2 1/2 Weeks in the Life - Busy busy busy busy....

My my it's been a long time.

Hope all of you are doing well, and I'm sure you are.

So what's new?

Here's what's new....

Well, the last couple of weeks have been a blur. We'll start with my sister.

So my sister has been with her fiancee Peter for some time, which may or may not have alot to do with their son Brandon, who was born about 3 and a half years ago. Together they've joined families, both having children from previous marriages, and now all of them reside happily in Roswell. And after 4 happy years together, my sister decided to make an honest man out of Peter. So the wedding was set for Sunday the 14th of June.

In addition, they decided to utilize my brother's services as well.

As you may or may not recall, when Crystal and I tied the knot three years ago, we had my brother ordained so he could perform the ceremony. I had already chosen my best man, but had wanted my brother to have as important a role as possible, so it was a thoughtful way to include him in the wedding without relegating him to usher or some other nonsense. So the 'no brainer' answer was to have him ordained online, which we did. So they flew him down from Hawaii to visit and perform the ceremony.

Of course, as life would have it, my last concert with the Juarez Symphony took place as well in the same week. Originally planned for Saturday the 13th, the concert was moved to the 14th, overlapping my sister's wedding. As much as I would have liked to skip the concert and attend the wedding, it was too much of a double whammy to miss out on the extra money (i.e. spend money to be at the wedding and lose money by not playing the concert). So we split the difference and I played the concert while Crystal and Caitlyn attended the wedding. More on that later.

So all week long it was your basic wash, rinse, repeat with work and symphony rehearsals.

Thursday (6/11), my brother flew into El Paso from Hawaii. I took some time off from work and we all went out to The Olive Garden for dinner in El Paso, and everyone went their separate ways (Crystal and Caitlyn to Las Cruces, my parents and Chris to Alamogordo, and me to my rehearsal in El Paso).

My sister's wedding took place in Ruidoso, where her and Peter had reserved a hall specifically for such occasions. One of those nice, all inclusive package type deals where one price covered food, decoration, music, libation, etc. The whole family, sans yours truly, travelled up to Ruidoso on Saturday to check into the hotel and unwind for a bit. Meanwhile, we were in Cruces doing whole lot of nothing.

On Sunday, Crystal and I parted ways as she left to Ruidoso with the baby, and I left for my morning rehearsal in Mexico. I was in it for the long haul, as the morning rehearsal went from 10am to 1pm and the concert started at 6pm, so there was no sense in enduring the wait to travel back to El Paso for the afternoon. So I stayed in Juarez for the whole day, just hanging out at the concert hall playing the DS. On the plus side, I did complete the New Super Mario Bros. , so hooray me.

This time around we were playing Donizetti's "Elixir of Love", which is really a great opera if you have a chance to see it. Take your basic love triangle, toss in a travelling salesman with a magic elixir, add a pinch of coincidence, and BAM! Great music, one really great famous tenor aria (Una Furtiva Lagrima), and some comedy to boot.

But I digress...

So Crystal drives up to Ruidoso to meet up with my parents and my brother. Once she arrived everyone started getting ready for the afternoon. As with most weddings, there was the usual catastrophic event, as my sister's hairdresser failed to show up. Some rainfall as well moved the locale from the outdoors to the indoors. But in spite of some delays, everyone arrived safely and the wedding went swimmingly, much to the delight of all in attendance. I've only seen pictures, but it all looked beautiful, and I'll get some online eventually (about as fast as I've gotten Caitlyn's pictures up).

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, I finished up the opera around nine and promptly headed up to Ruidoso. The bridge back to the states only had about a 30 minute wait, due the the new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requiring everyone from the US to have a passport or passport ID, plus they're still killing people pretty regularly down there so the Mexican army is everywhere. All in all, if I didn't have to be there, it would probably discourage any recreational travel there on my part. Of course I've been procrastinating so I didn't have the necessary documentation (just my driver's license and birth certificate), so I got a stern talking to both on Sunday and after Saturday night's rehearsal. No worries though, because I'm not headed back that way until September, leaving me plenty of time to obtain a slick new passport ID.

So I haul ass all the way up to Ruidoso and get there around midnight. I've missed the whole wedding, but I'm still in time to spend some time with the family before everyone falls asleep. The following morning we all had breakfast and everyone parted ways again after a nice morning swim. Nancy and Peter left for their honeymoon in San Antonio, and the rest of us drove back to my parent's house in Alamogordo. We spent the day there relaxing and then left later that evening back to Las Cruces, and brought my brother along.

Back home, we picked up some cerveza, some food from Sonic™ (I know it sound's weird, but they don't have them in Hawaii), kicked off our shoes, and relaxed.

Tuesday morning we slept in, then hit up Santa Fe Grill for some Breakfast Dream's (egg, green chile, cheese, potato, and your choice of meat - our's being chorizo). We went to Mesilla to shop the afternoon away, as my brother picked up some gifts for the return trip home. That evening we went to Si Señor's for dinner and margaritas, then it was back to Alamogordo to hang out with my parents the night before my brother was flying back to Hawaii.

Wednesday morning (6/17), we all had breakfast and then high tailed it to El Paso once more to deliver my brother back into Hawaii's open arms. It was quite the caravan, as my mother and father packed in all my sister's kids and my brother rode with Crystal, Caitlyn and I. We had some coffee at the Starbucks™ in the airport, gave him one last round of special-ed-sized hugs, and watched his plane take off (albeit, after waiting forever thanks to "security").

My parents took the kids over to Ft. Bliss to do some shopping at the PX there, while Crystal, Caitlyn and I travelled back to Las Cruces to wind down. We were all feeling a bit under the weather, so we arrived home and promptly slept the rest of the day away.

Since then, back to work as usual... wash, rinse, repeat.

Friday (6/19) was Crystal's 25th birthday. We celebrated by going to Peter Piper Pizza for her niece's birthday party... yay. But no, really, we'll find a way to make it special, just as soon as she finds something she wants so we can buy it as her gift (that's just the way it seems to work with us).

Saturday we went to the mall and shopped for Father's Day for her dad and my dad. We ran into some friends at JCPenney whom we haven't seen in awhile, and were invited to hang out with them that evening, which we did. Just drinking some beers and catching up on old times.

Sunday, of course, was Father's Day. We all slept in, Caitlyn and I especially, and left the house at about noonish to pick up some desserts for our visit with Crystal's grandfather. We spent a couple of hours out that way than returned to town and went by her dad's house to give him his gift. After relaxing for a short while, it was off again to Alamogordo to meet up with my parents and give my father his gift. We were able to see Nancy, Peter, and the kids once more, as they returned from their honeymoon over the weekend and were in town to pick up their kids and visit for Father's Day as well. Finally, it was one last long drive back to Las Cruces, and our cozy beds.

So yeah, there ya go. There's the past couple of weeks in a nut shell.

Hope life finds you well!

Jimmy

P.S. 3 years today!

Being married that is...

Video of the Day - Literal Translations

Initially, I didn't give this video much of a chance.

For one, I'm not the biggest "Total Eclipse of the Heart" fan.

For another, I'm not a Bonnie Tyler fan by any stretch of the imagination.

Bonnie Tyler is the Annie Lennox of Roxettes.

Just had to get that off of my head.

However, this clip takes her video for the song and details exactly what's happening as it progresses. Come to think of it, I've never given much thought to music videos like this, for good reason, as there's not much substance to them. However, there's a shitload of humor in those quick scenes we normally let pass freely from our short term memory to oblivion.

Have a look.

I hope that was as enlightening an experience for you as it was for me.

Have a great day,

Jimmy

A Week in the Life 23 - New Babies

Ahh, nice to finally have some time on the ol' blog.

Been busy, mostly with work. It's just life. I come to work, go home, then it's right to Caitlyn. And can you blame me? Didn't think so. Just something about walking through the door and the way her face lights up when she sees me. There's nothing on the planet more important than that, not even computers.

Speaking of computers, spent the last week or so putting together my latest model, in case you're wondering why I haven't updated. It's been about 5 years since I built my last computer, and it's served me well. Some minor upgrades every now and again like a new hard drive, more RAM, or a new video card helped me stretch the life on her as best I could. But no matter how you slice it, I'm long overdue for some modern computing power.

Besides, you can only make games look so good with an AGP slot. Yeah that's right, an AGP slot.

Bonus nerd points if you laughed at that, double it if you laughed mockingly.

Anyway, Angry Beaver IV consists of a Phenom Quad Core Processor, 4 Gigs of Corsair RAM, a BGF Geforce 8800GTS OC, 600W Power Supply in an Antec 300 Mini Tower, 2 640GB Hard Drives in a RAID 1 configuration, a ZBoard Merc, a Razer Diamondback, and a set of Logitech Z4's rounds out the peripherals.

Still unsure whether to run Vista, XP Pro, or the Windows 7 release candidate, but I'll figure that out soon enough.

In the meantime you'll be hard pressed to find a way to pry me from my computer. Unless you're Caitlyn, in which case it's ridiculously easy.

Of course, as you all know (those of you that care about these sorts of things) Chad and Amy welcomed a new addition to their family. Margarita Jean is the newest addition to the clan and we can't wait to meet her. DC has jumped into the top 3 on the list of places we're looking to travel to over the next year.

Congrats you two, and welcome to the club!

FYI, they really do grow up too fast. No matter how many times people have told me (hundreds) it's still faster than I ever imagined.

Enjoy it!

So this week nothing amazing, which is as it should be. NBA Finals are on, so I'll tune into that. Just watched the Magic get their asses handed to them last night so I'm hoping they can exact some revenge on that date rapist Kobe Bryant.

Anyway, next week has much more in store. I do promise to post more. Elwood's been lax so for some reason I've felt like it gives me the right to do the same.

But again, can you blame me? New computer people! I'm enjoying the electronic eye candy that is my new self-built PC. It's just fun.

Some babies are flesh and blood, other babies are electronic boxes that whisk me away to the magical world of whimsy known as the Internet. Either way they both took a substantial contribution from me (maybe not that big a contribution on the former).

More to come!

Jimmy

A Week in the Life 22 - The Story So Far

Ahh, welcome back friends!

Ok here goes.

I applied for a timekeeping position at work a while back. The position didn't necessarily offer more in terms of pay, but it's a back office job which would alleviate my time on the phone processing claims. In addition, it didn't require any weekend work.

So I went ahead and put my name in the hat. I really liked the idea of having a job with weekends off, and there's something to be said for not spending all day on the phone filing insurance claims. It's not a bad job by any means, but it can affect your mood depending on the severity of the claim (i.e. fatalities), or the demeanor of the caller (i.e. total asshole).

So, I was pulled from my desk last Monday the 11th. I had previously sat down with management to discuss the ins and outs of the position a couple of times before, but they went ahead and let me know that I was their second choice. I really had no preference one way or the other, because in this day and age a job's a job, so I returned to my desk to finish out my day.

A couple hours later I was pulled from my desk a second time. This time I was informed that the person chosen for the position had declined, meaning the position was mine for the taking. So as of last Monday I'm the new timekeeper... hooray me. Since then I've been busy training for the job, and my schedule has been shifted to overlap the person moving out of the position. So it's been a busy week and I apologize for my absence, but things are returning to normal so full steam ahead.

Now my day consists of adjusting work schedules, keeping track of employee's missed time, and making sure people get paid correctly for overtime, vacation time, bereavement, etc. It's a whole lot of numbers to crunch working with 200+ employees, but it's right up my alley and I'm enjoying it a great deal.

____________________________________________________________________

In addition, I had the pleasure of spending some time with my old friend Liz Gaylor. Liz was the bees knees of viola players when we played together both at Alamogordo High School and for a time in the Las Cruces Symphony before she moved on to bigger and better things. Through the magic that is Facebook we were able to reconnect, providing us an opportunity to catch up on lost time.

Saturday I played with the New Horizons Orchestra. New Horizons is an organization which oversees the forming of community music groups to cater to adults and senior citizens whom are just learning a new instrument, or may have played before but have been inactive for some time. The purpose is to provide, you guessed it, new horizons for those local educators, casual musicians, would be musicians, and all those who love playing music but never get the chance.

I must say I had a great deal of fun playing with the group. There's something to be said for playing music for the sake of playing music. It has a certain fulfilling quality you don't find when you're playing professionally. Don't get me wrong, I love that I am able to perform at a level that makes people think they have to pay me, but there's a certain gratitude people have for volunteer work that you simply will not find anywhere else. I guess you could say I'm pro pro bono, and I look forward to playing with the group again whenever I'm available.

So, in grand coincidental style, it turns out that Liz's mother performs as the principal flautist with the New Horizons Orchestra, which worked out great in terms of finding a time to get together for a beer. I must say for the record that she hasn't aged a day since we were in high school (a strange phenomenon amongst AHS alumni). We headed over to Farley's for a pitcher of Dos Equis Lager, and Crystal and Caitlyn met us there to shoot the breeze.

On Sunday, the family and I went down to El Paso for the day. Crystal was shopping for a dress to wear to my sister's upcoming wedding, and I was searching for some top notch Chinese buffet action. We were both successful. In addition, we procured some knockoff shades, so when you see Crystal rocking her Coach and Chanel sunglasses, make sure you envy her. But really, it's pretty fucking bright over here, so we bought the first sunglasses we could find. In the evening, Liz and her mother came by the house for a quick final visit before she left back to Fort Collins on Monday.

All in all, a very busy week, and a whole lot of fun.

So, this week I'll be adjusting to my preferred sleeping schedule of staying up late and waking up not as early. Can't wait for the weekend and the drunken stupor that is the Southern New Mexico Wine Festival. Should be, again, a great deal of fun.

Hope you all have a wonderful week and nice talking to you again.

Jimmy

P.S. Thanks for the gas!! (You know who you are.)

Basketball Clones

A Week in the Life 21 - Coming Soon!

Ahh, this week has been crazy.

I'd love to tell you all about it but it just so happens that it's crazy enough for me to not have the time to do just that.

Suffice it to say that the week has been loaded with some adjustments at work, some good movies, and hopefully some time with old friends (pending).

So I'll not keep you from your busy day, but I did want to let you know I'll get to this week's update sooner than later.

And as always, thanks for your time.
Jimmy

On Motherhood

Well, it's that time of year again. Mother's Day may just be an over commercialized way to sell flowers and cards full of cheesy prose, but it does remind us to pause and give thought concerning where we came from.

"Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope
outlives them all." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

For all intents and purposes, your mother is singlehandedly responsible for your existence. Call it a blessing or call it biology, either way we all popped out of someone else's torso. Like some strange, gooey Matryoshka doll, we all emerged with the world our oyster. In and of itself, that's quite an accomplishment.

"My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother.
I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical
education I received from her." -- George Washington

The first five years are a blur. None of us remember much from our birth years. Maybe a bad dream, a birthday, or that moment where we barely opened our eyes as our father's carried us off to bed. Yet for our parents those years hold the most valuable memories. Memories of us from a time when we were perfect, innocent, and needed them the most.

" Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no
chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? — It is you, my mother."--
Thomas Carlyle

Now, our lives are our own. We make our choices. Some stayed, some left. Many of us, myself included, have families of our own. Our lives branch out infinitely, splitting our focus and our priorities to ensure continued growth. We try our best to make sure we work toward a positive future, while not relegating our past to time forgotten. Trying to remember family and old friends, while raising families and making new friends, is never an easy thing.

"I think my life began with waking up and loving my mother's face."-- George
Eliot

All the while, our mother's one focus in life was to ensure that our happiness in all things preceded her own. Even in the countless situations where she knew the outcome of our naivety, she watched knowingly, giving us the chance to learn from our mistakes.

"Making the decision to have a child-it's momentous. It is to decide forever to
have your heart go walking around outside your body." --Elizabeth Stone

Truth be told, they aren't always perfect. I've lost many a fight to the trump card of motherhood, many a fight that under any other circumstances I would win. At the end of the day there are few things I wouldn't do once she plays the mother card.

"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother." -- Lin Yutang

Now some may not fall so easily in to this honored category. Some may be unknown to us, some have passed, and some seem like they're out to ruin our lives. But love or hate, you are always hard pressed to identify someone in your life who has more to do with who you are than your mother, whether because of her or in spite of her.

"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother."-- Abraham Lincoln

So thanks Mom, and thanks to all mothers. Without you there would be no me. And since I'm pretty fond of this existence, I owe you quite a bit. Enjoy your day, it's the least we can do.

Sorry about the morning sickness,
Jimmy

The Weekend Cometh

Well, here we go into another weekend. After work today it's off to the house for some much needed family time. Tomorrow it's more of the same as I return to work a half a day or so, since I took Wednesday off for those Children's Concerts and to run my laundry list of errands. After work I'm off to play with the LCSO for the family concerts, basically the same as the Children's Concerts but open to the public with cheap tickets. Prior to the concert we'll do a petting zoo for instruments, where the kids and hold and play with the instruments. No playing the wind instruments this year due to Porkatosis spreading around, but it's still a great way for the kids to interact with the instruments and ensures we'll have replacements someday when we go to that big rehearsal in the sky.

Tomorrow night, a whole lot of nothing.

Sunday of course is Mother's Day. So I'll save my sappy emotional material until then. Plans are take out mom and dad to see Star Trek, while Crystal and Caitlyn head over to her grandmother's house to celebrate there. We'll meet up in the middle, do some dinner, and then probably sit around, sip on some coffee, and shoot the shit. Maybe on Saturday I can do something for Crystal, since Sunday is already pretty full with family. I'm not sure what yet, but I'll think of something.

The rest of the month is shaping up to be rather uneventful. Concerts with the Juarez Symphony have been shifted to June due to Mad Sow Disease, so my workload has shifted a bit. We'll probably hit up the Southern New Mexico Wine Festival over Memorial Day weekend. I'll have a 3 day weekend so it should be a whole lot of fun. Let me know if you need me to ship you over a bottle or two of New Mexico's finest. Please abstain if expecting, you know who you are.

More to come,

Jimmy

A Week in the Life 20 - A Case of the Mondays

Another weekend come and another exciting week ahead. Today is ho hum. It's Monday and I'm a bit on the sleepy side, but I'll get to that later.

While we're on tangents here, do you ever look ahead at your week and try to pinpoint chunks of time when you might be able to catch up on sleep? I see the future and little lines shoot out at specific moments like connecting stars in a constellation, mapping my zzzz's like some distant cosmic event. I see naps this evening as a possibility, think Wednesday afternoon perhaps, maybe Thursday night... who knows.


But back to reality, I'm sure none of us really gets as much sleep as we'd like. That's what death is for. Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have.

Last weekend was the final season subscription concert for the Las Cruces Symphony. That officially marks the end of my fourteenth season with the Symphony. This week we'll be playing our Children / Family concerts. We round up all the 5th graders from all of Las Cruces' elementary schools on Wednesday morning, bus them in, and play three concerts in a row. It's a great opportunity for us to reach out to the community and provides some insight for those children who are about to undertake an instrument of their own. On Saturday we play a family concert at 3pm as well. Families can bring their children for the concert and the kids can hold and see all the instruments to get a better feel for them.

This weekend also marks the release of the revamped Star Trek franchise. On Sunday I'll be taking my parents out to see the movie. It is a fine coincidence that Sunday is Mother's Day, as my mother is a huge Star Trek buff so it's an easy gift.

At some point this week I'll finish up my online class, get an oil change, get a haircut, and apply for a Passport card to enable travel to Mexico come June. Somewhere in between I'll be hanging out with Caitlyn and Crystal, watching the NBA playoffs, finishing Children's Week, and hopefully adding a couple of posts.


Busy busy busy.


Oh yeah.. I said I'd get back to the "I'm sleepy" thing later. So, um, yeah. I'm sleepy.


So have a great week, and best of luck in all your endeavours.
Jimmy

P.S. Still not dead of swine flu, and still eating bacon like it's breathing air.

WTF 15 - Swine Flu Part 2

Ahh, nothing quite like the breakdown of civilized society. As Porkatosis continues to ravage the western hemisphere, 9/11 style paranoia again graces the streets of America. Nothing sets you up for the 4th of July like a scared American ready to shut down his or her borders to protect themselves from dark people.

Meanwhile, "Patient Zero," as he is lovingly known, sits at home in La Gloria, Mexico, unaware of his inevitable impact on Ben and Jerry's stock portfolio.

In the meantime, even I must admit that the probability of a swine flu outbreak has increased my hermit-tude a little. Something about having a 6-month old child that forces you to be concerned about things you once brushed aside as mere inconveniences.

I'm just saying that you won't find me throwing Caitlyn into a crowd of sneezing children anytime soon. I might have considered it in the past to test her immune system, but I'll probably just keep her home and watch Spongebob. She'll thank me later.

Fortunately, swine flu has managed to take our minds off of the economy for awhile. Personally I'm moving my investments over to pharmaceuticals and surgical masks and away from pork futures, it just seems like the right thing to do.

In other good news, pork spare ribs are buy 1 get 2 free at Albertson's. I'm ready for the 'itis motherfathers! Nothing says fight back like three juicy racks of slow roasted pork ribs slathered in sauce. Hell yeah!

So yeah, fight back by eating pork!

The more we eat = the fewer there are to make out with = swine flu free America.

Later on today I'll be watching Fox News, only to see how they can spin this into somehow being the fault of Barack Obama. My guesses for their reasons why:

• Higher taxes take your money preventing you from buying flu remedies.


• A soft stance on border protection allowed swine flu to cross over unchecked, where it has induced illness and stolen jobs from hardworking Americans.


• Patient Zero, Edgar Hernandez, hails from Mexico, but only recently moved there. He is originally from a pig farm in Portugal where he once herded pigs with his pet dog. Upon further investigation it has been determined that his herding dog was in fact a recently born Portuguese Water Dog adopted by ... you guessed it... Barack Obama. Swine flu came not from Mexico, but straight from the First Dog.


• Patient zero was released from Guantanamo Bay.


• Swine flu backwards is Ulfeniws, the name of Obama's imaginary childhood friend.

So I'll continue my verbal assault on swine flu unabated. It's kill or be killed at this point my tasty friend.

More to come,

Jimmy