Chris and I are off to the east coast for my brother’s funeral. We’re flying to Boston tomorrow morning and driving up to Plymouth on Saturday morning.
I realized the other day that I haven’t fully dealt with this yet. In my head, he’s gone. But in my soul, he’ll be there to greet us when we get in. Burying your little brother is a whole lot different from burying your mother.
I can’t believe I’ll never talk to him again.
We’ll be back on Tuesday sometime.
which are taking place right here in my beloved home town, the plants in my garden are putting on a vigorous display of new growth. The columbine is always up early, but the honeysuckle, clematis and roses have also decided Spring has arrived.
Feb 3
Dear Modern Employers:
I know you’re all hot to get on the employee empowerment bandwagon, but if you create a performance incentive program that will require me to spend a significant number of hours and then make it plain that all the other work that I do will not be allowed to slip, and if you then couple all of this with a massive list of re-engineering projects that must be completed by the end of the year, aren’t you merely forcing an overtime contract on me, where I will complete certain tasks on my own time (because there is no time during my regular day) for fixed remuneration?
And if that fixed remuneration is less than (1.5 x hours_required x hourly_rate), aren’t you forcing an overtime contract on me at less than industry standard overtime rates?
I’m just wondering, Employers, if you’ve thought about this. Because this is an industry that is widely populated with highly analytical people, and such people are hard to fool1.
Jan 31
We have new babies. Meet the Little Girls:
Quadruplet degus. We got them 3 weeks ago, from the SPCA, and they’re quite charming little creatures. We haven’t given them names yet because, as far as we can tell, they’re pretty much identical, except for one with a pink spot on her nose. Her name is Rum, because we all like saying “Why is the Rum gone?”
Jan 29
Jan 27
They are young here. This is 1969, the concert in Hyde Park. It was 2 days after Brian Jones was found dead.
Keith Richards is coming into his own around this time. The riff is pure Richards, bluesy and ballsy, memorable without being catchy.
Doesn’t matter. I love this band.
Keith Richards has quit drinking.
High-functioning addicts can continue for many years, particularly if the circumstances of their lives shield them from negative consequences. Richards has been in this state since the mid 60’s.
It would be consistent with my limited knowledge of Richards’ character for the impetus to be the self-immolation of a friend, Ronnie Wood. Richards has always had the money to afford to be a drunk and/or an addict, and he has always functioned well while gassed: the Stones best period occurred while Richards was an active heroin addict. He also has always had someone to watch over him.
Wood was similar. Lots of money and a job that didn’t require him to be sober meant that he lasted as long as he had someone to keep him from the worst excesses and get him to rehearsal on time. But once he lost that (by taking up with a 20 year old), he fell apart.
I think the days of the Rolling Stones as a band are closely numbered now. They’ve lost a number of people over the years. Certainly, if either Jagger or Richards calls it quits, the band will be done. I suspect that if Charlie Watts packs it in, the band will fold as well. Whether they would survive the expulsion of Wood, I don’t know, even though Jagger has talked publicly of just that.
Jan 26
I have posted a couple of times on a house in Arizona that was the subject of that obnoxious Extreme Makeover show. Originally listed at $1,300,000 last year, it went off the market for a short while and was relisted late last year at $835,000.
It has now dropped again, to $799,000. At the same time, Zillow’s estimate (which is, I understand, fairly whacked, but still) has dropped from $535,000 to $501,000.
It’s a 5500 sf monstrosity in a neighborhood of 2500 sf homes. The market is falling faster than their listing price is, and if they’re going to sell it, somebody is going to have to make a major move.
Jan 26
I don’t believe in the prophetic power of dreams. Given the high strangeness of your average dream, it is possible to retrofit all kinds of happenings into them.
But last night, I dreamed that I was driving the Miata, and she had two broken headlights. I have the last year with pop-up headlights, and I dreamed that the metal doors were gone and all that remained were some shards of glass sticking out of the hood. I remember being concerned that some pedestrian was going to put his or her hand on the glass and cut themselves.
Then, when I fired the car up this morning, the left headlight was out. It was working yesterday morning.
Make of it what you will.
Jan 22
Much as it pains me to admit listening to Top 40 music, I’m kind of digging Taylor Swift these days. HA2.0 got her latest album for Christmas, and it went into the family iTunes library. At work today, I needed something to drown out the office babble and, out of curiousity, fired up TF, expecting to switch to something more age-appropriate within a song or two. Didn’t happen. I listened to the whole album at work, and fired it up again in the car on the way home.
This is the one that’s been running through my head for the last couple of hours:
Now I’m the first to admit that I’m easy, musically speaking (Dean and the plethora of bad 80’s pop on my playlist will back me up here), but I’ve never been a big country fan, nor have I fallen for any of the previous generation of pop tartlets (Britney, Christina, et al).
However, I’m not so easy that I’m buying the boots with the lacy dress. That’s just wrong.