Today I got up to see if I could get my Georgia state license tag for my car. First I had to take my car to an emissions-inspection station and get it certified. Since I was there, I decided to get the oil changed while I was at it, since it was only a couple of hundred miles short of its due mileage. After that, I found the license place, but it was closed on Saturday, as I had feared. It was an extremely out-of-the-way place, though, which made it worthwhile to spend the time finding it.

Since that was a bust, I decided to see if I could get my Georgia driver’s license, since I knew they were open on Saturdays until 5 p.m. I went to the driver’s license bureau (which was a good 20 minutes from the license tag bureau), and got in line. The driver’s license bureau was overwhelming. They had 18 teller windows, with a red LED readout above each one that listed the number of the next person. A synthetic woman’s voice announced “Now serving number XXXX at window XX” about every 30 seconds.

I got in the (first) line to get my number. I explained to the teller that I had just moved here from Kansas City, and had my emissions certificate, etc. She asked me, “Have you ever had a Georgia driver’s license before?” “Well, yes,” I said, “About two or two and a half years ago.” She hit a few keys on her computer, and raised her eyebrows when all my old records showed up, including my last driver’s license picture, a horrid ugly one with a massive goatee and huge glasses. She gave me a number, and I went and sat down.

When my number was called I went to the next teller and gave her my number. She made pleasant conversation as I was filling out a form, and I told her I was a computer tech. Wouldn’t you know it, she had a computer problem, and needed me to diagnose and fix the problem right there at the teller window while I was filling out my form. Which I did. I really like being able to help people; it makes me feel – well, helpful, I guess. Which is just a sort of self-referential tautology. “I like helping people because it makes me feel like I’m helping them.” Right.

After I filled out the form, I went and sat down again and waited for my number to be called for the third station I had to visit. There, they took a new picture of me (thankfully) and asked me if I wanted to be an organ donor. I remembered that Georgia used to give a sort of price break for being an organ donor, but Missouri didn’t and I wasn’t sure Georgia still did, so I asked them. “The license costs $15 normally, but if you’re an organ donor, it only costs $8.” Woohoo! There go my eyeballs! I signed up immediately.

So, they made my new license and gave it to me right there, laminated and everything, with my new picture on it. I noticed it had my old Georgia’s driver’s license number on it. It was like they were saying, “Welcome back.”

Today I got to do an “on-site.” The computer store at which I work sometimes sends a serviceman to troubleshoot and fix computers, set one up, or intall networking devices. The guy who does this asked me to join him because he was intalling network cable, and the one that normally helps him was out on an extended delivery.

When I was in college, I was an “assistant electrician” my freshman year. I changed light bulbs. I needed no electrical know-how, nor did I have any. As part of that job, I also helped the head electrician do technical work, like running conduit. Conduit is like a thin hollow pipe that you slide through walls so you can run wires through it. Installing network cable is a job much like running conduit (although we didn’t use conduit).

We were installing network cable in a hospital; they had ordered a new computer for the nurses’ station, and we had to install it on the network. I set up the computer while the other guy prepared to install the cable. Once I had the computer set up, I wanted to test everything, so I brought up a document and typed something to the effect of, “The employees of [this computer store] wish to sincerely thank the men and women in the health care profession who work diligently to insure our continued health.” I went off and left it. I came back about ten minutes later to grab the screwdriver I had left there, and saw someone had typed, “you are so full of crap” right underneath what I wrote. I chuckled, and all the ladies in the nurses’ station – who had been watching me out of the corners of their eyes – broke into giggles.

I felt very at home there. My mom is (was) a nurse, and all the ladies there were just like her – equal parts caring, humorous, and no-nonsense. They wore scrubs in a variety of colors – light blue, dark blue, orange – and they laughed a lot. But at the same time, I could pick up the (necessary) edge of steel that lies beneath the surface. A short sampling of something I overheard one of the nurses say to another, the speaker was a smart-looking African-American woman in blue scrubs:

“That’s why I had to leave Pediatrics, you know. The children. People come in, wearing a coat, and their kids are in t-shirts and barefoot. What are you doing, wearing a coat, when your kid isn’t? And you wonder why you have to keep bringing them in here, week after week. And one woman, she brought her kid in here; the kid was covered with BRUISES. I said, “Uh-uh. You just sit right there, lady, ‘cause you ain’t going anywhere.” And I went in and sat with the kid. That lady left with the PO-lice. And I told her, “You be glad this is my job. Because if it wasn’t, I’d take you outside and kick your [censored].”

It was fun to get out of the workshop in the back of the store for an afternoon, and to top it all off, a drug representative had catered a meal for the nurses that day, and they let us eat all we could of tacos and teriyaki chicken.

This evening was “game night” at our cell group. We were invited to bring games to play. I rubbed my hands gleefully and selected four excellent games (two board and two card) from my collection. I love games, and frequently buy unusal games from specialty hobby stores.

Unfortunately, the games I own are designed for small groups of 4-6 people. There were over a dozen at the group tonight. We wound up playing a game – the name of which escapes me – that plays like a combination of “Taboo” and “Hot Potato.” It was fun, although it largely depends on a verbal fluency that one of the players (a Brazilian) didn’t have. It was the best game they had for the number of people, though, so I guess you can’t please everybody.

I like my group, but there are too many women and too few men. Out of the dozen people three (including me) were guys. I like having the opposite sex around, of course; but it’s always awkward to just jump into a conversation two girls are having, at least until you get to know them well. I found myself standing in a corner, scanning the room to find someone, anyone, who wasn’t already involved in a conversation so I could strike one up. I’m sure it’ll get better the more I get to know them.

They (the couple whose house we’re meeting in) mentioned that next week they might fix dinner for us. This would be great, since I go there straight from work and don’t have time to get a meal until I get home. Food has been kind of scarce since I moved here; this area has a much higher cost of living than Kansas City does. Chicken? $4 a pound. I mean, at those prices, it’s not much more expensive to eat out.

I’ll get used to it eventually – it’s just that I’ve been spoiled. I mean, obviously prices are going to be higher in the city than the country, but Kansas City isn’t really all that rural. In the meantime, though, Pan sometimes cooks for Dann, and if I’m lucky, I get some, too.

Maybe it would be better if I just went ahead and started eating out more often. It’d save a lot of time in food preparation, I’d probably wind up eating a lot better, and I don’t think it would cost all that much more. Besides, I love exploring all the little out-of-the-way diners and ethnic food restaurants that the city offers. Sometimes, if I find a place I like, I’ll just start going down the menu, and order a different entrée each time I come. Athens had a lot of cool little eating places; Kansas City, not so many, but I’m sure I can find a number of good ones around here. Dann introduced me to a good Vietnamese place nearby; he’s been eating there for several years.

For now, though, I’m stuck to a diet of Cheerios, chicken sandwiches, and the occasional Papa John’s pizza, delivered conveniently to your door.

The interstates around Atlanta have these large billboard-like signs over the roads with lights that make up letters. Usually they say things like “Exit 15, 6.5 miles ahead. Estimated travel time: 8-9 minutes.” When there’s a weather alert warning or something, they change it to, “Bridges freeze before roads” or something like that. They also post traffic accident reports. Today, on the way to work, I was coming down I-75 and the sign read: “Major accident on I-285 Eastbound. Avoid taking I-285.” How convenient! The sign, I mean, not the accident. So, I went down an exit, took out my map at the stoplight, and plotted a secondary route to work.

I’ve been noticing, though, that some days I can speed right on through to and from work, but when there’s an accident, there’s the possibility that I’ll be seriously delayed. I’m going to start getting up earlier, just in case. I’ll take along a book to read if I get to work early. (What I’m currently reading: Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Training Guide: Windows NT 4 Exams. 1600 pages. Eat that.)

I have a bag of Holiday M&M’s that I keep right here on my desk under my monitor. Every year at Christmas, the Holiday M&M’s come out. They’re special because they’re only in two colors: red and green, unlike the normal rainbow-variety that you get during the rest of the year. This year, I noticed that they have two distinct shades of green, which technically gives Holiday M&M’s three colors. We’ll see whether Upper Management decides to do it again next Christmas.

Holiday M&M’s are special to me because they have a lot of green ones. Green ones have always been the rarest and most special of the M&M’s, not like those ubiquitous boring brown ones. When I was little, I used to save the green ones and store them in a special air-tight container in my closet. Whenever I was sad and feeling bad, I’d break them out and eat a few. They actually kept remarkably well for a number of years.

It wasn’t until high school that I heard the urban legend about the “green ones” being aphrodisiacs (!!). It seems that the M&M/Mars company heard that legend too, since one of their commercials a few years ago made the comment, “You know what they say about the green ones . . .” with raised eyebrows and knowing looks traded between the commercial actors. Of course, it could have been an entirely different urban legend they were referring to, one I never heard of, like, “Green ones make you go insane,” or “Green ones contain chemicals that sterilize you.” You never know about these urban legends: they change around depending on where you heard it.

Fortunately, though, it looks like urban legends are finally becoming standardized. This is due largely to the influence of email in transmitting them. Now, instead of relying on faulty memory to transmit a legend through oral reconstruction, you can just hit “forward” on your email, and be sure that everybody in your address book receives it exactly as you received it (plus a few “>>” marks, of course).

Hooray for technology!

My roommate’s cat, Sifa, likes to sit with me while I’m on the computer. Right now she’s in my lap. This is one of the two “accepted” places around here for her to be. The other is on top of my computer box. Unfortunately, there are two other places she also likes to be, from which I have to discourage her from sitting: on top of my monitor, and on top of the hand that moves the mouse.

She likes the top of the monitor, because it’s warm and she can look at me while I’m looking at the screen. I don’t like it because it gets cat hairs in the cooling vents on the back of the monitor, and that can lead to long-term problems.

To the right of my computer screen is my mousepad and wireless mouse. She likes to jump up here because it’s the only place on the desktop not covered, and she can step down easily into my lap or hop up from there to the monitor. Sometimes she doesn’t do either, but plops down, purring, right on top of the mousepad, the mouse, and the hand that was moving it. On top of that, her body blocks the infrared signal from the mouse and not only can I not move my hand, but my button clicks do nothing. Furthermore, she scratches her head on the side of the keyboard, putting little “-“ and “+” marks into my blogging.

Sifa likes to sleep on my bed, but I’ve had to put a stop to that, too – my little pallet is too narrow for me to roll over without completely pushing Sifa off. She tends to move around and wake me at night, too, which is a problem because I jealously guard my sleep these days.

Dann jokes that Sifa’s aspiration is to be a barber. As part of her personal grooming habits, she likes to rip out tufts of her hair and leave them lying around. Dann thinks it’s either A) because of some sort of skin disease or B) because of psychological problems growing up on the “streets.” Me, I think Sifa thinks she’s a bird, and periodically needs to line the nest with feathers from her breast.

She also has this game she likes to play: I’ll start going up the stairs, and she’ll wait until I’m halfway up, and then bolt up the stairs to beat me to the top. I usually try to stay to one side, to give her room so I won’t accidentally step on her. But then she’ll bolt up the side I’m climbing up, right between my feet!

I’m glad to have a cat around, though. I’ve missed having a cat around for the last few years. I had one growing up, thanks to my dad (bless his heart!) who hated them, but let us have one anyway, but we gave it away once my sister went off to college. I’m glad to finally be living with one again.

This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for work, I reached for my keys and discovered that they weren’t in my pocket, as they usuallly are. I felt my coat, then my pants pockets, as panic began to rise in me. I ran upstairs and checked the jeans I wore yesterday, all to no avail.

Oh no! I thought. Not again! I don’t need this, not now! I ransacked my room, upending items, throwing papers everywhere, and shaking out things I hadn’t touched in weeks, hoping against hope that I might find my keys. I ran downstairs, swallowed the panic, and forced myself to carefully look through everything on every counter and on the floor. Nothing.

I went outside, wondering if perhaps I had dropped my keys when I was unpacking my car yesterday, but they weren’t out there. I opened my trunk from inside the car, thinking maybe I had dropped my keys in there, but I hadn’t.

I searched for those keys for twenty minutes before I finally found them. I was going through my closet, systematically checking everything in there (whether I had worn it recently or not) when I found them in the pocket of my raincoat. I had put on my raincoat to unload my car yesterday, and had put the keys in its pocket; then I had hung my raincoat back up in my closet. It was only God’s grace that I looked in there – I had completely forgotten that I had put it on yesterday. The sense of relief was so overwhelming, I nearly sank to the ground and sobbed. (I didn’t, though. I had to get to work.)

This is the second time in two months that this has happened to me – although last time, I never found my keys and had to call in a locksmith to make a new key for me. This was especially traumatic, because it was the day I was moving out of Kansas City, and had just finished loading everything, and (after a hectic day) was ready to walk out the door and leave KC behind forever, and then discovered my car key, which I had in my hand only moments earlier, had mysteriously disappeared. My family and my roommate combed the apartment and the ground outside for an hour and a half before we finally admitted defeat. It was like one last stab, one parting shot KC made at me with a snicker and a nasty grin.

But this was a good reminder: I need to get multiple duplicates made of all my keys, and put them in safe places. Even though I eventually found my keys, I was nearly a half hour late for work. Next time something like this happens, I want to be able to say, “Well, I’ll look for them when I get back. Right now I’m going to use my spare set and go to work.”

Work turned out all right. My boss was understanding, and I just worked through my lunch break to make up the time.

This afternoon, my aunt and uncle treated my sister and me (and David Hobart) to an all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch. It was wonderfully good southern food – fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, yeast rolls, slabs of pork – basically, like a good Southern Baptist church potluck. I had slept late and skipped breakfast (the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet the night before helped satiate my normally-ravenous early-morning appetite), so I was ready to dig in and make the most of the opportunity.

It’s always a pleasure to spend time with Uncle Wallace and Aunt Martha – they’re so friendly and encouraging and interesting. After Uncle Wallace retired from teaching philosophy, he built a cabin on a ridge on his portion of the land. It’s a bit of a drive to get there – you can’t see their cabin easily from Aunt Sarah’s, and have to drive a roundabout way to reach their entrance, almost on the other side of the land. They’ve settled down to a quiet life here in the backwoods. They haven’t severed their ties with the outside world, though – they’re reading this blog! (Hello!) Although my uncle caught a split infinitive in one of my entries. He might find other errors, if he looks hard. A sentence fragment. For instance. ;-)

I didn’t want to leave today, but I had to. It was raining, and starting to get cold, and I just sat on the hearth in front of a nice, warm fire, with the dog on the floor nearby, and the cat next to me on the hearth. It was so comfortable, and I was so full from lunch, I just wanted to stretch out and take a nap, then wake up and read a book and drink some hot chocolate, nibble some cookies or something. I don’t know – anything except pack my car up in the rain and drive for a couple of hours.

The weather reports were talking about ice, though, so I figured I better go before things got any worse. The drive back was cold and rainy, and my windshield kept fogging up and I had to reroute my heat to defog it, which kept me from warming up. I was glad that I left when I did, though, because by the time I got back to Atlanta, it was nearly dark, which would have made driving in the rain with a foggy windshield much more hazardous, and also because it was significantly colder when I arrived than when I left Alabama.

It was good to be back, though. I have a number of things I’m in the middle of reading, and, as relaxing as Alabama is, I have been wanting to get caught up. It’s funny – even after just a few weeks here, I’ve begun thinking of it as my home, and it really felt good when I saw the driveway at the end of a long, cold, rainy drive. And even though, technically, the cot my sister put up for me was much more comfortable than my own sleeping pallet, I was happy to sleep on it again.

Last night I slept on a cot in front of the fire. It didn’t die out until three or four in the morning, so I slept warm and cozy all night long.

Today our cousin Kathy invited us over to celebrate my sister’s birthday with a big lunch of chicken fettucini. Kathy had wanted to throw a surprise party for Marisa yesterday evening, and they had it all arranged with me so that I would show up at the party instead of coming straight in, but then Kathy didn’t feel well and had to put it off a day. It made things less complicated for me, and still let us have a nice big dinner and celebration.

They had baked a big, lucious chocolate cake for Marisa with lots of candles on it for her to blow out while we sang “Happy Birthday.” It was good to have a family birthday party with my sister – Grandmother was there, and Kathy and her husband David, and their children, as well as David Hobart and Marisa and me. Marisa had celebrated her birthday by going out with her friends on her actual birthday last Tuesday, but this one was with the family.

I had already given her her present. Last night, when I came in, I gave Marisa her card and birthday present. She was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had gone to the trouble of actually wrapping her gift this year. (“Yeah,” I said, “I remembered that girls like things like wrapped presents.”)

This evening, we went to Aniston to Marisa’s church, “Word Alive.” It’s an independent church, with a kind of Pentecostal atmosphere, without the speaking in tongues. I appreciated that their choir wore black uniforms instead of the shiny purple or red robes you often find in churches like this – it keeps the atmosphere from turning into a showy performance instead of focusing on worship. The pastor was a powerful preacher, and I was impressed with both his content and his delivery. My father used to teach sermon delivery on the college level, and after growing up hearing careful critiques of the pastor every Sunday on the way home from church, my appreciation for really good preaching is finely honed.

Afterwards, we went with Billy and Erika to a pizza shop and talked and ate. I like Marisa, and I like Marisa’s friends. They’re real and open and honest, which can be good or bad, but they’re also intelligent and nice, which makes the package deal rather rare and valuable. Of course, David Hobart and Billy wound up in the arcade machine section trying to get candy out of one of those “grabber claw” games. (They were only moderately successful, but they had a lot of fun, which I guess was the real point.)

Last night, Marisa made apple crisps for us. They were positively scrumptious, and I had intended to polish them off tonight, but I had managed to get the pizza place to make my special pineapple-mushroom-and-anchovie pizza for me, and I simply did not have any room left.

It’s good to be full.

I left work at 6:30 and started the long drive to Alabama. I had packed my car this morning before leaving for work, so I wouldn’t have to make a long detour home. As I drove west on I-285, the sun was in the late stages of setting, and I drove into the last light of day, even as it disappeared. The stars came out, and once I got away from the bright glow of Atlanta, I could see them quite clearly.

As I was driving, I got to thinking – this is the first time I’ve driven down to the family land at night. I’ve always driven down during the day, before. There wasn’t much traffic on the roads, and out in the country, there weren’t any lights but my headlights for miles around. The last time I came here, it was just after Christmas. I had left KC for my parents’ house in Iowa, then after Christmas, we packed their car and my car full of my stuff and drove down. I drove to Atlanta from Alabama, while my parents drove back to Iowa. I had to leave a few boxes here from my parents’ car that I couldn’t fit into mine when I left; I hope to get them all on this trip.

My grandmother came to the door when I arrived. She’s in her 90’s, and can only see well enough to walk around without bumping into things, but she’s friendly and loving and always a joy to be around. She’s always trying to feed you or give you money or take care of you in some way – it’s wonderful. Although she’s bent with age, if you ask her how she’s doing, she always says, “Good. I’m getting better. I think I’m better than I was yesterday.”

I went to the back to see my sister, and she had everything set up for me – a fire was in the fireplace, a nice tablecloth was on the table – all the little touches that make a place warm and inviting were in place. It was good to see her, as well as her cat Sihn and her German Shepherd, Kajsa.

We sat around the fire and talked late into the night. After a while, our cousin David Hobart came down to talk. (He’s actually our first cousin once removed, because he’s the grandson of Aunt Sarah. We figured this all out. It’s important to us.) He had taken an undergraduate philosphy course last semester at a local community college – a class my Uncle Wallace taught in his semi-retirement. He’s a deer hunter and outdoorsman par excellance, and it was good to see him again.

There’s something about family, and familiar surroundings, that – but now I’m going to start blogging trite cliches that really have no business being bandied about outside of made-for-TV movies during the holiday season. Those of you who know what I’m talking about need no explanation. For those of you who don’t – it would only increase your pain if I described them.

I’ll just say: it’s good to be home

Tomorrow I leave to visit my sister in Alabama. She lives with my grandmother and aunt and uncle in a rural section of Alabama about an hour south of Anniston, near the Georgia border. My grandfather owned 440 acres of backwoods there, which he split evenly among his five children. None of the family members have sold any of the land to anyone outside the family, save for the two acres my grandmother’s house was on, which everyone agreed should be sold when she got too old to live by herself and went to live with my aunt and uncle down the road a little ways.

The land is situated a few miles outside a really small town (population 750 or so), off of the highway, and down a long, winding, bumpy dirt road, past the Hunters’ Cabin and around the corner past the spring.

The old house Grandmother and Granddaddy used to live in was a big, old, white two-story farmhouse that sat on the top of a large hill, overlooking most of the other hills and valleys in the immediate area. It was the first house you met, on the left, as the road wound past at the bottom of the hill. Now that that’s been sold, the center of the “Family Cooperative” has shifted to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Ken’s farmhouse in the hollow down the road a stretch. They have a large house that keeps getting added to, bit by bit, as the rooms keep encroaching on the wide porches that used to line the house. Now there are virtually no porches; all of them eventually claimed by the burgeoning population of the house. The house is generational now; it’s expanded in both directions to include Grandmother, as well as room for Uncle Ken and Aunt Sarah’s children and grandchildren.

It wasn’t designed for this from the beginning. It’s kind of a patchwork house. You can’t tell it from the ground, but the roof is made of sheets of tin of varying sizes, joined together in a patchwork. The local pilots refer to it as the “quilt house,” and use it as a landmark. It’s kind of symbolic of the house as a whole.

My grandmother and my sister live in the renovated basement of the house. Outside, there’s a hen coop, a pond, Aunt Sarah’s garden, a couple of sheds, and several trails leading back deeper into the woods. There’re also the ruins of a huge greenhouse, whose roof collapsed under the weight of snow some years ago, now overgrown with briars and pine trees. (It’s been quite a while ago.)

After you pass the White House on the Hill, and before you get to the Patchwork House, you see a drive on your left going up a hill. This leads to the house my dad built, back when I was one or two. He intended to live there for most of the rest of his life, but a teaching position opened up at a college in north Georgia, so we moved away when I was four. After we left, my dad sold it to my Uncle Quincy, and his family lived there for a long time. After they moved to Kentucky, my cousin Tommy bought it, and he lives there now with his family.

We like to stick together, you see.

Yesterday my sister turned the big 3-0. Someone asked her, now that she was “mature,” what advice on life she had to give. Off the top of her head, she answered:

1. Don't wait until the last minute to try and make memories.
2. When it's time to leave, just go.
3. Don't waste today waiting for tomorrow.
4. Sooner or later, everything will change in some way. In stead of fearing it, use it to your advantage: gather and preserve the good while it is season. Be encouraged that your current trials will one day change. Be careful not to take for granted some current happiness or pleasure because it, too, will one day change.

This is some good advice. Of course, we’ve all heard some variation of #3 before, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The one I want to examine, though, is #2. Now that my sister mentions it, I’ve noticed that some people just never know how to bring something to an end. They keep dragging it out, keep belaboring the point, keep hoping something will change, or whatever. Let’s look at this a bit closer:

When it’s time to shut up, just close your mouth. Some people just don’t know how to say what they think and then stop talking. Especially when speaking in public (because they can’t be interrupted) – they just keep rambling on and on, looking for an “off ramp” but just missing every one they pass. In some churches, it’s permissible for a time-conscious member of the congregation to shout, “Bring it home, preacher!” when the preacher keeps on rambling after he’s made his point, especially if the morning worship service is creeping past noon. I keep wanting to interject this into conversations, but my good breeding prevents me.

When it’s time to break up, just say, “It’s over.” In the long run, clean breaks are the easiest. No tears, no pleading, no back-and-forth, on-again-off-again “it’ll be different this time, if only you do X or I do Y” – give it your best shot, and once you’ve done that, recognize the end for what it is. Yes, I’m sure you always planned to marry him or her, you knew that was the mythical “One” God had for you, but now, realize you were wrong and move on. You were a fool once for counting your chickens before they hatched, don’t be a fool twice by planning to eat them when the eggs are rotten.

When it’s time to move, pack your bags. This is the one that I’ve dealt with most recently. The last month before I moved to Atlanta, two tremendous job opportunities opened up in Kansas City, and suddenly I was having to rethink the decision to move I’d made several months prior. But after a few days of gut-wrenching indecision, I came back to my original position: it was time for me to move on. My problem with Kansas City wasn’t primarily my job. It was a number of other things – and while the new job would have been great, it would not have changed the fundamental reason I decided to leave: it was time to leave.

When it’s time to leave, just go.

Today I got insured. Finally. I had set my alarm 30 minutes early on Monday morning to visit the State Farm representative near my home, but either didn’t set the alarm right or slept through it, one. I woke up near my normal waking time, so I wasn’t late for work, but I wasn’t able to make it to the agent. Then I remembered there was an agent near my workplace.

So, over lunch I went down there and saw a sign on the front door: BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. What does this guy do all day? Just sit around in his underwear watching TV until someone’s appointment comes up? I mean, really, can’t you maintain regular office hours? I was really annoyed.

This morning I got up and called them, then made an appointment for my lunch break. Once I got there, I finally got some good news: I could get a better rate of auto coverage for slightly less than I had been paying for a lesser level of coverage in KC. I also got some health insurance while I was at it.

The only problem was that I put everything on my credit card – what with my auto repair bill, leftover Christmas stuff, and moving bills, I’m gonna have one whopping bill come next month. Fortunately, I’ll get two paychecks before then, so I should be able to pay it off completely. Have to keep away from that Compound Interest, you know! (Especially when my rate is 24%.)

Now that that’s taken care of, pretty much everything pressing is marked off my list. I still need to get a Georgia tag for my car, but I have two months to do that. No more worrying about what I’ll be able to get done over my lunch break, and my weekends are free for fun. Yay!

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, and I didn’t mention it in my blog. Dann got the day off. I didn’t. But today is an anniversary I would be sorely remiss not to mention: my sister’s birthday! Happy birthday, Sis! My older sister is my only sibling, and one of the people closest to me. She’s been loyal, supportive, and (when necessary) tail-kicking, in the appropriate ratios. I couldn’t ask for a better one. One of these days, I’ll have to spend several blogs reminiscing about fond memories of my sister. But I’ll save that for a slow week; a week designed for such things.

I was going to visit her last weekend, but she got MLK Day off and I didn’t, so we couldn’t make it a long weekend visit. I had insurance stuff to take care of, as well, so I’m going to visit her this weekend. This probably means that I won’t be able to upload my blogs. I may not even have access to a computer. I’ll have to take notes on what I’m going to blog about, and maybe do the actual writing later on. I don’t know yet. We’ll see.

I would like to take this opportunity to burst a little dream I’m sure all of you have: that computer techies know what they’re doing. You come in with your sick PC, tell the techie everything you’ve done so far, as well as your preliminary diagnosis, and he nods knowingly and assures you he’ll make everything better in a day or two. Then he disappears with your PC into the back room.

Now, I’m sure you have an idea that the techie hooks a bunch of cables from your computer to a much bigger, more expensive, and WAY more impressive computer, then runs a program with a name like “System Diagnostics” on the Cool Computer, and then goes off and surfs the net until the Cool Computer beeps and prints out a message like:

***
Diagnosis Complete.
Problem Detected: Damaged I/O chip on Inverter Drive.
Recommended Course of Action: Replace I/O chip.
Estimated Repair Cost: $15
Estimated Repair Time: 30 seconds
Suggested Bill for Customer: $135
***

The reality is, if you were to walk back into that back room, you’d see a bunch of techies screaming and cussing at your computer and beating it with screwdrivers.

Of course, there are the times that someone brings in a computer with a “problem” so obvious (power switch not turned on) that the techies roll their eyes and talk about an “I-D-ten-T” error (“ID10T”), but for the most part, techies go through the exact same frustrations in fixing your computer that you went through trying to fix it yourself.

Our workbench is a couple of old tables, covered with linoleum, hideosly scratched and scarred. (And are those . . . burn marks?! I don’t even want to know.) We have several old monitors set up to plug the computers into – but they are so old, they’re virtually unreadable. My last year at college, I fished an old (but functioning) monitor out of the dumpster. Five years later, my mom (bless her heart!) is still using that monitor. The ones we use at work are worse. (My dad, very nobly, gave my mom the “good” monitor. The one he’s using is black-and-white. I think my dad likes it that way. Of course, he writes books out longhand with a fountain pen, and then types them into the computer when they’re ready for publication. To each his own, I guess.)

---

An actual conversation I overheard today at work, with the incomprehensible technobabble replaced by a bracketed summary:

Techie A: “Whenever you get a chance, could you [perform standard routine X] to this computer? I’ve got to take care of [business Y].

Techie B: “If you would, please, remind me in a little bit; I’m sure I’ll forget. In fact, I’ve already forgotten. I wasn’t really listening to you at all.”

Techie A: “That’s okay. I haven’t been listening to [Techie C] all morning.”

Last comment made to Dann about my blog: “I really don’t feel comfortable unless I have homework to do. I really, really don’t feel comfortable unless I have homework I’m putting off.”

After church, I sat around and played video games all day. I have a bunch of nothing to write about. I could fill up the space with one of my pre-written pieces I’m saving for an emergency – like “How I Became a Yes-Man” or “Shelley’s Trip to Medellin” (like that, folks? That’s what we in the English biz like to call "foreshadowing!" Just to whet your appetite!) but I’m not gonna. Instead, I’m going to talk about the name of my blog, “Leaving My Mark.” It’s a pun, you see, because my name is Mark. And also, it being a type of journal-blog, “Leaving My Mark” could mean “making an impact on the world,” but it could also mean, “leaving myself behind,” i.e., growing more experienced and mature. Fiendishly clever, eh? Wait till you hear the rejected titles of my blog!

“On Your Mark” (I quickly rejected this one. Unpleasant memories of high school dogpiles came to mind.)
“Mark of the Beast” (Just to annoy hyper-paranoid Christian fundamentalists.)
“Mark of the Best” (A pun, not only on my name, but also on the previously-rejected title, turning an image of Satanic horror into an image of personal excellence. I liked it, but I was afraid I’d have to explain it to too many people.)

Of course, I could have named it like a rock band, and named it something pretty much random and evocative, like “Fishbed Dreams” or “Renegade Isomorphs” or something, but nothing really struck me, and, from my previous experience running a website, I knew that I’d get lots of emails like:

what does REandage Ixomarfs mean?! thata’s a stupedst name I eavew herasd!

You see, most people who have to ask for names like “Renegade Isomorphs” to be explained to them are generally none-too-quick on the uptake, and have subpar typing skills. It’s a wonder they can find the “send” button.

“Leaving My Mark,” on the other hand, requires no explanation. Think about it: I’ve been writing this for over two-and-a-half weeks without an explanation of the title, and nobody’s asked me about it. (Or that may be because nobody except you is reading this. And you couldn’t find the “send” button.)

I guess I could have titled the blog, “Mark’s Corner,” since that’s the URL address I’m using, but I liked “Leaving My Mark” better. But what am I, some kind of naming expert? If you think you have a better name for my blog, just post it in the “Comments” forum. If I like your idea, I might just change the name of my blog! (And rude “suggestions” will be deleted. Of course. As always. I run a family forum here, folks. Take your filthy talk somewhere else.) If I don’t get any suggestions, I’ll just assume that my instincts were correct and I’ll leave it as “Leaving My Mark.”

Last comment I made to Dann: “You think wet dogs smell bad? Try a burning cat!” (Just a little snippet of my life, folks. I’ll let you reconstruct the conversation.)

This morning I got up early and deposited my first paycheck at the bank, then went to my local State Farm agent to see about getting some health insurance – only to discover that their hours are Mon-Fri 9-5, and Saturday by appointment only. Well, I have two options: get up early on Monday and try to get it taken care of before work, or try to get it taken care of online. That’s what Dann’s done for the last several years; maybe I’ll have to try it. Computers are just so much easier to work with than humans – always there, always patient, never rush you or have to take lunch breaks.

This evening, Dann, Pan, and I sat down and watched “The Fellowship of the Ring – Extended Edition.” I love that movie and always enjoy watching it. Neither of them had ever seen the Extended Edition before, and I think it adds so much more to the film – it really explains the background and the characters in a way that makes much more sense than the theatrical release did.

I left all my DVDs with my sister in Alabama. One of these days I’m going to have to go back down there and pick them all up – I have a good-sized collection of DVDs, since I haven’t had television in the past year, and I got several more for Christmas that I haven’t had the chance to watch. (I got the Indiana Jones trilogy and the Terminator movie.)

That’s right – I haven’t had television in the past year. I watch DVDs on my computer. (The screen’s only 15 inches, but when only one or two people are watching the movie at a time, you can sit close.) I haven’t missed it at all – well, maybe “Junkyard Wars,” but that’s about it. In fact, when I moved in here with Dann, I watched a couple of half-hour programs, and was surprised at how annoying commercials can be when you’re used to watching a whole program at one sitting. You can get entire seasons of popular TV shows on DVD – I got Transformers, Season One, and Dann has the Simpsons, Seasons One through Three. And despite all the hype about “movies-on-demand” and “shows-on-demand,” I already have the movies and shows I want, when I want them, and I can watch them as often as I want, without having to pay a fee, because I already bought them!

You can get pretty much everything you need from the internet – news and weather, for instance, as well as many things TV can’t provide you -- like maps and dictionaries. In fact, even if I wind up getting a TV again someday, I seriously doubt whether I’ll go back to subscribing to cable. For me, computers and the internet just fill too many of the roles TV used to, and too many more, for me to spend time and money going back to what is rapidly becoming an obsolete technology.

And good riddance, I say.

Today I got my car fixed. I had a coworker follow me to the Goodyear garage before work, wait while I dropped off the car, and then drive me back to work. I had been hearing a ratcheting sound when I turned my steering wheel too far clockwise or counterclockwise – every time I made a 90-degree turn, I’d hear “clackety clack” from my wheels. Also, on my trip down from Kansas City, I noticed that the breaks were beginning to squeak. I realized I hadn’t had them looked at in some time, so I decided to have them checked, too.

They called me at work with the bad news: my CV joint was completely dry and ready to break, and needed to be replaced. My front breaks needed to be replaced, too, although my back breaks were fine. Grand total, including tax: $645. Now, just a couple of months ago, the tax assessors in Kansas City had valued my car at $830. (In Missouri, you have to pay property tax on your car. What a rip-off!) At first, I didn’t really want to sink that much money into my car when its value was so low, but then I thought about it more closely:

A) It doesn’t really matter how much the tax assessors value the car for. All I’m concerned about is how long my car will run before I get a new one.
B) If I don’t get my car fixed, there’s high probability that something will break sometime soon. If this happens on a back road, it might not be so bad, but I’m travelling I-75 and I-285 for 50 miles a day – and if it happens there, the results might very well be disastrous.
C) If I don’t get my car fixed and I want to avoid an accident, the only other option is to buy a new car – and that’s something I don’t want to be rushed into. I don’t want to take out a loan, either. I just got out of debt!

The mechanic there said I could expect to get a quarter of a million miles out of my little engine if I took care of it, and that’s another 110,000 miles. Since I have a job and can pay off a $645 bill without too much trouble, I decided to go ahead and get it done.

I wound up sitting at my workbench sorting screws, since all the new computers that needed building had already been built. One of the guys there suggested I ask our boss if I could drop by and pick up my car early, since there wasn’t anything going on. So I did, and he very graciously let me use company time to get my car.

A different coworker took me back to get my car. Boy, did it feel nice having everything working properly! I hadn’t realized how tense I was driving my car when it was making all sorts of weird noises, wondering (correctly, as it turned out) if something bad might happen soon. Now I can relax and enjoy the road.

Well, as much as anyone can enjoy I-285 during rush hour.

This evening I went to my cell group. It started at 7:30, and I got off work at 6:30, so I didn’t have time to go home first. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far out of my way to get there – it was just down the road a ways from my church.

I got turned around a little bit with the directions, and wound up in front of Marietta’s Police Precinct building. It was a huge brick building, with three flags flying overhead and a large parking lot. I thought, “This is a good place to get directions! Police officers are all about helping the public.” I made sure I didn’t have any weapons on me and ran up to the door, which was locked (it being after nightfall and all). I used the call box next to the door, and asked the receptionist for directions. “Where are you?” she asked. “I’m right outside the door.” “Which building?” It turns out that all the call boxes from their police stations, the precinct, and everything else go to her telephone. But she gave me good directions, and eventually I found the place.

There were a lot of visitors to the cell group tonight. They told me they normally have only about half-a-dozen people show up, but tonight, there were three times that many. Most of them I’ll probably never see again, so I’ll have to wait until next time to get a real “feel” for the group.

Most of the people there were my age. They ranged from a couple of Juniors in college to a number of people who’d been out of college for two or three years, so I felt, age-wise, like I fitted right in.

One of the guys there is a Brazilian, so I mentioned to him that I’d taken a few months of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Kansas City. “Oh, yeah, we have several good teachers here in Atlanta. You like doing it?” So I talked with him for a bit.

One girl said she recognized me. I said I wasn’t sure where she’d seen me, and she said, “Kansas City?” I was floored. I mean, there are a lot of people in Kansas City. Even at Mike Bickle’s International House of Prayer, which is where she would have seen me, there are a lot of people. Anyway, most of the people here have heard of the International House of Prayer, and a few have visited there.

After some socializing, we had some worship and a share-and-pray time. They had some homemade sugar cookies, which always earn bonus points in my book. In all, it was a good night. It was nice to get out and be around some Christians my age again.

Next week, they’re having a group meeting with their sister-cell groups and the elders in the church who shepherd them. They’ll be meeting at the church, so next week will be an atypical meeting, too. It should be fun, though – I’ll get to meet lots more people my age, and that’s really what I want most.

I’m starting to get the hang of work. Ever since I came in for my interview, though, I’ve noticed loud banging sounds coming from overhead. It sounded something like ten-ton hippos doing belly flops on the roof. I finally asked one of my co-workers what it was. “There’s an aerobics studio on the second level. Eventually, you get used to it and stop noticing it.” Ahh, I thought. Well, that’s one mystery solved.

Since nothing else interesting happened today, I decided to take this time for a little rant. You may notice, after I put the closing punctuation at the end of a sentence, I space twice. This is how I was taught to do it in typing class in high school (early- to mid-90s). And this is how I have always done it. A few years ago, when I was first teaching Freshman Composition at the University of Georgia, I noticed that a number of students were only putting one space at the end of a sentence. I thought there might be more to this than poor form, and eventually I discovered the source: The Modern Language Association had handed down their ruling from on high that, from now on, sentences will only have one space after the final period!

The Modern Language Association is an association of English teachers that is now over 120 years old. They’re the main governing body that decides what is “standard” English and what isn’t (and even the terms used – for instance, they don’t use terms like “proper English” or “correct English” anymore; they use “standard English.” This is a politically correct switch from recognizing English grammar as an absolute to recognizing it as an evolving, mutually-agreed-upon set of largely random and arbitrary rules.)

Anyway, they’re always changing things like that. I guess if they don’t change anything, they won’t have any reason to put out a new version of the MLA Handbook, and if the handbook doesn’t change, people will start asking why they pay yearly dues to the organization’s officials when they obviously aren’t doing anything. It makes things hard for me, though, because I’m always having to re-learn stuff, and I can no longer have the confidence I used to have when a student says, “But this is how my high school English teacher told me to do it!” I always think, “Did they change something on me again? I’ll have to go look it up before I give my student the answer.”

Of course, this is how every good business works, from the Auto Industry to Microsoft to Big Tobacco. If you can implement planned obsolescence into your product, you turn a one-time customer into a lifetime customer. If you make your customer reliant on you for continued service, you stabilize your income and secure your future prosperity. Funny how that works in academia as well as business. And you thought the Ivory Tower was immune!

My uncle and aunt are missionaries to Third-World countries, and they have adopted the old saw, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Everyone else is adopting it too, it seems, but applying it in reverse.

One of the problems with my job is that I live a good 30 miles away. That’s at least a half-hour drive, on a good day; with normal Atlanta traffic, that’s 45 minutes to an hour. Couple this with my late working hours, and most normal businesses are closed by the time I get home. Moreover, I’m so tired by this point, the last thing I want to do is go out and run errands.

I get a half-hour for lunch, though, so I decided to get my hair cut over my lunch break today. It’s getting unmanagably thick, and I want to make a good first impression on the people I meet this week. Fortunately, there was some sort of hair salon in the shopping center my Local Computer Store is in, so I thought I’d just run over there and get it done.

I walked in, and the lady said she’d be with me in a minute. She motioned for a Korean man to take care of me. He smiled and came over to me and gestured to a chair. I sat down, and he said, in a thick accent, “I will shampoo your hair!”

“I already shampooed just this morning!” I protested. With Suave, I wanted to add. Doesn’t it smell nice?

“I will shampoo it first, and then she will cut it!” he declared. I reluctantly submitted. He washed it, scrubbed it, and rinsed. “Finally,” I thought. “I just want to get this over with so I can eat lunch.” And then he put more shampoo on it and scrubbed it again. “I hope he doesn’t take those ‘Lather. Rinse. Repeat’ instructions on the bottle too literally, or I might never get out of here!” I thought. Then he rinsed my hair out.

And then he put more shampoo on it.

What the ?!!!

I was seriously contemplating the pros and cons of just leaping up, shouting, “Stop! Stop already! I can’t take it anymore!” when he finally dried my hair.

Thank goodness. I was afraid I’d wind up going over the half-hour I had for my lunch break. As it is, I’d probably have to wolf down my chicken sandwich on the go.

Now, I don’t know how long your haircuts take you, but I have a pretty simple haircut. Just cut it about an inch shorter. No fancy stylings or anything. It usually takes 10-15 minutes at most of the hair places I’ve been to. This lady, though, took her time. After a long while, she asked me, “Is this short enough?” I said, “Yes,” very pleased that it was nearly done.

And then she just kept cutting.

I was afraid she’d made a mistake, and kept on trying to “even it up.”

By the time I got back, my “30 minute” lunch break had stretched into 50 minutes. I showed my boss I had a new haircut, and he smiled and nodded. I stayed late this evening to make up some of the lost time.

Today was the first day of work. I went in and Kevin, the head of the service department, walked me through building a computer, step by step, using each of the component parts. I had some familiarity in this area, since I had been upgrading my PC since – well, since I first got a PC my freshman year in college. I knew enough to understand what he was talking about, but there were thousands of details I had never heard before. Details about the OS(s), PCI slots, IRQs, UDMA memory, the BIOS (especially the BIOS!) and lots of other acronyms I don’t care to go into any detail explaining. Suffice it to say, it was detailed, technical, and (apparently) unending. For four straight hours Kevin poured out fact after fact, minutia after minutia, before he finally said, “Well, let’s take a lunch break.”

The funny thing is, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t like “I think I’ll do this instead of playing Quake 3,” but I kept thinking, “Oh, I didn’t know that! How interesting! I’m glad I’m finally learning this!” You see, I got my first computer when I was in fifth grade – a Commodore 64. Back then, my Commodore was just like everyone else’s Commodore. Sure, maybe Mr. Morden had an “Action Replay 5” cartridge and I didn’t, but that wasn’t any big deal. I could go to “Toys R Us” and pick up any game labeled “Commodore 64/128” and know that I could play it when I got home.

As I got older, though, computers got more expensive, and you kept on having to buy more bits to add on if you wanted to play the games they carried in the store. It was too expensive for me to keep up with, especially after I got into graduate school. But for three years there in college, I worked at the college computer lab and helped people with their computer problems. I was the “answer man” everyone went to when they had a computer problem. Computers change so quickly, though – and the industry had already made a shift, and you could only stay a knowledgeable hobbyist if you had the money to keep upgrading; otherwise, you had to leave it to the professionals. After I graduated from college, I didn’t have the exposure to the latest systems, and people kept coming to me with questions I didn’t have answers to. I had Windows 98 installed on my system; I knew nothing about ME, 2000, NT, or XP. I didn’t have the money to play with them. So I slowly felt my knowledge becoming more and more outdated, and I felt a little sad, because I’d always enjoyed the field. And I’d always enjoyed being able to help people with their computer problems.

Everything awoke again when I got in there with the lid off the machine, though. I loved to hear, “This is what X is; this is how it works; these are the normal problems with it, and this is how to fix them.” Sure, after I leave this job, my knowledge will be current for only about another six months; I realize that. But for now, this is what I’m doing, and now I can be what I wanted – an industry professional!

Today at church, I met my old pastor, Mark Nysewander. He used to pastor the church in Kentucky where I went to college, but then he moved away. Last year he moved down here to Georgia to help Tom Tanner with his church. It was good to see him, and to hear him preach. It’s always a pleasure to see a familiar face, and hear a familiar voice, especially one you know you can trust. I also met a couple that led a cell group for the church on Thursdays. Their group is made up of twentysomething singles, so hopefully, I’ll fit right in and make some friends. I got directions to their house, so come Thursday, I’ll meet everyone and find out what it’s like. I’m looking forward to it!

Today is the promised shampoo rant. Friday I went out to buy some of my favorite shampoo, White Rain, but couldn’t find any. I’ve had a hard time trying to find them lately. Every store seems to carry their hair spray, but few seem to have their shampoo. I finally found a couple of bottles at a Kroger. They were both labeled, “Extra Body.” The last thing I need is extra body in my hair – it’s so wavy as it is, it’s all I can do to gel it into place. So, since I was down to the last portion of my travel-size bottle of White Rain, I realized I must, unfortunately, do the difficult – select a new brand of shampoo.

I knew I didn’t want “extra body.” And I didn’t need “dandruff control.” Nor did my hair need to be shiny, glossy, or peach-scented. And I certainly didn’t need aloe, lanolin, or any one of a dozen other exotic “natural” plants scrubbed into my scalp. A 2-in-1 shampoo + conditioner would be 50% wasted on me, since I have no need of conditioner. All I needed was to get my hair clean, thank you very much. Unfortunately, I could not find one single bottle labeled “original,” “normal,” “classic,” or anything of the sort. I ransacked shelf after shelf, rooting around behind bottles, hoping against hope that one of the early, now-obsolete “normal” bottles was hiding in the back, slouched down with her hat pulled low, like some overpartied freshman in an eight o’clock class.

Alas, it was not to be. I stared upon them – row upon row, a veritable army of the most relentlessly pastel-colored lotions I had ever faced. I swallowed hard, and contemplated my fate. Surely the End was near. With a sinking heart, I waved the white flag, approached a shelf of bottles with names – names having too many sibiliants, vowels, and liquids – and surrendered myself.

Eventually, I settled on Suave For Men Deep Cleansing. (Clean was the main reason I wanted shampoo, after all.) It was the closest I could get to “normal,” and the jet-black bottle loudly proclaimed that I was Not Being Girly.

And the aroma meshes well with my aftershave, if I do say so myself.

Yesterday on my way to the interview, I got rear-ended by a MARTA bus. MARTA is the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, the network of bus lines and train-subway things whose color scheme dates them quite painfully to the 70s. Anyway, I got rear-ended by one. I was stopped at a traffic light when one snuck up behind me and BAM!

Actually, I’m exaggerating. It was more of a nudge. It was going approximately 3 mph and it just bumped me forward a few inches. But still, that whole “mass times velocity” thing means there was a lot of kinetic energy even at 3 mph. At least, it felt like a lot.

No, not really, it didn’t. You see, I really was rear-ended, a year or so ago, in Kansas City. It was in a downpour, and I was going downhill in a rural subdivision looking for my turn. It loomed up out of the curtain of rain and I almost missed it, so I braked quickly. I heard a squealing behind me, and glanced into the rear-view mirror in time to see the grill of a huge white van right before I was whiplashed from the impact. It hit me so hard, the radio flew out of the dashboard console. I pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall that was right there, but the van sped up and went on. Hit-and-run – and in the rain, I couldn’t see to get a license tag.

Besides the physical and emotional trauma, the impact crunched in the back of my trunk, so I couldn’t get the lid open. A friend of mine, Brian, went with me to U-Wrench-It, a great salvage yard there in east KC, and helped me get a trunk lid from another Mazda Protégé. Fortunately, we found one in the same color as mine (aqua blue), that only had damage to its front. We detached my old trunk lid by pulling down the backseat and opening it from the inside. Then, Brian kicked the back of the trunk from the inside to bend the frame back out enough that the new lid would fit. It was amazing how well it all fit together once we were done – you can barely notice the new trunk lid doesn’t fit quite as smoothly. (It’s smooth enough that water doesn’t get in when it rains.)

All that is to say that I know what it’s like to get really rear-ended. And to say that, fortunately, this wasn’t like that. There wasn’t even any superficial damage to my car -- and yet, the potential for damage was so much greater, as much greater as a MARTA bus is than a van.

Any residual emotional stress from it was quickly swallowed up by my happiness in getting the job, so what could have been a blog yesterday on how my life took a turn for the worse ended up not even warranting a mention in the events of that day.

Thank God.

I was going to take today to rant about my inability to find a “normal” (i.e., not special-purpose) shampoo. However, I’m going to save that rant for a slow news day. Today, everything has been overtaken by the news:

I GOT A JOB !!!1!

(Note the tell-tale insertion of “1” into the series of exclamation points. This is to indicate I am so excited, I accidently let go of the shift key as I was typing them.)

Starting Monday, I will begin working Dann’s old job as a computer technician for A Local Computer Store. I will build computers to customer specifications, learning about all the new hardware and what needs to be done to get the different pieces from different companies working together smoothly. I’ll also have the opportunity to learn more advanced stuff, like wireless networking. Dann used the hands-on experience he got working this job for a couple of years with the book stuff he studied in his spare time and landed a job as a Network Administrator for A Major Georgia Real Estate Company.

Pan's computer died (see Sunday’s entry), so Dann went to A Local Computer Store to get some parts. (They still give him the employee discount.) While he was there, he heard that one of the guys was quitting in a week. Dann asked me if I would be interested in applying for the job. I said yes, so he called up the owner and told him I was looking for a job if he was hiring. The owner said he was hiring, and was very grateful -- two years ago when he advertised for the last opening, he put a five-line ad in the classifieds with his fax number and got over 300 resumes. Most of them were from massively overqualified IT (information technology) managers who were unemployed and willing to work an entry-level job. He also got about 50 phone calls from people who had tracked down his phone number (somehow) and wanted an interview. He was very happy not to have to go through that process again.

It’s the kind of thing you can’t plan for. If I’d come down a month earlier or a month later, the job wouldn’t have been open. But I planned to the best of my ability, considering logistics and planning around the holidays, as well as waiting until my student loans were paid off before I moved – and God allowed things to work out. Also, I don’t have any real qualifications in the hardware side of the computer field – it’s an entry level job, so I don’t really need any – but I got the job on the strength of Dann’s good word and my ignorance. (“No bad habits!” they said happily.)

Anyway, I emailed them my resume and put Dann down as a reference. They called back and set up an appointment for an interview this morning. Several hours after I returned from the interview, they called and offered me the job. Yay! Two words, baby: disposable income.

Mom was thrilled. She had been praying for me just this morning, and asked God for some specific assurance for me from the Scriptures. She doesn’t usually do this; the last time was when I went in for surgery several years ago. She felt that God gave her Psalm 107, and especially verse 7, specifically for me. “And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.” (KJV)

Few people know this about me, but at one time I had declared a Computer Science minor in college. Then I took a course in FORTRAN and quickly decided that programming, while a fun hobby, was probably not going to be my career. I switched to English instead. At the time, I thought I was leaving the computer field behind for good – it was just too expensive to keep up with unless you had a job that allowed you to test drive all the latest hardware. Now, I’ve come back. For how long? A year? Two? More? Who knows? We’ll see. For now, at least, I have a direction.

I was so busy yesterday thinking about Outdoor Adventure, I missed an important date: Wednesday was the seventh continuous day of my blog. One week old! Yay! Really, this is pretty good for a blog. When I was trying to find a name for my blog, I tried “mark.blogspot.com” and “markspot.blogspot.com,” but both of them had been taken. I visited those blogs, just to see what they were like, and guess what? Neither of them had been updated in years! A couple of posts each was all! Go ahead, take a look at them. I’ll wait here. There. Are you back? Did you like that line “I get the feeling that im gonna use it alot” [sic]? We in the English profession like to call that “irony.” And also, “bad spelling and punctuation,” but that’s another point entirely. BTW, not all expressions and constructions I use in this blog will qualify as “standard formal English.” I’m “letting myself loose,” so to speak, for the sake of exploration. Do as I say, not as I do. ;-) I’ll try to set a high standard, though.

Anyway, one week is a good anniversary for a blog. And what did I get for a birthday-present? A letter from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, which started out, “Dear Borrower: Congratulations, this letter acknowledges the payment in full of your loan . . .”! Yay me! It feels really good to be out of debt now. I’ve been really good about not getting into debt, paying off my credit card bill every month and such, but I thought that for education, it would be worthwhile. Once I got under it, though, I could just feel the magic of compound interest grinding away at me – if I ever get in a good position financially, I’m going to do what I can to get compound interest to work for me instead of against me.

January 7 was the anniversary for another famous publication: Dungeons & Dragons. That’s right, the first Dungeons & Dragons game went on sale January 7, 1974. “But wait!” you say. “I thought Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic!” Well, read the other side and decide for yourself. I’m just talking anniversaries, is all.

Speaking of anniversaries, my sister has a birthday coming up later this month. I’ve already gotten her a cool present that I think she’ll like, and I want to give it to her. My sister is one of the few people I can buy presents for easily; for most of the rest of my family, Christmas shopping, etc., is always pretty difficult. My family is decidedly non-materialistic; there’s just nothing that they want or need until you get into the “new car” price range. My sister’s got that interesting twist to her personality, though, that enables me to find all sorts of clever little presents that she’ll enjoy. It’s so much fun shopping for her! For the rest of my family, maybe we’ll have to switch to making a donation to a charity instead of buying a present, like Dear Abbey is always suggesting. It’s a thought, at any rate.

I got up (relatively) early today and went to the mall. One of the bookstores there was having a half-off sale, and I scored a good one: High Adventure, by Sir Edmund Hillary. This completes my trilogy of Everest accounts: Hillary’s (who was the first to reach the summit), Reinhold Messner’s Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (who was the first to summit without bottled oxygen), and Jon Krakaur’s Into Thin Air (the account of the Everest disaster in 1996).

Although I’m really into outdoor stuff – hiking and camping and all that – I’ve never been mountain climbing. I’d like to go, sometime, but I really don’t think I’d want to make a serious pursuit of it, even if time and money were no obstacles. In the first chapter of his book, Hillary talks about the books of earlier mountain climbers that inspired him to go on. I am amazed at how unlike him I am. While I love reading these books, the feeling I get is rather one of, “Boy, I’m glad I’m not him!” Especially Krakaur’s book – it’s one of the most horrifically scary stories I’ve read. As the cold and oxygen depravity begins to affect their minds, the climbers realize they are losing their grip on reality. As I once wrote to my sister, “I've added ‘climbing Everest’ to my list of ‘Things That Sound Cool To Do But Not Enough To Warrant The Effort Involved,’ right after ‘racing the Iditarod’ and ‘fighting in a full-contact mixed martial arts tournament.’

What do I want to do that would warrant the effort involved? Well, I’ve wanted to through-hike the Appalachian Trail for a long time now. I’ve hiked on a couple of sections of the trail in Georgia, and it’s beautiful and breathtaking and fun and miserably painful in all the right ways. More than accomplishing things, though, I guess I want to learn things: knowing how to tackle a glacier is more interesting to me than repeatedly climbing different glaciers in different parts of the world. There’s just so much to learn. If I ever get $8000 and a summer off, I want to do National Outdoor Leadership School’s “Semester in Alaska.” Go to Alaska and learn backpacking, glacier mountaineering, and sea kayaking in Price William Sound – that’s my dream vacation.

The problem is, outdoor leadership is a field dominated by the young. It’s not generally something that you keep doing regularly after 40 – unless you’re some kind of supertough hombre, your body just won’t be able to handle it. And it’s looking less and less like I’ll be able to do anything more than Boy Scout campouts anytime in the near future.

Well, I’ll do what I can, and thas overeode (“pass over that”) the things that I can’t. C. S. Lewis wrote about how, even before middle age, he found himself constantly eyeing new things he wanted to learn, but reluctantly had to admit to himself that there was no time – “have to wait for heaven for that.” Really, if a man accomplishes everything he wanted to accomplish in life, he probably didn’t try for very much.

Well, I did nothing today other than sit at my desk and play video games. Quite productive, actually. I nearly conquered the world (again). I hate being in limbo like this, not having a job, and not really knowing where to go other than wait for the classifieds in the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But I’m reading Anne’s blog, and she encourages me. In fact, her blog got me started blogging.

Now would be a good time to do a reflexive blog: a blog about blogging. Blogs are merely webpages with dated entries. There are three basic types of blogs: blogs-as-cool-links (Daily Illuminator), blogs-as-links-to-news-stories (ScienceDaily), and blogs-as-online-journals. I’d followed the first two types of blogs for several years before I ran across “Anne . . . straight from the hip.” It was the blog that introduced the blog-journal to me.

The blog-journal solved two different problems I had been ruminating over for some time. The first was for a teaching forum. As an English teacher, this was the direction I’ve been moving for a while. Since the only real way to learn to write involves writing regularly, I’ve always had my students keep some form of journal. In the beginning, it was a physical, written notebook. The first time I took up all 50 notebooks and carried them home to read and grade, though, I decided there had to be an easier way.

A different semester, I decided to have my students email me their journal entries. This worked much better – students generally typed faster than they could write longhand, I could read them quickly and reply with my comments interspersed throughout their writing without crowding it into the margin, I didn’t have to worry about penmanship, and I didn’t have to carry around and keep track of several piles of spiral-bound tree pulp.

But still, there were problems. Some mail programs inserted HTML code that my email client couldn’t display normally; also, all the emails cluttered my hard drive. I began to toy with the idea of having the students post them on the web somehow, and then read and comment on each others’ entries. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, though – standard message boards just didn’t seem to fit.

The second problem the blog-journal solved was that of a personal journal. My father is a great journaller – he’s kept regular journals for about 40 years now. He writes them all in cursive with a fountain pen in hardbound ledgers. He’s encouraged me a number of times to journal, and several times I’ve tried, but it’s always petered out. I kept it going the longest when I used my laptop – its portability, combined with the ease of typing, made journalling less of a chore than ever before. But I still lacked motivation to continue for an extended period.

The blog-journal looked like a great way to keep my personal journal, while giving all my scattered friends and relatives a quick-access point to get news about my life, as well as an easy way to interact with me by commenting on my entries. Along the way, I would be trailblazing for my (future) students, dealing with typical problems and working the kinks out of the system before I made blogging an assignment.

There are two more central elements in my desire to blog, though. The first is to learn to write. One reason my early attempts at journalling failed was that I always wrote about the wrong things. Food I ate, TV shows I watched, etc. Stuff few people care about even as it happens, much less on down the road. It takes a while to learn to recognize, “This event that happened or this person I met is something/someone I will want to remember down the road.” Moreover, as I said before, the only real way to learn to write is to write regularly – and 500 words a day as a goal is a good starting point.

The second element is Socrates’ statement that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To carry the idea further, the unexamined thought is not worth thinking. When I was very young, when other kids had “bedtime stories,” I had my dad give me a recap of my day. He’d tell me everything I did, hitting all the important points, and finally winding up with the present: me, about to be put to bed. I hope this blog will give me a way to actively reflect on the events and people in my life, as well as an outlet to “think out loud” about the books I read and thoughts I think, and so to . . . well, as Aristotle put it in Poetics, “complete myself.”

“It’s just another rainy night in Georgia – feels like it’s raining all over the world.”

It rained all day today. Normally, I like rain, especially a warm Georgia rain, but today it was cold and depressing. I got up and called the local branch office of the Major National Security Firm I had been working for in KC, only to hear (once again) that no new positions had opened up.

Dann always uses his cell phone, but keeps the land line for his security system. He told me the land line could be “my” phone; all I had to do was delete all the messages on the answering machine and tell anyone who asks for him that he’s not available. Sounded reasonable. I went through the messages, deleting about 30 telemarketing messages, a couple of urgent-sounding messages from his fiance that began, “Daniel, your cell phone’s not working again!” and several from some company that had picked him to receive a free vacation somewhere. I deleted them all, and prepared to venture out into the rain.

Wachovia turned out to have exactly the sort of checking account I was looking for; namely, free with no restrictions. I signed up on the spot. Well, that’s one thing marked off my “to do” list.

I do things by lists. I shop by lists, I plan by lists, I even write by lists. (I just now marked “Wachovia” off my list of things to blog about. FYI, blogging about lists is something completely spontaneous I’ve decided to do on the spur of the moment. So there.) I once read somewhere that the true sign of being a list-making maniac is to add something to a “to-do” list that you’ve already done, just so you can mark it off. Ever since then I feel compelled to resist this impulse. I always give in anyway, it’s just that now I feel bad about it.

I went grocery shopping with Sunny (a friend of mine from KC) a couple of times. I was aghast that she didn’t shop with a list. “How do you know what to buy?” I asked. “Oh, well, I just wander down the aisles and pick up anything that looks good,” she replied. I just shook my head.

Anyway, after Wachovia, I went and sat in my car in the parking lot. I felt it was a shame to go straight home, now that I was already up and out and everything, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted to go or anything I wanted to do – other than stay home and stare out the window watching it rain. Then I realized I probably looked a little suspicious just sitting there in a bank parking lot (my security experience kicking in!) so I drove home.

Once home, I searched the internet for jobs in the Atlanta area. Monster.com, hotjobs.com, careerbuilder.com – pretty much the only things available were for business managers (need 10+ years experience to apply) or salesmen (paid entirely by commission). I sent the standard “I’m-moving-here’s-my-new-address” email to everyone in my address book, and included a link to this blog, so if you got one of the emails, congratulations on being one of the Important People Entitled To Be In My Address Book. Feel free to comment on my entries by pressing the “comment” link after each one. If you use my last name, I’ll have to delete your post, because I don’t want weirdo internet stalkers tracking me down and selling me pickled halibut or whatever.

Dann’s in here fixing Pan’s computer. He pretty much had to replace all of the innards. She came in and brought him some Thai cookies, and offered some to me.
“Are these chocolate chips or raisins?”
“Raisins. We don’t have chocolate chips in Thailand.”
“You don’t have chocolate chips in Thailand?!!”
“Well, we do, but they’re not popular.”
“They put fish on their cookies in Thailand,” Dann said.

Today I got up and went to church for the first time in . . . a long time. I went to the Wesleyan Fellowship. The service was good, very good. I had met the pastor, Tom Tanner, the summer before I went to the University of Georgia. I’ve known he had a church here in Atlanta, so when I decided to come, I looked it up on the internet. The church is just great. They meet in a Lodge building, and have chairs they have to set up each week. Complimentary coffee and donuts, nametags for everyone, and a rockin’ worship band – I felt right at home!

After the worship music, they had traditional “turn around and greet your neighbor” time. The woman in front of me asked whether I was new, and I said yes, so she asked me what I did for a living. Ah, yes, the Big Question. What do I do for a living? I briefly debated giving a snarky answer like, “Trust God,” but decided against it, even though it is true. Then I thought about saying, “security guard,” but that’s what I did in KC to fill time and pay the bills. So, I got up on my pride and said, “Well, I’m an English teacher,” which immediately caused problems, because she started talking about the high schools in the area. I just nodded and smiled, because I didn’t feel like explaining that both my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degrees were in English literature, not education, and that I couldn’t get a job teaching at 99% of the high schools in Georgia without an education degree and/or a Georgia Teacher’s Certificate, neither of which I have, and neither do I have the time (1+ years) or money (standard college tuition) to get them.

While I was there, I had a big surprise: Eric and Kelley, a couple I knew from my church in college, were there! They had just finished a stint in Brazil as missionaries, and had just moved to Atlanta to join Tom Tanner’s church December 31. They were in the same boat I was – no job, not settled yet, just arrived in a new city looking to make connections. It was great seeing them again!

After church, I signed up for more information about a cell group. Hopefully, I can find a good group of singles my age to join. Hopefully, I’ll get a job that leaves me free time to go to a cell group. Hopefully, I’ll get a job.

Today the Martian explorer landed on Mars – the first successful one since the Pathfinder mission several years ago. I remember when that one landed; it was a big deal. In elementary school, they had some pictures in the textbooks from the old Viking expedition in the seventies, and the Pathfinder pictures were the first new pictures since then. I was in college at the time, and enjoying the thrill of a T-1 line, so I got to see every picture in high-resolution.

I mentioned to Dann that Sifa had left large clumps of hair on my bed.
“She pulls her hair out on your bed, too?” he asked.
“Why don’t you shoot her?” Pan asked.
“While that would solve the problem, I don’t know if . . .” Dann started.
“No, with the water gun!”

Pan’s computer got fried. Just overheated and stopped working. Dann’ll have to fix it tomorrow.

What I’m Listening To: “No Woman, No Cry” – The Fugees

For the last two nights, I’ve slept in my sleeping bag on one of those fold-out cushion chairs that Dann had. It’s just like the mattress I had on the floor in Kansas City, only not as wide.

When I moved into my apartment in KC, I met another man dragging a ratty-looking mattress for a twin bed out to the dumpster.

“Hey, can I have that?”
“Are you sure? It has spiders living in it.”
“Oh, that’s fine.”

From time to time, I’d wake up with these strange red welts. I never did figure out where they came from.

* * *

Dann told me Wachovia would probably have the type of checking account I was looking for, but the bank closed at noon, and I got there just a little too late. Since I was already out, I decided to go on a search for Wal-Mart. I found it, too. (Wal-Marts are generally hard to miss.) I also found a huge Goodwill thrift store. No bookshelves, unfortunately, which is what I was looking for. (Boy, do I need bookshelves!) I’ll try back later; from the looks of things, they have a pretty high turnover rate.

I’m typing this up on my computer here in our computer room. Dann is a computer tech in Atlanta, so he has a room devoted to computers. Two servers (running Linux), his Windows game machine, Pan’s computer, and a laptop. To this I brought my own desktop (which Dann put together and gave to me a couple of years ago) and laptop. We spent several hours rearranging the room to make space for my stuff.

The room is decorated in “geek chic” style: a couple of posters of wizards, a couple of framed dragon lithographs (signed and numbered, a gift from me once upon a time), and two broadswords mounted point-down on the wall. These are just the swords attractive enough to display – he also has a cheap katana that, frankly, looks like an oversized letter opener, and some sort of rusty ceremonial sword. There’s also a two-foot-high suit of armor on the floor between the lamp and his shelves of programming manuals.

Dann’s playing Everquest. He just informed me that he also has two computers in the trunk of his car he hasn’t figured out what to do with yet, and would I like a Linux server? No, thank you, I’ll leave that up to you, Dann.

Dann gave me my Christmas present today: a copy of Starcraft and the Starcraft: Brood War expansion pack. I’m about six years late getting these games, and they’re massive classics. I borrowed a copy of Starcraft from a friend a few years back, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but then I had to return the disk and never finished the game. Once I get a larger hard drive (my 10 gig drive from four years ago is finally filled), I’ll install both of them and get down to business.

Favorite Starcraft quote: “Sarge? I love you.”

Today I went in search of a bank. I need to set up a checking account. The problem is, most all of them require a monthly maintenance fee or direct deposit. Since I don’t have a job yet, direct deposit isn’t an option, and my limited funds make me wary of accounts with maintenance charges. Yeah, I know. What am I doing moving to a new city with no job and no job prospects?

Well, there’s only so much you can take. I woke up one day and said, “I’m a security guard. I can do this anywhere. Why am I still here in Kansas City?” So I decided to move back to Georgia. I put myself in the best financial situation I could, paying off my student loans and moving in with a friend, but the Big Ugly still remains: ya gotta have a job.

I transferred my employment records with the Major National Security Firm to the branch office in Atlanta, but even if I’m technically on the payroll, I don’t get any money until they have an opening to give me work. So, if they don’t have anything available by Monday, I’m going to have to start some serious jobhunting.

Not that I’m that picky about what job I get. I worked as a garbage collector one summer, and I doubt I’ll ever work a dirtier or more disgusting job. As a street sweeper, I drove a truck that vacuumed trash up off parking lots, and then I emptied the trash cans in front of the stores in the strip malls. The worst part about it wasn’t the smell, it was the ants. Every time I tried to tie up the garbage bags, they’d swarm up my arms and bite me. Oh, and when it rained, the outside garbage cans would fill with water. I couldn’t just tip the cans over (they were attached to the ground to prevent theft), so I had to lift the bags out before I could drain the water. Now, water weighs eight lbs. to the gallon, and after a hard rain, these cans would have three or more gallons of water in them. Most plastic trash bags aren’t designed for that kind of weight, and several times the bags would split open just as I got them out of the cans, drenching me with the foulest-smelling liquid you can imagine. And then I had to pick up all the pieces of garbage by hand and put them in a new bag.

It wasn’t intolerable. Except for my spit, which was always black because of the dust I breathed when I would clean the sidewalks with a leafblower (also part of my job). Whenever I tell this story, people always comment, “Oh, I’ll bet you made a lot of money, though.” Actually, I didn’t. Eight dollars an hour. A friend gave me the job as a favor, and I was lucky to get it. When another position opened up (doing the same thing), he had over 200 applicants the first day he put the ad out. And to top it off, it was the summer after I had earned my Masters degree, and I was kind of hoping for a job that was a little more . . . better-smelling, I guess.

Anyway, if I can do that, I can do anything. Still, though, I’m hoping to find something that won’t make me work weekends (like my last job did) – I’m really looking forward to joining a good church.

January 1 is a day for new beginnings. And begin anew I did. I piled into my Mazda Protégé (138k miles and counting) and drove the two hours to my new home in Atlanta.

Wow. I’d forgotten I-75 had 10 glorious lanes of traffic for a space there. I’d forgotten how the tree-covered hills simply undulated across the landscape. I’d forgotten the skyline, and caught my breath as I crested the hill on I-20 that suddenly shows the whole thing all at once.

Two years in Kansas City was about three years too long. Potholes, snow, ice, and barren, featureless plains stretching as far as the eye can see – it’s enough to make a Georgia boy spiral into depression. I thoroughly enjoyed the people in Kansas City, but really, there’s more to a city than the people.

My best friend has a house in Marietta with a spare bedroom. When I was thinking about leaving Kansas City, I gave him a call. Dann understands me, and understands Kansas City. He came to visit me a year ago. (“They had a tree in their backyard. It was the main distinguishing mark of the entire neighborhood,” he tells people.) He offered to let me live with him for a while. “How much advance notice do I have to give you?” “About a day and a half,” he said. Aren’t best friends great?

Anyway, it was another six months or so after that call before I finally left KC. I kept trying new job leads, and kept hoping something would work out, and then I just decided to quit my job right before Christmas, spend several weeks with my family in Iowa and Alabama, and then move in after the first of the year.

I showed up at his door about 1 p.m., and he helped me unload all my books and clothes and take it to the bedroom upstairs. (Despite being out of college for nearly five years now, I still own no furniture other than a halogen lamp and a computer chair – I do, however, own entirely too many books.)

As I sat on my sleeping bag and looked around at my new (lavender-painted!) room, I reacquainted myself with Sifa. Sifa is Dann’s cat. She is a beautiful blue-eyed beige-colored stray that hung around our front door in KC. When Dann came for his visit, he immediately fell in love, bought a carrier, and adopted her on the spot. She purrs more than any cat I know – much, much more than my sister’s cat Sihn, with whom I had just spent a week in Alabama. It’ll be great living with a cat again – it’s been entirely too many years since we gave Rusty away when I was a sophomore in high school.

Dann’s fiance, Pan, joined us for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. (No, she’s not Vietnamese. She’s Thai.) They’re planning to be married in May. Where will I go once she moves in?

“Oh, no problem,” Dann had said. “She’ll be in my room. You can still stay in yours.”
“Um, have you asked Pan about this arrangement?”
“No, but, I mean, come on, what’s she going to say? No?”
“Well, I’ll just make arrangements to move out once you get married, anyway. Just to be on the safe side.”

It’s good to be in the South again.