Jibralta

Blue October Hate Me I really like the musical transition at the bolded lyric (below). This whole album is good, actually. [video=youtube;UIU7Eabredw] ] I have to block out thoughts of you so I don’t lose my head They're crawlin like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed Dropping little reels of tape to remind me that I’m alone Playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home There's a burning in my pride, a nervous bleeding in my brain An ounce of peace is all I want for you. Will you never call again? And will you never say that you loved me, just to put it in my face? And will you never try to reach me? It is I that wanted space Hate me today Hate me tomorrow Hate me for all the things I didn't do for you Hate me in ways Yeah, ways hard to swallow Hate me so you can finally see what’s good for you I’m sober now for three whole months it’s one accomplishment that you helped me with The one thing that always tore us apart is the one thing I won’t touch again In my sick way I want to thank you for holding my head up late at night While I was busy waging wars on myself, you were trying to stop the fight You never doubted my warped opinions on things like suicidal hate You made me compliment myself when it was way too hard to take So I’ll drive so ing far away that I never cross your mind And do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind Hate me today Hate me tomorrow Hate me for all the things I didn’t do for you Hate me in ways Yeah, ways hard to swallow Hate me so you can finally see what’s good for you And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made And like a baby boy I never was a man Until I saw your blue eyes cry and I held your face in my hand And then I fell down yelling, “Make it go away!” Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be And then she whispered, “How can you do this to me?” Hate me today Hate me tomorrow Hate me for all the things I didn’t do for you Hate me in ways Yeah, ways hard to swallow Hate me so you can finally see what’s good for you

Lupe Fiasco Daydreamin [video=youtube;pTNQbdSXXOI]

It was a beautiful day to be home sick. I opened the blinds, threw the windows wide open, and let in the daylight and sounds. I wish I had a porch. Now the daylight is dwindling and I'll have to turn on the lights pretty soon. I wish I could leave the windows and blinds open and have the lights on, but I don't want people peering in my windows!

I was opposite of a lot of people Still am, really....

In terms of drugs and alcohol, I was quite open minded and experimented liberally. Sexually, I was too terrified of pregnancy or STDs to be so liberal.

Yeah, that was kind of the theme of the day back then.

I created this thing for an art class in 1995. We were making ceiling tiles for the Ceramics room in my high school. I painted a 2'-0" x 4'-0" piece of matboard with some watercolors, then drew on it with magic marker. The idea was to cover the board with these intricate little designs, but I didn't really plan correctly. The detail was so minuscule that I became overwhelmed and gave up. ] Here is a detail of the mushroom: ] The teacher, Mr. Morris, was lenient and said, "I know that, even if you are 80, you will finish this." And he gave me an A or a B or whatever. Bottom line is, I didn't have to finish it, but I left with this vast sense of obligation and this stupid piece of cardboard has been sitting in my mom's basement ever since. It got damaged by flood water (you can see traces of that damage on the right side, most obviously in the top right corner where the ink got diluted), but even still, I wouldn't throw it out. My mom moved, and now it's living with me in my tiny apartment. I kind of hate it. I resent the obligation, but also there's a creepy side of the story that I never told anyone about. Here it is: I visited my high school the year after I graduated. I saw Mr. Morris. He was always a bit of a heartthrob even though he was older. As I left, I went in to hug him and he kissed me on the mouth. I acted like nothing was wrong and left. But I felt absolutely filthy. I still feel horrified by it and am cringing as I write this. Well, I don't know. The thing is here now. Maybe I should just finish the design and be done with it!

Reinventmyself, why in the world did I think you were nutbrownhare??? So sorry!

My boyfriend is a bit of a micro-manager. Actually, his myers-briggs personality type is often described as a drill sergeant, parent, or guardian. He loves to establish rules and follow them. He approaches problems in a very regimented, linear way. I myself walk the line between INTJ and INTP. I'm a generalist, a big-picture thinker, not particularly interested in rules. Also, my ADHD makes me a world class scatterbrain. I have good problem-solving skills, but I have a very poor linear thought-process. I don't have patience for tiny little details when there's a bigger problem to be solved. But I am prone to hyper-focusing on minutia once I start working on the problem. We work pretty well together. The only thing is, sometimes he overcompensates for my tendency to forget/lose things and that screws me up even more. For example, he'll grab my car keys and my wallet on our way out, because I inevitably forget them. But believe it or not, there is actually method to my madness and when I remember what I forgot and its not where it's supposed to be, it starts a whole nother thread in my brain and anything that was there before is now wiped out by this one pressing issue of where the f did my car keys go?

Oh, I didn't realize camel milk was supposed to "cure" it!

Thanks, nutbrownhare. I'm glad to have known her. Sorry to hear that you lost your pet as well. You're right, it's not fair that we can't have them longer!

I really like my bosses. There are two of them. They're sort of like a dynamic duo. One guy is the muscle, the other is the brains. They're both really intelligent, actually. But one of them is like Superbrain. I feel like they want me to succeed, and that is a nice feeling to have.

I don't know a whole lot about it, but it may be worth looking into. This guy seems pretty reputable:

This song came out when I was 11. Everyone liked it. I remember we were all surprised to find out that Tracy Chapman was a woman, because her voice was so low. When I got to be a little older, in my teens, I found that I related to the "breaking-free" theme of the song, conveyed so well in the music of the chorus. It wasn't until my 20s that actually listened to the lyrics and realized that they don't just repeat, and that the song isn't actually about driving fast and feeling free. There's a story, and it takes a turn midway through. And the last line is: "Take your fast car and keep on driving." Somehow these things made the music even better to me. [video=youtube;uTIB10eQnA0] ]

Thanks It sucks, but it feels good knowing that she had a good life and was loved by everyone who met her. What a charmer she was.

My beloved little dog died today. My mom put her to sleep. She was quite old, I think nearly 17, but she was such a fighter that we held out as long as we could. Last October she got very sick. She contracted Giardiasis, which is a parasite that affects puppies and old dogs. She was so ill and lost so much weight that we though she would die. But she didn't. The poor thing could barely walk, and more than once my mom found her collapsed and passed out near her water bowl. She was like that for several months. During that time, if my mom had plans on weekend days, I'd go over and keep an eye on the dog. Then just as she was getting better, she got pancreatitis! Poor thing. She pulled through, but the ordeal aged her and a lot of her spark disappeared. But then it returned for a short while, right before my mom moved to Florida! When I got to her house, my dog practically bounded towards me (as much as she could!) and she even had the bitey little smile she always gave me, where she'd pretend to bite my face. I miss her. She was such a good girl.

Well, this is actually the crux of the issue that the mentoring program seeks to address: many former military people do feel alienated from the civilian world, and have a difficult time transitioning. So this program creates partnerships between civilians like me and military people like him to confront those very issues. So if that's the source of his current anxiety, this is a very good opportunity to address that problem. He told me himself, at the very beginning of our first conversation, that he felt intimidated by my degrees. I didn't come up with that myself. Sooner or later, I'm sure he will be able to get past that issue. But maybe not with me.

[video=youtube;WKUa46dEmVM] ]

Have you heard of the beneficial effects of camel milk?

I agree with you. This is probably more about Bill's inner dialog than anything else. In our last conversation, he said something about not wanting to accept certain jobs because they were 'beneath' him. I thought, "That's not a good mentality for someone going into a brand new field!" And I do realize that there are some men who have a hard time accepting a woman who could possibly be more competent. I've seen it before, and I will see it again. I can't account for it, and I'll never be able to change it. It's just one of those things. I'm not sure if "patronizing" is exactly the right word, but I think I understand what you are saying. Bill viewed the mentor/mentee relationship as better-than/worse-than arrangement: I am helping him, so I am better than him. But I joined a similar program when I first started my current job, and I didn't see my mentor as someone who was better than me. I saw him as someone who was interested in helping me to succeed. But I may have a different outlook on life than Bill. I don't think anyone wants to lose their freedom. It took about 35 years for me to find a relationship that didn't oppress me in some way! But my analogy was more along the lines of what happens when hormones are doing the driving in a relationship--when you actually want a relationship. Hormones are liars!

A couple of months ago, I signed up for a mentoring program. The program helps military people to transition into the civilian workforce. Soon after, I was paired with a gentleman who planned to retire from the Army in 2018, after a 20 year career. I will call him Bill, for the purposes of this post. The mentoring program has some general guidelines. During our first conversation, Bill and I were supposed to determine whether our personalities meshed or not. Bill didn't have a formal education beyond high school, and he confessed that he was a little intimidated by all of these degrees that I have. But I reassured him that I am a normal human being, and after that our first conversation went smashingly well. We decided to do the program together. I hung up from that call feeling elated. I was really helping someone! For the next few weeks, Bill and I stayed in fairly close contact: emailed and texted back and forth probably every other day. He emailed his resume for me to review. The format was fine but the information was too general. I had a colleague review the resume and the colleague provided a similar critique. I returned the resume and the comments to Bill with the recommendation that he elaborate much more on the items that he listed. Bill agreed, still enthusiastic. Our regular communication continued. He sent me some videos of his day to day activities on his base, and I sent him some photos of the construction site that I was working on. Then Bill's enthusiasm seemed to wane. During our second phone call (the program suggests monthly check-ins), he sounded nervous and unsure to me. He said was feeling anxious about an upcoming class that he was going to take. He didn't know if he would do well. Knowing the class and what it entailed, I reassured him that he would do fine. Then I learned that he had been hoping to get feedback from me on one (or more?) of the videos that he'd sent me. I didn't realize this, and I felt bad. Was I was a bad mentor? He was so happy last month, and now this month his spirits were in the toilet. What if he felt so discouraged that he gave up on his dream career altogether? I resolved to be a better mentor and ask questions the next time he emailed me a video. F_ck it, I was going to ask questions about everything! A few days later, I got a phone call from one of the program coordinators. I was like, "uh-oh, I'm getting fired (or Bill is breaking up with me)." But I didn't get fired or broken up with. The coordinator was just checking to see how things were going. I explained to her about how Bill seemed to be withdrawing a little. She said, "You need to remember that he is intimidated by all of your accomplishments." I was like, "I understand that. But I don't know how to un-intimidate him. How do I make him understand that I'm just like he is?" The coordinator was like, "Thanks for your time, we'll get back to you." I was like, "Thanks?" Over the next few weeks, Bill and I exchanged some texts, and smattering of emails, but they were pretty brief and to the point. And there was no mention of his resume, which was one of his major goals. I started to feel like I crushed his soul with my critique of it. When the day came for our third phone call, he didn't answer.... So now I'm not sure what's going on. But ANYHOO, the reason I am posting this here is because it reminds me a lot of online dating, when you meet the new person and you totally click, and you're both all Thelma-and-Louise about this New and Epic Relationship that you're both going to have, and then the dude jumps out of the car right as it's about to plunge off the cliff. And as he's getting ready to jump, you're sitting there thinking, "What is he doing? Is he jumping out of the car? Why would he do that? He's the one who said he wanted this!! Maybe he doesn't realize that we're going over the cliff now. 'Hey dude... This is the cliff, dude... Dude? Buddy? Are you really giving up?'" You know, all of the crazy/stupid ideas, hopes, doubts, and (finally) realizations that you have about people when you get involved with them before you actually know them. I have to say, I enjoy the show a lot more from this remote vantage point, where my heart is not actually in the car with the person!

You might as well ask. You kind of know each other at this point; it's not like it's your first date.* Time is precious. _____________ *and I know a lot of people freak out over things like this, but when I did online dating you bet I asked what people were looking for out of OLD even before the first date. I'm very protective of my time and like to spend it well.

My mom is moving to Florida today. She's had a helluva time this summer. She put her house on the market at a high price, indifferent to whether it sold or not because she was in no rush to move. Well, it flew off the market at an even higher price than what she listed, and suddenly it was a mad dash for everyone to get their sht together. I still had a lot of stuff at her house, so I spent weekends throughout the spring and summer slowly picking through old crap and purging. I went at a leisurely pace at first, but then the closing date was suddenly upon us and towards the end I was just piling stuff into storage. I'm so glad that my boyfriend and I had forethought and upgraded to a larger storage space in March, when we first learned of my mom's plan. I'm also glad that I started the purging process immediately, and didn't wait until the very last minute because it would have been a MESS. Anyway, my mom had to rush to find a new house, which meant she had to fly down to Florida and do a house-hunting marathon. After a few trials and tribulations, she did find a house that she liked. Closing on her former home was September 7. The plan was to then have a leisurely drive down to Florida, stay with my sister, close on the new house on September 11, and take her time moving in. Well, unfortunately for her, Hurricane Irma was also scheduled to arrive in northern Florida on the same day! So, she of course postponed the closing. But she's been in a state of limbo for the last week. Closing on the new house is still indeterminate, but she does have a place to stay in the meantime. Depending how everything goes, she may have to reschedule the delivery of her belongings. Anyway, today I spent a couple of hours at the storage locker, going through just TONS of old files that I had. I felt really good, like I had all the time in the world. In fact, when I arrived at the storage place and realized that I'd forgotten my keyfob, I didn't have any panic/anxiety over wasted time. I actually felt very light and free and happily drove myself back home to get it. At first, I thought this pleasant, stress-free reaction was because I finally completed the A.R.E.s and no longer have that weight on my shoulders. But that was months ago, and this feeling felt almost new. I think it may actually be a release of sorts from the burden of my mother. I love her and I will miss her very much, but she can be a lot of work. She is in good hands with my sister, though. They are like two peas in a pod. And she's in a warm place with friendly people. My stepfather will be joining her soon, as well.

I think this is the most beautiful version of this song that I've heard. Eve Cassidy, the singer, dies not long after this performance, from cancer. [video=youtube;xXBNlApwh0c] ]

The Money Pit I forgot how funny it was. Alexander Godunov was great in his role. Pity that he died so young.