Category: Glimpses

Geof and Rick | Day 158




Geof and Rick | Day 158

Originally uploaded by Geof F. Morris

Now, here’s why I love Twitter. I started with: “Anybody local wanna go grab a beer this evening?” This morphed into “Quick dash through the shower before I go eat Tommy’s Pizza with @jcreekmore and @abcreekmore…“, “Pizza + beer at the World Famus Bridge St.“, and then “Chilling at Bridge Street with Creekmores, Kings, and Granades. 🙂” Sorry for those of you HSVLocals who already had dinner plans by the time this sprang up.

As for the look on my face here, I think I was trying to make Emily look at her mother. Oops.

On Second Thought …

I am early to rise this morning, and at the very first, I resented it. As it’s quite cool in Huntsville, a fact I noted only about six hours ago, my bedroom window is open to let in that cool, 10C night air. For those who’ve never looked at our location here in North Alabama, we’re at the far, far east end of the Central Time Zone—in fact, as you go north, you move into the Eastern Time Zone.

As a result, it was nice and cool this morning when the local birds, with dawn breaking, started into their songs. I opened an eye and glanced at my clock, expecting it to be, oh, 0700 or later. Instead, it was 0535. My first thought: “Damn birds. When we finally get rid of Daylight Saving Time, we need to move to the Eastern Time Zone. If it were CST right now, it’s 035.”

My second thought, about two minutes later: “You’re complaining about a cool, crisp morning in a city you love on a day you don’t have to work? What an ingrate.”

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Roommates

Tomorrow night, I’ll have a roommate again. It’s good timing, too, because I’m going out of town on Monday to Houston for three days and two nights. [That’s sarcasm. I really feel bad about leaving the new guy here by himself less than 24 hours after he arrives in town, but … it can’t be helped.]

I’ve lived with a lot of people not related to me in my life. To wit:

  1. Drake, my first MSMS roommate, for about six weeks junior year before we realized that we were never going to study if we lived together.
  2. Thomas, my roommate for the remainder of my junior year. Nice guy, turned me on to country music. [It was that or kill him. I’m not homocidal.]
  3. Jason, my roommate for my senior year. Probably the roommate I’d most like to live with again, just because he was a fun guy and we meshed nearly perfectly. [This is not a slight against any of my other roommates.]
  4. Justin,
  5. Hurshidjon,
  6. … and Satan-boy my freshman year at UAH. Seriously … can’t remember Satan-boy’s real name. That’s all any of us really called him. He was cooking up GHB—he said for gym reasons—in our room. I could never catch him, but … whatever. He lived on the other side of the suite, Justin’s side, and when Justin was booted from school early on, there was just never any conflict. I lived and let live, man.
  7. Josh,
  8. Brad,
  9. and Chris my sophomore year at UAH. That was definitely my best roommate set of any of my on-campus roommate sets. [I know, I just said that I’d like to live with Jason again. I like multiple roommates.] Chris was a bit weird, but … he was an art major. The only awkwardness with him came to two incidents: sewing his Rocky Horror Picture Show costume in our common area, and the time I walked into our wing of the suite to see him and another guy standing next to a girl clearly fresh out of the shower. After a few seconds, I ascertained that it was an art project [she’d been a nude model for some plaster castings, I’d come to learn later], but all I could think of at the time was, “Nice towel.”
  10. PJ …
  11. and Kris. Suffice it to say that the former got me my current job, for which I’m eternally grateful, and the latter married a girl I’d once had a thing for. And had me in the wedding party. Good times. When PJ moved out of that apartment situation, he bought the townhouse in which I presently live.
  12. Jared, after I’d lived alone for four months after moving into the first apartment with my actual lease on the name. [I rented that apartment on 31 Dec 1999, half-jokingly telling myself as I wrote the check that I might never live in it.] We lived together for 14 months. I’m surprised that they didn’t just nuke the apartment when we were done with it.
  13. Todd
  14. and Blake, in the second iteration of Club Todder. That was a very fun apartment situation. Of all my apartment living situations, that’s the one I liked the best. 9/11 happened during that year. Todd was just out of school, and I was all but done. We were in the prime of our lives. It was a great time.
  15. Anthony …
  16. … and Jackie in Club Todder: Country Edition. [Todd and Blake were also there at some period of time.] Okay, so I didn’t actually live with them, because I lived in the garage, but they were both out there at one point or another. I really shouldn’t count Jackie, because I’ve never really lived with him, but … it’s my list, and poop on your shoe if you don’t like it.
  17. Leonard with Anthony after we left Club Todder. Anthony moved out …
  18. … and Randy moved in. Then Leonard moved out and moved back in within about a ten-day period, and that meant …
  19. … Michele moved in with us. Yeah, three guys and a girl in one apartment. After a while, Randy bailed on us, and it went back to just the three of us.
  20. Ande after a few months of living here by myself after I bought the house.
  21. J, starting tomorrow.

That’s a long list, longer than most folks I know that don’t live in a major city. I’ve lived outside of my parents’ home almost full-time since August 1995, at two educational institutions, in four apartments, in one rental house, and in one house I owned. I skipped only one roommate in there—I lived with my brother for two months after high school but before college. That was … not a good time for us to live together. I think now would be a lot different.

I’ve been blessed to have, on the balance, a very good set of roommates. My soon-to-be roommate is a law-school friend of a high-school friend of mine who’ll be here very short-term. I rather expect that he’ll never get another mention here. I just … want to remember.

Go Outside & Drive

There’s actually a surface on my desk? Who knew?

I’ve really got to clean up my room
You know its been so long since I’ve seen my floor
It’s getting kind of scary in fact I suspect
That when I finally clear away I won’t know her anymore
How we’ll have grown so far apart
From those early days with the fresh new start
So in the end it won’t matter at all
So why should I bother with the rise and the fall
So I quietly lay back down
And watch TV

— Blues Traveler, “Go Outside & Drive“, Save His Soul

Ironically, I found the liner notes to Save His Soul in the floor this morning. I didn’t put this together, of course, until I said, “Hey, my cleaning tonight seems a lot like that …”

I inherited the nesting gene honestly. Dad’s roll-top desk? I’m convinced that it has a roll-down top so that he can gently ease it shut to keep all the stuff from spilling out onto the floor if, you know, a butterfly flaps its wings in Ecuador, causing just enough wind currents in El Niño to shake the house just enough so that the avalanche would, oh, I dunno, open a hole to the center of the Earth. [I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.] Mom’s better, but not by much. [I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school here. I think we’ve all three come to admit that we’re pack rats.]

As such, my desk is usually best described as a war zone. Some might argue that it’s also a no-GTD zone, and … I won’t argue the point. As much as I’ve accepted the philosophy into some parts of my life, I am not a guru, nor am I great at applying it in all phases. Maintenance of my office area? Not by a long shot.

That said, I’ve gone through the huge pile—the avalanching pile, the one about six or eight inches high, the one that I was constantly avoiding brushing with my left arm while on the computer—and done a thorough de-junking. I have a slim stack of bills and receipts to file [I pay online but still get paper copies … which is fine, because filing is good], but that’s ten minutes at a burst.

Do I feel better? Yes, GTD guru, I do. I’ve cleared out some cruft, and I know the euphoric power of that act. [I’m still on the high, thanks.] But I don’t have the energy to tackle the rest of it, so I’ll hack at the jungle a while some time in the future. Hopefully the pile won’t be so high then.

Okay, yes, it’s on my calendar. 😉

Behold the Lamb of God

Me, to many people tonight: “It’s not Christmas to me without seeing [Behold the Lamb of God].”

…

Me, to Eric: “My first year [seeing BtLoG performed live] was at the Belcourt.”

EP: “The year Jill was pregnant?”

Me: “Yeah. I’d never heard this show before. Here it is, just hammering me with punches, and then out comes Jill, pregnant, on ‘Labor of Love’.”

EP: “It was quite a picture.”

…

Me, to Ronzilla: “I can’t believe [Andy] is playing [“Roast Beef”]. This is fantastic.”

…

AG, on playing “Roast Beef”: “It’s almost to the point where I’m tired of playing it now.”

Me: “It’s always great seeing a new audience hear it for the first time.”

AG: “Well, that’s what keeps me playing it. And every crowd laughs at different parts, too.”

…

Me, to Stephen: “[AG] is the king of the silly song that resolves right at the end to hit you with a good moral.”

…

The lady at the ticket table, upon giving us our guestlisted seats, to Stephen: “Yeah, y’all look like you belong with Andy’s people. You could be Derek‘s brother!”

…

Stephen, backstage after the show, on the way to the bus, to Derek: “Well, I feel like I’m in my element. I’m in your family after all.”

Derek: [doubletake]

Me, laughing: “Yeah, the lady at the table said that Stephen looked like your older brother or something.”

Derek: “He looks more like Garett [Buell]! Boy has the Bic’d head!”

…

Me, to AP: “I have to tell you, man. The night before Thanksgiving, I broke out the [Christmas] CD, and I was listening to it, and by the end of ‘So Long, Moses’, I thought that I might have to pull over so I could finish having my good cry. Thank you for what you do.”

…

Me, to Derek, Jill, and Sandra: “Last time I was in this sanctuary, I was in a tuxedo, standing on those steps, watching a girl I’d once loved walk down the aisle to marry her husband. I was thinking, ‘Man, I’m glad I’m standing down here.’ You guys really redeemed this place for me.”

DW: “Man, I’d love to see you in a tuxedo!”

Me: “I can arrange that. Yeah, one of the .net guys took one of those photos and Photoshopped me onto a box of Wheaties.”

DW: “Well, if there’s something that you can count on the .net guys to do, it’s Photoshop you onto a box of Wheaties.”

…

Stephen: “Thanks, man. That was a wonderful show.”

Me: “I’m glad you had a good time. I think you see why I do this every year.”

Stephen: “I do. And they seem like good people, too.”

Me: “That’s the thing. I’d be friends with them even if they didn’t make great music.”

…

Me: “Well, I think y’all now see why I have to see this show every year.”

…

Ron: “One of these years, I’m going to get tired of seeing this show. I might be 50 before that happens, though. I saw it last night at the Ryman, and I’m excited to see it tomorrow night in Atlanta.”

It was a great night. I am blessed to consider Andrew, Andy, Jill, Derek, Sandra, Eric, and all my friends, and I’m glad to have introduced Stephen, Rick, and Jessica to seeing it live and in person. I am blessed in new ways every time I hear and see this great re-telling of the Christmas story in song. Let us sing out with joy for the brave little boy who was God, but He made Himself nothing. He gave up His pride and He came here to die like a man.

Tonight, I have the same feeling I have every other night like this: grabbing Peterson by the shoulders and just telling him “Thank you,” over and over.

A Glimpse Into My Life Right Now, Largely Taken From a Conversation With a Colleague Today

Note: I want to write more here. I’m going to do that, I hope, through some brief glimpses into my life—brief re-tellings of events, skewed by my perspective, that tell the larger story of my life as I feel like I’m living it at the time.

Okay, having stated that lofty goal, I might never use this category again. But anyway.

“We’ll be okay on this one. We won’t make you drive to Minnesota in a Yugo just to save money.”

“Oh, I’ve driven to Minnesota before. It’s 18 hours from Huntsville to Minneapolis.”

“That’s a long drive.”

“Sure is. It’s longer when you follow up the drive with a quick stop in the hotel, a hockey game, drinking afterwards to cope with the 12-1 loss, a few hours’ fitful sleep in a chair, another full day, another hockey game, and then the return drive home.”

“Crazy.”

“You should have been around here then … working four 10s and then taking off for some cold weather venue late on Thursday, work the games Friday and Saturday, then travel back Sunday in time to do laundry and go back to work on Monday.”

“I don’t know how you did that.”

“I was younger, Mike. So while we’re busy right now, and promise to be busier still, I’ve done worse. But I know my breaking point.”

Not there. Not close. Still very busy. Perturbations, changes, posturing, and schedules moving to the left. And then three hours of choir practice tonight. Got home too late to call Mom back, whom I had to put off when she called me right as I was trying to get three things done simultaneously.

I wake up every morning and still am a bit in disbelief that I get to live the life I lead. I’ve been blessed.