....Meaning, of course, that I got lazy last night and ordered pizza for myself and Robyn. The world is a strange, convoluted place. Julian is working this weekend at Anime Weekend Atlanta, and our pizza delivery guy was the title actor for the worst movie Julian ever had the ill luck with which to be involved. Not that he's a bad actor, but the movie was really that bad--the "assistant director" should have been fired before filming even started. Even Robyn, who was ten when the movie was screened at Atlanta Sci Fi Summer, hated it. They talk about B-grade horror movies. Well, this one was a D.
It was actually kind of a jolt seeing Bobby on the front porch a few weeks ago in a Papa John's shirt carrying our pizzas. Frankly, life's been like that since we came back to civilization. Thanks to the party we threw, we've been hooking up with a lot of our old friends. I've noticed, though, that gas prices being four times what they were 10 years ago has made the world a bigger place. When we lived here before, we thought nothing of traveling from Little Five to Duluth to Douglasville a few times a week. Now, I have to make sure we have enough money for me to go back and forth to work for an entire week. We used to go to the mountains most weeks, too. I know I make more money now, but I can't afford to do anything. Yea, economics! The result is we don't visit our friends the way we used to, and they can't afford to visit us, either.
Strange as it may seem considering what I do for a living, my job has made me crave a social life. I work in a call center, in Credit/Billing and Beginning/Ending Service for Duke Energy. What this means is that I spend my day on the telephone talking to people who want to know why we cut off their power when they haven't paid a single bill in over a year. Man, Duke Energy is really caring and nice compared to Georgia Power! The result is that I crave intelligent conversation. I swear, Indiana makes the most remote parts of Georgia look downright sophisticated. At least that's true of the ones with whom I end up on the phone. At least I make the same amount of money here that I did in Athens, even though I liked my job better there. I like the city better here; Athens is a cultural sink hole filled with smog from Atlanta that travels down 316 with the rest of the crap and then gets moldy.
Sorry; my health declined so much and so rapidly in Athens that I really didn't see it until it was far to late to stop it. As a result of that and of having been in 13 automobile accidents in the first 8 years I was there (and I was the victim in all of them!) and becoming more and more ill and lethargic the longer I was there, I have become rather bitter about the place.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
In the beginning . . . .
So I was sitting at my desk today, thinking about life, the years 1992 and 1993, my job, and how life is difficult when it's being analyzed in 1 - 3 minute intervals, when it hit me: if I want to get back into writing, I need to actually do some of it. Seemed like a blog (for all that I've always resisted the idea) would be the way to go.
So, until I get bored with it or forget I'm doing it, I'll be blogging a little every day. Just, you know, to get back into the habit of something vaguely resembling creative writing. And maybe to vent a little.
We threw a party this past weekend. A few no-shows, several no replies, but overall a pretty good turnout. The fact is that Julian and I have been planning this party since the last one we threw when we moved into the house-thing in Athens (yes, I refuse to call it a trailer; call me stubborn if you like, but the damned thing offended my sensibilities enough as it was without adding insult to injury). That was in 2000, and involved a great deal of mud. Ever since, we've talked about starting to throw parties again. We kept trying. We even tried to get people to come over when we lived in the house thing to join us in burning piles of wood and stuff in a grand bonfire. A few people came over occasionally, but for the most part that was a bust. So for seven years we've been trying to throw a party, and we finally succeeded.
I suppose you could say we threw two, or that we had a two-day sectional party. The problem with maintaining friendships with both sides of a failed relationship is that it's really not nice to invite them both to the same party. So, rather than leave some people out, we just separated them by a dozen or so hours.
The whole thing went swimmingly until Saturday night when Robyn sliced a chunk of skin off the bottom of his foot. It bled a lot, but Julian got to it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, we have lots of concerned friends; I suppose they meant well, but it's hard to perform intensive first aid while people are staring over your shoulder.
The worst part afterwards has been keeping Robyn off his feet. We actually had to keep him out of school for a couple of days because we don't have crutches and we didn't want to risk making it worse or it getting infected.
Sunday's party went well anyway, despite the fact that only four people showed up. Ironically, one of the objects of these parties was to get rid of some of the alcohol that we bought for our party in 1999 (our three-day Halloween party) and no one drank any on Saturday, when we had 18 guests (well, 17 if you consider that Raven is only 13); instead we ended up with three more bottles of wine. At least on Sunday half of our remaining Yukon Jack went away.
We still had three out of our 12 pack of beer left over at the end of the weekend. I drank four this weekend.
We and our friends are obviously not what you'd call heavy drinkers.
Today, we had to go and have a meeting with Robyn's teachers and the school psychologist. Apparently, there was a standardized Language Arts test a the beginning of the school year to determine what the kids knew; you know the kind--they'll have to take it again at the end of the year. Well, the class average was 40%. Robyn blew the curve, or the average would have been 20%. That's right; Robyn, having been out of school for 5 months due to homelessness instead of two months like the rest of them , made an 80%. They're telling me that if he would only do his homework, he could be accelerated.
That's the hard part. I never did my homework, either. Of course, you could make up for not doing homework when I was in school. You could do extra credit work, you could blow away all the tests, and end up with a B and not do anything at home but watch cartoons. Now, homework actually counts as a significant part of the grade. It's just damn busy work. It may be useful for people who need practice at whatever it is, but worksheets are just damned busy work.
Well, I guess that's enough ranting for today. Hopefully I can maintain this and start doing it on a regular basis.
Cynthia/Cyd
So, until I get bored with it or forget I'm doing it, I'll be blogging a little every day. Just, you know, to get back into the habit of something vaguely resembling creative writing. And maybe to vent a little.
We threw a party this past weekend. A few no-shows, several no replies, but overall a pretty good turnout. The fact is that Julian and I have been planning this party since the last one we threw when we moved into the house-thing in Athens (yes, I refuse to call it a trailer; call me stubborn if you like, but the damned thing offended my sensibilities enough as it was without adding insult to injury). That was in 2000, and involved a great deal of mud. Ever since, we've talked about starting to throw parties again. We kept trying. We even tried to get people to come over when we lived in the house thing to join us in burning piles of wood and stuff in a grand bonfire. A few people came over occasionally, but for the most part that was a bust. So for seven years we've been trying to throw a party, and we finally succeeded.
I suppose you could say we threw two, or that we had a two-day sectional party. The problem with maintaining friendships with both sides of a failed relationship is that it's really not nice to invite them both to the same party. So, rather than leave some people out, we just separated them by a dozen or so hours.
The whole thing went swimmingly until Saturday night when Robyn sliced a chunk of skin off the bottom of his foot. It bled a lot, but Julian got to it pretty quickly. Unfortunately, we have lots of concerned friends; I suppose they meant well, but it's hard to perform intensive first aid while people are staring over your shoulder.
The worst part afterwards has been keeping Robyn off his feet. We actually had to keep him out of school for a couple of days because we don't have crutches and we didn't want to risk making it worse or it getting infected.
Sunday's party went well anyway, despite the fact that only four people showed up. Ironically, one of the objects of these parties was to get rid of some of the alcohol that we bought for our party in 1999 (our three-day Halloween party) and no one drank any on Saturday, when we had 18 guests (well, 17 if you consider that Raven is only 13); instead we ended up with three more bottles of wine. At least on Sunday half of our remaining Yukon Jack went away.
We still had three out of our 12 pack of beer left over at the end of the weekend. I drank four this weekend.
We and our friends are obviously not what you'd call heavy drinkers.
Today, we had to go and have a meeting with Robyn's teachers and the school psychologist. Apparently, there was a standardized Language Arts test a the beginning of the school year to determine what the kids knew; you know the kind--they'll have to take it again at the end of the year. Well, the class average was 40%. Robyn blew the curve, or the average would have been 20%. That's right; Robyn, having been out of school for 5 months due to homelessness instead of two months like the rest of them , made an 80%. They're telling me that if he would only do his homework, he could be accelerated.
That's the hard part. I never did my homework, either. Of course, you could make up for not doing homework when I was in school. You could do extra credit work, you could blow away all the tests, and end up with a B and not do anything at home but watch cartoons. Now, homework actually counts as a significant part of the grade. It's just damn busy work. It may be useful for people who need practice at whatever it is, but worksheets are just damned busy work.
Well, I guess that's enough ranting for today. Hopefully I can maintain this and start doing it on a regular basis.
Cynthia/Cyd
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