A cloud-to-ground lightning strike severs the sky near Los Lunas, New México. Tim Samaras and his crew chased the slow-moving storm cell until they ran out of road, and now can only watch as it moves on. Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic.
Filed under News
After my second day on the new job – my first full day of work – I’m tired beyond belief. My head is starting to hurt from looking at the tiny screen on the laptop they gave me because they ran out of desk tops. My hands are numbing from working on said laptop. And, I’m happy about it.
It’s such a strange feeling though – going back to work like this. It’s a contract job that I hope will metamorphose into a permanent position. But, in the current business environment, hardly anyone is full-time, permanent with benefits and stock options. Those were the glory days of – oh – circa 2000.
Still, I’m satisfied thus far. I’m doing the type of work I’ve always wanted to do – full-time technical writing and editing. I sit in a large cubicle all by myself. My supervisor is on another floor, handed me a platter full of documentation to scrutinize yesterday and has pretty much left me alone since. She’s already learned that I can be brutally honest; something I emphasized in my interview. But, she seems to appreciate that. The other associates have been friendly; periodically introducing themselves. There’s a huge break room, and I park my truck in a garage. It takes me 15 minutes to get to the office.
So yes, I’m starting to like it there. But, I won’t push my luck, or let myself get too comfortable. I’ve always been the cautious type anyway. Whenever I’ve taken things for granted, I’ve gotten sideswiped. I guess you could say I don’t trust happiness too much.
In the meantime, I’ll deal once more with crawling out of bed at 5:30 A.M.; wearing business casual attire; trying to stay awake all day; and seeing the joy in my dog’s mocha brown eyes when I return to the house. Now, if I could keep my own eyes from reacting to these damn pollens, I’ll be happy enough have an orgasm!
Filed under Essays
If I’d known acting was this simple, I would have moved to Hollywood 20-plus years ago, instead of going to work for a bank!
Filed under Curiosities
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Phyllis Diller (comedienne: The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, actress: Boy Did I Get the Wrong Number) is 95.
Actress Diahann Carroll (Claudine, Julia, Dynasty, The Five Heartbeats) is 77.
Actor Donald Sutherland (Dirty Sexy Money, JFK, Klute, Backdraft, M*A*S*H, The Dirty Dozen, Outbreak) is 77.
Bass guitarist Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler (Black Sabbath) is 63.
Actress P.J. Soles (Pamela Jayne; Carrie, Rock ’n’ Roll High School, Private Benjamin, Stripes, The Power Within) is 62.
Lucie Arnaz (actress: They’re Playing Our Song, Here’s Lucy; producer: Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie [1992-93]) is 61.
Actor David Hasselhoff (Bay Watch, Knight Rider, The Young and the Restless) is 60.
Actor Robin Shou (Mortal Kombat, Beverly Hills Ninja, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) is 52.
Actor – singer Paul Hipp (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Lethal Weapon 3, The Chippendales Murder) is 49.
Filed under Birthdays
1862 – The U.S. government authorized national cemeteries to bury those who died in battle, other war veterans, U.S. Presidents and government leaders.
1867 – The Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, MA, becoming the first dental school in America.
1889 – Author Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) was born in Malden, MA.
1901 – Dr. Willis Carrier installed a commercial air conditioning system at a Brooklyn, NY printing plant. The system was the first to provide man-made control over temperature, humidity, ventilation and air quality. It was originally installed to help maintain quality at the printing plant and for the first two decades of the 20th Century, Carrier’s invention was used primarily to cool machines, not people.
1955 – Disneyland opened the gates to “The Happiest Place on Earth” in Anaheim, California.
1981 – Two skywalks suspended from the ceiling over the atrium lobby at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, MO, collapsed, killing 114 people. Five years later, two design engineers were convicted of gross negligence.
1996 – TWA (Trans World Airlines) flight 800, carrying 230 people, including four cockpit crew members and 14 flight attendants, exploded, falling into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York. The Boeing 747 had lifted off from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport at 8:19 p.m. bound for Paris, France. After a 16-month probe, the FBI announced it had found no evidence of a criminal act or a missile; concluding the crash was caused by electrical arcing in the plane’s center fuel tank igniting fuel vapors.
1998 – After a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in West Sepik, Papua New Guinea, three tsunami waves reaching heights of 45 feet, struck; followed by two smaller waves. The waves killed more than 2,000 people and left some 10,000 left homeless.
Filed under History
In homage to my first day on the job as an experienced technical writer.
Filed under News
“He has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.”
– John Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire and former Chief of Staff to President George H. W. Bush, about President Obama in a conference call to reporters.
For the record, Sununu was born in Havana, Cuba.
Today I return to work for the first time in almost 11 months. It’s a strange feeling. I’m once again entering the corporate underworld that apparently keeps spitting me back out. But, I don’t play the lottery, and my gold bullion investment hasn’t paid off yet. I’ve been laid off three times from major companies within the past 23 years – two banks and an engineering corporation. I guess that’s a pretty good track record. I don’t jump from job to job. As creative as my mind is, I do like some semblance of order and stability. I definitely want my fiction writing career to be as successful as my dreams think it is. But, in the meantime, there are these awful creatures called bills and an especially evil entity known as a student loan debt. This particular job is a contract technical writing position that should take me into the first of the year – provided the Mayan calendar doesn’t prove to be truthfully apocalyptic. Besides, I enjoy technical writing as much as I do creative writing. Sometimes, the boundary between the two is as clear as a fog bank.
One good thing about working in corporate America is the slew of operatic real-life stories I’ve gathered for equally juicy stories. I’ve met some incredible people and endured some traumatic ordeals. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Well, except for a lump sum payoff from that gold bullion and a million-dollar book contract.
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Singer – songwriter Rubén Blades (actor: Color of Night, The Two Jakes, One Man’s War, Dead Man Out, The Milagro Beanfield War) is 64.
Violinist – orchestra conductor Pinchas Zukerman is 64.
Actress Camille Saviola (The Heights, Civil Wars, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) is 62.
Drummer Stewart Copeland (Police) is 60.
Dancer Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance, is 54.
Actress Phoebe Cates (Gremlins, Drop Dead Fred, Princess Caraboo, Bright Lights, Big City, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) is 49.
Actor – comedian Will Ferrell (Saturday Night Live, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Suburbans, The Ladies Man, The Andy Dick Show, The Ladies Man, Zoolander, Elf) is 45.
Filed under Birthdays
1486 – Artist Andrea del Sarto was born.
1723 – Artist Joshua Reynolds (The Age of Innocence, Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, The Infant Hercules, The Strawberry Girl, Garrick Between Comedy and Tragedy) was born in Devon, England.
1790 – The District of Columbia, or Washington, D.C., was established as the permanent seat of the United States Government.
1872 – Explorer Roald Amundsen (discovered South Pole: December 14, 1911; first man to sail from the Atlantic to Pacific through the Northwest Passage: 1903-1905) was born in Borge, Ǿstfold, Norway.
1926 – The first underwater color photographs appeared in National Geographic magazine. The pictures were taken near the Florida Keys.
This is the first color photograph ever taken underwater. It’s a hogfish captured off the Florida Keys in 1926 by National Geographic photographer Charles Martin and Dr. William Longley.
1945 – Under the Manhattan Project, the U.S. military exploded Fat Boy, the experimental, plutonium bomb, at 5:29 A.M. in the first U.S. test of an atomic bomb. The mushroom-shaped cloud rose to a height of 41,000 feet above the New Mexico desert at Alamogordo Air Base. All life in a one-mile radius ceased to exist.
1951 – Author J.D. Salinger published his only novel, Catcher in the Rye.
1969 – Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission, is launched from Cape Canaveral, FL.
1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, MA, killing him, his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. The three had been en route to a Kennedy family wedding.
Filed under History
