I try very, very hard to stay away from social issues on this blog — everyone else does a much better job of it than I do, and quite frankly, most of the time it just doesn’t interest me at all.  But I want to break tradition here and say something that will probably inflame some people, irritate others, and that a few will probably find unpatriotic to say the least.

Three words: I’m not voting.

The beautiful thing about democracy is that the people get to choose who is going to lead them.  In a free democracy, they even have the option to not choose if they like.  I’m willfully exercising that right, the right to be silent, the right to not have my voice heard.

I don’t look at it that way, though I know that’s how most people will take it.  I see it as speaking very loudly, actually, because it’s not through laziness or apathy that I choose to withold my ballot.

I’m tired of politics.  I’m tired of partisan politics, and I’m tired of the mudslinging campaigns that clog the airways.  I’m tired of seeing a country divided between red and blue.  I’m tired of every web site, radio show, or television show mocking one candidate or the other.  I’m tired of hearing so much about why Obama is the worse candidate, instead of why McCain is the better candidate, and vice versa.

The reason — as I see it, at least — that the media polarizes the country into red and blue and that the candidates attack each other so viciously is that the public eats it up.  We fall for it, hook line and sinker.  It’s not about who has the better ideas to run this country, it’s about who can convince the population that the other candidate would be a stupid choice.  It’s not about trying to make this country better, it’s about trying to get one party in over the other, regardless of the cost.

I don’t want to support that.  I don’t want my vote to be counted as one more reason to run a smear campaign.  I don’t want to be one more person trying to get one party into power over the other party.

When the nominees were finally announced, I was happy.  We were going to have either a black president or a woman vice president.  Either way it was going to be a first.  Instead, we just have another campaign of mockery and attacks.

Get this: the first time I heard Sarah Palin’s name was in a topic posted to criticize her on a message board dedicated to discussing suicide (don’t ask why I was there; wasn’t a good time for me).  People are talking about “exiting,” as they call it, and still there’s people who think so vehemently about a vice presidential candidate that, instead of trying to help someone who’s about to kill themselves, they’ll post messages about how evil this person is.  Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?

I know I could always do the write in thing.  I’ve thought about that, but seriously, who’s ever going to hear about it?  How is that going to make the slightest difference in the world?  At least if I’m willing to vocalize that I’m not going to vote, most of the time it’ll piss people off, because it’s considered unpatriotic.  Pissing someone off must be a good tactic for spreading a belief, otherwise every candidate would be running some kind of “My opponent is a good person, who’s never done anything wrong, but I promise to do <insert political issue here>.”

Let me know when that happens, and the odds are better than even money that I’ll be one of the first at the polls.

We have enough negativity in this world.  There’s enough cynicism, enough bad mouthing and criticism.  We don’t need the future leader of our country contributing to that.

Just a quick note here.  I posted a copy of The Writer, a short horror story, for your reading pleasure at my main site.  You can get to it (along with several other short stories) via http://chocolatefordogs.com/short-stories/.

Just for kicks, I thought I’d post the first chapter to Like Glass for your reading pleasure.  There’s been sample chapters available as a PDF download (which you can get here), but I know some people don’t really care too much for PDF’s or downloading files.  So, here’s a sample of the novel, and I hope you enjoy it.

Like Glass

Chapter 1

It’s generally inappropriate to call a woman in tears a bastard or a son of a
bitch, and ordering them to die and rot is fairly tasteless most of the time as
well. At least before you know what she’s crying about. Rob Jackson might
be forgiven for having those words on his tongue when he answered the
phone, as it was his brother he expected on the other end and not the
quavering, feminine sobs he heard as he put the receiver to his ear.

Five years had passed since he’d last seen Bill’s number on the caller id and
he’d waited by the phone until it quit ringing then. Five years still wasn’t long
enough. He still wished his brother were dead.

Of the eight years since Rob had called it quits with his brother, it had taken
three for Bill to get it through his head that Rob wanted nothing more to do
with him. Now it appeared he was calling again.

He almost ignored this call like the last one, but didn’t. It’d been a bad
Wednesday already—he’d lost the Grey’s Industrial Services account, a new
website that would’ve been great for the company’s portfolio as well as its
books. The LAPD finally decided that parking in front of the fire hydrant
outside the office door was worthy of a two-hundred-fifty dollar fine. To top
it all off, Cindy finally admitted to her affair with her trainer. That wasn’t that
big of a deal; he’d harbored stronger attachments to lawn furniture than any
woman in a long time. It just served as icing on top of an already shitty cake
of a day. Seeing Bill’s number on the caller id had proved that the day really
and truly could get worse.

Any other day he would’ve ignored it without a second thought. Not
tonight though. Tonight he wanted a catharsis. It’d been a long time since
he’d cussed out Bill for what he’d done to him, and it put him in a bit of a
better mood at least. A phrase somewhere along the lines of “You bastard
sonofabitch, die and rot in hell,” had been what sprang to mind, and he
marked it as either a good opening line or perfect for the moment before he
hung up the receiver on his brother’s pleading voice. Either would work, he’d
just wait and see how it played out.

When he picked up the phone, he hesitated—an act he was later at least
somewhat thankful for, although he could never figure out why he didn’t just
lay into Bill right off the bat. A rather feminine sniffle greeted his silence, soft,
almost pleading. At the very least it wasn’t Bill, and he quickly changed his
game plan. His pause apparently confused the tearful woman on the other end
as well.

“Hello?” Definitely a woman, speaking in that pathetic, shaky voice of
someone who’s trying to be strong and failing miserably at it.

“Hi, this is Rob.” Confused, he reverted to the office, speaking as he would
with a customer before he even realized it.

“Hi, Rob. It’s Janet.”

“Hi Janet. Long time.”

“Yeah. Um, I’m sorry to call you Rob. I know things were never that great
with us and everything, but…” That’s a lie, he thought, but didn’t say. It didn’t
seem appropriate to antagonize her at the moment. Maybe in a few minutes,
but at least he’d let her have her say.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Bill…he’s, um, Bill’s dead Rob. There was an accident at the factory
today and…” Her voice trailed off; she was still trying to be strong, but the
façade was crumbling fast.

“You’re kidding me. Is he—” He stopped himself; of course Bill wasn’t
okay, but that was the first thing that came to mind. “Are you guys okay?” In
hindsight, this was almost as stupid of a question, but he couldn’t think of
anything else.

“I don’t know. Lisa’s handling the um, the arrangements I think. She’s
watching Jake and Caitlain right now.” She was almost at a full sob again. “I
just wanted to let you know. I know you guys weren’t very close, but…” She
couldn’t continue, her words drowned out by the deep crying only newborn
widows are capable of.

“Janet, it’s okay. Look, I’ll be out there tomorrow and help out as best as I
can, okay?” Something that resembled an “okay, thank you” found its way
through her sobs. He told her to take care and that he’d see her soon.

Hanging up the receiver, he sat in anticipation for the sick joy he knew
should be coming along. Any minute now, he’d burst into a wide grin,
perhaps run to the store and get a bottle of champagne (or some cheap wine
from the gas station if the grocery store had already closed). It didn’t come
though, and he sat in his office, going over various bills and invoices as a light
rain blurred the city through the window before him.

After an hour he gave up trying to make sense of work and went online to
order a plane ticket to Portland for the next day. He called the office and left a
voice mail, telling whoever would get to it first in the morning that he’d be
gone for a while and to have Jim run the shop while he was gone.

He walked to the gas station at the corner, and instead of looking for the
cheap wine he grabbed a cheap six pack and returned home. Per his custom
when he could hear the sleepy grumbling of the past waking up to rear its
brutish head, he set one bottle aside and studied it as he drank the remaining
five. Still waiting for the malicious ecstasy he’d been expecting to join him at
this long awaited news, he turned his computer off and went to bed.

*    *    *

The next morning he woke early and packed for roughly a week away. If it
were longer, he could always buy more shirts and slacks; if it were less, then he
lost nothing but about fifteen minutes. He smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk
in front of his apartment, waiting for his cab to arrive, doing his part to
contribute to the late spring smog.

He hated flying, and was not particularly looking forward to the short
voyage up the coast. A “good” flight bores you to tears; an exciting flight is
what keeps the airlines in bed with the liquor companies. Turbulence is God’s
way of gently reminding you (and sometimes not so gently) that you’re His
whenever He wants you. He hoped the Almighty wasn’t in a reminding kind
of mood today as the cab pulled up. By the time he arrived at LAX, he relaxed
slightly, knowing the flight would be fine; whatever Gods there may be had
tried pretty damned hard to remind him of his mortality with the cab ride. If
they felt he still needed an extra push they obviously weren’t as all-knowing as
they claimed to be.

After checking in, he found himself an area near the main entrance where
he could enjoy a few cigarettes in peace while he waited the two hours before
boarding. Of course, it seemed these days “in peace” meant only two or three
non-smokers an hour harassed him, and only five others gave him dirty looks.
He didn’t really care one way or another about someone preaching at him right
now though; he was still waiting for the glee he had been positive would
follow the news of his brother’s untimely death. He was slightly disheartened
that it hadn’t made its appearance yet and confused that neither grief nor
remorse had taken the absent joy’s place.

*    *    *

Almost as much as flying, he hated kids. They could be cute, he supposed,
but mostly they were annoying. Too loud, too messy, too much of a nuisance.
Cindy didn’t want kids; that had been one point in her favor, but she was some
other poor sap’s problem now anyways. He was sure that the kid who smiled
at him as he smoked outside the terminal was no exception to the loud, messy
stereotypical child, and he doubted Cindy would’ve been terribly impressed
with her.

She looked like she might be cute at times. Probably most of the time, if
one were inclined to think runny noses and poor speech were endearing
charms. She was maybe eight, holding onto her mother’s hand as the woman
dragged her along. She waved at him and he tried hard to look annoyed at the
interruption in the thoughts he wasn’t having. Nevertheless, he found himself
smiling back at her diplomatically as she walked past, her blond hair bouncing
playfully along behind her as her mother tugged at one of her arms, a purple
stuffed dinosaur in the other.

He finished his last cigarette with about fifteen minutes to spare before his
flight boarded and hurried across the terminal. After a quick bathroom stop,
he found his gate and was just in time to stand in line as the attendants
boarded the plane. Luckily for him, Blondy was in line right ahead of him.
She noticed him, and turned and smiled again.

“We’re going to see my gramma.” She stated this with such an air of
importance that for an instant he thought she was referring to a foreign
dignitary. He smiled again at her.

“Really? Well, that’s good.” The girl’s mother turned at him, with stern
embarrassment.

“Krissy, how many times do I have to tell you: don’t talk to strangers. Sorry
about that,” she added to Rob. “She’s a bit too friendly sometimes.”

“It’s alright.” The lady turned back towards the front of the line, while
Krissy kept staring at him and smiling a smile that he could now see was shy a
few teeth.

“Gramma’s old. Older than dirt, daddy says.” The lady gave a sharp tug on
her child’s arm as Rob tried to hold back a chuckle in spite of himself.

“Krissy, be quiet!”

“‘Kay.”

The child finally listened to her mother as the line started to move. Within
minutes, they were boarding the plane, and Rob was relived to find himself
seated alone in the aisle (and noticeably many rows away from Krissy and her
mother, which he assumed was the mother’s way of showing appreciation for a
lack of assigned seats on this flight).

The flight attendants came along briefly to help people stow away their
carry-on bags, and as people took their seats another attendant walked down
the aisle taking drink orders. He satisfied himself with ordering a Crown Royal
on the rocks in spite of the relatively early hour, and within minutes they were
in the air. Not long after take off, when the plane had reached a stable
altitude, a different attendant returned with his drink and he sat alone with an
$8.00 double shot and his thoughts of the past.

He tried to think of Bill, to try and feel something one way or another as he
drank the whiskey, but it was hard—how could you remember anything about
someone you hadn’t known for eight years? There was before of course, all the
great times they’d had growing up together, the parties and the ribbing and the
long, late night talks about nothing and everything.

And there was then. The “then” that he’d used to alienate his brother, when
his brother finally grabbed the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial
camel’s back.

He could barely remember the before, and it was only in thinking of then—
the eight-years-ago then—that he started to feel anything. Nothing new there;
he’d thought of it plenty of times since it happened, and it always gave enough
fuel to the fire that kept him from picking up the phone himself. Part of him
didn’t want to think of then, it wanted to try and grieve over his brother,
because that’s what you do when family dies, right? He wanted to try and
force himself to respect the dead, but he couldn’t. As an airy ding signaled the
captain turning off the remain-in-your-seats notice, he gave up his battle with
himself and let his mind wander to then. To the eight-years-ago then.

Just wanted to post a quick update this morning.  Shattered is moving along, still slowly but surely.  I’m shooting at a finished date of December — what we would call in the software world as “feature complete”, though it will still need editing — and a release date in Feburary.  Of course, this is all dependent on work.  I’m hoping to get some vacation time in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll be spending most of that working on it (well, that’s the plan; I’ll probably spend most of it playing with Facebook).

Then again, if I get a killer publishing deal on Like Glass, then I should be able to quit my day job and work on Shattered a lot more (hint hint hint).

I’m also trying to keep myself more focused on the “rough” aspect of the rough draft: I’m going for quantity over quality at the moment.  It’s a lot easier to edit stuff later on when there’s something to edit, than to frustrate yourself while you’re writing.  If it’s garbage when I look at it later, I can scrap it or fix it; no need to worry about it now, just worry about getting the damned thing out first.

I’m not going to give too many details about Shattered — mostly because I don’t know them myself yet — but I guess I can tell you a little bit about what I’m playing with.

For starters, it is a sequel to Like Glass, and it takes place almost a year after the end to the first novel.  We’re still dealing with Rob, now as Caitlain’s adoptive parent.  Marty’s got a bigger part in this one, and Lisa’s come back as well — she’s married and has had her kid by now.  There’s a new character in this one, another pianist named Carolyn, and she’s going to have a big part in everything.

That’s about all I can say at the moment, other than two things that I’m adding as “rumours”: 1) I’m planning on this one to be “darker” than Like Glass was, and b) things are kinda the opposite as they were in Like Glass — Rob gets to play Janet’s role to some degree.

Those last two are, as I said, strictly rumours, and I’m reserving the right to change them as I see fit — so don’t get upset if you pick the book up when it’s finished and it’s all happy-go-lucky.  (Yeah, right; as if I’ve ever done anything happy-go-lucky…)

Okay, need to get ready for the next lap in the rat race.  Have fun.

As of this morning, Like Glass is officially available in eBook format and paperback.  However, due to the Terms of Service here at WordPress.com, I won’t be directly linking to where you can get it here.  I probably could get away with it just fine — probably no issues at all — but I don’t really want to step on anyone’s toes.  Hence the second part of this post.

I’m “officially” moving this blog to a new host, and you can update your bookmarks (or whatever) to point at http://mcory.net.  There you can find information on how to get your copy of Like Glass — and that’s the majority of the content that’s there right now.  Over the next few weeks, however, I plan on moving a fair amount of the content from this blog over there, and I’ll be changing the domain name (chocolatefordogs.com) to point there.

Fun stuff.

For what it’s worth, it isn’t just because of the terms of service, nor is it anything to do with WordPress — the blog that’s set up at the new site is a wordpress.org blog.  I’ve been playing with the idea of moving it for a while now, have a bit more control over everything than you get here, and my confusion with what WP allows as far as commercial linking gave me the right excuse I needed.

So, if you find two copies of my posts, check the url — if it’s this one or mcory.net, it’s fine.

Quick post today as I’m running late as it is, but there’s some stuff I wanted to talk about.

First, I ordered another proof yesterday. I’m expecting this to be the last — there’s probably still spelling and grammar problems scattered about, but whatever; I’ve seen enough typos in professionally edited material that I’m not too concerned about it. I’m really just wanting to double check the formatting, as I changed the indentation and it might’ve screwed things up. Otherwise I would’ve just approved it sight-unseen, and we’d be having a release party right now.

Second, I’ve come to a conclusion: I’m not going to be working at the company I’m at for much longer. It’s just not worth it — I used to love programming, and now I hate it. I know why at least: it’s the environment I’m in. It’s too stagnant, no one ever wants to try anything new. I came to this realization this morning as I was looking at MonoRail, an MVC architecture for ASP.NET web apps. Going through the tutorial, I got really excited — it’s easy, it’s clean, it’d make our site probably 10 times easier to work with.

And no one there would give a rat’s ass. They might think it was nifty, but they wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

And that’s fine; I can’t change them, and I’m not going to. And it’s not even about MonoRail in particular — that’s just the example I have at hand. I might be able to convince my boss to check it out, but the other web developer would dismiss it, and since he has seniority there, it’d be his opinion they’d pay most attention to. He’s just old fashioned in some respects, and lazy in others, and he fits in quite well there — the whole mindset is to touch absolutely nothing unless you have to, regardless of how terrible it is to deal with.

Fine, just not for me.

Patti and I are talking about moving anyways, and that’s something we’re going to be discussing over the weekend. I mean moving like back home or somewhere else altogether, not just up to Olympia or Lacey. Get out of this damned state and get closer to people we can relate to.

Smoke time; gotta run.

Had an interesting session with the therapist last night; he brought up something that Patti and I didn’t have time to discuss in more depth with him, though we wanted to (well, we wanted to on the ride home, at least).  There’s two vital (and quite obvious) points to it.

The first is a saying you’ve probably heard: tell a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth.  Or, phrased slightly differently, tell yourself something often enough and you’ll start to believe it.  Really simple, but really powerful too — you’ll know that if you’ve ever tried it.  And I mean it mostly for emotional/psychological concepts — I hate my job, I can’t quit smoking, I need to drink, I can’t do this or I don’t like that.  “Can’t” and “don’t” are often the terms used in those kinds of phrases; it seems to be really easy to say those instead of “can” and “do”.

The other point is even more obvious, and quite related: humans are quite adaptable.  Both physically and psychologically.  In spite of our general tendency towards negativity, we’re also very good at making lemonade when we’re handed lemons (or they’re thrown violently at us).  We can, when we desire to, make the best of any situation, or at least make it tolerable.

The first leads to the second here; I separate them mainly for emphasis, though adaptability is truly the overall concept — you can adapt to a situation by telling yourself over and over again that you like it.   I do not question that in the slightest; I’m the one who has the ability to make myself happy, not my job, nor my house nor the city or state that I live in.  That’s in my hands, and I can either accept and adapt to my environment and let myself be happy regardless of what’s going on around me, or I can sit and pout and say “I don’t like this.”

My main question — the question Patti and I were wanting to ask as we drove home last night — is where do you draw the line?  Where do you say “You know what, this just ain’t worth it any more”?  I can adapt to not having a cigarette with dinner — that’s not a big deal, because (contrary to how I often portray it) smoking isn’t vital to my existence or even my happiness (it often helps the latter, but it isn’t necessary).

But what about the larger stuff?  When is it better to just get out of the situation?  A job, for example — when is it better to just say “You know what, I don’t want this anymore,” instead of fighting it out each day?  Where do you draw the line between something that’s acceptable to adapt to — like no cigarette at dinner — and something that’s worth fighting for?

There’s a couple of concepts behind this that I’m driving at.  The first is that life’s short.  Even at best, I probably only have about another 50-60 years left in this world.  Why should I spend it on stuff that I’m not happy with?  Why shouldn’t I live my life as I want to, instead of trying to convince myself that I’m happy with a particular job or in a particular location?

The other concept — and I probably haven’t led up to it as well as I should have, and it’ll seem like it’s out of left field — is that my happiness (or lack thereof) is entirely mine; it isn’t something anyone else can dictate.  No, I’m not necessarily thrilled with my job, even if it’s something that countless others would love to have.  But someone can’t make me be happy with it by saying “Well, at least you’re not doing <blah>, so get over it.”  Yes, there’s lots of people that are in much worse situations than I am; does that make me feel better?  Hell no; makes me feel worse — now I’m not only unhappy with my situation, but I also feel like a jackass for being unhappy.

Well, I need to run right now; quick update on Like Glass: the latest copy has been uploaded and I’m probably going to order a new proof today.  If all goes well, it might even be ready to go next week.  Keep your fingers crossed.

One of the great things about coming home is that you get reminded of all the things you despised before you left, and you get a chance to look at them with the new perspective that intervening years has brought.  Weather is a good example — I used to get so damned tired of the sun and the heat while I was in El Paso before, and I loved rainy days with a passion; after spending four years living in the Pacific Northwest, I’m highly inclined to review that opinion.

Another grievance I used to hold against El Paso was admittedly an almost racist one.  As a border town, El Paso has an extremely high Hispanic population — I don’t believe it would be much of an exaggeration to say that Caucasians are in the minority here.  Growing up here, I held the population against the city for reasons I’ll elaborate on, though I’ve since seen the error of that train of thought.

I’ve tried very hard throughout my life to avoid holding bigoted opinions, to avoid prejudicial beliefs; growing up in the Sun City it was quite difficult.  Most of my elders had long since grown tired of things I was growing up to consider par for the course.  Because of the high Hispanic population, mere probablity would ensure that, if something went wrong, odds were it wasn’t a white guy or a black guy behind it — if 75% of the population around you is Mexican, then there’s a 75% chance that the kid who busted your window was too before you take anything else into consideration.

Stupid train of thought, I know now, but when you’re cut off in traffic twenty times a day by someone with a Front-Chihuahua license plate, or the people blocking every aisle in Wal-Mart don’t speak English, it’s hard to keep yourself from stereotyping.  When you can’t find a job because you don’t speak Spanish, or the job you do find pays crap because there’s thirty others who will take it for minimum wage, it’s hard not to hold a little resentment.  Well, hard for me at least; I’m flawed in that way.

Living up in Washington though, I’ve come to think differently.  There’s bad drivers everywhere you go; crappy driving knows no color.  People are rude and inconsiderate no matter what race they are.  It has nothing to do with being able to speak English or not, or whether you’re a legal citizen or not.  Just a fact of life.

I’ve also learned more about business since I’ve been up there, and I’ve changed my perspective on the job market in El Paso — I don’t like it any more than I did, but I understand it better at least.  As a software developer, I can command a fairly decent wage — probably $30K entry level; with my experience, probably about $40K-$50K if I can convince people I know what I’m doing without the little piece of paper that says I know what I’m doing.  If I had that paper, it’d most likely be around $60K-$70K.  Here in El Paso, for every development position, there’s probably 10 qualified people who live either across the border or in low-rent areas (and there’s lots of those, as the number of low-wage jobs far exceeds the higher paying positions).  Those people don’t need a lot to survive on, and since there is such high competition, they’ll undercut the salary.  My $30K position just became $20K.  So I move to Washington, where there’s higher paying jobs.

Magnify that by several hundred — no software development positions worth the gas it takes to get there, so all the developers move to other areas of the country.  No qualified software developers in the region means no decent software company will open shop down here, so there’s no reason for developers to stay here.  That’s just one industry — expand that across whatever industries you’d like, and you can see the viscious cycle El Paso’s found itself in.

For every decent paying job, there’s a high number of candidates who will do it for less than you because the cost of living is low.  The cost of living is so low because there’s no high paying jobs.  There’s no high paying jobs because all the qualified candidates move elsewhere to find high paying jobs, instead of staying in El Paso and fighting for better wages. Q.E.D.

One of the other gripes I used to hold was the language issue — people come to this country, they should learn the language, right?  I stumbled across this on xkcd a while ago:

Puts things in a different perspective.  Granted, if you move to an area — or you just spend a large amount of time in an area — you should familiarize yourself with the language as much as possible.  That’s just a decent survival skill.  But at the same time, even when I lived here I only went to Mexico maybe once every two or three years — why should I learn Spanish then?  If I moved there, that’d be different, but it would still take me probably a year to get halfway fluent in the language.  If you look at it that way — not counting that English is a rather difficult language to learn — then someone may have just moved across the border and is trying to learn the language, they just haven’t gotten the hang of it yet and you’re pissed at them because they didn’t instantly understand it as they crossed the river.  Yes, they should try to learn it as soon as possible, but it isn’t going to happen overnight.

From a business perspective it makes perfect sense to want to hire bilingual employees.  With such a high percentage of the city’s population being Hispanic — not counting legally (or illegally) commuting workers, tourist, and shoppers — you’d eliminate a large portion of your potential customer base by employing people who only spoke English.

I think the business perspective is what needs to be changed in El Paso.  A lot of people talk about fixing immigration — even so far as just straight up closing the border — but I don’t think that’s the key.  The city needs companies who are willing to spend money here to revitalize it, to make it a city where people will want to move to and where people can make a career for themselves.  The language-barrier for employment probably will never go away, but I think it could be diminished with the right companies moving to town — and, again, it’s still a kind of fact-of-life: the region is predominantly Spanish speaking, so in order to survive here you probably need to learn Spanish, regardless of what flag is raised in front of the company doors.  Last I checked, the U.S. didn’t have an official language.

Well, the flight made it — had a two hour delay in Dallas, but what can you do?  (Other than gripe at my sister-in-law for not setting us up with the straight-through Southwest flight, non-stop from SeaTac to El Paso, but…)

It really does feel like coming home too.  Hell, feel like I haven’t even really left.  We went to the bar last night, most of the old crowd was there, shot pool and did almost as good as I always had (made some, missed some, had fun overall though).  Hopefully I’ll be able to get in touch with a few old friends and see how they’re doing.  I know one guy I went to school with has three kids now.  I think for Christmas I’ll get him and his wife a television set so they have something else to do…

I don’t know how well I’ll be keeping up with this thing while I’m out here — I’m using my mother-in-law’s computer, and I’m sure they wouldn’t have any problems with my use of it, but it’s still someone else’s computer, so… 

Anyways, if I don’t get back here between now and then, I wish you and yours a great holiday season.  I’m off to go smoke and contribute to the El Paso smog.