I am finding that I can’t sleep lately. Friday and Saturday, I had to wake up earlier than usual and get going, and I was out late Friday night, too. I tried to sleep late Sunday morning, but my body resisted. I didn’t feel very tired, though, and had even more trouble getting to sleep on Sunday night. Felt ready to wake up and battle traffic and work yesterday (Monday) on very little sleep. I had more trouble getting to sleep last night, but that could have been the family emergency (more later) that had me cycling like mad against a headwind yesterday afternoon. Maybe, because today I’m pooped. I hope it passes. The idea that I need less sleep/rest with the warming weather is very appealing to someone who likes to stay up reading at night and cycling early in the morning.
I hate you. When our home phone died completely and my internet kept running slowly and disconnecting, you made us wait. When it happened again a few weeks ago, you made us wait two weeks. Then you came and blamed ME, for using equipment that YOU gave me and told me to use. When you were gone, I was glad it was fixed but called you an asshole in your absence. You gave us a credit for the lost phone but not for the lost internet.
Then the same thing happened again last week. You said you needed another two weeks, got shitty with Mrs P on the phone and made excuses this time. We told you we would switch providers if you didn’t come sooner. You said you couldn’t and thought we were bluffing. But we weren’t.
To paraphrase another dis-satisfied customer I know: How shitty is your fucking network if you’re always backed up for two fucking weeks for repairs? A gentleman I know who worked for you and your predecessor for three decades said that they used to turn things like this around in 48 hours on principle because phone (and now internet) service is a basic part of modern life for some Americans (bracketing discussion of our materialistic standard of living here) — or at the very least something you charge us a lot of money for but then don’t deliver.
If a switch is possible (and it looks like it is), I’d rather not give you $200 a month in communication “service” that we sometimes get but always get charged for.
Go to hell,
Mr JG to the P
(Yes, I wrote this at work.)
I have always kept an address book, since I was old enough to know people to write to. Before that, I always used the address section at the end of dayplanners starting in high school. My wife has a fancy Longaberger dealy that holds address cards. It’s very bulky. I have a small red silk Moleskine address book that I scored for a buck-ninety-nine last year. There’s postal paper lining the inside cover, stamps in the pocket and addresses of people I know written in black ballpoint pen ink.
I think of that scene in the beginning of Amelie when the older gent erases his best friend from his address book when he gets home from his funeral and sighs heavily. I imagine keeping an address book for a long time, like that. That’s kind of morbid, probably. But when I consulted my address book a few weeks ago, I noticed at least two entries of folks who aren’t around anymore: my grandfather and my great-uncle and his nice wife. All three folks passed away in the last year. I didn’t cross them out, though. I won’t.
Anecdote about address books: My very good buddy and his lady are expecting a baby very soon. For her baby shower, he called me on the phone to get my mailing address for what he claimed was the millionth time (it was only like twice). So, amidst the clothes and baby gear, there was a medium-sized navy blue address book for him, with my mailing address in it. The weird thing is that I had a hard time finding it. Other than Moleskines, I didn’t find a lot of address books at all. And I checked a few stores with a lot of stationery.
Am I so old-fashioned that I went looking for an object that fewer and fewer people are using? I’m not that old school. I’m certainly a bit of a techno-junkie. I’ve been blogging for five years and spend entirely too much time on Flickr and reading other people’s blogs. I embrace technology more often than I really am comfortable with. It’s also a little disturbing that my buddy didn’t already have one, since he’s more old-school than I am sometimes. And I mean that in a good way.
Are address books going to disappear in favor of information stored in cell phones and computers? Admittedly, phone numbers are more convenient when they are stored in the device you’re going to use to dial them (your phone), and the same is true of email. I store phone numbers and email addresses that way. But I never put anything else in my computer or cell phone address books on principle. No phone numbers in the email client, etc.
This could be a result of the fact that I stubbornly use the postal service whenever I can. A friend of mine in Oregon and I keep in touch via letters and mail. I send postcards when I travel and beg others to do the same (and my brother always does). Are address books going bye-bye with letters? They have other uses, though. Holiday cards. Birthday cards. Thank-you cards. Or are less people sending them? I get less every year, but I thought I might just be annoying people.
Geez. I feel like I should buy all the address books I can get my hands on and hoard them for when people come to their senses and want them again one day. I could give them out with the only form of payment requested being a letter once a year sent to me. I’d give them out with my address filled in. I always return letters and often include goodies like stickers and obscene ad-lib-ed pictures from junk mail, etc.
I’m so melodramatic.
Anyone else treasure their address books?
And what’s worse? I am often that guy who wears sandals and socks when it’s too cold to wear sandals. Not today, though.
I am very ready for winter to be over. I generally like it. There are past instances on this blog where I was angry at a lack of winter. I like wearing sweaters and flannel and cuddling up with the Mrs at night to watch movies, read and sleep. Cycling when water freezes to your face is exhilarating, if for no other reason, for the looks of amazement you get from other people. Longjohns are their own unique experience when you have them on under your work pants with nothing under them.
Maybe it’s barreling downhill for four miles every morning and getting watery eyes from the wind or my being tired of not being able to wear sandals sans socks. Or of coming home from community meetings at seven or eight in the dark. Maybe I’m tired of the bleak landscape on my way to work through the Jones Falls Valley and out of my window on University Parkway. But I’m really ready for spring now.
I haven’t actually gotten tired of winter since 2003, when I lived in Boston and didn’t blog yet. It was a particularly bad winter, full of blizzards and April snow. St. Patty’s day that year was 70 degree weather, with students at Boston College sitting around talking in tanktops next to mountains of snow still piled up. I remember wearing flip-flops and crunching on snow that April and wearing a jacket in May and June a few times.
There was snow on the ground two years ago for St. Patty’s Day, too, after a January that was so warm that plants were budding the week after New Year’s Day. I guess it could be worse. I get to work from home this morning for afternoon meetings and can probably get away with sandals later, if I’m willing to have cold feet, which I am.
I have a fridge full of Irish stout, cabbage, homemade soda bread from the Mrs and Irish music. What, you haven’t heard the new U2 album yet? It’s excellent.
In January, there was a memory quilt underway at work. I drew all over the blotter paper, with terrible literary cartoons. This is my punk version of Hemingway.
In fall 2006, I said that I would leave a certain situation if someone who was plainly racist was involved. Someone I looked up to said:
“You’d be wrong. You’d be wrong because you’re taking this personally because you got a black wife.”
It’s never sat right with me. For one, I honestly think I deserved this person’s loyalty more than the racist guy we were talking about. And also, uh, racism isn’t something that’s Okay, no? It’s not like something that’s Okay that I shouldn’t take so personally because my heart belongs to a black woman. Right? I’m wrong to take it personally because, what, it’s Okay in Maryland? Or because I’m not actually black myself by only sharing my life with someone who is?
I’ve been disturbed by this statement for a long time. And by the family member sitting right there who didn’t stick up for me at all.
My VISTA position largely involves Central Baltimore and hooking up higher ed folks with the area, to be better neighbors and to help one and all, etc. The problem is, no one knows what the hell Central Baltimore is, and even more people are plain afraid of it. When I mentioned that we’re ending tomorrow’s walking tour at the delicious Station North Arts Cafe’, someone told me, “[pause]. That’s not a real good neighborhood.” Indeed, I wouldn’t walk around there at two in the morning, but I wouldn’t walk around anywhere in Baltimore or any city at two in the morning. You really can’t blame someone who being like, “What’s Central Baltimore?” when they don’t know about the area. No one’s a jerk for not knowing something. But when people who don’t know anything start passing off judgments like they were just there last night, well, that’s a problem.
My co-worker and I led a walking tour in December and will lead another tomorrow and another Sunday in Central Baltimore. If you see a dude with a megaphone (I shit you not), that’s me.
This week has been very insane, and both blogs suffer. Apologies. Next week will be much more sane and will allow for more posting.
“President Barack Obama’s call to raise taxes on high earners and greenhouse gas polluters met fierce opposition Tuesday from congressional Republicans and also a few Democrats.”
Politicians sticking up for rich people and companies that don’t want The Man telling them what to do?
What?
You have to be shitting me.
Fatherhood
