Category: NoJoMo

Write about being 23. Other than the fact that nobody liked you, write a bit about being 23. What were you doing? Where you were living? Relationship/who were you doing?

Let’s see….I was still working in radio, but with lessened on-air duties.

This would be a lot easier if I had access to my old OD entries, but they’re somewhere stuffed away on a powered-off PC at my apartment.

I should really move thoes to somewhere more accessible.

But, working from memory, I was single. I can’t even remember if there was anyone I was interested in. I think that would have been the summer my brother got married (for the first time), and I helped ruin the paint on his car after his groomsmen weren’t ready to decorate it. Cheap shaving cream from 7-Eleven does wonders to brighten faded paint.

I’d moved back home so I could concentrate on school, and didn’t have enough money to move out again. That certainly made me a magnet for the opposite sex….a weird work schedule, fat, and no income to speak of.

So, what else? I think that was also the first time my dad was really sick; if memory serves, tha was the first near-death scare. It would have been later that summer that I came to terms that he wouldn’t be around a long time. Heavy stuff for someone that young, with a newly-married younger sibling who hadn’t yet finished college.

That also probably would have been a summer of spur-of-the-moment trips. I think that was the summer I drove up to Redskins’ camp in Carlisle on a whim. I met Spurrier, Wuerffel, Matthews.

It’s been a long time. And, yes, if I had a lawn, I’d tell you to get off of it.

I was still on the air overnights three nights a week, and in the mornings on Saturday. I lived in a perpetual state of jet lag. It wasn’t as bad as it was a couple of years prior, because I wasn’t also taking a full course load in college. But it certainly wasn’t easy. When you live at night, things “normal” people do you have to plan well in adavance. Traveling. Going to the doctor and dentist. Meals.

That was also probably the summer I spent fishing. There wasn’t a lot else to do when you had two solid nights to yourself, and those nights were Monday and Tuesday.

Grab the rod, grab a box of squid, wander out onto the pier to try to bring in something worth eating.

Instead, I spent a lot of time listening to the radio, sweating in the 80F+ humidity.

When I find my old OD entries later this week, maybe I’ll revisit.

Incredibly, if I’d been in a relationship, fathered a child, then, he/she’d be in middle school.

What is this? I don’t even.

Day of historical significance for “US Americans.” Do you know why? Were you alive? (I’m skeptical…) What do you remember? (Bonus on this one for readers from Soviet Canuckistan….)

Cheating a bit here, since I really haven’t gone to bed after SNL.

To the prompt, no, I wasn’t yet born. My ancestors were committed Democrats, but you’d rarely hear them say something positive about a Masshole

JFK would feel very out-of-place in today’s Democrat Party; most modern hipster progressives wouldn’t understand why. (Clluestick: He was Catholic, and very much anti-Communist…)

But, I’m sure the big three news networks will roll out the “where were you” segments in tonight’s newscasts. But the President was in diapers, and a lot of us ween’t yet born.

Update on the drama that woke me: http://wavy.com/2015/11/21/drivers-cars-towed-in-norfolk-without-prior-notice-from-city/

So, yes, the tow drivers probably were shouting at each other, along with the pool]ple whose cars cars were being towed……

First Look has yet anotherr new host. She’s in Worst Korea(TM). I miss the US focus.

Major drama between two tow drivers outside to wake up this morning. I don’t even….

I ended up calling the non-emergency phone number because while one left, another seems to be circling the block, and someone is yelling profanities at the truck. Umm…..

So, for the prompt, another where I wonder what I was thinking about when I wrote/accepted/recycled it. I understand the importance of the After-Action Review, and this prompt isn’t one…..

How about a list of things that’ve statisfied you this year, and a corresponding list of disappointments.

Satisfactions:
1. Surviving this awful job which made me….
2. Buy new letters after my name.
3. Buck up with my problems with venous puncture to be able to start Tysabri. (with a new neurologist because the one I’d been seeing since just after I was diagnosed didn’t accept my wonderful Federal health exchange plan…..)
4. Seeing my wife succeed in her college endeavors.
5. The Kansas City Royals. Duh.

Disappointments:
1. That I’ve gotten zero movement on the many outstanding applications for Federal employment.
2. That, because of this awful job, I’ve not had the opportunity to really make a push on the business I’d started.
3. That my financial situation hasn’t gotten better.
4. Realizing that due to this awful job, I’m earning roughly what I did in 2006. But the economy is totes getting better. Forward

But I’m thinking it’s time to try to go back to sleep now…..

Kind of at a low-ebb today. Tysabri in a few hours, and I’m beyond ready for it. This has been an incredibly trying week, and I will never understand how being overbearingly officious makes you right.

Talk about your professors/teachers. What things they taught you have stuck with you?

It’s interesting to reminisce about them now. Yesterday, as my mother was giving me a ride home, I was thinking about one of them who’d been a counterpart of my dad’s in the Army. We were talking about writing. This professor said something about how he’d see other officers who were not inspiring leaders, and wondering why or how they got promoted….until stumbling across things they’d written. I don’t know what happened to this professor; he was married to a professor at a nearby school, but I haven’t been able to find him. Even the totes-not-worried-about-being-evil company doesn’t give good info as a result of his common names.

So, who else…..

The History professor who helped me become a more-effective writer. There were a few things he’d focus on that have stuck with me. An impact is a collision. “In-depth” is for people who don’t know how to spell “thorough.” Still, he was big on college being about teaching you how to think, not what to think. In the world of multiple choice tests for everything, this has been lost. (And that reminds me I need to needle on something I’ve been considering as a joke that I can put up, string initials after my name on LinkedIn…..)

One who lived through “massive resistance” in Norfolk. This white protestant kid ended up at a Catholic school because the local Democrats closed all the public schools rather than integrate.

The business law professor who obliterated what I thought was a great analysis on a case. I’d treated the case as a tort, and she thought I wrote it well as a tort. “You should have used the UCC. C.” Ouch. So much for the grade on the final pulling me up to an A for the course….. At the same time, she spoke to a campus group I helped run a couple of years later, and was very gracious to me.

I’m wandering here, though, and could write little vignettes about several others. Instead, I’m going to cut it off, think about how I’d never fit in on a modern campus, and tell those kids to get off my lawn.

What opportuntities that you’ve passed up do you regret passing?

I’m trying to think of my frame of mind when I wrote this prompt.

I mean, there’s stuff that I could have done that would have greatly affected my life path.

but, then, I probably wouldn’t have met my wife, so I don’t really care about them.

I love my wife. I love where I live. I like that I feel like I’m getting some control over my health. My job would have to improve to suck, but….can’t win ‘em all.

Do I wish I’d been a bit less reckless on a few things? Sure. Do I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I been more reckless? Absolutely.

But, for tonight, I’m home. I’m going to have a Martini, and wait for my dinner to arrive.

I don’t know why this didn’t save yesterday. But it made ti to the blog, which I coped from here……

http://control-h.org/index.php/2015/11/19/eighteen-2/

Who knows?

What is your favorite holiday, and why?

~o/Love to eat turkey/o~

I do like Thanksgiving. Family, food, football, etc.. I really don’t like the start of the Christmas mania, but I guess I understand it. (At the same time, there’s a very Randy Marsh element there….the episode where he bought a Blockbuster Video store….)

But lots of memories of what happened various Thanksgivings.

The Lions and the Cowboys switching years facing a division opponent, and the other playing an AFC team. (Cluestick, Red-headed Spokeschimp Goodell….there shouldn’t be three all-NFC games! Seriously!)

The stoner passing out in line in front of me at Walmart, as I was packing to drive to my uncle’s house in South Carolina…

But, also, occasionally, there’d be something new and unexpected to try. Maybe it was a guest who brought something. Maybe it’s what they were serving….

(Holidays in the mess hall aren’t something people who’ve grown up outside the Army life won’t understand. Even my Navy brat wife talks of holidays on the officers’ mess…..there isn’t one of those in the Army; my dad would bring us to eat with his soldiers…yes, he was an officer, but that really didn’t matter…they were his guys, even if they didn’t have something shiny on their caps…..) So, new things. Maybe not things I’d traditionally thought of for Thanksgiving dinner, but, really, anything goes I guess.

Since this is a bit short, I suppose I should stuff it. I’ve never had a turkey filled with stuffing. I’m okay with this. Cornbread dressing gets cooked in its own cassarole dish, not inside the damned bird.

I need to figure out what to bring to the office Thanksgiving meal. Hmmmmmm…..

And this for the Cowboys’ fans…..

What normally find attractive in a partner? If you’re “taken,” does your current relationship fit that? If single, have you ever been with someone who fit those? Are there celebs who don’t fall into your traditional mold you’re nonethess attracted to?

Let’s see…..

I like different hair/eye combinations. Blonde/brown, Brown/blue, ???/green, ???//hazel, ???/grey.

Yes, my wife has one of those preferred combinations. When I met her, I didn’t notice anthing from the face down. (At first, later, of course I did….)

As for celebs that don’t fall into the categories to whom I’m attracted, there’s a few. Joanne Nosuchinsky.(No idea on that one, other than I see her on TV a lot) Charli XCX. (She looks suspiciously like someone I used to know….) By the same token, there’s some who have the keys that there’s no way in hell; Megan Fox, much (seriously, she is staling oxygen…..).

But being happily taken, and not seeing all that well, I really don’t notice often anymore.

Write a bit about your drivers’ licence. How old were you, where did you get it? What kind of car did you drive?

I was fifteen, driving my grandfather’s Ford, because I was nervous about stalling out my dad’s manual transmission Jeep. I probably would have been fine, but i was freaked out about the rumor that you’d automatically fail if you stalled….

i had a much longer entry written about this, but I managed to lose it.

This was the day after a tropical storm had strewn the course with limbs. Because of that, the trooper didn’t make me parallel park (which might have been something I wouldn’t have been able to do in a somewhat-unfamilar car).

It was a bit odd, because I’d had no formal behind-the-wheel training. My dad was still in the Army, and I’d taken drivers’ ed in Pennsylvania.

I basically stopped driving in late 2012. After hitting some road debris, pretty seriously damaging my car, and having the ability to work from home, I stopped.

By that point, I really couldn’t read the speedometer much of the time, so I was setting my speed by the sound of the engine, and the gear I was in.

I tried again towards the end of that year, and I couldn’t make out traffic lights against green backgrounds 9think a light with a tree behind it).

Damn you, optic neuritis. http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/opticneuritis.html

I was also getting to the point where I’d often hit the brake when I was hitting the clutch. Some of that was due to the car I owned, which had rather narrow spacing between the pedals, but……

When I’m home, I rarely miss driving; I can get pretty much everywhere I want to go by public transportation. When I’m away for this job, however, I’m basically a shut-in. I can’t go anywhere once I’m at work. Where I work, I can’t even get a cab.

When I’m at my mother’s house, I can get a taxi, but it’s expensive.

Halftime. When was/will be the halftime fo your life?

This was a rather dark prompt now that I look at it again.

Do I think I’m past the halfway point? I don’t know. Am I there in other aspects of my life? Yes. My professional career? Yep. This particular job? Certainly.

On so many things I ask myself why I continue on. Maybe NoJoMo should be one of those.

I will probably write next year; I don’t just quit, even when I have good reason to. I’m a Saints’ fan, so I’m watching Buddy Ryan Jr.-B’s defense get a good start on serving up the fortyburger in FedEx Field……

So, a bit of freewriting as the Redskins score, what am I looking forward to the next few few months?

1. Thanksgiving. For the first time in a very long time, I think I will be able to actually enjoy eating this year. Actually being hungry for the first time in almost twenty years is something new.
2. Travel. My wife and I are planning a trip, and I’m excited about that. The only details I’ll reveal are that French food will be consumed.

That jewelry commercial was more than a little hetero-normative……

Does anything have you excited for next year?

Nothing in particular, no.

I do seriously doubt that things will be the same as they are now. This situation I’m in is untenable; something different will be happening.

I’m not going to elaborate, because so few of these things are decided.

Changes are coming. As long as I’m alive, I’ll deal with those. Maybe that makes me a bad person, being comfortable with finding new ways of doing things. That makes me a bad target for politicians and insurance salesmen…..

I am certain I won’t be moving to a McMansion in the suburbs.