by rustedrobot | Aug 8, 2010 | Memories
I remember a conversation I had with Steph, maybe a year ago, about what was “next” for me. It started on a plane ride home from a business trip while still working at Ask. I had just gone out to San Francisco to basically fire someone and it affected me. It was without question the right move, but I still didn’t like doing it and it soured me on the corporate style life. Not that Ask.com was terribly corporate, but you get the point. On that plane ride home, I kept asking myself this question: when I look back after retirement, will I be proud of my accomplishments at work? Will I have done something I am proud of?
I had a lot of good moments and pretty big accomplishments at Ask, but I couldn’t bring myself to the answer those questions the way I wanted or needed to. That started me down the path of trying to find something right. Now, I don’t know if one ever finds something completely right. Or, let me rephrase – I could make a pretty solid argument that there is no such thing as the perfect job. I’ll leave that one open to debate.
Back to my conversation with Stephanie – we started riffing about “the perfect job.” One of the things I mentioned was a documentary filmmaker, but not in the traditional sense, like Michael Moore or whatever. My interest in film wasn’t at all about guns in the USA, healthcare© or the Bush presidency. My interest was in your next door neighbor. What is/was their story? I find far more fascination in regular, normal people than I do celebrity, sports players or politicians. Because everyone has a story to tell. So I was sitting on that plane and I opened the airline magazine and read about a woman who had started a business doing just that, but only locally in the state of Arizona. I’d want to do it nationally, I thought. Or maybe globally.
Of course, life takes over as it inevitably does and the soul searching came and went. It came again in February when I committed to Pure Hockey and left Ask. A few months later, here I sit, totally happy with my decision (but still adjusting to a HUGE change across the board), I came across a book that my sister-in-law gave to me called Listening is an Act of Love. I think she gave it to me for Christmas in 2008 but I can’t be sure. I put it in the queue behind the fourteen other books I wanted to read and just in the last few weeks have finally started reading it. I tell you what, it’s a crusher. These are stories of normal people’s lives, as recorded by StoryCorps, the best damn idea I think I’ve ever heard of. StoryCorps travels around the country, setting up audio booths and you just walk in there with a loved one or a friend and talk to them about their life. After you’re done, bingo – you have it on CD, recorded. Forever.
There are so many people, past and present, I’d like to pull into that booth for an hour, let me tell you. So many people.
Anyway, the stories range from run-of-the-mill, entertaining conversation to people who have survived plane crashes to the people who lost loved ones in 9/11. It is very interesting, moving stuff and it proved my theory (not hard to prove) that your neighbor’s life is way more interesting than Lindsey Lohan or Shaun White or whatever tripe is on the cover of People Magazine. You need to read it. Believe me.
by rustedrobot | Apr 16, 2010 | Memories
The oddest things sometimes light the match that flame a memory. Tonight I’m driving down Route 2 west, headed to Fitchburg and I’m about halfway there, in Lancaster. Now, I know I’ve mentioned here at some point that whenever I drive by the old Orchard Hills Skating Rink (which is now a roller skating rink), it brings me back to my childhood. A few miles before that, though, there’s a large tank, up on a hill in the distance, which you can see from Route 2 there as you roll through Lancaster. It’s the way we sometimes drove to the rink when I was a kid.
Today, the tank is painted a solid, pea green. But as I drove tonight, I looked in the distance at the tank and remembered the many times I sat in the back seat of the family car, with the bottom half of my hockey equipment on, staring out the window as the miles went by. Back then, the tank wasn’t pea green, it was red and white checkerboard. I can still easily picture it. Funny how much detail you can rememeber about certain things that are from 30 years ago, but sometimes you can’t remember last week.
Anyway, when I was a kid, I always associated that red and white checkerboard tank with Purina Puppy Chow. Because that’s what we gave our dog back then and the bag had the red and white checkerboard on it. It is, then, perfectly logical that when I was a kid, I thought the big tank held dog food, since both had the red/white thing going. As a logical adult, it sounds ludicrous, of course. But as a kid, it just made sense.
by rustedrobot | Mar 19, 2010 | Memories, Random
As I have stated before a few times, I try not to make this blog a gushing tribute to my kids or inane banter about things they do. There are plenty of blogs out there for that. But sometimes I just have to report funny little things so when I look back later, I can be reminded of things. If there’s anything I’ve discovered in life, it’s that there is a gaping hole of my life as a child in pictures and words. I should rephrase that. There are a fair amount of pictures – I just wish there were thousands more! But I so wish I’d kept a journal as a kid. Back then, of course, it wasn’t cool at all. Lame-o! I’m sure given the choice as a lad, I would have opted mindlessly to ride my bike, or explore the apple orchards behind the house. Those apple orchards look so small when I drive by them now, but when I was a kid, it was a vast, wide open spot of land that seemed like a entire state’s length.
Anyway, a journal was out of the question. That said, I hope that my kids, when they are grown, will have inherited that same burning desire I have now to understand, see, read and appreciate the things they won’t remember. Because they are going to have a vast treasure trove of documented memories, courtesy of their parents. That’s also the beauty of the internet. Flickr. Facebook. The site you are reading now. It will be interesting, as the newest generation of young children will have unfettered access to the largest database of memories ever put down. Fascinating. I wonder how they’ll look at it or what they’ll think.
So anyway, a couple of little things:
- Stephanie is a solid keeper of memories. She writes down some good stuff. For example, she had the foresight to keep jars for each boy during the first year and just would write quick stuff down on a post-it note and throw it in there. Those are now priceless memories during a very foggy time.
- I was walking in our kitchen this past week and in between all the busy-ness and rushing and chores and running around, I stopped and glanced at a little notepad that said “Nathan – “crocodeedle.” I asked her about it and it’s exactly what you think – it’s his precious and cute way of saying crocodile. He does occasionally say it correctly, in fact most of the time he does, but he butchered this one and it just makes your heart melt.
- Another one was “Oscratchers.” Steph and I were talking about watching the Oscars and he said something along the lines of “I want to watch the Oscratchers!” It will forever be known as such.
- One of our favorites over the past couple of years has been “Okee-dee-kee.” Now, at first glance, you would look at this and say that they must mean “okey dokey,” but that is not the case. What they are referring to is Pinnochio. We have a little wooden Pinnochio hanging in our playroom window and it somehow came out of their mouths as “Okee-dee-kee.” So that’s what it is, even today. We can’t even bring ourselves to tell them what it’s really called because it’s too cute.
- The last one for the night is “criss-cross applesauce.” They say this whenever they want us to sit cross-legged. No idea why, but it does make us laugh every time.
My job is going great. Really good group of people. It didn’t take long for things to ramp up – I am probably as busy as I’ve ever been at a job, but there’s a lot of opportunity here and I’m really excited to be there and excited for the challenge. Oh and yes, I’ve already purchased a pair of skates. I did not take the job for the employee discount, I took it for the challenge. But the discount is a hell of a benefit. I highly recommend the Bauer X60’s. Only took me two games to break ’em in.
As you may have guessed, blogging time is greatly reduced. It used to be that I would blog while everyone else was driving to (or home) from work. Now I don’t have that option. So I sit here on a Friday night at 8:30, Sierra Nevada in hand, dinner just finished, writing. That’s the way it might be now. It’s cool. You can also catch me on Facebook and Twitter for the short-and-quicks.
by rustedrobot | Feb 18, 2010 | Memories
When we moved to Lancaster, MA, I believe I was just four years old. I remember pulling into the driveway to see our new house for the first time, running into the house and picking my bedroom. I chose the room in the back corner of the house. Even back then I knew the advantages of solitude, I suppose. But that’s another story for another day. Before moving to Lancaster, we lived in Sterling, MA. I have no memory whatsoever of living there. I wish I could remember being one or two. Alas, it seems rare that anyone remembers that far back.
Between Sterling and Lancaster, we lived in an apartment in Clinton, called Towne Line Apartments. I do have some interesting memories from those days:
- I remember potty training there.
- I once rolled myself up in a large blanket on the living room floor and couldn’t get out. I screamed bloody murder while my sister and mother worked feverishly to unroll me.
- I had a little hockey stick and one day, I got a hold of my dad’s shaving cream and sprayed it everywhere on the floor, then pretended all the shaving cream spots were pucks….
- I remember one weekday morning a neighbor upstairs (an older lady) invited my sister into her apartment for bread & butter. We went in and enjoyed the food. Of course, this would never happen today.
- Outside in the complex pool, I remember being hesitant to go near the skimmer because a man jokingly told me there were a lot of frogs in there.
I have very little to say lately. I will have a lot to say soon. I am on vacation this week, while Stephanie and the kids are on their normal schedules. I just needed to grab a week to do all those little things that pile up over the course of a year. Today, I’ll do our taxes. But I’ll also watch obscure Winter Olympics in the mid-afternoon. It’s sort of like a vortex. Vacation, but alone. Of course, solitude……everyone needs some.
by rustedrobot | Feb 1, 2010 | Memories, Random
I saw zero percent of the Grammy telecast. I have absolutely no interest because those aren’t the waters I swim in. I think that during the 1990’s I was actually more interested in the MTV Video Music Awards than the Grammy’s. Both shows were still mainstream, but the MTV one did have slightly more edge to it. Like the time Christ Novaselic threw his bass up in the air and missed it on the way back down – almost knocking him unconscious. That was unscripted. And funny.
This brings me back to the ’90s a little bit, mostly the early part of the decade when I was still in college and discovering music at a pace that I know I will never equal. I was looking for new bands under rocks, in trees, in the bottom of ponds and in dark corners of bar bathrooms. I took a 6am-8am time slot on Saturday morning at the Kent State radio station just so I could pour through their relatively enormous library of music and discover. There are bands that I discovered in that little room that I still listen to regularly today.
So wait – did you catch that? Do you understand? I took a 6AM-8AM TIMESLOT ON A SATURDAY MORNING. IN COLLEGE! So yes, there were plenty of times when I never actually went to bed. The sequence would look something like this:
- Go to a friend’s house. Roughly 4 or 5 of us.
- Listen to some new music.
- Drink about 6 beers each.
- Play Tecmo Bowl on Nintendo. Best. Game. Ever. Whoever got Bo Jackson won. Period.
- Hit the Kent bars, more beer (The Loft, Ray’s, a couple of others whose names escape me)
- a) Try to find a girl OR…
- b) Go back to aforementioned house with the gang, crank music, drink more and play more Tecmo.
You were more likely to get a little sleep if you got option a. You were more likely to get less sleep and more drunk if you got option B. Of course, option B was where I ended up most of the time, given my terror in speaking to women whom I never met. Which meant there more than enough occasions where I wouldn’t sleep at all and I’d go straight into the radio station, rather intoxicated, and start my show. I still have some of these shows on cassette tape, too (evidence of one day’s setlist here). Of course, the worst was when I’d have to go straight to work after my radio shift (I worked at a grocery store for almost the full fours years at Kent). Then I’d have that odd mix of exhaustion, slight drunkenness and the initial signs of a hangover. Of course, today this seems impossible. I mean, TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE. But back then, hell, it was par for the course.
As a sidenote, one of my favorite things to do was find very long songs on the jukebox at Ray’s in Kent. For some terrific reason, they had somebody working there with good taste who stocked the CD jukebox with some stellar choices. So my modus operandi was that in the rare chance you got to hear your music (a lot of people put their dollars in there before you), you damn well better get some good time coverage to hear songs you liked. So it was pretty often that my selections would be 7-10 minute songs. You know, tracks from albums like Astral Weeks (“Cypres Avenue” or “Madame George,” both of which were about 8 mins long. Ministry was always good for that, too. I’d always cue up songs like “Scarecrow” (8:21) or “So What” (8:12).
I also directed the TV news at Kent State my senior year. We always had this horrific newsy-sounding intro, similar to the ones you hear on the network news. You know, completely devoid of any personality at all. Well, on my last day directing the news, I handed our audio guy some music that I wanted to substitute. On the show intro, viewers heard the theme to “Sanford and Son.” Going in-and-out of commercial, it was “Jesus Built My Hotrod.” I forget what we ended with, but I do remember all of us in the production booth, laughing our asses off. It was about a week or two before graduation, we couldn’t have cared less.
So whenever I watch the network news, I sometimes think about how funny it would be if NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams started with the theme to Sanford and Son. Classic.
by rustedrobot | Jan 20, 2010 | Memories
As a kid, I spent a lot of time in my room, in relative solitude. I’ve always just liked it that way and I still do today. One of the biggest adjustments for me when the twins were born was less of that. I was never a loner as a kid, but I always loved time spent by myself, so I could lose myself in something, be it building a model car, listening to vinyl records, sorting hockey cards or especially reading books. Oh, how I loved to read books. My earliest memories of book reading were the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery books. I think that must have been around 3rd or 4th grade.
By 7th and 8th grade, I was ALL OVER the Spenser:For Hire books, written by Robert Parker. I had all of them and it took me to another world. The best part about it was that I didn’t start reading them until there were about 10-12 of them on the market, so I had a string of Spenser to books to read – it was like there was always a new one! And when I got caught up, I looked forward to the new releases as much as I looked forward to new albums coming out. Spenser, the funny, tough, clever, but soft-in-the-middle detective. There was the psychiatrist Susan, his beautiful muse and girlfriend. The banter between the two was always fun – they made a legendary couple, arguably one of the best in books. Of course, Hawk, the mysterious tough guy who always had a knack for showing up just when you needed him. It was such fun reading at that age. I remember being so excited when the TV show came out and then so disappointed when I saw it, because the books drew the picture way better than the show did.
It was probably around 9th grade that I moved off of those and onto other books, but that stretch of book-reading was one of my favorite times growing up and set me on a path to almost always having a book or two to read. It continues to this day. So thanks, Robert Parker, you have a very special place in my upbringing and my heart. May you rest in peace, but your legacy is sealed for me and I would imagine many others.
