Did you hear the sounds of change?

This past weekend, I found myself in upstate New York. In a town named Fishkill. More precisely, on the outskirts of this town. Quite a distance from where I live, and probably not a place I would visit of my own volition. That's not to say that it isn't a nice place to live, I just don't think I could give up the easy access to the city I grew up in for it.

The reason I was up in Fishkill this weekend is because I was helping my cousin and his pregnant wife move into their first new home. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a half acre of property. Plenty of room to grow into. All of it in a small cluster of homes surrounded by woods and abundant amounts of wild life. The most visible form of wild life being the deer that kept crossing the roads we traversed.

I used to think it was quiet living out here on Long Island, but after spending the night up there, I could see that I was mistaken. Either that or the sounds of silence here have gotten louder as time has progressed. I remember as a youth listening to the sound of crickets chirping in the evenings, seeing (and chasing) the lightning bugs as they looked for mates, and seeing the stars overhead.

All of which I hadn't heard before in my life when I moved here from New York City. Now, as I listen for those sounds, I hear different sounds. I hear the loud descending chug of an eighteen wheeler downshifting as it tries to slow down, I hear the whine of jet engines flying overhead, the chop of helicopters passing by, and the spray of sprinkler heads watering manicured lawns. I see the orange glow of street lights reflecting back into the sky obscuring those same stars I marveled at when I saw them for the first time I saw them out here.

I don't hear the sounds or see the sights of my youth anymore. Did those things I noticed at first become part of the background noise? Or did time, along with increasing prosperity, hurry those sights and sounds on their way to extinction? It's not that I lament their passing, (for I am not much of a student of natural history such as Thoreau.) I only wonder how they slipped away without my noticing. Times, they are a-changing.

So, do you plan to get married?

It's amazing in the way how even writing out a few disjointed thoughts can organize the mind when it comes to communicating an idea to others. In my last post, I threw out a bunch of thoughts that had been weighing upon my mind, largely as an excuse for a post. It turned out that in doing so, it gave me something new to talk about and an interesting situation I find myself in.

At the job where I work as an engineer, we occasionally have to set up a series of test equipment for verifying the real world results of some product we are working on. I was working with another person who is, in effect, my mentor as I learn more about what it is that I am doing for the place I work at.

As things often do with work that doesn't require much thought, we ended talking, talking about ourselves. Rather, I asked questions about the setup, and the engineer asked questions about me. At first, he asked about my schooling, what I had learned there and what I wanted to learn about in the future. Then we moved on to hobbies, and eventually to relationships.

It turns out that the engineer was also an alumnus of my alma mater, and he complained about the same professors that I had issues with, which gave us quite a bit of common ground for discussion. I learned that he was married and had a boy and a girl. Then he asked that question. "So, are you married?"

Now, I'm not exactly oversensitive about my social status, but I sometimes wonder why this question is asked. It's a simple yes or no question. Somehow, I found myself apologetically explaining that I am single and that I am not seeing anyone right now. I even added the part about not really being interested in entering a relationship right now and my wish to do activities that didn't require a relationship to participate in.

Yet, the question is inevitably followed by this one when answered in the negative: "Do you think you'll ever get married?" With a question like that, I tend to get grumpy immediately. Since I had just taken the trouble to clarify that I am single and not seeing somebody, where would such thoughts of getting married follow that explanation? Instead of saying what I thought about the question, I heard these words blurt forth from my mouth: "No, I don't intend to get married."

Did I just say that out loud?!? I sure did! I paused for a moment, but that seemed to satisfy my colleague, since he stayed silent for the rest of the setup. In those moments of relative silence, I wondered to myself.

Was that response I had just replied with a Freudian slip? Some unconscious reason for why I just don't feel like finding someone special in my life? Do I really desire not to be married? I was troubled by the thoughts that continued to rattle around in my mind.

Is my explanation that I am tired of the chase really a superficial symptom of something deeper in my psyche? Was the real reason for the failed relationships I have had recently that they were undone by my own unconscious attitude towards being wedded to another person? Eventually, I had to push these thoughts out of my mind as I focused on the task at hand.

Usually, once these thoughts get supplanted by other thoughts, they escape from my memory unless something sparks the thought again. However, as I drove home, this particular conversation and the thoughts it set off came back to me of their own volition. During the entire forty five minute drive home during rush hour filled traffic (further extended by a car accident), I thought about it. I worried at the concept to see if some real feeling lay behind those words.

I came to a conclusion that I really didn't know if I meant what I had said. I couldn't say whether I had really meant it or responded that way out of pique from being asked the question one too many times. I can be contrary at times, and this may have been one of those times. Some doubts still linger though.

A Jumble of Random Thoughts

Just a handful of updates today. It seems that when things are going well, one simply is too busy to find time to write in their blogs. I've noticed amongst other bloggers as well, whom as life takes them to new and better places, simply fall off with their writing. As I well know, since I am guilty of the same. This doesn't mean that I am saying sayonara, merely an excuse for my own delinquency in posting more regularly.

I will take this moment to address an aside on a matter that seems to crop up constantly for some visitors to my humble blog.

Jamie and Brooke's (aka Belle) weblog on their lifestyle and simple recipes is an excellent example of success drawing them away from the blogging community in which they had resided. The non-working link I have to their blog seems to attract people who are looking for an update on them. While I am not a personal friend of these two, I point out for those who continue to search for them this news: Their blog has been deleted for whatever reason, though they seem to be doing well. At the last blog post they put up, Jamie is working at Daniel's in New York City, and Belle has a new site, www.brookeparkhurst.com The blog was deleted sometime near the beginning of the year. Which will end my aside about them.

It has been three weeks at the new job, where I am officially contributing as an engineer. Sadly, it has consisted mostly of creating reports. I can only smile with the chagrin I feel over the reality that I will be generating hundreds of pages of such reports every month. It's like the worst laboratory report I ever had to do at the university I attended multiplied by ten every day. On the bright side, at least I get paid to do it now.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying the company of my fellow engineers, who have a great sense of humor that keeps the tediousness to a minimum. Though I am still waiting for the World Rubberband War to start in our office. It's been a bit tense lately with everyone stocking up on arms of all rubberband shooting kind. As the new guy, I am trying very hard to be Switzerland, but those hopes are fading quickly. Besides, I want one of those gatling gun shooters. Three hundred rubberbands a minute is quite the deterrent. (We won't mention the hour it takes to load such rubber flinging fun...)

This past weekend was quite enjoyable, as I spent every night of the weekend attempting to do my very best to singe the hair off my arms-- I mean barbecuing. Summer's not quite right to me without that tradition of singed hair and flame blackened, grilled food for dinner. I look forward to many more weekends of such this summer.

The reason for this ability to barbecue every weekend is that I have taken a hiatus from my weekend job until mid August. No event photography, no evenings standing off on the side watching others having fun, and best of all, no more getting home at four in the morning with sore arms and exhausted body for the next month or so. Besides, it was starting to be less fun of late. I hope the hiatus will renew my sense of enjoyment in these endeavours.

Prospects for relationship remain dismal, though that is largely my lack of desire in chasing any members of the opposite sex right now. I am enjoying the sudden return of "free" time this summer, and I am resistant to giving up any of it for a woman. Of course, that's when I will probably start attracting them.

I intend to catch up on nine months of not playing paintball. I want to feel the wind in my hair while riding my bicycle aimlessly through neighborhoods I have never been to before. I want to go hiking and perhaps catch an interesting photograph of flora or fauna, all the while not seeing another human being for hours at a stretch. I want to sit in the quiet fantasy of a novel based on some fictitious world that doesn't exist in the here and now. And I don't need a woman to do any of these things.

So, in a jumbled heap of random news, I share what thoughts that are going through my mind. With them, I can see the sense of humor returning back into my life. I am no longer stressed out about where I will get the money to pay for things and that fact is a enormous burden off my back.

The air conditioner broke.

The air conditioner broke today. I'm going to paint an image for you. The squeamish ones should go away right about now. It's not going to be pretty.

It was very humid out today. About eighty percent according to the local weather forcast. It's been threatening to rain (again) and while the day had some sunny portions, the words hot and muggy come to mind quickly. Even though the temperature outside is only seventy two degrees, I came home to the busted air conditioner and an indoor temperature of ninety degrees.

My poor dog was laying on his side panting from the heat. I immediately got him some water and moved him outside, where it was twenty degrees cooler. While he is outside recovering, I went back in to turned on every fan and open every window. I was drenched in a matter of minutes.

My clothes had those unsightly sweat stains that made it seem like I had gone swimming in them. I peeled off those drenched clothes and I was still perspiring as if I had run a marathon. Sweat oozing out of every pore as I tried to move as little as possible.

When I went into the kitchen, I poured myself a tall glass of water, and the sweat faucet redoubled itself. I was dripping with perspiration. Seeing how things were going, I went and took a cold shower. As soon as the shower ended, the sweat returned as I toweled myself off.

So, there you have it. If, for some insane reason, you have read all the way to the end of this post, you now have an image in your mind. And that image is of a slightly overweight asian man with a sweaty body and no clothes on. Ewww. What were you thinking?

A ruined holiday

*SIGH* I'm home on this rain marred holiday, my great expectations dashed. Thank you very much Mother Nature. What a waste of a rare day off.

Instead of barbequed wings, burgers and (hot) dogs for dinner, we'll be having baked wings, grilled burgers and the dogs will be steamed. The drinks will have to be served indoors instead of the temporary bar (a plank of wood on some sawhorses; I was real proud of how it came out too). There will be no dinner on the patio guarded by citronella candles. No fireworks by starlight.

I won't even mention (too much about) my plans to photograph a sunset on the ocean, or shoot some fireworks (pictures of those fireworks, that is). No, instead the booming sounds that make my dog cower under my bed will be thunder claps. The flashes of light in the sky will be lightning.

I'm totally disgusted with how poorly the way this evening has gone on all of us. And just in case Mother Nature happens to be connected to the internet, I want to say thanks a lot for ruining it all.