Escape?, Old friends new parties, Ghosts of Relationships Past, R & S Tomfoolery

Escape?

So, I’m headded off to do a little work at R & S, and a favor for the owner on Sunday when I get a phone call – “HELP! The horses have escaped!” is what it boiled down to.  So off I head to the farm…

And all the horses are in their place.  Hrm?  Someone musta called in a prank.  Fuckers – that burned all of a day.  Well, actually, helping repair a fence when we moved a stallion from one pasture to another is what actually burned the day – just wouldn’t have been out there if it wasn’t for the phone call.  

Since I had my phone there, I had the chance to take some pics of the horses (in fact, forwarded one pic to a friend and said “See what you’re missing?” since she loves horses and was outta town at the time :-)  

This is a Fresian.  If you’ve seen big ass black horses in a movie, this is typically the breed they use – there’s only two farms in Kansas that have ’em, and Doc (my ex-father in law) is one of em.

Though not all of his horses are Fresians – the little one there is 3/4 Fresian.

Stallions – these boys always think they are the shit 🙂

Being out at the farm just re-enforces my Year 1 goals – I want my 20 acres of land out in the middle of no-where, and tell the rest of the city folk ta’ go away :-)  

Mentally, though, I do realize I need to be in a bit better “place” in my mind.  Right now, I still entertain the thoughts of moving out of Lance and Meredith’s place – but the truth is, I’m not quite ready to be alone all the time.  I’m just not capable of it right now.  So, either when I do move out to the country it needs to be with someone, or, I need to be in a better state of mind.  Both would be preferred actually.  Yeah, not holding my breath on either one 🙂

Phone usage

I’ve gotten WAY too used to carrying around the phone with a camera in it now.  Sure, the pictures aren’t AWESOME, but they are pretty workable (you can see some odd color artifacts in the pics above, and the pics below are even worse).  I didn’t realize how much I had been using it until I looked in my gallery folder today – of stuff I didn’t just immediately delete, I’ve got just under 300 pictures in the gallery in the last month.  Holy crap – I’ve gotten way camera-phone happy.  Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing – it’s not like it takes me more than a second to snap a shot of something.  But I find it kinda cool though – now I have a kind of visual record of the happenings in my life.  And since I have the blog, I’ve got a bit of a written record of stuff too.

Old Friends, new Parties

” And i hope when i get old i don’t sit around thinking about it

But i probably will

Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture

A little of the glory of, well time slips away

And leaves you with nothing mister but

Boring stories of glory days”

– Bruce Springsteen, “Glory Days”

On Friday Cassie & Jason hosted a party at their house where I met up with A LOT of people I haven’t seen in like 8 or 9 months (some longer than that).  Interestingly enough, that meant I had group A of old friends asking about group B of old friends that used to run around in the same circles.  

Take a picture in low light settings with my camera phone, and suddenly it looks like shit.  I really hope the iPhone has a much better camera in it! 🙂

But at least you can see enough to know a little bit o’ who was there (well, at least people who know these people… which would pretty much be just about anyone readin’ my blog)

Definitely gotta have more of these sort of gatherings.  People were discussin’ the old times, laughing our asses off at each other, etc.  It’s also interesting to see people acting like a sort of gateway into other’s lives – I live with Lance and Meredith (Lance isn’t from that old party group, but Meredith is), and am friends with Tammy.  So people ask questions.  

But MySpace and social places like this may be a new sort of gateway – something was said about Tammy, and Cassie commented that Tammy looked really good these days (especially when contrasted with what she looked like towards the end of her marrage to Norman.  No insult intended there Tammy, if you’re reading this ;-)  I hadn’t considered the full value of MySpace and Xanga and such until after that.  Told a couple o’ people what my profile name was so they could look me up later, which means those wanting to catch up with others from back then also can easily hunt them down too.

Ghosts of Relationships Past

“It ought to be easy,

ought to be simple enough,

Man meets a woman and they fall in love.

But the house is haunted 

and the ride gets rough

And you’ve got to learn to live 

with what you can’t rise above.”

– Bruice Springsteen, “Tunnel Of Love”

Everyone has Ghosts from previous relationships.  It’s just a fact of life.  Heather had ’em, I have ’em, Meredith has ’em, etc.  Everyone does, unless you’ve only had one love in your life (and if so, well, I suppose that means you got it right the first time – Congratulations! 😉

The interesting thing about Ghosts is often ya can go out and find ’em.  After Heather and I got divorced, she went and hunted down John, her big major love in her life who turned into one hell of a ghost.  But that brings up the strange part – when is it better to just let the past be the past, and when’s it better to seek it out to find out what happened?

For me, it’s been pretty simple – with the exception of one, I still speak to all of my major ex-es.  (note I say major ex-es.  There’s a lot of “ex-girlfriends” of mine out there.  Using quotes to emulate how Meredith picked on me about my “dating” girls… namely that I had no interest in relationships or longer term stuff, just sex.  I did a lot of “dating” :)  I’ve never been interested in hunting ’em down ’cause they are right here.

But I remember Heather telling me about talking to John again, and it got me to thinking – there’s a small part of me that wonders:  is keeping close ties with those people who, by rights, should just be Ghosts now a good idea?  Hm.  I mean, it’s turned out all right – I have Meredith who’s a great friend, Heather who I don’t talk to a TON at the moment but I assume will end up being a good friend, etc.  

But is there something there I’m missing?  Is there a reason why most people don’t get along with their ex’es that I should be concerend about?  Hell, I don’t even get worked up over my “bitch of an ex-wife” like most guys do (seems to be a requirement that an ex-wife is a bitch.  Even if she really isn’t.)  

Of course, I could be overthinking it :-)  But, the last discussion I had with Meredith made me question the natural “flow” of relationships, and well, how I tend to not nessisarily follow all the rules I guess.

One other thing was that Meredith pointed out that I tend to follow the same MO for all of my major relationships when it comes to the women I pick.  This disturbed me for quite a few days until I resolved it in my head a bit.  I’ve already decided I want to pursue a relationship with a particular person (now, if SHE wants to pursue a relationship, that’s a different story, and could easily be the end of the story right there) and I’m not going to just walk away from who I want right now.  But if that were to end up being nothing, well, a few months later I’d probably try something different relationship wise.  

I gotta wonder though – what is it that makes me select the people that I do?  Meredith kinda indicated that my choices were bad, but, I’m not so sure that they are:  My choices are my choices, and they come with a particular set of dramas.  But if I choose differently, would I be happy?  I’m not so sure.

For now though, my heart picked me a course.  I’m gonna follow that through first.  

R & S Tomfoolery

When I was tearing down all the old Radio Shack stuff in R & S, you run across stuff like scrawled phone numbers, measurements, etc.  But nothing “interesting”.  I had noted that, and decided I should seek to resolve such things – to give whoever tears down the walls next time something interesting to run into. 

Of course, that was months ago, when I was worried about tearing things down.  Now I’m worried about putting things up!  Totally forgot about it until Friday, when on a lark I put two “secret messages” in R & S, and hid ’em.  Until someone tears down the walls again, no one will ever see them (‘specially since they are written in liquid nails :-)  Here’s one though:

It should keep just enough definition that when I put that piece of faux brick panel up, years later someone should be able to decypher what it said (though, if it’s done in 20 years, I wonder if anyone will even know who the Kilroy in the upper left corner is?)

Next R & S, I’ll do it again, just for the hell of it.  I like the idea of hiding things inside the walls where only I know where it is 🙂

We moved some of the equipment in on Saturday – the steam table was the biggest piece.  The manager for R & S was totally amazed with the place.  He commented on it being amazing that I built it, by myself basically, in 3 months.  I shrugged, and said “Yeah, but it should have been done faster”  He was flabbergasted, and continued to complement me until I’d accept it without grumbling.  To me, I see a ton of glaring things that should have been done faster / better / cheaper (NASA rule applies – pick two.)  

But he is right – that was a shitload of work done in a short amount of time primarily by one guy.  

The owner and I came to an agreement on ownership – while not official yet, we have the model for what the deal is for my piece of R & S.  Yep, I’m going to own a piece of the pie.  But it doesn’t modify my pay schedule, which means reguardless of if I make any money from owning part of it I still can accomplish my Year 1 goals (Year 1 ends on April 31st, 2008 – basically, conincides with my retirement from R & S construction).  

After I retire he’s got 180 days to buy me out.  If he doesn’t, I own my shares forever.  If he does, I get a really pretty penny for it.