Down On Ferry Farm

I heard all of these statements with my own ears, so I know they're what was said. I can't explain any of them: "I can type better in lowercase than uppercase" "Daddy, his car costs $30,000. That's, like, a million dollars..." "Thumb, pointer, middle, ring and pinky -- which one is the 'index' finger?" "I would have made a stupid statement but my mouth was already closed" "Dude A: I think that old guy was incontinent Dude B: Yea, well I'm in that SAME continent" "I'd like a margarita on the rocks with no ice" "When I sing it sounds better in my head" "You should have seen what I heard" "That happens every day of the night"

I’m trying to learn Spanish on my own. It’s tough. It’s like learning – well, it’s like learning a new language. I think to myself “Well, English wasn’t so hard to learn”. That’s because there was no other choice. Everyone I grew up with spoke English. I went all through school never having learned another language. I recall signing up for a German class when I was in Junior High School but the class filled up and I had to choose something else. All other language classes had filled up before I could make another choice. Most people I tell that to (that I’ve never taken a language class) are shocked to hear that I’ve actually graduated high school. Apparently another language besides English is required to graduate – I don’t know. Trust me, I had a hard enough time with English. I had to go to summer school twice – both times for English. The upside of that is that I had one of the best experiences with the class. The teacher was a huge fan of poetry and of Shakespeare and that cemente...

Bachelorette #4: For clarity’s sake I’ll call her Jayden. We had our second date on Saturday. We went to an upscale restaurant – upscale, but casual – and had a very adequate time. It was nice, friendly, uncontroversial and I think we both had a good time. That’s about the best I can say about the evening. The whole thing started about 5:00pm when we went to see “Iron Man” (good movie, by the way). It was a full two hour movie but it didn’t seem like it. I don’t want to spoil anything but stay for the scene after the credits roll. It’s worth it. And before you jump to any conclusions: I gave her a list of about 10 movies that were playing at the theater and that’s the one SHE chose. I didn’t disagree. ‘Nuff said. So we left the theater and I told her where we were eating. I gave her directions and she knew generally where the place was located. By this time it’s about 7:45pm but I’m not starving on the vine – not sure why not. We get seated immediately and the waiter seems rather jovia...

I was listening to the radio earlier today and I heard the song “Gloria” by Laura Branigan. At that moment, it hit me that both Van Morrison and U2 have songs with the same name. Van Morrison – The Irish singer-songwriter is probably most well-known for his songs “Moondance”, “Brown-Eyed Girl”, “Domino” and – one of my all-time fave’s – “Into The Mystic”. In concert he does a rip-roaring version of “Gloria”, a song he wrote while he was with the band ‘Them’. I’ve seen several of his live performances on video or DVD and he makes the song last between 15 and 20 minutes ad-libbing the words but always coming back to the spelling of her name, in which the audience joins in: G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria… Laura Branigan – When Laura went looking for her ‘Gloria’, she reached global proportions. Her version was written by Umberto Tozzi (an Italian) in 1979 and re-worked for American audiences in 1982. Her ‘Gloria’ seemed somehow flawed, with ‘voices in her head’ and ‘if everybody wants you/why isn’...

I went to a birthday party on Saturday. One of the women I used to work with was having a 1st birthday party for her son. It was pirate-themed. The boy is cute as a button but looks nothing like his mother. I feel bad for her because she tried for quite a while to have a child and there were complications when she was pregnant. Obviously, everything is okay now. The weather was beautiful and we sat out on their side deck. Some burgers were cooked, some beer was consumed (not by me, I have a problem drinking alcohol at a child’s party – just a quirk, I guess), and the birthday boy was in good spirits. It then ended up with a core group of people that I knew (friends and family members had gone home) as we sat on the deck after the sun had gone down. Now, I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but the things these people were talking about were just unnecessary in my estimation. They were sharing information about themselves that I wouldn’t even say aloud to myself – alone in ...

I’ve had a cold for what seems like a month. In reality, it’s only been a week but – as you know – I hate being sick. It’s just your run-of-the-mill cold which is the equivalent of a paper cut: it’s annoying, you can feel it, it doesn’t last long but you remember it hurting much longer than it did. I seem to only write these on or near the weekends. I’ve had some really weird dreams lately. I think it’s due to all the medicine I’m taking. A-girl came into town and I missed going out with her because I was sick. Now that I’m starting to feel better, I’m trying to catch up with Bachelorette #4 so that we can go out again. She called toward the end of last week and told me to just get better and that we weren’t canceling our second date. Almost every day at work this guy comes to the office and sits in the chair of the woman who sits outside my office. The chair faces right into my office so I hear everything he’s saying. Generally, he’s a burly, manly kind of man and he talks to this wom...

They may not be cinematic masterpieces, but these scenes are the ones that I wait for when watching these movies again. They are in no particular order. Mulholland Dr. – “The Cowboy and The Director”: In this scene the Director (of a film) is asked to meet the Cowboy at a remote location. Upon driving there, the Director finds an empty corral with a single lightbulb above it. It is night and the location is on the outskirts of Hollywood, somewhere in the mountains of California. When the Cowboy arrives the lightbulb lights up and they have their conversation. When the Cowboy is done speaking and begins to walk away, the lightbulb dims again. The first time I saw this movie, this scene fascinated me. It was all about taking someone out of their element and forcing a choice – the conversation they had dealt with was the cowboy dictating an actress that was to be used by the Director. It’s such a subtle scene that most people miss it and that’s probably one of the things I like about it ...

So I'm sitting in my den watching TV, minding my own business. There's a bay window that looks out toward the street on which I live. I have the blinds open to get the overcast light and sporadic sunshine. All is well. Now that I've set the scene... I watch this woman riding her bicycle up my street. I can see her coming from a good ways down from my house. I figure she's just going to keep riding but then she stops right in front of my house and straddles the bike. She then reaches in to her pocket and produces a camera. She's standing in the street right in front of my house, and she takes a picture of said house. She brings the camera away from her face, looks at what she's taken a picture of and puts the camera away. She then proceeds to ride away. I am mystified. I don't know who she is, where she came from or why she was taking a picture of my house. My first thought, after she had ridden away, was to go out and ask her these things. It didn't occ...

My TiVo catches a lot of the old “Twilight Zone” episodes. First of all, I didn’t realize there were still so many of them that I hadn’t seen. It seemed like every time The Sci-Fi Channel showed a marathon, they would always be the same old classic episodes. A few months back it seemed they were running nothing but 1 hour episodes. Again, I had no idea there were so many of those as well. But what I really wanted to talk about is the audio on the episodes I’ve seen. You see, right before an actor yells a line or there’s a loud sound, I can hear it faintly before it happens. That whole thing seems very weird to me. I could see having it happen after, but it makes no sense to me that you can hear things before they happen. It makes me wonder about the way audio was recorded back then. My understanding is that the video is recorded with a camera and the audio is recorded separately and then they are edited together. Does this mean that the audio is slipping forward and getting out of syn...

So I went out with Bachelorette #4 (seems like more than 4 but, whatever…) last night. We went to a nice little wine & bistro place – you know, where the chairs are 4 feet high and the table hits you mid-chest. Anyhow, for some reason I was very nervous. I don’t know why. I got there a little early and helped myself to a couple of glasses of ‘liquid courage’ before she arrived. I was seated very near the front door so I could watch people come and go and I found myself playing that same game: “Oooh, I hope that’s her” or “Oh, I hope it’s not her”. As always, she was better than I expected. She was bright and funny with a good energy and red hair (a definite plus). Once she was sitting in front of me the fear just melted away. She was easy to talk to and very comfortable to look at. There were a couple of lulls that I recall but, when that happened, we both took a sip of wine and continued on. The only ‘concern’ I had (NOT a deal-breaker at all) is that she peppered her conversation...

Yea, so I got back in the pool this week. I ‘reactivated’ my account at the dating service. I have a date next Tuesday so I’ll give you all the details. I think this will make Number 4 – if memory serves – on the list. I would have thought it would be more but Renee took a lot of that. When I was out of work I didn’t think it was fair to date because I couldn’t afford to go anywhere that wasn’t making me money. Not that the job is going great. I feel like I’m just hanging on day-to-day. This is the company’s slow time so there’s not much to do. I was prepared for things to go majorly wrong on the network but things are pretty non-existent in that area. I have been doing a lot of organizing and documenting… and surfing the Internet and chatting with Superman. A good indicator of how bad it’s getting is when I start drinking at home. That’s when I know the cheese has slipped off the cracker. It’s too bad, really, because the people are really nice and the company is halfway decent. The p...

Recently, Superman and I got together and the subject of kids came up. He asked a pretty straightforward question about me wanting kids and I gave a very evasive answer. My standard answer, when asked, is: “If I have kids, I have kids. If I don’t, I don’t”. At this point in my life (unmarried, single, early 40’s) I think it’s kind of a strange question. You might as well ask me if I want to be The President Of The United States. Right now, I’m not headed down a path that would make either of these two situations possible. I think the essence of the question is whether or not I’d be able to handle the situation. As for the President, no, I have no aspirations in this area. As for children, let me see if I can answer this one in a round-about way. Let’s start this with an overview of the children in my life and my dealings with them so far. Obviously, I have no children of my own. My older brother, Dan: While he’s the oldest sibling in the family, his children are the youngest (he was a ...

5. The Number 5 4. The Number 1 3. The Number 4 2. The Number 7 1. The Number 3

Life continues unabated. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s like being on a roller coaster: you’re strapped in and the wheels are in motion but there’s nothing you can do but hold on and enjoy the ride. Planes are flying overhead. Why is it that they only seem to fly on days when the weather is beautiful? Don’t they fly in the rain? I did my taxes tonight. Yes, I realize it is literally the last minute. I’m not sure why I took so long to do them. I guess the whole “being out of work” thing threw me for a loop. I wonder how long I’m going to be able to procrastinate with that excuse? Not much longer. Yesterday I started mowing my lawn and it started to rain. Then it stopped. I continued. Then it started again – very lightly. I wanted to get the front yard completely done so I didn’t look like a psycho who only cuts half of his yard. It was raining light enough so I finished the front yard and then put the mower away. Tonight I got home from work and finished the back yard. Weathe...

Went out with some friends on Saturday and had a very good time. So good a time I had to recuperate on Sunday. Here’s how the day went: 5:00pm – Chocolate Place. We were supposed to meet at 5:00 at this place where you can get chocolate fondue. So I arrive promptly at 5:00 to find the place empty (of people I know). Allow me to sound like an old man for a moment, but in my day we just didn’t show up late. I think there’s a rudeness involved in it – unless there’s an emergency in which case you call. It’s about 10 or 15 minutes after the hour now and people start showing up and we decide to go in. Not everyone is there but we’re starting to congregate. People start to drift in with the last couple appearing a little after 5:30. So now we’re all in attendance and we get the attention of the shop-workers so that we can begin this thing. Let’s just say they’re moving about as fast as molasses in winter. Once we get their attention, it’s about 10 minutes before they ‘take our order’ (we ge...

Have you ever sat in the silence of your house? I must admit I don't do it a lot. The only time silence comes over my house is when I'm not here. There was a quote I heard some years ago that went something like this: If you're not making noise, how do you know you're alive? I'm paraphrasing, of course but the basic sentiment is there. Let's say there was silence between the sound. I was listening to some music, searching through a long list of songs, and between the songs was a silence. I was listening to my house. It's been rather windy around here lately and today is no different. I hear the wind. I heard the birds chirping and singing. I hear the house settling (which is rather unsettling). I hear the distant scream of a siren... a car drive by. Then a song to repeat the cycle. I hear it in my head. You know that's what reading is, right? It's talking in your head. It's reading the words and saying them aloud inside your head. Silence is some...

You know, I’m sitting down to write this thing and I don’t know where to begin. Let me try and recap the week that was: I started my new job on Tuesday. It’s a small to medium sized food manufacturing company. I met most of the people that worked there – quite a few were on vacation. I got a tour of the office, warehouse and production plant. The building and company are fairly old so making our way through the production area was interesting. The HR Manager was taking me on this tour – first, we had to wear hairnets through the entire production facility. Nobody likes hair in their food. So we go through the door to the stairwell (no elevators here) and walk up these dicey set of stairs to the second floor. When we walked through the door I noticed that the wall was on a 5 percent grade. The stairs themselves looked like they were built by Dr. Seuss. Of course, I did all the normal things you do on your first day of a job… fill out all the requisite paperwork, find out where to park, ...

You have NO idea how relieved I am to tell you that I’m working again. Yes, I finally found a job so I can shut up and stop whining about it. I live in the suburbs and my job is working ‘in the city’ – well, one city over, that is. My only concern is traffic congestion but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. My big issue – why I had to keep silent – is because there were 2 companies vying for my services and I didn’t want to jinx anything. I was waiting for an ‘official’ invitation from a government contractor but got a formal offer from a privately-held company instead. Which is okay, I was a little hinky about working for a government contactor anyway. I felt I had to do the professional thing and hear them both out as clearly as possible. I made a quick call to Superman once I had all the information and he helped me see the wisdom in choosing the private company, even though there was less money involved. It’s okay, I always look for an opportunity to advance anyway. I can breathe again....

There are 2 reasons I've been so quiet lately. The first reason will have to wait until Monday -- perhaps Tuesday. The second reason is because I've been sick... just your run of the mill cold. I'll explain it all as early as I can next week.

Today I had the distinct pleasure of watching “The St. Patrick’s Day Parade” from New York City. The coverage was by the WNBC crew on New York’s channel 4 but was being broadcast by the Travel Channel (darn nice of them, don’t you think?). Usually I’m working on St. Patrick’s Day so I always miss the live coverage of the bands and other paraders making their way down 5th Avenue. It’s not the same seeing the replays later on in the news coverage. The Grand Marshall was Tommy Smyth, who is usually up in the booth commenting on the parade but it was his turn this year to lead the revelry. After he had made his way down 5th Ave, he joined the team that was calling the parade. Up to that point the coverage was solid, but when he joined the crew it really livened up the tone of the whole parade. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many men in kilts. There were cable-knit sweaters, red haired lasses, and green, green, green as far as the eye could see. The funniest moment, in my estim...