A Week In the Life ... part 2

9/25/17

Monday mornings are low key for me, by design. I wake later than most weekdays. I log into work each workday at 8am. On Mondays I sometimes sleep until 7:45am. This morning was no exception. Not having a commute is conducive to sleeping late. I had two large iced coffees waiting for me in the frig that I made the night before. They felt great. It is was hot already at 8am.

It always takes me long to fall asleep. My wife falls asleep long before me, especially on Sunday nights. Because I sleep late on the weekends, Sunday night slumber takes long.  After she nodded off, I went downstairs to watch television. I watched the season premiere of Gotham and then the late innings of the Red Sox game. I may have fallen asleep around 1:30am. I awoke around 4am and went back upstairs to join my wife. She was playing the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and it lulled me to sleep.

Monday morning at work is usually mellow. Unless there is some emergency, I will try to spend the morning coding or doing something else I enjoy. Lately, I’ve been having a lot a conference calls to start the week. The ingesting of large amounts of coffee is important here.

When conference calls get boring or irrelevant to me, social media is a convenient distraction. This is difficult today because everyone on social media is talking about the protest at the football games yesterday. I think I have mentioned this before, but there aren’t many things I dislike more than football.  But as we know, this isn’t about football, but about the poor treatment of black Americans by police, the legal system and otherwise. But like most protests, people aren’t talking about that issue that is being protested. They are talking about the protest. Like the protests that block traffic, they aren’t moving the needle for their cause, they are just pissing people off who are stuck in traffic. Do the protesters think their pithy comments on their hand painted signs are going to change anyone’s minds? Maybe it did in the 1960’s, but in the era of instant and 24 hour news, this is doubtful.

To add it, President Douche Bag is tweeting about it. They are not distracting us, but distracting him. He is like a child, you really should wait until he goes to bed before you break out the bong, but I am not sure he sleeps.

America seems to be a country where symbols seem to be more powerful than actual events. People seem to be outraged by these players kneeing down during our national anthem. Yet this league if full of wife beaters, animal torturers, rapists and murders … they don’t seem too outraged by this. The guy leading the kneeing protest hasn’t even gotten a contract to play because he’s too controversial. This seems kinda sick to me.  Here is a conversation I had with some Brits on Facebook, I call them P.C. and E.L.F:

P…C… I lived in America nearly 30 years ago. I found the "respecting the flag" stuff a bit disturbing.

Mark Peloquin it is disturbing and if you say anything about it, you are treated like a pariah

P… C… It's all a bit North Korea, to be honest. A Brit let some old flag drop on the floor when I was there and you'd have thought he had committed assault or something.

E…L… F…. As a Brit I find it super creepy

Creepy is good word for it. Try not taking your hat off during the national anthem at a ball game someday. I don’t dare, I don’t want the drama. I just want to watch the game. Here is another one of things I don’t get.  When someone says "my father died for that," meaning he served in a war and died for the flag. This isn’t quite right. He died for what this flag represents … right?  One of things that the flag is supposed to represent is freedom of speech and yet, if you disagree with them about the flag, you are scum.  It is very … as P.C. said … a bit North Korea.

9/26/17

It has nothing to do with not respecting and loving the country I live in. It is about the symbolism just not working for me. The real thing has more power for me than any symbol. The symbol, the flag, is just a piece of cloth. The anthem is just a song, a bad one at that. The actual aspects of being a US citizen that I like so much are not represented by these symbols … freedom of speech, the separation of church and state, and the rule of law. All wrapping yourself in symbols does is further reinforce my belief that you haven’t thought much about your patriotism. I remember people yelling about the Constitution during the Obama years. When you took these people aside and ask them about the Constitution, they knew nothing about it. It isn't long. It shouldn't take anyone very long to read. 

We have become a country of empty gestures. The litany of thoughts and prayers I see on Facebook is a perfect example. Houston is wiped out “Thoughts and Prayers to people of Houston.” The kneeling during the National Anthem, wow, how heroic. No one is talking about the reason they are doing it, only that they are doing it. They’ve become a rallying cry for jingoist and empty patriotism. Time to move on.

9/27/17

I have the afternoon off today for a doctor’s appt.  This summer we were on vacation in Portugal for about twelve days. On day five, July 4^th, I was wearing my Captain America shirt walking up a cobblestone street in Porto, possibly the most beautiful city in Europe, with my wife and friend Paul. I stepped on some uneven basement and dislocated my ankle. I fell and my right foot was at a 45 degree angle to my leg.  I was in pain. Some nice people helped me, three young women from Belgium and a couple of local young men. They helped move me off the road. As they moved me, my ankle fell into place. Great relief of pain. One of the locals called an ambulance and I was transported to a hospital where I waited, still in pain, for about three hours to see a doctor. About half the people I dealt with spoke English. I received very good service once I did see the doctor. The experience was a lot like an American emergency room. Not fun, chaotic but within acceptable parameters.

The rest of the vacation wasn’t great for me. I spent the next two days in bed. Having my buddy Paul there was convenient because he really helped me with the stairs. He left the next morning to go back to his life in Germany. My wife waited on me but she didn’t stay around for long and had a good time being a tourist without me.  After a couple days, I was at least able to walk with crutches and we went out to dinner together. The taxis were handy.

Flying home was difficult. We upgraded to first class so that I would have room for my foot, but still that wasn’t great. I was in real pain for about six hours on the flight and then the drive home from Montreal in rush hour traffic while we were also exhausted, that wasn’t fun.

So here I am now, almost two months later. I am walking around okay but still having some difficult with stairs.

9/29/17

My wife is out of town for twelve days. This isn’t entirely uncommon. She travels for work and sometimes travel for fun without me. She has a lot more vacation time than I do. She is on the west coast for some conference. I don’t mind that much, I miss her but I enjoy my alone time as well. It just means I should go out into the world more often and interact. If I don’t, after about a week, I get depressed.

Other than companionship, the other reason I really miss her is that she is a very good cook and I am not. I’ve tried but I just don’t like to cook. It bores me. I just want my food. When she is gone I have a lot of frozen dinners from Trader Joe’s.

9/30/17

I received a check that I wasn’t expecting the other day. It was from the life insurance payment from my father, something I had totally forgotten about.  I hadn’t forgotten about my dad, obviously, but I forgot about the check coming. I was just going to put it into savings but my wife suggested I treat myself to a toy. I thought this was a good idea. I could use a new Mac, IPad or I was even thinking of buying a game console. I got up this morning, had my coffee, fed the dogs and heading out with Woodrow to do my shopping. 

I had breakfast at one of my favorite places, Firebird Café in Essex. Still undecided about my toy, I went to Best Buy to look at Xboxes and PlayStations. Everyone around me was teenager so I felt a little self-conscious. They are cheaper than I expected by then the add-ons and games add up. I decided against it. I don’t need another piece of hardware cluttering up my living room. I then drove to Small Dog Electronics, my favorite Mac store. It looked dead as I approached.  There was a big sign on the door, “Closed on September 30^th, please accept our apologies.”  Apology accepted now, please pay for the gas that I used to drive here, obnoxious thought of the day. I was very disappointed. I drove to the dog park to let Woodrow play.

While doing all this I had ESPN radio listening to the pre-game and then the actual Red Sox game. This was the biggest game of the year. With two games left, they either needed to win or the dreadful Yankees needed to lose. The Yankees won so they needed to win. The Sox were playing the Houston Astros, one of the best team in the American League. They eventually won, 6 to 4, but it was close. By the time I got home from the dog park with deviations to the gas station and then grocery shopping, I got to see the top of the 9^th inning. AL Champs, hooray! First time they have ever done this, two years in a row.

Following professional sports is a confection, seemingly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I find baseball poetic in its own way. It also a fine distraction from an otherwise frustrating world. Being a Red Sox fans has its frustrations but it also has its highs and the camaraderie between fans cannot be beaten. In a crowded room of strangers or in a strange town, I can always find a fellow fan or two to high five.

10/1/17

The good news in my life is that my two year old puppy, Woodrow, is starting to act like a full grown dog.  If you have ever had a puppy, you know, that after two years of dealing with puppy behavior, it gets old and it is no longer fun after a while.  I just left him in my living room, uncrated, while I headed to the hardware store and he did destroy anything. No remotes or computer mice were destroyed in this experiment.

The bad news is that my other dog, Hazel, who is a full grown five or six years old, got out of our fenced yard again. I was out in the yard with both the dogs. It is a beautiful Fall day and I decided to start working on winterizing the deck and filling some holes in the yard. I had the dogs out there with me. I was only out there for about 15 minutes and I realized that Hazel was gone.  All the possible spots in the fence that a dog could fit have been repaired. I have no idea how she is doing this.

Yesterday I step out of the fenced area and left Hazel alone within it. I wanted to catch where she was getting out. She cried a lot, she looked for places to get out but she didn’t. If I didn’t know better, I swear she could transport.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if it were not for her aggression. She is very sweet dog. We adopted her a few years ago when she was maybe three years old. Once we got the puppy, she start showing signs of aggression. Not towards the puppy or people but other dogs, usually female dogs. She goes on attack mode, instantly goes for the other dog’s throat.  It is very scary. So when she gets out like she did today, I have to drop everything.
This is what you get when you get a rescue dog. Some idiot fucked up this dog and we are left to try to repair her. Getting a puppy is a lot of work, but ultimately, you get the dog you trained. 

I looked for her for about a half hour, until I saw her running down the road towards me. When she sees me she comes and stays by my side. Finding her is the difficult part. Once she is found, she is fine. I am guessing that she is trying to find the dogs down the street from us. This is not good because she has gotten into bouts with both of them. I dodged a bullet this time.