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June 22, 2008

Day 6

Is it just me, or does this happen to anyone else?

You wake up in the middle of the night, and you don't know where you are in your own home. Even if you've been living in the same place for years. I can still wake up in the middle of the night and have no clue how to find my way out of my own bedroom, even though the way out is as follows:

I just don't understand it. Eight years we've lived here, and this still happens on a regular basis - I wake up, slide out of bed, and feel around for a door, a wall, anything to help me get my bearings. The light from the clocks doesn't look familiar, the light from the hallway doesn't tell me where I am, nothing makes any sense. There's times when I have to get out of our room, down the hall, and into the bathroom before I can figure out where the hell I am.

I can go through this house in pitch black to check the locks on the doors and never have a problem! From the bedroom, through the living room, backtrack to the kitchen (avoiding the couch and the loveseat and the birdcage), go through the kitchen (avoiding the island and the stools) into the dining room (avoiding chairs and table) and back again without incident. No lights, no glasses, no problem. But put me to sleep first, and all bets are off.

I hope it isn't just me with this problem. I'd think I was even crazier in that case.

Posted by zaren at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2008

Day 5

10:30 on a Saturday night. I'm sitting on my front porch, enjoying a 60 degree cloudless night.

Well, I'd be enjoying it more, if it weren't for the morons with their fireworks.

See, here in Michigan, fireworks that leave the ground are illegal. We're allowed to have smoke bombs and sparklers and cones and spinners and all the "kid's" fireworks, but no bottle rockets, no Roman candles, no mortars, none of the fancy "blow-off-a-body-part" stuff.

The problem with that is the following: our neighborhood is less than an hour's drive away from the Ohio state line, and you can buy any kind of fireworks you want in Ohio. So every year about this time, we start to enjoy the sounds of explosions and whistles and crackling in the skies above our house.

The geniuses firing these things off don't put much thought into where the refuse from these missiles will land, either. One summer I filled a trash can with the cast-off remnants of rockets that landed around my house. Some of them were still smoldering as they landed on my brown yard, the victim of a summer drought and a homeowner happy to obey the water restrictions and the ensuing lack of yard maintenance.

Every year I sit in my living room, gazing out the window, threatening to call the cops on these disturbers of my peace. Every year, I fail to do so. In fact, last year the kids and I walked down the street to watch someone setting them off. That promptly ended, however, when one of the launch tubes blew over and fired it's shell right through the crowd of kids watching on the curb. The shell bounced off someone's truck and went off in the yard next to us, no more than 30 feet away.

Well, the fireworks have stopped, and apparently the mosquitos have decided it's not too cold to be out after all (one fresh bite on each knee), so it's time for me to head back inside.

P.S. Yeah, it sounded cranky. I'm getting old. Get off of my lawn, even if I don't want to mow it! Still haven't, btw, we were out of the house most of the day. Maybe tomorrow.

Posted by zaren at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2008

Day 4

*sigh* I was going to head out to the mall tonight to try and track down a supplement from the muscle store, but the missuz came down sick again. So instead, I stayed home with the kids.

The stuff I'm looking for is called bromelain. It comes from pineapples, and it helps aid in digestion. I got it from my sister, who got it from her doctor. It helped us both out with our stomach problems, but I went through the bottle she gave me, and now i have to find it myself. I checked the local chain pharmacy on the way home, but they didn't have it. Maybe the muscle dude store will have it.

Her doctor also sells supplements that he recommends, but mine doesn't, so I have to track it down. I can't go to her doc, because they live 100+ miles away. With any luck, I can get out there tomorrow and have a look.

Posted by zaren at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2008

NaBloPoMo - Day 3

I'm going home in 10 minutes.


...

Not enough, huh?

Okay, I'm leaving work to go home in 10 minutes. Once I get home, I get to mow the lawn. The cool weather we've had the last few days and the rain from the days before has encouraged the grass to grow. The backyard is nice and green and thick now, so I get to cut it down.

Bleh.

If there's one thing about home ownership I don't care for, it's yardwork. If it wasn't for the kids, I'd just as soon astroturf it, or pave it all and paint it green.

But before I get to go home, I've got some last minute things to do, so off I go.

Posted by zaren at 05:21 PM | Comments (1)

June 18, 2008

NaBloPoMo - Day 2

"You help me go home?"

Paul glanced down at the voice and the tug at his pantleg. It was sundown, and his nightly walk had taken him down to the edge of his neighborhood, where the houses and concrete gave way to farmer's fields and gravel roads. In the fading light, he saw a young boy in dark clothes, maybe a track suit, with pale skin and a thin patch of light hair on top of his head.

Paul furrowed his brow as he tried to focus on the boy in the dying light. "Well, what are you doing out here, little fella? You lost?"

The boy tugged again at his pant leg. "Home? You help me?" Paul heard no panic in the boy's voice, just a quiet instance for help. He squatted down to get a closer look at the boy, his grandfatherly instincts overriding any other concerns. "No problem, kiddo, I'll help ya out, I'll get ya home." He squinted in the fading twilight, trying to figure out what wasn't right about the boy's face. "Where do ya need to go?"

The boy released his grip on Paul's pantleg, tilted his face up, and gestured into the sky. He opened his mouth, and made a sound Paul had never heard before, like a goose honking in reverse after breathing helium. As Paul stared in astonishment at the boy, the headlights of a passing car passed over them, and he could see the boy clearly for just a second. He realized what wasn't right about the boy - he had no nose, just slits where you would expect to see nostrils. His eyes were big, dark, and round, bigger than any boy's eyes he'd ever seen. And the clothes he wore weren't a track suit, but a flight suit.

He turned his face back to look at Paul, and blinked. "Home."

Posted by zaren at 12:06 AM | Comments (1)

June 16, 2008

NaBloPoMo - Day 1

So I found my way to this site called NaBloPoMo by way of rissadee, someone I follow on Twitter. NaBloPoMo stands for "National Blog Posting Month", like how NaNoWriMo is shorthand for "National Novel Writing Month". It sounded interesting, so I thought I'd sign up.

The point is to make a blog post every day for a month. I was thinking of holding off until July started, but then decided I'd start today and try it until at least my birthday in July. This should be easier than NaNoWriMo at least. I only made it about three days the last NaNoWriMo because I wasn't prepared for it, and tried to do too much research instead of just winging the story. But NaBloPoMo runs on themes, instead of writing your own story, and June's theme is "home". I can run with that for the next two weeks for sure.

Home used to be Saginaw, MI. That's where I moved when we got married. Before that, it was Auburn, MI, where my folks moved when THEY got married. Before THAT, it was Bay City, MI, where I was born and spent the first two years of my life. I still consider it "my hometown" - my mom was born and raised in Bay City, so we were always there visiting her dad. Also, I went to high school in Bay CIty at All Saints (last grade to attend classes at South Campus!), so there's a lot of "growing up" memories attached to the place. I've come across a few Twitter users from the Bay City area as well, so the place keeps coming up in my mind.

Every once in a while, I get the idea of taking a day some weekend and driving up (from my current home in Ypsilanti) to check out my old stomping grounds. I know lots of things would have changed: the mall I used to hang out in on the far east side of town is a ghost town now, roads have been re-aligned to change traffic flows - heck, they tore down one of the buildings I wandered for high school. But still, it would be nice to go back and see things again. Maybe it'll happen this summer - my parents want the grandkids to come up for an extended visit, so I might find a chance to slip away for a few hours.

Posted by zaren at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

Podcast #43 -Thunder, lightning, and family fun

Okay, here's the next episode. This was supposed to be out earlier last week, but you'll hear why it was delayed once you listen. The last segment of this episode is a bit weak, but there's some fun bits of audio in it regardless.

Podcast #43

Posted by zaren at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)