When I was a little kid, I liked to have a plan. I have been told that if I woke up on a day when I didn't have school and thought I did, there would be tears. I find this odd, since for a great period from the time I was really conscious of who I was (or sort of was) until a few years ago, I liked not having a ‘true’ plan. Sure I kept a job and a car, saved a little money for the future but I only sort of had an idea of what I was going to be doing next weekend. My single life was good for ‘Ben’ plans, which was to say, no plans. It was a life of id, although it wasn’t nearly as hedonistic as that sounds, It kept me free to say yes to just about anything that came up. I did this and saw it was good. I didn’t have a plan when I met M. Any formal plan would have been clumsily executed and taken away from my natural quick-wittedness and charm. I needed a plan to be able to get a real house and get married, but anything beyond knowing what was going in and what was going out would have been a stretch. I have since learned to embrace the plan. There have since been a few iterations of various budgets and long term projections and so far, so good. M and I even have Life Insurance. Well sort of. We have it temporarily until we get fully underwritten. It’s even a little liberating knowing what you have to do. I know that’s almost contradictory, but it’s true. And if we want to blow it all up and open a bait shop in Belize, well then como esta?
In the long period of silence since my last post, I have been doing more of the same traveling and work in New York. There was a random flight to Chicago for a day trip, but aside from that, business as usual. On a few of my flights, I have been graced with some finer reading materials left behind by previous flyers. First, US Weekly - Good for a short flight only. I’ve always wanted to get some ‘paparazzi’ photos of M and me taken. Maybe a telephoto shot of me pumping gas with some sweatpants on and 3 days of scruff and one of M with huge sunglasses and a enormous starbucks iced coffee cup walking around with some shopping bags. They could be taken to more extremes and be sort of funny to hang on the walls. This is to be continued, but the magazine is tolerable only in short doses. Next, IP = the journal of intellectual property law http://www.alm.com/almPublication.asp?profile=40. Holy crap was this unreadable. I consider myself to me a semismart and intellectually curious individual and I barely flipped through the entire magazine. It took me 15 minutes to even figure out what the focus of the magazine was. The cover only said ‘IP’, like I was supposed to infer that this was for intellectual property lawyers. I would venture to guess that IP is generally understood by the public to mean ‘Internet Protocol’, but I will bet if you started printing ‘IP’ hats or something, these jackals would come-a-calling. I am sure there’s some irony there that I am not adequately illustrating. The fact that this appears to be very big business has inspired me to develop an arcane and abstract body of knowledge that only I possess knowledge of and therefore can charge exorbitant fees to interpret for the common man. Third on the list is IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Now this is good reading! My hidden engineer ripped through this one, filled with articles about the next generation of LI-ion batteries and fly-sized flying robots. Even if I understood 4% of what was on the page, at least I was getting something valuable. Lastly is Auto Aficionado – This is another quality magazine, although it’s target audience is clearly not the family man in a 1500 sq/f home. AA detailed the evolution of Porsche’s ferocious 6 cylinder boxer engine, took me though the new Ferrari museum in Maranello, Italy and even mixed in a few advertisements for custom-made garages and limited edition supercars. Conceptually, I knew what was going on, but I don’t think I will ever understand running 800 hp wide open on a private racetrack, so this goes into the same pile as IEEE.
In other news, I heard Spring was here. We switched the clocks and everything, but I had to crank the heated seats this morning. This is not quite grilling weather yet, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. I’ve already got my eye on a hardwood smoker attachment and I’ve located a source for some primal cuts of beef. Now all I have to do is convince M that we need 18 lbs of slow cooked beef brisket...
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