Day One-hundred-and-forty-one: No real progress

I'd say that I don't know where the day went, but I do. I went out to mail a couple things, including the reviews I completed over the weekend and didn't want to go back to my house. So I did what any other good person with time on their hands might do, I went shopping. I hoped to get two things but Bed Bath and Beyond only had one of them. One of several people at the store who ask if they could help me, suggested that I could order what I was looking for online. I declined because that was something I could do at home and I didn't want to be at home. After Bed Bath and Beyond, I almost headed home but noticed a Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Bookstores are more my kind of shopping anyway. After browsing through a number of sections, I did finally find something to buy. Shopping without buying is not fun, but it would have killed about the same amount of time. I'd say that procrastinating is my way of Life after Layoff, but I'm sure I've already used that tag line. If I were more organized in my Life after Layoff, I would have a separate searchable record that I could use to make sure that each entry has a different use of my Life after Layoff tag. (Now I'm sure that there is one somewhat unique use in this paragraph. It is getting harder.)

I'm still waiting on a few confirmations of addresses so I can send out my first and potentially last Christmas Newsletter. I need to get started because I do have to sign them at least. I'm hoping I don't have more than 99 to send unless I have plenty of time to buy more of the same paper and envelopes. Right now I'm exactly on ninety. Since I was using my wife's address book, there may be some aliases and old addresses. I also checked out MyFamily.com. Not only did I not recognize all the names of my cousins, some of the names I recognized had addresses that I knew to be wrong. That site still has my oldest sister still living with my parents, which for readers that don't know the whole story isn't quite like it reads. For a time after her house burned down she stayed with her parents. Obviously this time covered when this address was entered. Besides, it was their old P.O. Box address, not their new number and road address.

I just had a horrible thought. She didn't have all her addresses in the address book I used. I don't even know where the other book is, nor where the lists she used may be. As I won't be home, I won't even get to see who I've inadvertently left off by seeing who sends me cards. Maybe I will have to write another Christmas Letter, a belated one for mailing the end of January. Maybe there should be a tie in to 1099's and W2's because that is when people really need a pick up that the spirit of Christmas can bring. That is the time they realize how little they made in the previous year or realize just how much the government is taking of it.

I've had about five meals today. More, smaller meals are supposed to be better for you but I'm a gradualist. I'm working on half of it at a time. The first half, "more," is the baby step. I'll work on smaller a meal at a time. At least it was all good food.

I think I'm done here, at least for today. I only have a few more things I can do this week. Unfortunately they are lengthy time consuming things. Next Wednesday and Thursday will be especially busy as I will need to cook and clean before I can leave.

Day One-hundred-and-forty: Productive Mondays

Wow! I'd be impressed with myself if I hadn't so many other things still undone and less than ten days to do them in. Of course my actual leave date is an arbitrary one but I don't want to waste any of it doing what has become work. Writing this blog is actually a break. While I hate to be practicing on the few readers that may be regularly viewing this blog, and I do get a few emails that reference reading it, it is good practice and hopefully will pay off in other writing, including future entries here.

Once I charge my camera batteries, I may even start including pictures.

Reviews are done. Christmas Letter is in a final draft and with a sample printed on the Christmasy paper. The mailing labels for the addresses I have are typed with the label sheets purchased and ready to be printed. The Christmasy envelopes are ready to be stuffed. My paper is suspended for the time I plan on being gone. My second speech to Toastmasters is written and printed.

Slowly I am checking off more things on my to do list than I am adding and getting the things done that are the least fun and absolutely must be done before I leave.

Today started out great. When I went out to bring in the trash can and recycling bins, there was an unexpected newspaper. Since I don't think my neighbor has started receiving a paper, he certainly didn't get any over the weekend, I assumed it was a bonus for me. So, after I finished up my brownies for breakfast, I took the puzzles and went to the Chat Cafe for a soy latte. Since having a latte in the afternoon proved to be so wakeful through the night, I just had to see if an earlier one has the same effect. I'm not tired yet but it's only 8:30 PM. It may be my excitement at all I've accomplished today. (Ha, ha.) Still, it was a nice morning.

As I was leaving the Chat Cafe, I ran into my CPA. I hope he was right about my tax liability earlier in the year. I will need a good refund to do all I want to do next year.

I have an errand to run and meditation. Hopefully after all of that, I will be able to sleep, but it isn't like I have to get up at a certain time tomorrow. After all, I can still sleep in most days in this Life after Layoff.

Day One-hundred-and-thirty-nine: Warmer than summer

Today, November 17, 2008, it was every bit as warm as the warmest day I recall during summer, 78 degrees. The sun has set and it is still 73 degrees outside. It was so nice out that even though I didn't skip out on my work and go on a motorcycle ride like I should have, I still spent over an hour just sitting in the sky chair. I truly enjoyed all the animal noises and didn't mind the human noises, even the human created technology noises. While I couldn't hear the words, the voices I heard sounded joyous, probably reflecting the lopsided victory that the 49ers had over the Rams. I could even ascribe joy to the passengers of the jet sounds overhead, although they did sound a little bit more distant. Even my woodpecker friend was back.

When I opened my eyes, I just sat and watched the variety of birds. It was amazing to see hummingbirds land on the barest of twigs without causing them to bounce. When I return, I will have to get a hummingbird feeder as the nectar they acquire from flowers can't be very much in a yard now very depleted of flowers.

I stank up my front yard again and will do so one more time before I take off cross country. I hope the double application of stink will let it last six weeks.

I learned my lesson about late afternoon caffeinated coffee. I was up until 2:00 AM this morning although I gave up doing anything constructive about half way through my review writing. I never enjoyed review writing and am now even less motivated to write them. However, even though short, I am making them quality reviews. I can do no less in my Life after Layoff. If it turns out that I need to take a job, I will try for a consulting type job that hopefully will not involve anything that I don't like to do in some way.

Part of my grocery purchases was a tub of Earth Balance margarine. This allowed me to make the brownies that my daughter and son-in-law bought last weekend. They were good. (I guess I should say "are good," because I haven't been able to eat them all yet.) I will have to finish them this week as I baked them in my gingerbread pan, one of the dishes I intend to take to the Thanksgiving dinner I've been invited to.

I still have a decent amount of work yet to do tonight. I have just one more review to finish. I still have the trash to take out. I wouldn't mind getting something other than the reviews crossed off my to do list, but I'm not going to stay up until 2:00 AM just to do so.

Day One-hundred-and-thirty-eight: Football Saturday

It wasn't going to be a football Saturday but this morning I got a call from my son who said that he was at the Notre Dame - Navy game at the Baltimore Raven's stadium and I should watch it. He was there with his friend from scouts and grade school, a groomsman at his wedding, and an alumnus of Notre Dame. He was supposed to be right on the 20 yard line and should have been very visible with his wife still on her crutches. Needless to say this was the excuse I needed to avoid my work and spend another day in front of the TV.

I never did see them. It seemed that whenever the camera panned the crowd it always showed midshipman and in the game shots the seats were always too far away to show any details of the stands, even on my big screen TV. Navy made a game out of it in the last quarter but lost.

After the football game I went into the kitchen to make the Spicy Mole Oatmeal Chili and discovered that I didn't have any carrots, clean measuring spoons, or clean spatulas. So I did the dishes. Then I took my Calling for Obama raffle winning Starbucks card and my incomplete speech notes to Starbucks. Now I know I shouldn't be drinking coffee in the afternoon, particularly caffeinated coffee, but I was planning on finding how much was on that card this morning. (It was a $5 card.) I did get my speech "mind mapped" out.

I started the speech last night technically after I went to bed. I had a "midnight" brainstorm that reminded me of my college days so I decided to make sure I got those thoughts down on paper. At least this "storm" didn't stop me from sleeping once I wrote it out.

I started working on my list this morning, before I was tempted away from working and into TV watching. I have started one review of six I have committed to do. Maybe the caffeine will allow me to stay up late tonight and actually get something marked off of my list yet today.

At least now I have carrots as well as apples, pears, and four cans of soup. Thursday I had had enough legumes in my diet so I opened a can of Amy's No Chicken Noodle Soup. It was quite good but I wished I had crackers to go with it. So yesterday I went out and got two boxes of crackers even though they are a worse than worthless food. Not only do they not have any nutrition, they are salted. While I bought non-fat crackers, I drew the line at their not having any taste. I can't help but think that this is a sad commentary on my vegan Life after Layoff where my splurges are tasteless soda crackers.

Yet to do tonight, other than items on my list, are: make the chili and sit in the sky chair a while. The weather is so nice this weekend that I just have to take advantage of it. Hopefully the memory will carry me through the worst of winter in Ohio and West Virginia. And now that I have all the ingredients, I just have to carry through with my earlier plans to make the chili. Somehow my life is more about completeness now.

Day One-hundred-and-thirty-seven: Checking them off

I'm checking off items on my to do list that must get done one by one and adding them two by two. Fortunately I'm adding them less frequently. I still have a lot to do in now less than two weeks. Today was the most productive day I've had in a long time. I think it was aided by getting out early today, even though that was to the dentist to have two silver amalgams replaced with the new composite fillings. The topical and two numbing shots meant that I didn't feel a thing during the work but now my gum is really sore.

After the dentist, I went and got my free flu shot. Since I'm heading back into truly cold weather for the first time in a long time, I thought I would get a vaccination this year. I haven't gotten sick in previous years without it but then I haven't been in hot houses and cold outdoors in rapid succession for about that long. I was ready to pay my co-pay but it was free.

Then I went down to Les Schwab to buy chains for the Prius. If I don't use them, I can return them for a full refund after April of next year. It was worth driving that far for them with that guarantee. Since this was around noon, I had a brainstorm, unfortunately after I had driven by Sirayvah. Over the last couple of months, I have tried to eat lunch at Sirayvah on a Sunday and this last weekend on Saturday, only to discover that they aren't open for lunch on either day, just dinner. (You'd think that I wouldn't be reading their schedule so precisely to need to discover each day's schedule individually.) But today I remembered that they are open for lunch Monday through Friday. So I went around a long block to get back to it and had a full, and filling, organic Thai meal. It started with a pumpkin soup, followed by a delicious appetizer, and then a spicy eggplant entree. I was going to skip dessert but the waitperson mentioned sticky rice with mango. I ate it all. It's a great place to eat and probably a good thing that I can't seem to eat there more often.

I've also arranged to have my plants watered, all of them, if it doesn't rain, and just the ones under the eaves, if it does. I got the back yard mowed with the clippings put in my compost pile. I finished this cycle of watering, although I decided to wait until tomorrow to apply the deer thwarting stink. I also made a temporary fix to my shed. (I've propped a weighted board up on the plastic corner post to keep it from bowing away from the panels it is supposed to hold securely.) This temporary fix should hold until I can figure out how to permanently stiffen it.

Unfortunately, I've added a couple rather large items. Last night I accepted the responsibility for making my second speech before I go on the road trip. (I keep wanting to say my vacation, but I'm on vacation right now. I'm just going to change the location of my vacation.) I also added something that I should have done in September but technically don't have to do at all, and that is write reviews for the people who reported to me the first six months of the year. Well, as a friend and fellow manager at Amdahl said: "Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well." Doing something poorly just isn't in my make up, more so in my Life after Layoff as everything I do is for me and my standards alone.

My daughters are off on a girl's weekend out in Portland, Oregon. They are staying just a block away from the Powell Street Bookstore. When I talked with my oldest daughter earlier this week, she said that she had already cleared a place to put her new book purchases.

Day One-hundred-and-thirty-six: Setting things right

I'm $8.82 poorer but that much morally richer. Part of it was three vegan cookies I shouldn't have purchased in the first place, let alone eat, but after accidentally ringing up $372 for a couple of heirloom tomatoes the clerk at Pacifica Farmers Market had to re-ring up the entire grocery purchase to correct what would have been a rather steep overcharge. In the second pass she didn't ring the three vegan cookies. Today, while I was shopping for some other groceries I knew could only be found at that store I bought three cookies and with her knowledge returned them to their shelf. I didn't compound my problem by buying yet more of those delicious but fat laden treats that I shouldn't eat. The other part was a purchase of an organic yam from Safeway. In this case, I couldn't find it when I got home so I returned to Safeway for a replacement. When I got home, I found the first one while putting the second one away. More than accidentally cheating Safeway out of the money, I wonder what this means for my mental condition. I hope I am too young for senility.

It felt good to correct both of those inadvertent thefts.

On another matter, I called Comcast once again. This time they explained that they had installed the trap but hadn't noted on the work order that they were to pick up the cable box. So, I delivered it to them. While their Pacifica "store" was difficult to find, even with the Prius Navigation System, it truly wasn't out of my way as I was on my way to the Apple Store where I bought my MacBook. I now have an extended AppleCare Protection Plan and a padded sheath for my MacBook. The sheath is just thinking ahead for my future motorcycle rides. It appears that I also still have basic cable, which means that regardless of what they claim they haven't truly installed the trap. I've called them at least three times so I'll just let it rest.

One of my errands was to visit the North Coast County Water District offices and find out what I needed to do to be gone the six or so weeks on my road trip, pay $60 on the account the first of December. (The road trip was also the reason for the timing in buying the AppleCare. It may be too late to do so when I return.)

Winter overcast and fog are definitely here. I need to get out and water plants and mow, hopefully for the last time before I leave. I bought some groceries for making some Thanksgiving treats, although I forgot to buy more olives. I don't think I will be making more olive bread than the olives I have remaining so not having more olives will reduce the temptation. However good olive bread is, it isn't all that good for me. I don't think I could exercise as much as it would take for me to burn off what I would eat of it. In many ways, my Life after Layoff is too much of a good thing, or too much of too many good things.

Tonight is my Toastmasters meeting, where I am the Table Topics Master. This means that I have made up some questions on the Toastmaster's theme of Cruising. Not that I am overly proud of my questions, but I thought I would include them here:

After the introduction of the car many young people have cruised up and down the main drags of their towns. What would be your dream vehicle for cruising?

This question includes a reference to the MTV television show and online game but the answer doesn’t. If you had a choice of any main drag in the world to be tooling around in your pimped up ride, where would you like to be cruising?

You were told you were cruising for a bruising. Where were you and what were you doing?

The saying is, "any port in a storm," but in nicer weather, into which port would you like to go cruising and why?

On many cruise ships, they have up to five meals a day with snacks in between and after. Other than food, what would be your favorite activity while cruising on the high seas?

If cruise control did it all rather than just allow a constant speed, what would you be doing in your car instead of driving while cruising?

And now some other musings:

Last night, well when I woke up this morning, I had another insight to write in my bedside note book, and that is that faith, or belief, cannot be truly tested, at least by the principal. For the principal to test his or her faith is to doubt, which is tantamount to not having sufficient belief.

Over the weekend I had an interesting discussion with my youngest daughter and her husband on the nature of magic, which as scientists they dismiss out of hand. In point of fact, I have my own level of disbelieving but would never admit it to them as it would change the nature of our discussion. However, my son-in-law made a statement that math is the only precise science. While I don't think we articulated it well, working magic could be defined as influencing possible but improbable outcomes. Now, the real question is does this "influence" really exist and if so, is it something that can be regularly done. I'm looking forward to testing this at the craps or roulette table.

And no, if my youngest daughter is ever reading this, I haven't gone around the bend to your definition of insane. Although, if you truly love me, you'll overlook inoffensive eccentricity.

Day One-hundred-and-thirty-five: To do list

Whenever I've found myself under time pressure or feeling overwhelmed with all that I have to do, I address it in two alternative ways: I make a "to do" list both to make sure I am not forgetting things and to give me the satisfaction of marking things off of it; and I go to bed, well, attempt to sleep. Nothing is more tiring to me than having a must do task. Several times in the past I've either stayed up all night doing an overwhelming task or gotten up extremely early after being unable to work the night before and unable to sleep when I needed to be working. Nothing concentrates the mind like a deadline, even an artificially imposed deadline. So, I did both today. I made my list and then went back to bed. I made my bed the second time up so I wouldn't feel tempted to going back into it. My list doesn't have anything on it about resume writing or job hunting. (I think they are related and reflect my reluctance to find another job. If one of the things I like to do don't start paying off, I will need to get a job of some sort by 2010.)

Now, while my must do tasks can vary, I do have a serious, if self-imposed deadline. Adding tasks to my list that must be completed before that deadline is a further time management problem, which brings me back to Comcast and their lack of cutting off my TV. Maybe that is their plan, keep stringing the addict along. I did find out that my son also canceled his cable. Further he now has a specific day for his return to California.

Yesterday, during my ride, I kept thinking about how it was Veteran's day and how my previous company, before it was acquired, gave its workers this day as a holiday. This was really useful when my children were young, and I enjoyed it and Columbus Day off, just not enough to take them off as vacation days when they were no longer holidays for me. Even the memories were pleasant since, once again, I had the day off. The memories didn't stop me from checking for mail when I got back home even though I know that there is no mail delivery on Veterans Day.

My prize for the raffle for making more than 100 calls for Obama came today: two bumper stickers, a button, and a Starbuck's gift card. There were millions of these things out there and these were left over, so I doubt that they have any real value, but I will save them, along with the November 5th newspaper front section, as best I can, except for the Starbuck's card. Maybe my great grandchildren will see some value in them, that is if my children start having children.

Endless "to do" lists appear to be a fact of Life after Layoff. I only wish the discipline to get them done were also a fact.