June 2002 Archives

Lithium

Something is definitely wrong with me. I had an out-and-out panic attack tonight.

Late this evening, Amanda, and the kids and I all went out with some friends of ours for dessert at Village Inn. They brought their son and daughter, and their son's friend. The two boys are like 13, and so as would be expected, they're dogging each other with the usual teenage one-upmanship stuff. At some point, a dispute arose as to whether they were playing video games when they were actually grounded from them, and next thing you know, one of them swears an oath on God's name, really loud, vowing that he didn't do such-n-such, and suddenly it got really quiet within a radius of 20 yards.

And the switch just flipped inside of me. My heart started beating faster, and I absolutely felt like everybody was staring at us, which I'm sure they were. And next thing you know, the boys are starting to arm wrestle, which they stopped right about the time I rolled my eyes back in my head and snarled at them. But everything that happened after that point just sent me higher and higher into orbit.

A few minutes later, somebody colored on Giselle's placemat thingie, and the second she noticed it, she started emitting ultrasound screeching about how dare they color on her sheet, and that's not fair, and on and on, and every word louder than the preceding word. As she started to get on a roll, I was plucking at the little hairs on her neck to get her attention (which it usually does), but she wasn't having anything to do with me. So I picked her up and stood her next to me and said "do you want to go outside to cry?" She didn't hear a word I said--just turned and faced her perpetrators and screamed on and on.

I wanted to claw out of my skin and light myself on fire. I held her hand and tried to calmly walk toward the door, but instead she dropped to the ground in the Political-protester-deadweight position. So I calmly and slowly bent down and picked her up, and calmly and steadily carried her outside as she screamed about the injustices she was enduring. Calm as I was trying to appear on the outside, on the inside, I was so embarrassed, I was about to implode into a swirling black hole. What kind of parent am I? My kids are out of control. Nobody within visual distance of me can eat their meal in peace.

So we get out to the car, I open the door and let her get in. She sat in the passenger seat, I sat in the driver seat, and she had tears streaming down her face, and was kicking her feet, and screaming at me about how mad she was that they colored on her placemat. And I was just sitting there listening, and telling her I know it must be frustrating, and I'm sorry they colored on it, and so on. And by this point, I could tell I was feeling less anxious, now that I was out of the restaurant. So this went on for about 5 minutes, and allof a sudden, she just stopped cold, and asked if we could go back in.

So then I told my side of the story to her about how much she embarrassed me in front of all those people, and Daddy has feelings too, and she needs to promise not to yell or scream like that, blah blah blah. So we went back in. and the second we walked in the door, the anxiety crept back up on me as I walked past all the people I passed on the way out. Well, it wasn't five minutes before the boys were trying to help me out by asking Giselle to come sit by them, so she crawled under the table, and so of course Harrison couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, so he followed her, but simply camped out underneath the table instead. I was trying to coax him out and he was having none of it, and I could just feel this pressure in my chest like I want to scream until my lungs burst out of my ribs and flew away to freedom.

I told Amanda that I couldn't take it and we had to go, and to please write a check for our portion of the bill. Somehow or another, the four of us managed to apologize to our friends, and get out. By the time we were out to the car, I was on the verge of crying my eyes out.

Like I said, I've obviously got a serious problem. I know I'm not being rational in how much I let it all get to me. And I know it all ties together with how uptight I am about walking up to a public door at the same time as somebody else, or not wanting to be grabbing for paper towels at the same time as somebody else, and on and on. If I'm this bad now, I can't imagine what I would be like in ten years. One of my sisters has social anxiety problems, although I don't recall what her triggers are. I'm seriously considering using the "Assist" program at work to try and get to the bottom of it before I have a brain aneurysm in public and die in front of my kids. Oy.

I'll probably be sorry I wrote this tomorrow.

Jeremy

Wax on. Wax off.

I was washing up in the restroom here at work a little while ago, and just as I was done rinsing, another guy came over to the second sink to "wash up". In a perfect world, this wouldn't be a problem; I'd be able to cruise over to the paper towel dispenser and dry my hands at a nice easy pace and be on my way. But, like most human beings I run into these days, this guy is a splash & dash washer, and he was done in a half a second, and already hustling his way to the paper towels just as I was grabbing a sheet. I don't know why this bugs me, but the dispenser is over in a corner, and now I have to either contort myself out of the way while mumbling "pard'n me" or something, so he can grab a sheet, or else I gotta hurry up with the dryoff and get the heck out of the way. Why can't people just use soap when they wash, and thus bring balance to my universe?

I got back in the office and started griping about it to Jo, another one of my cubicle neighbors. (Aren't you glad you don't work with me and have to listen to my constant complaining? Oh wait...) Well anyway, she starts relating to me how she was across the hall, and somebody offered to let her use one of the phones there to make a call. And just as she was reaching for it, she stopped as she suddenly recalled that the guy who sat at that desk was someone I had identified as a non-washer. So she jerked back, and then had to come up with an excuse as to why she didn’t actually need to use this guy’s phone. Well I thought that was good for a laugh.

But I think it’s a disturbing problem. I mean, not on the level of global-terrorism or Martha Stewart or anything. But this is my little world, and it drives me crazy. Why can’t people wash their filthy little hands after they pack their belongings back in their shorts and walk away from the stall? Whatever hygenic benefits there are, I think it’s just plain common courtesy. I don’t want to shake hands with your clammy, sweaty hands right after you’ve finished cleaning out the shed unless you’ve given them a little soapy TLC. Bleah. The guy whose phone Jo was afraid to use, was a particularly nasty character. I vividly remember being in the next stall, and after he finished his bizness, I could hear him just a-scrubbin and a-scuffin away with the T.P., and I thought good grief, that stall must look like somebody spilled a shaker of All-Spice in there. And then he just opened up the door to the stall and walked RIGHT out of the restroom. Not even one of those fake half-second washes. ARRRGH. Well anyway, I had his number now. You need to borrow my pen? Naw, you can just have it.

Nasty nasty nasty.

Disturbedly yours,
Jeremy

Lowest Common Denominators

The Rodeo and Chediski fires are now mating and coalescing like Spock's emotional brother and the angry, trapped god-creature in the sci-fi masterpiece, Star Trek V.¹ And all anybody can do is run for their damaged shuttle craft before they get burned to little crispies. The Rodeiski...Chediseo?...erm.... fire is up to 310,000 acres now, 185 homes destroyed, Show Low is evacuated, and FOX 10 News is about to pass out from excitement.

At work, Rob was musing how it would take at least 800 years for an area that large to naturally restore itself to forest-hood. That blew me away. I would've guessed 150 or so years. I did some admittedly skimpy research, and from what I can tell, the science of wildfire restoration seems like it's in a pretty sad state of existence. And as far as fuel reduction goes, Gov. Hull is getting vocal about the lack of Federal support for forest management. Of course, that'll probably change now. You know, a few people have to die at the dangerous intersection before it becomes fiscally acceptable to install a traffic signal.

It looks like there's a new gross-out show coming to MTV called You Wanna Bet?, where people on the street are offered relatively small sums of money to engage in disgusting activities, like $350 to have their hair shaved off, mixed in butter and then eat it. Which frightens me, because from time-to-time, I've had this morbid dialog in my mind about whether I'd do such & such (like licking clean the little circular floor drain thingee of a public restroom I was in) if somebody offered to pay off my car loan, or my mortgage, or whatever (okay, so wouldn't do it for the car loan...but the mortgage...ummm uhhh...). And I would inevitably shudder and reside in my relief that nobody would ever put me in such a position....d'oh.

Okay then, gotta catch a little sleep.

Jeremy

________________
1. nyuk nyuk nyuk... :)

Published!

Rodeo fire is now 130,000 acres. Holy crap! The second Chediski fire is approaching 15,000 and the sky's the limit. The Flagstaff DPS has a helicopter patrolling forest land around the city with night goggles looking for dingleberries running around in the forest doing naughty things. Good idea.

ABC15 News posted one of my fire pictures on their website. I'm not sure if they'll actually broadcast it on tonight's news, though. Still, I'm stoked.

Jeremy

Compulsive Tendencies

The two fires have topped 90,000 acres as of Thursday evening, and Pinedale is getting burnt to the ground.

Okay, so maybe I'm being obsessive about this. But you know, if I had been around when that asteroid blew up over Tunguska, I'd probably have been all over that too, despite all the dead forest animals and political prisoners....wait...that happened before they realized Siberia was good for gulags didn't it...

Well anyway, like I said, I was being obsessive, and I stopped on my way home from work and took this series of pictures and crunched them into an animation of the smokages down yonder.

This prairie dog was all bent out of shape and yapping at me because I parked my car next to his foyer to get the pictures.

A few minutes after I finished up, I got home and noticed that the smoke was suddenly going nova, so I obsessed some more and churned out this animation. (Note: Both files are nearly 800K each). Isn't the Southeast view from my house lovely? It's just one of those things you don't really notice when you're all excited that you found a home in Flag for under $120,000. A little out of view in that animation is the Purina tower. That's a heck of a landmark. I'm embarrassed to say there are days I come home from work and they're churning out whatever brand of puppy chow, and it actually smells darned yummy.

My rose bushes seemed to be doing okay, despite the slow torture of skimpy waterings. I've got buds on them finally and a couple blooms. But then today I noticed some round bites missing from bunches of leaves, and I'm thinking, that's not grasshoppers or caterpillers. What, do I have harvester ants now?? Then, as if to answer my unspoken question, this black and white striped bee zooms past my head and docks onto one of the roses and starts chewing a perfect little bee-sized leaf-frisbee that she can take home to her family for hours of wholesome fun. I'm trying to bring myself to the realization that I'm fighting a losing battle against nature and domesticated pets.

The mean bee that is turning my rose bushes into swiss cheese.




Here's the kids, trying to figure out why I was standing at the front door snapping pictures like an idiot.

Jeremy

Playing with Matches

The satellite website has been pooping out off and on today. It finally came back up. Check it out:


Now there's a second fire about 20 miles west of the first one. I haven't heard anything on the radio about it yet. There's no way the fire spotted that far AND in that direction. Somebody is really screwing around out there in the forest. Fooey.

Jeremy again

Foamy Bubbles

I went and shot some pictures of the Rodeo Fire at lunch. It's incredible to watch it from even 100 mi. away.

I got some interesting responses to my Plumage post:

---

Brian (post to the Old Folks Home messageboard):
Heh. Nice one, [Jer]. Oh, nice blog lately, as well. I particularly liked the animated smoke plume. (By the way, I dare ya to do a Google image search for rectal prolapse. I dare ya.) ATTN: THAT LINK IS PRETTY GROSS, AND IS MEANT SOLELY AS A JOKE FOR [JEREMY]. IF YOU'RE DUMB ENOUGH TO FOLLOW IT, YOU BLEEDING WELL DESERVE TO CLEAN THE BARF OUT OF YOUR KEYBOARD, OKAY? YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

---

Kevin (kindly emailed to me):
Dear God, rectal prolapse?!?!? Ugh, I didn't even know such a thing existed. Of course, I had to go find out what it is. Thanks to you, I'm never gonna take a dump again. That's ok though, because I think I've permanently lost my appetite.

---

I finally feel like I'm making a difference.

Jeremy

Uncle Gus's Barbecue

Okey then. The Rodeo Fire, as they're calling it (wahoo!), has ballooned to over 50,000 acres already. According to the National Fire News site,"Extreme fire behavior with flame lengths of 400 feet and long range spotting were observed..." Man, that's such a beautiful forest and it's getting totally nuked.

I drove around for about an hour last night trying to find a place to get a good picture of it that wasn't all cluttered with telephone wires or blocked by trees. By the time I found a good vantage point (right by my house :P ), the fire was starting to lay low for the night and I couldn't get a decent shot. I'll try again today, now that I know where to go.

In other news, I'll try and get some work done today.

Jeremy

Plumage

About noon today, I pulled up my AZ satellite image of choice, to see if any thunderstorms might be edging into the state for some landscaping water excitement at some point. And right away I see this immense plume of smoke lurching overthe White Mountains. My cubicle neighbor, Rich, says, "Yeah, that's near Showlow; it's supposed to be around 600 acres." The NOAA webpage agreed with him. Pfft. That was no 600 acres. The cloud was HUGE. So I started downloading the satellite images every 15 minutes and put together an animated GIF for posterity. I drove out for lunch around 1:00, and from here, 100 miles away, I could see this rolling wall of gray on the horizon, and right where the fire was hottest, it was shooting tall gouts of cumulus clouds up into the sky (they look like little white dots on the animation). We finally got an update on the radio a few minutes ago. They say it grew from 600 acres yesterday evening to over 19,000 this afternoon. Pinedale and some surrounding towns are being evacuated. Apparently they've seen enough to know already that it's arson. This thing will probably end up rivaling that 120,000 acre Colorado fire that forest worker set off. Rob thinks they should reinstitute hanging just especially for the intentional wildfire culprits. Heck, why hang'em or stick them in prison for decades when you could put them on a chain gang rebalancing the soil Ph and cultivating and replanting trees for the rest of their lives. Blah.

What did I have for lunch, you say? Went down to Soup'r Salad. I've been working on getting more vegetables into my diet. Subway is a pretty wimpy crutch. You get to a certain point in your life when you begin to worry about developing a rectal prolapse. Nasty stuff. Something I'd never have worried about if I didn't work where I work. Ugh. The video guys got hold of a huge book about musculature and surgical techniques, and they're all sorts of proud about it. Every time I go back there, they're like "Jeremy! Have you seen this?" and start showing me the pictures of people who's arms were hacked off by combines and windmills and stuff (Windmills of all things!), and then how the doctors disposed of the cube-sized arm bits, and then sewed up a flap over Hubert's new arm stump. Argh. And as I sit there turning green, Steve and Jody start going into their stories about setting up cadavers for surgeon training, and then the great fun of taking pre & post-operative pictures of some humongous lady and her rectal prolapse. Urf. There are far too many things that can go wrong with the human body.

Well that about does it for now.

Jeremy

La Cucaracha

We took the kids with us to La Fonda for a late lunch today. We haven't been there in a few years, and I remembered why as we walked in.

La Fonda is a strange place. It has absolutely no ambiance. None. It's like a Mexican cafeteria, except there's really nothing Mexican about it. So I guess it's basically like a cafeteria. They do serve Mexican food though (hot sauce sits in a squirt bottle at every table. Yum.). Anyways, we walked in, and the first thing I notice is that the floor of the first alcove of tables in the "sunny" room is completely strewn with chips and taco shells, lettuce and tomatoes, shredded napkins and other unidentifiables. Basically like my living room floor...minus the razor-sharp toys.

But I'm consoled by the fact that I can see directly into the whole kitchen by way of a long, low serving window (cafeteria thing), and all the prep surfaces, utensils and containers look pretty clean and orderly. I'm sure it's scurrying with mice and roaches at night, but it's not like it's something I haven't endured before.

Oops...Creed is playing on VH-1 right now. I get the feeling they're trying to say something in their videos.

Anyways, we get plunked down in the dark alcove. And it's cute because they have the lights turned down really low to give it this quiet, moody ambiance, but it just comes across like they forgot to turn on the lights. So they seated us like 18 inches away from this table of loud, opinionated New Yoahkahs who are going on and on about people that have been getting on their nerves lately, and staring most openly at us whenever Giselle starts asking about which chips have salt and which don't in her perpetual outdoor voice. And it's like DUDE! There's no WAY she could be even HALF as loud as you are when you 'lower' your voice to say sh** this or d**mit that every 30 seconds. Ooga Booga!

Meanwhile, Harrison has been fidgeting next to me, and I suddenly notice that he's sticking his head under the table, so I encourage him to sit back up, but then he shoots both of his hands under the table like he's catching fish, and I new instantly: fossilized gum! So I snatch his hands out and scold him: "Eww! Yucky!" and he looks up at me: "ewwww. eeyuckee." and then sticks his left hand under and I snag it, then his right hand goes under and I snag it and this goes on several times, and I'm telling him "No. Yucky." in my displeased Dad voice, but he's totally obsessed. I wished I had a chisel to crack that stuff off of there, because he was out of his mind to fiddle with it.

There's supposedly this child-rearing theorum about using "mildy aversive deterrants" to stop "undesirable" behavior, and I'm thinking how the heck does that apply in situations like this? I'm scolding him, I'm yanking his hands out, I'm not laughing, he's not laughing, it's not a game to either of us, and I can tell he doesn't give a crap about me anyway; he is TOTALLY fixated on the control-panel of gum blobs under the table, and I'm nothing but a speedbump on his road to Gum Rapture. Back in the day, Dad would've hauled me outside and beat my hide. Can't get away with that sort of child-abuse any more, buddy. (heh, Amanda is reading over my shoulder and asking me "isn't it bad enough that you lived through this once already?")

Eventually, they served our food and that particular adventure came to an end. But it didn't take too long for the boy to finish up, and then he was whining on and on that he wanted his "Patrick" toy (SpongeBob is good TV by the way), and then Giselle starts getting gripey, at one point I think Amanda had a napkin and was wiping something unpleasant off of Giselle's outstretched tongue. Things were a blur by now. Well it kept getting worse and worse, and so any hope I had of finishing my truckstop mexi-meal was dashed to squirming, miserable pieces. Did I mention the spilled 7-Up? Right, well, I guess that goes without saying.

As I jogged out to the front area--probably holding Harrison up by one leg--one of the waitresses says that if we'd like, we could get re-seated at one of the front tables (the landfill looking place). "No lady, we're bailing." I don't know why the heck they didn't just dump us in the nuke zone in the first place.

You know what the source of the whole problem was? They didn't have crayons and kids' placemats to give us.

Yeah. That's it.

Outtings with the kids:
Like a hopeless game of chess,
Deep Blue kicks my butt.

Jeremy

Second Thoughts

Oh brother. It's a darn shame that re-reading my doorholding-anxiety entry is more humiliating than my incontinence installment. Bleah.

That does it. I'm just slamming the door in everybody's face from here on out.

Jeremy

Samsonite Boomerangs

Strangest thing happened. I suddenly woke up at 4:30 this morning. No alarm clock, no knee to the groin, no screaming kids, just woke up all of a sudden. And I was totally lucid and awake. I could've gotten up and started my day right then. And I know this is the sort of thing that Type-A personalities do all the time (freaks), but it's absolutely contrary and bizarre to me. The thing is, at the time I woke up, my stomach was in full-blown digestion mode. I wasn't hungry at all, and it wasn't like that indigestion sort of rumbling. My guts were just churning away, happy as could be. Totally freaked me out. I've been trying to piece it together all day long. Amanda's never told me that I sleepwalk, but I've got to wonder if maybe I zombiewalked to the kitchen and raided the fridge. Either that, or the mothership was trying to reprogram me. Weird.

I was walking out of Subway with my health-lunch today, and this lady was coming in the door, and she made it a point to hold the door open for me. I thought that was totally cool. See, doorholding has been a very difficult issue for me. I want to hold the door open for people, but I have "issues". About 12 years ago, at the beginning of my so-called adult career, I was working in the Renaissance Building in downtown Phoenix. I would customarily hold the door open for people if I got there first. You know, if the door opens outward, pull it open and wait; or if it opens inward, step through and hold it. Anyway, I started to notice that some businesswomen seemed irritated when I held the door for them. One lady went so far as to stop dead in her tracks and tell me she could get the door herself, thank you very much. And that was it. I've been totally neurotic about it ever since. Never mind the fact that I'll hold the door for male and female alike, I'm obsessed with the possibility that somebody is going to think I'm being condescending if I make any more than a casual effort to hold the door for them.

So now if I'm approaching a doorway and notice somebody is coming from behind me, or from a different angle toward it, I find myself getting very tense, trying to gauge how far apart we will reach the door from each other. If they'll get to it right behind me, I feel a huge sense of relief, because it will look very casual if I hold the door open, and no hurt feelings. If they're significantly far behind, then I'll breeze through and not hold it, and no hurt feelings. But if they're at that fuzzy distance, like when a traffic light turns yellow at that sweet spot, and you're not sure whether to hit the brakes or gun it, then I just freak out. Sometimes I'll simply stop and act like I forgot something, or break off and go to a different door, just so I don't have to figure out whether or not I should go out of my way to hold it for them. Baggage, baggage, baggage.

I'm sure I have some level of Social Anxiety Disorder. I get the same way driving through supermarket parking lots and walking through crowds. Maybe I should give Paxil a try.

People and doorways
slog vinegar and oil through
my mental carafe.

Jeremy

BLAT!

Read the next five paragraphs at your own risk. Not for the squeamish.

The workday started out fair enough yesterday. Feeling good. Projects cooking at an even burn, no hypertensive emergencies. I'm in control.

So I'm sitting at my desk, flexing my decisive powers of whose job is going to get worked on next, and I lean over to grab a pen, and not being one to waste an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, I decide to let pass a little squeak of methane while I'm in the midst of the lean. Oh what a mistake that was. It is amazing to me how the course of your life can turn on a dime. One moment you're the king of your castle, the master of your destiny, and POOF in the flickered twinkling of an eye, your whole house of cards comes tumbling down. I knew in that burning, sputtering moment, that I had opened a Pandora's Box of indescribable horrors upon my unsuspecting undergarments. I don't know whether I gasped or hissed through my teeth, but the entire room went silent at that moment. Oh that they hadn't heard the tattle-tale blorking of my insouciant guts. I made my best attempt to nonchalantly crabwalk to the door for an emergency restroom consultation, fending off questioning coworkers along the way. Why do people need to ask you rambling questions, when it's plain that you are trying to make a hasty exit?

Well a few moments and about 25 crabsteps later, the test results were in. My briefs were pronounced dead on arrival. Not even a full organ transplant would have saved them. They were promptly removed from life-support, gingerly entombed in several layers of Scott two-ply and waste-binned. The worst part was the subsequent pants-assessment, which led to the discovery of a large and painfully obvious in & out skidmark. Since I don't ride my bike to work, much less have any water puddles to ride through, I had no face-saving excuse for the new tattoo on my Wranglers. Maybe if I lived in the South, it would escape notice. "When in Rome..." as they say. I even considered splashing water all over my backside and saying I fell in, but figured that would be just about as embarassing. These are indeed times that test a man's mettle.

I quickly discovered that sidestepping down the hallway with my back to the wall was a very suspicious activity. So I dropped that plan and simply walked fast with much zigzagging so as to make identification difficult. I made a quick stop by the office, informed my confused comrades that I had become quite suddenly and severely ill, and left hastily while avoiding the more heavily populated areas. Thank heavens I kept that newspaper in the car.

I'm not saying Jack in the Box is to blame for this, but I am so tempted to blame my kids and that wretched McDonalds playroom. What was I thinking.

Regretfully Jeremy

Travelbugs

Well, we just got back from our convention down in Tucson. There were family and friends there and in Phoenix we didn't get a chance to see while we were down in the griddle. It was about all we could do to attend each session, feed ourselves, and sleep under the liquid-nitrogen powered A/C at the hotel. Man I love Hotel air conditioning.

The kids did pretty well in the car ride there and back, which is a pleasant surprise. Although, this might be partially due to the one-hour stopover at the McDonalds hamster habitat at I-17 and Thomas each way. Man, those playrooms are icky. If I worked at McDonalds, the last thing I'd spend time cleaning is those huge aerial tunnel mazes. And it shows. If you look closely enough. That's why I prefer to stand back at least twenty feet and sort of blur my vision. I need peace of mind, just as much as the next person. And the way I figure it, it's like they're getting natural vaccinations when they play in places like this. Kids these days are kept far too sterile. Then they grow up to have industrial disease and chronic this & that. Have I griped about antibacterial soap yet?

The Bullock fire burning in the Catalinas put on a big show. On Friday night, we watched it throwing a bright orange glow on the smoke shooting out. We were commenting on how it looked like a volcano. Which struck me funny later, because if we were watching a volcano, I guess we'd comment on how it looked like a forest fire.

We grabbed a quick brunch (heh, I said brunch) at The Good Egg before we left Tucson this morning. They were really kid-friendly. The instant we sat down, the kids were given little bowls of honey-nut cheerios and apple slices to go along with the crayons and paper. Harrison grabbed the two little straws in his orange juice, crossed them and said "An X! It's an X!" That was pretty cool. Well...actually he said it more like "It's an ecks......ks." He echoes his last consonants all the time "Bottle of Milk......k!" "Quiet!......t!" I've been trying to figure out if he hears things funny, like maybe his left ear fires off the sound a half second later than his right ear or something.

I can't wait to get in to work tomorrow and see what horrors await me after my absence. It's like a great big Shroedinger's Cat experiment. The cat is either dead, or it's alive. And only the brain-sucking fluorescent lights and flickering monitors at the office will coalesce the disasters into reality for me.

Jeremy