My business is busy-ness

Whoo wheee... Since returning from from Way Out West, this past week has been equally hectic, but entirely more eventful and positive. Spent the past three days shuttling up and back from Louisville, meeting with possible-job folks. Now I'm pretty much done on my end - its all up to the-powers-that-are to see if I might, kinda, possibly, maybe can get a job. Anywho, it feels good to have put so much effort into something and to have some positive feedback. Even if everything goes kablooey (and judging from a lot of my previous experience, the odds are fairly good that it will...) I am upbeat about the whole deal. I'm trying to put the each-rejection-is-a-learning-experience spin on this - partly as a coping mechanism to stave off negativism, and also due to my naturally deep-seated optimism (hey, no giggling back there!). No worries, dear readers, no fear! On a side note: me and Maru-chan will be road-tripping this 4th of July weekend. We are going to head up to Chicago to visit our other favourite canine friend, Dixie Dog! Personally, I think Sherman and Dixie are two peas in a pod, and would make a dynamite couple..., but hey, that's only my opinion (everybody else thinks that they'd just bark and brawl - am I the only romantic here, people?!).

Is this thing on?

Hey, loyal readers, Ushiku is back! What a trip - what a week... Got to Vegas, did my interview-thing TTBOMA (To The Best Of My Ability), and got back to Kentucky a few hours ago. -Whew!- What can I say? It was intense; the interviews,the heat, the people (I knew a lot of folks were coming in for this, but over one thousand?!). It wasn't an interview - it was rock concert! The Powers-that-be have determined that they'll get back to us applicants in September. Maybe. Meanwhile, my hotel was located waaaaaaaaay up Las Vegas Blvd. on the Old Strip, in a funky, seedy part of Vegas where as soon as you stepped outside you were confronted by hyper-aggressive homeless folks who always started their conversations with "Hey man, let me axe you sumthin'..." (usually by that time I had smiled, wished them a good day and hit overdrive - leaving eddies of dust - as I booked down the street). Even at noon, in broad day light, it felt like the lions were hungrily sizing me up and wondering if they could take me down. But what did I expect? People come to Las Vegas to satisfy dreams (mine was employment); usually not the kind that involve the better angels of our nature. Avarice, sloth, something for nothing - call it what you will. I am very happy to be done and gone. I did get to meet plenty of people who actually live in LV (and over 2 million of them do), and for them the tourist population is a constant, necessary, but increasingly weary burden. I'm glad I made the effort to do this. I'm chuffed to have made the acquaintance of so many good people. I'm beat, and glad to have made it out in one piece. The job search continues...

T-Minus 6 Hours, and Counting...

Just scraped half of Hardin County off of my running shoes, and put them in my bag. I have a few more things to pack, then I'll be ready to go. My friends will be coming home around 4:30 to pick me up and take me to the airport. Am I crazy?! What the heck am I doing flying to Vegas looking for work? There must be ten bazillion people coming in for this interview - who the heck do I think I am? Breathe... breathe. Check List time: Got my best summerish suit and shoes? Check. Power tie? No. I left all my ties in Boston (like a melon head...). Borrowed innocuous tie from friend? Check. Tooth brush? Check. O.K. I'm good to go. When I get to Vegas, what's the plan? Smile and wave, boys, smile and wave...

Paper, Paper Everywhere

Filling out applications is not fun. Each company wants to know so much about me - why? Do you really have to know my favourite colour in order to make that critical hiring decision? My fingers ache from all the writing and typing. I am tired of having to continuously rewrite my details and particulars. When I nod off to sleep I see forms (in triplicate) hovering on the edges of my dreams. Oh, blessed employment, why do you taunt me so? And all this information - it can't be good for the HR folks, can it? How can they be expected to decipher what kind of applicant I am from all that stuff? Imagine, day after day, trucks delivering unending streams of single-spaced, small-printed forms filled with information about people who want jobs. It is enough to make even the most didactic soul bitter. Which might explain why it is so damned duece difficult to find work these days...

...That there's some corner of a foreign field/That is for ever Boston

I usually don't feel comfortable publicly showing my interests or attitudes (except on this blog). Guess I'm kinda private that way. One exception has been that since I left Boston I have begun wearing a Red Sox hat (if you're a Sox fan you know there are a multitude of different kinds - mine is the one with the red crown and blue visor, with the blue "B" and a pair of crossed socks on the back). A few weekends ago I was up in Louisville with my friends, and as we were crossing a busy intersection a car rolled by and the passenger began hollering at me - I initially assumed he was drunk and tried to ignore him, but I noticed he was gesturing at my hat, and I realised from his big thumbs-up that I had run into another Red Sox fan. And today, as I was driving home, I came up behind an SUV here in E-Town and I noticed a big bumpersticker in the rear window that proclaimed: "I Don't Brake For Yankees Fans" (and then my eye traveled down to the licence plate frame with the Red Sox logo). Baseball is not big here. If you ask local people what team they root for they might say the Reds or just shrug their shoulders. But here and there, all over the place, there is Red Sox Nation. I first heard of The Nation when I got back home from Japan - expat Boston fans who were spread out all over the country, but still came out to cheer for their Sox if they came into town (or at the local sports establishment to cheer if the Sox never came to town). I still get a little misty-eyed when I think of how much my grandmother cheered for her Sox, and how incredible it was, in the rain (fighting off a case of pneumonia, I might add), to cheer the home team after they won it all in 2004. Yes, I love the Sox, and I hate the Yankees, and I love the NY/Boston rivalry. So, if you are a member of Red Sox Nation, or even if you are a Yankees fan, but appreciate the rivalry, let's hear from you!

Illing

My friends both work in largish office environments and are exposed to lots of people everyday. One of them works in a basement IT dungeon and comes into contact with uncountable techies who don't get enough sunshine or vitamins (two-litter bottles of Mountain Dew not withstanding). So, it shouldn't have come as a surprise when suddenly this past Tuesday I got hit hard by some evil little microbes. A sore throat descended upon me faster than a state trooper on a van with out-of-state plates. By Wednesday it developed into something definitely more flu-ish; with muscle pain that turned into bone pain and then pretty-much-everything pain. Eeyow, it hurt!! Especially my head - it felt like somebody had punched my skull (after thoughtfully peeling back my face). Never had that before (and I don't recommend it), but since it has cleared up, guess it wasn't meningitis (I'm not a hypochondriac, but the thought did cross my mind a few times that night - I mean, it is a close neighbor to my cranium and all...). Now I have got sniffles and a cough, but blessed Walgreen's knockoff Nyquil can handle that - no problem sleeping now! I like to think that evertime I get sick like this, it makes me stronger, but really, am I just deluding myself? Luckily, this only happens (at most) twice a year. How about you?

Going to Vegas

VEGAS! I'm going to Las Vegas in two weeks for a job interview - packin' the money suit, and gonna order manhattens with three (count 'em: 3) cherries, baby. Actually, I won't be there to party, and I'm on a budget, but still its Vegas. I was there in March at a convention for work (my last job), and it really was a strange place. Saw Blue Man Group, and ate dinner along the recreated canals of Venice. Guess glam and glitter really don't do anything for me, but if the opportunity to find decent employment exists, then I'm gonna take it where ever it comes. Won't tell you what the job is or what it entails - sorry, but I don't want to jinx the whole thing (call me superstitious). If it happens, then, of course, I'll spill the beans.

Did you say "Peggy"?

It has always been a dream of mine to be the leader of an extensive organization that could field eccentric, but brilliant people to do amazing things - and at the core there would be a group of solid friends who would go with me on all sorts of adventures around the world. And we would also have a band. Which sums up my fascination with The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension - what, were these guys reading my mind or something? If I were Dr. Banzai
I'd have the black bus, tricked-out laboratory (with the super-strong watermelon in the hydraulic press) and Blue Blaze Irregulars across New Jersey - oh, and of course, the rocket truck complete with over-thruster (so that we could go through solid matter and enter the Eighth Dimension). Too Cool. And every Sunday we'd have waffles at the Institute. Come on and sign up today!

Two Hundred and Twenty

220 profile views? Does that mean that over two hundred of you have dropped by and visited my humble blog? Or is it only a few of my loyal readers who have been coming by? Well, in any event, I'm very happy right now (originally I planned to write something if I got a hundred views, but two hundred and twenty is better - is it not?). Huzzah! Before I get too carried away, though, I must remember how truly infinitesimally insignificant this blog is in the cosmos of the electron-spread word...

Where is my blog? Hint: its that faint light somewhere in the lower left corner (in the back ground).

All Hail the Sher-Man!

My friends have a border collie named Sherman, whom they have nick-named "Attention Deficit Pup", but who I affectionately call "Puparazzi" after the way he zips around the house, always under foot, like a motor scooter-bourne freelance news photographer. Sherman is very friendly, unless you drive a brown UPS truck (for some reason the "Ooops" Man drives him to distraction). Every morning he loves to stick his wet nose into my face as I stretch out for my morning run. He also has the standard dog ability to look absolutely forlorn and retched whenever you have a piece of food in hand - how can a well-fed pooch make himself look like a refugee in an instant? Sherman also is a tick magnet (you can practically see the little biters stampeding through the tall grass to get to him - its like some sort of bug rock concert with Sherman as Elvis), so we have to do a pat-down on him every time he comes into the house after one of his walks (it helps that my friends have watched enough T.V. police procedurals, so they know to read the ticks their Miranda rights, too). The last straw came last week when we pulled a football team's worth of ticks off of our furry buddy, and one still had the temerity to escape our careful search and jump on my friend's neck! His scream was amazing for its lack of manliness (luckily his wife wasn't there...). Anyhow, this meant that poor Sherman had to get washed down with special anti-tick shampoo and given a dousing of some sort of stuff that will make him less irresistable to the little crabbies. Well, you want to play in the grass, you gotta pay the price.

Humidly Yours, Ushiku

Wow, has it been five days since I posted last? Where has the time gone? No, seriously, what the heck happened? Its like I got abducted by a U.F.O. or something (last thing I remember was those strange clouds boiling into an otherwise clear sky... oooh beautiful lights...).
Yeah, anyhow, we've been having the same old cycle of heat, rain and humidity. Been very busy; we finished putting the rock in along side the house (my friends' obsession with completing this particular project kinda reminded me of Lt. Col. Nicholson in Bridge Over the River Kwai; except we didn't get to blow anything up at the end). I've unleashed my resume onto the job market, and, as expected, it is ravaging the countryside. So far I've gotten a few tentative nibbles, but woe betide the fool who tries to reject this monster outright - it goes back and gets some! Actually, it might be a tad too strong for this job market (Kentucky might not be ready for it - shoulda taken it out to the Nevada Test Site first...). Gotta get back to the paperwork, but I promise not to disappear again for so long. In the meantime: "Look to the skies!"

Hey, that thing got a Hemi?

My friends have just bought their first impulse-buy car: a bright yellow Corvette. You have to know these people in order to see how amazingly insane this all is - they are both hard working, quiet, middle class folks (not without humour), with, apparently, a wild side hungering for speed... So now I can't get that Dodge Hemi commercial tagline out of my head (and it has become our standard joke that when I exclaim that their car has a hemi - which, in all truth, I don't think it has - they yell back "Sweeeeet!"). I think it is because we are down South, and we're surrounded by lots of other muscular cars and trucks (which is a really big deal down here). Besides being ridiculously fast, I suspect this car can also become a Transformer (although my friends haven't initiated that option yet). Paradoxically, I was never a car person - although I do have a soft spot for Maru-chan - so I can't get too jazzed by this bumble bee rocket car in the drive way (don't worry Maru-chan, just ignore it - you'll always be special to me!). However, I am happy for my friends, as they do seem to derive much enjoyment doing doughnuts in the street and making smoke shows at traffic lights for the benefit of the locals...And speaking of Sweeeeet, does anyone out there like Matthew Sweet? Not a day goes by when I'm not humming some song off of Girlfriend or 100% Fun (and isn't that album just the perfect music to make you feel a little better when your day is running you down?). I'm beginin' to think, baby you don't know!

Sky Going Crazy-Go-Nuts

Wow... Well, we finally got our tornadoish weather Thursday night, and it was amazing. Clouds just poured into an otherwise clear sky just about sunset; it got warmer and the wind began to pick up. Then the radio emitted the signal from the Emergency Alert System, and a tornado warning was issued. We watched the clouds start to swirl around and get angry - with sporadic lightning at first, but with more and more electrical action going on as the sky got suddenly and noticeably darker. It began to rain in buckets and clouds were trucking along above us in distinct altitudes and groups (but overall the sky was overcast). At the height of the storm the lightning was nearly continuous and it lit up the area sometimes brighter than day. Luckily the golfball-sized hail didn't hit us (just south of our neighborhood) and some funnels were said to have touched down, but luckily not near any inhabited areas. It was amazing!
Now I understand why nobody in Close Encounters of the Third Kind was put off by those suspicious storm clouds that the aliens used to mask their movements just before they popped in to abduct folks. Its just par for the course here in the Ohio Valley.
On a sad note: the next morning I went running and there was no sign of my killdeer. Did the nest get washed away, and my anxiously feathered friend along with it? I hope not!

Red Dust Under My Fingernails

Yup, last Saturday my friends and I spread out most of that red lava rock along the side of the house - raising heaps of iron oxide-coloured dust. My job was to shovel the stuff into the wheel barrow, haul it over to the site and dump it. Repeat. I realised that I don't want to get a job hauling volcanic rock around. Anyways, as the day wore on - and it was hot and sunny - all this red dust started kinda reminding me of Australia (and I kept hearing Midnight Oil in my head over and over: "...River runs red, Black rain falls...") and I half expected road trains and koalas to start appearing across the desiccated front lawn (the grass seed didn't really take root in the clay they have here, which is why we had to start putting down top soil, which got washed away by all the rain earlier this month - look for the earlier posts, which explain that in greater detail...). Maybe it was the heat and manual labour, but things got a little loopy (dehydration isn't pretty), and by the end of the day we were coated in fine, bright oxidized dust - sore, and just plain tired of yard improvement. However, this next weekend we'll be back out there, ready to do battle with nature and entropy.

You Don't Need a Decoy, Leroy, Just Set Yourself Free...

Along the route that I go running (almost every weekday morning) there is a Killdeer who has its nest in the tall grass beside the road. Before coming to Kentucky I wasn't familiar with this bird, but it is supposedly well known for scrambling along the ground pretending to have a broken wing, so as to lead potential troublemakers away from its nest. Each morning I pad along to the spot where I know that my little friend will pop out of the grass and scoot ahead of me like an Indy pace car,weaving and zipping along. However, this morning I must have gotten up a little earlier than usual (or perhaps my ground-dwelling pal hit the snooze button on his alarm clock), because instead getting the regular escort, I caught my Killdeer on the edge of the grass and he just freaked out - feathers all poofed out, and a tremendous little racket of righteous indignation. It was like catching him in the bird-equivalent of being in his bathrobe & slippers with a cup of coffee, fetching the paper off the front porch. One angry bird. I initially felt bad for him, but, like I said over my shoulder as I trotted on: C'mon! Its not like you don't see me almost every day, eh?

Waffle's in the House, Y'all!

Give me some waffles, and its a party. Rebounded from Thursday's low-point with a Saturday morning trip to Waffle House - one of those icons that the rest of America turns to for 24-7 waffle-based solace (while, once again, we in New England don't have a clue - just like we don't understand White Castle). Nothing fancy, but oh-so-good indented batter-based yumminess! Now I'm flying back at normal cruising altitude, and the world seems right again. I know that a lot of us are waffle-centric - sooooo, write in and tell us how waffles shape your life. Are you a casual user, or a full-blown, Betty Ford Clinic, six-week-rehab type? What's topside? Maple syrup or fruit topping & whipped cream? Belgian, or thin and crispy? Inquiring minds want to know!

A little, dark cloud in my sky

Yesterday I went up to Louisville (which sounds like "Luvul" when the locals pronounce it) to do some job searching, and I gotta tell you that it turned out to be a downer - and I can't give you any particular reason as to why, but when I got back to my friend's place last night I was in a funk. A blue funk. And I really wanted to listen to Chet Baker Sings, but since it was on the ol' lap top... colour it "gone". Yeah, well, you get the picture. I don't know why it turned out to be such a crappy experience (well, Maru-chan did get dinged-up by a rock on I-65 - thank you Mr. Eighteen-Wheeler from Tennessee... ). It looks like a nice city and all. Maybe it was the hours spent sitting in a munincipal office filling out an endless application, only to be told afterwords that "... we don't know when we'll be hirin' anyone ..." (and the whole point of going to Louisville in the first place was because I was told that I had to go there in person to register and apply for work - no Internet applications allowed). Or maybe it was the weather, or it was just time for me to feel down for a change. Up to that point I had been having a pretty good job-hunting experience here in Kentucky (and, to be fair, I've been having a heck of a lot more luck finding leads than in Crashachusetts). I guess we can't always be up all the time, eh?

Until Pebbles Grow into Boulders Covered in Moss

Just thinking about rocks again...

Near Dell(th) Experience

Oh man, the Dell is in the I.C.U. - according to my tech-savy friend, the laptop has fried some vitals; he'll try to scrounge up some spare parts, and (hopefully) that will get my ailing mobile computing slab up and running, but no promises. Originally I bought the Dell, because a Veterinarian friend swore by them (said that the Dell in their animal clinic consistantly got clogged up with cat and dog hairs, was dropped from counters, and survived dozens of non-computer-friendly employees, and still operated like a champ). Maybe I have poor lap top karma (or maybe I shouldn't have lent my Dell to my dad - hmmm... that might explain why he recently returned it to me and bought his own lap top...). No use raging over burnt diodes.
Hang tough my flat silicon friend - help is on the way...

Rock on On!

A truck has just come by and dumped all this lava rock on my friend's driveway. They are going to put it around the house (like some sort of DMZ to keep the horde of encroaching weeds at bay). I asked the driver where do they get this stuff, anyhow? He didn't know.
Is there a volcanic island somewhere in the South Pacific where the locals mine their igneous rock and ship it to lawn centers around the world? And if so, aren't they chipping away at the very foundation of their society? (although, I suppose, lava is a
renewable resource, but only if your local volcano is active) It all seems slightly dodgy to me. Here we are talking about Third World debt relief, while we should be talking about sustainable lava rock removal. How many islands need to disappear in an orgy of self-destructive capitalism, before we step-in and do something about it? Now I'm looking at this lava rock like some sort of blood stone...
Yeah, well anyways, it is pretty light, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to shovel it off the driveway and onto a more convenient spot. I like to think that somewhere on Tonga right now a home owner has just gotten a delivery of crushed New England granite to put around the outside of their home (you know, to hide all that ugly red volcanic rock...).