Last year I don't think I handled the earlier switch to Daylight Savings Time all that well. It definitely messed with my internal clock to have things so light out later at night than I was used to, even though at the time I really didn't have any regular commitments because I was still just looking for employment. I definitely enjoyed the extra daylight -- even though I'm definitely a night person, after a certain point the winter just becomes total drudgery to get through -- but for a couple of weeks there things didn't feel right. When the old switch day came, though, I didn't feel any ill effects then; by then I think I'd adjusted to the time change and the date change.
This year I didn't really have any difficulty at all making the adjustment. Granted, Dad dying a couple of weeks before the switch probably caused me to put my focus on other things, and that Sunday was also the last Sunday of my so-called Spring Break, but it finally felt right. In a way I guess I was almost looking forward to the change, because with everything that had gone on I felt like I needed more daylight to help get through each day. I've never really thought about the possibility that I might have Seasonal Affective Disorder because I always assumed my annual autumn depression was caused by the season triggering memories of my year at Antioch and how part of me still longs to go back there, but perhaps it is just the general weather that's affecting my mood. (Then again, given how I'm still grieving for Dad, maybe this isn't a good time to be making judgments about anything else that could be affecting my overall emotional state.)
Speaking of Antioch, they let my personal data get compromised. (Even though I stopped attending by the start of the data that was breached, my application to Antioch University Los Angeles' MFA in creative writing in 2004 means that my stuff was there for the taking.) I haven't seen or heard of any suspicious activity so far, but needless to say I'm concerned since I haven't had an experience like this before. Is there anything I need to be doing right now to make sure that I don't get slammed from this?
Labels: personal
I continue to be stressed beyond belief on this end with various things, keeping me from blogging as much as I'd like or even do much of anything. I can't find anything much to lead the Friday Five with today except that it's the 29th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident, and I can't think of anything really profound to say about it. Let's just play the friday5.org Friday Five and get it over with so I can get back to other things here.
1. Who in your life would make a really good butler?
I wouldn't wish that kind of a job on anyone, even people I intensely dislike.
2. Who in your life would make a really good head of state?
Since I assume I'm not allowed to mention myself, I'll go with my sister here, since she doesn't take crap from anyone and can detect people trying to zoom her better than anyone I know.
3. Who in your life would make a really good TV talk-show host?
I think I'll go with Jeff here, since he has a knack for knowing the right questions to ask people to get them to open up. (I think his background in improv comedy really helps him with that.)
4. Who in your life would make a really good astronaut?
I don't know anyone who even likes to fly, let alone would think about going into outer space, but I know a couple of people I'd like to send into orbit. Not with a rocket, but I'd still like to send them into orbit.
5. Who in your life would make a really good movie director?
I'll go with Jeff again, but that's obvious because he's the biggest movie buff I know.
Labels: fridayfive
I'm the biggest packrat I know of, but Dad was close. Whatever extra ability he had to throw things out was kind of negated by the fact that he had a thirty-year head start on collecting things. Although he lost a lot of personal stuff in the fire since he stored lots of stuff upstairs, his business stuff was safe since we still had a separate office west of here back then. That stuff came over to the house once he built the addition a few years ago, and going through all of that stuff, while simultaneously handling the hundreds of other pieces of business his death has brought up, has been quite the task. It's been painful for me to try to resume some kind of a normal diet here, because most of this past month I've needed tremendous amounts of sugar and caffeine just to stay fueled up here. (I'm not denying emotional eating is playing a large part in that as well, but I think emotional eating is kind of understandable under the circumstances.)
Just before Dad's death I had started to go through my closet because I needed to clear space for some new clothes. Rather than throw out old clothes, though, I've only put them into "retirement" in a plastic tub out in the loft closet. I honestly don't even want to do that -- even if my clothes get too ratty to wear out in public I still think they'd be good for working out in -- but I need space for new clothes. I can't bring myself to throw any of the clothes out, either, because I can still remember how I got each shirt and from whom. Just like I've been learning this past month going through Dad's stuff, every little thing we have has its own story, and as much as the memories and stories matter more than the things themselves, I can't bring myself to throw them out.
As far as clothes go, though, Mom was in charge of cleaning out Dad's closet, and after we took out the things we wanted to keep or could repurpose (we have a thing in this house about converting old sweatpants into shorts to wear around the house), she's got the rest bagged up to send to Goodwill here shortly. Granted, most of the clothes I've retired are so raggy that I doubt they'd be of much use to anyone, but this is one of those things that makes me think about my own consumption. Being a packrat is bad enough when you've got so much stuff you have to find space for, but I have to admit that I don't think enough about how me keeping all this stuff around means that other people can't get enjoyment out of it. This is a matter that deserves a lot more thought than I've been giving it recently, but I simply don't have any time to stop and think now; I've got too much to do here.
Some of my birthday gifts have still yet to arrive -- including a couple of CDs I bought for myself -- but among the things I got this past Tuesday were Gandhi's autobiography (I don't know how I didn't pick it up sooner), Dr. Strangelove (ditto), an Oh My Goddess! manga (I am way behind on those), and most importantly of all, I am finally in possession of a Guitar Hero game, namely Guitar Hero III for PS2. However, not only have I had next to no time to play Guitar Hero since getting it (between teaching and bsiness relating to Dad's death I'm still swamped here), but the bundled guitar isn't working that well. It's one of the new wireless models that runs on Bluetooth, and the receiver only picks up the guitar if I hold the guitar about six inches from the receiver and keep the guitar facing at just the right angle. It's playable this way, but it's definitely a huge pain.
When I get paid next week, I'm going to head over to Best Buy and pick up a wired guitar. In a way I can understand the huge push towards making all video game controllers wireless, but at the same time these problems I'm having with my Guitar Hero controller just seem to highlight for me the problems with wireless-only options. (This is just one of the many reasons why I'm in no rush to pick up a PS3.) In addition to the problems I have with the receiver (and given how poor my cell phone reception is at the house I'm wondering if we're in some kind of dead spot here), I don't like the thought of having to keep throwing AA batteries into the controller just to keep using it. Honestly, having a cord run from my guitar controller to my console isn't that much of a pain, especially considering how much I'll be likely to save on batteries that way. I don't like that I'm going to be stuck buying an off-brand guitar controller here, though; why can't Activision continue to sell and support their old wired models?
I only made the wireless mistake once, a long, long time ago. Back when attachments came out for the NES for plugging four controllers into the system at once, Nintendo offered two models, a wired adapter (the Four Score) and a wireless one (the Satellite). This was back when Mom was buying me most of my video game stuff, and even though the Satellite cost ten bucks more, I asked for it thinking that the ability to move the adapter around my bedroom would be a major convenience at some point. Ignoring the fact that I think I only ever had more than two people playing my NES at one point in my whole life, the Satellite went through a lot of big, expensive batteries (I think 6 C batteries) in record time. The worst part was that I continued to use the Satellite for a long time, even for single-player games, just because I thought it was convenient, but it was really just a waste of batteries. (It was also a huge pain when the Satellite ran out of power in the middle of a game and I had to frantically plug and unplug the Satellite and my controller just to pause a game down to replace the batteries.) I suppose one of the good things about being such a loner is that I don't have to worry about picking up multiplayer adapters any longer, so I don't have to deal with these problems.
Labels: personal, videogames
Today would have been Dad's 62nd birthday. There's really not much more I can add to that, so let's just get to the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What was the last thing you filled out a written application for?
When I went to the BMV to renew my driver's license earlier this month I think I only had to sign a sheet after the attendant asked me a bunch of questions, so I won't count that. The last written applications of any kind I can remember are things regarding retirement funds and the like I filled out after I got hired at MCCC.
2. What computer application software last impressed you with what it could do?
I honestly don't have an answer here simply because I tend to use the same software over and over again. I intend on constructing Yggdrasil Mark II later this year, though, so perhaps I'll have a chance to try out some new stuff here soon.
3. Where did you last apply a Band-Aid?
Probably a finger; my hands certainly got cut to heck when I got a really, really bad case of winter skin about a month ago.
4. What’s a rule that applies to many people in your life but not to you?
Worry about the finances later. We will have some money coming to us here shortly, but I am perhaps overly paranoid in wanting to save as much money as possible here until we actually have the money that's coming in our accounts.
5. When were you last required to apply some elbow grease to something?
Fixing the keyboard drawer on my computer desk here when the screws on the right side came off. It's only on via a patch job now, but my sister finally found the anchor for my old articulating keyboard drawer here soon, so I hope to attach that to this desk sometime soon.
Labels: dad, fridayfive
I'm not in the mood to give one of my long birthday posts here, just like I wasn't in the mood to do my usual pre-birthday begging for stuff off of my Amazon wishlist. Suffice it to say that my birthday booty this year was a bit bigger than usual, and I'll get the specifics later (some items are still on their way here according to my sister), but obviously the events of the past month kind of put a damper on my usual biannual willing submission to materialistic desire. I think this may have been the hardest day for me to get through since the day Dad died. I was kind of tasked with doing the usual food run for my birthday (Mancino's pizza and Dairy Queen), and of all the things Dad used to do that I've been taking over, that was the hardest one for me to do yet. Even coming back down to Ohio from work, knowing I'd be making the pizza and ice cream run, I began to get sick to my stomach. I'm not even sure that I would have had a birthday party tonight if I hadn't known that Mom and Heather and Mark kind of needed the party more than I did.
There was an incredible dual quality to today. At once, I don't think I've felt Dad's absence more than I did today -- especially when we sat down for pizza and presents -- but at the same time, his spiritual presence with me, and with the rest of us, seemed stronger than ever today. I have to keep reminding myself of the spiritual aspect of this as the days go by here, as I have to fight my urge to save everything of his (although he wasn't quite as bad of a packrat as I am, he had a thirty-year headstart on me), but some days it's harder to deal with than others, and this day was a total pain to deal with it.
I wish I could say that things will get better, but Dad's birthday would have been this Friday (yeah, there's your peak ahead to the intro for this week's Friday Five). Normally there's a lot to celebrate this week (St. Patrick's Day, the anniversary of us buying this property), but this year everything's basically been turned on its head. I keep reminding myself that things will never return to "normal" because what was "normal" before will never be again, but I'm hoping that after we get through this week that things will start to become a little easier to deal with. Right now, though, I just feel like curling up in a ball on my bed and shutting the rest of the world out.
Again, my apologies for a lack of blog entries lately. I have lots of topics on my whiteboard here for when I feel that I can resume a normal blogging schedule, but that might not be for a while because there's still so much going on here in the aftermath of Dad's death. Just as a quick update on that, I had blogged earlier that the preliminary cause of Dad's death was determined to be a stomach aneurysm, but when we got his death certificate shortly after that, the cause of death there was listed as blood clots in his lungs. Complicating matters is the fact that the coroner's report is still not done yet, even though Dad was cremated two weeks ago; this doesn't seem logical to me, but I'm guessing that this is just one of those things where I'm basing things on what I've seen on television dramas like Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and not on any real-life experience.
As a lead-in to what I'm about to say, and at the risk of sounding like I would dare to brag about something like this, when the actual medical emergency hit on the 23rd, I clicked over into Crisis Mode, that rare state I achieve where I manage to stop being absent-minded, stop screwing the small and big things up, take charge and do a damn good job of it. Just like I was the one to get the family out of the house and call 911 and all that when we had the fire here in 2001, I was the one to call 911 when we needed to, I got the paramedics and others marshalled through the house, called Heather and Mark, coordinated everything, and drove behind the ambulance that took Dad to the hospital. After we were told of his death, I likewise got the family banded together and helped everyone piece together all of the things we needed to take care of.
With the fire, though, there came a point where I could switch out of Crisis Mode, and that was fairly soon in the process. Once the family was huddled together in the van in front of our house and the fire rigs were getting the blaze under control, I could afford to relax a little, in part because the family was safe and secure (and that was all that really mattered at that point), and in part because when it came to the upper-level planning stuff, those were things that Dad had to take care of, and he was quite capable of taking care of them. This is different, though; Dad's not here, and even though Mom has to take care of the upper-level things, she needs to rely a lot on Heather and Mark and myself to take care of them. We're far enough along in the process here to know that we don't have to worry about anyone swooping in and kicking us out of the house or any of that, at least for a good long while, but at the same time there are still an awful lot of unresolved questions and a tremendous amount of business to take care of. I'm not feeling the same panic I was feeling in the hours before and after Dad's death, but at the same time it feels like I haven't really gotten out of Crisis Mode yet.
The two things that have gotten me through here are writing (for myself) and food. Writing isn't an issue here, but I've been off-diet for a while now -- I tried going back on-diet last week but my heart wasn't in it, and with both Dad's birthday and mine this week I don't think now is the right time to get back on it -- but at the same time I haven't been taking good care of myself. Granted, there are far worse things I can do to my body than eat bad foods (and don't think I haven't been tempted to do some of them), but I feel like there's an underlying problem with me still being unable to get out of Crisis Mode here. I really don't know what to do here, and in a lot of ways I'm worried about relaxing too much because, as I said, there is still a lot of work to do. Still, I don't feel that good about myself right now, and I don't know what to do to fix that.
My apologies for going silent for a whole week like that, but between business surrounding Dad's death and work for school I haven't had a moment's rest for a very long time. I'll have an update on that over the weekend, but for now I wanted to make sure I got a Friday Five in here.
On this day in 1994, version 1.0.0 of the Linux kernel was released. I actually remember some friends of mine from local BBSes talking about Linux back in the winter of '95, but it was only in the late 1990s when I finally took a serious look at Linux, thanks in large part to The Screen Savers on ZDTV featuring it so prominently. Leo Laporte and Kate Botello need to get back together on my television now. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What were the events that led to your being in the most trouble with your parents ever?
I'm not sure if I can figure out a single episode that was the worst, and even if I could it is still far too soon for me to be approaching this topic. Pass.
2. What happened when you received your worst childhood physical injury?
The weekend before the last week of kindergarten I tried on roller skates for the first time in our garage. Ten seconds later I fell and broke my right arm and got to spend half of that summer vacation with a plaster cast on that arm, unable to swim in our backyard pool. I remember my sister drawing a huge Pac-Man maze on my first cast because I was big into Pac-Man then (and couldn't play it with my arm bent at the elbow the way it was while it healed).
3. What was the worst trouble you ever got into in school?
Just before my last year at That Private School, I was barred from campus for three months and had to be psychiatrically evaluated before I was allowed to return. The shrink who saw me agreed that if there were any mental problems, they were with the people who ran that school, not me.
4. What kind of trouble have you been in at work?
At MCCC I've only ever had problems getting behind on getting my students' work back to them in a timely fashion. I'm having that problem now, as a matter of fact, although my students have been understanding given the circumstances.
5. How do you usually deal with the knowledge that you’re about to be in big trouble?
I try to think things through and figure out how best to survive and get through things. That kind of sums up the last three weeks for me, actually.
Labels: fridayfive
Two of them on this day, in fact, both going back to the Steelers' glory days of the seventies. Franco Harris was born on this day in 1950, Lynn Swann on this day in 1952. This is particularly important to me right now because Harris was one of two men (William Shatner, of all people, being the other) Mom had a crush on when I was growing up. Mom says that there's no way she'll ever remarry, but seeing Harris' name pop up on Wikipedia today made me think. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What is your keyring like?
It's got two separate rings, one for car keys and one for other keys. The car key ring is getting particularly weak, and I have to keep pushing it back into a ring every week or so or else keys start falling off of it. I also have discount cards for three grocers on my keyring, although one is for a chain that isn't even in Toledo any longer (Farmer Jack).
2. What is your purse/bag/briefcase like?
My purse is at once incredibly well-ordered because I like knowing where things are, and incredibly dingy inside because it needs a desperate cleaning. It's a Powerpuff Girls purse I picked up at Meijer at least eight years ago or so, and it's held up well after all this time. I really don't want to get a new purse unless I absolutely have to.
3. What is your wallet like?
My billfold is, again, very organized but also in need of a cleaning. I probably do need to get a new billfold soon just because I've run out of storage space for all my discount cards and such.
4. What is your mousepad like?
Very old and dirty; about a decade ago I bought one of the plain black ones that comes with a gel rest on the bottom for your wrist, and my gel rest has flaked away so much at this point that I had to cover it in duct tape to stop it from flaking away more. I need to get new gel rests for both my keyboard and my mousepad at this point.
5. What are the curtains in your bedroom like?
I don't have anything on the window in my bedroom because Dad never got around to installing blinds on the windows for either my room or the loft. At this point I'd rather not have them, though, because I use the window ledge to store too many important things (including my whiteboard and my cell phone).
Labels: fridayfive
I was hoping for a distraction from the craziness of Ohio having such a hotly-contested Democratic primary, but this wasn't what I had in mind. Believe me, the last thing I needed after coming home from the hospital after Dad died was to walk by our mailbox and see a full-page flyer from Clinton's campaign sticking out of it. I had thought that the Republican and Democratic primaries were the only things on the ballot today, but there were a couple of funding issues on the ballot here, including funding for our firefighters. The firefighters already had my vote for life, especially after the house fire, but I saw them do everything they could to save Dad in our living room and they have my eternal appreciation for that as well. I was probably the only person at that precinct to come in as a declared Green (or at least as close to one as I can get given how Ohio's laws screw over third parties), but I'll get my chance to vote in the Green primary next month. I'd originally planned to go to the statewide convention in April to vote, but right now I don't want to make any plans like that until the situation here at home gets a lot more settled.
It would figure that immediately after Dad's death I'd get Darren McCarty back on the Red Wings, a snow day, and Ralph Nader in the presidential race. However, as much as I appreciate Nader running, I don't agree with his strategy of running independently and trying to run a campaign "alongside" the eventual Green Party nominee to get progressive issues out there. I think it does help to have more voices talking about the issues that aren't being talked about by the major party candidates, but it's possible to do that without having two progressive candidates out there. I don't think Nader and David Cobb running separate candidacies four years ago was a good thing for either progressives as a whole or the Green Party in particular, given how it split an already small vote and cost the Green Party several ballot lines it won with Nader's 2000 candidacy. Particularly if Clinton manages to win the Democratic nomination through superdelegates, there is a tremendous opportunity for the Green Party to make huge inroads in this next election and make the five percent popular threshold to qualify for federal funds in 2012. Nader running as an independent -- particularly with Matt Gonzales as his vice-presidential candidate (one of the biggest stars within the Green Party) -- doesn't strike me as the best strategy for this year.
As for my plans, I'm going to continue to push for Nader to get the Green Party nomination whether or not he wants it. He already has a huge delegate count, and I think he may actually win the nomination even if he isn't campaigning for it. (If he does win the nomination, I highly doubt he'd turn it down.) If he doesn't get the nomination then Cynthia McKinney will likely get it, and as much as I want to vote for the Green Party candidate no matter what, there's no way I can vote for McKinney over Nader. I guess I'm stuck with Nader now no matter what, and the moment he has volunteer opportunities posted on his Website that don't involve actually talking with other people, I'll probably volunteer to do something for him. At least that should give me another outlet for all the emotions I've been feeling since Dad's death.
Labels: dad, greenparty, politics