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February 20 Gone FishingRing
Ring
Ring
Hello, you have reached the office of ‘A Murder Of Crows’. We will be out of the office beginning 2/8 through 3/3, while I put the finishing touches on shocking the gasoline company's bottom line by permanently shortening my daily commute by 200 miles, regain some semblance of a life by getting more than 4 hours of sleep a night and getting reacquainted with the woman I married almost 25 years ago; but haven’t seen much of in two and a half years (I also understand that I have two kids and a dog somewhere in the mix too).
Have a pleasant day.
Beeeeep.
 February 08 100 Word Challenge - Fire
Go here for details and the rules of the Velvet Verbosity 100 Word Challenge. The topic for this round is:
FIRE
Within your colors I can dream And see those things undreamt, You pull me into places new To places I’ve before now went.
Within your heat I feel at home By your warm, yet teasing touch, You protect me with your warm embrace Keeping back the colds’ grey clutch.
Your light reflects within my eyes And you are all that I can now see, Your glow descends down deep within To become at one with me.
So carry me off to distant shores And to times forgotten long, Within my hearth, I watch your dance And hear your sirens song.
Haiku Friday – Week Of Woe Continues A Breezy Interlude
Power is restored
Now move on to the next task;
Save myself some dough
Lay new carpet down
Must hurry to beat the clock;
So far, all is good.
Carpet now installed
Returned the rentals on time;
WooHoo! Who’s the Man!
Move furniture back
Move PC back into place;
But it’s full of dust
Carry it outside
Smart of me; no dirt indoors;
WooHoo! Who’s the Man!
Place it on deck rail
Not to worry; enough room;
Will not fall over
Open up the case
Wow, there is a lot of dust;
Can of air should do
Blow away the dirt
It was a good beginning;
Can is out of air
Still a lot more dust
Go to store to get some more?
Got a bright idea
Shop Vac is at hand
Top converts to leaf blower;
WooHoo! Who’s the Man!
Get it all setup
Remember to grab it first;
Don’t want it to fall
Blower in right hand
Must grab it first with the left;
Guess which hand won race
Air blast hits PC
Physics has a brand new law;
PC’s now can fly
PC on the ground
And what do I worry most;
Anyone see that?
Look around; I’m safe
Bring the PC back topside;
This time holding tight
Explosive dust cloud
Now as clean as a whistle;
Hope it still will work
PC powers up
Works much better than it did;
WooHoo! Who’s the Man!
Daughter is perplexed
Grass sticks out of the casing;
“Yeah hon, that’s normal”
Daughter is happy
And no one is the wiser;
WooHoo! Who’s the Man!
February 05 My Week Of Woe - Darkness Falls – Part II“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary...”
~Edgar Allan Poe
“It's always darkest before the dawn”
~Proverb
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!), but 'That's funny”
~Isaac Asimov
Darkness Falls – Part II
Most people who had Martin Luther King’s Birthday off, more than likely enjoyed a day of sleeping in and lazing about the house or, shopping at the mall and lets face it folks, like all the other holidays that we are meant to celebrate with honor and reflection, most of us do not. I on the other hand spent the pre-dawn hours looking for a house gremlin. This particular mischief maker was keeping half of my house without power and all of me without sleep. Getting up from bed every half hour or so to see if anything new would present itself to my over taxed flashlight, yielded the same results as when I keep returning to the refrigerator to see if anything new to eat has magically appeared.
My flashlight batteries and I both conked out around 5am, in which time I finally was able to get in around three hours of sleep.
Strangely enough, I dreamt of candles.
Luckily for me the day was sunny, so I was able to easily poke around the problem areas without the need of a flashlight or work light.
Hooray for me.
One of the problems that I was facing was that I needed to find and rectify this problem as soon as possible because I was supposed to be installing a new carpet in my daughter’s room and just in case I forgot about this, I had the daily rental of the carpet knee-kick and stretcher to remind me. I needed to return these items back to the rental place by noon time or face another day’s rental. I spent about thirty minutes retracing the wires from the breaker box for the 50th time in twelve hours, and coming up with the same answer.
I work in the corporate environment and in this environment, we are bombarded with corporate style catch phrases and concepts that on the surface, we proudly proclaim as the way to success, but inside we know to be only good for lining bird cages with. In my 20 years floating in the sea of big business, I have only heard one concept from the Hallowed Halls of Horse Hockey that had any real life application, and that little gem is called ‘Benevolent Neglect’; the act of putting a puzzling problem that you have focused on for too long, out of your mind by focusing on something else which in turn, actually helps your brain to solve the problem because it is no longer straining over it. I have practiced this over the years and have found that it has a highly successful success rate in helping me to solve issues.
And so, I turn to laying carpet down.
But not really.
I am so mad that I can’t solve what should be an obvious fix, that I go no further than to sit on the floor of the room I’m supposed to be applying the brandy-new smelling carpet, staring at the outlet I know to be the culprit. I have tried replacing the outlet and even tried bypassing the outlet, all without result. So now it is just me and the outlet, locked in a ‘to the death’ staring match. I also start to hear the voice of defeat in my head stating that it was about time I called the three-Lexus-car-owning-and-mansion-on-the-hill-with Olympic-size-swimming-pool electrician
In the midst of this epic battle of mind over amperes, my cell phone rings. My daughter calls me on her 1st day of the Spring Session at college to tell me the good news:
“Dad, my car won’t start…
And the windows and defroster motor don’t work…
And when class ends, I have to go to work…
And then back to a night class”.
I tell her to calm down and that I would pick her up from school and get her to where she needed to go and in the meantime, I will call my auto mechanic and let him know he has a patient on the way. “Don’t worry hon, we will work it out”.
I end the call. It is always very important to reflect a calm, positive image to your children when a stressful situation raises its ugly head…
But there is nothing said that you can’t rip the universe a new anus when they’re out of ear shot!
I pick up the hammer next to me that I had been using to nail down the carpet strips and raise it towards the heavens, roaring upon Devine ears
“OH REALLY LORD; CAN’T I GET JUST ONE DAMNED LOUSY F’ING BREAK FROM YOU THIS WEEK! WOULD THAT BE TO F’ING MUCH TO ASK YOUR ALMIGHTY F’ING HOLINESS FOR, YOU BIG STUPID JERK!!!!!
And like the Norse god Thor, I slammed the hammer onto the bare wood floor just below the evil electrical outlet…
“And God said, let there be light and there was light…”
And just like that, the power was restored to the stricken rooms.
“ALL RIGHT! THANKS DAD”, I hear my son call out from two rooms away.
“And Rocas saw the light, and that the light was good.”
My rejoice although real, was short lived. While I’m not a true blue, bible toting Electrician, I do know enough to know that the household electrical service is not quite supposed to work that way, Divine Clapper or not.
So I did what anyone else with a hammer in hand would do; I looked a gift horse in the mouth.
Wham. I struck the floor in the same spot again.
“Awwwh DaaaaaD”. And what I thought would happen happened; the lights went out again.
Wham. Three times the charm. The lights were back on.
Silence from the other room and I can feel my son silently staring at me through the walls willing me to not repeat my performance.
I go into the basement and locate the area just below where hammer met floor, and lo and behold, hidden on the side of a floor joist close to a wall (where I would not have ever seen it), was a junction box.
Upon later inspection of this newly discovered electrical artery, it was discovered that the wires were a little loose. They were also a little old and brittle. Seeing that this was going to need to be rewired, I called into work and told them that I would be taking a couple of vacation days.
Some would say that in my ‘woe is me’ moment, God took pity on me and literally showed me the light. Perhaps he did, but as I was later to learn that very afternoon, God has a wicked sense of humor and that he wasn’t done with me yet.
“And the evening and the morning, was the fourth day”
February 01 Haiku Friday – Darkness FallsDarkness Falls
Hoping for some peace
Three day weekend to relax-
Better luck next time
Saturday was calm
Just like the eye of a storm-
Evil this way comes
Sunday was a wash
Half the house without power-
Night was coming fast
Could not find the fault
Though I knew where it should be-
Grouchy, Grouchy man
Candle light was nice
Kitchen was not affected-
Beer at least was cold
Could not sleep that night
Running problem through my head-
Darkness mocks my plight
I get up again
The fifth time so far tonight-
No new insight found
Dawn begins to break
The crows are outside laughing-
They know me too well.
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