I survived the New Jersey Hike of Death!

tgp, v, me :: somewhere in the nj wilderness :: may 21, 2011
photo credit: tgp

So, yeah, last weekend. Wow.

I hung around home on Thursday, being so productive it was scary. What a great way to start a 4 day weekend!

No, seriously.

It allowed me to be present Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning. Do you know how hard it is to be in the moment when you have a metric shit-ton of stuff to do at the day job and an equally large pile at home?!?! God bless David Allen. That’s all I have to say. Deciding to get back onto the GTD wagon was my best idea ever.

After a SIX HOUR drive to New Jersey (thank you, New York traffic!), and a VERY EVIL call from the Boy Wonder (can I call him the Boy Wonder? He’s been promoted to Bossman. Nah…), I finally arrived at the house of Viz. There was much craziness and much talking.  It was like Viz and the M-O-M hadn’t seen a person in days. A little overwhelming, but completely awesome. I needed it, I missed it, I reveled in it.

Saturday, after a completely nummy breakfast (where I had to teach Viz to make scrambled eggs - me, cook! I KNOW!), we headed over to TGP’s for what was supposed to be an easy hike. Remember, between the knee rehab and the subsequent injury to my hips/back, I haven’t really done much of anything even remotely physical. I certainly wasn’t planning on crashing a Boy Scout Jamboree, finding dead snakes and turtles, wading through ankle deep mud and being attacked by ticks. Oh, did I mention we got lost?!?! Mr. Nature Boy got us lost. In the same woods he got himself lost in when he first hiked through them.

Yeah. That proves it - I am NOT a nature girl. I think it was the ticks that pushed me over the edge. I don’t do spiders on a good day, never mind bloodsucking ones. Blech!

The early afternoon ick was definitely overshadowed by the amazing night we had. (I kid. I actually had a blast. Until the ticks.)

It started with Stewart’s Drive In, where I had THE! BEST! ROOT! BEER! FLOAT! IN! THE! HISTORY! OF! FOREVER!!!!! I’m not really a root beer drinker, but root beer + ice cream seemed like the perfect way to get over the horrors of the Hike of Death.

Then, we went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4. At a movie theater. It sounds weird, but that was a huge treat for me. We don’t normally go to the movies because we had such terrible experiences in Ohio. I think the last movie we saw was Harry Potter, which wasn’t that long ago, but that’s a MUST. SEE. NOW. kind of movie for us. Anyhoo, we even got movie theater popcorn - another huge treat. I mean, you can’t have the popcorn if you don’t go to the movies, right?

We leave the movie theater and look at each other because we heard a drum corp!!! So then it was the big search to find the drum corp, who were practicing in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Holy bassline disaster. I’ve marched bass drum and it’s hard to see what the other band members are doing if they’re in front of you, so I’ll cut them a little bit of slack, but WOW. They were like bumper cars. I have a spot on the back of my head where D’s drum used to land and it started to hurt as I watched them crash into each other. If they survive the season, it will be a miracle. They were pretty good, even if the metronome was the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard.

We tweeted and facebooked about finding them… Viz was getting texts from her friend W, who had just gotten to the theater and could hear them, too. I love W - we bonded at the Ren Faire last year - so I was excited to maybe have the chance to see him. It turned out his movie was sold out, so we were trying to find out if he wanted to get together. While we were waiting for his response, we sat in front of a loading dock and waiting. No texting and driving for us! Apparently, we picked the perfect spot to set up a game of “Ring Around The Vizma”. Cars that couldn’t find parking spots in that particular lot were turning around in our general area. The couldn’t do the turn anywhere else where there was plenty of room, they had to go around her car.

Eventually, we brought back the “beep!beep!” It just seemed like the right thing to do.

And it was the perfect way to end the weekend.

 

Crap self-generates; it doesn’t self-destruct

d, v, m :: zen bar, somewhere in ct :: 2008?

Got fed up the other day with my workflow processes… I need to reduce drag. Bouncing in and out of five different companies all day is exhausting.

So, because the David Allen Company got into my head and noticed that I needed a swift kick, they decided to send me an email about a GTD live set that I’ve been drooling over. To let me know it’s 50% off. I renewed my GTD Connect membership, busted out my copies of GTD, Ready for Anything, and Making it All Work, and bought the set.

I am ready to hop back on the GTD bandwagon, drink the kool-aid, whatever you want to call it.

w00t!

I’ve got next Thursday and Friday off of work - my last day off was the Friday before my birthday, but I’ve been working myself sick since then. I’m thinking about a road trip, or two. I’m thinking about sleeping. A LOT. I’m thinking of LEGO Pirates on the XBox, but mostly, I’m going to trust in my system and enjoy my well-earned four days of freedom.

D-ployed

d :: toad’s place, new haven, ct :: january 2010

Tom Petty said it best (and I always hear this damn song in my head at times like this): The waiting is the hardest part.

I’ve been dreading the day I’d find out that one of my friends is being deployed. 

Well, he is.

Towards the end of July.

I’m completely sick over this…

The people I love don’t seem to do so well when the military is involved.  Three people, two successful suicides and eight very unsuccessful attempts.

While I’m proud as hell that he’s serving our country and thankful, so very, very, very, thankful that he is, there’s a huge part of me that’s being VERY selfish.

I know I’ll make a point to see him before he leaves. There’s a clock out there, somewhere, that has time on it… and I need to fulfill my end of that deal. (I believe a compromise has been reached as to how that time can be used in a very family friendly, PG-13 manner.)

But that doesn’t mean that I’m OK with any of this.

I WON’T be OK with any of this until he’s home. Safe.

Gah.

I don’t know what to say…

uconn alumni game :: the rent, east hartford, ct :: february 13, 2011

For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking of my grandfather today. When I’d go to my grandparents’ house, he’d always take me to Carvel. I could practically smell the store and taste the ice cream this morning. So odd. So random.

I was poking around Facebook and looked at my cousin’s profile. Granted, it’s locked down and all I could see was her profile picture, but she had a baby.

A baby. God, that made me feel old. She’s seven years younger than I am, and it’s just so weird that she’s old enough to get married and breed. I’m obsessed with finding out what she named it. Like it would help matters.

You know, growing up, the Ukie side of my family was pretty tight knit. Then my mother died and everything got beyond screwed up. My aunt stole money from me, placed a restraining order on my father and I, and cut me off. She was like a mother to me, my cousins like siblings, and it was all gone. I tried to keep in contact with them, but it was hard, strained. When my father died, she told me she was glad because he killed my mother. That was pretty much the last straw.

It took me a long time to get to the point where I wanted to reconnect with my cousins, but I couldn’t deal with the thought of dealing with their mother. Eventually, we did reconnect, but it didn’t work out. The last time I saw her, I gave the eldest all my mother’s jewelry since I didn’t want it and my mother was her godmother, and I got shit on in return. I should have expected it. Like mother, like daughter.

I wonder what my grandparents would think about this. This wasn’t how they raised us. ALL of us.

One great mother spawned two evil ones.

I don’t get it.

I shouldn’t spend my Mother’s Day thinking about the two mothers I hate more than anything, but this bullshit Hallmark holiday always brings out the worst in me. I wish I had a mother to spoil today. More than anything, I wish I had one or the other (or in my wildest dreams, both), in my life. But they’re both dead to me and that breaks my heart.

Yup. Happy Mother’s Day, ya’ll.

I’ll be hiding under a rock until today is over.