Frenzied Daddy

What a great day to have an inch and a half of snow! While I hear that Eugene and other small towns recieved about six inches, we had only a smattering of snow. However, it was enough to send most of Portland scurrying for cover. In fact, I kept both the Wife home from work and the Kid home from her day camp. Of course, now I have the house to clean up, and I’m not getting a whole lot of “work” completed; but hey, it’s snow!

Remind me not to buy “beef round top round roast” – it’s kind of gristly.

Once apon a time, I was chatting with a batchelor friend of mine (Hiya David!) who was telling me that all he ever ate was fast food and/or kraft macaroni and cheese. While tasty- these can get old, and I explained to him that he could probably throw the items for a lasagne together in less than 15 minutes and then he’d have … lasagne. He told me that if I gave him a recipe, he’d give it a go. While I never got around to it, I do enjoy making some very fast foods; like the pot roast I just tossed in the oven. (Ok, it’s an oven roast.) I took an extra Reynold’s Baking Bag, threw in a hunk of cow flesh, some carrots, some potatoes, some red wine and a can of tomatoes; in about two hours, we’ll be having pot roast (delicious!) for dinner. And I didn’t even have to measure anything. I love it when I do that.

And boy howdy, did I have a merry Christmas. I got the wheelbarrow I asked for, and a whole bunch of D&D stuff, and some books (including the book I couldn’t put down last night, Al Franken‘s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. It was so good, I’ll have to read it again (I think I read parts of it too quickly). I guess the hardest part about that particular book has to do with not being able to tell the difference between Al telling us a joke and how bad the Bush people really are.

A special shout out of thanks to my buddy Steven (Zaelicor, Zanywizard), who sent me a new poster. 8) It’ll look great after I get a frame; I think it’s going over the baby crib to serve as a guardian.

When I was a kid, my mother’s lover brought home a printout from the Air Traffic Control printers (glossy picture print), that plainly showed several airplanes around the airport (she was an air traffic controller at the air force base) as well as a small blip with eight smaller blips around it. Pretty neat- and I still wonder how they did it. They’re still at it. You go, team.

Probably work safe- a lot work safer than demotivational posters: Babes Against Bush. All I can say is … where do I sign up for a “Bush for Ex-president” tee-shirt?

On second thought; not completely work safe- I wouldn’t want a boss standing right behind me when the link pops up. But it’s brief, and shows no nipples (and I’ve seen worse on the cover of Rolling Stone, if that helps.

My mind is a criss-crossing of many thin black lines. For instance; listening to Les Mis, it occured to me yet again that the difference between Javert and Jean Valjean is that of “Lawful Good” versus “Chaotic” or “Neutral” good. It’s also the struggle of “what does the Law (society) say” versus what makes a man- the internal struggles a person makes as they navigate the bark of their soul through these troubled waters we call life.

To me, there is a lot of difference between “what is lawful” and “what is right.” To live with other people, requires that I do what the laws say; they govern society. To live with myself, however, requires that I do what is right. Only a person inside themselves can decide that. And it’s hard to teach these “what is right” senses to my kid- but it’s one of the most valuable lessons I can give her; only when you live in accordance to your internal compass do you feel happy.

Fortunately, we’re doing pretty good with helping our kid find her compass. She is very caring (her first wish list for Christmas began with “That the war in Iraq end”), and she has some sense of right versus wrong (she came home and announced that she felt bad because she had cheated on her spelling test; we helped her set the problem right. ). So it’s not as hard as it sounds, perhaps. Just something (else) to keep in mind as I go about my business.

Another “thin line” is the one I meant to talk about here. When I was being councelled, he tried to help me find the things I could change and to not worry about the rest of the life-stuff. When something happens, how do I know if I could have changed it, and when an opportunity comes up, how do I know if it’s something I can fix, or should I just blindly worry? For instance; if I do all the “right” stuff when I send out resumes (send out a lot, craft individual well-fitting cover letters, etc) where is the line that I’ve done enough of the “right” stuff? I think this past week I did better than average (I’m starting to panic), and yet, no phone calls, no emails. There’s a line, somewhere, that I should be able to find, between “working hard enough” and “trusting the Universe enough.”

Ok, that last paragraph seems a little fuzzy to me too. It’s a concept I’m still working on.

… when I start looking at online realtor sites for house cost information and other sites that have school and crime and population information, it’s time to put the worries about a job in a little box for a little bit. There’s a lot more houses for sale in Klamath Falls than Ashland, however (but I’d rather live in Ashland than Klamath Falls; my brain divides it like UO versus OSU). (I’m looking at K Falls because my wife’s parents live there and I’ve applied for a job in Chiloquin. And I’m not moving to Chiloquin, Oregon, no matter what the commute looks like.) I’ve also applied for a job in “Paterson, Washington,” which is on the lovely Umatilla Lake. In, um, Washington. There’s a town of 10,000-50,000 named “Kennewick” that’s about 30 miles from there…

Unless I pack this stuff tightly in a box and cram it in the basement of my mind, I’ll slip into an even darker mood. I don’t particulary want to move to Kennewick, either.

We finally got our tree up on Sunday; we usually get a big Noble Fir. This year, our tree is barely as tall as the wife. It’s also in the library.