I hope that everyone has a safe happy holiday.
For those of you working today…
THANK YOU!
I hope that you have a chance to spend time with your friends and family.
But most of all…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!
The Roads are mine…
I have to admit that I do like getting to work at O’dark thirty.
I wake up and it’s dark, I lay here listening to the quiet, (Which in a city is actually just a quieter drone of activity. You don’t realize how much noise there really is unless you’ve lived someplace that is absolutely silent at night.)
I’ll stretch and count my bones then finally the desire for coffee will drag my old carcass out of bed.
While standing in front of the gurgling, sighing coffee pot, I’ll finish waking up.
The cool of the early morning on my skin and cold floor beneath my feet steels me against the day.
I’ll have my first cup of coffee in front of the computer scanning the exploits of various people from the world news.
(Wow, there is a lot of weird stuff going on in the world and I’m grateful that my awareness of it is limited.)
About the time I confirm not much has changed and the world is a totally crazy place, I shower, shave and get dressed then I’m out the door.
Then I have one more really nice thing to deal with.
The roads are pretty much mine.
Most mornings I catch green lights all the way to the freeway, and then I’m cruising at 80 on an empty road to work. 4AM seems to be the only time anymore that the freeways live up to their name.
I make it to work, after catching green lights all the way from the freeway exit.
Most mornings when I get to work, I’ll park next to a large open field and usually there is enough time to kill the engine of the car and just sit, listening to the rustling of various creatures ending their nocturnal foraging. I’ll catch sight of some of the denizens of the night and for a little while be reconnected to the “real” world, the world of life and simple needs.
Then it’s time to return to the world of man. The complexities, artificially generated problems, and anxieties that come with civilization.
I’ve come to realize that I look forward to my morning solitude. I like not dealing with throngs of people. My morning “quiet” helps me get through my workday. When I leave in the afternoon, I’m often stuck in traffic but even that traffic is nothing like the insanity of the 5 o’clock rush hour.
The term “Rush hour” itself has little meaning. I think it should be called parking hours. In the “O’Dark” hours it takes me 20 minutes to get to work. In the afternoon, it often takes me over an hour to cover the same distance.
By the time I get home, I’m not terribly interested in doing much of anything. I’m tired and drug out from talking to anxious people all day long, topped off by avoiding the inattentive clueless people who are supposed to be paying attention while they’re driving.
I’ll try to recapture the silence and solitude of the morning.
I’m in transition here. It’s generally healthy and I think I’m laying the foundation to be able to decide what I really want and what I don’t.
I’m calling it progress.
Take some time to smell the roses, look up from your toils and ask yourself; “What am I doing? Is this what I really want, and if not, what can I do to change it?”
You might be surprised at the answer.
I’m so German!
There must be order!
So the new job is rocking along. But after spending 6 weeks learning the rules and how things are supposed to be done.
I’ve been spending weeks learning how things are really done. The latter is basically a series of exceptions to the rules and those exceptions have exceptions depending on who you talk to and the phase of the moon.
There is always a certain amount of fiddle factor in any job, but here its like everything is fiddle factor and nothing is actually a real rule. Except when it is.
The problem for me is that I tend to gravitate toward the baseline rules and then deviate from the baseline when logic says it’s the rational thing to do because “in this particular situation, the rules weren’t built to accommodate the exception.” SO based on common sense… I work around the rules and can defend WHY I deviated.
Here, everything is an exception, the rules are guidelines at best, which are differentially or preferentially enforced, and at worst the rules are right out the window. However, like laws which no longer apply to the reality of life they stay on the books and can be selectively enforced to punish or just really fuck up your day.
That’s where I am now.
I hate not having real policies and procedures!
I’m German…
Can of worms…
I’ve been watching with some amusement, the bathroom wars.
This morning I found myself pondering the question raised by our willingness to accept and give people privileges based on what they identify as.
A man identifies as a woman, and even though he has “boy parts” decides he needs to use the womens bathroom.
Okay. Fine!
What do we do when someone identifies as Klingon? Or a Vampire? Or a Werewolf? Or Predator?
Do we afford these people special status?
What happens when someone who identifies as a Klingon, and lives a life of Klingon honor and follows a warrior code, is insulted by someone and decides to settle the matter in a very Klingon way?
How about followers of the old Norse religions? Odin took a dim view of people who insulted him.
What about followers of Poseidon, or Ares, or Zeus?
Will “I identify as X, Y, or Z” stand up in court?
We seem to be somewhat willing to bury Islamic honor killings as “Cultural”.
What happens when someone who identifies as Klingon to the core of their being, takes someone’s head off with a Bat’leth because they were insulted? How will we deal with the children of people who identify as Klingon? Will we permit them to carry knives in school?
Would a “Klingon” honor killing, or trial by combat also be justified as “Cultural”? How about a Klingon rite of passage where a 16 year old was repeatedly shocked with cattle prods instead of painsticks by the adults in his or her family? Would that be classified as abuse of a minor, or Cultural acceptance, welcoming the child into adulthood?
Klingons may indeed be fictitious beings, but given that there is a complete Klingon language, code of behavior, code of honor, and the typically swift justice of a warrior race. Would someone who completely gave themselves over to the Klingon ideal, in fact be a Klingon or just nuts?
I could make an equally strong case that ALL world religions and cultures are as made up as Klingons. This begs the question why would one belief structure be more valid than the next? Why would one group’s identity be more respected than then next?
If someone decides they identify as a member of the Predator species and begins hunting in the forests of our nation, when they rip out someone’s spine are they guilty of murder or just following their cultural imperative?
I guess my point is, once we start allowing “Identify as“ to dictate what we’re willing to accept or worse yet willing to take into account during adjudication then we open a Pandora’s box of effects that must inevitably lead to anarchy.
Let’s close Pandora’s box.
Let’s focus on the problems at hand in our society, close ranks, and define what we as a society are, and are not willing to accept. We cannot be all things to all people and we shouldn’t try.
Let’s once again blindfold justice and apply all the rules equally to all the people.
If someone from a foreign culture or religion doesn’t like the way we do things… well there’s a whole wide world of other countries in which they can choose to live, and planes leave most airports every hour.
New Feet
I didn’t really need to spend the money. Well… I DID, but I’d have preferred to wait a while longer.
The tires on the car were feeling mushy in the curves and I don’t even want to talk about the squirrelly way the car performed on the wet San Diego freeways.
I’d been putting it off and when I pulled into the driveway Tuesday afternoon I could easily see that the rear tired were getting scalloped in the inside edges. Okay… its time!
Having an accident would be way more expensive than simply fixing the problem.
So here I am, having found my trusted tire guys after their move and they got tires for me with one day notice.
It’s nice to do business with folks that you know… What was really funny is that when I gave them the license plate, they remembered the car much more than they remembered me. Funny how that works with car guys…
So once I have my new tires… I’m heading to SD early. I’m already about halfway there from home. rather than mess with the drive back to the mountain and then dealing with traffic on the way back to SD, this just makes better sense.
I’ll be at work tomorrow and should get a decent nights sleep so that I’m ready for the “joys” that will befall me in the coming week.
I hope your upcoming weekend is a good one.
The new feet feel great! The ride is smoother and the clutch even feels better. I’m wondering if the funkiness in the clutch was because of the tires not gripping very well. In anycase it was money I’d rather not have spent just yet, but based on the improvement and the fact that my car feels like it’s riding on rails again… I guess I’m glad I did it.