I don’t like storms
Or, at more accurately, I don’t like storms that cause power to go out, which knocks the power out in the middle of the night, which causes the sump pump to not work, which causes the basement to flood.
That I don’t like at all. Not one little bit.
Especially when you wake up to nice, squishy, wet carpeting in the basement at 7 in the morning.
Comparatively speaking, we got off a whole lot easier than a bunch of folks here in NW Indiana — and for that I thank God — but it’s made for a darned annoying, stressful, and inconvenient day. Fortunately, we were able to find a wonderful company to take care of the work of clean-up & drying things out (Garner, Inc. for those of you in this neck of the woods - they are good people, who do top-notch work at very reasonable prices…). They got here real early and did a great job of getting the water out, the carpet ripped out, the fans & dehumidifiers moved in & things drying out, so that we should be dry by the end of tomorrow (Tuesday) at the latest.
Fortunately, we weren’t without power for too long, so we didn’t get too much water built up (my parents, by comparison, ended up with about a foot of water standing in their basement! But at least they didn’t have any carpet, and also didn’t have as much stuff low to the ground as we do/did, after the flooding they had last year around this same time of year…). I’d guess that we ended up with no more than an inch or two, which probably didn’t get to too much more than the bottoms of stuff like cabinets, bookshelves, & some power strips (i.e., nothing too valuable that I’ve noticed yet…)
It’s amazing how much something like this, which to be honest is really quite minor, can throw the whole household into chaos. Do we really have such a tenuous grasp on normalcy? Scary…
I’m just thankful that the only damage was to stuff, not people, and that the damage was to stuff that thus far looks to be easily replaceable. I’m also very thankful that God has watched over us, kept us safe, and provided us with capable and qualified neighbors to give us the services that we need to get us through these difficult times.
-ghp
The title goes here
I can’t recall the last time I went over a week without posting an entry. Sometimes it gets away from you. I guess I have a decent excuse this time, in that it was last Monday evening that I got the call that my last surviving grandparent had died. As a result, the clan was summoned for a long weekend of funeral related activities, that for the Territorial Nuclear Family meant a Thursday - Sunday road-trip to the ancestral homeland in Metro Detroit.
I’m not going to go into a long, drawn-out, blow-by-blow recap, if only because it’ll bore y’all (’cause other folks’ families are never quite as entertaining as you might thing, even when they are dysfunctional…) & annoy me (’cause it was bad enough that I had to live through parts of it once…). Suffice it to say that there were good parts (it’s always good to meet up with bigsis!), and bad parts (extended family members & social situations that were frankly uncomfortable, physical and mental/emotional malaise, and a funeral service/eulogy that was stunningly stereotypically lightweight in its lack of theology — with the two “hymns” having been In the Garden & The Old Rugged Cross — and thus not terribly comforting as a result…). Layer all that on to the fact that I just don’t like to travel all that much, and you can easily see that it wasn’t the greatest of times for me.
But, it had to be done, and I was more than happy to have been there for my beloved mother. While my grandmother was, to put it lightly, the most difficult of the four grands, it still didn’t make it any easier for my mom to deal with the inevitable endgame. Over the past 14 years my parents have had to bury all four of their parents, including three in the past five, IIRC. Fold into that all of the traveling that they’ve had to do for medical appointments, home care, emergency-room trips, nursing home transitions, nursing home visits, etc… — well, this past decade-and-a-half has aged my parents well beyond the mere passage of time. I pray that the Lord now blesses them with a rejuvenation & removal of stress, that they might enjoy life on their own terms, without demands placed on them by other folks, really for the first time in their 51 years of marriage.
Anyhoo, that was the past week for me. This week, it’s catching up at work & getting ready for another trip to MI this weekend, albeit a planned one for the little woman’s family reunion and for her 20th high school reunion (can’t say I understand why she wants to go, but she does & I’ll do whatever I can to support her — ’cause if she’s odd enough to love me, then she obviously needs all the support she can get! 
).
-ghp
I lack discipline
I lack discipline.
It manifests in many ways, not the least of which is the recent paucity of postings. It’s also why I so look forward to time off from work, only to end up doing absolutely nothing of actual, you know, substance during that time. I’ll sleep. I’ll be horrifically slack. I’ll even be able to somewhat rationalize it in my mind while it’s going on, even as I know that I’m in the middle of an ultimately unjustifiable torpor.
I have books I want to read. Projects I want to complete, both on the computer and in “meatspace“. I have oodles of things that I want to write about. I have a course I’m teaching in the Fall that I need to prepare for (yeah, they’re letting me mold young minds…).
I don’t lack motivation. I know it all needs to get done. Well, I know what needs to get done, and I know what I want to get done, and I know the general timelines for both.
I just lack discipline.
More specifically, and importantly, I lack the discipline necessary to save myself the angst and last-minute stress that can be avoided by getting things done early (I never was the type to get projects & papers done weeks ahead of time and/or in little chunks of time & effort by starting them right when they were first assigned…). All too often I’ve done my some of my best work at the last minute/the night before — often enough to reinforce the bad habit, even though I intellectually know it’s not the best practice.
Heck, I don’t even have enough discipline to have good sleeping and eating habits. So I’m always tired & overweight.
Why unburden myself here? Eh, why not? If it’s a bad idea and/or the wrong thing, I can just blame it on the fact that I lack discipline…
-ghp
Boys’ weekend in
It’s been an interesting extended holiday weekend here at Schloß TB - the girls have been away at a softball all-star tournament, leaving us hearty males (and dogs) to fend for ourselves.
In different times, under different circumstances, we might’ve all gone to the the tournament, which was down Indianapolis-way. Finances (hotel/food/amusement costs), sibling attention/amusement issues, dog care issues, and other types of logistical stuff made it reasonably clear that it would be best for this to be a split-duty weekend: “girls’ weekend out” & “boys’ weekend in”. And it’s turned out pretty well, from what I’ve heard & experienced.
I’m very proud of my daughter, who has represented both herself and her league quite honorably — the girl has talent, and she has worked very hard in these past weeks since earning her way on to the all-star team representing Valpo. Unfortunately, Valpo has not been playing at this level for long, their league doesn’t play with the same rules (stealing, lead-offs, etc.) as the tournament, and their team hasn’t had as long to gel together, which resulted in a rather quick two-loss & out tournament. That said, the girls (from what I’ve been told) all had a good time, played hard, and acquitted themselves very well. They’ve had lots of fun, and my girls have had a nice mother & daughter weekend, with (from what I’ve been told) a minimum of snarling, which is a pleasant & welcome development, given the often mercurial natures of the Territorial Queen & Princess!
As to the boys, we’ve had a full weekend of activities, beyond even the normally outstanding hanging around the Schloß watching tube, playing the Wii, reading, & going swimming (him, not me…). We’ve gone bowling, gone out to eat a few times, gone to the library, we’ve got some yard work on the docket for tomorrow, and we caught a flick on Thursday. I would’ve liked to have taken him to a White Sox ballgame at some point this weekend, but didn’t for two reasons: 1) the games were all night games, and I didn’t want to keep him out that late, and 2) the tickets were just too darned expensive. It’s too bad, because he’s getting to the age where he’s ready to really enjoy his first big league game (he’s just a little bit older than when I went to my first game at Tiger Stadium…).
The movie we saw was WALL•E, which was not all that bad - maybe not as great as it’s been hyped to be, but then what is? It kept his attention throughout, and it worked very well on the level of a kids movie, which is good. It’s very clear, however, to any reasonably aware adult that this movie is pretty blatantly designed with two main intentions: 1) as an entertaining piece of eye- & ear-candy for little kids to be adequately entertained for 97 minutes, after which they will want to buy all the merchandise, and 2) as a blatant piece of pro-environmentalist, anti-capitalist propaganda.
On both levels, WALL•E is successful. It is very good eye- & ear-candy — technically very well-crafted, very well-made, & undeniably very entertaining. Why, it’s even possible to willingly suspend disbelief enough to anthropomorphize the robots WALL•E & EVE — that’s pretty good animation production.
As to the propagandistic nature of the flick, I’m willing to forgive it, because it’s so ham-handed & obvious about it that I can use it as a way to easily talk about it, should I ever need to. I didn’t really expect it to be subtle in its satire, but goodness, neither did I expect it to be so boldly cynical & conspiratorial. For a movie that was made by a huge conglomerate, and will make gobs of cash off of merchandise that will clog landfills, well, it’s hard not to view it as at least a little, y’know, hypocritical…
Anyhoo, like I said, it’s been a good, albeit different, weekend.
-ghp
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