Speaking Of Good Ideas

Today I made my work goal early, so I ran out to Johnny Rockets for lunch.

Now . . . normally I wouldn’t bother to mention this, except for one thing:

Today was the first day in my life that someone has said to me “You want more fries, sweetheart?  It’s unlimited refills . . .”

Words can not describe how terribly awesome the idea of unlimited refills on French fries is to me.  (For the record, already being full, I declined, but the offer was deeply appreciated.  Come to think of it . . . that’s something of a theme in my life, and reminds me of a story I’ll tell on Monday.  Have a good weekend, all.)

Good Ideas

Good ideas are tricky things . . . sometimes you don’t know if they are good ideas until enough time has passed to prove that they were good ideas.

Case in point:

Once I had to make a decision during a particularly nasty hurricane season to evacuate or weather the storm.  There had been no official call to evacuate (that would have made the decision easy), but if you’re going to be running before a storm, you always want to do it sooner rather than later.  At the time, the best place for me to fall back to would have been Mom’s house further north.

Eventually, I decided the odds favored staying over risking the road; I was in a solid building, well supplied, and inland enough that the flooding and damage risks were minimal . . . but it was still a tough call.

Turns out it was the right one, but I wasn’t absolutely sure of that until after the storm passed doing only minimal damage to my area . . . and then continued northward to plow right over Mom’s head and through an area that was much less prepared for it than my area.  (Mom was fine, by the way.  She had a bad night of it, but was otherwise fine. )  Had I gone north, I would have had a far worse time of it than where I stayed.

Life’s “funny” that way sometimes.

That Sums Up MY Feelings On The Matter

http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20100224

Delayed Gratitude

Clearly I made it no secret that recently I got sick, and ended up dragging about for a few days.

But as today marked the official twelfth person I heard from about how what’s been going around has knocked them completely off their feet for at least a week, suddenly what I went through doesn’t seem so bad.

There’s a lesson there somewhere.

The Winds Of Change

“The winds of change are especially fierce today, so now would be a good time to adjust your sails.”

– Gordon Arcane

A Confession

*sigh*

So as to avoid finching (1) any more about this topic later, I want to go ahead and get this over with now.  Now that I am healthy once more and in possession of my editor’s notes, I have established a benchmark speed for my progress of going over them:  A less than blinding one chapter per day.

I find this just flat out embarrassing, but there it is.   While I admit I’m also using the notes as an excuse to go over the chapters with a fine tooth comb, I was hoping for a pace that was merely “thorough” and not “glacier like.”  Hopefully practice will allow me to pick up the pace, but in the meantime . . .

If you’ll excuse me, I have a chapter to finish reviewing.

(1) “Finching” – making a lot of overly fussy noise, a term I learned from Algiz the Sun Conure, and a term that has NOTHING to do with anything you might read on Urban Dictionary.com (Who writes some of that stuff, anyway?)

At Least He HAD An Instruction Manual

And by “he” I mean, Ralph Hinkley, The Greatest American Hero.

Sure, he lost it, but he did have one at one point.

Not a lot of people even get that much.

(When one is tired, one’s mind starts to go to STRANGE places.  Years ago and late one night, someone once told me “Broccoli created the Universe, you know, because the purpose of broccoli is to be eaten, and for broccoli to be eaten there must be a Universe for that to happen.”  As I recall, I stared blankly for a moment, then cried out for someone to take me home so I could rest because “that made sense.”)

I’m Taking This Too Seriously

Going over my editor’s notes, I mean. 

It’s a process, for all my complaining, that I do take seriously, and that’s why I move so slowly when I’m doing it.

Even so . . . I don’t think I should be moving this slowly.  (And don’t bother pointing out to me right now that around the time I got the notes, was also the time I got sick, and this is the first day I’ve felt 100%.  It’s true . . . but that won’t make me feel better until a few days after I feel like I’m up to speed again.)

To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before, 2010 (Part Two)

Then, as now, my response seemed a little harsh to me, and even as I said it, I wondered if I was taking the question too literally.  If she wanted a goodbye hug, if she had directly asked for one, I’d have obliged her, and perhaps that was what this girl was trying to ask me.

But this was also the same girl that earlier had tearfully asked if we’d still talk after we parted ways, and didn’t seem to understand why I choked on a sad laugh and reminded her we were parting ways because we never talked anymore, so I didn’t favor the chances of our parting changing that for the better.  This was the same girl that I had watched for months destroying her health and treating everyone around her as annoyances at best, and ignorable distractions at worst, and when that girl asked me if *I* wanted a goodbye hug, then . . . as now, I could only think of one thing:

That wasn’t what I wanted at all. 

So this candle is for her . . . in the hopes that she’s better now.  When last I saw her, the odds were against her, but not so much so that there was no use in hoping.

So here’s hoping.

To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before, 2010 (Part One)

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Valentine’s Day.  Part of the reason for this is because while I fall in love easily, I’ve never actually been able to pull off the trick of falling out of love (though, sad to say, this fact has never even once saved a relationship), and Valentine’s Day always makes me think of all the girls that share(d) my life.  For those that are still with me, one way or another, I do my best to show how much I appreciate them, but as soon as I get some time to myself (like today), my thoughts start to drift to the girls not sharing my life any more.

And since this post is post-Valentine’s Day, it’s seems a good time to talk about one of the worst relationship endings I’ve ever had:

First off, do yourself a favor, and never involve yourself with an addict, and the addiction doesn’t have to be drugs either (it wasn’t in this case, for instance).  I tried everything, from being patient, supportive and reasonable to . . . well . . . impatient, angry, and desperately clinging to what reason (and reasonable) remained within me.   In the end it was mutually agreed that it was time for us to part ways.  

So I helped her gather her stuff, and we waited in silence for her ride to pick her up.  As she was headed out the door for the last time, she paused and somewhat tearfully asked me if I wanted a goodbye hug.

She seemed surprised when I said no.