Creative differences...or a bill by any other name...

In my short life span I have managed to collect numerous nicknames.  I'm not sure if its because 'Bill' is mundane, or maybe I'm just mundane enough that people feel the need to spice something about me up.  Either way, I've been called billy (my least favorite), tacoBill, illBill, 34, Chuckles, billy whiteshoes, bill sixtoes, Orville, billiam, DB, and I'll leave out the 'bad names' out.  Well this week I've been called by 3 more.  Three in one week.  Well, two of them are actually the synonymous with each other and the other is actually my favorite in quite sometime.  All three are for the same reason...water!

For those who don't know, since they moved my lab to Manhattan, there is no deionized water in my lab to fill the water pans for the insects.  So I have to push a bunch of jugs across the parking lot to fill up in the main building and push them back to the lab once their full on a daily basis, to keep my bugs biting.

So the obvious nickname is Waterboy!  Yeah, a guy called me that a couple days ago and I was underwhelmed with his creativity.  He wasn't the first person here to call me that, but it has been sometime since anyone else has (I have been doing this for 7+months).  Then he wasn't satisfied with Waterboy, so he moved on to calling me Bobby Boucher.  Thank you sir for finding one of the dumbest fiction characters out there and refering me to him.  I appreciate that.  He did hold the door while I pushed my cart through it and I almost said "Thanks Drew Carrey!"  He did have a vague resemblance, but I wasn't sure if he would take it as a complement or not, and I didn't want to deal with it, so I walked on and said nothing.

Then today, as I pushed the cart down the hallway, another guy came up behind me and said "we should call you pipeline!"  After fuming for a couples days at the stupidity of the first guy I was actually intrigued but the name Pipeline.  It sounds like a super hero, or G. I. Joe character.  And well, that more than makes up for the whole Boucher debacle.  Maybe the name will spread through the center and I'll get a reputation.

Watch people, here comes Pipeline!!  hehe

Oh ba dee, oh ba da...

I didn't write all weekend.  And I missed it.  So last thursday I pecked out over 1200 words on one of my creations and it felt great.  Then friday came and I had the day off, so first my routine was thrown off, and then there was the pressure placed on me by my wife to get something done on the sun room.  So I didn't really get anything accomplished that day on any of my projects.  And then it was time to run to the doctors to get Charleigh's shots.  That took about an hour longer than expected, though with no issues whatsoever.  And then it was saturday...

Saturday went a lot better, with a buddy coming over and helping to put up insulation and helping brainstorm future steps.  Then the same buddy (Thanks Phil!) went with me to home depot to get the require materials to drywall the rest of the sun room on sunday.  We were done with the ceiling about 5 minutes before 5 which gave me 5 minutes to get the panel lift back to Ace Hardware.  That accomplished, along with a shower and shave and it was time for church.  And exhaustion. 

And no writing was done all weekend, and now its monday and all those creative juices are flowing so I'm going to jump back with both feet and see if I can blow thursday out of the water and make up for the weekend...

I said MUSTARD...

and I love it!  There are so many different varieties.  There are three bottles of it in my office fridge.  There's Dijon for the distinguished flavor.  There's spicy southwest for something to jazz up my lunch a bit.  And there's spicy brown, which is my office-mate's mustard so I don't use it.  Not to say its any less of a mustard, because I would definitely gobble it up if given the chance.  Even the less exotic yellow mustard is rather tasty on a hot dog.  I have actually never met a mustard I didn't like.  Honey mustard on homemade pretzels! mmmmm...heavenly!  It may not be at the top of my list of things I love, but it might just be in my top ten....sadly enough.

Hello, Caption Obvious...

This is what government service is like.  They give you some responsibility and then make you take 'training' every year to make sure you remember the rules for the responsibility. I can understand the thinking behind the monotony of it all, but sometimes their trainings are little more than read and take a quiz, which is honestly better than being called into an hour long meeting to just have them read a powerpoint presentation that you could read on your own faster. 

Well, my latest training was on how to use and not abuse a travel card (its just a credit card they issue you in your name so you don't have to accrue business travel charges on your personal cards).  It was a 7 page powerpoint presentation and in the whole thing there was only one page with any other than words.  And it was this slide, with clipart, that grabbed my attention.  The slide is titled "Using ATM, [etc]."  The clipart along with the title of the slide appears to me to be a woman standing at an ATM.  Well, whoever made this presentation was obviously not happy with people using their imaginations (it sometimes gets people in trouble in the government) and went onto to create an unnecessary caption for the obvious piece of clipart.  "Woman using an ATM."  Not only did they write the caption but they placed it in a word bubble above the image. Its just amazing, I can picture someone back in D.C. having just spent over an hour putting all this info together in a rather mundane presentation and then thinking, lets jazz it up with a picture!  And then once they put in the picture, they suddenly feared that the image might confuse people, so they decided that a caption would clear up any confusion, even though the fact that they used a word bubble makes me wonder if the ATM is just reporting out loud what is happening as it happens or the woman is narrating her own life in the third person...

Forget fireproof...

I want to be explosion proof! 

So we have these freezers at work that say explosion proof on them.  There is one right next to me everyday while I fill up my water jugs at work.  And I have to say that I've never paid much attention to the sign. I just assumed that the fact that it was explosion proof meant that you couldn't use a bomb to open it up.  That was cool in my mind.  But the other day I was looking at it and realized that you wouldn't have to use explosives to take off the door because the hinges are exposed.  You can just take a wrench to it. 

So there had to be another reason for this proclamation.  Maybe it meant that if the building blew up, that it wouldn't blow up too.  But that thought is lame because if the building blew up and all the rubble fell on it, it would still get crushed, right?

Maybe it means that if an explosion happened inside of it, then it would be contained inside.  But why then does it say 'no smoking' and 'keep fire away' on the door?  Maybe its just trying to lull us into a fall sense of security before it really does explode. 

Dang, I think I just answered my own question.  The whole explosion proof thing just means that it won't spontaneously explode, like so many freezers before it....

do centaurs tie their own shoes?

I easily get off track and distracted.  I'm far from disciplined, and motivation leaves me rather quickly.  And then failure always follows.  And with failure, just a desire to give up, quit, run away.  I look back and think about the many failures in my life, whether they are relationships, goals, or just some miscellaneous project that didn't get done.  And through it all, my life has still wound up being pretty, freaking amazing! 

I have an amazing wife (seriously she is amazing, I've done one load of laundry since we've been married and she's faithfully made me lunch everyday for work for over 2 years now, and those are just two of the thousands of things that make her amazing).  An awesome daughter, I think she has to be the most mellow baby in existence, probably gets it from her papa! I have a job, even though some days I hate it and would rather clean toilets at a truck stop than deal with the bureaucracy of it all.  But I have great insurance (I'm thinking about having more kids just so I feel like I'm getting a better deal on the family plan), four weeks of paid vacation accrued each year (with another 6 weeks saved up that I carry over each year), over 700 hours of sick leave saved up so that when I start having fingers growing out of my head because some science experiment goes bad in the lab, I can take paid time off to get them taken off, unless I want to keep them and just get the nails done.  Three vehicles, and we've never had more than one of them not working at any single time.  I have more money in the bank than I have had at any point in my life (other than during that season of time we were saving up for the down payment on our house).  Life is great. 

In the midst of all that I still get bitter at life.  I still get a crappy attitude.  I still get angry at stupid things.  I still find myself envious of others.  I still fail and get frustrated at myself, even though grace has ruled my life for so long.

And that's what I have to remind myself of...Grace.  I failed yesterday.  I got bored at work and started surfing the internet before 5.  And rather than beating myself up for something I knew I would fail at eventually, I gave myself grace and started anew today.  Its hard.  Its hard to get past the thought that I'll never change.  Its hard to experience grace in the midst of failure.  Its hard to start anew with hope. 

But today I do.  I know life is sweet and if its not, its because I'm flinging my bitter garbage around.  Its time to mature, and believe that I can...

p.s.  we watched the voyage of the dawn treader yesterday, and I had the question, that I posed as the title for this post, pop into my head as I watched the minotaur walk around.  hmmm..

observations on a fast...

So, I think I'm on day 8 of my no media before 5pm fast and I think depression has set in.  Is that a side effect of withdrawl? I get to work and during my down time I sit at my desk and feel like sleeping.  Sleep calls out to me.  It tries to seduce me into closing my eyes, but I must fight!  Its all too tempting, especially since there doesn't seem to be anything else more enticing to do.  I fasted from food for 21 days once, and I remember many times just wanting to sleep so that I could skip the empty times and get to the full time much quicker, hopefully my brain isn't trying the same thing here. 


I wish there were a mind-to-computer interface, other than my hands and keyboard, that could translate my thoughts more effeciently.  Most days I start writing and my brain takes off at warp drive and I can't keep up.  Then I get frustrated and stare at the screen and try not to fall asleep as it calls me away yet again...