Autumn is finally here in all of its glory and its really cold winds are on the way.  We have been having flooding in the north of the state as I am sure you know from the news, and the water is on its way down south.  I feel for the people in north Georgia and know what they are going through as we in the south coastal area had similar flooding earlier this year.  One good thing about all this rain is that the water table will be back up close to normal and the draught that has been plaguing the state looks to end.

Want more good news Georgia?  We are expected to have a really, really cold wet winter with some places having unheard of snowfall.  I can image trying to go to work and passing over the five bridges between my house and my job, all of which ice over in the winter with little provocation.

Now for the list of things to do this Autumn to prepare for winter:

• cut and split firewood
• clean fireplace
• trim the weeds around the house and the wood
• cut and split more firewood
• winterize the car
• cut and split firewood (I have a lot of wood to cut and split)
• get out the winter clothes
• run around naked outside for the last time this year
• freak out my neighbors when they see me running around naked
• give my neighbors anti-nausea medicine for seeing me run around naked
• make more lists
• cut yet more firewood

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Finding content to write about each day is a difficult task, especially when you don’t have a whole lot going on in your life.  Writing the content is easy.  Once I start on a subject I can usually write until the cows come home.  Sure, it may not be anything anyone in her/his right mind would want to read (I have been known to cause insanity in others with my prose), but when I get started, the words just jump onto the page.  I don’t even think the keyboard even exists at those moments of clarity about writing.  I have found myself at times going on and on about really nothing of importance and filling an entire page with nothing but dribble.  Getting started is the hardest part, but woe is you when I do get started.  Sentence after sentence of either brilliant insight, funny remarks, or stupid rantings just flows from me on the keyboard.  But don’t distract me when I’m writing.  It doesn’t take much to get me off track or to lose my train of thought and once that happens it is like a giant boulder stopping for school kids (yes, boulders have kids too so they stop for school kids).

It is just that content is hard.

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Random thoughts running through my head, not necessarily good ones…

• Bananas should be opened from the bottom not from the top where it attaches to other bananas.  See this! I tried it and it works.
• Hollywood ran out of ideas long before the current crop of movies.  Just look at some of the movies that were made in the early days of film.  Some movies were “re-imaged” and “rebooted” within months of each other.
• Water is wet people!  I know this is a shock to some of you, but yes, you get wet when you get hit with water.  Another news flash, rain is water. Don’t even ask why I mention this.
• Cats are like some people when it comes to the wetness of water.  No matter how many times you stick your paw in the water, it will still be wet.
• Whoever thought of putting laptop hard drives in cases and selling them as portable storage devices was a genius.  Dude, you don’t know how much I appreciate them.  Those and the portable flash drives.
• How does John know I am on Facebook?  And which John is it?  Or is it a generic John that cruises for prostitutes?
• “Work is hard.”  No kidding, if it was easy it wouldn’t be called work now would it.  Same goes for homework.

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The local school starts back tomorrow with the looming specter of furloughs hanging over the teachers’ heads.  It is hard enough knowing that we may have to be furloughed three consecutive days, I can imagine how hard it is for the teachers in grade school that already know it is coming with their meager paychecks getting smaller as a result.  Having to teach with the financial worries and the possibility of even more furloughs in the future is not beneficial to the learning environment and the kids will suffer for it.  Hopefully this financial crisis will start to turn the corner soon and state revenue will start to pick up.

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I laughed at the gods of weather today and openly defied the obvious signs of heavy rain and went back to town this afternoon (my wife neglected to me her half of the shopping list), mocking the heavy dark clouds and the winds.  “Blow winds with all your might,” I said.  “Dark clouds, make the day a black as pitch with your blocking of the sun’s rays,” I bellowed, laughing hysterically and getting really strange looks from passers-by.  “You will not fool me again, you hussy of weather!”

My daughter and I got to town with the clouds getting darker and small drops of water falling gently.  “Is that all you got,” I mocked.  While inside we could hear the rain pounding on the roof of the building.  The parking lot was drenched in water, yet the rain had ended. “Missed me, missed me, nana-a-booboo,” I taunted.

A little splattering of rain hit my car, I was not impressed.  I went out to get some fast food before heading home.  This little sprinkle is nothing, a pittance.

On our way home, the road disappears in a white sheet of water.  For twenty miles the visibility is about ten feet.  I pull close to the door when we get home so my daughter will not get too wet.  I unloaded the car with buckets of water pouring on me by the second.  I am a walking wet towel by the time everything is in the house.

Then the rain stops and hasn’t rained since.

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It was my understanding that it was going to rain all day today, and rain hard.  Okay, where was the rain.  I say a little bit of it this morning on my way to town, but nothing since then.  I put off mowing the lawn (even though the grass was soaking with the rain from last night) and went shopping a day early just because I was expecting a torrential downpour.  The one time I actually plan my day around the weather and it comes for naught. I puttered around in the house all day with the sun shining at me mockingly.

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Have you ever wondered why a retreat (especially business ones) is called a “retreat”?  I guess it retreats from the normal business hassles and worries to allow more insight into what is really going on.  Our retreat today (yeah, a whole two miles from our offices) covered what I am told is the usual initial retreat items such as SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis, mission statement formation, vision statement formation, and some brainstorming sessions.  It was… different.  I personally have never been on a retreat, been plenty of camps for IT people and technical seminars.  This retreat was more of a team building and catch our breath experience with some information about changes in the way things are being done.  We are in the mist of a departmental shake-up (don’t worry, no one lost jobs or will be losing jobs) that started about a year ago which moved some of the sections to different departments and added new directors.  So far it has done a lot of good not just for the departments but for the university in general.

Of course the f-word, furloughs, came up and none of the news is good.  I’m worried now how I am going to make my mortgage and car payments for the month that the three-day furlough is planned to occur (though it still has not be approved and it is a slim possibility that it will not happen at all before January).

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Nothing much new going on today.  I have a business retreat I have to attend tomorrow and I was swamped with the usual work load of problems and finding solutions to said problems and, at times, holding user’s hands as they navigate through problems.  Everyone is worried about furloughs, which is especially hard on us since we work for a university and the pay is not that great to begin with. 

“So, why don’t you get a better paying job?” First, in this economy it is not wise to go job hopping.  You never know if the job you just wrangled will be on the list of new furloughs or layoffs.  I’ve been laid-off once already and it is not a pleasant experience and this time I have a family to take care of. Second, who will do my job?  It is hard enough to get new hires at my current price range, most want a great deal more money and can get it easily somewhere else.  Third, we have too many people retiring from the department as it is and we are hemorrhaging experience at an alarming rate.  Yeah, I know it is just a bunch of excuses, but they are real and have terrifying consequences.

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I get a lot of spam in my email accounts like most other people do.  I don’t exactly know how the spammers get some of my addresses, but they always manage to do so after awhile.  I still do not fully understand the whole concept of sending huge number of the same email over and over again is supposed to be good advertising.  Yes, I realize it is usually for male-enhancement pills and dating sites and I know that some people (somewhere around 5%) actually do respond to some of the spam.  Since email is cheap I can see how the profit outweighs the cost, one person buying the product (and many times it is a legitimate product if not a reputable one) can finance millions of emails.

But I really don’t understand spamming little known and sparsely read blogs.

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