Blank Brains and Bug Bites

Blank Brains and Bug Bites

For today's musing, lemme talk to the guys for a couple minutes, if I may. You ladies may read on, of course – you're always welcome - but let me hunker down with the males for a bit.

Did you guys ever have someone walk up to you and ask what's on your mind? Or say, “A penny for your thoughts?” Or have your spouse say, “What're ya thinkin' about, honey?” These queries seem to be invariably posed by a women. And you almost always turn to them and answer, “nothing.”

And mean it?

I know this a subject for stand-up comedians and we've all probably heard variations on this theme – how guys usually aren't thinking about anything and women are always thinking about stuff. Always. At least I know I have.

And I think there's way more than a grain of truth to the jokes and stories on this subject. You see, there are vast stretches of time where I'm not really thinking about anything at all! Nothing. Nada. Zip. Most every day. Oh, yes, there are some lights still burning in there. This is where I live and I gotta keep the machinery working and all that stuff. But actual thoughts? Naw, not really.

Maybe it would behoove me at this point in time to break down brain activity, at least my brain activity, into two categories. High-level and low-level. High level brain activity could be defined as where I'm actively speaking to myself, mentally, in English words, or working on a solution to a problem, or actively planning something, or learning something. If I'm trying to write a blog, like I'm doing right now, that takes a lot of high-level thought. Putting words together coherently, phrasing, deciding whether I want to talk about this now or that now. In what sequence I want to put my thoughts. How is the flow going and am I done with my present topic.

That's, to me, fairly high level.

Am I in that mode all the time? Of course not. If I hit high-level an hour or two a day that's probably about par for the course. The rest of the time? Low level. Just on cruise control. Just basic maintenance stuff – hungry/not hungry, thirsty/not thirsty, hot/cold, tired/energetic, sleepy/awake. Make the muscles do this or that. Eat. Doze. Maybe I've got an ear-bug and am hearing a song repeat over and over. Maybe I'm just in receive mode and am just soaking up the environment without making any judgments or internal dialog. Or reading and letting the words just soak in without pondering them. Or listening to music and just grooving. Or watching TV, the old mind number itself.

Or just in a pleasant fog with nothing much going on at all.

These low level thoughts, if thoughts they really are, generally are short and unfocused. They don't generate any spark or response and come and go like a variable breeze on a summer day. Oh, and sex of course. Gotta mention that. That crosses the male mind... fairly often I'd say. Maybe not every seven seconds, or fifteen seconds, or five minutes, or... well, you fill in the number. The rumor mill abounds with assertions on how often it happens. Suffice it to say, from personal observations, it's fairly often.

I have no idea whether this high-low thing is genetic, or something to do with the Y chromosome or possibly both sexes do it. But if women go low-level, they don't seem to talk about it much. At least that I can recall. When you ask them what they're thinking about, they'll tell ya!

So when a woman asks a man what he's thinking about and he says, “nothing”, you can generally take that answer to the bank.

He's telling the truth.

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I can be really, really stupid some days if I set my mind to it. And those episodes of stupidity invariably lead to unpleasant consequences. Always. I've been lucky that most of the consequences I've been subjected to, at least recently, haven't been in the life-threatening category, but there is usually some uncomfortable debt to be paid.

For instance...

Last week I went geocaching with my wife. We do this a lot in the summer time, usually on weekends when we can get together. On Sunday last week we headed out to search for a dozen caches or so. One of the first ones that we looked for was about a half-mile down a paved bike/hike trail in the county just south of our home. Since my wife had a buggered-up foot, she was basically just along for the ride. She didn't want to aggravate the injury, so she just sat in the car while I went searching. Like I said, one of the first caches to be found was down this paved trail, then off the trail a hundred yards into the bush, across a small creek and up a slight embankment. It was late spring and the woods that the trail passed through were beautiful with the trees all in full leaf, the birds singing, the air quite warm and the sun beaming down. We'd had a lot of rain the previous weeks and it was great seeing a day with no rain for a change. When I'd traversed the first half-mile, left the paved trail and started back into the bush area, I realized that I had forgotten to perform an action that I knew I should have performed.

I'd neglected to spray myself with bug dope.

I looked back down the long trail I had just walked. That'd be another mile or so and, as lovely as the day was I didn't want to have to walk that far again. So I decided I'd just get this one and spray myself when I got back to the car. Since we'd had so much rain recently, the insect population in the bushes was plentiful and joyfully waiting for me. The mosquitoes were thick and very, very hungry. I spent some long minutes swatting the blood-suckers while searching for the “treasure”. And ruing my lapse in preparation. Finally I found the cache, signed the logbook and returned to the main trail and thence back to the car. I was scratching a number of skeeter bites the whole way and mentally kicking myself for stupidity.

The rest of the day was similar but I was heavily lathered with repellent for those quests.

Unfortunately there were more vermin in the bushes on that fine Sunday afternoon than just mosquitoes. The next day I found myself itching again and I examined where the sensations were coming from. I found a number of reddish blotches and immediately identified them. They weren't mosquito bites. I'd got into some chiggers again.

Rats!

I'd had chigger bites in the past and knew I had a number of days to come where I'd be one miserable son-of-a-gun. And I have been. It's been about 5 days since the “infestation” and the incessant itching from the miserable little bumps is starting to ease off now.

Almost.

And so I guess I have to say, once again, lesson learned. Of course I said it the last time I got chigger bit.

Maybe if my brain wasn't in low-level all the time I'd have applied some high-level bug dope before leaving the house!

The Hunger

The Hunger

I finished my dinner tonight, laid down my fork, took a last swig of the soda I was drinking and then looked around. I felt like I was still hungry. Sort of. I thought about what I'd just eaten and realized that I shouldn't be hungry. I'd had more than enough food. But... Dammit. I felt like I was still hungry. But, for what? I had some fruit and yogurt for later in the evening. Didn't need it now. Didn't want it now.

Then I realized what I was hungry for. I hate to admit it and I hate to have to admit it.

I wanted a cigarette. Sure as hell, a cigarette would taste just fine right about now.

Let me collect my thoughts for a moment while I take a couple deep breaths.

OK, let's continue.

To begin with, you have to realize that I'd quit smoking over 20 years ago. More like 22 or thereabouts. I haven't taken one puff since then. Not one. I know myself and I know how damn hard it was to get off them. I can even recall the process that I went through to get that particular monkey off my back like it was yesterday.

I'd tried to quit a number of times. I really did. Tried cutting down. Tried the gum. Tried cold turkey. And also tried most of the other ways that were in vogue two decades ago. Nothing worked. I always returned to the comforts of my old friend tobacco. I finally had a conversation with a man with whom I worked who'd quit by using the patch. I knew the guy and I knew he smoked LOTS more than I did. He was a veritable chimney! And he'd quit using the smoke-cessation patch.

So I thought, if him, why not me?

At my next visit to my doctor I told him I wanted give the patch a try. It was a prescription item back in those days. He was a bit hesitant as my other attempts had ended so ignominiously. But he acquiesced and wrote me the script.

I remember the day I quit. I'd picked a day about a week after I had visited the drugstore and had the patches in hand. I had a little less than a pack of cigarettes left at the end of the day before, so I smoked one more before going to sleep and pitched the rest into the trash. I think I slipped a patch on before going to bed so I'd keep my nicotine level up. I woke up the next morning and suddenly remembered that I had quit.

It wasn't the best morning of my life.

First off just let me say that it was really, really weird. I won't say my life before that day revolved around smoking but, when I actually thought about it, I realized that yes, it did.

The feeling was exactly like a dear friend had died. That's honestly how it felt.

That day and for many days afterward my body was being delivered a dose of nicotine by the patch on my arm. But the patch was just an alternate delivery system. My normal delivery system, the big hit from a cigarette, was no longer available. Come to think of it, weird doesn't even begin to describe it. The psychological crutch that smoking is was gone and I had to “walk” without that crutch. I remember that one of the oddest part about those first few weeks was how strange my hands felt. I had realized that there is a lot of ritual involved with smoking. The handling of the cigarette, the lighter, the motions involved with smoking it, flicking the ashes, blowing out the smoke, putting out the butt. Etc. and etc.

My hands felt huge and useless hanging on the bottom of my arms. They had nothing to do! A large part of their previous life had been involved with the rituals of smoking.

And those rituals were now gone.

I made sure my patch was changed at exactly the correct times. I knew that my body still needed the drug and I knew that was the only way it was going to get it. I was crabby, I admit. Maybe more than I like to recall. I'm sure my wife and son could add some side notes here on my behavior during those weeks and months. The addiction to nicotine is powerful, more powerful than that of cocaine according to some accounts, and it had its claws in me deep. But I soldiered onward. I chewed on toothpicks by the boxful. And ate carrots and celery until I could hardly look at them. Anything to keep my mouth and hands busy while the bad habits of many, many years slowly dissolved. Over time the strength of the patches decreased and finally, one day I peeled the last one off. I was free!

But to say the urge was gone would be untrue. I missed smoking pretty much every day. I did finally get to the point where the smell of someone else smoking was starting to be a bit unpleasant. But that came a couple years after quitting. Before that the smell of smoke was still intoxicating, still a siren's call. I'd go out with friends who still smoked and sit downwind from them to make sure I got a whiff of their smoke. But I knew to never touch one. That'd lead to another and another and... I'd be a smoker again at once. Couldn't chance it.

So I've been off the drug for a couple decades. And the urge to smoke is gone. Or, to be honest, almost gone.

But... But... Every now and again my mind or my body remembers. And it remembers how simply marvelous a cigarette tasted after my evening meal. How it provided an end cap to the meal and satisfied a hunger than wasn't satisfied by food no matter how much you ate.

And that is what I think I was missing tonight.

Of course I'd never dream of getting a smoke now. That'd be ludicrous after all those years. Besides being incredibly expensive compared to what I used to pay.

But that ol' urge likes to pop up now and again. It likes to step in the door and say, Hello my old friend. How are you doing? How about you and I going down memory lane for a bit, just for old time's sake. And while we're there, how about a smoke?

So I sit here and smile at my old desires kicking in. I imagine the silky feel of the cigarette between my fingers, I hear the distinctive sound a cigarette lighter makes as the flame jets out, I hear the hiss of the tobacco as it feels the heat of the fire, the blue-gray smoke curling up from the glowing tip and swirling in the air currents. I imagine the feel of the dense smoke as it slides down my throat and how the smooth bite of the smoke feels as it goes into my lungs. And I can still feel the kick of the smoke as it hits all the needy spots in my body, lighting up all the receptors and feeling so damn good.

It's almost pornographic to imagine!

And tonight, as the minutes pass, I feel the urge die away. It always does now. Always. There's really no need for the drama anymore. That stuff is way, way in the past.

Uh-huh. Sure...

I remember my father saying something in his last year of life. He said that if he knew he was going to die sometime soon, he'd start smoking again. That day. And he'd been off cigarettes for many, many years at that time.

He missed it that much.

I remembered his words.

I hope I never say them.

But I still remember them.

I still remember.

Alius Ver

Alius Ver

I stood for a few minutes late this afternoon staring out a western-facing doorway here at work into a bright setting sun. The door is all glass so I could feel the radiant heat as it beat against my skin. As I stood there half-hypnotized by the unaccustomed sight, I gave a silent thank you to whatever powers that be for this unexpected gift. It felt wonderful!

It has been a cold and wet spring in this portion of northern Ohio I call home. The occurrences of sunshine the past several months have been few and the handful of times when the sun actually did appear only served to remind us all of what a normal spring used to look like. Gray skies, rain, thunder and more rain have been our lot since the last of winter's dirty snow has melted. People say it's climate change and I guess that's as good an excuse as any. Up until recently I seem to recall they called it global warming. At least until the recent long and severe winters started piling up. Haven't heard much from our old pal Al Gore on global warming the last couple of years, have we? Kind of hard to keep beating the drum on global warming when wearing a parka and mukluks.

So the catchphrase now is climate change.

They say it's our fault, too. Too many cars. Too many belching cattle. Or is it flatulent cattle? And lots more active volcanoes. Or tsunamis? And don't you remember when they were “tidal waves”? And then again I've heard it's just too many people. Or not enough trees. Or too many golf courses. Or... Or... Or...

I guess science has gradually moved into the climate change camp, too, even as the loyal opposition still maintains it's just a natural cycle.

I used to subscribe to one of those theories. I'm now leaning the other way. I'll let you guess as to which one.

In any event, the winters recently seem to be longer, colder and heavy with more snow than usual followed by long, gray, wet springs. At least the last few have seemed that way. And at least that's the situation around here. I suppose there are other places that are too dry, too hot and miserable in other ways. I seem to recall reading about them.

But what can you do? I don't own any flatulent cattle. I haven't built any golf courses or cut down any trees. I may contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer by my own flatulence from time to time, but I don't think that's a large contribution. At least macroclimactically speaking. In the offend-the-guy-sitting-next-to-you way of looking at it, yes, I'm probably one of the “bad” guys. But I'm going to blame the bean and Brussels sprout farmer. He's the one giving me the ammunition!

But, be honest about the weather. Hasn't it always been that way? I remember damn cold, snowy winters. And wet, rainy springs. And hot dry summers. We didn't blame them on anything exotic like we do now days. We just bundled up heavier (or lighter), turned up the furnace a bit (or the fan/air conditioner), made sure all the umbrellas still worked and went on with life.

And speaking about unusual weather reminds me of some memorable instances from the past.

When I was a young boy of three or four, maybe around 1950, and my parents rented a farmhouse for our residence. They didn't have much money and I suppose the place was quite economical How much fun it was in those days as a kid to run through the fields with my dog in the summertime and catch field mice. And how horribly bad the winter was that year; how the snow drifts were way over my head and how dad had to get up in the middle of each night to go to the cellar and stoke the coal furnace. Every night. And how I caught pneumonia that year, spent a week in the hospital and almost died except for a new “wonder” drug called penicillin.

In 1969 when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Panama and how I read about my hometown and local area in the South American edition of the Miami Tribune. On the fourth of July that year a monstrous thunderstorm stood over the area for hours and hours and dumped literally tons of water everywhere. Three police officers from the area were drowned as they tried to rescue people from the swiftly-flowing flooded areas around town. And that same day how my cousin and her husband were rendered homeless as their mobile home was ripped from it's foundation and smashed into the raging river that flowed around it that used to be a gentle creek. She walked the banks of that creek in the following weeks trying to find remnants of her belongings and of her life. She found very little.

On January 26 of 1978 the storm of the century blew into our area burying cars, blowing out power lines and killing 51 Ohioans. My wife and I were living in a mobile home at the time. We abandoned it and moved in with my father in his brick house. We would remain there for almost a week. The storm was so bad they still refer to it as the “White Hurricane” as the winds whipped over 80 miles per hour and the barometer reached record lows. My brother rode his snowmobile through the middle of town to get supplies for those of us stranded at dad's house.

On April 3 and 4 of 1974 I remember the tornado superoutbreak. 315 people were killed across the United States and the Ohio town of Xenia was devastated. About half the buildings of the town of 27,000 were damaged and 300 destroyed. It killed 32 people in that area. I remember it extremely well as paper fell from the sky in my hometown over 150 miles away that had been swept up from there.

When I think back on these terrible weather events I find that our long winters and wet, cool springs are a good trade off. I guess I'll take them over the catastrophes of the past.

So another damp spring slowly creeps into Ohio spreading its watery cheer and shy glimpses of sunshine. And I say welcome, my friend.

It sure beats shoveling snow.

Point of Confluence

Point of Confluence

As some of you may remember reading about in previous blogs, my wife and I have been pursuing a hobby the last few years called geocaching. The official definition of geocaching is: “Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online.” Each of the six-hundred-and-some geocaches that we've found have had a name along with a latitude and a longitude to enable us to find it using our GPS devices. Last year we found one in a small town about 15 miles north of where we live. It's title was “A Point of Confluence”. It was a rather mundane and unremarkable geocache in the middle of a field. It's “claim to fame”, I suppose, was that it was located at a particular point on the earth's surface defined as North Latitude 41 degrees 00 minutes 00 seconds, West Longitude 82 degrees 00 minutes 00 seconds. If you look at a globe of the earth you can see those lines of latitude and longitude drawn on it. The latitudes are the ones that go east and west and don't touch. The longitudes are the ones that go north and south and touch at the poles.

As I stood at the location of that particular geocache I visualized in my mind the two heavy black lines on a map of the Earth's surface converging at that spot. The North 41 degree latitude line swinging in from the east and rolling out to the west eventually crossing the wide Pacific Ocean, Japan, North Korea, China, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal before crossing the Atlantic and again meeting at my point of confluence. I also visualized the West 82 degree of longitude line running north from my location across Canada and the center of Hudson Bay, on through the icy wastes of the Arctic to the North Pole where it became the East 92 degree line diving south through Mongolia, China, Thailand and countless miles of the Pacific before meeting at the South Pole in Antarctica and racing again north on the West 82 degree line nipping the west coast of South America, Panama, Cuba, Florida and back up to my cache site. As I stood on that erstwhile “magical” spot I could feel the connection to those far-flung and exotic places by the magical lines that connected us.

Of course I could have performed the same mental exercise using any latitude and longitude, but this spot was on an important one! At least to the mapmakers and cartographers. It was interesting looking at my GPS and seeing all those zeros. All those minutes and seconds added up that all came out even at zero.

I guess there wasn't any really practical use to know that the field behind a certain McDonald's restaurant was a Major point of confluence. Perhaps only as an odd coincidence in our hobby.

But it got me to thinking... and eventually led to this blog.

I guess, if you wanted to, you could compare your life to a line of latitude or longitude and the important events that occur in that life could be defined as points of confluence. Some would be minor ones with odd numbers of minutes and seconds. New cars. Vacations. Holidays. Promotions. Others could be majors where the numbers have lots of zeros. Births of children. Deaths of loved ones. Job changes. Relocations. A lot of these points could be imagined as visible as they come sweeping in at you as you move along your line. Others would seem to sneak up on you and arrive at unexpected times.

I've got what could be construed as a major point of confluence bearing down on me at the moment, one that's been threatening to arrive for some time and now is upon me and a number of people who are “riding the line” with me. It's a point that holds promise and concern, happiness and sorrow, uncertainty and resolution. But most of all it holds change, and change is always the wild card of life.

To be more precise and to quit speaking in metaphors, my immediate supervisor is retiring at the end of the month.

I've been in my present job for almost a decade now and my currant supervisor hired me. I was trained primarily by him and I perform my duties as he wishes them to be performed. I've grown fond of him as we are akin in age and akin in a lot of our life experiences. He's been a mentor to me and a confidant, a boss and a friend in equal measure. And over the years he's placed his stamp on the department that he heads. We all know how things work, we all know what he expects and we've all grown accustomed to the “way things are done” under his leadership.

The department is as much defined by him as it is echoed by us.

And now that's going to change.

Now we're going to be, as they might say, marching to a different drummer.

Our present supervisor's replacement is well known to all of us. He's liked, he's eminently capable and we all expect that he'll be able to handle his new duties capably. His skill set is a bit different than that of our present leader, but not so much so as to cause great concern.

But it will be different around here. There will be changes. There will be differences both obvious and covert.

And to top things off, to put another layer of icing on the cake, our new supervisor's boss has just left for greener pastures and we have a new supervisor in that position also.

I expect a bit of a roller coaster ride for the next few months.

And the points of confluence on our jolly ol' line of latitude (or longitude) just keep rollin' on by.

Key

Key

As some of you may or may not know, I recently bought a car. It was a replacement for my old beater that I'd been driving around in for the last 13 years and quarter-million miles. The new purchase was a used car. I believe I've probably bought my last new car. I just don't think you're getting the value from a new car that you get with a “newer” used car. And a lot of cars last a long time nowadays so you're not taking as great a chance on a previously-owned one as might have been the case years ago.

This wasn't the first automobile purchase I've made in my life. I've bought others over the years, both new and used. So I'm not totally clueless when dancing the “buy a car” cha-cha. The first step in this dance is the decision about what make and model would be acceptable. (1-2 cha, cha, cha.) The next step is the calculation as to what we can afford. (3-4 cha, cha, cha.) The last step in the dance is to amble around the car lots and to complete the dance between the salesmen and yourself. (5-6 cha, cha, cha.)

Been there and done that. I'm certainly not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but not totally a doofus either.

This time around we used the internet instead of hitting a half-dozen lots and did most of our looking and selecting online. This time the dance was much easier.

So...

We ended up buying a 6-year-old Honda Civic. A nice, dependable car – not heavy on the flashiness but stylish. At least in our eyes. We were comfortable with the choice and liked the ride and the feel of the car. And it was our third Civic. The comfort level was high.

After having the car about a week we realized that it only came with one key. Uh-oh! This was a fault that we needed to rectify before too much time went by as my wife and I always have a spare of each others keys in case of one of us locks their keys in the car or does some other stupid move. We've always done that.

Before continuing I want you to be aware that our previous cars were 1998 models. That's important to the rest of the story.

We'd received a small income tax return check from the state late last week, so I told the wife it'd be a good time to get the spare key made for her.

We went to a local hardware store on Saturday morning to have this little chore accomplished. I'd gone to that particular store a couple years ago with my son to get a spare key made for his car, another 1998 model, an Accord this time. It was one of the newer “smart” keys and had a chip in it. The hardware store was able to make a new one for him and program it at a cost of around $50. I thought that was an atrocious price but, what can you do?

You see, I'm one of the old timers and remember when getting a spare key was a dollar or two. So you got a few, stuck one in the house, gave one to each member of the family and no one was bothered to give up their key so someone else could borrow the car. It was the way things were done then and it was the way things were done on our older cars.

I guess life was simpler then.

Anyhow, we went into the hardware store and I told the man there that we needed a key made. When I showed him my key he stopped me and said that they couldn't make copies there. It was one of the newer “special” ones and was unable to be copied by him. He showed me the reason. The keys edges, where the grooves on a regular key would be were smooth. The grooves were on another layer of the key (both sides) and were grooved on that, exterior layer. In other words, it took a very special machine to cut that key. Apparently ones that weren't available to anyone but a dealer.

That news disheartened me. I knew that a dealer would charge more. But I didn't know HOW much more. I thanked the man at the hardware store, took a deep breath and headed out the door and up the road to the Honda dealership.

I pulled in, parked the car and went to the parts department inside our local dealership. I showed the technician the key and said I wanted a copy made. And that started the process. They had to get the VIN number of the car to make the key. They also had to move the car into the shop. Haven't got a clue for what reason.

An hour later (that's not a misprint – it was an hour) I was handed my new key and a bill. Let me relate the charges for your perusal.

Charge one: One key – blank $58.02

Charge two: Programming charge $25.50

Charge three: Shop supplies $3.83

Total charges: $92.81.

I want you to read that again. NINETY-TWO DOLLARS AND EIGHTY-ONE CENTS!!! For a KEY!!!

I can feel the anger again rise in me as I type this. For a doggone KEY! Something that used to cost a dollar or two! Something that should STILL cost a dollar or two!

I looked at the new key laying in my hand. Not gold-plated. Not ruby/diamond incrusted. Not finely-wrought silver or platinum. Steel, plastic and an electronic chip.

Once more before I continue – NINETY-TWO DOLLARS AND EIGHTY-ONE CENTS!!!

Sigh...

I think the shop charges that they padded to the bill at the end were the ne plus ultra of the charges. Shop charges (and I quote) “cover disposals of fluids, tires, rags, filters and any hazardous materials.” I'm no mechanic, but gee whiz, Nelly. You made me a KEY!

Sigh (again)...

So I told my wife to be careful of the new key as there wouldn't be another one.

By the way, I tried the key and it did work. Thank God for small miracles.

As an aside to those who read my last blog about saying goodbye to my old car. My neighbor bought it. I told him all the things that were wrong with it but he said he was a good mechanic and could fix most of her ailments. He had the asking price in cash so I handed her over to him. He's already put new rubber on her wheels and is getting her clutch repaired. I think she's in good hands. And... I get to see her most days!

That's nice.

Welcome Home

Welcome Home

In the mid-1700's there was a word coined that's always fascinated me. This word referred to the attribution of human characteristics to non-human animals or non-human things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts such as god(s). The term coined was anthropomorphism. Characters from the story “Alice in Wonderland” or “Toy Story” are prime examples of how the term could be used. The inanimate toys in Toy Story and the fanciful animals and such in Alice were given human attributes.

You might wonder why I'm starting this blog with a lexicon lesson from several hundred years ago on a 5-syllable tongue twister of a word . Trust me that it's germane to the subject of the blog. And, whether you know it or not, most of us anthropomorphise all of the time.

Do you have a pet or know someone who has a pet? Does it have a name? Do the owners treat the pet like one of the family most of the time? Bingo – you're anthropomorphising! How about on TV... Gabby Hayes jeep on the Roy Roger's Show was named Nelly-belle. Knight Rider was about an automobile named KITT. Mr. Ed was a horse, of course! My Mother the Car. Etc., etc., and more etc.

I'll bet you could name a dozen more without even breaking a sweat. In fact, when you get right down to it, humans seem to have a predilection to name things around them and to give them human attributes, at least to some degree.

Here's a few more that cross my mind. Ol' Betsy was the name of Davy Crockett's rifle. General Lee was the name of the Duke's of Hazzard's race car. Old Yeller, of course. And who can forget Pyewacket the cat from the movie “Bell, Book and Candle”. Then there was “Kukla, Fran and Ollie”, only one of which was human. How about the Transformers? And pretty much all of the Disney animal characters. B. B. King's guitar was named Lucille. And don't forget the ancients who personified the wind, rain, lighting, sun, moon and innumerable gods with human attributes. Take a look at any Greek, Roman or Norse mythology book.

The list goes on and on.

Which leads me, albeit in a convoluted way, to the fact that my family has recently gained an new addition. You might say after hearing this bit of news, “Whoa, old fellow. You're a bit long in the tooth to be adding family members. What gives?”

So let me tell you a bit about her.

She's a 2005 edition who was made in Marysville, Ohio - a little northwest of Columbus. Her color is a beautiful shade of midnight blue called Fiji Blue Pearl and she has black interior trim and a handsomely patterned gray upholstery. She sports a peppy 1.7 liter, 4-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. She's got some miles on her but still looks and runs as sweet as the day she was made.

As you can now see from the previous description, it's obvious that we've just purchased a “previously-owned” car. A Honda Civic to be precise. We'd been in the market for a while, knowing that my old car, a '98 Toyota Corolla with almost a quarter-million miles on her, was approaching a “put some real money into me NOW or get a replacement and let someone else fix me up” point in time. I still think she's got quite a few miles left in her, but needs some expert TLC to make her purr like she should.

So we looked around here and there and finally found one in the make, model and general ballpark asking price we were looking for. Unfortunately it was 150 miles away. We decided that it was probably worth the trip, so last weekend we drove to Bowling Green, Ohio and were introduced to her. After a bit of a walk-around where we admired her lines and how she differed from our older Honda, we hopped into her and took off for a test drive. She ran sweetly, had a comfortable ride and seemed quite well-behaved on the road.

I liked her.

My wife also liked her which was a GIANT selling point!

We did some more car shopping the rest of the weekend (that's a story for another day) before agreeing that the Bowling Green car was our top choice. I called the dealer on Sunday to tell him we wanted her and a week later we went back to pick her up.

After the passing of the check to the dealer and the fastening-on of the 30-day tag, we headed on home, wending our way through the flat-lands of northwestern Ohio and back toward the hillier country near home. We made sort of a 2-car eastbound Honda parade – the newer blue one which I drove followed by our old standby green one driven by my wife.

And on that trip homeward I began to quietly talk to the new car, the new member of the family, in my mind as if it were an orphan which we had adopted and were taking home to meet the family. This is the way to your new house, I said to her in my mind. We'll drive southward until we get near Findlay, then turn east. Then we'll go by Upper Sandusky, Bucyrus and Galion. Then on through Mansfield and we're starting to get closer. Finally, as we pass over the last hill and head downward we can start to see the first of the evening lights of Wooster, your new home.

I guided my new friend up the last miles of highway and onto the city streets where her tires would now frequently roll and swung her into the driveway and, at last, to her new home. I turned off the engine, patted the steering wheel and whispered quietly, “Welcome home, little girl. Welcome home.”

Now I'll have to find some way to break it to the old one that she's going to get a new owner and a new home before too long.

But it won't be easy. She's always been a bit stubborn. But if I clean her up and shine her up I think I can persuade her.

But, in any event, I'm sure glad I don't anthropomorphise my belongings!

Anticipation

ANTICIPATION

I'm so doggone lazy these days. Or maybe lazy isn't quite the correct appellation. Maybe the correct one would be “easily diverged”. Or perhaps “easily sidetracked”. I say this in apology for not writing in this blog for a million years or so it seems. Oh, I always have good intentions to do so. I always intend to sit down and click out a masterful edition of the blog. I've thought about it countless times. And I have absolutely wonderful ideas for subject matter, too. I'll sit and imagine how I'll word this and how I'll phrase that. I'll have the first page or two almost written in my head when I stop and maybe take a quick look at Facebook or check my email. Or maybe someone will say something to me to interrupt my reverie. Something seems to always be there that is interesting or requires my attention and... away I go doing something other than blogging. And all the good ideas and great intentions vanish in the haze.

It's amazing how many great blogs you've missed!

So let's make a start on this one and see where the road takes us. To greatness or to mediocrity. Or to just a blog kind of blog.

I've spent a lot of time recently daydreaming about an upcoming event that is situated a long, long time in the future. So far in the future, if truth be told, that making too many plans now would be silly. It's much too far down the road. And I suppose one of my many failings is to jump the gun on things like this, to over-analyze and to examine a task from way too many different aspects. To visualize, to anticipate, to drive myself crazy trying to dot all the i's and to cross all the t's long, long before any of that is necessary.

To get specific, my wife and I have put a down payment on a cruise. We did it a week or two ago along with a friend from work and her husband. We're heading out on the Carnival Glory to, as Carnival likes to describe it, the exotic Eastern Caribbean. All that's entirely well and good and we're all delighted that we've made the commitment and are really, really happy that we're going to do it. The only drawback is that it's 400 days in the future, give or take a few. FOUR HUNDRED DAYS! That's a doggone long time! The act of booking this far in advance was smart for several reasons. First of which is you get a better rate on your cruise by booking far, far in advance. Second is that you get a much better choice of cabin. Later on your choices might be much more limited. So that's all to the good. But... It's 400 days away! FOUR HUNDRED DAYS! You can't even start looking at airline flights from home to the cruise port for another few months as they, unlike the cruise lines, don't book that far into the future.

So, for the aforementioned 400 days I have to sit and try to relax. Try to not get too excited about going on another cruise even though I am. Try to shift into quiet waiting mode to get through the next half-dozen months or so until I can again ratchet up into active planning mode.

But in the meantime I find myself watching videos on YouTube of cruisers on “our” boat cruising from “our” departure port to “our” destinations. Watching the happy faces and the blue waters and the welcoming palm trees.

And that thought brings me to another aspect of the upcoming cruise.

The anticipation.

With a lot of people, the anticipation of a looked-forward-to event is torture of a particularly evil kind. The hours drag, the days seem to take forever to pass and time seems to stand still. Or even start to go backward!

But I belong to a contrarian school of thought. I like to savor the anticipation, to luxuriate in the time between initiating the wait for an event and the event itself.

Let's face the cold reality, a one-week cruise is going to go by in a flash. In a veritable instant of time. We will no more than board the cruise ship and it will be time to pack up and leave it. One week – zip – cruise over and done. Just about that fast. Trust me, it will seem that way.

But the time between now and then? My friend, you can take that cruise a dozen time in your imagination – a hundred times. You can lovingly examine each facet of the upcoming cruise in detail, each leg, each port, each sea-day. You can feel the softness of the cabin's bed, savor the succulent taste of new foods, visualize the incredible blueness of the sea as your great white ship sails through it. You can marvel in the exotic beauty of a Caribbean island coming into view over the bow of your magic carpet – your cruise ship. You can hear the musical patois of the islanders talking in the markets and the sightseeing venues of the various ports-of-call and feel your feet start to move in rhythm to the Calypso music floating in the air. You can even feel the velvety caress of the ocean water as you glide over the surface and watch the beautiful fish swimming below you as you snorkel above them in the warm sea.

All of these wonderful things are available to you anytime! Just close your eyes and... you're there!

So I look at videos of the Carnival Glory gliding into an exotic port, close my eyes and I'm there, standing on the deck and watching the green of the approaching island rise above the crystal blue sea. I watch another video of a port we will visit, close my eyes and I'm there also, walking the old cobblestone streets, eating the fresh seafood, feeling the warm tropical breezes cool my sun-reddened skin and watching the white puffball clouds sail over the island in the azure sky.

So when the cruise date actually does arrive, I'll be an old salt! I'll have walked all the ship's corridors many times already, disembarked onto Caribbean islands countless times, made wonderful friends of shipmates and islanders and watched dozens of crimson sunsets over calm aquamarine seas.

Four hundred days to go? Over a year? A piece of cake! And if you're a Carnival sailor, you'll know... it's a piece of chocolate melting cake!