Leaving The Decompression Chamber

I took today off as a buffer between returning to VA and returning to work.
Think of it as spending time in a decompression chamber before returning to the surface.
I didn't do much more today than I did yesterday, going out into the world only long enough to grab lunch (a personal pizza at the Pizza Hut Express in Super Target) and to pick up some toilet paper.
The temperature has dropped considerably today from where it was yesterday and Tuesday, though it's not as extreme as the temperature change I underwent when leaving MI and returning to VA.
That was a 40 degree change, and it was a positive change, going from the 30s to the 70s in the space of the 3 and a half hours or so it took to travel from there to here.
At the Marquette airport they didn't have a jetway so we had to just walk on the tarmac to the small plane, which left us exposed to the cold and cutting wind that I had earlier been afraid might prevent my flight out.
We ended up standing out there longer than necessary because some old lady at the front of the line decided that the top of the steps at the entrance to the plane was an appropriate place and time to stop and chat with the flight attendant while the rest of us stood in a bone-chilling wind that was gusting up to 60 miles an hour.
I just don't understand how people can be so oblivious - and unconcerned - about the impact that their actions have on other people. It was a two-hour flight, lady; there was plenty of opportunity to talk to the flight attendant once you were in the damn plane.
And of course she did her best to slow the deplaning process to a crawl once we got to Detroit.
I would say that I shouldn't complain too much about people causing delays, as I generally create a bottleneck during the security check-in process, what with having to get my laptop out of its bag, take off my watch and take out my wallet, and having to untie my shoes and getting the laces all knotted up about 75% of the time because I'm trying to get them untied in a hurry which slows things down even further.
However, I would submit that having to wait a little longer to go through security is nowhere near as excrutiating as having to wait a little longer to get off the plane (or to stand around in a fucking arctic blast of cold).
Speaking of excrutiating waits, having to use dial-up for Internet access made going online even more painful than not being online, so I had to find another way to pass some of the downtime I had while I was back in the UP.
One of the things I did was finally try to make use of my Tablet PC for drawing.
I mean, one would assume that it's ideally suited for such a task, as you can draw right on the screen and actually watch what your hand is doing, which is completely unlike the way I draw on my desktop PC.
Sure, I use a pen/pencil shaped stylus just as I do on the Tablet, but my hand is like a foot away from what I'm actually doing on screen.
Of course, that's how I've been drawing for years now, so going back to the more natural method actually seemed kind of unnatural.
Still, I kind of got the hang of it after a while.
Mostly I just doodled and experimented with different styles and tools, not really intending to produce something worth sharing.
I did, however, produce this picture of Scarlett Johansson.



I'm not entirely pleased with it, but it did turn out more presentable than most of what I did on the Tablet.
Most of the problems with it stem from the fact that the source image was a low-res scan taken from a newspaper (newsprint scans always have a lot of "noise"), which meant that a lot of detail was lost in the image. And of course I was still getting used to using the Tablet for drawing, which actually has some disadvantages beyond just feeling a bit odd.
And before you say that it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, I will add that my talent, skill, and patience were not up to the task of overcoming the difficulties that I was presented with.
As I said, most of the rest of what I did were simply experiments which I never had (and still don't have) any intention of sharing with anyone.
I did do a picture of Sasha Cohen, as well, but it was a really, really, really shitty picture that I'm too ashamed to show to anyone, despite the fact that I'm much more justified in blaming the source image (which was a really tiny, really low-res, really noisy picture) for the lack of quality of my version of it.
I did okay on the body, and the outfit, but the face...well, it's best not to think about it.
I sent my friend Eric an e-mail yesterday to tell him about my dad. He responded with his sympathies and pointed out that we just missed each other, as he had been in the UP as well - also for a death in the family (his grandmother) - for a brief period while I was there, though neither of us knew about the other being there at the time.
In any case I still have some TV watching to catch up on before I turn in and prepare to leave the chamber.

November Had Better Improve On October

There's too much dying going on right now.  If you are thinking of dying this week, don't.  Just don't.
Neil Gaiman, 10/28/2006

I have to say that overall October was a pretty shitty month and I’m hoping that November will shape up to be a bit better.
It would almost have to.
A couple of days after my dad died a girl I’d gone to high school with died as well.
She wasn’t exactly a close friend, and it’s been nearly twenty years since I last saw her, but on those rare occasions on which she actually showed up at school before dropping out entirely I did have fairly regular contact with her and I have to say that she was always entertaining.
In study hall, for example, she would often take my friend Joel’s notebook or his vocabulary book and write embarrassing (to Joel) little notes.
Joel’s response would be to scribble it out with a pencil, tear off the offending section of paper, and crumple it up and throw it away.
It was always good for a laugh.
So though I didn’t know her well, it was troubling to see that she’d passed, and it was disturbing to think of someone my age just suddenly dropping dead.
While I was home two students from Michigan Tech were killed in separate accidents, both of whom were friends with my niece Jourdan.
The father of one of the people who bought my grandfather’s house from my parents also died.
And of course there was the troubling news I received about my friend Jon Betts.
So as I said, October was a shitty month overall.
Though I’ve been aware of it rationally all along, I find myself frequently struck by a visceral awareness of the fact that my dad is gone and I become briefly overwhelmed by the enormity of what that means.
Still, I’m managing to fall back into my normal routine pretty easily, though I have to say that it feels a little more hollow and meaningless than it already did.
I’d intended to do some shopping yesterday, as I was set to be back around 3:30, but they held us on the runway for no apparent reason in Detroit which meant that I arrived closer to 4.  After stopping to get something to eat and dealing with nightmarish traffic it was already dark by the time I got home so I said to hell with it.
There’s been an e-mail that keeps bouncing back and forth and getting updated among the homeowners who went to that meeting a while back.  Looks like we’ll be meeting again on Monday to plan for a holiday party.
Our HOA representative won’t be able to attend, so she asked that someone go to the office to get the key to the clubhouse in order for us to meet.
The cute music teacher responded that she wouldn’t be able to and asked someone else to volunteer.  I was considering it, but was beaten to it by the firefighter.
I can tell that guy’s going to be a problem.
Speaking of problem firefighters, I brought Brian and Kathleen to the airport this morning, or rather, more accurately, I rode to the airport with them and brought Brian’s truck back to their house.
I have to say that they were a little on the grumpy side.
For my part, I was just a little tired and loopy.  I’m not used to being up that early in the morning without having gone to bed extremely early.
When my alarm woke me this morning I shut it off and prepared to go back to sleep, puzzled as to why Rob Zombie would just randomly start blasting from my alarm at 5:15 in the morning.
Then I remembered that I was supposed to get up and that Zombie (or whatever random performer the Nano landed on) was blasting from my alarm by my choice.
Once I got home from my little morning adventure I sat around for a bit before going back to bed until a bit after 10, at which point I got up and sat around doing a lot of random Web surfing that I couldn’t accomplish while using my mom’s dial-up.
I thought about going out to shop but realized that I had absolutely no desire to do so, and no manifest need to do so either.
Ultimately, sometime around 1:30 I decided that I should go out to get some milk at least, and so, reluctantly, I did.
While I was back in Michigan I dropped a lot of money on various purchases.
First up, as I’d forgotten to pack any, I needed to buy shirts.
After I’d picked up a bunch of standard long-sleeve and T-shirts, I ended buying even more T-shirts from this store that characters to college students and sells a lot of novelty shirts.
Like Marvel Comics super hero shirts.
I bought about five different shirts.  When I went up to the register I said, “Why did I buy five shirts with different comic book characters on them when it would have been more efficient to buy just one that says ‘I am a huge nerd’ instead?”
I also picked up a new USB thumb drive ($40 for 2 GB:  how could I pass it up?) and a Network Attached Storage device, which is basically a 250 GB hard drive that I can plug into my router and make available to all of my computers.  I can also plug USB external hard drives into it add further storage and connect my printer to it and share that among all of my computers.  For $150, it was another bargain I couldn’t pass up.
It was while I was in line buying those items that I randomly encountered my friend Kevin, who, by the way, I wasn’t expecting to show up at the memorial and am not upset at for not going.  I’m not a big fan of funerals myself, and when I mentioned that none of my other friends besides Gretchen showed up that wasn’t meant as an indictment or complaint, it was just a statement of fact.
I’m very glad that I took tomorrow off as I don’t think I would have been up to going to bed early tonight and getting up and going to work.  I really need the extra time to just fully settle back in.
Besides, I’m in training, along with Scott, on two of my four days off next week, so I definitely need a little breathing room.
(Yes, having four days off every week for nearly four years has left me spoiled.)
Anyway, I suppose I should get back to the task of settling into my routine.

Screw The "Jiggety-Jig" Business; It's Home Again, Home Again, Sit Down And Take A Breath

Just wanted to put up a quick post to say that I'm back in VA as of late this afternoon.
Thanks again to Scott for picking me up. I'm going to do the whole "pay it forward" thing and give Brian and Kathleen a ride to the airport at, as Kathleen put it, the "butt crack of dawn."
Classy lady that Kathleen.
She deposited my mail in neat little piles on my table, which had a slight OCD overtone to it, but was thoughtful of her.
Not so thrilled about the flier for an old-fashioned tent revival held in Leesburg that she stuck on my refrigerator with a note saying, "You should totally go," though.
Guy I sat next to on the flight from Detroit (I upgraded to First Class; it was only $35, though that did seem kind of wasteful for a flight that was only a little over an hour long. Oh well; I appreciated the leg room.) was chatty and fairly nice. However, he didn't take my pointed response of "No, I'm not" as a clue when he said, "I don't know if your religious or not," and continued suggesting that I should turn to the church in order to cope with the loss of my father.
He didn't get too pushy about it, though.
Oh! Get this: after the memorial for my dad, the minister said to my brother, in reference to the piece I'd written for our dad, that I have a gift for words and that I should - wait for it - use it to become a preacher.
My brother thought, "Hmm...how can I put this...?" and then simply responded, diplomatically, "I'll tell him that."
Anyway, I'm here and still off work until Friday.
At least I'm assuming I have a job to go back to on Friday and that I didn't get the axe in the latest round of layoffs. No messages telling me that I did, so I guess no news is good news.
No trick or treating monsters in the condo development, apparently, which is just as well because I didn't have any damn candy for them.
It was hard to leave my mom; I know she's got a lot of grieving left to do and that after 47 years with my dad living alone is going to be quite an adjustment.
We got her moved into an apartment near my sister Kim's house (and even closer to my niece Jourdan's place), so that much at least is an improvement over living out somewhere north of the middle of nowhwere.
Sunday was her birthday. Not exactly the best birthday she could ask for, but she got through it okay.
No news on my friend Jon Betts, AKA "Zalfiro." I've been contacted by both of his sisters who were hoping that I had some information that could aid in the search for him. I wish I did.
More accurately, I wish he were just at home alive and well.
It's been a pretty shitty month all around.
Tomorrow is the start of National Novel Writing Month. I won't be participating this year, which is probably just as well, given how utterly disappointed I was with my last two efforts.
Anyway, that's about all I have the energy for right now.