Part 2...

Quick and dirty update time, no nutritional value, just empty calories here...

My transfer was (so far) temporary with the posibility of recall in time of dire need. I'm back among the ones I know and tolerate (love), and I think, better off for the experience. Shocking but true. I enjoyed the diversity of peoples I worked in and among during my brief transfer stint. There's alot to be said for perspective, however it's gained. I've got enough for now though, so please, no more.

I'm happy with the new Batman movie. That's all that needs saying. Flaws, sure. Good, yes. I'm happy. If you have problems with it, wait until the sequel, and then if the flaws are magnified, you can begin the bitching and moaning. Oh, and because of my Katie Holmes infatuation (lessened by the whole dreadful Tom Cruise thing) my wife made me close my eyes when her breasts were coming into their own glory (a wonderful outdoors scene and a brief passed out on the "altar" scene). She is quite lovely to behold. And if she is in the sequel, I'll seriously consider boycotting it. Ok, she's my only complaint. Hot, but worthless to the story. Not even that great of an acting job with the crap she had to work with. Allright, I'm through, I'm through.

My good friend made it back from school in a couple pieces. I've heard the stories of coming up I-5 going 45mph the whole way, with a 70's four-banger loaded beyond its capacities. Being in the right lane the entire way, slowing way down for corners. The shame and humor mingling togther to create an even stronger desire to get home and drink. So far we've started rewiring my attic, gotten lumber for a new laundry room shelf and have picked up desks for an upcoming project. I love having help that can help. Oh yeah, he also brought me the gift of my first half rack of Session beer from Full Sail. It's decent. Drinkable. Sorta trendy but screw it, I'll drink it anyway. If only a regular grocery store carried it. I hate going into a natural foods store to by cheap trendy beer. I almost feel like the poseur everyone assumes I am.

So, I got more, but it's time isn't here yet. Call this part two (?) if only because it will post below what will become part one. I'll return with the rest, soon. Sooner than not. Sometime...

i·ro·ny...

I just found out today that I'm being transferred from my job to a new location. New managers, new co-workers, new parking spaces and break room. So much for my ode to transition in other peoples lives. Could it be any more fitting? I haven't been told if this is a temporary move or a permanent one, but I have a former co-worker at this new location who has been "on loan" for a month or so now. My boss didn't even have the balls to tell me face to face! No, he waited till he was sneaking out the door to call me and tell me. No discussion, no asking, just a cold and quick "here's how it is", done over the phone. I'm sure I'll be fine however it turns out, but damn it all! I have stayed at my current location because of my relationships with the customers and the community. I've got plenty of reasons to leave due mostly to the managements business acumen. There is no step up at my current location, but that's a price I willingly paid for the loyalty of my customers. I traded promotion for job security and customer relationships, but hey, that's gone too! Having it all just stripped away in an impersonal and uncertain way is wrong on so many levels. I don't begrudge my boss his right to make this decision, just his approach in doing so. He didn't consider anyones opinions or feelings but his own. Fantastic management style I must say! Maybe that's why he's looking at early retirement 'eh?! Not to be too full of myself, but I've got personal relationships with enough customers that I could raise pure hell if I wanted. Transfer all of his business away and then we'll see how things stand. No, I know I don't have that much pull, but I could get a chunk of them if I tried! This is just me talking, I'm too full of steam to plan a proper strategy right now. If my transfer stands as a permanent move, well, then the gloves come off. I've got all sorts of crazy ideas and I'm too young to care about consequences. OSHA, lawyers and protesters oh my! I can fabricate enough evidence and bad press to take the whole place down! Once again, me talking out of my ass. I'm just not that kind of guy, but sometimes I wish I was. I only go up against true tyranny and oppression, not crappy bosses and lousy business decisions. And Canada. When they attack, in the middle of the night...I'm ready baby, I'm the home guard. So, here I bitch and moan about the inevitible transition my life now faces. I go forth unwillingly and with a sour disposition, to a new experience and reality. Change sucks. But only for a little while, then it becomes the constant and I can begin fearing the next change. * LEVEL UP*...

Remembering what will be...

Transitional periods are really sorta scarry 'ya know. The time that comes before the doing, where coming and going hasn't happened and what will happen is up in the air. I don't avoid transition, it's the natural progression and all, I just don't go rushing into it with open arms. I'm leary of the new as much as I'm excited by the endless possibilites it presents. I handle it akwardly enough, seeking to prolong the period of transition when the prolonging is itself what I'm really trying to avoid. For instance, I got my new phone today, it's fantastic. I love the newness, the fact that it actually works and all the learning that I've go to do in order to operate it. Yet part of me knows I'll miss the old one, regardless of how much crap I've suffered through with it. It took a bit before I switched out the chips and powered the new phone on. Even now, the old one sits on the table, ready to (not) work. I pass by it with a mixture of relief and sorrow. I wanted this new one and I am ready to move on, but the whole transition sorta makes me uncomfortable. It's an ending within a new begining. A goodbye disguised as a hello. A loss that results in a greater fullfillment. I know all this and yet I still have an ingrained aversion to it. And this is only a cell phone. Imagine me after a break-up or a death. I just don't like endings. I prefer for things to run parallell to one another, not begining to end with each other. But that's how life is, a giant trade off. Adulthood in place of childhood, marriage in place of dating, father in place of son. I'm always content afterwards, when the transition has run its course. That period though, man it's tough.
Two of my good friends find themselves in that transitioning position right now and I'm just really gratefull that I am not there myself. I'll be the rooted stable one for now. One of them is nearing the end of a rental term, after which the house he lives in is being sold. At the same time that he's being evicted he is ending his last month of state-mandated relocation prohibitation (probation in laymans terms...). He's got friends living out of state he'd love to visit and it just seems to be too much of a coincindence that everything works togther time-wise like this. He's looking to move (somewhere) in a month, and his life has become one big ball of transition. Paperwork, deadlines, jobs and housing all at once. When it all sorts out it will be completely new and completely different. And he'll be glad to be there (I hope...), and glad he's settled. Now though, he's all nerves and questions and rightfully so. Good luck Uncle Z nutts, you can't quit now. I'll always rep you though.
My other friend is finishing his year at school, looking to come back home for the summer. He needs to find a job, needs a place to stay, needs a bit of release from the usual answers to those problems. The old highschool job is tough to go back to year after year. But paying for tuition is an even tougher task, one that doesn't care where the funds come from. And staying with mom and dad one more summer is difficult when independence is a lifestyle and not a privilage. He is trying to bridge that gap between dependent and independent, and that is its very own can of worms. We've all either been there or will be there. It's dang tough boy, but you'll suck it up and plow through. You always do.
So, here I am feeling out of sorts, observing the transitions in others and not in myself. I'm just as powerless in other peoples lifes as I am in my own and I'd just screw things up if I could anyway. There's no big mystery being unravelled here, no profound summation of hidden workings. I'm just worried about my friends and sitting in empathy with them. I'll be right here for them, as long as they let me, or until my next transition moves me away...

Warm spoon...

Zippee-de-do-dah...I'm getting a new cell phone! That's right suckas, a brand spankin new phone, in all its "newness" glory! I've had the same old handset for about twelve eons or so, and am becoming more and more frustrated by it daily. It gives the cell phone version of the blue-screen-of-death every time you shut it. Clam-shell corpse of a phone. You have to power off, then hold it almost shut while powering back on in order to bring back any functionality. And when it "dies", it still may work but you're never sure. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Good luck trying to figure it out, it's a total crap shoot either way. The only hope is to turn it off, then on...every shinning time! This is the second time this model has gone belly up on me, I sent it back once but now I'd get a crappy replacement in it's place. Its' life cycle has come and gone. So, tough decision, I either get the el-crapo replacement or pony up for a new and improved million dollar wonder-phone. Features I won''t use, functions that won't work, wrapped in styling and form straight outta the 1970's! All the phones my service provider has for purchase are just stupid. Where are the cool tiny phones, or the non-antenna phones? All the nifty ones are available from the same service provider in every other country, just not in the US of A. How ass-backwards! I guess America is too small of a market to warrant current product marketing, or innovative products. We must be screaming for old, tired leftovers that no one else in the world seems to want. Seems about right. Well, I said "balls" to that, emailed a querry about the lousy product line to my carrier (they promise to reply to your questions in 24 hrs...it's been about two weeks and counting...) and then went searching. Took a few days, found a couple decent handsets, priced them out and was totally depressed. To get a good phone (read: import...) it would cost me upwards of three hundred US. I'm just not willing to drop that much, no matter how cool or practical the phone is. I saddly decided to find a cool "old" phone, one that wasn't current but seemed to have a good long shelf life. If it was a decent form factor, user friendly, and prone to working for long periods of time I'll give it a shot. My cousin has a sony-ericsson T616, and has had it forever. He swears by it, functionality and reliability being his formost concerns. I thought "well, if I can find one-a-them thar phones, dang-gum it, I'd be a might happier than I'm'a feelin right now...uh huh...". As I was searching for a new-old T616, I checked out sony-ericssons website and found all sorts of cool phones. In particular, the T630 (in liquid black...drool...). And wouldn't you know it, with a bit of searching I found one on ebay that worked with my provider. For the same amount as I'd pay for a new phone from my provider. That decision took all of two seconds, as I rushed to fork over my money on paypal. Well, I did ask my wife first, but ya know. That leads to me sitting here right now typing, with one window on PvP and a tab for fedex's package tracker. I'm reading the archives of a completey funny cartoon and obsessively checking to see if my package is on its way to my house. I should be cleaning the garage or doing dishes, but I'm fantasisng about the new toy I'm about to get. Allright! The package is on the truck for delivery. Well, maybe I will go clean the garage, it's closer to the door than the computer is!

Predisposable...

I'm becoming more and more aware of how often I interrupt other people when they're talking. I tend to listen to what someone else is saying only long enough to begin my own monologe. When someone is relating a story or experience I'm usually formulating my own "related" story that's obviously more important because, well, it's my story. I'm a self absorbed ass. It's not that I think I'm that important, it's just that I feel my experiences and stories are so unique and individual. They're not. Really. I know this, but I'm pretty set in my ways and it's darn difficult to break the habit. I'll sometimes notice that I'm waiting for a break in someone elses' narative so I can speak. I haven't even really been listening, I'm actually counting breaths so that I can interrupt when they pause to breathe. I really don't have a superiority complex, I don't secretly despise people. I just am so caught up in my life sometimes that it's hard not to want to tell everyone and make it the center of every conversation. I only focus when I'm really interested, and I never wait to see if I'm interested when someone else talks. Plus, I know I'm interested in myself, so...there you go.

In the land of imaginary friends, my wonder twin power this week is... Ok, so, I just recently found out that someone I consider a friend is still alive and supposedly well, and not, I repeat not dead in a gutter somewhere in L.A. (because all crime originates from L.A.). She dissapeared off the radar a couple months back, but she has been sighted and is well, and I'm a little tiny bit less concerned now. But if you want to come over and have a beer, Claire, just call. You can't always flake out, can you? People were (are) concerened for you, so quit the whole "need my space, gotta get my head on straight, I'm a pompus self-absorbed ass..." thing and make contact, ok?!!! Sheesh, kids! Plus, we all know who the pompus ass is here, don't we. In other news, I'm not going to the zoo tomorrow. That will dissapoint a couple otters, a marmot, two penguins, a hyenna and Aaron, but not the lemurs or the Giraffes. The giraffes are balls anyway. Sorry Aaron, my union doesn't cover personal zoo days. But it should. Everyone should feel free to contact my union and demand that workers recieve a minimum of three personal zoo days per year. It's what's best for the country. Links galore! Well, till next rant...