- PayPal: Customer Service wasteland. Just.Take.My.Money!
- Easy Jet’s baggage policy
- Running out of Milk for my coffee on Sunday when all the stores are closed in France
- SFR: my French cell company – sometime I have data, sometimes I don’t…
- Still hate Facebook. WAY too much Data mining!
Category: Uncategorized
Sorry for Being MIA…
I have been swamped for the last month and have not been posting. We have had friends and Family in, there have been trips for work and vacation, my J-O-B has me running in 6 directions – you name it. I will get my poop in group and post pictures from:
- A couple climbing trips
- My Son’s summer visit
- London
- Bespoke Shoe travails
- Hiking in France and Spain
- Barcelona
- Recent projects
- Stuff I am building
- Etc…
Thanks,
Matt
RIP Ezra Caldwell
Ezra was a photographer, chef, dancer, bike builder, husband, brother and son. I followed him for years on Flickr and on his various sites. He fought cancer again and again, fought it with all his might. He has passed and is now at peace.
The Tooth Fairy is now banned from my office…
I had a crown replaced seven years ago before we moved to Germany because the original was bugging me a little. The one I had put on was worse than the original and I have suffered with sensitivity since then and decided that something finally had to be done about it when it moved while I was eating – very uncool. I had it taken off, was fitted for a new porcelain crown and had a temporary put on last Monday. The difference was immediate: The temp crown felt great and the sensitivity was just gone. I really didn’t get how crappy the old crown made me feel until the new temporary one was put on. All was going great until the next Friday afternoon. I was sitting in a customer meeting and coughed a little and out popped my composite crown. HOLY KELLY CLARKSON!! The exposed nerve or whatever was going on reached down my jaw, all the way up to in front of my ear and squeezed. I tread really, really hard to make it through the meeting. I had to answer a question, air hit my exposed tooth and I had to excuse myself, post haste. Nothing says classy and professional like losing a tooth during a meeting…
I went to a dentist by my office and they couldn’t or wouldn’t put the temp back on because the “didn’t want to alter the tooth bed and affect the fit of the permanent crown…” Horseshit. My dentist was closed for a 4-day weekend, but I got through to her on her emergency number and she met me at her office 25 minutes later. She took care of it in 10 minutes, was REALLY nice about me calling on her day off and gave me some temporary cement is case it happens again before my permanent crown comes in and I can’t get a hold of her.
What I Want Thursday – 6/7/12
1. Summer! Somebody tell the weather-fairy that it in June and the thermometer on my porch notes the temperature outside is 56 degrees. JUNE!!
2. A flight booked for my son to fly out and spend some quality time this summer in Seattle.
3. An extra week of vacation this year. I want to go to Yellowstone and Hawaii and spend a month with my kids, but I am stuck with the normal “only two weeks off” vacation hole.
4. A quiet place to work at both home and at my J-O-B. It is getting harder and harder to concentrate on so many tasks with all the noise and interruptions that constantly swirl around me. I am contemplating a cardboard cubical door and a Bio-Peligrosos sign saying I have highly contagious airborne HerpieGonnaSyfalClymdiAIDs on my cube opening.
5. To take a long train trip in a private sleeper-car from Canada to Mexico.
6. A place out in the country where I can punch holes in targets. I HATE public ranges!
7. To have a shower at my J-O-B so I can bike to work.
8. A couple pairs of new dress shoes and a drawer full Smart Wool socks.
9. Affordable, quality universal health care for all – please refer to the German system.
Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs. Sent with admiration from my iPhone
So dad, I’ve been thinking…..
My son, who is deep thinker and a child that possess a vivid imagination came to me the other day and said, “Dad, we need to talk“. He had a stern and serious look on his face and he motioned to the table. I said “Alright buddy”, knowing that this was going to be good since the last time he got that look and we had to sit down, he asked me if I knew about Jesus and proselytized such that Jerry Fallwell would have been proud… He is forever coming up with the funniest and often profound little quips: like yesterday when he told my wife that he had had the same Teddy Bear for his whole life, a bear that he clutches as he sleeps every night, and that when he got married his wife would have to just deal with him sleeping with Rocky Bear.
So, we sat down, me smirking with anticipation, and he says as he furred his brow and tapped all five fingers on the table for emphasis; “Daddy, I need you to tell me the truth. It is ok, I already know so you can tell me.” I was trying not to laugh when I answered, “Of course son, what do you want to know.”
“Well, me and Hunter (his partner in crime) have been thinking (my son ruminates on things for months sometimes) and we figured it out, I know what you do.”
“Umm what exactly you mean…”
“Dad it is really ok, I know you’re a spy.”
“Bwahaha! I’m a what!? Where in blue blazes did you come up with that one?! Who exactly am I a spy for?”
“You know us, the US, the CIA, like Jason Borne.”
“Son, I am not a spy”
“Look dad, you really need to tell someone, you’ll feel better and it might as well be me.”
Still laughing: “Son, why do you think I am a spy?”
“So, you fly all over the world, speak like 11 languages, have a pretty girl, a fast car with a TURBO, can do karate moves, have cool army guns, and not even mommy knows what you do for a living.”
My boy may be over-thinking and over-estimating my cool quotient, but God love him for it.
“Son, I am not a spy. I fly a lot for work – to fix airplanes & have crappy meetings – and I only speak 2.5 languages (poorly) and a few words of others here and there. You have been to my office – it’s boring.”
“Hunter said that it was a fake office like Mr. Smith’s (my 10 year old has SO not seen Mr. & Mrs. Smith…) and that its just to trick your enemies.”
I am almost peeing myself laughing at this point and it was made worse by the seriousness and earnestness of my child.
“My enemies… Son, I am not a spy.”
“Daddy, its ok. When you are ready you can tell me. I won’t say anything to anyone.”
“Anyone except your friend Hunter…”
He raised an eyebrow at that and looked at me sideways, nodded his head knowingly and went back to playing with werewolf action figures and tormenting the dog with squeaky toys.
La Maison du Talley
This is what La Maison du Talley looked like in 1957. It was bright and sunny, there was no Compton-grade chain link fence, hedges or trees. You can see just the top of our now huge vine maple growing in the back yard. The neighbors’ homes looked neat, well cared for, and the houses share a cute little white picket fence. Our cute little home is almost 83 years old and has changed little in that time – porch made into a mudroom, new windows, siding, some paint… The original owners would have no issue at all in recognizing their home all these any years later. God only knows how many children they raised in our 2-bedroom 1-bath Seattle box. By today’s suburban standards it is a starter home that is meant for a young couple with perhaps their first child. To be sold to the same as the infant grows into preteen or before the birth of their second bundle of joy. Our home was built in an era when an entire wardrobe would fit in a suitcase, a double bed was just right for two people to sleep in, and a middle class family had one car – maybe. A time before mass consumerism and container ships made closet rooms, 5-car families, walls of shoes, man caves, and massive Barbie collections possible and attainable for a working family.
While I am grumpy with at least one of my neighbors, my current heating costs, the basement stairs, and some of responsibilities that accompany home ownership, I do have a genuine love for our house and yard. What I love most about my house and all old houses are the stories that have been told, written, and lived under their roofs. I love being a part of something greater than myself, adding to it lovingly, and having the knowledge that it will eventually pass on to another who will also add to the tale of a little old house.
We plan to live in our home for a very long time, raise some vegetables, have a couple of kids, live there, work there, relax in the yard, etc… With that in mind we are planning a few upgrades and changes that won’t change the look and feel of the place at all – they will, in fact, enhance its appeal, sense of time and place, and functionality.
Current planned projects:
Rebuild of Basement Stairs
New heat pump installation
Garage/Mother-in-law build
Egress window in basement bedroom
Master suite in the attic
Rebuild of back stairs
Three fruit trees in the back
Half bath and kitchenette in the basement
Rewire of kitchen and main floor bathroom
Extension of front yard to sidewalk
Removal of chain-link and addition of wrought iron fence
New interior paint
Misc. cabinet and trim installation
What I have become
About four years ago I woke up one morning, biked into work, had my Starbucks Tall Mocha, plopped down in front of my computer and spent the entire day drawing a satellite LMB load simulator for a terrestrial aircraft mock up lab. I ate take-out pad-Thai at my desk while drawing the wiring schematic, engaged in some Dibbert-esque banter with the engineer sitting in the next cubical, and rode my commuter-bike home listening to an audio-book on my MP3 player. Although I lived 300 steps from the Pacific Ocean, I didn’t run to catch the last sweet surf breaks before dusk or head to a beach bonfire with a six-pack and a bottle of red wine, my flip-flops going clickety-clack. Nope, I took a shower and hopped on my home computer to check CNN, e-mail, and look for the cheapest 500Watt power supply I could find for a new computer that I was building. While searching for said computer part, I accidentally popped onto an adult site. Annoyed, I clicked back and muttered about just wanting the damn part… BAM! It struck me, I am a nerd. I had been more interested in a computer part that boobies. I was horrified at what I had become and spent the next two or three months trying to prove to myself that it was only a temporary affliction and it wouldn’t leave any permanent residue. I was wrong. I have been forever tainted. Instead of fighting it now I accept that I can fix almost any electronic device, have become my entire family’s call-in computer help desk, find Weird Al Yankovic mildly amusing, and can discuss the nuance of data rate transmission with aplomb. I try to balance this new life of the geeky-stain with climbing, running, and cycling. I have a hot GGG wife and friends that pull me back in when I am seized in a fit of super-nerdy and try to discus free-market economics while drinking beer or like the time I decided to run a 10 gigabit optical line into the house for faster download times. There are no Geek/Nerd/Dork recovery meetings, no 3.14159265358979… step programs, and no pills I can take for this affliction. I will have to just live with my shame and strive for balance
