The other day I was headed home from a quick run to the grocery store and, because it was just after 5:00, I decided to take "the back roads" home. This sounds more dramatic than it is. I live in a small city, so it's not like I'm avoiding a highway or anything... I'm just deviating from the "main" route that I'd normally use 99% of the time.
As I was crossing the railroad tracks, I had a flashback that hit me like a punch in the gut...
I had moved my mom to a facility on the coast in September of 2016 because she required a level of care I could no longer provide. At this point she still recognized me, so my visits every-other-week were especially painful. In my heart I felt like I was abandoning her every time I left even though my head knew that it was the only option available. After making the two-hour drive home from her birthday dinner in December, I saw that snow removal was happening on the "main route" so I turned to take "the back roads" in the hopes that I would get home quicker.
As I was crossing the railroad tracks after sundown, the right side of my car fell off the road and dropped between the tracks below. Turns out that when they plowed the street they plowed way too far to the right, so the road I was driving on was not actually the road, it was just snow pack. Snow pack that could not support the weight of my car, so down I went. It was such a sudden and unexpected jump that I remember biting my tongue.
In the photo above, it doesn't look like much of a drop, but when you look at a photo from the opposite angle, you can see it's quite a height to fall...
It was a drop I had no way of seeing because it was plowed even to the road, everything was white, and it was dark out.
At the time my financial picture was dire. I had to come up with a significant chunk of money to get my mom into her new place and I didn't have two nickels to rub together... let alone have money to pay for auto repairs. I remember sitting there behind the wheel with my car off the road feeling utterly defeated. My mom's health was declining. I was overwhelmed with work and having to travel. And my credit cards, which I had worked so hard to pay off, were likely going to build up again because there were just too many expenses piling up.
Now this.
My car is front-wheel drive, so I was pretty much stuck. Trying to slowly back up just caused my tires to spin out in the snow. So I got out and took inventory of everything in my trunk. I had kitty litter, which I sprinkled under my left-front tire for traction. I also had a bundle of rope and some blankets, which I gathered up and stuck under my right-front tire. Then I
"Well that sounds expensive" I said out loud to nobody.
In the morning I backed out onto the driveway so I could try and see what was dragging. All I could tell was that it wasn't the muffler because the noise was coming from the front end.
Turns out it wasn't quite so bad as I had feared. Because cars are cheap crap now-a-days, it was a big piece of plastic which, apparently, was there to shield the underside of the motor from getting splashed by road grime. At first I tried to just rip it off the car but it was too well bolted on the back-side. My solution was to use zip-ties to pass through the holes in the plastic shield where the bolts had ripped through, and basically fasten it back to my car's frame.
It worked just fine and cost me $3.00 cash money.
A couple of years later I was driving down the highway when the zip-ties finally fell apart. So there I was all SCRAPE! SCRAPE! SCRAPE! again. This time with lots of people around. Fifteen minutes down the road I pulled off to an Auto-Zone so I could buy another bag of zip-ties to get me home. Though this time I spend $5.00 so I could get the industrial-strength version.
Those zip-ties are still holding my car together to this day...
And since it seems to be working, I guess I won't bother paying to have the plastic repaired or replaced... though I probably should at some point. Having people stare at me as I go driving by while my car is going SCRAPE! SCRAPE! SCRAPE! is enough to make me want to die from embarrassment.
And if I were to die?
Guess it only takes an 8-inch fall to kill you, as unlikely as that may seem.
Not a great day to be Dave, just sayin'.
I worked a half-day on Sunday so I could be ahead of the game when I walked into the office this morning. That was absolute folly, because I was confronted by or Horrendous Monday Problem the minute I sat down and checked my email. Nothing that was my fault or the fault of anybody I work with, mind you, it was a 3rd party problem which is now my problem. In all honesty, I wouldn't be upset about it if I didn't have so much work already on my plate, but here we are. Oh well. It's not like I have anything piling up on my social calendar. Though I really, really need to clean my house.
Other than the impending cascade of work which will be falling on my head over the next several weeks, my mind has been focused on one thing and one thing only today...
Yep... next Saturday before bed we will be "Falling Back" an hour because we're fucking stupid like that. And I am already mortified at the idea of it because after the change all the daylight hours will be happening while I'm at the office. Instead of getting a small slice of sunshine at the end of my work day, I'll be getting jack-shit and total darkness. Which is buckets of fun when it starts snowing heavy.
Honest to God I don't know why people aren't in open revolt and advocating anarchy over the government forcing us to dick with the clocks twice a year. At the very least politicians should be voted out of office for refusing to do anything about it. NOBODY WANTS DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME TO END, SO JUST MAKE IT PERMANENT OR WE WILL FUCKING END YOU! Is that what it's going to take?
Oh probably.
In today's non-calling-for-the-heads-of-our-politicians news... NASA announced there's water on the sunlit surface of the moon. As in our moon. As in THE moon. It's not like a lake full of water, it's a relatively tiny amount of water... and it's apparently trapped in glass bead or some crazy shit like that... but it's still kinda a big deal. Water is heavy. Getting water off the surface of the earth is difficult, expensive, and takes a lot of energy. Being able to get it off the moon somehow would be a game-changer for space exploration and building a human colony on the lunar surface.
Given how we seem to be intent on fucking up the planet with the Supreme Court "justices" we're installing, the moon may very well be the only source of clean water we'll have left.
Until we fuck that up as well.
If there's one thing I'm confident of, it's that we will continue to burn down the planet because it's inconvenient to try and save it. If there's two things I'm confident of, it's that we will continue to burn down the planet because it's inconvenient to try and save it... AND we're going to be stuck with senselessly fucking with the clocks forever because politicians are too big of fucking assholes to give a shit about what US citizens want or need. There's lobbyist dick to suck for cash and reelection to think about, and that's all that matters to the pieces of shit.
And to us, apparently, since we keep reelecting them.
I read yet another article calling me stupid because I have cloud internet security cameras. It's all BUT WHAT IF PEOPLE HACK YOUR CAMERAS AND SPY ON YOU? Well, first of all, my interior cameras automatically turn off when my iPhone detects that I'm at my house. By the time I walk in the door, all the cameras have switched off. In order for them to turn on again, I either have to leave my home or manually turn them on.
Second of all? Even if somebody hacked my cameras, what would they see? Me partying with cocaine and hookers while cockfights are being held in my living room?
I wish.
In actuality, the worst thing that they might see would be me talking to my cats...
This is me telling Jake that he can't have my bread because it's my food and he just had his dinner. I then go on to explain that bread is probably not a good thing for cats to eat because it's people-food and might make his tummy hurt. When none of that works, I just tell him a story about that time I was partying with cocaine and hookers at a Vegas cockfight.
And, yes, I manually turned on my camera to get that photo. It's okay though because the hookers and cocaine is in the kitchen and the cockfight doesn't start until midnight.
And don't get all judgemental... we'll totally be masked for the cockfight.
I get enough judgement for having cloud security cameras.
I've been walking to work whenever possible in order to fill in the "Activity Rings" on my Apple Watch so it won't bug me about being a potato. Few things are worse than sitting on your couch watching television and eating Cheetos when your Apple Watch buzzes and says "You can still do it!" At which point I get all mad at my watch and tell it "Stop bothering me! Can't you see I'm watching TV?
And, oh yeah, apparently it's healthy to get some exercise from time to time.
EXCEPT WHEN YOUR EXERCISE TRIES TO KILL YOU!
This morning on my way to work I tripped over some twine that had been discarded in the field behind my house. And it wasn't one of those "oopsies!" moments, I bit it pretty hard. Lucky for me, my security camera captured the whole thing. I've cropped into the footage here...
Hurt my wrist. Hurt my elbow. Really hurt my knee. And hurt my pride... because, seriously, am I so old that I'm going to have to get one of those LifeCall alerts now?
Oh probably.
And since I'm The Olds now, I know I'm not going to heal as fast as I did in my 20's. Nope... this pain is going to be with me for a while. What's weird is that it doesn't hurt very much when I'm moving. It's when I've been sitting at my desk for a couple hours then try to move that's the killer. The pain in my knee is breathtaking. As in it literally takes my breath away.
Something else that took my breath away?
My Apple Watch, which is supposed to have "fall detection," didn't detect shit. Didn't beep and say "Holy shit, are you okay?" Didn't ask if I wanted to call for an ambulance. Didn't even have a laugh at my expense. Not sure what's going on there, but it's irritating to know that this feature will not be having my back if I need it. Or having my knee, as the case may be.
So that's my hump-day today. How're things with you?
I've written about how Jake crawls all over me while I sleep but, by some miracle, I don't wake up. I say "miracle" because I am a light sleeper.
But it doesn't work the other way around.
Probably because he's (relatively) small and I'm (relatively) big, so me bumping into him is quite a bit different than him bumping into me. Poor guy, I woke him up a half dozen times last night. Here he is wide awake after I rolled onto my side and ran into him...
But that wasn't bad enough. I was exceedingly restless and was pushing the poor guy around all night...
He looks like a Weeble. Just look at that face. He doesn't know what happened...
But does he go find a calmer place to sleep? Nope! Curls right back up against my legs.
I'd feel bad, but he sleeps all day long while I'm slaving away at work, so I'm sure he's all good.
After seeing a rainbow out my window on Friday I decided not to go into the office over the weekend. I needed a short break so I can relax for a minute.
It didn't work out quite that way. Instead of putting in 8 hours at the office on Saturday, I put in 8 hours cleaning out my garage. Tore down my wood-shop... put away my tools... took out the trash... swept up the concrete... all because I didn't want to scrape frost off my windows in the morning.
Sunday I did a little better. Cooked up some toasted ravioli, vacuumed the stairs, used a leaf blower to clean out the catio and blow the cobwebs off my home... THEN DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR THE REST OF THE DAY! Well, not "nothing." But close to it. I ate crap food, watched crap television, and surfed crap internet. That's it.
Then I felt guilty about it.
What a waste of a day.
I fell asleep last night creating a list in my head of all the things that I could have done but didn't. I really should have cleaned the cat feeding station and scrubbed out my sink, right? Or steam-cleaned my floors. Or scrubbed my bathroom. Or washed my windows. Or vacuumed out my laundry room. Or cleaned out my refrigerator and freezer. Or any of a hundred other things that really need to be done around the house.
Instead I watched all the Police Academy movies.
I was compelled to after happening upon a story where Steve Guttenberg was talking about how they are wanting to reboot the series. Gutenberg left after #4 (Citizens on Patrol), which was pretty bad, and yet they slogged on for three more movies. By the time they got to #7 (Mission to Moscow) they had run the series so far into the ground that I’m amazed they think they can bring it back.
But you can say that about a lot of things, I suppose.
It's Friday!
Fridays usually aren't all that special to me because I mostly work on Saturdays. Saturdays, on the other hand, are more special because I try to take Sundays off.
This morning when I woke up, the first thing I saw was a rainbow out my window...
I wasn't entirely sure what this would mean for my day, but it seemed like a good excuse to Make Friday Great Again.
I've decided to not go into the office tomorrow.
Thanks to my volunteer work, I am accustomed to working with people who have unfathomable wealth. And while I can't speak for all of the vastly wealthy persons on earth, those I've worked with for charitable causes have also been unfathomably generous.
But just because I am accustomed to it doesn't mean that I am used to it. You never get used to being next to that kind of wealth. When you get to a certain financial level, money loses all meaning. You don't look at price tags. You don't care what something costs. You know you can afford it regardless of how much it is, so you don't have to care.
One of my many functions was to assist donors and their families before and after my meetings. Mostly in Las Vegas. Arranging for translators. Making reservations. Looking into custom experiences. Finding transportation. Researching people, places, and things. I pretty much had to do it all. Or at least be in charge of finding the people who could actually do it. Some of my friends familiar with my work assumed this made me a "Vegas Insider" but nothing could be further from the truth. Sure I could drop a name to jump a line from time to time, but unless you have millions upon millions of dollars, I really can't help you. Anything I might have an inside track for would be way above your price range.
I never minded being on-call 24/7 to assist absurdly wealthy people with their desires, questions, concerns, and problems. As somebody who loves adventure and likes to travel, it was like visiting an entirely new world. I got to see things most people probably think they know from watching TV shows and movies, but the reality is wildly different. At least most of the time it is.
I could blog for months about all of the stuff I arranged or was witness to. Mind-blowing stuff. Funny stuff. Inexplicable stuff. Obscene stuff. Crazy stuff. In the decade I spent volunteering, I saw it all. For obvious reasons, I can't talk about any of it. People entrusted me with discretion, and the last thing I would ever do was break that trust.
I can give some examples though!
On one of my last trips I had to work with a store to arrange for a jewelry purchase to be securely transported. I never found out what the purchase was (the translator /slash/ personal shopping assistant I worked with would only mouth the words "holy shit" when I enquired) but you just know that hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions of dollars?) was on the line to require that kind of fuss to be made. I was so nervous about it that I personally oversaw the loading/unloading.
On another trip I had to arrange shipment of a painting. And, no, I didn't walk it across the street to Kinkos. The gallery just needed me to provide details, gather information, contact a customs broker... that kind of stuff. And then I had to sign off on it all. The insured price was just over $6 million. I broke out into a cold sweat and asked to know what I was signing for. The agent took me to a private viewing room where the work was still set up for examination. Once I saw it, my legs turned to jelly. "Is the artist who I think it is?!?" I somehow managed get out. "Oh yes."
Many times I was asked to arrange for dining and show tickets and other mundane things. Except it is never really mundane when you do it for the people I was assisting. Restaurants and shows which are fully booked or sold out to me suddenly because no problem for them because money starts getting involved. And while I was forbidden from accepting gifts or anything (the sole exception being additional donations, of course!), I did get to experience life behind the golden curtain from time to time. I would receive permission to attend a private dinner... or an event... or otherwise indulge in a life far removed from my own. After a culinary tour I thanked my host because the vegetarian courses were some of the best food of my life. "I'm so happy you enjoyed it!" they replied. Later I found out that the chef who prepared the food and accompanied us was world-famous. I also found out that the cost per person for the event was $7,500 plus expenses. For 16 people. I was aghast... until I found out the $120,000 was all donated. Then I was aghast in a different way.
Since the pandemic shut down my volunteerism and my travel, I don't know if I will ever again get to drift through the private world of the über wealthy. Something tells me I might be done... even if the organization I work with starts up once more. That kind of travel and that kind of work takes a toll on you after a while.
Instead I get my unobtainable wealth fix like everybody else does... by watching TV shows and movies!
My obsession right now is Island Hunters...
It's like House Hunters and House Hunters International but instead of choosing from three houses to buy, these people are choosing from three islands.
Now, right off the bat I have to say... the people on this show are not what is considered "über wealthy." They have budgets, which is something truly über wealthy people just don't have.
But they might as well be über wealthy as far as I'm concerned. Because you won't see me touring million-dollar islands and being all worried as to where I can put the caretakers and servants so they don't intrude on my experience! And I certainly have never had to figure out where to build a helipad, that's for sure.
The show is kinda bonkers.
Island #1 is the right size, on-budget, and has a nice beach... but neighboring islands are too close and the existing house is not at all adequate and would have to be torn down so something more acceptable could be built!
Island #2 is under-budget with fantastic views, but is smaller and undeveloped... so it would take money and time before it was ready for construction and the house would only be 3,000 square feet.
Island #3 has gorgeous beaches, plenty of land, a great dock, and a home which would work with extensive renovation... but it's over-budget.
WHICH ISLAND WILL THEY CHOOSE?!?
I am really hoping that one day I'll be watching an episode and the buyer says "I just can't decide... so I want to buy all three!" because that's more in-line with what an über wealthy person would say.
Wealth is wasted on the wealthy. Wealth should really be given to somebody like me who knows how to spend it properly! So if any über wealthy person out there wants to make sure their money is spent right, my email address is in the sidebar of every page!
Phenomenally gifted musician Eddie Van Halen died this past Tuesday at the age of 65.
As I seem to do any time somebody passes away at a younger age than my mom, I immediately count my blessings that I had her for as long as I did. She died at 73, which still seems awfully young, but it's eight years more than Eddie's son had. Had my mom died in 2009, there would have been no Disney cruise through the Mediterranean... no cruise through the Panama Canal... no trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos... no trip to Africa... not to mention countless other memories I have from that precious time I got with my mom that Wolfgang Van Halen did not get with his dad. And my heart is crushed for him thinking about it. Though I'm sure he probably feels lucky he got the time he did when he thinks about those who lost a parent even younger than Eddie.
All this was weighing on my mind this morning when I was getting ready for work. So I took a half hour to look through the travel books I made for my mom from our trips together. I haven't thumbed through them in over a year because it was just too painful. But now? Still painful... but not so much that I have a total melt-down just taking them off the shelf. Now they're just page after page of fantastic memories that I am overwhelmingly grateful to have had. I got to travel the world with my mom... how cool is that?
On the afore-mentioned Disney cruise through the Mediterranean in 2010, one of the ports of call was Civitavecchia, Italy. This was the stop for an hour-long drive into Rome. Since we had been to Rome three times prior, I asked if she wanted to hang out on the ship instead of heading into the city. She, of course, wanted to see Rome again. Not only was she adventurous like that, but I am fairly certain it was one of her favorite places on earth. Never one to pass up an opportunity to eat at Alfredo alla Scrofa, my favorite restaurant in the world, I made the arrangements and off we went...
On the bus-ride I asked what she wanted to do in Rome besides lunch and the only thing she said was that she wanted to go The Colosseum. For whatever reason, she loves the thing, and we ended up going every time she was in The Eternal City...
I thought it might be fun for her to toss another coin in the Trevi Fountain. It's said that if you have your back to the fountain and toss a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder, you are guaranteed another trip to Rome. She did this our first trip together and here we were on our fourth, so it must work, right? Here she is trying to figure out which hand you use over which shoulder. If there were an audio recording you'd hear me saying "Other shoulder, mom!"
Alas, we never made it back to Rome again, but I'd hardly blame it on the fountain since it worked really well that first time.
With hours left to kill we went to The Vatican. I had never been on the roof of St. Peter's Basilica, so I thought we might as well take a look rather than getting lost wandering in areas I wasn't familiar with. But before that we went inside to kill more time. The church is stunning in a way the vast majority of architectural structures are not, so you simply can't see enough of it. My favorite thing there is Michelangelo's Pietà, one of the most sublimely beautiful works of art you'll ever see. It depicts Mary holding her son Jesus after the crucifixion...
I was explaining to my mom that Michelangelo was just 23 years old when he started work on it, and the piece was considered controversial because he depicted Mary as a young woman instead of somebody far older as had been customary. This has always been fascinating to me, and I noted that her face wasn't contorted in anguish because this would add creases and folds that would age her. My mom nodded and replied "She still looks sad to me." When I told her that I thought Mary looked more serene in her grief than sad, mom said "But she does look sad. She may be the mother of God, but she's still a mother who's lost her son. How else could she look?"
And there's no debating that. I was looking with my eyes... my mom was looking with her heart. She tended to do that a lot. Probably because it was a talent she had baked-in. I, on the other hand, have to work at it.
But not when thumbing through my mom's travel photo books. Looking with my heart is all there is.
Rest in peace, Eddie Van Halen. Your music was a voice for the generations.
This Wednesday entry will not be posted on Wednesday.
I don't have internet. I don't have celular service. I am completely off the grid.
I remember an email being circulated at work last week which mentioned something about an outage from 10pm to 8am, but I didn't plan to be at work during those hours, so I didn't pay much attention. I received NO notification that my internet would be interrupted at home. If I had, I would have probably ignored that as well, because I can always use the data on my iPhone to reach the internet, right? Nope! Apparently AT&T's cellular tower in my small city uses the same internet as my work and home, so that's non-functional as well.
It's this last point that really pisses me off.
AT&T never told me that my mobile phone would be down tonight. I was never made aware that my phone service was internet-dependent. And it begs the question... what the fuck happens if I have an emergency and need to dial 9-1-1 for help? Well, I'll tell you exactly what happens... nothing!
How in the hell is it that a mobile carrier can be run through an internet connection? Internet connections can be flakey as hell, and phone service really can't afford to be flakey as hell. And when AT&T says that they've "built the best and fastest celular network" they really haven't... because if they had, I would still have fucking phone service!
And it gets better.
Since I have no television, no Alexa, no Amazon Music Unlimited, I thought I could just play the media on my Plex server. Nope again! For whatever reason, the server could be found by my laptop and iPhone, but Plex would not play video. After much wheel-spinning I could play music, but it took forever for the data to start streaming. My Plex clients have been told to use the local network, but they refuse to do it because they're constantly looking for an internet connection. And of course my AppleTV was useless despite being plugged directly into the same hub as my Plex Server because apparently it needs internet to even function.
This is all something I need to look into, because being able to access my media without internet access is why I bought Plex in the first place!
What a shitty night.
I suppose I'll just take sleeping pills and go to bed. What else is there?
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