Potpourri No. 42

I’m alive. Here’s an update.

Work Life
My job continues to go really well. They seem really pleased with me. I receive frequent praise. My supervisor called me into a meeting room today and told me she’s already trying to get me to be a salaried employee, complete with a pay raise. They don’t normally do this so quickly, but she thinks I’ve been doing an amazing job and, according to her, they don’t ever want to lose me. I like the job very much because I work largely independently and get to spend a good chunk of my day listening to music. Most of the time, it’s a somewhat busy but not-too-stressful job. A nice combo. I often think about how happy I am with it, and I don’t think you could ask for much more than that.

Personal Life
One of the best things to happen in the last month is that I’ve started taking guitar lessons again. As I’m sure I’ve said on this very blog, probably numerous times, one of my biggest fears is that I will look back on my life and curse myself for not doing a whole lot more with music. I’ve taken guitar lessons, in spurts, a few times in my life, but I’m a much more disciplined guy nowadays. I think this time around, it really has a chance to pay off. And so far, it is. I’m playing a lot more music, and in turn, I’m writing more music. I think having a job where I’ve been able to listen to so much music has helped inspire me. When I’m listening to really good music, I find myself thinking I want to spend as much of my free time as possible writing and playing.

Home Life
I guess this is a subset of personal life, but whatever. Melanie and I continue to love our home, but the first big problems have already appeared. When it rains, we have issues with flooding. One of our downstairs bedrooms gets water soaking up into the carpet. Apparently, there’s a crack in the foundation and the water in the ground seeps in. It’s not coming in so fast that it’s hugely problematic, but it’s certainly a big nuisance. And it stinks up the carpet, and it makes a good chunk of that room unusable because you don’t know what will get ruined. And then we have to run a high-powered fan for days at a time to dry things out, which is noisy and likely racks up the electric bill. Our garage is also quite bad if it rains a lot. It turns into a lake inside. Many books have already fallen victim to it. We can’t reliably store anything in the garage, apparently, because water will get to it eventually. My books were in boxes, but the bottom of the box gets all soggy and then the water starts to soak up into the book. There was only one book that was in such terrible condition, I threw it away. But several have become warped. And that depresses me. Books are one of my treasured possessions.

Family Life
Family life is going really, really well lately. We went through a very rough phase with Peter, where he was pretty much abusive to us, no matter what was going on. It didn’t matter how you treated him, he would treat you like garbage. It was extremely depressing, and I’m not using that term lightly. But that situation has improved dramatically over the last two or three months, and it’s wonderful. I also love that Melanie and I are in a situation where we can date once in a while. Just last Saturday, we went out to lunch and two movies at Broadway, a theater that specializes in independent film. It was a splurge, but it was great. I continue to be crazy about that girl, and I don’t get sick of spending time with her. In fact, it’s much harder for me to enjoy work now that Melanie and the boys are on summer vacation. I feel like I’m missing out, and that’s really sad. But I think they’re enjoying the summer thus far. They’ve kept busy playing around. As they should. Melanie, unfortunately, has to have surgery in a couple of weeks. If everything goes well, it will be an outpatient surgery and shouldn’t be too debilitating. But that doesn’t mean it will be fun or that she’ll be wanting to (or allowed to) go out and play the next day. I just hope she recuperates quickly enough to enjoy the latter half of her summer break.


In sum, life continues to get more and more wonderful. And that’s pretty damn cool.  I guess that’s all I’ll say for now.