My Warranty Is Up

I really have nothing to complain about except aerosol hair paint.

I'm starting to think my body was only equipped with a thirty-year warranty. Some tell-tale signs are starting to show. For starters, in the last 16 months, I have been to a health care professional 10 times. To me, that seems like a lot. Especially since you can count the number of times I have been to the doctor in 10 years on one finger. Also, my 40-time is much slower and I have to stretch before I wake up.

It sucks though...I have never had a solid doctor (much less three) on-call for my well-being. Yeah, I am complaining about this. This is just another black note pushing me toward a cardiologist and more drugs in my cabinet than hair products.

This is just one of the crappy things I am just not a big fan of as I get older. I don't like hernia surgery. I don't like spending more on dental work than computer hardware. I don't like sitting in waiting rooms with screaming children--and the nurses warn me not to schedule appointments on certain days.

Okay, sure, I am wailing about a necessary evil, but it exacerbated by not doing anything for a good two decades. And now I am paying for it. Lame.

Of course, the delayed muscle soreness, bitching about a hard day of yoga and not having the same lung capacity for my waning libido has nothing to do with me going to doctors all the time. Apparently, that's normal. Just as normal as swine flu. Wait, what? Okay, I might need to schedule another appointment. And yes, I will stop complaining.

I really have nothing except some Lessons Learned...

LL, my three things...
1) I know how my dad felt when I played high school football: proud of accomplishments yet knowing I wasn't going to go pro in anything except a career. The footage below is proof of such knowledge.

2) Manu is the most important Spur.
3) I am really, REALLY, hating SAV right now. How can you flag a legitimate Microsoft file on one machine and leave it alone on 22 other machines? Piece of shoe!

I have to say, this is my lamest post in my career at P30P. It will never happen again. Now if I can only get my CONTRIBUTORS to chime in every once in a while. That's right CONTRIBUTORS...I am speaking to you. Talk later.

The Beauty of Democracy

National politics are so much easier to understand.

As noted, I live 27°44′34″N 97°24′7″W. And last weekend was Election Day for mayor and city council. For the last three years, no matter how large or small, when "political campaign" is in a sentence, "change" is automatically installed. This election period was no different. I don't want to call it sour grapes, but none of my agents for change won any seats or positions available. So, naturally, skepticism has already set in and the new administration does not get sworn in until next month. But skepticism is uncomfortably floating toward fear...and I have my reasons.

We now rejoin the link party, already in progress

Okay, let's be fair and say the last two years with The Chief, the Beach Boys, Nelda, Bill and the rest of the council (some that have trouble with attendance than others, and you know who you are) have been, to be gentle, a little rough. The plus side is they pushed one huge bond in 2008 while working out 2004 bond money and road projects. On top of that, they apparently saved the gulf beaches from themselves. This group made if possible to "keep your beach" and freely drive on the waterfront, curtailing any and all beach resort and real estate development. Yeah, it's local government, it's not glamorous stuff like budgeting for humanitarian aid, but infrastructure has to be kept up somehow. However, all of these 1-run victories in the preseason never made up for the major league losses with Memorial Coliseum debate and constant balking. Not to mention their final swan song--the swan apparently shot in midflight--the smoking ordinance-wait-non-ordinance (more on that garbage on a future post).

Sitting on the public hot potato known at the MC, this motivated enough "change agents" to mobilize and push for their name as the "right" representative. It's pretty bad when a building, deteriorating at every cold front and tropical weather event, takes more precedence than population shift (as opposed to boom), a consistent lack of high-tech and bio-medical careers and a hesitance from young professionals to either stay or be active in community building. No, a building that hosted Metallica 25 years ago is going to be the sticking point for local politicians. Yes, I know all the candidates spoke of these continuing issues, it was just the MC stealing all the soundbites.

Last Saturday, 16% of Corpus Christians mobilized and selected a local real estate mogul, two title company executives, one former title company owner, and a banker. Two of the council winners are re-treads (ergo, they were previously responsible for the state we are in now). The fear jumps out when you have four of the nine in some version of real estate with one ingrained with real estate business. There's your majority. And there's your "change agents". Sure, you throw out the pro-growth messages and policy speeches while campaigning. But why does this new group give me this nauseous feeling that the pro-growth will just line their wallets with their day jobs as opposed to giving everyone in the city the same opportunity?

By the way, you can stop patting your back about 16%...of the registered voters, not the whole population.

There are only going to be two things this administration does within it's life span to make me...appeased. If not, the moment I get the chance, I am so out of here like parachute pants. First thing's first, blow up the Memorial Coliseum. Quit playing prospectors. Quit outsmarting yourselves. The majority of the newbies are IN real estate. Everyone knows by now the ideas, pipe dreams and consultants are all on fumes. Just blow it up already. It's prime land. Someone with a great idea to draw people in will come (until Las Brisas scares everyone away). Just resist the temptation of rebranding. It wasn't that cool when it was the primary venue anyway. Move on. Second, fire Angel Escobar. You heard me. The city engineer should have never been in the hunt in the first place. The one city employee that escapes the city-wide water boil notice debacle, and the dude is running the whole effing city? And with two very solid and experienced candidates for the job, the council runs this bait and switch, literally? The clear message would be, "okay, this last council and mayor was a bunch of clueless brother-in-laws that their actions will not continue." Now, the Las Brisas issue is another hornet's nest that sounds like the silver bullet to all our job and economic woes. It's not. Train Wreck will take care of this one for me. Besides, it's they can't have a hearing on it in Austin, a single piece of rebar won't move until the arguments are finished. So, just do those two things, and it will build some confidence (at least with me). Now, this doesn't have to be done at swear-in. There is no real time table for that. Just do it. Those two big moves will remove the sarcastic quotation marks from "change agents".

So, we wait until the fear subsides or gets excellerated to anger. Mayor-Elect Adame was playing with the MC ideas after his win on KIII-TV 3 (of course, if Channel 3 had a webmaster worth a damn, I would point you to this discussion, but I will paraphrase) , departing from the current HappyFunLandHappyTime proposal to creating an "olympic" swim center to [surprise] creating a smaller venue for the hockey team...the hockey team Councilman-Elect Brent Chesney is currently a minority owner. And we wait, and see if Mr. Adame is sounding like this former city employee four years from now.

Enough about politics. Lessons Learned...my three things:
1) Getting sick takes practice...practice to get better and how to take care of yourself in an abbreviated state. If you don't get sick, there's no need to practice. I never get sick. And we are talking about practice.
2) Uninterrupted, the second generation iPod Shuffle (2GB) can roll on full battery life for ten straight hours on shuffle mode. Spring cleaning tested that variable.
3) I hate it when The Lovely is in a place that is cooler than where I am currently at. We spent ANOTHER weekend separated. This time around, she came back refreshed and I arrived appreciating my teammate and drinking buddy.

Okay, one last pop-shot and I will call it an entry: the smoking ban (referenced above) is about the most gutless move I have seen in a while. Corpus is not special. The rest of the major metropolitan areas in the state have pulled this trigger. Yet, the council wants to talk about it more? As I mentioned about Train Wreck, we may not need the pandering...the state may just make the decision for us. C'mon Corpus. Parachute pants! Talk later.

How Not To Live Angry

Yes, it was good to relax.

So, midweek was as stressful as it gets. Granted, we weren't tracking North Korea's "satellite" program. But we were watching Conficker.C. Unlike my Apple brethren, we actually had to track it. The big kaboom never came even though the threat is no where near over. To exacerbate the stress level, April Fool's Day featured probably the worst timed joke in recent history.

To illustrate how bad this joke was, I am going to state it in the form of a CompTIA exam question:
You are a floor manager of a funeral home. One of the five viewing rooms has been shut down due to a threat of formaldehyde contamination. All the rooms were checked with the same threat when someone at one of the viewing rooms was complaining of the status of a corpse. Under further inspection, the body was moving DURING THE VIEWING. When finding out the night undertakers were responsible for the "gag", who should the floor manager kill first?

White hot rage could describe my reaction. As a matter of fact, I needed the rest of the day for mental wellness. God bless that distinction. So, bad timing quickly dissolved to good timing. I had Friday off for a travel day. Nothing to get your mind off of work than crossing state lines. The Lovely and I scheduled a trip to Shreveport. I'm not really sure how this all worked out, but it was a brilliant stroke of serendipity.

Why Shreveport, you ask? To make a long story short, we have family friends that were entrenched in our wedding and embedded in The Lovely's history and future. Also, we needed an update on "the three step process" and we wanted to see how the two kiddos were doing as well. The cherry on top was that I have never been to Shreveport and Ark-LA-Tex just sounds like an interesting place to drink Abita.

After defrosting in a different zip code 466 miles away, all the stress and rage and bullshit just withered away. Granted, watching a four year old and a two year old build forts from couch cushions can change anyone's focus...or can it? Sure, Wednesday sucked. If I was any younger or more stubborn, the anger would have bled into the rest of my consciousness. Ultimately, the "job satisfaction" tag would have to be removed. But, I learned something huge this weekend: I have to step back. If I don't step back, I am as good as my former horrible self and as entrapped as some closed-minded old dude with zero flexibility. In other words, I'm bad or I do not grow...which is the whole point of this maturity mission.

So, I took a breath, stepped back, and feel encouraged for the next week. I feel like I grew a little. Not so much "grow up", but discovered some new information that will make my life fuller and more complete. And just like computer worms, employment and intra-personal communications, knowledge is power.

Lessons Learned (in addition to the big one), my three things:
1) With local and major daily newspapers fighting to stay above water and maintain functionality and production, you wouldn't think a periodical's website would pimp exclusive stories while leaving the print version sparse with content and thoughtful editorial and news copy. That's like bragging about your amputated foot as a diabetic. Not a good move, Crawler.com.
2) Abita only made 1000 cases of Strawberry Lager. What a tease.
3) When driving out of Texas, you absolutely know when the state line changes. I don't know if it's the atmosphere, the altitude, the twang or the proliferation of the Stars and Bars, you just know. It's just a feeling, like humidity or accidentally crapping your pants.
BONUS ROUND: When parents of children (that you will be hanging out with) warn you that the kids "are sick", watch your ass. Prevention is key, but you will probably get sick. Pathogens happen, kids happen. Have fun with this kiddos, remind them to wash their hands and be ready to slug Emergen-C and green tea. Love to Aussie and P.

Speaking of "knowledge is power", looks like the Body of Christ has taken a turn for the...interesting? I don't want to say worse, because it's pretty lame to start off with, but local elections were held and I don't feel the same confidence as I do in my inner knowledge. Oh yeah, we are posting about that so only 2 people will be interested in the post. Always looking out for my readers. Talk later.