Continuing Education

Lying in bed early yesterday in a semi-stupor -- suffering the after-effects of two nocturnal post-bad-dream visits with my daughter -- my senses were assaulted by the abrupt arrival of my son. It was, of course, 7 a.m.; as I have exhaustively (and exhaustedly) documented, he is nothing if not reliable. I suppose I keep mentioning it much the same as any other survivor of trauma is compelled to rehearse the details in order to come to terms with the shock to the psyche. Of course, he's 8 years old, and it shows no sign of abating: it's probably time to move on to the next stage of grief.

As he leaped into bed beside me and forcibly dragged my arm around him for a Squeezy Hug*, I was struck by a thought. As well as a kiss, as he flung himself back out of bed and launched himself into his day.

* Someone really ought to tell his old babysitter Tina that he still calls it a "squeezy hug", as she always did, even though he hasn't even seen her for five years.

The thought, as ill-prepared as I was to receive it, was: I wonder how my day would go if I attacked it with the same gusto he does? He almost literally hits the floor running every day... in contrast to certain of the rest of us. OK, all the rest of us -- who tend to welcome the morning much the same way as Custer welcomed the Indians (or maybe vice-versa).

Then, as if by nuclear fission (although regrettably without the concomitant surge of energy), one idea became two: What other lessons have we gleaned since then (i.e., is there a blog in this)? I greatly enjoyed writing the first edition... and frankly, I thought it was some of my better work... but I'm hoping that at least someone in the house has learned something new.

I could probably easily summon up a list of the lessons learned that we could do without, such as "the most important thing in the world is who gets to go first", or "sticks and stones may break my bones, but I don't have to go outside to find a name to call you," but allow me to take the high road instead and seek the life-affirming....

• It's good to create something and share it. Our daughter always has a craft project going: not something out of a box or something a parent or teacher shoves in front of her, but an idea springing full-fledged out of that extremely busy brain. This evening, she used construction paper, markers, toilet paper, glue, and tape to create... Well, I can't really do it justice. You tell me; as near as I can tell, it's supposed to be a kind of fringed apron you can put around your neck and it kind of waves in the breeze when you move. She made it, and will proudly give it to, her little friend Ethan. Seen in that light, one's quixotic quest to publish occasional blog articles seems almost rational.
• Each day should include fresh air and exercise if at all possible (sunshine optional; we live in the Northeast). When they get home, the first order of business is always the snack, but this is followed immediately by the exodus to the outdoors. Since it's winter, they're deprived of recourse to the plastic bowl and pile of dirt about which I rhapsodized in the earlier installment... but there's plenty of snow, and almost anything in the garage can be pressed into service in a pinch. Brooms have been popular lately, and yesterday I poked my head out to find a keyboard, mouse, and set of speakers perched on a snowbank.
• It's nice to look good, but it's more important to be comfortable (with apologies to Fernando). My wife waited for a long time for a little girl she could dress up, who would love girly things... and much of the time she's still waiting. It's true that our daughter can 'style' with the best of them, proudly, but at the same time if left to her own devices she'd opt for her beloved "sports pants" 5 days or more per week. She is an enormous fan of anything "silky", which mom leverages to get her into many lovely & feminine ensembles. But may the Lord have mercy on us all if there's anything scratchy in today's wardrobe. She's ultrasensitive to anything that doesn't hit just right, and the resulting fits when a garment falls short have all the dogs in the neighborhood barking.

I forgot another important point: "do your best to give dear old Dad something to write about"...

Office Space

I've heard it said that as time goes on, more and more of us will be working from home. Not sure how that'll work for people like elementary school teachers, or funeral directors (remember when they used to be called "undertakers"? That one may be gone, but at least "sanitary engineer" never really caught on). Maybe we're headed towards a time when the only ones not working at home are the members of the Service Economy... of course, we're told that before long that'll be just about everyone, anyway.

In case there are any among my faithful readers, assuming such there be, who find themselves moving inexorably in that direction, I thought I would share my wisdom; this is one of the few things with which I have more personal experience than almost anyone I know. So what follows comprises the absolute musts for the telecommuter, or if you prefer, the WAHer (or even W@H-er).

I'm not really talking about stuff like a screaming-fast computer or Internet connection... although life would certainly be much harder without them, at least for me. I was really musing about the less obvious building blocks of my average day -- as well as some things I really need, but probably won't get in my lifetime.

I think for me the most essential office supply is a comfortable pair of slippers. I am, after all, in the house, so it doesn't make much sense to wear actual shoes all day. However, since my office is carved out of the basement, features a carpet about the thickness of a grocery bag over the cement floor, and cannot truthfully be described as "heated", slippers are the only thing standing between me and that kind of numbness that starts at the feet and creeps all the way up to the brain they are paying me for.

By the same token, 1A would probably be the space heater, which I don't necessarily use daily (the basement has heat, there's just no duct in my office)... only when I find that my e-mails are all lower-case because I can't bend my fingers enough to hit the Shift key.

The next Must is definitely some bangin' tunes. I have a reputation, not really deserved even for all I do to maintain it, as a bit of a misanthrope -- you might have noted that one of the ways I put people off is by using words for which it's advisable for me to link to their definitions -- but even for me, a schedule of sitting in my office every day seeing & speaking to no one threatens to make me come over all Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Not that there's anything wrong with that (I wouldn't mind being the world's most popular movie star), but I don't even have a volleyball. Music, in addition to its ability to connect with me on a very elemental level, also makes me feel a little less deserted-island.

I guess if there's a "2A" for this one, the fact is that I really wouldn't survive either personally or professionally without access to instant messaging. This probably has something to do with the short attention span we've all developed communication-wise... but it's a life-saver to me to be able to ask (or answer) a question effortlessly, or just make a joke or talk about baseball. I may have more to say about IM World in a future post...

Third on the list is most assuredly "easy access to snacks". When I am working hard on something and not getting anywhere, I find that wandering up the stairs for a nibble helps me manage the frustration. When the space heater & slippers together are not sufficient to prevent icicles from forming, a cup of tea is a big help (I also find that drinking tea while I work makes me feel in some way more adult; I don't know why, there's just something inherently civilized to me about drinking tea. Too many British movies?). When I am working hard on something and finally break through, a bite to eat seems a fitting celebration.

Hmmm.... seems like England Dan & John Ford Coley were wrong after all... Snacks Are the Answer.

The addendum to this one is that I also need the intervening stairs, both as a buffer to keep me out of the snacks once in awhile, and for whatever exercise value they might provide. If my office & the kitchen were on the same level, I'd have trouble fitting through the door.

One item I definitely could not get along without is my phone headset. Since I am, again, completely isolated from all human contact -- see above -- I spend a significant part of my time on the phone. And since for many of my meetings, my primary participation is showing up, I spend a significant part of that time, ah, "multitasking". Meaning I need to talk hands-free; if I did the phone-in-crook-of-neck thing, I'd spend all my off-hours at the chiropractor. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be much better off holding the receiver in my hand for hours on end.

Believe it or not, I find a reasonably professional wardrobe to be important as well. In my early WAH days, I tried the sweatpants & jeans route; I found that the more informally I dressed, the dumber I got. I suppose I should take this theory to its logical conclusion and wear a tux every day. Hey, it works for those snooty maitre d's -- they get paid big bucks for the skill of saying "Follow me, please" over and over.

There are other things I'd like to have -- a completely soundproof office would be nice. That may seem contradictory, given that I've been complaining about isolation... but on a Snow Day such as today, a little enforced silence would really hit the spot. Alternatively, it could be the playroom that was soundproofed; that would get the job done just as well.

Taken all around, though, it's a pretty good gig. However, this summer it may get better... when my present desktop goes out of warranty, I should be able to get a laptop. Arithmetic quiz: laptop + wireless Internet + summer + table & chairs on the back deck (with umbrella!) = ??? Wonder if I can expense sunblock?

Tuning Up the WABAC Machine

I'm as prone as the next guy to get lost in reverie about The Past (which, to be honest, wasn't all that much fun when it was the present)... but recently I've been taking a series of intentional brief journeys to days gone by.

Remember how I was searching for a low-cost, low-effort way to digitize my LP collection? Well, not long ago some friends not only found the secret -- but also lent it to me.

It's called the Xitel inPort Deluxe, and it's so simple it even works with my thrift-store-level equipment. I heard about this thing, and it reminded me of some kind of Ronco gadget that promises to cut hair or julienne a squash or something, but can't really perform like the infomercial demo. But you know what -- it delivers the goods. I spent about 15 minutes installing the software on my aged PC; since then, all I do is plug one end of the device into the stereo's headphone jack, and the other end into the PC's USB port; one minute after that, I'm recording onto my hard drive. One program records, one takes out the clicks, the third splits the music into tracks... I can have an entire LP done, with great sound quality even, in an hour (of which maybe 45 minutes is just recording time when I don't even have to do anything).

See if you can guess from my first few rips what year I've been revisiting -- and/or what year I became a pop music fan:

• Billy Joel, Songs in the Attic
• Styx, The Grand Illusion
• Kansas, Point of Know Return
• Gerry Rafferty, City to City
• Steve Miller Band, Greatest Hits 1974-1978

I may have tipped my hand with the last one, but just in case, here are the release dates for those 5 albums (in the same order): 1981, 1977, 1977, 1978, 1978. In any case, I'm sure you can tell just about when I came out of my parent-abetted Easy-Listening Coma and was swept away by the tag-team of Top-40 Radio and the Columbia House Record Club. Remember 12 albums for a penny (then just buy 2 a year for the rest of your life)? I'm pretty sure that 4 of the above are from the original batch, although Billy Joel was represented by The Stranger.

Each of them also had one or more huge hits on the charts at that time -- although I can't link to the Billboard charts to prove my point without subscribing to their online archive :-(. I became an enormous Billy Joel fan -- still am -- but my favorite band was, almost instantaneously, Styx. And revisiting them led me to conclude the following:

(1) A Styx album contains more cheese than the entire state of Wisconsin

(2) They're still my favorite band.

I've made no secret that I knew from an early age that I wasn't cool, so it's not surprising that I went for a band... ah, not critically acclaimed. The irony is that at the time I was sure they were cool. I mean, c'mon, check out this picture:

The album, which is almost literally the first rock & roll album I ever listened to, is frankly a virtual catalog of all the rock album cliches:

Only 7 full-length songs? Check. Plus another song that's just a 6-line reprise? Check. A pretentious spoken-word monologue in the middle of a song? Check. Another song that refers to both angels and aliens? Check. Yet another song that refers to Greek mythology? Check. Funky, abstract cover art? Check.

As a band, they're equally good at covering all the bases, with the theater geek and the hard-rocker side-by-side.

Mozzarella, ricotta, muenster, Monterey Jack or cheddar ... cheese can be delicious as well as good for you! I think I'll go slice off another hunk of Styx.