Jeffrey D. Tharp's Blog, page 254

What I Did on My Furlough Friday (Part 6 of 6)…

I feel like we’ve reached the end of an era together. Now that I’m sitting here writing at the tail end of Furlough 2013, I’d love to say I’m sorry to see it go… but in the perpetual war between free time and spending money, money has won out yet again. It’s just as well that next week will bring back the standard 5-day work week. Another five of six weeks of being a part time worker would have probably ruined me completely for ever having a full time job again. If you haven’t had the experience in your adult life, a 4-on, 3-off schedule is pretty damned easy to get use to.

Being philosophical doesn’t really tell you much about how I used my final scheduled off-Friday for the immediate future. The answer to that one is simple: I did all the stuff I would have otherwise done on Saturday – grocery shopping, banking, stopping by the post office, and enjoying a late lunch at Chiplote just to top off the day. Now I’m back home writing, editing, and trying to remember that English is my first language and I should really know how to use it. All things considered, it’s been a successful Furlough Friday… I just hope it’ the last time I have to use those two words together in a sentence. Somehow I can’t shake the feeling that it’s just an operational pause before we reach a whole new level of stupid when the new year kicks off on October 1st.

Be sure to tune in here tomorrow for “My Trip to Walmart…”, a Post By Request coming to you whenever I get around to turning it in to actual sentences based on the notes I took while shopping for groceries this afternoon. With a plug like that, how can you not want to come back and check it out?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. The Bank. From time to time I have to physically walk into a bank branch. Every time I do, I’m reminded why I do as much banking as humanly possible online. That would be because online, I don’t have to stand in a line five deep while one teller window is open for business and two other tellers stand behind the counter looking at the fire extinguisher. I know I couldn’t do a job that required direct interaction with the public, but if you’re going to have one, maybe you should try, you know, interacting with the public.

2. Adulthood. Aside from waking up with the occasional ache or pain, the bills, and other assorted responsibilities, I feel pretty much like I’m waking up at approximately age 17. Society might be able to make me put on pants and give the appearance of being a responsible adult, but I’m mostly just faking it and hoping nobody notices. You might be able to make me be serious and responsible, but you can’t make me want to… and you certainly can’t make me like it.

3. Lists. I start every day with a list. Most weekdays the list I started the day with looks disturbingly like the one I end the day with. I would be easy to assume that means I wasn’t doing much during the day, but more often than not it means that whatever I planned on doing got overwhelmed by whatever crisis-of-the-day cropped up and needed complete and undivided attention. The problem with having the list is that no matter what crisis you manhandled into submission, some jackass is going to come along and ask why the stuff on the list didn’t get done too. I’m pretty sure the lesson here is to either not make lists, or stop having expectations. Possibly both.

Blink…

I’ve been staring at this blank screen for the better part of the last hour. The only interruption was watching the cursor. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. BlinkBlinkBlinkBlink. There is no more infernal form of torture for someone who pretends to be a writer on the side than a blinking cursor, an empty page, and a brain that refuses to give up even the barest of thoughts about what should be there.

The fact is my brain turned to mush sometime around 1:30 this afternoon and I haven’t had much luck at making sense using the written word since then. It’ll pass. It always does. A cold beer, a good night’s sleep, and hopefully less of an assault on my editorial abilities during the day tomorrow and maybe I’ll be able to string a few coherent words together. Maybe. That’s how it’s always worked in the past, so I’m taking it as an article of faith that the ability to be snarky in print doesn’t just evaporate in an afternoon.

I guess we’ll find out around this time tomorrow.

The art and science of the commute…

I think of myself as a fairly seasoned driver. I cut my commuting teeth on the DC beltway, it’s safe to assume there isn’t much traffic can throw at me that I haven’t experienced before. A 90 minute delay because the drawbridge was open? Check. Snow-induced gridlock on 95? Done it. Five hour office to home drives because a tractor trailer hauling gasoline fell off an overpass? Yep. Run a line of red lights at 5 AM on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast because certain unsavory characters got a little too close? Did that too. Snow, sleet, hail, rain, wind, all manner of natural factors have conspired against my daily commute at one point or another and I’ve bested all of them.

It’s been a long time since I’ve run the beltway gauntlet and you’d think that living in the backwoods of Ceciltucky would leave me free of most of the urban and suburban commuting hazards I faced while fighting my way into and away from the District every day. Commuting is an art and a science, but the one thing making the drive down 95 every morning prepared me for was the complete asshattery of the people who stop in the middle of the road during a driving rain storm. I don’t mean that they slow to a crawl. I mean they come to a full and complete stop right there in the travel lane as if nothing could have prepared them for the sight of liquid falling from the sky.

Look, if you need to pull off to the side and wait it out, good on ya. God bless. But for the love of Pete can we at least agree that stopping in the middle of the road, when by your own actions you’re admitting that visibility is less than ideal, is a very bad idea? And if, for some unknown reason, you do feel compelled to stop in the middle of the road, how about cutting the rest of use a break and flipping on your hazard lights so we have a fighting chance of seeing you before your cute little toy car becomes my hood ornament. Yeah. That would be just great.

Oh. And I had to drive over a tree today. A tree. Right there in the middle of the road. That was a first in 19 years of being a licensed driver. Surely that adds something to my cachet as a recognized power commuter… like earning my “Rural Living” merit badge.

Some days leaving the house serves no purpose other than reminding me why I do it as little as possible.

Kick in the junk…

Today is the last installment of Furlough Monday for the time being. One of the things I learned from the furlough experience is that regular three day weekends sound a hell of a lot better in theory than they are in practice. For the duration of the furlough, Mondays have been all about pain – trying to keep up with all the demands with less than half the people is not a recipe for good times. I can only expect the experience was similar for those who showed up on Fridays. From my admittedly limited observations, what you end up with is a few people doing a lot of things and not doing any of them particularly well. I’m fairly sure the technical description is penny wise and pound foolish… but that’s a point for another rant.

Tonight’s point is that the end is in sight… and I’ve never been more excited about the prospect of a five day work week (or a full week’s pay). Thank God the Labor Day holiday is coming up so we can ease back into the routine with a short week. These short weeks have been like a kick in the junk… but I wonder if the long weeks will be any better.

Pretend…

I like to pretend there is some kind of art or science to this whole blogging thing. I review the metrics, watch the traffic and hit counts, and imagine that I have some kind of idea what people might be interested in reading. At best it’s a 50-50 proposition most of the time. Fortunately, I’m mostly writing for the sake of writing and working out my chops, so the individual hits and misses aren’t really all that important. Lucky thing, too. If you tied much stock to whether you stats are up or down on any given day you’d drive yourself round the bend in no time.

Sundays are probably my slowest, least read day. I don’t know if that’s because I’m the only one who finds these archival posts even remotely interesting, or because everyone’s gone to church when I’m posting, or that you lazy jerks are still lying about in bed while I’m here slaving away at the keyboard. Not that it’s really important. I’ve been having a blast looking back at how the blog evolved over the last six years. The stuff I’m pulling in now from 2008 is far more personal/day-in-the-life than what I’m posting on a typical day in 2013. I like to think the writing has gotten better and the threads a little more coherent along the way. I know I’m more confident in my voice now that I was in the past, so even if practice doesn’t make perfect, it still makes for a better story.

I think everyone that lives part of their life online has some kind of performance fetish. We all want attention in one way or another. We’re all looking for the next “like” or comment or share at least on some level. For me, it’s the writing it all down that really feels important. I still find it fascinating to see what I thought was important the better part of a decade ago. Some of it holds up to the test of time and some of it just leaves me shaking my head and wondering what I was thinking.

Don’t forget to check out this morning’s archive posts from February 2008!

iPads for inmates…

So, I see that Attorney General Gansler wants to issue tablet computers to Maryland inmates. My initial response was that I couldn’t possible have read that article correctly. Surely the AG is pushing to restrict inmate’s access to the internet, email, and phone services that connect them to the outside world. After all, didn’t we just find a jail in Baltimore City where the inmates were quite literally running the asylum in part due to cell phones that had been smuggled in to them by members of the corrections staff? What in the name of high holy hell makes the AG think that giving everyone access to these devices would result in something different? Surely inmates with nothing but time on their hands would never conjure up a means of using these computers to communicate amongst themeslves as well as with the outside world. I can’t imagine how a prison full of inmates snapchatting with one another and their friends beyond the wall could possibly go wrong.

Sigh. The best part, the part that I really love, is that while I’m sitting here living with a 4-day a week paycheck, the esteemed Attorney General of Maryland and an assumed candidate for governor wants to spend $500 an inmate to give them these computers. Are you shitting me? Inmates get three meals a day, a bed, and a roof over their precious little heads. They get cable, a library, exercise equipment, and a host of other “privileges” if they’re not complete douchtards (by the standards of the corrections system). And now the AG wants me to think that spending another $500 a head is a good idea for these people who broke what I can only assume was some kind of major law – because let’s face it, if it was a minor infraction they’d have paid a fine or done 30-days and been out.

I’m a simple man. I really only want to hear about prisoners in a couple of contexts: 1) Making license plates; 2) Picking up trash along the highways and byways of the jurisdiction in which they are incarcerated; 3) Turning big rocks into little rocks; or 4) The news report where Inmate X was executed last night for rape, murder, or some other heinous crime. I don’t want to hear about their troubled childhood, or their anger management issues, or getting them the same computer that I’ve had to go out and earn an honest living to buy for myself. I want them to work demanding, physical jobs, so at the end of the day the only thing they can even thinking about doing is going to sleep.

That’s not how we roll here in the People’s Democratic Republic of Maryland. Oh no. We’d rather take money from the taxpayer and fund whatever half assed, bleeding heart program the sociological flavor of the day dreamed up to pass off as public policy.

This has been the first in an occasional series of posts where Jeff answers questions or opines on topics submitted directly by the readers.

What I Did on My Furlough Friday (Part 5 of 6)…

You can see from the title that word came down from echelons higher than reality that the Great Defense Furlough of 2013 has been shortened from eleven days to six. That’s outstanding. I’m all for it. I’ll be glad to get back to not having 20% of my pay chopped off every other Thursday.

All other things considered, Furlough Friday has gone pretty much how you might have expected. There was grocery shopping and playing with the dogs. Before the day is over there might even be a little laundry. What there hasn’t been, of course, is anything that would have required any more funds than was absolutely necessary. The grand irony of furlough is that you have plenty of time off, but the pay reduction makes you want to squeeze every quarter until George screams for mercy. Fortunately beer is still pretty cheap and no one is charging admission to sit on the deck, so it hasn’t been too much of a sacrifice yet.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go now and do absolutely nothing. It’s my furlough day after all and working is against the rules. With the end in sight, at least now I can kick back and attempt to enjoy the rest of the day. Someday soon I’ll once again spend Fridays fiddling with PowerPoint, but today’s not that day.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Being the “dumb guy” in the room. I’ve met enough brilliant minds to know mine isn’t one of them. I’ve made my peace with that. I’m satisfied with having a respectable amount of general knowledge in many areas and a deep knowledge of a few threads of the arts and humanities. It’s my niche. But every once in a while you walk into a room, spend nine hours listening attentively and walk away realizing that you don’t have a damned clue what anyone was talking about. On those days the best you can manage is to smile, try to nod at what feel like appropriate intervals, and pray that no one asks you any questions. Days like that suck.

2. Being a piñata. We all have plans – a basic script by which we’re expecting to live our lives. For most of my working life, my plan included working 40 hours a week. With the arrival of sequester and furlough I made my peace with the new plan being 32 hours a week and adjusted accordingly. Now that furlough is ending, I’ll again adjust accordingly – insecure in the knowledge that “next year is going to be worse” hanging over my head. If there’s anything I hate it’s being jerked from pillar to post repeatedly like some kind of half-assed piñata.

3. Artesian Water Company. Nothing quite like getting a email from your overseas landlord wondering why he’s getting a notice that the water company is about to discontinue service. When I called Artesian to calmly ask WTF, the customer service representative cheerfully told me that the account was two months past due. Oh really? Not according to my account of statements and bills paid. But hey, I think I may have uncovered a slight problem with their doucheconoe business process that says bills can only go to the registered property owner instead of the guy actually living in the house and paying the bill. Asshats.

Change…

Most people don’t pay any attention to pocket change. It usually ends up in a jar, run through a sorting machine, and traded in for fresh folding money at the first opportunity. As is my way, I’m a bit of a contrarian on the issue. I’ve always like loose change. Every time I get a handful of the stuff, I pick though it looking for the illusive steel penny or wartime silver nickel. I don’t put enough effort in or find enough of the “good stuff” to even consider it a hobby, but I still look. If you’re patient, every once in a great while you’ll manage to pull out a real gem.

Not long ago I pulled a 1917 “Mercury” dime out of a handful of change picked up over the course of the day. It was beat to hell and back, worn almost slick by the passing of time and changing hands. It was almost a dime sized slug rather than an actual coin. Still if you knew what you were looking at, the barest outline of Winged Liberty was right there waiting for someone to recognize her.

In 1917, when this little dime rolled out of the die at the Philadelphia Mint, Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States and the First World War raged in Europe. By the time the Korean War was halted by a ceasefire in ‘53, it had already been in circulation longer than I’ve now been alive. Sixty years have passed since then, yet here’s a little dime sitting on my kitchen table. Minted before prohibition and before women in America had the right to vote, it’s been out there circulating for the better part of a hundred years. It’s banged up and gritty, but I should hope to be doing so well in the summer of 2072 when I’m as old as that dime is today.

If you ever happen to wonder why I’ve paused to look though my handful of change at the gas station or fast food drive through, now you know. It’s because every now and then you get to hold a sliver of history right there in your own grubby little paw… and you can’t have that much fun anywhere else for just ten cents.