Teresa had to yell at me and remind me that she’s been doing all of the updates recently and that I’ve been slacking. Well, here I am finally and I have just been running at top speed for the last three weeks. I was working on the new project at work and putting in early mornings and late nights, almost all of it outside and on an aerial lift. After having the wind in my face all day I was just too tired to even open up the computer at night.
This week was tower climbing safety in Norfolk and I was hoping that this week would be slow so that I could get caught up but it never turned out that way because all of the guys wanted to go out to dinner and hang out every night. It’s good to be able to put faces to these names I deal with on the phone and now we’ve all been out drinking together. What a mess this week was.
One of the techs I was working with last week was wondering why I was scheduled for a whole week on this class because his training was a single 8-hour day. I didn’t find out until I got up here that this was not only a climbing/safety class but also an instructor certification. I am now qualified (and expected) to teach other techs the one day class. This will work out just fine if I am dealing with a single tech or a few techs I already know but to stand up in front of a class…? I just don’t like it. I had to come up to the podium and teach for a few minutes and I felt just like time stood still. I could feel my insides shaking and I remember the time I spoke to the School Board. I was a sweaty, nervous wreck. The rest of the class said I was a natural and that I was really easy to follow but all I heard inside my own head was the banging and clattering mumblings of a lunatic. I hate public speaking. And now they want me to teach classes? Yuck!
The climbing part of the class was great. The safety gear really sticks in your head when you realize you might have to climb a 300′ tower and that if you don’t know what you’re doing you could die. Death is an awesome motivator. All of our training was done on a 60′ tower and even then most of it was only half way up. Thirty feet looks a lot different from the ground than when you are walking an I-beam. We practiced with all the equipment and everyone got a chance to rescue and be the victim. Hanging in a harness is a lot less comfortable than it sounds but I’m sure it’s a lot more comfortable than coming to a stop after a sixty foot free-fall. Here are a couple of pictures of what I’ve been up to these last few weeks.
A BSCOD in the airport, I couldn’t resist. TSA security came over to me and scolded me. They said that I couldn’t take a picture of any airport information screens. They were asking for my camera and all but I told her I was taking a picture of the mermaid statue next to it and she allowed me to go on about my business. The force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded…
Well, I’m trying to get caught up. I have a whole bunch of movies I’ve watched that I haven’t written up yet. I’ll try to finish writing them up while I’m sitting here in the airport. As soon as I get home I’m going to sleep and bright and early tomorrow we’ll be in the car driving up to Pennsylvania. It doesn’t look like I’ll get any break any time soon. No rest for the wicked, only the good die young and all of that…
So, unless something drastic changes I probably won’t update again until close to New Years. In the mean time, Merry Christmas to you all. Some people are confused as to why I would say “Merry Christmas” being non-christian and all. I am more of a Yule person but I don’t shy away from the Christmas trappings. In fact, the more people try to eliminate it, the more I gravitate back toward it.
First off, it’s what I grew up on and in my nostalgic little head I still experience the joys of my childhood Christmas. I say “Merry Christmas” to you and in my head I’m feeling the freezing cold of snow on my nose as I sled down water-tower hill. I’m stripping off a wet snowsuit as my mother hands me cocoa with a candy cane melting in it while Bing Crosby sings in the background about how to say Merry Christmas in Hawaii. These are the thoughts in my head associated with those words. I thank the gods that I have never heard those words and conjured up a scene of an unwed teenager giving birth in a filthy donkey stall.
Secondly, I tell them that there is so little religion left in Christmas that I don’t think anyone should be upset at those simple words. I say them and hear them as the basic well-wishing it was intended for. There hasn’t been anything religious about those words in years.
Ok, allowing for religion, the Christian account of the birth of Christ is a pretty standard myth. It was told long before the time of the Jews and I suspect that it will outlive Christianity as well. The darkest time of the year has broken and we celebrate the coming of the sun. The rebirth of the sun/son is almost universal in almost every religion. If you allow for cultural differences and for religious myths, the truth is that it is a dark and desolate time of the year and people are happy to have something to look forward to. Spring.
And most of this is a moot point anyway. Food is available every month of the year. We’re not farmers sitting in the dark and hoping our last harvest is enough to get us through the winter. We’re not primitive peoples hoping the fire stays lit through the winter storms. We have flashlights and generators. The meaning of Christmas has been rendered obsolete by technology and science. We have overcome and adapted to the planet’s seasons. We understand things now. Mithras, Demeter/Persephone, Christ… all of them take a back seat to the twenty-three and a half degree tilt.
So if someone says “Merry Christmas” to you smile and inwardly translate it any way you wish. If they were sincerely wishing you well, you shouldn’t be offended. If they were saying it out of habit, they were simply victims of the latest meaning of Christmas; Consumerism. Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City, Apple and all the rest of them, they say Merry Christmas to you because they want you to buy their goods. If you don’t go out there and purchase a bunch of crap you don’t need then how will these mega-stores make their bottom line. You have to get in the TRUE spirit of the season, “GIMME GIMME GIMME!”.
I speak from experience and from guilt. For years we were the worst offenders. The money we wasted on Christmas should have been cut down to a manageable amount. But we used to go all out and in the recent years we have been making up for that difference. We’ve been caught short at the end of each year for a while now and this year it is the worst. With Becca’s trips, the house repairs and the new house on the way, we’re dead broke. It’s December 20th and we haven’t even bought Becca anything yet. This trip to Pennsylvania is the only present Teresa is getting and that’s only because I made some overtime the last few weeks. Why do I relate all of this here? To show how much guilt I am feeling for not joining into the consumer fray. I am a bad person because I can’t buy presents for the people I love. I have fallen under the spell of the mega-companies and I feel like shit because I’m not buying thousands of dollars worth of stuff. I WANT to but I just can’t. So I’m a bad man.
See how these companies have run the spirituality out of Christmas? Am I focusing on good cheer and the coming of the new year? No, I’m focusing on how I’m not a good consumer. I’m not participating in making this planet the third mall from the sun. I’m not out there going into credit debt in order to make myself feel good by purchasing things I can’t afford. How can I live with the fact that I don’t have a new 160G iPod or the latest gadgets available from Best-Buy?
In truth I love a lot of you reading this. I really wish I could buy those things for you. I have ideas of what I’d get each and every one of you. But this year I’m going to have to scrounge for gas money to get us home. This year I’m making the trip a present because in my strange fucked-up head, Teresa getting to see her family for Christmas is worth so much more than me getting a Tivo. And for whatever it’s worth, however you’ll take it, Merry Christmas.
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