I'll Procrastinate Later.

In the fourteen-or-so months (YIKES!) since I last posted, things have happened (as they are wont to do). Things I meant to sit down and write about but lacked the focus needed to apply myself to the task. Incidentally, "lacks the focus needed to apply himself" was a regular note my teachers left in my report cards back in the day.

Some things, you never outgrow.

Sure, I can make a lot of excuses as to why I didn't have time to blog. Tons of them! I could talk about how hard things got with my slow crawl to a Mass Communications degree and how not getting enough sleep didn't really seem like a problem in my thirties but my forties don't like it so much (I'd just turned forty when I last posted and hadn't truly started to feel the effects). At the end of the day, though, I just kept putting it all off.

That doesn't discredit the other things that have happened, however.

For one thing, school is tough on a working adult! A lot of you can attest to this. I reached the point where I suffered clear sings of burnout and developed a acute aversion to sitting down to do my assignments. Too bad you don't get to just throw your hands up and quit and still call yourself a proper adult. I totally would have done that, believe me.

So there was that... but the main thing that was giving me an excuse to put off writing was the flood.

Yup! Flood.

And I'm not talking about a flooded bathroom again. I mean a real, honest-to-goodness, house-under-water deluge.

Coming down to the end of last October - four days after our fifteenth wedding anniversary - Mrs C and I lost pretty much all our material possessions to a massive flood. Nearly everything we had accumulated over those fifteen years was gone after two days of freakishly heavy rain that left our community (as well as many other parts of our tropical paradise) under water for nearly two more days.

In our house the water got as high as five feet while others in other parts of our community saw as much as ten feet. I can't say we were the lucky ones, though. Be it five feet or ten, if you live in a flat everything you own is toast. Soggy, muddy toast.

Alas, poor Adella! I hardly knew ye!

Mrs C and I weren't home, fortunately. The rain caused a traffic nightmare in most of the country and, as a result, we were stranded in the capital where we both work. Kawaii - you remember Kawaii, right? - was the only one home and she was able to swim to safety and wait out the flood on top someone's pickup. The little so-and-so actually came right back to our street the same day all the the water had finally receded and met up with us when we were finally

able to get back in.

After several months and thousands of dollars, however, we were able to finally get back to some semblance of the life we had (though we still haven't replaced the TV and dinner table).

In some good news, I have finished with school (without having to throw my hands up and quit). By November I'll graduate and have my very own bachelor's degree! Not so comforting is the fact that, nowadays, everybody and his brother have degrees so to even consider myself marketable I'll have to jack back in and go for my master's.

Later.

We Own A House... Now What?

Twenty days in and this is only my first post for the new year. Good thing I didn't go and make a resolution about blogging more consistently for 2015... heh... heh... (*scratches "blog more consistently" off New Year's resolution list*). In my defense, it's mostly because we don't have internet set up at the new place yet. That and we're now so far away from civilization even our data coverage is close to non-existent most of the day.

So, yes, as you may have picked up, we have moved and have now officially joined the ranks of "homeowners". Now we just have to clear off that mortgage over the next thirty years or so and it's all ours. Just in time for the kids to kick us out into a retirement home and start fighting over it.

Can't wait.

As cool as it is to finally become a homeowner, in the end you still have to go through the whole process of moving and that's always fun. Isn't it? (NOTE: By "fun" I actually mean a huge barrel of suck... You probably already knew that.) You have your packing, heavy lifting, unpacking, exhaustion, aches, pains and stuff that gets broken. Yeah... fuuuuunn! (See earlier note.) We did that over the Christmas weekend which means we were too busy doing all that stuff I mentioned earlier and too broke to really celebrate Christmas (alcohol was consumed, though).

When the dust settled and we finally got some sleep (about a week after we moved in), we then had time to sit and take it all in.

Homeowners...

Us!

The novelty wears off soon enough though. Right around the time when you realize the last ounce of dependency you had on others is gone. Before, if you lived with your parents or, as in our case, you were a renter, you knew there would be certain things beyond your control. Leaky roof? call the landlord! Faulty plumbing? Get that landlord on the phone! Pest infestation? Better get the landlord to call in an exterminator.

Now we're on our own, when it comes to taking care of our house and all of its needs. If you stop to think about it too long it can be a little daunting. Needless to say, I'm trying not to think about it too much (seems like a viable strategy...)

Speaking of which, that leaking (READ AS: "gushing") shower faucet issue I mentioned the last time, yeah, we're trying to sort that out. Surprisingly, the agency responsible for the houses is actually saying they'll arrange to have the contractors come in and sort it out. Now we just have to see how long that takes to happen.

In other news: Kawaii's adjusting well after the move. She did get really sick the first night and we were more than a little worried but she eventually pulled through and, a few days later, she was back to her old self (cue the obligatory cute puppy pic). 

"I know you trimmed around my eyes like half an hour ago but... it grew back."

Unlike at the old place, where she spent all her time indoors due to our former neighbors', not-so-friendly (or clean) dogs that already occupied the yard, here she gets to go out every day (on a leash until we put a fence up). I've even started taking her for walks around the block (I feel so suburban now you would not believe), which she loves.

She's also taken an interest in the of local wildlife (READ AS: "bugs") which our new area has in copious amounts. And, since they often find their way inside the house, she has plenty of opportunities to examine them... after she chases them down, swats them to death with her paws and - of they're big enough - tears to shreds with her teeth.

Wait! Is that a cricket?

She's a curious girl.

Speaking of wildlife, we also have birds in the area. Lots of birds. Birds that are mostly quiet in the day but then there are these others that let out loud, eerie "squawks" throughout the night. We don't go outside much at night. As luck would have it, among the various species we also have my arch nemeses, Grackles.

Look at 'em! Just strutting around my backyard like they own the place... Send help.

At some point I really started to wonder if someone was just f*cking with me.

Anyway, their mating season is still a few months away so they don't have a reason to start attacking people yet. So there's that.

On the plus side, at the outer end the street leading into the community there are horses.

Those are cool.

One of the biggest adjustments, though, is that this an entirely new community. We were among the first two hundred plus people to get keys and everyone's new here and only moved in weeks apart from each other. That means none of us got treated to one of those scenes you see in the movies where the local community group forms a welcoming committee to bring you baked goods to mask their real objective of scoping out your stuff.

I want a blueberry muffin, dammit!

Instead, we all just get to watch silently as we observe another moving truck roll up the street and hope the whoever-it-is isn't planning on starting a meth lab in his/her kitchen or blasting Jamaican Dancehall music every night until 3AM (it's popular here).

The adventure begins.

A Little 'O This & A Little 'O That.

It would seem, for all intents and purposes, I'm back. I passed on my sport assignment to my lecturer and, until he provides me with feedback, I'm a free man again.

During my time away, there have been a few things that have been going on. Nothing too major. Just the usual crazy stuff to which I normally end up baring witness. Two, in particular, stood out and, instead of trying to figure out how to stretch each of them into individual posts, I decided smush them all together and hopefully come up with something worth our time together.

Ahem! I shall begin...

********

The newest addition to the C Household, our puppy, Kawaii, is a growing girl. She recently got the hang of jumping onto and off of the living room furniture all on her own (“yaaaay” he said with no real excitement whatsoever). I was there for her first successful jump. She was so excited, she had to jump off and on again four or five times to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

Now she’s got her sights trained on our bed. Of course, she’s not allowed on the bed and, added to that, it’s a bit higher than the living room couch. But she’s determined. The other day she figured she’d have better luck if she took a running start (EDITOR'S NOTE: she’s a little too smart for her own good). She had the right idea but because of the limited space in the bedroom, she had to run in from another room at a parallel angle to the bed.

As you can see, essentially she was trying to pull off one of those high jumps you often see done in track and field events.

source

Unfortunately, despite her planning and effort, it was obvious that she lacked natural grace and skill necessary to perform such a feat and she completely fell short of her goal. Both height and direction were a bit off.

I was there for that one too, just lying in bed, minding my own business when I heard feet thumping on the wooden floors as she came running up. Then, I saw the brown blur that was the top of her head. Our gaze met for a moment as she passed by and then... she was gone. Soon after came the sound of her sliding on said floor and crashing into the wardrobe.

It was as a result of that one act that I knew she was indeed a worthy member of this family.

********

You know those moments when you question whether mankind is really worth saving? I had another one of those recently.

It was morning. An average day, like any other. I was walking through the city, on my way to work. My headphones were on, the music just loud enough to drown out the world around me. That was normal. I was late but this was also normal. Indeed, it was just an average day, just like any other day.

That's when I happened to notice the guy in front of me had his boxers sticking out of his sagging jeans. Not that this is anything new. You know how I feel about trends but this one in particular has been going strong for decades. Personally, I think it's stupid but my complaining about it won’t change it. Instead, I try not to pay attention to it.

I probably would have dismissed him too except I happened to notice he wasn't just letting his boxers stick out of his jeans. His boxers were actually sticking out of another pair of boxers that were sticking out of his jeans. I could tell! They were different colors!

Is this the new "thing"? Is this what all the kids are doing now? I can't keep up anymore.

The icing on this double-boxer cake was that this guy was actually making an effort to show it off – as evident by him having tucked the back of his t-shirt into the upper boxer. Also, he was strutting. He was actually proud!

I briefly considered turning around and going home because, at that point, I had had enough of outside for the day.

********

To end things off, here are some blog posts I considered writing but decided against it when I realized the titles were only mildly more interesting than the actual posts themselves:

Of Mouse & Man - One man’s harrowing battle to blog and surf the internet while being hampered by a defective peripheral device.

My Application Letter to The X-Men - After getting caught in the rain four times in five days with not so much as a sniffle, I become convinced that I possess some sort of superhuman power.

My Application Letter to The Avengers - In case the X-Men aren’t hiring right now.

The Great Flood of 2014 - The time when Mrs C broke a pipe in the bathroom and all the hardware stores were closed for the evening.

A Little 'O This & A Little 'O That - Where I regale you with- Oh, wait, I wrote that one...

Word Vomit.

I've been trying to figure out why I've been avoiding writing lately. It isn't that I don't have anything to say, or that I've lost interest, or anything like that. I still want to write and I have tons of stuff going on. There’s the new house, the new puppy, stuff at work, etc. Tons of stuff! It’s just, every time I think about dropping a few lines (HOLLA!!!) I just... can't. I've started composing posts in my head more than a few times and, as soon as I sit down to write... nothing.

Like I said, I got stuff going on.. and thangs... s-stuff 'n thangs.

Why is it that, as bloggers who basically chronicle even the smallest and most inane (okay, maybe I'm just referring to myself with that one) aspects of our lives, the things that should provide us with excellent material for our posts end up actually keeping us from posting. I'm talking about all the really big things. We always talk about life getting in the way.

At the end of the day, though, these big things aren't as blog-worthy as you'd think. Take my stuff... and things... for example:

NEW HOME:  You'd think becoming a homeowner for the first time would be a big enough of a deal that you'd get tons of blog fodder from the experience. Right? But, after you say, “Hey, guys, I'm buying a house,” there really isn't much more you can add to the story and still keep it interesting:

- got approved for house.

- went and saw the house.

- signed all the legal documents.

- frantically trying to scrape up the down payment because they called us earlier than expected to do the closing.

That's it. Sure, it's mostly good news but  BOR-ING!

MARRIAGE: All good! Mrs C and I had our eleventh wedding anniversary on Sunday. We didn't make a big deal about it (we had pizza and wine as our celebratory meal - 'cause that's how we roll) so there isn't really much to tell there.

WORK: I started my new contract three weeks ago and will be gainfully employed for another two years (YAY!)...

They left me at the same desk they put me on while I was on loan to help with the - now stalled -White Paper project. Essentially, no one bothered to think about moving be back to my old desk or to anywhere else where I could be more productive so I'm just sitting around most days trying to keep myself busy (BOO!) It seems like a big deal on the surface but what else is there for me to say about that situation that would be worth mentioning (and not just end up becoming a swear-laden rant)?

SCHOOL: At the end of this semester, I'll have my Associate's degree and be at the halfway point to earning my Bachelor's degree. Sure it's more like two-thirds the way since it took me twice as long as it should have to get this far when I changed majors. But I made it. It's great... huge, actually, but I'm particularly inclined to do a practice valedictorian speech (I'm not giving any at school either, thankfully) about it.

PUPPY: Still there, still cute, eats her poop, thinks shoes are chew toys. Nothing new to report.

"I think my cuteness deserves a little more mentioning than that."

The more I think about it, the more I realize it really is the little things that matter. I think I've been stressing so much about writing about each of these big things and giving them their proper place of importance with grand, well worded posts, filled with humor and excitement that I forgot that inane is what I do best. Maybe now that I've listed all these and got them out of the way I'll be able to get back to business as usual.

We'll see.