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Submitted entry: Finally! It takes me fooling around for several hours automating this thing to get this entry up. Only a little over a month late…

I know, I know - it’s been almost a month since the last entry but I assure you I’ve been on the train of being inspired when I’m busy and uninspired or too tired when I’m not busy to write an entry. Go figure. Anyway, since I last wrote which to my knowlege Sage has yet to post anyway, things have been quite different. Anyway, forgive me if I repeat some of the last entry - I don’t have it handy to look at what I wrote. First off, I’ve seen lots of familiar people. It started early - on the trip out here. On the way through the Lehigh Valley, I stopped at The Morning Call which was the last place I worked before living in the yurt. I had a great time seeing and talking to my former co- workers. I was quite surprised to see that so few had actually left the company (the company I consult for now whom I also worked for full time from it’s creation in 1995 through spring of 1998) has only one or two people out of over 70 that actually was working there in 1998.

The place hardly has changed, either. I expected with renovations actually in progress as I left and with yet another buyout there would be more obvious changes. Of course how many changes can one note in an hour or so on a Friday evening when most of the staff has left. From there I drove over to Bethlehem, intending to look at our old house (for Sage & Todd Trivia buffs it was between Moravian College’s Steel Field and Liberty High School’s football stadium).

Anyway, I only meant to look at the house and see what it was like from outside but then thought “what the hell” and rang the doorbell of our neighbors two doors down. While we never really knew any of our neighbors there and didn’t really get along with those directly on either side of us for various reasons, we liked these folks and their two children quite a great deal. So I was quite pleased to find that they were, in fact, at home. And while in our four years living there we may have only spoken to them for five to ten minutes at a time on our way to/from the car, I had a lovely conversation that lasted almost four hours. It was funny to see just how much our philosophies of life (save some religious differences) were alike. I was when I left to have not talked more to them when we lived in the area. Of course, I have to remind myself that when we were living there even before Paul was born we were busy - and I was hardly even around much of the time. So how could I have found the time. I was so exhausted when I left the house that I drove up to the first hotel I could find and checked in. Is it me, or are all the new hotel rooms getting absolutely gigantic? It seems like growing up we’d go to a hojos or something and get a room that barely fit a couple of beds, a tv and a small bathroom. Now they’re just cavernous. Of course the rates, at least back east, are outrageous?

While I was paying $30-40 (with coupons) for a room in Illinois in western PA (Sorry I missed you, Emily - I didn’t get in until late and didn’t realize how far the turnpike was from Pittsburgh!) I paid a little over $50 with coupons. In Bethlehem I paid nearly twice that. The next day I (I keep wanting to write and say “we” in my writing - I’m so unaccustomed to being on my own) called a former boss and after a quick lunch at The Green Cafe on the south side (black beans, brown rice and collard greens) I went to visit him at his home. It was good to hang out again but I have to say one thing. In many ways I look upon his life as sort of the road not taken for me. He’s worked his way up quite high in the field we both work in. I was working on following in his footsteps before Paul was born and for much of that time aspired to follow further in his footsteps.

This time, though, seeing how busy his life was I was so grateful for having taken the path I did. We had a great time for sure - but even as we were hanging out he was doing work on the house and various errands because there was no other time to do them in. I really appreciate the what I now realize is a luxury of not having any task I can’t put off with minimal guilt. If someone surprises us and drops by and I am in the middle of just about anything it’s easy enough to just put it aside and enjoy the fact that someone has just dropped in. If that person is reading (and I doubt he is), I hope he realizes that I don’t mean that as a criticism or that I felt affronted. More that I feel grateful that my life is so simple that I have the freedom that most people in this country, particularly here in the northeast, don’t have. I stayed the night there and the next afternoon headed up to the hotel I’m in now. Nothing particularly interesting to say about it - it’s convenient to work, it’s convenient to food, it’s on a horrible road for pedestrians. Nothing much else. Work has been interesting. I have to say that I like this job a great deal more than my last one in Michigan. The biggest difference, of course, and probably the source of most of the reason I like it better is that the company is way smaller. The one in Michigan was a huge international pharmaceutical company, Pharmacia, on an enormous site with a great number of people. The building I worked in had a hall in it over 1/4 mile long. It felt like a big company with lots of rigidity right down to the fact that I couldn’t have any food or beverages other than water at my desk, or anywhere in the building save the snack bars (three - located about every tenth of a mile down the big hall) or the cafeteria. This company, meanwhile, which shall remain nameless for now if only to ensure that nobody calls me or shows up unexpectedly, is the total opposite. I’d estimate there are about 30 people in the entire building. People are way more friendly, fairly informal for the most part, too. Most employees aren’t expected to arrive until 9:00 in the morning - which in this industry is pretty late.

This doesn’t prevent people from showing up at insanely early hours, but does make me feel comfortable arriving at 9:00 with the rest of them as long as I am on top of my work. So that means I don’t have to leave the hotel until as late as 8:40. So yes, indeed, I sleep in, most times not even needing the alarm. This is a nice change from most jobs I’ve held. Of course there is a drawback to working here. It’s completely blown my caffeine avoidance away. There’s a little machine that, like magic, brews a fresh cup of one of eight different varieties of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters coffee at the push of a button. I started out with only two cups a day, worked up to a horrible six cups but then after I found myself on edge for most of the time, toned back down to 3 or so with any remaining cups I have being decaf (three of the eight varieties are decaffeinated dontcha know) Okay, I have a survey question. Not a real survey, mind you, but just a curiousity. Do people in the midwest realize their food is bland, boring and mediocre at best? I ask because not only was the food east of Ohio not only as good as I remembered it, but it was better than I remembered. The pizza alone is absolutely worth writing home for. The italian bread they use for subs (sorry, wedges - what’s up with that name here?) is exquisite, the Indian food is out of this world, and the Chinese food is a whole different variety than what is served in Springfield. But then, I think Springfield Chinese (home of Cashew Chicken which isn’t even like Cashew Chicken anywhere else) is a whole different variety of food having very little to do with China and more to do with the fact that it is served with rice in a place that also serves tropical cocktails. But what do I know. I feel like I should pack the car with several dozen bagels, boxes of Entenmanns (they don’t have it in Missouri - can you believe it!), and a pizza or two. Seriously I probably won’t do much more than bring home a few things from the Indian grocery here in town since there isn’t one for hundreds of miles around back home. Incidentally, I’m not allowed to talk about any of the above paragraph with Sage. She is still eating midwest food, and at that she’s eating what she is up for cooking which usually amounts to the sorts of thing made by just adding water. I got to do some visiting in the past few weeks, though. Two weekends ago I left for Massachusetts where I saw a friend of mine whom I haven’t seen in twelve years. Since the last time I saw her she got married and now is the mom of two really cool kids. Interestingly enough, despite our not having really kept in touch for most of that time we’ve seemed to have come to many of the same conclusions about parenting (and general life) philosophies. It was fun to see her and meet her family and very grounding after having spent the previous couple of weeks around nobody familiar at all. Even the weekend before that wasn’t particularly grounding - after all, I was in Vermont, but I only saw people I knew for maybe a few hours. I also got to meet a longtime reader of this journal and Coffee shakes too while I was in the area. I had a blast hanging out with her and her partner. My only regret was that Sage wasn’t there to join us. It was so helpful to have talked with people that weekend who actually get it and are familiar with us and our lives and understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. Before that I was getting tired of the blank stares and insincerity I got for most of the time here when I would tell about what I’m doing and why. I know what I mean now (yes, I am getting sleepy, why do you ask?) - it was nice to not have to justify, defend, explain, spin or otherwise tell about the basics of my life and just have a real conversation. Then last weekend it got quite a bit better. Last weekend (not this past Friday but the one before) I drove to Bethlehem again and picked up Kitey and Paul. They took a bus up and met me in Bethlehem, which we all liked and felt would be an easier landing place than Port Authority in NYC or anywhere else around here for that matter. They arrived at about 7:00 PM and we stayed the night there. When checking in at the hotel, I was sad to meet the first dad I saw so far on the trip (save those dads I visited) who talked about his kids with any enthusiasm. Sad because it was almost an entire month without hearing hardly any talk at all from interested dads, let alone enthusiastic talk. This man had an 18 month old son and obviously thought the world of him. Not only did he talk about him when he checked me in, we talked to him several more times throughout our stay. It was quite refreshing. It reminds me of a story, actually. I was at work a few days ago telling a woman about why I live in Missouri. The simple answer I give is that it’s cheap. It allows me to pay $190/month rent, for example, and therefore makes it unnecessary for me to work all the time. I told her that I felt that right now my job is to be a dad to Paul and that I’m only 31 years old. If, in another fifteen years I decide I want a career I can jolly well have one. She said then, sort of apologetically, that that was an unusual priority for a dad to have. And at first I mentally patted myself on the back but then as I thought of it more, I realized. Of course she hasn’t seen interested dads. She’s at work most of the time. Nearly all the dads I run into at home are interested and have the same priority as I do. So I realize that the same thing is probably true for me too. I haven’t seen many enthusiastic dads because the ones who are aren’t working their brains out in the office for the most part. I know there are some exceptions so please don’t be offended if you are one of those exceptions yourself (or know one). Disclaimer, disclaimer, blah blah blah. Anyway, Paul’s doing so much better here this time around as compared to Michigan. First off, he’s older - only six months but that’s almost fifteen percent. To me, fifteen percent would mean almost five years older. That’s a long time in my life and I can say I’ve changed a great deal since five years ago.

Those of you who have read Sage’s journal can vouch for that, I’m sure. Anyway, he’s older, has a better understanding of how long he’s going to be here (less than a week longer or a total of two weeks) and has a concept of when I go to work and when I get home. He knows it well enough to have noticed when I was late a couple of days ago by only about 20 minutes. He knows it well enough to understand how long it will be until the weekend. He didn’t have a perfectly easy time, though to start. He is still really overwhelmed by the noise, traffic and crowds even though we’re over 20 miles from the northern border of NYC (locals might know what I mean when I say that I can be at the Tappan Zee bridge in about 5 minutes). It’s helped a lot, though, when he’s found familiar things to do. The library, for instance, is a great joy in his life. The laws are stricter here about getting a card so we can’t bring books home but that doesn’t stop us from visiting. We still can read books there. The first night we spent an hour and a half there. He and his granny went there a few days ago for a while, too though at a mile and a quarter down a busy street it’s not an easy destination. Today we were there from 11-5 with a break for lunch. I’ve never seen anyone of any age that happy to spend that much time just choosing books and reading them one after another. We read dozens of books today, some familiar, most not. The majority were about halloween - still his favorite holiday I think.

I’m looking forward to leaving, though. I’ve enjoyed being out here somewhat. It is a nice change of pace, a nice reminder, on so many levels, of why I left the full time working world. The food has been good, I’ve met a few interesting people. I got paid to visit friends and family. Oh yeah, and I paid the IRS their money already. Sage’s dentures could be paid out of this next check and there’s still another one yet to come and even more work after I get home. So there were lots of benefits. Oh and I have a true confession. I know, I talk quite often about consumerism, particularly blind consumerism of just wanting things for the sake of having them but yesterday I had that impulse come over me. After work someone was showing me a workstation that the company had - an older Silicon Graphics Impact system. Quite nice with a large monitor. It was so well designed, not just from a manufacturing sort of way (drives slide in and out easily on “sleds”), but from an aesthetic viewpoint. It was a beautiful system to look at and even the Irix desktop was lovely to look at. And while it had only a 195mHz processor, it had a really excellent video card and it made such an obvious difference. The graphics were quick and stunningly beautiful. And now I want one. I don’t know what I’d do with it besides tinker and while I could get an older one for $300-500 it still seems excessive. I even dreamed I had one last night. How weird is that? That alone should tell me I’ve been out here too long. But a week from today I’ll be heading back to St. Louis to turn in the rental car and pick up my old life again. Sage, meanwhile has been having an interesting life on her “vacation”. Everyone leaves her alone for a couple of weeks and she’s working like crazy. And good thing we left, too, as it got really busy for her with some interesting developments as of late that I’ll let her tell you, or not, as the case may be in her part.

Free replacement computer.

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