Tag Archive for 'Dad'

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Holidays

Published on November 29, 2006 in Family & Friends, Random Thoughts and Web. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Feeling generous, or really, really generous? Threadless gift certificates are always a good idea, too, especially with the big sale going on. I’m gonna work on getting the Amazon Wishlists built into this site. I tried a little bit, today, but I think it’s beyond my current mental abilities. Maybe after some more sleep.

After my sixteen hours of driving, I came home to a cold and smelly apartment, due to the food in the fridge not getting eaten and the windows being left open. Then, when I woke up and tried to get dressed, I realized that a piece of the ceiling had fallen in my closet… there was dirt and stuff everywhere. I thought I had heard something in the middle of the night, but in reality, it could’ve happened anytime in the last two weeks. I wonder if animals from the attic came down to investigate my closet.

Thanksgiving was very different this year, but definitely fun. Christmas should be fun; Sarah is going to come out and spend the weekend with me for Mom’s family feast thing. The holidays last year seemed to be all about adjusting to having them without Dad. This year, I think I’m so distracted by the move to Chicago, that I might forget to really enjoy them. The plan is to have everything cleaned out and be completely moved when I fly out there on Christmas day. Hopefully, the cleaning will go smoothly. Today was supposed to be my day to rest before cleaning, but it turned into a 12 hour workday, instead… bummer.

weird dreams

Published on April 7, 2006 in Family & Friends and Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

I was on a roll when it comes to remembering dreams last night/this morning. I never remember the whole thing, but the bits and pieces that stuck with me this morning were pretty amusing.

The last one simply proved that I watch too much sci-fi; Something about sneaking onto the an alien planet on the back of one of their ships. I remember that when I was on the back bumper, or whatever, of the ship, I was talking to someone, and looking at some sort of computer monitor mounted back there. Then I saw some little compartments and asked whoever I was talking to if the driver might see some kind of “Trunk Ajar” warning. I opened one of the little ones, and it was pressurized, and then the computer monitor went out. We flew into a hangar with a giant pool of water instead of a floor and I jumped off the ship into the water. I guess I managed to hide down there and avoid a couple close calls. I don’t remember how, but I got out and into the main building. There were aliens and humans there, but the humans seemed to be slaves or pets or something. The aliens did almost everything by telepathy or telekinesis, but it wasn’t a special skill of theirs because I immediately started developing telepathic abilities as soon as I started talking with people. I also used these new and developing abilities to learn the language on their computer consoles. Then came the funny part. I was reading about the schematics for the planned Alien version of the iPod. The main changes were the user interface being changed from the click wheel thing to some sort of telekinetic thing. I think I was either planning on using the iPod to somehow destroy them or somehow use the information about the conversion process from click-wheel to telepathic interface. I dunno, ’cause i woke up.

Before that one, I had a sorta funny one about death, or some sort of Beetlejuice-like waiting room… except cleaner and sort of like a bank. We were under the impression that getting out the door would mean that we were alive again… and there was some hints about getting out of the waiting room during some past encounter. This time around, we apparently hadn’t really died anyway. We had just gone there to try and convince someone to let our superhero friend come back to life. Our idea was that since he had died in costume, we could just leave the costume and the superhero dead and let the secret identity live. I dunno how that one that one ended either.

The first time I woke up, I remembered a dream unlike any I’ve had lately. It was a very strange dream that I don’t remember much from, but the two or three pieces of information I retained were weird. The first is that my Dad was dead. My dad’s been alive in a lot of my dreams, lately. Usually having something to do with cars. But this time it was him dead, or dying, and it had something to do with a car accident (which is probably how we all expected him to die someday). The only other thing I remember is some other woman being very angry that we occupied a surgeon for him when whoever she was there for needed one.

Waking up three times during the morning and remembering dreams probably isn’t the sign of the best sleep cycle ever. I didn’t happen to check the clock after any of them.

it must get better

Published on February 10, 2006 in Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Break-downs, losing my mind, freak-outs. I’d like to take this time, when I feel sort of stable and write down some of the thoughts that crossed my mind today during a conversation about losing one’s mind. I am reminded of three major events which might be called break-downs. There were other smaller events, but these are the ones that pop into my head. I can look back at them now, in a sort of detached way, for some reason… maybe enough time has passed that I just don’t feel like that person anymore… or maybe that last break-down really did take that person away.

The first one, the earliest, was my second semester at UMASS. I had stopped playing music (for the first time in years), in an attempt to bring my grades up. It was a tremendous failure. I was truly addicted to music and performance and I was just realizing it for the first time. My roommate had left to go live with some friends in another dorm… so I had no one to tell me how crazy I was getting… and there was no one to kick my ass out of bed. I had been down before, a little depressed, not up to doing certain things… but this was extreme. I wasn’t up to getting up. I spent whole days in bed, whole weeks in my room. The bathroom was only a few steps out of my room, and I had a fully stocked micro-fridge. This was, of course, after I decided that I was not going to finish the semester and was going to leave school for an undetermined amount of time. This breakdown probably lasted about a month and a half. I know I spent a little time outside before the semester ended… I even went to the last couple classes I cared about.

The second time I lost my mind was the most fun. It was completely induced by a combination of my physical condition and being completely stir-crazy. I was working at an after-school day care in Woonsocket and I contracted Chicken Pox from the kids. I didn’t realize it until I was down in Baltimore for a gig with Mark, but that’s a story for another day. When I finally got home and figured out what I had, I was given some big blue pills and told to stay home for a couple weeks. I got myself all set up at home with enough food and supplies that I didn’t have to leave for a couple weeks… ready to start the recovery. I didn’t realize how long the itching and fever would last, though. It’s much worse as an adult than as a child apparently. Two weeks dragged by, the TV and Computer and such grew old in the first couple days… so I just sat and thought, and itched, and fevered. And by the time I wasn’t contagious anymore, I was completely wacked out. I wasn’t in my right mind… I’m not sure what had happened, exactly. But I took almost an extra week to get myself back into a work-worthy state of mind.

The third and most recent incident was that long set of circumstances I call “last year.” The whole year, really. At the beginning of the year, my lowest income season, I lost my roommates and became very, very poor… Got some new roommates, and they helped the money situation a little bit. I also joined a band with them, and the combination of wanting that band to be really a really good time and some general job dissatisfaction led to a mini melt-down where I abandoned my hyper-focus on work and decided to “live a little.” That led to falling in love… which led to driving 800 miles to get dumped… which led to some “curl up in a ball on the couch for a few hours every day for a month” depression. The logical course of action would have been to go back to my hyper-focus lifestyle, but at that point, I couldn’t even focus enough to continue playing in the bands I was in. So I limped along, and just about the time I had given up on trying to figure out how to get back to that lifestyle I missed and try to learn how to live without the ability to focus the way I used to, my Dad fell into a coma and then died.

UMASS was a learning experience, which I unfortunately didn’t take in completely, since I went back to school after a year off, only to fail out again. The Chicken Pox were a hellish experience that proved to me that I couldn’t ever really be a hermit/shut-in. But “last year” didn’t teach me much of anything. I already knew about all these eccentricities I have in regards to life and love. Alright, so some of the last year was fun, but I feel like I paid dearly for those fun times by losing my focus and not having it at times when I really needed to have it. What it has left me with, is a nasty inability to focus and nasty little freak-out sessions when I try. I don’t know how to explain it, but when I try to focus on something intensely, the way I used to focus on just about everything, I freeze up. I don’t know what to call it: Mini panic attacks? Mind moving a million miles an hour? Inability to function and communicate? I dunno. It sucks though. Does it get worse from here? Do we lose a little more with each episode?

Again. I may not be 100% … but just the fact that I can look back at all this and have some perspective is progress. Perspective is something I used to be good at. It’s something I used to offer my friends… I gave up offering actual advice because no one ever took it, but I gave my perspective and was asked for it quite a bit, since it was usually so different.

low tolerance to everything

Published on January 25, 2006 in Random Thoughts. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

had trouble sleeping, so I gave in and took some of whatever Sara’s big funny bottle has in it. I don’t have to do anything tomorrow that warrants a good night’s sleep… maybe it was just all the peer pressure. I think the last time I took something for a headache, it had lasted all day… this time I held out for about three days. Am I torturing myself? Possibly… but I don’t think I have any issues of self-abuse. In fact, I think of medication as a form of self-abuse. Putting things into your body that drastically and unnaturally change your mood or senses just seems wrong. I don’t know why I even started drinking caffeine again… no, wait, I do know – smelling all the coffee in the coffeehouses was too much for me, I really like coffee.

I’m sorry that I haven’t written much lately. I’ve been distracted by life and headaches and TV. I’ve actually had a lot on my mind that I should be writing down. It’s always helped me sort things out when I write them down. I have a little conversation with myself… in writing. I used to have conversations in notebooks with my friends all the time. It started, I think, at a live music venue in Worcester… because it either would have been rude to talk or it was too loud to really hear each other. Either way, we found that while I was not so good at communicating verbally, I was excellent at saying exactly what I was feeling if I was writing it down. I think I still have some of those old notebooks at my Mom’s house… though I’m not sure where they would be. I was just in the closet in my old room the other day, looking for Super Nintendo stuff, and I pulled out a couple boxes full of books, tapes, CDs, pictures and such… but only one notebook was there, and I didn’t see any conversations in it. I did get better at communicating verbally over the years, but I think I’m still better in writing, especially when talking to myself.

So what’s on my mind? Well, the magical financial security is about to run out, I fear. It was very, very unusual to have enough money to pay all the bills and such this winter. The last two years, this was certainly my lowest income period… and I was fully expecting to let some bills slip to the point of being on the verge of cancellation. Then paying them off with tax returns or by selling something again. The gas bill was the logical target, since they can’t turn that off, by law, in the winter. But the winter’s not over… and my foolish spending / debt repayment has cut into my savings drastically.

What else? Inadequacy. Once again, I fear that I am trying to fit myself into something that I don’t fit into. I am different and usually I accept and embrace and enjoy that… but there are times when I try to interact with the rest of the world and it becomes extremely apparent to me, if not everybody else, that my differences might just be too much to make this work. School was the big obvious one. I focus on one thing and do it very well, and school wanted me to be well-rounded. I was not willing or able to change to make school work. Relationships have been the other big failure. I don’t feel the same way other people do. I still believe in the separation of friendship/familiarity, sexual attraction and mate selection. I still don’t put any faith in the concept of Love tyeing those three together in a neat little package and I certainly don’t enjoy the romantic games that have been attached over the last 4-500 years. The difference is that I’ve tried, in the past, to change my thinking, or at least play along, to make relationships work… but they never do. And I’m never the one dissatisfied with it, because I never expect anything from it. It’s always been a choice to share time together and do things together and for one another, but never really anything more. I don’t have a role for someone else to fill, I don’t feel motivated by needs to be filled and I don’t give the relationship a life of its own. It’s always somewhat of a shock to me when someone wants to end a relationship with me. I’m so bad at it… and yet I still find myself trying. And I hurt people, and I get hurt.

I wish I had talked to Dad more. I know we would’ve argued, I’m almost positive of it, but we never really had any serious philosophical discussions. He was a very cerebral and brilliant guy and I wish that I had bounced these ideas off of him… not so much for advice, but just opinions or analysis. I know he once said that he didn’t like the “dark” and “existential” stuff that was on my website, and I tried a little bit to get him to expand on what parts, but I didn’t really dig too far. I know I told him in the middle of a heated argument about my grades in high school that I truly didn’t care what other people thought of me… and, in an effort to appeal to his interests, I got him a book about the international monetary system that had a kind of existential tinge to it… but we never discussed it. He probably hated it. But I would’ve liked to hear that from him and talk to him about it.

Wow, I babble quite a bit when I’m on drugs… even over-the-counter pain medications. I don’t believe in censorship, though, even when I’m drugged up… so, I’m gonna title this entry something about my low tolerance to drugs. Did you know that I title my entries after I write them? yep… almost always. Now you know. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be making the headache go away, yet, but I think I can sleep, now. I hate to think that I might have to call a doctor about this…

Something else I’ve been avoiding

Published on December 30, 2005 in Family & Friends, Music, Random Thoughts and Work. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

The year is ending. This has been sort of a disaster of a year for me and I’ve been reluctant to try to sum it all up. I guess now is as good a time as any though, so I can’t be accused of waiting until the absolute last minute.

From the girls moving out… to the guys moving in… to the guys moving out… it has been a revolving door down in Woonsocket. It’s never really been a stable place, but this is a lot of people in and out, around me, in one year. It’s been quite difficult, especially financially. But Sara has proven to be a great roommate, and hopefully the revolving door has stopped spinning for a while.

Early in the year, I felt some general dissatisfaction with my job, at least parts of it, and left the after-school day care, probably for good. Again, probably not a good financial move, as the position had pretty steady hours. It also put me in a weird position with some of the people I enjoyed working for (i just wasn’t enjoying the work). But the teen center is a good position, too, and I definitely enjoy it as much or more than the asdc. And I still have the team building/ropes and Andy to look forward to in the good weather.

These changes and general dissatisfaction with things in the winter led to a change in my overall lifestyle… by the spring, I was totally immersed in hanging out with friends as much as possible and “living.” Seriously, I cut my hair… this was drastic. I even rekindled an old love… but that didn’t really end up going so well. And what I thought was the logical course of action, going back to my old kind of lifestyle, didn’t go so well, either. So I found myself stuck in this foreign mindset and unable to focus very well. It was pretty depressing. I’ve started to be OK with where my head is at now, though, and have, at least, stopped agonizing and trying to figure it all out all day.

A bunch of stuff happened musically. I started getting into new music and rediscovering old music with the help of my Sirius radio. It’s been fun to really dig into artists’ catalogs and soak it all in. I did a lot of playing this year, too. Snakes was pretty active and when the guys moved in, I was involved in the beginnings of a new musical project with them, called Das Happening. Playing was fun and was really fun when I injected that does of “live a little” into my life. One of the reasons I wanted to do that was to try to recapture how fun it used to be when I played in Just For Sundae, back in the day. Unfortunately, with that breakdown and the lack of focus afterwards, playing was really difficult and not fun, because I couldn’t devote enough focus to it to do it as well as I wanted to… so I stopped playing. I dunno if, or when, I’ll be able to enjoy playing again.

The bands were not the only thing that was difficult to deal with because of my weird state of mind… I was definitely not in the best mental state when my Dad’s condition sent him into a coma and eventually took his life. Fortunately, there was a lot of family around, but I don’t feel like I was very helpful to any of them, the way that they were for me.

Those are the major events. Throw in the usual car troubles, computer breakdowns & hard drive failures, web host problems & web site moves/rebuilds, financial woes, blog-hopping, making a couple new friends & reconnecting with some old ones and you have my 2005. I’ve never really thought of the new year as a time to start over, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a year with so much stuff I’d rather just put behind me and forget about, either. Bring on 2006.

39 years later… some pictures were taken

Published on December 1, 2005 in Family & Friends and Photo. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .


Maybe just a little ironic that the inspiration to take the camera out tonight was some photo paper that expired in 1966. We found it in the garage at Mom’s while we were cleaning stuff out. It was not too far from an envelope of letters, cards and postcards from all of Mom’s old penpals. We lined up one of the guys who did some mechanic work for me & Dad, and who has a ramp truck, to take most of the cars out of our way, starting with the ones in the garage. So we started to get rid of the stuff behind the cars so the garage could really be usable for the winter. Cleaning the garage is a huge job. There’s a lot of trash in there and a lot of… not-trash. Mom wants to have a yard sale at some point, so we can’t just toss everything, as tempting as it is. Yard sales are fun, if we really get everything out and organized it’ll be a HUGE sale, I’m sort of excited thinking about it.

We used to have a yard sales on Columbus Day weekend. It was a big event and we went all out getting stuff prepared. Dad would advertise in all the local rags with some very detailed information on some of the collectibles and antiques that we had. We’d also go out and put signs on all sorts of poles around town… and the next town over. We had the whole driveway, which is huge, set up as selling grounds, as well as the “inside garage” (the previous owner of the house had the garage turned into an enclosed room). That room held all the real cool stuff that we’d collected from various auctions and flea markets and such. We sort of cleared a couple aisles through all the stuff and let people wander on through. Sometimes, we had bidding wars. I think we even sold a couple cars at those yard sales. I remember getting to keep the money that my old toys brought in… even though that was sort of ridiculous, since they were all bought by Mom and Dad. We served cider and coffee and some sort of food. I broke out that ridiculous metal change counter thing that you wore on a belt; Coins would get jammed in it and I would get flustered.

Anyway, I took some pictures of the photo paper and Death_Machine and some random stuff around my room and posted them all in the Objects gallery.

while we have time, let us do good

Published on November 27, 2005 in Family & Friends and moBlog. Closed Tags: , .

The stone is in. the epitaph fits him.
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time slows down

Published on November 27, 2005 in Family & Friends and Work. Closed Tags: , , , , .

When in Dudley, time is irrelevant. It simply does not move correctly. You notice it only after hours have passed, but somehow it seems like twice as many hours should have passed since the last time you checked the time… and you find yourself checking the time far less often. I had absolutely no concept of what time it was from about 11am until about 8pm. It’s not that there weren’t clocks all around me, right in front of me, even. I just had no desire to find out what time it was. There is no sense of urgency here. It is dampened by some unknown force.

I have no idea when I’m working… I forgot to write it down. oops. I guess I’ll call? I’m glad I get a few hours on the rock wall here and there through the winter. At the very least, it keeps my hands in practice for belaying at the ropes course in the spring. I really miss the team-building during the winter… though, I am sort of looking forward to all the down-time, even if it does cripple me, financially.

Our first holiday without Dad has passed. It was weird. There was a lot of stuff that I almost felt obligated to do/be in Dad’s absence, especially when we hosted Mom’s side of the family here. I tried not to dwell on it too much. Mom did a good job and we had a good night and great dinner. Visiting with Dad’s side was interesting, too. Definitely felt different.

Dreaming up a good mix CD

Published on November 26, 2005 in Computers, Family & Friends and Web. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

this weird CPU usage/lagging thing is really starting piss me off. All I really know is that it only happens when I’m playing something with audio and reinstalling the audio drivers seems to speed up the login process. I guess the next step is to completely remove the drivers and reinstall from scratch… one piece at a time, testing between each install. And if necessary, set up a separate hardware profile to install them separately. It seems crazy… especially since the drivers for the internal and external audio devices lived harmoniously for so long. Technically, if I can get things working with just the internal, I’d be happy, because the only thing the external gives me is surround sound and some inputs. The inputs I have on Death_Machine, and the surround, too… though I probably would want to use this machine for gaming over that one… but I’m not a gamer, so who cares?

After my last victory[/hack] with the plugins on this site, I decided that a nice little list of all the things I’ve added and tweaked would be cool… which is when I found the “plugins used plugin.” What a great idea. So I made this page which lists all the active plugins. I’m using almost all of them. Not really using the Tags at all, but maybe in a couple months, or when they’re good and out of style, I’ll check out what a Tag cloud for this site looks like.

In exciting family news, tomorrow morning is the big vehicle-swap. We drive the old beater to the Nissan dealership and drive home in the nice shiny minivan. I’ll be sure to take some pictures… even if they’re only with my phone. Grandpa is actually purchasing the vehicle, and it will be used primarily for moving him around, but it’s still very exciting to be getting a reliable and fairly new vehicle in the family. It’s been 10 years since we got anything close to new. Dad was an awesome used car shopper, but he was also willing to deal with keeping an older car in shape more than Mom really has time to be. We’re doing that fairly early, so I’m sleeping in the lonely little bed downstairs in Dudley again. And it’s about time to head there.

has decided that an appropriate prize for being the closest guess on the penny jar dollar amount would be [another] mix CD. I will get to work on that immediately. Feel free to make suggestions.

not so black friday

Published on November 25, 2005 in Family & Friends, Random Thoughts and Work. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

I already ruined that fasting all of Friday thing… cause someone who’s awesome did all the dishes when they came home and I simply couldn’t resist the urge to dirty one and have a bowl of cereal. Maybe I should walk to work to burn off all this over-eating. That would only take …hours and hours, in the cold; No, that’s not gonna happen.

More food tomorrow… but not before I go work for a while, then stay in Dudley tonight, then get up early in the morning to take my Mom and my grandfather to the Nissan dealership to pick up their new minivan. YAY! A reliable car for mom, and one that Dad can’t ruin! Then, once that’s safely home, we can start preparing for her side of the family to come over for dinner. I think she said she was gonna do pork, since everyone had Turkey yesterday…. mmmm, pork.

There were two years in the past where I worked a retail job on this day of the year and it’s not fun… you think shopping is hectic, today? Try being the guy who’s supposed to keep the shelves stocked. Especialy when your shelves are actually stacks of VCRs, TVs, computers, stereos, etc., in the middle of the aisles. I believe the wheels of my two-wheel dolly were actually warm to the touch a couple hours into the shopping day. If I can help it, I’ll never work retail in this season, again… of course, we have yet to see if the teen center hours will cover my expenses. It’s kinda nice to not even consider shopping today, since I have no money :)

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