Out here on the road, things are always strange. The exhilaration I usually feel isn't here this time, for various reasons. There are some profoundly wonderful moments, some difficult and painful ones, and a constant struggle to figure out what happens next. Been meeting friends and family too long absent, hearing news of triumph over adversity, descent into imprisonment, and passing from here to there to There. We're mostly just letting it wash over us, since our attempts to shoehorn things into plans have proven largely unsuccessful. But even without any of the rest of it, it's so nice to feel the cold air and the fog, see and hike the hills, smell the ocean which has been so very far away for too long.

Take care
-J-

Hi folks.

Well, we're heading out on the road. Again, as it were. Our ride to the
airport arrives in 15 minutes. Stress is a little high, but compared to
the departures to and from Korea, this is a piece of cake.

So be good to yourselves. I'll be checking in from the road, so I'll know if you're naughty

Take care
-J-

Hi.

June already. Hard to believe how quickly the time goes by. I realized
the other day that I've been doing this job now for 6 months. Six
months. Half a year. It used to be that a year seemed like an eternity,
but now years are things that just sort of happen. However, it's
important to realize (and often we're forced to realize) that the
just-sort-of-happens-ness of it all is something we have control over.
If we don't make the effort to make each moment of our time notable in
some way, the likelihood that random chance will pick up the slack is
rather low.

However, for most of us, that's more easily said than done. All through
my public school years, I passed the time by focusing intently on the
next big event  --  the next stat holiday, the next special
occasion, or whatever. I would do everything I could to block out the
intervening time (at least that part of the time spent in class), and
once that particular occasion had been reached, I focused on the next
one and the process repeated itself. Thankfully, I had a very rich
childhood despite this attempt to ignore a large chunk of it. In my
adulthood, however, I'm finding it a tough habit to break, and the
richness doesnt happen automatically, like it used to. It's easy to
slip into a living-for-the-weekend mentality, and easy to just let the
time slip by without cutting any notches in it, as it were.

But then, of course, sometimes events arrange themselves in such a way
as to remind us that it's important to keep some focus on the now. I
haven't gotten to the point where I don't know in my mind that I need
to be savouring things more, but I'm not always great at turning that
knowledge into action. At the moment, I happen to be getting some
nudges from the universe. Gentle celestial kicks in the posterior, as
it were. They remind me yet again of what I know I should be doing. The
present me with irrefutable evidence that unless I get myself in gear
right now, I'm going to sell myself short. There are some things I need
to do, because if I don't start now, they're just not going to happen.

The specifics of it all are both painfully clear and typically murky.
While I'm being spurred to action, I'm still having to force myself to
expand my perspective and narrow my focus. Rather than just be reactive
to the current situation, I want to take this opportunity to jumpstart
a range of dormant or sluggish areas of my life. Just thinking about it
makes me tired, but hey. What's the point of easy goals.  It's a
bit like the overused adage about the beverage we need to make from the
sour citrus fruit that life keeps beaning us in the head with.

In somewhat related news, I'm going home. Just for a visit, mind, but
still. As my long-time readers may remember, it's been over 2 1/2 years
since I've seen my parents and my brothers. Too long. So off my wife
and I will go, for 2 weeks in Newfoundland. I was going to go in the
fall, but we're going to go now. So there. The details are almost all
dealt with, and will probably be finalized by the time many of you read
this. All that will be left to do is for me to work ever minute of
overtime I can manage over the next couple of weeks, to try and offset
the heavy impact of taking two weeks of unpaid leave.

And with that, I bid you adieu for the night. As could easily be
predicted, it's past my bedtime. I have a long week ahead of me, and
all the extra savouring is bound to leave me even more worn out than
usual   Thanks for dropping by, and I'll do my best to return
the favour.

Take care
-J-

Time has come
And come so soon
So much sooner than expected
Like those conversations
Held with myself
During many a long walk
Or sleepless night
What would I save
If the house was burning?
What would I do
If something I thought would be
No longer was?
And now we must reach
For a shoehorn
To coax all we expected to receive
Into the box we have been given
Wrap it in moments of exquisite beauty
And cherish it
Until the time comes
To offer it up

Take care
-J-

Sometimes the problem with doing research is that you get answers.

Hi

Another Wednesday night rolls around and finds me bracing for another
week at work. This last one was not pleasant. It felt interminable,
with several days where I was jut dragging myself through. My
efficiency percentage rating (based on how fast I get stuff done in
relation to how fast they think I should be going) has been plummeting,
although I did receive another two perfect quality audits, so at least
I'm still doing a decent job. I'm just sort of feeling several kinds of
lousy. My physical energy level is low, and my muscles have been aching
in that way that usually indicates a lack of calories. Many days they
feel like they're filled with concrete. It's the big orders that kill
me -- the ones made up of 300-400 boxes stacked 7 feet high. Give me an
order with 75, 50lb boxes over one with 400 teeny ones any day. Must be
an attention span thing or something...

So yeah. Feeling kind of low. It's not terrible, but it means
constantly keeping tabs on myself, to combat the feelings of
hopelessness or being trapped or whatever. Nip them before they take
over my whole mood. Because really, things are not that bad. they just
feel that way sometimes. My stress level has been really high lately
too, even though I don't notice it most of the time. My temper has been
closer to the surface, and I actually got angry and swore at someone at
work the other day (which is completely out of character for me).

In a way, my recent mood has been a lot like the weather was on Monday.
Strange day. Started out cold and rainy, got warmer, got sunny, rained
a little more, got sunny again, hailed for a few minutes, got sunny,
rained, hailed for the better part of half an hour, then settled on a
sort of sun ringed by heavy clouds.

Not trying to be a downer here. I just tend to lose my focus at the end
of the weekend. All the fascinating thoughts I had to write about
vanish, and all I can think about is my stupid emotional
preoccupations. Somehow, my entries have been way too human lately
  I always sort of intend to be literary and thought-provoking,
but I end up with more of a diary sort of thing.

Anyhow, I'm going to go. It's 10pm, so already an hour past my bedtime.
We're going to watch the DVD special features for Finding Neverland,
which we rented last night. Great movie. I'm constantly impressed by
the subtlety of Johnny Depp's work.

So, 'night all.

Take care
-J-

9:45pm Wednesday evening, which means my weekend is in its last
drowsing moments. The coming week, however, is pleasantly broken up by
an unexpected Saturday layoff (meaning no work, not some sort of sexual
competition). So, to my mind, I have a two-day week, a day off, another
two-day week, and then a full weekend. Sounds good to me, especially
since it's rare that my days off coincide with my wife's. Sure, losing
a day's pay is a bit of a stress, but since there's nothing I can do
about it, I'd much rather look forward to the break rather than defeat
it through worrying.

The big news of the day is that I finally filed my income taxes! Mailed
them out this afternoon, a full week-and-a-half before the deadline.
Plus, if my calculations are correct, we're due for a pleasant little
refund. Unlike so many folks I see talking about plasma screen TVs and
trips to the Bahamas, our refund will serve the much less glamourous
purpose of paying down a chunk of our Mastercard debt. But such is
life, and every dollar we put toward that debt saves us scads of money
in interest, so it's a good thing. Plus, it's just really nice to have
the stress of having-to-do-taxes out of the way.

Musically, things continue to progress slowly but surely. That song I
mentioned last time is now 95% done I'm expecting a breakthrough
very soon, and then it'll be finished in a couple of minutes. I did
manage to finish something I've been wanting to try for a while -- a
one-man choir recording. I kept it short and simple, but it turned out
quite well I think, and already gives me tons of insight into the
things I need to study and think about in order to make my next attempt
more sophisticated and successful. Also on my plate at the moment is a
collaboration I'm doing with a jazz musician in France. Our two styles
and approaches are so different that I'm finding it really difficult to
make any headway given my very limited amount of available recording
time. The project is supposed to wrap up at the end of the month, so
I'd better find some time somewhere...

And finally.... That photoblog entry I've been promising has been
delayed yet again (as evidenced by the stubborn lack of pictures in
this entry). The WCDC has a habit of crapping out, and when the battery
bumps lose even for a millisecond, the memory empties and the pictures
go bye bye. The other day, it crapped out because the battery leaked
acid inside. So basically, some day this week, I'm going to have to
bring it to work with a fresh battery and baby it all day -- no bumping
or jostling, no sudden impacts... And the funny thing is, even when you
treat it like gold and it actually does its job, you're left with the
inescapable fact that the pictures are still crap But that's half
the fun.

And so I leave you, once again, to your day. I'm going to get myself a
nice cup of jasmine green tea, give the guinea pig her eye drops, and
then get myself to bed.

Take care
-J-

Hi folks

Just breezing through and wanted to say hi. Everything is jumbled
together in my brain recently. There's tons of content, but the lack of
coherence makes it damn near impossible to reduce it to any kind of
enjoyable creative output. The stress from the illness I mentioned in my last post,
combined with the usual stress and general icky feeling of my own life and body, is
making things... interesting. There are many things I want to say, and
many places I want to focus my attention, but ultimately most of it
gets passed over because I can't focus long enough. For example, I got
our income taxes 90% done about 3 weeks ago, yet I've been unable to
get them finished. I have a new song which I got 90% finished, needing
only 4 short lines for completion, and yet it remains incomplete.
Projects and tasks and responsibilities and communications are
gradually starting to get backed up by this mental traffic jam, and I'm
just hoping that I can find some way of imposing a little order and
release before the existential constipation becomes problematic

And so here I am, writing a blog entry about how I can't write a blog
entry. Typical. My goal, toward which I've slowly been working, is to
post a photo entry soon. This entry will give you some insight into the
fascinating world of my job, and will feature pictures taken with our
recently-acquired digital camera. I like to affectionately refer to it
as the World's Crappiest Digital Camera, but I don't resent it for
being such. It's actually a keychain, and cost 17 bucks new, so I went
into the deal knowing I wasn't going to be getting top-quality imaging.
It's more of a novelty than a camera, really, and I shall inflict its
shots on you in future entries.

If I keep spewing my random thoughts here tonight, I'll just ruin the
almost-clarity of what I've already written, so I'll go now. I still
have to sort the recyclables and put them out along with the garbage,
and tidy the kitchen and put away the last of the groceries and do a
few dishes. This is the theory, anyway. The fact that it's already
almost an hour past my bedtime may result in the cutting of some of
those tasks from my list. But we shall see. And we can't begin to see
until I get myself off the computer and into task-accomplisment mode.

I've been reading even when I haven't been commenting. Congrats to
those of you doing well, hugs to those doing not so well, smiles to
everyone in between. See you soon.

Take care
-J-

I'm very very relieved.

Someone very close to me has just gone through a major medical ordeal,
but seems to be doing well (knock on wood). I've been stressed out of
my mind the past week, but now I can relax a little. There are still
hurdles ahead, but the first big worry is over. Any healing prayers
would be appreciated.

Oy. This world. In the words of Mr. Burns: "It's not rocket science..."

Anyhow, I'm planning a photoblog entry for later this week, so keep your eyes peeled

Take care
-J-

Once would be a real trick
And the river running higher than usual
Twice would bring flowers from the sky
And the river flowing faster than usual
Three times would make ordinary things move in strange ways
And the river breaking its banks
Four times would dig trenches in the frozen ground
And the river overflowing
Five times would smell of fresh lemons
And the trees on the shore floating downriver
Six times would make stones rise into the sky
And the river churning over everything
Seven times would bring cold wind and grey sun
And the river full of logs for rebuilding