Funny how things work out.
As I work on my site — and try not to think about what tomorrow means — I can’t help but wish I had banged out this new blog just a month earlier so I could have shown it to Pop. I’m pretty sure he had only a vague idea of what I do for a living (most people just ask how the credit card design stuff is going), and I would have loved to share with him one of the things that makes me tick besides the superficial stuff like football or quizo.
Something tells me that he would have appreciated it, and it was just one of the things I wanted to show him on the computer. He used it mainly for playing Solitaire and making his weekly football picks for myfootballpool.com — no small feat for a while until he got the hang of it — whenever my grandmother wasn’t writing email. Little things, like finding out immediately when the person who swiped his credit card number purchased gas again or seeing how I just set up my bank account to write him a check online for my monthly car payment to him.
He’s the only person in the world who I cared to teach and who would have found such things interesting. Now that he’s shuffled off his mortal coil it doesn’t matter anymore.
My grandfather died last night. Man oh man, it hurts.
My intention is not to make this a sappy, long-winded post about what a great man my grandfather was or how much I miss him. I just need to remind myself how much I cried tonight and prepare for the tears to come during the funeral Saturday.
I never realized just how much everything can change in a heartbeat. No pun intended, honestly. It would have been pretty insensitive considering that the cause of death was a heart attack, but I digress. At some point after dinner I remember thinking how the evening’s worst case scenario would be if the list item tags in the new blog menu won’t be able to resize large enough for my grandparents to read. Now, 50 percent of that target demographic has ceased to exist.
Hell, I’m bawling like a baby just thinking about it. As I was saying, everything has changed now, from how we’ll spend Christmas a year from now right down to whether I can make it through a day of work tomorrow. The things in between that seemed so important — like this weekend’s hockey game or finding the time and energy to stick to my exercise schedule — suddenly don’t matter at all. My heart says drop everything to spend the week with my grandmother but my brain tells me that things after Saturday, while definitely different, will start falling back into place and I’ll regret any rash decisions like giving up a third of my paycheck; poor Dia has to decide between attending the services or her first day of school in about a year.
I also realize we have it easy by comparison. My sweet, sweet grandmother doesn’t know what she’s going to do with herself. Pop took good care of her; he was the chef, accountant, pharmacist, personal assistant, channel surfer and coupon clipper. (That last one is what kills me: the man would send someone to the store with $10 and a stack of coupons and they’d return with two bags of groceries. I’ve always said that I wanted him to be my personal shopper and now it hits me like a brick. He’ll never clip another coupon again.) I’m confident in my grandmother’s strength and that she’ll be able to get by without him, but placed in her shoes I don’t know that I could do any of it without getting emotional over now having to do it alone.
The bigger plan had always been for Dia and me to move to their row home in Northeast Philly and help take care of my grandmother in a situation like this, but I had no idea it would be this soon. Now I find myself mentally preparing for the move: sorting things into categories of what to fit in an already cluttered house and what to place in storage, figuring where exactly to store everything until we purchase a house of our own, and thinking of how our cats will handle another move. It’s not set in stone yet, but I already miss my short commute and living with Tim.
I’m tired enough to pass out right at the desk, but I’m also scared to fall asleep. I’ll be haunted for a long time by the image of my grandfather lying motionless on the hospital bed with his eyes still open, a respirator tube still sticking out of his throat. Part of me regrets asking the cliche “May we see him?” because I’ve heard it so often in books and on televsion that it seemed like the right think to ask. I should have waited outside; instead I was the lucky individual who had to break the news to my father, aunt, uncle, and sister. At no point did I feel like I was doing my manly duty by being strong and notifying the next of kin; the entire ordeal was miserable and I’d gladly volunteer to be the last to find out the bad news.
I spent my entire life explaining to people how the closest person I’ve known to die was my friend Andrew’s father. In fact, I explained it to someone just last week. If I was superstitious I’d say I should have kept my big mouth shut, or if I was religious I’d say that my grandfather was looking down on me now laughing at the whole thing. After bragging about how all my family and friends were still alive, I always made sure to add that when tragedy finally befell someone I loved I’d probably end up a complete, heartbroken mess. It was the truth.
I’m fortunate to have gotten to know him better in the last ten years. He ended up being more than the grumpy husband of my doting grandmother that I knew as a kid. I’m glad he lived to meet Dia and know us while we were married, and it means a lot to us that the engagement ring he gave to my grandmother now sits on Dia’s finger. These thoughts console me better than any religion ever could.
While I’m coding like mad to reach a stopping point before Superbowl XL airs, it occurs to me that I forgot all about catching up on The Sopranos. I bought the first two seasons on DVD for $16 from the Radnor Library but I haven’t had time to sit and watch the remaining 30 hours or so. There’s no way I could watch it all in the span of a typical video store rental, but hopefully someone I know has the discs and would be willing to lend them out so I can finish up before the new season debuts in a few months. Also, if anyone wants the first two seasons they’re welcome to them; I was just going to sell them on eBay anyway. The boxes are the cheesy rental type so they won’t look good in a collection or anything.
I lied just a little. While I did play video games for 12 hours straight starting a little after 5 p.m. yesterday, I’ve spent an equal amount of time on the blog redesign. But there aren’t that many hours in a weekend, right? Exactly, so let me say just how exhausted I am right now.
I’ve stripped out the color but only because I want the final unveiling — which is still a ways off — to come all at once. I’m finally pleased with the way it looks.
Things are okay with me in general, but on days like this I realize why I drag my feet where personal design projects are concerned. As punishment for wasting my own time with such horrible concepts and to remind myself just how little I deserved to call myself an artist, I’m posting three horribly misguided attempts to redesign my blog.
All three are an excellent reason why one should always nail down a color pallette before working on a design, work out a design before a logo, and get both absolutely perfected before even starting on the code.
Not that they need any explanation as to why they’re so awful, but I somehow managed to make every single one of my attempts drab, unclear, and puke-colored. I’m so disgusted with myself that I’m going to regress into yet another period of inactivity and do nothing but read and play Halo for the rest of the weekend.
I’ve become the stereotypical married male.
One of the smaller reasons why I was attracted to Dia in the first place was her small nuclear family conveniently located overseas. With my relatives providing more than adequate amounts of drama I was glad of not having to worry about adding to the mix. When Dia and I eventually grew close enough to think about becoming a family, it dawned on me that the communication barrier would situate me in a promised land free of in-laws. I love Dia’s family and it’s an incredible experience every time we visit Serbia or play host to them in Philadelphia, but every guy (and every now and then, a gal) knows that dealing with the extended family can be painful for a number of reasons.
This brings me to the most recent development in our relationship: our first fight.
It’s a long story, but Dia’s sister wants to return to the U.S. to get her Master’s degree. She has an undergraduate degree from Bucknell University in international studies and she’s as well-travelled as Dia is, only she doesn’t exactly have the resources to pay for a continued education. Being the caring sister she is Dia originally pledged our financial support (as a last resort only), and her sister was supposed to begin the application process: writing essays, seeking scholarships, and collecting every piece of information that she possibly could about returning to school. To that end, and seeing as how she had little spare time to perform these tasks after work and with only a dial-up internet connection, she took two weeks off from her job in Serbia to spend them with us while she accomplished as much as she could.
While she was visiting we took the opportunity to analyze the whole situation and determined that it simply wasn’t feasible to co-sign for over $10,000 in loans as well as pay $1,500 a month to feed, clothe, entertain, and otherwise support an additional family member, who would be legally prohibited from earning money other than what she brought in as a graduate assistant. Even that was already taken into account before deciding how much we would need for a loan.
After a week of observing Kari while she went through the checklist Dia provided a few things became clear. She wasn’t hitting the pavement like someone desperate to return to school. She had trouble preparing a list of anticipated expenses, dragged her heels in scheduling interviews, and seemed reluctant to leave the house at all. Dia and I didn’t take any time off from work as it wasn’t supposed to be a vacation but rather a working one; still, Kari had every opportunity to venture out of by train or bus and opted instead to spend almost the entire two weeks indoors, painstakingly writing two essays. I felt slightly worried that Kari’s vacation wasn’t very fun, but she knew the reason she was coming to visit. It was her opportunity for her to really focus and show us that she was dead set on going to school.
Listening to Dia fret about potentially bankrupting financial woes (her sister is not the most loan-worthy person we know) and watching Kari act as though a loan was no big deal to us, I laid it all out for her. Not only were we worried about her defaulting on the loan — a serious possibility considering there was only a one-year window in which to find a company willing to sponsor her — but we could barely afford to support her while in school anyway. So with that in mind, I added that if she could find enough money to cover tuition in its entirety we would find a way to cover her remaining expenses such as rent, food, transportation, clothes, entertainment, etc. If not, she should simply wait two or three years until Dia becomes a U.S. citizen and Kari could move here permanently, get a job and decide if she still wants to go back to school.
It was a simple statement of fact: that it made more sense to work for two more years at which point she could move here permanently, rather than accrue a sizeable debt when in all likelihood she would be forced to return home after graduation. Unfortunately, I think it was at that moment when Kari realized just how much work it would require on her part if she was interested in going to school.
The rest of the week passed uneventfully and Dia saw her off at JFK airport. The following few days were filled with phone calls, first of understanding, then of accusations. How could we be so uncaring? What do you mean it would be too much of a burden? After all we did for you how come you can’t help your sister? Then the part that dealt with me directly: What right does Bob have talking to Kari that way?
So there it was, the first swipe in my direction. Let me respond by simply saying that I have every goddamn right. If my wife considers bankrupting us on a venture that’s already failed once before, I’m allowed to raise my objections. In this case it’s even simpler since I was speaking for both of us. Whether Dia couldn’t find the words or didn’t have the heart, either way it had to be said.
At the risk of having written too much back story for too little payout, I’ll wrap it up with a final note. On an airplane, in case of emergency, passengers are asked to first affix the oxygen mask to their own faces, then proceed to helping others. We’re still working on helping ourselves right now, and not at a point where we can afford to give money to the extended family; someday, but not just yet.
