Spatters gets a little culture

Classical music is something I know very little about.  It was never played in our house when I was growing up and we never really had any exposure to it at all.  Then I married one of the members of the ASO chorus.

Over the last few years I've been to a handful of symphony concerts to see my wife perform.  Usually on a Thursday or Friday night because Saturdays were sold out.  Except for one show, I was by myself every time.  So there I was, tired from a long day at work, sitting alone and listening to music that I had never heard before.  It's not hard to imagine me maybe nodding off a time or two.

Then along comes John Adams and his violin concerto with the lead violin played my Midori.  Once again I was alone, since no one would go with me, and sitting in row K of the orchestra pit - horrible place to sit.  This piece of music rocked my world.  I sat there fascinated for 35 minutes.  If you want to hear a sample of it you can find it at Adams' website earbox.  Just search through his works and click on Violin Concerto(1993).

During the intermission I hooked up with a friend who was there and we snagged some seats in the loge for the second set. Once again I was floored by the music. I may not have enjoyed the second and third pieces quite as much if I had been alone.  Sitting next to a true music fan helps a little sometimes.

So finally, after 3 years of going to the symphony, I have been truly moved by a piece of music.  There were other concerts I enjoyed, but nothing that had me up at 8:30 on a Sunday morning looking for sound bytes of that first piece so I could remember being there.

A little late in life, but I may just be starting to get it.

That Red Dress

Last night my wife and I went to a black tie fundraiser for our local hockey team's charity foundation.  After 45 minutes of panic, but no fighting, about no being able to find the tickets we started to get ready to go.  The problem with wearing a black tuxedo in our house is that it suddenly becomes a challenge to get out the door without being covered in white cat hair. 

While I was meandering about the house trying to kill a little time, my wife put on her dress.  The red dress she was wearing when we got married.  After I helped her zip up I started getting myself ready to go.  I walked back into the bedroom and saw her again.  That's when all the memories of our wedding came flooding back to me.

I know it's only been two and a half years since the wedding, but seeing that dress brought it back like it was my wedding day: The happiness, the craziness, trying to hold back a tear and a cheese eating grin at the same time while saying "I do" and "I will" in all the right places.

That day was the most special and happy day of my life and sometimes it only takes a little thing to bring it all back.

The Block

When I decided to start this thing I had so many things I wanted to write about. But now I'm just drawing a blank. It seemed like a great idea at the time - an outlet for all my ideas and thoughts and blah, blah, blah. Blank.

So I guess I'll have to tell you a story.

Herman was a ladybug. Not very lady-like, I know, but Herman wasn't your ordinary ladybug. He was terrified of flying because whenever he was off the ground he got airsick. Airsick? It's the damndest thing I'd ever heard too, but I'll tell you I've seen it for myself.

When he was just a little pupa, he had a horrible experience. A bird got hold of the leaf he was cringing on afraid he was about to get eaten. But the bird wasn't looking for a quick snack, she was grabbing leaves and twigs to make her nest. She took him so high in the air and over a lake that he was sure he was going to fall in the water and be devoured by a hungry fish. When he got stuffed safely into the nest he vowed to never leave the ground again.

The problem with Herman's promise is that ladybugs fly. A lot. It's pretty much their only means of transportation and, as he found out, walking from plant to plant takes an awful long time. He would stay on the plants hunting aphids long after all his friends had moved on to better pastures in the garden.

And oh how his friends mocked him. "Don't stand under Hurlin' Herman when he takes off! You'll get a faceful of aphid." "Here comes Heavin' Herman again!"

It was the worst shame he'd ever felt in his short life. It only took him a few weeks of ridicule before he came to see me about his fear of heights. We talked through his phobias until we were blue in the face, but I couldn't get him to leave the ground for anything. I finally decided that I'd get my friend the Paul the Praying Mantis to jump at him from behind the doorway to scare him into flight. It worked like a charm.

When he'd been up in the air for several seconds I yelled "Hey Herman, you're flying!"

He looked at me, looked at the ground, and promptly threw up on my carpet. It looked something like this:

*

Safety first.

I do heating and air conditioning for a living and one of the primary objectives of my job is customer safety. In my opinion this comes before customer comfort. If we find equipment that is unsafe, we're required to inform the customer of the situation and then, if they want to leave the equipment operational, they are required to sign a release form saying that they know it's not safe to operate but are willing to do it anyway.

Last week one of the technicians I work with went to a commercial property and found a furnace with a bad high temperature safety cutout and two large holes in the heat exchanger. The high temp cutout is designed to turn of a furnace if the temperature gets too high. As he was supposed to, he informed the manager and turned off power and gas to the unit until the owner could decide what he was going to do. Today we get a call from the owner saying that another company came out and said that the heat exchanger was fine and the unit only needed a new temperature switch.

So I just got back from the frigid roof - 35 degrees and high winds - trying to confirm a hole in the heat exchanger. The two holes were pretty hard to miss if you actually took out three screws, removed a cover and looked. When I looked at the burner section I was rather surprised to find this:

If you can't read small yellow text: Left arrow - "Hole where high temp limit should be" Right Arrow - "Wires that are spliced together to bypass safety." Sorry, camera phone.

The company who came out to give a second opinion bypassed one of the most important safeties on this furnace. If, for some reason, either the blower fails or the gas valve sticks open there is now nothing to keep this unit from overheating and possibly causing a fire. It makes me wonder how this guy sleeps at night.

Next came the joy of telling the store manager what was going on and giving him the option of shutting it off or signing the release form I had in my hand. His main concern was for his customers, but when the release form came out he did the smart thing.

I know this one is particularly long, but I have to just say that I take great pride in what I do and stuff like this just really pisses me off. Someone was willing to take a dangerous shortcut with other people's safety to either gain a customer or prove another company wrong. Looking like the good guy isn't worth all that to me.

Testing, testing

Sometimes I just don't want to log on to firefox and go through the steps of opening up my blog account if I've got something to put down before it flies out of my brain.  So I've decided to try Windows Live Writer to create offline and upload whenever I feel like it.  We'll see if this one shows up.

 

Edit: I guess it works. Rather well too I might add.  I have to give props to MS on their new "Live" line of products.  To find this one follow the LINK.

My God, the local news

So I'm sitting here reading the news online and the local news is on the TV, which is rare because the TV is hardly ever on in this house, and they keep teasing a story that I don't really care about. Ever since 5 after 10, or whenever they go to their first break, they've been saying "Coming up next, a story on how close people are to identity theft", or some such crap. I turned it off at 10 till 11 and they were still saying the same thing. I know they're hard up for viewers, but damn that stuff drives me nuts.

Going to Beantown

Last year I think we started what I hope will be a continuing tradition. While we were in New York we caught a Thrashers game a Madison Square Garden. We were going to NY to see an Atlanta Symphony concert at Carnegie Hall and the Thrashers just happened to be in town at the same time.

This year we were planning a trip to Maine to visit grampy and my very astute wife realized that the Thrashers are playing in Boston the weekend we were thinking about going. Through some creative Travelocity manipulation she was able to get us a flight into Boston, tickets to the game, a rental car at Logan International, and a hotel in Maine for about $500 per person. I think that's a pretty good deal. Kudos to B for being persistent!

So in what I hope is year 2 in a long tradition of watching our home team playing in an out of town arena, we'll be proudly wearing the colors of Blueland in Beantown.