Getting down to business

As anyone who knows me well knows, I'm very keen to get my house back into presentable shape. Lately I've had more going on during the weekends which has brought progress to a standstill. So I've looked forward to the time off over Christmas and New Years (two, four day weekends in a row) to get down to business.

Over Christmas weekend between running errands and spending all Christmas day with family I hardly stepped foot in my own house. I found this incredibly frustrating, but after reflecting on it realized I shouldn't have counted on doing anything on the domestic front over that weekend.

So all week I've looked forward to tackling stuff New Year's weekend. Then the phone started ringing, one friend wants me to take him shopping for groceries and an exercise machine, my parents want me to drive them out to a nearby city for a New Years Eve party, another friend wants me to come see him for a day or two in another city. I quickly realized if I did all these things it would suck away the entire weekend before I knew it.

I've always had trouble saying no to people. Now days it's not quite so hard to say no, instead I struggle with my motives for saying no. Am I selfish to turn down my parents request to drive them? They are up in years and don't drive at night anymore.

Tonight while eating dinner with them I asked if anyone else from their church going to the party (one of their friends at church has organized and promoted this party for years). They said they hadn't heard. I asked if they would mind making some calls, since anyone coming from town would practically drive right by their house (they live right off the interstate). My dad said he didn't want to do that and forbid my step mom to make any calls. This struck me as odd and a bit over the top. With a bit more pressing my dad finally revealed he didn't want to rely on other people. If I didn't want to take them, they would stay home and watch TV, simple as that. My original plans for New Years Eve to go hear a band at a local club, one of the guys at work plays drums for the band and they are really good. I've tried to go see them live for over a year now, but it never seems to work out. I figured on staying for 2 or 3 hours and then coming home, so as not to tie up the entire night. If I take my folks to their New Years Party I will have to leave around 5:30P and won't get home till 1A or so.

I seems to me my folks do have other transportation options, but are refusing to avail themselves of them. I decided to stick with my original plans. The friend who wants to go shopping OK with doing it next weekend, he's already got the groceries it turns out. The friend who wants me to come down for a day or two? Well, I haven't hung out with him for over a year now, so I'm really torn about this. I would rather stay here and look towards the summer to get together. I said that last summer to. Hmmm.

I don't normally look at sale flyers and the like or go shopping without a specific need to do so. Any time I walk into a store I inevitably see something I've GOT to have, on sale of course. When these situations come up, I make it a habit to go home empty handed and see if I still remember a day or two later. 90% of the time I've forget about it, since I really didn't need it anyway.

This Christmas my parents had a "crisis" over the heater in their guest bedroom pooping out. My step mom would ask me about it every time she saw me, over a 2 week period, just petrified at the thought of a guest feeling cold while taking a shower. I ended up going to 5 different stores and spent about 10 - 12 hours of shopping trying to find a suitable heater for the job. The bathroom small, not a lot of room for one of those big utility things. Also thinking something with electronic buttons more shock resistant than direct wired switches and knobs. I eventually found a nice, tower style ceramic heater at Menards. Ended up buying 3 to get one good one, the other two vibrated excessively.

I also wound up with two pairs of gloves, two pairs of shoes, a new spring jacket, a heater for myself, ... and a bunch of new shelves for my house. Target having a sale on the kind I wanted. Never even knew they sold this kind, I had looked in the wrong part of the store before. The cool shelves in the Home Improvement department vs. the Storage and Furniture sections I had looked in before. Who would have thought.

Armed with shelves, today I worked on my bedroom. Bed, Bath and Beyond sells these cool wire cube storage units you can put together in any myriad of combinations. Only problem, they are always out when I go looking for them and they are expensive. Sam's Club sold them for while, then stopped. Wouldn't you know, Target has them too it turns out, for about 1/2 the price. I now have one wall more or less dedicated to the cubes, a small shelf in front of the window for my cat to sit on, a big shelf for, well, big things and a little shelf to act as a night stand by my bed. Before I had used a TV tray table for my night stand, had my clothes split between two bedrooms and my cat sat on top of a pile sleeping bags.

I'm quite excited about the cubes. I never really cared for dressers, you forget about 1/2 the stuff you put in them. With the cubes everything out in plain sight. One for everyday jeans, one for nice jeans, one for dress pants, another for shorts, ... you get the idea. Turns out you can get little clips which allow you to subdivide the cubes into smaller sections, but only in the specially marked boxes, and only enough to do two cubes. A web search eventually led me to the cube holy grail ; a site that sells: spare plastic connectors (the basic building block for the cubes), nicer clips to subdivide (the little shelves actually slide in and out) and the greatest thing of all, casters! Hurray!! Always puzzled me they didn't come with casters in the first place. All reasonably priced.

Tomorrow, I aim to finish up my bedroom and put a shelf up in front of the window in the dining rm. This the only place in the house plants will grow, currently they are sitting on cardboard boxes and are surrounded by stuff sitting on the floor. The shelf may not work out because of a huge return air register built into the floor under the window. I'm hoping the shelf I picked out wide enough to span the register so all the legs will sit on a solid surface. I need to get this ironed out tomorrow so I can still run over to Target and make any additional purchases/exchanges before the sale ends at 10P.

A post 9/11 moment

While driving to work a few days ago I saw two state road workers in the median hunched over the base to one of those big overhead signs. They had their bright yellow vests on and a transit stand set up next to the base.

As I drove by the first thought that hit my mind, "Hmmm, wonder if they are two terrorists dressed up as road workers planting a bomb or loosening the bolts on that sign? Wonder what the surveying transit for? Sure seemed set up in a weird spot. Wait a second I didn't see a truck along the shoulder. Now what's up with that!?!"

Then a second thought struck me, "If I saw those two guys before 9/11 I would have said to myself. Man hope those guys are getting double time for having to work on a sign in this kind of weather. The snow looked knee deep along side that sign and it's kind of windy to. Bet those wrenches cold as ice even with gloves on. To top it all off they don't even give them a truck to go warm up in"

I continued driving to work and figured my mental gymnastics would make a fine post.

So ... did it take?

Looks like we are about 3 weeks into the great get up earlier campaign. The first week I got up at 8:30A each day. By the end of the week I felt exhausted. As it happened, the weekend which followed unusually busy so I never fully bounced back and have spent the past couple weeks in recovery mode.

Over time I've come to realize my energy level goes in distinct cycles, I will feel very energetic for a week and then very tired for the next 2 or 3. This also has an effect on my hypoglycemia, when I'm in the tired part of the cycle my brain "fades" constantly, resulting in me eating constantly to maintain my ability to think and make rational decisions. When I'm in the more energetic part of the cycle my body more resilient, more like I remember it as a younger person.

Lately I've given thought to my schedule and how much I accomplish in a day. I look at people like my blog friend Noel and can't help but think I'm not making the mark. Let's look at a typical Stevo week.

Mon - Fri Up at 9:30A or so. Eat 1/2 bowl of cereal, check my e-mail, start making the rest of breakfast while listening to Diane Rehm. The whole make/eat breakfast and wash dishes cycle done by 11A or so. Take shower and get ready for work. Leave around noon to go to work. Eat lunch with guys on 5th floor, get back to shop around 1:30P. Eat "brain snack" around 3P. Work till 5:30 or 6P and then ...

Mon - Check in at local hobby shop, make sure club flyer rack full, then go to home group a couple blocks away. Aim to arrive around 6 to 6:15P. Eat dinner w/ Steve and Cheryl. Have home group. Get home around 10 - 10:30P. Check e-mail, read up on news of the day, listen to Marketplace while making up and eating evening brain snack, check Noel, Dan and Frank blogs. Go to bed around Midnight.

Tue - Grocery day or helping someone, usually my friend Tom go shopping. If groceries, get home around 7:30P or so. Put stuff away, make dinner, go through mail. If Tom, eat dinner, go shopping, get home 9 - 10P

Wed - Peterson's night, couple at my church which puts on a free meal every Wed. night. Really great folks. Jim, the husband, seems to genuinely look forward to seeing me each week, this means a lot to me. I've also made some new friends, Derek and Scotty, who live close by. We went to see Good Night and Good Luck together a couple weeks ago and grabbed some dinner afterwards, my first opportunity to do something with them outside of Wed. night. I look forward to more opportunities, they are great fun to hang out with. I usually head out around 9 - 10P and fill up at the gas station at the end of the street on the way home.

Thursday - Go home and make a quick dinner, then train club. For most of my life people have said I should take up a hobby. Last year I decided to give model railroading a try. I like it a lot. Get home around 11P.

Fri - Dinner with my folks and fixing stuff around their house. Get home around 9 - 10P. My dad likes me to stay and watch Law and Order reruns with him.

Sat and Sun - I try to stay home. I'll typically aim to go through my snail mail, respond to e-mails, put up a blog post or two, do laundry, take care of cat stuff and make some progress on getting the house back into shape. While preparing meals, eating and doing the dishes afterwards I listen to On the Media, Washington Week, Off the Record, Fresh Air and the message from Riverview. Inevitably something comes up that takes up most of Sat. - helping Tom, "crisis" at my folks house or a meeting to attend which leaves Sunday to focus on domestic stuff. Every other Sunday night devoted to talking with my friend Jason who I met in the Czech Republic several years ago while on a short term mission trip. He's in a tough spot in life right now, our conversations typically last 3 - 4 hours. We used to talk every Sunday, but that became too much, so we agreed to try every other week which works out a lot better. On the opposite Sunday I often watch a movie in the evening, one of my favorite times of the week.

I think I'm doing too much stuff. As you can see many weeks I'm not home at all in the evening. Feels like I'm on a treadmill. Mon. night the obvious night to cut out, since this the home group from my old church. However, I've become friends with the hosts, Steve and Cheryl, and have found myself hesitant to drop out of the group. I also get several free trade magazines via work which I like to read, but in reality I can't possibly get to all of them so they pile up. I've finally decided to cancel them except for my one absolute favorite, Engineered Systems, an awesome magazine about commercial HVAC systems. To me it's like a little treasure wrapped in glossy paper when it comes in the mail each month.

I originally thought by getting up earlier I could do stuff like go through my mail, read up on the news, put up blog posts, etc. in the morning when I'm fresh, thus taking the pressure off trying to do stuff when I get home at night when I'm not up to it anyway and freeing up the weekends for focusing on the house. Complicating this effort, I seem to function best on 9 - 10 hours of sleep, 9 or a bit less during the energetic part of my "cycle", closer to 10 during the down portion. Something I don't like to admit since many take it as a sign of laziness. I don't see it this way. If 8 hours the average people need, then it stands to reason that a goodly number of people will fall in the 7 hours bracket, others in the 9 hours bracket. Our culture takes great pride in getting by on as little sleep as possible so 7 hour people end up as hero's while 9 hour people regarded as slugs.

Food also plays a role in this. I have to eat constantly to keep my energy up, yet thankfully I don't gain any weight. As long as I can remember people have made fun of me for eating so much. 7 years or so ago, it hit me that maybe I did eat too much and I started to eat less, even though I still felt hungry. After a few months of this the hypoglycemia started rather suddenly and has never let up. You may wonder, "What's the big deal? So you get a little hungry.". It's hard to explain but in short, my brain will start to "fade", usually about 2 hours after a meal. It's almost a physical sensation with my brain activity slowing down and my muscles tensing up. If I don't stop and eat, my whole thought process comes to a halt. I can't remember stuff, I'll babble, I'll hook red wires to black wires, if I'm in a store I can't make a decision on what to buy ... you get the idea. It's hard to focus and get stuff done when you have to stop every 2 - 3 hours to eat. Whenever I go anywhere I have to take into consideration how long the trip and make sure to pack enough snacks and water to tide me over between meals.

I started the getting up earlier initiative during an "up" cycle, now that I'm in the "down" cycle I'm back to the 9:30 or so time again. We are going into the 3rd week of the down cycle, so I'm hopeful in another week I'll have more energy again and can resume the 8:30A goal.

Out to the Movies

I haven't seen a movie in a theatre for some time, easily month's, but made up for it the past couple weeks.

First off I saw "Good Night and Good Luck", George Clooney's historical piece about Edward R. Murrow taking on McCarthy. It's all in black and white adding further to the feeling of going back in time to the early 50's. Superb acting combined with the compelling story line makes for a great movie. I went with some friends on Fri. afternoon over Thanksgiving weekend, the theatre completely full. We sat in the very back row. Hurray for stadium seating! Although not intended as a political piece, the parallels to events today pretty hard to miss. Especially the mostly unspoken, yet clearly evident, atmosphere of fear created by McCarthy and his tactics in those who didn't share his exact views.

A few days later I went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Having a lot of ground to cover it moves really fast. So much so I went to see it twice and still don't think I picked up on everything. I'll have plenty of chances to absorb it all when the DVD comes out. I identify a lot with the Harry character, feeling alone in the world and all, and have looked forward to each of the movies. It's fun to see how he and his friends are maturing and dealing with growing up. Lots more I could say, but suffice it to say I liked it a lot and will certainly add it to my DVD collection when it comes out.