We Let In Light And We Banish Shade

Yes, I still exist. It's been a busy month, with the biggest 2 weeks of the year kicking off later today. So, a quick and to-the-point update of what's been happening around here since you last listened to me whine, bitch and pontificate follows ...

* Sarah bought a Wii, which is kind of our early 2009 Christmas present to each other (though I threw in a DVD of Inglorious Basterds, her new favorite film of all time evar.

* Speaking of Christmas, it's gonna be a subtly blue-tinted Yule this year as Sarah will be in Missouri with her folks from December 23 to January 3. I think I'll pass the evenings finally catching up once and for all on Battlestar Galactica, getting lit on Jim Beam Black (note to self: need to refresh stash Monday afternoon), and maybe going to see Avatar or The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus while she's away.

* While we're on movies, The Road has yet to make it to a theater within 60 miles of here. Some kind of "not-so-limited" limited release. Grrr.

* Work is going okay, though sales are a bit off pace for the month so far. Our online sales, on the other hand, have gone through the freaking roof over the last three weeks and I'm reaching the limits of what I can cope with as a one-man operation.

* Speaking of work, Record Den now has a Facebook page. I did this mostly as an attempt to increase our visibility as I feel our total lack of advertising budget (no more label offices in the area to put up the dosh for a Scene or Plain Dealer ad, after all) needs to be offset with some kind of active "new media" presence. The fun part? In order to really do anything with the account, I'm going to have to stick my own antisocial countenance on there at some point. I am not exactly happy with this (my feelings on these sites were posted here this summer), but if doing this helps the store, then it will be worth the effort.

All right, off to finish up some more errands/running around. Incredibly, I have nearly all of my holiday shopping done with a week to go before Christmas. It's a nice feeling ... now I just have to wrap it all up. Wheeee!

Blue Cyber Monday

For about ten minutes, today was a really good day.

Things didn't start off very promising; I'd slept in past my intended target hour and was wondering as I checked e-mail if I was going to get any of the four things I needed to get accomplished that I'd listed out last night:

1. Mail dropoff at the Post Office
2. Fluid top-off/computer inquiry at Valvoline
3. Return/exchange at Borders
4. Cyber Monday orders (if applicable)

Cyber Monday was pretty good for the store this year, and by the time I'd generated the shipping labels for the stuff sold from the store account (and the couple that had sold from my own), it was already nearly 3:30 in the afternoon. Thus, I arrived at the Willowick Post Office at one of the worst times to visit any such place (the late afternoon), and true to form, I lost a half hour of my life waiting in a seven-person line that moved slower than a herd of turtles. Good lord, I hate these places. As I was mailing a couple of international packages for the store, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter and did my best to reach that inner state of Zen I seek whenever I find myself trapped in situations like these. I can't put into words how glad I am that I ponied up for that postal scale back in April and am able to do most of our shipping from work or home: it gets very easy to understand exactly how and why people "go postal" when you are the second person in line for fifteen of the thirty minutes you are in these horrible places.

Despite the clammy, frigid conditions and the barely detectable snow flurries that fell like tiny grains of sand from the slate gray sky, it felt positively wonderful to finally get the hell out of that post office and back on the road, even if it was Vine Street at 4 PM. I made Record Den my next stop, and spent an hour there packaging all of the Cyber Monday orders that had come in by then and ultimately managed to get them all of them ready for our typical 5 PM mail pickup. Two objectives down, two to go.

After spending an extra half hour attempting to wait out the worst of the evening rush hour, it was off to Borders to return a couple of bookends I'd purchased the night before. The traffic on Mentor Avenue was still pretty grating to deal with, but it was at my destination where the day suddenly took a surprising turn for the better.

A bit of background explanation: I am completely out of room for CDs in the office. All of the shelving units behind me are currently packed end to end with music, and there is no more room for any more shelving in here. While selling a few hundred pieces on Amazon had partially eased this problem for a while, but nearly all of my recent online listings had been coming from the boxes of CDs I have stashed in the closet (most of them banished here years before for the crime of only having one good song on them or whatever other reason I could come up with). As a temporary solution, I decided to take the box sets out of their alloted space and move them on top of these shelves for the time being, using bookends to keep them in place.

When we finally came across these bookends last night, I was a bit crestfallen to find out that that they were freaking expensive (at least the cool-looking ones, anyway). After some chin-stroking and frowning over the options, I selected a pair that were by some measure the cheapest models available. Problem was, they were also by some measure the smallest and lightest models available. Upon getting home, I quickly deduced that these little guys were not up to their intended task and opted to return them the next day and use the exchange credit towards a set of more expensive (and weighty) models.

After leaving my too-small set at the front counter with the same clerk who took care of the sale last night, I headed back to their "decor" section of the store to pick out the cheapest, heaviest set I could find. To my considerable surprise, the simple, elegant green marble "triangle" style that I had looked at the night before had magically been marked down thirty dollars over the last twenty four hours to $19.99 a pair. Fuckin' score! Elated, I grabbed two sets and wound up spending only ten bucks on top of my exchange credit.

A bit flush with success, I decided to stop over at Kohl's (as it was right down the plaza from where I was parked), hoping to find some slipper socks and lounge pants for my dad's Christmas gift. While hunting about for the above, I came across a winter hats sale (50% off, natch) and picked out a couple of new "beanie"-style caps for myself as well as a couple of convertible hat/mask thingies for my younger brothers.

From there, I had to make a bit of a mad dash clear across the county to fulfill my last objective: a monthly topping off of car fluids at Valvoline, hopefully along with a resetting of the Saturn's computer. A few days before, my SERVICE ENGINE SOON light had come on and had kindly provided some company for me to and from work over the holiday weekend. Touched by the gesture, I took the Saturn to Autozone on Sunday and had the problem diagnosed as the gas cap not sealing correctly. A problem very easily corrected! Hurray!! Since the Autozone tech could not reset the computer once I had replaced the cap, I took a chance that the Valvoline guys could do it and was pleased that they could and did. With all of my objectives completed, I grabbed some Chik Fil-A and headed home feeling a real sense of accomplishment and of things being in their right place. Hell, I even just beat the train signal on E 305 and didn't even get the red light at the South Marginal intersection. It was a truly wonderful ten minutes.

As I was coming home and maneuvering through the parking lot, I noticed the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light came on again. I was a bit surprised and irritated, but not really worried as the problem had been corrected. The tech at Valvoline had told me that if that light came on again, then I'd need to take the car to a shop to get it looked at, and it was that scenario that annoyed me more than anything else. After dinner, I drove the car to Autozone again just to be absolutely sure that the gas cap was (somehow) still the culprit here.

Great news! It wasn't!

Instead, I was presented with an all-new error message that read "GEAR 1 RATIO INCORRECT," which based on my research appears to be a kind of mechanical shorthand for "your transmission is having minor issues that are not going to go away and will likely become totally fucked at some point in the future."

So, yeah. Great. Wonderful. Coming right smack in the middle of my Christmas shopping (and just after a recent splurge purchase on my behalf on a couple of box sets), this may be my most impressively-timed bit of bad financial news since about August of 2006.

Bah. One of these years, I will enjoy an entire holiday season without once worrying at any point about future insolvency thanks to something inside of a car I own picking that particular point to cease working correctly. Believe me, when this happens, y'all will be the first to know.

NP: Devo Duty Now For The Future

The Accidental Diet

At the end of February, I stepped onto the scale in the bathroom for the first time in forever and discovered that I weighed 195 pounds: about twenty pounds heavier than I had ever been in my life. A bit horrified at my recent surge towards 200 (likely an unpleasant side effect of quitting smoking, perhaps) and battling with a minor recurrence of Chuck-like symptoms, I decided to change a couple of aspects of my diet in a half-assed effort to keep things from getting any worse and kinda left it at that.

Over the last couple of months, two or three different people at work have asked me if I'd been losing weight. As far as I could tell (based on facing myself half-clothed in the bathroom mirror every day while shaving or brushing my teeth), I looked pretty much the same, so I didn't pay them a lot of mind. It was only when Sarah mentioned that I was looking thinner through the middle a couple of weeks back that I finally stepped on the scale again and was pretty shocked to see that I weighed 177: a loss of eighteen pounds in seven months.

Aside from the unsolicited comments, this new information also explained why some of my t-shirts had been feeling a bit roomier and why my pairs of 34'' x 36'' relaxed-fit jeans had become a bit too-relaxed (necessitating me buying a belt back in June or so). I honestly figured that these clothes were simply getting worn-in and loose, but it turns out that I'd dropped a couple of inches of circumference instead. Now I'm trying to relocate my old pairs of 32" x 36" jeans that had become waaay too tight last year and shelving the 34s until some later date.

Now, what exactly did I do to cause all of these pounds to melt away? I'm not really sure, to be honest. I merely intended to stop gaining weight back in February: losing a bunch of it instead was a completely unforeseen event, especially since I didn't join the gym or start jogging or anything. Thus, it might be a bit before I can figure out if it was just the not-that-drastic dietary adjustment (dropped most of the beef and red meat for chicken and salads, upped my ratio of water-to-pop, started getting bare bones ham-n-cheese sammiches instead of the meat-n-mayo heavy "club" subs at Tommy's), some kind of seasonal swing (we do pack on extra tonnage when it's cold out, after all), simply standing up more at work instead of sitting, the Cleveland Indians playing like absolute crap, my month-long bout of insomnia over the summer, my use of nasal strips to relieve snoring, or some as-yet-unknown factor. Whatever the case, I'll be watching this closely over the coming weeks to make sure this is nothing to end up getting worried about: Goat knows I've had enough of that kind of thing over the last couple of years.

The Midnight Heat

81 degrees at 2 AM. Cruising down empty thoroughfares in shorts and a tee with the windows down, some appropriately scenic music pulsing from the speakers, sipping at a sweaty can of Pepsi, basking in the nighttime warmth and soaking up the thickened, sultry atmosphere.

This, my friends, is true summer. So nice that it decided to show up at last on the final days of my vacation. ;p

Staycation '09

My 2009 vacation, such as it is, kicked off today in suitably relaxed fashion: we went off to MicroCenter to pick up a couple of USB/PS2 adaptors for the computer as I am maxed out on available ports, got the Saturn's fluids topped off and serpentine belt replaced and then spent the evening hanging out and watching DVDs (and listening to a few cuts from 5.1-enchanced classic albums) with our friends Eric and Katie down in Seven Hills. A very pleasant start indeed.

The reason for the "such as it is" qualifier is that this vacation will be marred by one work day towards the end. When setting this week up, my replacement during the week informed me that he couldn't fit Saturday the 8th work into his schedule, which for a few hours had me debating on delaying my furlough for a week or two before coming up with a secondary option that suited us both. The original plan had been for me to work the 1st, and then take off the 4th through the 8th (which, with weekends bookending, would have me off the days of August 2-10). The amended plan works out as follows: I am now off August 1-7, I'll work the 8th (which actually should allow me to get caught up enough that I don't come back to a huge pile of e-work on the 11th), then I'll still have the next two days off as a normal weekend. While this isn't exactly the ideal scenario I'd had planned, it's still a very workable option, and I get the keep the nine days off ... only with a hiccup towards the end.

Despite the onset of my first week off in exactly a year, I wasn't in a very good mood Friday night as I'd been battling a sore throat for the last 36 hours and was rather annoyed at the timing of this seeming onset of illness. Luckily, I seem to have triumphed over this cold or infection or whatever it was, having been free of symptoms since this morning, though I'm currently sucking on a Cold-Eeze and sipping on a glassful of Airborne just for good measure.

As for what comes next, there isn't much to write about right now. I'm still not 100% caught up on remaining bills that were delayed by the purchase of the Saturn, thus I plan to spend most of this year's vacation off at home. I can't presently afford to attend multiple baseball games as I did on last year's break (not that I am presently in the mood to do so following the events of the past few days ... more on that later) or doing much of anything else that involves the throwing about of moolah. The only possibility I am considering for a daytime trip right now is heading over to Geneva On The Lake and seeing how the ol' Strip looks. Beyond that, you can just call me "homebody."

XL

Guh.

What else is there to say, really.

Over The Hump

You know those times when you’ve been behind the 8-ball for what feels like forever, perhaps beginning to despair that you might not ever catch up with your suddenly-ballooning finances? Somehow, after a major expenditure, it seems like everything comes due at the same time and what seemed like a pretty great idea a month ago has had you privately second guessing yourself ever since.

Then, along comes that unmistakable day where things finally start to feel right again: the highest hurdle has been cleared, and looking down the path ahead, you begin to realize that everything is actually going to get better from here on out. For me, that day was today.

I'm not going to be out of the woods for a while yet, maybe the end of July, but the Saturn passing E-check today (despite the presence of a hole in the exhaust system that only made itself known over the last five or so days) was a tremendous relief nonetheless. Now that the car is finally legal, I can start lining up and systematically dispatching waiting bills and ratcheting down the stress to a far more manageable level. Life can be pretty dramatic, and I should be familiar with this feeling, but it feels wonderfully new everytime it happens.

Of course, not everything came up completely rosy today: I have now lost my second Western Digital "My Book" external hard drive in the last six months and I am absolutely furious with that once-trusted company. As with everything else in this increasingly disposable world of electronics, the new model crap withers and dies while the older models soldier ever onwards: my oldest WD drive (a pre-My Book era dinosaur) is not only is it still working wonderfully in its current capacity as electronic jukebox for the Record Den, but also taking a fair amount of abuse doing so. How surprising.

Luckily, my friend Dave has most of the data on this drive already saved from the last time I had a drive fail, and that dead HD had ironically been migrated to this one. Assuming Dave can save what needs to be saved from what was so recently known as Drive K, I face a bit of a data-archiving quandary in that I have 3 other "My Book" drives still active and all of them nearly full-to-bursting with data. Obviously, I can no longer trust any of these drives not to fail in the near future and I will need to figure out a non-WD solution as to how I'm going to backup these drives before taking great pleasure in destroying them. For now, they are going to be used as little as possible until I can back everything up safely to DVD-R for a least a short-term solution (a project that has started in earnest as I write this post).

Lessons learned today:

1. Life does not always suck nose. There are indeed times when all is well ... or at least trending that way.

2. Never slack off on backing up your data, people: especially the important stuff you can't live without.

3. Fuck you, Western Digital. Seriously. Go take a long walk off a short pier.

Taking Me Out To The Ballgame

An early birthday gift for me as we're headed downtown to see my first Cleveland Indians game of the 2009 season later tonight. Even though it's technically a stupid dumb interleague game, this contest should provide a very interesting pitching match-up as Indians staff ace Cliff Lee takes on St. Louis Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter before a national audience via ESPN.

I'll have more to say on this frustrating, but not entirely hopeless season in a couple of weeks. Until then, in a fit of boredom and sleeplessness (not taking any pills on the weekends is the plan for now in an attempt to draw out their effectiveness a bit), I computed my attendance win/loss record (minus one late summer game I attended in 1990 and have absolutely zero memory of) and the final results are presented below:

1995: 1 - 0
1997: 0 - 1
2006: 1 - 0
2007: 5 - 2
2008: 7 - 7

This gives me an overall record of 14-10 and a winning percentage of .583. Granted, that's not exactly a dominating number right there, but it ain't too shabby in baseball terms (especially in this year's AL Central).

I therefore conclude that tonight's game is in good hands. :)

SEMI CONSISTENT SLEEP ACHIEVED!

ALL HAIL TRAZODONE!!!!

Dreamstate Achieved

A heartening sign amidst all of the gloom: I dreamt for a short time this morning. I won't even attempt to get into the substance or symbolism of that dream state, but it was certainly a state of deep, restful sleep that lasted for at least a few precious minutes. Unfortunately, I spend the rest of the morning in my now-usual state of hypersensitive Stage 1. There was no sleep possible when Sarah was awake and getting ready for work while passing cars and the clanging of the garbage trucks doing their automated thing in the parking lot jarred me awake continuously. Still, I was asleep for a bit, and that was a start.

While I'm nearly certain that stress is playing a large part in this, it also feels like my body clock is completely out of whack: once the sun comes up, say 5 AM or so, sleep becomes at least possible, if very fragmented and frustratingly inconsistent. Until that point, I will occasionally feel very drowsy and lethargic, but unable to make the transition to a true state of slumber.

The worst part of the day is driving to (and arriving at) work and trying to get going without my usual shot of carbonated caffeine. I'll have a few "muuuhhh" spots along the way, but once I get home, my head somehow magically clears itself of cobwebs, which has rendered efforts to "nap" for a few hours from when I get home (trying to "cheat" myself a few hours of rest, in effect) completely unsuccessful.

I haven't completely run dry of ideas for how to combat this problem sans pills, but I am definitely within sight of the end of inspiration. I still have to try that Trazodone out, though I have very little real hope of those pills making any difference when nothing else works. I also want to try a return to our old comforter: shortly before all of this started, Sarah switched out our old heavy comforter for a newer, lighter blanket, and while I doubt that returning to the older model will provide a miracle cure, I feel it's at least worth a shot.

OK, back to work ...

Vent

Sorry, reader: this post is going to come off as unnecessarily defeatist and angry. I hope you'll understand and bear with me (or better yet, skip on down to the next entry). Normally, I try to ride these lows out without a word in here, but it's now a little past four in the morning and I don't do "peppy and upbeat" when I haven't had any goddamned sleep in 4 days.

That's right: my insomnia has not only persisted over the last month, but has also worsened to the point that right now, nothing can make me fall asleep. Zilch. Nada. Niechievo. Benadryl? Stopped working last weekend. Unisom? Hasn't worked in weeks. Even fucking Ambien, my only guarantee of a good night's rest, has no effect on me (and discovering that last night was a pretty nasty and spirit-breaking surprise). My caffeine intake is now near-zero (I'm not sure how much caffeine is in a Snickers bar, but that's all I've ingested since Tuesday afternoon), I've walked a mile or so every night in a vain attempt to make myself sleepy, listened to ambient music for an hour before bedtime the last three nights, and all of this has had absolutely zero effect on my condition. Tonight, in a final insult to normalcy, I took a Clairitin-D an hour before retiring, and the near-knockout effect it usually has on me every single time I take one utterly failed to materialize. Of course. Sarah has a bottle of Trazodone on her desk that I can try tomorrow night for the sake of trying it, but I have about as much hope in that working as I do in popping some Dexedrine and washing 'em down with a can of Jolt.

So, now what? Obviously, I'm going to have to see a doctor about this, and here is where we come to the oh-so-diabolical timing of this condition worsening: even if I wanted to see a professional and throw a lot of money I do not have at this problem, I simply can't do it right now. As I mentioned previously, buying a new car two months earlier than I'd planned to has utterly nuked my finances to the point where I have already-delayed bills and obligations lined up for the next 3-4 weeks, and they must be taken care of before I can go getting myself into another medical adventure.

Speaking of the Saturn, by the way: to the kid(s) who ripped the temporary tags off the back of my car for a lark (or whatever the hell reason it is you assholes decide to fuck around with anonymous cars): thanks a ton, jackass. That was really hilarious. Seriously. I just love spending even more money and time running around to the police department and the DMV on unnecessary, redundant bureaucratic bullshit. By all means, keep up the good fight and display your little prize proudly. You really stuck it to the man this time! Rock on!

In happier Saturn news, my long-awaited title to the car arrived today, which means I will soon be able to put plates on the thing (the sole task that is holding everything else up that I have to take care of behind it). However, I was also informed while getting my new temp tags that I will need to E-check the Saturn before I can put plates on it, which means that the balding driver's side front tire will have to be replaced this weekend in order for the car to get tested ASAP. The front tire was a known repair issue when I bought the car, so that is no big deal in and of itself. As for the E-check ... while it appears that I have nothing to worry about in that department, I hope y'all can understand that it's very difficult for me not to imagine another shoe waiting to drop here.

Oh yeah, at some point yesterday, the shelving units mounted on our kitchen wall came crashing down to the floor, splattering their contents all over the place. I strongly suspect the hand (or paw) of Moe in this, but who the hell knows for sure. I'm also very glad Sarah discovered this mess first, as I might have simply exploded on the spot. If there was a "good news" angle to this story: it's that a.) the cats weren't hurt by the collapse b.) the unit came off the wall cleanly and didn't pull out any chunks of plaster with it. Huzzah.

So, that's it. Venting operation completed. I cannot afford to take care of this insomnia until sometime in early-to-mid July, so I'm just going to deal with it by waiting it out, at last until I am out from behind the 8-ball. At some point, eventually, my body's demand for sleep will win out this battle and that will be that (or I will simply get used to the series of five-minute catnaps or whatever the hell goes on with me once the sun comes up). Until that time comes, I guess I get to sit around and read a bunch, maybe watch some movies, organize my sock drawer, meditate or however else I choose to kill off the hours between 12-6 AM. Whatever I choose to do, it will certainly beat lying in bed, wanting to scream and/or cry, and listening to the fans running for hours. Whatever the hell is wrong with me, one way or the other, it is not going to last forever ... it just feels like it right now.

The New Vicmobile

Following the failure of the Beretta to pass E-check, my initial plan was to coast into July and allow myself plenty of time to save up the necessary funds and search out a replacement vehicle at my leisure.

Life, as always, had other plans.

On May 21, I was returning home from visiting Dad at LakeWest (sadly, his home away from home anymore) and idling in line at the Chick Fil-A drive-thru when something gave under the hood of the Beretta. There wasn't a bang! or crack! or anything dramatic like that, just a sudden, tangible change in the character of the engine noise, coupled with a sinister new vibrating thrum that immediately began clattering the exhaust pipes noisily against the frame of the car. The Beretta immediately sounded rougher, louder, and wheezier than it ever had before, lending me to suspect that I had somehow just managed to wreck my brand new (and apparently useless) exhaust system. But no, this noise was different ... it was coming from the engine itself, not from the rear or bottom of the car. There was also a whiff of something burning: not gasoline, not rubber, not coolant ... engine oil?

I got the car back home and worriedly popped the hood, sniffing around and smelling that weird, wispy tang of something wrong while not knowing what it was. On Sarah's advice, I checked the oil and was relieved to see that I was still filled up and looking good. That led me to wonder about the fuel lines being clogged, or maybe the transmission being compromised. Sarah wondered if the gas tank had taken on water.

The next morning, to my consternation, the car's new running characteristics remained unchanged. I tried gunning the engine a few times on the way to work (in an attempt to "blow out" whatever seemed to be making my engine sound asthmatic) to no effect, and adding some fresh gas to the tank didn't seem to help either. In fact, it wasn't until I was cruising down Mentor Avenue in the homestretch towards work that I realized that the Beretta was actually running semi-normally once I had it cruising along in third or fourth gear: it was getting to that point where I was having problems. That led me again to wonder if the transmission was at fault here, and I found that to be the case later that evening as I noticed a large puddle forming behind the left front tire. I backed the car away from the pool and dabbed at it with a paper towel, immediately spying a thick blot of pink fluid spreading across the surface of the paper. En route home, I smelled that burning scent again, and noticed wisps of steam/smoke crawling up the side of the Beretta from the vicinity of the left front wheel well. Ah, hell, that would explain a lot of things, wouldn't it.

I had already resolved that there would be no additional repairs to the Beretta, no matter what. So, it was going to be showtime ... two months early. Beautiful. With nothing else to be done for it, I parked the Beretta in the rear parking lot at the condos, where it sits as of this writing: cleaned-out and awaiting to be towed and ultimately junked.

I did some car shopping online looking for something cheap and (hopefully) semi-dependable, while consulting a bit with my brother (who is far better versed in cars and car repair than I am). After some poking around, I'd found a possible candidate to look at, but ran into a timing snafu: Sunday and Monday are my weekends, and the used car dealership where I found my pick was closed for business on Sundays and would be closed the following Monday since it was Memorial Day. Of course.

At least with Brett being currently out of work, we had some scheduling flexibility that normally wouldn't exist between us, so we arranged to meet early Tuesday morning to do some looking around. Brett was pretty skeptical of my initial pick, a 2001 Sebring sedan, and it turned out he had good reason to be: after some close inspection of the dessicated inside of the drivers compartment, the damaged front clip, and a small coolant leak under the hood, the Sebring looked like a bad investment waiting to happen. Next!

With an hour and change to burn before I had to be at work, we headed up to Vine Street and started driving eastward, eventually coming across Transportation Outlet Inc. An initial pass through their lot didn't look very promising: I was not in the market for an SUV or pickup truck, and I also wasn't looking right now to take on a few years of car payments just yet. On the second pass, however, we finally came across what turned out 45 minutes later to be the new Vicmobile:


And there she is, folks: a 1998 Saturn SL2. Considering what I am moving up from, this rather tame acquisition feels like a freaking luxury sedan, despite the lack of CD player (the only demand I had for car audio was a working AM radio so that I could listen to Indians games on the road, so this was a forgivable omission). It's also about as far from the old hot rods of my early twenties as I could have imagined myself buying. Priorities definitely change as you age, and while my priority in 1994 was "how cool does it look and how good is the stereo?," the biggest priority I have in 2009 is "will this car be dependable enough to get me through, say, the end of 2012?" Brett thought so, and his approval of the car itself and the asking price was instrumental in me sealing the deal.

I feel a strange mix of emotions writing this: that exotic blend of giddiness and terrified accomplishment that only comes from spending most of your hard-earned money on something you really hope was worth the splurge. I think most of my friends felt this way when they walked out of the realtors office with the keys to their first house. For me, it was driving off the lot in this car. While the price was good, it was also at the very top end of my reach financially, which will almost certainly make June and July a bit of a monetary high-wire act (at least until this thing has plates on it), but so far it appears to have been worth the risk.

Happy updates are hopefully forthcoming.

Two Small Victories

~1~

As promised, I took an Ambien before bed time last night and slept wonderfully, though I guess getting any quality sleep would qualify as semi-miraculous after the last five days.

These pills require you to have at least eight hours of time handy to devote to uninterrupted rest, so until I get a handle on this (hopefully temporary) insomnia problem, I'll be heading to bed a bit earlier for a while in order to giving myself plenty of time to figure out if I'm gonna conk out on my own or with a bit of chemical assistance (be it in pill or organic form).

I'm not sure if it was the after-effect of the Ambien or if my internal sleep timer is still mysteriously out of sync, but I felt heavy-lidded and a tad lethargic at work this afternoon, though nowhere near as foggy-brained as I felt on Tuesday night.

~2~

The Cleveland Indians won only their second series (and their first in almost exactly a month) of the season early this afternoon against the Chicago White Sox. For a club that is playing with the worst record in all of baseball, only in the last game or so have the Indians begun to look like a team with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Pitching remains crucial to the team having any chance for a successful season, and the call-up of Jeremy Sowers to fill the fifth starter role does not look like a long-term answer to that problem (especially with proven starting commodity Aaron Laffey now working in the bullpen as the team's long relief man). On the other hand, Cliff Lee has been pitching like a man possessed over his last few starts, having fully regained his incredible 2008 form and is only now finally getting some help from the Indians offense. This team has a long way to go to reach .500, but at least there is now a glimmer of possibility.

Sleepless

Having a very crappy start to the work week: didn't fall asleep until the sun was shining Monday morning, and wound up sleeping most of the afternoon away to get some winks in. Then it got worse: I managed maybe 90 minutes of REM sleep this morning (from, say, 11 AM - 12:30 PM) after eight hours of fruitless, frustrating stage 1.

Sooo, it looks like it wasn't the 5-Hour Energy Blast thingies after all (or, if it was, they have somehow thrown my circadian rhythms all out of whack). For the first time in my life, I have full-blown insomnia. Ugh.

Luckily, Sarah has Ambien. One way or the other, I will be very rested tomorrow morning. Beyond that point, we'll see how this plays out.

(Un)Naturally Wired

Last Wednesday, I decided to try out those Five Hour Energy things you see at the gas station in shotglass-sized sealed plastic bottles and come with, like, 8333% of your daily recommended allowance of Vitamin B-whatever. Greg has been using a similar brand off and on at work since giving up on pop, and he reported that they worked pretty well.

For those of you who have never tried one of these, it was like doing a shot of overripe, squished berry juice (there is also a Lemon/Lime brand which simply tastes awful). The concoction took about a half hour to really get working, but when it did I felt very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed indeed. Alert. Flushed. Smiley. Bouncing on the balls of my feet. "Yeah! Let's go!" That kind of thing. And, true to the label, there was no discernible "crash" at the end, just a kind of realization about six hours later that I no longer felt that spring in my step.

I tried another of these bottles on Thursday and then on Friday, and something kind of odd happened: the "rush" or feeling of excessive vitality did not recur either time, but suddenly my ability to fall asleep in a period of less than 2-3 hours was severely compromised. I think I went to bed at 2 AM on Friday morning and didn't really go beyond stage 1 until sometime after 5. Not good.

Friday night was the worst: no sleep at all, and Saturday is an 11.5 hour shift. Ugh. I went to bed at 1, closed my eyes, and basically listened to the Sarah's bedside fan whir and thrum all night until my alarm went off at 9 AM while I tossed and turned and cursed my own existence. Once "awake," I stumbled into the shower, feeling like a walking corpse, and swore off these stupid energy things ... after I had one more on Saturday to make sure I didn't keel over behind the counter at 5 PM.

The timing of this episode was actually kind of funny: a week ago, a couple of old Record Den employees had stopped in and we recounted some good old times. In the midst of this chat, we had a discussion of being able to pull all-nighters with little ill effect in our early-mid twenties and how we could never do one of those again these days! Ha ha! No way, Jose! Amusing.

Anyway, I managed to keep myself pretty busy on Saturday (spent the entire evening alphabetizing 1000 pieces of Sony/EMI product), and despite getting a bit headachey as evening fell, I managed to make it through the day. Once I fell asleep Saturday night (which did take a while), I was completely out the whole rest of the night. Mmmmm REM sleep. So relaxing.

So, yes, these things seem to work pretty well, but caveat emptor ... especially if you are an old and decrepit hippie like me.

"Boo!"s And "Woo!"s

Yeah yeah, I've been a quiet, streaky blogger so far this year. Guilty as charged. I've been having a difficult time getting myself into a regular writing mindset for a while now, largely due to free-time issues (like, not having very much of it). That said, I am matching my 2008 output to date, so maybe it's a seasonal thing. Who knows, maybe I need to look into this Twitter thing.

Just kidding.

"BOO!"s

* Even though the exhaust system is brand new and the car had been running better than it had in a while over the last few weeks, I'd been having a bad feeling about how this year's E-check was gonna go, so I made sure to get it out of the way extra early for a change. That was probably one of my better ideas: not only did the Beretta fail, it completely BOMBED the test. From the near-hysterial reaction of the lady at the testing facility, it seems that my hydrocarbon exhaust level is about, uh, four times over the normal limit, suggesting that I am not far off from blowing unburned fuel right through my tailpipe. Even better, my CO levels are nearly twenty times where they should be. This is no longer a Chevy Beretta, people, I am now driving the fuckin' Deathmobile. I take a grain of comfort in knowing that my friend Andy will be so proud of my size 30 carbon footprint that he might give me a plaque or something.

Needless to say, the limit has finally been reached and the Deathmobile is now on its farewell NE Ohio tour, as I have about 4 months until the current tags expire. Said tags will not be renewed, nor will the Deathmobile be repaired again. Believe me you, I'm a bit incensed that I blew that last grand on it getting the power steering and exhaust systems fixed in December and January, but we (ultimately) live and learn. The question now becomes what do I do about transportation after the end of July? As of right now, I'm leaning strongly towards "new (used) car," and away from "take over Sarah's car and assume remaining payments."

Assuming I go with the former option, I'm going to need to step up the Amazon sales on my end a bit, if nothing else, while also increasing my currently-depleted level of savings over the three couple of months to reach a place where I am comfortable parting with a decent-sized down payment and setting up some attendant financing. More details and strategies as they emerge...

* Frustratingly, the obtaining of a permit for our new water heater has stalled completely. We have called the company that installed the goddamned thing twice in an attempt to get some idea of what to do or how to get a permit, and we have not been called back either time. Finally sick of waiting, I contacted the Willowick Health Department in an attempt to go straight to the top, only to be told that someone would be in contact with us. Of course, said someone has yet to call.

* My 2008 income taxes were e-filed earlier tonight. The results are about par for the course: I get a whopping 7 bucks from the state of Ohio (and that is only after declaring the substantial amount of dental work I had done last year), while the Feds soak me for 111. Grrr.

"WOO!"s

* Dad is back at home again and independently mobile, with a voice and demeanor that is slowly strengthening ... though I wonder if it will ever sound anything like it used to.

* Somehow, we followed up a miserable January at Record Den with the best February sales figure we've had since our re-opening in 1998. It looks like March is going to be close, maybe just a shade off target, which is still better than we thought we'd have any right to be considering the way everything in this country has allegedly gone to Hell. We are pleased and delighted with these results, but also wondering if maybe we are finally becoming the only game in town at long last.

* Our friend Dave Lynch was in town last weekend, and to herald his visit, Sarah and despite a water disaster with the worktub that soaked a part of the living room carpet a couple days previous, we managed to get the condo tidied up to an extent it hasn't been since last year. Now the onus is on for us to keep it that way.

* Opening day for the 2009 baseball season is exactly one week away.

* I still have not set up my new PC yet as I have bogged while backing up stuff on this old one. Still, this rates as a "Woo!" because this new baby is going to kick this old one's ass right off the planet. 4 gigs of memory. Need I say more?

Progress

A checklist of things accomplished and to be accomplished since the beginning of 2009:

* New exhaust system on car (ostensibly to pass this year's E-Check, though also to keep me from inhaling unhealthy amounts of carbon monoxide and keep me from smelling like the interior of an auto repair shop 24/7): check.

* Power steering on car repaired and functioning nominally: check.

* Possibly impulsive and ill-timed purchase of new, very speedy PC from MicroCenter, partially on a $200 gift card I'd received for Christmas: check.

* Heater unit maintenance to clear out a few years of dust buildup: check.

* Completion of re-inspection by Inspector Dickhead: check.

* Cleveland Indians 2009 spring training: in progress.

* Record Den sales status as of end of February 2009: cautiously optimistic following an absolutely awful January.

* Pointless obtaining of permit/plumber inspection for new water heater installed last year (by licensed plumbers, I might add) in order to get the city of Willowick off my back for this year once and for all: pending.

* Next six months of car insurance paid off: pending.

* A couple more dental fillings in April (which, if nothing else, finally closes the book on that ongoing project): pending.

* Dad's status on physical rehabilitation (following a late January bout with pneumonia in his other lung): pending.

* Current pace of Amazon sales: tortoise-like.

* State of condo cleanliness: cluttered.

* Setup/installation of new possibly impulsive and ill-timed purchase of new, very speedy PC from MicroCenter, partially on a $200 gift card I'd received for Christmas: delayed while trying to backup and offload ridiculous amounts of files from this one.

* 2008 income taxes: delayed until I can get needed dividend info from Dad.

* Scheduling of an ultrasound test at LakeWest Hospital (a very cheap and cost-effective procedure, I'm sure) to ascertain that Chuck is no longer hanging around: delayed awaiting the completion of "bill week".

Things are gradually becoming better than they were when I last updated this blog. My overall mood is improving considerably. There is a new U2 album next week. Baseball season starts in just over a month. Best of all: summer's comin'.

NP: (Various Artists) Cafe Del Mar Volume Five

Breather

Hi. Taking an hour break between applying coats of paint to the trapdoor access to the upstairs bathroom (located in the foyer ceiling) and the upper windowsill of the bathroom itself. After seemingly vanishing from existence for a wonderful two months after finding some new stupid shit to bitch about, Inspector Asshole has returned from whatever sabbatical he was on and now wants to schedule a re-inspection, like, yesterday. Good for him.

I think there is some kind of limited zen state I can achieve while painting. I can lose myself in the job and shed irritation with life and just kind of Be for as long as it takes to complete what I'm doing. Granted, dripping paint onto surfaces of different colors kinda hinders the calming effect of the chore a bit, but luckily, we've had none of that tonight.

Maybe I should do this more often. Anyone out there need a room painted by a rank amateur anytime soon?

I'll write some more eventually, but I've been in a pretty bleak place moodwise for the last week or so. Life sucks. It'll pass.

Holiday Season Wrap Up

On both a personal and a business level, Christmas 2008 will not be remembered fondly in the years to come. By the end of December, I was coping with a fair amount of stress, dealing with the nasty after-effects of that week-long godawful flu that had been going around, and worrying about of the future of my occupation more than feeling any kind of measurable Christmas Spirit. Hell, I could barely be arsed to string up any colored lights or mess around with the ol' metal tree ... and the ones I did wind up putting up came down all of two days after the holiday. Bah humbug, etc.

Ironically, this was the first holiday season in years where spending money was not really an issue for me, yet thanks to the collapse of the U.S. economy, it suddenly became a pretty big goddamned deal for everybody else. Thus, gift cards became the gift du jour at the annual Cooke family Christmas get-together, which itself was a strangely somber and empty-feeling occasion since, for the first time ever, my father was not present for it.

Thinking about Dad now, it seems really silly for me to complain about how 2008 basically went into the crapper just as the summer finished winding down, especially since I wasn't the one who spent nearly a quarter of the year (including all of November and December) in a freaking hospital. Dad basically started off last year in pretty iffy shape and seemed only to get worse as the months went by. By Thanksgiving, he had been reduced to a literal shell of himself (roughly 140 pounds, if that) by a series of ongoing health issues that seemed to beget additional problems in a disturbingly domino-like fashion. There are too many involved descriptions and eventualities to get into right now, but the end result of all of it was that my father spent the last two months of the year linked up to a half-dozen tubes, immobilized in a hospital bed, his once-booming voice now wasted away to a wheezy, thin whisper. I remember clearly leaving his hospital room on Thanksgiving Day and seriously wondering if he would ever be coming home.

Thankfully, one of the best parts of Christmas Day was all of us heading up to see him at a rehabilitation facility just outside Chardon and seeing him in markedly improved condition. We had brought along a mini-Christmas Tree, bags full of gifts, and visited with him for a few hours, having in effect a kind of "Christmas away from home." Though still terribly emaciated and dependent on machines for eating and breathing, Dad looked and sounded noticeably stronger and more upbeat than he had on Thanksgiving. For a combination Christmas/"get-well-soon" gift, I had spent nearly all of my free time in December hand-scanning over 1000 family photos to create a chronological "digital photo album" for him, and I was very happy to hear that he was delighted with the end product.

Happily, as I write this, Dad is finally back at home and getting around on his own. We're all hoping that the worst is finally over at last and that he can rehabilitate into a semblance of his old self once again, but time (and his compromised immune system) will tell. A version 2.0 of my photo album will soon be in the works as well: Mom found another 1000 or so pictures a few days after Christmas, and I'll need to sit down with my father sometime soon to sort out some dates, people and places in order to make the new volume a bit more informative and complete.

Business-wise, this holiday season felt like being given a sudden kick in the teeth following months of having one arm held behind our backs. Until about December 16, we were running a tad off pace (which had been the case with us most of the year), but keeping within sight of our sales targets. After that point, however, the bottom just fell out: instead of keeping within 5-10% of our expected sales, we were down by upwards of 30-50%. Ow. Save for a couple of days immediately before and after the holiday, we could have run the entire season with just the three of us ... it was that slow.

I suppose it goes without saying that coming out of a crappy Christmas and entering the year 2009 and the most foreboding economic climate in the last 75 years, we're expecting a pretty brutal January (and after a hopeful start, the sales over the last few days seem to be following our predictions). The prospects for the first quarter as a whole aren't looking a lot better, either, though forthcoming new releases from Bruce Springsteen, Morrissey, Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach and U2 should provide interesting field tests of just how bad things really are.

Ah well, at least 2008 is finally over and out ...

Gradual Relief

I haven't written much about what has been going on in my personal life, since quite frankly things haven't been a party lately with work, my family, a brief return visit from Chuck last Friday, and the never-ending pressure to keep some money set aside for what I hope to be a new used car sometime in the first half of next year. However, one of the bright spots to the last few weeks has been the continuing easing of the prices at the gas pump to a point I actually thought we might not see again. While doing some finances and updating of the bank account tonight, I created a list of my last few visits to the gas pump and the totals accrued each time (and keep in mind that I only get gas when I'm nearing empty and I always get a full tank):

September 17: $58.01 (my highest gas reciept of the year, after 4 months in 54-57 range)
October 1: $51.51
October 14: $44.00
October 28: $36.00
November 14: $28.25
November 24: $26.50