So, in lieu of writing something that’ll make you think, I’ll simply run through a brief outline of some areas of my life that have been on my mind lately. If you don’t care, no worries — I don’t, either.

My Job

I left my employment of seven and a half years and started the new position of Systems Programmer at Cambrex Charles City on the 19th of November. While I’m still the “new guy” and I’m very much in a learning role, I’m starting to find my footholds in this interesting corporation. I have not met everyone yet in the 200+ employment, but so far my impression is that Cambrex is staffed by people who are intelligent, friendly, and absolutely dedicated and dead serious about the work they perform.

I’ve quickly learned that, while you can joke about your weekend or lunch or your retirement plan, humor concerning the job is taken about as well as yelling, “Freeze!”, in an airport. Which, considering that the company is making human pharmaceuticals, is very comforting. My role is still fleshing out and I’m still learning the various tasks and projects that I’ll be involved in, but it will be more responsibility and mental work than my last job, but in a good way. So far the commute hasn’t been awful (40 minutes each way), but I’m sure it’ll get old in the long run. All in all, enjoyable.

My Moonlighting

As some may know, during my last job I would have periods where we needed extra funds and would do contract work at night or on the weekends to get a bit extra on the side. Now that I have the job with Cambrex, this is no longer needed and, indeed, with Keston in the picture is almost impossible if I want to have anything to do with his upbringing and/or seeing my wife. However, I have obligations to finish off a couple of jobs and they driving me crazy to try to get done. I’m struggling to finish them and/or back out as I can, but it’s taking some time and a lot of Maalox to do. I’ll be forever relieved when they are completed.

My Son

He is a constant source of amusement and education or, in the case of today, poopy. While I was feeding him he obviously shat himself, so I hauled him upstairs. Sure enough, there was a copious amount deposited in his diaper, so I took it off and got a new one underneath him, then proceeded to clean him up. It was at this point that the little firehose of his went into spastic mode and sprayed everywhere, prompting me to cuss and quickly cover his willy with the new diaper — 2nd one down. I pulled that diaper out, put a new one underneath him, and just got done cleaning him up again and he farted and shot liquid crap everywhere. Finally, after four diapers, a clean onesie, a new changing pad, and an untold number of wipes, he was clean and happy. I tell ya, the fun never stops when you’re a parent.

We recently found out that he is officially a carrier, but not a demonstrator, of the disease cystic fibrosis, a fact that we are forever grateful to find out. That being said, the doctor that came and told us the news should be hit over the head with a tack hammer for taking 15 minutes to explain to us the nature of the disease and then say, “Oh, and I don’t think your son has it.” Or should that be a tact hammer?

My Wife

The woman of my dreams has been having a hard run of it lately, I’m convinced. After having an interesting labor and delivery, she had a lot of pain in her abdomen, which we all associated with the two hours of pushing needed to get Keston out. However, of late she has had major pain attacks that last from an hour to five and cause her no end of agony. As it turns out, the doctor is convinced her gall bladder has gone tits up and needs to come out, but we have a specialist looking into the matter on Monday morning. Likely it will be a keyhole surgery and therefore easy and quick, but it’s still a surgery and not one that she looks forward to. Hopefully this will be the end of problems that she has had recovering and she’ll be back on her feet, better rested, and in no pain soon.

My Health

It’s shit, really. I’ve been constantly gaining weight since I came back from Australia in February and/or losing muscle tone. My need to work contracts at night and my job in the day lent to days of sitting on my ass and not doing anything physical at all. Now, at this point, I’m out of shape, tubby, and completely and utterly lacking the motivation to get going on a healthier eating plan and exercise, despite my desperate need to do so. My blood pressure is up, I’m pretty sure, given the number of times I have red ears and/or face, clothes are fitting poorly, and I find myself out of breath easily. I know it all has to change, I’m just trying to find that trigger that will lead me down the right path again. Why does maintaining health have to be one of those things that takes every fiber in your body? Should we just default to being healthy?

So yes, dear reader of mine (who is still reading — bless each and every one of you) — a few things have been plaguing my tendrils of thought lately. I hope to be back in the saddle soon and making you all scratch your heads, but until then, think of me, think of me fondly….to quote the Phantom.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Sure, there are examples from 80s music literature that should be used more as examples of what not to do, but one has to be picky when spotlighting the decade given that there was a plight of one-hit wonders and pan-flashes. Madonna’s Material Girl hilights some of the worst attitudes of a world wrapped up in things like pumpable basketball shoes, hanging gardens of hairstyles, and cola wars. Karma Chameleon is lovely but strange as hell and Boy George is nothing more than a 1980s version of David Bowie gone homosexual (and there’s some debate about Bowie’s alignment in the ballpark as well). It’s iconic, but it isn’t necessarily noteworthy.

Africa, on the other hand, is one of the real gems of the era, a song that is unique, intriguing, powerful, well-done, and memorable. I never get tired of hearing it, whether it be sung by the original Toto or one of many a capella covers in my music collection. The video is a bit odder than the song itself, but is a shining example nonetheless. It is a golden rule by which other compositions from the 80s and, indeed, today can be measured by.

Ok, ok, stop laughing, dammit. I’m only 3/4 serious.

But really, who doesn’t love that song? It’s so…haunting. I mark this as a “travel song”, one that always makes me think of the escape of flight from this country to foreign climes and the thrill, excitement, and fear of doing so. Along with Dazy Head Mazy’s Push Away, each time I hear this song I get the chills and travel bug longings in my heart while my gut aches with that feeling of displacement from all you’ve ever known.

My trips to Australia have been a combination of joy and terror; that sweet feeling of escaping to some place new and the tug of the homeland pulling at you, less and less with each passing mile, yet increasing in its poignancy. Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy noted that humans radiate a sadness and longing emotion to others around them, the strength being how far away from their place of birth they are. At times, when away, I feel as though I am at my peak, putting behind me everything in the world and being re-invigorated by the newness of my surroundings; at others, the strangeness of it all washes over me like a cold wave, causing me to inhale sharply and curl emotionally into a ball.

Africa is about travel and it is about relationships. The perspective in the song is from a man waiting for his love to come to him on an inbound flight to Africa during the rainy season, giving them time to spend together and “do the things we never had”.

This could be taken literally, but I think the metaphors point to a greater meaning. Sometimes in relationships, we get a chance to reconnect, to try again. If we can realize those points (“Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you”), we can take advantage of them and strengthen the bond that exists between us. Conviction is required (“It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you”) and you have to fight to do what is best for everyone involved (“I know that I must do what’s right”) but you can find a solution for the problems that exist (“I seek to cure what’s deep inside”).

I must constantly remind myself to bless the rains down in Africa in all of my relationships, but especially with my wife, who is most important to me in the world. I think in some ways, the appearance of Keston into our lives is a bit of a chance for us to adjust our association and spend the rainy season reconnecting. There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do to drag me away from you — or him.

C’mon, boy. We’ve got a whole decade and you’re only a week old. You, mum, and I have a lot of listening to do.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 11 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I have noticed in the past week or so that when I’m talking to my lovely and talented wife, I sound like a complete and total nimrod. I don’t mean that I’m saying things that are stupid (although, inevitably, that sometimes occurs), but that I am physically speaking badly.

I have always had a lisp although, apparently, some people who know me have never known that or at least never noticed, and so I’m pretty grateful that it’s not very prominent. Over the years I’ve been able to compensate for it in most situations, but when I was little I went through a lot of speech therapy classes to try to correct it. My problem is my ‘s’es — I create the ‘ssss’ sound by holding my tongue between my teeth, whereas most people make it by folding their tongue back into their mouth and pressing against the roof to produce the hiss.

I spent the better part of 3 years of my childhood education being pulled out of my lessons and being drilled by a speech therapist (who, if I had been 15 years older, would have very much liked to drill, but alas…the innocence of youth), speaking in the way in which she wanted me to (forcing my tongue to make those positions…oh, hell, that just reeks of innuendo, doesn’t it?), and then promptly going back to my old ways once I got back to class. After all those sessions, I think she gave up and went back to teaching others how to do more useful things, like saying ‘w’ instead of ‘r’.

Now, over the years I’ve gotten so good at my own way of doing things that it’s second nature and I’m very accurate, masking most of my problem. But when I’m intoxicated or, apparently, talking to my wife, my speaking problems come back again from time to time. I’ll find myself saying a sentence and simply being too lazy to bother saying it any clearer, because we know each other so well that even if I was 10 feet underground, sucking on a rutabega, she would be able to finish my sentence.

I wonder if this is an automatic response being initiated by my brain which, after witnessing the copious amounts of excellent communication flowing between me and my wife, has chosen to simply not work as hard, figuring that if she’s going to figure out what I was going to say anyway, it just can’t be fucked to make the effort. Either that or it’s testing me (or her) to see how far it can go before I get too many “WTF?”s and I have to actually work at speaking again.

I don’t mean to be lazy, really…I’m usually pretty conscious about my speaking and how it is coming out, but one has to admit that they get pretty comfy with your spouse and you let certain things go that you’d be more vigilant about in public. I’m not out to fart on purpose (usually), but releasing the occasional blast in front of the wife, while might not be the most romantic thing in the world, certainly isn’t something that I prevent as much as, say, doing so at an interview. “Well, Nathan, what do you think your best management style is?” “I rather prefer *bwaaaht* a more pragmatic approach to *ffffaaaapppt* conducting business, don’t you, Jim?”

I guess I haven’t asked my wife how many times she’s noticed me sounding like a complete doughhead, but I imagine it’s happened more than once. Or, perhaps like me, she’s just getting lazy with her hearing, too. Which explains a lot of our odd mishaps, but at the same time, means we’re clearly destined to grow old together and drive each other nuts for years to come.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything you daffy old bird, and knowing your ears, you didn’t hear anything, either.”

“Listen to the sound of the whistling in the air as I hit you over the head with a skillet, you old bastard.”

*WHONG!*

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

Bent Over the Turnstile

If you are ever considering taking Virgin Blue airlines as a connection off an international flight, don’t, unless you travel lightly. Yolanda finally got to Adelaide, but she got raped at the ticket counter because they have a silly 20kg limit on baggage, and she had 2 bags, both over 20kg each, so she got charged $110AUD to get them on the plane, essentially nullifying the price advantage of taking VB in the first place. GAH! So much for spending money for the next couple weeks. I think it’s idiotic for them to screw over international travelers like that; domestics, sure, but…*sigh* It was my fault for misreading the information — I thought it would be 20kg per bag, not total, and so I screwed it up. Lovely.

It sounds like she’s making the rounds of everyone so far, catching up with our friends Mel and Dale and their cute little daughter, Lara, and she also saw Simon and Lou and their two kids, Geordie and Taevey, so I’m a bit jealous about that, because we’ve been watching these kids through pictures and webcam for the past three years and now they get to meet up. All in good time! I’ll get my chance in awhile. The only frustrating part is that her family seems to have gone into high gear and want to see her all at the same time and it’s overwhelming her right now, as she just needs some time to recover from the jetlag and needs to get to everyone on her own time. It’s not like she’s going to ignore them while she’s there, but they seem pretty insistent to see her as soon as possible, no matter how she’s feeling.

Crossings of Postage

I have a bunch more postcards to send out for Postcrossing. I haven’t done this in a long time, but I picked it back up again about 2 weeks ago and since have been sending cards fast and furious; as soon as one is registered and I’m allowed to send another, off it goes. My theory is that I can stop in about a week and then get postcards from others for about a month or so, give or take.

Today’s postcards (if I get stamps and get them going) are going to Ayumi Oda in Japan, Paola Papen in The Netherlands, Pip Wilson in New Zealand, and Kirsten Schauble in Germany. All of the cards are the same one — the custom-made cards I had made at VistaPrint with our house and our picture on the front. I figured if I was sending so many cards, they might as well be personalized, and it keeps me from having to find stores selling cards. Plus, they were 100 cards for $10 total — who can beat that? Not with a stick this side of the Mississip’, by gum.

Code Mania

I have a lot to write about with programming and coding but haven’t yet found the time to congeal my thoughts about it and put it down in some sort of concretized fashion. I’ve been working steadily on HooDaHek, improving it as I go and debugging things that go wrong. I really feel like a schmuck about it, because I wrote this program, released it to the open-source community, and then got too damned busy to keep it up. Now it’s sorely out of date and my next version will kick some serious ass, but I have to get the features done and out there.

I have also recently purchased a copy of AJAX for Dummies and PHP 5 and MySQL 5, so I need to get reading on those for my next personal project (yet to be revealed to the breath of the baited world). Essentially, the only way I can learn programming languages is to make a project and then do that project in that language, so I have created a project that I think will benefit a lot of people in the world and am going to force myself to write it in these technologies so I learn them. I may very well end up taking both tomes to Australia, either as in-flight entertainment or as something to read on the back porch whilst I listen to the birds chirp and the spiders inject horse-killing poisons into the local ant population.

So much to do…so little time left to think to sort it all out. I’ll get there, one way or another, by gum.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

So, we got up to MSP a bit later than we had hoped, mostly because we had to screw around with baggage and so forth, but we got there around 12:30 or so, parked, and headed in, upon which my wife rolled her ankle when her big-ass pullman twisted on the escalator and landed on her calf. I went and quickly pulled some cash from the ATM for her, then headed up to ticketing.

Got 2nd in line and got to the counter pretty quickly and she did the electronic check-in dealy. After which we threw our bags on the scale and asked the United Airlines woman if she’d check her bags through all the way to Sydney so she didn’t have to handle them again. She asked who we were flying through, and we told her, “Qantas”, and she asked for her tickets. She then did a tappity,tappity thing on the computer for a bit, then looked up and said, “I can’t do that. You don’t travel until tomorrow.”

Our jaws dropped. “WhaaaaaaAAAAAAATTT???”

“Yeah,” she said, “you fly out of LA on the 29th.”

Five people in line, including the TSA security guard, simultaneously said, “It IS the 29th!”

She looked very befuddled for a minute, then shook her head and said, “Oh, right, yes, of course. I was looking at something else,” and carried on checking in Yolanda’s luggage. I could have strangled her. I’m like, “I know this is right, I booked these myself!” The guy behind us in line gave me a wry smile and said, “Nice way to start a vacation, eh?” I could only nod in disbelief.

The goodbye was quick and painless, thankfully, mostly due to the fact that by the time she got checked in it was 1pm and she had to board at 1:33, so I walked her directly down to the security line, kissed her quick, and sent her into the line. To make it easier, I just walked off and out of the airport right away, as we had agreed to make it quick and simple for the both of us.

I then spent a long time driving home in the crappy weather; thankfully, barbershop rehearsal was cancelled so I didn’t have to turn around and go back up to Mason City, but I wouldn’t have, given the weather. Of course, that means that Wednesday I have practice to make up for it.

Yolanda then called me from the Denver airport, and then again from LAX, mostly to let me know she was ok and to burn up time between flights. From her blog entry, sounds like she had a pretty good international flight, which is great to hear. I hope mine is equally good.

Now just another two flights to go and she’ll be in the care of one of her friends, so I won’t have to worry anymore.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

I cannot honestly predict when this change occurred but I am not entirely unsure that it hasn’t been this way my entire life. I remember when I had a bedtime of 8 or 8:30pm and would go, grudgingly, to bed, but I would lie awake for what seemed hours, listening to the rhythms of the house, the wind and sunshine outside, feeling along my body for the various sensations of the blankets, my pajamas, and just thinking. At some point or another I would drift off and be gone for the night, but I never knew when it happened.

In my teenage years, I would often spend long hours in bed but reading a book or writing, depending on what my fancy was that evening. My parents would have to yell and/or threaten to remove books, lights, and/or electricity from my room in order to get me to go to sleep on time. I just never had the motivation to do so. However, once I got to sleep, I was near impossible to wake up and I could sleep till all hours of the day, something that chagrined my sister and others to no end.

College years came and my night owlish abilities actually seemed, for the most part, to be a boon to my experience. I was able to stay up late much easier than my classmates if required to finish a project or simply get work done. I seemed to suffer less from the loss of sleep and found it much easier to sleep in late to compensate for the late nights. I have, it seems, always been able to “bank” tiredness — to take a loan on my sleep and repay it later without too many repercussions. Of course, one can only borrow so much before your body forecloses; however, that has only happened a few times for me. The times it has happened I’ve done such things as completely miss all classes for the day, etc.

Now in my later years I am a part of the “great work force” and am forced to work an 8-6 job. Thus, I have to get up early — 7:30ish most mornings. Personally, I find this schedule torturous. Not only must I get up at an ungodly hour (nobody should be awake before 10am, in my oh-so-humble opinion) but I am no longer able to easily “bank” my sleep till later. While my mornings are forced to be early, my body still ramps up in the evenings like always.

Few people understand it. Most shake their heads and declare that I’m nuts; I assure you, I am not. At least not completely. I simply find that around 10pm every night, my body and mind wake up and are ready to churn for at least a few more hours. A typical night will have me finally getting to bed anywhere from 12:30 to 2:30am. Of course, by that time I am truly exhausted, having been up for 19 hours at a stretch, and I fall asleep like the dead, only to rise up again in 5 to 6 hours to start it all over again. Thus, my weekends usually involve some sort of sleeping-in to recover my lost hours.

Some day I hope to find a job that allows me the flexibility to get to work mid-morning and work until I am done at night; right now I have to leave by 6pm without an option for staying later and coming in later. I find that very restrictive; as all good geeks know, our inspiration and motivation comes in streaks. When you get a good one, ride it out.

Until then, I’m struggling along with my sleep schedule (or lack thereof) and work in between. Not that there aren’t distinct advantages to staying up later. In fact, I think some people really miss out on some things because they go to bed too early.

For instance, everything fun happens after 10pm. That is my true determination. Nobody gets really and truly crazy until the tenth hour at least. After that, anything goes. You can observe the drunks trying to hold up trees, the nutty teenagers doing whatever pantomime of their friends is appropriate at the moment, and the neighbors doing odd things that National Geographic hasn’t even documented yet. The vastly-interesting characters tend to drive by in the middle of the night; animals wander around looking lost in the sea of pavement and brick, and the damned birds have shut up for the night. Bats whiz overhead, stars, moon, and shooting meteors whiz by around you if you only look.

Another thing I feel I get to witness — my wife. Being the night owl that I am, she is often in bed several hours before I am. While I don’t get the pleasure of falling asleep when she does (one that is certainly nice), I get the pleasure of watching her sleep for a short time before I drift off. Lying there in bed, I can glance over to where she is lying and watch her, snuggled in between the layers of blankets and pillows (she has about 20), fast asleep and breathing softly.

It is my opinion that when people sleep, they resemble the closest thing to being a child again. The worry and creases of their faces and bodies smooth out, they completely relax and fall limp. My bride is a beautiful woman; when she sleeps, she takes on angelic proportions in the simple cuteness and softness of her face and hands. Her highly-defined lips with their cute upturned bow are parted slightly as if she were whistling or about to kiss a dandelion. She is so calm — it makes you almost angry at the stresses of life and how they can tense someone up so much when they’re awake.

I also get to lie there and feel her next to me. The first few times I had to try to sleep in a bed with someone next to me were quite disturbing. I remember getting very little sleep at all since whenever that person would move, I would wake up. Now I relish the feeling of slipping between the sheets after a long day, settling into my pillow and stretching out my body, and feeling the radient warmth and presence of my sweetie lying beside me. Even if we don’t touch (we rarely touch while sleeping), there is the presence of her that is so familiar and comforting. Every now and then one of us will reach out tenderly with a toe or a hand, find the other, pat gently, and go back to sleep, reassured in the presence of each other. It’s one of the nicest pleasures I’ve found so far.

Going to bed late at night has distinct advantages, dear reader. If you don’t currently partake, I suggest you give it a try sometime. You might be pleasantly surprised.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2004. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

In some ways, I think it’d be easier if we just moved to Oz. I think I would handle the homesickness better than she does but I don’t really know. I know I would miss my friends and family a lot and eventually the differences in culture and systems would get to me and drive me crazy. That being said, I think I cope better than she does about such things, so who is better to be in misery? *sigh*

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2004. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS