Sunday, February 29, 2004
Fossils On Mars
I have a buyer for my house. I've signed the agreement, but he has a ten day option period where he can back out in case his inspector finds something wrong with it. Please, please, knock on wood (my head) don't let this fall through. If all goes well, we close on the 19th.
The Mars rovers are doing fantastic and I visit the site at least once a day to see what their latest adventures are. Well, adventure is a strong word for it. Everything happens so slow. They drive in a straight line then prepare for the next day. They move their tools in position and then wait for the next day. They grind a rock and then wait for the next day. Come on, JPL, pick up the pace a bit, will ya?
And you know, the one thing we ALL want is for the rovers to find a fossil. Where's all the fossils? Come on, something ... anything. Petrified wood. Petrified lichen. Anything! We're not asking for a dinosaur here. Just a taste, just a hint. Some tantalizing bit to galvanize humanity into building a spaceship and flying out there personally.
Ah well, enough rambling. I'm off to go do some more work on the old house.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Jerry Gone Missing
Something funny happened today at work. I told my boss I was leaving for a late lunch, so that I could go get my kid from school. Well, he didn't hear me, and we had a fire in the plant. Smoke, flames, and fire trucks, and everyone outside in their evacuation areas, and they did a head count to make sure everyone was safe.
Oh no, Jerry wasn't safe, he was missing!
So the entire time I was gone, people were frantically searching for me, afraid the fire had burned me to a crisp. I came back and saw the fire trucks, and said, "Hey, what's with the fire trucks?"
"There you are!" Everyone was yelling it. I was in trouble. "Where were you!?!"
Um... uh... Uh-oh. I was, ah ... yeah. Taking a late lunch I probably wasn't really supposed to take. Ahem.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
The Zoloft Starts To Work...
Finally got DSL in the apartment but I can't use it yet because the DSL kit they sent is sitting in the manager's office, which is closed. I'm on a dial-up modem right now. Man, I forgot how slow it could be. You don't surf the 'net on a dial-up modem, you saunter through it.
Looks like I'll be heavily tied up through the rest of this week working on the old house. Lots of cleaning, sorting, storing, and selling to do. I may have to take off more time from work. I'll be SO GLAD when it's over.
It's after 1:30 AM as I type this. I couldn't sleep so I thought I might as well get online and make a journal entry. Nothing much going on except for the move. Pulled my kid out of her old school today, and am putting her into the new one tomorrow. Hope I'll be awake for it.
I feel much better being less than 5 minutes away from her during the day, instead of two towns away.
Oh, and I should mention, I think the Zoloft is kicking in. Either that or I'm feeling better because I'm taking active control over my situation. Or both.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Thanks To Bill
A really big...
No, a really, really big...
No, a gigantic, huge, mammoth... BIG ...thank you to Bill for helping me move various large and heavy objects to my apartment today. Thank you, my friend!
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Moving
No DSL in the new apartment yet.
Still moving...
Very busy! Though my daughter and I did make it to ConDFW for a couple hours. Very cool. But, sorry Becky, they didn't have that dragon there.
More updates later...
Thursday, February 19, 2004
New Story Sale
Last night I received an acceptance letter from a magazine called Brutarian Quarterly. They'll be publishing my story Just Dying To Know, which is about a hit man who's obsessed with the afterlife. I'll let everyone know when it actually goes to press. I'm especially pleased with this because it's a pro sale.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
The Great and Mighty Caffeine
9:25 am - I pray to the Great and Mighty Caffeine to give me the boundless energy that I'll need if I'm to accomplish all this endless crap!
Amen.
12:18 pm - I must give the Zoloft time to work ... must give it time ... more time ... suicide is not the answer ... must keep telling myself this...
Got an offer on my house today. A full $20k less than I owe.
I am in a very dark and nihilistic mood at the moment. My coping mechanisms are crumbling. The end seems near.
9:19 pm - Ah yes, there we see ramblings from when I hit a rock-bottom low. It lasted for hours. I almost got up and wandered away from work, just wandered away. I was hoping a car would hit me or a elevator fall on me or something. I'm better now.
We moved more stuff to the apartment tonight. It was fun. My daughter got the bathroom all set up and I stocked the kitchen. The hard part, though, is deciding what to take over, and when. Most of our possessions are not moving, only the stuff we really really need, or really really really want. My goal is to simplify my life. I have to. My mental health depends on it.
I can't wait until this house is cleaned out, sold, and someone else's baby, and all I'm responsible for is rent. Home ownership not my thing.
10:06 pm - Just got off the phone with Becky. We had a very friendly, very honest and open talk. It's official. We've given each other permission to date other people. She's got someone interested in her and if it's right, if he's right for her, she should date him. Her and I will always be best friends. I want her to be happy. I'll feel weird with her seeing someone else, but, hey, this is life. Life is weird.
I'm going to go to bed early in hopes of NOT having to pray once again to the Great and Mighty Caffeine tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
The Real Cuba Libre
2:56 pm - Had a great lunch with Bill today. Chips, salsa, Coke with lime, chicken burrito, and writer's talk. Lots of writers talk. The trouble is, every time Bill and I do this, I don't want to go back to work ... I want to go home and write.
Afterwards I stopped by my new apartment and picked up the keys. Then I wandered around the place and checked it out. My new home. "Home?" Weird. I can say one thing about it: it's very quiet. I hope it stays that way.
From there, it took less than 5 minutes to drive back to work. Less than 3 miles. Now that's a commute I can live with.
4:37 pm - Inspired by my new favorite soft drink, I found this on webtender.com:
The Real Cuba Libre
Ingredients:
1 chunk Ice, preferably crushed
1 Lime, squeezed
8 cl Rum (Havana club)
1 shot Coca-Cola
Mixing instructions:
Sit on ocean side balcony, fill glass with crushed ice, squeeze lime, hold glass up to the sky (best effect during sunset), pour rum up to horizon, add some coke to cover the sky (no overflow), stir smoothly, lean back & ENJOY! Maximum effect with bass heavy dub reggae in the background.
I especially like the part where you "pour rum up to the horizon." If you notice, though, you could only mix this on the western side of a Caribbean island, or on the Pacific Coast.
5:52 pm - Working a bit late tonight to make up for my long lunch. But, man, I am starving. Also sleepy, which is bad. I have a nail in a tire on my van, so I need to fix that, plus fix dinner, eat, and then take the first load over to the new place. Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it.
6:45 pm - I just repaired the flat tire and am now airing it up. So far, so good. There are no soap bubbles burbling out of my repair. I wish, though, that I had a more powerful air compressor. This little rattletrap takes forever. And I'm starving!
11:11 pm - We took our first load to the apartment, and now I'm exhausted. The quiet I observed during the day doesn't apply at night. There's a disadvantage to living under someone else. Clump, clump, clump. *sigh* Oh well, like I said, I'm exhaused. Must sleep now. Sleeeeep...
Diet Coke with Lime
Subject: RE: Coca-Cola Web Form
Date: 2/17/2004, 7:55 AM
From: Coca-Cola Support
To: Jerry J. Davis
Thank you for contacting The Coca-Cola Company, Mr. Davis. We are always thrilled to hear from loyal consumers and are glad that you took the time to share your comments about diet Coke with Lime.
As a consumer-oriented Company, feedback from our consumers is extremely important to us. We certainly appreciate your taking the time to sample the product and share your kind words with us. Comments like yours are a positive reinforcement of the quality and refreshment we work hard to achieve.
Again, we appreciate your loyalty and patronage. If you have additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact us again. Best wishes!
Christine
Industry and Consumer Affairs
The Coca-Cola Company
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry J. Davis
Sent: 2/16/2004 10:43:02 AM
To: "Coca-Cola Support"
Subject: Coca-Cola Web Form
Your new Diet Coke with Lime is the best thing since the first amoeba sloshed out of the ancient ocean and discovered the taste of air. It's like sex on the beach with the entire female cast of Baywatch. It's better than going to a large arena and watching machines crush each other then explode. The taste makes me want to jump and sing and dance the cha-cha.
Could you add some rum to it, though? And not tell anyone?
Sincerely,
Jerry J. Davis
Monday, February 16, 2004
Unpaid Product Endorsement
Today was laundry day. Laundry and sleep, and not much else. Still kinda sick, or maybe depressed ... I am a total lack of motivation. My zoloft isn't airworthy yet.
Unpaid Product Endorsement: I absolutely LOVE the new Diet Coke with Lime! All it needs is a touch of rum.... mmmMMMmmm... RummmMMMmmm. Not that I have any rum, but if I did, it would be perfect. As it is, it almost tastes like the rum is there. Probably because every time I mix Diet Coke with rum, I squeeze a lime into it ... so I'm tricking my brain into thinking I'm drinking alcohol. But... ha! Psych!
My brain doesn't care. It still likes the taste.
Saturday, February 14, 2004
Valentines Snow
2:27 pm - My daughter saw and approved of the apartment, so I signed the lease. We'll start the moving process next Monday. In the meantime we're building snowmen and throwing snowballs. I'm feeling pretty good today.
9:06 pm - Isn't it amazing what lost and forgotten stuff you'll find when you move furniture that's been in the same place for a long time? I just found a $5 bill.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Writing In The Snow
1:50 pm - Went and looked at another apartment during lunch today. Bigger, but still in my price range. Not as nice, but at least it's a two bedroom and it's downstairs. Another plus is that it has a large storage closet. Location not quite as good, but not bad. I think I just found my new home.
This is my second day on Zoloft. Unlike the other drug, I have noticed zero side effects. While legally tripping was fun, it got old fast, and I don't miss it. (I wonder if I would say the same thing about legalized marijuana?)
5:07 pm - Spoke with my kid about the apartment choices. I'm proud of her, she's making some practical decisions. She advised that we go for utility over elegance, and voted for the larger (yet dumpy) apartment. I've decided to sigh the lease ASAP.
A shame, though ... the other one was really nice. I always wanted a place with one of those huge oval bathtubs.
9:02 pm - Somebody ... I'm not saying who ... begged and pleaded to go to all-you-can-eat pizza tonight, and I broke down and took her. But when we got there, and after I paid, she was too ill to eat. Poor girl.
I know this isn't a big deal to you northerners, but it's snowing here tonight. Or at least it's supposed to. We were getting ice pellets on the windshield as we drove home.
11:55 pm - Yup, it's snowing all right. I'm out front right now, blogging in the snow! I better get this Palm Pilot back in the house before the melting snowflakes ruin it.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
My Silvery Zoloft
9:15 am - Blew it this morning. Slept through my alarm. By the time I woke up my kid was so late for school that there was no point in sending her -- she would have been counted absent anyway.
I'm at my doctor's office right now. I just barely made it on time for my appointment. After the appointment and lab tests, my kid and I plan to go apartment hunting. Might as well, as I took the day off from work.
9:30 am - Decongestants = bad. They raise your blood pressure. My doctor's nurse just told me. I'm to take antihistamines and expectorants only.
9:49 am - And then I had to go pee into a paper cup.
9:57 am - And here I am sitting in my van with a 5 week supply of Zoloft. Ah, yes. At least I've heard of this one. Zo-loft. Zo. Loft. Sounds like I'm going for a ride in a peddle-powered airship. "Look! There's Jerry up in his zoloft!" I pause in my peddling, and wave. "Hello down there!" My silvery zoloft is so cool. I'm the envy of all the neighborhood kids.
4:16 pm - Too bad these drugs don't work instantly. My kid and I went apartment hunting and now I'm depressed. I make too much money for the rent-controlled apartments, but only because they won't count all four people I support. I only get credit for whoever will be living in the apartment with me. So it looks like my kid and I will be going from a 2000 sq. ft. house to a 700 sq. ft. single bedroom apartment.
I hope these meds kick in and help me cope. I mean, I'm about at the end of my coping ability.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Today's Metaphysical Question
10:03 am - Is this my life? My choices are either riding this wild emotional roller coaster, or spending my days in a drug-induced zombie state? As you can tell, the mood swings have returned.
My doc tells me that most of my emotional problems stem from me being in a big "between." I know I'm moving but I don't know where or when. I'm married, yet I'm not with my wife, and our future together is unclear. Right now I'm living in between my old life and my new life. Once my new life starts, things will hopefully get better and I won't need drugs.
12:47 pm - Sitting here in the lunch room at work, I realize I had plans to go look at apartments during lunch. "D'oh!"
5:33 pm - I'm about to head home from work. Tomorrow morning I see the doc about the next medication we're going to try. If it weren't for one of my friends telling me that it took several tries to find the meds that worked for him - and he said they were wonderful - I wouldn't be doing this. I want to find my "wonderful pill."
My metaphysical question for today is: "If you have to take a pill everyday to keep you happy ... are you truly happy?"
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words?
If a picture is worth a thousand words... 
This is how I feel today.
Monday, February 09, 2004
We're Doomed
At our local Burger King, you can buy a Whopper hamburger for only 99¢. But, now, they're selling their new "Low-Carb" Whopper for $1.19. It's exactly the same as the 99¢ Whopper, but minus the buns, ketchup, and mayo.
Twenty cents more for them to serve them without buns...
...and people are buying them.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Deepen The Characters (Just A Little)
I must be feeling better, because I've gotten a lot of writing done on "version 2" of my story Daytime For The Dead. Members of my writing group who'd read the original version will not recognize this one. It's totally different.
The problem I'm having is that, with all the things I want to do with the story, it's turning into a novelette. This happens a lot with my writing. It's because I'm really more of a novelist than a short story writer. I'm starting to think that maybe I should just go ahead and start writing novels again.
In the case of this story, it could very easily be turned into a novel. All I'd have to do is deepen the characters a little. Just a little. That's all it would take, and then these characters would write the story for me.
Also, in addition to doing some writing, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. And here's something I want to share with you: the public library system has really come of age. Especially here in Plano. All I have to do is log into their system over the Internet, tell them the book I want, and when it's ready for me to pick up their computer system calls me on the phone and tells me. If they don't have the book, they'll go out and find it. If it's in any library in the state of Texas, they find it and have it sent (with no charge to me) to my local library, and all I have to do is pick it up. And to check it out, I walk up to an autoteller looking machine, put my library card into the scanner, then place my book on the scanner, and BOINK! It's checked out. I get a little receipt and I walk out of the library.
On a nice day, I'll walk to the local library. It's less than a mile away, right along a scenic path beside one of the many creeks that run through town. Plano really is a great place to live.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Dark Alley
I'm still sick. I would have been home sick all week but I couldn't bring myself to use up all my sick time for the year, all at once, in February.
I hate being sick. Why is it that when I'm sick, it seems everyone is sick? I feel responsible somehow. I'm sick, my kid is sick, everyone at work is coughing and sniffling. Even the computers are sick, thanks to the latest round of email bombs, trojans, worms, etc.
To look on the bright side, I've gotten more reading done in the past two weeks than I usually would have done in 6 months.
On the bad side, when I'm sick, I'm very antisocial. Or, perhaps, that's on the good side. Don't want to help spread these germs any further. They must be terminated with extreme prejudice ... just like computer virus writers.
Let's just say I'm not the guy a computer virus writer would want to meet in a dark alley.
Thursday, February 05, 2004
better living through chemicals
I've been sick this week. I even used two of my precious sick days from work to lie around at home, taking flu meds, drinking tea, reading, and playing video games. I made it to work today, finally.
My doctor is now weaning me off my current mind altering drug. She said that since I was only taking 75mg it should not be a problem ... the problems happen when you stop taking the drug after being on 300mg a day, like some of her other patients.
300mg a day! Oh my God. Those people must be living life in a non stop hallucination. Either that, or I'm more sensitive to the drug than other people.
Anyhow, she said I could either swing by and get a lower dosage, or take one every other day, or just stop and see how I feel, and if it gets bad, take one.
So far, I feel like Jerry again, and that feels pretty damn good. It feels like coming back from a surreal vacation that you're glad is over. Next week I'll be in her office talking about the next drug on the list. I'm a bit nervous about it, but hey, this is exploration. I'm searching for better living through chemicals.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
LSD
I've spent almost a month under the influence of Effexor XR.
For me, it's like being on low grade LSD all the time. I've lost my ability to concentrate on anything. I've lost interest in just about everything. I just want to sleep or watch TV or play video games.
This morning I've decided to wean myself off of them and go ask my doctor to try something else.
If they're all like this, though, I'd rather just deal with my natural emotional problems than these weird drug problems.
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