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Year: 2006

Actually, A Very Good Day

January 24, 2006 • • 1 Comment

CookiesYesterday afternoon as I was coming up the hill at the end of my run, I noticed that Mrs. Next Door Neighbor and her daughter were walking away from my front door pulling a wagon. On Saturday I had seen them unloading boxes from a van outside their house and now these same boxes appeared to be in the back of the wagon. They noticed me approaching and stopped on the sidewalk by my house. I then realized that despite the calculations of the mood scientists, yesterday was not to be the worst day of the year. In fact, it was one of the best. It occurs on different days for each of us, making it something of a moveable feast, but yesterday – for me, anyway – was Girl Scout Cookie Day.

I’ll buy anything from a kid just to get the little urchins off the street and back to their XBoxes, but I usually only get a small something unless the kid goes beyond staring at the ground mumbling, “I’m…. selling… for sch…” at which point I just ask to see the catalog. If the kid actually pitches something and really tries to sell it… well, I’m a sucker, which is why I have a pantry full of wax-tasting candy, caramel popcorn, and excessively strong candles.

The exception is Girl Scouts. They need money. I need cookies. It’s perfect. The cookies sell themselves. I always splurge, and at three bones per box, that’s a lot of cookie. This year there are even two new flavors: Reduced Fat Cartwheels (“cinnamon oatmeal bites”) and Thanks-A-Lot (“crunchy fudge-coated treats that say thank you on them in five languages.”) Next Door Neighbor’s daughter proudly pitched the new items. How could I resist?

I haven’t tried the new ones yet since I had to immediately sample the Thin Mints. I’m happy to report that this year’s vintage is exceptionally good. They are suitable for aging a few days in the freezer and perfectly compliment a sparkling clementine Izze.

Melancholy Monday

January 23, 2006 • • 1 Comment

According to an article in today’s Austin American-Statesman (which requires a subscription so no link) entitled, “In mood science, today = bluest of 2006” today is supposed to be a gloomy day based on the calculations of one Cliff Arnall, a health psychologist at Cardiff University in Wales. He uses the following formula to calculate the year’s “emotional low point”:

1/8W + (D-d)3/8 x TQ/M x NA

The variables are weather (W), debt (D), monthly salary (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failure to quit a bad habit (Q), low motivation levels (M) and the need to take action (NA).

I’m not a mathematician, and I’m not sure how to assign the variables, but I tried to work it anyway.

It’s beautiful today in central Texas and even 1/8 of that is still a pretty fine day. I got lost on failure to quit a bad habit. Are we measuring minutes or years? If I just quit a bad habit or never failed to quit a bad habit, then does Q=0? If so that could throw the whole equation out of whack. We could wind up with gloominess essentially being 1/8W + 0. As stated earlier 1/8 of a beautiful day ain’t bad. I also realize you’d need to make a major adjustment for the southern hemisphere since large swaths of the planet could be enjoying a perfect summer day.

Basically then it seems that if you quit a bad habit on a reasonably nice day (or in the southern hemisphere), you’ll have no call to worry about your debts, income, motivation or the fact that Christmas was a month ago.

Fortunately for me, I had a non-melancholy Monday and was able to maintain all of my bad habits.

Weekend Hound & Cat Blogging: Animals

January 21, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Since nobody did anything of note this week and after reading about the IM Needle Nose Crew, I felt that reintroductions might be in order. And as Morrison has pointed out, this blog can get a bit dog-o-centric and needs an occasional feline presence to be more politically correct.

Morrison, of course, is the king of the Brush beasts. Why an eighteen pound cat can lord it over 120 pounds of dog, I’ll never quite know, although a friend of my wife’s suggests that dogs will defer to any animal who can “shit in the house without getting in trouble.” Perhaps it’s that simple.

Morrison asleep

In many ways, the big guy is more dog than cat: outgoing, friendly, and very sociable. He’s often the first to greet visitors. He snores when he sleeps upside down and offers a squeeky meow when we wake him up so we can sleep.

Likes:

  • Lounging on shoes and purses (especially when they belong to visitors)
  • Frank Sinatra
  • Green beans
  • Newpapers, paper bags and boxes

Dislikes:

  • Cars
  • Chicken

The adventures of the hounds are better documented elsewhere in this blog, but they wanted to share their likes and dislikes.

Phoebe and Daphne

Daphne is the blue-fawn brindle beauty on the right. She is a very small greyhound (53 pounds) with yellow wolfy eyes who has just discovered the art of begging. She’s probably five (no tattoos) and was found running through the woods of Lockhart by animal control. We met her three years ago at a GPA meet and greet where she was curled into a tight little ball, shivering, and hoping not to be noticed. We fell in love immediately. A person needs to visit our house several time before they see the ‘real’ Daphne, a very affectionate, playful, and goofy dog. There is very little brain in that pointy little head of hers, making her untrainable, but her heart is enormous.

Daphne likes:

  • Peanut butter Kongs
  • The word ‘greyhound’ (one of only a few that she knows)
  • New clothes to sniff
  • Nesting in the pillows on the bed

Daphne does not like:

  • Car rides
  • Walks
  • Anything new and different
  • Anyone new and different
  • Anywhere new and different

Phoebe came to us in October and was thought to be a spook, but is far more outgoing than Daphne. She weighs around 65 pounds and is still getting used to living amongst the humans. Everything is new, exciting and fun. She adheres to Emerson’s advice to do something everyday that scares you, and is quickly overcoming her fears.

Phoebe likes:

  • Squeeky toys
  • Walks
  • Car rides
  • Soft couches
  • People she’s never met
  • Being outside

Phoebe does not like:

  • Fireworks
  • Being told ‘No.’

So there’s the pack. Or is it pride? I suppose that would be Morrison’s call.

[saveagrey]

Drugs

January 19, 2006 • • Leave a comment

Last weekend we spent a lot of time watching movies, and all of them turned out to be very good. There’s nothing like a long weekend catching up on Netflix and DVR recordings. It’s even better when you don’t regret the time spent watching what you watched.

On Friday, my wife came home with frozen White Castle hamburgers and onion rings, and we watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie this funny. It’s a good-natured stoner buddies on the road movie that was perfect for a Friday night. It didn’t seem appealing when I saw the trailer last year, but it had me laughing. And, man, those burgers are good, even frozen.

On Saturday we watched The Buena Vista Social Club, a documentary about Ry Cooder bringing a large ensemble of brilliant and largely forgotten cuban musicians back to the studio and then on tour. Ruben Gonzales hadn’t played a piano in over ten years and most of the musicians had faded into obscurity, but the music they created together is nothing short of magic. I’ll need to buy the CD.

Next came Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a fascinating film about Chuck Barris, the creator of The Newlywed Game, The Dating Game, and The Gong Show, who according to his journals on which the movie was based also worked as a CIA assassin. After that came The Yes Men, a documentary about a group of guys who built a fake website satirizing the World Trade Organization. Occasionally, people would email thinking they were the real WTO and ask them to come speak. They oblige. The results are hysterical.

The most interesting film was Less than Zero. I’d read the book a few years back, but somehow missed the movie when it came out in the late ’80s. The movie, of course, is nowhere near as good as the book, but seeing it today just made me sad. Not because of the subject matter (rich kids gone bad) but because of the way Robert Downey Jr’s fine performance as the doomed Julian so perfectly foreshadowed the trajectory his life would take. He became that character – so hopeless and desperate to clean up his act, but never able to do so. Occasionally, while flipping through channels, I’ve seen bios that focus on his persistent drug problem, but I never paid much attention until seeing this particular example of life imitating art.

Don’t Worry About the Government

January 19, 2006 • • Leave a comment

I received an unusual compliment the other day.

Since I’m now working in a correctional facility, I had to be fingerprinted. When the woman collecting my prints was finished, she looked over the paper and then stated that I have ‘beautiful fingerprints.’

“Really?” I asked, looking at the tips of my blackened fingers.

She nodded. “Yeah. You should never commit a crime. They’ll know you right off. ‘Hey, guys, it’s James.'”

So that’s me: “a forensic scientist’s dream.”

Burning Down the House

January 18, 2006 • • 4 Comments

Driving along the highways around here, one can’t help but notice the big signs reminding motorists of the extreme fire danger throughout the state. There hasn’t been any significant rain, it’s unseasonably hot and very windy. What surprised me though was the wording on the electronic signs along Mopac and I-35 in Austin:

Arson/Burn Ban in Effect

Does this mean that under normal conditions there is no ban on arson? If so, it’s a bit disappointing to know that all those times I wanted to burn down someone’s house, torch a restaurant for providing lousy service, or just ignite a large swath of woodland to keep warm, my hand was stayed by the belief that arson was always banned. Silly me. I can’t wait until it rains again.

This Must Be the Place

January 17, 2006 • • 8 Comments

I went back into teaching today.

Towards the end of last school year, I decided to leave the district I’d been with for the previous six years mainly because of a commute that due to a move had grown considerably longer than when I had started. Once the decision to leave that district was made, I decided to leave the profession altogether. There were a number of reasons, but mainly I was feeling burned out. Besides, I had never intended to teach forever. Teaching was my second career. After growing tired of the ups and downs of freelancing in the film business, I had wanted to do something ‘useful for a while’ as I told people who thought I’d lost my mind back when I was working through an alternative certification program.

Last summer, I decided that since I was going to be looking for another job why not look outside of public education? I spent the summer interviewing and searching and finally found a job as a project manager at a small company. It sounded exciting – a combination of marketing, IT and communications. The job was okay, but it didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. The commute was horrendous, I got home very late each evening and while there was no grading to do, I had little time for writing, a problem that was growing increasingly difficult since there is another novel just bursting to be written. So back I went to the calculus of career in which I always conclude that what I do all day must be personally fulfilling and give me time to write.

The thing about teaching is that I know I’m really good at it. I can reach the kids who hate school (just as I hated it until I got to college) and I can push them past the level of ‘minimum skills’ that Texas requires, showing them that they can read and write and – most importantly – think better than they ever thought they could. Not teaching felt like I was wasting part of myself.

A few weeks ago, I started looking and found a mid-year opening at an alternative school. It’s a boot camp environment for kids who are on their last chance. In some cases the next step could be prison. This is exciting to me. When I got the job last week, I happily packed up my office and quit. Today was my first day at my new school. I loved it. It felt right. When I resigned from my old teaching position everyone tried to convince me that teaching was my calling and that I shouldn’t leave the profession.

I’m glad I did, but I’m thrilled to be back where I think I probably belong. I’ve had many jobs, a few professions and careers, but only teaching has ever made me want to get up and go to work for someone else.

Weekend Hound Blogging: Greyhound Daylight Time

January 15, 2006 • • 2 Comments

Initially, I didn’t have much to say and was just going to post a picture, but that didn’t feel like a Weekend Hound Report, so instead of sitting at the computer wishing for something to blog about, which seems to be very dangerous, I decided to just change the name from ‘Report’ to ‘Blogging,’ thus freeing myself from the tryranny of the word ‘report’ and opening the way to just put up a cute picture. Then I thought of something to write, but I went ahead and left ‘Blogging’ up to keep the pressure down and thus it is that we now have Weekend Hound (or Cat) Blogging:

I’ve heard that greyhounds have very accurate internal clocks due to the regimented life they live in the concentration camps… er… kennels at the tracks. You know, early to bed, early to rise makes a hound faster and smarter and postpones his demise. Well, since Phoebe is a retired fired racer, I’ve been watching since she came to us for evidence of this internal clock. Well, it started going off this week. 4:30 am. Usually, I get up at 5:30 and Phoebe follows me out of the bedroom and joins me for breakfast and a trip to the backyard (for her, not me).

This week, however, every morning at 4:30am we hear the squeek-squeek-squeek of a squeeky chew toy growing louder and louder as it begs for mercy. After that comes the beating of her weedwhacker tail against the wall until finally she starts running laps around the room. The room is small – at least for a speeding greyhound – so bouncing off the walls is more like it.

Every morning this week.

4:30am.

It’s apparent that Phoebe’s internal clock ticks just fine, but somewhere in that pointy little canine head it seems that a switch has been made in which the internal clock has skipped ahead an hour. A friend suggested that she has perhaps switched to greyhound daylight time.

Or perhaps it’s just youth. She turned two in November, which is pretty much adult for most dogs, but according to my copy of Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies, (She came with the book, can you believe it? Adopt a dog and get a book. What’s not to love?) greys mature more slowly:

Because greyhounds don’t mature until they are about three years of age, a two-year-old retired racer may still be very much a puppy and quite full of himself. He may need more exercise and supervision than a dog who is just a few months or a year older.

I wondered if perhaps she needs a bit more exercise. So I took her for an especially long walk on Saturday night, but it only helped a little bit. She started working over the squeeky toy at 4:37. Better, but we still need to adjust that clock.

[saveagrey]

Welcome to the New Coyote Mercury

January 14, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Thanks for coming. I’ll be blogging here from now on. There are still some things on this site that may be a bit buggy, but I’m working on those. If you notice anything that looks weird or doesn’t work right, please comment and let me know. Once the various kinks are worked out, I’ll resume regular blogging.

Don’t forget to update your blogrolls!