I Should Have Been a Firefighter

Words From The Road

It’s mostly the travel that I hate in my job. I’d much rather be at home, able to pursue projects at home and volunteering with the library and literacy program, instead of mouldering in a hotel room in such fortresses of culture as Modesto or Riverside.

But there are some good parts to the job; [...]

The FBI Is Following Me to Sacramento!

Some very important mollusks end up on public assistance; they’ll tell you themselves. Often at great length, if you let them.

Yesterday, we had a woman come in who didn’t speak a word of English, and whose Spanish was so fast and slurred I couldn’t understand her at all. My Spanish is good enough [...]

Trans-Specific Chicken

We were all eating lunch — a feast from Taco Bell delivered to the training site by one of our team — when M., one of my fellow mollusk trainers, made an important discovery.

“Hey!” she said, outraged. “This isn’t chicken in my taco. It’s steak!”

“Impossible,” said N., with a look of [...]

At Atwater

This week, I’m in the town of Atwater, California, where mollusk training is proceeding just fine. Although the adventures I’ve been having are nowhere near as interesting as the adventures that Jennifer has been having in San Francisco, we have had our share of fun.

Atwater itself intrigues me. The sign just outside the town [...]

The E-Word

Today was my first real graduate school class. Yes, it was a Sunday class; since the MLIS program at San Jose State is geared toward working people, they decided to have the single actual meeting for the students on a Sunday so that we could all attend.

The topic of this class is management theory. [...]

December Night

The wind crashes outside, slamming up against the south end of our house like a mad thing throwing itself against walls, trying to escape its prison. I look outside, and the brances and leaves of the trees next door writhe; drops of rain hammer incessantly against the window, as if trying to break it down [...]

On The Beach

This week, my job has me in Santa Barbara. Jennifer’s a bit further north, in the same county as I am, but in the city of Santa Maria. It’s been pretty hectic this week, what with me zipping from Santa Maria to Lompoc and down to Santa Barbara. But, on the whole, it’s been pretty [...]

Why Is This So Freakin’ Hard?

I can sit down and churn out a three-page document summarizing some new features of a software product that I’ve helped develop. Within minutes I can spew out a humorous e-mail inviting all of our friends to a Hallowe’en party. And all throughout college I could sit down and write a paper or an [...]

It’s All Circular

Today Jennifer and I had our first meeting at Benthic Creatures, and I discovered how amazingly small our world can become at times. One of our co-workers is a former co-worker of Jennifer’s from her Company To Be Named Never, but we knew that was going to happen. We knew that was going to happen [...]

Two Errors

Robert Bly, in his poem "Four Ways of Knowing", writes, "I usually ignore the other three / and learn by falling." Some force — God, your higher self, whatever — is out there, says Bly, and there are times when you desperately need to learn something. It starts with subtle hints: a shape in a [...]

Moving Target

Note: I added this bit after I’d already posted this entry… I found it so incredibly… odd. This person makes me worry. Using Apple’s newest operating system apparently makes you a Communist and an anti-Christian [...]

Being Where

So where have I been? I’ve been busy, and for some reason I haven’t had much inclination to update my journal of late. Here, then, is a brief summary of what’s been up with me.

Writing

I’ve revised a short story that I wrote about a month ago, something called "Ten Feet Tall, [...]

Still Breathing…

…but only just barely at the moment. Darn asthma.
I haven’t completely forgotten about you, Faithful Reader. I’m still here, and I’m still moving, kicking, and so on. I’ve just been feeling a remarkable lack of inspiration of late, as well as beginning a process of completely rebuilding my website (all on my computer at [...]

Two Petals of the Flower

I think that this is the second time that I’ve posted the results of one of those silly "What kind of … are you?" in my journal — three, if you count the Which Crawford Cat Quiz that Jennifer and I came up with a few months ago — the one that prompted my aunt, [...]

Carburetor Mechanic

A carburetor mixes air and fuel in a car engine in order to provide just the right mix to make the fuel ignitable so that the engine can work. It’s a very important part of the whole internal combustion thing. But in newer cars, the carburetor has been replaced by the fuel injection system; in [...]