Quicky Family Update

Since I've been so lax....

It's the bus rides that've kept me from BLOG'ing. Honest. Me and the "Leroy Brown" singer dude were up all night waiting on the bus....

Acutally, the bus, yet again, failed to show up last night at 5:30pm. I'm standing there in downtown Albany, NY with the smells of the city wafting by, waiting for my bus until like 6:05pm.

I called Vic on my Trac cell phone. Trac phones are "pay as you go" phones. My mom just gave me her old Trac phone which had like 178 minutes on it still. Thanks mom!

I said, "Vic!"

Vic said, "Huh?"

I said, "Can you take me home today? The bus didn't come again."

Vic said, "Huh?"

No, not really. Vic said, "I have a meeting I have to go to. I can after that."

I said, "The meeting hasn't started yet??!!"

Anyway, one of the ladies awaiting the same bus was like interrogating every other bus driver dropping off folks at our site about our late/never-arrived bus. She got one of the drivers to agree to take us home on his way to the garage. So, he did.

Since there were only three of us on the bus, we zipped home, and I ended up getting home at about the same time I normally would on the regular express bus anyway. Not bad.

Poor Vic tried to hunt me down after the meeting, but I was home already.

...so, I went home to my family, and I need to get moving on to the family update part:

Well, let's see:

Barb is doing okay. Not terrific but okay. The move from NC was pretty hard on her.

I just did a search for registered sex offenders at http://www.registeredoffenderslist.org -- they want money, of course, for the complete list, but at least you can get a general number. In Charlotte, NC at my zip-code there, we have 70 registered offenders. In Scotia, NY. ZERO.

I'll have to let Barb know about this fact tonight.

Brittany starts college *today* at Schenectady County Community College. I'm not sure what she's taking. I should know, but I've been too busy playing games on the Internet to find out.

Bobby starts 11th grade next Wednesday.

Ben starts home-school 7th grade soon.

Bekah starts 2nd grad next Wednesday.

I'm really enjoying living near my family, and I love my new job as a software developer for a small ASP in Albany, NY.

Interestingly enough, my office window at work faces two banks. Both have been robbed within the last year. Of course, I never saw either robbery. I need to get a web-cam going and keep an electronic "eye" out on the corner. Maybe I can get some interesting footage? Who knows.

I think we finally found a church we can attend. Barb and Brittany found it. All my efforts at church finding were bust. When you go to a church and are brand-spanking-new to the church community and not one single person bothers to even say "hello" to you, that's not a good sign.

Brittany and I searched for a while together. We experienced some very interesting church mornings. One morning, the female pastor gave a sermon that consisted of a book report on a book she read by Hillary Clinton and a movie she watched Saturday night.

During the "sermon", some unfortunate man passed out in the pews near the front. Someone called 911, and Brittany and I snuck out when the rescue trucks arrived.

We attened another church where folks hopped vigorously as they sang. At least they hopped in-place. We didn't have a any bunny-hopping up and down the aisles, but we did have some serious hopping in-place going on all around us.

I can live with hopping, I suppose. I don't particularly want to hop myself, but that's cool. You can hop if you want. But, no one said a word to us that day as visitors. We didn't go back.

There's an interesting spiritual community here in the Capital District. Folks seem to be on one end of the spiritual spectrum or the other, with very few "middle-roaders" so to speak. You have a lot of small, charismatic groups who focus on speaking in tongues, etc. Then, you have your older churches that appear to be fairly dead, spiritually.

Brittany and I did attend a charismatic church a couple of times. We had a bit of a freakish experience there, which I won't go into detail publically, but I'm glad to say we've not been back and Brittany isn't attending the study any longer.

One of my third-cousins had his 40th birthday party this past Sunday. I think over 70-folks attended. Our family attended as did two of my sisters and my mom and step-father. It was just a lot of fun, and I loved being around the family.

Brittany finally met up with a 19-year old child of yet another third-cousin of mine, and it appears they may have a lot in common. We'll see how that goes.

Bus Paranoia

So, like it's been forever since my last post. Sorry.

I was IM'ing with a bud today, and he's like, "Dude, you never post to your BLOG anymore."

I'm like, "Dude, you're so right." I promised I'd update it tonight, so I am.

I'm mostly lazy. That's the single biggest reason I've not BLOG'd in a while. I've been playing a lot of Warcraft III on Battle.NET lately.

I just love playing with my fellow 12-year olds. They're so brutal. It's a riot. I've been called every name in the book. My online name is Uxorious -- more or less a word from the Latin Uxor (wife) and meaning "hen pecked". Or perhaps, "ruled by your wife" may be a better meaning. Look it up at www.dictionary.com. It's really a word.

I've been playing this really fun game where you get a tank and go and try to attack the other side's town and you have all these tank varieties, weapon choices, etc. The game has a tremendous amount of potential. Some like 14-year old probably designed it.

I also love to play tower wars where you build towers to defend against the other guy. I like to play tower defenses where you build towers to defend against the computer. I like tower-based games the best. My son's think I'm boring. Whatever, right?

I've been riding the bus to work since April. I get on the bus at 7:10am in downtown Schenectady and ride it to smack-dab in the middle of Albany to arrive usually about 7:50am. At night, I get on the bus at 5:45pm to arrive in Schenectaday at about 6:30pm. I have like almost 12-hour days.

The bus is an interesting microcosm of life. You meet all sorts on the bus. Today, I assisted a nearly blind, somewhat odiferous, mentally-handicapped man find the correct bus to board. He was looking for bus 14 or 15. I announced the various buses as they passed by, so he took that as a sign that I wanted a deeper relationship with him.

Attempting to stand upwind of said gentleman, I also had to bend my ear his way and concentrate on what he was saying. Often, it appears, severe slurring of speach goes along with mental handicaps. I think he's moving South with his Social Security checks now. That's what I think he said.

He said he tried to give someone he works with $20.00 as a goodbye gift.

I wouldn't be able to accept any cash from a mentally handicapped person. It may make them feel bad, but I would feel worse like I was taking advantage of them.

Said gentleman said he had very bad glaucoma, and I could see his eyes were very cloudy. I was glad to be able to help him, still.

There's another guy I ride with regularly who sometimes forgets to medicate, I think. He then becomes a tad boisterous, but never mean or threatening. Just vocal. You know as most of us have this mental audio-shut-off-valve in our heads that tells us to shut up. His valve just doesn't work.

Speaking of which, we had yet another gentleman, and I'm glad this event only happened once, rode on our bus and talked non-stop. He sat next to this poor woman on the bus and spoke to her incessantly. When finally, he had nothing left to say, he sang, at the top of his lungs, "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown."

The whole song.

I made up a song that I'm going to compose and sing once I get my new musical group off the ground. The song's name is "Bus Paranoia". It goes:

Bus Paranoia, Bus Paranoia
I'm gonna miss the bus.
I'm gonna miss the bus.

That's all I've written. I have a tune for it too, but I can't type out the tune, so you'll have to go without that.

The new group is call F.O.M. Sort of like P.O.D. but older, uglier, and fatter. F.O.M. stand for "Fat Old Men". Right now, I'm the only guy in the band, and I sold my guitar. I guess I'll get a kazoo.

I'll write more soon, I promise.