RonnMcCarrick.com

No calls so far… guess everything Gary was saying about getting after hours and weekend calls every week were a little overstated. Or maybe I’m just lucky.

Tasha and I talked about being more of an active couple, but so far we’re not doing so well on our couples events. First, I neglected to invite her to Tyler’s comencement ceremony. Then I got stuck with the oncall this weekend when we were supposed to go to a friends 40th anniversy party. She’s said that Tyler’s graduation party isn’t something she’s thinking she’ll be going to (I can understand that… I don’t think she and Heidi ever actually spent any time together during the eight years we were married, and now, well, it’s just more wierd.) We’ve got her high school reuion coming up and I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to make that. So really, it’s just me not being able to make these things. Hmmm. I think the biggest difference is this; In the past, I didn’t really want to be bothered to do any of these couple things and so would use whatever excuse I could find at hand to avoid them. Now, I actually want to do these things, looking forward to them even, but life has set out to confound me. So to Tasha I say, I’m sorry. I want to do these things with you. I really do. Honest.

Of course all this just leads to a questioning of whether this is us falling into old routines and foretells bad things for the future. I don’t think that’s the case, but it something to consider and work against. A relationship is a constant project, one that is never completed.

Today, I cleaned the house a little, washed my laundry (or would that be laundered my clothing?), revised my resume for Carlo and company, and went to the grocery. Of course I forgot to cash in my bottle returns yet again, I think I’m up to about ten bucks in return slips now. I fiddled on the computer. And I got Chinese food, mind you it was TERRIBLE, I mean it was so bad I fully expect to get sick later tonight. But not so bad that I didn’t eat it. After all, I did pay for it… no sense in throwing away ten bucks. I checked craigslist for mountain bikes, as suggested by Doug. But alas, there was nothing I was interested in. All in all it was the most boring uneventful day I could imagine. I’m so bored.

The internet is a wonderful tool. I was exploring my site traffic, which isn’t huge, but I was curious who has been reading me and I see that I’m getting visitors from all over the place. Oh sure, Michigan is the biggest source of my traffic, but I’m also getting visitors from 19 country’s and from all around the USA. In the last month I’ve gotten multiple visits from California, Washington, Ohio, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and a few visits from 18 other states. Like I said, I don’t get a lot of traffic and I honestly don’t know anybody in most of these places. Florida could be my mom or grandparents, either way they’re visting secretly because nobody has mentioned my blog to me. The rest of the states, sadly, I know no one in those other states. I really don’t know a lot of other people. Which brings me to another thing…

I was using the internet to find people I haven’t talked to since high school or shortly there after; friends, ex-girlfriends, former co-workers (did I mention I was bored?). I’m pretty sure I’ve found my old buddies Doug Lechner, Mike Womack, and Eric Schultz, none of whom I’ve talked to in 20-years. A little bit of Intelius combined with Google PhoneBook and maybe a few web searches and it’s pretty easy to find people.You think I’ll call them? Probably not. I’d like to, but it just seems weird to call out of the blue and be like, hey, how you doin’. **sigh**

I miss all my friends. I’m just to lazy to do anything about it. Later.

So I’m oncall. So boring. If nothing comes in tomorrow, then nothing will come in at all. Because no one will be at the banks to know that they need help on Sunday. I’m expecting to get nothing.

In more exciting news, I paid my rent today… that’s not the exciting part …while I was doing that I added a 10×10 storage unit and a carport to my lease. All for only $30 bucks a month. I think that’s a good deal. Pretty cool, huh. I also got the run down on how much it’s going to cost me to have Tasha and the animals move in. It won’t be bad at all.

Tasha didn’t come out this weekend and I didn’t go out to where she’s at for the obvious reason of being on call. So I don’t know what I’m going to do for fun this weekend. Maybe I’ll try and find a mountain bike. There’s lots of bike paths around here and it seems like it’d be a good way to get some exercise. I’ll hit the garage sales and resale shops, there’s gotta be something I can get my hands on for less than the $100-$300 I see bikes for at all the stores.

This is a little late today because I was playing The Sims 2. I picked up the Pets expansion tonight and had to play around with that a bit. Sorry.

Tasha asked what the deal was with the Eagles lyrics and refused to accept that it’s just a great song, perhaps my favorite Eagles song. Of course I presented my case a little differently than that. I may have said something about it being  their best song…. honestly, I don’t remember how it went down. But that’s the deal. I was listening to it while I wrote last night and I figured you needed to feel the love.

Okay, that’s it for now. You don’t go getting all crazy without me this weekend. Later.

Tonight dinner consisted of three strong margarita’s. No particular reason, just kinda the way things worked out. Besides, moving furniture around is thirsty work. Yeah, I decided to do it. Tyler and I talked about it but I wouldn’t pull the trigger to make it happen. Tonight I decided that I couldn’t take it any longer and I rearranged the couch and moved my desk into the living room.

Why? Well, let me explain. Not that there’s any reason for me to do so. I spend a lot of time on the computer when I’m at home and my computer was in the small bedroom that looks out on the parking lot. This was doubly bad because one, I’m spending all my time in the smallest room of my apartment and two, I’ve got this nice lake out back that I can’t see from the back bedroom. So now I can see the lake and I don’t feel near as clostrophobic. I’m sure that when Tasha moves in she’ll hate it and I’ll move it back, but for now I’m more happy this way. (Happier, yes I know, that was intentional. Sheesh, you people.)

I put some pictures of the new layout on Picasa, you can see them here.

Word has it that they’ll be letting everyone know on Monday when they’re last day is… um, Tasha, not me. My job is safe… I think… probably… sure, no worries. This weekend I get to do my first on-call. I’ll be on-call for all of western Michigan. I don’t expect that anything will come in, but I sure wouldn’t turn down the overtime. OT would be sweet. Today was one of those days where I busted my ass trying to get everything done only to find out that I’d busted my ass for nothing. Which is both a good feeling and a frustrating feeling. It’s good to bust a little ass and feel like you’ve done a solid days work. It’s not so good when you rush around to make time for something only to find out when you get there that it’s been sent to another vendor and that you really didn’t have to rush at all. Ah well, such is life.

I’m going to finish on that note. Later.

So last week I spent with my oldest boy. He’s 18 now and done with high school. We haven’t really had any one-on-one time in the last 10-years or so. As such I think we’ve kinda forgotten how to communicate with one another. I think we were both expecting more from our visit than what we got out of it. There was no real deep communications, it was really just more of a hanging out. But I’m glad we did it and I hope he is as well. My hope is that as he matures and goes out into the world that we’ll see more of each other and maybe even learn to talk to each other again in a more intimate way. That may never happen; or maybe it will. Only time will tell.

I was supposed to have my second boy this week, but apparently report cards came on Saturday and there’s an issue with summer school and all that goes along with that. So he’ll probably take his visit a little later in the summer. There’s much less of a communication problem with him, as he’s got his mothers knack for chat and is far less reserved with his thoughts and feelings. I’m looking forward to getting him for a week sometime this summer.

Work wise we got an email on Friday letting us know that we’re no longer going to be exclusively working for Bank of America. We’ll be merging into the National Mobile Engineering Services, which means that I’ll be getting more clients and more responsibilities… always a good thing. But as always with this sort of thing there is stress and uncertainty. But from what I’ve heard, I think it’s a good thing.

I called the guy from Johnson Controls, twice actually, but he hasn’t returned my calls. Maybe he found a guy. Really, I don’t care. I’m happy where I’m at and I’m leary about layoffs and union dues anyway. Besides, like Denis said, I need to get some stability for a year or so before I start shaking things up again. I’ve had two years of craziness and a little calm would be good. I agree with him.

I’ve been wracking my brain for story ideas but I keep going back to stuff I’ve all ready started. Thane, in particular, keeps calling me back. Probably because that is the source of my greatest sucess to this point. But I don’t want to revisit anything I’ve all ready started. I want to start something new. Which means lots of thinking time. And I need to start doing my free writing again. Get the old mind and fingers back into shape. I’ve been visiting the writing sites and author blogs again looking for inspiration and I think it’s working. I want to write.

Tasha’s been asked to work through the holiday break, so looks like she’ll have a job until closer to the middle of the month. The ball is rolling and picking up momentum, she’ll be coming out here to be with me and we’ll go from there. We’d both like to leave the state, but I want to get all this bad debt out of the way before I even try that. But then if she get’s a good job offer that could all change.

Everything is so up in the air. It’s as if I’m a juggler. Is this what life is like when you try to take control of it? It’s just such a new experience for me. And the craziest part is that I feel I’m doing it sucessfully. How crazy is that. Anyhoo, I’m out of here. Later.

Okay, let’s see here, what do I have for you today?

I downloaded the new Firefox, yes I was one of the 8-million downloads. I don’t see a difference. Doesn’t seem any faster to me. The new ‘awesome bar’ is alright, but I don’t know if I’d say it’s awesome. All-in-all I don’t see the big deal really. Maybe all the changes are in the code and they just don’t affect what I see. Which is fine. I don’t really care, it’s just a browser.

I downloaded the Spore creature creator…. yeah… my computer wont run it. So maybe it’s cool, I don’t know.

Tyler has been here all week, we haven’t really done much. I mean, I didn’t really have big plans or anything, but everyone seems to expect fireworks and cotton candy or some such. We’ve just been hangin’ out when I get home from work. We eat dinner. We watch TV. We make funny comments about the ducks and the geese. It’s all good, just hangin’ out. We went to dinner on Monday at the 50’s style restuarant down the road. We ordered some magazines from the door to door guy. We watched National Treasure 2 last night and we both agreed that the first one was better, but that 2 was alright. We talked about college and jobs and how to rearrange the living room. It’s been pretty casual. He claims he’s not bored all day while I’m at work, so it’s all good.

I called the guy that my step-brother-in-law told me to call…. he told me to call somebody else and send him another copy of my resume… I haven’t done either yet. I will, I just haven’t yet. I guess I’m not expecting much from this whole deal so I don’t really care. Besides the idea of moving again so soon doesn’t really appeal to me.

I think I’ve convinced Tasha that it doesn’t make any sense for her to hold onto her apartment as long as possible. Struggling to pay the bills with unemployment and getting further behind. I mean it would be different if her apartment was going to work with her, but it’s not going to and the amount she’ll have to pay for breaking her lease in July is the same as what she’ll have to pay in October. So why kill herself when she’s planning on moving anyway. So I imagine she’ll be here sooner rather than later.

For now, that’s all I’ve got for you. I’ve got to go work on my resume. Later.

Oh what a weekend. Tasha and I put about a hundred miles on the Triumph just cruising around town to no place in particular. I got too much sun on my arms and a new helmet for my head (I forgot mine at home so I needed to get one). Sunday I took my boys to dinner and then brought Tyler back to Grand Rapids to spend some time together.

Today, I woke up early, got to work early, and put in a full day. Then we went and got some dinner and went grocery shopping… woo hoo! The the magazine guy showed up at the door and for whatever reason I ordered some magazines. Now I’m writing you a blog. This is the life. It’s like I’m a rock star.

I got a call from my step-sisters husband about that union job yesterday. He’s saying it’s about twice what I’m making now. Which seems too good to be true, but I’ll call his guy and get the skinny on it tomorrow. It can’t hurt and I’d be okay with doubling my income. Of course it probably means moving, but whatever… we’ll see what happens.

That’s it for now. Perhaps something more exciting will happen tomorrow. Later.

Today is Tyler’s 18th birthday. My oldest is officially no longer a child. And while that means no more child support it also means that the time I had to mold him into an adult has long past and that all the things I kept putting off about his childhood have to be put away. I missed the boat on a lot of things, but maybe we’ll be better now that he’s grown. I hope so. Happy Birthday, Tyler.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition was released last week. D&D and roleplaying in general were a big part of my life for a long time (twenty some years), but a couple years back the hobby just sort of lost it’s appeal for me. I can’t really say why, maybe life just gets in the way of these things. But I must confess to being curious about what changes they’ve made to the game. Not curious enough to go out and buy the books, but just sorta wondering. I’ve heard good things about it and some of the electronic/web-based stuff that’s supposed to be out soon sound interesting, but I just don’t think I have it in me to relearn the game, find a group to play with, and dedicate the the kind of time to the hobby that I once did. It’s a little sad that something that used to give me untold hours of creative happiness has now just become something I used to do.

The worst part of it all is when I think about what has replaced roleplaying in my life. Because really nothing replaced it, it just went away. I started to pull away from RPG’s when I was trying to kick start my writing. I reasoned that all the time I was spending creating worlds, characters, and story lines for my D&D campaign could be better used to create worlds, characters, and story lines for my writing. That didn’t happen, or hasn’t as of yet.

Did video games take over that time? Maybe for a while there, but not so much anymore. Sure I bought the Sims 2, but really, I’m over it all ready. I bought an xbox and then a xbox 360, but I gave the 360 to my boys and I haven’t missed it at all and have had no inclination to get another console for myself. When I first moved here I was replaying some Need for Speed on the xbox, but that didn’t take. So I’d say that no, video games didn’t replace roleplaying for me. But maybe they did help me pull a little bit further away form roleplaying.

When I look back I can see that roleplaying was always something that I was a little shy about. I never really liked that most people didn’t get it and looked down on it as a hobby of geeks and losers. Towards the end I was feeling less and less satisfied with what I was getting out of the actual running of games (I’ve always preferred the creation of the worlds to the running of the games) and my desire to play in general was fading along with my enthusiasm. Then there was a divorce followed by moving in with my sister, a girlfriend, then two girlfriends, balancing my time between work and school… it all just sort of drifted away. By all I mean the gaming, the writing, and the whole creative part of my daily routine. But now I’m starting to stabilize. Getting my feet back under me. Finally getting to the point where maybe I can start listening to my muse again. I want to write and create, but there still just feels like there’s so much to do.

Tasha asked what happened to it all, the writing, the gaming, the creativity. It all just get’s pushed to the back. Even the blogging can be pushed away by something as simple as getting home 30-minutes late and feeling like the night is over even though it’s before 6 o’clock. Yes. I know it’s mostly a mental thing. And that I just need to motivate myself and get to doing the things I need to do. It sounds so easy. But it’s so damn hard.

I want to write everyday. I want to eat better. I want to exercise; lose weight and get back in shape. I want to study for and take the tests I need to take to get my license and my NATE certification. I want to learn more about the systems that my banks use. I want to get my realtor’s license so I can move into property management. I want. I want. I want. And it all takes time, discipline, and motivation. I’ve got the time, I’m just not using it as best I can. The other two, well, I’m a little hit-or-miss on the discipline and motivation.

I need to figure out what I’m doing, again. I had a plan, a good plan, but life takes unexpected turns and twists and even the best plans needs to be reevaluated. I need to reevaluate. Next week Tyler is coming to Grand Rapids for a week. I was hoping to talk to him about life, plans, and us. Get a little one on one time that we haven’t really had in a long time. But maybe while I’m talking to him about his life and the decisions that he needs to make I’ll be able to work out some of my own.

Later. Peace.

I’ve been staring at the blank space here for ten minutes… I got nothing… nothing at all.

Um, I was in a muddy pit yesterday. Today, I went to the used bookstore.

I ate chips and salsa for dinner.

See what I mean.

Nothing.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. Later.

Sorry about the last week or so, I just didn’t really have anything to say. Or rather, I just couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything. Partly, this is because I bought the Sims 2 last weekend when Tasha didn’t come out and I spent probably too much time playing around with that. But mostly it was just a lack of motivation and a general disinterest with everything in general. But let’s quickly get you up to speed.

Last weekend Tasha stayed home and despite wanting to see her, I did as well. I bought groceries, got a hair cut, and bought the Sims 2. Last week at work I was trying to finish my sprinkler system start-ups, but I got pulled away to go do AC and sprinkler start-ups in Lansing for 3-days (Wed, Thur, Fri). FridayI went back to the east side of the state to see Tasha and because my oldest boy, Tyler, graduated from Waterford Kettering high school. One down, one to go.

No, seriously, I’m very proud of him for getting through high school and happy to see him growing up. Though it is a little sad. Here’s a pic of Tyler and Zachary after the commencement.

Tyler is the one in the sweet hat.

Consider yourself caught up with what’s been going on in my life, because otherwise things have been pretty quiet. You might even say boring.

More on Monday. Peace.