From Wit’s End

Well, the light fixture over the island and the chalkboard were installed today. As you can see below, Rachel’s already starting to move back in. There probably won’t be any more kitchen pictures until after the new year. That’s when the tile and the countertops will come in. See you then.

The cabinets came today.

Installation begins tomorrow.

Dear Wife is has only just begun to be thrilled.

The guys repaired the ceiling today, and as it turns out, the roof structure too. Dave told me that whoever installed the original range hood also cut into one of the roof joists. “I was kind of wondering why the roof sagged like that, that must be why,” he said. The ironic thing is that the range hood that they just took out didn’t even vent up to the roof; it didn’t even vent anywhere, it just moved the air around above the stove. Nothing to worry about, though: Dave and his boys repaired the roof joist all tidy like, and our roof is that much more solid.

All those beige spots on the wall are wood putty. The putty is used to cover up all those dark knots that were so stylish back in the 60′s. The first coat of primer will go up on Monday.

I took half a day off today. Dave and the guys left me a little bit of lacquered paneling, so that I could do my part.

				Mercy would rather stay outside, thank you very much. It doesn’t smell funny out here.

They’re taking it all off.

Well, today we packed up the kitchen stuff. Rachel felt sick today, so that I despaired of finishing the packing all by myself. I called around some friends at church, and a Deacon J.N. at our church was kind enough to come over with two of his kids, and even came with a whole lot of boxes to pack things into. They were quite helpful, and Rachel alternated helping out and resting. We wrapped it all up in just a couple hours.

Mrs. N. called later that day and invited us over for lunch the next day after church. We ended up staying for about four hours and hardly even noticed the time go by, we had such a good time talking. God is good to us.

Well, Thanksgiving is over, let the great Renovation begin!

I’m currently in Detroit taking a two-day course in the newest version of Pro/Engineer, called “Wildfire 2.0″. I am in a tremendously good mood, full of energy, and remarkably at ease. Throughout the day, i have been ruminating about physiological explanations for this ebullience: i must have slept well last night, perhaps i just operate well in the cooler temperatures of this place, the mile of walking first thing in the morning from the hotel to the office building, etc.

All of a sudden a little voice intervenes: “It’s spring and you’re happy. You don’t need to explain it, just enjoy it!” Okay, i think i will.

Our “Spring Break” vacation starts today. We’ve been greatly looking forward to this, because we haven’t been out of town since Thanksgiving, which hadn’t ended so well, so we were hoping things might go a little better this time. But once again, providences converged to divert our plans…

We arrived at our gate at the airport about an hour early, like one is supposed to. After we had sat there a while, though, the gate attendant got on the PA and told us that the plane was going to be about half an hour late. This worried me slightly, because this meant that our layover in Saint Louis would be one and a half hours instead of two. After the plane finally arrived, the gate attendant got on the PA and said that the plane had maintenance issues, and that he would keep us informed of any new developments. (Strangely enough, through the window i saw that our plane was painted a non-descript white, and had no discriminating marks of the carrier, which was USAir.) Just about then, it started to rain. I did a quick estimation on my notepad, and realized that we would probably not make our connecting flight in St. Louis, which was with Frontier Air. I called my dad to get the 800 number for Frontier to see if there was anything that we could do about this. Around this time, the gate attendant announced that the flight was cancelled due to the aforementioned maintenance issues. The crowd gave a murmur of dismay and went to the special services desk a ways down the terminal to recover what they could of their travel plans.

Rachel went to find a power outlet to charge her cell phone, and i waited in the customer service line and called Frontier to determine our connection options. Sadly, Frontier had no other flights from St. Louis that day, so we were going to have to come up with an alternative to our original plans, which was to fly to San Francisco to visit Brother Tom for a few days. The Frontier flight did layover in Denver, so I determined to try and get a flight there if we couldn’t get to STL.

Someone behind the service desk asked if there was anyone in the line trying to get to St. Louis, and most of the people in the really long line raised their hands. The desk agent told us to go back to our gate because they were going to try to get us a new plane. I followed the annoyed herd back to the gate, but I realized that most of these people may be able to get to St. Louis in time for the NCAA tournament game that evening (You don’t know the meaning of “March Madness” until you’re in an airport with lots of people all trying to get to the same city on such short notice), but Rachel and I still were not going to be able to connect with our other flight and pass through to San Fran, so I went back to the service desk, also realizing that i no longer knew where Rachel was, because i didn’t see where she went while i was standing in line the first time. Her phone went straight to voicemail, so I just stood in line waiting to see what would happen next.

I got to the front of the line and explained the situation and asked the lady behind the counter what was possible. Apparently the way i had arranged things was to our disadvantage in this case, because USAir was only contracted to get us to St. Louis, and was not willing to get us to Denver. (This was not the last of the little rules i was to come up against in trying to salvage this vacation of ours.) Not knowing what else to do, i rescheduled the flight to St. Louis for Tuesday, which was to be the day we were going to return to St. Louis from San Fran anyway. This way, whatever we did with ourselves in the intervening time, we would still be able to keep our reservation with Bluegreen in Branson, Missouri for the rest of the week. (That’s right, folks, Bluegreen is tangled up in this, too!)

About this time, Rachel showed up again, so I told her what I did. She agreed it was probably the best we could do under the circumstances, and we went to find a place to sit down and assess the situation and charge my phone, which was also about to fall asleep. I called Frontier Airlines to cancel our flight, and the nice lady on the other end told me that she couldn’t refund our money because the tickets were non-refundable, but that we would each have a non-transferable credit for the cost of our tickets, less a $100 re-booking fee for each of us when we used these credits. We had to rebook by December 11th, 2005, and we could book our tickets up to 11 months ahead of time. I got off the phone and told Rachel all this, after which we both proceeded to denunciate all involved: USAir, Frontier Airlines, and Bluegreen for whose sampler points’ sake we had done all this in the first place.

We finished our venting, and then I realized that we hadn’t yet retrieved our checked baggage from the ill-fated flight to Missouri yet. We split up: Rachel went to the gate to find our bags and i went to the service desk again to try and make lemonade out of these lemons by extending our time in Missouri. I realized that I was going to have to arrange any new flight time and accommodations in Missouri pretty much simultaneously because i didn’t know what airplane seats or rooms in Branson were available until I asked the respective service agents. So while I was in the USAir service desk line, I called the Bluegreen customer service number. I told the Bluegreen agent what i wanted to do, and he put me on hold to see if he could do it. Somewhere along the line, i realized that our reservations were to check out on Friday morning, but our flight back to Charlotte wasn’t until Saturday, so i was going to have to see if we could extend that back end of our reservation as well as the front end. (Somehow, the person who took the original reservation all the way back in January misunderstood me when I asked for “Tuesday through Friday”. Strike two, Bluegreen.)

When I got to the front of the USAir service line, i was still on hold with the Bluegreen service agent. The USAir lady just shifted me over to the side and took care of other people waiting until i was ready. To make a long story short, between these two agents of the market, this is what i found out:

• Bluegreen would waive the three-night minimum this once and could add two nights in a smaller unit on Sunday and Monday, and then we could finish out our time in the unit that we originally reserved.
• No, USAir didn’t have any available seats to St. Louis on Sunday, but they did have seats on Monday.
• No, Bluegreen couldn’t tack on just Monday night at the beginning, they were stretching it already adding two nights instead of three.

So Tuesday night was going to have to be it for the beginning. What about the end of this?

• No, Bluegreen couldn’t tack on Saturday night at the end, because it would be adding just one night, and besides our unit had already been reserved on Saturday night by someone else.
• No, USAir couldn’t move our Saturday return flight back to Friday, because that leg of the flight wasn’t the one that had been affected by the plane maintenance issues (Editor’s Note: YET).

(Remember what i said about annoying little rules?)

So we weren’t going to make it to San Francisco because a plane broke down, and we were going to have to find accommodations elsewhere on Friday night, somewhere between Branson and St. Louis, because a telephone agent and I misunderstood each other all the way back in January. It’s a crazy world.

While i had been on the phone, Rachel kept trying to call in to tell me where she was, but for some reason, my call-waiting would beep once, and then disconnect her. This had happened a couple of times. So after all this rigmarole, I called her back and agreed to meet her in Baggage claim. On the way there, I stopped at an ATM and got $20 cash on a whim. I found her sitting in the baggage claim looking somewhat despondent and threw myself into the seat next to her. We just sat there taking time to recover, wondering what to do next. I called Tom to tell him that we wouldn’t be making it out to San Fran, and while i was talking to him, my cell phone went dead. Rachel and i both burst out laughing.

We walked out the the parking lot shuttle stop. Rachel told me that she didn’t really want to go home, because hanging around at home wasn’t really a vacation, because there was always something that needed to be done, and we hadn’t been out of town for so long before that, anyway. A light bulb appeared over my head, and i said, “Why don’t we go to the farm?” Her face lit up just like I hoped it would, and she called home as we got on the shuttle bus to confirm our last minute “reservations” at the McCune Homestead. While we drove north to Virginia, we discussed how we might be able to use our credit with Frontier Airlines, which is mainly a western concern and doesn’t come out as far as South Carolina. The next day, i put the $20 bill in the offering plate at church to acknowledge the out-working of God’s Providence in the events of the weekend, and to thank him for caring about each and every one of our steps on this earth.

Before i woke up today, i sketchily remembered having a dream: first i was in a monastery of nuns dedicated to “the Force”. I was in a big room (the cafeteria, i think) and there was lots of Star Wars & “Episode III” merchandising paraphernalia, including bootlegs of the actual movie. Later in the dream i watched The oldest brother and sister of a family friend being willingly led away in a horse-drawn cart to be made into mindless automatons with tiny screens directly in front of their pupils.

Then i woke up. It was a little before 5am, and it was time to get ready to go to the airport, because I was going to commute to Chicago today for a meeting with our customer representatives. When i arrived at the airport,
Valet parking guy at Columbia Airport

“That’s okay, nobody knows what they’re doing at the airport”

Pocket knife found at security

“Wouldn’t want them to think you’re a terrorist”

Mailbox knocked over.

Joe the taxi driver:

• “…or what i like to call ‘Crook County’… “
• “Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to save California”
• “…It’s a slow news day. Let’s keep it that way.”
• “Don’t call me ‘sir’, i’m not your father.”

Android stewardess:

• fast, high-pitched safety rigmarole
• “Would you like a snack? Would you like a snack?”
• “Would you like a beverage? Would you like a beverage?”

My day started out okay with breakfast with a good friend at the “Original Pancake House”, but it went down hill from there. There wasn’t much to do at work on that particular day, and I had lots of time to sit at my desk stressing out my back, and stare into my cathode ray tube thinking too much about everything i could ever possibly struggle with in the future. So i was in a sour mood indeed by the time 5:00 rolled around. I went home to take care of the dogs, and it took longer than usual — though i can’t remember why. I was mad at everything when i finally made it to the gym, and it felt good to blow off some steam.

After that, I felt slightly better, but i was still in a strange mood. There was a voicemail waiting on my cellphone when i got into my car that helped me along: It was our neighbor thanking us for the coffee cake. She had come over the day before with a bunch of daffodils from the prospering colony of them that she has in her backyard. Rachel and I decided to return the favor with a few pieces of coffee cake from the prospering batch that she had made that weekend. The message she left on my phone was a bright spot in this glum day.

Rachel was otherwise occupied in the evening, so I didn’t really want to go home right away. I decided to stop by Books-A-Million and then I had a brain wave. After browsing around a while, I found and bought a paperback NIV Bible, and then zipped down Trenholm Road and bought a nifty 10-pack of highlighters at Staples. I want to color certain kinds of words in Scripture to reflect the different realms of authority and relationship like i’ve begun to outline on this website that website. This will enable two things: I can further develop and understand the qualities and interactions of all the realms, and it will get me back into studying the Scripture on an individual basis, which I haven’t been doing lately, relying instead upon a number of group Bible studies for spiritual nourishment.

Anyway, I got back home a little after 8pm, but Rachel still wasn’t home, much to my surprise. So I broke open my new purchases and occupied myself with them, with my eye on the clock, mildly concerned about Rachel. She arrived around 9pm. Apparently the guy she was meeting with at Lowe’s was more interested in talking about himself than about our kitchen remodeling project, and she withstood his yapping for all of three hours, before she finally left. We cobbled together some sort of dinner, and hit the hay, both of us glad that this day was over.

Mum found this place while my folks were looking for a condo in the Washington DC area. Weird, man.

Last week I borrowed Jennifer’s black 70′s-vintage (?) chevy pickup truck to take the three bicycles languishing in our backyard to the shop to see if we could get them fixed up. I have been looking forward to picking them up today, as I wanted to ride mine home from the shop. We picked them up around noon and bought a rack to put on the back of my newly-recovered Corolla, thus reluctantly taking one more step towards unashamed yuppieness. We drove to Target, to buy cheaper helmets than were offered at the bike shop, and Rachel left me in the parking lot to figure out how to lower my bike seat so that I could actually ride it home.

I took the bike back into Target, and bought a half-dozen wrench set (drop-forged in China) in the hopes that one would fit the metric bolt at the base of the seat. The biggest one was slightly too big but worked tolerably well anyway just outside the store. Putting the wrenches in my jeans pocket, i was off like a rocket for the first time in maybe about 10 years. It wasn’t too hard even after so long; it was like riding a bike.

I took mostly back roads of the residential persuasion, though a lot of the bigger roads in this part of town have bike lanes on either side, which i used for certain stretches. Early on i stopped fairly frequently to readjust the seat a little lower or consult my printed map, and later on i would get off to walk for a while and recover a little bit.

I stopped at Trenholm Plaza (local market square frequented just about every week) and found the Corolla with a bike rack on the trunk and the groceries in the back seat, and left a little love note in the driver’s window for my lovely and gracious. I proceeded home on more back roads, riding halfway up the hills and all the way down them. Somewhere on this second leg of my afternoon quest, the old cycle starting squeaking consistently on the down stroke of my right pedal.

Sister Jennifer-in-law was waiting in the driveway as i pulled up, and Rachel pulled in a few minutes later. Jennifer wanted to show off her newly-rented apartment in Shandon, so we piled into her Accord, stopping by Starbucks for some warm apple cider for J. and a cold water chaser for my roasted almond granola bar. High hopes and compliments all around upon perusal of said domicile, and then she dropped us off back at home. We had a late lunch of leftover steak from last night’s night out, and i spent the late afternoon browsing the web with Winamp on shuffle, my body humming pleasantly contented from the day’s exertions.

Is this tiny feeling of guilt to be listened to?

Rachel and I both cleaned out our desks today. But it’s much better than it sounds.

Rachel recently accepted an offer with Netbank (which used to be RBMG) to help them write reports to the SEC and other press releases. This is a welcome change for her, because she won’t have to deal with 55-hour work weeks during tax season, or traveling out of town for days at a time. She gets a decent raise out of the deal, too. Netbank’s building in town is an abandoned Wal-Mart renovated to be a cubicle farm. Rachel says she’s just tall enough to see over the cubicle walls to see the grid as far as the eye can see.

I am accepting an offer to go over to the new Diesel Systems North America Division of Siemens VDO Automotive Corporation (SVAC). This is is basically a spin-off company made up of a significant portion of the R&D group of Siemens Diesel System Technology, a joint venture of SVAC and International Truck and Engine Corporation (ITEC). I moving from what has grown to be a fairly large factory employing about 500 people, to a smaller R&D facility employing a few dozen. This will be a return to the old days for me, as when I was a drafter at SDST when it was still in its temporary facility and only a few dozen people worked there.

There’s all sorts of funny converging circumstances with this. Before the change, Rachel had a monthly paycheck and I had a biweekly paycheck, and now it has switched. In my old plant, I could wear jeans every once in a while, and Rachel couldn’t, and now it has switched. Our respective commutes will both be about five minutes shorter.

On balance, it’s all good. We have each been worrying and praying about these things for a little less than two years now, and God has been better to us than we deserve.

The cingular service agent called me this morning at work on my cellphone to complete the wireline porting process I started a little over a month ago. After a few strange steps in the process, this morning it finally happened, just like i was told.

She asked for a landline number she could call me back on. I gave her my work number, which she called. She asked for the number on the new SIM card that i picked up from the cingular store over the weekend. I turned off my phone, and while she confirmed the release of my number from Bellsouth, I swapped the new SIM card into the phone. She came back and asked me to test the phone’s ability to make an outgoing phone call using the new SIM card, then went on hold to establish the ability to receive calls. (It’s interesting to note that there was actually a few minutes that I could have called with my home number from my cell phone, but if the callee tried to call me back, the phone would have rung at the house.)

I called Rachel, but she didn’t answer so I left a message. The phone worked, but I wanted to actually share the victory with a real voice, so I called my mom: What number shows up on your caller-ID? Oh, good! Wasn’t that editorial I sent you really cool? …chit-chat, chit-chat… oh the service rep is back on the other line, i have to go. Bye.

The service rep then put me on hold and called my cell phone to test the ability to receive incoming calls. So for a few seconds I was simultaneously talking to and on hold with the same person.

So my cellphone now has our good old home number on it. So feel free to call me at home; my ghost virtually haunts the house, glad to answer the phone should it ring.

Just as I walked into the factory this morning, my belt broke. What the hey?

During a meeting I was in right after lunch, my boss had trouble pronouncing the word “tentative”. He turned to me to ask if that was correct, and I obligingly pronounced it for him. As everyone chuckled, another associate of ours said, “It’s a good thing we have a native english speaker in the room.” It hadn’t occurred to me before he said it, but I was indeed in the conference room with two Germans, an Austrian, a Palestinian, and an (East) Indian. Later this afternoon, the Indian was called by an Assembly line coach from Tanzania, and they spoke to each other in Hindi, a language i had never heard before.

What can I say? It’s a world wide web, i guess.