Life is a State of Mind

Yippee! Bruce Roemmelt (Firefighter, educator, veteran, 2005 candidate) is running for Virginia House of Delegates for the 13th district again. As many of you know, I am very proud to have worked in Bruce’s 2005 campaign to unseat Delegate Robert Marshall (who is way too concerned with what goes on in my private life for me). Please consider helping Bruce win election this November. Visit his website, contribute, volunteer, and help get him elected.

If you live anywhere in Virginia the outcome of this election matters to you, as Delegate Marshall is the author of the hateful marriage amendment that passed last year and Delegate Marshall just tried to sneak a law onto the books that would make contraception illegal in Virginia (HB2797, thanks Kenton).

Oops - Was really was writing again to express how thankful I am to be on a terrific team at work, and then work got away from me (I am oncall again this week) and I did not leave until 10pm Thursday. However, Friday was page and interrupt free (yahoo!) and that meant serious focus time to prepare for next week’s major switch-over to a new primary server (big complicated procedure involving about 18 people). I was able to go over the entire plan, line by line, and make lots of improvements from the past switch-over. That is a very nice feeling, the confidence that big scary change is completely under control and all the risks have been mitigated.

Capped off a long day revising the plan at work with wonderful evening of dancing at The Ballroom Studio in Centreville. We still love dancing at Tysons Corner Arthur Murray studio as well, but Friday night is Tyson’s newcomer night, and Darryl Adams and Michele Kearney have a wonderful deal on two group classes and a practice/dance party for only $25 that is too good to refuse. Anyway, last night the group classes were Paso Doble and Argentine Tango. Paso is the dance I did not know enough about to name, but was what I was picturing in my head when we first went to Arthur Murray for lessons in the mid-1990s. I have always thought I wanted to know Paso, but it is not easy, and I am simply not getting it. I don’t hear the music transitions, and can’t keep up the act of being a toreador for very long withouth laughing. Argentine Tango is the dance I did not think I would like at all, but it seems to be sticking now. We had a lot of fun dancing, and the party was excellent afterwards, even if I was tired from a long week of being oncall at work.

I am really, really thankful I am part of such a great team at work, and have recently turned down a few unsolicited offers for much more money because I am really happy where I am at. I guess the market for experienced UNIX systems people is picking up again (I’d stopped getting recruiter calls a few years ago, but they are calling again now). The bottom line is I like my job, I like my boss, and I really like the people I work with day to day a lot. We are moving to the Sterling (aka: Dulles) campus (CC4, 6th floor) in early March, and I have mixed feelings about the move, but the people will still be great. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Erci and I like wine. We like wine from several places, but we are particularly fond of wines from Bonny Doon Vineyard in the mountains over Santa Cruz, California. We like Bonnie Doon wines so much that we tried to join DEWN (their wine of the month club) way back when it was illegal to ship wines via mail-order into Virginia. We did a little research and discovered that the reason it was illegal was because the big alcohol distributers did not want to give up their monopoly, and that this retarded law (written by alcohol distributer lobbyists, and passed by Virginia’s notoriously retarded legislature) was hurting Virginia wine makers and small out-of-state wine makers alike.

We joined the “Free the Grapes” campaign which took a while but eventually got the stupid law repealed and now it is legal to mail-order wines both to and from Virginia, much to the delight of everyone except the monopolistic alcohol distributers… they may find my lack of sympathy disturbing. We were finally able to join DEWN and try some of Bonnie Doon’s eclectic wines about every other month.

UPS has very attractive repeat shipping rates for small businesses, so attractive that many small businesses will only use UPS for all their shipping. It is simpler and cost-effective, and I applaud both the small businesses and UPS for a generally good arrangement. However, it does limit choice; and I’ll get to how that can be a problem later.

There is another law, designed to protect minors from getting their hands on alcohol, that states that none of the shipping companies can leave packages with alcohol without the signature of an adult of drinking age. It’s a pretty strictly enforced law, and I blame none of the shippers and carriers for following it, the penalties are rediculously high for violations.

Erci and I are both professionals who work in office buildings, pretty long hours. The chances of any delivery catching us at home are next to negligable. We simply are not home that often. in a perfect world this would be no problem, we could notify the shipping companies that we are never home, that they can save themselves a trip and simply call us when a package comes in and we can stop by the warehouse on our way home (it literally is on the way home for UPS, Fedex, USPS, and DHL) and sign for packages. Fedex and USPS both do this routinely when the shipper says signature is required and provides our phone number. For some reason the Chantilly branch of UPS is not able to do this simple and time/effort saving trick.

Chantilly UPS insists on putting the package of alcohol, clearly marked with our phone number and the fact that we are almost never home during the day, on their delivery truck. Invariably they leave a sticker on our door with a phone number to call UPS and warning us they will only try twice more to deliver and that after that it will be held at warehouse for only 5 days. Annoying, but we can deal with that. We call UPS’s 800 number, go through voice menu hell for 10 minutes, and instruct them to hold the package at the warehouse for customer pickup. Warehouse is on the way, and warehouse hours are much better than delivery hours.

Every two months the shipment comes in from Bonnie Doon. Every two months we get three successive days of stickers on our front door (they ignore the phone calls and keep trying to deliver). Every two months I call and go to the warehouse, only to find that they have continued to try to deliver and the package is not there for me. It would be funny if it happened once. Every two months makes me an incoherent ball of rage. This last time takes the cake:

Thursday: 2/8 come home to find sticker, call UPS 800 number and instruct them to hold package.
Friday: 2/9 go to UPS warehouse Chantilly… they do not have package, it’s “on the truck” again, sure enough - sticker on door with “2nd notice” on it
bastards
Monday: 2/12 I don’t bother going by warehouse, and sure enough we get 3rd sticker marked “Final notice” - I call again anyway and instruct them to hold at warehouse for customer pickup
Tuesday: 2/13 - snow day, astonishingly I am working from home all day!!! No UPS delivery truck. Great - they finally are holding it at warehouse…
Wednesday: 2/14 - second snow day, again home. UPS truck goes through neighborhood, stops at three neighbor’s houses (I was shoveling) and not at ours - great, package must be at warehouse.
Thursday: 2/15 - more important errand
Friday: 2/16 - I go to warehouse to pick up package, guess where it is…. On the #&*%&A%$ truck!!!

To hell with Chantilly UPS, they can take the wine and shove it. I call Bonnie Doon and reluctantly cancel the standing order because they can’t switch to another carrier and UPS Chantilly are a pack of idiots.

I finally broke down and bought the expensive original soundtrack and score to the movie Donnie Darko. I selected the British import version of the CDs because it has all the classical music and the ’80s pop that was remastered specifically for the movie and gave it such a haunting edge. The variation to Michael Andrews’ “Mad World” song is worth the expensive price of the double disc set all by itself. You can get “Mad World” elsewhere (Tears for Fears did the most popular version), but I like this version best of all.

If you are curious about it, you can hear the 30 second samples for free on iTunes Music Store (fire up iTunes, which is free for Mac and Windows, go to the iTunes Music Store, search for “Mad World”). Several versions come up, and they are all good (I have the Tears for Fears version on CD too). Something about the quieter, slower version by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews is the most hauntingly beautiful though… decide for yourself.

BTW; if you have not seen Donnie Darko the movie, and wrote it off (as I did) as another silly teen flick, give it a chance. It is mind-twisting Sci-Fi set inside an ’80s teen flick… awesome. Really twisted in much the same way Body Heat, Eternal Sunshine, Memento, Body Double, The Crying Game, and other films are. You might have to watch it three times to catch on to all the time loop paradoxes. Thank you very much to those friends who insisted I get by the silly teen reputation and watch this film (yes, it’s a film, not a movie). Oh yes, and it stars a very young and handsome Jake Gyllenhaal and has his super-sexy sister Maggie in a bit part as his sister too. Lots of eye-candy.

Wes Clark’s letter about Iran is on DailyKos with commentary from bloggers. Definitely worth a read. This is the sort of leadership the United States needs right now.

In other news, Mark Day is video podcasting his entertaining yet poignant monologues. Feed his RSS/URL string into your podcatcher (I use iTunes and Democracy Player) and watch these for a laugh and to be challenged to think a little.

I love having our home filled with happy friendly people. We had another fabulous La Belle Compagnie meeting/workshop/gathering at our place and continued making progress on preparations for the spring reenactor show season. We’ll be going to Military Through the Ages (March 17-18, Jamestown, VA), and to Marching Through Time again (April 14-15, Marietta Manor in Bowie, MD). We are also presenting at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 10-13, UMich, Kalamazoo, MI).

It will be quite a race against the clock to get all the material goods and clothing made in time for the shows, but we have risen to the challenge before.

Wow, it’s been years since I was in Upstate New York during a snowstorm, but that is being changed right now.

Mom has her RoadRunner broadband connection now (an amazing Wave Comm contractor came out in the middle of the blizzard and hooked up her connection, even had to climb the pole outside, though we told he he could come back after the storm). She also has Erci’s old iMac 800, a new Epson printer/scanner/copier, and my old Canon Elph PowerShot S100 digital camera to play with.

Tug Hill Plateau (about 30 miles North of Rome) is getting 3-5 feet of snow as I write this, and Rome is expecting 6-15 inches with tall drifts. It will be fun digging the cars out of the drifts tomorrow and setting out on the trip back to Virginia.

The Prius is doing fine in the snow and even the bone dry extreme cold yesterday and the day before. MPG has fallen dramatically (only getting around 40MPG because of the heater running all the time in single digit temperatures with wind chills well below zero), and even further to 35MPG today in the snow and warming up the car long enough to scrape windows clear. Traction is good though (relatively new tires) and no problems starting or getting into doors (locks often freeze solid in these conditions).

Had a wonderful visit with Ant and Jammie last night, met their cats Merlin, Tookie, and Buddy; exchanged mac geek files, book reading lists, movie lists, and watched lame SuperBowl commercials. Had dinner at Ninety-Nine (a new local chain with pretty decent food). Sadly I did not get to see Terry and Tammy as the weather (and Terry’s recent travel/drive schedule) prevented it - but we’ll hook up later.