Because as an American, I can!

A few weeks ago I was thinking about High School Football and how much I sucked at it. I could never “look around” the field and tell what type of play it was, I could not react quick enough to make that pass block, that tackle. I was thinking that if I could take today’s knowledge and understanding about the sport back then it would all be different. I was wrong. I played kickball tonight with my team. I SUCK. I had more errors than I want to own up to…. But I realized something. We are all built different in God’s likeness, I don’t have a flare for grammar, art, or music… and I know God did not make me a person who can react quick. And it is just not athleticism… I can never make that snappy joke in conversation, I can’t catch a girl if she trips…. And when I catch that ball in the outfield I don’t know if I should hold it, or throw it to second or third base… it’s not me, and I hate it. Yet, I know we all have gifts in this world. I believe/hope that mine lies more with analytics… give me data, give me time, let me make a decision, I think…. I know I cam make the right decision. I hope that I can find a job that allows me to use this skill which I have, and be successful with it. As Jimmy Buffett says: “only time will tell”

It might be a strange statement that so state that dealing with shit (literally), it makes me proud to be an American.  But it does. This morning I called a local septic tank company which services one of our many rural Waffle Houses.  The call was like countless other conversations with these small, family owned businesses; and as always one constant was in the background:  a crying baby.

For you city dwellers, a septic system is a way of disposing of the waste that goes down your sink, toilet, dishwasher and processing it when a local municipality is not capable of providing sewer.  Part of this process involves a septic tank, which is literally a large tank in the ground that holds all of your solids (human waste, food scraps).  Once every six months to a year this tank must be pumped.  It’s a smelly job and not for the weak.

This is not some major company, there is no office address, no 401k for employees.  Here is a rural family, whom likely has a mortgage, a car payment, a work truck payment and a baby.  The wife is a stay at home mother whom also juggles answering the phone for clients, dispatching the husband to jobs, bookkeeping for the company, shopping, laundry cooking… the list goes on and on.  The husband is out before dawn every day.  He leans over moves a 75lb man hole cover (some times four of them) and sticks an apparatus that looks like a giant beater from your mom’s kitchen-aid mixer into a hole in the ground to break up smelly, deteriorating human waste that has been in a hole for 6+ months.  Every night he comes home from work….want to guess what he smells like?

Yet despite all of this, they press on and they work day in and day out.  They chase the American dream, participate in capitalism and bring a much needed service in an industry that is not glamorous.  I respect them for what they do, and I hope everyone else does as well.



BBC Planet Earth might be one of the best TV documentaries I have ever seen.  I highly recommend it.  I’ve been sick all week.  Don’t feel like typing, just wanted to give a shout out.

I must say, things could be worse, I was mostly moved out.  But it is still depressing to lose stuff.  Mostly of note is pretty much every article of work out gear I have for winter, my suits, my medals and numbers from races I have run, spare sheets for beds, all my kitchen wares (pots, pans, microwave, fridge)

When I was a kid, I worked summers for my dad’s construction company.  Learning the value of a hard earned dollar was important to my father.  As such, since the age of 12 he had me out on job sites dodging OSHA inspectors while I swept floors, cleaned anchor bolts, dug ditches, picked up trash and whatever the super needed from me.  In the hot summer months of Florida, wearing jeans and heavy boots, it’s about as bad as one can get (at least he was not a roofing contractor!).

Needless to say, one summer when I got to work in the office I loved the experience, no matter what I had to do, even make blueprints… See kids, before the days of digital wide format scanners; blueprints were actually blue (shocking I know).  This happened as the copy was made using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, and boy did it smell!

So today, I can only say that I am happy to still have a job in an industry were I can continue my passion of carting around 24″x36″ sheets of paper all rolled up.  It’s one of the perks I readily enjoy, it reminds me of the hard work I put in on the job site, and to be grateful for what I have in life.

Why this was not played during the USA-England world cup soccer game I don’t know, but it should have been.

A good little video here, I think I posted it on my facebook status once, but here it is again.

Like 99.99% of Americans I pay taxes (Obama’s appointees kill any shot of a 100% there), however unlike 99% of them I have a little joy in my life called Tourette Syndrome (it is estimated 1/100 of Americans have some form of TS).  After I learned I owe the “Savior” money… and lots of it… in early April I have been under some fiscal stress and as a result I’ve been having quite the little flair up of my TS.

I must say I am blessed in my life that I have one of the most mild cases of TS as they are often not present.  Tics have ranged from heavy blinking, to a little grunt in the throat.  The tics typically flair up when I am extremely stressed, tired or inebriated, rarely lasting longer than a week, often 48 hours.  Sleep, a relaxing weekend often does the trick just fine.  For some reason it’s just taking me a bit longer this time round than usual to get over it.

So please bear with me, feel free to point it out, have a little fun with it, I don’t mind, just don’t think I’m some crazy weirdo.  And remember, at least I’ve got a Golden Ticket

Ever since I was a little kid I always enjoyed raiding the supplies closet at my dad’s engineering firm and stealing the super expensive (as in like <$8) .05 mechanical pencils. I remember my mom would always get upset with me because I would press down to hard and break the lead.

Well now I am all grown up, and I still break lead like Evel Knievel broke bones. At least my employer provides me with unlimited refills.

The point is, I love using 0.5 mechanical pencils, they bring joy to my every day life.

So Marta is changing the Yellow line to the Gold line to help ease relations with the Asian community as reported today by the AJC.  I can’t begin to explain how pissed off I get when I hear about stuff like this.  Get over it, I am sure it was not intentional and as my mom would say, your making a mountain of a mole hill.  If the Asian community can be upset over this, here are some other people that can be mad at Marta:

1) Milton County residents – If you know your history of the Atlanta area, you know that Milton County merged with Fulton County in 1932 to save it from bankruptcy during the Great Depression.  As an individual who lives in former Milton County, I am personally insulted that MARTA still considers my community to be a poor, fiscally irresponsible part of the community and named our rail service the red line.

2)  Tree Huggers – To save money I have no doubt that Marta spent a significant sum of money to print rail maps in bulk.  These not only include the maps inside the trains, but pamphlets which can be found on any bus or train operated by Marta.  How many trees are we wasting here?

3)  Tax Payers – For the same reasons as above; not to mention the numerous man hours spent to re-render, re-draw, and put up these new posters, pamphlets and web based maps.  Last I checked, the Center for Pan Asian Community Services was not willing to flip the bill for this.  But again, what’s $10,000.00 for a government authority that stands to lose $1,200,000,000.00 over the next 10 years.

4)  The Asian community at Helen Kim, director of advocacy and education at the Center for Pan Asian Community Services; the tip of the spear in this push.  Though Kim may feel violated by the naming of the yellow line, an unforeseen result is the national publicity which helps educate people, whom may already not know, that yellow is a derogatory term towards Asians; not to mention that they all look like a bunch of whiney bitches.  I have the feeling that most people in the Asian community never read into this matter till someone brought it to their attention; then again, I’m not Asian, and I don’t let matters like this bother me.

5) Black people – the AJC.com article explained how MARTA CEO Beverly Scott actually went as far as to find this “matter” necessary to bring up the Atlanta Civil Rights Movement.  Yeah, right; I did not see 750 Asians thrown in jail over this.