Lone Catalpa Flower

I’m having an out-of-body experience. While I was in my body, I had a bad day. Then a short while ago, I laid in the hammock outside, swatting mosquitos and watching the last rays of the sun illuminate the huge green leaves of our Catalpa tree. From my position on my back, all I could see was Catalpa leaves, some dark green, some yellow-green, against a perfectly blue sky. I think that’s when I decided to leave this day behind and start blogging.

My day started ordinarily enough. I was late to work because it felt so much more comfy to sit in my chair at home and drink coffee. When I finally slinked in, I realized I had basically nothing to do that day. Oh sure, I responded to some little things and helped a few people out here and there, but I had practically the whole afternoon to myself.

It wasn’t always this way, and it shouldn’t be this way, but it is. You see, I used to be a technical wizard. From there I turned into an application designer. Pretty soon I was leading teams, and now I’m a project manager. I’m not supposed to  be a geek anymore. In fact, I’m barely hanging on to shreds of my geek heritage, and at the same time, I’m not a very good manager. For those who have read The Peter Principle, I’ve petered-out, or more accurately (and sounds like a lot more fun), I’ve petered-up. I’ve been promoted to my level of incompetence, and I’ll likely retire from this position in another twenty years.

Enough about work. After work, on my sweaty ride home in the air-conditioning-no-worky Dodge pickup, I remembered that my wife would be late today. Gina was in Lake Forest because her mammogram last week turned up a “density” that needed checking out. I was surprised to see her home before me. Walked in and got the mammogram update right away: they did a bunch of ultrasounds and MRIs and other tests and decided she needs a needle biopsy right away. That’s scheduled for tomorrow, with the results due Wednesday. Oh, and get this: apparently she was supposed to be notified of a follow-up in 2007, but her old doctor’s office screwed up and never told her. Great, this thing has been brewing inside her for two years.

Now I have to say this right up front: I’m a crier. I cry at sad movies. I cry if I think a sad thought. I totally cry too much, and this is a problem for me right now because I need to be strong for Gina instead of being a 260-pound snotrag. But instead, for the umpty-umpth time, I’m a sobbing wreck while she’s telling me it’s going to be OK.

I capped that off with a little weird spending on my son. This past weekend Andrew told us he was going to trade his shotgun–something we’ve been praying to be rid of since his May suicide attempt–for a bike. A bicycle is just about Andrew’s speed, something he is capable of taking care of. A car would be too much. Anyway, I have pictures in my head of him coming home with a nice, sturdy bike he can ride all over town. After all, it was a like-new shotgun with all the accessories and extra ammo. Instead, he brings home this wreck of a little motocross bike that was never worth more than $100 new. Ah well, we’ve learned to keep our mouths shut when things like this happen.

So he leaves to go home, and about 20 minutes later we get a call. Can Dad come pick me up? The crank snapped off! I pick him up a few miles from home and throw the bike in the back of my truck. We take it over to the bicycle repair shop, and I ask them how much it would cost to fix it up. They tell me I’d be better of spending $100 on a new, cheap bike at Toys-R-Us. So we head off to Toys-R-Us and find ourselves in the bike aisle.

This is where it gets a little surreal. Andrew is 23 years old, 6′ maybe 6′-1″ tall, probably 220 pounds…he’s definitely a man, not a little boy. We’re in the aisle with all the tiny motocross bikes, right next the little girls’ princess bikes. We’re checking out bikes shoulder-to-shoulder with parents of kids small enough to ride in the cart. I felt more than a little out of place. Anyway, long story short, we settle on a nice Tony Hawk model for $189. I didn’t want it to fall apart after a month’s hard use. When we got home, my wife frostily reminded me that we’re supposed to discuss purchases over $100…oops.

That’s when I laid down in the hammock. What a day. Then I noticed something strange. Catalpa’s make a huge flower display in May, then they dump all the flowers like rain over a period of about two days. These flowers have long since shriveled up, rotted, and blown away. Except for one. It’s still up in that Catalpa tree, eking out a living. Seemed like a perfect finish to the day to find that one struggling flower.

#3: Kopps Frozen Custard. They have three locations. Huge burgers, and they’re famous in Milwaukee, but I think you can do better.

#2: Omega Burger & Custard. They have at least two locations that I know of, one at Hwy 100 & Layton, the other near Lincoln & KK. The burgers aren’t as big as Kopps or Golden Gyros, but they’re good.

#1: Golden Gyros: At 72nd & Lincoln. Huge, delicious burgers. They also have gyros that are supposed to be good too, but every time I go there I can’t resist getting another delicious double-cheeseburger, extra cheese, ketchup, and pickles. Yum!

I’ve heard of other burger joints that are supposed to be good, and I’m going to try a new one tomorrow—the Nite Owl Ice Cream Parlour at 830 E. Layton, by the airport.

Strangely, all these places have good ice cream, too. I prefer Omega for this purpose.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Here’s a list of 50 songs today’s musicians need to take inspiration from:

• Aerosmith before they kicked smack: Last Child
• Early ZZ Top–Tush, La Grange
• Any popular Tom Petty song, for example, Mary Jane’s Last Dance
• The Black Crowes, Remedy
• The White Stripes, Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
• CCR, Heard It Through the Grapevine
• Jimi Hendrix, Manic Depression
• Social Distortion, Ring of Fire
• Presidents of the USA, Lump
• Gov’t Mule, 30 Days in the Hole, aka Hempilation
• AC/DC, Night Prowler
• Bad Company, Shooting Star
• Beck, Loser
• Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita
• Bush, Glycerine
• The Clash, Should I Stay or Should I Go?
• Joe Walsh, The Confessor
• Anything by George Thorogood
• Green Day, Brain Stew
• Guns-n-Roses, Mr. Brownstone
• Jet, Are You Gonna Be My Girl
• Jethro Tull, Cross-eyed Mary (pardon the flute)
• Kid Rock, Cowboy
• Living Colour, Cult of Personality
• The Outlaws, Green Grass and High Tides
• Nirvana, All Apologies
• Papa Roach, Last Resort
• Monster Magnet, Space Lord
• Rolling Stones, Brown Sugar
• Rush, Working Man
• Soundgarden, Burden In My Hand
• Stevie Ray Vaughn, Voodoo Chile
• Toadies, Possum Kingdom
• The Wallflowers, Sixth Avenue Heartache
• Alice Cooper, Eighteen
• Bob Seger, Her Strut
• Deep Purple, Smoke on the Water
• Foreigner, Juke Box Hero
• Head East, Never Been Any Reason
• Jane’s Addiction, Mountain Song
• Led Zeppelin, Black Dog
• Lynyrd Skynrd, Gimme Back My Bullets
• Mountain, Mississippi Queen
• Rage Against the Machine, Killing In The Name Of
• Robert Palmer, Addicted To Love
• Scorpions, The Zoo
• Ted Nugent, Stranglehold
• Spin Doctors, Two Princes
• Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak

I’d love to see a list of hits from anywhere in the last three or so years that rock like these songs did. I’m not talking about metal or screamo, just good ol’ fashioned hard rock. Is it really that out of style?

By 2003 I had changed jobs, and the company I work for was switching over from AIX to Windows for the area I support. Although I was still a believer in Unix, it was now my job to eliminate it. I thought I had better get myself on the Windows bandwagon and learn how to be a proper Microsoft developer. So I switched my home workstations over to Windows XP. Got a copy of Visual Studio. Learned how to be a .NET developer using (gasp) Visual Basic .NET. Pirating all the software I could have never afforded if I had to buy it.

Well, it’s 2009 now, and after six years on the dark side I’ve come home to Linux. In this case, Ubuntu. I’d heard good things about it, and to tell you the truth, it’s better than I expected. It installed flawlessly on my Toshiba laptop, and I was instantly comfortable with it. In the past I’d been a real command-line geek, but now the GUI utilities are so good I don’t even need to dredge that up. Now I can try out tons of software with a guilt-free conscience.

It’s good to be back. I don’t miss Windows one bit, especially the horror that is Vista.

Update: my son finally got tired of relentless waves of viruses and strange behavior on XP. Even after starting with a fresh install, all the Windows Updates, and AVG 8.5, his computer would soon be trashed after a month’s use. So he let me install Ubuntu Jaunty on his computer. He uses his computer mostly for streaming movies and keeping his iPod music. We’ll see how it goes!