posted @ 05:57...

I helped SRC yesterday. I don't know what that stands for, but essentially, I helped defend freedom by sitting at a table waiting for soldiers to come by so I could stamp their pieces of paper and sign my name. I did that all day long. Wouldn't you love a job as fulfilling as mine?

Did you know...? I could write an extensive analysis of the movie Benny & Joon if I wanted to. But I don't really want to... at least not right now. How much would you pay me?

posted @ 12:24...

There are so many ways on the web to waste time. I've been spending too long here. I also found this place.

And for a nonstop techno stream from Belgium, there's C-Dance. That'll come in handy when I'm doing design in the middle of the night.

Supposedly, it's normal for soon-to-be fathers to have erotic dreams about women other than their spouses. It's supposed to be brought on by the man's fear that his pregnant wife is becoming unattractive. I can honestly say that I have no such fear. She's more attractive to me now than ever.

She's going to Texas in about a month, and I'm going to miss her. It'll be nice to be able to use the car for two months. It'll be nice to not have to ever leave the house on the weekends. But besides that, I'm gone be very lonely. I keep telling myself, though, that it would be so selfish to ask her to stay. She's got doors that have opened for her in Texas, and she's miserable here. Besides, I practically abandoned her last year when I went to basic training. I guess it'll just be something to get through.

posted @ 11:22...

I'm excited to be writing again. I'm off today for MLK day, so after doing some long overdue web design work this morning, I'm able to write a little more on my book. I can't wait till it's done, but I don't want to rush it and leave anything out. It's sort of a how-to manual for independent Christian musicians. Here's a mock-up of the cover. That could change, of course...

posted @ 06:15...

More about our landlords. They're some interesting people. They left a ton of their junk in the house. Here's a question: When you rent a property, be it an apartment, a house, a commercial building, etc... do you expect to see the owner's junk everywhere inside the building? Here's a short list of some of their stuff that was left in the house when we moved in. curtains, misc. decor, cat food dish, century-old pump organ, antique radio, 20-year-old dot martix printer, 15-year-old computer monitor, boxes of old newspapers, lumber, broken table lamp, broken hat rack, etc. The only part of the basement we can access is right in front of our washer & dryer, since the rest of the basement is literally stuffed with their junk. The landlady even complained one time that a previous renter had taken the curtains when they moved out. Usually, people don't leave curtains & other decor in a house they're renting out The crazy thing is, the house has been on the market for years. Would you look twice at a house that was strewn with crap?

Our lease agreement clearly states that rent is only late if it is received after the 8th day of the month. Yet if she doesn't get a check by about the 3rd or 4th, we get a phone call. And then, because we found a good deal on alternate phone service, we ended up with a new phone number. When the 4th rolled around, the landlady called me at work. She said she'd been crying that morning, because she figured since our old number was out of service, we must have skipped town.

Understand, we can't just skip town: a) I have a three years left in my commitment to the military and it's likely that most, if not all, of that time I'll be stuck at Ft. Drum. b) We have nowhere else in this area to live. c) Moving all our stuff is a huge pain. d) My wife is pregnant. e) We have a great deal on rent. ($475/mo. for a two-story house). There's no way we'd just pack up one weekend and take off. This lady needs to chill out.

Of course, these are the people who installed a phone jack in every room of the house, yet only two of them work. These are the people who, while they were living here, petitioned the villiage to build a playscape in a vacant lot behind the house, and then after the playscape was built, they petitioned the city to tear it down because the children made too much noise.

posted @ 05:53...

I've been thinking about the cold weather... but now, in perspective. I know something's dreadfully wrong with my cold weather perspective when I look at the 19° readout on the sign at the bank and my first thought is, "Wow, it's warmed up!" Sure, it's 30° warmer than it was last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday... but it's still freakin' cold.

One of the worst things to happen in sub-zero weather is to run out of heating oil. Saturday evening, we arrived home to find the thermostat set it 65°, but the actual temerature was around 50°... Before we moved in to the house, the landlord told us we had a 1000-gallon fuel oil tank. Knowing nothing about home heating oil and having never had to deal it, we thought, "That sounds like a lot, but okay!" In reality, the tank holds 250 gallons. When the tank was last filled, it only took 85 gallons, so we thought, "Hey, we've got plenty in there. We won't have to get it filled for a while!"

So Saturday evening we brought out the space heater and piled on the blankets. By morning, the first floor was 35°. By the timethe emergency fill-up guy from Agway got there, the house was about 33°.

posted @ 11:00...

In order to teach at a school in the state of New York, you need a master's degree. In order to work at a daycare here, you need at least 12 hours of child development classes. So when a woman walks to a daycare looking for a job, and she has only 9 hours of child development classes (among the 70 hours she has in various subjects), she can't be hired, according to state law -- even if she has been a teacher at several other daycares, even if she's been a nanny for several families over the past 10 years, even if she comes with sparkling references from parents about what a great nanny she was and how their child blossomed socially and intellectually while she was working for their family. "Sorry," she was told. "I would love to make you my head teacher, but it would be against state law for us to hire you."

And even if you have a degree, many companies and organizations around here will not even look at your resume unless your degree is from a New York school. This means I could go get an education from a prestigious school like UCLA, University of Texas, or even Harvard, and I'd be out of luck. But put in four years at SUNY Oswego and I'm golden. Backward? Yes. But that the way this area is.

My biggest question is... if these academic rules are so strictly enforced, why aren't there positive effects from it? These rules are obviously in place to develop smarter students, and in-turn, smarter adults. So why are so many people around here so backward? Why are people around here so unschooled in so many areas? If you knew some of the natives around here, you'd see what I mean. I'll go into detail later when I have time...

posted @ 18:55...

Well, it looks like I won't be going overseas - at least not for a while. The guy that I was going to be replacing in Afghanistan has had his deployment extended for the rest of the mission. That means, nobody will need to replace him. And hence, my buddy & I will continue our hard work at the brigade legal office just as before. My mom sure is happy.

The wife is happy too, but she's been planning on going back home to Texas for a few months before she has the baby. She just purchased the plane ticket last night, and then this morning I found out I won't be getting deployed. Maybe God simply wants us to take some time off from each other before the baby is born. I do notice how I am more likely to help out around the house if she's not nagging me.

Sometimes I miss her even when she's here. I feel like I go so far away to work every day, and I'm away from the house for such a large portion of the day (5:00 am to after 6:00 pm)... I start feeling like we live different lives, and that's scary. And now we'll be spending March and part of April away from each other. But we've done this before. I was away for nearly 6 months last year, and made it through that okay.