A short short story…

“On the Tractor Every Day” by Thomas La Foe
December 10, 1990

Cornelius found a strange animal on his tractor today. There was a small snake inside the cab. Cornelius sent Rosco, his dog, inside to get the snake out. Cornelius opened the door and Rosco came out with a baby snake! He put it on the ground and ran off.

(I got a 100 on this)

Holiday Rehab Blog

This has been a really hectic couple of months for me. In October 2009 I found myself staring at a pretty grim situation. I had a second DUI pending (which is really the third in my driving career), was looking at losing my job, had buried myself in debt by not paying bills and taking out payday loans, and generally was drinking myself into oblivion. As I plunged into this tunnel, I discovered that there was a light at the end, thanks to rehab, my mom, and my friends.

I checked into Parker Valley Hope on October 8, 2009, and I’ve been sober ever since.

The general suck that surrounded my emergence from rehab was the fact that I couldn’t drive for 2 years, had to find a new place to live, had set my family back tens of thousands of dollars, and faced losing many of the people I had called friends. It’s hard to say which one of these was the worst as they all floated to the top of the toilet bowl of my life. Everything just really sucked.

The best thing, of course, is that I had beaten this whole alcoholism thing. I thought.

When I got back to Starkville I picked right back up at work, found a new place within walking distance of everywhere I needed to go and secured rides to places farther away, and got hooked up with an outpatient group that has been mostly helpful. I was living on my own, getting by with a little help from my friends, and staying sober. I had opened the lines of communication with my family, who knew nothing of my drinking/financial/legal/endless problems, and felt stable.

I picked a bad time to stop drinking.

The holidays blow. For an alcoholic, I suppose. I don’t know, really. There is just no good way to deal with it. I was around drinking with a couple of my friends, and came out pretty much unscathed, and I wanted this to be the way people acted around me. I didn’t want to be the guy that you couldn’t mention booze around or couldn’t order a drink if he was sitting next to you at the table. I think that would make me feel worse than actually sitting face to face with the stuff. I would feel like I was handicapping everyone around me when I was actually the cripple. So charging headlong into the holiday season, I felt I needed to give my family this same reprieve.

I have a lot of family, who like a lot of booze.

It’s not really a problem for them, but it’s still a problem for me and now it’s too late to say something. But what if I wanted to say something? What would I say? It’s ME that has the problem. “I’m sorry guys, I’m uncomfortable with this because I can’t have any and I’m jealous that all of you are having eggnog and I can’t partake in your festivus.”

Grin and bear it. I’ve almost got 3 months.

In the next installment, Thomas returns to Starkville…stay tuned!

My First Blog/Vlog/Thing…Attempt

 

So the whole “writing” a blog idea didn’t really pan out…I’m too lazy. Maybe I’ll mix and match my vlog/blog posts.

Enjoy this, if you can.

Camp Blog

A quick blog from my phone…in the woods. You might have seen photos from this wooded, mountainous campsite, that I uploaded from my phone. The idea that I uploaded it from the campsite itself seems to defeat the purpose of “getting away from it all” that accompanies the notion of camping.

However, having this technology is not without it’s up side. Although I’ve been obsessively following the movements of everyone back home via Twitter and Facebook, which leads to mixed emotions I’d rather be able to table for the extent of this trip; I can actually use my 3G wundertool to look up the rules to long-forgotten card games, or lyrics to campfire songs to amuse the young ones (you know, like “2 Legit 2 Quit” as requested my my 5 year old nephew), or even play music while we play these games. So I guess it’s handy.

So I’m blogging about how technology shouldn’t follow you into the woods, but I find it kind of excellent that it can. As long as we’re on the mountain top and not in a valley…

More later, cause it’s hard to type on this damn thing.

Day changer…

So it’s been a while. How are you doing? I’m doing alright. School has started back and work is busy as ever. We are also in the middle of updating the lab in which I teach, which has led to, let me tell you, some HILARIOUS encounters with technology…with an audience no less!

Anyway. I’ve had a stressful past two days. I’m not unused to the stress, I just find that when I am confronted with obstacles “on the fly,” you know, “in front of a class,” I tend to get flustered. I don’t do well with flustered. During one class on Excel for a credited BCH course, after I had setup a worksheet with all the data I needed, the computer starts logging me out, reboots, and subsequently locks itself with an administrator’s password. Yeah. I had to switch to an entirely different computer and recreate the spreadsheet “on the fly.” You know, “in front of the class.”

Anyway. I turned it into a learning experience for the students and the two instructors for the class said that I handled the “technical issue” like a pro. Aw, shucks. Suffice it to say that the whole ordeal, after I was allowed to break my composure, you know, “not in front of a class,” really put me in a poor state of mind. So I went outside to smoke before returning to my desk and saw that I had 2 voicemails. After I deleted the voicemails from bill collector’s 1 and 2, my phone informed me that I had, “1…saved message,” and it began playing it…

I saved this voice mail because it was from my mother, but it wasn’t my mother talking. I’m going to attempt to transcribe it for you now.

Mom: (in the background) Say, “Hey Thomas.”

Will: Hey Thomas!

Sophie: Hey Thomas!

Will: It’s Will…and Sophie. Come see us!

(pause)

Mom: (in the background) What do you want to say to him?

Will: I love you.

Sophie: (apparently snatching the phone from Will) Hey do you want to come to the house and have a play date?

Mom: (laughing, still in the background) A play date? What else? Tell him to bring the Wii.

Will: Hey, bring the Wii.

Mom: (knowing we must reinforce Will’s spirit of sharing, but still in the background) And we can ALL play.

Will: And we can all PLAY!

(pause)

Will: I miss you, see you soon.

Sophie: (slightly, but never totally in the background) Miss you, see you soon!

Mom: Tell him we’re on the trampoline.

Will: We’re on the trampoline.

Sophie: (taking the foreground, by force if necessary) Hey, can I get you all out of the way?

Mom: (knowing she could never be in the foreground with these two in the picture) Say, “Bye Thomas.”

Will: Bye Thomas, we’ll see you soon.

Sophie: Bye Thomas, we’ll see you soon.

Day was instantly better, I tells ya, instantly better.

And I’m totally taking the Wii.

Right Brain, Left Brain; Up Brain, Down Brain

So yesterday I was all prepared to be organized. I got my list together for everything I’m working on (at work, there is no organization to my life) and decided to tackle a project, one of my yearly goals, that involved doing some research on different type of “distance education” tools. Well these tools are very…well, varied. And all of them tackle the same task in vastly different ways. So different, that they seemed foreign to me.

Now I hate talking about this because it makes me seem so egotistical (which I know I don’t come off that way, but that’s how my brain works. I don’t take compliments well and can’t even fathom giving myself one…but here goes), but when it comes to software, it always makes sense to me. It may take me a little bit of googling before I find the right answer or the right no-nonsense person to explain it to me, but I usually figure it out. Well yesterday, that was NOT the case, and I got frustrated beyond belief. It was like eating too much ice cream and getting the brain freeze.

Well a forced break came in the way of a meeting with Pattye and Amanda about Amanda’s upcoming poster session in Chicago for ALA (American Library Association…I think) and how we were going to all put it together. Well Bobbie (co-worker, and one of our main project “leaders”) was out sick (surprise) so I became the “point person,” as Pattye said. So, we talked about the ideas and how every thing should flow and I went back to my desk and began working.

My brain totally thawed. I opened Adobe Illustrator and just went to town on it. For those of you who don’t know, a Poster Session usually involves a huge vacant space, in this case 4′ by 8′, that you fill in with bits of information and pictures and charts and graphs about a project you are working on in order to share with those who walk by and show some interest (or make eye contact). Think of a science fair for adults. I filled and organized this space in 3 hours. From beginning to completion, I dove into this project head first and didn’t have the slightest hint of  brain freezing.

I discovered something about myself at the end of the day. I am somehow on the cusp of everything in my life. My birthday is June 21, so I’m right at the cusp of Cancer and Gemini (I tend to be more Cancer like, just ask my friends, but I’d rather be a Gemini…I think it’s cooler) and I think this has somehow shaped my life.

I’m introverted and extroverted.

I’m dominant and submissive.

I’m artistic/creative and analytical.

I’m emotional and rational.

But I’m always one or the other. It’s a veritable grab bag of me’s. Yesterday I was introverted, dominant, creative, and rational…and I NEVER saw that coming. It’s not my usual combination. I got so focused it was scary. If I was always that focused there’s no telling what I could accomplish…

Then I had a cocktail.

“Hello World” indeed

My thoughts exactly...

I have somehow managed to stress myself out with this whole “starting a blog” thing. I had have a LiveJournal (greatteal.livejournal.com) but have fallen quite behind in updating it. So why not start another?!

Golly, I really thought this was going to be easier, but I started doing it in the middle of doing other actual work related projects. Holy crap. My brain had a freeze-up.

I don’t have anything to say right now, but I hope to some day.

Kris and Matt have led the way, and away I follow…

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