When did that happen…

Somewhere between Lexington and Bowling Green, Kentucky yesterday it occurred to be that I today was the 2nd anniversary of closing on my house here in Memphis. I know it’s a true fact because I pulled the stack of paperwork out of the file this afternoon and checked because it didn’t seem quite possible. Add to these two years the addition six months when I was spending three weeks of every four in a hotel here and I’m at a bit of a loss to identify where, exactly, the last 30 months have gone. I know I’ve been doing stuff but the two year mark kind of snuck up and surprised me. If you would have asked me five years ago where I would be living, Memphis wouldn’t have even shown up on the list. Ask me where I’m going to be five years from now and I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess. For the time being, I’ve found myself to be reasonably happy to knock around down here. Ask me again in August when its 110 degrees and I’ll probably give you a different answer, though.

Traveling with two dogs create all sorts of new and interesting challenges but no regrets. First among them is having no real time to sit down and blog properly. It will have to suffice to say that the pups have been doing famously and are taking all the new scenery well in stride. Even my mother, who is no fan of dogs has warmed up a bit to having them around. Our holiday is coming to an end with the drive back to Tennessee on Saturday but it has been leave well spent and one of the most enjoyable Christmases I've had in recent memory. I hope everyone has had as good a christmas as I have. I'll be back on a more regular writing schedule in a few days when I'm back to work and into the routine.

Out...

That's strike four and they are outta there... Asshats.

Cover...

Two Saturdays ago I went to the local truck accessory store and ordered a tonneau cover for the Tundra. It’s one of the flip models that still gives access to the bed without dragging the entire cover off the truck. At $900 installed the price wasn’t awful and the salesman doing the ordering said they could have it there on Tuesday. Not wanting to take a day off to do the installation, I scheduled the appointment for last Saturday, thinking that would allow plenty of flex time in case the parts were delayed in transit. And of course that’s where the plan went off the tracks.

I show up at 9:00 on Saturday for my appointment that should have taken about an hour to finish up. At 9:45 I see the truck back in the parking lot – without the cover. The sales guy comes over with that “yeah, we’ve got a problem” look on his face and tells me that the warehouse only shipped the box of hardware and not the cover itself. Strike 1. I’m annoyed by this point, but he promises that he’ll have them overnight ship it on Monday and they would be able to do the installation on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday rolls by and at noon I call to make sure the second box has actually arrived. No way I’m driving halfway across town for no good reason again. This time, the story was that their truck from Texas had been stuck in the overnight ice storm, but that they were expecting it any minute. At 5:00 I called back and was told that they still hadn’t located the truck, but that they promised they could do the installation today at 1:00. Strike 2. I call back at noon today and ask about the missing truck and now get a story that my second box is actually on a truck in California and it probably won’t be in until next Monday. I’m steaming by this point and at times like this that it’s good telephones haven’t evolved the capability to let callers reach through the phone and bitch slap people on the other end. Explaining in as calm a way as possible that I was leaving on Saturday morning for the holiday and that I would just find a dealer in Maryland and have one waiting on me up there next week, I told them to just cancel the order and recommended hiring someone in their warehouse who knew something, or anything really, about warehouse or inventory management. Strike three and they’re outta there.

At 5:30 this evening, the store manager called back and really, really promised this time that they would have the item on Friday and could install it in the afternoon and that they’d knock $100 of the cover and $50 off the installation. They only thing I’m holding my breath for at this point is strike 4. Here’s a tip, don’t try to cry the blues about how hard it is to manage a warehouse in December to someone whose job description at one time included “Serves as a senior supply manager.” I’ve been doing it for almost six years and to be honest, logistics just ain’t that hard.

All puppy all the time...

I’m beginning to feel like I’m turning into an all-puppy-all-the-time blogger and I suppose that’s been true lately. Keeping up with Maggie hasn’t left all that much time for anything else. Free time essentially becomes an opportunity for a nap and I try to indulge in that as often as possible. In keeping with the theme, I’ve been told by my new puppy guru that I’ve been approaching the entire housebreaking too much like a dumb human and not enough like a smart dog. So at her advice, it’s back to the drawing board with special high intensity crate training, no more roaming the kitchen during the day, and way more treats for doing her thing outside. As far as the poo eating, I’m promised it’s just a phase and sweet Jebus, I hope that’s true! The plan now is for me and Winston to wear her out so if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get back to my second job…

If anyone is interested, Maggie is has a pretty good grip on “sit” as long as there is a treat involved and started working on “down” tonight. I’m taking my comforts in the small victories at the moment.

Busy little beaver...

So I’ve been a busy little beaver this weekend. Keeping up with the pups is, as always, a full time job unto itself, but I’ve finally managed to finish my Christmas shopping and get it wrapped. Winston went to the groomer’s for a bath and nail trimming last night and I cleaned the house and caught up on email, filing, and getting some pictures organized today. I even managed to steal seven hours of sleep last night so I’m feeling downright fantastic. Of course now I have to start thinking about what I need to do to get on the road back to Maryland next Saturday, but in light of my other successes this weekend, I’m deferring all trip planning until at least tomorrow. It’s Sunday and after all, it is a day of rest.

Eww… Ewwww… EWWWWWW…

There are some things that you’re never really prepared to handle. It never really occurred to me that dogs eat poo, but based on a quick Google search of the topic, it’s very apparent that they do. I’m sure that’s a behavior that can be adjusted with some serious training. If Maggie were just eating off the ground, it would be bad enough but she has taken to following poor Winston around like he was a warm, furry, four legged soft serve machine. And yes, that’s exactly the mental image I was trying to get across. I’ve been disturbed by it all day so you might as well be too!

When you least expect it…

With Winston pushing a healthy 11 months this week, I had forgotten that occasionally puppy parenthood throws you a bone when you least expect it. I got home this afternoon to find only two small puddles and not a pile of poo to be seen in the entire house. Maggie is 9 weeks old now and I know this is only one small triumph in the greater battle, but when you spend all day anticipating the worst, occasionally you’re pleasantly surprised by the best. And that’s why it pays to be a pessimist. ;-)

Awe... shit....

I was thrilled this afternoon when I got to the house and found no poo in the breakfast nook where I have been keeping Maggie since she got here. Definitely some pee, but I can totally live with that on the linoleum for a few weeks right? All was right with the world and I put my little angles out and headed back to the bedroom to change before cleaning up the kitchen. That’s when I saw it… the giant pile of poo in the middle of the living room floor. So not only did she get over the gate once, but she climbed back over it and was sitting happily back in the kitchen when I got to the house. Knowing that Maggie is an escape artist, I suppose it was inevitable that she would find her way over the larger gate in the kitchen just as she had found her way over the last one. I had hoped it would take her more than two days, though. I know shit happens, but I would really rather it happen on tile or linoleum. So for tomorrow, we go to Plan B. Now I just need to figure out what that actually is…

Minimum safe distance...

Sometimes I think it’s a good idea that I live 800 miles from home. It’s the kind of mileage that gives one a minimum safe distance from family. I knew that my mother was going to have a small conniption when I broke the news to her that her second grandchild was also a dog. But I hadn’t planned on the rather blistering email invective that I got outlining all of the reasons why a second dog was a terrible idea and that a lab makes it even worse. I suppose it serves me right for convincing her that she needed to be part of the e-revolution in the first place. Now mother has never really been a big fan of the kind of animals that live in the house, where I have always been the one trying to drag strays home. That’s definitely not something I got from her. The reasons ran from “you’re too impulsive” to those dogs need more room than you have to she’ll destroy everything in your house. The real kicker was arguing that it would have made more sense for me to come home telling her that I got some girl pregnant. So much for logic.

So here I am, sitting here at the keyboard second guessing myself. It’s amazing that at 30 a guilt trip from my mother still has the old magic, no. But the kids seem to love playing together and I know I’m giving them both better homes than many other dogs out there. So chime in here, readers, have I done the right thing?

Escape artist...

When I got Winston, I was able to basically leave him in a pen in the kitchen secure in the knowledge that he wasn’t able to get out. This arrangement worked until he was about five months old and the random peeing on the floor had stopped. After that, the baby gates at the kitchen doors were good enough to keep him contained whenever it was necessary. Silly me, I assumed that the same general procedures would work for Maggie too. Yeah, assumptions apparently will get you in trouble.

Maggie stayed in the pen for a grand total of 36 hours before she discovered that she could climb over it. Of course I didn’t discover this until I noticed that she was sitting with Winston in the middle of the kitchen floor. No problem, I thought, I’ll just have to start leaving her in the wire kennel when I’m out of the room. Having come up with my new plan of attack, I left her in the kennel when I went to get a shower this morning. Apparently, Winston figured out how to spring his little sister from the outside because once again, she was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor when I cam back.

So now she’s in the big plastic travel kennel and neither of them seem to have figured out how to break the code on that one yet, but it seems as if it’s only a matter of time before the escape artist strikes again.

Maggie...

Yes, the rumors are true… I brought home an adorable female chocolate lab puppy on Tuesday night. As you might expect, there’s a somewhat involved story about how I came to be a single father of two and it all starts off with a sign. No, not a burning bush kind of sign, the 8 by 11 inch computer printed version that end up on bulletin boards at work…

Tuesday was my first day back in the office after my month-long hiatus and one of the first things I noticed was a sign advertising “free” full blooded Labradors. I must have made a comment about things that sound too good to be true usually being untrue because one of my coworkers piped up quickly that it was the real deal and she had taken hers home the night before. As it turns out a family ended up with an “accidental” litter and their efforts to sell them and to give them away to friends and neighbors had failed. Mom died while giving birth to the litter of nine and they had been hand raised for the last eight weeks. According to the owners, the herd was eating three 50 pound bags of food a week and was driving them on the fast track to the poorhouse. The bottom line, apparently, was that if they weren’t gone by the end of the week, they would be going to the pound.

I had been toying with the idea of another dog mainly as a buddy for Winston while I was at the office and had more or less made up my mind that I’d do it after the holidays. Of course sometimes, you just have to embrace the opportunities that are given to you and I pulled the trigger, calling the owners and asking for the only chocolate-colored pup in the litter. Unfortunately, she had already been spoken for by someone a few offices down. I had really hoped to get the chocolate, but made up my mind that black was fine too and told her than I’d be over after work. Ultimately, the individual who made first claim decided that three dogs was probably too many for her and backed out. Since I was first out the door, I had pick of the litter at that point and ended up bringing Maggie home.

It’s a little earlier than planned, but I was able to give a beautiful little pup a warm home and a big brother so for the time being it’s back to semi-sleepless nights for me. Still, though, I’m a happy camper and I think the kids are too.

But I’m feeling much better now…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted and it hasn’t been because all has suddenly started going right with the world. I never really fully got over the bug that kicked my ass back in mid-September and up until about a week ago I was more or less in a standoff with it on one side and a small army of over the counter remedies on mine. My guys waivered early in the day on Friday and made a rally around noon, but by that night they gave up the fight completely. By early Saturday morning I was fevered and achy and facing the prospect of a 15 hour drive. It’s nice to know I can make the drive from Maryland to West Tennessee while alternately shivering and burning up, but I don’t recommend it to anyone else nor do I think I’ll be doing the same thing again. By hour 12 on the road, everything was sort of a general haze and the last 30 miles of the trip were basically a miracle. By Sunday afternoon I was vaguely aware of my surroundings again and drug myself to the local doc-in-a-box 24/7 clinic and was treated by a very nice French doctor who decided I had managed to procrastinate myself into a nicely advanced case of bronchitis. Four prescriptions later I seem to be on the road to recovery. I guess 750 milligrams a pop of antibiotics and a codeine based cough syrup can work wonders for your system.

Sleeping in...

I’ve been getting up at 5AM or earlier for so long now that sleeping in till 6 or 7 is quite a treat when it actually happens. Even on weekends I usually find myself rolling out of bed around 6. Not that I’m really thrilled about that; it just is what it is. That’s why crawling out of bed at 10:30 this morning was so unusual. I have no idea why I would have slept that long as it’s certainly not like I’ve had too many hard days lately. Eh, maybe it was making up for the lack of sleep on Friday night. Speaking of last Friday, there are a whole series of stories that just scream to be told, but discretion in this case seems to be the better part of valor. Suffice to say that a good time was had by all.

Use or lose...

In the current economic climate, there are all sorts of glorious things about being in the employ of Uncle Sam. At the moment, though, my favorite perk is the concept of use-or-lose leave. How can you not enjoy working for an outfit that essentially forces you to take vacation before the end of the year. So here I am sitting in Western Maryland with nothing but free time on my hands enjoying the first of two weeks of use or lose between now and the end of the year. At the moment, I’m planning on wandering back in to the office some time on or about next Tuesday. Between traveling for work and taking some vacation time, I’ll have been gone for a month. I vaguely remember that I have a job at this point. It’s not quite the white sand beaches and rum-based economy I was planning on for my next vacation, but it’s definitely been nice getting away for a while. And if you’re in the WMD between now and Wednesday, look me up and say hello.

Storm...

This is beginning to feel like a blog that should titled “Jeff Drools Over New Cell Phones,” but there’s another new Blackberry coming out tomorrow. Moving away from the company’s venerable position as the QWERTY king, the Storm is a full touch screen affair that just looks absolutely slick. Of course this model is a Verizon exclusive and I’ve been spending all week telling myself that having phones on the two largest networks in the country is not a good enough reason to pay two $100+ cell phone bills a month… Or is it?

The Bold is hands down the best device I’ve ever owned and other than the standard Blackberry memory leak, I don’t have any performance complaints. The Storm is a horse of a different color though and oh, so tempting. I still have two weeks to return the Bold and I’m seriously thinking about picking up the Storm and running them side by side and then keeping one I like best. Really, this is like some kind of nerdy sickness.

Could he give up an arm instead…

I was perusing the New York Times mobile site this morning and ran across a story that actually made me feel sorry for a professional politician. It seems that because of some combination of national security concerns and the desire to avoid having email subpoenaed in the future, when he assumes office President-Elect Obama will have to give up his Blackberry. I guess I had never really thought of the president having time to send out missives from a potus@us.gov email address, but I think as president, my first executive order would be stay the hell away from my cellie.

The civilized world has embraced email as part and parcel of daily life. Surely a country that has tens of thousands of men and women who spend their working lives coming up with sophisticated cryptographic devices and ciphers can come up with a way to let the leader of the free world read his gmail and send a few text messages. Seriously, I get jumpy when I haven’t checked my email in an hour or two. Four years in an email free zone is just way too far beyond the pale. I say buck the system, Mr. President-Elect; make a Charlton Heston-esq stand for your inalienable right to wireless communication!

How did I miss it...

I don’t know how long I’ve been in the dark about it, but how come none of you have told me about the wonder beverage that is Vitamin Water? I friggin love this stuff. I mean it’s water that actually tastes like something tasty. Bloody brilliant! The tagline is “The inside is natural, the outside is plastic,” how can you not want that in your hotel mini-fridge?

Over it...

Let me start off by saying it’s good to be back on the east coast. For the most part people here make sense to me in that they have places to go and basically want to be left alone to get there in as expeditious a way as possible. With that being said, all I can say about this class is that I’m basically over it. I’m not saying that I’m ready to go back to my actual job, just that I’d rather be doing something other than this.

Teamwork sucks...

OK, team, for the record tomorrow is a federal holiday. That means that the sooner we get our shit together this afternoon, the sooner we can begin enjoying an extra day off this week. This is a pass-fail course, so no one is grading you on how many cute pictures you can put into a briefing. I hate to break it to you, but no one cares. You’re not being graded on this assignment and they guy who does your yearly evaluation will never know that you had 12 slides instead of 10. I grow weary of trying to nudge the discussion from “what sound lobsters make when they’re boiled” to something slightly more productive. I appreciate that you want to be a hard charger and do great things… but this is a mandatory training course, not your actual job. We all have enough garbage to deal with back at the office, so why are you trying to make life harder than it needs to be when we’re on TDY? Sorry, but there’s just no good reason that we should have been working at 4:00 today when they cut us loose to build a briefing at 10:30. You, my dear teammates, are asshats.

Of the gods...

It’s the small things you take for granted that you miss when you move halfway across the country. In my case, what I had really been missing is the ability to drive 10 miles in any direction to get a really good crab cake… or steamed crabs… or crab soup. Let’s just say as long as it’s not the kind that make you itch in your happy place, I’m all about the crabs. The lightly broiled, falling apart on your fork, sweet back fin tasty goodness is really one of life’s great joys. Seriously, when the gods on Olympus got tired of ordering pizza, I’m convinced they sent to Maryland for an order of crab cakes. Tennessee is great for things like cheap housing and no income tax, but some summer afternoons, I would trade my right leg for a good crab. Thankfully this weekend I got my fix.

Fork...

Ladies and gentlemen, stick a fork in this election because it is just about done. Tonight we’re all watching one of the last things I ever imagined I’d see in my lifetime. It looks like the country is once again evenly divided and unless there’s a significant departure from how things look now, we’ll have a President-Elect Obama sometime very late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Senator McCain has been a good and faithful servant of the republic and watching this American hero go down in defeat is far more bitter to me than it is sweet. My only hope now is that Senator Obama proves worthy of the trust that his countrymen are about to repose in him.

Things that make you say WTF…

So, I was repacking the truck this afternoon for the drive from dad’s down to Ft. Belvoir and happened to overhear a call go out on the scanner in the garage for a police response for a “10 year old out of control, breaking stuff up in the residence.” Now I have to ask… WTF? I have a vague recollection of having once been a 10 year old. Let’s just say that my parent’s response to my being out of control and breaking stuff up would not have been to call the police. Seriously, people, are there not earlier signs that your kid might be headed for trouble than needing to call the police? I’m really at a loss as to what a 10 year old kid could be doing that any adult human couldn’t step in and stop without ending up on next week’s episode of Cops. Just another example of why civilization is doomed.

Like a bat outta hell...

I’m trying to get ready for a three-four week road stand starting Friday morning so there seems to be too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. Leaving on one of these trips at the end of a week always leaves me feeling like I’ve forgotten to do something important, even though packing out and driving halfway across the country has gotten old hat and I can do most of the preparation on auto-pilot. Excuse the all too brief post tonight as I get back to the giant pile of laundry in the middle of the living room floor.

Fool me twice, shame on me...

guess it serves me right for believing internet rumors, but I just can’t help myself when it shows up on usually reliable sources like Boy Genius added to the slew of forums where it made the rounds. Late last night the rumor mill started circulating that BestBuy had the Blackberry Bold in stock and would begin retailing it this morning. Yeah, not so much. Once more, the AT&T/RIM/Bold succubus got everything worked into a lather only to disappoint. So now it’s back to eight more days of impatient waiting. Of course I’m so annoyed with the miserably bad roll out this device has had, I might just wait the extra week or two and try the Storm on Verizon. Then again the even bigger probability is that I’m going to end up with both of them until I can figure out which one to keep.

Early Voting...

In one of the great lines that endeared him to the party faithful, Ronald Reagan once told his fellow Republicans "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me." My feelings about the Republican Party are more or less the same. My Republican Party, the party of Reagan, has been hijacked by fanatics and religious extremists inflexible on a single issue and unable to see a broader policy agenda. The Republican Party left me and for the first time since I registered to vote in 1996, today I voted for a Democrat at the top of the national ticket. I take no joy in it, as I believe John McCain is a good and true servant of the republic, but the thought of a vice president who doesn't believe in evolution or in letting kids talk about sex in an academic setting and who thinks that living near Russia counts as foreign policy experience is more than I could bear. America deserves better than either of our alternatives this year and in the end I cast my vote for who I believe is the least bad alternative.

Bold...

It’s true, I crave neat new electronic toys like drunks crave their next drink or junkies their next fix, but come on now, you have to admit that the BlackBerry Bold is one sexy beast. Of course with the endless series of delays from our friends at RIM and AT&T, it’s been almost interminable waiting for this phone to actually drop. But now it looks like November 4th is the official release date. Yes, it’s election day here in the states and yes, I’ll be on the road, but you can bet your sweet bippy that once I get away from class that afternoon my first stop won’t be for a TV update on the election. I’ll be too busy looking for an AT&T store.

Conflicted…

For the first time in my adult life, I’m actually conflicted over who will get my vote in a presidential election. Ideologically, neither major party candidate represents my general positions. McCain has me covered with his notions on defense, smaller government, and lower taxes across the board, but Palin terrifies me on social issues. Obama has a prayer of a chance of unifying the 75% of the country that aren’t insane rednecks, but I’m deeply troubled by his positions on foreign policy and taxation. I’ll be doing the whole early voting thing next weekend here in West Tennessee due to out of state travel plans on election day, but as it stands now, my vote is still thoroughly up for grabs. Right now it’s even odds and with the clock running down, I don’t know what it’s going to take to change that.

Down with the sickness…

It’s not so much being run down, congested, and generally achy that I object to as much as it’s the sheer grinding monotony that comes along with being sick; the hour after of hour of doing essentially nothing except wandering to the kitchen for beverages and to the bathroom to divest myself of the beverages I got from the kitchen. There’s also the occasional very interesting side trip to the DVD player to change movies. Two days of it is really more than enough. I don’t have a clue how people who are well and truly ill deal with days, weeks, or months of it. After two days, I’d pull my bloody hair out if I had any. Sure, I guess I could have toughed it out and gone to the office, but inflicting my particularly sunny disposition and potentially contagious leftovers on my colleagues didn’t seem like a terribly good idea.

The good news, I suppose, is that I’m feeling better now than I was last night so I seem to be well along the path to recovery. Lord willing, I’ll even be able to muster the oomph to get out of the house tomorrow. It’s ironic that I usually spend all weekend trying to avoid people. All I want to do now is see someone that isn’t in HD. I’m sure that fascination will wear off quickly!

Change of venue...

After some serious consideration I have decided that it was time to enlarge my horizons a bit and jump into a more serious mode of blogging. That’s not to say that my previous blog wasn’t serious, but rather as an adjunct of MySpace, blogging wasn’t what the system was built to do. I’m happily ensconced here at Blogger now, and hope that we will all find it a productive change of venue. I’ll get to strengthen my chops among the serious bloggers here and hopefully those who stumble onto my new home for ranting and raving will find a better product. Sometimes you just need to change your perspective and I’m hopeful that this will be a good one.