So I park in a garage beside the light rail station for the day before heading in to work. The parking garage recently started tagging vehicles with “friendly” reminders that they were going to enforce the 6 hour parking limitations. That’s nice of them to give us a warning.

So the floors of the garage have signs which indicate which areas are covered by this six hour span and which are not. I have been parking in the spot just beside the one that has the sign that designates it as the end of the restrictive time zone thinking it was safe.

I got a ticket. I was upset and tried to call the local police about it and inform them of their error. They didn’t want to hear it. I got a second ticket a week later. I can read signs and know what arrows mean. After getting the second ticket I went down to the police station and they informed me that I just “shouldn’t park there.”

F-You

Can’t you people read your own damn signage? I am going to mail off my second ticket disputing it as well but I’m thinking that any future tickets are just going to fall off my windshield because I can’t be bothered to read them, much like the signs that say I’m in an allowed spot.

Yes this might come back to bite me in the ass but as far as I’m concerned I don’t care.

1st world problems.

Today is blood day.

It’s been a week since I last posted something.

Did I mention I donated blood today?

Uh…

Did you know that 8(pints to the gallon)x5(gallons)+2(individual pints)=42(total pints donated)?

42 is the meaning of life and it saves lives.

Thanks for the fish everyone

RIP*

(Yes I realized its a few weeks late but I’m shooting from the hip here)

That is all

The above sentence is usually followed by the phrase we often hear from those who don’t want to admit the truth. Maybe I am but do me the favor and at least hear me out.

So this is my story….

I’m leaving work a bit early as I have to get to my daughter’s school for a meeting between my wife and I and the learning staff. As soon as I’m on the train and have located a less stained seat from which to park myself I pull out my kindle. At the very next stop and gentleman gets on and sits in the seat opposite of mine which face me. In my mind he could easily be mistaken for a cousin of Louis Gossett Jr. He seems pleasant enough in that he is clean shaven and his clothes are not showing to be any worse for the wear. Over his shoulder he has one of those single strap bags that looks rather nice. I almost find myself asking aloud “where did you get that?” but hold off as I notice he seems interested on something in the distance. Feeling relatively safe in my “risk assessment” I turn my gaze back down and into my kindle. Several pages and rail stops later I look up again as my squirrel mind demands of me and notice that the gentleman sitting across from me hasn’t so much as veered his eyes from where they were transfixed from when he sat down. Intrigued I start to watch him a bit more closely but do with behind the mocking actions of bringing raising my kindle once more. Two more stops and still no change. Then as if some saturation level had been achieved the man reaches into his jacket and pulls out a frozen single serving dessert from a pocket within. The man in the nice clothes begins to rip into the dessert with no abandon and drops all of the packing to the floor. I try to get back into reading my kindle in earnest but when I see him finishing with his “meal” he drops that too to the floor and wipes his fingers across the upholstery on the unoccupied bench seat beside himself. Then to top that off he licks what is left off of his fingers that he couldn’t get off onto the seat. Can you say “urine for some flavor.” He then goes back to staring out at the great beyond and I try to put myself back into my kindle. Two paragraphs later he repeats nearly the whole process over again with a second pastry. By this time I’m wondering just what kind of mini-mart he has knocked off and just how much of their inventory is up in his jacket. Things start to settle down again and he goes back to zoning and I try to go back to my own little happy place. Several stops later he pulls his shoulder bag and swivels it into his lap where he unzips it. He reaches in and handles something wooden that looks like a cross between a world war II pineapple grenade and a bowling pin, its hard to say as he never fully pulls it out. He then starts swearing at the aether in a dialect of pig latin I am unfamiliar with. By the time the train has arrived at the next stop he has apparently made his point and dominated whatever was causing him grief as he has zipped his bag back up and moves to get up and make his way towards the door.

This leaves me wondering about the worth of my life and was I really just a pineapple upside down cake away from exiting from my own train ride early? Then I remember my similar experience this morning on my way into work.

I got on at the last stop of the line which is also the first stop of the line depending on how you look at it. As I climb on board I begin looking for a seat with minimal stains and pass by a woman who looks like she is an “all day passenger”. These are typically homeless people who just ride the train back and forth all day until their next lottery ticket hits. In writing this I am reminded that the prize is now over 200 million and I need to buy a ticket. Hopefully I might win one of these days and wont need to ride the train back and forth everyday… hey… I just made myself sound-

Anyway…

I find myself a seat and it is within clear sight of the aforementioned woman. I pull out my Chromebook and begin to start one of my peer reviews for one of my writing group members. As I’m typing away I feel the scratch of the squirrel and find myself looking up every now and again. I happen to notice that another woman has sat near the all day passenger and is now apparently answering her question aloud with “It’s Wednesday today.” The conversation continues for a few more seconds and then the new lady gets up and finds herself a geographically different seat. I don’t think much of this and go back to writing. I then find myself looking up once more to scratch my squirrel and see yet another woman has found herself sitting near the all day passenger. She too gets up to leave and I find myself chuckling when I know I shouldn’t be. More Chromebook and another itch later I see a third lady has sat herself down and she too is getting up to find a better seat. This time however she lands near me, opposite me. I find myself interested in watching her settle herself in and no sooner has she been settled than she looks over towards me and does her own version of a threat assessment. Not five seconds later the seat across from me is empty once more and I am now left wondering How did I earn myself so much less time than crazy woman?

So this is where this whole thing comes full circle.

Am I one of them?

I don’t want to sound like a…but am I a crazy person?

I think I understand death.

It is the only time you get to leave all your undone sh*t behind and not give a damn about it.

I have all these things I should do but when I get half a second to sit down and contemplate doing them I realize in the grand scope of it all I am doing something pointless. So I find something else to distract me until the guilt of having not done what it was I should have done in the first place comes back to haunt me yet again.

Buddhism is the separation of self from stimuli to gain a better understanding of what it is we are.

Vacations are the artificial realization of Dukkha, at least temporarily.

I am now going to get up from my desk and talk a brief walk around my building and try and enjoy the sounds of creation.

🙂

Peace out

So a friend of mine, I will use the name Kim, sent me a link about relationships since I have been chatting with her about a few of the difficulties I have faced in my own.

How Couples Stay Together

In my extensive reading(skimming) of the article I ran across it saying… “All couples fight. Sometimes they quarrel over immediate issues that can be resolved, but most of the time they are fighting about perpetual problems that have no solution. Those are usually rooted in deep-seated personality clashes.”

I thought “okay” and started to read it a bit more closely.

Then I read this… “Depression highlights what Gottman calls the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse in blocking emotional connection. Defensiveness, contempt, criticism and stonewalling are the worst behaviors that escalate from disagreement into angry fighting.”

Talk about a gut punch that reaches all the way to the gonads. It goes on to say… “Staying together over the long haul depends on showing concern, warmth, responsiveness and affection. If one turns away or ignores these affectionate gestures, there’s little basis for sustaining connection.”

I have been trying to be the positive in my marriage as my wife does suffer from depression. I just feel… ignored. It’s kind of like constantly holding open the door for a person who does not even so much as grumble a thanks. Now I’m not saying that is exactly it but at times it does feel like it. I *NEED* a little reciprocation now and again. In no way am I saying I expect a 50/50 split by any means for I know that at some things people are just different. What I am trying to say however is that if you keep your dog chained up in the backyard for long enough eventually that dog is going to want to jump the fence and seek out contact elsewhere. Am I calling myself a dog? Sure why not. I’m a man and I think about boobies and admit it freely. It comes with the package (pun intended).

” The inability to resolve the problems adds to the pain that partners feel.”

True true true

“He emphasizes that a relationship needs to have a lot more positive than negative experiences to survive.”

So when I say “want to go out tonight?” and get the response of “that place sucks” or “too crowded” or “I’m tired” or something else it kind of starts to wear me down. You can’t build positives when your natural mode is so damn negative.

That being said I love my wife and want to stay with her but at times I feel like the white knight(which I know i’m not) ridding up to battle the big black dragon(of depression) and hoping to drag her back to the land of smurfs and smiles(I actually hate smurfs).

I’m sure in her mind I’m the emotionally needy self loathing victim who is constantly bugging her with ridiculous ideas and she wishes I would just leave her alone.

Marriage… relationships….sanity…

all overrated 😛

I am a fan of Neil deGrassusersomething-or-ther Tyson

I am also a terible speeler and can’t remember names worth sheet.

In a recent broadcast of StarTalk, the episode with Arianna Huffington,  the panel discussed the lack of genuinity of people online. Let it be known I have no qualms about showing pictures of me clipping my nails or me being on the toilet or much of anything else. I do not however as show of respect to those of my family who don’t view the world this way.

Soo… am I sell out or am I honoring those that I care about?

So in my mind I am about 1/3 of the way through my idea for book 3 of the Chronicles of Death and Ash and am sitting at around 6,500 words.

I NEED TO GET BACK TO REVISING my Mr K novel but the muse is hot and if there is one thing you do not do is ignore the muse. She is a fickle woman and if you ever feel like you want her inspiration I fear she will coldly remind me of the time you ignored her.

I honestly don’t believe this but it’s just something that popped into my head.

*Shakes fist at muse in the sky.*

Get a load of this copy and paste spam comment on one of my posts

A Zune? Are you F’n kidding me? That’s almost ten years ago. How old is the rest of the copy/paste material that these Nigerian millionaires are working with?

Will the next one plug the latest Dolly Parton 8-track single?

That is all.

🙂

That is all

*yes i know it is still technically “spring” but when the “Summer Movies Season” starts as of May 1st I’m calling it summer.

What do you think of the name?

So my outline/draft of book 3 is about 10% of the way through plotting and I am sitting at 3,300 words. I have an idea of how this all ends but how it gets there is all ass-grabbing-pants-ploration. (wtf did I just say with that made up word?) Translation… I meant a “seat of my pants” & “exploration” writing style.

Oh and I do like to grab ass’s. It does tend to make me look and sound like a perv but we all have our issues. Does it make it any better if the ass I’m grabbing is my own? I don’t think I’m making myself look any better. Guess I better stop and pack this up as its time to head home and play daddy for the rest of the night again. Yes I am/was hiding out for my half hour before picking up my kids.

Tootles 🙂